The medicine was meant to make all of this easier. The new box of pills had made its way into his bathroom cabinet, sitting there with everything else he used to keep his migraines under control. But unlike those medications, he had to take the anti-epileptic drugs every day – a constant reminder of this latest complication.

The possible consequences of missing a dose kept him organised even as the ream of side-effects made it so tempting to just forget about them. The fatigue was almost constant, weighing him down impossibly at first but eventually fading somewhat into the background. It was still there though, leaving him wiped out at the end of a long day.

The doctors wanted to keep going with it, slowly increasing the dose in the hopes that it would start to control the frustratingly frequent seizures that he was struggling to deal with. But with each added dose, the tiredness only seemed to get worse. Stephen was dreading the day they decided to try a new one, having to slowly reduce his dose of the first and then start the process all over again. New side effects, same disruption to his life.

And then there were days like today. Days when everything came together in a perfect storm. He wanted to sleep but was almost too tired. He could feel the beginnings of pain settling in the back of his head. Today, it felt never ending.

He wasn't really paying attention to the TV, playing with the unfamiliar band on his left wrist. He didn't want to have the engraved piece of metal pressing against his skin, reminding him constantly of this recent diagnosis that he was struggling to accept. The carved words taunted him when he ran his finger over them.

Epilepsy

DOB: 04/04/1977

NHS: 485 593 3284

ICE: 07938 492 819

The striped band; red, purple and white; was arguably too cheerful for the information it held. Dec had pointed out, rightly, that it needed to be visible, to catch someone's eye if Stephen had a seizure around unfamiliar people. Still, Stephen didn't like knowing that he had to wear it. He didn't want it to be obvious when he was filming – to give people a chance of working out what was wrong with him.

The contact number was Ant's. Neither Ant nor Dec had looked confident at that the prospect of being the person responsible to answer first responders' questions in case of an emergency but Ant had been the one to offer in the end. Stephen knew they'd both tried to hide their reluctance too, that it came from a fear of messing up rather than the extra responsibility it gave them, but he still felt more like a burden than normal.

It fastened like a watchstrap, seemingly innocuous until you noticed that there was no timepiece, just the metal plate and that one word Stephen didn't want to think about. When he wasn't having a day like today, he fantasised over the most recent seizure he had being the last. Maybe the doctors had jumped to conclusions, giving him a diagnosis so quickly. Sure, he'd had at least two seizures in short succession and maybe his second EEG had come back with all the trademark signs of epilepsy but that didn't mean it was the case. And yeah, there had been other seizures since then but maybe...

Maybe he'd never have another seizure again.

Or maybe he'd have another one today. It certainly felt like he could, the warning signs hard to distinguish from the suggestions that he might be about to have a migraine but leaving him feeling particularly lethargic this afternoon.

Stephen blinked and concentrated on the TV screen, frowning when he noticed an advert break. It felt like time was slipping through his fingers again because he swore the show had been on a second earlier. He scraped a hand through his hair and tilted his head against the back of the sofa. His fingers were trembling in a way he wished he could ignore but knew he shouldn't. Then his head was feeling heavy out of nowhere, threatening to pull his entire body down until the ground swallowed him whole.

"F-F-F... F-Floor," he mumbled to himself as if the audible instruction would convince the rest of his body to move; he'd learnt the hard way a week earlier that it was best not to stay on the sofa. He lowered himself off the seat slowly, his arms shaking as they took his weight for the short amount of time it took to reach the ground. Already, he knew the sofa and coffee table were too close, shuffling across the carpet and snagging a cushion from the chair as he went. He was grateful of the carpeted floors but wanted some extra protection if he really did have a seizure.

He blinked and found himself lying with his head on the cushion, barely able to focus on the ceiling, tasting blood when he moved his tongue dryly around his mouth. His neck ached along with his arms and legs. Moving felt like a challenge he couldn't hope to overcome. It was too much for the time being so he let himself stare up at the ceiling blankly, reeling from the sudden jump in time. He wanted to lift his head, to find his phone and try to figure out how long it had been. His limbs hurt too much for that though, aching in a throbbing pattern that was frustratingly regular. He knew what that meant by now – what he thought of as a 'proper' seizure although he knew that wasn't the right terminology.

