Flu

a Hot Fuzz one-off story

by Setcheti

 

 

Rating:  FRT: MP, SLC

 

Disclaimer: Don’t own Hot Fuzz – no money made, no infringement intended.

 

Author’s Note: I came up with this when the swine flu was making the rounds everywhere, it just took me a while to get any kind of an ending on it. This story is not part of the Tales from the Sandford PD series. It doesn’t even fit in the Tales universe, so if you try to read it that way you’ll only make yourself confused.

 

When the swine flu began to hit Gloucestershire, Inspector Nicholas Angel was ready for it.  He’d been collecting reports of flu outbreaks for months, putting pins up on a map of the area in his office, and when the pins started to cluster in Buford Abbey he knew it was only a matter of time before Sandford was hit as well.  New regulations went into effect almost immediately.  Every officer was issued hand sanitizer and germ masks, and lists of symptoms went up in the locker room. 

 

In spite of their inspector’s care, however, the flu still ripped through the Sandford Police Department like a charging herd of wild pigs.  Tony brought it from home all unknowing, the transmission of illnesses to unsuspecting adults being the special purview of innocent schoolchildren like his son.  Nicholas packed Tony back off home the moment he began displaying symptoms…but by then it was already too late.  Within two days Danny and Doris were feverish, the Andys were coughing and complaining of sore throats, the twins were headachy, and Bob had gone home to suffer his chills and aches in peace and had taken Saxon with him. 

 

Nicholas sat at the front desk and did paperwork and answered the phone, advising people who called not to come in to the station unless they had no choice.  He took a supply of disposable masks along when he went on calls, not wanting a healthy person to be infected by the no-doubt flu-laden air of the jail if he had to bring them back there.  Not that there were too many healthy people in Sandford right then, as the village had a generous supply of innocent schoolchildren and unsuspecting parents.  Some people went to the hospital at Buford Abbey and were sent back, as the hospital was already full of people who had the flu and beds were being held in reserve for only the sickest patients.  Cold and flu medicine became hard to find as the chemist’s and the local store both ran out, and old home remedies began to be brewed and passed around instead.  And the pub still did a steady business, many people feeling that alcohol would certainly kill just about anything so there could be no safer place to hang about.

 

Nicholas forced the owner of the pub to close down after three days that saw the number of new cases of flu in Sandford nearly doubled – the school had already been closed for two days at that point.  He did more paperwork, kept tabs on further outbreaks, spelled Danny at dispatching when Doris lost her voice, and bullied his team into staying indoors and warm rather than going out into the chill winter rains that were making it very difficult to decide if a person had flu or just a nasty wet-chill induced cold.

 

Since there was no one of sufficient rank to bully Nicholas about it or feeling at all well enough to try to go against him anyway, he simply donned a police slicker and slid out into the muck himself when calls came in, trudging back in to sit at the desk and shiver and ache and try not to vomit while he pecked at the paperwork that flowed across the desk in an endless stream.  Some of it even got done.  And slowly, the wave of flu began to ebb out of Sandford as the people with lighter cases of it got better and went on about their business.  The pub reopened, rather defiantly, followed by the school.  NHS called ‘round to the station when they couldn’t get the local doctor, asking if there was a need in Sandford for flu vaccine, and received an earful of vitriol from Nicholas that widened the eyes of every officer in the building.  Nicholas laid his head down on the desk, heedless of the paperwork, and went to sleep after that.

 

Andy Cartwright came by to harass him later that afternoon and found him still conked out on the desk and radiating heat like a furnace, a discovery which caused Danny and Tony to donate a pound fifty to the swear box between them.  Doris called the doctor, who told them to not even bother trying either hospital or clinic but just to take their inspector home and force him to rest and pour non-alcoholic fluids down his throat at every opportunity until he started to get over it.

 

 

Nicholas woke up disoriented, feeling as though he was in the process of being run over by a very large truck.  He was in bed, but it wasn’t his bed, and when he tried to sit up to figure out where he was a large, strong hand pushed him back down.  “No you don’t, Nicholas,” Danny told him.  “You’re stayin’ right here in bed, doctor’s orders.”  Danny, to Nicholas’s surprise, looked a bit pissed at him.  “An’ if you try gettin’ up before I say?  I’ll tie you down.  Got that?”

 

Nicholas blinked at him.  “Wha?”

