Thinking about Quinn, now that he's safe, what is his biggest regret?
Oof.
Collins visibly bristles at the question, squeezing Quinn's hand a little firmer than just moments ago, but he stays quiet.
"We should have done it at night," Quinn says, almost too quickly, "We were foolish to think we could take the ship during the day. We waited until the shift change but-."
Collins swallows hard, guilt flooding his belly knowing full well that he was a large part of why the mutiny failed. He's never felt that blame from Quinn though, never once. He swallows the guilt and looks to Quinn, frowning deeply as he waits for him to finish his thoughts.
Quinn looks back at him, meeting his eye with a softness, a knowing sadness.
"Murphy said it wasn't right, to kill the Captain in his bed," Quinn says, his face hardening as he looks back to you, "I agreed with him back then. It felt wrong. Excessive."
"And now," you ask quietly.
Quinn's lip trembles, in more anger than anything else you think, "Now-I've been in that man's bed. And I think that, the gods, the universe, whatever you believe in, I think they would have been fine with it."
Vince closes his eyes, feeling exhaustion pull at every muscle and tendon, weigh down every single bone. Warm brown fingers card gently through his short hair - cut for a role, but he's thinking about growing it out a little again.
"Hard day on set?" Dmitri rumbles, and Vince smiles, a little, resting a hand on the big man's thigh. Near him is a glass, as much vodka as it is mixer, but he's ignoring it, for now.
"Kind of," He mumbles in reply. "Hard scene."
It's a sex scene, that they're working on, and today they only made it halfway through. The intimacy coordinator is doing her best, but Vince is skittish with scenes like that on a good day, and lately he's been having fewer and fewer good days.
Eventually, he'll have to admit that, to himself if not to Dmitri. But not yet.
Vince and the actress are both nervous going into it. It's her first big role after a sudden unexplained disappearance from Hollywood, and vince wonders if it happened to her, too.
But he can't figure out how to ask.
How to begin.
Hi, hey, I just want to know if-... no, see, when I was 21...
"Maybe you should take a break after this one wraps," Dmitri says, thoughtfully. "It seems like it's taking a lot out of you."
He sees so much more than Vince ever means to show.
Vince smiles. It's nice to have someone know him so well.
CW: Trauma survivor, referenced noncon and assault, heavy internalized victim-blaming and self-loathing/anti-asexuality (Chris has serious issues from his conditioning around this)
(references events from this small series)
I think you should spend time apart, not with me.
When Chris picks up his phone, it's not at all the message from Laken he expected to see. Not the kind of thing they've ever sent before.
He has to read it two times, then three. The letters swim and shake along with a dull pounding inside his head, but no matter how he tries to make them into other words - tell himself he must have misunderstood, must be missing something - they come back together the same in the end.
I think you should spend time apart, not with me.
Each letter is as crisp and clean as a sterilized blade between each rib, one by one by one by one.
The words are a body blow. They're a hundred blows, beating him into a barely recognizable shattered shell of himself. It wasn't supposed to happen this way - it's been a bad few days, yeah, a bad week really, but until yesterday's fight it had never occurred to him that Laken might give up on him.
The fight was his fault, anyway.
He meant to apologize last night, but then Nova had come into his room, and he'd lost the rest of the night to lying next to Jake, trying to remember how to stop living inside his head again, how to stop being still.
He'd woke up this morning with his stomach doing butterfly flips inside him, nervous, but he'd really wanted to say he was sorry, for the fight, for all the weirdness lately. He'd wanted to apologize for being difficult.
Instead... he'd woken up to find a missed text from the night before, sent after he'd shoved Nova away but before he could stand to look at anything again.
I think you should spend time apart, not with me.
There it sits.
He hasn't unlocked his phone yet. Instead, he keeps tapping the button to light up the screen, looking at the message preview that has all he needs to see. Lets it go dark again. As if one of these times he'll click and it'll say something else.
But it doesn't,
It just says the same damn thing.
I think you should spend time apart.
Not with me.
He's still staring at it when another one comes in. He feels the soft pulse of his phone in his hand, and the screen lights on its own.
