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This was a mess. To be honest, Minho had no idea how it had even escalated so quickly. At the beginning of this year, he was perfect. The teachers loved him, his grades were great, and everything was going wonderfully.
Then something happened and it really shouldn't have. Never in Hogwarts's centuries-long history had this ever happened. The little snake transferred his residence to Gryffindor tower— and not only that, the dorms were completely full, so he had to room with Minho.
Minho was never one to aggressively defend his title as head boy or as a pureblood— but having his hard-earned privacy taken away by none other than Han Jisung, the muggleborn shit that's been after his ass since day one, was too much. He'd tried to talk to the Headmaster, but Professor Namjoon wouldn't even tell him why the petulant shit-snake was transferred to Gryffindor tower, much less how to get him out .
He tried his Head of House next, knowing he could trust Professor Seokjin to be direct and straightforward, as he always was with his Gryffindor dongsaengs. And he was direct and straightforward, but not with what Minho wanted to hear: "Just let him be, he's not bothering you."
Which was true. At that point it had been two days since Jisung had moved into his private head boy dormitory, and Jisung had rarely even been in the apartment, much less given him all the relentless teasing and nagging he normally would. But of course Minho couldn't consider this when he was on a rampage to get the rat out of his room.
He opened his mouth to protest, and Professor Seokjin gave him a stern look. "Minho, I may be telling you more than I should, but I mean this when I say it. That boy is fragile. Let him be ."
Professor Seokjin was rarely so adamant about any particular topic, so Minho rested his case and went back to his not-so-private dormitory. Unfortunately, it was even less private, seeing as Jisung had finally decided (at the most inopportune time, if Minho does say so himself) to stay for more than two minutes in the apartment. Minho got up to the highest level of Gryffindor tower, opened the door to his apartment, and nearly fell on his ass slipping on the papers on the floor.
"Han Jisung," Minho said, trying to keep his voice a little lower than a dull thunder, seeing as the first years were only one floor beneath him. "Why the fuck are your papers all over my room?"
"I'm doing homework," said Jisung plainly. "In our room."
Jisung seemed to regret those words the moment he saw Minho's eyes narrow, but they were already out, so he gathered his papers while Minho shut the door quietly behind him.
"Listen here, you mudblood shit ," said Minho, "this is my room and I worked hard for it. Don't pretend just because you're temporarily here that you suddenly have rights to whatever this space is. You aren't worth shit so don't put your papers all over my floor and then act like you're entitled to it."
Minho was almost proud to say he'd make a good Slytherin.
Jisung scowled at him.
"What?" Minho said. "Are you gonna cry?"
"Yeah," said Jisung, that stupid smirk growing on his face as he made his way past Minho to the door. "Your breath smells so much like those elf-cooked onions that my eyes are watering. I could start sobbing right now."
The door shut behind him, and Minho was left in the silence of his dormitory.
Classes were done for the day, so Minho couldn't see where he would be going, but he wasn't about to complain when he now had his room back to himself. He'd be back right before curfew like he always was, and by then the snake was too tired to bicker and always locked himself up in Minho's spare room.
He sat at the desk and busied himself with his parchment and paperwork. He was nearly done with his potions homework when the time for supper came, so he met with Chan midway down the staircase and together they wove through the sea of students headed towards the Great Hall. They made some idle chit chat, but Chan could tell Minho wasn't in a talking mood, so after some greetings he shut his trap and simply walked next to Minho for the rest of the way.
"Does Jisung still sit with the Slytherins?" said Chan as they sat at the Gryffindor table.
"He better," mumbled Minho. "It's enough with him sleeping one room over."
"At least you've got a spare room," said Chan. "It's better than having to share a bed."
"If I didn't have a spare room, he'd be sleeping on the floor," said Minho.
The doors burst open and the Slytherins came pouring in. Minho spotted Hyunjin, who was friends with Chan, Jeonghan and Joshua, that power friend couple that everyone knew, and Yeonjun. Jeongin tagged along behind— those Slytherins were never very kind to people like Jeongin, who was muggleborn. It was sort of a feat in and of itself that people like Jeongin and Jisung were sorted into Slytherin House to begin with, considering the foundation of Slytherin was pureblood and pureblood alone.
Jisung, however, typically walked in pace with Jeongin, and he was nowhere to be seen.
Seungcheol, who had been dating Jeonghan since kindergarten (Minho vaguely thinks they announced they were actually dating now), stood up to go sit with Jeonghan and Joshua, but Minho caught him first.
"Can you see why Jisung's not there?"
