Unintentional (Aiden & Leo/Aiden & Harrison)
Barely counts as BBU: Classic whumpee-thinks-caretaker-is-new-master trope. This particular box boy is dealing with the "side effects" of some experimental surgeries. Caretaker is clueless and Whumpee is practically mute, let the misunderstandings begin. Ongoing!
In League (August & Wyatt)
Late-19th century whump: Indentured servitude, carewhumper/sympathetic whumper, power dynamics, team whump/found family vibes, nefarious activity. Semi-AU to Together. Ongoing!
Involuntary
BBU-adjacent: Our poor boy is abandoned in a foreign city and adopted by a band of waiters who live and work together far from their Sicilian homeland. Recovery, found family, and independence in a country where the System isn't legal. Sporadic at best
Together (August, Wyatt, & Emma)
Captivity whump: Conditioned-to-be-mute whumpee, masked whumpers, whumpee as caretaker, whumpee forced to whump. Ohsomanytropes. Complete.
Apart (Wyatt & Emma)
Prequel to Together: Pre-captivity and captivity. Power struggles, plenty of "No, don't fall for it! Get out while you still can!", and hate-to-love-it-love-to-hate-it dynamics. Complete.
Sink or Swim (co-written by @alittlewhump)
BBU-adjacent pet whump: You've heard of box boys and guard dogs, loyal pets designed to cater to every whim of their owners. It's easy to forget that four-legged friends aren't the only kind of pet out there, isn't it? Keeping exotic fish can be a challenge well worth the reward of having a unique pet all to yourself.
(🧽 ask from this game) cw: what it sounds like...but maybe not that bad in the way you would think...? idk
masterlist
Absence gnaws the air when he comes to. Even though it sinks its teeth into his mind instantly, impossible to ignore, he can’t quite put his finger on what’s missing. He feels it like an unexpected step between the rooms of sleep and consciousness. His stride falling through empty space for untethered seconds until it hits home, lower than anticipated, jolting the body with its newfound altitude. A few inches felt like miles.
He takes stock of himself but he doesn’t feel any new pain. There’s hardly any pain at all, it’s been days since Harrison cut into him. The most recent sutures have healed, leaving behind just the dull ache as his body tries to complete the closure layer by layer within.
It’s not until his heart shoulders off the initial disturbance, on its own descent, that he figures it out. For the first time in as long as he can remember, the monitor doesn’t echo back the stubborn, persistent metronomed proof that he continues to survive this hell. His heart beats alone.
Nothing but empty, cold air.
Something whispers over the skin of his left arm and it takes all his focus not to tense every muscle. His other arm rests against his side.
No heart monitor and no restraints? It must be a dream or a hallucination.
His desperate, fracturing mind conjuring a tender ghost from the past. But the air is cool against his skin, his body heavy where it meets the table, anchored by his weight. Heels, hips, shoulders, the back of his head; it feels so real.
The touch comes again, light as an exhale over his skin.
He stays perfectly still, eyes closed. Doesn’t even try to see if he could move because he doesn’t want to break the illusion.
The third touch is so light, it’s all-consuming.
His mind drives after the feeling. Willing it to turn back and meet him where he expects it, can embrace it. Instead, the sensation vanishes and takes his last restraint away too.
He opens his eyes carefully, as if the stroke of his eyelashes against the cold air could ripple through the room and disrupt whatever waits to be seen.
It must be a hallucination. His spectre looks like Harrison but is completely unrecognizable.
A new drug, one Harrison didn’t even bother allowing him to witness being doped with. Poison lacing reality with lies. He’s high out of his mind, there’s no other explanation.
Harrison—“Harrison”—stands over him, same white coat as always, same scrubs underneath.
What’s impossible is how tranquil he looks. Completely at peace, not a line visible on his face, not even to smile. His serenity runs so deep, it resonates in the air around him and doesn’t need to be named by such an insignificant expression. It’s clear in the perfect symmetry of his posture, the gentle bend in his neck, the balance and grace of his movements.
For an endless moment, all he does is drink in the differences as other-Harrison stands over him. Even the light in his eyes is changed, familiar brown revealing that all along they’ve been secreting away an undercurrent of ochre, warm to the core.
He keeps perfectly still, isn’t sure he wants to move, if he even can. Especially since Harrison doesn’t seem to realize he’s awake.
As wrong as this whole thing feels, disturbing it is an even more unsettling idea.
Harrison lifts a sponge out of a basin and he braces himself for the sting of ice-cold water but it’s neither hot nor cool. Like it’s been measured to the exact temperature of his skin. Harrison slides it over his stomach. In methodical, meditative sweeps, washes his whole torso. Focused entirely on the task, never a glance spared to see if his work is observed.
His mind somersaults under the touch, thoughts racing like goosebumps through his head. Second to the strangeness of Harrison is everything else about this situation.
He’s naked.
Harrison is bathing him.
How much has Harrison already washed? How much of this aching softness did he miss? How much more will he have to endure? Is he supposed to be awake? Is he supposed to be able to move?
He doesn’t want any of the answers.
Harrison starts for his shoulder and he lets his eyes slip closed. Surely Harrison will notice he’s awake in such close proximity. The idea of being caught sets his heart racing and he wonders if Harrison will catch sight of his pulse sprinting in his throat. Or detect the shift just by touching his skin.
But Harrison continues from his shoulder down his arm. The path of his sponge, slow and thorough, painfully familiar surgical precision. It could simply be careful maintenance of a delicate and valuable piece of machinery, vital equipment. A possession needing upkeep in order to perform. Thoroughbreds need to be curry-combed and brushed, hooves carefully cleaned and inspected after a ride. Even a dog needs to be washed if it runs through mud.
If only it were that.
He peeks one eye open.
Harrison doesn’t look up from where the sponge slides along the crease of his elbow.
He opens his other eye.
Something simple, dismissible, understandable.
Instead, each whispered brush of Harrison’s sponge feels like it’s painting him into existence. Right here on the table. The only anchor that’s ever mattered. Binding him to his bones, to the ache and cold. Every new touch is the first touch, all others before forgotten. Until he’s ringing with it, alone.
Harrison sweeps down his side.
He wants to roll into it, bend toward it. It’s all he can do to suppress a shudder, to maintain his breathing.
He’s more relaxed than he’s ever felt.
Keeping still is nearly impossible.
Harrison dips the sponge in the basin again, squeezes it out. The trickle of water echoes, thunderous in the empty air. Harrison cradles his wrist in one hand and passes the sponge over the back of his hand. His palm. Methodically twists over his thumb, washing each of his fingers in turn. Nothing missed, nothing overlooked. Surgically precise, cold.
He wonders if this is what Harrison looks like operating on him.
Cutting him open, tearing him apart. Serene and wholly at peace. Destroying the very fabric of his being in the name of innovation. And now bathing him with that same kind of ease, like they’re one in the same.
The thought is as terrifying as it is other. Something unnamable and dangerous that he can’t look at head-on but that wedges itself inside his ribcage, spined and barbed, digging in to make its presence undeniable.
He wants to destroy it. Crush this living thing like a moth caged in his palms. Trapped and writhing, uncomfortable between them. Wings beating like a heart. He can’t stand to let it go on, suffering alone. It will never survive, released into the open air.
Harrison lays his hand back down and picks up the basin to walk around the foot of the table, breaking the spell.
The bitterness of the poisonous hatred filling his head, his chest, almost takes his breath away. His desire to annihilate this unnameable thing. Pretend it never existed. A ghost without a name.
Harrison starts repeating the whole process on the other side. At least now he knows what to expect.
It’s no easier to bear.
He tries to distract himself by staring at the ceiling. Counting the familiar tiles. Counting the lights.
His eyes fall back to Harrison.
Again
and again.
Until he’s desperate to forget this version of Harrison and the alien air around him.
He can’t stop it from flooding his mind like poison, staining and burning itself into his memory. It’s impossible to keep his eyes closed. It takes all of his focus to keep himself still, to suppress the urge to twitch and jerk, just to see if he can. The fact that he can open his eyes, that he’s breathing on his own, thinking clearly—unreal Harrison aside—makes him think that he could move but that it’s very important he doesn’t.
Harrison continues to his hips.
Sweat prickles on the back of his neck. He definitely won’t be able to fly under the radar anymore.
There’s a good chance Harrison will hurt him for spying like this, on the care of his own body. For intruding to meet this version of Harrison he’s never been allowed to see. Affronts to Harrison’s person are usually punished with violence. Three broken fingers for a slap to the face, for calling him a sadist.
As Harrison moves the sponge lower, he braces himself.
What if—
What if—
What if—
He imagines the worst possible physical reaction he could have and the equal or amplified retaliation Harrison will rain down.
But there’s nothing different about the precise and careful way Harrison cleans between his legs. His touch is neither hurried nor lingering. It carries the same methodical attention used everywhere else and doesn’t feel any different either.
He’s relieved, numb.
He’s roaring and writhing, poisoned, blood-curdling, somewhere else. Far, far out of reach, alone.
The minutes ache forward, blurring together. He can’t remember what brought him to awareness anymore. How long he’s been the silent, invisible observer to this task, a ghost. Harrison continues to his legs, routine immersing him to the point of reverence. Like he’s done this a hundred times. A practiced mantra, a prayer, followed until it’s leading the way.
He thinks he’s glad to have missed the weight and repetition that wore this path so deep. The feeling that there is no other way this could go, no other order or process even considered besides the one Harrison follows. He doesn’t like to feel its density, existing outside his awareness as something so established, almost named.
Harrison cleans his feet like he cleaned his hands.
He wonders if he was ever ticklish. Nothing about this touch is ticklish, light as it is. There’s something about his skin that welcomes it, everywhere. Nothing but cold left in its wake.
He wants to claw the feeling of predetermination out of his cells.
Harrison’s expression never changes, immortal calm like he’s carved from stone.
Was every step of his life leading to this? Fate, destiny, piss poor luck. None of it was ever under his control and in the end he’s here. All paths led to this one, a master architect mapped it out, one thread to follow. Harrison uniquely equipped to take him apart not only in body but in mind.
Cutting him open, bathing him. It aches to consider the two acts in parallel, in convergence. They can’t exist on the same plane, let alone in the same person. He can’t even begin to reconcile this version of Harrison with the one he’s used to. The one who looks at him, speaks to him, listens and questions. Hits and hopes and waits.
What possible name can he give to this kind of creator?
Nothing is delicate enough to braid or knot or burn this thing born them. Alive and writhing, it evades interference. The moth again. Its existence is impossible and the fleeting, vulnerable life of it will pass. If not now, soon. It’s pulsing poison through his veins. All of this has an expiration date and it’s never in his control. He’ll die here, aware or not. Perhaps just like this, witnessing it all like a ghost. Alone in the cold, through to the end.
Harrison cuts him open with the same peaceful attention as bathing him; or he bathes him with the same serene consideration as cutting him open. One in the same; two different realities. He doesn’t want answers.
All that matters—
Harrison’s teeth snap together, the movement echoes through the rest of his face. Muscles in his cheeks tensing, brow furrowing.
His heart beats like a wing behind his ribs.
Harrison knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.
Harrison’s gaze snaps to his, eyes dark and as familiar as coming home; the only living thing he looks up to now.
He almost stops breathing. Except he didn’t do anything to raise the alarm. Nothing changed. Not a hitch in his breath or a twitch in his fingers.
Nothing at all prevented Harrison from noticing before.
It’s impossible he didn’t know all along.
An even deception. Holding onto pretense for fear of what might lie in its ruins.
Or the entire thing was intentional on Harrison’s part. It would mean he should be able to move his limbs, that Harrison was just waiting for him to be the one to give up the ruse.
Wave the white flag.
The air crushes from his lungs. The awful, haunting feeling growing where it implanted itself inside his chest. Roots inching deeper, poison spreading. It’s unfathomable.
He closes his eyes.
Removes his awareness, his participation, in the whole raw, binding, undoing exchange.
Just in time for Harrison to run the sponge over the hollow at his throat, where his pulse skips and jumps. Tracing his neck to his chin before curving up his jaw. Harrison ghosts across his forehead, down his nose, anointing each cheek in turn. Even his ears and behind them.
He expects pain, or discomfort at least, when Harrison moves behind him to attend to the crown of his head.
Harrison’s touch is gentler than a sigh.
He wants to choke, break, scream, wants to pull it under his skin. He doesn’t move, can’t move, doesn’t want to know if he ever had the choice. Wishes he’d never opened his eyes. That this poison spreading through his veins had already killed him. That he was the ghost.
Even if that would mean never catching the moth, ending it. Alive and fragile somewhere in the air between them, wings beating like a homeless heart.
Harrison finishes his task unhurried, unobserved. Just like every other time.
And leaves.
He’s cold, alone.
masterlist (harrison is at the bottom; maybe when he gets to 20 posts i'll make him his own...)
(🧽 ask from this game) cw: what it sounds like...but maybe not that bad in the way you would think...? idk
masterlist
Absence gnaws the air when he comes to. Even though it sinks its teeth into his mind instantly, impossible to ignore, he can’t quite put his finger on what’s missing. He feels it like an unexpected step between the rooms of sleep and consciousness. His stride falling through empty space for untethered seconds until it hits home, lower than anticipated, jolting the body with its newfound altitude. A few inches felt like miles.
He takes stock of himself but he doesn’t feel any new pain. There’s hardly any pain at all, it’s been days since Harrison cut into him. The most recent sutures have healed, leaving behind just the dull ache as his body tries to complete the closure layer by layer within.
It’s not until his heart shoulders off the initial disturbance, on its own descent, that he figures it out. For the first time in as long as he can remember, the monitor doesn’t echo back the stubborn, persistent metronomed proof that he continues to survive this hell. His heart beats alone.
