joey reveals some of his trauma and doesn't have a great understanding of it
written at 9pm and not proofread so go read the tags at the bottom if you're a little confused (i am also a little confused)
CW/TW: pet whumpee with slight existential crisis, (nongraphic) mention of involuntary body modfications (piercings, finger and ear amputations, 'debarking'), whumpee is slightly drunk
kinda references these two pieces
---
Marla had made mulled wine that evening. The year before she had been in Germany for part of the holidays and had developed an appreciation for the spicy drink. The taste was a little strong for Joey's palate, but he enjoyed the burst of heat as the liquid hit his tongue, and drank from his mug in small sips. The kitchen smelled warm and inviting. In the sink were two empty mugs; Joey still had his. He was presently seated at the bottom of the staircase in the hallway, mug cradled between his hands with his second helping of wine while he watched Aaron and Marla get ready for their date night.
He was a little bit tired from the day (The Fellowship of the Ring, a walk in the neighborhood, shakshouka on the kitchen island for lunch, and Marla's attempt at teaching him Crazy Eights) and a little bit buzzed from the drink. His inhibitions were altogether pleasantly lowered. He was dimly aware of this fact and it did nothing to pull him back down to earth again. Here he was, warm, comfortable, a little sleepy, full and sated, a treat between his hands and in the same room as his favourite people. He idly wondered if this feeling was happiness, or if it was just the alcohol that made him feel this way.
"We're going to be late, Marla. The reservation is at seven," Aaron said, sounding only slightly resigned as he held up Marla's midnight blue coat for her. He was already wearing his own, complete with the burgundy scarf Marla had helped Joey pick out and order for him for Christmas a few weeks ago.
Marla didn't pause her rifling through the drawer of the console table. "I know that, but I can't find my earrings-"
"What do they look like?"
That made her pause and look back at Aaron over her shoulder.
"If I don't know where they are, then you're not going to find them," she said, as if it was the plainest fact in the world. Maybe it was, Joey wondered. Aaron had thought he'd misplaced his tie one morning, only to find that it never left the drawer in the first place. The memory made Joey smile. He had seen Aaron exit his bedroom that morning, sans tie, but back then he had been to scared to bring it up. Instead, he had resigned to watch Aaron hurry back and forth between the kitchen, the bathroom and the bedroom until he finally found the rolled up strip of silk.
Right now, the though of not being brave enough to talk to Aaron seemed silly. That version of him felt far away, as if he was looking at him through water, light and noise distorted.
"Come on, I can help you look at least," Aaron said, as he not-so-descreetly glanced at his wristwatch. Marla closed her eyes for a brief second before turning to face him.
"Fine. They're little hoops, but wide at the bottom. Gold."
Aaron blinked and then cleared his throat. "What does that mean?" he asked, and Joey couldn't help but smile into his mug.
"Really? They're hoops." She moved her finger in a circular motion in the air. "There's no other way to explain it."
"Golden hoops," Aaron muttered, clueless, and Marla lifted her hand to her face.
"You can borrow mine."
The words slipped out of Joey before he could stop them.
They both turned towards him, and a little twinge of uneasiness woke to life in his chest at so suddenly going from being a spectator to being the sole object of their inquiring attention.
"Yours?" Marla asked, and Joey nodded.
"Yeah." He turned his head and brushed his hair back, and pushed the lobe of his ear out with his finger, showing them the stud.
"They're not hoops, but they're gold, if you want them."
Marla was the first to speak. She came closer to him and leaned down, studying the earring. "Are you sure?" she asked, meeting eyes with Joey. "You wear them all the time, I know they're important to you."
Joey looked down, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. "Oh, not really," he said. "I guess I just never took them out."
It was halfway true. Joey had never felt strongly about the piercings themselves. Not when the handlers had switched out the steel ones they had first punched through his earlobes for these goldens ones before he was packed in the box to be shipped, at least. However, he had been put in gold - piercings and collar buckle - because he had been told his Master liked gold. As time in his new home had passed and his Master had told Joey again and again, directly and indirectly, that he disliked him, he had still held on to a small hope that maybe he at least liked his golden piercings.
Now, in Aaron's home, the studs existed in a sort of limbo that Joey had trouble examining properly. A part of him wanted to stay here, with Aaron, forever, and the earrings would be useless. Another part, maybe smaller but none the less just as insistent, wanted him to keep them in the event that he came under Master's care again.
"Well, I'd love to borrow them, if it's okay with you."
Joey gave her a small, lopsided smile and sat down the mug of wine on the step next to him, then reached up to remove his earrings.
"Sure," he said as he worked, soon having freed one of them from his ear. He deposited it in Marla's hand and turned his head to take out the other. "You can have my tongue piercings, too."
