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Carter should never have accepted Mrs Benton’s Thanksgiving invitation.
The realisation comes to him in two moments, the first one being that in which he steps across the threshold of the Benton house. Immediately, his senses are bombarded- the aroma of roasting turkey, the laughter of children as a few chase each other down the hall, and a veritable army of Peter Benton’s relatives wherever you look. It's, in a nutshell, a perfectly traditional family affair. And John Truman Carter III is intruding upon it.
This is the first, and ultimately less important moment, however.
The second consists of sweaty hands gripping porcelain, knees on tile, and the irrefutable knowledge that he's about to vomit.
At first, when he'd been making small talk with the Bentons and felt that telltale twinge in his gut, he'd naturally assumed it was the nervous nausea he’s prone to. After all, what better way to challenge his constitution than coming face to face with the relatives of (essentially) his boss? It's enough to make anybody queasy. So, for a while, he'd kept it hidden beneath forced smiles, continuing to introduce himself to everybody in the hopes that once he grew accustomed to those around him, the nausea would die down.
Except it didn't, and now he's kneeling down in front of Peter Benton's toilet, praying to a God he doesn't believe in that this isn't what he thinks it is.
He cannot be sick.
Everything can be explained, see- the nausea is nervousness, the sweat and discomfort a lingering reaction to what happened with Ms Carleton, the aching… the aching is because he's been running around like crazy doing Benton's busywork. Right?
He sniffs, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead. Along with the early throbbings of a migraine, he can feel the abnormal heat of his skin. His other hand rubs at the back of his neck, and withdraws itself slick with sweat.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
He starts to assemble the plan together in his head: he'll leave the bathroom, make a quick apology to a no-doubt relieved Benton about having to study for an upcoming surgery, thank Mae for her invitation, and slip out to his car before anyone else realises he's gone. His parents are away in Switzerland visiting Barbara, and Gamma’s at some gala, so the house will be empty. He can just-
A violent wave of nausea interrupts his train of thought, and before he can do anything to stop it, he's heaving into the toilet bowl.
Peter Benton's toilet bowl.
He squeezes his eyes shut and prays again- this time, for any benevolent deity at all to smite him out of existence.
It doesn't take long for Peter to realise Carter is missing, given that he sticks out in the house like a sore thumb, and when he does, frustration bubbles up within him.
So the guy seems hellbent on coming for Thanksgiving dinner, then bails as soon as Peter has introduced him? What the hell's that about? Some kind of odd ploy to humiliate him in retaliation for Peter's treatment of his student?
As quickly as the idea blossoms, though, it withers right off the branch. He hasn't known Carter long- only a couple of months- but the idea of him enacting some Machiavellian scheme just to embarrass Peter seems ridiculous under even the slightest scrutiny. He's too gentle, which is most of Peter’s issue when it comes to his potential future as a surgeon. He cares too much, feels too much, to grow comfortable with the detached decisions in the OR.
Given this fundamental of Carter's personality, therefore, it doesn't make sense that he would just up and leave without saying a word.
“Hey,” He catches Jackie by the arm, brow furrowed. “You seen Carter?”
“That polite little boy you brought with you?” His sister half laughs (though she smiles with an affection that seems to infect everybody who encounters his student). “Not for a while, no. Last I saw him he was heading into the bathroom. Probably needed a break from the chaos.”
“How long ago was that?”
“I don't know, Peter, ten, twenty minutes? Give the boy room to breathe, won't you?”
She's right. Peter knows she's right, because she's his sister, and Jackie has a way of reading people that he doesn't.
That doesn't stop him from heading down the hall to the bathroom door and knocking, though.
“Carter? You in there?”
His voice booms with his usual gruff authority, but when there's no response, it melts into something like concern.
“Carter? Hey, open the door.”
When, yet again, this yields no results, Peter does the one thing he can think of next: he turns the handle.
