Mother
Toji makes it out of the pit. Toji makes it out, alive and injured and hungry, and mother isn't here patch up his injuries. Not this time, not ever again.
For the prompt : Busted Lip [ @badthingshappenbingo ]
read on AO3
or under the Read More, I’m not your boss
[ do mind that this fic features heavy descriptions of injuries]
.
It hurts.
It didn’t hurt quite as much when Toji made it out, maybe because of how excited he had been, tearing through curses with the savage joy of revenge and finally seeing the light of day, but now – now it hurts like hell.
The worm wriggles inside his stomach, and he fights the urge to throw up.
He couldn’t leave the little guy in there where it would just be exorcised, couldn’t get rid of it either, not when the knife it spit out was what gave Toji a chance to make it. Not when it does nothing, but eat what falls in front of it and call out for its mom.
So Toji does his best to keep the little guy hidden inside his stomach, does his best to stumble up to a room where he can take care of his wounds, maybe rest a bit before someone comes to bother him, maybe even eat something that isn’t a curse for the first time in… ah, how long was he in there ?
Given everyone’s faces when he walked out of the pit, he thinks they’ll at least leave him alone for a while.
Shit, it hurts so much.
He tracks blood across the dark floor of mother’s room, stains her dresser while looking for the first aid supplies she used to keep for him.
Usually, she would tell him to sit in the entrance and not touch anything until she’s done cleaning him up, lest it gets dirty. She would scold him, say they both know he will never make her proud, but if he could at least stop being such a disappointment it would be the least he could do, as her son.
“You’ll never win these fights anyway, Toji, so stop picking them,” she would say.
Not that he ever really picked fights so much as watched them fall in front of him. Last time was… last time was an exception.
He grinds his teeth. Feels his stomach jump to his throat in pain when the muscles of his jaw contract around the open wound that is his mouth.
He doesn’t know what it looks like, hasn’t looked yet, but he thinks… he thinks it’s pretty bad. All of his injuries probably are, honestly, but the way he feels his bottom lip kind of hanging uselessly on the right, in a way that would definitely dry up his mouth if it didn’t constantly fill with blood…
Yeah, that doesn’t sound good. Gonna have to sew up that one for sure, if he wants to eat.
Mother could have done pretty stitches, cleaned him up all good and stitched his wounds like she did when he got hurt real bad, even though she didn’t have to and he already hurt her enough by being born wrong.
“I can’t let you trouble anyone else,” she used to say while patching up whatever injuries he brought back that day, “since you’re my fault.”
Toji never really cared why she did it, honestly. He just liked how warm her hands were.
He undresses, wincing with each move, throat tearing up with deep, animalistic moans befitting of a monkey, as he pulls cloth out of open wounds and half dry blood.
Mother’s mirror on the dresser will do, he thinks as he grabs it and smears more blood on her things, blurring the image reflected in the glass to an unrecognizable shape.
Shit.
He tries his best to wipe it with the least bloody corner of his yukata, just enough to manage a check of what needs cleaning, what needs dressing, what needs sewing.
The blood in his left eye doesn’t help with seeing all of that, but – he squints. Holds the mirror, shakily angling it to look where it hurts most.
There are deep claw marks carved in the flesh of his right shoulder and breast, and he thinks he can even see a little bit of rib shining through one of the open wounds. That’s gonna need sewing. Same for his forearms, but he’s not sure how he’ll manage that. Maybe if he just dresses them tight enough, the gashes will close on their own ? There’s no bone showing there, so surely that’s a good thing.
His back and left side down to the thigh are just a mess. He thinks he remembers being caught by some, uh, sucking, octopus-looking, thing, and literally ripping himself from its grip to avoid getting eaten. Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe it was the corrosive spit of that weird-ass snake instead.
He guesses… ah, well, that’s already mostly done bleeding, and with how big this one is, he would have a better chance just embroidering all over the exposed flesh rather than try to sew it closed. Gonna have to clean it good, dress it good, and hope skin regrows on monkeys like it does for lizards.
Lizards regrow their skin, right ? They couldn’t shed it otherwise.
