Someone needs to yell at me to write my requests otherwise they’ll never get done.
Anyway, here’s a sick Pidge who shouldn’t have taken Coran’s advice.
Warning: vomit and all that.
“Uh, Shiro? Can we stop please?”
One look at Pidge and Shiro was calling to end the simulation. One hand rested on her stomach, and the other pushed her bangs back from her pale, sweaty face. As the simulation ended, the lights brightened in the room. All the paladins took a few deep breaths, ready to relax after the intense simulation.
“What’s wrong?” Shiro’s brow furrowed. She had been fine a few minutes ago.
“I don’t feel good,” Pidge admitted sheepishly. Lance scoffed. Pidge wished she could roll her eyes at him, but right then, she just wanted to cry. Her throat felt ready to bring up everything she had eaten, and her mouth was already filling with saliva.
“I’m gonna puke,” she mumbled, rubbing her hand on her sore stomach.
“Can we go a week without one of us puking?” Keith wondered mockingly.
Shiro shushed him. “Coran, can you bring us a bucket, please? Pidge, you should sit down.”
Pidge burped wetly and immediately shut her mouth against an oncoming stream of vomit. Shiro gently led her into a sitting position on the floor. She curled up almost instantly, hugging her knees to her chest and trying to force herself to relax. The smallest paladin just wanted to curl into a ball forever. Shiro sat next to her, his frame dwarfing hers, especially curled in a tight ball as she was.
This position made her stomach ache even more, but she dreaded being even more exposed in front of the other paladins. She was supposed to be proving that she was tough, despite her age, despite her size. But Shiro’s hand was so comforting and made her feel closer to Matt and the rest of her family. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was back home, and it was her dad’s hand slowly rubbing across her back.
Coran burst into the room, frantically moving towards them so he could avoid scrubbing vomit off the training deck floor. He carried a glass container, shaped like a bottom heavy vase. Pidge was not excited to see the contents of her stomach poured into a clear jar, although Altean food looked pretty well like vomit anyway, so she figured there wouldn’t be much change.
Pidge groaned lowly in the back of her throat, waiting for the impending gag. Coran put the receptacle in front of her, and she extended her legs on either side, holding it in place with her knees. Her throat finally constricted, leaving her to allow herself to be wracked by a painful gag. Her efforts were fruitless, and she huffed into the receptacle.
“I suppose what I gave you wasn’t fit for human consumption after all,” Coran mused. Pidge glared at him.
“What did you give her?” Shiro asked in a panic.
“Oh, just a little of that focusing food I made you all a while ago. I noticed she wasn’t eating as much as the rest of you, and I figured a little of my special meal would do the trick.”
Pidge cut off the conversation with a groan, leaning as far into the vase as she possibly could, resting her hands on her knees and pushing her hair away from her face. She gagged again, her every muscle tensing while she tried to bring up the alien substance. She only managed to drool. Lazily, she spat into the bowl.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t eat it, or else we’d all be like Pidge!” Lance chimed in. It was his turn to be on the receiving end of a glare from Pidge. “I mean, ‘Oh no, poor Pidge.’”
The ‘focusing food’ hadn’t tasted very good on the way down. Pidge dreaded how it would taste coming back up, mixed with her own stomach acid. When she let out an involuntary high-pitched whine, she knew it was coming sooner than she’d like. She leaned further over the bowl again, barely registering Shiro’s hand rubbing her back, before all the food she had eaten was spewing from her mouth in a violent green wave. She coughed weakly, desperate to get it all up.
Her glasses slid down her nose, and Shiro gently removed them, unwilling to let them splash into the sick.
The container looked too small to hold what she was sure would be an astounding amount of liquid. Pidge pursed her lips and shut her eyes, fighting through the intense nausea wracking her system. She wondered briefly if she could avoid ever eating Altean food again. The thought of the food provoked another gag, and she pitched forward into the vase again, more vomit spilling onto the previous layer. The gags gurgled as she desperately tried to breathe through the retches.
Pidge felt utterly disgusting, and remembered with a flash of embarrassment that everyone was still here, and everyone was still watching.
“Guys, I’m sorry,” she whispered, wishing she could look any of them in the eye. Before anyone could respond, she spewed again, the splashing sound made choppy by half-digested chunks. The acid made her throat feel raw, and left a foul taste in her mouth. She was right: the taste of it going down was nothing compared to it coming back up.
Shiro muttered encouragements, telling her she was doing well and calling her by her name. As the gags slowed, she rested her head on her arm. Pidge’s teary eyes slid shut, and she let herself rest for a few moments. Lazily, she gagged into the vase again, not lifting her head. If the taste was bad, the smell was worse. She didn't think it could get any worse until she opened her eyes and realized that yes, it absolutely could. The sight of her own vomit on display in a clear glass container drove her to gag again, completely disgusted by herself.
“You don’t have any other symptoms, do you?” Shiro asked firmly. Pidge shook her head and wiped her forehead on her sleeve. Shiro moved his human hand from her back to her cheek and left it there a moment. “You don’t have a fever.”
“I think I’m okay now,” Pidge said. “I think I got it all up.”
Keith brought over the water bottle he had been drinking from between simulations. He put it in her hand and scampered away, desperate to get away from the smell of the vomit. Pidge took a long drink, interrupted only when Shiro said, “Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick again.”
Pidge nodded and put her head back down.
“Coran.” Her voice was raspy. “Never feed us that again.”