Nothing but empty, cold air.
Something whispers over the skin of his left arm and it takes all his focus not to tense every muscle. His other arm rests against his side.
No heart monitor and no restraints? It must be a dream or a hallucination.
His desperate, fracturing mind conjuring a tender ghost from the past. But the air is cool against his skin, his body heavy where it meets the table, anchored by his weight. Heels, hips, shoulders, the back of his head; it feels so real.
The touch comes again, light as an exhale over his skin.
He stays perfectly still, eyes closed. Doesn’t even try to see if he could move because he doesn’t want to break the illusion.
The third touch is so light, it’s all-consuming.
His mind drives after the feeling. Willing it to turn back and meet him where he expects it, can embrace it. Instead, the sensation vanishes and takes his last restraint away too.
He opens his eyes carefully, as if the stroke of his eyelashes against the cold air could ripple through the room and disrupt whatever waits to be seen.
It must be a hallucination. His spectre looks like Harrison but is completely unrecognizable.
A new drug, one Harrison didn’t even bother allowing him to witness being doped with. Poison lacing reality with lies. He’s high out of his mind, there’s no other explanation.
Harrison—“Harrison”—stands over him, same white coat as always, same scrubs underneath.
What’s impossible is how tranquil he looks. Completely at peace, not a line visible on his face, not even to smile. His serenity runs so deep, it resonates in the air around him and doesn’t need to be named by such an insignificant expression. It’s clear in the perfect symmetry of his posture, the gentle bend in his neck, the balance and grace of his movements.
For an endless moment, all he does is drink in the differences as other-Harrison stands over him. Even the light in his eyes is changed, familiar brown revealing that all along they’ve been secreting away an undercurrent of ochre, warm to the core.
He keeps perfectly still, isn’t sure he wants to move, if he even can. Especially since Harrison doesn’t seem to realize he’s awake.
As wrong as this whole thing feels, disturbing it is an even more unsettling idea.
Harrison lifts a sponge out of a basin and he braces himself for the sting of ice-cold water but it’s neither hot nor cool. Like it’s been measured to the exact temperature of his skin. Harrison slides it over his stomach. In methodical, meditative sweeps, washes his whole torso. Focused entirely on the task, never a glance spared to see if his work is observed.
His mind somersaults under the touch, thoughts racing like goosebumps through his head. Second to the strangeness of Harrison is everything else about this situation.
He’s naked.
Harrison is bathing him.
How much has Harrison already washed? How much of this aching softness did he miss? How much more will he have to endure? Is he supposed to be awake? Is he supposed to be able to move?
He doesn’t want any of the answers.
Harrison starts for his shoulder and he lets his eyes slip closed. Surely Harrison will notice he’s awake in such close proximity. The idea of being caught sets his heart racing and he wonders if Harrison will catch sight of his pulse sprinting in his throat. Or detect the shift just by touching his skin.
But Harrison continues from his shoulder down his arm. The path of his sponge, slow and thorough, painfully familiar surgical precision. It could simply be careful maintenance of a delicate and valuable piece of machinery, vital equipment. A possession needing upkeep in order to perform. Thoroughbreds need to be curry-combed and brushed, hooves carefully cleaned and inspected after a ride. Even a dog needs to be washed if it runs through mud.
If only it were that.
He peeks one eye open.
Harrison doesn’t look up from where the sponge slides along the crease of his elbow.
He opens his other eye.
Something simple, dismissible, understandable.
Instead, each whispered brush of Harrison’s sponge feels like it’s painting him into existence. Right here on the table. The only anchor that’s ever mattered. Binding him to his bones, to the ache and cold. Every new touch is the first touch, all others before forgotten. Until he’s ringing with it, alone.
Harrison sweeps down his side.
He wants to roll into it, bend toward it. It’s all he can do to suppress a shudder, to maintain his breathing.
He’s more relaxed than he’s ever felt.
Keeping still is nearly impossible.
Harrison dips the sponge in the basin again, squeezes it out. The trickle of water echoes, thunderous in the empty air. Harrison cradles his wrist in one hand and passes the sponge over the back of his hand. His palm. Methodically twists over his thumb, washing each of his fingers in turn. Nothing missed, nothing overlooked. Surgically precise, cold.
He wonders if this is what Harrison looks like operating on him.
Cutting him open, tearing him apart. Serene and wholly at peace. Destroying the very fabric of his being in the name of innovation. And now bathing him with that same kind of ease, like they’re one in the same.
The thought is as terrifying as it is other. Something unnamable and dangerous that he can’t look at head-on but that wedges itself inside his ribcage, spined and barbed, digging in to make its presence undeniable.
He wants to destroy it. Crush this living thing like a moth caged in his palms. Trapped and writhing, uncomfortable between them. Wings beating like a heart. He can’t stand to let it go on, suffering alone. It will never survive, released into the open air.
Harrison lays his hand back down and picks up the basin to walk around the foot of the table, breaking the spell.
The bitterness of the poisonous hatred filling his head, his chest, almost takes his breath away. His desire to annihilate this unnameable thing. Pretend it never existed. A ghost without a name.
Harrison starts repeating the whole process on the other side. At least now he knows what to expect.
It’s no easier to bear.
He tries to distract himself by staring at the ceiling. Counting the familiar tiles. Counting the lights.
His eyes fall back to Harrison.
Again
and again.
Until he’s desperate to forget this version of Harrison and the alien air around him.
He can’t stop it from flooding his mind like poison, staining and burning itself into his memory. It’s impossible to keep his eyes closed. It takes all of his focus to keep himself still, to suppress the urge to twitch and jerk, just to see if he can. The fact that he can open his eyes, that he’s breathing on his own, thinking clearly—unreal Harrison aside—makes him think that he could move but that it’s very important he doesn’t.
Harrison continues to his hips.
Sweat prickles on the back of his neck. He definitely won’t be able to fly under the radar anymore.
There’s a good chance Harrison will hurt him for spying like this, on the care of his own body. For intruding to meet this version of Harrison he’s never been allowed to see. Affronts to Harrison’s person are usually punished with violence. Three broken fingers for a slap to the face, for calling him a sadist.
As Harrison moves the sponge lower, he braces himself.
What if—
What if—
What if—
He imagines the worst possible physical reaction he could have and the equal or amplified retaliation Harrison will rain down.
But there’s nothing different about the precise and careful way Harrison cleans between his legs. His touch is neither hurried nor lingering. It carries the same methodical attention used everywhere else and doesn’t feel any different either.
He’s relieved, numb.
He’s roaring and writhing, poisoned, blood-curdling, somewhere else. Far, far out of reach, alone.
The minutes ache forward, blurring together. He can’t remember what brought him to awareness anymore. How long he’s been the silent, invisible observer to this task, a ghost. Harrison continues to his legs, routine immersing him to the point of reverence. Like he’s done this a hundred times. A practiced mantra, a prayer, followed until it’s leading the way.
He thinks he’s glad to have missed the weight and repetition that wore this path so deep. The feeling that there is no other way this could go, no other order or process even considered besides the one Harrison follows. He doesn’t like to feel its density, existing outside his awareness as something so established, almost named.
Harrison cleans his feet like he cleaned his hands.
He wonders if he was ever ticklish. Nothing about this touch is ticklish, light as it is. There’s something about his skin that welcomes it, everywhere. Nothing but cold left in its wake.
He wants to claw the feeling of predetermination out of his cells.
Harrison’s expression never changes, immortal calm like he’s carved from stone.
Was every step of his life leading to this? Fate, destiny, piss poor luck. None of it was ever under his control and in the end he’s here. All paths led to this one, a master architect mapped it out, one thread to follow. Harrison uniquely equipped to take him apart not only in body but in mind.
Cutting him open, bathing him. It aches to consider the two acts in parallel, in convergence. They can’t exist on the same plane, let alone in the same person. He can’t even begin to reconcile this version of Harrison with the one he’s used to. The one who looks at him, speaks to him, listens and questions. Hits and hopes and waits.
What possible name can he give to this kind of creator?
Nothing is delicate enough to braid or knot or burn this thing born them. Alive and writhing, it evades interference. The moth again. Its existence is impossible and the fleeting, vulnerable life of it will pass. If not now, soon. It’s pulsing poison through his veins. All of this has an expiration date and it’s never in his control. He’ll die here, aware or not. Perhaps just like this, witnessing it all like a ghost. Alone in the cold, through to the end.
Harrison cuts him open with the same peaceful attention as bathing him; or he bathes him with the same serene consideration as cutting him open. One in the same; two different realities. He doesn’t want answers.
All that matters—
Harrison’s teeth snap together, the movement echoes through the rest of his face. Muscles in his cheeks tensing, brow furrowing.
His heart beats like a wing behind his ribs.
Harrison knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.
Harrison’s gaze snaps to his, eyes dark and as familiar as coming home; the only living thing he looks up to now.
He almost stops breathing. Except he didn’t do anything to raise the alarm. Nothing changed. Not a hitch in his breath or a twitch in his fingers.
Nothing at all prevented Harrison from noticing before.
It’s impossible he didn’t know all along.
An even deception. Holding onto pretense for fear of what might lie in its ruins.
Or the entire thing was intentional on Harrison’s part. It would mean he should be able to move his limbs, that Harrison was just waiting for him to be the one to give up the ruse.
Wave the white flag.
The air crushes from his lungs. The awful, haunting feeling growing where it implanted itself inside his chest. Roots inching deeper, poison spreading. It’s unfathomable.
He closes his eyes.
Removes his awareness, his participation, in the whole raw, binding, undoing exchange.
Just in time for Harrison to run the sponge over the hollow at his throat, where his pulse skips and jumps. Tracing his neck to his chin before curving up his jaw. Harrison ghosts across his forehead, down his nose, anointing each cheek in turn. Even his ears and behind them.
He expects pain, or discomfort at least, when Harrison moves behind him to attend to the crown of his head.
Harrison’s touch is gentler than a sigh.
He wants to choke, break, scream, wants to pull it under his skin. He doesn’t move, can’t move, doesn’t want to know if he ever had the choice. Wishes he’d never opened his eyes. That this poison spreading through his veins had already killed him. That he was the ghost.
Even if that would mean never catching the moth, ending it. Alive and fragile somewhere in the air between them, wings beating like a homeless heart.
Harrison finishes his task unhurried, unobserved. Just like every other time.
And leaves.
He’s cold, alone.
masterlist (harrison is at the bottom; maybe when he gets to 20 posts i'll make him his own...)
content: pet whump (bbu/institutionalized slavery), literary flashbacks, explicit discussion of suicide, discussion of dead parents, implications of past sexual assault, implications of past underage whumpee, smoking & drinking
♤♢♧♡♧♢♤
It was only once Sonny’s mind caught up with the mechanisms of his body that he even registered he was conscious, sitting bolt upright, having shot up without thinking. His heart thumping against his ribcage was evidence of how he had startled. He clenched and unclenched his fists to feel the workings of muscle, tendon, and bone, trembling with nerves. It was always jarring, to be ripped from sleep and sent straight into fight-or-flight.
He could not identify with any certainty what noise had woken him. It had been loud— he only knew that much. The first thing his brain supplied to him, neurons grasping at straws, was the slam of a cabinet door. Bang! But some subconscious sense told him that it didn’t quite fit. The volume, the distance, the quality of sound… how to describe it? A crack? A pop?
When he turned to check if Port was awake too, he could only blink at the empty space beside him. Sonny was alone.
* * * * *
The shadow in the doorway left as quickly as it had appeared— so silently, that once the door shut and there was no longer proof before his eyes, Sonny was not confident he had not merely hallucinated it.
His head fell back onto the pillow. Drifting in and out, he kept seeing gut-twisting things he did not want to put names to out of the corners of his eyes, disappearing at the flutter of his eyelids. He felt the mattress dip under him. He himself being bent until he might stretch and warp and snap. He felt five distinct points of pressure gripping his neck, his bicep, his thigh. He feared he might find shadows of bruises on his skin as evidence, if he looked.
He did not know if these sensations plagued him for minutes or hours, but at some point he must have fallen into a deep, genuine, dreamless sleep. He pried his eyes open, gazed at the ceiling, and realized he was lucid.
He clenched and unclenched his fists. At the unfamiliar, scratching sensation, he remembered the bandage wrapped around one hand. The cut on his palm did not really sting, anymore. He pulled up at the edge with his fingertips, unraveling it. The wound, less than a centimeter long and settled into one of the wrinkles, was pink and raw. It was still shiny with the ointment Rida had tenderly applied to it with a finger.
Every swallow was like a razor blade slicing the track of his esophagus. When he finally collected the will and the strength to sit up, he noticed the cup on the bedside table, one of the acrylic ones with texture like a chiseled stone. His arm was heavy when he raised the water to his lips. It hurt sliding down his throat, but it activated his thirst, and then it was gone.
He coughed into his elbow, hating the rattle in his lungs. He hoped it would not stick around. He ran his fingers through his hair, which felt limp and greasy, clinging together and sticking up in strange ways in the back. He wondered how long he had been out. When he tried to remember his last moment of clarity, what came to mind was waking up in the middle of the night with terrible nausea and stumbling to the bathroom to curl over the toilet bowl. He remembered the way his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. Who was it who had pressed a grounding hand between his shoulder blades? Rida, right? Why was Port’s face floating to the front of his mind? And why had he been… wet? And naked…?
It trickled back slowly.
He sat in the memory for some time. A nausea crept back into him.
