Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s just slime.

It’s a gooey substance you can make with glue, baking soda, and contact solution. You can add whatever you want to it. Some people add glitter. Some people add small charms.

Some people add green food coloring.

Gus really doesn’t mean any harm. He just wants to ‘get slimed’ like the kids on the human realm ‘Nickelodeon’ channel. It’s a fun activity he and Luz are doing in the kitchen to destress from a long week of rebuilding the Isles. Hunter’s the one making it a big deal. Hunter’s the one who can’t be summoned into the kitchen to check it out without his lungs threatening to cave in.

Unbidden, during his infodump on color experimentation, Gus places a blob of goo into Hunter’s rubber-gloved hands and asks for his opinion on what they came up with. Hunter drops it immediately onto the counter and wipes his hands on his pants. It’s a useless endeavor, he knows. He’s already contaminated. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to frantically rub the surface clean anyway.

He’s too late. He’s always too late. His surroundings morph into the graveyard where he dies. Green rot creeps along his skin until he’s not sure where he ends and Belos begins. He’s stuck screaming inside his mind, crying, begging, to be let go. His breathing picks up as the moonlight bears witness to his disfiguration. He closes his eyes to ignore whatever Belos is doing now with his body and tries to barter with the Titan for someone to come save him. He doesn’t want anyone to be in danger, but he’s also selfishly terrified of dying alone with no one else to lead him to the afterlife but his creator-turned-destroyer.

His ignorant wish for help bears fruition when his friends arrive at the scene. His arms liquify and shoot out to hurt them. He’s forced to look again. His body is screaming out in pain, but Belos doesn’t care. Maybe Belos can’t feel it. Maybe all the agonizing fire destroying his body’s neurons is reserved just for Hunter. Maybe Hunter is just too weak to handle it.

“Hunter!” Luz yells.

He can hear his friends yelling for him as though he’s underwater, but there’s nothing he can do to respond. He can take control of a limb or two at a time, but it takes an exorbitant amount of strength to ignore the agony enough to focus on what to do with it. It’s as if he’s fighting to break through vicious waves each time he tries to hit himself. As long as he’s able, he’ll fight to keep his head above water for his friends, but with his control slipping by the second, he’s drowning, drowning, drowning; he doesn’t know how long he can—

“Hunter, you’re safe. We’re at home. We’re in the kitchen. He’s not here, everyone’s okay,” Luz says. 

She sounds like she’s talking to a wild animal, which, to be fair, she kind of is. Belos’s version of his body resembles a grotesque deer rather than a witch or a human.

“Yeah! Everything’s good! Bueno, even,” Gus adds.

His shaky tone betrays his words. He’s scared. He should be. They all should be.

“You guys need to leave,” Hunter says, “I can't keep him down for long. Please go, I’m going to kill you, please—”

It’s only now that he notices his chest is heaving. He grasps onto his wolf shirt over his galderstone with an iron grip. It doesn’t look completely like his wolf shirt, though. It kind of looks like his dinosaur shirt. It’s like he’s looking at both at the same time.

“Hunter, come on, breathe. In for four, and out for four,” Luz says, “You can do it. You’re safe.”

“I can’t—please—I’m going to kill you.”

“You’re not going to kill anyone,” Luz says.

She and Gus immediately wince. They must realize that he’s right.

Hunter needs to find the lake—

Where’s the lake?

Camila’s holding his hand now. He’s not sure when she got here. She says something. He’s not sure what. He’s infecting her.

The lake has to be around here somewhere—

He’s on the floor now. 

In the kitchen? At home?

But the lake—he needs to drown for real—

She’s sitting in front of him now, counting down with her fingers.

“Breathe, mijo. In for four, out for four. You’re safe. You’re at home. It’s just you, me, Gus, and Luz. No one else.”

Terror cinches his heart. “I killed them?” His breathing picks up even more, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I’m—”

“No! Everyone’s safe. Vee’s out with Masha and the rest of the kids are in the Demon Realm. Nobody’s hurt. We’re at home. Breathe. Follow me.”

She puts his hand on her stomach and breathes deeply. He coughs on his hyperventilating a few times in the process, but does his best to follow her instructions. She’s his anchor through the haze of panic, yet for her sake, he wants her as far away from him as possible. He’s not sure how he’s going to find the lake in the kitchen, but maybe if he can calm down enough to think clearly, then he can find it, and…

“Good boy. You’re doing so good. Keep breathing. Can you help me count down from thirty?”

He nods. A split second passes, and they’re at zero.

“Great job, baby. Can we do it again?”

He nods. He needs to make up for not doing it right the first time. He needs to get it together so that he can figure out what he’s going to do to protect her. The time skip happens again, but at least this time, he blips back into existence with ten seconds to spare before they hit zero. He finishes counting with her.

She smiles at him. “You’re doing so good. Can we count by twos now? Let’s get to twenty.”

He thinks about it. It sounds difficult. His mind is incredibly fuzzy, but he thinks he can manage that. He nods.

“Two,” he croaks, and it occurs to him that Belos hasn’t taken control over his mouth for a while, “Four. Six. Eight.” He takes a deep breath and shakily lets it out, “Ten—Mmf, mmf!—Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty.”

“Excellent job, baby. What are five things that you can see?”

His heart is still beating out of his chest, but at least he’s not hyperventilating anymore. 

“You. The floor. Th-the cabinets. The rug. The dishrag.”

“Keep breathing. Four things you can feel?”

She looks over and grabs the dishrag hanging on the oven door beside her that he spotted. She hands it to him. He takes it into his hands and rubs it on his arm. It’s scratchy. Grounding. Ruined by his touch.

“The floor. My shirt. The rag. My gloves.”

“Three things you can hear?”

He whistles and snaps his head back, hitting the cabinet behind him.

“Ow,” he winces and rubs the tender spot, “You talking. Me talking. The TV in the living room.”

He glances up at her worried face. He tries to hold the next phrase back, but it comes spilling out of him anyway.

“Ew gross, those glasses are ugly.”

He knows her well enough to spot the almost-grimace she does when she’s trying not to laugh at one of his out-of-pocket tics. He’ll never forgive Luz for accidentally giving him this new one while Camila was trying on new pairs with them at the optometrist last week. He actually loves Camila’s new glasses! He’s thankful Camila knows that and brushes over it to continue on with her list.

“Two things you can smell?”

“Your lotion. Glue.”

“One thing you can taste?”

“Nothing?” He scrunches up his face and whistles, “Hello!—Tch, tch, tch—I’m not eating anything.”

She giggles. “That’s a good point. Are you back yet?”

He scrunches up his face again and takes a look around. The graveyard has completely faded away by now. Still, he feels like he’s been teleported back to his home and he’s still stumbling to regain his footing. 

He takes in his body. His breathing is normal again. He yanks off his gloves and holds out his hands in front of him to study them. No slime, just red hands and scars. Finally, he looks back up at his adopted mother. Her face is so soft for him, it makes his skin crawl. No one should be looking at him like that. He exhales one last big breath and nods.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Good! I’m proud of you. You did great.”

“No, I didn’t,” he says, pulling his legs to his chest and glaring at the floor.

“You did. I know it was hard to come out of that flashback. It seemed like a really bad one.”

It was, but she doesn’t get it. No one should be babying him over his baggage from something his negligence caused. No mother should worry for the child who’s going to hurt her.

With that, the urge to hit her on purpose slams into him like a truck. He imagines his fist connecting with her cheek and what it would feel like when her head recoils to the side. He imagines wrapping his hands around her throat and strangling her just like he did with…

Who did he do that to?

In his mind, his hands wrap around a small, warm body and squeeze. Green blood trails down his arm.

Oh, right. Flapjack. 

It would be just as easy to kill Camila. 

A tingling feeling builds up in his neck. He whips his head to the side to make it go away. Another one builds behind his eye sockets, so he squeezes his eyes shut until it hurts, then blinks several times. He has one more begging to be released—it’s a combo this time—clearing his throat and hitting his fist against his chest.

Did he say one more? Well, turns out he really meant six more, as one look at Camila’s sad face urges him to make it seven. Seven is a good number. A lucky number. A holy number. If he hits himself seven times, everything will be okay. He won’t hurt her, because seven is a good number and good numbers protect good people.

