#caretaker!soobin

“Agh,” he complains to himself. “Feet, come on.”

Is he tired? Is that what it is?

Yeonjun reaches his water bottle and unscrews the cap, wondering why his throat feels kind of tight. Not allergen tight, but an odd feeling, almost restrictive, as if something in his throat is what’s giving him issues. With a deep sigh, he subdues whatever may be bothering his insides in exchange for taking a sip.

And it’s an awful idea. The moment the warmed water passed over his tongue and down his throat, he could already feel it threatening to come back for a return visit.

“Come on, come on,” he mumbles to himself, his fingers gripping the water bottle.

As he takes another sip, he realizes quite quickly what he’s experiencing here—and it’s just… nausea.

His stomach feels unsettled, and the moment the water touched it, it shattered something solid in him. His mouth feels wet already, saliva beginning to pool around his tongue. He swallows roughly to subdue it.

It doesn’t work, anyway.

Immediately, the floor doesn’t seem so solid, and neither does Yeonjun’s resolve. With shaky hands, Yeonjun swallows again, and thus begins the internal monologue of: don’t throw up – don’t throw up – don’t throw up–

And it doesn’t work. His stomach immediately summersaults and he barely has time to put the water bottle on the counter before he rushes to the small trash can, hunching over. It’s barely two feet from the ground, but it helps. He gives the can a rough spit, but it doesn’t do anything.

Immediately, Yeonjun is angry. After all these hours of working to get this done and his timing has to be the worst. He doesn’t have time. This is a non-issue.

And his stomach seizes up again. A cramp the size of a tsunami waves across him and cause him to curl down further, bringing the tall member to hover barely over the can. He doesn’t have time to focus on another wave of cramps before he just feels it come pouring upward. Warm, thick, and full of chunks, and it reeks. It felt like undigested breakfast, warm tea and cold rice working its way into the trash can at an alarming rate. Yeonjun feels shaky, so he places his hands on his knees to brace himself as another mouthful rips its way up. The noise he makes is inhumane, annoyed by how his stomach hurts, his his back is throbbing, how he has to deal with all of this in the first place. He didn’t make these plans, for sure; he wanted to be done, go home.

He coughs up another heavy mouthful, breath heaving with each effort. He hurts, aches, and he’s not getting any relief as his body continues to expel everything his stomach may have contained over the past week. Barely another cough in, a hard spit, and he’s back to coughing up bile and stomach acid once he feels himself running empty.

He feels woozy. His vision spins for a moment, and the sound of the choreographer from the speaker goes almost silent for a solid few seconds. Yeonjun’s vision blurs, then returns as another cramp seizes him. Another mouthful. He’s so shaky, he can feel himself almost willing his knees to keep him up while he spits another mouthful.

And after a moment, it stops. He’s spent, exhausted, and he crumples almost immediately to kneeling on the ground. Without a napkin and with no strength to get a tissue from the box on the side table, he merely uses the back of his hand to wipe at his mouth and spits another rough mouthful into the trash can.

“God… that fucking hurt,” he mumbles to himself.

The choreographer’s voice is too loud. The speaker is a little ways away, the remote nearby, but Yeonjun can’t bring himself to make it over there. His head feels too disjointed, almost feeling far too faint. And hot, everything feels so overwhelmingly hot. Sweat plasters his shirt to his back, and the air in the room isn’t cool enough to combat how his temperature must have spiked.

Tilting over, he merely lays down on the floor and pulls his phone from his pocket. When he opens the screen, the bright light brings the nausea back so he turns it back off. Just a few minutes, he tells himself. He’ll just wait, rest a moment, he should start feeling better in a few minutes. His eyes close.

~*~

Yeonjun isn’t sure when he fell asleep or what happened, but he awakens to Soobin’s voice on the phone and a hand gently stroking his hair. He groans, only to hear Soobin’s deeper voice hushing him softly.

“It’s okay, hyung. It’s okay, you’re okay.’

Yeonjun, strangely, believes him. A brief chill runs down his spine, but when he curls in more, he can feel the heat of Soobin’s thigh underneath his head, and the comfort of a thick sweatshirt draped over him. He just pulls his hands into the fabric more. It’s oddly very comfortable here, and with Soobin’s long fingers combing through his long locks, he almost begins to drift off again.

