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Hacking coughs echo off the cavernous walls of the otherwise peaceful castle, and their stumbling progress out of the workshop halts momentarily.
“Darling,” Vex tuts, shouldering more of his weight and rubbing what should be soothing circles into his back over his soaked shirt and vest. The contact does little to soothe, however, feeling more like dozens of needles pricking his oversensitive skin. Still, he can’t bring himself to pull away, drawn to her warmth like a moth to flame.
“Sorry,” he gasps between productive coughs, fumbling around his breast pocket for a handkerchief. He comes up empty, every scrap of cloth in his possession long since soiled with contagion from the hours he had spent tinkering in his workshop as his condition deteriorated.
He’s about to admit defeat when a fresh handkerchief is pressed into his groping hand. He accepts it with a silent glance of appreciation toward his wife, then disappears behind it to cover the rest of his fit and catch any mess before he can infect half the castle.
“Stop apologizing,” Vex insists, soft but firm. "You'll make it up to me later, when you're well again." She grins in spite of herself, teasing. The hand not currently pressed against his back deftly loosens his cravat and grants him easier breaths. It’s an intimate gesture, and it sends a shiver down Percy’s spine that has nothing to do with the fever as he fights to catch his breath.
The coughing fit leaves him sapped of all remaining strength, and he slumps heavily against her side, gasping.
“It’s gotten worse,” she says, fingers migrating from the fabric around his neck to brush against his cheek. All traces of her formerly teasing tone vanished in an instant.
Percy leans into the touch in lieu of a reply. Vex’s fingers are soft and cool against his overheated skin. Using all his remaining strength to focus on getting air into his lungs and staying upright until they can reach their bedroom, he can no longer keep his heavy eyelids open. Long lashes flutter as his eyes slip shut and he nearly falls asleep against her then and there.
“Trinket?” He hears her call out, followed by a few familiar, confused chuffs. “A little help, please?”
Percy swears he can hear the bear roll his eyes before there’s pressure behind his trembling legs, forcing his knees to buckle and knocking him backward off his feet and onto the beast’s armored back. It does nothing for his vertigo, and the world tilts nauseatingly around him. If not for Vex’s arm around him, he’s sure he would have tumbled ass over teakettle right off the great bear’s rump.
“Easy… that’s it. Good boy, Trinket. Thank you.” Percy feels more than he hears the bear’s responding chuff. The rhythmic echo of pawpads on stone nearly lulls him to sleep again.
It feels both like a decade and an instant that he’s being eased off Trinket’s back and into bed. All at once, he curls up with a pitiful moan, burying his face in the soft, cool plush of the pillow on his side of their shared bed. It’s a balm on his scorching skin, and he shivers violently from the warring sensations ravaging his system.
Sleep is a breath away.
The mattress dips just a little beside him, the only indication of Vex’s returned presence until he feels her tugging off each of his boots in turn.
He forces his eyes open, and everything is shimmery and hazy, like he’s trapped in a dream.
“I’m fine, really, Vex. I can take care of myself,” he tries to tell her, embarrassed by the coddling. He’s not sure if he managed to get a single one of the words out properly, however; although she pauses halfway through disrobing him, the look Vex gives him isn’t annoyed or stern, but rather worried.
He hates that look. It doesn’t suit her. He’s not supposed to cause her to make that face. He’s supposed to be the one that assures her.
He can’t even tell that he’s getting worked up until he feels the hot warmth of tears pooling under his eyelids and slipping down his flushed cheeks.
She hushes him with impossibly gentle fingers slipping through his hair. He hears a pathetic, undignified little sound he doesn’t recognize. Had it come out of him?
“It’s all right,” she coaxes, relieving him of his shirt and vest. “It’s going to be all right. I’m here now. Lie still.”
The cool air in the room hits his overheated skin and he can’t help but whimper, trying to curl more tightly into himself to conserve warmth. Gooseflesh sprouts on his skin, the tepid air of the castle feeling as cold as the chill of the grave, and a sinking feeling convinces him he will never be warm again.
Thankfully, it’s only mere seconds later that Vex helps slip a clean, dry sleep shirt over his head and arms. The worst of the chill is still deep within him, twining around his aching joints and settling in for what feels like a long stay. But, at the very least, there is a layer between him and freezing to death.
The familiar, comforting scent of home surrounds him momentarily as the blankets appear around his trembling shoulders. He attempts without success to release the tension in his sore muscles, but he feels stretched taut as Vex’s bowstring.
Vex.
Hands, rough and callused from years of archery but impossibly gentle, smooth the blankets up under his chin, then wander upward to tuck a damp lock of hair off his sweaty forehead. Her fingertips linger on his brow, and he knows she’s fretting about his temperature again. He tries to open his mouth to reassure her, to tell her he’s all right. But his lips are blistering, and his tongue feels just as thick and heavy as the rest of him, too clumsy to form the words.
A weight lifts off his face and out from behind his ears, and he hears the gentle clicks of the arms of his spectacles as she folds them neatly and sets them aside but still within reach.
“Thank you,” he whispers, or tries to. It’s still not clear whether he’s making any sense, whether she can hear him. “I love you.”
“Rest now, my darling.” He feels the words whispered across his burning cheek as cool lips feather against his temple, momentarily distracting him from the throbbing ache there. “I’ve got you.”
Her words, and the truth within them, settle somewhere deep in his chest, a warmth for him to cling to as he drifted into a dreamless, fitful sleep.