RUSTY

The deli sandwich he’d had earlier— salami, bleu cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo— is sitting in his stomach like a rock. It had just been sitting out at the grab-and-go station in the hospital caf, and maybe he should have been suspicious, but it’s a hospital. He didn’t think to check if it had been out for too long or if it was past its expiration date or if it was being stored at the proper temperature. Maybe he should have, but he didn’t.

Not only that, but he’s steadily eaten an entire bag of shredded mozzarella cheese. His tummy feels like it’s struggling to break it down, sitting like a heavy blanket over everything inside of his stomach. It’s bloating him up more than he expected it would. He guesses he hadn’t really been thinking about it while he was taking the fistfuls of cheese. Each fistful felt separate on its own, but now they’re gluing together inside of him, and he feels so full and tight and uncomfortable that he’s starting to regret eating any of it at all.

“Hey, Dr. Monroe, can I get your opinion on something real quick?” one of the medical students asks, and Riley suppresses a burp to nod and follow after them.

While he’s helping the med student and her patient, Riley’s cramping stomach feels like it’s bloating even more. He can feel it pressing into the elastic waistband of his scrubs but he can’t try to reach down and rub it while he’s working. He just has to ignore it and power through, pretending it’s not happening at all. He’s really good at that when he’s working at the hospital. The work, healing, and patients all come first.

He moves through four more patients before the bloating and cramping in his stomach forces him to take note of it again. In the time he’s been ignoring his belly, it’s grown uncomfortably round with gas. He ducks into another empty hallway to try rubbing it again and finds it heavily rounded out, the gurgles he can feel inside also felt against his palm as he presses into the bloat there.

“Shit,” he curses. A burp bubbles up his throat, tasting like salami and cheese and the black coffee he’d chugged barely twenty minutes earlier. “Oh, fuck, goddamnit.”

A nurse scurries past and Riley makes himself go quiet, even as his stomach does not seem to get the message. It feels like it’s putting on a show as it attempts to cope with what he’s done to it. An almost-theatrical rumble growls up from the pit of his stomach as it starts to churn, trying to digest the food and lactose. He has the feeling that his stomach is like a simmering pot of soup, gases and fluids and chunky solids bubbling too quickly inside his belly.

There’s an uncomfortable, strained, popping sensation in his intestines then, as if there’s a tight bloat squeaking its way through him. He tries to force out the gas, even if it’s a fart, but the rolling waves in his belly and the tight contractions of his intestines seem to refuse to let go of the gas. It seems like his belly is perfectly content to be horribly miserable.

A series of warm, gurgling bubbles churn up from the pit of his stomach to his chest, and he starts feeling a little sweaty— and a little nauseated— as one deep burp comes up, then another, then another. Each one of them burns in the back of his throat, painful with the acidic coffee.

It feels bad. It feels so, so, so bad, and the next burning, acidic belch grabs at his gag reflex and makes him gag into his fist.

But he has work to do, and he makes himself do it. He keeps interacting with his patients and helping the nurses and the med students, and he doesn’t let a stupid little upset stomach get in the way of his hard work. If someone gets hurt on his watch because of a bellyache, he would never forgive himself.

However, his stomach is still feeling worse and worse, and he’s unable to ignore it completely. Even as he continues to help patients, part of his brain can’t help but notice but just how nauseated and gurgly and uncomfortable his stomach is becoming as he keeps working.

His upset stomach is working overtime to try and digest what he put into it, but it’s not doing a great job. It’s definitely trying, but it’s a lot, and it might just be too much, he’s realizing. He’s starting to get sweatier and a little clammy, his stomach cramps getting worse and worse, tighter, noisier, more painful, as his digestive system struggles to process what he’s put into it and is forcing it to try and digest.

Though his body is attempting to manage the overload of indigestible lactose— he knows he’s lactose intolerant, even if he likes to pretend he isn’t— and the probably-spoiled sandwich and the acidic black coffee, it seems to be losing the battle. The gurgling in his belly and his intestines is getting louder and more active, everything inside him fighting against him. It almost feels like his stomach wants to eject what’s in it, like it might empty itself against his permission, but it isn’t actually doing anything yet.

Well, it is doing something. It’s trying to process the lactose and spoiled food that are fermenting inside of it, and it’s struggling to succeed in doing so. A storm is steadily brewing in his belly, even though his shift is nowhere close to being done.

He wishes he could get his stomachache to stop. He rips open an alcohol pad under his nose more than once trying to curb the queasiness, but it’s starting to become a persistent problem.

His nausea is actually building more with every passing minute. As he moves from patient to patient, he starts getting really nauseated, like his body wants to reject what he’s put into it. His stomach feels like it has had to expand to accommodate the bloating, leaving him feeling tight and uncomfortable and dense.

His stomach cramps tightly. There are these sharp, stabbing pains that are starting to pierce into his intestines, as if every part of his digestive system is protesting the large amount of cheese and the spoiled sandwich and the black coffee he’s forcing through it.

It’s a weird feeling. He’s a doctor, so he knows that cheese is really high in fat and really low in fiber, and he knows that eating as much as he did would slow his digestion significantly. It’s almost giving him a constipated, bloating feeling— but the black coffee he chugged is trying to speed up his digestion, to stimulate it and make everything go faster, and the two are fighting against each other and making a storm brew up ferociously in his belly. His heart is starting to beat faster and deeper and he can feel it in his belly, pounding like it’s inside his throbbing tummy.

The spoiled sandwich is the real deciding factor here, and it is wreaking havoc on his digestive system. As he hides in the hospital hallway and clutches his churning belly, he can feel the way the sandwich is just wrecking him, sending his insides into turmoil.

A bubble pops in his tummy, and he groans, trying to massage it more deeply. His belly feels soft, squishy; he displaces the bloat as he presses into it though it doesn’t come out in any good or meaningful way.

Riley’s heart starts to pound too fast and too deep. His belly struggles to digest, trying to process what he’s eaten and move it through his digestive tract, and it’s hard at work with how much fucked-up stuff he’s put into it. There’s too much gas, too much pressure; waves of attempted digestion vibrate his belly, pronounced gurgling audible to anyone who passed by him.

The next couple of minutes feel like they stretch on forever.

Riley attempts to continue and to leave the side room, moving on autopilot. However it is getting harder and harder for him to hide what’s happening. He can feel his pulse throbbing inside of him and his limbs buzzing with an anxious and unsettled energy. He hunches a little when he walks, trying to protect his belly. One hand pushes into the swollen throb just below his ribs, as if he could physically hold everything down if he just pushed hard enough.

Despite his best efforts, it doesn’t seem to help. In fact, that added pressure only serves to make the uncomfortable, bloated gas and the shifting, unhappy contents of his stomach shift with an audible glorp. When Riley’s stomach forces up a deep belch, he nearly chokes on it; it claws up his throat, stings his nose, makes his eyes prick. He’s so nauseated by it that his body nearly seizes up with the effort of swallowing it back down— and he has to swallow convulsively just to do that much.

When he manages to tuck himself into an empty room again, his scrubs are sticking to him with sweat, his stomach feels actually heavy, and he has this sensation that the contents of his belly are boiling and disgusting like hot liquid concrete.

With every step, he can feel everything inside of him sloshing, thick and wet and wrong. His burps used to taste like cheese, or salami, or coffee, but now they just taste acidic and disgusting. Another cramp tightens deep inside him, forcing a roll of nausea through his belly, and he has to grip the closest wall when his knees buckle at the force of it.

He can’t do this. He hides himself as fast as he can in the empty room, slamming the door shut behind himself. There isn’t a lock, so he just has to lean against the door and block it with his own big body.

His stomach gurgles. He’s not sure exactly what is disagreeing with him, but something is, or everything is. It feels like nothing is digesting at the same time that something is digesting too fast, and he can’t figure out which end everything wants to come out of. He only knows that there is a storm in his stomach that he only has to ride out. He cannot avoid it anymore.

As if realizing he’s conceding to the pain, his sick belly forces up a thick belch, then another, stirring up the storm into a riot in his belly. The gurgles are just as audible as his burps, and he just can’t stop burping now that he has started.

Every couple of minutes, this rancid, gurgling bubble of air swells up from the churning pit of his stomach. It drags in an audible burbling up his spine to burst out of him. None of them are polite or little, they’re all deep and rumbling and erupting out of him. They burn, hot and bitter and filled with acidic bile. Each one makes him more nauseated, to the point where he starts trying to swallow them back, tense every time they try to come. He swallows even harder and thicker, pressing his hands into his bloated, roiling stomach and trying to breathe through it, but he can’t manage it.

Whatever is happening in his stomach, he is not getting out unscathed.

He’s a doctor. He understands indigestion. This is not that. This is much worse than that. This is his entire system breaking down, everything inside of him fighting against itself. There’s an actual battle in his stomach, he thinks. The deli sandwich had to have been past its prime, and it’s like it’s speeding through his intestines, accelerating way too fast for him to even process it. It’s making his insides churn, unable to properly digest; it’s only reacting to him, not digesting or processing or absorbing anything. All it can do is react as the disgusting sandwich decimates his insides as fast as it can.

And in the middle of it all, that cheese just sits there.

It’s just thick and undigested and gluing everything together in a way it absolutely should not be. When the sandwich tries to fly through him, and the coffee churns everything up so horribly, the cheese just keeps everything packed into the lowest curve of his belly like wet cement, bubbling and thick and clogged up, a drain that cannot go down. The more Riley rubs at his stomach, the more he realizes how uneven the contents of it feel, and how uneven his body feels as a result: his middle is firm, bloated, without any give, but his sides are squishy and tender, and his lower belly feels heavy and weighted while his upper tummy has an airy heft to it of bloat, the air churned up and pushing upwards obviously.

The only thing his whole belly has in common is how loud it is. No matter what, everything is so loud. His system is trying so hard to process everything, and failing to process anything. His intestines are grinding into overdrive, his stomach bubbling furiously, everything in his tummy bubbling and squealing and groaning under the pressure of too much lactose and too much bacteria and too much food trying to slug its way through his system.

His body forces up a hiccup that tugs at the back of his throat, and he gags, wet but empty.

Pushing through the first door he finds, Riley finds himself in an empty stairwell. Crouching down, wrapping his arms around his stomach, he tries to breathe. He fails. His tummy keeps doing somersaults, flipping inside of him, like it’s being turned inside-out in slow motion. Another acidic burp churns up from his belly, leaving his mouth tasting like curdled milk and rotten tomatoes and heat.