Hands and feet are fucked a normal amount, same for his knees. Running and crawling and scratching at the door in the hope he will somehow manage to dig his way out of this hell, he knows no one will open, not father – not father, he said himself he has no son, threw Toji in there himself like he should have eleven years ago instead of making everyone hurt – not mother – it’s Toji’s fault he knows, something he did had to be the last straw and that’s why she slit her throat and left only this dark stain on the floor that Toji can’t even see anymore – not anyone but himself and he tried so hard to just flee, and that’s when the octopus caught him by the back of the shoulder and he –
Hands and feet are fucked a normal amount. He’s missing, what, two nails ? He’ll live. Will be a pain to stitch up anything because of that, but it’s not like he was ever going to make it as pretty as mother did anyway.
His face is the real problem, as expected.
The black eye is fine, he’s had a few before, he knows how that goes, a few days of seeing weird and like a week more of looking ugly and he’s done. But his mouth…
The gash goes from the top of his cheek – missed the eyeball, thankfully – to the bottom of his jaw. Didn’t cut the bone, he thinks, but the right side of his mouth is just limp. He can see the gums through the open wound and under his bottom lip, thinks he can feel a chip in one tooth with his tongue too, follows it down to the gum and it stings, not just his jaw but his tooth too, like the root itself got exposed. Maybe it is.
There’s iron at the back of his throat, up his nose, blood dripping and spilling from the gash kept open by Toji’s spit, too diluted to coagulate.
Even if he manages to sew it all back up properly, can that thing even heal ?
Out of nowhere, he remembers one time Tadayoshi beat up his face and then made fun of Toji for being ugly afterwards. “A face only a mother could love,” he’d said. It made Toji laugh because he couldn’t understand what Tadayoshi meant by that. Which was the wrong answer, but then again, Toji never gives the right answers to anything.
Ah… should he try fixing it right now ? With his hands all fucked up and his stomach empty save for the worm, and his eye all busted ? He’s never gonna get mother’s pretty stitches right, but ugly scars aren’t the same if they’re on his shoulder or on his face.
On her face. Fath- Jin’ichi’s eye, but mother’s full lips, mother’s straight nose. Mother who he’s never gonna see ever again, mother who won’t ever clean his wounds with her warm hands and scold him for being a disappointment, mother whose blood is getting soiled by Toji’s again, spilling on the floor where the last trace of her body was.
He wants to throw up.
The worm hasn’t even moved.
Toji puts down the mirror. There’s fresh water in the room, mother never went out so the servants made sure she always had enough at all times. Tons of clean clothes inside mother’s closet, too, since there’s no way the first aid kit has enough gauze and bandages for this mess. Jin’ichi won’t like it, but what’s he gonna do ? Throw Toji back into the empty pit ? He doesn’t have a son, so Toji doesn’t have to act like one anymore.
And mother wouldn’t mind. She wanted Toji to only ever trouble her, so it’s fine if he uses what little is left of her until there’s nothing but ashes.
It’s fine. He’ll live, even if it hurts.
He’ll make it out.
He’s hungry.
8 notes
·
View notes
Rating: E | STALK BEFORE YOU BITE by Dimi_Stan (Kookies_Cookie) - me!
Summary: Steve’s been drifting aimlessly for five years since his life was forced into faux normalcy. The last thing he expects is to suddenly inherit a forest house on the edge of Hawkins from his grandfather, but he takes it anyway. He definitely doesn’t think it’s haunted. He definitely doesn’t think something has followed him.
Tags:
Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Steve Harrington’s parents SUCK, Vampire Eddie Munson, Steve has a grandfather who he inherits a house from in this, Dubious Consent, mayhaps?, Feral Eddie Munson, Jealous Eddie Munson, Anal Sex, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Gay Eddie Munson, Rough Sex, Depression, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Blood Kink, because Eddie feeds off Steve, Masturbation, All the Eddie stuff is eventual btw. He hasn’t shown up yet lmao, EDIT: Petah. The gargoyle's here., Is there a tag for when a vampire bites someone's butt after coming inside it?, oh btw, Bottom Steve Harrington, Top Eddie Munson, can't believe I didn't put that earlier., Barebacking, a pinch of overstimulation?, Angst with a Happy Ending
Note: My works are locked from readers that do not have Ao3 accounts.
6 notes
·
View notes