#it’s just boring!!!! i’m bad at noticing my bodily needs and it’s a chore

[skautism]

oh wait i didnt grow out of ed it just turned into arfid lol. i wish fresh fruit was cheaper thats always safe but like. environmental impact of always available strawberries. but its pomegranate and grapefruit season!!!!

[dashuisofanubis]

Making Excuses (or 5 times Eddie and Patricia got chores and 1 time they didn't)

Alternatively titled 6 times Victor got a migraine

My @sibunasecretsanta gift for @sibxna, who asked for anything Peddie related. I hope you like it!!!

Read on Ao3

1.

It was all subjective really. Maybe they had been miscreants launching a deliberate and malicious attack against Victor’s prize dahlias, or maybe they’d just been having fun playing catch when the competitive streak kicked in and the flowers were unfortunately caught in the cross-fire. If he hadn’t wanted his flowers to become a casualty, maybe he shouldn’t have planted them there.

Tragically, Victor didn’t see it their way, so Patricia and Eddie were once again stuck doing chores for the foreseeable future. And apparently tending to the garden they’d ‘vandalised’ was a key part of this punishment.

Patricia groaned as she pulled up another weed. Why were there so many of them? If Victor cared about his flowers as much as he seemed to, why did he let them get so overrun? “Why does Victor like doing this to us?” she muttered under her breath.

“Uh, maybe because he likes to see us suffer?” Eddie replied, evidently not understanding her question was rhetorical. Eddie had drawn the short straw and was shovelling manure onto the rose beds. Either he was fine with that task or was doing a really good job at hiding how much he hated it.

“Well, duh.” Patricia shot back, taking out her frustration on Eddie, rather than this weed that would not budge however much she pulled at it.

“Uh, Yacker, hate to break it to you, but that’s a marigold.” Eddie said, watching her battle with the plant.

“Oh.” She released her grip, smoothing the leaves so it looked a little less like it had been viciously attacked. She’d thought it was a deceptively big dandelion, and debated whether she should tell Eddie that, before deciding against it.

Eddie paused in his work and turned to her. “You thought it was some kind of fancy dandelion didn’t you?” He asked, a grin set on his face.

“No.” She said defensively. Perhaps a little too defensively, she thought, as she watched Eddie’s smile widen considerably.

“Aw come on Yacker, it’s okay to admit you know nothing about plants.”

Patricia chose not to reply in words, but with a glare, though it was much harder to manage without bursting into laughter than she thought.

“You know, we could switch jobs, since you’re struggling so much.”

“Fight me.”

“Well, if you insist.” Eddie shrugged, tossing his spade to the side. Patricia had barely a second to process what he was doing before he came barrelling towards her.

“Eddie wai-!"

He collided with her, both of them falling bodily to the ground. They lay there for a few moments, stunned, before breaking out into laughter.

“Maybe the others are right, we are too competitive.” Patricia sighed, feeling the laughter subside.

“Yeah, but it is fun to prove I’m better than you.”

“No way! If I’d been prepared I totally would have taken you down.”

“Okay, you wanna prove this in a proper setting, Yacker?”

“Sure.”

“Tomorrow? At the gym?”

“It’s a date.” Patricia confirmed, then added: “If you buy me a drink after.”

Eddie paused, pretending to consider her offer. “You got yourself a deal!”

It was then, as they made to stand up, that they noticed where they’d fallen. Both of them peered down to see the marigolds, crushed and broken under the sudden weight.

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah, we might need to rain check that date.”

2.

Victor sighed, resisting the urge to press a hand against his face as he looked at the students sat across from him, covered in bits of paint and plaster. Just last month, these two miscreants had destroyed not only his dahlias, but his marigolds too. After that, he’d banned them from all garden work, which made them happier than he liked, but he had to do it if he still wanted a garden to work in. These two seemed determined to give Lewis and Clarke a run for their money.

“So,” he began, “Let me get this straight-”

“More like let me run this bi you, am I right?” Eddie whispered to Patricia, who tried to suppress a laugh while under Victor’s stare. He sighed.

“Let me just check: you two put a hole into yours and Mr. Rutter’s bedroom wall?”

“Yeah, we did.” For some reason Eddie looked vaguely proud of himself, which potentially had something to do with the hand he was keeping firmly in his hoodie pocket.

“So, your first solution is not to come to me, but to try and fix it yourselves.”

“We didn’t want to get in trouble.” Patricia said, at the same time as Eddie says, “We thought we could handle it.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” Victor asked. “But neither of you take DT, and neither of you have any proficiency in DIY, so what did you end up doing?”

“We made it bigger.” Patricia muttered, rolling her eyes.

“What was that Ms Williamson?” Victor said, in a tone that was almost patronising.

“We made it bigger! Jeez!” She exclaimed.

“Exactly. So, what’s the reason you made the hole in the first place?”

The two students exchanged a look.

“It was an accident.” Patricia said quickly.

“Okay, how did you accidentally put a hole into the wall?”