“Shit,” he curses as dizziness crashes over him, making the stairwell spin around him. His stomach churns heavily, his head swims, and the nausea taking over him starts pulsing inside of him. It feels like it has a heartbeat, throbbing hot and constant and in the center of his gut. He tries to rub at it and diminish it, hoping that rubbing his upset belly will either soothe it or upset it enough to do something, but neither happens. Not really. It does upset his belly, but not enough to do anything; all that happens is that he feels a tight, heavy pressure gathering in the pit of his stomach. His stomach gurgles again, complaining as loudly as it can, wet and thick and weird, and he practically feels the contents of his belly shifting inside of him.

The sandwich, the coffee, the cheese— it’s all one incoherent mess now, sloshing back and forth with these sickening, tumultuous turns inside of him that have thick saliva gathering in his mouth.

The storm brews up ferociously, as metaphorical as it is real. There’s thick pressure filling him up, and the roiling in his belly is gaining strength, everything moving inside of him in the worst possible ways. The cheese is fermenting, the gas is expanding, the spoiled sandwich is rushing through him, and the coffee is sliding slimy along his stomach lining.

His insides feel like a disaster. Another burp churns up, and Riley belches, deep and wet and thick, before he gags and dry heaves.

Nothing comes up. He dry heaves again, a third time, but nothing comes up, and he swallows thickly to keep everything down before he groans, shaking and trembling like a leaf.

His undershirt clings to his skin with sweat. His scrubs are too tight, especially around his bloated belly, and every belching breath makes his tummy feel like it pushes harder into his waistband. He puts his hands on his belly again, trying to rub it and work out some gas or soothe the internal chaos, but all he does is churn up the storm inside.

His upset belly feels like it’s yelling at him. It won’t stop churning, sloshing, bubbling; it burbles loudly, then groans, making him whine before he belches again, unable to keep it back. The burbling inside almost feels cartoonish in how wet and aggressive it is, punctuated on every gurgle with these weird, small, high-pitched squeaks of gas that is trapped deep in his belly. The sandwich— the bad sandwich, he should have known how bad the sandwich was— is ripping through him like his guts are on fire, making his insides bubble like he swallowed a potion— and yet the cheese just sits there stubbornly, as if it is a second potion fighting against the first, the lactose refusing to digest and instead deciding to feed the bacteria gurgling away in his belly, making more gas and more bloat and more horrible, thick, churning noise.

Every last bit of him is overstuffed and queasy. He’s clammy and trembling and actually thinks he might shit himself if he takes a step, or throw up if he takes a breath that’s too deep.

He’s just about to try and stand up, his hands clutching his swollen and upset belly, when he hears, “Riley?”

The door to the stairwell opens just as Riley jumps to find Luke standing over him. His entire belly lurches up his throat, and Riley’s hand flies up to clamp over his mouth as he belches. It’s deep and wet but nothing comes up, even as he groans and takes a knee right there on the stairs, trying not to vomit or shit himself at the same time.

“Hey,” Luke says. He’s calm and measured and professional as always. “You doing okay?”

Riley considers lying, but it wouldn’t work. He just shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut as his stomach gurgles again, thick and horrible. There are weird, painful, tight cramps seizing his lower belly; his digestive system struggles to process what he’s put into it, and he starts sweating, burping again, tasting the burning acid of the black coffee. It feels so horrible, disgusting and forcing him to gag before he swallows thickly, and his bloated, cramping belly has to re-accept the almost-vomit, taking it all back into his gassy, bloated, uncomfortable stomach.

His belly, all rounded-out and gurgling, tries to force up another belch. He feels so nauseated, really nauseated, and he’s starting to sweat because of it, his body rejecting what he’s put into it, refusing to actually digest it. His cramps are coming these sharp, stabbing, piercing pains, while his stomach gurgles again, loudly and heavily and bloated. It won’t stop; it can’t stop churning, burbling, too heavily unsettled.

Riley is vaguely aware of Luke’s arm winding around him, helping him to stand again. He forces him to walk, navigating him out of the stairwell and back down the hall, but everything feels dimmed and faraway and strange, as if he’s underwater and watching everything from a distance.

A nauseating vertigo starts growing inside of him, making everything spin even more severely and confusingly. A creeping heaviness settles into his limbs, pulling at his body, making every step that Luke forces out of him to feel like he’s dragging himself through a sea of molasses. His vision keeps swimming, his head throbbing, his skin prickling with a clammy cold-heat, his stomach—

Fuck. His stomach.

His stomach is an absolute mess. It feels like a swirling, seething cauldron of thick liquids and fermenting chunks and undigested food and roiling acid and bubbling gas. It’s heavy— it’s so heavy, it’s too heavy— and it’s bloating high and taut under his ribs.

But it’s not staying still.

It keeps moving inside of him, this sick, fizzling churn that refuses to stop. It twists his tummy, wrenching the contents inside this way and that, making his belly lurch against itself. It’s like everything in his belly is physically flipping over and over itself inside of him. It just won’t settle.

“Fuck,” he mumbles out loud. “It hurts so much. It won’t settle down, it just—” He belches again, then manages, pathetic, “Something isn’t sitting right,” and clutches his belly, churning right under his hand, whatever isn’t sitting right trying to claw its way out of him.

His uneasy stomach sloshes inside of him as he clutches it. When it bubbles again, the queasy feeling only increases, twisting his insides and wrenching at his intestines. His discomfort only grows as his stomach starts doing more and more somersaults. Roiling waves surge through his sick belly, twisting his guts into knots; the creeping heaviness gets closer and closer, weighing over him while his stomach bubbles up with hot, nauseating, fizzy discomfort.

“You’re okay,” Luke tells him. Riley doesn’t feel that way though, with his sickly disorientation and the way his stomach keeps trying to lurch up his throat. He’s starting to feel this prickly, clammy feeling as wooziness claims him; the white walls spin, and he feels faint and queasy at the same time.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Riley mumbles. He’s not even sure if he’s coherent. His words are followed up by a heavy, thick, long belch, pulled from the pit of his belly, and he doubles over. Forcing Luke to stop, he leans against his own knees; another belch rips out of him, and he groans, eyes watering, nausea building. “Fuck, I’m gonna be sick—”

“Not here, you’re not,” Luke tells him, forcing him through a doorway.

Riley whimpers softly. It won’t stop. His belly churns, and he grabs his swollen stomach, hands pressing hard into the tight swell of his abdomen. His guts gurgle so loudly that he would be embarrassed if he were more coherent. As it is, his stomach blorps loudly before a strange rolling glurg churns through it, followed by a series of sharp, squeaky little gas bubbles that rise up inside of him and shift his belly and his guts and his intestines and the contents of his sick stomach.

God, but he can feel every single little bubble of gas gurgling inside of him. Every single one sloshes, twists, turns, and adds to the uncomfortable, indigestion storm gurgling hard and fierce inside of him.

His body is basically begging him to reject everything. It’s screaming at him, his stomach roiling, wanting to force up the spoiled meat and acidic coffee and indigestible cheese, but—

But nothing will come up. Nothing will come out.

His cramps shift as Luke forces him onto his knees over the toilet. They’re not this dull, strange thing anymore. Instead, they have become these sharp, piercing jolts that stab into his abdomen in horrible waves, making him gasp and clench his arms over his belly as he folds forward over the open inside of the toilet.

“Just let it up,” Luke encourages him. “C’mon. Something’s making you sick, you just gotta get it out.”

His hand pats hard at Riley’s back, forcing up a thick, heavy belch like he’s an infant being burped. 

“I feel so sick,” Riley complains, his voice groaning and weak and pathetic. “Fuck, I feel so sick, I—”

His intestines twist themselves into knots, wringing themselves out, making his pain tighter and stranger and refusing to allow him relief. His stomach cramps and clenches hard, his nausea twisting harder, and he belches with violence. It feels like this gurgling burp comes up from the pit of his stomach and nearly brings a wave of vomit with it, ripping through him without warning. His throat burns with stomach acid, the burp long and deep and searing, and he groans heavily as it leaves a bitter, burning heaviness on the back of his tongue, inside his throat.

“Easy,” Luke murmurs, rubbing his back again. His voice is calm, close, steady, slow, and right next to his ear. “You’re almost there. Just let it up.”

Except Riley can’t let it up. It won’t come up, and Riley belches again into the toilet water, his arms wrapping tight around his stomach, clutching at his belly while his fingers dig into the bloated, rebellious, heavy curve of his tummy. His whole body won’t stop trembling, sweat dripping down his temples, his breath coming short and fast and desperate as he belches thickly again.

“Okay, I’ve got you,” Luke promises him, rubbing his back up and down, thumping near the base of his spine. He forces up another thick belch, and Riley rocks forward over the toilet, tasting black coffee and bleu cheese and bile. “You’ll feel better once you let it up, okay? Just let it go. You’re okay, just get it up.”

Riley belches again, deep and stinging and searing. It feels fiery as it launches up from his belly, through his chest, to this throat and his mouth, leaving the lingering bitter taste of bile and stomach acid, and his hand flies up to cover his mouth as it rips out of him. His other hand still clutches his stomach, and he knows how he must look, pale and sweating and pathetic, but he can’t help it.

He breathes deeply, trying to stop himself from getting sick while knowing the fight is inevitable. His lower belly gurgles, and when he shifts, he thinks he’s going to belch again, but a deep, wet fart rips out of him instead. He gags, his stomach turning, and he hunches over the toilet.

“Get out,” Riley tries to tell him, weak and pathetic. “This is disgusting, get out—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Luke protests. “You’re sick—”

“—And it’s gross—”

“—And you need me,” Luke continues, “so I’m staying.” His hand thumps between Riley’s shoulder blades again, forcing up a thick belch that ripples the toilet water. “That’s it, babe. Get it up, c’mon.”

Riley burps again, then groans. “I can’t, it’s— I feel— I need to, I can feel it, but it won’t—” He belches once more, sick and heavy. “Fuck, it won’t come up, it’s just—” He rubs his belly where it is storming the worst, burbling so thickly and heavily, and complains, “It’s just churning up, it won’t move.”

Pale and sweating and disoriented, Riley belches over the toilet again. His stomach won’t stop gurgling anymore, and he feels like he needs to shit and vomit all at the same time.

“I know,” Luke assures him, steadying him, keeping him upright over the toilet. “I know. Just breathe. You’re safe, I got you. It’ll be up soon and you’ll feel so much better.”

Riley belches once more, hunching forward, arms wrapping tighter and tighter around his belly. His lower belly won’t stop rumbling anymore. It’s full of knotted, peristaltic gurgling, deep and desperate rolls that feel like they should be dragging him towards a release of this sickness, but he’s still stuck in the middle.

Attempting to force a retch, all Riley succeeds in doing is belching again. His stomach churns, and another sick fart rumbles out of him, mortifying him.

“I’m sorry,” Riley apologizes. “You should go—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Luke stops him. “Just let it happen. It’s not your fault, you’re sick. Just let yourself be sick and get it up.”

