Warning: mentions of germs and sickness and general grossness
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Flu season. It comes around every year, infesting the hotel lobby with germs. Germs germs germs, the dirty kind, the kind that make you sick, the icky, gross kind of sick where you can't breathe and nose is all runny.
Despite being deceased for nearly a century (97 years, but who's counting?), James still had a body in death, though he can't die again, nothing can happen to his soul, he can still catch certain pesky illnesses. He had survived the Spanish Influenza in 1918, he had nearly gotten COVID-19 in 2020, and since then he has learned his lesson: beware of the sick, and wear a mask amongst the masses.
Since he knew of this simple solution to avoid sickness, he found there to be little to no excuse for catching a virus, especially in this day and age, with all of the vaccines and boosters and recommendations from the CDC, you'd have to be an idiot to still be sick.
He'd walk through the lobby of his hotel, past the bars, hearing the infected cough and wheeze, and he'd grimace in disgust at them. The least they could do was take their illness to their own homes.
That was until this morning, when he noticed a slight tickle in his throat that no amount of whiskey could satisfy. Strange, that liquor usually fixed all of his problems as quick as they came.
He was a man, he was certain, and a real one at that, which meant he was not to act childish over a small tickle in his throat. He had things to do, places to be and plenty of people to order around in a day that just couldn't wait. But soon, that tickle turned to a cough that he couldn't contain in him.
With each word he spoke, the threat of him coughing hung loosely in his throat, his lungs seemed to inflate at half mass, leaving a croaky wheeze in the absence of air in them. Along with his cough, he felt dizziness, headaches, and slight nausea.
He kept this all to himself, suffering in silence because he knew you knew how much he hated sick people, much more being sick, and he didn't want your pity. But that all was interrupted once you caught him taking a COVID test in your shared bathroom.
You had just returned to the hotel from a trip to the thrift store, something James rarely approved of, not understanding the appeal of buying things second hand when he could afford any luxury clothing you desired, when you noticed him in the bathroom.
Odd, since it was the middle of the day, he usually would be out and about the hotel by now. The door was open so you pushed it open a little further, him not taking any notice to you, and you spotted him struggling to set a 15 minute timer on his iPhone with the test kid splayed out in front of him.
