Disclaimer: I do not own Star Vs The Forces of Evil. It's a pretty good enough show as is, and it doesn't need a fanfic author telling it what to do. ...oh, I made myself sad...
Of Magical Wands and Safety Helmets
Fever
There was a knock on the door. A second later, Star popped her head into the room.
"Marco, you any better?"
She didn't get a reply. Shifting all the way in, Star quietly closed the door behind her. She tiptoed her way to the bed, where a sleeping figure laid completely bundled up in blankets. Star dragged a chair from the table and set it up next to the bed, taking a seat. She scootched a bit closer and leaned forward.
Marco's face was heavily flushed, his brow beaded with sweat and lips slightly dry and cracked. His breathing was heavier than normal, and every once in a while he grimaced as he let out a series of light, pained coughs. Besides that, he was completely dead to the world, his fever having kept him unconscious for most of the day.
Star frowned in concern. She was the only one left in the house besides him. The Diazs had planned on going out that weekend to a botanical garden or some other cool thing, but Marco's cold had quickly shot those plans down. The boy had barely even been able to get out of bed that morning, and he couldn't eat or drink anything.
Mr. Diaz said it was just a cold and that all his son needed to get better was a lot of bed rest and quiet. Star was apt to believe the older man. (She thought he was a doctor? He did have a lot of medical books, though a lot had naked people, inside and outside, in them.) Still didn't mean she had to like it.
After a lot of frenzied debate, she'd managed to convince Marco's parents to still go on their trip. It'd only be the next city over, and she would stay home to watch after Marco. It made her feel all warm inside that they'd immediately trusted her to take care of the boy despite her past... fiascos (yes, the fire type), and there was no way she'd betray that trust.
Still, there wasn't much she could do. Marco couldn't eat or drink anything, not even juice, without a lot of pain, and he'd been sleeping so long he had to be starving whenever he woke up. Star didn't like it when she couldn't do anything to help her best friend, especially when it involved something hurting him that she couldn't just beat into submission.
Not like she even knew where to start, anyway. Back on Mewni, if someone was sick you threw them into a pile of leeches to suck the evil spirits out that made them ill. But she didn't think the Diazs would appreciate her using Mewni folk remedies on their son, so that was out.
Star placed one hand on Marco's head and the other on hers. Her frown grew deeper. She supposed his head felt hotter than normal, but it was still pretty tame compared to average Mewnian body temperature.
Removing her hands, Star fished her and Marco's phone out of her pocket. Never hurt to do a little more checking, right? Mr. Diaz could've been wrong, right?
She spent a few minutes searching the web before finding a website that looked promising. It claimed it could diagnose any illness and its cure - just plug in the symptoms and go. She scrolled down the list, checking off boxes as she went.
Fever? Check. Labored breathing? Check Lack of appetite, sweating, coughing, always tired? Check, check, check, and check.
...maybe a few more would be good, too.
Star finished off the list and hit the 'diagnose' button. Barely a second later, the result popped up.
...what the heck was malaria? She scrolled down to check out the symptoms and end results.
...oh her Mewni!
It was a long, slow process, but Marco eventually woke back up the land of the living. Or he thought he did, but the way it was completely pitch black, stickily warm, and how he was buried underneath who knew how much stuff made him wonder.
Weakly pushing, he managed to shift enough of the junk on top of him to pull himself up to a more sitting position. What he saw made him take pause.
The couple blankets he'd had when he'd fallen asleep had someone multiplied tenfold, nearly reaching the ceiling. Several heated, moist towels had fallen from his head onto his chest, making him feel even hotter than before. There was a humidifier and a dehumidifier belching out and sucking in moisture from the room. And he didn't even want to think about what squelchy, lukewarm thing was curled around his feet.
Marco glanced at the side of his bed through bleary eyes and immediately found the reason.
Star was crouched over, arms acting as makeshift pillows. She looked tired, frizzed out, and altogether belabored. He noticed how one hand was tightly gripping the blanket near where his was. A soft smile tugged at his mouth.
Putting aside the towels but keeping the blankets, Marco slid back under the covers. He tapped at her hand through the blankets.
"Night, Star."
A happy sound and boisterous sneeze were his reply.
A/N: Yes, it is my headcanon that Mr. Diaz does have some sort of medical training or education. The 'medical pictures' gags used in 'Storm the Castle' fueled it. Also, no, they aren't 'dirty' books disguised as medical; lots of medical texts have drawings, photorealistic, and photos of naked people to show differences. Also, the leech joke was not a joke - they seriously believed in that before people found out what the heck germs were.
