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doks-aux · 4 years ago

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ZsaszMask Week Day 1: Pumpkin

Happy ZsaszMask Week the First! Many thanks to @mashimero for putting this together. I’m gonna do my best to stay on schedule and post something every day.

Kicking things off with some seasonally appropriate trauma set in The Arkham Home For Troubled Youth AU. Features kids swearing, background Hattercrow, violence done to innocent pumpkins, and very indirect references to child abuse, dead parents, and self-harm.

Also on AO3.

“How’re you not excited for Halloween?”

Roman scowled at Jon across a table strewn with several pumpkins and the contents of just as many pumpkin-carving kits. “Every day is Halloween in this sickhouse.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” the taller boy grinned, thoughtfully sorting through the various jack-o’-lantern patterns. “But this is real Halloween. I never got t’ have real Halloween before. Granny always said it was the Devil’s work. Oh! Look at this one!”

Jon grabbed a pattern of a wide, grinning cat face and held it in front of his own. “Jervis’ll like this.”

“Well, it’s stupid,” Roman said. “So probably.”

“Don’ be a dick,” Jon scoffed, lowering the paper. “I wan’ him to have a good time. I don’ think they even have Halloween in England.” He set the cat face carefully to the side and went back to studying the rest of the patterns. “But he’ll have a great first one. It’s really cool a’ the rich boy t’ take us all trick-or-treatin’ in his rich neighborhood.”

Roman bristled, baring his teeth and growling his words out between them. “His name is Bruce.”

“We always go trick-or-treating with Bruce,” Victor suddenly spoke up, jumping in like he always did when he knew Roman was about to do something especially stupid. He was kneeling in the chair next to Roman’s, struggling to cut a lid into a pumpkin with one of the thin, flimsy knives from the kits. “His parents have a big party every Halloween, so we all meet there, and then his butler drives us to all the houses. It’s cool ‘cause it’s too far to walk, and we get to eat candy in the car. And then we have a sleepover if it’s not a school night.”

“And it’s not!” Jon crowed, successfully distracted from a potential fight with Roman, which was probably for the best. Roman thought he might be stronger than Jon, but Jon was taller and quicker and claimed to know karate. “I can’t wait! It’s gonna be the best night. Candy and scary movies and monsters and zombies and ghosts!”

Victor’s face blanked out at the last items on that list, and he went still. Roman sat up in his chair, hackles rising again, but he wasn’t as fast as Victor was at averting disasters. Jon had seen and was already leering at Victor, grin as wide and toothy as the jack-o’-lantern patterns.

“Oh?” he said, teasing and delighted. “Are you sca-a-ared of those?”

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?!” Roman roared, slamming his hands on the table hard enough to hurt and make the pumpkins wobble dangerously. The look on Jon’s face was almost worth it.

“Th’ hell’s your problem?! I was only askin’--”

“Dead things should stay dead,” Victor said flatly, once again cutting in before Roman could receive the ass-kicking he just kept asking for. Except Roman wasn’t sure he’d meant to do it this time. The way he was staring down at the partially lobotomized pumpkin, Roman wasn’t sure he was aware of them at all.

At least Jon wasn’t a complete idiot and noticed it, too, his eyes widening as he stuttered out an apology. “Oh, sh-shit, I’m sorry. I-I didn’ mean--”

Victor suddenly stabbed the tiny carving knife into the pumpkin with such force Roman was sure it would snap in half.

“This isn’t working,” he said, still in that flat tone, and pushed back from the table to disappear into the kitchen, leaving the knife wedged in the top of the pumpkin, wobbling slowly to a standstill.

“Fuuuck,” Jon groaned, shrinking back into his own chair and looking guiltily at Roman. “I swear I didn’ mean anythin’. I jus’... I forgot...”

How do you just forget something like that? Roman wanted to ask, except that he had sort of forgotten, too. Or else he might have realized where the conversation might end up and could have stopped it. He should’ve stopped it.

“Don’t say stupid shit like that to him,” he said, anger already fizzling out and leaving him exhausted. “He’s just a kid.”

“Yeah. Yeah…” Jon stood and awkwardly gathered the cat face pattern and a few others into a stack in his hands. “I’ll jus’... go see if Jervis likes any a’ these... Sorry.”