LAKEN - NOW Did you see my message?
He thinks maybe Kauri had it easier when he was the age Chris is now. Back when Kauri carried on entire conversations in emoji form, letting the nuance and ambiguity take over, the recipient working through the meaning on their own. With this, each letter is merciless, each word is unmistakable. He can’t misunderstand it.
Can he?
He opens the phone with shaking fingers, types back yes, presses send, and turns his phone off.
Then he throws it at the wall.
He’s grateful for the heavy plastic case that makes it bounce off and drop to the floor without breaking. There's a strip on the back, textured and a soft purple, gray, white, and black. He rubs his fingers over it sometimes in class to keep himself from rocking and being distracting.
Now he just... stares at it.
Laken bought that for him. They bought the shirt he's wearing right now-
He yanks it off his head before he can think, balls up the soft fabric and throws it as well. It just sort of drifts pointlessly to the floor, a single eyeball from the print of a band he likes staring back at him.
Laken has ranted before about people who break up by text message, and Chris has to breathe through a physical ache in his chest that tightens every muscle at how awful he must be that they're not doing this face to face. How awful, how used-up, how shredded apart, how fucking pretty he is.
After all, he and Laken have been together for more than a year, and he still held perfectly still for Nova to touch him before he remembered how to move. After all, he’s a grown man who still cried and fell apart when Jake was hurt. After all, after all, after all...
He scrambles across the floor for his phone again, turns it back on. Part of him hopes he’ll see a new text saying they take it back, they didn’t mean it. Or just asking him to apologize for what he’d said that night before, for how he’d thrown their confusion over his reaction to something back at them, echoing out the way Kauri fights sometimes, talking about himself the way he thinks everyone else might be thinking about him, so he says the insult first and no one else gets to surprise him with it.
But there’s nothing new.
He manages to open the texts again, barely, and breathes in gasps, nearly pants, as he types out, you don’t want me at your place?
Not right now.
Is it because of what I can’t do?
It takes them a minute to answer. Every single second ticks by with a slowness Chris hasn’t felt since his days in the cold white room, tied down to stillness, forced to endure every minute that passed in perfect silence or to the soundtrack of his own tears and pleading for it to stop.
When they do respond, it’s just, it’s because of what you won’t do.
His breath catches in his throat. The ache in his head starts to pound harder, and he has to close his eyes against a sharp stab behind them.
What he won’t do.
They’ve never cared before. How-... how could they suddenly care now? The fight had only a little bit been about that, it’d really been about something else. About his nightmares, how he’s not sleeping, not seeing his friends, skipping therapy. It hadn’t even been about... that. About what Chris can do and what he can’t, in bed.
But that was the thing - the fight had started when Chris had flinched back from Laken’s touch to his back, and snapped at them, and accused them of wanting too much, and...
And now this.
It’s like they knew about Nova. Knew that he could be good just fine - better than fine, Handler Petrus said he was one of the best he’d ever worked with once - he just... wouldn’t. Won’t. Doesn’t want to. Never wanted to.
Can’t do it without tearing himself to pieces all over again.
It was always a scream inside his mind, but should he have pushed it down and tried harder to be more like everyone else? Is he losing Laken because of it? Did Nova pick up on something Chris himself doesn’t know?
Should he have... tried?
Even if it hurt?
He drops the phone again, then kicks it viciously under his bed, listening to the scrape of it sliding across the floor, the thump as it hits the wall. He hears it vibrate again, but this time he doesn’t care what Laken has to say.
They’ve said enough.
He understands.
Part of him expected this eventually.
He leaves the room, doesn’t bother to pull on his compression shirt, even. He lets his skin prickle bare and exposed to the air. He accepts the discomfort, the uneasy feeling of being too seen, too felt.
The house is quiet, this early.
He makes himself toast with butter, wincing at the scrape of the knife against the crisp bread, the sound boring into his ears. But eventually it’s done, and he slumps into a chair at the kitchen table, willing himself to cry. Somehow, the tears just... don’t happen.
