Hyun might be, as the kids say, crashing out.

Or Haru says that at least, he learned it from TikTok, whatever.

The person he loves is sleeping with someone else, his best friend started helping. His members are all playing the sex hunger games, or something, and Hyun is failing not one but two of his classes.

The teacher says he can bring his grade up if he turns in his final papers and scores well on the midterm, but that’s beside the point.

His throat hurts, he thinks he might be coming down with a cold, and there are sex noises coming through the wall. Again.

The soundproofing in this dorm is not good, but then again it’s not terrible because Hyun has screamed into his pillow five times tonight and no one has come to see if he hurt himself and the neighbors haven’t called the police.

He’ll give the walls a C+ for effort.

His throat hurts more from all the screaming. He’s afraid to go into the kitchen for more tea about it, and all he can think to do about it is punch his pillow and kick his feet against the mattress, which sends his laptop careening to the floor.

No, no, no, he had his paper on it.

When he picks it back up again, the screen stays dark and it won’t start.

He had his paper on it. The paper that he needs to not flunk this course, which brings us back to the whole screaming thing.

The sixth time’s the charm!

He’ll give the soundproofing a B-, actually.

Hyun might be having a nervous breakdown.

* * *

Rui slinks into the kitchen the next morning looking at once enviable and pitiable. He’s clutching his head and muttering under his breath in Mandarin, and the sound of the refrigerator closing—his own doing—makes him wince as if it was as loud as a gunshot.

And yet there’s a loose, easy languor to his limbs as he slides into the chair across from Hyun with the leftovers of yesterday’s gopchang jeongol and a bowl of instant rice. His eyes are barely open beneath his beanie and hood, and he eats without saying a word.

Hyun swallows heavily and then breaks into a series of hacking coughs.

Rui looks up, with eyes suddenly as shrewd and alert as a panther’s. “Hyunnie, are you sick?”

Hyun shakes his head. “I’m not. I think I just stayed up too late last night.”

He gathers his things and goes to put them in the sink, wanting to leave before this turns into more of a conversation.

Unfortunately, that tickle in his throat is back as he’s putting his dirty cup in the sink, and although he tries to smother it, it still comes out as a kind of coughing fit that makes him choke worse than if he’d just let it out in the first place.

Rui’s chair screeches against the laminate flooring as he sits up. “No, that sounds like a bad cough. Don’t run off. You don’t have to talk to me, but let me at least make you some of that honey drink—”

“I’m fine!” Hyun says, and it comes out more sharply than he’d intended.

Rui’s face falls, and Hyun can’t—he can’t deal with this right now. He’s going to want to comfort Rui, and he can’t—he’s still so angry every time he looks at him.

He turns around and walks quickly down the hall before he can do or say anything else, his heart pounding even as he feels a pang of guilt for leaving his dirty dishes in the sink for someone else to clean up. He’ll make up for it by doing all the dishes for a couple of days.

“What was that?” Wumuti asks, concerned as she passes by Hyun in the hallway—Hyun, who makes a hurried, cursory apology before brushing past her and striding quickly away.

In the kitchen, Rui looks stricken. He’s biting his lip and trying not to cry as he clutches something to his chest.

“What’s in your hand?”

Rui hands over the box of medicinal tea that she’d picked up the last time she was home—Hyun had really liked it, the time he’d tried it, and he’d said it had made him feel better the last time they all caught laryngitis.

“Can you give this to Hyun?” Rui asks. “He won’t… from me, he…”

She quickly thrusts the box into Wumuti’s hand and hurries down the hallway in the opposite direction, leaving Wumuti standing in the kitchen clutching a box of tea and thinking it’s too early to have this much of a headache.

“Mom?” Haru chirps when he comes into the kitchen a short while later when Wumuti is standing at the tea kettle.

He props his head on her shoulder from behind, hooking his chin over it and leaning into her, wrapping his arms around her soft, warm middle and nuzzling into her like a koala.

“Morning, baby,” Wumuti says, clearing her throat and shaking her head a bit to clear it. She favors Haru with a smile. “How’s your head?”

“Haru’s okay,” Haru chirps.

Wumuti squints at him, trying to discern the difference between the wonders of youth after a night of irresponsible drinking and Haru just being a little liar in an attempt not to concern her.

“Really,” Haru says, shaking her affectionately. “Stop squinting, you’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

“And then I’ll be ugly?” Wumuti half-jokes.

“And then I’ll have to kiss them all every morning and it’ll take even longer to get out of bed.”

He nods toward the box of Chinese tea on the counter. “Someone isn’t feeling well?”

“Hyunnie. I think. It wasn’t exactly… clear.”

She frowns.

“Do you want me to bring it to him?” Haru asks.

Wumuti is about to say no, but… that might actually do the both of them good. Get them started on repairing their relationship, if Haru could do a few more nice things for Hyun.

“Sure, baby. Thank you.”

Haru nods and uses his boyfriend privileges to nuzzle into Wumuti a little more, soaking up all the love he can get to fuel him first thing in the morning.

Muti-hyung is so soft and nice-smelling and good to hug that he almost falls asleep to the feeling of her heart beating through the back of her ribcage. He startles a little when she finally moves to pour the freshly boiled water, rousing with a yawn that curls his tongue like a little puppy and a pouty little tilt of his head that makes Wumuti have to kiss her way all the way down to his mouth for a proper good morning.

* * *

Hyun hears a knock on the door, which means it probably isn’t Wumuti.

He considers the relative merits of pretending to have fallen asleep again. If it’s Rui, he can’t…

“Hyung? It’s me,” says Haru’s voice, muffled through the door.

Oh. Haru. That’s…

Hyun really does consider not opening the door. Just because he’s Wumuti’s favorite doesn’t mean that Hyun has to let him in.

