Chapter Text
“I’m alright, Sam, it’s just my meds.” Atom put a hand against their stomach and a shiver went down their spine. “I’m nauseous today.” The reverberations of the feeling had the hair on his arms standing up and throat cloying with salvia.
“Nauseous? Again?” Sam half turned in the driver’s seat, trying to get a good look at her boyfriend, who knew his face was clammy and pale without having to flip the shade down in the Jeep. He’d been like this before on days when his medication didn’t agree with him, or he’d taken it without eating enough and it was damn near the only thing knocking around his system. Ironic that eating was supposed to prevent this feeling, and that was the last thing he wanted to do while on this stuff.
“I didn’t eat breakfast, that’s probably why. Or it’s the traffic.”
“Let’s get something in your system, then.”
After swerving over at the first highway sign advertising food, Atom and Sam were flipping through a small-town Cracker Barrel-esque menu with both their faces in a scowl of aversion.
“Whaddya say we get some snacks at the gas station, Sammy?” Atom suggested, reeling at the mere description of a butter fried, beer battered, sweet chicken steak.
“No, we need you to eat something real at least once a day. Haven’t you had your fill of popcorn and peanuts yet?” Atom grunted with annoyance. He tended to only keep light snacks and cheap, quick meals in his apartment since he always felt about 10% of the way to throwing up. It was safer to keep the meals small and infrequent, but that wasn’t enough to pad the medicine stacking up in his system.
The waitress came by and Sam ordered for both of them. “I’ll take the baked potato meal, hold the liver gravy, and they will have a chicken enchilada.”
“Comin’ right up, sweetheart.”
The drive to the beach house wasn’t too long, but since everyone in the state of Georgia wanted to go to the beach for Memorial Day weekend, the drive had been stop and go for about an hour longer than it should’ve been.
“It’s probably good you said something, I was so locked in on the highway I probably would’ve drove us all the way there without stopping for anything.”
“I almost wish you had,” Atom replied, eyeing the plates arriving far too quickly to not have been microwaved. “This is going to confuse the fuck out of my system. Think they’ve got Ritz and sour cream back there?”
“Yuck, dude.” Sam replied, reeling at the thought of Atom’s favorite snack. The smell of food had Atom’s tongue thickening with dread and the shiver travelled up his spine this time, resulting in an irrepressible shake of the shoulders. “No need to be scared, A. This will help a lot more than those goddawful snack concoctions you make. I promise. Dammit–they didn’t hold the gravy.” Atom laughed and dug in.
Back in the car one microwaved enchilada heavier, Atom pulled the seatbelt hesitantly over their body, conscious of how unsettled the meal was in their gut. Sam sighed tiredly into the passenger side, palm resting against her belly, as full as his was.
Reversing tiredly out of the dirt parking lot onto the road again, sunset blossoming on the horizon to their right, Atom rested his arm behind Sam’s headrest and listened to some NPR quietly. The nausea hadn’t fully subsided as his girlfriend had promised, but fatigue had rushed in after the meal. He was more awake than her still, who snored against the door and occasionally shifted, furrowing her brow.
Traffic waned a little, then built again, then waned a little, each press of the breaks lightly lurching his belly back and forth while Sam half woke up every few minutes. An ominous gurgle escaped from his middle and he swallowed nervously, glancing at her muttering and turning over.
Gently taking his arm from behind her headrest, he cupped the upper portion of his belly where the gurgle had initiated, instantly noticing the slight bloat and warmth through his t-shirt.
“Ghh,” he finally sighed, slipping a cold hand underneath the fabric to cradle the sloshing contents. “I knew this wouldn’t work–”
The gurgling panged deep inside them again, this time painful and intent as it rolled from the pit of his belly up their esophagus.
“Oh, god–microwave enchiladas shouldn’t even get one taste, but two is worse.”
“Huh?” Sam murmured, raising her head from the seatbelt strap and looking him up and down blearily. “Who are you talking to?”
“Nobody,” Atom muttered tensely. “It’s just–my stomach.”
“It didn’t help?” She glanced at the hand which had slid under their shirt, watching it trace up and down the slightly rounded dome of their gut. “I’m sorry, babe. Are you going to be able to keep driving? Do you want to switch?”
“I don’t know if I’m even going to keep it down, to be honest.” Sudden brake lights up ahead had him crushing the brake pedal. “Woahh, shit–” The car strained on its front wheels as they quickly went from 60 to 0, and Atom’s lunch absorbed the change in momentum. Suddenly turning over in a churn, his foot faltered on the brakes as everything in him and in the car lurched forward. His hand flew to his mouth and the car veered a little without a hand to guide it, but Sam reached out to snatch the wheel in time.