 

Danny rolled his eyes.  “You daft bugger, you were so busy playin’ Mr. Super Inspector and riding herd on the rest of us that you forgot to take care of yourself.  You’re sick as a dog.”

 

“I am?”  Nicholas pushed at the blankets, scowling when Danny held them in place.  “I’m hot, gerroff.”

 

“You’re hot ‘cause you’ve got a temperature,” Danny told him.  “The blankets stay on.  And yes, you are.  Passed out right on top of all your bloody paperwork, you’re lucky Andy didn’t take a picture to post on the tackboard.”

 

What Danny wasn’t saying – and had no intention of mentioning any time soon, if ever – was that the incident had scared Cartwright half to death and hadn’t done much for the rest of the station either.  And neither Andy had much liked it when they’d realized just how easy it was to carry their new inspector, which they both had done in turn to get him off the desk and then over to Danny’s flat and into bed.  Nicholas had a presence about him that made it easy to forget how small he actually was.  Not to mention, he’d lost weight and most of what color his fair skin had ever had because of the flu and was looking more than a little fragile at the moment.

 

That made Danny pissed too.  He distinctly remembered Nicholas shoving soup and juice and strange vitamins and all sorts of other things at him when his battle with the flu had been at its worst, so he knew the stupid bastard knew what needed to be done.  He just hadn’t done it for himself.

 

Not to mention, none of his recovering officers had thought to take the initiative and do it for him, either.  Danny blamed himself for that one.  He knew Nicholas better than any of them did, and he knew just how much the whole inspector thing had messed with the man’s head.  Because it had been a hero’s promotion, something to play for the media, and Nicholas knew it; he felt he hadn’t really earned it.  So he’d immediately set about being the perfect inspector to prove he deserved what they’d given him.

 

He hadn’t lost all that weight just from the flu, Danny was sure of it.  But no more.  It ended now.

 

Which was why Nicholas was currently in Danny’s flat, in Danny’s bed and not his own.  If they’d taken him home, he’d have most likely dragged himself back into the station the next morning – or fallen down his front steps trying to, anyway, if he hadn’t slit his own throat trying to shave first.  No, Nicholas was going to be staying with Danny, where Danny could conveniently watch and mother and bully him until he was better and could be let out on his own again.

 

Not that Danny actually wanted to let him out on his own again, or that he hadn’t wanted to get Nicholas into his bed for a while now, but this particular situation wasn’t connected to what Danny wanted save by cruel coincidence.  Danny wasn’t even sure that what he wanted was possible, considering that Nicholas already had one stick up his arse and Danny wasn’t sure a second one would fit.  And considering that he hadn’t any reason to believe Nicholas swung both ways except for wishful thinking fueled by a few après-movie cuddly naps together on the couch.

 

But those were ponderances for another time.  Right now, Nicholas was still looking at him with befuddled eyes as though he simply didn’t understand what was going on; the fever was most likely cooking all the higher brain-power right out of him.  Right then, keep it simple.  “Nicholas, you have the flu,” Danny said, very plainly.  “You’re very, very sick.  And the doctor said you MUST stay in bed.  The doctor has ORDERED you to stay in bed.  Alright?”

 

A flicker of understanding showed in the bleary brown eyes.  “It’s orders?”

 

Of course, that would be the word that would register.  “Yeah, it’s orders,” Danny confirmed.  “An’ you have to obey orders, don’t you?”

 

Nicholas started to nod, then hesitated.  “Do I?  I’m an…I’m an inspector now.”

 

“Yes, you do.  The doctor outranks you.  We all have to follow his orders.”  Which was true, because the doctor was a short, rather vicious little Scotsman who would probably give them all hell if he thought they weren’t doing what they were supposed to for their inspector.  Danny knew the man, it would happen.  But yet it wouldn’t, because the members of the Sandford Police Department were not going to forget what they were supposed to be doing again, and Danny especially wasn’t.  Nicholas was his partner, after all, no matter whether he’d been made inspector or not.  So it was Danny’s job to take care of him.

 

Suiting actions to his thoughts, Danny wrung out a washcloth in a little basin of cool water sitting beside the bed and folded it up to lay across Nicholas’s hot forehead; then he did another one to put behind his partner’s neck.  That one made Nicholas shiver, and Danny tucked the blankets a bit tighter around him, patting his chest with one hand.  “You want some water?”

