The Sugar Thief (G/T) (Completed)

9 - Healing

In which Carter worries a lot, and Eric does his best to calm him down.

However, taking care of a borrower might prove more challenging than he thought.

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Eric couldn't quite believe what he was looking at. Again, much like the first time he laid eyes on a borrower, he was dumbfounded. Damien looked rough, and he couldn't help but wince at all of the minor injuries on his body. A cold couldn't have done that to him, and it just left him wondering. What did?  

He looked so delicate, yet sturdy; Eric could see the years of experience and toned muscle in his body, but his arms were still as breakable as toothpicks. While he wasn't as identical to Carter as he was imagining, with his neck-length brown hair and bigger physique, he could tell that the two were still related. Up close Eric could see that they shared the same darker fur patterns on their ears and tails, although the tuft at the end of Damien's was admittedly a little less fluffy.

Carter helped him put the older brother down on an old soft hoodie on his desk, beginning with an injury assessment. He stood beside him between Eric's arms, worriedly looking down. Eric tried not to loom over them, but it was hard to get a good look without.

"What are his symptoms?" He eventually asked, hoping that Carter would be able to explain. 

Carter sighed. There were a lot.

"Well he's really warm," he started, "I think it's a fever. He kept coughing a lot and wouldn't really eat or drink much, and then he just kind of stopped responding to me at all. He keeps shivering and I.. I think he also had a headache?"

He wilted away from Eric's gaze, ashamed that he wasn't able to help his brother more than he had. If his mother were here she could concoct some sort of salve or tell him what plants he could use for medicine, or make her miracle soup like she always did, but it was just him. He worried deeply about his brother, and felt so hollow as he watched him lay there, almost lifeless except for his flushed cheeks and occasional shudder.

Eric nodded, hand moving to rest on his chin in thought. It sounded like the flu to him, something he'd dealt with a handful of times in his life, but this was on a whole different scale. Quite literally. All of the remedies coming to mind that would aid a sick human weren't very applicable to borrowers, like painkillers or cough syrup or a steaming hot shower. He thought for a second to try the first two, but he had no idea how it would affect him. He didn't want to give him too high of a dosage, or witness the potentially harmful effects of human medicine on something that very much wasn't human.

His eyes narrowed as he kept thinking. He'd have to find a place for the two of them to stay, somewhere accessible yet hidden, and warm but also dark. He knew his grandparents didn't have any shoeboxes, and he doubted that he could construct something that would work in such a short amount of time. After scanning the room for a solid minute his eyes landed on his dresser, and his face lit up. He could clear out a drawer for them. Perfect.

It didn't take too long to set everything up, maybe about ten minutes in total. Eric scoured the house a bit to get his grandma's heating pad, and the softest yarn blanket he could find. If there was one thing a sick person needed, it was warmth to fight the virus.  

He laid the heating pad on the bare bottom of his dresser drawer, before piling the small yarn blanket on top. His grandmother used to sit with it on her lap in her rocking chair to keep her legs warm, but it hadn't seen a day's use in over a year since she moved out and Eric figured this was a good reason to bring it back out.