Chapter 163: Tuesday
Tamiflu is the best thing ever. Hands down, no competition,
second place is miles behind it.
The last time Tim got the flu he spent seven days utterly
miserable and three just pretty sad after that.
It's day three (Tuesday) and he's feeling, well, not
horrible at all. Not great, not by any stretch of the imagination, but not
terrible either. He's a little sore, a whole lot tired, and the cough is really
annoying, but his fever finally broke, so he's not delirious or shivering.
So, all in all, it could be a whole lot worse.
He woke up a bit after eleven, noticed that he wasn't
shaking any more, took his temperature, saw it was at the high end of the
normal range (okay, yeah 99.5 is technically still a fever, but he's feeling so
much better he's willing to consider himself back to the normal range) and very
slowly (and carefully, Abby's spooned up behind him, and he doesn't want to
wake her up) got up to get a shower.
Shower felt great. Hot water was excellent. He started to
feel weak and shaky again before he got done scrubbing everything, so he didn't
quite get entirely washed off, but all of him got rinsed, the important parts
got scrubbed, and he doesn't smell bad anymore, so that's a victory of sorts,
and if he needed to spend five minutes sitting on the bathroom floor after
getting out of the shower to rest, well, he does have the flu, and hasn't eaten
anything solid since Saturday night.
Eventually he got himself back together enough to get up and
brush his teeth (also excellent, toothbrushes are vastly underrated miracles
and he never wants the inside of his mouth to taste that way again) and walk
very slowly back into their bedroom to put some clean clothing on.
He's still not enjoying the feel of fresh, cold clothing on
his skin, but not being in the clammy, damp sweat-soaked t-shirt and sweatshirt
was good.
At some point between waking up and now, Abby left their
bed, and changed the sheets. He debated between getting back into bed, which
sounded pretty good, or going all the way downstairs to get on the sofa, which
meant he could watch some TV to go with the napping he had planned for today.
TV and napping won over just napping, so he grabbed a
blanket, wrapped it around himself, and slowly shuffled toward the sofa.
He'd gotten himself pretty comfortable on the sofa (lying
down, two blankets, remote within easy reach, but TV not turned on. He's
thinking nap first, then season nine of Supernatural.) when Abby came into the
living room and sat on the sofa next to him.
"You're alive then?"
"Looks like it."
She kissed his forehead. "Good. You feel cooler."
"Still have a little fever, but I'm all here
again."
"Very good. You want some food?"
He shrugged; he's not feeling any burning need to eat.
Probably a pretty good sign that he's not all better. "Tea? Bagel? I was
thinking sleep."
"Okay. You sleep." She was petting him, making
sure the blankets were nice and tucked in around him.
He'd closed his eyes, relaxed a little, and was just starting to drift when something occurred to him. "It's Tuesday, right?"
"Yeah."
"Why are you here?" True, they haven't done the
whole one of them is sick thing before, so he's not sure what the rules are,
but he's fairly certain she doesn't need to take off work just because he's not
feeling well.
"Worked twenty hours yesterday. I'm beat. I'm taking
off until they need more trace run."
"Okay." He thought about that while coughing.
"You aren't getting sick, are you?"
She shook her head. "Just tired. For some strange
reason, I can't work all day, grab a three hour nap, and do it again
anymore."
He stroked her tummy and coughed again. "Some strange
reason, huh?"
"Yeah."
"You wanna nap, too?" He curled onto his side,
coughed yet again, and patted the sofa in front of him.
"I'm good right now. Only been awake half an
hour."
"Okay." So he rolled onto his back again, and went
to sleep.
The next time he woke up, there was tea and a toasted bagel
on the coffee table in front of him. Even better, he felt good enough that he
really wanted to eat them.
He was happily scarfing them down when Abby came back into
the living room. "Thought I heard you up and moving around."
"Yep." He chewed, started coughing, and finally
got his breath back. "I love food."
"Glad to hear it."
He reached for her hand, and she let herself be gently
tugged onto the sofa, next to him. "I love you, too."
She snuggled into him. "Even better."
"I think I said some really," more coughing,
"horrible things to you when you were," and yet more coughing,
"rubbing me down."
Abby leaned back a little to look into his eyes. "Baby,
you were completely out of your head, and I'm sure being rubbed with something
cold and wet felt like torture."
"I'm sorry."
"You say something like that to me when you're sane,
then you can be sorry."
"I say something," very harsh coughing stopped
that sentence for a minute, "like that when I'm sane," even more
coughing stopped him again, "and you should divorce me."
She can see this is serious for him, and he needs to talk
about it. She can also see he can say about four words at a time before he
starts coughing. "Okay, Tim, we can and will talk about this, but not now.
You need to be able to say a full sentence without coughing before we have a
real conversation."
He nodded, agreeing with that, but there was one thing he
needed to know. "Ducky?"
She got that he was asking how much of it Ducky heard.
"Yeah, he was there the whole time. He helped me. You couldn't stay on
your side by yourself, so he held you in place, and I rubbed your back down.
Same thing with getting the sheets changed."
"Great."
"He's not going to hold it against you."
Tim shrugged a little. He knows Ducky isn't going to hold it
against him, but he still doesn't want to explain how he even had phrases like
those in his head, let alone that he'd whip them out when his defenses were
gone.
"You want more to eat?"
He nodded. There's nothing he can do about what happened
with Abby and Ducky, and more food sounded like a great idea.
 |
| Cas, Dean, Sam, & Bobby |
"Wow!" Abby just stared at the TV.