“I have… sick-person tea, from Muti-hyung,” Haru adds, as if he knows what Hyun is thinking. Probably he does. Hyun needs to teach him the word for ginseng. “She wanted me to bring it to you, but if you don’t want… I’ll leave it on the floor, but you have to pick it up as soon as I leave, okay? Because I don’t want someone to kick it over.”

“No, don’t—” Hyun trips over his blanket a little, trying to get to the door in time to pull it open. “You don’t have to leave it on the floor. Here, you can just give it to me, okay?”

Haru smiles at him and cocks his head.

“Here you go, hyung. What are you doing up? Go on and get back into bed, I’ll put it on your night table, okay?”

The way Haru says things in Korean sometimes is really charming, and right now Hyun is charmed despite himself. He doesn’t use the words the way a native would use them, sometimes twisting them into odd shapes or inventing new phrases that Hyun is pretty sure no one has used before.

Sometimes they end up passing them around, the four of them, absorbing them into the odd and idiosyncratic patois forever developing in their petri dish of a house.

“Um. No?” Hyun tries, sounding more uncertain than he wishes.

“If you’re sick, you need to get in bed!” Haru says with a certain nearly menacing cheerfulness.

Hyun is significantly easier to menace than he looks, but he mostly gets back into bed because he feels like crap and whatever is happening is confusing enough that he just does it without thinking.

Man, not thinking feels nice.

“I’m not that kind of sick,” Hyun tells Haru.

“Okay,” Haru says, while still standing there and making sure that Hyun is sufficiently in bed and horizontal to call off whatever weird maknae attack this is.

He pulls the covers up to Hyun’s neck, making them snug and cozy until he’s satisfied by whatever criteria he’s looking for with a critical eye.

It feels strange in a way that makes Hyun’s eyes feel hot. He can’t remember the last time that someone’s tucked him in, or even looked after him this way when he was sick.

“My mom says that when you get sick, you have to rest a lot. It’s good to not even get out of bed, because the more resting you do, the better your body will be able to fight off the bad bug. So don’t even move, okay? Just yell—” well if his throat hurts, then maybe not. “Just text us, and we’ll get it for you, okay?”

“Haru, I think that’s not—” Hyun starts to struggle to sit up—this is ridiculous, he’s not that sick. He needs to rewrite that paper and get his computer to the repair shop today and pray to the gods that it’s just the screen that’s broken—but Haru pushes him gently back down. “I mean, I think it’s good to exercise a bit when you’re sick? Get the blood flowing, breathe some fresh air?”

“The air in Seoul is disgusting at this time of year,” Haru says matter-of-factly. “So wet. I could open a window for you but—” He says something in Japanese that Hyun can’t understand but the vibes are derisive.

“Okay, but the part about the blood flow—”

“Hyung, are you calling my mom wrong?” Haru asks, looking Hyun dead in the eye.

Hyun shrinks back into his covers. “No, not at all. Sorry, Mrs. Kato. I was wrong, Mrs. Kato.”

Haru’s hackles shrink back down and then he’s a little fox puppy again. He pushes Hyun’s phone closer to him and tucks it into Hyun’s side, on the top of Hyun’s blanket burrito.

“Okay, so just text us if you need anything. Goodnight, hyung.”

Haru turns out the lights before he leaves.

Hyun really isn’t that sick, and he did get some sleep last night. And yet somehow being so warmly tucked in like this, with all the lights out… without really meaning to, Hyun drifts off.

Hyun has to hand it to Kato-mama. He really does feel much better by the time he properly wakes up.

But first, he wakes up to a dark room, alone, feeling disoriented with his clothes stuck to him all over—the cozy blanket burrito had become more of a sauna and he’d sweated enough to make it a bit disgusting.

He sits up, not knowing what time it is.

His phone falls to the floor when he gets up—fortunately nothing breaks this time—and when he picks it up to look at its face, he sees it’s already 5 pm. His face falls. He’d slept most of the day away.

The tea is still sitting on the nightstand where Haru had left it—totally cold by now, but it’s sweet and tasty, with a light medicinal flavor that Hyun likes, and he gulps more than half of it in one shot.

He drinks the rest and sits up to open the curtains and the window to air out the room.

He’ll feel bad if he gets Muti-hyung sick, too.

* * *

And then Haru gets sick, too. It starts as a couple of sneezes that leave him looking like a startled fox, but by the time their typically late dinnertime rolls around, his eyes are wet and filmy, and he looks like a wilted fox that’s been left out in the rain for too long.

“Jesus, Haru, you don’t look so good,” Rui says.

“Huh?” he says, turning to her looking totally out of it.

He sneezes, and Rui has to scramble to find him a tissue to blow his dripping nose into.

“Eww,” Rui says. “That’s it. I’m making you some tea.”

“I’m fine,” Haru says, although his nose is so stuffed up that it doesn’t come out sounding like himself. “Also don’t go, I want snuggles.”

“Because you don’t feel good?” Rui asks pointedly.

“No! Just because I want snuggles. I always want snuggles.”

“You usually only want them from me after we fuck, but okay,” Rui giggles. She does get up, no matter what Haru says, though, and pops the handle on the tea kettle.

She’s kind of a big softie when it comes to Haru, though, so she ends up sitting back down and letting him hug onto her as soon as the tea is finished—the same tea that Rui had made for Hyun, but with extra sugar in it because she knows that Haru doesn’t like bitter things.

It steams forgotten on the table as Haru sags into Rui, breathing miserably through his mouth and clutching onto her like a drowning man on a life raft.

“Oh, absolutely not,” Wumuti says when she comes into the room and takes one look at them.

