Work Text:
9:12 a.m.
The moment Ocean wakes up, she knows it’s going to be a terrible day.
That familiar pressure in the sinuses; the dull throb at the back of her head; the tickle in her throat that promises to escalate into a scratch by the end of the hour. It’s official; she can no longer deny it.
Ocean is sick.
She thought she’d been fending it off well enough for the past week with an extra glass of orange juice in the morning and some over-the-counter magic that was supposed to ward off colds “99.9%” of the time, but Ocean supposes she’s always been unlucky—or that pharmaceutical products are prone to exaggerating their efficacy. Shouldn’t have trusted that stupid box, she thinks bitterly.
Still, she sits up in bed—crud, too fast, she has to wait a second or two—before reaching for her cell. She gawks at what she sees. God, nine o’clock already? What happened to all the other o’clocks? Her alarms? Her head whips to the other side of the bed. It is, for the first time in a long time, empty.
It’s Ocean’s day off, this she knows, but long ago she’d gotten into the habit of rising before the sun, work or no—after all, the earlier she woke, the more hours in the day, the more things she could check off her eternally expanding to-do list. This, however, being the complete antithesis to the one she tends to share her bed with, who will sleep in for as long as the circumstances will allow her.
It works, though—honestly, it’s nice, in a way. Her peaceful expression is the first thing Ocean sees in the morning.
Sometimes, she sets her alarm for five minutes earlier, just to give herself a grace period, for observation purposes.
She does not tell her that.
Shaking the thought from her mind, Ocean swings her legs over the side of the bed and plants her feet on the ground, shuffling them into her slippers. No, no, she is not sick. She can’t be sick. She has checks that just cannot be left unchecked today.
Ignoring the way the bedroom spins a little, Ocean stands up straight and pads her way to the kitchen. Tea, she decides. Tea fixes everything. Right? Right. It has to.
It’s then, when she’s standing in the hallway, that she sees her.
“Well, hello there, sleepyhead,” comes the voice she knows so well, and for a brief moment, the ache in her temples takes a vacation.
“Hello,” Ocean says back, trying to inject a fraction of her usual energy into the greeting. She’s not sure if it works.
“Whoa.” The bustling movement at the other side of the kitchen stalls. “Slept through her alarm, still in pajamas, and no morning pep? Who are you, and what have you done with my beloved girlfriend?”
It decidedly did not work. Ocean snorts, making a beeline for the stove. “Everything’s perfectly fine, Connie,” she insists, hands blindly reaching for a pot in the cupboard and placing it on the smallest burner. “In fact, I’ve never been better!”
Constance Blackwood, the love of her life, owner of Toronto’s very own Blackwood Café location, puts an incredulous hand on her hip. “Really, Ocean? Is it?” she asks, one eyebrow quirked high.
Ocean opens her mouth to loudly protest that yes, of course it is, why would she say that, until she realizes that what she has in her hands is a wok. She blinks. “Yes,” she mumbles, quiet and a little more flimsy than she’d originally intended.
Constance takes the wok from her and puts it back, slowly shutting the cabinet door. “Yeah. Okay,” she deadpans, but there’s a smile on her lips. She brushes the hair from her face and it always feels so nice when she does that. “You know I’m always happy when you get more sleep, Oce,” she says, smile fading to a slight frown, “but are you sure you’re alright?”
Ocean waves her off, kissing away the scrunch in her forehead for emphasis. “I am positive,” she avows, because she totally is. She has work to do—she can’t be anything but. So, no, her body does not ache, and she does not feel strangely warm. In fact, she can feel the affirmations working already!
“So, you don’t need me to stay home with you?” Constance asks, pausing midway through putting a lid on her to-go cup. “I can have someone cover my shift, you know. I’m the big boss, they have to listen to me.”
“No, no,” says Ocean immediately, grabbing the correct item of cookware. “Of course not. It’s not like I’m sick or something.” Because she’s not. “I’m perfectly fine, Con! Just…slept in, that’s all.” She tries to adopt her most convincing tone—for both of their sakes.
