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Etho is curled up underneath his one nice wool blanket on the couch picking at the bandage nestled in the crook of his elbow when the phone rings.
He left it, fuck, he left it on the kitchen counter.
It’s so cold in the apartment. It shouldn’t be, it’s boiling outside, but he feels cold. Shivers wrack his whole body, he even feels his feet quake. He’s not moving from under this blanket. It’s probably the blood draw from a few hours ago making him feel so awful anyway. Not that they’re really meant to do that, but Etho’s always been sensitive to anything medical.
That’s why he avoids it.
His friends press him about it sometimes. He comes down with a cold and suddenly he has at least a dozen people hounding him about urgent care and nurse lines and office visits. His favorite excuse is that he can’t afford the copay. Generally, if you pull the money-issues card folks will back right off. It’s not a complete lie either. If he had a copay, which his insurance does not require, he wouldn’t be able to pay it.
It doesn’t matter. He had to stop using the excuse after Cleo venmo-ed him fifty bucks and drove him to urgent care herself.
Etho tries not to blame her for his current problems, but the thought of it being her calling him strengthens his resolve to not answer.
The phone’s insistent buzz against the vinyl of his countertops finally stops. He pulls the blanket up past his mouth and settles in for a nap. When he wakes up it’ll be time to take off the uncomfortable bandage.
His eyes slide shut, but right as he finds that warm place between sleep and wakefulness, the phone begins to kick up a fuss again.
Tossing the blanket off himself, he stumbles to his feet and wanders half-blind with frustration to the countertop.
“ What? ” he hisses.
“Geez, Eefo, your very good, very considerate friend Joel gives you a call to check in on you and you respond with aggression? Not very cool of you.”
Joel sounds a little hurt, despite covering it with his usual bravado. To be fair, Etho was expecting Cleo. She’s a little better at handling his grumpier moods. Dating him for a little bit will do that to a person.
Well, Etho feels a little bad now. He exhales slowly, trying to gain some composure. “What are you checking in about? I'm fine.”
“Can't a guy worry about his buddy, unprovoked! I was thinking about you!” he says before immediately backtracking. “Not that I think about you often. I was just thinking about how obsessed with me you are, that's all.”
Etho stays silent. Joel will usually get to the point eventually, if you just give him a moment to ramble.
“You skipped another tabletop session,” Joel finally admits his reason for calling.
Right, a couple members of their obnoxiously large friend group meet for tabletop role-playing games every other week or so. Etho hasn't been going. Not since he tried to go while feeling a bit under the weather and ended up with a group trip to the ER. According to everyone involved, painful breathing is not normal. That was after the first time Cleo got him to the hospital. Bdubs and Grian took it as a lesson in getting Etho medical attention.
He's still figuring out how to make them relearn minding their own business .
Regardless, he's been avoiding their games. It's easier to mute Grian's group chat than to explain his current situation.
Etho weighs his options carefully before responding. “I wasn't feeling it.”
It's good. It doesn't give away too much.
There's a slight commotion on Joel's end, one that Etho is strangely familiar with, before Lizzie's sweet voice comes across the phone.
“Do you need us to come by? Are you feeling bad again?” she asks.
When Lizzie says “bad” she doesn't mean “sick.” This is immediately obvious to Etho. Lizzie, Joel, and Etho have a bit of an agreement. When Lizzie or Joel are sick, Etho comes over and makes them soup. The three of them bundle onto the couch with blankets and personalized stuffed animals and watch movies until the sick party feels a little better. Etho has stayed for a week at a time before.
For Etho, Joel and Lizzie come and keep him company when he doesn't feel entirely safe around himself. He's embarrassed to admit it, but sometimes that dreadful little voice in the back of his head gets too loud and he can't discern between safety and anger and fear. He hates when people witness it, but he's also not stupid enough to try and bear it alone. Anymore, at least. He's chosen Lizzie and Joel as the people who can see him like that. They're the only two these days.
