Old Embers, New Flames (tumblr x Reddit)
(Hurt/comfort, 1683 words, mlm) Look. You saw the title. You're the one clicking read more. I'm not held responsible for your actions and you're not permitted to question mine.
A tale as old as time, a lonesome boy with a broken heart, standing in the rain. Bloody and battered, bearing the burden of betrayal by his own kin.
It's getting hard to stay standing, so I crawl to the side of the road, putting my back against a tree. I laugh miserably at my own state. Chuckles turn into snorts turn into heavy, agonising sobs. How could I have been such a fool? How could I have trusted someone who was sure to leave me bleeding out at the side of a road like this?
The rain seeps into my wounds, trying to wash away the evidence of their torture. Not that it'll go away anytime soon. Not that it'll go away before I go away. And not that I have any other choice.
How could I have just laid here, letting them do whatever they wanted to me? How could I have not heard the cruel intentions behind those sugar coated words? What was the point of regretting now? I'm going to die here, alone despite everything I did.
I can feel the life trickle out of every wound. My life flashes before my eyes, nothing but a series of useless faces. The night was cold and there was no one who loved me. A deep chill settled over my heart with each uncaring face I remember, none of them would help me now.
Call it a dying man's delusion, because not in a million years would I believe he would help me. I picture myself at his doorstep, and him laughing at me for all those times I'd insulted him. Worse, I picture him not opening the door at all. Why would he? I have been nothing but an enemy to him.
Until I remember him.
Still, the urge to see someone's －someone who cares about me enough to laugh at me－ face before I die is strong. He might not have any reason to help me, but I would not die alone. I deserved at least that.
With a new hope of… I don't know, being seen one last time? I rip off a piece from my already tattered jacket and tie it around my arm to momentarily stop the bleeding. Pushing to my feet, I stumble across the street to where his junkyard of a home is.
It's exactly as I remember, not because he doesn't change it, but because it's the same time of the year as I last saw it. The threshold is above three stairs. Of course, look how high and mighty the king is, living a lofty two and a half feet above the common ground. It takes everything in me to not pass out on those steps.
I knock on the door right before the last of my strength flows out and slump against the wall. If he doesn't answer, good for him. I'll die right here outside his door and have him clean up the mess.
Knowing him, he wouldn't even mind. I could almost hear him seeing the blood stains on the white marble and saying, 'oh, I didn't know my house was the children's hospital.' Him and his stupid jokes. I can't believe I was going to die and the last voice I hear will be his. What was I thinking?
Despite all I did to convince myself that I hate him, nothing could stop my knees from buckling at the sight of him. I hold on tighter to the door frame. "Sorry," I grunt, "I… hah, I didn't know where… else to go."
Surprisingly, the door clicks and creaks open. And there is he.
He didn't speak, unusually out of character for him, considering he never shuts up. I glance at him, vision blurring for a few seconds before I really see him. Ah, the same ol' Tumblr, with his true blue hair and piercing dark eyes. The furrow in his brow that looks unsettling to me, because I'm used to getting indifferent once-overs from his gaze and not whatever emotions he had behind it right now.
Tumblr finally speaks, and the protectiveness in his voice shocks me so much I think I'm imagining it. "Who did this to you?"
That's all it took for me to break. I fall forward, grasping him in a way that's sure to reopen some closed cuts. I can tell I took him by surprise, but he isn't pushing me away and kicking me out, so I give in too. "They cornered me, 'blr. 'ey made me helpless. I had- had nowhere to go," I sob into his shoulder.
He takes me by surprise too, by wrapping his arms around my back. His hands dig into my sides, into a blooming bruise and I whimper.
"Can you stand?" he whispers.
"N-no."
He hums, arms still around me, and leads us into the house. My back hits the couch with a soft thump, making me wince. He turns back to the door and locks it before disappearing into the bathroom. I raise my uninjured hand to my face to wipe my eyes.
