lessons in caregiving - minsung (extended oneshot)

lesson five: cherish him, never make him feel like a burden

MINHO/JISUNG—

   Jisung was fumbling with the flaps of a cardboard box, trying to wrestle them all into some kind of closed-ness without going through the hassle of taping it up for all of the ten, fifteen minutes that it'd take to drive it over to his house.

   "I think I got it!" he beamed, only to be sorely disappointed, smile and posture falling slack, when Chan showed up with a sippy cup he'd unearthed while double-checking his room for Minho's things.

    Minho sat off to the side, watching them silently, playing with the cuffs of the sweater Jisung had transferred to him earlier (because Jisung knew he liked how it smelled and how it came to his knuckles to give him sweater-paws). Somehow one of the cuffs had made its way to his mouth at some point, and he'd been sucking on it anxiously as Jisung and Chan had taken things that had accumulated in this house over the past two years and fit them into the box.

   He was leaving.

    Minho had a new caregiver now; the next logical step would obviously be to change the place he was taken care of to his new caregiver's house. Thus, almost as soon as Minho and Jisung had gotten to Chan's house this Saturday morning, Jisung and Chan had gotten to work packing up the onesies, the ponies, the pacifier... everything Chan had gotten him— everything he'd worn and played with here. With Chan. Hyungie. 

    In Chan's words, Jisung had "graduated caregiving school", so now there was no need for the pair of them to stick around. (That last part was implied.)

   All Minho's attention had been on Jisung recently; once he'd been made sure of the fact that Jisung wasn't perturbed by the existence of his childish headspace, he'd clung to Jisung with a passion and soaked up every bit of attention his new caregiver gave him, hardly even sparing a glance towards Chan. After all, he'd been wishing for this for so long, how could he do anything else? But when the realization finally hit that Chan wouldn't always be around anymore...

   Chan and Jisung were absorbed with the box situation as Chan tried to teach Jisung the right way to fold the flaps to shut it temporarily but securely— but both their heads shot up at the sound of a badly muffled whimper. Both of them had the instinct to get up right away, but Chan pushed it down, as he'd gotten used to the past several weeks, while Jisung went about scooping up a teary-eyed Minho without hesitation, asking him what was the matter.

   Surprisingly, Minho reached for Chan.

   "Hey, bug, why're you crying?" Chan questioned, while Jisung eased the little into the oldest boy's lap. But it only made it worse, because Minho started to sob at the nickname. 

     But the only thing that came out of Minho's mouth that wasn't completely unintelligible was the word 'hyungie'.

   This was the first time Jisung figured out what was wrong before Chan. Something just clicked faster for him than it did for Chan, he guessed.

   "Oh, hyung, I think I get it." He knelt beside Chan and ran a soothing hand down his little's back, shushing vigorously and encouraging a deep breath, before he made an attempt: "Hey, baby, listen, are you upset because you'll miss Channie hyung?"

   Minho nodded shakily, his head knocking against Chan's chest.

   Jisung and Chan both cooed at that; Chan held Minho a little tighter, in a 'you'll be alright' sort of way. Chan, too, had seemed a little down this morning, but he'd seemed a lot more resigned to the inevitability of it.