“I can’t,” Riley complains, shaking like a leaf. The pressure intensifies, the cramps worsen, and his belly tightens with churning gurgles. Groaning, Riley tells him. “Fuck, it’s like I’m full of hot, bubbling concrete. It won’t come out.”

“What did you eat?” Luke asks. Riley moans, and Luke insists, “Tell me so I can diagnose you. It’ll be over in a second.”

Riley swallows thickly, then confesses, “I ate—” He belches, tasting mayonnaise and coffee and cheese. Sitting up and away from the toilet, trying to rub his swollen upset belly, Riley tells him, “I had a sandwich from the caf—”

“Which one?”

“Salami,” Riley tells him, tasting it as he says it. “With bleu cheese, tomato, lettuce, mayo— Fuck—”

“Keep going,” Luke insists, rubbing his back. “Tell me everything.”

Riley belches over the water again, then continues, “I had— I had a coffee—”

“Black coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Luke encourages him. “Anything else?”

Riley pants over the water before he admits, “I ate a bag of shredded cheese.”

There’s a pause that feels as thick and heavy as the bag of shredded cheese inside of Riley’s belly.

Then, Luke asks, “A bag?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Riley admits. “I just kept eating it, I’m s—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Luke stops him. “I’m glad you ate. I’m just sorry it’s upsetting your belly so much.” His hand sneaks around Riley’s stomach, stroking slowly, coaxing up another gassy belch. “That must feel awful inside of you. You’re so bloated.”

He pushes in, and Riley’s upset stomach forces up yet another rumbling burp, just as gurgling as the rest of his stomach. A weird, tight squelch squeaks along his belly, and he rubs at it, trying to coax up something further. All that happens is a thick gurgle runs through his belly horizontally, and he can’t do anything to soothe it.

“Okay,” Luke murmurs. “I think the cheese is probably slowing everything down.” He says this as something gurgles in Riley’s midsection, loud and fast before it makes something thick ripple in the lower right of his belly. “Yeesh. All that fat and no fiber? No wonder nothing’s moving through you. You can’t digest all that when you’re this blocked up.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Riley mumbles. Another gurgle starts in the center of his belly and squeezes to the side; it doesn’t go up or down, doesn’t offer relief. Just churns.

“Your body knows what it needs to do,” Luke coaxes him. “It’ll figure it out. Don’t fight it. It’s not going to digest, you need to get it out.”

Another thick, heavy cramp pierces his belly, and Riley lurches forward over the toilet again, panting as saliva fills his mouth. He spits out a mouthful of thick, ropey, syrupy saliva.

“Jesus, your stomach is bloated,” Luke comments.

As if Riley doesn’t know. He doesn’t need his boyfriend to comment on it. He knows how big and huge and bloated his belly is now, so distended and taut under his scrubs that he can see it straining the thin fabric. He’s visibly bloated, and his stomach is gurgling so constantly that it’s actually making these weird little rippling motions every time it burbles, like his insides are moving around and trying to rearrange themselves— or like everything in his stomach is trying to make space for itself when there isn’t any space left for it.

Through it all, Riley’s gut keeps trying to move and digest and function and work and process, but all it is actually capable of doing is bubbling, and burbling, and gurgling, and  churning, and attempting to digest in this slow, agonizing way.

And failing.

It’s so weird, but Riley thinks he can feel everything melting together in his belly. The spoiled sandwich, like a fucked-up soup swimming in sour stomach juices; the massive amount of cheese, unable to digest, thick and curdling and stuck inside of him; the bitter coffee, liquid and gurgling and sloshing around inside his sick belly like some sick acidic potion in a beaker.

The bacterial, chemical disaster inside of him is getting worse, and worse, and worse. The slow-brewing storm isn’t a storm anymore, it’s a hurricane, and it’s getting worse with every passing minute.

The contents of his belly are fermenting. He can feel it, especially the way that the fizzy, bloated pressure of the lactose absolute refuses to digest and instead sits in him like a sticky, heavy rock, churning up gas the longer it sits there. His intestines stretch to accommodate the uncomfortable gas, twisting his guts into tighter, more painful knots. They force out a heavy, painful fart, and he moans, burying his face in his arm, hunching over the toilet again.

“You okay?” Luke asks, as if the answer could possibly be yes.

Riley feels like he’s going to be sick from both ends, but he can’t move. Not even a little bit. His nausea is rising and sinking at the same time, slow and hot and steady. It climbs up the back of his throat and sinks down through his lower belly. It feels like it’s pumping out of his stomach in both directions, and his stomach spasms, lurching in both directions, contracting sickly as his mouth floods with saliva.

“I’m going to be sick,” Riley whimpers. “Fuck, I’m going to be sick—”

He belches, cutting himself off. It tears up from the pit of his belly, and a heartbeat later, his body forces out another fart that makes his stomach audibly gurgle.

“Okay, up, get up,” Luke instructs him. He hauls him up with an arm underneath his, forcing him to sit on the toilet while he shoves the bathroom’s trash can between his thighs. “Jesus, what the hell is going on inside you? Is that really all you ate?”

Riley belches heavily again, tasting salami and coffee and cheese. “Yeah.”

“You feel like you ate an entire Thanksgiving dinner,” Luke comments, rubbing his hand over Riley’s bloated, bare, exposed belly, now that his pants have been tugged down and he can push his scrub top up. “Did you eat one sandwich or one hundred?”

Again, Riley burps, his stomach gurgling ominously inside of him. He whimpers as another burp tries to come up but he swallows it down, though he doesn’t know why.

Well, he does. He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to lose control, but he doesn’t think he has a choice.

“It’s okay,” Luke promises him, rubbing his back, still at his side despite how disgusting he is. “Just let it happen. You’ll feel so much better once it’s all out of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Riley whines. “This is so gross—”

“Hey, you’re a doctor, I’m a doctor,” Luke stops him. “We’ve seen it all. You just gotta do whatever will make you feel better, that’s the whole point. Okay?”

Riley hesitates. Then he agrees, “Okay.”

“Okay.” Luke thumps him between the shoulders, forcing another deep belch out of him. “Get it up, babe. Come on.”

Riley tries to bear down, or force up another belch, but his stomach just won’t release.

And it won’t stop gurgling.

It’s non-stop, and it’s loud, it’s cartoonishly and humiliatingly loud. Something protests in his guts, and then his belly starts up all over again, groaning and bubbling and popping like it’s a boiling cauldron beneath his ribs, filled with potions and chemicals that aren’t meant to interact. As he clutches his belly, he can feel the bubbling continue in his belly, a burbling that pushes against his palms and makes audible pops and groans as he feels and sees it ripple under his hands.

“Fuck,” Riley complains, leaning forward, arms wrapped around his belly as it continues gurgling like a pot of soup, chunky and wet and thick. “Shit, I think the cheese is blocking me up. It won’t stop gurgling inside me.”

“Yeah, it sounds like that,” Luke agrees. His hand comes forward, rubbing slow circles over the front curve of his bloated belly, just over his belly button. Another desperate gurgle churns up, bubbling just under his hand in a way that Luke can feel, and Riley’s hand shoots out to grip the edge of the sink next to him, whimpering through it. “Shit. How’d that feel?”

“Bad,” Riley confesses. Something gurgles in his exact center. It should be too deep for Luke to feel, but it works its way out to the front of his tummy before going down and coming out as a sick, strange fart that turns his bowels and stomach all at once, bubbling yet again. “Fuck—”

“Let it up,” Luke encourages him.

“I’m trying,” Riley snaps at him. He doesn’t mean to be short-tempered, but he feels so sick he can’t help it. His lower belly keeps rumbling so much, too much, it’s so bloated and keeps forcing through little bubbling pops and it feels like he should be able to get everything out, but he just can’t do it. He just feels so full and uncomfortable and—

And still, he just can’t get it out.

“Hey—” Luke starts, crouching next to him, rubbing into Riley’s stomach more firmly, but he forces up a heavy belch that makes Riley surge forward over the trash. Nothing comes up, ultimately, and he burps again, his belly churning heavily inside of him, noisy and throbbing and audible.

“Oh, shit,” Riley complains. “I need— I need to get it out, why— why won’t it come out—”

“It’s okay,” Luke assures him, calm as patient as always, even as a sharp, stabbing cramp seizes Riley’s gut and makes it gurgle audibly, thick and moving under Luke’s palm. “Don’t fight it. Just listen to your body. You know what your belly’s trying to do, you’re a doctor. So, let it do it. You know what the point is. It needs to get rid of what’s making it sick.”

He’s right, and Riley tries to process this. He is right. If this were his patient, he would know that this much belly movement and gut involvement and belching and farting and illness would indicate that something indigestible is upsetting his patient’s insides, and once it came out, they would start to feel better. It’s just harder when it’s his own stomach, fighting against what he chose to eat, rippling noisily under his own hands.

Riley groans as another gurgle pushes through him. He presses down harder on his belly, hoping that he can move something— the gas, the upset contents, the churning spoiled food, anything. He just needs it to start happening and stop sitting there being so sick.

“It’s right there,” Riley tells him. “I feel so full, I just— It’s all right there and I feel so full and I just want it to come out.”

“Yeah, I know,” Luke says. “You’re all backed up. It’s probably the bag of cheese, babe.” Riley groans, tasting it and feeling it all at once, gluing his insides together. “Yeah, that’s it, I think. That sandwich was shit for you and then the cheese just plugged you right up. Your gut wants to get rid of what’s making it sick, but it can’t. You overloaded your system, like— like you’re a clogged drain.”

Riley certainly feels like a clogged drain. He even sounds like one, his belly bubbling in the same way a clogged drain would, burbling heavily right in the pit and forcing its way up.

His belly lets out another long, rolling gurgle, like a bottle of soda abruptly turned upside-down and made to glug all over the ground. Riley moans low in his throat, clutching his swollen belly. His lower tummy and intestines churn, desperate to empty themselves, gassy and swollen and so bloated that he can’t stand it. There’s so much motion inside his tummy, muscles throbbing with peristalsis, his gut wanting and trying and begging to clear itself out, but it just keeps hitting the thick, gluey wall he stuffed inside himself.

The gas builds, and builds, and builds, and only occasionally forces itself out in a deep fart or a wet belch. Otherwise, it refuses to release, even when Riley tries to bear down to force something out of his body.

All he gets is this weird, wet, crackling gurgle that surges through his lower belly and a sharp, painful cramp that twists his stomach like a knife.

“Fuck,” he pants. Rocking forward, he admits, “I can’t. I can’t get it up, I can’t, it feels like it should be moving, but—” His stomach groans loudly, churning before it bubbles and pops near the crest of his belly, and he moans as he tries to rub at the protesting, swollen swell. “It just won’t move out. It just keeps moving inside of me.”

