Work Text:
“It's my turn to be sick,” you inform your boyfriend.
Seungcheol pauses. He’s staying in a hotel overnight after traveling for work, one of his least favorite things to do now that you’re dating. The only way he tolerates it is if you call him and talk him through part of your evening.
You’re having dinner together on a video call. It’s more than a little disgusting how the two of you can’t seem to manage a night apart anymore, but it’s your business. You can be as disgusting as you want together.
“Shit,” he says, wiping bits of rice off his lip. “I was hoping you’d escaped.”
He brought the plague into your apartment less than a week ago but thanks to your determined care, he’s already back to work and functional, minus an occasional dry cough. You rub at your throat where you can feel the weird biting itchiness starting.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be a weak version. I’ve been dosing up on vitamin C and zinc since yours,” you point out.
He doesn’t look convinced. He just looks guilty.
“I can come back tonight.”
He’s hours away from you. Just the thought of him getting into his car right now has you ready to fight.
“Don’t you dare drive back exhausted,” you tell him. “You can’t do anything. I am going to sleep early and I swear to God if you show up at my door I won’t let you in. Got it?”
“But baby–”
“Seungcheol.”
A sigh. “Got it. Please get some rest.”
“I will. You know I’m serious, right?”
“I know. I don’t want to spend the night freezing on your doorstep. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
“I have work in the morning,” you remind him.
He makes an uneasy sound. “I don’t think you’re going to make it, love.”
You’ve shown up to work with much worse than a sore throat. Besides, it gives you an excuse to wear a mask and skip all your meetings. You’ll get so much done tomorrow with everyone avoiding you and then you can take Friday off to sleep.
And it’s just the start of the cold, a slight discomfort when you swallow. You’ll have plenty of time to grouse at Seungcheol about it after work while you’re making soup and hunkering down for your turn at being a giant baby.
Except, as you realize the next morning, this cold moves so much faster than you remembered. Seungcheol went to sleep tired and woke up miserable; you wake up feeling like your entire body’s been hit with a baseball bat.
Everything aches and your itchy throat now feels like swallowing knives. You stumble towards the kitchen and pour some water into a cup. The act of drinking it makes you want to cry.
Heat. You need something warm to break up the gross and soothe your throat. You fumble through the motions of spooning yuja syrup into a glass and heating up water. The first sip feels like acid; the second sip is better. The sweet taste of citrus and sugar blooms on your tongue.
Then you swallow it down and the pain makes you wince. There’s no way you’re making it into work like this.
You’ve just finished exchanging messages with your boss, who expresses her usual mild disapproval at you having a body, when there’s a knock at your door.
Seungcheol isn’t remotely surprised to see how sick you are. “Oh, baby. Come here.”
He reaches out to hug you and you duck away in terror.
“Nodonttouchme!”
The words are painful as you gasp them out, holding your hands out to keep him away. He freezes in the doorway, uncertain.
“My body hurts,” you tell him. “Even my skin hurts. Please don’t touch me.”
“Oh…is that normal?”
All you care about right now is that cold air is pouring in around him.
“I have to go back to bed,” you announce abruptly. You head back into your room, drawing the blankets over your aching body.
Seungcheol follows you in a few minutes later with your tea, which is now steaming again. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault.”
It is, but it’s not like he wished illness upon you. “Any one of my hideous coworkers could have sneezed on my keyboard this season. It was going to happen eventually.”
“Was your boss nice at least?”
“When is my boss ever nice? I have sick leave.” She can shove it, you think, but don’t bother saying. Talking too much is painful.
“Can you sit up to drink your tea?”
Despite not wanting to, you let him coax you into a seated position, your back braced against the wall by several pillows. It’s still uncomfortable, but each sip of hot, sweet tea eases some of the stabbing pain in your throat.
“Sorry you had to drive back to this,” you rasp.
He has to be tired. After all, he’s barely recovered from his own cold and he must have left early this morning to get you by this time. And he can’t even hold you.
But Seungcheol is firm: “No apologies. You rest up and and I’m going to organize everything. I’ll get you better in no time.”
That’s a tall order, but you smile. “Okay. Can I have another blanket?”
You left the pile from last week folded in a chair, so he picks one off the top and lays it across your lap. “Better?”
No. “Better.”
“What can I get you for now? Phone? Switch? Book?”
“I think I just want to sleep.”
