Chapter Text
Cha-Young officially hates March. It’s a stupid month: spring is always late, it’s always either too hot or too cold, and then there’s the diseases that come back in full force as soon as the temperatures rise again.
But she’s not thinking about this because she’s sick, no no. She just hates the month; it doesn’t have anything to do with how miserable and nauseous she’s been feeling since waking up, after a night spent outside for a stakeout. Which turned to be useless.
Ugh, what a stupid month.
And now she can’t go to the Jipuragi office as long as Vincenzo’s in here or as long as she’s feeling like this, because he’s definitely going to notice her state and make a remark about it, the bastard. Or worse, he’ll remind her of the stupid bet they’ve had about her never falling sick. The last finger flick was awkward enough, and she’d rather not get in this situation again.
Not that she’s sick, of course. It’s just a temporary moment of weakness.
Fortunately for her, she has an aerial yoga session scheduled for today, which gives her an excuse not to come to the office right away. At least, she would be able to clear her mind!
Except that the drive to the gym is an absolute nightmare and by the time the lawyer gets out of her car, her head feels like it’s going to implode. She feels like throwing up. Breathing in deeply, she manages to calm the nausea down after a few moments, and she squares herself up as she enters the building and changes into a more comfortable outfit. Yoga sessions like those, as strange and tiring they can get with the weird poses she has to get into, had always helped her to relax. So surely, it’d help her make feel better, right?
Wrong. She’s terribly wrong. After the first ten minutes, Cha Young’s starting to struggle immensely. Her arms and legs are starting to ache way faster than usual, and she’s barely managing to focus on her instructor’s advice; body literally shaking from the effort, she feels like she might just slip and fall. And then, of course, it happens; just as she’s stretching a bit more on her hammock, she’s hit by a violent dizzy spell. Closing her eyes in hope to stabilize her hands slip, making her fall awkwardly on the ground.
She groans from the pain and the nausea while the people around her, alerted by her fall, come around to check on her. Her instructor is the most worried, as he checks for any bad injury. Fortunately for her, she was lucky in her fall and doesn’t seem to have broken or twisted anything; yet, he instructs her to call someone to pick her up.
“I can’t let you drive back home alone in that state,” he reasonably explains as she protests. Which makes sense, but that doesn’t mean she has to agree with it. The older man won’t leave her alone, though, and she’s forced to take her phone out to call someone. Right now, there’s only one person she can think of, but she doesn’t want him to see her so weak. She hovers on his contact info, staring at the name on her screen but not quite daring to hit the dial button. That is, until her instructor, probably more worried about her state than he should be, gets impatient and snatches her phone as he tells her he’ll call her boyfriend in her place, and that she should try to rest a little while waiting for him.
She tries to protest again and gets up to catch the phone back before Vincenzo can accept the call, but her attempt is cut short by yet another wave of nausea. She sits back with a groan, and accepts gratefully a water bottle from one of the older ladies she often works out with, before closing her eyes and putting her head between her arms. She faintly hears her instructor talking, but she can’t make out what he’s saying. He then comes back to her side and kneels down to her level, hovering worriedly near her.
“He’ll be here soon, miss. How far away do you live?”
She’s guessing he’s asking for the time Vincenzo will need to come here. “About fifteen minutes, probably,” she estimates roughly, and the man nods.
“Alright then. I’ll stay here until he arrives.” With a chuckle, he adds, “You know, your boyfriend can be really scary. I pity anyone who’s on your bad side.”
Cha-Young cracks an eye open, curious, and he elaborates. “I think he kind of freaked out when he heard a male stranger talking to him from his girlfriend’s number. His voice was so menacing before I managed to explain the situation. Acting like a tough guy, eh?”
There’s so much to unpack there, and Cha-Young doesn’t have the strength to refute the boyfriend/girlfriend claim nor does she feel like snarking about the villain part, so she sticks to nodding before closing her eyes again.
Hardly a few minutes later, Vincenzo storms into the room and walks up hurriedly to her before crouching in front of her.
“Are you alright? What happened?” he asks, to which she answer with a simple nod.
“How did you get here so fast?” she asks instead, but it comes out as a weird croaking. Still, her partner seems to understand her well enough, and he looks sheepish for a second.
“I was around,” he obviously lies, and she snorts weakly.
“I thought you were at the office.”
“I left the office to buy something when I got the call from your instructor.”
The amusement she feels does little to appease her nausea and but it’s already making her feel better.
“Just how many red lights did you run to get here?” she wonders aloud. He chuckles, patting her shoulder lightly to as he assures her, “Not that many.”
