The thermometer in her mouth started beeping. She lifted a hand to grab it, aware of all the extra effort the action suddenly seemed to take. 

... She hated being sick. She was normally good at avoiding it. 

102.7

@#$%.
 
With a groan, she shifted onto her side and cracked her window open a bit more. It was a careful balance between keeping her blankets on her legs and a breeze on her face, or she'd probably die. 

The coughing didn't help, either. What had started off as an annoying sniffle had transitioned into a full blown cough that kinda made her feel like she was suffocating. It had been five days of late nights studying, shooting down Xavier's attempts at various date ideas, and canceling plans with her dad and lil Bro... which she also hated. She had a final coming up and currently didn't even feel like she could concentrate enough to read anymore workbooks without developing a full blown migraine. 

Her phone chimed above her head, on the headboard attached to her bed-frame, and she sluggishly reached for it.

A billion texts assaulted her eyes, all of them from Xavier, most of them about soup. He'd made soup. Of course he had.

'Neat.' 

She responded back, not really thinking about what he was talking about or asking. Maybe if she agreed with him he'd shut up for a while and let her sleep. 

Another text pinged before she'd even set her phone back down. She swore, loudly, and opened it. 

'...Should i come over?'

'Sure. She typed back, pausing momentarily as a coughing fit hit her full force. 

Did he even know where she lived? She was pretty sure she hadn't ever told him. 

Hazily she tapped her address and dorm number in, and then slapped her phone back down. 

She wasn't sure how long it would take him to get there, or when he even planned on coming over, but she struggled herself up to go unlock her door anyway.

Then she flopped back into her bed, pulled her blanket up over her askew pajamas, and went back to sleep immediately. 

Elke was sick.

Yes, it was completely normal to be sick. People got sick. It was fine. So, when he found out she was sick... He asked if she wanted him to come over. You know. Take care of her.

She was busy studying. Okay, she liked to power through a cold. That was a thing he had now learned about her. Cool. Cool cool cool. The next day, he checked in.

Still not feeling well. Busy studying. Okay, you could be sick a few days. He'd spent the next day cleaning skyscraper windows. No bird man this time. He'd checked on her. No reply. Okay. He was annoying her. Dang. He couldn't just... Ignore it, right?

He waited another day. He tried again. She should be over a cold by now. Maybe a date? 3am reply. Still sick. What? First, it was 3am.

Oh... Oh god. She was lose track of time levels of sick?

He started making soup. Real ass soup. The sort of soup that heals from the soul to the body. Serious soup. Enough about the soup.

Now... he just needed to know where she lived. Because... After six months of dating, he still had no idea where she lived. Like... He knew she stayed in her dorms. She always just sort of came over when she wanted to see him. It sort of felt sad to think about it like that.

So he wouldn't. He would think that his girlfriend was sick enough to reveal her location, and thus, he needed to be there for her. After all, she'd texted him at 12am this time.

She was still time traveling. He flew across town with a crock pot full of panacea. Super hero cooking apron waving in the wind. He felt... really nervous standing outside of her dormroom door, crockpot in hand. Knocked. And waited.

And waited.

A Neighbor, tall man with glasses, poked his head out, and warned him that he was knocking on the demon of hallway 12's door. He kindly thanked him, and assured him he was in the right place.

He tried the door handle. It opened. Okay. "Elke... I'm coming in... I hope you're okay..." He walked in to a clean dorm with a very, very sick native in it.

Xavier's worried expression softened as he saw her... This was going to take a lot of soup. He plugged in the pot to keep it running at warm, and got to work setting up optimal well-making conditions.

By the time she woke, she would have a cool cloth on her forehead, and the back of her neck.

Elke hadn't intended to live alone. Way back when she had decided she wanted to do the school thing, after quite a bit of pestering from Saph, she'd chosen a shared dorm. Two small bedrooms split by a bathroom and a living area that bled into a small kitchen.

She'd started off with a roommate. A very annoying girl who liked to stay up late talking on her phone well into the wee hours of the morning. That had lasted exactly as long as it took Elke's patience to snap. Turns out installing a signal blocker just outside of your roommate's doorway could be considered "hostile", but Blondie had called her a psycho and left so... a win in her books!

The next girl who ended up living with her was pretty short-lived, too. She tried to bring a boy home and after one ill-advised comment about two girls living together, he left with a broken nose.

