Naga!Moon x Reader. Sickness.
The first sign of your fever hits you with a pulse of heat. You brushed it aside, believing the sun had been beating on you too long, and the jungle warmth was simmering your blood. Sun leads you to the cave come nightfall. The buzz of mosquitoes fills the air with a menacing hum.
Sun has always been warm to you, even when he told you that you are warmer. His melting yellow and golden jewel tone scales, his cornflower blue eyes, wide and endearing, fit alongside the heavy humidity in the afternoons. The small scarlet markings on his throat and hips are metal-red hot, too. He always kept you warm.
Moon is cool. You’re not sure if that’s due to the cold tones of his scales, gray-blue on his belly and along his arms, and deeper into midnight blue along his back and on top of his hood. He hides in the darkness after sunset. His red eyes, even darker still, only flash once it’s too late for his prey. You’ve seen how fast he strikes—before, when you were acting foolish and trying to escape their aid, and after, when you watched him and Sun hunt a meal.
You slip out of Sun’s embrace. His arms fall away, lethargic from the day you both put your energy into scavenging for berries and nuts and small mammals. A soft hiss leaves his lips. You wait a moment to ensure he doesn’t stir, though his coils unconsciously tense, searching for the little human he was holding.
Sun had mentioned you felt warmer than usual, but you convinced him you were only tired and worn out from the hot day. Still, he frowned when you laid down beside him on the cool cave floor.
The fever pulses deep within you. You feel it burn across your forehead with a ripple of sweat. Staggering out of the cave, what strength you have is quickly sapped by whatever attacks your body. You need less heat. You need to be cold and imagine gulping down icy water to soothe the dryness infecting your throat.
A small trail that’s been trampled by your feet and the width of snake tails leads you through the trees. Even in the dark, under the delirium of a fever, you find the edge of the glinting water reflecting the canopy of thick verdant leaves overhead.
You kneel, almost collapsing forward before you manage to catch yourself with both hands splashing into the pebble-bottom stream. The heavy breaths in your chest heave in and out. You sigh and tell yourself you’re being a baby—one little fever, and you’re struggling to concentrate on the water before you.
In the reflection of the stream, you catch two red eyes glowing above you, leaning out of a tree to survey your feeble attempts to quench your burning thirst. A hood of midnight and diamond yellow stars surround the visage.
“It’s nothing, Moon,” you whisper to the water. Slowly, you cup your hand and carefully bring it to your lips. The crisp coldness douses your heated lips, filling your mouth with a jolt due to the sharp contrast of cold and fire within you. When you swallow, you shiver.
The softest rustle echoes. A few branches quiver, then, you feel his presence behind you, cool as a tree’s shadow.
A large, blue-gray hand snakes around your forehead. Knuckles press against your temple, and you sigh in relief at his blissful, fresh touch.
“Fever,” Moon rasps, carrying the end of the word with a soft hiss of disdain, as if saying it with a curse will make it no longer reality.
“I just need a drink.” You cup your hand in the lazy flow of water again. “I’m fine.”
“Too warm,” he says when you greedily gulp another mouthful.
Water spills cut down the corners of your mouth. He presses closer to you. His thumb smoothly wipes away the drips falling off of your chin, then he shifts. Your mauve shirt with the sleeves cut off allows his frosty arms to offer a barrier against the next wave of heat crashing against you. He’s never felt so cold before—or have you never felt this feverish before?
You try to get to your feet but Moon’s hand on your waistline stops you from rising.
“Come here,” he rasps. “Let me see you, orchid.”
You would have given him a look at the pet name, but you don’t have the strength to muster the effort. He eases you back against his chest. His palms slide and cup your shoulders, his sharp fingertips slipping slightly under the frayed edges of your shirt and resting on the end of your collarbone. Is that a shiver from the elicit touch or sickly chills beginning to take hold?
“You’re flushed,” he hisses softly. A slight slip of his tongue, forked at the end, peeks out of his mouth as he leans closer. You moan unwittingly at his cool, flat cheek pressed against your clammy face.
“You’re sick,” he decides.
This time, you groan out of refusal rather than relief.
“I’m not sick.” You slowly shift, managing to get to your knees to face him. The fever forces your shoulders down. You bow under the exhaustion taking hold.
Moon hisses in an amusement yet concerned note. His long tail drapes behind him, cutting across the ground like the connections of a constellation. It’s black in this lowlight, but in the day, when he sleepily shows himself, you’ve caught the iridescent indigo and jeweled blue tones of his beautiful scales.
“If you keep denying it, I will take drastic actions. Do you want that, orchid?” his tone lowers to a menacing threat, all dark cords and hisses, but you’ve learned to tune your senses to his hands and expression. He looks only at you, a slight frown playing along his wide mouth. His eyes are narrowed, displeased with your condition.
“No,” you shake your head, “You and Sun are so dramatic.”
“Says the stubborn flower,” he touches your cheek. You nearly collapse into his palm. The rasp of his laugh stings your pride as much as it soothes your aching chest.
“I’m not a flower,” you mutter as you feel his arms lower slightly, coaxing your hands over his shoulders. He rises higher on his tail, lifting your feet off the ground without effort, and you slump over his shoulder, little more than a child being carried to bed. Moon hums a low, hypnotic sound (that you’re sure is part of his allure, his power).
“Of course not,” he gives with amused demean.
You work up a growl at your throat that sounds weak even to your own ears. Moon shushes you with a soft stroke of his claws against your spine. The shudder that follows through your body is both cold and hot, and you hate that he silences you so simply, and that you like how he strikes back against your harshness.
“Easy, easy,” he murmurs as if calming a tiger. You want to snarl at him again but the brief spark is quickly smothered under an internal infernal cooking your core.
No one agitates you and reassures you as much as Moon.
He glides across the ground to his tree—it’s wide and high, thick with strong boughs and leafy but not too leafy. A perfect tree for a naga. Moon tends to lounge up there when he wants to escape the shadows of the cave you usually make your bed in. You wonder how he intends to hold you through the night up in its verdant limbs, but Moon hooks a hand behind your head and lowers you softly to the cool, moist ground at the base of the trunk.
“Moon?” For a piercing moment, you’re afraid. You refuse to let go of his arm as he draws away. Where is he going?
“Hold still,” he gently hisses.
You let go. You wait for him.
Slowly, his coils gather, curving in loops close to you. He draws himself around you, his long body following. The darkness shimmers. He takes you into his arms once more and guides you to his chest where he fully embraces you. The end of his tail drapes across your waist, sealing you within a deliciously cool embrace of the naga’s scales.
“Shush,” he says when you groan, soaking in his invigorating presence. “Sleep, orchid.”
You almost tell him that you can’t, or that you won’t, but the comfortable weight of his body surrounding you, the chill of his arms against your burning skin, and the soft tuck of his chin upon your sweaty head chases away the last of your resistance. You might have pressed back—saying you don’t need his help, but it’s hard to resist the frost-gentle relief of his presence. It’s hard to be stubborn when he feels so good.
“Close your eyes,” he murmurs against your hair. “You’ll feel better soon.”
The sweet caresses of his cool touch across your forward eases your ache. Against your will, your eyelids flutter. He hums low, a lullaby you can’t name, and it soothes you gently into a dreamless sleep, comforted by a cool cradle of scales and songs.
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