Lou Lou

You hadn’t meant to stay as long as you did, just until he was settled, until the fever had come down enough that leaving felt reasonable, and then you had meant to go. Instead you had stayed through the morning and into the early afternoon, through two more doses of medication administered with the same quiet efficiency as the first, through a bowl of soup you’d found the ingredients for in his kitchen and assembled without asking, through the comfortable silence of two people occupying the same space without requiring anything of each other. He had slept a lot. You had sat with it, reading on your phone, with his head in your lap, simply being still in the way you were good at being still, and the hours had passed quickly. The second time he woke properly he had been more himself, the fever’s grip noticeably looser, the animation beginning to return to his face. He had pushed himself to sitting and looked at the soup on the coffee table in front of him with an expression of genuine surprise.

“You made that,” he said.

“Your kitchen had ingredients.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I noticed.”

He had eaten all of it without being told, which you had watched with the satisfaction of someone whose practical instincts had been vindicated, and afterward he had looked at you with an expression so unguarded and warm that you had found something very interesting to look at on your phone for a few minutes. You had talked, on and off, just a little bit. About nothing much. About the hospital, about a book on his shelf you had noticed and asked about, about the pumpkin on the front step. He had been tired still, and you hoped that meant his body was doing what it was supposed to. Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon he had drifted off again, his head against the back of the couch this time rather than in your lap, one arm loose at his side. You had sat with him for a little while longer than necessary. Then you had gathered your things quietly, your jacket and scarf from the hook by the door, your bag, everything collected softly, trying not to disturb the silence in the room. You had stood in the living room doorway for a moment. He was asleep in the afternoon light that came around the edges of the curtains, the fever flush fading now, his face carrying the beginning of something more like ordinary rest. The blanket had slipped and you crossed back to pull it up, briefly, just enough, a small unnecessary thing that you did couldn’t help. Then you had let yourself out, and locked it behind you with the spare key you’d found on the hook beside your jacket, sliding it back under the door when you were done because it wasn’t yours to keep.

You had stood on the front step for a moment. The Jack-o lantern looked up at you with his lopsided expression of existential uncertainty. You looked back at him for a moment. Then you went down the path and back to your apartment to collect your things before work, and the afternoon went on around you, and you didn’t examine any of what had just happened too closely because there was nothing to examine, because it was simply what you did when someone needed something and you were able to give it. And it was what you wanted to do. That was all it was. You were almost convinced of this by the time you got home. Almost. He called at 11 p.m. that night. Your personal cell this time, which was new enough that you still noticed it, his name appearing on the screen rather than the hospital extension. You picked up on the first ring.

“Blood lab,” you said with a soft smile.

“Hey.” His voice was better. Not all the way back, but meaningfully better, something closer to his usual register returning. “How’s the lab?”

“Busy. How’s the fever?”

“Gone, mostly.” A pause that carried something in it, something you’d learned to recognize over weeks of late night calls, something being considered before it was said. “Thank you. For today.”

“You don’t have to keep thanking me.”

“I know.” A brief quiet. “I want to.”

You looked at your monitor without seeing it.

“How are you feeling otherwise?” You asked.

“Better than I have in three days.” Another pause. “The house is less quiet.”

The warmth from his voice was comforting, something that you were getting used to, and starting to crave.

“Good,” you said simply.

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. “I keep thinking about—” He stopped.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just.” A pause. “Liked having you there when woke up.”

You didn’t answer immediately. The lab hummed around you, the refrigerators steady, the phones quiet for the moment.

“I wish I could have stayed longer. I had to get ready for work,” you said.

“I know you did.” His voice had a careful tone, the one that meant he was being precise on purpose. “I needed the company. I just didn’t expect it to—” He stopped again. Started differently. “I’m not used to someone being there when I wake up. And I appreciate that you were.”

The room felt very still.

“Jack,” you said softly.

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “Too much.”

“Not too much. I promise.”

A silence, longer than the others.

“No?” he said.

“No,” you said. “I’ll tell you if it is.”

You heard him exhale, slow and deliberate, the same exhale as the couch, the same sigh of something releasing that had been held too long.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

A beat.

“I woke up and you were gone,” he said, after a moment. Quiet, not accusatory, just stating a thing. “I heard the door.”

“You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I know.” A pause. “The key was under the door.”

“It wasn’t mine to keep.”

He was quiet for a moment, and felt like you knew what he was thinking about. Telling you to keep it, but not wanting to be too much.

“You could have woken me,” he said.

“You needed the sleep more than you needed a goodbye.”

Another quiet, this one softer.

“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.” A pause. “Still.”

You understood what the still meant without him finishing it, the same way you understood most things about Jack now, through accumulation and attention rather than explanation.

“Next time I’ll wake you,” you said.

The words landed in the space between you and stuck, both of you aware of what they contained. Next time, said plainly and without qualification, offered and received in the same breath.

“Okay,” he said, and the warmth in that single word was the warmth of someone who had been given something they hadn’t asked for directly and hadn’t expected to receive. The conversation drifted after that, the weight of what had been said settling into something comfortable rather than charged. He told you the fever had finally broken properly around noon. You told him about the shift. He asked about music again, what you’d listened to that night. You told him the album, and he asked why that one specifically, and you told him, and he listened the way he always listened, with that complete unhurried attention that had stopped feeling like too much and had started feeling like exactly the right amount. It was past midnight when the conversation began to thin.

“You should sleep,” you said.

“I’m actually tired tonight,” he said, which was different from the previous nights, the exhaustion now the letting him rest rather than the feverish kind. “Real tired.”

“Good. That means you’re getting better.”

“Mm.” A pause, soft at the edges. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Come back soon.” He said it quietly, simply, without dressing it up. “Not because I’m sick. Just.” A pause. “Come back.”

You looked at the ceramic black cat on the corner of your desk.

“Alright.” You said. A beat of quiet.

“Yeah?” he said, and that one word told you how much it had cost him to ask and how much your answer meant.

“Yeah,” you said. “I’ll come back.”

The silence that followed was settled and certain and not going anywhere.

“Goodnight,” he said eventually, quiet and warm.

“Sweet dreams, Jack.”

You held the phone for a moment after the line clicked. Then set it down, pressed two fingers briefly to your temples, and went back to work. The music was still playing in your single earbud, patient and unhurried, filling the edges of the quiet the way it always did.

What was this? You couldn’t find an answer. It was what it was, and it was enough for tonight.