He can hear Jake snoring softly from the living room. He’d been up with Chris until nearly 4 am, then Chris was awake again at 6:30, looking at that text, looking over and over and over again. Two hours of sleep leave him weirdly euphoric alongside his despair. Like he’s floating in some nightmare place that isn’t awake and isn’t sleeping, either.
He’s probably slept nine hours in three days at this point. He keeps seeing Jake with a knife sticking out of him every time he closes his eyes. Jake, screaming as Antoni pushed cloth into his wound to stop up the bleeding. Jake with a bullet wound, sitting up against the wall, staring at him with wide eyes whispering, It’s okay, Tristan, I love you, it’s okay as he dies.
He can’t sleep. He can’t leave for long. He can’t breathe. He can’t think.
Him being what he is, it’s the reason Jake is hurt. If he hadn’t been his brother, he wouldn’t have decided to run a house for Romantics, and he wouldn’t have ended up dealing with all the dangerous bits about them.
Jake said it himself, didn’t he? It’s a mistake, running a house for Romantics. Not his best idea. A mistake.
Chris is a mistake.
Him being weak, and cowardly... it’s hurting Jake, making his life harder.
He makes everyone’s life harder.
There’s a soft sound of footsteps behind him, and he turns to find Nova in the doorway, staring back. She’s in a sleeveless gray dress and has her long dark hair pulled back from her temples, spilling in a waterfall down her back. Her eyes are dark and fathomless, and she gives him a faint, slight smile.
She had smiled like that with one hand down his pants.
Chris turns around, too fast, his head spinning a little, and hunches over his toast. “Good... good, um, good morning,” He mumbles.
She clears her throat. “Morning. Chris, about-... about last night...”
“Don’t, um, don’t-... don’t don’t don’t worry about it.” He takes a breath. He doesn’t want his toast any longer.
“I’m sorry,” She says, simply. “I spoke to Sarita about it, and... and she said this happens with us, and I should apologize, but, um. So I am. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-... I thought I was helping.”
“I... know you did.” His words are slowing down. Chris can’t hold on to his thoughts, they want to drift away somewhere else, somewhere safer. Somewhere darker.
“When I was with-... with my Miss, she would always say, if you are sad the best way to fix it is to make your body forget that feeling, replace it with something else. And that was what we replaced my sadness with. So, you were sad and upset, and I thought I could fix it that way.” She pauses, flushing a little, looking down and to the side as she moves with effortless grace to get a glass and fill it with water, take a small sip.
“Kauri used to... to do that,” Chris says after a pause, thinking about it. Kauri, who would show up in the small hours of the morning reeking of liquor and someone else’s cologne, or just didn’t show up at all. Kauri, who would laugh instead of crying, and laugh with someone’s arms around him, a guy whose name he didn’t know.
Kauri, who ran and ran and ran and can do things and be things that Chris can’t.
Or... won’t.
What if he’s been hurting Laken this whole time and didn’t know it, because he was already hurt himself?
His foot starts to tap tap tap on the floor until he stops it.
“Did he? Did it-... work for him?” Nova asks it with genuine curiosity, and her eyes are so pretty. He looks up at her, and then down again, pushing the plate of toast away from himself.
“I don’t know,” Chris whispers. “I, I don’t know. He’s happy now, but...”
“Was he happy then?”
“No. But, but, but... maybe we aren’t supposed to be. At least... not with, with anyone... who isn’t like us.”
“Jake isn’t like us,” Nova points out. Her presence in the room feels heavy, like a weight pushing down on him. But what does it matter? He’s not with Laken anymore, anyway. If he wanted to, he could stand right up and kiss Nova right now, press her back into the counter, and learn what it’s like to be the one doing things and not just having them done to him.
But his body doesn’t stir at the thought. It never has.
“He is,” Chris answers. “A, a little bit. I’m, I’m, I’m sorry, too, Nova. Sorry that I-I can’t.”
“No, I know. You have a partner, and I shouldn’t have-”
“I don’t have... I, I, I I don’t have a partner anymore.” Chris stands up, leaving her there with his plate of untouched toast. The sky outside is bright as the sun rises, as if mocking the way he feels like a stormcloud inside.
