Chapter Text
Home is where the WiFi auto connects, they say. It’s where the shoes reliably come off, all the hats are hung in order, where the right type of jam is stocked in the fridge, and you know where the remote control is (most times, anyway).
More importantly though, home is where there aren’t any zombies trying to gnaw the meat off your bones and where you can slouch on the sofa, uninterrupted.
That’s how she finds Kyle Crane: slouching his worst slouch on the sofa. His ass is near hanging off, that’s how far forward he’s slipped, and his long legs are doing that thing where they take up too much space extended as they are. He’s wearing a forest green kinda t-shirt that’s a size at least too large for him, a pair of plain grey joggers, and a white sock on his left foot. The second sock is orange. It has white ducks printed on it.
His feet wiggle.
(Because there are a lot of things Kyle Crane can be, motionless is never one of them.)
So, there he lounges, feet wiggling, with his chin turned down to his chest in a way that probably means his neck will start aching soon, and a Nintendo Switch held up under his nose.
She parks herself by the door and watches him.
He’s focused. Very focused. Like the entire world has shrunk to the tiny screen in front of him. He’s also wildly expressive, she thinks. Sometimes his brows shoot up. Other times his entire face gets all pinchy. That’s when he leans his torso left or right and tilts the Switch alongside him. The buttons gets smashed harder then, too. And the thumbsticks get a vigorous workout.
Never mind all that though.
The best bit are the smiles. He has a wealth of those ready to go at a moment’s notice and now is no different. There are wide ones, the ones where he shows teeth and when his cheeks get all bunched up. And the quick ones. And the lazy ones. They all curl into his three-day-old beard and they are what end up tugging her away from the door, across the room, and reel her in to sit on the sofa next to him.
Crane doesn’t exactly look up. He throws her a quick, sideways kind of glance from where he’s halfway down the sofa, and then he’s back to playing.
That is when she notices he has three giant Haribo Dummy candies stuck on his fingers.
Yeah.
He does that.
Sticks them on— preferably a whole ten of them —and then slowly works his way from left to right, beginning with the long ends until only the rings are left. Eventually, those get chewed off too and then he repeats the exercise until he’s run out. The empty bag sticks out from where he’s squeezed it into the band of his joggers. She extracts it, balls it up, and chucks it onto the coffee table.
. . .
Or tries to, anyway. Plastic doesn’t chuck well. It gives up flying halfway and falls to the floor.
She sighs.
That gets Crane’s attention and it earns her a smile. Not just any smile, either. It’s that smile; the private one; the deceptively languid one; the one which mostly sits in his light brown eyes, where it’s unapologetically fierce and beelines right for her heart.
He scoots up. It’s an awkward, wobbly motion, involving lots of grunting and shoulder-rubbing into her direction until he’s finally in a position where he can drape an arm around her.
See, Kyle Crane is a cuddle bug.
Give him any indication you’re up to get nuzzled at and he’ll be right up in there, happy as a clam. (It’s a phrase he dropped on her at some point and it’s stuck, though she can’t for the life of her figure out what makes clams particularly happy.)
Anyway.
He pulls her in close, rubs his cheek against hers, and drags her into his world of— ah— Terraria.
She blinks.
There’s a tiny sprite dude blasting other tiny sprite dudes to bits with what she assumes to be a boomstick of sorts and— she blinks some more.
“Are those zombies?” she asks.
“Mhmm,” he hums. The noise rumbles around in his chest, deep and comforting so close to her ear.
“Isn’t that a little, I dunno—“ She gives her arm a half-hearted lift, gesturing lamely.
“—cathartic,” Crane says. “That’s what it is. Cathartic. Wanna try?”
“No. I’m good.”
“Kay. Hey. Lemmi show you something.” His fingers squish some buttons. The thumb sticks get a wiggle. And suddenly Terraria!Kyle is standing in a ginormous tree. A tree that is also a house, she assumes. Rooms are held up by wide branches and ringed in by leaves and there are lanterns dangling on the outside — and, honestly, there is so much to see, she can’t process it all at once.
“Tada. My tree house. ‘cus it’s a house. And a tree.”
“It’s very intricate,” she admits.
“Right? I been working on it all week. Look—“ He zips up the middle of the tree’s very wide trunk, right along a chain. “—top floor, bedroom.”
It does, indeed, have a bed. In front of a large window looking out across a jungle. She nods quietly to herself. He’d do that if he could get away with it. Have a bedroom real high up somewhere. With the wall facing it being nothing but glass. There’s also a bookcase though. Which is very him, too. Plus more books on shelves. And starfish. And shells. And a pink piggy bank. Also very him. The clutter. The hoarding.
