The Dresden Files/Codex Alera is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.

Crossposted at the multi-fandom Day_by_Drabble community on Livejournal for the April Showers Drabblethon.

Prompt: #3, Fever

The sound of the door being shoved open woke me up – not that I could've done anything about it, being half-dead on the couch, same as I'd been for the past forty-eight hours. I was surrounded by a veritable siege wall of Kleenex boxes, though, so I rolled over, pulled a blanket over my head and hoped for the best.

"Harry, you idiot."

The intruder flicked the blanket off my face and I stared up at a pair of baby blues, blonde hair and a grin.

"Wakey-wakey," said Karrin Murphy, cop chick, leaning over the sofa to look at me upside down. "Hands off snakey."

"Urgh," I said. Tried to say. "I'm dying, here."

"No, you're not." There was a clink of glass and a sniffing sound. "Jack Daniels?"

"Didn't have any Nyquil," I croaked.

"So," she said, folding her arms across her chest, sitting down on the armrest of the couch. "Did you kill that bird before you tried to wear it as a hat?"

Right. I hadn't shaved, showered or generally moved in almost two days. She'd seen me in worse states, though, but this was somehow more embarrassing. Tough P.I. wizards aren't supposed to get knocked on their mystical butts by a virus. Jeez.

Murph put a hand against my forehead. An icy, icy hand, like Antarctica dipped in liquid nitrogen and put into cryogenic storage. I flinched, covered in instantaneous all-over goosebumps, and tried not to scream like a little girl.

After a second or two, it felt freaking heavenly. I caught her wrist and held her hand there for a little longer.

Not too long. A nice, platonic thirty seconds.

Then she patted my shoulder with a business-like "Sit up," and pushed one of those big bottles of blue-flavored Gatorade into my hands. The lid was already loosened. I drank. Mmm, blue.

"You could've called me, you know," she said, quietly.

I'd wanted to. Almost did, a few times. But I wasn't about to tell her that. Instead, I said,

"The phone is waaaay over there," and gestured weakly to the rotary-dial monster sitting at the opposite end of the couch.

"As I suspected – the dreaded Man-flu," Murph said to Mouse as he padded over, doggy tail wagging in affirmation, "A much deadlier strain of the regular flu, which I had last week. Looks like we caught it in time."

"Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. House."

"I see it hasn't affected the snark centers of his brain."

Mouse made a huffing sound that might have been disbelief, settling his puppy chin on my knee.

"You're right. What brain?"

Karrin sat down next to me and started digging through a brown grocery bag, producing a package of saltine crackers, a bottle of Nyquil, two deli containers of soup and plastic spoons. And, bless her heart, a cold can of Coke. I took it from her and held it against my forehead as the room kind of…tilted.

"Murph, you're an angel."

She rolled her eyes at me, but I know the truth.

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