The third and final attempt had been been a boy. He'd was fine at first, but as time went on he got progressively messier. He came home one day after filling the shared sink with dirty dishes, to find all of the dishes gone. Elke was chewing on a piece of pemmican at the shared table. He'd found all of the dirty dishes in his bed.

It had been a year and no one else had been brave enough to try living with her again.

As such, she had moved a bit more into the rest of the apartment.

The walls in her room were half decorated with colorful artifacts of her culture. An old feathered headdress that she had used to wear as a kid, which was distinctly not Oneida, was still present and strung up in one corner of her room. She had her window decorated with an older, well-used Dancing shawl in place of curtains, and another carefully tacked up on a wall like art. Feathers, horns, a slew of different kinds of knives, and such littered the few shelves she had.

Her bed was pushed up against the window that overlooked the busy city below, with a small nightstand beside it. A full, but organized desk was tucked in the only empty corner with all of her school work and books, as well as her still open laptop on the last project she had been working on.

Her various projects had bled out into the living room, where a small loom was propped up by the couch, with an authentic woven blanket from the Rez draped over the cushions. Small round embroidery hoops were scattered across the coffee table, with an assortment of cups full of different colors and types of beads. She had been working on beaded animal patches at some point.

Her kitchen was the messiest part of the whole place. It was clear she had been up at some point and poking around, looking for something to eat and then giving up. No food was out, but she had raided her storage of dried foods.

The spare room was full of plastic boxes full of all sorts of other crafts, almost all of them related to the upcoming Powwow's and the gear she would need for the competitions.

The few costumes she had were hanging on a rack in one corner and stood in stark contrast to the color scheme and patterns she normally wore.

She was completely out when he came in. Didn't even hear him announce himself. She coughed a few times in her sleep and stirred, but only enough to yank her blanket up further as her fever addled body decided it was cold again.

When she finally woke up a few hours later it was too the feeling of damp rags on her. It took entirely too long for her to work through how they had gotten there.

"...-avier?" Ah, @#%&, her voice was giving out.

With a grunt, she pushed herself onto an elbow and knocked the wet rags off.

...What time was it? Hell, what day was it?

He was checking on the soup when she stirred, which was perfect timing. He'd just switched out the steaming water pot, and had switching out her cold rags up next on the to do list when he heard her lost voice call out.

"Hey."

He'd brought a tupperware container to scoop soup into. Within moments he'd brought it her way. "It's been stewing a few days. Should be just about perfect." He took a seat that he'd pulled up next to the bed, and smiled warmly.

"You still have a fever, so take it easy, okay?" He could already tell she'd been trying to operate normally, but the signs were always there that someone wasn't at 100%. "Do you take fever reducers? I brought some Ibuprophen if you want." Some people weren't a fan of even over the counter medications.

He didn't say anything else for fear of overwhelming her. It was hard enough to think with a fever, and she'd just woken up. Gently, he reached over to retrieve the cloths she'd pushed off, and go get her a cool glass of water in case she needed it.

He appeared. Oh good, she wasn't hallucinating.

His lips were also moving, but @#$& her if she could understand what he was saying. She registered exactly two words.

Soup and Ibprophen.

She nodded mutely, not even bothering to try and respond with her sore throat, and reached out for the Tupperware of soup. The soup was good. Didn't even have to taste like food. Just boiled sustenance that would sit fine in her stomach, hopefully.

She peeled the lid off and tipped it back, gulping greedily for a moment. She stopped herself before she could get full, just in case it disagreed with her stomach. Small doses.

"...prophen."

She set the Tupperware off to the side and flopped back into her bed, tucking herself under her covers just as the whole room started to spin.

"...How'd you get in." It came out as a raspy croak. She couldn't remember unlocking the door for him. She covered her head with her blanket a moment later to lock in a coughing fit and poked a hand out to reach for a nearly empty box of tissue.

He watched her carefully as she moved... Gosh, she really had to have a pretty bad fever. She was clearly disoriented. She took up the soup and had a little. Nodding as she spoke most of the word, he produced two little pills, handing them to her, and taking the soup in order to hand her the glass of water.

"The door wasn't locked. You didn't answer it, so I checked in on you." He'd wait to recieve the glass of water back after she was done with it before he stood and grabbed the thermometer from his bag.

