hey could you please do something for poly helnik and a grisha healer reader who has chronic pain and is having a bad day? (romantic relationship if your okay with it, nina and reader grew up together in the little palace)
As someone who is chronically ill and currently having a bad time with their flare up, this request couldnt be better timed, I need this
Bedside Manner Isn't My Strong Suit, But I'll Try For You - Nina Zenik, Matthias Helvar
Content Warnings: Poly!Helnik x Chronically Ill Healer Reader. Discussions Of Illness, Poor Health. This One Became Rather Self Indulgent And I Will Not Apologize For That. Probably Explicit Language Knowing What I Am Like. Not Beta/Proof Read.
It was the wince that gave you away, you really didn't mean to. The thing about being chronically ill, is that you are so used to what would normally be crippling amounts of pain for other people, that you start to drown out a lot of pain signals. When you are in pain every moment, pain becomes normal to you, it doesn't make it hurt less, but you can live with a lot of pain and discomfort if you have no other choice. And after a while you can become numb to your bodies warning signals, especially when you don't want to acknowledge it. So when you move and the jolt of pain is so noticeable, even by your own pain standards, even on top of all the daily pain that you've been long saddled with, you wince. And Nina doesn't miss a beat.
"Sit down," she says almost a little too fiercely, but her eyes are so filled with concern that you could forgive her any tone right now.
"Love, it's nothing," you try. But the pain swells around in your nerves and you lose your sight for a moment and before you can really argue your case anymore, Nina is helping you back into a sitting position.
"You've been doing too much," she tells you, her voice melodic and soothing as she pulls a blanket up from the bed and wraps it over the two of you. She learned long ago it's much easier to get you to let others care for you, if that care isn't distancing. So she curls up on the soft seat with you, and lets the blanket fall over her own shoulders.
"I've been doing as much as I normally do," you argue. Nina gives you a gentle tap on the tip of your nose.
"And sometimes the limit is different," she reminds you, "you and I both know that." You learned in the early years of knowing Nina, training side by side at The Little Palace, that it was no easy task to pull the wool over her eyes. She learned your tells and your mannerisms as closely as she knew how, and most days she was able to read your needs better than you. It didn't help you were prone to ignoring yours. You had argued over and over, that this world wasn't forgiving to those who let themselves fall behind, but Nina wouldn't have it, not then, not when you were just kids, and certainly not now.
"I do not want to waste the day," you try, but she shushes you with a gentle kiss to your forehead.
"Are you saying a day cosied up with me is a day wasted?" she quips. You give her a playful glare but she does not let up.
"No moment spent with you could ever be wasted," you tell her.
"Good, then we are not wasting a day, I am looking after you, and you are letting me," she tells you. You'd never had it in your heart to deny Nina anything, why would you start now?
You had often thought it a bitter irony that you were born a healer, that you had the ability to help others, take their pain away, ease their suffering, when you were bound to suffering yourself, with no way to help yourself. But you'd given up trying to reason with the saints about it years ago. It was a pointless and one sided argument, so you just decided it was better to focus on what you could. So you focused on your life, on Nina, on Matthias, on what you could control.
"You do not want to spend the day curled up with me," you realise how it sounds at it leaves your mouth but you don't let it deter you, "you have more interesting things to be doing, Nina, I am fine-,"
"I love you," she repeats.
"I love you," she says again. She will say it over and over until you relent, she does not want to dismiss your feelings anymore than she wishes to hurt them, but she will not argue with you about taking care of you. She will not argue with you over what she is willing and wanting to do. She will not argue with you over this.
"I love you," you say in return.
"Even when I am injured," she says.
"Even when I am injured?" she asks.
"Even when you're injured," you tell her.
"Even when I am tired?" she asks.
"Even when you're tired."
"Even when your hungry," you reply. Nina gives you a gentle jab in the shoulder, but she is smiling.
"I said grumpy," she says. You blink at her, faking confusion.
"That's the same word darling," you tell her. She leans in and presses a kiss to the tip of your nose.
"So why is it so hard to understand that I love you, and I want to be here with you?" she asks.
"I know you love me," you tell her, it may have taken convincing, it may take reminding, but after enough time she has managed to get that idea stuck inside your head in a way that it won't easily worm out. "I just mean there must be things you'd rather be doing than taking care of me."
"Not a one," she tells you, pulling you in to hold you closer. "Not a single one."
You're both half asleep when Matthias comes back. Your head resting on Nina's shoulder as she subconsciously draws loops across your skin with her fingers, trying her best to ease the pain she knows you're feeling. It barely touches the edges, but you feel it, and you know it is from love that she tries despite the futility, and you take a type of comfort in that. "Matthias," your voice comes out as a whisper.
"Been too strong today?" Matthias asks, knowing very well this trap of Nina's, the hug and blanket that is more of a mandatory bedrest than a subtle attempt to get you to rest.
"You wince one time," you say. If you're honest, if you're really honest, you feel bad, you feel all types of bad, your body feels brittle, every nerves either burns or aches and the throbbing pain won't go away, but you try to drown it out. It's nothing you've not felt before, and you will likely feel again.
Matthias leans down and presses a kiss to the top of your head, and then one to Nina's. "Rest," he tells you, a little gruff but his lips twitching into a smile.
"How am I supposed to sleep when my bones feel like they're snapping under the pressure of my skin?" you ask honestly.
"With a warm drink and a kiss?" he offers. You smile, it doesn't fix you, nothing can unburden the pain set deep in your bones, but they've never once tried to fix you. They've just sat with you in the storm, and waited it out with you. They never once tried to fix you, they just loved you anyway. They love you not in spite of but regardless. They cannot take the pain away, but being around them brings you a peace you had never known before and you never dreamed of having, and that is more than enough.
"I like the sound of that," you tell him. He smiles.
"Then that is exactly what you shall get."
