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American Idol Fic: Turn My Blue Heart to Red
TITLE: Turn My Blue Heart to Red
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17
PAIRING: Michael Johns/David Cook
DISCLAIMER: Nothing that happens here is real.
SUMMARY: Oh, sure, it’s easy to be with someone when they’re healthy. This is such ridiculous, self-indulgent h/c that I can’t even.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Takes place between “When the Dawn Cracks” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.
AUTHOR’S NOTE 2: Someone please stop me. This time, the title comes from Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You.” No, really.



“Relax,” David whispered, and placed a kiss to the quivering skin between Michael’s shoulder blades.

“That.” There was an oh god growl to Michael’s voice that David thought he could listen to forever. Michael drew a ragged breath and went on, “That is a lot easier for you to say, mate.”

David kissed the soft space between Michael’s shoulders and at the base of his neck, brushed away hair that was already sweaty. He had done this before, a handful of times both before and after he had become a household name and learned that his days of scrambling for money were over. He had been on both sides of this equation. If what Michael told him was true, then David was the first time that Michael had ever done more than drunkenly kiss a man, let alone what they were getting ready to do in Michael’s bed right now. That had meant over a month getting to this point, too, long slow nights in learning what the other liked. That meant that everything that David did to Michael and showed him how to do back was the first time that Michael had ever experienced it; David didn’t think that he had ever concentrated harder on giving someone a good orgasm in his life.

Though it was usually considered bad form to laugh at someone just before fucking them, David couldn’t stop the bubble that he felt rumbling up his throat. “Just breathe,” he said to Michael, stroking bicep. In spite of the beads of sweat that David could see on Michael’s back and shoulder, there was still gooseflesh on his upper arm. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He didn’t need to see Michael’s face to know that he was rolling his eyes. “But will you hold me if I cry after?” he threw back over his shoulder. “For fuck’s sake, Dave, I’m not made of glass, come on.”

“It fucking thrills me when I get that kind of enthusiasm, you have no idea.” Michael was already slicked and ready, stretched with David’s fingers until he had gone loose-limbed and relaxed, a little dazed by what a handful of light and deliberate brushes against his prostate could do. All of that relaxation had disappeared again as soon as Michael had turned over and gotten on his knees, but David intended to bring it back soon. He positioned himself at Michael’s entrance and pushed in, just a few inches. Michael was tight and resisting, and his back arched at the intrusion. David heard him make a hissing noise.

“Do you want to stop?” David asked, even though he thought that an entirely new word would have to be invented for the level of blue balls that he would have if that were the case. He couldn’t see Michael’s face like this and tell whether this was the usual nervousness of someone who had never been fucked before or the start of a genuine problem, and he hated that. He wanted to be able to look at someone’s face when he was having sex with them, but Michael had been firm.

Michael let out a short laugh. “This isn’t prom night, and we’re not a couple of teenagers drunk in the back of a limo,” he said. Though his voice was still tight, he didn’t sound as if he was reconsidering the wisdom of this entire situation at all. “Just give me a minute.”

David did, though being even partway into Michael was making him want to do nothing more than thrust himself all the way in, balls deep, and again until Michael’s back was arching even harder and they were both making sounds loud enough to knock the pictures down from the walls. “Okay,” David whispered. He leaned across Michael’s back again, kissed the base of his neck, reached under him to fondle Michael’s cock. It was already hard and leaking from the tip; Michael shuddered and made a strangled sound when David dragged his thumb through the pre-come. “Just breathe.” He pushed further in and Michael gasped. David paused again so that Michael could get used to the feel of him from the inside, watching Michael’s bowed head and listening to him inhale and exhale. He was gorgeous, and David could feel himself starting to shake with how badly he just wanted to do it already; Michael’s was not the only breathing that had gone ragged.

“You ready?” David asked, and waited for Michael to nod before he pushed himself those final inches. Michael was tight and warm, and David had to stop, just stop and take his own advice and breathe for a minute, because it would be absolutely fucking hysterical if he came as fast as a horny eighteen year-old right here and now.

Michael made a strangled, startled sound and arched even harder, rising off of the bed partway and against the David’s chest. David wrapped his arm around Michael’s stomach, felt sweat and the dark trail of hair leading down to his cock, wished that he could see all of this rather than filling in the blanks. No one had ever accused him of having a lack of imagination, though; he would cope.

“Oh,” Michael said, sounding startled and wondering. “That’s...God.”

“That’s the prostate,” David told him. “Proof that Leviticus is a load of shit. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Not if you don’t do anything with it,” Michael growled back at him, sounding wanton and almost desperate, and grabbed for David’s hip. No, really, David thought, coming right now, I swear-- He bit his lip hard, drew out of Michael’s ass only far enough to push back into him again, not going slow this time. They made the same sound.

