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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

Note

chris and jake both waking in the night after nightmares and just hug each other tight to comfort each other and themselves at the same time 🥺

CW: References to traumatic beating, blood, and degrading language, noncon touching (nonsexual), references to pet whump.

Tagging @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxckfxck , @slaintetowhump

"You'd be good at it, too," Everly says from somewhere behind him. Jake shifts in the hard metal chair in the interrogation room, every corner a shadow and he counts at least seven corners in the rectangular room. Too many, something tells him. Or not enough. "I can always tell which ones'll be good. You top my list, Stanton. Good looking, nice big muscles, take a punch like a fuckin' man? Yeah. You'd do great."

Jake's head is forced back, fingers gripping onto his short blond hair gone sticky with drying blood. He can't quite focus his eyes, something is off about the world. This conversation never happened.

Did it?

"Good at what?" He growls out, but he knows the answer. Can nearly feel it in the air before Everly ever speaks the words.

"Fulfilling desires, numbnuts," Everly says, and laughs, letting go of him only to smack the back of his head hard, Jake jerking forward only to wince against throbbing pain inside his skull.

"I'd die first," Jake spits the words, and knows they don't mean anything. The whole point is that you die. The whole point is that they take a life already being lived and burn it to the ground, start fresh, erased. Compliant and terrified.

It'll only get worse from here.

"I think you'd beg." Everly laughs. "After a while, everyone does."

I know I would beg. Somehow he doesn't say it, even though he's never thought something so loudly in his life.

"Fuck you, you're dogshit on my shoe," Jake says instead, and his head is slammed back into the table, and he jerks back and up, his head spinning, dizzy lilt around him, sparks and stars behind blue eyes.

When he can focus again, he blinks several times at the person sitting across the table.

"It's time to sign," Nat says, sliding the contract to him, setting down a pen. The shadowy form of the man who had been there at Chris's signing looms in one of the corners, undefined, just a suit and a smile and glittering, wanting eyes.

Nat wears a tag on her suit that says NATALIE YODER, NEVER LEFT with the WRU logo."Sign your contract, Jake. You could learn what he lived through. You'd understand them all so much better, right?"

"Wh-what-... Nat-"

The shadowy man in the corner starts to laugh, the oil-slick smile and sound Jake knows from TV, that Chris knows somewhere inside his body, deep in his bones. "I like this one," He says, drawling, slight accent and all. "Not as good as my boy, though-"

"Not yours," Jake says, and feels the zipties giving as he pulls desperately at his wrists, ignores the pain and tearing skin. "Chris isn't yours."

"His name isn't Chris. It's-"

"It is now." His wrists come apart with a crackle of broken plastic and Jake pushes himself to his feet, watching them all scatter in surprise. "It is now, and I won't break for you."

Not like this.

"Jake-" Nat begins, and Jake picks the pen up and throws it at her, bouncing uselessly off her shoulder. She flinches, anyway, guilt-riddled. "Jake, I never meant to-... Jake-"

Jake feels Everly's hand on his shoulder.

"Jake!"

He flinches awake in a sudden movement, one arm flying up and then down again, catching his breath in his throat.

Sweat trickles down the side of his neck, feels sticky against his face like the blood.

There's a hand on his shoulder and for a second - one wild irrational moment - Jake is sure Grant Everly is in the bed with him.

He chokes off a sound of helpless horror and turns, only to see Chris, just big green eyes and strawberry blond hair, peeking out from under the blankets. "Jake?"

Jake lets out his breath all at once, the rigid tension of his body dissipating as rapidly as it came. "Fuck," He breathes. His heart is pounding, a solid thump of panic inside his chest. Almost dizzy. His head hurts, like it really did hit the table all over again.

"'m okay," Jake manages, putting a hand up over his face. It's a reassurance to himself as much as it is to Chris. "... 'm okay. We're okay. We're, we're both... we're all okay."

Chris is silent for a second and then pushes himself up on his elbows. "Do you want to, to, to to tell me about, about it? The, the dream? When I have, have a bad bad bad dream you ask me to tell..."

"Uh... No, man. Nah. That's okay. With you, it's talking out trauma, taking its power away, with me..."

Chris watches him, oddly knowing. "With you it's, it's something else?" There's maybe even a little humor in his voice.

Jake aches, still. He hasn't gone back to class yet. He can't relax, can't seem to stop believing they'll break down the door again. Stays up until Nat forces him to bed, because he can't stop watching that front door.

It could happen again. Over and over again. He can't keep Chris safe if he lets his guard down again. They still don't know who turned them in. He still doesn't know.