Constance looks like she wants to argue with her some more, but she eventually concedes, slinging her bag over a shoulder and taking her coffee in one hand. “Okay,” she relents. “Alright. Whatever you say, my dear. Just remember you can call, alright?” Ocean opens her mouth to protest. “For anything!” Constance cuts her off before she can. “Not because you’re sick. Of course.”
“Of course,” Ocean says, just so she knows.
“Of course,” Constance agrees. She leans in for a longer-than-usual kiss on the lips, which Ocean happily obliges before—regrettably—she pulls away and starts out of the kitchen. “I have to get going. I might be at the shop a little later tonight, so don’t freak out if I’m not home by six,” she says over her shoulder, grabbing her keys from the bowl by the door.
“Okay,” Ocean hollers back. “Have a good— I did not freak out that time!”
“Tell that to the fifteen missed calls, twenty-six voicemails, and Toronto PD. Love you!”
“Love you, too!” Ocean calls, and the door to their shared apartment clicks shut and locks behind her.
She’s alone, now.
“You said you wouldn’t bring that up,” she mumbles to no one in particular, making a pit-stop at the living room. The place is quiet without Constance—too quiet—so she flips on the television for white noise before returning to her tea-making. After that, it’s getting ahead on some work.
Tea—that’s it. As soon as Ocean gets some tea in her, she’ll feel just dandy.
She thinks.
11:34 a.m.
The tea does not help.
But it’s fine. Everything is fine. Ocean has been on the couch with her computer in her lap staring blankly at this spreadsheet for at least half an hour now but it’s fine.
She finally gives in to the pressure in her skull and leaves her spot to forage through the bathroom’s medicine cabinet like a wild animal. It’s just because she hasn't been wearing her blue light-blocking glasses lately—that’s the only reason she’s got a headache. Ocean finds her prize—an extra-large bottle of Tylenol that’s nearly gone—and takes it to the kitchen. She downs two pills with half a glass of lukewarm water before calling it a day, crashing back down to the couch with her laptop and a sigh that comes from deep within her.
Getting dressed always helps her face the day with a little more pep and positivity—at least, she thought it might. Now, as it turns out, her usual jeans—God, why the H-E-double-L did she put on jeans?—and a v-neck were turning out to be not her smartest choice in the world for a day working from home. Everything feels tight on her skin; the bra she really regrets putting on is digging into her ribcage and she wants to cast irreversible curses on whoever invented underwire and she forgot to shave and everything is awful.
Ocean is crabby and tired and sick—no, not sick—and she misses Constance.
She sighs again, leaning her head against the back of the couch and dragging a hand down her face. She’s fine. Everything is fine, she decides, forcing herself to sit up straight and look back at her screen. A little headache never killed anyone—nor barred them from any semblance of productivity whatsoever. She’s got this. She’s Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg—some non-illness can’t stop her.
And so, Ocean settles in with her spreadsheet, gets to work, and waits for her headache to disappear.
2:07 p.m.
Ocean’s headache does not disappear.
Even after popping another Tylenol (she was too afraid to take any more than one less than the recommended dosage, so three was the designated stopping point), she’d barely finished two columns before what little she’d written began to swim on the screen and she’s well-nigh about to give up but Ocean doesn’t give up and so she groans again.
Okay, yes, fine, maybe it is at this point that Ocean is beginning to accept that manifestation and positive affirmations are maybe not the most effective technique here and also that maybe she has a very, very slight problem. Maybe.
It’s then that she checks her phone, and two things blink back at her when she taps on the screen: The time, and a text from Constance. She startles at the clock—past lunch already?—and quickly reads the message, circa twenty minutes ago.
>Connie (13:46)
>”Hi O. Rush was crazy today so just getting off my half hr lunch break. Igtg but wanted to check in and see how you were doing. Miss you + be back by 7 latest. 💜you!! xoxo”
Despite it all, Ocean smiles, probably for the first time since this morning. As if the universe senses her happiness, though, a particularly strong throb ice-picks its way into her cranium, and she cringes. Still, this is slight, she tells herself through gritted teeth. Absolutely nothing to worry Constance about; she has more than enough going on at the café, clearly, and besides, the problem is only slight. Ocean can handle slight.
Her fingers carefully compose a reply and she can’t read half of what she’s typing because it’s like her skull is currently being used as the devil’s piñata, but she hopes the message is both convincing and coherent.
>Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg (14:17)
>”Hi, Con. I verymuch hopw your shift is going well., I’m doign perfectky fine. Din’t push yourself. Noted, I will see yuo] then. I ljove you, too. ❤️”
Sent. Ocean’s sure that’s fine.
When her stomach grumbles furiously, however, she realizes she should probably undertake the harrowing task of cooking lunch.
Ocean moves to stand up and oh. Granted, she hasn’t been up in maybe an hour or two, but the world spins a little and she has to grip the couch’s arm rest until it rights itself again. Slowly, when everything no longer feels quite so twisted, she shuffles in the direction of the kitchen and stares blankly into the barren shelves of the pantry.
It’s void of anything truly edible—unless she supposes she develops a sudden hankering for Constance’s cake flour and half-empty bag of white chocolate chips, all leftover evidence of her recipe testing—and she remembers that might be because tomorrow is supposed to be grocery day. Ocean groans again.
She opts instead to look in the fridge, which yields two slices of cheddar cheese in the drawer with, upon closer inspection, three days left until expiry.
Thinking faintly this is probably the saddest meal she’s ever had the pleasure of making—which is saying a lot, because for all the things she can do, Constance spares Ocean no words when she tells her just how dysfunctional she is in the kitchen—Ocean slaps a singular hotdog bun in a pan with some butter and prepares to make a ratchet grilled cheese.
As she tosses the near-expired namesake of the dish onto the bread, she realizes now that her nose is running in full and her throat feels like a cat tree that needs to be put out of its misery. Ocean resists the urge to bend over the counter and put her head in her hands because everything hurts but no, actually, it’s fine, because she can handle this, this is only slight. She faces the wall and leans her back against the granite instead, as if that’s somehow more acceptable, head just hitting the topmost cabinet where they keep the mugs. Her arms dangle limply at her sides as she allows her eyes to flutter shut, just for a second.
Just for a second, she thinks, the breathing she now has to do through her mouth growing slow and even. Just for a second, she insists to herself, and then I have to flip the…
At a suspiciously charcoal-y sort of smell, Ocean’s eyes snap open.
That was more than a second. That was definitely more than a second—way more—because at some point she’d fallen something akin to asleep and her sorry excuse for a grilled cheese is now completely burnt to a crisp in the pan. Ocean desperately flicks on the fan so the smoke alarm doesn’t set off her ticking time bomb of a headache that’s now returned twofold, turning off the heat and removing the now unrecognizable black lump from the burner.
The charred scent hits her square in the face again. Ocean breaks into a coughing fit, flinching at the way it sears her throat, and suddenly she realizes she has no appetite anyways.
Telling herself she’ll deal with the mess later—when her headache is gone, she’s made a miraculous recovery, pigs fly, and before Constance is home—Ocean slogs back to the living room.
She’s lost so much time, falling half-asleep standing up in the kitchen with nothing but an incinerated hotdog bun and some cheese in a pan to show for it. She has to get this done.
With a box of tissues she’s set on the coffee table and another deep sigh that rattles her chest and throws her into another bout of coughs, Ocean falls back to the couch with her laptop and forces herself to process the words and numbers on the display.
Okay, this kind of sucks—she’s willing to admit, now. But it’s fine. Everything is perfectly fine.
Because it can’t possibly get any worse—of this, she’s sure.
4:58 p.m.
It gets worse.
Ocean nearly scoffs at her earlier delusion of having the common cold. Maybe, in some universe, that’s what she could call this—if it were jacked up on steroids and she caught it from Satan himself.
She gave up on the idea of getting work done hours ago and instead took up hoarding all the blankets from the hall closet and constantly being both hot and cold at the same time. Every couple of minutes she switches between furiously kicking them off and gathering them all up off the floor to surround herself with again. She’s hungry but she’s not; sweaty but she’s shivering; tired but painfully awake. At one point, she started bustling around the house to try every home remedy a Google search yielded, but she pretty quickly had to abandon the pursuit because standing and walking was more trouble than it was worth.
Now, she sits on the couch, dimly aware of the hundredth rerun of one of Constance’s favorite sitcoms droning on the television and fighting just to breathe through her nose.
