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Namjoon is dreaming that Kim Taehyung is trying to unblock their kitchen sink with an old-fashioned rubber plunger. Sounds like the start of a bad porno, really, might even look like one if Taehyung, in this particular dream, wasn’t in his bare feet and wearing a Care Bear onesie. He keeps singing the national anthem and talking about bees, and Namjoon is just standing by the fridge, arms crossed, watching him work with this feeling of defeat and mild, creeping dread heavy in his chest. The plunger is making the most awful and unplungerlike noises that have Namjoon feel faintly nauseous, but Taehyung tells him over and over that is totally okay, definitely normal, then he continues with his patriotic humming.
It’s an almighty, echoing clatter from behind him that finally has Namjoon snapping out of it, panicking in the dream only to wake up in real life. He finds himself already half sitting up in bed, propped on an elbow, scratchy-eyed and disorientated, blinking at the glowing blue display of his bedside alarm clock.
It’s just after four in the morning, the chink in the curtains showing a weird, dark-grey pre-dawn sky.
‘What the fuck,’ Namjoon mumbles softly to himself, rubbing at his face as his weary memory clings to a few lingering fragments of his dream.
Kim Taehyung being odd in a onesie – a daily occurrence, really, that’s not the part that bothers him at all. It was those noises, the plunger noises that sounded nothing like a plunger, noises Namjoon swears he can still hear ringing in his ears, and that clatter, too, the one that woke him up. That wasn’t part of the dream, Namjoon’s gut tells him, which means Holly’s probably up to some kind of late-night destruction spree in the living room again.
Namjoon groans softly as he sits up, turning to give Yoongi a poke because he can always calm the puppy better anyway. Holly really makes no secret of his favouritism, but Namjoon isn’t bitter. Whatever. It’s not as if his own dog doesn’t also hate him. It’s not as if Hoseok’s dog hates him, too. It’s not as if every dog he’s ever met seems to hate him when all he wants to do is love them. No, he’s not bitter at all.
‘Hyung—’ he begins through a yawn, but his words die when his gentle patting hand falls on cold, rumpled sheets.
Namjoon blinks down at the space where Yoongi should be, then over at the crack of light spilling from underneath the bathroom door, then he thinks of those noises in his dream and somehow it finally clicks.
Retching.
It didn’t sound like a plunger because it sounded like a human person heaving their guts up. (How on earth the sound of his boyfriend being sick in their bathroom made him dream of Kim Taehyung unblocking their kitchen sink in a Care Bear onesie, Namjoon doesn’t care to know.)
‘Shit,’ he mumbles, untangling his legs from the sheets and rolling out of bed, stumbling on several pairs of shoes in his hurry towards the bathroom door. He should probably have just rolled over to Yoongi’s side and saved himself the clumsy trip around the whole bed in the dark, but a 4:00AM Kim Namjoon sure as shit does not have an IQ of 148.
He hears the retching again just as he’s about to knock, feels his own stomach clench a bit in sympathy and maybe also a touch of mild disgust because of course he wants to help, but no amount of love stops it being really quite gross.
‘Hyung,’ he calls out, finally knocking. ‘Hey, you okay?’
There’s no immediate answer that Namjoon can hear, so he tries the handle. He isn’t all that surprised to find it locked, but it still adds a little bit to the heavy worry left over in his chest from that weird fucking dream. He leans in to press his ear right up against the door, though he can’t hear anything much, mostly the gurgling of the building’s pipes, the dripping of their faulty shower head.
Namjoon knocks again, gently.
‘Hyung, come on, open up.’
This time, he hears more of the retching, the sick, wet sounds of toilet water splashing about enough to have Namjoon move his ear away for a moment, mouth pulled into a grimace. It doesn’t seem to last as long as the last round, the faint sounds of weak coughs filtering through the door seeming to signal the end of it. Namjoon gives it a couple seconds before he tries again, knuckles rapping.
‘Hyung,’ he says.
Waits.
Nothing.
He presses his ear back up against the cool wood once more, his heart beating just a little bit too hard for his tired body to handle right now. He can hear what might be panting, but it’s hard to tell through the door like this, and it really doesn’t set his mind at ease at all. His mind is, currently, being really super helpful by running through all the possible disaster situations that could happen as a result of this locked door. Yoongi could pass out and hit his head, he could hurt himself, he could choke on his own vomit. He could be delirious and try to run himself a bath or something, end up drowning, or try to shave for his morning lecture only to cut some major artery on his… relatively blunt and harmless convenience store razor?
Namjoon rolls his eyes at himself, pinches the bridge of his nose and lets his forehead rest against the door. Pull it together, Joon-ah. ‘Hyung, talk to me,’ he says, his voice coming out more whiny and worried than he intended, but whatever. ‘You’re really freaking me out.’
