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Logan wakes up distinctly cold.
It takes him several moments to realize why. He’s almost certain he had a blanket when he went to sleep because, despite spring nearing, it still manages to get cold enough at night for Julian to turn into a human ice cube, which only serves to make both of them colder and-
Julian.
Heavy-lidded and not nearly conscious enough, Logan rolls over only to find a suspiciously boyfriend-shaped blanket burrito where Julian had last been. Groaning, he reaches over and shakes what he assumes is Julian’s shoulder, mumbling out his name in a tone that does nothing to hide his annoyance. Over the past few weeks Logan’s woken up without a blanket more times than he can count, and if he didn’t happen to love the calming breathy sounds Julian makes when he’s asleep (as well as the accessible morning sex), he’d have made them sleep in separate beds again ages ago.
Even more irritated when he gets no response, Logan tugs at the blanket, trying to unwind the ridiculously complicated sushi-roll architecture that Julian’s encompassed himself in. He’s met with resistance and a muffled sneeze.
Logan’s too tired to do anything other than grumble, “Jules, c’mon, let go- how’re you even breathing n’there?”, and huff in exasperation before trying to pull some of the blanket over onto his side again. He’s more successful this time and the roll shifts, unravelling as he tugs on it to give him a glimpse of severely disheveled dark hair and a miserable looking Julian- although it’s kind of hard to tell with the lack of light.
His suspicions are confirmed when Julian sneezes again, sniffling wetly afterwards and attempting to burrow back into his destroyed blanket nest. “M’dying, le-leave me alone.”
Logan raises an eyebrow, stretching to reach the bedside lamp and flick on the light. Several seconds pass before his eyes adjust to the dim glow, and only then does he notice the thin sheen of sweat over Julian’s features, his skin pale white and clammy.
Frowning, Logan manages to place the back of his hand on Julian’s forehead (despite Julian’s persistent attempts to smush his face into his pillow and become one with it). “Holy shit, you’re burning up.”
“It’s fr-freezing,” Julian chatters, eyebrows creased, and Logan pushes himself up on his elbows, sitting up in bed and blinking tiredly. A glance at the clock tells him that it’s just past 3:30 AM, and the heaviness of his eyelids reaffirms it.
“That'd be the fever chills,” Logan replies, voice still rough with sleep. He notes the goosebumps trailing up and down Julian’s arms and decides to sacrifice his part of the blanket for the greater good, draping it back over the other boy and trying to recreate the set up from earlier. Julian mumbles something that sounds an awful lot like “thank you”, but also more like “fthhhharkn ghyoug.”
Logan decides that it’d be kind of endearing, if it weren’t for the fact that Julian is the temperature of your average furnace. He’s only seen Julian sick a mere handful of times, so he’d be lying to himself if he tried to pretend that he isn’t worried.
“I’ll get you some tylenol,” he says quietly, slipping out of bed and padding barefoot over to the bathroom, where he quickly comes to the conclusion that just medicine isn’t going to cut it, and also wets a small hand-towel with cool water.
Getting said hand-towel onto Julian is a whole other matter. Julian jumps at the cold touch, shooting Logan a look that could quite possibly possess enough disgruntlement to single handedly kill a man. He also somehow manages to look as pitiful as a wet kitten all at the same time.
“Wet rags don’t have antiviral properties, get th-that thing away from me,” Julian says, the sides of his dry and scratchy throat rubbing against one another uncomfortably.
Logan rolls his eyes and lays it down gently on Julian’s forehead anyways. “No, but it’ll help keep the fever down.”
Julian grumbles unintelligibly but allows it, and chases down some Tylenol with a glass of water. “You don’t have to b-baby me.”
“You’re sick,” Logan replies, raising his eyebrows, “I’m not babying you, just making sure you don’t end up puking all over my bed.”
~
As it just so happens, a sick Julian ends up being remarkably more high-maintenance and grumpy than one could ever even hope to imagine. By the end of the hour, Logan feels like he might kill someone. The tea he brought Julian upon request was too cold, the medication wasn’t working fast enough, the lamp was too bright, and the blanket wasn’t warm enough.
This is precisely how Logan ends up knocking on various dorm room doors in search of extra blankets at 4 AM. The comments from amused and slightly aggravated half asleep-Stuarts about how he’s “so whipped it isn’t even funny” when he explains to them why are quickly beginning to get old.