"Sure," said Seungcheol.
Chan gave him a pointed look but said nothing as he dug into his prime roast.
Dinner ended quietly, just like Minho liked. Chan was an amazing friend, knew how to read Minho perfectly and was never upset to sit through an entire meal in silence. If he had something to really talk about, of course he'd bring it up. Regardless, the two of them could sit for hours without saying a word to each other and still enjoy the other's company.
Chan clapped him on the shoulder with a "g'night" and headed into his dormitory.
"Sleep well," said Minho quietly, exchanging smiles with his friend before climbing up the stairs.
The apartment was dark, no lights were on, and silent, no Jisung was here. Minho frowned, because while it was normal for the two to not see each other between supper and curfew, it wasn't normal for Jisung to not show up at dinner at all.
The curfew bell woke Minho. He'd always been a light sleeper, but the lack of Jisung's annoying presence had him anxious. He tried to convince himself he didn't care, he'd never cared, and Jisung was probably in his room anyways. He laid himself back down on the pillow with a huff. He fell asleep easily.
Jisung was gone in the morning, which was again a normal occurrence, but he was also missing from breakfast in the great hall. When Minho tried to ask Seungcheol what he'd weaseled out of Jeonghan, he shrugged and said "it wasn't my business, I guess."
Minho wasn't worried. Of course he wasn't. He'd never cared about that little shit once. He convinced himself that it was because of Minho's harsh words the night before all these events that he was now on the third floor of the castle, searching fruitlessly for Jisung, instead of attending potions class.
It was his guilty conscience. He should apologize for saying all those awful things. And maybe get Jisung to apologize to him about the onion statement. His breath did not smell like onions.
A shout from beneath the staircase landing at the end of the hall had Minho running back the way he'd come. He reached the landing and leaned over the railing, only to see Jisung held up by two Slytherins he didn't recognize, and pummeled with fists and hexes by at least four more.
"What the fuck—" Minho murmured, waving his wand to expelliarmus the wands out of the boys' hands. He strode down the winding staircase with a cold stare, keeping his eyes on every single one of them as they backed away from Jisung. The other two holding Jisung up continued to hold him, and Minho knew (almost with a sense of pride) from their duels together that it was because Jisung would be firing off curses left and right the moment they released him.
"Jisung," said Minho as he reached the bottom of the flight.
Jisung's gaze hadn't left him since the moment he'd begun descending the stairs, and the glint in his eyes was giving Minho a small problem between his pants. He waved his wand as discreetly as possible, mouthing the words without saying them, but Jisung's cocky little smirk told Minho he knew exactly what he'd done.
He cleared his throat. "Did you agree to a duel?"
"Yes," said Jisung, clearly, and his words bounced around the corridor.
"Who was your second?"
"This dude on my left here."
"The one who is holding you."
"Yes."
"The one who was holding you while these four boys ripped you a new one?"
"Yes."
"A poor choice. You should have asked someone who's at least a strong enough wizard to be doing the pummeling. Perhaps even without the assistance of five other people."
Jisung's lips twitched, and Minho could tell he was trying not to laugh. His burning gaze still hadn't left Minho's face, even when Minho was readily glaring daggers at these idiot Slytherins.
"You know, dueling without the express witness of a Professor or Head Boy is punishable by fifty points. Tell me, do you know the latin root for the word duel ?"
"Duo," one of the kids muttered.
"Excellent! What's that mean?"
"Two," the same kid said in the same tone.
"Does this look like two people to you?"
"No," several of the idiots mumbled.
"Jisung?"
"Yes."
"Do you care if your house loses the House Cup? Because if we abide by the rulebook, I can take fifty for each of them, and that would set your poor Slytherin house into the negatives."
"Well, that's not great," said Jisung. The corners of his lips twitched.
Minho turned to what looked to be the oldest here. "I'll tell you what. I'm feeling lenient today. One of you will duel me in a proper duel, with a proper second under fair rules. Jisung will be my second. If you win, you walk away. If you lose, I'll take you to Professor Yoongi and let him decide what's a fair punishment."
The kid looked scared shitless, but the two holding Jisung released him, and he stumbled towards Minho.
The Slytherins got their affairs in order, and the duel began. Minho sent an expelliarmus charm towards the boy, who managed to dodge it. Mistake— now Minho knew the kid couldn't perform any sort of shielding charm. Minho flicked his wand towards the boy as he regained his center and he went flying backwards a couple feet, his wand tumbling out of his hands during the fumble.