"Something else," Jake says, nodding, but even he doesn't believe it.

He's got trauma now, doesn't he? Something new to layer over the childhood shit. He's got three days of threats and starving and not sleeping. He's got days of being shocked with the baton and beaten and tied up so he had to let that sick son of a bitch touch him.

"What-" Jake's voice catches. He has to breathe for a second to keep back the hint of tears that want to fall. "What do you do when you have a nightmare, Chris?"

Chris smiles, just a little, and puts a hand on Jake's chest, over his heart. "Hold on to, to you, and and and I tell you, too, what I, I, I-I I saw."

I saw the man who did this to you.

"I don't... want to talk... so how 'bout the holding part, huh? That, uh, might actually help."

Chris brightened, and shifted in the bed to rest his head on Jake's shoulder, not quite tucked into the crook of his neck. He kept his hand on Jake's heart. "You're, you're, you're okay," Chris said, softly. "We're okay."

"We're okay," Jake repeated, and felt some part of him relax.

"We, we did it just right, and everybody's okay," Chris continued. "We, we, we we we-"

"Hey, Chris?"

"Yeah? Do I, I need to stop? Are are, are my words bad?"

"No. Can you-... Can you tap? On me? A little?"

Chris hesitates, for just a second, and then his index finger takes up a rhythm over Jake's heart, familiar now. Fingers-twist-tap-tap-tap.

Jake's eyes slowly close.

"Does, does that help?"

"So much," Jake whispers, and keeps his eyes closed, listening, feeling the constant tap just above his heart. Eventually, the two feelings seem to match, slide into a single rhythm, to be the same.

His pulse and Chris's fingertips, in perfect time.

"Y'doin' that on purpose," Jake says, and barely holds back the yawn.

"Yeah, I am." There's a smile in Chris's voice. "Want, want me to stop?"

"No. Just... just keep going, okay? Remind me."

"Of, of what?"

"Just... remind me that I made it back. That we're all okay. I just... need the reminder."

Chris doesn't say anything to that. He just keeps tapping in the silent room until Jake falls back asleep.

Chris had a nightmare, too, burning under his skin. But he doesn't always share his. And tonight, he comforts himself by keeping Jake safe even from the worst things that lurk inside a sleeping mind.

It's somewhere between 4 and 5 am, and Chris doesn't go back to sleep.

With each twist, each tiny rush of soothing reassurance, he feels a little bit stronger, and Jake seems to sleep a little bit deeper.

He just keeps tapping until dawn.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

Text

Just Right: Chris

CW: Head-banging stim referenced, stimming in general in a negative context, derogatory language about stimming, referenced past abuse/noncon, institutional whump, referenced whump of a minor, conditioning, memory loss, traumatic deaths of family referenced, traumatic memory recovery, getting glass out of foot referenced

Tagging @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxck-fxck, @slaintetowhump

PREVIOUS (COME BACK)

No one comes back.

He waits and waits, but no one comes back. People stand on the sidewalk, for a while, the old lady and her grandson and some other people besides. Chris doesn’t listen to them, although the sounds filter in, bounce around his mind, occasional words and half-formed sentences that he doesn’t want to understand.

Instead, Chris focuses as hard as he can on the memory of Jake promising Chris won’t be left alone. It’s difficult to focus - he’s scared and didn’t sleep last night, and the birds are loud outside and there’s so much glass that catches the light and bounces pretty white reflections off all the walls - but he tries, he tries so hard, to remember that Jake won’t make him be alone forever.

They can’t keep Jake away forever.

Can they?

The people leave. Breakfast is there, and lunch, and dinner, right on the porch where the old woman said they’d be. Chris drifts through the day, and his thoughts cycle and circle and he can’t keep them still long enough to decide what to do beyond just… staying alive. He has to stay alive. He has to wait.

The first night, he doesn’t sleep. He waits, and waits, and tries to remember how to calm his thoughts, but nothing comes.

All he can think of is that Antoni and Leila were supposed to wait for him, but it took too long, and once the door broke down they had to go. Somewhere they’re safe, somewhere else, with the other ones, the ones Chris has heard about but hasn’t met. Kauri, who never sits still, Kauri is safe, too, somewhere else. Chris is the only one left.

Chris is the only one here to wait.

He tries to clean but he doesn’t remember how to do it very well. He washes the dishes in the sink, he can do that - and he empties out the coffee pot, full and long-since gone cold, and sets the coffee up for the next day, even though he knows no one will be here to drink it, but maybe if he makes the coffee someone will come back.

