Pairing: Germany/Prussia

Prompt: my nurse just came in to check my vitals and I told him to fight me from beneath a mountain pillows. He just moved my pillows and told me maybe later.

he just came in again and when I tried to tell him to fight me again I started coughing and I couldn't breathe and then then he just smiled and told he won't fight me because he knows I'd win Apparently I seduced him with my drool and terrible lungs because he wrote his number on a coffee from the giftshop under "fight me?"

Imagine your OTP

Fight Me

Having pneumonia sucked.

Actually, first Gilbert got the flu, which he blamed Francis for, because Francis had gotten the flu first, and had then passed it on to his friends Gilbert and Antonio, because that's just the type of awesome we're-all-in-this-together type of friend that Francis was.

Anyways, they got the antiviral medication, and Francis and Antonio both got better, the lucky bastards. While, for whatever reasons, Gilbert got pneumonia instead of getting better. Apparently his immune system was weaker, according to the doctors; but no, apparently it did not have anything to do with his albinism, but had he been feeling particularly stressed lately?

No, of course he wasn't stressed—what could possibly be stressful about his job teaching kids the Olympic sport of fencing? It was a dream job, truly, even if the kids were brats, and Francis and Antonio kept asking him to sub for some of their classes so they could go out with their dates, which was completely unfair, since Gilbert didn't have a date, and it meant they were spending more time with their dates than with the awesome him. He just hoped none of them had gotten any of the kids sick.

They were cute kids, and it was somewhat endearing how they referred to the self-proclaimed Bad Friends Trio as the Three Muskateers, even if it caused the three to argue about who was who, with Francis ending up as Porthos, Antonio as Aramis, leaving Gilbert as Athos. Of course, Gilbert and Antonio also complained, mostly for the sake of complaining, that it would mean they'd both be French, which was unthinkable, and Francis was way too smug and kept telling them about King Louis whatever-number of France, Gilbert didn't give a Sheiße.

And he was still mad at Francis for ending him up here, in this stupid hospital bed in this stupid white hospital room that he practically blended into, which also smelled cloyingly of antiseptic, and forget the risk of dying of viral pneumonia, Gilbert was going to die of boredom.

Or maybe he'd die of pneumonia first. He was feeling miserable, to put it lightly. He had a fever, a dry cough, a headache, muscle pains, and he felt weak. His breathlessness had been getting worse, his fever had been getting higher, his coughing had gotten worse and was hurting like hell and had started producing small amounts of mucus, and apparently his lips were blue from lack of oxygen, which didn't sound good, and he probably didn't look good. On top of the red eyes and sickly pale skin, he now had blue lips. Great. Just what he needed.

He'd originally been sent home with the antibiotics and the instructions to drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest and have someone else do household chores, no take any cough medicine without first consulting the doctor, and to control his fever with aspirin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or acetaminophen.

He lived alone in an apartment, though, and there wasn't anyone to force him to rest or drink plenty of fluids, and he'd convinced himself that he was fine—awesome, in fact—and he could still do chores. As long as he took the antibiotics, he'd be good as new in no time!

However, he'd been taking the antibiotics at home but wasn't getting better, and then his symptoms had gotten worse, and a concerned Francis and Antonio had hurried him to the hospital, where he was admitted.

Apparently he had viral pneumonia instead of bacterial pneumonia, which meant that antibiotics didn't do anything.

And apparently, since he had viral pneumonia, he was also at risk of getting bacterial pneumonia, which would make things worse to the point where his mental state may fall into confusion or delerium, which Gilbert did not want to happen. He didn't want to die from verdammt pneumonia, of all things, and he didn't want to lose his mental faculties to the point where he couldn't appreciate the hot male nurse that came in to check on him.

Because this guy was hot. Tall, blond, piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders and muscles that he must cultivate by spending every minute of his time not spent sleeping or eating or working as a nurse, at a gym working out. Nurses should not allowed to be so sexy. It simply wasn't fair. This guy would only see him at his worst, coughing and drooling and shaking with chills.

And Gilbert didn't even know this nurse's name, since he couldn't read the man's name tag without his glasses, because maybe a weak immune system wasn't a symptom of albinism, but poor eyesight was.

So basically, everything in Gilbert's life at the moment sucked.