He's not feeling bad right now.
“No, I'm fine, really. You don't need to come over.” He spends another few minutes fending off the couples’ concerns before quietly hanging up and crawling back under the blanket on the couch.
There is a bag from the facility he visited for his blood draw resting on the coffee table. Its contents loom over him. Tomorrow. That's tomorrow's problem.
#
The day doesn’t seem to want to allow Etho some rest. After talking with Lizzie and Joel, he had turned off his phone and decided to sleep through the afternoon. Naturally someone knocks on the door waking him from the dregs of his latest attempt at a nap.
Jokes on them, Etho has a carefully honed skill of ignoring visitors.
It works best on visitors who don’t have a key. Which is apparently not his current interlopers; the lock slides open and the door follows in its steps moments later. He already knows who it is.
Etho stumbles to his feet and tosses the blanket over the items from the lab.
“I told you, you didn’t need to come over,” he snaps. He sways as he says it. His head suddenly aches and the world feels terribly unbalanced.
Lizzie rushes across the room and steadies him. Joel ambles in after her, his forearm crutches clicking against his hardwood floor. Etho loses track of Joel while his head spins. He tries to push away from Lizzie, but she manhandles him down onto the couch and into Joel’s arms. Well, at least he knows where Joel is again. The three of them stay very still for a beat while Etho’s head clears.
Lizzie sits down on the coffee table in front of them. “I’m sorry I touched you without permission,” she begins. “I didn’t want you to fall.”
Joel starts to unwind his arms from around Etho, but Etho grabs his wrist. The other man is warm, is all.
“It’s okay,” he slurs. Lizzie’s face pinches. She brings a hand up to his forehead, but stops before she touches him.
“Can I touch you?”
Etho nods and her hand comes to rest on his forehead. She clicks her tongue in disappointment and Etho shrivels under her stern glare. “You have a fever, dear. Where is your Tylenol?”
“I’m out. Don’t need it. Just a blood draw.”
She hums good-naturedly. “A blood draw wouldn’t make you feel sick. I’ll go get you Tylenol.”
“It was ten tubes,” he says petulantly.
Her hand travels down from his forehead to cup his cheek. “I’ll be back soon, okay? Stay with Joel.” She smiles and then stands up. She presses a quick kiss to Joel’s cheek, Etho hears the soft smack of it, and then heads towards the door.
Etho shrinks down, sliding out of Joel’s arms, and stretches across the couch to put his head in Joel’s lap. Joel’s fingers are immediately in his hair, scratching at his scalp. They bask in each other’s company for a bit before Joel takes a deep breath. Oh, he’s going to say something serious isn’t he. Etho can tell he’s hyping himself up.
Joel starts slowly, “I know I have a super comfortable lap and everyone would kill to be in your position right now, but my legs hurt a bit today.”
“Shit, sorry.” Etho pulls himself up into a sitting position and scoots away. It’s not that he forgets about Joel’s cerebral palsy, some days are just better than others and Etho doesn’t like to assume what Joel can and can’t do. Joel is very tactile, but Etho shakes with the thought of adding to his pain.
Joel doesn’t seem to care, he scoots himself over to press his side against Etho’s. “I didn’t say to stop touching me altogether!” He shifts into a more comfortable position. “You know, if you’re having a hard time you can lean on us right? Even when it’s physical pain.”
He knows he can, but he doesn’t want to bother them too much. He can’t become a burden. He needs them to keep him.
They spend the rest of the time waiting for Lizzie in relative silence. Whether it's because neither of them know what to say or they just want to enjoy the quiet is unknown, Etho’s just begrudgingly happy to not be alone.
Lizzie opens the door gently and spares no time returning to Etho and cracking open a bottle of Tylenol that she dumps into his waiting hand. She takes the blanket off the table and stops as she reads the words on the bag sitting there.
“Wait! Don’t take the Tylenol!”