She’s watching him. 

“You okay, baby?” She asks.

“Yeah.” He can never look her in the eye when he lies.

She purses her lips, but blessedly doesn’t mention it. 

“Do you want to go take a nap or something? You look exhausted. I told Gus and Luz to give you some space, so they went on a walk for a while. She’s going to take him home afterwards. No one will interrupt you.”

Did he really just kick Luz out of her own home? Just because he was having a little freak out on her kitchen floor over a children’s science experiment? Pitiful. He really ruins everything, doesn’t he? Maybe he should take a nap. Maybe he should sleep forever, in fact. He’s long overdue.

“Um, yeah. A nap sounds good. Thank you.”

“Of course. Want me to tuck you in?”

His cheeks burn. “No,” he clears his throat, “I’m—Mm-mm! Mm-mm!—I’m—Up-bub-bub-bub, mind your manners, dear—I’m okay,” he clears his throat again, “Thank you ma’am.”

“No problem, baby. Try to get some rest. I’m going to get started on dinner.” 

She kisses him on the forehead and walks away. He smacks his hand against his forehead where her lips just were. He’s glad she didn’t see that part. He doesn’t want her to think he’s disgusted by her, when really, it should be the other way around.

If he could erase her memory of the last hour, he would in a heartbeat. Not only did she just have to calm him down from his panic attack, now she also has to listen to him tic all over the place. Hopefully this nap will help. Hopefully he’ll wake up normal. He never does, but he can dream.

When he enters the basement, he wastes no time finding a plastic bag and depositing his soiled gloves inside. He almost spirals into another panic attack as he double-bags, then triple-bags them. He thinks the slime isn’t Belos, but he can never be sure. Fool Hunter once, shame on Belos, fool Hunter twice, shame on Hunter. 

He fantasizes about taking the bag outside and setting it on fire. He can’t do that now though, if he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. He’ll be expected to be at dinner soon. He can only pray that the late Titan keeps the slimy gloves contained inside the bag until he can sneak away to take care of the issue. He makes sure to repeat his prayer script seven times for good measure.

Momentarily reassured, he flops onto his new bed and buries his face into his pillow. He tries to relax, but between the tics and the never-ending images of violence pouring back into his mind’s eye, he can’t. He can’t stop feeling awful that he’s valuing his pride over protecting his family. He tries to reassure himself that it’s okay that he’s waiting to dispose of the bag until tomorrow. He’s still behaving like a good person. He’s just protecting their peace. They would be so worried if they knew just how anxious he is about killing them. Good people don’t think about that kind of stuff. Good people aren’t so desensitized to their own violence that they forget they killed their best friend, either.

That last reminder makes him want to hurl. What kind of awful person forgets something like that? The only conclusion he can come to is that he must have wanted to do it. He must have wanted to squeeze the green essence out of his friend and watch him fade into dust. 

Deep down, he knows that if Belos were to invade his body again, the man wouldn’t even need to come up with his own schemes—he’d simply act on Hunter’s thoughts. That’s what Belos did at the graveyard, right? Belos may be evil, but so is Hunter, deep down. He’ll never admit it, but he’s had these types of fantasies long before Halloween. Now that Belos has indulged him, the occasional violent thoughts have become the default subject of his daydreams. 

This fear inside him has become so big that he can’t sweep it under the rug anymore. He can’t even reassure himself that “He would never do that,” because he did. He did do that. He can’t take his family’s safety for granted anymore. He has to put safeguards in place to protect them from himself.

In his next prayer, he lists out the names of every single family member and friend and begs for the Titan to protect them from any awful thing Hunter may do to them in the future. He starts over each time he stumbles in his wording or forgets to list a person. With the last repetition, he feels a little better. That is, until he remembers that he didn’t wash his hands after handling the dirty gloves with his bare hands earlier.

What if he’s tempting fate by spreading his filth everywhere? What if Camila dies from touching him earlier? He knows he can’t convince Camila or Luz to wash themselves when he asks them to (trust him, he’s tried), so he tries not to think about the damage he’s already done. He can only do what he can for himself, and pray it’s enough.

He rushes to the bathroom. He scrubs his hands seven times until they’re even more red and raw to the touch. It still doesn’t feel like it’s enough, so he takes a shower, too. Gets dressed. Slaps the soap bottle into the sink like he’s some unruly house cat. Sighs. Fixes it. Washes his hands again. Resists the temptation to wash his hands six more times (He can’t keep wasting soap like this, or somebody’s going to think there’s something wrong with him).

There’s nothing wrong with him. Everything’s okay. He’s doing what he has to do.

He walks back to his bed. 

Nothing is okay.

Now that he thinks of it, it’s probably dirty. He hadn’t washed his hands or showered before laying in it. If he wants his family to be safe, he needs to change the sheets. In order to change the sheets, he has to touch them. If he has to touch them, he’ll be dirty again. If he’s dirty again, he’ll need to start the long process of getting clean all over again.

It’s entirely possible Belos has the capability to sneak in under his gloves while he sleeps and try his luck on a cut Hunter can’t even see, so he’s been washing them a lot lately. As a result, his hands have been extremely dry. Unfortunately, if he washes his hands several more times tonight, he’s positive the skin’s going to split. If the skin splits, it’s definitely over for Hunter. He aches to wear his gloves again and tape them down to be airtight against his skin, but they’re busy festering across the room in a plastic bag. He’ll never be able to wear that pair again, yet he doesn’t have any more gloves to spare to replace them.

He wants to burst into tears. 

No matter what he does, no one is safe.

He can only do his best.

He pulls himself together enough to complete the task. He has to stop several times to let out a series of tics, but he manages. He’s changing the pillowcases when he spots Luz plodding down the stairs. 

He sighs. He hates having an audience when he’s stuck in these loops. Everyone’s used to his tics, but they always look at him like he’s crazy when they get a glimpse of him putting his preventative measures in place.

“What’re you,” he snaps his head back, whistles, then punches his chest, “Up-bub-bub-bub, mind your manners, dear—Mmf, mmf!—doing here, Luz?” He jerks his head to the side and whistles again.

“Yikes, your tics are super bad right now, huh?”

“No shit. Thanks for,” he snaps his head back and clears his throat, “Pshew! Pshew! I'll hit you!—Byeeeee!” He snaps his head back, juts his chin out on the way back up, and smacks the bony parts of his wrists together, “Haha!—Th—th—th—Haha!—Haha!—Fuck! Thanks for pointing out the obvious!”

“Thought you said you don’t curse when you tic?” She says, tilting her head slightly.

He knows it’s a genuine question coming from a place of curiosity, not malice, but after everything that he’s done this afternoon, he’s really not in the mood to play 20 questions about his Tourette’s. Not everything in his life is out of his control. He can change his pillowcases if he wants to change his pillowcases. He can change his bed sheets if he wants to change his bed sheets. He can curse if he wants to curse.

“I don’t. That was just,” he clears his throat and whistles, “That was just me. I’m frustrated.”

“Oh, gotcha. I’d be frustrated too. Well, anyway, I just came down here to tell you that dinner’s ready. You need help finishing up here?” 

She steps over to where he’s changing a pillowcase to grab a corner of his sheet. His heart drops.

“No! You can’t!”

She looks at him like he’s crazy. He’s not.

“It’s gross, don’t…” He grunts, then whistles. He shakes his head, half on purpose, half because it helps the tingling in his neck subside, “You can’t touch that.”

Luz holds her hands up in surrender like she’s afraid of a bio-hazard. Good.

“Iiiiiiiii don’t even wanna know,” Luz says, “But okay, finish up here, then come eat dinner.”

He huffs. “Dinner can’t be done already. Camila—Hey!—tch, tch, tch!—Haha!—I’m a sneaky sneakster!” He jerks his head to the side and scrunches his face, “She—Ha!—Hello—Pshew, pshew! I’ll hit you!—just started.”

She raises an eyebrow. “No, she said you came down here for a nap two hours ago and that I needed to wake you up if you were still asleep.”

That cannot be right.

“Two—Mmf, mmf!—Meow!—Ha!—hours?!”

“Uh huh…” She says slowly, “Wait, did you even sleep?”

