Work Text:
Juho was thankful when the camera turned away from him, so that he could stop pretending that he was just tired. While being tired was definitely a problem - learning stage combat techniques wasn’t easy, and his body was definitely feeling the effects of his time at the stunt school that he and Jaeyoon had been studying at - he knew that wasn’t why the joints in his hands were so swollen that he couldn’t close his fingers around the prop knife he was supposed to use. The stress could be a contributing factor to this latest flare in his rheumatoid arthritis, but it definitely wasn’t the only problem.
“You okay?” Juho looked up at the soft question, thankful that Sanghyuk had waited for the camera to be as far away from them as possible before the elder approached. The last thing he wanted was for anything to get caught on camera and potentially shared with the whole world. Juho didn’t trust Mnet’s editors to leave things out, even if they specifically requested that certain things be left on the cutting room floor for privacy reasons. He’d already seen the way they handled Jisung from Stray Kids’s anxiety attacks, and he wasn’t happy with that at all. “Your hands are shaking…”
“They’re swollen… they don’t really hurt yet, but I can barely move my fingers,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure it’s a flare…”
“Oh…” Sanghyuk replied, sighing and looking around the room quickly. “Okay. I know you need your phone, so that you can call your doctor… what about the pain meds? Can you take them right now, before it starts to hurt? I mean, they’ll help with the swelling, too, right?”
Juho took a deep breath. “Yeah… they should help,” Juho replied, nodding. “I’m going to have to get someone to go pick up my other meds again… I’m honestly amazed it’s just my hands right now, with everything going on…”
“Hopefully we can get the meds in your system before your symptoms get any worse,” Sanghyuk replied, gently squeezing Juho’s shoulder. Juho nodded, putting the prop knife down before he had the opportunity to drop it and potentially break or lose it among the set pieces. He was so tired; Juho wished that they could just be done for the day, but he knew that their rehearsal still had at least a couple more hours. He had to get through this, even if his body was already exhausted from the week’s work.
“You okay?” Juho looked up at Youngbin’s question, shaking his head. “Your hip?”
“My hands,” Juho admitted, letting the leader see the way he couldn’t really move his swollen fingers. “Sanghyuk-hyung went to get everything, but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do much more today…”
Youngbin nodded, taking one of Juho’s hands and gently trying to massage the swollen joints. “If you need to go home…” Youngbin began.
Juho shook his head. “It’s just my hands,” he interrupted. “I’m going to take a break, so that I can get everything sorted out to start the steroids again. And I’m going to take it easy, until the meds I do have can have a chance to work.”
“Okay,” Youngbin replied, nodding as Sanghyuk hurried back towards them with Juho’s entire bag rather than just the couple of things he’d planned on bringing over. “You need some water, right?”
“Yeah, please,” Juho replied, trying to take the bag despite the fact that his swollen fingers really didn’t want to cooperate with him.
“Where are your meds?” Sanghyuk asked, putting the bag down on the rehearsal box next to Juho so that he could dig through the bag. It was much easier to just let his hyung take care of it, honestly; the small amount of energy Juho had managed to drum up for the camera was quickly waning, and he really just wanted to go lay down for a while.
“There’s a little zippered pocket inside the big part… I keep them in there so that they won’t fall out or disappear,” Juho replied, watching as the older man dug around in the main part of his bag until he found the proper pocket and pulled out the bottle of anti-inflammatory painkillers that was always in there as a precaution in case his arthritis began to flare up again.
“Here…” Sanghyuk began, starting to hand Juho the bottle.
“Hyung…” he began, holding up his hands as a reminder that he couldn’t actually open the bottle himself.
“Right… sorry,” Sanghyuk replied, shaking his head and opening the bottle to pull out the proper dosage.
Juho felt awkward letting his hyungs feed him the medication and water, but he knew that his hands weren’t going to allow him to handle the situation himself.
“Okay… let’s get you somewhere so that you can call your doctor and then lay down for a little while,” Youngbin commented softly, as several other people milled around and the cameras got a little too close for comfort. “Are you good to walk?”
Juho nodded, sighing. “Yeah… yeah, it’s just my hands,” he replied. Juho couldn’t help noticing that he was a little more stiff than he’d expected to be as he stood up, but it wasn’t as bad as he would expect it to be in a full-blown symptom flare in his hips and knees, too. If anything, it just felt as though he’d been sitting for too long after a long day of dancing - which was probably a pretty accurate description of what had just happened. “I just sat too long, I’m okay,” he commented softly, as soon as he saw the look of concern shared between Sanghyuk and Youngbin.
