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Thursday
Their bed was too hot.
Agatha pushed the source of the heat away and it moaned, and Agatha realized that she knew that moan. She blinked open her eyes to see Rio shivering, her face flushed.
“Damn,” Agatha said, sitting up. “Looks like you got my cold after all.”
Rio didn’t answer, just curled in on herself.
“And maybe a fever, too. Good thing we still have the cold meds.”
“But I never get sick,” Rio whispered, her voice raspier than normal.
“We’re married now. We share things, including germs. So I’ll get you a pill and some breakfast and you just rest, alright?”
Rio nodded slowly, pulling her covers tight. Agatha leaned over and pressed the back of her hand to her wife’s forehead, frowning at how hot it was, and then ran her thumb along her hairline.
“We’ll get through this together,” Agatha promised. “Again.”
*
Monday
The first thing Rio heard was sneezing.
She opened her eyes to see Agatha, red-faced with a big frizzy blob for hair and one leg in and one leg out of her pants.
It took a few seconds for Rio’s sleep-addled brain to understand what was happening. “You’re sick.”
“No, I'm not,” Agatha grumbled, awkwardly fumbling to get her other leg into her pants while coughing. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine,” Rio said as she slid out of bed. “You seem -“
“Don’t!” Her wife managed to the rest of her pants on; when she straightened up, Rio noticed her blouse was on backwards. “We have a double funeral this weekend, I don’t have time to be sick.”
“I don’t think that’s how being sick works.”
“It does today. I am not letting some stupid sniffles stop me from the biggest payday we’ve had in weeks.”
“Whatever you say, Agatha,” Rio said, mild and unruffled as Agatha glared at her before marching out of their room.
Rio sat on the edge of the bed and counted to twenty. Then she stood up, straightened her shirt, and walked out of their bedroom and down the stairs.
There was Agatha, leaning on the banister at the bottom of the staircase, staring blearily at the front door. Rio stood on the stair above her and petted her head. “You wanna go sleep on the couch?”
“Yeah,” Agatha conceded before slowly shuffling to the couch and collapsing on it. She pulled the throw blanket off the back of the couch and threw it over herself, making sure it covered her from the top of her head all the way to her toes.
“I’ll make toast.” Rio said as her wife disappeared from view.
“And get more blankets!” Agatha commanded, voice muffled and thick.
“As many as you want, my love.”
*
“I see all the colors.”
“Me, too,” Agatha said as her wife lay back down after finishing her breakfast and Agatha piled all their extra covers on top of her. “This quilt looks like a rainbow threw up on it.”
“No, not all the normal colors,” Rio said dreamily. “I see colors that no human has seen before. I see colors that no else could ever imagine.”
“O-kay.” Agatha pressed her hand to Rio’s forehead. “You don’t seem hotter, but I think we better check that temperature again.”
Rio reached up and cupped her cheek. “You have the prettiest colors I’ve ever seen. You’re so beautiful.”
Agatha smiled, melting inside. “Thank you, my love.”
Her wife blinked slowly. “I can also hear all the sounds. I hear the worms in the Earth and the monkeys in the zoo and someone singing the Monster Mash.”
“Yep, getting a thermometer right now.”
Agatha stood and started to leave the room. She stopped in the doorway when she heard a series of squishes behind her. She turned to see Rio smushing the leftover blueberries in her half-eaten oatmeal bowl, one by one. She looked at Agatha with wild, unfocused eyes. “I am Death and this is my sacrifice.”
“Good for you, hun,” Agatha said as Rio waved blue-stained fingers at her. “So I’m getting a thermometer and some wet wipes, apparently.”
*
“You have to take your medicine.”
“No.”
“Agatha -“
“My throat is on fire, I’m not swallowing that horse pill.”
It was a pretty normal size pill, but Rio didn’t think pointing that out would help right now. “I’m sorry, my love, but this is supposed to help."
“No!”
“You aren’t going to get better by this weekend if you don’t take your meds.”
A few seconds passed before a hand thrust itself out of Agatha’s blanket nest. Rio put the medicine in it and the hand disappeared again. There was the sound of gagging and coughing and then Agatha sighed. “Did it.”
“I figured.” Rio sat down next to the blanket nest. “Do you wanna watch Murder, She Wrote?”
“… yes.”
*
It took until just before midnight for Rio’s fever to break. Her side of the bed was wet with sweat but Agatha was too tired to change the sheets, so she put a blanket over that side and pulled Rio on top of her.
“Everything hurts,” Rio croaked, snuggling her head into the crook of Agatha’s neck.
“You can take some more Tylenol in an hour. I set an alarm.”
Rio just groaned.
“Hey,” Agatha whispered, pushing damp hair off of her wife’s forehead, “you’re beautiful.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not. You’re beautiful. And the red nose is super cute.”
Rio sniffled when Agatha pinched the tip of her nose. “Don’t, I’m gross.”
“So? You were there for me when I was gross.”
“I regret that now.”
“No, you don’t,” Agatha said confidently, kissing the top of her wife’s head. “You’d do it again, because you love me, and I love you, even if you’re getting snot on my shirt.”
“And you took care of me, even though it means we’ll have to get help from Alice and Billy this weekend and split the profits.”
“Eh, no big deal. We’ll have other double funerals. Maybe even triple or quadruple funerals someday.”
“So optimistic,” Rio said, with the first hint of a smile she’d had all day.
“Well, I am married to Death, the slayer of blueberries. I figure you can probably set something up for us.”
Rio rolled her eyes, but said, "I'll see what I can do. Maybe we can shift the business, do exclusively fruit-themed funerals."
"Sounds perfect."
*
“I think I like the Tupper episodes better,” Rio said six hours or so into their Murder, She Wrote binge.
Agatha scoffed, at least as well as she could with her nose still half stopped up. She’d finally stuck her head out of the blanket nest around the fourth episode and had instead created a ring of used tissues around herself, although the humidifier Rio had set up in the family room seemed to be helping with the congestion now. “How? Tupper’s the worst. He’s useless.”
“Because both Metzger and Tupper are constantly wrong, but at least Tupper has the excuse of being old. Metzger is just stupid.”
“Yeah, but Metzger is less stupid and he does his job better. Incompetence is so annoying.”
“But Metzger is condescending.”
“Tupper is sexist.”
“Jessica is too good for both of them.”
“So true,” Agatha said before blowing her nose again.
As Jessica explained how she solved the latest mystery, Rio reached over the pile of tissues between them and pulled Agatha down until she was lying in Rio’s lap and began to run her fingers through her wife’s matted hair.
Agatha hummed in pleasure but still protested, “You shouldn’t. You’ll get sick.”
“I’ve been inhaling your germs all day anyway. Besides,” Rio said, a bit smug, “you know I never get sick.”