Chapter Text
Mark climbed out of his truck and yawned. Somehow, despite falling asleep on the couch for three hours and then sleeping another eight hours in bed, he was still tired. He deliberately refused to think too hard about what it could mean. He’d just gotten back to work—the last thing he wanted was more time off.
Oliveras pulled her car in next to his and got out. “Wow, you look like shit. Late night?”
He shook his head. “The opposite, actually.”
“No way.” She stepped in front of him and paused to look him over with the practiced eye of a professional observer. Then she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He tried to push her off, but he was too slow. “You’re officially sick. Go home.”
“I’m fine,” he replied, but it sounded weak even to his own ears.
Oliveras sighed. “Look, the last thing we need is you infecting the rest of us. I can drive you if you need it. Just let me go in and tell Blythe what’s up.”
“I don’t—” He intended to say more, but his voice gave out and he couldn’t continue. He tried to clear his throat, but that just made it hurt like hell.
“Okay, that’s it.” Oliveras grasped his wrist and led him to the passenger side of her car. She opened the door and gently pushed him down into the seat. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded glumly, figuring he didn’t have much of a choice.
The next thing he knew, Oliveras was standing next to the open passenger door shaking him awake, and they were in front of his house. He blinked a few times, trying to get her face to come into focus. He wasn’t sure if the look on her face was concern or annoyance. These days it was harder to tell the difference. She always seemed to be pissed at him about something, like he was the one who’d betrayed her instead of the other way around.
She frowned and pressed hard on his shoulder. “Hey, you with me? We need to get you inside.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, but it came out as a barely audible rasp.
Oliveras pulled him out of the car and steadied him when the change in position caused the world to tilt a bit sideways. “I got you. Come on, it’s not that far.”
She was right, but the way he felt, the ten or so feet between him and the front door might as well have been ten miles. She ended up sort of half-dragging him up the steps to the door and then straight to the couch. “You think you can stay awake for five minutes while I get you some water and Tylenol?”
“I’ll try,” Mark replied, but she was already in the kitchen. She came back with the promised glass of water and three Tylenol tablets. He swallowed them all, wincing at the burning pain in his throat when he did so.
Oliveras looked at him quizzically. She reached out and touched a spot on his neck that was surprisingly tender. He jerked back from her touch, but that made the room tilt alarmingly. He squeezed his eyes shut and let her push his shoulders against the back of the couch to keep him upright.
“Please tell me you didn’t sleep with a fucking college student.”
“She’s a grad student. In marine biology,” he answered immediately. Then his foggy brain finally caught up and he glared at her in disbelief. “How’d you know that?”
Oliveras smirked. “Congratulations, you caught mono two decades late.”
“What? No!” Mark shook his head, not realizing until it was too late how bad an idea that was. He pressed his palms over his eyes to try to make the room stop spinning.
He felt the couch cushion next to him dip down, and Oliveras’ hip pressed against his. She put her arm around his shoulders to ground him. “Easy there,” she said softly. “Don’t go passing out on me now.”
It took another half a minute for the dizzy spell to pass, but then he was able to uncover his eyes and try to push Oliveras off of him. “Don’t,” he tried to say, but the outburst earlier had rendered his voice inaudible again.
She handed him the glass of water. Every sip was like swallowing battery acid. He set the glass down after three small sips and shifted slightly so he could face her. “Why?”
Oliveras frowned. “Why what?”
There was no way he’d be able to say everything he wanted to before his voice gave out, so he settled on, “Why are you still here?”
“Because you need me,” she answered in a tone that suggested it should be obvious.
“I don’t want you.”
She sat back, clearly hurt. “Yeah, well, I’m not a 25-year-old marine biologist—but I’m the one that’s here.”
Mark drew himself upright with some difficulty and looked her straight in the eye. “What changed?”
“If we’re talking about the last hour specifically, it’s the fact that you can barely stand up under your own power.” Her face softened, as did her voice. “And maybe I’m not gonna let you push me away again.”
He picked up the glass of water and steeled himself to drink from it. He managed two small sips and set it down again. “You better mean it,” he told her.
“Look, there’s a time and a place, and it’s not now,” she replied. “All you need to know is that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
He still wasn’t sure exactly what had changed, or why, but he simply didn’t have the energy or brainpower to figure it out. Oliveras pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at the time. “You made it seven minutes. You’re off the clock. Do you want to stay here or go to bed?”
As much as he would have preferred the bed, he didn’t want to change clothes or walk that far. “Here,” he croaked.
Oliveras helped him take his shoes off, and she removed his jacket and covered him with it. “I’ll be back after work. Give me your keys and I’ll lock up.”
He pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them to her. He fell asleep before she even got to the door.
