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“You’re sick,” Yoo Joonghyuk hisses at Kim Dokja. On any other day it would’ve been an insult, but he says it quite literally now. “You’ve caught a cold.”
“Sorry,” Kim Dokja rasps, coughing pathetically into the back of his hand. “Did I wake you?”
“You did,” Yoo Joonghyuk says. He was rather peacefully asleep before he was rudely shocked awake by the cool, nightly breeze. Yoo Joonghyuk laid in a thin shirt for five minutes just contemplating the lie Kim Dokja had told him about not being a blanket-thief, until a coughing fit shook him out of his thoughts.
“I-” Kim Dokja croaks, voice like rough asphalt. “Uck, my throat hur’s…”
Yoo Joonghyuk clicks his tongue. “You’re being noisy.”
He presses a hand to the reader’s forehead, and Yoo Joonghyuk’s suspicions are quickly confirmed. Kim Dokja’s skin burns like embers against his palm, and how troublesome this will be, he thinks. It’s barely two in the morning. He hadn’t got much sleep the previous week due to several ill-timed sub-scenarios popping out everywhere, and the first time he sleeps for four consecutive hours in a long time, it’s broken by Kim Dokja.
“How did you catch it?” Yoo Joonghyuk frowns, more out of confusion than anything. Do constellations get sick? It’s not like he’d made the man sleep in the open.
“I dunno,” Kim Dokja replies weakly, covering another cough. “Go ‘way. You’ll catch it.”
Yoo Joonghyuk blinks. “This is my bed.”
“Oh, right...I’ll g’ sleep on the couch, I guess.”
At that, Yoo Joonghyuk watches as Kim Dokja groggily slips out of bed and makes a horrible attempt at walking across the room. He stumbles like a newborn fawn, stubbornly propping himself up with the wall. Kim Dokja doesn’t make it more than five steps to the door when Yoo Joonghyuk latches onto his bicep and drags him back to bed.
“W-wait, urk-” the man gasps, “Dizzy.”
Goddammit. With his reflexes, Yoo Joonghyuk kicks the wastebasket at the foot of the bed with enough strength to send it sliding across the parquetry, stopping perfectly to catch Kim Dokja’s dinner.
Yoo Joonghyuk scowls in disgust as horrible retching fills the silence.
In hindsight, he shouldn’t have allowed this sleepover to happen. No one understands how Han Sooyoung had fucked up with one of her clones, tearing down a wall and the ceiling of Kim Dokja’s bedroom, but that’s none of Yoo Joonghyuk’s business. Kim Dokja could’ve asked to share with Yoo Sangah. In fact, there was nothing stopping him from taking a nap in the rubble, right there.
Then again, perhaps it was Yoo Joonghyuk’s fault for accepting Kim Dokja’s request in the first place. It was a stupid whim on both sides. But the man had worn a gauze on his cheek like it was the latest fashion and Yoo Joonghyuk just couldn’t say no.
Trust Kim Dokja to always make things difficult for him.
“Lie down,” he sighs, feet hitting the floor. “I’ll get a cold towel for you.”
“Wait,” Kim Dokja says, stopping him in his tracks. “‘M fine. Jus’ go back t’ sleep.”
He could, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks. Just close his eyes and wake up, refreshed.
He doesn’t.
“Stop saying unnecessary things,” he sternly tells the reader instead, shuffling out the door.
--
There’s a clean towel under the bathroom sink, thankfully. Yoo Joonghyuk fetches a basin from the kitchen and fills it with cold water, throwing in a few ice cubes just to help Kim Dokja bring the heat down a bit better.
The room is silent when he enters. Yoo Joonghyuk sets the basin on the bedside table and switches on his lamp. It flickers to life, and the first thing that he sees is Kim Dokja, lying under the covers, unmoving and quiet. He wears a calm expression, but the signs of illness still mar his features like a ripple in a lake, and the second thing that Yoo Joonghyuk sees is the unhealthy flush painting Kim Dokja’s cheeks. Ironically, it gives his pale face more colour than it usually has.
Soft breaths drift from under the duvet, where Kim Dokja made sure to bundle himself in. Yoo Joonghyuk wrings the towel and pastes it on the man’s forehead. This is absurd, he thinks. His alarm will ring in four hours. What is he doing here, playing nurse?
“Kim Dokja.” Yoo Joonghyuk fishes out a thermometer from his drawer, shaking the constellation’s shoulder and carefully sitting on the edge of the mattress. “Kim Dokja, open your mouth.”
A low whine escapes Kim Dokja’s teeth. “Nuhhh…”
“Don’t be difficult. It’ll be quick,” Yoo Joonghyuk tells him.
But Kim Dokja only grouses under his breath. “Noooooo… ” he grumbles like a petulant child, and it’s then that a fact makes itself clear; Kim Dokja has completely lost to the fever. Yoo Joonghyuk decides it’s not worth coaxing him into obedience when he can just shove the thermometer down his throat--just like that.
“Mmh-”
“If you spit it out, I’ll kill you.”
Pause, then a beep.
