AN: I don't own anything you recognize. I am not a doctor – just did some google-ing, so please forgive any medical inaccuracies. Warnings for language and descriptions of depression, eating disorders, panic attack, and illness/bodily fluids. Also angst.
One day he's suspiciously absent, and the next he's back, looking tired and sad and withdrawn. Travis doesn't question it, figures everyone's entitled to a bad day or two, and gets on with his day as usual. Wes says nothing unless directly spoken to, and when he does his answers are tetchy and clipped. A few of the other detectives seem affronted, but Travis doesn't mind – bad days and all.
The next day Wes is exactly the same.
Travis still passes it off as a chance bad day – figures that maybe Wes and Alex are fighting or something. Figures that it'll blow over and things will get back to normal. The fact is Wes has generally been an easy guy for Travis to get along with. He's a little obsessive compulsive, but Travis can deal with that. He also insists on strictly adhering to the rules at all times – but never rudely so. They've had their differences, but where it counts they've always been on the same page. Travis would even go so far as to say they're friends. He's been over to Alex and Wes's for dinner several times – Alex makes unreal chicken parmesan – and on the few occasions where Alex has actually found time away from being a lawyer to come to the precinct with something for Wes, food or coffee or what have you, she's always brought something for Travis too.
By the fifth day, Travis finally acknowledges that something is irrefutably wrong. However, when confronted Wes just brushes him off brusquely and returns to his paperwork, and proceeds to ignore Travis for the rest of the day.
Travis was too distracted by the shaking in Wes's hands to notice how his face completely shut down when Travis said Alex's name, asking Wes if they were fighting.
The days go by and the sadness in Wes's face never lets up. The circles under his eyes grow darker, his skin grows paler, and the hollows in his cheeks grow deeper, and Travis can feel a ball of worry take shape and grow in the pit of his stomach.
Wes refuses Travis every time he suggests that they go out for food, and barely picks at or completely turns down anything Travis might bring back for him. No matter when Travis gets to the precinct in the morning, Wes is always there, and no matter how late Travis leaves, Wes always stays behind. He's wearing a new suit every morning, so Travis figures he must be going home – he hopes he's been going home.
When he sees Wes spend two days in the same set of clothes, and then a third in the spare set he knows Wes brought in last, Travis decides that things have gone far enough. However, he gets nothing out of confronting Wes except for a shouting match that has the entire precinct staring, and ends in Wes storming off. Travis vaguely hopes that Wes has at least stormed off to go home, but when he returns about an hour later with a salad that he barely manages a quarter of before throwing out, Travis finds that he's had no such luck.
Wes is running himself into the ground, and Travis knows neither why nor what to do about it.
It isn't till almost three weeks in, when Wes has (inevitably, Travis thinks) come down with a cold and called in sick for a few days, that Travis gets the call.
He's sitting at his desk filling out a report (he really does do his paperwork, despite what Wes might say) when his phone rings. Quickly checking the caller ID and seeing Wes's home number, he puts it to his ear.
"Hey Wes, buddy, how're you doing?" There's silence at the other end of the line for a moment. "Wes?" Travis tries again.
"Um…" Alex's voice. "Uh… Travis, it's Alex." Oh. Travis wonders briefly why Alex would be calling him, and has a brief moment of fear that something might be seriously wrong. Wes did go home sick, after all – which is why "How's Wes?" is not high on his list of things he might have been expecting to hear, and he doesn't manage to get anything smarter than "What?" out.
"How's Wes?" Alex repeats again, her voice soft and tentative, almost like she's afraid to be asking.
"Um… he… he stayed home sick today, didn't you know?" Travis frowns. "Yesterday and the day before, too, Alex… why…?"
Why haven't you realized your husband's been home ill for the three days?
Wes didn't say anything about Alex going away for anything.
"Just... I… But otherwise, he's been okay?" Alex asks worriedly.
