Sending Beck a text in case he wakes up, I steal his room key and head down one floor to my room to grab a few things. I call my mom while I’m there and tell her I’ve been exposed to the flu and woke up feeling off. It’s not a complete lie. I’ve definitely beenexposed to something, and I do feel off. I just don’t feel off as insick.
Beck is in the shower when I get back to his room. When I hear the water cut off, I make him a cup of tea with lots of honey and lemon juice, and some toast. It’s on the counter waiting for him when he steps out in a clean pair of sweats and a hoodie.
“You aren’t cold?” he asks, his voice weaker than yesterday. I shake my head and press my hand to his forehead, which he lets me do with only a slight flinch.
“You still have a fever,” I say, and hand over some more meds.
“These knocked me out,” he complains, but takes them anyway. He sighs into his cup of tea.
Beck tries to argue with me when I ask him where he keeps his clean sheets, but I give him my best unimpressed look. “You might as well just let me do what I want,” I tell him. “We both know I’m going to win.”
I’m heating up more soup and considering when I should head out to get more when I sneeze so hard I end up splashing myself in scalding chicken broth.
Beck’s head lifts from the couch and gives me a concerned look. “Oh, no,” he says.
“I’m fine,” I say, but the scratchy throat I woke up with this morning tells me I probably got whatever Beck has. Not to mention the backache, which I’m secretly glad isn’t because of sleeping half under a certain someone.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says, bleary and adorably annoyed. “Now look at what you’ve done.”
I sneeze again. Well, fuck.
“What do you mean, what I’ve done? You’re the one who keeps getting high on cold meds and kissing me.”
Beck squints at me, and his already pink cheeks get dark. “Says the guy who keeps feeding me the cold meds.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t like the excuse.”
He rolls his eyes and makes a disgruntled noise that’s half smug, half apology. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“Yeah,” I say again, softer now, “I did.”
Later, my mom calls me, and I don’t even have to pretend to be sick. I inform her that Beck did, in fact, give me the plague. He scoffs and ends up in a coughing fit.
“Neither of you sounds good. Do you need a doctor or anything?” Mom asks, not questioning who I’m with or why I’m in his bed. She makes me put her on video chat so we can stick out our tongues and answer a bunch of questions about our symptoms, then tells us to stay hydrated and to check in with her tomorrow.
When I hang up, I get up to plug my phone in and grab us some water. Beck is watching me from his pillow with an unreadable expression. He opens his mouth like he wants to comment on something, then he closes it again and settles deeper under the covers, as if retreating is the safer choice.
I crawl back into bed beside him, fighting the urge to reach for him, only for him to beat me to it in the most reluctant, stubborn way possible. He hooks his foot around my ankle under theblankets, like he’s pretending it’s accidental even though it definitely isn’t.
We stay like that for most of the evening, drifting in and out of sleep. Every time one of us coughs or shifts, the other adjusts instinctively. At some point, Beck’s head ends up tucked under my chin, and my hand settles in his hair without a conscious decision on my part.
For the next three days, we stay suspended in our own little world. We watch bad movies on his laptop, half of which Beck complains about loudly until he falls asleep twenty minutes in. We argue about whetherThe Panthersare going to win theSuper Bowl. Beck orders more soup and supplies to be delivered, and I decide not to make fun of him for being privileged because it’s actually really nice to not have to leave our bubble. We take turns forcing each other to hydrate. And we talk a lot, although we fall asleep mid-conversation more times than I can count.
Sometimes we talk about nothing—the weather, the awful paint color of the dorm walls, whether the dining hall has better food than a mall food court. Sometimes it gets deeper without warning. He tells me about his childhood nanny, Ms. Delia, and it’s nice to hear him talk about someone who might not be blood, but certainly counts as family, with affection. I want to ask about his father and whether they talked after the last meet, but I decide not to bring it up. I tell him that my brother is sick, which isn’t a lie, but I don’t tell him the whole story. I tell him my dad died when I was a kid, but no deeper details, especially considering how pissed off he gets about Pierce on my behalf.
And sometimes when the medicine makes us loopy and the world feels soft and blurry, we kiss. Slow, drugged with warmth that burns through me. We learn each other’s mouths in adifferent way. These kisses aren’t frantic or desperate, they don’t hurt, and they aren’t driven by a need to dominate or consume him. They’re cautious kisses, learning how to fit together like puzzles that were missing pieces.
Every time Beck pulls back, his eyelashes flutter like he’s overwhelmed.
“This is different,” he breathes.
It’s different because he’s not fighting me. It’s different because he’s letting himself feel.
For three days, we exist in this suspended space. Two sick idiots wrapped in blankets and each other, pushing pause on reality. No wrestling. No teammates. No stairwells. No games.
By the time the fever has broken, and the worst of the body aches and congestion have faded, I almost wish we could stay like this a little longer. I’ve fallen so deep into this quiet, this softness, this fragile peace where he doesn’t run and I don’t have to chase him, that I really don’t want to have to leave again.
What’s going to happen when his roommates come back tomorrow? When we have to step back into the world and start acknowledging that whatever this is between us has changed irrevocably.