There’s a pause, a few beats of silence where Namjoon wonders if he might need to break down this door – or call Seokjin to break down this door, more likely – but Yoongi, at last, decides to grace him with his voice.
‘No,’ comes the muffled croak.
Namjoon straightens up, frowning at the door. ‘No, what?’
The sound of a throat clearing. ‘Don’t wanna talk to you.’
Namjoon smiles a little at that despite himself – always a snarky fuck, even when he’s ill. ‘Hyung—’ he starts to argue, but he’s cut off by the sudden hiss of the toilet flushing.
Namjoon listens as the sound of the rushing water fades out, his hand ready on the handle, hoping some vain hope that Yoongi might unlock it now.
‘Go back to bed, Joon-ah,’ he hears Yoongi sigh, followed by some soft rustling, then a sharp, plasticky clatter like he dropped something on the floor.
‘You okay, hyung?’ Namjoon asks immediately, panic not quite getting a chance to rise properly in him before Yoongi replies with a weary mutter of, ‘I’m fine.’
‘I’m still not going anywhere,’ Namjoon tells him flatly, turning to lean his back against the door instead, letting his eyes slip shut.
Yoongi’s probably right trying to send him to bed. He has a lecture at 9:30AM and lunch with his mom at midday and she’ll string him up if he looks anything short of the picture of health. But even if he did lay down right now, he wouldn’t be able to sleep, not with Yoongi on his own in there, being a stubborn, stoic bastard as usual when Namjoon knows for a fact he doesn’t fare well on his own when sick.
He should’ve seen something like this coming when Yoongi didn’t eat dinner, when he spent the evening huddled under a blanket with one of his weird Japanese music tech magazines, snapping at everyone who tried to talk to him like an old, cranky terrier. He was running a very mild fever when they got into bed, pink-cheeked and a little shivery, curling up to Namjoon’s back, but neither of them could’ve seen it getting this bad so fast, Namjoon supposes.
He hears the sound of the faucet being turned on, running for just a couple seconds before Yoongi twists it off with a metallic squeak.
‘Are you really sick, hyung?’ Namjoon asks, listening to him shuffling around, though he wants to hear his voice again, properly.
‘No, I’m doing this for fun,’ comes Yoongi’s hoarse drawl.
Namjoon breathes out a soft laugh, rolling his eyes. ‘No, I just meant—’
He cuts off at the sound of the lock clicking, stepping away quickly from the door before it’s opened from the inside, the bright, white light of their bathroom pouring out in a rectangle across the bedroom floor.
Half blinded at first, he can’t quite see him, but when Namjoon’s eyes adjust, he feels his heart curl up like a frightened hedgehog at the sight.
Yoongi is some step beyond white, a translucent sort of grey that shows up the faintest lacework of veins under the skin of his face and neck. His eyes are puffy, nose red from the vomiting, a worrying feverish blush sitting high on his cheeks and looking wholly out of place on that vampiric complexion he’s got going on. His hair hangs lank and wavy with the fever sweat, pasted to his forehead and temples in places, and those cute shivers from earlier on have turned to full body shuddering that makes him look like he’s about to fall apart. The grumpy set of his eyebrows dares Namjoon to comment, but the rest of him just looks so fucking small and broken, he can’t help himself.
‘Ah, hyung,’ he says softly, reaching out on instinct.
‘Joon-ah, no,’ Yoongi groans, face scrunching. He half raises his arms to bat Namjoon away, though the motion seems to unbalance him a little, has him reaching to catch the doorjamb instead. ‘I don’t want you to get sick, okay? So, just… go sleep on the couch or something.’
‘I’ll sleep on the couch if you want, hyung,’ Namjoon tells him, arm still extended, plucking gently at the sleeve of Yoongi’s sweater in case he does fucking fall over or something, ‘but I’m gonna make sure you’re settled first, come on.’
Yoongi doesn’t look at all reassured. ‘We don’t even know how contagious this is.’
‘Hyung, we fucked yesterday morning,’ Namjoon points out, trying not to laugh. ‘We exchanged a pretty substantial quantity of bodily fluids, so if I’m gonna get it, I’ve got it already.’
Yoongi squints, red-rimmed eyes all narrow, the picture of suspicion. ‘Are you just shit-talking me because you know I think you know shit?’ he asks.
‘No, I’m serious, really,’ Namjoon sighs, as if he’s not dredging up whatever little knowledge he remembers from high school bio classes. ‘Most viruses are contagious before symptoms even start, hyung, you’ve probably been infecting me repeatedly for a week.’
‘Wow, Joon-ah, that makes me feel so much better,’ Yoongi grumbles, shooting him a dark look through his lashes.
