Word Count: 628

He was going to die.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going to die, but he certainly felt worse than he’d ever felt in his entire life, and maybe eighteen years wasn’t such a long time to be alive, but he thought it was enough. He felt like s**t. Complete and utter s**t. And it didn’t look to be easing up any time soon.

Nothing sucked worse about being sick than being sick alone. He didn’t want to go home and infect his father, who probably really would die if he came down with this thing, which meant Paris had only two places to go—Ladon’s or Chris’s.

He’d chosen Chris’s because it had been closer at the time and he’d liked the idea of his boyfriend waiting on him hand and foot.

He’d completely forgotten that Chris had obligations, like school and work (which Paris had roped him into in the first place) and baseball and knightly patrols.

Which meant that Paris spent an awful lot of time by himself, moaning and groaning to the only two beings in the apartment who would listen, who merely looked back at him with sad eyes and wagging tails and soft, fluffy nuzzles to encourage some attention for themselves.

He had medicine to take every four to six hours (Paris, in his misery, decided that four hours was quite long enough), and water and orange juice, and saltines for a stomach that felt too uncomfortable for anything but blandness and salt. Chris had made him eat some toast before leaving for class that morning, and Paris had managed to drag himself out of bed long enough at lunchtime to warm up a bowl of chicken noodle soup (in the microwave, because he swore he couldn’t stand upright long enough to wait for it to heat on the stovetop), but after that it was bed and naps and more moaning and groaning and then outright whimpering because this sucked and he hated this and he didn’t want to die!

Yes, of course, he was being overdramatic, but when one was left to their own devices while dreadfully ill, and when that particular someone was already dramatic by nature, it stood to reason that he would be a bit overdramatic when his head felt awful and he could barely breathe.

Paris had checked his temperature only to see that—despite the medicine and the orange juice and all of his and Chris’s attempts to bring some sort of relief—he was getting worse, not better. The logical part of Paris’s brain told him it was likely that he’d get worse before he got better, but the illogical part of Paris’s brain wailed and raved that he was done for. There was no hope for him.

It was Sunday night, and he could do nothing more than curl up in bed with Sassy and Chris’s dog for company, staring at the television but not really watching the Oscars—even though there were glamorous people waltzing across the screen, and he really did enjoy watching glamorous people—because he was tired and maybe a little delirious, and he missed his boyfriend, but Chris was either playing a ballgame or patrolling the city streets or doing something other than sitting here with him and letting him alternatively whine about his present condition and extol the many, many virtues of one Mr. George Clooney who, as luck would have it, didn’t even win.

“Here’s to you, George,” Paris croaked to the television screen, and raised his glass of orange juice in a toast before taking a large swig to chase down two more pills. Then he set his cup aside and collapsed, boneless and drowning in despair, against the pillows.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “I hate my life.”