Luke lays a steady palm against his back, right in the center, grounding him. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

No, he is not okay. He is a disaster— or, at least, his stomach is a disaster.

The bag of shredded cheese is clogging him up, filling his guts like a long, heavy lump of congealed glue, and the sandwich— Oh, fuck, the sandwich is fermenting in his belly just above it, unable to move through him, the spoiled meat and off vegetables and warm mayo bubbling inside of him, fizzing and popping and rotting in real time. Every two seconds, it feels like, another sick-slick gurgle rolls through his stomach and either moves up or down, bringing with it either a deep, choking burp or a wet, sour fart, everything heavy with stomach acid and illness.

His body fights itself from both directions, and Riley is the one losing.

And his belly is raging.

As he sits there, trying to rub and soothe it, it growls at him, furious at what he’s done to it. In its churning, it feels like it roars at him, thundering like the storm it is inside of him. He shifts, forcing up another burp, and his belly glorps, glugging like a clogged drain, every piece of his digesting system screaming at him to be emptied.

However, he is locked down far too tight. He is like a locked pressure cooker, nausea churning up more and more heavily, something sick and loud squelching across and through his belly in a squeal.

His mouth fills with saliva that he has to swallow down thickly. His belly churns, protesting even that joining the contents in there. “Luke, I— I don’t feel good.”

Understatement of the century.

“I know,” Luke tells him. “Get it up. It’ll be so much better.”

Riley closes his eyes, dizziness and disorientation surging. It feels like he’s floating halfway out of his body, woozy and weird; his body is clammy, flushed, pale all over, and his muscles keep tensing, especially in his abdomen as he gags and his belly gurgles loudly, filling the hospital bathroom and echoing.

“Let it go, honey,” Luke encourages him, rubbing his belly harder. It seems like he pauses for a second before he’s reaching out to vigorously rub his stomach, so hard and forceful that a heavy belch rips out of him, loud and upset and making his nausea furious. “Come on—”

Riley forces his hands away, another burp rocketing up so hot and thick that it burns inside of him. His belly squelches in the center, a non-stop mess of indigestion and nausea, and he belches again, a deep, gagging heave following that forces his body to curl forward over the trash bin.

Another belch comes up.

And another.

And another.

They’re getting worse, heavy and disgusting and churning up the storm in his belly. His ass clenches, and he wraps his arms around his belly with a groan.

His next retch is wet, painful, so loud and violent that it echoes off the bathroom tiles. His belly clenches mercilessly, forcing another loud gurgle through it as it tries to do something, but it can’t do anything. The cheese and sandwich and coffee are just tearing him up inside. There’s no way he’s actually going to process anything inside of him right now; it has to come out.

Riley gags again, and a mouthful of something comes up. He spits into the trash can, gag reflex making him belch sickly, but it’s not much. It’s just discolored froth and thick saliva.

God, his stomach just won’t stop gurgling. The nausea is relentless, loud and messy and wet-sounding, like a pot of soup boiling over inside his belly. Each noise rolls over the last one, sloshing and churning deep inside him and rumbling up to echo off the bathroom tiles as Riley attempts to breathe through them.

Attempting to shift and find a position that doesn’t make everything worse, Riley finds this is impossible. Everything feels worse. His abdomen is so swollen with indigestion, bubbling with gas, churning with sick overfull undigested food and plugged up with the stupid amount of lactose he ate. His guts are making so much noise it sounds like there’s something alive inside of him, fizzing and bubbling and trying to claw its way out, making its displeasure known.

He can feel what Luke was telling him now. He can feel what the cheese is doing to him. All that heavy lactose that he ate so fast is just sitting undigested in his belly like the powder keg it is, clogging him up so bad it’s forcing the sluggish mess of his spoiled sandwich and stale coffee to ferment more than it ever would otherwise. He can almost feel the chemical reaction— fuck, he can feel his own colon, attempting to fight against stomach contents it was never meant to digest. In return it releases gas and fluid and fire and all Riley can do is suffer.

His digestive system is still trying so hard to work overtime and contain the damage.

It’s failing.

A thick wave of nausea creeps higher in his throat like a rising floodwater, slow and heavy and inescapable. His belly lurches, a low twisting clench that forces him forward. A shaky breath escapes him as his stomach grumbles again, a loud churn that bubbles inside of him and ripples his bare belly in a visible way from the outside.

“Riley, honey, you’re so pale,” Luke murmurs.

“I feel like I’m gonna—” Riley starts before a belch rips out of him, his stomach gurgling so loudly it’s nearly louder than his actual burp. “Oh, fuck, I feel like I’m going to explode, but I can’t, I’m just— Fuck, I’m so bloated, I feel so sick, I can’t, I can’t, Luke—”

His stomach gives a loud, gloppy slosh, and then a deep blorp that feels so painful that it’s almost offended. His belly twists in slow motion before his intestines rumble, another gassy swirl pushing through it and making him groan loudly as his belly groans the same way, if not even louder.

Really, he’s not even bloated anymore. It’s bloating, yes, but it’s more than that too. It’s the kind of internal storm that can only be a punishment. He had known the sandwich had tasted a little off, he had known dairy hates him, he had known that eating that much cheese and drinking that much coffee and eating a sandwich like that might do something, but he didn’t care. It didn’t seem like it could happen to him, and he had been hungry and stupid and running on three hours of sleep and half a brain cell. He has eaten things like this before; surely he’d be fine and be able to digest it.

He can’t.

He couldn’t.

And now, he’s paying the price.

His stomach growls again, snarling like thunder, deeper than any gurgle he’s endure before now. It takes a longer time, too, and feels like it starts in the base of his throat before it rolls through his belly to the pit and through his intestines. It ends with a frothy, fizzling churn low in his gut, between his hips, in the pit of his stomach, like someone shook a bottle of soda and cracked the seal and is waiting for something to happen.

“I think it’s just— fermenting inside of me,” Riley gasps. He whimpers through the next gurgle. It’s medicinal of him to say. “I feel like— I can feel the fermentation. The gas building up, the—”

He belches, everything inside of him proving to be incompatible with his system. Nothing is willing to sit right, struggling to digest inside of him, making him feel bloated and full like his stomach has a heavy balloon full of cement inflating inside. The pressure is too much and won’t ease or release no matter how he moves or how much he belches or farts. A rolling, uneasy queasiness rumbles through his belly, gurgling loudly. It’s almost like carsickness, the unsteady and strange nausea bubbling through him, churning up his tummy so loudly that he feels like he needs to keep burping, even if it isn’t helping. Everything is fermenting so sickly that each belch is sour and unpleasant and thick; the longer the food just churns up in his belly, the more it tries to digest, and the more acidic and nauseating it becomes. He feels sluggish and sick and strange as he belches again.

It all tasted okay going down, but it feels horrible now that it’s inside of him. His belly is gurgling so loudly, bubbling that sounds like he’s a broken washing machine on spin cycle. All the cheese in him fermented too fast and gurgles too much, while the salami clogs him up and the coffee speeds him up all at once. There’s too much inside of him, and too many noises as his belly tries and fails to digest.

The volume is a problem. He mixed up too many things, too many dense and hard-to-digest foods consumed at once. His digestive system is working overtime and still failing, rumbling through his intestines and trying to get everything out in the most miserable of ways.

Another sour belch bursts out of him. The immense bloating and pressure in his belly, especially in his upper tummy, won’t go away. In fact, the queasiness only increases, at the same time his stomach noises do.

He’s a doctor. He knows what’s happening: indigestible lactose is untouched by any digesting enzymes in his belly, it’s meeting his gut flora, and it’s fermenting in real time. The salami he ate— and the bacteria and fungi that were clearly attached to it— are breaking down inside of him, releasing acids and gases and toxins. His digestion is slowed to a crawl because of it and the sheer amount of cheese inside of him, making him feel bloated and queasy and nauseated.

The coffee could’ve helped in another situation. But right now, when his belly is attempting to deal with so much already, that much acid is upsetting things so much worse. He can feel his colon inside of him as his belly gurgles again, a loud and thunderous sound before he groans. He feels something popping deep in his belly, and he leans forward, clutching his stomach, feeling the intense bloating and cramping rumbling inside of him as things get pushed through him undigested.

The coffee is amplifying the fermentation and noises already happening inside him, like giving his belly a megaphone as it gurgles and churns louder this time. He groans, clutching his belly, and doubles over his own lap.

Fuck, his belly is so loud.

A huge, rumbling blorp rolls across his lower belly. It’s followed immediately by another audible, heavy slosh, and then a drawn-out warbling gurgle that sounds like a clogged drain tying to empty, gargling around a stuffed pipe.

And it hurts.

Riley grabs his stomach, his belly feeling and looking so round and swollen with stomach upset and unreleased gas that it’s like a balloon about to burst. Pressing his hand just below his navel, a bloated ache radiates out, pulsing waves of nausea and discomfort following.

His nausea is all he can focus on. His throat feels tight, his mouth waters, and his stomach gives a high-pitched glug. It’s followed by a loud, roiling churn that sends ice water through his veins in a sudden freezing chill.

“Okay, let it up,” Luke encourages as another enormous growl tears through Riley. It’s thick and wet, like something shifting beneath the surface of a murky swamp, bubbling just the same way. His stomach clenches, then sloshes, a full-body heave rolling through him as he belches into the trash can between his legs.

“Help me,” Riley begs. “Please— Help me—”

Luke doesn’t hesitate, pressing his hands into Riley’s belly, trying to force something up. His angry stomach protests, and he inhales deeply, trying to swallow down air to force up another belch. He inhales the scents of sweat and bathroom bleach and his own belching, the phantom taste of his sandwich thick in the back of his throat, and it forces him to retch again.

Still, it doesn’t bring anything up. It’s just another horrible burp that makes his belly rumble, all wet and all awful. He hiccups.

“Fuck,” he moans. His stomach gurgles in agreement, a thick and drawn-out continuous glorping that sounds like a thick potion being stirred. He coughs and gags, the pressure swelling and forcing up another burp before his stomach gurgles, fizzling like an opened and shaken soda can.

His nausea no longer comes in waves, but exists now as a constant rising tide. It is everywhere and everything, and he burps again before his belly roars, wet and urgent and giving him a warning.

“I think—” he manages before he burps again, his stomach gurgling right in the center, foaming up. “Luke—”

His body lurches forward of its own accord, and another bubbling retch rips out of him, forcing up a mouthful of sour spit. His stomach sloshes, but refuses to let anything out; every sound is thick and wet and gurgling and horrible and unfinished.

