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Off His Game (M, Original)


stardust

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Hi forum, it's been awhile~!

I recently wrote this original fic as a trade w/ Ti on Tumblr. Just thought I'd crosspost it here! ft. 4 thieves on a mission while one of them is coming down with a cold + M/M (pre-relationship) + original characters + low fantasy setting that's not really that plot-relevant.

Sorry for any typos! Hope you like it! ^_^

MILES

“Okay, Codebreaker, what do you make of this?”

Nora hands him the communicator. It's small, not-eye-catching in the least—a dull, faintly-metallic silver that they would’ve missed had she not been looking.

“Um,” Miles says, and cycles through fifty possibilities. Nora is watching him expectantly. “This was for communications, but it’s dead now. No call logs. Recordings, uh….” Suddenly his train of thought is gone. Nora is still staring at him, silent, and Eddy and Leslie have their backs turned but he knows they’re listening too.

“Wait,” he says, softly. He clears his throat—not to get their attention, but it seems to have the side effect of accomplishing that anyway. “You’re going to like this. It’s the communication line for passwords.”

“Seriously?” Eddy says, and claps him on the shoulder. “Holy shit. We just hit jackpot.”

Eddy’s hand feels warm; Miles almost shivers under it before he catches himself, steels himself, and turns away. Eddy’s touchy with everyone, he reminds himself.

“Which way are we headed now?” Leslie asks.

They’re halfway through their latest assignment—a heist to break into some rich man’s accounts and steal a couple hundred thousand. Leslie had insisted that they only take enough for it to be an annoyance, not an inconvenience, but Miles thinks their target’s rich enough that they could get away with taking a little more.

“Northwest, I think, to the river.” Miles says, and coughs into his elbow. “Eddy, check the frequency this thing is broadcasting at.” He turns the communicator over in his hands and memorizes the model code on the back. “It’s one of a pair.”

Their target, predictably, isn’t keeping his wealth sequestered in one place. He’s invested most of it and hidden the rest of it elsewhere, and though Leslie had insisted that he’s left enough of a paper trail for them to follow, he hasn’t made it easy.

They’ve been on the same case for a couple weeks, and Miles can feel the desperation starting to percolate, even though none of them talk about it.

“Let’s not waste time, then. The car’s parked outside,” Leslie says. 

They cut through the building separately and meet up again in the parking lot. From there, Leslie drives. Nora tells her instructions from the passenger seat, while Eddy runs tests on the communicator from the back, casting and uncasting spells.

Miles just sits and stares out the window. He wants to close his eyes, but he’s afraid he’ll fall asleep, and then he’ll wake up groggy and more sluggish than usual. Right now his head’s starting to hurt, but a headache isn’t enough to cancel for, and it will be better for all of them if they can get this case over with without wasting time. He tells himself he’ll get something done and head home to crash after. They’re counting on him.

He’s looking but not really looking at the city as it rolls by, all vibrance and dizzying color, when Eddy taps him on the shoulder.

He startles. “What?”

“I got the frequency. Also, I'm pretty sure this thing was imported from overseas. It doesn’t look like the kind of thing they’d make here.”

Miles nods. He hopes that this case won’t involve oversea traveling—it’s been enough trouble as it is. “Great. Can you run a scan to see if—”

“Already done. I didn’t find anything. That’s why I suggested overseas.”

“Hold on,” Miles says. “Can you—can I see that again?

Eddy hands him the communicator. There’s an off switch in the back, and there are a few dials that he suspects are used for calibration. “Try turning the dials to see if you can get a range of frequencies,” Miles says. “Check all of them for local matches.” He sniffles, looks away as he hands the communicator back.

His breath catches on an inhale. Eddy’s busy fiddling with the dials, and Leslie and Nora are arguing in hushed voices over something that sounds urgent. So no one notices when he raises a hand snappishly to his face—

“hehH’nNGxt!” 

He sniffles again. Stifling it is a habit he’s learned from too many assignments in near-silent spaces, buildings so guarded that even a small enough quantity of magic to cast a silencing spell would tip off security.

