Kleenex Romance

[noelleleithe.livejournal.com]

Title: Kleenex Romance
Author: noelleleithe
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: Luke/Noah (circa 2007)
Word count: ~785
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything here except my own words. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's notes: Written for schmoop_bingo, prompt: illness–shared. Unbetaed.

~~~~

As if being paralyzed from the waist down wasn't bad enough, now Luke had caught Noah's cold.

More likely, they'd both caught it from Ethan, who'd been sick for nearly a week now, since late Thanksgiving afternoon. As grumpy as he felt, though, Luke didn't much care who he blamed.

Noah had stayed away for three whole days, ever since he woke up Sunday with a runny nose, sneezing fits, and a hacking cough. Luke had talked to him on the phone every day, trying to convince him to come over anyway, but between Luke's immune-system-depressing anti-rejection meds and his current physical condition, Noah couldn't be swayed.

Until Wednesday morning, when Luke woke up with a runny nose, sneezing fits, and a hacking cough.

His mom must've been pretty persuasive. Everyone had commitments that day, which left Luke alone in his misery until Noah showed up just before lunchtime, carrying a bag from the drugstore that contained two big boxes of Kleenex and enough hard candies to choke a horse.

"No cough drops?" Luke tried to smile at him from the nest he'd made at one end of the sofa in the parlor, but he had a feeling it didn't translate all that well.

"Doesn't make much difference," Noah said, toeing off his sneakers and sitting down at the far end of the sofa. "Cough drops are basically just candy anyway."

Luke could just barely feel the warmth of Noah's thigh against his socked toes, but as he'd discovered recently, his legs weren't the only things making progress toward recovery. Noah's voice was still scratchy from all the coughing, and Luke's body interpreted the low, rough sound in an entirely different way.

A very nice way.

Noah peeled the plastic off one of the tissue boxes and ripped the cardboard cover off the opening on top, tugging up the first soft cloth. He gave a lopsided smile as he held it out toward Luke. "Got the kind with lotion," he said. "Maybe your nose won't end up as red as mine did."

Luke took the box, being careful to run his fingers along Noah's as much as possible. They both shivered a little, and Luke really didn't think it was from a chill.

Noah pulled back and tore into the bag of candies with both hands. He looked down inside. "Looks like we have red, purple, yellow, and orange," he said. "I'm going to guess you're a red kind of guy." He gave Luke a sidelong glance. "Cherry?"

Luke snickered and sneezed. "Funny man," he rasped, reaching for the bottle of water his mom had brought him before she left for work earlier, taking a long sip to soothe his dry throat. He considered lying, but mentally rolled his eyes at himself. What was he, three? Hell, even Ethan probably wasn't that immature.

"Yeah, cherry's my favorite," Luke finally admitted, fiddling with the edge of the afghan draped over his legs. "When I was, like, eight or nine, I used to get those packs of Life Savers that just had the wild cherry flavor and eat the whole pack in about fifteen minutes. My whole mouth would be red the rest of the day, even after I brushed my teeth."

Noah chuckled, digging into the bag with one hand, dropping red candies into the other. "I can just see that," he mused, biting his bottom lip a little as he sorted. "Little Luke gorging on cherry candy, spoiling his appetite for dinner."

Luke rested his elbow against the back of the sofa and tilted his head down onto his fist, lowering his eyelids to half-mast. "Oh, I don't know," he said, bringing his voice down a few registers, not difficult with how raw his throat felt. "I've never really had a problem with having enough appetite for the things I really want."

Luke could tell the second Noah got it. He froze, one hand in the bag, the other still holding the ten or so candies he'd separated out for Luke. His head turned slowly in Luke's direction, and as their gazes met, Luke ran his tongue across his bottom lip.

The next thing Luke knew, the bag of candies was on the coffee table, a pile of red ones sitting next to it, and Noah had crawled up the length of his body on his hands and knees until his face hovered within an inch of Luke's.

"How's that appetite doing right now?" he asked, deep and rumbly, and Luke flicked his eyes down to Noah's mouth, then back up to meet his gaze, dark and heated.

"Let's find out," he murmured back, wrapping his fingers into the back of Noah's hair and bringing their mouths together.