This was the day Sollux Captor broke his vow to never set foot in a hospital again.
Kanaya put her car in park and turned to look at Sollux. The man was huddled up against the window in the passenger's seat, his sunglasses covering his eyes. She waited half a heartbeat before putting her hand to Sollux's shoulder. The man flinched so violently at her touch that she withdrew, curling her fingers back around the steering wheel.
"I don't mean to upset this new fondness you seem to have developed for my car door, but we've arrived at the hospital."
Sollux curled up tighter, his eyes wide behind his shades. Through the darkened plastic he could see the expansive parking lot and the glaring alabaster surface of the towering white building. His hands were balled into fists and his arms were wrapped around his chest, all to avoid the violent tremors Sollux could feel crawling under his skin. His stomach felt as though it had wound itself around his esophagus. Every breath was halting and painful and carried the distant threat of bile behind it.
Beside him, Kanaya was sitting quietly. Though they hadn't spoken in nearly a year, she had changed little from the woman Sollux remembered her as. She was still articulate and calm, with a penchant for offering aid to more people drowning in troubled waters than she at times had room for in her personal lifeboat.
And when to be silent. She still knew that.
They sat together in the parking lot, the hot July sun beating down on Kanaya's dark green car. They remained there, the interior of the vehicle warming until Kanaya started the car once again. Sollux jerked up so suddenly that his glasses flew from his face, whipping around to face the woman.
"No, don't—!" he started before he cut off.
Kanaya was staring back at him, the whites of her eyes outlined around her dark irises. Her hand was outstretched toward the temperature control knobs.
"I'm only turning on the air conditioning," she stated in her smooth, dark voice. She did as she said then, and the hum of the car's fan cut the thick silence hanging over them.
Sollux collapsed back into his seat, drawing his legs up to his chest. "I'm sorry," he muttered into his knees.
"If you're attempting to apologize for inconveniencing me, let me restate that I had no prior engagements to see to today, and this can in no way even approach the definition of 'inconvenience' until our activities extend into tomorrow at ten when I have to make an appearance at the library for the sake of my salary." She adjusted the temperature dial on her car before leaning back in her seat and folding her hands on her lap.
Sollux hugged his legs tighter. "How are things at the library?"
"If you can imagine the sort of cricket-filled silence that usually follows a less-than-exemplary jest, but only remove the crickets because they've all packed up and left ages ago, that's how a typical day at work usually paints itself."
Sollux blinked. "So it's shit?"
Kanaya smiled, her teeth a bright white contrast to her dark lips. "I actually find it quite enjoyable. I get a level of reading done there that borders on the genuinely obscene."
"That's great for you, I guess," Sollux mumbled, trying to focus on the way his tongue rolled the words around in his mouth rather than the jackhammer thudding against the inside of his ribcage. His knuckles turned white as he clutched at his pants, and he swallowed the excess of hot saliva pooling under his tongue.
Kanaya sat back in her chair before reaching over and digging in her bag. She withdrew a book and looked it over, gently separating the pages before folding it open. "I've been rereading Anne Rice's works lately. Would you like me to do some narration of chapter ten for you, Sollux?"
Sollux couldn't unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth in time to refuse. Soon he was drowning in the intrigues of Lestat, and the inside of the car suddenly seemed to be filling with mist and moonlight. Finally he thrust out his hand and covered the book, making Kanaya pause mid-sentence.
"I'm feeling pretty ready now," he choked out.
She smirked, gently closing her book. "I'll make a mental annotation of the fact that you require twelve pages of torment before you can work up the motivation to do something undesirable."
She shut off the car and stepped out of the vehicle while Sollux sagged in his seat. He looked up as Kanaya appeared outside his window and opened the passenger side door. He slid his feet out one at a time before he stood, clutching his sunglasses tightly in his hand. She then locked up her car before taking him by the arm and beginning the trek across the parking lot.
It was like a vast expanse of blacktopped desert. Heat rose from the asphalt in waves, creating a nauseating shimmer over everything in Sollux's view. His head spun as he approached the building, its towering white façade seeming to arch over him like some lengthening shadow. His heart had lodged itself in his throat, pounding at the back of his tongue. As he forced his legs forward, voices flooded his head. Rapid and urgent and wet with tears. Voices pleading. Begging. Others harsh. Business-like. He exhaled slowly, trying to focus on the sound of his shoes against the asphalt.
