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JANUARY 9

   One day later, Minho was on his way to see Jisung, to ask him if he wouldn't mind helping him soothe the pain in his tense, sore muscles.

...But you have to understand the position he was in. It wasn't that he wanted a massage (the thought of such a thing happening to him made him want to scream and throw himself from the window of his dorm room, and it made him quiver and shake like a leaf), and it wasn't that he couldn't take the pain— that he was too much of a wimp to grin and bear it— either. If it were only the pain he would've sucked it up as always. Rather, it was the fact he was utterly unable to focus on anything with the headaches he'd been having, which meant that his grades were immediately at high risk.

   All he wanted was to be able to pay attention to something other than the agony that being incredibly sore put him through. There was a sure way of getting that, at least, according to the  boys in his friend group who were now used to working knots out of each other.

   There came a point where Minho needed to choose the lesser of two evils: possibly flunk out of his classes, or deal with the intense unpleasantness of having hands pressing into him for an extended period of time (plus whatever consequences that allowing or asking for such a thing could bring) and he'd been fighting himself on that for hours.

   Again, you have to understand that Minho tried— he really tried— to do anything but go asking for something as horrible-sounding as a massage.

    In fact, he woke up in the morning, groaning and groveling with his face shoved into his pillow to muffle his agonized noises that came due to a mix of frustration and pain.

    He tried to fix things; he did everything he could think of to alleviate the havoc wreaked on his neck and back. He took a long, hot shower before he went to bed. He pressed his knuckles firmly into that annoying bump between his neck and shoulder that was always tender and uncomfortable. He forced himself to sleep on his back, rather than his side. And it turned out that none of his efforts had done a thing, because he felt absolutely no better than he had yesterday.

    Still, he assured himself that he'd be able to ignore it and go on, grumpily sitting through class after pain-filled class. That's what he always did, so why would it be different now? The last thing he wanted was to make a habit of begging for Jisung to come to his rescue. That was supposed to be a one-time thing.

   What made it different was that bright red 'F' circled on the quiz he got back today. 

   Turned out he failed that pop quiz from yesterday. 

   Minho had never failed anything before. A quiz, a test, a project— whatever it was, he'd never gotten any less than a C on an assignment, which made seeing that little, red-ink letter at the top of his paper seem surreal. 

   The scariest thing was: he didn't feel any better today, physically or mentally, as he felt just as brain-fogged as he did achy, which meant that he might do just as badly today, and if this continued, maybe he'd fail the class. Sure, it was a worst-case scenario, but with every shock of pain inside his skull it seemed more and more like reality.

   The failed quiz sat in front of him on the fold-out desk while he stared silently. His bleary eyes recognized nothing but the red scribble in the top right corner.

    Head throbbing and aching; hands tingling and shaking, Minho took a shaky inhale in a failed attempt to calm his panic. 

    Suddenly, a thought entered his mind.

    Jisung. Jisung could help.

    Just as quickly, he imagined himself asking Jisung for help and clamped his hand over his mouth and suppressed a violent shiver. No, no, no. He couldn't.

    And then he looked back at the red 'F'. He sighed harshly.

    After hours of fighting himself, uneasily, he came to the conclusion that maybe he should just try it. Let Jisung knead his neck until he had a head clear enough to focus with, for the sake of his grades. And that is, in full, the reason why he finally gave in and texted Jisung, asking him to stay behind in his room when Felix inevitably left to go upstairs and watch a nature documentary with everyone else (that was the plan discussed at the table during dinner, because Chan wanted to stare at penguins for a while and no one had any better ideas), but Minho didn't tell him why, just in case he ended up panicking last minute and chickening out.

   That was what finally got him here, standing motionless in the middle of the hallway, an equal distance from his room and Jisung's, breathing heavily, despite the fact that all he'd done for the past two minutes or so was stand and stare at the sticky-note-covered door. Perhaps he was stalling. (He was definitely stalling.)

    Minho hoped the boys in 2Chan's room didn't get too curious about why both he and Jisung weren't coming up that night. It wasn't so much of a surprise that Minho wasn't there: he'd missed out on plenty of nights where everyone else was gathered and hanging out together (due to the fact that, much more often than he'd like, he'd end up in one of those moods where he didn't feel like he could trust himself to act sufficiently 'normal' around other people), but Jisung was pretty much always there like the rest of them. It be weird for him to just... not go upstairs on a night when everyone was there. So the boys upstairs might be wondering... why?

