JISUNG—

   Bored, bored, bored. That's what Jisung was today. That, and in need of attention from his darling Minho. That's why he was currently tracing shapes onto his bedsheets, kicking his feet in lazy circles, waiting for the ringing in his ear to stop so he'd hear Minho when he said: "Hi, Sungie."

   And when he did, a smile tugged at the corner of Jisung's lips as he started, "Hey, hyu— wait, hold on a sec, do I get to call you 'babe', now?"

   In the silence that followed, Jisung imagined his boyfriend covering his blushy face with his free hand. With a flustered, slightly wavering voice, Minho answered, "Yeah, I guess so."

   With his smile growing mischievous, Jisung continued, "Okay then, babe, can we hang with Chan hyung again tonight?"

   "...Sure, Ji."

   ~~~

   Nearly an hour later it was Jisung, Minho, and Chan sitting on Chan's living room couch yet again, chatting comfortably. Jisung had wrapped an arm around Minho's shoulder and felt his heart thump happily when the boy leaned into his side— and they'd sat like that the whole time they'd been here, unmoving.

    With a lull in the conversation, when all three of them had gone quiet for some time (as they'd each gotten their fill of complaining about the continual lack of heating in the Lit classroom), Jisung took the chance to cure his curiosity and ask a question he'd been considering all day. Anxious to keep learning while he was here with Chan, wondering about the frequency with which Minho's shift in headspaces would occur, and hoping to see his boyfriend be all cute some more, Jisung started, "Hey, babe," not missing a chance to finally use some pet names, and to make Minho shy. "When are you gonna little again?"

   Jisung felt Minho stiffen slightly under his arm as he nervously chuckled, "Uh, I'm not sure..."

    Ah— right, Jisung just now remembered, this was Minho's coping mechanism... so it wasn't really a good thing for him to need to slip, right? "I mean— not that I want you to be stressed, but... y'know."

   Minho nodded a little. "Well, I could probably slip now if, um..." While Jisung waited intently, Minho grimaced and looked down.

   "If?" Jisung prompted.

   But Minho didn't answer, so Chan filled in, "He means if you babied him. Isn't that right, bug?"

   Blushing hard, Minho furrowed his eyebrows at Chan, whining, "Hyung, stopppp!" He shifted away from Jisung, shrinking in on himself shyly.

   "See, look at him getting all whiny like that. Ji, when it comes to little space, there are things called triggers— things that cause a little to slip into their headspace. For Minho, pet names are a huge trigger."

   While Minho was busy half facepalming, half embarrassedly covering his red face, Jisung chirped, "Oh~ I see." Removing Minho's hands from his face nonchalantly, Jisung pressed a kiss to Minho's cheek and softly called, "Baby~"

   He watched Minho's eyes get big, glancing back and forth between him and Chan, as if he wasn't sure what to do. Chan just smiled at him— of course, Jisung did the same, but watching a trace of a pout form as Minho's lower lip jutted out slightly, he also reached forward to wriggle his fingers into Minho's side. As expected, Minho couldn't help but shriek with laughter.

   Minho fell back onto the couch and thrashed while Jisung's fingers dug into his tummy and made him squeal— and when Chan joined in he couldn't hold it back at all and fell into a giggling fit while the two of them tickled him mercilessly.

   Finally, running out of air and near turning blue, Minho threw himself forward into Jisung's chest (which still heaved with fond laughter) and clung to him, hiding his face.

   Letting his little breathe, Jisung carded soothing fingers through Minho's hair. "You're little now, huh, Minnie?"

   Slowly and bashfully, slightly hesitantly, Minho nodded into Jisung's chest, bunching up the fabric of his shirt in his fists. 

    "It's okay, baby." Gently hooking fingers under Minho's chin; tilting his reddened face up, Jisung soothed, "Sungie's happy to see you, you know that?"

   Minho finally smiled.