If they both hear the yoga instructor muttering under his breath “Oh, he’s a keeper,” neither of them comments on it.
“Alright,” Vincenzo tells her softly as he helps her stand up, “let’s get you home.”
He thanks the instructor on their way out, and when she blabbers something about her car, he assures her that they’ll come back later to take the vehicle back.
“You shouldn’t have come here if you weren’t feeling well,” he chides her.
“It’s not that bad,” Cha-Young tries. “I just got a bit dizzy earlier.”
He hums before continuing. “Your instructor told me you were hesitating to call me. Why that?”
She curses at the man under her breath. “I don’t know,” she answers instead.
Vincenzo throws her a look, raising an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the one telling me that we should share everything as partners?” he reminds her, not unkindly. The (un)sick lawyer tries rolling her eyes, right before her migraine harshly makes itself known again, and she sighs.
“I guess I just didn’t want you to see me like this. Being weak.”
“Being sick isn’t being weak, Ms Hong. It’s being human.”
“I’m not ill, I’m just tired,” the female lawyer counters.
“Right.”
The drive back to her house passes in a blur as they both stay in a comfortable silence, Cha-Young feeling too exhausted for small talk. As soon as they park, the consigliere helps her out of the car, and doesn’t let her go after that. His hands are everywhere, on her shoulders, elbows, or on her back, as he guides her inside, and she can’t help but wonder whether he’s conscious of how much they touch. It’s not something that colleagues should be doing; but it feels so familiar and comforting that neither of them seems to mind going past the purely professional aspect of their relationship.
Once they get inside, he tries to guide her directly to bed, but she protests.
“I stink. I’ll take a shower first.”
He nods, though he seems slightly concerned. “Will you be alright?”
She scowls at him, but there’s no heat to it. “Of course I’ll be fine, I’m not on my death bed.”
He smiles. “If you still have the energy to complain, I guess you’re not.”
She glares at him, and with the few bits of energy she can muster, stomps to the bathroom and makes a show of slamming the door shut. She hears Vincenzo chuckles on the other side and can’t refrain from smiling.
Clearly, March sucks, but at least she’s in good company.
No, Vincenzo’s not hovering anxiously in front of the bathroom, straining his ears in case Ms Hong gets dizzy again and slip on the bathroom tiles. Definitely not.
He tries not to pace around when he hears the water stop running, and relaxes slightly when she comes out, in pastel pajamas and with a towel in her hand, absently drying her hair.
He sighs. “How many times did I tell you not to come out with damp hair? It’s no wonder you got sick.”
“M’not sick,” the usually energetic woman mumbles.
“Whatever you say. Go lie down, I’ll bring you some medicine. What are your symptoms?”
“Stomach hurts, head too. Feeling nauseous.”
It’s not like her to be so untalkative, and he hates seeing her like this. “I’ll see what you have. I’ll be right back.”
He manages to find something for her headache and another tablet for stomach bugs, so he brings both medicines along with a glass of water. When he comes into her room, she’s sitting on her bed and she looks at him as he holds out his findings to her.
“Take these,” he instructs her, and she complies easily. As she does, he picks up the discarded towel and eyes her still humid hair. He waits for her to gulp down everything before he takes the glass back to place it on her nightstand, and he turns back to stand in front of her.
“Don’t move.”
“Mmh?” she inquires.
“We have to dry your hair. The last thing you need is you getting sicker because of this.”
“You know, contrary to popular belief,” Ms Hong starts as he scrubs gently her hair between the rough cloth, “having wet hair doesn’t actually get you sick.”
At least she’d stopped repeating that she wasn’t sick.
“Let’s not try our luck,” he insists anyway. He keeps going for a few minutes, and his partner stays uncharacteristically, worryingly silent. Between strands of hair and the towel, he catches a glimpse of her staring at him.
“Is there something on my face?” he can’t help but ask.
“I just like looking at you,” she answers genuinely, and he ignores the way his heart pounds frantically in his ribcage at her words. He lowers one of his hands to her forehead, checking her temperature. She’s not burning up, but she clearly has a fever. He frowns but keeps silent as he finishes drying her hair as much as he can. Finally, he puts the towel aside, as he nudges her gently so she can lie down.
“Come on,” he urges her softly. “Go sleep. You’ll feel better.”
“Are you staying?” she asks, but Vincenzo hears the hidden plea in it, and how is he even supposed to resist this woman?
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” she hums in satisfaction before promptly falling asleep and starting to snore lightly.
