Cinnamon Muffins Chapter 14: Self-Care Can Be an Unscheduled Nap in a Scenic Spot
Spoiler: Uh-oh spaghettios someone is back taking naps where they shouldn't
Trigger Warning for panic attacks, implied attempted suicide, and near-death via hypothermia
To all those new, hello! This story is Cinnamon Muffins, an original work of mine about six queer boys trying to survive Winter Break in a tiny, homophobic town of Iowa. This chapter is pretty heavy, so heed the trigger warnings please! And, if you’d like, feel free to head to the archives and get caught up before jumping into this chapter. I hope you enjoy it!
The snow, while it hadn't really melted from the last storm, exactly one week ago, is refreshing itself after a week of tire tracks and bootprints and harsh winter sunlight. It was a slow night at Post Family Coffee, and customers were sparse. When the sky had darkened and people stopped showing up, Wes closed up and went home. Texted Taylor that he would make him some hot chocolate when he got back. And now he's waiting in the living room, with the TV playing old Christmas movie reruns, in a t-shirt and pajama pants and socks.
His phone rings. It's Todd. Wes wonders if the reason Taylor never responded to his text was because his phone had died, and he answers.
"Hello?"
"Wes? Hey, can you tell Taylor to answer his phone?"
"What?" In an instant, Wes's throat has constricted to the barest needle of air. "H-h-he-he's not w-with you!?"
"What? No, why would he—" Todd stops abruptly. "Taylor's not at your house?" he asks, his voice deathly still and too-knowing.
"I th-tho-thought he was wi-w-- at your house!" Wes screeches back.
The sound of rustling item— keys, shoes, jackets— can be heard through the phone. "Jesus Christ," Todd groans, barely within earshot of the receiver, "it's December in Iowa and my stupid best friend has the self-preservation of a fucking possum!"
Wes doesn't respond. The space in his brain usually reserved for putting one word in front of the other is currently dammed up with images of skin as red as cherry cough syrup spilled on a wooden table, of little coughs perforating Wes's eardrums, of Taylor stepping into the porchlight covered in bruises. His eyes are dammed up with tears. His throat is dammed up with bile and— dammit, he's not waiting around to figure out what happened.
He's got something he can do, in this situation. He doesn't bother hanging up on Todd or bringing his phone with him. He sprints out of the house at nearly midnight on Friday, December 18. It's still snowing (and Wes had been so excited for a white Christmas, even if Christmas is a week away), and he wishes the snow would all spontaneously melt. He should have asked Todd when, exactly, he last saw Taylor— if Taylor ever even went to his house for that project.
The snow isn't falling fast, but time feels slippery and evanescent to Wes. He's running, and little flakes are catching on his eyelashes, his coffee-shop scars, the hem of his ugly, hand-me-down Christmas sweater, the edges of the band-aids he's tried to stick on the worst parts of Bart Chomski's fingernail scratches, anything textured enough to stick. He starts to feel like a snowman. A chill rattles his spine, despite his exertion and his stupid, nonexistent temperature response. He's only been running for ten minutes. He runs faster, breath hiccuping through his trachea, trying to get oxygen to his extremities faster, faster— faster, jesus, Taylor might—
A hand yanks his shoulder backwards. No, that's not right— the hand just stopped him from running.
"Wes."
Oh, that's Dalton. He's panting. Wearing his thick, leather varsity jacket and still shivering. It must be cold.
"Can. You. Hear. Me?"
Wes nods, still unable to catch his breath, even after he's stood still for something like thirty seconds now. The lost time stretches infinitely across the mangled footprints in the snow, already being dispersed to wind and fresh flakes.
"Fuck, dude, you need to go home."
From somewhere beyond the darkness and snow, Todd calls, "Dalton! Did you catch him!?"
"Yeah!” Dalton calls back. “No, Todd, over here! Under the tree!" The hand that isn’t holding Wes in place waves wildly to flag Todd down.
Wes lets out a high, cackling laugh when Todd almost gets lost in the Rorshach of darkness and snowflakes. How long have the streetlights been out? Is the storm that bad? The snow is starting to peter out. It's just windy now.
"Todd, he needs to go home. He can't be out here like this—"
"I know, dude. Can he even hear us?"
"If you talk, like, right in his ear."
"Shit, I don't know how to do this— uh, Wes, buddy. We need you to go home,” Todd says, right in Wes’s ear. “You're not even wearing shoes." He says it like Wes might not know. He knows he doesn’t have shoes on. Who cares about shoes? Taylor is out here somewhere with the self-preservation of a possum.
