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Make This House a Home [Tommy Hewitt x Reader]

Title: Make This House a Home [Tommy Hewitt x Reader]

Synopsis: You’re not killed–but what is the life inside this house, anyway?

Word count: 8000ish

Notes: Descriptions of death and violence; descriptions of sexual assault (not against reader); abuse in general, kidnapped reader.

All of your friends are dead.

Mary Ann died first. Her face burst wide open, red gore and brain matter seeping out the back edges of the passenger headrest. Something grey and gooey landed on your cheek and there wasn’t enough momentum in your brain to scream–you just knew to freeze. Something dark and awful happened, and that’s all you could do–freeze.

At least, until John screamed. Until John screamed and tried to grab the gun that the stranger had used to make a mess of Mary Ann, shouting–”What the fuck, what the FUCK is wrong with you, man?! That’s my sister, my SISTER, you FUCK”--and he was fumbling over Mary Ann’s body in a pitiful attempt to grab hold of the weapon.

When that didn’t work, he jumped out of the van. You and Linda followed, stumbling, bodies shaking and numb, and as you peered around the driver’s side you could see that Mary Ann no longer had a face. A gory crater was all that was left against the headrest. But her body was there. Blood splattered, but there. Like it was just napping. She was still wearing her grandma’s gold bracelet–a birthday present from last year.

John died second. Not in the van. It might have been nicer, if he died in the van. Might have been easier. Instead, the man shot him in the thigh, bringing him to the ground. He howled, like an animal, like twenty minutes ago he wasn’t waxing philosophical about the state of the government and how it’s “all going to fucking hell, man.”

John didn’t die in the van. Neither did Linda.

John and Linda died at the house, where the man dragged the three of you after forcing you into his truck. He took Linda away, and she screamed a lot, and you knew what was happening to her even before it all ended with a distant gunshot and terrible silence.

You and John had been tied up to the ceiling of the garage and you wondered, almost numb but not quite, if the man was going to drag you away like he did Linda. If you were going to end up violated and murdered in some rotten bed in some rotten house in some rotten town.

All of the nerves in your body sparked at once when the man shouted something in the house–

“Tommy! Go take care of that garbage out there! Make sure you clean up after!”

And what came through the squeaking garage door was not a person, surely, but a big hulking monster of a man. Like the kind you saw in horror movies you weren’t supposed to watch, that greasy-faced guys with unshaven faces told you were like, actually snuff films disguised as movies, man. His hair was greasy but that’s not what stood out, no. It was his size and bulk and a mask strapped over his face, revealing only his eyes, wild but determined.

It must be Tommy, you thought, dimly, your feet scrambling for purchase. As if you could get away.

This is where John died. It was not a nice death. Tommy had grabbed an axe from the wall and–you began to heave, throwing up a diner breakfast onto the floor–chopping at John’s body like he was a tree to take down. Whacking at his stomach, his legs. His flesh flapped down like so much meat.

Chop.

The screaming came from John. And you, too. And maybe the whole wide world had been screaming this whole time and it took watching your friends die in front of you to finally hear it.

John was dead. You knew it, because his torso was hanging from the ceiling now, and his legs had fallen to the ground in a tangled heap. If you had more time, maybe you would have been able to process the full horror of this. But as it was, all you could do was think about what was about to happen to you.

It was your turn.

Your friends were dead, and now, you were going to die. Horribly, probably. Getting axed to death or worse.

The thing, the creature, the murderer approached you, bloody axe in hand, and you squeezed your eyes shut and began to murmur some prayer you’d learned as a kid and hadn’t said in years. A pitiful thing that you couldn’t even fully remember. But what did it matter, when your life was going to be nothing but a heap of blood and viscera in mere moments?

“Please make it quick,” you whispered, to the killer, to God, to yourself. Then you went back to your mumbled prayers, hoping it would all be over soon.

You waited for death.

And waited.

And death never came.

Someone was breathing, hard. It couldn’t have been John–he had no breath left to give. It could’ve been you, but it was lower, harsher, and when you let your eyes slowly open he was standing right in front of you.

Tommy. The killer. With an axe in his hand. Breathing. Staring.

Maybe he wanted you to watch while you died?

Maybe he–

He swung the axe suddenly and your heart soared and some half-assed last word pushed itself out through your mouth, but the axe didn’t hit. At least, not you. Instead, it hit the ropes above your head, and you crumbled to the ground like John’s lifeless legs.

Later, you will turn it over in your head. Why didn’t he kill you? Why did he cut you down?

At the moment, though, nothing went through your head but renewed terror as he grabbed your jelly-like leg and began to drag you away from the garage. Away from John’s mangled body and the blood still dripping from his torso, over rough ground, kicking and yelping like the scared little animal that you were.

A house of death and grime, a house where Linda’s body still lay, somewhere, probably just as faceless as dear Mary Ann’s.

The house would, later, be called home.

–

You’re still on the floor, leg held tightly by the man who killed John without a hint of remorse, when an older woman with glasses looms over you and tuts.

“She’s filthy, Tommy.” A look of horror in her eyes, not because you’ve got blood and brain matter on you, not because this man–Tommy–is covered in blood and she had surely heard all the screaming from your dead friends. But because you’re messing up her kitchen floor with your filth.

