A/N: This is the goddamned nerdiest grad school geek pretentious shit I've launched on so far, and that's saying a lot. The epigraph for this is the first stanza of John Donne's sixteenth-century poem, "The Flea." It's sort of a silly, dirty poem - the (male) speaker of the piece is trying to convince his (virginal, female) love interest that, because they've both been bitten by the same flea, their blood is already commingled. It's therefore like they already had sex, so why not just do it for real, now? Okay, it's a goofy image, but I do think that a lot of human relationship is bound together by invisible ties of blood - one way being the blood of relatives (children, parents, whatever) that we share. Another being blood from shared suffering or joy, those high, special places in our brains where we think we're the only person that lived through that thing, and we feel very alone until we meet someone else who is running on that cylinder. And so there's this weird way in which sex is, in fact, less intimate than the ways in which we already have relationships with each other.

This really is going to be slow as hell. It is going to be huge and sprawling and chick-flick-y and gratuitous and SO SLOW. NOTHING HAPPENS EVER. It's a lot of stupid, petty people (aren't we all?) trying to not hurt themselves or anyone else as they flounder around in the wake of bizarrely damaging pain. (But you know what? Grace really has been through some shit, and Ethan really isn't that great a dad, and that's worth remembering.) And yeah, I was sick as hell when I started writing it. You probably shouldn't read it if you can't take a lot of graphic depictions of vomiting.

"The Flea" - John Donne

"MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do."

Ethan Mars woke up, rolled over on the sofa in the dim dawn light, unable to figure out for a minute just what it was that had woken him. After the first few days, he had fairly well managed to overcome his initial disorientation at waking up in Grace's living room, and now it had become a sort of comfort, because when he saw the fabric of that ugly couch, he knew he was in the house where Shaun was. When he'd first been released from the hospital, he'd genuinely needed someone's help getting around, showering, getting himself fed – now, after the first week, that was no longer true. But neither he nor his ex-wife wanted to part from their son, and their slightly uncomfortable living arrangement had continued. It was hard, all of them dancing around each other, renegotiating each day just what their relationships were now, but at least the house had become familiar.

So it wasn't the strange room that was bothering him, not any more. His thoughts thickened by sleep, he slowly realized that his body was telling him something was wrong – he felt hot, ill. He managed to scramble his way into the first-floor bathroom and to the toilet just before his stomach clenched, hard, and he heaved up what remained of the previous night's dinner. He retched endlessly.

Stomach finally emptied, Ethan flushed the toilet, then slowly worked his way to his feet and into the kitchen. His hands shook slightly as he poured himself a glass of water – he was definitely coming down with something, an unwelcome complication. He began walking back towards the living room, sipping, and realized unhappily that his stomach was rejecting the liquid, as well. He was a bit farther away from his goal this time, and he left a trail of watery vomit on the bathroom floor before he reached the toilet. After he finished the second round, he sat down next to the stool, rubbing one eye, beginning to take a slow inventory of everything that wasn't working right.

His stomach was still cramping, though he doubted it contained anything worth throwing up at this point. It was hard to tell, but he thought he was running a fever – the skin across his chest definitely felt hot, raw, tight, and his joints had that telltale, tired ache. He thought about heading back to the sofa, then instead cautiously worked his way through another repetition of trying to keep the water in his stomach. It didn't go well. He leant back against the wall, frustrated, tired, and let himself drift mentally. The frustration was at the forefront; he'd finally started feeling better, having energy, and now, this. It felt as though he couldn't catch a break.

By the time he heard Shaun get up – he'd always been an early riser – Ethan's body had added chills to the mix, and he decided definitively on the fever. He felt lightheaded. He thought about closing the bathroom door as Shaun came down the stairs, decided it wasn't worth the effort.

"Dad?" Ethan looked wearily up towards the doorway, and managed a wan smile up at his son. Shaun was still in his pyjamas, peering nervously in at him. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"Think I'm getting sick. No, don't come in, I got some puke on the floor. It's pretty gross." Another wave of the chills shook him, hard.

