Ankles and Awkwardness (Larry Stylinson)

Chapter Four - The Supermarket

"I'm dying," was the first thing Harry heard waking up at the weekend, and he too could feel it. The undeniable ache in his head, and the feeling that someone was pinching his sinus's tightly. Niall, who'd walked into his room wrapped in his duvet fell into bed beside Harry with his nose bright red and his eyes puffy. "I live here until I die." 

"Okay," Harry muttered closing his eyes against the very dull light that was still protesting against his eyes. It was probably only eight in the morning and he moved over in his bed to make more room for Niall rolling so he was right up against the wall.

When they'd got ill in their first year, Niall had moved into his dorm room then too, and It had become a kind of ritual if one of them wasn't well.  Harry slipped back to sleep and didn't wake up until much later. When he did wake up however it was to a hacking cough and he discovered his thumping head now had a companion with a burning throat that felt like he'd swallowed a load of drawing pins.

"Ugh," Harry groaned grabbing his head that was banging painfully from the coughing fit. Niall simply rolled over in the bed and sniffed loudly. He felt weak and horrible and he grabbed his phone to send a message to Perrie, Ashton and Jade seeing if one of them would bring them back any cold medicine.

As it turned out, Perrie and Ashton were ill too and poor Jade agreed to pick up a trolley load of medication and true to her word, filled the counter downstairs in pills, cough syrups, cough drops and enough soup to last a lifetime.

No one wanted to move and so they spent the weekend on the sofas downstairs wrapped up in blankets. Jade too finally succumbed to the illness and the five of them miserably watched films while coughing, sneezing and completely going overboard on the cough medicine.

When Harry woke up on Monday morning to his alarm, he threw his phone across the floor as everyone else in the room threw pillows at him and didn't bother heading into his lecture. In fact he was pretty sure he'd never be leaving the house again, he felt so terrible. 

"This Is it," Ashton said on Tuesday evening. "We're not getting better. We have the plague and we're going to die."

"It's the next apocalypse," Jade said before coughing terribly. Harry simply sniffed unhappily and wrapped his duvet over his head.

"Not even alcohol can cure this," Niall said, sounding even more Irish than ever with his nose blocked, Harry who had googled up all his symptoms was sure he had tonsillitis, glandular fever or tuberculosis.

"It's tuberculosis," He said, probably a little delirious from the cold medicine. "Or we've all got ebola."

"Oh my god," Niall said from under his blankets. "I'm too young and beautiful to die."

"Or it could actually be the plague, how is everyone's lymph nodes doing?" Harry questioned and he rubbed at his swollen and tired eyes.

"leave my nodes out of this," Ashton muttered into a tissue.

"What if it's meningitis?" Harry said continuing to scroll through his phone, "or-" Perrie took his phone from his hand and shoved it down the side of the sofa and refused to give it back to Harry. It was probably for the best though.

"I told you all it was serious, they'll have to quarantine us and we'll slowly starve to death." Jade muttered, her voice raw from coughing and she broke into more coughs.

"Stop being over dramatic." Perrie said getting up from the sofa. "I'm feeling better today than yesterday."

"She has the cure," Niall said pointing at her and Harry looked up at her, miserably she patted him on the head and walked into the kitchen.