The mother was standing behind her child, hands firmly on the little boy’s shoulders. Every questioned Kyungsoo asked the kid with a measured smile, the mother replied to instead with urgency and almost hysteria.

“His ADHD is getting worse.” The woman insisted.

Kyungsoo was staring at the kid that was just sitting there silently. Funny.

They’d been in his office arguing (or at least, the mom was arguing, not leaving Kyungsoo the chance to speak) for at least fifteen minutes now, yet the kid was sitting silently, eyes bored in Kyungsoo with curiosity. He was focusing on him, and he wasn’t fidgeting in his place, just silently observing. He hadn’t interrupted their talking at all,

Not usual behaviour for an eight-year-old kid diagnosed with ADHD.

“With all due respect, he seems fine to me,” Kyungsoo said, looking back towards the mom who shot a look down to her son. The kid just blinked.

“Well he’s fine now. Maybe he’s shy in front of you. At home he keeps running around, being loud, sometimes he gets really, really impatient and then he would just abruptly stop.”

Kyungsoo straightened up and opened the patient file again. He shook his head a little at the general physician diagnosing this kid with ADHD when everything the mom was describing was simply normal behaviour for children. Annoying and loud. Seemed about right.

Kyungsoo’s eyes trailed back to the kid.

The little boy wasn’t staring at him anymore, he wasn’t staring up at the mom either. No, the kid wasn’t blinking. It was staring blankly with hazy eyes somewhere at the floor, its head bobbing back and forth systematically and rhythmically.

Kyungsoo squinted his eyes, as he reached out to hold the kid’s shoulder. He ignored whatever the mom started saying.

The kid didn’t look at him at the contact. Unaware of the touch or the talking.

Kyungsoo pursed his lips and didn’t move his eyes away from the kid until it eventually blinked the haze in its eyes away and looked at him again – just as curiously as before.

“Does this happen a lot?” Kyungsoo straightened up and turned towards the mom. “How often does he blank out like this?”

“Yeah, it happens sometimes,” the mom shook her head, confusion lacing her voice. “I just told you. He’s been daydreaming a lot. His doctor said it’s the ADHD.”

“It’s not ADHD,” Kyungsoo interrupted, eyebrows furrowing as he looked down towards the kid, then towards the mom. More and more confusion was spreading on her face. “We will need to run a EEG test, but this looks like absence seizures to me.”

“But-…he hasn’t been seizing. That’s impossible.”

“Absence seizures cause you to blank out or stare into space for a few seconds. They’re quite common for children this age.”

“Seizures?!” the mom echoed, sounding full of disbelief and doubt. “That’s…that’s just not right. IT’s ADHD!”

“Which often gets misdiagnosed when you see an incompetent doctor,” Kyungsoo’s eyes were a little harder on her as he pulled out his pen and started scribbling on his pad. “I’ll schedule an EEG for this afternoon.”

He finished writing everything down in the patient chart, before looking up. There was a panicked look in the mom’s eyes as she was holding her son and looking at Kyungsoo with a look full of questions and scare. He let out a breath.

“You have nothing to worry about. Those seizures are harmless, they usually completely disappear before puberty. The treatment is simple too, a low dose of anti-epilepsy drugs.”

Kyungsoo handed the charts to the mother.

“I’ll be working in the clinic tomorrow morning. You can come so we can discuss the results from the EEG test.”

He smiled a lopsided smile at the little nod of the dumbfounded woman, before turning around and leaving.

Kyungsoo didn’t think he’d ever been this tired in his entire life. It had been 9 hours of work straight since he arrived in the morning, no break, no moment to catch a breath. And it was Friday. He didn’t know how he’d have the strength to go out with his friends tonight when he was barely functioning now as it was.

But there was work to be done, cases to be solved, patients to be treated.

He kept throwing impatient looks towards every clock he passed by during the entire day.

And now he had a woman standing in front of him, teary, desperate. Kyungsoo breathed in deeply, trying his best to be as sensitive as possible.