“Of course I slept!” He lies, probably not convincingly, “I—Beam us up!—Haha!—Meow!” He snaps his head back, “I just lost—Mmf, mmf!—lost track of ti—Mmf, mmf!—lost track of—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—Haha!—Tch, tch, tch—Byeee…”

He runs his hands down his face and groans. Jerks his head to the side. “Never mind. I’ll be up in a minute.”

He’s so exhausted.

She studies him. He needs to pull himself together.

“Hey. Do you want a hug?” She asks.

The thought makes him unconsciously hug his own arms around himself. He wants one so badly it hurts. He used to love hugs, once he got used to them. He wasn’t dirty back then, though.

“That’s—Mmf, mmf!—Meow!—Probably not a good idea,” he says.

“I don’t care. I can dodge, and you look like you need a hug. So, do you want a hug?”

“No thank you,” he says, shifting on his feet.

Luz looks disheartened, but he tells himself it’s for the best.

“...Okay,” she says, “Well then, are you ready to go upstairs? This can wait. We want to eat while dinner’s still hot, right?”

He’d be fine with skipping dinner if it meant that he can finish what needs to be done, but he’s sure she wouldn’t like to hear that. He understands that arguing why he needs to do this would sound insane to her, but that’s just because she doesn’t think things through like he does. He’s better than her in this regard, which he likes to think makes up for him being a bad person. Still, he needs to keep up appearances. She can’t know he’s two seconds away from internally combusting from the pressure.

He looks at his bed and reminds himself that everything will be there later. The sheets will probably fester in Belos’s slime and be ten times more contaminated than before, but they will be there later. He can wash them extra well. Everything will be okay.

“Yeah—Mmf, mmf!—that's fine. Let’s go.”

He subtly pumps some hand sanitizer into his hands before turning to follow her. He rubs it into his skin once her back is turned, and revels in the sting of the alcohol. He’s temporarily clean. When Luz scampers off to help her mother finish setting up the table, he makes sure to grab the key above the door to lock the basement door behind him seven times.

It’ll never be enough.

Chapter Text

There’s a knife on his plate.

The seating arrangement is nice. He appreciates how they always give him the seat closest to the hallway. Having an escape route in mind tends to help settle his nerves a bit. Luz always sits to the left of him. Today, she’s already digging into her meal while he’s still stuck twitching and staring at his. Camila’s on the other side of Luz. She takes a sip of her water. Vee’s usually on his right side, but she’s at Masha’s house right now, planning some type of renovation project for the basement in the old house. She told them not to wait up, and that she’d be back before eight.

There’s still a knife on his plate.

He tries to listen in to Luz’s tale of what she and Gus did on their walk. Luz pointedly doesn’t bring up the slime or Hunter’s flashback. She rattles on and on about some squirrel that wouldn’t leave them alone, all while Hunter’s thoughts become so loud he’s paranoid his family can hear them.

There’s still a knife on his plate, and it’s very, very sharp.

He could use it to cut his steak, like a normal person. Or, like the secretly evil person he is, he could pick it up and viciously stab Luz until she stops moving. He could pull the knife from her dead body and rush over to plunge it into Camila’s chest, too, all before the woman can even finish calling 911. There’ll be so much blood, and he’ll keep stabbing her even when she’s dead. When Vee gets home, he’ll finish off his work by ambushing her when she walks in the door.

If he doesn’t do something to stop it, they’ll be dead by tomorrow. The thought of extinguishing the lives of more people he loves makes his stomach churn in terror. He has to swallow his pride and ask for help on this one. He doesn’t trust himself to touch it without giving in to the thoughts.

“Hey, sorry—Pshew! Pshew! I'll hit you!—I’m a sneaky sneakster,” he whistles and jerks his head to the side, “Can you please—You’ve got it all wrong, little fella—Mm-mm, mm-mm—take the knife away? Please?”

“Why?” Luz asks. Her mom stops eating and looks at him, too.

Here’s one time he’s actually thankful for a tic: he drops his head forward to smack against his plate, but luckily, Luz shoots out a hand to catch his forehead. They all breathe out a sigh of relief.

“You know what, that’s fair,” she says, letting out a nervous laugh.

She lifts his head back up and tries to meet his eyes. He tries not to look at her, but he catches a glimpse of her eyes pooling with concern anyway. Across the table, her mom looks at him the same way. They look so similar sometimes, it hurts. He wishes he looked like them. Having to explain to everyone not only why he acts so differently, but also why he looks so differently to what they’d expect, stings every time.

As Luz takes all the knives away and pushes them towards her mother, Hunter’s tics make it well-known that they don’t appreciate their plan being thwarted. He does his best to suppress that dramatic face-plant tic and attempts to redirect the energy into smacking his thighs and blinking instead. It helps the slightest bit, but it’s far from a satisfying one-to-one replacement. It’s only a matter of time before the he's electrocuted by the buzzing energy pooling behind the skin of his face.

Camila gestures for Luz to give her Hunter’s plate, too. His cheeks burn when he figures out that her intent is to cut up his steak for him. He could have managed without that part.

“So what sewing project were you working on this morning, Hunter?” Camila asks, sawing through the meat.

She’s trying to distract him. They always do this when he’s having a bad tic attack. Admittedly, getting his mind off of what his body wants to do does tend to help reduce the severity of the tics. He appreciates the effort. He’ll do his best to play along, no matter how much he wants to run to his room and ruminate on how much he hates the loss of control. Hopefully it will help him stop planning from planning out homicides in his head, too.

“It’s—Ha!—it’s a bag for—You’ve got it all wrong, little fella—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—Byeee!” He jerks his head and punches his chest while clearing his throat, “It’s a bag for Gus. He brought me his old—Hello!—Mmf, mmf! Hello!—one for me to fix. I fixed that one, but it’s kind of at the—Mmf, mmf!”

His arm whips out in front of him and gets stuck contorting into a tense, unnatural stretch.

”Ow ow ow ow—Pshew, pshew! I’ll hit you!—end of its rope right now, so I’m—Mm-mm—trying to make um…”

While he’s talking, the energy coalesces into a target on his jaw. He tries to ignore it. He knows it’s going to come out eventually; he’s just delaying the inevitable, but he would really like to at least finish this thought before bashing his face in. He clears his throat and tries to power through.

“Hello!—I’m trying to make him a new one. I’m going to give it to him—Mmf, mmf!” He whistles, snaps his head back, and blinks a few times, “Ha!—Byeeeee—on his birthday.”

“Aw, that sounds like a lovely birthday present! When’s his birthday, again?”

“January 24th. I…”

He can’t hold it anymore. The fist against his cheek provides relief for a split second. He has to do it again. Harder. Again. Harder. Again. Harder. Again.

“Hunter!” Luz yells.

She stupidly, in his opinion, puts the back of her hand against his target so that his fist hits her palm instead of his jaw. She winces. He cares that she’s in pain because of him, but his tics surely don’t. The energy wants to spark outwards now, and she’s the closest target. Once he lands the first blow, he can’t stop.

“Sorry!”

“It’s okay!” Luz says. 

To his relief, she manages to catch his fist and puts a stop to his blows. His body’s still trying to fight her, but she’s not having it. She catches his other fist before it can even try.

His hands are picking Luz up and tossing her out of his way like she’s nothing—

He sucks in a breath. Then gets stuck taking in small gulps of air until his lungs are burning. He wants to scream. He hates this. This is by far his least favorite tic. Every time he gets stuck in this loop, he feels like he’s going to die. He’d rather go back to hitting himself.

Camila gets up and walks around the table. Luz lets go of his fists so that her mom can take over. Luz’s eyes are wide while she watches him struggle to breathe. He hates scaring her. She shouldn’t care this much about him. It’s only going to get her hurt.

Camila takes Vee’s seat, holds his hands in her own, and speaks in a soft, low voice.

“Hey, hey, hey, breathe, mijo.”

“I’d—love—to,” he gasps out, snapping his head back before holding his breath again.

Despite everything, he holds out hope. He owes it to his family to survive. He knows he just has to do one more big sip of air and hold it, but then, it should be over. 