Etho stops with his hand half-raised toward his mouth. He follows her gaze to that awful test kit that’s been causing him so much grief and cringes.
“You can’t take NSAIDs while doing a 24 hour urine collection, Etho. Why didn’t you tell me?” She holds out her hand for the pills back. He returns them with no small amount of shame.
“It’s embarrassing,” he mumbles.
Both Lizzie and Joel shake their heads vehemently. It’s kind of funny, the synchronization. The two of them make eye contact then, both their eyes narrowing. Joel wins whatever argument just occurred.
He shifts to face Etho rather than remaining tucked into his side. “Nothing medically necessary is embarrassing. It’s important to me that you know that. Would you think anything I’ve had to do is embarrassing?” He doesn’t wait for Etho to respond. “Were you going to do it tomorrow? We’ll stay with you.”
Etho opens his mouth to refute, but Lizzie beats him to speaking.
“We just don’t want to leave you sick and alone and doing a medical test you clearly haven’t read all the instructions for, but…” she trails off for a moment. “If you’re really uncomfortable with us helping you or knowing any medical information of yours right now, we will leave.”
He can tell she feels some reluctance in offering to leave, but she’s always been so careful with Etho. It must come from being in a bit of a caregiving position to Joel. Lizzie is always taking steps to be a better ally to their disabled friends. Something in him bristles at receiving that same care, but… If his blood tests, and eventually this test, come back with the results he’s dreading, then he supposes he’ll join that subsect of their friend group.
He responds quieter than he means to, “You can stay. We can. Talk about it.”
She reaches forward and pulls him into a gentle hug. “Thank you, but let’s talk tomorrow? I want you to get some rest, okay?”
Etho likes to think of it as her caregiving mode. It’s like a switch activates. She throws herself into the action of keeping her boys comfortable and safe. She walks Etho to his bedroom and gets him situated in bed before returning with Joel. The bed doesn’t quite fit all three of them and Joel can’t sleep on the couch, so he usually ends up in the bed with Etho. She takes Joel’s forearm crutches and helps him take off his KAFOs. The moment she leaves, Joel snuggles up to him, but makes Etho stay on his back.
It makes sense once Lizzie returns with a cold washcloth for his head. She kisses Joel on the cheek and eyes Etho very carefully. He watches her internal battle, but something must give because she giggles and comes over to his side again and lands a large performative peck against his cheek. He laughs and pushes her away.
“I’ll change out the washcloth a couple times through the night, but you go to bed now.” She points a threatening finger in his direction and leaves to the living room to get some sleep herself.
Etho falls asleep with a smile on his face.
#
He is immediately grumpy again when Lizzie wakes him up the next morning. She has the kit from the lab unpacked on the kitchen counter and a cooler filled with ice outside the bathroom door. He gestures to it menacingly.
“What’s that for?”
She eyes him suspiciously. “It’s the piss cooler. Where were you going to put the collection jug?”
“The fridge?”
“No!” she shouts.
He throws up his hands. She pushes him to the door. “Don’t collect anything this time. You start the next time. I’ve already written the date and time on the jug.”
He shudders. “Do you really have to help with this so much?”
“Yes. Now go.”
She wanders off and he disappears into the bathroom. What an awful day he is going to have.
When he comes back out Lizzie has Joel settled at the table and is beginning to make breakfast. Joel has his arms splayed over the table and his cheek pressed into the wood of it. He’s vaguely protesting being awake. Etho sits at a chair to his left and Joel raises his head to look at him. A positively evil smile comes over his face.
“So, how much did you piss.”
Etho flushes red. Lizzie cuts in, “Leave him alone, Joel. Besides, it hasn't really started yet.”
There is no way Etho survives this.
Lizzie cracks a couple eggs into a bowl. “Do you want to talk to us now, Etho? About what’s been going on?”
