title: breathe a little louder
pairing: woogyu
genre: clichéd fluff
rating: PG
summary: in which woohyun is sick and sunggyu doesn't really care
A/N: this hasn't been proofread, so yeah enjoy and feel free to point out any inconsistencies/ the fact that this idea is totally overused
It starts when Woohyun wakes up one morning with an aching throat. When he mentions it to Sunggyu, the other boy seems unconcerned “It’s probably just from overuse,” he says before shovelling more food into his mouth. Woohyun considers this carefully, gently massaging his throat and swallowing a few times as he contemplates the amount of singing he’s been doing recently.
“I think you’re right,” he declares after a moment but Sunggyu isn’t listening anymore, deeply engrossed in a conversation with Dongwoo instead.
He’s not worried until his voice cracks in the middle of a note and he ends up having a coughing fit. Sunggyu frowns at him as he passes him a water bottle, “You okay to keep going?” Woohyun coughs a bit more then nods but, as it turns out, he’s definitely not okay to keep going. He barely lasts another minute before he starts trying to cough up his lung, or at least that’s what it feels like. Sunggyu sighs irritably, shoving another water bottle at him and telling him to sit down for a bit. Woohyun complies, eyes watering as he gulps down the water. He doesn’t try to sing again but it doesn’t seem to alleviate his condition. His throat continues to ache and to top it all off, his head starts to throb as well.
“You’ll be fine tomorrow,” Dongwoo says calmly later that night, patting Woohyun’s shoulder where Woohyun is lying in his lap, “You know Sungjong had a sore throat a week ago and it was gone the next day.”
“He did?” Woohyun asks incredulously, turning to look up at the other boy.
“You should pay more attention,” Dongwoo replies, rolling his eyes before pushing Woohyun out of his lap and standing up.
“Come back,” Woohyun calls pitifully.
“Go to bed,” is all he gets in reply.
~~~
The next day is definitely not better. His throat aches fiercely and one nostril seems to be completely blocked whilst the other won’t stop leaking. “Sunggyu,” he croaks, “help me, please.” The other comes over slowly, scrubbing at his face and squinting sleepily at Woohyun. “I think I’m sick,” Woohyun says, sniffing loudly to demonstrate. That seems to wake Sunggyu up, the boy mashing his hand into Woohyun’s face in a desperate attempt to keep him away before scrambling backwards and out of the room. “Sunggyu,” Woohyun whines, rubbing at his nose, “you made it worse.”
It’s almost 20 minutes before Sunggyu comes back, this time with a face mask and a bottle of hand sanitiser. “Don’t breathe on me,” he warns before sitting tentatively on the edge of Woohyun’s bed.
“I can’t breathe on you, you’re all covered up,” Woohyun mutters, gesturing irritably at the multi-layered outfit Sunggyu has acquired.
“Can’t be too careful,” Sunggyu says, shrugging.
“I’m sick,” Woohyun says again when it doesn’t appear as though Sunggyu is going to say anything further.
Sunggyu rolls his eyes, flicking his fringe off his face before asking, “Do you want some vitamins?”
“Vitamins?” Woohyun mumbles confusedly, “No, I want you to get me tissues and some hot tea.”
The other boy scowls, “Get them yourself, you’re not that much of an invalid.”
“No!” Woohyun protests as Sunggyu gets up to leave, “I am! I’m dying Sunggyu…Sunggyu! I can’t breathe!”
Sunggyu snorts and closes the door after him with more force than Woohyun feels is really necessary.
The manager makes a brief appearance with tissues and hot tea, apparently Sunggyu was useful for something, but seems as unconcerned about Woohyun’s imminent death by cold as Sunggyu was. “Just try to rest, okay?” is all Woohyun gets as the others are herded out the door and into the van. Woohyun sniffles very loudly and forces a few coughs but only Sungjong pokes his head in to wave at him quickly before leaving again.
Woohyun spends the morning slouched in front of the television, draped in a blanket and surrounded by an ever growing pile of used tissues. It starts off fine, if a bit boring, but every hour that passes seems to make his head hurt with increasing intensity and his nose clog up a bit more until finally he’s slumped horizontally wishing he’d stayed in bed.