Is she going to help him kill you? Thoughts try to land inside but nothing sticks in your brain. The shock is too much.

But then something seems to click with this strange woman, and she sighs, murmuring, wringing her hands. She looks up at Tommy and he jerks your leg towards her, making one of your muscles cramp. She sighs again, nodding along. “Well. Alright. No need to beg now. If she’s going to stay, she’ll need a bath.”

He drops your leg to the ground. It hits the kitchen floor with a thud but you don’t have the presence of mind to really feel the pain; there’s too much terror coursing through you, unable to properly think about what’s happening at all.

“Well,” the woman says, hands on her hips. She’s talking to the man, to Tommy, not you. “Help me get her up now. She’s got to get a bath before anything else.”

Something that might be a protest bubbles out of your dry lips as the man reaches down and scoops you up by the armpits. A thought claws its way up–he’s going to take you into the bathroom and strip you and hurt you and then you’ll be with your friends, dead, some bloodied silent corpse that no one will ever discover.

So when he begins to haul you away from the kitchen, you struggle, kicking your useless legs and struggling against the rough rope that still keeps your wrists bound.

“Don’t–”

You don’t get the rest of the words out before your head smacks against the kitchen doorframe, and there’s a dull grey buzzing in your head as you’re slowly dragged up a flight of stairs.

Thump, thump, your body thumping all the way. You’re aware enough to see the woman following behind, mumbling one thing at Tommy, tutting something else at you.

The pain in your head fades away as you’re dragged down a wooden hallway, which is, at least, some small relief. It was shock from the sudden pain, then and not a serious injury.

The bathroom he drags you into wasn’t as dirty as it ought to have been. That’s the strange thought that comes to mind as you’re leaned up against a cold porcelain tub, as his rough hands finally move away from under your armpits.

Yes, you think. The bathroom is all wrong. A bathroom in a house of death should be filthy, grimy. There should be blood caked into the grout that wouldn’t come out even if you scrubbed for years.

Instead, it’s a modest bathroom that reminds you a bit of your grandma’s house. Blinking, you can see a decorative soap sitting on the sink, next to the well-worn pump soap filled with the stuff people actually use. There’s a doily on top of the toilet tank. A bowl of potpourri.

The only sign that anything is amiss is the bloody killer with a mask covering his face standing over you, breathing.

Is this where he takes you? Where he forces himself on you, and kills you after?

“Tommy, you git now–” The woman is in the bathroom, too, hands back on her hips. “Ain’t right for you to be in here with us ladies.” She waves him on and it’s the strangest thing to see him nod, to hear some sort of grunting mumble in response. He leaves the bathroom like a puppy being told to stay out of the kitchen.

You’re left alone with a woman wearing a floral print dress, hair pulled back into a bun, wisps of hair framing her face in an achingly familiar way. She looks like anyone’s grandma, the type of woman you’d see rocking on her porch in the evening, drinking lemonade and watching fireflies.

Instead she’s living in a house of horror and has no apparent problem with it.

“Well,” is what she says eventually, looking you over like some wayward child come in covered in mud before Sunday dinner. “Best to get you cleaned up before supper.”

Cleaned up? Supper? Maybe you did hit your head harder than you thought. Because what the hell is she talking about? What the hell is going on? Why aren’t you dead like the rest of them?

Your frantic thoughts and potential concussion don’t matter, though, because all she does is ignore the unanswered questions written all over your face and lean over the tub. A moment later, the sound of rushing water bombards your frazzled nerves and makes you flinch.

A bath. She’s going to run you a bath.

Her arm hooks under your armpits and she hoists you up with surprisingly little effort. Some noise escapes you, but if it was a protest, her suddenly stern expression shuts it up. She sits you down on top of the toilet seat and begins to pull off your dirty jeans.

“Don’t fuss,” she says, not that you have much energy to continue fighting her movements. “I’m not gonna have you in my house in these filthy clothes.” She holds up your loose jeans like they’re something truly awful and chucks them in the trash.

It’s impossible to take your shirt off with your arms tied, and she hums about it for a while. Finally, she says, low and slow. “I’m gonna take these ropes off you, honey. But if you do anything but sit there nice and pretty, I’ll have Tommy come and break your neck. Okay?”

You can’t do anything but nod.

So your shirt comes next, the swirling floral print looking almost obscene now, with blood on it. Mary Ann’s blood. John’s blood. Your own, probably, from the scrapes you got being dragged around like some ragdoll.

And then it’s your socks and underclothes and really, you ought to fight. But something dull and heavy and numb takes over as she helps you out of your clothes, gentle as anything. Like the way your mom used to give you a bath.

The way she leads you to the tub is familiar too, as is the way she bids you to hold onto her as you step inside it. The water is warm and achingly inviting and you sink down into it. Your body does, anyway. You’re not entirely sure if your mind is actually inside it now, because none of this can be real.

Only it is. Because the woman turns off the tap and hands you a washcloth with a faded embroidered flower and a well-used bar of soap.

“I’m going to grab you some clothes,” she says, standing in the open doorway. “You just wash up real good. Get all that muck off you.” The muck is your friend’s brain matter, but you don’t say that. “There’s shampoo on the shelf there.”

She leaves you alone and it’s the pure, unadulterated desire to rid yourself of the blood sticking to your skin that propels you to begin scrubbing.

