A/N: This was written for the Small Fandom Challenge over at hc_bingo on livejournal. The prompt was 'major illness'.

Enjoy.

"Travis, don't you DARE fucking-" The ground was slipping out from under him, darkness nipping at his ankles and lapping at his toes.

"What, Wes? Do the right thing? Stop you from MURDERING someone in cold blood?" He couldn't understand, could never understand.

"YES!" The ensuing silence was suffocating. The only noise was labored breathing, his own or Travis's, he didn't even known anymore. Somewhere in the small crevice of his mind that hadn't fallen prey to whatever had come over him, he vaguely realized that he had just admitted to having the intention of murdering another person.

A hand came down on his shoulder, sending waves of fear through the fabric of his suit, his shirt, down into his skin and then to his brain. The hand was infectious, spreading its horrid fear by gripping vulnerable flesh and bone and blood. Why was it hurting him?

Black spots infiltrated his vision, shrouding everything in static, when his head whipped towards the source of the hand, eyes wild and fearful. Wes tried to get away, had to get away from the hand and he stumbled on his own two feet in his haste to put distance between it and him.

"No, no, no. Don't INFECT- no, no." His hands were opening and closing uselessly, as if grabbing and pulling some imaginary object. His next step took him tumbling downward, ending up a tangle of limbs on the hardwood floor. The hand entered what was left of his dodgy sight and he felt his body lurch away from the sight before his mind had even registered the full implications of such a sight.

Suddenly, his own hand shot to his hip, scrabbling at the leather attached to his belt in search of the carefully contained metal it bound. The leather holster kept the gun concealed, it kept the gun out of reach from bad guys, but it also kept Wes's trembling fingers from breaching its barriers to the weapon beneath. For a moment.

The holster unclipped with a near silent, click, but the noise was effortlessly overshadowed by the terrified curse gasped out by his partner, somewhere in the godforsaken room.

Travis.

Wes breathed out a curse himself, pissed for having forgotten that his friend was in the room as well. Here Wes was (safe from the hand and only left to worry about the shrinking space beneath his feet), while Travis was being infected.

"Travis, Trav, can you, c-can you hear me?" His voice faltered, sounding weak to his own ears.

"Yeah, buddy. I'm right here, right in front of you." The words twisted and swirled in front of him, font an ugly, jagged sort with its edges frayed and fading in different areas. No, no, this couldn't be.

"It got you, didn't it? Shit. IT FUCKING got you!" Wes bellowed, scooting backward as more of the floor disappeared close to his feet, replaced by the growing, never-ending abyss.

"Nothing got me, man! I'm fine!" Desperation was not a tone Wes would ever readily associate with his arrogant, self-assured partner. Determination, yes. Persistence, yes. Desperation, hell no.

Something was pounding really close to him. Beating in time with his racing heart. Oh. The pounding was his heart. But it sounded...off. It sounded like it was malfunctioning, like a car with its check engine light flashing. It was definitely beating too quickly, but there was something else about it that was different.

Wes didn't have much time to consider the issue, however, because mere seconds later, the darkness closed in.

What had previously been nipping at his ankles and lapping at his toes was now smothering him in its embrace, coiling around him until all he could see was darkness and all he could feel was darkness. He briefly heard a voice call through the void before he was enveloped entirely.

"Stay with me!"

It took almost two days for Wes to open his eyes again, but to Travis it had seemed simultaneously like both two minutes and two years. Everything had happened so quickly, but his body was battle weary and his limbs trembled when he walked.

The first day was spent flushing the drugs out of his system; apparently it had been an impressive cocktail of hallucinogens and stimulants, which had been the main cause of the cardiac issues. They already had the suspect in custody (Travis had made DAMN sure of that), but Travis had simply handed the dickhead to a uniform, needing to be with his friend more than get credit for the collar.

It had happened so unexpectedly that Travis was still confused as to how everything had happened.

Because of an incident involving a certain public figure and an apparently highly flammable toupee, Captain Sutter had placed them on the beat for a week as punishment, which ended up being more punishing than the captain had intended. They had entered the run-down house on an Unknown Disturbance call, both knowing that these calls had the most potential for danger. They had split up upon entry (not the best idea, in hindsight) and had efficiently cleared the house, or so Travis thought. The perpetrator had, it seemed, been laying in wait in one of the rooms on the second floor. From the needle mark on Wes's neck, the doctors were able to determine that Wes had been ambushed from behind. He probably never even saw his attacker.

Then Wes had met up with Travis, and proceeded to freak the fuck out. He had been hallucinating, shouting, almost pulling his gun on him, and, finally, having a heart attack. The entire debacle had left Travis feeling nauseous. He kept thinking of all the mistakes he made on the call, and how his partner had been so afraid of him, of his hand (God knows why) that he had suffered a heart attack. Well, him and the cocktail of drugs. His point remained, though.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Travis in tow, Wes, in addition to being treated for his heart attack, had had his system thoroughly flushed. Travis had started his bedside vigil the moment he had been shown to Wes's room, never once leaving the general vicinity of said room.

