Jadeee! I had a thought reading the last zombie au story, with r taking a bath in the cold water and she was super chilly maybe she gets a tad sick (maybe just some sniffles or a stuffy nose) and Robin and Steve kind of go overboard to take care of her? (And cuddles with Robin's new cat!!)
thank you for your request angel, hope this is ok. steve zombie au —steve and robin take look after you when you get sick. fem!reader, 2k
There are better places to feel shitty. You're the kind of sick that could get dangerous —hypothermia, maybe pneumonia, you got too cold after a cold wash in the river outside of camp and didn't warm up the right way— and it would be a thousand times easier in a building with central heating. But at least you're not in a tarp anymore.
You, Steve and Robin share a real tent. It zippers closed and doesn't have any mesh, so heat brought inside of it doesn't ebb away immediately, like it had in the poorly constructed tarp tent. You pull your second blanket over your body and try to seem casually tired rather than sickbed exhausted as their footsteps return.
"Hey, killer," Robin says as soon as she sees you, ducking under the tent's opening, a box in her hands. "You're finally awake. Since when do you sleep in?"
"I'm tired from the girl's trip."
"That was nearly a week ago," Robin says.
"And yet you're still reaping the benefits," Steve says to her dryly as he follows her inside of the tent. He gets on his knees and crawls to your side. "Hello," he says, kissing your cheek. "Good morning."
"Hey."
He frowns at you. "Why do you sound like that?"
"What? I just woke up," you say.
Steve clearly doesn't believe you, and he's right not to. Sick of being a burden on him, you've stopped telling him about your aches and pains, your injuries, your worries. He absolutely hates it but no amount of begging has changed your mind. You're not interested in being his weight to carry. Love, sure, but there's no reason he should be so intrinsically responsible for your wellbeing. Or at least that's how you feel right now.
"Sarah's given Robin a present," he says, his eyes narrowed at you. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. What did you get, Robs?"
Robin slides the lid off of the box eagerly to show you the contents. "It's a baby grow, only Sarah's cut off the arms and legs and sewed the hems. I'm going to put it on Stinkyboy."
"I thought his name was Shark?" you ask.
"Or something as stupendously stupid," Steve mutters. He smells like woodsmoke. "Are you sure you're okay? You don't look okay." He rubs under your eye with his thumb. "You're all puffy."
"I don't think you can speak to her like that, Steve," Robin says.
Her deadpan delivery makes you laugh, and it's a perfect segue to new conversation and away from your unokay-ness. "Are you and Sarah, like… you know?"
Robin looks at you for a second. "Like what?"
"Romantic?" you whisper.
"Oh, no. She's my new Steve, I'm replacing him."
"Can't you replace him with me?" you ask.
Steve puts his hand on your forehead. "You're warm. You're warm, shithead, are you sick?"
"No?" You frown as his hand moves to the back of your neck. You're not warm there, you're a furnace.
"You're actually sick?" he asks, frowning down at you. "What, were you just not gonna say anything?"
"It's not that bad," you mumble.
Robin and Steve make simultaneous sounds of disbelief. "You really weren't gonna say anything?" Robin asks.
They talk so quickly.
"I don't know for sure if I'm sick, and neither do you guys, don't worry so much." You sit up to get away from Steve's overly cautious hands, black spots behind your eyes and a shooting pain at the back of your head. "Ew," you say, bringing your hand to your eyes, "Maybe I'm sick."
Steve puts his arm behind your shoulders. "Dummy," he says, rubbing your arm.
"What he said." Robin stands up. "I'm gonna go track down some breakfast for little miss secretive. I'll be back. Don't let her die."
"I'll try not to," Steve says.
When Robin's gone, Steve gets nicer. Which isn't to say he's mean when she's around, of course he isn't, but he's polite enough to spare her the full reality of his affection for you, and maybe slightly shy about it. He gathers you into his chest and rubs his cheek against your crown. "You're so warm, honey. I'm not fucking around, you have to tell me when you're not okay."
"You can't do anything about it, Steve, just a flu."
"Where would you have caught the flu?"
"I mean, I must've got it from the cold. It's a cold, that's all it is."
"You sure?" he asks, his hand snaking under your shirt. He takes an unabashed handful of your stomach. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine, Steve."
It isn't without fondness, but it's said to be simple and straight. Steve tends to catastrophize —why wouldn't he? You can't be cut, you have to be bleeding out. You can't trip, you always fall flat on your face. You have the worst luck in the entire world (or, almost, getting bit would plant you firmly in the worst luck category). And Steve's the one who pays for it, every single time.
So you assure him as best as you can and describe your symptoms honestly. "My head hurts, and I feel like I'm on fire. My hands and my legs are really hot, but I don't feel sick. It's not food poisoning, and it probably isn't, like, influenza."
"I guessed that much."
"Oh, did you?" you murmur, turning in his arms to hug him back, and better. Steve gives the best hugs for you, but you know everything that he likes down to the placement of your pinky finger. You do your own skin-searching and slide your hands under his shirt, one palm roving over each bump of his spine to the midway point. His skin is smooth as velvet under your touch here, and noticeably colder. "Stevie," you say, still murmuring as you drag your fingertips down to the base of his back, "I love you. Don't worry, okay? I caught a chill from the river."
