MINSUNG ONESHOTS

LITTLE

By maniacdotmp3

Summary:
Jisung hasn’t told Minho about these tendencies of his. How he starts feeling small sometimes. How the world gets too big and too heavy and he curls in on himself. How little he gets. He’s shy about it. He’s ashamed, and he’s scared how he’d react.

or: canon compliant minsung navigate littlespace

(also long asf)

Picture a glass. Picture the steady drip of water flowing into it. There’s just a bit at first, barely a sip. Then it’s half full—or half empty, depending on your perspective. Another drip. Another. Water spills over the rim of the glass and wets the wooden table, but the flow doesn’t let up. If the glass could feel anything, it might start feeling small. Too small. It might beat itself up for not being able to hold all this water. Being a failure. Not being big enough.

This is a poor allegory, but the point is—Jisung is the glass. Drop him and he’ll break. He caves under the weight of the world. Too small to shoulder it. Too small, too small, too—

But he can’t let himself slip right now. He has to stay—normal. He has to be big.

They’re three weeks into this comeback and the deluge of it has left him more keyed-up than usual. Stressed-out. Exhausted, but sleep still escapes him when he finally collapses into bed. Kept up by spiralling thoughts and the sharp stab of anxiety that’s been lodged right below his pancreas for as long as he remembers. His whole life, it feels like.

Something changed between this comeback and their last. More attention. More eyes on them. And that’s a dream, of course, that’s the dream as a producer, a musician, an idol, which is what Jisung is. Which is what Jisung has trained to become. Which is what he has always wanted to be.

It’s complicated. He wants it and it still spikes his body with dread. He wants to write songs and he wants to perform and he wants to connect with people through music, but he’s also—he’s also afraid of all that attention.

Right now, they’re at a fansign. He’s next to Minho, which is nice, because Minho is his favourite person in the world. Whenever he thinks of the first time he saw Minho, he flushes red-hot at the memory. How he lost his breath. How he made this strangled little sound and Hyunjin asked if he was okay.

He was full of so much rage back then. He wanted to take on the entire world. He wanted the adrenaline rush of a good fight and he wanted someone to push him around and give him an excuse to bruise his knuckles just because it was simpler than admitting how scared he really was. On the precipice of adulthood—it was terrifying. And fear is humiliating. Better to be angry than afraid.

But then Minho showed up and all the fight bled out of Jisung’s body. He went slack-dumb right there. The most beautiful person he’d ever seen.

He didn’t understand it, of course. He wouldn’t understand it for a long, long time. The meaning of that. The depth of it. He tried to chalk it up to jealousy, but the pieces wouldn’t ever properly fit. It’s not that he wanted to look like Minho. He wanted to look at Minho.

He still does. He still loses his breath sometimes looking at him, and isn’t that silly, after all these years? All those years loving him loudly but pining quietly and then the last nine months since Minho kissed him the first time. Square on the mouth, his hands cupping his face, his tongue slipping between Jisung’s lips when he gasped. The taste of soju on his tongue. Sharp. A raspberry undertone. And his lilting voice turned raspy, murmuring, tell me no. Tell me no and I won’t.

But why would Jisung say no? He’d wanted Minho to kiss him since the first time he touched the small of his back. The first time he adjusted his stance during dance practice, Jisung felt the spectral touch of his hands on his hips the rest of the day. The blush never left his cheeks.