Nova watches him leave, and whispers to herself, “No partner?”
Chris goes outside, pulling a sweatshirt that hangs on the coatrack on over his head to protect his skin, curling up on the porch swing and watching cars pulling out of driveways as the neighborhood starts to head to work in ones and twos.
He doesn’t cry.
He sits very, very still, and he is silent.
Upstairs, under the bed, his phone vibrates, again and again, unnoticed.
Just go talk to Nat, Chris.
That’s all I said.
Just go see Nat and get a night or three away from the house.
Being there all the time is overwhelming you.
Are you even looking at these?
Chris you can’t just ignore me every time I say something you don’t like
Chris answer me
...
...
Oh shit, Chris, my phone autocorrected earlier and I didn’t notice
I meant “some time at Nat’s”, not apart
Chris?
Are you seeing my messages?
Baby?
Chris, please check your phone and answer me.
Please.
CW: Drunk whumpee, referenced drug use, abuse survivor lashing out, low-level ptsd, rough recovery drabble, some references to dubcon and noncon
Timeline: During the years of Kauri’s Poor Life Choices
“Come on, baby,” Kauri says, in a voice like a deep rumbling purr, tilting his head just right, putting all that heat and warmth he doesn’t really feel into his eyes. He’s a good liar, he’s a great liar, and the booze in his veins and whatever that guy gave him two hours ago make him feel unstoppable. “Take me back.” He pauses, then giggles, and he knows they love to hear him laugh, they always love to hear him laugh.
He can laugh with a knife to his throat, he can laugh with his legs spread, he can laugh when every other trainee would be screaming, if they were in his place.
Jake, though, Jake doesn’t like the laugh. He doesn’t like the heat in Kauri’s eyes. He doesn’t like the voice, or the head-tilt, or any of it. He just sets his jaw, looking around the bar as if checking for witnesses, and Kauri can’t stop laughing at how comically serious he is.
“Oh my god.” Kauri giggles again, puts his hands over his mouth. The bar is spinning around him, the colors are liquid bleeding into each other, he can feel the air move over his skin, like someone touching him. “You look like you ate a lemon.”
“I have class tomorrow, Kauri,” Jake says, voice sharp and flat somehow both at once, and he grips Kauri by the arm, pulling him towards the exit. A few of the guys at the table Kauri was sitting at boo loudly at the loss of Kauri’s sparkling brilliance - or maybe just at losing the way he’d been sitting in their laps one by one just to feel their arms around him. “I don’t mind taking you home-”
“Not my hooooome,” Kauri singsongs, but he lets himself be pulled. Jake’s hand on his arm feels nice. All of it feels nice, all touch, anyone’s hands mouth whatever they want on him, it’s nice.
Means he’s wanted.
Means he’s real.
Jake exhales, rubbing his free hand over his face. He looks tired, doesn’t he? Kauri can suddenly see those dark circles under his eyes, the way his hair is all mussed up from a pillow.
“I woke you up,” Kauri says as they leave, the stale heat and booze-smell from inside the bar giving way to cooler, fresher air outside. He lets Jake pull him down the sidewalk, looking up at him. He nearly walks into someone going the opposite way, until Jake pulls him to the side. “You, you were asleep when the phone rang.”
“Yeah,” Jake says roughly. His shirt’s on inside-out - Kauri hadn’t noticed that before, either. He must have rolled out of bed and changed out of his pajamas without even taking time to check.
Kauri called for a ride and Jake didn’t waste a second.
“My car’s a few lots down,” Jake says, not looking at him as they walk. Kauri hums, taking in the beauty of the streetlights with their halos like angels hovering over the road, lighting the sidewalk. Someone calls his name and Kauri waves, trying to go give her a hug, but Jake’s grip on his arm stops him. It stops him, and makes his heart beat faster. “If we hurry, we can get back by 3, I can sleep til 6:30 if I pay for parking tomorrow instead of taking the bus.” He sounds like he’s already worked this all out for himself, and maybe he has. Maybe he talked through it the whole way here.