“We, uh… tripped?” Eddie offered, rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at Patricia, who exasperatedly mouthed why?

Victor raised his eyebrow raised impossibly high “Tripped? Both of you? Into the same patch of wall with enough force to break through the plaster?”

“…yes?” Patricia pressed a hand to her face and sighed. Victor wanted to do the same. Eddie couldn’t even lie convincingly, let alone well.

Victor leant back in his chair, considering an appropriate punishment. The two wall destroyers were whispering furtively to each other, both of them berating each other for not thinking of a decent cover story before they came in. Victor cleared his throat deliberately, and they jumped, turning to face him as he delivered his verdict.

“Since the two of you seemed to want to solve the problem yourselves, you can help me repair the wall this weekend.”

The duo nodded, neither of them seeing fit to argue, for once.

“You can go.” Victor dismissed. He did not like plastering walls by any means, but at least by teaching them, he had someone he could relegate the task to if it happened again. Which, if he knew his students, which he unfortunately did, would happen sooner than he’d think.

“Well,” Eddie said as the two left the room, “That didn’t go as badly as I thought.”

“No.” Patricia agreed. “And we’ll get to learn how to fix walls, you know, in case you ever put your hand through one again.” She smirked.

“I was just trying to show you how tough I was, I didn’t know the walls were that thin!” Eddie defended, pulling his hand out his pocket and examining the bruises. They’d definitely help people think he was tough - he needed to make sure other students knew he was still a ‘bad boy with a heart of gold’, since they knew who his father was. “But” he added with a grin, “how cool is it that I was able to do that! Do you think it’s one of my Osirian powers, or do you really think I’m that strong?”

“I dunno.” Patricia said. “Maybe we should try it out with Sibuna later?”

“Maybe… ah.”

“What?”

Eddie looked at Patricia, a grimace forming.

“Who’s gonna tell Fabian about the hole in the wall?”

3.

This was all KT’s fault. She was the one who suggested playing knock knock ditch with Victor’s office. And yet she was sat on the counter, swinging her legs as she watched Eddie and Patricia clean the windows.

“You could help you know.” Patricia said pointedly as she scrubbed the glass.

“I could,” KT replied, a smug grin on her face, “but I’m not the one who got caught in the act.”

No, that had been Patricia. It was the 6th time someone had knocked on Victor’s door that night and he’d been determined to catch the perpetrator. So much so that the second Patricia knocked Victor yanked the door open, causing the startled student to fall over. Eddie made the mistake of going to check on her, and as such had been stuck with the punishment too. Meanwhile, KT had been watching the goings on from a distance, laughing to herself at her friends’ continued excuses as to why they’d knocked so many times.

Patricia scowled as she dunked her sponge back into the bucket. “Next time, we’re totally dragging you down with us.”

“Good luck with that.” KT laughed. “Victor doesn’t like it when I pull the ‘that’s homophobia’ card, so he just doesn’t convict me of anything.”

“Maybe we should try that out.” Eddie said, casting a look at Patricia, who was scrubbing at the window like it had insulted her. “It might work better than our excuse did.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she responded, “I thought ‘there’s a fire that keeps reigniting’ was pretty inspiring actually.”

“Really?”

“Obviously not.”

“Oh.” Eddie said, and the group lapsed into silence as Eddie and Patricia washed the windows and KT offered them ‘helpful’ comments.

“You missed a spot.” KT said again, pointing to a patch of glass that was, admittedly, dirtier than the rest. Patricia, however, wasn’t appreciative of KT’s constant interruptions and picked up her bucket.

“Woah, woah hey!” Eddie said, placing a hand over Patricia’s and lowering the bucket down before KT ended up drenched.

“It’s fine, Eddie,” KT replied, “This is the kind of entertainment I was hoping for.”

“Really? You want to be covered head to toe in dirty window water?”

“Well, it’d make for a more interesting time, this is boring!”

“You don’t even have to be here!” Patricia exclaimed.

“Yeah, but I feel kinda guilty.” KT admitted.

“But not guilty enough to help.”

“Obviously not.”

They were now cleaning the windows in the living room, and KT was sat on the arm of the sofa, still watching them despite her claims of boredom. Eddie had set his bucket down on the floor just within arm’s reach of her sitting position, and the duo were getting competitive over who’s cleaning better. KT grinned, sensing the opportunity. She leant down, stuck her hand in the bucket and flicked a handful of water at Patricia before moving quickly back into position as she said “Eddie!” in a shocked tone of voice.

Patricia spun round, glaring accusatorially at the supposed culprit. “Hey!”

“What?” Was all Eddie managed to reply before the water hit him. “Oh, okay if that’s how you want to play it!” He said, shaking the water out of his eyes before retaliating.

“You started it!” Patricia shouted.

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes you did!”

The argument continued for a few minutes, each opponent getting slowly more drenched, before Patricia asked: “Okay if you really didn’t do it, who did?”

