Archive of Our Own

Moonshine remembers the first time she ever got sick. She was either seven or eight, and she’d gotten the bright idea to jump into the Crick even though it was so cold the surface was littered with sloshy patches of ice. 

Sure enough, the next day she was already sniffling and burning up. MeeMaw chewed her out for it like she was some crawfish jerky, but she bundled her up and tended to her for the rest of the week. She’d seen MeeMaw taking care of sick youngins her whole entire life, but it was her first time on the other side of it. 

She remembers that it felt so nice. Doing nothing all day, laying in bed and having MeeMaw bring her soup and medicine, focusing just on her and not any of the other scrambling children around the Crick that always pull her attention one way or another. 

She’s always known MeeMaw is there when she really needs her. But she didn't realize how nice it would be to need her a lot.

But she also remembers, after a day or two of that fun, enjoying being a lump in bed and having her every little need catered to, when she noticed the slight pinch of exhaustion around MeeMaw's eyes as she got her another blanket and made her another snack. She remembers a conversation down the hall with some of the Old Folks Circle: “I’m a bit low on spells today, what with Moonshine…” She remembers waking up when it was far past dark and MeeMaw still up, sitting by her bedside while looking over some papers. 

She stopped asking for as many snacks. 

“MeeMaw,” she asked, closer to the end of the week when she was feeling better physically at least. “Am I gonna make you sick?”

MeeMaw clicked her tongue and ruffled her hair. “Don’t you worry about that, youngin,” she said. “MeeMaws don’t get sick, alright.”

But Moonshine did, and does. 

It wasn’t true of course, it was some small platitude for her while she was young and sick and feeling pangs of guilt. MeeMaws can get sick. The real difference is that when MeeMaws are sick, there’s still work to be done. 

—

It sneaks up on her. Not because there aren't signs, but because she's too determined to not get sick that she tries to ignore it out of existence. 

And yet, her throat is dry for a day and a half and her stomach turns over so much at meals that she skips a few, and then she's standing in Alanis's new office at the university, listening to some talk of concerning seismic activity over in Asmodea, and the wave of it finally crashes. 

Her eyes are hot and her vision is blurring a bit, and it feels suddenly like her skull is shrinking, pressing on her brain. PawPaw wriggles within her overall bib, but instead of comfort, his claws against her skin leave unpleasant tingles in their wake. 

She stares down at the map in front of them, the red coloring of the land and the raised detailing of the volcanic mountains, and tries to compose a coherent thought through the blur and pulsing throb of her temples and the ringing in her ears. 

She's not sick, she insists to herself. It's all fire and ash in front of her, and she's hot and cold everywhere at the same time, but that doesn't mean anything, she just needs to focus up and—

"What about, uh... ice?" she says, absently, not in response to anything because she's not really hearing anything anymore. But everything is burning up and they just need something cool, right? It makes sense somewhere in her brain. 

"Moonshine—" someone near her starts to say, and she barely hears half of it before something drops right out of her and time skips. 

The next second she's halfway on the floor, sprawled over Hardwon's lap, her neck in the crook of his elbow. 

Not an unfamiliar position. Him holding her or catching her or grabbing her up out of some danger, the feeling of coming to consciousness in his arms. Something in her instinctively settles, more than relieved to not have to be keeping herself upright anymore, promptly assessing the responsibility can safely be handed over to him.

"Hey," he says, when he notices her, his head craning down and his hand smoothing her hair away from her face. His hand is a cool reprieve against her skin, a strange new feeling, he usually runs hot. She almost gives into the feeling of it entirely, her eyelids heavy and pulling down. 

"Is she alright?" a distant voice asks, tinged with uncertainty.

She forces her eyes back open, searching instinctively around. 

"Hey, Moonie," Hardwon says, leaning down even further, boxing her in. "You alright?"

Beneath the pressure in her head, embarrassment finally manages to sink in. She sees past him, past the base of the map table, the legs of various Gladehome wizards and legion generals there, shifting in impatience or pitying discomfort. Her cheeks suddenly become the hottest part of her body. 

She gathers whatever strength her body still has, despite the chills and the aches, and claws her way up. Or tries to anyway. More like she twitches feebly, strains her neck attempting to pull herself to sitting and makes it absolutely nowhere. 

Hardwon’s arms stay at her back, and he moves them both, rising to a stand and bringing her up with him. 

“I’m fine,” she insists, getting her feet underneath herself and pushing him away. Back up, her head is still fuzzy, but she's more aware of the feeling now, is getting used to it and adjusting to it and actually… finding more stability, perfectly alright and ready to make it through the rest of the meeting. 

She feels great actually, like standing is effortless in a way its never been even when she's healthy and... no, actually, she's not standing at all, Hardwon's got his arm under her armpits and is holding pretty much all of her weight.

She tries to push him off again, or well, she thinks about pushing him off again, but her body makes absolutely no attempt to, sinking against him instead. 

"You're burnin' up," he tells her, hand against her cheek again. 