Namjoon only laughs at him, but he doesn’t miss the way Yoongi’s still leaning against the doorjamb for support, arms wrapped around himself in an attempt to make his shivering less noticeable.
‘Come on,’ Namjoon says, pouting a bit now, tugging more insistently on the elbow area of his sweater sleeve. ‘I know you wanna.’
Yoongi does have his stubborn face on, that one mulish look that’s half pout, half killer eyebrows and usually means Namjoon is losing bigtime, but he’s also sick. Min Yoongi when he’s sick is a whole other creature and the same rules just don’t apply. He only manages to hold out a couple more seconds before he breaks and lets Namjoon pull him in closer, arms unwinding from round his own torso to wrap around Namjoon’s instead.
He’s shaking so much that a little shiver runs down Namjoon’s own spine when curls an arm around him. Namjoon’s been standing round in the early March chill in boxers and t-shirt for the past ten minutes; he’s surprised he doesn’t hear an actual hiss, a puff of steam, when his hand meets the burning skin at the nape of Yoongi’s neck, resting there and giving a soothing sort of squeeze.
‘I fucking hate being sick, Joon-ah,’ Yoongi mumbles, voice small and half lost in the fabric of Namjoon’s shirt. He sounds done already, fed up and beaten.
‘I know, hyung,’ Namjoon murmurs, leaning down to nuzzle gently at the crown of Yoongi’s head. He smells very strongly of mint mouthwash. ‘It’s gonna be fine, though. I’ll get you whatever, just say the word.’
Yoongi doesn’t reply for a moment, just stays there, his breath hot on Namjoon’s chest even through his t-shirt.
‘I just wanna lie down,’ he finally sighs.
Namjoon nods. ‘I can do that.’
‘I can fucking walk, Namjoon,’ he mutters, pulling back a step to glower up at him, but Namjoon shoots a pointed look right back at him.
‘You seemed pretty unsteady a minute ago,’ he reminds him, not taking his hand away from Yoongi’s back, not a goddamn chance in hell. ‘Also, there are shoes everywhere.’
Yoongi grumbles sullenly under his breath about Namjoon trying to fucking kill him as he steers them towards the bed, but he doesn’t argue more. He holds on tight, fist curled into Namjoon’s shirt and Namjoon keeps a grip around his shoulders, watching out for any potentially lethal footwear as they move, slowly but surely. Yoongi is still muttering vague and half-formed complaints when Namjoon insists on leaning over ahead of him to pull the sheets down, and he shakes Namjoon off so quickly once they’re at the bedside that Yoongi seems to topple more than actually ease himself down onto the mattress. He doesn’t look so good after that bumpy landing, sitting very still for a moment, eyes shut, brow creased (Namjoon’s pretty sure he goes a little green, but it’s hard to tell in the weak light).
‘Hyung?’
Yoongi holds up a hand to silence him, though he doesn’t move for another few seconds, just sits there looking like he’s running some kind of full-on internal negotiation with his stomach and gag reflex.
‘I’m good,’ he croaks at last, practically kicking Namjoon’s hand away with a sound close to the angry hiss of a feral street cat when he attempts to help him get his legs up onto the bed. ‘I’m not fucking dying, Joon-ah, my limbs are functional.’
‘Hyung, you look like you’re dying,’ Namjoon tells him, even though he’s supposed to not. He’s probably supposed to tell him he’s still as hot as ever or something, but that’s really hard to do when he looks like should probably be hooked up to a couple hospital monitors and Namjoon’s chest is kind of doing this weird throbbing thing that might be worry if worry is prone to heart palpitations and anxiety.
‘I feel like I’m dying,’ Yoongi admits, his voice a little weaker now as he lays back on his pillows, eyes slipping shut immediately. He doesn’t even complain when Namjoon pulls the sheets up over him, tucks him in a little, sits down on the edge of the bed. His fingers trail lightly over Yoongi’s cheek before he sweeps his sticky fringe out of the way to press his hand to his forehead. He’s really burning up, so hot that he flinches a little when Namjoon’s palm touches his skin, eyes flickering open again.
‘Don’t do that,’ he says softly, and Namjoon frowns at him in question. ‘Biting your lip like that, you’ll make them bleed again.’
Namjoon releases his vaguely stinging lower lip and runs his tongue out over it, feeling spilt skin there – he hadn’t even realised he was doing it.
‘Like I said,’ Yoongi goes on, reaching up to catch Namjoon’s wrist and pulling it gently away from his head, lets it rest on his chest instead, ‘I’m not fucking dying, Joon-ah.’
Namjoon smiles at him, but his teeth are at his lip again before he can think twice about what he’s doing. He sees Yoongi roll his eyes as he lets them slip shut again, giving Namjoon’s wrist a squeeze.
