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Minho leans back into the couch and exhales, blinking hard once, then twice.
The room is too bright, and paired with the exhaustion clawing at the edges of his consciousness, the deep ache behind his eyes, all of it is blurring into colors and a concerning wooziness when he turns his head too quickly.
“Hyung.” It’s Jeongin, peeking over the back of the couch to check if he’s awake. “We’re playing Uno in Chan-hyung’s room. Are you joining?”
Minho squeezes his eyes shut, cracks one open. “Nah,” he murmurs, tilting his head back and arching his back into a stretch. “I’m getting sleepy.”
In truth, he wouldn’t say he’s sleepy, exactly. He’s tired, but too wound up to fall asleep. There’s something strange wobbling in his chest that’s making the edges of his vision go wonky and his mind feel disconnected. It’s too complicated to explain it all to Jeongin, anyway. All he knows is that if right now, he’s made to hang out in a space where seven other men will most definitely start screaming at one another, something in him will splinter.
“Okay, rest well.” Jeongin’s head disappears over the couch, and Minho hears him skipping into Chan’s room where muffled shouting over the atrocity of making someone pick up eight has already started.
His head aches.
Minho doesn’t keep track of how long he stays on the couch, drifting in and out of half-consciousness, weary, yet strangely agitated.
Eventually, he registers the muted padding of footsteps and the sound of running water.
Then, “Hyung? You awake?”
Minho opens his eyes, squinting against the harsh light directly above him and twisting his head to the right. The blurry figure standing beside the couch comes into focus.
Minho blinks at him.
“I thought you’d be asleep in your room by now,” Jisung says, putting down the glass of water in his hand and walking up to Minho.
Minho hums in response.
A moment later, Jisung’s hands land on his shoulders, fingers digging into the knotted muscle.
Minho hums a little louder in approval.
“We’re ordering takeout later. Do you want anything?”
Minho shakes his head.
Jisung’s thumbs slip under the collar of Minho’s shirt and rubs circles into the spot above his shoulder blades, soothing the tension there, too.
“Is something bothering you, hyung? You’ve been a bit… zoned out. Not just right now, but today in general.”
Minho tilts his head back and stares up at Jisung, who blinks down at him with his round, boba-like eyes. He looks so soft around the edges here, bare-faced, hair falling past his temples. Minho adores this version of his best friend the most—not HAN, not even J.ONE, but Jisung. Just Jisung.
“Not really. I’ve just been feeling weird.”
“Weird how?” Jisung’s hands move towards the base of his neck.
“I don’t know, floaty? Like I’m dreaming and the floor might give out under me any moment.”
“Hyung,” Jisung says with a huff of laughter, “that’s mildly concerning, I think.”
“I’m probably just sleep-deprived,” Minho decides.
Jisung stays quiet, more concentrated on his arbitrary mission to give Minho a shoulder massage. After a while, he starts humming Limbo under his breath, which turns into soft singing, a contrast to the way he likes to unabashedly belt out songs in the middle of dressing rooms, his bangs curled around a criminally cute hair roller.
Minho’s mind wanders back to the start of today, when he’d woken up late because his alarm failed to go off, which meant he had to forgo his morning coffee and get on the van groggy and cranky. He’s not usually that affected by the lack of sleep—he’s used to it, and his body’s used to it. But evidently running on thirty-seven consecutive days of two hour’s sleep and power naps is his limit, and he’d stumbled through rehearsal with one too many mistakes, which, fine, mistakes happen.
But then during sound check, with a sizable audience who had VIP access as witness, his voice cracked on a note that should’ve been comfortably in his voice range. Normally, he’d be the last person to be bothered by a voice crack—it happens, and more often than not it’s even funny. Yet, all of his usual nonchalance had curled inward into shame then, and all he’d wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed.
And then the day had somehow gotten progressively worse—small trips on stage, the too-rough touch of the staff backstage, the flashing lights of cameras in his face, the constant need to uphold the illusion that he’s not remotely affected because they’re filming for SKZ-TALKER—on any other day these things would slide right off his back into the background, easily dismissed, but today they sit on his ribcage, heavy and suffocating, and his heart is glass and his veins are water and any moment now all of it could come crashing down like an avalanche.
