A/N: A little one-shot about Penryn getting sick while travelling with Raffe. Set after the events of the second book.
Rated T because of mild swearing. Beware of Raffryn fluff!

Enjoy.

Fever

I remember how a common cold went in the World Before.
You got a little scratch in the back of your throat, sometimes more than a little, or a headache, or even a full blown fever, but then you would just take the handy World Before meds, lay in bed and watch Netflix for hours. You had an excuse not to go to school or do anything, really. Sometimes a common cold could get truly uncomfortable, but it was always still just that. Common.

In the World After you don't have handy meds and you sure as hell don't have time to lay in bed. You don't even have dry socks anymore, because the water is sitting in your boots since you had to walk through that little brook two hours ago.

I doubt you'd get much sympathy from anyone right now, if your major problem is just a cold, but being in the company of a practically all-immune angel surely is worse.

"Could you speed it up, Penryn? We've been walking for hours and we aren't anywhere near the end of this forest."

I glower at the back of Raffe's head, who keeps stomping through the woods as if he doesn't feel my eyes shooting daggers at him. Maybe he doesn't.

"My head hurts," I complain, not caring that I sound like a whiny kid. My head really does hurt and I'm sweating under my thick Parker, even though my breath clouds in the cool air.

"Stop complaining. How old are you?"

"You're the one complaining."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

Raffe shoots me an incredulous look over the shoulder. "Seriously, how old are you?"

I know I'm being more cranky than usual, but the pounding in my head is really getting at me and Raffe's usual arrogance isn't helping. It's bad enough that I can't turn my head quickly without getting dizzy. How am I supposed to look out for potential danger like this? Let alone fight.

We walk in silence for some time, the smacking of our boots on the mud sounding abnormally loud.I feel like the forest is unnaturally quiet. Like no living thing is left in here to make any noises.
It's creeping me out.
I watch Raffe's back, but by the way that his back and shoulder muscles are relaxed, I can tell that he doesn't seem to share my concerns. And he has excellent instincts. I relax slightly.

I'm sweating but somehow freezing at the same time. That means that I'm probably getting a fever.

After a quick internal seesaw, I decide to speak up. "How long exactly are we planning to walking like this for today?"

Raffe doesn't look back at me as he answers. "Until it gets dark. I want to get to the camp as quickly as possible, so we can get your sister and then be on our way."

Paige took off with the Resistance camp a couple of days ago, while Raffe and I remained at Beliel's side to question him. But the bastard didn't wake up in six whole days and we were running out of food.
We had no choice but to leave him in the small cottage we had stayed in during those days. We have his wings of course – Raffe's wings – but no way to get them back on and no new information whatsoever.

Naturally, Raffe's mood hasn't exactly been the best since then.

"Seriously, Raffe, I think I have to stop. I'm not feeling too good."

My voice sounds raw and hoarse and maybe that's what makes him finally turn around to me.
When he does, he stops and closes his mouth – that he had no doubt opened to say something snarky – looking me over silently.

"You look horrible, Penryn. Like you're color-drained."

"Gee, thanks. I'll remember to crank my saturation back up when we're there. I think I might be having a cold. Nothing a few hours of sleep couldn't fix."

Raffe narrow's his eyes at me and puts his hand to my forehead. His palm feels cool against my skin, which is unusual, since he's normally such a heat radiator.

"Penryn, you're burning up." His voice sounds almost accusatory, which really isn't fair in my eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"I'll live. I just need to lay down for a while."

Raffe regards me through dark blue eyes then nods and turns away from me.

"Alright, let's go find some shelter."

We stumble across a deserted cabin about half an hour later and I practically slouch in relief when Raffe digs out three cans of tomato soup and a package of crackers from the kitchen.

He checks the remaining rooms, while I curl up on the leather couch in the living room, putting a hand over my eyes to block out the light that is hurting my eyes.

I try to fall asleep, but the sounds of Raffe bustling around keep piercing my head like knifes. I know he only does what needs to be done, covering up all the windows and door slits, lighting candles, heating up a can of tomato soup, but I wish he could do it silently.

Finally, he stops in front of the couch with two cups of steaming tomato soup and prods at my legs.

