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Hoseok’s immune system is virtually indestructible. It’s something he prides himself on.
Being on tour means multiple different germ pools to come into contact with– those of the members, the staff, and even the fans, especially during the intimate fansigns. One wrong move, one time of forgetting to wash your hands after going to the bathroom, one sip from someone else’s cup, can mean confinement to the hotel room for days on end. With having concerts every single week, that’s like a death sentence.
It seems to pay off that Hoseok always takes extra precautions when it comes to hygiene and cleanliness during tour seasons because he has never once gotten sick since becoming an idol. When a big chunk of the makeup noonas came down with the stomach flu, he managed to avoid it. When his hotel roommate and boyfriend Yoongi caught strep throat while on the European leg of their tour, he came out victorious. It’s like his white blood cells are reinforced with steel and spikes or something.
Hoseok gets cocky, he’ll admit. Sometimes he laughs when the members threaten to cough on him because they can do it all they want, he won’t catch it. There was also that one time Namjoon had strep throat after catching it from Yoongi and Hoseok drank out of his cup to prove a point. At this point, he was untouchable, and no illness could drag him down.
Or so he thought.
This particular summer morning is a special one because it’s the first day of their two-month break. Hoseok planned out the entire day – go out to lunch and the shopping strip with Jin, get some work done back at the apartment, and then cook dinner and watch a movie with Yoongi. Hoseok wakes up to the sun streaming in through the white curtains and bathing the bed in bright light. Even though he should be warm, he’s freezing. His teeth practically chatter as he peels his eyes open, violently shaking even under the fluffy comforter.
He pats the other side of the bed to find it empty and groans, glancing at the clock. 9:00 am. Yoongi would be at the studio by now. He reaches over towards the glass of water on his side table, the cold glass prickling his fingertips as he tilts his head back to take some into his mouth. He tries to swallow but splutters it out onto the floor when a stabbing pain shoots through the back of his throat. It feels like someone is taking their nails and scraping them across his tonsils.
He moans, sitting up and touching his feet to the floor. “Please god no. This can’t be happening.”
His head pounds like it’s full of bricks and it’s practically a struggle for him to stand up, but he eventually does and stumbles into the bathroom. Gripping the counter for balance, he looks up at his reflection. His skin practically lacks color, but the flush in the apples of his cheeks and the shadows of under-eye circles stand out prominently on his face. He looks like Kaonashi from Spirited Away.
Grabbing the thermometer from the mirror cabinet, he slips it under his tongue and waits.
What feels like hours go by before the small device lets out a shrill cry, and when Hoseok removes it from his mouth he reads 37.9 from the small window on the front. He has a fever. Sighing, he lets the thermometer fall to the porcelain counter and slips back into bed, wrapping the sheets tightly around his body. He grabs his phone – and a bottle of Ibuprofin – from the side table now and sends Jin a quick message that he won’t be able to go out. He hates to cancel on his hyung so last minute, but thankfully he understands and promises to try and call later in the day.
Hoseok stands at a fork in the metaphorical crossroad now. He theoretically has two options: he can call Yoongi, tell him what’s going on, and beg him to come home, or he can suck it up and try to get something done. He desperately wants to choose the first one and be taken care of. However, he doesn’t want to bother his boyfriend while he’s at the studio. He’s been desperately trying to crank out his new mixtape before the preparations for their next comeback begin, and Hoseok doesn’t want to ruin the tight deadline he set for himself.
So, the second one it is.
Hoseok dumps two of the M&M-shaped tablets into his hand and sticks them towards the back of his tongue, gagging as he forces them down his aching throat with a sip of water. He grabs his laptop from its spot underneath their bed and places it on his lap. Clicking into his email, he decided to look over one of the songs for the new album he had yet to finish. He tries to slump back against the pillows and pull the sheets up over his shivering frame to get comfortable, but his skin blooms with heat as flames engulf his entire body. His blankets suddenly squeeze him tight like a Boa Constrictor, and he throws them off in a panic. Now, completely bare aside from his t-shirt and shorts, chills overtake his body again.
Having given up on trying to get anything done, he grabs his phone and rolls onto his stomach. He can barely look at his screen though, his head swimming and light like a feather – and not in a good way. Fear rips through his core as he sets his phone beside him on the bed and tries to get comfortable again. No matter what position he lies in, his skin crawls so much that he can’t keep still.
I can’t spend the next eight hours like this, he thinks to himself.
Tears cloud his vision as he picks up his phone from beside him, punches in his code, and scrolls through until he finds Yoongi’s contact information.
Yoongi clicks the save button on the production program as he pulls off his headphones and pushes away from his desk. He finally finished the rough cut of the track he’d been working on for the past two hours or so, the last one on his newest mixtape. This is a good sign, he thinks. It means that everything is ahead of schedule and there’s some extra time to fiddle with everything before he turns in the final copies.