“Do you want ice or heat for your hands?” Youngbin asked, as they finally got to the little green room where they had left all of their bags when they’d first arrived. There was a sofa in the room, and Juho knew that he would likely be spending a good bit of his day laying there and waiting for the medication his body clearly needed to kick in so that he could function.
“Ice… heat is only going to make the swelling worse, I think,” Juho replied. He sat down, trying to take his phone from Sanghyuk and sighing as he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to grip the device. “This isn’t going to work…”
“Aish… I didn’t think about that…” Sanghyuk commented.
“I can get manager-hyung to call for you… it’s probably better if you just rest, anyway,” Youngbin added, taking Juho’s phone from them to look up the number. “Try to get some rest, okay? You haven’t been getting enough sleep since we started working on this round, and that’s probably at least part of what caused all of this in the first place.”
Juho nodded, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “Yeah… yeah, okay,” he replied softly, relaxing back into the sofa and trying to let himself go to sleep in the hopes that it would somehow help him get past this particular flare more quickly.
Juho was almost asleep when he heard their manager coming into the room with Youngbin. “How sure are you that it’s an arthritis flare?” the manager’s voice asked.
“He’s pretty convinced that it is,” Youngbin replied. “Both of his hands are stiff and swollen, and the joints are pretty red. Juho-yah said that they aren’t hurting yet, but they look pretty bad, honestly… Sanghyuk-ah helped him take the painkillers he keeps in his bag, and he’s going to get him some ice while Juho-yah rests to see if we can get the swelling down some.”
Juho forced his eyes open as he felt the manager gently lifting one of his hands, examining it closely and gently touching the angry looking joints on one of his fingers. “Aish… that’s definitely a flare,” the man commented, sighing. “They’re warm, too. Is anything else bothering you, Juho-yah?”
“Not yet,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “It’s definitely the very early stages… I don’t think I’ve ever caught a flare before it actually starts to hurt before.”
“Right… I’m going to give your doctor a call, and see if this is something that warrants a trip to the hospital or if they think you’ll be okay with just getting back on the oral steroids again,” the manager commented, standing back up.
“It’s a minor flare…” Juho began, shaking his head.
“It’s in a limb that you normally don’t have much trouble with, though,” the older man reminded, shaking his head. “If it was one of your hips again, or even one of your knees, I would agree with you that it’s not that big of a deal. But you don’t usually have major problems with your hands, Juho-yah. And this is a major issue, even if you aren’t currently in pain - even if it’s temporary, this is serious.”
***
“How are you holding up?” Taeyang asked, as Juho made his way back into the green room after trip to the hospital to see his doctor and get a new round of steroids to try and fight back against the disease attacking his joints. This time, however, they’d gone straight for steroid injections rather than just giving him the pills he was used to in the hopes that it would kick in more quickly so that he wouldn’t have to miss anything with the show. It was frustrating because it meant more pain in the short term and the possibility that his hands might bruise, but Juho knew that his doctor was doing the best he could to keep him working for as long as possible.
“Still can’t hold anything very well, but I’m starting to get some movement back in my fingers,” Juho replied, holding up his hands and slowly bending his fingers in towards his palms. He couldn’t quite close them completely, but it thankfully didn’t hurt at all and Juho wasn’t nearly as stiff as he was afraid it was going to be. “I still have to take it easy, but I shouldn’t have to miss anything important.”
Taeyang nodded, reaching out to squeeze Juho’s shoulder gently. “We’re running some of the bigger stuff when we come back from this break, but we have a dancer standing in for you if you need to lay down and rest for a little while longer,” the main dancer replied. “We really only have to have you for camera rehearsals, because no one is tall enough to take your place for the purpose of camera angles. But we can put that off for as long as possible.”
“Thanks,” Juho replied, nodding. “I’ve been trying to sleep as much as possible, but it’s still not enough…”
“Lay down and get some rest, then,” Taeyang instructed, gently pushing Juho towards the couch. “One of us will come get you closer to when we need you, so that you can warm up. Have you eaten?”
Juho smiled at the younger man’s question, knowing that his friend was doing his best to take care of him. “They fed me while I was stuck in the hospital,” he replied. “I’m okay right now, honestly. I really just need some more time to try and sleep, I think.”
“I’ll keep everyone out of here as much as I can, then.”
