Whumpee has been given some kind of drug (or is under a curse) that heightens their senses by a lot, to the point touching anything or moving will cause them unbearable pain. They're in agony even by the mattress they're lying on.
But Whumpee's friends don't know this - all they know is they're in pain and don't know what it is or how to help. So they stroke Whumpee's cheek, hold their hand, rub their back, trying to provide comfort. They don't know if Whumpee could speak, they'd be pleading for them to stop because every touch, no matter how light, feels like a blowtorch on their skin.
This is an 18+ slowish burn pet-whump story with added romance.
Title from 'Liquid Smooth' by Mitski
Series
First | Previous
Chapter Summary: Things get worse, and Onthyes learns a hard truth.
Chapter Content: drug addiction/withdrawal, some magic whump/loss of control, doomed to die, curses, mentions of pregnancy and death of a pregnant person, mentions of childhood drug use, victim blaming, Ventis is extremely depressed sorry, suicidal ideation
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Shayah's POV
Rain pattered against the windows, a soft, steady sound that filled the otherwise silent kitchen where Onthyes sat. The fire in the hearth had burned low, casting long shadows across the worn wooden floor. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and herbs.
Shayah found Onthyes at the table, sitting motionless with his face buried in his hands. The mug of tea in front of him was untouched, no longer steaming. Onthyes stirred at her presence, lifting his head. His eyes were ringed with deep purples and reds, making the green of his irises seem to glow in the dim light.
“How’s he doing?” Shayah asked, lowering herself into the chair across from him.
He drew a slow, unsteady breath. “Worse,” he murmured. “It’s… it’s really bad.”
Shayah hummed softly. She’d expected as much.
Her own mother had used nightspill years ago, before she took too much and it snatched her away in the night. But before that, she’d tried to quit a handful of times, spurred by moments of clarity in which she realized that she had young sons to raise and a teenage daughter who was doing her damned best but crumbling under the pressure.
So Shayah knew better than most how brutal nightspill withdrawals could be.
“Onthyes…” She slid a little closer to the man, leaning over the table to place a hand on his arm. “Are you prepared for the possibility that he might not make it?”
His gaze snapped to meet hers. “What? No. He’ll be okay, Shy. He has to. He’s come too far-”
“I know. It’s not fair. But the gods don’t give a fuck about fairness, and nightspill withdrawal is nothing to be taken lightly.”
“He isn’t going to die. I won’t let him. We can’t just give up.” Onthyes’s voice was so firm.
Shayah wished she could share his certainty.
She’d come to like Ventis in the time since he’d arrived at her house, a too-thin bundle burned and bleeding and wrapped up in more diamonds than she’d seen in her entire life. He was odd, yes, and his bone-deep submissiveness was unsettling, but there was a quiet charm to him that she couldn’t ignore. Besides, he clearly mattered to Onthyes. To Theodore too, although he might never admit it out loud.
“I never said anything about giving up on him,” she said softly. “I just… I don’t want to see you hurt again, Onthyes. After Samantha-”
She stopped herself as soon as the name left her mouth.
Samantha was a subject that everyone in Onthyes’s life - including the man himself - avoided at all costs.
Shayah had been there in the guard barracks when Onthyes got the news of Samantha’s passing. Some complication with her pregnancy, apparently. Shayah and Onthyes hadn’t been very close yet, so she didn’t know the details. She just knew that he had lost both his betrothed and his future child that day, and he hadn’t been the same since.
“He’s going to live.” Onthyes stood abruptly, eyes hard. “I’m not losing another love. I can’t.”
Shayah just swallowed, unsure of what to say. She’d just wanted to prepare Onthyes for what could very well be inevitable, but he clearly couldn’t bear the thought. At least he still had hope. Shayah wasn’t sure if she could say the same for herself.
She followed him into Ventis’s bedroom.
With the curtains drawn, the room was lit only by a flickering lantern and a few candles. The air reeked of sickness, thinly masked by a warm coat of lavender. Even in the low light, Shayah could tell that the place had been destroyed - books and decorations flung across the floor, glass shattered and pages torn. A draft chilled her skin, although it had no discernable source. Shayah fetched the broom leaning against the wall and busied herself with sweeping glass shards into a pile.
Theodore stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed. He’d insisted on watching Ventis for a few hours, just long enough for Onthyes to get some rest, although the man hadn’t taken proper advantage of the opportunity.
