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As a matter of principle, Michael doesn’t believe in getting sick, which might be why he doesn’t accept his obvious illness until he parks outside Adam’s squat apartment building and and succumbs to the coughing fit he’s been holding in for five miles. He’s felt off all day, warm and slow and achy, but it’s this eruption that reminds him that a good person, as he is pretending to be, would not choose to infect his friend with an illness just to keep from being alone.
He calls Adam, who picks up on the first ring and says, “Oh, good, you’re not dead.” Michael doesn’t respond because he doesn’t understand this opener and because he has muted his phone to blow his nose. “You’re an entire two minutes late; I was starting to worry.”
“You’re always late,” Michael says, and then has to unmute his phone and repeat himself. It sounds even more childish the second time around.
“No, I know. It was a joke because you’re usually like, twenty minutes early. Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Michael says, feeling the instinctive urge not to be a burden. “I mean, no. I’m sick. I won’t be able to make it today.”
“Aw, that sucks.”
Michael is analyzing Adam’s tone for genuine disappointment when an ambulance rushes by, its siren blaring. He hears it from the street on his left and again from the phone pressed to his ear. Adam must hear it too because he asks, “Hey, where are you?”
Michael wishes he had the nerve to hang up; it feels much too revealing to admit how far he made it before deciding to turn back. “I just parked. I felt all right when I left home.“ This is a lie, but it’s nothing compared to the lies he’s telling Adam every second they spend together. “But now I’m realizing— Well, I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Oh, then you should just come up. I have an immune system of steel; I’m not worried about it.” Another coughing fit overtakes Michael before he can refuse. When it subsides, Adam says, “Yeah, seriously, get up here or I’m going to have to come down and get you, and it’s way too cold for that. Please don’t make me put on shoes.”
Michael smiles into the wind, already most of the way out of the car. “If you insist.”
He has to pause on the fourth floor landing to catch his breath, which takes several minutes longer than it should. He feels much too disgusting to see Adam and much too tired to go back down to his car. With only bad options, he makes himself move forward.
Adam opens the door holding a mug of tea, which he shoves into Michael’s hands, only to have to take it back so that Michael can shrug off his coat.
“God, you look awful,” Adam says. Michael winces. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just, you’re definitely sick. Here.” He returns the mug. Chilled from the winter air, Michael holds both hands to the hot swell of the ceramic, leaving him unable to stop Adam from pressing a hand to his forehead. Michael freezes, his entire world narrowed down to the place where their flesh meets. Adam’s eyes bore into his. The back of his hand is very cool and very smooth, and Michael has to hold very still to keep from leaning into it.
Adam pulls away too soon, his face creased with concern. “You’re burning up! Sit down.” Somehow, Michael’s coat is in Adam’s arms, and Michael himself is being propelled toward the couch, Adam’s hand flat against his back. “Have you ever heard of dressing down? I’m getting you some pajamas.”
“I don’t need—“ Michael starts, but Adam has already disappeared into his bedroom. Michael allows the couch to swallow him up. The ceiling light burns his eyelids red.
Something lands in his lap, and he opens his eyes to see Adam standing over him and grinning. He’s emerged from his bedroom with a massive sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants, both worn soft and smelling of detergent. Michael frowns down at the smiling sun on the front of the sweater.
“They’re clean, I promise.” Adam claps his hands. “All right, I’ll let you get changed.” He once again leaves the room without giving Michael a chance to protest that he’s perfectly comfortable in his own clothes, a polo shirt tucked into his most casual slacks. It’s technically though not spiritually a lie since he can’t imagine he’ll be any more comfortable in clothes he knows have touched Adam’s skin.
After confirming that the blinds are drawn, Michael pulls the sweatshirt on over his polo and then, after a pause, swaps his slacks for the proffered pajama pants. The sleeves fall down over his hands while he’s trying to cuff the pantlegs, which is, of course, when Adam reenters the room. At the sound of footsteps, Michael jolts upright to see Adam gazing at him, a strange expression on his face. The sudden movement makes Michael’s head swim, and Adam’s expression goes from softly fond to distressed in a split second.
“Here, lie down,” he says, prodding Michael until he’s mostly horizontal, the velvet of the couch’s arm tickling his cheek. “Is it warm enough in here? Do you want some soup?” Michael shakes his head, meaning no, he does not want soup, but Adam drops a blanket on top of him.