He ends up falling asleep in front of the television when it becomes too much of an effort to even keep his eyes open. He’s woken up in the late afternoon by one of the managers coming to check up on him. They are both surprised when Woohyun goes to say hello and all that comes out is a dry croak. Woohyun turns wild eyes on the manager and grabs his throat slightly hysterically, there is no way he could have lost his voice. But, Woohyun realises after being bundled off to the doctor, apparently there is.
When the others finally arrive home, its dark and Woohyun is so starved for company that he manages to stop the complaints he wants to make about all the noise they’re making and how it’s making his head hurt.
“Woohyun? Are you actually in here?”
Woohyun pushes back the blanket covering his head and scowls up at Sungyeol who’s kicking absently at the huge pile of tissues and making a show of looking around. Woohyun peers at his surroundings and eventually has to admit the mess he’s made is pretty large. There’s a collection of empty water bottles, tissues scattered everywhere and what looks like all the pillows in the house laying in a pile behind him. He probably should’ve tried to clean up, he thinks hazily, Sunggyu is going to lose his shit.
“I feel as if you’ve greatly exaggerated your illness in order to pig out all day,” someone who’s probably Myungsoo says.
Woohyun shakes his head vehemently as he turns to look at someone who’s probably Myungsoo but, he realises with growing horror, he really hasn't cleaned up, at all. Because in Myungsoo’s hand is the empty, family sized pack of chocolate biscuits he’d eaten earlier and at his feet is what appears to be the tub of ice-cream Woohyun had decided should probably be finished off.
“You’ve got a cold and you decided to eat ice-cream?” Sungyeol asks incredulously.
Woohyun turns pleading eyes on Sungyeol, but he’s no longer looking in Woohyun’s direction and is instead calling for Sunggyu.
To say Sunggyu isn’t pleased is an understatement. There’s a lot of shouting about the state of the room, about the food he’s been eating, about how Woohyun is a liar, all of which Woohyun covers his ears for, and then some angry gesticulating accompanied by some incoherent spluttering before Sunggyu storms out of the room.
“He’s just angry because he spent the whole day worrying about you,” Woohyun glances up to see Myungsoo staring intensely at him.
Woohyun looks pointedly at the tissues littering the floor, trying to communicate that he is sick. Myungsoo shrugs. Apparently he doesn’t subscribe to telepathy.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sungyeol says, flapping his hands wildly, “why aren’t you whining about how unfair you think Sunggyu is being?”
Woohyun scowls, wondering if he can somehow convince Sungyeol he hasn’t lost his voice because there is no way Sungyeol is going to be anything but a dick about it.
“So apparently you’ve lost your voice,” Sungjong announces as he steps into the room, Woohyun cringes and pulls the blanket up over his face.
“Oh my god, really?” Sungyeol exclaims gleefully, dropping down to prod at Woohyun through the blanket.
“Uh sorry, was that meant to be a secret?” Sungjong sounds anything but sorry and when Woohyun yanks the blanket down to glare at him there’s a decidedly unkind glint in Sungjong’s eyes.
“Do you want a notepad? I’ve got Hello Kitty or Power Puff Girls,” Hoya offers, looking at Woohyun sympathetically.
“His voice is gone for a reason,” Sungyeol hisses, whipping around to glare at the other boy, “so we don’t have to acknowledge what he wants in any way. Giving him a notepad will ruin that.”
Woohyun pouts at Hoya behind Sungyeol’s back, pleading silently for a notebook.
“Don’t,” Sungyeol warns when Hoya goes to leave the room.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Hoya replies, disappearing into the hallway. Sungyeol scrambles off after him and Woohyun listens with vague amusement to the scuffle that ensues.
“Well,” Hoya sighs when he reappears, notebook in hand, “that was more trouble than it was worth,” but he’s smiling a little as he passes the notebook over.
Sunggyu eventually comes back in an hour later and the others have migrated to another room to play video games after finally convincing Sungyeol to leave Woohyun alone. Sunggyu looks a lot calmer but Woohyun’s equipped with a Power Puff Girls notebook now in case anything else should erupt. He drops a paper bag in front of Woohyun’s face before collapsing onto the ground next to him.
“Vitamins,” Sunggyu mumbles, edging the bag closer to him, “take them in the morning. And throat lozenges and cough syrup and a menthol inhaler, to clear your nose.”
Woohyun looks sceptically at Sunggyu, who’s fidgeting with his socks, before pawing through the bag. There is indeed all the things Sunggyu had promised would be in there and not one thing that looks like it might get Woohyun’s body to give up the extra calories it had ingested that day.