He starts to pat your head, but catches himself at the last moment. “Okay, sleep well. Call me if you need anything.”
Five minutes later you call him back for another blanket. Then another. The weight on top of your body increases but so does your chill.
“I’m cold.”
“Baby,” he says gently, “you have every blanket.”
“The heater–”
“The heater is on. Any higher and it’s going to be a sauna in here.” Judging by the dampness along his neckline and the fact that he’s stripped down to a tank top, it already is. He’s clearly not lying to you, but your cold-addled brain can’t help but feel tricked.
A shiver wracks your body and you feel like crying. You feel for the controls to your heating pad only to see that it’s clicked all the way up already, and has been for a while.
“I’m dying,” you tell him.
“You’re not dying,” he says, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced about it. In a tiny voice, he asks, “You’re not, right?”
You prepared him for how to deal with a sick person, but not a sick you. In all your care of him, you neglected to tell him that sickness tends to hit you far more intensely and differently than the average person. And now he’s floundering.
“It’s okay, Cheol,” you tell him, or try to. Your teeth keep chattering. “This is normal for me.”
He brings you some medicine that you manage to get down before curling up tightly in bed.
“Sleep, Bun. You need to rest.”
You know that. You’re too cold to sleep, but he means well and you don’t want to bite his head off in your misery so you bite your tongue instead. But Seungcheol isn’t easily fooled.
“I’m sorry. I’m not helping.”
“You are.”
“I wish…” He trails off, but you know what he wishes. You wish the same thing: for him to be curled up with you, warming you with his body heat. But your skin still feels tender and every part of you aches.
At some point the exhaustion wins the battle and you drift off finally, plagued by strangely realistic dreams. In one of them, your cousin is grocery shopping with you, filling the cart with candy. In another, you’re sorting through all your belongings. Your friends are there. Mingyu takes one of your favorite hats and stretches it out on his big head while you shout at him.
You wake up feeling even worse. Your mouth is dry and pasty; Seungcheol’s left you a glass of water on the nightstand. With clumsy fingers you manage to pull it over and chug it down. It takes all your energy to place it back.
When you wake up again, you’re confused. You don’t remember falling back to sleep but you must have. The water’s been refilled. Or maybe you never drank it at all and only dreamed of it.
There’s also a small pile of cough drops next to the glass this time, so Seungcheol has definitely been back in. Someone else is here, too.
You vaguely make out Joshua’s voice coming from the kitchen. “Cheol, she’s not going to die. Let her sleep.”
“How long is a sick person supposed to sleep?” demands Seungcheol.
“As long as she wants to.”
There’s a distant aspect to Joshua’s voice that suggests he’s not actually here. Seungcheol must have his phone on speaker.
“This doesn’t look right.”
“Of course it doesn’t. I told you to add the chicken before the water boiled and skim off any foam. You did neither of those.”
“It didn’t seem important!”
“At this rate, your cooking might be what kills her.”
“Not funny.”
“Do you want me to bring over some soup?”
“No! I can feed my own girlfriend when she’s sick.”
“You can, but potentially only once.”
You enter in time to cut off Seungcheol’s curses.
“Baby! What are you doing up?” he asks as you totter over wrapped in your thickest blanket. Sure enough, he’s got a wooden spoon in one hand and his phone in the other.
Joshua makes an exasperated noise, but ultimately decides not to point out Seungcheol’s hypocrisy.
“You’re very loud,” you tell him. “I’m sick, not deaf. Hi, Shua.”
“Hi, Bun. You sound terrible.”
“Thanks.”
“I tried to help but there’s no helping your boyfriend. He’s an idiot.”
“Fuck off,” snaps Seungcheol before hanging up. Giving you a pouty look, he says, “I made you soup.”
You peek into the pot. The chicken is cooked, thankfully, but most of the rice is no longer in it. That hardly matters for your swollen throat though.
“I did my best.”
“It’s going to be great.”
It looks bad if you’re honest, which you aren’t. You can’t smell it, so hopefully you won’t be able to taste it, either. As long as it doesn’t give you food poisoning, it’s fine.
Seungcheol herds you over to the table, wrapping your blanket snugly around your legs. He only burns himself once with the broth as he ladles soup into a bowl and rushes it over.
“Spoon?” you rasp.