Juho nodded, laying down and doing his best to get comfortable on the sofa despite the fact that it really wasn’t long enough for someone his height. Still, it was more comfortable than trying to sleep on the floor, and Juho knew that even sleeping on a slightly uncomfortable sofa was better than not getting the rest that his body was obviously in desperate need of at the moment.
Juho woke up to the sensation of someone pressing a hand against his cheek. “He doesn’t seem warm…” Youngbin’s voice commented, as Juho opened his eyes. “Hey… are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” Juho replied, nodding. “It’s kind of warm in here, and I’m kind of thirsty, but I feel better now than I did before I went to the hospital.”
Youngbin nodded, helping Juho sit up and gently checking out Juho’s hands to see what kind of progress he’d made since the last time they’d talked several hours earlier. “Your hands feel better?” Youngbin asked.
Juho nodded. “They’re still kind of stiff, but it’s definitely better,” he replied. “They aren’t sore at all… I still haven’t had any pain, really, other than when they actually did the injections. The doctor said that I should keep taking the painkillers on a schedule until the inflammation goes down, because they will help with that, too. But all I can really do is wait it out right now.”
“What did they say about you performing?” Youngbin asked.
“It’s just my hands that are being affected right now,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “I can still dance and do some of the rehearsals… as long as I take it easy for a few days and get my medication, we think I’ll be fine by the end of the week. Or at least well enough to perform by the time we record, without anyone knowing that anything is wrong.”
“So you’re going to push through?” Youngbin asked, sounding obviously concerned.
“If I can,” he replied, nodding. “I promise, hyung… I’m not going to do anything dumb. I’m not going to dance again today except for camera angle rehearsals, and I’m not going to do anything that would put a strain on my hands or any of my other joints. I’ve already talked with Taeyang-ah about what’s going to happen the rest of today, so that we can keep me safe.”
Youngbin nodded, smiling at him. “Okay… I’m going to trust you two to handle this,” the leader replied. “I’m going to bring you some water, because we need to make sure that you’re not getting dehydrated or anything else when you’re already not doing great.”
Juho nodded. “Thank you, hyung.”
The leader left the room, and for the first time Juho noticed that Chanhee was still in the room with him. “You’re really feeling okay, hyung?” the maknae asked, moving to sit down next to Juho.
“I am… like I said, I’m still just kind of stiff. And I’m a little tired, but nothing crazy,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine in a few days… we’re doing steroids for a couple of days to get the inflammation under control, and my usual painkillers on a regular schedule. It’s already helping.” Juho held his hands up, demonstrating the fact that his hands were moving significantly more freely than they had been just a few hours earlier.
“Is it really a good idea for you to work, even though you’re being treated right now?” Chanhee asked. “I mean, normally you aren’t allowed to dance when you’re on steroid treatments…”
“Normally it’s one of my hips that’s bothering me, though,” Juho replied. “As long as I don’t try to overuse my hands for the next few days, it’s okay… I’m not going to practice with the props until my hands are cooperating with me, and I’m only going to do the bare minimum until I’m doing better.”
Chanhee nodded still looking at Juho’s hands. “I’m just worried about you, hyung… you’ve been pretty hard headed about taking care of yourself in the past, and I don’t want to see you get hurt,” the maknae replied. “I know that this show is important… that we need this. But I also know that we need you to be healthy. We aren’t SF9 without all nine of us. Together.”
Juho nodded slowly. “I know,” he replied. “I promise you, Chanhee-yah… I’m going to be careful. SF9 is important to me. I don’t want to lose this.”
***
Juho took a deep breath as he collapsed back onto the sofa, thankful that their performance was finally over. It had gone well, despite the fact that he was in the middle of what was proving to be the worst arthritis flare he’d had since his initial diagnosis. Even with the steroids and all of the additional medication he was being given, Juho was still stiff and sore to the point that it had been a struggle to get through the performance; he was just thankful that he hadn’t had to hold a microphone, considering the fact that he’d nearly dropped the prop knife more times than he could count off camera.
“You okay?” Youngbin asked, purposely covering his microphone to try and keep it off the audio that they all knew was being recorded. Juho shook his head, closing his eyes as he let the leader see his hands. They were swelling again, red and painful despite everything Juho had been doing for nearly a week to try and stop his own immune system from attacking his body. “Aish…”
“You need to go back to the hospital,” Jaeyoon commented, taking one of Juho’s hands and gently trying to move his fingers for him. “This isn’t normal… you should be getting better by now, but your hands look worse…”
“They aren’t going to let me leave…” Juho replied, shaking his head. “I just have to push through until we’re done filming, hyung… can you hand me my bag?”