In hindsight, this could have gone a number of ways (many of them absurdly awkward), but reality materialises and immediately affirms his decision.
His student is hunched over the toilet, one hand in his hair, the other keeping the porcelain in a white-knuckled grip. He turns at the sound of the door opening. His nose and eyes are streaming, his skin pasty white and shiny with sweat. Peter winces.
“Jesus, man.”
Carter swipes at his upper lip, hastily clearing his throat and turning away, and Peter feels momentarily… sad? The expression on the medical student’s face is one of deep guilt and shame, eyes averted, cheeks beginning to pink. Like a dog who disobeyed his master waiting for the inevitable thump on the snout, the kick of a booted foot against his ribs.
“Are you… are you sick?”
His student’s eyes flutter closed. He nods.
Peter sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose and regretting the action the moment he sees Carter's shoulders hunch even more.
“Alright, just… just stay there.”
He turns to the door and slips back out into the throng of people before Carter can offer a response.
The moment Benton leaves, Carter sinks against the wall of the bathroom, holding his head in his hands. His cheeks burn with a mixture of shame and fever.
You've really done it now. Congratulations, idiot. This is totally going to strengthen your professional relationship.
He waits grimly, eyes closed, for the moment when the door opens and he's curtly dismissed from the house. No doubt Benton is hurriedly arranging his guests in such a way that they don't catch his student’s emasculating exit, plastic bag from beneath the kitchen sink balled up in his hands as he's ushered to his car.
A similar thing happened many years ago at his own house, some sort of fancy fundraising dinner during which Carter had come down hard with the stomach flu. He was only twelve or thirteen, and it was going round his prep, but there was no sympathy in his mother’s eyes when she discovered him retching into a plant pot in the atrium. She and his father managed to salvage the situation by giving an impromptu speech, distracting the attendees while one of the footmen practically dragged him upstairs out of sight.
Even now the memory feels like ice in his stomach- how he'd curled up in bed still dressed in his tux, too exhausted to deal with the buttons. How he'd spent the rest of the evening hoping his mother's touch would land gently on his forehead, the spark of belief snuffing out with the click of the lights going off at two in the morning, him still alone, his parents drifting down the hall to their own bedroom without so much of a glance in his.
Still, he can't blame them too much. It was simply the wrong night for him to be sick. They'd had too many duties to attend to without him embarrassing them so publicly, and his mother's anger was tamed by morning anyway. She’d had the maid bring him breakfast in bed (she only wanted to avoid as much contact with him as possible), oatmeal and orange juice (at this point he'd been too sick to consider eating anything).
The door to the bathroom clicks open, and Carter feels a familiar wave of shame. In an instant he's back to being twelve, gathering his thoughts and his uncooperative limbs to mumble out apologies and stand shakily.
“Dr Benton, I'm really sorry, I’ll get to the car quickly so nobody will see me and-”
A lighter hand lands on his shoulder, and he lifts his gaze up to find Jackie, Benton's sister, gazing sadly at him.
“God no, honey, sit down before you fall down. There's no way in hell you're walking out the door like that.”
Carter blinks, taken back. He glances over to the door and sees Benton standing there, arms crossed but eyes not unkind either. Clearly, his student must look unsure, because he offers a quick nod of encouragement.
The jelly-like feeling in Carter's legs makes the choice for him. He sinks slowly down to the floor, and once he's grounded, Jackie's hand moves from his shoulder to his forehead. She clicks her tongue.
“Peter? Can you pass me that thermometer?”
The surgeon obliges, and soon the tip of the device is being pressed between his lips, slid under his tongue. He sits in a fevered haze for a few seconds as the reading completes, and when it does, Jackie withdraws it. Her sigh follows shortly after.
“102.8.”
Disappointment. Frustration. A burden being dropped upon their shoulders, one they must immediately dispose of. A-
“Come on, baby, let's get you in bed.”
