Just A Hive Of Bees In A Human Suit™

He squints an eye open—squeezes it tight shut against a needle of light—rapid inventory: every part of him is sore. More than it should be after a meal and a full night. Was it full? If he woke, he must've slept. Doesn't remember much in between. Something last evening, maybe.

Doesn't matter. Not the pounding headache or his skin all wrong and pulled tight. Has to get up.

"Meetings," he croaks, and gropes at the sheet to untangle himself from it.

Stopped by a hand to the center of his chest. "Rescheduled." His elbows wobble and collapse at a push. "Told you not to get up. You fell and cracked your skull last time." He wriggles—makes a noise that sticks barbs in his throat—ugh, his nightshirt is wet and stuck to him, sweated through it again—and as he touches his head where the soreness is sharpest something blissfully cool slaps itself flat against the top half of his face.

Daud snorts. "You don't have to moan every time I change your towel, Attano."

Water trickles down his cheek and into his ears and hair. He thinks of midday breezes, of river water flowing sleek off the top of his head. Mumbles: "But I do," when he remembers to. Convinced. Not sure why—then peers out from under the towel to catch a bright sliver of Daud's face and remembers. Because, he thinks, the words all blurred halos, you don't like when I thank you.

Daud might be complaining, but doesn't seem to mind the noises: is looking down at him with a twist to his mouth that's easy to wander down along to the hangdog corner of it, with its unshaven patch of stubble, or to the shadow underneath his heavy bottom lip. Corvo lingers there, not thinking of anything. Or thinking of—reaching out. Reaching up, setting his thumb in the furrow of that chin, pulling. There's a fascination to the idea of touching him. For all the late night drinks they've shared in meetings that have had less and less to do with work, Daud has a skill for dodging closeness.

Corvo frowns. Touches that sore spot on his head again, like if he sharpens the ache it will put his thoughts in order for him.

"Why're you in my rooms so early?"

Daud's expression twitches.

"And why'm I so tired?"

Short breath out. "Took you long enough to ask." The towel is flicked from his face and Daud moves away, out of immediate reach, his bulk no longer blocking off part of the light. Corvo sighs at his losses. "You're ill. You woke around two—could've been a nightmare, you weren't particularly coherent, but I'd bet on the fever." At the basin Corvo washes his face in every morning, he soaks the towel to then wring it back out. Water drips down his wrists: bare, like his hands.

There are scars across his knuckles. Small, pale damage. The biggest curves along the back of his thumb like a hook. Doesn't think he's seen Daud's hands like this before, the gloves are always on, but. A strange sense lingers, as if he's already put a fingertip there atop the knotted line.

"Had to wrestle you down," Daud rumbles, not done. "You were..."

Still caught on the shape of him, how it stands in the morning light, Corvo wonders aloud, "Did you sleep here last night?"

Oh. The points of his ears go dark when he flushes.

"No."

Doesn't sound angry. Rarely does when he truly is, though. Corvo considers being embarrassed but decides, given how tensing his jaw makes his skull radiate a low pulse of hurt, to get back to it later, and stares in interest instead, face half buried in pillow.

Daud drapes the towel over the lip of the basin and blinks across the room to the desk, the flickering ash of his wake boring an ache into the backs of Corvo's eyes—he closes them. Tries to focus on listening rather than the dry burn. The room swims in the half-lit dark—a swelling rush like that of his own blood in his ears rises and falls with his breathing—but when he presses his fingertips to his own throat all he can feel is a thick, grimy layer of sweat.

Paper shuffling: Daud is going through his things. He should worry. Should rise, make some protest—too tired. They've been sharing intel for a while, anyway, working together for longer... and Daud must have gone through them already, must have contacted his secretary to cancel his appointments... has been the source of half of it all in any case, and Corvo—well. It could be called trust, this quietness in him. He hasn't even—

Oh. He hasn't.

"Emily," he says, and lurches what he thinks is upright, but with how the walls then begin to slide sideways and Daud flashes back to his side with a curse and a rough grip under his armpits, it probably wasn't.

Heaving, growling effort gets him back on the mattress; Corvo helps by tangling both his flopping arms in Daud's bandolier, who curses him out under his breath as he undoes his work then pulls away once Corvo's dangling leg has been tucked under the blanket again—but the hand Corvo snuck around his belt stops him short. Hasn't forgotten what he tried to get up for, though the pain in his skull spiked and is now smouldering. Daud huffs a breath through his nose, but his glare isn't so harsh when he answers, "She's fine. Someone's watching."

Corvo lets a little of the tension drain out of him—holding on to it makes every inch of him sore, anyway—and shifts onto his shoulder, adjusting his grip. "... Was someone watching me?"

