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There was no real reason for it. It's not like he'd eaten anything weird, a diet of cheesy mac and apple juice was perfectly reasonable and had never gotten to him before. Could it have been the cake he'd hijacked from one of the kids in class? Nah, that wouldn't have fucked his system up, he did shit like that all the time.
Long story short, Dave Strider was curled up on the bathroom floor puking his guts out in a toilet he prayed he got all the firecrackers out of in time. It was probably, shit, two in the morning? One? Who fucking knew, it was impossible to tell, he hadn't even gotten the chance to grab his phone before he was left sprinting for ye olde porcelain throne trying not to leave a mess he knew he would have to clean up lest he bring an ass whoopin' onto himself.
Somewhere in between flushing down the only warm meal he'd gotten to have all week and getting up to brush the acrid taste of acid from his mouth, the world decided to go sideways and maybe he shouldn't stand up alrighty then. This wasn't no goddamn case of food poisoning, but if it wasn't food poisoning what the hell was it? Striders didn't get sick. He couldn't afford to get sick, not when his beloved guardian could bust in at any moment and toss out a line about getting his happy ass up to the roof for a hot minute of training. It had to be food poisoning, or a twenty-four hour bug at the worst.
Dave shuddered and let out a shaky breath, shoving a hand through his hair, a frown forming as he realised just how clammy he was. Eugh. Not great. He needed a washcloth or something, get this grime off his face before he took a one-way trip to breakout city. Pimples never looked good in selfies, no sir, or at least that's what those numbers keeping track told him. But washcloths were way the fuck up there and quite frankly Dave wasn't entirely sure he could make it off the ground after the way his vision tunneled the last time he tried.
He groaned softly, leaning his head to rest against the cabinets and contemplate his fate. God, how was he even supposed to get back to his room? This shit was impossible. How did anyone deal with being sick? No wonder everyone got pissed off about having to go to work like this, or not having days off, or bitched about how they didn't have enough sick time off school to deal with getting the flu or mono or whatever it was they had. Here he thought they were just making it up, but now that he was in their shoes, he kind of understood why they didn't want to deal with being around other people and functioning. Hell, Dave didn't even want to deal with himself.
To be fair, Dave didn't want to deal with himself of the best of days, but that was beside the point. At least now he would be immune to whatever bullshit disease he had caught. That was how it worked, right? People got hella sick and then were immune to it forever. At least, that was what he heard around school, but school was full of notoriously misinformed teenagers so maybe he shouldn't be trusting their advice all the time. Last time he did, he fried his hair trying to dye it red and it had taken months for it to look less crispy.
"You alright in there?"
The words were almost inaudible, Dave too busy wallowing in his misery to pay them much mind. it wasn't until there was a knock and the door was pushed half-open that he realised it wasn't some shitty desperate fever dream. Fuck, he was just in a t-shirt and old-ass boxers, looking like shit on the bathroom floor, he needed to get up and pull himself together before Bro could really get a gander at him and figure out what a miserable excuse of a kid he was. Granted, this was talking about the man that had raised him and thus seen him as a gross baby, but if his total disinterest in Dave was any hint to how he behaved back then Dave doubted it made much of a difference. It was probably a question asked out of pity. At this point, Dave practically thrived on being left the fuck alone, piss off life, that was about the only way they would get along well. But wait no, life wasn't fucking off, life was busting into the bathroom in the form of Bro trying to check up on him for whatever goddamn reason and he needed to take care of that.
Dave took a shaky breath and grabbed at the counter. "Y-yeah, fine. Just fine. Downright peachy, even. Fly as shit." Most of those words came out as a mumble rather than properly pronounced syllables, but close enough. Hoo, boy. Was it just him or were things getting weird again? If he leaned against the counter, he could at least pretend the counters weren't spinning and there weren't three of him in the mirror. He could see the way Bro's eyebrow quirked disbelievingly above the line of his pointy-ass shades and raised one of his own in return, frowning faintly. Man, he wanted to brush his teeth, his mouth tasted absolutely godawful and he didn't know how much longer that could be handled.
Next thing he knew, he was falling forward and Bro's expression turned from a fairly even one to one of stunned confusion. Was this what it was like to everything go in slow motion? Fucking wild. Not something he would recommend or want to experience again, but hey, Dave was just along for the ride at this point. Maybe if he was lucky he would wake up in bed with this all a dream, or at least with a cool cloth over his forehead. Something. He doubted it. He'd probably just end up sore on the bathroom floor with a couple fresh bruises from taking a nasty fall and end up having to scramble to get ready for class, pray he didn't end up sick while he was there, rinse and repeat until whatever this was passed over.