 

Nicholas tried to sit up; Danny pushed him back down, replaced the washcloth.  “What did I say?” he asked mildly.  “You’ve got no business bein’ up, Nicholas, I mean it.  Now, do you want a drink?”

 

Nicholas visibly thought about it, then he smiled an uncharacteristically wide, mischievously guileless smile.  “Pint of lager, please.”

 

“An’ he’s a comedian, would’ja look at that.”  Danny mock-scowled at him, picking up a glass of water that had a bendy straw in it and holding the straw just right.  “Okay, then, here you go sir, your pint.  Don’t drink it all at once.”  Nicholas sipped once, twice, three times, and then lost interest and went back to sleep.  Danny sighed as he put the glass aside again.  It was going to be a long few days.

 

Especially as seeing Nicholas suck on the straw had given him some tingles he had no business having in the present situation.  Danny resigned himself to spending the next week frustrated as all hell.

 

 

The next day Nicholas was still feverish and only about half-lucid; the lucid half, however, was cranky and difficult.  “No,” he’d protested when Danny came into the room with a bowl of water and an extra towel.  “NO.”

 

“Yes,” Danny told him, not even getting upset.  “I’m goin’ to wipe you down, it’ll make you feel better and you’ll be clean into the bargain.  You’ve been sweating like a pig.”   

 

“It’s all the blankets,” Nicholas complained, and then sulked when his best attempt to stop Danny from starting on his face and neck resulted in having his wrists pinned to the bed and getting a stern look.  He struggled for a few seconds and then gave it up with another sulk.  “I can wash myself, I’m not a baby.”

 

“You’re skin’s as soft as one’s,” Danny observed without thinking, cautiously letting him go when he felt the resistance to his hold leak away.  He pulled the blankets partway down and started steadily working his way across Nicholas’s shoulders and chest with firm strokes, doing his best not to think about just how soft that skin really was or how well-defined the muscles underneath were even if his friend’s ribs were showing a bit more than he thought they should be.  Or at least, he was not-thinking about that…until he saw the scar.  It was very small, a thin pinkish-white line barely an inch long, and it was just above Nicholas’s left nipple…or, right over his heart.

 

It was a scar left by a knife.  By the tip of a great large knife, in fact, that Danny had stuck into his friend’s chest just over a year ago.  A knife that the ketchup-loaded policeman’s notebook in Nicholas’s pocket was supposed to have stopped.

 

A hand wrapped around his wrist, and Danny looked up into brown eyes that were a lot more lucid than he wanted them to be right at that moment.  “You saved my life,” Nicholas said quietly.  Danny’s hand flattened out over the scar, hiding it from view, and he could feel his friend’s heart beating beneath his palm.  “If you hadn’t done it…you saved my life, Danny.”

 

Danny remembered the look that had been in Nicholas’s eyes that night, the look of horrified, disbelieving betrayal…right up until the knife had plunged into the notebook, at which point he’d just looked shocked, as though he couldn’t quite believe any of it was happening.  “You didn’t tell me it’d gone through and hurt you.  I didn’t…”

 

“I know.”  Nicholas sighed.  “To be honest…after everything else, I’d sort of forgotten about it.”

 

“You forgot that I stabbed you in the chest?!”  Nicholas winced, and Danny dialed it back down.  “That’s a load of bollox, Nicholas.  How do you forget something like your partner trying to kill you?”

 

“Saving my life, by pretending to kill me,” Nicholas corrected.  “How?  By going a few rounds with a man twice my size who wasn’t pretending at all.  Being chased down by a bunch of homicidal lunatics in hooded capes.  Finding out the fatherly old inspector who’d just nearly convinced me that I was having a nervous breakdown for seeing murders everywhere was the ringleader of the twenty-year-old serial murder ring he’d formed to commit them.  Falling into the middle of a lot of bodies under the church, some of whom were freshly there because I’d arrested them for trifling offences. Wondering just who was going to open the boot of the car I’d been tossed into, or if they were just going to drive it into the nearest pond with me locked inside.”  He swallowed.  “Driving back to London knowing that you were right, that no one was ever going to believe me – and that you’d most likely be dead and tucked away under the church by the time I could bring back help anyway.”