The first day, he brews the coffee, and no one comes. But maybe the second day will be different. He dumps the pot again and goes through the motions.

They destroyed the house and the television is turned over and shattered all along its front, they cut up the couch cushions even. Nothing is the same, and everything is wrong. Chris tries to sweep up the glass in Jake’s room from the lamp and steps in it instead, letting out a wild, high-pitched cry at a stab of pain straight up his leg. He can’t get the glass out, he’s too scared to touch it, and he hobbles around leaving bloody trails everywhere he goes, limping, whimpering and wishing there was anyone, anyone left.

If Jake was here, he’d sit Chris down in the bathroom and use his cell phone as a flashlight and use tweezers and Chris would watch him stick his tongue out a little like he does when he’s thinking really hard about something. Then Leila would fuss over him and Antoni would sing him songs in Russian, which Antoni doesn’t know anymore but still remembers the songs. Chris doesn’t know what Russian looks like, but he knows the sounds of the notes Antoni sings, the way his mouth shapes the letters.

Tak byvayet - staneshʹ vzrosleye ty

I, kak ptitsa, vvysʹ uletishʹ

Kem by ni byl, znay, chto dlya mamy ty

Kak i prezhde, ilyy malysh

Chris is bad at remembering things and bad at knowing words and bad at most things, he thinks, sometimes, but when he does remember something it pops in fully-formed, and he remembers Antoni singing the songs to himself, songs he doesn’t remember in his head but his body still knows, anyway.

See, we are still in here, Antoni says, tapping the side of his own head with one finger, flashing a smile. They didn’t take it all out, it’s only hidden, Chrisha.

Why do you call me that?

I don’t… I don’t know. But I will, Chrisha. I will know, soon, and I’ll tell you once I do.

But Antoni can’t tell him, because he’s gone. Everyone is gone. There’s no one but him, now.

He’s alone, and he’s not made to be alone, they told him he couldn’t be alone or he’ll suffer and shrivel up and die, and Chris hits his head on the wall and taps his fingers desperately on the floor and cries into the hardwood, but none of it helps, because he’s still alone when he stops tapping, stops hitting, stops listening, when he stops.

All alone.

Just like last time, some dim part of him remembers, but there wasn’t a last time, and he doesn’t know what he’s thinking about. It’s just part of the cycle of too many thoughts at once, dipping in and out of his conscious mind. It’s just another thing that slides in and around the calls of the birds and the rustle-clatter of a squirrel leaping across tree branches, the splashing sound of something in the birdbath in the yard, Doves mean peace and pigeons get no love, but they’re the same bird, baby, just a little different coloration. That’s you, honey, just a different way of being in the world and we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure you out, little dove-

He doesn’t know whose voice he keeps thinking of and he misses her so much it’s a physical pain inside his chest, making his mouth open to cry long after the tears have dried. He makes strange dry sobbing sounds, hiccups really, that come with no tears but grief pours from him in a wave, grief that he didn’t know could still be in there for a woman he doesn’t remember, doesn’t recognize, has never met.

He doesn’t know who she is and it’s his fault she’s gone.

His fault Jake is gone, they were looking for him, he knows it somehow. It’s certainty, deep in his bones. They always said if he ran, someone would find him and bring him back to Sir, and he was so good, he didn’t run, Miss Megan asked him to get in her car and Baldur was always so good for guests, and, and it’s not his fault but it’s his fault Jake is gone.

He can’t think, the circles run too fast, there are too many thoughts and not one will let him pin it down. Instead they bounce and jump and leap and crash and bash the inside of his skull, tired not tired hurt my fault not my fault where did he go come back you promised you promised you’d come back don’t leave me I don’t know where I am I don’t know how to do this the squirrels are loud today the birds are quiet do the birds know did the mourning dove know you’d be taken away from me too just a different way of being, honey, mom come back mom don’t leave jake don’t leave me alone you promised you promised you promised you promised

you promised

No one comes back. Not the first day Chris is alone, not the second.

Chris falls asleep, eventually, after the sun goes down on the second day. He curls up on the floor near the spot of dried blood, wrapping himself in Jake’s blankets until even the floor beneath him feels nearly soft. He lays his head down on Nat’s pillow and Jake’s, too, breathing in their scents and tapping on the floor, on himself, on the wall.

He won’t leave the last bit of Jake he can see, the spot where his head hit the wall. He’ll stay right here, in the house, and stay close.

