#benji martin

[knell-locke]

dnd benji!! the server is in Real Dnd Hours. maybe some day he’ll be a reality if we ever locate a willing dm lol

[knell-locke]

just a bunch of….. scribs. wasnt gonna post these but the spoiler-zone leohne looked soft so . its not technically spoilers because it was self indulgent and doesnt happen in comic but i didnt want o give away any character deets. anywayz

[knell-locke]

owo whats that???edgy 

drew this last month. wanted to wait to post it so i could at least mention bens brother in comic first lol

[tomato-sickfics]

Hi!! Idk if you'd rather all prompts were sent via survey now, so please ignore this if so. Your last fic made my heart ache for Taryn, she deserves some loving! Could you please write something where Taryn is the sick one and Benji is dotting on her? I know he's not the type, so maybe he starts brushing it off and then it turns bad enough that it scares him a little? It could be a migraine that turns awful or heat exaustion... Doesnt matter tbh! XX

ok so i actually wrote this the same night you sent it to me (tuesday i think) because i was so hype about it, but I've been so busy this week that this is the first time i've been able to sit down by myself with internet to post it!

This is incredibly soft Benji h/c and I hope I did our queen Taryn some justice!!

The one thing I don't like about this is how fast it turns from her being in misery to being fine, but in my research about migraines it sounds like that happens for a lot of people once they throw up??? idk it worked so i went with it.

CW: vomiting, migraines, accidentally neglectful SO

Word Count: 2855

----

When Benji flipped the light on that morning to get ready for work, it hadn’t occurred to him how inconsiderate it was to his sleeping girlfriend.

When she groaned to roll over and glare at him, he had stared right back at her unflinchingly.

“Would you fucking turn that off?” She’d croaked hoarsely. She looked like a hot mess, but she always did when she first woke up. Benji found it cute.

He’d rolled his eyes at her dramatics but flipped the light off without verbalizing his irritation. Instead, he got dressed in the bathroom.

Taryn was always a bit grumpy in the mornings. Their exchange was nothing he wouldn’t expect from her at 7 in the morning; when he left for work, the memory slipped his mind within seconds.

--

Taryn tended to text Benji throughout the day with anything interesting she heard or saw. Even though she knew he wouldn’t respond, Benji always read them and on special occasions would even reply with a thumb’s up emoji. His silence wasn’t lack of interest and she knew that; her stories always brought a hint of a smile to his stoic face.

Her radio silence today was the first indication that something might be off. Benji wasn’t one to pester and quickly brushed off any hint of worry.

When he finally arrived home that evening, he was taken aback by how quiet the house was. Gunner was sat by himself on the couch watching 90 Day Fiancé, but the volume was turned way down. He craned his neck over the edge of the couch when Benji opened the door and threw up a hand in greeting.

“Hey, welcome back. You just missed the princess and her tantrum,” he said immediately. He was looking restless and irritated, as he so often did.

Benji slipped his shoes off and fetched himself a glass of water.

“Come again?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

Gunner rolled his eyes and paused his show to turn and face him completely.

“Your girlfriend stormed down the stairs a few minutes ago screaming at Edith and I to turn the TV down because,” he raised his fingers in quotation marks, “her head was fucking killing her.”

Benji took a sip from his glass and plopped down on a barstool.

“She always gets moody when she has a headache, she’ll be fine,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. Even so, if Gunner wasn’t exaggerating, he was surprised to hear she’d been that verbal about her irritation.

Gunner turned back to his show. “Clearly,” he grumbled. “Anyways, Edith is with her now.”

Benji felt a twinge of guilt in his chest, maybe a hint of jealousy too. If Taryn really needed someone to dote on her, it was his job, not Edith’s. His longtime friend had experienced quite the shift in personality when she finally quit bartending and became an elementary school teacher last year. He knew how much effort she’d put in to get her degree and reach the point she was at now, but sometimes he missed her punk rock vibes and unapologetic personality. He knew it was unreasonable; Edith had always been a high-empathy ‘fixer’ type. She had a motherly, nurturing nature not unlike Taryn’s. It was just a lot more noticeable now that they were living together again, difference being her long-term sobriety this time around.

