Synth(em)etic Generation

📖 2026 Event Prompt List

"I told you, I'm fine." / Loss of Balance

"When was the last time you actually slept?" / Sensory Overload

"Stop talking for a second." / Pharmacy Run

"I can handle it." / Lab Results

"You look pale." / Chronic Illness/Injury

"You feel warm." "I know." / Sharing a Bed

"I made coffee/tea." / Tired Caretaker

"Don't look at me like that." / Too Busy To Stop Working/Moving

"Let me help you." / Anxiety/Panic Attack

"Just sit down before you fall down." / Overworked

"You don't have to carry this by yourself." / Fever Induced Confession

"Just give me five minutes." / Hiding An Illness

"Everything is vibrating. Please stop talking." / Shaking Hands

"I'm just tired." / Burning the Candle at Both Ends

"I am completely capable of doing my job." / Brain Fog

“I was just trying to help.” / Exhausted Silence

"Everything is too loud." / Sleep Deprivation

"How long was I out?" / Waking up disoriented

"It's just a headache, drop it." / A cold compress.

"I didn't realize how bad it was until I sat down." / Uncontrollable shivering.

"Can you turn the lights down?" / Fluffy Blanket

"I don't think I can get up from here." / Warm drink

"I've handled worse than this." / New Medication

"I didn't think it would hit this fast." / Contlagion

"Hold onto me for a second, the floor is moving." / Stomach Virus

"My brain won't shut up." / Relapse

"Don't treat me like I'm fragile." / Loss of Fine Motor Skills

"I can't remember the word for it..." / Failed Masking

"I think I'm awake, but I'm not sure." / Wired but Tired

"Is it just me?" / Hot Flashes

"Just rest." / Tunnel Vision

🔄 Alternate Prompts

"Did I already say that out loud?"

"It's fine, it's just a seasonal thing."

"I don't need a doctor, I need an hour of silence."

"Everything is just... too much right now."

"I didn't mean to snap at you."

Ringing Ears

Nausea

Fight or Flight

Fever Dreams

Abandoned Tasks

Hey everyone, a quick note from me.

You might have noticed things have been a bit quiet around here lately, and the prompt list didn’t quite make the midnight debut like it was supposed to. Life got a little crazy behind the scenes, and the scheduled posts simply didn't happen. I’m really sorry for keeping you all waiting!

Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking around. The prompts are officially up now, and I’m incredibly excited to see what everyone creates this year.

"Not dying," Julian replied with a faint smile, "just suffering." It was funny how Alex could handle—even enjoy—completely ungodly temperatures in the sauna, yet be all but incapacitated by outdoors temperatures just short of thirty. The look he gave Julian was so miserable Julian wanted to hug him…Only that wouldn't help cool him down.

"You've remembered to drink?" Julian asked. "And not just water, either?"

Alex nodded with an inarticulate whine. His T-shirt was visibly damp with sweat under the arms and across the chest, and his hair was curling even more than normally.

"Well," Julian went on when it was clear that no verbal response was forthcoming, "maybe you should try taking a shower. Or at least dunk your head under cold water for a bit."

"I see how it is," Alex grumbled weakly. "The sun isn't killing me fast enough so you're going to drown me…"

Julian snorted softly. "I wasn't planning on getting in the shower with you," he replied. Well, the idea might have some merit, maybe, but Alex probably wasn't in the mood, all things considered. "So if you're going to drown, you're going to have to do it yourself."

Alex hauled himself up to a sitting position with an exaggerated grunt of effort. "Fine," he said, "I'm going. To shower," he added after a beat, "not drown. Maybe." He pushed himself to his feet, wavering slightly as his blood pressure tried to keep up, and then headed into the house.

--

Later in the evening they were sitting in the big kitchen-slash-living space of the house, eating strawberries and cream.

The house had two floors, though the upstairs was more like a glorified attic where Alex and his brother had slept when they'd used to come here with their parents as kids. Well, Alex would still sleep there if his parents were there at the same time, but since they weren't, he and Julian had appropriated the ground floor bedroom that remained marginally cooler than the attic. Built sometime in the mid 1900's, the house and the concept of air conditioning were probably not even aware of each other, let alone more closely acquainted.

The clink of Alex's spoon settling into the ceramic bowl brought Julian back from imagining a younger Alex running buck-wild all summer in the surrounding fields and woods. He looked up to see the present-day Alex getting up slowly. "You good?" he asked.