He fell asleep beside the blood before, too, in the thing he can’t remember, the reason for the pain so deep in his chest, twisting his heart in knots until he wonders if people can die like this, can die of pain in their hearts that comes from inside their heads.

Sleep is thin and drawn, it’s the way he slept in training, and Chris shifts and murmurs and cries in his dreams, blood and bone and bits of worse gray bits on the wall, screaming woman shouting man men with guns, but they turn the gun on him, the men, and they say what the fuck is a kid doing here? You have a kid, you goddamn bastard?

And Jake is the shouting man and he is yelling of course I have a fucking kid, what did you think all the fucking trophies were for, did you think I’m the one who’s gonna be in the Olympics?

Flash and burst of sound, deaf in the dark. Chris flinches in his sleep, from moments that aren’t real because he doesn’t remember them, and false memories happen when you’ve been erased. It’s not real. None of it happened. It’s not real.

The phone rings in the early hours of the morning - there have been two sunrises since they took Jake and Nat away - and wakes him with a start, but Chris doesn’t dare answer it. He only stares at the old bit of plastic and wiring that hangs on the wall as though it might come to life and bite him, and eventually it stops ringing, the answering machine picks up, and whoever called hangs up without saying a thing.

Chris falls back asleep.

This time, he doesn’t dream.

The next time he wakes up, he can hear murmuring voices, and he goes still and quiet and tense on the floor, keeping his face turned down, letting his hair hide his eyes so no one will know he’s awake.

“Shit, they did a fuckin’ number, didn’t they?” It’s a man’s voice, rough-edged and angry, and Chris fights the urge to curl in on himself, to hide all the soft parts and hope he will not be hit or kicked or hurt for being bad again.

“Why would they do this?” A woman, and her voice is softer, sweeter. Chris swallows. They were only a few female handlers, but they spoke in quieter voices and were meaner, too. So much meaner, even when they didn’t have to be, even when he tried to be good. “What were they trying to accomplish, Ruth?”

“Y’know damn well.” That’s the old woman whose grandson has brought him food, and Chris carefully shifts around. They don’t know he’s right where he can see them, the pile of blankets is wrapped so tightly it looks like nothing more than another pile of the debris left behind. He moves just enough to look, through his hair, at a small crowd of people just outside the broken front door.

His eyes struggle to understand, but they seem to be holding… plastic buckets, and mops, and other things for cleaning. The thoughts bounce and jump, but he tries to grab on, to grasp them even though his heart is sick with fear and his mind wants to tumble after it.

“It’s fear, is what it is,” The first person, the man, snaps. “They want us to be fuckin’ afraid to be like Natalie, that’s what they want. I’m not afraid of them.”

“Easy to say when you don’t have kids to worry about,” The younger woman, maybe Jake’s age, replies, but she doesn’t look scared to Chris. She looks strong. She looks brave, holding her mop and bucket with a little baby strapped on her back, staring into the house over her shoulder, scruff of dark hair standing up nearly straight on its little rounded head.

“My Wilbur went through some of this,” The old woman - Ruth? - says, nodding firmly. “There’s no shame in fear, but there is shame in lettin’ fear keep you standing outside the door when there’s work to be done. Jaden’ll be back with his little friends to help in a bit, I’ve promised ‘em all the pizza they can eat. Now. This door isn’t locked, but it does make a hell of a screamin’ sound, so I think we’ll prob’ly wake the poor thing up, wherever he’s hiding.”

The woman’s eyes roam across the walls, then catch on the spot of Jake’s blood on the wall. Chris feels a wild urge to yell don’t look at it, that makes it real, but he doesn’t know why. Instead he curls up tighter, tapping under the blankets against his own skin. Finger-twist-tap-tap-tap, finger-twist-tap-tap-tap.

Now, Baldur, honey, you know better than to do that. I don’t like it when you do that, do I?

No, Sir, no, y-you, you don’t, you don’t like when I, when, when when when-

Baldur. Silence is better than stammering.

… Yes, Sir. I’m sorry my… words are bad, Sir.

That’s better.

Chris bites down hard on his lower lip, catching the protest before it can be spoken out loud, because the woman he doesn’t remember said you have to talk or no one can hear you, and Nat always says to speak how he wants to, and Jake says his words are fine, they’re fine, he’s fine even if he’s not the way they are, he’s fine he’s fine he’s not fine and Jake is never coming back but he promised, he promised, he promised-

Something about his movements must get her attention, because he hears the woman in the doorway catch her breath. “He’s right here, Ruth.”

