The Whump Dump

Every time I lose a whump mutual to suicide a piece of me dies with them I think. Maybe we only really talked in tags and a handful of dms but Troy was one of my first mutuals. One of the first people to ever ask to be in my writing tag list when I made this blog over 3 years ago. I will always think of them, for years to come. I know this because I still think of Moya and cry over them, I sob whenever I see the art they made of one of my posts.

Losing a whumpblr mutual is not like losing a stranger. It’s like losing a mirror. We have a kinship of shared suffering here. It’s knowing that we have found our way here because of our pain. Because writing torture is the only language that makes sense after so much suffering when life gave us no other way to express and wrestle with or justify the deep ache after all the fucking trauma that has been my life, your life too probably, but ill at least speak for myself.

I found my kin on whumpblr. I found the first people to ever truly understand me on this corner of the internet. The few people im closest to on here are also kind of the only thing keeping me here right now. Like we’re not supposed to talk about it because it makes other people sad but I fantasize of suicide every single day. Silently cry daily at my desk at work about how much I just wish I didn’t have to be anymore. And I won’t lie there’s a desperate part of me that wonders if I’d be better off too if I followed the mutuals who are gone now. This is not me fishing for compliments or affirmations. It’s just a very sad reality so many in the whump community deal with, and thats like, why we ended up here in the first place. Because we are in fucking pain.

I can’t help but see a certain inevitability to it. Like, if they reached their limit, if they couldn’t keep going, if this was their end, how am I meant for anything different? Im no better, im no stronger, im just like them. Hurt as fuck and just rotting in it. I know thats not logical, and thats not the right lesson to get out of this. But I feel it anyway.

But I know it’s about being here for each other. I hope the rest of us can grip each other tightly right now. Even if only through screens. We need to stay for each other, to hold up the mirror. To remind each other we have kin. We are not alone in the ways we think and the ways we are suffering. Even if the only ones who understand you are so far away they may as well be on other planets. If I hadn’t found this community I don’t know where I’d be. This community is biding me time. Thank you, whump community. For being the reason I haven’t left.

And to those mutuals I have lost, I will never forget you. I will always love you, your creative soul and your beautiful mind. May you be celebrated always for the bright spirit you are.

“What’re you doing?” Cameron hissed. His agitation possessed a note of panic.

“Nothing, Cammy. Just seeing how cleaning my house is going for you.” He pushed Cam an inch closer to the sink full of water. He braced himself, using all his strength to keep himself as upright as he could against his half brother’s heavier, more muscled body. Despite Cameron’s height and lanky sort of strength, Ethan had a clear advantage. This was nothing but a crude display of it, and they both knew it.

“Ethan,” Cam said seriously, as if this might just be rough play. “Let me up, man.”

Ethan pushed him closer still, so his forehead broke the surface tension and he whimpered, straining to stay above it. 

“Why should I?” 

“Because— I did what you asked. And I’m… you’re my brother.”

Ethan hummed in barely restrained glee, leaning close to the back of Cam’s neck. “You may have just carved out a new soft spot in me. But don’t brothers do this sort of stuff?”

With his mouth open to answer, Ethan dunked him under, submerging his face in water that was equal parts soap suds and slimy food debris. Cam struggled violently, but he was pinned underneath Ethan’s unbudging weight. After many long seconds, he let him up. 

All pretense of horseplay was gone, now. Cameron coughed wetly and gasped for air. He spat into the water in abject disgust. “Let go!”

“Ask me nicely.”

“Get the fuck OFF of me!” He sent a sharp elbow backwards into Ethan’s chest.

Ethan’s exhale of surprise trailed into a laugh. “That’s not nice.”

“Ethan…”

“Nicely, Cameron,” he said, and dunked him quickly in and out of the water again. 

Cameron sputtered and spat, blinking soap from his eyes. “Stop,” he begged, more like a sob than his earlier demands. “Just please stop, Ethan. Let me up.”

“Warmer.”

