Cinnamon Muffins Chapter 21: Haunted by the Scones of Our Past
Spoiler: Wes has his little cool guy moment
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Wes wakes up early, too early to know what time it is. When his consciousness comes around he registers two things: he hurts all over, and he is completely pinned to the floor of the cupboard by Taylor, who is still asleep.
Somehow, for the first time in his life, Wes blinks blearily, happily back to sleep.
When Wes wakes up again, it's because Taylor is moving around in his sleep, muttering a little. But before he can start romanticizing how comfortably Taylor fits between his arms, or how soft his hair is against Wes's neck, or how nice it is to wake up next to your boyfriend, Taylor makes a soft sound that is much scarier to hear than his usual sleep-mumbles.
It's a terrified, whispering whine. Like Taylor is in pain. Wes's heart skips a beat or three.
Maybe Taylor is in pain, since he's still bruised to shit. But he's never made a noise like that before? And there's the same noise again: unmistakably afraid.
"Taylor?"
Taylor doesn't wake up, but he kicks one leg into the back of the cabinet, and his hands grab fistfuls of Wes's sweater, and he lets out a choked, dry sob.
"T-Taylor!?"
Taylor snaps awake, his head ricocheting back to bonk against the drawer above them, and then he tries to squirm back and away from Wes, he's scraping in ragged breaths and bouncing off of all the interiors of the cabinet and then Wes opens the cabinet door by his head and squeezes out and then Taylor gets a door open, but he doesn't crawl out he just sits there, wheezing.
"T-Taylor, w-w-what's going on?" Wes asks. He hasn’t had his meds yet today and he feels it acutely now. Taylor flinches, like he did last night, and he looks at Wes with bleary, unfocused eyes. Wes knows what this is. He's seen this a hundred-thousand times in the mirror.
Wes takes a steadying breath, focusing on the feeling of his bare feet on the cool tiles of Todd's basement kitchen. "Taylor," he calls, "you're alright." Taylor shakes his head, but the movement isn't decidedly negative. It's almost like Taylor is trying to physically shake off his panic. "You're okay, Taylor, look--" and Wes kneels down on the floor next to where Taylor is tucked into the cabinet, shivering and gasping, "Look, I'm gonna h-hold your hand, okay?" Wes knows that touching someone freaking out like this isn't always great, but he wants to get Taylor out of the cabinet-- he bonked his head pretty hard, and Wes would hate to see him do it again. Wes's fingertips meet Taylor's arm at the elbow, and Taylor barely notices the contact, so Wes moves down the arm to grab Taylor's hand, and he slowly, gently coaxes him out of the cabinet. "Good, great. Thanks, Taylor," he murmurs, and pulls his hand back.
Taylor blinks a few times, hard, and rubs at his face. He holds his breath-- and Wes wants to tell him to stop, don't hold it in, let it out, lean on me too. But Taylor holds it until he stops shaking and his eyes stop watering and then he lets it all out in a shuddering sigh.
Taylor opens his mouth to say sorry.
Wes talks over him, "Do you want a hug?"
Taylor doesn't answer, just leans into Wes and lets Wes wrap him in his arms.
"Bad dream?" Wes asks cautiously.
Taylor nods into Wes's shoulder. "Hit my head," he mutters, voice choked still.
"You sat up so fast you hit it on the bottom of the drawer," Wes explains. Taylor nods again.
"You--" Taylor bites his own tongue, and then tries again, "You still hurt? From yesterday?"
"Yeah," Wes says.
Taylor tells him, "It's always worse two days later." The words are muffled by the sweater Wes is borrowing from Todd.
Wes giggles, "Thanks for worrying. You wanna go see what's going on in the kitchen?"
"What're you talking about?" Taylor asks.
"Smells like someone's cooking," Wes says. "Can you not smell it?"
"Nah, I can't smell much of anything since I broke my nose," Taylor says, his voice sounds more even now. He still doesn't let go of Wes.
When Taylor and Wes slip into the kitchen, they're there just in time for Dalton to scream at the top of his lungs "OLY-OLY-OXENFREE!" Wes feels Taylor jump beside him uncharacteristically. Taylor hasn't let go of Wes's arm since he hugged him. He's just waddling beside Wes, holding his arm with both hands, like a toddler. Todd certainly stares, and so does Dalton, once he's done yelling. "Oh," Dalton says, "There you are." He's talking to them, but he's staring at the arm Taylor won't let go of.
"Got a fucking problem?" Taylor growls.
Dalton's eyes snap up to meet Taylor's now, a little confused by the ferocity, but he shakes his head no. "Collin made us scones," he says instead, trying to keep his voice bright. "We thought you guys might want some."
"Thanks, Collin!" Wes says.
Collin grins nervously, shoving his hands in the pockets of his borrowed pajama pants. "No problem, y’all. You sure did hide good though-- we couldn't find you for nothin'!"
"Where's Jaxson?" Wes asks, he can feel his voice picking up in panic. He's still not sure how much he trusts Jaxson unsupervised after Wednesday night. Jaxson wouldn't do that again, would he? Even Taylor doesn't have any reassurance for Wes, besides his presence pressed into Wes's side. Maybe Taylor is scared too. Wes realizes he hardly knew Taylor understood how to be scared, and he shivers.
Todd seems to understand Wes's fear the quickest, and he answers, "Just peeing. He was sleeping under the couch in the sitting room when Dalton found him."