    Jisung wouldn't have cared if they knew. If it were up to him, in such a situation, he would've told them that he was sitting in his room, with Minho on his bed, pressing his thumbs into his neck. Minho, on the other hand, would've been mortified, so Jisung didn't tell them.

    After an adequate amount of stalling, Minho shuffled forward and knocked on the door. Sure enough, Jisung had stayed— his warm, welcoming voice called out the words, 'come in', within a second of Minho tapping his hesitant knuckles against the door.  When Minho let out a shaky exhale and slowly opened the door, he caught a glimpse of Jisung's bright demeanor, and then he fixed his eyes on the floor. The carpet looked real nice just then.

   Quietly, he shut the door behind him, and kept his eyes narrowed and safely away from Jisung. Just from that one look, it was easy to see that Jisung was being friendly and chill, stretched out on his bed and ready to listen attentively to whatever his visitor had to say, even though Minho was being mysterious and broody (not that that was anything new, of course,) as he avoided both saying what he was here for and looking Jisung in the eye. He had to be like that, because it was the only way he could cover up the fact that he was incredibly nervous, with his heart hammering in his chest.

    Minho had not been in that room for quite some time. About two months, actually. When he lifted his head a little and moved his gaze up to scan the room, he found that it hadn't changed since he was there last, hugging Felix because he felt that he had to. The twin-sized beds were pushed up against each other, still, and the combined mattress-space was covered with two different sets of bedding strewn about, mostly in one heap, as if the pair using it didn't care to maintain separate sides of the bed.

    "...You still haven't moved the beds back?" Minho asked, mostly because he was disinclined to let Jisung know what he wanted right away and was searching for something to say. Once again, he was stalling.

    "Nah, too much work. Besides, Felix likes to cuddle and it gives us more room for stretching in the morning. It was pretty cramped before." Jisung shrugged, saying that like it was no big deal. Because, for him, it wasn't a big deal.

    When Jisung had slid nonchalantly off the bed and they were standing toe to toe inside the room, he popped the question, "So, what's up?"

   He was actually going to have to say this... unless his throat seized up before he got the chance.

    Hand in his neck, Minho slowly began, "Can you— um..." He paused. Suddenly, he realized that, even though he didn't feel that hot except in his reddened cheeks, beads of sweat were running down his arms under his sleeves,— that was gross as heck. His heart hammered wildly against his chest, yet he thought his throat would close up before he keeled over and died of a heart attack. He just couldn't say anything.

『 ↳✧･ﾟ

i know exactly what i want to say.

well, only part of me actually wants to say it— the other part desperately wishes i wasn't even in this room. i would be saying "can you give me a massage?" if only that didn't sound so weird.

...it's funny, 'cause i can imagine all the guys saying that, no problem. they just wouldn't care.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 』

    Somehow, he finally got his stupid voice box to start working— and thank goodness, because this would've turned even more awkward had he let that pause go on much longer. "Ever since we got back I've been really sore and I was wondering..." He trailed off, head down, biting his lip, cheeks flushed intensely because it was just so awkward. Everything about this sucked. Plus, it just felt weird and wrong to tell someone he was in pain. He couldn't finish the sentence. He knew if he tried, it'd just come out as a sequence of pitiful stutters.

Jisung tilted his head with a caring, encouraging little smile. "You want a massage?"

    Oh thank goodness. He understood, easily. Minho didn't have to say what he actually 'wanted' from him.

"Yes... please," Minho admitted, almost begrudgingly, eyes still glued to the floor.

『 ↳✧･ﾟ

gosh this feels so wrong. but at least there's a reason for it, right?? im not asking him to put his hands on me just because...

still, this is so unlike me. and i hate that.

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 』

    "Yeah, of course. Honestly, I was wondering if you were going to ask. You seemed to have it pretty rough today." Jisung paused, thinking it over.

   How was he always so okay with everything? And how did he always know what Minho was feeling, especially when Minho didn't want him to?

   "...But then again, I didn't think you would," he added, and it seemed (to Minho) almost as if he were looking for a reason why Minho actually, finally did come to him.

    Minho shrugged. "Couldn't focus in class... It's just... headaches. I kind of failed the pop quiz... " In his mind, Minho clung to that, desperately, as the sole reason for him coming to Jisung. His grades depended on it. He just had to keep telling himself that.

    Jisung seemed a bit displeased with the way he dropped his shoulders and furrowed his eyebrows. "Why didn't you ask earlier? You didn't have to go all day like that."

