100 Ways to Die [Joshler Oneshots]

Ill

Based off current events, quite obviously. It's not about Covid-19 specifically, just sort of generally "inspired" by the situation (I don't like using the word inspired to describe that but I'm not sure how else to say it). 

Trigger warning: hospitals, death

Word count: 1866

Josh was the first to start showing symptoms. 

He knew as soon as they started what it was, but couldn't quite tell where he had contracted them from. The grocery store? His parents? That lady he passed on his walk the other day? It could have been anyone. It didn't really matter why he had the symptoms though; it just mattered that he did, and that he had failed. He had become infected, and now he was putting Tyler at risk. God, he was such a horrible husband. 

Maybe if he hadn't been in denial about it the first day or two, the outcome would have been better. The moment he noticed his throat closing up and his nose getting runny, he should have run to his bedroom and locked the door and not come out for a month. But he didn't, because Tyler needed him. If Josh got sick, who would go out and get them the things they needed? Not Tyler, because his immune system was compromised, and Josh couldn't let him leave. It wasn't safe. 

Then again, it wasn't safe here either. Nothing was safe. Now that Josh had brought the thing home, they had no sanctity.

The best option he saw for the moment was to ignore it, hope the symptoms indicated just a cold or something. So, despite Josh knowing somewhere within him that he had it, he continued on as though everything was normal. He and Tyler went for a nice walk the morning after he started getting all sniffly, although it didn't last as long as usual because all of a sudden it seemed like the capacity of his lungs had decreased a few times. They got home and had lunch, put something on the TV in the background while Josh hacked and coughed and Tyler watched him worriedly and asked if maybe he should go to another room. Josh told him he was fine though, that he would know if he had it and this was likely something minor, so Tyler dropped it. 

How could he know if he had it though? He couldn't, that was the answer. Not until he showed signs beyond that of every common and harmless sickness under the sun. Those didn't take long to show up though. 

Everything started to get bad by the end of the second day, when Josh threw up his supper in the toilet and collapsed on the tile floor in front of it, rasping to a sobbing and panicked Tyler to stay the hell away from him. He did, and Josh crawled his way to their room down the hall and pulled himself onto the bed and passed out. Tyler would just have to sleep on the couch for a week or so, there was nothing to be done about it. 

A routine started. Tyler would leave food and water at the door a few times a day, in paper dishes so that he wouldn't have to come back and collect them once Josh had used them. Josh would eat and drink whatever was on them, throw it all up a few minutes later, and then fade in and out of consciousness for the next few hours until his husband brought him something else to try to keep in his stomach. 

Josh was tempted to give up on the food for a bit, to tell Tyler to just stay away for a day or so and leave him be, because he was wasting the man's time and putting him at risk by taking all this food from him that he couldn't even eat. He needed to at the very least try to keep up some strength though, so he kept trying and trying and trying and failing to hold something down. 

It wasn't long before Tyler showed up in his room too, and sniffles and coughs. Josh's heart broke when he saw him, and his empty stomach sank. He had really let him down now, and there was nothing he could do to help him- he just had to hope and pray Tyler could get better.