But once they actually entered the hospital and the clean, white smell of sickness and death crashed around him like a wave, Sollux felt his nose and mouth flood with panic. He clung to Kanaya as his vision blurred, hopping in and out of memories like a skipping disc.
"Your heart rate is normal."
They had insisted on going through all the procedures and protocol first.
"You've suffered severe trauma to your right eye."
They refused to tell him even when he begged and pleaded. Even when he could feel tears and blood leaking through the bandages around his head. Not until they were finished.
"It's highly likely that your vision in the affected area won't return."
And then they laid him back in his bed and gave him some water before the doctor arrived. Sollux remembered the man's mouth so clearly. His thick lips and the stubble surrounding them as they formed the words.
"I'm sorry. But your friend is gone."
Friend.
Friend, he said.
As if he knew.
As if he had a fucking clue.
Sollux gasped, trying to breathe through the rope of memories tightening around his neck. He clung to Kanaya, his fingers digging into her arm.
"I'm gonna puke," he forced out.
She only barely managed to locate a men's bathroom and usher him inside before his stomach clenched in an attempt to purge him of grief and the smells of the hospital. He clung to the edges of a sink as he vomited, coughing and gasping and choking. His throat and nose burned and tears streamed from his eyes.
At last it was over. He righted himself, wiping his watery eyes and staring at his reflection in the mirror. His pallid countenance gazed back at him through puffy eyes and a running nose. He shuddered and ducked his head under the faucet, letting cold water shock him back into his senses. After rinsing out his mouth and shaking the water from his hair, he made his way back into the lobby where Kanaya sat waiting for him.
She took him by the arm once more. "Are you all right?"
"No," he snapped darkly, his limbs still shaking. "Eridan is going to fucking pay for making me come here. He's going to fucking pay."
Somehow it settled his stomach, focusing all his energy on getting up to Eridan's room and hating him for every step it took him to get there. After Kanaya stopped briefly at the front desk to retrieve Eridan's room number, Sollux marched to the elevator, Kanaya still clinging to his arm. Though she was now acting as more of a restraint than a support.
He burst from the elevator at nearly full tilt, Kanaya planting her feet firmly behind him with his wrist gripped in her hands. It slowed him, but it didn't cool his heart. It thrashed in his throat like some fish doused in boiling oil, sending jolts of heat spitting up into his mouth and down to his stomach. It drove him on even faster, his feet slapping the ground while he walked as fast as his legs could carry him.
When he finally burst into Eridan's room, it was with enough force and wild energy that one would have expected a wild bull to be waiting for him on the other side of the door. Instead, a quiet and dimly lit hospital room greeted him. Only one bed was present, and Feferi sat at the foot of it. Sitting up against the headboard was Eridan, scraping impassively at the bottom of a fruit cup. Both of them turned to face the heaving and sweaty man with dumbfounded expressions. At the same time they let a name tumble from their mouths.
"Karkat?"
"Sol?"
They both looked at each other. Eridan's lip curled with vexation.
"What the fuck are you goin' on about, Fef, how could that be Kar, I mean, Kar is this short, ornery guy, do you even listen to me when I'm givin' you all these detailed descriptions?"
"He said his name was Karkat!" Feferi retorted, flicking a hand in Sollux's direction. "Besides, how am I supposed to keep track of all of your friends when I've never met them? It takes so much effort and it's not like I have a pen and paper handy whenever you gripe at me about them."
Eridan opened his mouth to make some sort of angry response when Sollux cut him off.
"Can we please stop arguing about this trivial bullshit?" he snapped, slicing his arm through the air. He then pointed at Eridan. "You. I have a bone to pick with you. Actually it's more like a whole fucking skeleton. I have a whole skeleton to pick with you, you shit-sucking assball, and I will pick it slowly and also in private. So everyone else can just get out."
Eridan's mouth closed and a shadow appeared over his face. Feferi looked to him, her eyes questioning, but he only gave a tiny nod. She then smiled and hopped from the bed. She took Kanaya by the arm and the two of them exited out into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.
"So, what are you doin' here?" Eridan asked, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. But the wavering note beneath it didn't escape Sollux's notice. It made the fear- and grief-fueled fire in his stomach flare, and he balled his hands into fists at his sides.
"How about you answer that yourself?" he asked, his voice strained. "Huh? Or you just didn't think it was important enough to let me know about your fucking life-threatening heart condition?"