Crane zips back down. “Armoury.” With, well. Armour. On mannequins. And chests full of weapons, or so he says. Further down there’s the dryad and the zoologist. The first one is a lass in nothing but some vines covering her private bits and the second one is a fox lady. Or a cat lass. She can’t tell.
He ships them, he says.
She snorts.
Next, he shows her a kitchen. Then a crafting room. After that, a bathroom with an actual tub and a toilet (“Where does the poop go, Crane?” “Shut up. It’s magic.”) and eventually the bottom floor, where he’s built a deck over a pretty jungle lake off on the left.
For fishing.
He’s an avid fisher, she’s found out. Has a soft spot for fly fishing in particular and often whinges how he doesn’t get to go as much as he’d like.
There’s more to the ‘tree house’. A lot more, and, eventually, something catches her attention. She worms her hand up until she’s able to wiggle a finger at the far right of the small screen.
“What’s that? They look like tombstones?”
“Oh. He-he.” He clears his throat and taps the first one.
Kyle couldn’t put the fire out, it reads.
Her right brow quirks up.
Kyle’s flailing about was finally stopped, says the next one.
“That’s a miracle,” she comments. Crane bumps his head against hers. Gently.
Kyle forgot to run.
Kyle discovered gravity.
Kyle tried to swim in lava.
And so on and so forth.
“Wow,” she says. “Little Kyle isn’t having the best of times, is he?”
“Little—“ Crane pauses.
His mouth snaps shut. And, after that, it’s a miracle she can’t actually hear the worn-out gears in his head turning. Though she can most certainly feel how the lips he’s pressed to her temple curl up into yet another smile. This one’s cheeky, she imagines.
“Yeah. He’s having it rough. Wanna help cheer Little Kyle up?”
. . .
Okay, she walked into that one. She admits that, readily, but even more so readily she pokes at his ribs with her finger. Once. Then twice. At the third jab he huffs. At the forth the huff turns to a laugh and he twists awkwardly away from her — while not actually going anywhere and always snapping right back.
“I hate you,” she lies, her voice flat, and bites at his nearest finger with one of the candy rings still stuck to it.
“Thief,” he accuses and pulls her in tight again, his chin back to rest against her head. “Fine. Wanna help with decorating instead?”
She nods while idly chewing on the candy.
“Sweet. Okay— so—“
Yeah. Home is where the WiFi auto connects. Where you got all your favourite jam. Where the hats are all in order. And, sometimes, home is tiny and it’s also a tree, and you watch it grow while wrapped up in the arms of a man who can’t wear two matching socks.
Notes:
Chapter Text
Sleep and her had always been an odd pair. She’d sleep through the worst of noises without much trouble, but woe be the night where there’s a soft scratching nearby or a poster whispers off a wall on account of a tack having come loose.
Tonight, she’s woken by the mattress shifting and by a stealthy retreat of bare feet, followed by the gentle clack of the bedroom door closing. A second later the door pops open again (as it so likes to do unless you really give it a good shove) and bright light slices into the room, cutting the dark clean in half.
She doesn’t follow him. Instead, she rolls over to his side of the bed and manhandles his pillow into a clingy hug. And that— now that’s all on him, really. It’s his fault for leaving and it’ll be his problem to deal with later when he wants the pillow back.
He can fight her for it if he likes.
A minute ticks by.
Then another.
And another.
She squeezes the pillow.
There are careful noises bouncing around beyond the bedroom door; those distinct types of sounds you get when someone tries their hardest to be quiet. And, yes, Kyle Crane is deceptively good at being a ghost when the occasion calls for it and when he’s so inclined. Which he isn’t often. Inclined.
Cupboard doors creak slowly. Things land with the softest of clicks. But, then, there’s a muffled bumping-kinda-thump that doesn’t sound at all intentional, followed by a hissed “Shit,” and the distinct clatter of a knife hitting the floor.
She makes a face into the pillow.
Knives and floors, they aren’t meant to go together.
She gets up after all.
Crane switched on every light between the bedroom and the kitchen.
To reiterate: all of them.
The lamps around the artsy-craftsy-table are on. The dangly mood lights tucked into real greenery over the dinner table do their part. And not to forget the lights over the kitchen counters, which shine down on a cutting board, a stove with a sauce pan on it, and the— the crock pot? That’s the crock pot. Out at the strangest of hours.
The knife she heard earlier is lying on the floor. Along with a load of button mushrooms that’ve bounced their way far and wide. One of those shrooms is right by her toes. She scoops it up.