David gripped Michael’s hips hard as Michael pushed back against him, colors sparking at the edges of his vision. He gasped out Michael’s name and what he thought was probably an endearment, he couldn’t be sure, as they found a rhythm together, whatever hesitancy Michael might have been feeling up to that point falling away as he thrust back against David. “Like that, like that, like that,” David heard him start to mutter; he watched sweat darken Michael’s hair to his neck and had to give himself a hard internal kick before he was able to remember that this was Michael’s first time and that David had promised himself that he was going to make it good. He leaned over Michael’s body and found Michael’s erect cock, stroked it in the same way that he had before and that had made Michael jump so. Michael jumped even harder when David turned his caresses even faster, bordering upon rough, but if the sound that jerked from his throat was anything to go by he was not displeased. David concentrated hard on keeping his breathing level, or as level as it could be, and not coming himself stupid as he stared at Michael sprawled out wanting and offering beneath him, heard the gasping, nearly whining sounds that were coming out of Michael’s mouth, swore that even the best of intentions were not going to be enough to keep him from coming first. He continued to masturbate Michael as they shifted and moved together, wished yet again that he could see Michael’s face, and made do with the low sound that Michael made from his chest seconds before he came across David’s fingers in ropy spurts.

It had been a long time since his first fumbling experiences in the backseat of a borrowed car, but David knew that he was not going to be able to hold himself back any longer. He came hard enough to make his vision go wobbly around the edges and slumped forward across Michael’s back, bearing the both of them down to the bed. For several moments all that he did was get his breath back and listen to Michael do the same. Michael stirred.

“You’re squishing me,” Michael said. “That’s a new experience.”

“Hmmm.” David didn’t think that he wanted to move ever again, really, but he obligingly rolled over so that he and Michael were now laying side by side. There was a little bit of moonlight coming in through the bedroom window and laying in bars across Michael’s face, but most of his expression was in shadow. “New like the first time you got a blowjob, or new like a raging case of gonorrhea?”

Michael laughed and then shoved his face against the side of David’s neck, effectively dispelling any doubts as to whether or not the experience had been pleasurable. His skin was warm to the touch, nearly feverish. “Quit fishing for compliments, Dave, it’s not flattering.” He tilted his head up and bit at David’s earlobe before turning his face away again, almost as if he could not believe that he had done it. The body in David’s arms stiffened slightly. He wanted to pull it back, stopped himself just in time.

“I should go,” David murmured, because Michael was doing that turning away and shutting down thing that never failed to make David grind his teeth, and sometimes it was hard not to chase him whenever Michael tried to run like that. It was an easy out, but he didn’t care. “Got an early call tomorrow.” It was a blatant lie, and there was probably even a chance that Michael knew that, but they had intricate rules concerning the things that they didn’t talk about.

Michael yawned against David’s shoulder. “No, stay,” he said. His tone was so evenly nonchalant that one might not even have known that this was the first time that he had ever invited David to spend the night after one of their rounds of sex, or vice-versa. “I don’t. I’ll get to laugh at you and then sleep in.”

“You really want to ruin my work ethic. I see through your cunning plan, Johns.” Michael only yawned. His body was still held taut, a long way from the loose-limbed wrapping around one another that David was accustomed to and enjoyed after sex, but endorphins were taking him under into sleep whether he liked it or not. David could feel their pull against his limbs, as well. He squirmed deeper beneath the covers and heard Michael mutter in sleepy protest as he was jostled to make room.

“Some of us aren’t used to that,” Michael muttered against David’s collarbone. David decided that he liked where Michael was resting his head, where David could feel every word that he said as a rumble against David’s chest. “Give us a freaking a break, we don’t bend like that every day.”

“Poor baby,” David said, and smacked Michael lightly on the ass. Michael snorted out a sleepy laugh, though he still did not relax entirely against David until long after he was unconscious.

*
David was not a morning person. Neither, it would appear, was Michael. He turned over and muttered something annoyed when the alarm on David’s cellular phone went off, and didn’t move again when David got out of the bed. David gave his shoulder an affectionate shove; Michael swatted at him. He was too sleepy to remember his usual habits of push-pull, it seemed. David decided then that he liked Michael sleepy.

“Lazy,” David leaned down and murmured into Michael’s ear as he reluctantly pulled himself from the bed. It was warm beneath the blankets and cool in the air beyond it, with the way that Michael liked to turn his air conditioning up to glacial levels; David could feel goose pimples rising across his skin immediately. Michael murmured something undoubtedly rude and turned over. David thought that his skin was warmer than normal as he deliberately pulled the blankets back--if one of them was going to be awake and unhappy about it, then both of them were, especially since Michael had been taking such delight in being a prick about it earlier--but he passed it off as nothing more than the cocoon that they had made around each other.

“Asshole,” Michael said as he finally woke up enough to pull the covers back over himself.

“Now you’re sounding like a debauched rock star,” David said cheerfully as he headed in the direction of Michael’s shower. He didn’t miss the middle finger that Michael turned his way before he went, but it only made him laugh.

David showered quickly and left the bathroom to discover that Michael was still a motionless huddle beneath the blankets. Michael flopped out a lazy arm to flash David his middle finger again when David poked him, just because he could, and then wandered into the kitchen. Michael’s new apartment was smaller than his old one, but David didn’t mind. He lived in a freaking labyrinth himself, and it wasn’t as if stoves worked any differently from one place to another. David poked around until he found coffee and bacon and set both to cooking, shamelessly exploring Michael’s cabinets as he did so. He told himself that it was idle curiosity only, and that if Michael was drinking on the sly then he surely would be smarter than to put his stash next to the Bisquick. It didn’t even come close to working, but elaborate games designed to avoid outright cognitive dissonance were what made the world go round.

