Archive of Our Own

Water hammered the back of his neck, running over his face and chest until the air itself felt thin and oppressive. He braced against the tile, fingers splayed, forehead tipped toward the cold wall, waiting for a breath that wouldn’t come. His shoulders rose and fell like they should, but his lungs had forgotten how to work on their own.

The world around him had narrowed to heat, pressure, and the relentless sound of water. Thick steam gathered in the corners of his vision, making everything feel hazy and much too close. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the darkness had been replaced by a wash of white static—pale spots drifting across his vision like snow.

It was just the heat.

The thought came together slowly, in fragments, but he clung to each piece because it was the only thing that made sense. It was simple, logical, something he could fix.

He just needed to—

His forehead thumped against the wall.

For a moment, or several, he stayed where he was, suspended in the tight space between intention and action. His hands curled into fists against the tile. His knees felt uncertain and unreliable beneath him, like they could abandon him at any moment. But the little pocket of cold air he’d managed to find cleared the steam from his lungs and wiped away the fog in his mind long enough to remember what he’d come here for.

Shampoo. Right.

He moved carefully, negotiating with his own body at each step. One hand left the wall and fumbled blindly for the bottle, nearly knocking it from the ledge. The plastic felt insubstantial. Too smooth. It slipped between his hands, and he squeezed out more than he meant to, the scent blooming quickly in the heat: something crisp and earthy that turned his stomach.

It took longer than it should have. He lost the thread halfway through, forgot whether the weight in his hair was water or soap, and found himself starting over just to be sure. By the time he finished, his arms were trembling from the effort of holding them up. 

He rinsed. He washed. He moved through it by rote—the movements designed to keep his brain from noticing how much he struggled just to stand.

But it was fine. It was just the heat.

The pipes thumped, and the roar of water fell into silence, leaving a faintly buzzing absence where sound had been. The bathroom air wrapped around him, leaving him feeling flushed and sweaty, like the last ten minutes had been utterly pointless. He hung there in the center of the shower, hand heavy against the wall, watching as the last thin streams of soapy water traced their way down the drain.

Then he dragged the shower curtain back.

It struck him harder than he’d expected—cool air against overheated skin—and the world tilted. He reached out for something solid, fingers scraping slick tile until they locked around the towel rack nearby. The metal bit into his palm, but he hardly noticed as he dropped onto the edge of the tub, sitting before his body could make the choice for him.

The porcelain beneath him was even colder, a sudden, steadying relief that bordered on pain. He bent forward, his elbows on his knees, and let his head hang, damp hair dripping in slow, irregular taps against the tile. His breathing came a little easier like that—or maybe he’d just stopped paying attention to it.

It was fine.

The water had been too hot. That was all. He should have turned it down.

Once the world stopped swaying, he reached for the towel rack again, pulling himself to his feet. The room held steady this time. The faint, crawling static at the corners of his vision dissolved into something easier to ignore. He stooped and grabbed his fallen towel, scrubbing it over his face and down his chest, relying on the routine to hold him upright.

The worst had passed by the time he tugged his scrubs on, but in its place was a dull pressure behind his eyes, the first fine threads of tension threatening to become a headache. His joints ached and protested, but it was the kind of thing he was used to carrying, even on good days. He just needed to breathe through it until it faded into background noise.

It was his own fault, really. He hadn’t eaten much the night before, and sleep had been fitful, at best. But that was easy enough to fix. Breakfast, a glass of water, and some strong coffee on the way to work. He’d be alright as long as he kept an eye on it.

Maybe.

It sounded true enough.

Robby was nearly dressed when he stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks, while the smell of fresh coffee and toasted bread drifted through the apartment. It should have been comforting. Instead, the bitterness and char caught in the back of his throat like a warning.

Behind him, the mattress groaned, followed by a few shuffling footsteps.

“Hey,” Robby called. “You feeling any better?”

Whitaker braced against the wall and rubbed his eyes. “Getting there.”

The coffee maker hissed, wringing its last thin drops into the carafe. Robby had already set their mugs out—black next to powder gray—and the good creamer that Whitaker never asked for but always appeared in the refrigerator regardless. Two slices of half-burnt toast were cooling, still in the toaster, next to them.

He pressed his hands against the side of the counter and leaned into it, letting the solid surface hold him, trying to breathe through the heat and the scent and the feeling of his own wet hair sticking to the back of his neck. But the ache behind his eyes sharpened when he focused on anything too long, the edges of the room blurring, light bleeding in where it shouldn’t. He squeezed them shut and tried to focus on the dull, ordinary sounds of the apartment: the rumble of the coffee maker letting out its last gasp of steam, the rustle of fabric and footsteps, and the trill of a sparrow on the balcony.

It helped—a little.

He reached for his mug, overshot, and sent it wobbling for a second before his hand clamped down around the sides. It made a hollow, metallic protest as he held it in place, but it didn’t try to escape again.

“You good?” Robby asked from somewhere near the end of the counter.

Whitaker nodded. “Yeah.”

The word scraped across the back of his throat, weaker than he expected, cracking a bit at the end. He stifled a cough against his elbow, trying to clear the muddy mix of grit and humidity, but it barely moved. He tried again—better this time—and swallowed down the sticky phlegm.

Robby pulled his phone out of his back pocket and swiped across the screen—then a tap and another quick swipe. 

