#Kauri's Low Self Esteem

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Today I am thinking about Kauri's way of hiding how little he thinks of himself by layering over his low self-esteem with witty commentary and constantly turning the conversation back to his looks and how good he is in bed. And the deep chasm of loathing for himself he has for every perceived failing, and how much of that is delivered, in his mind, in Owen's voice...

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Would lowkey kill to see Kauri attempting to write poetry in his relationship with Jake era (omg Jake helping him/being the one to write it down) I always forget that he was a writer and loves poetry and I love him 10 times more every time I remember

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.

“Writing,” He says, finally. “I was... trying to-... write something.” The words are ground out of him nearly against his will. He glares at the notebook lying open on the floor, the scrawling handwriting of the fucked up slut still thinking he can be anything else. Looping and childish, too big almost to fit within the lines. 

“Oh.” Chris pauses, and then brightens, setting his phone aside and straightening up. “You, you sad you think that you used to, to, to, to write, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Kauri’s head hurts, a sharp punishing ache. How dare he think in metaphor and simile, how dare he try to build the villanelle, how dare he remember vaguely arguing with someone in a coffeeshop over old poetic forms being superior to poems that don’t even try to fit within a rhythm, and he just-

This is so-

He’s so stupid, thinking he could just pick it up again like it hasn’t been a decade or close, like he’s still whatever stupid shit lived in his body before he-

signed up for this-

followed a fucking hot guy outside in the dark and got thrown into a van and made into Kauri. 

“Well, my... my professor for, for, for, for Playwriting says... says writing is a muscle. You, you have to exercise. And you can’t do the, um, the, the, the-the heavy weights until you start with, with small ones.”

Kauri snorts, derisive, but it’s not because Chris is wrong - of course he’s not wrong. Part of Kauri knows it, too, that he used to write all the time, around the pounding inside his skull he knows that he used to scribble lines on napkins and paper towels and the margins of his study books, bringing together the poem itself only later, usually alone or with a boyfriend on the other side of the room. He used to be able to do this.

He used to do this all the time. 

“I wish Owen had wanted someone who could write a fucking poem,” Kauri says, voice breaking on the tears that threaten. “Maybe then I’d still be able to.” He pushes himself to his feet and stomps over to scoop up the notebook almost violently. “Why are you taking Playwriting, anyway? I thought you wanted to do set design.”

“I, I do.” Chris shrugs, eyes on Kauri, watching him walk back towards the doorway that leads to a hall and then to the kitchen. “But I thought-... I, I, I figured-... maybe if I learn how to, to write a play, it would help... visualize. For, for, for set-building. You, um. You know?”

Kauri exhales, slowly, and then nods. “Yeah. I get it. That’s a good plan - I mean, not that I would know, I’m a college fucking dropout, right?” He laughs, bitterness in every word, in every sound.

“No,” Chris replies, simply. “You, you were... abducted. We were, um. We, we, we were stolen. Your words were, um, were stolen, too. That’s what Dr. Berger-”

“Fuck Dr. Berger,” Kauri snaps, and leaves the room before Chris can make any more sense and possibly break apart Kauri’s determined self-loathing while he still wants to soak in it. 

Hating himself for what he can’t do - or what he’s been told he can’t do - is so much easier than trying to do it anyway.

Everything was easier than trying to get better.

So why is he still trying?

Notebook clenched in white-knuckled hands, Kauri climbs the stairs like a man moving to the gallows, one by one, his thoughts a swirling morass of self-hatred, and then he moves into the bedroom he shares with Jake here and stares at the rumpled covers on the bed.

He sleeps here every single night, wakes up to the same face pressed red on one side from the pillow, hears the same deep voice rumbling good morning, feels the same arm slide over his waist, the same scratchy stubble rubbing his jaw when he’s kissed. 

I have generally found, in my work, the fucking therapist’s voice echoes inside him, that when you begin to do the work to rebuild, you will find yourself dedicated over time to reconstructing not just a room, Kauri, but the entire city that was once leveled. Does that make sense?

He’d told her it didn’t.

Kauri spent years dodging therapy whenever Nat didn’t talk him into it, and he hates going. He hates having to spill all the darkness inside him to someone who never stops being so goddamn calm.