It’s a little late to be fucking the guy if you can’t trust him, David told himself, shutting the refrigerator with a carton of orange juice in his hand. That line of argument probably lost something, though, when David had been fucking him before he had learned that he couldn’t trust him. It got complicated after that; since they had just entered into brand new and pretty damned complicated territory the night before as it was, he thought that he could set to the side everything else that was tugging at him for the moment.

David made enough breakfast for two, but when he came back into the bedroom juggling both portions on one plate and two cups of coffee besides, Michael still hadn’t budged. He barely even twitched at the scent of the coffee.

“You weren’t kidding,” David said as he took a seat on the edge of the bed and a long drink of his coffee. He watched Michael over the rim as Michael turned over, finally, and poked at the eggs before he grimaced and reached for his own mug instead. “I’d think that you had been trashing hotel rooms if I didn’t know better.”

Michael broke off a tiny piece of bacon and put it into his mouth. “I’m more out of shape than I realized,” he said. “God, I’m sore all over.”

“You regret anything?” David wasn’t able to stop himself from asking, even though he was rolling his eyes at himself as he said it. There were very few ways there that he could have actually sounded more like a virgin needing his hand held, when Michael was the one that this was all new for.

Michael saved him by rolling his own eyes and letting out a short laugh. He poked at the bacon for a few more seconds; David had previously thought that seeing someone turn green was only a myth. “Yeah, I was trying so hard to push you off of me last night,” he said. Michael reached out and grabbed at David’s wrist, took the opportunity to trace his fingers along the veins on the underside. David held his breath as he marveled at the way that the smallest caresses could sometimes feel nearly as good as outright fucking. “Give me a little while to figure out the curves, Dave, but I think that I like this ride.”

David grinned in spite of himself, without caring that he probably really was looking like a virgin getting his first compliment at this point. He noticed that more than half of the food on the plate was gone, even though he had only seen Michael himself take a few bites. “You feeling all right?” he asked.

Michael grimaced and shrugged, pulled the covers higher up over his shoulders. “One of those mornings when I can’t seem to get going,” he said. He looked at the plate of food apologetically. “I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to make that for you.”

“I enjoyed the practice. Didn’t even leave smoke marks on your walls this time.” David hesitated, because no matter how glib Michael’s tone was he still didn’t look right, then leaned forward and kissed him. It was relatively chaste, as anything short of a full public rutting was likely to be chaste after what they had done to each other the night before, and Michael’s mouth was warm. He had a lazy smile on his face when David pulled away. “See you tonight?”

“I’ll try to be more energetic by then.” And now Michael’s smile was definitely not intended to send chaste thoughts through David’s mind. Goddamn him. David blew a long breath of air through his nose and told himself that it would only make him whip through his schedule that much faster if he had something to look forward to at the end of the day.

*
Apparently whipping through his schedule that much faster meant being a holy terror to his producers for most of the day, which made his assistant giggle behind her hand whenever she could get away with it and a few times, unwisely, even when she couldn’t, which in turn made the producers turn around and be terrors to her whenever they thought that David was not going to notice. That didn’t make him stop, but it did make him slide her a credit card at the end of the day.

“What’s this?” Brittany said, blinking down at it, then up at him again. She still looked frazzled, and pieces of her normally immaculate ponytail were sticking out like wings around her ears.

“I’ll want it back in the morning,” David told her. “Just go wild at Macy’s and not a car lot.”

Brittany looked as if the thought had not actually occurred to her until David had so helpfully pointed it out, but now she was going to have to hold herself back with a white-knuckled grip to keep that from happening. “Best boss ever,” she told David. He blinked and then she was gone, more likely than not dashing off before he could change his mind. The producers were distracted for the moment; David thought that it would be a good plan for him to do the same.

His cellular phone buzzed as he was driving in ways that definitely would not have been approved of when it came to his tween-friendly representation. David fumbled for it and answered without looking at the screen. “Hey, Carls.”

“Do I have a special ring? I didn’t know I had a special ring.”

David said, “No, I’m just psychic.” It was “Barracuda.” He wove a pattern through traffic that would have made a NASCAR driver proud. A flurry of horns followed him.

“Don’t get yourself killed, David,” Carly said, but she was laughing. “You doing anything tonight?”

“Hanging with Michael,” David said, though the wistful tone to Carly’s voice made him feel guilty. Todd hadn’t been gone for six months yet, and she wasn’t used to being alone. As someone who had been dumped more than his fair share of times, David could relate. “But I’m sure I can cancel--”

“No, go be with your boyfriend,” Carly said forcefully. It was the forcefully that did it; David could all but see that tight little smile she got when she was trying not to be a bother but was also about two good nudges away from losing her shit in an epic fashion all over the nearest person in her vicinity. “It’s okay.”

David was her best friend and had been since they had stumbled over one another in Hollywood four years before. That made it part of his job to be the nearest person in her vicinity. “I’m coming over,” he told Carly before executing a turn that earned him even more horns from behind and around him. They were like his backup band at this point. Carly made a snuffling sound that belied her earlier attempt to pretend that she was okay. “Give me twenty minutes, okay? And get the Wii out.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Carly hung up.

David dialed Michael’s number without having to look at his fingers; it took Michael several rings to answer. “Hello?” he answered. There was something wrong with his voice, something a little disjointed and distant, that made David wonder if he shouldn’t be calling Carly back.