“You can’t be serious?” Inseong asked, as the group’s second oldest came closer. “Juho-yah, you’ve got to be in a lot of pain… I don’t even know how you made it through that performance like this.”
“I can make it through the rest of the filming if I can just get my meds,” Juho replied, shaking his head.
“You’re sitting out of whatever the next performance is… we’re pulling you for sure,” Youngbin replied, as the leader finally brought over Juho’s bag and began digging through it to find the younger rapper’s medication. “Are you sure that you’re going to be okay to stay here for the rest of the filming? It’s going to be a long time…”
Juho nodded. “I brought enough of my medication for the whole day… I should be fine,” he replied. “I can get through this. I have to get through this.”
“You shouldn’t have to get through this, though,” Seokwoo commented, as the tallest member came up to the conversation as well. “You have to take care of yourself, hyung. I don’t like that we can’t get you out of here to at least go home and rest…”
“We’ll do what we can do, then,” Youngbin replied. “Medication, food and water, and as much rest as he can get between performances. And a trip straight to the hospital as soon as we’re done here, because you obviously need something more to get over this flare.”
Juho nodded, as the leader began to hand him the pills he needed to take in order to get through the next few hours as Inseong brought over an opened bottle of water. “Hopefully things will work out so that I don’t have to miss out on the entire rest of the show…” Juho began.
“You aren’t allowed to worry about the show from here on out,” Taeyang commented. “If you can get cleared again after this, then you can worry about the finale performance - but for right now, you aren’t allowed to worry about how this is going to affect the show or anything like that. We’ll forfeit the show if we have to, if it means that we protect you from doing serious damage to yourself.”
“I don’t know that we’ve managed to stop things in time to avoid that…” Juho admitted, shaking his head. “I should have dropped myself from this performance when I started having trouble with my hands… I shouldn’t have convinced myself that trying to finish this round was still going to be okay, when I knew I wasn’t going to get enough rest with all of the rehearsals and everything else going on…”
“You did what you and your doctor thought was going to be best,” Jaeyoon replied, shaking his head. “Even if it ended up not being the best decision in the end, you did what you thought was right. You can’t beat yourself up for making the wrong choice, when things aren’t exactly black and white here…”
Juho nodded slowly, knowing that the older man was right; there really wasn’t a perfect answer to the question of what he should do in his current situation. While stepping back and taking time off was probably the best choice for his physical health, Juho also had to think about his mental health - he knew that he wasn’t going to do well with being kept out of Kingdom activities for any significant length of time - and what was best for the group as a whole. This flare had come on so quickly and so late in the game, there really wasn’t time for him to drop out of the performance without it causing a lot of unnecessary stress on the rest of the group. It was a delicate balancing act, and Juho was still working on figuring all of that out.
It still felt a little strange to be treated like he was so fragile, especially given the fact that they were in a position where it would be very easy for someone to notice what was going on and potentially put it on television for the whole country to see; they were already well aware that the editors had been cruel enough to include some moments of Stray Kids that shouldn’t have been put on the screen. But Juho wasn’t exactly in a position where he could protest being taken care of by his members, given the fact that he wasn’t quite able to use his hands in his current state.
The rest of the performances seemed to drag on forever; as much as Juho enjoyed seeing the rest of the groups perform, he was exhausted and he just wanted to get through the final meeting filming so that they could go back to their dorms and try to get some rest. Even though he knew that he needed to go back to the hospital, the later it got the more Juho was determined to just beg the managers to let him go home for the night and make the trip to the hospital in the morning, after he’d gotten the chance to get some sleep in his own bed.
“Are you still okay?” Youngbin asked, as the group’s stylists came into the room to do some last minute touch-ups before the ranking announcements were filmed. “Are you still going to be up to filming for potentially a couple more hours?”
Juho nodded. “I can get through this,” he replied nodding as the leader handed him another dose of the painkillers he needed to try and minimize the inflammation. “It won’t be that bad… we’ll be sitting the whole time, and at most I’ll just have to talk for a couple of minutes. I can do it.”
“We can pull you if it’s going to be too much…” Youngkyun began softly, walking up and gently massaging the back of Juho’s neck as he spoke. “You look pale… if you need more rest…”
“I can hold out a little while longer,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “Honestly, I just want to finish this filming so that we can go home and get some sleep. If we try to pull me, it’s just going to prolong everything for everyone else while the managers try to negotiate that… and I’m not that bad off. I can walk, I’m not in excruciating pain. Let’s just get this done.”
