Knife and Scalpel

Here’s some more of my favorite whumpy stories! Content warnings can be found on individual masterlists

Pet/slave whump:

• Behavior modification - @whumpcereal

• Daniel Michaelson’s story - @ashintheairlikesnow

• We’re Ok; Simon and Oliver - @endless-whump

• Burning at both ends - @angst-after-dark

• As we hope for better - @shinyhatsunemiku

• Blue’s life - @sideblogformindtrash

• The kennel - @whumpcereal

• The fighter - @hold-him-down

• Royal slave - AlwaysTired07

• The long leash - Ryoko21

Takes place after the Same Bed Arc’s conclusion

For @whumptober 2022, Day 18: “Just get it over with.”

CW: Man, I don’t know. Jake is weird about religion, contacting relatives who thought you were dead… I have no idea what to content warn for this one. It’s really comf.

-

Kauri sits at the edge of the bed, staring down at the simple rectangle in his hand, with its glittery teal case a comforting soft plastic wrapping, the screen lit up as his thumb inputs the numbers that he’s written down on a piece of paper. 

He glances back and forth from one to the other, making sure each press is correct, taking his time. Taking too much time. 

He almost puts the phone down. 

Almost. 

Antoni, head laying on his thigh and the rest of him angled away across the bed, right at the edge, offers only the touch that he can stand right now. He tilts his chin up to look almost upside-down at Kauri. 

Something in the warm dark brown of his eyes is calming. Maybe just that Kauri has looked into them for so long. “Do not be afraid,” He offers, voice low and soft. “Nothing bad will happen.”

Jake, seated next to Kauri, huffs soundless laughter. When the other two men look at him in confusion, he sighs, running his hand down his face. “It just made me think… fear not, for I am with you,” He intones in mocking seriousness. It pulls a slightly unwilling smile onto Kauri’s face. “Be not dismayed, for I am your… uh, your Jake and Antoni…  I will-”

“We,” Antoni corrects serenely. “We will, Jasha.”

“We, sorry Ant, we will strengthen you, we will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand-”

“You’ll do what with your right hand?” Kauri actually giggles, his low deep laughter a relief to both of the other men. “Clearly the Bible is sexier than I think it is.”

“It’s really not. I’ve been trying to forget all that shit for years. I mean, the one part is… kind of. If you don’t think too much about the metaphors. I wasn’t allowed to read that bit for a long time.”

“Why not?” Antoni blinks. 

“Don’t know. Maybe they were worried I’d start thinking girls could think sexy thoughts, too, and wonder why they were supposedly so bad to have if, like, the wisest king had them…” He trails off. “Probably just because we might read the word ‘breasts’.”

There’s a pause. “I don’t get it,” Kauri says. “Did they think you didn’t know, or…”

“Honestly? No idea. You weren’t exactly allowed to ask.”

“Well, I bet the Bible would all be sexy if I read it,” Kauri points out, his thumb hovering over the little phone icon, not quite pressing to make the call. “Just think about what I could do with all the shit Jesus said.”

“Probably would be, but then my relationship with religion would get even weirder than it already is, so maybe not a great plan.” Jake leans over and presses a kiss into Kauri’s black curls, still damp from the shower. “Hey. You’re stalling.”

Kauri wrinkles his nose. “Am not.”

Its so good. It’s hurting me. It’s healing me. I vcan’t stop reading this.

HIS MOM GREATING JAKE AND BEING HAPPY HE iS MARRIED!!!! HIS MOM NOT SAYING ANYTHING AGAINST HIM HAVING TWO PARTNERS!!!!! JAKE GREETING BACK AND BLUSHING!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

*continues to have a wholesome meltdown*

This is a series, Masterlist Here!

TW: Medical emergency, hospitals, police, use of excessive force, dehumanization, muzzle, Restraints, needles, injection, PTSD flashbacks, dissociation, conditioned response, noncon drugs, unreality.

Yves had made his choice. It was highly illegal, what he was doing. He wasn’t supposed to drive the car. It had been decades since vampires were allowed to drive vehicles. He wasn’t supposed to leave private property without the horrible collar on. But the labored breaths and thready heartbeat of the woman sitting white-faced in the seat beside him made him bold. He’d do anything for Miss Edith. And there’d been no one else at home to get her to the help she had to have. He knew what it was likely to cost him, and he didn’t care.