Derek’s wearing a giant, stupid smirk that should be illegal so early in the morning when he hands Logan a folded red and blue blanket, adding it to the pile in his hands.
“Shut up,” Logan interrupts him before he can say anything and storms off back to his room with the stack of blankets.
He returns what feels like an eternity later to Julian, who’s still radiating heat and shivering like a leaf. He’s pretty certain that he can feel every fiber of his nerves, right down to their molecular level, and they all hurt.
“How’re you feeling?” Logan asks.
The medicine must be starting to kick in- and strongly- because all Julian says is “hmph.”
Logan covers his shivering body with a layer of blankets, and then another, and then another, until Julian’s Eskimo-swaddled and thoroughly buried under a small mountain of wool and linen.
Julian actually smiles tiredly up at him- bless the small miracles in life- and Logan takes the opportunity to remove the now-warm towel from his forehead, pressing his fingertips upon the skin there and frowning. Still warm. He moves his hand into Julian’s hair, carefully pushing it off his damp forehead before dropping down onto the bed beside him. “The entirety of Stuart is never going to let me hear the end of this,” he groans quietly to himself, hand still absently occupied with the task of trying to tame Julian’s hair, threading it throughout his fingers almost therapeutically.
“It’s so cold in here,” Julian pouts with a far-away voice, snuggling further into the blankets and tucking his chin underneath. It’s not exactly the most conversational response but it makes Logan huff a laugh anyways.
“Y’should sleep. And listen to me the next time I say you should wear a hat outside, no matter how stupid you think it makes you look.” Logan shoots him an I told you so look.
Julian only nudges his head up into Logan’s hand, evidently enjoying the massage, and that’s a testament in itself to how effectively the medication can knock someone out, because Logan would usually be experiencing multiple scathing retorts being verbally thrown at him right now, concerning where exactly he should shove a hat .
Nuzzling his pillow, a sleepy half-smile on his face and hair so messed up that he just looks fucking cute, Julian finally manages to drift to sleep, and Logan stays awake long enough to make sure that Julian isn’t about to start coughing up a lung before he follows.
~
This time Logan awakes to a persistent nudging at his side.
“Lo, go away,” Julian moans in a slurred kind of mumble, “Your body temperature’s too hot for me t’sleep.”
Logan’s eyebrows make a valiant effort to actually jump off of his forehead. “You’re the one running a fever! And you’re in my bed!”
Julian makes a simple noise of protest that effectively conveys that those facts are irrelevant to him.
Sighing, Logan sits up again, and the room’s still dark enough for it to only be early morning. Six, maybe. “Take off some of those blankets,” he suggests, tugging one away and tossing it onto the floor. All the bedsheets will have to be washed and thoroughly disinfected after this anyways.
Apparently “some” equates to “all” because next thing Logan knows, Julian’s squirming out of each and every one and nudging them onto the floor into one big pile with his feet.
“I’m still hot,” Julian states matter-of-factly, peeling off his damp shirt in a series of awkward, drawn out motions, fatigue moving over him like a heavy blanket.
“Yeah, you are,” Logan jokes wryly, but then he regards how glossy Julian’s skin is with sweat and feels a pang of sympathy. “C’mere,” he murmurs, sitting up drowsily against the headboard and patting his lap.
It seems to take Julian a moment to figure out what Logan means but then he shuffles over and rests his cheek on Logan’s thigh, fingers wrapping loosely in the fabric of his sweatpants.
“Thank you,” Julian says softly, and it’s muffled by his thigh but Logan doesn’t care, only smiles a little and tip-toes his fingers up and down Julian’s spine, like playing notes on the piano of his vertebrae.
“Mm, yeah yeah, go back to sleep, you can make it up to me later. When you’re not all contagious and high on cold medicine,” he replies, reaching over to grab a book from his nightstand that he had begun reading a few nights earlier for English. He angles his elbow so the book isn’t on Julian’s head and uses his spare hand to cover Julian’s on his own knee, threading their fingers together almost instinctively.
Turning the pages ends up being a challenge, and he doesn’t actually get much reading done in favor of tracing Julian’s knuckles with his fingertips, exploring the dips and valleys as well as the smooth expanse of his wrist, but when Julian yawns and presses closer, he doesn’t mind at all.
Because not-so-much-reading a boring book with his sick significant other draped over his legs at six in the morning makes him a lot happier than he could’ve anticipated.