Crane stands among the quiet chaos, his hip propped against the kitchen island. He wears nothing but his favourite PJ trousers (the Deadpool ones with the unicorn), his many scars and marred patches of skin, and a deeply furrowed brow. The furrow is from how he’s scowling down at his left hand, which he’s gripping with the other.
They’re shaking just enough for it to be noticeable. Considering his hands are typically the steadiest of things, that means something.
He’s had a flare-up.
Those come with pain, a goodbye present the Harran virus left him with after it’d gotten done gnawing on his brain. It’s in his joints. In his muscles. And it’ll come and go as it pleases, sometimes barely worth a wince and other times bad enough he’ll drop knives and mushrooms and get rooted to the spot.
He’ll be living with it for the rest of his life.
She scoops up another mushroom. And another and another, the motion repetitive and making her head feel a bit light as she starts to pile them into an emergency net made from her shirt.
Crane remains quiet. He might’ve looked her way, but he’s got no words for her. Which is alright. All his words are probably piled up behind the pain. That, and the—she spares the lights a glance—panic attack which woke him earlier.
Add the lot together, and here he was: bullied into an awkward slouch, his jaw tight and his throat giving the occasional bob.
Her first instinct had been to walk up to him and hug him. She’s still fighting the urge because there’s very little she’d like to do more right now, but she’s learned how Crane the Cuddlebug liked to borrow a bit out of her playbook whenever Harran catches up to him like this.
It was why he’d left the bed, rather than turning her into a plush. So he could find a bit of space.
Well.
She’s very good at space.
With Crane still propping himself up on the kitchen island, she goes to wash the knife and shrooms. He’s a quiet presence behind her, hovering about like a comfortable, warm itch. An itch she happily endures while she takes the knife to the shrooms.
She’s not awfully precise at it, and by the end, she’s got a pile of unevenly chopped chunks which ends up tumbling into the crock pot, right on top of a puddle of melted butter.
Next up?
The main attraction: chicken.
An open package of thigh meat appears, like she’s summoned it with a thought. Which she hasn’t. Crane slid it in front of her the second she’d cleared the board. She upends the package and attacks the chicken with the knife. And while she’s all chop-chop-chop, Crane goes back to raiding the fridge for milk and a cup of creme fraiche. By the time she’s finished dicing the chicken and stirred it into the shrooms, he’s poured the milk into the sauce pan.
The latter required a look of sheer concentration and a grip that made her feel a tad sorry for the milk carton.
What follows is a quiet side-by-side as they reach for different cupboards each. She fetches flour and the sieve. He gets the onion soup powder and the chicken broth bucket.
After that?
Well, after that, four hands turn out to be a lot more helpful than two, and Crane rediscovers his penchant for ignoring the principle of personal space. Because there is just no reason for him to stand all flush against her back while she plops the chicken broth bucket in or when she sieves the flour in bit by bit while he stirs the milk.
Nope.
Not any whatsoever.
But he does it anyway.
And stuck to her back he remains long after the milk has gotten sufficiently creamy and the onion soup powder gets mixed in (What’s forty grams of a whole package? Half? Two-thirds? Just how onion-y is this going to be?). He won’t even budge when the creme fraiche slurps out of its cup and into the lightly bubbling milk. No, he goes as far as to make it unnecessarily difficult to duck out from under his arm when she’s ready to carry the sauce pan to the crock pot. Not only because he’s got a heavy arm, but because he’s made entirely out of comfortable warmth that’s far too tempting.
But the milk.
It’d burn.
So she worms herself free and dumps the lot into the pot before all their hard work goes to waste.
Will power. She’s got loads of it.
Crane takes the sauce pan from her the second she’s done drowning the chicken and the shrooms and puts the lid on the pot in the same motion. His hands have steadied. There’s not a wobble in sight anymore; not as he fills the dish washer; not as he rubs shoulders with her while they thoroughly wash their hands; and most definitely none whatsoever when he snatches her by the waist and lifts her up onto the kitchen island.
Could she have predicted that’d happen? Probably.
Wordless still, Crane crowds into her space.
He slides one questing hand under her shirt, his fingers warm but greedy around her midriff, while the other tracks its way up her side. It goes off on a detour over one boob, where he takes a quick pit stop for a little squeeze, before it gets back on the road to find the back of her head.
His grip is light, but determined.
Obviously, he has a plan.
It’s written in his eyes most of all. Those light brown eyes she has to be very careful around, what with how they were so impossibly warm and gentle, she sometimes misses the glint in them. It speaks of an unfailing sharpness belonging to a mind unaccustomed to rest.
