Rot

Summary: Sam gets sick, Noah can't help but worry that it's something more.

Date: May 2026

Quote: "Only one explanation satisfied the knot of worry surrounding his lungs, the worst of them all: a raw throat, an empty stomach even after dinner. Sam, dealing with it all on his own."

TW: Hints at an eating disorder, specifically bulimia.

In English, rot is meant to signify a state of decay, or the act of undergoing decomposition. In Dutch, it carries the same meaning, but it can also be used to convey a feeling of guilt or miserability.

November, 2017

It was quiet while he watched Sam. It was a Saturday, but it was cold enough outside to keep people away from the café near their flat. So, finally, they could go to bed without having to listen to yet another couple’s drunken arguments. The other man’s chest rose and fell, his eyelashes fluttered against the papery skin of his under eyes. Because of the autumn, his brown hair had darkened significantly, making the rest of him look paler. He was in the first stage of sleep, the one in which his fingers still twitched, as if he needed to be ready to wake up any second in case of an emergency.

Noah always liked to stay awake a little longer than his boyfriend, to see how the other’s body acted when there was nothing controlling it. Sometimes he would rouse in the middle of the night, and he would take in the sleeping form beside him. For a moment he would listen to the soft snores leaving Sam’s lips, and it was like he was falling in love all over again. In those moments, he felt a great grief for the fact that he couldn’t follow the other man into his dreams. He also felt lucky, for he was able to wake up with the man he loved beside him every day. In a way, the grief was yet another reminder of that.

But that night, he did not avoid slumber just so he could admire Sam. They had gone to dinner at Sam’s parents’ house that day, and although Noah occasionally worried about the brunet, he was never able to put a name to that worry until he went to the bathroom after the man. Along with that small smudge of blood on the toilet seat, and the smell of acid hanging in the air, the worry began to transform into something more, something he couldn’t ignore. And as a partner, it was something he was obliged to bring up.

Truly, he consoled himself, what are the actual chances of Sam doing that — of getting on his knees and forcing his meals back up? Noah could not imagine a world in which his boyfriend felt the need to do such a thing. The mad had always been on the thinner side, from what Noah knew, and he had a job he was happy with and parents who loved him. Sam was everything the bulimics he saw on the television sometimes weren't. And yet, even with the smallest possibility, it was his duty to at least bring it up, just in case.

On the train ride back home after dinner, he couldn’t stop thinking about the blood, even though his boyfriend kept trying to start conversations about the weather and soccer, which neither of them had ever been interested in. The blood could have come from anyone, which was a disgusting thought, but in some way it was better than it coming from Sam. Nothing made sense, he knew that the man would never do such a thing, but that smell. It smelled familiar, like the rotten lemon he once found in his aunt’s kitchen, like the smell constantly lingering in their own bathroom. So he had to come to the conclusion that something was wrong, but it wasn’t that.

After contemplating on the train, he decided that the next step would be going into their bathroom to see if he could find any evidence of his worst fear. If he couldn’t, he would keep watch and make sure nothing bad was going on with Sam. If he could find evidence, he would confront the other with it, knowing that the man would deny it if Noah had no physical proof.

They were both quite lazy people, and doing laundry was always the last chore they prioritized. So it was a regular thing for their laundry basket to be overflowing with clothes from the previous days. If blood had managed to get on the toilet seat, then it surely could have left a trace on Sam’s clothing. He slowly made his way out of their bedroom and closed the door with one last glance towards his boyfriend, who had seemingly fallen into a deeper sleep. Once he was in the bathroom, he kneeled in front of the laundry basket and began to look through the pile of clothing one by one, swiftly ignoring his own. With each clean piece, a swell of relief rose in his chest, like a knot tied to his lungs was beginning to loosen. Until he found the white button-up.

It had been shoved to the bottom of the laundry basket. Sam had worn it just the day prior to work. And there it was, the thing he had been looking for — a yellowish smudge nearly blending into the white collar, along with another droplet red in hue. The smudge was the same colour as the discoloured shower tiles that surrounded the drain, though it was faded and patchy, as if Sam had attempted to handwash it before hiding it amongst the rest of their laundry. That said enough. If the man was simply getting sick, he wouldn’t have bothered to hide it.

He threw the shirt to the floor and stood up. Dozens of images came to him as he left the bathroom, all possible explanations, but most of them felt wrong. Only one explanation satisfied the knot of worry surrounding his lungs, the worst of them all: a raw throat, an empty stomach even after dinner. Sam, dealing with it all on his own.

❃❃❃

It was a Sunday, which meant that they were both still free from work. Noah woke up later in the day, and wasn’t surprised when he saw that Sam had already left the bed. The man always woke up earlier than him, especially during the weekends, when he finally had plenty of time to do every little thing he hadn’t gotten to do throughout the workweek — he could pick up the book he had been excited to read for ages, or he could reorganize their kitchen, which always got cluttered within days while they were busy, or he could simply sit on the balcony and watch the street get busier throughout the morning while people began to slowly wake up and leave for the nearby church.

