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Cavalier already knows that something isn't right.
He will admit, he doesn't see his older siblings as much as he used to, but he is still familiar with them, enough so to know when they aren't acting themselves. Yes, he knows that Ronald has always been the best of them at putting on the persona of a charming gentleman, using an innate silver tongue to his advantage.
So when he sees the other for the first time in months at a small family gathering for the holidays, Cavalier can barely hold back his surprise. Ronald looks... awful, to put it lightly. There are bags under his eyes, concealed well enough with makeup from a distance but unmistakable closer up. His entire bearing is jittery in an anxious, paranoid sort of way; he is constantly looking over his shoulder and sticking close to Tulip, who seems to be the only one not taken aback by his behavior.
"You alright?" Cavalier asks Ronald as he manages to steal him aside from the rest of their brothers for a moment or two.
"Never better." Ronald grins, eyes sliding slightly over to a point somewhere behind Cavalier's head before abruptly refocusing. "Why do you ask?"
His words sound stilted, too, and Cavalier frowns. "Nothin'. You just seem..." He trails off, unsure of how to even put it without possibly offending Ronald.
Ronald raises a brow when Cavalier doesn't finish the sentence. "What?" he asks, shifting from one foot to the other. Cavalier squints at him. Ronald never fidgets.
"... Nothin'," he repeats at last. "Just haven't seen you for a while, I guess."
"Don't tell me you think I'm getting old?" Ronald offers up a mock frown, running a hand through his rumpled auburn locks. "I'll have you know I'm in my prime, Cavalier. When you're older, you'll wish you'll have aged as gracefully."
Cavalier snorts. "You ain't even five years older than me," he points out dryly. More important than the ridiculousness of the exchange is the fact that Ronald is clearly trying to divert his attention from the main point. And as Tulip sidles back up to them, Cavalier decides to let it slide for now. Perhaps Ronald's simply been overworking himself; being an actor must surely take a toll. He shakes off his misgivings and does his best to put it from his mind.
***
A few weeks later, Ronald sits heavily on his bed, shifting from side to side. The night is late; he should be asleep, getting the beauty rest that every well-loved actor needs. Instead, he feels sick, edgy, as if there's something crawling in at the corners of his mind, rolling everything up into a black web and spreading it back out again over his whole consciousness.
He shakes his head even as he laughs to himself, broad shoulders shaking with the movement. He's really become pathetic, hasn't he?
He remembers being a child, bright and eager and ambitious, with big plans for the future. He remembers fantasizing about the glory of a thousand worshippers gazing up at him with only adoration in their eyes. He remembers how glamorous those visions were, how utterly careless- how utterly immature.
He doesn't even have a life of his own. The spotlight is always on him, digging up details of his private life, spinning false rumors about him to gain more media attention, nitpicking every small thing he does and every bad day he has. He barely has anything left for himself. Acting is not his career; it's his life, and it's taking a toll on him.
He looks up at himself, to where the mirror would be on the opposite wall. It's too dark to see his reflection, but he can imagine it; haggard and haunted. Oh, yes, and he can picture the headline now: "Ronald of Ness, an actor who the nation once swooned over. Is he already falling from his prime?"
He laughs again and pulls at his hair, wondering if he's going insane. He rises jerkily from the mattress, hands fumbling and searching for the hidden secret that is all he has left to himself, the secret that will surely become public soon enough and entirely ruin him for good. Well, let it ruin him! He'll be damned if he cares anymore.
His chipped nails clack against the syringes, and his eyes flutter shut as he feels the rush flow through his bloodstream, bringing him the only sensation that can ever truly make him feel anymore. He barely notices when the drowsiness starts to hit him, nor when his fingers slip and his body tilts over to the side slightly and crashes into the lamp near his bed. The syringe lays discarded on the floor, rolling over and over to a stop on the other side of the room.
***
Tulip wakes with a sudden start, heart jolting.
It takes him a moment to figure out why he's awoken. A quick glance at the clock tells him it's barely early enough to call it morning; 2:20 stares back at him in an irritatingly bright shade of LED orange. And he can't remember having any sorts of dreams, certainly not bad ones. So why…?
His question is answered soon enough when he hears a faint thumping sound a ways down the hall. Tulip tenses, slipping out of bed slowly and cautiously as he picks his way towards the door to listen again. It can't be an intruder, he reasons with himself; he always locks the doors and windows at night, and he has an alarm system planted. So there's only one possibility.
"Ronald!" he calls. "You alright?"