Nothing in Daud's face moves. He is watching the creased corners of those eyes and that mouth closely enough to know.

"Yes."

"Was it you?"

Daud grasps his hand and uncurls his fingers one by one, almost gentle about it—Corvo snickers dry and dizzy, strangely light—maybe that's the fever, too—until it makes the headache flare and he quiets, and then his open palm is being pressed to his chest and Daud has gone again, returned to the basin.

Corvo's sleeping shirt is damp with sweat, rougher under his fingertips; the sheets, too, where they stick to his legs and arms. He thinks if his skull wasn't so full of heat and aching he could smell himself thick in the room. Air is heavy on him. Carrying too much, prickling. Now that he's tried to sit up he doesn't think he could lift an arm again—yet still, something is wound tight in the back of his neck, like he can't quite settle his head.

"You were showing signs, last evening," Daud says, quieter than he's been, so much so that for a moment Corvo only hears him as a low, rasping music, without meaning. Closes his eyes to pick through the last few minutes and remember where they were. The thread of their conversation keeps breaking in his hands.

"... Signs?"

"Void fever." Daud isn't doing anything at the basin, only leaning against the little table it's set on, hands wrapped tight around its edges. "There's a—buzz to it." His eyes flick over to somewhere halfway down Corvo's chest, and he scowls and adds, "And you kept doing that. Don't," striding up close (in reach, again, a buzz—yes—but soothing, like a sleeping cat, he thinks) to separate Corvo's hands from where one has been scraping its nails into the Mark on the other.

"It itches."

"It'll keep itching." Merciless. "At least until you expend some of that energy. How long's it been since you last used your powers?"

His eyes are dry enough for his eyelids to scrape, but the tension in his shoulders loosens a little as he tries to remember. One of Daud's hands is still clamped around his wrist. Fugue is soon—they've been caught up in preparing for it—no time for outside missions, no trouble close enough to home that he's had to intervene. Last year, he thinks muzzily, they hardly celebrated at all, with the plague in full swing and Emily having barely claimed the throne—have to make up for it now, show the city, the empire, that they're recovering—

Daud's first fugue, too, isn't it. Well, not his—the first in the, in the Tower, not— Corvo wrinkles his nose, heel of his palm against one eye. Daud wasn't here last year, is what he means, trying to set the thought out clearly.

Weren't easy, those first months. The first letters too. Had to track the man down, when half the information leads from Burrows' files turned out to run back to the Knife. Had his fingers in everything. Didn't kill any of the people Corvo sent after him, either, which got him thinking. Writing. Daud was a shit correspondent.

He's wandered a little far. Not sure how long it's been since Daud asked his question.

"Fugue soon," Corvo says, half in his throat.

Daud grimaces. "Fugue's passed."

His hairline prickles with sweat; outside, a sea bird calls, shrill and raucous. The crease of his eyelids is sticky when he blinks them shut and open and shut. No. No, no—it should be next week. He was only just done confirming the deliveries.

Corvo swallows.

"I'm... might be... missing a few days," he says, hands clenched in the sheets. Daud has let go of his wrist.

"It's only the third of Earth. Hasn't been long." No surprise in his voice. A cool square of pressure against Corvo's forehead pushes him into the pillow. "You burned up last night. We made a serious dent in the icebox trying to keep your temperature down." The pressure lightens, lifts. A brush of fingertips. "... It passes. You'll get the time back." Then a whisper of Void, the whap of damp towel pulled across space into an open hand, and Daud says, "Hold still," though Corvo is already lying quiet and exhausted and a little numb. Relief: cloth trails across his eyes, turns the burn of red-orange light through thin skin into sweet dark. Clear water replacing sweat. He sighs.

Maybe he sleeps. In the next moment the grounding weight of Daud's hand has left him. All he finds at the end of his reach is empty space, so he flops his arm down over his face; the towel drags at his aching skin, clinging to his nose and mouth. It's less soothing now, the cool leached out by his burning. Sweat itches everywhere.

Every muscle a leadened pull, he curls his fist into the towel and scrapes it down to his neck, where the folds of skin stick to each other with the unpleasantness of congealed sugar. Then down, to his shoulder, trying to get under the sweat-glued edge of his nightshirt—until a steadier grip than his takes up the task and swipes down his collarbone. He squints up; Daud looks back down, a dissatisfied air to him. The flush is still there. It tints his cheekbones as well as the furl of his ears. Its own fever—its own morning. Corvo licks his dry lip, every thought like molasses.

Last time he was this ill, it was someone else holding the towel.

"... No doctor," he notes. Always back to this. Maybe all of this is part of the fever, too, a strange dream, where the least expected person waits at his bedside. Daud's too busy to be here. Daud shouldn't, he thinks, be here at all, but Corvo weighs that thought and sets it aside. It's wrong. He should be. Corvo just isn't sure why.

