Disclaimer: Chapter three, still broke and definitely not the owner of any of this. Welp.
3.
It's thirty-five degrees. Inside. Outside, it's twenty-two. Face has barricaded himself in the closet, taking the espresso machine and three of the blankets with him. Hannibal is out on the balcony, for God's sake, taking one of his infamous Cuban cigars and letting the jazz run through his veins like fire.
B.A. is suffering from the mother of all headaches and joints that ache like they belong to someone three times his age. He made it through the day on a bottle of Advil and endless glasses of oatmeal water, but the drugs wore off half an hour ago. He sits in the middle of his bed, shaking, teeth grinding together like he was chewing a bit.
Murdock, unfazed by the cold, droops halfway off his bed, mumbling sweet nothings at the carpet. B.A. had him worried there for a second, although no one would've known. His concern manifested itself in the infinite supply of oatmeal water, which he warmed in water bottles kept tight between his legs. B.A. didn't know. Nobody told him.
The sergeant drifts close to sleep, slumped on the mattress, his eyelids fluttering. The blues in his skin bled to the top layer of dermis and he pales in the harsh lighting of the hotel. If Murdock didn't know better, he'd say B.A. looks worn down, and the man's shoulders shudder jerkily as he coughs.
Murdock's up in a hot second, scrambling over the bed like a puppy in socks. He reaches B.A.'s side in seconds, ice-cold nose pressed to the hollows of his cheeks. "B.A.," he prompts, breathing hot on his neck, "B.A., are you pneumonia?"
The look B.A. gives him is remarkably acerbic for someone so under the weather, and his eyebrows threaten to meet at the center of his forehead. "Fool," he snarks, his voice low and raspy, "How the hell am I—"
Murdock puts one long, chilly finger against his lips. "Because you give me the shivers," he murmurs, and he brushes away a smudge of engine grease with a gentle thumb. B.A. can do nothing more than gaze at him with tired, glassy eyes as Murdock nudges him down on the mattress. Extra blankets are found in the closet—Face gives them up begrudgingly, and shoos Murdock out to keep in the minimal heat—and B.A. is soon swathed in pilled fleece and two-hundred-thread cotton.
"Merry Christmas Eve, B.A.," Murdock whispers, and B.A. grins at him. It's brief and weak, and the two of them don't speak of it, but Murdock feels sweet warmth blossom in his stomach.