 

Danny took all of that in with a tight nod, and his hand curled over the heartbeat he could feel and the scar that he’d created.  “That’s what I told them, you know – Dad, and Mr. Skinner.  That I put the car into a pond, that I’d eased it in careful-like so as not to leave evidence on the bank, because I remembered what you’d noticed about Mr. Mordant’s collision.”  He made a face.  “Dad was…proud of me.  He said he’d had his doubts I’d ever…ever have been able to take his place, but that I’d done very well for my first time and he was proud of me.  And Skinner tried to make a joke about them not having to kill me now.”  He shrugged.  “Knew he wasn’t really joking.  I was sort of sick with it all anyway, and Dad told me to go home, have a beer and watch a movie, then get some sleep.  Said I could come in late to my shift the next morning, too.  He…he said the first one was always the hardest, but that it would get easier as we went on, and that it was all for the greater good.”

 

Nicholas shuddered when he heard those words, his fingers tightening weakly on Danny’s wrist for a moment before slipping off.  “I didn’t know how to…so I just didn’t say…I’m so sorry, Danny.”

 

Danny caught the fallen hand and brought it back to his friend’s chest, holding it there in a warm, reassuring grip.  “What’ve you got to be sorry for?  Ain’t your fault my dad was a homicidal nutter.”

 

Nicholas shook his head; Danny saw that the flush crossing his face wasn’t entirely embarrassment and realized that getting upset had his fever rising again, but this was important.  “I’m sorry…I’m so very sorry, that I left you that night, that I…ran off.”  There were actually tears starting in his eyes.  “I almost didn’t come back, I was nearly to London when I saw the movie case, and I remembered.  Partners.  So I turned around.”

 

“You came back…for me?”  Danny was stunned.  He’d thought, all this time, that Nicholas had come back because Nicholas was Supercop and just couldn’t let the bad guys win.  The sick, broken look on Nicholas’s face that night when Danny had refused to come with him, when Danny had told him that his father and the NWA would just cover it all up…Danny had always thought that look had been for him because Nicholas was disappointed.  But Nicholas thought…Danny squeezed his hand tight enough to get his attention.  “You thought I was disappointed because you took off when I told you to?”

 

“I left you…”

 

“If you hadn’t, they’d have found you and killed us both.”  Danny fished up the washcloth with his free hand and started wiping away the hot tears that were beginning to track down his friend’s flushed face.  “God, Nicholas, I could never be disappointed in you – you’re my hero!  You came riding in on a white horse, bristlin’ with guns that you walked off with right out of the lockup under everyone’s nose, and you challenged the whole bloody town of Sandford to come face justice.  An’ you weren’t even shooting to kill, you took every last one of ‘em down with a non-lethal shot!  Forget cop movies, that was like somethin’ out of a really great Western, the kind with Clint Eastwood!”

 

Nicholas looked confused.  “You aren’t…”

 

“Never could be,” Danny emphasized.  He reached for more water, went back to wiping; apparently getting all worked up hadn’t been very good for his partner, who was brain-frying hot again just like that.  “You’re the best partner a bloke could ask for, Nicholas – the best inspector, too.  So you don’t have to keep tryin’ so hard to prove you can be, okay?  Everybody knows it already.”

 

“Everybody?”

 

Nicholas’s breath was hitching a little, his eyes wide…and Danny suddenly realized just how badly his partner wanted to believe that, needed to believe that.  For probably the whole past year.  Danny put the washcloth aside again and pulled him up into a strong, reassuring hug.  “Yeah, Nicholas.  Everyone what matters, anyway.”

 

It took Nicholas a while to stop crying, a weak flood of hot relief that almost silently soaked the front of Danny’s t-shirt while he gently patted his friend’s back and murmured nonsense at him.  Nicholas eventually fell asleep in his arms, and Danny pulled the blankets up and held him for what felt like a long time until the fever finally broke and his shirt was soaked all over again – this time with sweat.  And then he stripped off the blankets, cleaned his friend up, and put some pajamas on him before settling him temporarily on the couch while he changed the sheets on the bed.  After which he put a still soundly sleeping Nicholas back into the bed, tucked him in, and went off to take a shower and get himself cleaned up.