“I’m afraid that your husband’s kidneys are failing.” He said quietly. “The anti-tumor antibiotics we are treating him with have started affecting his kidneys. They first started producing crystals that blocked the urine flow. Then they started damaging the cells.”

“So stop the antibiotics!” the woman whispered, fingers forming a fist so tight her knuckles were white.

Kyungsoo heard Chanyeol shifting behind him. Sehun, the resident, was standing one step behind him, silent and mum, not even daring to look up from the ground.

Kyungsoo breathed out slowly.

“We cannot stop the antibiotics. If we do, we might be able to get his kidneys to function again, but his condition will become worse. And in his case, we cannot allow the cancer cells to spread. That would be fatal.”

Kyungsoo’s lips pursed in sympathy when the woman buried her face in her hands, silent sobs filling the hallway of the ICU.

“So what…what can we do?”

“He’s going to need a kidney transplant.” Kyungsoo said, trying not to let the pity creep in his voice. “We can put him on the list, but-…I have to be completely honest with you, the chances of him receiving a kidney are very slim. He is no good condition, and even if he receives the kidney, the chances of him beating the cancer aren’t too high. I can’t lie in my reports, and when the committee reads the charts, it is likely they will rule against giving him a donor.”

The sobs became even more uncontrollable and Kyungsoo breathed out shakily, as he reached out to hold the woman’s shoulder for some sort of support. He waited there, throwing a quick look back to where Sehun was still very darkly inspecting the ground and where Chanyeol was chewing on his lower lip.

“What if-“ the woman looked up with a sniff. “What if I give him one of my kidneys?”

Kyungsoo blinked, eyebrows shooting up. He threw a quick look back to Chanyeol, who had decided to join Sehun in staring at the ground uselessly.

Kyungsoo pursed his lips, before raising another hand to put on the woman’s other shoulder.

“That is very admirable, but I’m afraid the chances of you two matching is one in ten thousand.”

“But I love him!”

Right, Kyungsoo thought grimly to himself, true love. That’s how we match organs these days.

He blinked when he realized the woman was staring at him, waiting for an actual reply.

“I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise,” he ended up saying quietly, hands sliding down from her shoulders. “I will refer you to a nephrologist who will run the necessary tests. And in the meantime, I will send your husband’s files to the committee and put him on the kidney transplant waiting list.”

He watched as the woman nodded at him silently, a little shimmer of hope deep, deep down in her eyes. Kyungsoo didn’t have the heart to kill that hope.

Instead, he turned around and instructed Chanyeol to call the hospital’s nephrologist and arrange a meeting as soon as possible.

He threw one sympathetic glance towards the woman in the hallway, before walking away.

Maybe, sometimes a one in a ten thousand chance existed. He was going to root for them.

Kyungsoo was holding a chilly glass with nice whiskey, and he was talking excitedly to Minseok and Jongdae. It had been a while since he last had some time to actually sit down and chat with the other doctors and it had definitely been a pleasant surprise to see that Baekhyun had invited them out for football night too.

“A neurologist, an oncologist and a nephrologist sitting together at a bar,” Kyungsoo’s head whipped around when he heard the familiar and teasing voice of Baekhyun. “It’s like the start of a bad joke.”

Baekhyun was approaching them, wearing a simple T-shirt and jeans, so different from the suits and the lab coat Kyungsoo was used seeing him in. His smile was cocky. Two people were trailing after him – Chanyeol, who was a good head taller than him, towering over most of the people in the bar, and Yixing – a young fellow in Baekhyun’s department for infectious diseases.

“You’re late to your own party,” Minseok remarked, sharp eyes resembling the look of a cat. Baekhyun grinned a little, reaching out to grab the glass from Minseok’s hand. He took a sip from it before the neurologist could even protest.

“I like that you’re referring to it as my party. Gives me more power.”

“Forget it.”

Kyungsoo smiled at Yixing a little awkwardly – he didn’t know the fellow that well, they didn’t really cross paths much. He just knew the man always got superb reviews from patients for his attitude. Something about his cute dimple made even Kyungsoo feel at ease in his presence.