“Tree pollen is high today,” he said. “We’re gonna have asthma cases.”

“No kidding.”

Robby chuckled and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, setting it on the counter in front of him. “Did you take your meds last night?”

His gaze drifted towards the cabinet where he kept his pillbox, searching for the memory of plastic in his hands, the click and rattle, but the only thing he found was a restless ache and a feeling like someone had come along and swept all the thoughts from his head.

“Shit.”

That explained a lot—the broken sleep, the dull ache in his joints, the feeling of silt in the back of his throat, even the low throb behind his eyes.

But it was a problem he knew how to fix.

He peeled the lid off his mug and pushed himself upright.

Too fast.

The static lingering at the edge of his vision rushed forward, swallowing the kitchen in a featureless white blur. It crawled along his arms and up the back of his neck, dissolving the lines between his body and everything else, until there was nothing left but a spike of pain and a distant, thundering pulse.

For a single, splintered second, he felt like he was floating. Then—

“Whit…”

Hmm?

“Easy.” Robby. “I’ve got you…”

“I’m fine.” 

The words sounded hollow. He didn't examine them. There was nothing to examine. He was still upright, Robby's hand was on his waist, and the storm had started to recede into careful static again. It was passing. It had passed. These things always passed.

He just needed a second. He just needed to—

His knees buckled, and the world lurched sideways, the floor dropping half an inch lower than it should have been. A void crept forward where the bright wash in his vision had fractured, staining the white halos black. Robby’s arm tightened around him, enclosing him, guiding him through the dark until something solid caught the back of his thighs.

“It’s alright,” Robby said, close to his ear.

Of course it was.

He could feel the warmth of Robby’s chest, the softness of his shirt, and the whisper of breath against his cheek. It slipped in through the pauses in that heavy, thrumming darkness, pulling him out of the void.

“Sit.”

Right. Okay. He could do that.

But his legs didn’t want to move right—too stiff or too loose—and he hit the chair harder than he meant to. The edge bit into the back of his knees, and he sucked in a sharp, burning gasp, his eyes tearing open just in time to watch the world dip in another nauseating wave. He gripped the edge of the chair and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep from being swept along with it. The rushing in his head slowed, the floor rose up to meet his feet again, and when he finally opened his eyes, the room had a little more form than it had before.

It didn’t settle right away. Everything still felt slightly out of place, like the furniture had shifted two inches to the left. A relentless pressure throbbed behind his eyes, and his throat felt like it was coated in a sticky, metallic heat. But as long as he kept looking at Robby, he had some kind of fixed point as the darkness receded and his heartbeat settled back into his chest. The only real thing in a room made of smoke and stars.

Robby’s hands didn’t wander far—they moved to his wrist, then his forehead, and the side of his neck. Quick and efficient. Like triage.

But he didn’t need triage, so—

“Sit tight. I’m gonna go get the thermometer," Robby said.

“It’s just—” he started.

“Not right now,” Robby said, his tone softening just enough to take the sting out of the command.

Whitaker slumped against the back of the chair, hands pinned between his knees, and watched Robby hunt through the cabinet. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d produced a spare stethoscope and reflex hammer, but all he managed to unearth was a forehead thermometer that had been buried behind bottles and blister packs. He started to protest—he was still flushed from the shower; the dampness on his neck was just lingering steam—but the words died beneath Robby’s fingers as he brushed a bit of hair back from his face.

Three seconds later, the thermometer beeped, and Robby’s brows furrowed just enough to crease the lines around his eyes.

“Any trouble breathing?”

He hated the clipped, clinical tone that snuck into Robby’s voice sometimes—the way he shifted so easily from comfort to diagnosis. It was too cold. It didn’t belong in their kitchen. But he knew when he heard Doctor Robinavitch come out of his mouth, there was no point in trying to hide or sidestep the truth—he’d figure it out regardless.

“Just… tight,” he admitted.

“Headache? Joints?”

He shook his head. “Nothing new.”

That much was true; he’d pushed through worse aches—though he usually didn’t have to push through the fog crowding his vision or the warm prickle that sank deep into his skin like a sunburn. The last time he felt like this, he’d been fifteen and caught mono from a boy in town. His parents still made him do his chores every day, but they hadn’t fussed or let him wallow in it for weeks on end. He still remembered the sweat-soaked sheets that stuck to his skin at night and how the dust from corn feed made his stomach roll, even though he’d always liked the smell before.

Maybe that’s where all the conviction in his voice had gone.

Robby sighed. The rush of air sounded softer, drained of tension by a weary sort of calm that matched the lines on his face. He set the thermometer down on the counter with a soft, clinical tick and fixed Whitaker with a look. 

“That’s what I thought.”

He tried to push himself upright, his hands dragging back to the edge of the chair as he searched for some kind of leverage. “I can still—”

“No.” Robby shook his head. “You’re going back to bed.”

“I just got the shower too hot…”

“And you almost cracked your head on the counter five minutes later,” Robby said. “We’re not discussing it.”

There was a beat of silence, and Whitaker’s gaze dropped to the floor.

Robby stepped out of the kitchen for a moment, phone in hand. He tried not to listen in, but the words snuck around the corner—brief, professional, and vague; constructed with careful deniability, like Whitaker called him first and Robby was just passing the message along. No explanation or excuse, just procedure.