Okay? Travis pauses for a moment, thinking back on the past few weeks. Withdrawn, quiet, angry, sad, sullen, tired, thin… Wes has always been slim, but Travis is pretty sure that somewhere in the past few weeks his partner crossed the line into frail, downright breakable.
Broken.
No, okay is pretty much the last word he'd use to describe how Wes has been lately.
Alex takes Travis's silence for the admission that it is, and he thinks he hears her sniff on the other end of the line. There's a hitch in her voice. "Just… check on him, could you? Please, Travis, go check on him. I… I'm worried about him."
Travis has gathered that something is seriously wrong here, but he's still confused. "Alex… aren't you at home? This is your home phone. Where's Wes? Alex – "
She cuts him off, rattling off an address and room number, and it takes a moment for the location to register in Travis's mind, and when he does he freezes. "Alex… that's a hotel." Alex says nothing. "Alex… what the hell is going on?"
"Wes… Wes never told you?" She's definitely crying now, Travis can hear it in her voice, can hear her sniffles over the line.
"We… I… we're divorced, Travis."
And with that everything seems to click into place. The past three weeks suddenly make painful sense. Travis barely manages to choke out "I gotta go, Alex," before hanging up, grabbing his keys and heading outside to his bike.
When Travis reaches the hotel he takes a brief moment to flash his badge and demand a key card to Wes's room. With Wes in the mood he's been in lately – and with good reason, as Travis has just found out – he's highly doubtful that his partner's just going to let him in. Normally Travis would just kick down the door, but he thinks that maybe enough things in Wes's life have been broken lately. He'll do this the quiet way – like his partner would – just this once. Making his way up to the room, ignoring the do not disturb sign, Travis gives knocking a half-hearted chance before getting the expected lack of response, and quietly slipping the key card into the slot and opening the door.
Aside from a trash can filled to the brim with tissues that's been pulled up beside the bed the room is pristine. From the looks of things, everything has been put away, straightened to perfection.
Everything except for the rumpled covers covering Wes's thin form on the bed.
Wes is curled up, facing away from Travis, with the blankets pushed down to his waist. Travis cringes as he sees the defined outline of Wes's spine visible through his thin, sweaty t-shirt. "Wes?" he calls softly.
He gets no response. Slowly making his way over to the bed he tries again: "Wes, buddy? Wes!"
He still gets no response, so he puts his hand on his partner's shoulder and shakes it. Wes lets out a moan, but Travis is already rushing over to the other side of the bed to face him. Wes's face is pale and sweaty, his lips pursed tightly together in discomfort. Travis lays a hand on his forehead and winces at the heat he feels radiating from it. "Geeze, man…" Wes says nothing and Travis feels his worry grow. He shakes his partner's shoulder again, and Wes finally looks blearily up at him, eyes confused and fever-bright. His gaze focuses on Travis and then drifts sideways again as he closes his eyes.
"G'way."
Travis shakes his head. "Sorry, man. I can't do that. You're sick, bud, really sick, okay? I'm gonna get you to a doctor." He looks around the room, thinking of what to do. "Okay. Okay. Let's get you changed first, alright? Some nice, clean clothes will make you feel better, okay?" Nodding to himself, Travis digs around the room until he finds a clean t-shirt and sweats.
He tries not to think of how sad it makes him feel for Wes when he finds them folded in the hotel room's drawers – because who unpacks into a hotel?
Hauling his partner up into a sitting position, Travis peels his shirt over his head, suppressing a grimace at the sight of Wes's bare, thin torso – his almost concave stomach, his protruding collar bones and vertebrae. Wes barely moves as Travis undresses him, letting his head slump sleepily on Travis's shoulder.
Then he coughs. It's long and deep and painful sounding, and when Wes pulls away mumbling an apology Travis looks down at his own shoulder and sees a splatter of sputum on his jacket.
Bloody sputum.
And that's when he actually gets a good look at Wes's face and sees the purple tinge to his partner's lips.
Forget trying to find a doctor, they're going to the hospital.
