Name: Mellitus

Author: haesthetics

Description:

"Diabetes mellitus. You know, Diabetes? Type two, to be specific. Haven’t heard of it? It means I’m fat- or at least that’s what people say.”

Foreword: 

Minseok sits patiently outside the doctor’s office where he waits for the results again, a sick smile plastered on his mildly plain face.

The kids running happily sets Minseok’s heart ablaze- warm, but at the same time painful, but really it’s more of a warm that hurts and it kind of confusing but at the same time somewhat comforting. He looks up at the parents of the kid, who look relatively happy, and he wonders why they’re on a family field trip to the doctor’s.

He focuses his mind back on task and continues to sit patiently outside, waiting for his results, sick smile not wavering in the slightest. He stares as the nurses, who are walking around in the small booth, calling out names and giving out medicine.

But there it is again, the faint feeling the back of his head that grows heavier but lighter, and Minseok swears he can’t feel his limbs anymore, but there he is, still sitting for the results. The feeling makes his head light and Minseok is hyperaware of every breath he takes, alternating from his nose and his mouth. It makes him feel light headed, and heavy.

Suddenly and all at once, the feeling comes. Heavy, heavy, it feels less of weight on his shoulders and more of a push on his neck that chokes him as he falls on the floor with a thud. He ignores the feeling of blood rushing to his face due to the impact of the fall and feeling the pulse in his body as his lungs gasp for air that never arrives.

The last thing he hears before passing out is an innocent kid’s sweet voice.

“Mum, the fat guy fell over!”

-

Minseok arrives late that day to the dance class he helps teach. So terribly late, in fact, that he gets there when it’s already done.

“Sorry I’m late,” he pants out, the door flying open as he’s faced with Jongin, and only Jongin, stretching. Tears are stinging in Minseok’s eyes because he’s scared of what Jongin will say. Words bubble up in his throat – ones that never manage to come out before Jongin finally speaks.

“I had to teach a whole class by myself,” Jongin begins. Minseok already feels the pressure again; he’s heard lectured too many times. “It’s okay, though. We didn’t do anything interesting, and you needed a break! Come here and stretch with me, it’s always good and relieving after a long hard day.”

Minseok puts down his things in the corner next to Jongin’s things and walks up to the latter as if he had bad news or something of the sort.

“I’m so sorry,” Minseok apologises again. He feels a million things run through his mind, but he can only focus on one- it feels like the other nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine thoughts are pouring out of his eyes in warm tears. “I promised I’d be here.”

“No, it’s really okay!” Jongin reassures him. Watching a person he had only had a purely professional relationship with breakdown was not part of Jongin’s plan. Also, when people hurt, he hurts too. Jongin takes Minseok’s arm gently and pulls himself closer to the crying boy. “Do you need to talk about it? I’m always here for anyone, you know that.”

“I…” Minseok begins. Now everything is about something completely different that he wants to tell Jongin. Tears spill out of his eyes uncontrollably at different things all together and he can’t make any words until he finally says it, as if some big secret. “I have Diabetes.”

“I don’t know what that is.” Jongin states plainly as he lifts Minseok’s head up with his own hands in some sort of support that none of them can put in words. The corners of his plump lips turn up into a small, sad smile.

Minseok takes a big breath and recites a speech he had been practicing in his mind over and over again and never thought he’d have the chance to say.

“Diabetes mellitus. You know, Diabetes? Type two, to be specific. Haven’t heard of it? It means I’m fat- or at least that’s what people say.”