A quick forehead scan would tell him her temp as of right now. When he turned around he saw her reaching for the tissues, and placed them closer to her to help out before scanning her.

The tall blonde would take a moment to sit and watch her before speaking up. "You're really sick, Elke... I'm going to stay and take care of you, okay?"

He'd already wiped his schedule for the next few days when he'd seen the state she was in. "We can get in contact with your teachers as well. You probably should stay and rest in best for a few days at least." He left out the potential need to take her to the hospital if it got too much worse. She didn't seem the type to like places like that.

The young man had been doing all sorts of internet searches to make sure she wasn't dying, and at what point they would need to head straight in to an urgent care at least.

Her temp had risen to a solid 103. She wrinkled her face at the beeping of the thermometer and attempted to bury herself deeper in her blankets.

He said something about staying. She blinked sleepily. Eh, whatever. What did she care if he loitered?

"Don't mess with my stuff or I'll @#$&in' stab you again." ... That sounded much less threatening with no voice.

He prattled on, stuff she barely had the energy to pay attention to. "I already informed everyone." She whispered and flopped a hand at his concern.

She started zoning back out, am still hanging off the side of the bed. Eventually she actually did fall back asleep, but not before snagging the sleeve of his shirt in her grip and... holding it. Just held on through snoozing.

She wouldn't remember it later and would have never admitted it out loud anyway, but having someone there was a bit of comfort.

103... The NSAID should help a bit. He would need to call the curses line for her. She threatened to stab him. Oh good, she wasn't too far off from her normal self.

"Don't push yourself. Relax. We have to break that fever." He placed a fresh, cool rag on behind her neck and turned to grab another when he felt a slight tug. Looking back, he smiled as he realized what it was.

Taking a seat, he stayed perfectly still for a while, not wanting to disturb her by moving too much. Taking her hand after god knows how long, he gently pulled his shirt free, and stepped away to dial the local nurses line.

At this point there wasn't much they could tell him other than monitor her temp, watch for certain more dangerous symptoms. He came back in to stir the soup and check on her. Sitting, he looked down to her, having run out of busy tasks. He just sort of... watched her. He was worried, sure, but it was also nice just to be here to take care of her.

She was always so strong. Now he could be strong for her, for a little bit. For now, she was resting. He took in the details of the room. As an American history buff, there was much for him to nerd out, here. The head dress didn't make any sense, but the rest of it was authentic, mostly home made.

Some in progress. She'd never mentioned she made all of her own gear for the Pow Wows. He would have to ask her more when she could form complete sentences. For now, he looked to her again, and reached down to grab her dangling hand, holding it gently.

She slept for a bit. A little less fitful, and then the fever broke. She didn't dream, which wasn't abnormal. She didn't dream a lot normally either.

Something touched her hand. She stirred, twitched. She didn't remember that Xavier was there at first and yanked her hand away after a moment. Elke was too tired to launch into a full-on attack of whoever it was though, so she just cracks an eye open and was ready to grouse out some smart comment when she spotted his big blonde head.

Oh. Right. It all sluggishly came back to her and she left a little bad about ripping her hand away like that.

Awkwardly, she slid it back over.

"...What time is it?" She managed to get out, but it hurt. A lot. Maybe not talking was on the menu until her throat wasn't all #$%#ed up anymore.

Water. She needed water. How long had it been since she'd drank anything? Elke started pushing herself up slowly. The rag Xavier had put on her slid off.

"...Water?"

He had a lot on his mind. She was frowning; the fever was still hitting her pretty hard for the first few hours. It made felt heavy to see her like this. She was always so fierce, he wouldn't have thought seeing her like this was possible. And here he was. Taking care of her.

A hand reached up to her forehead told him he temperature might be dropping finally. He used the scanner to get a read. 100.1... Better. He let out a relieved sigh, turning to get up and change out her cool rags and stir the soup before sitting back down to take her hand once more.

It wasn't long after that she awoke, causing him to start a bit when she suddenly yanked her hand away. "Oh- You're awake, sorry, I thought-" She grabbed his hand again. He smiled.

"It's 7... Am. Early morning." He'd been up all night, but it didn't show much on his face. He was just glad her fever had broken. He let go of her hand as she started to push herself up. "Careful... Don't push yourself."

He was already handing her her water. He'd gotten a fresh glass after she'd fallen asleep. He carefully grabbed the cloth that slipped off of her, placing it to the side.

