CHAN—

   It was another one of those days where the chaotic couple Chan was sort of strangely, parentally involved with was lounging about his house, Minho in his headspace and Jisung tending to him, increasingly without Chan's help. It was a weekday, though, and Minho had classes early in the morning, which led to...

   "No!" 

      Little Minho didn't use his voice much, especially not since Jisung had showed up (though he'd been steadily loosening up when it came to him). He hardly ever shouted like this. Maybe he'd finally gotten comfortable after all.

    "Minho, you need—" Chan tried, but it was drowned out by another, louder:

   "Noooooo!" The little clung to Jisung, arms around his neck as he whined, ear-splitting, driving Jisung to wince and cover his ears.

   Chan sighed. "If you're going to scream, spare Jisung's poor eardrums and do it over there."

   At this, Minho's defiantly-set mouth snapped shut, and he guiltily buried his face in Jisung's neck, simultaneously hiding from Chan while apologizing for hurting Jisung's ears.

   When Jisung relaxed and wrapped his arms around Minho again, Chan lifted his eyebrows in a stern expression, and pointed a finger at Jisung, then at Minho, effectively saying: Do your job.

   Jisung bit his lip and thought it over, then coaxed, "Baby, are you sure you don't want to go to bed? Even if we sleep here?"

   "'m not tired," Minho insisted stubbornly, though the fiery attitude he'd had with Chan had completely vanished.

   Chan's mind was already supplying the answer: Of course not, but you will be— but Jisung turned his face to Chan and there was weakness in it.

   "I can't just... force him to go to bed, can I? If he says he's not tired..."

   Given, it was still relatively early, but Minho was rubbing his eyes just five minutes ago.

     "I get what you said about how I need to take care of him." Jisung lowered his voice for this: "But, he's still an adult, and it's pretty early. He doesn't need more sleep just because he's in his headspace." He trailed off for a moment and a bit of doubt twisted his features. "...Wait, he doesn't, right?"

   Chan chuckled at his still-remaining inexperience and shook his head. Though, it was worth mentioning that Minho usually liked to ignore his sleep deprivation for days on end— something he was much better at doing when he was big. He'd often catch up on the sleep he needed when he was in a headspace that made it difficult to fight off— of course, he only fought it when he knew he'd have to go to college when he woke up; any other time, he'd be happy to doze off.

   But Jisung went on before he did mention it. "Well, my point is, if he really doesn't feel like going to bed... he can deal with five or six hours of sleep just as well as I can, right?"

   "You know what, it's your call to make, now," Chan relented. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

    Lesson number four would come first-hand.

~~~

JISUNG—

   Chan was right. That's all he had to say.

   Minho had milked that chance he was given and happily played with Jisung until they were both ready to pass out on the couch, and that was well-past midnight. 

   Jisung was tired, yeah, but Minho looked exhausted. He wondered if Minho had stayed up longer than he would've actually wanted to last night, just out of spite. But now he was at college with bags under his eyes, head on his desk, gravel in his voice that hadn't really left since he got up that morning. 

   And gosh, he was grumpy, too. But it seemed like he was trying to be a good sport about it, knowing that he'd brought it on himself. Jisung could tell he was trying his darndest not to snap at him, pushing away any little affectionate gesture with a sense of urgency.

   That's why, at lunch, he asked, carefully, "Should we go back to Chan hyung's house later?" Which really meant: I think you need to let off some steam. Because Jisung was starting to get accustomed to this: when Minho was in a bad mood, often the best way to cheer him up was to help him regress and let the pent-up stress melt away with each little show of affection.

     Jisung felt it would be good to talk to Minho about last night, or, more accurately, about what Minho really wanted in a caregiver. Did he just someone to be there while he de-stressed, to snuggle him and make sure he didn't get lonely, and maybe to take care of some things he found hard in that headspace, like getting himself food or brushing his teeth— or did he want someone to make responsible choices for his well-being, like dictating when to eat and when to sleep? Jisung had become Minho's caregiver in a sort of slap-dash way; right after the blindfold was tugged off, Jisung was thrust into all this without a proper explanation first (although he'd been entirely willing), and since then he'd just been learning from watching Chan. Yeah, Jisung was Minho's caregiver now, but he was also his boyfriend, not the older brother figure that Chan had always been. Did Minho want Jisung acting like a parent?

    This unresolved question pressed on his mind all day, but he knew not to touch the topic with Minho looking like a grumpy cat at the moment. Instead he just quietly took Minho back to Chan's house after classes were over, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the smile return to his tired eyes. As soon as they walked through the door, Minho was back to soaking up every bit of affection Jisung offered, a completely different person than the one Jisung had sat next to in class.

   Sadly for Minho, tomorrow was another day of early classes. And this time, the eye-rubbing started earlier and came more frequently. While yesterday he'd been drifting around the house, entertaining himself with this and that, tonight he just sat quietly, motionlessly, in Jisung's lap and asked to be read to. Three books in, Minho's head was drooping and shooting back up periodically. The yawning came once Jisung got the hint and started gently rocking him. 

   With the shutting of that third book, Jisung pressed a kiss to his hair— which had been conveniently placed right in front of his face with the way Minho was slumped against him— and murmured, "Let's go brush your teeth, yeah?" 

   Minho straightened up and pouted at Jisung with half-open eyes, shaking his head. "Book," he instisted, only a whisper, but a very stern one.

   "Baby, you're exhausted," Jisung reasoned. "It's bedtime, okay? Maybe I can read to you again tomorrow night."

   Jisung understood his dilemma, having had his own fair share of caving to the temptation to ignore the impending day (and the responsibilities that would inevitably be piled onto his shoulders once again with the appearance of the morning light), to stay a little longer in the calm of night... but right now he was the only one out of the two of them with a head clear enough to see the importance of getting enough sleep for tomorrow. As he realized earlier, Chan had been right to warn him: if Jisung wasn't firm with Little Minho, he'd continue dealing with this cycle of grumpiness that wasn't fun for either of them.

   The look in his flooding eyes told Jisung that he understood the situation just as well, but in his current state, wasn't ready to accept it. So he kept shaking his head, insisting he really wasn't that tired; asking for just a few more minutes.

   "Not tonight, Minnie, we're going to bed, now." 

    That was when the wailing started. And it hurt Jisung's heart just as much as his eardrums, but he'd learned his lesson, he really had. Maybe this wasn't how he was supposed to care for Minho— maybe he wasn't supposed to force him, but tonight, he was going to make sure Minho got to sleep at a decent time. And if Minho might end up chewing him out once he was back in his adult headspace, well...

   Jisung had walked him around the house as much as his tired arms would allow, and then he'd sat down and rocked him until he eventually tired himself out too much to keep crying. By then, he seemed to have lost the will to continue resisting his fate and he'd complied as Jisung pulled him along to the bathroom and brushed his teeth for him— he just sat there and let it happen, sniffling and rubbing at his eyes.

   Jisung tried not to look at him too much, because when he did, in his eyes, he felt like he saw betrayal.

    Was it right to have forced him? Did Minho know Jisung messed up as a caregiver yet he felt too young to articulate it?

   He'd have to wait for the right time to ask Minho (when he was both big and in a good mood) if he'd done the right thing.