"Yeah," Alex began, then reconsidered. "I dunno, man. Just feeling kinda icky."

"Aw, still?" Julian replied. "That sucks."

Alex gave a slightly lopsided shrug. "Yeah, well. Think I'm just gonna go to sleep."

"You should have something salty," Julian said, trying not to sound like he was fussing, but Alex had had no appetite at dinner and the amount he'd sweated over the day was guaranteed to throw his salt balance—or whatever—out of whack. Besides, an Alex with no appetite was almost always a cause for concern in and of itself…

"I know," Alex replied. A sudden mischievous glint appeared in his eye, then he leaned closer and licked the side of Julian's neck. "There. Yummy."

"What the—" Julian exclaimed with a startled laugh. "I swear to Godzilla, the sun has actually fried your last brain cell…" But Alex looked less miserable than he had basically since the sun came up past the trees at ass o'clock in the morning—probably not due to the amount of salt he'd licked off of Julian's skin, though—that Julian didn't have the heart to even fake disapproval for long. "Fine, go to sleep, dumbass," he said fondly, slapping the other man's ass in passing. "I'll just do the dishes quickly and I'll be right with you."

--

Alex lay in the darkness of the bedroom—heavy blackout curtains blocking out the light of a northern summer night—trying to will his brain to shut down and get some sleep, but everything in the universe seemed to be working against that very goal. His head felt heavy, kind of fuzzy, but annoyingly awake, and every time he closed his eyes the room began to loop in wobbly circles around him. His body felt overheated despite the shower and the amounts of iced drinks he'd put into it. And as a cherry on top of the shitcake, the loudest goddamn mosquito in the entire kingdom of Sweden had gotten into the room and was probably flying circles in the darkness just beyond his vision, just to spite him. At this point he'd almost rather the fucker sit down and bite him just so that the sound would stop.

He kind of wished Julian would hurry the fuck up, but he also dreaded having to share the bed because it would inevitably get even warmer, even if they weren't crazy enough to cuddle.

By the time the creaking of the floorboards told him Julian was finally here, Alex had had ample time to regret if not all, at least 70% of the life choices that had led to this point. He'd just wanted to show Julian the place he'd spent most of his summers as a child; he'd not ordered a fucking heat wave to roast the countryside alive while there, thank you very much.

"You're awake?" Julian's voice asked somewhere above him.

"But at what cost," Alex replied, the words coming out as a semi-intelligible groan but Julian seemed to get the gist of it.

The mattress dipped as Julian sat on the other side of the bed. Then, like a fucking miracle, something damp and cool settled onto Alex's forehead and over his eyes. And another pressed to the side of his neck. "They won't stay cold for long, but it should help for a bit at least," Julian said softly, and then the mattress dipped again as he—presumably—settled down on his side of the bed.

"I think you just saved my life," Alex mumbled. He could identify the ancient kitchen towels by the faint smell that clung to them no matter how recently they were washed, but right now he couldn't care less if they were Julian's used underwear.

"Not sure I'd go that far," Julian replied, and it took Alex a second to realize he was responding to the comment about lifesaving, not the thing about underwear which, for a delirious moment, he'd worried he'd accidentally said out loud. "But if it helps you—and by extension, me—sleep tonight, I'll take it."

--

Alex must have fallen asleep shortly after that, because the next thing he knew, he was jolted awake from dead sleep by… Well, he didn't really know what. At first he thought it must have been a sound, but the house was completely silent, even Julian wasn't snoring.

As his body slowly caught up to the whole being awake thing, Alex had to confront the fact that he was feeling awful. The pillowcase and the bedsheet under him were drenched with sweat, but the primary function of sweating—cooling the body down—wasn't really working as far as he could tell. The towel against his neck had long since caught up with his body temperature and was just a gross, damp mass against his skin. He wasn't sure where the other towel had ended up; he must have yeeted it in his sleep.

The feeling of discomfort ebbed and flowed in waves as he lay in the stifling darkness. Maybe he should get up and rinse the towels in cold water and try that again since it seemed to work so well the first time. Drink some water. There were still strawberries left, too… Or maybe not strawberries; for some reason the thought of strawberries was intensely off-putting right now. Especially with cream. Which was odd, because usually he could eat his body weight in strawberries and cream with no issues whatsoever—

A shudder ran through him and he resolved to just not think about strawberries and cream, and question his body later when he didn't feel like dying.

