Chapter Text
It’s Tuesday. Just a normal, average Tuesday… well as normal and average as a Tuesday could be when you’re practicing for the quarter-finals of Strictly Come Dancing. Lewis was ready at just gone six in the morning, as he often was, curls combed back, simple t-shirt and cozy joggers on, fully prepared to wear his Cuban heels at every given opportunity, and yet... something was ever so slightly off.
Week eleven always does that – wraps itself in routine so tightly that the exhaustion underneath almost feels orderly. The corridors of their rehearsal building smell like sweat and wood polish and stale coffee. Everyone moves slower now. No one says it out loud, but they all know that this is the stretch that breaks you if you’re going to break at all.
Lewis feels it in his bones.
The gym is booked for the practically the whole day, a wide space with sprung wooden floors and high windows that let in pale early-December light. It echoes when they move, every step and clap bouncing back at them half a second later. Katya likes it. She says it makes people listen to themselves properly.
They’re rehearsing their salsa to Dance at the Gym from West Side Story. It’s sharp and aggressive and playful all at once – angles instead of softness, tension instead of glamour. Katya had drilled that into him yesterday.
“West Side Story is not sexy,” she’d said flatly. “It is territorial. It is violence wearing rhythm.” She’d insisted he needed to be more confident – to be able to lead with no hesitation, no emotion but that of their characters.
Lewis had laughed at that. He doesn’t laugh today.
They’ve been running it since seven. Again. And again. And again. Sweat soaks into the collar of his t-shirt, damp enough that it sticks to him unpleasantly when he turns. His calves feel like they’re vibrating, a low hum that won’t settle. Every time he pauses, even just to catch breath, the room tilts slightly, as if the floor is considering becoming something else.
“You are late on the syncopation,” Katya says in her usual no-nonsense way, tapping her palms together to enunciate her point, “you’re thinking instead of reacting.”
“I know,” Lewis pants. He’s more tired than usual, his body slow and lethargic, like a lagging computer. He wipes his face with his sleeve and tries to grin. “My brain’s just… buffering.”
Katya snorts. “Then stop opening tabs.”
They run it yet again.
The music starts, tinny and metallic through the speaker, brassy, bright and relentless. Lewis launches into it on muscle memory alone – hips snapping, feet skimming, shoulders sharp. He knows the steps. He knows them so well they live somewhere beneath conscious thought, which is usually comforting.
Today, it isn’t.
Something is wrong.
It doesn’t announce itself dramatically. There’s no pain, no sudden blackout. Just a sense of narrowing, like someone slowly turning down the edges of the world, bit by bit. The sound of the music stretches thin, warping, as if heard through water. His vision sparkles faintly, tiny flecks of light dancing at the corners, like flies buzzing around in his peripherals.
He misses a step.
Katya notices immediately. She always does.
“Lewis,” she snaps, clapping once. “Stop.”
He does, chest heaving. He puts his hands on his thighs and bends forward slightly, trying to breathe, trying to shake the heaviness out of his head. His head feels thick, full of cotton, it’s near impossible to even form coherent thoughts.
“You okay?” she asks. Not soft, not particularly concerned, just precise. She wants him to say yes so that they can continue, as is so very Katya of her. It’s not that she means to be insensitive, she just doesn’t get emotions too well.
“Yeah,” he says automatically, “just tired.”
The word feels inadequate even as it leaves his mouth.
The room chaperone – Maggie, blonde and middle-aged with sensible trainers and a bright green lanyard always twisted around her fingers – watches him from her fold-up plastic chair by the wall. She’s been doing this for long enough to spot the difference between normal Strictly week eleven tired, and something else. Her brows knit together.
“You want five?” she offers, smiling cautiously towards the couple.
Lewis straightens, waves her off. “No, no, I’m fine. Let’s just – one more run.”
Katya studies him for a beat longer than usual. Her head tilts a fraction, eyes sharp and assessing, like she’s running through data only she can see.
“Then focus,” she says. “Because right now you are not in your body.”
He nods. He always does what Katya says, eventually. He positions himself again, shakes out his arms, rolls his neck. The dizziness eases just enough that he convinces himself it’s nothing.
The music starts.
It’s somehow tinnier than before.
He gets through the opening section. The claps. The turns. The quick directional changes. His footwork feels slightly delayed, like his legs are responding half a second after his brain sends the instruction, but it’s subtle. Probably invisible. Hopefully invisible.
Then the warning hits properly.
There’s a strange rushing sensation behind his ears, a roar like wind through a tunnel. His stomach drops hard, not nauseous exactly, but hollow, as if gravity has briefly increased. He recognises it now, as he thinks finally, I need to sit down.
He doesn’t get the chance.
His body locks.
It’s abrupt and terrifying – every single muscle in his body seizing all at once, his posture frozen mid-movement. Katya has just enough time to register the wrongness of it before Lewis’s knees buckle.
He goes down hard.
The sound of his head hitting the wooden floor is sickening, a dull crack that echoes around the gym. Maggie is already moving before his body fully lands, abandoning her chair, shrieking after him, “Lewis!”, despite knowing he’s not going to respond.
Lewis’ back arches violently. His arms jerk inwards, fists clenched so tight his knuckles blanch. His jaw tightens, teeth grinding, and a raw, strained sound tears out of his throat – something between a groan and a gasp, wholly involuntary. He’s posturing violently, his entire body firm yet broken, like a wire animal underfoot.
