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"Hey, has anybody seen Janus? He's not in his room."
"Shhhh, he's sleeping on the couch."
"Ah."
Janus awoke to chattering, far earlier than he would have preferred considering he'd likely only gotten a few hours of sleep at most.
"Yeah, I found him when I got up this morning. I guess he had trouble sleeping?"
"Most likely. Though, getting out of bed and watching television is rather counter-productive when one cannot sleep."
"Insomnia's a bitch, dude."
"Language."
Janus rubbed his eyes, but he didn't sit up quite yet. The others were clearly talking about him, and he wanted to see what they would say, even if the conversation seemed innocent enough.
"Sorry, Pat."
There was a brief pause, and Janus contemplated whether it would be a good time to sit up or not. But then the talking continued
"…Hey, bro, do you know if something is up with him? He's just been… really weird lately. Like, is he sick or something?"
"Eh, turns out thyroids are kind of important."
"…"
"Huh?"
Remus. That motherfu-
"Remus, do be a dear and shut up," Janus spoke up suddenly, revealing that he had been awake.
He sat up, rubbing at his eyes to pretend (likely ineffectively) that he had woken up only a second ago. The others were all turned to look at him now, varying levels of curiosity and concern crossing over their features.
"Um. Kiddo, what's Remus talking about?" Patton asked, tilting his head in confusion.
"Things that aren't any of your business," Janus shot back, a little too quickly.
He could see Remus roll his eyes.
"Ok, fine. Since you're up, go take your medicine, Jan."
Janus blinked, freezing for a second. Why would he say that?
What exactly was Remus trying to do?
"Wait. Medicine?" Virgil hissed. "What the fuck do you need medicine for?"
Janus crossed his arms, rolling his own eyes as he replied:
"Oh, calm down, Virgil. It's hardly something to get worked up about."
"How am I not supposed to get worked up about it?" Virgil growled back. "You are sick, aren't you?"
Janus grimaced.
"I'm not sick."
"Then why do you need to take medicine?" Virgil shot back.
Janus turned a glare onto Remus, who was holding his hands behind his back and trying to appear 'innocent'.
"Well, thank you for the sudden invasion of my privacy first thing in the morning, Remus," Janus drawled. "Really, I just love it when you broadcast my personal affairs whenever it suits yourself."
He could see Remus's smile waver for a moment, but he could tell that Remus wasn't done with whatever he was trying to pull (which, as far as he could tell, was trying to make him divulge his medical history to the others out of the blue).
"Hey, Kiddos, maybe we should put the brakes on this for a bit? Everyone's getting upset, and I don't think anyone wants to have an argument first thing in the morning," Patton suggested. "Why don't we have breakfast first, at least, and have any discussions we need to have after?"
No one else even had time weigh in on Patton's suggestion before Remus spoke up again.
"Jan can't eat yet," he announced. "He has to take his pill, and then he can't eat for an hour."
Hearing this, Janus stood from the couch, throwing his hands in the air.
"For fuck's sake, Remus, would you cut it out?!" he snarled. "I don't know why you're insisting on this all of a sudden, but stop. I'm a grown man, and I don't have to tell anyone about my damn medication!"
At this, Remus's smile finally fell completely, but Janus couldn't quite tell which emotions were on the other man's face.
"Look Jan, I get that you like being private about things, but everyone's worried about you, and none of them know why you aren't acting like you usually do," Remus explained. "And things would be a lot easier if you could get help with things when you need it!"
"This is not about me 'liking privacy'! It's about respecting my privacy, especially when I trust you with something under the expectation that you're not going to do things like this!" Janus shouted back.
Remus threw his hands in the air.
"I know! I know you didn't want me to say anything!" Remus responded. "But I don't know what else to do, 'cuz you won't ask for help! You're having trouble getting things done, but you won't ask anyone to help you out because you don't want anyone to know about what happened! You just beat yourself up about it instead of asking one of us to help you, and it's starting to affect Thomas! You're literally his sense of self-preservation, Jan!"
Janus clenched his hands into fists.