He peeled the useless towel off his neck and pushed himself to a sitting position, to look for the other towel, but instead the motion caused two things to happen. His blood pressure decided to take a vacation in Narnia, judging by the black spots blooming in his vision and the way the bed seemed to tilt precariously under him. And the previously ephemeral sense of discomfort suddenly concentrated around his stomach as its contents shifted with an audible glorrrbp that he was sure would wake Julian up.

Fuck.

He considered lying back down, but immediately realized that was not going to help at this point. His heart was racing and his breath came in quick, ragged gasps despite his efforts to try to regulate it. The feeling of vertigo was not letting up and the discomfort was rapidly evolving into full-blown nausea, and it seemed like his stomach contents had taken the motion of sitting up as incentive to try and crawl back up his throat, and—

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.

"Jul—" he tried to speak but his mouth was rapidly filling with thick, viscous saliva, and he had to stop and make a considerable effort to swallow some of it back down. "Hey, Jules…"

Finally Julian stirred. "Mmmhm?" he mumbled, the mattress tipping again as he also sat up. "What's up? You feeling alright?"

Alex just shook his head with an inarticulate groan, not daring to attempt speaking again. He drew his legs up and pressed his forehead against his knees, hoping to alleviate the overwhelming feeling of faintness that gripped him. His stomach gave another glorrrbp and a sickly burp rolled up that he didn't have the energy to stifle, flooding his mouth with saliva and the taste of—fuck—partially digested strawberries and cream. He felt a glob of drool dribble onto his thigh, which was incredibly gross, but he knew with a sinking certainty that if he tried to move, he was going to hurl, so there wasn't much he could do about it.

Julian, meanwhile, had caught on to the crisis and was already in motion. "Right, okay, fair enough," he murmured as he got out of bed and switched the small lamp on the nightstand on. "I guess we're past the point of getting you into the bathroom…"

Alex's body answered the rhetorical question by objecting to the shifting of the mattress, and a shallow gag shook his body, thankfully not bringing up anything more substantial than a steady flow of drool dripping from his lips. He heard Julian move around the bed and then his hand was on Alex's back, at once grounding and too warm. He felt Julian place something in his lap, unfortunately not a bucket but they weren't exactly in the habit of keeping buckets in the bedroom—

"There," Julian said softly, "I'll go get a bucket but just in case I don't get back fast enough—"

As Julian turned to go, Alex's nose caught the whiff of the still-damp kitchen towel, way, way too close, and that was the last straw. He drew a panicked breath, managed a strangled "Jules—" before his stomach lurched.

The actual vomiting was less violent that he'd have expected; it was like his stomach was so ready to expel its contents that his body didn't need to go to a lot of effort to make it happen. A heave that felt more like a gurgling belch sent a wave of mostly liquid, mushy, almost disturbingly sweet yet foul vomit surging up his throat. As it filled his mouth, for a second he had the misguided impulse to try and hold it in until Julian returned with the bucket, but then the sheer grossness of it overwhelmed him and he was spitting and coughing, his forehead still pressed to his knees and eyes squeezed shut, hoping the towel would be enough to soak the sick.

He heard Julian cussing in multiple languages, none of which sounded like English or Swedish, and it almost made him laugh, but what came out was a pitiful whine, which turned into a cough, which turned into a wet, not-quite-productive belch as more of his stomach contents tried to make an unwanted comeback. "Juh-hhhyuuurbp! …Jules, fuck," he groaned, spitting out more bitter saliva to join the mess soaking the towel and his thighs.

And then Julian was back, gently peeling him from his curled position and taking the soggy towel away. Alex groaned as his stomach protested the movement, but just as body pitched forward again, the bucket appeared in front of him, wedged between his knees.

"Okay," Julian muttered half under his breath, "it's okay, just let it out."

And it's not like Alex had a choice in the matter. His stomach heaved again, making him double over the bucket, gripping its plastic rim with both hands as what felt like an immense amount of vomit surged up his throat and gushed out of him, splattering into the bucket. He could distantly hear Julian say something he couldn't make out, but he felt the hand rubbing circles between his shoulder blades.

"F-fucking… fuck," Alex gasped weakly when his stomach finally gave him a reprieve. He remained slumped over the bucket until Julian's hands on his shoulders coaxed him to sit up again. The motion made his head spin and he listed to the side until Julian shifted closer and guided him to lean against him.

