ASH PLEASE MORE RAFAEL I LOVE HIM I WANNA SEE HIM MEET CHRIS AGAIN WHEN HE'S FREE <3 - robinswhump
@robins-whump, here you go! Although this doesn't involve Chris, it is Raf getting a new place to stay
@whumpmasinjuly prompt: Support
CW: Escaped whumpee, touch starvation, references to past noncon/dubcon, internalized victim-blaming
Rafael thinks he preferred the little room behind the bookstore, but they told him he had to move to a real safehouse, some place where he can be to focus on getting better, and here he is.
This room in a new place seems vast, somehow, although it's not even half the size of his masters' room. He clutches an old backpack to his chest, staring around, his dark eyes skimming the small twin-size bed, neatly made-up, a blue blanket on top of plain white sheets, two pillows lined up side by side.
Carpet is somehow both scratchy and soft beneath his sock-covered feet, and he wiggles his toes a little, just to feel it. The masters never had carpet. That's new.
He likes it. It's warm.
"Will I have a roommate?" He asks the man standing just behind him, without turning his head. There's a window, and the bars on it make his heart race a little, even though they talked about it. They're for safety, the neighborhood isn't great. Just for safety.
He has a view of a small tree and a brick wall, the house next door barely far enough away. If he leaned out he feels like he could nearly touch it.
Are the bars to keep people out, or to keep him in?
"Not right away," The man says in response to his question. "You'll need some adjustment time, first."
"Does everyone get a room to themselves at first?"
"Ah... no." He introduced himself as Mr. Martin, the man who runs this safehouse, and his voice is musical, with the slightest hint of a lilt that makes Rafael think he was born somewhere far away from here. "We have to-... well. We have to keep the safety of our others in mind, too, you know? We've had some trouble in the past with... certain designations. Had a few who kept forgetting some things. It's a risk with Romantics."
Rafael closes his eyes, shame briefly twisting inside him. "Of course," He says, and his voice stays perfectly calm. He can sound calm no matter what his heart feels like, it was the first skill he mastered.
"It isn't meant as an insult, and it isn't because I think you'll do anything on purpose," Mr. Martin says. He sounds so kind, as he says the things that cut Rafael to ribbons. "It's only that we've found through experience that certain designations struggle to integrate in with the others. I'll check around for a Romantic-focused or friendlier safehouse that can take you in, but in the meantime you'll have the room to yourself. Won't that be nice?"
Rafael has never slept alone in his memory when he wasn't in training, locked in the white room, light burning through his closed eyelids. Well, then just for the couple of weeks he spent in the bookstore room, but even then he'd known there was a store cat out somewhere walking around at night. This... this is supposed to be what happens until he's ready to get out on his own.
Because he can't be trusted.
Because he's going to fuck anything that moves, right? That's what they do, they can't help themselves, they're all just fucking-
He cuts off the thought and clears his throat. "Yes, sir."
"Please. Just Mr. Martin." The man claps him on the back, in a way he must think is soothing. Rafael instinctively leans back into the touch, only to have Mr. Martin immediately pull his hand away.
"I-I'm sorry." He turns around, raising his eyes to meet Mr. Martin's, looking for some hint of warmth there. He finds it, but it isn't the warmth he knows, the one lined with desire with arrogance and ownership of him. This warmth is... frightening, in the way it's there but distant from him, too. The warmth of someone who doesn't really care that much about him at all. At least not about owning him.
Rafael only knows how to be owned.
"That's quite all right," Mr. Martin soothes, but something tells Raf it really isn't, not at all. Do the others not do this? Is this only a Romantic thing, to need the touch? Maybe he's overthinking this.
He misses the bruises his master and mistress left on him, suddenly, the indentations of their nails and teeth. Those at least told him he was wanted. Someone wanted him. He's not real if no one wants him, he's just a ghost.
No one will want him, now, damaged and used and he remembers what his handler told him. No one can love a pet, not really, except their masters.
And he's run away from his.
He deserves to feel like this, doesn't he?
No one will care about him now. Maybe no one ever did.
Somebody loved you, once. The voice is the man who helped him find his way out, who gave him a plastic feather he still keeps, that he brought with him here, rings through his mind.
He tries to remember the hope he'd felt at those words.
They lie to us all. Somebody loved you.
He pinned everything on the sincerity in the man's voice, in the look in his wide green eyes
Was he wrong?
"I'll give you the night to get used to your new room," Mr. Martin says, gesturing a little to the empty space, the little bed, the blank walls. The barred window. "We have breakfast every morning at 8 am, but you're free to come downstairs whenever you like and just scrounge around until you find something, if you'd prefer. We have lots of cold cereal, hard-boiled eggs, that kind of thing. We do ask that you not begin cooking until we've seen what you can do. Lunch is at 12:30, dinner at 6:30. Again, snack as you need to, absolutely every food that isn't labeled with a name is yours."
Rafael swallows. "I-I can't read, sir."
"Mr. Martin."
"... right. Mr. Martin."
"And I assumed as much, Romantics usually can't. Just check for black marker, and if you see black marker, assume someone's got a name on that, okay?" He smiles, and Rafael smiles back.
Romantics can return a smile even if they're bleeding.
"Yes, s-... Mr. Martin. I understand." His fingers tighten around the nylon of the backpack someone at the bookstore had given him. Everything he has fits in there - some extra clothes, some extra underwear - he's never worn underwear before but he likes it, he likes the added barrier between his skin and the world that would lay its hands on him.
His plastic feather from the man at the museum is in there, he goes to sleep every night rubbing his fingers over the vanes, remembering the way the other man had looked, so insistent on helping him be saved.
He would hate to disappoint him by being bad at freedom when he was so, so good at being a pet.
"Great. Let me know if anyone gives you trouble. We've been working on it, but some of our people can be a little... well, reluctant. There's a lot of bad experiences, you know?"
Bad experiences with people like him. Romantics. Pets that get the good treatment, who know how to arch their back and bite their lip and make their gaze warm and liquid. Pets that sneak and snitch and curry favor and suck up and lay back and-
And have it easy.
It never felt easy. It felt like hell on earth.
Rafael licks at his lips and slowly nods. "I will."
"Perfect. Okay, I'll leave you to it. Remember, breakfast at 8, but seriously - come downstairs and grab some food or something to drink whenever you want. We do timed showers just to make sure nobody fights over them, your shower slot's at 9:30, so... couple hours from now."
He just nods at this. He can read time, he can do that much. The numbers spin a little, get blurry, but he can do it.
Mr. Martin gives him another slight smile and then steps away, walking down the hall. Rafael hears whispers, and feels his cheeks burn as he understands it's the other rescues, and they're probably talking about him.
He knows what they're saying.
The same things the trainees said in his Facility.
Please, it hurts to live like this, I don't like it, I never liked it. Please believe me.
They won't. The others never do.
He closes the door, then turns and looks at his little room, all to himself. He shudders, a horrible loneliness already clawing its way up his throat.
He wants someone to hold him down on the bed and keep him there, to whisper that he's good, to hold his face in their hands and tell him what to do and when. Hell on earth with other people is better than heaven alone.
Assuming this is anything but oblivion.
What if all he did by escaping was make himself no longer exist?
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@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @whump-tr0pes @symphony-of-greys @orchidscript @doveotions aaahhh I can't remember who asked for Rafael