He’s watching his outstretched hand release the Titan’s blood. He can still see the reflection of the moon above him rippling at the surface so far above. It’s the last thing he’s ever going to see. Air’s bubbling out of his mouth, forming a swirling column above him as he sinks, and he can only pray through his panic that Belos is dying just as much as he is—

He misjudges a bit—it’s actually two more sips of air—but at least it ends eventually. The air rushes out of him so quickly that it makes him lightheaded. Camila pulls him into a hug and rubs her hand through his hair. He sputters, trying to catch his breath under her soft-spoken encouragement. Luz puts her hand on his back and pats it, too.

He blinks tears away. He shouldn’t be taking comfort in this. He’s selfish, he’s manipulative, he’s making himself out to be some kind of innocent child at the mercy of his body instead of a murderer at his core. Even in the loving embrace of Luz’s mother, he can only think about how easy it would be to stab her in the back from this position. Of course, while he’s thinking this, he just has to punch her on the shoulder.

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, I can’t,” he whistles and snaps his head back. In the process, he accidentally bops his head into her jaw. His eyes widen. He hates, hates, hates the pained look on her face. He ignores the sting on his own head and rushes to pull away from her. She rubs her jaw.

 “Ahh! Sorry—Mmf, mmf!—I didn’t mean to!”

“It was an accident, it’s okay, baby.”

She tries to pull him back into the hug. It takes everything in him not to lean into her touch. He wrenches himself away from her again.

“No, it’s not! I’m going to keep hurting you guys if you don’t get away from me!”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, Hunter. Mami gets kicked in the face by animals all day long,” Luz says.

He glares at her. “I’m not—Mm-mm, mm-mm—Ha!—Beam us up!—a dog, Luz.”

“You know that’s not what I meant! I’m just saying that Mami is tough. I am too! My weak nerd arms are actually strong nerd arms, nowadays. Look!”

She pulls up her shirt sleeve and flexes her muscles. To her credit, she does have nice biceps.

“I don’t care! Can I just be excused from dinner please?” He begs, looking up at Camila.

“No way!” Luz shouts, “‘Cause then you’re just going to go downstairs and be miserable and get stuck ticcing all night long. We should at least go do something to keep your mind off of it.”

“There’s no—Mmf, mmf!—Meow!—Hey!—keeping my mind off this, Luz! Kind of hard—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—to,” he does jazz hands, snaps his head back, and whistles, “Ignore!”

“That’s why we have to find something you can really focus on!”

“Like what?” He hisses, “I’m just going to ruin anything we try to—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!—do right now.”

“Something low-stakes, then! Ooh, we should play video games!”

“That’s such a good idea, Mija!” Camila says. Luz grins at the praise.

“I know, I’m a genius! So what do you think, Hunter?”

Hunter sits back in his seat and crosses his arms. Jerks his head back. Whistles.

He really shouldn’t be putting them in danger like this.

“I’m just going to hurt you,” he says.

It comes out so timid. Gross. He clears his throat and scrunches up his face.

Luz shakes her head. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

He doesn’t know why he believes her. He shouldn’t. It’s completely illogical. But something about the way she says it with such conviction feels like a drug being injected directly into his veins. It slows his looping thoughts the slightest bit. 

“Are you sure?” He asks.

“Absolutely. You’re a good person. You would never hurt me on purpose,” she says.

A flair of anxiety, “How do you—Mm-mm, mm-mm—Ew, those glasses are ugly—Haha!—know that?”

“‘Cause I can’t think of a single time you’ve hurt me on purpose?”

His stomach is in knots. “I’ve hurt you by accident though,” he points out. 

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve lived, obviously. There’s nothing you can do that would ever be bad enough to really hurt me. I’ve handled your tics before, and I can handle them now, easy peasy. It’s going to be oookay,” she drawls, amused.

It's not funny.

“Can you say it again? That I—Ha!—won’t hurt you?” He bounces his leg and jerks his head back. 

He doesn’t think he can get her to say it six more times, so he hopes the Titan will forgive him. Three is a holy number, too. Maybe it will be enough.

“You’re not going to hurt me.”

He nods, “Okay—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—Haha!—One more time, please?”

“Hunter, it’s fine! Let’s just go play!”

“No!” He yells, “You,” he whistles and clears his throat, “You have to!”

Camila’s eyebrows knit together. “Mijo, she’s already said it twice. That’s enough. Go play. Everything will be okay.”

“But!”

“You are such a worrywart. Let’s go, I promise you’re going to chill out once we get into it,” Luz says, rolling her eyes.

Luz grabs him by the hand and drags him to the living room. Panic blooms in his chest as the electricity in his arm begs him to hit her hard.

“No, stop!” He yells, wrenching his hand out of her grasp and backing up out of her reach. His eyes widen as he grabs his own hand.

She looks at him in stunned silence. They've only gotten to the threshold of the living room. He can still salvage this.

“We can’t! You have to say it,” he jerks his head to the right, whistles, and directs the fizziness to punch the wall next to him instead of at her, “You have to—Mm-mm, mm-mm—Hello!—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—You have to say it or I can’t go with you! Please!”

“Okay, okay! It’s okay!” She says, holding up her hands in surrender, “You’re not going to hurt me!”

She looks heartbroken, and he’s not sure why. Maybe he’s upsetting her by being so nervous around her? Maybe she thinks he thinks she’s too weak? He doesn’t know, but he’s done something wrong. Why is he incapable of causing anything but harm?

“Dude…” 

She reaches up on her tiptoes and catches tears under his eyes with her thumbs. He hadn’t even realized he started crying. He pushes her hands away and scrubs his face himself, but the tears just keep coming. He’s never learned how to stop his tics, but at least he learned how to cry silently. Small victories in the dignity department for the Golden Guard.

She gives him a hug. “Hey. It’s okay. I promise. I…don’t know what’s going on, but obviously something has you freaking out. Can we sit for a minute and just, I don’t know, take a chill pill? We can go to my room and I can grab a pillow for you to hit? Please?”

“I don’t want to, Luz.” 

He nudges her away. Her face falls. Guilt fills in every crevice of his body not otherwise occupied by anxiety. He needs to fix it. He put on hand sanitizer before he left the basement, so it should be okay to go with her.

“Fine!— Ha!—Pshew, pshew! I’ll hit you!—I’m a sneaky sneakster!—I’ll go.”

She still doesn’t look satisfied, but she takes him by the hand and starts to lead him to her room.

Hunter plops down into her bean bag chair and throws her blanket over his head. He’s still twitchy and loud underneath, but at least she won’t see him cry. He hears her clothes rustling as she sits down beside him on the floor. In the lull between tics, he can almost hear the cogs turning in her head.

“Hunter…” She says eventually, “I think you need to talk to someone.”

He doesn’t respond to that. His stance on the matter has been clear since day one of his stay here post-Flapjack. He won’t. No one else has been through the things he has. No one else knows that he’s evil inside. No one else will ever understand why he has to do these things.

“If not a therapist, just…can you at least talk to me, or Mami, or Vee, or Willow, or Gus, or anyone! It’s just, everyone has been really worried about you.”

“There’s—Byeeee!—Meow!—Ha!—Hey!—nothing to be worried about.”

“You’ve changed a lot since…You moved in here,” she says, and the pause tells him everything about what she actually wants to say.

“No—Mmf, mmf!—I haven’t.”

A knock on Luz’s door interrupts their argument. Hunter yanks the blanket off of his head and throws an arm out in front of Luz’s torso, like that’s going to do anything to protect her from an intruder. He’s such an idiot; why didn’t he lock the door?!

“It’s just Vee, dummy,” Luz says fondly, “Come in!”

The electricity from his extended arm gathers in his fist within seconds. He bops himself in the jaw twice, hard, before Luz scrambles to grab the pillow beside her. She curses and pushes it onto his cheek. He gets a couple more swings in, and while the blows are not as satisfying when they’re hitting a plush pillow instead of his jawbone, it fulfills the itch just barely enough.

While he’s stuck in the next particularly painful series of neck jerks and whistles, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vee raise her eyebrows and mouth something to Luz. Whatever Vee conveys, Luz responds with a nod and a head tilt to direct Vee to sit on the other side of him.

Great. Another person in his path of destruction. He gets started on his prayers for her, but keeps getting interrupted by himself. He can’t finish a single thought without having to start over. He gets stuck smacking his wrists together, bone against bone, while he holds his breath and tries his script again. It hurts, it’s not enough, he can’t breathe—

He really cannot take it anymore.