It dawned on KT that she really should have left before this point, as the two window cleaners turned to her, realisation clear on their faces. KT’s realisation was that maybe she should have helped, at least then she’d have her own water to defend herself.

“Oh sh-” she exclaimed, scrambling back. But she’d united the two against a common enemy and they were unstoppable.

Once they’d successfully driven a soaking wet but laughing KT out of the lounge, the two turned to each other, sighing with laughter.

“Okay, I’ll go with KT, this was more entertaining.” Eddie admitted.

“Yeah, it was.”

They stared into each other’s eyes, and Patricia thought she’d quite like to kiss Eddie. He evidently thought the same, as he placed a hand on her face, wiping away some of the water. They leaned in towards each other and-

“What on Earth is going on here?”

They sprang apart as Victor stared at them, two bedraggled teenagers, then at the room, which was decidedly more wet than when they’d started. They both looked at him, an excuse on their tongues:

“It was KT!”

4.

“What have you got to say for yourself this time?” Victor asked. He looked like he needed a stiff drink, or at least a nap, which was impressive, considering it was 9 in the morning.

“Well you see,” Eddie started, “We were bored, so Alfie suggested we play 21, so we all said ‘yeah! That’s a great idea!’ Now, I don’t know if you know the rules to the game- “

“I’m familiar.” Victor interjected. The look on his face suggested he wasn’t 100% sure but was desperate for Eddie to cut to the chase. Eddie, however, was determined to drag this out as much as he could.

“Okay, good. So, we played a few rounds before this one but suddenly it gets to me and we’re up to 19. Willow was sitting next to me, so I could have passed it onto her, but I’m a gentleman, so I took 21 for myself. I choose dare because the last couple of rounds had been truth and we needed to spice things up a bit.”

Victor resisted the urge to press a hand against his face, and settled with a hard stare at the troublemaker, hoping he’d get to the point. He didn’t.

“So, the others go off to do some intense discussion on what the dare will be. Fabian and Mara return fairly quickly, because the others apparently don’t want the voices of reason guilting them into something less drastic. After, like, 10 whole minutes, they come back and tell me I have to get into your office and put a tiny party hat onto Corbierre. So, you see it wasn’t my idea, or my fault.”

Victor did not look convinced. “There wasn’t any way for you to refuse this ‘dare’?”

“Of course not, that’s just bad sportsmanship!”

“Of course.”

“Plus, if I did back out of it I’d owe them. We didn’t discuss what I’d owe them but just owing everyone in the house is enough. So really I’m the victim here, Victor! Go give the others a lecture on peer pressure!”

“Oh, I assure you I will, but first, tell me how you managed to conduct this dare of yours.”

“Really?” Eddie asked. He’d assumed Victor was just going to give him chores, especially since he’d spent the past 10 minutes looking like he wanted Eddie never to talk again.

“Oh yes.” Victor said, sounding vaguely interested. “I’m intrigued to know how you did it.”

Eddie felt a sense of unease wash over him but continued his retelling of last night regardless. “Okay, so the hard part was getting you out of your office. I needed to create a distraction, but tragically I cannot be in two places at once - I needed an accomplice. So, I called in a favour to Patricia. She didn’t want to help seeing as it wasn’t her dare, but she owed me for something completely unrelated to the hole in my wall, and the others agreed that the laws of owing people are ranked higher than the rules of 21, so she had no choice. I came up with the distraction idea, but she had to enact it, so I could slip in and place the hat on Corbierre…” Eddie trailed off, suddenly realising why Victor had wanted him to continue.

Victor smiled- well, it wasn’t a smile exactly but more like the look someone gives when they’ve got someone right where the want them. “So, it was Patricia who set the smoke alarm off, hm?”

“No-I- did I say that? I didn’t say that!” Eddie fumbled. Why was he so bad at lying when put on the spot?

Victor looked unimpressed. “Okay, Mr. Miller, I’ll give you a choice: either you and Miss Williamson get put on chore duty for the week, or you do chore duty yourself for a fortnight.”

Eddie considered the offer. He didn’t want to turn Patricia in any more than he had done, so really he should do the noble thing and take the two weeks but… that was a long time to be doing chores. Alone. Besides, he and Patricia were good at working together and technically this meant he could spend a week hanging out with her. Chores were never that bad when they were together, in fact they were almost fun. He sighed. Patricia would not be thrilled by his decision. “We’ll do the week of chores.”

Victor nodded. “Good. Now, go downstairs to the living room. I have a talk on peer pressure to give.”

Victor watched the boy leave. He didn’t seem to be entirely at fault this time, Victor was well too aware of the chaos that went down in the students’ games of truth and dare. But that didn’t mean he was exempt, Victor was fairly certain Eddie was behind several of the dares, especially the one that led to Jerome belting Bohemian Rhapsody outside at 1 in the morning. Plus, he’d talked Patricia into helping him, so he could sit through this talk just like everyone else.