Tumblr comes back in a few moments with a first aid kit in hand. He sits beside me, already unrolling a bandage. Of all the things I had expected when I came here, this was the least probable, and yet.
"Did you get that from the children's hospital?" I say weakly, trying to diffuse the tension.
Unluckily for me, he doesn't laugh. Instead, he glares at me like if I wasn't already dying he would've loved to kill me with his own hands. "Where are you hurt?" he sneers.
I nod to my left arm, where the deepest wound is. He unties the knot of my make-shift bandage with a gentleness I could have never expected. Looking at the open wound, I feel a thousand times more vulnerable than I did before. Tumblr doesn't even wince, just takes a wet towel to clean it. He looks up at me and curls his lips in disgust. "Hold my shoulder, this is going to hurt."
Hesitantly, I place my hand on his shoulder. The towel rubs against my skin and I immediately tighten my grip. Despite how gentle he was being, those were some serious cuts.
"Can you talk?"
I nod. "Kinda."
"Talk, then. Tell me what happened," he grumbles.
"I got jumped," I lie. What would he understand about-
"Don't fuck with me, Redd," he growls, pausing to glare at me. "Tell me what happened."
"You know, don't you? You know they were robbing me."
"Ah, those motherfuckers."
"They robbed me. They took away everything I needed to live. They left me helpless and when I tried to defend myself they did this."
He stares up at me in both anger and disbelief at once. "And you came to me!?"
"Who else was I supposed to go to," I replied meekly.
"You were about to die and you came to me!? All I would've done was laugh at you, are you fucking stupid!?" Well, that was true. Or at least I believed it was. Because then Tumblr went silent and put down the towel to treat the cut on my arm, and we both knew for certain he wouldn't have laughed.
"I still would've come here, knowing you'd laugh at me."
"Why would you do that?" The anger in his voice terrifies me. Because I know it is not just anger but the mask of rage on something delicate, and whatever it is, is much more frightening than his anger. Still, the chokehold that my own thoughts have me in is scarier, and I can hold them in no more.
"To hear you laugh before I go."
His eyes meet mine and I think if I knew all those fights and quarrels would lead to this exact moment I would have taken every insult without offence.
"You don't know what you're saying," he says.
"Incoherence is more of your forte."
He shakes his head, slowly tying a knot on the bandage. He looks at me again but his eyes drop to the suffocating distance between us.
"I've been nothing but cruel to you."
"Does it matter?" I say. "You keep me alive."
And then there it is, all the anger pouring out of him as I pull his eyes back to mine with my words. This time, his gaze trails from my eyes to the bruise on my cheek to, finally, my lips.
I use my uninjured hand to cup his jaw and make him look at me. Because I don't want him to look away. I never want him to look away. I think of kissing him and almost laugh at the thought.
So I kiss him back －like I haven't been pushing this exact thought away for as long as I remember, like I haven't wanted to do this for as long as I'd known him. I zero in on the feeling of his lips on mine and focus there. I try not to let it seem like I've wanted this because, fuck, I didn't even know how much I did until it was here.
And then he kisses me.
But then his hand is on my thigh, his teeth are on my lip and all hell breaks loose. I push my fingers into his hair and the other arm around his neck. He towers over me, pressing me down until my head is on the armrest.
Tumblr pulls away, gasping. Me? I'm giddy all over. He sits back where he was between my legs and I stare at him with a grin so wide it makes my cheeks hurt. "Well, wasn't that something."
He laughs, shaking his head. "Don't push your luck, I still hate you."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I say, still smiling because so is he. And because he's full of shit, trying to pretend that didn't mean something. "So… Can I stay a while longer?"
"And then go back to what? Those tyrant cunts?" Tumblr scoffs. He crawls back over me, pinning me down. "You're not going anywhere."
@a-really-hot-caterpillar i did it
Join me. Take my hand. We could change the world, you and me. Together, we would be unstoppable.
