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Fluixon is burning.
He swears the air conditioner in their classroom is broken—because he’s practically sweating out of his ass and shivering from the slightest gust of wind at the same time.
Every micro-movement is like a dozen pins being jabbed into his skull. His nostrils are in different climates. He’s hacked at least five times in the last hour to the point where he’s been getting weird looks the more he coughs, but his throat still won’t let up.
He’s given up on appearing okay now; he’s just slumped over his desk with his arms cushioning his unusually heavy head. He’s also pretty sure he heard the bell ring a bit ago, but even that doesn’t get him up.
An unseemly sight, Flux knows, but he’s beyond caring.
Fluixon is in the middle of praying for a miracle to come his way when a hand claps his back and pulls him out of whatever delirious train of thought he was on.
He peaks one eye out from behind his forearm when purple meets honey brown. It’s Thomas.
“Dude… you good?” Flux is genuinely two seconds away from passing out, does it look like he’s good?
Fluixon only replies with a hoarse hum that answers nothing and lets his eye droop closed, shifting the positioning of his head for the umpteenth time in a futile attempt at finding a comfortable position to rest.
There’s nothing but the grating sound of chairs scraping against tile and voices of their classmates traveling in the air that follows, and for a moment, he thinks Thomas left.
Flux feels his friend’s hand hover over his damp forehead before quickly jerking away. “The hell—? We need to get you to the infirmary, man, you definitely have a fever,” Thomas declares with a frown.
That makes Fluixon groan in disapproval.
“What I need is silence, Thomas.”
Thomas clicks his tongue in a mix of worry and irritation, “But—”
“Ah.” Flux’s hand shoots up, index finger pointed up to silence the brunet. “I said silence.”
The audacity makes Thomas pause. Fluixon takes that as his opportunity to put his arm down and continue napping. He hears a sigh, then the sound of footsteps receding.
With nothing else except literally everything in his body to bother him, Fluixon falls into a fitful slumber.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖🪽── .*♟️˖+
On the other side of the coin, Saparata is concerned.
Not too much, just a little. Enough to make him obsessively check his phone for a notification from his best friend, but definitely not too much.
But just enough that he ends up in front of the familiar classroom looking for Fluixon. To be fair, he did get a text from Thomas telling him to “come here, something’s up with Flux,” so he believes it’s a perfectly concerning reason to be here.
Saparata invites himself inside knowing he’s been in here too many times to pretend to be ashamed that he’s being a little bit of a bother. The students in the room barely acknowledge or even notice that he’s there—which only proves his point.
His eyes scan the sea of desks before landing on the one he knows is Flux’s, where he finds—well, Flux.
The younger male looks a little worse for wear; he’s slumped over, book shielding his eyes from harsh fluorescent light, coat draped on his chair, and… asleep.
Asleep and sick, apparently. Saps can practically feel a change in temperature just by being around Flux himself.
Oh, that’s why he wasn’t answering my messages. Saparata blinks. Well duh, Fluixon hardly ever left his texts unanswered on purpose.
Regardless of the logical side in him telling him to keep his distance, the white-haired boy reaches out and lifts the book from the other’s sleeping face. When Flux doesn’t stir, Saps sees that as his go-sign to gently brush the hair framing his forehead.
For a bit, neither of them move.
Saparata is too busy staring, while Fluixon still hasn’t woken up despite the disturbances. The light is clearly bothering him even in this state, it’s clear in the way his brows furl and unfurl periodically.
Saps lowers his gaze to Flux’s lashes; they’re long and thin, fluttering against his fair skin and creating an unfairly beautiful contrast of colors.
(Subconsciously, it reminds him of the two of them.)
Saparata’s gaze lowers once more to Fluixon’s mouth. They’re open, just a bit, he’s murmuring something incoherent in his sleep. Saps takes a second, before moving his hands from his friend’s scalp down to his jaw, and gently pushes it closed.
He’s just doing Flux a favor, really—he knows how humiliating it would be if he just drooled all over his table while taking a nap, so he’s preventing it from happening.
Yet, for some reason, Fluixon chooses that small movement to wake up to. Saparata sees the younger male’s cheek twitch ever so slightly, eyelids slowly blinking open to make room for purple.
A yawn leaves Flux’s lips, the noise tired as he sits straighter on his seat and looks harder up at Saps.
“…What’re you doin’ here?” he asks, barely audible above the noise of his classmates.
“Just admiring the view,” Saps quips softly. He lets his hand slip away from the other male’s jaw, falling back to his side naturally. “Am I not allowed?”
Fluixon’s eyes narrow into a half-assed glare. “Always looking for opportunities to spend time with me, aren’t you, Saps?”
Saparata only tilts his head with a tiny smile playing on his lips.
“Maybe I am… but you’re sick, so you can’t blame me.”
That makes Flux snort, though he doesn’t try to deny it. He uses all his remaining strength to push himself up using his forearms. Then he pulls his seatmate’s chair out and pats on it insistently.
“Sit.”
Saps shakes his head fondly. “Just like a child.”
He takes the seat anyway.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖🪽── .*♟️˖+
“I’ve named at least five reasons why this is a terrible idea, Saps.”
From where he’s standing next to the bed, Saparata squeezes a wet rag over a bowl of hot water. He only smiles cheekily and doesn’t take Flux’s words seriously.
“I think you’re just being paranoid.”
Fluixon, in all his sick glory, musters up all of his energy to glare at his best friend. “Oh, because being literal centimeters away from a sick man isn’t a free ticket to a fever, right?”
Saparata, choosing that exact moment to turn deaf, turns around and sets the aforementioned bowl on his nightstand.
“It’s just sharing body heat so you sweat the fever away, where’s the harm in that?”
“Again, like… everything.”
Saps tuts with an adamant shake of his head. If there was one thing about Saps, it was that he was hard-headed to absolute shit. He sets the warm rag down flat on Flux’s forehead, who only hums in mild discontent.
“You… are an idiot, Saparata Al-Theria.”
Yet all it takes is a ruffle of his sweat-dampened hair for him to stop talking and cave.
Minutes later, they’re a tangled mess of limbs; arms wrapped around the other and legs indistinguishable. Platonically, of course. It was normal for two best friends to cuddle.
Right?
Right.
Saparata shifts in his position. His face is a breath away from Fluixon’s—he can feel the feverish heat coming from the raven-haired male. Despite himself, he chuckles lightly, breath fanning against Flux’s lips.
“...You’d be so lost without me.”
He watches as Fluixon, losing all of his earlier bravado, has the corners of his mouth quirk up into the tiniest smile known to mankind.
“That I would be.”
The words simmer in the warm air of Saparata’s bedroom without interruption. The two drift away from consciousness, with nothing but the sound of each other’s breath as lullaby in their ears.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖🪽── .*♟️˖+
“Looks like you were—” Sneeze! “—right, Flux...”
There’s a sheepish grin on Saparata’s face, but it doesn’t do anything to calm the now feeling better Flux’s fondly irritated mood. Looks like the tables have turned.
“I told you so.”
Contrary to what Saps believed, cuddling with a sick man, in fact, is a free ticket to also catching a fever.