He's doing it all wrong; she thinks absently of all the times MeeMaw's stuck the inside of her wrist against the forehead of some feverish youngin trying to wriggle away. But maybe nobody ever checked over him like that when he was little, maybe he doesn't know how to do it. 

The thought of him sick like that, all little and all by himself, hits her hazy head hard, makes her feel like crying, her eyes hot and burning with a sudden wetness she fights to blink away.

Focus. 

"Let's get you home," Hardwon says decisively.  

Her body wants to give out, badly. There's a strange pleasure that zings through her, at the siren song of safety, of care, of not having to do anything at all for once. A miasmic soup of appealing concepts: Hardwon, and trust, and exhaustion, and home, and laying down. 

But this meeting is important, her mind reminds her, she can't just leave because she's a little under the weather. But she's not a youngin anymore, she can't just go limp and let someone else take care of her when she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But she's supposed to be someone that people, that this world, relies on, she's stronger than this. 

She throws up her best protests with what little presence of mind she has left. 

"No, I'm fine." "No, I just need to sit down." "No, I can walk myself to my room." 

But she can barely keep her footing physically, let alone in the conversation, and between Hardwon and PawPaw, she loses what little debate she puts up handily, and finds herself being swept out of the room and to the hall. 

"I can carry you," Hardwon offers. Again, she thinks, though everything is a bit echoey at the moment. He practically is already, holding half her weight as she stubbornly tries to walk in a straight line down the hall. 

"I'm fine," she grits out. There's sweat on her brow even though she feels suddenly very cold. "This is silly." She tries to force an easy smile but her jaw simply clamps tight. 

"Alright," he says evenly, like he doesn't believe her. For some reason, that's the worst thing so far, makes her feel even sicker, face hotter, stomach twistier. 

She shrugs him off a bit more and walks under her own power, slower, much slower, with none of her leg muscles wanting to cooperate. He hovers but allows her to fight her way down the hall, which somehow feels even more like pity.

"See," she says, crossing the threshold of her room what feels like hours later. "You coulda stayed for the rest of the meeting."

He tactfully doesn't point out that she's leaning against the wall already and breathing heavy and dripping sweat. 

"Please, I was looking for any out," he says, closing the door. "That was so goddamn boring."

She laughs, grasping eagerly at the excuse for what it is, but it gets caught in the phlegm in her throat and briefly tries to kill her. 

Hardwon is standing in front of her when she finishes her brief coughing fit. 

"What do you need?" he asks, hand on her shoulder. Her attempt at a grin fails, her chest aching, maybe literally from all the coughing, maybe with something bigger and deeper. 

She doesn't want to be sick. She doesn't want to be sick in front of him. She's embarrassed and tired and already over this entire feeling. 

She doesn't want to need anything. No, she doesn't need anything. She doesn't. 

"'M fine," she insists, petulantly now, pushing past him and making a slow and shaky beeline directly to her room and her bed. She collapses onto it and it's a relief beyond relief. Her desire to give out finally gets an inch and takes a mile, sinking her into her pillows, heavy as a rock. 

Her eyes are closed already. 

There's a tugging on her legs and then something lightening. Her boots are off. Hardwon runs a hand along her calf. 

She's dropping away, can faintly hear him say something but it's jumbled static far beyond her. 

Something drops over her, heavy, slightly scratchy. Hardwon adjusts the blanket a couple times, pulls it a little too far off her legs, tugs it back down, but it settles, covering her shoulders and gathering by her ears, muffling the rest of the world.

—

The sleep is heavy, the time goes soupy, her body feels restless and yet doesn't move an inch. When she wakes up, she feels worse. 

Her nose is stuffed but her throat is bone dry and aching. Beneath the blanket, she's sweating, but the tips of her ears and her fingers feel frigid. 

She rolls over and it takes a million years and something cold and sharp ripples through her hips as she does. 

She peels her crusty eyes open, blinks against the harsh light coming in through the window. Through her squint, she takes in the ceiling and, in her left periphery, Hardwon, sitting with his back against the wall and his legs out next to her. He fiddles with something in his lap that she can't quite see without shifting her head more. From the sounds she guesses he's working on one of his rock carvings, a little hobby he's taken up recently. 

(He's homesick, she thinks, missing an Irondeep that doesn't exist anymore, but maybe could with all the work Jaina's been putting into it recently. She's shown him the best places around the Crick to collect weird looking rocks, worn into cool shapes by the water, but she worries it's not enough.)

She stares at his face while he concentrates, and tires to suck in any air through her nose. Instead her chest spasms and she hacks out a weak cough, every movement jostling her body unpleasantly.

It scrapes up her already wrecked throat and she flops uselessly back against the pillows when it passes, breathing shallowly in through her mouth. 

"Here," Hardwon says. His hand cups the back of her neck and helps her lean up for a couple sips of water. It bumps her teeth and spills a bit down her chin. Hardwon winces. She manages to get her hand on the cup, to feel an inch less helpless. 

It doesn't do much to help her throat, but is a reprieve for a moment. 

He sets the cup back down on her nightstand, but keeps his hand against her neck. 

"How are you feeling?" he asks, dropping his voice to something low and soft. 