But the first time she’d said, have you ever heard about the effect that solitary confinement has on the human mind? He had told her he didn’t know, but he’d started crying, too, and hadn’t been able to explain why. 

Part of you knows, Dr. Berger had said gently. Part of you always knew.

He had never really wanted to know the person who had inhabited this skin, or try to be him again. But standing here looking at the evidence of the life he is slowly building - his clothes in a crumpled heap on the floor by the bed, his toothbrush in the little cup in the bathroom, a picture of he and Jake in a frame by the bed now, the very small silver ring he wears sometimes even though they’re not and they probably won’t but it kind of feels good to wear it sometimes... 

He wonders if Liam Harker wanted a life like this one.

---

“It’s really dumb,” Kauri mutters, pulling the pillow over his face, burning red with embarrassment. “I didn’t even really mean for you to see it-”

“It’s not dumb,” Jake says, gently. Kauri feels the dip in the mattress as he sits down, feels the warmth of his hand resting on Kauri’s thigh through the blanket. “I’m sorry I read it. I didn’t know what I was looking at. If it was supposed to be a secret-”

“No. I didn’t. I forgot I left it out on the dresser. It’s not your fault. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t know why I even-”

“Kauri.” Jake’s voice sharpens, a little. “Stop. Stop calling yourself stupid. You’re not, and you never were, and you don’t have to repeat what that asshole told you about yourself anymore, remember?”

Kauri swallows, hard, a lump in his throat he can’t quite breathe around. ���When does it stop being his voice,” He asks, muffled, “and start being my own?”

“When you let it,” Jake says, rubbing his leg soothingly. “Just like my dad’s voice. You’re not stupid. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m sorry I read it, but that’s because it wasn’t mine to read, not because it was dumb, or bad. It wasn’t.”

Kauri hesitates, then pulls the pillow to the side, looking at the sincere affection in Jake’s face, his slight smile. “Yeah? You’re not just-”

“Saying that? No, I’m not. I mean, I’m not, like, a poetry person-”

“It’s not even a real villanelle, anyway.”

“I have no idea what that means. I just... I thought it was pretty good, actually. When I realized-...  I put it down when I realized you were writing about-... you know. Yourself.”

“Liam,” Kauri says, hoarse, barely able to pronounce the name. “I wrote-”

“Yeah.” Jake takes his hand, pulls it to his lips, presses a kiss to Kauri’s knuckles. “I know. It’s really good, Kaur. You should keep writing. I promise I won’t look at any stray papers I find anymore, yeah?”

Kauri takes a breath. He feels almost dizzy, in a way that is both terrible and wonderful. The way you open yourself to the people you love is a horrible, amazing risk. The way you spill the darkest parts of yourself, not things you’ve done wrong but the things you are afraid of allowing back into the light, in case it washes them all away again.

But the light he lives in now isn’t cold, and it isn’t taking him away from himself. The light he lives in now is sunlight.

“What?” Jake’s eyebrows raise slightly. “What’s that face for?”

“Jake. What if-... what if I ask you to? Read them?”

Jake’s lips press together, and he nods, smiling slightly, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against Kauri’s hand. He’s always warm, Jake, even on the coldest days. He’s always warm. “I’d be-... be fucking honored, or something that sounds less bullshit than that, but I mean it. I’d be... I love you, Kauri. Seeing inside your head is what I want to do for-... for forever.”

“Maybe I’ll ask then,” Kauri says, and pulls Jake’s hand and then Jake himself, the taller, larger man settling on top of him, holding himself up on his elbows, careful not to rest all his weight. “I love you, too, you know.”

“Yeah.” Jake kisses the tip of his nose. “It’s pretty fucking great.”

Kauri’s eyes glimmer, but he closes them so Jake can’t see, and kisses his forehead. “It’s nice to think that I’m lucky and mean it.”

“I think you should read your poem to Dr. Berger,” Jake says, and when Kauri groans, he pulls back. “I mean it. She should know.”

Kauri wants to argue, but he looks into Jake’s eyes, and sighs, and says he’ll think about it.

---

AN APOLOGY

I am built from the hollow air left after your heart stopped beating

Your hands still gripped tight to the life they were ending

I know you thought of home but I don’t know where your home is

The sound of my voice is a green valley that only sends back screaming

Covered in smoke and dust that I told myself smelled like cologne

Pathways that remember your laughter silent in the years that followed

Have I done enough to build a life you would have enjoyed living?