Ventis lay on the bed, no more than a shivering heap of blankets.
“This is the longest I’ve seen him sleep yet,” Onthyes muttered, carefully sitting down at the edge of the bed. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“Right,” Shayah whispered, but a louder part of herself feared that it was only a sign that he’d become too exhausted to fight anymore.
“He woke once,” Theodore said, his voice low and flat. “He didn’t know where he was. Who I was. Passed out again soon after.”
Onthyes carefully pulled down the blankets, washing the room in a purple light that shifted and pulsed like little veins of lightning under Ventis’s skin. Sparks jumped at the points where Onthyes touched him, and his body jerked.
“His magic is calmer when he’s asleep.” Onthyes glanced up at Shayah, watching her scoop the glass shards into a tray to dispose of. “Sorry about the mess. I’d stopped trying to keep up with it. When he wakes up his magic just…” Onthyes made an explosion gesture with his hands.
“Trust me, I’ve heard it,” Shayah said with a chuckle. She’d lost count of how many times she’d been woken by magical winds battering her spare bedroom to pieces.
The room fell quiet again, save for the occasional crackle of candle flame and the quick, strained breaths from the bed. Shayah dumped the last of the glass into a bin and straightened, wiping her palms on her tunic.
“He can’t go on like this,” she said.
Onthyes didn’t respond right away. He was watching Ventis with quiet desperation, his hand hovering over the boy’s arm, hesitant to touch as if even that small contact might be the final blow that makes him crumble.
“We’re doing what we can,” Theodore said, settling at the end of the bed. “We’ve kept him alive this long.”
“Barely,” Shayah muttered. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but it was the truth. Every inhale from Ventis felt as though it could be his last, and every silence between each breath felt final.
Onthyes finally spoke. “He needs help. Real help.”
“A healer. He needs magic. Medicine alone won’t fix this. I know someone.”
It finally dawned on Shayah. “You’d risk going to your mother with this?”
“She’ll help us.”
Theodore scoffed. “But your mother lives with your father. Who is, if you’ve forgotten, the captain of the guard.”
“I know. But she won’t betray us.”
Shayah believed him, despite the risk. She’d never met Onthyes’s mother personally, but if she could raise someone as stubbornly heroic as him she must be trustworthy.
“Alright. I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Shayah volunteered.
“She’s an elf. You won’t be waking her. Besides, at this point Ventis might not have until morning.”
“I’ll go now, then.”
~
Ventis’s POV
Ventis just wanted it all to stop. The fire. The itching under his skin. The voices.
He was floating, falling, his limbs weightless and head clouded by vertigo. He missed feeling heavy, feeling grounded. The nightspill had been a weight on him, sinking him to the earth, keeping his treacherous body from drifting into the sky, and now he missed it more than anything because he couldn’t stand to fall for another minute.
But it wouldn’t stop.
Before - hours or days ago, he couldn’t be sure - he’d been holding onto something. Something to make all this pain and confusion worth it. But now he couldn’t quite remember. Why was he even doing this if all it did was make him hurt?
A gentle touch pressed down on Ventis’s shoulder, too much and not enough at the same time. He longed to be held down again. To be under someone again. At least then he wouldn’t float away anymore. But the hands were too much. Always pushing too far, too hard. All of them but this one.
Swordsman’s calluses on the fingertips, brushing carefully along Ventis’s aching skin. Onthyes, right. He’d almost forgotten. He was doing this for Onthyes.
Ventis tried to lean into the touch, tried to say something, but all he could do was let out a pained whine.
“It’s okay,” Onthyes’s voice came from deep underwater, nearly incomprehensible. “Shayah’s getting help. Just hold on a little longer.”
“I can’t,” Ventis wanted to say, but his lips wouldn’t move.
“You’re so cute when you’re helpless, treasure.”
Gods, not again.
Even here, hiding away in Shayah’s home, Athos had yet to leave Ventis for a moment of rest. The man’s voice was always present, his shadow always slinking in dark corners.
“You really think you can escape me?” his voice mused, echoing from every direction, pressing in on Ventis.
Ventis whimpered, tried to curl into himself, but he just didnt have the energy and he knew the motion would be torture even if he did. “Stop,” he managed to gasp out, and Onthyes’s hand tightened slightly on his shoulder before disappearing.
“You can run away as far as you’d like. You can hide yourself away for the rest of your pathetic little life. But you’ll always be mine. You know that, don’t you?”