She's too worn out to try to lie at this point, just shakes her head and tries not to tear up in frustration. 

Hardwon breaths in tight through his teeth. "Right, yeah," he says. His hand goes to her forehead again. This time she reaches up and tugs it forward, presses his wrist to her skin. 

"Not great," she rasps, and barely manages to not fall into another coughing fit. 

"We should go to Bev or MeeMaw. MeeMaw probably, right? Easier to get to the Crick than the Feywild from here."

"I, um." She closes her eyes and attempts to clear her throat. "I don't think I can, uh... I don't have a lotta energy right now for a spell like that."

"Oh," Hardwon says, and she tries to will herself out of existence. She hasn't felt this weak, this powerless, in years and years, and never in front of Hardwon like this. "Of course, yeah, duh. I can... I'll get Alanis to send a message—”

"No," she says. "Nobody’s gotta come here. It’s just a cold. I’ll be fine enough.” It might be more convincing if she didn't sound like someone had beer-battered and deep fried her vocal cords. 

Hardwon frowns. "Are you...?" he starts hesitantly. His hand slips down, his thumb coasting carefully along her collarbone, gently poking a fungal shelf there that is dried out and beginning to wilt. "Are you sure?" 

"Just need to sleep it off," she insists. A little longer. By tomorrow, probably, she'll feel fine. 

He studies her closely. For the first time in a long while, she feels uncomfortable with him watching her. She knows her cracks, her failings, are more visible at the moment and she doesn’t like it.

It’s weird. That there’s such a difference between knowing that she’s safe with him and having to lean on that safety. 

It is different though. It’s worlds apart, the thing they do where they will kill or die for each other and this, being weak as a kitten, being unable to cast a measly cantrip to defend herself let alone him. 

His attention shifts around the bed. “Well, um, I have some water,” he says, gesturing to the bedside table. “And blanket.” He grimaces, looking around a little more. “But you probably need… more things?”

She smiles and moves to sit up, coughing hard as she does. “Shit,” she groans, when it passes, rubbing at her sternum, eyes watering. 

Hardwon settles his hand against her back, patting slowly. 

She takes in a few wheezing breaths there before swinging her legs off the side of the bed despite the achy chills that dance up and down her calves. 

“Whoa,” Hardwon says, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Hey, where are you going?”

She waves him off. “I gotta grab some stuff.” She tugs forward but he holds onto her. 

“I’ll grab you stuff, Moonshine,” he says insistently. “I just, you know, don’t know what to get. But I can go get it.”

She shakes his head. “I’m fine,” she says, as casual as she can. The edges of her vision suggest otherwise, darkening slightly. “I can walk down the block just fine. You should…” She winces against the swelling pressuring in her head. “You should go on and check in with Alanis or get some dinner.”

She wiggles her feet forward but still can’t quite find the floor. 

“No.”

“Hardwon.” She turns over her shoulder to scowl at him and feels it in every nerve up and down her neck. 

“I’m not gonna do that,” he says with a scoff. Taking her by the shoulders he pushes her back to the mattress. 

“Hey!” she protests. 

“Oh shit, was that too rough?”

She tries to get her elbows under her, but he pins her down with a hand on her shoulder. She growls, but it warbles in her throat. All she can do is twitch impotently in the sheets and sneeze a couple of times. 

“Moonshine,” he says. “You’re sick.”

“I know that,” she grits out. 

“I can… I can help you,” he says. “Let me, like, take care of you, okay?”

She closes her eyes, tries to breathe in. “Fine, whatever,” she mutters, nodding her head loosely against the pillow. 

He stops holding her down, moves his hand up to brush her hair out of her face. 

She squints up at him, tries to stop frowning at the concerned (pitying) look on his face. Her nose is running, gross and loose. He dabs at her with his shirt sleeve and grimaces. 

“Uh, tissues,” he says, brows furrowing. “More… blankets?”

He’s cute when he’s out of his depth. She exhales slowly. 

“Tissues,” she affirms. “Maybe some soup. See if one of the apothecaries has a potion of NyQuil.”

He nods fervently. “On it!” He jumps out of the bed, bouncing the entire thing wildly. He makes it a few steps away before he spins back. “Oh!” He grabs her ankles and tucks them under the blanket, spreads it out over her and pulls it up to her shoulders until it satisfies some metric in his head. “Wait, are you gonna be okay while I’m gone?” 

She rolls her eyes. “I’m sick, not dying.”

He hums in the back of his throat, uncertain (and unclogged, she feels a terrible flash of jealousy). He grabs up PawPaw from the foot of the bed and drops him on her chest. 

“Alright,” he says, nodding to himself again. “I’ll be back fast.”

He kisses her forehead and jogs off and out the door. She stares up at PawPaw, half crossing her eyes past her nose. He merely tips his head at her and reers in mild concern. 

“This is all a little much, don’t you think?” she croaks. 

The front door swings back open abruptly. “Forgot the fucking gold!” Hardwon calls, scuffling around in the entryway before slamming the door shut again. 