“Anyways, what were you guys talking about?” Baekhyun asked, seating himself casually next to them.

“The game. We were just making bets. 20 dollars on 2:1.”

“20 dollars?” Baekhyun echoed after Jongdae, a sneer in his voice. “You’re no fun. Make that 50 and I’ll think about joining.”

Kyungsoo leaned back in the chair of the bar then and swirled his whiskey around in the chilly glass as his friends started talking loudly and excitedly about the football game. There was still another hour to go before they had to go to the stadium, and they spent most of it just joking around and catching up. Actively avoiding hospital talk.

They all wanted a break from that.

They all needed it.

Time was passing, and the game was approaching, and suddenly Chanyeol asked where Suho was.

“Oh,” Baekhyun popped the straw of his cocktail out of his mouth. “He’s not coming.”

“What?!” Minseok sounded disappointed, but also confused. “Why not?”

Baekhyun shrugged.

“Measles.”

Kyungsoo choked on his whiskey. The alcohol made his throat burn. He blinked incredulously in Baekhyun’s direction.

“What?!”

Baekhyun seemed satisfied that he had managed to cause such a reaction by, after a quick look Kyungsoo realized, all the doctors sitting around him.

All, except for Yixing who just rolled his eyes.

“Parents brought in their kid in paediatrics, they thought it had a rash and a cold. High fever, cough, you know…all that jazz. So Suho’s stuck contaminating everything before an infection spreads in the hospital.”

“How old?” Minseok asked, eyebrows furrowed. Baekhyun shrugged.

“I don’t know. Like seven, I guess?”

“Anti-vaxxers?” Jongdae asked, scepticism already audible in his voice. Kyungsoo was already shaking his head in complete disappointment and done-ness with the world, even before Baekhyun nodded in confirmation.

“Some people will never learn,” Kyungsoo sighed out. “The only way they’ll realize they’re wrong is if you connect their child’s measles and they spell out ‘My parents are ing idiots’.”

“Nice,” Chanyeol scoffed. “I’ll make sure Suho knows of that impeccable tactic to deal with patients as opposed to talking to them like they’re, you know, actual human beings.”

“Hey, I mean,” Minseok shrugged “If it works.”

“Thank you,” Kyungsoo raised his glass towards the neurosurgeon.

They spent another half an hour just messing around and they were just about to get up from their seats and head to the stadium because of the crowd starting to form in the bar, when Kyungsoo heard something amidst all the voices and all the loud cheering of football fans around them.

“Doctor Do!”

He blinked quickly, thinking that his mind might have started playing tricks on him after the long day at work.

“Doctor Do, is that you?!”

Nope. Definitely no mind tricks. And by the time he realized he wasn’t hallucinating, it was already too late.

He turned around just to see Kim Jongin approaching, an intrigued smile pulling his plump lips back. He was wearing the blue jersey of the football team they were supporting, and he even had the colours on his face. His brown hair was falling softly over his eyes.

Kyungsoo squinted his eyes a little.

“Are you following me?”

Thank god the boy understood he was joking, because he just laughed a little, shaking his head. More of his brown hair fell over his eyes.

“No. Here for the game. What about you?”

“Contrary to popular belief, doctors do have personal lives,” Kyungsoo jugged his chin towards the bunch of doctors sitting next to him. Jongin followed his gaze absentmindedly before he turned back to him. “We’re here for the game too.”

“That’s cool.”

Kyungsoo hummed, awkwardly shifting in his seat.

“So…Chelsea fan, huh?”

Jongin looked down to his blue jersey and laughed quietly.

“Ever since I can remember myself. What about you?” Jongin gave him a playful look. “Don’t tell me I have to switch doctors.”

“Please switch doctors,” Kyungsoo said, raising an eyebrow at Jongin who just shrugged with a little bashful smile. Kyungsoo took a quick sip from his whiskey before finally setting the glass aside. “How’s your cold?”

“I’m feeling better,” Jongin said distractedly, eyes shooting back to the crowd. As an afterthought, he added, “Thanks.”

