He smiled a little bit; just a little more than that base level smile he almost always had on. "Thank you, Elke. I call it 'Feel Better Soup.'"

He may or may not have been giving her puppy dog eyes after asking if he could stay. As she gave in, he grinned and nodded as she asked him not to be super annoying. He wasn't sure what that meant, but hey, she'd said he could stay and take care of her!

Victory!

She offered to teach him how to make her usual sick foods. "Yes please! They say that comfort is important to a speedy recovery." He blinked as while he said that she started to climb out of bed.

"Oh, uhm, are you sure you shoul- Okay, well, lemme help." He offered her an arm to help her make her way into the kitchen "You're supposed to be on bed rest... You know you'll get better faster if you let yourself recover..." He said that, though he still helped her move around...

Stubborn people were... well, stubborn. It wasn't like she would just roll over and do nothing for a week. His wins would be in getting her to let him do as much as possible without her feeling like she was doing nothing.

Feel better soup

Bleck. "Oh... my god, you are the biggest dork."

His... hovering was the annoying thing she'd been concerned about. The Native leveled a look at him that was clearly unimpressed despite how tired she was. "...You're doing that annoying thing I told you not to do..." She waved off his concern again.

"I will rest. I'm not going to lay in bed until I'm covered in bedsores and completely immobile."

She helped herself to a bowl of soup, spooning it out with minimal trouble, and got him a bowl while she was at it.

"That thing you do. When you hover anxiously. It's @#$%ing obnoxious." Elke turned and pressed the half-full bowl at him, completely forgetting about spoons for the moment. "I survived 18 years on this planet without you, I will survive many more without you fliting about like I'm made of glass. If I need help, I'll ask."

She muttered something under her breath about how her dad had done that for a long time as well, as she lifted her own bowl to her lips and took a few small gulps.

Man, whisper yelling took a lot more energy than regular yelling.

He shrugged. "I was 13 when I named it. It would feel wrong to change it now."

He raised an eyebrow when she told him he was being annoying. He... was? He took a step back as she waved him off and blinked a few times as she passed him a bowl of soup.

Not that he thought of it, he hadn't really eaten a whole bunch, maybe fretting over her a little bit.

"Sorry? I'm just worried, I guess... You had a really bad fever just a handful of hours ago, Elke. If you do too much you'll spike again. You said you'd never been this sick before."

He leaned in a bit when she muttered, turning away at the first look the response got. "If you want, I can toast up the corn bread... The soup can make it softer?" It did sound good, and comfort and all...

Also, he was hoping to change the subject away from him being annoying.

"It's whatever. I'm better currently, enough to stretch before going back to bed, anyway." She swirled her bowl around a bit, then set it down in favor of grabbing the cornbread from the fridge.

"You can boil it, too. It'd probably taste good in the soup. Like dumplings." She didn't dwell on her previous remarks. She'd said what she felt she needed to say and that was that. Onto the next thing.

Plopping the cornbread onto the counter, she moved out of the way and let him take over. It had been his idea after all.

She was still too out of it to start to think about all of the other things she needed to do, still. Homework, papers, projects.... ugh. A whole ass bucket of beadwork she hadn't touched in like... a week.

She could feel a headache forming and felt the urge for another nap coming on.

"... Wanna help me with beadwork and watch tv after this?"

Relatively. He kept his mouth shut, though.

He raised an eyebrow at the thought of boiling cornbread, but quickly decided it was worth a shot. He jumped right to action as she set the cornbread down. His phone was his guide on this one, in case where was any trick to it.

Soon, they would have their boiled cornbread dumplings for their soup. He felt a little bit trapped here. Where she could say something and be done with it, he was trying to make her happy, so he... kept his distance?


One might seem him, being a big guy, was a big eater, but he ate very deliberately, and politely. "That's good!" Her cornbread was different than the typical americanized version. Thicker, and less grainy, and the kidney beans gave it a good texture change and flavor.

He saw her look around, and look a littly woozy, causing him to set his bowl to the side. "Oh, cool!- I mean...that sounds nice. I can get everything together for it... What do we need?" She looked like she might pass out if she tried to pull together all of the things they would need for beading herself.

Xavier looked about the room. He... didn't see a TV.... he also sort of wondered what Elke watched in her spare time. He also didn't own a TV, so he couldn't really say he watched anything at all. It took from his time doing pretty much everything else he did.