That stopped Marla in her tracks, as she was about to put the earring in her own ear. Behind her, Aaron looked up from his phone, eyes wide.
"Your… what?" Marla asked.
"These." Joey opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out, showing off the twin studs on his tongue.
Neither Marla nor Aaron said anything. Both looked sligthly alarmed at his reveal.
What was that look? Had he done something wrong? He pushed his eyebrows sligthly together and closed his mouth again, suddenly self conscious. "Sorry," he said and looked away. "You don't want those. That's gross."
"Did you … always have those?" Aaron asked, stepping closer. Joey felt the odd, sudden urge to hoist himself up and move a step or two up the stairs, away from him. It was a foreign feeling, wanting to move away from Aaron, when he normally always craved closeness.
He hesitated for a moment to answer Aaron's question, considering the facts. "They gave them to me at the-" He cleared his throat and reached for the mug of wine again. "At the facility. I don't think I'd ever had earrings before that. Or, uhm. Tongue piercings."
"Oh, honey." Marla's brows pinched together and she suddenly looked full of grief. Joey didn't quite qet why.
"Did they really…" Aaron started, but he stopped himself and ran a hand through his hair instead. Joey cringed at the way he mussed it up. Marla had spent a full minute pulling her fingers through it this way and that before she had started looking for earrings, and now her work was in vain.
Thanks to Joey, even though he didn't quite understand either of their reactions.
"It almost didn't hurt," he hurried to reassure them. because he had learned that Aaron often didn't like hearing about the way the handlers and his Master had treated him. He always had this sullen look about him after, even though he tried to conceal it to Joey.
"They used a very sharp needle, I think, so it was quick. And they made sure I couldn't move, because if I did and the holes didn't align, they would have to do it again and it would be more painful."
Aaron drew a sharp breath of air and Marla reached for the banister of the stairs to steady herself. Joey grew more uncertain. It really hadn't been that bad. It was just a few piercings.
In a last ditch attempt to placate them, he retrieved a memory of the procedure another trainee had gone through. His own treatment was nothing in comparison, and they would stop looking at him as if he had been tortured.
"They took the little fingers of one of the others," he said and held out his hand, separating his little finger from the rest. "His buyer wanted him to have slim hands."
"Joey…" Aaron began, but he didn't finish. He stepped forwards instead and sat down next to him on the step, putting his arm around his shoulders. Joey didn't know what he meant by it.
"They cut the tips of the ears of a girl. Like that dog we saw today? They were sharp. She looked like an elf," he said instead.
Marla hitched a breath and she abruptly turned away. Aaron's arm tightened around him. Joey looked between them, uncertain. Hurting Marla was the last thing he wanted to do, only surpassed by the prospect of hurting Aaron. Or making them feel uncomfortable. Pets weren't for that. Pets should make their owner's life better, not worse.
He swallowed. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No," Aaron reassured him immediately, and warm relief bloomed in his chest. "You didn't say anything wrong."
"It's horrible, what they did you," Marla said. Her voice was sligthly shaking, as if she couldn't hide it fully. She still wasn't looking at either of them.
"I think they made them sleep while they did it," Joey said, because it really wasn't that horrible, even though the others hade gotten the brunt of it, and he only had four little piercings to show for it. He gripped Aaron's hand in his own. His constant, steady anchor in any storm, even of his own making. "There was another boy, too. They, uhm. I think they said that they were going to debark him the next day. I'm not sure what they meant by it." He scratched at a spot under his eye. "They said that they wanted to make him scream a little before then. That it would be a shame to waste such a pretty voice."
That made Aaron hitch, too. He rested his forehead in his palm and took a few slow, steady breaths. Joey looked at him. Surely a few piercings didn't seem so bad now, right? No one had ever taken a scalpel or pliers to any part of his body. No handler had set out to 'make him scream'. His screaming had only ever been an unwanted byproduct of his training. He was lucky.
Aaron cleared his throat and straightened his back, seeking eye contact. Joey did not waver, even though meeting someone's eye sometimes made him queezy. Good pets keep their eyes averted unless specifically told not to.
"Just to be clear," Aaron said and pressed his palms together. "They didn't do any of this to you, right? Or anything else? Just the…" he pointed at his ears and mouth, frowning. "Just the piercings?"
Joey swallowed and nodded rapidly. "Just the piercings."
"Okay," Aaron said and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't move. Neither did Marla, still half-turned away, leaning one hand on the banister.
Nobody said anything for a while, until Joey cast a look at Aaron's wristwatch. He couldn't decipher the time but he could see that one of the hands had moved. He swallowed.
"Please don't miss your reservation because of me," he whispered, loathe to be the reason they were late.
Aaron smiled, although it was a little mournful, and a weight lifted off of Joey's shoulders. He hadn't destroyed it all with his disclosures.