~~~

   Jisung spent quite a while cuddling with and fawning over the little until Minho eventually perked up and felt confident enough to slide off of his lap and find some toys to play with— well, it was also partly because Minho was embarrassed about the loud growling of his stomach that Jisung could certainly both hear and feel as he was pressed up against him.

   Rather than follow the little to be his playmate as he would have, had he not heard the complaints of his empty stomach, Jisung got up and promptly approached Chan with a determined gleam in his eyes.

    "Hyung, can you teach me to cook?"

   So about half an hour later, proudly, with a pan of stir fry just finished and steaming ever so slightly on the stove, Jisung looked to Minho in the living room, who had occupied himself quietly with a handful of small, plastic horse figures the whole time, and called for him gently.

   "Baby?"

   Minho looked up at Jisung with those big, babyish eyes that Jisung had yet to get over.

   "Dinner's ready." Jisung motioned for Minho to come to him from where he stood at the end of the table, smiling wide.

   Minho only looked back down at his toys and kept playing. Jisung's smile dropped.

   "Minnie, come here, baby, it's time to eat..." Jisung looked over at Chan, confusedly, helplessly, when Minho didn't respond at all. Chan mouthed instructions for him to approach Minho. Jisung compliantly approached and crouched beside the little. "Hey, come on."

   Minho shook his head.

   "No?"

   He stared blankly, and it was just as much of a 'no' as a head shake.

    "Not hungry?"

   "Don't wanna," Minho mouthed, perhaps even whispered, but Jisung couldn't hear him— and that was how it was meant to be, it seemed. He directed his gaze back to the plastic ponies in his hands and on the carpet.

   Defeated, Jisung sighed and walked back to the table, where Chan sat watching. They carried out a hushed conversation, due to the fact that Chan had been staring, disapprovingly, at Jisung that whole time.

   "Hyung, I can't force him to eat if he doesn't want to..."

   "Jisung, if you're his caregiver, you need to take care of him. That means you need to make sure he's being properly nourished, even if he would rather just keep playing right now." Chan sighed. "Eating isn't always his favorite. He'd rather just keep playing, so if you let him, he'll ignore his hunger until it goes away. You heard his stomach growling earlier, didn't you? I certainly did." As he paused, Jisung nodded. "He should eat," Chan concluded, a little louder, loud enough for Minho to hear, nodding promptly.

   "...Okay." Jisung once again appeared at Minho's side, crouching and watching the little move his ponies. "Baby. Look here," Jisung started, a little firmer this time. And Minho looked, so he went on, "You heard him, Minnie. You need to eat."

   Thus, Chan suddenly became the bad guy, so Minho hid himself from Chan by pressing himself to Jisung's side, whining softly into his shirt.

   "Aw, honey," Jisung chuckled, feeling the breath in Minho's chest stop up momentarily at the first use of a new nickname. It had just come out naturally— was it alright to call him that?

   Well, with the way that, after his breath returned a second later, Minho pressed still closer, making himself smaller in Jisung's arms, Jisung figured he must've liked it.

   Aware of Chan's judging stare, Jisung realized he should probably try to be more firm.

   "We're gonna get to that table one way or another, Minnie. Do you need Sungie to carry you, or do you wanna walk?"

   Minho stuck his hands up lazily, hardly pulling himself away from Jisung's side.

    Jisung chuckled a little. "Alright, you little cutie." He lifted Minho into his arms, withholding a grunt as he shot Chan a pained expression. He'd made this look so easy. It was not, in fact, easy to lift his boyfriend (who was actually slightly taller and broader than he was) off the ground and hoist him up to his waist. Chan held back his laughter as he watched Jisung struggle.

    (Jisung would be purchasing a gym membership soon.)

    Despite that, once Minho was secure in his hold, he carried him safely to the table and set him down, only to pick him right back up when Minho made grabby hands for him, asking to sit in his lap.

    "Alright," Jisung started, breathless. "Now it's time to eat, baby." With the little staring warily at him, Jisung added: "Please."