“This is completely unnecessary,” Michael says, straining to speak normally despite his stuffed-up nose. He unfolds the blanket and drapes it over himself, pulling it up to his chin. Adam smiles down at him, which makes him glad he did it.
“You seem like a work-through-the-pain kind of guy. Just the fact that you made it over here sort of makes me doubt your judgment.”
Michael is, as Adam put it, a ‘work-through-the-pain kind of guy’; what he considers his best ever homily was written while ignoring stomach pains that turned out to be appendicitis, but that is wholly separate from the fact that he didn’t want to cancel on Adam.
“Drink your tea.” Adam nods to the mug that has somehow made its way to the coffee table. Michael doesn’t remember putting it there, but then, he was distracted by Adam's easy approach to physical contact. The teabag string is wound around the handle, and the bag itself has come untethered at the bottom of the mug, where it rests on a lemon slice. Michael adjusts his position so that he can take a drink without pouring now-lukewarm tea all over himself. He has to fight to keep a straight face; it's over-steeped and impossibly bitter.
Adam drags a stool over from the kitchenette and sits down by the couch. He’s very close, close enough to reach out and touch Michael’s forehead again, which he does not do. “Does it taste okay?” he asks.
Michael says, “It’s wonderful,” and he thinks, I’m in love with him, the words with the force of a gunshot. He tugs the blanket over his mouth as if this will keep them from spilling out.
Adam must interpret the look on Michael’s face as another symptom; he asks, “Have you taken anything?” Michael barely has time to shake his head before Adam is off to the bathroom, raising his voice so that Michael can hear him over the distance and the rattling of bottles being moved around. “I have... aspirin, Icy Hot, ooh! DayQuil.” He emerges bearing the bottle triumphantly, then squints at it. “Shit, it’s expired.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“No, it’s crazy expired. Like, ‘it might have been here when I moved in’ expired. I’ll just run to the drugstore.”
Michael barely hears him, too distracted by the words in love circling in his head. He’s been aware of his desire for Adam for some time, but he’s never applied the word love to it before. Love is not want, is not dirty or illicit. The thought doesn’t feel as dangerous as he suspects it should. It feels contained, almost safe. It feels true. There will be fear later, he knows, and self-loathing, but now, in Adam’s bright, cheery apartment, he doesn’t feel wrong.
The front door creaks open. When Michael looks up, he sees Adam already halfway out of the apartment, car keys dangling from one hand. He points at Michael, his face serious. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Michael wonders whether he’s somehow misled Adam about the severity of his illness, but he doesn’t protest, only sinks more fully into the couch. He thinks he likes the apartment better without Adam in it, a thought he spares a moment to feel guilty about. Without Adam, he has room to breathe. He can imagine what it would be like to live here, a nice fantasy for a not-especially-nice apartment. It’s small, and the institutional white paint on the walls bubbles alarmingly, and the only window in the living room looks out on the uneven brick wall of an alley. Despite its flaws, it’s neat and lived-in. Scores of novelty mugs hang from hooks in the kitchen. Books sit in a stack on the coffee table. The top one is about an Arctic expedition, the bottom one is about the history of haunted houses, and several of those in between appear to be for children. When Michael picks one up, it falls open in his hand and several pages slip free. He pushes them back in and replaces the book, heart racing. When Adam doesn't reappear in the doorway, furious at the manhandling of his belongings, Michael sinks back into the fantasy. He allows himself to pretend that he is the person who lives here, that he is the person who picked out this ergonomically unsound couch, that he is the person who bought and destroyed these books, that he is the person who posed for and framed these sloppy candids, many of which are out of focus or have the shadow of a thumb in-frame.
His phone vibrates across the coffee table, and he feels, for a second, the unshakable conviction that Adam knows what he’s thinking, but it’s just a text reading, “hey do u ahve a favorite soup answer quick.”
“Chicken noodle,” Michael sends back, not because it’s true but because it seems like the right answer: conventional and sure to be available wherever Adam goes. Smiling down at Adam's responding thumbs-up emoji, he realizes he wouldn’t know what to say if he wanted to be honest. He asks himself what his favorite food is and finds he doesn’t know that either. The question of his favorite book turns up the same non-answer, as does his favorite movie. He tries not to be bothered by this inadequacy. Children have favorite colors, favorite shapes, favorite animals, but adults know better. Adults know you take what you can get.
Though Adam instructed him to respond promptly, he doesn't return for almost an hour. Finally, just as Michael's beginning to really miss him, he clatters in the door, cheeks pink from the cold, arms weighed down with plastic bags.