"Yeah," Julian agreed, "that about sums it up…" But his voice was soft and his hand brushing Alex's sweaty hair back from his forehead was gentle. "Do you think you're good to get up? We should get you properly cleaned up."

Alex shuddered as his stomach gave another lazy roll. "Not… not sure I'm done," he muttered and leaned over the bucket to spit out the saliva pooling in his mouth.

"Okay," Julian replied. "No rush."

They remained like that for what felt like forever, minutes stretching out in the silence of the night. Alex's stomach continued to roll queasily, and more than once he leaned over the bucket, certain that it was going to happen, but all that came out was a sickly burp and more drool.

Finally Julian spoke again. "Let's get you into the bathroom," he said. "If you're gonna puke again, you may as well do it there."

The idea of moving was still far from attractive, but Alex couldn't argue against the logic. And besides, he did very badly need a shower. He let Julian move the bucket aside and help him up, groaning as the effort or the motion or both made his stomach roll again. Julian didn't give him time to dwell on the sensation, however. The other man deftly maneuvered Alex out of the bedroom and into the bathroom which, fortunately, was not far.

--

The bathroom was small and, to Julian's eye, looked at least a century old, but Alex said it had been fully renovated some time in the late 70's. The space just fit a toilet, a sink, and instead of a normal shower there was this weird, half-sized bathtub with a seat at one end, so that if you actually filled the tub with water and sat on the seat, the water would come up barely to your waist, which did not seem like an enjoyable way to take a bath.

The space was very much not meant to accommodate multiple people at once, at least not when one was the size of Alex. Julian was not tiny himself, but next to Alex he looked—and felt—positively dainty. Which usually was the opposite of a problem, but maneuvering a dizzy, 190 cm tall beefcake in the cramped space felt just a little bit hazardous.

He somehow got Alex into the tub and sitting down, then realized that the other man was still wearing his vomit-soaked boxers, and Julian had to coax him to stand up again to get them off. Then he started the shower, setting the water temperature just a little cooler than he thought comfortable, and handed the shower head to Alex.

"Think you can manage while I change the sheets?" he asked. The mess had been fairly contained, all things considered, but inevitably some had ended up on the bed. He just hoped it hadn't soaked into the mattress itself or the bedroom was going to be out of order. When Alex nodded, Julian gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Right, try not to pass out and drown in the next five or six minutes."

Alex murmured something that might have been 'piss off', which Julian took as a good sign.

He stripped the bed, quick and efficient. His hands shook a little as he stuffed the vomit-stained sheet and towel into a plastic bag; he wasn't too squeamish and he could handle taking care of a sick friend—or whatever Alex was—but he wasn't completely unaffected by the smell, or the other sensory details of the main event. He wasn't sure what to do with the bag, there was no washing machine in the house, but for now he figured he'd just dump it on the porch and let Alex tell him what to do in the morning. He opened the bedroom windows as wide as they'd go, hoping the room would air out sufficiently by the time they were ready to get back to sleep.

He was just in the kitchen, pouring a glass of water, when he heard the unmistakable sound of retching from the bathroom.

He hurried back to find Alex sitting slumped over, elbows on his knees, his forehead resting on his arms as his back arched and his abdominal muscles clenched visibly with another heave. A deep, gurgling retch brought a stream of chunky vomit splattering to the bottom of the tub between—and on—his feet. The shower was still running, at least, and the mess was already getting washed down the drain.

"Hey, easy there, okay," Julian spoke in a low voice as he moved closer and took the shower head from Alex's grip before the other man could drop it. With his other hand he began to rub Alex's back again, feeling the muscles work under the shower-slick skin. "You're okay, just breathe."

A pained groan turned into a retch as another heave shook Alex's powerful frame, this time bringing up just a thin trickle of sick; the next one was unproductive.

"I think you're empty," Julian said as Alex continued to dry heave weakly. "Alex, you're done." He brushed the damp hair back from the other man's forehead and pointed the shower to rinse the last remnants of the mess swirling around the bottom of the tub down the drain. "It's done, just… breathe, man."

Gradually the dry heaves died down and Alex slumped against Julian with a pitiful whine. Julian gathered him into his arms and held him, not caring about his own T-shirt getting soaked in the process.

"Right," he said after a while, "I think it's time to go back to sleep. Well. Drink some water, then back to sleep."