He finds that he actually does. He trusts them, all of them still in their pjs and about to enjoy a meal together. “Yeah, uhm. It started when Cleo took me to the hospital that one time. If you remember. I got really sick while I was there and I just kept feeling worse to be honest. Bad enough I willingly went to the doctor to see if anything extra was wrong.
“I mean, it still took me a while to work up to that, I guess. Too long. It, hmm, hurt. For a while. Everything did. It was the numbness in my legs that scared me the most. They still want me to do a nerve conduction study about that, but I’m a little nervous. Anyway, it must be bad news. They didn’t say it super clear, but I think they’re testing for lupus.”
He read online that lupus is more common in women. It made his dysphoria flare up. Sometimes it feels like he can’t escape femininity in medicine. They always want to know what gender he was assigned at birth and he gets it, fine, biological sex plays a part in medical care. Doesn’t make it hurt to be reminded it of any less.
“Okay, how can we support you?” Joel asks.
It doesn’t click for Etho right away. “In what way?”
“If you have it. You’ve been struggling a bit since you first got sick, how can we help?”
“You don’t have to.”
“We want to,” Lizzie reminds him.
This is too much right now. It’s not even confirmed. He doesn’t want to think about it. “Can we cross that bridge when we come to it?”
“Of course. For now, why don’t you drink something. Nothing more than you normally would, though. It’ll throw off the results.”
He groans at the reminder of his test and grabs his water filter to pour a couple glasses for everyone. He’ll drink just a bit more than usual. No one needs to know how dehydrated he normally is.
#
He survives the test. Lizzie and Joel came with him to turn it in to the phlebotomist. They even took him out for ice cream for doing it. He felt silly getting a treat for doing his stupid medical test, but he can’t deny that it eased some of his grief.
Coincidentally, they are with him when he gets the call about the test results too. Except, they don’t tell him. His doctor’s nurse has him make an appointment. There is something foreboding about it.
“That means it’s bad news, right? They wouldn’t make me come in just to tell me everything is fine?” he asks them.
Lizzie has a very solemn expression when she responds. “You don’t know that.”
He did, in fact, know that. He went to the appointment. Joel wasn’t feeling super mobile that day, but Lizzie waited for him in the lobby of his doctor’s office.
It is lupus. Of course. He waits until he gets to the car to cry at least.
Once they’re in the car, he pulls down his mask to prevent it from getting wet.
“It’s not fair,” he hiccups.
Lizzie has a vice grip on the steering wheel, determined to get them home. “I know. I’m sorry.”
It hurts. It hurts. He was healthy. This shouldn’t happen to him.
He cries the whole way home and up the elevator. He manages to silence the roiling ugly sobs that pour out of him by the time Lizzie opens the door. Joel is sitting on the couch, bundled under a few random blankets with pillows around him. His head snaps toward Etho has the door opens and his face falls.
“Oh, Etho…” he says and Etho is stumbling across the room and falling to his knees in front of Joel, coming to rest his head on the pillow in Joel's lap.
He tries to hide there, but his shoulders shake as he begins to sob again. Joel pets his hair with one hand and rubs up and down his back with the other. Lizzie comes over to kneel beside him and tugs him into a hug. The hands on his head and back follow. Etho wonders if Joel needs to touch him in the same way that he needs to be touching Joel right now.
He rests in Lizzie's arms until he feels properly wrung out and dry of tears.
Joel breaks the silence first. “Well at least we're disability buddies now.”
One of Lizzie's arms leaves Etho and Joel yelps shortly after. She must have pinched him.
“Too soon,” she hisses, but Etho is giggling a little bit.
He sobers quickly and pulls his head away from Lizzie's shoulder. Joel makes obnoxious grabby hands at him. He bats them away for now. “Do we have to talk about things now?”
“We can,” Lizzie says.
“If you want,” Joel adds.
Etho works through the options for what he can say. Lands on, “So, I'm always going to hurt like this?”
Joel answers, “Not always. I don't know lupus that well, but I think there's flare-ups. They can help you manage them.”