I am built from the hollow air left over when your heart stopped beating

The heat of their hands as inevitable as a river tore down every foundation

Their cruelty buried you so deeply that only I remain

I don’t deserve the love that should have been yours to receive

The sound of my voice is a valley echoing back your screaming

I owe you an apology for walking around inside you

Crumbling ruins with my touch and calling it preservation

I’m sorry for every blade of grass growing through our bones

Am I nothing but hollow air from when your heart stopped beating?

-

Wildflowers grow inside me from soil windswept over ash

Is that life worth everything not quite dead so deep below?

Is Kauri Grant good enough to make up for Liam Harker’s loss?

In the valley of my body, does anyone but me still hear you screaming?

I owe you an apology and have to hope the life I live provides it

I wish I could ask for forgiveness from the shape of you  

We’re both ghosts, in the end, mosaic pieces shattered in shadows

I’m sorry that I’m all that’s left.

I built myself from hollow air in the shape of a heart still beating

The sound of my voice will always carry the echo of yours screaming

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @orchidscript @cubeswhump , @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @moose-teeth @whumptywhumpdump @wildfaewhump

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Ash, can we get a little jake and kauri yearning today? Just a little??

CW: Alcohol use, p i n i n g, Kauri’s Poor Life Choices, Kauri’s low self-esteem

Jake sees him from across the bar, and it’s like he knew he’d be here, even though he didn’t - couldn’t have known. Kauri never tells them where he goes when he’s gone, just disappears for a few days, a week, a month, and then pops back up hungover and starving.

Tonight, though... here he is.

Jake, sitting at a table with a couple of friends with his whiskey-and-coke in his hand, looks out at the dance floor and catches sight of a head of black curls and his breath catches in his throat. 

It can’t be him, this city is huge, there’s no fucking way-

But there he is, wearing someone else’s shirt and dancing with his back to another man’s chest, arms up and around his neck. What they’re doing can only barely be called dancing at all, but that’s not the point, and Jake knows it.

“... literally never have a single day of fun,” He hears, and blinks, turning back to look at Jennifer from his ethics class, sipping through a teeny straw a drink that has entirely too many cherries in it. “It took us two and a half months to convince you to go to dinner with the group exactly one time and you’re already zoning out on me.”

“Yeah... yeah, sorry,” Jake says, shaking his head a little, trying to knock the image of Kauri out of it. “It’s just, you know-”

“I know, I know, you’re busy as fuck. I get it. Fighting the good fight for the homeless kids, right?” Jennifer’s girlfriend has her arms around her waist, Del’s chin resting on Jennifer’s shoulder. 

“Right,” Jake says, and shrugs. “You know how it is. You get into something and you just-... I mean, you and Del met at that DV shelter, right?”

“Right.” Jennifer turns, and she and Del smile at each other, before Del presses a kiss to the side of her head and gets up, heading to the bar for a refill of her own drink. “But Jake, there’s a difference between loving what you do and being fucking married to it, you know? You need to have fun with us!” Her eyes are huge and sad and pleading.

Chris makes eyes like that sometimes.

He should really be home with Chris, but Nat had more or less shoved him out the door and told him to take a night off, try and act his age for once.

Everyone else in their twenties is living it up, Nat had said, making herself coffee at 5 o’clock, both of them knowing she’d be up later than she wanted to be if Jake wasn’t there to run interference. And here you are, working yourself into an early grave at 25. 

Well, what were you doing at 25? Jake had challenged, and then realized too late the answer to that question. 

The weight of it hung in the air between them, until finally Nat had said quietly, I was working for WRU. I made my mistakes. Go have fun, Jake.

Now here he is, and he’d rather be home, sitting on his bed studying while Chris plays a game next to him, nudging him to read him the words when he needs to. That would feel better than being here, right now, alone in a crowd.

His eyes shift again, and Kauri hasn’t moved, but he’s turned around to face the man he’s dancing with. The song slows, and so do the dancers. Even from here, Jake can see the sweat shining on Kauri’s skin, sticking his shirt a little bit to his back along his shoulder blades. 