He waits for the rug to be pulled out from under him. For Benton to suddenly turn around and reveal the disgust that's been lurking beneath the surface, to look at him with the revulsion he's been met with when sick his whole life.
Instead, Jackie tucks him into bed like a child, smooths back his hair just like a mother would, and turns off the lights in the guest bedroom. He's been given Tylenol for his fever and a trash can nearby just in case. An ice cold water, condensation still dripping down the glass, sits on the bedside table. Even when all else has gone dark he stares at the rivulets through a blur of tears.
“We’ll be back once the others have left.” She’d said gently, and Benton hadn't contradicted her.
We’ll be back.
He swipes at his running nose and tries desperately to think of an occasion where he's been given a similar promise by his parents. There aren't any.
It's odd, really.
Despite being in someone else's bed, in someone else’s house, at someone else’s party, Carter has never felt more… welcome.
“So you're telling me that he had no other plans for Thanksgiving? The boy you said was the most privileged kid you'd ever met?”
Jackie sounds incredulous, sitting on the couch as Peter slowly paces back and forth in the living room. He can't blame her. Somehow, despite all the evidence he collected, the scraps of a life of luxury and a youth spent wanting for nothing, he was… wrong. At least, he wasn’t totally right.
“And you said his parents are in Switzerland? So he would've been alone at home?”
Peter sighs heavily, the weight of the truth uncomfortable on his shoulders. The fantasy he constructed is crumbling with every second. Those magnificent halls, the grand antechambers of the Carter house in his mind, suddenly transform from stunning to stifling, their empty expanse so great that even the sound of his student's footsteps echo.
“I thought- I thought he had everything, Jackie.” He says dumbly, an edge of defensiveness in his voice. “How could I not? The first day he came in with a- a tailored lab coat, for God's sake, and then when we all found out his family's net worth-”
“Peter, you know as well as I do that money is not everything.” His sister retorts, quick as always. “I know we didn't have much growing up, but we were never short on what mattered- love. The way that boy looked at me when I so much as touched his shoulder? Tells me all I need to know about how he fared in that department.”
Peter feels that familiar urge to fire back, but for once he has nothing. The truth is he saw the look in Carter's eyes too.
He wakes to a world that's fuzzier, darker, and quieter. It takes him a few moments to even remember where he is, or why he feels so awful, but when he does he pays attention to his surroundings more clearly.
The muffled chatter that he’d heard when falling asleep has dwindled into nearly nothing, perhaps only a couple of voices. It must be fairly late. The guests have gone. Carter is intruding.
He struggles to lift himself onto his elbows, head swimming, and squints at the alarm clock on the bedside table.
8:53pm.
Not as bad as he thought, but still time he left the Bentons in peace.
Sucking in a fortifying breath, he pulls himself up properly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed before he has a chance to sink back into the mattress and fall asleep again. The wooden floor is freezing cold against the soles of his feet, or perhaps his skin is simply scalding- either way, he exhales a sharp hiss of discomfort and does his best to hobble to the carpet in the hallway as quickly as possible.
By the time he gets there, clinging onto the banister at the top of the stairs, he's already depleted most of his precious energy. The back of his neck and his armpits are soaked with sweat, shirt plastered against his skin, and it takes several moments of shaky breathing to get the blood to stop pulsing noisily through his head. Soon, though, slowly but surely, he makes his way down the stairs.
Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.
Slippery palm sliding against the banister, desperate for proper purchase.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
His heart pounds faster in his chest, legs feeling increasingly like jelly again. A concerning dark cloud is creeping in at the edges of his vision.
Left… right… left…
He inhales deeply. There are pins and needles prickling against his skin.
Right… left …
His foot hits the solid wood of the floor and he crumples like a marionette with its strings cut, half dangling from the banister as his hand retains its grip until at last he loses the strength for that too. He lands on his ass on the bottom step, then slowly sinks fully against the staircase, head flopping back on the edge of one of the higher steps with a vague thunk. His chest heaves with quick, painful breaths.
