Cinnamon Muffins Chapter 24: The Ignorance/Cruelty Differential
Spoiler: the chapter you have all been waiting for >:D
Hello! Are you ready for the beginning of the end? >:D I have an event tonight where I have to dress up as a cowboy (any Magic fans in the chat?) and I have everything except boots (tragedy). Remember that you can help me build a commune in Portugal with my lover (and get me cowboy boots) by clicking this cute button:
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Anyway, enjoy the chapter!
When Wes comes home from work carrying Taylor like a toddler on his back, everyone kinda assumes the worst. Honestly though, given Taylor's track record, it's totally fair that Todd's hand goes to pinch the bridge of his nose and Dalton feels like he's gonna be sick and Collin gets all squirrely and Jaxson reaches out a hand and asks what happened.
"Will you put me down?" Taylor grumbles, pleasantly surprising everyone with his consciousness and lucidity. "I told you they'd do this."
"To be fair," Todd says, "we have good reason to be worried."
"I'm fine.” Taylor clarifies. “Wes, will you put me down?"
"But you're so cute when you're sleepy."
"Sleepy!?" Dalton shouts. "Okay, that's it. This is where I draw the line. My son is sleepy and I have not seen it! Not once! In my life!" He stomps his foot petulantly and says, "Taylor, we are duct-taping you to the bed in the spare room and you're gonna fall asleep! I gotta see it!" He's trying to get everyone to laugh, because the air is still so heavy from when they thought something bad had happened.
"Please be quiet, Dalton," Wes says.
Dalton immediately shuts up, even if only because Wes said it so seriously. It's actually such an uncharacteristic thing for Wes to say that everyone (sans Taylor, who really does look, for lack of a better word, sleepy) gives Wes a collective funny look.
But before anyone can ask Wes what's wrong that they need to be quiet about, Wes says, "Okay, Taylor. Bedtime."
And for once in their whole fucking lives, Taylor doesn't fight it. He doesn't insist that he's not tired or grumble uncomfortably like he has at every sleepover Dalton can remember. He just nods tiredly and says to everyone, "I'll be back in, like, an hour."
"Sleep well?" Jaxson says, looking out of his depth.
Collin, cheery and oblivious as ever, says, "Have a good nap!"
"You okay, Taylor?" Todd asks slowly. Because he thinks Taylor looks a little off and he thinks Wes is being weird. Weirder than normal.
Dalton knows Todd is smart, the smartest one here, most likely, and definitely smarter than Dalton, but he also knows that Todd isn't always right. He says, right after Todd, too fast for Taylor to have room to respond in an overdramatic voice, "Look at my son: all grown up! Taking naptime by himself!"
Taylor tells Dalton to fuck off, and Dalton laughs to make everyone else laugh, and they do, and Taylor wanders upstairs to take a nap at Todd's house for the first time in something like a decade.
As he's going up the stairs, still in earshot, Dalton says, "I'm making cookies."
"I'll help!" Collin cries, winces, amends, "If ya want me to, Dalton! Sorry for yellin' so loud, Wes."
The moment they hear a door close upstairs, Jaxson demands, "Yeah, no, what was that about?"
"Taylor just had the worst first day at work one can reasonably have," Wes says, very calmly.
"What happened?" Todd asks.
"I'm not sure it's something y-you would w-w-want to know."
"We're his friends, Wes," Dalton snaps, "We want to be there for Taylor even if shit sucks."
Maybe sensing the tension Dalton is trying not to let leak into those words, Collin says, "We can make cookies while we talk?"
"Good idea, babe." Jaxson kisses Collin' shoulder and takes the lead into the kitchen.
Dalton starts grabbing bowls and ingredients, and Collin starts putting everything together. Dalton would have no clue the kid was so nervous if his hands weren't shaking.
"So," Todd prompts, hands gesturing for Wes to continue as if this is some kind of business meeting.
Wes collapses into a chair. "There was so many little things, ya know? The w-whole English department came into the shop. Mrs. Liu—"
"From school?"
"Yeah. And Mrs. Liu called Taylor a thug! A thug! And then this stupid f-fucking Karen came in and h-h-harassed him f-for n-n-no r-re-reason!"
"Breath, Wes."
