Work Text:
At some point, Yeosang really needed to get better about checking the forecast before leaving for work in the morning. He always dressed based on the general temperature it seemed to be outside, asked Wooyoung if he thought it'd work for the weather, and put a lot of faith in other people to warn him if there was something he should be ready for. Unfortunately, no one warned him about the weather today, and it caught him almost completely off-guard when halfway through his first part of the lesson plan a bunch of his kids started gravitating towards the windows and clammoring about a snow storm. Sure enough, within the two and a half hours since Yeosang got to the school, the ground that had just been a bit frosty was now completely covered in a blanket of white. Judging based on how far it climbed the base of the tree facing his classroom window, it'd come up to just below his ankles if he went out to stand in it now.
Even as he tried to wrangle the kids back into their seats, he knew it was only a matter of time before administration decided to send everyone home for the day. For safety reasons, obviously, but also, in Yeosang's opinion, because it was simply impossible to get a bunch of elementary schoolers to settle down when they knew it was snowing outside. Before the PA system even crackled to life he cut his planned lesson short and let the kids all draw under the guise of a "book report" comic assignment he was actually planning for a few weeks in the future, but worked well enough to get their attention back on something tangentially learning-related.
Sure enough, it took only another half-hour before he heard the little dinging of the PA system coming on and his principal's voice come through announcing they were letting school out early for the storm. He smiled to himself as his classroom erupted in cheers, and he could hear the other fourth grade classrooms down the hall do so as well. He tried as hard as he could to listen to the announcement even over the noise, trying to catch all the bus routes that she rattled off and when they would arrive, and the information that students who usually walked were encouraged to either wait for a parent or take the bus route closest to their house. As soon as his students returned to a more normal level of noise he tried to repeat it all back, answering the few questions that popped up about "but I only live five minutes from the school, do I have to wait?" and "My mom is working, are you going to call her?" and "what if I don't know where my house is?" and all the standard "what about"'s he'd gotten all too used to answering after four years of teaching. He would've thought by fourth grade most kids would have these things figured out already, but he was always a little surprised by just how many kids had very little understanding of how bus routes actually worked.
Thankfully, it didn't take long to navigate all the questions and soon enough they were all packing up and cleaning after themselves like it was a regular end to the school day. Eventually, it was just him and a kid who was talking his ear off about how excited she was to build a snowman with her dad, who was as they spoke rushing to the school to get her. Yeosang didn't envy him at all. Apparently, she lived just a little bit outside of the school's zoning so there wasn't a bus that went by her house, and his job had been reluctant to let him leave even knowing that. When Yeosang had asked her what her dad did for work, she told him she didn't know, but he was very important.
"He says that they'd make him work through a tsunami if they could." She said, zipping and unzipping her jacket with more focus than some of his kids gave their school work.
"Ah, I have some friends with jobs like that." Yeosang told her, thinking of how completely swept up in work Hongjoong and even Jongho could sometimes get. Like it'd all fall apart without them because, frankly, their employers treated them like it sometimes. He hoped she didn't feel guilty about having to call her dad away from work like he often felt trying to get one of them to take a break.
"It's stupid." She said. "But he says that even if they tried to make him work through a tsunami, he'd tell them no as soon as I asked him to stay home."
"That's good." Yeosang said, smiling at her. "You're very lucky to have a dad like that."
"I know." She said, taking her hand away from the zipper to cross her arms over her chest proudly. "He's lucky to have me."
Yeosang laughed lightly. "He is."
It only took a few more minutes for the girl's dad to enter the classroom, looking harried but still happy to see her as she got up and ran to get her backpack slung over her shoulder. He gave Yeosang a bow that Yeosang rushed to reciprocate. "Thank you for watching her."
"Of course." Yeosang said, watching her start rocking back and forth by the door. "She makes great company."
"Appa, I want to go now." She said, only a little whiny. Her dad huffed fondly.
"Thanks again, Kang-ssi." He said, taking a hold of her hand.