"I've asked you this three times, Todd, but what the fuck is a sitting room?" Jaxson says, swaying into the kitchen. He's left his jacket somewhere, so he's just in the croptop he was wearing yesterday, and Wes can follow the line of Collin’s stare to Jaxson's exposed waistline. Wes isn't sure what Collin sees there. To Wes, all he sees is too thin and tanner than expected, but Collin is preoccupied with it enough that Jaxson notices and smirks at him. Wes looks away, feeling accidentally voyeuristic, but his interest is piqued and his eyes dart to the hem of Taylor's sweater. He vaguely remembers how close they were last night, and registers that his hands must have brushed Taylor's waist, but he had been so focused on how warm and solid Taylor was that he hadn't had the extra space in his brain to take in shapes and curves. He wonders if Taylor would flinch at the chill of Wes's fingertips if they got greedy-- but, no. Taylor had flinched last night when Wes tried taking off his hat.
"I've told you three times," Todd says, sipping orange juice from a glass so clear you can see the pulp through it, "it's, like, a living room-- and stop looking at each other like that in the kitchen!"
Wes's spine snaps to attention, thinking he's been caught staring at Taylor, but Todd is glaring at Jaxson and Collin, not him. He's relieved, but still nervous, and his eyes dart around the kitchen until they land on the scones and his mouth waters for a moment before his stomach lets out a low, whining grumble.
Finally, after all this unbearable stillness, Taylor shifts against Wes, looking up at him. "You're hungry," he says flatly, voice low with exhaustion. Wes meets his gaze, twitching anxiously, and sees the sallow look of Taylor's face, the dark hollow of bags under his eyes. A tic wracks half his body and he wonders how much Taylor actually slept last night and, of those precious few hours, how much was nightmares?
"Yeah, sorta," Wes admits.
Collin grins at them from across the kitchen. "Well, don't just stand there, y’all! Grab a scone!" he says brightly, and Jaxson sweeps in behind him and wordlessly grabs a scone off the plate in front of him, and drags Collin, screaming laughing, by the waist to sit on his lap at the table in the breakfast nook. Todd scowls at the PDA, but a bite of his scone makes him willfully forget to be upset.
Dalton pulls the plate of scones closer to his spot at the island, and he throws one first to Taylor, who drops Wes's hand to catch it, and then one to Wes, who fumbles and drops it, and Taylor catches that one too before it can hit the polished tile floors.
"Good catch!" Dalton says.
"Eat," Taylor says, to both Wes and Dalton. He shoves Wes's scone into his hands and flops into a chair at the island.
As fast as he read Wes before, Todd reads Taylor, and he asks, "What's wrong, Taylor?"
Even Jaxson and Collin stop teasing each other over their eating habits to glance Taylor's way.
"Nothing."
Dalton leans over, pokes Taylor's ribs. "Taylor. Buddy. My guy. Main man Macready--"
"Nightmare," Taylor says, voice tight and terse. Wes finally takes a seat next to him at the island. He hadn't asked about the dream that had woken up Taylor in such a panic, he didn't think Taylor would want to say. It looks like he was right not to ask: Taylor's whole posture reads closed. Even as he nibbles on his scone in the light perfectly angled by the automated blinds over Todd's kitchen window, his shoulders are hiked in tense plateaus and his jaw clenches around the scone, and the set of his eyes are dark and forbidding.
"What was the dream?" Collin asks brightly, "I always talk my dreams out after I wake up. Sure does make me feel better!"
"No." Taylor finishes his scone but doesn't look up.
Dalton leans in again, trying to get Taylor to open up a little. Taylor has been so open since Wes came into the picture, and this morning feels like a step backward, and Dalton just wants to nudge him forward so he says, "C'mon, Taylor, my good pal! Tell us your dream!"
Taylor snaps, "My dad killed Wes."
Dalton makes a face like this is pretty bad, but not anything some good conversation with friends can't fix.
Todd, trying to be reasonable and rational and kind, says, "But that would never happen, Taylor."
Wes's therapy-trained brain is already talking him out of being paranoid of Taylor's dad lunging from around the corner with a gun/baseball bat/brass knuckles/bare knuckles, already trying to follow Todd's rationalized logic. But then he happens to glance at Collin, who is staring at Jaxson, who is staring at Todd with a look that says Taylor might be right to be afraid.
Wes shivers. A tic seizes his arm and he yanks at his borrowed shirt for a second before he can help it, and it pulls against a bruise at his nape and he winces all over again. Taylor's head sinks to rest on the cool granite countertop of the island and his arms curl around him defensively.
God, what Wes wouldn’t give to have his meds on him right now. It’s usually not the end of the world if he misses a day, but the week has been maybe one of the most stressful of his life, and he could use the help. But he’s got things he can do here, things he can help.
"I'm not dead," Wes echoes from the other day under the bridge, "but thanks for the vote of confidence." Taylor's eyes peek up from under his arms. Nobody else in the kitchen has any clue what Wes is referencing, and they don't ask. Wes says, "I'd like to see your dad try and kill me, Taylor."
Nevermind that Wes has no clue, at the moment what Mr. Macready actually looks like, if he's bigger or smaller or more muscular or more intimidating than Wes. Maybe Wes would see Mr. Macready and be terrified, and maybe Mr. Macready would actually try and kill him, but this isn't about that. Isn't about reality. It's about making Taylor less scared of a dream about his dad. It’s about making Taylor less scared of his dad.
haha anyone else love how they’re just dancing around that elephant in the room. bc they sure as shit don’t wanna look at it! :D
Anyway, Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!!