    With that, Minho's Jisung-pleasing-tendencies seemed to kick in, and he took the first mouthful of Chan and Jisung's stir fry he was offered. But after that, even Jisung asking him sweetly to please say 'ah' didn't work. Even that couldn't get him to eat more. (And for your information, yes, maybe Jisung was a little disappointed that he didn't want to eat the meal he slaved over for about twenty minutes, even if Chan did most of the work.)

    Minho just kept shaking his head, pushing his face into Jisung's chest, refusing the spoon Jisung held to his lips.

   Sighing, Jisung relented and set down the spoon to free up his hand for running through the little's hair. "Is there anything you want to eat, baby?" 

   Silence.

   "Not even pudding?"

   As Minho perked up suddenly, Chan tilted his head, eyes flicking slightly wider with a note of surprise. "So you know about his pudding obsession?"

   Jisung nodded, smiling, patting Minho's knee fondly. "He's managed to hide a lot of things from me, but his love for pudding his not one of them."

   "Well, unfortunately, I have no more pudding to offer him. He ate the last one last week and I haven't been to the grocery store since."

    "Oh."

   Minho sunk back down into Jisung's chest disappointedly.

   "Listen, baby, if you eat this, Sungie will go to the store and get you pudding."

   Minho nodded slowly.

   "But you have to stay here and eat, okay?"

   He nodded again, but this time he was more bowing his head slightly than nodding.

Jisung slid him off his lap, patting his back as he assured him he'd be back soon.

"Wow, and he didn't even scream," Chan commented.

~~~

   Twenty three minutes is what it must have been, Jisung assumed (because that's how long he'd been gone), that Minho had sat there at the table, unmoving, staring at his bowl, toy pony lying on its side, abandoned, in the middle of the table. Hadn't eaten a bite, by the look of it, the whole time Jisung was out speedwalking through unhelpfully labeled aisles to finally find a six pack of the pudding he'd watched his boyfriend go bonkers for once or twice. Now Jisung was setting a crinkly plastic bag filled only with said pudding plus a receipt onto the counter, disappointed to find the bowl untouched.

   Chan was still sitting at the table too, but he'd come around to sit on the same side as Minho, and was currently running his hand through the little's hair as said little rested his cheek on the table. "Welcome back. He," Chan started, while moving his hand to Minho's back as he sat up to look at Jisung. "hasn't eaten at all." Jisung frowned. "Wants you to feed him, he said."

   Jisung clutched his chest and cooed, smile returning. He wasted no time in kicking off his shoes and peeling off his coat, hurrying towards Minho and pulling up another chair next to him for a smooth transfer— letting Minho climb into his lap, holding his arms out open for him.

   "Missed me, huh, baby?" Jisung cooed, a hint of a chuckle in his voice. He was definitely enjoying the way Minho so desperately clung to him, looking at him with his shiny, baby eyes, instead of Chan, for once, nodding. If only Minho could always be this honest.

   "Well," Jisung started, picking up Minho's spoon, "let's get this in that little tummy of yours, so you can hurry up and eat your pudding, okay?"

   Finally, Minho allowed Jisung to shovel a few spoonfuls of stir fry into his mouth, while Chan commented on the fact that there definitely would've been quite a lot more crying and yelling involved if he were the one in Jisung's place right now.

   Both Minho and Jisung were happily giggling and cooing when, after Minho finished his last bite of dinner and Jisung had thoroughly praised him, the lid was pulled off of the pudding cup. Minho, excited for pudding; Jisung, excited to see Minho so excited.

   Watching Jisung deliver a spoonful of pudding to Minho via the old standby, the "airplane", Chan rolled his eyes, though not without a fond smile. "He's gonna be spoiled rotten at this rate." 

-----

hey people, sorry this one took forever, a ton of stuff has been going on and i've been pretty unmotivated to finish up the last like 500 words this needed lol