Haru is obviously as sick as a dog. He looks worse than Hyunnie did earlier.

“Nngh,” Haru mutters something unintelligible.

“How did you let him get this bad? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Like I knew?” Rui says defensively. “He was like this when I sat down. He wasn’t sick this afternoon.”

Rui and Wumuti are having a hushed, intense conversation over his head, and Haru barely registers any of it. The sharp, clipped syllables of their speech fall around him like disorienting shards of glass, and Haru whines and squeezes his eyes shut tight, trying to bury himself more firmly into Rui’s side. Her arms come up around him protectively.

“I love you, baby, but we can’t have another mini pandemic like last time.” She snaps her fingers at Rui. “Ya, get away from him, come on.”

“Sorry, Haru-chan,” Rui says apologetically, as she sits him up and pats him on the back.

The lights are hurting his eyes and he doesn’t want to get up. His head hurts. His everything hurts.

* * *

Haru doesn’t really remember how he ends up in Muti-hyung’s room, in Muti-hyung’s bed, but without Muti-hyung there.

He knows where he is without even opening his eyes because the pillows all smell like her familiar room spray and shampoo.

He whimpers, turning onto his side and reaches out. Groping for a familiar body but finding none, he realizes he’s alone.

“Where’d hyung go?” Haru croaks, muttering the words to himself in a daze.

Hyun is savvy enough to realize that Haru doesn’t mean him. It comes with a faint bitter, burnt feeling, to be reminded that he doesn’t even rate.

Patiently from the other bed, Hyun says, “She’s staying in your room with Rui, do you remember?”

Haru whimpers, then, and the sound makes all of Hyun’s hair stand on end for some reason.

Haru stares up at the ceiling, but his gaze is blank and watery. It’s like he’s not even really seeing anything, and it freaks Hyun out. His lips are dry, and he looks like he’s panting a little.

“What? No.”

“You’re sick,” Hyun says, with a small twinge of guilt. After all, it’s his cold that Haru caught. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

Haru mutters something completely unintelligible and rolls back over.

Presumably he’s fallen back asleep.

Hyun does wonder, on one of the many instances where Haru wakes up delirious and completely disoriented, why whatever sickness that Hyun has had hit Haru so hard. He’s obviously much sicker than Hyun feels, and he can’t help but worry for their maknae.

They might be the two youngest, but Hyun is still four years older than Haru, and he wants to take care of him, too.

That’s why, a few times when Haru had seemed extra uncomfortable, kicking Wumuti’s covers and pillows to the floor, Hyun had gotten up to tuck them back around him, using a clean, damp washcloth from the bathroom to wipe the sweat off of Haru’s face and arms to try to help him get a little more comfortable.

He didn’t realize Haru was such a violent sleeper when he’s sick. He flails enough that Hyun is actually a little concerned about getting hit or kicked when he gets too close, but when Hyun tucks him in or pushes his hair off his forehead to clean his face, Haru seems to relax. The pinched expression on his face grows a little smoother, and he huffs out an exhausted sigh.

Hyun looks at Haru’s exhausted, sleeping face for another moment, then shakes his head, folding up the damp washrag and setting it on Wumuti’s night stand before climbing back into his own bed to convalesce like an obedient patient.

When Haru wakes up the next time, he seems a little more lucid. His fever seems to have broken during the night, and he sits up with a groan, wincing at the feeling in his cracked lips.

“You should drink some water. There’s a cup of hot water next to you,” Hyun says when he notices.

He still seems a little dazed, and some impulse makes Hyun stand up and physically put the mug in Haru’s hands after making sure the porcelain isn’t too hot.

It’s a little gratifying that Haru does actually drink it on something like autopilot when Hyun presses it into his hands, although Hyun still hovers to make sure that Haru doesn’t drop it on himself.

“What time is it?” Haru asks when he’s finished, his eyes finally focusing on Hyun.

Hyun checks the digital clock beside his bed. “11 in the morning,” he says, and before Haru can freak out, he adds, “Schedules are canceled. Well, for us. We’re officially quarantined.”

“Quaran—?”

“Mama’s orders. It means we’re under house arrest and not allowed to leave until we’re, her words: ‘no longer walking contagions.’”

“Oh.”

Wumuti had said as much when she’d dropped Haru off in the room she usually shares with Hyun last night. She actually had tucked Haru in, just like she’d stroked his hair and told him to focus on getting better, and at the time, Hyun had thought Haru was awake, although it doesn’t seem like he remembers it.

To Hyun, she’d said, “Haru is already sick, so can he stay in here with you, if you’re okay with it?”

Of course Hyun had said he was okay with it. No matter how awkward things are between him and Haru, he would never jeopardize the other members’ health over it.

Hyun asks, “Do you want something to eat? I can text the others. It’s maybe the one perk of being deathly ill.”

Haru shakes his head, already wilting again. He sags back into his nest of Wumuti’s pillows and doesn’t move.

“Hey, hyung?” Haru says when it’s been so long that Hyun thought he’d fallen asleep again.

Hyun hums to show he’s listening.

“Sometimes I say weird stuff when I’m sick, so please don’t mind it, okay? If I’m bothering you, you can just hit me or something to wake me up.”

“Thanks for the warning, but I’m not going to hit you when you’re sick?”

Haru makes eye contact with him. “Okay, but you can, alright? Like if I’m bothering you, you should.”

Hyun bites his lip and doesn’t tell Haru that he’s not going to hit him again, but he does want to. And a little while later, Haru is lightly snoring again anyway, and Hyun stares into space for a while before turning back to his tablet and the writing he’s doing on it, feeling unsettled.

* * *

Hyun hasn’t always had an easy time with sex, but it was easy, with Rui. Rui made it easy.