‘Idiot,’ he grumbles, and Namjoon snorts softly, the sound making a corner of Yoongi’s mouth twitch upwards.
‘I’m gonna get you a…a bowl or something,’ Namjoon says, easing his wrist out of Yoongi’s light grip, about to haul himself to his feet when Yoongi groans.
‘No, Joon-ah, I’ll use the toilet.’
Namjoon sighs, shoulders slumping as he turns his gaze skywards for a little help here. He knows for a fact he should just put his foot down and tell Yoongi what’s what because he’s sick and he can’t fight back, but it’s hard when that just isn’t what he’s used to. ‘And what if you can’t get there in time, hyung?’ he challenges – his voice gentle, but still firm. (Or something like it, anyway, Firm’s unsteady, black sheep second cousin.)
‘You’re not rinsing my vomit out of a bowl, Joon-ah,’ Yoongi practically spits, almost attempting to struggle up onto an elbow before he seems to decide that’s Too Much and drops back.
That, Namjoon thinks, shooting Yoongi a pointed look, should be his side of the argument dealt with, but Yoongi still has that mulish glint in his eyes.
‘Hyung, I’d rather rinse it out of a bowl than mop it off the floor,’ he says flatly, smirking when Yoongi wrinkles his nose up, shutting his eyes again in what looks a lot like defeat. ‘Now, you want anything else?’
Almost certainly sulking, Yoongi seems like he might not reply for a moment, but he finally gives a subtle shake of his head.
‘Okay,’ Namjoon says softly, watching him a couple seconds longer before he gets to his feet. He hovers a bit while he’s picking up his phone from the bedside locker, wonders if it’s really a good idea to leave him alone, but part of him knows that’s just the worry talking, making him irrational.
Probably.
(Hopefully.)
The living room is dark and Min Holly is a fluffy demon, so of course he’s dragged his doggy pillow right out into the middle of the floor and of course Namjoon trips over it, almost brains himself on the coffee table while the demon in question yaps from the sofa.
‘Shh,’ Namjoon hisses, picking himself and the cushion up off the floor, tossing the latter back into the corner of the room from whence it came.
Holly hasn’t shut up, of course, and won’t shut up because he’s learned that if he just keeps on barking while Yoongi’s not around to calm him, Namjoon will finally give in and toss him one of his favourite dental treats. So, that’s what he does as soon as he flicks on the kitchen light, hears the click-clack of tiny claws on wood as Holly comes skidding in. Namjoon grabs a treat from the pack left on the counter by Yoongi before they headed to bed, but he doesn’t have the patience right now to go through the usual round of Sit, Stay, Beg, Paw, Dab, whatever new shit Yoongi’s trying to teach him. He drops the treat and Holly dives forward to snatch it up, immediately skitters off into the living room again as if he’s afraid Namjoon might try to take it back.
He’s barely paying the pup any attention, though, his phone already at his ear, dial tone ringing too loud in the silent kitchen.
Hoseok’s slow about answering and Namjoon has time to settle himself against the counter, to chew half of his thumbnail off, to worry himself onto a whole new plane of existence before there’s a rustle on the other end of the line.
‘’The fuck, Joon-ah,’ Hoseok grumbles, voice so rough, accent so thick it’s practically impossible to make out what he’s saying. ‘It’s fucking… it’s fucking ass o’clock, we have a class in the morning, someone better be dying.’
The D-word makes Namjoon shiver a little (that could also be the cool air and icy tiles of the kitchen, but it’s horribly coincidental timing). ‘Yoongi-hyung might be,’ he mutters, thumbnail still between his teeth, fluffing his words.
‘What?’ Hoseok demands, but he isn’t what Namjoon needs at all and he needs a cranky Hoseok even less right now.
‘Wake your boyfriend,’ he says, tucking his free hand in under his armpit before he rips his nail off for real.
Hoseok lets out a baffled sort of grunt. ‘You want Tae? Right now?’
‘No, the other one,’ Namjoon says, impatience clipping his words a bit, though Hoseok seems too groggy to even notice.
‘Okay, right…’ he mumbles, his voice fading off towards the end.
Namjoon can hear faint rustling and Hoseok speaking, the softer hum of someone else replying, followed by what sounds a lot like hushed bickering. There’s a high whine from someone – Taehyung, more than likely – then another round of rustling as Seokjin takes the phone.
‘Apparently Yoongi is dying, which I almost believe because Min Yoongi would definitely die at the most inappropriate fucking time,’ he grits out, and he sounds pissed, but his voice is still somehow reassuring right now. ‘You’ve already caused me probable eye-bags and two tired, whiny boyfriends, Namjoon, you better start talking.’