"Do you want a blanket?" Shaun asked shyly.

"That would actually be great, Shaun. Just grab one of the ones I was using off the sofa." Shaun trailed away into the living room. Ethan grabbed a wad of toilet paper off the roll, wiped up the floor, and flushed it, gagging anew at the smell of that bile-stained water against his hands. Shaun reappeared, dragging one of the afghans that Grace's mother had given them, and Ethan wrapped it gratefully around himself. His shivering trailed off for the moment.

"Do you need anything, Dad?" Shaun was fidgeting, his face frozen somewhere between worry and an eagerness to help, and Ethan felt shame wash over him at their upended relationship.

"Not really. You can sit with me if you want, but it's not going to be very interesting. Could even be kind of disgusting. You might want to go watch cartoons." Instead, Shaun padded softly into the bathroom, and sat down next to him. "Careful, now, I don't want you to catch whatever it is I've got, okay?"

"How's your finger?" the boy asked. Ethan's mouth quirked upwards; he and Grace had decided that Shaun shouldn't be told just what had happened to his father's hand, but there was certainly no hiding it. Shaun had immediately been impressed when he'd noticed, fascinated by the gruesomeness of the stump, and tried to sneak a peek whenever he could. His slightly macabre curiosity worried Grace, but Ethan was pretty sure that it was just a consequence of Shaun being a ten-year-old boy.

"It's not too bad," the man replied. "Maybe later we can take a look at it, when I feel a little better."

"Do you want to play cards?"

Ethan's smile widened. "You're only asking because you know I'm sick and you want to finally beat me at Go Fish." Shaun gave him back a grin.

Then the chills came back, and they wouldn't stop. His chest was starting to ache dully. Ethan wondered again if he should just return to the couch.

"Dad? Should I go tell Mom?"

"Yeah," Ethan admitted. "Go tell her I'm sick, and then make yourself breakfast, how's that?"

"Okay," Shaun said, cheerful at having been given accomplishable tasks, and shuffled his way out of the bathroom. He was shouting before he had fully emerged, and Ethan's smile flickered back onto his face for a few seconds – it never failed that "go tell someone" something, for Shaun, always ended up meaning, "yell across the whole house."

"MOOOOM!" he shouted now. "Dad's sick! He's throwing up and stuff!" It wasn't a particularly pleasant description, but not an unfair one.

Upstairs, Grace Mars came more fully awake. She'd heard her son get up and had drowsily considered whether she should go down to help him with breakfast, then had decided that Ethan would probably like to do it; it didn't sound like that had turned out well.

"MOOOOOOOM!"

"I'm coming, Shaun!" She shrugged her way into her bathrobe and made her way down the stars. Shaun disappeared into the kitchen once he saw her. Grace only had to take one look at Ethan sitting on the bathroom floor – pale, sweaty, shivering, an afghan-wrapped mummy, before she sighed wearily.

"'Throwing up and stuff?'" she said, not unkindly.

"I think maybe I'm getting the flu," he responded. "I can't keep anything down."

She laid the backs of her fingers against his cheek to check his temperature and sighed again. "Want to try some Pepto?"

"Okay."

She went to the upstairs bathroom, used the toilet, washed her face and hands, and gripped the edge of the sink for a long moment, counting to ten, before grabbing the Pepto-Bismol and the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet.

Back downstairs, Ethan fumbled the pink bottle open and took a swig directly from it, then screwed the top back on and sat for a few seconds in deep concentration. He shook his head just before he lurched forwards again, convulsing, this time dribbling thick, pink liquid out of his mouth into the bowl. Wrinkling her nose, Grace let him finish and lean back into the wall before handing him the thermometer.

"Here," she said. "I'm going to go make sure Shaun doesn't destroy the kitchen." He nodded and stuck it under his tongue.

In the kitchen, Shaun had, in fact, more or less succeeded in getting together a bowl of cereal without creating a giant disaster. Grace put the heavy gallon of milk back in the fridge for him, then fondly tickled his armpit, and he squirmed away, poking at the bowl with his spoon. "Is Dad okay?" he asked.