 

 

When Nicholas woke up again, he felt like the truck that had been running over him had finally gone past, although everything still ached.  He rolled over onto his back with a groan and opened his eyes…to a strange ceiling.  Where was he?  He turned his head, which also hurt.  There was a great big cuddly monkey looking at him, which made his eyes go a bit wide.  What was he doing at Danny’s place?  In…Danny’s bed?  He sat up – slowly, because it hurt to move at all and he really didn’t want to – and tried to look around without doing any more moving than he had to.  This was Danny’s bedroom, in Danny’s flat.  And he was in his pajamas.  He frowned, putting a hand to his head, which felt stuffed and heavy and somewhat too big.  How…

 

The hand that came seemingly out of nowhere and pushed him back down onto the bed startled him so much that he flailed his arms about for a second before realizing the hand belonged to Danny.  “You see how it is, I leave the room to take a piss and you’re just gettin’ right up, aren’t you?”  his partner scolded him, although seemingly without any real heat.  “Glad as I am to see you awake, you’re not gettin’ out of that bed unless you need the loo, got it?”

 

Nicholas was so stunned by this new, forceful Danny that he actually nodded agreement…and then he frowned.  He glanced over at the window, which had the shade pulled but around which he could clearly see daylight.  He tried to sit up again.  “Bloody hell, it’s morning!  I have to…”

 

“No, you don’t.”  This time Danny held him down.  “You’re not goin’ in to work today, Nicholas.  You’re not goin’ in the whole rest of this week, doctor’s orders.”

 

A spark of familiarity flared; had he heard that before?  Nicholas forced his uncooperative mind to process and realized he had.  Danny had told him, before, that they all had to follow the doctor’s orders, and that the doctor had ordered him to stay in bed.  A few more dots connected, and Nicholas groaned, throwing one arm across his eyes.  “Oh shit, the flu.  I caught the bloody fucking flu.”          

 

There was a moment of silence, and then Danny’s disbelieving voice blurted out, “You didn’t know you had the flu?!  What the hell did you think was goin’ on?”

 

“A cold.  I’d been out in the wet and the cold, and I was a bit worn down.”  Nicholas uncovered one eye enough to look at him.  “I didn’t get the flu when the rest of you did, remember?  I thought it had missed me.”

 

“You got it from the rest of us, I think,” Danny told him, shaking his head.  “Maybe you just didn’t get it as fast or as bad, yeah?  But since you kept goin’ out, and didn’t take proper care of yourself, you just got worse while we all got better.  So now you’re stayin’ here until you get better.  And I’m gonna make sure you get better, because you scared the crap out of me and I didn’t much enjoy it.”

 

Nicholas goggled at him, not really knowing what to say.  Danny was suddenly so…intense.  He didn’t remember his partner being quite this way before…before…

 

Before he’d gotten the flu.  Nicholas swallowed, wincing when that hurt to do too.  “How long have I been here?” he rasped.  He had some vague, blurry memories, but they weren’t stringing together into a cohesive timeline for him and the implications of what was coalescing were worrisome.  And potentially…mortally embarrassing.

 

Danny saw the dull red flush creeping across his friend’s face, but although the look in his eyes said the color was emotional, Danny felt Nicholas’s forehead anyway, just in case.  “Since day before yesterday,” he said.  “I’m guessin’ you don’t remember passing out on your desk Tuesday afternoon.  We – the Andys and me – brought you back to my flat after the doctor said the hospital was still full up.”  He withdrew his hand, not having found any extra heat.  “He said just to keep you in bed and drinkin’ non-alcoholic fluids until you got over it.  Which is exactly what I intend to do, so…water or juice?”

 

An image of a glass of water with a bendy straw in it flashed across Nicholas’s memory, and a glance sideways showed the glass sitting on Danny’s dresser.  Which meant the other flashes of memory were also…he looked away from his friend’s concerned, decisive gaze, feeling his face absolutely burn.  “I’m fine, thank you.  I think I’ll just go back to sleep, if you don’t mind.”  Silence.  Nicholas risked a glance back, saw Danny frowning thoughtfully at him.  “D-Danny?”

 

“Of course, I should have expected it.”  Danny seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Nicholas.  He shook his head.  “Switched right back on, didn’t you?  Well, I made up my mind and I’m stickin’ with the plan; didn’t expect it to be easy.  No,” he said directly to Nicholas, and the intensity of the one word made the other man jump.  “No, Nicholas.  No more of this shit.”

 

Nicholas was still trying to process what that meant when Danny pulled him up a bit, stuffed a cushion behind his back, and then proffered the glass of water with the bendy straw.  “Drink.  I’ll go get some juice in a bit, but first you’re goin’ to drink half that water.  And after that I’ll let you have some aspirin.  Now drink.”