‘He’s—he’s sick,’ Namjoon sputters, his wide gaze on the blank, black door of the microwave since he can’t direct it at Seokjin himself. ‘Hyung, I dunno what the fuck to do.’
There’s a pause, but when Seokjin speaks next, his voice is a touch softer. ‘What d’you mean he’s sick?’
‘Like a virus or something?’ Namjoon says, his shoulders shrugging up round his ears even though there’s no need. ‘He’s throwing up and—and feverish, I guess, and so weak, hyung, I’m—’
‘Okay, calm down,’ Seokjin cuts across him, and Namjoon slumps against the counter again; he hadn’t even realised he’d started pacing. ‘It sounds like nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ he bursts out, but he can hear the panic in his own voice this time. He sounds a bit on the manic side, Seokjin’s probably right to tell him to shut the hell up.
‘Look, Joonie, come on,’ he says firmly, though he’s still working through that just-woken-up grump to keep his voice gentle and Namjoon appreciates it. ‘Pull yourself together, okay? You just wanna keep him hydrated – not with water, just energy drinks, Powerade or something – and control his fever as much as you can, the rest’s probably just gotta work itself out.’
‘But he’s so sick…’
‘People get sick,’ Seokjin sighs, ‘it just seems worse when it’s someone you love.’
‘Gross,’ Namjoon hears Taehyung call out in the background, soon followed up by some high-pitched cooing from Hoseok.
Judging by the hiss on the line, Seokjin lets out a long breath through his nose. ‘So help me god, I will murder you both,’ he growls, making even Namjoon jump a little, nerves too fried to be dealing with Seokjin’s angry voice right now.
‘Love,’ Namjoon murmurs, listening to manic cackling filtering through the static buzz, woven through with Seokjin hissing more threats, a door slamming, silence. ‘Right.’
Seokjin sighs, finally somewhere more quiet and sounding a little less homicidal. Namjoon shuts his eyes to block out his own pasty-faced reflection in the microwave door and he can almost picture Seokjin’s resigned expression, that look he gets just before he launches into his favourite rant: Why am I the mom friend? Why have all of you appointed me as the mom friend? I am the worst equipped to be the mom friend. Don’t call me for things. Ever.
He always picks up, though. That’s why he’s the mom friend.
‘Look,’ he says, followed by a soft thwump like he just fell onto the couch, ‘two weeks after Tae moved in, we took him to the hospital for a head-cold. I swear, if they could’ve fined us for wasting the precious time of medical staff, they would’ve. He had the sniffles, but we saw a mutated strain of H1N1. Didn’t help that we’d just watched Contagion and were also high, but whatever.’
‘I remember that,’ Namjoon mumbles around his thumbnail, which has made its way back between his teeth again. ‘Hyung picked you up from the hospital. Tae was more lucid than both of you put together.’
‘Yeah,’ Seokjin says, sounding like he might be smiling a bit now. ‘Sounds about right. What I’m trying to say is, if you had what Yoongi has, you’d probably still be trying to go to your morning lecture, so calm down, Joonie.’
He’s right. Namjoon knows he’s right. Seokjin’s always right – mostly because no one’s dumb enough to call him out and tell him he’s wrong, but also sometimes because he’s actually right, and this is one of those times, Namjoon’s sure. He just needed to hear it, he just needed someone to tell him to stop being an idiot and that is one thing you can always rely on Kim Seokjin for.
Namjoon takes a breath, a deep breath, slow in, slow out, only a little shaky.
‘You calm yet?’ Seokjin asks him.
‘Yeah,’ Namjoon sigh. ‘Yeah, I think so. Thank—’
‘Good, now keep in mind it could be something more serious and you might need to call a doctor,’ Seokjin says, doing that thing where he runs his words out so fast he’s speaking again before Namjoon’s even processed what he just said, blinking dazedly at the microwave.
‘Wait, what—’
‘Make sure his temperature doesn’t go over 104 and watch out for signs of dehydration.’
‘Hyung—’
‘Night, Joon-ah~’ Seokjin all but sings, voice growing distant as if he’s already pulling the phone away from his ear. ‘I’ll call in the morning.’
‘Hey, wait—’ Namjoon chokes out, taking a half step forward in his sleepy panic, as if he’s going to be able to chase him down somehow.
Instead of a reply, he gets the dull beep of a line going dead and he’s left standing there awkwardly in the middle of his kitchen, staring wide-eyed at the microwave – so, no different to when he started the call in the first place, really.
‘Asshole,’ he mumbles, without much conviction, locking his phone again.
He lifts one of his bare feet off the floor to poke at Holly’s nose when he comes sniffing around for more treats, but it’s at this point he realises just how long he’s left Yoongi on his own. Maybe Kim Seokjin is kind of an asshole, but he was still kind of also right. Yoongi isn’t dying – probably (hopefully) – but he still needs Namjoon right now, he needs him to get his shit together.
