16 w chris and nat? (perhaps chris after falling out of a tree or smth)
CW: Brief references to trauma, pet whump, memory loss, conditioning, dehumanization, and noncon.
TIMELINE: Early in Chris’s recovery
There’s a sound she doesn’t quite recognize, but then a cry that she absolutely does, and she heads for the door, wiping her hands on a dishtowel as she goes, figuring the rest of the dishes will just wait until she knows if she just heard what she thinks she did.
She finds him on the ground next to the white birch tree, curled on his side, whining in pain. “Chris! What did you do?”
Chris blinks up at her, and there’s red on his face that’s rapidly darkening, wiping out his freckles on one side. He pushes himself up to sitting with effort, cradling one arm a little, but at least he can clearly move it. “Um. I, I, I was... climbing.”
“Well, are you hurt?” She drops into a crouch next to him, ignoring the crackle in her knees.
He swallows, his eyes slipping to the side. “No.”
“Oh, really.” Nat’s voice holds a gentle, affectionate sarcasm as she reaches out and cups his face, feeling him lean immediately into the touch, smiling faintly. Then she runs her thumb over his cheekbone and he jerks back. “Hm. What’s this bruise, then? I think you scraped up your face, Chris, how’d you do that?”
Chris licks at his lips and hunches his shoulders, hiding in the big shirt he’s got on, knobby knees bloodied and dirt-covered where they stick out from his mesh shorts. “Um. I, I... um-”
“And don’t say climbing the tree. You and I both know you can’t get high up enough in that birch to hurt yourself when you fall.”
“I, I... I, um, I...” His hands grip into his shorts and bunch them up, and he sways, nervously. “Um, I, I... am, am, am, am I, in... am am I, in in in-in trouble?”
“Chris. Honey. Have you ever been in trouble here? I just want to know what happened.”
He still won’t look at her. “I, um, tried... to to to climb down the, um, the-the drainpipe.”
Nat slowly turns to look at the gutter, with the drainpipe twisted away from the side of the house in a way that’s unmistakable, now that she sees it. “Chris, I-... why?”
He is still looking off to the side. “I, um, I saw-... I thought, you know, if, if people do it in, um, in in, in movies, and, and it looks, um, neat when when when they do it-”
“Chris.” Nat groans and sits back in the dirt herself, giving an incredulous laugh, the breeze whispering through the braid that runs down her back. “You tried to climb a gutter pipe because you saw it in a movie and thought it looked cool?”
Chris blinks. “Um. Yes.” He reaches out and carefully puts a hand on her knee, and his eyes are so very big in his narrow face, losing the last of the teenage puppyfat even as he struggles to break out of the childlike mindset that the rescues all arrive with. He’s going to look like an adult long before he feels or acts like one, Nat thinks.
She just has to hope she can protect him long enough to get there.
“Am... Nat, am, am, am... was I-... was I bad? Am I in, do I need to be, um, be be be punished?” There’s fear in him, now, worry that he’s already crossed a line, pushed her too far, done something he can’t come back from.
One stupid screwup, and he genuinely can’t tell if he can earn forgiveness without pain.
Any other 18-year-old who still lived with his family might be lectured, or grounded, or had something taken away, but Chris has already lost everything. There is nothing she can take from him except for the foundation of support he needs more than he needs air, now.
Discipline to him isn’t losing a privilege or his phone or something small and simple like being grounded.
To Chris, discipline is pain racing along your nerve-endings until you’re sorry enough, discipline is isolation and terror and pleading for mercy, discipline is hands in your hair and a voice in your ear telling you you’re nothing except for what they have taught you to do, that your worth relies on keeping them happy, even if it hurts.
Any other teenager doing stupid shit, Nat might get angry at.
Now, though, she just sighs and opens her arm for Chris to crawl into the embrace, feeling him grip tightly around her waist. “You’re not going to be punished, Chris. But let’s maybe think about how a gutter is not at all designed to hold human weight, shall we? And let’s not do that again? How’d you even get up there, anyway?”
“I, um, I like to, to, to get out my window onto the roof and, and, and I climb around sometimes.”
Nat sits there in silence, with Chris’s hair warm from sunlight brushing against her cheek, and then she says, “Damn it, Chris, I thought I was hearing squirrels!”
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Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker, @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth , @cubeswhump , @cupcakes-and-pain @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @orchidscript, @itallcomesdowntopain