“Hey,” Austin greeted softly, and Joe wavered on his feet.“What do you need?”
“Bathroom.Drink.Bed?”He looked so befuddled that Austin wanted to cuddle him.Instead he ushered him to the bathroom and asked which drink he preferred.
A few minutes later, Austin was helping Joe back into bed, this time with a can of ginger ale on the nightstand.Joe blinked up at him and asked, “Stay?”So Austin settled next to him over the covers.
Joe groaned about that, but Austin didn’t think trying to sleep next to Joe all night would benefit either of them.
“I’ll stay until you fall asleep, sweet thing, but I need to rest in my own bed tonight.”
Joe just burrowed in as close to Austin as he could get, then fell asleep to Austin finger-combing his hair.
Okay.Now that Joe was out, Austin needed to plan.
Joe was a grown adult.He probably didn’tneedconstant supervision just because he was sick.But Austin didn’t want to leave him alone either, and Will had to go to school tomorrow.Austin could close the garage for another day.He didn’t have anything important on the schedule, just some routine maintenance things with regular clients who’d hopefully forgive him for rescheduling if he said he had a family emergency.He’d just ask his tenant to put the “Please Call for Appointment” sign back up.Maybe there was a project or two he could tinker on in the garage to pass the time, just because he’d never been good at sitting around.
But he couldn’t keep the garage closed indefinitely.Not with Joe off work, Will and the pets to feed, and the heat to keep on in this place.They definitely needed to look into improving the insulation in the spring, because Austin didn’t think the air-conditioning bill was going to be any more fun.
Maybe the kids could hang around this weekend while Austin caught up at the shop.With any luck, Joe would be on the mend by then.
But that would only work if Austin didn’t get sick too, so he peeled himself out of Joe’s sweat-sticky embrace, popped a vitamin C in the bathroom, and trudged up the stairs to bed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
UNFORTUNATELY, JOE’Scondition did not improve by morning.
Austin woke a few times in the night to deep, rattling coughs that echoed through the house.Will, at least, didn’t look like he’d slept badly, though when Joe coughed like that while they were both seated at the breakfast table, a little of the pre-Christmas Will shone through, timid and anxious.“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I’ll see if there’s a clinic open later.”Assuming he could get Joe to agree to go… or carry him to the car if he didn’t.
“Okay.”Will worried his lower lip for a moment.“Text me if he gets worse?”
Ah, Austin thought.Right.This might just be a cold, but Will had just lost his entire family in one fell swoop.“You want me to tell you what color his snot is too?”he asked, hoping to lighten the mood.“I can take pictures.”
“Don’t be gross.”But he looked a little lighter when he grabbed his bag from the hook by the door and left in Joe’s truck, so Austin would take it.
Half an hour or so later, he checked on Joe again and found him awake but glassy-eyed.“Hey.Still alive, sweet thing?”
“Unfortunately.”He sounded like a frog.
“You want anything?”
Joe took a rattling breath.“Actually….”He pushed back the covers.Underneath, his T-shirt was stained with sweat.Now the whole room smelled vaguely of sickness.“Maybe help me get into the shower?”
“Maybe you can sit on the floor of the tub so you don’t die?”Austin offered as a compromise, taking his arm.
He got Joe set up in the bathroom, then stripped the bed, cracked the window, and put on a fresh set of sheets.
He made Joe eat a piece of bread and drink a glass of orange juice, then pumped him full of cold medicine and put him back to bed when he started to shiver.“I’m going to take Pepa for a walk, but I’ve got my phone, so call if you need me.”
“I’m allowed tovoice call you,” Joe said sleepily.“You must really like me.”
“I think I probably wouldn’t be able to decipher your texts,” Austin said honestly.
“Pff.”But his eyes were already closed.
The day fell into an odd routine.Austin did a few chores, then checked on Joe, tried to get some liquids into him, made sure he hadn’t spiked a worse fever, and let him fall back asleep.He sent Will a message around lunchtime letting him know nothing had changed.
He never did make it out to the garage to fidget with one of his projects.He didn’t want to be that far away for that long, get into the kind of mindset where he was focused on his work and wouldn’t hear his phone.Instead, he put a nature documentary on Netflix with the volume low and googled recipes for chicken soup.
