Work Text:
The ride home from the clinic is a quiet affair. Neither of you are talking (probably due to his current state of post-anesthesia drowsiness; dude is completely zonked out, all but drooling down the passenger-side window) and the radio is turned down, some classic hits station interspersed with talk show shock jock banter. You’re not paying attention to any of that bullshit, just the snowy roads and wiper blades scraping against your windshield, the rhythm offering concentration and distraction for the drive home.
Beside you, Cronus wheeze-coughs and shifts slightly, fingers curled loosely around the kidney-shaped plastic emesis bin they’d given you back at the clinic. The pamphlet of post-op recovery instructions and side effects was tucked in between his seat and the console, hopefully not to be forgotten. You turn on your blinker at the next stop sign and wait for two cars, replaying Dr. Z’s words over again in your head: The procedure went smoothly…groggy from sedation…sent the biopsy to Pathology for analysis, the results should come back hopefully within two or three days…suspect a fair-sized aspergilloma but we’ll have to wait for the results to be sure.
You glance over at Cronus, pale and unwell, and your chest tightens. Fuck. Some lousy moirail you are. If you’d not fallen for his stubborn bullshit façade this whole past month and gotten him in sooner, maybe this nasty fungaloid black mold mass whatever growing in his goddamn fucking lung wouldn’t have gotten so bad, Dr. Z wouldn’t have had to shove a fucking tube down Cronus’s throat to pull out pieces of whatever he was gestating in his right superior lobe that’d been making him cough up grape-and-black colored blood for the past two weeks… God this seatroll of yours is a hopeless, heartbreaking mess.
When you pull up to your building, you try to park closer so he doesn’t have so far to walk. However, once you park and go around to open his door and have to immediately catch him before he slumps out onto the slushy pavement, you realize that it doesn’t matter where you park your shitty Buick, Cronus ain’t gonna be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed skipping up to the door anytime soon.
“Hey,” you say, keeping your voice low. “Cro, c’mon, we’re home. Time to get up.”
He makes a low guttural little noise, lolls his head briefly before his heavily-lidded eyes meet yours. His gaze is glassy and heavily medicated. “Mmnnuh?” he inquires, and your heart quite literally aches for him, not gleaning any humor from his incapacitated state.
“Yeah,” you reply, gentler yet, and you take his hand (cold cold, floppy, boneless, still taped up from the IV earlier) and help him to an upright position, keeping him steady and watching with silent alarm as he whitens visibly, but doesn’t vomit. Ok, cool. You can do this. “C’mon, dude, we’re movin’, we’re walkin’, I gotcha…”
He leans on you heavily during the journey up to the front door, hands wrapped securely around your arm, shaky but white-knuckled, sharp claw tips pricking your skin through your jacket (not that you’ll say anything, of course). Sollux answers the door, grin fading as he sees just how shitty Ampora looks. “Whoa,” he breathes quietly, blue-and-red eyes widening. “Ith he okay?”
You look down at Sol, all gangly wide-eyed concern, and can’t help a small smile. “Yup, he just needs a nap, is all,” you reassure him with a slight nod. You know Dr. Z did a good job, that he didn’t malpractice all over your friend, but goddamn you don’t wish what Cronus had to go through today on anyone.
Bro, who has been scrolling down with mild interest on his laptop, looks up at your arrival, catches a glimpse of Ampora, and immediately he abandons his project to fall in at Cronus’s other side, helping you navigate him toward the couch. “Jesus,” Bro comments, and shoots you a tangerine Look, one you reciprocate with equal brevity. “How much diazepam they give him?”
“I’d wager approximately one actual fuckton,” you reply, remembering how, when the two of you had been sitting in the waiting room, he’d worked himself up so as to be sick from sheer nerves and then had promptly demanded, when you’d gone to tend to his shaking and sweating self, to be bestowed with the maximum fuckin’ legal amount ‘a drugs, Strider, ‘m fuckin’ serious here, I don’t wanna remember anythin’ about this goddamn mornin and then he’d gone into another coughing fit and you’d sighed and wished for some happy knockout drugs for yourself at that moment.
