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Off Balance
by Allthinky
Off Balance
Scotty woke up to the sound of a cocktail party in the living room, and for a moment he wondered if an afternoon nap had gone into overtime. He scanned the bedroom in order to get his bearings and realized his first impression had been mistaken. The door between the bedroom and the sitting room of the suite was ajar, and he could see neither bright light nor shadows in the room beyond; just dim lighting. And, as his brain became further alert, he realized that the murmuring from the next room all came from one voice, not a party-sized crowd.
Maddeningly slowly, he was able to gather some scraps of memories from the last few days - he'd been tired after his a chase through some winding roads in the village had led them out to the shoreline, and they'd spent a good hour wading in the breakers, trying to find some trace of the man they were after. Then, despite a good night's sleep ... two or three days ago, he guessed, he'd awakened to the unmistakable symptoms of a cold. His throat hadn't been so much sore as shredded, and the pain in his sinuses had been blinding. With his usual brilliance, he'd taken the longest, hottest shower their antiquated bathroom could provide, and after a hot tea with lemon and honey, he and Kelly had trudged around the island in a drizzle, trying to track down their informant.
Shortly after noon, Kelly had made some veiled comment about dropping Scotty back at the hotel room, for a nap; possibly the word "resurrection" had been spoken. And while Scotty had objected rather vociferously, he'd been too feverish to notice that his partner was only pretending to continue the search for Stephanides, meanwhile taking a circuitous route back to their hotel.
That's when his recall began to falter; he had some nightmarish images, and clearly, based on the state of his pajamas, his fever had only broken recently. As he made to crawl out of bed, a heavy ache set up housekeeping in his right ear.
Oh, misery. He remembered now - hours, possibly days, it seemed, of agony. He'd had earaches as a kid almost constantly, til he'd had his tonsils out, but this one had surpassed what he could recall of his childhood illnesses. He groaned at length, but quietly, until he managed to sit upright on the edge of the bed. His attention was snagged by the voice in the next room - Kelly, of course - getting louder, sounding charmed. Or charming.
Scotty sighed. Here he was on his sick bed, and Kelly was in the next room making time with some girl - probably Scotty's own nurse. As if in reaction to Scotty's thoughts, the sound of Kelly's delighted laughter came wafting through the door.
Scotty'd had enough. As he stood, the ear bothered him some, and his balance was more than a little unreliable. He felt that strangely light-limbed sensation that came to him after a fever; and despite his slightly damp pajamas, he was comfortable without a robe. Thus, in his wrinkled, pajama-clad state, he shuffled slowly and carefully toward the door.
The nearer he got, the clearer it became that Kelly was on the phone, and not flirting with someone there in the room with him; Scotty therefore felt no shame in simply pulling the door open, casting an accusing glare at Kelly, and shouting "Ah HA!"
If he hadn't been so bleary-minded, he surely would have practiced his voice before trying to shout accusingly; he managed, at best, an outraged squeak. And had that been his greatest miscalculation, he might have lived it down - but no. The attempt to shout moved his head enough to unleash an attack of vertigo, and when he reached out with his right arm to catch the door frame, it wasn't there.
From somewhere in front of him he heard Kelly's startled exclamation - which couldn't possibly have been "A hanging bomb!" Nevertheless, that's what it sounded like.
But then Kelly was there, saying quiet and comforting things, and lowering him carefully into the chair he'd just vacated - probably. Things were still a bit too odd for Scotty to be certain.
"Hey, Duke - what was that for? Don't you remember how the pitiful feverish agent is the one who hangs back as a lookout; it's the other guy who does the surprise attack. Only there's no one here to attack, as far as I know ... 'cuz I'm the other guy."
During his monologue, Kelly did his best to make eye contact with Scotty, and not so subtly felt his face and forehead for fever. Finally, Scotty was able to meet his partner's gaze, just in time to see Kelly smile.
"Hey, Herman - looks like you may slowly be returning to the land of the living. Oh - hang on a sec."
The strange broken whine that Scotty had attributed to his mangled hearing turned out to be coming from the phone handset, which Kelly had dropped during his rescue bid, and now retrieved.
"Are you still there, Mom? No - I'm sorry, but Scotty just showed up unexpectedly. Yes - I didn't think so either. Would you like to talk to him? Yes, I thought you might. One moment, okay?"
Offering the phone to Scotty, Kelly took a moment to pat his chest.
"Hey, man, you okay? You want to talk to your mom?"
