north

By late afternoon, the Stray Kids dorm smelled faintly of bleach, peppermint, and despair.

Minho had boiled up a light chicken soup for the fallen members, and everyone had tried their hand at a bowl.

All except for Felix.

“Lixie, please.” Hyunjin begged, prodding at the younger mans shoulder yet again. “You really need to try… you’re dehydrated, you literally have nothing in you.“

Felix just groaned, not making even the slightest attempt at moving. He was sprawled out on Chan’s bed, blonde hair sticking out in every direction and face hidden somewhere in a heap of pillows.

Hyunjin knew the younger could be stubborn sometimes, but this was on a whole new level.

Even more concerning than his obduracy was the fact that even though Felix’s temperature kept rising, his skin felt dry, like all the moisture had been sapped out of him. And well, in a way, it had..

“Yongbok-ah..” It was Minho’s turn to speak now. Sitting beside Hyunjin on the edge of the mattress, he carried a stoic calm the former lacked. “You know how this ends... and we all know you don’t actually want to go to the hospital, so come on now.”

That finally evoked a response.

Felix turned over, peeking out his burrow with a resigned look. “I’m just s-so tired,” he whispered brokenly, eyes blood shot and weary. “I don’t wanna.. huhh.. don’t wanna go back to the bathroom again…”

Hyunjin and Minho shared a helpless, sympathetic glance, the kind that said everything words couldn’t. Oh, how their hearts ached to see him like this.

“We know…” Hyunjin began, running a hand up Felix’ warm back. “We know. I’m so sorry, baby, but a trip to the hospital is longer…”

Minho pressed his lips together in what was supposed to be a half-smile. His voice was soft and unusually sweet when he spoke. “And we’ll help you if you need it, okay? It’s… it’s gonna be okay.”

Felix let out a shaky sigh, burying his face back into the pillows for a moment before muttering, “O-okay… okay.” His voice was small, hesitant, but there was a thread of trust woven through it.

Hyunjin’s shoulders slumped in quiet relief, and Minho let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“Good, that’s good, Felix.” Hyunjin murmured encouragingly, brushing a loose strand of hair from Felix’s forehead.

Minho nodded. “Yeah. No rush. Just… slow and steady.“ he lifted up a spoonful of soup, eyes soft. “Now say aahh..”

—

When the evening rolled around, the dorm was quiet. Too quiet.

Seungmin and Hyunjin had done another round of disinfecting, masked up and feeling exhaustion begin to pull at their bones.

Minho had taken over Felix duty while Chan shuffled around doing the laundry, cleaning up sick buckets, and checking vitals like he was a nurse on the world's worst (and longest) shift.

None of them said it aloud, but it hung in the air between them like a charged storm cloud; someone else is going to fall soon.

…. they just didn't expect it to be Chan.

—

An hour passed, then two.

Bang Chan stayed on his feet, running between rooms like clockwork (even when the other healthy members gathered for a much needed dinner break). He helped Jisung clean up again, swapped out Changbin’s puke bowl, and sat with Jeongin when he cried deliriously for his mum in the middle of a fever spike.

He ignored the first few waves of nausea, brushing them off as stress. He hadn't really eaten properly, so of course his stomach felt off. His head was pounding, but he'd barely had a wink or sleep. His legs trembled, but he'd barely sat down.

Every symptom could easily be explained by the taxing day he’d had…

But the signs were coming in hot, each one more pressing than the last.

It wasn't until Chan dropped the thermometer and had to brace against the wall to keep from falling that Minho caught on. He saw his stumble from the hallway, freezing in place as his eyes narrowed— like a cat with its eyes fixed on a prey.

Chan couldn’t have lied his way out of it even if he tried

"Hyung.” Minho's voice was unusually sharp, demanding his immediate attention. “Stop."

"I'm fine." Chan protested, straightening up again, but Minho was unbending. He wasn’t that easy to fool.

The dancer dropped the supplies he was sorting, eyebrows drawn as he stepped closer. "You're shaking."

It felt like one of those eerie first symptoms in a zombie movie.. right before everything went wrong.

"I'm-" Chan swayed again, his vision momentarily swirling out of focus. For a second, he feared he would keel over, ears ringing, but he didn’t get the opportunity to.

Minho caught him by the elbow, tightening his grip when Chan's knees buckled slightly beneath him. This time, his voice left no room to argue,

"Hyung. Sit down. Now."

Chan allowed himself to be lowered to the ground, but the second his butt hit the floor, everything hit him full-force. The fatigue, the nausea he’d suppressed, the sweat clinging to his back.

A tsunami of pain erupted in his gut, and his head swam in dizzying waves, his vision turning spotty. His hands instinctively flew to his stomach, and he curled in on himself with a shaky gasp.