He was back at the cabinet in moments, then back at Whitaker’s side, pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“Here,” he said, pressing the glass into Whitaker’s hands. “Drink.”

He didn’t argue this time—there was no point; it was done—and if he was being honest with himself, he was too tired to try. But the glass felt cool and solid between his palms, and the water eased his stomach a little, even if he had to swallow the pills one at a time because his throat didn’t want to work right.

The glass settled on the table a little too sharply, the sound needling through the tension behind his eyes and drawing a single hard thump across the inside of his temple. The space vibrated with it. In and out. Like an echo. His eyes darted around for a moment—the balcony doors, the display on the oven, the pothos growing like a deep-sea creature in the corner of the room—just to see if the static moved with him, but it clung to the edge of his vision, churning slightly, unaffected by anything he did or didn’t do.

He thought about trying to stand, lost the thought, and had just started drifting into some half-formed notion in the back of his mind when Robby slipped an arm around him and pulled him to his feet. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t have to. He knew the way to the bedroom.

“I need to head in,” Robby said, his voice low and gentle as he set Whitaker on the edge of the bed. “I can’t have both of us out right now. But I’ll have Jack stop by and check on you when he gets home.”

“You don’t have to.”

The protest slipped out before he could catch it—thin, impulsive, without any of the breath to back it up.

“I know,” Robby said. “But I don’t like the idea of you being alone all day.”

Whitaker opened his mouth, but the words got tangled and dissolved before they’d even had a chance to form. There was no point in fighting that, either. He’d used up all his excuses—brittle as they were—and Robby hadn’t humored a single one. The only thing he could do now was settle into the pillows and try to ignore the way the room tipped slightly to the left.

“I’ll be right back.”

He nodded. Robby hovered at the edge of the bed for a second—a final, fleeting check—then headed for the kitchen.

Everything felt hollow without having Robby to focus on. The furniture was the same, but it looked like it had been pasted into the room from somewhere else. Flat. Muted. He lost a few minutes gazing at a shirt sleeve flopped over the edge of the laundry hamper, its fraying cuff turned slightly inside out, trying to remember which one it was.

He was still like that when Robby came back with a fresh glass of water and a crinkled foil of cold meds. They took their places on the nightstand, gently, before Robby pressed another pill into his palm. It took him entirely too long before to realize it was the same one he took every morning—salt, just salt, and a few vitamins. He swallowed it down as quickly as he could and started peeling off his scrubs while Robby pulled his phone off the charger.

His shirt hit the floor in a heap, socks following, then his pants—though he needed to borrow Robby’s hands for that. The room had just started to feel real again; he didn’t want to ruin it by standing up. 

That should’ve been reason enough to admit defeat and crawl beneath the covers.

Robby set his phone back down on the nightstand and pressed his hand to Whitaker’s forehead like it might tell him something new. It was absent-minded, undeniably fond, and strangely at odds with the clinical assessment that had come before it.

“I set up alarms for your meds,” he said. “Every four hours. Drink more, try to rest, and don’t give Jack too much trouble when he gets here.”

He huffed out something that might have been a laugh if it had more force behind it.

“Okay.”

They both knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but Robby didn’t press.

“Dana said things were pretty steady this morning, so I’ll try to get him out of there as quick as possible,” he added. “But if you start feeling worse before he gets here, call me—or Santos, or the hospital. I don’t care which—just call someone.”

“It’s not that bad,” Whitaker said.

Robby didn’t acknowledge it. He just leaned in and pressed his lips to Whitaker’s forehead. The touch was lighter than he expected, and Robby—who usually burned hot—felt surprisingly cold against the noise of the fever. He held there a bit longer than he needed to, brushing a hand through Whitaker’s hair.

“We’ll see about that,” he murmured.

The sound of the front door closing behind him was half a relief and half a strange sort of foreboding. Whitaker couldn’t see it from the bedroom, but he could hear it—the heavy thump and swift click of the lock. Then, nothing—silence, save for the sound of his own heartbeat and the noise of the city somewhere far away and unassuming. His eyes fell closed, and his head drooped, though he kept thinking about the glass of water and how nice the cold had felt. He drifted there, sinking into the weight of his own limbs, until he was yanked out by the sound of a click, a rumble, and a short hiss.

In the chaos and concern, Robby had left the coffee pot on.

Whitaker sighed. It would probably be fine until Abbot got there. He might even want it warm if he planned on staying long. He was tempted to curl up and leave it, but unfinished things had a bad way of sticking like a splinter beneath his skin.

He pushed himself to his feet, leaning on the nightstand for balance, and looked out across the hallway toward the kitchen. He’d crossed the distance in the dark, half asleep, at least two dozen times; there was no reason for it to feel so daunting. But the twenty or so feet may as well have been a mile.

From the nightstand, he moved to the dresser, then the doorway and the hallway wall, dragging his body along in increments. Halfway through the living room, he started rationalizing: he could get an ice pack from the freezer and maybe one of the good popsicles. He still hadn’t eaten. If he had to sit on the kitchen floor, that was fine. The tile was cold and the light was dim. There were worse places to eat.

He heaved himself against the counter and jabbed the button on the coffee maker.

It ticked and gave a burble of finality before falling silent.

The stillness came with a small, misplaced sense of completion, as though he’d finished something important and still found it lacking.

