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Phil was drifting somewhere halfway between sleep and wakefulness. It made him feel kind of weightless, like his body wasn’t really there, and he was just suspended in a bubble of vague sensations. He could feel movement, a gentle swaying from side to side, and he could hear sounds too — the soft shush of the air conditioning, a familiar low rumble in the background that he couldn’t quite place, and music.
It was the music his brain latched onto. What was that song? He knew it. He’d heard it very recently… As he came more awake, he realized the music was someone humming. It was a nice tune….gentle…good for waking up to. He knew now that he was waking up. He could feel the bed beneath his back, the pillows his head was leaning against.
“Hmmm,” he sighed, a mostly-meaningless sound that was half an expression of comfort, half one of regret over having to wake from a very nice nap.
The music stopped. That’s when he realized that the sound had been coming from very nearby. Whoever had been humming was lying right next to him. He felt fingers on his forehead then, brushing his fringe to the side. His lips twitched a little, forming an involuntary smile.
“You waking up, Sleeping Beauty?” he heard someone say in a soft, low voice — Dan. The person beside him was Dan.
“Mmm,” Phil said, mostly awake now but not quite ready to open his eyes. He could feel the heaviness in his chest and the scratchiness in his throat that reminded him why he’d been fast asleep in the middle of the day. He’d been knocked out by a pretty bad cold.
“It’s almost time for more of your drugs, you sicko,” he heard Dan say and could tell from the sound that Dan was leaning away. He must be reaching for Phil’s cold medicine. “If you can rouse yourself for long enough to take them, that is.”
Phil let his eyes flutter open at last, squinting in the blinding white light pouring through the window beside him. He rolled onto his side, away from the window and the painful light, and right into Dan’s body.
“Whoa there,” Dan said as Phil’s face squished into his arm. “You almost gave yourself a bath in bed.”
Phil squinted up and made out something shiny hovering above his face — a glass of water held aloft in Dan’s hand.
“Well, why were you sitting so close to me anyway?” he grumbled, his voice hoarse from sleep and illness. Despite the annoyance in his words, he took the opportunity to wriggle closer to Dan’s warm body. His fever must be going up again because even though it was a sweltering summer day outside, the air conditioning here inside the bus was making him shiver.
Dan clicked his tongue, and though Phil couldn’t see his face from this angle, he could just imagine him rolling his eyes.
“This isn’t exactly a king-sized bed,” he pointed out. “Where else was I supposed to sit? On the roof?”
“On the moon,” Phil muttered, closing his eyes again and letting himself go completely lax against Dan’s side. God he was exhausted.
“Hey, don’t go back to sleep yet,” Dan objected, nudging him a bit with his hip. “You still need to take your drugs.”
“Stop calling them drugs,” Phil complained. “That joke is so tired.” He added after a moment, “I’m so tired.”
“Are you gonna sit up and take them then?”
“You sound like my mum.” Phil stuck out his lower lip, knowing he probably looked silly, but not caring. Sick people were allowed to look silly, and anyway, it was only Dan here to see him.
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to talk like a mum if you weren’t acting like a four-year-old,” Dan returned.
“Fine,” Phil sighed and pushed himself up at last, blinking as the room swam before his eyes. He had to put out a hand to steady himself against the bed until the dizziness passed. When his eyes came into focus, he could see Dan at last, dressed in his pajamas still though it was mid-afternoon, with the back of his hair half sticking up. If he’d had a bit more energy, he would have reached out and smoothed it down. But he didn’t, so instead he took the glass of water and the two orange capsules Dan was holding out to him and swallowed them down quickly. Dan was eyeing him with concern, so he offered him a small, reassuring smile before handing him the glass once again and collapsing back onto the pillows.
“How are you feeling?” he heard Dan’s voice ask. His eyelids had already fallen closed again. A hand came up and pressed against his forehead, the skin of it feeling cool against his own skin. He was definitely feverish.
“Like an entire colony of mole rats has decided to build a burrow in my brain,” Phil said, coughing a little to try to loosen the tightness in his chest.
“Now that’s a colorful image,” Dan chuckled. He paused, then said, “Feels like you’ve got a slight fever, but the medicine should take care of that,” and the hand disappeared from Phil’s forehead. Phil was on the verge of protesting when he felt Dan’s arm come around his shoulders instead, pulling him into the other man’s side once more. He sighed and let his cheek fall against Dan’s chest, sneaking one hand up to his stomach and giving it a little rub. There was something so comforting about running his palm over the soft roundness of Dan’s stomach.
“What was that song?” he murmured after a moment.
“Huh?”
“The one you were humming earlier,” he elaborated.
“Oh,” Dan said, “I thought you were still asleep.”
“I kinda was,” Phil said, the last word cut off by a sudden yawn. “Kinda still am,” he added in a scratchy voice, stretching his back a bit and then nestling down into a more comfortable position.
“It was this,” Dan said and started humming the song again. Phil listened for a while, his breathing growing deep and even as he concentrated on the sound resonating through Dan’s chest. When Dan stopped, he frowned.
“I still don’t know what it is,” he muttered, yawning again. “Sounds so familiar, though.”
“It’s the ending theme from Fruits Basket,” Dan told him, a hint of amusement in his voice. “The anime we’ve been watching nearly every day for the past—“
“Ohhhhhh,” Phil said, finally recognizing it. “The one that goes ‘La la la la la la la something something love and life.’”
“That’s the one,” Dan replied, rubbing his palm up and down Phil’s arm a little.
“Mmm,” Phil let out a little hum of his own, enjoying how soothing the soft, rhythmic movement was. He could feel himself starting to drift off again. “You should keep humming it,” he murmured, the words so slurred he thought Dan probably wouldn’t even understand them.
But a moment later, Dan started humming again, his voice soft so that Phil’s cheek could only feel the faintest vibrations of the sounds inside Dan’s chest. Dan was slightly off-key, but that only made Phil smile. He took a deep breath and let it out gradually, imagining that all the tension in his body was leaking out with the air.
The bed beneath them was swaying gently back and forth, back and forth with the motion of the bus. Dan’s hand was rubbing very slowly up and down his arm. And he could hear Dan’s voice, humming low in the back of his throat, growing more and more distant with each passing moment. When Phil finally slipped away back into sleep, the ends of his lips were curled up in the tiniest smile of contentment.