"You're going to fucking die if you don't get out of the cold,” Dalton says, maybe harsher than he meant to, maybe more terrified than he meant to.
"Dude, shut it,” Todd snaps. “Wes, listen. We're gonna find Taylor. You go home. Get warm, get changed, and calm down before you come back to help us."
Dalton has reigned in the terror enough to try at optimism."If we haven't already found him by then."
It’s a thin veil, even to Wes, but Todd seems put at ease by it. "Right. See, Wes? We'll find him. But you're no use to anyone freezing to death in your pajamas having a panic attack in the dark."
Wes takes one gasping breath (and vaguely remembers that all of his breaths have come in gasps since leaving the house) and forces clarity to his eyes, and says "No."
"Buddy," Dalton tries.
"I'm helping you search."
Todd fixes him with a piercing look that would, under any other circumstances, cow him, nearly a foot of height difference be damned. But not this time— as it is, he isn't sure if he can stack his panic attacks. Just one at a time, one after the other. Maybe he'll flip out about Todd being pissed at him when Taylor isn't freezing to death somewhere in Swisher.
"You kn-know," Wes has to take a breath, mid-sentence, when he feels his chest tighten around his conviction, "I won't be able to calm d-d-down until he's safe." His resolve is rapidly crumbling as awareness of his surroundings, the whistle-wind and the dark and the sogginess in his socks, slams into his brain. But they can’t all stack, so it’s just one after the other. He can panic about frostbite when Taylor is safe.
"Dude," Dalton speaks softly and wraps his arms around Wes's shoulders. The sudden warmth makes him realize how cold he had been. The disparity is painful. "Go home.” There is no context for a hug like this, and Wes’s brain might short-circuit if he tries to process the emotion this inspires. His face is wet from snow that’s melted on the leather of Dalton’s varsity jacket. “If it makes you feel better, double-check everywhere on the way back. We'll look everywhere else in town until we find him." The tears that had felt frozen to Wes's eyelids melt and fall down his face with Dalton's heat. He shakes his head. Dalton presses, "Taylor will just feel shitty if you lose toes trying to find him in the snow in your socks." The laugh is fake and weak, cracking under the weight of the sentiment it supports, but it finally convinces Wes.
"O-o-ok-kay."
Todd looks at him funny over Dalton's shoulder. "Should we walk him home?" he asks.
Wes snaps, "Don't." He wouldn't be able to live with himself if they wasted time walking him home that could have been spent searching for Taylor. Wes's stomach is already curdled with fear.
He pushes off of Dalton and turns back toward his house. He'll go home. Change. Then head back out. Maybe bring a blanket in case he finds Taylor first. But fuck if he doesn't check every nook and cranny while he goes.
And that is exactly how he finds him. No cough this time. But Wes remembers this bridge, on Clearwater Street, and he can't help but go check. So he slides down the embankment to the little dip in the ground where Taylor had lived for four weeks before Wes found him, and where he’s been hiding for four hours when Wes finds him again.
"Taylor!"
Taylor is laying on his back, entirely under the bridge, in a flannel and jeans. He doesn't even react at first, just turns his head against the concrete, dusted with a crystalline layer of powder that is heard underfoot more than seen. The streetlights aren't back on yet. But the moon is starting to show its cowardly face as the snow dies out, and Wes has been looking for shadows in the dark all night. He knew Taylor's outline on the ground even without light to distinguish its features by.
"Taylor?"
Taylor's voice mouths Wes's name, but his lungs don't provide the force to speak it. He looks kind of blue in some part of his face, even the parts that aren't bruised, and it's exaggerated by the deep shadows of the bridge.
"Taylor, you fucker, answer me, are you dead?"
"Clearly not," Taylor whispers, "but thank you for the vote of confidence." He's not even shivering, and his skin doesn't give off any heat when Wes pulls him into his lap. "Wes, what are you doing out here with no shoes?"
Wes finds his own voice collapsing as he bites back, "Looking- f-f-for you. St-tu- stupid."
"Wes, it's alright. You found me. Relax…" Taylor's voice filters into almost nothing by the time it reaches Wes's ears, the stern insistence to be heard lost in the cold.
