Drabble 45: Love Sick
A/N: This prompt is for weasleywarrior. I know it's not exactly what you wanted, but I thought you might like this too. It was the first thing I could think of. I'll write one exactly like you requested at some point, I promise. I hope you like it!
Fitz walked into the lab feeling sort of clammy, and maybe a bit shaky. He dismissed it as being overtired, though; he'd only gotten about three hours of sleep the night before. He and Simmons were making a more improved version of the Night-Night Gun, and the calibrations had to be exact. They were aiming for more power in a smaller container, something that would be easy to conceal. And they were close, too. They'd only gone to bed earlier that morning because their eyes were too tired to see clearly.
So now Fitz walked back to his desk and sat down, picking up their diagrams to re-examine them. Simmons joined him about half an hour later, and they worked on building a prototype.
It was just before they were going to test the prototype that Fitz realized he felt worse than ever. He was covered in cold sweat, shivering. He also felt tired all over.
"Jem, I think I'm going to go to bed for a while." He said, standing shakily up and supporting himself by placing a hand on his desk.
"Are you alright?" she asked. Then she looked up from the prototype. "Fitz! You look terrible!"
"Thanks." He said through chattering teeth.
"That's the first good look I've had at you this morning. You need to go to bed right away!"
"That's where I want to go." He said.
"Oh." She said in a small voice.
She walked over to him. "Do you want help?"
"No, I'll be fine."
He took a breath and then let go of the desk, moving one foot forward to walk. Almost immediately he crumpled forward, and Jemma lunged to support him.
"Gotcha." She said breathlessly as she caught his arm and pulled him back up. "Let's get you to bed."
He just nodded. His head felt extremely heavy, and his thoughts were slow. He didn't have the strength to walk on his own. He didn't even have the strength to argue about it.
Before he knew it he was lying on his bed, and Jemma was pulling a blanket over him. She looked worried, but he couldn't figure out why. He didn't care why. He just knew he needed sleep.
Jemma was worried about Fitz. His symptoms had come up so quickly, and so strong… she had practically dragged him to his room. And what was worse was he didn't seem to be aware of it. At some point while they were on the trek to his room, his eyes glazed over and he slumped even more, which she hadn't thought possible.
It had been an hour since she'd put him to bed, and she sat by his bedside. She had tried going back to the lab and working, but after ten minutes had been unable to stand it any longer. So she'd told Coulson that Fitz was sick and gone to watch over him, equipped with a cold pack and a small bucket of water, with a square washcloth.
He had a fever, so the first thing she did was wet the washcloth and place it on his forehead. He was still asleep, so she didn't want the severe cold of the ice pack to wake him up. His face was flushed, and occasionally he would groan or whimper in his sleep.
She felt terrible. Fitz was sick, and whenever Fitz got sick, he became seriously sick.
She checked his temperature every half hour, hoping to see it going down; it remained steady, his forehead burning. After about another hour she left the room to get him water, which she slowly and carefully poured into his mouth every so often. He was dehydrated, but he hadn't woken up yet.
Then, at about midday, he opened his eyes.
"Fitz." She said in relief.
He strained to focus his eyes as he saw her. They were still unfocused, though, even after locking on her. She could tell he wasn't quite with it, as his eyes had a glassy quality to them that seemed to veil them.
"Jemma." He murmured.
"I'm right here Fitz." She said. "I'm going to give you a drink, okay?"
He didn't respond, but she propped him up a bit with the pillow and poured more water in his mouth, which he swallowed mechanically. "Monkeys." Fitz said. "At the zoo."
Jemma smiled. "Yes, Fitz. Now go back to sleep."
He stared at the ceiling for some time after she laid him back down, murmuring occasionally in a delirious haze. She heard him mention monkeys again, and then his mother. And then, when he hadn't said anything for a while, she heard her name again. She looked up from the book she had been reading and saw that his eyes, which had been growing ever more vacant with each passing minute, were now closed, his face a mask of calm. But she kept watching him, sure that she'd heard him say her name, and a few minutes later heard it again.