“Oh no.” Seungmin said warily, crouching beside him with a frown. Where’d he’d come from, Chan didn’t know. "That’s not a good sign…”

Chan gave a weak laugh, voice strained. "Tell me about it.." His skin had gone ghostly pale in the blink of an eye, a cold sweat broken out along his brow.

And before anyone could react, Chan was actively gagging into the same bucket he'd just cleaned out for Jisung.

Seungmin huffed resignedly, sweeping his bangs out of his face and keeping them clear from the line of fire. Minho stayed steady on the other side, his hand pressed flat to Chan’s back as he retched.

The sound of their leader forcefully emptying his stomach echoed down the hall, and amidst the chaos, another groan arose from the sick room.

Minho and Seungmin exchanged a glance— a weary kind that said “here we go again.”

But before either of them could decide who would stay with Chan, and who would respond to the new distress call, Hyunjin appeared in the hallway, looking visibly frazzled.

He spun on his heel, caught between directions, trying to decide where to go first. Who needed him? What could he do? Someone was being sick, but where—?

When he saw Chan on the floor with Minho and Seungmin by his side, gagging into a bucket, Hyunjin froze dead in his tracks.

The colour drained from his face like water from a sink, his heart plummeting straight to his feet.

“Fuck— oh no… no, no, don’t tell me he’s..” Hyunjin tried to mask it, but his voice trembled, fraying at the edges. Hell, he just wanted to sit down and cry.

Seungmin nodded slowly, rising to his feet with a grim expression as he reached for a roll of napkins.

“I’m afraid it’s official…” he said with a sigh. “The boss is down.”

—

By nightfall, the line of causalities was five and counting. And the medics? The medics had been reduced to a crestfallen trio.

Minho had taken over Chan's "command center" with its base in the living room. Second oldest equaled second in command, naturally enough.

Seungmin had started tracking fluid intake and symptoms on a tiny whiteboard, scribbling down temperatures with all the seriousness of a field doctor.

Hyunjin, meanwhile, made fresh cold packs, disinfected surfaces, and stayed juuust out of reach of any coughing, gagging, or suspicious stomach grumbles.

For the most part, anyway. His heart inevitably melted to a puddle whenever one of the sick members looked up at him with those pitiful puppy-dog eyes…

Cool, calm and indifferent? Not a chance. He couldn’t be. Not when they looked at him like that.

Jeongin, in particular, was his Achilles’ heel. If Hyunjin ended up sick himself, he knew it would almost certainly be from his inability to resist coddling the poor maknae.

At 9PM sharp, Hyunjin stood in the kitchen, stirring around the same pot of rice porridge Minho had begrudgingly entrusted him not to burn (he’d only been given the task because Seungmin already had set their noodles ablaze earlier in the day…)

“I hate this.” Hyunjin groaned, earning a soft hum in response from Seungmin, who was sitting with his legs dangling off the counter, snacking on a bag of hot Cheetos.

“This is like those zombie outbreak movies,” The older boy continued, staring into the porridge like it held all the answers he needed. “just with a lot more vomiting and diarrhea..”

Seungmin stopped chewing, narrowing his eyes in a tired glare. “Wow, thanks.” He muttered dryly, dropping a Cheeto back into the bag before shoving it aside. “Guess I didn’t need my appetite…”

Hyunjin shrugged sheepishly, a hint of guilt crossing his features. “Seriously though,” he said, suddenly solemn. “We’re outnumbered here. Our leader has fallen…. Minnie, we won’t survive the week.”

"We will..” Seungmin countered, though his voice was smaller than he intended, not nearly as confident as he wanted it to sound.

Their eyes tracked down the hallway as the way too familiar sound of vomiting echoed through the walls. Fluorescent lights gleamed through the slit of the bathroom door, and a soft voice rumbled from the other side, calm and steadfast.

“You think he needs help..?” Hyunjin asked quietly, stirring around the pot harder, hand shaking from the strain.

Seungmin hesitated, then shook his head. “No. Lino-hyungs got it.. let’s just.. let’s just focus on the porridge.”

-

The bathroom light cast an unbearably harsh glow over the tiles. Chan was slumped against the wall beside the toilet, his forehead pressed to his arm, the other hand clutching the edge of the toilet like a lifeline.

Minho had lost count of how many times he’d been in this same position over the past 24 hours; kneeling next to someone shaking and pale, watching the life drain out of them one heave at a time.

Surely, by now, he could be considered an expert in the field.

He’d already helped Chan through what he hoped was the worst of it, but his hyung hadn’t exactly bounced back… His breathing came shallow and uneven, every exhale trembling and thin with lingering nausea.

“Hey,” Minho’s voice was low, gentle but firm as he crouched beside him. “You done for now?”

Chan made a noise that could’ve been a groan or a laugh; it was hard to tell which. “Define ‘done’..” he said humourlessly, voice raspy and raw from the excessive upchucking.