Yeosang waved it off quickly. "Ah, Yeosang is fine."
"Well, then, thank you Yeosang-ssi." He said as she started pulling him towards the door. "Get home safe."
"Thank you." Yeosang said, watching the two of them leave, the dad gently pulling the door closed behind him. Yeosang let out a quiet sigh as he sat down in his chair, deflating now that there were no kids in the room left to keep up appearances for. He glanced out the window, seeing the snow had creeped only an inch or two more up the base of the tree, and flexed his hand on the desk in front of him. Most of the school had probably gone home by now, but he knew there were more than likely a couple of his colleagues still lingering like he was. It didn't seem like the snow was falling that fast, anyway. Leaving probably wasn't all that urgent. And besides, he had a mountain of papers in his desk drawer waiting to be graded. Surely an hour or two of work before he hit the road wouldn't be all that bad.
It didn't really occur to Yeosang why, exactly, everyone was calling the event a snow storm. Or that when he'd left the house today, he'd not thought to bring gloves with him, assuming he wouldn't need them anyway.
He probably wouldn't. It was only an inch or two of snow. What was the worst that could happen?
—
As it turned out, the answer to that question was his car getting snowed in in the hour and a half he spent getting lost in grading.
When he finally got out of the building to see where the maybe less-than-ankle-high snow of a few hours ago had grown to cover almost the bottom half of his tires, it took him a few minutes of blankly staring at the scene in front of him to register what was going on. Even when it finally hit, he wasn't really sure what to do about it.
He couldn't drive, clearly. Even if he had snow tires getting out of his parking spot now would be a feat, so he'd probably have to leave his car for the night and hopefully not any longer than that. He could try a busline but he also knew that when it got this snowy out a lot of them just didn't run, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually had to navigate the busline alone, so maybe that wasn't the best idea. He guessed his last option would be to call one of his boyfriends.
Except he knew that none of them would be able to come get him. San usually took the bus to work, but he was with Wooyoung today, and while Wooyoung's car had snow tires he and San would probably be busy until late even with the storm. The same went for Hongjoong and Seonghwa, because Hongjoong had an important shoot today and Yeosang knew his boss wasn't the type to send anyone home without everything done, and Seonghwa because a residential facility like the one he worked at couldn't afford to just send people home because of the snow. Jongho and Mingi might be available, but Jongho worked so far away that asking him to drive further to pick him up was a hazard, and Mingi was home today without a car because Yunho took it to work, and he also probably wouldn't want to leave early.
Yeosang frowned, pulling his phone out of his pocket and sliding up to unlock it. His fingers already felt like they were burning from the cold as he navigated to the maps app and typed in their address, never having saved it to his "pins" like Seonghwa kept telling him to. He sighed at the time that popped up over the suggested route. One hour twenty-three minutes. He looked back at the school building. In theory, he could stay and just wait until someone could get him, but waiting that long with near-nothing to do didn't sound especially pleasant, and his phone was already at twenty-percent. It probably wouldn't last long enough for him to even call someone once he did need to be picked up.
So Yeosang deliberated for a few seconds before pulling his admittedly far-too-thin hat down further over his ears and stuffing his hands deep in the pockets of his wintercoat. He'd need to take them out every once in a while to check the route, but it probably wouldn't be that bad. He was pretty good with remembering instructions.
The first few steps were obnoxious, the snow high enough that trudging through felt like trying to run through water, his feet being dragged down. But after a while he got into a rhythm with it, not letting his feet sink too deep and being a little more forceful with pulling them back up. He was glad he'd decided to wear his snowboots today, he knew trying to brave this much snow in his sneakers would probably be completely impossible and probably deeply uncomfortable after a while. Even if some moisture from the snow seeped into his boots it wasn't that much, and he was at least happy to not have to deal with the despicable feeling of wet socks while he steadily got colder.
