Author's Note: Despite the title, this story takes place before Jane and Jack are married. And I probably rated this higher than is warranted, but I figured better to play it safe. Hope you enjoy.
1.
The first inkling anyone had that something might be wrong was when Jack said, "Will this horrible rain never end?"
This was a sentiment expressed by almost all of the leeries at some time or another that week (In fact, they were more likely to say something like 'I've had a French egg of this blasted pleasure' but they meant 'I've had enough of this horrible rain'). It had been raining almost non-stop for eight days, after all. But now it was Jack saying it.
"Oh no!" said Angus promptly, "Our Jackie boy is down. He must be going whaling!" The suggestion that Jack must be sick wasn't said seriously, and everyone laughed in response. Even Jack grinned a bit sheepishly; he knew himself that he usually enjoyed a bit of rain just as much as a bit of sunshine…or at least didn't mind it. In fact, hearing Jack complain about anything was so rare that the few occasions when he'd actually lost his temper were now the stuff of legends. And even then, it was more likely to be about an injustice to his friends than anything to do with himself.
"Knock it off," said Jack, but good naturedly, while he ducked Angus's hand as his friend jokingly tried to check Jack's temperature. Jack succeeded in ducking Angus, but then got dragged closer to the fire by two other leeries and a mug of something warm was shoved into his hands. "I'm not going whaling," he explained, though he did accept the drink. "Jane is. And this pleasure and pain isn't helping."
Then of course the teasing turned to Jane. Not mockingly, but it was hard not to tease their mate a bit when he was so clearly smitten. They were actually gentler with him than with each other; at any rate they avoided lewder commentary. This was out of a mixture of feeling like they were corrupting a kitten when they made suggestions around Jack (a mistaken feeling; Jack was neither a child nor nearly as innocent as his persona suggested) and experience that said disrespecting someone Jack cared for was asking for trouble. Jack defended his friends, even from his other friends. So they teased him about how seldom they saw him now that he had a real lady to go out with, and the usual 'and what does a girl like that want with a guy like you' that no one really meant, and then Jack mentioned seeing Freddie talking to a young flower seller which neatly took the attention off himself, and after that talk turned to a story Bill had about a lake he'd mistaken for a puddle, and a nice evening was had by all.
It was when Jack begged off early that Angus remembered the joke at the start of the evening, and looked more closely at his friend. Jack somehow looked a bit pale and a bit flushed at the same time, but then, that could have been from sitting so close to the fire. And he had coughed a few times, but then, there wasn't a man among them who didn't have a bit of a cold by that point. Constant close quarters mixed with constant rain were not a good recipe for health. Jack leaving early wasn't too unusual either; they all had to get up early and lately Jack was always off to meet Jane or some other member of the Banks family. It was late for visiting though, and Jack had said himself that Jane was ill.
"Off already?" Angus said, trying to study Jack without looking like he was studying him.
"Bit tired," Jack answered, his voice cheerful enough that he still sounded like his usual self, even if his voice was slightly hoarse. He didn't look overly tired; there was still a spring in his step and his eyes were bright.
In the end, Angus dismissed his worries and went back to enjoying the evening.
The next day they had a bit of break in the weather, though everything remained gray and damp and the air was chilly. At least they had dry clothes for once as they moved through the early morning to turn down the lamps.
Angus saw Jack briefly, for their routes converged, and he seemed fine; probably better than Angus himself who had stayed out rather later than he should have. Jack was still coughing, but then, Angus himself had a runny nose and an annoying sneeze that seemed to come on just whenever he was halfway up his ladder.
"Meet up after?" Angus has asked in the place of a greeting.
"Can't," said Jack. Despite his growing friendship with Jane, and the Banks family, and his tendency to find odd jobs to do between leerie shifts, it was actually rather unusual for Jack to turn down meeting with his old friends at all. Angus must have looked a bit surprised by Jack's abrupt answer, because he quickly expanded to say, "Jane is still whaling." And he looked worried, which was a foreign expression for Jack's face.
"That bad?" asked Angus, who had supposed it was just the same sort of cold that had been going around.
