Work Text:
For the third night in a row, you woke up with nausea roiling your stomach and sweat covering your forehead.
You’d been like this for a year now. It had come on out of nowhere, and so slowly that you barely noticed it at first. You started to get random bouts of nausea throughout the day, seemingly with no reason, lasting a few hours before dissipating - but you would never actually throw up. You’d experience this nausea a few times a week, thinking nothing of it at first - you were generally a nervous person, so you’d put it down to ‘anxiety stomach’ and tried to carry on. But as the nausea got more and more frequent, interrupting both your day-to-day life and your sleeping, you knew it was something out of the ordinary. The worst thing was the unpredictability; you could go an entire month without feeling the slightest bit sick, but then the next week you could be up for several nights in a row, curled up and trying desperately to think about anything but throwing up.
You’d been put through every test your doctors could think of, but none of them had turned up any results. Bloods were normal, scans were normal, everything was annoying normal - except for the fact that your stomach randomly decided to rebel against you quite frequently.
Loki had been wonderful throughout the entire thing. You had worried yourself sick (or, sicker than you already were) thinking about what he would say when he found out. Surely he would get fed up of dealing with your weak and breakable Midgardian body. After all, he was a God; why would he have any desire to get tangled up in your untreatable mess? But he surprised you - as he so often did - by being so supportive it genuinely made you tear up sometimes. He would cool you down when the hot flushes made you worse, he would rub your belly, he would let you cry and fall asleep on you when the sleep deprivation made you clingy and whiny. He did all that and more, and he never once made you feel like you were a burden. He actually wanted to take care of you.
Trying your hardest not to wake him, you slipped out of the now overly-warm bed and made your way to the bathroom, clicking the light on and leaning heavily over the sink. Your face looked ghostly in the mirror. Sweat gleaned on your forehead and the bags on your eyes looked darker than ever. God, was this what Loki woke up next to every morning? You shuddered at the thought. The shudder turned into a full-body shiver, and you moaned low in your throat. This was undoubtedly the worst part of all this: feeling like you were about to puke up your guts, but knowing you wouldn’t be able to, knowing you’d be stuck in the dreaded limbo of ‘not sick enough to barf’ and ‘too sick to lay down’. Tears rushed unbidden to your eyes as you sank down on the floor next to the toilet. Why couldn’t you catch a fucking break?
As another wave of nausea hit you, you pressed your burning face to the cool porcelain in front of you, screwing your eyes shut and silently praying to every deity you could think of that this would go away soon. It was torture. You wanted to scream your throat raw, beg on your knees for this feeling to go away. But it wouldn’t help, and you knew it. Nothing would help.
A sob escaped your throat and brought an uncomfortable gag with it, forcing you to lean over the toilet and cough hopelessly into it, your hair balled into your fist and pulling it away from your face. Your hands were shaking, and you had to resist the urge to call out for Loki. You wanted him with you, comforting you with his kind words and his gentle touch, but it wouldn’t be fair to wake him up three nights in a row. The thought set you off crying quietly, curling further into yourself and pressing a hand against your mouth to muffle the worst of the sound. You couldn’t let Loki hear you cry. Not again. He deserved better.
The sound of the bathroom door creaking open made your heart sink into your stomach. Great. You’d woken him anyway, with your stupid crying. Was it really that difficult to shut up and deal with this shit yourself? Were you that much of a mess that you couldn’t handle a little nausea without your boyfriend?
“Oh, darling.” His voice was quiet and full of sympathy, and it pulled another painful sob from your chest. God, you wanted him to stay so badly. Hearing your soft cries, Loki dropped to his knees on the floor beside you, smoothing firm strokes up and down your back. “It’s okay, I’m here now. I’m right here.”