He makes a ruckus yanking open your silverware drawer in his haste to comply. If you asked him to blow on every bite, he probably would. It’s sweet, but you’re tired again already. You just want something in your stomach.
Except the first sip makes you change your mind.
“Cheol,” you ask, eyes watering, “how much ginger did you put in here?”
“Is it too much? I thought if a little bit was good, then twice as much would be better.”
“That’s not…how cooking works.” It burns. The soup actually burns your throat going down. You hover over the bowl, trying to decide what to protect: Seungcheol’s self esteem or your own wellbeing.
“Is it bad?”
“It’s good, I’m just not very hungry.” One of those isn’t a lie.
Suspicious, Seungcheol dips a spoon into the pot. “Oh, fuck,” he says, a moment later. “I’m telling Joshua to bring over some soup.”
Drifting back to your room, you call out, “Tell him to bring the tiny crackers I like.”
You alternate between freezing and sweating, waking up for a few minutes in a miserable, sniffling haze, only long enough to tuck a new cough drop into your cheek before passing out again. When you finally rouse yourself for more than a minute, you find that it’s dark inside your room.
It takes your eyes a moment to adjust to the figure drowsing beside your bed. He’s made a pillow of his arms, resting them on the mattress beside you. The rest of him is seated on the floor.
“S…cheol?” Reaching out, you pet his hair. “What are you doing next to my bed?”
Blinking awake, he mumbles, “Didn’t want to go too far in case you needed me.”
“You didn’t need to sleep on the floor.”
“I didn’t want to touch you,” he explains. “Your skin hurts.”
It’s enough to make you teary. Before you can respond, you have to roll over to sneeze. “Ugh. I feel disgusting.”
“Joshua brought the soup. Want me to heat some up for you?”
“I want a shower.”
“Food first.”
The soup is good; at least you think it is. Your sense of taste is compromised now. At the very least it doesn’t burn, so you eat as much as you can manage while Seungcheol preps the shower for you.
This means getting the water nice and hot and making sure the anti-slip mat is down. He even gets the bathroom steamy to try and break up your congestion.
“Want me to wash your hair?” he offers.
“I want to be alone with my grossness for a bit,” you tell him and close yourself in.
Even though you went through this same process with him less than a week ago, you feel terrible for him. You’re disgusting right now, a whiny, sniffling snot monster. So was he, but that was different. At least you were able to share a bed with him, hold him, comfort him.
He’s been so good to you and without complaint. You really have to make it up to him when you’re better.
Showering takes all the energy you had, so Seungcheol brings a chair over so you can sit while he blow-dries your hair. The gentle warmth is soothing; you end up closing your eyes, content with whatever your hair looks like.
He does his best; he always does for you. If only it hadn’t taken you so long to see the effort Seungcheol pours into everything he does. Maybe then the two of you could be going on three years instead of only three months.
“Baby,” he says softly. “Your hair is dry.”
“Mm.”
“Do you want to go back to sleep?”
“Come with me this time?”
But he hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’d rather have you with me.”
Together you devise a solution: Seungcheol wraps you up in your own blanket before climbing in beside you, the extra padding serving both to keep you warm and protect you from accidental contact.
“When you’re better, we’re going to work on your immune system,” he tells you.
You’re not sure you like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”
“It means you come work out with me. And I buy you all the vitamins I can find.”
“Ugh.”
“You shouldn’t be this miserable,” he insists.
Mumbling into your pillow, you say, “And you think a treadmill is going to help me with that?”
He chuckles, the warmth of his breath tickling the soft hairs on the back of your neck. You shiver and he tucks the blankets in tighter around you.
“Sorry I’m icky.”
“Did you really just apologize to me for the cold I gave you?”
“No. Maybe?”
He sighs, pressing his forehead against your back. You can barely feel it through the blanket, but it still makes you smile.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“You can always punish me. Feed me more of your soup.”
“I threw that away,” is his flat response.
“The poor drain.”
The nighttime medicine is making you drowsy. You don’t know how you can possibly be tired when you’ve slept essentially all day, but the more you sleep the sooner you can hopefully escape this sickness.
The soft, slightly congested breathing behind you makes you shift. Seungcheol, who is barely recovered and who worked his heart out for you today, has fallen asleep, his forehead still pressed against your back.
“Night, Cheollie,” you whisper, before stretching your arm out to turn out the light.
It occurs to you just before you drift away that you’re finally, blissfully warm.