He tips his head back, laughing at something the guy says, but Jake knows Kauri’s fake smile, his fake laugh. He knows it even across a bar, even through music so loud he can barely hear himself think.

Jake wonders, idly, if Kauri will show up at the safehouse when the bars close tonight, if he’ll stumble in with that sweat dried to his skin and smile at Jake over leftovers he pulls from the fridge and tell him he was somewhere other than this. If Kauri lies.

“What’re you-... ooooh, you’re looking at that guy?” Jennifer leans over, craning her head, not even trying to be subtle. “You think he’s cute?”

“Jenn-”

“Jennifer, thanks.”

“Jennifer-... just... no, I, uh-” Should he say he knows Kauri? He can’t explain how, now can he? Jake just groans. “I think I should go home. I’m just not feeling it tonight.”

“I swear to God, Jakob Stanton, you are the least fun person on Earth.” Jennifer pouts, but Jake pushes himself to standing anyway. Somehow, because God hates him maybe, he manages to time it to exactly when Kauri pulls himself out of the guy’s arms and turns around to head for the bar or the bathroom maybe, and the two of them look right at each other. 

For a second, they only stare, blue eyes on blue. Kauri’s expression brightens, a burst of happiness at seeing Jake here, and his hand starts to raise before his eyes flicker to the others at the table, back to him, and the happiness fades.

Jake can’t read what he’s thinking, but he can see how Kauri’s thoughts fly, the certainty Kauri has in his own stupidity is ridiculous to anyone who has ever seen his mind work at lightning speed to protect himself.

There’s a look on Kauri’s face as he takes in Jake’s friends. It’s something like shame. He turns away and walks a different direction and Jake watches him disappear into the crowd, black curls fading into the darkness in the corners.

Jake swallows, jaw tightening.

He could follow Kauri. He could ask him what he was thinking, why he turned away. He should follow him, he should prove he wants to, to seek him out, to tell him... what?

But of course he knows what he should have said, only now, when Kauri is already gone.

I’m not embarrassed by you, I want you to meet my friends, I know you’ve been told you’re stupid and embarrassing and worse than that, but none of it’s true. Sit with us. Sit with me.

Dance with me.

Funny, how the words only come to his mind when it’s too late.

Jake shoves his hands in his pockets and heads for the exit, ignoring the beat of his own heart inside him trying to pull him back inside. Whatever Kauri was thinking, he didn’t want Jake to see him here, or to talk to him, and he can respect that. There’s boundaries - the world of the safehouse and the world Kauri lives in outside of it don’t meet. That’s always been true.

The whole drive home, all he can think about is that look on Kauri’s face before he walked away.

All he can think is that he should have followed him across the bar, and been the arms around him while they danced. 

[newbornwhumperfly]

Although Kauri himself doesn't see himself as good at gift-giving...

gentlepeople, welcome to the stage! kauri’s abysmal self-esteem! 😭😭😭

Could we have some sweet Kauri facts please?

1. A very drunk Kauri will absolutely become that person in the bar telling everyone else how wonderful they are and they shouldn't get down about themselves, they're great. He does not extend this kindness to himself.

2. He has dated a DJ. Twice.

3. He is actually really good with/around kids, and is generally willing to take their bizarre trains of thought and impulsive explanations/narration of what they do without complaint. Leila's baby ends up liking him better than any of the rest of the safehouse crew.

4. Once, he found a little ceramic chicken with a picnic basket at a thrift store and bought it with some panhandling money, then took three buses across town to deliver it to Krista because it was spring and he knew she'd have her spring stuff out and like the gingham pattern on the little 'blanket' under the chicken.

5. When he DOES eventually let Jake read the poetry he writes, he has to leave the house while Jake is looking at it because he gets too worked up and nervous.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdxry3Am/

Presents to Kauri: Dis U?😂

Kauri: "I mean, you could argue the cost comes with having to deal with me afterwards."

Jake: *quietly making a mental note of Kauri's Low Self-Esteem making a new appearance*

[ashintheairlikesnow]

What are your characters’ biggest flaws?

Ryan: Taking the easy way out or not wanting to do difficult things, because everything has always been easy for him.

Nate: Passivity in the face of danger. It's a learned survival skill but Nate considers it his biggest flaw.