The two of you get him settled onto the fresh blanket nest you’d so lovingly made up for him before Bro leaves you to fuss in proper goddamn fashion. You peel Cronus’s leather jacket off his pliant torso before gently easing him back against propped-up satin pillows stolen from his own bed. He starts to stir when you pull the blanket over him, and you stop, watching his eyes flutter open and his chest rise and then hitch with a sudden cough.
“Whoa, easy,” you caution, bracing a hand against his back to steady him, and you have to hold up the plastic bin so he can spit out a mouthful of nasty when the fit subsides (you feel a little sick yourself after masochistically peeking at it).
He settles back onto the pillows after he’s done, and you deposit the bin safely under the coffee table. “Th’fuck they do t’me, Strider?” He mumbles, his voice painfully hoarse and small.
“Hey, look who’s progressed to full sentences,” you reply. “Dr. Z worked you over pretty good. Offered me extra to watch, but hey, I’m more of a mano a mano type guy.” You decide this pithy mock-explanation will be better than informing him of the actual grisly details of his procedure.
He closes his eyes and makes a small unhappy noise, and Karkat chooses this time to scamper over and see what the dealio with Mister Purple is now.
“You sick again, Mister Purple?” He asks, poking Cronus’s taped-up IV hand with speculative curiosity.
Mister Purple cracks an eye open, turning his head to gaze wearily at Karkat’s inquisitive expression. “Nah, kid, me ‘n Dave just got back from Fun Town. Had a blast, we did,” he rasps, and Karkat furrows his brow and actually climbs up to straddle Cronus’s lap before you can stop him.
“Yo, Karkles, Mister Purple ain’t exactly up for pony rides at the moment,” you say, reaching out to gently disengage your rambunctious trollchild, but Cronus reaches up first - not to remove Karkat, but to pat his soft black head. You stare.
“I’ll be fine. Orphaner Dualscar ain’t taken down so easily.” Oh God he’s using the pirate name the kids gave him last time they played. This is unbearable levels of cute. “But I could use a glass’a juice, if you’re willin’ to fetch me one.”
Karkat salutes – kid’s getting better at that, you notice – and obediently climbs back down and runs off to the kitchen. Cronus deflates once he leaves, and you realize he was Being Strong for the Child. Aw.
“That just warmed the cockles of my heart, you know,” you inform him, and it is 100% true. “But I can’t let you have anything to eat or drink ‘till the numbness wears off. Dr. Z’s orders – don’t want you pullin’ a Hendrix on us, man.”
Cronus swallows once, experimentally, and grimaces. “Fuckin’ A,” he groans in defeat.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” you tell him. “We did scour the local Wally World beforehand, you know. You’re gonna have all the off-brand grape creamsicles and MSG-loaded salty beef broth you can eat, I promise this to you.”
He sulks deeper into his satiny purple nest, but a smirk does play about his features. “Only if you feed me wearin’ one’a Dirk’s slutty anime cosplays,” he murmurs, an echo of his old lecherous self that is ruined somewhat by the tapering wet cough at the end. Nothing comes up, though, so you relax.
“So sugoi,” you sigh dreamily, and Karkat comes running back up to you holding a cup with both hands, sloshing apple juice all over the carpet.
He thrusts the cup at Cronus. “You drink,” he commands. “I got juice, Dualscar.”
You look at Cronus, who gazes at the cup reverently, and turn back to Karkat. “Mister Purple’s feelin’ kinda tired, kid. We’ll set his juice here and leave it for him when he wakes up from his nap, how’s that?”
Karkat furrows his brow again, weighing the pros and cons of this particular option. “Okay,” he concedes, setting the cup on the coffee table with a gusty sigh. Cronus utters a sigh himself, but does settle back into the pillows and close his eyes, mimicking sleep or not, you can’t say. Dude looks wrecked.
“Cool,” you tell Karkat, and scoop him up, standing and heading into the kitchen. “Let’s go order dinner, little dude.”
“Yay!” Karkat yells, and the two of you leave Cronus to his couch nap, juice waiting patiently on the coffee table for his awakening.