Travis quickly finishes dressing Wes, pulling the shirt over his head and threading his limp arms through the sleeves, slipping on the sweats and tucking his partner's feet into some shoes. Standing up, and throwing out a hand to stop Wes from listing to the side, Travis looks around the room.
"I can't take you on my bike, bud, not with you like this… where're your car keys?"
Wes is utterly unhelpful, but Travis manages to spot them on the dresser and, grabbing them, makes his way back to Wes and hauls him up onto his feet, immediately pulling Wes's arm over his shoulder and putting his arm around his waist to keep him upright. Travis takes a deep breath and they start the long trek back down to the parking lot.
Finally, after the fifteen minutes of shuffling around it takes them to find Wes's car, they're on the road.
When they get to the hospital, Travis dumps Wes in a seat and goes to get the necessary forms to fill out before coming back. Wes is already falling back asleep, having slept in the car on the way there, and Travis nudges him upright before lowering himself into the seat next to him, and putting an arm around his partner, bringing him to rest against his side (the lady on Wes's other side had looked particularly unamused at having Wes looking like he was about to drool on her shoulder). When Wes shivers Travis tightens his arm around him, running a brisk hand up and down his arm, trying to rub some warmth into him. He'd left the soiled jacket in Wes's room, and he wishes he'd thought to grab one for Wes.
A few minutes later Wes seems to be asleep against Travis's side, so Travis turns back to the paperwork and starts filling it out.
Wesley Mitchell, male…
Address. Travis doesn't know what to do, and he really, really doesn't want to bother Wes with it – Wes is in enough pain already – so he just puts down Wes's… Alex's… the house's address, and hopes it's okay. When he gets to medical information he pauses.
"Hey Wes?" Travis nudges his partner gently. "Wes, buddy? Allergies – just penicillin, right? Wes. Wes! This is important, buddy." He sits back and puts a hand on Wes's shoulder, and uses his other to turn Wes's face towards him.
And that's when he realizes that Wes hasn't been sleeping – Wes has been crying silently. Travis sighs and puts the clipboard aside, pulling Wes into his arms. He rubs up and down Wes's back, hating the feeling of Wes's ribs under his hand.
"It'll be okay, Wes. Shhh. I'll get you through this, alright? It's gonna be okay."
"Alex…" is the anguished mumble. Travis holds Wes tighter.
"I know, buddy… I'm sorry. I wish you would have told me. You bottle in too much, you know that? Let me help you."
Wes's only response is to start sobbing in earnest, and Travis ignores the curious looks they're getting from the people around them and starts to rock back and forth slightly. Wes is shaking and sobbing and radiating heat like a furnace and his breath is hitching and then before Travis knows it he's hyperventilating, wheezing and gasping for breath and coughing that awful cough and Travis barely has the presence of mind to dart an arm out to the nearby table and grab a tissue for Wes to cough into. He feels panic rise in him as Wes continues to shiver and shudder and wheeze and sob and cough.
"Wes… Wes breathe with me, please, okay? In nice and slow, and out nice and slow. Wes!" But Wes doesn't seem able to catch his breath, and someone must have gone and called for help because orderlies are there, picking Wes up and loading him onto a gurney and wheeling him away, leaving Travis holding a sputum-covered tissue and staring at the retreating form of his partner, tears welling in his eyes.
Pneumonia.
That's what they tell Travis a few hours later. Pneumonia, and a fever of one hundred and four when he was brought in, delirious, dehydrated and severely underweight. They say they want to do a psych evaluation – has he been starving himself on purpose?
No, no, Travis doesn't think so. Wes just… loses his appetite when he's stressed or upset. Alex is usually there to…
Alex.
But they tell him that a few days in the hospital until he's breathing a little easier – less blue – until his fever's down, and he can be sent home with antibiotics to take and instructions to get his eating back on track and he should be okay.
Okay.
Travis looks at his partner lying curled up on his side in the hospital bed, tear tracks still visible from his last bout of crying and calling out for Alex in his delirium, thinks back on the miserable past few weeks and thinks that okay might be a bit of an overstatement.