The elderwood hit the floor with a dull clack. Minho strode forward and grabbed the boy by his ear.
"Come on, all of you. Jisung, do you want to come or do you want to meet me in the dormitory?"
Jisung looked stricken for a moment before he regained his normal aloofness. "I'll meet you back in your dormitory, then."
Minho smiled and nodded, turning to haul the six teenagers towards the DADA classroom. He thought he caught Jisung looking slightly hurt in the corner of his eye, but he didn't think much of it.
The meeting with Professor Yoongi went just as expected. Yoongi was never one to favor his own house over his other students when he knew they were in the wrong. He took the rulebook fifty points from each of them, putting Slytherin behind Hufflepuff house by an entire sixty points. What he didn't expect was for Yoongi to dismiss the kids (after giving them a good telling-to, of course) and then sit Minho down with a cup of tea in his office.
"There are some things I should tell you," said the Professor as he set a kettle atop the burner. Before Minho could respond, Yoongi opened a cabinet, pulling from it a vial full of silver wisps. There were a number of vials resting in racks on the same shelf. "Liquid memory," he said by explanation, as though Minho didn't already know.
"We'll start at the moment he left your dormitory that last time you saw him."
Minho frowned, wondering how Professor Yoongi knew Jisung had been gone, but the Professor only gave him a pointed look as he poured the wisps into the stone basin. Minho sighed, for a moment wondering why he cared enough to stay and then deciding he'd lied to himself long enough. With a deep head, he thrust his head into the silver water of the memory basin.
Jisung heard Minho's footsteps far too late, and while all logic told him that he should resign himself to his fate of his journal entries being witnessed, his heart went full panic mode anyways. He scrambled to pick up the loose sheets of parchment, which he'd been sort of in the process of destroying. He was in a new dorm now, why would he need the things that remind him of where he'd come from—
Worthless little shit can't even hold himself up in a duel, really. Who does he think he is? It's because he comes from a mudblood family, obviously .
Flashes of bloodied bodies splain across his living room.
Worthless mudbloods, never amount to anything, he'd be better off dead.
"Han Jisung," Minho's voice rang through the room, and Jisung froze, his hand over a particularly angry diary entry in which he recounted studying the killing curse reserved solely for that stupid Malfoy inbred. "Why the fuck are your papers all over my room?"
Jisung wiped his face clean of any emotion. He's always known not to get his hopes up, so he's pretty prepared for this to be just about the same stuff he's heard all his life. At least this time it's one person and not a houseful of them.
Regardless of his stony facade, Jisung isn't the type to try and fool himself. He knows and has acknowledged that he's been in love with Lee Minho since day one. He knows and has acknowledged that it wouldn't amount to anything. He's not even upset about it. But he's always known the guy to be relatively gentle, at least to the people he liked, so it stings a little that the first words Jisung has heard from him all week are expletives in his direction.
Bonus, Minho was too pissed about almost slipping to notice what he'd slipped on.
"I'm doing homework." Jisung watched Minho's face carefully, monitoring exactly what was going on in his head and calculating how to react. It was all one big calculation: don't fuck up and you don't die. Appease them and maybe you'll get friends, but that never really worked out for Jisung anyways. "In our room."
If Minho looked angry before, his glare made Jisung want to apparate himself six feet under Hogwarts Castle. He averted his gaze for one moment to send an accio charm towards the papers by Minho's feet. He didn't appear to notice, fuming too hard.
"Listen here, you mudblood shit. This is my room and I worked hard for it. Don't pretend just because you're temporarily here that you suddenly have rights to whatever this space is. You aren't worth shit so don't put your papers all over my floor and then act like you're entitled to it."
Jisung isn't the type to lie to himself. As much as he'd like to wipe his face clean, something about hearing those same words from Lee Minho, the boy he'd looked up to the last five years, the boy he'd waited through many weeks of winter holidays to see arrive back at the castle, the boy he'd inevitably fallen in love with somewhere along the way, was vastly more hurtful than a whole house of Slytherins ganging up on him.
Jisung pressed his lips together and furrowed his brows, feeling the pricks behind his eyes and willing them away.
"What?" Minho said. "Are you gonna cry?"
Jisung took a deep breath, and plastered what he hoped was a joking smile over his face as he made his way towards the door. "Yeah. Your breath smells so much like those elf-cooked onions that my eyes are watering. I could start sobbing right now."
Jisung shut the door behind him and weighed the pros and cons of burning his papers right here and now while he practiced his deep breathing. Counting to four breathing in, then back down again, he looked at the journal entries in his hands, thumbing through the dates of each parchment sheet to make sure he'd retrieved them all.
