Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
•
In the last week before Lena leaves to join Harry on his promo tour, she gets either a horrible cold or the worst bout of summer allergies she can remember. Nose constantly stuffed up and/or dripping; her throat feels scratchy and tastes sour; her whole head feels clogged with pressure, and every morning, she's wiped out before the day even begins. But she has no fever, and a quick trip to urgent care informs her that she doesn't have strep throat, so she does her best not to slow down. There is a lot to get done before the trip, and she does it all while coughing profusely.
I can't wait to see you, she texts, her heart trilling.
I know, he writes back, you're all I can think about.
It takes her hours to fall asleep that night. She just lies in bed with those words running through her mind on repeat, making her feel like she has a fever.
When she wakes up, she realizes that she actually did. That she still does. That her throat feels more swollen and raw than before, and her head is pounding, and her chest is heavy, and her legs ache, and she can't get warm no matter how many blankets she's under.
She calls in sick hoping to sleep it off before her flight the next afternoon, but by late that night, she knows there's no way she's getting on that airplane. She has a fever of one hundred and two.
Wrapped in blankets and shivering in her bed, she sends Harry a voicemail, explaining the situation.
Not even an hour passes when he FaceTimes her, his eyelids hooded, hair crazy with bed head.
"Go to the doctor first thing in the morning," Harry tells his lover, voice deep and husky.
"Maybe it's just peaking," Lena offers.
"You shouldn't be feeling worse this late into a cold," he reasons. "Please go to the doctor, sugar."
"I will."
"None of that," he softens as her walls crumble and her composure comes undone. "Don't cry, love."
"I'm sorry," she blinks her tears away, "I just really fucking miss you, H."
"I'll see if Jeff can move things around."
By the end of the phone call, the very thought of getting out of bed makes her feel dizzy. She sets her phone aside and closes her eyes, letting sleep rush up to swallow her like a well reaching up, up, up around her as she drops through it.
Whenever she's sick, she just wishes she was in her hometown. Lying in her childhood bedroom, its walls papered in vintage fanzines, the pale yellow quilt her Mom made while she was pregnant with her pulled up tight around her chin. She wishes her Mom were bringing her soup and a thermometer, and checking that she was drinking water, keeping up on ibuprofen to lower her fever.