Except for the sexy nurse. But the sexy nurse wasn't there, and that sucked. So therefore everything in Gilbert's life at the moment sucked.

Groaning loudly to make his misery known plainly to the empty hospital room, Gilbert buried further under the mountain of pillows on the hospital bed (those pillows had been hard-won: Gilbert had used every charm in his metaphysical toolbox to convince various members of the hospital staff to give him more pillows).

He shivered.

He clenched his eyes shut against the pain in his head, but the headache had been locked on the wrong side.

He coughed, which caused the sharp, stabbing chest pain to get worse.

At that point he just wanted to bury himself under the mountain of pillows and never come out.

Up until the moment the door opened, and a deep, baritone voice that made Gilbert shiver for reasons entirely unrelated to his illness said, "Gilbert, I need to check your vitals."

Gilbert was quick to poke his head up out of the pillows, grinning the brightest grin he could, which probably still looked like a grimace, as he watched the nurse walk over with some vitals-checking instruments or whatever.

"Fight me," Gilbert rasped, eyes challenging, watching intently the nurse's approach. He wasn't even entirely sure why he said it, only that he was suddenly very much in the mood to fight something.

"Maybe later," the nurse said, carefully moving the pillows away so he could check Gilbert's temperature and listen to his breathing and whatever else. Gilbert did not at all understand any of this medical stuff.

The nurse left for a moment to get something else, and when he came back, Gilbert jutted out his chin.

"Fight me," he rasped, only for the rasp to catch in his throat and start him coughing, doubling over and wheezing at the pain in his chest and gasping for air that was suddenly so, so hard to get.

Once the coughing fit subsided, the nurse just smiled. The smile lit up the room and Gilbert stared in wonderment.

"I'm not going to fight you because I know you'd win," the nurse said, in that deep, rumbling voice that held trace of a German accent. "I can tell you're a fighter. That pneumonia doesn't stand a chance."

And just like that, any thoughts of giving in to that feeling of wanting everything to end was banished from Gilbert's mind. He was going to kick this pneumonia's Arsch, if he had to do it with pure concentrated power of will.

Gilbert found it rather amusing that, before the nurse left, he went to the effort to replace the pillows exactly where they'd been before he'd moved them out of the way.

After that, Gilbert dozed off in much-needed recuperation sleep.

"Fight me?" Gilbert asked, every time the nurse came in to check on him.

"Maybe later," was the nurse's standard answer. But he smiled each time.

The urge to fight that Gilbert got from that smile was entirely unlike any other urge to fight he'd ever had.

That smile—that smile didn't make him want to fight against something. It made him want to fight for something.

The nurse was right. The pneumonia never stood a chance.

On the day Gilbert was finally discharged from the hospital, feeling a million times better and unable to stop grinning, the nurse smiled at him and handed him a coffee.

"Stay healthy, Gilbert," he said, and walked off, Gilbert staring after him with the sinking feeling of hopelessness curling in his stomach.

It wasn't until Gilbert was sitting shotgun Antonio's car as the Spaniard drove him back to his house (Antonio said that Francis didn't come because he didn't want to be murdered and was going to avoid him for a few more days, and Gilbert merely muttered that he wouldn't murder Francis, honestly, he'd only maim him a little bit—he might even let the Frenchman keep the use of one of his arms!) that Gilbert looked at the coffee cup in his hands and saw a phone number written under the words:

Fight me?

When Gilbert turned the cup, he saw that the nurse had signed his name as well.

Ludwig.

Gilbert's breath caught.

"What is it?" Antonio asked, glancing over at him in concern.

And then Gilbert burst out laughing, doubling over, breathless in a way that was much more pleasant than that from coughing, and Antonio asked, "What?!"

Straightening, Gilbert grinned, waving the empty cup of coffee before Antonio. "Apparently I seduced the nurse with my drool and terrible lungs, because he left me his number!"

"De verdad?" Antonio said, glancing at him.

"Ja!" Unable to stop grinning, Gilbert leaned back, brushing his fingers over the neat handwriting on the cup, chest swelling with hope. "Maybe I don't need to maim Francis after all!"

END.

AN: He'd still need to maim Francis if this story took place in the US. Our healthcare is so fucking expensive. Seriously, you pay thousands of dollars just to enter the emergency room. It's absurd.

Luckily this piece takes place... somewhere else... with a better healthcare system.