Ohhh.

She picks up the cup of water and offers it to Lucy. She's helping!!

And Lucy will accept it, and hold it to Cara’s mouth!

“She was crying and gets dehydration headaches,” she explains to Haru.

-oh no this is SO EMBARRASSING.

She will just... let Lucy water her... 

"...Cara, would you rather drink it yourself?"

oh no this is one of those tricky questions and there's so much happening already! 

She stops thinking about the process of being watered while it continues to happen, which predictably results in her getting unexpected water in her mouth and throat! She starts coughing, and some of the water spills on her. Ack!

Oops!!! Lucy quickly puts what’s left of the water down and tries to help with some combination of Coughing and Wet. Which is difficult when she doesn’t have a handkerchief or towels or anything but still.

Cara will recover from the coughing on her own, but appreciates the effort!

Lucy petting her chest with a blanket is not helping with the furious blushing and associated feelings, but apparently those are just fine to have, so she relaxes.

"...be right back." He goes and gets a hand towel.

Cara leans on Lucy appreciatively. "Thanks."

“You’re welcome. Are you okay?”

That's is only a hard question if she takes it literally! "Yeah."

leeean. Lucy is soooo nice to touch.

“Good.” Snuggle. “Drink the rest of the water?”

"yesm"

glug glug glug ohhh it's good to be hydrated. She puts the cup down and flops Lucywards.

Good! Lucy kisses the top of her head. “Good girl.”

(Possibly she shouldn’t copy that aspect of her mother taking care of her own small-child-after-nightmare self, but: backlash, babey.)

"mghfmghmmm" her life is just like this now, apparently??

Hopefully it's dark enough that Lucy can't see just how much Cara is blushing, now.

She either doesn’t see or doesn’t care! More snuggles.

And before long, Cara is back asleep.

And eventually Lucy drifts off as well.

Haru slips out.

A few hours later, Cara wakes up quietly for once. She's very entangled with Lucy  [!!!warmsafegood!!!], but it means she needs to extract herself VERY CAREFULLY because. She really needs to use the bathroom. 

While she's doing her best to extract her arms and legs without waking her snugglebuddy, she does an experimental checklist in her head to see if she's missing anything.

Is she tired - yes, but that's fine, she's going back to sleep after. Is she thirsty - no, she's been well watered. Is she in pain - nothing super noticeable, no. Is she hungry - yeah, actually she is.

She'll go raid the kitchen for a snack after bathroom. Ha! Take that, backlash she thinks, grinning.

Lucy makes a small noise of protest as Cara disentangles but does not wake up.

D: "sorry", she whispers as softly as she can, and then tiptoes off to the bathroom.

 go to the kitchen for a snack after, go to the kitchen for a snack after, go to the kitchen for a snack after...

She washes up, heads out to the kitchen, and turns on a light to poke at the pantry. What's for snacks?

Couple kinds of Pepperidge Farm cookies, cans of tuna, potato chips, instant ramen, Pop Tarts, saltines, goldfish, microwave popcorn, peanut butter cups, and Ho Hos.

Oooh, she'll grab a peanut butter cup, and - what kind of poptarts? 

Frosted strawberry and brown sugar cinnamon.