“Atom, we need to pull over immediately.”
They were in the wrong lane for that as bumper to bumper traffic crossed over a small bridge. The complete lack of shoulder on the left boded very poorly for the green pallor that was climbing over Atom’s face as he hunched forward and squeezed his eyes shut, almost relaxed, then clenched again, a wet belch echoing up his gullet as he squeezed his belly with the free hand.
“Atom, Tommy, I need you to merge right, baby. I can keep us straight, I can’t get us to safety.”
Somehow, he was pressing and releasing the breaks according to the inching traffic subconsciously as Sam leaned over to the driver’s side and held the car straight. He started to let go of his face to grab the wheel again, but a sickly bubbling stitching up his throat sent both hands flying to his mouth once more.
“C’mon, c’mon A, just one lane, one lane at a time.” He frantically shook his head side to side, a throbbing now banging on his temples as his heart rate increased, stomach muscles contracting for another effort to erupt the enchilada up his system. The pace of traffic began to truly pick up and Sam looked furiously for a way to swap places with him, but nothing could be executed at the 40 they were building to, and then 50, and then the car was wobbling left and right as Sam tried to hold the wheel while Atom used the tension of every muscle in their body to keep from projectiling on the windshield while sweat dripped from his trembling hairline.
“Fuck-ing hell, A, slow the car down!”
“C–c–can’t!” They managed to gargle, only barely catching the onslaught of vomit that rushed to fill their mouth as soon as they opened it. With a hand pressed against his lips and the other clutching his upper stomach for comfort against the churning, roiling pain, Atom helplessly watched Salem try to rescue the car speeding down the left lane as she reached under his seat and lifted the bar.
“Move.” She muttered.
Almost in disbelief, he watched Sammy straddle the console and stretch one leg down to the brakes as he slid back away from the steering wheel. He reeled and clutched his gut as the chair jostled at the back of the rails trying with everything inside him not to hurl on her back, hair standing on end, eyes brimming.
“Shit, shit,” she muttered, leaning more on Atom’s thigh as she swerved and wobbled the car, trying to find a gap to slide into. Atom’s stomach let loose an onslaught of frustrated gurgling, signalling that the mass of food pressing against their gullet as they tried not to even breathe was about to find a way past their hands, though they held on to the composure of their body by the skin of their teeth. Every time the car wove or wiggled, he felt the mixture swirling now in his chest rock and slosh, rising up until he forced it down again, eyes rolled back and gripping the door handle while Salem tried to manage the car with one leg slung over the console and one hand, half turned to see the other lane over her shoulder.
“HUuuRrnNGGHH–” Atom released a strangled gag as self control started to cost him more than he could pay. Sam placed one gentle, soothing hand on his arm to ground him just a second longer, biting her lip while they finally wiggled into the rightmost lane and she began to cruise to a halt in the rubble.
“Hang on, baby.”
“HAAUURGHh–” His churning belly erupted and he squeezed his eyes shut, hyperventilating through his nose as the clammy sludge pressed up his torso. As the car rumbled in the shoulder, a sticky wetness sloshed in his mouth and Sam yelped as he choked wetly, cupping his chin, sinuses burning with the acid pooling. He frantically slapped her hip as liquid started to sputter from his between his fingers.
As she jumped out of the driver’s side, his lips pursed, puke dribbling down his chin until she was gone and vomit immediately sprayed over his steering wheel. Their stomach roared with discomfort and they clamped one hand against their stomach over the wet shirt, shaking as they fumbled for the door, half falling out of the car as their sloshing belly clenched and forced another eruption of brownish liquid from their straining throat. Sam turned the car off frantically as Atom folded over, hands trying to calm his gut from the outside as stabbing pain cinched his middle, pouring puke over the asphalt, the pressure packed into him finally freed.
He squatted on the side of the road with one hand to the gravel, the other clutching his throat, face, or gut intermittently, depending on where the pressure was focused. Sam appeared over their shoulder, wincing when cars passed by, inching closer carefully.
“A? Tommy? It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.” She led him, stumbling like a drunk, to the guardrail, holding his arm by the dry sections over to where he could put both hands down on the cold steel to support himself while the mess of food wrestled up him and poured out of his mouth as his back caved and twisted, his spine arching and turning while Sam gently patted his side. “It’s alright, you’re okay. Breathe, Atom, breathe.”
“AuOUhhg–” He gargled, thin tears brimming in his stinging eyes. A cough flew up from his diaphragm and more throw up cut in halfway through, leading to a physical competition of both breathing and puking, and he slipped off the guardrail.