The last words burst out of him like gunpowder. He wanted to turn around and punch something. To upend a trash can or kick at the perfect white walls. But as he stood there, facing Eridan, he felt a stone settle in his stomach. The fire behind his eyes died down and at last he truly saw what lay before him. A skinny young man with a hospital gown hanging from his drooping shoulders, his legs barely visible beneath the sheets. A heart monitor and an IV drip at his side, a tray of unfinished food over his lap. His hair was disheveled, the purple dye looking faded and the face beneath it pallid as well. Sollux felt the stone in his gut turn to ice, slowly freezing the blood in his veins. His fists loosened and his arms began to shake.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispered.
"Because a the way you're lookin' at me now," Eridan replied, his voice filled with muted anger. "That's why I fuckin' moved here to begin with. I never wanted anyone lookin' at me like that again. Like they couldn't see anything in me except death."
Sollux took a halting step forward, his limbs beginning to tremble even harder. "You just disappeared. I even tried to text you. Look." He fumbled in his pocket, digging out his phone with shaking fingers. He went to his message. The one he'd been reading and rereading ever since he'd sent it. He held it to Eridan's face. "See? They have snow in Minecraft now and I wanted to ask you about what you thought of using it on Alternia…"
He couldn't continue. He felt his throat closing on his words and a shameful heat prickling behind his eyes. He took a shuddering breath before he forced out, "I didn't know what to do."
Eridan stared at the cold peas and carrots sitting on the lunch tray before him. "Alternia's mostly desert, Sol, I don't really think snow would fit in unless you wanted to make some special area for—"
"I don't give a fuck about the snow," Sollux burst out, his vision beginning to blur with tears. "When Feferi told me where you were, I thought… For a second I thought…"
He had to stop again. He tried to stuff his phone back in his pocket, but he dropped it, and it clattered to the floor. He stooped to pick it up. But he didn't get back to his feet. He held it in both hands and stared at it as his voice came gushing over his lips like blood.
"Aradia and I dated for three years. She loved Indiana Jones and Deep Impact. She wanted to be a paleontologist when she got done with school. She liked pottery. It was her dream to visit Greece someday. She wore skirts a lot even though they got stained because she was always digging around in some patch of dirt. She liked dark and cold things but her smile was so warm. She was the greatest fucking thing that ever happened to me. That ever happened to this shitty space rock we call Earth. And I took her away. I took her away on the night that I was going to ask her to stay with me forever."
The face of his phone was now splattered with tears. His whole body shook. From the bed he could hear Eridan shifting around. His voice floated over to him, tentative and soft.
"Sol…"
"That chair you broke belonged to her. She had it since she was in high school but she gave it to me because she wanted me to stop slouching when I sat at the computer. But that plan went to shit because she broke it when she was trying to adjust it. So it was stuck at the perfect height for me to slouch as much as I liked. It was one of the last things of hers that I had. Because I was too much of a fucking coward to face her family after what I did. I just let them come into the apartment and take everything."
He looked up, trying to blink the tears away. "I fucked up. My whole life is a fuckup, Eridan. But I'm not going to shit around trying to keep it from you anymore. So don't you fucking dare try to keep stuff from me. Don't you fucking dare."
Eridan looked away, and his blue eyes lost some of their usual luster. He was quiet for a long time, the faint beep of his heart rate monitor serving as the only sound to crack the thick silence of the room around them.
At last he spoke, his voice muted and small. "I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to be a guy that went to parties and played music and could just fuckin' take a walk around a park without gettin' winded…"
He paused, his fingers clenching on the sheets. And then he continued. "I wanted to be someone who could take care a himself instead a just bein' one big inconvenience to everyone I met. I wanted to be a guy that had friends and not just a group a people that would occasionally feed me a big shit-steamin' plate a pity. I wanted to pretend I could be this guy. But pretendin' makes nothing but a lot a fake bullshit. And this perfect fuckin' guy that I dreamed up was the fakest bullshit yet. Because tryin' to be him did nothing for me except land me back here. In this fuckin' place with its condescendin' doctors and its wires and needles and fuckin' food."
He lashed out at his dinner tray as the last words erupted from his mouth, flipping it over and sending peas and carrots raining over his sheets. As the tray crashed to the floor and rattled to a rest, Eridan stared at his legs, his eyes full of tears and fury.
