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The first thing Gyuvin does is make coffee.
It's something to do with his hands at 2 AM when Ricky's temperature has climbed past the point of reasonable and the dark outside is the color of the coffee bean itself. Gyuvin is sitting in the old mahogany desk chair he dragged to the bedside hours ago and hasn't moved since. It's Ricky's desk chair, technically, but after two years of living together the distinction for everything in this apartment has stopped meaning anything.
He didn't touch his coffee at all. He watches Ricky breathe instead.
This is what he does. Being the Gyuvin who shows up, who takes care, who stays, who has been Ricky's best friend since their first week of university when Ricky sat down next to him in the lecture hall and proceeded to copy off his notebook for the entire semester. That was three years ago, and Gyuvin has been in love with him for approximately two years and ten months of those three years, which he has never told anyone, and which does not change anything about the fact that here he is, watching Ricky's chest rise and fall, same as he always has.
He hates that about himself sometimes.
Ricky shifts against the pillow, and Gyuvin watches with high alert. The fever has been bad since this afternoon.
Ricky's hand moves. "Gyuvin,” he called. His voice is rough. Gyuvin leans forward just enough but still holds the distance.
"I'm here," he says, because that's always the answer.
Ricky doesn't say anything for a moment. His eyes are half-open, not quite tracking. Gyuvin knows his versions by now. Ricky lucid, Ricky asleep, or Ricky somewhere in between, which is the most dangerous one because he says things and reaches for things in that version. He'd say Gyuvin like it means something it has never meant in three years of best friendship and shared grocery runs and falling asleep on the same couch. Because Ricky never looks at him the way Gyuvin looks at him.
He says it again now. "Gyuvin. Come here."
"I'm right here."
"No," Ricky says, and his hand lifts off the blanket. Deliberate or just feverish, which is the problem Gyuvin decided not to think about. "Here." He gestured to his side.
Gyuvin looks at the hand. He thinks about being good.
He has been good for so long, being someone that careful and present and available in every way that didn't count. He made coffee for himself so that he can stay awake, he bought flu medicine from the convenience store downstairs, he sat in this chair and not said a single thing that was true, for years, because Ricky is his best friend and roommate and the person he'd ruin himself for, and Gyuvin has always known which one of them would end up ruined.
He takes Ricky's hand in the end.
Ricky's fingers close immediately. And then he tugs.
Gyuvin goes. Then he's sitting on the edge of the narrow mattress and Ricky is shifting over to make room, pulling him more to lie down or hover him or anything that closes their distance and the voice in the back of Gyuvin's head that sounds like all his better instincts is saying this is the fever, he doesn't know, he's not going to remember, you know what he means to you and he has never meant it the same way back—
But Ricky pulls him down and kisses him.
Oh, Gyuvin thought. He is so tired of those voices in his head.
It tastes strange. Ricky's lips are chapped and hot, his tongue clumsy with dehydration. Gyuvin tastes the salt of sweat on his upper lip, feels the damp heat of his neck, the way Ricky's hair tangles in his fingers when he finally touches it. Ricky's t-shirt has ridden up, his palm finds the bare skin of Ricky's stomach, waist, and hip. Ricky makes a sound that Gyuvin feels against his mouth.
He is going to ruin everything. He knows he is. But Ricky's hand is on the back of his neck, holding him there, and Ricky's body is arching into the touch, and Ricky isn't pushing him away.
That's all Gyuvin needs.
After minutes of sharing spit and inhaling each other's breath, Ricky's breathing slows and evens. He's asleep in the middle of their kisses, before Gyuvin has finished putting the thought together.
Gyuvin watched him, the pale face in his peaceful sleep. Then Gyuvin lies in the space that is left from the small bed and stares at the ceiling.
He can feel Ricky's hand is on his chest, open-palmed. It's the same way it used to land when they were studying on the chestnut colored couch and Ricky would fall asleep mid-sentence, his hand finding Gyuvin's arm or shoulder or chest without looking, as natural as he reaching for something familiar in the dark. It meant nothing then, so Gyuvin had decided it meant nothing even now.
Gyuvin doesn't move from his position at all.
The coffee probably has gone cold. The room smells like sweat and fever and autumn coming through the gap in the window Ricky always leaves cracked, a habit Gyuvin used to complain about but it doesn't actually bother him at all.
He wonders if Ricky will remember, if Ricky would want to, if he is the one who took advantage of something that was never on offer, or if Ricky's hand on the back of his neck meant exactly what it felt like.
Gyuvin doesn't know. He shouldn't be thinking too much about whatever just happened earlier.
Gyuvin closes his eyes, trying to sleep away the voices that come back crowding his head. But he doesn't sleep. He can't. He just lets Ricky's hand rise and fall with his breath as his company through the night.