(no subject)
Title: Sick days
Fandom: Whitechapel
Word count: 350 words. A tiny thing.
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG, at most.
Characters/Pairings: Chandler/Kent
Joe is possibly the cleanest sick person that Kent has ever encountered in his life.
Used tissues reside in a sealed plastic bag next to the bed, packets of Lemsip (next to the hand sanitizer) are lined up in ruler-straight lines on the bedside table and Joe looks -
Well. Therein lies the exception.
He looks a little like death warmed up - messy death warmed up at that. His hair is stuck up in odd, untidy quiffs, and the old t-shirt he is wearing hasn’t been changed since the morning.
Emerson looks at the clock. 2pm. Something of an achievement, considering that yesterday, after dropping a dirty tissue on himself, he had stumbled out of bed and torn it off like it was aflame.
Instead, Kent sits on his side of the bed, keeping to himself and trying not to make noise. He had tried to be comforting with skin contact, holding his partner, but that had made Joe feel crowded and too warm. Having the blankets on was too warm as well, but without them was too cold, so, in the end, Emerson goes out and buys just a sheet, then washes it to get rid of any shop dirt, and wraps Joe in just that.
He feels a little exasperated, but mostly fond about all the extra effort - aside from when he tries to make scrambled eggs and sticks them to the pan. “That was non-stick! How is that even - sneezecoughsplutter - possible!” Joe had grumbled, and Kent had pointed out that whatever non-stick coating the pan had was now mixed in with the blackened, crumbling eggs.
(They order takeaway that night.)
Still, it’s nice to get the time off, even if it is spent playing nursemaid, as Miles had so unflatteringly put it. Riley had (jokingly, he hopes) offered to buy him a pinny. Mansell merely asks him, when he goes in to pick up files, if he's enjoying working from home, complete with a wink. That said, quality time is a rarity, and even if it is spent cleaning up and periodically checking his lover is still breathing, it still counts.