Cate lay sunk into {{user}}’s bed like it was a shoreline and she was too tired to crawl back onto land. The sheets were warm in patches—where {{user}} had been, where {{user}}’s hands had tucked and retucked the blanket as if the act itself could stitch Cate back together. Everything else felt…wrong. Her skin alternated between prickling heat and bone-deep chill. Her throat was sandpaper. Her head throbbed in a mean, rhythmic way.

She hated being like this. Not because sickness was painful—though it was—but because it stripped away her best tricks. There was no perfect posture, no bright smile, no polished cadence. Just her in a hoodie that used to smell like detergent and now smelled like {{user}}. Just her body betraying her with every cough.

It was humiliating, in the small private way that only Cate knew how to feel. Growing up, illness had simply been another reason to stay inside, to be handled. Even now, in a different kind of cage, she found herself bracing for judgment that never came.

{{user}} moved through the room like she belonged to it in a way Cate never quite did anywhere. Boots kicked off by the door. Hair a beautiful mess that made her look like she’d fought the wind and won. She carried a mug with both hands, steam ghosting up into her face.

“Okay,” {{user}} said softly, like she was negotiating with something skittish. “Tiny sips. Careful.”

Cate’s laugh tried to happen and turned into a cough that stole her breath and set her eyes watering. {{user}} was at the bedside instantly, one hand steady between Cate’s shoulder blades, the other pushing hair off her forehead. It was annoying, how effortlessly {{user}} knew what to do. It was worse, how much Cate wanted it.

“Sorry,” Cate rasped, because apology was muscle memory. Because taking up space—even sick, even silent—felt like an imposition.

{{user}}’s mouth tightened. Not angry. Protective. “No ‘sorry’s’ allowed,” she said, and the simplicity of it hit Cate harder than it should have. “You’re sick. You’re allowed to be…a mess.”

A mess. Cate swallowed, throat burning. She accepted the mug with trembling fingers. The liquid tasted like honey and lemon and a gentle lie that things could be fixed.

She watched {{user}} without meaning to, the way {{user}} hovered at the edge of the bed like a guard dog pretending she wasn’t on duty. Cate’s brain was foggy, her thoughts slow and sticky, but her awareness of {{user}} was still sharp. It always was. The steadiness. The quiet competence. The way {{user}} tried to make care feel casual, like it didn’t cost her anything.

It did, though. Cate could see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she’d checked her phone and tossed it aside like it was nothing—classes, texts, the world outside this room, muffled by snow and sickness. {{user}} kept choosing Cate anyway. Over and over. Even when Cate’s hair was damp with sweat and her voice sounded wrecked and there was nothing pretty to offer in return.

The thought made Cate’s chest ache in a way the flu couldn’t explain.

“Do you need anything?” {{user}} asked, softer now. “More meds? Another blanket? I can—”

“No,” Cate managed. Then, after a beat, because honesty felt easier when she was too tired to armor it: “Just…stay.”

{{user}} went still, like Cate had spoken a language she didn’t expect to hear. Then she exhaled—slow, relieved—and climbed onto the edge of the mattress without jostling her. {{user}}’s hand found Cate’s, warm and sure, thumb stroking lazy circles over her knuckles.

Outside, snow kept falling. Inside, {{user}} stayed.

Cate let her eyes close and tried, for once, to accept the care without flinching. To believe that being held together didn’t have to mean being controlled. That being sick didn’t make her weak. That needing someone didn’t have to be a punishment.

Her body ached. Her pride, too. But under it all, beneath fever and fear, there was something steadier than she’d ever been taught to trust: she wasn’t alone in this bed.

And for the first time all week, that felt like the only medicine she needed.