“Please,” he repeated, water dripping from his hair and the tip of his nose. He sounded wrecked. “I get it. You’re stronger than me. You don’t fucking like me. I give up. Please, get off of me.”

“That’ll work,” Ethan said, leaning over and kissing the back of Cameron's neck. He cringed in Ethan’s grip and sobbed between grit teeth.

Ethan let him go.

“Look at you,” he said, watching Cameron in the reflection of the kitchen window. “Soaking wet. Let’s get you into some dry clothes. C’mon, you can borrow something of mine.” 

Cameron didn’t move. Hands still on the edge of the sink, he stared straight ahead at Ethan’s reflection in the window, still breathing hard from the struggle.

Ethan tilted his head. “I was just fucking with you. I have to make sure you’re not a pussy.”

Cam turned to look at him over his shoulder. 

“And you’re clearly not,” Ethan continued. “Come on. I have a shirt for you.”

Reluctantly, Cameron followed him into his dark bedroom. Ethan motioned for him to strip, and Cam pulled his wet shirt gingerly over his head. Ethan approached with a dry one in hand, but stopped when he noticed the dark and angry bruising that still bloomed over his ribs from the beating he’d taken back home. He reached out to brush his fingers over the purples and yellows. Cam stiffened. 

“That hurt?” Ethan asked, his voice edging towards tenderness. Cam looked at him guardedly, his body language closed and hostile. Ethan touched two fingers to the bluish center of the bruise. Cameron closed his eyes. 

“Yeah, it does,” Ethan murmured, but continued to touch. He applied light pressure and watched Cameron’s breath catch. 

“I don’t mean to take it out on you,” he said gently, walking two fingers over the dark contours of the bruise so Cameron inhaled sharply. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Our father did. But that’s got nothing to do with us. Not anymore.”

“I thought I was fucked up,” Cam said, his eyes still closed, brows knit in a soft expression of pain. “But there’s something really wrong with you.”

“How fucked up are you?” Ethan asked, massaging two fingers in the center of Cam’s wounded ribs in the way he might touch a girl. 

Cameron took hold of his wrist and pushed it away. “Not that fucked up,” he said, and snatched the dry shirt from Ethan’s other hand.

But there was just no food lying around for him to grab. The fridge was full of condiments and soy sauce packets. He’d sucked one the other day for the sodium. The counters were cluttered with takeout bags and fast food styrofoam cups, but sadly free of snacks he could grab a handful of without any being missed.

There had been pizza delivered earlier. Something of a Sunday night movie night tradition among a group of the brothers, it smelled greasy and hot and heavenly.

Cameron hadn’t offered him even a bite from his lowered hand, like he occasionally did. The hunger-punishment was not for anything he’d done. It was a general reminder of Cam’s control over him, and that he found him lacking in some way. Disappointing. Zee still hadn’t quite figured out how, but he felt it like an extra lock on the collar around his neck.

He slipped off to the kitchen when Cameron wasn’t paying attention, aware of the doorway behind him as he lifted the corner of a pizza box on the counter. It was empty. Just grease marks and crumbs. He pressed his forefinger onto a crumb licked it off. He considered drinking one of the garlic butter dipping sauces they’d left unopened, knocking it back like a shot, but worried it would just make his nausea worse. And Cam would probably smell the garlic on him like a bloodhound.

He put his bare foot on the pedal of the trash can. The pedal, and the entire can, needed a wipe down. He should do that before someone yelled at him. The lid lifted to reveal nearly an entire piece of pepperoni and mushroom on the top of the pile.

It had one bite taken out of it, as if to tease him. Who took one bite just to throw the rest away? Just leave it in the box. But his mouth watered. His stomach felt like it was clawing up out of his throat. The slice was only touching cardboard, and a fairly unsoiled paper towel. It wasn’t even that gross. Not really. Just on principle. And he was so, so hungry. With a cursory glance at the doorway, he picked it out gingerly.