CW: Some references to past trauma, forced illiteracy, some brief internalized victim-blaming/slut-shaming, Kauri’s low self-esteem

Takes place after Worth the Risk and Kauri’s first glimpse of his own past

“This is fucking stupid. I can’t fucking do this.” Kauri picks up the notebook, hard-backed blue with little golden stars twinkling on the cover, and throws it full-strength across the room until it smacks into the wall and drops to the ground, open to his own scrawling, struggling handwriting.

Chris, wrapped in a big fuzzy blue blanket and curled up in an armchair playing a game on his phone or texting Laken or maybe both, flinches and looks up. “Kauri?”

Kauri looks away from the earnest concern in those huge green eyes and kicks ineffectually at the coffee table, hissing when he doesn’t actually miss and his toes connect with the hard wooden leg. “Fuck. Fucking-... bullshit, I’m an idiot trying to do this, just-... god damn it. I should know better.”

There’s a silence, and then Chris asks, softly, “Know better than, than... than to what? What were you, um, you doing?”

Kauri’s jaw is set and for a second he considers lying. He’s a good liar, after all, and Chris is always so ready to believe him, he wouldn’t even question it. Safer to lie, hide the ideas inside his head, talk instead about something soft and surface-level. 

Safer to be stupid, always.

But he’s trying not to do that anymore.

He’s trying.

Sooo this might not be chronological or have much of a plot but I am apparently a bit compulsive when it comes to writing and I Gotta. I was thinking about Box Boys, and a conditioning problem I wrote for rp, and how they’d look in my world of Tsanet… and this happened.

This is more D&D 5E based Whump.

(It’s Fih-DEY- lee-us, if you’re curious)

TW: mind control, memory loss, conditioning, drugs mention, battle gore, death

“He’s shaking.”

“Side effect of the herbs. It’s fading already. See his breathing steadying? He’s going to wake up. Yours will be the first face he sees.”

“Is that important?”

“The words are the trigger, but him seeing you as you say them may help solidify the binding.”

“How will we know if it works? Might it work only partially?”


“No, Lady, if the spells have taken effect it will either do as I promised, or nothing at all. Free will is a very powerful force to bind.”

CW: Referenced past pet whump, mentioned negative stimming resulting in self-injury, pet whump (different character) with intimate whumper, grief, referenced parental death, trauma response, brief reference to true crime

Timeline: Chris is 25 years old in this piece

Rafael (Raf) first appears, unnamed, in this drabble from Chris’s early college days

Laken’s hand is warm in his, their fingers intertwined, as they stand underneath the hanging bones of an enormous ancient thing like a whale but entirely unlike it, too. Chris closes his eyes, swaying lightly side to side, humming softly as he imagines it, rows of teeth with some as big as his hand, moving through oceans older than anything he can imagine, chasing down prey.

The sun shines in through the all-glass windows that make up the other side of the atrium, warming against his shirt without prickling his skin. The lights are far up and away, and the sunlight is stronger. 

“Wow,” Laken murmurs, and he glances over at them to see their chin tipped back, liquid dark eyes focused on the recreated bones not so far above their head. “I’ve never been here before. Have you?”

Chris feels the hint of pain at the question, and for once it’s not in his head from memories but simply the aftermath of what he knows. “Yeah,” He answers, voice low and soft. “With my, my dad and mom. Long, um, a, a long time ago.”

CW: NSFW, bondage, spitting, demeaning language as dirty talk, consensual spice, I hope the intersection of filthy and sweet. 

*****

CW: some internalized homophobia, coarse discussion of sex and hookups, discussion of m/m/f threesome, consensual marijuana use, food mention, boxboy universe, human pet.

****

Sometimes, when Cam and Alex were lying lazily about and passing Cam’s weed pen back and forth, they would forget Zee was there. Not entirely, of course. But in those late spring days when everything got hot and slow and Cam put a box fan in his window to move the air, they would say the strangest things in his presence.