“Careful with those spells,” Nora warns now. 

“You know I'm always careful,” Eddy retorts. “And I'm just doing what Miles told me to.”

“Don’t pin this on him,” Nora says pointedly. “Last time you were the one who blew up the tape recorders, not him.”

Eddy blinks, then glares at her. “Hey, the tape recorders blew themselves up. You’re lucky I'm so good with shielding spells.”

Miles ducks again to stifle again, harshly, into his wrist. It’s quieter than the last one. “I checked this one for explosives,” he says. His voice is starting to sound rough around the edges, so he clears his throat again, but if Nora notices she doesn’t say anything about it. “It’s probably not a decoy.”

Nora grins. “I know. I was just teasing.”

Eddy rolls his eyes, reaches out to shove her lightly on the shoulder. She bats his hand away. “You’re always just teasing.”

“We’re here,” Leslie chirps, pulling into an empty lot.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Eddy says, propping his chin up on one hand as she parks. “Great.”

“Yes, that’s what makes it secure,” Nora says. “No one would go looking for keys in the middle of nowhere.”

The parking lot is located just at the periphery of a forest. The road cuts off abruptly, which means if there’s something of interest in the forest, they’ll have to walk.

“There should be a safe in the forest ten minutes from here,” Leslie tells them. “I’m going to stay up front and check for danger.”

“Ten minutes,” Eddy repeats. “Does that estimate account for us getting lost?”

“We won’t get lost,” Leslie assures him. They’ve all seen the map, and Nora has a near-infallible memory.

They start off into the forest. Miles, Nora, and Eddy stay behind, trudging through the undergrowth. Miles pinches the bridge of his nose—his headache hasn’t cleared. Maybe the late-night meetings this week have started getting to him, but everyone else seems fine, if not a little tired.

He wishes that he’d thought to take something before coming with them. This morning, he’d slept past his alarm and had to speed to get here on time. They’ve been at this all day. Now, the exhaustion is starting to catch up with him.

His breath catches again. Next to him, Nora and Eddy are playing a silent round of rock paper scissors as they walk, and Miles ducks off to the side and raises a hand to his face, making sure he doesn’t sneeze in their direction.

“hHh’GXt! hh.. hiih’NGXsh!”

“Bless you,” Nora whispers, but he isn’t done.

“hiih… hEeh’GXxt! hehH’nGXt!hh...

He sniffles into his wrist. It’s not very relieving—his nose is running and the stifling isn’t helping with his headache, but if he’s too loud and there are other people around he’ll give away their location.

This time, it’s Eddy that blesses him. Ahead of them, Leslie holds up three fingers behind her back, then points to her left.

Miles looks past her. There’s a wood cabin and three guards in navy blue uniforms, having a loud conversation about some sports game that happened last night. They seem to be patrolling, but he isn’t sure. At least it means they’re in the right place. Next to him, Nora grins—she’s probably thinking the same thing.

The guards turn sharply into the forest. Leslie watches them make their rounds—Miles has worked with her long enough to know she’s trying to figure out their patrolling pattern. He rubs his nose against a knuckle.

“Are you going to cast a diversion?” Nora asks. “Get their attention elsewhere?”

“There are three guards,” Leslie tells her. “If they see something suspicious, at least one of them is going to stay behind, and they’ll be alert.”

The cabin they’re guarding looks unpretentious enough, and it doesn’t have nearly the level of security that a safe should. The sun is in the process of setting, which means that the forest has gotten a lot colder, and Miles is starting to regret his decision of not having brought a jacket. Leslie has an extra one tied around her waist, but he doesn’t want to disturb her while all her focus is elsewhere.

“Okay,” Leslie says, the second time the guards head out of sight. “They should be back in three minutes, maybe more. If we’re quiet.”

“If?” Nora says.

Leslie shrugs. “You know the rules. No silencing spells until we’re sure that nothing in the security gets set off by magic.”

