"You mean to tell me what?" Loki glared at Tony, his green eyes glittering with anger. He would have been intimidating, probably very intimidating indeed, if he hadn't sneezed the next second and huddled himself deeper into the mountain of blankets piled on the couch.
"You've got the flu," Tony repeated and dodged the pillow that was flung at him.
"I am not," the god hissed, "going to be reduced to a quivering mess with a flowing nose," he sniffed and then groaned in annoyance, "by a pathetic mortal disease!"
Carefully, Tony responded: "Well, you are kind of mortal at the moment."
"This is ridiculous," Loki snapped. To prove his point, he shoved the blankets aside and rose to his feet. "I am – oh." The world tilted around him and he fell back onto the cushions gracelessly.
"...definitely ill," Tony finished for him. He felt the mortal's – his fellow mortal's, as he had to say now – hand on his forehead. "And you're hot."
"I know," the prince grumbled. "Although I can't seem to understand why that only occurs to you now." He pulled the blankets back into place around him.
"No, I mean like feverishly hot," the inventor corrected.
Loki rolled his eyes (which caused his headache to suddenly intensify) and huffed (which caused an unpleasant sting in the back of his throat) while he turned to his side (which caused an unexpected feeling of nausea).
"This is awful!" he complained in a tone that he refused to acknowledge as the whine it was. "How do you endure to suffer from this regularly?"
"You caught a really nasty one, I'll give you that," Tony half-explained while pulling on a suit jacket. The god just stared at him. Had his lover always had a twin brother? "Just drink your tea as long as it's still hot, I've put a jar of honey onto the table." He leaned down to press a kiss to Loki's forehead. "I'll be back in a couple of hours, Snowflake, don't die on me just yet."
"You are leaving me here?!" Loki exclaimed in horror.
"Got a meeting, Pep's gonna murder me if I skip this one," Tony excused himself, already on his way out. "Love ya!"
"Traitor," Loki muttered and reached for the tea on the coffee table.
When the cup was empty, he let it rest on his chest. He was tired and felt completely drained although he had barely moved during the day. There was a dull ache in his limbs and his throat already felt raspy again. Sighing, he tried to get up, but the room began its spinning again and he quickly surrendered to the nauseating dizziness and laid back down.
After a few minutes in which he just couldn't seem to fall asleep, he called out: "Servant!"
"What is the matter, Mr Laufeyson?" JARVIS replied. Loki swore that he sounded a little bit amused.
"Connect me to..." He paused in thought. "Captain Rogers."
"As you wish," the AI said and a few seconds later, Steve's voice rang out from the speakers.
"Um... Loki? Is that actually you?" he asked uncertainly.
"Indeed," the god confirmed hoarsely. "Listen, Captain, it is an emergency."
"What? What's up?" Steve immediately demanded.
"I need you," Loki replied as calmly and seriously as possible, "to brew me some tea."