Dragon Age One Shots

Man-Flu, Alistair/Warden

"I'm dying!" the wad of quilts and pillows moaned from the bed.

Sighing, I placed the tray of various medicinal tonics on the table beside and tugged back the whinging duvet. A shock of copper hair, dulled by the dark shadows of the drawn curtains, popped out at me.

"You're not dying," I assured him watching as the rest of Alistair's feverish but intact face prodded above the coverlet. He drew the edge tight under his chin, just the bare tips of his fingers prodding over the top while the rest of him remained swaddled. They'd damn near stolen every blanket in the Keep, which he then proceeded to chuck onto the floor when the fever grew too much.

"Here," I said, fishing up the tonic the local healer brewed up specially.

Alistair wrinkled his face at the color, a putrid brown that even turned my stomach, but he dutifully slugged it down. After screwing up his face and smacking his lips, he cried, "I am so dying. Look at this!" He jabbed at his cheek, causing me to cross my eyes as I started closer.

"What?"

"There's a spot! It's the deadly river pox!"

I risked inching closer, nearly bumping into him until I could make out the brown dot in a sea of them. "That's one of your freckles! And who gave you a mirror?"

Mumbling, the ill patient who was suffering from a cold — nasty but certainly not deadly — fell back to the pillows. "I had to relieve myself," Alistair whined.

"So you can get up," I said, catching the man in a lie. He'd been camped in our bed for going on three days, insisting it was too much of a strain on his body to risk leaving.

"Only for a few moments, then I feel faint!" Alistair laid a hand to his forehead and pretended to pass out. "I'm more swoony than an Orlesian dowager watching a randy play."

Chuckling, I rose to the floor and left the patient to heal all alone in his sick bed. Piles of letters from across Thedas awaited the Warden Commander's attention, most of which I'd been ignoring while I served as nurse to my ailing... We never did quite work out what to call each other.

Who am I kidding? He's my husband in all but name. Being up half the night to soothe his coughing fits cemented it deeper than any ceremony could. The lesser half in that equation was rolling around in the bed, groaning about the books I left for him.

Each one hit the floor with a complaint about how he'd already read it, it was dull, or he didn't like the cover. I tried to ignore it, dipping the quill into ink and rising above to mark a letter to Arl Teagan, when the whine resumed.

"What are you doing?"

"Working," I grumbled, trying to hunch my shoulders down as if that could hide away his complaining.

"While I'm sick?" Alistair gasped as if such a thing were impossible.

"Do you expect Thedas to cease spinning just because you're ill?" I countered.

He fell silent a moment, clearly weighing his thoughts, before a rattling cough broke from him. It sounded far less damp than before, a fact that raised my spirits. "Maybe," Alistair shrugged. "How come you're not sick too? Doesn't seem fair that I'm knocking on death's door while you're all singing with bluebirds, twirling in your dress beautiful."

I shook off the thought of me in anything but my armor. "Dwarves are stronger than you humans," I answered, trying to return to the parchment which was now stained with dozens of ink droplets. They must have dribbled from the quill while I failed to ignore him. Damn it!

"Well that's super duper not fair. So you never get sick? Like ever?"

Abandoning hope, I laid down the quill and spun in the chair. Stone save me, but he did hew a pathetic ore. All that coppery hair was mashed to one side as if a mouse formed a nest. Darkness circled his usually sunny eyes, and his skin took on a more sallow pallor than usual. It was so yellow, I tried holding up a daisy as comparison.

His pale lip quivered, and he delicately folded a fist to his mouth to cough into it. No doubt there was enough phlegm for days scattered around 'borrowed' hankies. He was pathetic in this state but I couldn't turn away either.

Rising to my feet, I watched his eyes brighten as I sidled up to his sick bed. The coverlets fell, revealing his soft blue pajamas unbuttoned nearly to his stomach. "There are a few diseases we can suffer from, smoky lung being the worst of them, but..." I dipped my fingers into the salve left at the side of his bed. "Your common ailments never seem to strike at us."

As I crested my salved palm over his chest, Alistair pulled in a deep breath. It was doubtful the medicine worked that quickly, but he seemed to perk up immeasurably. Coasting his weak hand behind mine, he caressed me as I kneaded the salve into his skin. The muscles tightened at my touch, trying to remind me of the build of the body below. As if I could ever forget, as if I'd ever cease aching for him.

Dipping lower down his mountainous terrain, the salve ran out as Alistair's chest hair petered away. My rummaging ceased, but he bundled his fingers with them and he butted his burning forehead to my neck. "Good," he said, bringing a smile to my lips. I wrapped a hand around his mussed hair, trying to offer what succor I could.

With a shock, Alistair's hand slid off mine and grabbed me by the waist. The damn fool yanked me into his sick bed, both his arms ensnaring me tighter in his grip. His lips remained pressed to my throat as I wound up nearly sitting on the pillows.

"Because you're gonna have to take care of me forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and..."

Groaning from the bottom of my lungs, I folded in beside the fool, my salve-coated hand smearing the last of the goop over his stomach. As Alistair tucked me in beside him, clearly his plan all along, I whispered, "Next illness, Oghren is nursing you back to health."