The rest of the team follows her to the back of the cabin, where she walks the perimeter, evaluating the security system for weaknesses. Nora peers through a window, and Miles looks too—the interior is neatly arranged, laid bare for any visitors to see. There’s a fireplace, a round table, a door closed leading to a bedroom. The front door isn’t even locked. All in all, it’s unassuming.

“You think we picked the wrong place?” Eddy asks.

Nora shrugs and says, “The guards have to be guarding something.”

Miles feels an itch settle in his nose. He sniffles, rubs his nose discretely against the back of his hand. It barely helps. 

Leslie lingers on the cabin porch for all of thirty seconds before she stops walking. “The porch is hollow,” she says. “There’s something underneath.”

“Oh, nice,” Eddy comments, joining her on the porch. Nora follows suit.

Miles stays back to let out another stifle, neatly contained but not very relieving, into his hand. His breath wavers again, sudden and unrelenting.

“It’s a trap door with a combination. Of course the actual safe’s underground.” Eddy crouches down, raises a hand to cast a spell—

—only to get stopped by Nora’s hand on his arm. “Are you crazy? What about security?”

Miles’s shoulders tremble on an inhale. He clamps a hand over his mouth and nose. The guards are still fairly far away, but the forest is quiet, and around here the sound carries. Hopefully it will keep the sound muffled if he—

“hh… hhIh… hih’NGsh! hiiH’kshHu!—ugh... 

He sniffles again. His nose is running, and he wipes it on the back of his hand, frowning—he hadn’t thought to bring tissues. Evidently, that was a mistake.

“There’s no security,” Eddy says. “Otherwise Leslie would’ve said.” He removes all four screws from the trap door with a wave of his hand—this time, Nora doesn’t stop him. “See, here’s a lock with a combination. Miles, you think you can crack this one?”

It’s more an invitation than a question. Miles joins them on the porch on uncharacteristically shaky legs and stares down at the combination lock. His head is swimming. His headache’s worse, now—probably from all the time spent walking around in the cold, though he can’t be sure. Locks like this can be brute-forced with magic, but it takes a trained professional to do it, and solving magical cyphers takes time. That’s why they’ve hired him to do it—he’s good at it.

He blinks, rubs his nose discretely. He can feel the slight unsteadiness in his legs, the headache settling deep behind his eyes. They’re all counting on him, he reminds himself. All locks have a tell—some relic from manufacturing or from usage that points to the right combination—he just has to be the one to find it.

LESLIE

Leslie has always liked watching Miles work. She doesn’t know how he does it—none of them know exactly how he does it. But there’s something enchanting about watching the furrow of his eyebrows, the trained focus of his eyes, the magic veined in blue around his wrists as he works.

Now, Miles blinks, a little absently. He seems less focused than usual—like he’s missing his typical laser-focused precision. “Sorry, um, give me a sec.”

Nora frowns, sympathetic. “Heavy encryption?”

“Not really. J-Just—” he stares at the ground, blinking again. “I got it, it’s… 2, 3, 7…. Uh, 5.”

Nora’s listening, punching in the numbers as he talks. “That’s weird,” she says, after.

“What’s weird?” Eddy says.

“It didn’t go through. Are you sure that was right?”

Eddy elbows her, “Are you asking Miles if he got it right?”

Miles frowns, a little dazedly, and shakes his head. “I might’ve gotten something wrong. Uh, try... 8 instead of 3. 2875.”

Leslie watches him, quiet on the sidelines. It’s not a big deal—they’ve opened vaults with higher stakes and fewer clues. Comparatively, this isn’t very high risk—Leslie’s seen this kind of lock enough times to know that they get three guesses before the system locks them out—but that’s not what’s concerning.

In all the time she’s known him, Miles has never gotten one of the passwords wrong. He’s admitted to not knowing them before, but he doesn’t give them a concrete guess unless he’s already sure of it. 

“Woohoo,” Eddy says, a moment later, “Here we go.”

Miles is staring at nothing in particular, Leslie notices. His shoulders hunch, just for a split second, as he ducks off to the side to do—something. Then he’s straightening again, shoulders set, as he follows the other two into the trap door that leads them underground.

