UsaMamo Week 2025 Day 6 - Sick Day
Just a bitty contribution to @usamamoweek this year, cornily titled in my head:
Love is the Best Medicine
(Yes, really.)
Summary: Mamoru receives a little TLC from his Usa.
The eardrops were cold and hurt when they went in, but hopefully that meant they were working. And it was almostāalmostāworth the pain if it meant he got to lie here in Usa's lap four times a day, head turned sideways so she could carefully drip the antibacterial medicine into his infected left ear. The instructions said to allow ten minutes for the drops to fully make their way into the canal and reach whatever microbes were causing his current miseriesāswelling, hearing loss, fever, and a heavy malaise he couldn't shake. He hadn't had an appetite for days, and he worried about missing work despite Usagi's admonishment that he couldn't take care of other people if he didn't take care of himself first.
"You're a doctor. Aren't you supposed to know that?"
"Everyone knows doctors make terrible patients." The movement of his jaw from speaking spurred a bubble of pain in his ear, and he winced. "That's why we take care of other people instead."
Usa noticed his wincing and shushed him. "That's silly," she declared.
"That's just how it is."
"Ssssshhhhh! Stop talking. You're making it worse."
Usagi's bedside manner had an abrasive quality that he found hopelessly endearing, and he had to smile in spite of how lousy he felt.
By now she knew not to touch him anywhere near the back of his ear, so she did this other thing instead where she played with the hair at the nape of his neck. The warmth of her fingers there was the real medicine, a soothing caress that helped him relax as the eardrops slithered uncomfortably down his ear. She kept it up even after the discomfort passed, and more often that not, it was his undoing. The recommended ten minutes extended into twenty or thirty or forty minutes of much needed rest.
The first time he'd fallen asleep like that, he'd woken up to find the day turned into night, and Usagi was still there beneath him, sitting on the couch in the dark with nothing to do. Immediately he had felt bad, but when he tried to apologize, she shushed him like she did today, gently combing his hair back from his forehead in a precursor to the thing she did with his hair now. He had been worse then, at the peak of his fever and feeling like his ear might explode with the smallest provocation. Their bedroom had seemed farther than the moon, so Usagi brought the bedroom to him instead, dressing the couch with their comforter and a fresh, cool pillow. The determination in her eyes as she dragged the armchair over to the end of the couch nearest his head so she could spend the rest of the night beside him was a love he tried to deserve every day of his life. The next morning, he awoke to the muffled sound of her snoring and her hand dangling just a few inches from his. The pain was better and his fever had stopped climbing.
With his faithful nurse watching over him, he slowly got better, but he would miss this, these quiet stretches of time togetherāthe quietest Usa had ever been, now that he thought about itāwhere nothing and no one else was allowed to demand his attention. He even mostly stopped feeling guilty about accepting her care.
Sleepily, he gave her knee a squeeze and murmured, "Thank you, Usako."
Her reply was muffled and unintelligible through his incapacitated ear. "What was that?"
"I said shut up already."
Smiling, he closed his eyes and drifted off, already looking forwardāalmostāto his next dose of medicine.
