Prompt via Kei

Rating: Don't leave me

“How many bones are in the human hand?”

Jinki’s groan was loud and the other students in the library threw annoyed glances his way. His own annoyance was exponentially higher than theirs, so the glare he shot back in their direction was dark and narrow.

“Don’t take it out on them.”

Jinki dragged his furrowed eyebrows and down-turned frown and whatever dark and evil thing he could conjure on his face towards the taller underclassmen.

“And don’t take it out on me. This final is in less than 48 hours and you can’t even tell me the number of bones a human has in their hand. A human. You do plan on being a doctor, right?”

Jinki banged his head on the table and yanked on handfuls of his auburn hair. “It’s like my brain has melted out of my skull and is leaking all over this table. Every time I try to scoop it back up, the twenty seven bones in my hand won’t…” Jinki’s head shot up from the table in a moment of pure recognition.

Minho smiled. “Next question.”

This was their thing. As master level procrastinators, Jinki and Minho had built a steady rhythm of late night study meetings, cram sessions and ingested enough caffeine to kill a small child. Nonetheless, it was their thing and it would always be their thing until Jinki graduated. And it worked. Whatever symbiosis they’d discovered and built over time had managed to be the one solitary fiber of collective success they both could rely on. It was like a human hand, skin and cartilage folded over twenty seven bones that had the power to hold, to touch, to damage, to save. That’s what they meant to each other.

“No next question! No!  Sleep. Time for sleep!”

Minho didn’t budge. “Next question,” he said meaningfully.

Jinki whined. “I promise on everything that I love, if you let me sleep just an hour, just one hour, I will study every fragment, every word, every sentence and paragraph in that ridiculously stupid anatomy book with you until my eyes bleed. But the caffeine is wearing off, Minho. I see three of you.”

When Minho started again, Jinki shot to standing, stuffed their books into his bookbag, cuffed his hand into the younger man’s and pulled him out of the university library. After a quick trip across campus, they ended back in Jinki’s suite where his other three roommates slept quietly in their own rooms.

“One hour,” Minho managed as he toed off his boots and took off his heavy jacket. Jinki nodded happily as he shrugged out of his thick coat and pulled off his hoodie.

Flinging himself across the bed, Jinki moaned as the soft –who was he kidding, it wasn’t soft but at the moment if felt like a mountain of feathers – mattress welcomed him to the –one hour, yay him – sleep he’d been promised.

He felt the bed sink next to him, and snickered internally because if Minho fell asleep, one hour would turn into eight and praises to the God of Study, he’d willingly crawl through glass for a full night’s rest. He was, however, disappointed when the fused light from a laptop brightened his room considerably.

Jinki peeked an eye open and glared with it at Minho. “What and why are you doing this to me?”

Minho’s eyes never moved from the laptop as he open their blackboard assignment and started to type away. “I said you could sleep. I’m going to stud –“

“For once in that ridiculously good looking head of yours, would you accept the idea of relaxing?”

Minho scoffed. “Relaxing? I am relaxed.” He let his shoulder slump just a little. “See, relaxed.”

Jinki yanked the laptop out of Minho’s large hands, snapped it shut and put it on his nightstand. “No, you look like someone has a ruler tapped to the back of his neck. Relaxing would be –“ and Jinki removed Minho’s glasses, ed his cardigan and threw it on the floor, then forced the taller man to lie down next to him,  –“ actually relaxing.”

Minho grunted in way of a reply but remained prone as Jinki refamiliarized himself with his pillows.

After a stretch of silence, just right as Jinki felt himself falling asleep, did Minho whisper a quiet “Hey…Jinki.”

Jinki hummed in response and when Minho didn’t answer, he turned towards him, searching him out in the dark room.

“After this test, you’re graduating.”

“You mean if I pass this test,” he grumbled, pulling his face away from his pillow. 

“If you pass this test, which you will, you’ll graduate.” Minho cleared his throat. “That means I won’t…we won’t…you know…all of this.”

