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Aaaand of course that just happened. Just fucking great .
After the shit show that his life has become, Travis is almost shocked it wasn't worse. If the event that just transpired had taken its cues from his usual luck, he may have straight up killed someone instead of just spilled his lunch all over them.
Well, he didn't just spill his lunch on Reggie. He also slipped in said lunch, grabbed Reggie for balance in the hopes of not getting spaghetti anywhere else on his clothes, and somehow ended up accidentally pushing Reggie into the cafeteria trash can.
How the fuck did he manage that? He has almost no upper body strength, but somehow there Reggie is, rising up out of the trash can that Travis forced his beefy ass into.
The cafeteria had gone so eerily silent for a moment there, but now it’s a cacophony of ‘oh shit!’s and poorly muffled laughter. Oh, how the children laugh! It makes Travis wanna stick forks in his ears.
After all that hard work to chill the fuck out and stop being the bully, isn't it just how things were meant to be that he'd throw someone into a garbage can on accident?
Not that Reggie doesn't deserve it, mind. Reggie was a big name bully even back when he was the asshole shouting slurs down the halls. If he was small fish, Reggie was big fish. Now, Reggie is turning around to stick his foot up Travis’ ass and Travis is about to shit his pants.
He’s grabbed by the front of the shirt and picked up (off the fucking ground!) as if he’s the weight of a pickle, but whatever Reggie is thinking about doing to him, it doesn't happen. Instead, a blue converse comes out of nowhere and wallops Reggie in the head.
Reggie looks to the side in enraged shock, but Travis doesn't take his wide eyes off the big lug. It's just not safe. Travis knows better than that.
"You." Reggie spits on the floor, snarling at the assailant. "Haven't I fucked you up enough, Fisher?"
'Fisher'? Sally Face is here?
"Leave my friend alone, Reginald."
Travis looks over and lo and behold, there he is. Sal Fisher, wearing only one sneaker and standing tall. Well, as tall as he can, being barely taller than 5'. The cafeteria fluorescents give him a certain glow, however, and his denim skirt makes his legs look long.
He looks like Travis' hero - up until Reggie drops him to the cold linoleum and starts moving in on Sal.
"God, you fucking queers never learn."
"I know everything I need to know," Sal snarks. "Like the fact that your head is too small for your body."
"Fuck you!"
Reggie charges, but Sal scrambles out of the way, climbing on top of a table while the kids sitting there shout and move out of the way.
Travis is frozen, watching this happen, his green sneakers still covered in spaghetti sauce and his jaw on the floor.
Did Sal seriously just stand up for him? After all the shit he's done, he'd imagine Sal would've just watched and laughed with everybody else.
But Reggie catches up to Sal - he grabs him harshly by the wrist, pinning him down to the table to slam his fist into his prosthetic. Travis' heart falls into his stomach and he runs forward to get Reggie off, skidding across the slippery floor, but Sal's already got his thumb ready to dig into the guy's eye.
"Fuck!" Reggie flinches back, hand over his eye, growling through his teeth. "You son of a bitch!"
"You're the bitch here!" Travis can only stare in shock as Sal lands a solid kick to Reggie's torso, then a knee to the guy's nose. " My bitch!"
The kids around him laugh and holler, half applause and half disbelief. This is the guy that hangs out after lunch to help clean the tables. This is the guy that remembers every teacher's birthday. This is the guy that’ll let you cheat off his math homework and show you how to do it if you ask. And he's going after Reggie like a wild animal.
He's going after Reggie like a wild animal. Shit, Sal isn't that kind of guy! Travis can't let this go on any longer.
Before Reggie can recover, he hurries to put himself in front of Sal, catching a wild kick with his hands on Sal's bare shin.
"Sally, come on," he hisses. "He's not worth it. He's just an asshole."
"You were worth it," Sal gasps back. His chest rises and falls quickly, either from exertion or adrenaline.
Travis almost laughs. "You never kicked my ass."
"Lucky you."
Reggie's shadow falls heavily over them, the dark shape of him completely engulfing Sal. Travis leans over Sal to protect him from the blow, tensing up in preparation-
But the blow never comes.
"Reginald Harris Williams." Oh shit. That's the fucking principal! Travis doesn't dare turn around. "Son, we've talked about this."
"Fuck off, Mr. Lorenzo."
"And it appears we'll be talking about it more. In my office. Now."
Reggie doesn’t say anything else. The cafeteria slowly gains volume again as their footsteps recede.
Shit. Okay. Looks like he and Sal are off the hook - at least, for now. Father isn’t going to be happy when he hears about this. But, then again, is that man ever happy?
Travis sighs and removes himself from on top of Sal, before turning back to apologize to the-
Blood floods out from the bottom of Sal's mask.