Choosing his mother over his partner, Scotty took the phone and croaked into it.
"Hello? Mom?"
"Alexander, is that you? Are you feeling better?"
Some deep part of him melted at the familiar tones. He just managed not to weep.
"Yeah, yeah, a lot better. I think. I mean, I just woke up, but since I'm actually upright and everything, and I don't have a fever anymore, I think I may live." He accepted the glass of water his partner held out to him, and drank it all down - slowly, but with enthusiasm, while his mother continued.
"Son, I'm so happy to hear it. Kelly told me that you would be all right, but I was so worried when he told me that you were calling out in your sleep."
"That I was - I was?" He put the empty glass down on the phone table with a thunk, and and looked up at his partner, who was hovering above him, appearing both solicitous and gratified at the same time.
"Now, Alexander, you couldn't help it. Your fever was very high, and you must have been having nightmares about those earaches you had as a child."
"No - well, maybe, Mom, but Kelly shouldn't have worried you about it." The glare he directed at the man in question should've buried him on the spot, but Kelly only offered a fake grimace, and then went to refill the water glass.
"I think I've been your mother long enough to handle a little bit of worry, don't you? And don't go scolding Kelly. He was only trying to take care of you, son, and I hope that what I told him will help. Now, you need to hang up this phone before you run up the bill, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble, you call me on the weekend and let me know how you are, won't you?"
Halfway through his second glass of water, he nodded, then said "I will Mom, I promise. And you take care, too, all right? And say 'hi' to Jo for me. And - I love you Mom."
"Well I love you too, Alexander, and please give my love to Kelly, and tell him thank you from me. Goodbye, now."
"Goodbye, Mom."
He was looking at the headset for several minutes, it seemed, when Kelly took it from him and set it gently in the cradle.
"You called my mother?"
Scotty's voice seemed finally to be in working order.
"Hey, man, how you doing? You wanna head back to bed, or, you hungry or something?"
Scotty sat quietly for a moment, considering.
"To be honest, I am a little whipped. Not hungry yet. But mostly, I want to know what you were doing bothering my mom all the way from Greece?"
Kelly finally had the apparent grace to look a little guilty.
"Look, man, it wasn't a big deal or nothin'. I was up with you, night before last, you know, and you were having fever dreams, and you kept talking to your mom and ... well, I just thought maybe I could give her a call, and find out how - you know, what kinds of things she did for you when you were little, and what you liked in your chicken soup, and like that. And so we talked a little - after I figured out that she was ten hours behind us and all that, so if it was 3 a.m. here, it was early evening there. And this evening, your fever was breaking, and you were doing a lot better, and so I wanted to call her and let her know that you were fine. Is that okay with you?"
For a minute, Scotty just had to sit and take it all in. His playboy partner had called his mother in the middle of the night to get her recipe for chicken soup? But even in his sluggish mind, it made sense. Sitting up in the early morning hours with a feverish partner - why wouldn't Kelly want to talk to the one person on the planet who had shared that unique experience?
He meant to pass along to Kelly his mother's thanks, and ask him for a hand to the bathroom. Instead, he began to giggle. And once he'd started, he couldn't stop.
"Uh, sir? Hello, there, sir? Would you please stop this foolishness, now? There's a sick man in the room, and this is simply unbecoming to a man of your station. Hey? Pal? Come on, man, give a guy a break."
He snuck a glance at Kelly; the man did look awfully tired. Almost as tired as Scotty felt. Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the attack faded away.
"You know what, Duke? You are truly something else. I can't believe you went to all that trouble --"
"Hey, now, wait a minute. You weren't there! I mean you were, obviously, but - let's just say I could live the whole rest of my life without ever seeing you that miserable again, okay, Jack?"
"But Kel, why didn't you just call the hotel doctor? You didn't have to hang around all this time, talking to my mom about chicken soup. It's just - it's just wrong, man."
Kelly shook his head in dismay.
"I do not know what you are talking about - wrong! And I did call the hotel doctor, just for your information. And he said to give you two aspirin and call back in the morning, and you can imagine how much help that was."
"So there you were, up all night, bathing my fevered brow and trying to get me to drink weak tea? Is that how it went?"
"Well, something like that," he said, aiming for matter-of-factness, "What, you don't remember?"
"Not much, I'll tell you that. Just - no fun, is what it was, but I really don't hardly remember much since - wait, what day is it?"
Kelly set about preparing a cup of tea - with plenty of sugar, Scotty noticed, and a fair amount of milk, as well.