“It’s me,” David said hesitantly. “I was thinking that we could, uh, move plans back a few hours. Carly needs me--”

“Go be with your friend, I can deal,” Michael interrupted. There was definitely something wrong with his voice, and David was seriously on the verge of calling the whole thing off before Michael went on, “Maybe it’ll make her like me better.”

David laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Save a box of puppies from a burning building and deliver them to her door,” he told him. “And then maybe she’ll turn a water hose on you if ever showed up on her lawn engulfed in flames.”

“You have the greatest friends in the world,” Michael said. He sounded more normal, and David thought that he was hearing Michael’s first laugh of the actual conversation bubbling towards the surface.

“I’m scared to break up with her,” David answered. He hesitated, then added, “I’ll hang out with her for a few hours, then I’ll come over, all right? She’s just going through something kind of intense right now, and she needs me.”

“You just want in my pants again.”

That wasn’t it, David wanted to say. That was...no, he was a liar, that was a big part of it, but he was also determined to come over that night because there was something about Michael that just didn’t sound right, and with Carly not sounding right, either, David was torn between which way he needed to go. “Well, yeah,” David finally said, and Michael laughed again and hung up on him.

Carly met him at the door when he pulled up on her drive; she had to have been waiting for him just inside. David noticed immediately that her eyes were red, though there weren’t any salt tracks on her cheeks. “Oh, Carls,” he said, and enveloped her in a hug. She made a snuffling sound against his shirt and was undoubtedly leaving a soggy face print comprised of her makeup against the fabric. It was an old NIN tee shirt that she had cried on before, it would be all right.

“You need to get more girlfriends,” David said into her hair. “I’m really bad at this stuff.”

“Girlfriends would want to feed me ice cream and trash talk Todd’s technique in bed,” Carly answered back, her voice muffled. “I just want to get drunk.”

“I guess I can handle that,” David said. He put his arm around Carly’s shoulders and guided her back into her house, while she continued all the while to make the saddest snuffling sounds that David thought he had heard in his entire life. “Did you do what I told you to?” Carly pointed triumphantly at the Wii that she already had set out for two players, and also the bottle of amaretto that was sitting on the coffee table. “Atta girl.”

“Tonight, I mean business.”

*

“Carls,” David said calmly, and made Mario jump expertly from one mushroom to another so that he wouldn’t fall into some kind of pit. He was currently in third. Carly was in twelfth, and appeared to be driving in the wrong direction. “I think that you’re drunk.”

“I think I am!” Carly sang back, sounding happier than she had at any point since David had arrived on her doorstep. She spun her car in a circle that ought to have been impossible, given the unwieldiness of the Wii steering wheel, and made a moue of displeasure as she watched her car disappear into an abyss. The same faintly disturbing cherub picked her up and set her down on her mushroom again. David watched in amusement as she promptly raced off of it again. Carly was a restless drunk, and she kept scrubbing at her face as she drove, which might have been part of her problem. When even two hands were taxing her coordination, shifting over to one probably wasn’t such a great idea. She was rubbing a little more of the stalk tracks off of her face every time that she did it, though, and David was glad to see them go.

“You’re either a really good friend or a really crap boyfriend,” Carly told him abruptly, somewhere into the fourth drink that she had had in his presence, not counting how much he was sure that she had downed before his arrival.

David thought about this for a second and then could not help but laugh. “Wrong relationship. If I’m a good friend, then I’m a crappy boyfriend. I win in at least one category here.”

Carly paused to look over at him while cherubs hauled her car back onto the right side of a cliff yet again. Tiny cartoon Luigi got out of his tiny cartoon car to shake his fist at her. “Well,” Carly said. “I’m glad that you’re being my crap friend.”

“I am being an awesome friend,</i>” David was so distracted that he drove his own vehicle over the edge of the barrier and cursed. Carly laughed at him; David flipped her off. “And I’ve been your crap friend for a lot longer than I’ve been Michael’s crap boyfriend, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Carly abruptly dropped her controller so that she could lunge across the couch and hug him. Luigi was going to stage a full-on rebellion against her at this point. “Thank you,” she whispered to him.

“Hos before bros, baby doll.”

Carly made a noise against David’s shoulder that was practically a giggle. “I mean it,” she said. “You didn’t have to come, but I’m glad that you did.” She attempted to put her controller back down on her coffee table, missed, and stared at it in faint puzzlement as it slid down to her living room floor. “Huh. I do believe that I have had enough to drink.”

“You are going to have such a hangover in the morning,” he told her. David had had a couple of her generously mixed drinks earlier in the evening but had cut himself off soon afterwards, recognizing that it was up to him to be the responsible adult of the night, or the nearest thing that was going to be able to suffice. Even the slight buzz that he had worn early on was gone.

Carly grinned at him and toed at the shoes that she had kicked off moments after sitting down on the couch. “Yes,” she agreed. “But see, there’s a logic to it. If I get drunk enough now, then I’ll go straight to sleep and won’t call him.” David reached out and pulled Carly into a deep hug without speaking. Her face pressed against his shoulder, she continued, “And tell him what a fucking bastard he is.”

“I love you, Carly.” David pressed his lips to the top of her head. She shifted against him, already falling asleep. “Come on, I’ll help you up the stairs.”

