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When Viktor coughs, he tries to make it as little of everyone else’s problem as possible.
He knows he bothers people with his frequent fits. Hell, he bothers himself with this constant battle against his lungs, the feeling both heavy and light, only a matter of time before he loses control enough to cough again. If he’s lucky, he is able to excuse himself from the room before that happens, if he can feel it coming. Sometimes he feels it anyway, but his body cannot find the strength to exit.
At the lab, he knows it’s a distraction at best. In public, people keep their distance. At home with Jayce, well…
It’s been a long, exhausting week for the both of them, and Jayce falls asleep nearly the moment his head hits the pillow. The nasty twinge of jealously in Viktor’s gut takes root again, not for the first time, as he struggles in vain to find a position to rest that works for both his body and his breathing. Each time he moves, it’s a risk of jostling things too much—he can feel the pressure in his lungs starting to build, as they’ve been doing all week long. He’s wondered if he might be getting ill. He supposes it hardly matters.
Another shift, and the damp in his lungs needs an escape route, and will not take Viktor’s stubbornness for an answer anymore. He coughs as quietly as he can, close-mouthed into his pillow, silently begging the spasms to stop. And stop they do, if by sheer willpower alone. He lies there as a few minutes pass, breathing shallow and hot, until his body becomes desperate for more air, and he gasps sharply.
Jayce immediately jolts awake as Viktor sits upright, the feeling of drowning on land suddenly overriding his need to prevent Jayce from being disturbed.
“Viktor…?” Jayce asks blearily, before he takes a shuddering gasp, and the dam bursts.
Viktor coughs so deep, so damp, so breathlessly. Jayce moves to brace him immediately, seeing the swaying motion of his treacherous body.
“Hey hey hey, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He won’t say you’re okay. They both know that’s not true, not anymore.
Keeping a hand on his back, Jayce reaches across him for the nightstand, grabbing tissues, his inhaler, and a pulse ox. He hands Viktor the tissues, who takes them dazedly and clutches them to his face. The pulse ox goes on Viktor’s other hand.
89%.
A wheezing half gasp, before the coughs start anew.
88%.
Shit.
After a hit or five of his inhaler, some water that nearly comes right back up with renewed coughing, followed by the closest he’s come to passing out in a while—Viktor finally agrees that he needs the hospital, and oxygen. He can’t move without stars bursting in his vision, without the ringing in his ears deafening him. But Jayce is there the whole time. He takes him to the car, he wheels him in the door, he helps hold the oxygen mask on his face when it becomes too claustrophobic for him. He hold his hand all night from the chair beside him, before resting his head on Viktor’s bed, and falling asleep.
The persistent dampness in his chest remains. He holds it back, tries to soften it again, until he can’t. And he’s coughing, and alarms are blaring, Jayce is immediately out of his seat, and Viktor can’t see can’t see can’t see.
The next time he’s aware, Jayce is still there. Exhausted, but undoubtedly awake, undoubtedly because of him. Viktor groans lightly, or tries— it comes out more like a whistle from deep in his lungs.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Jayce whispers, shaking his head. His mop of hair is sticking out in all directions, likely due to all of the times he’s run his hands through it in the last however-long they’ve been here.
“Do what?” Viktor mouths without sound, before snapping his mouth shut, and coughing in a quick burst.
“That,” Jayce says, voice nearly a sob. “That, right there. You’re making yourself worse. And I hate it.”
“Don’t want…to dis—disturb,” Viktor gasps, absentmindedly rubbing one hand over his aching chest.
“I know that. And I wish you wouldn’t worry about that so much.”
“Can’t help it,” Viktor whispers, swallowing back a cough again. This time, because the pain of coughing again just might be the end of him.
Jayce runs a hand down his weary face. “Please just…wake me up next time, okay? I want to be awake for this. Just—please, I have to be. Do you understand?”
Viktor forces himself not to back down from Jayce’s desperate gaze, tears leaking from his eyes, as he begs Viktor to listen. To feel the gravity of what he’s saying.
Viktor already feels the gravity of it with every breath he takes.
But this is something new.
“I will…try,” he says, because it’s all he can promise right now, in this exact moment. “I will. I swear.”
He can see in Jayce’s eyes that he doesn’t believe him. But Jayce squeezes his hand a little tighter anyway, pulls the thin hospital blankets a little higher toward his chest, tangling in the telemetry leads. And he hopes.