would love to see the first time chris and kauri are introduced and how they become closer!!
CW: Vague references to past dubcon/noncon, vague references to conditioning
This is enough Kauri that I’m tagging both boys’ lists all at once: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @18-toe-beans, @burtlederp @finder-of-rings, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers, @moose-teeth, @whump-it, @lumpofwhump, @pumpkinthefangirl, @spiffythespook, @slaintetowhump, @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @stxckfxck , @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout
“He’s back,” Jake says, staring through the window towards the backyard. Chris sits up a little, frowning, looking from Nat, who gives a world-weary smile and tucks a bit of brown hair back behind her ear, to Jake, who gives an even world-wearier sigh and lets the curtain drop.
“Don’t sigh like that in front of him, you’ll scare him off,” Nat says, with a hint of affection in her voice. “You know how he is.”
“Does he know how he is?” Jake asks, and Chris wants to ask, who? But he’s not brave enough yet. All he does is curl up tighter on the couch, swathed in Jake’s big sweatshirt, swaying gently side to side, just feeling the soft fleece lining warm against his skin from the inside out. The slight brush of fabric over his bare skin feels good, gentle and soothing, so he keeps swaying, and no one tells him to stop.
He’s been waiting for them to tell him to stop for days, but each new thing - he tapped on the table, he let himself rock a little bit one morning - they don’t say stop at all. They just ask if he is okay, or needs anything, sometimes, and if he says no they act like he’s not doing it or maybe like doing it isn’t something he has to be afraid of anymore.
So today, he’s trying swaying.
No one stops that, either.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Jake says, giving Nat a raised eyebrow. He’s got his hands in his back pockets now, where Chris would like his hands to be sometimes, but they had a talk about that and he doesn’t have to - isn’t supposed to - be good here, not like that.
“I’m not,” Nat answers, giving Jake an impish little smile, showing a crooked tooth on one side, just slightly off compared to the others. “I got a call about three hours ago.”
From who? Chris doesn’t ask, but he wonders.
Jake huffs half-silent laughter, shaking his head. “D’you ever wonder why he keeps going back-”
“I know why.” Nat’s voice is quiet, but there’s a warning there, and Jake seems to understand what Chris doesn’t, because he nods, just slightly.
“How long ‘til he stops?”
“Hopefully he doesn’t,” Nat says, brusque now, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel as she steps out of Chris’s sight, heading for the back door. “If he stops going to him, he’ll stop coming here, too.”
“How d’you know that?” Jake asks, leaning around the corner himself.
Chris wants to beg someone to tell him who they are talking about already, but it’s not his place. He’s only been here a little while. All he does is close his eyes and focus on the shift of the fleece over his elbow as he moves his arm, back and forth, back and forth.
“Because if he stops coming somewhere he feels safe...” Nat says softly, almost too softly for Chris to hear. He can’t see her face and her emotions are held too deeply under her skin for the voice to mean much to him. “If he does that, Jake... that means he’s done.”
The backdoor smacks open a second later, and Chris flinches at the sudden burst of noise, pulling his arms inside Jake’s big sweatshirt and hunching his shoulders, looking worriedly towards the kitchen, where the sound came from.
“Kauri, it’s good to see you,” Nat says warmly, and there’s a pause. Chris closes his eyes, they are probably hugging. He has to be careful when he hugs because he doesn’t know how to not do other things, too.
“Just here for a night or two,” A voice he doesn’t know yet says brightly. There’s a thump, and then the sound of a zipper. Chris listens with rapt attention as an odd clicking noise starts up, and then the new voice whispers something.
Footsteps. Another pause.
“Stay longer,” Jake says, softly.
“Can’t,” The new person replies, a little muffled. They’re definitely hugging. Something twists inside Chris’s chest, a hint of discomfort he doesn’t have a name for. Why are they hugging? “You know me. I’m hopeless.”
“I’m kidding, Jake. I can’t because, believe it or not, I have something to do in two days.”