Saliva filled his mouth. He took as big a bite as he could. He closed his eyes and thanked whoever took a single bite and threw the rest out like an asshole. He would have liked to savor it, to break it into small pieces and chew slowly, but at any moment he might be missed from the living room. He hurried to tear through it and swallow. The greasy carbohydrates hit him like nectar, and he could swear his dizziness abated by the time he was ready for a second bite. He could easily finish it in three.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, Z2.”

He froze. He didn’t dare chew. He knew the voice before he turned his head, of course. Somehow, by an asinine turn of events, he was legally and contractually bound to the every whim of not some old money aristocrat or unctuous politician like he’d imagined, but of an absolutely average nobody. A boy his own age— younger actually, who just happened to be the biggest cunt on the eastern seaboard. But not just him. It was a group project, but Cameron Byrne selflessly took on the lion’s share of the responsibility.

“You can’t just starve me forever,” he said with stolen pizza in his cheeks.

Cam came closer, looking from Zee to the open trash can. “Why not?”

“It should go to a vote.”

“A vote.”

“Yeah. I’m not just yours.”

Cameron grabbed the back of his hair in a tight fist and pushed him so his head was over the can. “Spit that out,” he said quietly. “Do not swallow it.”

He obeyed. It was weird to spit out half chewed pizza while someone watched. Someone with a fistful of his hair. Like that old movie trope of chewing gum being confiscated by spitting it out into someone’s open palm. He mourned the loss of calories, but his pounding heart reminded him he might have bigger problems very soon.

“Throw away what’s in your hand.”

He did. He noticed the arrival of two other guys on his peripheral. They paused in the doorway at the scene, but then continued to the fridge for drinks. They were all used to strange rituals of hierarchy and control surrounding the boxie by now.

“What’d he do?” asked Sean. His eyes seemed to gleam as he cracked open a Dr Pepper, which for reasons unknown to Zee was the frat’s drink of choice, a running joke among the brothers which had origins in some obscure past event he wasn’t privy to.

“Eating out of our trash,” Cameron answered, his hazel-green eyes never leaving Zee’s. “Like an animal.”

Cam oscillated between cold, aloof cruelty and cruelty with a scathing personal touch. The indifferent kind was usually worse, though the up close and personal kind carried its own sort of dread. He could satisfy Cam in that latter mood, at least. Rarely could he be appeased in the former. Zee searched his proxy master’s eyes for which kind he was up against tonight.

“Pretty gross, dude,” said Sean.

“Yeah, rush week’s over,” Michael added eagerly, pleased to have cracked a joke. “Eating garbage for fun’s a bad look, boxboy.”

“The rules are real simple,” Cam said to him with the tone of a disappointed teacher. “If you want something, you just have to ask my permission to have it.”

Zee stayed perfectly still, trying to keep all expression from his face. All three of the brothers waited for a reaction. The overhead light was harsh, making the kitchen feel something like an interrogation room. In its white glare he could see sneaker scuffs on the linoleum and smudges of food debris on the fridge and stove.

The trash can he’d just eaten from smelled distinctly like garbage all of a sudden, and the crust he’d thrown back on top combined with the cheese and pepperoni taste in his mouth made his stomach turn.

He’d just wanted something to eat. He was so tired. If he were alone, he’d probably cry. He swallowed hard against the feeling of it in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said, flicking his eyes briefly to Cameron’s and then dropping them again deferentially.

“I know.” Cameron eased his fist out of his hair and smoothed it back down so gently that it sent an odd thrill down the nape of his neck, and a spark of something between his legs. He shut his eyes against the touch.

“Try asking permission, though.”

“I will.”

“I mean right now. Give it a try.”

Sean and Michael grinned hyena grins. Cam’s eyes were dark and serious.

He licked his dry lips. He didn’t want the pizza anymore. It had become repulsive to him. But telling Cam he didn’t want it was not the right move. This was not a hill he was willing to die on.

“Since you’re done with it, may I have the pizza in the trash?” he asked.

He and Cam both noticed as Sean took out his phone and held it low, at an unmistakably straight angle. Recording him.

“Magic word?” Cam prompted, probably just for the sake of Sean getting it on video.