She wheezes a sigh out her reed pipe nostrils, and stares unfocused up at the ceiling, allows herself to start drowning in mucus and malaise. 

—

At some point she falls asleep again. 

She doesn’t remember it. But she’s laying there on her bed in the late afternoon sunlight patches through the window and then it’s dark out and PawPaw isn’t on her chest anymore. 

And she smells smoke. 

There’s a clanging down the hall and she instinctively tries to pull at some spells or her Fungal Form, but still can’t muster it, her mushrooms barely twitching before she falls back against the mattress. 

“No, no, no, shit,” she hears and then a concerningly solid thump. Hardwon, she recognizes, and eases slightly. 

She goes to call his name, but still feels the heavy frog in her throat and gives up on it. 

Instead she claws herself out of bed. Her head is heavy and hot, the pressure in her sinuses worsening as she moves up. Her fingers and frigid and her toes radiate with chills. The air is terribly cold on her skin and she tugs the blanket off the bed, shrugging it over one shoulder and clutching the ends to her chest. 

She keeps her hand on the wall as she shuffles towards the kitchen, blanket dragging up dust across the floor behind her, barely bundling her body into enough cooperation to close the distance. 

Hardwon is in the kitchen, one of her aprons half tied around his waist, falling off and tangling between his legs. He’s in front of the stove, which is covered in pots of various sizes with red streaks beginning to crust along the sides. One pot sits off kilter on an active burner and is smoking and bubbling over as he frantically spins a spoon in it and swears under his breath. 

She watches him for a moment with an affection muted beneath the miasma of her other bodily sensations, but still there, always there. 

“What’re you doing?” she asks. 

He whips around, nearly sending his elbow into the pot. 

“You should be in bed,” he says. 

She leans against the wall “You should turn down that burner.”

He glances back at the pot, more soup now spilling over the lip and hitting the flames with aggressive sizzles. He does reach out and lower the heat and she grins to herself. 

“Stir it a bit.”

He follows her instructions obediently and the soup calms a bit, enough for him to turn his attention back to her. 

“What are you doing up?” 

“Keeping you from burning down the kitchen clearly.”

He winces. “Sorry.”

She waves him off. “What are you doing?” she echoes in response. 

He puts the spoon down right on the counter, and crosses over to her, scooping her off the wall and carrying her over to a chair at the kitchen table. She sinks into the seat and wraps the blanket more tightly around her body. 

“Making dinner,” he says. “Uh, trying to. But!” He reaches across the table and grabs some small bags shoving them at her excitedly. “Tissue! And some potions!”

She grins, doing her best to catch them in her lap. She wiggles one hand out of her blanket cocoon and digs into them for one of the potions, taking a quick pass of the dosage before downing it. 

“Thank you,” she says, dropping the empty vial to the table and petting at his shoulder. 

He smiles. “Yeah, ‘course. Uh, how are you feeling?”

Bad. Still. Achey and snotty and exhausted despite all her sleep, like her insides have been scraped out, like her insides have been stuffed full of heat and pressure. It feels like she’s been sick forever and she will be sick forever. 

“Hungry,” she says instead. “Good thinking.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I, uh…” he says. “Well, I thought it would cook faster on high heat. And then, uh, I thought I needed a bigger pot…”

She nods. “You don’t want it to boil, just simmer,” she offers gently, squeezing at his shoulder. “And switch for one of those big wooden spoons, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees, sounding deeply relieved. He gets back up off his knees and heads back to the stove. 

The potion starts to kick in, little by little, and she feels her head cool a bit and something in her chest and in the space between her brows loosen. 

She cranes her neck slightly and watches him cook the soup, offering careful instructions, guiding him through watering down the concentrate and then thickening it up a bit, adding some salt and pepper. He pours out two big bowls, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he does, and she doesn’t feel all the things in her body that she usually does when she thinks about how much she loves him as out of it as her body is. It’s all conceptual instead, all in her head, but no less potent. 

“Uh, thanks,” he says, setting a bowl in front of her and ducking his head. 

“Thank you,” she says, immediately placing her freezing hands on the hot ceramic. “Spoons?”

“Right!”

And it’s like heaven, the steam and the warm liquid all the way down her throat and into her chest. She moans and groans her way to the bottom of the bowl, grateful for every second it opens her airways and warms her. The drowsiness of the potion is hitting hard by the time she finishes, and Hardwon helps her half-sleepwalk her way back to her bed. 

She drops into sleep again, feeling the best she has since the morning.

“‘Night,” she mumbles, reaching out and patting at his body. 

His hand sweeps over her cooling forehead. “‘Night, Moonshine.”

—

The fever comes back. Sometime in the night probably, the potion’s dosage wearing off. 

She sleeps, but she feels it, the heat returning in fits and starts. 

She dreams of the Hells. She dreams of the Crown. 

Behind her eyes everything is fuzzy and red, disjointed and sharp. Pendergreens is there, somewhere, his body distorted, his voice distant, a brassy rumble that sends tremors through the ground somehow. 

