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He’s waiting for the ‘I told you so’. It’s due any minute now. He can hear it, in his head. Over and over and over. It sounds more like his own voice, than Poe’s. Sounds like a self-criticism, which in many respects is worse. If the voice comes from outside his head then he can argue it down. If it’s inside, that means it’s true, and means it’s harder to refute without sounding even more like you’re insane, because you’re talking to yourself (aloud, not, what’s the difference) and maybe you should have taken the shot like everyone told you to and not insisted to Poe that ‘the power of the Dark Side will keep me strong’.
Apparently the power of the Dark Side does not extend to keeping an immune system going when there’s an outbreak of something unpronounceable and virulent which involves more bodily fluids than Kylo Ren has seen in a decade, due to most of the injuries he’s inflicted being immediately cauterised, and also living behind a filtered mask and gloves that kept him from the grime.
It’s the kissing. It has to be. Poe kissed him sick. And weak. And miserable. Poe, with his stupid mouth that tastes of bliss, and his horrible hands that make him feel things. He’s poisoned him with loving.
Darth Vader probably never had to deal with the flu. (The sensible voice points out Darth Vader was almost more machine than man, and was riddled with pain of his own, and so the comparison is not valid and he tells the sensible voice to shut the fuck up because he’s sick and he wants to complain, dammit.)
“Kylo…”
He does reply. It’s somewhat mangled between all the gross things happening in his upper respiratory tract and the rage that boils deep within his–
ACHOO.
The one saving grace of not wearing his helmet all the time is that he doesn’t have to sneeze in a confined space. Kylo thinks about that for all of thirty seconds before he runs off to be very ill in the ‘fresher. There’s several minutes where he thinks he’s actually removed something vital to his continued existence, and that the reason he feels so bad is because he actually expelled an essential organ and his body is now shutting down bit by bit, but that’s the paranoia and the fever talking. Probably. He splashes cold water on his face and staggers back to the living room.
Poe isn’t suffering anywhere near as much. The bastard probably repels ill health like he repels sadness and attracts sunshine and rainbows and chocolate cake and the tiny flickers of Light in would-be Sith Lords. Kylo would punch him, if it would make him feel any better. (Except he wouldn’t, he’d just think about it intensely. He could never really hurt Poe, no matter what he sometimes - jokingly - threatens.)
“Come here,” Poe says, his voice caring, and more than a little stuffed up. He is suffering, just to a lesser extent.
His pilot has taken up residence on the longest couch, which is very selfish. He’s propped up on a mountain of throw pillows and swaddled in a blanket that goes on and off his legs whenever his temperature veers too far in either direction. His normally bright eyes are bleary, and if he looks like that… Kylo does not want to think about how terrible he looks. Or sounds.
There is nothing more unsexy than a man who is attempting to dehydrate himself through every orifice simultaneously, whilst also whining like a baby. Kylo wishes Poe couldn’t see him in this state, but also then he would be alone and no one would know if he choked to death on the ‘fresher tiles, or if he smothered himself in blankets, or worse. So selfishly, he’s glad he’s here.
“I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“I am.”
“Kylo… babe… it’s just the flu.”
“Sith don’t get the flu. I’m dying.”
“Alright. Well, if you’re dying, you might as well do it with me.”
Kylo frowns some more, then tries to work out where he’s supposed to go. He’s so long that he takes up the majority of the couch, even without a Poe taking up valuable inches, and he doesn’t want to sit upright. He’s fairly sure he’s okay with just tissues for his nose for a while, and maybe some icecubes on his tongue, and Poe had the good sense to make a little armoury of supplies within easy reach. He sits down, and when a foot nudges at him, pushing him about, he eventually relents.
Relents… and pulls his feet up onto the side of the couch. One of his socks has slipped and the seam irritates his toes. And looks dumb. He weakly reaches out with the Force to put it right, and is surprised when he’s manhandled - man…footed? - some more. He’s so weak and exhausted that he can’t really resist, and then his legs are up and his toes are okay and he’s found a warm, safe place somewhere up on Poe’s inner thigh and there’s legs sort of curled protectively around his upper torso. He wiggles, making sure his elbows are right, making sure he doesn’t trap the blood flow to his hands and that he can lie like this for some time.
…he also makes sure he isn’t making Poe uncomfortable, but he does that a little more subtly. Reaches through the Force to assess the damage, and to ensure this won’t lead to a trapped nerve in a foot causing a kick, or a thrombosis, or whatever. Poe’s eyes unfocus when he slides against the loudest parts of his body, and Kylo wishes he felt well enough to take away Poe’s discomfort. But he can’t, not when he can’t even control his own body.
“You could just ask me, you know.”
Kylo huffs in annoyance. “You might lie.” Which isn’t denying he did it, which was what he was supposed to do. Crap.
“If you wanted to make sure I was comfortable, I wouldn’t lie about something like that,” Poe chides him, caringly. “You’re in a worse state than me, anyway.”
“Yeah, but if I’m making you worse–”
“You don’t.”
Kylo inches into a smaller ball in his lap, and Poe’s hand reaches to push his hair away from his face. It’s sweat-limp, and bedraggled, and sticking in more directions than it has any right to, and Kylo just…
It feels…
…
Warm and caring, and that hurts in his stomach, too. Hurts like a memory, like a hope. He jams his eyes tight shut as he tries to breathe through it, the roiling sensation in his core somehow louder than the angry Krayt-dragon in his stomach, or the poisonous, many-limbed entity in his sinus cavities.
Poe keeps up the stroking, and Kylo wants to cry. He wants to cry because it feels so good. It feels so good, and he just needs Poe to nevereverevereverever stop it. It’s not even the physical contact, really. It’s the emotional one. It’s being safe to lie in a pathetic, sneezing, eye-watering and gross ball of anger and knowing Poe won’t be horrified, or disgusted, or send him away, or - or - or…
Kylo sniffles.
“You want to watch something trashy?” Poe offers, his voice careful and caring, and enough to make any man shatter.
Kylo nods. He does. He thinks he does, anyway. Something mindless and vapid and empty. Something that doesn’t so much gently provoke a reaction, or incite you to debate, or make you question the galaxy. Something where the emotions are raw and charged. Something like he normally feels, inside. A cheap trick, an easy tug on a heart-string. He wants to feel things, and too strongly. He wants that kick to his ribcage, and he wants to feel Poe around him while he cries about who is cheating on whom, and true love, and betrayal, and long-lost relatives, and murders and everything on a Grand Scale.
He feels things like that all the time. He’s not sure why he’s always so close to the surface, but he is. He’s tried to keep it lower, to tone down his reactions, but he’s never been able to do it for long. Even under all those layers, all those masks and all that armour, he’d blazed furiously brightly, waiting for someone to appreciate his ardour, and his power.
He’s an acquired taste, it seems.
Poe flickers on the story. Kylo tries to feel guilty about this - all of this - but somehow… he just can’t quite…