『 ↳✧･ﾟ

oh, i don't know... maybe because i would've died of embarrassment??

i'm already close to doing that now. can't imagine what it would be like with people watching ...actually i can, but i better not. otherwise i might puke on jilix's floor. 

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 』

     But he wasn't going to say all of that, so he just left it at a grumbly 'I don't know', which was pretty much a lie, and obviously Jisung could see that.  

 Still, (thank goodness) Jisung didn't push (for once). Instead, he just softly said, "C'mere", and patted the edge of the bed, sending a shiver down Minho's spine. Minho hid shaking hands in his hoodie pocket and sat down where Jisung told him to. The weight of the realization that he just asked for someone to touch him was really hitting him now.

    Minho gulped and held his breath as he felt the bed dip behind him while Jisung got situated, then bit his lip hard as his warm, gentle hands were planted on his shoulders without warning. Instantly, he felt the burning disgust crop up that made him freak out and violently flinch away, shuddering as always. However, for once, he did his best to calm his suddenly quickened breaths and slowly forced himself back into his place in front of Jisung creakily, muttering, "Sorry..."

    It must've looked like he overreacted. Was that an overreaction? It was plenty uncomfortable and frankly distressing to Minho, so was that reaction too much or was it not? It must've seemed pretty rude though, and if Jisung took that personally—

    "No worries," Jisung assured, once again being inexplicably fine with everything. "You alright? Should I start?"

    "Yeah," Minho murmured, voice tense and, annoyingly, quivering— and no, he was not actually "alright". "I'm fine." He tried to prepare himself this time (but how was he to prepare for someone to put their hands on his shoulders?), and all he ended up doing was hiking up his shoulders nearly to his ears and holding his breath and squeezing his eyes shut.

   "'kay."

    The hands returned to his shoulders slowly, and as they made contact, Minho kept himself stiffly, rigidly in place, completely ignoring the way that sitting that way hurt a lot.

    Jisung went easy on him at first, to get him as close to comfortable as possible (though Minho definitely wouldn't have described this as comfortable), firmly pressing his hands into Minho's shoulders and rubbing slow and gentle, in an attempt to get him used to the feeling.

   "So, your neck hurts, right?" Jisung murmed, and something about the softness of his voice was sort of sickening to Minho.

   Minho nodded, despite the fact that it hurt quite a bit, because he decided he was very much over with talking for tonight.

   "We'll start with that, then."

    Little by little, the tension fell away and the sensation of the skin on his didn't feel quite so terrible, because he was adjusting to the feeling, like stepping into a cold shower. Minho didn't know that was something that could happen... The horrible, gut-wrenching sensation of physical contact could actually... dissipate (for now, at least), and he eventually didn't feel the nearly irresistible urge to shake off the hands and brush himself 'clean'. He, of course, had never been in a situation where he would've found that out before.

   Still, he had a persisting sinking feeling in his stomach and a strange, vague feeling of peril— the way Minho saw it was: if this had been a movie, there would've been unsettling violin music playing (He didn't really know what that came from, but it wasn't that Jisung was acting creepy or anything).

    Because it only made things worse, Minho tried not to think. If he hadn't been fighting off the thoughts threatening to flood his head, he would've been freaking out and tensing up again. All he had to do was convince himself to focus on the fact that his poor, screaming muscles were getting relief, instead of the fact that there were hands trailing down his back.

    Had this not been such an awkward position for Minho to be in, it would have been a complete, total relief to almost instantly find the tension in his shoulders slip away, quickly followed by the premature aching of his back. Gone. Almost completely.

    For half a second, caught up in the overwhelming relief, he almost wished that he had just given in and let Jisung do this months ago, the first time he'd offered. Then again, back then it'd probably been even more of an issue for him, and despite how much it would have made him physically feel better, he would've hated it so, so much and he wouldn't have recovered.

    But right now, as he let his mind go blank and let the increasing pressure of Jisung's thumbs working into his neck melt him into a puddle, he couldn't even lie to himself and say it didn't feel... good.

   Sort of.

   Almost.

    Until Jisung found a knot. Totally unprepared (having never received a massage before), Minho actually screamed.

   (And for your information, he clamped his hands tightly over his mouth directly afterward and mentally cursed himself for it.)

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4k for my birthday?? thanks guys :D

the way this chapter and the last one combined was originally like 600 words- it was insufficient

btw five star is soooooo good and i still haven't gotten any of the albums yet but i need the limited version so much and i can't decide whether i wanna get a b or c help