Having had enough of replaying the way he had shamelessly pressed himself against Port’s collarbone, and the way Port’s pinched face and hardened hands had morphed into someone else entirely— someone he could not name or even remember— Sonny swung his legs over the side of the bed. He stood, faltering a little at the sudden light-headedness.
He pulled the curtain aside on the window facing the street. Hardly any light entered the room— the sky was dark. Street lamps cast golden cones on the pavement. A stranger passed through one, like stepping into a spotlight, walking a dog connected to her by the leash hooked on its collar. Sonny wondered if she might be able to see him there, standing in the window, if she looked. If she might be able to see the collar around his own throat. Her eyes were too far and shadowed to tell. He drew the curtain shut.
* * * * *
Port never left the room before dawn. It was not allowed. This rung through Sonny’s mind as his fingers hovered over the doorknob. Not allowed, not allowed, not allowed.
He could almost feel an electric buzz coming off it, connecting to the pads of his fingers with invisible cords that would surely burn him if he drew closer. The thrumming traveling from his chest down his arm pushed his hand forward. There was no pain. The metal was cool to the touch.
He opened the door silently, twisting and holding the knob so that latch wouldn’t stick or click. The hallway was dark except for the faint glow emanating from downstairs.
The door to Mr. Oz’s room was ajar.
* * * * *
As soon as Sonny emerged from the bedroom, Port noticed him. The flash of his brown eyes as he turned over his shoulder. They disappeared when Port turned back a second later, hardly landing on Sonny for a second.
God, Port must hate him. Sonny bleakly wished that he had drowned in the tub so he wouldn’t have to think about how he had tried to kiss Port’s neck.
Embarrassingly, the rejection still managed to sting, even if it was at least partly due to Sonny being sick and not in his right mind. He never really thought Port would reciprocate in the first place— and that was probably for the best— but in that state he had thought Port was someone that wanted him, too. All the confusing, illicit sensations. Wires crossed. He wondered if Port would push him away all the same if Sonny were to try it in a state of perfect lucidity. He would not actually attempt it, of course. Port would probably be less nice about it.
Sonny forced himself back to the present. Tal was there, too, sitting across the kitchen table from Port. Playing cards were spread over the surface, and they each held a fan of them in their hands. It struck Sonny as odd to see Port not busying himself with something— engaging in leisure with his master.
“Yo, the Son has risen!” Tal exclaimed. “How ya feeling?”
Sonny blinked away the disparate image of Mr. Oz’s face, focusing on Tal’s unique qualities. Recalibrating master from Mr. Oz to this boy.
“I…” Sonny cleared his throat, sound not coming out right. “I think the fever is gone, sir.”
“Still sick, though?”
“Getting better.”
“That’s good,” Tal said. “Wanna play cards with us? We can deal you in.”
“Uh…” He was distracted by the way Port was refusing to turn around and face him. Sonny stared at the wavy hair falling over his nape.
“Wait!” Tal threw his hands up. A card slipped out from under his thumb and landed face-up on the table. Ace of spades. He hastily flipped it over to hide it from Port’s view. “You should eat. Rida got some crackers for you.” With the guidance of Tal’s pointing finger, Sonny noticed the conspicuous box of wheat crackers sitting by the kitchen sink. He went to grab them, and they rattled around inside.
Sonny turned around at the scrape of chair legs on tile and reeled back against the counter, alarmed, when he saw Tal leaping towards him. But he was aiming for the cupboard, not for Sonny— he produced a cup and filled it with water, kicking the cupboard door shut with his toe. Bang. He held the cup out. “Here.”
Eyes flicking from Tal’s expectant face to the cup of water, Sonny grabbed it cautiously. “Thank you,” he said.
“No problem-o. Hydration is important.” As Sonny drank, relishing the cool water sliding over his tongue, Tal returned to his chair and swept his abandoned cards back into his hand. “Rida’s on the patio, if you were wondering. It’s really nice out. Sure would be nice to sit out there… if she wasn’t smoking,” he said pointedly, eyeing the back door like he could x-ray his disapproving look to her.
Sonny was struck with the sudden and overwhelming urge to escape the stifling house. Out there, Port’s refusal to meet his eyes wouldn’t be so obvious. “May I go outside?” he blurted.
“Sure, bro. No one’s stopping you.”
Tal could, if he wanted to. But Sonny appreciated that he wasn’t.
* * * * *
Every sensible part of him urged Sonny to simply shut himself back in his room, lay down, and go back to sleep. If Port and Mr. Oz were downstairs together, at this hour, doing god knows what, it was in his best interest not to get involved.
But something felt off. Really off. It was quiet downstairs— not even hushed voices. The silence rung in his ears, a pressure against his eardrums just short of tangible.
* * * * *
The breeze against his face was heavenly. Somewhere, wind chimes tinkled gently. Rida was sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the patio cobblestones, pushed up against the adobe wall. Her head swung towards Sonny, who was hovering in the doorway, surprise playing across her face. Her elbow rested on one of the chair arms, cigarette perched delicately between two fingers. The soft wind blew the thin plumes of smoke, dancing in the air like silk threads.
“Heyyy,” Rida said. It was soft, like a coo, the same way she had murmured to him when she bandaged his hand. She’d had him sit on the closed toilet lid, kneeling before him with the first-aid kit by her knee, and saying to him, softly, “Hey, hey, you're okay.”
“Hi,” Sonny replied, still gripping his box of crackers.
“Did you need something, babe?” Her voice was strangely sweet, though she was not smiling— maybe it was just his lingering sickness or sentimentality. Maybe the way she called him babe.
He forced himself to speak, suddenly clutched by timidity. “May I sit out here?” he asked quietly.
She gestured to the open chair beside her, sweeping lazily with her smoking hand. It drew the swirling plume through the air. “Be my guest,” she said. “I can put this out.”
Before she could stub it in the ash tray resting atop the little table on her other side, Sonny stopped her. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” He shut the door behind him and sat in the twin chair, placing the box of crackers between his thighs. “I don’t care about smoke.”
“You found the crackers,” Rida said.
“Tal told me to eat them.”
“Good. Eat them.”
A command was familiar. Sonny obediently opened the box, prying up the cardboard tab on the top. It ripped uncleanly, forcing him to pick at it with his fingernails. Before he could get to the bag inside, a scratch crawled its way up his throat, and he coughed into his elbow. He buried his face deeper in the crook of his arm when he noticed Rida’s attention on him.
“Are you sure I don’t need to put this out?” Her brow was furrowed in concern. “I really shouldn’t be having it, anyway.”
“It’s fine,” Sonny wheezed, cough petering out. “It’s just the sickness. I used to smoke myself.” He didn’t know why he bothered to admit that. To connect with her, he supposed.
She tilted her head. “Really?”
He pinched the plastic bag of crackers on either side. “I mean— it’s been a while,” he said. “But yes. Though I prefer vaping. Um…” The bag sort of squeaked as he peeled it open. The salty, wheaty smell filled his nostrils. “Not that it matters. It’s been a few months,” he finished lamely. Not since before Mr. Oz. He still got the itch for it, sometimes.
She hummed, raising the cigarette. The cherry glowed red as she took a drag. “Me too, but vaping fucks with my sinuses,” she mused, smoke blowing from her lips. She held it over the ash tray and tapped it with her thumb, a clump falling off the end.
“That sucks,” Sonny said, and placed a cracker on his tongue. It was delightfully salty.
“Yeah. I keep trying to kick it, especially since Tal can’t be around the smoke. He’s got bad lungs.” She idly nudged the ash tray and it scraped across the table. “Fuck, my mother would kill me.”
Sonny wondered, grimly, what had happened to her. No surviving spouse, Beau had said.
Rida threw her hands up. “But it’s easier said than done. I only really smoke when I drink, anyway. And I only drink when I’m stressed, these days.” It was then that Sonny noticed on the table the heavy-bottomed glass, halfway full of dark liquid, rippling minutely at the vibration.
* * * * *
He crept towards the top of the staircase and carefully lowered his toes to the first step. Then, gripping the handrail like a lifeline, the next. And then the next. Then the next. On the fifth step— creak. He froze.
“Sonny?” That was Port’s voice. It was hissed, like he wanted to keep his voice low, but it cut through the dead silence.
* * * * *
“I’m sorry,” Sonny said, stomach flipping. He was the reason for her stress, no doubt. She probably regretted taking them in already, especially with the trouble he’d caused.
Her eyes widened, landing on him. “Oh, don’t be. I didn’t mean it like that, babe.” She pressed her fingers against her temple, black nails pushing up into her hair. “I’m always putting my damn foot in my mouth. It’s just the whole… uh… situation.”
Sonny did not know what else to say. He ate two more crackers, taking his time to chew and savor the texture, as Rida wrapped her hand around the glass and took a sip. Sonny felt another unwelcome wheeze in his lungs and broke into another bout of coughing.
Rida clicked her tongue. “Your poor thing,” she said. “That cough is persistent.”
“Yeah,” he rasped.
“Whiskey cure?”
Sonny blinked through watering eyes at the glass in her hand. She was sort of holding it out, and grinning a little goofily, teeth peeking out between her dark painted lips. He realized she might be a little more tipsy than she'd let on. “Um…” The thought of a drink sounded strangely appealing, though he doubted it would actually help his cough.
Her smile faded, registering his expression. “That was meant to be a joke, but if you actually want some…”
He hadn’t had any alcohol in a long time, just like nicotine or any other substance— not since he lived with the Hans. He liked the way it made him looser, less anxious, though that came with its drawbacks around his masters. With their daughter, though… he had found it funny how it made Alice’s cheeks flush, and the way her touch on his hip burned like the bourbon down his throat, even through clothes. But Alice was long gone, a thousand miles away.
Too many thoughts crowding his head. “If you’re offering…”
“What the hell, sure. Here.” She held out the glass, but then withdrew it just as fast, liquid splashing into itself. “Actually, I can get you your own.”
For some reason, he did not want her to go inside and leave him there alone, even for a moment. And he didn’t want the other two to see her search through the cupboard and take an empty glass. “I don’t need my own,” he said. “If you don’t mind. I don’t care if you don’t.”
She hesitated. “Are you sure? Okay. I don’t care.”
He reached to meet her extended arm halfway, connecting himself to her through their shared press of prints to glass. The skin of their fingertips nearly brushed, but did not touch, and then her hand was gone and the glass was his.
He rotated it in his grip, the scant amber swirling at the bottom. His eyes caught on the dark print of lipstick on the rim. He was mindful not to press his mouth to it— he oriented the kiss across from his own, so that as he tilted the glass to let the last vestiges of whiskey slip into his mouth, the wax wrinkled blurred before his eyes.
It burned terribly, as expected. His nose scrunched involuntarily, coughing again into his elbow. The sore throat was momentarily made a thousand times worse, but he relished in the feeling of warmth blooming in his chest as the whiskey made its way down.
Rida took the glass back from him. “That wasn’t your first drink, was it? I would feel bad.”
“No, no,” he said. “I promise it wasn’t.” The breeze returned then, moving his hair. It made him shiver, though he wasn’t cold at all. The weather had warmed significantly since his frigid journey from Texas. He heard those wind chimes again. He looked above Rida’s head and saw them, hanging from the logs spanning over the patio, spinning gently in the air. A glass bird hung down from the center on a string, its crystalline facets catching the light, winking at him like a precious gemstone.
* * * * *
Sonny’s voice stuck in his throat, terrified to speak aloud. “It’s me,” he whispered.
“Don’t come down here,” Port said after a moment, voice shaking. His tone made something tighten in Sonny's chest.
* * * * *
Rida leaned down to reach for something by the leg of her chair— the bottle of whiskey, he realized. Refilling the empty glass. Not a drop was spilled— she twisted and lifted her wrist at the end of the pour. “You are definitely not 21,” she murmured, twisting the cap and setting the bottle back on the ground.
Sonny didn’t bother to comment on that, thinking bitterly about his redacted file. But he knew it was true— they only would have blacked out his birth date if they had something to hide, and it didn’t take a detective to figure out what that was. So-fucking-what.
Regardless of the circumstances of his acquisition, regardless of whether he had been illegally underage or not, he decided it was irrelevant. He had pondered, more than once, the question that would often rise to his mind unbidden, especially in his darkest moments— a question that, back in the facility, handlers would answer before it was even asked. You chose this.
Faced with circumstance, faced with scarcely concealed truth, faced with the things he had seen in the throes of mind-warping fever, he decided he was done asking. It didn’t matter. In some subconscious sense, in memories of impression buried deep within the recesses of his mind, the answer had always been with him. Maybe this is always what he was meant to be. Maybe he chose this for good reason. Maybe it was best not to remember.
Some things were not worth thinking deeply about. (Whoever he used to be was dead, now.)
* * * * *
Sonny knew he probably shouldn’t ask. Still, he could not resist. “Why not?”
Silence.
He was too scared to move. “Porter?”
* * * * *
Or maybe it was just the alcohol talking. He realized, perhaps too late, that his tolerance was nonexistent and his stomach was practically empty. When he turned his head, the world took a few seconds to stop spinning.
He had to ask: “Is it true Tal had to convince you to take us?”
Rida sighed, staring into her swirling drink. “He was on board from the beginning. I’ll admit I had my reservations… but I would’ve made the same decision, anyway,” she said. She never really opened her mouth all the way, especially with her tipsy slurring. She spoke softly. “I want you to know that. I just hope you won’t hate it here.” She sipped at the whiskey, lips landing on the waxy mark, and swallowed. “It has to be better than living with my dad, at least, right?”
Rida was not looking directly at him, but her dark eyes were aimed towards his face out of her peripheral. Gauging his reaction. Sonny sunk deeper into his chair, quietly running his nail over the waxy cardboard box. “You think he didn’t treat us well?”