Ignoring Holly’s vaguely threatening growls when Namjoon doesn’t immediately reach for the pack of treats, he ducks down and grabs a bowl from the back of the cupboard. It’s big, plastic, they used to use it for popcorn till Taehyung melted a whole chunk of the rim (no one knows how), but Namjoon figures it’ll do. All they have by way of energy drinks is a half-drunk bottle of blue Powerade, so Namjoon grabs that and flicks off the kitchen light.
Holly starts barking at him again in the living room, dancing around his feet to trip him up (because the fluffy demon really, truly doesn’t care for his continued survival at all if he’s not getting treats out of it), but Namjoon nudges him away with his foot before hurrying back into the bedroom, shutting the door gently behind him.
Relief loosens a knot in his chest when he finds Yoongi is exactly where he left him, same position and everything, curled up on his side, asleep. Their bed is small – at least, Namjoon’s always thought so, small enough that they can’t both lie in it comfortably without touching somewhere – but Yoongi is still lost in it tonight, more so than other nights, Namjoon thinks.
He sets the bowl down quietly on the bedside locker and heads across to the bathroom again to wet a small towel with cool water. Control his fever, keep him hydrated. Namjoon’s pretty sure he’s covering all the bases here, running his little checklist through his head like a mantra as he moves back to the bed.
He’s got this.
He’s careful about crawling onto the bed next to Yoongi, even more careful about pushing Yoongi’s hair back and laying the towel over his forehead, but it still has his face crumpling, his hand flying up to catch at Namjoon’s arm.
‘No,’ he groans, voice cracking. ‘Joon-ah, no, please, I’m cold.’
‘But you’re burning up, hyung,’ Namjoon says gently, keeping his hand over the towel so Yoongi can’t claw it away. ‘We don’t even have a thermometer, I don’t even know how bad you are.’
‘Seriously, it hurts,’ Yoongi whines, his voice only growing thinner and fuck, he really does sound distressed. ‘Please.’
Namjoon can’t take it, from the way his face is scrunched up to the desperate death grip Yoongi has on his wrist, he can’t do it. ‘Okay,’ he allows, taking the cloth away, feeling his chest twist at Yoongi’s little whimper of relief. ‘Okay, but… drink something, then, hyung.’
Yoongi shakes his head at once, a negative sounding grunt humming in his chest, but Namjoon isn’t taking no for an answer on this one.
‘You have to,’ he says flatly, reaching over to swap the towel for the cool bottle of Powerade.
When he turns back to Yoongi, his dark eyes are open to red-rimmed slits, nose crinkling slightly again at the sight of the bottle.
‘Come on, you need to stay hydrated,’ Namjoon tells him, popping open the cap, meeting Yoongi’s glower with a pointed look until he seems to break. He slumps in defeat before he works at propping himself up on his elbows, shooting Namjoon a toxic look when he helps him a little with a hand between his shoulder blades.
Namjoon can’t help himself watching, rapt, as Yoongi takes these tiny, delicate sips from the bottle, the smallest sips imaginable, wincing with every single one as if it’s poison being forced down his throat. Namjoon is half waiting on him to choke or throw up again or god knows what else, his heart in his mouth while Yoongi shoots him a sideways look.
‘Can you not fucking stare at me, maybe?’ he suggests, popping the lid back down and handing the bottle back to Namjoon. ‘I’m drinking juice, not doing the fucking cancan in the nude.’
The sound of Yoongi’s scathing drawl, comforting and familiar, is enough to bring a tired smile to Namjoon’s face. ‘But you’re pretty,’ he murmurs, leaning in to grin against Yoongi’s shoulder at his own cheesiness.
‘You trying to make me throw up again?’ Yoongi asks him. ‘And I think we know that’s not fucking true right now.’
Namjoon lifts his head to raise his eyebrows at him. ‘So it is true every other time?’
‘Damn right,’ Yoongi says, smiling faintly, though his eyes are already shut again.
Namjoon laughs softly leaning back down to nuzzle his head in against Yoongi’s shoulder. He knows this is probably his cue to grab some spare blankets and head for the couch, but he can’t bring himself to do it, not yet. Yoongi’s shoulder is soft and warm and it’s nice to feel him breathe and maybe Namjoon’s not a hundred percent sure about the virology facts he used to placate his boyfriend a little while ago, but whatever.
‘Stop worrying,’ Yoongi grumbles.
Namjoon nuzzles some more. ‘I’m not worrying.’
‘You woke Jin-hyung just to freak out.’
‘Oh.’ Namjoon feels a sheepish sort of grimace pull at his mouth. ‘You heard that, huh?’