“...Thirty-nine and a half degrees,” Yoo Joonghyuk whispers in disbelief. But taking Kim Dokja’s weak constitution into mind, it’s not as big of a surprise as before. He couldn’t have lasted long with his sticks-for-bones, and his pathetic muscle mass is probably why he falls ill to just about any gust of wind.
He considers calling Lee Seolhwa over with some story packs despite the late hour, because surely, this classifies as an emergency?
“Joon’hyuk?” Kim Dokja murmurs, catching his attention. “You’re gonna get sick. Go ‘way.”
Yoo Joonghyuk ignores him, naturally. “Do you think you can stomach some soup?”
“...Don’t think so.”
“Okay. Then save your energy and go to sleep. Don’t talk.”
“But you have t’ go away,” Kim Dokja insists, letting out a loud, obnoxious cough. “You’re gonna die.”
“If anyone should go away, it’s you. You’re sleeping in my room,” Yoo Joonghyuk points out, but there are no barbs in his tone for all the exhaustion pulling at his eye sockets. Rather, the sight of Kim Dokja vulnerably swaddled up in his bed makes his gut squirm with something he can’t put into words. “Stop worrying about pointless things.”
“I’s not pointless.” A crease appears between Kim Dokja’s eyebrows. He shifts under the quilt. “I don’t wan’ you t’ die.”
Yoo Joonghyuk amusedly says, “Is that so?”
“Mhm,” Kim Dokja mumbles, drunk on sleep, and if it weren’t for the fever boiling his brain, he likely would already be unconscious. “If you die, I wouldn’ know what to do.”
Immediately, Yoo Joonghyuk raises a brow. He knows it’s just the fever messing with his head, that Kim Dokja would rather bite off his tongue than admit such a thing to him, but it’s strange to hear regardless. There are already several things wrong with that statement.
For one, Yoo Joonghyuk won’t die. Kim Dokja himself had told him that things wouldn’t get better just because he regresses. And even if he does somehow die, just the notion of Kim Dokja at a loss of how to move forward from his death seems unfathomable at every angle. It wasn’t a fluke that led them this far through the scenarios, and even now as it stands, Yoo Joonghyuk has a nagging suspicion that the prophet knows far more than he lets on.
“You know everything, don’t you?” Yoo Joonghyuk hums. “No matter what, you’ll always find a way.”
“Not really,” Kim Dokja slurs deliriously, eyelashes fluttering. His bleary eyes open ever so slightly, just enough to look right at Yoo Joonghyuk. “If y’ die, I might die, too.”
It’s just the fever, he repeats to himself, but it feels like he’s just taken a peek through the shrouds of mental barriers and mystery Kim Dokja has layered himself in to quite an unpleasant discovery.
“I’ll kill you if that happens,” Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly says. “You promised to reach the end of the scenarios. I won’t go down so easily, but you can’t give up on that goal, with or without me.”
“You can’t stop m’ if you’re dead.”
“I could beat it into you while I’m still alive.”
“As long as you’re not dead,” Kim Dokja whispers softly, as fragile as the wind. “I don’ know how I’ll go on if you’re gone. You’re th’ most important thing in m’ life.”
The admission robs the breath out of his lungs. This time, it’s hard for Yoo Joonghyuk to ignore the lurch in his chest. He’s always thought his companion may harbour some morbid fascination with sacrifice (perhaps suicide), and sadly enough, he’s probably right. He isn’t sure how to feel about that last piece of information, though. It feels like a knife between his ribs, but the blood that fills his lungs is hot.
Yoo Joonghyuk frowns. “You shouldn’t say things like that to just anybody.”
“Joon’hyuk’s not anybody,” Kim Dokja tells him. “You're...my protagonist. M’ hero.”
Right after that, he tugs on Yoo Joonghyuk’s hand, bringing his palm to cup his cheek. Kim Dokja’s skin is flushed, scalding hot as he nuzzles into Yoo Joonghyuk’s calloused touch. The heat spreads to his gut, and maybe he’s sick too, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks.
“I’m not as great as everyone thinks,” he says, mildly. “I’m hardly any hero. I can’t save the world.”
“You saved mine.” Kim Dokja squeezes his hand, tangling their fingers together so intimately that Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath hitches. “You saved m’. And now, I’ll save you.”
It takes considerable strength to remember that Kim Dokja is alive now, not impaled by Yoo Joonghyuk’s sword and uttering the same words that have since been haunting him at the back of his head. Yet none of his questions leaves his tongue, choked by the faint smile of content on Kim Dokja’s face.
“...Kim Dokja?”
Silence.
He feels peaceful breaths in his palm, and after some hesitation, carefully tucks the quilt under Kim Dokja’s chin. It’s odd seeing how unguarded his companion is, comfortably lulled to sleep right under him.
For a moment, Yoo Joonghyuk wonders if this is how the man would look when the scenarios are over.
“I’ll put everything into this regression, so you have to keep your promise,” he says gently, even if the other doesn’t hear it. “I’ll take on any suffering that comes your way, so you can’t die until you show me the end.”
For the first time, Yoo Joonghyuk gives in to the itch to brush Kim Dokja’s bangs aside. There’s still time to figure the reader out, he thinks.