By the time she returns with a pile of clothes in her hand, the water is a startling mixture of brown and red, all bubbling with soap. Little flecks of brain, the last remnants of Mary Ann’s thoughts and everything she ever was, float with the bubbles.

You don’t say anything when she helps you out of the tub. You don’t say anything when she sits you back down on the toilet seat and begins to dry you off. It’s only when she starts rubbing at your head that something escapes you–

A hiccup. A whimper. The beginnings of pitiful, whining, childlike tears.

You expect her to yell at you. Tell you to shut your fucking mouth, like that man probably would have.

Instead, she coos in the back of her throat.

“Oh, sweet girl. Hush now, hush, hush.” She murmurs that plea over and over as she dries you off, and you lean into her touch, gentle, almost familiar, if you can ignore everything else.

By the time she’s pulling a loose dress with a floral print–from her own wardrobe, you think–over your body, you’ve managed to bring yourself down to the occasional sniffle. She dabs at the last of your tears with the rough towel and hoists you up again.

“I think you ought to take a nap before supper. Or just lie down for a spell, if you can’t fall asleep. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

It does, in fact, not sound nice. It sounds like she means for you to stay here. Or maybe supper is the place where you’re going to die, maybe in some more fucked up way than your friends. Wash you, dry your tears, then tie you to the dinner table and sacrifice you to Satan.

Satan worshippers were real; you knew that much from TV.

But that numbness overtakes you as she leads you, your newly socked feet warm and toasty, out of the bathroom and down a darkened hallway.

The room you’re shuffled into looks like a guest room. Impersonal, with ironed sheets and doilies on the side table and a generic alarm clock ticking away on top of them.

The bed is hard and not terribly comfortable, but you let her push you down onto it, let her lift your legs so that you’re curled up on your side.

She leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead.

Would she kiss you, if they were going to kill you later? You didn’t know how these things worked. Or how anything in life worked, apparently, because you never thought a road trip would end with your friends brutally murdered and you laying in some woman’s guest bedroom wearing a dress that smelled faintly of mothballs.

“When I call for supper,” and her voice is all matter of fact, “you just come right on down.” She takes a step out the door, then stops, looks straight at you. “And honey?”

When she doesn’t continue, you force yourself to make some sort of questioning noise in the back of your dry, horrified throat.

“Don’t do anythin’ stupid.”

–

“Supper’s ready!”

You’re not asleep–how could you be–but the shrill words that come from downstairs startle you anyway. There’s lead in your body as you force yourself to slowly sit upwards. One foot in front of the other–then you think about John’s legs laying in a heap on the floor and the lead turns into helium, tingling and numbing.

Are you going to be laying in a heap on the floor soon?

A noise in the doorway turns you into a startled animal, even more so when you see what the noise was:

Him. The killer–well, one of them. The one who killed John. Tommy, the older man had said.

Maybe they sent him up because you were taking too long. Or maybe he was your escort down into hell, where you’d be sacrificed to Lucifer or whatever terrible god these people worshipped.

“I–I was sleeping.” A lie. “S-Sorry,” and the words stumble out. “It just took me a minute to get up.” Not a lie, at least.

If this bulky man with an obscured face hears you or cares about your excuse, he doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, breathing, staring. His eyes seem to linger over the dress the woman gave you as you awkwardly walk towards the door, and there’s a few brief awful moments where you’re face to face before he sidesteps and lets you out–

Only for you to stumble over the threshold, nearly flying into the floor. A strong grip lands around your upper arm and you’re suspended, balancing on one shaky leg, taking a moment before you realize that he’s kept you from smashing your face into the wood below.

“Um,” you manage. “Thank you.” Because it is probably a good idea to be polite to a serial killer. And you’re not even sure if your mind is being sarcastic with that particular piece of advice.

Tommy says nothing. Maybe he stares at you for too long, and he might say something. Instead, though, he gestures for you to go down the stairs before letting go of your arm. He stares at his hand for a moment and you don’t think much of it, now. That will come later.

For now, you take the staircase one step at a time, out of fear, out of necessity–your body aches all over and your hands grip the rickety railing as hard as you can to keep from slipping or tripping or flying and smashing your nose against the ground below.

The dining room is homey, set just off the kitchen. It seems that everyone but you and the axe-wielding murderer behind you are already seated at the table. There’s the older woman, of course. A man you’ve never seen before. And–him. The one who killed Mary Ann. Who hurt Linda. Who ordered you and John to be killed.

Something hot twists inside your stomach as you hover in the doorway. When you’re finally spotted, the woman smiles, and gestures for you to come inside–but the man who killed and hurt your friends scowls.

“What in the hell is that dumb bitch still doing here? Tommy, I told you to–”

The woman steps in, hand on her hip. “Charlie Hewitt, you will watch your mouth at the dinner table.”

To your surprise, he ducks his head–murmers, “Sorry Mama.”

She begins to dole out spoonfuls of steaming food from a pot onto his plate, and so on down the table. “Tommy thought she ought to stay, so she ought to stay.”

The man–Charlie–only shakes his head at this. “Since when does Tommy make decisions?” He wipes the back of his hand against his nose, and the woman bats his arm with the spoon. “She ought to be tied up, at least.”

The woman sighs. Your wrists ache.