"Move over. There's room enough for two on this couch, if you'd be a bit more considerate. Seriously, how can such a short person take up so much space?"

I open my eyes and sit up gruffly, ignoring the wave of nausea that hits me at the movement. I scoop over to one side of the couch and Raffe sits down at the opposite end. He holds out my cup of soup to me and I take it, gingerly nipping on it. It tastes incredible compared to the animal food we've been eating the last days.

Raffe watches me, which makes me feel slightly awkward and uneasy. How does he still look perfectly clean and fresh after a six hour walk through the deepest woods?

"How are you feeling?"

I shrug. My joints ache. I wonder if that's because of the cold or just because it's been some time that I didn't spend the night sleeping on the ground.

"I told you, I just need to lay low for a couple of hours."

Raffe gloomily gobbles up his soup. Only Raffe would manage to gobble up something gloomily, I think.
I'm feeling so nauseous that I'm not even hungry anymore, but I know that I need the calories to recover, so I force the soup down, my throat feeling scratchy and swollen.

When I am done, Raffe wordlessly takes my cup from me and heads to the kitchen. Again, I wonder if he might be upset. Which would be silly. It's not my fault I'm sick.
He comes back with two thick blanket, which he both drapes over me. One of them must have belonged to a child, because it's featuring a beaming Disney princess and her, for an animated character admittedly attractive, prince. I recognize it as Rapunzel and I smile as I snuggle into the blanket. I liked that movie.
Raffe leans back and gives me a leveled look.

"What?"

It's his turn to shrug. "Nothing. Just wondering how your race managed to survive for so long. You're so easily broken. A simple flu or a cold can kill you, given the right circumstances. Scratching your finger on a rusty nail could."

Somehow, he manages to not make it sound condemning. Just genuinely curious.

"We're not that easily broken. I'm not. I killed one of your kind, remember?"

The words slip out and for a second, the silly fear of having said the wrong thing, something totally inappropriate, crosses my mind. It's not, of course. His race killed thousands of my people and he talks about it like it's no big deal. But still. A human, a daughter of man no less, killing an angel? That must've been a first.

"That wasn't really you, it was my sword," Raffe argues, but he doesn't sound like that makes it any less impressive.

"I wielded her."

"Yes."

Shaded blue eyes bore into mine for a few moments, so intense that I feel like squirming.

"You're still shivering," Raffe observes, worry lacing his tone. A warm feeling unravels in the pit of my stomach at the sound of his concern. "That means the fever's still getting up. What do you humans do in situations like this?"

I grin and raise an eyebrow at him.

"You don't know how to fight down a fever?"

"How the hell should I know? Angels don't get sick. Not like this at least."

"Aren't you the archangel of healing?"

Raffe's face darkens so much it's almost comical.

"If I ever find out who put that in the book, I swear, heads will roll."

"Hey, being the archangel of healing isn't so bad. Women love doctors."

"I'm not a doctor. I'm a warrior. I'm god's wrath, for heaven's sake! Just because I healed Abraham once, doesn't mean I'm the archangel of healing! And I certainly don't have any magical healing powers, or I would have used them when you-" He breaks off.

I don't know at which point the conversation turned the wrong way, but I decide to change the topic and quickly.

"Well, normally, I'd just take some meds against the fever and sleep it out, but a classical housewife trick is calf packing. You know, with wet towels or something."

Raffe seems to consider this for a moment. "Okay," he then says, and gets up.

I stretch out on the couch again, while Raffe is preparing a bowl of cold water and brings towels from the bathroom. He drops those and the bowl on the coffee table next to the couch. Then he lifts my legs to sit on the couch and puts my feet into his lap.
If my cheeks weren't already red from the fever, I'd be blushing.

I'm wearing pants that are two sizes too big for me, so it's not difficult for Raffe to push them up over my knees to expose my calves.
It's not like lower legs are the most intimate thing ever, and really, he's seen me in a dress that reveals much more leg than this, but for some reason, my heart is still pounding ridiculously hard against my chest. My face feels like it's burning up. I mean, even more. For the first, and probably only time, I'm so thankful that Madeline and her team took care of all my leg hairs by brutally ripping them out with wax. I know it's petty thinking, given that this is the apocalypse, but I'd probably die of shame now if I had hairy legs.