The voice slithered through him, curling behind his ribs. He could feel it, a thread wrapped like a collar around his throat, pulling too tight and dragging him backwards, back to cold marble floors and perfumes that made his head pound. The touch of silk gloves, brushing along his jaw, sliding down his hip.
Ventis wanted to scream. What came out instead was a rattling breath that scraped its way uselessly out of his throat. His skin prickled with cold sweat. When he tried to open his eyes the room swam sickeningly.
Then the fire in his blood flared to life again, burning poison in his veins, flooding his body. He didn’t want to be in it anymore. His body was a cage, a torture chamber more than anything else. He had forgotten what it felt like to be so present and to hurt so badly, and he didn’t want to live like this for any longer.
“He’s shaking.”
“Ventis? Come on, hold on a little longer. Please.”
“Onthyes, I don’t think-”
“You remember the price of disobedience, don’t you darling?”
Yes, of course he remembered. He remembered the whip, the branding iron, the times he’d been denied nightspill for just a few hours and it had felt like it would end him. Now he would give anything to feel like he had then. Anything would be better than this.
“You chose this. You chose to run away from me, knowing perfectly well that your knight won’t take care of you like I do. And now you’re paying for it, aren’t you?”
Ventis let out a choked sob. That was the worst part, wasn’t it? Knowing that all of these years of suffering were his own fault. His own choice.
The nightspill had just been for pain at first. He was called Jasper back then, sixteen and suffering from chronic pain due to a spine injury after taking a tumble off the palace roof. The royal physician had told him that the pain would never really go away, and she’d given him some pills to combat it. “Only take these when it’s unbearable,” she’d warned him.
Jasper hadn’t listened.
It just felt too good to be unburdened by pain, and he realized quickly that even the sting of his father’s and brother’s words was dulled by the drug. He became dependent quickly, and his physician seemed to have no problem getting him more when he ran out. Things were so much more peaceful around the palace without constant squabbling between brothers, after all.
It hadn’t taken long for him to want more. The nightspill took the pain away but it brought mind numbing apathy with it, and it drove Jasper to the docks, to the taverns, to that little shack on the beach where he’d drink until Peer dragged him home on wobbly legs. It went too far at one point. He couldn’t even remember what happened, just that he’d woken up in a cell with a black eye and his father standing on the other side of the bars, looking directly at him for the first time in a year with nothing but disdain.
“You are no longer part of this family,” he’d said. “Never come back.”
He wasn’t given time to pack. Just grabbed his jar of nightspill and a few loose coins and talked his way onto a merchant ship headed south to Nimbria.
He changed his name from Jasper to Ventis, telling himself it was just because ‘Ventis’ sounded more standard for an air genasi - if he ever ran into another of his kind, he didn’t want to stand out. But that wasn’t the truth, not really.
He just… wasn’t Jasper anymore. Hadn’t been in a long time.
Because Jasper would have turned and run the moment he saw the way Athos looked at him. Because he wasn’t as stupid and naive as some made him out to be and Athos had made his intentions clear from the moment they met. Jasper would have saved himself in an instant.
But Ventis wasn’t worth saving.
He let Athos take him. He signed the contract of his own free will. He craved punishment, desperate for someone to steal him away and make everything just stop, and Athos had been right there ready to do just that. Ventis had brought this on himself.
The next thing he knew, he was sobbing openly. Crying with what little energy he had left because he had never allowed it to surface - how deeply he hated himself. He’s always been the problem, even now, because he was forcing Onthyes and Theodore to stand there, helpless, while he selfishly succumbed to the consequences of his own actions after they gave everything to save him.
“Look at you,” Athos cooed. “I don’t think I’ve ever managed to get you this broken.”
Shut up shut up shut up shut up.
Ventis’s thoughts couldn’t find purchase in his own head. There was nothing left but agony. His muscles convulsed weakly, his jaw clenching so hard he was afraid something would snap. But the pain wasn't even the worst part anymore. It was how familiar the pain was, like some twisted part of him had always known this was how he would end: sick and hallucinating while the people who tried to love him stood helpless at his side.
He was so tired of hurting people just by existing.
But surely it would hurt someone if he died, too. Onthyes had tried so hard to save him.
But he just wasn’t worth it.
“I’m sorry,” Ventis managed to whimper. “Onthyes… I’m so sorry.”