Danny: It used to be his temper. Now I would argue it is how well he no longer has one, even when he needs it. He has no self-protection that isn't entirely internal left.

Ora: Apathy. Nothing matters any longer. Why try? They are getting... somewhat better about this.

Abraham: Bram's biggest flaw is probably his assumption that he can break anyone he wants, no matter who or what they are

Ashley: *maniacal cackling*

---

Jake: His anger and temper. While it comes in handy on occasion, it also makes things harder for him

Chris: He would say his unwillingness/inability to risk himself to help others

Antoni: He keeps so many secrets, even those he does not have to

Nat: She is an eternal slave to the "I'll just do it myself" mentality and ends up overwhelmed

Laken: They tend to drop people easily but take a long time to make long-lasting connections, which sometimes means making real friends is difficult

Krista: She is very susceptible to peer pressure

Kauri: Lack of a sense of self-worth, cripplingly low self-esteem

Leila: A self-protective sharpness that often makes her seem cruel or unkind

Allyn: No sense of individual identity, they struggle to see themself as worthwhile unless they are on someone else's arm

Jameson: Rage with no target or purpose still burning inside him

Nova: Obsessive fascination with anyone or anything that interests her

Sarita: lack of impulse control when her temper flares

Eli: He is so good at waiting that he is nearly incapable of taking action on his own

Nine: He keeps to himself so well basically no one knows him at all

Keira: Keira performs to custom specifications of Kauri Grant. Keira is adequate. Concern broken front wheel.

---

Kima: Naiveté

Bahram: Passivity. After his breakdown, he lost his ambitions to push and push and push and is largely content to simply exist. This is difficult when the situation calls for heroics

Miah: Impulse control and temper

Dr. Rachel Lachlan: The ability to compartmentalize and maintain cognitive dissonance at any cost

Anders Kirsse: He got so good at making money off of conspiracy theorists about cryptids that he became one

---

Killan: Lack of self-worth

Calon Nie: WAY TOO MUCH SELF-WORTH

---

Savvie: It's all flaws all the way down. But let's pick one and say that really, she loves @comfy-whumpee's Jax too deeply, that's all...

Izzy: Total lack of self-esteem and inability to stand up for herself the way she can for Jax or her little brother

[ashintheairlikesnow]

There is also an element here, it should be said, of Kauri feeling like it’s kind of manipulative to “have Chris text him” - because a. his self-esteem is so low he struggles to think Chris would think to do so all on his own and not at someone else’s prodding - and b. Kauri himself is somewhat manipulative through his stage of his life and he’s projecting

Can I ask why Kauri is annoyed that someone taught Chris how to text?

Because now there's one more person who wants to know Kauri is alive, and at this particular time in his life, he thinks he doesn't want that.

[newbornwhumperfly]

@ashintheairlikesnow, i… i have no words? the villanelle was so exquisite at capturing kauri’s pain and his healing and this aching bittersweetness that drew me in so deeply.

i absolutely adore when a piece of art is emphasized or enhanced or sharpened somehow by whatever form the artist chose to put it in, the intentionality of it, and the way this poem’s form of villanelle makes the themes so aching, so impactful.

i don’t say this lightly cause i’ve written and read a lot of poetry in my life but i haven’t been able to stop thinking of this poem for weeks. 💖😩💖

Would lowkey kill to see Kauri attempting to write poetry in his relationship with Jake era (omg Jake helping him/being the one to write it down) I always forget that he was a writer and loves poetry and I love him 10 times more every time I remember

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.

“Writing,” He says, finally. “I was... trying to-... write something.” The words are ground out of him nearly against his will. He glares at the notebook lying open on the floor, the scrawling handwriting of the fucked up slut still thinking he can be anything else. Looping and childish, too big almost to fit within the lines. 

“Oh.” Chris pauses, and then brightens, setting his phone aside and straightening up. “You, you sad you think that you used to, to, to, to write, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Kauri’s head hurts, a sharp punishing ache. How dare he think in metaphor and simile, how dare he try to build the villanelle, how dare he remember vaguely arguing with someone in a coffeeshop over old poetic forms being superior to poems that don’t even try to fit within a rhythm, and he just-

This is so-

He’s so stupid, thinking he could just pick it up again like it hasn’t been a decade or close, like he’s still whatever stupid shit lived in his body before he-

signed up for this-

followed a fucking hot guy outside in the dark and got thrown into a van and made into Kauri. 