She doesn’t take the Crown, she doesn’t have that moment where she chooses it, where she faces her fate as bravely as she can. It just is on her head one moment, there like it was never anywhere else. 

Inevitable. It was always going to end this way for her. 

It sinks its spikes into her forehead. She grits her teeth against the pain. Blood drips down her face, warm and sticky against her skin. It burns, flames licking up and down and across her vision. Her hair ignites, flames spilling down her back. 

She didn’t think it would hurt this much. A naive assumption. 

She did expect the anger, can feel it brimming up in her. Her muscles tense and clench with it, with a rage that wants to destroy everything, even the good things. She gives it nowhere to go, holds it in her body as it tries to explode out of her. Her nails bite into her palms and her teeth grind each other to dust. 

Other than that it all hurts too much for her to act on. A small blessing. 

All she can do is twitch and whimper, try to shy back from the roiling sensations but finding nowhere in her body to go. 

“Moonshine?” 

She doesn’t want him here. She could hurt him. He shouldn’t be here. 

“Moonie?”

His hand is like ice against her cheek. Her baser instincts have her leaning into him. 

She knows it’s not real. Some part in her, beneath the flames. She can squint her eyes barely open and know that she’s not in the Hells, she’s in her room, cool and dark in the middle of the night. 

Hardwon is there, really there, next to her in the bed like he always is. She can’t actually hurt him. She’s sick, she’s feeble. 

But she can still feel the Crown. Her muscles cramp and ache, her head and her thoughts are drowning beneath the flames. 

“Hey, girl,” Hardwon says, close and soft. “Hey, honey.” She reaches for him weakly, her hands still fisted tight. “What's wrong? What do I do?" 

His hand slips up along her spine and he pulls her closer to him across the bed. 

Her eyes slip closed again. She can feel him touching her face still, feel his fingers coast over her temple where the Crown would be, where it is stabbing into her. 

"Um, I don't think you can take more of the potion yet," he says. "Can you? You're... you're burning up again. And you’re shivering. Are you hot or cold? Moonshine?"

Her head feels far too heavy to hold up. She's not holding up her head, she's in bed. The Crown is made of lead and it is collapsing her. The anger is screaming at her, overlapping voices that go louder and louder. Her ears feel like popping.

Her nose is congested and she can't get air through it. She breathes through her mouth and she's breathing fire. 

She needs to take it off. It needs to come off. She thought she could do it but she can't. It wasn't supposed to hurt like this and she can't think and she can't breathe. 

Her arms are too heavy to move, she can't reach up.

She's not supposed to. She's not supposed to take it off. She's here for a reason. It has to be her. For the good of everyone, for the good of the world. She's the one who nobody needs. Or rather, this is what everyone needs her for. To handle the burn, to sit in the flames, to shoulder it. She's the only one who could do it. 

She thought she could do it, alone. But it hurts. All she wants to do is cry, but she's too exhausted to. 

It hurts and she wants her MeeMaw, and she wants PawPaw, and she wants Bev and Balnor, and it's too much to want, it's selfish to want them here in the Hells with her, it's what she was supposed to be hardened against, to want better for them, to not drag them down with her. 

Like he can sense her needy selfish thoughts, Hardwon starts to move away, arm pulling out from under her. 

She should let him. 

She whines instead. "Don't." Her voice barely rasps out of her. Maybe it'll be too quiet for him to even hear. "Please don't go. Please.”

"Shit, but I—" There's a moment that feels like a hundred years. She can't do it. She can't be here by herself forever. If he goes... she can't do it. 

And then his arms are wrapping around her again, and the relief and shame hit at the same time and overwhelm her. "No, no, no. I'm here, okay? I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Thankfully, she's not strong enough to sob. Because she would. 

Instead, she gets to keep one little shred of dignity. 

She wants to ask him to take the Crown off her. But there's no Crown. But her throat hurts too much to move anymore. But if she takes it off, someone else has to put it on, he could put it on. 

She goes limp in his arms instead, buries her face in his neck. 

"I gotta..." he says. "I was gonna get you something. I feel like you need... something. I don't know what I'm doing here, Moonshine."

It feels too good, being in his arms. It's more than she deserves. It's more than she should need. 

But she is here anyway. 

"Don't go," she mumbles again. 

"I won't," he says. "I won't. I've got you."

And he means for the night. And she means for the night. But she also means a hundred something years, when it's his natural time to rest somewhere beyond her with Moradin and Gemma Bronzebeard. But she means the decades before then, when he'll find someone beautiful and loving who'll want to give him his happy ending, someplace to settle down, maybe some youngins, who'll all need him more than she does. 

But she means, in the morning, when she wakes up from this dream, and has to sit in the embarrassment of this whole night, when the shame makes her avoid his eyes, when the world keeps moving and this illness passes and she runs out of reasons for him to still be here. 

But she means forever, and she always does.

—

Her fever does break sometime in the night. 

She wakes up covered in a cold sweat, but clearheaded. 

Hardwon has his arms around her still. Has bruises under his eyes, like he hasn't slept at all. Has his eyes on her face, like it's his job to keep watching her. 

She looks away, just like she knew she would. 