Wes's whole body twitches in an anxious tic that twisted up with a shiver and seized his hands. "Y-y-you c-c-ca-can't say th-that! You-"
"Alright," Taylor whispers weakly. "Alright then." He doesn't press it. Just brushes his fingers against the back of Wes's palm. His fingers are frigid, and, of course, Wes gathers Taylor closer, as close as he can get him, and holds his hands between their chests. Taylor starts to shiver in spaced out little spasms. His fingers squeeze Wes's wrist in familiar time. He's mimicking a breathing exercise— the one Wes had used after the in-class essay earlier that day. Wes feels himself sob, but begins to put herculean effort into calming himself down. Follows the example set by Taylor's hands.
Wes remembers what Todd and Dalton were trying to get him to do. Finally.
When he feels like he can talk, he whispers, "Taylor, we need to go home."
Taylor's eyes are closed. He doesn't answer, just nods. His face is pinched together like he's hurting.
But when Wes tries to stand, he can't. Limbs won't cooperate. Like dandelion vines have crept through the cement and through the snow and into his veins. Holding him down. He doesn't have the strength to get up. It's terrifying.
And, with one panic attack over, he's free to start anew. So he panics again.
"Taylor, I-I- I can't st-tand up."
"It's alright, Wes."
"B-b-but, wh-what-"
"Hey," and Taylor's eyes open to slits, the lids look ashen and blue, but too sallow to be swollen, "I ever lie t'you?" And he has. He lied about going to Todd's today. But they're both doing their best. So Wes makes another insurmountable effort to calm down even as his body begins to fail him.
His legs won't stand,
and then his arms give way,
and his eyelids collapse,
and his spine wilts in the weight of the wind,
and he's just wrapped around Taylor as his body stops shivering.
Taylor hears them coming before he sees them. Four boys in the middle of a night so silent not even the streetlamps dare buzz their interference are hard to miss. But they'll walk right past, bumbling around like that in the dark. They have flashlights, but a flashlights' vision is so narrow…
He tries to rouse Wes. Wes is louder than him, he'll be able to get their attention, but he's folded on top of Taylor, sleeping deeper than Taylor has ever seen. And he won't wake up, even when prodded. His eyelids wrinkle, but don't open.
"Wes," he tries.
No response.
"Wes, look."
Nothing.
"Wes?” the whole world becomes TV static again. “Wes, can you at least get off me? They're not gonna see us from the main road—” It hits Taylor that he might have fucked up. He might have ruined one of the few truly good things in this world. He might have killed Wes. “Wes? Please, Wes, you're— fucking hell, Wes, wake up!” His throat is shredded from cold and the sudden transition from whisper to scream, but he doesn’t notice. “Wes, wake up. Wes, please, wake up— please, please, wake up!"
He must have made enough noise to be heard on the main road, because Dalton sleds down the hill on his ass, followed by an unsteady Todd, a frantic Collin, and Jaxson with an empty smile that drops when he moves to help Dalton untangle Wes from Taylor.
"Why won't he wake up?" Taylor's voice breaks on frost, "He's sleeping and he won't wake up."
"Fucking hell, dude—"
"He needs a hospital—"
"They both need a hospital—"
"With what fucking insurance? Maybe Wes's parents can afford it but I know for damn sure Taylor's parents don't have any. The hospital's just gonna throw 'em in a blanket. We can do that at home."
"Jaxson—!"
"Dalton, they'll call Taylor's emergency contact. That means his parents. You think it's gonna be good for Taylor to talk to his parents right now?"
"Todd, can you—?"
"Yea, yea, I'm— fuck, Taylor? Look at me, bud. Alright. Shit, shit, shit, uh— okay. We goin' to Wes's house or mine?"
"Wes's is closer."
"But his parents—"
"Neither of our parents are home!"
"We can't take 'em to Jaxson's house, he don't even have insulation— and my parents would never allow anythin' like that— and—"
"He doesn't need parents, he needs a heater. Collin are you looking it up?"
"Y-you bet! It says slower's better, like lukewarm—"
"Slower!? Really—? Todd, we need to get going!"
"Shit, dude, I'm trying! Taylor? Alright we're going to Wes's house, okay? Can you— shut up, Jaxson, I'm trying— can you walk?"
Taylor nods. Stands. Legs like bags of beach sand. He can't walk, but he can shuffle. And this satisfies Todd, who isn't big enough to carry Taylor. Dalton is already carrying Wes, almost running. Taylor can't keep up with that. So Jaxson, hilariously, scoops him up off the ground with his bony arms and runs too.