He nodded at Gunner and made his way up the stairs. The hallway lights were out, and their bedroom door was shut, but he could tell it was dark from within. When he opened the door, he was met by the sight of a lump on the bed and a shadowy figure sitting next to it. The curtains were drawn, and it was completely silent aside from the erratic, heavy breathing of his girlfriend curled up on the bed.

Edith looked up at him when he entered, and as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw relief wash over her face.

“She okay?” Benji asked with his voice at regular volume, his situational awareness flying out the window.

A high pitched whine sounded from underneath the covers and Edith shot him a deadly glare. The agitation came off of her in waves, like a mother bear protecting its’ cub. She quickly ushered him outside the room and closed the door behind them.

“No, she’s not okay,” she hissed, “and you need to lower your voice, you ass.”

It dawned on him how thoughtless he’d been, and he felt his cheeks turning red in embarrassment. “How was I supposed to know?” he whispered aggressively in his own defense.

Edith huffed at him and crossed her arms. “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, “she has a horrible migraine, she's nauseous, and she's miserable. Be considerate.”

Benji didn’t appreciate the lecture. “Fuck off Edith, I know what I’m doing,” he grumbled. Somewhere in the very back of his mind, Benji knew that he should have thanked her for taking care of Taryn in his absence, but the urge to react after being called out for his actions was too tempting to resist.

He rudely stormed past her and re-entered the bedroom, closing the door in her face rather harshly.

It was louder than he thought because a wobbly sounding groan of pain came out of Taryn. He winced guiltily. He was really fucking this up.

He approached the bed slowly and sat down next to her. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and from the sound of it she was clearly dedicating a significant amount of energy to keeping her breathing as slow and steady as possible.

Her hair was in the same state of bedhead it had been in when he left that morning, and her unwashed face was pale and oily. She clearly hadn’t even been able to get out of bed to shower, and Benji was suddenly hit with a massive wave of guilt for how many times he’d brushed off the signs. This wasn’t Taryn’s first migraine, and he silently reprimanded himself for not having taken it seriously. He should have known better.

“Having a rough go of it today, huh?” He whispered quietly, wanting nothing more than for her to reply that it wasn’t that bad, that she would be fine, that he didn’t need to worry. He’d take anything over the pathetic whimper she gave instead.

“I want to die,” her voice was very quiet and sounded like she’d gargled glass from going mostly unused all day.

Benji swallowed, not knowing how to respond. He felt clammy and overwhelmed. He had the strangest feeling that if he so much as touched her, she would break into a million pieces.

His fear was only amplified by her reaction when he tried to lay a gentle hand on her waist. She flinched away harshly and exhaled sharply. Benji pulled his hand back like he’d been burned. Taryn was rarely so unwell that she couldn’t tell him what she needed him to do whenever he felt lost or out of his element. Conventional caretaking didn’t come naturally to him. He wanted more than anything to be effortlessly nurturing to her, but it just wasn’t who he was. Benji felt stiff and robotic when he tried to comfort her, as if all his reassurances were copy and pasted or pre-programmed into him.

He had his own way of showing he cared. It wasn’t with lovey-dovey, softly spoken comforts. It was with rough words of encouragement and firm, reassuring touches. Unapologetic forehead kisses and less than skilled back massages. That was why in times like these when Taryn needed silence and the slightest touch was agony, Benji had no idea what to do with himself.

“Unghh—B-Benji,”her voice was shaky and panicked, and she reached out to wrap her fingers tightly around his forearm. It was an act of desperation designed to focus on a sensation other than the figurative knife stabbing her skull over and over again.

“What?” He replied. His brows were furrowed deeply in worry, and he was frozen in place waiting for her to speak.

“I’m— ‘m gonna throw up—” Taryn’s voice became deep and distorted as her words were overtaken by an aborted heave.

Benji’s eyes widened. This was an unexpected turn—most definitely yet another event he should have anticipated a while ago.

“Fuck, uhhhh—fuck, uhm, it’s fine,” he said, forgetting to keep his voice quiet until halfway through his sentence. “Let’s get to the bathroom.”

He stood up and waited for her to follow suit, but all she did was groan miserably and clap a hand to her mouth with a painfully thick hiccup.

