The inevitable Explosion

Part One

"Are you sure you don't want to go to work?" Vic said, placing the back of her hand on Travis's forehead, not feeling any extreme warmth. "You seem okay."

"I'm sick." He insisted, pulling up his duvet over his whole body apart from his head. "I'll be fine by the time we have our next shift. I just wanna stay in bed today, okay?"

Vic nodded, knowing something else other than the fact he was sneezing for the entirety of the night before was keeping him off work. "Alright, well I'll see you tomorrow." She picked up her bag from where she dropped it just below the bed. "And I'll call you later to see how you're doing."

Travis unleashed his arms from the cocoon he created and raised them out, hoping Vic got the hint. She did, and she lowered her face just to the right level so Travis could kiss her cheek. "Be safe, I love you." He smiled as she went to go exit the room.

"I love you too." She pointed to him and called out, "I'll call you!"

He smiled again and sighed, waiting until he heard the front door close and a car drive away before he could get out of bed and make some breakfast.

In some ways, he was sick. He had been sneezing all evening the night before and he felt so tired, but really, he just needed the day off. He had a dream - he relived getting told that Michael had died - and he woke up in a cold sweat about it in the middle of the night. It took him ages to fall back asleep, and he probably only got another thirty minutes before Vic came in to tell him it was time to go to work. And then he said he was sick.

Truth be told, he was struggling a lot with Theo being at 19. He was struggling with the fact that the guy who took everything from him was working in such close proximity to him and could easily make another careless decision or mistake and be responsible for another one of his closest friends - or god forbid, his person.

He didn't want to talk about it, though. He'd survived this long with Theo being around on most days because he was dating Vic, so he didn't know why he was struggling so bad because he was at 19. He was hoping these feelings would pass because he missed having work as his safe place, even though it hadn't been feeling like that since Theo first started at 19.

He just missed feeling anxious in the one place he used to go to be free from the anxiety.

He pulled himself out of bed and went into the kitchen to find a bag left on the counter in the middle of the room. He took one look inside and realised it was Theo's and rolled his eyes before picking it up, walking over to Vic's room and chucking it in there. Even when Theo was at work, he was still being haunted by the guy. The whole reason he took the day off was that he wanted the day away from Theo, and before the day off had even technically started, there was already a reminder that the man did indeed exist.

It was going to be a long day.

It was around 3 pm when Travis had officially become bored of the daytime TV that was being shown. He'd exhausted all the channels and he just couldn't find something on any streaming service to occupy his mind, so instead, he decided to clean the house. For whatever reason, that seemed like the best thing to do.

So, he put on some loud music to have a dance to as he cleaned, and he started by picking up all the dirty dishes and mugs around the house to wash up. The majority of them came from Vic's room since Theo was so messy, but there was an unhealthy stack of dishes piling up in his room too since he was also quite bad at washing up.

Once he'd washed and dried everything and put it all away, the next point of action was to vacuum. He got out the vacuum and turned it on, realising he couldn't really hear the music above the loud roar of the machine, but it was fine because he'd be done soon.