When he receives no answer, Tulip steps out into the hall, not bothering to shut his bedroom door behind him as he traverses down to his brother's room. They've lived together for a while now; neither of them has a need for a large space of their own, and both agree it saves time and expenses to share a lodging. Tulip finds himself in front of Ronald's door, fist poised to knock, until he hears a sound inside of the room, a loud crash that echoes through the hall.
He feels his face pale even as he throws his shoulder into the door once and then twice, forcing it open and stumbling inside. Tulip's hand scrabbles along the wall for the light switch; when he finds it, he flicks it on immediately, wincing at the way it stings his eyes, and his blood goes cold.
Ronald is stretched half across the floor, body limp and chest barely rising and falling. A layer of sweat has built up over his face, threading through his hair; his eyes are partially open, but unseeing. The usual tan of his skin is reduced to a ghastly greyish color, and his lips seem almost blue.
For a second, Tulip absolutely panics. A part of him wants to run out of the room and shut the door behind him. The larger part of him knows he could- would- never do that. Besides, this is his fault, all his fault-
He drops to his knees beside Ronald, ignoring how the carpeting of the room chafes his calves. "Ronald!" He speaks more roughly this time. "Can you hear me?"
Ronald doesn’t move for a long second, giving no indication that he heard at all. A sort of gurgling sound slips past his lips, which is enough to prove that he’s indeed still alive, despite how slowly his breath is coming. His eyes are sliding closed and then back open again, and Tulip knows that even if he does hear, he won't be able to respond. He's seen it bad before, but never this bad. God, he should have known, he should have been paying attention. He knew Ronald was having a shitty day, a shitter evening, saw it in the slump of his shoulders and the bag of his eyes, and yet he didn't think-
Didn't think what, comes a little voice, winding through his mind. Didn't think he would really do it?
Tulip's stomach lurches in his throat as he struggles back up to his own feet, feeling absolutely useless. "I'll- I'm calling 911, stay here," he blurts out as he backs out of the room, as if Ronald will be going anywhere. He supposes it's more of a metaphorical statement than anything. Stay with me.
***
When he receives a call in the middle of the night, Cavalier is surprised to see that it's from Tulip’s number. He considers rolling over and leaving it to ring, but when it continues after several minutes, he sits up with a frustrated groan, tossing his sheets back as he gropes for his phone at the bedside table.
Cavalier brings it up to his ear, clearing his throat to hide the rasp. "You better have a good reason for wakin' me up at-" he checks the time, squinting against the bright light of his phone screen- "2:40 in the mornin'."
"I'm sorry, Cav. It's just- it's urgent."
Cavalier blinks as Tulip's voice and words register in his brain with a second of delay. His brother's tone is panicked, on the verge of cracking, and suddenly he's a lot more awake, swinging his legs over the side of his squeaking mattress. "Tulip? What-"
"I can't explain," Tulip mutters, "not over the phone. Just- come meet Mole and I at the Sacred Heart Hospital."
"Hospital? What are you talkin' about?" Cavalier scrabbles around for his shirt, tossing it on haphazardly as he holds his phone with one hand.
"It's Ronald, okay?" Tulip snaps, and then takes another short breath. "Sorry. Just- hurry up."
Cavalier's heart barely has time to sink before the line disconnects, and he's left with the dead buzztone ringing into his ear. He shoves his phone into his jacket pocket as he pulls on the first pair of pants he finds; then he's in his car, starting up the engine as quickly as he can.
***
The hospital is fairly empty, of course, as one would expect at nearly 3 in the morning. Cavalier shoves past nurses with mumbled apologies, finding his way to the room number Tulip texted him several minutes after ending the call.
"What happened?" he demands as soon as he catches sight of Tulip and Mole, practically hovering outside of a closed door.
Tulip starts to say something, but Mole cuts in with a dark curl of his lip. "Ronald's overdosed."
"... Overdosed on what?" Cavalier echoes, not quite understanding; he left half of his brain in his bed, and besides, the words Ronald and overdosed aren’t compatible in his mind. "Medicine?"
Tulip lowers his head. "You knew something was wrong when you saw him a couple weeks ago, didn't you?" he says softly. "He's been taking drugs, Cavalier. Speedballing. For months now."
Cavalier only stares from Tulip to Mole and then back again. "You knew?" he asks at last, because what the fuck else is he supposed to say? He can’t even picture Ronald doing something like that…
But as he thinks about it a bit more, he realizes, with a sinking sensation, that he absolutely can. Ronald’s always had issues with restricting himself, with holding back from indulging in everything- both things that will do him good, and things that won’t.
"Of course I didn't," Mole growls in answer, "but he did." He turns abruptly to Tulip. "How long did you know, anyway?"