Con, he wouldn't be able to feel the satisfaction of ripping the papers up with his own hands. He'd never liked this magic stuff anyways.
Pro, he wouldn't have to worry about Minho finding them. He'd easily hidden them from prying Slytherins, in part because the charm on his bag to hide the bottom compartment wasn't something they believed he would know, and in part because a large stack of homework looking papers wouldn't interest an evil snake nearly as much as Jisung's wand or broomstick. But Minho, he was smart. Smart enough to become head boy a year before he would have met the age requirement. Smart enough to know when Jisung is hiding something underneath all his textbooks.
It's part of why Jisung fell in love with him in the first place.
It's part of why Jisung feels just a little bit broken right now.
Jisung takes in another breath, holds up his wand, and watches as the stack of parchment burns, turns to ash, and blows out the window at the end of the staircase landing. Then he turns and walks down the staircase, out of the common room, and towards the infirmary.
Jisung goes there sometimes, because he knows he mustn't lie to himself, and he knows right now that he needs help.
Jisung spends a day or two, he's not really sure, lying on a bed in the hospital wing. Because he's learned to associate the infirmary wing's stiff and uncomfortable beds with a safe haven, it's not really difficult to sleep on what feels like a slab of rock.
Sure, Minho's spare bed was much, much nicer than entering his room in the Slytherin dorms and finding a pit of vipers where his bed used to be, but at least this slab of rock comes without additional humans and their additional hatred.
Jisung learned from a very young age to talk. So he told Professor Hoseok all about his feelings. Jisung is unashamed to say he has a very high emotional intelligence. He's excellent at reading a room, and also excellent at monitoring and recalling how situations made him feel. Hoseok gave him chocolate and stuffies.
Jisung had many stuffies when he was small, but they all burned with his parents.
He told Hoseok all about that, too. He told Hoseok he doesn't mind being called a mudblood, because it's profanity for those wizard-born people but it's just a funny-sounding English word to him. But he doesn't like that they think he's worthless because of his parents.
Sure, he's pretty useless. But it's not because of his parents. It's because they're gone. It's because magic killed them. Now he's stuck here with a bunch of people who think they're better than him not because of their skill or their talent but because their parents are alive, because magic didn't kill their parents.
Hoseok asked him what snacks he liked when he lived with his parents. Jisung told him that banana milk and fruit snacks were his favorite thing as a child.
Hoseok came back later that night — day? — with the exact same banana milk he'd drunk as a child, his best approximation of fruit gummies, and a thick envelope. Upon opening the envelope, he saw all his report cards and grades from his time at Hogwarts, as well as Professor Yoongi's nearly illegible scrawl in his native language:
잠시 뒤처지면 조금 쉬어가면 돼, 너는 잘 하고 있어 너 잠시 힘들 때.
If you're falling behind, take a break. It's all right to have a hard time, you're doing well.
Shouldn't tell you this, but these grades are many points higher than your fellow Slytherin classmates. Don't say you're worthless.
— MYG
Jisung's very good at keeping up a facade, but surrounded by banana milk, stuffies, fruit snacks, and blankets, he agrees it's time he let himself cry. Hoseok gives him a warm smile and shuts the curtain to give him his privacy. Shoes tap down the infirmary and a door shuts.
It's in the silence, when fat, ugly tears roll down his face, that Jisung feels most at peace.
Sometime between that moment and his exit from the hospital wing, Hoseok comes back once more, this time with Professor Yoongi in tow. Yoongi draws Jisung's recollection, stores it in yet another vial, and gives him a smile.
The shrill shrieking of the tea kettle has Minho ripping his head out of the basin.
"So—" begins Yoongi, with a kettle in hand, but before the Professor has even begun pouring the teacups, Minho is throwing open the door and storming towards the Slytherin dormitories.
Minho knows he's walking into a snake trap, but he's always believed those few upperclassmen he knows to be people of proper principle and good moral compass. Minho is about ready to kill them, but he wants to first understand why they weren't there for Jisung when he evidently needed them to be.
The stretch of smooth stone wall between the doorway to the potions classroom and the descent to the lower dungeons is where Minho knows the entrance to the Slytherin common room, but a bit of his heat fizzles out when he realizes he'll need a password in order to turn the wall into a doorway.
Minho paces the length of the corridor, trying some words out but really having no idea what to say as a passcode to a Slytherin dormitory.
