Prompt: “Fight Me!”

Pairing: Xiumin/Chen

Words: ~1300

“Fight me!”

Minseok furrows his brows, bemused as a man in his twenties stares at him from underneath what looks like a pillow fort above plain, scratchy, hospital bed sheets. The little clipboard at the end of the bed tells him the occupant is named Kim Jongdae (24 years of age, blood type B), and that he’s just had his appendix removed. He has cropped raven hair and black eyes with little flecks of brown. A bare upper torso with pastel pink pyjamas peeks out from under the covers. He’d be gorgeous, Minseok thinks, if he wasn’t drooling all over the linen.

Minseok fishes for Jongdae’s wrist and takes his pulse, nodding to himself at its regularity, using his other hand to pull the sheets off Jongdae so that he doesn’t suffocate himself in his drug-induced stupidity. Minseok absently brushes invisible creases from his light blue scrubs as he gently pushes Jongdae to the side and rearranges the pillows.

“Fight me!” Jongdae repeats.

Minseok rolls his eyes, tugging down Jongdae’s pyjama bottoms so he can do a quick check of the bandages. All appears in order, so he simply brushes a stray strand of hair behind Jongdae’s ear and pokes his tongue out at him.

“Maybe next time,” he responds jokingly.

Next time happens to be the evening rounds. Minseok maneuvers the tray table across the sidebars of the hospital bed as Jongdae drags himself up into a sitting position. Dinner for Jongdae consists of a very thin piece of steak sitting on a bed of watery, bland mashed potatoes. A small garden of peas, broccoli, carrot and cauliflower occupies the edge of the plate, obviously out of the freezer. Jongdae doesn’t look impressed, and (to be honest) neither does Minseok.

“You want me to eat this?” Jongdae asks in a lilting voice.

“Well, yes,” Minseok says cordially, eyebrow twitching. The job of a nurse, he reminds himself, is to make his patients happy. It’s not too different from customer service in retail, now that he thinks about it. Always s ready to complain, always questions that he was expected to answer with kindness and compassion, despite how idiotic they happen to be.

“I don’t wanna eat this,” Jongdae says with a giggle, though he shovels a little of the mash onto a fork and sticks it half on his mouth, half on his chin. Some of it ends up under his shirt and he wiggles around like a gleeful slug as Minseok grabs a paper towel and tries to fish it out.

“Fight me!” Jongdae yells, and for a second Minseok wonders if the doctors have accidentally overdosed the poor bastard on painkillers. He checks the monitors, and for good measure takes Jongdae’s blood pressure. All within normal range. Jongdae stares at him with unblinking eyes, and Minseok can’t help but chuckle.

“Again, maybe next time,” he says with an eye roll.

Minseok makes his way to Jongdae’s room towards the end of his shift. It’s just after midnight, and he can’t help but brush the back of his hand against his lips as he stifles a yawn. The hospital halls are silent, bar the occasional beep from ECMO machines and the snore of an old man almost ready to be released after suffering a bout of pneumonia. He sticks his head in each room, making sure all of his patients are happily in dreamland.

Jongdae is still awake.

The lone patient, with his bandages seeping slightly, is rolling about in his sheets tossing pillows aside as he attempts to change the channel on a television bolted to the ceiling. Minseok steps inside, a small smile unconsciously spreading across his face. Jongdae groans, finally finding the right channel and laying back against the pillow. His eyes are bloodshot with dark rings underneath them, and he looks distinctly paler than before in the dim, fluorescent ceiling lights.

Minseok steps across the room quietly, checking Jongdae’s monitors once again.

“You’re going to have to sit up a little for me Jongdae,” Minseok says serenely. Jongdae wiggles a little and stifles a moan of pain. The painkillers must be wearing off, but he’s not due for another dose for a few hours.

Minseok wrestles the bandage off Jongdae and folds it gently, walking across the to the storage room for a new one. He notes that it is only light seepage, as typical of a healing wound. He makes sure to disinfect liberally, vaguely noticing the hisses Jongdae is giving him if he presses on the taut stomach muscle too firmly.

“Fight m-” Jongdae collapses into a fit of coughing and Minseok furrows his brow. Not exactly a normal reaction to a simple bandage change.

Minseok checks Jongdae’s vitals again as Jongdae wheezes, noticing slight changes in temperature and blood pressure from before. A simple cold, though from experience Minseok knows it could develop into pneumonia. He quickly reaches for the wall phone and calls a doctor in, to have Jongdae moved up a floor where there is stricter monitoring. He helps wheel a confused Jongdae into the lift and gives him a reassuring smile.

“I couldn’t possibly fight you, Jongdae,” Minseok says gently. “If we ended up in a fight, surely you would win!”

Jongdae relaxes back against the pillows, his lips curling into a satisfied smirk. Minseok rolls his eyes as he marches back down the corridor and to his locker, ready to finish his shift.

If Minseok hadn’t found this until the next morning, Jongdae could have been in a lot more trouble than he is now. Luckily, when caught early usually symptoms left the patient within the next 6-8 hours. Jongdae was young and (admittedly) ridiculously fit. A tight facial structure to match finely chiseled abs and heavily muscular upper arms. Minseok can’t help but blush at the thought of those arms wrapped around him, despite having seen Jongdae in various states of drug-fueled dopiness and pink pyjama undress.

Minseok returns to work the next day with a small bunch of flowers under his arm. He hastily tosses his car keys into his locker and pulls on his scrubs, eyeing the flowers nervously. Minseok sits the flowers above his locker, contemplating when to actually give them to Jongdae (if he manages to pluck up the courage to do so at all). He doubts that Jongdae will remember him, but he still decided in a spur-of-the-moment on the way to work that it would be nice to buy something for the poor bastard.

Finishing his loop of the ward, Minseok finally makes his way across to Jongdae’s room. He peeks around the corner, letting out a breath of relief as he notices that Jongdae is still asleep and that the colour has returned to his cheeks. Jongdae is still drooling all over the place, but there’s something cute about the way he clings to his pillow and lets out unconscious sighs.

Minseok rushes back to the employee’s locker room, grabbing the flowers off his locker and bringing them back to Jongdae. He drops them on the bedside table soundlessly, finding a notebook and pen. He quickly rips out a page and scrawls a simple message and his phone number, sitting it next to the flowers.

Fight Me?

Minseok keeps a close eye on Jongdae for the rest of the day, blushing as he notices him finally awakening, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Jongdae notices the flowers and smirks again. He stares at the doorway and sees a tuft of hair sticking out from where Minseok has just retreated. Minseok jumps slightly as a booming, lyrical laugh echoes out of Jongdae’s room and down the hallway.