A compromise is made, and your ankle is tied to the chair. Not that it makes your situation any less horrifying–any less difficult to comprehend, as you find yourself seated between the woman (Luda May, she says, finally) and the man who killed Mary Ann and Linda (Charlie, Luda May addressed him as Charlie) and another man who didn’t object to any of it (Monty, Luda May calls him).

You expect the hulking, breathing Tommy to sit down at the table. There’s almost a curiosity that prickles in you–will he take off the mask to eat? What would he look like, sitting down at this deceptively cozy dinner table?--but to your surprise, he leaves, footfalls heavy as he skulks outside the dining room door and simply stands there and watches.

The food that night is not well seasoned, not that it matters. You’re eating it only to stay alive. The hastily chewed globs of it sits heavy in your stomach along with the sight of your dead friends, along with the knowledge of Tommy standing outside, watching all of you eat.

“Now, sweetheart,” Luda May begins, interrupting the buzzing of your thoughts. “Why don’t you tell us your name, seeing as you’re fixin’ to stay?”

–

Charlie and Luda May argue that night about letting you stay. About letting you live. They do it right at the dinner table, with you, captive, ankle bound in rope to the table. It’s hard to do anything else but feel the way your scalp tingles, wondering if this will be your last night on Earth. If Charlie will grab a knife from the kitchen and simply stab it through your chest. Or your head. He seemed to like the violence of it all.

“Well,” Luda May offers, pointing at the open doorway where Tommy still stood vigil. “Tommy thinks she’s sweet. Don’t you, Tommy?”

All heads–yours included–swing doors the doorway.

You almost, stupidly, because what do you have to lose at this point in your short life, ask how Luda May even knew what he thought. He didn’t talk. But fear bites your tongue for you, and you simply stare with the others at the strange, unkempt man who, hours ago, lopped your friend’s top half from his bottom half with an axe.

Tommy grunts–

Luda May smiles and claps her hands together and Charlie rubs the back of his head with his hand.

“Well,” he says, a drawl. “If Tommy wants to keep her, then he’s responsible for her.” He gives you half a glance and shrugs. “Like taking in a stray dog, is what I say. A stray dog…”

Stray dogs, you think, sometimes get put down.

–

They let you live. A compromise is made, though, after Charlie insists that they can’t trust you not to attack them for a good while. “Wouldn’t let some roaming mutt sleep with your baby, would ya? Same damn thing.”

So you get tied up at first. By the ankle, usually, and you’re at least a bit grateful for that. Even if the skin around your ankle starts to rub raw, and Luda May (“Call me Mama,” she says, and you do not) rubs cream on it after your weekly bath. Luda May is the one who takes you to the bathroom, to pee or bathe or whatever else you need to do–and you’re at least a bit grateful for that, too.

The soap always gets in your eyes when she washes your hair, dunking water over your head from a filled up gas station cup; you don’t mind, because when it burns and stings and you start to cry, it’s easy to pretend that you’re crying from the pain, and not your new normal.

What is normal, anyway? Normal is what you become used to; and you do become used to–this. This life. Or whatever it might be called.

Because after a while, it gets easier.

You don’t get tied up to the table for breakfast (or lunch or dinner) and Luda May hovers outside the bathroom door and finally lets you pee and bathe all by yourself. Though she still likes to help you wash your hair, humming and drying your hair for you afterwards, and you don’t fuss about it.

Because she’d only get mad–and because, well. Because it feels nice to be cared for, sometimes. Because it’s easier to pretend this isn’t a horror house when she’s humming and talking about how you’ve been so good lately, so helpful, as she pours a dollop of cheap strawberry shampoo into her hand.

The chores come with your newfound freedom, freedom that doesn’t extend past the threshold of the front or back door. Do the dishes, pick up after yourself, help fold the laundry when Luda May brings it in from the clothesline outside.

They keep you busy. They keep you from pretending that you don’t hear the screams, now and then, of people that they kill. Usually Charlie. Sometimes Tommy. They die, all the same, and what happens to them after that–you don’t want to know.

Sometimes you think about running. But where would you go? You wouldn’t make it past the front yard, anyway. Charlie would get you. Kill you, surely, after telling Luda May that he was right all along.

Or–maybe Tommy would grab you first.

Tommy’s always there, it seems. At the edge of your vision. Watching from the doorway at meals, only dipping in to grab his own plate and wolf it down once you leave. The thought came to you once, when he’d shook his head at Charlie encouraging him to come on in and grab his plate–

Maybe he’s shy.

The thought hit you like a shotgun to the face. Shy–shy? The hulking man who killed your friends? Who could break you like a branch, if he wanted. Who might still kill you, if you step out of line. Who–

Who is the only reason Charlie Hewitt didn’t murder you right then and there in the kitchen.

And who is the only one in the house who hasn’t threatened you at least once.

(Even Luda May has her moments, when you aren’t being a good girl. She threatened to box your ears once, when she caught you swearing. At least she didn’t threaten to cut out your tongue like Charlie, or say you ought to be taken over someone’s knee like Monty. Though at least a spanking wouldn’t have resulted in the loss of a body part.)

But not Tommy. (He cut Johnny in half–but not you. Not you.)

So.