Chris slowly raises his head. His foot aches where the glass is still stuck inside it, and it protests as he pushes up to sitting and has to move his legs, keeping the blankets wrapped around himself, pushing his back into the wall.

“Oh, baby.” Ruth smiles at him, one of those sad smiles you give people when you feel sorry for them, and Chris pulls further into himself, dropping his head back against the wall, taking the momentary feeling for the comfort he so badly needs it to be. “I’m back, honey. I brought you some sausage biscuits for breakfast, and I brought some friends, too. This here is Naomi, she lives on your left in the house with the blue porch ceiling-” The woman with the baby waves the mop in a kind of greeting, nearly knocking the angry man in the head. “-and that’s her little girl Kaelah. And this touch of grump is Jefferson, he lives right across the street.” The angry man waves, too.

Chris, tentatively, raises a hand to wave back, his fingers just barely bending at the knuckles.

“Now, I know you’re scared, honey, I understand, but we’re here to help you clean this place back up before your people come back. Can we come in?”

Chris’s eyes roam from one face to the next, looking for signs of cruelty, looking for the kind of smile his Sir would give him. He sees nothing but openness on all of them - Jefferson with the bit of anger, but it’s not really at him, it’s at the house, what happened here. Naomi with her slight smile for him, and her little girl Kaelah grabbing at fistfuls of Naomi’s hair and sticking it in her own tiny mouth to chew on. Ruth, the same wrinkles and gray-and-black hair, the same open kindness, compassion, looking at him with the same look she’d given her own grandson the day before.

They wait, and eventually Chris presses his lips together and nods. The door scrapes loud along the floor, and he flinches back from the sound, pulling Jake’s blanket as tightly around him as it will go.

“I’ll take the living room,” Jefferson says, his eyes roaming over the shattered television, the cut-up couch cushions and stuffing littered everywhere. “Ben and I bought a new couch a week ago, the old one’s just been sitting in the den while we figure what to do with it. I’ll call some people, have it moved in here.”

“We got a TV we don’t need in our bedroom,” Naomi says, looking around as well. “I’ll start in the-…” Her eyes move to the open-framed doorway to the kitchen, staring at the shattered wreck of ceramic, the little path that Chris had made by pushing all the wreckage to the side. The coffeemaker with its full pot still piping hot, untouched. “… we got extra plates, too, I’ll get those. I’ll call my girl Kari, that woman’s a hoarder waiting to happen and she’s got half a whole house sitting on her porch taking up space. Did they leave this poor kid anything?”

Chris clears his throat, swallows around the nervous lump there, and says, hoarsely, “Th-they, they, they left the, um, the, the food in the fridge.”

“Well, that’s a small mercy and I’ll say a prayer for that,” Ruth says, stepping inside herself, rubbing her hands together, a wedding ring with a diamond glittering on her left hand. “Let’s pray the Lord shows His mercy on the ones who did this.”

“I don’t see why we should,” Jefferson snaps, already in the living room, his boots crunching on something before he lifts his foot to sigh. “Glass is fucking everywhere.”

“We should pray for the Lord to show mercy,” Ruth says, in the voice of a woman who will brook no appeal, “because I sure as hell wouldn’t. Leavin’ a boy here in this wreck all alone.” Ruth screwed her mouth up like she might want to spit. “Imagine it, just imagine leaving a boy here all on his lonesome.”

“Th-they… they didn’t know, know I was here,” Chris says, softly. “I was hiding. I have a hiding place.”

“Hiding,” The man says tightly. “You hear that, Miss Ruth? Hiding while they fuckin’ trashed everything around him. Fucking hiding. You know who else had to fuckin’ hide in goddamn-”

“Don’t you curse the Lord’s name near me, young man.”

“… sorry, Miss Ruth.”

“Besides, I know, Jefferson. If you think I don’t know damn well… but gettin’ ourselves all worked up won’t help this boy in the here and now, will it?”

A muscle twitches in the angry man’s cheek. It reminds Chris of Jake, even though they are so different, Jake all blond hair and scruffy stubble and Jefferson looks like a cowboy in the movies Jake watches late at night, skinny-hipped in worn-out blue jeans with a giant belt buckle and hard-lined set to his jaw. But the anger - the deep-down rage - that’s the same.

It’s not rage he has to be scared of, but rage meant to protect him, and Chris’s heart twists in a good way this time.

“Yes, Miss Ruth.” Jefferson frowns.