Once Victor was certain Eddie had gone, he opened the drawer and pulled out the small party hat. He would never admit it to anyone, but he thought Corbierre was rather dashing in a hat.

5.

“It was Jerome.”

“Liar I don’t even eat that crap!”

“Oh yeah, then why did I see you with a box yesterday?”

“We needed the box to build Victor Jr Jr’s home, everybody knows this Patricia!”

“Enough!” Victor’s voice cut through their argument. “This bickering is getting you nowhere! Patricia, I know you are covering for Mr. Miller, he has already confessed to taking the cereal from the cupboard.”

Patricia sighed internally. “Well, if you already knew Eddie did it, why did you ask us?”

“Because, Miss Williamson, while I don’t doubt his dedication to making my life difficult, he usually has an accomplice, and it’s usually one of you two.”

“I would never partner with Eddie willingly!” Jerome exclaimed, sounding affronted.

“Why? Afraid he’ll outshine your reputation?”

“Stop, both of you, before you give me a migraine.” Victor sighed. “Patricia, go join Eddie upstairs and start clearing up your mess.”

Jerome smirked at Patricia like he’d won. In response, she turned to Victor and said in a sickly-sweet voice: “Oh Victor, just before I go, I think you should know that Jerome’s the one who’s been stealing pens from your office. He’s been selling them to first years.”

Jerome paled. Patricia left and made her way upstairs, grinning as she listened to Jerome’s attempted excuses. Eddie was rifling through Victor’s drawers, pulling out cheerios’ and placing them into a bowl by his side. He appeared to have only filled a tiny amount of the bowl, but that could be because he was eating them as he went along.

“Oh, hey Yacker.” Eddie waved a handful of cereal in acknowledgement of his girlfriend.

Patricia wasted no time in returning the greeting. “Why did you tell Victor! Jerome would have taken the blame, I know it!”

“Please,” Eddie laughed. “There is no way Jerry was going to crack that easily.”

Patricia snorted. “Oh yeah? Tell that to the guy who’s now trying to explain why first years are using Victor’s fancy handwriting pens.”

Eddie looked impressed. “That’s cold.”

“Eh, he had it coming.” Patricia replied. Jerome had told Victor it was her who tracked mud into the house the other week, and she knew he would get her back sooner or later, but that was just how they worked. The more pressing issue was why Eddie dobbed her in again. Last month he told Victor of her part in the Party-hat Corbierre incident, when she hadn’t even come up with the idea- that had been Alfie- and he’d only pulled her into it because she’d helped put a hole in his bedroom wall.

“So why did you drag me down with you, Edison?” she asked.

“I just like spending time with you, Yacker.” Eddie admitted.

“Aww, that’s sweet.” she said, smiling. It was sweet, and it kind of made sense, they did work well together, after all. “But maybe next time just ask if you want to hang out, then maybe we could go see a movie instead?”

“You make it sound like spending the day clearing out cereal from Victor’s papers isn’t fun.”

“It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I think ‘fun’, no”

“Why not? We’ve got free snacks-” Eddie shoved a handful of cereal into his mouth to demonstrate “-and we get free run of Victor’s office, at least till he finishes shouting at Jerome.”

As if on cue, Victor’s voice rose up from the living room. If Patricia thought she had it bad, Jerome was gonna be grounded till the end of the year.

“Okay,” she said, “You make a good point.”

“Of course I do.” Eddie replied, holding up a small book. “I mean, don’t you want to read Victor’s journal? I wonder how many times he calls us ‘miscreants’ or ‘the bane of my existence’?”

Patricia grabbed a handful of cereal from the bowl and sat down next to him, nudging him with her shoulder. “Go on then, start reading.”

He smiled, nudging her back, then opened the book. “January 1st, 2011…”

+1

Oh, this time they were definitely to blame. Sure, it had been an accident, but that wouldn’t stop Victor. Neither of them could think of any good excuses, and they were standing right at the scene of the crime. Patricia grimaced. They were supposed to be going out to see the movie Eddie had promised her, but now it looked like they weren’t leaving the house for another few weeks. She looked up at Victor, who was standing in front of them with his arms folded, staring at the broken picture frame.

“Would you believe us if we said KT did it?” Eddie asked, hopefully.

“No.”

“Okay, well in that case…we were really hoping it wouldn’t come to this but,” Eddie took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for what he was about to say. “There was an Egyptian spirit in the house.”

Patricia tried not to show the incredulous look on her face, because of course this was how Eddie was going to play it. Victor, however, merely raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah, they showed up last week and started following me around, y’know because I’m the Osirian and they wanted my help.” He nudged Patricia, who nodded. “It’s true he wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“Anyway,” Eddie continued, “They turned on me, as ghosts seem to do, so we had to fight them here in the foyer. I blasted them a couple times with my powers, which got sent them right back to the underworld-”

“Afterlife.” Patricia interjected.

“Yeah that too. So, I sent them packing and Anubis House is once more safe from spirits.” Eddie performed a bow. “You’re welcome.”