Leslie falls into step with them, flicking a rearrangement spell behind her to put the door back into place.

Interesting, she thinks.

MILES

The underground tunnel is dark and not very spacious. Miles bumps shoulders with someone, almost trips walking down the stairs until someone else grabs his elbow to keep him from falling. 

When he looks back, he can see that it's Eddy. Eddy’s hand is warm again—the warmth seeps through Miles’s sweater in the split second before Eddy removes his hand.

“Woah, watch your step,” Eddy says, sounding like he’s frowning. 

“Sorry,” Miles says. “I got it.”

Eddy doesn’t say anything in response to that. Miles can’t see through the dark, but he thinks Eddy is staring at his hand.

Nora spells on a light, dim enough to turn everything around them into wavering silhouettes. They’re surrounded by filing cabinets, Miles realizes, and what must be tens of thousands of documents. Nora had predicted they’d find keys here, but they won’t be able to stay down for long.

“Any ideas?” Nora asks Leslie. “Any of these cabinets that’s more guarded than others?”

Miles shivers. It’s cold here underground—not that it was a warm day to begin with, but here it’s worse. He crosses his arms over his chest. He needs to sneeze again, and this time there’s no open air corner to sneeze into. It’s a cramped space down here. It’s bad enough that he’s unwell—he doesn’t want to infect the others if this is contagious. 

He wanders back over to the staircase, which is as far away from them as he can get, and lifts an elbow up to his face.

hHeh… hehHnGshh! heEh’GKTT!—nhh.” 

The sneezes are sudden and wrenching and messy. He blinks through watery eyes, sniffles into a tightly curled fist. “heHH’nGXTtt! hH…” Even though he can’t be sure anyone is listening, he feels heat rise to his cheeks. It’s such an inopportune time for this. The last thing he wants is for them to break focus from analyzing the documents and ask him how he’s doing, but he’s nowhere close to done, and the stifling is turning his headache into something searing.

“hIih’GKXTtt! hih… ehh’DZSCHh!-ue…”

“Woah, Miles, you okay?” says someone emerging at his shoulder—Nora, he thinks. “Allergic to all the dust down here?” She’s cast a lighting spell between them, so when he blinks he can see her features resolve—he sees the worried curve of her frown before he looks away.

“I’m okay,” he says. He smiles at her in a manner that he hopes is reassuring. “Thanks, Nora.”

Her frown deepens even as she nods. “If you need to get out of here…”

“We’re only going to be down here for a little while.” He steps past her, careful not to touch her with the hand he’s just covered with. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

Back over by the cabinets, Leslie pulls open a drawer and starts leafing through the papers. “They are all financial records,” she says. “But only for small-scale transactions, as far as I can see. Nothing more than a couple thousand at once.”

“We’re going to be down here for decades trying to find something useful,” Eddy groans. “Might as well start paying rent.”

Miles blinks at them, a little blearily. His voice cracks when he asks, “Can I take a look?”

Leslie hands him a few of the folders. He pages through them.

They’re not real records. He can tell by the way the ink rises on the page, by the weight of the paper in his hands. Whatever in here that’s worth three guards and an underground safe isn’t the documents.

Something to his left is thrumming. He looks over. The space seems to warp strangely where Eddy is standing—he thinks he can pick up on some steady stream of magic, but he isn’t sure where it could be coming from.

Then it clicks. Eddy still has the communicator in his pocket.

“These are all fakes,” Miles says—softly, against the ache in his throat, wincing when his voice comes out congested. “This place isn’t guarded because of the… hh! the documents. It’s guarded because the hh… m-magic—hHh… hiIh’DSCHew! ehH’DZCHuu!” The papers crinkle slightly in his hands as his knuckles tighten around them, and he hurriedly passes them back off to Leslie. “—the magic interference in the room makes the communicator broadcast at a different frequency. I'm guessing that’s how the real messages are sent.”

“That makes sense, actually,” Nora says. “I thought the papers felt wrong.”

They hear footsteps somewhere above them, undercut by unfamiliar voices.

