Fate is a cruel mistress.

Jungkook is tying his boots, about to go to the store, and nobody is on standby to kiss him goodbye. It’s usually Hoseok’s job, but his treacherous immune system decided to give out right at the first hint of spring, leaving him sick and miserable and practically immobile with misery and self-pity.

“Kookiieee,” he moans, reaching through the fog clouding his vision. Haze is not a good look on Jungkook, and everything looks good on him. Even nothing looks good on him! But haze? Too blurry. Smudges out the lines of his muscles and angle of his jaw.

“I’ll be back in a little bit, hyung.” Jungkook catches his hand and tucks it beneath the pile of blankets that pin him to the bed. According to Seokjin, the purpose of all the blankets is to break Hoseok’s fever. If that means making him sweat, it’s working. He’s probably lost every ounce of water weight he ever carried.

It’s also very uncomfortable and rather smelly. Baths are treacherous alone, however; being upright for too long makes Hoseok dizzy. So, showers are impossible. Even if he had help, being with Jungkook makes him dizzy, too. Weak knees.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since you had a good kiss?” It could almost sound threatening, if it came from anyone but Hoseok. “Or any kiss at all?”

“Well, it’s been a few days, at least, but a good kiss?” Jungkook hums and kicks a pile of tissues nearer the overflowing wastebasket. He shrugs. “A few days. Any kiss from you is good.” His ears are red, or Hoseok’s hallucinating from heavy medication. “So I want you to get better. To do that, you need medicine that we don’t have right now.”

Hoseok whines in the face of logic and struggles to free himself from his feather down prison before Jungkook can make his ultimate escape.

“I’ll not even be an hour, hyung. You’ll live until then.”

“Just to spite you, I’ll die and come back just to haunt you.” The kiss on his fevered forehead does little to soothe him, but he’ll take what he can get. According to Jungkook, Seokjin hyung has been putting the idea in his head that prolonged contact with Hoseok will get Jungkook sick. As if Hoseok would actually do such a thing. The only sickness he’ll spread is lovesickness, and the only cure to that is Jungkook.

A catch-22.

“You can’t kiss me as a ghost, hyung.”

“I could try.”

“Just stay alive until I get back. You’ll be fine.”

“But you’ve gone without kisses for days.” He hears the door click as it shuts and pouts, burrowing further into his cocoon. His phone is in his pocket—possibly melting from being trapped in a blanket sauna—and he fishes it out with some difficulty. “There’s only one person who can help,” he mutters, opening a chat app. “‘Your mission, and you have to accept it, is to kiss Jeon Jungkook as many times as possible…’”

Pleased with assigning his best agent, Hoseok settles back into his pillows, barks a few chest-rattling coughs, and closes his eyes with a miserable groan.

He’s feverishly unaware of the mayhem he’s set on Jungkook. The dedicated boyfriend runs as politely as he can through the crowds and slips among convenience store patrons to load his arms with medicine, tissues, electrolyte drinks, and whatever else he thinks they need.

His delicate sense of inner danger is overshadowed by his sense of duty, so he doesn’t feel anything until too late, and his cheeks are assaulted with loud mwah!s and a bubbly greeting.

Rubbing his cheek on his shoulder, Jungkook spins to face his assailants. “Taehyung! Jimin!”

“Hyung, to you,” Jimin scowls, “and before you complain: Hoseok hyung asked me to. Tae was gracious enough to volunteer to help.” He holds up his phone. The chat shows lots of heart and lip emojis surrounding Jungkook’s name and a bizarre, misspelled message to kiss him as many times as possible.

But the contact name is their Hoseok hyung. Jimin’s added a sunflower emoji before the name and a sun after it. It’s a reliable source.

A reliable source under the influence of prescription cold medicine.

Like a bunny caught in the headlights of a car, Jungkook stares at Jimin, who stares back with a catty smile. Taehyung looks like the cat that caught the canary.

No one is sure who moves first, but Jimin is fast and has the advantage of very personal knowledge of the store’s layout. He and his roommates live two floors above it. Taehyung has instincts like a hound dog and springs up when Jungkook thinks he can escape an aisle.

All Jungkook wants is to pay for his stuff and go home before Hoseok suffocates in his own snot. If he can’t actively escape, he may just have to surrender...

Hoseok doesn’t get the text message until his foggy mind realizes the buzzing isn’t under his skin but is actually under his arm. Namjoon had sent him a video attachment and is calling him now, only minutes later.