"Jemma." He said on an exhale. It was barely formed and almost inaudible, but she had heard him say her name enough times to recognize it. His voice sounded sleepy.
She felt the word clutch at her heart and touched one of his hands, gently laying hers on top of it. "I'm here." She said softly.
She knew he wouldn't respond; he was almost completely asleep, so he couldn't; but a funny little smile appeared on his calm, pale face.
She felt a small shock run through her. He shouldn't have been able to smile, right?
But she forced it from her mind as she measured his breathing and, when she was sure he was asleep, took his temperature again – and smiled in relief. His temperature was down. Not much, but a little bit.
She spent the day at Fitz's bedside, keeping track of his temperature and giving him fluids every so often. The next time he woke up she fed him some chicken noodle soup, and by nightfall his fever was down a whole degree. She stopped putting the wet washcloth on his forehead and watched as he slept, a bit more color in his face.
The next thing she knew a hand was gently shaking her shoulder, and she blinked as she woke up. "What?" she murmured. She sat up slowly; she had fallen asleep in her chair, her head down on Fitz's bed. She felt the warm spot on her cheek from where she had been laying as she turned to face Skye, and rubbed her hand against it to try to even it out.
"You didn't look very comfortable." Skye said quietly.
Simmons took a minute to stretch. "It's alright. Thanks for waking me up, though. I need to check on Fitz again."
"I can take over if you want. You look tired."
Simmons realized that she was exhausted, and Skye's offer was heartfelt; Skye would take as good care of Fitz as she would. But she didn't want to leave. "I'll stay." She said.
Skye nodded as if she'd known she would get this answer and perched on Fitz's bed, near his feet. "How's our patient?"
"I think he's got the flu, but I'm not entirely sure. He seems to be fine, but…"
"But…?"
"He was a little delirious the first time he woke up, and before he fell asleep he said my name."
"What's so weird about that?"
"Well… after that, I touched his hand and said I was there. You know, mostly for my own benefit, to think I was comforting him. He was almost completely asleep, so he couldn't have really heard me, but I think somehow he did. And then he smiled."
Now Skye smiled at her. "It's probably an instinct for him by now. You guys have been best friends for a while, right? So he probably knows you so well that just your voice can make him feel better, even if he isn't in his right mind."
Jemma was quiet for a minute. "You know, you're pretty quick to come up with things like that."
"What can I say?" she said with a smirk. "Some things just come to me."
Jemma smiled at her, and after a bit of small talk Skye left her alone with Fitz. It took Jemma a few minutes to realize that she couldn't hear Fitz's deep, even breathing anymore. He was awake, and looking at her with tired eyes.
"I have the flu?" he said.
"Welcome back to reality!" she said warmly. His eyes were still a bit unfocused, but she could tell he was much more like himself.
He groaned and closed his eyes.
He surfaced like that many times, waking for mere moments before falling back into a light sleep. Sometimes he was as alert as he'd been just after Skye left; other times he was in varied states of delirium, unaware of exactly where he was and who he was with. She knew that this was normal behavior. The virus often took many days to work its way out of the body, and some were worse than others.
But he frequently said her name. He said it in sleep and in complete consciousness. Just her name, never really anything about her. And it was always softly spoken.
She brought pillows in from her room and made herself more comfortable, abandoning her chair at periods to lie down on pillows by his bedside. She knew he was going to be fine, but she didn't want him to wake up alone, especially not if we woke up in one of his delirium fits.
After two days Coulson forced her to go to her room to sleep. She protested, but after a good seven hours of sleep felt so re-energized that she thanked him.
Fitz recovered a little over a week later, and work resumed as usual. Jemma never mentioned how much Fitz had said her name; he only thanked her for looking after him. They acted as if nothing strange had happened. Jemma accepted Skye's explanation for Fitz's repetition of her name, thinking it was just a comfort to him. Fitz, at least when he remembered doing it, hoped she didn't think too much about it. It had been comforting to think of her by his bedside, but that had only been half of his reasoning; the other half was much more personal.
The other half was his foolish, foolish brain trying to tell her how he felt about her.