Work Text:
Alfred was probably going to die.
That was being melodramatic, he’s aware. It was also fully true. The recent pandemic sweeping through his lands had hit him, unsurprisingly, the hardest. Alfred felt vaguely like he shouldn’t even be conscious.
Everything felt vague– Sensations arriving in fits and starts, much like the sleep that had evaded his feeble grasp. Alfred didn’t really feel… like a person, so much as a walking center of disease.
The conference room was stuffy as hell, and not helping at all. Alfred had called out of everything but this, because he’d been expressly forbidden from calling out of the World Conference. Apparently, they wouldn’t reschedule for anybody (Alfred could see that, Ludwig (Germany) was a hardass), and nobody back home had thought that his cold was a big enough deal to miss it entirely.
So here he was. Wielding a box of tissues and a bag of extra-strength Hall’s with deadly efficiency, desperately pretending that America wasn’t about to either yarf up his last meal (three days ago) or pass out where he stood. About three people had asked if he was sick, two had insisted he stay back if he was, and two more had moved their seats as far away as they were comfortable with. He could see England pretending not to stare at him out of the corner of his eyes.
Arthur was always terrible at being subtle.
Alfred sneezed into a Kleenex and felt fresh tears gather at his incredibly irritated, tired eyes. The world spun and shapes blurred into each other, and he ducked his head further into the tissue to avoid anyone seeing. Alfred knew he wasn’t going to get away with the whole “being sick” thing… so it wasn’t his goal! His goal was to simply make it through this meeting, go home, and take enough Nyquil that not even tomorrow him would have to deal with it.
Why don’t countries get sick days?