Roman slumped back into his chair once Jon was gone, sighing and grimacing as he peeled his still-stinging palms from the table and turned them over to look. They were red.

Little socked footsteps heralded Victor’s return, and Roman hurriedly rubbed his hands together to soothe and hide them. Victor didn’t need to worry about him right now. The smaller boy climbed back into the chair next to Roman, holding a kitchen knife almost as long as his arm. Roman eyed it warily, but didn’t say anything just yet.

“He won’t say anything like that to you again,” he began, speaking softly and reassuringly, carefully watching Victor’s face. He looked sad and a little confused, but that was better than the blank look from before. The dead look. “I’ll kick his ass if he does.”

Victor sighed. “Dr. Thompkins doesn’t want you getting into fights.” He was quiet and didn’t look at Roman, but he smiled, just a little, and that made Roman smile, too.

And feel a hundred times worse about what he had to say next.

“She doesn’t want you using that knife either.”

Victor’s tiny smile immediately vanished, and Roman hated himself a little more than usual. “I have to cut the pumpkin,” he insisted, his grip on the knife’s handle tightening. “The little one doesn’t work.”

“Okay. But maybe we should wait for her to-- Hey!” His hand shot out to grab Victor’s arm as he raised the knife. “You’re not supposed to have something that sharp!”

His voice broke on the word, and he swallowed hard, sliding his hand down to curl around Victor’s tiny wrist gently, so carefully. “Put it down,” he said, much softer, lowering both their hands. “C’mon, kid. Let’s put it down.”

The knife dropped to the table with a clunk, and instantly Roman filled Victor’s empty hand with his own.

“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing tightly as Victor lowered his head to stare at the floor. Roman wasn’t as good at comforting Victor as the reverse, but he was learning. “It’s okay.”

They sat like that for a long, quiet minute, not quite looking at each other. Finally, Roman heard a sniffle, and Victor’s hand squeezed back. “Roman…?”

“Yeah?”

“How come you aren’t excited?” Victor lifted his head to frown at him. His eyes were always sort of wet and shiny, so it was hard to tell if he’d been crying. “You love Halloween.”

“Halloween’s fine,” Roman sniffed, frowning right back. He didn’t want to talk about it, and he didn’t want Victor worrying about him, but it was hard to say no when Victor looked at him with those big eyes, wanting something else to think about. It felt like being tricked.

He let go of Victor’s hand and shrugged. “I just don’t wanna go back there.”

Victor cocked his head like a little bird. No, a puppy. “You don’t want to go home?”

“It’s not home anymore, Victor!” Roman suddenly shouted, slapping the table again. “We don’t live there. We don’t live there anymore, and now we’re gonna go back, and... Everyone will be there, and it’s the first time since... since we left, and... And they’re gonna know now! They know... what happened, and that we... But now we’re going back like it’s normal, and Bruce should’ve known--!”

Roman curled his hands into fists and stuffed them into his armpits so he wouldn’t hit the table again. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it, and he didn’t want to yell at Victor, and he didn’t want to be crying, but...

The rich boy and his rich neighborhood.

Because Bruce was the only rich boy now, and Roman and Victor weren’t. Because it was still Bruce’s neighborhood, and Roman and Victor didn’t belong there anymore. Because even though Bruce came to visit and get his head shrunk, he didn’t have to live in the crazy house with the crazy kids nobody wanted. Because Bruce had someone who loved him and took care of him, and Roman and Victor--

“It’s okay.” Victor’s arms wrapped around Roman’s trembling shoulders, hanging on tight as he climbed from his chair into Roman’s. They were both bigger now and couldn’t fit in the same seat like they used to, but that didn’t matter much when Roman grabbed him around the middle and hauled him into his lap. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not!” Roman sobbed, burying his face in Victor’s shoulder and gripping his shirt with both hands. “It’s not okay.”

“It’s not,” Victor echoed, and Roman was certain he was crying now, too. But he nuzzled his little blonde head next to Roman’s and just held him tighter, the way he had since the hospital, since the funeral. Like even when he let go, he hadn’t really. “But that’s okay, too.”

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