"C'mere," Aaron said as he stood back up. Joey followed and let himself be enveloped. They both hugged him, tighter than usual, but it felt good, not restrictive.
"Do you want us to stay home?" Marla asked as Aaron rubbed Joey's cheek with the pad of his thumb. "We can, if you don't want to be alone," he agreed. Joey shook his head.
"Please don't. You have been at home with me every night."
She squeezed his arms lightly. Her lips tilted up in a little smile.
"You are sweet, Joey."
He shrugged one shoulder and looked down at his socked feet. Being sweet was almost the same as being good.
"There's that pasta dish in the fridge, right? And the soda you like?" Aaron said, even though Joey knew that Aaron knew perfectly well what was in the fridge. Still, he nodded.
"We'll only be gone few hours. I've restocked the wood for you." He took a step back, starting to button up his coat. "Call us anytime. I mean it."
"Thank you- Oh! My other earring. Here." Joey freed the remaning ear from its earring and handed it to Marla, who held it in her palm as she pulled her heeled boots on. "Thank you," she said. "I'll put these on in the car. Aaron, we need to go!"
"You're the one who- nevermind," he said, faux-annoyed, winking at Joey as they both went out into the cold, dark night.
Joey remained in the hallway, looking at them through the warped glass in the door. He couldn't make out their shapes, but he could see the car lights turning on, shadows passing them as they moved around it, and finally, the red taillights growing weaker and disappearing around the bend.
He was warm and comfortable, his people were only a phone call away, and most importantly, he hadn't ruined anything tonight.
---
They were silent for a long time.
"I'm not hungry anymore," Marla said eventually. She looked down at the golden studs she still held in her hand. The sight of them made her nauseous. She imagined a herd of faceless, uniformed men holding Joey down, piercing his ears and pulling his tongue out to pierce that too. She imagined him scared and confused after having his memory wiped, not seeing a single familiar face or feeling a frindly touch. She shuddered.
"Me neither," Aaron said. Still, his hands held the steering wheel tightly as he took off the highway. The restaurant where they had reservations, a spanish place that specialized in paella, was only a few minutes away.
"I didn't even know they could do that. I mean, earrings? Sure. But cutting their ears off? Amputations? And-and… Aaron, they took someone's voice away!"
"I know. It can't be legal."
"Fuck the legality," Marla said, aware of how it sounded coming from a lawyer. "They're people. Just because they're in vulnerable situations, being coerced into uninformed decicisions… they can't do this to them. They can't get away with it."
Aaron's knuckles whitened. He had been stewing in the same thoughts for weeks, months, now. The outrage. The helplessness. The complete and utter lack of any way to make it better, other than to take care of the broken man in his house the best he could.
"I don't know what we can do about it," he said in the end, because it was the only thing he knew to be true. He worked on autopilot as he parallel parked. Marla put the earrings in a zippered side pocket in her bag.
None of them moved, even though the car was in park and they were already twenty minutes late for their reservation.
"I don't know," Aaron repeated. He still hadn't let go of the wheel.
Marla sighed, looking out of the side window. This far down in elevation the temperatures were higher and what had been snow in the air around Aaron's house was big, heavy raindrops here. They hit the window like little projectiles, exploding on impact.
Creator(me): And here we are, we've reached the end of the ranking game. Barnaby is the winner of the game😆, congratulations on reaching the end without giving up👏🏻. I also thank everyone who participated, I'm glad you enjoyed the ranking game😁. I swear, every time I make these games, when I wake up in the morning I find my phone with like 17 Tumblr notifications😅, so these games really attract people. I'll try to bring more games like this in the future😏. Thanks for participating😄👋🏻. (I look like a TV host🤣)
So I'm opening up commissions again 👀 these are sort of emergency commissions... I've missed a few too many days of work due to chronic issues and I gotta make sure I can feed my kitties!
If you're interested please use the comment section to let me know so I can schedule ya in for a slot! :D
I'd love it so much if you could share this with friends and any servers you're in, it would help me out so much 🥺
i barely say anything about the updates we’ve been getting a lot more lately but oh my GOD I NEED THE CONTEXT FOR THIS NOWWWNOWNOW
first of all HOLY SHIT GROVER HAS A PERSONALITY. see NOW i can get somewhere with this mf this guy has been pissing me off his entire existence now i can see through him a lil bit
second of all WHAT IS HE SAD ABOUT. WHAT IS HE MAD ABOUT. WE KNOW LIKE NOTHING ABOUT HIS LIFE WHAT HAPPENED. and like the thing is this isn’t a regular “big sad into big mad” thing this is like a flush of emotions that sad face is genuine concerned devastation face. and that angry face is pure rage revenge face
did not expect grover of all people to get expressions but any amazingly animated expression is a peak expression