Hardwon clears his throat. 

"Hey," he says gruffly. "Uh, morning. How are you feeling?"

Her nose is a bit stuffed, and she can feel the mucus dripping down her throat. 

"Better," she admits. The night is a hazy, of the dream, and the fever, and the swelling storm of emotions through it all. She can't remember it all with clarity, and that is maybe the only thing that keeps her from mustering her strength and putting as much distance between them as possible. "Um, did I... sorry if—"

"You should eat something," he says, assertively, sitting up. "And have another potion!"

She sinks into the empty space on the bed he leaves behind, closes her eyes at the warmth of his body heat still trapped in the sheets. They stick to her gross skin, covered in dried sweat that smells like illness. 

"I needa—" She breaks to cough. Almost felt too like herself again for a second. "I needa bath."

“Food first!” Hardwon calls from the kitchen. 

—

Sure enough, she still can barely stand long enough to make it to the kitchen. 

She gets there with some assistance from just about every wall along the way. And as a result, Hardwon refuses to let her go to the bathroom alone. 

“I’m perfectly capable—”

“Excuse me if I doubt that,” he says. And he is currently helping her back to the bed. She tries to push him off. It’s ineffectual. 

“You ain’t excused,” she says. “There’re walls in there I can lean on just as easily as I’m leanin on you.”

“The walls can’t catch you,” he says. 

“I’m not gonna fall.”

He hums, not even bothering to argue. 

He does remember to grab her clothes and towels and soap, which she had forgotten. A point in his favor. 

He also draws the bath while she sits on the toilet and catches her breath, each tiny stream of air squeaking through her nostrils like a teapot. 

For the first time in her life, she goes to take her clothes off and gets shy. 

Hardwon glances back at her expectantly, gesturing to the steaming water. 

She bites her lower lip. “I hate that you’re seeing me like this,” she says. She didn’t mean to. It just fell outta her mouth. 

His eyes widen. “Uh…” He grimaces. “I mean, no offense, Moonshine, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

She rolls her eyes. It makes her head hurt. “Not that,” she says. “I… I’m all sick and gross. It’s…” Embarrassing. 

“Oh,” he huffs. He scoots across the bathroom on his knees until he’s in front of her. “C’mon, Moonie. You’re the most beautiful girl in Bahumia.” And it just falls right outta his mouth. Simple. Casual. Like it’s nothing. Like he knows it. “I mean, you got a mile on anyone on your best day, alright?”

She feels the fever under her skin again. Different this time. She looks down at her lap and tries not to think about it. 

It’s so vain. It’s not the response she was looking for, though it must seem like she was fishing for it. 

“Sorry I snotted all over your shoulder all night,” she says. 

“It was hot, I promise,” he says, hand closing over hers. 

And well, if anything would get her to take her clothes off…

—

Sinking in the hot water has every bit of sickness leaving her body. She feels like herself again, her sinuses clearing, breathing in clearly for the first time in days. Her muscles relax and her head clears and she basks in the wondrous sensation of not feeling like shit warmed over. 

The tub is too full of water, every time she shifts, some more sloshes over the side. Hardwon swears and grabs some towels to mop it up. She's able to throw out a little Shape Water cantrip to help him move some to the sink before the exertion catches up to her. 

She ducks her head beneath the surface and stays under for a couple minutes, breathing in and out and feeling the hot water clear out her system. 

When she comes back up, Hardwon is sitting by the edge, dipping his fingers in the water and swirling it around. 

"Is it still warm enough?" 

She nods, leaning her neck back against the lip. 

He reaches for her hair, gathering the wet strands up and into his hands. 

"I can take care'a that," she mutters, eyes slipping shut just to rest for a moment. 

"Or... you can let me," he offers. 

Or she can let him. It's a softer proposition when she's feeling this blissful, no longer at war with her body, unwilling to lift her arms not from sickly exhaustion but from peace. 

It'd be so nice, the temptation whispers between the rising spirals of steam. To just let him. To not have to do it herself, to not have to worry about, to just give in. 

It could just be this once, couldn't it? She's sick and she needs the help. He's offering, like he's offered again and again. 

She can handle it just being one time. Just because she need it. She won't get so attached to the selfish hedonistic pleasure of it. She won't spend the rest of her life longing for it every single time she's tired and doesn't want to wash her hair but has to anyway, and doesn't have any excuse or anyone else to handle it for her. 

She nods, despite herself, and sighs as his fingers scratch against her scalp. 

"Thanks," she breathes, before the shame would trap it in her throat. She thinks she's crying a bit, but the water makes it all disappear. 

All she has to do is lay back and breathe. Instruct him a bit when he confuses the shampoo and conditioner, when he tugs a little too hard. It was a mistake, she knows, because she can feel herself becoming addicted to the sensations, to the care, to the feeling of his thick fingers behind her ears and against the base of her neck. She has to bite down hard, on all of the noises she wants to make, on all of the ridiculous sappy things she has the instinct to say. 

He's being so nice, so hospitable. It's embarrassing that it's enough to make her fall apart this much. 