He lunges over to give Luz a hug and lets out the ugliest sob he thinks he’s ever produced. He can’t see Luz’s reaction, but he imagines its shock. If it is, he understands. He’s never been one to cry in front of people. He’s used to bottling everything up behind his mask and crying in the safety of his room before sucking it up to work another day. He’s pretty sure that ever since the Day of Unity, before today, he’d only cried twice—Once in front of Luz, and once in front of her mom. It was unsettling to each of them, but he was able to pull himself together both times completely within five minutes. He’s proud of maintaining that level of composure.

Crying just brings far too much attention. He doesn’t like obligating people to take care of him. Gus called him a 'tough guy,' once as a joke, but Hunter thinks he really is one. He’s been trained to fight since he was three years old, he can work magic with a first aid kit, and he was the Emperor’s right-hand-man for years. He should be tough enough to handle a little stress on his own.

If he could convince himself to leave the room right now, he would. He imagines himself doing it; he pictures opening the door in his mind; he counts how many steps it would take to cross the threshold, but his muscles won’t even move to stand up. It’s just another way his body won’t listen to him.

Luz pulls him close and rests her cheek on his head. Vee scoots over to wrap her arms around him, too. It’s awful. Their arms are so thin, it would be so easy for him to snap them in half.

He cries even harder. 

He just wants to be good. Why is it so hard for him to just be good?

Cradled in the hug he doesn’t deserve, he cries himself to sleep.

He dreams of a lake he can never escape.

Chapter Text

He wakes up the next day swaddled in a blanket pile with Luz and Vee. He’s no longer on the bean bag, he notices upon opening his eyes. Instead, he’s laying on some type of pallet right next to it. It’s amusing to consider how they managed to roll him over onto it after he fell asleep. He’s a notoriously light sleeper, so he must have been really exhausted if they didn’t wake him up with their plan. He thinks back to the time he, Willow and Luz carried Gus to bed one time, and snickers. If Gus was hard to move with three people, he can only imagine the chaos of Luz and Vee bickering over how to move him. However they managed it, it's strange knowing they care so much about him to bother with it. When they’re not trying to drive him up the wall, they’re sickeningly considerate.

Of course, he can never return the favor. No, of course, bright and early, he has to wake them up with his unruly body. He tries to slip away before the violence starts, but Luz’s leg draped over his is trapping him in place. In retaliation, he just has to reel his hand back and smack her shoulder over the blankets.

“What the heck?!” Luz hisses, waking up instantly, “I’m trying to sleep, here!”

She flips around to give him a piece of her mind. Before he can even think of sputtering out an apology, her narrowed eyes catch sight of his horrified face and soften.

“Oh. Good morning to you too, ‘mano.”

“What’s going on?” Vee mumbles. She doesn’t bother flipping around to face them.

Luz pulls the covers closer to her chest and whines. “Hunter’s tics want to practice karate at,” she taps her phone beside her to display the time, “Six AM on a Sunday, apparently.”

He groans and rubs his hands down his face, “Ugh, sorry. I’m kind of stuck in-between you two. I couldn’t exactly—Mmf, mmf!—Tch, tch, tch—Hey!” He snaps his head back, “Get up.”

“It’s okay, I’m just teasing you.” 

He wants to keep apologizing, but he knows he shouldn’t. After last week when he had a meltdown over smacking Luz’s wet painting, she has a new “boundary” that she won’t stay and listen to him apologize to her a million times for accidents. It reminds her too much of herself, and she’s trying to break her over-apologizing habit too. Once she explained that, it was hard to bite his tongue, but he managed.

Now, his fist tingles with the building urge to punch something. As always, his jaw is its biggest target. Seconds later, when he hits it, Luz winces in tandem. Ever the bleeding heart, she takes the pillow out from underneath her head and holds it loosely against his cheek. While he loathes taking away her comfort, he’s thankful for the barrier. Without looking, he already knows his jaw and fist are bruised to the Knee and back from yesterday. He doesn’t think he can ice anything without turning an ice pack or a bag of frozen peas into an assault weapon either, so he just has to deal with minimizing the damage until his tics calm down again.

Being unable to fully see his surroundings never fails to keep him on edge no matter how objectively safe he is, so when the blankets rustle to the right of him, his ear twitches in Vee’s direction. Logically, he knows it’s just her, but to his partial sensory deprivation, she may as well be a slitherbeast hiding in the bushes. He lies there in tense silence, his heart pounding for no reason, and he can only assume Vee is looking at him like he’s nuts.

“Hey Luz, why are we smothering Hunter?” Vee asks sleepily.

She isn’t entirely wrong on the ‘we.’ Hearing Vee’s voice permits him to expel the breath he didn't know he’d been holding since he first heard her moving around. Now, if the rest of his body could wind down too, that would be great.

“She—Wa—Wa—Wants to be an only child again. You’re next.”

“Exposing my secrets so early in the morning? I’m hurt, Brutus. You really are evil,” Luz says.

His skin crawls. He’s pretty sure she’s joking, but he has to make sure.

“You said I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose. I wasn’t trying to, I promise. I was joking.” He hopes he doesn’t sound too desperate. His head snaps back to smack the pillow under his head twice. He adds one more, just in case. Scrunches up his face and blinks.

“I know, Hunter.” Luz sighs, “I was joking too.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“So you don’t really think I’m evil, right?”

“Oh my Goddd,” Luz groans, “I love you, but you need to get a grip. You’re not evil.” 

There are plenty of people back in the Isles who would disagree with her. As a Human Realm native, she’s far too biased. He needs someone who’s lived in the Isles and knows the worst of what he’s done to give him some insight on his morality.

“Hey Vee, do you think I’m evil?” He asks.

“Nope,” she says simply.

Well, that plan failed. He wishes she would have given it more than two seconds of thought. Scouts like him were the ones that kept her locked up in a cage all those years. Surely she could have come up with a list. Instead of indulging him in his spiraling, she steals the pillow Luz is still holding over his face and leans over him to smack it on Luz’s face.

“Hey!” Luz cries, “Why am I the one who keeps getting hit?”

“That looked uncomfortable on your neck, so there’s your pillow back. Gimme your Squishmellow.”

Fittingly, Vee holds out her hand and does a gimme gimme motion. Luz grabs her nearby possum Squishmellow and lunges over Hunter to dive-bomb it at Vee’s face. Vee catches it with a smug, victorious laugh and replaces the empty real estate of Hunter’s face with it.

“Jerk,” Luz mumbles. She puts the returned pillow back under her head and flops over to face away from both of them. Satisfied with herself, Vee snuggles back into the blankets.

“You're welcome. Now, everybody go back to sleep,” Vee says.

Hunter sighs and takes over holding the plushie. “Thanks for the Squishmellow, but I don’t know…I don’t think I should stay here if you guys want to go back to bed.”

“Didn’t ask, don’t care. Go back to sleep,”

“Yeah, you heard the lady,” Luz mumbles.

“But what if I hit—Pshew, pshew, I’ll hit you!” He grimaces, “What if I hit you?”

“We can scoot over. And if you end up hitting us, we’ll be fine. We’re under all these heavy blankets. The worst you’ll do is jumpscare us. So chill,” Luz says.

He knows he’s not going to win, so he swallows the outrage. The girls scoot away from the firing range of his arms and legs and snuggle up into their now-disconnected blanket cots, which makes him feel less dangerous, if not a little lonely. With Luz and Vee falling asleep, he’s left alone with his thoughts, and that’s never a good thing.

He gets stuck hitting the Squishmellow on his face for a minute, then, when he’s pretty sure the worst is over (he’s not going to think about it anymore, as not to trigger himself into doing it again. He’s not. He’s not.) he takes it off of his face. He hugs it against his chest and stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Watching the lazily spinning fan above his head interrupt his view of them every few seconds isn’t as entertaining as he’d hoped, but he owes it to Luz and Vee to try to chill out enough to let them get some rest after dealing with him for so long.