Victor’s eyebrow was once more raised, causing Patricia to wonder if he practiced in a mirror to make sure it was the perfect amount of condescending. If he did, it needed some work, his tiredness was bleeding through.

“I see.” He said, and was Patricia going delusional or did he sound vaguely impressed? “So, how does that explain the state of my picture?”

“Oh, well,” Eddie began, before Patricia cut in:

“Would you believe it, our oh-so-amazing Osirian cannot aim to save his life? He completely missed his first shot and hit the photo, then it fell off the wall.”

Eddie gave Patricia a look at the albeit accurate statement. Sure, he was terrible at archery but was that necessary?

“Is this true, Edison?” Victor asked.

“…yeah it is. Sorry. It was an accident.” Oh, Patricia could buy her own sweets for this - if they make it to the film, of course. The two of them braced themselves for Victor’s verdict.

He said something truly shocking.

“That’s okay.”

The two students were taken aback. What kind of shapeshifter had replaced Victor? Maybe there was an actual Egyptian spirit possessing him that Eddie needed to vanquish.

“What, so you’re not going to make us do chores?” Patricia asked dubiously.

“No, like you said, it was an accident, and we apparently have you to thank for saving us from another spirit.” Victor said, unfolding his arms and making a shooing motion. “Now go wherever it was that you were going.”

The two exchanged incredulous looks, shocked that it had worked. They turned to go before Victor changed his mind, or the force controlling him left. Eddie realised he was still holding the photo frame, so he darted across and set it down on the table before taking Patricia’s hand and leaving, all the while glancing across at Victor. Once they were out of earshot, the two burst into laughter.

“I cannot believe that worked!”

“I know right? The guy’s losing his touch! And he thinks I saved the house from an evil spirit! Again!”

“Come on, oh so amazing Osirian.” Patricia said, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “We’re gonna be late.”

Victor watched them walk away, hand in hand and exchanging relieved looks. He heard Eddie whisper ‘See? Told you we could convince him!’ and struggled not to smile. Of course, he hadn’t fallen for it, what did they take him for? But it was one of their more entertaining excuses, and he knew grounding them giving them chore duty just led to more catastrophic results than their original crime. At least if they went to the cinema, they’d be out of the house and trouble caused out there didn’t need him to deal with it.

Hopefully, this meant he’d have a couple hours of peace, to account the tale in his journal, and to find a better hiding place for it than his desk drawer.

Naturally, that’s when a loud crash came from upstairs, accompanied by a range of shouts. Victor sighed, cursing the day Sarah had talked him into founding a school, and went to get an aspirin.

[more-miserables]

I was blown away by all the support I got for my first fic, which made me a lot more motivated to write another one. This community seems lovely, honestly. Anyway, I was laughing with @cubeswhump about how I barely remember writing this because I started it once I’d taken my pills that make me super drowsy, so let’s see where this goes, I guess.

Tagging @albino-whumpee (thank you, by the way, I was so happy someone wanted to be tagged, I never had a taglist before).

Warnings for dehumanizing language, institutionalized slavery, boxboy universe, implications of past self-harm, implied sexual abuse, implications of drugging, lots of messed up stuff, you guys know.

I’m grateful, I’m grateful, I’m grateful. Ginger gabbled it over and over in his head all day. I’m grateful as he spent hours scrubbing the entire house from top to bottom, knees rubbed raw and back aching. Of course, Mr Stanley wasn’t up to deep cleaning, but Ivy could’ve got off her lazy behind to - ow ow OW, okay, that’s bad. He didn’t really mind the cleaning so much. It meant he could move around a lot, stopped him getting bored and twitchy. They’d sedated him a lot in training, until he shook and retched without it regularly, but it still didn’t make him stand still. He was like a restless pony, Yates said.

Ginger missed Yates a lot.

Yates spent almost all day upstairs with Stanley. He wasn’t completely paralysed, and could stagger about slowly with a walker, but he got tired so easily that he mostly ordered Yates to push him around all over, help him in and out of bed or his stair lift, or guide him to the bathroom. Yates spooned the food into Stanley’s mouth if his hands were too shaky; he stripped the soiled sheets and tucked fresh ones in with exceptional precision; he cleaned all manner of bodily fluids without complaint. Yates was busy busy busy all day, standing at the ready for any requests. A perfect pet.

Ginger didn’t go to Stanley’s room much. He knew Stanley didn’t like to look at him more than he could help it. And honestly, though he knew it was bad, Ginger didn’t like to see how Stanley treated Yates either. He always wanted to touch him, holding him too close and hugging too tight, then barking irritably that Yates shouldn’t neglect his duties. It didn’t seem fair, when Yates wouldn’t dream of shoving Stanley away. Every so often, Ginger would get a flash of mad desire to grab Yates by the hand and run with him, on and on until they were far away - but Stanley had threatened him with a shock collar if he tried to escape. Ginger remembered those awful things from training. The thought alone made him shake violently.

