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It’s quiet when he enters their apartment, which in itself wasn’t odd. Trowa was a naturally quiet person, after all, but his presence usually filled the space with soft noises regardless. The quiet clacking of keys on his keyboard as he finished up a report. The soft, regulated exhalations of air as he exercised. Water rushing through the pipes as he showered. The low, dulcet tones of his flute. Things that Quatre could usually pick up on the moment he entered their home.
But today, there was nothing. It was quiet and still.
Perhaps he was out. He frowns, pulls out his phone even as he toes off his shoes, checking to see if he’d missed any messages, but there are none.
They were very good at keeping track of one another’s schedules, both having come too close to losing everything to feel comfortable doing anything different. They knew each other's work schedules, and if there was any deviation in their routine they always updated one another.
And so he is fairly confident that Trowa must be in the apartment. Maybe he’s out on the deck, he thinks as he shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it in the foyer closet. They were due for some thunderstorms this evening, and Trowa liked watching the untamed clouds roll in. He steps out of the vestibule and into the living room, crosses it to look out the large glass doors that lead to their patio. The storm clouds are there, brewing dark on the horizon, but no Trowa.
He sighs and continues to the kitchen, still finding no Trowa, only a half-drunk abandoned cup of coffee. That did strike him as odd. Trowa was so fastidious, especially in the kitchen. Frowning, he takes the mug to the sink, dumping its contents and rinsing it before loading it into the dishwasher out of habit.
“Trowa?” he finally calls into the stillness of the apartment, but isn’t surprised when he doesn’t hear a response.
Deciding that there would be some sort of sound if he were in the study or workout spaces, he continues down the hallway to their bedroom.
“Oh, habibi ,” he murmurs, finally spotting him.
He’s curled up in a cocoon of blankets, with only the top of his head peeking out. It’s a clear sign to Quatre that he wasn’t feeling well, as Trowa typically slept under just a light sheet, content to let Quatre hoard all of the blankets instead. He was also an early riser, a morning person , something Quatre avidly was not when he could avoid it, so the fact that he was huddled in bed at five thirty in the evening was a huge red flag.
Gingerly, he sits on the edge of the bed, and pulls back the blankets enough to expose Trowa’s sleeping face. He swipes a hand across his brow, frowning at how hot and sweaty he feels. He’ll have to pry him out of bed at some point, maybe take him for a cool shower. Though he does vaguely remember something about sweating out a fever. He’ll call Sally in a while to get her input.
Trowa stirs at the touch, sleepily blinks up at him. “I think I’m dying,” he croaks, his voice a wreck. He must’ve caught the bought of flu that had been going around the Preventers office.
“You should have called me,” he admonishes gently, bending to press a kiss to his forehead. “I would have come home.”
Trowa shifts slightly, his hand gesturing toward their bathroom door from inside the blanket cocoon. “I forgot my phone in the bathroom,” he murmurs, then shivers and tightens the blankets around himself. “Too far to get it.”
“You must be exhausted,” he murmurs, then smiles softly, brushes his fingers through damp bangs and watches as Trowa’s eyes slip closed again. “I’ll be right back,” he says, pressing another kiss against his forehead.
“Stop kissing me,” Trowa groans. “You’ll get sick.”
Quatre laughs softly, squeezes where he thinks Trowa’s shoulder should be under the blanket. “Have you taken anything?” he asks as he stands, frowning when Trowa shakes his head. Of course he’d attempted to muscle through it. Though, to his credit, Trowa was rarely sick, and when he was, it was rarely this severe. He usually could push through just fine.
He stands and makes his way to the bathroom, finds Trowa’s phone sitting innocently on the vanity. He grabs a washcloth and runs it under cold water for a moment before wringing it out, then takes both it and the phone back to the bedroom. Trowa groans appreciatively as he places the cold compress over his forehead, and Quatre feels a little swell of pride. It’s rare in their relationship that he finds himself in the position of caregiver.
It was far more common that Quatre was the one who needed to be looked after. When Dorothy had stabbed him she’d conveniently obliterated his spleen, which meant that his immune system wasn’t fabulous these days and illnesses tended to hit him pretty hard and fairly often. Trowa was always so tender with him, so doting and patient until he was back on his feet, which was no small task, as Quatre was, admittedly, an abysmal patient. He hated being sick and stuck in bed, especially when there was work to be done.
“Can I use your phone to call you out sick tomorrow?” he asks. He’d left his own on the table in the foyer. When Trowa nods he unlocks the phone, laughing softly when he sees that half-written text intended for him still pulled up.
‘ I think the recruits got me sick. Staying home today. Can you ’... He wonders what it was Trowa had planned to ask for.
He steps out into the hallway to call Une and is just coming back into their room when Trowa has a short coughing fit. “Do you think you could sit up long enough to drink some tea? Maybe have some soup?” he asks as he sits gingerly beside him, his fingers carding carefully though chestnut brown hair.
Trowa grimaces. “Not soup,” he mumbles. “Don’t want to think about food right now.”
“Tea, then?” he asks, and Trowa nods. He bends down and kisses his cheek.
“Stooop,” he moans, some part of him pushing against the blanket to nudge Quatre off the bed. “Don’t want you to catch this.”
“We both know that I’m probably going to, regardless of whether I kiss you or not,” he says as he sets Trowa’s phone onto the nightstand. The taller man rolls his eyes, giving Quatre a mock glare before he coughs again. Quatre pats his cheek fondly before returning to the kitchen to start the kettle. He retrieves his own phone and calls Sally while he waits, writes down her instructions for what medicines to give him before promising to give her an update in the morning. She also promises to send some flu preventative by courier for him, to hopefully help him get ahead of his own inevitable turn with this sickness.
Trowa is dozing again when he returns to the bedroom with the tea, a glass of water, and a dose of flu medicine. It takes some cajoling, but he’s able to get Trowa propped up against the headboard and medicated, with his fingers curled around the warm cup of tea as Quatre skims through channels on the television. He stops on a nature documentary, knowing that it would hold Trowa’s interest enough to distract him from his symptoms but not enough to keep him awake if he needed to sleep.
“Sally says you should be feeling better in about 48 hours,” he says as he slips into bed next to him, adjusting the blankets around him as he does. Trowa feels like a furnace, but he still has the chills, and Quatre doesn’t have the heart to take some of the blankets off. “According to Une, about half your office is down at the moment.”
“Perfect time to start a war in Brussels,” Trowa says dryly.
“Ah, not really,” Quatre hums softly. “Heero’s still going strong.”
“Nevermind then,” Trowa murmurs around another sip of tea. “You don’t have to stay,” he murmurs, his head slipping down to rest on Quatre’s shoulder as he speaks.
“I know,” he replies, gently taking the mostly emptied mug from his hands and setting it on the nightstand.
“I could sleep on the couch,” he slurs.
Quatre rolls his eyes, even though Trowa can’t see him. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t want you to get sick,” Trowa says drowsily, tucking in closer to Quatre’s side. “It’s bad when you get sick.”
Quatre couldn’t deny that he had a point there. “I know. But Sally’s sending me some preventatives,” he says. “I’ll start taking them tonight.”
That seems to appease Trowa some, as he nods and nuzzles himself into the crook of Quatre’s neck. “If you do get sick I’ll take care of you,” he adds, before drifting off with a light snore.
“You always do, love,” he murmurs, before pressing a kiss against the crown of his head. “You always do.”