new au masterpost addition:
Call Vex AU
au cws: trauma, PTSD, nightmares, panic attacks, past abuse, past kidnapping and imprisonment, body image issues (scars), touch aversion, touch starved, touch trauma, listen it’s all centered around the touch issues, mentions of sexual stuff, despair, feeling broken, mental health issues
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after escaping the watchers and their torture, grian finds it difficult to acclimate to real world again—especially the part where his best friend looks at him like a kicked puppy because grian flinches away from his touch. and the part where he can’t comfort him and offer a hug. and the part where he can’t stand short sleeves because the scars on his arms stare back at him until he’s nauseous. and the part where there are people, everywhere, crowding him, bumping into him, brushing against him—
he can’t handle even the gentlest of touches, because he’s learned that touch means captivity and pain, and his brain screams at him until he scrambles away in panic every single time.
it’s a problem.
failing to get better by himself and feeling guilty near mumbo for being unable to offer the kind of physical closeness they once had between them, grian finds himself at the end of his rope. desperate and frightened, about to believe that he’ll always feel like this—afraid, starved, untouchable, broken—he comes across an ad that might just change everything.
rent-a-vex is a service that promises to offer anything one needs. they boast having a perfect vex for anything—be it a tech job, a construction help, bodyguard duties, or pretending to be your date for an overbearing mother at dinner. they even have vexes for more… intimate affairs. it’s private and judgement free, and… it might just be grian’s last hope.
if there’s a vex for any need—any at all—then maybe there’s one for grian, too…? someone who could teach him to breathe when he’s being touched. someone who could patiently coax him into reaching out without feeling a deep-rooted terror in his bones. someone who could help him patch himself up back to a semblance of the person he used to be.
with shaky hands and even more shaky heart, he picks up his phone and calls.
two hours later, there’s a vex at his doorstep. emerald eyes, a smile, and a posture that emanates as much confidence as it does gentleness… and there’s no longer an option to back away.
(well, there is. there is, unlike when he was with the watchers. this is a decision that’s in his own hands, a service he can stop and cut off at any time, a vex he can always decline and request a different one… but maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t want to stop. even unsure and afraid, he’s desperate for this to work, and as long as it’s his choice… it’s going to be fine, right?)
or: the AU in which grian has touch issues, pays a “call vex” to help coach him out of his trauma, and accidentally finds himself attached to this handsome, gentle, patient vex that looks at him as if he wasn’t going to be broken forever.
or: the AU in which scar is renting himself out, catering mostly to social requests, including fake dating, an evening’s company, and even amateur acting. he doesn’t entirely expect to be called to an incredibly cute avian with mountains of trauma and desperate pleading in his eyes, but he’s going to do everything in his power to help. and if he falls head-first in the process…? well, that’s a problem for a future scar to solve.
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au put together with link & lyrai <3