Increasingly, the doctors were starting to believe that the lapses in concentration that he'd experienced since the accident were another form of seizure. As much as they were frustrating when he was around other people, Stephen preferred them. They didn't hurt. He almost didn't realise they were happening.

A seizure like this was impossible to ignore. He was slowly starting to learn the terminology; the lapses in concentration were absence seizures and what had just happened was a tonic-clonic. One might precede the other, warning of what was to come. The TV jumping from show to advert break suggested that he had been absent minutes before ending up on the floor.

He huffed out a breath, about as close to being amused as he could manage when he felt so rough. It was almost easy to notice the pre-warnings after the fact. Hindsight was 20:20, after all. What he was currently quite bad at was noticing them beforehand. Today had been better, he had to admit. He'd noticed and got onto the floor. He hadn't fallen off the sofa in the middle of the seizure as his currently bruised left elbow reminded him of the time he had.

Despite that, despite this being a more successful seizure than the last few, Stephen felt no sense of accomplishment. Or, if it was there, it was buried beneath layers of fatigue and nausea that would take the rest of the day to fade completely. His head ached again and he shut his eyes with a tired sigh, resigning himself to staying on the floor for a little longer. Any hope of feeling 'normal' was rapidly going out the window. Nothing about this felt particularly normal.

(*~*)

Stephen had only been in the house for five minutes and Dec already felt like he was fighting an uphill battle. It was his intention to make things better but he wasn't sure how he was meant to do that when Stephen looked so tired before they'd even started talking – when every attempt Dec made to get close to the topic of epilepsy left him with an uncharacteristic frown on his face.

A cloud was hanging over him darkly. Dec didn't know how to start a conversation gently without pushing too hard and causing a storm. He wasn't used to seeing Stephen look angry, the deep furrow of his brow not suiting his features, looking out of place when he usually tended towards worry rather than frustration.

"When are y-you g-going to Aus-Australia?" Stephen asked, making a clear move to change the subject after Dec's latest attempt. He tapped his hands against the mug in front of him, looking at the cooling tea within it rather than at Dec.

"November twelfth," Dec replied, feeling uncomfortable now that the date was less than a month away. He and Ant didn't want to be on the other side of the world at the moment even if Stephen was going through a period of evidently wanting some space. Maybe that was why Dec couldn't grant that request right now; he felt like he had to be around at the moment, to make up for the fact that he wouldn't be for almost a month.

"Looking f-forward to it?" Stephen asked, unusually taking on the role of pushing the conversation along. Dec nodded half-heartedly but knew he had to reply when the younger man didn't look up to see the gesture.

"Suppose so," he replied with a shrug. Stephen did glance up now, raising his eyebrows in question. With his confusion, the frustration from earlier had faded somewhat. Dec knew he should have been glad about that but he didn't really want to explain himself.

"N-N... Nicer we-weather," Stephen pointed out with a grimace towards the window. It had been getting progressively darker for a couple of hours, the forecasted storm clearly on its way.

"Yeah, hopefully," Dec said half-heartedly before biting the bullet because Stephen's look of bewilderment hadn't gone anywhere. "It's just – a long way to be going right now. You're still getting used to everything and I know you don't like talking about it with us, never mind anyone else but... at least you do talk about it with us. We don't want you to be on your own."

Stephen's expression closed off unhappily again and he looked around Dec's kitchen with a sigh before swiftly shaking his head. "I'm f-fine."

"You're having seizures every week," Dec tried to keep the heat out of his voice, not wanting Stephen to find any reproach in his response.

"And I'm – I'm de-dealing with them," Stephen said flatly. "On m-my own."

"You could call," Dec pointed out quietly, going over old territory that Stephen had flinched away from before. "If either me or Ant are at home and you're at home, we're only ever 10 minutes away."

"I don't get t-ten min-minutes," Stephen retorted, his voice already clipped. There was a silent warning there, asking Dec to stop.