Ruth sighs, her eyes roaming, taking in the enormous task ahead of them. Well… we’d best get started, the day won’t get any younger.” She holds out her hand and Chris looks up at her, hesitating before he lets her take his hand and help him onto his feet. He stands with one leg bent, to keep the weight off the glass still embedded in his heel. Jake’s blanket falls down around him to puddle on the floor at his feet. “Baby boy, what are you wearing?”

In the kitchen, Naomi is already on the phone, speaking to someone in hushed hurried tones, while baby Kaelah bats happily at her mother’s shoulders with her hands, legs swinging bare out the sides of the carrier she’s settled in.

Chris looks down, then back up. “Wh-what I, what I always wear to, to to to sleep in.” Jake’s shirt, the one he’d shoved into Chris’s hands before, before, before-

Before they took you away from me.

“Sweetie, you look like a toddler tryin’ t’wear his daddy’s clothes,” Ruth says gently. “Y’got anything left of your own, or did they tear that up, too?”

Chris shakes his head, slowly, his eyes moving to the stairs. “I, I have clothes. Um. I have clothes but, but, but but but I don’t want to, to walk on the stairs, it’ll, um, I have, I have, um, there’s there’s glass in my, in my, in my my my-”

“Glass in your foot?” Ruth asks, gently. “You step on somethin’, honey?”

Chris nods, balancing on one foot and twisting his other leg to show her the mess of his heel, with the glass still deeply inside.

“Oh honey, that had to hurt,” Ruth murmured. “Jefferson, can you-”

“Got it, Miss Ruth. You’re the CO on this little enterprise.”

“Don’t you ‘CO’ me, Jefferson, this ain’t the army.”

Jefferson laughs, and Chris feels like the walls are soaking up the sound, and his breathing eases. His lungs feel less constricted, less held still. He feels a little less frozen. He is aware without knowing that there was a time when no one came the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that.

But this time isn’t going to be like that. It’s going to be different, and he’s going to remember this.

Naomi pops her head back into the entryway. “Kari’s packin’ up, and I told them a bit of what happened - just that the cops trashed the place and left a kid behind, that’s all, they don’t know what Nat does. Kari’s husband wants to come help, too, and he’s bringin’ a buddy. Guy knows somebody who knows somebody in the movement, I guess. They’re callin’ around to see if any of the lib people will come on over to sit with the kid.”

“They won’t,” Ruth says, after a moment’s pause. “Unless it’s different than it was when Wilbur was in it. They’re islands, Naomi, always have been.”

“If a volcano blows up an island,” Naomi says, her voice edged with something Chris doesn’t understand, eyes suddenly hard and flinty, “You can’t tell me the other islands wouldn’t send some fuckin’ boats to find survivors.”

“Volcanoes are part of nature,” Ruth says, almost primly. “This isn’t natural at all.”

Ruth and Naomi share a long look, and then the woman and her baby disappear back into the kitchen.

“Ben’ll be over in about an hour, he’s calling in sick and setting someone else to take his meetings for the day,” Jefferson offers, breaking the moment of strange, weighted silence. “And I don’t work at the bar ‘til 6:30, so I got time. Ben says he’ll call a couple of people, too.”

Chris stares around at them, and feels tears stinging his eyes. He taps the inside of his wrist with his other hand, rhythmic, soothing the ache inside him, but it’s not quite the same kind of ache it was before.

“Jaden’s bringin’ three or four of his little friends,” Ruth says firmly. “Which make us quite the crowd, and we can get this all cleaned up in no time, can’t we? And we got pizza for lunch. Jefferson, I don’t spend my good clean money on liquor, but you can, if you want.”

Jefferson laughs again. “Understood, Miss Ruth. Okay, little one let’s fix your foot-… hey, what’s your name?” He tilted his head, watching Chris with kind, dark eyes.

Chris looks over at Ruth, who nods and squeezes his hands lightly, then lets go. The touch felt so good he nearly moves closer, back into it. He likes being touched, he’s supposed to like being touched, any way at all. “M-my, my name is, my name is, is is is Chris, my name is-… I picked the name, the, the name Chris, I picked it myself.”

His voice is low, worried they’ll laugh, but Jefferson grins at him, and it tugs a smile from Chris in return. “That’s a good choice, Chris. Now, look, we got half a couch cushion and I think that’s enough for your skinny butt. So take a seat, and I’ll get you cleaned up in no time.” He takes Chris’s arm now, helping him hobble his way into the living room, to sit slowly down on the undamaged part of the couch, holding his heel out for the man to take in warm fingers, pressing here and there, apologizing in a low voice when Chris hisses at the sharp stab of pain.