His stomach growls loudly, signaling to him that he should get something into his system before he eats his leg.
I did bring some of that barbecued meat from dinner last night, Yoongi thinks, standing up from out of his rolling chair. He raises his arms above his head, circling his stiff shoulders until he hears a satisfying crack, and heads over to the small minifridge in the corner of the room. A cold blast of hair hits his face as pulls out the small, plastic container and sticks the entire thing in the microwave.
Yoongi’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and when he pulls it out, Hoseok’s contact image flashes upon the screen. He can’t help but smile. The photo is from a few years ago during the Spring Day era. Hoseok’s face is up close to the camera and a pretty smile plays upon his pink lips, one of his dimples poking out on his cheek. Yoongi loves this photo because it was when Hoseok’s hair was pink and purple like candy floss, making him look like a fairy king.
Yoongi presses the green ‘accept’ button. “Hello, my love. Are you getting ready for lunch with Jin hyung?”
Yoongi doesn’t expect for Hoseok’s usual honey voice to grit through the receiver like he just swallowed a truckload of sand. “Yoongi…”
Yoongi sits upright, ignoring the beep of his microwave. He hugs his phone closer to his ear with both of his hands.
“Seok-ah, what’s the matter?”
There’s a thick, strained cough accompanied by a whine on the other end of the line. Then, a moment of silence. “I woke up this morning so sick. I have a fever, my head feels like it’s being pounded by a mallet…Need you, Yoongi.”
Sniffling fills Yoongi’s ears as he quickly shoves his stuff into the duffle bag on his couch. He makes out the words “sorry” and “hurry” while grabbing his keys from the dish by the door and heading out. He quickly sends a text to Namjoon, who’s still at the studio, that there’s barbecued meat in the fridge if he wants it and plugs the address to the closest drugstore into his phone.
Hoseok might be dying, or at least he thinks so.
In the past half an hour since he hung up with Yoongi, things have progressively taken a turn for the worst. His throat hurts even worse than it did before, rendering him unable to swallow most anything, even his saliva. His skin burns to the touch; he’s practically liquified now, laying in what is virtually a puddle of his own sweat soaking and ruining the bedsheets,
His heart even beats practically out of his chest. He thought that was just a something that people just write in stories and that couldn’t actually happen, but he wasso, so wrong.
Hoseok lies in the bed, television flipped on to some stupid soap opera, trying to ignore the way his bones scream, his stomach churns, and his ears ring. He tries to focus on the woman in the show who cheated on her husband, not what he perceives to be his looming end.
“Seok-ah?”
Hoseok turns his head to find Yoongi standing in the doorway with a white drugstore bag in his hands. Hoseok manages a pained grin, reaching his arms out as Yoongi sets the bag to the ground, walks around the other side of the bed, and wraps him into a hug. Hoseok buries his face in Yoongi’s neck, taking a large whiff of Yoongi’s citrus cologne. He breathes it in until that’s the only thing he can smell. Yoongi, Yoongi, Yoongi. It settles his rapidly beating chest just to have him here now.
“I was scared, Yoongi.”
“Don’t be scared, baby. I’m here now.”
Yoongi pulls back, coaxing Hoseok up and into the chair in the corner of the room. He strips the soiled sheets and pillowcases off of the bed, tossing them into a damp ball by the door. He grabs the extra set of sheets from one of the dressers and slipping them over the mattress, fluffing up the pillows a bit for good measure. He turns to Hoseok, gently pulling him up by his hands and raising his arms above his head. After peeling the wet, sticky mess of clothes from his body and leaving him in just boxers, he leads him into the bathroom.
“Let’s get you all cleaned up, yeah?”
Yoongi wets a washcloth and starts running it across Hoseok’s chest, beads of water dribbling down his stomach and thighs. The flames underneath the surface of his skin, although still burning hot, die down until the heat radiating from him is slightly more bearable. Yoongi works the cool rag down his body, paying careful attention to wipe the perspiration collecting in the dips of Hoseok’s skin. Once his body is completely cleaned, he cups some cool water from the faucet in his hands and lightly splashes it onto Hoseok’s chest and face.
“Feel better?”
Hoseok nods weakly. He might be significantly cooler and less gross than he was before, but now he’s much sicker to his stomach than he was before. He sits down on the toilet, breathing in deeply through his nose. “Yoongi, get me the bin.”
Yoongi obeys, grabbing the bathroom waste bin from under the sink and stuffing it with toilet paper before putting it in Hoseok’s lap. A hand comes up to rest on Hoseok’s shoulder, a thumb massaging the junction at his collarbones.
