Sting had regressed.
Rogue wasn't sure when exactly it happened. Lector claimed Sting had stayed in bed whenever he wasn't around for a few days before the blond gave up on hiding it from him. Getting him out of bed to visit the doctor had been such a fight that Rogue had been forced to contact the hospital and reschedule.
He was determined not to do that again.
"Come on Sting. You're overdue for an ultrasound. They need to make sure the baby is growing properly. And don't you want to know the gender?"
"Can't the doctor just come here?"
"Yes. But the equipment he needs will be over there. I know hospitals smell awful, but you have to go."
Sting shook his head. "I don't feel good."
Rogue had hoped it was just that Sting was afraid for the baby again, but feared an answer like this all the same. "How so?"
"Sick," Sting said. "I feel sick."
"Your morning sickness is bad again?"
Sting nodded.
Bull. He was making it up. He had to be. Even when his sickness was at its worst, Rogue had still seen Sting get up and drag himself through the day. But unless Sting chose to answer honestly, Rogue couldn't force the real reason out of him.
That being said, he could easily disprove Sting's claim. He went into the kitchen pulled out a packet of bacon, and set that cooking while he rolled out dough. By the time the bacon had cooked, he was ready to fry doughnuts, and he munched on the fatty meat while doing so. When he and the cats had eaten half of it, he stopped. Whatever Sting claimed, he suspected the blond would want some.
The doughnuts were coated with a generous helping of sugar and placed on a plate with the remaining bacon, which Rogue carried back into his and Sting's bedroom.
Sting watched Rogue come in and sit in a chair across from the bed, then take a doughnut, and bite into it.
"You're evil."
"I've been told I might head down that road, but I think I missed whatever turning point was supposed to solidify my descent into madness. How are you feeling?"
"I'm going to be so sick, Rogue."
"Really, now?"
"Do you want me to have to rush to the bathroom? If I don't make it in time you'll be scrubbing puke off the floor."
"It would be worth it, if that got you out of bed."
There was a pause.
"Go on," Rogue insisted. "Rush to the bathroom."
He waited longer this time while Sting struggled with how to properly react to this one.
"Fine," Sting said after a good three minutes of internal debate. "I'm not sick. Happy?"
"Not really. But here's a doughnut for being honest." Rogue held one out. "They're still warm. Now if you could—Sting! Don't eat it over the bed! You'll get sugar everywhere! You do know we sleep in that, right?"
Sting gave Rogue a much suffered look and pushed himself, agonizingly, into a sitting position. He attempted to lean over the side of the bed to eat the doughnut, but stopped with a whimper, and eased back.
"What's wrong?" Rogue demanded. "What's really wrong?"
Sting hung his head in defeat and shifted to a more comfortable position. "My back hurts. But… that's normal, right? Because the weight from the baby…"
Rogue looked down at Sting's stomach. It was starting to really stick out. You could no longer mistake him for merely putting on weight. In fact, if he were a woman most people would assume he was pregnant. But he wasn't so large yet that it should cause a considerable strain. At least not for someone who hadn't been in a horrible accident a few years ago.
"Doctor. Now." Rogue ordered. "If this is keeping you from getting out of bed, you need to have someone look at you."
Reluctantly, Sting pushed himself forward again, gritting his teeth in pain as he stepped out of bed. He couldn't get himself completely upright, and had to hold on to Rogue for support while they walked. After making it halfway down the hall, the two gave up completely, and Rogue lifted Sting up princess-style. It made the blond blush and complain that it was embarrassing on top of painful, but one way or the other he had to get to the hospital.
-o-
"Normally we would take an x-ray to make sure you haven't re-opened any old wounds, but considering you condition…"
"Can you do anything to inspect him?" Rogue asked. "He couldn't walk. I could hardly get him to sit up."
The doctor, who had watched Rogue fumble trying to get Sting onto the ER table, nodded in understanding. "We don't have any healers on staff, but we can have one come over from another hospital. He may need to stay the night."
Rogue and Sting exchanged scowls. If they needed to take him to someone with actual magic, then it would be easier to ask Wendy for help. But she was off on a solo job protecting some caravan that had important luggage, and wasn't expected back for at least half a week still. Not to mention, Rogue didn't want to move Sting any more than was necessary. So staying overnight would be best.
"No," Sting insisted.
"If the doctor says so—"
"It smells like death, Rogue."
"It smells like chemical cleaners."
"And beneath that it smells like death." If his back didn't hurt so bad, Sting would have made some dramatic gesture to emphasize his point.
"He can stay the night if you can't get anyone in earlier," Rogue decided for Sting, "but you'll have an easier time of getting him to cooperate if he doesn't have to stay so long."
