Work Text:
“Someone call for a rescue?” Ryuu shouted as the door slammed open.
Hitoka, who was currently down with a cold and had not called for a rescue, blearily raised her head from her sick burrito on the couch. “Ryuu?”
“Me too!” Yuu shouted as the two stampeded into her living room. “We're here to help!”
Hitoka, still kind of in a sick haze, blinked at them blearily. “With what?”
“Enno said that Kiyoko said that you were getting stressed about not having decorated for the holidays yet, so we're here to help!” Ryuu said, plunking a bag of stuff down on her coffee table. Both he and Yuu were wearing masks, which was probably wise, considering how sick she was.
Oh yeah, she had been complaining about that to Kiyoko yesterday. She liked to get decorations up as early as possible, but this cold had sent her magic on the fritz and had also kept her knocked out for the last week, so she hadn’t been able to.
Basically right on cue, she sneezed three times in quick succession, shooting out a couple multicolored sparks that she was quick to bat out when they landed on her blanket.
“We also brought stuff for the cold,” Yuu added, opening the bag. “Asahi made chicken noodle soup, Futakuchi made a different kind of soup cuz Ryuu asked him nicely, we have saltines if those are too heavy, and some rice pudding we worked hard to make under supervision.”
They each could cook at least pretty edible food, the problem was putting them together usually spelled disaster. Thus, the supervision.
“Since you're not camped out in the bathroom you can't be feeling too bad in that department,” Ryuu said, getting out his wand and casting a quick spell to check her temperature. “Aw man, that's a pretty bad fever. Good thing we also brought medicine!”
They were so thoughtful! Hitoka sniffled, now tearing up at how thoughtful they were. It always took her by surprise, even years after she'd first met them.
“Oh no! Don't cry! You'll dehydrate yourself even more!” Yuu said, panicking.
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” she sniffled, extracting an arm from her sick blanket burrito to wipe at her face. It wasn’t very effective. She was pretty gross.
“Where's your holiday decorations anyway?” Ryuu asked, now back with a cup of water for her to take the medicine with.
“In that closet there, in the back, behind the coats,” Hitoka instructed, still sniffling a little before downing the medicine and water in quick succession.
“How about we fish that out, and you go take a shower, you look like you could use one,” Yuu suggested, looking five seconds away from dragging her out of the blankets if she didn’t agree.
She could probably use a shower. It might help the congestion.
“Not too hot of a shower though,” Ryuu said quickly, now probably digging through her closet based on what she could hear from behind her. “Don't want your temperature to go up too much!”
“Don't decorate too much before I get out,” Hitoka attempted to instruct, although it was interrupted halfway through by her sneezing a few more times. She did make it out of her couch blanket burrito though, and yeah, she did feel pretty grimey. Shower was definitely appealing now. “I don't want to have to redo it.”
“You mean make us redo it,” Yuu corrected. “We're decorating this time, you're sitting on the couch and looking cute.”
“And ordering us around,” Ryuu agreed, nodding vehemently.
Hitoka giggled, although it was a very wet sort of giggle between the congestion, the coughing, and the earlier tears. “Okay, okay, I'll sit on the couch and look cute and give orders. Just don't say I didn't warn you that I might get a little lost in trying to make it perfect.”
“Sounds about right!” Yuu said cheerfully. “Now shoo, shoo, you can have soup when you're done too!”
Normally those soups would sound really good, but she'd had no appetite recently.
She should eat anyway. She was kind of hungry. Yeah. She’d eat the soup when she got out even if she didn’t really want to. She needed food to have energy and energy to get better.
“No, no, that isn’t straight at all! To the left. No that’s too far, to the right again. No, too far again, come back here, look at it, and adjust it in little increments!”
“Ryuu, those do not go together! Yes I know they all have reindeer on them, but the colors clash!”
“Yuu be careful! Those are really breakable! Put them up in that cabinet there. Really really carefully! I don’t want them within reach just in case, they’re safer in the cabinet.”
“Don’t take out all my mugs! I know they don’t all fit in the mug cabinet, just leave the christmas ones on the counter, I’ll figure it out later, I don’t want you to mess up my kitchen. Oh I’m sorry that sounded so mean! I don’t think you’d mess it up but I want to do it!”
“Those are two different yellows, please don’t put them next to each other. Yes I know there’s red in between them but I can tell! They look completely different!”
“No, I don’t think you’re color blind. Well, you aren’t great at telling shades apart, but that doesn’t make you color blind! Color blind is difficulty differentiating between different colors! You just don’t pay close enough attention. And you haven’t trained your eye to it. Yes you can train eyes, it’s very strange, I know.”
“Oh that can just go on the coffee table, but maybe set it aside for now, I don’t want to have to wash it because I coughed on it, just leave it in the box, I’ll put it on later.”
In the end her apartment was decorated. Not perfectly, she’d probably have to adjust things when she felt better and could use her magic again, but it was certainly more cheery than before.
They’d probably made the right call by coming over and decorating for her, she did feel much better, although that could be attributed to the soup or the medicine. Hitoka chose to believe it was because of the power of friendship and holiday decorations.
She did hurry them out the door a little bit since she didn’t want them to get sick and consequently infect the rest of their friend group, but they’d forgive her. Mostly after no one else got sick.