One of these sounds catches the attention of the two people- Benton and his sister- conversing in the other room. Before he can utter a rasping word to assure them he's okay, their footsteps make a hurried approach, and his skyward gaze roves downwards to find the surgeon leading the charge this time.
“Carter? Jesus, man, why are you out of bed?”
He tries to offer an explanation, to tell him that he’s good to look after himself from here on in, that he doesn't want to take up any more of their time and be a burden, but all that emerges from his lips is a half intelligible murmur with only the last word clearly understandable. Jackie crouches down beside her brother, voice kind.
“Burden? Oh, honey, you're no such thing. You're just sick, and we want to take care of you. We want to. Alright?”
Carter chews on his lower lip, sinuses burning, eyes stinging. He closes his eyes and nods.
“Come on, Carter. It's probably best if you're on the couch anyway.” Benton’s voice. A little gruffer, the instruction not honey-sweet like Jackie’s would have been.
Right. The couch. He sucks in another deep breath, preparing to pull himself up and move with the last vestiges of his energy, only for it to hitch when an arm slips under his upper back, another under his legs. His eyes flutter open.
Oh.
Oh.
Peter lifts him as though he weighs nothing, and the journey upwards is so quick Carter instinctively links his hands behind the surgeon's neck for stability. The skin is warm there. Strangely soft, with only a whisper of stubbly hair.
The reality of the situation is only starting to sink in when it reaches an end, Peter lowering him to the couch with a vague mumble of assurance. Still, Carter is paying attention enough to notice the way his head is cradled for the briefest of moments in Benton’s hands before it's allowed to meet the cushion.
His eyes have been growing ever heavier with each passing moment, and he feels on the brink of sleep as an increasingly blurry Jackie drapes a blanket over him, her own murmurs of assurance those of a mother, more practiced than her brother's.
“There we go, baby. You just relax. It's okay. You're alright, sweet boy, don't cry.”
He chews on his lip again and tastes saltwater. The scene around him is blurry, only clearing slightly with each blink.
He's shaking with fever. His shoulders are shaking especially.
“Shh, Carter. Easy. Easy.”
A tissue is swiped across his cheeks, initially rough before the touch is purposefully softened. Warm, if awkward, fingers drift slowly back and forth over the feverish skin of his arm, clearly meant to soothe. He realises now that he's crying hard, that he has been for several minutes.
“I-I’m s-soh-s-orry.” Carter chokes, throat constricting with continual sobs that he no longer has the energy to stifle. “Th-th-h-ank you- for- fo-oh-or t-taking c-care of- of mmm-me.”
Jackie's feather light touch brushes over his damp hair. Peter continues with his stilted ministrations, an expression of concealed pain rising with every brow twitch that he tries to repress. His lips part as if to say something, but whatever it is he can't force the words through them, so it's Jackie’s voice that leads Carter back into sleep instead.
“You've got nothing to apologise for, baby, and you're very welcome. That's what we do for people we care about, hm?... You just sleep now. We're staying here, Peter and I. We're not going anywhere.”
Peter watches the slow blinks grow slower, Carter's eyes beginning to take on the disconnected glaze of near-sleep, and though he knows his student is probably past the point of no return anyway, he doesn't stop the soothing motions. His hand drifts back and forth, back and forth, across Carter's arm. His other holds the tissue, now absently swiping it beneath his student’s reddening nose.
And when those eyes fall closed at last, Peter’s shoulders relax. He hadn't even realised they were tense.
“Poor baby.” Jackie murmurs, her own hand still in Carter's hair. “I can't even imagine what- how… poor baby.”
Peter swallows past the lump in his throat, the sudden guilt that threatens to swallow him for even insinuating, before all this happened, that Carter couldn't come to Thanksgiving. Because despite this not being the relaxing holiday he envisioned it would be, he's sure of one thing.
Whether she knew it or not, his mother extending that invitation to Carter was the best thing she could have possibly done.