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“Sawyer?” His voice crackled over the phone. “Can you come over? I feel sick…”
Sawyer, half under his Superman bed sheet, half sprawled out on the rest of his covers sweating, shuddered involuntarily at his best friend Riley’s breathy plea. He stole a glance at the plastic alarm clock on his floor and hissed at the time. Damn it, two in the morning… Dad’s gonna throw a fit if he catches me out. “Yeah, Riley, I’ll be right over. Hold on for me, ok? I’ll be there.”
A gasp. Sawyer could feel the fevered breath through the speckled speakers against his sticky cheek. “Thank— thanks…”
“Just hold on, Riley, I’ll leaving right now. Do you want to stay on—“ Sawyer heard the phone line click off. He tightened his shoelaces in tandem with the tightening of his heart. Riley needs me, he indulged himself as he slid open the tiny window in his room. He doesn’t know that’s rude, he’s never had friends before. He still needs you. Sawyer cringed as his worn yellow Onitsuka Tigers slapped the pavement in front of his father’s house. His feet never stung more than the lies he told himself when he ran out like this.
~
“Riley, Riley are you here? Riley are you—“ Sawyer held open the bathroom stall door as the dirty-red hair of his best friend flinched and turned around.
Riley No Last-name, 162.5 centimeters, holder of transformation power unseen from the world, mesallah of the Special Kaimono Exterminatiom Group, and ultimate ruler of Sawyer’s heart lay hunched up on the appartment complex’s communal bathroom floor. He was sweating and panting, and his crumpled face showed a glance into his fogged mind. Those pitiful eyes, the flushed cheeks, the sweat, tears, and drool dripping off his gaping mouth… He looked almost like he did that day Sawyer first met him in the dirty alleyway.
“Riley, how’re you holding up??” Sawyer fretted, voice soft, quickly kneeling down and brushing the damp hair out of Riley’s face on the grimy blue and black tile.
“I…” Hiccup. “I was trying to sl—“ A gasp for the humid air suffocating the both of them. “Sleep, and, I felt like, I was gonna—“
As if on que, Riley’s dazed eyes shot open as his body seized up and over the toilet bowl. A pathetic dribble of vomit contrasted inversely with the violent heave Riley’s chest gave way to, leaving the rest of his body to shake and quiver. Sawyer held no hesitation in coaxing Riley there, smoothing the vibrations out of his back and gripping his matted hair back behind his head.
After a few more dry heaves (and a few more tears of Sawyer’s heart), Riley’s body slumped back against the faded blue stall wall, devoid of any energy left to stay upright. Sawyer ran his hands down Riley’s shivering bare arms, down his stained ratty t-shirt, and down his flushed cheeks, wiping away tears and sweat. Sawyer pushed pressure through his hands, knowing from experience Riley found that more soothing than dry brushes of the skin. Riley always let Sawyer touch him like this when it was this late, sometimes even asked for it in his indirect, childish way.
At another gasp and sigh from Riley, Sawyer wrapped his arms around Riley’s middle and pulled him up off the tile and into his crossed legs. Riley’s eyes fluttered and he whispered sour nothings, limp in Sawyer’s shadow.
Sawyer Watanabe, 173 centimeters, normal employee of S.K.E.G., main user of brass knuckles, and just-best-friend of Riley, continued to sport his Onitsuka Tigers, yellow and orange plaid pajama bottoms, and an oversized long sleeve shirt displaying the phrase “MES WITH ME MESS ITH GEE” in all it’s poorly translated glory. His bleached hair prickled in his downturned eyes, the both itchy and unwashed. He lifted his left hand to his hair, releasing some of the pressure from Riley’s body, of which responded with a whine and a shiver. Sawyer hastily returned it back to its place, cooing, “Shh, Riley, it’s ok, I’m here, I’m here for you.”
“I think…” Riley breathed, “I think it was… the training… from today.” His eyes fluttered again and he flinched as if he had to vomit, but after a tense moment between the two of them, he skunk back down into Sawyer’s chest.
“That made you sick?” Sawyer finished after he was confident Riley wasn’t going to throw up at just that moment.
Riley the past few weeks had been training extra hard with their mentor, C. Emmanuella, to transform easily in and out of his other self. After only a few hours of witnessing the process, Sawyer had resolved he couldn’t watch Riley’s efforts anymore and trained silently on his own, unable to endure the screams and pleas in agony from Riley as he transformed. They both knew Emmanuella didn’t like it either, but the order had come from higher up, not from her.
Sawyer stroked rielys neck as he reassured tentatively, “You know Emmanuella doesn’t mean to put you through that. She can’t control her orders, you know, right?”