When he sets the bags down on the coffee table, Michael can see several cans of soup threatening their structural integrity. Adam unpacks his purchases in the living room even though most of them belong elsewhere, like he wants to show off.
“So I got DayQuil, NyQuil, tissues—“ He maneuvers a three-box value pack out of one of the bags, and Michael surreptitiously checks his nose to make sure it isn’t running. “Chicken noodle, tomato, cream of mushroom—no offense but it seemed very ‘you.’ Let’s see, let’s see...”
“How much do I owe you for all of this?” Michael asks, because it’s important information and because a bag on the floor holds a small humidifier, and if he has to hear Adam acknowledge that he bought an actual appliance because Michael had a cough, he might lose what’s left of his composure. The words in love beat a tattoo on the inside of his skull.
Adam stops digging to frown at him. “Seriously? You don’t owe me anything. You’re my friend, and you’re sick.”
“I appreciate your concern, but this seems excessive.”
Adam’s gaze is drawn like a magnet to the humidifier sitting on the floor. His face is still pink. “It was on sale,” he says in a petulant tone that makes Michael nearly certain he’s lying. “Besides, it’s not like it’s just for you. Unless you’re planning to use up three boxes of tissues, two bottles of cold medicine, a dozen cans of soup, and like, an entire humidifier while you’re sick.”
All Michael can think to say is, “I’m not sure what it means to ‘use up’ a humidifier.”
“Exactly. So shut up about paying me back for things I basically bought for myself.”
When Michael was a child, he sometimes overheard well-meaning strangers telling his father that Lucifer and Gabriel had his eyes or his nose or, once, his earlobes. They didn’t—they were just as adopted as Michael and Raphael, but they were white and Michael and Raphael were black. As an adult, Michael knows that it was just an easy comment to deploy, particularly with two boys who certainly couldn’t be complimented on their behavior, but at the time, he found it alienating in a way he didn’t and still doesn’t have words for, a hurt that went beyond how he would have thrilled at any comparison to his father. Now he thinks all of those self-conscious moments were worth it because, being reasonably brown, he can’t turn bright pink like Adam is now.
“I should put these away,” Adam says, gathering the soup cans in his arms and turning toward the kitchen.
Michael reaches out and puts a hand on his arm, surprised by his own boldness. “Thank you for this. It was very kind.”
Adam doesn’t make eye contact. “Yeah, man, no problem.”
He makes a lot of noise in the kitchen, more noise for much longer than should be required to place a few cans in a cabinet. While he’s gone, Michael helps himself to a dose of cold medicine, choosing the nighttime formula rather than the non-drowsy daytime one. It’s barely six, but congestion has kept him up several nights in a row, and he’s much too tired to navigate the situation he’s found himself in.
When Adam comes back, he looks at the measuring cup with its sickly green residue. “Oh man, that stuff hits me hard. You can take my bed if you want. I’m good on the couch.”
The thought of lying in Adam’s bed makes Michael feel like he’s having a heart attack, and he shakes his head mutely.
“All right. Do you want me to go so you can sleep?”
“No,” Michael says, too quickly. “You should stay. If you want to, that is. I would also be fine on my own, of course.”
Adam smiles like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. His face has returned to its ordinary color, but Michael’s cheeks are warm. “Well, if you’re sure. Should I put something on?”
Michael shrugs. He doesn’t mind what Adam does, as long as he stays. Adam chooses a cartoon Michael’s never heard of.
After several too-loud, too-bright episodes, Adam says, “I know you’re not dying or something. And obviously you’re an adult and you can take care of yourself. I just.” He shrugs and looks away. “I got sick a lot as a kid. Nothing serious, just a lot of colds. It’s weird because I never do now, like I filled my quota or something. My mom tried to take off work, but sometimes she couldn’t. And then when I was old enough to heat up my own soup and not accidentally O.D. on cold medicine, she didn’t usually try all that hard. And that’s—it’s not like I blame her or something. We needed the money, and her boss was an asshole, and a ten-year-old doesn’t actually need someone holding his hand while he coughs, you know? But sometimes it was just lonely. And I guess I didn’t want you to be lonely.”
Michael smiles into the blanket. He thinks of the days when Adam’s voice from the other side of the confessional was all he had and marvels at how far he’s come. “I’m not lonely,” he says, and is pleased to find that it’s true.
“Good. I’m not lonely either.” Adam smiles. “So you know.”