Constance. Ocean wants to call Constance, but she shouldn’t. Can’t. Won’t. She’s already terribly busy, and she works so very hard, and Ocean just knows her well enough to know she’ll worry out of her mind and it’ll only distract her and Ocean is fine. She’ll be fine—she’s fine. A cough and the chills and a headache that just doesn’t quit never killed anyone. And, if she’s being honest, Constance has seen her in plenty of states before, and so has Ocean; neither are quite strangers to the whole “sickness and health” bit. But Ocean’s never felt like this before.
A part of her doesn’t want Constance to be able to see her like this. She thought she’d gotten past the whole idea of Constance seeing every shade of her after they’d moved in together—all of the bathroom habits, bedheads, and everything in between. And she had. But this goes beyond that, she thinks, because right now, Ocean feels awful. This is different than when she’s brought her soup in bed, or held her hair back after a bout of food poisoning.
Ocean doesn’t want Constance to see her like this.
So, she lets her chin fall forwards to her chest and just sits there—because she still can’t fall asleep—listening to the laugh tracks and corny jokes Constance loves and trying to allow the memories of her breathy giggles to give her some form of comfort.
If Ocean just stays perfectly still like this, maybe it’ll pass, and everything will be just fine.
6:40 p.m.
Nothing passes. Everything is awful.
If Satan gave her whatever she has, she’s lying in the very depths of Hell, now. At one point—Ocean doesn’t know when—she’d laid sideways on the couch, hoping to lull herself to sleep just so she wouldn’t have to be awake to feel her headache or be wracked with more ceaseless chills, but it never came, and eventually she realizes, she can’t move.
She wants to rip off her clothes and the way they stick to her skin slick with sweat and feel like they’re strangling her, but even lifting her head feels impossible. She wants to eat, because her last real meal has been twenty-four hours ago at this point, but her legs are trembling with fatigue too much for her to even think about walking to the kitchen. She admits it: She wants to call Constance, and she would, if she could reach her phone from where it sits face-down on the coffee table. She doesn’t care about how she might see her anymore. She doesn’t have the mind to be able to.
She just wants this to be over. She wants to feel okay. She wants Constance. She wants Constance a lot.
Ocean just really, really wants—
The key twists in the lock.
Constance.
Ocean just barely forces open her eyes to see the door swing.
“Oce, I’m home,” calls Constance, like a celestial body sent down to earth that she doesn’t deserve, and her keys clink when she drops them in the bowl. She turns around to lock the door behind her. “I managed to get off a couple minutes early, so I picked up some—”
It’s then that the front door is successfully locked, Constance twists back around, and she catches sight of her for the first time. Her purse and two grocery bags drop to the floor.
“Holy shit, Ocean!”
In an instant, Constance surges forward, dropping to her knees by the couch. She immediately starts talking. “Are you okay? What the hell am I saying, of course you’re not! What happened? What hurts? I just saw you— Just this morning, you were— I thought, so I didn’t— Oh, my God, Ocean.”
Ocean’s not sure what she looks like. Is it really that bad? She wants to say something, she wants to reply back to her—very badly, in fact—but then more splinters go shooting through her skull and she’s so ridiculously hot and she feels more shivers coming on and all she can do is moan.
Constance's face swims in her vision, a little blurry, a little dotted. “Honey. Oh, dear God,” she frets, sounding like she’s underwater.
Fingers—pressed against her forehead. Deliciously cool; utterly gentle. All too soon, they’re gone.
“Holy shit,” Constance says again, “you’re absolutely burning, Ocean.”
That she knows, but for some reason, hearing it out of Constance’s mouth is much more pleasant. And a little funny. Burning—what an apt term, isn’t it? She is, indeed, very, very hot. Constance is so smart.
“I don’t know what to— Jesus, okay, okay, okay. Okay.” Now, she’s standing up—where is she going? “Just— just stay, stay here, Ocean. I’ll be right back. Just— okay. It’ll be okay,” Constance tells her, and bustles out of the room.
When she says that, Ocean can’t help but believe her a little. Okay, she thinks. Whatever you say.
But then, she realizes after a few moments, Constance is gone. Wait—Ocean doesn’t want her gone. She just got here. Where is she?