“Have you eaten anything today?”
Hoseok shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut as his stomach rolls menacingly. “All I’ve had today was water. I haven’t had anything to eat since last night.”
Yoongi says nothing and instead rubs his hand up and down the length of Hoseok’s back. Hoseok, who curls the waste bin up around his chest, shakes as he tries to force himself from getting sick. He burps, a wave of bile awashing the back of his mouth and tongue with a bitter taste.
“Let it out if you have to, baby.”
And so, he does. His stomach heaves as he throws up the contents of his stomach into the bin. Yoongi presses a kiss to the soft flesh right below his boyfriend’s ear, cooing and whispering to settle his racing pulse.
After a few moments, Hoseok gags and then falls into silence. His stomach still feels disgusting, but he’s slightly more comfortable now.
Yoongi swipes the beads of sweat that formed on his brow with the wet compress and takes the bin from his hands. After setting it in the bathtub, he helps Hoseok rinse out his mouth and ushers him into bed so that he can take care of the garbage bag.
“I’ll be right back, okay baby?”
Hoseok nods weakly, sprawling out across the bed in different positions in an attempt to get comfortable. He whines when he can’t, desperate to just lay in Yoongi’s arms. Luckily, Yoongi comes back with a freshly cleaned garbage bin, which he sets on Hoseok’s side of the bed.
“I figured you could use some pick-me-ups, so before coming home I got you a surprise.”
Picking up the bag from when he first arrived home, he crawls on his side and dumps out the content. Out falls a box set of Studio Ghibli movies and a box of cherry popsicles, Hoseok’s favorite which Yoongi knows very well.
He’s thoughtful like that.
“My full attention for the rest of the day is you, so we can have a movie marathon,” Yoongi digs his nails into the clear plastic surrounding the box, peeling it off and throwing it to the floor. “Pick out the one you want to watch first.”
Hoseok sits up against the fluffed-out pillows, eyes scanning the DVD sleeves before finding Ponyo at the very end. That one is Hoseok’s absolute favorite, something else Yoongi knows very well. Hoseok always forces him to watch it after rehearsals if it’s on television, so much so that they’re both able to recite the lines of every scene by heart. Hoseok hasn’t seen it in over a year since televisions abroad don’t play it on their stations.
Hoseok chooses to believe Yoongi bought this specific box set because it had Ponyo in it and he knew how much Hoseok missed it.
“I also remembered from the company doctor that popsicles can actually be really good when you’re sick, especially with the flu if you’re nauseous. It hydrates you like water, except I imagine that sucking it prevents you from taking in too much fluid at once and making yourself sick.”
Yoongi pulls one from the box and unwraps it before presenting it to Hoseok, who smiles as much as he can manage and takes it. Yoongi takes one out for himself and quickly deposits the box in the freezer; he comes back with his laptop.
“Ready?”
Hoseok nods, taking the popsicle between his lips and lightly sucking on it. The flavor explodes across his tongue as the juice runs down the back of his throat, helping to get rid of the lingering bile taste still present from his vomiting episode a few minutes ago.
The sounds of the opening scene fill the room and, satisfied, Yoongi lies back against the pillows, pulling Hoseok close to him with his free arm. Hoseok curls up into his chest, ears pressed so that he can hear Yoongi’s heart beat rhythmically – which somehow settles his own. Yoongi’s hand comes up to rest in Hoseok’s hair, running his fingers through the soft brown wisps and occasionally gently massaging his scalp.
Hoseok pulls the treat from his mouth with a pop, gnashing the bit of flavored ice from the top between his teeth for a moment.
“Maybe this’ll humble me about the whole ‘never getting sick’ thing,” Hoseok says, looking up at Yoongi’s face.
Yoongi laughs warmly, pressing a kiss to Hoseok’s warm forehead. “It’s time something knocked you down a few pegs.”
They don’t speak for the rest of the movie, sucking and munching on their popsicles until only the sticks are left. By the time the credits roll, Hoseok’s vision blears with exhaustion and his lids hang heavy, his eyelashes fluttering in an attempt to stay away.
“It’s okay, Seok-ah,” Yoongi soothes. “Take a nap. We can start the next movie when you wake up.”
Hoseok nods, handing Yoongi his popsicle stick to put on the side table before further curling in into Yoongi’s arms.
He yawns once, stretches his arms high above his head, and then wraps himself around Yoongi – his legs enveloping Yoongi’s thigh and his arms around his middle so that he looks like a baby koala bear.
“Yoongs?” Hoseok whispers.
“Yeah, Seok-ah?”
He pauses, turning his face into Yoongi’s tummy and mumbling. Despite the material of Yoongi’s shirt muffling the words, he still hears him loud and clear.
“Thank you for taking care of me.”