Alex mumbled something unintelligible, but it didn't sound like a protest, and he got up and out of the tub at Julian's prompting. He seemed a little steadier after the shower, and he dried himself and fetched a new pair of boxers without assistance.

They made their way into the kitchen, where Alex sat down heavily at the table and Julian brought him a glass of water. "You holding up okay?" Julian asked as he sat across the table from Alex.

"I'll live," Alex replied between small, cautious sips of water. It was difficult to tell in the gray non-darkness of the summer night, but his color looked considerably better as well.

Julian nodded with a faint smile. "That counts as okay for now."

They sat for a few minutes longer while Alex finished the rest of the water and assured himself that it was going to stay down, and then they headed back to bed, now accompanied by an entire flight of mosquitoes that had taken advantage of the open windows. Alex was too worn out to be bothered by the new, annoying roommates, but Julian was kept awake for a long time by the incessant whining noise they made.

--

Julian did, however, manage to fall asleep eventually, and they both slept soundly enough that neither heard anything out of the ordinary in the early hours of morning. And so neither was prepared for the sight of the plastic bag Julian had left on the porch having been torn to shreds and its contents spread over the grass in the front yard.

Alex took one look at the scene, looked at Julian, then back to the yard. "I think I've had enough of this vacation," he muttered faintly.

"Not dying," Julian replied with a faint smile, "just suffering." It was funny how Alex could handle—even enjoy—completely ungodly temperatures in the sauna, yet be all but incapacitated by outdoors temperatures just short of thirty. The look he gave Julian was so miserable Julian wanted to hug him…Only that wouldn't help cool him down.

"You've remembered to drink?" Julian asked. "And not just water, either?"

Alex nodded with an inarticulate whine. His T-shirt was visibly damp with sweat under the arms and across the chest, and his hair was curling even more than normally.

"Well," Julian went on when it was clear that no verbal response was forthcoming, "maybe you should try taking a shower. Or at least dunk your head under cold water for a bit."

"I see how it is," Alex grumbled weakly. "The sun isn't killing me fast enough so you're going to drown me…"

Julian snorted softly. "I wasn't planning on getting in the shower with you," he replied. Well, the idea might have some merit, maybe, but Alex probably wasn't in the mood, all things considered. "So if you're going to drown, you're going to have to do it yourself."

Alex hauled himself up to a sitting position with an exaggerated grunt of effort. "Fine," he said, "I'm going. To shower," he added after a beat, "not drown. Maybe." He pushed himself to his feet, wavering slightly as his blood pressure tried to keep up, and then headed into the house.

--

Later in the evening they were sitting in the big kitchen-slash-living space of the house, eating strawberries and cream.

The house had two floors, though the upstairs was more like a glorified attic where Alex and his brother had slept when they'd used to come here with their parents as kids. Well, Alex would still sleep there if his parents were there at the same time, but since they weren't, he and Julian had appropriated the ground floor bedroom that remained marginally cooler than the attic. Built sometime in the mid 1900's, the house and the concept of air conditioning were probably not even aware of each other, let alone more closely acquainted.

The clink of Alex's spoon settling into the ceramic bowl brought Julian back from imagining a younger Alex running buck-wild all summer in the surrounding fields and woods. He looked up to see the present-day Alex getting up slowly. "You good?" he asked.

"Yeah," Alex began, then reconsidered. "I dunno, man. Just feeling kinda icky."

"Aw, still?" Julian replied. "That sucks."

Alex gave a slightly lopsided shrug. "Yeah, well. Think I'm just gonna go to sleep."

"You should have something salty," Julian said, trying not to sound like he was fussing, but Alex had had no appetite at dinner and the amount he'd sweated over the day was guaranteed to throw his salt balance—or whatever—out of whack. Besides, an Alex with no appetite was almost always a cause for concern in and of itself…

"I know," Alex replied. A sudden mischievous glint appeared in his eye, then he leaned closer and licked the side of Julian's neck. "There. Yummy."

"What the—" Julian exclaimed with a startled laugh. "I swear to Godzilla, the sun has actually fried your last brain cell…" But Alex looked less miserable than he had basically since the sun came up past the trees at ass o'clock in the morning—probably not due to the amount of salt he'd licked off of Julian's skin, though—that Julian didn't have the heart to even fake disapproval for long. "Fine, go to sleep, dumbass," he said fondly, slapping the other man's ass in passing. "I'll just do the dishes quickly and I'll be right with you."