But it was done.

He stayed where he was, folded over the counter, his fingers resting against the cooling plastic while he waited for the next step to present itself. It was right there a second ago, but the loose threads of intention had turned into knots. Now, the thought hovered just out of reach, shifting whenever he tried to grasp it.

Popsicle.

There it was.

The word felt strange on his tongue, even unspoken—too bright and out of place. He could picture it, though, even if it was an interloper.

He pushed himself upright and the floor slanted, but it wasn’t the violent pitch it had been. It rolled, he swayed with it, and his vision stayed mostly clear. The sick pit in his stomach stayed still. Either the meds were kicking in or he was finally learning how to press through it.

The steadiness carried him a few inches toward the freezer. He fumbled with the handle, his fingers sliding down the slick steel, and in a fit of annoyance, he slammed his palm against the side of the door and shoved it open instead. The seal broke with a soft sigh, and a wash of cold air spilled across his face. 

It felt—

Really good.

It wasn’t the relief he’d been looking for, but it was close enough that he leaned into it without thinking, forehead dropping against the open door. The chill cut through the heat clinging to his skin and sharpened the dull ache behind his eyes into something cleaner. Even the rush of the fan seemed to soothe something in his head. 

He stayed there long enough that he almost forgot about the popsicle again. His thoughts had started circling around a hazy memory—the time his brothers had shut him in a chest freezer in the basement. It wasn’t turned on. He was pretty sure it wasn’t, anyway; that felt like something he’d remember…

A shiver crawled up his spine and pulled him back into the kitchen. His arms were still inside the freezer, his fingers starting to ache against the frost-dusted plastic. The boxes and bags blurred together until they were barely even shapes anymore, but he knew it had to be in there somewhere. He shoved aside a pint of ice cream and a half-empty liquor bottle, fumbling around until recognition caught on something bright and narrow near the back.

He snagged it by one of the flaps and yanked, the cardboard tumbling forward, hitting him in the center of his chest. The cold sliced through him, raising a brief, prickling chill across his skin that evaporated into mist just as swiftly. But he had it. He blinked down into the box, trying to figure out the colors—deep, bruised red; pale orange; and nearly translucent green—muted beneath the fogged plastic. Robby liked the orange ones. He took the red and dropped the box back into the freezer.

His fingers fumbled at the edge of the wrapper. The plastic resisted, slick and fickle. He tried again, slower, focusing on each tiny movement: the seal peeling back, his thumbnail pressing into the crease, until he found the space between the notches and pulled. It gave with a sharp, sudden snap, and he almost dropped the whole thing. 

Thin tendrils of cold rolled off it, and a bead of condensation slid down the inside of the wrapper, catching in clumps of frost on the way. Now that he had it open, the smell of it—sticky sweet and cloying—made his stomach tighten. He didn’t know if the thought of eating or the effort of swallowing was a greater risk to his already fragile equilibrium, but the cold drew him in, even as he braced himself for the flavor.

The chill was vibrant and immediate. Ice crystals cracked along the tip of his tongue and spread down the back of his throat, sharp enough to make him flinch. It cut across the noise—the heat, the pressure, the drifting fog—in a clean, frozen line, dripping down his spine to pool at the base. 

He remembered shoving his head under the pitcher pump in late summer, the way the water rumbled up from its safe, dark home below ground to crash against the back of his neck. He’d cup his hands as close to the spout as he could and drink until his lungs felt like they were coated in ice. For a few breathless moments, he’d forget about the sun and the sweat. One summer, his uncle had shown him how to soak a flannel and wrap it around his neck to leach the heat from his skin.

Then the cold was gone, banished by a crackling furnace.

He took another bite, chasing the swell of relief. It didn’t rush straight to his head that time, and he tasted a bit more than frost. The syrup felt artificial and sour, but it hung in his throat instead of twisting in his stomach. It was the first faint benediction he’d had all morning. Another bite—more confident now that he wasn’t going to be sick—and he shifted his weight to lean against the counter. The tile beneath his feet felt cool and solid as it drew heat down his body, slowly bleeding it away.

Better.

Or… not worse, anyway.

The distinction didn’t seem especially important.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just to rest them, letting the juice melt on his tongue.

The darkness was quiet and empty—

Until it shifted.

Not abruptly, not in any way he could name—there were no shapes or clear images, just a viscous sort of churning in the middle of empty space. It hovered, then ebbed, shivered, and pushed forward again. His head dragged to the side, fighting against gravity like a bubble trapped in a level. But it wasn’t the sudden jarring shift he’d felt before; it was more like falling asleep. He might have let himself slip into it, too, but the cold in his mouth kept him pinned to the present, dragging him back to the surface.

He opened his eyes.

The kitchen returned bit by bit, lines reasserting themselves and colors deepening into something recognizable. The freezer door was still hanging open, humming peacefully as cold air spilled out, curling around his shoulders.

He should close that.

He didn’t.

His grip on the popsicle had loosened. Meltwater ran over his fingers, translucent pink and sticky, pooling in the curve of his palm before dripping onto the floor.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound seemed to match the drumming in his ears, landing on the tile with a strange, monotonous tempo. He watched one fall. Lost the next one.

