Word Count: 1165

When Paris woke up to his alarm one morning with chills and random aches, he told himself it was because the heater wasn’t working properly and he’d put a lot of work in at the studio the day before. He rolled out of bed and ignored the heaviness in his head, texted “<3333333” to his boyfriend to make sure he was up for class, and then collected some clothes and dragged himself into the bathroom for a nice, hot shower.

It didn’t help.

By the time he got around to drying his hair, Paris realized his nose was running. Copiously. He grabbed some toilet paper to wipe it up, which left it a little sore and red, and when he took a moment to peer closer into the mirror, he noticed that his eyes looked a little glassy.

Panicking, he rummaged around under the sink until he managed to find the thermometer, hitting his head on the edge of the counter in his rush. Then he shoved the thermometer into his mouth and sat on the toilet to wait for it to beep, pulling it out once it did to stare at the tiny screen with an expression of horror and disbelief.

100.1

No, that had to be wrong. He didn’t get sick.

In his denial, Paris took his temperature again. He was even less pleased when his second try resulted in the same reading.

“s**t…” he muttered.

This couldn’t be happening. When was the last time he’d gotten sick? Years ago, wasn’t it? Excluding a few little colds here and there, but he hadn’t had a fever in years. He didn’t usually get sick. Sure, he’d had the usual childhood illnesses, but beyond that he was proud to say that he was a remarkably healthy individual. He’d never had pneumonia, he’d somehow avoided mono, and he rarely caught the flu.

This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t afford to get sick now. He had things to do. He had his dad’s store to help run, and <********, he had dance.

He couldn’t be getting sick.

Paris refused to believe it.

So he tossed the thermometer back under the counter without a care for where it landed, scrounged around for a package of Dayquil and popped two pills, swallowing them down with water from the sink. Once he was done getting ready, he followed his medication up with a trip to the kitchen, where he downed two glasses of orange juice in quick succession. He took his vitamins and ate breakfast—eggs and toast and a bowl of Special K Fruit & Yogurt.

“Problem?” his father asked over his bowl of cheerios.

Paris just rolled his eyes and tried to pretend as if he didn’t want to crawl right back into bed. “Shut up,” he said.

He made himself leave the house. Through sheer force of will he walked all the way to the bus stop, and only once considered texting or calling his boyfriend to whine for a ride. He managed to stay upright in the bus shelter, but held his coat more firmly around himself to try and ward off the chills. Once he was on the bus and on his way to the studio, he was pretty sure he’d be able to beat this thing before it even started. He got to the studio right on time, and went to change into more suitable clothing.

“You don’t look so great,” Ross, formerly the Nutcracker Prince and presently Prince Désiré, observed as they were warming up at the barre.

“Shut up. I’m gorgeous,” Paris insisted.

“I didn’t say you weren’t, just that you look a bit-”

“Don’t say it,” Paris interrupted him. “You’ll jinx me.”

“O-Okay. But don’t you think you should-”

“I think I should be dancing, so if you don’t mind, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Ross just gave him a funny look, but eventually relented and stopped trying to refer to Paris’s condition, which Paris continued to refuse to believe was deteriorating for the rest of the day.

Paris did his barre exercises, and he practiced and practiced and practiced, and even though a few people looked at him in concern, he thought he’d done pretty well considering he may not have been in tip-top shape. He drank plenty of water and downed one or two power bars, taking a couple more Dayquil he’d smuggled along with him when no one was looking.

He was okay. He was getting through it. He didn’t need rest and he wasn’t getting sick. Nope. No sir. He was as healthy as he’d ever been, and if he happened to look a little paler than usual… well, he was already pretty pale to begin with, so if anyone commented on it they just got a dirty look and a firm demand to shut the hell up.

Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, by the time he was done Paris couldn’t ignore the worse-than-usual fatigue, and he sat down on the floor to breathe and chug some water and shut his eyes for a little bit before dragging himself into the changing room to listlessly tug his street clothes back on.

Ross met him on the way out and took his bag for him. Paris, weak and bleary eyed, didn’t have the strength to refuse. He tried his best to glare, but he wasn’t sure it looked the way he intended it to, because Ross just snorted and dragged him toward his car.

“I’ll give you a ride home,” he offered.

“No,” Paris said. A bit of a whine was beginning to work its way into his voice now that he could no longer pretend as if something wasn’t dreadfully wrong with him. “Chris’s place. I don’t want Dad to… to…”

“To what?”

“To get sick,” Paris forced himself to finish.

This was awful. This was beyond awful. It was horrendously terrible.

Ross snorted and shook his head but did as he was instructed and drove the fifteen minutes to Chris’s apartment building.

Paris trudged in when he was dropped off, hardly able to manage a smile for the kind old doorman as he dragged his feet into the lobby. In the elevator, he leaned against one of the walls as it stopped on a few other floors before making it to the top, and he spent a couple of minutes outside Chris’s door, trying to find his keys in the depths of his purse.

Once he was inside, he tossed everything onto one of the couches, gave the dog an absentminded pet, and then slowly made his way up to the loft, where his boyfriend—currently absent and probably still in class—had left the bed unmade.

Paris just groaned to himself and found something comfortable to change into. Then he grabbed the bottle Nyquil in the bathroom, took a healthy swig, set it aside on the bedside table for later use, and collapsed face-first onto the mattress.

He was asleep ten minutes later.