“Shit,” Leslie hisses, looking over at Eddy. “They’re back already. Did you reset the combination lock?”

“If I had, we wouldn’t be able to get out. The combination has to be entered physically. It can’t be spelled,” Eddy says, already heading towards the base of the staircase. He pauses just long enough to toss the communicator to Nora, who catches it neatly, even though she looks as if she hadn’t been expecting it. “You think the guards will see that it’s open?”

“Considering that that’s most likely the entrance they’re supposed to be guarding, yeah,” Leslie says.

Eddy heads up the stairs. “I can make it look like we went in through the front door so that’s the first place they check,” he pauses behind the trap door, waiting for someone to say something.

“Sure,” Leslie tells him. “Hurry up.”

Miles can hear the nervousness in her voice. Clearly, Eddy can hear it too—he turns around to say, “It’s going to be fine,” then heads up the stairs faster.

How he can be so confident right now, Miles isn’t sure. Eddy is just like that—all unwavering confidence, even when he knows the stakes. 

Three guards are not something they can’t handle. But the guards will report to the higher ups if they see that the safe’s been compromised, and their target’s response will almost certainly be to tighten security and lock down his financial assets, which means that several of the loopholes they’ve found will be for nothing.

Upstairs, Eddy casts spells to make it look like the cabin has been looked through. His efficiency with spellcasting is impressive, as always. The rest of the team crowds around the top of the staircase close to the exit door to wait. If this all goes according to plan, they’ll be able to make their escape while the guards are still searching the house.

Inconveniently, Miles feels a now-familiar tickle resurface in his nose.

He sniffles, smothers a few harsh coughs into the back of his hand. Now is the worst time for this. He lifts a hand to cover, and then—even though it takes energy—casts a silencing spell around the general vicinity. Whoever’s outside of it won’t be able to hear him, but his teammates are all standing close enough to be within the arc of the spell, which means they can hear him with perfect clarity as—

 “hHih… hiIH’NGXT! hiih’GXT!” He sniffles, too preoccupied with keeping up the silencing spell to properly stifle the sound. “hhiIH’NGXSH-ue! hh…

He blinks away wetness from his vision, takes a few steps down the stairs, and ducks forward to sneeze again—

 “hIIH’TSCH’uu! hih’NGXt! hH… hehh… hehh… hEh’DZCSHew!”

His shoulders untense, and he lifts the silencing spell, resisting the urge to lean back against the wall. He’s glad none of them are looking at him—he’s shivering openly now, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to put up a good fight if Eddy’s distraction plan doesn’t work out.

Someone drapes a jacket around his shoulders, which startles him. When he turns back, Leslie meets his eyes for just a second before tilting her head a bit in question. Miles doesn’t trust himself to speak right now, but he makes a mental note to thank her later.

“Okay,” Eddy whispers. “I think I'm done. They’re…” He clamps his jaw shut. Whatever he sees, it must not be good.

“Who’s there?” Someone says.

The guards’s footsteps are right above them now. Eddy waves another hand—inside the cabin, glass breaks.

“Don’t move!”

The guards rush into the cabin. Eddy slams open the trap door. Then all four of them are on their feet, hightailing it back into the forest. Leslie throws back a spell to seal the cabin door shut, and Nora fogs up the cabin windows so that the guards can’t see which way they’re going.

Neither of the spells is going to hold once they’re out of range, but the spells buy them time. The forest is dense enough that they lose the guards on their trail after a few minutes, but Leslie insists on taking a longer route back to the parking lot. It’s not unmanageable, but Miles is already unsteady on his feet, even if he has the stamina to make it.

When they finally make it back to the parking lot, he heads into the backseat and pulls the car door shut just as Nora gets in on the passenger side. Leslie steps hard on the gas.

They’ve made it out, they aren’t any better off than they had been when they got here. Eddy slumps against the window, silent. Nora is texting someone, her eyebrows furrowed as she stares down at her phone.

“We’d have made it if the guards came back just a little later,” Leslie says, staring through the windshield. “We’ll have to go back to use the communicator.” 

