"You've had that cough all day. You really should see Manuela."

"It's just my allergies," Ashe insisted as he coughed again. But the next day he collapsed in a faint on the training grounds, into Petra's arms, and Yuri only found out when he discovered the pale freckled form lying motionless on a cot in the infirmary.

(Actually, Ashe just kept coughing and sneezing until Hubert told him to go to bed, and when Yuri found him he was taking a nap. But he was worried, could anyone blame him for thinking it was that much worse?)

Ashe insisted he'd be on his feet again. When Yuri protested, Ashe, stubborn ass that he was, sent him away. You'll get sick too, just let me rest, I'll be fine. So with a heavy heart, Yuri left. But he couldn't concentrate on anything, even Balthus's usual antics. He almost gave him some gambling money before Hapi threatened to sigh at both of them.

He skipped dinner that night to sit at Ashe's bedside. Marianne brought him a plate and he was able to eat most of it while Ashe slept. It was one of his and Ashe's mutual favorite dishes, but he was so worried it didn't taste like much, and even if Ashe did wake up, he'd said earlier his throat hurt too much to swallow so he couldn't eat the leftovers.

"You know people get colds all the time, right, Yuri-bird?" Hapi said, like someone who hadn't almost died of the plague as a child and sat by a relative's bedside watching them toss and turn and sweat through a fever, checking their palms or their handkerchief for blood every time they coughed.

It's not her fault she's been lucky, he chided himself, don't go getting cranky with her because you can't deal. He knew Hapi cared, but she was, well, Hapi. She didn't have the same baggage Yuri did with this sort of thing.

"Get some rest, will you? Otherwise you'll get sick and Freckles will be the one sitting by your bedside making a fuss," she said. Yuri didn't even bother to point out that thanks to his Crest he hadn't been sick since that one time he almost died of it.

(Other than allergies, and that wasn't sickness. It was just annoying and painful and he hoped someday Marianne would perfect the allergy medicine she was working on just for him.)

He barely got any sleep that night. It's just a cold. People get colds all the time. His mother said that, even now as her health got worse and worse. By some miracle she'd survived the war, but it was like he'd told Shez - every time he saw her could be the last.

(He often fantasized about scooping Ashe up and spiriting him to the Abyss where his mother lived so they could stay with her every moment until the end came. But even if the Empire didn't need them, his mother always made him leave. You have a life outside of me, Regulus, go live it.)

Ashe was much healthier than his mother, of course. This was the first time Yuri had ever seen him come down with anything, which was more than he could say for his mother, or himself before the old man gifted him with magical immortality and immunity. But they weren't the only people in his life. He'd known perfectly healthy people in the Abyss who came down with the sniffles one day and were dead within days. He'd heard of nobles who were perfectly fine die slow, painful deaths from consumption even when the best healers in the Kingdom spared nothing in trying to heal them.

How the plague knocked out thousands of people who were "just fine" before then, including the Queen of Faerghus.

It's just a cold, until it's not.

He tried not to think about Ashe getting paler and weaker, or coughing up blood until he collapsed. Ashe wasn't a believer, but if he were about to die, would he ask for Last Rites from the Southern Church because Lonato was worshipping there now?

Swallowing, Yuri patted Ashe's sweaty face.

"Please, stay with me. Don't fade away like they did." Like she will soon.

The next day, Yuri played the devoted boyfriend by bringing tea and broth and a device Constance had whipped up to help with the sinus pain. It worked, but Ashe still spent a good chunk of the day sleeping. He seemed more focused, listening as Yuri read from one of his saucier novels (even now he still couldn't believe his boyfriend had such tastes, and they'd been sharing a bed since the final months of the war with the Church).

Ashe fell asleep in the middle of a boring scene of Luna and Freya just talking. And yes, he was just sleeping, Yuri could see his chest rise and fall as he breathed.

But he remembered seeing his mother's chest rise and fall, her breathing ragged, her skin growing paler. He remembered leaving the room for a minute to make broth and hearing her cough like she couldn't stop, coming back to find her collapsed against the pillows and out of breath.

He remembered being the one coughing and burning up and barely able to lift a finger without pain coursing through his body while his mother wept and prayed to the Goddess. Even knowing that the old man had been the one to save his life, Yuri had always believed it was the Goddess who sent him to them.

"Ashe," he whispered, "I hate seeing you like this, you know? I'd really like it if you got better and stayed with me."

He was fighting back tears when Ashe woke up. Expecting either yet another it's a cold, people get them all the time or some cute snarky comment about there being something the Savage Mockingbird feared after all, he was surprised when Ashe only took his hand and smiled a little.

"I'll be okay."

Yuri and his mother had barely survived the plague. Ashe had lost both his parents to it, seen others die the same way. Of course he'd understand, did you really think otherwise?

Ashe wasn't like those people in the Abyss, or in Fhirdiad during the plague. There was no plague anymore, they had access to skilled healers and the best medicine possible. Ashe wasn't like his mother, for whom only even the best healers could only provide a temporary break from her symptoms.

You're stuck with me, Yuri, Ashe had said the night of their victory against the Church and Those Who Slither in the Dark, after hours of glad we're both alive sex. Ashe hadn't been hurt, but he'd been in a tight spot against some dark mages at one point and of course Yuri had panicked even as he shrugged off a nasty gash to the shoulder to reach Ashe and take out those mages in time.

Ashe was too stubborn to back off even when Yuri had been his grouchiest, calling him a self-righteous do-gooder and needling him about his past.

"I'll be okay," Ashe whispered again. He was too stubborn to let a stupid cold take him away. Yuri managed a tiny smile and squeezed the sweaty hand holding his.

"You better be."