Unfortunately for them, Hunter cannot even begin to conceptualize the idea of “chilling.” All of the things he needs to do today flood into his mind the longer he lays there. He needs to go out to the woods to dispose of his gloves. He needs to change his bed sheets. He needs to wash the dirty ones, probably three times. He needs to do extra chores for Camila today, since he just realized he forgot to help her with the dishes last night like he usually does. He needs to go find new gloves. He needs to find Camila and double-check to make sure he didn’t hurt her yesterday. There’s so much to do, yet he’s laying here wasting time.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He’s not wasting time. He’s resting. Resting is good for the body. When you rest, you regain your energy so that you can work even harder the next day. It's good. This is a good thing. Everyone tells him that.

He closes his eyes. Scrunches his face. Blinks back up at the ceiling. Closes his eyes again. Clears his throat. Huffs and glares at the ceiling.

On the bright side, at least he has time to get ahead on his prayers for the day. He devotes all of his focus to going down his list and praying for each person three times. By the time he reaches his third person, Gus, Luz whips around to face him. She catches him red-handed (literally) smacking himself on the chest-Squishmellow and making an annoying sound he didn’t even realize he was making until now.

“Ticka ticka ticka ticka—Sorry,” he finishes, blushing.

She scrutinizes him. He sucks in his lips and bites down hard to keep the noise from escaping, yet it continues high above their heads. They both look up at the swaying fan, then back at each other.

It burns. He can’t hold it back anymore.

He holds his hands over his mouth to muffle the noise, and after a moment, he’s able to force himself to stop. It feels awful trapped behind his teeth, but he can deal with it. It’s not the same, but he jerks his head quietly to the side instead.

She’s still staring at him, and he bites back the “sorry,” that wants to be freed just as much as the tic.

“Hold on. Stay here,” Luz says.

She throws the covers off herself and walks over to her desk. He stays tucked under his blankets, but watches her every move. He does Willow’s breathing thing to try to focus on anything else but the familiar sound of someone digging in their desk drawer after he’s failed to keep himself quiet. His body is perfectly behaved now all of the sudden, silent and still, just like they both wanted, and he has the humorous thought that maybe all that training was a good thing, if it still works this well years later.

After an eternity, Luz returns with some headphones and the tablet they all grew to love playing with in their stay here before Halloween. She settles back onto her blankets and hunches over the tablet to mess with it. She holds the headphones up to her ears and adjusts the volume. Satisfied, she scoots closer to him. Her hand holding the headphones flashes in his periphery coming towards the side of his head, causing him to flinch.

“Sorry,” she says, reeling back, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t, it’s fine. But what are you—”

“Enrichment,” she explains sleepily, “You wanna put them on yourself?”

She dangles the headphones out in front of her, lower this time, and looks at him expectantly.

He’s not quite sure this isn’t a trick, but in the more likely chance that she does actually have a good-faith plan brewing, he can’t just tell her hopeful face ‘no.’ He takes them and holds them like they’re a ticking (haha) time bomb in his hands. If he’s going to humor her, he at least wants some explanation.

“I still don’t know what you’re doing,” he says.

“You can’t fall back asleep, right? So I’m pulling up a game and some music to keep you busy. What kind of music do you want? Linkin Park?”

“Oh,” he says dumbly, “Uh, sure. That sounds good.”

With a few more flicks of her finger across the tablet, she pulls up his favorite album and some weird block game. The title ‘Tetris’ flashes across the screen. Luz tells him that it’s a popular Human Realm game. He reads the directions to the game and catches on quickly. 

She dives back under the covers and leaves him to it. The tension in his body unspools with each line of blocks he clears. The sound of his favorite singer in his ears blocks the sounds of the fan and the no-longer-repressible noises from his mouth. Removing the potential to get stuck in a feedback loop of tics by hearing himself make noise is helpful. The amount of times he has to drop the tablet on his chest to smack his wrists together dwindles until it’s only a once-in-a-few-minutes occurrence. 

He has the passing thought as he relaxes: ‘Is this how normal people feel?’ And almost laughs about it. Surely everyone else is also stressed all the time, too. He’s just incredibly dramatic. Stress is just part of being a person, and Hunter is one-hundred-percent a certified person. 

He thinks. He’s pretty sure. 

Again, there’s nothing wrong with him.

Eventually, the girls wake up and scoot a little closer to him to watch him play. He’s too engrossed in his activity to divert his attention to them. He’s certain if he keeps at the game, he’ll be able to beat his high score within the hour. Alas, Luz doesn’t care about his legacy—after a few minutes, she waves a hand in front of his face to get his attention and makes him mess up a line. He huffs, pauses the game, and yanks the headphones off.

“What?” He asks.

“Good morning again, skibidi rizz iPad kid,” Luz chirps, stretching as she sits up.

“Good morning.”

“Don’t answer to that,” Vee croaks, exasperated. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes.

He tilts his head down to look at her questioningly. “What? It’s true though. I am using the iPad.”

“It’s meant to be derogatory, you doofus. Didn’t you hear the context? The skibidi rizz?”

“I don’t even know what that means, and I don’t care to.”

“It means that—”

“Anyway,” Luz interrupts pointedly, rolling her hand in a circle, “Did it help?”

“Did what help?”

“The music and the game!”

“Oh. I think so?”

Vee stretches and yawns, then snuggles back into the blankets closer to him. “Hmm. You’ve only done the blinking thing so far while we’ve been talking, so I think so.”

“Wait, really?” He sits up and turns to Luz, wide-eyed, “Woah, Luz, that’s like magic! How did you know that would—” 

Like clockwork, the energy returns as soon as he thinks he’s in the clear. He shoots an arm out to smack Vee with the headphones. Luckily, she catches his wrist with one hand and plucks the headphones out of his with the other. After throwing them on the beanbag out of his reach, she smiles and pats his back.

“Aaaaand that’s why I said ‘So far.’”

He sighs, “Thanks for the vote of—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!—confidence, Vee.”

“But was I wrong?” She says, raising an eyebrow.

He sighs. “No…”

“They’ll calm down eventually,” Luz reassures, though she doesn’t look too confident in the sentiment herself.

He whistles and jerks his head back. “Eventually can’t—Mm-mm, mm-mm!—Tch tch tch—Haha!—come soon enough.”

“I feel you,” Luz says, “Do you wanna keep the headphones and the tablet?”

“I feel you—Haha!—Are you—you—you—you—Haha!—sure?

“Yeah! Honestly, I don’t even really use the iPad anymore now that I have a phone, and I have another pair of headphones around here somewhere. You can use those while you do…whatever it is you want to do today,” she tilts her head, “What is everyone doing today, by the way?”

“I’m probably just going to hang out at the old house with Masha. We got some new LED lights yesterday that we plan on hanging up in the basement,” Vee says.

Hunter’s heart drops. The familiar flutter in his stomach returns full-force.

If she goes out in the woods to get there, then he won’t be able to set a fire without her noticing, and then—

“Wait, you can’t!” He blurts.

Both of them look at him quizzically. He rushes to explain himself.

“Um, I heard there’s been a lion out there lately. People have been talking about it around town. You shouldn’t,” he snaps his neck back and whistles, “Haha!—Byeee!—go there.”

Vee and Luz look at each other, then back at him. He can’t read their expressions, but he knows it’s not anything good.

“What?!” He snaps.

“Do you want to call him out on his bullshit, or do you want me to?” Luz asks.

“I can do the honors,” Vee says, nodding, “There are no lions that live in the forest here. We’re in Connecticut, not Africa.”

Stupid! He knew that! He watched the animal conservation channel just about every night with Gus during their stay here. He could list every single animal that lives in the Akagera National Park in Africa if someone were to ask him, so why would lions even come to mind when talking about Connecticut? He’s such a bad liar under pressure!

“I thought,” he snaps his head back and does jazz hands, “I feel you—Mm-mm, mm-mm!—Ew, those glasses are ugly—we live in the United States?”

Luz sighs. “Don’t play dumb. Why are you lying?”

“I’m not lying!”

“You are! Why don’t you want me to go to the old house?” Vee asks.

He does jazz hands again, smacks his wrists together, then, even as a surprise to him, smacks his hand against his nose instead of his jaw. It’s the most intense hit he’s taken in a while. He cradles his nose in his hand. He’s lucky it isn’t bleeding.

“Ow, fuck! Ugh!” He pulls his hands away from his face, splays them out, and shakes them in frustration, “Can we drop this? Do what you want! I’ll figure something else out! It’s fine!”