Raffe's warm hands linger on my calves for a few seconds, slowly brushing the tiniest inch over my skin, causing goosebumps to erupt under his fingers.
He looks up at me. "So I just wrap wet towels around your calves?"

I nod. "And cover them with dry ones. That draws the heat out of the body and helps lower the temperature."

"Alright."

He lets go off my legs to dip a towel into the bowl of water. He gently wraps it around my calf and wraps a dry one around the first towel, just like I told him.
Then he repeats on the other side.
When he's finished, he sits back and looks at me expectantly.

"Umm… thanks," I say awkwardly.

"Is it helping?"

I laugh, my throat hurting from the effort. "It doesn't work that fast. Patience grasshopper."

He quirks an eyebrow at me. "Grasshopper? Is that some weird monkey-language slang?"

"If you guys call us monkeys, I can call you a grasshopper. That's just fair, so there's nothing you can do about it."

"Bummer." His voice is dripping with sarcasm.

I roll my eyes and stretch out more on the couch, only now realizing that my feet are still in his lap. Raffe seems to come to the same realization, because he looks down at them for a second, sprawled across his lap.I'm trying to figure out what would be more awkward, taking them off his lap – meaning I'd have to sit up again – or leaving them there.

Raffe makes the decision from me by draping the rest of the blanket over my legs, like covering the sight of my feet in his lap.

I sigh and close my eyes, hoping to get some sleep, but his nearness makes it impossible to relax for me. When I open my eyes again, Raffe's still looking at me. "Are you in pain?"

I shake my head, because there's really nothing we can do about the headache, and it isn't that bad now that I've laid down.

"Hey, Raffe?"

"Hmm?"

"Do angels never get sick?"

I try to imagine Raffe lying in bed with a cooling pack on his forehead and a thermometer in his mouth, but the image won't substantiate. I guess it's a too mundane thing to imagine an archangel do, even though if this particular one is as close to me as my own mother. No, scratch that, closer.

Raffe hesitates for a second. "Not in your way."

"Cryptic. As usual."

"What?"

"You know what." My voice rasps as I raise it. "You guys know all about us, but you won't even let the tiniest information through, not even to me. What do you think, that I'm still spying on you?"

Raffe frowns at me. "No, I don't. In fact, your loyalty to me is part reason why I don't want to tell you anything about me."

I stare at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

He sighs like a tired parent having to explain the basics of life to a child. "If I give you information about my kind, you'll be inevitably caught in a moral conflict. You want the humans to win against us, and I understand that, and any information you might have about our race could help them, but you also don't want to give something away that could harm me."

The way he says that makes it sound like he has no doubt about my feelings for him. He's right of course, but hearing this from the same person that declared that he 'doesn't even like me' – even if I have reasons enough to know that that isn't true – is slightly embarrassing at best.

"So," he continues, ignoring the glare I'm giving him, "I'm not giving you anything and you don't have to decide where your loyalties lie."

I'm silent. He's right and we both know it, but something about his declaration creates a stinging feeling in my eyes.

Maybe it's because the fact that he can't even share the most mundane information with me is a reminder of how different he is from me, that this – whatever this is – can never actually be. That we can never be fully open with each other, regardless of how much we trust the other. Whatever this is between him and me, it's temporary.

And it also throws up another question.

"Where do your loyalties lie?" My voice is merely above a whisper, and I don't know if it's from my damaged voice, or my fear of his answer.

Raffe looks down at his feet in his lap - his hands atop of my feet in his lap to be more precise - and stays silent for some time.
When he speaks up, his voice is rough, as if he, too, has a raw throat. "I'm not human, Penryn. I don't belong here. And I never will. I don't want my kind to destroy humankind, mainly because I don't want anything to happen to you, but once the coast is cleared, I'll return home with them. I can't stay here."

His demon wings shift on his back, as if reminding me of his otherness, his unearthliness, and suddenly I can't stand being close to him anymore. I pull my feet from his lap, pulling my legs up to my chest so that the calf wrappers puddle around my feet.

Raffe looks up at me and for a moment I see something like hurt in his eyes.

"I think the fevers already gone down," I say. I sound a lot more steady than I feel. "I should hang these up so that they dry overnight."

