ugh I'm so pathetic for Cate when I just read the other anon about her non-existent immune system my immediate thought was maybe she was a little excited to be sick because
1) reminder she got to be around people! she was part of a community long enough for her to get sick! hooray!
2) she could do right to shetty and get to have the whole mom im sick 🧍♀️ experience she never could with her own mom. forehead taking temperature with hand, concerned tsking, "mhm that's a fever let's get you in bed I'll make tea"
i hadn't thought about it that way but you’re actually so right...
it makes complete sense she'd have complicated feelings about being sick. like on one hand she feels guilty and weak and annoying about it, but on the other hand—yeah. she got sick because she was around people. she was part of something. a dorm, a routine, a community. that alone would feel weirdly validating for her...
and the shetty angle…god. yeah. cate 100% would lean into it just a little. not in a manipulative way, but in that very quiet, hopeful way where she doesn’t ask outright—she just sits there wrapped in a blanket, glassy-eyed, letting herself be small for once. the hand to the forehead, the soft concern, the “you’re burning up, sweetheart,” the tea, the insistence that she lie down. all the stuff she never got growing up.
she’d pretend she doesn’t need it, too. all “i’m fine, it’s not that bad,” while absolutely melting inside at the attention. probably clutching the blanket like a lifeline. and then feeling so ashamed afterward for wanting it at all.