"... From the beginning." Tulip sits down on one of the benches against the wall. His signature hat is gone, hair matted down somewhat at the top and showing enough of his face to make it clear that he looks almost just as much of a mess as Ronald did.
"But why?" Cavalier sits down across from him, still not quite absorbing this information. "He was doing well- successful, at the peak of his career. Why did he-"
"He wasn't," Tulip cuts in. "I mean, sure, he was successful. But mentally, he just... wasn't." He balls up his fist over his knee. "He took me aside one day and said he was losing himself, that he needed to try something new. I didn't know what he was talking about until he showed them to me."
Tulip gnaws his lip raw. "And... by then, I couldn't do anything. I wanted to slap them out of his hand, but... damn it, I couldn't, because I knew how much he was suffering."
Cavalier crosses his arms tightly. Tulip lowers his head, hands twisted through those dark curls, while Mole glowers down at him, still standing. “And so what? What were you thinking?” hisses the older, hands wandering along the bottom hem of his tailored jacket as if to fiddle with the seams before falling limp back to his sides. “That letting him destroy himself would be better? Were you even thinking at all?” He answers his own question with a marked shake of his head.
“I don’t…” Tulip falters, and Cavalier thinks it’s the first time he’s seen him really lost for words. “I don’t know. I thought-”
“Thought what?” Mole’s shoulders are set square, and even Cavalier feels intimidated, despite the fact that Mole’s rapid-fire words aren’t meant for him. “Come on, Tulip. You…”
He cuts himself off, and Cavalier sees the way his hands are shaking, despite how he tries valiantly to hide it. Mole sits heavily on the bench next to him, jaw working tight and slow as he bites back words that he knows will only make the situation worse. Of course, Mole feels responsible; Cavalier knows that as the eldest, he often shoulders every burden as his own. Combined with the stress in his everyday life as well, it’s a wonder that he’s not entirely lost himself by now. But indeed, he restrains himself well, only leaning against the backboard of the bench with a quiet thump and heavy exhale.
“I just couldn’t,” Tulip says quietly, so quietly that it barely stirs the air. “He said he was going to stop, every time, even though he never did. And he looked so miserable. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared of what else he might do to himself.”
“You should have said something to me. To anyone.” Mole speaks roughly through his teeth, eyes sliding closed for a brief moment before sliding back open to shine nearly black under the harsh hospital lights.
“Damn it, Mole,” Tulip mutters under his breath almost resentfully as he picks at the silk of his shirt. “And what would you have done? Yelled at him to stop? Dragged him off?”
“I would have done something.” Mole slams his fist down onto the arm of the bench. Cavalier is sure it must hurt; the wood is solid, lined with metal, but Mole doesn’t flinch at all as he curls his fingers into a death grip around it.
“Face it,” Tulip argues, and god, Cavalier can’t believe they’re arguing over this when Ronald is in critical condition only a few rooms away. “If you’d been in my position, you’d have done the same-”
“I wouldn’t have!” Mole spits. He takes a breath to continue, and that’s when Cavalier realizes they’ll keep at it all night at this rate.
He stands, effectively garnering both of their attentions. “Do you hear yourselves right now?” he asks tersely, meeting each of their gazes. “Does it matter what you would’ve done or wouldn’t have done? It doesn’t change anything. It is what it is. The only thing we can do from now on is try to support him when he comes out of there.”
If he comes out of there, proceeds the unspoken conclusion. Cavalier knows both Mole and Tulip understand by the way their brows crease, the way they both glance down to the ground. Good. It’s ridiculous; he’s the youngest of them present, and yet they fight like children over something that can’t be helped.
He sits back down and rubs his gloved hands together. “Besides, you shouldn’t argue in a hospital. Go outside if you have to.”
Tulip scratches at the base of his neck. “I… no. I’ll stay. And…” He sighs. “I understand what you mean, Mole. You’re right- partially, at least. I shouldn’t have enabled him the way I did. I was just…” The hoarse laugh that bubbles up in his throat grates on Cavalier’s ears like rusted metal. “I was afraid, y’know? He was using all of his own money, asking for mine, making shady deals, getting into fights. I just didn’t know what to do. And now he’s…”
Mole breathes out through his nose, head hanging low. He rises from Cavalier’s bench and goes back over to Tulip, sitting next to him with a huff. “Yeah,” he says. His quiet tone strikes a sharp contrast to his earlier fire; like this, it’s all too clear how worried he really is. “I know. But you should’a talked to- to me, or Cav, or somebody.”
