#sickfic!

The bed is empty when you wake, and you register this with your sleep-sluggish brain.

Then you hear her sneeze, in the bathroom through the door. Twice. Three times. Four.

"Nata," you say hoarsely.

"Yeah?" she replies. You see a glimpse of red hair. Her voice is thick.

"You are disturbing me."

She laughs, and you hear the rustle of tissue. "You're such a jackass."

You pull the sheets more securely over your head, blotting out the sound of her sniffs and the light from the window. "Come back to bed," you say, your arm falling over the side of the mattress to brush the floor.

"Coming." That thick sound again, like there's something stuck in her throat. You stick your head out of the covers and frown at her as she enters, ignoring the fond smile on her face.

"What's wrong with you?" you ask. She grabs your nose and you squirm out of her grasp.

"Rude."

"Why is your face like that?"

"Rude," Natalia repeats. Her nose is red. In fast, her whole face is flushed. She sits gingerly down on the edge of the bed. "You want breakfast?" she asks.

You study her. Her fingers gripping the covers, her wrists trembling. The way her chest is moving shallowly, her breaths in tight little gasps. "I'll make breakfast," you say. She raises an eyebrow at you.

"Oh, you will?"

"Yes, I will." You wave a hand vaguely in the direction of the ceiling. "That thing James said about assimilating back into the world."

She studies you critically for a second, but she doesn't appear to have the energy to protest, and you scramble out of bed, touch her shoulder and make for the kitchen.

Behind you, you hear a whoof as she collapses back onto the mattress.

Natalia only emerges when you begin to burn the food. She leans against the kitchen doorframe, barefoot. Her face is pallid now, her shoulders slumped.

"You're burning that," she says thickly.

"You really are the most observational-"

"Idiot."

You turn back to the oven with a sigh. "Sit." She pauses, then obeys, her feet making no sound against the floor. The chair scrapes and she drops heavily into it.

You serve her a watery fried egg on a piece of toast with the burnt edges cut off, and she beams at you like you've set the world on her plate, her bloodshot eyes turning up at the corners.

"Sit," Natalia says, and when you've sat down, she forks a bit of egg white up and pushes it into your mouth. She's only eaten a small square of toast when she pushes her plate away.

You touch her forehead under the guise of affection. Her skin is hot like sunwarmed stones, alarmingly so.

"You're ill," you say.

Natalia pulls away from your hand, her constant smile fading. "No," she says. "I'm not."

"Okay, so eat," you prompt. She eyes her plate reluctantly.

"I have work to do today," she says eventually, and she pushes herself up to stand. You grab her shoulders and shove her down again: it's frighteningly easy. She stares up at you.

"You're going back to bed."

"I'm not sick."

"Nata," you say, fixing her with a look. Her nose is still red, her lips cracked, her eyes half closed. You wonder if she has a headache.

Finally, she gives in. She leans forward slowly and presses her face to your stomach with a sigh. "Okay," she says, muffled. "Only if you come with me."

You scratch at her scalp, thumbs in circles just behind her ears and she melts into you with a groan. "Of course."

"My head hurts." She shivers, hard like she's been holding it back all this time. "I'm cold."

"I'll get you an Ibuprofen."

Still, she doesn't move away from you. In the end, you have to lift her up with arms around her waist, and walk her into the bedroom yourself. You lay her down amongst the tornado of sheets, draw them over her shoulders, and make for the bathroom to get the medicine. When you return, she's curled into a ball, shuddering under the covers. You switch the light off.

You set the glass of water you'd poured down on the bedside table and climb in next to her. Immediately, she loops her arms around your waist and pulls you in, shoving her face into your shoulder.

"I have pills," you say. Her knee is in your stomach, but you don't move. Natalia's hand worms into yours and finds the tablets. She swallows them dry, her face screwed up in the dark. Then she sighs against your neck and relaxes.

You draw your hands over the curve of her back, gently.