 It was then, lying half-under Cam’s desk on his back and fanning himself with a flimsy one subject notebook, he knew for sure that he was right about Alex and Cameron; something had shifted between them. Something had changed and he couldn’t remember exactly when it had happened. 

“I heard something about you.” Cam said, suppressing a cough as he blew skunky vapor out of his lungs. 

From the floor, Zee could see Alex propped up against Cam’s pillows, eyes low and stoned.  “It’s true.” He accepted the pen and took another hit. “Whatever you heard.”

Cam ignored him. “I heard you slept with Claire from Gamma Phi. And then, and this is the good part, her jealous boyfriend, too.”

Alex laughed silently, visibly only by the subtle way his chest shook with it.

Zee’s hearing sharpened at the turn of conversation. He knew Claire. Claire had honey-brown eyes and a heart pendant that she wore in the hollow of her throat. Her hair had been in a messy, slept-in french braid and she’d stayed with him that second weekend, never letting Amber have him to herself. He remembered how familiar Claire and Alex had been with each other, and wondered if they hadn’t slept together before. But a boyfriend? He imagined first Alex and this faceless guy, and then his imagination placed Alex, Claire, and the boyfriend all in bed together, with each other. 

“So?” Cam asked. 

“So what?”

“So it’s true?”

Alex huffed, lifted himself up to scoot down lower on the pillows in a way that made his triceps flex and bulge. Zee watched, endlessly fascinated by the musculature of Alex’s body, the blond hair of his forearms and the blue vascularity of his wrists. He draped one leg over Cam’s lap. “Claire and me, sure. A few times. Nothing in a couple of months though. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”

Cam didn’t touch Alex, but he apparently tolerated being used as a perch for his calf and foot. That alone would’ve been unimaginable  just a few short months ago. 

“So why am I hearing it from two different people?”

Alex sighed. “Coz one of them told the other one. That’s how rumors work.”

“Yeah. But now everyone is saying how you fuck guys, and you even fucked some straight guy.”

“Mmhm.” Alex took the pen from Cam again, hit it with a long, slow drag. When his phone chimed beside him, he glanced down as if he didn’t know what it was for a moment.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

Zee winced at Cam’s tone, the accusatory and prying one he used to hear often, and could not do much but nod yes or no, whichever response it seemed like Cam wanted at the moment. 

He accidentally caught Alex’s eye, and Alex smiled at him- that lazy, roguish grin that always made him want to smile back. He rummaged in a plastic bag by his hip from the gas station, came up with a Slim Jim. He held it aloft and raised his eyebrows. Zee nodded and Alex tossed it to him. 

“Doesn’t bother you? Really? You’re not even going to defend yourself?”

“About what? To you? Or to…whoever repeats some weak ass gossip?”

“Weak?”

“Hey, I haven’t seen Claire’s boyfriend, but I trust her judgement. It’s sort of flattering. Ridiculous, but…” He winked down at Zee and Zee blushed, busied himself in peeling the plastic apart to get to his snack. 

“What if the rumor was that you and another brother were fucking?” 

Fucking. The word sounded dirtier than usual the way Cam was using it. Like it was an accusation. 

Alex unscrewed the lid to a bottle of soda cautiously, watching the bubbles threatening to rush to the top. “You mean…”

“Like say there’s a rumor that you and another one of your brothers are fucking and hiding it.” He over-enunciates rumor, and brother. “Pretending to be straight.”

Alex looks at him over the lid of his soda bottle. “But I’m not. Pretending to be straight.”

Zee paused mid-chewing to glance at Cam. He didn’t reply. He just looked off to the side, at a patch of his floor. He didn’t have any of his usual mirth or slyness in his face, even the meanness was gone. It gave away how young he was. He looked alone. Lost, even. 

Zee climbed out from under the desk, up onto the foot of the bed where Cam had his back against the wall. The fan felt good on his face, stippled with sweat. He’d take a cool shower later, when the sun went down. Tentatively, making sure he wasn’t misreading and about to get shoved to the floor, he crawled onto the bed at Cam’s feet. Alex moved his leg, giving him room. He laid his head on Cam’s lap, minimizing points of contact so not to share unnecessary body heat.

