We did not die today!

When Debby registered Ferris was the person near her, she relaxed visibly. There was a small group of people that Debby felt any sort of comfort with and Ferris was number one on the list. In fact, Debby was certain that Ferris was really the only person who truly understood her. And their encouragement was enough to make Debby feel a little more confident in her words, even though she was sure she was still going to sound a little uncertain. “I dunno…I thought maybe? But then I thought what if our friends don’t like what I bring home or what if the animal hates me or what if they get really sick and di-” she stopped herself, the tears flowing freely again. “I just wanted to look…That’s all.”

Angelo breathed out heavily through his nose, but only because that’s what he always did when he actively got worried over. Most of the day was spent with people being scared of him, people patronizing him, people telling him to cheer up, and Riley, who was…A good kid, but not one that saw the extent of what he usually ended up doing to himself through the day.

His silence was interrupted for just a moment by a little ‘tsk’, too used to peroxide to actually hiss about it at this stage in his life. Maybe when he was a teenager… “This is helping?” he had to ask, glancing at what was happening. “I think the real help would be if I could…not.” Then again, he knew what holding back felt like, and that was more bullshit than screwing up his hands. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll switch to just kicking to spare you tomorrow night,” he joked, grinning despite himself.

Ferris allowed themselves a small smile at that, though they weren’t sure why that was so hard to believe. Maybe they tended to get so panicked that it seemed like something to set them off, but panic was for the things they couldn’t do anything about. There was plenty of that in the world, plenty of pain they couldn’t soothe and plenty of wounds they couldn’t heal, but this was something they could set in the right direction, and they knew that deep down Angelo wasn’t entirely unappreciative of being taken care of. It was a hard thing to ask for, so when they saw a window to offer, why not?

“Well, don’t get arrested now,” they admonished, moving the treated gauze pad into place over the open cuts before opening a new roll of the bandages themselves, getting a decent wrap around his knuckles to secure the pad in place. “That would definitely be the worse of the two options. I can fight injury, not the law.” They set to wrapping the bandages around his hand, tight enough to hold the pad in place but loose enough to allow for movement and circulation, readying the tape as one hand held the wrappings in place. “Just don’t get into too much trouble and we might be okay.”

She sat next to them. Not to close, she didn’t want to crowd them. She hated seeing Ferris worked up like this. She’d brought in a weighted blanket and a mug of tea which she set on the end table. She didn’t know what they needed but she knew those things helped her sometimes. She was bad at helping when it came to these sorts of things, but she wanted to. Joy wasn’t the only one who was able to make people feel better, right? Diana could do this. “Hey,” she said softly. “I’m here for you, okay? I’m right here.”

@m-e-t-e-o-r​

This was, by any standards, a rough night. And Ferris had had a lot of rough nights to date. They weren’t entirely sure how it had started, or rather, they were sure it had started while watching the news, which was a mistake on their part in hindsight, and now they were here, shaking at their joints and going white-knuckled grasping at their own ankles and wrists in an act of self soothing. They blinked up at Diana apologetically, panicking all the more at how pathetic they must have seemed, huddled over themselves. Still, they were grateful and hoped that showed in their acceptance and the muted nod they initially met her with. They tried to apologize, took a little while too long to while they tried to figure out how to accept air back into their lungs, but eventually the apology came with their thanks on hiccup breaths. They rubbed their eyes, tried to breathe again. “I r-- I really am s--” another breath, “-orry. Sorry.”

Angelo paused at the sight of Ferris with their hands out, everything neatly arranged and he felt…like a fucking asshole. Yeah, he was one, but usually he didn’t feel like he was one. Begrudgingly, Angelo shifted and placed both of his hands into Ferris’, glancing from the scars and open places quickly to the carpet. Him and his fuckup hands. “I could’ve done it,” he heard himself nearly grumble, though there wasn’t any bite there. There never was.

At least Ferris’ response to not being able to sleep sounded about typical, even though it only served to make Angelo a little antsier because nothing ever changed. Still, he managed to not think about that, biting on tongue for a moment until the urge to say something about it went away. “Sorry,” he offered, and it sounded lame. “Guess you tried everything, or I’d try and help.”