“Oh my God-” Maggie drops to her knees beside him, heart pounding, training kicking in through the panic. This is the first medical incident she’s had to deal with this year, “Lewis, love, it’s okay, you’re okay.” She knows he probably can’t hear her, but in a way, she’s trying to reassure herself that everything’s going to be okay, that Lewis hasn’t just smashed his head into the hard gymnasium floor again.
She slides her folded hoodie under his head instinctively, cushioning it against the unforgiving floor, angling his body just enough to stop him smashing his skull again as the convulsions begin in earnest. His whole frame shakes now, uncontrollable, muscles contracting and releasing in brutal waves. He looks possessed, totally alien in his usually confident body.
Katya stands a few feet away.
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t run. She just… freezes.
Her face drains of colour, eyes locked on Lewis’s violently moving body. Her hands hang uselessly at her sides, fingers twitching as if she wants to grab him, help him, do something – but her feet won’t move. There’s too much information at once. Too many variables. Her brain stalls out in the gap between observation and action.
“What?” She starts, voice flat, brittle. “Maggie? What do we-”
“Katya!” Maggie barks back, not looking at her. “Time it. Now.”
Katya blinks. Once. Twice. Then she fumbles for her phone, opening the stopwatch and pressing her shaking fingers to the button. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Timing.”
Lewis’s breathing is ragged, irregular, each inhale a harsh rasp. Froth gathers at the corner of his mouth. His hips jerk suddenly, a final violent contraction, and Maggie notices, silently acknowledging, when warmth spreads beneath him.
She pretends not to.
She keeps her focus exactly where it needs to be – on his head, on the rhythm of his convulsions, on counting in her head despite the adrenaline roaring through her veins. She blocks out the smell, the vulnerability, the awful intimacy of witnessing a body completely out of its owner’s control.
“You’re doing great, sweetheart,” she murmurs, even though Lewis can’t hear her, “just let it happen. We’ve got you.”
Katya swallows hard.
“This is… this is a seizure,” she says aloud, more to herself than anyone else. Stating facts. Naming things helps her think, “he’s having a seizure.”
“Yes,” Maggie says tightly. “Which is why I need you to call the medic. Now, Katya.”
Katya doesn’t move.
She’s still watching Lewis, eyes tracking every violent jerk of his limbs, every grimace that contorts his face, every wonky hitch of his breath. She sees the puddle seeping out beneath him, smells the strong scent of urine, the faint aroma of blood. Something deep and unpleasant coils in her chest – fear, yes, but also something like guilt, or frustration. She was pushing him. She was always pushing him.
“Katya!” Maggie raises her voice now, sharp with urgency. “Medic. Now.”
That cuts through.
Katya spins on her heel and sprints for the door, glossy ponytail whipping behind her. She yanks it open hard enough that it slams into the wall, shouting down the corridor without slowing.
“MEDIC! NOW! SEIZURE IN GYM TWO!”
She’s back almost immediately, breathless, hovering awkwardly at Maggie’s shoulder like she wants to help but doesn’t know how to do so without making it worse.
“How long?” she asks.
“Just over a minute,” Maggie replies. She’s looking at Katya’s phone screen on the floor next to her. Katya knows that; Katya put it there – she could’ve looked herself, and yet everything was turned upside down and on its side too much for common sense to prevail. Maggie’s arms ache from holding Lewis steady, from protecting his head as his body continues to fight itself. “Still going.”
Lewis’ groans deepen, strained and animal, chest heaving against the floor. His face is flushed a frightening red, veins standing out sharply at his temples.
Katya clenches her jaw.
“He hit his head,” she says. “Hard.”
“I know.”
“If it goes over five minutes-”
“I know,” Maggie snaps, then softens, “I know. Just… just stay here. Don’t touch him unless I say.”
Katya nods, stiffly. She rocks slightly on her heels, hands flexing and unflexing at her sides. She hates this – hates not being able to fix it, hates the uselessness of observation without action.
Two minutes.
Two and a half minutes.
Finally, mercifully, the convulsions begin to slow.
Lewis’s movements lose their violence, jerks turning sluggish, uneven. His breathing evens out, though it’s still clumsy, laboured. His body goes slack all at once, like a marionette puppet with its strings cut, limbs limp, heavy and unresponsive.
The silence afterward is almost as horrible as the seizure itself.
Maggie exhales shakily. “Okay,” she murmurs, “okay, that’s done.”
She gently rolls Lewis onto his side, careful of his neck, keeping his airway clear. Her hand hovers over his wrist, checking his pulse out of muscle memory, despite being able to hear the rattle of his lungs. His face is pale now, skin clammy with sweat. His eyes flutter weakly beneath closed lids, like a man possessed, unfocused.
Katya steps closer at last, kneels opposite Maggie.
“He’s post-ictal,” she says quietly. Clinical. “He’ll be confused when he wakes up.” Maggie explains, looking up at Katya, whose usual air of nonchalance has cracked beneath the heat of the situation.
As long as he’s breathing,” Katya replies slowly, voice trembling despite herself, “that’s all I care about right now.”
The medic arrives moments later, a blur of competence and calm. Questions are asked. Vitals taken. Maggie gives a concise summary, her hands finally shaking now that the immediate danger has passed.
Katya sits back on her heels, watching Lewis like she’s afraid he might disappear if she looks away.
She doesn’t touch him.
Not yet.
Maggie didn’t say she could.
And, for once, even she doesn’t know what to say.