At some point his fingertips, even shoved in his pockets as they were, started to get numb and a little painful. His nose and cheeks stung too, but he tried not to think about it. He hadn't checked his phone in a while, but it couldn't be that much longer to the house. And he was fine, he'd walked longer distances and been in worse cold before. Granted, never at the same time, but he didn't see why it couldn't work like that. The only thing that was really getting to him was how unrelentlessly he was shivering. Sometimes it was even hard enough it made him loose his footing briefly and he had to act quickly to keep himself from falling face-first into the snow. Once, he had nearly fallen and instictually used his hand to catch himself, wincing at the way it started up the tingling in his hands again where they'd started to go numb. He tried to keep his hands firmly in his pockets from that point on.
Walking in the snow felt a little like walking through an apocalypse. Sure, every once in a while there was a car on the road, but there would be long stretches of time where Yeosang would see no cars or people at all. And there were certain places where the snow had yet to be cleared from the road and the sidewalk and road itself blended together dangerously. Yeosang was just glad he'd not accidentally wandered into the street yet.
At one point he got close, crossing a road he knew was usually busy. It was snowing, though, and the road wasn't perfectly clear, so he chose to blow right past the button for the walk sign. He stepped immediately into the road and got five steps across before looking up to see a car coming towards him. Usually, he thinks he'd be more worried about that. But he was already walking, and he needed to get home, so he just kept moving across the street. He heard the screeching of tires and a loud honk, but didn't turn to acknowledge it. He couldn't really understand why they would honk at him, so they must've been honking at someone else.
The further along the walk he got, the more things like that started happening. He'd miss a street sign and walk for almost five minutes in the wrong direction before realizing what he'd done and having to double back. His shoelace came undone and instead of trying to stop and tie it like he usually would he just ignored it. It wasn't like it was going to make him any more or less likely to trip, given the shivering.
He also didn't notice when the shivering stopped, despite knowing he'd been waiting for it to. It didn't feel like a slow decline, or even like an abrupt stop, but just like one moment he knew he was shivering and then one moment he realized he wasn't and he didn't know when it changed. It was nice, though, either way. It made him feel faster even though for some reason his body seemed to be moving slightly slower than before.
By the time Yeosang reached the door of the house he was exhausted. Walking so much must've really taken it out of him, because all he wanted now was to curl up in bed and sleep through the rest of the day.
He tried to find his keys in his pockets but was unpleasantly surprised by the realization that he couldn't feel his fingers. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and staring at his fingers as if he expected them to have disappeared. They hadn't, but they had gotten a lot paler. Almost blueish if he looked at them in a certain way. He huffed, seeing the air on his breath, and used his numb fingers to slowly and clumsily strip off his jacket and open up the pockets while he was looking in them to find his keys. He couldn't find them, though. He found his phone, which he relocated to his back pants pocket, and a couple loose items he didn't know were in there, but no keys. He frowned, turning the jacket inside out. He sat down on the stoop in front of the door to search more closely, but still turned up nothing. Though he did accidentally scratch his finger on a loose earring back and was fascinated when he didn't even feel that.
He frowned, dropping his jacket and setting his chin in his hands. If he couldn't find the keys, he could probably just sleep out here. It was cold, but he'd stopped shivering, so it wasn't that annoying. He'd probably adapted to it. They were covering adaptation in his class right now. He was going to show a fun video about it today, before the snow made everyone go home.
Yeosang perked up, looking over to where he'd dropped his work bag and reaching for it. He didn't remember taking it off, but he must've had to to get his jacket off. He fumbled with the zippers for a while, having trouble getting a proper grip with the numbness in his fingers and after too many times of losing his grip halfway through getting a zipper undone he just leaned over and bit down on the zipper, using his teeth to drag it open. It hurt a little, but it worked well enough, and soon he was able to fish out his keys. He got up slowly, leaning on the door behind him so he wouldn't topple over and then turning around and grabbing the doorknob.