Rui with their laughing, dancing eyes and quick and easy smile. Rui coaxing Hyun, teasing him, pulling Hyun into his lap to cuddle him around the waist and nuzzle into the side of Hyun’s neck, like it was a normal thing to do, an okay thing for Hyun to want.

Bouncing Hyun on his knees and telling him that he was so light, that he ought to eat more.

Most of Hyun’s partners had wanted him to be a certain way because he was bigger, taller, stronger. He’d kind of just gotten to expect it. After all, Rui likes his body too. Hyun knows he does, so Hyun had expected…

“Pretty Hyunnie,” Rui cooed, kissing along the side of Hyun’s throat. “I’m gonna make you feel so good, sugar. Will you let me?”

And Hyun had nodded and felt so small and large at the same time, so perfectly well taken care of by this strange creature he felt lucky to have met.

* * *

Hyun doesn’t think there’s any way he could possibly fall asleep. It feels like he’s spent the better part of the last two days sleeping—surely he must be full up by now, but he supposes he’s still sick. He drifts off and wakes up in the middle of the night feeling strange and unsettled with that particularly noxious sense of dread that afflicts those temporarily made more aware of their mortality through illness.

At first, he’s not sure why he’s awake. He’s thirsty and thinks it might be late enough to go to the kitchen for some water without running into anyone, but then he hears a sound coming from the other bed, a moan that makes his hair stand on end that cuts into choking sobs.

He sits up quickly with his heart pounding.

“Haru?”

Another moan. Hyun can’t see much in the darkened room, even with his eyes adjusted, beyond making out a figure writhing on the other bed.

“Hyung, please,” Haru moans, and Hyun freezes.

“Haru?” he says softer, until it quickly becomes clear that whoever Haru thinks he’s talking to, it’s not Hyun as Hyun’s voice barely seems to even register. He’s not necessary for whatever is going on in the other bed.

Hyun’s cheeks heat slightly as he realizes that Haru must be having one of those types of dreams—he knows through unfortunate, extensive experience exactly what Haru sounds like when he’s turned on, when he’s… what? Just say it: having sex.

(Having sex with Rui) Hyun’s mind supplies like a terrorist.

But if Haru is having a… spring dream, then why is he crying?

“Harder, it’s ok. I want you to.” He whimpers. “Noona, it hurts.”

“Haru, wake up,” Hyun says, barely cognizant of making a decision before he’s crossing the room. He touches Haru’s shoulder gently, trying not to startle him.

Haru moans again, then clutches at Hyun’s hand, which gives Hyun such a fright he has to stifle a scream.

“Haru, wake up!”

Hyun shakes him a little harder, feeling bad about it, but it does wake Haru up.

“Hyung?” Haru asks.

The blanket slips down and Hyun becomes aware that Haru is still hard.

He swallows heavily. “You were having a nightmare.”

“Oh,” Haru says.

He squirms and pulls the blanket back over his lap, the both of them aware it was not just a nightmare.

“Sorry I woke you up, hyung.”

It’s unsettling, having Haru apologize to him with teartracks still on his face. They gleam silver by the faint light bleeding in through the window, reminding Hyun of odd fairytales.

“It’s okay,” Hyun says, getting up to go back to his own bed, feeling foolish now for waking Haru up at all.

He’s sick. What is Hyun doing?

Hyun gets back into bed, but now he’s the one who can’t sleep.

He can’t stop thinking about Haru crying and feeling unsettled. He rolls over onto his side, trying to put it out of his mind, but he can’t get comfortable.

He tosses and turns a few times, growing increasingly frustrated.

And a while later, like some kind of nightmare that Hyun himself is having, Haru making sounds starts up again. He’s moaning under his breath, whimpering and whining.

Hyun thinks about saying something. He opens his mouth and then closes it again.

Eventually, he rolls over onto his side, trying to ignore it, but it’s all he can hear. He puts his pillow over his ears and shuts his eyes and tries so hard to go back to sleep.

Maybe because of the inescapable audio track provided by his temporary roommate and partially because of his own illness, Hyun has unsettling dreams.

He can’t remember them in the morning, but he knows they involved Rui. He wakes up feeling sticky and hot. He’s hard in his flannel pajama pants, and he feels sick to his stomach.

Haru isn’t in the other bed.

The room seems less nightmarish by daylight. More familiar, again the room that Hyun knows. He looks at Wumuti’s unmade bed, at the shelves that hold her perfume bottles, cluttered but tidy, and feels such a deep and sudden longing for her.

He wants his friend. He wants his hyung to help him and make everything okay.

And Hyun is still terribly, insistently hard. His cock aches, and there’s a slow-burning, coiled need low in his stomach. It’s all tangled up with snatches remembered from his dreams. Nothing sensible that could resolve itself into a plot. Just flashes of soft, pale skin; sleek black hair, curved and sly eyes. The feeling of someone pressing inside him and the impression of a hand against his mouth.

Haru has probably gone to take a shower, but even if he did, Hyun has no idea how long he’s already been gone. He could come back at any second.

It’s not like Hyun typically does this regularly. He can go weeks without and not even miss it, so why is his body suddenly so insistent?

It’s so illogical and inconvenient to have the urge when he doesn’t even have any privacy.

Maybe it’s giving in to weakness.

After another second, Hyun bites his lip and slips his hand past the drawstring waistband of his pants, sliding down over his clothes to press against his erection.

The pressure itself feels good, and Hyun’s eyes flutter closed.

It feels good just to hold himself, and Hyun slides his hand down, the better to press the heel of his palm into his rigid erection.

Hyun rocks into his hand, just tiny, minute movements that could barely be called thrusting, just enough to spread the pressure around a little bit so it sparks through him, warm and a little bit bright.