It occurred to Benji then that in her state, there was no way she could have stood up even if she wanted to. You fucking idiot, he berated himself. He wasted no more time in scooping her into his arms bridal style.

The way Taryn hung limply in his arms made him feel uneasy. She laid her head in the crook of his collar-bone.

Two steps into the journey, she spasmed in his arms and he heard a wet gurgle in her throat. He cursed and tried to move faster, but before he could reach the bathroom her cheeks ballooned out comically with vomit; it took less than a second for it to burst past the dam. It splattered all over his collarbone and chest, and another wave quickly followed suit. Some fell to the ground, but much of it continued to coat his shirt, bare upper arm, and Taryn’s front.

Benji couldn’t stop himself from loudly yelling a surprised Fuck! and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to drop her right then and there out of sheer reflex. His chest jolted with a gag of his own, but he stubbornly swallowed back his own nausea to focus on the task at hand.

Taryn managed to hold back the next round until he had safely set her down in front of the toilet, but she was so dizzy that the next wave splattered all over the toilet seat and floor. Benji cursed again and crouched behind her, but not before divesting himself of his soiled work shirt. He wrapped his arm around her from behind and planted one hand firmly in the center of her chest, steering her over the toilet bowl. He was horribly aware of the warm squish of vomit between his fingers as he supported the front of her body. With his other hand he held her head to keep her aimed over the bowl properly. His bare chest pressing into her back held her steady, and he tried hard not to think about how much this was probably hurting her right now.

It's necessary, he reminded himself. Even so, there was a part of him that worried he was just being a nuisance and horrible boyfriend.

A soft, wet belch bubbled up Taryn’s chest and he felt the rumble in her chest under his hand as vomit shot up her esophagus. It sprayed forcefully into the water below and she made a choked noise as it came out of her in a long, awful stream.

“‘Fucks sake, babe,” Benji murmured.

“Fuck,” she sobbed out the word and coughed up a bit of bile that trickled over her lip and streamed down her chin. Some of it dripped onto Benji’s forearm and he bit back the overwhelming urge to retch.

“I know,” he whispered. It was so soft that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Taryn didn’t hear him.

Interspersed with her loud gasps were sloppy hiccups and burps that sounded incredibly ominous. The disgusting noises made his skin crawl. When nothing came up though, Benji finally removed his hand from her head and grabbed a few squares of toilet paper. He wiped her lips and chin, shushing her as she struggled to breathe through the hiccups and tears.

“Jesus Taryn, fucking breathe,” he said. His voice rose an octave in what he refused to admit was panic. In that moment, Benji would have given up just about anything if it meant he never had to hear his girlfriend cry with such anguish ever again.

Several minutes and one more round of vomiting passed before she finally started to calm down. After she’d had a few minutes to breathe, Benji loosened his grip and helped her sit against the side of the tub while he washed his vomit covered hand. He wiped the drying puke off the toilet seat and threw a towel on top of the mess on the floor; he’d properly deal with it later.

She followed his movements with her eyes. Benji could see they were still hazy, but overall she seemed much more aware and in far less pain.

“How you doing over there, hot stuff?” He asked after a few more minutes passed, trying to lighten the mood.

A hint of a smile graced Taryn’s lips. Benji felt his heart skip a beat. It dawned on him that he hadn’t seen her smile once today; he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

“My head is so much better,” she sighed, “but I feel disgusting.”

Benji snorted with that signature raspy laugh of his.

“We’ve both seen better days,” he chuckled. “Think you can stand for a shower?”

Taryn nodded, but she looked so worn out that Benji couldn’t help but doubt her sincerity.

He hoisted her up to sit on the edge of the bath and carefully slipped her out of her soiled sweater. He balled it up and tossed it into the sink, grimacing at the foul smell. She wasn’t wearing any pants, so her bra and undies came off next. Benji turned on the shower and removed his own pants and boxers.

After he’d thoroughly rinsed both Taryn and himself down, Benji drew up a lukewarm bath and sat in the tub with his girlfriend as the water filled up. He was leaned against the wall of the bath, and Taryn had nestled her back comfortably in his chest.