The heat in Wes's house feels oppressive, even though Todd immediately voices skepticism about it not being warm enough. Taylor tries to tell him it's too warm, but he's dizzy with the overloading sensations of body heat and fear. Did he kill Wes? Did he finally manage to infect him with the awfulness at his core? He just wanted to be alone for a minute— he just wanted to see the snowflakes rush out to meet him.
Dalton drops Wes on the pullout couch, and Collin deposits a protesting Taylor next to him before both of them run off.
Wes is so still. His chest spasms with a shallow breath once in entirely too long, and his eyelids begin to scrunch with pain that he is too weak to truly fight, but he is otherwise totally motionless. No fidgeting hands or stumbling mouth or biting his cheek. His lips are purple in the sallow overflow of light from the hallway.
"Is he gonna die?" Taylor whispers, watching Wes's breath leave his lips in harsh little puffs.
Jaxson has been assigned to keep an eye on them while the other three make a ruckus elsewhere in the house, shouting things and displacing the items they are shouting about. "No," Jaxson replies, "trust me, buddy. I'd know." For the moment, Taylor can't remember why Jaxson would know, but he does trust him.
On cue, like an engine suddenly called to life, Wes begins to shiver hard enough to rumble the springs in the mattress.
Taylor hardly knows that anything else exists until Dalton comes in, wipes the tears off of Taylor's face and says something about how everything is gonna be alright.
And then Jaxson begins his upbraiding.
"—And you just thought he would actually go home!? The dude is six-and-a-half feet of walking anxiety whose go-to coping mechanism is his depressed fucking boyfriend!"
Todd snaps something, probably something witty, in reply, but he's farther away and Taylor can't hear it.
"Yeah, because Taylor is a paragon of fucking mental health— Jesus Christ!"
Dalton growls, "Everyone here is doing their fucking best,” and the scariest part of all of this might be that Dalton is angry and maybe Taylor ruined two of the few truly good things in this world.
"Don't take that tone with me like I'm not right!” Jaxson sounds terrified. All of this is wrong. “You've been friends with this kid for ten years! You should know him pretty fucking well by now."
Collin is trying to diffuse it all. "Guys, I really don't think—"
"And it's one thing to not know what his parents were doing,” Taylor wants to sit up suddenly. Make Jaxson shut up in any way possible. Jaxson wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. “But, fuck, you never thought anything was wrong until he disappears off the face of the fucking planet!?"
"Jaxson Dixon, you shut yer mouth right now!" Collin cries, accent thickening with the emotions behind his incredibly well-timed interruption. “Now I know yer worried, but what yer sayin' is just mean and you know it."
There is frigid, isolating, suffocating silence for several seconds, and Taylor thinks maybe he ruined all of the few truly good things in this world, and maybe this time they’ll really hate him forever and he’ll be alone in the cold again.
"Now, the wikihow is sayin' to put 'em in a lukewarm bath,” Collin says, quieter but still very firm. Taylor has never felt more reassured by a firm voice. “I dunno how the faucets work in here. Can some'un help me out?"
The fight drains from everyone.
Dalton nods and his footsteps follow Collin’s into the guest bathroom. They figure out the faucet, then the temperature, then the drain plug. Then they go upstairs and do the same thing to Wes's bathtub while Jaxson and Todd maneuver Wes into the bathtub, which immediately wakes him up with a spluttering of curses.
"GAH!! Taylor d-d-died and you didn't t-t-te-tell me!
Like a slug trudging through salt, Taylor heaves himself off the pullout couch and shuffles to the entrance of the guest bathroom. "Not dead," he croaks. Doesn't know why his throat feels so raw.
"T-T-Taylor?"
Todd and Jaxson squeeze out of the bathroom so Taylor can kneel next to the showertub. "Yeah, Wes."
"It-t h-h-hurt-urts-s."
Taylor nods.
"Y-you we-were sc-screaming b-but-t I c-c-c-couldn't f-find y-you."
Taylor nods. He can tell the stammering is from shivering now, not panic, but he stays by the tub.
Footsteps descend the stairs.
"Taylor," Dalton murmurs, "we have, uh, we have another bath upstairs… You're still shivering." He says it like he's not sure if Taylor knows, and, to be fair, Taylor didn't.
"No," he mutters.
Jaxson blows an exasperated breath from his nose. Dalton skips the middle man and grabs Taylor around the waist and hoists him into the air. Taylor doesn't fight it. Too tired.
"'M comin' back, Wes," he promises. And Wes smiles a thin, shivering smile back at him. To Dalton he says, "And 'm not gettin' naked."