Wes does, very intentionally, and clears his throat. "And those guys from yesterday came by again. Taylor and I s-scared them off, but it freaked me out, ya know? And I was h-h-holding the bread knife, because they looked like they m-m-m-might h-hurt him, a-a-a-a-and—"
"Wes, it's okay—"
"But it's not!" Wes cries, and then takes a breath and lowers his voice, eyes glancing up toward the ceiling. "It's not okay," he says. "Have you guys seen what Taylor's torso looks like? From that fight he picked Wednesday night?" The only noise in the room is Collin frantically mixing the cookie dough together. "Taylor says it doesn't hurt anymore, but it looks bad. I was scared if Alex and Jasper hit him—"
"Like with Freddy on Thursday," Jaxson infers. Todd is horrified to know that he doesn't know exactly what Freddy Peters did to Taylor on Thursday, and from the look in his eyes, neither does Dalton. He remembers when Wes and Taylor and Collin and Jaxson came into lunch on Wednesday, and he and Dalton had been so preoccupied with letting Taylor know they didn't like him fighting people that they hadn't bothered to ask what had actually happened. He hadn't even asked. His lungs vacuum out and he tries not to cry.
But Wes just nods. "Yeah. So, I had this bread knife in my hand, and I was yelling at Taylor because I was scared that he w-was going to get, y-ya kn-know, h-h-h-hurt, and he started freaking out and he h-h-had a p-panic attack."
"What!?" several voices shout, out of sync.
"I felt h-horrible about it—" Wes starts, but he's interrupted by Todd insisting that Taylor has never, ever had a panic attack before, or at least not in front of anyone present. Jaxson seconds this. Wes looks at them like they're all crazy. "What do you mean?" he says, "He had one the other day, when he found Jaxson in the bathroom w-w-with the, um, the razor. He almost had one yesterday w-when w-we w-were sitting in the bathroom together, but I guess you guys were in the other room that time—"
"But he wasn't acting any different?" Todd interrupts again.
Wes wrinkles his expression in confusion. "What do you mean? He gets all quiet and shuts down, his eyes do that thing where he's looking all over the place. And he holds his breath sometimes. Plus, he clearly can't understand anything you say to him—"
"But that's not," Todd tries, "That's just Taylor when he's upset. It's not a panic attack." But the more he thinks about it, the more it definitely is. "Is it?" Guilt bubbles like baking soda and lemon in his gut.
Todd remembers Dalton’s mom's funeral. They had it in the summer between fourth and fifth grade. He remembers Dalton’s mom's body, bent at funny angles at some of her joints because even the mortician in charge of making her look presentable for the open casket hadn't been able to get her bones to sit right again after a wreck like that. He remembers crying his eyes out, and Taylor standing next to him the whole time, not crying at all, his eyes unable to focus on any one thing.
At the time Todd had took Taylor's silent presence by their sides the whole day to be a thing of comfort, Taylor protecting them, like always, but now he can't get those unfocused eyes out of his head.
Dalton remembers Taylor showing up at his house one night, it was raining, and Taylor was drenched, and he knocked on his door until Dalton's dad answered it, but when Taylor saw Dalton's dad he ran off down the street again and Dalton's dad had told Dalton about it and Dalton had chased after him and Taylor had been stonefaced and still but he hadn't responded to anything Dalton said for hours—
and Dalton is so stupid.
He is just now wondering why Taylor ran from his dad.
"Taylor's dad," Dalton whispers.
"Huh?"
"Taylor's dad," Dalton says again. "His dad yells at him."
"He does a whole helluvalot more than yell at him," Jaxson scoffs.
"I'm sorry, what?" Todd says. His toes are rapidly becoming TV static.
"Jax…" Collin cautions, voice high and tight as his hair.
"That's p-probably," Wes stammers, "I mean, that sounds about r-right."
"Alright, Jaxson, Wes, spill." Dalton says, "I don't even care anymore, I just need to know what's going on so I can help."
Wes shrugs, tremors vibrating in his bones, "I don't really know anything, he just flinches when you try to touch him sometimes."
Jaxson says, "Listen, I only know all this shit because our sisters have been friends since forever and Hellen and Juniper-Maisie didn't used to be so tight-lipped. Taylor's dad hits him. Like, beats the shit out of him typa hitting him. He's done it since we were kids."
"Oh, my god." Todd says, and his legs are shaking so he sits down. "And we never—"
"He didn't ever tell you," Collin says, reassuring. "Jax only knows 'cause Juniper-Maisie told him. Seems to me like Taylor didn't never wanna talk about it."
Dalton chokes out, "Is Hellen—?"
"Hellen’s fine," Jaxson says quickly. "They never hit Hellen."
"Then why hit Taylor?"
Jaxson's eyes go to the floor, the first sign Dalton has seen of Jaxson being uncertain about any of this. "Taylor probably isn't… He's probably not biologically his dad's kid."
"Oh." Nobody questions this. Taylor hasn't ever looked like anyone else in his family.
"Yeah, and his parents kinda don't like that."
"So they hit him!?" Dalton cries. "What kinda parent could do that to their own kid!?"