Ferris offered his friend a small smile, though their eyes never left their task. “I know.” They bit at the inside of their cheek, always a bit sick to see Angelo hurt, but they knew it could always be worse. They were a caretaker, through and through, and with Angelo, whether he wanted it or not, there was always something to take care of. And Ferris didn’t mind that. In fact, they welcomed it. More often than not they felt useless, secluded in their chosen spaces, stuck with the little things, menial things, the things that only came out at the worst of times. Here, they were useful. It wasn’t bad.

They started with the disinfectant, keeping a stretch of gauze beneath Angelo’s hand to catch the drips from Ferris’s gentle pour of the peroxide, thin fingers curling just below Angelo’s palm as they watched the solution bubble. They shrugged a bit, removing the gauze and setting it to the wide on top of a wrapper to be disposed of later. “You are helping,” they murmured, applying ointment to the pad they were readying to place over the open wounds. “You get it all out, which - very jealous of - but you don’t always take the time to bring yourself back together,” they finally glanced up with a small, careful smile. “So I’m happy to help.”

Even when Ferris called out to come on in, Riley still waited a moment for them to open the door - not wanting to intrude on their space. Unlike with most of the other housemates, Riley had a high level of respect for Ferris’s privacy and the fact that they needed a few more boundaries than most of the others. “Not till a bit later,” they answered with a returning smile of their own as they stepped into the room and dropped down onto the bed. “I went to the ice and ran some drills till they closed down. But I kept my pepper spray out and ready the whole walk home, I promise.”

Ferris smiled, exasperated still sometimes by Riley’s dedication to their sport as much as they were inspired by that same mad insistence on keeping it up. They tended to worry for Riley’s safety a bit too much, but Ferris still accepted that they’d come home and stayed safe while doing so. It was all they could ask. “Good workout?” they asked, feeling kind of lame in doing so, but it was a workout, wasn’t it? Something like that at least, drill was a technical term. They sighed at themselves mostly and moved to the low couch at the base of their bed, wordlessly inviting Riley to sit as well. “I’ll trust you. You know you can always call me if you need a ride home, or anything, right? My ringer is always turned up in case you need something.”

Joy giggled. She knew they were being serious, but she found it sort of adorable. Ferris was sort of adorable. “I dunno. Maybe a really hot chili? A spicy sauce to go on some pasta? Enchiladas? Curry? There are so many options!” She was almost overwhelmed by them. Almost. “So what do you think? I appreciate your feedback but I also want to get started right away!”

Ferris blinked rapidly in response to Joy’s rapid fire brainstorming, cocking their head to the side as they weighed the options. A curry was simply out of the question; Joy had too much fun with them, and they never ended well, at least for Ferris - not when they hadn’t prepared it themselves with a lighter blend of spices. “Enchiladas we could do,” they eventually decided, pointing a warning finger. “But we keep the spices in the sauces, alright? Let everyone decide what kind of torture they’ll take.”

Angelo nodded, not very surprised, and turned back to what he was doing. Really, this was all just a matter of needing to bandage his hands back up and heading back to his room, but…nah. Ferris had seen his hands before, anyway, they knew it was ugly. So he stayed still and shrugged. “Not tired,” he answered simply, and that was true.  As usual, he was restless in that way he always was, where it felt like he needed to get into a fight but could never find the right one to get into. Where he wanted to just scream. “Plus I figured I’d let these new places air out a bit when nobody had to look at me.”

Fiddling a bit with the first aid kit, he went ahead and got out what he needed, everything on top like it always was because apparently he couldn’t go a day without fucking himself up more. “How ‘bout you? Real bad or only kinda bad?”

Ferris came across the living room to perch on the edge of the coffee table, moving the first aid kit and the items that Angelo had retrieved into their lap and sighing softly. They sorted through things, more than anything just to have something to do with their hands, nimble fingers sorting through gauze, bandages, tape, ointment, setting them all out in a sort of assembly line order on the table next to where they sat. They reached out, then, hands upturned in asking, wanting to assess the damage. They could have asked what happened this time, could have gone from there, but they imagined it would be much of the same as always. Not all injuries were accidents, and these were, they supposed, occupational hazards. They murmured, “I’ll look,” for good measure and did their best to see what they were working with in the dim light.