“Figure what out? I’ve said it a million times, but you need to talk about whatever’s freaking you out at some point,” Luz says, “I love you, but you’re kind of a trainwreck. You’re going to keep having tic attacks if you’re this wound up all the time.”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to five in his head like Camila taught him to do when he’s annoyed with Luz. He wants so badly to snap and tell her to shut up, but even though Camila is nowhere near him right now, he won’t. The last time he did that on purpose, she overheard and scolded him. He doesn’t have it in himself to disregard her direct order in her own home. She’s the only one who corrects him anymore, and he refuses to ruin that.

He exhales and opens his eyes to look back and forth between Luz and Vee. His voice is level when he speaks.

“I’m fine, guys. Please leave me alone now. I have to get stuff done today, too.”

He avoids their stares as he nudges the covers away and stands up. He makes a beeline for the door.

“Wait!” Luz yells. 

He jumps and whirls around to face her. Judging by the look on Vee’s face, her outburst startled the basilisk, too.

“Sorry! It’s just…Can we all play video games together? We never got to yesterday. I was looking forward to it. So please? It doesn’t have to be for long, if you guys are busy.”

Vee shrugs. “I’ll make time. Masha definitely won’t mind getting to sleep in.”

They both look at him.

“I…” Hunter starts, rubbing his arms, “I don’t know.”

“You can stand away from us,” Luz says. She’s using her ‘I-don’t-like-the-idea-but-I’m-willing-to-compromise-with-you voice.

He wants to indulge her. He hates it when she pulls out the puppy dog eyes. He’s not sure why his approval matters to her, but he wants to give it to her regardless. For as much as she gets on his nerves, she always has him wrapped around her finger, at the end of the day.

He growls and throws his hands up.

“Fine! I guess!” He snaps his head back and whistles, “As long as you stand away from me. What do you wanna play?”

“Just Dance?”

He scrunches up his nose, and for once, it isn’t a tic, “You know I suck at that game.”

“Yeah, you kind of do. But the talking-to-distract-you thing obviously doesn’t always work. But it also seems like you tic less when you focus really hard on something or listen to music, so why not combine the two?”

He’s fascinated by the revelation. Sure, the focusing thing makes sense—any time he sits down to read something interesting, the tics go away for a while. He already knew that. But music? It feels like it’s something he’d always known deep down, but never looked into. It’s not exactly like he had the time, nor means, to listen to music back at the castle.

That’s…not quite true, actually, now that he thinks about it. Raine played sometimes, once they moved in. At that point, he should have given up on knocking on Darius’s door and bothered them instead. Maybe he should have taken them up on their offer to teach him violin. Maybe he could have had happy lessons instead of scary ones, and ended up with the same result.

It doesn’t matter now. It all worked out, and it’s fine. He needs to focus on the present.

”Wow, I’m surprised you,” he jerks his head to the side and whistles again, “Noticed that. Is that why you gave me the tablet this morning?”

“Yes! Don’t act so surprised; I can be observant too, you know!” Luz says, offended, “So do you wanna do it, or not?”

He shrugs, “As long as you don’t make fun of me, sure.” 

“Oh please, Vee will wipe the floor with both of us. I can’t say anything about your cringe whiteboy moves when I’m a disappointment to Aubela for not even being able to do the bare minimum merengue dance without looking awkward.”

Vee smirks at the compliment, but chooses to neither confirm nor deny.

Hunter’s mouth twitches into a half-smile. It’s nice hearing that he’s not the only one sucking at fitting in with the Noceda family. Camila is the kindest person he’s ever met, but Luz and Vee’s abuela always has something smart to say about his satanic outbursts and his unsightly scars that terrify the girls’ little cousins. 

“That’s fair,” he says, “So, are we playing in the living room? I can go and—Mmf, mmf!—Byeeeee!—I’m a sneaky sneakster—Haha! ” He smacks his chest a few times and whistles, “Ugh, hold on, sorry.” He snaps his head back. Smacks his chest again two times, then makes it three, “Haha!—Ew, those glasses are ugly—”

“No, I can do it,” Luz shakes her head, “You guys can come chill on the couch in the living room with me for a minute while I set it up. I can tell you about my next cosplay idea, and you guys can give me pointers. Sound good?”

Vee agrees. He frowns, but nods on the comedown of a head jerk. Luz’s idea is probably for the best. 

Vee and Hunter follow Luz’s lead into the living room. They sit on the couch and watch her flit around while he sits there and tics nonstop. She chatters away about a character from a new manga she’s reading, and her idea for a new cosplay. Somehow, he gets roped into a plan of tweaking her costume design and sewing it for her if she pays for his con ticket. 

Vee jumps in before he can agree and argues that since the local con’s tickets aren't even expensive, he deserves “better pay.” Hunter honestly would have done it for nothing in return just to spend time with Luz in a place where she’ll have easy access to scissors if he decides to hurt her, but he’s interested to see how this debate will go down. 

Vee negotiates what she and Luz determine is a fair price, which is Luz buying him con tickets and a fanart of his choosing from the Artists’ Alley. When Luz says they have a deal, he and Luz shake on it. With that, Luz grins and goes back to her task of setting up the game while she talks about how excited she is to work on the dress with him.

It puzzles him. He wishes he could know what Luz really thinks about him, but her face betrays nothing. 

She sticks out her tongue while she troubleshoots why the remotes aren’t connecting. He aches to nudge her out of the way and take a look at the remotes himself. He may be a bit of a mess still when it comes to typing or using social media on phones, but somehow, he’s an engineer compared to the rest of them when it comes to TVs and game consoles. He’s usually the one to set everything up, so he knows he’d figure it out much faster than her if he weren’t at risk of throwing and/or breaking anything unsecured that’s placed in his hands right now. 

He knows she spoke highly of him not even two minutes ago, but there’s still that nagging feeling in his buzzing nerves that she’s just placating him. He wouldn’t blame her if that were the case, but knowing Luz, she’s probably helping only because she likes helping—not because she thinks he’s useless. She always tells him that if she’s frustrated with him, she’ll say it straight to his face, so judging by the lack of admonishment, he owes it to her to trust he’s not bothering her right now.

He’s not bothering her. 

He’s not, he’s not, he’s not.

Her insistence on being nice to him is ironic, though. It would be easier to accept her thoughtfulness if he weren’t imagining bludgeoning her with the game controller at this very moment. His incessant internal dialogue lets him in on a secret solution to his problem—if he hides his hands behind his back and squeezes them together seven times, they’ll be too tired for violence. He’s too tired to argue.

When she hands him the controller, his hands are pounding and hot. She stills at the sight of how red they are, a question wavering on her lips, but decides against saying anything. She tightens the controller strap around his wrist without a word. She tightens her own, too, even though she always laughs about how useless they are. She places a remote in Vee’s hand and tightens the strap for her, too. 

He can’t help but sigh.

“What?” Vee asks.

“Just because I might throw the remote at the TV, it doesn’t—Tch, tch tch—Mm-mm, mm-mm—Haha!—it doesn’t mean you guys have to do that too.”

“You say that like Luz hasn’t accidentally thrown her remote at the TV playing Wii Sports bowling when she was little.”

Luz gasps and throws her hand over Vee’s mouth, “Shh! I shouldn’t have ever told you that story. Mami doesn’t know that was me and not my cousin, Vee; I’d like it to stay that way,” she hisses.

Vee rolls her eyes and yanks Luz’s hand away. “She’s all the way in her bedroom, dummy. And it’s been like, seven years.” 

They argue about it some more until Vee gets a little too close while pacing around and ranting. Hunter can’t stop himself in time from hitting her on the bicep with the remote. 

“Ow!” Vee hisses. She rubs her arm and winces.

Lovely. He’s two for two right now when it comes to hitting both of them. Maybe. Is that how that works? He’s not good at sports terminology. He is good at hitting, though, as evidenced by the red mark on Vee’s arm that will probably bruise, so maybe he should join Vee’s softball team and make himself useful for once.

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!—I feel you—mean to do that. You guys can always,” he clears his throat, then whistles, “Hit me back by the way. It would make me feel better, if I’m being honest.”