It took him maybe twelve tries to properly get the key into the keyhole and turn it the right way, and he was practically crying out of frustration by the time he finally got the door open, throwing his bag and himself over the threshold. The warmth of the house was immediate relief, and he nearly keeled over and lied down right there, content to sleep somewhere warm even if it wasn't the warmest he could be.
But he remembered Seonghwa telling him once that getting warm again after being cold was really important, so he figured he'd at least make an effort to. He left his bag by the door and stumbled towards the bathroom, trying to find a mirror. His face was pretty red when he looked back at it and his hat was a little damp with the wetness of the slowly melting snow, his lips chapped and a couple of the beads of sweat on his forehead having legitamately frozen into his hair. He held out his hands in front of himself and found the blueish hue of his fingers again. That was probably the most important thing, then, right? If blue meant cold, clearly his fingers were the coldest part of him.
He grabbed onto the hot water tap and pulled it towards him fully, bracing himself against the counter so he wouldn't give into the desire to lie down and fall asleep. He shoved his hands under the water, flinching at the immediate pins and needles that covered his hands and especially his fingers, like a million tiny candle wicks had been stuck into his fingertips and lit. He let the water run with his stomach digging into the counter to keep him upright until it got physically hard to hold his head up and it started lolling onto his chest. He forced himself to get up again, shoving the tap until the water turned off and grabbing the hand towel to dry his now red hands. Good. Red means warm, so he was clearly doing good.
He still felt cold, though. And it wasn't like trying other things could hurt, so he sat down on the floor and threw open the cabinets. He found what he was looking for quickly, one of the heating pads Mingi kept around for his leg pain. Yunho had stashed them around the entire house so that Mingi would never be far from one if he ended up needing it without someone around to help him get it, and now it was working in Yeosang's favor because it meant he didn't need to get up and go somewhere else yet. He grabbed it and found the little attached remote thing, putting it on the highest heat and holding it between his hands.
For a while, he sat like that, letting the lingering numbness make way for an almost painful burning sensation spreading over his hands. He held it to his face for a while too but that ended up hurting too much for him to keep it up, so he leaned back against the bathroom wall and went back to just using it on his hands.
He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until he was awoken to violent shivering and groaned in annoyance. He thought he'd gotten rid of that. He'd adapted to it. If it had come back, he must've gotten colder somehow, and that wouldn't do.
He pressed the heating pad against his chest and held it there, curling around the warmth it brought as he pulled himself off the ground and hobbled out of the bathroom. He made it all the way to the living room radiator before letting himself collapse again, leaning back against it and wedging the heating pad between his knees and his hands where they were pressed against his chest. He let his head fall forward and his eyes gently close, feeling content with himself for the first time in a while. His hands still hurt a lot from being rewarmed, but the rest of him felt blissfully warm. Like he'd been wrapped up in a big blanket and put in the sauna. It was nice, and Yeosang felt himself begin to drift in and out of consciousness peacefully.
"Yeosang?" A voice asked from nearby and Yeosang hummed quietly but made no other move to respond to it. "When did you get home?"
Yeosang tried to shrug, but couldn't get his body to cooperate. It was fine, the shrug was implied.
"Are you asleep?" A warm hand landed on his forehead, but it didn't stay for long, jerking away upsettingly quickly. "Aish."
The voice was quiet for a second, and Yeosang could feel the person it belonged to try to gently shake him but give up quickly. They hummed, and distantly Yeosang heard a phone ringing.
"Hi, hyung. Sorry, I know you're busy." The voice said, and Yeosang heard a much quieter, tinnier voice respond, though he couldn't hear what they were saying. "Yeah. I know. It's, ah, it's not me though."
The voice went silent for a second or two.
"Well, uhm, Yeosang got home from work. I guess they sent him home early because of the storm, but he's really cold. He's set himself up by the radiator and he got himself one of my heating packs but he's still in all his outside clothes except for his jacket. I think he's asleep." The voice said, and Yeosang heard them shift on their feet. "I don't know, hyung, I just came down. I've been in my room all day."
