salute ➳ 〚h.s.〛 〚a.u.〛

chapter 7 - irritating illnesses & lethal lessons

Piper was pretty sure she could cook an egg on her forehead right now, based on the heat coming off of her skin, but she found herself pulling on a bulky jumper to fight off the chills that were passing through her intermittently. Her body had decided to contract something, an infection, virus, bacteria – based on her headache, maybe all three – on the night when she was working a double shift. And in the spy world, there were no such thing as sick days.

There was a bottle of NyQuil calling her name from the medicine cabinet but she knew she couldn't take it. She was in charge of T branch the whole night and while nothing usually happened down there, it didn't mean that something couldn't. After all, she had been working the night shift the first time she had gotten Harry's call. She was just going to have to suck it up.

She'd taken the time to Google home remedies for the flu, which she was almost sure she had, but they had mostly said sleep which wasn't an option. She figured she was just going to have to stick it out. It didn't stop her from sitting on the floor of her bedroom and moping before she had to leave for work.

"There's a perfectly good chair just down the hall."

Piper nearly jumped right out of her skin at the sound of Harry's voice. When she glanced over her shoulder, he was leaning against her bedroom doorway, a little grin on his face that dimpled his right cheek. He had a bag of Chinese takeaway in one hand and Piper knew she must be ill if she hadn't smelled it the second he walked in the door. She could usually smell out Chinese takeaway like a sniffer dog.

"For fuck's sake," she snapped at Harry, her voice hoarse as her throat flared in pain, "wear a bell or something."

"Oh, petal," Harry said in a sympathetic voice as he crossed her bedroom, folding his long gangly legs beneath him as he sat down in front of her. "You sound terrible."

"Thanks for that," Piper bit out before breaking into a dry coughing fit that made her yelp. "Christ, my throat feels like it's been coated in acid."

"Dry cough," Harry murmured as he reached out a hand to curve over her forehead and then drop to cup the nape of her neck. "Not a good sign. You feel like you're about a thousand degrees. You shouldn't be wearing that jumper."

"S'cold," she whined as she pulled her hands into the sleeves and crossed her arms across her body for extra warmth.

"Poor thing," Harry commiserated, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead gently. "You should be in bed."

"Got to work tonight."

"You can't go to work like this, petal," Harry scolded half-heartedly as his green eyes surveyed every inch of her looking for further evidence of her rapid degeneration into illness. "It's only going to get worse from here on. You need rest and lots of fluids."

"I don't have a choice. I'm the only one who can cover T branch for the night and then Agent Lahiri is making me do my physical testing tomorrow."

"There is no way you can do physical testing," Harry said with a bark of laughter. "No way."

"I have to."

"No you don't," Harry insisted with more confidence than Piper thought he had earned. "I'm the one who ordered the physical tests. I'll call and get them postponed."

"What do you mean you ordered them?" Piper snapped, forced to stop to cough away the itch in her throat. "Why would you do that? Physical testing is the pits." Piper had done physical testing at the very end of her extensive training with MI6. It had been like the torturous icing on the cake. After a hell week of exhausting modules, they had to do a final culmination test – running, pull-ups, crunches, push-ups, 20-metre rushes. Basically, think of the worst of gym class from secondary school and that's it.