“Connie?” she musters, desperately, and it’s like a disembodied voice that’s not her is saying it, all hoarse and raw. Just calling for her saps everything out of her. She’s not even sure if she hears her.
But Constance comes rounding the corner, arms full with things she can’t make out. “I’m here, I’m here,” she assures her, her load clattering to the coffee table in her haste. “I’m here, Ocean.”
The hair, matted to her skin with sweat, is tenderly brushed from her face. It still feels nice when she does that. Then, something goes and buzzes in her ear, which doesn’t feel quite as nice, but Constance is holding her hand, going in little circles with her thumb, so she thinks it’ll be fine.
The buzzing stops. Constance holds something up to read, then lets out a breath.
“Christ, 103,” she hisses. “What do I even…”
Ocean can’t hear what she says after that. She puts the thing down and grabs two more things.
“Can you take this for me, sweetheart?” Constance asks, and Ocean thinks she sees a glass of water and one more little white pill. She also thinks she’s already had some of those, but it’s been a few hours, and she’ll do whatever Constance asks of her. She trusts her.
Wordlessly, with Constance’s hands over her own when the water she tries to hold shakes in her grip, she manages to down it.
“Good, good,” she hears, and she’s eased back to lie down again, except there’s something soft—a pillow—under her head this time, not just her numb, tingling arm. “Good, honey. I have a— Here, here. This might help.”
Something nice and cool and soft is deposited on her forehead again—a damp washcloth, she realizes—and oh, yes, that definitely helps. Suddenly, Ocean feels slightly more aware again. A portion of her delirium starts to dissipate. Everything still hurts. She moans, softly, again, because nothing else will come out and now she can’t tell if she’s cold as she’s wracked with more chills. Instinctively, she tries to reach for the blankets she kicked off not long ago.
But Constance stops her—not like she would have been able to reach them even if she hadn’t, because her arms feel like lead, but she stops her. “I know, Oce,” Constance says, so gently she can’t even be mad, “I know you probably have the chills, honey, but it’s not good for you to be hot. You’re sweating, love.”
Ocean whines a little, even though she knows she’s right; it’s mostly just because everything hurts and she can’t think straight.
“I know, I know,” Constance repeats, and her voice is so kind and her face so sympathetic that it feels like she does actually know. Ocean’s head is pounding; her body aches everywhere.
But Constance. Constance is here. Constance with her campy favorite shows and her soft hands and her first-aid knowledge she never really forgot from grade nine.
Everything hurts, but God, does she love Constance.
She looks down, though, and suddenly she gapes. “You’re still in jeans?” blurts Constance. She shakes her head, a hand coming up to her face to cup her cheek. “Sweetheart, can I get pajamas for you? Your chills will be better, you won’t be so hot. You can’t be so hot.”
Ocean tries to hum some kind of agreement, but she realizes it ends up coming out more like a low, vague noise than an affirmation, so she adds a nod of the head for clarification.
Constance nods back, parting from her almost like she doesn’t want to. “Okay. Alright,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
True to her word, it only takes her a laugh track or two—the television is still blaring—for her to return with what Ocean recognizes as her favorite pair of silk shorts and a tee; the ones she usually wears in the summer.
Then, it occurs to her, she has to put them on.
Though the throbbing in every muscle she owns has subsided infinitesimally, the fatigue still makes twitching a finger feel like moving mountains. Constance, however, doesn’t seem to mind.
“Can I help you put this on, Ocean? You can say no, love.”
No matter how embarrassing it promises to be—God, she can’t even move to dress herself—Ocean doesn’t think she trusts anyone on the planet’s hands more than Constance’s, so she nods again, with the promise of no longer wearing these godforsaken jeans serving as her motivation.
Constance, however, eternally the angel she is and possibly sensing her discomfort, is nothing if not efficient. Before Ocean knows it, she’s wiggled out of the sweat-drenched outfit she thought was a good idea at the time and slipped into something that is, admittedly—of course Constance was right, she’s always right—far more comfortable.
“That’s a little better,” soothes Constance, running the very gentlest of fingers over her scalp and through her hair in a way that feels like wonderful rainwater trickling down. It reminds her of when she’d play that game together when they were kids, where she’d draw letters in her back and pretend to crack an egg on her head to give her the shivers. It was always strangely calming; now, an indeterminate amount of years later, the memory makes it even more so.