Miles blinks. She sounds despairing, and the tone of her voice makes something ache in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should’ve noticed the thing about the frequencies earlier. I mean, it’s—it should’ve been obvious, I was just...” Everything’s catching up with him now. 

He feels miserable. If he’d just figured out right away, they would’ve been out with time to spare. Now he’s delayed results and probably put all of them at risk of catching whatever he has. His head is throbbing, and he can’t stop thinking about how upset Leslie sounds, and how big a part he’s played in—

“It’s not your fault,” Leslie tells him. “None of us noticed.”

“Yeah, we could’ve planned that better. We’re lucky to have you as our mastermind,” Eddy says, slinging an arm around Miles’s shoulder in a gesture that’s supposed to be comforting. It’s warm and maybe too comforting—Miles shivers, trying not to lean into it. Eddy doesn’t say anything, but he keeps his arm there.

“Actually, we won’t have to go back,” Nora says, finally looking up from her phone. “Eddy tossed me back the communicator, so I monitored it for broadcasts.”

“When did you have time for that?” Leslie asks, sounding perplexed.

Nora smirks. “While Eddy was messing things up in the cabin and Miles was busy sneezing his head off, I was casting spells to try to amplify the signal. I just typed out what I got from the broadcasting end.” She holds up her phone. “It’s encrypted—it’s not in plain English, at least, but we can figure it out later.”

Eddy sits straighter, shoots her a grin. “Nora, you’re a godsend! I wasn’t sure if you could do it.”

“You remembered all of that?” Leslie says, sounding impressed. “Dude, that’s crazy. You’re a godsend.” 

Nora looks back between Miles and Eddy, as if she’d only been half-listening to their exchange and now it’s finally caught up with her. “Why were you off today, Miles?”

Miles leans his head against the window pane. The glass is freezing—he has to clench his teeth around another shiver. “I—”

“He's sick,” Eddy interrupts, staring out the window opposite to him.

Nora’s eyebrows creep up. “Why didn’t you say so? we could’ve taken a rain check.”

“The case has been going on for long enough.” He musters a smile. “It’s just a cold.”

Nora opens her mouth to say something else, but then Leslie distracts her with a conversation about a new game she’s bought. Eddy frowns at him for a second, eyebrows raised in question.

Miles shrugs, still half-disappointed in himself, and sits back and shuts his eyes.

The car is Leslie’s—she drops him and Eddy off at the train station.

Somewhere between the time he last closed his eyes and now, it’s started to rain. He hands Leslie back her jacket. Then he ducks out of the car, waves back to Nora, and ignores Eddy’s worried frown. 

“You’re going to get drenched,” Eddy says, heading out with him. They live in the same direction, and it’s become routine for them to take the train back together after meetups, though they’ve never been close enough—as workplace partners, or as friends—for Eddy to actually accompany him back the whole way.

“It’s just rain,” Miles tells him. “Both of us are going to get drenched.”

Eddy’s silent for a moment. Then he says, “I’m not the one with a cold.”

Miles isn’t sure what to say to that. He suspects Eddy is right to be concerned—the rain is freezing, and it’s not helping with his headache. He tries a joke. “Good thing I already have one, right? I can’t get another.”

The impact of that statement is slightly lessened when he lifts his arm to his face to cough harshly into his elbow.

Eddy grins at him and says, “Do you want to take a run for it?”

The two of them sprint through the downpour into the dimly lit interior of the train station. Miles buys them both a ticket home, while Eddy tells him he’s starving and disappears for a few minutes to get food. The station’s warm, but not warm enough, and the rain outside is falling hard enough that Miles’s hair is drenched. He can’t stop shivering.

He asks for two tickets, his voice halfway to shot. The person behind him in line looks at him with thinly-veiled disgust, and when he gets the tickets he puts as much distance between her and him as possible, for her sake.

His breath catches, and he veers sharply away for—

“hiIH’DZSCHiew! hh… hhiH’TSCHuu! hiIH...”