He can’t say he’s surprised at how fast she falls asleep, but it still makes him smile fondly. He can only appreciate how comfortable she seems to feel when she’s around him.
Does she feel that comfortable with other people? Would she fall asleep in front other people from the plaza, even Mr Nam? He’s not sure whether he’d be able to sleep in front of anyone like this.
(And yet he had, hadn’t he? Because Ms Hong was the exception of every rule he’d set up for himself.)
Beads of sweat start to form on her forehead and he reaches out to wipe them off, frowning when he feels the heat emanating from her skin.
He gets up to fetch a towel in the bathroom, and as he soaks it up in cool water, he’s once again struck by how familiar they are with each other’s living place. Not that towels are hard to find in a house, but still… It feels oddly domestic. Which is both appealing and scary.
He enters the room again and sits down on the bed, hoping that the dip of the mattress won’t be enough to wake her up.
He places the damp cloth on her forehead, and he finds himself staring at her face. His heart clench with worry at the way her skin lacks its usual healthy glow and how exhausted she look. Was that because of last night stakeout that she had fallen sick? Should he have left her at home or at the office?
Then he snorts softly, because there was no way she would have let him go on his own. He stays like this for a while, before he starts fearing he’ll wake her up if he sits on the bed for too long. To his biggest regret, he stands up after brushing a strand of hair out of her face. Yet, even if he knows she’d sleep better unperturbed, with him out of her room, he can’t quite bring himself to leave; after all, she’d asked him to stay, and Vincenzo was a man of his word.
So he grabs a chair, sits not to close yet not too far from her bed, and he fishes his phone out of his pocket to start working.
He won’t pick up the phone.
“The person you’re trying to reach cannot –“
She calls again. And again. And again.
She feels like her head is underwater, and she can’t hear anything but the sound of blood rushing in her ears and that stupid voice from her phone. Outside the accelerating car, snowflakes are flying around furiously, like they’re greedily absorbing any sound that could have been made around her.
She calls again. And again. And again.
Cha Young ignores the way her eyes burn with tears of pure anguish, nor does she acknowledge the shaking in her hands. Despite her urge to sob, she pushes the panic seizing her throat away and takes an uneven breath to calm herself down.
And finally, finally, they get to the underpass. The panicked woman throws herself out of the car as soon as it comes to a stop, and a terrible fear squeezes her heart in its cold clutches when she notices two dark, undistinguishable figures, one crouching over the other who’s lying on the floor.
She tries to scream, but no sounds manage to come out of her throat. So she moves towards them instead, not caring the least about the potential danger she could quite literally be running into. Cha Young pushes forward until her lungs are burning and her legs are threatening to collapse, and finally, she reaches them, but she doesn’t slow down yet. She gets close enough to have a better look at the crouched figure, who stands up and turns in her direction. She almost cries in relief, but her voice still isn’t working.
He’s alive.
Not slowing down, she slams into him, arms encircling his back as he hugs him tightly. She breathes in deeply as he puts his hand on his shoulder, and she finally manages to calm down.
He’s alive.
However, her relief comes abruptly to a stop as her fingers meet something wet and warm, and she recoils to look at them in horror.
Her hands are covered in blood. Vincenzo’s blood. As she looks up to meet his eyes, she flinches. He’s battered, all bruised cheeks and bleeding temples, yet he’s smiling at her.
But it’s not the kind of smile she’s used to; no, instead, it’s one of the fake, forced twitches of lips that are usually reserved for his enemies, or for the people he doesn’t really care about.
The hand he has on her shoulder tightens its grip, and he asks her, “Ms Hong, why are you always coming so late?”
And then he collapses.
She shouts in anguish and tries to catch him, but he falls to the ground like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut. She calls his name, shakes him, begs for him to say something.
There’s blood everywhere: on their clothes, on the ground, on their skin. He’s not breathing. Her lungs are burning from the screams that tear out of her throat.
His eyes are wide open. They’re empty, lifeless orbs that seem to be staring right at her soul.
He’s dead.
“Why didn’t you save me?”
She wakes up screaming and sobbing. Her skin feels like it’s on fire and her lungs are burning because she can’t breathe. She can’t see anything, vision blurred by the tears spilling out of her eyes.
God, his eyes-
“-Hong.”
She couldn’t save him. He’s dead.
“Ms Hong!”
What had she done? Why couldn’t she get here sooner? She should have-
“Hong Cha Young!”
She snaps back into reality with a flinch, her breathing heavy and uneven. She’s in her bed. In her room. And in front of her, holding her by the shoulders, is a very much alive and breathing consigliere.
