Red Dead Racoon

The npc he greeted:

Here’s some Micah Bell x platonic!reader because my last post got me in the fEELS and…yeah

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‘Is that you or your father talking?’

Those words. That sentence. It made him want to scream. To break everything around him, including you.

But he couldn’t move. His feet were planted to the ground, practically growing roots. There was a faint ringing in his ears that he knew too well. A ringing that would be accompanied by the color red, and then his mind blanking. And then once the ringing stops, the red disappears, and he’s aware of his surroundings again, his hands and knife are usually covered in blood or there’ll be a couple of bullets missing from his revolver.

…but the ringing never increased and red didn’t start to cloud his vision. The adrenaline that would usually be pumping through his veins by now never came. In fact, it felt as though his body forgot what adrenaline even was at all. His limbs were far too heavy. He felt small and weak.

And he hated it.

Both of your eyes were still locked on each other. The coldness in yours melted and was slowly being replaced by…concern? Worry? Oh god, he hoped not. He didn’t need some maggot giving him pity. Your mouth opened. You were saying something. But he couldn’t process it. It was like seeing lightning before hearing the thunder a few moments later. Until it finally echoed in his ears.

“Are you okay, Mike?”

Mike? Who the hell did you think you were calling him “Mike.” Whatever was clouding his senses was gone. He was aware of the crackling of the campfire in between you and the snores from the gang who had all went to bed. He tried to will himself to lunge at you, to punch you, kick you, hell even STAB you. But he couldn’t. Instead, he felt something caught in his throat. A painful clench in his chest. He stumbled forward, clutching at his chest. His head hung low so the brim of his hat covered his face.

The face you saw when he slowly looked up at you would haunt you forever. The most pained, broken, confused look you’ve ever seen on a man. He was so torn between acting tough and showing no emotion as his father had beaten into him or letting you see how completely and utterly human he actually was.

“Don’t mention my father.”

He tried to sound menacing but there was something behind it. Pleading you not to bring up the pain and torture. Micah wanted to stop the few hot tears trickling down his face. He wanted to stop the walls that he spent years building, that his father spent years beating him to build, from crumbling down. He tried, he really did. He used every ounce of him to keep them up. He almost had control of it, until he felt your arms wrap around him. Until you rested your hand on the back of his head and pulled him down so his face rested in the crook of your neck.

That was his breaking point.

He couldn’t stop it. Sobs fell from his mouth, luckily they were muffled by your shirt, otherwise, the whole gang would wake and see how pathetic he was being. He could definitely feel his tears beginning to soak through your shirt and he felt another unfamiliar emotion he didn’t enjoy. Guilt.

You didn’t seem to mind though. Your fingers gently stroked his hair while your other hand caressed his back.

It felt like an eternity for him before his sobs stopped and his tears dried. Somehow his arms ended up wrapped around you, clinging to you like some little child.

“I’m pathetic,” Micah whispered into your shoulder.

Your heart broke even more. Why? You didn’t know. You were hating this man not more than five minutes ago. The only reason you knew about his father was because of a certain newspaper clipping he left behind in his old makeshift camp. You wanted to get payback for all the times he purposely hit a sensitive spot for everyone else just to get a rise out of them. You didn’t see the broken man inside him. You didn’t see the war waging inside his head. But you did now, and you were going to help him just like you were going to help the others. He was apart of this camp after all. He was apart of this family.

"Dutch's Boys" by Anthony Petrie.