Work Text:
You don’t hear the phone ring at first; the air is filled with the raucous din of TV noise, Bro chopping up dinner in the kitchen, and the kids hissing troll-slurs at each other while fighting over crayons (you’ve really got to have a talk with them about that, cultural divide be damned). So when you do hear the insistent jangling, you heave an exasperated sigh and haul your ass up to go fetch it.
“Hey, guys, take it down to about a 3, aight?” You tell the kids, your patience fraying to the tune of the throbbing headache pulsing through the soft tissues of your brain.
“NOOKLICKER!” Karkat screams, snatching up the red crayon and scribbling furiously all over Sollux’s drawing, Sollux responds by grabbing Karkat’s paper and viciously ripping it in half, to Karkat’s shrill wails of dismay and outrage.
“Look whothe talking, bulge fondler,” Sollux seethes, psiionics sparking between his horns.
“Whoa!” You have had Enough, phone be damned; this shit has gone on too long. You stand up, go over to their play pile, and snatch up all the crayons. They both protest vehemently. “No, y’know what, not cool. Both of you go to your rooms, right now.”
“But DAAAAVE-”
“Now.”
Usually you feel a teeny bit guilty whenever you have to bust out your seldom-used Stern Parent Voice (complete with leveling glare) but right now, no way. You don’t know what’s gotten into these kids lately, but you are so not in the mood to deal with their bullshit anymore.
“Yo,” Bro hollers, and you turn to face him. He’s standing in the kitchen, holding up the phone. “Gotta phone call on behalf of one pain-in-the-ass seatroll and the retrieval thereof.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” You reply, and go over to retrieve the phone. Jesus fuck. “Yeah,” you greet tersely, letting your irritation bleed through to the other line.
“Uh, is this Dave?”
“Depends. Is Cronus lethally maimed and/or actively dying from a horrible dishwashing accident?”
“Uh…dude’s pretty sick, he kinda passed out earlier-”
“What? When, earlier? Were you plannin’ on callin’ me when this happened?” Your headache, your vexation, the kids, is all instantly forgotten. “Y’know what, I’m on my way.”
And you hang up, slamming the phone definitely harder than necessary, and everybody turns to look at you, scuffling and yelling forgotten. Sollux’s eyes are huge, watching you, and now you feel like a huge asshole for yelling at him earlier. Shit.
“Ampora fucked up again?” Bro eloquently ventures, raising an eyebrow beneath the shades.
“Dude passed out at work, apparently,” you reply, grabbing the keys off the counter. His greasy shitdick of a boss probably fired him for doing it, too, which is something you really hope, for Shitdick Boss’s sake, did not occur.
—
The Rat Hole, the skeevy, skanky dive bar your seatroll just had to pick for his First Job, is busy as fuck – dinnertime for the bottom-feeders, you guess – and you actually have to take a teeth-grinding minute to navigate the hordes of pedestrians and vehicles before you whip the Buick into the closest spot you can find and head inside, heart hammering in your chest.
Your headache’s back, too, exacerbated by stress and the atmosphere similar to the one you’d just left. You’re greeted with the loud and raucous din of rowdy laughter and clinking glasses amid Lynyrd Skynyrd crackling from the old jukebox in the corner. Seriously? This is fucking Baltimore, you think, not Baton Rouge, but whatever, you have more pressing matters at hand.
“Where’s the troll?” You demand of the bartender, yelling loudly enough to get half the bar’s attention, purposely not using Cronus’s name (even though you get a twang of ugly doing so) because you figure none of these assholes know it, anyway. Fucking Christ, this place.
This motherfucker actually does a huh-huh snigger, and you very actively have to restrain yourself from grabbing a fistful of his collar and socking him in the fucking face. “’Breakroom,” he grunts, jerking a thumb toward Round Back, still wearing that shit-eating grin. “Creepy fucker’s done for ‘round here, Gary’s pissed as hell.”
You have to keep hold of the bar for a few more seconds, unable to control the twitching in the muscles of your arms itching to injure this deplorable waste of flesh, before you detach yourself without so much as an appropriately suave and characteristic witty reply and head around to the dark and dingy hallway where you’re guessing is the vicinity of Round Back.