Riley jerked his head up and down against Sawyer’s stomach. “It just hurts… it hurts too much…”
Sawyer felt his chest split in two seeing his Riley break down like this. “It’s alright, it gets better, it has to,” Sawyer murmured. He pulled Riley’s head up closer to his. “I’m here, and you’re here, and it’s all ok right now.” He brushed his noes against Riley’s cheek, ignoring Riley’s discomfort from the soft touch. Sawyer’s arms squeezed tighter around his best friend as he saddled Riley’s face to rest in the crook of his neck and Riley’s hands to grip onto his shirt and pants, the two leaning against the stall divider. They both panted in the heat of each other, inhaling the sickly sweet sent of stomach acids and various other bodily fluids, unable to breathe anything other than one another. Sawyer pushed Riley deeper into his chest and caressed his body harder, coaxing the sickly moans out of him.
Sawyer began to feel Riley’s breath sway and slow, polar opposite to Sawyer’s own chattering cardiac valves. His friend’s breath became longer and deeper, as did Sawyer’s strokes of his hand on Riley’s arm and back. Eventually, though, Sawyer too slipped into Riley’s chest’s metronome and driffted off to sleep as well.
~
Owww… My head hurts.. and my back too. What’s going on…? Sawyer wondered as he woke up. He shifted his stiff neck around to view his surroundings, beginning to remember the events of the night—or rather, morning—before. Riley groaned below him.
“Sawyer, is that you?” He drawled, his voice husky with sleep. Sawyer gazed down at his best friend waking up. He was still snuggled in Sawyer’s lap; they had fallen asleep together in the grimy stall. Riley rubbed his eye with an equally grimy hand. Sawyer laughed in affectionate disgust to himself.
“Yeah,” he sighed, attempting to stretch out his limbs without shoving Riley off his lap. “How are you feelin’?”
Riley grumbled, turning his furrowed eyebrows into Sawyer’s crotch. “Better,” he pouted. “Not great though.” Riley played it up.
Sawyer devoured it all; Riley knew he would. “I’ll stay here until you feel ok, don’t worry.” Sawyer smiled down at Riley, his fingers playing absent-mindedly in Riley’s hair. Sawyer glanced to his left out the stall door, then jumped; “Crap!! Sunlight! It’s gotta be past 10, maybe noon! Emmanuella will be pissed…..”
Riley whimpered again and nuzzled his face further into Sawyer’s crotch.
“…I bet Emmanuella wouldn’t make you come in to work after what happened last night…” Sawyer responded sheepishly. “I’ll call her and let her know.”
Riley allowed himself to doze in his best friend’s lap, ignoring the different-kind-of-sick feeling rising in his stomach at his actions. He was familiar with both.
“Yeah, yes,” Riley distantly heard sawyer apologize nervously into his phone. “Yes, I’m sorry, but you know… you.. understand right?? Yeah… no, I—… yes… ok, yes ma’am…”
Riley heard the phone beep off and felt Sawyer’s previously occupied hand return to Riley’s his stomach, fiddling in the same way Sawyer’s other hand was still in Riley’s hair. “She says we’re good, but to not feel like we’re off the hook.” Sawyer slowed his hand on Riley’s stomach. “She says she hopes you feel better, too,” he murmured, trying to imply the distress Emmanuella’s voice reached on the phone.
Riley stayed stubbornly silent, unable and unwilling to understand the emotions behind what Sawyer was hinting. Instead, he posed another thing that confused him, as so many things did these days. “Why,” Sawyer’s fingers in his hair stopped. “Why are you so good at this?”
“At phone calls?? Riley, I call you, like, every night, and I call the other guys all the time, how could you—“
“No,” Riley cut Sawyer off. “At, like, at me being sick… N’ stuff…” Riley was glad his face was still in between Sawyer’s legs, obscured from his best friends face. He could never look him in the eye when asking him questions like this. Riley was afraid of seeing something—-he didn’t want to know what.
“Oh, that? Yeah, that makes a lot more sense,” Sawyer laughed lightly. If Riley weren’t so stunted, he trust himself more to hear the uncomfortableness in Sawyer’s voice. “My dad comes home drunk all the time, so I, uh, get a lotta practice.”
This was why Riley asked so few questions. “Huh??” He exclaimed, even more confused now. “You… you treat your dad like this?” He hushed. “Like how you… …Like this??”
“Uh, yeah, I guess?” Sawyer tentatively answered, clearly as confused as Riley was.
Wow. Riley knew he didn’t have a great grasp on how family members acted with one another, what with him never having any, but even to him, that seemed a little strange. Oh well, he resolved, this must just be how Sawyer sees Riley: as a family member. I can live with that, he thought, sick feeling back in his stomach.