“The manager said you’re already on some medication but that you should be fine to take this stuff too.” Sunggyu’s managing to look even more uncomfortable and it dawns on Woohyun that this is some sort of apology, that possibly Sunggyu is feeling a teeny bit guilty.
Woohyun grabs something from the bag and peers at the orange wearing sunglasses on a bottle of vitamin C for a long moment before eventually writing ‘thank-you’ on the notepad accompanied by a tiny smiley face.
Sunggyu visibly relaxes, reaching up to scratch his head then patting Woohyun on the shoulder. “You should go to bed now, how long have you been lying on the floor?”
Woohyun shrugs, thinking that he’s definitely been here most of the day. ‘I’m not tired’ he scratches onto the paper, ‘get me dinner’.
Sunggyu rolls his eyes but no complaints are voiced as he shuffles off to, presumably, get Woohyun something to eat. Woohyun is still lying on the floor a few minutes later when Sunggyu comes back with a plastic container of reheated takeaway. Sunggyu passes him some utensils along with the container and looks like he can’t decide whether he should sit with Woohyun or go join the others so Woohyun helpfully prods him in the leg and makes pitiful faces at him. It seems to work because Sunggyu sits down behind him and flicks the television on, fiddling absently with Woohyun’s hair whilst Woohyun eats.
Woohyun gets full pretty quickly, which probably has something to do with all the chocolate he ate earlier, so he shoves the half-full container into Sunggyu’s hands and waves off the others protests that he should eat more. Sunggyu shoves irritably at his shoulder but obediently sets about finishing Woohyun’s meal.
“I can’t believe you lost your voice,” Sunggyu says once he’s set the container aside. Woohyun flops onto his back and stares up at Sunggyu, he doesn’t really know how to reply to that. “I mean,” Sunggyu goes on, trailing his fingers lightly over Woohyun’s throat, “it just doesn’t make any sense.”
It doesn’t have to make sense, Woohyun wants to complain but instead he loops an arm around Sunggyu’s waist and hauls himself half into the others lap. Sunggyu sighs, half-heartedly trying to pry Woohyun’s arms off him but Woohyun’s clinging like a limpet, determined not to be displaced. “Don’t be annoying. If I get a cold cause you won’t leave me alone,” it’s sort of a threat but Woohyun figures if Sunggyu was really still worried he’d have gotten the face mask back out. So he squirms a bit further into Sunggyu, burying his face in Sunggyu’s stomach to try and block out the flickering television light.
It doesn’t take long for him to discover he’s more tired than he thought or else the medicine has finally decided to knock him out. Conversations seem to be jumping around him, not making any sense and at one point he thinks he hears Sungjong but when he eventually turns to look it’s still just him and Sunggyu in the room. Right, he thinks a bit fuzzily, it’s probably time to go to bed. He stumbles upright, clutching at the blanket that’s trying to slide to the ground and makes his way slowly to his bedroom. Or at least that’s what he thinks he’s doing right up until someone’s tugging his arm over their shoulder. “Wrong room,” Sunggyu says dryly, pulling at Woohyun until he changes direction, slumping against Sunggyu’s side.
Woohyun falls onto his bed a bit awkwardly, knocking his elbow painfully against Sunggyu’s head in the process. There’s some muffled cursing on Sunggyu’s part but for once he seems willing to let it slide. Sunggyu tugs the blankets up over Woohyun and possibly says something about Woohyun feeling better tomorrow but, to be honest, Woohyun’s fucking tired and sick and so all he can think of before he’s asleep is how the bed is much more comfortable than the floor so why did he spend the entire day there?
~~~
As it turns out, Woohyun doesn’t feel better tomorrow and his voice is still gone but the day after is a bit better and the day after that he can talk again. Everyone seems a bit put out when he gets his voice back so he makes sure to be as obnoxious as possible, harassing everyone until Sunggyu snaps. They get into a loud shouting match which goes on for awhile before Sunggyu realises Woohyun is shouting just because he can and actually isn’t hugely passionate about defending his right to be annoying. Sunggyu narrows his eyes then leans forward to seal his mouth over Woohyun’s briefly before pulling back, “Just, shut up. Please.”
“Not unless I have to,” Woohyun smirks.