It was so relaxing, sitting in content silence. Benji grabbed Taryn’s shampoo and squirted some into her hair. He began to slowly massage it into her scalp to slowly work out the tangles, and she let out a sigh of satisfaction.

“Keep doing that,” she breathed out, leaning forwards to give him more space.

Benji smiled softly at the way she melted into his touch. He pressed an affectionate kiss to the back of her neck, and she hummed quietly.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually, “…you shouldn’t have had to see me like this.”

Benji rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe for a fucking second that you wanted to go through this alone.”

His voice was almost mocking in its delivery, but he meant it sincerely.

Taryn drew her knees closer to her chest. “Yeah, I guess. Still wish I hadn’t forced you to baby me like this though. And I’m really sorry I threw up on you—”

“Taryn.”

Benji’s voice was firm and serious now, designed to get her to listen. He leaned forwards to hook his chin over her shoulder and look at the side of her face.

“I know, I know, I just need to apolo-“

“Shut the hell up, you idiot,” Benji said. The words were abrasive and direct, but his voice was uncharacteristically gentle and there was no malice in his words. Only Benji could make such an insulting sentence sound so sickeningly sweet and affectionate. “Stop fucking apologizing. You couldn’t force me to do anything even if you wanted to. Understand?”

Taryn nodded slightly, like a kid being lectured by their teacher.

“I love you. That isn’t going to change just because you puked on me. Shit happens, babe.”

It wasn’t a particularly eloquent way of putting it, but it was the only way Benji knew how. Seeing his girlfriend so sick had him feeling a lot more sentimental and open than usual. “Listen,” he continued with a sigh, “I know I sound like I don’t care sometimes, but I promise I do. I really love you.”

Taryn leaned into him again with a long exhale and grinned. “How about you shut the hell up, ‘idiot’. I already know all that stuff. I love you too; I’m just a little embarrassed.”

Benji scoffed. “Well cut it out. We’ve had five years to get acquainted with the grossest parts of each other. Hell, at this point the smell of your farts is burned into my memory, and by the grace of God I somehow haven’t run away yet.”

Taryn’s entire face turned crimson at that, and she smacked his shoulder lightly. Her toddler-like pout had Benji curling over in a rare fit of boisterous laughter, feeling a little too pleased with himself for provoking such a reaction.

Once she finally stopped defiantly batting away his hand, Benji combed his fingers through Taryn’s freshly washed hair and kissed the crown of her head.

“C’mon cranky,” he laughed softly, “I think you’ve earned a nap.”

[tomato-sickfics]

Benji’s Sickest Experience: local idiot man thinks UTI will just ‘go away’, gets a kidney infection

Inspired by this anon here:

I get the feeling this fic is less fluffy than you were hoping for, but quite honestly it had to be this bad if it was going to make Benji cry. I hope you still like it!

Content Warning: lots of vomiting, hospitals, severe pain, *urinating, losing control of said urination, blood in bodily fluids, mentions of an STD (nobody has an STD in this), medical emergency, two passing mentions of male genitalia, extremely corny ending

*this is NOT a piss kink fic. I do not write for that kink and I do not have it, so do not send me requests for it because I will not write them. The piss content in this fic is for the sake of medical accuracy and a catalyst to make Benji cry.

Word Count: 3500

----

“Hey, babe?”

Taryn looked up from her tablet when Benji peeked his head into the bedroom. His eyebrows were knit together in an expression of extreme confusion and distress, and she set the tablet to the side immediately.

“Yeah? Something wrong?” She prodded, and Benji looked at the floor. Taryn imagined her own face was starting to mirror his confusion, because this behavior wasn’t like him. Benji was never meek or sheepish in the way he seemed to be currently, and that was a major concern. He looked like a lost child trying to work up the courage to ask a stranger for help. If it wasn’t so bizarre, Taryn might have laughed.

He combed his fingers through his ginger hair in a sort of self-soothing manner before finally speaking.

“I—fuck, uhm,” Benji huffed, “there’s no fucking way for either of us to get chlamydia without fucking someone else…right?”

The question made Taryn’s jaw drop. What kind of question was that?

“…No? Why are you even asking?”

