365 Days of Starshipping (Part 1)

Wait, Sickness?

6/1/19

It started with a little bit of scratchiness in his throat - not particularly a common occurrence for Judai, but not particularly rare, either. The morning went on, he was blessed with some of Yusei's coffee made just for him, and it was gone for a little bit thanks to the thickness of the drink.

But then it came back, and kept getting worse, and Judai knew something had to be wrong when he started coughing regularly and had what was probably the worst sore throat of his life. It was alarming enough of an event that even Yusei took notice from just a few rounds of coughing.

"Are you okay?" Yusei asked him, frowning slightly and looking over at him from the desk.

"...Uh, don't think so," Judai replied hoarsely, keeping his answer short due to the pain before standing up from the couch to go grab cough drops from the medicine cabinet in the kitchen, "Throat is hurting, badly."

Yusei blinked at him in surprise, immediately getting up to follow him, "Did you get sick? I thought you said it was really hard for you to get sick, and you haven't done anything recently that would warrant it even for someone without your kind of resistance."

"No clue," Judai mumbled, tearing open the cough drop bag and noting happily that they were the cherry kind, "We'll have to see if any other symptoms pop up." When he looked over, he smiled widely at the sight of Yusei filling a mug with a ton of honey - about triple the amount a sane person would normally put - before throwing in a tea bag and pouring hot water from the coffee maker inside for him, "Yusei I fuckin' love you."

He got a chuckle in return at his enthusiasm, Yusei giving him the mug after stirring it a bit to make sure the honey dissolved, "Love you too. Let me know if it gets worse, okay? For the record though, I hope it doesn't."

"Me too."

And then a few hours later, of course, it got worse. It had actually been building up for a while, but he hadn't taken too much note of it because it wasn't an incredibly obvious thing at first like his terrible sore throat; he was cold, and by this point, it was bad enough to label them as chills.

He didn't have a fever though - he took his temperature a couple times just to be sure, too.

"This sucks," Judai complained, popping another cough drop into his mouth like it was candy and doing his best to huddle further into the blankets and bed sheets surrounding him. Yusei had practically forced him to go back to bed once he told him he was starting to get the chills, and he was really thanking him right now for doing that because he was cold.

"I guess you really are sick," Yusei mused, looking at him worriedly before passing over another fresh mug of tea and honey.

Judai gave him a thankful look before immediately sipping at the hot drink in relief - it was burning hot to his tongue, but it was a small price to pay for the warmth that shot through his body when he did so. He'd take anything he could get right now.

"What I'm wondering is how he got sick," Haou stated, having popped up alongside Yubel a little bit beforehand when Judai was still downstairs and initially had his realization that the cold he was feeling was unnatural. All three of them stared at Judai while he continued to drink his tea, not wanting to talk more and irritate his throat in the process.

Yubel looked thoughtful, giving Judai a careful stare before slowly saying, "I have a possible theory. It could be a duel monster sickness - I recognize these symptoms, it's an uncommon one but not life-threatening in the slightest and tends to go away after a few days. He hasn't been exposed to them much at all, so he hasn't caught any before but... being half-human doesn't provide the same resistance to monster sicknesses as being half-monster does for human sicknesses."

"So he caught a duel monster sickness?" Yusei wondered, bringing a hand up to his chin as he pondered the idea, "It makes sense, but then where did he get it from?"

After another short period of silence, Haou was the one who finally came up with an answer, "Pharaoh."

"The damn cat?" Yubel asked, smirking slightly at the idea.

"That has to be it," Yusei agreed, his eyes lighting up in realization, "Pharaoh's been in the spirit realm for years now, right? He could easily be a carrier for it, and it just took a few days for it to latch onto Judai."

That goddamn cat, I swear to the gods- Judai thought, glaring at the inside of his mug resignedly, I can't even be mad, it's not like there's anything that could've prevented it from happening. It's not Pharaoh's fault.

"Well, at least now we know how it happened. Just have to wait it out now," Yusei continued, turning to Yubel to ask, "Since you know what he's got, are there any other symptoms to look out for?"

"He's gonna be pretty damn loopy on days two and three," Yubel grinned, cackling slightly to herself, "I got infected with the same thing once, now that I think about it. I remember on those days that I felt really happy for some reason, pretty much like I was high or something."

"Gods, I remember that," Haou said, looking vaguely terrified at the memory which in turn absolutely terrified Judai and, it would seem from the face he was making, Yusei, "You kept insisting you weren't sick anymore, yet you stayed wrapped up in sheets and were like a leech that wouldn't get off of me. You wouldn't sleep, either."

Yusei winced at the information, sighing with dread, "This is going to be a long week, isn't it?"

Well, at least Judai had the reassurance that he'd feel fine for a couple days, based off what Yubel had said. He still felt bad for Yusei though, and he gave him an apologetic look - hopefully he wouldn't prevent him from getting his work done too badly, he knew that Yusei was set to finish up entirely soon because he wanted to spend more time together.