"Snake." Minho frowns when nothing appears. "We hate mudbloods. Vipers are nice. Yoongi is god."
"Perhaps try 'yellow rose.'"
It appears Minho didn't even need to get into the damn common room. Rounding the corner are the ones he wanted to talk to most: Hyunjin, Jeongin, Joshua, Jeonghan, and Yeonjun.
Minho frowns. A yellow rose can mean friendship, sure, but it's also the universal flower of apology.
"Would you like to sit?"
Minho levels Jeonghan with a steady and cool glare. "Think I'll just sit around and drink tea with you? Did you offer such comraderie to Jisung?"
Hyunjin scowls. "Jeongin, go inside. The rest of you, too."
Jeonghan looks ready to protest, as does Jeongin, but a look from Joshua has Jeonghan moving and Innie follows after them.
"You've got him trained to follow you around like a lost puppy too, haven't you?" says Minho as the stone archway smooths out into a wall once more.
Hyunjin raises his eyebrows. "I'd like it if you didn't refer to my friend as a dog."
Minho rolls his eyes. "Explain."
"I'm trying to," Hyunjin says, and his natural easygoing smile fades away. "Jisung, he's… difficult. I don't understand him. He's always getting into fights, but he doesn't let any of us help him or intervene. Even Joshua, the head boy of Slytherin house, and Jeongin, our prefect, can't tame those idiot youngsters when Jisung himself insists on letting them gang up on him. He… doesn't like magic. I don't get why he's here when he seems to hate using his damn wand, even as self-defense. We tried taking away points from them, it worked for some of the younger ones, but those third and fourth years, they're rebellious. So we talked to Yoongi, tried to see if he could knock some sense into them with detention. You can't stick a whole house of teenagers from three different years into one detention, though. So we had Jisung move. He pushed us all away, but, I mean, I don't know if you've ever talked to him about, like, his feelings for— well, anyways. We thought the Hufflepuffs would at least accept him, but he doesn't want acceptance. He's smart enough to be a Ravenclaw, easily, but the Ravenclaws are impassive so things would've just been the same, sans the bed. So we sent him to you."
Minho took a moment to process all of this. "You… wanted to help."
"Yes."
"He wouldn't let you."
" Yes. Minho-hyung, he needs you. He does. He's very, very clever, it's what makes him such an amazing Slytherin. But he uses his cleverness on things like monitoring his emotions carefully so he doesn't drop it on anyone, on things like reading the room to know exactly when to fly and when to fight. On things like pushing away the very people who try to help him," Hyunjin's rushing it out now, words flying out of his mouth as though he thinks Minho is going to run. "He's fragile. He's so fragile, Minho-hyung, you don't understand how much he needs—"
"Who's fragile?"
Hyunjin freezes. It seems he recognizes that voice. Minho is a little ashamed to realize he doesn't, a little ashamed to admit that he still needs to see Jisung's face to connect the voice to the anger and then to the circumstance.
He's got trouble processing everything that happened in the last, say, twenty minutes, which is his justification for his incredibly delayed reaction when Jisung goes flying past him and onto Hyunjin.
"Fragile my ass," seethes Jisung, pinning Hyunjin to the ground. "You don't get to tell anyone shit. Who the fuck gave you permission—"
"Jisung."
Jisung whips his gaze to Minho. He frowns at Minho, as though he doesn't understand what a hug is, as though he doesn't recognize the position of open arms waiting for him to fall into.
Minho sighs. "Fine, don't want a hug? Then let's go home. Come on then."
Minho turns on his heel and walks back down the corridor, pausing at the end to see Hyunjin brushing off his robes and Jisung following after Minho. Minho mouths a thank you to Hyunjin, who grins and gives him a thumbs-up before turning to descend the steps to his common room.
The walk to Gryffindor Tower is silent, but not the peaceful sort that Minho enjoys. No, it's the type that crushes down on Minho, makes him want to simultaneously cry and scream at the same time. They pass through the portrait of the fat lady, through the common room. Up the stairs, final door on the staircase. Jisung enters first, and Minho follows after him, shutting the door and casting a spell of noise-cancelling over the apartment.
He takes a moment to collect himself, but taking a deep breath only serves to break down his resolve even more. His grip on the doorknob feels like his only grounding point when tears begin to roll down his cheeks.
Why am I crying? I don't even like the guy. We've been bickering since day one. We've been enemies since day one. We've had it out for each other since day one.
Minho decides he should pull a note from Jisung's book and stop lying to himself. Do I like Jisung?