“Come on,” Luke encourages him. “Just let it out. Y—”

“I’m trying,” Riley insists. “I—”

Another loud gurgle from his belly cuts him off, so loud and so thick and so wet that they both freeze. Riley’s eyes are wide, and he can feel that both ends want to let go at the same time.

His lower belly cramps hard, his muscles all twitching at once. At the same time, his upper belly churns up a gurgle, and he belches, shivering. “I can’t— I can’t hold it—”

“Don’t hold it,” Luke encourages him. “Just let it happen.”

Riley belches again, leaning forward over the trash can. His belly actually heaves, both inside of him and physically visible from outside. Another thick belch burbles out of him, his whole belly sloshing, every moment wet. With his next deep, brassy belch, something shifts behind his ribs, and he feels something loosen.

Every muscle in Riley’s belly quivers, clenching hard against the storm that’s trying to release itself and escape him. He lets out a small, broken whimper as he belches again, wet and gagging.

Fuck, his stomach sounds so horrific, churning like boiling soup, so loud and frothy and furious. There’s no rhythm or reason to it anymore, it’s just an unpredictable mess, overlapping layers of groans and pops and sloshes and glorps and glurks that seem to rise up from the depths of his belly and crash against each other. The sounds overlap and echo through his belly, storming like thunder.

Suddenly, there’s a harder, deeper sound— a wet blorp that seizes his whole belly, from his throat to his ass, and rumbles his belly so significantly that a ripple surges visibly through it, under his hand and Luke’s.

“Jesus,” Luke comments just as Riley stiffens.

Another sharp, wet squelch erupts from Riley’s lower belly. He doubles forward, arms wrapped around his gurgling stomach, and he whimpers, “Luke— Luke— Fuck, I— I can’t keep it down— It’s not sitting right, I can’t keep it down, I can’t, it’s gonna come back up—”

Luke’s hands are steady on his back, grounding and warm, comforting even through the sticky sweat of sickness on him. “Hey, it’s okay. Just breathe. Don’t fight it, let it up. It doesn’t want to stay down, that’s why you don’t feel good. It’s not sitting right because you’re not meant to digest it. Let it come out.”

Riley belches heavily again, thick and long, tasting salami and cheese and coffee so thickly that he can’t help the sick, strange, gagging burp that follows. His stomach churns in a hollow, deep way, and he farts, clutching his belly.

It’s too much. His whole belly is so heavy and taut and it aches, so filled with sick contents and squelching gas and hard pressure that won’t come out. His belly groans loudly, squealing and glorping, like something trapped inside of it is alive and trying to claw its way out. His nausea deepens, surges, and he gags, then retches, a fiercely wet heave that curves his body over the trash can again.

His whole body contorts, and he belches again, tugging in the back of his throat. His stomach won’t stop gurgling as he feels more and more nauseated, and as that nausea grows more persistent and overwhelming. The lactose in his gut remains undigested because he just cannot digest it. Instead, it ferments, making him so gurgly and bloated and uncomfortable while his digesting system is already working overtime to deal with the negative consequences of everything he ate.

His storming belly rumbles, growling way too loudly as it decides it’s going to force everything up. A long, low churn glugs through his belly, the soupy swamp of contents inside bubbling and burbling as he belches and feels the storm inside him actually swirl. When he belches again, his gassy insides fizzle, a loud roar thundering through him before he belches again. The sound gargles through his intestines and sloshes through his tummy, fighting against everything he ate: the sandwich that was definitely out too long and past its prime, the entire bag of cheese that refuses to digest and makes his stomach so noisy and upset, the black coffee that is making everything slimy-slick and horribly gassy inside of him.

Another horrible burp comes up, and another, and another. He can’t stop them, and they refuse to be stopped as he spits up another mouthful of thick, weird saliva into the trash can.

“Get it up,” Luke encourages again. “That’s it, come on.”

It doesn’t feel like Riley has a choice. His upset belly is making him feel more nauseated than he ever has before, loud and messy and unstoppable. It releases another cavernous, horrible, loud glorp of a sound before it feels like everything inside of him actually just breaks apart.

His stomach clenches hard, gurgling loudly, and then everything gives.

A sharp, wet noise erupts from his ass. It’s hot and sudden and humiliating, but it’s also such a release of pressure that he can’t help but sob through it. His bowels release, burning liquid pouring out of him as he doubles forward with an immense surge of nausea and gags, spitting up a thin wave of vomit that tastes far too much like salami.

It’s too much. The dual sensation of his body emptying from both ends at once is overwhelming. There’s too much pressure, too much movement, too much pain, too much relief, too much misery.

“Fuck— I’m sorry—” Riley pants before he hiccups and belches up his first real wave of vomit. His voice sounds wrecked and watery as another burst erupts from below, feeling like he’s vomiting from his mouth and his ass at the same time.

“Hey, nope, none of that, don’t apologize,” Luke insists. His arm slides around Riley’s waist while his other hand comes to his belly again, stroking across the front of his swollen tummy slow and steady. “You’re okay. It’s just food poisoning. You’ll be okay once it’s out. I got you.”

The pressure of his hand on Riley’s belly makes him belch again. Now that his body has agreed to let everything go, his tummy clenches again, and another wave of nausea forces him forward. He burps up a small mouthful of vomit, then retches, bringing up a huge wave of cheese and salami and mayo and coffee, half-digested— and the other half releases in liquid form from the other end, absolutely loosening and emptying out of him as he belches again and sobs.

He can barely hear Luke. Everything is the roar of blood in his ears and the gurgle of his stomach inside of him. It’s all hot and wet and heavy as he shakes. Every inch of him feels so sick and sour and the slop inside of him cascades out from both ends, and he belches again before a wet fart forces more out, miserable.

And even through it all, his stomach won’t stop roiling. It just keeps gurgling the entire time, punctuated by these miserable, suffering gurgles and weird churning squelches. His stomach forces up a continuous stream of sick from between his lips, while from the other end— wet, loose liquid forces out of him, while unpredictable and throbbing cramps wrack his lower belly and force everything out in one way or another.

He loses track of time. All there is is his belly churning and forcing something out one way, or another, or both. By the time he can actually take a breath, he’s covered in sweat, the bathroom smells horrible, the trash can is full, he’s panting for air, and his belly is still loudly and audibly churning. His mouth tastes acidic, his skin is damp, and his belly—

Well, his stomach isn’t like it was.

Before, it had been hard and rounded out and swollen with how much was in it. Now, it’s softened, some of what’s inside of it out now—

—But it doesn’t feel like everything.

Despite how much Riley just was forced to expel from his system, it feels like he’s still full. Whatever is making him sick is doing a number on him, because his soft, grumbling belly keeps gurgling, still uneasy despite how much it has just erupted out of itself.

“Okay,” Luke whispers. A cold washcloth presses to the back of his neck. “You’re okay. It’s all done now.”

Riley swallows thickly, slumping backwards. “I don’t—” He burps, his hand coming up over his mouth, weak and slow. “Ugh. I don’t feel okay.”

“You will.” Luke kisses this cheek, then brings the washcloth around to wipe over his face. It feels so nice and cool, and Riley closes his eyes with a sigh and a tilt into his hand.

Another faint glorp rumbles through Riley’s gut. His tummy churns with an audible squelch, rumbling just under his hand where it rests over his navel, and he groans, pathetic, as his stomach gurgles with renewed queasiness.

“Not yet,” he mutters, miserable.

“No, not yet,” Luke agrees. “Soon, though. Just let it all up.”

Riley laughs a little before he groans, rubbing his hand over his stomach as slow and steady as he can. It’s not really doing anything, and it’s not even that easy to do. His arms feel limp and jellied, every inch of him totally wrung out, hollow and sore and weak—

—Except his stomach.

His stomach is the only part of him that doesn’t feel hollow. It still feels way too full, and it wants him to know this, refusing to stop making noise even after he feels like it should be totally emptied out.

As it turns out, his belly isn’t anywhere close to being emptied out.

Despite how much he’s just shit out and thrown up, his stomach churns on, bubbling and squelching like there is still something living inside of him that is fighting to escape. It is probably something alive— something fermented, something— something bad, mold or fungi or something that thinks it can live inside of him, because that’s the only explanation for how ferocious his belly feels. Something must be trying to destroy him; there’s no other explanation.

The pressure is different, shifting. He’s able to get the gas out now, and cannot stop burping. Each belch seems to release some of the pressure and air, which should be helping, but instead he only feels sicker and more nauseated with every burp. His stomach without gas is only motion and movement, churning unsteadily, fizzling shifts of acidic liquid and fermenting cheese and sick sandwich swishing through his gut with the sick air. Now that he’s emptier, everything is louder, too much space for even more sounds.

Beside him, Luke readjusts his crouch, then puts his hand on Riley’s bare belly again, stroking slowly. The noise beneath his hand is immediate and awful, a churning glorp and squelch that he can feel rippling under his palm before it gurgles downwards into a burble in his lower guts that squeals and then pops loudly, making Riley groan with a wave of queasiness and another gurgle in the center of his stomach.

Riley lets out a helpless, nauseated whine.

“I’m not done,” Riley gasps. “I’m not done, I’m gonna be sick again, I feel so sick—”

“It’s okay,” Luke lies, because how can this possibly be okay? “Your body’s just trying to get it all out. That’s a good thing. Get it out, it’s okay. I got you.”

Riley belches again, clutching the trash can once more. His own vomit is cooling in the bottom, and the sight and smell makes him gag again, another loose torrent releasing from his other end in the process.

“Ugh, I hate this,” Riley groans. “I feel like a broken faucet.”

“Two broken faucets,” Luke corrects. Riley belches weakly again, glaring sideways at him as he spits thick saliva into the can. “Or two erupting volcanoes. This is apocalyptic.”

Riley would laugh if he could. Instead, he retches again— sudden and violent, gagging, no warning— and belches up another wave of watery vomit into the can. His shoulders shudder, and the next belch comes fast, his belly churning loudly as it squeezes up a mouthful of mucus and foam and vomit.

His stomach twists around the sick remains inside, and he sobs hoarsely before he heaves again. Another deep cramp seizes his lower belly, thick tension that coils low, and he groans.

“No, no, no—” he whispers before his stomach squelches. He can feel exactly where every organ in his body is— his stomach, his intestines, his colon— and he vomits into the trash can at the same moment that his other end releases, splattering wetly and embarrassingly. It feels like every hole he has is streaming something, and he sobs through it, his stomach convulsing as it tries to empty itself in every direction. His bowels cramp, and his stomach gurgles, and messy, loose, seemingly endless waves fall out of his mouth and his ass all at once.

He doesn’t even have the strength to apologize anymore; all he can do is let it happen. At least Luke just holds him, calm and patient and kind, not asking for any apology or even seeming to comment on how gross it all is. He just keeps telling him he’s okay, even though it’s obviously not true, until his body gives up on emptying itself.

