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“I can’t believe this.”
“You said that already.”
“Because it’s true! I can’t fricking believe this!”
“You don’t have to believe it. Goddamn. Let it go, already.”
“Let it go? Are you nuts?”
“Roy—”
“One night, dude. One singular, solitary night. And not just any single solitary night, no—this is the only night in living memory that we’ve had the ship to ourselves. The chance to hang out, just the two of us guys, without Kori melting all the ice in my lemonade—”
Jason groans, resting his sweaty, aching forehead on the edge of the toilet bowl. “Don’t,” he says thickly. “Just—don’t.”
“Don’t what, complain about being stuck in here with you? Because believe me, watching you turn yourself inside out is not, surprisingly enough, my idea of a good time,” Roy snarks, adjusting the wet washcloth on the back of Jason’s neck with an indignant flick. He’s tactful enough not to mention the lemonade again, though—thankfully, because Jason doesn’t think he can even think about it without wanting to hurl.
He wishes he could say this was the result of partying too hard. Or maybe that he’d brought it on himself by lifting too many weights or running too hard for too long. If that were the case, at least he’d have someone to blame. But honestly? The truth is that it’s sheer dumb luck that has him in this bathroom tonight, barfing up his guts. All he did… was eat a turkey sandwich instead of the ham he’s been buying all week. There was no grand decision made, no clear choice to fuck up his life, no—it was because his favorite lunch place was out of ham. That’s it. That’s literally it. And now…
Jason groans again, unsticking his forehead from the porcelain as his stomach rolls. He feels so sweaty, it’s like his skin is trying to liquefy. There’s no time to focus on that (fortunately or unfortunately) however; he’s already pushing forward, leaning over the bowl with his lips parted, letting a string of drool drop down into the water. He waits one moment… two… god, it hurts. Worse than his head, even. His stomach is cramping angrily, like he’s got a boa constrictor wrapped around his middle. He forces up a burp, trying to get the puking started in the hopes that it’ll be over sooner. Instead of puking, however, all he gets is a bubble of stomach acid that pops at the back of his tongue, leaving a sick, bitter taste behind.
He groans, taking the opportunity to swipe at the sweat beading on his lip with one of the wads of tissue scattered around him. His insides roll again, making him wince. Everything feels so bloated, fuck. And the nausea. The nausea is unrelenting. Normally he can force himself to vomit on command and the nausea will go away, but there isn’t enough left in his stomach to get it going properly.
This fucking sucks.
“…You want a little more water?” Roy asks softly, after a few long moments stuck on the very precipice of hurling up his guts.
Spitting out another string of drool, Jason gropes a hand out blindly in Roy’s general direction. Almost immediately he feels the cool glass press into his palm—he draws it around to his front, pausing a moment to swallow the spit in his mouth before he takes a large gulp of the cool liquid, forcing it down. He does it again, and then again for good measure, until he’s gotten about half the water into his stomach. He leans back over the toilet, waiting.
…And yet it does not come. “You know, some soda might help,” Roy says, after another minute has gone by and still no change except increasingly sweaty pits. “I have a few cans of ginger ale in the workshop if you want one. Or maybe some tea?”
Jason shakes his head. It needs to come up, and it needs to come up now. He’s not just going to sit here sipping tea while this damn thing edges him like a bad date. Fuck that. He’s tired and he feels bad and he just wants to lay down.
It’s this feeling, this suddenly all-consuming fury at the fact that he can’t just sleep off whatever the hell this thing is, that drives him to shove two fingers halfway down his throat. Roy audibly winces behind him, but he couldn’t give less of a shit—he’s coasting on the relief of his stomach finally contracting, his back hunching with a gag. He hurriedly yanks his hand back out of his mouth, letting it hover over the toilet bowl as he tries again to make the vomit come up on command.
This time, thankfully, it works. First just a little bit of the water, and then a little more, and then suddenly what feels like all of it at once. Blood pounds in his ears as a stream of watery bile pours from his mouth, and he pants between the gut-wrenching heaves, feeling both light-headed and yet unbearably heavy all at once.
He comes back to himself an indeterminate length of time later. Hunched over the toilet, he lets his head hang as he spits out as much of the bitter taste as he can. He can hear Roy moving behind him—tissues being plucked from the box, running water, the clink of him refilling the glass. A second later there’s a calloused palm on his forehead, guiding his aching head up and away from the mess in the bowl in front of him.
