When Minho woke in the morning, he wished he hadn't.
However, Hyunjin was evidently doing better, because he was up before Minho and working on homework. His fever must've broken during the night.
Minho woke up with a dry throat and a stuffy nose that he couldn't breathe out of. Though it felt like he'd just been wandering in a desert, due to the fact that he was incredibly thirsty, and covered in sweat, he still felt cold. Must've been one of those cold deserts.
His headache had only gotten worse.
great. hyunjin just had to get me sick right on the day we were supposed to start exam review.
To be fair, it was just about flu season, since fall was coming to a close, with November rapidly passing them by. He'd seen lecture halls a bit more empty these past few days, and this was probably the reason.
It didn't matter at this point. He needed to be in his classes for review.
As he tried to stand, kicking off his bedding, he was wracked with a series of coughs that made Hyunjin glance back at him. His throat certainly wasn't dry now, but now he had another problem: fighting to breathe through the mucus in his throat. One more cough later, he sneezed very intensely, and all that mucus came right out into his hand.
He and Hyunjin both stared at his slimy hand in disgust, until Hyunjin threw a box of tissues in Minho's direction.
"Yeah, thanks a lot." His voice sounded even worse than Hyunjin's had. He cleaned his hand and threw the wadded-up tissue into the trash can by his desk.
Hyunjin just shrugged dismissively, because it wasn't really his fault.
Minho successfully stood up after that, and oh boy, did he feel weak. And woozy. He only just made it to the door before he felt that he was going to collapse, so he leaned against it for support.
"You're not going to class, are you?"
Minho groaned loudly. "Exam review starts today. I need to be down there."
"Trust me, it's not gonna be much use to just sit in class when your head hurts so bad you can't focus. At least take a nap and see about going down next period"
Silently, Minho stumbled back to his bed. Maybe Hyunjin was right. He sat down. His throat was, again, painfully dry, so he looked over the end of his bed for the case pack of water that he'd bought for them, and had been slowly depleting over the past two months. It was empty.
"Do we have any water left in here?"
Hyunjin shook his head. "I just drank the last one. Sorry."
Sighing lightly, Minho laid back down, facing the wall, and shut his eyes. He ignored the buzzing of his phone, instead choosing to keep his eyes in darkness, and shivering underneath his blanket.
Would water help him feel better?
Undoubtedly.
But after laying down again, he wasn't sure he could force himself up to get it.
His headache was now not only in his temples, but in his forehead and around his eyes too. He tried pressing his thumbs between his eyebrows and the bridge of his nose. He was only mimicking what he'd seen Jisung do to Chan once, after some class a month or so back, since he'd mentioned that he was dying of a headache around his eyes. Jisung had gone right up to him, told him not be scared, and thrust his thumbs right into those two little spaces Minho was now pressing his own thumbs into. When Minho had seen it happen back then, it looked pretty violent. But it did help, definitely.
As his headache faded a little, he almost fell asleep again, but before he did, someone knocked. He sat up quickly as Hyunjin permitted entry, squinting while the door opened. Jisung and Felix stood outside, with armfuls of water bottles.
Minho was confused until he checked his phone.
...
COLLEGE IDIOTS🤧
HYUNJIN
can someone bring some water up
HYUNJIN
me and minho hyung are dying of thirst up here
JISUNG
dw hyun me and felix gotchu
...
Jisung actually went in, setting the bottles up on Minho's dresser while he stared at him through eyes that looked dead. Felix stayed in the doorway and handed the bottles he held to Jisung. After lining those up, too, Jisung set his hands on his hips and tilted his head at Minho. "You're sick, too?"
Minho looked down, flattening his mouth into a straight line. He didn't wanna say it, not even if it was obvious.
"Thanks guys," Hyunjin called. He waved to Felix in the doorway.
"Hi." Felix smiled and waved back. "I'm not coming in because I don't want to catch the plague, but I love you guys! Feel better soon!"
"Love you too, Lix. I'll give you a hug when I stop coughing every two seconds."
When the two of them left and shut the door, Minho leaned forward to grab a bottle off the shelf. He chugged more than half of it, then laid back, suffering through a mix of panting and coughing. Once he was through with his coughing fit, he felt even weaker than before.
It was all he could do to just set the uncapped water bottle on the floor and tug the blanket up over his shoulders.
He was so glad that he brought his own bedding with him to college. His thick comforter was leagues better than any cheap, thin blanket the dorms would have provided. Had he not brought it, he'd probably be feeling like a sweaty ice cube right about now.
♡
Minho had been surprised to see Hyunjin sleep so much the day before. He was even more surprised to wake up the second time that day and see that it was completely dark again. However, he wished again that he hadn't woken up, because he was immediately hit with a strong wave of nausea.
He sat up, shivering and shaking all over, fighting the urge to spill the contents of his stomach all over the floor. And that was when Hyunjin walked back into the room, holding bowls of soup.
"Oh, good you're up— and looking like death."
"Oh come on, you don't look that much better."
"Anyway, I got some food. Here." He put one of the bowls into Minho's hands. At least it was warm. It heated up his icy fingers.
"...Thanks, Hyun, but I don't feel like eating."
Hyunjin shrugged. "Probably should though."
He looked down at the soup and felt his stomach churn. Because Hyunjin was being nice (again), he took a sip of the broth, then placed it on his dresser and laid down again, and just like that he was knocked out again for the next several hours, and he'd only wake up every now and then because of coughing or sneezing fits.
꘎♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡꘎
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