Little King (Seoksoo)

Joshua

"You goddamn, flipping piece of crap, son of a hot potato!" Joshua yelled, shaking his fist at the current bane of his existence. "You were put on this earth to torment me, weren't you, spawn of Satan? Don't even try to deny it."

The copy machine did not, in fact, try to deny it.

"That's what I thought," mumbled Joshua, a trifle smugly. Then he remembered he was talking out loud to an inanimate object in the middle of the night, and all smugness was forgotten. He took a quick look around to make sure nobody was nearby. He was generally pretty good when it came to controlling his admittedly dirty mouth while at work, but he wasn't actually quite sure what had come out just now.

The office was abandoned. Chloe, the night-shift charge nurse and his work bestie, had left her computer to go grab coffee and snacks, and he was pretty sure the other emergency room nurses were sneaking naps on some of the gurneys in the lesser-used patient bays.

It was a dead night.

Joshua supposed he should be glad about that, since it meant no one was horrifically ill or injured, but it also meant he had time to help out his charge and copy the new schedule, necessitating the use of the copy machine from hell, so his feelings were a little conflicted.

The copy machine that was currently possessed, refusing to copy and also refusing to tell Joshua why.

"Agh! I give up. You win again, demon."

"Joshua Boy, please stop talking to the copier. It's concerning."

Joshua jumped at the sound of Chloe's voice. She had appeared in the doorway, coffees in hand, a few bags of chips peeking out of her scrub jacket pocket.

Joshua immediately blushed at being caught—he fucking hated that he blushed so easily—but still managed to defend himself. "That beast started it."

"Be a good boy, step away from the copier, and drink your coffee. I appreciate you trying to help me out but not at the risk of your clearly fragile sanity."

He was tempted to stick his tongue out at her, but he was a professional, damn it. He took the coffee with a quick grin of thanks.

Joshua was nearing the end of his second year working nights in the emergency room, but it was too unpredictable to get used to any sort of routine. Their hospital was in a smaller city, but the mountains around Hyde Park, Colorado, attracted outdoorsy tourists, and that meant that some nights it seemed everyone and their mother needed to be seen and some nights there was not a patient to be found.

It was hard to stay awake on the slower nights, but he knew if he tried to nap like some of the other nurses, he'd just end up throwing off his sleep rhythm. He tried to help out with some of the charge nurse duties when he had time, but sometimes he ended up more hindrance than help.

"I saw Seungcheol in the cafeteria. He told me to tell you to go see him, if you're not busy."

Joshua rolled his eyes before he could stop himself. Of course Seungcheol had used someone else as a go-between rather than coming to find Joshua himself.

"We both have phones. He can text me if he really wants to see me."

Chloe shrugged while scooping her dark curls up into a ponytail. "I figured you'd say that, but I'm not getting in the middle of it—just told him I'd pass the message along." She grinned at him. "I'm an angel that way."

Joshua couldn't help his answering grin despite his annoyance with his brother. "You are an angel. Thank you. And thanks for the coffee. I'm gonna head back to my station. Call me if you need any help."