So when he finally got out of bed and stepped inside the living room, he expected to hear Sam shift around on their uncomfortable couch, trying to find a position that didn’t make his back ache, or to see him through the window on the balcony. The flat was silent, though, and there was no sight of the brunet. Even so, the man’s shoes were still by the entryway.

Slowly, he made his way to the kitchen, thinking about what they could eat for breakfast with the things they still had in the fridge. Grocery shopping was another thing they shoved aside — he began to realize that he was truly lazy, in ways he had never been as a child. Sam had given him a dream life, hadn’t he? They often replaced fresh meals with microwavable dinners and takeouts. After breakfast, he would fish Sam’s shirt out of the laundry basket and confront the man with it. He stayed in the kitchen for a bit, looking through the cupboards and pulling out an old pack of unopened muesli.

And then, suddenly a gag broke through the silence, along with it came a wet splash. His soft smile turned into a frown. Without thinking, he made his way to the toilet. The light was on, the door was cracked open slightly. He could see the soles of Sam’s socked feet.

He stopped in his tracks. Could he — so early in the morning? “Sam?”

“A moment,” the other mumbled after a while, his voice rough and broken.

Noah thought about forcing himself into the toilet, but he did not want to personally witness what his boyfriend was doing in there. It wasn’t like he could really stop it. He went back to the kitchen and leaned against the counter, played with the edges of the muesli box, and tried to keep himself from panicking. God, what would he tell Sam’s parents? Should he force the brunet to a doctor, the hospital? His eyes burned and his face flushed hot with — he wasn’t quite sure what. He could not tell whether he felt full of grief, or anger, or a painful gradient of both. How long had Sam been doing that? Why hadn’t he told Noah, was he not aware of the fact that his boyfriend would do anything to help him?

When Sam finally came to stand beside him, he could practically feel the heat radiating from the other’s clammy looking skin. It was the kind of warmth that only came with an illness. Noah let out a short sigh of relief, because it was clear that his boyfriend was sick. Maybe the bulimia was a thing, but it wasn’t something he could fix immediately, he could help Sam get better from a cold, though. The other got sick more often lately, especially when it rained just like it had done earlier in the week. They had gone to the doctor a bit ago, who couldn’t do anything except tell them to keep painkillers stacked up in the house, and to make sure that the symptoms didn’t occur too often. Perhaps Sam’s tonsils needed to be removed. A seed of doubt grew in his brain. It made more sense for the blood and the vomiting to be extensions of the throat infections that Sam frequently suffered.

“Oh, schat,” he whined, slipping his arm around the other man’s shoulders. He looked at Sam, and almost allowed the tears to spill from his eyes at the sight of his face. His cheeks stood stark and red against his pale cheeks, and his lips were wet with spit. It was a pitiful image. Noah pulled his boyfriend away from the counter and planted a quick kiss on top of his head. “Let’s get you cleaned up and to bed, luckily it’s a Sunday.”

“Lucky,” Sam let out a gruff sigh.

As he led the sick to the bathroom, as he cleaned up the man’s face with a damp hand towel, as he put the other to bed and tucked him in with one of the warmer blankets he had grabbed out of their closet, he couldn’t forget the stained button-up. Sam had never before hid it when he was sickly. Early in their relationship, Noah had quickly found out that the man liked being cared for when he was ill, and he never felt like a burden because of it — so then why had he attempted to clean the shirt, why had he bothered to push it to the bottom of the laundry basket, so all of their other clothes covered it, if it was just another infection?

❃❃❃

On Monday, he went to work even though he had wanted to stay home with Sam. Luckily Jo was off of work, so she was able to come to work to take care of her son. Perhaps if the symptoms had shown up earlier, Noah could have found a way to come to an agreement with his boss so he could work from home, but alas. Jo always took good care of her boy, though, and Sam was pretty much out of it, so it didn’t quite matter whether Noah was there for him or not.

For once, his Monday didn’t go by as slowly as it usually did. He worked at the customer service desk at a local company, so his day was mostly spent explaining to confused elders how they should refill their printer inks, and processing orders for new overpriced computers. The day didn’t go by faster because something exciting finally had managed to happen at work, but it helped to know that he would return home to Sam, even with his illness, which never happened on Mondays. Work was dull, with the fake script he had to read during every call, even though every customer knew that it was inauthentic, and that Noah was just trying to get them to give up a little more money to the company. Extra money he himself would not see deposited into his bank account.

It reached five p.m. while he was finishing up a call. He impatiently tapped his foot against the floor, not wanting to extend his shift by even a second. Finally, after three excruciating minutes of giving the same instructions, he was able to utter his usual and have a nice rest of your day, miss! before ending the call. A tired sigh left him as he pulled on his jacket while also nodding goodbye towards the only other customer service worker in the company. When he looked at the clock, he realized that if he hurried he could still make it to the next train back home without having to wait too long. He imagined coming home to Sam, probably already tucked into bed, and a smile pulled at his lips. His boyfriend loved being taken care of, and Noah loved taking care of him just as much. It felt nice, to be useful, to make someone you adore feel better when they need it.