Hyun’s eyes fly open when he hears the door, and his hand flies away from his own pants, although it’s obvious what he’s been doing.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Haru says. “I can, um. Go, if you want privacy.”

“No!” Hyun squeaks. “I’m fine, thank you!”

“…are you sure?” Haru says after a little while. “That looks like it hurts.”

Hyun’s… erection. His hard cock.

“It’ll go away on its own,” Hyun says through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, but…” Haru chews on his lip. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I’m sure I’d rather you didn’t,” Hyun says, but Haru asks anyway.

“Do you do it like that? Like…” Haru makes something of a gesture, miming holding his hand over his crotch, and Hyun kind of wants to die.

“Is this important?” Hyun kind of squeaks.

“I mean, no. It’s just different, that’s all. Sorry, I was just curious. If it feels good, like that.”

Hyun is going to regret engaging in this, but he has also been cooped up in a small room with just the internet and their delirious maknae for company for the past few days. “You could just try it,” Hyun says wryly. “I mean not right now!”

Haru huffs and gives Hyun a look. “I’m not about to start jerking off in front of you, hyung.”

Which, maybe Hyun deserves that look, but also, how is he supposed to know?

“Do you think I’m that much of a slut, hyung?”

“I—” Sexual desire and expression are both healthy and natural, that’s what Hyun should say. “I’m not sure you want me to answer that question?”

“Oh,” Haru says. “Okay.”

At the very least, this conversation has killed the last of Hyun’s interest in sexual activity of his own. Small mercies, or something.

He closes his eyes and tries to pretend he is somewhere that’s not here.

“So… you do think I’m a slut?”

“Haru.”

“Sorry. Um… you’re still hard, you know. Really, doesn’t that hurt?”

Now Hyun has to open his eyes, mainly to stare at Haru with a look that says really or maybe are you fucking kidding me?—Hyun isn’t really sure, he’s not fluent in the dialects of unspoken communication.

“Haru, you realize that blue balls can’t actually kill anyone, right? That’s a lie that bad boyfriends tell their girlfriends to guilt them into having sex.”

Haru huffs again. “I’m not stupid, hyung. I didn’t say it was going to kill you.”

“That’s not what you told Muti-hyung the other night.”

Hyun regrets it as soon as he says it, as soon as the words come out of his mouth. Apparently being sick makes him mean, or something.

Haru flinches. “W-what? You…”

Hyun closes his eyes again. “Sorry, it’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said something. I’m just tired.”

“You heard us?” Haru asks, and oh.

Hyun didn’t really realize…

Haru’s eyes are wide, and he looks a little pale, and Hyun is reminded again that Haru is very young. And that Hyun had just admitted to hearing him having sex, had said it in a way that was really quite vicious. Muti-hyung is obviously okay with this. This is obviously none of Hyun’s business. Haru had been having nightmares about sex all night that had turned Hyun on.

The gulf between their two beds currently seems huge.

“Sorry, yes, I brought it up to Wumuti. I thought she must have told you about it. I didn’t… mean to.”

“S-she liked it,” Haru says. “M-ma—Muti-hyung. She said… I didn’t hurt her. I w-wouldn’t do something like that…”

Oh god. This seems way above Hyun’s paygrade and also exactly none of his business. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut!

“I—I didn’t mean—” Well, he did mean. But it’s occurred to him that he’s just called Haru both a slut and, at best, a sexually coercive shitty boyfriend in the last three minutes. Haru was having weird sex nightmares all night.

“That’s between you and Wumuti-hyung,” Hyun says finally, firmly. “It’s… what you two do is none of my business, okay?”

Haru nods woodenly, but it doesn’t look like he feels any better.

He kind of… curls in on himself, turning around so he can lie down in the opposite bed and face the wall.

If Hyun’s boner wasn’t making him want to have sex before, he really, really doesn’t feel like it now.

His stomach kind of feels like he’s swallowed paint.

* * *

It’s quiet, so it takes Hyun a little while to realize that Haru is crying.

It’s late afternoon now. The buildings across the street make it so that the room is overcast, everything washed in grey shadow hues.

“Haru?” Hyun says softly.

Haru doesn’t answer, but Hyun knows he’s not asleep because he contracts into an even tighter ball. Seeing their youngest member this way makes Hyun’s heart ache.

“I’m coming over there, okay?”

There’s a long enough pause that Haru could say something in it, something like no, don’t. But he doesn’t, so Hyun gets up, groaning slightly. His muscles aren’t used to so little activity, and they all ache, and he sits on the edge of Haru’s bed.

He doesn’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said.

In the end, he ends up reaching out to put his hand on Haru’s back.

He’s a little shocked to feel the tension in it. It must hurt. It feels like every muscle in Haru’s body is tensed.

Hyun is reminded, not for the first time, how small Haru is. Hyun’s hand nearly spans the width of him.

Lithe and narrow, so much talent packed into such a tiny frame.

Is that why Rui…

Hyun cuts off the thought sharply.

He still doesn’t know what to say, but he ends up rubbing Haru’s back and humming softly.

The shaking of smothered sobs under his palm breaks Hyun’s heart. One of them sneaks its way past, wrenching itself loud and devastating into the room like the cry of some small animal, and Hyun can’t stand it.

He lies down on the bed behind Haru and fits himself to Haru’s back, curving himself around him and bringing his arm up to curl protectively around Haru’s waist, pulling Haru into himself.

Whatever’s wrong—whatever Hyun did wrong—he won’t let Haru suffer alone with it.

“Hey,” Hyun says. “Hey,” Jiggling his hand against Haru’s sternum a little. “Keeping it in won’t do you any good. Let it out, okay?”

Haru shakes his head emphatically.