“How will I do things when I'm in so much pain?” he asks, then tries to explain further. “It's been hard to leave the house. I still need to work and do things.”
It's a hard question to answer, he realizes. Lizzie does try her best. “Work is hard. You'll have to talk to them about accommodations. For other things, we'll help. And there's options like food delivery for grocery shopping.”
Etho rejects that last point without thinking. “That program is full.”
“What?” she asks.
“The food bank's delivery program? I checked, it's full.”
She has a mystified edge to her voice. “I meant like instacart?”
“You've been going to the food bank?” Joel cuts in.
This feels like a moment where Etho needs to tread very carefully. He’s learned that if you sprinkle enough little references to being poor, people will go easy on you. When you go too far and bring in conversations of food stamps and housing aid and food banks those same people get very, very weird. Most of them feel like they have to save you. He can’t bear that from these two. He likes them too much to deal with that disappointment.
Finally, he says, “I just supplement with the food bank every once and a while. Just cuts down on food costs. I don’t rely on it.” The half-truths taste sour on his tongue like spoiled milk.
“What do you think about moving in with us,” Lizzie says quickly and without preamble. Etho looks at Joel expecting him to be shocked or angry with Lizzie for suggesting something so outrageous, but he looks expectant. They’ve talked about this before.
Etho pulls away from her. Shakes off Joel’s hands. This is exactly what he was worried about.
“I don’t need charity.”
“It’s not,” she insists.
“Then pity. I don’t need that either.”
“Etho, it’s not pity.”
He stands and Lizzie follows. Joel makes a wounded sound somewhere behind them. “Whatever it is, I don’t need it. What, you think I can’t take care of myself just because I got diagnosed with lupus and my shitty job has shitty pay? I’m managing just fine.” He’s not quite shouting, but his voice is raised.
“Listen, just think about it–”
“I’m fine!” he finally shouts.
Something in Lizzie’s face hardens, but she doesn’t look outright hostile. “Are you?” she asks very calmly. Etho doesn’t respond. “I said, are you? Etho.”
He nods, once. It’s barely a jerk of his head.
“It doesn’t look like it to me.” Her fists are clenched at her sides. “It’s not charity or pity or whatever awful thing you want to project onto me. Joel and I have been talking about this for a while, Etho, we like you. We want you around. If that means we can take a little burden off your shoulders by sharing expenses, then I’m even happier.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up in the moment I did, but you are struggling and that’s okay! I just can’t stand by and watch it anymore. It wouldn’t be us just taking care of you either. You’d be there for me and Joel just like normal and we’d be there for you. The only thing that changes is our office into a bedroom.
“So, fine, call it what you want. We’ll leave and not bring it up again if you want, but hear me when I say. It’s not about anything except love.”
Joel finds his crutches and leans against the countertop just behind Lizzie. He often defers to her in moments like this. He looks shaky on his feet still. Etho moves past Lizzie and over to Joel.
“You shouldn’t be walking around without your KAFOs, right?” he murmurs.
“Right,” Joel agrees with a wry smile.
Etho walks with him back to the couch, fetches his KAFOs from the bedroom, and starts helping Joel get them on. Lizzie watches over him. No one presses him to answer. They’re good about that. A little part of him wants to never answer. Never speak again, but he can’t leave this conversation here. Besides…
“I’d like that then. Living with you.” If it’s what Lizzie says it is, then it’s fine. He can be fine.
#
The tabletop group helps him move in. They treat the whole situation like it was inevitable. The happy couple that finally realized everything and got their shit together. Grian particularly insists he had a hand in it. Etho and Joel wouldn’t have gotten so close if not for his tabletop oneshots.
At some point Scar corners him and adds him to a group chat of disabled friends. There’s a couple names he didn’t know about. They tell him their pain is private, but they’re happy to share with those who get it.
He still hurts. Not all the time, but even those bad days feel a little more manageable with a king sized bed in the primary bedroom and two warm bodies beside him.