His eyes are wide open, but this time they’re alive and roaming her face, looking for an answer.
“It was just a nightmare,” he tells her softly, and the hands on her shoulder tighten their grip. Unlike the hands from her dream, they’re holding her in reassurance, and he’s not smiling this fake smile of his at her. Instead, he looks terribly worried, and she feels herself tearing up once more.
“Cha Young?” he asks again, and she breaks into a sob .
“You’re alive,” she croaks out as she lurches to him. She feels pathetic and she knows she’ll later be deeply ashamed of her reaction to a stupid nightmare, but for the moment she can’t bring herself to care. Vincenzo shifts on her bed to hold her close to him, and he murmurs soothing words as he rubs circles on her back and run a hand in her hair, letting her cry in his shoulder.
“You’re okay,” he repeats in a loop, letting the words sink in. “You’re safe. You’re at home.”
After a short hesitation, he adds, “I’m safe too. We’re okay. It was just a nightmare.”
She soaks in his warmth and he keeps on holding her until her sobs and shaking calm down. Only after she’s somewhat retrieved a normal breathing, he cups her cheeks with both hands and move slightly away from her so he can look at her in the eye.
He brushes the pad of his thumbs against her cheeks to wipe stray tears, and questions, “Are you feeling better?”
She nods weakly, unable to detach her gaze from his. She leans into her touch and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
He tilts his head slightly. “What for?”
For not coming here soon enough. For not being strong enough. For letting you die.
“For making you stay,” she answers instead, voice raw with emotion.
He sighs softly. “There’s nothing you have to be sorry for. The nightmare wasn’t your fault, and your fever wasn’t helping either.”
Then, he closes his eyes and leans forward to lean his forehead against hers. “You’re okay now.”
She hums, closing her eyes as well and relishing in the feeling of safety and warmth the contact brings her.
“You should go back to sleep,” he says after a moment. “You still don’t look well, and I doubt you managed to rest properly earlier.”
She knows he’s right; but she also knows that she’s, at the moment, terrified of getting stuck in another of those dreams.
“We already lost enough time,” she protests as she moves to get up. “We should get back to work-“
She’s interrupted as Vincenzo pulls her back gently on the bed with a sigh.
“We’ll get back to work later, when you’re doing better. For now, sleep.”
There’s a tone of finality in his voice and Cha Young clenches her fists in unease. Something in her expression must show, because there’s a flash of understanding in the male lawyer’s eyes and he exhales.
“I’ll stay with you, okay?” he adds. “You don’t have to be worried about another nightmare.”
She hesitates for a short moment before nodding, and Vincenzo smiles warmly in approval.
She lays down again, eyes fixated on his, and in a moment of worry-induced boldness, asks him, “Can you stay with me?”
“Of course,” he agrees easily, sounding confused by the question. “I already told you I would, didn’t I?”
She swallows awkwardly, throat suddenly dry. “I meant in the bed,” she clarified. “With me.”
When she sees his astonished expression, she adds “Please?”
He blinks, before clearing his throat. “Are you… okay with that?”
She nods.
“Alright, then,” he decides, awkwardly moving from the bed so she can scoot over and give him enough space.
He slips under the sheets and they both position themselves so they’re looking at each other.
“Like this?” he asks, checking one last time.
She hums, and in another daring move, and pushes herself up so she can move closer to him. She presses herself against him, and settles her head against his chest. She sighs in contentment at the warmth it brings her, and at the beating of his heart now resonating against her ear.
What she doesn’t expect, though, is him encircling her with his arms to pull her yet again closer to him. He rests his chin on the top of her head, and commands, “Now, sleep.”
“Okay.” She closes her eyes shut, before opening them again. “Wait.”
“What is it?” Vincenzo croaks out tiredly. He sounds already half asleep.
“The finger flick,” she whispers, horrified.
After an unnaturally long pause from the consigliere, he answers “What finger flick?”
His act of innocence doesn’t work with her, though she’s confused as to why he’d pretend to forget about it.
“The bet,” Cha Young insisted. “We made a bet the other time. I’d lose if I fell sick.”
“You told me you weren’t sick. Besides, I don’t remember making that bet.”
“You even told me you’d show no mercy.”
“Must have been another dream”, he denies, though she can hear the smile in his voice. Then, he repeats, “Go to sleep.”
“Alright, Mr Mafia Lawyer,” she surrenders, and closes her eyes for real this time.
Both of them fall asleep in record time, their embrace chasing each other’s nightmares away, and they sleep better than they’ve had in a long, long time.