She takes over for the brushing, while he towels her off, so gently it's almost ineffectual. She walks herself back over to the bedroom, sits on the floor for a few minutes while he kneels behind her and braids her hair carefully and intricately. She's never learned the exact meanings of the different Dwarven braids, and she can't even see them well enough in her own hair to identify them, but she knows the meaning anyway. She can feel it, the love, the care, the claim, from just the focus of Hardwon's attention behind her, just from the way the very process feels. 

Maybe one day she'll ask. If it's family or ally or... or partner. Whatever static label from his culture he sees fit to place on her, on what they have. It's not that she's not curious. It's not that she's that nervous about what any of the answers would make her feel. It just feels like enough to enjoy the ritual of the very braiding itself, the significance that he's sharing this with her at all. 

He runs his fingers over the braids when he's finished and then pulls away.

—

She takes another potion of NyQuil and the drowsiness sets back in before long. 

"What are you up to today?" she asks, already yawning as she pulls the blankets on her bed back. 

"Not a thing," he says, reaching to grab them for her. 

"You should—" she starts. 

"I'm not going anywhere." An echo, briefly, she feels from the night before. She climbs up onto the bed before thinking about it too long. He comes up behind her, settles up against the headboard. 

"I don't wanna keep you, if—" 

"I got nothing else going on, I promise," he insists. 

She doesn't push again. She put in some modicum of effort into it. And she's tired of it. And she doesn't want him to go, selfishly. 

She slides down against the mattress and rests her head on his thigh, trapping him there. 

He said he doesn't want to go. If he really needs to, he'll push her off. 

The legs of his boxers are a little damp from cleaning up the bath and his leg muscle is so solid and firm beneath her. But she can hear the rush of his blood through his body, and it's the perfect height for her to lean on her shoulder. She closes her eyes.

Moonshine finds herself lulled to a soft place between awake and asleep, Hardwon’s hand steady through the remaining loose strands of her hair against his thigh.

“Sorry,” he grumbles after a while. “I’m, uh, sorry I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sorry that you’re the one who’s sick and you gotta show me how to do everything.” His hand stutters to a stop and she listens to him sigh deeply. “Sorry, you’re stuck with me.”

She doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t have the energy to respond as dry and scraped as her throat feels, barely has enough energy to process what he is saying with how her head thrums. She tries to grab his hand, just manages to flop hers up over it and grip weakly at his pinkie.

"Don't go."

"I won't," he says, and slides his hand over to hold hers more solidly.

"Hardwon, I—" she tries. But it's so much that she doesn't know where to start. 

That it's not his fault. That he should've been taught these things, but he wasn't, and it been breaking her heart all day. But that's not what he wants to hear, would only make him shy away from her even more. 

That he has been perfect, more than perfect. That she's felt nothing but safety and care, because it's him, because she trusts him with everything. But how believable is that when she's spent ever second trying to push him away. 

"It's okay," he says, petting at her hair again. "You don't need to say anything, just get some rest."

She curls herself harder into him, like maybe she could make him feel it, just how much she's needed him here, just how much he's done for her. 

"You're here," she says, and her voice is too nasally to convey the desperate prayer that it is. "Taking care of me, I..."

He nods. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry. Just wish I was... better."

"I don't," she says, as firm as she can. "I never do."

He doesn't say anything else. Just breathes in slow and keeps running his fingers through her drying hair. 

She wishes she could find it harder to sleep, that she could stay up in case this isn't done, in case he has more doubts she can muster the strength to scare off. But it's quiet and his hand is steady, and she slips back down, gripping his hand instead of the blankets, and for the first time this whole time, not feeling guilty for clinging to him. 

—

She sleeps for most of the day and most of the night, takes more potions, has more soup, drinks more water. And by the morning after the sickness is mostly flushed out of her system. 

She holds Hardwon's wrist to her forehead to prove it. "See, cool as a clam." 

It's enough to get him to relent, to actually believe that she's feeling better and can be trusted to leave the apartment. 

"Um, why do you—" he starts, eyes dancing away from hers. 

"The inside of the wrist has a more stable temperature than your hand," she explains. "Makes it easier to tell if someone's hot, than if your hand is just cold."

"Oh," he says, and grins a bit to himself. 

"Your lips are real sensitive too," she says. "You can also check that way."

It makes him blush and clear his throat. And she smiles, feeling a lot more like herself again. 

By the end of the day, Hardwon heads back to his own apartment for a bit. She misses him instantly, but that's always been the way, she never gets her fill with him, never will. 

He's back for dinner, and another medium bed that night, like he usually does anyway. 

She casually monitors him when they get ready for bed, to see if he's sniffling or clearing his throat a bit, any indicators that he's caught the bug. But he seems just fine. Bev'll be back in two days. Things'll be back to normal. 

She wakes up first the next morning though, trancing instead of sleeping again, and sets up in the kitchen to put together a rather grand apology breakfast. 

Hardwon comes in about an hour later, yawning and stretching. "What's all this?"

She shrugs, shoving some of the serving plates around the table to make room for the bacon she just pulled off the burner. "Just a little something." 