"You should tell me, next time," you say softly. "Don't hide things from me."

"We don't really talk about things, though, do we?" Natalia says. Her voice is muffled and slurred. You paint patterns against the cloth of her t shirt. "Besides, I'm used to dealing with it."

"We could." She stays silent. "We could talk about it," you say. "And you don't have to deal with it. You never made me deal with it."

No reply. Then: "I want to go to sleep."

"Okay." You hesitate. "I love you."

You feel her smile. "Love you too," she says. The shutters thump gently against the window sill. Natalia tightens her arms around your waist. "Thank you for looking after me."

You can't communicate the emotions those words surface in you. How could you? When she's cared for you so much more? When she's saved you from the brink of hell, when she's tolerated and loved you, even as cracked and abrasive as you are, all this time. You will look after her always, in any way, at any time. If this is what you can do to love her and comfort her, you will do it.

You say nothing. You let her sleep, her wet breath warming your skin and think over and over again I love you I love you I love you.

Such a shame you can't say it any other way. You'll run out of I love you some time or other.

requests | masterlist

Luckily, Thrug had watched this a number of times. His lover was a solid force indeed, but he knew that all he had to do was find the cracks. A few days after a particularly ill-advised jaunt on the balcony of Zeke's parents' estate house, steps were slow and the scholar sniffled here and there. It was enough to make Thrug ask only to be reassured that everything was fine. It was nothing. At first he was content to let it lie, after all Zeke was usually sluggish in the morning before his oversweet coffee fix. Except it turned out to not be nothing, and getting further from every day. Every ounce of Zeke’s strength fought against the sneezing, the watery eyes, and the constant shivering, but Thrug put his foot down. 

“I’m fine-d!” Zeke insisted, gathering books he needed to return to the library. 

“When you add a ‘d’ on the end of ‘fine’, you’re no longer ‘fine’,” Thrug spat,  reaching up for his lover’s forehead. Zeke dodged out of the way, using his girth to push past. 

“Enough! I’m not sick.,” he continued, starting for the door with his load in hand, somehow confident in his stride until he was hit with a sneezing fit, quickly wiping at his nose like if he were able to do it quickly enough his lover wouldn’t notice while the books fell to the floor. 

Thrugg rolled his eyes, taking Zeke’s hands and attempted to tug him towards the bedroom, “C’mon, you need to rest.” 

Zeke pulled his hands out of Thrug’s as if they were nothing, barely budging when the latter tried to pull harder on his arms. “I don’t need rest,” he mumbled, bending over to pick up his scattered books only to find that the floor fell away from him. The druid heard him yelp for the first time as his shapeshifted hands grabbed the scholar’s waist and hoisted him up and over into the bed in a flurry of motion which groaned in quiet protest beneath their combined weight. 

“Nooo, stop! I’m fine-d…” Zeke repeated, though his voice a lot softer as he stared into the large gorilla form his boyfriend had taken, using his bulk to keep him from moving and one large hand to keep his arms pinned above his head, “Dis is kinda hot though…”

Thrug stared down at him incredulously, slowly shifting back into his own body. Brow arched so high it nearly vanished in a bed of messy brown hair. “Seriously?” His answer was a lopsided smirk under a pair of dancing eyebrows that would have been endearing if it wasn’t for the dribble from his nose making its way down Zeke’s cheeks. 

“C’mon Thrug,” he cooed beneath the druid who leaned over to grab some sort of cloth to wipe at his runny nose, ‘We’re in deh pribe of libe! Don’t you want some of dihs?” Zeke even started to gyrate his hips against him with no sense of rhythm in his best attempt to seduce.That was enough to get him to laugh, though not it’s intent, as a bead of warmth settled in his chest. Thrug drew from it, its warmth allowing him to grow the vines around his companions wrists, winding down his arms to pull them and tightly bind him. These only proved to encourage the gyrations beneath him, making it harder and harder for Thrug to resist laughing. But there were things to do, soups to make and salves to pull. Leaving Zeke’s warmth made the scholar grumpy, complaining loudly now that he was stuck there without the weight of another and that he was “Fiiiiiiiined, come baaaaagg!” But Thrug was just as stubborn, his roots digging into the cracks of the stone wall.

