CONTENT WARNING:  While there's probably nothing in this story that will offend anyone, it *does* involve adult themes.  ;)

Boring Old Married Guy

by E!lf

"You know what your problem is?"

Roy DeSoto sighed heavily.  Just climbing the stairs was an effort, every step sapping his already limited strength.  "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

"You just can't admit to your weaknesses.  I mean, if you'd admitted two or three days ago that you were sick we could have gotten you started on some antibiotics before you reached the point of actual collapse.  But no!  You gotta play Mr. Tough Guy.  So what happens?  I gotta drag your butt home and carry you up to bed and play nursemaid.  Man!  This is just like the whole tonsillitis thing all over again!"

Roy glanced over his shoulder, irritated.  He wanted to protest that he wasn't this sick two or three days ago, that he hadn't actually collapsed, that the only thing his partner was carrying up the stairs was a small white drugstore bag with a couple of bottles of pills in it.  He wanted to explain that he'd thought that if he ignored the symptoms they'd go away, but even he realized how lame that was and he really didn't have the energy to argue with Johnny.  Besides, he felt guilty.  It was Friday night and they were off duty.  He knew the younger, still single man had plans that didn't involve taking care of him.

"I wanted to see the ballgame," he said instead.  He had finally reached the second floor and leaned against the wall on the landing, breathing heavily.  "It was a good game."

"Better if they'd won," Johnny contradicted him unenthusiastically.  Johnny was an energetic adrenaline junkie and a high-scoring basketball game or a hockey match was more to his liking, but Roy was quiet and introspective and he had appreciated the low-key tension of a pitchers' duel.

"Anyway," Roy said, "you don't have to stick around.  Jo'll be home in a little while.  I'll be fine.  I know you have plans."

"It's okay.  It's not even eight o'clock yet.  I'll stick around until she gets here.  I guess you guys probably had some plans yourself, what with the kids staying at their grandma's and all?"

"We were probably just going to take advantage of the house being quiet and go to bed early."

Johnny snorted in disgust.

"What?"

"Go to bed early?!?  Man!  I'm glad I'm not a boring old married guy!"  He nudged Roy's elbow.  "Come on, man, you're almost there.  You can't sleep out here in the hallway."  Roy was breathing heavily.  His face was pale but for bright spots of color high on his cheeks.  He shivered in spite of a light sheen of sweat that covered his skin and his eyes were fever bright.  Johnny considered his appearance.  "Know what?  You'll feel better if you go grab a hot shower first.  Think you can manage that?"

He darted ahead of his partner into the bedroom and was unsurprised to find his partner's pajamas clean and neatly folded on a chair by the bed.  Predictable, he thought.  He brought them back out and carried them into the bathroom, laying them on the toilet seat and adding a heavy towel from the tiny linen cupboard.  Returning to the hall he gave Roy a light shove to get him moving.

"While you're doing that I'll go find you some soup or something."  He shook the bag in his hand, indicating the medications that Joe Early, trusting Johnny's assessment, had prescribed over the phone.  "You need to take these with food."

Roy nodded tiredly and headed for the bathroom and Johnny clattered back downstairs to the kitchen.

By the time Johnny returned with a steaming mug of soup, a small plate of crackers, a can of 7UP and a can of beer Roy was out of the shower, dressed in his faded blue pajamas and in bed half asleep.  Johnny made him sit up again, giving him the soup, the soda and a pill from each bottle.  Roy eyed the beer in Johnny's hand.

"Wanna trade?"

"I don't think so!"  Johnny gave him a small, sympathetic grin.  "Consider it your penance for trying to play off being sick.  Again!"  One of the drugs Roy had just taken was a pain pill, to combat the bone-deep body aches that accompanied a high fever.

The two paramedics had a lot of practice caring for one another, for the other firefighters on their shift and for Roy's family.  Roy, in fact, often got teased about being a mother hen.  In point of fact, they both were, but Johnny tended to bully where Roy fussed, so it was less obvious with him.  He had wondered from time to time if it was an occupational hazard.  That begged the question, though:  Did being a paramedic make a man become a mother hen, or did being a mother hen make a man become a paramedic?

Johnny had his own stethoscope, from the kit he carried in his car, slung around his neck.  When Roy had obediently drunk the soup and the soda Johnny listened to his chest and shook his head.  "Bi-lateral rales, man.  You're gonna be lucky if you don't wind up with pneumonia!"  He shifted his weight more to the side of the bed, making it easier for Roy to slide down beneath the covers, and looked around.  "You got a thermometer around here anywhere?"

Roy's eyes were already closed.  "Mmm," he muttered sleepily.  "In the drawer of the nightstand."

There were two nightstands, one on each side of the bed, and Johnny pulled open the drawer of the one nearest him and fished around for a thermometer.  Suddenly he realized what he was pawing through.  Tucked away in the drawer was a small but very nice collection of adult toys.

Johnny pulled his hand back as if he'd been burned, then, impelled by the same force that makes some people unable to look away from traffic accidents, he reached back in the drawer and removed a framed Polaroid snapshot.  It was a picture of Roy, grinning.  He had a rose in his teeth and was wearing a tie and a cummerbund . . . and nothing else.

"Jeez!"

Roy reached out without opening his eyes, took the picture, put it back in the drawer face down and closed the drawer firmly.  "Other nightstand."

