Chapter Text
Kai was dying.
Okay, maybe not dying, but it sure felt like it. His head was stuffy, his nose was red, and his whole body ached in that miserable, all-consuming way that made everything feel like too much effort. His usual vibrant energy—the same energy that had earned him millions of followers, thousands of likes, comments, and shares—was reduced to a pitiful slouch on the couch, cocooned in the fluffiest blanket he could find. His phone sat abandoned on the table, its screen dark and lifeless, a sharp contrast to the constant buzz of notifications it usually emitted. His audience, his fans, his entire brand were left in the dark.
The Ultimate Influencer was out of commission.
And that sucked.
For someone like Kai, who thrived on being in the spotlight, the silence was almost unbearable. The world didn’t stop when you were sick, and neither did social media. His mind kept flickering to his last post—had it been engaging enough? Were his followers already moving on to someone else? Was he…replaceable? The thought made his stomach twist, but even that wasn’t enough to rouse him from his cocoon of misery. He was too tired, too achy, too overwhelmed by the pounding in his skull to do anything about it.
But, somehow, against all odds, Kai had one thing going for him.
Damon.
Of all people.
Kai would have laughed if he had the energy. If anyone had told him that Damon, the most annoyingly self-serious, emotionally constipated person he knew, would voluntarily sit beside him, acting as his personal caretaker, he would have assumed they were messing with him. Damon, who treated emotions like they were a foreign language he refused to learn. Damon, who had once told him, with a perfectly straight face, that "personal feelings are irrelevant in a debate." Damon, who had a permanent scowl etched onto his face, like he’d been born irritated.
Kai opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. For once, words escaped him. Was he hallucinating? Maybe the fever was worse than he thought. Damon, the same Damon who once debated the ethics of sharing personal belongings like it was an Olympic sport, was now… making him tea? It didn’t compute.
“You care,” Kai said finally, his voice dripping with mock astonishment. His tired eyes narrowed as a mischievous grin spread across his face. “Oh my god, Damon. You care.”
Damon’s jaw tightened, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, his signature gesture whenever Kai was being particularly insufferable. “Don’t start.”
“No, no, I’m serious,” Kai continued, his voice scratchy but gaining strength. “This is like… a milestone. Should we mark it on a calendar? ‘The day Damon showed human emotion.’ I’m honored, really.”
Damon’s expression didn’t change, but his lips pressed into a thinner line as if he were willing himself not to take the bait. “Do you want the tea or not?”
“Oh, I want it,” Kai said, reaching out with exaggerated reverence, his fingers brushing against Damon’s as he accepted the mug. “But I also need to process this moment properly. I mean, you—Damon—are taking care of me. Me. This is huge.”
“Don’t make it weird,” Damon muttered, leaning back and crossing his arms again.
Kai took a careful sip of the tea, the warmth spreading through his chest and soothing his sore throat. It was good. Like, annoyingly good. Of course Damon would be good at making tea—it was probably another one of those things he’d perfected in his endless quest to be better than everyone at everything. He’d probably researched the exact steeping time and temperature. Kai could almost picture it: Damon standing in his kitchen, reading articles with titles like The Science of the Perfect Brew.
Kai smirked behind the rim of the mug. “You know, if this whole debating thing doesn’t work out, you could totally open a tea shop. Call it ‘Damon’s Brews.’ You’d get, like, zero customers because you’d scare them all away, but still.”
Damon sighed deeply, his fingers drumming against his arm. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet, here you are,” Kai shot back, grinning. He leaned back against the couch cushions again, letting himself sink into the warmth of the blanket and the tea. The ache in his body was still there, but it felt a little less overwhelming now.
Damon didn’t respond, but he didn’t leave, either. He just stayed there, sitting stiffly at the edge of the couch like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. It was such a Damon thing to do—being helpful in the most begrudging, awkward way possible.
Kai hesitated, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “…You’re not gonna, like, take a picture of me like this and blackmail me later, right?”
Damon rolled his eyes. “I don’t need to blackmail you. You embarrass yourself enough on your own.”
Fair point.
Kai yawned, his body sinking deeper into the cushions. He should keep teasing Damon—who knew when he’d get another chance like this? Damon was the type of person who would deny this ever happened the second Kai recovered. But warmth was settling over him, making his limbs feel heavy. The tea was helping. The blanket was helping.
Damon’s presence was… helping.
Weird.
He shifted, resting his head against Damon’s shoulder without thinking. Immediately, he felt the other boy tense, as if his entire body had gone rigid with the effort of not reacting. Damon was always composed, always controlled, but Kai could practically feel him fighting every instinct to push him off. And yet, he didn’t move. That alone made Kai’s fever-addled brain light up with amusement.
