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“He’s asleep right now, master,” the nurse explained. A black surgical mask obscured her face, but cool eyes searched him curiously. “He was in some pain earlier, so they gave him something to help him rest.”
Toki avoided her prying stare and worried the thick olive cardigan in his hands. He was starting to become a regular fixture at the hospital, making the short trek across the Mordhaus grounds almost daily now, and he was certain the doctors and nurses talked in his absence. Of course they did. Everyone else did, too. He’d even gotten a phone call from Charles about the situation, one of those “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” conversations people liked to give him when they thought he was being careless or stupid.
Frankly he was tired of it. Nathan and the rest of the band had been up in his business for the better part of a month now, wanting to know where he was going and when he’d be back whenever he so much as left a room. They’d never cared that much before, but man, you get yourself kidnapped one time…
He thanked the nurse and went inside anyway, closing the door behind him and drawing the blinds on the small inlaid window. The others already gave him grief about coming here as it was, he didn’t need the additional guilt trip he’d catch if they knew his reasons why.
“Mornins, Magnus.”
Magnus slept, oblivious to his visitor. The gentle rise and fall of his chest was a welcome sight. He must’ve been sleeping deeply and with some amount of peace. Even his eyes, sunken though they were in their sockets, lay still instead of darting, panicked, beneath the lids.
“Toki brings you somethins. Here…”
He draped the olive cardigan over Magnus’ shoulders, being careful of the oxygen cannula, and lifted him gingerly from the pillows just enough to wriggle it around him properly. He tried to ignore the shift of brittle bones under his hands, the chill in Magnus’ flesh through the thin hospital gown. It was like handling a corpse.
Like holding his father.
He didn’t dwell on that, he couldn’t, instead busying himself with feeding Magnus’ limp arms through the sweater sleeves. An unused IV port was adhered to the back of his hand, the skin around the site bruised and tender-looking. He’d need to ask a nurse about that. It didn’t look right.
How had Magnus become this breakable? He was so vulnerable, so strangely fragile. Where had that other man gone, the one who cackled in his face and loomed in his dreams like some fearsome shadow? That man had been larger than life itself, a character from his childhood storybooks. Even before everything went wrong, Toki had still looked up to him as someone entirely unshakable. Someone who had his shit together. An anchor.
His anchor.
Toki brushed a curl from Magnus’ icy brow and adjusted the little oxygen tube behind his ears so it rested straight under his nose. And still Magnus slept without so much as a sigh or stir, looking especially frail now in the thick knit of the cardigan.
“Gots to eats more, okay? Gets your strengths back so you gets better…”
His hand lingered on Magnus’ cheek, tracing the hollow. So cold. A nurse had called it some fancy medical word, but he couldn’t remember. Not enough oxygen in the blood, made worse by the chest injuries and decades spent smoking. Recovery was going to take longer than the doctors’ initial estimate. He wasn’t sure if Magnus knew yet or not.
“And you ams gonna gets better, I promise.”
The chair beside the bed had begun to mold to Toki’s shape after so many weeks of sitting vigilant at Magnus’ side. He settled into the indented cushion and reached for that right hand as he always did, giving the fingers a slight squeeze. It probably didn’t do anything, but he liked to imagine Magnus could sense the squeeze in his sleep, so he’d know someone outside his own head was there for him, keeping watch.
He thumbed softly at the bruise on the back of the hand. It really did look awful.
A deep wrinkle pinched between Magnus’ eyebrows and a low moan crackled in his wounded chest.
“Magnus?”
Another moan, higher. Pained. Or frightened.
“Shhh, ams okay,” he tried to soothe, but Magnus’ breathing snagged and quickened, almost like a sob, and one of his legs moved beneath the blankets. Must’ve been another nightmare.
It was hard to watch knowing there wasn’t much he could do. Toki also got nightmares, bad ones. Violent ones. He’d had them since he was little, waking up crying and wanting to throw up. But there were nights he could remember, as a child, when he’d wake in the dark and his mother would be there, sitting beside the bed with him just as he sat with Magnus now. And she’d kiss his forehead sweetly and whisper a prayer, and he’d close his eyes and sleep soundly until morning.
Grown though he was, he still thought back to those moments whenever a nightmare left him particularly anxious and unable to fall back asleep. He’d been remembering his mother quite a bit over the past few months.
Magnus whimpered, chapped lips tensing as if trying to speak in his dream. The corner of his right eye was damp, and as Toki watched, a fine tear rolled down the side of his face into his hair.
“No, no, don’ts cry. Ikke gråte.”
Still holding his hand, Toki stood and smeared the wet away.
“Jeg er her,” he said, slipping into a tongue he hardly seemed to use anymore. I’m here. He tried to recall his mother now, and the things she’d say to calm him. It’s just a dream, my son. You’re safe. “Du drømmer, Magnus. Du er trygg.”
He looked towards the door for a second, waited, just in case. And when he was certain they wouldn’t be interrupted, Toki leaned brazenly over the guardrail of the hospital bed and pressed his lips to Magnus’ crinkled brow in a warm, comforting kiss.
No one would understand this if they saw. He barely understood it himself, this need to forgive the man who’d betrayed him. To care for him in this way. But if he didn’t care, if he didn’t stay, Magnus would be alone. And nobody deserved to be alone. Not his father, not anyone.
Even when things had been at their absolute worst, at least he’d had Abigail. Who did Magnus have, if not for him?
“Du er trygg,” he said again, quietly. “Sleep, shhh…”
“...mmnhToki?”
He pulled back from Magnus’ forehead, heart thudding, half expecting to see those weary eyes open and looking directly at him. Thankfully not. Magnus still slept, though the lines in his face had relaxed and his breathing slowed. The nightmare, it seemed, had passed.
Toki smudged his saliva from Magnus’ skin and combed fingers through greasy curls. The man needed a bath. Very badly. Another thing to tell the staff.
“Only sweet dreams now...okay, Magnus? Toki comes back later.”
He let Magnus’ hand rest on his stomach, and he left the room to track down a nurse.