Ginger brought Stanley his three meals on a tray each day, but that was all. He looked forward to those fleeting visits because he could see Yates, even for just a minute. He felt the knot in his chest unravel when he locked eyes with Yates across the room.

Stanley narrowed his eyes at Ginger one day, rapping his spoon on the edge of his soup bowl. “You only ever smile at him.” He pointed the spoon in Yates’s direction, dripping soup down his plaid pyjamas.

Ginger blinked. “I hadn’t noticed, Mr Stanley. I apologise.” He quickly smiled at his owner too.

He must’ve looked too smug. He must’ve sounded patronising. He should’ve smiled at his owner in the first place, Mr Stanley had every right to be mad.

The bowl hit Ginger on the temple, shattering and spilling scalding soup down his left cheek. The impact knocked him to the floor, and he landed on top of the broken bowl. He felt shards pierce his soft palms and bit hard on his lip to stop the screams. He had a sudden flash of memory, of a little red-headed boy being whipped around and slapped by a cold, cruel hand - then blinding pain behind his eyes wiped the image away as he tried not to pass out. No. That’s a bad memory. You’re doing everything wrong today.

His stomach twisted and he coughed, trying hard not to bring up his meagre breakfast across Stanley’s floor. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, his cheek - and the calm came back. “It’s okay,” Yates whispered. “Don’t fight it. Let the memory pass.”

“Get away from Yates, you insolent brat!” Stanley bellowed. “Stop putting on this act! I barely touched you.” He threw the spoon too, and it bounced off Ginger’s forehead surprisingly painfully. He supposed operating a wheelchair meant Stanley had developed strong arms. “I don’t need your smiles! And neither does Yates. You bring the food and you clean the house. That’s all. Don’t even look at me.”

Ginger knelt and put his palms and forehead to the floor. “Yes, Mr Stanley. I’m sorry, Mr Stanley.” Lick your soup off the floor then, you stuck up fuc- OW, no, I’m sorry, that was terribly bad.

“So you should be. Now get out. Don’t even think about treating that cut on your head either. It serves you right,” Stanley said icily.

“Yes, Mr Stanley,” Ginger said, making sure his voice was monotone now. I’m grateful. I’m grateful. I’m sure I’m grateful. This was good for me. I was bad. This makes me good. I’m grateful grateful grateful.

Ivy was in the kitchen when Ginger went downstairs, blood trickling down his cheek. His burned cheek throbbed and it was difficult to make fists without hissing in pain. He picked the bigger shards of glass out of his palms while Ivy watched in amusement.

“Set him off, did you? Yes, well, I’d get used to it if I were you. Stanley has a filthy temper and he plays favourites, that’s how he is. It used to be his own boy, my Timothy, but now he’s dead and gone,” she said airily.

What’re you doing here then? No, stop, that’s none of your business. Why can’t you ever shut up? Ginger decided not to risk offending anyone else, so he went to wash the dishes in silence. The soapy water hurt his hands horribly, but at least they were getting cleaned.

“Roll your sleeves down!” Ivy snapped, making Ginger jump.

“I’m going to wash up, Mrs Ivy. They’ll get wet.”

“I don’t care. Roll them down now, I can’t bear to see those awful scars,” Ivy insisted. “What happened to you? Did you fight a tiger?” She laughed harshly.

“I don’t remember, Mrs Ivy, but I would assume not,” Ginger said solemnly.

“Well, I don’t want to see them. Sleeves down.”

Ginger sighed and did as he was told. His sleeves were soon sodden, sticky and uncomfortable against his skin. He’d have a rash by the end of the day. That’s your fault. You’re ugly. Ivy had bought him a muddy-brown, long-sleeved shirt, and demanded he wear it every single day. It even had a little hole on each cuff to hook his thumbs through, so the sleeves couldn’t ever ride up and show off those unsightly scars.

It was a good idea. Those scars are disgusting. Ivy said scars are disgusting. Ivy is right. The owners and their families are always right.

Ginger worked through his afternoon chores, periodically wiping streaks of blood out of his face with his special long sleeves. His hands burned, his cheek blistered, his head throbbed along with his heartbeat and he felt queasy, but he didn’t stop his scrubbing. He really didn’t want any more discipline. It’d be okay as soon as night came.

Night brought peace; night brought Yates.

Ginger was so glad they had to stay tethered at night. It was just like training (though that hurt to remember) when they spent every hour of every day together. Ginger doubted he could ever sleep alone now. He was accustomed to the little snuffling noises Yates made when he dreamed, and Yates told him he talked in his sleep. Ginger didn’t ask what he said; he was a little bit scared of the answer. He could barely guard his tongue when he was conscious.

Ginger got to their little mattress first that night. He often did, as Stanley liked Yates to settle him down for the night first before he was allowed to go do the same. Ivy looked in on them before she retired, letting Yates lock their collars together. She seemed to dislike touching them. Her discipline was always carried out with something long like a cane, so she could stay as far away as possible.