"Had my medic come in. He left once we got your temperature down." The wipe-down is brisk, efficient; Corvo tips his chin up and breathes deep, which is as much as he can press into it. When he tugs at the neck of his nightshirt to give that hand more space to work, it undoes a few of his buttons and reaches in, all the way to his sweat-tickled ribs. His shirt falls back against him in a cool press. "You should focus on making sure that fever doesn't spike again. What can you do, besides transverse? And that—wind trick. Don't use it here, you'll smash something."

The drag of the towel is good, smooths some of the ache from his bones.

"... Rats," he says, sprawling more firmly, his eyes and voice and breathing gone limp. The towel pauses. He fumbles for the hand, finds it, is shaken off. The towel resumes.

"—Rats."

"Mhm."

A huff. "Anything that won't cause a panic?"

"..."

His clothes still stick to him a little, but his skin isn't so shrunken, so stiff around his flesh and bones—as if the strokes of pressure, the buzz of the body nearby, have released a spring inside him. The air is kinder, the light like something he could drink rather than dry fire. His eyes still sting—the tiredness—but it isn't so bad.

"Attano. Don't fall back asleep."

"Nm." Breathes in; out. "Time. Could..."

"Yes. Sure. Just once, don't drain yourself."

He has just enough strength to suspend one hand in the air and flex whatever deep muscle calls the Void into his fingers. Feels overextended somehow—wire pulled taut, messing with his balance—huh. Should have noticed it happening. Seems obvious now he's testing the strain, how it radiates through his jaw and neck.

But Daud was there—Daud caught it. Caught him. He twists his hand.

In the slow whirlpool of time coming down to a pinpoint, still and held, Daud stills, too, for the second Corvo needs to find his shirt lapel. Not wearing the coat—hasn't been, all along. He didn't fully think of what that meant—the not wearing it, and him not noticing, not thinking it strange—but he's noticing and thinking now as the Void's chill chases through his blood, runs up his arm and along the other, down his spine, his legs, out to every extremity, like a strong wind, breaking up some of the haze over his mind. His knuckles are so close to Daud's warmth, which radiates behind the hang of fabric. He tugs. Too weak to make Daud move, but the flicker of his eyes down and back up brings a new ache to Corvo's face as he smiles.

"Lean down?" he asks into that waiting drop of time so clear and quiet. All the birds have stopped, hanging midair, but him: he chuffs, a breath. It's exhausting. It's almost enough to lift him. "I can't sit up."

The thing he can see in Daud's eyes isn't new—he saw it earlier, couldn't recognize it—but the slump of his shoulders is, and the rough cup of his palm holding Corvo's jaw, the press of his thumb—new, but not. Corvo's felt the shape of them before.

Daud leans down. His lips to Corvo's forehead are scratchy, and yet very soft.

"How about you ask me again when you can," he rasps, eyebrow quirked, the curve of his mouth not quite a smirk, a dimple in his stubbled cheek.

Corvo grunts. "But you're very handsome now."

Daud laughs—barks it, head thrown back—and the way his grin flashes, the movement of his throat, catch Corvo's attention so thoroughly he completely loses his grip on time. It unspools: a trail first then whipping, the knockback a physical thing, pressure in his chest and sinuses—or maybe that's just for the visible hitch in Daud's breath, like he can feel it all run out back into morning too.

The hand on Corvo's chest, towel now warmed through, holds him down as if he might press the issue. Fair enough: he considered it. Doesn't think he could right this moment, though, still breathless, if clearer in the head.

"Why not?" he asks, reclining, as Daud goes to the basin and soaks then wrings the towel again. He says it without quite thinking, then remembers why. "We have before."

Pieces, minutes, trickling in. Impressions and colors. Specific expressions on a particular face. Was he only missing a week? This seems like so much for him to have been without.

Daud finishes the motion, smooth. Tilts his head to shoot a narrow look over his shoulder.

"I like when you can give it your all," he answers, as if it's sparring they're talking about. "You should rest. Flex your powers again later. You still need to recover."

Corvo grumbles. One arm dangles off the mattress's edge, hand grabbing idly. Daud is too far; he feels bereft.

The man in question growls audibly, but Corvo is starting—had started—to understand that his irritation is just another kind of fondness. "Attano."

"Thought that'd changed," he mutters back. Not sure how much of it got through: he's up to his ears in the pillow.

Another bird cries—maybe a boat, signal distant. He is merely overwarm now rather than aching with the force of the heat. The mattress sinks him deeper, stills his limbs; the blanket crawls up his legs to drape across his back.

A cool breeze brushes his face and tucks back the hair trying to tickle his nose.