--

Alex lay in the darkness of the bedroom—heavy blackout curtains blocking out the light of a northern summer night—trying to will his brain to shut down and get some sleep, but everything in the universe seemed to be working against that very goal. His head felt heavy, kind of fuzzy, but annoyingly awake, and every time he closed his eyes the room began to loop in wobbly circles around him. His body felt overheated despite the shower and the amounts of iced drinks he'd put into it. And as a cherry on top of the shitcake, the loudest goddamn mosquito in the entire kingdom of Sweden had gotten into the room and was probably flying circles in the darkness just beyond his vision, just to spite him. At this point he'd almost rather the fucker sit down and bite him just so that the sound would stop.

He kind of wished Julian would hurry the fuck up, but he also dreaded having to share the bed because it would inevitably get even warmer, even if they weren't crazy enough to cuddle.

By the time the creaking of the floorboards told him Julian was finally here, Alex had had ample time to regret if not all, at least 70% of the life choices that had led to this point. He'd just wanted to show Julian the place he'd spent most of his summers as a child; he'd not ordered a fucking heat wave to roast the countryside alive while there, thank you very much.

"You're awake?" Julian's voice asked somewhere above him.

"But at what cost," Alex replied, the words coming out as a semi-intelligible groan but Julian seemed to get the gist of it.

The mattress dipped as Julian sat on the other side of the bed. Then, like a fucking miracle, something damp and cool settled onto Alex's forehead and over his eyes. And another pressed to the side of his neck. "They won't stay cold for long, but it should help for a bit at least," Julian said softly, and then the mattress dipped again as he—presumably—settled down on his side of the bed.

"I think you just saved my life," Alex mumbled. He could identify the ancient kitchen towels by the faint smell that clung to them no matter how recently they were washed, but right now he couldn't care less if they were Julian's used underwear.

"Not sure I'd go that far," Julian replied, and it took Alex a second to realize he was responding to the comment about lifesaving, not the thing about underwear which, for a delirious moment, he'd worried he'd accidentally said out loud. "But if it helps you—and by extension, me—sleep tonight, I'll take it."

--

Alex must have fallen asleep shortly after that, because the next thing he knew, he was jolted awake from dead sleep by… Well, he didn't really know what. At first he thought it must have been a sound, but the house was completely silent, even Julian wasn't snoring.

As his body slowly caught up to the whole being awake thing, Alex had to confront the fact that he was feeling awful. The pillowcase and the bedsheet under him were drenched with sweat, but the primary function of sweating—cooling the body down—wasn't really working as far as he could tell. The towel against his neck had long since caught up with his body temperature and was just a gross, damp mass against his skin. He wasn't sure where the other towel had ended up; he must have yeeted it in his sleep.

The feeling of discomfort ebbed and flowed in waves as he lay in the stifling darkness. Maybe he should get up and rinse the towels in cold water and try that again since it seemed to work so well the first time. Drink some water. There were still strawberries left, too… Or maybe not strawberries; for some reason the thought of strawberries was intensely off-putting right now. Especially with cream. Which was odd, because usually he could eat his body weight in strawberries and cream with no issues whatsoever—

A shudder ran through him and he resolved to just not think about strawberries and cream, and question his body later when he didn't feel like dying.

He peeled the useless towel off his neck and pushed himself to a sitting position, to look for the other towel, but instead the motion caused two things to happen. His blood pressure decided to take a vacation in Narnia, judging by the black spots blooming in his vision and the way the bed seemed to tilt precariously under him. And the previously ephemeral sense of discomfort suddenly concentrated around his stomach as its contents shifted with an audible glorrrbp that he was sure would wake Julian up.

Fuck.

He considered lying back down, but immediately realized that was not going to help at this point. His heart was racing and his breath came in quick, ragged gasps despite his efforts to try to regulate it. The feeling of vertigo was not letting up and the discomfort was rapidly evolving into full-blown nausea, and it seemed like his stomach contents had taken the motion of sitting up as incentive to try and crawl back up his throat, and—

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.

"Jul—" he tried to speak but his mouth was rapidly filling with thick, viscous saliva, and he had to stop and make a considerable effort to swallow some of it back down. "Hey, Jules…"

Finally Julian stirred. "Mmmhm?" he mumbled, the mattress tipping again as he also sat up. "What's up? You feeling alright?"

