#BUT ALL OF OUR HURT/COMFORT SICK FLUFF CHATS SEIZED ME AND WOULDN'T LET ME GO UNTIL I WROTE IT

[llondonfog]

i hope you're doing well, my dear lettie <3 for the six sentence prompt ask game, might i request silver getting sick at school and lilia dutifully cuts class to take care of him? 🥹

"Oh— oh, watch yourself, love—"

The hand on his arm is sure and steady, and it is the only thing that keeps Silver's knees from buckling away beneath him as if he were wobbling around with transfigured sea legs, jellified and weak.

It's a familiar touch, one that he would know even in the deepest of slumbers. He doesn't need to lift his heavy eyes to know who has seemingly materialized out of thin air to support him, and because Silver is, still among all things, a child, it takes no effort at all to slump his head to the side and rest his forehead against the waiting curve of his father's shoulder.

" . . . now, what am I to do with you?"

Silver was sick.

And not the average, runny-nose and scratchy cough kind, but the roiling shower steam nausea, feverish kind— the kind that felt as if little craft fairies with lead hammers had taken up residence in the hollows of his bones and the aching sinus pockets behind his eyes, and were banging incessantly on his raw nerves with vicious, unmitigated glee.

Morning classes had been an absolute misery of sensory havoc, his mind distracted and his glazed eyes slipping shut with even more forceful vengeance than usual. His pen had scrawled aimless lines across the blank notebook pages, and even Trein had spared him a pitying glance, not that Silver had realized it, for his flushed cheeks and obvious disorientation.

(Neither had he noticed Kalim's repeated concerned glances, nor the way that his friend kept tapping on his cell phone with a worried twist to his perpetually upturned lips.)

It was little wonder then that as the students streamed in eager droves out of their lecture halls for lunch, Silver chose instead to attempt a shuffling escape towards the Mirror Hall, towards Diasomnia and the promise of a timed catnap in the gloomy embrace of its dark, cool corridors before the rigor of his afternoon classes could begin.

He'd been rather foolish to believe he'd make it there unaided with how the stone floor beneath him started to wink closer, the sinking realization tugging at his stomach that he was beginning to plummet down to meet it without resistance, until a presence unannounced had swooped in by his side.

So focused now on attempting to wrangle his breakfast into submission before it inevitably made a second, less pleasant appearance upon his father's uniform, he hardly notices until too late that the ground has disappeared under his very feet with a swiftness that spares him the nauseous threat. Bleary eyes blink past the invisible weight pressing insistent fingers against them, and Silver manages to find a glimmer of incredulity among all of his slippery, pounding thoughts as he stares up at the fae cradling him in his arms as if he were all of five again— and smiling as pleased as punch, in the middle of the grand hallway no less.

". . . Father— !" he doesn't even think to correct himself as he croaks out the beloved title, utterly at a loss as to what the fae could possibly be thinking. "Father, please, put me down! Someone might see—"

"And see what?" His father's eyes sparkle down at him with mischievous delight, but it is not enough to mask the darker currents of worry that linger there, stealing the rest of the sputtering arguments from Silver's mind. "That I'm caring for my adorable junior classmate as a good vice housewarden should?"

His mouth opens and closes more uselessly than a fish as he stares without a rebuttal at the self-satisfied fae, unable to come up with a worthwhile protest in the sluggish cogs of his mind.

The rambunctious cacophony of their fellow classmates echoes from further down the hall, and Lilia's smile creases into something tender and private, an expression reserved for Silver and Silver alone as those clawed fingertips drift soothingly through his sweaty bangs. There's no magic that glitters from his touch, and yet Silver's eyes find themselves drooping instantly just the same, his head tucking forward to rest against his father's chest where that heartbeat reverberates like a lullaby in his ears.

"Come on, dear— let's get you back to bed."