For a moment, Cam only tolerated him as he had Alex’s leg. He listened to the silence, the whir of the fan in the window and Alex unscrewing his bottle cap the rest of the way.  

Then Cam laid a hand on Zee’s back, between his shoulder blades. Slowly, he began to pull his fingers in and out in a soothing motion, something between a pet and a scratch. The red pen came into his line of vision from above. He could tell from the position of his fingers Cam was offering to hold it so he didn’t have to move. It felt like just that, an offer. He could shake his head and it would disappear. 

Alone, with these two boys on an afternoon that promised a hot summer, he didn’t mind being a little high, a little impaired. He leaned forward and put his lips on it, let Cam fire it so all he had to do was draw breath. 

It burned, familiar and earthy, and he only held it a few seconds in the bottom of his lungs. Cam pulled it away and he watched dust falling in a beam of afternoon sunlight, like snow in zero gravity. 

“I’d deny it.” Alex said quietly, like he’d been thinking about it this whole time. “If you wanted.”

Through the gentle elevator-ride of his mild high coming on, Zee wondered if that could mean what he thought it did between them. So there’s something to deny. He knew he should feel strangely about that. It was almost comically unlikely, in his world. Or so he thought. But if they could stand to be in a room together now, he could enjoy them both. 

Cam didn’t reply. If he and Alex exchanged a look, Zee couldn’t see it from his position on Cam’s lap. 

If you in anyway support Donald Trump unfollow and block this blog.

I do not want anything you have to offer. I do not want you using my prompts or interacting with me.

Donald Trump is a terrorist. His followers are part of a cult.

@gottalovethemwriters (won’t let me tag you!) requested:  I know Kauri said he’d be there when Jake wakes up but could we have a drabble or snippet -or whatever you want, honestly- where Kauri wakes up and has to convince himself it’s okay to stay? please?

CW: Domestic abuse survivor navigating trust and relationships, some trauma response, PTSD references, referenced consensual spice

Jake is still asleep when Kauri slides out of bed.

After years of finding his way into apartments and bedrooms and basements next to a series of men he can barely remember, whose names slip off his tongue like oil or stick like ash or just don’t stay at all, Kauri is an expert at getting out of bed without waking the other people in it up.

He inches along the cool sheets and he doesn’t allow himself to look back until he’s out, pulling on his pants from the night before, tossed haphazardly with laughter. There’s an ache in him, sweet and slight, the stretched muscles of a night spent moving, laughing, arching his back and wrapping his legs around Jake’s waist, hands on either side of the other man’s face. His fingers twitch at the memory of Jake’s stubble scratchy against his palms, his cheek, his lips.

He can still hear it, still feel Jake’s hands sliding along the outsides of his thighs, shifting up to his hips, murmuring things in his ear in that low, deep voice that the really tall guys get sometimes.

He looks back, once his pants are on. 

He gives himself a moment to love the ache, and mourn walking away from the promise he knows neither of them can keep.

CW: Negative stimming including stimming resulting in self-injury, pet whump, death of parents, grief, ableism, past noncon references, r*pe survivor having severe PTSD flashbacks, memory of shock collars, derogatory language, dehumanization, meltdown/panic attack, whump of a minor referenced repeatedly. 

This is Chris in a very dark place - stay safe.

Directly follows Found Out, Akio, and Chris Sees.

Come on, 223499-

I’m Tristan! My, my, my name is Tristan, Tristan H-Higgs and I l, I, I live at-… but, um, no, no, at my, my my aunt’s ap, apartment now-

Tristan Higgs is a fucking corpse, kid. You don’t have a name anymore.

No, I’m, my, my name is, is, is-is-

 Your name is for your prospective to choose. Now let me show you how we shut you up.

 The boy is screaming, twisting, writhing in pain on the floor, clawing at the black collar around his neck, desperate to somehow escape it, but there isn’t any way out. He digs his fingernails down his skin but it’s still there, the collar never leaves, you’re only safe with your collar on, no wait that hadn’t happened yet-

Oh, that’s nice. Time for the Drip for you. 

N-no, no-

Welcome home, 223499.