After several hours, at something like five in the morning, Wes and Taylor are warm, dry, lucid, and drinking hot tea while packed into one collective mound of blankets on the pullout couch watching the only thing that's on so late (early?): Jeopardy reruns.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Dalton, Jaxson, Todd, and Collin are trying to simultaneously discuss and avoid the events of the night before while they pretend to make breakfast.
"I don't even know how to make pancakes," Todd grumbles.
Collin takes over smoothly from there, with the almost-precision of any stress baker. "What can we even do for 'm though?" he wonders.
"Other than sign Taylor up with a therapist?" Todd laughs.
Jaxson interjects, "Again, no insurance," with a sardonic smile. The smile is under duress from Collin, who has made it clear that he doesn't think fighting will help anything.
"Well, shit, I'm not a therapist," Dalton moans.
"But he needs help," Collin says, "even if we ain't the ones givin' it."
"Jaxson," Todd begins thoughtfully, "how did you know Taylor's family doesn't have insurance?"
Jaxson's eyes slide out of eye contact smoothly. "Our sisters are friends," he says, dodging the question.
Dalton snaps, "Jaxson if you don't cut it out with the vague bullshit…" but he doesn't finish the thought, also under duress from Collin.
From the other room, they hear the torn-paper edges of the first words out of Wes and Taylor's mouth since they got dropped in their respective bathtubs. Everyone lets some tension leak out of their shoulders, each in their own ways. They give each other little looks— looks that say, thank fuck, I thought they would be mute for the rest of their lives and we'd have to explain to Wes's parents whatever the fuck happened last night.
Nobody is really sure what happened last night.
There's a text chain, created at 10:58 on Friday, December 18. That's technically yesterday, but nobody has slept yet so it feels like today.
Unnamed Groupchat: Todd Richards, Dalton Aarons, Collin Donahue, Jaxson Dixon
[10:58]
Groupchat created by Todd Richards
Todd: taylors missing
wes went after him idk where he is either
can you guys help us look for them?
Collin: ????
Whaddaya mean Missing
Im puttin on my shoes
Jaxson: omw
Juniper-Maisie says her and Hellen saw both of them after school
Says that were right to be worried
Wont tell me wat happened tho
Todd: dalton and i ar handling the west side of town, can u guys get east?
we'll meet in front of the school
Dalton: if we havent found them by then
Who knows maybe wes found taylor first and just forgot to text us back
Jaxson: im not betting on that
[11:22]
Dalton: todd
Found wes
By the park
Hes not wearing shOES?
Todd: omw
Collin: is taylor with him?
Dalton: No
Toddster
Hurry
Jaxson: should me and leo come too?
Dalton: No u two keep looking
I think someone is gonna need to walk wes home
Hes like a fuckin zombie
Todd: jfc
Im by the park
dalton ??
Where u at????
[11:49]
Jaxson: oh shit wait i see u guys
By the front gate?
[12:39]
Collin: nothin at the coffee shop
Dalton: theyre not around the mall
Jaxson: nothing at the tree house
Todd: same,,
Nobody has seen him near the bars either
Dalton: should we tell hellen?
That taylor is missing?
Jaxson: probably no
Collin: meet by wes house?
Maybe they went home
Todd: Omw!
Dalton: see u there
Jaxson: omw
They hadn't found them until something like 2 am, when they were finally turning in and thinking there's no way their friends were stupid enough to be outside in that cold at that hour. They were certain that if they hit up the Post household one more time, Wes and Taylor would be there, watching tv on the pullout couch or sleeping or something.
And then Taylor's voice had cracked the frigid night with desperate, choked sobs and they had all nearly drowned in the sound and they found them, of all places, under a fucking bridge, off of Clearwater Street. Taylor was screaming. Nobody present has ever heard Taylor scream before.
Once they’d gotten them warm enough to leave behind the incoherent oscillation between catatonic and mumbling sobs, they were silent. And everyone was too scared to ask, so nobody really knows what happened last night.
But the tissue-paper edges of voices heard from the other room reassures everyone that they won’t actually have to go to the hospital. Probably.
so. there’s all that. personally, i think everyone here is being awfully messy, but that sorta plays into the novels’ thesis of We Need To Teach Teenage Boys How To Communicate Their Emotions Healthily, so whatever <3
as always, scream at me in the comments! Nothing brings me more joy!
They're both himbos with no sense of self preservation... I love them dearly