His weakened arms can’t hold up his phone for long; Hoseok props it up against a mound he makes from his blankets. It angles the camera funny, but he probably looks bad, anyway, and he’s not in the mood to impress.

Namjoon’s with Seokjin, who’s slouching a bit with the weight of Taehyung along his back. After some customary greetings and asking how they all are, Namjoon gets down to brass tacks.

“Why were Jimin and Taehyung terrorizing Jungkook?” They’re a unit. What one does, the other inevitably follows.

Hoseok blows a raspberry, coughs, and blows his nose.

“Jiminie’s the only one I trust with this very important mission.” Jimin’s the reason Jungkook and Hoseok even met, after all. He and Jungkook are from the same hometown, and Jungkook was very much a baby duckling as a kid, following the older kids he liked—although he vehemently denies liking Jimin at all, even now. Bless him, that angel Jimin volunteered to move out of his and Hoseok’s shared apartment after he’d been dating Jungkook and wanted to live with him.

Seokjin leans over Namjoon’s shoulder, looking put out. “If it was anyone but Jimin, I’d be offended.”

“Jungkook’s gone, like, days with no kisses, okay? He won’t accept my germy kisses, and he only comes near me when I ask for more tissues or something, because somebody said to avoid me—”

“I said to exercise caution so he doesn’t get sick, too.”

“—and there’s just no fairness to it.” Hoseok chops his hand through the air, intending to punctuate his point but only letting it fall to his side, because his arm is just too heavy. “That boy’s face was made for kissing, okay? And my face was made for kissing that face, and that I’m not allowed or able to do that is cruel and unusual…”

Jimin ambles to join the call, wiping smeared lip gloss from his mouth. “Hi, hyung! Mission accomplished.” He joins Taehyung in clinging to Seokjin.

“Good boy, Jiminie!” Hoseok throws up a finger heart that breaks to cover another coughing fit.

“That was dangerous, though,” Seokjin scolds. “This is a place of business, not a playground!”

“I know, hyung, but it was important! I’ll apologize to that auntie when I can, and tell her why it had to be done.”

Seokjin nudges the others, looking like he wishes he could enter the phone and pop out at Hoseok’s side. “You should rest more. We’ll see you in a couple days, okay? You should feel better by then.”

“Get better soon, Hoseok.” Namjoon angles his phone so Jimin and Taehyung can shout their own get-well-wishes and promises to hang out once he’s well, and the call ends.

His phone slides down its makeshift stand and drops from his belly to his side, and he can’t be bothered to pick it up again. It can just stay there.

He doesn’t feel as foggy. Just sweaty. Maybe his birthday wish is granted, and his fever is finally gone.

Jungkook makes it back at some point. Time isn’t real, and Hoseok may have dropped off for a while or just zoned out onto another plane of reality. The important thing is he’s back and being intentionally quiet, so focused on making no sound as he paws through the plastic shopping bags that he jumps and drops the cough syrup when Hoseok blows his nose.

“I’m sorry, hyung!” Hoseok groans and chucks the wad of tissues in the general direction of the wastebasket. Miraculously, he makes it. Kobe. “I got more tissues…” Jungkook picks his way around the tissues that missed their mark, ripping open the cardboard packaging and setting it within easy reach. “Seokjin hyung had also made soup, if you’re hungry, but I’m tempted to make you heat it up yourself, for setting Jimin on me.”

“It had to be done, Jungkookie!” He makes a weak attempt to grab his boyfriend’s hand and is delighted when Jungkook doesn’t avoid it. “I feel better, so it worked.”

Following the tugging that does feel stronger than a day or two ago, Jungkook climbs over Hoseok to lie partly beside him and partly on top of him, with the sofa at his back. Contradicting his behavior, Hoseok whines that he doesn’t want Jungkook catching his sick.

“I’ve got a strong immune system,” Jungkook replies, kissing his temple before shimmying down more comfortably. “I’ll be fine.”

He was not, however, fine, and while Hoseok was up and about with a couple days, as predicted by Seokjin, Jungkook takes his place on the sofa, and it’s Hoseok’s turn to play unprofessional nurse.

‘Unprofessional’ because he doesn’t deny his patient kisses.

Fate can kiss his .

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a/n: Written for Your Hope Fest. (prompt hoseok is SICK and tired of not smooching jungkook’s face 24/7. it has to be illegal for jungkook to go unsmooched for more than a few minutes and he’s got a lot to say about it)