♞ (Bruce taking care of Loki since Bruce doesn't get sick)
Caring for each other while ill
Loki was curled up on the couch and shaking with fever. He didn’t remember stumbling here, but he was fading in and out of lucid thought and terrified, and he knew he must have been frightened enough to come here in the first place instead of crawling to Tony’s. Sure, Tony doted on him and would do nearly anything to help, but Bruce had wider medical knowledge. He needed the safety of trained supervision when he had little idea what was going on and could hardly form thoughts through his struggled breathing and heavy lethargy. Something felt really wrong; he could hardly function and everything felt too distressingly warm. The cold cloth on his forehead was heavenly, a fact he expressed with only a moan, and he uncurled just a little to allow Bruce to take his temperature. He was a truly miserable, ungrateful patient.
Bruce had popped a stack of blankets into the freezer and kept swapping them out one by one as they came to room temperature around Loki’s fevered form. it was a bit of a tug-of-war when Bruce brought the next one, having to wrest it from Loki’s snatching hands in order to tuck it around him rather than let the young mage bundle it all close to his chest. It helped, but wasn’t enough. Bruce gave him a strange-smelling mix to drink and, too weary to protest much, he merely gave it a suspicious glare and accepted it, making a show of considering it before desperation made him swallow it down. Clinging to a freezer pack like a child’s toy, eventually his body regulated itself and the fever broke.
He slept the rest of the afternoon and through the night, and was gone by morning.