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It had been a remarkably quiet day in Lazytown, and Robbie was suspicious. Sure, the poor weather they'd been having recently, rainy and cold, meant that most of the kids were inside anyway, but that had hardly stopped Sportacus from flipping around town visiting all of them and wheedling them into more active play before. He was rather sure he hadn't seen him the day before, either... He wondered, less idly than he would've liked, where he could've possibly been.
He was out and about for other reasons, of course. He'd run out of a few basic essentials-- fondant, cardamom, he really needed a spark plug or two-- and that was why he'd been walking through town, shoulders shrugged against the cold, when the little pink girl ran up to him.
"Robbie!" She was carrying a large plastic container that seemed just slightly too heavy for her. "I need to ask you a huge favor!"
He frowned and crossed his arms. "And what'll I get for it?"
The edges of her smile hardened just slightly, and it pleased him. It meant she was in too dire straits to tell him off like she wanted. "Can I at least say what the favor is first?" she said stiffly.
"I suppose." He waved a hand dismissively. "Go on. Spill it out."
"Sportacus is sick."
At first, the words she spoke didn't even seem to be real. They made sense on their own-- "Sportacus" and "sick"-- but, together? That wasn't right.
"Sportacus doesn't get sick," he said with surprising confidence. Because of course he didn't. Getting sick was for mortals who didn't live in technomagic airships and eat bell peppers like they were apples.
"Well, he does, and he did. He played in the rain with us last week and didn't change out of his wet clothes when we went inside to get sportscandy, so he got a really, really bad cold. He's been in." A pause. "He's been at home for two days now."
"You wanted to say 'in bed,'" he said. "But, you didn't."
"Well..." She sighed. "Sportacus is... not the best patient. He keeps--"
"Moving?"
"Yeah. Even when he's close to collapsing. I can't... I told him to lie still while I went to go get soup, and I just know the moment I left, he started doing, I don't know, jumping jacks or something."
She looked slightly miserable. It made him... uncomfortable, maybe. He couldn't really define the emotion it was giving him. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt it before. "You know," he said, "you haven't actually said what the favor is yet."
"Oh! Right." She grinned sheepishly, and he felt slightly better. "I need to deliver this to Sportacus, but I promised Pixel I'd help him with something, and I can't do both. Can you just bring this up to him and check and make sure he's okay and resting? I swear I'll make it up to you before you even know it!"
Which was a vague, slightly threatening-sounding sentence, but. Whatever. "... Fine. I'll do it."
"Thank you so much, Robbie!" She gave him a quick one-armed hug before he could stop her. "Okay, I'll call down the ladder for you, okay? You probably won't even need to climb it; it should take you right up!"
'How does she know that?' he asked himself. Since when had she been able to command the elf's strange airship, either? But, he didn't have much time to consider such questions, as Stephanie had already shoved the Tupperware into his arms and called down the ladder.
He glanced up. From where he was standing, he couldn't even see the airship; the ladder, waving slightly in the breeze, disappeared into the cloudy sky.
"If I fall and break every bone in my body--"
"I'll make you soup, too. I promise." She moved his free hand for him, closing it around the side of the ladder.
"That wasn't really what I mean--" His sentence broke off into a scream as the ladder shot off like a rocket, sending him off into the sky. Stephanie waved at him as he went, and, for a brief moment, he seriously hated a small child.
-
The airship looked much like he remembered it, but messier. It looked as if someone had emptied out a small pharmacy onto the floor-- empty cough syrup bottles, boxes of decongestants and antihistamines-- and the bed was unmade and vaguely damp-looking. It was all wholly unpleasant.
And there was Sportacus, in the middle of it all, doing one-handed push ups. Because why wouldn't he be.
"You're going to give a nine year old a heart attack, you know," he said dryly. "That's not very heroic of you."
Sportacus looked up at him, vaguely surprised, and Robbie noticed that he looked absolutely awful. He was covered in a sheen of sweat that looked far too heavy to come from just exercising. His eyes were dimmer than usual and had a far-away look in them.
"Robbie," he said, his voice hoarse and slightly breathless, "what are you doing up here?"
"Possibly saving your life, it looks like. Now, get up--" It was far too easy to pull Sportacus up, and he swayed on his feet. "You look awful."
"You don't look so bad yourself."
"How are you not in bed right now? Surely someone as health nuts as you knows you're not supposed to be up and about when you're sick."
"I am not sick!" He sounded vaguely offended by the idea. "Stephanie thinks I'm sick, but I'm not sick. I don't get sick. I've never had a cold in my life!"
He punctuated that convincing speech with an incredibly violent coughing fit. Robbie was almost surprised he didn't start spitting blood; the last thing he needed in life was a tubercular elf.
Robbie rolled his eyes and placed his wrist against his forehead. It felt hot, but, then again, that could be normal. Elves ran hot. And he could hardly remember the last time he'd touched Sportacus' bare skin.
"Now, go get yourself in bed, and if you so much as turn over, I swear I'll tie you to it with your own jump ropes."
Sportacus made a vague confirming noise, but Robbie still had to take his arm and lead him over to the bed before he actually got in it. He took the soup over to his weird little kitchenette, listening carefully for the rustling of bed sheets as he ladled some into a smaller bowl.
He glanced over at Sportacus, bundled up in his blankets, and realized that he was most likely going to have to feed it to the overgrown child himself. God, did that little girl owe him big time.
"I'm under strict orders from Dr. Pinkie to give you this," he said. He sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered up a spoonful of the soup before carefully holding it out to him. "Eat it, or we'll both face her terrible wrath."
Sportacus glanced somewhat warily at the spoon. "Why didn't Stephanie bring that up herself?" he asked in a way that made Robbie almost wish he had spiked the soup with something. If Sportacus was going to be such a little brat about everything...
"It's being appreciated that makes doing good deeds feel rewarding, you know?" He pushed the spoon forward. "Your little pixie had to go help her computer friend with something. So, you're stuck with me."
"Computer... Oh, that can't be right." Sportacus smiled. Did it look smug? It looked a little smug. Like he knew something Robbie didn't. "Pixel is out of town this week, visiting his grandmother. You must have misheard her."
It was at that moment that he realized that he had been tricked. Bamboozled. And by a child! The reason for her deception was beyond him, at the moment, but that didn't change the fact that it happened.
"Eat your damn soup."
Thankfully, Sportacus had finally decided to not be incorrigible for once in his life, and docilely opened his mouth for the spoon-- he hadn't even had to make plane noises or anything. It was quiet for a bit, just the sound of the spoon scraping the bowl and swallowing, and Robbie's mind began to wander... It was odd to have Sportacus looking up at him like that, parting his lips to accept the spoon, a flash of tongue when it left... Wow. That was a new emotion. Different from the last one. Entirely different. But equally difficult to process.
"Robbie." It was remarkable, really. How, hazy as they were, those eyes could still twinkle. "You're staring."
"Am not."
Sportacus opened his mouth, most likely to argue. He stuck the spoon in it.