***
“I see that you’re already back in your favorite place…” Sanghyuk commented, as the older man came into Juho’s room and picked up Lui as the younger of Juho’s two cats attempted to escape from his room. Huru had taken up residence on his chest already, purring away to try and comfort Juho as he tried to rest after a night in the hospital for further monitoring as they started him on an even stronger round of steroids than before. While it wasn’t ideal - any time he had to go back on the steroids for a flare there was a risk of side effects that might cause problems for performances - Juho knew that it was the only way his body was going to be able to deal with this latest episode. “What did the doctors say?”
“I’m definitely not allowed to do the first performance,” Juho replied, shaking his head. “I might be back in time to do our group’s song, but the big one is a no-go.”
Sanghyuk nodded. “The company is only going to send Taeyang-ah, Youngkyun-ah, Inseong-hyung, and Jaeyoon-hyung,” the older man explained. “It’ll take some of the pressure off for the rest of us, and make it less obvious that you’re being pulled until we know whether or not you can come back. Plus it will let Seokwoo-yah have some more time to rest his back, too.”
Juho nodded, even though he felt more than a little guilty about the fact that their team was being put at a disadvantage for his benefit. Though he knew that the members the company had chosen to participate would do a great job, it still felt a little like he was letting the whole team down by not being available to participate in the rap performance for their team. “What about the other teams?” Juho asked.
“I can’t be sure about The Boyz, but Chanhee-yah spoke to Chanwoo-ssi, and they’re not sending everyone, either,” Sanghyuk explained. “He didn’t say who was sitting out part one, but he said they were going to talk to The Boyz about making the Dance and Rap units trios so that each group only sends one person, and only have two or maybe three people per group for the Vocal unit since that’s what both of our companies are doing.”
Juho nodded, thankful that things seemed to be working out, even though no one outside of their company was aware of his current health situation. The fact that some members of The Boyz were having health issues of their own certainly made it easier to believe that they might be willing to take the advice coming from the other two groups as well. “At least this plan will buy me some time,” he replied. “Now I just have to hope that I can make it through the next week or so without anyone noticing all of the trips to the hospital I’m going to have to make…”
“Hopefully people will be too focused on other things to be worrying about your whereabouts while you’re not actively filming,” Sanghyuk replied, as their manager came to the door with what Juho knew would be another round of medication to try and get his symptoms under control again. “Aish… how much medication do they have you on right now?”
“It’s the anti-inflammatory I’ve been taking all along,” Juho replied, shaking his head as he forced himself to sit up enough to take the medication. “The doctor said to keep taking it, even while I’m on the steroids. The more we can throw at this, the better… at this point, they’re talking about putting me on a new medication to try and stop future flares like this. But I can’t start that medication until I’m over this flare and off all of the steroids.”
“But… that could take a while…” Sanghyuk began.
“It could,” their manager commented. “But it also might get him pushed up the list for the vaccine… the medications they want to try will compromise his immune system to some extent.”
“It’s worth it, though, if it will help stop more of these flares before they have a chance to start,” Juho added, before Sanghyuk could respond to the manager’s explanation. “I’m okay with having to be a little more careful about protecting myself from getting sick… I don’t want to have to keep going through this for the rest of my life. Every time this happens, I’m going to lose a little bit more until eventually I’m not going to be able to walk or write or whatever… and that isn’t what I want. I don’t want to be forced to retire from being an Idol because I’m sick; I want to choose when I’m ready to be done, before I’m too disabled to be able to enjoy having a private life after SF9. I don’t want this to be what ends things for us.”
There was a prolonged silence as Sanghyuk processed Juho’s words, clearly starting to understand what was actually happening with Juho’s health and how serious it could become. “It’s really that bad?” he finally asked.
“It could be,” Juho replied, nodding. “There’s going to be permanent damage to my joints eventually… just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. The more flares I have, and the longer they last, the more likely it is that there will be serious damage. And the way things are going right now, I need to be on the disease modifying medications because I’m having flares too frequently…”
Sanghyuk nodded, sighing. “You have to figure out the balance between protecting yourself from a guaranteed bad outcome, and protecting yourself from the possibility of one,” the older man replied.
“It’s not great either way,” Juho commented, shrugging. “This gives me a chance to avoid both possible bad outcomes… or at least put off the guaranteed bad outcome for as long as possible, because right now there’s really no way to completely avoid the arthritis flares over time. I just… I have to do what I have to do here, you know?”
“Yeah… yeah, I get it,” Sanghyuk replied.