| One

"Watch out!"

Eunhyuk awaked with a start.        
He found himself in a bed, panting and covered with cold sweat. His heart was hammering painfully against his ribcage, so hard like he had been running a marathon. Trembling hands found their way to his mouth as he started coughing, his eyes aimlessly darting through the room. There was this awful feeling in his guts that kept tightening until he almost threw up without him even knowing where it was coming from.

'It was just a dream', he told himself, heaving for air, as he recognized his surroundings and understood that he was in his room. Yet that fact didn’t manage to calm himself down, not even a bit.

Just a dream – a nightmare to say it better. But what had it been about? He tried to remember where his mind had been just a few seconds ago, tried to ignore the awful pounding he felt especially in the back of his head. It got worse with every second he spent with thinking about it, yet there was no use. There was nothing. His mind was blank, every memory of his dream completely erased – except for this one sentence: Watch out. Watch out for what? And who had said that to begin with? The sound of the voice he had heard also was something he couldn’t recall.

He ran his hand through his red hair and held his head with both of them as his world started spinning. The feeling in his guts worsened and it felt like he was falling as he closed his eyes. It got so bad that he had to open them again only a few heartbeats later, gasping and irritated. The pain only seemed to increase as he once again looked around, made black dots appear everywhere whenever he blinked his eyes.

It was kind of dark in his room, he noticed, and that fact made him believe that it was early in the morning. But as his eyes flitted to the alarm clock next to his bed, he furrowed his brows in confusion as he noticed that it was 9 p.m. and the sun had already set. Why was he already in bed, weren’t there any schedules? And why wasn’t someone bursting through his door and dragging him out of it like it would usually happen when he slept at such times?

Eunhyuk let his gaze fall down to the bed and with from pain narrowed eyes looked at the shirt he was wearing. Tugging a bit on it and blinking as his vision started blurring, he noticed that it was one of the shirts he wore when they were having practice. This definitely wasn’t something he would wear when he would go to bed. He pushed the blanket back a bit and saw the pants he wore; those he also had never worn anywhere except for the practice room. Why was he wearing those clothes now?

This was weird and as he started thinking about it, he couldn’t remember that he had even gone to bed. But what was the last thing he could remember? He deliberated, thought about it over and over again, yet it was impossible for him to find an answer. The dull pain in his head made him unable to think; his hazy mind was surely caused by it so he tried to not think about it any further. All he wanted was for the pain to stop; he would ask the others about how he had come into his room afterwards.

With sloppy movements he freed himself from the blanket and swung his legs out of the bed, one hand pressed against his forehead. He had to wait for almost a whole minute until his world stopped spinning enough so he dared to do the next step. Lifting himself up was way harder than he imagined it to be and he swayed dangerously as he slowly stumbled through the room and to the door. Reaching it, he was glad to have something in his hand to hold on to as he grabbed the door handle for he didn’t trust the strength of his legs. Eunhyuk had to wait for a moment again before he pulled the door open and with that he unconsciously made the faint whispering next door immediately die down.

His hand was still on his forehead as he stepped into the living room; he couldn’t see straight as his vision blurred even more. The other hand got a hold on the door frame and he tightly clutched to it as his world continued swaying, almost dragging him down. He saw someone sitting on the couch, but there was no way for him to make out who it was. Were there two people or … four? Was he seeing double?

Eunhyuk let out a silent groan as the pain in his head almost brought him to his knees and thought he heard something that sounded like a faint gasp, maybe even mixed with a whimper. He clenched his eyes shut; he felt near collapsing right where he stood.

"Hyukjae."

That was Sungmin's voice, he thought and it wasn’t much later that a pair of hands was placed on his arms. He hissed, glad that the hands held him in place as he swayed to his right. With much effort he managed to open his eyes again and was kind of surprised to see Leeteuk standing in front of him – at least he thought that it was him; his vision was way too blurry to make him see anything.

"What's wrong?" he heard their leader ask. His voice was silent and sounded worried, but at the same time so odd. If he hadn't known it better, Eunhyuk would've thought it sounded like the elder was crying, so hoarse was it. But that couldn’t be, right? There was no need for him to do that. Maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him.

"My head", he groaned silently and took an unsteady step to the side; Leeteuk's hands still didn’t let go of him.

"Does it hurt?"

Eunhyuk hummed pathetically. "It feels like it's about to explode..."

There was a brief moment of silence and he could hear someone snivel, but it sounded like it was further away. Maybe it was one of the people sitting on the couch. Had somebody caught a cold?

"Come on", Leeteuk said and grabbed one of his arms tighter to gently pull him along. "You should sit down for a bit."

The redhead was blindly following the leader's steps, couldn’t tell where they were going and was surprised as the next thing for him was to be pushed down to sit on one of the chairs in the kitchen.  
Eunhyuk rested his elbows on the table and held his head. His world was still swaying, but at least it didn’t feel like he would fall to the floor anymore. Leeteuk's hand was on his back and rubbed in soothing circles over it. The elder seemed hesitant, needed by far more time to speak than he usually did. And as he finally spoke, Eunhyuk noticed how weird his voice really sounded. Was it him this time, sniveling silently?

"Do you need anything?" Leeteuk asked and it was so low that Eunhyuk almost couldn’t hear it. "Shall I … bring you some medicine or something?"

The younger let one of his hands sink to the table and slightly turned his head to look at him out of still narrowed eyes. Now that he was sitting and after blinking at least five times in a row, he could see Leeteuk's face clearer – and it shocked him how broken the other looked. His eyes were reddened just like his cheeks; his face looked kind of swollen and the reason for that was still visible: traces of tears were everywhere. And with his tousled hair and the exhausted expression on his face it looked like he had spent the whole day with nothing but crying.

Eunhyuk his lips and searched for the right words to say, too overwhelmed to actually find them. "Hyung…" was everything he managed to utter and the leader immediately forced himself to a short and bitter smile before he stood up and turned around, opening one of the wall cupboards to grab a glass. The redhead kept watching him in silence as Leeteuk filled it with water and eventually placed it in on the table, head turning and eyes searching for something. He found the medicine he was looking for on the counter, close to the sink; the packet was still opened like someone had used them before and had left them there. Was there someone else having a headache?

The painkillers found their way into Eunhyuk's hand and he quickly gulped them down without a second look but with some water; Leeteuk sat down beside him, looking completely devastated. Eunhyuk couldn’t tear his eyes away from him and as they sat there he noticed for the first time how silent the dorm was. There were simply no sounds; no shower running, no voices, no music, no TV playing – just the occasional sniveling. He couldn’t remember the dorm being that quiet, only when there was no one home. But there were at least four people here, so what was this silence about?

"Hyung", he tried again as he held his head and blinked to make his vision less blurry. There it was again, this faked smile that made him even sicker to the stomach. Leeteuk reached his hand out and placed it on his back again to rub it, soothe him even though Eunhyuk thought he needed to be the one comforting the other.

"It won't take long", the elder croaked out. "Just wait a bit and they will start to kick in."

"B-but … I don’t-"

He was pulled in the other's arms before he could finish his sentence. Leeteuk hushed him and carefully placed the younger's head on his shoulder, his hand