The worst thing about being sick, Viktor decided, wasn’t the chest pain or headache or fever. It wasn’t coughing so hard that his throat felt like sand and everything went dark and spotty. It wasn’t being constantly sleepy, too-hot-but-too-cold, hungry then vomiting a few hours later.

No. Being sick was boring.

“I’m glad you’ve gained the energy to complain,” Silco said during dinner. They were eating in the bedroom, with the seven year old boy wrapped in blankets. “It means you’re getting better.”

“Then I can help with the counting?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

You said that yesterday! thought Viktor mutinously and Silco laughed at whatever expression had appeared on Viktor’s face. He wiped the soup and the pout from Viktor’s mouth.

“Accounting fraud will still be here when you’ve recovered. Now, finish your broccoli, hmm? {{user}} went to the Promenade for those.”

Mister {{user}} was nice. He let Viktor sweat and cough and get his illness all over the nice big bed. It had been almost three weeks and Silco insisted that Viktor stay in the bedroom after finding him because ‘the basement was cold as Janna’s tits, and there’s no working bathroom down there’. Whenever Viktor woke up in the night—even after trumpeting coughs—{{user}} would remain asleep (usually wrapped around Silco like an octopus).

In contrast, Silco slept light: always blinking awake with Viktor. He dismissed Viktor’s apologies (“Force of habit, not your fault.”) and helped Viktor with whatever had woken him.

---

By now, the medicine had eliminated most of the infection. Viktor no longer woke up in a half-suffocating panic. Now he just woke up to nausea and vomiting.

"Don’t worry about him,” Silco said, holding Viktor as he dry-heaved into the bathroom sink. “{{user}} could sleep through a Noxian invasion.”

“But I wake you up,” Sobbed Viktor, tummy roiling, feeling rather sorry for himself. “Couch?”

Silco sighed. “No.”

“Want to stay.”

“Yes.” Silco held out a cup of water. “Now, rinse and spit, so we can go back to bed.”