Someone emerges at his left. He wants to tell them to move away, or apologize, or something, but his breath is hitching again, so its all he can do to press his wrist up to half-shield his face.

“hehh’NGXt! hih... hiih’GSCHhuu! hh… ehH’DZCHew!”

Someone’s pressing something warm into his hands. He looks up, and he’s almost immediately mortified to find out it’s Eddy.

“Sorry,” he says, blinking. “I didn’t see you—” 

“I got us drinks!” Eddy says, ignoring him. He’s grinning again, as if nothing’s happened at all. “I mean, I got you hot tea, and I got myself something sweet.”

It’s surprisingly thoughtful, and the cup is pleasantly warm. Eddy is still watching him, so he lifts it to his face for an experimental sip. He can’t really taste it, but it goes comfortably down his throat, warm enough to make him shiver. “It’s good. How did you know I liked tea?”

“I didn’t,” Eddy says, starting off in the direction of the platform where they have to wait. “Just thought it would warm you up. How’s your fever?”

“How’s my—” Miles quickens his pace to fall into step with him. “How’d you know I have a fever?”

“I felt it when you tripped on that staircase,” Eddy says nonchalantly. Miles sometimes forgets that he’s scarily observant when he wants to be—he’s reckless, but he’s also the one to notice when things are off. It’s gotten them out of a few precarious situations. Still, Miles hadn’t thought that observance would be extended to him.

“It’s just a cold.”

“I know.” This time, Eddy flashes him a quick smile. “I remember. You told Nora that.”

They wait side by side at the station. Eddy is talking to him about his experience saving a neighborhood cat—Miles, who usually is content to listen to him anyways, finds it especially comforting today that Eddy isn’t expecting him to speak.

When his breath snags on an inhale, he twists away sharply.

“hHIh’NGxt! hh... HiIH’GXTt!-hh…” Miles blinks, his eyes watering. He’d wanted to be quiet about it so that Eddy could keep talking, but Eddy stops mid-sentence anyways. Miles can feel his eyes on him.

“Sorry,” he cuts in quickly. The stifles have done nearly nothing for him, but anything else will attract unwanted attention. “I—hhEh’NGKsh!” he sniffles, muffles the sneeze into his sweater sleeve. To his embarrassment, he isn’t done—if anything, the stifling is making things worse, and he can feel his control starting to waver. “heHH’GSChh!-ew… I didn’t mean… hh! to interrupt—hehh’TSCHhew! hIIH’GXXt!”

Past them, the train pulls into the station. It’s loud enough that it drowns out the sound of his sneezing, and he takes the relief for what it is, sniffling into a half-curled fist.

Eddy says something to him that he can’t hear over the roar of the oncoming train, then slips away. Miles stares at the empty space next to him. Eddy doesn’t seem to care whether or not he gets sick—once a few months back when Leslie skipped out on a mission because she had a fever, Eddy had offered to check on her. On another train ride a few weeks back, he’d sat next to a former university classmate and talked with her for two hours—he hadn’t bothered to do so much as lean away, even while she’d sniffled through what sounded like a raging head-cold.

But maybe Eddy has his limits, and he’s finally realized the dangers of standing so close to someone who’s so obviously symptomatic. Miles shivers, wrings rainwater out of his sweater, and heads onto the train when the doors open. It doesn’t matter—Miles can take the train home by himself, and Eddy can sit in a different compartment. It’s probably for the best.

To his relief, the compartment he’s in is mostly empty, save for a few people. He sits down in a corner, checks the time, and fumbles with his phone to set an alarm five minutes before his stop, because he’s tired enough that he thinks he’s going to fall asleep.

His breath hitches again, and he ducks into his sleeve, his shoulders trembling.

“hiIH’GSCHu! sniff. iiHH’DSCHEew!” A stranger blesses him, but he doesn’t have time to thank them before he’s veering away again. “IiH’DXSCh-ue! hehh… heHH... EhH’DZCSHhu!!”

It’s messy. He keeps his arm pressed to his face, wishing—for not the first time—that he had brought tissues.