He was saved from the grass by Sam wrapping her hands around his waist and pulling back. He moaned weakly and pressed his hand to hers over his belly.
“Dammit,” she muttered. “You’re shaking.”
They opened their mouth to speak but were cut off by a chunky mess and only managed a sob of desperation.
Sam sat with him for a while until it stopped, alternating between rubbing and kissing his trembling shoulder and squeezing his bicep, tracing her nails down his arm.
“O–oh–” He whimpered. “Salem…”
“I’m here, Atom. How are you feeling?”
“I–I’m s–sorry.”
“Oh gosh, for what? You’re so unwell.”
“I almost,” he gasped for breath, his unruly stomach still gurgling threateningly, and he wrapped one arm around it. “Got us in an accident.”
“Don’t worry about it anymore. We’re fine now, aren’t we?” She looked him up and down. “Well, fine might be putting it strongly. You think you can change clothes?”
She drove them to the nearest motel with Atom’s shirt in a trash bag and the windows down to help with the smell. He let the air rush through his hair while her right hand traced back and forth across his still bloated belly, coaxing the organ into submission whilst he tried not to squirm with every gurgle and grumble it emitted.
The night they spent in the hotel was relatively peaceful in comparison to the drive; Atom skipped dinner entirely while Salem got food alone. She spent most of her happy meal eager to get back to the motel, while Atom spent most of it dry heaving and massaging his abdomen.
The trouble with Atom was that they had the worst stomach issues Salem had ever heard of, and it often interrupted their lives together. It was far worse for him than her, when they ate a routine meal and then as soon as they were done, a quiet pain started deep in his gut, and then gradually built to churning, bloating, and nauseous gurgling. Most of the time he just threw up. But if they didn’t, their intestinal system could become an absolute mess that wouldn’t stop without medicines, hot baths, oil massages, and a lot of painful aches in bloated, unhappy guts that couldn’t handle themselves.
Before they knew what was to be avoided and had medicines to make Atom capable of eating a meal, the two of them had many dates end in tears, in pain. Their first date was no exception, a drive-in movie with an unfortunate conclusion.
After scarfing down a movie-theater chilli-cheese dog in an anxiety-induced ravenous hunger, Atom had been dead silent for twenty straight minutes straight while they watched the movie. All-in-all, Salem was enjoying the movie enough that it wasn’t a huge problem, just odd, considering how much they’d been chattering over it immediately before.
“Hey, whatcha thinkin’ about?”
Atom almost jumped at the sound of her voice and seemed to fumble for words. “Uhh, uhm, just the movie. And…how pretty you are.” The second part seemed tacked on, and Salem wasn’t sure what that meant. Not certain how to respond, she just chuckled and sipped some slurpee.
“Want some?”
Atom’s eyes rested on the red straw with dread, seemingly unsure of how to reply. Salem slowly pulled the drink back and took another sip.
“No pressure,” she chuckled. “I wonder if they’re going to listen to Prince Caspian or stick with their king.”
“Prince Caspian. This time.” Atom struggled out, trying not to squirm in the front seat of their car, which at the time was a 1980 Chevy Impala they’d built themselves in their dad’s garage. The beautiful old car was Atom’s magnum opus at the time, handed down from their grandpa, along with the signed baseballs hanging from the dash. Salem flicked one and watched the shadow swing on Atom’s arm, which leaned heavily on the center console.
“Spoliers.” She mumbled. Atom swallowed thickly. Atom’s belly seemed to squirm up their gullet, and they suddenly put their hand to the car door.
“I–I have to step out for a minute. I’ll be right back.” Their face was pale, and sweat stained the pits of their t-shirt. Salem just nodded emphatically.
“Sure. Whatever you need. I’ll wait here for you, sorry I can’t, like, pause the movie.”
Atom just cringed and nodded, quickly retreating from the car. Salem waited about ten minutes, many moments of which were saddened by the sudden urge to quip with Atom, only to remember he wasn’t there. She tried to remember the jokes to tell him when he got back, since he’d clearly seen the movie before, but they fell out of her memory one by one until she was no longer watching, just sadly waiting, wondering if it had anything to do with something she said or did, but at the same time feeling confident that it didn’t.
While Salem waited, Atom had been dealing with a sickening stomach ache.
“Ohhhh,” they moaned, leaning against the fence around the drive-in movie area. “I’ve gotta get rid of this so I can get back…” They pressed both hands against their bloated stomach, rubbing and sighing with discomfort.
Their stomach continued to let loose labored gurgles and groans that matched the aching they could feel rising and falling inside the organ. Suddenly pushing the waistband of their pants down off of the swollen dome, they sucked in a breath and keeled over.