She raised a shaved eyebrow, finally allowing herself to twist in his direction. “Am I wrong?”
He only shook his head, eyes on his lap. He meant it as a denial to answer, but she seemed to take it as confirmation. He supposed they were effectively the same thing, anyway.
“I figured,” she sighed. “I didn’t expect anything better.” Her hand rose to her chest. There, bellow her collar, hanging from a thin chain necklace, was a ring like one might wear on a finger. She twisted it over and over, a comforting motion, thumb running over the delicate solitaire diamond. “I think him killing himself was inevitable. I wasn’t that surprised. Some part of him always knew he was a piece of shit.” She took a final puff from her cigarette. It was burnt nearly to the filter by now. She stubbed it into the ash tray. “Can I ask something?”
Somehow, despite the subject matter, Sonny found himself lulled by her words. She lisped like there were cotton balls stuffed under her tongue, giving her voice a muffled, dreamlike quality he could not help but like. “Yes,” he replied automatically, complacent and pacified.
“How did he do it?”
* * * * *
“He’s…” Port’s voice broke. He cleared his throat. “Oh, God…” he whispered, not meant to be heard. “I don’t know how to explain this. Please, just go back to bed.”
* * * * *
“Gun,” Sonny answered.
“Checks out,” Rida said brusquely. “Sounds messy.”
“It was.”
Rida’s head snapped towards him, though because he was not looking, he did not know what sort of look she had on her face. “Shit, did you see it? I’m sorry.”
He shook his head again. “I didn’t see it,” he said. “I didn’t see it, but…” Porter did. He wasn’t supposed to say that, though. Port asked him not to tell anybody. “I can assume,” Sonny finished. He had smelled it, even underneath the white sheet.
Rida did not respond. When his eyes flicked back to her, she had produced another cigarette, which was sticking out of her mouth. She was lighting it awkwardly with a needlessly long lighter, like one he might use to light a gas stove if he was scared to get too close. The end caught the flame, and she took a draw. She noticed his stare and released the trigger, flame disappearing. She pulled a little smoke into her mouth. “Don’t make fun of me,” she said, smoke swirling. She placed the lighter on the table. “I can’t find my Zippo. I don’t know where it went.”
Sonny could not suppress his urge to grin. “I wasn’t going to make fun of you.”
“Sure,” Rida intoned. Her eyes narrowed at his face— then she broke into a smile. It looked nice on her, when it wasn’t forced. “You have dimples,” she said, delighted.
Suddenly shy, and feeling his cheeks go warm, he resisted the desire to hide behind his hands. He could not tamp the grin entirely, and dropped his eyes. “I guess I do,” he said. How funny it was, for her to be so enchanted by such an innocuous feature of his face.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you smile before.”
“Maybe I’ll smile more often,” Sonny said. “If I have reason to. Can I have another drink?”
“I suppose,” Rida said. “But not too much more.”
She passed it to him, and he took a reasonable sip. It went down easier the second time. Something occurred to him, staring into glass. “Is this halal?” he asked.
Rida made a weird face at him, halfway between incredulity and amusement. “Do I look Muslim to you?”
“I— I don’t know,” Sonny stuttered, fearing to have offended her. “A Muslim can look like anything, can’t they?”
Rida broke into a laugh, tilting her head so that her bob fell closer against her cheek. Her bright face sent some relief through him. “You know what? You’re right. You shouldn’t judge based off looks.”
“I’m open-minded,” Sonny proclaimed, giving the glass back to her.
“You’re sweet,” Rida said. “But I’m not Muslim. You’re thinking of Tal.” She was fidgeting with that ring looped on her necklace again. On the tiny diamond, a tinier facet caught the light and twinkled in his eye. “He takes after our mom. She was always the religious one.” The cigarette hovered by her mouth, but she did not put her lips on it. “I guess in that sense, I take after Dad.”
* * * * *
Port did not come upstairs for hours. Sonny laid awake the entire time.
When he finally stepped through the door, he had a wild look in his eyes. Sonny had always thought his thousand-yard stare was one of his most striking traits. Now, Sonny realized he had never even seen how unsettling it could really look.
* * * * *
“When did she die?” Sonny asked, before he could stop himself.
Nothing changed in her face. Her eyes were lidded, gazing across the dark yard to the wooden fence, like she was deeply considering a long crack splitting the rot. She continued to twist the ring in her fingers. “Last year. May.”
Sonny thought back to that fateful evening, the night Mr. Han lost that card game. The night he gave Sonny up to Mr. Oz’s clutches. Sonny knew he was lying when he tried to convince himself that the game was the extent of it. It was merely the culmination. The tension had been building long before that.
Before he got into Mr. Oz’s car, he remembered taking a final look at the brick house he had come to know, windows glowing from within. The evening had been warm. Something sick settled in his stomach— not the alcohol. “He took me in June,” Sonny said.
Rida pursed her lips, nodding. “I know. I saw that in your file.”
* * * * *
Port’s hardened hands shook as he cupped Sonny’s in his own. They were cold, and slightly wet, like he had just washed them and did not bother to dry them all the way. Sonny stared down at them, at the shadows of the bones pressing against his skin, at the missing fingers, and the misshapen nails. There were dark threads of earth under the white tips, like little crescent moons.
* * * * *
Sonny could not really remember how he had reacted, when Port told him the news. He could barely even remember the day after, by this point— it was all getting buried away, like countless other moments, many of which he was sure he had already forgotten and did not want to remember or even think about in passing. (For the best.)
Port had waited to call the police until morning. He’s already gone, he’d explained to Sonny. Might as well wait until daybreak.
Sonny, despite the warning bells ringing in his mind, had accepted this. He had been terrified of what would happen to them next. If Port wanted to delay it for as long as possible, he was okay with that. As long as he got to spend the rest of the night by him, savoring it, in case he would never get the chance again.
Seems like it all worked out, Sonny thought. Now if only we could stay off the topic of Mr. Oz, forever.
The moon shone through a tear in the clouds. Sonny turned to the horizon. It was too dark to see clearly, especially beyond the rotting fence, but he imagined he could see the shadow of the distant mountain range if he just focused hard enough.
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
content: pet whump (bbu/institutionalized slavery), new master, aftermath of seizure, flashbacks, minor hallucinations
~~~~~~
He woke to a metallic taste all the way in the back of his throat, an unusual slickness coating his tongue. It brought with it the phantom and distinct sensation of gnashing teeth through flesh. His heart skipped— why did he feel he was about to be punished?
Maybe he already had been. His muscles screamed. His throat ached. His tongue stung sharply, and then he realized: he had bitten it, a telltale sign he must have seized at some point in the night.
Port pressed a feeble hand to his forehead, the back of his skull throbbing fiercely. A headache in the aftermath, he thought, then remembered he was laying on the floor, no pillow to support his neck. He had probably cracked his head against it over and over in his thrashing. Couldn’t remember it, of course— he was never inside his body when it happened.
With a grimace and a twist of his stiff neck, he pressed his cheek against the carpet, feeling the stretch of muscle and tendon. He wondered, as he scrubbed at the dried spit on his chin, where Sonny was. He usually had some commentary when Port woke up— It was a quick one, he would say, or It felt like forever or You stopped breathing or I’m worried about you.
But Sonny was nowhere to be seen. Not sleeping beside him, not kneeling over him… in fact, something was off, and he couldn’t quite place his finger on it. Squinting at dust bunnies beneath the bed, it struck him as odd that there was furniture in here at all.
It would come to him soon, probably. Sometimes it even took him a few minutes to remember his own name. Thoughts tended not to stick.
He never even knew he was hazing seizures until Sonny told him so. Once he did, a lot of things suddenly made a whole lot of sense. Those foggy, walled-off memories of waking up in the night, confused, in pain, before drifting back off to sleep and feeling like he’d been tortured come morning. In his less lucid moments he was convinced that a real, actual ghost had come back to haunt him, in a more physical way than simply lurking in the corner of his mind or his eye, always just out of sight.
Did something blink at him from underneath the bed? He closed his eyes, heart pounding. His chest shuttered. The very air around him was almost too thick to enter his lungs. When inhaled, it was heavy, weighing him down from the inside.
Ginny was sitting on his chest, suffocating him. Her sharp nails dug divots into his cheeks. Her unforgiving grip hurt his jaw. She was putting something in his mouth— a finger? No… she poured some burning drink over his lips, electrifying. It mingled with the blood.
Port’s eyes snapped open, and the specter disappeared, though he could swear he still felt the foul liquid creeping down his throat and dribbling out the corners of his mouth. He hated these strange flashes, so fleeting and disjointed and tangled he could not be entirely sure he did not simply dream them up. Loose threads pulled from the patchwork.
He righted his head, gazing up at the ceiling fan. It was a great effort to raise his eyelids. The fan was still, air stagnant. He knew if he were to run a finger along the blade, it would come away clean. No dust. Soft light of dawn seeped through the split in the curtains.
When he closed his eyes again, someone else crawled on top of him, straddled him, jabbed a playful finger into his shoulder. The limb twinged and spasmed, knocking against the floor. The tension ran up his collarbone like plucking a taut cable. Her soft hair tickled his face, scent of strawberry shampoo artificial and cloying. It snuck up his nose and got stuck on his tongue. It masked the smoke, which clung to her hair and fingers no matter how hard she tried to wash it away. And it clung to Ginny’s breath, and her teeth, and her clothes and her hair and her fingers which ran over the wheel of her lighter which clicked and clicked and burned and burned and burned—
Enough.
Enough. Into his ear, someone whispered: Wake up.
~~~
For a moment he thought he had locked eyes with a ghost again, just for a single split second, before his sense caught up to his instinct. Port wondered how long it would take him to get used to this boy wearing a warped version of his master’s face— how long it would take for it not to set off the hair-raising, urgent reaction: You’re supposed to be dead.
Talha was looking at him weirdly. “You okay?” His head was poking out over the back of the sofa, an episode of Looney Tunes playing on the TV perched on the console against the wall.
“Yes, sir,” Port said automatically.
Based on his expression, Tal was dubious, but he accepted this answer. “How’s Son-Dawg?” he asked.
When Port last checked on him, Sonny was out cold. Port had found himself suddenly paranoid that Sonny had died in the middle of the night and hovered the back of his hand over Sonny’s mouth, just to feel the faint draft of his breath and make sure he was still alive. “Sleeping,” Port said. “No school today, sir?”
Tal’s mouth quirked like he wanted to make fun of him. “It’s Saturday.”
“Oh. Right.” He had lost track of what day of the week it was… well, days ago.
Tal swung his sharp elbow over the back of the sofa and rested his chin on his hand, beholding Port with round eyes. “Rida picked up a shift, so unless SunnyD wakes up, it’s just you and me today.” His impish smile made Port kind of scared to move. “Do you know algebra?”
“Um… no.”
Tal frowned. “Dammit. I was gonna try to get you to do my homework for me.”
Port couldn’t help the gut-sick feeling at his master’s disapproval. “Sonny could probably help you,” he said, wanting to mitigate the damage. “Once he’s feeling better.”
Tal’s eyes brightened. “Is he good at math?”
Better than me, at least. “I think so.”
Tal leaped off the sofa and made some wild movement with his body, throwing his arm up— dunking an imaginary basketball? “Let’s go!” he exclaimed. Then a thunk— something had fallen off the couch and hit the floor. Tal looked to his feet. “Oh, fuck! My Froot Loops!” His lips pulled away from his teeth as he cringed, exposing his braces.
Port rounded the sofa (not overlooking the way Tal took a few steps back as he approached) and laid eyes on the grey puddle of milk soaking into the Persian carpet, right next to the overturned bowl.
“Oopsie...” Tal said, eyes flicking over to him. “Don’t tell Rida."
Any chance u can make a small masterlist of unintentional that has the whumpiest chapters?? I personally REALLY liked the series but I'm not big fan of rereading full series and would love to just re read all the great whumpiest scenes whenever I feel like it
Hmm… Honestly, depends how you define “whumpiest”. Physical whump actively happening? Post-whump pain and angst? Emotional whump? I try to label every piece with enough to not give spoilers and also remind people who have read what each chapter is about.
Also, am traveling with no laptop for a bit so not really set up to make a full-on list!
In lieu of that, let’s survey the fans:
Aiden’s whumpiest moment:
When Leo comes out of the store to find him getting jumped
After he gets his ass kicked trying to scam guys to get Leo’s money back
When he gets nailed to a wall
When Leo has to get him down from said wall
When he gets whipped for no reason during training
When he gets reclaimed from his first placement pre-Harrison
When Harrison chokes him by shoving a hand down his throat
Voting ended onMay 17
Leave your alt answers in the comments if you have a different whumpiest moment for Aiden!
Also, link for Undeserved Punishment. I’m on mobile so put something as a placeholder because I forgot the name and then tumblr dot com decided I was not allowed to edit the post to fix it (:
Any chance u can make a small masterlist of unintentional that has the whumpiest chapters?? I personally REALLY liked the series but I'm not big fan of rereading full series and would love to just re read all the great whumpiest scenes whenever I feel like it
Hmm… Honestly, depends how you define “whumpiest”. Physical whump actively happening? Post-whump pain and angst? Emotional whump? I try to label every piece with enough to not give spoilers and also remind people who have read what each chapter is about.
Also, am traveling with no laptop for a bit so not really set up to make a full-on list!
In lieu of that, let’s survey the fans:
Aiden’s whumpiest moment:
When Leo comes out of the store to find him getting jumped
After he gets his ass kicked trying to scam guys to get Leo’s money back
When he gets nailed to a wall
When Leo has to get him down from said wall
When he gets whipped for no reason during training
When he gets reclaimed from his first placement pre-Harrison
When Harrison chokes him by shoving a hand down his throat
Voting ended onMay 17
Leave your alt answers in the comments if you have a different whumpiest moment for Aiden!