As he settles, he hears Soobin’s voice begin again. He must be talking to someone; Yeonjun’s vision is blurred and teary when he tries to look up, so he gives up quickly and closes his eyes. “Yeah, he just woke up for a moment. Mhmm… he hasn’t since I’ve been here, but he’s not mumbling anymore.” A pause. “Yeah, I’ll wait here.” And then: “Yeonjunie?”

“Mm?” Yeonjun mumbles in acknowledgement. He tilts his face but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Think you’re awake enough to tell me what happened?” The request isn’t unkind and Soobin’s keeping his voice low, almost as if he senses Yeonjun’s growing headache. His fingertips rake along Yeonjun’s scalp and it’s so gentle and comforting that it almost lulls him back to sleep.

“Yeonjunie?”

“’M up…” Yeonjun grumbles. His mouth feels full of cotton. It takes him another moment before he just sighs. “Dunno… tired.”

“I know… were you feeling sick all day?”

That receives a grunt and the smallest of head shakes. Yeonjun doesn’t think he felt terrible all day; actually, things were going well for the first few hours, he’s sure. Soobin doesn’t push him further, but he does pause in his hair rubbing to place a hand on Yeonjun’s forehead. Yeonjun whines, trying to tilt his scalp back to Soobin’s hand, and it gets a small chuckle from the young man as he returns his head to scratching his scalp.

“Yeonjunie?” the older one hears again, but with a soft groan, he merely pushes his head back into the sweatshirt and falls asleep again.

~*~

When he wakes up again, he’s once again struck with an overwhelming urge to vomit. He pushes himself upright, eyes opening to bright white lights, and the nausea rushes to turn his stomach inside out. And immediately there’s a hand on his shoulder, leaning him forward. He can briefly feel a bucket in his hands before he sticks his face inward and gags. But only a stringy mouthful of water and spit and bile escape him. He groans, but it turns into a gag and he manages to cough up a little more bile. With a strained cough, he spits, and feels the edge of a cup placed on his lips.

“Take a mouthful and try to rinse,” Soobin’s voice cuts in softly.

It’s commanding enough but gentle at the same time; even when speaking like authority, Soobin’s voice is always so soothing. He truly is a fantastic leader. Yeonjun just does as he’s told, taking in a sip and relishing in the sensation of cold water on his tongue before he feels something gritty and slimy in his mouth. It’s almost enough to make him gag again, but he shuts his mouth to try and avoid thinking about what it actually is and just spits the water into the bowl. He rinses a second time, before Soobin tells him to just sip slowly.

“What—” but it takes Yeonjun a moment. He still feels dizzy, he thinks; not really any pain, but he doesn’t feel very secure sitting up. His head leans forward, and a gentle hand directs him to a shoulder. Judging by the scent from earlier, it’s Soobin again. “What… did I miss?”

Soobin sighs softly, and brings the cup back to his lips. “Another sip. Yeonjunie-hyung, you’re sick, you know.”

With that, Yeonjun just groans. He doesn’t have the time, but he guesses his body made sure he did.

“Your fever’s going down, though… But this is the third time you’ve thrown up in here. The hospital’s going to keep you to get you hydrated again.”

It is? Yeonjun doesn’t even recall throwing up in here, much less being brought in here at all. That gets him to raise his head, eyes open to face Soobin. As they make eye contact, their leader smiles, relief showing in his eyes. “Feeling more awake? You’ve been out of it for the better part of three hours.”

“What happened?” he mumbles.

Apparently, as Soobin explains, Yeonjun answered his call. When he hadn’t come back for the two to leave or answered his texts, Soobin had called his phone and, half-asleep, he answered and mumbled about his stomach hurting. Soobin pieced his location together by the choreographer’s voice in the background and found him. A medical check in the practice room, a trip to the hospital in the van, blood work, and vomiting three times while asking the same question was what led them to that moment.

But he was lucid now. His skin, albeit pale, was slowly regaining its honey soft color. And he’s being held overnight, IV pushing Tylenol and saline through his veins to keep him hydrated.

With a groan, he merely puts his head back on Soobin’s shoulder, which gets a laugh from the younger leader. “Thanks, man.”

“For what, taking care of you?”

That elicits a small nod while Yeonjun closes his eyes. He’s exhausted, even though he’s been sleeping on and off this whole time.