It was a small consolation that the video would likely only ever be circulated among the brothers, if at all. They had the sense not to broadcast the endless hazing and abuse of a boxie around campus.

“May I have the pizza that’s in the trash, please?”

Cam gave him a little smile. Zee noticed the dimple it gave him, the freckles on the bridge of his nose. He was attractive in an offbeat, intense sort of way. Or would be, if he wasn’t such a dick.

“No.”

Michael snorted. Zee hung his head an inch in a nod of acceptance, like a private being chastised by a drill sergeant. He willed this little exchange to be over. He’d go to bed with hunger gnawing at his ribs and be glad for it.

“Don’t be gross. You can take the trash out and clean this place up, though.”

It was framed like a gentle suggestion of penance for the bite he’d taken without permission. But it was the dripping condescension that made him want to headbutt Cameron in the nose. The strength of the urge surprised him. But this was Cameron being playful. Cameron being vindictive was something he had learned he should actually fear. He would not headbutt him over being condescended to.

He tamped down the sudden surge of hate into something befitting the situation. “Of course, your highness,” he deadpanned, hoping Cameron felt at least a twinge of embarrassment at the tight, sadistic control he imposed.

He must have, because he slapped Zee in the face so hard it knocked his head to the side. He stumbled backward in surprise. The trashcan was in his way as he tried to catch himself. He fell gracelessly to the floor, clutching his cheek. It was bleeding on the inside where it had knocked against his teeth. He sucked on the wound. Perversely, the taste of blood it made his stomach growl.

Cameron squatted down beside him and took his chin in his hand, wrenching his stinging face up to meet his. If he thought his head hurt before, it was nothing compared to now.

“Learn to shut the fuck up, Zee, and I’ll let you have something to eat tomorrow.”

Cameron pushed back to his feet. Sean and Michael followed him out. Michael, who still had shoes on, gave Zee a vicious little kick to the shin as he passed that earned him a yelp.

At least that had abated, mostly. Once Zee was put through his paces a few times, it grew boring for the guys. Zee couldn’t fight back in any meaningful way, and he’d long ago figured out that when it did, it just made whatever was happening worse. With Cameron somewhat on board, the house’s abuse of their boxie was down to a minimum now. Alex had accomplished that, at least.

In lieu of the public torture and humiliations, Cam spent his free time hoarding Zee in his room or taking him places in that old shitty Mustang, which hadn’t sat well with Alex either, except Zee seemed to prefer it. In fact, Zee was looking the best he had in months. He looked like he was eating and sleeping. His hair had grown back into soft waves and he made willing eye contact with almost everyone except Tyler and Michael. People would see him and clap him on the shoulder, ruffle his hair. He witnessed Marshall, their scholarship chair, fist bump Zee in the driveway the other day and Zee hadn’t missed a beat, like he and Marshall fist bumped on a semi regular basis.

Cameron had shot him the most vile look, which Zee saw and Marshall didn’t, and by the time Marshall turned his head to nod a greeting at Cam, he was smiling both casually and convincingly.

Zee was wearing an old hoodie of Cam’s, faded and thin with wear, well loved since early highschool at least. His brown hair turned copper in the afternoon sun, his under eyes refreshed and not purple, eyes alert.

And in a less warden-like manner, Alex noticed Cameron too— the tightness of his shoulders and his jaw, the way his teeth were set like he was grinding them. Cam’s once easy laughter, often preceding a cutting remark, had been replaced with a markedly antisocial silence.

Cameron had been gone all weekend, and missed a Monday meeting as well as, presumably, all his classes. It had been raining incessantly, and still on Monday night it poured from the house’s gutters and streaked the windows. It had been dark all afternoon, and the gloom stretched into the evening. Alex was in his room studying, listening softly to music. A knock at his door made him glance at over at Zee in his bed, who frowned in his sleep and turned over.

He stood quietly from his desk to answer the door. Cameron was in the hallway with a hood pulled up like he had just come from knocking off a gas station. “He’s with you, I’m assuming.”

