#rafie

He shivers again as the nurse takes his temperature, announces it as “One oh two point nine. You said you’ve been feverish for multiple days now?”

“Yes, since maybe… Thursday or Friday, I think. I’m not sure how high it was then, it tends to climb at night, I wasn’t really keeping track of my temperature. The fever in and of itself actually escaped my concern, because I tend to spike a high fever whenever I’m sick at all. I get them routinely with colds and such.”

“I see, okay.”

“Um…” Cal says, having trouble remembering the question, or whether there ever was one. “I’m rambling, but anyway, I passed the point where I felt like—” he has to stop speaking to start coughing again, desperately into his elbow, wearing a sweater he’d normally not wear in public because there’s a rather large saffron-colored stain on the sleeve, which he’s reminded of as he huddles into it until he can stop, finally recovering with a markedly softer voice, hardly above a whisper. “Excuse me. Um… I meant to say that I feel like I got to the point where I should have been beginning to feel better and instead I started feeling worse.”

The RN notices Cal’s hand continues to return to his chest and asks, “Are you experiencing chest pain?”

“Uh, yes, when I cough. Or… inhale—Yeah, I should have mentioned that, it slipped my mind.”

“The person who came in with you, can he speak for you? I can see you’re having trouble speaking and I don’t want you to have to repeat all that for the doctor. Would you want me to invite him back here?”

“Oh, that’s really kind of you… yes, he’s my partner and I would really appreciate that,” Cal says, quietly and with some difficulty, and he might go on further but the nurse cuts him off.

“Alright, I’ll go get him. Save your breath, Mr. Chowdhury, you’ll need it.”

“Thank you so much.”

Rafie appears in the doorway a couple minutes later and Cal could swear the man is glowing as he stands there, a knight in shining armor come to save him from the task of repeating his symptoms.

“It was so nice of him to—”

“Shhh, papi chulo,” Rafael says, trailing a hand over Cal’s mouth. “The nurse said tell you to stop talking.”

* * *

Their trip to the CVS by their place must be endured immediately afterwards, and a simple chore has perhaps never felt quite as unendurable to Cal, who is so woozy as he stands there in the pharmacy line with Rafael that he’s swaying precariously on his feet, and says, “Oh shit,” just as Rafael’s arm tightens around him.

“Whoa, papi… let me pick up your medicines. I’m going to bring you back to the car and you can wait there.”

He does not have the energy or the desire to protest, just squints at Rafie with a dopey smile as he leads him back to the parking lot.

In the car Cal pulls out his phone and zones out for a couple minutes as he scrolls up and down on the Mayoclinic page for viral pneumonia.

He’s read this already, what he should do is call Deepa, that would be a smart thing to do right now, because he’s running out of energy to make arrangements, and potentially running out of voice to give explanations. It rings thrice before she picks up, during which time Cal has settled his cheek against the window, an action he doesn’t feel fully in control of, and maybe he wasn’t expecting her to answer because when she does he startles like he’s jerking awake from almost-sleep, sitting fully up, vaguely dizzy from the sudden movement.

“Hi Deepa, sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I’m still not feeling well enough to hold class and in fact I uh, just got out of urgent care with a diagnosis of pneumonia. I’m—”

“Oh no, Dr. Chowdhury! Are you okay??”

“Yeah to be—” he begins, with an inadvisably deep inhale that jettisons him into a rough fit, pressing the phone into his shoulder as his sweater weathers another series of productive coughs, taking a wheezy inhale as he catches his breath. There’s a voice he’s used to using, in professional contexts, and he realizes now for the first time it puts more strain on his vocal chords than his non-professional speaking voice does.

“Aww you sound awful.”

“Oh I know,” he says, with an approximation of a laugh that rattles in his chest and ends in an almost cough he manages to subdue. “To be clear I should be able to bounce back from this in maybe a week or so. But I’ll be totally honest with you, Deepa; right now I don’t even feel up to composing an email. I was going to ask if you could send one out on my behalf to cancel class and just explain what’s going on. Ask students to email you instead of me if they need anything.”

“Of course, absolutely. I’ll talk to the other TAs but I think let’s plan for this week at least? And you can just let me know how you’re feeling over the weekend in case you need more time and maybe we can regroup then,” she says.

“Yes, absolutely, that’s perfect. You have no idea how much of a weight off my shoulders—” he says, before he has to cough more, returning to her afterward with a winded, “Gosh I’m sorry, I hardly have the breath necessary to properly thank you.”

“It’s okay Dr. Chowdhury, it’s really no problem at all.”

“I’ll let you know in a few days how I’m feeling and hopefully by then I’ll have a better plan of what I’m gonna do about missing as much material as this will be,” Cal says, as Rafael returns, sliding back into the driver’s seat and handing Cal a brown paper bag.