Her answer didn’t appear to put the man at ease though, and he slowly sat on the edge of the bed. Closer up, Taryn could now see his skin was clammy. The hair on the back of her neck stood up seeing him so nervous…had Benji done something bad?

She shook off the thought and decided to hear him out. They’d been together 5 years, and despite a lot of rough patches, she trusted him fully in his commitment to their relationship.

Benji smacked his lips anxiously and looked her dead in the face as he said, “I just took a piss and it felt like my dick was on fire.”

Taryn’s face was blank for all of two seconds while she processed his confession; then she burst into a fit of laughter. Benji’s face darkened in annoyance immediately.

“Is this fucking funny to you?!” He raised his voice in volume as well as—albeit unintentionally—pitch.

Taryn finally came down from the comedic high and held her breath until she could maintain her poker face well enough to continue the conversation.

“I think,” she choked down another laugh, “you’re describing a UTI, babe.”

In the next five seconds, Benji’s face contorted as if he was experiencing every emotion possible. He finally seemed to settle on complete and utter humiliation, if the red hue rapidly spreading across his face was any indication.

“Ben, you just need to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics. Don’t worry about it.”

--

Seven days had passed since then and Benji was starting to wish he’d listened. Comforted by her reassurances, he had mistakenly convinced himself that it was no big deal. He didn’t need antibiotics; he had a good immune system. This would clear up on its own, no doctors visit necessary.

Two hours into the day’s shift, Benji’s misplaced confidence abruptly evaporated.

His wake up call came in the form of a sharp pain spearing through the left side of his lower belly. It was white-hot agony, and although he tried for a few moments to stay standing, his legs quickly gave out, sending him crashing to the ground on one knee. His head…fuck, his head. With the newfound pain in his side came a wave of overwhelming vertigo, and he fell even further, catching himself by planting a hand firmly on the concrete floor of the workshop.

What the fuck is happening to me?

All the clanging and drilling that typically filled the auto shop very suddenly ceased when a voice nearby exclaimed something that Benji was in too much pain to catch. It must have been important though, because suddenly every single one of his coworkers was surrounding him. There was so much yelling, so many people leaning down next to him, snapping their fingers to try and get a response from him.

Benji was in too much discomfort to speak, but he could still think. The thought that was currently occupying the forefront of his mind?

I need to piss right fucking now.

The urge hit him hard and fast, a burning hot pressure settling in his abdomen along with the licking tendrils of agony that had begun to creep up his back. He knew if he didn’t get to a bathroom in the next thirty seconds he was going to piss his pants.

The initial tidal wave of vertigo dissipated enough for Benji to come back to his senses. There was a hand on his shoulder, and he quickly smacked it off.

“Fuck off!” He snarled to the small group, and he stumbled to his feet with an arm wrapped protectively around his stomach.

Benji staggered to the urinal in the nick of time, because the moment he unzipped his pants and adjusted himself, it was coming out.

Where he had been expecting relief, though, there was absolutely none. Instead, Benji slammed his forehead into the wall in front of him and bit down on his bottom lip hard. Anything to distract himself from the liquid fire lighting his dickhole ablaze. He tried desperately to stop the stream, but it was in vain. There was nothing he could do other than stand there and try and bear it.

Benji had never felt anything like this, and he couldn’t help it when a choked sob tore up his throat. He swallowed back the noise but couldn’t fight back the tears that welled up in his eyes. He had a feeling a UTI wasn’t supposed to hurt this bad.

When the hellfire urine stream finally ended, Benji took a few heavy, labored breaths before pushing himself back from the wall. He was so dizzy again, and hardly managed to clean himself up before he tripped over his foot and caught himself on the sink.

A shockwave of pain lanced through his left side again; that was when the nausea hit him like a truck. He clutched onto the sides of the sink for dear life as his stomach immediately catapulted into his throat.

Just as a sick belch tore up his esophagus, the bathroom door swung open.

It was Grady.

Benji was pissed someone had come to intervene at all, but if it was going to happen, he was glad it was his close friend and roommate.

Sparing the other man a greeting didn’t occur to him as a violent dry heave rocked him forwards.

“Holy shit.” Grady said. Benji couldn’t help but agree.