So this morning, when you’re sitting alone at the table eating a late breakfast because Luda May let you sleep in, and you see Tommy standing in that doorway again, his own plate cold and untouched on the table, you clear your throat.

He doesn’t stir.

You clear it again.

“Thomas?” You ask, then, feeling stupidly formal, correct yourself. “Tommy?”

There’s a loud shifting sound. The thud and tread of his shoes on the floor. And there he is, standing in the doorway, awkwardly staring to the side like there’s something particularly fascinating there that only he can see.

What are you doing? The question repeats itself in your buzzing brain, but, fuck if you know. Being in this house has made you… something. Crazy. Stir-crazy. Itching to do something, anything, to get yourself out of this tension-filled rut you’re in. Maybe being nice to the sort-of-shy quiet (killer, a small voice pipes in, he’s a killer) will change things.

Everyone needs kindness, after all.

“Do you um,” you start, digging up the courage like it’s stuck in the mud. “Do you want to eat breakfast with me?”

There’s a noise from behind his mask. A sort of breathy thing–like surprise.

He hesitates. Then he stalks forward and leans down, ready to wolf his food in a minute like you’ve caught him doing before, being a sneak in the doorway yourself. But you swallow–

“I mean, do you want to sit down with me?”

He pauses. Another sound, this time, like wariness.

“If–if you want–I mean, you don’t have to,” you correct, suddenly feeling stupid and anxious rolled into one. What were you even thinking? That you owed it to him, maybe, because he did save you. You’re alive, because he wanted you to be–but why?

And then he moves. Stalks forward, like he’s unused to the idea of simply taking a seat, yanks the chair so hard that you flinch a little. Then he’s sitting, legs parted too wide, with a plate in front of him.

He stares at it. Then looks at you–and it’s maybe the first time you’ve looked eye to eye in a while. He blinks and looks away first, and again, that word comes to you. Almost stupidly, but still: Shy.

So you look away, now, and it’s only then that he parts his mask and scarfs down the pancakes. You don’t look–he doesn’t want you to look, and neither do you–but you can hear the sound of it.

It’s a bit startling, really, the sound of his eating; the weight of him so close, and not hovering in the corner of your life.

When he’s done, he takes his plate to the sink, and there’s something so normal about it that you almost laugh.

He goes back to the doorway and you get another idea. A silly, weird, stupid idea. But it’s something different. Something to shake up the tight, tension-filled world you live in.

“Tommy?”

He stops.

“You can help me do the dishes, if you want.”

He turns. Questioning. When you get the nerve to look into his eyes it makes you feel a bit dizzy, how human they are. Because he is a person, after all. Even in this house.

You lick your lips, and your voice is too dry, but you ask anyways:

“I’ll wash… you dry?”

There is a long awkward moment in which you think you’ve finally lost your damn mind. And then, slowly, Tommy moves to stand to the side of the kitchen sink, still filled with breakfast dishes.

And after you wash them up, with the same hands that once chopped your friend in two gory pieces, Tommy Hewitt carefully dries off Luda May’s breakfast china.

–

The next morning, you wake up to find flowers at the threshold of your bedroom door. Not particularly pretty ones. Wild ones, the kind you find on the side of the road, the kind that will tickle your palm while you walk on hot summer days with friends, eager to find trouble or fun or something in between.

They’ve been pulled up right from the root, dirt clumps, beetles and all. And there they sit, adding a splash of white and purple to the dull wooden floor. All wild and dirty, with a touch of rot underneath.

Just like this house.

Still. Still–something in you flutters at the sight.

There’s only one person who could have left them. As if on cue, you hear his footfalls, edging down the hall. Was he watching while you opened the door? Maybe. And maybe that’s partly why you smile, just a little, and reach down to scoop them up.

In the kitchen, Luda May is frying up bacon–though it has a funny smell, this week, and your brain takes a moment to connect the smell to the screams you heard a few days ago before shutting off that train of thought–and only turns away from the hot stove when you clear your throat.

You hold out the clump of flowers, like a kid presenting dandelions at lunchtime. “Um. I found these–on the floor.”

She smiles a crooked smile, but it’s not a mean one. “I think someone’s got a shine on you.” Something seems to cross her mind, a thought that wants to stick, and she shakes her head. You don’t dare ask what she was thinking.

Instead, you sheepishly ask if you can borrow a cup to keep the flowers in. To make your room brighter. (To make your life brighter, too, but you don’t say that part out loud. Though maybe with the expression on her face, you don’t need to.)

“So they can live a while longer,” you add, as if you need to explain.

“Of course, honey.”

It makes her smile, and she stands on her tiptoes to retrieve a dusty cup from the back of the cupboard. The kind she won’t miss when it inevitably stays upstairs. She rubs off some of the grime with the back of her shirt and hands it to you.

She really is kind to you. All things considered. Washes you up and gives you extra helpings of vegetables if you don’t eat much meat and tells you that you look nice in her dresses, though you probably don’t.

“Thanks, Mama,” you say, quick, easy as she hands you the cup; the words come without thinking, as you turn away to head back upstairs with your flowers and dusty cup.

“Oh,” is the sound she makes, and you can’t see the hand that goes to her chest with your back turned, but you imagine it all the same.