The breakroom is a small and dingy affair, but it’s quieter, thank God. The din of the bar fades to dull background noise as you slip inside and close the door behind you.
“Jesus fuck,” you breathe.
Cronus is sitting in a busted-leg chair, bent over and clutching a crude ice-bag to his forehead, still wearing his long white dishwashing apron. He looks up at your entry, and he is just miserable, you can so tell this. Poor guy probably got nothing more than a gruff “here” with the ice-pack and a demand to go somewhere out of the way ‘till his ride got here.
“Dave,” he moans, straightening a little, but groans again, raising the ice back to his face. “Feel like shit,” he manages, voice barely audible.
You go over to him and touch the back of your hand against his face, feeling for the cool-warmth that signifies he’s running a fever, remembering when Bro used to do the same to you back in the day. You sigh, feeling headachy and exhausted yourself. “What happened?”
He gives a thin, mirthless smile, readjusting the ice on his forehead. “Went t’sit down ‘n fell down instead,” he supplies humorlessly.
“You didn’t hit your head? Did anybody, I dunno, try to fuckin’ catch you, at least?”
“Frankie did, th’ busboy, ‘s the one who called you.”
You sigh again. “Well, thank heavens for little miracles,” you say sagely, straightening up and giving him a good look, this time examining him for any bruises or dried blood about the head and neck. Nope, nothing that would signify obvious physical blunt head trauma. You’ll take that as a sign that his story checks out. “C’mon, let’s get outta here. Another minute in this shithole and I may feel the urge to paint rebel flag stripes on the Buick’s hood.”
—
Outside, the dark parking lot is still packed full of cars, and a few drunken onlookers are staggering amid the vehicles, loudly swearing with the gleeful abandonment of the heavily intoxicated. Cronus groans to your left, and you steer him in the direction of the Buick, catching sight of her dented fender and sighing in profound relief at the fact that it is not keyed or defaced in any way.
You lean over and ease him into the passenger seat, and he promptly slumps against the door after you close it, damp forehead pressed against the window, breathing shallowly on the glass.
“Cronus,” you say after getting in and turning to get a good look at him, “dude. You okay?”
A few seconds pass; then, he abruptly brings a hand to his mouth and you think he’s gonna hurl, but instead his face crumples and he just breaks down, silent sobs wracking his whole body. You blink, taking a second to register this emotional overhaul as not one of his usual drama queen brand, and slide over to pull him close, letting him cry all over your shirt. You hold him and rub circles on his back, soothing him through the worst of it, before the hysterics subside enough for him to speak.
“Fffuckin’ sick’a this job,” he chokes out, voice shuddering and thick with tears. “Workin me f-fuckin’ ragged, ‘n, an’ I never get t’see you guys ‘ny more…”
Oh hell. Tears prick at your own eyes. You remember your first real full-time gig, how you’d seemed to always be at that fucking job, never having enough time to chill at home and fucking missing your bro, never seeing him since your schedules had no longer coincided. Shit had sucked; you’d bade goodbye to him one evening, went to work, and promptly quit and came back home to demand he strife with you as soon as you hit the door. Seeing the look on your face, he’d agreed without further discussion of the job details. You feel that night had been a good decision on your part.
“Tell you what,” you say to him, “how ‘bout you make this your last night scrubbin’ dishes for these assholes and don’t worry about ‘holdin’ your own’ with us, because–”
“But-”
“ –because you don’t owe us a damn thing, Ampora,” you finish sternly, but still rubbing his back. “So stop actin’ like you gotta repay this huge debt just ‘cause the troll rights activists made it so you guys can get shitty minimum wage jobs like the rest of us.”
A thin, keening whine issues forth from his end, and you sigh heavily and just hold him tighter. “You’re family, man. If we wanted to be compensated, we’d a charged you rent by now.”
He sniffs, lifts his head up – God, those drooping earfins are just pitiful – and looks into your soul. “Th-thanks,” he finally gets out, wiping his eyes. “don’t matter ‘nyhow, bossman Gary prolly fired my ass for pullin’ that stunnin’ display a acrobatic prowess in the kitchen earlier.”
“Cronus?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck that greasy shitdick Gary. Put it in writing on elegant fucking stationery and shove it real deep straight up his fucking ass.”
God you have been waiting to say that aloud all night.