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“Doc–” There was a knot in Ren’s throat that he could barely swallow around, and panic in his eyes. “Doc, I don’t– I don’t feel so good.”
Doc turned around just in time to see the half-eaten cookie tumble out of Ren’s shaking hands, crumbling into a million pieces as it hit the floor. The man himself barely looked more put-together than the pastry he had held.
“Ren!” Doc leapt over, threading an arm around his shoulders to lead them toward the nearest couch in the cigar lounge, Ren sagging heavy against his side as he stumbled along, “What happened?!”
“I don’t know, I–” His words came out muffled with his head buried in his hands, curled in on himself completely. “It just suddenly started hurting and,” His gasping breath caught in his throat, “I can’t– I can’t breathe, Doc, I can’t–”
Doc’s grip on his arm tightened, eyes going wild with worry, his lip splitting under his teeth as he worried at it, lost in panicked thought. His head snaps over to the remains of the cookie scattered across the floor, realization sinking in, burning a hole through the pit of his stomach. Those had been given to them by Scar. By their enemy. And they had been stupid enough to accept it, without a second thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could he have let this happen? It had been his and his dangerous inattentiveness at fault and now it was Ren suffering from it. He’d started violently trembling in his arms, by then, skin paling, breaths wheezing as he struggled to fill his lungs. His fingers were getting weaker and weaker where they latched onto him for support.
Charcoal. That was supposed to help, wasn’t it? Clean out the toxins from your body, and all that. Yes, yes, he needed to find some charcoal. He leapt from his place on the couch, running for the door, leaving Ren to slump back into the pillows with a soft noise of distress, the world spinning around him as his one grounding point of contact disappeared from his side.
Doc returned, after a few minutes that felt like hours, to see Ren having slid most of the way off the couch, just barely hanging on in his half-consciousness. Doc carefully stepped over a puddle of sick on the ground beside his head, pulling him back into a sitting position over his lap, pushing the bottle of activated charcoal past his lips. His eyes scrunched up at the pathetic whine that bubbled past the mouth of the bottle, but he didn’t pull it away, instead tipping the bottle to let the black sludge spill into his mouth. The bottle fell from his grip after it had emptied, whether it shattered into pieces like the cookie had upon contact, frankly, he didn’t care, all his focus back on the man in his arms, forehead clammy with sweat against his shoulder, heartbeat weak and slow where their chests pressed together.
His breathing was evening out. Doc could only hope that that meant something good, as he held him in the safety of his arms. He could only hope that he’d get better. But that, he did with all his heart.