M-my name is, is, is Tristan-

Chris slams the door on his way into the bathroom, locks it behind him, sweeps everything off the counter with a crash, plastic bottles of soap bouncing, a toothpaste container clicking against the tile, the toothbrush holder shattering and sending shards of ceramic pale on one side and rainbow-painted on the other everywhere. He stares at them clicking over the floor before they stop, some of them skimming the tile all the way to the wall. 

Inside his head, there is a cry, bubbling up behind the wall that his life has been hidden behind, deep inside the cold pale light that all the worst things drown in. 

CW: PTSD, conditioned behavior, degrading language, dehumanization, pet whump, noncon touch (nonsexual)

Come here, love. 

The voice is low, with that thick English accent that will make his skin crawl for the rest of his life. The ashtray moves quickly, without hesitation, eyes locked on Mr. Davies’s face, trying to read every minute change in his expression, to understand whether tonight will be meant for keeping his mouth closed to hold in his need to scream, or to keep his mouth open for something far worse.

There’s a good lad. Good as any well-trained dog, aren’t you? 

Thick fingers move through his curly dark hair, and he leans into the touch, eyes closed. When the fingers grip on, grab, force his head to the side, he goes as limp as he can without moving off his knees. He allows his head to be tilted far to the right, baring the left side of his neck. 

Smoke moves thick in the air around Mr. Davies, sickly-sweet clove cigarette between his teeth, but it won’t be for long.

Mr. Davies brushes a bit of dust off the ashtray’s shoulder, gives him a little shake with the hand in his hair

Antoni-

No, that’s not yet his name. The ashtray doesn’t have one. 

Beg, love.

As always, the command is given with soft confidence that he will obey.

As always, he does. 

He begs, and pleads, and it is never enough. Maybe next time, Mr. Davies murmurs. Maybe next time you’ll do it correctly.

His collar bites into the skin of his throat as his head is forced even further to the right, his ear nearly touching his shoulder. His breath catches in his throat, the embered end of the cigarette held tightly between his owner’s thumb and fingers the only thing he can focus on in all of reality. 

Antoni, I, I need-

Here you go, love, Mr. Davies whispers. Even the softest whisper from his owner drowns out any other sound. His voice is loving, affectionate, as he grinds the cigarette into the side of the ashtray’s neck. One sin atoned. If only you were able to stop committing new ones.

The pain shatters him.

He doesn’t scream.

His place is not to scream - it is the woman’s place to scream, in the bedroom, at night - while the man listens in his own bed and sings lullabies he can’t quite remember to drown out the sound.

He is not allowed to scream. 

Antoni!

The ashtray’s mouth opens in a rush of air that he has to catch, desperately, as any sound will lead to far worse than a burn. All that escapes him is a strangled moan, one that could nearly be mistaken for passion. 

Good, love, Mr. Davies praises, and with tears in his eyes, the ashtray feels so, so grateful for the mercy that comes with the cigarette is put away, the sweet smell of cloves mixing with the scent of burnt skin. 

The ashtray keeps breathing in pants, eyes wide, and his body shakes as if there are hands on him, he can hear something breaking through. He can’t look away from Mr. Davies, though, he can’t, he can’t or it will be worse, so much worse, there is so much worse than the burns, he’ll do anything not to be thrown in the bathtub with ice overnight again, there are too many sins to atone and he has no way to earn forgiveness. 

The pain is fierce, throbbing, and endless, and he keeps shaking-

“Ant! Antoni! An, Antoni, Antoni, wake-wake up, are you, are you you you awake? Are, are you-... are you awake yet, are you-”

Antoni’s eyes snap open with a gasped inhale. There is weight on him, warm and living, and he struggles in a sudden instinctive fear of it. Weight on him isn’t right, there shouldn’t be, Mr. Davies would never-

The weight is Chris. 

Air rushes out of his lungs all at once in a thin, whimpering moan. The scar on the left side of his neck itches with such severity it feels like pain, phantom cigarette searing already-damaged skin. 

“Ch-Chrisha?” His voice wavers more than he’d like. “Chrisha, wha-... what are... what are you doing?”

