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Original December 2007; last modified March 15, 2009.  Please see the endnote for disclaimers, credits and all that good stuff.

Get Well Soon
a Highlander fanfiction
PG
by Amy R.



Soft footsteps hesitated outside the bedroom door.  Tessa pulled the comforter over her head and pretended to be asleep.  If anything is less tolerable than immortal vigor when you can't breathe through your nose and you're fantasizing about popping your ears with a fettling knife, it's youthful vitality.  She hoped that cursing at Richie in French when he tried to bring her a bowl of canned chicken-noodle soup had been a nightmare.

If she were going to curse, after all, she would be sure to do so in a language her target understood.

The only sound was fat raindrops plopping on the roof above.

Then a gunky, gasping cough gave her away.  As Tessa reached for the tissues on her nightstand, Richie brushed his knuckles against the door and peeked in.

"Tess?"

"I'm awake," she admitted, her voice muffled by congestion backed up to her eyeballs.  She blew her nose, dropped the tissue, and raked unwashed blonde snarls out of her eyes.  She blinked at Richie.  "What time is it?"

"After five.  I closed the shop."  The teenager edged into the room.  "I brought you some more orange juice.  I guess we'd, uh, better not try soup again until Mac gets back."

Tessa rolled her eyes at herself.  Not a nightmare, then.  "Did he call?"

"Yeah!  Yeah, twice.  The auction went fine.  He'll be home in a few hours.  He said not to wake you."  Richie placed the glass of juice next to her tissues.  "Pain killers, decongestants, Kleenex, water, juice, a book with a title I can't read," he counted off the items under her lamp.  "Anything else I can get you?  Another blanket?  A comic book?"

"Comic book?" Tessa's laugh flirted with becoming a cough.

"Sure."  Richie grinned.  "On cartoons, the kid who pretends to be sick to get out of school always sits in bed reading comic books with a thermometer in his mouth.  Thermometer!"  He snapped his fingers.  "You don't have a fever, do you?  I can get--"

"No.  Thanks."

"Can I turn on some music for you, maybe?  That seventies stuff Mac keeps moving to the bottom of the stack?"

"Oh, is that what's been happening to it?"  Tessa sighed, pushed her pillow back and sat up.  Her 'I'm sick; don't even think about it' flannel nightgown was too hot, but baking a virus out was her favored line of attack on illness.  She reached for the orange juice, and Richie put it in her hand before she got close.

"Thanks."  Tessa eyed him warily.  She was going to have a word with Duncan about telling Richie to take care of her.  She'd bet a month of doing the dishes that he had.  Two months.

While she sipped, Richie filled her in on business.  Two customers had picked up previously paid-for antiques, and he'd taken a delivery of materials for her next sculpture.  The splattering rain had kept casual drop-ins down.  "Oh, and there was this one guy, Prescott something, something Prescott.  Wait, I got his card--"

"Orrie Prescott?"

"Right!  That's the guy!"

"Damn."  Tessa set down the glass and buried her face in her hands.  Maybe she did have a fever.  "He's putting together a show, and said he might come by.  How could I forget?"

"You're sick; you're allowed.  And he said he'd call."  Richie propped the business card by her lamp and crossed his arms.  "Are you sure there isn't anything you want?

What she wanted, more than anything short of getting well -- and even that ran close -- was a cigarette.  But she wasn't going to tell Richie that.  She'd given them up to set him a good example shortly after he moved in with them.  And breathing was enough of a challenge at the moment, she reminded herself.  "Duncan told you to look after me, didn't he?"

"Maybe.  Not that you can't look after yourself!  And not that I wouldn't've, anyway."  Richie plunged his hands into his jeans pockets.  "I'm not doing a very good job, am I?"

"You're doing almost too good a job."  Bemused, Tessa patted the bed to show he should sit while she waited for her brain to turn over, sluggish in her stuffy head.  "I'll be sick again, I'm afraid.  You don't have to do everything at once.  Or is this an investment for when you get this cold yourself in a day or two?"

Richie looked puzzled for a moment.  Then a sheepish smile flashed before settling down as a cocky, lopsided grin.  He sat on the bed.

Tessa suddenly wondered whether anyone had ever really taken care of Richie, in his succession of foster homes and shelters.  When he'd been sick, had no one ever made him soup or brought him juice or offered him an extra blanket?  And of course Richie had already been on his own more in his short life than she had in all of hers; at his age, she was just beginning to plan her move from her parents' home to a flat with friends, from where she eventually moved in with Duncan.

She leaned forward and patted Richie's hand.  "I promise we'll take care of you when you get sick."  And that was the end of the energy earned by her last nap.  She sank sideways on top of the comforter and closed her eyes.

"Tessa?"  Richie sounded alarmed.

"When Duncan gets home," she said very slowly, "tell him to put my albums back.  But don't tell him about your soup."

She fell asleep to the sound of raindrops and retreating sneakers.

      

-End-

     

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