ā (Reyna leave a Squishable duckling on his bed; referring to that one drabble of him wanting those duck rainboots and raincoat) squishable(.)com/pc/mini_squish_duckling_7/fp_mini_squishables/Mini+Squishable+Duckling
The yellow fuzz covering the duckās body was faded with age. And the musty smell clinging to it indicated it must have gone unloved, sitting in a dark closet for years on end, until today. The faint scents of hair gel and gun smoke intermingled with the mustiness indicated that the closet in question had been his motherās. Irregardless of its age, it had managed to retain its softness, and Kā kept rubbing circles against its cheek with his bare left thumb to savour it.
It was a cutesy little thing; very much something a child would enjoy. Which meant it was the exact opposite of his own taste of aesthetics. Yet he couldnāt bring himself to toss it across the other side of the room. Not when heād first entered his quarters and caught sight of it. And not now when he was sitting on the bed, the little black eyes staring blankly through him.
For some strange reason āDuckieā hovered at the very edge of his tongue, begging to be vocalised, the longer he stared at it. And the more he stared at it, the more the simplistic billed face began to blur, until it had smeared away to illegible black and orange blobs amongst the sea of faded yellow.
His first tear kissed it just by the blush marks under one eye.
The rest found the top of its head when they didnāt hit his knees, the plush now being crushed against him in a hug. The softness of it tickled at his bare chest every time he shook with a quiet sob.
He didnāt truly know why he was crying, the vague feelings and images clawing at the fringes of his mind too indistinct to make much sense of. The only thing clear to him was a sense of bittersweetness. There was sadness, as with a lot of the erased and repressed memories he was recalling more and more of every day. But it was intermingled with a pure, unbridled sense of joy. It made things confusing in regards to how he should feel; were these tears of anguish or happiness? Both?
A strangled noise bubbled from his throat. His fingers clawed against the duckās body, gripping it tighter against him, as if afraid it would be ripped away cruelly at a momentās notice.
Dimly, he was thankful heād had the foresight to close and lock his door. These tears werenāt for anyone else; it was a way to process all that had been done to him and what had been lost.
Punching peopleās faces in and chugging cheap booze only helped as crutches so much. They were distractions rather than balms; a means to run from the emotional weakness he always kept under lock and key, lest it drown him. But to finally give into the tsunami of emotions always being kept tightly leashed, while overwhelming, was also kind of... relieving.
Little by little he was grievingā healing, even. And these occasional silent offerings Reyna would leave him at random helped with the process; olive branches extended to gradually build him towards a face to face reconciliation that wouldnāt devolve into a heated screaming match.