“Well, my... my professor for, for, for, for Playwriting says... says writing is a muscle. You, you have to exercise. And you can’t do the, um, the, the, the-the heavy weights until you start with, with small ones.”

Kauri snorts, derisive, but it’s not because Chris is wrong - of course he’s not wrong. Part of Kauri knows it, too, that he used to write all the time, around the pounding inside his skull he knows that he used to scribble lines on napkins and paper towels and the margins of his study books, bringing together the poem itself only later, usually alone or with a boyfriend on the other side of the room. He used to be able to do this.

He used to do this all the time. 

“I wish Owen had wanted someone who could write a fucking poem,” Kauri says, voice breaking on the tears that threaten. “Maybe then I’d still be able to.” He pushes himself to his feet and stomps over to scoop up the notebook almost violently. “Why are you taking Playwriting, anyway? I thought you wanted to do set design.”

“I, I do.” Chris shrugs, eyes on Kauri, watching him walk back towards the doorway that leads to a hall and then to the kitchen. “But I thought-... I, I, I figured-... maybe if I learn how to, to write a play, it would help... visualize. For, for, for set-building. You, um. You know?”

Kauri exhales, slowly, and then nods. “Yeah. I get it. That’s a good plan - I mean, not that I would know, I’m a college fucking dropout, right?” He laughs, bitterness in every word, in every sound.

“No,” Chris replies, simply. “You, you were... abducted. We were, um. We, we, we were stolen. Your words were, um, were stolen, too. That’s what Dr. Berger-”

“Fuck Dr. Berger,” Kauri snaps, and leaves the room before Chris can make any more sense and possibly break apart Kauri’s determined self-loathing while he still wants to soak in it. 

Hating himself for what he can’t do - or what he’s been told he can’t do - is so much easier than trying to do it anyway.

Everything was easier than trying to get better.

So why is he still trying?

Notebook clenched in white-knuckled hands, Kauri climbs the stairs like a man moving to the gallows, one by one, his thoughts a swirling morass of self-hatred, and then he moves into the bedroom he shares with Jake here and stares at the rumpled covers on the bed.

He sleeps here every single night, wakes up to the same face pressed red on one side from the pillow, hears the same deep voice rumbling good morning, feels the same arm slide over his waist, the same scratchy stubble rubbing his jaw when he’s kissed. 

I have generally found, in my work, the fucking therapist’s voice echoes inside him, that when you begin to do the work to rebuild, you will find yourself dedicated over time to reconstructing not just a room, Kauri, but the entire city that was once leveled. Does that make sense?

He’d told her it didn’t.

Kauri spent years dodging therapy whenever Nat didn’t talk him into it, and he hates going. He hates having to spill all the darkness inside him to someone who never stops being so goddamn calm.

But the first time she’d said, have you ever heard about the effect that solitary confinement has on the human mind? He had told her he didn’t know, but he’d started crying, too, and hadn’t been able to explain why. 

Part of you knows, Dr. Berger had said gently. Part of you always knew.

He had never really wanted to know the person who had inhabited this skin, or try to be him again. But standing here looking at the evidence of the life he is slowly building - his clothes in a crumpled heap on the floor by the bed, his toothbrush in the little cup in the bathroom, a picture of he and Jake in a frame by the bed now, the very small silver ring he wears sometimes even though they’re not and they probably won’t but it kind of feels good to wear it sometimes... 

He wonders if Liam Harker wanted a life like this one.

---

“It’s really dumb,” Kauri mutters, pulling the pillow over his face, burning red with embarrassment. “I didn’t even really mean for you to see it-”

“It’s not dumb,” Jake says, gently. Kauri feels the dip in the mattress as he sits down, feels the warmth of his hand resting on Kauri’s thigh through the blanket. “I’m sorry I read it. I didn’t know what I was looking at. If it was supposed to be a secret-”

“No. I didn’t. I forgot I left it out on the dresser. It’s not your fault. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t know why I even-”

“Kauri.” Jake’s voice sharpens, a little. “Stop. Stop calling yourself stupid. You’re not, and you never were, and you don’t have to repeat what that asshole told you about yourself anymore, remember?”