"No, he's not shivering. Hyung?" The voice asked, pitching up a little. Like it was scared. "Okay. Okay, I'll—uh—"
Yeosang felt fingers land against his neck, above his collar bone. They held there for a second before the hand attached to them grabbed at one of his hands and pulled it out of the safe little slot between his chest and the heating pad. The voice made a noise of discontent and the fingers found his wrist and pressed down. "No, I feel it. I feel one, it's just really slow. Okay. I—okay."
There was a pause for a while, and Yeosang must've fallen asleep again because the next thing he knew he was lying on his stomach and someone had wrapped wet towels around his hands. They also took his shirt off, or must have, because he could feel air against his back. He didn't like it, it was colder than the radiator. He wanted to be warm. "Yeosangie, please wake up."
A brief pause. "Okay. Okay. You can sleep, but you…you need to wake up eventually, okay? Help is coming. I called an ambulance so…so help is coming. Okay, I—fuck."
The hand gently landed on the nape of his neck, tangling its fingers in his hair gently. Someone had taken off his hat, too, then. He didn't know why they would do that. Did they want him to freeze?
The last word he heard before he fell asleep again was a shockingly grief-filled "Idiot."
—
"I'm getting real fucking sick of hospitals." Was the first words he heard after waking up again, and the aggression of it made his lips twitch towards a smile. He knew Wooyoung when he heard him.
"Agreed." A voice replied. Yeosang only realized then how nice and warm he was. He hummed to himself, blinking his eyes open blearily. For some reason, even given the conversation he'd overheard, he expected to be in his bed at home.
"Well look who decided to wake up." Jongho's voice greeted. Yeosang lolled his head over to see him and hummed again when he reached out a hand to gently rustle his hair.
"I'm in the hospital." Yeosang observed. Jongho looked mildly exasperated, which was a little strange. Usually he had a good grip on things.
"Do you want to tell us why?" He heard Mingi ask, and looked over to see where he was sitting next to Yunho with his cane leant against the chair he was in. He couldn't help but think that they all looked really tired.
"You don't know why?" Yeosang asked, confused. Surely, one of them would've had to call the ambulance. Unless a stranger did, and they really had no idea.
"Yeosang-ah, you came home with hypothermia and frostbite. Mingi found you burning yourself to a crisp by the radiator." Hongjoong explained. Yeosang frowned.
"I burned myself?" Yeosang asked, finally looking down to his hands and startling a little at seeing them completely bandaged up. "Oh. Wow."
"You did that to your back too, Sangie." Seonghwa said from his bedside, rubbing circles into Yeosang's upper arm. "It can happen when you try to rewarm yourself improperly. Since you didn't understand how cold you were, you couldn't tell that all the heat you were applying was too hot."
"So…you do know why I'm in the hospital." Yeosang said, and Wooyoung gave him an unimpressed pout.
"We don't know why you apparently decided to walk almost three miles home in the freezing cold instead of just calling someone to pick you up." Wooyoung said, poking at Yeosang's other arm. "But I have a theory, and I don't like my theory."
Yeosang looked around the room and shrunk back a little bit, embarrassed now that he was thinking back on all the poor decisions he'd made. "I didn't think you'd be able to."
"So you didn't even try?" Yunho asked. "Aish, Yeosangie, at least one of us could have gotten you."
"But you were all at work." Yeosang said, glancing at Mingi. "Or didn't have a car."
"Why do you think we wouldn't have left to go get you?" San asked. Yeosang stared at him for a second. He didn't really have an answer for that. Most of them had bosses who would understand needing to leave for something like that, and…all of them would've probably fought for the ability to. Like his student's dad. He frowned.
"I didn't think that." Yeosang defended. "It was more…I didn't think."
"And why wouldn't you come to me when you got home at least? I could've at least helped you get into the house." Mingi said, and Yeosang was momentarily confused as to how he knew he struggled with the lock that much. Mingi gave a little understanding smile. "You scratched up the keyhole. And you left your jacket inside out at the door, I figured you were probably trying to find your keys."
