Woo, so it's been a couple of days since I've last published something. My bad. I've kind of been distracted by Star Trek lately, and plus I've been dogsitting with my cousin so the ample time I used to have to write has been cut short drastically (no internet + no time alone = no time to write, sadly) but here's a little drabble I've been working on for a few days!

I hope you like it. Thank you to everyone who has favorited/commented/followed me/my stories. It really means a lot! And it's overwhelming :)

This can be considered the fourth installment in my drabble series for Beca/Jesse. Remember I'm always taking prompts in the comment section, through messages, or over at my tumblr (I've recently changed my url to sassfleet, just so you're aware!)

Enjoy!

"Dude," Beca says, empathetic. "You need to sit the hell down." She pushes her boyfriend's shoulders down so that he's sitting down on his bed again.

"I need to go to class," Jesse insists, fumbling with the covers that he refuses to let Beca put on him.

Beca glares. "What you need is to lay the fuck down and sleep."

Jesse shakes his head, and Beca has never wanted to physically harm her boyfriend more than in that moment. He's sick, has been sick for days, actually, and while normally Jesse's this quite literal ray of sunshine with a dash of adorable charm, he's being stubborn. Beca has this policy about never harming the ill, but Jesse's testing her patience. Has been testing her patience. For days.

Needless to say, she's annoyed but that's mainly because she hates taking care of people-it's not that she's selfish or anything, it just-it makes her feel utterly helpless. Beca has no idea what she's doing half of the time, okay (she's pretty sure she almost gave Jesse the wrong medicine, and who does that; Beca-freaking-Mitchell, apparently). Beca barely knows how to take care of herself, trusting another life in her hands is like putting your entire faith in that of a squirrel: she's bound to fuck it up.

So, yeah, maybe she's freaking out a little. But, she tries to hide it from Jesse, of course. He doesn't need to see the kind of disaster she is when he's sick, because then he'll just run himself into the ground even more.

"You're sick," Beca says, her fingers tightening their grip on his shoulders.

"I feel fine," Jesse retorts, and tries to snort but it comes out sounding like a particularly deadly wheeze. His nose is twitching kind of cutely as he says it, too.

That's really the only thing that's cute about Jesse right now.

Everything else is a mess.

He's a mess.

His eyes are puffy and his cheeks are swollen, and there's this purplish-green color that's been gathering under his eyes for the last couple of days. His hair is sticking up in matted tufts on the top of his head, and his nose is this constant current that leaks everywhere (see here: it's legitimately the most disgusting thing Beca has ever experienced in her life, alright). He looks weak and utterly useless and seeing Jesse like this-when she's used to the steadfast, persistently independent boy that captured her heart-it's weird. She doesn't like it.

She wants him to get better so he stops feeling like shit as much as she wants him to get better so she'll stop feeling so damn uncomfortable.

Does that make her a bad girlfriend?

Probably.

"It's been two days," Jesse argues. "I've missed so much. I need to write papers and there have been Trebles practices I've-"

Jesse breaks off into a deathly sounding cough, and yeah, no, if this kid thinks he's getting out of this bed today, he's sadly mistaken.

"No," Beca reassures him, "you don't."

She's been doing his homework the last couple of days, since he's fallen delirious.

It's just, she knows that she's not exactly the most maternal person out there, okay? And she knows that Jesse would've been better off with a girlfriend that would've made him some ridiculous homemade soup or one that would've known what the hell they were doing. But Jesse's stuck with Beca, and the best she's been able to do thus far is (reluctantly) change his sheets when they get too sweaty or when he gets puke on them and participate in an endless movication. Which he doesn't even remember after he's passed out.

The things Beca does for this kid, she swears.

But really, the least she can do, after all he does for her, after all he continues to do for her, is do his damn homework.

Jesse will be undoubtedly pissed off when he finds out that she spent her free time doing his homework instead of her own, but whatever, it's worth it not to see him fall behind in his classes, and now she won't have to hear him whine about it.

It's a win-win.

Probably more like a win-lose. But whatever. Beca's allowed to lie to herself here, okay?

The first time Jesse asked her to get him something, Beca didn't even look up from his computer and said, "Get it yourself, weirdo."

It took many grunts and fifteen to pass for Beca to realize that he couldn't, because he was cocooned in his blankets and his fever was so high that just hours before she was contemplating on sending him to a hospital.

She may or may not be a horrible person.

"Bec."

Beca looks up from where she's typing up another one of his essays. She has no idea what the hell she's doing-Beca's not sure if she ever really does, mainly it's her walking into a situation completely blind and hoping for the best, which you know, the best rarely happens, but, oh well, maybe she's just hopeful it will someday, or maybe she's just reckless-what the hell she's writing, actually.

"What is it, Jes?"

"Don't feel good," Jesse's face is scrunching up in discomfort, and it makes Beca discard her laptop so she can walk over to him. It's weird, taking care of him, and even though she doesn't really enjoy it, it doesn't mean she likes seeing him like this. It sits wrong with her, turning something inside her belly that she doesn't like.

Beca has never been good with words, not even when she was a child. They're either too harsh or too brash, cut too deep or don't cut deep enough, and this time it's no different. She's not sure what to say, is never sure what to say, especially now. She's much too afraid that her words will come across insincere if she tries to vocalize what she's feeling. So, she doesn't try to.

Jesse will understand, she thinks, because Jesse always understands.

When she's close enough, she reaches out of her fingers to spread across Jesse's forehead gently-it's sticky, and hot and it makes that clenching feeling come back in Beca's chest again. The only reason she doesn't pull her hand away is because she can feel Jesse arching his head into the touch.

Before she can talk herself out of it, she climbs into bed with him, cuddling up to his side, fingers running down his back in a move to comfort him.

Jesse grunts. "Bec," He turns his head over to look at her. The moves looks painful and Beca has to resist the urge to slap him because of it.

"Go to sleep."

"You're going to get sick," he murmurs, slightly incoherently.

She smiles against his t-shirt. "Don't care."

Jesse doesn't say anything, but his posture relaxes, finally.

Beca doesn't mean to, but she falls asleep, too.