Also, link for Undeserved Punishment. I’m on mobile so put something as a placeholder because I forgot the name and then tumblr dot com decided I was not allowed to edit the post to fix it (:
Any chance u can make a small masterlist of unintentional that has the whumpiest chapters?? I personally REALLY liked the series but I'm not big fan of rereading full series and would love to just re read all the great whumpiest scenes whenever I feel like it
Hmm… Honestly, depends how you define “whumpiest”. Physical whump actively happening? Post-whump pain and angst? Emotional whump? I try to label every piece with enough to not give spoilers and also remind people who have read what each chapter is about.
Also, am traveling with no laptop for a bit so not really set up to make a full-on list!
In lieu of that, let’s survey the fans:
Aiden’s whumpiest moment:
When Leo comes out of the store to find him getting jumped
After he gets his ass kicked trying to scam guys to get Leo’s money back
When he gets nailed to a wall
When Leo has to get him down from said wall
When he gets whipped for no reason during training
When he gets reclaimed from his first placement pre-Harrison
When Harrison chokes him by shoving a hand down his throat
Voting ended onMay 17
Leave your alt answers in the comments if you have a different whumpiest moment for Aiden!
you should post the harrison and aiden bath scene!! if you want to!!
This is in the AU. You know, the one I still pretend isn't a real thing...lolz
tw: casual discussion of suicide/suicidal ideation
Masterlist
“I don’t know about this…” Aiden mutters, fingers curling in the fabric of his pajama pants.
Harrison ignores him, leaning against the sink at his side. To say neither one of them is looking forward to this task would be the understatement of the century.
They keep their gazes fixed on the tap, water rushing as if its priority isn’t to fill the tub but the silence, leaden and cumbersome between them. All this time together and there’s more left unsaid now than ever. Built up invisibly, like minerals accumulating around the edges of a tap, inside the pipes until it starts to visibly kick and choke the smooth flow out of shape. They’re shouldering this new avoidance equally, bending under the weight rather than shucking it off. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Pretending they can carry on with a third body to drag along with them when one of them is already paralyzed, the other burdened with the blame.
All the fixtures in Harrison’s bathroom are bright, polished chrome. Shining in contrast with the soft, sherbert orange on the walls. Even the countertop is a slab of pearly, rose stone, the sink scooped right out of it. The tub itself is a floor-to-ceiling insert of wall-to-wall acrylic cream. It must have been like this when he bought the house. He can't imagine Harrison caring enough to renovate a whole bathroom.
Harrison pushes off the counter and grabs a bottle out of the metal rack hanging from the showerhead. He unceremoniously squeezes a generous amount into the rising water. It foams more than bubbles, filling the small room with the scent of soap edged with something sharp. A fresh, synthetic-clean smell that’s not really one thing but distinguished as men’s.
It being his soap, it smells exactly like Harrison. Well, minus the coffee and the odd cigarette he still sneaks sometimes. Aiden wrinkles his nose.
The silence is deafening when Harrison twists the tap off. He sticks his fingers in and nods in approval, wiping them off on his jeans. Visibly pulling on every ounce of clinical detachment, he finally turns to Aiden.
“Let’s get this over with.”
“Are you sure…” Aiden’s not sure how he planned on ending that question. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you sure I need a bath? He was the one who insisted, had refused Harrison’s offer of helping him through a sponge bath, and immediately exiled himself to his room to have a quick but fitful panic attack at everything that brought up. Are you sure this is going to...
Aiden shakes his head to drop the half-formed thought and Harrison doesn’t encourage him to pick it back up. He takes his shirt off, tossing it behind Harrison into the hallway. He smells, he has to take a bath. Harrison squeezes between the wheelchair and the end of the counter to stand behind him.
“Ready?”
He’s still not used to it, Harrison’s efforts to give him autonomy, can’t quite unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Mhm.”
Harrison lifts him under the arms just enough so that he can hook his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and pajamas, slipping them off his hips and pushing them as low on his thighs as he can reach. “Okay.”
Harrison sets him down again. Two fingers brush the front of his shoulder, making sure he’s balanced and able to hold himself upright. A not-so-old reflex. Harrison drops his hand in the span of the same heartbeat, clearing his throat. They pretend it didn’t happen, though for whose benefit, he doesn’t know but it leaves a strange feeling in his chest.
He pushes and pulls the fabric past his knees, gripping the armrest of the wheelchair tightly in one hand to lean forward and shove his bottoms the rest of the way to his ankles. It takes both hands to push himself upright again. His core is nowhere near as strong as it needs to be, aching every day from how much he has to rely on it now. He scoops his hands under his knee, lifting his foot out of his pant leg. Repeats on the other side.
Harrison uses his foot to sweep his pants into the hallway. “You’re getting better at that,” he says softly.
His cheeks heat. “Shut up.”
Harrison holds his hands up in a show of peace, rolling his eyes.
“Alright, I have to pick you up from your left side.”
Aiden looks pointedly at the six inches of space between the chair and the cabinets under the counter, then back up at Harrison.
Harrison flicks away his concern. “It’ll be fine.”
“It’s your back,” he says, shaking his head.
“You’re not that heavy.”
“Then why not just leave the chair in the hallway?”
Harrison taps his foot on the tile-print linoleum. “You’re not that light either. Ready?”
“Okay.”
He loops his arm around Harrison’s neck as he picks him up. They’re both focused on the maneuvering Harrison has to do, shuffling a few steps sideways before he can skirt around the wheelchair to the edge of the tub.
Aiden grips a fistful of the front of Harrison’s shirt when he has him over the water. “Wait—”
“What?” Harrison shifts his weight uncomfortably. “What? Spit it out.”
“The water?”
“I checked the water, you saw me.”
He presses his lips together.
“Fine, check it.”
Aiden slowly releases his shirt to let his hand dangle so Harrison can lower him until his fingertips meet the water.
Harrison even holds him there so he can feel the temperature after the initial bite of heat. “Satisfied that I’m not trying to boil you alive?” he grits.
He shrugs one shoulder. “It could have been freezing.”
Harrison starts lowering him in. “I’m not interested in giving you more reasons to complain.”
He hisses when the water hits him between the legs.
“What is it?” Harrison tightens his grip, pulling him closer to his chest to lift him infinitesimally out of the water.
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. “It’s just…” He looks down.
Harrison’s brows lift. “You can feel that much?”
“What?”
“Relax,” Harrison breathes, like he felt Aiden’s heart start racing behind his ribs. “It’s a good thing.”
He lowers him the rest of the way in, teetering just a little when he has to shift onto one knee and then the other.
Aiden pulls his arm from Harrison’s neck to grip the side of the tub. Harrison lets go of his legs. His feet sink to the bottom, he feels the gentle reverberation through his torso. He watches through the breaks in the bubbles as his feet continue to slide to the other end of the tub in underwater slow motion.
The rest of him starts to follow.
“No, wait.” He scrambles to wrap his arm around Harrison’s neck again, gripping the top of his arm with his other hand. “Don’t—”
“Jesus," Harrison is tense under his sudden grip. He keeps his voice carefully level ."What now?”
“Wait, I’m slipping. I can’t—”
Harrison tries to shake him off.
“No, no. Harrison—”
“Just lock your knees—”
“What do you mean?” He sounds shrill in his fear. “You know I can’t—”
Harrison tugs at the wrist of the hand clinging to the front of his shirt. “You have to do it with your hands.”
“You filled the tub too much!”
“For the love of God,” Harrison grits, eyes closed like it’s taking everything in him not to lose his temper.
“Harrison, I can’t hold myself up.”
“The tub isn’t taller than you,” Harrison parses slowly, like Aiden’s being irrational and needs the plain logic of the situation spelled out for him. “You just have to brace your feet against the end.” Harrison shifts on his knees.
Aiden twists his fists tighter in Harrison's t-shirt. “Don’t you dare—”
"Relax. I'm not trying to drown you." Harrison tries to tug out of his grip again.
"Harrison—”
"What?" he snaps. "This isn't a dramatic enough end for you?"
He feels it like a punch to the gut. "Fuck you."
Harrison sighs long sufferingly. "Let go of me and I'll help you," he enunciates as if dealing with a petulant child, lips above his ear.
"No. I don't trust you." It comes out like a whip, silence ringing in its wake. Aiden's cheeks feel hot, but that could just be the heat of the water.
"I'm not taking you out again," Harrison says flatly.
Aiden can't see his face without loosening the arm around his neck. He doesn't think he wants to. "You didn't think this through at all."
Harrison lets the silence gather weight this time. Aiden braces himself for the end of Harrison's patience. He knows the feeling of the end of this rope by heart. The twist of the braid, the knots and bumps in the fibers that have torn the skin from his grip time and time again.
But no pain comes.
In its absence, he feels a hot thread of guilt sew itself to his breath.
"Fuck off," Harrison finally says, voice brittle. "I'm trying."
The guilt flares into full on remorse, regret that almost has him apologizing. Fuck. That. He smothers the fire with gasoline, until he’s choking on fumes of hatred and rage instead.
“Get away from me,” he growls.
“What?” Harrison scoffs, indignant. “You just fucking said—”
“Did I stutter?” He grabs the edge of the tub with his free hand.
Harrison catches his wrist before he can pull his arm from behind his neck. “Are your legs steady?”
He glares at him. “Let. Go.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Harrison mutters but does what he’s told.
Without Harrison to hold onto, he immediately slides further into the tub, his useless legs bending at the knee. He’s left clinging to the side of the tub with both arms, the square lip biting into his armpits.
Harrison raises his eyebrows.
“Fuck off,” he snaps.
Harrison rolls his eyes, shaking his head as he stands and dries off with the towel hanging beside the sink. He picks up a loofah from the counter and rips the tag off savagely, whipping it into the water where it lands with an airy splash. Grabs the same bottle from earlier and smacks it on the edge of the tub right next to Aiden’s elbow.
He glares up at him.
Harrison meets his gaze evenly.
“Fuck off,” he repeats.
Right on cue, Harrison rolls his eyes again before moving to slide into a seat against the foot of the tub. He stretches his legs out in front of him and even looks at his nails in theatrical boredom.
Aiden grits his teeth. He refuses to ask for help, to surrender. He lowers his left arm down the front of the tub to make a wider angle of leverage, his fingers practically brushing the floor. He carefully releases his right arm. It takes every ounce of strength to keep himself steady in his twisted seat, way too far from the back of the tub to lean against it. He manages to capture the floating loofah in his free hand and slap it onto the edge of the tub. Water runs onto the floor.
Harrison looks at the spray on the sleeve of his t-shirt with practiced indifference.
Aiden claps his right arm over the side of the tub to give his left arm a rest. After a few seconds, he switches back and picks up the bottle of soap, squeezing a generous amount onto the loofah. He scrubs under his left arm first. Tries to contort his right arm to scrub the right side but he’s not quite limber enough.
He sets the loofah back on the edge of the tub and switches arms.
It’s a mistake, he already has to twist so much further on this side to leverage his weight and now his right hand and forearm are all covered in soap.
His grip starts to slip—
He tries—
He’s underwater.
A belated attempt to hold his breath. The burn of inhaled water making it hard not to release it all at once.
He grapples with the side of the tub but he still can’t lift himself an inch off the chair, let alone drag himself upright. Why is this tub so deep? Why is he so fucking weak? Oh, yeah because he spent the last year strapped to a steel table. Maybe if there were bars or rungs on the outside of the tub, if he could climb hand over fist, he could do it. All he finds is smooth acrylic, the unhelpful lip of the tub too wide to close his fist around, too narrow for anything else.
He can picture Harrison just sitting there, watching him struggle. He might not actively drown him but he never said he wouldn’t let him drown. Asshole.
How fucking perfect. He survives WRU, survives Harrison’s experiments—not even pitied with the mercy of a clean death—only to drown in a tub because he was too stubborn to let Harrison help him. This isn’t supposed to be his fate, isn’t supposed to be his end.
From very early on, as a little boy, he understood his lack of control. Came to terms with the fact that childhood was something for other kids, his life was steeped in something different than bubble solution and capri suns. And that was before his parents signed away his life because they found a boy in his bed. Before he understood that watching the neighborhood kids play through the window was a G-rated version of the otherness that would be whitewashed into his brain. There was no point in crying over it. Spilled milk, a broken glass. Take the backhand and clean it up.
Still. Drowning in a bathtub of his own filth?
This was a whole new level of pathetic, hard to swallow.
He stops struggling, forces himself to pull his balled fists back under the water. His lungs ache. He opens his mouth, warm soapy water flooding in behind his teeth, and screams out the last of his air.
And immediately regrets it because Harrison still isn’t intervening.
Fuck him.
A tiny part of Aiden starts to worry that all bets are off and Harrison will suddenly start breaking promises.
His lungs burn.
No, that motherfucker is probably going to wait until he’s unconscious just to subject him to resuscitation. Not his mouth, never his mouth. That motherfucker probably already has an intubation kit locked and loaded.
Harrison will employ anything and everything to drive home his point. Nowadays, most especially if it can be done with consequences, an illustration of the remaining imbalance in power between them in Harrison’s favor. Anything if it means he doesn’t have to spell it out in a long-winded, exasperated monologue neither one of them has the patience to weather without turning to violence.
And isn’t that what he promised? Underneath all of this pomp and circumstance, toptoeing around eachother’s landmines. That—
Aiden sputters and chokes when Harrison deigns to drag him back into the air.
