I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Eight

A/n This one is by me. @ancilla89 helped me with some of it, and gave me good ideas

***********

"I told you it wasn't COVID!" Linda tells Danny as she gets in the car. By some miracle, Danny was able to get Linda an appointment later that day. "It's just the flu!"

"But it could've been COVID!" He argues, his stress about everything rising.

She groans dramatically, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Would you relax?"

"No, I'm not gonna relax! Don't you get it? You could be dead right now, because you got the virus. And that'd be terrible, because I can't live without you!" He angrily backs up, narrowly avoiding the red car next to them.

He must be tired, Linda thinks, feeling a twinge of guilt. Or frustrated. He normally doesn't say those things unprompted like that. "I'm sorry, Danny, but you're just... you're so uptight. You gotta relax."

"I was relaxed until you went and got the flu!"

"Do you think I thought 'oh, I think I'll get the flu and freak out my husband'?!"

"That's not-"

"Just drive, Danny." She slumps in her seat, turns the volume up on the radio. The rest of the ride is spent in silence, minus the Christmas music coming from the speakers.

********

"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Linda says, her stopped-up nose making her sound funny as she sits next to Danny on the couch. "I didn't mean to."

"I'm sorry too," he sighs, then sneezes. "I'm fine," he says when she reaches for his forehead. "Cold always makes me sneeze--you know that!"

"You feel a little warm," she muses, then coughs herself. She sniffs, stands up.

"Where are you going?"

"To get the thermometer. I wanna make sure you're not sick, too."

She's back in a flash, ignoring Danny's gripes about the sneeze being just a sneeze. She takes his temperature, frowns when it reads as a low degree fever.

Linda diagnoses Danny with the flu after asking about some other symptoms. He grumbles about it, of course; he hates being sick.

"Why would I get the flu? You've only had it for, like, sixteen hours."

"And in those sixteen hours, we exchanged a whole lotta spit, babe. Or have you forgotten about-" she doesn't finish as a row of sneezes interrupt her. "Forgotten about the sex we had?"

He groans.

He hates being sick. It lowers those walls he likes to keep nice and high. And whenever he's feverish, he starts babbling about Fallujah, letting details slip that he'd never wanted Linda to know.

"I'll sleep on the couch so we don't exchange any more...spit," he groans, stands up, sways as a wave of dizziness washes over him.

Maybe going downstairs isn't the smartest idea right now...

He coughs, curses in his head when his rib stabs him, and lies back down. "Actually I think I'm just...gonna stay right here."

That's better anyways, Linda doesn't want him away from her now that she knows he's sick and still thinking (or purposely not thinking) about his flashback.

*******

His fever spikes, and he's mumbling.

Linda knows it's not fair to take advantage of his delirium, but she asks anyway: "Babe, why were you so eager to have sex if you knew your rib was hurt?"