I grab the towels and stand up so quickly that the world spins around me for a second, nausea washing over me.

"Whoa, easy, Penryn!"

Raffe grabs my upper arm and forces me to sit down again, one hand shifting to my forehead to check my temperature. "You're still burning up. You shouldn't remove these, yet. Let me…"

"No!" My voice sounds almost panicked and I give myself an imaginary smack. Get it together!

"I mean, no, it's fine, really. I can do it myself."

I smile up at him, but it feels like a grimace. "But thanks anyway."

Raffe's frown deepens. "Don't be ridiculous. Behave like a grown-up for once and let me help you."

"Fine."

I lay back down and stretch out my legs. Raffe kneels next to the couch and I close my eyes, trying to get some sleep.
Raffe rewraps the towels silently and I'm concentrating on not feeling his fingers against my skin.
He doesn't say anything when he's done, and I feel awkward just lying there with my eyes closed, not knowing what to say. Maybe if I keep this up long enough, he'll think I've fallen asleep.

"Look at me, Penryn."

Crap.

I open my eyes and turn my head to him, as regally as one can with two towels wrapped around each leg and a Rapunzel blanket pulled up to the chin. His eyes are deep blue and serious. The mischievous spark is missing in them and I want to break this thick, unbearble tension between us so badly. But I know I can't. We need to have this conversation at one point and working around it now would only feel worse.

"There's no other way."

"I know." Do I sound like a stubborn child? I'm not sure. It must be this stupid blanket. I kick it of angrily, Rapunzel's smile seeming a bit wrinkled once the blanket hits on the floor.

Raffe throws it a look but doesn't comment it. I'm not being fair and I know it. If I was stranded in an alien world, cut off from my people, with only an alliance from the enemy race to keep me company, I'd want to go back, too.

"I really know. You want to go back and that's understandable. It's just…" My voice wavers off lamely. I was hoping for him to cut in at this point, but he's listening silently, those navy blue eyes still staring at me intensely.

"It's just that also means I'll have to leave you."

Ouch. Now that he has cut in, I really wish he hadn't. Having it said out loud really hurts.

And then I'm crying, for the first time ever in front of him, hiccupping and sobbing like a baby. It's so pathetic, I want to pull the Rapunzel blanket over my head and hide underneath it forever.

Raffe looks shocked and stricken at my outburst, which makes the whole thing a bit funnier, but also even more embarrassing. Right now I'm selling all the clichés. It's the freaking apocalypse and I'm crying because the hot guy doesn't want to be my boyfriend.

Raffe grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me into his arms, his warmth enclosing me and bringing me more comfort than the Rapunzel blanket ever could.I force myself to calm down, because I refuse to fully become that-irrational-seventeen-year-old-teenage-girl by crying against his shoulder.

"Shh," he soothes, stroking my hair. That seems to be our thing, I think detachedly. Hush, shh, I'm right here. Only that soon he won't be. I almost start crying again.

"It's just, you feel so much like…" I've already made a complete fool out of myself, so why the hell not tell him how I honestly feel for once. "Home."

Raffe's arm snakes around my shoulder and he leans his cheek against my hair.

"I know what you mean," is all he says.

I lean against his shoulder and turn my head towards him, my nose brushing his neck. This close, I can feel his heart thrumming against my chest, fast and strong like a rabbit's. I feel his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. My lips twitch into a tiny smile.

"You should probably go to sleep." His voice is low, but he's so close that I can feel his words vibrating through me.

"Stay with me," I blurt out. I'm not sure whether I meant tonight or something else.

For a moment, his arms tighten around me, and I store that feeling carefully away in my head, a memory meant to comfort me in darker times.
I focus on the feeling of our chests pressed together, our hearts beating erratically – but that in synchronicity – and for a moment I almost manage to pretend that this is more than a momentary illusion of peace. The air is sick with all the unsaid things between us.

Raffe's lips brush against my temple in a sort-of kiss."I'll try."

A/N: Shout-out to all the Tangled fans out there! I just love that movie!
Anyway, I just had to write some Raffryn fluff! I needed it and so did this fandom!

I hope you enjoyed this little one-shot. Thank you for reading!

.K