Kyungsoo followed his gaze back to the crowd. There were three boys standing there, wearing the same blue jersey, seemingly waiting for Jongin. Throwing funny looks towards Kyungsoo, probably wondering who he was.

Kyungsoo’s eyebrows shot up when he realized that his fellow doctors were giving Jongin the exact same look.

“You shouldn’t keep your friend waiting,” Kyungsoo said and Jongin nodded absentmindedly.

“Yeah…yeah, of course. Well,” Jongin shone him a smile and Kyungsoo basked in the sight of that beauty for the whole three seconds that it lasted. “I just came by to say hi. And, uh…have fun! At the game, I mean.”

“We will,” Kyungsoo nodded, trying not to look as awkward as he felt. “You and your friends too.”

Jongin waved his hand a little awkwardly as he started moving away. Kyungsoo let out a soft breath, and a little lopsided smile pulled his lips.

“I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Right. Monday. See you then.”

Kyungsoo was too busy staring at the retreating form of the younger man to realize that he had five pairs of eyes inquisitively bored in his back.

“Mmm,” Baekhyun was slurping the rest of his cocktail loudly, before finally setting the glass down and raising an eyebrow. “Who was that fine piece of human?”

“Just a patient,” Kyungsoo shrugged, finally looking away.

“Yeah, right,” Chanyeol scoffed. “This is one of the few patients whose he didn’t allow me to finger.”

Baekhyun feigned absolute horror, as he turned to stare at Kyungsoo.

“Why would you do that, you monster?!”

Kyungsoo mumbling a quiet whatever under his breath. Yixing, Minseok and Jongdae seemed beyond confused, with Jongdae muttering something about needing a backstory.

Kyungsoo just rolled his eyes.

The high from a fun Friday night with his friends was still burning within him even when Monday rolled in. Somehow, after spending a somewhat quiet weekend, even clinic hours didn’t seem like a drag that morning.

Everything was, for once, going smoothly and pretty quickly. The patients were actually listening to him, he didn’t have to fight anybody. Everything was quite perfect.

And the cafeteria was serving steak for lunch.

He supposed it was just his lucky day.

He was sitting in his office and going through his patients’  files, reviewing test results and checking progress on the treatments, his pager lying ruefully on his desk, surprisingly silent.

He didn’t realize how quickly the day was passing until he heard a knock on the glass doors. He startled at the sound interrupting the silence in his office, and he looked up.

Kim Jongin was standing there, looking just as glowing and handsome as the last time he’d seen him at the bar on Friday night. Kyungsoo gave him a little smile through the glass as he vaguely motioned for him to enter.

“Good afternoon,”  Jongin greeted him quietly, hands fidgeting on his sides as he approached the desk.

“Hello. Please, take a seat.”  

Kyungsoo rolled his chair around when he saw Jongin finally sitting down, and he reached for the stack of folders on the side of his desk.

“Did you enjoy the game?”  Kyungsoo asked, searching for the files that he needed.

“Yeah. It was a good victory,”  Jongin seemed a little more at ease while talking about that. Kyungsoo nodded eagerly.

It had been a good game. 3:1. That had earned him 50 dollars from Baekhyun and another 80 from Jongdae and Chanyeol.

“I got the results from your blood tests earlier,”  Kyungsoo said in the same time he finally found the tag that read Kim Jongin, pulling the files out and laying them down on the desk between him and Jongin. He opened it and pulled out the papers again. He checked the numbers again, just to make sure he wouldn’t get it confused with the results of another patient. He nodded, mostly to himself. “It’s a very good blood picture. Hemoglobin and hematocrit levels are looking just right. The white blood cell count is also perfectly normal.”

“Meaning?”

Kyungsoo looked over the sheet of paper with the test results with a softer look in his eyes.

“Meaning you don’t have cancer. You’re fine.”

Jongin blinked at him and just stared. For a couple of seconds, he just stared at him, before finally letting out a breath and leaning back in the chair.