"Thursday, why? You got a date?"
Scotty accepted the teacup, thinking as he took the first glorious taste.
"No, man, no date - I'm just trying to piece together the last couple of days of my life. Wasn't it Tuesday when we were wandering around in the rain?"
Kelly crossed his arms and leaned against the bedroom door frame.
"Yeah. Then Tuesday night, you took to your sickbed, and I had a long night - me and your mother, that is. Too bad you weren't there, man, you would've liked it a lot."
Scotty shook his head at the mild teasing.
"But what about Stephanides? We've been in here for forty-eight hours? Washington won't be very --"
"Would you stop worrying? I caught up with him yesterday morning. The first time I thought you were getting better."
"You did?"
"Yes, to both. Too bad you weren't really all there - your fever went down in the early morning, so I checked out that taverna, remember? And found him in the back room eating eggs and playing cards with a goat."
Scotty was pretty sure his hearing was one hundred percent, but -
"A goat?"
"Well, it's a long story, man. But not as funny as when I got back here around eleven a.m. to find you sacked out on the floor holding my shirt and asking about someone called 'Lily'. Then when I tried to get you back to bed, you kept falling down again. Hotel doc said the infection had moved to your inner ear, so he left some magical penicillin, and things got better after that."
Scotty felt himself fading slightly, but he had an important mission to accomplish before he returned to bed.
"Now I know you're lying, Herman, because I never knew any Lily."
"You sure? Because I did worry a little bit that you were telling me you wanted some lilies at your funeral."
"You, sir, are far from funny. Now help me up, I want to take a shower."
"Sorry, Jack. Doc said to make sure you kept that ear dry."
Scotty almost cried.
"Are you serious? We'll tape it up or something. Man, I gotta get rid of this funk, okay?"
"No arguments from me - look, we'll cover it, but you keep your head turned and I'm giving you about one minute in there, okay? Last thing I need is you with an attack of the vapors, falling out and cracking your skull."
"Scout's honor," Scotty swore, solemnly.
Kelly helped him rise from the chair and steadied him on the way to the bathroom, but after the water and tea, he was beginning to feel much more clear-headed, if exhausted. And while his eyes were still a bit bleary with sleep, he could see the lack of sleep and general strain in the lines around Kelly's eyes as his partner stuffed his ear with (fresh) cotton and wrapped a ridiculous bandage around his head.
"Okay, Vincent, in you go."
He stood in the shower, amazed at how a lukewarm trickle could feel so decadent, scrubbing feebly at the grime of two long feverish nights and days, and just tried to let himself ponder what he'd missed by being so delirious. Not only had his partner called his mother in an attempt to ease his sickness, he'd gone ahead and made contact with Stephanides during a lull in the proceedings. He'd always known his partner had many skills, but these events cast Kelly in a whole new light. It was one he thought he could get used to.
A bang on the door let him know his time was up, and because he was tiring anyhow, he shut off the water. Emerging from the shower, he found a pair of clean pajamas on the bathroom counter near a steaming mug of what appeared to be chicken soup. He took a small taste, and the movement of the cup disturbed the cloudy liquid and released the scent of lemon. Avgolemono; definitely not his mother's recipe, but really, just what the doctor ordered.
He dressed and unwrapped his head, after catching sight of himself in the mirror - less Van Gogh than shell-shocked soldier, he thought. He'd almost climbed into his bed when he discovered that his partner was sprawled face down on it, nearly fully clothed. His head was buried beneath the pillow, but an arm emerged from the tangle of bedclothes and agent, one finger indicating the other bed.
"Take that one, it's clean."
"Um, but shouldn't I --"
"Don't argue with a sleeping man."
"Right," he said, shuffling over to the bed with his soup. He downed the last of it while sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating his partner.
"You know, next time I'm sick, I hope you won't be using it as an excuse to make time with my mom."
Kelly made a sound that was part outrage, and part terror, then rolled to his back.
"If you are determined to pick a fight with me, my man, I should remind you that right now you couldn't take a four-year-old with both hands tied behind her back."
Scotty only smiled.
"I think she likes you, though."
Kelly reached above his head without looking and snagged the pillow. For a moment, Scotty thought it might end up in his face, but Kelly only re-buried his own head under it.
"You will not come crying to me if that shower aggravates your ear. Now, say good night, Scotty."
Lying down, Scotty smiled, and did as he was told.
end
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Notes: Thanks to Sarah E . who inspired it, then made it better.
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