"A lotta something," he corrects. 

She rolls her eyes and shepherds him towards a seat at the table. "Just a thank you, and a sorry, for all that." She waves absently. 

"Well, I don't need either," he says, brow furrowing. He glances across the table, eyes widening. "But, I mean, I won't say no to breakfast."

She smirks, makes a final trip to grab the cornbread from the oven and joins him at the table. 

"It was mighty sweet of you," she says. "Sticking around here when I was all gross and boring."

He finishes shoving a piece of toast in his mouth and tips his head at her again. 

"Moonshine," he protests, mouth half full. 

"It was," she insists. "You didn't have to do that—"

"'Course, I did."

"I'm just recognizing your service."

"It wasn't some fucking sacrifice," he protests. "You don't need to thank me for shit."

"Yes, I do."

"Why?"

"Because you didn't have to do all that and you did, which was very nice, so I'm doing something nice back," she says evenly. 

"I did have to," he says, staring intently at her, even as he reaches for the eggs. 

She huffs. "No, you didn't. I would have been absolutely fine."

"You were sick."

"I've been sick before. I'll be sick again."

"And I'll be there." 

It makes her stomach flip a bit, makes her remember the bath and his hands in her hair and bliss from every follicle in her scalp all the way down to her toes. 

She glances down at her plate, pushes some of her own eggs around.

"Sure," she says. "If you can."

"Always."

Not always, she knows. But she doesn't want to talk about that. She never wants to actually talk about that. So she just hums and takes a bite of her eggs. 

"You don't believe me," he accuses, and she can hear that trace of bullheaded pride. 

She sighs. "You're exaggeratin' to make a point," she says. "But I believe you."

"I'm not exaggerating. I mean it. I know I'm not good at it, but I will be. I can look out for you, no matter what, forever. What else are we doing here, Moonshine?"

In sickness and in health, she thinks for a brief absurd moment. Because that's the kinda promise he'll be making to someone else. And it won't be in sickness and in health unless Moonshine has the sniffles. 

"Have you tried the biscuits? I added a different type 'a cheese and I don't know how it turned out."

"Moonshine..."

She sinks back in her seat. "What?" she protests. "You can't promise those things. You'll take care of me when you can. I believe that."

"And will you let me?" he asks. "Take care of you? Really?"

She shrugs. "I can take care of myself," she mutters.

"And what if I can do it too?"

"It'll just make it harder," she says, against the clenching of her jaw. "When you... when you have other people to take care of or whatever and I... I just have to do it myself again."

She peeks up at him across the table. He stares at her, unblinking, looking mildly horrified. Bile surges up her throat. Why would she even say it like that, sounding so ungrateful and needy and pathetic.

He swallows hard and lets out a wet ragged sound. 

"Fuck me," he mutters under his breath, before leaning forward. "There will never be someone more important to me than you." She inhales sharply without even meaning too, something in her leaping frantically to her throat. He shrugs. "And so, like, logically, there's kinda nothing that will be as important to me as taking care of you. Even if that's just... heating up soup and getting you tissues and-and whatever, okay?"

She remembers gasping, but it feels like she can't breath anymore, like a fever of a different type is surging through her and making her head spin and squeezing at her chest. 

"And the toast is great," he squeaks, looking back down at his plate and pulling at the collar of his shirt. "I'll have to try a biscuit though."

"Hardwon?" she exhales. 

"What type of cheese?" He reaches for it, but she catches his hand over the table, grips him tight because she feels like she's about to fall from something very high up. 

She wants to believe him so bad. She does believe. But she wants it so bad, and it's so... selfish. When she... when he... 

She thinks of how it feels to send healing magic into him, how her spores mix and mingle against him. She thinks of how it felt to cast Reincarnate, to reach in and cradle his soul and carry it to safety. She thinks of watching him eat her food and putting Crick knots in his beard and giving him careful instructions that he follows with unbelievable trust. 

He's putting food out on the table for her. And she's been pretending that she isn't starving.

"What if I like it too much? Having you take care of me?"

"I don't know if you will like it. I'm not that good at it. Yet."

"You are," she protests. 

He squeezes her hand. “Then… it’s not too much. It’s never…”

"And I could teach you MeeMaw's split pea soup recipe," she offers. He nods eagerly. "And, uh... Are there any Dwarven soups that you...?"

"Oh, we didn't really..." he starts with a grimace. "Actually, there was this one stew..."

She smiles, shaky from how deep she feels it. "You know that I... that it's the same for me?" 

"Yeah," he says, smiling weakly too. "Course I do."

She settles, breathing deep again and nodding to herself. She reaches and slips a biscuit into his hand, leaning back into her seat and grabbing her fork again. 

They finish making their way through her breakfast buffet quietly, the rest of it almost too big to feel let alone say. 

Hardwon carries the dishes to the sink, and stops back in front of her to press his wrist to her forehead, and then to lean down and press a long kiss there instead. She's sure her face goes hot anyway, but he doesn't comment on it, just nods and finishes cleaning off the table. 

She sits and lets him.