A hand gripped his, shaking. “No no no no, you’re okay, Ventis. Just hold on. Help’s coming, I promise. Just stay with me.”
Ventis tried to squeeze the hand back. He couldn’t tell if he succeeded. He just knew that darkness was rushing in, and his limbs were freezing cold, and every breath was a monumental struggle.
He wasn’t afraid of dying.
He was afraid that if he didnt die, this would go on forever.
He was afraid that surviving this would mean facing the world all over again - the shame, the conditioning, the look on Onthyes’s face every time he wasn’t strong enough to overcome it all.
He couldn’t fight any longer.
Then a voice cut through Ventis’s haze, soft and unfamiliar.
“Faenya. Stay.”
The words hit him like a splash of cold water. Elvish.
He didn’t know that voice, and yet something ancient stirred in it. A hand touched his chest, over his heart. His magic flared to life, angry and scared, but the hand didn’t pull away. It held strong, pushing down just enough to steady him. And just like that, for just a moment, Ventis felt heavy again. Present.
“Revar.”
And everything slipped away.
~
Onthyes’s POV
“He’s asleep now.” Onthyes’s mother, Sylviavaris, lifted her hand from Ventis’s chest, the golden glow fading from her palm. “It’s a good thing that you sent for me when you did. He was fading.”
“Will he be okay now?” Onthyes asked, anxious for any good news at all.
She turned to him, a slight smile touching her lips, and reached out to cup her palm against Onthyes’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re alright, my son. Although, I’d hoped you had the sense to leave this place for good. It’s not safe here for you. Any of you.” She glanced over at Shayah and Theodore, who were lingering on the edges of the bedroom, wanting to give her space to work but also ready to help if need be.
“Trust me, as soon as Ventis can stand on his own we’re crossing the sea,” Onthyes assured her. “But right now I just need to know he can survive this.”
Sylviavaris glanced down at Ventis’s sleeping form. He was quiet now, his face wet with leftover tears, and relentless shaking had stopped. He still couldn’t quite be called peaceful, but he was something close to that.
“I gave him more time,” she said. “But I’m afraid I may have just delayed the inevitable.”
“What are you saying?” Theodore crossed his arms, tilting his chin up in a way that may have seemed tough to anyone else, but Onthyes could see the glint of fear in his eyes. “He’s just going to die no matter what? What good is healing magic if it won’t heal him?”
“Theo.” Shayah bumped him with her elbow. “Lay off.”
“No, it’s okay. He’s right to be concerned. If this were just any sickness I should be able to heal it easily. Withdrawal is tricky, but… Well, I don’t mean to be vain but I am quite powerful. I still should have at least eased his symptoms long enough for him to ride it out on his own. But I could feel a resistance. Something is keeping my light from reaching him.”
“Why?” Onthyes asked. He was painfully reminded of the time Ventis was poisoned, and just like now every doctor and healer said the same thing: that he was beyond help. He felt that same helplessness all over again. “There must be something, mom.” Tears stung at his eyes and he quickly scrubbed them away with his sleeve. “I’m not… I won’t lose him. I can’t.”
Sylviavaris considered him for a long moment, her green eyes widening slightly with realization.
“You love him.”
Onthyes nodded miserably.
A flash of grief crossed her face and she rushed forward, pulling her son into her arms. Onthyes has been taller than her since he was a teenager but her hugs made him feel small again, and he bent down to tuck his face into her shoulder.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered into his hair. “My son, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid… I can’t save him. If you truly love him, then there’s nothing I can do.”
Onthyes pulled away, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
She glanced at the others. “Maybe we should speak about this privately.”
“Tell me.”
Letting out a deep sign, Sylviavaris sat at the foot of the bed. “It was your father’s doing.”
As always.
“I was pregnant with you. And he… he’s always had high expectations for you. Even before you were born. He was willing to do anything to guarantee that you would live up to his standards. So he went to a hag.”
Theodore and Shayah both cursed at the same time. Onthyes was too stunned to do anything but stand there and listen as his mother pressed on.
“I told him it was a bad idea. I warned him that hags are not to be played around with. But to him, no price was too great. He bartered with the hag. She rewrote fate so that you would be destined to become the greatest swordsman in the realms. In return, she claimed the souls of everyone you fall in love with. If you love someone, they are fated to die a painful, premature death.”
She reached out, taking Onthyes’s hand. “I’m sorry, Onthyes, but he’s doomed.”