Minho sighed softly, silently grabbing a towel and running it under cool water before wringing it out. He pressed it to the back of Chan’s neck, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. “You’re burning up...”

“No, no,” Chan insisted, shaking his head weakly. “‘M okay… just… tired.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Minho asked flatly, eyebrows raising. God, how foolishly stubborn this man could be.

Or if not for his stubbornness.. maybe, just maybe, Chan was already so feverish he’d officially lost his grip on reality.

“You’ve been ‘just tired’ since 7 o’clock this morning..” the dancer countered, “Now you’re pale, sweating and throwing up. That’s not ‘just tired’, that’s sick.”

Chan didn’t answer right away— partially because he felt too queasy to speak, partially because he knew Minho was right. He just leaned forward again, elbows braced on his knees and eyes squeezed shut as another wave of nausea rolled through him.

A gurgle reverberated up his chest.

Minho didn’t so much as flinch when Chan retched again, because he had expected as much.

Instead, he reached out, steadying a hand on his shoulder and rubbing slow, grounding circles over the tense muscles. By now, it was instinct driven more than anything.

“Breathe through it,” he murmured. “You’ll be okay, Chan-ah. Just let it pass.”

Chan obeyed, if only because he didn’t have the strength to argue or push him away. The bile burned its way up his throat as he got sick again, stinging vile and bitter through his nasal cavity.

Even when the first torrent dwindled to a trickle, his stomach kept clenching, twisting and turning until every last drop in his stomach had been ejected. How his body still had anything left to give was beyond him.

When the heaves finally eased, Chan sagged back against the wall, his head lolling weakly in Minho’s direction. His hair was doused in sweat, his skin clammy to the touch.

“Sorry…”

Minho frowned, supporting his head carefully against his shoulder as he reached over to flip the toilet lid down. “For what?”

Chan hesitated, then shook his head with a faint, almost childish petulance. “Forget it…’s dumb..”

Minho exhaled sharply through his nose, unamused. “Nope. That’s not gonna work on me and you know it. Speak.”

Chan swallowed thickly, his voice shaky as he spoke. “I just… ‘feel bad for getting sick cuz.. I’m the oldest..” he hesitated again, eyelashes fluttering. “I-I should be taking care of the others…”

“Well, you’re right about it being dumb.” Minho deadpanned, but then his expression softened. “You’ve been doing just that this entire time… taking care of everyone like some superhuman nurse. You can’t help that you got sick too. It was only a matter of time, really..”

He paused, allowing a moment for the words to sink in, then added with a shrug, “Viruses don’t care if you’re royalty. They’ll getcha either way.”

Chan let out a weak huff, leaning into Minho’s shoulder in quiet surrender. Even if he felt like a sack of shit, caught in the throes of the virus, at least Minho could lift a little of the guilt off his chest.

Minho rested his cheek lightly against Chan’s temple, letting the steadiness in his presence do most of the talking. “You’ve done your part,” he mumbled. “Now, let me help you.”

He grabbed another towel, this one dry, and dabbed it carefully along Chan’s hairline, wiping away the sweat.

Chan closed his eyes, letting the words wash over him, and for the first time in hours, he allowed himself to fully exhale.

The sickness hadn’t gone away— quite frankly, it had only just begun, but for a moment, the weight of responsibility lifted off his shoulders. Just a little.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Minho said as Chan sagged against him, looking closer to unconsciousness with each passing second. “You can’t sleep on the bathroom floor. We only have one…”

Chan made a soft, noncommittal sound, halfway between defiance and surrender, but stretched out his arms anyway.

Like a damn toddler, Minho thought with a fond smirk.

It took effort to get him up, Chan was heavy and pliant in his arms, but eventually Minho managed to get him standing, one arm looped around his waist for support.

“Come on,” Minho murmured, a little breathless. “Sick bay for you too, General Bahng.”

When Minho pushed open the door to the sick room, a wave of warm, feverish air greeted them, tinged with the faint smell of disinfectant. Changbin and Jisung were curled up on their respective beds, both deep in restless sleep.

Minho led chan to the third bed, the largest, where Jeongin remained nestled under a mountain of covers. The maknae stirred in his corner, half awake and gazing at the newcomers with hazy eyes. “Oh, no.. Channie-hyung…?”

“Hey, Innie..” Chan greeted quietly, earning a concerned look from the maknae. Jeongin was still pale, but he looked a little better, Minho thought. Though maybe it just seemed that way in contrast to Chan’s rapid decline…

“Move over a bit, Innie,” Minho whispered as Chan settled down on the edge of the mattress, swaying like a boat caught in a swell. “Channie-hyung’s joining you.”

Jeongin blinked a couple of times, dazed but obedient, shifting to the side and making room without a word.