As you walk up the stairs, you realize–and don’t, at the same time–you can’t ever go back now. Not all the way. Even if someone finds you and a sheriff-at-arms kicks down the door to rescue you, you can’t ever go back. Not with Tommy’s flowers in your hand and Mama on your lips and the way you’re actually looking forward to supper tonight.

After filling the cup with water from the bathroom, you drop the flowers in–not before shaking them over the sill so the bugs fall out, landing on your windowsill and immediately crawling away to find a safe spot.

You wouldn’t want to drown them, after all.

–

Thomas Hewitt watches you while you sleep. You know this. You don’t know if he knows you know this, but you’ve woken up more than once to sense him standing in your bedroom. There’s a certain presence about him, one you can never miss.

That presence used to be something you’d feel in the corner of this new bizarro world, while you did dishes or tidied or read one of the battered romance books Mama let you borrow and shut your ears to whatever you heard outside.

Something you could almost-but-not-quite ignore.

But not anymore. Not when he’s taken to finishing up the dishes with you, or sitting in the same room with you and Mama while you work on embroidery or drink tea and watch her stories.

And now–

When you sleep–well, when you wake in the middle of the night–that flicker of a shadow in the corner is something far more looming. More heavy.

Once, you carefully peeked, letting just the slits of your eyes flutter open, and saw him. Or the outline of him, his shadows, what was visible from the bit of moonlight that made its way through your bedroom curtains.

Tonight, you brave it again. Letting your eyes flutter just enough to look. And there he is, standing over you, watching. You can just make out his fists clenching and unclenching, wavering, like he wants to reach out–for what?--but doesn’t.

You squeeze your eyes shut again and by the time you fall back asleep, you’re alone again.

–

The first time Tommy touches you again–after that first day, when he dragged you into the house–you flinch. Not because he’s being rough or hurting you, exactly. But because your body remembers the feel of his hands. Remembers the way you were dragged, remembers the way you thought, body and soul, that he was going to kill you.

But now?

“Sorry,” you mumble, drawing yourself inward in apology. Someone you used to be screams inside you, a whiny, tiny noise like a tea kettle: You’re apologizing to a fucking murderer?! And you tell her to shut her mouth, because the person you are now has to survive, and surviving means that this has to be normal.

It has to be normal, it has to be right.

So when Tommy’s rough, large hands reach back up, you will your body to stand still. Will your face to remain neutral. Will yourself to think of this as okay.

All he does is brush at your cheek, at your hair. It’s a strange sensation. Rough and soft–rough in the texture of his callused fingers, used to killing animals and much more besides, and soft in the way he seems like he’s afraid you’ll break you.

He could break you. But he didn’t. And he doesn’t. And that’s something you can hold onto.

His other hand reaches up, and soon enough he’s cupping both your cheeks, staring straight down at you, his mask obscuring the bottom half of his face. It’s rough-hewn, like him. Maybe he made it himself. (He has other masks, worse masks–you know this. He doesn’t wear them around you, but you’ve seen them all the same.)

That tea-kettle of a voice says: Maybe he’ll carve your face off and make it into a mask, you dumb bitch. You push her down, down, down where she belongs, just as Tommy pulls you against his body.

He’s warm. There’s musk about him. Sweat and butchering and oil. He holds you firm; not to where it hurts, not like when he dragged you into the house over all the bumps and grooves and you hit your head and went fuzzy for a while.

But firm. He won’t be letting you go, and maybe–maybe that’s okay.

It must be normal. It must be right.

If it wasn’t, you might lose your fucking mind.

–

Thomas Hewitt doesn’t watch you sleep anymore. Now, he gets into bed with you. And you let him. Not every night. But enough that it becomes enveloped into your slowly broadening new-normal. Enough that you go from trembling all night from a sick feeling in your stomach to almost looking forward to the warmth, the tightness, the way it shocks your system into forgetting the world before.

Because when Tommy’s in your bed, you can pretend. Pretend that you’re really part of this family and weren’t brought here by an awful, blood set of circumstances. And that makes it nicer, makes the world blur around the edges.

Is it so bad to want to feel good?

He holds you like a teddy bear, all cradled and close against him. If you needed to get up in the middle of the night, you couldn’t; so far, at least, you haven’t had to figure out the logistics. All you know is that by the time you wake up in the morning, he’s gone.

His chores start earlier than yours, after all

–

Mama notices that the two of you are getting closer. Of course she does. She sees just about everything that goes on under this roof; at least, that’s what she says, hands on her hips, confronting you in the kitchen when the two of you actually walk in together for breakfast.

She tsks at you. She hums at Tommy. A word or two starts to come out, get stuck, and she sucks them back down her throat.

“You two mind yourselves,” she says, finally.

Charlie notices, too. Of course he does. But he doesn’t swallow down whatever his mind thought about saying. Instead, he chuckles, folds over the newspaper you are sure he doesn’t actually read every morning.

“Took a real shine to her, didn’t ya Tommy?”

Tommy doesn’t answer. So Charlie prods on.

“Not saying I blame ya. She’s a pretty little thing, ain’t she? You got to second base yet, Tommy?” He shakes the newspaper. “Better watch out. Pretty sluts like that from the city…” He clucks his tongue, a sticky sound. “Don’t know where she’s been.”

It’s enough to make your cheeks burn hot as humiliation coils in your stomach–and in an instant Tommy grabs your arm and yanks you right out of the kitchen, pulling you down the hall into the living room and its dull, dusty draperies.