Minho remembers when Jisung was the one to wake him up when everyone else had cleared out of the library, saving him from a telling-to by the librarian for staying after closing. He remembers when Jisung told him how to sneak into the kitchens after overhearing a conversation in which Minho vented about wanting comfort snacks. He remembers every tiny moment from the last six years in which Jisung seemed antagonistic, and Minho was purely misreading the situation.
When Jisung's arms wrap around him from behind, pulling him away from the door and towards the couch— when Jisung pulls Minho down onto the couch and tucks his face into that fluffy sweater he's always wearing— when Jisung sits with his arm around Minho for minutes upon minutes without question, that's when Minho makes up his mind.
I've always liked Jisung.
He made Jisung into the antagonist because he didn't want to admit to himself that he was in love with— well, who? His rival? A Slytherin? A muggleborn? What was so awful about loving someone like Jisung?
Literally nothing.
"What's that?" said Jisung.
"What?" said Minho, picking his head up off Jisung's rather comfortable collarbone to fix him with a confused look.
"You said, 'literally nothing'."
"I said that out loud, huh?"
"Mmhmm."
"I need to talk to you. Is now an okay time or do you want to take a moment to cool down?" said Minho.
"It's been twenty minutes," said Jisung quietly. "I've cooled down enough. How're you?"
"Uhm. Fine."
"Yeah, the pool of snot on my shirt agrees."
Minho laughs, followed by a hiccup, followed by a sniffle. Cute is the thought Minho can see written all over Jisung's face.
"I need to be honest with you. After I dropped those kids from Slytherin off, Professor Yoongi told me to stay. I… watched your memories."
Now that Minho knew to look, he could see the panic spread on Jisung's face before it was wiped off. Jisung was, as Minho was learning, a master of facial control. "Which ones?"
"Just— just one. I assume the most recent, because it began with the moment you left the apartment after I… went off on you."
"Oh," said Jisung.
"Yeah. I— I, uhm. I want to apologise. For, uh, lots of things. Like, invading your memories in the first place. Going off on you without trying to first understand why you transferred dorms to begin with. For not talking to you and rather going on a rampage around the castle to see how to get you transferred back to Slytherin. For, uhm. For making you feel like you weren't welcome here."
"Well, I'm not," said Jisung. "It wasn't that I felt that way, it's that you flat-out spelled it out for me."
"Yeah. Sorry. I… was angry."
"Justifiably so."
"Even if I was justifiably angry, it wasn't justifiable to let it off on you. I may have worked for this dormitory, sure, but, I mean, we've been through it together since our first year together. I should have been more welcoming to begin with. I— you— you're always welcome here, Jisung. Always. This is our apartment, not mine, and it was that way the moment Professor Namjoon told me you'd be here, and I was just too stuck up to admit it."
"Our apartment?"
"Ours."
Jisung furrowed his brows. Cute .
"Does that mean I can bring all my stuff?"
Minho looked at him. "You didn't bring it?"
"No, I just brought the things I needed for class."
"Why?"
"I figured I wouldn't be spending much time in the room to begin with, seeing as that first meeting with Headmaster Namjoon was a literal mess."
Minho groaned, recounting specifically his astute rejection of Jisung from the start, as well as the smug little smirk on Jisung's face (which in retrospect he realizes was actually just a pained smile.) "I'm so sorry. I misinterpreted that completely. I thought you— because you were smirking at me— that you had just manipulated someone or pulled some strings or something to get yourself a fancy dorm instead of, well. Anyways."
"I was smirking at you?" said Jisung, his brows creased in confusion again. Minho noted that when Jisung was confused, his eyebrows furrowed and his lower lip jutted out.
"Well, no, when I'm thinking back on it I think you were just trying not to look hurt, but I warped the situation pretty well to be honest. I don't know how much I can apologize."
"That's okay," said Jisung, contemplating and running through the conversation. Minho almost could see the scenes and respective emotions play like a movie in his mind. "You've apologized enough. I know you mean it. I'll go get my stuff now."
"I'll come with you," said Minho immediately, hopping up from the couch and grabbing an empty bookbag.
"Uh, thanks," said Jisung. "Can, I, um…"
Minho glanced away from the door and back at Jisung. "What's up?"
"My parents and I, you know, whenever we settled an argument or dispute, we'd, uh, we'd hug it out. It was… our way of forgiving each other."
Minho smiled and opened his arms.
He decided nothing fit better in his arms than a small and clingy Jisung.
"Our home," said Minho. He felt Jisung smile into the crook of his neck. "On our way back, can we sneak into the kitchens?"