When she finally left, closing and locking the door behind her, they could be them again - Ginger and Yates, One and Two, together. Yates cupped Ginger’s face in his hands, wincing with him. His fingers gently probed the gash on Ginger’s head in the darkness.

“The bleeding stopped. I have antiseptic for Mr Stanley, I’ll get you some tomorrow. Somehow,” Yates whispered.

“Don’t. I don’t want you getting disciplined,” Ginger said quickly. “The burn hurt more, but I can still see perfectly. It doesn’t matter if I scar, does it?”

“It matters to me,” Yates whispered.

Ginger smiled weakly. “I’m fine, really. Mr Stanley had to discipline me. What’s he like to you, anyway? Is he still friendly?”

“Oh yes, he’s very kind,” Yates said, almost automatically. “He talks a lot, holding onto me. I like to listen. But I wish he was kinder to you.” That was probably the most rebellious thing Ginger ever heard Yates say, so he was rather touched.

“Mn.” Ginger let his aching head rest on Yates’s shoulder, relaxing further when he felt Yates’s fingers running gently through his hair. It was getting long now, coming to his shoulders, still sticking up all over the place. Stanley hated it at first, and had made Ginger get into position two every morning while he slapped half a tube of gel in it to make it lay flat, but he’d long since given up now.

“Sometimes I wish it was just you and me, Yates,” Ginger muttered.

“Ginger, don’t!”

“Argh!” Ginger tensed all over, fingers balling in and out of fists, eventually tangling up in his hair and pulling hard. It felt like his head was going to split open. “No no no, stop it stop it stop it make it stop Two please...”

You’re BAD, you’re broken, you’re going to be sent back and you’ll never see Yates again!

There were arms around Ginger, rocking with the tremors of his body. “Shh, One, breathe. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean it, yeah?” Yates was staring at him imploringly. Ginger’s heart thumped with love for him. He was giving Ginger a way out.

“Yeah, I didn’t,” Ginger gasped, and the terrible splitting headache faded. He deflated with relief and exhaustion, shaking all over.

Yates carefully eased him back onto the mattress, cuddling up behind Ginger and wrapping his arms around the bigger boy’s waist. It was more practical to sleep so close with their chained collars, but they’d long since accepted that it was more a comfort thing.

“We’re going to be so happy here,” Yates whispered, his breath tickling against Ginger’s ear. “You were so brave today. I know how hard you’re working.”

Yates was the only one who ever praised Ginger. And Ginger didn’t even care, because he knew it was only Yates’s praise that he needed. Nobody else mattered.

Except. Your. OWNER.

Expect Mr Stanley. Of course.

[teaboot]

Hi there! I want to ask you something, but feel completely free to not do so if it makes you uncomfortable ok? It's because my best friend comes from an abusive house, and I just wanted to understand better about this uncomfortable feeling you mentioned in your last post, if it's ok :)

A warning in advance for discussion of abuse.

The experience of being in an abusive situation as a child is different for everyone, and I can only truly speak for myself.

For me, the process of realizing it WAS abusive took the longest time- much longer than it took to realize instinctively that something about it wasn't normal.

From my memories of being a young child, my first sort of awareness that I was being treated unfairly was when I was tasked with chores, and no matter how hard I worked or for how long, somehow it was never *done*. Cleaning my room, my parent would come in, take a look, and tell me, "it's a good start".

That was the first time I was conciousness aware of my parent being unfair. The first time their actions weren't automatically rationalized as 'they're the adult, they're doing the right thing' before I had the chance to actually think about it. That was an important step, and I was about five years old when the concept occurred to me: my best work does not impress them. They expect more. I must try harder.

From there came a greater awareness, but no deeper understanding. They would yell when work wasn't completed, despite not having made it clear what work was expected. A common order was, "if you see something that needs doing, do it". Perhaps an expectation an employers may have of an employee, but in hindsight, not a fair standard to set for a child of six years.

My solution? The first experiment, and the first act of rebellion: Be Perfect, Always, All The Time. It seemed simple. Do everything I could think of to 'be good', to the absolute maximum letter of the law, and if they came to yell anyways, I could ask them why, and they wouldn't have an answer. They would feel foolish, I would be validated as a good child, all would be right in the world.

It turns out that perfection is impossible. Nobody had told me that at the time, do that was a fun discovery. Not only that, but no matter how close I came to it, it still wasn't enough; even while actively focusing my efforts to be the quietest, politest, hardest-working child, nothing was good enough.

Slowly, over a period of years, I came to the conclusion that meeting their expectations was beyond my ability, and that their praise or approval wasn't something I had any real hope of attaining.

Even then, though, they weren't abusive. Not in my eyes, at least. Abuse was something unspeakably horrifying, not something normal and boring and everyday as simply having high expectations, strict rules, a harsh tone, no respect for personal boundaries, regular threats of bodily harm, invasions of privacy...That wasn't abuse. That was Tuesday, 3:30 PM. The concept of 'abuse' was like... Something that happened to other people, like house fires or car accidents or cancer. They were things that I sort of knew existed, in an abstract way, but not things I associated with myself.