“Okay sounds good. Feel better! Take as much time as you need, we’ll figure it out.”

“Thank you so much.”

He hangs up and looks into the bag in his lap, fishes out three prescription bottles with directions he stares at. He can’t remember exactly what his doctor had said about dosages and times.

“That was your TA?”

“Myeah,” Cal says, articulate, rubbing at his eyes.

“She's gonna take care of things for you?”

“She is, yes.”

“Bien,” Rafie says, gathering Cal’s face in his hands and guiding him away from his halfhearted attempt to parse prescription information. “It’s okay I wrote it down—the way the doctor said to take everything. You took care of work. We got your medicine. All you have to do now is rest, mi amor, okay? It’s the only thing left on the checklist.”

The gently authoritative touch is comforting and the sense of mortal dread he’s carried around since yesterday is loosening and the light is streaming through the window and backlighting his boyfriend beautifully and Cal feels like he might cry.

“What’s wrong?”

Cal shakes his head, feeling his eyes well. “You’re so sweet that was the prettiest thing to say,” he manages, the combination of emotion and throat pain making his voice more of a squeak than anything else.

“Ohoho papiii,” Rafie chuckles, thumbing a single quick tear from Cal’s cheek.

“I’m sorry, wow,” Cal laughs hoarsely, and then needs to pull away to cough into his shoulder. “God I’m a whole train wreck today.”

“Maybe a little train wreck, it’s okay,” Rafie says, smoothing back Cal’s hair as he sniffles and wipes at his face with a sleeve.

“Okay, I’m okay,” he decides.

“Let’s get you home.”

* * *

Later Cal huddles beneath both a kantha quilt and the comforter from the bed, head in Rafie’s lap on the couch as he sleeps through multiple episodes of a plot-heavy Spanish crime drama he’ll now have no hope of following moving forward, in an oseltamivir and high-strength pain-reliever sponsored daze that barely brings down his fever but does at least lessen the pain in his lungs and throat and back from the endless coughing, and allows him a couple hours of the deep sleep he desperately needs.

He coughs himself awake finally, half-conscious but still aware of the comforting feeling of Rafael’s hand on his shoulder, holding him with a firmness that makes him feel both secure and very weak in comparison. By accident he issues a rare moan.

Rafie takes note, coos a low, soft, “Pobrecito…”

Cal shifts so he’s on his back, shivers when his limbs make contact with places of the blanket that aren’t already heated through with his febrile warmth. He blinks slowly, hesitantly breaching the surface of being officially awake. Mumbles that he doesn’t remember falling asleep, realizes he’s said this in the only one out of three languages he could have used that Rafael doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t have the energy to even think about translating it, so when Rafie responds, “Hmm?” he just shakes his head.

Rafie brushes sleep-tousled hair out of the way to lay a large palm across Cal’s forehead and whistles as if impressed by his findings. “You must have been feeling even worse than I realized, mi amor.”

“Mm?” He blinks, trying to latch on properly to what’s being said rather than letting it wash over him like the sounds from the television.

“Pneumonia, papi. In both of your lungs.”

“Yeah it’s kinda crazy,” he agrees. “Never had double pneumonia before. Never had single pneumonia before. Not one single pneumonia. Momentous occasion for me.”

“You’re a little loopy right now aren’t you?”

Cal laughs, a phlegm-ridden, chesty sound that makes him start back up with the coughing again. ‘I would love something that just knocks me out completely,’ he’d chimed in, as the doctor was writing prescriptions, and the drug cocktail obliged. It’s definitely affecting him rather strongly and he’s unsure which phenomena are from what exactly because he’s unfamiliar with the treatment and the illness alike. 

Rafael says, “Ohh no, you can’t even laugh. Does it hurt? Your lungs?”

“Not unless I breathe,” he smiles.

For a while he just lies there as Rafie cradles a hot cheek with a comparatively cool palm, or lightly strokes a hand over his aching chest, both of which Cal recognizes as comfort targeted at the very source of pain. If he had the breath to do so he’d tell Rafael how nice his hands are, how much he likes their calloused toughness, how strong and steadying they feel to him right now, and he’s fond and fortunate and when combined with his fever he somehow feels lovesick for the person kind enough to be holding him even as he does so. 

“You’ve been so good to me,” he rasps, feeling a need to touch Rafie’s face in return but as he currently possesses the world’s heaviest arms he’s only able to reach as high as Rafie’s chest to cling limply to his shirt like a dying man.

“Papi chulo,” Rafael says fondly, running a hand through Cal’s hair, and Cal turns his head slightly like a cat trying to provide a better angle to be pet. “You were very good to me when I was sick, it’s only fair I should be good to you.”

“Yeah but you weren’t this sick, I didn’t have to take you to urgent care. Or carry you to the car.”