~~~  

   This morning, Minho woke up slightly more rested, now looking less grumpy and, instead, more pensive. He'd peeled himself away from Jisung's side and rolled off the couch quietly, and then proceeded to stare out the window in the kitchen for a solid five minutes while Jisung worked up the initiative to start getting ready.

   A few minutes later, as Jisung passed by Minho on his way out of the bathroom where he'd just brushed his teeth and ran his hands through his hair until it looked somewhat decent, he gave a little smile and let his fingertips ghost along Minho's shoulder, not too perturbed by the way Minho's eyes only met his for half a second in a bare-minimum acknowledging glance. (Minho still tended to get a bit awkward in his dealings with Jisung right after having come out of little space, and depending on how much he remembered of last night, he might've been extra embarrassed.)

    "Ji," Minho started, the unexpected onset of his voice causing Jisung to stall at the door and turn to face him again.

   "I'm really sorry about... um, the way I was last night," He paused, stopping himself to add, "...And before that, too. Okay, actually, I'm sorry for the past two days. I was being super annoying and selfish, making you stay up late with me." His cheeks flushed crimson.

   "I understand. You don't wanna go to sleep because it means you have to get up early and sit through boring classes again, right?," Jisung chuckled. "'Cause I get like that too."

   "Yeah... But it's more than just not wanting to go to classes. ...I think, when I'm at college, that's the only time I still feel pressure to act like someone else." Minho fiddled with his fingers, his eyes firmly planted to them; not daring to venture up to meet Jisung's gaze. "So, when I'm little and I think about going back to that in the morning, it freaks me out, 'n I can't convince myself to sleep." He sighed heavily, quickly, and in a moment of sudden boldness flicked his eyes upward. "I, um... I don't want to be little all the time, but I do want to feel the way I do with you— when we're alone— all the time."

   Jisung felt an involuntary, warm smile creep in as he came away from the door and returned to linger by Minho's side; his hand blindly reaching, brushing willfully against Minho's as he kept his eyes trained on the sincere but slightly insecure expression coloring Minho's face.

     Minho seemed encouraged by the eagerness in Jisung's disposition; he wrapped his fingers tightly around the hand Jisung reached out and continued on: "If I stop acting, I don't think people on campus are going to like me anymore. I guess all the girls are gonna stop crushing on me when they realize I'm not really the bad boy of their dreams," he chuckled, some levity finally brightening his demeanor for a moment, then he quieted again, "but I guess it really doesn't matter, as long as you like me."

   Never before, not even when they'd settled on the status of 'boyfriends', had Jisung felt so close to Minho— felt so secure in their relationship. Back then, no matter how incredibly happy Jisung had been to be able to call Minho 'his', he'd known even then, there was still a wall between them. And now it'd finally come down.

   Now, with Minho's hand tucked into his, and their eyes finally meeting now that Minho was able to hold the eye contact, Jisung felt like it was the right time. With no wall between them, Jisung pulled him closer, closer, closer— hand on his cheek, chests touching. And still a little closer.

   Jisung hadn't expected that after months of dating at what seemed like arm's length, he and his boyfriend would finally have their first kiss in Chan's bathroom. But, in the end it was all good with him, even if they ended up getting to class a little late that morning.

   ...Until he realized that, distracted by how sweet and kissable Minho was being, when he was given the perfect opportunity, he totally forgot to ask him the question that had been imprinted onto his mind for the past few days: exactly what do you need from me as a caregiver?

----

to anyone who's been waiting, sorry this took so long! i've been in a really weird mood lately where i like fluff but only for about ten minutes and then i'm like alright time for some angst, which is why i haven't really wanted to write this lol.