His next retch was even louder, but this time was followed by a gurgling wave of this morning’s black coffee and breakfast sandwich splattering into the sink basin. It tasted like shit on the way back up, triggering the release of another torrent of vomit in its wake.

A clink sound from his belt buckle alerted Benji to the fact he hadn’t had time to zip up his pants or buckle his belt. A groan of embarrassment escaped him, and he reached down to try and fix it, but as soon as the support of the sink was gone he tumbled into the wall.

When two strong arms caught him under the armpits, Benji, probably for the first time in his life, didn’t reject the assistance. He was slowly lowered to the ground, where he wasted no time bending over and pressing his forehead into his knees.

“Benji, man, you’ve gotta tell me what’s going on right fuckin’ now, or Rick is gonna call an ambulance.”

Grady’s deep voice sounded much closer to Benji’s ear than he was expecting, and he looked up with glassy, bloodshot eyes.

“No, no ambulance!” He stuttered, “…’ts just a nasty hang—hicc—over.”

Grady’s nostrils flared in frustration, but his voice sounded only of concern. “Bullshit, I know you didn’t drink last night. Don’t play with me, tell me what the fuck is up because I’m not fuckin’ around.”

Benji wracked his brain for an excuse. He knew something was terribly wrong, but that was nobody else’s business. A burp slipped up unexpectedly and he covered his mouth.

“I just ate something bad this morning, okay? Got cramps and vertigo, ‘ts not like I’m fucking dying,” he offered weakly. Grady studied him silently and Benji filled the silence with a thick swallow.

His friend knew better than to push Benji on these subjects. He lamented with a sigh.

“Fine, but I’m taking you home.”

Benji pushed himself into a more upright position to protest. “But my truck—”

“—will stay in the shop overnight and be here tomorrow,” Grady finished his sentence with a firm and resolute tone.

It wasn’t a suggestion.

--

The drive home was awful, and Benji spent most of it retching into a grocery bag while trying to hold his bladder, which somehow still felt full. His stomach was empty and his heaves fruitless, each one loud and painful. The pain in his belly ebbed and flowed with each jerk forwards, but it was nowhere near as bad as before.

Taryn wasn’t home. All he’d wanted all day was for his nurturing girlfriend to dote on him and tell him he would be alright. Even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself.

Alarmingly, Grady had to help him up the stairs, where he stopped at the top to retch into the bag some more, bringing up a trickle of sour bile.

Once he was left alone, Benji stripped off his clothes so that he was clad in nothing but his boxers. The room was stifling, and he had started to sweat buckets halfway through the ride home. He was pretty sure he was developing a fever.

Benji tried to use the restroom again, but only a few burning droplets were produced. He leaned over the sink and scrubbed his face with both hands to ground himself. The urge to urinate was so fucking strong, but nothing was actually there. The pressure in his belly was unrelenting; at least the stabbing pains in his side had dulled down to an ache.

After outfitting himself with the bathroom wastebasket, Benji collapsed in bed, exhausted from the events of the last hour. His fatigue was a crushing weight that pinned him to the mattress, and he closed his eyes involuntarily.

He was woken up mere minutes later by the creaking of his bedroom door. A lithe silhouette perched in the doorframe—Edith.

“Hey big guy, how’s the party up here?” She said lightly. Her voice was soft, far removed from the abrasive and dry woman he was used to.

Benji didn’t sit up to greet her, opting to moan into his pillow.

“Seriously, fuck off,” he groaned, swallowing uneasily. A creeping sense of nausea climbed its way up the back of his neck and he propped himself up on his elbow. He burped rather loudly, not bothering to excuse himself.

“That good, huh?” Edith’s lopsided smile faltered for a moment. She was worried and trying not to show it.

“Nuh-uh,” Benji slurred through a mouthful of watery saliva. When he tried to position himself over the edge of the bed to aim for the trash, it put pressure on his left side, and he shuddered in pain. “Oh, fuck.”

Edith set whatever she was holding—a glass of water, he was pretty sure—on the bedside table and came around to grab the trash can and hold it closer to his mouth.

Benji hated the feeling that she was babying him. This was not the role she was supposed to play. It was supposed to be Taryn. He mustered up the strength to snatch the bin from her hands and force himself upright.