Right now, the stare he locks her in is deceptively lazy. Half-hooded. Steady. Deeply intimate. But there’s desperation in there, too, in how his brow won’t fully unknot.
So. His plan.
When Kyle Crane has a plan, he sees it through. Come hell, high water, and an apocalypse for all he cares, so when he catches her lips with the neediest of kisses, what’s she supposed to do?
Give him an approximate of three seconds, that was what, before she sets a hand against his chest and pushes. Gently.
It’s not a stop push, but one which says think it over. They’re different, though exactly how they’ve puzzled out which one is which and how he recognizes them remains a mystery to them both.
Crane’s lips detach from hers, but he doesn’t go far. Nose-to-nose, forehead-to-forehead, he takes a deep, long breath that hitches at the tail end and then rumbles from his chest in a low sigh. Or, well, a growl, really. She’s immensely tempted to change her mind right then and there, but holds fast. Not because she’s particularly into the whole cooking to sex pipeline, but because all she wants is to help.
But tempting as it might be— this? This won’t help.
“My lady bits aren’t therapy, Crane.”
He slumps into her, his head hitching down until he can press his mouth where her shoulder and neck meet. “That’s your opinion,” he mumbles, muffling the words against her skin. The scratchy shadow on his chin and cheeks tickles an awful lot.
He does that on purpose.
It makes a line of goosebumps zip down her side and gets her feet to kick. None of which she has any control over.
Yeah. On purpose.
“Which, I totally—” He catches one of her legs in a firm grip and tugs her closer to the counter’s edge. Closer to him, really. “—respect. Everyone’s allowed a bad take once in a while.”
“Okay, those are fighting words,” she says and bumps her head against his. Just before she puffs air into his ear. When you do that to a dog or cat, they shake their head all funny. When she does it to Crane, he squeezes her. But he does finally stand up straight enough to look at her.
That desperate thing she’s seen before? It’s still there; a shadow lurking behind his eyes.
“You’re missing more appointments than you’re hitting,” she adds.
A rueful, tired smile makes his lips twitch.
“And you’re not taking your meds.”
The smile falls.
He doesn’t argue or explain himself. They’ve gone round and round on the pills a few times already, and there isn’t much left to say. Something-something side effects. Something-something, Yeah, okay, I’ll take them (he doesn’t).
“So. Again. For the hard of hearing: My bits aren’t therapy. I’m not therapy.”
His fingers tighten. He’s clutching at her leg and curling them into her hair.
“Nuh-huh,” she says before he can open his mouth to disagree. “I’m not. Sure, I’ll listen to you whenever you need me to. And then I’ll nod where appropriate and make the right noises at the right time, but you need more. You need someone who knows what they’re doing. A professional.”
She poises a finger and gently taps it against his chest. It lands on one of the many scars he’s carried out of Harran. This one is pitted and round and surrounded by similar splotchy marks that left behind an uneven pitting in his skin about the size of her palm. Corrosive snot, he’d said when he’d shown her the first time. He’d been grinning then; and maybe Crane didn’t much mind the scars he wore on the outside, but what about all the shit he kept locked away in his mind? The shit that made him turn all the lights on and get sidelined by a panic attack? And which had him claw for comfort like a man might claw for purchase on a rope while he went down a cliff?
“I mean, look at me,” she said unnecessarily because it’d been all he’d been doing anyway. “I don’t have any frame of reference to what you’ve been through. Not a one. And I sure as hell can’t help you figure out whether or not getting up at ass in the morning to make lunch is good coping mechanism or not. No, Crane. That’s the sort of thing you talk to your psychiatrist about. Or… psychologist. Or… therapist. Okay, I honestly don’t know which one’s which.”
For a few long seconds (which they spend staring at each other while the house gradually fills with the warm smell of onion soup), neither says a word. It’s not until Crane exhales slowly and gives her a small nod that the silence is finally pushed aside.
“You’re right,” he says, his nod growing more convincing. He even gets that thoughtful look on his face where he squeezes his lips together tight, and for a moment there, she wonders if she’s actually gotten through to him. “Yeah. Of course, you’re right,” he repeats, and that is when his brow furrows all solemn-like.
Way too solemn.
Way too focused. She should’ve known better than to think he’d forgotten about his plan.
“But, ah—“ The fake brow furrow is abandoned and replaced by a conspiratorial smile. “I’m a positive reinforcement kinda guy. You’ll want to give me a little treat when I’ve been good so it’ll stick.”