“I didn’t carry you.”

“You basically did,” he struggles to say, before bringing up a crooked arm and launching into a fit of harsh, wet coughing that he tries to cut short because it actively hurts, but he gets stuck in a loop of gasping inhales that prompt still more productive spasms and it feels bottomless enough to go on forever if he isn’t careful. It has him sitting up by the end of it, petering out slowly, Rafael’s hands on his shoulder blades as he pants as shallowly as he can to catch his breath and Rafael quietly mutters a reassuring, “Bien, bien, está bien.”

He is passed a glass of water and he nods his thanks, hand shaking so badly as he holds it that he has to bring up the other hand to help.

“Hey, you should try to not talk so much, okay?” Rafie says, as Cal dizzily sinks his weight back into him, settling his head in Rafie’s lap again, cheeks feeling weird and tingly from the effort of coughing and the fact that his face is throbbing with fever.

“I know, I just want you to know it means a lot to me,” Cal says carefully, searching Rafael’s eyes, weighing the words with importance and probably helped by how slowly he has to say them.

Rafie succumbs to a gradual smile that almost looks like it pains him and says, as if in marvel, “Que linda tu actitud.”

While Cal hasn’t heard this specific phrase before, he can ascertain its general meaning as being an appreciation of his attitude, and he entertains an unfocused thought he sometimes has when he watches subtitled cinema, or provides someone an approximated translation from Hindi to English or vice versa — about how reordering a sentence never seemed to keep its sentiment intact. The way Rafie said it was all the translation needed.

“Okay I do want you to taste this though so I know if I need to adjust anything,” Cal says, as he removes the lid from the pot again to dip a spoon into the mixture and offer it up to Rafael. “What do you think, is it good?”

The dish is spiced richly enough that he’s still able to taste it through muted senses, spicy enough that he knows dinner’s gonna make his nose run like a faucet. “Yes, snff! Okay, yes it’s good.”

Cal grins, clearly very pleased with himself.

“Don’t tell my grandmother I said that.”

“Oh! I also made you tea I almost forgot,” Cal says, turning to the fancy electric kettle Rafael secretly doesn’t understand how to use.

“I don’t really drink tea.”

“I know but you’re sick and it’s what sick people do and I happen to know my way around a teapot.”

This is not the first time Rafael has heard him phrase it this way, ‘I know my way around a teapot,’ which provokes an eye roll but makes him feel fond and stupid.

Cal goes over ingredients and their benefits, while Rafael sniffles and dissociates through an unsolicited spiel about how marshmallow root will help coat and soothe his irritated mucus membranes, and when the cup is pressed into his hands the runny nose immediately worsens.

He pulls himself away from the mug with a murmured “Aghh,” sniffling desperately as he feels the warmth of melting congestion in his face.

“That steam is doing a number on you isn’t it? Another benefit of tea, it kinda clears out your sinuses.”

Rafael wonders why Cal feels the need to talk about things like his irritated mucus membranes and disgustingly drippy sinuses as he grabs a paper towel he’s told not to use and Cal runs, actually runs, to grab the tissue box from where it was left on the coffee table. Rafael presses the paper towel to his nose, digging it into his nostrils, trying to absorb the mess before it makes itself visible, trying to just make it go away.

“Here, Rafie, don’t use that, you’re gonna tear up your poor skin.”

Rafael glances up from the paper towel and levels a look at this fussy Florence Nightingale version of his boyfriend. “Dios mío papi you—” He does grab a tissue then, just in time to cup it over his mouth and nose and wince into a sneeze he forces through his teeth, accompanied by a quick little jerk of his head.

Fucking steam— “ht’chishh! You’re… h? Hh!” Fucking tea— “huh’chishoo!”

“Saaalud.”

“You’re-hh!-worsethan-h?” He loses his breath, a slave to it, shaking his head and finally just surrendering whatever tenuous control he has, letting it overtake him, letting his body rid itself of the aggravating tingly sensation the only way it sees fit to, with three quiet explosions that nonetheless shiver through him and leave him breathless and leaky.

“Huh-hhh! t’chishu, t’chishhoo! uh-h-huh? …T’CHoo!”

“Awww, bless you bless you bless you Rafie, poor thing.”

Rafael blows his nose into a less soaked tissue as Cal passes him the mug again, asks, “You okay? You got it?” and with absolutely no sense of self preservation tries to trade the tea for the soggy tissues half disintegrating in Rafael’s hand.

“Papi do not take my used tissues, what is wrong with you?” He finally finishes a stuffy sentence whose relevance has only increased. “You’re worse—snfff!—than my family.”

Cal’s eyebrows are quirked in curiosity. “What do you mean, how so?”

“Just, do not tell my family I’m ill,” Rafael says, taking a seat in a barstool at the counter and carefully setting down the tea he doesn’t want, “it’ll be a whole thing.”