Kauri swallows, hard, a lump in his throat he can’t quite breathe around. “When does it stop being his voice,” He asks, muffled, “and start being my own?”

“When you let it,” Jake says, rubbing his leg soothingly. “Just like my dad’s voice. You’re not stupid. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m sorry I read it, but that’s because it wasn’t mine to read, not because it was dumb, or bad. It wasn’t.”

Kauri hesitates, then pulls the pillow to the side, looking at the sincere affection in Jake’s face, his slight smile. “Yeah? You’re not just-”

“Saying that? No, I’m not. I mean, I’m not, like, a poetry person-”

“It’s not even a real villanelle, anyway.”

“I have no idea what that means. I just... I thought it was pretty good, actually. When I realized-...  I put it down when I realized you were writing about-... you know. Yourself.”

“Liam,” Kauri says, hoarse, barely able to pronounce the name. “I wrote-”

“Yeah.” Jake takes his hand, pulls it to his lips, presses a kiss to Kauri’s knuckles. “I know. It’s really good, Kaur. You should keep writing. I promise I won’t look at any stray papers I find anymore, yeah?”

Kauri takes a breath. He feels almost dizzy, in a way that is both terrible and wonderful. The way you open yourself to the people you love is a horrible, amazing risk. The way you spill the darkest parts of yourself, not things you’ve done wrong but the things you are afraid of allowing back into the light, in case it washes them all away again.

But the light he lives in now isn’t cold, and it isn’t taking him away from himself. The light he lives in now is sunlight.

“What?” Jake’s eyebrows raise slightly. “What’s that face for?”

“Jake. What if-... what if I ask you to? Read them?”

Jake’s lips press together, and he nods, smiling slightly, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against Kauri’s hand. He’s always warm, Jake, even on the coldest days. He’s always warm. “I’d be-... be fucking honored, or something that sounds less bullshit than that, but I mean it. I’d be... I love you, Kauri. Seeing inside your head is what I want to do for-... for forever.”

“Maybe I’ll ask then,” Kauri says, and pulls Jake’s hand and then Jake himself, the taller, larger man settling on top of him, holding himself up on his elbows, careful not to rest all his weight. “I love you, too, you know.”

“Yeah.” Jake kisses the tip of his nose. “It’s pretty fucking great.”

Kauri’s eyes glimmer, but he closes them so Jake can’t see, and kisses his forehead. “It’s nice to think that I’m lucky and mean it.”

“I think you should read your poem to Dr. Berger,” Jake says, and when Kauri groans, he pulls back. “I mean it. She should know.”

Kauri wants to argue, but he looks into Jake’s eyes, and sighs, and says he’ll think about it.

---

AN APOLOGY

I am built from the hollow air left after your heart stopped beating

Your hands still gripped tight to the life they were ending

I know you thought of home but I don’t know where your home is

The sound of my voice is a green valley that only sends back screaming

Covered in smoke and dust that I told myself smelled like cologne

Pathways that remember your laughter silent in the years that followed

Have I done enough to build a life you would have enjoyed living?

I am built from the hollow air left over when your heart stopped beating

The heat of their hands as inevitable as a river tore down every foundation

Their cruelty buried you so deeply that only I remain

I don’t deserve the love that should have been yours to receive

The sound of my voice is a valley echoing back your screaming

I owe you an apology for walking around inside you

Crumbling ruins with my touch and calling it preservation

I’m sorry for every blade of grass growing through our bones

Am I nothing but hollow air from when your heart stopped beating?

-

Wildflowers grow inside me from soil windswept over ash

Is that life worth everything not quite dead so deep below?

Is Kauri Grant good enough to make up for Liam Harker’s loss?

In the valley of my body, does anyone but me still hear you screaming?

I owe you an apology and have to hope the life I live provides it

I wish I could ask for forgiveness from the shape of you  

We’re both ghosts, in the end, mosaic pieces shattered in shadows

I’m sorry that I’m all that’s left.

I built myself from hollow air in the shape of a heart still beating

The sound of my voice will always carry the echo of yours screaming

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @orchidscript @cubeswhump , @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @moose-teeth @whumptywhumpdump @wildfaewhump