“Aw c’mon, I was just fucking around!” Charlie says from behind you, voice softened as you’re being dragged further from the kitchen.

And then, Mama. “Charlie Hewitt, you watch your mouth.”

Tommy stops with enough sudden force that you almost topple over, but he steadies you. When you look up, his eyes look wider, wilder. His breath comes out more jagged. Not because he’s exerted himself, you realize, but because he’s upset.

About what Charlie said?

Yes. About what Charlie said. Because he doesn’t like it anymore than you do. Because he… likes you? Wants you? It’s hard to know, when there aren’t words between you.

Sometimes you don’t need words.

“I don’t like it when he says things like that,” you finally say to him. Soft, quiet. The first time you’ve ever had the courage to say anything about your treatment here. “Or-or when he calls me a bitch or slut,” you add, feeling stupid and brave.

Tommy nods. Then his rough hands, clean at least because he hasn’t left the house yet, cup your cheeks and stroke downward. He hums–or tries to, it comes across more guttural, less of a sweet sound and something earthier–and it’s you, this time, who pulls closer to him.

You may be fucked in the head. But at least you’re not alone in the house, anymore.

–

“I’ve still gotta finish the mending,” you say lightly as Tommy lifts you up as easily as a sack of potatoes and sets you down on a dusty work bench in the barn. “But Mama said it’s okay if I stay out here for a little bit.”

It’s nice to be with Tommy. Especially in the mornings, when the air is cooler and Charlie tends to leave the house. Not that he says anything too awful lately–he’s not nicer, exactly, but you haven’t been called a bitch, slut, or anything close to that in ages. Not since Tommy made it clear that he doesn’t like it.

Plus, when you’re alone, it feels nicer. Without the weight of other people on him, Tommy feels different. Lighter, you’ve decided. Like he’s capable of being more than this house and this family.

Sometimes you watch while he works. Butchering dead hogs on the table, rending the skin from the flesh, processing the meat into slabs or tossing it into containers to be ground up later. It’s messy work. It’s why Tommy always smells, vaguely, of blood, of butchering, of death.

Sometimes what he butchers are human beings. Sometimes they are still alive. Sometimes they are not dead corpses in the barn but are living, wriggling people hung up in the garage like you and John all those months ago. But none of them are dragged into the house and made part of the family. They all die.

You don’t watch–you’re not allowed, and you wouldn’t want to, even if you were–but you hear it. Even with cotton stuck in your ears, upstairs in your bedroom, a pillow over your head. You hear it.

The nights when Tommy kills people, he holds you tighter. You wish you had the guts to ask why–

Why does he kill them? Why didn’t he kill you? How can he hack someone else into pieces and come upstairs in the evening and act the same around you–caress your cheek and hold you at night and let you, slowly, tentatively, touch his face above the mask.

And how do you bear it? Why don’t you act differently towards him, knowing he’s just killed and butchered and Charlie doesn’t care and Mama cares, maybe, but won’t say much about it. Why do you still want to hold him, despite the blood underneath his fingernails?

But you push all of that down into your stomach with the person you used to be.

Because “hows” and “whys” are luxuries that you can’t afford anymore. It’s best not to think on them for longer than a moment in the night.

–

Mama could use some fresh flowers for the vase on the dining room table, and she left some sheets on the clothesline in the back that will be too heavy for her. It’d really help her out if you brought them in without asking. Heaven knows the men in this house won’t do it.

It’s taken time–there’s a new calendar tacked up on the wall–but you’re finally allowed to go outside. Not into town or even to the neighbors or even to the end of the street, heavens no. But in the backyard and to the barn. The backyard is mostly you helping Mama with the clothes, and the barn is mostly you going to visit Tommy, but still–you take what freedom you’re given.

Today, you’re taking your sweet time getting to the backyard. Taking the long way, a way that probably skirts the edge of where you’re allowed to be–but unless someone tells you otherwise, you’ll stick to sneaking out the side door of the garage and walking around the front of the house. There’s sometimes little patches of pink wildflowers near the front, and they look the nicest on the table.

Only this time when you step out the side door and walk down the three rickety stairs into the garage, you are not alone.

A young man is hanging from the ceiling, his arms bound in rope–you’ve known that same rope, the tightness of it, the burn–that keeps him on his tip-toes. Based on the groans coming from his mouth, he’s been hanging up there a while. His muscles are probably screaming at him.

Your eyes lock together and his go from squeezed and pained to wide and–afraid?

“Don’t hurt me,” he says. “P-Please. I just want to go home. Please!”

“Don’t… hurt you?” The first words you’ve spoken to someone outside the family in more than a year. You blink at this stranger, tied up, and now that you step closer you can see he’s got bruising. And he’s bleeding. A gash on his cheek, some sort of wound on his stomach that’s clotting blood on his polo shirt.

“Um,” you say, feeling small, voice small to match. “I won’t hurt you. I don’t–I haven’t hurt…anyone.” It sounds stupid. But he seems to believe you, because his eyes go from widened in fear to something else.

Something you recognize that you once must have had, before. Hope.

“You’re not one of them? Then untie me–quick, before they see!”

Untie him?

