He dreamed of flames leaping and crackling all around him. He dreamed of people crying out and of a vast, writhing darkness that gloried in the screams and fear and anguish and the terrible smell of burning flesh.

"Kibum!" he heard the urgency in the familiar voice and part of him wanted to respond to it, but beyond the light waited some unimaginable pain that he could not bear to face.

"Wake up," the voice pleaded. He let it draw him up until slowly he became aware of his head and body. He groaned. He felt as if he had been savagely battered. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was pushing frantically through a crowd because something terrible had been about to happen. Trying to clarify the memory made his whole body hurt.

"The blood around his mouth could mean internal bleeding," an unknown voice said calmly.

He opened his eyes and saw flames leaping high and exultant in the darkness. Had he simply climbed from one fiery dream into another? He became aware of the salty metallic taste of blood in his mouth.

"Keep still," said the unfamiliar person authoritatively, and caught the hand he tried to lift to his head. Then quite suddenly he remembered. He saw the snarling terror of the sickness when he opened himself to it, and felt the terrible drain of energy it had taken to physically push Jonghyun. He saw him fall and burst into flame in mid-air.

He tried to sit up in his agitation, but hands held him down gently but firmly. He shuddered, feeling sick. He had tried to save Jonghyun by pushing him off the scaffolding before he could burn up there, with the desperate hope that Minho might get to him in time to break the fall and put out the flames, but he had been so high up, and he had been burning as he fell.

He tried to speak but the paramedic had risen and was speaking to two security men now, pointing away into the fitful darkness.

He realised when darkness fluttered its wings around him that he was not far from drifting back to unconsciousness. He willed it away, but doing so brought the hovering headache down to roost. It sunk its claws so deeply into his skull that he moaned and lifted both hands to his head to stop it from bursting apart.

"Kibum! Kibum-ah, you have to resist it. I'll find a way to heal you, I promise!"

Kibum focused painfully on Jinki. His face was white. His hand held Kibum’s, and Kibum suddenly realised that he couldn’t feel Jinki’s emotions. He couldn’t smell the new plastic that should be mirroring Jinki’s worried face. He couldn’t feel anything more than Jinki’s warm hand clasping his.

“I saw Mr. Jang grab you,” Jinki rushed on. “I tried to get to you in time but the crowd was too thick –"

“What happened?” Kibum searched Jinki’s face frantically. Having no emotion scents to read was like being suddenly blinded. “Did you see what happened to Jonghyun? Is he -"

“Minho caught him,” Jinki said. “They fell down, and Minho rolled him, put the flames out. They hadn't properly caught when he was falling, but if he hadn’t fallen…if he’d stayed up there...” Jinki swallowed and his voice trailed off.

“I pushed him,” Kibum said. “With my mind. I yelled at Minho to catch him and then I pushed Jonghyun off.”

Jinki looked at him with a mixture of awe and fear.

“I saw Mr. Jang grab you,” he said after a moment. “Did he infect you?”

“No. I think I did something to him. When he touched me, I could feel it all over me, trying to get in.” He shuddered. “It was so powerful I couldn’t fight it. It was like being suffocated in hatred. But when I heard you call me, you and Taemin, I remembered the feeling of love, and somehow I pushed that into him and it made him let go.”

“More than that,” Jinki said. “He went down like he’d been struck by lightning.”

“Is he…”

“I don’t know. I didn’t care, to be honest. I was too worried about you and Jonghyun and Minho. They’ve been taken to hospital. Taemin went with them.”

“Are they okay?”

“I don’t know. They’re both burned. Minho was conscious, he said it was just his hands, but they wouldn’t let me near Jonghyun.” Jinki’s voice was trembling. “If you really pushed Jonghyun off, you saved his life. He would have burned up there. Nobody could have gotten to him in time.”

“Hyung.” Kibum was unable to stop the tremble in his voice. “I can’t smell your essence anymore. I can’t see what you’re feeling. I think pushing him like that burned out my extended senses.” He’d never regret what he’d done. He would do it again in a heartbeat, but the loss of his extended senses felt like he was being held underwater, half-blind, half-deaf. He felt a deep sense of grief, as if part of himself had died.

Jinki leaned forward and hugged him. Kibum closed his eyes and imagined the smell of coffee.

“Maybe that’s why you got them,” he suggested quietly. “Maybe it was so you could save Jonghyun.”

“And Jessica.”

“Jessica?”

“I burned the sickness out of her yesterday. That’s why we both collapsed. Now she has a chance. She won’t become like Mr. Jang. I just wish,” he swallowed against the lump that rose up in his throat. “I wish I could have done that for Jonghyun, too.”

They fell quiet and looked around. The earlier scene of chaos was dying down. Firefighters had put out the parts of the stage that had caught fire, and most of the crowd had dispersed, those injured in the stampede to get away from the fire being checked over by paramedics before either being taken away in ambulances or allowed to go home.

“Let’s go home,” he said. To his relief, Jinki didn’t argue. He helped Kibum stand up, and they walked away from the scene of so much pain.

Minho and Taemin were waiting in the dorm lounge when, tired and cold, Kibum and Jinki finally made it home. Minho’s hands and forearms were heavily bandaged.

“I’m fine,” he said, forestalling their worried questions. “The burns aren’t too bad. I didn’t have to stay overnight, and they gave me some painkillers.”

“How’s Jonghyun?” Jinki asked.

“He’s been admitted to the burns unit, but they said he was stable.”

Kibum looked around the small group. Everyone looked shellshocked.

“We’ll look after him,” Taemin spoke up quietly. “We’ll help him get better.”

Everyone knew Taemin didn’t mean from the burns.

“Yes,” Jinki agreed immediately. He put an arm round Taemin’s shoulders. “We’ll help him. We’ll do everything we can.”

---

A few days