Grace was so, so tired of answering that question. She'd given up during Ethan's coma of always saying yes, of course he'd be okay, tried to be as honest as she could with Shaun, instead. Answering him during her ex-husband's apparently endless bouts of depression had stretched the limits of her abilities; this at least felt more manageable. "Well, you're right, he's sick. Probably have to go to the doctor."

"I think I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," Shaun said thoughtfully, and looked hopefully at the sugar bowl.

"No sugar for breakf- " Grace started automatically, then stopped herself. "Oh, okay. Go ahead. One spoon. I thought you wanted to make video games."

"If I were a doctor, I could help people like Dad." He'd dived into the sugar eagerly, but caught the warning look in her eyes before he went in for a second spoonful. She felt the now-familiar rush of rage at Ethan for making medical emergencies such a part of his son's life, of her own, knowing that part of her anger was irrational, not caring.

"Want the comics with breakfast?" she asked, and he nodded. She fetched the newspaper off the front porch for him, carefully confiscating the news section, as she'd done every morning since he came home, and slid him the funny pages while he toyed with his cereal. "Here you go. I'm going to sort out your dad."

Ethan wiped at his sweat-slicked hair as she pulled the thermometer out of his mouth. "Oh, Ethan," Grace said, frustrated, as she peered at the numbers. "It's high. This is an emergency room trip." She began to formulate a plan of action – all three of them were still in pyjamas, which needed to be taken care of, Shaun was going to have to come with – and shook her head at him with helpless irritation.

"No, it's okay," he said, hugging himself. "Maybe I can get some pills to stick –" And that was the last straw, for Grace. She shut the door shut behind her, harder than she'd intended, so Shaun wouldn't hear her.

"It's pretty obvious that you can't. Listen, Ethan," she hissed at his startled face. "I don't know what your problem is. I don't know if you don't take care of yourself because you're not willing to or because you're not able to, but what I do know is this shit," she swore so rarely that he flinched at the word, "Is over. When you get back on your feet again, when you move back into your own place, I am not comfortable leaving him alone with you. I will legally renegotiate the custody agreement if I have to, but I think you know why you'd better not fight me on this."

He was floored. Grace felt a flinch of guilt at attacking him while he was already so miserable, but stuck to her guns. "That's not," he started, and readjusted the afghan, eyes narrowing. "That's not fair. This just came out of nowhere. I felt fine last night. Pretty much."

"Pretty much. Exactly. It's part of a pattern, Ethan. You were having blackouts that lasted for hours at a time while you were watching Shaun, and you knew it, and you didn't do anything about it. I didn't want to believe you were letting something like that happen, so I guess not asking you about my doubts is my fault. Mine. And I'm not making that mistake any more. What I see is you falling apart over and over again – mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever, and you cannot make Shaun have to look after you."

He was struggling between guilt, and rage, and the rising throb in his chest. She was right, about the blackouts. Right, but it was so hard to admit it. "I can't believe you'd say that, after . . . after what we've all just been through. Hasn't what I've done made up for anything? Proved I care?"

"I know you care about him, but that was not an example of being a good parent. That was an example of a crazy man forcing you to suffer because you care, and it's not the same th– I don't understand why you don't get this. Why you can't bother to keep yourself together enough to look after him all the time."

"What . . . what else could I possibly do?"

"Get your act together. I bet you still can't take him to parades because of the crowds; I haven't seen you do anything about that. I'm right, aren't I?"

"It's hard –" he started.

"I'm sure it is. That doesn't excuse you from doing it."

"Mom? Dad?" They'd gotten too loud; both glared at each other in mutual warning, and then Grace leaned back again to open the door. Shaun knew better than to ask them if everything was all right between them; he knew the answer to that hadn't been "yes" for a very long time. But the question was on his face, anyway.

"Shaun," Grace started, "Go put some clothes on. You can put on yesterday's, if you want. We've got to take your dad to the doctor."