Alex just shook his head with an inarticulate groan, not daring to attempt speaking again. He drew his legs up and pressed his forehead against his knees, hoping to alleviate the overwhelming feeling of faintness that gripped him. His stomach gave another glorrrbp and a sickly burp rolled up that he didn't have the energy to stifle, flooding his mouth with saliva and the taste of—fuck—partially digested strawberries and cream. He felt a glob of drool dribble onto his thigh, which was incredibly gross, but he knew with a sinking certainty that if he tried to move, he was going to hurl, so there wasn't much he could do about it.

Julian, meanwhile, had caught on to the crisis and was already in motion. "Right, okay, fair enough," he murmured as he got out of bed and switched the small lamp on the nightstand on. "I guess we're past the point of getting you into the bathroom…"

Alex's body answered the rhetorical question by objecting to the shifting of the mattress, and a shallow gag shook his body, thankfully not bringing up anything more substantial than a steady flow of drool dripping from his lips. He heard Julian move around the bed and then his hand was on Alex's back, at once grounding and too warm. He felt Julian place something in his lap, unfortunately not a bucket but they weren't exactly in the habit of keeping buckets in the bedroom—

"There," Julian said softly, "I'll go get a bucket but just in case I don't get back fast enough—"

As Julian turned to go, Alex's nose caught the whiff of the still-damp kitchen towel, way, way too close, and that was the last straw. He drew a panicked breath, managed a strangled "Jules—" before his stomach lurched.

The actual vomiting was less violent that he'd have expected; it was like his stomach was so ready to expel its contents that his body didn't need to go to a lot of effort to make it happen. A heave that felt more like a gurgling belch sent a wave of mostly liquid, mushy, almost disturbingly sweet yet foul vomit surging up his throat. As it filled his mouth, for a second he had the misguided impulse to try and hold it in until Julian returned with the bucket, but then the sheer grossness of it overwhelmed him and he was spitting and coughing, his forehead still pressed to his knees and eyes squeezed shut, hoping the towel would be enough to soak the sick.

He heard Julian cussing in multiple languages, none of which sounded like English or Swedish, and it almost made him laugh, but what came out was a pitiful whine, which turned into a cough, which turned into a wet, not-quite-productive belch as more of his stomach contents tried to make an unwanted comeback. "Juh-hhhyuuurbp! …Jules, fuck," he groaned, spitting out more bitter saliva to join the mess soaking the towel and his thighs.

And then Julian was back, gently peeling him from his curled position and taking the soggy towel away. Alex groaned as his stomach protested the movement, but just as body pitched forward again, the bucket appeared in front of him, wedged between his knees.

"Okay," Julian muttered half under his breath, "it's okay, just let it out."

And it's not like Alex had a choice in the matter. His stomach heaved again, making him double over the bucket, gripping its plastic rim with both hands as what felt like an immense amount of vomit surged up his throat and gushed out of him, splattering into the bucket. He could distantly hear Julian say something he couldn't make out, but he felt the hand rubbing circles between his shoulder blades.

"F-fucking… fuck," Alex gasped weakly when his stomach finally gave him a reprieve. He remained slumped over the bucket until Julian's hands on his shoulders coaxed him to sit up again. The motion made his head spin and he listed to the side until Julian shifted closer and guided him to lean against him.

"Yeah," Julian agreed, "that about sums it up…" But his voice was soft and his hand brushing Alex's sweaty hair back from his forehead was gentle. "Do you think you're good to get up? We should get you properly cleaned up."

Alex shuddered as his stomach gave another lazy roll. "Not… not sure I'm done," he muttered and leaned over the bucket to spit out the saliva pooling in his mouth.

"Okay," Julian replied. "No rush."

They remained like that for what felt like forever, minutes stretching out in the silence of the night. Alex's stomach continued to roll queasily, and more than once he leaned over the bucket, certain that it was going to happen, but all that came out was a sickly burp and more drool.

Finally Julian spoke again. "Let's get you into the bathroom," he said. "If you're gonna puke again, you may as well do it there."

The idea of moving was still far from attractive, but Alex couldn't argue against the logic. And besides, he did very badly need a shower. He let Julian move the bucket aside and help him up, groaning as the effort or the motion or both made his stomach roll again. Julian didn't give him time to dwell on the sensation, however. The other man deftly maneuvered Alex out of the bedroom and into the bathroom which, fortunately, was not far.