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sorry for the wait on this one yall i have no excuse other than i had a minecraft phase <3
"You...you don't understand..." whumpee stammers, barely keeping himself upright in the doorway. "I've been cursed, whumper cursed me...there's nothing you can do..."
"We'll see about that," caretaker mutters, and lunges forward just in time to catch whumpee as he collapses, unconscious.
Late because I've been swamped but now I am free to write since everything is cancelled from the hurricane.
Anyways here's curse whump about Onthyes. (@kabie-whump Ventis mentioned !!)
tags: character death mention, curses
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When Onthyes had nowhere else to turn, he ran to his mother, Slyviavaris. So when Ventis was weak, tired, and on the brink of hopelessness, Onthyes brought him to her.
He barged through the door, cradling Ventis in his arms.
Onthyes hadn’t seen his mother in weeks, so he whispered a prayer that she would be home, before calling loudly into the house. “Mom, please! I need your help, please!”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Onthyes rushed into the kitchen and hastily cleared a spot for Ventis on the kitchen table, then placed him on it gently. Ventis curled into himself, groaning.
As Onthyes brushed the hair out of Ventis’s face, Sylviavaris rushed into the room. She began to ask what was wrong when Onthyes rushed her to Ventis’s side.
Whatever strength Onthyes had previously had left the room upon the entrance of his mother. He began to sob. “Please save him, Mom, I need you to save him!”
She looked at Onthyes mournfully. “You love him?”
“Yes,” Onthyes replied breathlessly. He had never admitted it out loud before, but at that moment nothing was more certain.
“I can’t save him.”
“You have to try–”
“No, Onthyes,” she grabbed his hands, “if you truly love him there’s nothing I can do to save him.”
“I don’t understand–”
“It was your father’s doing,” she began to explain. “He had a run-in with a hag–”
Onthyes dropped her hands.
“He made an agreement that ended with a curse on his firstborn–”
No. This can’t be happening.
“Onthyes, everyone you fall in love with is destined to die a tragic, early death.”
“That’s not fair!” Onthyes cried out. “I didn’t do anything to any Hag!”
Sylviavaris reached her hands into Onthyes’s curls. “I’m sorry, dear. I should’ve told you after Samantha.”
Onthyes’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.
Samantha. His first love. The mother of his unborn child.
idk how to feel about this one? I just feel like something's off with it. anyhow tangled jumpscare except this lad can do the opposite of what rapunzel does
🔪 - Describe the worst character death you've ever written!
I actually rarely kill off characters on Screen! In my Canon Stories there is two (Main) characters I kill on Screen. So it's hard to choose between the both of Them.
Patrona from Pearl of the Lor dies due to the curse. So her Body and mind withers away. Like rotting in reallife. It starts of slowly with little black necrotic spots showing Up on her Body and she continues going about her Life until the rotting Takes Up the pace. On her final day she goes from alive to only Bones left within about 16 hours. A horrible death. A horrible curse.
And then there we have Cade from M.A.L.E.U.
I fucking kill him Off in Like 2 sentences. He Is on a Mission with Team B to retrieve Gene and Sidun. He ends up having an accident in the industry parket while Lucia is stuck in a fight. He rushes to Help her but snaps His Neck in an ugly Fall after tripping on a tripwire. Dead upon Impact.
Thank you so much @orchidscript for helping me with this one <3
CW: past whump mentioned, scarring mentioned, past abuse mentioned,
Last week, Ilya’s world consisted of nothing more but a fuggy room and dusty window. Of dinner leftovers he’d tried to eat with mangled hands.
Now, a hospital visit and some nights spent on a fold-out couch in the welfare office later, he followed a blonde young man around the ranch's property on legs still wobbly from the six hour drive to this new placement.
That social worker, Miss Maria Mullens, hadn’t been the one behind the steering wheel, but she’d pressed a backpack into his hands full of clothes that weren’t coming apart at the seams and wished him good luck. Ilya had nearly teared up on a pitstop at a pull-in, where he’d changed into a new soft sweater and pants that hung only a little too loose and found a pair of brand-new leather gloves neatly folded atop the clothes.
They felt so much more pleasant against his skin in the late July heat, compared to the scratchy wollen ones.
“Ilya,” the blonde guy’s -- Matthew -- work boots clicked over the stone path to what looked like stables. “Say, do you have any experiences with horses?”