Kauri thinks of Jake talking to himself, planning out his day at a stoplight, and starts laughing again. Once he starts laughing, he can’t stop. They pass a small park, a kind of courtyard between two businesses, and Kauri puts up a hand, collapsing onto a bench. He can’t stop the giggling bubbling up out of him.
Jake all serious-faced, checking his phone, I can be asleep by 3:30, I can do this, I can do that, his whole planned life and his classes and Kauri is drunk at a bar and he’s high at a bar he did some stuff with a guy in a bar and he’s calling for a ride back from the bar-
“Kauri, come on.” Jake’s voice is weary, not just tired, not just sleepy, but exhausted. By the night, and by Kauri himself. “I don’t have time, I have to go to sleep.”
“You’re as stupid as I am,” Kauri says when he can get control of himself enough to speak, and there’s still laughter edging his voice, slightly breathless. “You know that? You’re a fucking moron just like me. Doing this. You’re so fucking stupid, we’re both so fucking stupid, Jake.”
“Kauri, you’re not stupid. I’m not talking about this here with you-”
“Why do you do this? Huh?” Kauri shakes his head, sweaty black curls sticking to his forehead in a sudden chill as a breeze ruffles them. He can feel his hair at the back of his neck, too, pressing there. Not the weight of a collar, but a memory of one anyway. “Why do you answer when I call?”
Jake swallows, rubs at his face again. “Because I want to-”
“No. No, that’s not it. No, you answer because I’m your fucking... your charge, right? Your ward. Because you feel sorry for me.” Kauri giggles, but there’s no real humor in it now. “I’m pitiful.”
“It’s not like that. You’re in pain-”
“Oh, shove your fucking psych-talk, Dr. Stanton.” Kauri shakes his head, leaning his back against the metal curve of the bench, looking straight up. In the city there are no stars, only a faint glow of lights making even the night sky just a little orange around the edges. “That’s what it is, right? You feel sorry for us, so you get to be the big hero, and we’re the pretty little pets grateful for whatever crumbs of mercy you throw-”
“Kauri. Stop it.” Jake’s voice snaps, and he leans in closer, and Kauri breathes in the fear that hearing an angry male voice lights in him, lets it spark his nerves with the booze and the everything else already there. “I’m not doing this because I feel sorry for anyone. Okay? Get up, we’re going home.”
“It’s. Not. My. Home.” Kauri meets Jake’s eyes this time, his own a sparkling, crackling blue flame, and Jake’s stony silent ocean, nearly gray in the darkness. “It’s not. You like this, huh? You like getting to show up and save the damsel in distress? Yeah?”
“Kauri, I would give anything to be fucking asleep right now-”
“But you didn’t. You got right up when I called, and that’s why you’re as stupid as I am. I’m brainless because they beat all my brains out of me, Jake - beat and fucked and drugged ‘em all out, left me all sweet and pretty and pointless for whoever paid the price - why are you stupid? Huh?”
Jake’s jaw works. “Kauri-”
“You’re stupid because you think I’m gonna stop being like this. You’re stupid because you think I can get better.”
“You can-”
“No, I can’t. I like me this way.” Kauri snorts, looks down his hands, but they’re shaking a little, and he doesn’t like that. He can’t feel them shaking but he can see them shaking.
“I don’t think you do,” Jake tries, but his voice is getting ragged along the edges, and Kauri knows he’s pushing too far but he can’t stop himself now. “I think you want to get better and you just need more time.”
“Time?” Kauri laughs, and people walking by look over at them briefly, at the mess on the bench and the big tough man leaning over him. Kauri gives a little wave, I see you eavesdropping, assholes, and they hurry past. “Maybe this is fucking it, huh? What you see is all that’s left of me. What do you do then?”
Jake stares down at him. “I keep coming to pick you up anyway.”