It was practically freezing outside, and he began to understand how Sam had managed to get sick yet again. While he made his way to the station, it suddenly began to rain. Before he knew it, the rain was crashing down onto the world, fast and painful against his skin. It cracked against the pavement with an ugly sound that made his head ring. He couldn’t help but curse that last customer, who had asked for clarification probably a hundred times. If he had left right at five, he might have been able to avoid the worst of the storm. When he finally made it to the station, he pulled out his phone to message Jo, excited to let her know that he wouldn’t take long to get home. The screen lit up slowly, and he was immediately met with notifications about missed calls and texts from her number.

“Shit,” he groaned, urgently looking around for a quiet place where he could take a call. Though every bit of the station was overflowing with people huddling away from the rain.

It was difficult to figure out what to do, to hold onto a single thought as his brain threw dozens of them at him per second. He forced his trembling hands to still so he could call Jo back, rushing to figure out where the toilets were — no matter how often he went to the station, he could never remember where anything was. His feet and his fingers felt numb from the cold, all he could focus on was his racing mind. He could hear Jo’s voice coming from his phone, quiet and tinny — she still had an old phone, one which couldn’t even take pictures — but he could not force himself to answer. There was something wrong with Sam, he knew, something bad enough to warrant an unexpected call from his mother. Jo certainly knew that a sudden call from her, along with a sick Sam at home, would worry him half to death.

Finally, he reached the toilets. He slipped into the only empty stall and locked it.

“Jo,” he breathed, attempting to focus on his phone, instead of the image of Sam, terribly sick and maybe even dead already. “Is everything alright?”

“Schat,” her voice was distant, but she did not sound distraught. She did not sound like she could have lost her son. Surely, it couldn’t be so bad if Jo wasn’t upset over it. And yet she had called for a reason. “I — sorry, I panicked, I didn’t think to just leave only a message. Sammy fainted, and he had a fever, so I had to bring him to the hospital, but —”

She continued to speak, but Noah couldn’t bring himself to listen. He hated himself for always leaving his phone on Do Not Disturb while he worked, he shouldn’t have done so knowing that Sam was ill. He felt a stab of grief in his stomach as he imagined his boyfriend being rushed to the hospital, not knowing whether Noah would answer his mother’s calls and come to comfort him. It felt like he had betrayed the man. “He’s at the hospital right now?”

“They told me he was dehydrated, which is normal. Everything’s normal right now. They were worried about the fever for a bit, but that was two hours ago, schat. I called right when he got admitted, when I wasn’t sure yet. But I am now, he’s fine, just not at home, I messaged. Sorry, I thought you would have read my messages.”

He looked back at his phone, clicked on one of the notifications, and there it was: sorry, called in a hurry. Things aren’t urgent anymore. Message me when you get off of work.

“Can I visit him?”

“Noah,” Jo sighed. “It’s best if you go home. Visiting time will be over soon, and they told me Sam won’t have to stay long. Right now, they think he can leave tomorrow morning, if things keep improving like they are.”

“Okay, okay,” he whispered, unlocking the bathroom door. “I’ll see you at the flat, then?”

The woman hummed over the phone. They said goodbye twice before hanging up, and he got three apologies from Jo for worrying him. By the time that he reached the train platform, he had already missed the train.

❃❃❃

Sam came home early the next day, mainly alright. He was paler, and thirsty all the time, but his fever wasn’t dangerous anymore and he was in no way close to dying. Noah called off from work, feeling bad for the other customer service worker, but it was also partly because of the ache blooming behind his own eyes. He had tried to figure out what to do at home while his boyfriend slept the day away, only waking for glasses of water and to use the toilet. Sam had been getting sick often for the past two months, and it seemed to be getting worse each time. Never before had the man fainted, though, never before had it gotten bad enough for him to need the hospital.

Could it be — Noah was ashamed to admit it, but he had turned to Google with shaking fingers and searched up bulimia symptoms, as if he had never heard about the disorder before. It felt like he was a failure, for not knowing Sam enough, for needing to search something up online. Was it his fault, though, when all he knew about bulimia were the things his teacher had told him during cooking class ages ago? In his mind, bulimics were everything that Sam wasn’t — they were depressed, they were underweight, they ate and ate and ate — how often did the other man eat? It was awful that he didn’t even know for sure.

His search told him that bulimics, just like anorexics, might have weaker immune systems.

He thought again about the shirt, still hidden away in the laundry basket, and the discoloured shower tiles, and of the acidic smell, which now seemed to linger everywhere — though he felt like it was mostly in his own imagination. After the search, he also began to think about the percentage of bulimics that died because of their disease, how some people got bad enough to rupture their esophagus while vomiting, leaving them to die in their bathroom. Others had their teeth rot out of their mouths, Noah could almost imagine the smell of that. Sam had always hated the dentist, hated anything that could damage his teeth, and he had also always been careful with his health in general — so what was bad enough for him to throw all caution to the wind?