“Shh, just let it out. Good boy. You can cry. I won’t tell anyone, and I already know, so what do you have to lose, huh? Keeping it in will only make you sick, so let it out.”

Hyun doesn’t know if his words got through to Haru or if Haru just lost the fight against suppressing his own emotions, but he does let go and just cry, sobbing bitterly while Hyun holds him.

He worries about Haru, crying this long and this hard with a fever. The tempo of Haru’s heartbeat feels so fast against Hyun’s chest.

When the tears finally peter out, Hyun says, “I want to go get you something to drink. Can I?”

Haru drags in an awful rattling breath and nods glassily.

Hyun gets up from their small nest, pulls on a paper mask, and closes the door behind him quietly.

Wumuti and Rui have probably just gotten to the practice studio, and Hyun fingers his phone on the way to the kitchen, wondering if he should call one of them.

They’re busy, working hard for all of their sakes, and Hyun doesn’t want to bother them with a problem he should be able to fix alone.

But at the same time, he can’t lie to himself and pretend they wouldn’t want to know. Of course they would. Both of them would.

Hyun types out a message to Wumuti quickly.

– Haru is really upset.

They must not have started yet because Wumuti’s message comes very quickly.

– Did something happen?

Hyun hesitates for a moment before saying

– I think I upset him

– Do you need me to come back?

Hyun hesitates for so long he sees the Wumuti is typing status flare back to life.

– No, I can handle it. But maybe check in on him later, if you can.

– Sorry, hyung, Hyun adds.

– You have nothing to be sorry for, Wumuti sends, and that’s the end of it.

Hyun puts his phone back in the pocket of his pajama pants that probably need a wash, hurriedly getting Haru a glass of water and some cold and fever tablets.

He’s stopped crying when Hyun gets back to the room, but the state Hyun finds him in is almost worse. He’s staring into space still exactly where Hyun left him.

It scares Hyun so much for a second that he almost drops the glass of water, although he’s not even sure why he feels so frightened.

It scares him even more when Haru won’t get up.

“Please,” Hyun ends up pleading with him. “Please. If you don’t, I’ll have to get Wumuti to come back. Haru, you need to drink something.”

“Muti-hyung?” Haru mumbles.

Hyun doesn’t think that did anything, but then Haru obediently sits up at least enough to drink something. He swallows the tablets that Hyun gives him and drains half the glass of water.

“Can you drink a little more?” Hyun asks, and without a word, Haru takes the glass back and drinks the rest of it.

“How do you feel?” Hyun asks.

He peers into Haru’s eyes, which are tracking worse than usual, one of them drifting gently inward toward his nose. His double eyelids have all but disappeared from his crying, and his skin is dry and flushed.

“Haru’s okay,” Haru says dimly, and Hyun gets goosebumps all over his body.

He changes his mind in an instant. “I’m going to get Muti-hyung to come back right now. I think we need to take you to see a doctor.”

He’s already reaching for his phone and isn’t expecting the way that Haru hugs him tightly from behind, so hard and so suddenly that it knocks the wind out of Hyun.

“Noo, I’m sorry. Haru will be a good boy. I’ll do whatever hyung says, okay? I won’t be bad. Don’t call mama.”

“But Haru, don’t you—don’t you want to see Muti-hyung? You do, right? You love her, she’s your favorite.”

Haru shakes his head. “Don’t bother her.” And then his voice takes on that faraway, sticky-sweet quality again, melting like taffy with a hint of slyness threaded through it. “You can be my favorite, hyung. I’m sorry if I made you feel left out. I love you, too, you know…”

“I love you too. Haru, I don’t like… whatever it is that you’re doing. Can you stop it now, please?”

Haru is wrapping himself around Hyun, sinuous and so hot to the touch. He’s burning up. He loops his arms around Hyun’s neck in a parody of an innocent backhug and rubs his fever-warm cheek against Hyun’s.

“I’m not doing anything~”

But Haru definitely is. And furthermore, Hyun can feel that Haru is hard, Haru’s erection poking into the small of his back. It sends a shiver down his spine as Haru nuzzles into him.

“Haru, stop.”

Hyun twists around. He’s both bigger and stronger than Haru, and pins both of Haru’s arms to his side.

Haru’s eyes are wide, and his lip starts trembling as Hyun looks at him. His face kind of crumples, and no. No, no, no, Hyun didn’t want this.

“You don’t want me?” Haru asks, his voice wobbling. “You don’t love me?”

“I—” Hyun’s breath hitches in his throat. “I do love you.”

“Then why don’t you want me? I’ll make you feel really good, hyung. You can do whatever you want to me, and I’ll like it, I promise.”

Haru strains against Hyun’s grip, trying to get closer, and Hyun very much doesn’t want to hurt him, but he also doesn’t want Haru touching him when he’s acting like this. There’s something really wrong with him.

Hyun doesn’t mean to say it, but it just comes out—

“You already have Muti-hyung and Rui. Isn’t that enough?”

It’s not a nice thing to say, and Hyun knows it.

Haru smiles at him. “See, you do think I’m a slut. It’s okay. Since I’m a slut, you might as well use me, right? I ruined things between you and noona, so you probably hate me, but you can punish me if you want.”

Hyun kind of feels like he’s stuck inside one of his own nightmares, the kind he used to have.

He lets go of Haru’s wrists all at once, pushing him away.

The way Haru lands on the bed, in a tangle of long, skinny limbs with his shirt rucked up to expose his pale, smooth belly. He actually moans when his back hits the mattress, looking up at Hyun like a consumptive sex kitten, still tenting his sweats, and Hyun really, really feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Just stay down. I don’t want to have sex with you. Do you… you understand that, right?”

