Cinnamon Muffins Chapter 18: Endearments to Disable Your Boyfriend
Spoilers: Wes figures out how to make Taylor buffer
The first coherent thought Wes has had in what feels like years (but is actually only about half an hour), is oh thank god, Taylor is here, when Taylor grabs his hand and Wes realizes that he's been fidgeting with his fingers while trying to answer people's questions.
"Are you coming?" Taylor asks. Everyone else is on their way out of the room, but Taylor hasn't moved yet. He's staring, in that half-angry way, at their entwined hands. Wes thinks Taylor might not like holding hands that much, so he tries to take his back, but Taylor holds onto his hand more fiercely than Wes knows what to do with. "You wanna--" Taylor interrupts himself, "Wes."
"Huh?" Wes is hardly aware that he's even being spoken to.
"Dude, you're not even on this fucking planet--" Taylor blows a breath out through his nose and pulls Wes to his feet. "Come on, we're going to Todd's house."
"Why?"
Taylor asks, "Is it gonna make you feel better to know why, or are you just asking because you feel like you should?"
Wes isn't sure how to answer, he's just very tired. He shrugs and lets Taylor lead him to Todd's sleet-splattered Jeep Compass. All five of them just barely fit, which means it's a pretty big car. The leather seats hold Wes's attention. So smooth, and barely used. Todd doesn't drive his car too often, not unless he's going somewhere far or his friends ask for a ride. There aren't a lot of kids in Swisher who have their own car, even fewer who have a car this nice, and Todd doesn't like to stand out. The car was a gift from his parents for his sixteenth birthday (everyone always knows what Todd gets for his birthday because his parents always invite the whole town to his parties) and it was brand new then. It's still the newest car in the whole of Swisher.
Taylor says "Wes," like this is the fifth time he's said it. Maybe it is. Wes isn't exactly the master of his faculties at the moment. "Wes, you wanna breathe with me? Everyone else gonna do it too-- right, Dalton?"
"What?"
"Right, Dalton?"
"Oh, yeah, sure."
Tapping out the time on Wes's palm, Taylor breathes in for four, holds for seven, out for eight. Four. Seven. Eight. Four. Seven. Eight. The music is calm and quiet. Classical? As they breathe, Wes can pick out the instruments: piano, cello, violin. Then his vision clears (how long had it been fuzzy?) and he can see that Todd is driving. Dalton is in the passenger seat. Collin is on one side, still looking a little frazzled. Taylor is on the other side, pretending to stare out the window but really trying to catch Wes's eye in the reflection of the tinted glass. When their eyes do meet, Taylor blinks, swallows, looks anywhere else and stops counting out breaths.
Wes swears he's in love, even if he's barely lucid enough to string the thought together.
"Where--" he wheezes a little, and realizes he's out of breath, even though he's been sitting in the car and has no good reason to be out of breath, "Where are we g-going?"
"Toddster is taking care of us," Dalton explains with a forced grin that's more heard than seen, "we're going to his house."
"You sure were out of it," Collin says, giggling, "You were answerin' questions an' all, but I know that look when I see it, yessir!"
The rest of the car gives a polite chuckle to cover up the fact that nobody has the slightest fucking clue why Collin would 'know that look'.
Nobody says much else in the whole three-minute drive to Todd's. Taylor is a warm presence on one side, and Collin is on the other side, itching at the bandaids on his neck. Wes wonders what he looks like right now. It's gotta be at least pretty bad, because Dalton is staring through the rearview mirror and Taylor won't look at him at all. Maybe unconsciously, Taylor is still tapping out the time on Wes's palm. Wes smiles around the bruises dawning on his face.
But the moment he feels that bruise radiate its feathery tendrils of pain from his cheekbone, every other bruise, scrape, and cut comes to vivid technicolor in his interoception. Everything hurts. From toes to crown, Wes's whole body is comprised of a connect-the-dots of different pains, from the sharp one cutting into his forehead to the dull one around his ankle. The salt in the wound is that, even though he's started to dry off in Todd's car, Wes is still soggy and covered in grit and grime from being rolled all over the disgusting asphalt next to the dumpster behind the shop. He feels hurt, he feels gross, he feels fear he feels disgust he feels anger he feels too much too fast—
—and he tries to narrow his focus to Taylor's tapping fingers on his skin.
He keeps himself collected in a tight, tense, pissed off little puddle at the top of his head, but Taylor's fingers are there in his palm. Everything else spins and spins and spins around that point of contact. That touch is his control center.
Todd types a code into the keypad at the gate to his driveway, and then they slide into the garage, and then Wes is being coaxed out of his seat by Taylor, and Wes follows in a haze just in case there's a chance he could hold Taylor's hand again.