"I was born with only half a heart. And that's how I've gotta live. This fuckin' half-existence where schoolwork is done from a hospital bed and teachers and classmates barely know my name because I spend so much time plastered to a bunch a pillows. Where I can't lift shit by myself or take long walks or swim or spend too much time in the sun. Where I can't drink and get shitfaced and laugh about it later because I'm on all these fuckin' blood thinners. Where all I can do is stare at a wall and dream a what it must be fuckin' like to be born as a whole goddamned person instead a this fuckin' sick, half-thing."
He was shaking by the end, and the tears brimming in his eyes had spilled over to dapple his bed sheets. Sollux stared at him from the floor, his own tear-flecked phone still clutched in his hands. He swallowed the painful knot in his throat.
"So all of that… All the whining that I gave you so much shit for… And how tired you said you were all the time… That was all because…"
"I don't want to hear about how you would've done things differently if you'd have known," Eridan snarled, running a hand beneath his dripping nose. "I don't want people doin' things differently because they know. I don't fuckin' want that."
Sollux felt anger flare in his gut. "You nearly killed yourself by pulling the shit you pulled. I nearly killed you! So don't start shitting yourself this huge assloaf of a pity party because things aren't they way you want them to be. Because your dead girlfriend ripped out half your heart or you were never born with both parts to begin with. You can't run around acting like the other half is there and that you're just fine. Look at us, you fucking asslord. Look at where pissing around in our respective fantasy-lands got us. I'm sitting on the floor of a place I swore I'd never go again, and you're hooked up to a fucking IV drip without any of your precious hair gel in grabbing distance."
"Actually I got some hair gel right here, I just never—"
"Shut up, I'm trying to make a profound statement."
They both smiled then. Small quivering smiles that broke through their tearful masks. Sollux got to his feet then and sat hesitantly on the edge of Eridan's bed. He quickly ran the back of his hand over his moist cheeks and jerked his chin toward the other.
"So can I see it?" he asked, his voice still hoarse.
"See what?" Eridan asked, running an arm underneath his glasses to dab at his eyes.
"The…damage zone, I guess," Sollux replied, the words tumbling awkwardly from his mouth.
Eridan blinked at him in confusion for a minute, his eyes still puffy and red. But they widened with realization as Sollux's request became clear. "Oh. Sure, I guess. Like you said, there's really no point in pretendin' it's not there."
He lifted his gown. Beneath, his chest was heavily bandaged. Sollux winced. If some part of him had been hoping everything had all been some elaborate prank, that part died when he saw the gauze. He reached out a hand tentatively, his fingers shaking. He looked to Eridan, who was still holding up his hospital gown.
"Can I?" Sollux asked tentatively.
"There's really not much to touch because it's all covered in about eight different layers a medical tape, but whatever, you can do what you want. Just don't push on it, it still hurts like you don't even want to fuckin' know."
Sollux eased his hand forward and gently splayed his fingers over Eridan's chest. He felt it rise and fall beneath his palm, the warmth of Eridan's body radiating even through all the bandages. After a time, he took his hand away.
"This is pretty heavy shit," he said at last, unable to form a more profound statement.
"Yeah," Eridan replied, dropping his gown back down.
"So how long are you going to be in this place?"
Eridan shrugged. "I don't know. They're scared I'm gonna do something stupid again, so I've been ordered to stay here for as long as they deem it necessary until I get their certified fuckin' say-so tellin' me that I can go home. And even then, I'm sure I'll be consigned to fuckin' bed rest for who knows how long."
Sollux was silent for a moment as he watched Eridan fume. At last he shrugged a shoulder and replied, "Well, can you at least operate your laptop from bed?"
Eridan glanced up at him, the fire in his eyes cooling. "Yeah, I guess. Why, are you goin' to be commissionin' me for construction work on Alternia even in my delicate physical condition?"
"On Alternia, the only vacation you ever get to take is the one six feet underground," Sollux replied, a smirk forming on his lips.
"Wow, that is a lot a fuckin' bullshit, Sol, I can't even believe you," Eridan replied, but he couldn't keep the laughter from his voice.
Their talk ceased then, a tear-watered silence sprouting up in its place and blooming into an exhausted warmth. When Feferi and Kanaya finally decided to re-enter the room to inform the two that visiting hours were drawing to a close, they found Sollux curled on the bed beside Eridan. Each were breathing the soft notes of sleep.