He taps hard on the couch, closing his eyes so he won’t see what happens, feeling a little faint at the thought of the clear glass shard coming out of his foot. Finger-twist-tap, finger-twist-tap, finger-twist-tap-

“What are you doin’ there, Chris?” Jefferson asks, and Chris stops.

“Nothing,” He whispers, keeping his voice slow, and careful. “Nothing, sir-”

“No fuckin’ sirs with me, I did that way too long in the fuckin’ army. Just call me Jefferson, thanks. All right, Chris, do whatever you gotta do, I’m gonna fix this as soon as I count to one, two, three-”

But he’s already squeezing hard on the count of two and Chris whines in pain as a sharp ache shoots up his leg from his heel, spikes, and then… lessens, lowers to a dim throb, hardly real pain at all.

“Done,” Jefferson announces, brightly. “Now, let’s get you some shoes, so you don’t worry about stepping in anything again. You can come stay with me ‘til your people get back-”

Chris opens his eyes. “No.”

“No?” Jefferson’s eyebrows raise, and Ruth pauses where she’s working with a broom to sweep some crumpled papers in the entryway, looking over at the way Chris’s voice has suddenly gone stronger, harder.

“I can’t, can’t leave,” Chris says, looking Jefferson right in the eyes. Baldur, love, you know you should never meet a man’s eyes unless you’re going to-

“Why not?” Jefferson asks, confused, cutting off Chris’s nervous, cycling thoughts.

“Because, be, because, because because he said to wait for him,” Chris says, a little louder this time, pulling his foot back and away from Jefferson’s hands, curling up on the couch cushion into the tiniest ball he can make himself. “Jake said, he said, he said to wait, and I have to, to wait for him. Right here. Until he, he comes back.”

“Chris…” Jefferson hesitates. “It could be a while-”

“Hush,” Ruth says, quick and fast the way the woman he doesn’t remember used to sometimes say things like that to a man he doesn’t remember, either. “Hush now. Not the time or the place, Jefferson. Not yet.”

“Yes, Miss Ruth. So you need to wait right here?”

“I have to wait for Jake,” Chris says, pressing his own hands against his stomach through the soft fabric of Jake’s worn-out old T-shirt, long fingers that curl into the cotton. “I have to wait for him. I, I, I said I’d wait, I said I’d wait, he promised he’d come back, and I-I-I, I have to, I have to…”

I have to do it the right way this time. Last time I did it all wrong and they died. If I can do it right this time, no one has to die. He doesn’t know where the thought comes from and it sinks back and away just as quickly. He flinches at the memory of a woman’s terrified face, his own voice screaming, and the realization that people can die with their eyes wide open.

“I have to wait,” Chris whimpers, and presses his palms up to his eyes to hide the tears that start to start to fall. There’s a pause, and then warm arms around him, holding him, but the arms aren’t right and the smell isn’t right and he’s alone, even with people in the house, he’s alone, he’s only not alone when he’s with Jake, and Jake is gone, and people have died when Chris did it wrong, he has to do it all just right this time-

Don’t move, baby. Just stay here, and it’ll be all right.

No! He’s just a child! Please, please, that’s my little boy, please no, please, God, no!

I’m coming back for you. Wait for me here.

“I have to w-wait, I have to, to wait, I have to wait for him, I have to wait…” The words bubble up unbidden, and the man holding onto him rocks back and forth, back and forth, and Chris rocks with him, crying into his shoulder, the man’s shirt damp with his tears. The women are silent, but for the sounds of their work, water pouring into a mop bucket and a broom sweeping across the floor.

You are not hidden, there’s never been a moment you were forgotten - you are not hopeless, though you have been broken, your innocence stolen

Jake likes to sing to him, now, in his low bass voice, and he might never sing to Chris again, like the woman won’t, and how many times can he lose everyone before there’s no one left to lose?

The only sound now is Chris crying into the shoulder of a stranger, all the fear he cannot keep inside himself any longer wept out against his will, that somehow it’s happening all over again, and once more he’s the only one left in the house, once more there is blood on the wall, but he can’t remember when blood was there before and he doesn’t know why he’s so scared that Jake will die.

Just like the woman did, the one he doesn’t remember, the warm hand on his forehead when he was sick, the man the low voice murmuring, if you had a bad dream, you can crawl in with us, buddy, when he was young.

I will never stop marching to reach you in the middle of the hardest fight, it’s true

“I promised to, to wait,” Chris sobs into the man’s shirt, his skin, and feels the man’s warm hands rubbing soothingly at his back. “I promised to wait for him. He’s, he’s, he’s coming b-back, he said he’ll come back, he said to wait and I have to, to wait-”

I will rescue you

“He’s coming back,” Chris whimpers. “He’s, he’s, he’s coming back, he promised to come back-”

“I know,” Jefferson murmurs. “I know he did.”