 

Nicholas actually cringed, just a little, but he took the glass and sucked halfheartedly at the bendy straw while Danny watched, frowning, with his arms folded across his chest.  Aspirin appeared once the glass was half gone, and then to Nicholas’s surprise Danny helped him get out of bed – and he was even more chagrined to realized he was actually shaky enough to need the help – and into the loo, where thankfully he allowed Nicholas to do his business in relative privacy.

 

The bathroom mirror told Nicholas that Danny had reason to worry; he didn’t look good, in fact he looked like death warmed over after being run down by a truck.  “Bloody fucking flu,” he told the mirror, the warmed-over image in which immediately stuck its tongue out at him.  It was also wavering rather strangely, although it stopped when Danny appeared out of thin air behind him and wrapped strong, solid arms around his waist.

 

Nicholas looked at his friend in the mirror, wide-eyed, and Danny sighed; somehow, Danny’s reflected frown seemed more concerned than frustrated.  “You daft bugger,” he said, giving Nicholas a little shake.  “Come on, back to bed.  I got juice, and later there’s some chicken soup that Doris’s mum made.  Just walk, I won’t let you fall.”

 

Nicholas honestly hadn’t realized he was about to fall, or that he was shaking, but his first step away from the sink convinced him that Danny was right and he let the other man support him back to bed and fussily adjust the blankets and pillows for his comfort.  Nicholas just watched him, confused.  This wasn’t right.  Something wasn’t right.

 

Danny sat back down on the side of the bed and handed him a new glass, this one filled with deeply red liquid and crowned with a bright blue bendy straw.  “It’s berry, the shop was out of orange,” Danny explained.  “But it’s 100% juice, said so on the label.”  He watched again while Nicholas drank part of the juice, taking the glass away and setting it aside when he looked to be finished.  “You don’t get it, do you?”

 

“Don’t get what?” Nicholas asked warily.

 

“Took me way too fuckin’ long to figure it out.”  Danny ignored the question.  “I’m kickin’ myself for that.  I didn’t even start to get an inkling of how big this problem was until two days ago, an’ then last night it all came together.”  He was frowning again.  “I thought you were just a stubborn, independent bastard who wanted to do it all by yourself, but that isn’t it at all, is it?  You just don’t know how to ask, do you, Nicholas?”

 

Nicholas blinked at him.  “Ask?”

 

“For help.  Or for what you need.”  Danny cocked his head.  “Or…for what you want?”

 

Nicholas looked away, his face flaming again.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“You came back for me – not to beat the bad guys, not because you ‘had a job to do’.  You came back for me.”  Danny tipped Nicholas’s chin back up so he could look into his eyes.  “Partners, you said.  But I’m wonderin’ if that’s all.  Because you stayed in Sandford – the middle of nowhere – for me.  Didn’t you?”

 

Nicholas swallowed hard, wincing when it hurt.  But he couldn’t lie, not to Danny, not about this.  “Yes.”     

 

“Yeah.” Danny put one hand on his chest, over his heart – over the scar – and leaned in very close. “I love you too, Nicholas Angel. I’ve known it since the night this happened, the night I realized you were more important to me than Dad or the whole fuckin’ town of Sandford…or my bein’ a cop. I’ve known it since I jumped in front of Tom Weaver’s gun for you, ‘cause I realized I’d rather die myself than watch you die. You got that?” Nicholas nodded, his brown eyes wide and starting to look wet around the edges. “Good. If you weren’t still so sick I’d kiss you right now – I’d kiss you so hard you’d shut off for an hour. But since I don’t really want the bloody flu back…” He kissed Nicholas on the forehead and then looked him in the eye again. “No more hidin’, not from me, okay? Promise.”

 

Slowly, Nicholas nodded. “I…I promise.” He made a face. “But at work…”

 

“At work, we’re just partners. You’re the Inspector.” Danny smiled at him. “Ain’t a lie, we are that. Just at home, we’re also somethin’ more.”

 

The other man looked more than a little stunned. “It’s that simple?”

 

“Yeah, it is.” Danny ruffled his hair affectionately, then sat back up and straightened the blankets back out. He retrieved the glass of red juice and held it out again. “Now have some more juice, ‘cause the doctor said you need lots of fluids…and ‘cause it turns me on watchin’ you suck on the straw.”

 

Nicholas blushed. “Danny! That is…that is highly inappropriate.”

 

But he still drank the juice. Through the straw.