You retched loudly into the toilet, still nothing coming up, coughing and whimpering in equal measure as the roiling in your stomach reached an all time high. Loki’s hand reached out and unwrapped your hair from your fist, holding it away from your face as you moaned miserably. One hand still rested on your back, grounding you enough to hear Loki’s question.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Cause - nngh,” you swallowed a gag here, turning to look at Loki with stinging eyes. “Cause it’s the third time this week. I didn’t… I didn’t want to wake you again.”
“Love, how many times a week did I used to wake you up with my nightmares? Almost every night, wasn’t it? You’d sit up with me until the sun shone on us again, you would hold me and talk to me, comfort me. You never once tired of me, never once wished I would leave you to sleep and suffer alone. Why would I want to leave you when you need me, as I needed you?”
“That’s different!” You protested, turning your full body so it was facing him. “You- you were hurting, and scared, of course I wanted you to wake me up-”
“Are you not hurting?” Loki asked, no trace of teasing in his tone. “Are you not scared?”
You didn’t want to answer his questions. Of course you were. Your head was pounding, your stomach was cramping, your throat felt like it was on fire.And you were fucking terrified. You had no way to know if this would ever end. You could be stuck like this forever; nausea popping up unpredictably and ruining your life, stopping you from sleeping and eating, forcing you to stay inside for days on end until you felt well enough to leave. So yes, you were hurting and scared. But surely that didn’t compare with the things that Loki had been through.
As if he read your mind, Loki took your chin in his hand, forcing you to look him in the eyes. You barely contained a gasp at the worry and tenderness that lay in their depths. Then he spoke the words that you needed to hear.
“Your pain doesn’t have to be worse than somebody else’s to make you worthy of comfort, kitten.”
The bout of crying that came after that lasted almost ten solid minutes. You had stopped gagging a few minutes prior, so as the tears started up, Loki pulled you into his lap, hushing you quietly as you shook.
“You don’t have to do this alone. I’m here- I’ll always be here, you know that, no matter what.” Loki was aware that his words were making you cry harder, but he knew you needed to hear them. Needed to see that you weren’t going to lose him over something like this. “Shhh, you’re okay, we’re okay. Come on now, deep breaths, you can do it. I’ve got you, darling.” You stayed like that for a while, Loki swaying you both from side to side, your tears slowly subsiding to a hiccup or a heavy breath every now and again. The nausea had receded slightly, but it was still there, causing you to sigh heavily into the God’s shoulder.
“Are you still feeling ill?” You nodded, not trusting your voice yet. “That’s alright. Do you want to stay here, or do you want to try and lie down with me again? Either way I’ll stay with you, so it’s up to you.”
“I…” You cleared your throat, still sore from both the retching and the crying. “Can we try lying down?”
“Of course we can, angel. C’mon,” he urged you gently off of his lap, but before you could make to stand, he picked you up in his arms and carried you back to your shared bed. You blushed as your mind wandered to memories of the many other times Loki had gathered you in his arms and carried you to bed, for much less innocent activities than sleeping. You shook your head minutely to clear the thoughts; you were certainly not up to anything like that tonight. No, tonight you just needed Loki’s arms around you, and his reassuring words in your ear. He tucked you beneath the covers before switching off the light, moving to the other side of the bed and climbing in next to you.
“Do you need anything?” You hesitated long enough for Loki to know that you were holding out on him. “You need only ask, and it’s yours. Anything in the world.”
“Could you…” you blushed, looking away. Loki lifted your face up to his, as he had in the bathroom, and pressed his forehead against yours, nodding fractionally to encourage you to continue. “Could you rub my belly?”
“Anything the lady wants, the lady shall get.” You felt his cool hand slide under your pyjama shirt and start kneading firm circles into the skin covering your stomach. “Is this okay?” You shifted further into his touch, nodding and sighing as some of the pain and sickness started to fade under Loki’s hand.
“I love you, Loki,” you whispered, eyes slipping shut as you let three days’ worth of exhaustion pull you under. You didn’t hear as Loki gently kissed your forehead, tucking you into him and replying softly:
“I love you too, sweetheart.”