Archive of Our Own ^beta

Still 1983

Carlton shifted in his bed, pulling the covers closer to him. He shivered, clutching tightly at the warm blankets despite them practically grating against his now sensitive skin.

After falling through the ice a couple days ago, Carlton had — unsurprisingly — caught a cold. A bad one too.

His nose was completely stuffed, and no matter how hard or how many times he tried to blow it clean, it never cleared completely. His body ached almost as much as his sinuses. The nerves in his skin were on fire, and tingled with static when something with just a slightly wrong texture touched him. It was a living nightmare. Except he couldn’t even manage to fall asleep for longer than a few minutes before he was woken up by coughs wracking his body.

Speaking of…

Carlton felt the tell-tale tingle in his throat and quickly grabbed a tissue from the box beside him. He coughed violently into it, small bits of what felt like phlegm flying out.

He didn’t even look as he threw it out in trash can next to his bed. Sniffling, he settled back down, nerves firing like crazy as the fabric dragged across his skin.

This- all of this- was just utterly humiliating. How dumb could he have been to go ice skating when the ice wasn’t frozen enough? It was like the lake had hypnotized him or something, making him not think straight.

He swallowed down another cough. Granted, he couldn’t think straight even now. His head felt as though the brain was removed and instead filled with cotton balls. He wanted to just rest the back of his heavy head on his pillow, but even that just ended up making it hurt more.

So he tossed and turned, balling up the sheets around him. Every time the side he was laying on become uncomfortable, he would very annoyedly turn to the other side. And then vice versa.

He tried to groan when he felt another tickle in his throat, but ended up just coughing.

But this one felt… different, somehow. It felt wetter, and warmer.

Carlton hadn’t had time to grab a tissue, and ended up using the crook of his elbow instead. He felt the drops land on his pajamas. ‘ Great ,’ he thought to himself. ‘ Now I’ll have to change out of my booger-stained shirt. ’

He looked at the sleeve to try and assess the damage he’d accidentally done to the fabric, and he froze.

Small, tiny, minuscule drops of red dotted the sleeve of his pajamas. Blood.

It was at that moment his mother decided to walk in with a bowl of soup. “You just can’t seem to shake that cough, can you-” she stopped midway, and looked at her son — who was sheet-white and visibly shaking in panic — with concern. “Booker? What’s wrong?”