Johnny circled the bed, opened the other drawer cautiously and found only Kleenex, a broken wristwatch, a couple of paperback novels and a thermometer.

"I can't believe you!" Johnny ranted as he shook the thermometer down!  "I mean, I really can't believe you . . . you --"

"Boring old married guy?" Roy grinned sleepily.

"Oh, hush!" Johnny told him, sticking the thermometer in his mouth.  Johnny brooded for two or three seconds and started in again.  "I mean, really!  I'm just shocked, is all!  I mean, you always act like you're so . . . respectable!"

"'Mrespect'ble," Roy mumbled around the thermometer.  "'Mmarried.  'Srespect'ble when you're married."

Ignoring him, Johnny took the thermometer and read it.  "A hundred and two point seven.  That tops one oh three and you really ought to go to the emergency room."

"You're just jealous 'cause I have better toys than you do."

"Oh, be quiet!  You're delirious!  And I don't want to think about your 'toys'!  You should be ashamed of yourself!"  Johnny, of course, had a pretty good selection of toys himself.  But that was different!  Johnny was a swinging single.  It was okay for him to have toys.  But Roy was a husband and father, a pillar of the firefighting community.  "I can't believe you, man!"

Roy giggled.  Between the hot soup and the painkillers he was starting to feel a lot better.  "Come on, Johnny!  We've got two kids!  Where did you think we got 'em?  The kid fairy?"

Johnny was saved from answering by the sound of a door slamming and a woman's voice drifting up from the entryway.  "Honey?  Johnny?  Where are you guys?"

"We're up here, Jo," he called out.  He was trying to decide if he was glad she was here, because she was saving him from this conversation, or unhappy she was here because now he was going to have to make himself not picture her and Roy in conjunction with any of the stuff he'd glimpsed in the drawer.

Her footfalls thudded lightly on the carpeted stairs and she appeared in the doorway carrying several shopping bags and, he supposed, with her hair styled differently.  He was guessing on the last, because Roy had told him that she was going to the beauty parlor.  She looked, to Johnny, much as she always did.  She eyed the scenario in the bedroom with narrowed eyes.

"Did his 'insignificant little chest cold' turn fierce?"

"Upper respiratory infection bordering on pneumonia."

"You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here," Roy protested.  The other two ignored him.

"Do I need to get him to the emergency room?"

"Not yet.  Dr. Early prescribed him some meds.  They're here in this bag.  He's had one of each, so far, at about eight o'clock.  The instructions are on the labels.  The antibiotics had ought to start fighting his fever, but if his temperature tops a hundred and three I'd take him in."

Joanne peered at Johnny closely.  "Are you sick too, Johnny?  You look pretty red in the face."

Before Johnny could pass it off as the heat or a sunburn Roy went and blew his cover.  "He was looking for a thermometer and he opened the wrong drawer."

"Oh, I see!"  Jo gave him a fierce glare.  Johnny swallowed hard and raised one hand to protest that it had been a mistake.  She spoke before he could.  "It's not bad enough that I come home and find you in bed with my husband, but now I hear that you've been playing with my toys?!?"

"JOANNE!" Johnny squawked, scandalized.  He hopped up very quickly from where he was seated on the edge of the bed.

Jo held the stare for perhaps ten seconds and then dissolved into giggles.  Roy was snickering quietly.  Now it was Johnny's turn to glare, looking from one to the other.  "You two have a very sick sense of humor, you know that?"

"Boring old married folks gotta do something to amuse themselves," Roy grinned.  His breath caught in his throat and he coughed violently.  Joanne sat down next to him and kissed his forehead.

"Poor baby!  Can I kiss it and make it all better?"

Roy gave his wife a wicked leer.  "Yeah.  And I ache all over!"

"Oh-kay!" Johnny said.  "Time for me to leave!"

As he reached the door Roy's voice stopped him.  "Hey, Junior?"

Johnny turned back to find his sleepy partner regarding him with affection.

"Thanks."

Johnny shrugged lightly.  "What friends're for, Pally."

Joanne came and walked him down to the door.  "Johnny?  You know we're just teasing you, right?  I do appreciate you looking after my guy for me."

"Hey, he's my guy too.  Only in a different way.  A very different way.  One might even say in a VASTLY different way."

She giggled.  "You're not mad, then?"

"Nah.  I'm just a little upset to find out that there's no kid fairy."

Jo considered that for a few seconds.  "Okay . . . I'm not going to ask."

Johnny grinned down at her and took her small hand in both of his big ones.  "Look, he should be fine now, but if you do have to take him to the ER, call me and I'll come and help.  I'm gonna be at a singles' bar called the Electric Lemon Twist until closing time and after that I'll be home, okay?"

"Okay.  And thanks again!"  She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.  He turned away as the door closed at his back and by the time he reached his Land Rover, parked at the curb, the downstairs lights were going off in succession.  By the clock on his dashboard it wasn't eight-thirty yet.

The bedroom light went off last, the harsh, white electric glow replaced by the soft radiance of candles.  Romantic music drifted out the open window.  As he eased his car out onto the street and turned for the lights and noise of the club scene, where there was always a party going on and California never slept, Johnny leaned his elbow on his window, slouched sideways with his chin in his cupped hand and spoke to the empty car.

"Man!  I wish I was a boring old married guy!"

The End.

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