"She insists it's just a cold," Jack answered, "But then she doesn't want the children to visit, in case it's catching, and she told me it would be better to stay away, as if I would, and anyway, who is there to take care of her if she's sending everyone away?" Then, in a lower, confiding sort of tone he said, "I think she's scared. After how her parents died."
And just then wasn't the time for that kind of conversation, so that had been the end of it. Angus had gone one direction and Jack in the other. Angus had been vaguely relieved that Jack himself wasn't ill, and hoped with all his heart that Jack's young lady would soon be well too. He didn't want to imagine how it would hit Jack if that proved not to be the case. Then Angus sneezed again and almost fell of his ladder and thought perhaps he should worry more about himself and getting rid of his horrid, miserable cold. And leeries aren't the sort to hold onto life's worries, so for the most part, he enjoyed the lack of rain and whistled as he went about his job.
Something did niggle at Angus for the longest time after. It took him a while to figure out what he'd noticed. Jack hadn't been singing, nor whistling, nor even humming. Jack had once confessed to him that one of his favorite things about his job was that he could sing while he plied his trade.
"And just imagine what sort of world we'd live in if everyone sang as they worked."
Angus had laughed, and so had Jack, but Jack hadn't really been joking; Angus could tell. And this morning he had been silent. Either Jack was even more worried than he had let on, or he hadn't felt up to singing.
Either way, there wasn't much Angus could do about it. He wasn't Jack's mum.
Jack, meanwhile, went silently through his route as quickly as bad roads and a pounding head would allow. In fact, despite hurrying, he was actually slower than was normal for him. He generally had a good rhythm and could sail through his route, knowing which lamps were tricky and which just needed a touch and where to swerve to avoid loose cobblestones and the like. Trying to rush threw him off, and the fact he'd awakened that morning with a mild but tenacious headache, along with the tickle at the back of his throat, had not helped.
Between the tickle in his throat, the aching head, and the way he was slightly out of breath (from trying to hurry, he thought), he had neither the inclination nor the ability to sing that morning. He himself never even noticed his own silence, for his thoughts were full of Jane, but several people he regularly passed did notice. A police officer who usually called him a 'menace on wheels' or a 'public nuisance' instead shouted 'you see about that cough 'fore you've passed it on to all of London!' and a somewhat confused vendor found himself having to toss one of his own apples to a small child waiting in line at a soup kitchen. When he caught another passerby staring he mumbled, 'Day wouldn't've felt right' and then pretended it hadn't happened.
Jack noticed none of these things, only thinking to himself that Jane had looked so unwell the last time he saw her and he hoped Michael had talked her into seeing the doctor and he hoped none of the children did catch her cold…or his cold, and all in all he noticed very little that morning but still managed to do all his lamps.
For once he rolled down Cherry Tree Lane, which was at the very end of his route, without a thought about stopping by number 17, because he was already plotting in his head the shortest route to Jane's flat. At any rate, he was so late for all his hurrying that he'd missed the children, who had been forced to walk to school without a leerie for company (and very glum they were about it, with just a smidgeon of worry because Jack was almost never late).
And of course Michael should also have been out the door already too, which only left Ellen (and normally, he'd be quite happy to stop by just for her; she had the best stories about the family and she tended to hand out tea and toast or whatever was left of breakfast), but Jack's mind was still full of Jane. So Jack finished the final light and didn't turn towards number 17 but he did take a moment to rest. He was still feeling a bit out of breath and he wanted a chance to catch it before he started the journey to see Jane, except instead of catching it he started coughing. The bout of coughing actually surprised him; he knew perfectly well he'd caught a bit of a cold but up to then it had seemed like a small thing brought on by too much chilly rain. Somehow, riding his bike around and climbing his ladder hadn't set him off too much but resting did. It was as though the cough had been chasing him all morning and only just had the moment to catch up.
He was beginning to feel a bit light headed from the coughing, in fact, and his head was pounding awfully. He was just beginning to wonder if he shouldn't hop on his bike anyway, since exercise must have agreed with him like resting didn't, when the hand grabbed his shoulder, not roughly, but steadying, and it was only in that moment that Jack noticed he'd begun to lean sideways a bit.
