Swan Queen Week Summer 2016
Day 4 - Illness
Regina Mills did not get sick. Ever. It was just unheard of. So when she woke up one morning with a delicate cough and a case of the sniffles, Emma and Henry acted as if it were the end of the world itself. She actually had to stop her wife from calling Gold in a panic, snatching the phone from the blonde while Emma had been in the middle of yelling something about 'magical illnesses' at the imp.
"It's just a cold, Emma," she'd snapped, irritated. "Henry gets them all the time. I'll live."
"But you never get sick," Henry insisted, his Ma bobbing her head fiercely in agreement. "What if it's some sort of magical sickness?"
"I'll make any deal with Gold if I have to," Emma said seriously. Regina barely resisted the urge to smack her. (How did she end up married to an absolute idiot? A cute idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.)
"No one's making any deals. I'm fine. You," she pointed a finger at her son. "Get ready for school. You," and she actually jabbed her finger into Emma's chest, "have a shift in half an hour. And I'm going to work."
Henry scampered away at the first sight of his mother's glare, but Emma was less easily scared off, trailing after Regina like a puppy.
"You're sick, Gina. You need to rest! Call your secretary, take the day off."
"Don't Gina me," the brunette growled, nostrils flaring at the much-hated nickname. "And absolutely not! This hardly constitutes a day off. I'm fine." She coughed into her elbow a moment before throwing on her suit jacket and grabbing her purse.
"Re-gi-naaa," the blonde complained, following her to the door.
"I'm going to work. I suggest you do the same, Sheriff."
Suffice to say, six hours later, Emma was getting a hushed call from town hall while she was on patrol after her lunch break.
"Sheriff?" a whispered voice asked.
"Andy?" Emma questioned. "What's wrong?" Andrea - or Andy, as the blonde liked to call her - was Regina's current secretary after the last one retired. She was young and vibrant, with a strong, playful personality and a no-nonsense temperament when it came to her boss. The mayor often came home complaining about the younger woman's sass and 'unprofessional insolence', but Emma knew she secretly liked having her around. Very few people let Regina get away with whatever she liked.
"Your wife is going to work herself into an early grave, that's what's wrong," Andy muttered, keeping her voice low as to avoid detection from aforementioned wife. "She ducked into the bathroom a while ago to puke, and now she's got the air-con going on full blast, whining and bitching about how hot it is in here. It's fall, Sheriff. I'm fuckin' freezing."
Emma couldn't help it; she laughed. Andy had no filter and she loved it. "Hang tight, I'll come get her. Can I get you anything from Granny's on the way?"
"A hot cocoa would be nice. And ask Granny for her 'special' soup. It'll do wonders for Madame Crankypants. I doubt she'll be able to stomach solid food right now."
"Gotcha. See you soon."
Emma showed up twenty minutes later, handing off the hot cocoa to Andy with a wink before slipping into the mayor's office. The secretary was right; cold air was blasting through the room and turning it into a miniature ice box. Regina had her head ducked over a stack of paperwork, the little garbage bin by her desk overflowing with wads of used tissues. Despite the room's temperature, she looked sweaty and flushed.
"What is it, Andrea?" the brunette questioned without looking up, her voice scratchy.
Emma pitched her voice higher to match Andy's. "Your sexy wife is here to see you, ma'am."
Regina's head shot up, gaze murderous. At the sight of her actual wife standing in the doorframe, hands on her hips and a crooked grin on her face, she scowled. "What are you doing here, Emma?"
"Here to take you home, Madame Crankypants. You're sick and you should be resting, not puking in a bathroom at work."
Regina looked past her wife to where Andy's head had peered around the doorframe, innocently sipping a takeout cup of cocoa. "Traitor!"
Her secretary beamed and popped back out of sight as Emma padded around the desk and grabbed the jacket and purse hanging from the back of Regina's chair.
"Come on, up you get."
"But-"
"Don't make me handcuff you and toss you into the back of the cruiser, because I will."
Regina glared up at her, the kind of glare that scared off fully grown men and gave young children nightmares, but then she gave a kittenish sneeze and the effect was lost. "Fine."
When they got home, Regina went straight for the thermostat, already shedding her suit jacket and then her blouse. Emma hesitated in the doorway, raising a brow at her.
"Why, Madame Mayor, what are your intentions?"
"I'm hot," Regina complained, agitated.
"Yeah you are."
"Emma."
Emma laughed and took the soup to the kitchen, knowing her wife refused to eat out of takeout containers. Ladling the soup into a bowl and grabbing a spoon, she returned. Regina was nowhere in sight and there was a trail of abandoned clothing making its way up the staircase. Apparently her wife turned into a slob when she was sick. Huh.
"Babe?" she called, padding upstairs and down the hall. There was a disgruntled sound from their bedroom ('Babe' was another pet-name that the brunette loathed with a passion.) Emma entered and found her wife sprawled face-down on the bed, limbs akimbo, wearing nothing but her bra and panties and her hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail. Her flushed skin was rapidly cooling in the brisk, air conditioned room, and her face was buried in Emma's pillow.
"Guess I'm washing the pillow covers after this is over," she joked, sitting on the edge of the bed as Regina turned her head just enough to glare at her with one eye. "Sit up. I bought soup from Granny's, it'll make you feel better. I'll get you a glass of water and a Tylenol after."
"I don't want soup."
"You need something in your stomach."
"I'm not hungry."
"It's for your own good. Come on, up."
Regina grunted, rolled over, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. Emma handed over the bowl and the brunette scrunched her face adorably.
"It's hot. I'm already hot. I don't want something hot."