“No,” Ilya murmured upon entering. Soft sighs and snorts echoed through the long, wide hallway flanked by spacious boxes. BIgger than most rooms he's ever been kept in. The smell of hay and heated skin was intense here and the floor was stained in some places with something Ilya hoped wasn’t poop. He squashed down his urge to side step them. Not wanting to appear too big-city. “Only ever seen them on tv. Horse holidays aren't-... They’re not really foster-life, ya know?”
“They’re part of yours, now.” Matthew beamed.
Almost blinded by the others' sunshine brightness, Ilya peered into the box next to him, and froze. He knew the creature inside existed, of course he did, but he hadn’t really thought they would look so-
“...tiny.”
“Yes, meet our newest family member -- apart from you. This is Susie. She’s four whole days old, as of today.” Matthew ran over with pride. Voice warm and steady, breast swollen, and a stupid blissfull expression plastered over his face. As if he’d born that small spindly legged thing himself. It was ridiculous, really.
Tiny soft looking nostrils flared, inhaling Ilya’s scent. The small creature left its mothers side, stalked over with stumbling steps, ears perked up in interest.
Ilyas fingers twitched with the urge to pet it. He burrowed his hands deep into his pockets instead, bit back a smile. “They’re called, uhm, foals? Right?”
“So you do know a bit about horses.”
Bristling under the tease Ilya snapped, “I lived in the city, not under a rock,” but it lacked any real bite.
“Alright, alright, city boy.” Matthew lifted his hands, cheeks dimpling and chest trembling with suppressed laughter that spilled past his lips in a breathless chuckle. “Wanna pet your very first foal? Their noses are the softest thing you’ll ever touch.”
“No!” Ilya blurted, stumbled backwards, eyes snapping to the foal. It answered his wild eyed stare with curiously twitching ears. A friendly nicker.
“No I- '' Panic prickled up his palms. His hands grew clammy, the leather gloves stuck to his skin. Ilya swallowed. “That wouldn’t be- I can’t.”
“Hey, hey there. It’s alright. You don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna. But-.” Straight, white teeth worried at his plush lips. His broad hands fidgeted with the drawstring of his grey hoodie, wrapped it around his finger and let it go, letting it flop against his chest. “Listen. I know it’s weird but I read your file. Have to for every newbie, and... If it's because of your scars you really don’t--.”
“Itain’tboutthat,” Ilya spluttered. Panic frenzied shame compressed his vowels and syllables into one single hectic exclamation. The solid stone ground felt more like a waterbed under his feet and Ilya took one deep shuddering breath. “My scars-. It has nothing to do with my scars. It’s- I…” Shame chaffed away at his voice until it cracked, more rasp than whisper. “I’m wicked. Cursed.”
“Ilya. You’re magic, not cursed.”
That flicker of sadness in Matthew's tone hit him like a kick in the chest. Ilya didn’t need to look at him to know his face was pinched with pity. He failed to hold back a snort. All derisive anger. It made an honest man of him.
Matthews boots clicked over stone as he took a step towards him. “There is no shame in being different.”
“Oh and what do you know about it?! Wannabe social worker, taking care of some strays, working for a good cause, living the pony farm dream life. Zatknis!” The words burst out of Ilya’s mouth like an angry bee swarm. Eager to sting, to pump poison under Matthews skin, to scare him off.
There was no way to take them back, to unhurt the boy staring at him, blue eyes blown wide in bewilderment. Those stupid dimples had vanished alongside that stupid charming smile. Ilyas pulse picked up, hammered in his throat, quick as the footsteps of a frightened child running to its mother.
He had no mother to hide behind, no arms to find solace in. Hanging his head Ilya prepared for the yelling sure to come, the blow, or kick, or spit in his face.
“Sorry.”
Please forgive me.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I overstepped.”
Ilya glanced up, heart stopping, skip-stutter-starting into another wild frenzy. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. His face crumpled in confusion over the honest concern in those blue, blue eyes.
It suddenly became very hard to breathe around the tight, burning knot lodged in his throat.
How the hell was he supposed to answer?
His mouth opened, closed, opened again, like a petrified fish, hauled out of water and slapped onto the cutting board.
Ilya turned on his heel and ran from this place he wouldn’t ever belong.
There was no way to build a life filled with soft things and fragile creatures and warm smiles, not when his hands were destined to destroy everything they touched.