“Hey to you, too. Why didn’t you just text me?”

“Just seeing if he’s alive,” Cam said, vaguely annoyed and tired, and looked over Alex’s shoulder at the boy-shaped lump under the plaid comforter. “I’ve seen. I’m going.”

Alex opened the door wider and caught his wrist as he was turning. The way Cam jerked his wrist back reflexively didn’t escape his notice. “Where’ve you been? I asked Zee and even he didn’t know.”

Cam was looking at him in that way he had, with detached distaste, like Alex was a bobbing picket sign he didn’t agree with. “Home. I caught a cold, so I just stayed there.”

Alex eyed him carefully. He was lying, and poorly. “Take your hood off.”

“What?” Venomous.

“Indulge me.”

Cam fixed him with a flat look before pushing the hood back from his head. In the soft blue light from the room behind him, Alex could see he had a black eye. Any swelling there may have been was gone, but it was unmistakably purple on the upper lid, and a fading blue comma beneath.

“You should see the other guy,” Cam deadpanned, staring at Alex as if daring him to say something— unwilling to break off and look at his feet, or the wall, because in Cam’s world that would signify weakness.

Alex tried to sound casual. He was just checking in like he would with any of his brothers…but ever since they’d kissed the tension between them was insurmountable. “Are you okay?” It had come out too gentle. Too intimate.

Cam balked, as Alex knew he would. He wrinkled his nose. “Fuck off, man. Take care of my boxboy.”

He left Alex standing in his own doorway, and in Alex’s bed Zee was listening, facing the wall with his eyes open.

—

Nothing had improved in the week that passed. Cam came to check on Zee, again, and Alex let him in. Zee was sound asleep.

“If you miss another meeting, they’re going to fine you, you know,” Alex said quietly.

Cam groaned, but softly. He didn’t want to wake Zee either. “They already fined me.”

“They did?”

“Weeks ago. I know I’ll get disciplinary action if I miss any more. Probation, kicked out, whatever.”

“What then?” Alex asked meaningfully. He was pushing, but Cameron had been sleepwalking for weeks, missing classes and meetings and chapter events. He was nearing the cliff and still had his eyes shut. “Would you go home?”

Cam shot him a look that burned, that peeled back his flimsy pretense. “With my father, you mean? Aw, are you worried about me?”

“I just know you don’t want that.”

“I can handle him.”

“Why handle him if you don’t have to? Just stay here. Whatever’s got you off track…”

“Off track? You’re such a Boy Scout. Have you considered highschool guidance counselor as a career path?”

Alex ignored him. As far as Cam’s painfully insightful jabs went, it wasn’t a particularly good one. “Zee would miss you.”

“Zee would replace me with you. He’s with you half the time already.”

“Because you’re gone all the time.”

“What do you want, Alex?”

He decided to play a dangerous card then. It would either get him a black eye like Cam’s or take them somewhere they’d never been.

“I want you to fucking relax,” he said, taking a step closer. Cam pulled his head back a few centimeters but didn’t step back. Cam had two inches on him, but Alex was broader and more muscled— his hours with Dominic in the gym gave him width through his chest that had not been there last year, thickened his arms and put callouses on his palms. Cam was as coltish and skinny as he’d been when he pledged as a green freshman, when Alex was a seasoned sophomore and gave him some sage advice. If someone tries to get you to eat a goldfish, don’t do it. They’re playing chicken with you.

“I know you won’t tell me what’s got you all fucked up, but whatever it is can you take a step back from it before you completely screw everything up for yourself? You look like shit. You’re all over the road. You need to come to the meeting tomorrow not looking like roadkill and you need to go to class.”

Cam flinched, but didn’t look away. His anger was corrosive, highly volatile, but mostly to his own detriment.

Alex softened his voice. “Can you get some fucking sleep, at least?”

Cam swallowed, finally blinking. “Why do you care? Wouldn’t it be convenient for you if I was gone?”

“Why?”

“You could have control of…”

They both knew he was going to say Zee, but that he’d already messed up by using the word control.