Jinki blinked in the darkness. He hadn’t thought about that. It was only then did he come to realize how Minho, despite being the harbinger of sleep deprivation and caffeine overdoses, had pulled him through the last corner of his senior year with a smile on his face. Well, just realizing would be a lie. But some things he had to keep in a water-tight box that had no chance of escaping, less he embarrass himself.

They’d met in an advanced anatomy class that Jinki should have taken years ago and one Minho decided to knock out his sophomore year. They hadn’t blended well together at first, with Jinki being talkative and Minho’ quiet nature, but when Jinki slid Minho the answers to a pop quiz on the sly one Friday afternoon, they’d warmed up to each other. From that point on they decided that it was either sink or swim. They’d help each other pass this banal course, or they’d fail together.

“I have visitation rights.”

Minho chuckled. “Yeah…like you’d remember me enough to visit.”

“What do you mean by that? We’ve been stuck at the hip this entire semester. That’s fifteen weeks of us.”

“Because it served a purpose. We’re not friends.”

Jinki frowned even if Minho couldn’t see it. “That’s funny, because I do consider you as my friend.”

“Oh, you do?” Minho sat up in an irrational huff. “Friends, huh? Sure. What’s my favorite color, then? When was my first kiss? How did I get this scar on my chin?”

“What does that have to do wi –“

“It has to do with everything,” Minho said quietly. “It’s how I know the minute you’re off to medical school, that I won’t matter anymore. I’m not trying to have an angsty temper tantrum on you, I’m just stating facts.”

Jinki was quiet for a moment before he asked, “Do you like me?”

Minho reeled, his head turning towards Jinki’s in the dark. “Now what does THAT have to…why would you…are you crazy?”

Jinki sat up to join him. “Your favorite color is blue. Your first kiss was with a girl name Sunye. You were six. The scar on your chin is when she pushed you off the slide for kissing her. Now answer my question.”

“How do you –“

“And you can’t answer my question with another question.”

Minho remained silent, instead choosing to shuffle off the bed and towards the door. Minho was fast but Jinki was quicker. He caught Minho by his arm, shut the door with his foot and spun Minho towards him, using his momentum to push Minho up against the wall.

"What’s your problem!" 

Jinki peered up at Minho, his face serious and searching.“You remember after the seventh week, when we both failed our weekly and you wanted to drop the class? Remember what I said to you?”

The little light filtering through Jinki’s blinds removed Minho’s security blanket of darkness and he sighed as Jinki’s arms clenched around his. That was the one thing about Jinki that many didn’t know; despite his soft looks and charming smile, the son of a was strong as hell.

“You said…” Minho exhaled loudly. “You said don’t leave me.”

“Right, I said ‘don’t leave me.’” Jinki stepped closer to Minho. “I wasn’t talking about the class.”

If ever there was a look of total disbelief, Minho had it down to a science . “Yeah, right. Well you chose a mighty convenient time to tell me to –“

Words between them consisted of vocabulary recall, diagram labeling, and quiet stories to keep each other awake, ones that were sure to be forgotten in the delirium of studying. And however powerful words were, action was the most potent thing they had. Don’t tell me where the sternum connects with the rib to cover the heart. Show me. Don’t tell me the muscles in your arm shorten when holding something…someone… show me.

Words. Action. So, skin and cartilage folded over twenty seven bones that had the power to hold, to touch, to damage, to save, reached out, sunk into Minho’s shoulder length tresses, and pulled Minho’s lips to Jinki’s.

In the space of timelessness and sharp accountability, where Jinki barely found the strength to pull away from the one thing he’d wanted more than a degree, the one thing he’d wished for for the last fifteen weeks, did Minho understand what he’d just gained.He stared at Jinki with wide-eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere, so don’t leave me.”

Minho found the ability to finally relax. “I won’t. Next question…”

 Jinki smiled as he kissed Minho again.