“Yeah,” Tulip echoes. His bangs fall forwards into his eyes, and Cavalier is struck by how similar he and Mole really look, cloaked in dark, side by side. “I should’ve.”
He seems as if he’s about to say something else, but that’s when the nearby doors swing open. All three of them rise quickly, turning to the nurse who enters their presence with a solemn look on her face. For a moment, silence hangs deadly in the air; none of them want to ask the question that’s on the tips of all of their tongues.
At last, Mole speaks up, fingers digging into his bicep so much that it must ache. “How is he?”
“He’s…” The nurse sighs, folding her arms loosely. “He’s going to make it. There will still be aftereffects, especially given how much of the substance was in his bloodstream, but he should be able to push through.”
All three of them relax visibly; Cavalier lets loose a tension in his shoulders that he didn’t even know he was holding.
“Is he awake?” Tulip hurries to ask.
“Not yet.” The nurse glances behind her. “He will be soon, though. I’ll come back and let you know when he is.” She pauses, gaze drifting to each of them before dipping her head and exiting again.
Tulip sits down with a heavy sigh, burying his face in his hands. Somehow, he looks even more disconsolate than he had before. “God,” he breathes out, fingers flexing around his face. “I really thought he…”
Mole purses his lips and places a hand on his shoulder, tentative but firm. “But he didn’t,” he reminds him gruffly.
“Yeah.” Tulip laughs another rough laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, but he was damn close. You weren’t there when I found him, Mole. He looked like a corpse. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing, and I knew it was my fault.”
Mole shakes his head, but knows better than to keep trying. “Cav,” he says, changing the topic tactfully. "You should go."
"Yeah." Cavalier scratches the back of his neck, knowing what he means. He really can't argue; Tulip is too melancholy, Mole still too wound up. It won't do Ronald any good to be around either of them for now.
When the nurse returns a few minutes later and holds the door open, Cavalier follows her the short distance into the room. Ronald is laid out across the stark hospital bed, hooked up to several machines that Cavalier can't be bothered to know the names or uses of. He's more concerned with the way hazy golden eyes seem to be focusing on him, then drifting away again. "Is he...?" he mutters to the nurse dubiously.
"I may look like death, but I can still hear you, you know." Ronald's voice is raspy and sounds painful squeezing past his throat, but it’s still a consolation hearing him speak at all. He crosses the room, ignoring the nurse's indignant warning, and hugs Ronald. It's a quick gesture, barely enough to show his relief; even in that moment, though, he feels how Ronald's ribs and spine are sticking out in an unhealthy way.
"Be careful," the nurse scolds, stalking up behind him. "He's-"
"I'm absolutely fine." Ronald shakes his head and half-smirks, ducking away from Cavalier. "Really, everyone's taking this out of proportion-"
"You could have died," Cavalier cuts him off stoutly. "You almost did die." He takes a moment to monitor himself, stepping back.
Ronald's brow furrows ever so slightly. "I didn't," he argues weakly. "It was... an accident." He catches sight of the look Cavalier sends him and adds, "A deliberate accident."
"There's no such thing." Cavalier exhales and bites at the inside of his lip. "How do you feel?"
"Well. Like shit," Ronald murmurs, putting a hand to his head in a slightly exaggerated manner. "I don't even remember much of what happened."
"Tulip and Mole are outside," Cavalier tells him after a beat. "They were really worried- Tulip especially."
Ronald's lip quirks up, but it's not in the amused way. He looks down at his lap, fiddling with the edges of the hospital blanket. "I suppose that would be the case."
The nurse, who moved away to the other side of the room to give them some privacy, now approaches them again, heels clicking against the tiles softly. "Excuse me," she tells Cavalier, gently squeezing in to check something on one of the monitors. “After we get him treated, we’ll probably let him have a talk with one of our specialists,” she says without looking at him. “So he’ll likely be kept here for a few hours at least.” Ronald makes a face, picking at the bedsheets again.
Cavalier makes a mental note to let Tulip know. "Thank you," he answers, stepping back. "I'll get out of your way now, then." He gives Ronald one last meaningful look. Ronald lowers his head, bangs falling into his eyes, and that’s the last Cavalier sees of him before he turns back to step out of the room.
They both know they’ll have to have a talk after this. Cavalier had no idea that Ronald was struggling with such issues; none of them did, except for Tulip. But it isn’t too late. It sounds as if he’ll already be on a better path, and eventually, it’s likely that rehab will come into play. For now, though, Cavalier rubs his hand across his face with a sigh as he goes to rejoin Tulip and Mole, feeling another wave of relief that the situation didn’t end the disaster that it could have.