Haru squeezes his eyes shut tight and nods. “Yeah, I get it. But then, can I— Hyung, you don’t have to stay in the room, but can I jerk off? I need to, I…”

Haru rolls over onto his stomach, his face pressed into the pillow, nuzzling it, and starts to hump the mattress.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hyun asks. “You’re really—Haru, you’re freaking me out.”

Haru giggles. “I mean this is all I’m good for, right?” He sighs, rubbing his cheek against the pillow again—Muti-hyung’s pillow. “I don’t know, I just— I just need to feel something good. I feel so… so…!”

And then he starts biting the pillow, and Hyun feels so, so lost and out of his element.

It seems like an insane fucking thought, wondering if Hyun should text Wumuti back and ask if she or Rui can come back right away to deal with Haru.

Hyun thinks he means to, he really does, as he grabs his phone and steps out into the hallway.

So he’s not sure why his fingers end up dialing Rui’s phone instead.

Rui picks up on the second ring, which is unusual for her. She usually has her phone off during rehearsal, and Hyun has to wonder if Muti-hyung said something to her that meant she chose to leave it on in case of emergencies.

“Hyunnie? Are you alright? Is everything okay at home?”

She sounds so warm and concerned, and her voice is so familiar.

Despite everything that’s happened between them, the feeling that washes over Hyun at the sound of Rui’s voice is pure relief. Distantly, his mind registers that she asked about him and not about Haru.

It shouldn’t matter to him, and yet it does.

“Something’s wrong with Haru. He’s okay,” Hyun adds quickly because he doesn’t want to incite a panic. He glances through the door, as if he could actually see their skinny, usually bright Japanese maknae behind it. “Physically, he’s okay. He’s running a fever, but he’s acting— Unnie, he’s acting so weird. It’s really freaking me out, and he keeps trying to fuck me, and—”

He kind of expects Rui to laugh. This seems like something that Rui would laugh at him about, and if everything about this wasn’t so terrible, Hyun might even think it was kind of funny, too.

She doesn’t, though.

Distantly, Hyun can hear Wumuti asking a question in Mandarin, and the muted sound of Rui covering the mouthpiece and answering in return.

“It’s Hyun.”

On the other end of the line, Wumuti is hovering anxiously, and Rui makes a shoo gesture.

“Are you alright?” Rui repeats.

“I’m— yeah. Yes, I’m okay. He’s—I got him to stop, but he’s not doing well.”

“Okay, that’s good. I want you to feel safe, okay? If you don’t want to stay in there with him—I talked to Muti-hyung. You can go and stay in my room until we get back.”

“Okay,” Hyun says, surprised to find that his eyes are welling up.

He sounds a little choked on the phone, and Rui says, concerned, “Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay now little honey. Everything is going to be alright.”

A choked sob strangles its way out, and Hyun is still choking the phone in a death grip.

“Don’t cry~” Rui croons gently. “If you cry, then I’ll cry, and we’ll be in such a mess.”

It could sound selfish, if Hyun was so inclined to read everything Rui says that way. But that would be dishonest. Instead, it comes out very, very kind.

Rui says something else to Wumuti before bringing her mouth back to the receiver.

“Okay, we’re going to head back, but there’s some—” Loud, emphatic swearing from Rui in Mandarin. Hyun has lived with both her and Wumuti for long enough to know all of the swear words by heart. He might not be able to reliably order from any one of the really authentic Chinese restaurants in Guro-gu, but he could cuss somebody out if he really needed to. “—there’s some kind of road work outside the company? I don’t know what it is, it just went up like an hour ago. So it might take a little while for us to get there.”

Hyun lets out a shaky breath.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, that’s okay.”

“You don’t sound like you’re doing okay, and that’s just fine. Okay, sugar?” She hums. “I’ll see what I can do. Put Haru on the phone.”

“Okay, but he— but he’s—”

Hyun makes a distressed noise, not knowing how to even begin articulating whatever is at the intersection of ‘losing his mind’ and ‘masturbating.’

His fingers grip the phone tighter.

“I know what Haru is like,” Rui says calmly, with that calm slicking over all of Hyun’s doubts and worries like a soothing balm. “I can handle it, whatever it is. Put him on the phone.”

It feels like such a relief, to just turn over control and let his hyung handle it.

* * *

Whatever road work was going on, it’s bad enough that they don’t get back for an hour.

Hyun has no idea what Rui says to Haru on the phone. After he passes it to Haru, he goes and sits out in the living room wearing a surgical mask and staring listlessly at the ceiling.

He tries to meditate, and after a while, he just falls asleep.

Wumuti and Rui get back to find Hyun passed out on the couch, sleeping at an angle that makes Wumuti wince for his neck. They close the door softly and move quietly to avoid waking him.

Rui makes a beeline for Haru’s room as soon as she gets home, stripping off her jacket as she goes and hanging it over the back of a chair haphazardly.

They’re alone for a long time, and when Rui finally leaves, Haru is exhausted, but there’s a loose, easy languor to his limbs. He’s clearly still feverish and sick, but he doesn’t seem like the version of himself that was freaking Hyun out before.

When everything is over and every fire has been put out, Wumuti sits heavily beside Hyun on the couch, a glass of wine in her hand.

Hyun rouses slowly, sitting up and blinking with a wide yawn.

“You’re back. You should probably stay away from me,” he says, muffled from beneath his mask. “I’m still sick.”

Wumuti runs a hand through her hair, an anxious habit. She looks tired, Hyun thinks.

“I think we should probably give up on the idea of a quarantine, don’t you? It doesn’t seem to have been much of a success.” Wumuti sighs. “I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea at the time. I’m sorry, Jinhyung-ah. To make you deal with this.”