"Rogue, I'll be fine to wait at home," Sting insisted.
Rubbing Sting's shoulder gently, so as not to accidentally shake him and potentially hurt him further, Rogue shook his head and said, "It's your spine, Sting. We're not taking any risks with this."
"It's not a big deal."
"It will be, if you do some permanent damage."
"I won't—"
"Sting, it's your spine."
That silenced the blond for a good five seconds.
"Who will look after Alex?"
"Lector is holding down the fort. I told him to go to Erza if we're gone too long."
"You'll stay with me if I'm trapped here overnight, then?"
Rogue's immediate reaction was to say no. One of them ought to be there for Alex. She might let the cats put her to bed, but she would scream if she got up the next morning and her mommy and daddy were still gone. But Sting really was trapped wherever Rogue left him. He'd seen for himself that the white slayer could hardly move himself. And how much of his reluctance to stay with Sting was his own dislike of hospitals? Would it be fair to tell Sting to put up with it when he couldn't?
"I need to step out for a bit," Rogue told him. "I'll be back with real food. Not… whatever they make here. If we're going to be here overnight, we're going to want something to eat."
He let go of Sting's shoulder and turned to the door when Sting called out, "Wait!"
Rogue looked back. "What?"
"Lean over."
Rogue obliged, and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.
"Thanks, Rogue."
"Anything to help."
-o-
In the end, they weren't able to get someone to come and look at Sting before nightfall, and the two wound up staying in the hospital overnight. Sting, after much sweet talking, got the nurse to find him a baby safe drug that would help him sleep despite the pain he was in, and Rogue kept him distracted while he waited for it to kick in by planning aloud for Alex's third birthday. Once Sting was passed out, he settled in a chair that the doctor had let him drag in from the waiting room and went to sleep himself.
Rogue woke the next morning when they finally brought in someone with healing magic. Sting took a little effort to wake, and seemed drowsy even when they got him to keep his eyes open. Aftereffects of the drug, the doctor said. Under different circumstances Rogue might have been troubled by this, but in his stupor, Sting didn't fight against having medical professionals help him.
"How bad is it?" Rogue asked when the healer paused in his inspection.
"Well… it's not the worst I've seen. What kind of trauma did he experience?"
"He was hit by a monster truck. In a destruction derby. He was in a coma for a week."
The healer stared at Rogue, trying to guess as to how someone could possible end up in that situation. When Rogue supplied no further explanation, the man shrugged and resumed working his magic on Sting.
"So?"
"I'll do what I can for him. Whichever surgeon fixed this injury when it happened did a good job, considering he didn't have any magic, but to heal it completely you would need something more magical. If he weren't… ah… if there wasn't a child, I would fix him here and now. As it is, I can treat the symptoms, but there's nothing I can do right now to tackle the cause."
"Meaning…"
"I will fix his back, but it's going to start bothering him again. Soon. Until the baby is born, I would advise he be on bed rest. Or at least wear a brace that will help take some of the pressure off his spine. Even then, he'll likely be in here a few more times in order to ensure that the bone doesn't crack before we can do something more permanent for him."
Rogue made a mental note to ask Wendy to look over Sting regularly. As well as to have her of Porlyusica—probably both—see what they could do for Sting after this pregnancy was over.
"I'll see what I can do for his knee too."
"His knee?"
"Mm. It's not as bad as the spine, but it looks like there's an awful lot of strain on it too. Is that also from the… ah… truck?"
"Probably. I'm still amazed he didn't need a full body cast."
"I see. I really do advise he stay in bed for the next…"
"Six and a half months," Rogue supplied. The old Sting would never have consented to that. The new Sting, who was paranoid about his baby's health and tried to hide it from Rogue when something was wrong, might.
Maybe a wheelchair? It had made Sting motion sick the last time he was stuck to one, but it had been better than nothing. If Sting had preferred being bed ridden to the chair, he wouldn't have used it so much after his accident.
Well… calling it his accident wasn't entirely fair. Completely unfair, in all honestly. It had been Rogue who fell in front of the truck. Sting was only hit because he had to run in front of the truck to throw Rogue to safety. It wasn't fair to call it Sting's accident, and it wasn't fair that Sting was the one in pain now either.
"Alright." The healer stepped back. "You two be careful with him now. I'll have his doctor right up an order for medical supplies. He'll need a brace for his back. And one for the knee too. And a wheelchair. Hopefully, keeping off his feet will keep any other old injuries from flaring back up. I'd tell you to keep him from lifting anything heavy, but I assume he already isn't doing that."
