Alcuin had been in the process of disentangling his legs from the sheets to investigate when the boy reappeared in the doorway, grasping a cup of chilled water in his hand. He wondered, muzzily, what he must have been getting up to in his sleep to worry his companion so. “It was only a dream,” he murmured reassuringly, reaching out with both arms to embrace the boy proper as he clambered back into bed. The effects of sleep, which paralyzed the fine muscle of his throat that produced doubt and uncertainty, made him sound much more confident in the statement than he truly felt. Alcuin found comfort in the warm press of his companion, his pale fingers vanishing in the blue-black of the hair at the nape of his companion's neck, yet his mind skittered over the statement like a broken record. “It, too, will pass.”
A part of him thought, ominously, that it hadn't felt like a dream at all.
“It was very kind to have woken and thought of me. I thank you,” Alcuin said at length, brushing aside the queasy feeling in his gut that something, somewhere was amiss. He turned his head to nose at the boy's temple for a moment and kissed his cheekbone – delicately arched and keen as herringbone – and then pressed another to his cheek proper. Kissing him thusly had become something of a habit over the time they'd been together; concern for his temperature giving way to boundless affection. “Your fever must have broken...” By all rights, it should have pleased him to know.
Alcuin leaned back to get a closer look at his companion's face, the corners of his lips quirked downward as the feeling in his gut intensified. His beautiful brown eyes were clear and bright and unburdened by sickness; his skin, normally parched for blood, glowed with good health and was a degree or two cooler than was normal for him; his lips, too, were flushed pink as newly bloomed rose petals. What in the world...? “My, but you are better...!” Alcuin smiled cheerfully in the face of his growing suspicion. “How do you feel?”