From the loudspeakers, a pre-recorded voice announces that the doors are closing. So Eddy isn’t coming after all. Miles sniffles.

As if to read his mind, someone hands him a stack of café napkins. He doesn’t look at them as he takes one, blows his nose as quietly as possible, and contemplates putting up another silencing spell—it’s technically against the rules, but it’s better than being distracting, and he doubts the other passengers would report him for it.

Then the person who handed him the napkins sits down next to him, holding a hot chocolate that’s gone half-cold, and that’s when Miles realizes who it is.

“Eddy?” His voice cracks on the note, and he winces, coughing harshly into the napkins. 

“You looked like you needed those,” Eddy says, cheerful and unaffected as ever. “I had to run back to get them. The waitress didn’t look very happy seeing me take the entire stack. Good thing I made it, right?”

Miles blinks at him. “Thanks.” he clears his throat. “You didn’t have to.” He shivers again. Has it always been so cold on the train?

“You sure you’re warm enough?”

Eddy leans forward and presses a hand to his forehead. His hand’s warm—Miles is convinced that Eddy runs warm. It’s hard not to lean into his touch. Then Miles is grabbing Eddy’s wrist and shoving it out of reach as another sneeze snaps him forward, wrenching and uncontained.

“Bless you. The rain really didn’t do you any favors, huh,” Eddy says softly. “Your fever’s worse. I can’t believe Leslie doesn’t keep an umbrella in her car.”

“That’s just the cold running its course, not the rain,” Miles insists. 

“Yeah, running its course by turning into something that’s not a cold.”

He smiles tiredly. “That’s not how colds work.”

“How long have you been feeling bad?”

“Not long. It came o-on—hiIH’DSCh-uu! pretty fast.” Miles looks away. “I’m probably… hh…  hIIH’GKkt! HIIh’NGXtt!... Contagious… sniff. There’s a lot of room in the train cabin if you want to sit somewhere else. I won’t be offended, I promise.”

Eddy’s eyebrows furrow, as if that’s a worry that hasn’t even occurred to him. “Don’t worry about it. If I was going to catch this, I probably already sealed my fate in the car.”

That doesn’t make Miles feel better at all. “Sorry,” he says. “I should’ve called a taxi or something—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Eddy says quickly, frowning, “I mean, I don’t really care if I catch it. I can handle a cold. Unless...” For the first time, he sounds uncertain about himself. “...unless you want me to move?”

Truthfully, Eddy’s presence next to him is comforting. Eddy’s always comforting—Miles likes hearing him talk. How he always has so much energy is beyond him, but it’s grounding that even after a long mission or an unsuccessful one, Eddy doesn’t make him walk back in silence. He’s always finding ways to get Miles to stop thinking about work. It makes their two-hour train rides a lot more bearable.

Now, Miles tries to imagine Eddy sitting on the other side of the train compartment, not talking to him. 

Unless you want me to move. Miles blinks, meeting his eyes. His chest aches. “Would it be selfish of me to say that I don’t?”

Eddy grins brightly at him, the uncertainty in his expression gone all at once. “Nope,” he says. “I like sitting with you. Do you want to take a nap or something? you can get like, two hours in.”

“I think I will,” Miles says, his voice halfway to shot. He shuts his eyes. Eddy is warm at his side. “Sorry I'm not—” he opens his eyes to grab a napkin from the stack. “—hIIH’tsCCHhu! not especially good company. That’s going to happen a lot.”

“You’re always good company. Sleep before you lose your voice,” Eddy says. He sounds fond. Miles does fall asleep, and if he wakes up to his phone alarm with his head leaned on Eddy’s shoulder, feeling warmer than he has all day, they don’t talk about it after.

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  • 2 months later...

This is wonderful! The whole world and the characters just felt very lived-in and natural, and of course Miles with a cold (and Eddy subtly and then not-so-subtly taking care of him) was just perfection. Really enjoyed Nora and Leslie, too. I'd love to read any future adventures you feel like writing with these characters!

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  • 2 weeks later...

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