“What is something, exactly?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” The man’s voice slips into effortless flirtation, and Chris feels his teeth set together a little harder than they need to. He can do that voice too, just like that. Tilt his head and look up just a little from under his eyelashes, he’s so good at that, but Jake doesn’t want that from him.
“Gonna guess that means you don’t have anything and you’re just avoiding him, huh?” Jake’s own reply is flat, and Chris fights back the urge to give a little smile, because if the man was flirting with him, it didn’t work at all.
“Okay, fine, you got me. I’m avoiding a fight.”
“One you already had, or one you’re about to have?”
“Kauri, for fuck’s sake-”
“Jake. The fight was my fault, I said I was sorry, I left. Let it go. It’s fine.”
“If it was fine, you wouldn’t have left. I just want-”
“I know. And thanks. But I’m fine. When am I not fine?”
“Kauri, when the fuck are you fine?”
The Kauri-voice laughs instead of answering, and then he comes around the corner and the first thing Chris thinks is that his voice is surprisingly deep for the skinny, shortish man who is suddenly in his view, pretty with wide blue eyes and a mess of black curls that seem to defy gravity, wearing an unzipped hoodie over a t-shirt and jeans, looking every inch like the kind of person Chris wishes so badly he could be.
Kauri sees him on the couch and stops, blinking at him. “You got a new one of us?” He asks, surprise obvious in every line of his face, his posture.
Chris pulls himself himself a little more, lets his hair fall in front of his eyes, blurred copper to cut the new person apart into an eye, the curve of a jaw, the faded image printed on the t-shirt that looks as old as he is.
“A new... oh, yeah.” Jake moves around behind him, comically tall compared to Kauri, and gives Chris a warm smile. “Chris, this is Kauri. He kind of comes and goes, but I promise he’s not a total ass. Kauri, this is Chris, he just got here.”
Kauri watches him with unease, and Chris stares back with real nervousness. There’s a beat of silence, and then Kauri asks, voice pitched low, “Is... is he-”
“Yeah,” Jake says, softly. “He is. We don’t know by how much.”
Kauri’s face twists, in an expression that mars the pretty face with disgust. “But-”
“I know. But here he is.”
Kauri swallows - Chris can see his Adam’s apple shift, watches him cross his arms in front of himself uncomfortably. “Looking at him... was he... he was a-”
“Yes.” Jake’s voice darkens slightly. “He was. We’re not sure for how long, or for who.” Chris wants to sink into the couch cushion at the darkness in that voice, the barely-concealed anger lacing the tone, until the floor opens up and swallows him and he sinks into the earth.
Kauri nods, pauses, and then nods again, like he’s convincing himself of something, before he takes one step forwards and then another. “That’s kind of funny,” He says, with the tone of someone who knows what he’s about to say isn’t funny at all. “I never met another one while I was-... when I was, before. I, I mean, I met another pet... but not... never mind. Now I meet you, huh?”
Chris leans slowly back against the couch cushions as Kauri gets closer, watching him with green eyes that follow every movement, in perfect stillness and silence.
Except for one hand he’s pulled all the way inside his sleep, tapping with relentless speed against his own stomach, hidden from them all. Each tap against his own skin is a gentle soothe, a rush of reassurance, a reminder that he’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay.
“Kauri’s safe, Chris, I promise,” Jake says, moving over to sit next to Chris on the couch, putting a hand against his back. The warm weight makes Chris feel better, cared for. Cared about. He raises his eyes to look back at Kauri as the other boy stops in front of him and then drops down into a crouch, so Chris has to look down now. “He used to be a Romantic, too.”
Chris’s lips part, slightly, and he takes in the way that Kauri moves in a whole new light, the casual grace, the way his head tilts slightly to the side as he looks at Chris, and Chris unconsciously mirrors the motion.
“I was,” Kauri says, gently. Like Chris is an animal who might spook or run if he speaks any louder than that.
He’s not entirely wrong. Chris wants to bolt, but instead he presses himself into Jake’s side, and feels a thrill when the older man just slips an arm around him and holds on instead of pushing him away.
“What... what, what are you, you you-you now?” Chris asks, barely breathing.