"I'm gonna stab Freddy Peters right in his disgusting face," Jaxson says, emerging from the side of Todd's house.
Todd and Dalton both screech in undignified ways (Wes would have screeched too, had he been cognizant enough to know why Jaxson coming out of nowhere on Todd's supposedly unoccupied property was spooky), and Jaxson waves them off in favor of wrapping his arms around Collin.
Over Collin's shoulder, Jaxson scoffs, "Your fence is way too easy to hop for you to be surprised that I'm here, Todd."
"Well next time don't fucking materialize out of the blue when we're already nervous!" Todd screams.
"Shut up," Jaxson says with a faux-seriousness, "my boyfriend is injured and I would like to coddle him now." To Collin, he says, "Fucking hell, Collin, they tried to chop your head off!"
Wes just kind of stares. They did try to chop Collin’s head off. Taylor says something ribbing, and Jaxson responds with something snarky, and Todd makes some sarcastic comment and Dalton laughs, but Wes doesn't really hear them. He feels very tired all of a sudden.
"Todd, I'm taking Wes inside," Taylor says.
Todd says, "You're right, it's cold as fuck out here," but Taylor wasn't waiting for a response.
Inside of Todd's house is warmer than outside, but still chilly in the way that houses that are lived at instead of lived in feel. Todd runs up a grand staircase by the entrance and returns with a sweater and some joggers.
Dalton laughs, "No offense, Toddster, but I don't think Wes's gonna fit into your hand-me-downs." He's probably right. Todd has a build that could be called academic, and Wes looks enough like a tractor that he might be able to run on diesel. Plus the four-inch height gap.
Todd nudges Dalton in the shoulder, "Shut up, they're way too big for me. Last year my parents forgot what size I wore, so all my birthday clothes were, like, three sizes too big."
"Dude, your parents got you a fucking Bape sweater and didn't get the right size!?" Jaxson cries, "I'm gonna sue."
"I shouldn't tell you about the Saint Laurent then," Todd jokes, and Jaxson screams something that gets lost in the 12-foot ceilings.
Taylor shoves Wes into a bathroom that Wes wouldn't have even known to look for amongst all the doors in the hallway to the left of the foyer and passes him the clothes and says, "If you're not done in three minutes I'm breaking down the door."
Wes barely hears him, and he stares at the clothes and wonders why Todd would loan him clothes after he caused so much trouble. Before he knows it, someone is banging on the door and saying, "Coming in."
Taylor looks pissed. "Dude, you haven't fucking moved."
"Huh?"
"Jesus fucking, alright, com'ere." Taylor unbuttons Wes's long sleeve, face going very red, and pulls it off his arms. "Can you—" he clears his throat, "can you get the undershirt by yourself?"
There's a joke somewhere in there about boyfriends and intimacy, but Wes can't find it in the scrambled mess of his brain right now. He pulls off his shirt, trying not to twitch too hard and get it stuck around his ears.
Taylor breathes, "Fucking christ," under his breath. "Wes, are you… okay? I mean, fuck, of course you're not okay, god," he forces a laugh, but Wes can see tears building in the shine of his eyes. "You just got the shit beat outta you by some homophobes because you're dating me! And I don't know how the fuck to even help! Jesus! Fuck me-- this is all my fault! If you had left me under that bridge, we wouldn't be here! You would be fine, and Collin and everyone else would be fine— fuck me!"
Wes shimmies himself into Todd's sweater. He doesn't bother looking at himself, because he knows it'll just freak him out. He can feel most of the bruising anyway, at the gauzy edges of his epinephrine-soaked perception. Even though his ears still feel stuffed with cotton, and he can't really assign names to the different objects in the room yet, and he can tell from the tremors in his shoulders that he's starting to hyperventilate again, Wes knows Taylor needs help too.
"Babe," Wes says, and immediately regrets using the endearment when it comes off his tongue clumsy and awkward, "this isn't your fault."
Taylor pauses mid-rant. His mouth keeps moving, like it might still believe it is ranting, but there's no sound coming out. It keeps opening and closing while Taylor's face goes bright red, rose-red, fire-red, starting at his ears and blooming out towards his cheekbones and neck.
"I heard yelling," Dalton says from outside the door. "Taylor, are you being mean to your boyfriend?"
Taylor's expression changes slightly, now half angry and half panicking. He's still mouthing out words with no sound.
Dalton opens the bathroom door. He takes in the scene and guffaws, and then calls everyone else in, saying "Wes broke Taylor."