“I thought you of all people would be happy I’m fucking up so prodigiously,” he said instead. He looked at Alex so guardedly that for a moment it laid his insecurity bare. It was an insecurity that had very little to do with him personally, Alex knew, and more to do with Cam’s preconceived ideas of him. Of everyone.

Sometimes when he was like this it was easy to forget about the time they’d spent at the beginning of the year butting heads. Even the physical blows they’d come to more than once seemed like overkill when he looked at Cam’s guarded green eyes, the freckles on his nose, the slight parting of his lips making him looking so uncertain.

“Why would I be happy about that?” Alex asked. “We’ve been working together on this for months.”

This meaning Zee, of course. He didn’t have to say that part. Cam said nothing.

“You won’t tell anyone what’s going on with you, will you?” he asked, and he reached up in the space between them and moved a piece of Cam’s belligerently straight hair from his forehead. He flinched, or just blinked, it was hard to tell. Alex’s heart pounded.

There was something in Cam that made him want to push, to make his way to the other side of all that posturing and petty meanness. On the other side of it was a boy who wanted very much to be treated carefully. He could see glimpses of it, feel it in flashes. And he could do it, and do it well, if Cam would only let him.

“Why’d you do it?” Cam asked.

“Do what?”

“Kiss me, that time. What the fuck was that?”

“Nothing,” Alex answered truthfully. “You’re pretty when you’re not being an absolute demon. I’d never seen that side of you before. I just wanted to.”

“So you just… felt like it.”

“I did.” I don’t remember you complaining, he could’ve added, but didn’t, because it was Cam, and at any time his mood might turn on him.

Cam’s voice was quiet, with a rare, open sincerity. “What else have you wanted?”

“Seriously?” he asked, in a way that sounded the same as are you game?

Cam shifted his weight to one foot, looking troubled. He was so untouchable, so prickly and unlikely a candidate to be gentled, to allow something like sexual attention because of the bare minimum intimacy it was requiring. Alex could admit to himself that the challenge was part of the attraction. He laid his hand on the back of Cam’s neck. He drew him close, giving him room and time to shy away. He didn’t. He was like a coiled snake and a trembling leaf at once. Alex kissed his cheek, and angling his knifelike jaw away with his free hand, began to kiss his neck with simmering reverence.

Cam made a soft noise that may have been a whimper of disbelief, or relief. Alex felt hands tentatively on his shoulder blades, but they lowered like he’d thought better of it, hanging them limply at his sides in non-participation. But his shoulders dropped. His breath quickened. Alex pressed slow kisses to his soft, warm skin.

He smiled into Cam’s ear. “You can pretend it never happened if you want. Whatever we do. I don’t mind.”

Strained— “We’re going to get caught.”

“No we’re not. No one’s looking. That’s not what’s happening here.” To prove his point, he kissed Cam’s neck again, a gentle hint of tongue and teeth. Cam shuddered wordlessly, his hips tilting forward to brush Alex’s, making it real.

“Stop,” he breathed.

Alex pulled back to say something reassuring but Cam pushed away entirely, putting space between their bodies again. His pale skin was flushed, green eyes dark. “You keep starting shit and never finishing it.”

Alex hadn’t expected him to say that. “How do you want me to finish it?” His voice was rougher than he meant it to be, half hard in his pants at the look in Cam’s eyes, the part of his lips. He made a loose grab for Cam’s hand. “Ask me.”

Cam pulled his hand away from him. He covered his kiss-bitten neck with it instead, as if to tamp the desire that had welled there, like staunching a wound. “Just fuck off,” he muttered. “Send Zee to me in the morning.”

His stomach dropped at the rebuff. He’d miscalculated, and badly. In fact, it had never happened to him before as definitively as this. He knew his concern should be for Cam, but it stung.

“Hey. Hold on. I—“

Cam shut the door quietly as he left, which may have been for Zee’s sake, or just to avoid drawing undue attention to the fact he was storming out of Alex’s room he middle of the night. It still felt as if he’d slammed it.