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Solas rolled onto his side, burying his face in Ellana's hip where she sat upright beside him on the bed.
"I'm dying," he croaked out, his throat on fire with the effort.
"You're not," Ellana said. She sounded very certain, and perhaps slightly cross.
"How can you be certain?" He tugged up his blanket until it covered his ear. Sweat was pooling between his shoulder blades and on the backs of his thighs, but his body seemed certain that he was, in fact, freezing and he should ask Ellana for yet another layer of blankets.
"You've already been to the doctor. He didn't say anything about you dying. I'm pretty sure he would have mentioned it."
She was certainly cross.
"I should sleep on the sofa," Solas offered, making a perfunctory effort to sit up. "I'll only make you sick as well if I stay here."
"No," Ellana replied decisively, a hand on his chest to push him back down. "I'll be fine. I never get sick. I absolutely refuse to get sick. You should try it."
Solas was confident it didn't work that way, but he lacked the energy to debate her at the moment and had no real desire to move to the sofa. He wanted to stay in bed, hugging Ellana's legs while feeling absolutely miserable.
"I can't sleep," he complained some time later.
His head was still under the blankets but he heard Ellana set her cell phone on the nightstand.
"Can I get you something?" she asked. "Do you want some tea? Or water?"
"No."
"Crackers? Soup?"
"No."
"I don't think it's time for another dose of medicine yet."
"No, not for another hour."
"I can grab my laptop if you want to watch something?"
"No."
Ellana sighed. "Is there something you want to read?"
"No," he groaned into his pillow. "Unless …" he said as an idea occurred to him. "Would you read to me?"
She didn't immediately respond and so he tightened his grip on her leg, hoping to convey the urgency of his request. He was suddenly certain that this would be the thing that would finally make him feel a bit better.
"I can. Did you have something specific in mind?"
"There is an issue of The Orlesian Historical Review on my desk that I haven't had a chance to read yet."
She hesitated again.
"You want me to read you articles from an academic journal?"
"Yes," Solas nodded against her leg. He wanted it very badly.
Ellana sighed again. "Alright," she said, beginning to stir beside him.
"Don't leave." He held tight to her legs.
"Solas. You do understand that unless you've trained Parchment to fetch things from your desk, I'm going to need to get up."
"I know." He dug his fingers into her thigh.
Ellana leaned over him, chuckling. "It'll be a minute. Not even a minute. Just let me go." She briefly placed her lips to his forehead, then abruptly pulled away.
"Oh," she said, the touch of her lips suddenly replaced by back of her cool hand against his skin. "You're actually really warm." She sounded worried. "Here, I'll get you a cold washcloth while I'm up."
He let out a low whine as she eased his arm off her and finally slipped out of the bed. In truth, he was feeling a good deal better than he had an hour before. But if Ellana thought he seemed worse, if she had determined he needed additional care, who was he to argue?
When she returned, she put a few extra pillows behind him so he could sit up without feeling the iron bars of his bed poking at his back. She arranged the washcloth on his forehead before sitting beside him again and opening the journal to an article on the prevalence of swans in early Storm Age woodcarvings found in southern Orlais. Solas happily closed his eyes and leaned back into his pillows.
"'The carvings at the recently discovered remains of the Avery estate in Montsimmard depict two members of the genus Cygnus facing one another, their wings outstretched. While some have argued -'"
"Wait," Solas peeked at the journal in Ellana's hands through half-lidded eyes, lifting his head only just enough to see over her shoulder. "Was there a footnote in that sentence?"
"How could you possibly know that?" She angled the text away from him.
"It had the cadence of something that needed additional clarification," he said.
"Yes," she bit out. "There's a footnote."
"Would you read the footnotes as well, please?"
She stared at him, her lips forming a tight pout as he watched her cheeks grow red. "All of them? Even the citations?"
He did want all of them, even the citations, but he was enjoying himself too much to risk pushing her too far. "The content footnotes will suffice," he said.