“Leave me the fuck alo-urghhh,” Benji cut himself off with a deep, gut-wrenching heave as his stomach tried to empty itself of what wasn’t there. “I don-hicc-need you.”

Edith sighed as his frame was wracked with a guttural belch that had the dregs of his stomach pouring out of his mouth, crinkling wetly into the plastic liner.

“Okay,” she relented. “I brought you some water and ibuprofen. Grady said your stomach was cramping so make sure to take it. Just drink something, please. You look like hell.”

Benji fought the urge to snap at her and instead nodded slowly. The fact that he was cognizant enough to be an asshole this time around was strangely comforting to all involved. He did as she said once his stomach had settled and prayed he would keep it down, although he wasn’t sure how much it would help. These weren’t stomach cramps; he wished that was all it was.

At some point, he had drifted off again, left alone to curl into himself and try to ignore his aching stomach and the need to relieve himself of a bladder that was already empty.

When Benji next awoke, it was to the back of a hand on his forehead.

Taryn.

Relief washed over him for a split-second and he began to sit up groggily, only to be slammed back down again by the same stabbing knife in his side that had knocked him to the ground hours ago. Except this time, he noted with dread, it was both sides.

A cry of pain ripped itself from his throat without his permission, and he knocked his head back against the headboard.

He hadn’t even had the chance to say hello.

“Woah, baby,” a gentle voice said softly.

Benji had been looking forward to taking solace in her soft voice and comforting words all day. It was unfortunate that this pain was far too intense for even an ounce of comfort to help him.

His chest felt heavy as he struggled to breathe through the sharp waves of agony.

“Ben, take a deep breath.”

Her hand was suddenly wrapped tightly around his wrist, but Benji yanked his hand away forcefully. The touch he’d been so desperately craving was way, way too much sensory input for him to deal with right now. He couldn’t take a deep breath if he wanted to. Even the shallowest of inhales exacerbated the lancing pain in his sides and back.

His stomach muscles seized, and he let out a big burp that cut off wetly. He needed to puke, and he said as much to his worried girlfriend with a deep groan.

Taryn had to support a ridiculous amount of his weight during the very short trek to their private bathroom. He was stumbling like a drunk, the vertigo from earlier having returned with a vengeance. She was too small to keep it up for long though, so by the time they reached the toilet, Benji crumpled to the ground with little support, hitting his knees on the tile hard. It sent shockwaves through his body, and he clenched his teeth to ride out the pain wave.

He was so dizzy that he was literally seeing stars, and a small but firm hand snaked around his forehead to steady him and direct him over the toilet. Taryn inhaled sharply when she contacted his skin.

“You’re burning up, baby. Like, bad.”

Benji responded with a deafening gag from the depths of his belly, and a thick stream of brown vomit cascaded into the toilet water. He spluttered in surprise. Where had this been hiding in his gut the last three times he’d nearly coughed up a lung trying to bring something up?

The force of vomiting made the pain in his sides so much worse, and as he belched up another mouthful of puke with tears quickly rising in his eyes, he came to a horrific realization.

There was a familiar fire spreading in his groin…and with it, a warm wetness seeping into his boxers.

Benji Martin, 28 years old, was pissing himself.

The first thing he did was slam his legs together to try and stop it, and he took in a panicked breath.

“Out!” He yelled sharply at his girlfriend.

The look of confusion and hurt on her face pained him, but she couldn’t see this.

“Get the fuck out!” He raised his voice further, frantic and pleading. He couldn’t stop it and it was still coming. That fucking water Edith had given him, of course. He should have anticipated its reappearance.

He puked again, the seizing of his muscles making it flow out of him faster while he threw up. Why wasn’t she leaving? His breathing sped up and he felt a sob quickly building in his chest. He couldn’t help it when it exploded out of him, along with an influx of tears of both pain and humiliation.

He knew the exact moment she noticed what was happening, because her hand on his forehead suddenly stiffened and she gasped.

“…holy fuck…”

Benji choked on tears and sobbed loudly as his bladder finally became empty again. It hurt so fucking bad he was shocked he even managed to speak.