Harrison lets him hang by the top of his forearm from his hand instead of helping him sit.
He wheezes through his first full breaths, rubbing water out of his eyes. The wheelchair is in the hallway. A stack of folded towels sits on the floor beside Harrison’s feet.
“I thought I wasn’t light,” he rasps when he's caught his breath but Harrison still hasn’t moved. He feels like an orangutan hanging from a tree, except for his limp lower half.
“You certainly gave up quick in there,” Harrison drawls, tilting his head to one side to look at him.
“You’re the one who decided I shouldn’t want to die,” he reminds him.
“Because you’re just being weak and short-sighted,” is the easy answer.
“Fuck you.”
Harrison readjusts his grip and he glares up at him in warning.
“Yeah,” Harrison sighs.
He ignores the feeling of guilt rekindling itself in his stomach. He’s not the one who should feel bad here, he’s the one with no future. Fuck. He grapples for the searing bitterness again, pulling it over the guilt.
“Oh, woe is you. Cut the shit with the long-suffering martyr act.”
Harrison ignores the bait but the muscles in his jaw work as he grinds his molars.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
He wishes he could kick and twist and thrash. He’s bone tired. “You said if I wanted it, you’d let me go. Was that just a lie?”
Harrison commits himself to stony, teeth-clenched silence.
“Or it only applies to the pre-approved methods of killing myself? Huh?”
Harrison threads an arm behind his shoulders, stooping to lower him back to a seat. He grabs a towel as soon as he can reach it, shakes it out so hard it snaps in the air and Aiden flinches. “Here, take this and put it under you so you don’t slip.”
Aiden stares at the tile, curling his hands into fists.
Harrison shoves the towel at him, stopping less than an inch from his face. He turns his head away. Like a slow-motion punch. Aiden imagines him continuing, slamming his head against the tile, holding it there. Smothering him with the towel. His heart stutters in tortured anticipation.
“I’m trying to help you,” Harrison growls.
“I. Never. Asked. You. To.”
“For the love of Christ.”
He whips around to face him again. “Yeah? A little more than you signed up for? Welcome to the fucking club. Oh, wait—”
“Stop it.”
“Why?” he spits, refusing to blink.
Harrison huffs and submerges the towel himself. His shirt is soaking wet already. Aiden does nothing to help as Harrison struggles to lift him while trying to smooth the towel flat underneath him.
“You know they sell stickers for this?”
Harrison ignores him.
“You really should have planned this better. Been more prepared.”
Harrison can’t quite manage and finally gives up.
Aiden scrambles for the edge of the tub when Harrison drops him the last inch and pulls his arm away. He refuses to grab Harrison again. The towel doesn't reappear so it must be somewhere beneath him, even if he can't feel it.
“Sure you don’t want to just push me?” he snipes venemously.
Harrison sticks his arm back in the tub and Aiden’s heart stutters, a manic fear gripping his chest even as he tries to convince himself that it’s swirled with relief.
But all Harrison does is push Aiden’s knees to make his legs lock and he stops sliding. Harrison keeps his hand there, holding him in place and shifts to sit with his back against the tub again. He pulls one leg up to his chest. His jeans are soaked from the thigh to his knees, where he props his free arm.
Aiden doesn’t move, doesn’t even want to breathe too loud.
Minutes or a lifetime later, Harrison sighs.
“I do want to push you under. I want to hold you under until you’re choking, until you couldn’t even speak to beg, until you’re trying to climb me for air. Until you black out and I don’t have to deal with you for a few hours. So I can stop having to try so fucking hard.
“I want to push you under until you drag me with you and we can either let go or die. And God, I want to stop living. Every time you ask me, I get closer to saying yes because whatever you take, I’ll be right behind you and I don’t know how much longer I can keep using you as a shield.” He scrubs his free hand over his face. He didn’t shave today, again. His hair’s a mess, like he spent the whole time Aiden was underwater tugging and pulling at it.
The deep inhale Harrison takes feels like it shakes the edges of the whole room. “So, go ahead. Ask me again if you still want me to let you slip under the surface.”
He’s glad Harrison has his back turned because he can’t hide his shaking hands under the water, they make the surface ripple.
“Sociopath.” His voice cracks, he clears his throat. “Of course you’d find a way to make this about you.”
Harrison coughs a laugh that makes Aiden tense all over again. He’d give anything to see the accompanying expression. He’s afraid to see it, if it’s what he thinks it is. Harrison drags his hand over his face again, takes another breath that feels like it pulls at the film stretched over reality.
“The water’s getting cold.” He picks up the bottle of soap that got knocked onto the floor and puts it where Aiden can reach. “I’ll buy you your own for next time if you just tell me what you want,” he says softly, like he was the one screaming and choking underwater and has no voice left.
Aiden grabs the loofah where it bobs next to him. “Bold of you to assume you’ll get me in the tub a second time.”
Harrison’s eyes flick over but not long enough to linger to see his expression. More overture than assessment. “I never said the next time would be in the tub.”
Now it’s Aiden's turn to laugh. “And track mud in from the yard?”
“Damn.”
“Build a bigger patio.”
Harrison reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a plastic pitcher, places it on the edge of the tub. For rinsing his hair. He feels a rush of relief when he thinks of the alternatives.
“You build a bigger patio. You’re the one just sitting around all day while I’m at work.”
Aiden snorts. “If I’m building anything, it’s a ramp so I can even get outside.”
“I ordered them, I swear,” Harrison twists to look at him, disproportionately defensive.
He schools his expression away from surprise, bordering dangerously close to concern. “You know what they say about protesting too much.”
you should post the harrison and aiden bath scene!! if you want to!!
This is in the AU. You know, the one I still pretend isn't a real thing...lolz
tw: casual discussion of suicide/suicidal ideation
Masterlist
“I don’t know about this…” Aiden mutters, fingers curling in the fabric of his pajama pants.
Harrison ignores him, leaning against the sink at his side. To say neither one of them is looking forward to this task would be the understatement of the century.
They keep their gazes fixed on the tap, water rushing as if its priority isn’t to fill the tub but the silence, leaden and cumbersome between them. All this time together and there’s more left unsaid now than ever. Built up invisibly, like minerals accumulating around the edges of a tap, inside the pipes until it starts to visibly kick and choke the smooth flow out of shape. They’re shouldering this new avoidance equally, bending under the weight rather than shucking it off. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Pretending they can carry on with a third body to drag along with them when one of them is already paralyzed, the other burdened with the blame.
All the fixtures in Harrison’s bathroom are bright, polished chrome. Shining in contrast with the soft, sherbert orange on the walls. Even the countertop is a slab of pearly, rose stone, the sink scooped right out of it. The tub itself is a floor-to-ceiling insert of wall-to-wall acrylic cream. It must have been like this when he bought the house. He can't imagine Harrison caring enough to renovate a whole bathroom.
Harrison pushes off the counter and grabs a bottle out of the metal rack hanging from the showerhead. He unceremoniously squeezes a generous amount into the rising water. It foams more than bubbles, filling the small room with the scent of soap edged with something sharp. A fresh, synthetic-clean smell that’s not really one thing but distinguished as men’s.
It being his soap, it smells exactly like Harrison. Well, minus the coffee and the odd cigarette he still sneaks sometimes. Aiden wrinkles his nose.
The silence is deafening when Harrison twists the tap off. He sticks his fingers in and nods in approval, wiping them off on his jeans. Visibly pulling on every ounce of clinical detachment, he finally turns to Aiden.
“Let’s get this over with.”
“Are you sure…” Aiden’s not sure how he planned on ending that question. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you sure I need a bath? He was the one who insisted, had refused Harrison’s offer of helping him through a sponge bath, and immediately exiled himself to his room to have a quick but fitful panic attack at everything that brought up. Are you sure this is going to...
Aiden shakes his head to drop the half-formed thought and Harrison doesn’t encourage him to pick it back up. He takes his shirt off, tossing it behind Harrison into the hallway. He smells, he has to take a bath. Harrison squeezes between the wheelchair and the end of the counter to stand behind him.
“Ready?”
He’s still not used to it, Harrison’s efforts to give him autonomy, can’t quite unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Mhm.”
Harrison lifts him under the arms just enough so that he can hook his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and pajamas, slipping them off his hips and pushing them as low on his thighs as he can reach. “Okay.”
Harrison sets him down again. Two fingers brush the front of his shoulder, making sure he’s balanced and able to hold himself upright. A not-so-old reflex. Harrison drops his hand in the span of the same heartbeat, clearing his throat. They pretend it didn’t happen, though for whose benefit, he doesn’t know but it leaves a strange feeling in his chest.
He pushes and pulls the fabric past his knees, gripping the armrest of the wheelchair tightly in one hand to lean forward and shove his bottoms the rest of the way to his ankles. It takes both hands to push himself upright again. His core is nowhere near as strong as it needs to be, aching every day from how much he has to rely on it now. He scoops his hands under his knee, lifting his foot out of his pant leg. Repeats on the other side.
Harrison uses his foot to sweep his pants into the hallway. “You’re getting better at that,” he says softly.
His cheeks heat. “Shut up.”
Harrison holds his hands up in a show of peace, rolling his eyes.
“Alright, I have to pick you up from your left side.”
Aiden looks pointedly at the six inches of space between the chair and the cabinets under the counter, then back up at Harrison.
Harrison flicks away his concern. “It’ll be fine.”
“It’s your back,” he says, shaking his head.
“You’re not that heavy.”
“Then why not just leave the chair in the hallway?”
Harrison taps his foot on the tile-print linoleum. “You’re not that light either. Ready?”
“Okay.”
He loops his arm around Harrison’s neck as he picks him up. They’re both focused on the maneuvering Harrison has to do, shuffling a few steps sideways before he can skirt around the wheelchair to the edge of the tub.
Aiden grips a fistful of the front of Harrison’s shirt when he has him over the water. “Wait—”
“What?” Harrison shifts his weight uncomfortably. “What? Spit it out.”
“The water?”
“I checked the water, you saw me.”
He presses his lips together.
“Fine, check it.”
Aiden slowly releases his shirt to let his hand dangle so Harrison can lower him until his fingertips meet the water.
Harrison even holds him there so he can feel the temperature after the initial bite of heat. “Satisfied that I’m not trying to boil you alive?” he grits.
He shrugs one shoulder. “It could have been freezing.”
Harrison starts lowering him in. “I’m not interested in giving you more reasons to complain.”
He hisses when the water hits him between the legs.
“What is it?” Harrison tightens his grip, pulling him closer to his chest to lift him infinitesimally out of the water.
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. “It’s just…” He looks down.
Harrison’s brows lift. “You can feel that much?”
“What?”
“Relax,” Harrison breathes, like he felt Aiden’s heart start racing behind his ribs. “It’s a good thing.”
He lowers him the rest of the way in, teetering just a little when he has to shift onto one knee and then the other.
Aiden pulls his arm from Harrison’s neck to grip the side of the tub. Harrison lets go of his legs. His feet sink to the bottom, he feels the gentle reverberation through his torso. He watches through the breaks in the bubbles as his feet continue to slide to the other end of the tub in underwater slow motion.
The rest of him starts to follow.
“No, wait.” He scrambles to wrap his arm around Harrison’s neck again, gripping the top of his arm with his other hand. “Don’t—”
“Jesus," Harrison is tense under his sudden grip. He keeps his voice carefully level ."What now?”
“Wait, I’m slipping. I can’t—”
Harrison tries to shake him off.
“No, no. Harrison—”
“Just lock your knees—”
“What do you mean?” He sounds shrill in his fear. “You know I can’t—”
Harrison tugs at the wrist of the hand clinging to the front of his shirt. “You have to do it with your hands.”
“You filled the tub too much!”
“For the love of God,” Harrison grits, eyes closed like it’s taking everything in him not to lose his temper.
“Harrison, I can’t hold myself up.”
“The tub isn’t taller than you,” Harrison parses slowly, like Aiden’s being irrational and needs the plain logic of the situation spelled out for him. “You just have to brace your feet against the end.” Harrison shifts on his knees.
Aiden twists his fists tighter in Harrison's t-shirt. “Don’t you dare—”
"Relax. I'm not trying to drown you." Harrison tries to tug out of his grip again.
"Harrison—”
"What?" he snaps. "This isn't a dramatic enough end for you?"
He feels it like a punch to the gut. "Fuck you."
Harrison sighs long sufferingly. "Let go of me and I'll help you," he enunciates as if dealing with a petulant child, lips above his ear.
"No. I don't trust you." It comes out like a whip, silence ringing in its wake. Aiden's cheeks feel hot, but that could just be the heat of the water.
"I'm not taking you out again," Harrison says flatly.
Aiden can't see his face without loosening the arm around his neck. He doesn't think he wants to. "You didn't think this through at all."
Harrison lets the silence gather weight this time. Aiden braces himself for the end of Harrison's patience. He knows the feeling of the end of this rope by heart. The twist of the braid, the knots and bumps in the fibers that have torn the skin from his grip time and time again.
But no pain comes.
In its absence, he feels a hot thread of guilt sew itself to his breath.
"Fuck off," Harrison finally says, voice brittle. "I'm trying."
The guilt flares into full on remorse, regret that almost has him apologizing. Fuck. That. He smothers the fire with gasoline, until he’s choking on fumes of hatred and rage instead.
“Get away from me,” he growls.
“What?” Harrison scoffs, indignant. “You just fucking said—”
“Did I stutter?” He grabs the edge of the tub with his free hand.
Harrison catches his wrist before he can pull his arm from behind his neck. “Are your legs steady?”
He glares at him. “Let. Go.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Harrison mutters but does what he’s told.