Eventually, the cramps and spasms and convulsions slow.

The gurgling doesn’t actually stop. His belly keeps making these soft, horrible, miserable sounds— these fluttering kind of glorp noises followed by these long squelches of trapped gas and these loud, thundering churns of the little that remains inside his storming tummy— but the violent, projectile expulsions do slow down into trembling and gags and the occasional heavy fart or belch that doesn’t become more anymore.

Riley slumps backwards, head lolling, trying to catch his breath. Tears cling to his eyelashes.

“Sorry,” he croaks, voice raw and rough. The effort of talking nauseates him, and he closes his eyes as another belch rolls up, his stomach gurgling. He puts one hand over his soft, rumbling belly, stroking back and forth slow and steady, trying to soothe whatever’s left in there. “Fuck. That was… Fuck.”

“Yeah, it was.” Luke kisses his temple. “You’re okay now. Wanna clean up and lay down?”

Riley considers the state of himself. “I think I’m dead.”

“You’re not,” Luke informs him. “Your belly’s gurgling too loudly for you to be a ghost. You wouldn’t get away with it.”

Riley huffs a laugh, weak and wet, and it makes him burp. The belch is long and thick and nauseous, and he groans, his hand digging in a little harder as he rubs his belly.

“Don’t make me laugh, I don’t feel good,” Riley complains. “Fuck. I feel so sick still. How do I still feel so sick?”

“Because you are still sick,” Luke comments. He wipes sweat away from Riley’s forehead, vomit away from his mouth. “You’re not going to magically heal once it’s out. Your body suffered for way too long. It’s trying to fix what that mess did to it.” He dabs at his chin. “What were you thinking, by the way? That much black coffee, a bag of shredded cheese, and one of those slimy salami sandwiches from the caf? What’s wrong with you?”

Riley groans, his stomach gurgling in protest, squeezing his eyes shut harder. “Ugh, and it was so soggy. I should have known.”

His stomach rumbles loudly, a thunderous gurgle like it echoes the regret he’s feeling. There’s another sensation like he’s a clogged drain, the sound deep and restless and twisting. There’s a sudden pop, then a slosh deep in his gut, the queasiness brewing back up and gurgling to distract him. A low rumble rolls through him, then another, then another, before they’re overlapping in a newly relentless symphony of wet churns, gurgles, groans echoing out of him, rumbling through his tummy like an overboiling cauldron, despite the fact that he should be empty.

“Fuck,” he groans again as his stomach bucks, protesting every bite he swallowed earlier. Another sharp pang stabs in his lower gut, the cramp followed by a long, rumbling, ominous squelch that sounded like someone slowly stirring macaroni and cheese inside his belly.

“Oh, that sounded awful,” Luke comments. “What the hell is still in there? ‘Cause whatever it is is not sitting right, it wants out.”

Riley absolutely knows this already, rubbing harder at his belly as a sloppy, deep blorp burbles up from deep inside of him. Sweat prickles along his temples again and his belly rumbles so loudly he almost doesn’t even hear Luke’s comment.

Another vicious gurgle rolls through him like thunder as he attempts to speak. When he can talk, he tells him, “I don’t— I don’t feel good, I’m gonna be sick again—” and then belches heavily.

“It’s okay,” Luke promises him. It can’t be true, but he still promises. Riley feels the pressure increasing in his belly again, so he shifts, and he feels everything inside of him shift at the same time. His stomach gurgles, and a deep bworp rumbles up out of it as his belly churns and sloshes angrily at the movement.

Riley stiffens, his hand stilling as he clutches his soft, rumbling belly.

“No, no, no,” he mumbles. “Oh, no—”

Another cramp tightens his lower belly, and his tummy growls so loudly he can feel it through his ribs. His whole body starts shaking, all of him sweating again, and he farts, and he belches loudly, but his body won’t release again. He retches softly, though nothing comes up; his stomach flutters inside of him, then rumbles loudly, squelching in the lower pit, like it’s deciding still whether or not it’s actually done.

It’s a few minutes of this with nothing productive happening before Riley slumps. Looking up at Luke, he asks, “Can we go home?”

“Can you make it home?” he asks.

Riley considers this, then shakes his head.

“On-call room it is,” Luke tells him.

He helps him up. To his credit, he helps clean him up, and wash himself down with cloths and the sink, and then rinse his mouth. It’s all disgusting. And yet, Luke doesn’t flinch. He just helps him through it all before helping him out of the bathroom and to the bed in the on-call room.

Cleaning up helps a little, but not that much. It definitely doesn’t help his nausea, though. His stomach protests through the whole thing, gurgling wet and sharp and loud through the whole process. Still, it makes him feel more like a person and less like a leaking meat sack to be clean and redressed— and Luke even helps wash his hair for him in the sink, and doesn’t comment when he leans forward to get rinsed and his stomach churns so loudly it sounds like he’s about to shit himself— which he miraculously does not.

By the time Luke is helping Riley collapse into the thin single cot in the on-call room, he’s cleaned and dried and wearing one of Luke’s sweatshirts. It’s too small for him, but he likes how it smells, and he keeps burying his face in it as he curls up on his side in bed with a groan.

As he lays down, his belly rumbles loudly, and so he curls around it, winding both arms around his belly. It gurgles again, a loud squelch forcing through it, and it’s just so loud. It’s so embarrassingly loud, it’s just— not quiet little gurgles or demure digestion, but a full, loud storm, even still now. His stomach glugs and churns like a washing machine full of cement and a bunch of bricks, heavy and messy and horrible even after he’s theoretically emptied himself out. These wet, sloppy sounds keep sloshing through his belly, followed by high, squeaking fizzes of gas that shift through his gut like his intestines are carbonated and boiling near his belly.

When he turns his head into the pillow, his body forces up another belch, deep and wet, and he tightens his grip on his soft, rumbling belly.

“Fuck,” he groans. “Why is it still doing that?”

Luke sits on the edge of the bed, running his hand through Riley’s hair before he coaxes him to lay on his back.

“Because you ate a spoiled sandwich and washed it down with a gallon of acid and a dairy bomb,” Luke reminds him. “That’s some fucked-up math, babe. Your stomach is not gonna be able to solve that problem.”

Riley whines, dragging his arm up over his face, his other hand slipping beneath his stolen sweatshirt to rub at his churning belly. Luke eases his hand under the sweatshirt too, pushing it up slightly and laying his warm, broad palm against his belly. His stomach is still swollen, bloated and rumbling and hot to the touch; as Luke leaves his hand there, he can feel another gurgling churn ripple through him, so violent it’s like a burbling wave he can actually touch.

“Jesus, that’s horrible,” Luke comments. “Are you still feeling that sick, sweetheart?”

Riley nods, unable to speak, lips tightening as he swallows thickly and his belly churns loudly again. He can feel himself getting colder and paler; there’s a pop in the center of his belly before something rumbles and makes his belly contents swirl.

The air is leaving him a bit at a time, but his belly is still so swollen with sickness. Each gurgle visibly shifts beneath his surface— a churn there, a roil there, a glorp there, a gurgle there, a burble there. Luke tries to rub slowly where he sees and feels the most bubbling, his hand firm and grounding. He pushes soft circles just below Riley’s navel, then right above it, where he can feel a cluster of activity rumbling inside of him.

Riley shifts, curling towards Luke’s hand, and the movement sends a slosh through his belly like a thick stew slopping against the sides of a pot. He belches, and his belly squelches before releasing a long, low, ominous groan.

“God, it feels like there’s an actual storm in there,” Luke murmurs. Riley’s belly lets out a high-pitched squeal just to the right of his navel, and so he presses gently there. He earns a rumble and a deep belch that makes Riley gag.

“I do have a storm in me,” Riley tells him. “It feels like there’s a fucking hurricane in my belly and it just won’t stop.”

His stomach gurgles loud and thick as if in agreement, and Riley closes his eyes again, trying to breathe through the wave of nausea that follows.

“Still feeling sick?” Luke asks unnecessarily.

“Mm-hmm.” Riley nods, then whispers, “It’s bad.” His hand comes up to rest on the rumbling, bloated swell just over his navel, above Luke’s hand. “It’s like— It’s all right here, but there shouldn’t be anything left inside of me.”

Another loud, sudden groan ripples through him, and he moans, rolling onto his side again, grabbing Luke’s hand and pushing it harder into his belly like it’ll help.

“I still feel gassy and nauseous,” he admits. His shame is all gone by now. “Fuck, just so gassy and nauseous. It’s like my belly is bubbling.”

Luke keeps rubbing his stomach, trying to ease the worst of the tension with his slow, patient spirals of touch. His shame stays gone with every time Riley burps or farts or his stomach growls in another thunderous snarl, and Luke still doesn’t comment. He just keeps rubbing his belly and sitting with him and telling him he’s going to be okay once it all settles.

Eventually, his quiet, calm rubbing feels like it quiets Riley’s body enough to relax. Not completely, because his belly is still gurgling and bloated and uncomfortable, but his churning is slowing and his heart isn’t pounding so badly. His closed eyes are less tormented and more sleepy from the exhaustion of everything he’s just gone through.

Unbeknownst to Riley, as he falls into a restless sleep, his belly keeps making noise. It should be digesting— Luke was hoping he would hear productive sounds as his belly processed the last that was left in it and worked it out the other end in a healthier, less painful way— but it doesn’t sound like it is at all. His belly keeps groaning like a thundercloud in the distance, ominous and present and yet not yet arrived.

Luke keeps rubbing his stomach, trying to soothe it.

The room is dark. It’s quiet.

Except for Riley’s sick tummy.

It keeps churning, gurgling so loudly that Luke’s surprised it takes as long as it does for Riley to wake up again. He’s clearly uncomfortable in his sleep, tossing and turning, his face creased and pale, his hands continuously creeping back to clutch his belly. He belches more than once in his sleep, and occasionally a sick fart slips out; the whole time, his belly keeps gurgling so loudly it’s a shock nobody comes to ask what the sound is in here.

Riley’s dreams are disorienting, filled with nausea and confusion. Even there, his stomach hurts so badly. It’s all rolling ships and spinning rooms and swirling nausea before he’s jolting awake, his sleep shattered by a sour wave gurgling through his belly.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Luke assures him, his hand still on Riley’s storming tummy. Riley blinks, confused, and moves to sit up. His stomach lurches upwards with him, and he belches as his stomach gurgles, groaning before a wet squelch tears through his lower belly.

Riley’s eyes flutter open, and he moans.

His stomach feels so full. Not really with food that much anymore. Most of that has come out of him. But now, he’s filled with nauseating gas, sick fluid, and this awful pressure that feels like something is swelling and living and shifting around in his belly, like his entire digestive system is still scrambling to bring something up after attempting to process something so foul and horrible and indigestible.