I will rescue you

“I’m so, I’m, I’m so, so so so so scared, I’m scared, please, I’m so scared he won’t come back, please, please, I don’t want to lose anyone anymore, please, please get him back-”

I hear the whisper underneath your breath, I hear you whisper you have nothing left

“It’ll be okay, Chris,” Jefferson says softly, into his ear. “We’ll figure it out, and you can stay right here. We’ll figure this out with you, okay? We’ll… we’ll figure it out together. Okay?”

“He, he, he he he promised, he promised, he-”

“I know. I know he did.” Jefferson swallows - Chris can hear it, feel the movement of his throat. “I know he did, kiddo.” There’s a pause, and then in a slightly different voice, Jefferson asks, “Miss Ruth, what’s our next step?”

The old woman is silent, and then says softly, “We clean the house, and we get this boy a bed to sleep in, right here where he wants to be. And then I guess one of us should figure out how to pay bail.”

The phone in the kitchen rings again, and Chris can hear, through his own low sobbing, Naomi’s voice as she picks up. There’s a low conversation, and the click of the phone resting back in its cradle.

“We might not have to do this ourselves,” Naomi says, sounding odd, like her voice is caught in her throat.

“Why not?” Jefferson’s arms tighten around Chris, and he clings to him desperately, the warmth of human contact, the reassurance that he will not be left alone again.

“Because…” Naomi’s voice twists with a wry humor. “Jake didn’t call his lawyer or his mom, Miss Ruth.”

“Then who did he call?”

“Uh.” Naomi clears her throat. Chris looks up, to see her looking stricken, staring at Chris as though he’s grown three heads. “He, uh. He called someone who called-… you guys ever see the movie Dimmer Switch?”

“Yeah, like… a million years ago,” Jefferson says, sounding baffled.

“I don’t see movies,” Ruth says, equally confused, though hers sounds more like irritation.

Chris’s heart twists, in his chest. Something like relief, but sharp as a blade, cutting him open, laying out all his hope for them to see and take and destroy, if they want to, like all of him was cut out once before.

It’s not gone, Antoni says, inside his mind, in his memory. They buried it, they built a wall, but we are still inside ourselves. You just have to dig deep enough, Chris.

This isn’t going to be like before.

“That was, uh. That was… some girl named Krista. She’s coming here. And she’s coming with a check from Vincent fucking Shield to pay their bail. We’ll have to go do it, because Krista says she’s… she’s one of them - the Boxies - she can’t go herself, they might recognize her.”

“Then I’ll go to the jail and get them myself,” Jefferson says, strongly. “I thought Vincent Shield just talked a big game in interviews, but that’s walking the walk, huh?”

“Oh, man.” Naomi sounds stunned.

There’s a silence.

“Does that mean Vincent Shield has been here? And I was right next door to a fucking movie star and no one told me?”

Chris laughs, putting his hands back up over his face, burying himself in Jefferson’s shoulder. Krista will come to help him, Krista will come, and they’ll go get Jake, and Jake will come back, and it won’t be like before, mourning doves are just pigeons with a prettier name, they don’t mean anyone will die, no one has to die this time, you’re the reason Ronnie died, you should never have been born, but he doesn’t know that voice, either, who said that?

Someone, darker in his mind, a place he can’t go. A place that hurts but Chris tries to dig down into it anyway, follows the voice, chases it into the pain.

Thank you, it’s, it’s hard, but, but but but thank you for getting this for, for dinner, it-it helps, thank you-

Don’t thank me. It’s the least I can do on a day like this, huh?

A day like, like, like like like what?

Nothing. Just thinking about tomorrow. Happy birthday, Tris-

His thoughts are interrupted by a flash of red in the window, the cardinal from before. It sits on the windowsill, briefly, looking in at him with one dark eye. Then it takes flight again, a burst of wings, and is gone.

He doesn’t remember what he was thinking about but it doesn’t matter now. He did it all just right, so no one has to die this time. No one has to die because of him, and Jake is coming back, and it’s going to be okay. Jake promised he would come back, and Chris promised he would wait right here.

They can both keep their promises this time, because Chris did it all just right.

He did it just right.

He was good, this time, and that means no one will die.

He can keep his promise, the last one he made to the woman he doesn’t remember when she was lying on the floor with her eyes wide open, to be good.

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