When Mark woke up, the light had changed considerably. It was much darker in the living room. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and squinted at his watch. It was almost three in the afternoon. Jesus. Although, it did make the day go faster, and it meant that he didn’t feel sick or in pain, so maybe there was something to be said for sleeping nineteen hours a day after all.
He dragged himself to the bathroom, moving slower than an octogenarian with bad knees, but he did get himself there in the end. While he was washing his hands after using the toilet, he was startled by his own reflection in the mirror. Not because he looked like shit (that was obvious), but because it looked like he had two large marbles sticking out of his neck, one on each side. What the actual fuck was that about? He didn’t know much about mono. He remembered jokes about it in high school, but he never was around anyone when they had it. And he certainly wasn’t going to pick it up in the damn army. So Oliveras was right—he was incredibly late to the party.
He briefly debated whether to go back to the couch or just pack it in and go to bed, but he still didn’t want to change clothes, so couch it was. Plus, it would make it easier for Oliveras to find him when she got back. He knew she was as good as her word. She seemed to genuinely care, which was quite a switch from the past couple of days. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he wished he understood better what had changed her mind.
He managed to get back to the couch, but he had to stop halfway there and take a break by leaning against the wall. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired, even in training when they only got to sleep 2 or 3 hours a night for weeks on end. He felt like he needed to sleep for about a year. He’d heard people say that Covid could be like that too. Kristyn, the marine biology student, had said she’d slept 11 to 14 hours a day for the entire two weeks that she’d had it. She was an insomniac, which worked handily for his purposes. She also had some really interesting tattoos, including a pink dolphin jumping over a blue moon with yellow stars. But he’d been less enthused about the anatomically accurate octopus covering one of her breasts. The suction cups were a bit creepy.
He laid down on the couch and fell asleep instantly. He was awakened by voices—more than one, which didn’t seem right. He struggled to open his eyes. He knew Oliveras was there, but he had no clue who the other person could be. It was also a lot brighter than he thought it should have been for how late it was.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty, time to get up. We brought food.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Mark mumbled, and pushed himself up to sitting.
“I brought your truck back,” replied Oliveras. “Shepherd’s driving me back to the office.”
Shepherd emerged then from the kitchen, carrying a plastic bowl with a handle and a grocery store plastic container of pudding. She set both on the coffee table in front of him, along with two spoons. “It’s not much,” she said. “Just chicken noodle soup and chocolate pudding. It was pretty much the only things I could eat when I had it.”
“When was that?” he asked.
“In high school,” Shepherd answered. “There was sort of an outbreak. They figured out the plates and silverware in the cafeteria weren’t getting sanitized well enough. A quarter of the entire school had it at once. Attendance was messed up for months. Some of the seniors almost couldn’t graduate.”
“Jesus,” he said. His voice sounded like he had been gargling with ground glass, which was exactly how it felt as well. He knew intellectually that he needed to eat and drink to stay hydrated, but he didn’t exactly relish the idea of doing so.
Oliveras pulled something out of her bag. It was one of those new gun thermometers. She pressed it to his forehead until it beeped. “103.7. I think that’s higher than this morning, even.”
“Fevers are always worse at night,” said Shepherd matter-of-factly.
“How do you know that?” asked Oliveras.
Shepherd shrugged. “I read a lot as a kid. Old stuff, like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë.”
“I’m not sure 19th-century medical knowledge was all that accurate,” replied Oliveras. She gestured at the bowl of soup on the table. “I know it hurts, but try to eat, okay? It’ll help.”
Mark edged forward on the couch and picked up the bowl. It was just chicken broth and little skinny noodles—exactly what he’d be able to handle. Still, he knew it was going to hurt like hell, so he was having trouble making himself pick up the spoon and start eating.
Oliveras lightly tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not going to eat you,” she teased.
He tentatively swallowed a spoonful of broth and noodles, and the heat of the liquid did alleviate the pain just a tiny bit. He managed to finish half of the soup before the pain and fatigue made it impossible to continue. He slumped against the back of the couch and yawned so wide his jaw cracked slightly.
“Well, it’s a start,” said Oliveras. She and Shepherd cleared the coffee table and put everything away in the kitchen. When they returned, Oliveras put his keys down on the coffee table. “We’ll let you get to bed. I’ll stop by after work tomorrow. Text me if you wake up between now and then,” she added with a smirk.
Mark nodded and followed them slowly to the front door. He locked it behind them and leaned against it to gather the energy to go to his bedroom, change clothes, and brush his teeth. He ended up doing the latter two things sitting on the edge of his bed. He didn’t have the strength to go the bedroom doorway and hit the light switch. He ended up just going to sleep with the lights still on. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference.