#clj

He notices the fever before you do.

Syd always does.

Your skin is warmer than it should be when you curl against him on the couch, head heavy on his shoulder. He doesn’t move at first, just adjusts his breathing so you don’t wake. His eyes stay fixed on the wall, listening. Counting. The rhythm of your breaths is off. Too shallow. A little too fast.

“You’re hot,” he says quietly.

You hum, unfocused. “Always am.”

He slides two fingers against your neck, clinical, precise. Pulse racing. The kind of speed he recognizes immediately, not panic, not excitement. Infection.

He helps you up without asking. Syd never asks when he’s already decided something is necessary. He guides you to the bedroom, sits you on the edge of the bed, presses the back of his hand to your forehead. The contact lingers a second too long, like he has to remind himself this is allowed now.

“You need to lie down.”

You obey. You always do when he sounds like that.

The apartment is quiet in that sterile, late-night way — the hum of the fridge, the distant city breathing through the windows. Syd moves around you with practiced efficiency: water, clean cloth, thermometer. He notes the number, commits it to memory, frowns faintly. It’s worse than earlier.

Still, he looks… calm. Focused. Like this is where he’s supposed to be.

“You injected me again,” you murmur, half-lost in heat. It’s not an accusation. Just an observation.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You were sleeping.”

He presses the damp cloth to your temple, careful not to startle you. His touch is light, reverent. Like he’s handling something fragile that might break if he presses wrong.

“You’d do it anyway,” he adds.

You smile weakly. “Yeah.”

He watches your mouth curve. Files it away.

The kit is already laid out on the nightstand. Syd keeps everything clean, labeled, ordered. Love, for him, looks like preparation. He sanitizes his hands, swaps gloves. When he rolls up his sleeve, the inside of his arm tells its own quiet history, constellations of bruises, faint scars fading into pale skin.

You watch through heavy lashes.

“Come here,” you whisper.

He hesitates. Just a fraction of a second. Then he sits beside you, lets you lean into him. Your head fits under his chin like it belongs there. He adjusts the cloth, wipes sweat from your jaw, your throat. Your fever makes you pliant, warm, almost glowing.

“You’re burning up,” he says softly.

“Don’t sound so happy about it.”

“I’m not happy,” Syd replies. Then, after a beat: “I’m relieved.”

You turn your face into his shirt. “Because you can fix it?”

“No.” His voice drops. Honest. “Because I know what’s wrong.”

The needle doesn’t scare you anymore. Not with him. Not when he holds your arm steady, thumb brushing reassurance into your skin before the sting. Your blood fills the vial slowly, dark and alive. Syd watches it like it’s sacred. Like it’s speaking to him.

He injects himself without ceremony. A practiced slide. A small hiss of breath. His eyes close briefly — not in pain, but recognition. He’s always loved this part. The closeness. The way your body rewrites his.

You whimper when he withdraws the needle, the sound thin and feverish. Syd immediately turns back to you, all attention, all care. He presses gauze to your arm, kisses the spot through it, a strange, chaste apology.

“I’m here,” he says, as if you might forget.

Your fever spikes later.

You’re shaking now, teeth chattering, eyes unfocused. Syd sits behind you in bed, holding you upright, your back against his chest. He murmurs observations under his breath, temperature, breathing, timing, but his arms never loosen. He rocks you slowly, not to soothe you emotionally, but physically. To regulate. To ground.

“You’re doing good,” he tells you when you whine. “Your body’s responding.”

“I feel awful,” you whisper.

“I know.”

“But you like it,” you accuse weakly.

He doesn’t deny it. Syd never lies about that.

“I like being needed,” he says instead. “And I like knowing you’re inside me.”

Your laugh dissolves into a cough. He immediately shifts you forward, supports your chest, waits it out with infuriating patience. When it passes, he wipes your mouth, presses your face into his neck so you can breathe him in.

You smell like iron and antiseptic. He smells like soap and something warmer underneath.

“Stay,” you murmur, barely conscious now.

He tightens his arms around you. “I am staying.”

The fever breaks sometime near dawn.

You wake tangled in him, sheets damp, head clear but heavy. Syd hasn’t slept. He’s watching you with that hollow, intent gaze, the one that would scare anyone else. When you open your eyes, it softens. Just a little.

“You’re better,” he says.

“Mm.” You blink at him. “Did you sleep?”

“No.”

You smile. “You’re weird.”

“Yes.”

But when you shift closer, when you tuck your face into his chest, Syd lowers his head and rests his mouth in your hair. Careful. Possessive. Gentle in the only way he knows how to be.

Outside, the world keeps its distance.