Kyungsoo ran a tongue over his lips as he watched the reaction of the younger man. He nodded slowly, a hand rising up to rest at his chest. Then he nodded again. Letting out another breath. That one suspiciously sounded like laughter.

Relief was written all over his face.

Kyungsoo didn’t even realize he was smiling again, until he looked down at the lab results again.

“Platelet count is also average.” Kyungsoo wrinkled his nose a little as he lowered the paper. “Your red blood cell count is on the lower side but still very much within the normal range. That would explain why you were feeling tired.”

“I guess,” Jongin breathed out with his honey-like voice. “Why is it lower though?”

“There are many reasons for a lower red blood cell count,” Kyungsoo closed Jongin’s lab file and slid it towards him. “Side effects from medicine, chronic diseases. Yours, however, are within the normal range, and according to the ferritin test, your iron levels are a little lower than they should be so that is the reason for it.”

Jongin reached out to pull the files closer to himself.

Kyungsoo smiled at him, and vaguely wondered to himself for a second what exactly he was smiling so much for – was it because he was in a good mood? Was it the fact that this patient finally didn’t look like he was going to lose it? Probably a mix of the two.

“It isn’t alarming in any way, you don’t need medicine. Just increase your protein intake – red meat, chicken, fish. You’re not vegan, right?”

Jongin scoffed and Kyungsoo tried to hide his smirk as he looked down at his hands brought together on the desk.

“Good. So more proteins, more vitamin C foods. That should be about enough.”

Jongin nodded, his eyes lingering on the folder he was holding with his results.

Kyungsoo saw his eyebrows flinching a little, before the younger man looked up.

“Thank you, doctor,”  he said. “For taking the time. I really appreciate it.”

Kyungsoo felt a little flash of guilt running through his chest upon hearing that. Guilt because he had been ready to send Jongin away from the moment he started talking in the clinic. Because he thought he was ridiculous.

But now, seeing that genuine gratitude on his face, and that genuine relief from moments ago – they were worth it. He didn’t regret making the time for those tests at all.

He reached out over the desk, hand stretched out – an invitation.

Jongin blinked up in surprise.

“Of course.”

Jongin’s palm, when it slid inside his for a firm handshake, was warm. His skin felt soft against Kyungsoo’s.

Their hands lingered together, as they wordlessly smiled at each other.

“Based on the test results I believe you have lupus,” Kyungsoo said. “It explains all your symptoms as well – the joint pain, the skin rashes.”

“Lupus,” she repeated before pursing her lips. “Is it treatable?”

Kyungsoo pursed his lips, looking down to the patient files, before looking down at the hospital bed where the girl was lying down, looking at him with anticipation.

“With the right medications, it’s manageable.”

Her nod was slow. Accepting.

Kyungsoo reached out to return the patient chart at the base of the bed.

“We’ll keep you here two more days, just to make sure you’re stabilized before we let you go home.”

“Alright.”

Kyungsoo threw her a small smile, before rounding the bed and escaping the room of the patient. As soon as he stepped out, a fury of black and white assaulted him from the side.

Sehun was waiting for him, his black clothes, the white coat. His hair was neatly styled up, his tie was perfectly attached to his shirt. His eyebrows were sharp and furrowed.

Kyungsoo almost let out a groan.

“What again?”

“I want to transfer to oncology.” Kyungsoo threw the resident a quick look.  “I need the signature of the Head of Department before I can go in for an interview.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks more fun.”

Kyungsoo threw yet another quick look towards Sehun. What a weird kid.

“Fun?!” he let out a scoff. “Look, kid, if you’re looking for fun in any medical field, then you chose the wrong career.”

Sehun made a face.

“Bad word choice. It seems more interesting.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of things are interesting. Being a professional chef sounds interesting, yet here I am, stuck working with sick people all day, every day.”

“It was your own choice.”

Kyungsoo wrinkled his nose a little. Sehun was right.

It was his own choice. Nobody forced him to go to college for 4 years, and then go to med school for another 4. Nobody forced him to do a 2-year residency in oncology. Nobody forced him to do another 2 years of diagnostics as a fellow. And certainly nobody forced him to become a practicing physician.

