lessons in caregiving - minsung (extended oneshot)

reputations

CHAN —

    Lee Minho was popular. Everyone on campus knew him for being attractively aloof— your typical strong and silent type— but charming overall, and of course, stunningly handsome. With his carved, statue-esque features most of all his sharp, dark eyes (with the potential to give quite the startling stare), he had the general look of what you might call a 'bad boy' (you know, the type that rides a motorcycle and wears a leather jacket and mouths off to teachers with his feet propped up on his desk— except, spoiler! Minho didn't do any of that)— especially when he wore that little, smirky grin that made him seem, at first glance, like a player.

    Han Jisung was popular, too. Everyone knew him for being hot, cute, and animated (with those pouty lips and sparkly doe eyes that could potentially get just about anyone wrapped around his little, black-nail-polish-tipped finger), but all around, quite a catch, so it seemed no wonder that he'd end up underneath the arm of Lee Minho, no matter how much it bitterly disappointed some hopeful girls (at the very least). And that he did. Jisung was blessed with the privilege of having Minho's arm wrapped around him most everywhere he went, and often times he found himself sitting in Minho's lap, sometimes in class. They were dating since a month after classes started.

    Bang Chan was... just a guy. He blended into the background, because he was always too busy with his own stuff to be much of a stand-out character around college, but he did have one call to 'fame' (rather, campus popularity), and that was the fact that he was friends with Minho.

   Minho and Jisung looked good together. They had chemistry together (and not just the class), often bickering light-heartedly and joking around, and they were comfortable with each other— or so it seemed. Chan knew otherwise, because he knew Minho.

   See, Minho was Chan's little. Chan was Minho's caregiver. It'd been that way for about two years, since before either of them were in college, and before either of them met Jisung.

   Chan was happy for Minho when he announced that he was dating Jisung (especially Jisung, because Chan had made friends with him, too, so he knew that under all his flirtiness, he was a really just a nice kid that would probably be good for Minho), but it came with a twinge of pain that struck his chest faintly. No way was he jealous— he and Minho really were just friends (in the typical sense of the phrase), but naturally, he assumed that Minho would want his new boyfriend to be his caregiver... which meant he'd probably be seeing a lot less of cry-your-eyes-out-adorable Little Minho, who he'd very much gotten used to and grown very fond of over the past two years. That was the only disturbing part of it for Chan... until the next disturbing thing cropped up just the next day.

   Chan very clearly remembered the first day he saw Jisung with Minho— or, the day Minho changed.

   Before, Minho seemed mostly indifferent to the opinions people had of him around college, and the perceptions that the general public had of his character— but when a round-cheeked hottie by the name of Han Jisung took an interest in him, Chan watched him start to play into the character that rumors around the campus painted him to be.

   The Minho Chan knew would never be the type to scoff or roll his eyes at his lover when they were being affectionate. Chan knew how much he really wanted that.

   He was secretly (but obviously) desperate for Jisung's attention and approval, and there were things that he couldn't hide that showed that. The traces of a blush and a flustered smile that he couldn't quite hold back when Jisung whispered into his ear— Chan could only imagine he was giving him little compliments: Minho loved those, and Jisung was either lucky to happen to already have a tendency to do that, or very perceptive to have figured it out when Minho wanted to hide it. And there was the subtle bouncing of his leg and tensing of his neck when Jisung got close... A slight hesitation as he wrapped his fingers around Jisung's hip, trying to keep his cool... if you knew Minho, it was obvious that he was fronting.

   But did Jisung know Minho?

   Minho used to walk around with a sort of blank expression on most of the time, as if he were deep in thought, whenever he was out in public and not in his safe place (Chan's house, where he could be little). With his sharp features, his resting face gave off an air of disregard and overconfidence by itself; that was what had built his reputation initially, with all the circulating whispers (mostly coming from the freshman girls) coming to life as he came and went, mostly oblivious.

     But now, especially when Jisung was with him, he walked around with a lingering impression of a slight smirk and a completely manufactured arrogant tilt to his head and eyebrows, so Chan had picked up a tendency of sighing whenever he saw Minho at college, or really anywhere but at his house, knowing it just wasn't him. This was all an act.

   And, well... Chan was helping him keep it up, unwillingly.

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