"I don't mean beforehand, necessarily," Dec ignored it and continued, "But if you want or need company afterwards, we could be there."

"I l-l-lie on the f-f-f... f-floor f-for twenty m-minutes and then I'm o-okay," Stephen said with a shake of his head. "What w-would you be – be able to do to m-make that b-better?"

Dec tried not to feel too hurt by the question. He could tell Stephen didn't mean it in a hurtful way even if his defensive tone did little to disprove that. Stephen was taking the diagnosis hard – he'd been settling into a routine between his stammer and the migraines but this had shot a hole in all of that. He seemed to be struggling to regulate how he felt, swinging from resignation to frustration before Dec could keep up with the change. He wondered if Stephen could keep up either, or if he was just being tugged from one extreme to the other without warning.

"We could sit with you," he suggested carefully, feeling his voice rise incredulously, "We could help get you somewhere more comfortable than the floor! I don't like the thought of you lying there on your own until you're able to move yourself."

"I'm n-not a b-baby!" Stephen argued back, pressing his fingers into the corners of his eyes and sighing again. "I can l-look after m-myself."

"I'm not saying you can't," Dec placated, "I'm just..."

"It s-sounds like y-you are," Stephen interjected bluntly. He closed his eyes, looking tired again. "We n-never talk about an-anything else." He looked back at Dec as if he really wanted him to understand. "I w-want to f-feel n-normal f-for once."

Recently, Dec had started to notice the way Stephen talked about normality. He didn't particularly like the obsession the younger man had with wholeheartedly believing he was completely out of place. He wanted to talk to Stephen about it but knew that now wasn't the time so he just kept filing these small instances in the back of his mind.

"If we're not going to be here for a month, it's hard not to worry, Stevie," he tried instead, wondering if some of his own vulnerability might calm Stephen's wavering temper. "Sometimes I feel like you don't let us help because you get in your own head and think we don't want to help. So, maybe I do bring it up too often but I just want to make sure you know that we do."

"You're m-my f-fr-friend," Stephen said emphatically, "N-Not s-some sort of c-carer."

"I'm not trying to be that," Dec replied wearily. He could feel his own temper fraying, defensiveness coming in an attempt to smother the worry that Stephen wouldn't accept.

"I sh-should g-go," Stephen said shortly, getting to his feet to make it clear that it wasn't a suggestion. Dec glanced out of the window and the sight mellowed his temper.

"It's about to tip it down," he said practically, "You're gonna walk home in that?"

Stephen kept walking towards the hallway without answering although his persistence did a pretty good job. Dec followed him, trying to push down a whisper of irritation.

"Stephen," he prompted, wanting an answer even if he knew it already. Stephen couldn't drive until he'd gone 6 months without a seizure and even if they managed to get the tonic-clonic ones under control, the absence seizures meant it was almost impossible that his licence would be reinstated.

"I'm going h-home," Stephen replied eventually, tugging his shoes on with a healthy dose of frustration.

"You don't have to deal with this by yourself," Dec tried one more time as he straightened up, half-turned towards the doorway. The angle gave Dec the perfect view of Stephen's tensing shoulders, a rigidity that betrayed his bad temper.

"M-Maybe I want to," he bit back, wheeling around one last time. "J-Just g-give m-me some s-space."

"Stephen!" Dec called frustratedly as the other man disappeared through the front door, closing it almost amusingly quietly when his mood suggested he would have preferred to slam it. His final words reminded Dec too much of their misunderstanding at Britain's Got Talent last year. He felt a similar discomfort now, hating when he was having an argument with Stephen. His brain still struggled with the concept of not being able to ask Stephen if he was okay; it threw him back to the accident and the feelings of helplessness that he just wanted to leave behind.

For a while, he was tempted to go after the younger man. If they weren't at risk of making a scene, he'd walk him all the way home, hoping that if he was annoying enough, Stephen would just break and let him help. But he knew Stephen would hate that and even if Dec was stubborn, he couldn't bring himself to make life any harder for the other man right now.

