Her muscles ache. Even the smallest of movements sends jolts of pain through her entire body. Elsa groans, curling up into a ball and tucking the thin blanket tighter around her body. Her skin is drenched in sweat, hot and feverish, yet she shivers. It's too cold and too hot at the same time. She's supposed to be resting, but there's no way to make herself relax. It's like her brain is wired directly to an electrical socket.
She must doze off at some point, however, for a knock on the door startles her awake sometime later.
"Hey." Jack carefully peers inside. "Can I come in?"
"Sure…" Elsa mumbles, voice raspy as she sluggishly sits up. Her arms wobble with the effort.
He brings a tray with a big steaming bowl of something and a tall glass of water. "Made you soup. Hope you like mushrooms."
She gathers her hair into a loose knot in the back of her head so it doesn't get in the way. Her eyes are heavy, and she tries to blink the sleep away. "You didn't have to bother."
"No bother at all." He adjusts the tray in front of her then sits on the edge of her bed. "How you feeling?"
She rubs small circles between her eyebrows slowly. "Like I was run over by a truck. And then it reversed. And ran me over again."
"Fun," he chuckles softly.
Jack reaches over and gently presses the back of his hand to her forehead for a moment, and she closes her eyes with a constricted sigh, the contact soothing against her clammy skin.
"Fever seems to be going down," he says, "so the medicine must be working."
She hums, feeling slightly unsettled as he pulls his hand back. The world felt a little less lonely when he was touching her. Maybe it's the fever talking, but she misses the proximity. Still, not stupid enough to let her bedridden hidden desires be noticed, she directs her full attention to the rich and warm homemade broth in the bowl and heartily digs in.
Jack leans forward, elbow resting on one knee and watches her eat like she fascinates him. "Anything else I can get you?"
"I'm good, thank you," she mumbles back between sips.
"Cool. Then I just have one more thing to do…" He shifts on the bed and his thigh touches hers. He stretches one arm and points his phone's camera at them. "Say cheese!"
She glares at him through the screen. "What the hell?"
He shrugs as he checks the freshly taken selfie. "Anna demanded regular checks on your improvement or we'd risk having her camping on the porch until you were on your feet again."
Elsa blinks, confusion etched across her face as her mushy brain has a hard time focusing. Her mouth opens slowly. "You called her."
"Texted would be more accurate, but yeah, we talked." Putting his phone away, he looks up at her with a sly smirk on his lips. "Why? Jealous?"
She dabs her lips with the napkin before saying, "I should remind you that my sister has been in a happy relationship for years."
"Yet here you are: jealous."
Elsa scoffs. "I thought I was the one supposed to be high on flu medicine."
Jack rolls his head back and laughs. "Alright. That's enough talking." He squeezes her knee before getting up. "Eat your soup and rest up."
"Aye aye, captain…" she says, eye hidden by a curtain of hair, the phantom of his touch making her skin tingle in a rather unsettling manner.
"Get better, or the dogs are gonna end up destroying all your tulips."
"There are no tulips in the garden."
"Well, the sentiment still stands." He stops with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at her. "House is too quiet without you sassing me around."
"Is that your way of saying you miss me?" she teases with an eyebrow quirked up.
His eyes droop with melancholy for the smallest fraction of time. "Pretty much. Get well soon, lady."
And before she has time to decipher his tone, he's waving and shutting the door behind him, leaving Elsa alone with a hurricane of unanswered questions and a slowly cooling-down big bowl of probably the yummiest soup she's ever tasted.