"Oh shit," gasps Travis. "Fuck, where did he get you?"
"Get me?" But his voice sounds wavy and light, like he's waking from a dream. When Travis carefully pulls him up off the table, he stumbles, and Travis feels another bright flash of panic.
Sal brings his hand up to his mask, just over his mouth and nose, but can't seem to find the wound through the ceramic.
"Ow," he whispers.
"Shit," a dark-haired girl breathes. Travis doesn’t remember her name, but she looks between him and Sal, her dangly earrings tangling in her hair. "Dude, is he okay?"
Travis takes charge quickly. He's had enough life-threatening injuries to know that calm will be his best tool, so he puts a hand on Sal's back in a way he hopes is soothing and tells her, "It's okay. I'll take care of it.”
She nods, allowing him to turn back to Sal and assess the injury. He can’t tell what it is through the mask, but his eyes look okay, so it’s probably his mouth or nose.
“Can you breathe okay, Sally?"
"Um-" He shivers. His voice is much weaker than it was just a few moments ago. "Mom, it hurts."
Okay, so Sal won't be much help. No big deal. Travis is used to being the grown up. "We have to go to the nurse." Then, a realization. "Are you too dizzy to walk?" His head was slammed onto the table pretty hard; he could have a concussion.
Sal takes a wobbly step forward, then a few stronger ones, easily led along on Travis' arm. Good. Carefully, Travis moves the hand on Sal's back to wrap carefully around his waist.
"We're gonna walk slow, okay?" It's hard to keep the edge out of his voice - he finds he almost doesn't recognize it when it's soft and low like this. Usually, he's either shouting in anger or speaking clearly to his father. “Just hold on to me. I’ll take care of you.”
He wishes he could sound like this all the time.
He leads Sal forward, desperate to get to the nurse. The blood is slow and not as heavy as it seemed at first, thank fucking God, but Travis is still worried about some kind of brain injury. Sal doesn't feel fully present, which could be spelling something very bad.
All this because he tripped over his own feet. Travis feels like an idiot.
Finally, they make it to the nurse, leaving only a thin trail of blood behind them. Travis knocks on the door desperately, hoping beyond hope that the nurse isn't taking her lunch with the teachers or fucking around with Reginald’s well-deserved eye injury.
She isn't. The door opens to reveal her surprised face. "Mr. Phelps? Why, you never- OH!" Her eyes go wide when she notices the blood traveling down Sal's neck.
She runs to her equipment, ushering Travis to help Sal sit on the little bed she has against the wall. When she moves to take his mask off, Travis looks away respectfully.
“Is it bad?” He asks. He can’t help the nervous shake of his voice. “How bad is it?”
Nurse Parker sighs. “This looks fine. Nothing fatal - just a heavy bleeder. But did she sustain a head injury?”
“Um, I’m not sure. Head hit the table, but I don’t know how bad it was.”
“M-Mommy? Mommy, the dog-”
Travis can’t help it. He turns his head at the sound of Sal’s voice and his eyes go wide in shock.
So that’s why he wears the mask. Travis swallows hard. It looks painful.
“Mommy? Mommy, please...” Sal’s voice grows more and more frightened, bordering on panicked. “Oh God, God, please-”
Travis bites the inside of his cheek, frozen again. He can’t take his eyes off the inflamed hole in Sal’s cheek - or the drying blood smeared around it. “Is it- a flashback?” He has stuff like that happen sometimes. He’d asked his health teacher about it earlier in the year. With scars like that, Sal has to be super traumatized. “Blood on hi- uh, her face probably freaked her out, especially with that guy on top of her…”
Nurse Parker’s eyes go wide in shock. “...What happened to cause this, exactly?”
Swallowing hard, Travis explains the situation. He doesn’t tell her that Reggie can burn in Hell, but her face seems to say that she agrees.
“That Reginald.” She hisses a sigh through her teeth. “That boy makes my job harder. Not to mention the lives of you kids.”
“Tell me about it.”
She doesn’t. Instead, she takes a deep breath and then ushers him over. He hesitantly steps closer, then closer again when she waves impatiently.
“Come on, now. You said Reggie was hurt, so I need to go look at his eye. Hold this over Sally’s injury and keep her calm until I get back.” She levels him with a hard stare, one eyebrow raised challengingly. “Can I trust you to do that?”
He blinks, feeling his face heat at her heavy stare. “Um. Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute.”
And so she goes, her first aid kit in hand.
Ugh. For all Travis cares, that douche can bleed. Let his eye fall out! At least then kids could sneak by him, tip-toeing past him on that side… If it weren’t for the shitty situation, Travis might laugh at the visual.