“Is that so,” she says, her voice as flat as she can manage. Which isn’t all that flat at all, considering he’s back to crowding out the world and putting his steady hands to use.
“Mhm,” he hums, right before he scoops her up over his shoulder like she’s a wiggly sack.
Okay. She hasn’t seen that bit coming.
“Rewards are for after, you neanderthal,” she says while she hangs off his back and gives her legs a few theatrical kicks.
“This is a pre-ward.”
“No, it’s wanting a bribe.”
“An incentive.”
“Same thing—” His hand holding her in place eases up, and she slides down his back by a horrifying couple of centimetres. “CRANE-I-swear-to-god-do-not-drop-me—” He resets his grip and bounces her back onto his shoulder.
Then comes the laughter; the bit where they both forget they’ve had important and meaningful things on their mind only a few minutes ago. And soon after, she’s reminded (wordlessly) how she’s not wrong that he needs help from someone else than her; but she’s wrong in thinking she’s not helping at all.
Notes:
Recipe time!
Do you, too, like chicken? And do you, too, want to know how to make your place smell delicious? Join Kyle in making Chicken Stroga-taff!
What you need:
- a slow cooker
- 1 kg of chicken (I prefer thigh meat)
- 500 ml of whole milk
- 40 gr of onion soup powder
- about 125 ml of creme fraiche
- lots of brown or white champinions/button mushrooms (IDK, like, 200 gr? I scoop some out of the loose mushroom bin I never measure them.)
- a cube or bucket of chicken broth (same amount you'd add into 500 ml of water)
- some flour
- some butter
- pasta, noodles, or rice; Kyle is gonna eat his with fettuccini, but it's really good with egg noodles
How it's done:
- Cut the chicken into large chunks and drop it into a lighty buttered slow cooker
- Chop and then add the mushrooms
- Put milk and chicken broth cube/bucket into a sauce pan
- When milk starts cooking, sieve in (stirring all the time) a little flour until it is creamy (I usually use like 1 or 2 large spoon's worth)
- Add the onion soup powder to the milk
- Add the creme fraiche
- Then dump it all over the chicken and mushrooms
Let it slow cook for about 5 hours, which'll make your place smell DELICIOUS.
Oh! When reheating it, do that in a pot and not the microwave, which'll turn the soft chicken into stringy bits.
johnnyy_guitarr on Chapter 1 Sat 23 Jul 2022 04:22PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Sat 23 Jul 2022 04:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
WanderingAldecaldo on Chapter 1 Sat 23 Jul 2022 05:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Sun 24 Jul 2022 07:24AM UTC
Comment Actions
GrumpkinVicky on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 06:55PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 07:32PM UTC
Comment Actions
exquisacreamcheese on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 06:56PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 07:37PM UTC
Comment Actions
exquisacreamcheese on Chapter 1 Sun 07 Aug 2022 07:49PM UTC
Comment Actions
LunaLateNight on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 07:32PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 07:36PM UTC
Comment Actions
lazyhazylulu on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 10:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
Sagefox on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 10:30PM UTC
Comment Actions
the_orion_scribe_288 on Chapter 1 Thu 04 Aug 2022 11:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
JulyFlame on Chapter 1 Fri 05 Aug 2022 02:15AM UTC
Comment Actions
Monika-s Moniker (Dan_Francisco) on Chapter 1 Fri 05 Aug 2022 10:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Sat 06 Aug 2022 01:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
Abendfalki on Chapter 1 Sun 07 Aug 2022 08:28AM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Sun 07 Aug 2022 08:46AM UTC
Comment Actions
Aze on Chapter 1 Thu 27 Oct 2022 08:30PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Thu 27 Oct 2022 08:49PM UTC
Comment Actions
Aze on Chapter 1 Fri 28 Oct 2022 08:56AM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 1 Fri 28 Oct 2022 04:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
Aze on Chapter 1 Fri 28 Oct 2022 09:09PM UTC
Comment Actions
chimpo on Chapter 2 Mon 07 Apr 2025 12:10PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 2 Thu 10 Apr 2025 07:49AM UTC
Comment Actions
GunningForTheBuddha on Chapter 2 Fri 06 Jun 2025 07:23PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 2 Sat 14 Jun 2025 01:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
Popcorncat15 on Chapter 2 Sat 07 Jun 2025 09:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 2 Sat 14 Jun 2025 01:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
sky_neverending on Chapter 2 Sat 14 Jun 2025 09:35AM UTC
Comment Actions
Tafferling on Chapter 2 Sat 14 Jun 2025 01:28PM UTC
Comment Actions