"Jack?" said the voice of the one the hand belonged to, and Jack had a vague notion that this wasn't actually the first time the person had called his name, like maybe he'd heard it just before but somehow hadn't noticed well enough to pay attention.
"Michael? What are you doing home from work?" is what Jack didn't say, because all he got out was 'Michael' before the coughing started again. After it passed (and Michael's hand was still on his shoulder, warm and solid) and the world stopped tilting under his feet, Jack didn't dare try again, for he rather thought talking was what had brought it on in the first place.
"You're as bad as Jane," said Michael, his voice fond and a bit exasperated, and then, "Well come on, then." And Jack was just befuddled enough to follow meekly as he was tugged along. He wasn't entirely sure how Michael managed it, but somehow Michael had Jack's bike and was pushing it awkwardly with one hand while the other was kept at Jack's back, and the next thing Jack knew he was sitting in Michael's kitchen with a mug of hot tea warming his fingers and a thermometer stuffed in his mouth.
"I'm not that sick," is what he failed to say, mostly because of the thermometer but also because he could feel that tickle in the back of his throat getting worse and nothing sounds more ridiculous than trying to say you're not sick while coughing.
Michael had left, saying something like, "I'll just tell him he has another one," which would have left Jack baffled except the world felt a bit unreal around the edges and it was hard to work up to the level of curiosity that is needed to be truly baffled. Ellen was the one who had produced the thermometer and tea.
"And I suppose you've been out in the weather all week, too," she scolded, just as though it had been his choice and not his job. "As bad as Jane, and her SPRUCE."
And Jack rather liked to be compared to Jane, but didn't really appreciate that Ellen was implying Jane's work was a bad thing. And he gave her a grumpy sort of look that completely failed to have the desired effect, seeing as he looked about as fierce as a kitten at that moment.
In the end, the cough won, but Ellen snatched the thermometer just in time, then tutted over the reading.
"As I thought," she said while Jack finally got his first sip of his tea. "38 degrees." The way she pronounced it, one would think it had said 40, but Jack hadn't actually expected it to be any higher than 37, at most. Sure he had a bit of a cough (soothed by the tea for the moment) and a headache, but a fever?
And then Michael was back with another man that Jack didn't know, but he could guess his profession from his bag and clothing. But why did Michael have a doctor about the house? Surely not on the off chance Jack pedaled by looking a bit peaky?
"Who's sick?" Jack asked, his eyes roving to Michael (who should have been at work, but otherwise looked perfectly fine) and then to Ellen, who looked as spry and active as ever as she bustled about the kitchen. "The children?"
"The children are at school," Michael answered. "Georgie has a bit of a cold, but no fever, and I imagine we'll all get it in the end."
"Then who's sick?" Jack repeated, before breaking down coughing again. He tried to stop it with the tea, only to almost choke, and Ellen was kind enough to pat him enthusiastically on the back. Michael only just saved the mug.
"You are, it would seem," the doctor said.
"'s just a cold," Jack mumbled when he could.
"Perhaps," the doctor agreed, much to Jack's surprise and Ellen's disapproval. Then the doctor gave him a stern look. "But that doesn't mean it should be ignored. We don't want it to develop into something worse, now do we?"
And then he shooed Ellen out of the room, under the principle that she is a woman and Jack is a man and demanded that Jack remove his shirt. Feeling just the slightest bit outnumbered (and the slightest bit just out of it), Jack meekly did what he was told and allowed the doctor to examine him.
The end pronouncement was, "Just like the other one. Plenty of liquids, plenty of bed rest, make sure he takes his medicine, and call me if either of them get any worse."
If Jack hadn't been feeling so slow that morning, he probably would have figured out quicker who the 'other one' must be. As it was, he was still trying to figure out how it came about that he'd gone from plotting a trip across London to being half pushed up Michael's stairs while Michael said something about loaning him some clothes to sleep in.
As it was, it wasn't until a door opened and Jane stuck her head out, doubtless drawn by the commotion, that Jack understood.
