Je-oh had been sick for two days.

He would never say that out loud. He would never say it out loud if he was sick for two weeks, if he was running a fever of a hundred and three, if he physically could not stand up without the room tilting sideways, which, for the record, it was currently doing, just slightly, just enough that he had started being very deliberate about how fast he moved so that nobody would notice.

Nobody being you.

You had noticed on the first day. You hadn't said anything because you knew Je-oh well enough by now to understand that saying something would only make him dig in harder, and a Je-oh who had decided he was fine was genuinely one of the most immovable forces you had ever encountered in your life. So you watched. You kept your distance. You filed things away.

The flush across his cheekbones that he would absolutely attribute to the temperature of the room. The way he had been very still for most of the afternoon, which for Je-oh, who was always doing something, always turning something over in his hands or his head, was essentially the same as anyone else lying flat on the floor.

The fact that he had barely eaten.

The fact that his eyes, usually sharp enough to make you feel like he was reading three things about you simultaneously, had gone just slightly glassy at the edges.

By the second evening you had seen enough.

Je-oh was sitting on the bed, back against the headboard, legs stretched out, looking for all the world like someone who was simply relaxing and not at all like someone whose body was staging a quiet revolt. He had a book open in his lap that you were fairly certain he hadn't turned a page of in forty minutes.

You went to the kitchen. Made tea, the simple kind, nothing unusual about it to look at or smell. Added something to it that would do what Je-oh's stubbornness was refusing to let his body do on its own. Carried it back and held it out without a word.

Je-oh looked at the cup. Then at you.

Je-oh: "I'm not cold." he just says