“That’s a good plan,” Carly agreed. “I don’t think that I can do it in these shoes.”

“You’re barefoot.”

“Then I’m really fucked.” Carly stood on her own but wobbled, and gaze the Wii equipment scattered across her living room floor a dubious look.

“You’re rich, Carly,” David told her as he turned her around and led her towards the stairs and her bedroom. “Let the maid get it in the morning.” There was still a picture of Todd on the hallway wall. Carly reached out and casually knocked it to the floor as they went past. “Let her get that, too.”

“Planning on it.” Carly made it to her bedroom, already fussing with the edges of her top, and turned on him. “This is where you make your gentlemanly exit.”

“I can stay the night, on the couch,” David said, even though he could not stop thinking of how strange and out of sorts Michael had sounded while David had spoken to him on the phone. Carly sounded several dozen different kinds of not right, too, and she had seniority.

Carly flapped her hand at him. “Go. I got it. I’m going to call you and bitch about my righteous hangover in the morning, but I got it.” She gave him a look over her shoulder. “Just so you know, this doesn’t make me like Michael.”

David leaned back, shocked. “Carly,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking that.” And he hadn’t been, of that he wasn’t lying, even if being with Michael did mean that he watched the potentially addictive behaviors of everyone, including himself, and not-so-idly speculate on what it would take to make that line be crossed.

Carly kissed his cheek. She smelled like amaretto and coke syrup. “Babe,” she said. “On some level, you’re always thinking that, now. Consequences of the company you keep.”

“You’re making for an awfully nosy drunk,” David groused at her. She flapped her hand at him again and started fiddling with the zipper on the side of her top. Starting to think that Carly was going to strip right there in front of him, David said, “So, I’ll go and see my boyfriend, then.”

Carly paused with one strap of her bra showing and flashed him an unexpected smile. “If I can remember, I’ll call you in the morning and let you know what I called my ex-husband!”

“Jesus Christ.” But David left without feeling too guilty; whenever Carly had moved from crying and into trash-talking, it generally meant that the worst was over. He made it to Michael’s at an hour that usually marked the Los Angeles night life just getting started.

David knocked once, then again, on Michael’s door. There was no answer from within. He frowned and ran Carly’s words through his mind; it could never be said that he worried too little. And Michael had sounded so out of sorts when David had spoken to him on the phone.

After several more knocks and several more minutes without any signs of life from within the apartment, David put his hand on the knob, unsure of what he was planning on doing. Knocking the whole thing right off its hinges with his shoulder if it came to it, probably, but the door opened easily beneath his hand, and that was when David really started to get the bad feeling. Michael didn’t live in the building that he had used to call home, where anyone who wanted entrance had to wait to be buzzed up, and Los Angeles wasn’t some farm town where everyone knew the contents of everyone else’s pantries. David had a fence that topped nine feet and even he didn’t leave his front door unlocked.

“Mike?” David called as he stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed within. “You all right?”

From the bathroom, there was the unmistakeable sound that David had heard at a dozen different college parties and then all of the nights in the bars when tips weren’t flying fast and furious because he sang well. Michael was throwing up, and violently.

Carly had told David that he watched everyone for signs of addiction now. Goddamn her; he really wished that she could manage not to be an insightful drunk. David felt his stomach tighten, but he walked down the hallway and to the bathroom on steady feet.

Michael was leaning over his toilet as if every other string in his body had been cut, head hanging down between his shoulders and hair clinging in damp strands to his forehead. He didn’t seem to notice that David was there at first; David, however, noticed immediately how pale and gleaming Michael’s skin was, how glassy his eyes. “Fuck,” he said, and rushed forward.

Michael glanced up at the sound of David’s voice and took an inventory of his expression immediately. “I’m not drunk,” he said. He sounded exhausted, but his words weren’t slurred. Carly had enunciated like a diplomat; David wasn’t ready to throw anything out the window just yet.

“I know,” he said anyway as he knelt behind Michael and put his hands against Michael’s shoulders as Michael hunched forward again suddenly and made another one of those horrible sounds. David wrinkled his nose and looked away, while keeping his hands on Michael’s shoulders. Must be love, he thought, and for a second was so shocked by the thought that he didn’t realize how hot Michael’s skin was, even through his shirt. “Oh,” David said. He felt guilty immediately afterwards; when one’s boyfriend was doing his level best to vomit up major organs and was running an impressive fever besides, the reaction that one was supposed to feel probably wasn’t relief.

“God,” Michael said, spitting and grimacing when he appeared to be done for the moment. “Been a while since I tasted my own bile. Kinda missed the flavor.”

“Come on,” David murmured, and hooked his arms beneath Michael’s to help him up to his feet. Michael wobbled and leaned back against David so heavily that David thought they were both going to be driven back against the wall. “How long have you been like this?”

“Couple hours,” Michael muttered. He broke away from David hurriedly to hunch over the toilet again, arms shaking as he braced himself, but nothing came of the experience. Michael did not appear to be relieved. David remembered some of the worst stomach viruses of his life, the ones where throwing up was actually a pleasant distraction compared to the dry heaves, and winced. “Felt weird all day, but it just now started to get really bad.”

“You could have called me,” David said. He tried not to sound accusatory. He was not sure that he entirely succeeded.