Minho helped Chan ease down beside him, the leader looking halfway asleep before his head even hit the pillow. The maknae’s warmth, even in sickness, was oddly comforting. Chan’s arms wrapped loosely around himself as he curled up on his side, finally allowing his body a moment to relax.

“Alright..” Minho hummed, placing a bucket securely by the side of the bed. “I got the superior bucket for you right here, okay? Now rest up, soldier..”

He adjusted the blanket over both of them, lingering for just a moment— just long enough to make sure Chan was breathing evenly, Jeongin’s hand loosely curled against his arm, before quietly backing out of the room.

11:20PM

The apartment was eerily quiet except for the occasional groan or retch. The sick room, now housing Jeongin, Jisung, Changbin, and Chan, had finally settled into the stillness of night.

At last, Felix too had finally fallen asleep, curled tightly in a blanket burrito back in Chan's bedroom. Now, the three who remained standing finally had a moment to breathe.

Like night shift nurses, they sat huddled around the dinner table, drinking ginger tea and whispering war plans. Seungmin was wiping at the whiteboard, scribbling notes with droopy eyes.

They hadn’t even started talking about how to deal with the night that was so rapidly approaching, dreading the topic as a whole.

All they wanted was rest, but resting while running a poor man’s infirmary was a scarce treat they probably couldn’t afford.

Hyunjin collapsed down in a chair after his last disinfecting duty, resting his forehead on folded arms. “We need reinforcements...”

Minho glanced over from where he was absentmindedly stirring a spoonful of honey around his tea. “There are no reinforcements,” he said quietly. “This is it. We're it."

Hyunjin closed his eyes and mumbled something under his breath that might have been a prayer or a curse. Possibly both.

They sat in silence for a moment longer, listening to the distant sound of groans down the hall. As they grew more persistent, the three men tensed up, ears piqued and senses on high alert.

A door clicked open, feet shuffled, another door closed. Someone retched harshly, the sound echoing harrowingly through the thin walls. It sounded like Chan— again.

With a heavy sigh, Seungmin stood from his chair, but Minho lifted his hand, quietly signaling him to stay seated as he bravely volunteered himself to the task instead.

Seungmin gave him a look, one that practically spelled are you sure? in bold letters, but Minho nodded. He was sure, and Seungmin looked every bit as exhausted as the rest of them.

If he could spare the poor kid, he would.

"Day three of the apocalypse. We’re outnumbered,” Hyunjin muttered somberly, holding his head like he was on the brink of insanity. "Five infected. Three survivors. Hope dwindling…”

Seungmin rolled his eyes, taking a long sip of his beverage. “We’ll live one more day, Mr.Hwang.. Innies already on the mend.” His voice took on a more genuine note, hopefulness and determination woven into his words.

“We can do this.”

The silence was heavy, they were all exhausted beyond compare, but a tiny spark of hope was ignited. And they wouldn’t let it fade away.

Not without another fight.

Before Minho got ready to leave the room and assist their fallen leader once more, Hyunjin suddenly reached out a hand, hovering it above the table.

“Nurse-racha?”

Seungmin and Minho exchanged a look before they both reached out, stacking their hands on top of Hyunjin’s in turn. In unison, they sealed a silent agreement, weary smiles tugging at their lips.

“Nurse-racha.”

____________________________________________

— extra scene—

The following day, Jeongin was looking more like himself again, the spark having returned to his eyes. He was still weak, but his fever had lowered significantly, and his appetite was resurfacing.

As his condition improved and his puke risk neared zero, he was roomed with Felix in Chan’s bedroom.

Changbin had finally managed a cracker and some water without immediate regret, and even Felix had replenished some much needed electrolytes thanks to Seungmin’s expertly made Gatorade popsicles.

Jisung had declared himself dead at least twice more, but he was resting, swaddled into an immobilised cocoon on the bed.

Beside him on the next bed lay Chan, resting uneasily as he drifted in and out of fever ridden dreams.

Minho, Hyunjin and Seungmin lingered in the doorway, surveying the room like three generals assessing the damage on a battlefield. For the first time since the outbreak began, they allowed themselves a small, shared sigh of relief.

The worst of it was, hopefully, behind them.

Hyunjin brushed a stray strand of hair from his face and muttered, half to himself, half to the others, “We… we actually did it?”

Seungmin let a small smile tug at the corner of his lips, jabbing his elbow gently into Hyunjin’s side. “Don’t jinx it,” he said. “But yeah… we did it.”

Minho leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, a tired but genuine grin on his face. “Good job, guys.”

For a moment, the room was quiet, filled only with the gentle, even breaths of those still resting.

The past two days had been a bonding experience they wouldn’t forget anytime soon, and in the quiet aftermath, they all felt it deep down.

Blood, sweat and tears— they had made it through.

Together.