Ocean is no longer seeing double, nor does she feel like she’s teetering on the cliff’s edge of passing out. Her body still aches; she’s still breathing hard; her heart’s still thumping in her chest, uncomfortably so; but she feels a portion of her faculties return to her.
She uses the first bit of energy she gains back to speak. “I love you, Con,” Ocean rasps, already knowing she’s got a limited time before she devolves into total nonsense. If she can say anything, she wants it to be that, at least.
“I love you, too,” echoes Constance without hesitation, and the kiss she buries in the top of her hair sends pleasant tingles through her. “How do you feel?” She starts asking questions. “Can you tell me? What’s hurting? What happened, sweetheart?”
It’s then, coincidentally, that Michelangelo decides to chip away with his mallet at the screwed up sculpture of Ocean’s cranium. She flinches and curls further in on herself, Constance’s hand jerking away as if she’s been burned. “My head,” Ocean hisses, like a reflex. She’s beginning to forget what it’s like to not have a headache.
The frown that hasn’t left Constance deepens even further, and she feels her grab hold of her hand again, pressing circles into her palm with her thumb. “I know, Oce, I’m sorry. The Tylenol’s gonna take another half hour or so,” she tells her, apologetic.
Ocean remembers she asked other things. “I don’t know,” she manages to reply, better late than never. “I don’t know what happened. This morning, was fine—ish—and then…” And then everything sucked and hell was here and now I’m dying.
“Okay, okay, Oce, it’s okay,” Constance stops her, with another hand stroking her hair. God, she loves her.
“Thank you,” Ocean can’t help but babble, a senseless word-vomit of the only things her mind is thinking of. “Thank you.” For all of it. “Love you.” A lot.
“Please, God, don’t thank me, Ocean,” Constance breathes, something brimming in her eyes. “That’s what I’m here for. I love you, too, just— Why didn’t you call me?”
Oh, no. She looks sad. She can’t even remember why anymore. “‘m sorry. ‘m so sorry,” Ocean mutters, and worry creases Connie’s brow, and she remembers now, that’s why. Because she did end up having to see her like this. She did end up worrying her. “You’re busy. I didn’t want to— I don’t—”
“Shhh. Stop that. Stop talking,” says Constance, the nicest you need to shut up in the history of ever. She’s said it for years, whenever she’s being very stupid, and whenever she really wants her to listen, and every time, Ocean does. She stops talking. “Ocean, I want to know about these things,” Constance says, starting to draw little shapes in her palm. “I love my work, I love the café, but I love you more. Like, way more. Some days are busy, but they’re never too busy for you. Especially when…” Constance swallows, and she looks away, at her hand she’s holding in her lap. “Especially when you’re like this.”
Ocean looks, too, and watches the way her feather-light fingers trace the lines in her palm like she’s reading them, peering right into her soul. Ocean always believed in that stuff, secretly, a little bit. Sometimes, she wonders if the hands of Fate dealt her Constance Blackwood because of some crazy philanthropist she was in a past life; if they were both fastened from the same cosmic forces, specifically for each other, for reasons she can’t possibly begin to fathom. For someone who has spent her life in pursuit of some sense of control over all worldly things, she supposes it’s a pretty dumb thing to think.
But she likes to believe it anyway.
“I’ll call you,” Ocean promises, because she gets it now, in some way. She’d want to know, too.
Constance looks relieved, but only just. “Okay, Ocean. Okay.” She sighs, shaking her head. “I stopped by the store and bought stuff,” she says, glancing briefly at the spot by the door, “for soup, because I had this, this feeling— God, why didn’t I just listen to it?” Constance whispers the last part like it’s just to herself, full of regret.
Ocean frowns. “Connie,” she says, using what energy she has to squeeze her hand back, “it’s not…on you.” She really, really, really hopes she believes her, because it’s absolutely not.
Constance sighs again. “No, no, no, you’re right,” she says, to her relief. “You’re right. I know. It’s not. I just—” She runs her free hand through her curls, which at some point had fallen out of the ponytail she tends to put them in for work. “I just wish I’d been there,” she murmurs. “Oh, Ocean. God, you look— When did you last eat?”