“Here, wash your mouth out,” Roy says, raising the glass again. Jason lets him guide it to his lips so he can take a sip. Once he’s swished it around his mouth a bit he tips forward again and opens his lips to let it spill back out. He spits again.
He’d be content to stay there, kneeling in front of the toilet with his head bowed over it, forever. He’s so tired, completely done with today and tonight and probably tomorrow, too. Roy, on the other hand, seems to be gearing up for another round of bitching—Jason literally hears him draw in a deep breath, and tries to brace himself, noodley limbs and aching stomach and all.
Only, it… doesn’t come. Instead, Roy just lets out a long, gusty sigh, dragging it out for several excessive seconds. Then, silent, he reaches forward to pull the flush.
The sound of the water circling down the drain feels both too loud and yet agonizingly quiet as it echoes around the small bathroom. It feels weird, wrong, without the addition of that voice in his ear. There should be jokes and teasing and Roy snarking like an asshole—not silence. When Roy gets quiet, Jason gets worried, and he isn’t so out of it that he’s failed to notice Roy withdrawing.
That won’t do. Jason twists where he’s kneeling, dropping carefully down onto his ass and spreading his legs out in front of him so he’s not perched on his aching knees anymore. Roy is holding out a tissue for him so he can blow his nose and clean up his face and hands—he takes it, raising an eyebrow at his best friend as he does.
“Sorry,” Roy says from where he’s crouched, ducking his head a little. He’s not making eye contact, his nails tapping against the tissue box. Jason grunts for him to keep going. “I just… I don’t like to see you hurting, Jaybird. And I felt like I was just making it worse, so…”
…Well, shit. Trust Jason to forget how sensitive Roy actually is under all the layers of easygoing humor. “You weren’t making it worse,” he says, a little too fast if Roy’s frown is anything to go by.
Jason groans, doubling down. “I’m serious. If I didn’t want you to be here, you know I would have kicked your ass out. Right?”
Roy sighs again, softer this time, like the air was just too heavy in his lungs. “I know when you’re lying to me, Jay,” he says. “And I know when you’re starting to get overstimulated and your head hurts from the noise. You don’t need me talking at you nonstop when you’re already feeling so bad.”
A twitch. For a second, Jason isn’t sure whether it’s the urge to laugh or to yell, or maybe both… but after a moment it settles into a sigh of his own. “Okay, fine,” he says. “You’ve got me. My head hurts and my throat hurts and my stomach feels like it’s been lined with rusty nails. I feel like shit. But I’ll feel like worse shit if I’m stuck with nothing for company but the urge to eject my entire digestive tract out through my mouth, so could we maybe focus on that? You’re not so bad, in the grand scheme of things. Let’s not have ourselves a fucking pity party.”
By the end of his little speech, he’s straightened his posture, his clammy skin and the heaviness in his limbs all but forgotten as he gestures with a tissue. It’s a little too much a little too soon, and his stomach rolls uncomfortably to let him know he needs to stop moving, but he couldn’t care less because Roy is looking at him, eyes raised with a little spark of hopeful light.
“You think I’m not so bad?” he asks, and a crooked grin is starting to spread across his face.
“Okay, no, back it up. I said you’re not as bad as food poisoning,” Jason says, but there’s no stopping it now. You give Roy an inch and he’ll take a mile—he can take any small scrap and run with it, turn it into something positive, a reason to keep going. Jason has always admired that in him—after a lifetime watching Bruce fuel himself with grief and righteous anger, Roy’s bright focus felt like a breath of fresh air. And Jason… he knows he’s more like Bruce on this particular issue, and also on many many more, but he always feels… calmer, almost. More in control, maybe even happier, if such a thing should exist for Jason Todd, when he can see things from Roy’s point of view. The aggressive optimism in the face of incredible adversity is refreshing, and he follows it like a sunflower follows the sun.
Or, you know, like a nauseated vigilante who hasn’t gotten up off the bathroom floor in at least three hours peers at the toilet. Semantics. Whatever. All he cares about at this point is that Roy no longer looks like a kicked puppy.
If it makes the headache worse, so be it. He’ll take it. Just so long as there’s no talk of lemonade, he’s with exactly who he wants to be, right here and right now.