fevery excuse

She was just about to lean down to start looking for the tablet she just yeeted, when you came back.

You take one look at Sandra’s bright red face and immediately jump to the wrong conclusion.

“You’re burning up,”

you say, already shifting into full caretaker mode.

“Shit, you must be coming down with something. Muscle pain, flushed, the works. Okay. Bed. Now.”

Sandra opens her mouth, closes it, then just lets the misunderstanding happen. The embarrassment of explaining that the colour is from your earlier soft, newlywed coffee question is somehow worse than being treated like she has a fever. So she stays quiet and lets you bundle her back under the blanket.

What follows is the full sick-princess treatment.

You make her stay in bed while you limp around the house gathering supplies. Cool cloth for her forehead. Extra pillows. A tray with toast, fruit, and the coffee she asked for, carried in with careful, pained steps because your own body is still screaming. You sit on the edge of the mattress and insist on feeding her a few bites

“so you don’t have to sit up too much.”

She accepts it in silence, cheeks still pink, eyes flicking away every time you look too concerned.

Then come the massages.

You start with her shoulders and neck, working the sore muscles as gently as you can. When she doesn’t stop you, you move lower—slow, thorough strokes down her back, thumbs pressing into the knots left by two days of constant arching and gripping. You spend a long time on her legs, kneading her thighs and calves until some of the fire eases. When you reach her feet you give them the same careful attention, thumbs digging into the arches while she stares at the ceiling and tries not to look as flustered as she feels.

Skincare somehow gets added to the list. You find one of her face masks, smooth it on with surprising seriousness, then sit with her while it sets, occasionally adjusting the blanket or offering water. Every soft, domestic gesture makes the original misunderstanding worse, but by this point Sandra has surrendered. If you’re going to treat her like a slightly feverish princess for the rest of the day, she’ll take the bonus. The alternative is admitting why she actually turned that red, and she is not ready for that conversation.

The afternoon drifts by in this strange, tender haze. You keep the lights low. You put on a quiet show neither of you really watches. Every time she shifts you ask if she needs anything. She keeps answering in small, embarrassed murmurs and lets you keep spoiling her.

Only when evening settles in do you finally think to check her temperature properly.

You dig out the thermometer, wait for the beep, and frown at the completely normal reading.

“…Huh. No fever.”

You look at her with mild surprise, then give a small, satisfied nod.

“We must’ve caught it early. Good. The rest and the fluids probably stopped it before it got serious.”

Sandra just stares at you for a second, still wrapped in the blanket, face mask long gone, and then quietly agrees.

“Yeah… must’ve been that.”

She doesn’t correct you. She simply accepts the entire day of soft, mistaken care as an unexpected gift and leans a little more into the hand you still have resting on her blanket-covered thigh.

By the time full evening settles in, Sandra is quietly losing her mind.

The entire day of soft, attentive care—the massages, the food in bed, the way you kept adjusting the blanket around her shoulders and speaking to her in that low, concerned voice—has soaked straight into her. It is exactly the kind of treatment she has wanted from you on some deep level for longer than she is willing to admit. Every gentle touch, every domestic little gesture, has gone straight to her core. She is aching with it now. Wetness has gathered steadily between her thighs under the blanket; every small shift makes her aware of how empty and needy she feels. The sweet girlfriend treatment has turned her on more thoroughly than any of the rough breeding talk from the days before.

She keeps trying small things.

A longer look when you bring her water. Letting the blanket slip just enough to show the upper curve of her breast. Resting her bare foot against your leg and leaving it there. When you sit beside her on the bed she leans into your side with a soft sigh that is a little too warm, a little too close to a plea. At one point she turns her face into your neck and simply breathes against your skin for a long moment, waiting to see if you will take the invitation.

You don’t.

Your body is still wrecked from the previous days, and the long afternoon of taking care of her has used up whatever energy you had left. On top of that, the (completely mistaken) belief that she might still be fighting off a mild illness gives you the perfect, reasonable excuse. You stroke her hair, press a quiet kiss to her temple, and gently but firmly shut it down.

“Not tonight,”

you murmur.

“You’re still recovering. I’m still recovering. We both need actual rest or we’re going to break something. Just sleep, okay?”

Sandra makes a small, frustrated sound in the back of her throat but doesn’t argue. She is too embarrassed by how badly the soft treatment has affected her to push harder. She simply nods, curls closer under the blanket, and tries to will the ache between her legs to quiet down.

It doesn’t.

You settle in beside her, one arm loosely around her waist, already half-asleep from exhaustion. Sandra lies awake a while longer, staring at the dark ceiling, body still thrumming with unfulfilled need. The sweetness of the day has left her more desperate than any of the raw fucking that came before it, and now she has to simply endure it—pressed against the person she wants, denied for the night under the gentle, iron-clad excuse of recovery and care.