"Taylor's," Jaxson snaps, because he’s getting awfully tired of how much coddling Taylor does for his friends. They deserve to know. "And mine. And Collin's.
"Collin?"
Jaxson doesn't give the silence enough time to force an answer out of Collin, who is frantically scooping cookie dough onto a nonstick cookie sheet. "Why do you think he can't go home? They'll beat the shit out of him— or make him fast, or fuckin, I don't know, like, lock him in the closet!"
"What!?"
"Jax," Collin whimpers, "please, stop. I don't wanna cause a fuss."
Jaxson deflates. He runs a hand through his hair a few times. "Sorry."
Dalton sinks further into the stiff edges of the island barstool. His head is barely buoyed above the flooded tide of new, horrible information. Everything he hadn't known— for thirteen years, he hadn't known— all coming out at once.
Nausea ripples along his organs like a spider, eight legs splayed out and crawling up, up, up his throat. "I'm gonna be sick," he says.
Todd tells him to use the bathroom if he needs to. Todd is trying to remember every time he told Taylor off for picking fights and coming to school covered in bruises, and how many of those times was he chastising Taylor for getting hit. He sets his head on the cool, granite countertop of the island and thinks about how Taylor and Collin had understood each other so clearly yesterday, when Collin panicked at the thought of going home and Taylor had just told him they wouldn't make him. Thinks about how Taylor has always been the last to go home after every sleepover. Thinks about how the only way anyone knew was because Hellen told Juniper-Maisie and Juniper-Maisie told Jaxson.
"God, I feel like a shitty friend," Todd murmurs. Dalton has to agree. They hadn't known. Somehow, they hadn't known.
An oven timer beeps as it is set for twelve minutes. "Now, don't go sayin' that," Collin says softly, shutting the oven door over the cookies. "Y'all have been great friends to Taylor. Yer houses were always open when he needed somewhere to go, and you know he loves you both an' all that."
"But we didn't know," Dalton says, making an incredible effort not to cry.
"Nobody knew," Wes says. "I didn't know, you two didn't know. None of the teachers or kids at school know. He's pretty fucking secretive."
"I mean, he always said he got in a fight—" Dalton rambles.
"And we fucking believed it," Todd breathes. He’s been in gifted and talented programs since diapers, and he’s never felt more stupid.
Jaxson shrugs, and he can’t keep being pissed when they look so miserable. It’s not like they don’t care, they just didn’t know. "Like Wes said, he's pretty fucking secretive."
Wes goes up at something like nine to check on Taylor. If he's still asleep they might as well just let him sleep until morning, but nobody really wants to leave anyone alone yet. When Wes's panicked yelp echoes downstairs, and his feet pound out time to run back to the kitchen, Todd has already kinda figured out what's up.
"Taylor! H-he's—"
"He's gone, isn't he?" Todd says, feeling his stomach sink and his nerves steel over.
Wes nods, trying to get his breath back.
Todd rubs at his eyes fiercely, feeling preemptively exhausted. "Dalton, can you help Wes calm down?" Todd is bad at calming people down. His bedside manner is the biggest obstacle between him and being a doctor. He's too analytical, his parents say, has no clue how to connect to people. Dalton may not be a whole lot better— not anywhere near as good about it as Taylor is with his smooth distractions and the uncanny ability to force people into calmness— but he's gotta be better than Todd, and Todd isn't sure how well Jaxson and Collin do with stuff like this.
"What am I supposed to do!?"
Todd shrugs, aggravated. They have two priorities right now: calm Wes down and find Taylor. "I dunno, do some of those weird little focus things Taylor used to do with you." Todd knows that Taylor would sometimes spend hours with Dalton when he'd have breakdowns after his mom died. It's something Todd has always been a little jealous of, but he's not complaining now that those interactions could come in handy.
"And where the fuck're you going?" Jaxson asks, eyes looking much more nervous than the rest of him.
Todd slips on his shoes by the door, grabs a coat out of the closet, and calls back, "I know where Taylor went. I'll be right back." On purpose, he doesn't give anyone time to come after him. He's pissed enough as it is, and if anyone comes with them, Todd will spend precious time that could have been spent making sure his best friend doesn't get the shit beat out of him again ranting about how he can't believe he has to chase his best friend down to keep him from getting the shit beat out of him again while his other best friend comforts the first best friend's boyfriend and—
And honestly? Todd would prefer to just get Taylor safe and home and deal with the rest later.
the big reveal! :D are any of them handling this well (other than maybe collin)? no <3 but thats okay we love them anyway
i hope y’all’re enjoying this one as we go into the last five chapters!
as always, scream at me in the comments! nothing brings me more joy!