AUTHOR'S NOTE: So all the feedback last chapter was amazing, please review again and if you didn't last time please do now. It inspires me to continue writing, yeah I need that confirmation. Hope you enjoy and don't worry this whole fic will not be a sick!Loki story.
It was dark, but he could hear the soft sound of bare feet against a concrete floor, furrowing his brow and swallowing against the grain of a dry throat made him cough quietly. There was the sound of bubbling liquid and a strong bitter smell began to overpower the room. Finally he wrestled with the exhaustion swirling and cradling him and opened his eyes, cringing he made to pull his arms over his eyes from the sunlight streaming in but his left arm never made it to his eyes. He made to pull it again, but it was restrained, he glanced over and noticed that it was handcuffed to the metal leg of the couch.
Loki just stared at his restrained wrist, through the fog of sickness.
Suddenly Jane was in front of him and he looked up at her, raising an eyebrow, "Is this really necessary?" he criticized, his deep lilting accent coming out stronger than usual.
"Ummm," Jane said, turning her head slightly and sounding like she couldn't believe her ears. "Yeah, you tried to enslave my entire race just a few months ago. I should actually just call S.H.E.I.L.D and have them deal with you."
"But you haven't." Loki surmised somehow, through constant swallowing, trying to ease his dry throat. Was this what mortals put up with all the time? He thought to himself, further proof that mortals were just as beneath him as he always thought, so easily stricken by the ailments of the world around them.
"Well, no…not yet." Jane sounded unsure of herself; it was that kind nature in her speaking against rational thought.
Loki laid back down on the couch, the muscles in his side hurting from holding himself up to speak to her.
Jane sat back on the coffee table across from him, his hollowed eyes were rimmed red and his nose and cheeks where pinkish, his mess of black hair was sticking to his neck and forehead and the blanket she'd placed over him during the night was now cast onto the floor. The center of his green shirt was wet with sweat and his long legs hung over the edge of her couch.
Jane realized one of two things, one that he was either really sick with some mystical Asgardian solar flu or he had the flu, the actual human, mortal flu. Which meant he was human…Jane stopped that train of thought for the time being, if he was mortal there was just a slew of a hundred other questions she'd need answered, which in his current state he clearly couldn't. And two, was how incredibly uncomfortable he looked, laying on a couch that was much too small for him.
She got up and walked to her kitchen and wetted a small dish rag with cold water and grabbed a bottle water from her fridge, when she returned to his side it was as if he hadn't even noticed she was gone. He seemed lost in thought either because there was just too much going on up there in his head or he was trying to navigate through the fog of flu to say anything.
"Here." Loki turned to her, his expression unreadable, he glanced up at her face as if looking for something, perhaps if he should trust her or not. But unbeknownst to Jane, due to his dry throat and mouth, it was all an act, he was going to take the beverage regardless of what he saw there.
Loki popped the cap off the bottle and drank the entire bottle in one go, dropping it lazily on the ground
next to the couch. He exhaled loudly and swallowed some more, his eyelids becoming heavy once more as sleep began to overtake him once more.
Jane watched as the fallen prince seemed to struggle under the own weight of his body, as if even the most infinitesimal pain was a curse to his limbs. She then placed the cold rag across his forehead, his eyes opened quickly, and his free hand went to his forehead, resting on the cold rag.
"You should probably move to my guest room, I think you'd sleep better somewhere were you actually fit." Jane spoke, as her light brown eyes found his.
For just a moment she saw a familiar contemptuous glare in Loki's eyes, making Jane realize that the better he got, the Loki she'd come to know through the News and from his own brother would be the one she'd have to eventually deal with.
Which that thought in itself was enough to make her want to spoon feed him pure undiluted swine flu.
But the expression was gone as soon as it had appeared, he honestly looked defeated, his eyes were all his fierce power usually collect were barely open and a sickly grey.
He sat up slowly, groaning slightly as he became away of the injury to his side, he sat there as jane pulled a small silver key from her jeans pocket and undid the cuffs. She repeated the same procedure to lead him to the guest room as his trip to her couch. He leaned heavily on her once more and within a few minutes she found herself at the entry of the guest room.
The guest room, like most of Jane's home was sparsely furnished. She leaned over to help Loki onto the bed, but it seemed that the years past events had made Loki no more graceful than the time of his youth on Asgard. His long limbs, weak from soreness pulled Jane down with him.
She made a strangled gasp of panic, lying directing underneath him, her feet hanging off the bed.
"Loki.." Jane said, she repeated it in surprised embarrassment, after a few moments he lifted himself up onto his elbows and looked down.
She waited for a quippy clever comment or some creepy smirk that would make her skin want to crawl right off her body, but it didn't happen.
Strands of his black hair hung over her nose or tickling her cheek, Jane's eyes remained wide with shock; Loki's breath was against her lips, hot and ragged. Though most likely from sickness, than anything else. Jane tried to scoot out from underneath him, but his legs held heavy against the bed on and between her own.
"Loki, you need to move." She said with a surprisingly firm voice.
"Sif was jealous of you, you know." He mumbled, his nose an inch from her own now, Jane frowned confused slightly, but also still incredibly uncomfortable at still being pinned beneath the fallen Asgardian.
"Okay, Loki please move." She said pressing against his chest with her hands, at first he did not move but then it seemed to be enough; he rolled over to the middle of the bed.
Jane quickly got up and stepped back from the bed a lot, and quickly, he heart pounding for what reason she could not discern, nerves most likely, she'd just had an ex-tyrannical dictator from another planet with major daddy issues pin her between himself and a mattress, it was any father's worst nightmare.
Jane closed her eyes and calmed herself down, she walked back over and handcuffed on of his wrists to the bottom of the headboard, and pulled the heavy grey blanket over him. She knelt on the side of the bed and brushed the sticky hair from his forehead, and lifted his head to unstick the strands from his neck and then stepped away, she looked at him for another moment.
It seemed he had fallen asleep as soon as his back had hit the mattress, out like a light.
She then decided to go find some cold medicine and cough drops for him, for when he woke up and she also began to consider what she'd do with a healthy Loki in a few days, and that thought…it terrified her.