‘No, he texted me after and told me to put you to bed,’ Yoongi says, shifting his head on the pillow to lean his cheek against Namjoon’s hair. ‘You’re an idiot.’
‘Asshole,’ Namjoon mumbles. Trust Seokjin to rat him out.
‘Joon-ah, I need you to promise me something,’ Yoongi says suddenly, making Namjoon prop himself up again to look at him. He’s got something close to a serious expression, but it looks so pathetic with his eyes, nose and cheeks all still flushed pink.
‘Is this the part where you tell me it’s okay to move on if you don’t make it?’ Namjoon asks him, smirking as he waggles his eyebrows a little. ‘Because I’ve still got pizza guy’s number.’
‘Fuckin—no, it’s not,’ Yoongi snaps, shoving so much force into his weakened voice that it cracks under the pressure, ending in a sort of squawk that Namjoon can’t help but laugh at. ‘If I die, you live out the rest of your days in mourning, Kim Namjoon, or I swear, I’ll come back as a poltergeist and throw shit at you.’
‘Okay, sorry,’ Namjoon murmurs, patting his chest to try and quieten him down a bit. ‘What is it, then, hyung?’
Yoongi glowers a moment longer before shutting his eyes again. He takes a deep breath, as if this is an incredibly difficult thing to say and Namjoon’s almost worried until—
‘If it starts coming out the other end, I want you to pack your bags and leave for a few days, no questions asked.’
He tries to keep a straight face, he really does, but he soon decides Yoongi doesn’t deserve a straight face for that one, not even while sick. ‘I’m not gonna do that,’ Namjoon says, chuckling quietly as he settles his head back down on Yoongi’s shoulder.
‘You will if you love me, Joon-ah,’ Yoongi says, very serious, and Namjoon’s starting to think he might be a little more fever-drunk than he first seemed.
‘Why would I leave you like that?’ he asks him.
‘Joon-ah, you’d never see my ass the same way.’
Namjoon snorts. ‘Oh my god, you sound like my sister,’ he groans. ‘She was talking the other day about how she’d never let her hypothetical husband witness the birth of their hypothetical child because he’d never see her the same way after.’
‘Can we not equate explosive diarrhoea to childbirth,’ Yoongi suggests, a grimace clear in his voice.
‘Not even hypothetically?’ he asks.
‘Not even then,’ Yoongi confirms.
‘Look, it’s in sickness and in health, right?’ Namjoon says, propping himself up onto an elbow to see Yoongi’s face. It’s blank, but blank in that way where he’s most certainly judging, a glint to his glassy eyes, something smart-assed about to come out of his mouth.
‘Namjoon, we’re not fucking married,’ he reminds him.
Namjoon quirks his eyebrows up. ‘Practice.’
‘We’re never getting married,’ Yoongi clarifies, shutting his eyes on him.
Namjoon laughs softly, thumbing at the crooked ridge of Yoongi’s jaw. ‘See, you say that now, but…’
‘Are you proposing?’ Yoongi asks him, cracking open an eye to frown at him, but Namjoon wrinkles his nose.
‘You have a lil’ puke on your sweater there,’ he says, plucking at fabric of his sleeve near the sizeable stain. ‘I don’t think now’s a great time, hyung.’
Yoongi groans at the sight of it, dropping his arm and shutting that one eye in apparent defeat. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
‘Someday,’ Namjoon promises, laughing when he can see Yoongi’s eyes rolling underneath the thin skin of his lids.
‘I’ll say no,’ he warns, in a monotone.
Namjoon smiles, kind of wishes he could kiss him, but love can only take a person so far. ‘You’ll marry me anyway, though,’ he murmurs, his fingertips scratching into the hair behind Yoongi’s ear and he swears he can practically hear him purring, those lines of discomfort fading right off his forehead. ‘You’re soft, hyung, you always give in.’
Yoongi hums, a low, grumpy sort of note that isn’t entirely argumentative. ‘Let me sleep, Joon-ah,’ he sighs, turning his head to press his cheek into Namjoon’s palm. He’d let him lie there like that, too, Namjoon knows he would, even though it makes it practically impossible for Namjoon himself to lie down comfortably.
(Yoongi, however, isn’t the only one who’s soft.)
‘You want a new sweater first, maybe?’ Namjoon suggests, and Yoongi does open his eyes, a flicker of interest before he shuts them again with a quiet whine when he seems to realise he’ll have to get up.
‘I’ll get one for you,’ Namjoon tells him, tugging his hand out from under Yoongi’s cheek and clambering off the bed to pick through the pile of clean laundry left on top of their dresser. (He finds something lighter than what Yoongi’s wearing, determined to get him to cool down whether he’s cooperative or not.)