“Gosh, your neck is so tense,” Jisung murmurs, more to himself than to Minho. The pads of his fingertips ease their way along the back of Minho’s neck, releasing the tightness from hours of sitting in front of a phone and even more hours of dance practice.
It feels good.
Minho becomes shamefully, sharply aware of the fact that his nose is stinging, and he barely has time to snap his eyes shut before he feels pressure pushing at the back of his eyelids.
It’s too late, he knows. The moment he tries to blink it will all be in vain, but he keeps his eyes stubbornly closed and reminds himself to breathe.
The hands on his neck still.
“Hyung?”
He must’ve done… something. Either a change in posture or the pattern of his breathing, or his shoulders must’ve hunched in, because he can feel Jisung leaning over, breath warm against Minho’s ear. “Are you okay?”
The concern sends another sharp sting up Minho’s nose, tumbles into the liquid trapped behind his closed eyes, and the barrier breaks.
There’s a short, stunned pause.
“Aigo.” Jisung’s voice pitches up with worry. The couch judders as he vaults over the back, and a moment later his hands are all over Minho, on his hands, his arms, his neck, then his face, gently wiping away the tears slipping down his cheeks. “Aigo, what’s wrong?”
Minho laughs a little, doesn’t lift his head because he can’t look Jisung in the eye like this.
He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to explain it, the way he’s been feeling, like he’s been balancing on a tightrope all day, the way he’s been so quickly and easily affected by things that never had a hold on him, and the way he doesn’t have an inkling of why.
Minho lets his gaze travel up, enough to see Jisung’s blurry, outstretched arms. He makes an aborted move to take Jisung’s hand, but his own is shaking and he’s dizzy with the need to stop feeling like an ant under a boot, so he doesn’t make it very far.
Jisung meets him halfway, grasping Minho’s hand in his own and peering up at him, the other hand still resting on Minho’s cheek.
Contrary to popular belief, Minho does enjoy physical touch. He doesn’t need or crave it like Yongbok does, and he isn’t used to initiating it as much as Chan and Jisung are, but he still finds comfort in it, especially when he’s with his members and the cameras are off, and every contact they make is as natural as breathing.
Jisung’s touch is calming. Minho leans into it, still staring at his knees, embarrassment curdling in his stomach. He doesn’t feel the urge to cry all that often, and when he does he does it in the privacy of a bathroom or his own bed. If he has to count, this must only be the second time Jisung has seen him cry throughout the five years they’ve known each other, and over virtually nothing, too.
“I’m okay,” Minho whispers when the shaky, fragile thing in his chest settles a little and he feels like he can speak without sounding like he has a cold.
“Pshhh.” Jisung reaches up and pokes his nose. “Nobody needs you to be okay right now. It’s good to cry it out sometimes.”
He leans in and thumbs away the remaining tears from the corners of Minho’s eyes, the saddest pout on his lips. “You can tell us—me—what’s bothering you, you know? Don’t lock all of it up and hide away. I know how you are. And if you don’t know what’s bothering you, tell me you feel bad so I can make it better, okay?”
Minho blinks down at his knees, something warm and mildly uncomfortable tingling its way up his spine. Ah, Jisung. Their Jisung. His Jisung.
“Okay,” he whispers.
Jisung nods and reaches up to pat his head gently. “Do you want me to sit with you? Or do you want to be alone?”
Minho hesitates, then swallows and gives Jisung’s sleeve a small tug, unable to make himself say it.
It’s a good thing Jisung knows him so well. “Okay, I’ll stay.”
Jisung practically melts into his side, sliding his arms around Minho’s torso. The sharp jut of his chin is enough to prompt Minho to move and rest his head in the hollow of Jisung’s neck, cheek pressed to his collarbone.
“We’ll sit here for as long as you need or want,” Jisung says. “Okay?”
Minho wouldn’t be able to begin explaining how much he appreciates Jisung’s existence if he tried. He breathes out, letting the tension bleed away through his fingertips.
A chorus of laughter erupts from behind the half-closed door of Chan’s room. Momentarily, the noise sounds less like glass in his ears and more like the echo of safety Stray Kids has always been, and will undoubtedly always be.
Minho nods against Jisung’s shoulder, the floating, unmoored thing in his chest finally anchoring itself, settling.
“Okay.”