hot and cold - nct, jaedo

♨ 24 ❄

doyoung turned around for the nth time of the night inside his bed.

he couldn't sleep.

he didn't seem to be able to find sleep these past days.

the memories of his parents taking him away from jaehyun were too freshly printed in his mind to allow him to sleep peacefully.

it had been four days.

four long days that doyoung hadn't seen jaehyun.

he missed him.

it was as if some part of him had been taken away when he had left the demon's room that night.

the painful memory encouraged him to change his position again, which he did.

"stop moving and sleep, dear."

doyoung rolled his eyes after hearing his mother's voice.

he hated the fact that now, one of his parents was always with him.

they didn't trust him.

they knew he or jaehyun could open a portal and get to the other realm.

but they obviously didn't want that.

which was why they had taken this measure.

they didn't want a maid to watch over him 24/7 because they knew that maids tended to listen to the kind hearted human heir.

"i can't sleep." doyoung scoffed, his voice accusing his mother.

"you should." his mother told. "or you'll be tired tomorrow."

"i don't even care." the heir replied, flipping himself on his stomach. "but you don't either apparently..."

♨/❄

"so, how was your day?" the king asked, digging inside his plate of food.

doyoung used his fork to play with the green beans that were floating in some vegetable soup in his plate.

his eyebags were prominent because of his sleepless nights and all his crying.

it had been two weeks since their separation.

doyoung was wondering how he had managed to survive until then.

he had lost a lot of weight because he refused to eat.

but he didn't really care anymore. what was the point of living if he couldn't be with the man he loved?

"shitty." he replied, dropping his fork to zip his sweater.

"come on, i'm sure you did interesting things." the king spoke.

"no. nothing." doyoung scoffed.

"but we visited the farming lands! it was beautiful and very enriching, don't you think?" the queen said happily.

"the last interesting things that i saw were in the demon realm. and nothing is as beautiful as when jaehyun shows them to me!" doyoung replied with gritted teeth.

"please, we already told you to stop talking about him." the king warned.

"i won't." doyoung spat before standing up and walking away.

"doyoung, come back here, you haven't eaten anything..." the queen tried calling her son.

"i'm not hungry!"

♨/❄

"are you... huh... okay?"

"never been better." the demon heir scoffed at his best friend's stupid question.

"y-yeah, huh..."

sicheng sat down next to doyoung on one of the couches of the living room.

the queen was sitting a few armchairs away, far enough not to hear their conversation, but close enough to see what they were doing.

"i hate your parents..." sicheng sighed, hugging his best friend.

"trust me, i do too." doyoung nodded.

"yuta and i had just gotten together, and then they forbid us to create portals..." he whined. "it has been three weeks, and i can't live like this anymore..."

"at least your mother hasn't been following you around and always sitting five meters away from you."the heir rolled his eyes.

"i don't know how you manage to live like that..." sicheng sighed.

"i know right." doyoung nodded. "it's not monarchy anymore... it's tyranny..."

♨/❄

"could you have an idea what is wrong with him doctor?" the queen asked, looking worriedly at her pale son who was lying onto his bed under dozens of comforters, his eyes barely staying open.

the doctor who had been called from the other side of the realm sighed, standing up from the bed and approaching the queen of the human realm.

"your son is in a critic state." the medic said. "his body temperature is very low, and his body refuses to regulate it. it's as if he was freezing from the inside."

"the realm is cold, it's something usual." the queen told.

"yeah, but usually, human bodies don't overpass a certain threshold." he added. "your son's body temperature is lower than that."

the queen looked sadly at her son who seemed to have completely passed out by now.

"is that all?" she asked with a pained expression.

"he is also underweight. and he lacks a lot of sleep." the doctor explained. "this could be linked with the cold body temperature too. each problem is aggravated by the other."

the queen gulped.

"how can we heal him, doctor? he's the heir to the throne."

"well..." the doctor gave a glance to doyoung. "he needs to be in a hotter place. this could compensate the fact his body temperature is so low."

"we'll try to find a hotter room." the queen nodded quickly. "thank you very much."

the doctor bowed, packing his stuff to head back to the door.

however, he stopped when he got by the door.

"one last question." he said.

"yes?"

"has he face some kind of traumatic event?"

the queen's mind unconsciously flashed images of their son being taken away by force from the demon realm. images of him being taken away from the warm embrace of his boyfriend.

she might be against this relationship, she was still his mother, and she was still a human. she could see and understand that this event had been a traumatic part of his life.

"w-why?" she asked without answering the question.

"all these things can be caused by a trauma. judging by his state, i guess it has been a month." the doctor said. "and as longs as this trauma will be on his mind, it will be very difficult for him to recover..."