“Not everybody’s cut out to do what they want to do is my point,” Kyungsoo frowned, stopping in the middle of the hallway and throwing Sehun an assessing look. He set his jaw. “7-year-old presents with a lesion in upper tibia. X-ray shows radiolucent area with Codman’s triangle and Sunway appearance. Diagnosis?”

Sehun blinked at him.

“What?”

“What’s the problem with the kid? Quickly.”

“Uh-…uh…” Sehun’s eyebrows knitted even closer and Kyungsoo clicked his tongue.

“Aaaand, the kid’s dead.” Kyungsoo clicked his tongue and Sehun let out a breath, raising his hands a little. “Its bones just cracked from osteosarcoma.”

“What?” Sehun let out a huff as he started following after him again. “That’s unfair. First of all, I need to see lab results and do tests to be sure what it is. It’s protocol! Second of all, you didn’t even give me twenty seconds to think.”

“In the ER, you don’t get twenty seconds to think sometimes, and you certainly don’t get enough time to follow protocol.” Kyungsoo sighed out, hand resting on the glass door to his office. He threw Sehun a sympathetic look. “Listen, kid. You’re just in your first year of your residency. Think about what you really want to do and think about it hard. You don’t want to waste years doing something you’ll regret.”

“But-“

“If you’re really set on being an oncologist, then maybe try again next week. Read some books in the meantime, follow Chanyeol around and get a look at some actual cancer cases. It might change your mind.”

Sehun’s face was equal parts bright at being given an opportunity and solemn at the underlying darkness in Kyungsoo’s voice. He ended up quickly thanking him and then scurrying away down the hallway of the hospital, undoubtedly on his way to hunt down Chanyeol and stick to him like a band aid for the rest of the week.

Kyungsoo let an amused smirk pull his lips as he finally pushed the door of his office open and walked in.

The weeks passed. Cases came and went.

Life was becoming an unbearable routine of work, a microwaved dinner late at night, barely six hours of sleep, sometimes less, and then again.

It was a Tuesday morning and he was in his third hour of clinic duty, feeling borderline delirious, as he took yet another patient file from Sooyeon or Sooyoung. He headed towards the exam room.

An old lady was sitting on the bed, a very old lady, who blinked at him when he entered. Kyungsoo let out a quiet hum at the sight of her – he knew her. She’d been coming in a lot lately.

She had dementia, and came almost every week, at least once, to tell him about ‘new’ illnesses she had. Kyungsoo couldn’t do much. He could only sit there, listen to the lady as she said the same thing again and again every time, and in the end he could write her a prescription for the same medicine she was already taking.

“Mrs. Lee,” Kyungsoo smiled tiredly, ready to sit on the little stool in the corner and just zone out for fifteen minutes straight. “How have you been?”

The old lady just blinked at him again. She shrugged her frail shoulders.

“I have no idea.”

Kyungsoo could swear he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean to let out the loud laugh that traitorously escaped his lips.

But the moment it echoed in the room, he shut his mouth quickly, aware again of the fact that his patient was looking at him, looking beyond confused.

He could feel more laughter bubbling in his chest.

God, he was an . And all this work was definitely messing his mind up. He needed a break before someone eventually punched him. At this rate, with his ty doctor humour, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

He cleared his throat, trying to maintain a straight face.

“Sorry. Long day,” he ended up saying, before sitting down and setting the patient file aside. “Tell me, Mrs. Lee, how can I help you today?”

As expected, there was nothing new. Just the same rambles as last week, and the week before that, and the one before.  

Exactly fifteen minutes later, after writing the same prescription and sending Mrs. Lee away after calling her son to come pick her up, Kyungsoo found himself being handed yet another patient file. The way Sooyeon or Sooyoung kept them coming – it’s like there was an endless pile she kept pulling them out of. Kyungsoo sighed, eyeing the coffee machine at the end of the hallway. His best friend.

He wondered if Sooyeon or Sooyoung would let him have a fifteen minute break for a quick coffee without ratting him out to management.