Even living here with the other ones, it never occurred to him to think about there being an after. This new person, this Kauri, is living an after.
Kauri and Jake meet eyes, for just a second. Jake shakes his head, imperceptibly, then Kauri’s blue eyes are back on Chris’s green.
Kauri gives him a sweet, slightly one-sided smile. “Whatever the fuck I want to be,” He answers, in a low voice. “Eventually. I’m getting there. It’s taking me a while, but Nat’s patient and Jake has to do whatever she says-”
“Hey now,” Jake says in warning, humor in his tone, and the two of them share a smile, and the smile makes Chris’s chest all twisted up and strange again. He doesn’t want them to smile that way at each other. He doesn’t like it.
“Do... do you, you live here?” Chris asks, softly.
“Nat wishes I did,” Kauri answers, then shakes his head, and Chris watches the wild curls shift and move as well, a little shaggy and overgrown. It’s the kind of hair you want to bury your hands in, Chris thinks with a strange detachment, a train that runs its own track entirely separate from the others. A darker track. A track that leads down into the everything he was ever trained to do. “But no. I don’t live anywhere.”
Kauri blinks, as if he’s never thought of that question before. Then he just shoots Chris the same sunny smile he was giving Jake before, pops back up to his feet, and Chris feels like the moment where they saw each other is gone, and he badly wants it back. Somehow his question was the wrong one.
“Because a place to live is just a place they don’t let you leave,” Kauri says, without looking at him, staring out the window at the sidewalk
“Kauri.” Nat, standing in the doorway, crosses her arms just under her chest and leans against the doorframe. “That’s not how it works and you know it.”
“Do I?” Kauri tries the dizzying smile on her but she doesn’t fall for it, either, only giving him the faintest little quirk of her lips.
“Hey, don’t gang up on me, now,” Kauri says, but Chris feels a sudden tension in the room, a nervousness that comes off of Kauri in waves. “I’m just meeting someone new, give me a break.” He turns back to Chris and gives him a smile, like they’re in on this together. “Right? We should talk and get to know each other.”
Nat and Jake meet eyes - why does everyone have conversations without their mouths? It’s driving Chris crazy trying to understand the things they don’t say when it’s hard enough for him to understand the things they do. He frowns, swaying a little with Jake’s arm around him, licking at his bottom lip where there’s a little chapped spot that’s been bugging him all day.
I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.
“We’re still going to talk about this more later,” Nat says firmly.
“Absolutely,” Kauri replies, but when Nat sighs and walks away, back upstairs, he turns back to Chris and mouths, no we’re not. Then he winks.
Chris has to hide a little grin, ducking against Jake’s side with his chin lowered, turning his head to nuzzle into Jake’s neck. Jake gently pushes him back without a single suggestion of being upset at the touch, and instead gives Kauri a hard stare. “I saw that, you know.”
“You just like my face so much, you can’t stop looking,” Kauri teases, flirty, but now Chris can hear the training in it, the way he was taught to speak, just like that. Calm the problem, soothe the tension, use your voice and your eyes and your body to keep the worst ways to hurt at bay.
“Whatever.” Jake rolls his eyes. “Come on, come talk to Chris. He could probably use someone who knows what it’s like. We’re... trying, but you know the others are all Domestics, and-”
“Are they mean to him?” Kauri’s head jerks up, a sudden hard glint in eyes that have been soft this whole time. He stares at Jake, speaking evenly, strongly. “If they’re being mean to him the way the other houses are mean to me-”
“They’re not,” Jake says, putting up a hand in surrender. “I promise. We just don’t really know what it’s like. You do.”
“Yeah.” Kauri gives a laugh, but this time it’s bitter, and Chris leans slowly forward, watching his face.
Soft and smooth, pretty and smiling - and angry, roiling underneath all the softness.
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Kauri rubs the back of his neck with one hand, taking in a deep breath, and then he looks directly at Chris again. “I’ll start over. My name’s Kauri. I lived with-... with someone for a while.” He grips onto the sleeve of his hoodie and pulls it back, showing Chris the barcode and numbers tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. 645898.