“Oh, you’re just the best. Huh? The absolute pinnacle of fucking manhood. Jake Stanton, guardian angel and patron saint of the fucked-up messes that fall on your doorstep,” Kauri sing-songs, clapping his hands together in a mockery of prayer, eyes rolling back to the sky. “At least I’m nice to look at, huh? Got that going for me. I mean, it’s pretty much all I’ve got going for me, good fucking looks and pretty mouth and my tongue knows how to do that thing-”
“Kauri-”
“Used to be popular, in training,” Kauri says, leaning forward now, licking at his lips. Like Jake is the prey this time, like Kauri for once isn’t the one being held down but the one doing the holding. “Used to be a favorite. Only one way you get to be anyone’s favorite in training, Jake, and it’s not by being smart. Face it, Stanton, you got a hopeless case on your hands, you’re a big saintly perfect hero getting in your car after midnight to get your chaste savior rocks off with a fucking whore who won’t stop, who can’t stop, who will never get any better than this-”
“Kauri, for the love of God, stop it!” Jake’s voice raises finally, and Kauri flinches back against the bench. Adrenaline pulses all at once through his veins, heart racing, and he feels a mix of terror and a mean, cruel, small victory.
Made him mad. I made him mad. Now he’ll be just like everyone else. Now he’ll hurt me. Now he’ll see why Owen had to.
But Jake doesn’t get closer, doesn’t shove a finger in Kauri’s face, doesn’t grab him by his shirt or his arm or his hand, doesn’t slap him doesn’t hit doesn’t scream. All he does is sigh, and look away, down the street in the direction he must have left his car. His shoulders shift. Kauri can see the anger in him, but it doesn’t rise, it isn’t wielded. It... fades, after a second, and leaves behind a weary look. An emotion Kauri can’t read. “Kauri. I’m not doing this. I’m not having this fight, not this late, not now. If you want to argue this in the morning, fine, but... god. I need to go home, okay?”
“Then go home,” Kauri says. He feels tears in his eyes, suddenly, and he can’t understand why. “Leave. No one’s stopping you.”
“You called me to come get you,” Jake says, but he knows where this is going, Kauri can see it in the way his shoulders slump, in how his hand moves into his pocket to dig his keys out. “Just come get in the car, okay? If you want to argue all the way home, it’s fine, but-”
“I already told you it’s not my fucking home. Go, Jake. I’m sorry I called. I won’t call you again.”
“Yes, you will.” Jake looks at him, an expression of almost comical confusion and hurt, and Kauri’s heart aches. “You will, right?”
But he sets his jaw. “No, I won’t. Don’t worry, I can handle myself.”
“Did you call me out here just to start a fight, Kaur?”
Kauri doesn’t know how to answer, because he hadn’t, but now that he has started a fight he doesn’t want to admit it was an accident. He just swallows back the apology that tries to find its way out, forces it down. He sits back against the bench and shrugs, crossing his arms in front of himself.
The silence draws out.
As though the silence in itself said something - and maybe it did, really - Jake nods, finally, and pulls his keys out from his pocket. “Fine. I’m sorry it went this way tonight. Please... please call me.”
Kauri doesn’t answer, because if he opens his mouth, he’ll apologize for doing this, he’ll beg Jake not to hate him for it, and he can’t do that. He doesn’t know why, but there’s a rock in his mind blocking him from taking the first step to mend the break he made.
“Get some sleep, Saint Stanton. Maybe I’ll be pathetic enough to call you in the morning. We can go back to pretending you give a fuck about who I am as a person and not just as the little rescue who needs you. Make up for whatever fucked you up before that makes you want to work with us.”
That hits home. Kauri sees Jake wince, sees his hurt feelings written all over his face. Sees Jake consider arguing, give up. Sees the second Jake decides to stop trying.
That’s right. Stop trying. I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve you.
Kauri tries to feel that sense of victory from before, but all he feels now is cold - and as Jake turns and walks away, the cold slips from his heart into his fingertips, all the way down to his toes.
Cold, and alone.
“Congratulations,” He whispers to himself, watching Jake’s back as he walks away, until he turns a corner and is gone. “Good job, Kauri Grant. You got exactly what you wanted.”
