(no subject)

[longsufferingly]

I was doing a tiny little drabble of sick boys for hd_obsession and started wondering how Tractorbeam!Jensen would do with sick Jared, since we already had sick Jensen and caretaker Jared.

So here's a little bit of sick Jared Tractorbeam fic.

You Can Read Me Anything
716 words, G


Jensen has never in his life had to really take care of anyone.

Once, when he was younger, Mackenzie got sick and he attempted to cure the common cold to help her.

"Just read to me," Mackenize had said. She was always so much younger than him, so much smaller. She was only seven. He knew she wouldn't die of the cold, no matter how bad it was, but he was still scared. So he read to her, as if he could save her.

But even then, it hadn't just been him. Then he'd had his mother to tell him he wasn't supposed to read her articles from the American Journal of Physics, to make her soup, to give her all the emotions Jensen wasn't capable of really showing.

When Jared gets the flu, Jensen is on his own.

Coincidentally, it's very similar to when Jensen was sick; he comes home and finds Jared asleep on his couch, wheezing a little in his sleep.

Jensen is concerned.

"Hey," he says, shaking Jared. "Hey, Jared."

"Mrmph," says Jared, and falls off the couch directly on to Jensen.

Jensen flails a little and wonders if he's going to be crushed to death.

Jared lets out a hacking cough and whimpers.

"You're sick," says Jensen, with rising horror. Jared is sick and full of germs, and he might get Jensen sick, but there's no one else to help, so it has to be him, it has to be Jensen.

Jared just coughs again.

"We need to get you up," says Jensen. He's trying to be as rational as possible. "You're big, so you need to help me. Come on, Jared."

Jared groans and rolls a little, and Jared drags himself off Jensen. Together they manage to get Jared into the bedroom, and Jensen deposits him on the bed and sits down next to him.

"When did you get sick?"

Jared cracks one eye open. "When I woke up this morning."

"Were you feeling sick yesterday?"

"Scratchy throat," says Jared. "Didn't seem like a big deal."

He coughs again, dry and hacking, and Jensen's heart aches.

"We'll get medicine," he says. "Medicine and tea and soup and--what do you need?"

Jared laughs a little. "Never knew you were a mother hen."

"You're sick," says Jensen. "I'm going to make you tea with honey. Honey is a super food."

"I'm gonna stay here and cough and feel like a loser," says Jared. "If that's cool with you."

"Don't feel like a loser," says Jensen. "I'm the loser in this relationship."

Jared smiles before he starts coughing again. "Love you too," is what he finally manages to say, when the coughing dies down, even though Jensen didn't say it first.

Jensen is not good in the kitchen; he makes it too much of a science. But tea is a simple equation: tea bag plus boiling water plus honey equals tea. It's not rocket science, and even if it was, Jensen would be able to do it, and he would, if it would make Jared feel better.

He putters around the kitchen until he finds his germ mask; thinks about putting it on for a long time. Any time Gabe or Chad is even a little sick, he disinfects everything, wears a mask, and sometimes breaks out plastic gloves. But this is Jared. Jared is so tangled up in his life that it's probably too late. And he knows it might be--offensive. It would hurt Jared's feelings if Jensen was distant, and Jensen hates hurting Jared if he knows how to avoid it.

Besides, he wants to do the things his mother did, feeling Jared's forehead, stroking his hair until he feels better.

Jensen knows his hands don't have curing properties. But his mother's always seemed magical.

When he gets the tea into the bedroom, Jared is already asleep, his nose buried in Jensen's pillow.

Jensen puts the tea on the nightstand next to Jared, crawls in to the other side of the bed and tangles his hand in Jared's hair.

"A monk," he starts, finding a graphic novel on his bookshelf, "lived in solitude beside a temple on the side of a mountain."

Jared snuggles against him, coughing a little even as he sleeps, and Jensen keeps reading.