Instead, he walked back to the kitchen, sank into his seat and tried to plan how to get himself out of this situation before he was a twelve hour time difference away. The problem occupied him for some time until he was drawn out of his head by the sound of pounding rain outside. It took a moment for the significance of it to settle with him but as soon as it did, he was on his feet, phone in hand.

He'd warned Stephen not to walk home minutes before a storm was forecast. And now he had no idea where the younger man was.

(*~*)

The ringtone distracted Ant from the sudden rattle of rain against his window, dragging his attention from the rolling, black clouds in the sky and over to Dec's name. He smiled faintly, amused that the other man had to resort to calling because he didn't want to face the weather for the short run over the road.

"Hello," he greeted teasingly, "Didn't fancy popping over?"

"I messed up," Dec said, void of the humour and good-natured complaining Ant had expected.

"What do you mean?" he asked abruptly, frowning to himself when Dec's breath wavered anxiously. He softened his voice, instantly annoyed by the weather rather than amused by it. "Hey, Decs. What's wrong?"

"Stephen left my house about ten minutes ago," Dec said quietly. Ant could imagine him shutting his eyes and swallowing tightly before he continued. "We had – an argument? I don't know. He just seemed frustrated with everything and I thought I could calm him down..."

"He left before this started?" Ant interjected with a wince. He walked over to the window and glanced out at the storm again. The rain was bouncing down onto the ground, large puddles already swarming across the road. Not ten minutes earlier, the sky had been warning of a downpour, turning a foreboding shade of grey.

"I tried to get him to stay," Dec's tone shifted too close to panic for Ant's liking. "Have you seen the weather?! What if he's still out in it?"

"Was he walking home?" Ant asked, fighting to be the one to maintain a level head.

"I assume so," Dec mumbled, letting out another sigh that Ant wished didn't have to exist. Dec sounded mad at himself. "We weren't really talking by the time he left."

"Text him," Ant said patiently, "If we haven't heard from him in half an hour, we'll go out looking for him."

"Half an hour?" Dec echoed uncertainly.

"He might be at home and just not wanting to talk to anyone, Decs," Ant murmured soothingly, "Let's give him enough time to get over that and respond before we show up and get in his way. He's struggling, pet. You know how much he hates it sometimes when people are all over him and he doesn't have a chance to process what's happening."

"But what if he's still outside?" Dec pressed, a restless growl escaping under his breath. "Such an idiot."

Ant didn't have to work out who he was talking about – it was self-directed, a muttered comment aimed internally. "No, you're not."

"We're meant to be making this easier," Dec bit back, his voice clipped but still not aiming any of his hatred at Ant.

"That's what you were trying to do," Ant replied realistically. Unlike Dec, he'd taken the opposite approach with Stephen. Not by design; he'd just found himself at a loss for anything to say that might reassure him. He knew Stephen was having seizures because he'd see the younger man a couple of times a week and be able to catalogue a new bruise showing up on his arm. But he hesitated to ask about them, scared that the younger man would feel overly scrutinised or self-conscious if he realised Ant could work it out simply from the appearance of a mark on his skin. Ant was scared of driving him into wearing long-sleeves permanently, shaming him into keeping things hidden.

"Thirty minutes?" Dec asked again, sounding as if he was reluctantly coming round to the idea.

"Thirty," Ant repeated, nodding to himself to reinforce the point. "We give him his space and then we do something about it if he hasn't got back to you."

Dec hummed in agreement, the sound dripping with doubt although he didn't vocalise it. Ant didn't like his own plan particularly, still staring out at the road and wondering how long it would take to be soaked through to the bone if Stephen really was outside. Part of him itched to go looking already but the thought of an uncharacteristically angry Stephen answering the door and frowning in that way that showed they had misjudged the best way to take care of him put him off for the time being.

He didn't want to get anything wrong with Stephen at the moment, not when the universe was hellbent on making everything difficult. But this felt like a coin toss; to leave the house or to stay and wait. Ant hoped it was a fair coin but given their track record of luck recently, he worried that both decisions could be wrong this time.