The thought has never crossed your mind before and honestly, honest to God, it didn’t cross your mind even when you stepped down those stairs and saw him. Because it would only cause trouble, and no one in that house would be happy about it if you did. You were a good girl, a good daughter, who did her chores and ignored the screams and listened to what you were told.

So. So you fiddle with the sleeve of your dress, all nicely hemmed in now that you were allowed to use the sewing machine, and refuse to look at his man’s face anymore.

“I”m not even supposed to be in the garage,” you murmur, though it’s probably a half-truth. “So I can’t…” Can’t untie you. Can’t help you. Can’t spare you from a butchering.

Your name is suddenly called from inside the house–by Charlie. Loud. Then louder.

“Sorry,” you finish, and you put a spring in your step when your name is yelled out a third time. You barely hear what he says, though you can tell it ends in “fuck you.” Not that you blame him for the expression.

When you reach the kitchen, only Tommy and Charlie are waiting for you. They're both staring with something different in your eyes that makes your stomach feel all tight and gummy.

"You didn't let the fucker go, didja?” Charlie asks.

You shake your head at once. “No, sir.” It's not often you call him sir, and he doesn't really bother you about it anymore outside of teasing, but the situation feels serious enough to warrant it. You lower your gaze and try to look as respectful and meek and small as possible. It's not even really pretending anymore.

He tsks, spits something into a cup. “Well, good. Gonna have Tommy here take care of him. Ain’t ya, Tommy?”

Tommy breaths out something hard, and you do look up at him this time. You bite back whatever it was that some part of you, some long forgotten smashed down girl, wanted to say: Why do you have to kill him at all?

But that part of you doesn't surface. She's not strong enough. You're the strong one, the one who survived. The one who's adapted and come to make a life here. And if that life comes with the caveat that sometimes the man you snuggle with at night cuts people in half, well. That's life, isn’t it?

“Bet that guy thought you were a looker,” Charlie muses, cutting through your thoughts. “Did he flirt with you?”

Your brain itches to leave but you know better. So you shake your head. “No, sir.” The truth is as sweet as honey. Or so you hope. “He just asked me to untie him. So I said I couldn’t, and came back in.”

Charlie hums, and it’s not as sweet as honey. “Bet he thought about it, even if he didn’t say nothin. Don’t you think so, Tommy? He probably wants to make a move on your girl.” There’s a sadistic chuckle in his voice, all sticky tar; something you’ll never understand.

It’s Tommy that worries you more, now, though. His breath gets harder, and he suddenly moves too quickly. Stomping right past you and outside and down those three steps so hard that you think they might break.

Even from a distance, the sound of something metallic and sharp being grabbed from the garage wall catches your ear. You know what’s coming. Charlie does too–he laughs. But not you. It’s not funny, will never be funny, to hear people dying.

At the first scream, the first sound of metal hitting flesh, you dart further into the house, upstairs and away from it all. You find yourself in the bathroom where Mama is busy putting the clean towels away and you offer to help, to keep yourself distracted.

“Ain’t you a sweetheart,” she says, and gives you a kiss on the cheek.

Downstairs, a man is taking forever to die.

-

Tommy comes to you that night, smelling of blood and something you can’t place. Something sharper and heavier than usual. He crawls into bed but this time he does not slot himself against your back and hold you close.

No.

Instead, he grips your shoulders, and abruptly rolls you from your side to your back.

Oh. Oh, now, you think–is it now that this happens? After he's killed someone and some sort of jealous fit? Is that what it took to push this (whatever ‘this’ could be called) from cuddles and touching to something more? It’s a detached curiosity that you force youself into; to keep yourself from agonizing over it.

He smells of sweat and hard labor. Of butchering. Of the dead man.

You smell of cheap shampoo and musty nightgowns and Mama’s cigarette smoke from rocking together on the back porch before bed.

Tommy leans down and presses his face against yours, through the mask. Gentle and not gentle all at once. A bit of flesh and mostly fabric meet your chapped liips.

A kiss. A kiss that makes your guts feel all hot and strange, like they want more and also want to unzip your stomach and roll on the floor to get away from it all.

But you won’t let them feel that way for long. You can’t feel that way for long, if you want to live–if you want to stay intact.

So you lean forward and move your lips against the mask, pushing out something that might be a pleasant sound, vibrating against the fabric. It forces pleasantness inside you. If you think it, it becomes real. Doesn’t it?

“Tommy,” you murmur, in the night, in the dark, as he begins pulling at your nightgown with his butchering hands.

Tommy, who saved you all that time ago. Who decided you were worth keeping alive and worth protecting and worth–worth whatever this has become.

Tommy, who heaves you up on the work bench in the barn as you laugh and ask him to show you how some of the tools work, when they’re being used on pigs and not people. Tommy, who brushes your cheeks when you can’t take it anymore and go to bed crying.

Tommy, who is kissing you and whose hardness is pressing against your thighs. Tommy, who is making you feel good, making some spark light in you.

It’s normal to feel this way. For warmth to spread from your mouth to your gut, burning out the words of that someone-you-once-were. For you to move your hands against him, wondering what you might find underneath his clothes in the end. Wondering if he’ll take off the mask or keep it on and you’ll never kiss more than cloth.

It’s normal, this is all perfectly fucking normal, because if it wasn’t, you might just scream.

#thomas hewitt x reader

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