Tim was lying on his side, spooned behind her, on the sofa.
"I didn't see that coming at all."
"Really?" She turned so she was laying on her
back, and he scooted a little further back into the sofa to give her a few more
inches.
"Yeah. Not at all. Cas and Dean," that was too many
words, he started coughing again, but managed to suck in some air to finish,
"sure, but Jesus coming back as Bobby?" They'd just finished the
fourth episode of Supernatural Season Nine.
"You really didn't see that coming?"
He was trying to flash her an irked look while he coughed,
from the way she was smiling, he didn't appear to be succeeding. Finally he
said, "No. I really didn't. How did you see it?"
"Okay, Sam and Dean are the parallel characters for
Lucifer and Michael. John and Bobby are the parallels for Old Testament God and
Jesus. Bobby even rose from the dead after three days."
"Everyone," more coughing, "rises from the
dead on that show. Who hasn't risen from the dead?"
"Adam."
"First man. Eternally damned." Even more coughing.
"He's never getting out of Hell until the rest of mankind is
redeemed."
"Huh…" Abby thought about that for a moment,
staring at the paused end credits. "Hadn't thought of that. Anyway, Bobby
is the parallel to Jesus, so of course—" Abby stopped dead in the middle
of that sentence, her eyes went really wide, and then she grabbed his hand and
pressed it to her stomach. "You feel that?"
From context he knew what she had to be talking about, but,
nope, he didn't feel it.
"Sorry."
"Here, quick." She let go of his hand and yanked
up her t-shirt. "She's still moving."
But even skin on skin, he couldn't feel it.
He shook his head, loving the expression of wonder on her
face and wishing desperately he could feel their baby move. "What's it
feel like?"
She already had her right hand on his left, so she vibrated
the tips of her fingers against the back of his hand, tapping them a little as
well.
"Wow."
"Yeah." There was a brilliant smile on her face as
she said that. "It's soft, and fluttery, and sort of bubbly."
He's grinning now, too. He scooted down and lifted up on his
left arm a bit, so his mouth was hovering over Abby's tummy, and he kissed it
gently, then said, "So, did Bobby being Jesus' vessel surprise you,
too." He paused to cough for a moment. "Or are you agreeing with
Mommy that it was pretty obvious?"
Abby tugged on his hair, and he looked up at her.
"Mommy?"
"Uh, yeah. You're Mom. I'm Dad. That's usually how this
works."
There were tears in her eyes, a wide, glorious smile on her
face, and she gently stroked her fingers over his face. "We're really
going to be Mom and Dad."
He kissed her tummy again, and grinned back at her.
"Yeah, we are." Then his arm started to shake, letting him know he
wasn't healthy enough to lean on it for that long, so he lowered himself back
onto his side, and scooted back up to be face to face with her.
She rolled onto her side toward him, her tummy pressed
against his, her leg over his hip. "Dad, then?"
"Yeah. I don't see being Pa or Father."
She laughed a little at that. "No. I don't see that,
either. 'Course where I'm from we have Mamas and Moms, no one has a
Mommy."
"Which do you want to be?"
"I think we'll get something figured out, probably be
both depending on what's going on. I know my mom was." He nodded and
coughed at that. She kissed the tip of his nose. "No more talking for
you."
He nodded at that, too. The coughing was really frustrating.
He had no idea how much he talked until every other sentence made him feel like
his lungs were trying to explode.
His hand settled on the side of her belly, hoping to feel
something.
"I think she went back to sleep, or turning means I
can't feel her."
He blinked in a I understand sort of way. It was
pretty relaxing to be lying like that. His arm under her neck, her leg over his
hip, his hand on her belly, and he'd been awake for a whole three hours at that
point, so he was probably due for another nap.
And, like when he usually falls asleep his brain sort of
wandered around over the last few things they'd been talking about or doing. It
landed on something he really liked, and wanted to say to her, a lot. So his
eyes popped back open and he said, "I want us to adopt Jethro," which
was followed by more coughing.
She hadn't been party to the way his brain got to that
thought, so she furrowed her brow and looked confused.
"Make it official," the coughing after that was
fairly mild, "have our kids call him Grandpa or something like that,"
unfortunately the coughing that went with that was hard enough it strained the
muscles between his ribs below his scapula, so he groaned and winced to go
along with it.
She put her fingers on his lips. "Really, no more
talking for you. I will get your phone and you can text me if you have to
talk."
He nodded.
"Did you just pull your back?"
He nodded again.
She untangled herself from him, and got up. A few minutes
later she was back with his phone, more tea, an ice pack which he didn't want
anywhere near his body, and two Advil. He took the pills, drank the tea,
coughed a little, winced because it felt like knives in his chest and back, and
glared at the ice pack, typing into his phone: No ice.
"Fine, be sore."
He glared at her, took the ice, and gingerly turned so that
it was tucked between his back and the sofa.
"Better."
Can I have another blanket? He's fairly sure the
fever's completely done now, but even if it wasn't, an extra blanket when
you're lying on a bag of ice doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.
"Sure." She went upstairs and came back with one
more to tuck around him.
Grandpa?
She knelt on the floor in front of him, and kissed him, a
gentle smile on her face. "Yes." Another gentle kiss. "I love
the idea of making it official, of him being Kelly's Grandpa…" She thought
about that for a moment. "Your mom's dad, the one you were really close
to, who was he to you?"
Pop.
"If he likes it, he could be Pop for our kids."
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