‘I don’t like this,’ Yoongi announces, as soon as Namjoon settles on his knees next to him, his hand hovering worriedly by Yoongi’s shoulder as he pushes himself up on shaky arms.
Namjoon grins at him, trying not to worry about the way he’s looking a little paler already (maybe he shouldn’t be changing, maybe the exertion’s making him worse, maybe Namjoon’s doing everything fucking wrong already, holy shit). ‘That’s not what you said last time I took your clothes off,’ he says, waggling his eyebrows a bit.
Yoongi is not amused, not in the slightes, eyes dark and narrow and razor sharp when they flick up to cast Namjoon a sideways glower. Namjoon draws his grin back to a subtler smirk, starts tugging up the hem of Yoongi’s sweater when Yoongi seems to be having trouble doing that while also staying upright.
‘But, hyung, this is the point, isn’t it?’ he says gently, after a moment.
Yoongi blinks at him, sleepy. ‘What?’
‘It’s like poetry,’ Namjoon says, though he probably shouldn’t have, judging by the way Yoongi sighs.
‘It’s 5:00AM and I just expelled my whole digestive system into our toilet, please don’t start talking about the universe, Joon-ah,’ he grumbles.
‘No, but there’s something in there,’ Namjoon goes on, pausing with only one of Yoongi’s arms out of the sweater. ‘Juxtaposition, or whatever.’ He has no idea what he’s saying, but his mind wants to go somewhere with this, Namjoon’s sure of it, even with Yoongi’s fever-glazed eyes quietly begging him to Not. ‘Between taking your clothes off in a fit of passion and helping you change when you’re sick. There’s something there… It’s like—they’re both intimate, but in different ways. They’re the same, but kind of completely not, you know?’ Judging by the dead look on Yoongi’s face, he does not know and does not care to. Namjoon shrugs, going back to the task at hand, though Yoongi’s already slid his other arm out by himself. ‘Poetry,’ he mumbles, finally.
‘You’re way less good at words at 5:00AM,’ Yoongi observes, voice muffled from inside his sweater as Namjoon eases it off over his head. He reappears with even messier hair and a gentle frown, like he might be trying to understand what Namjoon was babbling about.
‘I know,’ he sighs. ‘I’m just trying to say I like doing both, I guess.’
Yoongi hikes up a challenging sort of eyebrow. ‘What, you like it when I’m sick?’
It’s Namjoon’s turn to shoot him a scathing look and Yoongi’s turn to attempt a weak sort of smirk before Namjoon reaches over to tug the clean shirt down over his head.
‘I like being allowed to love you,’ he says quietly, as Yoongi’s reappearing, blinking his own too-long bangs out of his eyes. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say.’
Yoongi just watches him a moment and Namjoon can’t really tell if he’s dazed from the fever or if he’s really thinking deeply about what was just said, but either way, the little shiver he gives at the feel of cool, new fabric on his skin makes Namjoon’s heart do the hedgehog thing again. He tosses the old sweater over to some other corner of the room and reaches out for Yoongi, brushes his hair out of his eyes and smiles at the way they slip shut when his fingers trail gently down his cheek. He’s so out of it, even drunk Yoongi isn’t quite this soft.
‘Maybe,’ Yoongi yawns, leaning in against Namjoon as Namjoon settles down into the pillows, guides Yoongi to do the same.
‘Maybe what?’ he asks, but Yoongi’s too busy to answer at first, arranging himself, slow but surely, fitting up against Namjoon’s side and finding a pillow in the form of Namjoon’s chest. He throws an arm over his stomach, seems to try to get a leg over Namjoon’s, too, but gives up when the tangle of sheets is too great an adversary for now.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t say no,’ he mumbles, his lips moving soft through the thin material of Namjoon’s t-shirt.
It’s late – early? – and it takes Namjoon a few seconds to realise what he’s talking about, but when he does, he feels his face split, arms tightening around Yoongi as he ducks his head to press his smile and a kiss to his damp hair. Burning fingertips from the arm thrown across his stomach start poking gently at his wrist and Namjoon takes the hint, finding Yoongi’s hand and tangling their fingers together.
‘Get some sleep, hyung,’ he murmurs, but Yoongi’s halfway there already, his reply nothing more than a vague sort of hum.
Namjoon listens to him for a while, the shallow breaths made shaky by the shivers still creeping through his body. He doesn’t think he’d be able to sleep more even if he tried, nerves frayed, heart still a little jumpy in his chest, but Yoongi feels like a living hot water bottle against him. Namjoon reckons it won’t be long till he roasts him to sleep, but for now, he reaches over and grabs his phone from the bedside locker.
He welcomes the dawn with WebMD’s list of H1N1 symptoms, Yoongi’s hair tickling his neck.