By the time he returned, arms full with a tray of remedies, Zeke’s whining had long since quieted. Thrug found him still in bed, the vines doing their job, though his lover was staring up at them as though they had made personal offense to him. And in a way he supposed they had. Amber eyes tilted in his direction, the glare melting into something much softer. Zeke looked so much more tired when he wasn’t puffed up and ready to defy. “Thrug,” he said quietly, the sickness dropping his voice so deep Thrug had to resist the way it harmonized with his bones, “I think Ah’m thigg…”

Thrug chuckled, seating himself on the bed next to him and relieving himself of the tray. “Gee, you think? Whatever gave you that impression?” he teased, reaching for the largest bowl. 

“Assth…” was all Zeke could muster, though it had lost all its potency. It seemed that the larger man was ready to give in, the dark circles giving away just how heavy his eyelids must have felt. Even when the vines slipped away and vanished he didn’t struggle, simply rested his hands on his stomach and let Thrug work. The druid couldn’t help but stare. He’d never seen Zeke look so helpless before. While certainly generous, Zeke never took help from anyone. Always determined to see things through himself, remain self-sufficient. Thrug had a suspicion it had something to do with that thing they didn’t talk about. The shadow that loomed behind them, neither of them eager to speak of for as long as they could avoid it. The reason they were on that balcony in the first place, trying to be as loud and messy as possible as their own brand of defiance. And yet, here he lay, finally allowing someone else to take care of him. Though he wished the circumstances were different, Thrug felt the warmth in his chest swell knowing that Zeke had decided to be this vulnerable with him. He knew better than to draw attention to it though and quietly tended to his lover, convincing him to eat soup and some dried bread while he rubbed salve on his chest. When he was finally finished administering remedies and new bedsheets the sun had already begun to set. 

“There,” Thrug said in hushed tones, as if speaking too loudly would send Zeke into another fit of coughs, “all set. Now get some sleep.” He set away the medicines, salves, and a happily empty soup bowl before standing to leave, only to be halted by soft fingers around his wrist. When he looked down, Zeke stared back up at him. Tired eyes pleading in the fading twilight. Without a word, Thrug sat back down, where he belonged. 

A few days of caretaking and waking up with his face plastered to a mentholated chest had Zeke up in no time. By the third morning he felt so good he spent most of it practicing various exercises in the nude. Posing, putting himself on display, it all would have been very arousing if Thrug hadn’t been glaring at him from a cocoon of blankets, sniffling quietly. He should have seen this coming with Zeke insisting they sleep in the same bed while he was sick, but the druid could hardly refuse him. And if he thought sick Zeke was stubborn, he was not at all prepared to Caretaker Zeke, who insisted on doing everything himself. 

“It's soup, how hard could it be? It’s mostly water,” he said after his morning work out, trudging off into the kitchen area, leaving Thrug wishing he could enjoy the view but instead was left with a sinking feeling as his recipe tips were ignored and the sort of mess he’d be left with once he was well again. Zeke and his kitchen did not get along at the best of times, so he’d taken over the room when he’d been asked to move in. Every bang of a pot and a curse made him flinch from his spot on the bed, knowing full well that if he tried to go direct him, Zeke would just carry him back. 

To his credit, Zeke did not leave his side much. He spent hours nearby reading whatever he’d found interesting to Thrug while the druid poked at his bowl of hot water and raw vegetables, torn bits of herbs floating at the top like garnish. When he wasn’t reading to him, he was buried in medical books or scrolling through Web MD on his phone (“You could have, the common cold, influenza, or the measles probably…OH, intestinal obstruction what is that?”) which usually lead to long hours of studying and wiki holes.