Michael turned his head so that he could throw David a look over his shoulder. There were rules to what they could and could not talk about that David was still learning, usually by running face first into one of Michael’s walls and then stumbling around for the next day and a half trying to figure out how to proceed forward again, but this look, at least, was perfectly transparent. Michael hadn’t called because he had known exactly which conclusion David would have jumped to, and David had proven him right.

And he didn’t call because he’s a self-sufficient jackass even when he’s drowning, David could not stop himself from thinking, even if he did manage to do with a certain amount of affection. Vomit-breath was not the best perfume in the world for these kinds of close-quartered conversations, anyway. David winced and leaned away, trusting Michael to keep himself upright for a few more seconds while David poured a glass of mouthwash. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Michael rinsed out his mouth and then leaned over the sink, hands braced to either side of his body. With his eyes closed, the shadows beneath them were very dark.

“You are such an ass,” David could not stop himself from saying as he tugged at Michael’s shirt and, when Michael stumbled, put Michael’s arm about his shoulders. His skin was so hot that David was torn for a few seconds between pulling Michael towards his bed or shoving him into the shower, because Jesus.

Michael gave him a look first startled and then annoyed. “Don’t change your bedside manner,” he told David. “Really. No matter what your critics say.”

“I would have come over,” David said. “You didn’t have to be by yourself.” He might have even convinced Carly to come over; between her being drunk and Michael being sick, it would have made for a colorful night all around, but at least David would not be feeling like he was going to be wearing the crown of world’s worst boyfriend for the rest of his life now.

“I’m all right,” Michael said. David leaned away from Michael slightly, letting Michael support his own weight for just a few seconds. Michael promptly wobbled and would have fallen if David had not renewed his support again. “Yeah, I’m the ass. That makes sense.”

“Shut up and come on.” David helped Michael to the edge of his bed and then sat him down while he went through Michael’s drawers for more comfortable clothing. “Get your shirt off.” Michael made a face at him but obeyed; David thought that he might have even seen the first edge of a smile curling at Michael’s mouth. David made a face back. It wasn’t that he was having mother hennish tendencies, it was that Michael was sick enough to legitimately be scary and seemed determined to treat it like nothing more than a bad headache.

Michael’s unclothed chest for once didn’t make David’s libido go pitter-pat, proving that he and Michael were just going to keep knocking one first off of the list after another for as long as they knew each other. David helped him change and then pulled back the blankets on the bed. “Try to sleep.” Though Michael was so hot that looking at blankets was making David feel miserable by proxy. He eyed the waxiness of Michael’s skin and decided that he was going to go fishing around for a thermometer the very second that he managed to catch Michael with his back turned.

Michael closed his eyes without bothering to lie down and for several seconds appeared to be concentrating very hard. “Leaving the bathroom might have been a mistake,” he said in a faint voice. David lunged for the wastebasket and got it within range just in time. Michael threw up very little; David pictured how long he had to have been sick before David had gotten there and winced.

“Oh, I am the best boyfriend in the whole world,” David muttered sarcastically as he set the wastebasket to the side and helped Michael lie down. Michael tilted his head to the side and flashed David a quizzical look. Sometimes David forgot how smart Michael actually was, when he was hiding it behind sarcasm or tense silences; his eyes could flash with insights that made David wonder at all that he was hiding behind them.

“Definitely not one of the worst, anyway,” Michael said as he lay back. He was nearly the same color as his pillow, and hot enough to actually make the tips of David’s fingers tingle when he touched him.

“Can you keep Sprite down?” David asked, so that he would not ask Michael again why he hadn’t just told David that he was sick. He hadn’t told him that he was...that he was sick before, either, and sometimes that was a sore tooth that David could not stop wiggling at.

Michael turned green at the very thought. “Bad idea,” he said and closed his eyes. “You could have stayed with your friend.”

“So you could make friends with your toilet all night?” David wanted to shove at Michael’s shoulder the way that he had that morning, when post-coital glow had briefly made things so much easier between them, but Michael looked like he might break at the slightest touch.

“This one hasn’t really gotten the chance to warm to me yet.” Michael turned on his side, towards the center of the bed. It left his back to David; it might have been an invitation for David to take his exit gracefully.

Just because David could notice a hint didn’t mean that he had to take it. He walked around the bed, took the unoccupied half without sliding beneath the blankets, and kicked off his shoes. “You smell like vomit,” he told Michael cheerfully.

Michael opened his eyes long enough to register that David was still there and groaned, though David knew good and well that he had to have felt the bed dip when David got on it. “Are you planning on staying all night?” he asked.

“For every minute,” David told him. He reached out and put his hand over Michael’s, even though Michael’s entire body tensed at the contact and his skin was so hot that it was nearly painful.

*
“Where’s your thermometer?” David demanded, jerking his hand away from Michael’s arm because Michael was reaching the point where it was physically painful to touch him. He glanced at the bedside clock; it informed him that it was 3:57 in the morning.

“Don’t have one,” Michael muttered. He was sitting up, legs dangling over the side of the bed and hands braced against his knees. David had insisted on leaving the bedside lamp on after it had become clear that neither one of them was going to be getting anything that resembled sleep, and he could not look away from the long, heavy patch of sweat that was darkening Michael’s shirt along his spine. “Or else I lost it when I moved. I, uh, wasn’t that responsible Before.” There was always a capitalization in his voice when he made any mention of what he had been doing before he had decided to get help, and sometimes David even caught himself doing it, too.