(If you don't mind me tossing Dmitri at you while I work on a piece with Flynn and Kai)
Vincent is sitting in his hot tub, lemonade in one hand and Dmitri's hand in the other.
Vince had the hot tub installed a month ago. He doesn't know why - it had been a whim, something that skidded across his mind and he'd had his phone in hand calling his assistant before he could second-guess it.
Now he sits in water as warm as his hottest baths, trying to relax a painful knot in his back after a rough few days working, a lemonade in one hand and Dmitri's hand in the other.
"It'll help my shoulders relax," He says, aware he's wheedling, negotiating, whining. He lets his head fall back on the side of the hot tub and turns it, looking up and over at Dmitri as he looks down. "Just a couple shots."
"I'm not going to stop you," Dmitri says, gentle as always. "But last night you said you wanted to stop. Or at least cut down."
"Yeah, I know. I started drinking to dull the pain, and then because I was lonely. Kind of never figured out how to stop."
"Drinking, or being lonely?"
Vince exhales at the unexpected introspective question. "... Both, I guess."
Dmitri goes quiet, sipping his own lemonade and looking out towards the carefully landscaped trees along the far-away fence line. "What pain were you dulling, Vee?"
Vince thinks of his hands cuffed to a headboard, drinking drugged water, waking up to find Owen three inches from his face whispering that he loved him. The tearing agony within. The throbbing in the bruises that kept multiplying.
He thinks of Owen's spitting, screaming rage.
Vince remembers hands around his neck, and the realization that he was going to die.
"Spoiled child star stuff," He murmurs, and doesn't meet Dmitri's eyes. "You know how actors are."
CW: Aftermath of trauma nightmare, some references to pet whump or vague noncon, but mostly angsty comf
"Pl, please. Please, please please please please don't get up, please. Please don't." His voice is trembling, cracking in the darkness, and his hands push too hard against Antoni's chest, straddling his waist with a leg on either side.
The heels of his hands rub over old scars that itch and crawl under the touch, but Antoni finds it in himself to stay calm, and his own hands come up slowly to encircle the newest rescuer's wrists. "I understand," He says, hoping his voice is soothing and not too rough from sleep. "But you cannot-"
"Please," the new boy whispers, Chris falling towards him, not quite laying on top of him. His breath smells like cinnamon and vanilla toothpaste, he doesn't use the same kind everyone else does. Antoni has never asked why.
"Please," The boy whispers again. "I, I don't want to to to, to, um, to be alone, I don't-... I'll d-do anything, please-"
"No," Antoni says softly, in a whisper right back. "You won't. But here, you had a nightmare? Is that why?"
"Yes, I, I think so, I was, he he he he, he, he was... he found me and, and, um, he... I, I can't sleep al-alone I have to, to have someone, have to..."
"You do not. Still." Antoni pushes down the itching feeling of wrong at touch and carefully slides his arms around the boy's narrow shoulders, until his head rests on Antoni's shoulder. His breathing is harsh and ragged. Antoni makes his own carefully calm by comparison, even, almost placid. "Stay here until the nightmare leaves you. He is not here, Chris. This house is safe."
"Safe," The youngest member of their household murmurs. Under the blankets, his feet rub together, a purposeful motion that seems to soothe, as the boy relaxes more and more. "S, safe here."
"Right," Antoni says gently. While the boy settles, Antoni scars are all alight with fire, throbbing with disgust at so close a touch.
Kauri hearing about Jameson's situation and having a stirring of discomfort/familiarity before it clicks later on.
Yessss. But also Allyn hearing this story and with genuine confusion saying, "But why didn't you just be good instead?" And Kauri and Jameson just staring at them in silence.
i'm really behind on antoni's story but who was the woman mentioned in the noncanon recapture bit?
The Woman is mentioned throughout Antoni's captivity. She is another captive - not a Boxie exactly, Antoni doesn't think, but maybe so. She is kept mostly in the bedroom, and Antoni listens to her scream night after night.
He never learns her name before his escape.
She was Oscar Davies' wife, who left him. His revenge was to have her abducted and her memory erased, and she was kept as a kind of Box Babe in his home.