Ellana took in a deep breath. "This is a note after the bit about the genus Cygnus: 'As the carvings were not embellished with color, there are difficulties in determining which species is represented. While the Empress Swan was, and remains, the most common species found in southern Orlais …'"
Solas watched her as she read, entranced by the movements of her mouth and the way she swept her hair back behind her ear each time it fell forward when she leaned over the journal. He chuckled when she added editorial quips to the text (to 'give it some flavor,' she said), though he quickly lost control of his laughter as it shifted to a hacking cough. He wished he could hold her close to him and feel the cool press of her skin against his own; he wished he could kiss the corner of her mouth where it pinched each time she made a joke. He sighed loudly, his frustration getting the better of him.
"You sound worse," Ellana said, all the amusement gone from her face as she looked over at him. She ran a hand from his forehead down his cheek and it was perfect, just perfect, Solas thought.
"I'm going to get you a glass of water and your medicine, and then I really think you should try to go back to sleep." Her eyes were so wide, her mouth curved down in a little frown, so concerned, so tender.
"I will try," he said. It sounded very brave to his ears.
Once he'd taken his pills and finished the full glass of water (Ellana insisted, and he was delighted), Solas settled down beneath the covers. She left again, carrying the empty glass back into the kitchen. When she didn't immediately return, he called out her name. When she didn't reply, he called it a few more times.
Finally, she reappeared at the door with her open laptop balanced in one hand.
"I was coming back," she assured him. "I just wanted to watch something while you slept - unless you think the noise will bother you."
"It won't," he said. He had no real intention of sleeping, anyway. He merely wanted to lie beside her. Parchment, perhaps sensing his mood, hopped up onto the bed, made several small circles, and then found a comfortable spot pressed up against his legs.
Ellana slid beneath the blankets, perched the computer on her lap, and then draped her arm above his head on the pillow. Very responsibly, he did not turn to kiss her fingers, though he easily could have.
"What will you watch?" he asked.
"I thought I should finally check out that version of Inquisitive Hearts you and Dorian are always talking about," she said. "The Antivan production."
Solas knew he would not sleep now, even if he had been tired. He was far too invested in seeing Ellana's reactions to the film, though he might have to at least pretend to doze off occasionally. As slowly as he could, so as not to disturb Parchment, he angled himself toward her and hooked a knee over her leg. He heard the swell of familiar music as the film began.
Three days later, Solas returned from an afternoon in his office at the university to find Ellana sitting on his sofa with blankets piled on top of her. When he approached her, he realized she was also wearing several layers of clothing and had somehow convinced Parchment to sit on her lap.
"Why is your house so cold?" she complained.
"You're sick," he said immediately.
"No, I'm not."
"Have you taken anything?"
"No. Because I'm not sick."
She sneezed loudly, several times in a row. Parchment hopped down off her lap, clearly offended by the display. Ellana stared up at him as if daring him to contradict her.
"Come," Solas said, reaching down a hand to her. "You should be in bed."
"Well if that's what you wanted, you could have just … oh shit, it's freezing!" Ellana winced as her bare feet touched the floor.
"It isn't," he said, putting a hand behind her back to balance her. "But I will get you a pair of socks."
She was shivering when he finally managed to convince her to get into bed, so he piled the extra blankets on top of her. He brought in her laptop because she insisted she was still going to conduct the two remote interviews she had scheduled for the afternoon, even though she sounded increasingly congested (and ridiculous, and a bit endearing) with each passing minute. He considered pointing this out and decided against it - she would only become more insistent that she needed to stick to her schedule.
Solas tried not to hover outside the closed bedroom door while she finished her interviews, noting the increasing frequency of her sneezes and, now, coughs as well. Once he was certain she was done, he knocked on the door to bring her a cup of hot tea.
"Thanks," Ellana said, her voice hoarse. "I'm just going to take a quick nap and sleep it off. I'll be fine in a couple hours."
"Are you certain you don't want to take something first?"
"No." She coughed. "It's not …" she coughed again, "… that bad."
"And if you wake up and it's worse, will you take something then?"