“Then I’m taking you to the hospital,” David announced. He tried to touch Michael again, if for nothing else than to put his hands beneath Michael’s arms and leave him no bodily choice in the matter. “You’re getting scary.”

“No, you’re not,” Michael gritted. He had just sat up, and the sheets where he had been were soaked with sweat. There were shadows beneath his eyes so dark that they looked as if they had been painted there, and every few seconds he would close them and clench his jaw tightly against a bout of dry-heaving. It hurt to look at him. “It looks worse than it feels.”

“It has to,” David snapped as he made his first attempt at physically lifting Michael from the bed. Michael let out a muffled curse, struggled, and flashed David his middle finger. This didn’t even compare to their worst fight by a fraction, so David ignored him. “Because it looks like you’re dying.”

“Oh, this is nothing like dying,” Michael said. His voice was pitched so low that David wasn’t even sure that he was supposed to hear. Michael leaned over the wastebasket that didn’t make it very far from the bed and arched his back. God, David hated the sound of someone vomiting, even if by this point Michael wasn’t producing much more than saliva and bile by now. “Trust me.”

Must be love, David thought again. He averted his eyes until Michael stopped heaving and then gathered him beneath the arms. Michael was sweating so profusely that David’s own shirt was soaked within seconds; he could only imagine what that must feel like from the inside. “Come on.”

Michael managed vertical for only a few seconds before he sank back heavily against David. “Why,” he said in a strangled voice that made David wonder if another bout of heaving would not be greeting them shortly. “Why in God’s name did you think that standing was a good idea?”

“Because you’ve got to cool off,” David said. He sounded scared, and he knew it, and he didn’t care, because if Michael got much hotter then David was either going to have to ignore his wishes and drag his ass to a hospital or watch him cook in his own skin. He got Michael to the bathroom, turned the shower spray on as cold as it would go, and shoved Michael fully clothed beneath the water. Michael yelped and cursed. David didn’t care; it was the most alert that Michael had sounded in hours. He took a deep breath and then jumped in after him as Michael started to slide down the wall.

“Motherfucker,” David blurted out as the icy water, so cold that it actually hurt, struck his skin. It was all that he could do not to jump right back out again, Michael be damned, and spend the rest of his life telling everyone that he was the world’s worst boyfriend without feeling sorry for it in the slightest.

Michael would have slumped down against the far wall if David had not reached out and grabbed for him quickly. “No shit, Sherlock,” he stuttered out from behind teeth that couldn’t seem to stop chattering. “And if you hadn’t jumped in here with me, I would have had to drag your ass in, you sadist.”

“You’re the best patient ever.” David couldn’t be angry, not when he was reaching out to touch Michael’s skin and finding that it was already cooling back down to an actual human level.

“You’re not exactly Greg House, Dave, I’m just saying.” Michael started to slump again, making David’s heart leap up into his throat with every intention of staying there, until Michael put his face against the crook of David’s neck and braced his hands around David’s waist for the barest of seconds before he pulled away again. “Thanks for coming.”

“I’m still dragging your ass to LA General if your fever doesn’t come down,” David said, while he thought, Like you could pry me away.

Michael made a muffled sound. David wasn’t sure if he was trying to speak or not, because he was at the moment shivering too hard to form words. David wrapped his arms around himself and wished that the first time he and Michael got an opportunity to take a shower together could go better than this. “I’m bigger than you.”

“By two inches. Don’t get a swelled head.” David hopped in the biggest circle that he could manage in the cramped expanses of Michael’s shower, because the water was at this point like having hypodermic needles driven into his flesh, and then leapt out of the spray amidst a flurry of cursing. “Stay in there a few more minutes,” he said to Michael, who raised his middle finger at him again. David didn’t care; Michael’s eyes didn’t have that terrifying glassy cast to them any longer, and there was color in his face that didn’t exist solely as those apple-red points high upon his cheeks.

David stripped out of his soaking clothes and threw them into Michael’s hamper before he raided Michael’s dresser without regret for something that would fit him, grabbed a couple of towels, and returned to the bathroom. Michael was sitting on the floor of the shower, his knees pulled up and his head resting upon his folded arms. He looked up when David opened the shower door and blinked at him for a few moments. “You look good in my shirt,” he said.

“Oh, delirium,” David said, though he was secretly pleased. “I’m glad we’ve finally reached that stage of the evening.” He extended his hand down to Michael. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

It seemed to David that Michael wobbled less when David tugged him up, only having to put his hand against the shower wall for a second before he was able to stand on his own, and his skin was definitely cooler. He stood shivering in the center of the bathroom after the water had been turned off, hurriedly tugging off his soaking clothing and pulling on the dry things that David offered him. “You gotta invest in a thermometer, bro,” David said as he felt the inside of Michael’s wrist. “I have an overactive imagination, you don’t even want to know what I can do with this.”

Michael made one of his muffled sounds that were kind of laughs and kind of not. David was not sure whether to interpret that as a good sign or a bad one. “I’m dating a mother hen,” he said. “I never would have guessed that on our first date.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t have guessed on our first date,” David muttered, but he was secretly pleased by the clarity within Michael’s voice. “Think you can keep water and aspirin down?”