He gets his answer when thunder booms, rattling windowsills, and Chris shudders on top of him, nuzzling into his neck, desperate for reassurance. The redhead rolls off and tucks in against his side before Antoni can even begin to formulate any kind of true conscious thought. 

His breath is warm against the itching scar on Antoni’s neck. Somehow, the warmth soothes the burn. Antoni breathes in, thin and whistling through a throat that feels closed with an old, old fear, and then exhales again, as slowly as he can.

“Sc-scared,” Chris whispers, and then whines, flinching when thunder booms again. Antoni can feel it in the bedframe, rattling right up into his bones. The storm must be right overhead - the thunder comes so fast on the heels of the lightning that there is really no time between them at all.

He moves with creaking slowness to hold Chris, sliding one hand up into the fine, soft red hair, stroking there gently, while his other arm slides behind the boy’s back and holds on tight. 

“Please,” Chris whispers. “Jake is, is, is, is gone with, with his, um, with the, uh, the the the-the-the girl, he, um, Addie, and I, I just-”

Lightning- flash of blinding light through the window, barely caught by curtains. Squeaking fear from Chris, burying himself with gasping, tearful breaths against Antoni.

“I understand,” Antoni says, keeping his own voice low, unbothered, even as he nearness of the storm sets his own nerves alight in worry. On the side table next to the bed, his phone starts to vibrate, and Antoni gives a thin, slight smile, knowing who the text messages will be from without having to check.

He’ll get back to Jake later. For now, he holds Chris, and feels thoroughly unable to help him. Unqualified, not right for the job. A scarecrow playacting at being a man.

“I have you,” He whispers. “I have you, Chrisha.”

“D-Don’t make me, make, make, don’t put put put me outside,” Chris whimpers. “Please, please don’t make me go, go, go-go-go outside, please-”

“Never. Not ever. You are safe here, Chrisha.”

Safe with a hollowed man whose body is coated is evidence of the crimes he can never earn forgiveness for, crimes he can’t even recall. It’s not much of a promise of safety at all.

But he holds on tight, and for the moment - for Chris - it’s enough.

---

Your whump author pseudonym: last initial, first initial, the first tree species that comes to mind.

The title of your next fic: The + the color of your shirt + the object directly to your right.

CW: PTSD/trauma recovery focus, references to past burns and current scarring

His eyes feel heated, still, as he ducks his head and walks with a determined step back towards the house. The walk from the bus stop isn’t all that long - maybe fifteen minutes of winding his way through the neighborhood, swinging past the run-down houses of people out enjoying the way the sweltering summer heat is slowly cooling as the sun begins to set.

The light is gold-tinged, and there are dark clouds building far to the southeast that suggests there will be rain, tonight. For now, though, the neighborhood is full of laughing, shouting, talking drinking eating loving life.

 Funny how he has lived here this long and he still stands apart from them.

Perhaps that’s not a problem of being a runaway pet, but of something deeper, some core aspect of whoever he has been in his life. 

The thought makes his burns begin to itch, and he rubs his left hand over his right forearm as he walks, gritting his teeth against the flush of false flame that travels up his arms to his shoulders, itching fires that race down his sides. The burn in the side of his neck, the only one he can’t hide.

I have need of an ashtray, and you do make such a pretty one, don’t you?

Antoni in his long-sleeved shirt and long pants passes households full of people in their tank tops and shorts, sandals that smack and flap against the concrete driveways where they run and toss basketballs into hoops. Babies and toddlers wearing swimsuits or their play clothes or nothing at all splash in little plastic pools, shrieking in delight. Dogs run in and out of sprinklers. Cats sit on porch railing, tails swishing, watching Antoni’s progress with calm thoughtfulness.

Somewhere, further down the street, he can hear Jaden and his friends howling like a pack of wolves, Jaden’s voice a touch lower than the rest. At barely thirteen, Jaden is already growing like a weed through the summer, seems taller every time he appears at the door to ask if Chris wants to come to the park today.

Antoni wonders, sometimes, if Miss Ruth is putting him up to it - but he can’t bear to make himself ask in case the answer is yes. What good would it to do, to break Chris open with information like that?