He swallows thickly, disoriented in the darkness.

His saliva threatens to come back up.

The second the thick spit hits his belly, it tries to force its way back up, making his stomach growl loudly. He groans, his hands coming back to clutch his stomach, rubbing desperately.

“What’s going on?” Luke asks. “Do you need the bathroom again?”

Riley can’t manage to talk. All he can do is nod, and the next thing he knows, Luke is taking him by the arm. It’s too much already, though, and Riley isn’t going to make it. He belches, too loud and too deep and too wet, and Luke releases him in favor of scrambling for the trash bin. He manages to get it in front of his pale face, between his shaking hands, just in time for Riley to belch again and bring up a mouthful of bile to spit into the can.

Riley can’t even sit up all the way. He collapses sideways onto his side again and heaves, another retch into the can before he’s belching up another violent wave of stomach acid and the little that remains in his belly. He can feel the solid chunks of chewed sandwich his body couldn’t digest passing back up, and gags harsher around them, belching up another burst of sick air from his belly.

His lower stomach clenches, and Riley clenches as tight as he can, focusing on keeping everything coming up instead of going down. His stomach growls loudly, storming as it forces more up, as if there is anything more to even get out.

His whole body shakes, trembling with the effort of waking up and vomiting like this. Ropey strands of thick saliva hang from his lips as he gasps into the can, clutching it sideways still, his belly squelching thickly with liquid that sloshes inside of him and yet refuses to come all the way up.

“Fuck,” Riley gasps before burping thickly, eyes filled with tears. “Fuck, my stomach—”

The stomach in question lets out another loud, gurgling rumble, and he sobs.

“I feel like I’m gonna explode,” he groans. “It’s all just churning inside me, like it’s just— I don’t know, it just feels like something’s boiling, or fucking— bubbling, or alive, fuck.”

Luke pushes his hand under Riley’s stolen sweatshirt and against his bare belly again. His palm presses to the swollen swell and finds it even louder than before, rumbling to the touch under his hand and glugging loudly like a sink trying to drain a thick stew after someone stuffed the pipes with peanut butter. There are these weird rolls of gas sliding under his skin, followed by sharp pops and thick sloshes and long, sloppy, rippling gurgles that make Riley belch again.

“Your body’s still trying to process what’s left, I think,” Luke speculates. “It’s still trying to move through you. You’ll feel a lot better when it all clears out.”

Riley burps again. It’s wet and sour and thick and he collapses into Luke’s arms afterwards, his belly grumbling. Luke takes the trash bin away and sets it on the ground, close enough to be grabbed when he inevitably needs it again.

“How am I still alive?” he whines. “I should be inside-out. I should be dead.”

“You’re too stubborn to let this kill you.” Luke kisses his temple, and Riley groans, pressing his face into Luke’s chest just as a long, low churn grumbles through his belly like a rumbling roll of thunder. “Just breathe. It’s probably over now.”

Riley shifts against him. He does try to breathe through the nausea, focusing on Luke’s palm heavy and steady and slow as it rubs his bloated, boiling, belly, but—

But then, something shifts again.

Something deep inside of him feels like it snaps, and his belly rumbles, deep and wet and heavy. A wave of nausea surges through him and makes him scramble upright, wide-eyed as he belches, his hand coming up over his mouth while the other one clutches his rumbling tummy.

“Luke—” he manages before belching again. His voice is strained as he begs, “Oh, shit— Help—”

He clutches his stomach with both hands now as he doubles over his own belly, trying to get out of bed and yet unable to. A ferocious, twisting cramp shoots through his lower belly, and his tummy roars with a thunderous, sickening, aggressive squelch. It bubbles up from below and rises in his throat all at the same time, and his tummy twists, his entire digestive system pulsing and convulsing, unable to decide which direction to go in first this time.

“Okay,” Luke says, firm and steady. “Okay, come on, let’s go, up with me.”

Luke grabs him under the arms. Even though he’s smaller than Riley, he still manages to get him up to his feet quickly. It’s all the strength and urgency of a doctor that has him moving him, even when Riley’s body locks up and his knees won’t work and all his muscles are tense with the effort to not let go.

And still, he fails.

His body forces up a deep, gurgling burp. It’s followed by another belch that makes his stomach gurgle, before there’s a noisy, heavy, wet sound erupting from below. Riley whimpers, absolutely mortified, and sprint-stumbles out of Luke’s arms, out of the on-call room, and into the bathroom just down the hall, slamming the doors behind him.

His stomach lurches once again, heaving violently inside of him. He yanks his scrub pants down, ignoring the mess inside as he plants himself on the toilet just in time for the next disgusting wave. His body lets go in every direction, and Luke isn’t fast enough this time. He’s still scrambling to put the trash bin in front of him when Riley parts his thighs, his stomach gurgles, and he vomits between his own legs into the toilet, hot and liquid and with such force his vision darkens for a moment.

His bowels release once again as soon as Luke puts the trash can in his arms. His insides cramp and spill out from every direction once again, even though there shouldn’t be anything left. His body wrings itself out, loud and relentless and gurgling waves pouring out from both ends, and his stomach—

Fuck, his stomach is just a goddamn mess. It’s unbearable, the nausea is too much. It churns out loud as he empties himself. Thick, roiling bubbles pop and shift and gurgle deep in his center like something horrible is cooking in there, something— something foul and indigestible and unstoppable. Every time he thinks he’s empty and that there can’t possibly be more, his muscles clench and his stomach groans and another wave of nausea hits, and suddenly he’s back to his belly squelching and his ass emptying and his tummy forcing up bile as he sobs into the trash can.

“I can’t stop,” Riley mumbles into the trash can. Luke holds him up and doesn’t even comment on how horrible this all is, or how disgusting he is, or even how loud his belly is.

Over a stupid sandwich and cheese and coffee. He could almost laugh if he wasn’t so sick.

Another horrible sound escapes from him, like a monstrous roll of thunder escaping his belly through his throat.

“Oh, fuck, I’m gonna—” he manages before he’s vomiting again. Another burbling gush escapes him from below, his belly gurgling and cramping tightly, and he has no control anymore. It’s all just happening.

“You’re doing so good,” Luke promises him. “Just let it out. I got you. It’ll end eventually.”

It doesn’t feel possible, but it does eventually ease again. Riley doesn’t trust it this time though. It eased before, and then he woke up and shit himself. He’s still belching, still farting, and his belly is still gurgling— long, wet, sloshing gurgles— but he doesn’t even try to stop it anymore. He just lets it all happen. It’s inevitable anyway.

“Still alive?” Luke asks him.

“Barely,” Riley replies. He belches again, his voice raw. “Exorcise me?”

“Later.” Luke kisses his cheek. “You done for now? Want help cleaning up?”

Riley’s face heats up again as he remembers the fact that he literally shit himself. In front of Luke. At work.

“You don’t—”

“I want to,” Luke stops him. “Let me help, okay?”

Riley nods, allowing Luke to help him sit up again. It’s a mortifying experience to be cleaned up and helped through changing his clothes, swapped out for scrubs that Luke runs to grab from the next hall, but he does feel better once it’s done.

He can tell his stomach isn’t done, though. Through the whole experience, his belly keeps protesting. The loudest, most upset sounds keep crawling through his tummy. It refuses to stop shifting, rumbling non-stop with heavy glorps and grumbles that make Riley stop occasionally to press a hand to his belly and the other to his mouth and breathe until he can move again.

Luke wipes sweat— and worse— away, he helps him change, he coaxes him into drinking water, and he holds him up as he brings him back to the on-call room. Riley is trembling, pale, and clammy by the time he’s back at the bed, and he collapses on the small bed with another groan, curling back up on his side.

As predicted, his upset belly gurgles immediately and loudly. It’s a thick, syrupy glorping that rises and sinks from his center at the same time, filling his tummy and rolling outward with an echoing slosh they can both hear. If Luke had his hand on Riley’s belly, he would have felt it, too.

“Fuck, it’s still going,” Riley mumbles. “Why won’t it stop?” Luke puts his hand on his stomach, laying down next to him, starting to stroke slowly. “Please kill me.”

“But you have such a beautiful orchestra in your belly,” Luke jokes. “It wouldn’t be right.”

Another gurgle churns beneath his palm, followed by a blub-blub-blub that is punctuated by a glorp in his belly, that clogged drain fighting him again. A high, tight squeal of gas squelches through his gut a moment later, and his upper belly joins in, not wanting to be left out, joining with a series of low, hollow rumbles that overlap each other, fizzling and gurgling and making him groan.

It’s all so loud, embarrassingly loud, and nauseating, and every few seconds there’s a new gurgling sound. His belly should be empty, and yet it feels like it’s foaming still, gargling with sickness. Air pops inside of it, sick and sloshing; occasionally, it grumbles, a rumbling thunderous groan, and Riley curls up tighter around his own belly.

Through it all, Luke just keeps rubbing his tummy, slow and steady and grounding. “You just need it to settle. Just work through it, just breathe. It’ll settle.”

“It’s not,” Riley complains, face buried in Luke’s thigh. “It’s never going to settle. This is the most unsettled anyone’s stomach has ever been.” A gurgling slurp of a noise echoes through him, and something stirs in his guts, low and heavy. Luke pushes his hand against the active motion and gets a response of a warbling, burbling, fizzy churn that vibrates under his touch. “Fuck, it feels like my stomach is fucking brewing something.”

“Yeah, you feel like a science experiment,” Luke comments. “Like, did you drink a bunch of potions while I wasn’t looking? Because it feels like you’re just full of shit that shouldn’t be near each other.”

“Clearly.” Riley belches again into Luke’s thigh. “I’m not an experiment, I’m a fucking environmental disaster, just— a bubbling, fermenting, horrible disaster. I can feel everything still… Fuck, it feels like it’s moving inside of me.”

As if on cue, his stomach churns, glubbing loudly, followed by a long roll of nauseating gas that works its way through his belly with a loud grumble and out in a squelch and a hiss.

“Your stomach agrees,” Luke comments. It does feel like it’s moving under his hand, it’s so active inside him. “Jesus. That can’t feel good.”

“It doesn’t.” Riley groans, curling tighter to him. “Fuck, I feel carbonated.”

Luke kisses the top of his head. “Go to sleep, my handsome soda fountain.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“…I hate my stomach.”

“Now, that, I believe.” Luke keeps rubbing said stomach, pausing to tap just beneath his navel. “I love it, though. Even when it’s fighting you.”

His belly continues its protests, muscles tense, guts groaning, long squeals of shifting gas overlapping with thick, echoing glugs of fluid and illness trying to move through him, a plugged-up sewer that forces everything left inside to get worse and worse the longer it lingers.