“Uh… so I did actually tell Alma.”

“What? Why??” he asks, grabbing Cal’s arm.

“My goodness Rafie,” he says, of the sudden panicked snatch at his sleeve. “She called me because you weren’t picking up while you were napping and I just explained that you were—”

“Papiiii,” he groans, sinking his head into his hands and speaking through fingers, “you never tell a Morales you’re sick. And you definitely never tell Alma Morales you’re sick.”

“Why not?”

“When did you talk to her?”

“Maybe an hour ago?”

Rafael sighs at length and says through laughter born of frustration, “Ahhh Cal, of course you did.”

Now that he doesn’t live with his absolute gossip of a brother Andres, Rafael really thought he could escape it this time, the whole silly procession. To for once just be sick and gross alone, or with Cal but not with his entire goddamn family.

“I don’t understand, your family’s so sweet.”

“We’re about to have four, five, maybe six women in this kitchen fussing over me.”

“Awww wait really?” Cal asks, a hand over his heart like it’s about to burst.

“Yes, really, snfff! They’re going t-to…” An irrepressible tingle roars back to life courtesy of a rogue sniffle. Rafael’s mouth falls agape as he hurriedly pulls another tissue to his twitching nose, face propped up by his elbows on the counter, head bobbing fitfully foreword with a ticklish little, “t’chish!”

“Salud.”

Rafael speaks through the tissue, aware he won’t get far but desperate to convey the words his breath hitches and stutters through, disrupting himself with sneezes that sound progressively messier. “They’re going to come over here with foods and medicines and their-h? theirlittleremedies-h-hand— Hit’chushoo!”

“Dinero.”

“And direct me huh-h-haround like-hh? I’m… t’CHIZSH! hh’CHUSHHHoo!”

“Amor.”

“Snff! Like I’m a child, snffh!”

“I know you’re mad,” Cal says, pausing as Rafael blows his nose forcefully, “but that sounds like it’d be adorable, Rafie, oh my god.”

“You don’t know, papi,” Rafael insists, “they’re very bossy. You wouldn’t find it so adorable if it was you they were about to do this to.”

“Are you kidding?? I would love to have four to six Dominican women fussing over me if I wasn’t feeling well, I would love nothing more.”

Rafael wants to explain, no you don’t understand, they treat a case of the sniffles as if you’re dying, it’s emasculating, it’s annoying, it’s a huge waste of time, one of the remedies involves onion tea, onion tea with honey. He wants to impress upon Cal that if he did have this he probably wouldn’t like it. But maybe he would, and either way… Cal would have to have something like this to know what’s it’s like, and he doesn’t.

“Well I’m sure they’d love another victim so next time you get a cold I’ll call them up.”

Cal’s smiling to himself as he turns off the stovetop and Rafael is about to wonder whether he’s being ungrateful when the doorbell rings and he just about jumps out of his skin.

There’s a gasp of pure delight from Cal and Rafael turns to him, suddenly suspicious. “Did you tell them to come, did you plan this??”

“No, not at all, honestly, but I love that it’s happening.”

Rafael grumbles under his breath that he can’t believe they’d just invite themselves over even though he absolutely can, hurriedly gathers the used tissues he’s strewn over the counter, sneaks in one last hasty nose blow and throws them away, snuffling so hard he nearly chokes as he pulls unruly hair back into the kinda-bun it was in earlier.

“Caliph. How many women are outside that door right now?”

Cal peers through the peephole, lowering his voice. “Four. Wait, there’s Fernanda coming up too. Five.”

“You are in trouble, papi chulo.”

Cal/Rafie, ‘oh god this is falling apart isn’t it?’: Sunken Treasure by Wilco; Guilty Party by The National (pls be warned the latter is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard)

Josephine: Rare Thing by Frances Quinlan Cal/Josephine: Creature Fear by Bon Iver; Isles by Fleet Foxes

Scotty: Silk by Wolf Alice Cal/Scotty: Don’t Delete the Kisses by Wolf Alice (I owe this song a lot)

Cal/Ayush: Thinkin Bout You by Frank Ocean (I’ve not publicly posted anything on Ayush yet but since I plan to I’m including him regardless)

Bonus fun music facts :)

The presence of Josephine’s little monologue about her nephew in The Ethics of Fantasy is directly because of that Frances Quinlan song, because the song is about Quinlan’s niece.

Malik is named after Malik by serpentwithfeet.

Josephine’s looming departure for Greece in The Final Final is brought you by the fact that I was listening to Mykonos by Fleet Foxes when I was writing it.

I decided that Ayush’s family is wealthy expressly because Frank Ocean’s Channel ORANGE gives me Cal/Ayush vibes and Super Rich Kids is an amazing song.