Rogue nodded, absentmindedly running his hand through Sting's hair. Suddenly, he had the strange fear that the blond might collapse under his touch. Silly, if for no other reason than that contact with Rogue made Sting murmur something about chocolate and smile.
They forgot to ask about the baby's gender before they left.
-o-
Since Natsu visited Sting so often, Rogue figured that it was probably alright for him the visit the roset. Besides, Natsu was dating Lucy. There were no lingering feelings between them. None. At all. Absolutely zero. Save for awkward tension, which would never be resolved if they kept avoiding one another.
Rogue carried the still somewhat drowsy Sting home, returning to find Lector frantically trying to stop both Frosch and Alex from crying. That roused Sting somewhat from his drug induced stupor, although he still didn't seem fully awake to Rogue. He set Sting in bed, made Alex a quick breakfast, changed her into clean training pants, then dropped her off beside Sting before heading back out.
Seeing as how Natsu loved the guild so much, Rogue had always wondered about his decision to not only live outside of town, but to pick a house outside of town in the opposite direction as the guild. Of course, Natsu had probably paid almost nothing for that run down, one room home. If he even paid for it at all. There were times when Rogue had been busy cleaning, back when he and Natsu lived together, where he stumbled upon filth so old and alarming that he suspected the building had been abandoned after some tragedy, and Natsu had assumed ownership of it when he showed up in town because no one else would touch it.
The long walk to Natsu's gave Rogue plenty of time to regret his decision, but the further he got the easier it became to tell himself that for as far as he'd made it, he might as well go all the way.
That didn't stop him from hoping that Natsu might have gone off for work. Nor did it stop him from being disappointed when he picked up the fire slayer's scent fresh as he approached the house.
It did, however, make him come to a full stop when Natsu opened the door just as Rogue reached it.
"Hi… I…" Rogue forgot what it was he'd planned on saying. "Good Morning."
"Hi, good morning to you, too," Natsu grinned, then seemed to think better of it, and tried scowling before settling on a neutral expression. "Is something wrong? If this is about me coming over, Sting and I were—"
"He told me," Rogue cut in. "It's fine. I don't mind. And you're helping him with Alex, right? That's… You can see her whenever you want. Really. I don't mind at all."
For as much time as Natsu spent expecting to be her father, Rogue could never tell Natsu to stay away from her now. Maybe not to try and handle her on his own, but denying any contact was out of the question.
"So what is this about then?"
"I was hoping to borrow something that we let you have a few years back. If it's still here."
Peeking over Natsu's shoulder, he saw that the house was in a state of orderly chaos. He didn't know how often Lucy visited, her scent was all over the place, but it looked as though she'd done her best to keep the place clean. Though in the absence of a live-in cleaner, Rogue could see that the clutter had piled up again.
"As long as I'm not using it." Natsu stepped aside and gestured for Rogue to step inside.
Rogue stayed put.
"Well, what did you need?" Natsu asked when it became apparent that he would have to go in and retrieve whatever it was.
"The wheelchair Sting used," Rogue said. "You wanted it as a memento. He… I haven't gone anywhere in the past week, so you haven't been to see him, have you? He's been having some trouble. The strain from his…" Somehow, saying the word 'pregnancy' in front of Natsu felt rude. "The strain from his condition caused some of his old injuries to act up."
And since Rogue wasn't working as often as he should, and couldn't take as high paying of jobs without Sting there to support him, buying a new wheelchair was a big commitment.
"Sure. Do I get it back when you're done with it?"
"That won't be for another half a year, but yes. Once Sting doesn't need it anymore, we can bring it back."
Natsu nodded and disappeared inside. Rogue moved to follow, out of some old habit but stopped himself a few feet from the door, and instead waited outside.
A crash sounded from inside the house, and a half a minute later Natsu emerged with the old wheelchair. It was in good shape, despite whatever had been knocked over to retrieve it. (Probably a stack of items Natsu had stored on the chair.) It had been good of them to hand it over to Natsu, in hindsight. Sting had been just about ready to shred the thing by the time he was able to get out of it.
"One more condition for having it back," Natsu said as he wheeled the chair up to Rogue.
"What?"
"I get to push him around next time I come to visit."
For the first time since showing up at Natsu's, Rogue cracked a grin. He tried to raise his hand over his mouth cover it, but burst out in laughter, and there was no hiding that.
Push Sting's wheelchair. Come to think of it, Natsu had mentioned wanting to do as much when they broke up, hadn't he? Let him push Sting around in return for bringing the blond to Fairy Tail and Natsu said they would be even. Rogue had been so desperate to avoid having to face the man he'd strung along and broken the heart of that he all but forgot about that detail of their last conversation.
"He won't like it, but fine. I think I owe you that one."