There’s no mistaking the light in Chris’s eyes that comes with being wanted by someone, thought about when he’s not right in front of them. The desperate affection of someone who is relearning what a friendship is, or maybe didn’t have any at all before. Antoni would be the worst kind of bastard if he took that away.

Who knows? Maybe Jaden and his friends fall as deeply for Chris’s enthusiasm for the world as everyone in the shelter does. It isn’t fair to carry his suspicion like this, when Chris doesn’t have those sorts of thoughts himself.

Especially when Jaden and his friends stood in the safehouse lying to the... cops? They looked and acted like cops, but Nat maintains they were company men playing dress-up. But Jaden and his friends hadn’t known the difference, and still they’d all lied as one about Chris’s existence with no motivation but to do the right thing, even when it meant staring fear in the face and setting your jaw against its threats.

Antoni can say no such strong things about himself. He is instead a man who ran through a dark tunnel and left Chris behind. 

Congratulations, Antoni, you don’t have the courage of your average twelve-year-old boy.

Therapy makes him like this, sometimes - his conversations with Dr. Berger in her home office after hours, twice a month or once a week depending on how he’s doing at the time, leave him melancholy. He feels like he has emptied himself of everything, is a man made of hollow spaces and scars and all the things he did not do, when they most needed done.

“Antoni!”

The voice comes from down the block, and Antoni looks up to see the flash of bright copper under the evening sun that tells him Chris is already outside waiting for his return, swathed in his usual uniform of Jake’s shirt over one of his own. 

Never - not once - has Chris asked him why it took him so long to come back to see if he was okay, after it happened. He is still a burst of light that makes it way out from behind dark clouds.

He raises a hand in a wave, managing a slight smile.

Chris doesn’t wait for him, but instead barrels out into the sidewalk, and Antoni’s eyes catch the shift of a cowboy hat, Jefferson turning to watch while carefully watering the rose bushes he’s convinced he can grow along the front of his house, his partner safely hiding in the shade of the porch and calling out his emotional support while drinking a beer. 

Jefferson looks up, and then back down again. Across the street, Miss Ruth sits fanning herself in a lawn chair while what Antoni assumes is Jaden’s mother and Miss Ruth’s daughter gestures widely, in the midst of a story. 

Naomi’s house is closed up, they’re down in Florida or something and Nat’s been going in to water their houseplants, and why anyone would go to Florida in the middle of summer is a mystery to Antoni.

The bigger mystery is why he even knows that Naomi is gone, or that her name is Naomi at all.

How did I come to know these people, and all these things about them?

The answer, of course, is Chris.

Chris makes it to him with striking speed, already beginning to tell a story about the neighborhood stray having a litter of kittens, and Antoni finds some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders as he slides one arm around Chris’s. The shorter boy walks next to him with a bounce to his step, chattering happily, and Antoni isn’t quite sure when he stops dwelling on his own failures, but by the time they make it up the front steps and to the door, his scars don’t itch any longer.

He pauses, takes a breath. He has failed in so many ways-

“I made, um, I made... made made made dinner tonight,” Chris says, and Antoni’s attempt to blame himself for something simply shatters as he takes that statement in.

“You what? Chrisha... what did you make?”

“Um, first, I tried to, to make pizza.”

“... First?”

“Well, when the smoke, the, um, the smoke-... the fire alarm went off Jake said maybe, um, maybe something that, that that that doesn’t, um, doesn’t use-use the... the oven. I got, um, I got... I was cooking and I went to set the, the timer, but then there was, I saw a thing on TV, and then I heard Jake listening to, to, to-to-to music I liked and then I... forgot.” Chris grins, shamefaced, and Antoni smiles back, shaking his head.

“So? What did you decide on, after the, ah, the smoke cleared?”

“Salad.” Chris gives a firm nod. “You, you can’t burn a salad.”

Antoni laughs, soft and deep-voiced, and Chris brightens even more at the sound. “This is true, Chrisha, this is true. I would be very impressed if you found a way to burn salad. Show me what you did.”

He comes back from therapy sometimes weighed down by his own guilt. Somehow, by the time Chris meets him halfway and leads him back inside, he feels less guilty and more like he has a chance to make up for every failure, simply by allowing Chris to forgive him for them.