Without Harrison to hold onto, he immediately slides further into the tub, his useless legs bending at the knee. He’s left clinging to the side of the tub with both arms, the square lip biting into his armpits.
Harrison raises his eyebrows.
“Fuck off,” he snaps.
Harrison rolls his eyes, shaking his head as he stands and dries off with the towel hanging beside the sink. He picks up a loofah from the counter and rips the tag off savagely, whipping it into the water where it lands with an airy splash. Grabs the same bottle from earlier and smacks it on the edge of the tub right next to Aiden’s elbow.
He glares up at him.
Harrison meets his gaze evenly.
“Fuck off,” he repeats.
Right on cue, Harrison rolls his eyes again before moving to slide into a seat against the foot of the tub. He stretches his legs out in front of him and even looks at his nails in theatrical boredom.
Aiden grits his teeth. He refuses to ask for help, to surrender. He lowers his left arm down the front of the tub to make a wider angle of leverage, his fingers practically brushing the floor. He carefully releases his right arm. It takes every ounce of strength to keep himself steady in his twisted seat, way too far from the back of the tub to lean against it. He manages to capture the floating loofah in his free hand and slap it onto the edge of the tub. Water runs onto the floor.
Harrison looks at the spray on the sleeve of his t-shirt with practiced indifference.
Aiden claps his right arm over the side of the tub to give his left arm a rest. After a few seconds, he switches back and picks up the bottle of soap, squeezing a generous amount onto the loofah. He scrubs under his left arm first. Tries to contort his right arm to scrub the right side but he’s not quite limber enough.
He sets the loofah back on the edge of the tub and switches arms.
It’s a mistake, he already has to twist so much further on this side to leverage his weight and now his right hand and forearm are all covered in soap.
His grip starts to slip—
He tries—
He’s underwater.
A belated attempt to hold his breath. The burn of inhaled water making it hard not to release it all at once.
He grapples with the side of the tub but he still can’t lift himself an inch off the chair, let alone drag himself upright. Why is this tub so deep? Why is he so fucking weak? Oh, yeah because he spent the last year strapped to a steel table. Maybe if there were bars or rungs on the outside of the tub, if he could climb hand over fist, he could do it. All he finds is smooth acrylic, the unhelpful lip of the tub too wide to close his fist around, too narrow for anything else.
He can picture Harrison just sitting there, watching him struggle. He might not actively drown him but he never said he wouldn’t let him drown. Asshole.
How fucking perfect. He survives WRU, survives Harrison’s experiments—not even pitied with the mercy of a clean death—only to drown in a tub because he was too stubborn to let Harrison help him. This isn’t supposed to be his fate, isn’t supposed to be his end.
From very early on, as a little boy, he understood his lack of control. Came to terms with the fact that childhood was something for other kids, his life was steeped in something different than bubble solution and capri suns. And that was before his parents signed away his life because they found a boy in his bed. Before he understood that watching the neighborhood kids play through the window was a G-rated version of the otherness that would be whitewashed into his brain. There was no point in crying over it. Spilled milk, a broken glass. Take the backhand and clean it up.
Still. Drowning in a bathtub of his own filth?
This was a whole new level of pathetic, hard to swallow.
He stops struggling, forces himself to pull his balled fists back under the water. His lungs ache. He opens his mouth, warm soapy water flooding in behind his teeth, and screams out the last of his air.
And immediately regrets it because Harrison still isn’t intervening.
Fuck him.
A tiny part of Aiden starts to worry that all bets are off and Harrison will suddenly start breaking promises.
His lungs burn.
No, that motherfucker is probably going to wait until he’s unconscious just to subject him to resuscitation. Not his mouth, never his mouth. That motherfucker probably already has an intubation kit locked and loaded.
Harrison will employ anything and everything to drive home his point. Nowadays, most especially if it can be done with consequences, an illustration of the remaining imbalance in power between them in Harrison’s favor. Anything if it means he doesn’t have to spell it out in a long-winded, exasperated monologue neither one of them has the patience to weather without turning to violence.
And isn’t that what he promised? Underneath all of this pomp and circumstance, toptoeing around eachother’s landmines. That—
Aiden sputters and chokes when Harrison deigns to drag him back into the air.
Harrison lets him hang by the top of his forearm from his hand instead of helping him sit.
He wheezes through his first full breaths, rubbing water out of his eyes. The wheelchair is in the hallway. A stack of folded towels sits on the floor beside Harrison’s feet.
“I thought I wasn’t light,” he rasps when he's caught his breath but Harrison still hasn’t moved. He feels like an orangutan hanging from a tree, except for his limp lower half.
“You certainly gave up quick in there,” Harrison drawls, tilting his head to one side to look at him.
“You’re the one who decided I shouldn’t want to die,” he reminds him.
“Because you’re just being weak and short-sighted,” is the easy answer.
“Fuck you.”
Harrison readjusts his grip and he glares up at him in warning.
“Yeah,” Harrison sighs.
He ignores the feeling of guilt rekindling itself in his stomach. He’s not the one who should feel bad here, he’s the one with no future. Fuck. He grapples for the searing bitterness again, pulling it over the guilt.
“Oh, woe is you. Cut the shit with the long-suffering martyr act.”
Harrison ignores the bait but the muscles in his jaw work as he grinds his molars.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
He wishes he could kick and twist and thrash. He’s bone tired. “You said if I wanted it, you’d let me go. Was that just a lie?”
Harrison commits himself to stony, teeth-clenched silence.
“Or it only applies to the pre-approved methods of killing myself? Huh?”
Harrison threads an arm behind his shoulders, stooping to lower him back to a seat. He grabs a towel as soon as he can reach it, shakes it out so hard it snaps in the air and Aiden flinches. “Here, take this and put it under you so you don’t slip.”
Aiden stares at the tile, curling his hands into fists.
Harrison shoves the towel at him, stopping less than an inch from his face. He turns his head away. Like a slow-motion punch. Aiden imagines him continuing, slamming his head against the tile, holding it there. Smothering him with the towel. His heart stutters in tortured anticipation.
“I’m trying to help you,” Harrison growls.
“I. Never. Asked. You. To.”
“For the love of Christ.”
He whips around to face him again. “Yeah? A little more than you signed up for? Welcome to the fucking club. Oh, wait—”
“Stop it.”
“Why?” he spits, refusing to blink.
Harrison huffs and submerges the towel himself. His shirt is soaking wet already. Aiden does nothing to help as Harrison struggles to lift him while trying to smooth the towel flat underneath him.
“You know they sell stickers for this?”
Harrison ignores him.
“You really should have planned this better. Been more prepared.”
Harrison can’t quite manage and finally gives up.
Aiden scrambles for the edge of the tub when Harrison drops him the last inch and pulls his arm away. He refuses to grab Harrison again. The towel doesn't reappear so it must be somewhere beneath him, even if he can't feel it.
“Sure you don’t want to just push me?” he snipes venemously.
Harrison sticks his arm back in the tub and Aiden’s heart stutters, a manic fear gripping his chest even as he tries to convince himself that it’s swirled with relief.
But all Harrison does is push Aiden’s knees to make his legs lock and he stops sliding. Harrison keeps his hand there, holding him in place and shifts to sit with his back against the tub again. He pulls one leg up to his chest. His jeans are soaked from the thigh to his knees, where he props his free arm.
Aiden doesn’t move, doesn’t even want to breathe too loud.
Minutes or a lifetime later, Harrison sighs.
“I do want to push you under. I want to hold you under until you’re choking, until you couldn’t even speak to beg, until you’re trying to climb me for air. Until you black out and I don’t have to deal with you for a few hours. So I can stop having to try so fucking hard.
“I want to push you under until you drag me with you and we can either let go or die. And God, I want to stop living. Every time you ask me, I get closer to saying yes because whatever you take, I’ll be right behind you and I don’t know how much longer I can keep using you as a shield.” He scrubs his free hand over his face. He didn’t shave today, again. His hair’s a mess, like he spent the whole time Aiden was underwater tugging and pulling at it.
The deep inhale Harrison takes feels like it shakes the edges of the whole room. “So, go ahead. Ask me again if you still want me to let you slip under the surface.”
He’s glad Harrison has his back turned because he can’t hide his shaking hands under the water, they make the surface ripple.
“Sociopath.” His voice cracks, he clears his throat. “Of course you’d find a way to make this about you.”
Harrison coughs a laugh that makes Aiden tense all over again. He’d give anything to see the accompanying expression. He’s afraid to see it, if it’s what he thinks it is. Harrison drags his hand over his face again, takes another breath that feels like it pulls at the film stretched over reality.
“The water’s getting cold.” He picks up the bottle of soap that got knocked onto the floor and puts it where Aiden can reach. “I’ll buy you your own for next time if you just tell me what you want,” he says softly, like he was the one screaming and choking underwater and has no voice left.
Aiden grabs the loofah where it bobs next to him. “Bold of you to assume you’ll get me in the tub a second time.”
Harrison’s eyes flick over but not long enough to linger to see his expression. More overture than assessment. “I never said the next time would be in the tub.”
Now it’s Aiden's turn to laugh. “And track mud in from the yard?”
“Damn.”
“Build a bigger patio.”
Harrison reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a plastic pitcher, places it on the edge of the tub. For rinsing his hair. He feels a rush of relief when he thinks of the alternatives.
“You build a bigger patio. You’re the one just sitting around all day while I’m at work.”
Aiden snorts. “If I’m building anything, it’s a ramp so I can even get outside.”
“I ordered them, I swear,” Harrison twists to look at him, disproportionately defensive.
He schools his expression away from surprise, bordering dangerously close to concern. “You know what they say about protesting too much.”
you should post the harrison and aiden bath scene!! if you want to!!
This is in the AU. You know, the one I still pretend isn't a real thing...lolz
tw: casual discussion of suicide/suicidal ideation
Masterlist
“I don’t know about this…” Aiden mutters, fingers curling in the fabric of his pajama pants.
Harrison ignores him, leaning against the sink at his side. To say neither one of them is looking forward to this task would be the understatement of the century.
They keep their gazes fixed on the tap, water rushing as if its priority isn’t to fill the tub but the silence, leaden and cumbersome between them. All this time together and there’s more left unsaid now than ever. Built up invisibly, like minerals accumulating around the edges of a tap, inside the pipes until it starts to visibly kick and choke the smooth flow out of shape. They’re shouldering this new avoidance equally, bending under the weight rather than shucking it off. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Pretending they can carry on with a third body to drag along with them when one of them is already paralyzed, the other burdened with the blame.
All the fixtures in Harrison’s bathroom are bright, polished chrome. Shining in contrast with the soft, sherbert orange on the walls. Even the countertop is a slab of pearly, rose stone, the sink scooped right out of it. The tub itself is a floor-to-ceiling insert of wall-to-wall acrylic cream. It must have been like this when he bought the house. He can't imagine Harrison caring enough to renovate a whole bathroom.
Harrison pushes off the counter and grabs a bottle out of the metal rack hanging from the showerhead. He unceremoniously squeezes a generous amount into the rising water. It foams more than bubbles, filling the small room with the scent of soap edged with something sharp. A fresh, synthetic-clean smell that’s not really one thing but distinguished as men’s.
It being his soap, it smells exactly like Harrison. Well, minus the coffee and the odd cigarette he still sneaks sometimes. Aiden wrinkles his nose.
The silence is deafening when Harrison twists the tap off. He sticks his fingers in and nods in approval, wiping them off on his jeans. Visibly pulling on every ounce of clinical detachment, he finally turns to Aiden.
“Let’s get this over with.”
“Are you sure…” Aiden’s not sure how he planned on ending that question. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you sure I need a bath? He was the one who insisted, had refused Harrison’s offer of helping him through a sponge bath, and immediately exiled himself to his room to have a quick but fitful panic attack at everything that brought up. Are you sure this is going to...
Aiden shakes his head to drop the half-formed thought and Harrison doesn’t encourage him to pick it back up. He takes his shirt off, tossing it behind Harrison into the hallway. He smells, he has to take a bath. Harrison squeezes between the wheelchair and the end of the counter to stand behind him.
“Ready?”
He’s still not used to it, Harrison’s efforts to give him autonomy, can’t quite unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Mhm.”
Harrison lifts him under the arms just enough so that he can hook his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and pajamas, slipping them off his hips and pushing them as low on his thighs as he can reach. “Okay.”
Harrison sets him down again. Two fingers brush the front of his shoulder, making sure he’s balanced and able to hold himself upright. A not-so-old reflex. Harrison drops his hand in the span of the same heartbeat, clearing his throat. They pretend it didn’t happen, though for whose benefit, he doesn’t know but it leaves a strange feeling in his chest.
He pushes and pulls the fabric past his knees, gripping the armrest of the wheelchair tightly in one hand to lean forward and shove his bottoms the rest of the way to his ankles. It takes both hands to push himself upright again. His core is nowhere near as strong as it needs to be, aching every day from how much he has to rely on it now. He scoops his hands under his knee, lifting his foot out of his pant leg. Repeats on the other side.
Harrison uses his foot to sweep his pants into the hallway. “You’re getting better at that,” he says softly.
His cheeks heat. “Shut up.”
Harrison holds his hands up in a show of peace, rolling his eyes.
“Alright, I have to pick you up from your left side.”
Aiden looks pointedly at the six inches of space between the chair and the cabinets under the counter, then back up at Harrison.
Harrison flicks away his concern. “It’ll be fine.”
“It’s your back,” he says, shaking his head.
“You’re not that heavy.”
“Then why not just leave the chair in the hallway?”
Harrison taps his foot on the tile-print linoleum. “You’re not that light either. Ready?”
“Okay.”
