Chapter Text
The last thing she needed in the middle of the night was a surprise.
Yona groaned, silently cursing whoever was at her window at this hour, and resolved to ignore them and go to bed. It was already way past her usual bedtime, thanks to this stupid Accounting test.
The tiny clink sound kept coming, and Yona rolled out of bed, yanking open the window to find—
“Hak?!”
Her best friend waved sheepishly, one hand pressed to his head around—
“Is that blood?!” Yona hissed, never more grateful for her single dorm room as Hak hefted himself awkwardly through her ground-floor window with a stifled groan.
“Yes?” He replied slowly, limping toward her bed. “But you should see the other guys.”
Yona kept her voice quiet for the sake of her neighbors but didn’t bother to hide her shock.
“What is wrong with you?”
Hak blinked at her for a moment, the hand not on his head shifting to rub at his leg, and Yona scowled as she snagged a towel from the back of her door, resisting the urge to throw it at Hak.
Instead, she strode to his side, demanding, “Let me see.”
Hak winced but removed his hand from his head, where an angry slash marred his forehead.
Yona sucked in a breath, tamping down on the rising nausea.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re doing bleeding on my comforter at three AM instead of a hospital bed?” she asked as she pressed the towel as gently as possible to the wound, ignoring Hak’s hiss of pain.
He’d likely gotten himself into this, so he’d get very little sympathy from her.
“I … got into a fight with some older guys,” Hak replied, sounding strangely defeated, and Yona scowled again as she asked, “What did you do this time?”
“Hey, they started it!” Hak insisted, his hand gripping her wrist as she waited for him to explain.
Hak sighed heavily.
“They were jerks.”
When Hak didn’t elaborate, Yona stood and retrieved the first aid kit from her en-suite bathroom, pulling bandages out and letting Hak have a moment to think.
“I’m guessing you thought you’d beat them up pretty easily, huh?” she predicted, setting one hand on her hip.
Hak looked away from her and she had her answer.
The poor boy had been beating up “jerks” since they were in elementary school, though admittedly, most of the jerks had needed to learn a lesson.
“What did they do? Tell you that you weren’t cool enough to join the kendo team?” Yona suggested, frowning.
“They were saying terrible things about you, and about your father,” Hak replied harshly, and Yona’s hand stilled on his forehead.
“What?”
Hak nodded, anger causing his fists to clench at the memory.
“Hak, I’m used to people who know our family history talking rudely about my father,” Yona said quietly, pulling antiseptic from the first aid kit.
“They called him a sniveling coward,” Hak replied bitterly, glaring at her bedroom wall, and Yona took that opportunity to dab at his forehead, the antiseptic causing him to wince.
“While I appreciate your loyalty to my father, that really wasn’t your battle to fight,” she chided, though part of her leapt for joy at the idea of him defending her family’s reputation.
“They called you a liar and a gold digger,” Hak spat, his gaze snapping up to meet hers.
Yona went still, her mouth hanging open slightly, and Hak snorted. “I owe your father my life. You’re my best friend. Of course it was my battle to fight.”
How dramatically he always referred to her father being the one to give him a second chance and a job, Yona frowned, ripping open a roll of bandages.
“Still,” she insisted, “you didn’t have to get beaten up to prove that point.”
“I gave just as good as I got,” Hak grumbled. “Until their friends showed up.”
Yona sighed as she wrapped his head with the bandage, securing it as tightly as possible.
“Leg,” she commanded as Hak prodded gingerly at the bandage, and he glared at her.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Son Hak, if you do not roll up that pant leg this instant, I swear I will call your grandfather,” Yona warned, reaching for her phone.
Hak groaned but did as she asked, wincing as the leg of his jeans passed the bruising and small puncture wound.
“What, did one of them have a knife?” Yona asked in disbelief, and Hak replied quietly, “In his boot.”
Yona exhaled sharply, suddenly overcome with the mental image of Hak being beaten half to a pulp, and her fingers began to shake.
“Yona?” Hak asked, his hands coming up to catch hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes as she watched him frown at her.
“For what? Yona, I’ve been hurt before,” he reminded her, and suddenly she was bombarded with all of those memories from childhood, of him getting into fights and taking martial arts lessons and self-defense classes, showing up for her father’s business dinners with his grandfather, bruises peeking out from under his sports coats.
They probably hadn’t all been her fault, but Yona knew at least a few of his early fights had been at her expense, until the other kids had been afraid to approach them for fear of Hak’s fists.
“Hak, please,” she pleaded, kneeling to touch the leg wound gently, “please, stop getting into all of these fights.”
“I can’t help it, Princess,” her friend replied, dredging up the old childhood nickname as he refused to meet her eyes.