"Sure. I guess," she shrugged before dissolving into a coughing fit and shrinking below the covers. She was snoring lightly not long after.
Solas used the hours she was asleep to clean. The house had become somewhat disorganized while he'd been sick, during which time Ellana had managed to do a load of laundry but not to put it away. He also noticed a few items in the kitchen had not been returned to their usual places. She'd been apologetic about the state of things, but he knew the blame was partially his as well - he'd wanted her to keep him company for as much time as she would allow.
With the laundry folded and the kitchen thoroughly cleaned, Solas peered into the bedroom to check on Ellana. She was lying face down, had kicked off several layers of bedding, and had her arms and legs splayed across the entire mattress. Parchment was perched on her lower back, purring loudly enough that Solas could hear it from the door. He hurried in to move the cat off her.
Ellana slept well into the evening, emerging from the bedroom with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders sometime after sunset. She insisted upon eating the soup he'd made at the dining table, though he'd found a tray to use so she could stay in bed if she preferred. She shuffled into the bathroom after she ate and returned with a selection of medicines that she spread across the table. After some consideration, she finally chose one of them and then immediately returned to bed.
Solas joined her a few hours later. She had managed to confine herself to one side but was tossing and turning constantly, her cough keeping her half awake. When he finally decided it would be best to move to the couch, she grabbed him around the waist with both arms and sleepily murmured, "Stay," so he did.
In the morning, he left her only long enough to take a shower. But when he opened the door from the bathroom he found Ellana at the front door, fully dressed, and attempting to pull his heavy winter coat over one of her arms. She already had it half on, but it was so large on her that it fell down to her ankles, and she was struggling with the second arm because her hand was lost somewhere in the first.
"What are you doing?" he said, baffled.
Ellana looked up at him and her face was deathly pale. Her eyes were only slightly open and sweat beaded on her forehead. "I'm going to the store," she said with something he imagined was supposed to be a smile but actually looked a bit harrowing.
"Ellana …" he began, uncertain what to even say.
"Do you need anything?" she asked before she hunched over, coughing uncontrollably, and reached out a hand to balance herself on the door.
"Oh, come on, Solas!" Ellana objected as he carefully escorted her toward the bedroom. "I just want to go outside for a few minutes. Sun is supposed to be good when you're sick, right?"
After a long negotiation, he situated her on the bench in the garden still wrapped in his winter coat, with a blanket beneath her and two more on top. He then hurried back into the kitchen to make tea and collect the medicines she'd left on the dining table. It was time, Solas decided, to take matters into his own hands.
While Ellana sipped her tea and blinked sleepily in the sunlight, Solas scoured his phone for some way to set a timer. Eventually he found it and set individual, labeled alerts for each of the medications he handed over to her.
"See?" she said as she finished her tea. "I told you the sun would help."
"Taking something to treat your symptoms is what helped," he muttered under his breath as he took her mug into the kitchen to refill it.
He sat beside her on the bench until she began to fall asleep, then took the mug from between her hands when he saw her head slump forward to her chest. When he felt certain he wouldn't wake her, he carried her back to the bed.
By the third day Ellana had a little color back in her cheeks and the medicine was keeping the worst of her cough under control. She was, however, far more congested than she had been at the start, and Solas had to make a trip to the store for more tissues when she went through everything he had in the house.
He knew she must be over the worst of it when, while he sat beside her on the bed and read through the latest issue of The Orlesian Historical Review now that he could better focus on it, he suddenly felt Ellana's hand slide from where she'd rested it on his chest down into his lap.
"Ellana!" Solas grabbed her and laced her fingers with his own to keep her from pulling away.
"What?" she groaned, then sniffled loudly. "It might help. You don't know. Please, I can't just sit in bed all day. I'm so bored."
"Flattering," he told her. "And yet not the solution to your problem."
She huffed with frustration and curled up closer to him, bringing their clasped hands down to rest against her chest.
"I'm dying," Ellana proclaimed with another round of sniffles.
"I know," Solas said as he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against his chest, and placed a kiss to her forehead.