“No, I’m sorry. I should have—”

Wumuti cuts him off. “Not your fault. Do you believe me?”

Wumuti looks at him with a searching look that’s no less clear-sighted or intense for all the exhaustion written plain as day on her face. She looks at him until Hyun nods reluctantly.

“But—”

“No buts. Nothing about this was your fault, or Haru’s.”

At the mention of Haru’s name, Hyun can’t help bringing it up. “About Haru… what’s going to happen to him? Why is he…” Hyun can’t find a good way to put it, so in the end he just says it plainly: “Why is he like that?”

Wumuti sighs, and for a moment, Hyun can see the pain written clearly on her face. “Haru is… to tell you the truth, honestly I don’t really understand it either. Rui gets it better than I do.”

There’s a trace of bitterness in Wumuti’s words, and Hyun feels a twinge of sympathy for her.

“They’re both… like that. I don’t know why they’re both like that.”

Wumuti says something in Uyghur that Hyun can’t understand but that he’s nevertheless sure he probably disagrees with.

“I feel like I should be more understanding, and I am glad that they have each other to rely on, but. Well.” Wumuti spreads her arms in a palms-open gesture that speaks to the helplessness of them both.

It is what it is, it seems to say. For all of them.

“But how are you?” Wumuti asks. She grimaces. “I say that I’m going to keep a closer eye on you, and then I leave you to clean up my messes again. I’ve been a bad hyung.”

“No you haven’t,” Hyun says automatically.

“A bad friend, then.”

Hyun could argue, but he gets the sense that they’re both too tired for that. He picks idly at the hem of his shirt, feeling like he hasn’t worn real clothes in weeks.

“I’m…” Honestly, Hyun doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how he’s feeling, now that the adrenaline accompanying an acute crisis has faded. “I don’t know.”

“Poor Hyunnie,” Wumuti says gently, reaching over to push Hyun’s hair out of his eyes.

He leans a little into her touch. It makes him feel safe, along with her familiar scent, and Wumuti seems to realize that he needs it. She rubs his sideburns gently for a moment, scratching her fingers lightly against the hair growing right beside his temple.

It’s a little shocking, how much Hyun feels he needed that.

It’s not something they talk about often, but they have talked about it in the past. Wumuti knows that Hyun’s relationship with sex is different from many people’s, but she never saw that as a reason to treat him or look at him differently. After all, her relationship with sex is different from Haru’s is different from Rui’s, even for all their similarities.

They’re all born different anyway. It’s not like Hyun is more different, or stranger for it.

But maybe Wumuti should have said that out loud more often.

“I just felt like… if I was more like you, then I would have been able to handle it. I wouldn’t have had to bother you, or call Rui, or make you both leave practice early…”

“Hey,” Wumuti says. “Look at me.”

It’s convenient that Wumuti is still touching the side of Hyun’s face, because it means that she can tilt it up gently to face her.

Hyun does, and even though he’s less of a crier than the rest of them, he looks so sad, and it makes Wumuti very much want to comfort him. She drags her hand down his chest once, over his heart, before letting her hand fall back into her lap.

“Please don’t feel guilty on our account. Rui was very glad that you called her, you know?”

“Because it meant I’m not still mad at her?”

Wumuti smiles a little and shakes her head. “Oh no. She knows you’re still furious with her, and also that you have every right to be. No, it’s…” Wumuti thinks for a second, knowing how important this conversation is and trying to choose her words carefully. She wants to handle her friends’ hearts gently, always. “She was glad to have the opportunity to help you, to be there for you when you needed it. He still…” Another shake of her head. “He still wants to be your hero, you know.”

“My hero,” Hyun repeats a little numbly, not sure quite yet how this makes him feel either.

His prince and princess, knight and villain.

“Is Haru going to be alright?” Hyun asks then.

Wumuti loves him—Hyun—so much. All this trouble they made for him, and he’s still worried about Haru. Wumuti thinks that he really has a good heart.

As for Haru…

There’s so much pain there, and Wumuti doesn’t even know what to begin to do with it.

Wumuti takes a deep breath. “Yes. I think he will be.”

“I’m sorry,” Hyun says, reaching out to thread his fingers through Wumuti’s.

She takes his hand gratefully.

“That this is so difficult for you, too. I’m sorry. You do a lot of looking out for us, but who’s looking out for you?”

Wumuti waves him off before she starts getting emotional about this, too. Then where will they all be?

“Don’t think about it. It’s not your job.”

“As your friend, it is. I love you. We all love you.”

Love, huh. Whenever did love start to be so complicated?

“Rui is…” Wumuti starts to say something and then thinks better of it. Whatever that is, maybe it’s best left between the two of them for the time being, when it’s all so new and fragile. “We’ve been talking,” is all that she says in the end. “It’s starting to make things… better.”

Hyun looks at her curiously but just accepts it for what it is.

Maybe he’ll ask about that, when it’s not all so raw—when his heart doesn’t still feel bruised, when he feels less jealous, when he feels less shell-shocked and starts feeling normal emotions properly again.

He feels he’ll have a lot to say at that point.

But for now…

“Hyung?” Hyun asks.

“Hm?”

“Did it upset you, that I called Rui and not you?”

Wumuti picks up her forgotten wine glass and swirls it gently, making the clear liquid dance in the cup. Finally, she shakes her head.

“Rui was a good choice, actually. Maybe some part of you knew that. I might have been upset a couple of weeks ago, but now…” She spreads her hands gently. “I think I’m just relieved that everyone was alright.”

“Yeah,” Hyun murmurs, letting out a long sigh and letting his head tip back to rest against the couch.

He gets that.

Strangely, at this point, that’s all he knows for sure that he feels, too. Glad that everyone is okay.