"How are you feeling?" He stood up and walked over to the kitchenette. "Do you drink tea? I brought Chamomile Turmeric... It should soothe your throat a bit." If she was open to to it, he would have it done in just a couple of minutes.

She waved him off with as much of an annoyed expression as she could muster. "Don't mother me, Jesus."

Water appeared a moment after she'd asked for one and she took it, sipping at it until it was halfway gone.

"... Thanks."

Did she like having someone putter about worrying over her? Not really. She liked her independence too much. It wasn't horrible though, having him around. Different and slightly annoying, but... kinda nice all the same.

"Tea's fine."

She finished off her water and handed him back the empty cup, scooting herself back in her bed so that she was leaning against the window sill a bit. Being propped up felt better after sleeping for so long.

She cocooned herself in her blanket as he went off to make tea.

"... Never been this sick before. Don't like it. Feel like roadkill." She grumbled softly as he came back, leaving room for him on the edge of her bed in case he wanted to sit. She accepted the steaming cup from him and just held it under her nose or a while.

Xavier shied away a bit when she waved him off. Boundaries and all.

"No problem..." I'm here for you, Elke... He didn't say it. Things were hard to say around her. He nodded and went off to make tea.

It wasn't long before he was back with the fragrant blend of herbs in a small, hot mug. He handed it to her and had a seat again. "My mother was sick a lot... I helped take care of her. Guess I have some experience with this." It wasn't exactly the same, of course. Elke was going to be fine.


He smiled a little bit. "You're looking a lot better already... Maybe we can get you some soup after you are done with your tea."

He gave a nervous glance over to the corner of the bed, after realizing she'd left space for him, before looking at it for a long second, and slowly shifting over to it. "Was it this bad the whole time, or just last night?" Maybe he should have stopped by sooner.

She kinda grunted at him at first. "My mom was sick too. Probably a different kind though. She got mad at me whenever I helped her by dumping all her pills down the toilet."

The Native sipped at her tea, enjoying the warmth of it in her mouth and eventually in her belly. It was nice after a glass of cold water.

"Yeah, soup sounds good. Your's was good." Nothing too fancy. Just nice plain stock with all the flavors of the things he'd put in it. She hated soup when people tried to get fancy and added a bunch of extra spices.

She watched him, this giant of a boy, as he bashfully scooted closer to her.

.... Jesus @#$% why was that so adorable.

She ended up scowling at him on accident and covered it up by pulling the tea back to her mouth.

"I... dunno. I felt like I was fine. Like I had a cold or somethin' and then a fever hit me out of the blue and this damn cough kicked up."

He listened to her quietly, not passing judgement on her somewhat strange statement. He knew she wasn't against medication in general, she'd taken the NSAID, so it probaby had to do with something else. He just nodded at her statement, and sat with her.

He did, however, puff up with pride when she complimented his soup. "My mom always said it was bland, but the Chemo made it so she couldn't eat anything with too strong of a flavor profile... I could tell the broth lifted her spirits."

He totally missed her not so well hidden scowl, however, as he scooted closer. "Snuck up on you, huh? The bug going around this year is pretty rough... guess this is proof. The Nurses line said you'll need to be on bed rest for a while... I cleared my schedule and got my classwork in advance... Uhm... You know... In case you wanted me to.... stay?"

"It wasn't." She made eye contact. Or, as much eye contact as she could with red, puffy, itchy eyes. "Bland is tasteless. What you made just highlighted all the flavors that are naturally there." His mom could shove it, chemo or not.

She squinted at him as he went on about clearing his schedule and whatnot, and then ultimately popped the question... albeit in a roundabout way.

... Could he stay.

"Eh. Sure. Just don't mess with my stuff or be like... super annoying."

She cleared her throat or tried to. Talking was exasperating the pain and her voice kept giving out.

"Maybe I'll teach you how to make my usual sick foods at some point."

Finishing off the tea, she shuffled up with the empty cup in hand and made her way carefully into her kitchen.

She couldn't smell anything yet, but she knew the soup was in there.

As she passed by her desk she picked up a hairband along the way, so she could wind her hair up in a messy knot on the top of her head. It had been loose since she had really started feeling ill and if she left it down too long she'd end up with knots.

"If you want some cornbread it's in the fridge. Gotta fry it first though."