But it is a shitty situation. Sal still doesn’t look great. Travis keeps pressure on the area that was bleeding - just beside his nose, an awful scratch where the prosthetic had caught him - but it seems like the real injury wasn’t really physical.
“Sally?” he asks nervously. “Where are you right now?”
“I- I don’t-”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Um. Do you want to play a game with me, Sally Face?”
“...A game?” He sounds so hopeful, it makes Travis’ chest squeeze.
“Yeah, a game. It’s a seeing game, like I Spy. Except, I tell you what I see, and then you describe it to me.”
Sal nods, moving Travis’ hand up and down with him. The movement makes Travis smile.
He ducks his head. “Okay, cool. Uhhh, shit. Okay, see that poster right there?” He points to it. “Can you tell me the colors on that poster?”
Immediately, Sal looks clearer, squinting at the safe sneezing poster on the wall beside them. “Green… That’s the germs. He has a blue shirt. And orange hair. Todd has orange hair.”
“Todd does have orange hair. Can you tell me what the poster says?”
He thumbs Sal’s ear without thinking, gently pulling the blue strands of hair from the back of his earrings. They’re just baby hairs that fell out of his pigtails during the fight, but Travis feels shy touching them anyways - and unable to stop.
Sal leans into the touch. “It says… ‘Always sneeze into your elbow. So that into the air, the germs won’t go.’ And it has a thing at the bottom I can’t read.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of small…” Even squinting, he can’t quite make out the text at the bottom. It’s too far away. “Maybe we both need glasses.” He smiles at Sal, who smiles a little back. “Can you tell me what else you see in the room?”
“I see you.”
Travis laughs in surprise. “Yeah, I’m in here. But what else?”
“Um. There’s a phone on the wall. And a computer and a desk. And this weird paper I’m sitting on.”
“That’s right.”
“And there’s a clock over there on the wall.”
He turns his head to look at the wall behind them. The clock says lunch period is almost over. “What else?”
“Um… a tissue box. And a cabinet of medicines. And more posters.”
“Yep. Do you know where you are?”
“I’m… in the nurse’s office. Because of the fight with-” He puts a hand over Travis’ suddenly, looking more awake than he has since he was kicking Reggie’s guts into his spine. “Oh, shit. Are you okay?”
“You’re the one in the nurse’s office, Sally Face. I didn’t get a scratch on me thanks to you.”
Sal swallows. Travis can see the movement of his throat, the way he licks his lips after. He licks at dried blood and flinches. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah. He messed up your face.” He cringes. “I mean-”
Horror overtakes Sal’s face, his eyes wide and mouth a thin line. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry, you don’t have to look, I know it’s-”
“It’s okay.” Travis doesn’t look away, even though he wonders if he should. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. You saved my ass today.”
“Still… I know how I look.”
“Like my hero, Sally. That’s what I thought when I saw you, you know. My hero. ”
Sal snorts. When he grins, his face looks alive. His teeth can be seen through the hole in his cheek and by way of his toothy smile. Travis thinks it’s actually… kind of beautiful.
“Do you- I mean. Are you in pain? How bad does it hurt?” Sal’s hand is still on his over the scratch beside his nose.
He shrugs. “Not bad. Faces bleed a lot anyways, and mine is- Well, y’know. I have to deal with stuff like this more than you think.”
“That fucking blows.”
Sal laughs this time, a brighter sound than Travis could have hoped for. “Yeah. I know.”
Travis wants to ask more - about his mom, about the dog, about his scars - but he knows it’s not his place. Just because Sal calls him friend doesn’t mean he’s earned it. God, how he wants to earn it.
No time like the present.
“Can I-” He swallows. Sal’s blue eyes look up at him, soft and kind. “I mean, assuming Reginald doesn’t get us in an assload of trouble. Can I come over to your place? Just to- to make sure you’re alright?”
“Not to hang out?” There’s a teasing hint to his voice, one Travis would assume he was imagining if it weren’t for the smug little smirk on Sal’s face.
“Well, we’re friends, aren’t we?” That makes Sal’s smile grow more, still crooked, eyes sparkling. Travis had more to say, but now he can’t remember the words. “Your face is kind of beautiful, you know that?”
Sal’s eyes grow wide and his smile falls. “Wh-” He exhales. “What?”
Shit. Shit! “Um. You’re really- I mean. I like seeing you. I’m sorry I looked without asking.”
“I’ll have to ask my dad. If you can come over.” The smile returns slowly, like dawn bringing light into the sky. “But you should. You know, to make sure I’m alright.”
Travis smiles back. He probably doesn’t look half as good as Sal does, not even a fraction, but he does it anyways. Around Sal, it’s like he can’t help it. “Y-Yeah. That sounds good.”
When Nurse Parker comes back in, the two are still smiling.