--

The bathroom was small and, to Julian's eye, looked at least a century old, but Alex said it had been fully renovated some time in the late 70's. The space just fit a toilet, a sink, and instead of a normal shower there was this weird, half-sized bathtub with a seat at one end, so that if you actually filled the tub with water and sat on the seat, the water would come up barely to your waist, which did not seem like an enjoyable way to take a bath.

The space was very much not meant to accommodate multiple people at once, at least not when one was the size of Alex. Julian was not tiny himself, but next to Alex he looked—and felt—positively dainty. Which usually was the opposite of a problem, but maneuvering a dizzy, 190 cm tall beefcake in the cramped space felt just a little bit hazardous.

He somehow got Alex into the tub and sitting down, then realized that the other man was still wearing his vomit-soaked boxers, and Julian had to coax him to stand up again to get them off. Then he started the shower, setting the water temperature just a little cooler than he thought comfortable, and handed the shower head to Alex.

"Think you can manage while I change the sheets?" he asked. The mess had been fairly contained, all things considered, but inevitably some had ended up on the bed. He just hoped it hadn't soaked into the mattress itself or the bedroom was going to be out of order. When Alex nodded, Julian gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Right, try not to pass out and drown in the next five or six minutes."

Alex murmured something that might have been 'piss off', which Julian took as a good sign.

He stripped the bed, quick and efficient. His hands shook a little as he stuffed the vomit-stained sheet and towel into a plastic bag; he wasn't too squeamish and he could handle taking care of a sick friend—or whatever Alex was—but he wasn't completely unaffected by the smell, or the other sensory details of the main event. He wasn't sure what to do with the bag, there was no washing machine in the house, but for now he figured he'd just dump it on the porch and let Alex tell him what to do in the morning. He opened the bedroom windows as wide as they'd go, hoping the room would air out sufficiently by the time they were ready to get back to sleep.

He was just in the kitchen, pouring a glass of water, when he heard the unmistakable sound of retching from the bathroom.

He hurried back to find Alex sitting slumped over, elbows on his knees, his forehead resting on his arms as his back arched and his abdominal muscles clenched visibly with another heave. A deep, gurgling retch brought a stream of chunky vomit splattering to the bottom of the tub between—and on—his feet. The shower was still running, at least, and the mess was already getting washed down the drain.

"Hey, easy there, okay," Julian spoke in a low voice as he moved closer and took the shower head from Alex's grip before the other man could drop it. With his other hand he began to rub Alex's back again, feeling the muscles work under the shower-slick skin. "You're okay, just breathe."

A pained groan turned into a retch as another heave shook Alex's powerful frame, this time bringing up just a thin trickle of sick; the next one was unproductive.

"I think you're empty," Julian said as Alex continued to dry heave weakly. "Alex, you're done." He brushed the damp hair back from the other man's forehead and pointed the shower to rinse the last remnants of the mess swirling around the bottom of the tub down the drain. "It's done, just… breathe, man."

Gradually the dry heaves died down and Alex slumped against Julian with a pitiful whine. Julian gathered him into his arms and held him, not caring about his own T-shirt getting soaked in the process.

"Right," he said after a while, "I think it's time to go back to sleep. Well. Drink some water, then back to sleep."

Alex mumbled something unintelligible, but it didn't sound like a protest, and he got up and out of the tub at Julian's prompting. He seemed a little steadier after the shower, and he dried himself and fetched a new pair of boxers without assistance.

They made their way into the kitchen, where Alex sat down heavily at the table and Julian brought him a glass of water. "You holding up okay?" Julian asked as he sat across the table from Alex.

"I'll live," Alex replied between small, cautious sips of water. It was difficult to tell in the gray non-darkness of the summer night, but his color looked considerably better as well.

Julian nodded with a faint smile. "That counts as okay for now."

They sat for a few minutes longer while Alex finished the rest of the water and assured himself that it was going to stay down, and then they headed back to bed, now accompanied by an entire flight of mosquitoes that had taken advantage of the open windows. Alex was too worn out to be bothered by the new, annoying roommates, but Julian was kept awake for a long time by the incessant whining noise they made.

--

Julian did, however, manage to fall asleep eventually, and they both slept soundly enough that neither heard anything out of the ordinary in the early hours of morning. And so neither was prepared for the sight of the plastic bag Julian had left on the porch having been torn to shreds and its contents spread over the grass in the front yard.

Alex took one look at the scene, looked at Julian, then back to the yard. "I think I've had enough of this vacation," he muttered faintly.