He loops his arm around Harrison’s neck as he picks him up. They’re both focused on the maneuvering Harrison has to do, shuffling a few steps sideways before he can skirt around the wheelchair to the edge of the tub.
Aiden grips a fistful of the front of Harrison’s shirt when he has him over the water. “Wait—”
“What?” Harrison shifts his weight uncomfortably. “What? Spit it out.”
“The water?”
“I checked the water, you saw me.”
He presses his lips together.
“Fine, check it.”
Aiden slowly releases his shirt to let his hand dangle so Harrison can lower him until his fingertips meet the water.
Harrison even holds him there so he can feel the temperature after the initial bite of heat. “Satisfied that I’m not trying to boil you alive?” he grits.
He shrugs one shoulder. “It could have been freezing.”
Harrison starts lowering him in. “I’m not interested in giving you more reasons to complain.”
He hisses when the water hits him between the legs.
“What is it?” Harrison tightens his grip, pulling him closer to his chest to lift him infinitesimally out of the water.
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. “It’s just…” He looks down.
Harrison’s brows lift. “You can feel that much?”
“What?”
“Relax,” Harrison breathes, like he felt Aiden’s heart start racing behind his ribs. “It’s a good thing.”
He lowers him the rest of the way in, teetering just a little when he has to shift onto one knee and then the other.
Aiden pulls his arm from Harrison’s neck to grip the side of the tub. Harrison lets go of his legs. His feet sink to the bottom, he feels the gentle reverberation through his torso. He watches through the breaks in the bubbles as his feet continue to slide to the other end of the tub in underwater slow motion.
The rest of him starts to follow.
“No, wait.” He scrambles to wrap his arm around Harrison’s neck again, gripping the top of his arm with his other hand. “Don’t—”
“Jesus," Harrison is tense under his sudden grip. He keeps his voice carefully level ."What now?”
“Wait, I’m slipping. I can’t—”
Harrison tries to shake him off.
“No, no. Harrison—”
“Just lock your knees—”
“What do you mean?” He sounds shrill in his fear. “You know I can’t—”
Harrison tugs at the wrist of the hand clinging to the front of his shirt. “You have to do it with your hands.”
“You filled the tub too much!”
“For the love of God,” Harrison grits, eyes closed like it’s taking everything in him not to lose his temper.
“Harrison, I can’t hold myself up.”
“The tub isn’t taller than you,” Harrison parses slowly, like Aiden’s being irrational and needs the plain logic of the situation spelled out for him. “You just have to brace your feet against the end.” Harrison shifts on his knees.
Aiden twists his fists tighter in Harrison's t-shirt. “Don’t you dare—”
"Relax. I'm not trying to drown you." Harrison tries to tug out of his grip again.
"Harrison—”
"What?" he snaps. "This isn't a dramatic enough end for you?"
He feels it like a punch to the gut. "Fuck you."
Harrison sighs long sufferingly. "Let go of me and I'll help you," he enunciates as if dealing with a petulant child, lips above his ear.
"No. I don't trust you." It comes out like a whip, silence ringing in its wake. Aiden's cheeks feel hot, but that could just be the heat of the water.
"I'm not taking you out again," Harrison says flatly.
Aiden can't see his face without loosening the arm around his neck. He doesn't think he wants to. "You didn't think this through at all."
Harrison lets the silence gather weight this time. Aiden braces himself for the end of Harrison's patience. He knows the feeling of the end of this rope by heart. The twist of the braid, the knots and bumps in the fibers that have torn the skin from his grip time and time again.
But no pain comes.
In its absence, he feels a hot thread of guilt sew itself to his breath.
"Fuck off," Harrison finally says, voice brittle. "I'm trying."
The guilt flares into full on remorse, regret that almost has him apologizing. Fuck. That. He smothers the fire with gasoline, until he’s choking on fumes of hatred and rage instead.
“Get away from me,” he growls.
“What?” Harrison scoffs, indignant. “You just fucking said—”
“Did I stutter?” He grabs the edge of the tub with his free hand.
Harrison catches his wrist before he can pull his arm from behind his neck. “Are your legs steady?”
He glares at him. “Let. Go.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Harrison mutters but does what he’s told.
Without Harrison to hold onto, he immediately slides further into the tub, his useless legs bending at the knee. He’s left clinging to the side of the tub with both arms, the square lip biting into his armpits.
Harrison raises his eyebrows.
“Fuck off,” he snaps.
Harrison rolls his eyes, shaking his head as he stands and dries off with the towel hanging beside the sink. He picks up a loofah from the counter and rips the tag off savagely, whipping it into the water where it lands with an airy splash. Grabs the same bottle from earlier and smacks it on the edge of the tub right next to Aiden’s elbow.
He glares up at him.
Harrison meets his gaze evenly.
“Fuck off,” he repeats.
Right on cue, Harrison rolls his eyes again before moving to slide into a seat against the foot of the tub. He stretches his legs out in front of him and even looks at his nails in theatrical boredom.
Aiden grits his teeth. He refuses to ask for help, to surrender. He lowers his left arm down the front of the tub to make a wider angle of leverage, his fingers practically brushing the floor. He carefully releases his right arm. It takes every ounce of strength to keep himself steady in his twisted seat, way too far from the back of the tub to lean against it. He manages to capture the floating loofah in his free hand and slap it onto the edge of the tub. Water runs onto the floor.
Harrison looks at the spray on the sleeve of his t-shirt with practiced indifference.
Aiden claps his right arm over the side of the tub to give his left arm a rest. After a few seconds, he switches back and picks up the bottle of soap, squeezing a generous amount onto the loofah. He scrubs under his left arm first. Tries to contort his right arm to scrub the right side but he’s not quite limber enough.
He sets the loofah back on the edge of the tub and switches arms.
It’s a mistake, he already has to twist so much further on this side to leverage his weight and now his right hand and forearm are all covered in soap.
His grip starts to slip—
He tries—
He’s underwater.
A belated attempt to hold his breath. The burn of inhaled water making it hard not to release it all at once.
He grapples with the side of the tub but he still can’t lift himself an inch off the chair, let alone drag himself upright. Why is this tub so deep? Why is he so fucking weak? Oh, yeah because he spent the last year strapped to a steel table. Maybe if there were bars or rungs on the outside of the tub, if he could climb hand over fist, he could do it. All he finds is smooth acrylic, the unhelpful lip of the tub too wide to close his fist around, too narrow for anything else.
He can picture Harrison just sitting there, watching him struggle. He might not actively drown him but he never said he wouldn’t let him drown. Asshole.
How fucking perfect. He survives WRU, survives Harrison’s experiments—not even pitied with the mercy of a clean death—only to drown in a tub because he was too stubborn to let Harrison help him. This isn’t supposed to be his fate, isn’t supposed to be his end.
From very early on, as a little boy, he understood his lack of control. Came to terms with the fact that childhood was something for other kids, his life was steeped in something different than bubble solution and capri suns. And that was before his parents signed away his life because they found a boy in his bed. Before he understood that watching the neighborhood kids play through the window was a G-rated version of the otherness that would be whitewashed into his brain. There was no point in crying over it. Spilled milk, a broken glass. Take the backhand and clean it up.
Still. Drowning in a bathtub of his own filth?
This was a whole new level of pathetic, hard to swallow.
He stops struggling, forces himself to pull his balled fists back under the water. His lungs ache. He opens his mouth, warm soapy water flooding in behind his teeth, and screams out the last of his air.
And immediately regrets it because Harrison still isn’t intervening.
Fuck him.
A tiny part of Aiden starts to worry that all bets are off and Harrison will suddenly start breaking promises.
His lungs burn.
No, that motherfucker is probably going to wait until he’s unconscious just to subject him to resuscitation. Not his mouth, never his mouth. That motherfucker probably already has an intubation kit locked and loaded.
Harrison will employ anything and everything to drive home his point. Nowadays, most especially if it can be done with consequences, an illustration of the remaining imbalance in power between them in Harrison’s favor. Anything if it means he doesn’t have to spell it out in a long-winded, exasperated monologue neither one of them has the patience to weather without turning to violence.
And isn’t that what he promised? Underneath all of this pomp and circumstance, toptoeing around eachother’s landmines. That—
Aiden sputters and chokes when Harrison deigns to drag him back into the air.
Harrison lets him hang by the top of his forearm from his hand instead of helping him sit.
He wheezes through his first full breaths, rubbing water out of his eyes. The wheelchair is in the hallway. A stack of folded towels sits on the floor beside Harrison’s feet.
“I thought I wasn’t light,” he rasps when he's caught his breath but Harrison still hasn’t moved. He feels like an orangutan hanging from a tree, except for his limp lower half.
“You certainly gave up quick in there,” Harrison drawls, tilting his head to one side to look at him.
“You’re the one who decided I shouldn’t want to die,” he reminds him.
“Because you’re just being weak and short-sighted,” is the easy answer.
“Fuck you.”
Harrison readjusts his grip and he glares up at him in warning.
“Yeah,” Harrison sighs.
He ignores the feeling of guilt rekindling itself in his stomach. He’s not the one who should feel bad here, he’s the one with no future. Fuck. He grapples for the searing bitterness again, pulling it over the guilt.
“Oh, woe is you. Cut the shit with the long-suffering martyr act.”
Harrison ignores the bait but the muscles in his jaw work as he grinds his molars.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
He wishes he could kick and twist and thrash. He’s bone tired. “You said if I wanted it, you’d let me go. Was that just a lie?”
Harrison commits himself to stony, teeth-clenched silence.
“Or it only applies to the pre-approved methods of killing myself? Huh?”
Harrison threads an arm behind his shoulders, stooping to lower him back to a seat. He grabs a towel as soon as he can reach it, shakes it out so hard it snaps in the air and Aiden flinches. “Here, take this and put it under you so you don’t slip.”
Aiden stares at the tile, curling his hands into fists.
Harrison shoves the towel at him, stopping less than an inch from his face. He turns his head away. Like a slow-motion punch. Aiden imagines him continuing, slamming his head against the tile, holding it there. Smothering him with the towel. His heart stutters in tortured anticipation.
“I’m trying to help you,” Harrison growls.
“I. Never. Asked. You. To.”
“For the love of Christ.”
He whips around to face him again. “Yeah? A little more than you signed up for? Welcome to the fucking club. Oh, wait—”
“Stop it.”
“Why?” he spits, refusing to blink.
Harrison huffs and submerges the towel himself. His shirt is soaking wet already. Aiden does nothing to help as Harrison struggles to lift him while trying to smooth the towel flat underneath him.
“You know they sell stickers for this?”
Harrison ignores him.
“You really should have planned this better. Been more prepared.”
Harrison can’t quite manage and finally gives up.
Aiden scrambles for the edge of the tub when Harrison drops him the last inch and pulls his arm away. He refuses to grab Harrison again. The towel doesn't reappear so it must be somewhere beneath him, even if he can't feel it.
“Sure you don’t want to just push me?” he snipes venemously.
Harrison sticks his arm back in the tub and Aiden’s heart stutters, a manic fear gripping his chest even as he tries to convince himself that it’s swirled with relief.
But all Harrison does is push Aiden’s knees to make his legs lock and he stops sliding. Harrison keeps his hand there, holding him in place and shifts to sit with his back against the tub again. He pulls one leg up to his chest. His jeans are soaked from the thigh to his knees, where he props his free arm.
Aiden doesn’t move, doesn’t even want to breathe too loud.
Minutes or a lifetime later, Harrison sighs.
“I do want to push you under. I want to hold you under until you’re choking, until you couldn’t even speak to beg, until you’re trying to climb me for air. Until you black out and I don’t have to deal with you for a few hours. So I can stop having to try so fucking hard.
“I want to push you under until you drag me with you and we can either let go or die. And God, I want to stop living. Every time you ask me, I get closer to saying yes because whatever you take, I’ll be right behind you and I don’t know how much longer I can keep using you as a shield.” He scrubs his free hand over his face. He didn’t shave today, again. His hair’s a mess, like he spent the whole time Aiden was underwater tugging and pulling at it.
The deep inhale Harrison takes feels like it shakes the edges of the whole room. “So, go ahead. Ask me again if you still want me to let you slip under the surface.”
He’s glad Harrison has his back turned because he can’t hide his shaking hands under the water, they make the surface ripple.
“Sociopath.” His voice cracks, he clears his throat. “Of course you’d find a way to make this about you.”
Harrison coughs a laugh that makes Aiden tense all over again. He’d give anything to see the accompanying expression. He’s afraid to see it, if it’s what he thinks it is. Harrison drags his hand over his face again, takes another breath that feels like it pulls at the film stretched over reality.
“The water’s getting cold.” He picks up the bottle of soap that got knocked onto the floor and puts it where Aiden can reach. “I’ll buy you your own for next time if you just tell me what you want,” he says softly, like he was the one screaming and choking underwater and has no voice left.
Aiden grabs the loofah where it bobs next to him. “Bold of you to assume you’ll get me in the tub a second time.”
Harrison’s eyes flick over but not long enough to linger to see his expression. More overture than assessment. “I never said the next time would be in the tub.”
Now it’s Aiden's turn to laugh. “And track mud in from the yard?”
“Damn.”
“Build a bigger patio.”
Harrison reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a plastic pitcher, places it on the edge of the tub. For rinsing his hair. He feels a rush of relief when he thinks of the alternatives.
“You build a bigger patio. You’re the one just sitting around all day while I’m at work.”
Aiden snorts. “If I’m building anything, it’s a ramp so I can even get outside.”
“I ordered them, I swear,” Harrison twists to look at him, disproportionately defensive.
He schools his expression away from surprise, bordering dangerously close to concern. “You know what they say about protesting too much.”