Ocean doesn’t have the brain power to lie to her, but she can’t meet her eyes either when she admits, “I, I don’t remember. Dinner, last night. I don’t know.”
“Last night?” It’s precisely the reaction she expects, but she still can’t help biting her lip. “Jesus Christ, honey, lead with that! You need food!” Constance cries.
She can’t even argue with her; she kind of does. Actually, she’s really hungry.
“Will you be okay? If I go ahead and get you something? I’ve made it, like, a thousand times by now, it’ll be ten minutes, tops, I just— I don’t want to leave you like this,” Constance frets, gaze traveling between the abandoned grocery bags on the floor and what Ocean is sure is her miserable-looking form.
Truth be told, Ocean doesn’t really want her to leave, either, but even through her fever-addled brain she knows there cannot possibly be two Constances at once. Just the one—which is more than enough, because she loves that one. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” Ocean lies, lightly brushing a finger over her knuckles just to see the tiny smile flash across her lips. “I love you so much, Connie.”
“You’re delirious, Ocean. It’s the fever,” Constance tells her, but she is, indeed, smiling.
“Nooo.” Maybe she is, but she’d definitely still love her if she wasn't. “I still love you,” Ocean mumbles, through the ache in her bones and heat beneath her skin.
The worry remains present in her tone, but Constance giggles. “I still love you, too,” she murmurs back, pressing another kiss to her cheek. “Please don’t die. I’m going to make you dinner, but I’m just going to be right in the kitchen. Okay?”
“Okay, Con.”
She pauses just as she stands up. “And please, please holler if you need anything,” she says, and the look on her face is too serious for Ocean not to nod, so she does. “Good. I’ll be back.”
Constance disappears around the corner, and Ocean is alone again.
Except, then she isn’t. Constance talks to her from the kitchen. She narrates what she’s doing (cutting vegetables for soup); asks her what episode the television is playing (she knows them all by heart and elaborates on her favorite jokes); asks her if she’s okay at least once a minute (fine, it’s always fine, but it still makes Ocean feel warm and fuzzy inside.) It’s so nice, even when she can barely comprehend the words she’s saying or formulate a noise in response, because it reminds her that she’s there.
It might take even less than Constance said it might—Ocean’s not sure—but before she knows it, the clatter of a bowl being set on the coffee table coaxes her eyes open. From what little she can smell, it’s nothing short of heavenly.
“Here, Oce. Careful, it’s hot.”
Ocean immediately sits up and reaches for it with shaking hands, but Constance, noticing this, gets to it before she does. “Okay, alright, maybe I do this part,” she says, chuckling softly. “You already have a fever. Let’s not add second-degree burns via spilled soup to your laundry list of ailments.”
Ocean would like to say she complained—she probably would have, under any other set of circumstances—but maybe it’s the delirium that allows her to just sit down and let Constance spoon her the Blackwood family chicken soup (made with tofu, specifically for her vegetarianism.) And the fact she gets to rest her head on her girlfriend, bobbing a little when her shoulder shakes with her laughter at the television, doesn’t hurt either.
At some point, two bowls of soup and an uncertain amount of episodes later, Ocean’s head is in Constance’s lap. The TV’s volume has been turned down and the lights dimmed—when, she’s not sure—and Constance’s fingers are playing through her hair. The sensation is so deliciously soothing, and Ocean finds her eyes fluttering shut, just to enjoy it.
She’s hovering on the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness when she hears it, distantly.
“It’ll be okay,” Constance says, and seconds later, for the first time, Ocean sleeps.
10:02 a.m.
When Ocean awakes in the morning and the first sight she sees is Constance’s slumbering expression, head draped over the back of the couch, hand in her hair at some point having stalled, she smiles, faintly.
Her head still kind of hurts. Her throat’s still raw, her nose stuffy, her body tired, and yet, it’s okay, Ocean thinks. She takes more than her allotted five minutes to listen to her girlfriend’s soft mumblings and watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest, and maybe it’s a tad bit of placebo, but for just a moment, Ocean’s symptoms ease.
She may still be sick, but Constance was right. Everything is okay.