The second day, they had sedated Wes. They had thrown complicated medical jargon around when he had asked for an explanation, and when he asked for it in layman's terms, the nurse had simply said, "It's better for him this way."

He wasn't a complete idiot, if she had refrained from using words like "myocardial" and "infarction" which he only had a general knowledge of from watching House, not an in-depth enough understanding of to follow, then he would have gotten more information than a toddler but less than a cardiac specialist.

Okay, maybe Travis was just a little pissed and taking it out by mentally berating everyone who so much as irked him. Who wouldn't be a little upset when their partner was currently laying in a sterile hospital bed and still unconscious?

"'v's..." Travis's head whipped upward, legs automatically standing out of his chair at the sound of Wes's first, raspy syllables in forty-eight hours.

"Wes? Open your eyes, Wes." Nothing. "Come on, you stubborn bastard." He muttered, leaning over the blonde, hands braced on either side of the bed. His eyes eagerly searched the face in front of him for any more indication that he was indeed awakening.

"N't a...st'bborn b'stard." The words were softer than a whisper, as if spoken to himself rather than Travis, but Travis didn't care. Wes was waking up and nothing could upset him right now.

"Yeah, ya are. But you're my stubborn bastard." He teased, grinning wildly when a brilliant blue eye peaked out from under its lid.

Wes's right hand twitched, prompting Travis to reach down and take it with his own, large fingers curling over smaller ones, mindful of the IV and other medical interventions cluttering the pale skin of his hand and wrist. Wes slowly raised an eyebrow dubiously at the motion, somehow able to appear judgmental even when lying vulnerable in a hospital bed. Travis just tightened his grip minutely, knowing that Wes will understand what he's saying without words, because they'd never get spoken aloud.

'I've been here the whole time. I've been watching over you. I'm not going to let you go. You will never understand how relieved I am to have you still.'

'I'm so, SO sorry.'

"D'nt own me." Wes ground out, throat burning with the effort. He squeezed Travis's hand back, which - thankfully - Travis understood. The brunette reached around the blonde, extending his arm as far as possible to reach the call button on the other side of the bed. The button lit up when he clicked it, notifying him that the message was received and that a nurse was coming their way.

When he settled back to how he had been standing, Wes gave him a pointed look.

"What?"

"Couldn't jus' walk 'round like a normal pers'n?"

"Sarcasm? Already? You've been awake less than five minutes, and you're already sassing me. After I saved your life, too." Wes's eyebrows furrowed. "Someone had to give you mouth-to-mouth. Sure as hell wasn't gonna let the perp do it."

Wes blinked once, twice. His cheeks flushed, pink coloring his too pale face. If he were feeling more up to, Travis was certain that Wes would be stomping around, shouting up a storm, not even noticing the amused grin plastered on Travis's face. As it was, Wes was too exhausted to do much else than mutter his retort under his breath.

"'Course you f'nd a way t' make savin' someone's life sexual." Wes rolled his eyes, but the motion sent a wave of nausea over him, forcing him to have to stifle a groan.

"It's a talent." Travis smirked, relieved to see the nurse at the entryway.

The nurse fluttered around Wes for a few minutes, administering something or other and checking his vitals before and after. Travis threw in a weak "His throat hurts," sometime during her flurry of activity, and she just gave him a look that clearly expressed how obvious a point that was to make before she continued on with what she had been doing. After about five minutes, she turned to address them both, glance flickering briefly to their still interlocked hands before she softened slightly.

"I just administered a low dose painkiller; just something to take the edge off really. I'll get some crushed ice for his throat - not much else can be done about that - and, other than that your boyfriend should be feeling back to normal soon." She ended with a smile before turning to leave.

Wes was left spluttering her wake, brain stuck on 'boyfriend' as he glanced between the nurse's retreating back and Travis's serious expression. "Honey, what's wrong?" Travis cooed, prompting Wes to give him a weak punch in the arm. Travis broke his stoic act in favor of letting out a laugh. It was so easy to get a rise out of Wes, so easy that it didn't even constitute as a challenge anymore.

"Babe, you make this too easy." Travis stifled a laugh at the blush that rose to his partner's cheek at the endearment.

The two lapsed into a companionable silence, both trying to process all the thoughts flooding them because of the last two days. Travis swallowed past a phantom obstruction in his throat, knowledge that he almost lost his best friend still overwhelming even with the man in question awake and talking. Wes seemed to sense the change in Travis, because he glanced up at him, eyes open, emotions visible as he rasped out another sentence.

"Th'nks for savin' me." The hair was poking up at various points on his head, making him look younger and certainly more vulnerable.

"I got your back, partner." Travis reached a hand up to ruffle Wes's hair.

Their hands didn't separate all day.

A/N: Exactly 2000 words! :D Hope you guys liked it! I know that I'm still in mourning for this amazing show, but I also know that I won't be forgetting about it any time soon.

Please review!