Yeosang nodded, looking around guiltily. "Again, I didn't think. I just knew I was cold, I wasn't really worried about much else."
Hongjoong sighed. "So, I think we know the only way we can solve this."
"Give him the ability to think? I don't know if science is that advanced." Wooyoung teased. Yeosang made a noise of protest but it didn't stop San and Yunho from laughing at the joke.
"We could always put a tracker on him." Jongho added on and Yeosang sighed in defeat. "Start going anywhere while the weather's cold, we'll all get a ping."
"Or, we could all keep an eye on the weather from now on." Hongjoong offered, lightly pinching Wooyoung's arm who immediately grumbled that Jongho had made a joke too. "If we think Yeosang, or anyone else for that matter, might not be able to get home, we send a message offering to pick them up. Surely at least one of us will remember."
"That…would work." Yeosang admitted, wiggling his fingers in the bandages before remembering himself and forcing them still.
"Good, we'll do that, then." Seonghwa said. "And in case I didn't drive it home before, everyone needs to know really well that if you or someone else has hypothermia you should not use hot water to warm back up, or anything hot for that matter. And you need to change into dry clothes immediately. Got it?"
"Got it." A couple of them parroted back, some more enthusiastic than others. Mingi especially sounded like he'd heard this a couple too many times, probably because back in the first few weeks following his leg injury Seonghwa had been practically hovering over him with medical advice. It must have started anew when the seasons changed, probably also having something to do with Seonghwa wanting to make sure Mingi didn't accidentally burn himself with his heating pads.
Hongjoong called in a nurse after a few minutes to check on Yeosang, and he was cleared for discharge pretty quickly afterwards with the instructions to get burn cream and maybe some over-the-counter painkillers, both of which they already had plenty of thanks to Seonghwa and more recently Yunho's dedication to keeping a well-stocked medicine cabinet.
San helped Yeosang into a temporary wheelchair to take out of the hospital because apparently his feet also got some frostbite, and while it was starting to heal it was still a bad idea to put a lot of pressure on them. Yeosang let himself be manuevered easily, somewhat content to be pushed around. Up until Seonghwa took over for San once they got to the parking lot and Yeosang felt a little guilt creep up on him.
"Are you mad at me?" Yeosang asked quietly, and he could practically hear Seonghwa's frown.
"Why would I be mad at you, Sang-ah?" Seonghwa asked, genuine enough. Yeosang looked down at his lap.
"I was stupid." Yeosang said, grimacing. "I didn't remember what you told me. And I scared you and Mingi. I scared everyone."
"Oh, Yeosangie." Seonghwa cooed. "I'm not mad at you, sweetheart, I'm worried. It did scare me when Mingi told me what was happening with you, but I'm not upset with you for that. I just want you to be safe."
Yeosang nodded, but his tongue still moved faster than his mind. "You sounded a little mad."
"I promise I'm not. I'm just tired, it's almost one in the morning." Seonghwa explained, and Yeosang sat up to look back at him.
"Really?" Yeosang asked, looking back towards the rest of them after Seonghwa nodded. No wonder they all seemed so exhausted. He was shocked it had taken that long for him to get treated, but moreso he was a little emotional about it. "You all stayed up for me?"
"Well, Joongie took a nap once." Seonghwa whispered, like it was a dire secret. Yeosang smiled. "But yes, we all stayed up for you. I told you, Yeosang, we care. Like Yunho said, we would've come to get you."
Yeosang smiled to himself, finally seeing one of the cars come into view. He couldn't help but think of his student. "I guess I'm pretty lucky to have you, then."
"We're lucky to have you." Seonghwa said, pressing a kiss to the top of Yeosang's head. "Now lets get you home and all bundled up, hm? I bet we could guilt Wooyoung into making hot chocolate, too."
Yeosang deflated in content at just the idea. Nothing could have possibly sounded better.