There was a gap in the sequence he couldn’t account for. His brows furrowed as he tried to retrace it, but the moment had already slipped away. He tilted his head. The floor tilted with it. He thought about the bubble in the level again.

The freezer clicked and the compressor kicked on with a heavy thump.

Right.

Close it.

He twisted to the side and caught the door with his shoulder, leaning back into the chilled steel. The hum of the condenser echoed across his skin and pulled a rigid wire through his spine. 

He stayed very still, waiting for it to pass.

It didn’t.

It pressed forward.

The kitchen started to shrink as the darkness crawled from the inside of his eyelids and spilled into the room. His fingers tightened reflexively around the edge of the counter, around the flimsy popsicle stick, as the shadows crowded his periphery, narrowing the world to a single, suffocating point, where the air felt too thick to move and too thin to breathe.

He tried to drag more air into his lungs, but it stalled halfway there, trapped in that sticky heat behind his ribs.

Sit down.

It surfaced slowly, like something rising out of deep water, where it floated, unmoored and shimmering, against the vast distance between his body and the floor. 

He didn’t know how to get there; he just knew he needed to sit.

Now.

Now.

The tile cracked against his knees, sending a sharp spasm of pain up through his hips and into his back. White sparks flared against the dark—sharp and cold and electric—and he tried to reach out for something, but the kitchen was already retreating. The counter, the floor, and the fragile reality of his own body all unspooled at once, sinking into a deep, droning chasm that crushed the light and the rest of the world with it.

The hallway outside Robby’s apartment smelled faintly of floor cleaner and burnt toast, which was a modest improvement over the waft of chlorine and sweat that drifted past his. Abbot stood there for a moment with a plastic CVS bag hooked around two fingers and his keys balanced against his palm, trying to remember which one went to which lock. He figured he had a fifty percent shot of getting it right, though, so he settled on the one with the notched head and thumbed it into the deadbolt.

The bolt slid back with a satisfying click, and the handle quickly followed. But the silence that leaked out of the cracked door made him pause. It wasn’t the soft, heavy quiet of someone sleeping, like he’d expected to find; it was something thinner and more frail—a vacuum that lacked the rhythmic cadence of breath. 

Something tightened unpleasantly beneath his ribs.

“Hey, kid?”

Inside, the curtains were partially drawn against the mid-morning glare, casting dim shadows across the carpet and leaving the space feeling strangely out of time. It was warmer than it was in the hallway, and the air smelled like stale humidity. The bedroom light was on. The kitchen, too.

Abbot shut the door behind him, twisted the lock, and dropped his keys on the table just inside. No movement. No answer. He wasn’t exactly trying to be quiet.

The kitchen was closer.

He’d barely taken two steps into the apartment when he saw the bright pink streaks melting into the grout lines on the tile—sticky, glistening, half-dried. Not blood, at least; but nothing Robby would have left, either.

Then—

“Jesus Christ.”

Whitaker was crumpled up beside the counter, twisted awkwardly onto one shoulder with his arm trapped beneath him. His bare legs were curled awkwardly against the cold tile, his undershirt rucked up crooked across his spine, and his curls were damp with sweat, plastered down against his forehead and neck.

For one terrible second, Abbot wasn’t sure if he was breathing. Then his chest rose and he made a thin, uneven sound, somewhere between a sigh and a swallow.

Abbot dropped the bag on the counter and sank to one knee beside him.

“Kid…” His hand landed against the side of Whitaker’s neck, searching. Hot skin, damp pulse—fast, but there. “Hey. Come on.”

He flinched weakly, trying to pull back from the touch, and raised a hand like he meant to shove it away. Relief hit harder than it should have.

“Okay,” he murmured, more to himself than Whitaker. “Okay. Don’t do that to me.”

He reached down to free Whitaker’s arm from beneath his ribs, feeling the loose, liquid slack of his shoulder and the way his body seemed to have no center, no internal scaffolding, nothing to hold him together except the cold, hard pressure of the tile. It made sense why he’d gravitated towards it—he was radiating heat, drenched in sweat, and even paler than usual.

Abbot slid a hand carefully beneath the base of his skull, trying to ease the awkward angle he’d slumped into.

“Dennis.”

A faint furrow appeared between his brows, the sound of his own name finding a foothold in the heat and tightening a single frayed wire of recognition.

“Come on, sweet boy…” Abbot murmured. “Just a little further.”

His lips parted, but the only sound that came out was a ragged breath.

Abbot leaned closer.

“…’orry,” he whispered.

A shard of anger twisted in his chest. Not at Whitaker—never that—but the impulse and whoever had put it there.

“No,” he shook his head. “No one needs you to apologize for anything, you got that?”

His hand shifted again, brushing against Abbot’s arm this time, and he slowly opened his eyes. But they drifted past Abbot’s shoulder, unfocused and swimming with a kind of heavy, wet luminance that made them look like they were trapped behind a layer of polished glass.

The fever there was obvious—not catastrophic but high enough that reality had started to split apart at the seams. His pupils were blown wide, dragging slowly from one arbitrary point to the next, but they still caught the light, which told him that he was only simmering at around a hundred and three. That took the need for an ice bath off the agenda, at least, but he couldn’t say for how long.