One by one, Todd, Jaxson, and Collin poke their heads into the bathroom to gape and giggle. Then Taylor gets pissed and kicks them out, still wordless. He locks the door and backs up into the corner and finally gets his voice back enough to whisper, "What did you call me?"
Wes yelps out a surprised little sound. He hadn’t thought that was what Taylor was reacting to! "Uh, I take it back!” he cries quickly, “I won't call you that again!"
"No!" Taylor snaps, "Wait— I mean— uh, fuck. I didn't…" He mutters, "I didn't hate it."
"Y-you-…" Wes is so fucking surprised by the fact that, of all people to enjoy cutesy endearments, it's this motherfucker, he's almost laughing. Almost. His ribs still hurt too bad to really laugh hard, but it's close. "Dude, er, wait," Wes clears his throat and, very self-consciously, says, "dearest."
Instantly, Taylor goes right back to red from his collarbone to his forehead. Wes has one thought to kiss every red spot on his face, but that still seems so far away. Instead, Wes grins a shit-eating grin and ignores Taylor's too-late plea of "no, wait, don't" and he sprints from the room, ignoring the bruises and scrapes on his legs, and skids to a halt in front of Todd, Dalton, Jaxson, and Collin.
They all look at him like he might have hit his head pretty hard. Maybe he has, but that's not the point. The point is, "Watch." And Taylor stomps over next to Wes. And Wes says, innocently, "Hi, sweetheart." And Taylor's face goes bright, vivid red and his pride and embarrassment are at war over whether to cover his face or not, and everyone blows up laughing.
"Holy fuck," Dalton screams through his laughter, "you actually, seriously broke him!"
Taylor opens his mouth with a barbed reply, but all that comes out is a strangled, "fuck you."
Collin does his best not to laugh too much. "Aw, come on, guys, don't tease him," he says, "I was just like that at first when Jax and I got together."
This gets a vaguely thankful expression from Taylor, and more bellowing laughter from everyone else.
"Collin is my only friend," Taylor says through gritted teeth and flushed cheeks, "fuck the rest of you."
Tensions feel diffused after that. Taylor tries calling Wes "babe," but he can only get out the first phoneme before his whole vocal tract starts playing possum.
Wes tries to insist that he doesn't need help getting himself patched up, "just gimme a first aid kit and I'll throw on some band-aids," but literally everyone shot that down.
"At least let me clean up that cut on your forehead," Todd says, maneuvering Wes back into the hall bathroom.
"It's only fair; you patched Taylor up on Wednesday," Dalton calls after them. "We're just returning the favor."
Jaxson asks, "Did you dipshits even check for a concussion yet? I cannot tell you the kinda trouble me and Collin have gotten ourselves into for not checking for concussions—" He cuts himself off, seeming to only realize what he’s said after it’s come out of his mouth.
Taylor, thankfully, misses what he said (or pretends to) and grumbles, "We get it, you're in love, shut the fuck up about it," as if Jaxson said something else entirely.
Happy to redirect, Jaxson asks, "And did Wes make sure to check your, ya know, personal areas?"
"I will kill you where you stand, Dixon."
Collin smacks Jaxson playfully on the back of the head, and Jaxson's attention is diverted to sticking his tongue out at Collin instead of needling Taylor. "Did y'all ever check Taylor's ribs after Freddy Peters kicked him on Thursday?" Collin asks, "'Cause he sure did go down like a sack of bricks."
"I lied," Taylor says as Dalton and Jaxson's eyes slide to him, and Wes squeaks out a negative response from the bathroom, "Collin is not my friend either."
"Well, sure I am!" Collin replies optimistically, "Friends make sure to check in with each other!"
It takes heckling, convincing, and a well-timed cutesy nickname from Wes (who is still being taken care of by Todd in the bathroom down the hall), but Dalton manages to get Taylor to let him poke at his torso, just to make sure nothing is really wrong.
Dalton pokes, and Taylor is under duress from Jaxson (who has promised to be much more invasive than Dalton, if Taylor lies or is uncooperative) to tell him if it hurts.
"Ow."
"Yes, that hurts."
"Ow."
"Ow."
"Ow."
"If you touch that rib again, I'm gonna knock you on your fucking ass."
Dalton eventually says, "Jesus Fucking Christ, where doesn't it hurt."
"The bruises are, like, four days old, dude," Taylor grumbles, "They don't hurt at all if you don't fuckin' poke them with your giant fucking football-player fingers."
Dalton clutches his fingers to his chest as if burned. "Todd,” he whines, “Taylor is making fun of my fingers again!"
"Taylor, don't make fun of Dalton's fingers," Todd calls from the bathroom, followed by a little echo of a giggle from Wes.
nearly done with todays htgawm writing!! i hope y’all’re having great days!!