I read a lot of books, growing up. Looking back, it was probably escapism. I woke up to read, read on the bus to school, read during class, during recess, after class, on the bus home, at home, before dinner, after dinner, outside, inside, in the bathroom, in bed, under the covers, and while dreaming. When I was punished, sometimes I wasn't allowed to read. Sometimes my books were confiscated. Once they came into my room and pulled everything out of my bookshelf and onto the floor, then left me to clean up the mess. Books and fantasy were my life more than my life was my life. Later, as I started writing, I'd lose that, too. Stories were the best things in the world, and they became an odd sort of arms race.

It was while reading that I learned the most important things I know and where I adopted my favourite parts of myself- An awareness of others. A respect for strength and perseverance. A resolve to withstand pain and hardship. Self-sacrifice. Kindness. Maturity. Determination.

Books were where I looked to find people I admired, and where I learned to recognize the behaviors of a villain.

Interestingly enough, the characters I wanted to be like and the characters that turned out to be evil did not coincide. At all. In fact, the person I looked up to who acted most like the villains did lived in my house.

So, something was obviously wrong. As the internet came within reach, I had access to stories my library didn't have: fictionpress.net and fanfictiction.net; stories written by people my age for people my age. And a lot of stories discussed things like depression, child abuse, suicidal ideation, self-harm, isolation, etcetera.

Which blew my goddamn mind, because holy shit. Holy shit, that's me. Why is it tagged 'abuse'? That happened to me. Am I being abused? I don't have it THAT bad. Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion.

Better look up the dictionary definition of 'abusive behavior' just in case. And 'clinical depression', because geez that seems familiar.

Cue two to four years of on-again-off-again obsessive research into long and short term effects of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse, as well as how to recognize abusive and manipulative behavior in others.

This all led to a very quiet, nagging, persistant realization: Holy shit, am I being abused?

Yes. Yes I was. My parents refused to acknowledge that anything was outside the ordinary, but I became aware of it. Threats. Gaslighting. Holding friends, family, and pets hostage as a tool of control. The physical isolation. The unreasonable standards. The hair-pulling, slapping, grabbing, humiliation, name-calling. Not just me deserving something terrible, but actions I didn't deserve that never should have happened.

And then one day, I went camping.

And somewhere nearby, I heard a father and his daughter arrive in their car to their own campsite, right next door.

And I hear him tell her, "Wow, we made it! Let's have a hug for the trip!"

Nonsense. Long drives happen. Why does that deserve a hug? Sappy and ridiculous.

Then the kid starts running around and screaming. Obviously shitting themselves with excitement. Being a nuisance. Disturbing the quiet. Running ruckshot, not helping the father set up camp at all.

And instead of telling her to shut up and be more considerate, or giving her a job to keep her busy, or hissing something else, he just... Let her. And it was annoying. Irritating. An aggravation that got under my skin like nothing else, because I never would have gotten away with that kind of behavior.

Hell, I never would have considered acting like that at her age. What was she, seven or so? Eight? I knew better at her age. That sort of shreiking and horseplay would have gotten me slapped, and I would have deserved it for being such an obnoxious, ignorant little puke.

Then I realized I wasn't breathing.

I wasn't moving.

I was sitting perfectly still, in a tent, in the middle of the woods, all alone, waiting to jump in.

Waiting to run out into the next camp and intervene.

Because soon enough he was going to get sick of playing the fun dad, and he was going to start screaming, and then he was going to hit her, and I'd have to stop him and make sure she was safe, because she was just a small little kid who was happy to be there and he was a grown ass man who knew better and if he so much as stepped harshly in her direction then I was going to tear his lungs out through his fucking throat, because she doesn't deserve that.

Because she's just being a kid.

Because I was just a kid.

So why did it happen to me?

I spent the rest of my time there hiding in my tent, one part too scared of my own shadow to come out and maybe actually see these people or God forbid talk to them and have to act like I wasn't losing my mind being within a thousand miles of them and an equal part ready to sprint out at a moment's notice if things got ugly the way I was used to.

And through the tarp I heard laughing, and jokes, and the father mentioning a mom coming to visit who apparently shared custody and still stayed friends, and a few more requests for a hug, and the girl put up some arguments over bedtime here and there but not even once did the father even raise his voice.

The screaming never came.

On Sunday morning, they packed up and left, and I never even saw their faces.

It's been a few years since then. I started therapy. Started keeping a journal. Work on cognitive behavioral homework so I can recognize when I'm being a bad parent to myself, so I can be kinder and more aware of my thoughts and actions. It's helped a lot. I still remember things sometimes that bother me, but they don't affect me the way they used to, and I'm not the scared and angry person I used to be.

So, yeah. Seeing something normal and healthy when you're not expecting it can be a bit of a jolt, and it can be a bit extra distressing if you're alone and unprepared.

Sorry for the long post. Hope it helps