Michael leaned his hip against the bathroom sink and gave the prospect all of the due consideration that he would have given a marriage proposal. Finally he nodded, and David wondered if he didn’t realize how green he still looked or was simply hoping that David wouldn’t notice. “I can try it.”

It took three tries, actually.

*
Michael’s fever didn’t rise again to the terrifying heights that had had David considering simply throwing him over his shoulder and carrying him to the hospital by bodily force, never mind that Michael hadn’t been joking about being bigger than David (even if it wasn’t by much) and David wasn’t an ant capable of carrying around five times his own body weight. By dawn he was actually keeping the aspirin down without a struggle, and a little water and Sprite besides. David kept his relief to himself as much as he could.

“Do you actually have food in this house that doesn’t involve grease as a main ingredient?” David asked as he came back into Michael’s bedroom. Michael was lying on top of the blankets, his face pale and his arm thrown across his eyes.

“Don’t mock a basic food group,” Michael said, and then peeked out at David from beneath his elbow. David wasn’t certain how he was supposed to interpret that look, for another, far different biological urge from the one that he normally felt upon seeing Michael looking at him like that overwhelmed him seconds later.

David hit his knees in front of the toilet just in time.

*

“Oh, you’re a fucking liar,” David said hours later. He was sitting in front of Michael’s toilet with his elbows braced against the porcelain that had been a lot cooler before he had decided to spend his entire morning using it to prop himself up. Michael was leaning against the wall behind him; he was still too woozy himself to be much help. David was just glad that he hadn’t had to be physically dragged into the shower, as his fever wasn’t spiking much higher than the merely uncomfortable while his stomach took up the slack. He liked having Michael sharing space with him, though. He liked knowing that if they were going to be miserable, at least they were going to do it together.

“Why am I a liar?” David glanced back over his shoulder. Michael was sprawled out against the floor behind him, his legs touching David’s feet when he stretched out. They never could seem to get their date nights to go right.

“This feels every bit as bad as it looks,” David managed, and then doubled over the porcelain again. He returned the favor that Michael had done him earlier and flipped him off. “And invest in some goddamned Gatorade, all right?”

“Will do,” Michael said, and nudged at David’s calf with his toes. “Thanks for staying, even if technically I don’t think that you can leave at this point.”

David hung his head down between his shoulders and focused on breathing. That turned out to be a bad plan only a few seconds later; David hadn’t realized just how much he smelled like vomit.

“Hang on,” Michael said from behind him, and David heard him struggling up to his feet. He was only gone for a few moments before he returned and knelt down beside David. Michael forced David to uncurl his hands from around the edges of the toilet long enough to nudge aspirin and a bottle of water between his fingers. “Your turn.”

“Let’s hope I can keep it down,” David muttered. He took the aspirin, pausing to rinse his mouth out with some of the water first. Michael’s face was very close to his. Normally David wouldn’t have minded that at all, but now he had no choice but to wince and lean away. “God, you reek.”

“You don’t smell like roses yourself, kid.” Michael sank down against his bathroom cabinets, throwing one of his arms out to rest against David’s back. He rubbed a circle against the small of David’s back. “You’re not as feverish as I got.”

David hadn’t spent the time that Michael had drinking himself into oblivion, either; his immune system probably had all kinds of legs up on Michael’s, still. They were already making their lists of things that they did not talk about. David leaned over the toilet again as his stomach did another slow forward roll and concentrated hard of keeping it from completing that flip. When he thought that he might succeed, he leaned back. Michael’s arm stayed where it was.


“Guess there are worse things I could have caught from the two of us sleeping together,” David said. His head ached, he could feel prickles of sweat running down his spine, and his entire body felt as if he had run face-first into a wall without even attempting to put on the brakes first. Michael rubbed another circle against his back.

“That’s crude, Dave.” Michael tugged at David’s shirt. “You’re lucky I’m not shoving you into the shower. If I had to go through it, there’s no reason I don’t get to share the wealth.”

“You had to have been delirious if you’ve forgotten who was in there holding your ass up,” David said, but it was hard for him to keep his tone light, remembering how terrifyingly hot Michael’s skin had been. He was still feverish now, but more like a bad case of the flu than something that was going to require an IV line and a trip in an ambulance.

“Naw, I haven’t forgotten,” Michael said, his voice soft. He tugged at David’s shirt again. “You up to standing?”

“Maybe.” David rose halfway and then leaned over the toilet again abruptly it turned out that he had tried to stand too quickly. When his stomach had settled, he made another attempt. He and Michael had to lean against one another in order to make it back into the bedroom. It had to be the least erotic way that they had ever sprawled onto a bed together. David made a soft sound. “Forgive me if I don’t kiss you right now.”

“Forgiven.” Michael kicked at the blankets until they were in a pile at the foot of the bed. His body still alternating between fever and chills without any warning from one minute to the next, David didn’t think that he was going to argue. He looked longingly at the remote to the television, but it was all the way over on the bedside table, and they had exhausted all of their available energy in getting even that far.

“Thanks for staying,” Michael murmured again as he and David got themselves settled. They still weren’t willing to let their faces get too close to each other. David wondered if Michael had any gum close enough to reach without having to move...anything.

“Don’t worry about it,” David answered back softly. He wasn’t sure what this was turning into, just yet, but he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to be going anywhere for awhile.

End