He tore his gaze away from Whitaker’s face to scan across the rest of him: no obvious head injury, knees and shins bruised from impact, breathing shallow, pulse skittering too fast against his throat, skin flushed scarlet in places, and translucent white in others. He was almost certainly dehydrated, from the way his undershirt clung to his chest, but the worst symptom was still whatever had brought him to the floor.

“Okay,” Abbot said. “Let’s get you up.”

Whitaker made a soft, incoherent sound that might have been dissent.

“I know,” Abbot replied. “I don’t care.”

Getting him to his feet was a battle—not because Whitaker was too heavy or the position was too awkward but because he kept trying to help. Abbot didn’t think he was doing it consciously; it was more like his body was searching for instructions through the fever haze and landed on usefulness in lieu of sense.

“Stop,” he said firmly as Whitaker attempted to brace his weight on an arm that immediately buckled beneath him. “You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

He looked up, wide-eyed, like he genuinely didn’t understand how he was resisting. Even unfocused and flushed, he managed to nail the look that turned Robby to putty in his hands—and, for the first time, Abbot could see exactly why it worked.

“Just… stop trying to hold yourself together and trust me, alright?”

For some reason, that reached him when the rest hadn’t.

He sagged bonelessly against Abbot’s side with a heavy, exhausted exhale, only moving as much as Abbot directed him to. One arm slipped around his back, while the other braced against the counter long enough that Abbot could get his leg under him again, then he pushed, staggered, corrected, and hauled them both off the floor. 

Whitaker murmured softly and tucked himself against Abbot’s chest.

It felt like standing next to a bonfire.

The hallway was a slow, swaying transit through half-light, a sequence of bracing and dragging that Abbot managed only because he’d been trained how to haul dead weight across a battlefield. Every few steps, Whitaker’s legs would give out—the same liquid slackness of his joints failing him—and Abbot would have to stop to hitch him higher, his hydraulic ankle compensating a little faster than the other one. Now that they were upright, Whitaker tried to walk on his own as much as he could, but he mostly just watched the shadows slide along the walls with a quiet, glazed fascination, his breath coming in hot, shallow gusts against Abbot’s neck.

He didn’t know how long Whitaker had been on the kitchen floor, but it didn’t seem like he’d spent much time in the bedroom after Robby left. The glass on the nightstand was still full, and the sheets lay rumpled, though not sweat-dampened or kicked to the side the way someone with a fever might try to escape the weight. There was a stagnant sort of humidity hanging in the air, but the smell of heat was muted beneath the lingering traces of soap. Robby’s pillow was the only thing in obvious disarray—lying abandoned on the floor like the casualty of a clumsy exit.

Abbot tried to set him down gently, but Whitaker slipped from his hands and onto the bed with all the grace of an understuffed ragdoll. It took him a moment to get settled—his shoulder digging into the mattress as he dragged his knees up to his chest, one arm draped across them as though he had the strength to keep them in place. He looked even smaller against the tangled landscape of the bed, his head resting at a too-sharp angle without a pillow to support it. Shivering. Despite the heat pouring off him, his limbs rattled, bracing against a chill that lived deep in his bones. 

The only way out is through, Abbot thought, and reached down to strip the damp undershirt away.

Whitaker resisted that more than the lift.

“No,” he mumbled, fingers fumbling uselessly against Abbot’s wrist.

“Yes,” Abbot said.

“Cold.”

“I know, lamb, but it’ll be better in a minute, I promise.”

The protest dissolved into another shiver.

He still had to wrestle the shirt over Whitaker’s head and down his arms, but it was easier when he didn’t have to contend with him tugging the fabric out of his hands or trying to roll away. The fever was gathering faster than his skin could cool him, and Abbot needed to get his temperature down enough to stop his body from cooking itself into delirium.

“Hey,” he murmured. “I’m gonna run back to the kitchen real fast. I’ll be right back.”

Whitaker studied him with a silent, fever-bright intensity, like he was trying to find the signal for a dead channel.

“You smell like rain.”

Abbot blinked. “…What?”

“Like gravel,” Whitaker murmured. “Right after it rains.”

His gaze drifted away again before Abbot could answer. He knew how absurd it was to try to make sense of feverish ramblings, but the longer he sat there, thinking about it, the more it checked out. The humidity in the room had become a catalyst, binding the sharp eucalyptus and citrus of Whitaker’s soap to the salt of his sweat and the lingering ozone of the pool that clung to Abbot’s clothes when he’d walked past it to the elevators. It was a metallic, mineral alchemy—the smell of wet pavement, cooling earth, and static—and it was close enough to the truth that it made Abbot’s head tilt.

“Huh,” he breathed.

He’d have to pick it apart later.

He pushed himself up from the edge of the bed and made his way back to the kitchen, still trying not to think too deeply about it. The thin river of melted popsicle greeted him again, and he stopped long enough to reach under the sink for some cleaner. It spread into a glossy bubblegum-pink puddle under the spray, trickled a little further along the grout, and wiped up neatly with a few quick swipes, erasing the last sticky trace of collapse from the tile. He had absolutely no intention of telling Robby about it—or anything else he’d found there.

Negotiating with the nightstand took longer than the cleanup or gathering supplies. It was already crowded—lamp, phone, glass, cold meds—and adding a bowl of ice water required more spatial reasoning than Abbot had at nine in the morning. The CVS bag slumped to the floor at his feet, cold meds thrown in with the rest, and the lamp was shoved into a corner just to make space. He dropped a washcloth into the cold water and let it soak while he sat back down on the side of the bed.