"Would you stop catastrophizing this situation?" Janus snarled. "It was never as big of a deal as you're making it out to be, and it's certainly not now that I'm almost recovered! And I'm trying to get my work done, and I'm still doing most of it, so don't suggest that I'm trying to sabotage Thomas or some shit!"
Janus was mad. He was mad, and below that, there was a sharp sting of betrayal. He'd trusted Remus, and now, not only had Remus broken that trust, he was also accusing him of things. It hurt, and he hated it.
"I'm not! I just want you to actually let other people help you!"
"I don't need help, Remus!"
"You had cancer!"
And with those words, the entire room froze, Janus especially.
"What."
Janus mentally cringed as he heard Virgil's tempest voice. This whole thing was getting way out of hand.
"Oh, for fuck's sake-" Janus sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Yes, I had thyroid cancer a few months ago, but no, it's not a big deal."
"How is having cancer not a big deal exactly?" Roman chimed in.
Janus shot a glare at him (as well as at Remus for forcing him into this situation).
"Because it was caught very early, it was small, and it's gone now," Janus explained through gritted teeth. "It didn't spread anywhere. I had to get half of my thyroid removed, but once that was done, it was gone. I didn't need chemotherapy or anything, and it wasn't life-threatening. I only need medication because, as Remus so helpfully pointed out, the thyroid is a necessary organ, so I need to take synthetic hormones to be at normal levels."
He crossed his arms.
"But figuring out the right dose and everything takes a while, so I'm tired and having some annoying symptoms," Janus continued, spitting out each word. "But it's not a big deal like Remus is making it out to be. I just need to take more naps and it's a little harder to get things done. It sucks, but it's not like I'm dying or some shit."
Janus looked at each of them.
"Good? Can we move on now?"
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then, he saw Virgil open his mouth.
"… Dude, why didn't you tell us about this?" the other side asked, incredulous. "I mean, you're saying it's not a big deal, but it kind of is? And even if you didn't need chemo, aren't you recovering from surgery?"
Janus sighed, deeply.
"No. The surgery was months ago," Janus denied, pulling down the collar of his shirt. "As you can see, the incision is completely healed by now."
"… But why didn't you tell us? We could have helped."
Again, Janus rolled his eyes.
"How many times do I have to say that this happened months ago?" Janus asked. "In case you've forgotten, we didn't exactly get along until recently. What was I supposed to do, Virgil? Walk into a room and announce I had cancer before you could hiss at me to leave?"
He saw Virgil glance away, appearing somewhat guilty. Whatever.
"And telling you later has clearly gone well," he continued. "And besides, there's hardly a point to it, considering that I'm practically fine at this point."
"… Are you, though?" Roman asked.
"Yes."
The princely side shot him a frown.
"Apologies, Janus, but you did more-or-less confirm that you're having difficulties completing your work due to fatigue, correct?" Logan suddenly asked. "That suggests that you are not, in fact, completely recovered quite yet."
"I've recovered enough," Janus argued. "Like I said, I just need to take my medicine and rest more than usual. That's it. But speaking of which, I'm going to go do that so I can actually have breakfast some time this morning."
So, before anyone could stop him, Janus left.
XXX
After that, Janus was still pretty annoyed with all of them, particularly Remus, but he did notice that the others would sometimes pick up the slack when he got too tired.
He wasn't sure how he felt about it, but at least he didn't have to worry about his problems affecting Thomas too much.
He just hoped that this wouldn't go on forever.
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The absolute irony of me repeatedly being too tired to continue writing this lol. I literally couldn't finish this until my medicine dose got adjusted and started working.
And now that I'm editing it months later, there were SO MANY typos.
A lot of this story was kind of spent exploring my thoughts on this whole thing because, on the one hand, I feel like this wasn't/isn't really that big of a deal compared to how bad it could have been (and sometimes I somehow convince myself I made it all up despite having medical records and a scar proving otherwise lol), but on the other, I still don't feel right months later (even now, after it's been well over a year, I still don't feel normal). I just kinda ping-pong between the two. Idk.
This is the end, and I don't think I'm gonna continue this fic past this point, since there's not really much else to say about it other than very slowly improving. So that's it- Thanks for reading!
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