He opened the door of the exam room to the sight of a young man sitting on the bed. He was wearing a shirt, the top button undone, golden skin peeking from underneath the black fabric as he looked up with his big eyes.

Those eyes only seemed to widen a little when they met his. Kyungsoo let out a breath.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he ended up saying as he closed the door behind himself and threw a sharp look towards Jongin. His eyes were a little narrow.

“Uh, hi.” Jongin mumbled, shuffling awkwardly in his spot, as he eyed Kyungsoo. “I didn’t know you’d be working today.”

“I work every day,” Kyungsoo muttered, as he stepped forward, hands raising to twist in front of his chest. He let out a huff as he eyed Jongin.

He was holding on to his hand, and even if all of him was shuffling, he wasn’t moving his hand at all.

Kyungsoo’s eyes shot up to his face.

“What’s wrong with your hand?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

Kyungsoo appreciated the unyielding look in Jongin’s eyes. It was a breath of fresh air to have a patient who wasn’t entirely okay with dealing with his cranky .

Kyungsoo raised his eyebrows a little as he finally opened the patient file. An X-ray almost fell out of it as his eyes scanned the page. He then flashed a look towards the X-ray.

The light was bright when he the small lightboard and attached the scan. His eyes flashed over the image.

“What happened?” Kyungsoo asked, turning back towards Jongin.

He shrugged, still holding on to his hand.

“I was at the gym last night,” Jongin said and Kyungsoo didn’t mean to let out a sharp breath. Figures. “I was working with some weights. Guess I was tired and it slipped out of my hand. I tried to catch it before it fell but I just ended up hitting my hand. My wrist’s been sore ever since.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo said, setting the patient file aside and taking three steps towards Jongin. He stretched his arm out, waiting for Jongin to take the hint and give him the hand he had hit.

Jongin’s skin was warm again when Kyungsoo’s fingers brushed against it – soft and warm. Kyungsoo held on to Jongin’s forearm with one hand, the other he moved to hold his palm. He turned his hand a little to the side, eyes fixed on Jongin’s face. Waiting for a reaction.

He turned it the lightest bit in the other direction. Still no reaction.

Kyungsoo pressed Jongin’s palm up the slightest bit. And there it was, the reaction he was waiting for – Jongin flinched milliseconds after that, pulling his hand back as much as Kyungsoo’s grip allowed. He hissed in pain, shooting a sharp look up to Kyungsoo. An accusing one.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo ended up saying, sliding his fingers away from Jongin’s palm but still holding on to his forearm under his elbow. “Can you move your fingers?”

Jongin was still very much pouting and glaring at him, but eventually looked down and moved his fingers. Little movements of his long fingers. Kyungsoo vaguely noted how pretty such long fingers looked with the rings he was wearing. It looked beautiful.

“Alright,” he ended up saying. “There doesn’t seem to be a loss of function, so that’s good. You have some small tears in the ligament, but it’s very minor damage. The good news is it’s gonna heal quickly.”

“And the bad news?”

Kyungsoo let go of Jongin’s hand and turned to pull one of the cupboards in the exam room open. He pulled out a bandage as he threw a look over his shoulder.

“It’s always about the bad news with you, isn’t it?” he let out a small chuckle, shaking his head and pulling a stool closer to the bed. He sat down in front of Jongin, too busy tearing the package of the bandage to notice how he had trapped the younger man’s legs between his own, how entirely too close he was sitting to him. “The bad news is there isn’t really a medication to magically fix this. I can give you some general painkillers, but injuries like this take time to heal themselves.”

“Oh.”

“You should rest your hand if possible, for the next 48 hours at least. I’m going to compress your wrist with a bandage to stop you from moving it too much,” Kyungsoo explained as he pulled Jongin’s arm towards himself again, resting it on his own leg as he started wrapping the bandage. He threw a quick look to the younger’s face to see that he was already looking at him, sharp and dark eyes boring into his. Kyungsoo blinked and looked away almost immediately. He tried to ignore the way his heart did something funny in his chest. “If it starts hurting again or swel