"I do worry," he murmurs back, nuzzling your temple with his scratchy cheek.
"I know, baby."
"It's hard to be the one in charge when you speak to me like that," he says.
"Who says you're in charge?"
You snuggle like fools until Robin insists you eat your breakfast outside in the cold, which you abhor but your feverish skin appreciates. Steve sits on one side of you and Robin on the other.
You know Robin likes you, but you think she must really love you, she's so worried. She doesn't say it, but she keeps glancing your way with a pinch between her eyebrows, and she asks you twice if your breakfast, a lukewarm soup she procured from the campfire, is hot enough. You lie each time, 'cos cold soup stopped bothering you a long time ago, and she's a sweetheart for caring.
Steve suggests a group reading, as in, he grabs a book and usually you'd read, but you're sick, and they both tell you it isn't your turn. Steve reads, practised by now, more confident with each page. He even tries to follow the dialogue tags, whispering and sighing when instructed.
You start to nod off. There are things you should all be doing, but none of you move. You can't report for washing duty, you can barely stand, and Steve refuses to go without you. Robin's supposed to take baby Ada for two hours. When Robin doesn't show up, one of the other members of the camp appears and makes her take her anyway.
"You should strike," you say, woozy on Steve's arm. Your fever is getting worse. The cold breeze helps some, but eventually Steve's gonna have to dunk you in the river.
"I should." She hugs the baby on her chest. "I don't even really like babies. Like, I'd die for her, but kids aren't my thing. At least, they weren't."
"She's quiet," Steve says.
"Why don't you hold her, Stevie?" you ask. He loves kids.
"I'm busy with my own baby."
You can't decide if it's funny or romantic. You fall asleep against his side and wake a few times throughout the evening, your face in his lap, his hand protective in your hair or against your ear. He wakes you at dusk, kissing a stripe down your cheek.
"Sorry," he says softly by your ear, "but I can't carry you."
"You would if you loved me," you tease, your eyes sticky and hard-pressed to open.
Steve helps you stand and takes more of your weight than necessary as you walk back to your tent. Robin's already inside sans baby Ada, and she has a surprise for you.
"Tada!" she says. "It's a pillow."
You rub your eyes with your fist. "Aw," you mumble, disoriented, "yis."
Steve laughs like you're the cutest thing on earth, and he helps you sit down. You're horrified that you actually need him to, almost slipping and smashing your head on the packed dirt ground as your leg buckles under your weight. Now that would've made you sick.
One fool on your left and another on the right, you rest your aching head on Robin's miraculous pillow and breathe a sigh of relief.
"Where did you get this?" you ask.
Robin taps the side of her nose. "Not saying."
You huff at being out of the know but are ultimately too tired to pioneer for your right to know —you nod off a minute later, and vaguely recollect the sound of the tent zipper.
Much later, you wake to whispers.
"He has fleas, Robin," Steve says.
A weight lands on your legs. "He doesn't anymore! And fleas don't live on people."
"But they bite. And they have diseases! Stinkyboy can't stay in here."
"Stinkyboy has just as much right to shelter as you do."
"No, he doesn't. Not if he's going to give bubonic plague to the love of my life."
You try to wake up properly. All you manage is a weak sound and a leg twitch. There's a sharp and sudden silence, disrupted only by a thwacking of skin on skin.
"Did you just hit me?" Robin whispers furiously.
"No! You tried to hit me, I was defending myself!"
"You're so done. I'm taking Stinkyboy and Y/N in the divorce."
"Idiot! Shut up, you'll wake her up. She needs to sleep to get better."
"You're the idiot, idiot. Isn't that right, Stinky? Isn't Uncle Steve just the worst?"
After a night of tossing and turning, you finally wake at daybreak. You're confused at first when you can't see Steve, until you realise he's pulled your head into his lap again, stroking the skin before your hairline. It tickles.
"I still feel awful," you say hoarsely.
"I don't think you'll recover after just one day," Steve whispers back. Robin sleeps beside you, a blanket wrapped bundle of cat at her feet.
"You let her let the cat in?" you ask.
"We actually argued about it at length." Steve's fingertips draw a heart over your temple. "She swears that flea ointment stuff worked, but I found a flea on my sock. I'm furious."
"You sound it."
"Don't worry. She has to de-flea everything, we made a contract."
"Well," you say. "It's a big tent."
It most certainly isn't. If Stinkyboy was as rife with fleas as he was when he first came along Steve would've put his foot down and so would’ve you rather than let him stay, but he only has a few stubborn ones hanging around, and Steve feels really sorry for the poor cat. Imagine how lonely he must have been, he'd said, and then coughed, like sympathy was something to be embarrassed of.
You feel very sorry for the cat, but you absolutely don't want fleas. You ask Steve to help you go down to the river so you can change your clothes and wash the ones you'd been wearing. You're still too sick to do a good job, but Steve sits half behind you and helps your aching arms scrub the fabric against the makeshift washer (corrugated metal from a shed roof).
Being sick isn't so bad when you have that much love at your back, metaphorically and physically. You lean all of your weight on him and sigh.
"Love you," you say.
"Love you," he says back. He holds your wet hands in his. "Now let's go and warm you back up, loser. You're just dying to get hypothermia."
"It's in season."
"Funny."
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