Kai smirked sleepily, his voice a little hoarse but still carrying that teasing edge. “Oh, relax. I’m sick. It’s not like I can fight you.”
“…That’s exactly why I should move you,” Damon muttered. His tone was flat, but there was a faint waver in it, a crack in the perfectly cool demeanor Damon so carefully maintained.
Kai snuggled in closer, mostly out of spite. “You won’t.”
“I might.”
“You won’t,” Kai repeated, his voice softening. He didn’t know why he was so sure of it, but he was. Damon might have been the most stubborn person alive, but there was something about the way he stayed rooted to the spot, every muscle in his body tense but still, that told Kai he wasn’t going anywhere.
And Kai, for all his teasing, wasn’t sure he wanted him to.
But Damon didn’t. He didn’t shove him away or lecture him about personal space or make some sharp comment about how insufferable Kai was. Instead, he let out a long, exasperated sigh, like he was trying to convince himself that this wasn’t happening, and settled back into the couch. He didn’t move his shoulder. He didn’t move Kai.
That was enough for Kai.
He let his eyes close, exhaustion creeping in around the edges of his mind. His voice was quieter now, softer, like the effort of teasing Damon was too much work. “You’re not as mean as you think you are,” he mumbled, his words slurring slightly.
Damon sighed again, this time with more weight, like he might actually argue. But he didn’t. “…Go to sleep, Monteago,” he said instead, his voice low and steady.
Kai smiled drowsily, his lips curling up in a way that felt almost involuntary. “Liar.”
Damon didn’t argue.
For a moment, there was silence. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty, but full—of unsaid things, of unacknowledged truths, of the strange, unspoken bond that had formed between them despite Damon’s best efforts to keep people at arm’s length. Kai could feel it, even through the haze of his fever. That tension, that closeness, that thing between them that neither of them ever talked about but both of them always felt.
Damon might not say it—he might never say it—but he was here. And that alone said more than words ever could.
Kai’s breathing slowed as the exhaustion finally won, his head still resting on Damon’s shoulder. His body felt heavy, but not in the way it had earlier. This wasn’t the weight of sickness or fatigue—it was the weight of comfort, of safety, of knowing that despite everything, Damon was here. And Damon, for all his sharp edges and cold words, was staying.
Kai, against all odds, felt safe enough to fall asleep.
He woke up to the sound of nothing. The room was still, lit by the faint glow of the afternoon light filtering through the curtains. His body ached less, though his throat still burned and his nose was still annoyingly stuffed. The fevered haze had lifted slightly, enough for him to register his surroundings.
The blanket was still wrapped snugly around him, its warmth cocooning him in a way that made him reluctant to move. The empty mug of tea sat on the table where he remembered leaving it—or, at least, where Damon had made him leave it. But Damon himself was gone.
Kai blinked blearily, his mind struggling to catch up. The warmth from the blanket was still there, but the warmth of Damon’s presence—the steady, grounding weight of him sitting beside him—was noticeably missing. For a moment, Kai felt… disappointed? No, that wasn’t the right word. Not exactly. He wasn’t sure what he felt, but whatever it was, it left a strange hollowness in his chest.
He shifted slightly, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles, and that’s when he noticed it. A fresh box of tissues had been placed within arm’s reach, sitting neatly beside a new, steaming mug of tea. The sight of it made something warm and soft bloom in his chest, chasing away the hollow feeling from before.
Damon might not be here, but he hadn’t just left. He’d thought ahead. He’d made sure Kai had what he needed. And, knowing Damon, he’d probably done it in the quietest, least attention-grabbing way possible. Because Damon didn’t do things for recognition. He didn’t do them for thanks or praise. He just… did them.
Kai smiled to himself, the corners of his mouth tugging up despite the heaviness of his body. His heart felt inexplicably light, even as his limbs weighed him down.
Damon cared.
Whether he admitted it or not, whether he said it or denied it or buried it under layers of sarcasm and cold logic, Damon cared. And that, Kai realized, was enough. It didn’t need to be said. It didn’t need to be acknowledged. It just was.
Kai reached for the new mug of tea, his fingers curling around the warm ceramic. He took a careful sip, savoring the way it soothed the scratchiness in his throat, and let himself sink back into the couch cushions. The blanket, the tea, the tissues—they were all small things. Things that might not have meant much to anyone else.
But to Kai, they meant everything.
As he sat there, sipping his tea and letting the warmth spread through him, he found himself smiling again. Not his usual, camera-ready smile, the one he wore for his audience, but a smaller, softer one. The kind of smile that came from knowing that, despite everything, someone was looking out for him.
Someone as stubborn and infuriating and unexpectedly kind as Damon.
And that? That was more than enough.