It was like taking care of a toddler. Emma resisted the urge to snicker, instead brushing damp strands of hair from Regina's forehead and tucking it behind her ear. "If you finish it, I'll get you a nice tall glass of cold water, okay?"
And - was Regina actually pouting? Yup, she was pouting.
So fucking cute, Emma thought, though she kept that to herself because she was pretty sure her wife would murder her if she said it aloud.
"Fine," Regina finally huffed, conceding to the soup. She hated the fact that it warmed her up from the inside - she was already too damned warm and sweaty - but it did taste good, and it was surprisingly spicy, just the way she liked it. "Is there cayenne pepper in this?"
"Dunno." Emma shrugged. "It's Granny's special soup, Andy said it would be good for you."
"I should ask Granny for the recipe," the brunette muttered to herself, turning her head to cough and sniffle noisily, her nose running even more thanks to the spiciness. Emma moved a box of tissue closer to her before scampering back downstairs for a bottle of water from the fridge and a Tylenol. By the time she returned, Regina had finished her soup and was laid prone on the bed again, eyes closed.
"Regina?" she whispered, wondering if she'd fallen asleep. Regina snuffled and cracked open an eye.
"I don't think I have a simple cold."
"Me neither, babe." Emma chuckled, returning to her side and handing her the pill and the water. "Swallow that, and then we'll see about lowering your temperature a bit more. You've got a heck of a fever going on."
She pressed the back of her hand to Regina's forehead to prove her point and grimaced at the heat against her skin.
"No wonder Henry used to act like he was dying," Regina bemoaned, taking the pill with a big gulp of water and then slumping back against Emma's pillow with a little whine. "This is terrible."
"I know, I know," Emma soothed, smiling in amusement despite herself. She felt awful that her wife was suffering, of course, but for all the times that Regina had rolled her eyes at Emma whenever the blonde complained about being sick, well… this was just too funny.
She managed to convince Regina to slide under a thin blanket, bringing over a basin of cool water and setting a damp cloth on the brunette's forehead.
"Any other symptoms I should know about?" she questioned.
"Mm. Kinda fuzzy." Regina waved a hand vaguely at her own head. "Hot. Cold. Don't wanna move. TV?"
Emma chuckled. "Okay, baby. Hang on."
She ended up carrying the TV from the family room up into their bedroom, hooking it up in front of the bed and popping in a Friends DVD (Regina owned the entire series box set.) An hour later and the brunette was out like a light, snoring and snuffling in her sleep. Emma turned down the volume but left the show playing, a soft hum of sound in the background while she took a quick shower and then sat quietly next to her wife, re-watching her favourite episodes.
"Hey Ma," Henry's voice whispered from the doorway, poking his head in. She hadn't realized how much time had passed and blinked over at him.
"Oh. Hey, Hen. How was school?"
"Fine. How's Mom?"
"Worse than you when you've got a fever," Emma chuckled, fondly stroking Regina's calf over the sheets.
"No kidding." Henry stepped inside with an armful of clothes, having collected his mother's discarded clothing from the staircase and hallway. "I'll put these in the laundry basket. They're all sweaty."
"Thanks. I'll get started on dinner in a bit."
He glanced at the relocated television with a scrunch of his face. "No Playstation for me today, I guess?"
"I'm sure your mom wouldn't mind if you hooked it up in here to play, so long as you keep the volume down. You know you always make her feel better."
Henry grinned bashfully at her and ducked out again, presumably to go get his homework done, so Emma headed down into the kitchen to start on dinner. Spicy foods were apparently good for helping someone "sweat it out" so she ended up making spicy beef enchiladas, digging out the tub of sour cream from the fridge, along with heating up the leftover pozole from the other night in case Regina couldn't handle solid food yet.
"Dinner, kid," she said when she stuck her head into Henry's room, faltering when he wasn't there. She checked the master bedroom and found him cross-legged on the bed next to his now-awake brunette mother with a schoolbook in hand. "Making the sick woman do your homework? That's just mean."
"Are you any good at calculus?" He arched a brow at her in a most Regina-like fashion and his mother followed suit, both pinning Emma with judgemental looks that had her rolling her eyes.
"Point taken. Go eat before it gets cold."
He pat his mom's knee affectionately before scampering away. Emma sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed Regina's foot where it lay under the blanket, gently kneading her thumbs into her soles. "How're you feeling?"
"Terrible," Regina huffed, though she relaxed under the blonde's ministrations, sighing in relief and then prodding Emma's thigh with her other foot to get her to switch.
"I made dinner. Think you can stomach beef enchiladas? I also heated up the pozole if you'd rather have more soup."
"Mm. Soup." Regina chewed on her lower lip. "And maybe one enchilada."
"As you wish, your majesty," Emma purred, bouncing off and returning shortly with both their dinners on a tray, along with a glass of iced water. Henry bounced after her with a plate full of enchiladas and a can of soda, sprawling himself belly-down over Regina's legs and snatching the remote to turn the volume back up on another episode of Friends.
Emma settled down next to her wife with the tray between them and dug in, absolutely beaming.
"You look far too happy taking care of me while I'm sick, dear," Regina said dryly, though she smiled and wiggled her toes under Henry, pretending not to notice when he squinted accusingly at her.
The blonde shrugged a shoulder, demolishing half an enchilada in one bite. "You always take care of Henry and I when we're sick. It's kinda nice to return the favor. Besides," she leaned over to bump their shoulders together and tilt her head cutely, smiling and fluttering her eyelashes up at Regina, speaking in a sing-song voice, "I love you."
Henry grinned, stuffing another roll into his mouth. Regina scoffed and blushed, biting into an enchilada.
"Idiot."
"Yours."