“Please stop, go—go away, Taryn,” he was crying like a little boy with a skinned knee, tears streaming down his face. God, he felt so, so sick, and he hurt so, so bad.

Taryn didn’t respond. If he’d had the guts to look at her in that moment, he would have noted that her face had completely drained of color.

“I—holy fuck, Benji—there’s…fuck, there’s blood.”

Benji looked down at his lap with watery eyes and gulped down another wrenching cry in favor of a blank, shell shocked expression.

She was right; exacerbated by his white boxer briefs, his accident was terribly obvious. What was also readily apparent was the fact that his urine was dark pink.

He sniffed and his chest jolted with a residual hiccup that morphed into a gross burp on the tail-end. Another sob bubbled up his throat and he shook silently, tears spurred on by the stabbing pains in an endless loop.

“Sorry, ‘m so sorry,” he slurred out, “don’ want you to—” he leaned his head back over the toilet and spit out a rope of thick saliva,”—see this. ‘M disgusting.”

Whether his voice was distorted from vomiting, crying, or fever delirium, nobody could be sure. It was likely a combination of all three.

Taryn shushed him and rested a hand on the burning nape of his neck, discreetly pulling a towel down from the rack with her other hand and tossing it on the wet floor.

“Shhh,” she murmured in his ear, “you didn’t do anything wrong, Benny. I’m always going to take care of you, but right now I think you need a hospital, babe.”

Benji’s chest tightened, and more tears spilled onto his fever-flushed cheeks. He knew she was right, and for once he agreed.

Something was horrifically wrong with him, and he now knew he couldn’t beat it with sheer willpower.

--

A severe kidney infection. A highly unusual case.

Those had been the doctor’s words to Benji when he was admitted. Nobody seemed to be able to explain to him how his symptoms of kidney infection had become so severe so suddenly. That was because nobody seemed to know the answer.

The 105 degree fever that had popped up over the course of only a few hours seemed to floor them too. One nurse seemed almost skeptical of his story, earning her more than a few snappy comments from a sick, exhausted Benji. Stuck in his arm was an IV pumping fluid and antibiotics into him. He’d been doped up with pain-killers and an anti-emetic as well. He was feeling pretty good, comparative to every other part of today.

His fever was still blazingly high, though. He spent much of that night in the restless throes of fever dreams. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was sitting up with his head planted firmly in his hands. The anti-emetic had helped tremendously, but there was still a bit of nausea he couldn’t quite kick, and in between sleeping sessions he found himself plagued by episodes of nauseous burping that he was too exhausted to muffle or apologize for.

Taryn sat with him through each episode, never failing to have a cool washcloth ready for the back of his neck and a hand rubbing and patting his back to coax up the air. She never got annoyed with his noises or upset with him for letting his condition get to this point; she was steadfast and quiet in her support, and Benji loved that deeply about her.

“Hey, T?” He’d whispered at some point during the night.

She didn’t respond, and Benji squinted his eyes in the darkness. His heart softened at the sight of his girlfriend curled up in the uncomfortable chair. She was fast asleep, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled tight around her head.

Benji had forgotten what he was going to ask by the time he snapped out of the trance of staring at her. He extended a shaky hand and rested it on her narrow shoulder.

He fell back asleep just like that, knowing the next time he woke up, she’d still be here with him right when he needed her most. Because she always was.

[benjimartinmusic]

19th June 2018 #BenjiMartinNC #NCmusic

Good evening, everyone. I am sorry that I have not been posting here lately. A lot has been going on in my life since my father’s death back in April. Aside from work, I have been handling some business concerning his estate, of which one of my aunts, who lives in South Carolina, is the executor, and I have not been having much time to practise my music because of that. So instead of this summer…

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[benjimartinmusic]

4th April 2018 #NCmusic #BenjiMartinNC

Hello, everyone! How are you doing? I have not posted anything here or on any of my other social media in a while due to my being under the weather a couple of times in recent weeks as well as having to help my dad out due to foot surgery that he has had a couple of months ago, but hopefully, I will be back on the open mic stage in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina again within the next…

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[knell-locke]

was gon wait to post ben’s but nah ill just post it now ! comic notes for my baby boy hes my favorite