“If you roll over, I can fix this pillow,” he said.

He expected some protest about getting Robby’s pillow all sweaty. Instead, Whitaker looked up at him with the same glassy-eyed clarity as before.

“You came back,” he whispered.

Something daggered through Abbot’s chest again.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Whitaker’s fingers grazed the side of his knee as he slumped onto his back. It was hard to tell if he was even aware of it—or the hand at the back of his neck, lifting him up enough that Abbot could slide the pillow into place. His eyes had fallen closed again, an arm draped over his stomach, and a stubborn curl stuck to the side of his forehead. It might have been peaceful if it weren’t for the tremor that rolled through his body at odd intervals, making his muscles clench and shudder, his fingers instinctively reaching toward the blankets. Abbot almost felt bad, knowing it would only get worse. 

He reached into the bowl and wrung the washcloth out over it, cold water threading between his fingers and rolling across his wrists. The chill was hardly unbearable, despite the ice, but Whitaker was running hot enough that it wouldn't make a difference. He couldn’t lessen the shock; he could only make it quick.

“Cold incoming,” he warned, and pressed the cloth to the side of Whitaker’s throat.

He sucked in a sharp breath, jerking away from the touch before his body had registered anything more than cold. But there was no strength behind it. Even when his hand slipped up to wrap around Abbot’s wrist, he didn’t push or pull or try to object; he just hung there, fingers trembling faintly against the back of his hand. 

“I know, I know…” Abbot murmured, trying to hush and soothe as much as he could.

The next pass wasn’t as vicious, and the one after that was easier still. Abbot worked slowly across his neck, chest, and the insides of his wrists—places where heat gathered closest to the skin—and little by little the tension bled out of him again. For a while, the only sound in the room was the soft drip of water from the washcloth and Whitaker’s shallow breathing. Then, quietly:

"Do you ever miss it?" Whitaker murmured. 

He glanced over. Whitaker’s lashes were still, his expression soft and faraway, somewhere between dreaming and waking.

“What’s that?”

“Y’know…” he trailed.

For a second, Abbot felt like he really should know, even though Whitaker had barely been lucid since he got there. Then his head lolled against the pillow, smudging gold curls against the pale grey sheets, and he slowly opened his eyes.

“Knowing where you’re supposed to be.”

The question caught him off guard—not because it was strange, but because it hit on something he hadn’t thought about in a while. He’d gone over it with his therapist more times than he could count, but having it appear again, now, slanted his perspective in an odd way.

He thought about the particular weight of a rifle at parade rest, the way a formation could absorb a man whole and give him back something simpler in return. He thought about the confessional at Saint Cecilia’s, the wooden screen, the scent of incense, the way absolution had a shape, a sequence, and a guaranteed outcome. He thought about the Pitt—the whiteboard, the hierarchy, the clean logic of triage. Institution after institution, each one offering the same implicit promise: here’s the role, here’s the rules, and here’s what it means to be good. He’d believed in every one of them, more or less, until he didn’t.

Strange what survived inside people.

Whitaker shifted restlessly next to him, his hand sliding across the mattress in search of the sheet. He wasn’t trembling as much as he had been, and when Abbot lifted a hand to his forehead, he felt a little cooler than before—not out of the woods by any means, but the furious heat had started to ease.

“Hey,” he stilled Whitaker’s hand for a second. “I need you to drink something before you fall asleep.”

He could hear the protest in the way Whitaker sighed—a flat, weary sound that sagged his entire body and was so close to dramatic he nearly laughed. 

“Just enough to take your meds. Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re not my doctor.”

“Thank God,” Abbot teased. “You’re a terrible patient.”

That earned him a ghost of a smile, at least.

Whitaker heaved himself upright, half-slumped against the headboard, and let his head drop back against the wood with a heavy, dull thud. He stayed there, pliant with exhaustion, his breath shallow, as Abbot reached for the plastic bag between his feet. He hadn't known what Robby would have in stock, so he'd picked up a box of Advil and two half-liter bottles of Pedialyte. He was grateful for the forethought now—he wasn't sure Whitaker could even lift one of the big bottles. 

The safety seal peeled off with a bright crinkle, followed by the crack of the plastic cap, then he pressed the bottle into Whitaker's hands. He looked down at it, then up at Abbot, with the expression of someone who’d been promised something fair, only to be utterly betrayed. It was terribly sweet and did nothing to discourage Abbot’s insistence. 

“Small sips,” he said.

A tired frown gathered between Whitaker’s brows, but he didn’t argue, taking a single tentative sip and fighting not to grimace at the taste of salt and artificial citrus.

While he drank, Abbot fished the cold meds out of the bag, popping the next round loose from the pack. Whitaker held his hand out—obedient, at least, when he was too tired to be otherwise—and swallowed them down. By the time he eased back against the pillows, some of the rigid tension had gone out of his body, and the fever sweat started to cool into a faint sheen across his throat and collarbones.

Abbot reached out and took the bottle before it could slip from his grasp, quickly capping it and adding it to the growing clutter on the nightstand. 

“You’re a tyrant,” Whitaker murmured, reaching out for the sheet again, tugging it free from the tangled knot he’d left it in that morning.

“Just think,” he shrugged, “I could’ve dumped you in an ice bath.”