“Oh, my stomach, my stomach… not now…” A rumbling fart finally pressed out of their asshole and they stood slowly, letting out a sharp whine at the pain in their inflated intestines. “Fuuuck… I feel so bad right now.” A cramp and a wet gurgle alerted them to the need to get to the port-a-potties by the entrance, but unfortunately, Salem had run out of patience and stumbled upon them at the fenceline.
“Atom!” She called, waving. “There you are, I went looking for you. You know, you’re missing half the movie.”
Atom tried to respond with a good excuse, but could only grit their teeth and try not to draw attention to their expanding stomach, full of gas and sloshing chilli-cheese dog. Salem was still sucking on that damned slurpee, and the bare concept of ingesting food had Atom feeling nauseous and light headed.
“Hey,” Salem cautioned slowly. “Are you okay? You look kind of…moist, for lack of a better term. Your hair is stuck to your forehead.” She reached out to try and fix it, but Atom leapt back in fear of being touched by their beautiful date in such a disgusting state. The sudden movement jerked a fart from their tubes and an onerous gurgling from their stomach.
“Oh,” he couldn’t help but moan, hand clamping to his swollen belly, covering his almost-exposed belly-button.
“Woah,” Salem remarked incredulously, suddenly noting how their t-shirt was ridding up to expose a wider waistline than he’d had an hour earlier. “You’re…stretching your shirt. You sure you’re okay?”
Atom tugged their shirt down and squirmed from side to side. “Look, my stomach is sort of… sensitive. Really sensitive, lately, and the chilli-cheese dog upset it. I–I think I need to cut off the date, I’m so sorry, but–you can see–uuurrp–I’m really not–Eeuuurrhhpp–okay…” Atom clutched their side and groaned.
“No problem, sure, we can just try when you’re feeling better. Would you like me to walk you to your car, or I can just get my stuff out of the back and go…?”
“No, no,” Atom had almost gasped. “I’ll walk you back at least. It was–oungh–a great date.” His hand stretched around the front of his girth and he was unable to keep from holding it whilst they walked. His stomach sloshed and groaned while they returned to the car side-by-side, but he kept his feet planted firmly one in front of the other while Salem and he navigated to the field of cars and lovers. But he was almost out of his depth as they reached the Chevy and his belly started to groan loudly, gas creaking against the walls of his gut and a deep, achy belch working up from the pit of his stomach. Salem looked pityingly over at him and almost looked to say something, but Atom was already red with embarrassment and wanted to simply get this over with so he could cry on the toilet about a lost connection with her back at his apartment.
He yanked the car door open and reached in as the smell of chilli-cheese dog and slurpee rushed over him. His muscles faltered, the door felt heavy and his head felt light, without a moment to retract it, he puked on his seat cushion.
That would have been bad enough, if not for the contracting of his gut forcing a huge spurt of gas from his rear, which splattered wetly against the seat of his pants, warm with diarrhea, which he was now doing all he could to hold inside.
He knew Salem heard the shart. He knew Salem saw the puke. And he was bent double in his open car, hands to his belly. It was beyond over for him with this date, so he simply gave in to the need to nurse his belly. If he hadn’t given it all the attention it demanded at that second he would’ve been in worse shape. His abdomen had bloated to twice its normal size and his shirt was slick with sweat. He had no idea where Salem even was as he gripped his swollen belly and caressed it soothingly, weak moans folding him slightly as he closed his eyes. Burps ripped from his throat and his ass quaked with desperation. He’d never had it so bad before–it must have been something in the hot dog, or the nerves of a pretty date, or–god forbid–his stomach was getting worse.
“Hey,” a girl’s familiar voice cut into his defeated thoughts. “I know you’re not feeling up to it right now, but feel free to text me. I’ve been seeing you’re not feeling good, I wouldn’t hold this against you. I’ll leave now to give you some space to take care of yourself, but, I’ve had a great day with you so far, and I’d be happy to try again. Feel better.”
Atom looked up and Salem was already leaving again with her tote and her slurpee. His night was indeed spent on the toilet, but it was interspersed by messages from Salem, who he texted as he dealt with the sickness, unfazed by his stories of stomach expulsions and achy dates of the past. Salem, who he began to occasionally call Sam, seemed like someone who he could stay with for a while. She was understanding and sympathetic to his struggles, he didn’t feel anxious about hiding any future issues, and she always knew just what to say when he wasn’t sure if that last message was TMI. It was the best indigestion he’d ever had, despite being the worst and lasting three hours without starting to ease up until he finally puked the chilli-cheese dog up at last.