He’s starting to calm and trying to sleep when his belly gurgles aggressively again.

His stomach has been gurgling this whole time, but this one is different. It’s wet and rising and feels like something forcing its way up a clogged pipe, wanting to erupt into a sink and fill it with something disgusting and rancid from below. The gurgle builds in his belly, tight and hot and low, spiraling up into his chest, then squelching heavily before the exact center of his stomach churns so aggressively and gurgles so loudly he’s not sure he’s ever heard anything like it before.

“It’s never going to end, is it?” Riley asks, his belly gurgling again. His stomach groans, and he closes his eyes, trying to ignore the nausea. It won’t be ignored.

A long, slow groaning burble rises from deep inside of him. For a moment, he doesn’t move— he just breathes, setting his hand against his belly, trying to rub where he can feel the gurgling gathering most heavily. His tummy glorps; he tightens his grip; it doesn’t help. His belly glorps again, the remains inside turning over themselves.

His belly squelches next, sharp and wet and heavy, and he winces, groaning, turning more closely into Luke.

“Fuck,” he whispers into him, his hand digging in just below his ribs, where the nausea throbs most presently. Another roiling churn echoes up from his lower belly, and he can feel it moving through him, like thick sludge sloshing through a too-small pipe. It shifts sharply inside of him, and he moans, closing his eyes tight, swallowing thickly.

Luke’s hand slides over Riley’s, then moves higher, rubbing the soft, rumbly swell just above his navel again.

“Why won’t it stop?” Riley asks quietly. His belly whines, the bloated sound of gas forcing itself through him, right before there’s a gurgling glug that burbles up from the pit of his stomach. “I sound like a clogged toilet, holy shit.”

“You sound like you went to hell and back,” Luke comments, continuing to rub slow, even circles over the firm swell of his sick belly. He’s careful not to press too hard, but Riley’s nausea is growing again all the same. “Want some water?”

Riley belches, his stomach growling loud and low at the idea of drinking anything. His stomach lurches, and he belches again, thick and sour, before he groans. “No, thanks. I don’t think I can move.” He pauses, then groans again. “Fuck. I have another shift—”

“No, you don’t,” Luke tells him. “I called out for you for the next few days. Once I can get you home and in bed, you’re staying there, you hear me? You’re gonna let that noisy monster inside you settle.”

Riley wants to protest, but his stomach is doing enough of that for him. He knows he’s useless in his state, so he just nods and lets his head fall back against Luke’s thigh. His stomach fizzles weakly before it squelches loudly again, and he exhales shakily, closing his eyes once more.

“I’m gonna be sick again,” he says with confident finality. “I can feel it.” He rubs his hand into the churning mass beneath his navel, trying to soothe the storm with slow circles that won’t stop a goddamn thing. “Fuck. I’m never eating here again.”

“Might be the combo of black coffee, cheese bag, and the most disgusting sandwich you could’ve chosen,” Luke reminds him. Riley groans, a deep glorp rumbling through his stomach in a heavy roll as Luke reminds him of what brought him here. “Yeah, see? I told you so.”

Riley wheezes a week laugh that forces up an immediate burp. “Ugh— Fuck, don’t make me laugh. You’re gonna make me vomit, everything’s still moving too much.”

“Did you eat anything else?” Luke asks and sounds genuinely curious. “That’s a lot of movement for what you had.”

“No, that’s it today.” Riley swallows thickly.

There’s a beat of silence.

Then, Luke asks, “Do you think it would help?”

“What?”

“Eating more,” he tells him. At Riley’s alarmed look, he clarifies, “I don’t mean another bag of cheese, you dumbass. I mean— Another sandwich, maybe? Or some toast? Something from the vending machine? Just to help you get it up. There’s clearly still something in there that wants to come out and can’t, so…” Luke shrugs. “Eating should either settle your belly or bring the last of it up. Either way, uhh— Win-win?”

Riley is skeptical at first, but Luke has a point. He acquiesces and lets him get up and leave for a couple minutes. When he comes back, it’s with a pre-wrapped sandwich from the caf and an apologetic expression.

“Nothing better in the break room, I checked,” he tells him, tossing it down between them. Riley makes himself sit up, his stomach gurgling in protest as he does, and picks up the sandwich to read the label: a turkey sandwich with bacon, cheese, and coleslaw. He might like this on a normal day, but right now, his stomach rolls just reading the label. “You don’t have to—”

“No, I want it to be over,” Riley protests.

He sits up and Luke sits next to him. They’re both side-by-side on the cot as Riley unwraps the sandwich and takes a deep breath to steady himself. He inhales the scent of the sandwich, pulling in a deep lungful of bacon and cabbage, and his stomach gurgles so loudly he thinks he’s about to vomit for a second. He doesn’t, but it’s a close call.

“Go slow,” Luke tells him.

Riley nods. He holds the sandwich in one hand, his other hand pressing lightly over the grumbling curve of his upset belly, just waiting for the inevitable explosion. He takes a deep breath again, frowning, and holds his breath to take a cautious nibble of the sandwich.

At first, nothing happens. He swallows down the bite, and Luke squeezes him, encouraging.

He takes a second bite.

Nothing happens.

He takes a third bite.

Glorp.

Inside him, his stomach turns over itself, churning audibly as it rumbles, slow and sluggish, like trying to push molasses through a straw.

Closing his eyes, breathing heavily, he rubs his gurgling stomach.

“Don’t,” he whispers. “Just stay down, please. Please.”

His stomach rises and falls heavily under his hand, gurgling as another burble rises from deep inside, accompanied by a visible ripple over the top crest of his belly.

Luke’s brow furrows. “That didn’t sound good.”

“It didn’t feel good,” Riley complains. “Oh, fuck— It moved.” His hand rubs harder at his belly, feeling as if he can feel whatever it is crawling through him, like the bites of his new sandwich are alive inside his belly. “It’s like— It’s like it didn’t go down, it’s like it’s—”

He can’t finish before he belches. His stomach gurgles again, loud and aggressive— and then lower, there’s a heavier, more ominous burbling, and he shifts on the bed, curling forward, his grip tightening on the sandwich in his hand.

“Riley, you should stop eating that,” Luke warns him.

“No, it’s working,” Riley insists. His nausea is rising, but that’s the point, wasn’t it? “It just— It just reacted so fast, like I fucking— swallowed a mouthful of acid— I feel—”

He belches again, a surge of nausea swelling up so strong that he thinks he might vomit in his lap for a second. His stomach burbles loudly, simmering and shifting, the contents unsettled, and Luke rubs his back.

“Don’t force yourself,” Luke tells him. “Give me that—”

“No, I’m gonna… I’m gonna keep going,” Riley insists. He takes another breath, then another bite. Another gurgle tumbles through his sick tummy, and he rubs the rumble he can feel rippling under his hand before he burps around the bite he’s still chewing.

It’s a bad idea.

He knows it’s a bad idea and he knows it even as he’s doing it. Still, though, Riley chews and swallows anyway.

His whole digestive system protests at once.

His stomach clenches, gurgling so loud and livid that he groans out loud. A bubbling churn follows, a heavy glorping that forces him to drop the sandwich. Luckily Luke catches it and puts it aside just as Riley’s gagging.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasps out, both hands cradling his stomach as it heaves beneath his palms. Luke shoves the— cleaned-out— trash bin in front of him again, and he drops his head over it though he doesn’t release his belly. He hiccups, his stomach sloshing and swollen and furious with him, before he belches again, deep and wet and heavy.

Luke directs his head forward just in time for Riley to gag.

His whole body tenses, his stomach gurgling loudly before the pressure inside roils up and he vomits up a wet, heavy wave of barely-digested stomach contents. The bites of the sandwich he’d only just swallowed come up first, disgusting and just the same as they just went down, and then they’re followed by a sudden, massive, liquid release. Too much motion, too much fermentation, too much sickness, too much, too much— and not enough mercy, ultimately. The mess that chokes up out of him is thick, half-digested, and just as loud as his gurgling belly, splattering against the bottom of the cleaned-out can as his stomach thunders with another snarl.

“Fuck,” he manages to gasp out before another round surges up.

He’s just lucky that things don’t seem to want to go down anymore. Or, at least, nothing has moved through him enough anymore to come out that way. Everything just comes up, and the addition of the sandwich forces his belly to want to purge with purpose, glorping and sloshing and squelching audibly and visibly as it brings up everything he’s eaten since what feels like the day he was born.

Spitting out a mouthful of something thick, he whimpers, then burps again, triggering another wave.

Then—

No, no, he’s not lucky.

His lower belly cramps, and he gasps out, “Luke— Shit—”

His stomach gurgles, pressure dropping so low so fast it’s almost impressive if it wasn’t alarming. He rolls off the bed, shoving the bin into Luke’s hands as he sprints out and manages to make it to the bathroom this time before his body revolts and starts emptying from both ends.

A loud gurgle sounds from inside his belly, burbling audibly, and he palms at his stomach as he empties from one end. Luke shoves the bathroom trash into his lap just in time, holding it up for him as he burps up more of the sandwich and his sick stomach contents, and he groans.

“You’re okay,” Luke tells him and holds the bin for him while Riley rubs his bloated, gurgling belly. Riley groans and spits. “Let it up, get it out. You’re almost done.”

“I feel so sick,” Riley complains. “I don’t feel good, I feel— I feel so sick—”

“I know,” Luke says. “I know, baby. Just breathe, get it up. I got you.”

Another loud, gurgling rumble echoes from Riley’s belly before he farts again, a moment before he gives a thick, watery burp. Riley groans, his stomach bubbling non-stop, still so noisy and revolting, turning over itself even when he should be empty.

It takes a while, but, finally, it all slows. Riley’s belly gurgles and he burps, rubbing his hand hard over his navel, not sure what’ll happen next.

“Done?” Luke asks.

Riley shrugs, then belches, spitting into the trash can. His stomach burbles under his hand, and he groans.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be done,” he whispers. He groans as his insides shift again, his arms hugging his belly as it starts glorping again, aggressive grumbling followed by a low, echoing pop that makes his whole body stiffen before he burps again. “Ugh, it’s still going. It’s all still moving, fuck.”

“I know.” Luke kisses his temple again. “Just relax. Let it come out when it comes out. I got you.”

Riley’s belly burbles again, churning with miserable queasiness, and he belches again. Luke’s hand comes over his tummy, rubbing firm just below his navel. He coaxes up another burp, and his nausea spikes.

“It’s never gonna stop,” Riley complains.

“I’m never gonna go anywhere,” Luke tells him, and Riley believes it. Even as he lurches forward and burps up another wave of vomit into the trash can.