“Yes, you can,” Yona sniffed, cleaning the wound on his knee and slapping a bandage over it hastily.
“Yona, I—”
She tossed the roll of bandages at him without meeting his gaze and fled to the bathroom, needing to put air between them before she continued this conversation.
Hak had always been so impulsive, so eager to prove himself and defend others.
That last part she appreciated, but surely there were other ways for him to defend than with his fists.
Yona sighed, leaning her hands on the vanity and glancing at her reflection briefly, cringing. Well, it was after three AM and she had been exhausted before Hak had shown up and caused her even more stress.
She took a moment to splash water on her face, scrubbing at the remnants of tears, and took a deep breath before stepping out of the bathroom.
Hak was leaning against her headboard, eyes closed, and Yona sighed. He’d be lucky if he didn’t have a concussion to go with all that bruising.
Rushing to the bed, Yona prodded Hak’s face, calling quietly, “Hak? Are you asleep?”
Hak raised a hand to bat hers away, groaning.
“Well I’m not anymore,” he grumbled, leveling her with a hard stare.
“Sorry!” Yona squeaked. “I just thought you might have a concussion and I wanted to make sure you could wake up okay and—”
One of Hak’s hands went to cover an ear as the other reached to close over her mouth, halting her explanation.
Yona glared as she raised a hand to shove his away, scolding, “Hak! What if you have a concussion?”
“I’ve had concussions before, Princess,” he replied, shrugging. “I know the drill. And I don’t think this is a concussion, just a nasty headache.”
“But what if you’re bleeding internally?!” Yona screeched quietly, her hands flying to her mouth. “Hak, we should take you to a hospital and have them do x-rays or CAT scans or something!”
This time one of Hak’s hands gripped hers as the other returned to its previous position over her mouth, and Yona huffed, glaring once again.
“Yona, I’m fine,” he insisted, leaning in close as her eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed.
She nodded mutely, acquiescing, and yet Hak’s hands lingered.
She glanced down at his hand, then to theirs, clasped, and back again, indicating without words.
They’d always been relatively good at having conversations with just looks.
“Right. Sorry,” Hak sighed, releasing her hands and dropping his hand from her mouth.
“I promise: no concussion, no internal bleeding,” he assured her, a hand over his heart. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Yona replied weakly, shoulders slumping.
“You should try to sleep,” Hak admonished, nudging her shoulder as he shifted against her headboard.
“So should you,” Yona replied, nudging back before she stood. “Come on, help me move the blankets.”
“Huh?” Hak asked, blinking at her as she tugged the comforter and other layers down, frowning at him.
“I can’t just let you sleep above all the covers!” Yona laughed, nudging his legs to shift the blankets so she could pull them down further.
Hak adjusted his position enough to let her pull them to just under his knees and she smiled in approval, declaring, “There. Now you can put your feet under and actually lay down.”
“Uh…” he mumbled, staring at her, and Yona crawled under the covers, insisting, “I’m not letting you go back to your dorm this late with those injuries, and you’re not sleeping on the floor. It’s not like we’ve never shared a bed before.”
“Yeah, when you were like six!” Hak retorted, frowning.
“If it makes you feel better, we can pile pillows in the middle,” Yona offered, holding out one of the more decorative pillows she usually tossed off the bed at night.
Hak hesitated for a moment before snagging the pillow and tucking it between them, ignoring her frown. Sure, normally she would have been the awkward one, but they were best friends and she knew he wouldn’t do anything inappropriate on purpose.
With a giggle, she snuggled down under the covers, definitely ready for bed after the night it had been.
Hak slid under the covers next to her, his fingers twitching a little above the comforter.
Yona reached over to first snap off the lamp on her nightstand, and then toward Hak’s hands to still his twitching.
“Go to sleep, Hak,” she instructed with a smile, glancing over at him in the dark.
Hak sighed heavily, nudging her hand with a finger, and Yona nudged right back before they lapsed into silence.
“Hey,” Hak said a little while later, and Yona turned her head toward him.
“What?”
“Thanks,” was his quiet reply, and she could just barely see the smile on his face in the darkness.
“Of course,” she replied automatically, nudging her shoulder into his.
Hak sighed as he nudged back and Yona smiled as his eyes fell closed and his breathing began to deepen in sleep.
It was getting harder and harder to keep her eyes open, but she stared at him for as long as her body would let her, taking in the details of his face in the relative darkness of her room.
Hak had always been a part of her life, from the moment she’d met him when he’d been a towering second grader when she’d been in kindergarten, knocking over a couple of first graders who’d been teasing her.
He’d been protective of her ever since, and Yona appreciated it, but she also wished that he’d take a break once in a while.
With a sigh, she let sleep overtake her, but not before her head dropped to land on Hak’s shoulder.