"Jack?" said Jane, her voice barely more than a whisper and her face pale and her nose red. Jack was so surprised that he said the first thing to pop into his head, which was, "But I'm going to see you at your flat." Which was followed by a coughing fit.
"I told you you'd catch my cold," Jane whispered harshly.
"You two deserve each other," is what Michael said, albeit with a fond sort of smile, which is possibly why he completely ignored all propriety and settled them both in same bed. In fact, Jack would later realize it was Michael's own bed, lent first to his sister and then to the two of them under the theory that it was the most remote from the children's rooms and therefore the quietest. Of course Michael only succeeded in giving up his room because his sister was too sick to win the argument.
Jack was still not entirely sure how he had gotten there, let alone Jane, but somehow he was now wearing a pair of Michael's pajamas, propped up next to Jane on a mound of pillows and tucked under warm blankets, a stack of handkerchiefs at the ready and a tray made up with toast and porridge and tea over his lap.
"Is Michael a bit…magic?" he asked Jane.
"Poor Jack," said Jane, and she would have giggled if she hadn't been too poorly herself to manage. Instead of mirthful, it actually came across as a bit sad. "You look like a lost kitten."
"Lion, surely," muttered Jack, but he was unable to muster up the energy to be properly offended. Then, once he'd eaten his breakfast, and the dim light and the warmth had soothed his aching head (and, he now realized, aching limbs…perhaps he did have a bit of a fever), he felt recovered enough to say, "How did you get here? I really was about to go visit you."
"Michael," Jane answered, "is far too much of a mother hen for his own good. He showed up at my door and said, 'Enough is enough.' And he had a car bring me here."
"And you went?" Jack said, instead of what he thought, which was, 'if that's what I look like when I pout no wonder everyone keeps comparing me to a kitten' and 'Jane is so pretty. Even with the red nose.' and 'I wonder if she'd be up for a cuddle'.
"Of course I didn't go," Jane answered. Jack stared at her. Then he reached out a finger and poked her gently on the shoulder, just to be certain of things. Jane wrinkled her nose. "Well, obviously I did go…in the end. He threatened to tell you about…" and then, quite abruptly and in the middle of her own sentence, "You know, Jack, I really am quite sleepy." And she cuddled up against him of her own accord, and Jack was so pleased he never got around to asking exactly what Michael had threatened.
Michael found them like that ten minutes later, when he came to collect the tray. Both were curled into each other, and it would have been quite sweet except for the way Jane's drippy nose was burrowed into Jack's shoulder, and Jack, even asleep, kept coughing into her hair.
"Well, I guess they can't get each other any more sick," said Michael (which isn't actually how germs work, but ultimately proved to be true). And he resisted the urge to do a quick sketch but instead took away the tray and went back down and told Ellen "If either of them tries to do a runner, you have my permission to tie them to the bed." And then he went to work, because it was a work day (he had gotten permission to have the morning off, of course, but not the afternoon, though if Jane or Jack had proved to be worse than they'd seemed, he would have).
Jack had no intention of doing a runner when he got to cuddle sick Jane. Jane had pretty much refused any of his attempts to take care of her before (under the theory that her cold was catching and, when it came down to it, just a cold), but now that he was already sick, she was perfectly happy to let him hold her and give her handkerchiefs. She drew the line at him running up and down the stairs for food or drink. At any rate, Ellen popped in so often with tea that they were both heartily sick of the substance quite quickly.
They did get to whisper together in the quiet (while they were awake anyway; and mostly to make secret plans to get around Ellen for something that wasn't tea), and read to each other. This didn't work very well because Jane's voice was almost gone, and talking made Jack's cough worse, but they did their best and Jack still didn't think he'd had a more pleasant time while sick.
The children came home from school and Ellen had intended to hide Jack and Jane's presence from them under the theory that the children would disturb them and the two needed peace and quiet; that or it would upset the children. Illness within the household tended to lead to nightmares among the children. During the day, they could be reasonable and know very well it's just a little illness…then at night they'd wake up crying that the ill person had died. Michael hadn't actually told them their aunt had a bad cold; they just thought she'd been busy or unwilling to traverse the rain. So Ellen intended to keep the two patients hidden as long as possible.