“Your old man back wishes it could…”

He felt a short, quiet huff of amusement hit his chest as Whitaker burrowed down in the pillows and yanked the sheet up. He was sorely tempted to lie down with him, but he wanted to get the chaos cleaned up and make sure there were no more surprises before he took his leg off and settled in. For now, he was content enough to smooth the hair away from Whitaker’s face and linger until his breathing settled into a slightly less fraught rhythm.

It wasn’t long until Whitaker’s grip loosened on the sheet, and Abbot pushed himself up from the bed. His knees gave a displeased creak as he rose, and he knew he’d never live it down if Whitaker heard. But he barely stirred as Abbot cleared the spent wrappers and plastic from the nightstand and carried the bowl of cracking ice back to the kitchen. He did a quick pass of the counters—trash in the bin, dishes in the sink—then ducked into the bathroom to strip off his prosthetic. The clicks and peels were familiar enough that he could have done it blindfolded, but this morning, it all felt tedious. The routine wasn’t soothing; it was just one more thing to get through before he could fall into bed.

He left the sleeve drying next to the sink and grabbed his crutches from the hallway closet, the rubber tips meeting the floorboards with a hollow, rhythmic thump. Whitaker didn’t stir—nor did he stir when Abbot settled on the opposite side of the bed and eased himself down on top of the blankets. 

The room gradually settled around them. Outside, somewhere far beyond the apartment, a siren wailed through the city before dissolving into traffic noise. Pipes clicked faintly in the walls. Mid-morning light lay in thin strips across the foot of the bed, barely moving. 

Whitaker drifted in and out with the strange inconsistency of fever sleep. Sometimes his eyes opened without warning, fixing briefly on the ceiling, the open doorway, or Abbot’s face with vague, startled awareness, like he’d surfaced too quickly and didn’t recognize the room.

Once, very quietly, he murmured, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The words sat strangely in the silence. Abbot rolled onto his side and stuffed an arm beneath the pillow.

“You collapsed on the kitchen floor and cooked yourself to a hundred and whatever degrees,” he said. “I think I’m allowed to be a little alarmed.”

Whitaker’s gaze drifted toward the wall, his expression going flat and distant as he focused on something past Abbot’s shoulder. 

“Sorry.”

“You do that a lot,” Abbot murmured. “Apologize for things that are just physics, like it’s muscle memory.”

The room was still for a long heartbeat, marked only by the faint, metallic ticking of the radiator cooling down. Whitaker’s eyes fell closed, his face strikingly neutral.

“Wasn’t allowed to do anything else,” he said, the words barely reaching across the mattress.

Whitaker didn’t seem to realize he’d said anything unusual. His breathing had already started to deepen again, the fever haze pulling him back under before the words had even landed. But Abbot felt them anyway.

He thought, abruptly, of all the ways Whitaker made himself smaller without seeming to notice he was doing it: the way he folded inward whenever care lingered too long on him; the way gratitude and guilt were so tightly tangled they were almost indistinguishable. 

Not allowed not to.

Christ.

Abbot dragged a hand across his face and looked over at him again. He’d curled further onto his side, deeper into the pillow, one hand tucked loosely beneath his cheek. When Abbot brushed the back of his hand against his forehead, the heat no longer felt harsh enough to burn. 

Relief arrived quietly, without drama or triumph—just the slow loosening of something that had been clenched inside his chest since he’d opened the door. The adrenaline had burned off hours ago, leaving him heavy-limbed and wrung out in its wake. The last twenty-odd hours were catching up to him now in ugly increments: the ache in his lower back, the grit behind his eyes, and the low, static hum at the base of his skull.

But the room had finally started to feel still enough, sound enough, to shed his jeans and slide under the blankets. The apartment had gone dim by then, the afternoon sun shifting to the other side of the building, leaving them with muted gold and thick shadows spilling across the walls.

He’d just started to drift when his phone rattled against the nightstand. He reached for it, half-blind, pawing at the wood for a moment before he captured it. The screen threw a harsh white light across the dim room, and he squinted against it for a moment before making sense of the notification. Robby. 

A few quick taps and he had the message open.

How is he?

He turned and looked over at the quiet, dark shape beside him—his breathing finally leveled out into a slow, rhythmic drag, the frantic, fever-bright restlessness from the morning collapsing into exhaustion. The flush had gone from his cheeks, damp curls drying against his cooling skin. 

He replied with one eye closed, trying to clear the blur from his vision.

Fever broke. He’s sleeping.

Then—

He’s an incredibly uncooperative patient.

The typing bubble appeared almost instantly, wobbling in the corner of the screen for a second before the text came through.

I’ll grab dinner on the way home. Get some rest.

He locked his phone without replying, setting it face-down on the nightstand. His gaze wandered toward the clock on the dresser, and he dragged his hands over his face, debating the merit of waking Whitaker for another round of meds. The soft, uneven sigh and brief rustle of sheets next to him were their own argument against the prescribed schedule—and a compelling one, at that.

Meds could wait. Whitaker was finally sleeping deeply enough that the fever no longer seemed to chase him through it, and Abbot found himself too tired to care about much beyond that. In a few hours he'd have Robby, food, and enough energy to wash the fever from his skin—but for now, there was nothing in the apartment demanding anything from him except this.