sicker

Jake feels like hell.

He assumed he would get sick, it was a calculated risk to make his life easier while he was looking after Amir, but fuck he didn’t think it would be this bad. He doesn’t know which of Amir’s gallery of diseases he contracted, but it’s definitely not mono. Jake’s had mono before. This has to be some previously undiscovered new strain of deadly virus, and with the way Jake can feel his body shutting down, it has to be terminal. There’s just no way he makes it out of this. He’s absolutely burning up. It’s gotta be, like, over a hundred degrees in here, the way he’s sweating and shivering. God, he has a fever. He’s gotta be, what, 105? 106? He needs a doctor. He needs to see a doctor right now, or he’s gonna die.

Amir wanders in when he hears Jake frantically trying to free himself from the extremely tight burrito of sheets he’d wrapped him in, shaking his head like Jake is a misbehaving child. “What are you doing?”

“I gotta see a doctor, man,” he gasps, throat tight, voice scratchy, “it’s too hot, my cells are dying, I need medical attention right now. Right the fuck now.”

Amir presses a hand to Jake’s forehead and hums thoughtfully, like he doesn’t even give a shit that if Jake doesn’t get to a hospital he’s gonna pass away, and grabs the thermometer from the bedside table.

“Open wide,” he says, waving it around in the air, “here comes the airplane!”

Jake holds the thermometer in his mouth, feeling it clack against his teeth when he tries to talk, words jumbled. “I’m dying, man, and you don’t even care.”

“I care. I’m a carer. I’m extremely caring! I let you put the ass thermometer in your mouth, didn’t I?”

“Please tell me you're joking.”

“I am! Wow, someone is not in the mood for goofs today.”

“I can’t believe this is a joke to you. After everything I’ve done for you. Who’s gonna help you with your laundry or remind you to brush your teeth when I’m six feet under?”

“The only thing you’re gonna be under is me, so don’t worry about it.”

“Crass. At a time like this? In my final moments?” Jake startles as Amir grabs the thermometer out of his mouth and looks at it, squinting, for a few seconds too long, and Jake starts to freak out. “What? What is it? Be honest with me, man, I need the truth.”

“Remind me what’s too hot again?”

“Like, over a hundred,” Jake mumbles, covering his eyes with one hand, “shit, how bad is it? I need to go to a hospital.”

“Ninety nine point two,” Amir says, and Jake grabs the thermometer out of his hands to check, “you barely have a fever, Jakey. You’re fine.”

“I’m not fine,” Jake says, even though he’s holding the thermometer and reading what it says, “I’m extremely sick. I probably still need to go to the hospital.”

“You’re fine,” Amir says, “Parm checked you out and said you weren’t even that sick.”

“Parm is not a real doctor,” he mumbles, but he thinks Amir is probably right, “and I still feel like shit. Ass.”

Amir grabs a plastic bag he’d dumped in the corner of their room earlier and starts rooting through it, throwing the contents onto the ground. “Right, I got you some stuff, from the, uh, from the medicine store—”

“The pharmacy?”

“Yeah, the medicine farm, exactly right.” He pulls out a bottle of something and hands it to Jake. “They said to like— I think they said to drink that and then go to sleep.”

“They said to drink all of this?”

“Uh— no. I don’t know. I’m supposed to remember everything everyone says to me?”

Jake rolls his eyes, because even the promise of death can’t stop him from being exasperated with Amir, and scans the instructions part of the bottle.

“Two capfuls, it says,” he shakes his head and struggles to get the stupid childproof lid open, “if I’d listened to you then I would be dead right now.”

“C’mon, that stuff can’t kill you. It’s for babies.”

He’s already had his first capful by the time Amir’s words register, and twists the bottle in his hands to see that, yeah, this is small child medicine. Great. “Why did you get the one for babies?”

“Because you’re my baby,” Amir says with an over the top wink, and, as deeply annoying as it is, Jake actually finds himself endeared by it, smiling as he drinks his second mouthful.

He’s already feeling a little better just from having Amir close enough to touch, not that he would ever tell him that. He reaches out and Amir threads their fingers together, and Jake feels like he can breathe easier again.