“I don’t know if I’d say bad,” they tried, though they both knew that Ferris would go much past bad - terrible, horrific, even. But those words lost their meaning when every night went by very much the same, or at least reached a similar extent. A long time had passed since Ferris realized that they were better off saving the more colorful adjectives for the rock bottom nights when they couldn’t leave their floor. “I just couldn’t fall asleep; I kept thinking and worrying and thinking about worrying and...” They shrugged, scrunching up their nose to bring their glasses higher. “Same stuff, different day.”

@m-e-t-e-o-r

It was around that time where Joy and Ferris would start preparing dinner, except Ferris hadn’t left their room yet. Joy tried to respect their privacy and normally left them alone for the most part, but when it came to making sure mouths were fed she waited for no one. So she knocked on their door, softer than she would with the others, and let herself in when they hadn’t said anything in response. “Hey there,” she greeted, a warm smile on her face. “Are you cooking with me tonight? I was thinking something spicy! But if you don’t want to that is fine with me!”

Ferris had been aware enough not to jump when Joy entered their room unannounced, not totally surprised by her lack of real warning before she did so. She appeared when she wanted to and the rest of them had learned to run with it, so there Ferris was, running with it, holding the papers they’d been working through down. On the bright side, they weren’t grading, but they had been researching which they held in similarly high regard. “Hi, Joy,” they sighed, marking the last coherent sentence they’d read and understood with the tip of a highlighter and rearranging the pages so that their current one was on top before they clipped them back together. Cooking felt secondary to some extent, but everyone needed to eat, and Joy had a tendency to get experimental. “How spicy?” They asked as they stood, pushing their chair in neatly. “Acid reflux is real, you know.”

It was late, and everyone should have been asleep. Angelo was up, of course, sitting in the living room with the first aid kit in front of him. For once, his hands were not bandaged, and he was flexing his fingers in silence before he redid them, looking at the scars and healing wounds around his knuckles in silence. Whatever infomercial was on the tv in front of him was giving off some weird light, and he was only distracted by a small noise behind him. A scared one.

“Just me, Ferris. Can’t sleep?”

@m-e-t-e-o-r

Ferris knew that their fretting could be a bit of a nuisance, and they never wanted that nuisance to be overwhelming, so sure, sometimes they stayed a part of the backdrop, waiting to be acknowledged, or not to be acknowledged, as they made sure that the people in their life were okay. That was okay. They were okay with that. It was just that once that habit had been built, they didn’t often expect said acknowledgement. They blinked once or twice, in surprise, then in acceptance, stepping forward from the shadows to be more present in their concern. 

“A little bit of trouble,” they admitted, trying to make something like eye contact over Angelo’s shoulder as they made their way to him. “Thought I’d make sure everyone else was doing alright...” They hesitated a moment, then added in a soft voice, “Seems like everyone else is asleep. Something keeping you awake?”

“ferris,” they called out, standing outside of their roommates door. they didn’t knock though, not wanted to potentially spook the other. it had been awhile since riley had spent some proper one on one time with their older friend and they felt today was the day to rectify that. “is it okay to come in?” @m-e-t-e-o-r

Roused from their not-quite-rest, Ferris lifted their head from their arms and straightened themselves in their desk chair with a quiet groan, rolling their shoulders to stretch. They had been grading quizzes once upon a time, sort of pointless quizzes that didn’t make up more than two percent of final grades, but they liked having small assessments to keep their students on track. They couldn’t see or feel the red smudge from their grading pen on their cheek, but it was there and vibrant, the pattern of their jumper embedded in the skin of their forehead. “Hey,” they called out, just loud enough to be heard through the door. “Yeah, come on in.” They went to get the door for Riley, pulling it open and revealing the lair behind it, smiling softly. “I didn’t hear you get in yesterday, what time did you come home?”

Coming home, for Ferris, was always a momentous occasion of sorts. Work was always something, and they always stayed during their office hours out of some sort of fear of missing students who needed help, and yet, once again, no one showed up. They wished they’d worked through grading papers at home, but knowing their luck that would have meant a student in need would have been knocking on the door of an empty office. While Ferris was never sure who would be home when they did arrive, they knew that it would be a world far better than the one outside, and when the first person they saw was Debby, they lit up, walking a bit taller and setting their bag on the table to wrap her up in a big bear hug. “How’re we doing today, Debs?” they asked, speaking mostly into her hair while they ran through scenarios at light speed. Good days or bad, they liked to be prepared.