That was rather ruined when the children ran into the house shouting, "Uncle Jack is here, Uncle Jack is here!"
She had forgotten about the bicycle left in the front of the house. And of course Jack and Jane heard the children, and neither was so very sick that they didn't respond by staggering out of bed to go and greet them. Of course, if Jane had stopped to think, she would have remembered she was avoiding the children to avoid passing on her cold, but they'd caught her while she was sleeping so she had forgotten. Jack, who had been sleeping too, woke up half convinced he must be well again after napping half the day away, and he held onto this delusion right up to the point that the stairs tried to move out from under his feet.
Luckily, between Jane (though she was somewhat unsteady herself) and the banister, they managed.
The children's cries changed from 'Uncle Jack' to 'Uncle Jack, Aunt Jane' and Ellen threw up her hands in despair.
"Jack and Jane Banks, you get back into bed right this instance or so help me I will tie you down, see if I don't!" And she was terrifying enough that Jack didn't even point out his last name wasn't actually 'Banks', but meekly explained, "We only wanted to greet the children."
"Oh, are you ill?" asked Annabel with a frown, and the children's excitement died down.
"I've got a cold," said Georgie. "Is it my fault? Teacher says colds are catching and I had to wash my hands a hundred times today."
"I'm afraid you caught our cold," Jane tried to explain, only she had to whisper and Jack started coughing from the effort of going downstairs so it's doubtful if any of the children understood her.
"Back to bed, I say!" Ellen insisted. So the two started back up the stairs again, much more slowly than they went down, and John and Annabel ran to help them up. This created a funny sort of dance when the two patients, not wanting to introduce their illness to the entire household, tried to dodge them.
"We'll make you ill," Jane whispered, much more successfully this time.
"We'll wash our hands after," John answered. "We know all about that. Come along, Aunt Jane. Are you in the guest room?"
"You can hold onto my shoulder, Uncle Jack," Annabel added. Georgie, it must be confessed, probably hindered their efforts more than helped when he tried pushing Jack from behind and almost caused all of them to fall, but they made it in the end.
There was some confusion at the top of the stairs, when Jack didn't actually remember which door they'd come from and tried to go to the nursery, and John tried to lead his aunt to the guestroom.
"Actually, we're in Michael's room," Jane had to explain. Which alarmed Jack, who hadn't realized this up to that point. In the end the children got them sorted, in part because the two were too sick to put up much defiance (Jack was alarmed a second time when he remembered it wasn't really proper for Jack and Jane to share a bed and what would the children think? What they thought was, easier to take care of them together.)
"You feel awfully warm, Uncle Jack," Annabel remarked as she tucked him in.
"I'm fine," said Jack. "It's just a bit of a cough." Only when the thermometer was fetched, it turned out he now had a temperature of almost 39. Jane's was slightly better at not quite 38.
"It was probably all that exertion, up and down the stairs," Ellen decided. "But if it doesn't go down, we'll call back the doctor."
"But Aunt Jane exerted just as much, and hers isn't that high," Georgie pointed out, confused. And then he sneezed and didn't quite get his hand up in time and Ellen decided that was enough visiting and shooed everyone out.
"I really don't mind," Jack tried to say, only he coughed instead, and it was just as well because five minutes later he'd fallen asleep again. Jane stayed awake this time, gently stroking his hair and frowning slightly. She could feel his warmth against her hand, and she wanted to hold him, but she felt too hot to do it comfortably. In fact, she didn't want any of her blankets and wished a bit that she could open the window. The only thing stopping her was that Jack might get cold. Despite his heat, she could feel him shivering.
"Poor Jack," she whispered. "I did tell you to stay away." And she gently kissed his forehead, then lay herself more comfortably and closed her eyes.
Author's Note: Incidentally, research into disease in the early 1900's is fascinating and John Snow is awesome (like Sherlock Holmes, but for disease. And…you know…not literary).