A palm went to her head and she sighed. Maybe the fever was coming back? Ugh.

"Uh... yeah, sure. The stuff on the table over there." She gestures at the coffee table full of jars and plastic boxes full of beads, and the basket of needles and various kinds of thread.

As she went to stand, slowly this time, she reached down to grab her bowl of soup and cornbread to take with her.

"I'll get the laptop ready."

She left him to gather up the project stuff and shuffled into her room again. Since there would be two of them now, she needed to make the bed a bit more comfortable for them. Since she had it pressed up against a wall and a window it was pretty easy. She rearranged her pillows a bit, pulled her blinds all the way open, and set her bowl on the window sill.

By the time he'd come in, she was set up in one corner with her blankets over her legs, and the laptop in her lap. She'd brought up view tube and had on a playlist of hundreds of cartoons she loved to watch. Old-time tube TV cartoons of cowboys and rabbits, hunters and space aliens. She was pretty simple with her entertainment, and if it got too distracting while she was beading she'd get frustrated. So.. cartoons it was.

She'd made space for him on the bed beside her, with ample room for all of the equipment they would need.

She was pushing herself too hard. Still, he felt like trying to stop her would just cause her to get all stubborn and do more to prove that she could, even though she really shouldn't.

He nodded when she pointed out the supplies, and he went to go gather them carefully.

His short gathering expedition ended in him returning to a rearranged room. So much for taking it easy. Still, he couldn't help but smile at the cozy set up, the cartoons, and the overall...

Niceness of it.

It was calm. It was a side of her he didn't know; they had always sort of been fighting something, working away at something, or sort of arguing about something.

He slid himself onto the bed and sort of... leaned in. You know, to watch the screen with her. She'd made the space for him, after all.

"Oh hey, my dad loves this cartoon..." There was a cat chasing a mouse with a hammer. He hit himself in the toe. Good times.

He never watched cartoons much as a child; he was too busy doing other things most of the time. Like now! He was beading. "Okay, so... show me what we are doing here..." He would take to it naturally, as he did pretty much any dexterous task. He had a good idea of some of the iconography, as well, being fascinated with American history. He'd been prepared to accept a full ride sports and academics scholarship to Harbert(That very prestigious college) to study such niche history.

He tried not to talk too much about anything that poked out to him, though he would listen to any explanation of anything she offered with healthy dose of fascination. It was all so neat to him! Most importantly, though... He would try and just... enjoy some quiet time with his girlfriend.

She didn't react to him leaning in. Didn't seem to mind enough that she didn't shift away or glare at him. She focused on flipping the blankets over his lap so that there was a smooth area between them for the stuff to sit.

She handed him one project she had been working on and picked up a different one, and whether or not he could guess that she hadn't handed him anything important was up to him.

"Yeah..." She already had a threaded needed in her hand and had snagged one of the small jars filled with blue glass beads. "I used to watch these all the time as a kid. They've just kinda grown on me."

Once she had all of her supplies, she turned her attention to him. It didn't take long to gather up all of the stuff he'd need or his small hoop of cloth and beadwork. His was of a half-finished bird, in blue and orange colors. He had a few pots of both round and flat beads, for the body and the wings. She was working on a mostly fished cuff for one of her dresses, and the project had clearly gotten more of her time than the other.

"You'll want three to four beads on your needle at first, starting here." She pointed with a finger where she had last left off. "Then, once you hit the middle you can add another bead. Don't go over six on a line, or it won't last as long with wear and tear."

She demonstrated this by using her needle to pick up a few beads of her own, choosing to stick with three beads since she was working on a rather intricate pattern. She knew that he knew how to sew, so she didn't bother telling him how to thread it on. She figured he'd watch her and pick it up from there if he still had questions.

After she got him started she lapsed into tired silence, half watching the cartoons as she worked. After a bit, she took a moment to stretch and sat the cloth in her lap.

"... I picked this all up way after my grandfather died. He had always been super into all of the traditional things, but I didn't care much when I was younger. Wasn't really until I started going to classes at the school that I took up an interest in all the things he'd tried to teach me."

She pointed once more at the bird he was working on, "Bluebirds were his favorite from the bird family. He said they brought along the spring and happiness and hope with them."

She launched into a few other short tales, while adding a few more lines of beading here and there on her own project.