Chris glances sidelong at Jake, nervously, and at his nod, Chris holds his own arm out and rolls back the oversized sleeve of Jake’s sweatshirt to show his own, slightly darker tattooed barcode. Fresher, newer. 223499.
“Can I, I ask you something, Kauri?” Chris asks, and his voice is small.
Kauri hesitates, then nods, slowly, licking his lips and giving a soft smile. “Yeah. Ask me whatever.”
“... are you, you happier?”
“Happier than, um... than, than than you were before?”
Kauri’s eyes fill with tears.
Chris’s heart drops somewhere near his knees. “I’m, I’m, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-sorry-sorry I didn’t, I didn’t think, shouldn’t have, have have have-”
“No, you’re okay, you’re fine!” Kauri holds his hands out, both of them. “I’m sorry. I just came from kind of an intense... he asked me the same thing, and I just-... he asked it differently and it wasn’t... I’m sorry. Let me tell you something, Chris.” Kauri moves back to him, back into his crouch, and takes Chris’s hand in both of his. He looks up at him, and Chris looks back.
A mirror of himself, only entirely different. A Romantic who isn’t a Romantic anymore, with no locked doors, who goes where he wants to go. Chris wants that so badly he can barely breathe, but he’s too terrified of the idea to ever do it.
Kauri seems, in that moment, impossibly brave.
“What I need to tell you... the other night,” Kauri says, not quite whispering, “I got caught out in the rain. It rained and rained and rained. Soaked through all my clothes and my jeans chafed my legs and it was fucking awful-”
“You could’ve come here,” Jake says, frowning, worried-angry, which is Chris’s favorite of the ways that Jake gets angry.
“Not the point, and I... I couldn’t be inside. It was, um, bad night.” Kauri gives a shrug, tossing his hair, the same sunny smile. “I can’t be inside on bad nights or I can, um, feel him, it’s just-... that’s not my point. Anyway, I ended up sleeping in a bathroom, so it smelled like disinfectant and gross, at the tail-end of a park I’d never been to before, so I didn’t know anybody and I’d had a shit panhandling day, so no dinner. I was hungry and cold and wet and had no blankets or anything, and you know what?”
“What?” Chris’s voice is a whisper.
“If you showed me sleeping hungry, soaked, in a stinking bathroom while laying my head on my backpack... and then you showed me sleeping dry and full in Mr. Owen’s bed with clean sheets and warm blankets... Chris... I would choose the bathroom in the park.” Kauri’s lips tremble, like he’s trying not to cry. “Over and over and over again, I would choose that bathroom, choose sleeping wet, choose being all by myself all night over a single night more with him. I don’t know... I don’t know about happier. But he can’t-” Kauri’s voice catches, and Jake jerks a little, as though he wants to hold them both at once, but Kauri leans away from even the hint of an offered touch, letting go of Chris’s hand when he does.
Chris’s fingers feel cold, when Kauri isn’t holding the any longer.
“He can’t make me hurt anyone I care about anymore,” Kauri says, almost firmly. “And that’s worth every single bad thing out here. And now yours can’t hurt you, either.”
“... who, who, who did you care about?” Chris asks, but Kauri’s already back up and walking away, back into the kitchen, and he never answers the question.
Jake watches him go, and his arm tightens around Chris. “Don’t ask,” He murmurs, softly. “Kauri wasn’t rescued. He ran away.”
Chris takes in a breath, and watches the wild black curls disappear around the corner. “Wow,” he whispers. “He, he, he, he must be very, very brave.”
Jake snorts. “Maybe if you tell him, he’ll believe it.”
Chris leans into his side, closing his eyes, pulling his hands back inside the sleeves, letting fingertips trail over the fleece. Cabinets open in the kitchen, the sound of water pouring into a glass. “Maybe, maybe I will.”
“Besides,” Jake says finally, after another long pause. “You’re all brave as hell, no matter how you get here. It’s brave to start over, you know that, right? No matter how you start, it’s brave to do it at all.”
Chris isn’t sure he believes that. But he smiles, anyway, just to hear the words.