“Absolutely not,” Vee whirls around to stare him down. She adds a threatening edge to her voice, and his fight or flight almost kicks in, “I told you last time. Don’t ever say that again. It was my fault anyway. You said you wanted me to stay back, and I forgot. Natural consequences.” 

He ducks his head and nods, and it turns into snapping his head back and then hitting his chest. Vee drops her glare and angles her body towards both him and Luz. 

“...Anyway, softball practice yesterday wore me out. I’d rather not drop anything, either,” she says.

They all know she’s bluffing to help him save face, but he’ll relent. He never wins their two-against-one arguments. It’d be a waste of time to try over something so trivial. 

 “Okay, okay! Fine! Everyone can put the strap on!”

“‘Everyone can put the strap on,’” Luz repeats with a giggle, “You’re so gay, dude.”

“Whatever, I—Haha!—You’re so gay, dude,” Hunter repeats. He snaps his head back, whistles, and smacks his chest with the remote. “Ha!—Hello!—You’re so gay, dude.”

His eyes widen. All three of them stare at each other. 

Luz bursts out laughing. Then, so does Vee. He already knows his face has to be bright red.

“I’m going to kill you. I’m actually going to kill you,” he seethes, “First the glasses one, now this?”

They laugh even harder. Surprisingly, the threat he made doesn’t scare him. Instead of the usual violent thoughts, this threat of vengeance is more akin to wanting to smack her on the head with a rubber mallet. He’s not actually in a murderous mood right now. He knows that if this one sticks around, sure, he’ll be embarrassed for the first day or so, but he’ll survive. Everyone always adapts to any new tic he picks up rather quickly. His little family, while extremely irritating with their initial teasing, will never hurt him over something he can’t control. 

It’s…nice. Having one less thing to be afraid of.

“It’s not just me!” Luz defends between giggles, “Willow and Gus gave you some too!”

He shakes away the stupid sentimentality to jump back into the battle. Just because he loves them, it doesn’t mean he’s going to go down without a fight.

“Okay, but at least theirs aren’t inappropriate, Luz!” He says.

“What do you mean?! Gus literally gave you the hitting one when you were doing your weird Cosmic Frontier roleplay thing and shooting Nerf guns at each other!”

“That doesn’t count! That one only sounds bad out of context!” He counters.

“Okay yeah, you got me there,” Luz says, “But it’s really not that bad!”

“It is! Everyone is going to think I hate gay people now!”

“Hunter, you’re bi! It’s fine!” Luz says.

“Oh yeah, and some—Mmf, mmf!—random person on the street I call 'gay' is going to know that?”

“No, yeah, I agree with Hunter. You fumbled this one, Luz,” Vee says. Her lips are in a wobbly line.

“Thank you!” Hunter yells, vindicated.

Luz wipes a tear from her eye as he laughter winds down, then out of nowhere, she starts cackling again. 

“Wait, guys, oh my god, Amity’s going to lose her mind over this,” Luz cackles, “I cannot wait for her to hear this.”

Vee purses her lips even tighter to keep herself from laughing. It doesn’t hold her back very long. She grabs Luz and buries her face into her sister’s shoulder to muffle her laughter. She snorts when she laughs, which makes him feel a soft, ironic sense of pride for making her that amused. She gathers herself again quickly, to her credit, and lifts her head off Luz’s shoulder. She wipes the tears from her eyes. 

He’s still mortified, but decides to lean into the teasing. ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,’ Camila always says. He falls into the sofa and throws an arm over his eyes. 

“Whatever. It’s whatever! You guys are awful and I’m never—Haha!—leaving the house again,” he groans.

Vee snorts again on a barking laugh, and Hunter pulls his lips taut to keep from laughing. He knows it’s something she’s insecure about when it’s pointed out. 

Luz strides over to pull his arm off his face, leans in close, and smiles devilishly. “Good! She’s coming over tomorrow~”

He lashes an arm out, but she dodges. It was a tic, but he almost wishes he would have hit her. Not hard, but just a joking revenge tap.

“Hell yeah, I’m getting good at that!” Luz cheers, pumping her fist in the air.

“For what it’s worth, for your sake, I do hope this one is temporary,” Vee says through giggles, “But if it’s not, at least it’s a conversation starter?”

You know what? He’s changing his mind. He’ll beat her over the head with the rubber mallet, too.

“Knowing my luck, it won’t be. I hate my life.”

“Quit being dramatic and come on. It’s time for me to destroy you in this game,” Vee says.

“More humiliation. I can’t—tch, tch, tch—Byeee!—wait,” he says dryly. He gets up anyway.

They play for about an hour, and he decides that maybe the Titan really does care for him—his tics dwindle to around his new normal level of disruptiveness. He’s too tired to think up new murder plots, too, which is a massive plus. The girls put away the game stuff while he sits on the couch preparing his 'goodbyes.'

After he gets out of here, he can get started on his mission. He already came up with a backup plan while they were playing. If he scrounges around the basement for the money he earned from dog walking before Halloween, he can go to the store and pick up some new gloves and some bleach. Camila has some bleach upstairs, he knows, but he would like to have his own personal jug to hide downstairs, too. Once he returns with his bounty, he’ll soak the old gloves in bleach. He'll check on Camila, and then help her with any chores she has for him. He'll return downstairs, take the gloves out of the bleach, triple-bag them up, and throw them in the trash. That should be enough to get all the Belos goop off, right?

It is! Then he can take a shower or three, and once he does that, everyone will be safe, and everything will be okay. For now, he just needs to break away from the girls as inconspicuously as possible so that he can get a move on.

“Thanks for this, guys. It was fun.”

Just as he's about get up to walk away, Luz bounds over and jumps on the couch to sit with him. He cringes at how the seat bounces.

“Aww, no problem hermano," she says, lightly punching his arm.

Abandoned by Luz, but seemingly not upset about it, Vee crouches down to her knees and turns off the TV.

“I’m just happy you even let us help,” Vee says. 

“Yeah, It’s just…hard. I’m used to,” he clears his throat and whistles, “Dealing with it by myself.”

“I know, Luz says softly, “But you don’t have to. And whatever’s got you all anxious, you can talk to us about that, too, you know.”

He cringes even more. He was so close to escaping without being cornered into talking about it.

“Guys, again? Can you just drop it? I promise, I’m not anxious,” he says. 

Vee huffs out a laugh. She gestures for him to hand her his remote. He unstraps the controller and hands it to her, praying that he won’t throw it at her. He focuses really hard, so he doesn’t. The energy has to go somewhere though, so he bops his aching jaw with his fist.

Vee crouches down to tuck the remote away beside the console.

“You totally are,” she says, standing up and facing him, “No offense, but your Tourette’s tells on you every time. When you’re relaxed, you don’t tic much. But when you’re stressed, the tics flare up. Bad. And it’s been bad more often than not ever since you moved in here.”

She walks over to sit on the other side of him.

He blushes. “Is it really that noticeable?”

Luz jumps back in, “Dude, you had a tic attack yesterday that lasted, what, two hours? And then today, another couple hours? So hate to break it to you, but yeah. That, and you’ve been super weird lately. It’s almost like you’re hiding something.” She eyes him suspiciously.

Hunter shifts in his seat and looks away. “I um…I’m not. I’m fine. You guys don’t need to worry about me.”

Vee huffs and crosses her arms. “We do, though. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I noticed that you keep wearing gloves all the time again, and your hands are always red, and—and you’ve been super weird about people touching you. It’s like you’re a germaphobe all of the sudden.”

“I noticed that too!” Luz says, “And you’re spacing out and having flashbacks a lot, and skipping meals, and avoiding everyone and…” Luz trails off and shrugs, “I dunno. It’s just not like you.” 

He clenches his fists, “I’m—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!—fine! I keep telling you, there’s nothing wrong with me! You guys are just reading into things that aren’t there!”

Luz shakes her head. “No, It’s not just us. I think everyone else is worried about you, too. Gus especially. He feels awful for yesterday. He keeps texting me to ask if you’re okay.”

Hunter’s heart sinks. 

“He is? But he didn’t do anything wrong.”

He says that, but for some reason, when the words leave his mouth, he feels like he needs to repent for the indecipherable tangle of emotions that accompany them. It’s inexcusable and ridiculous. His feelings on the matter should be cut and dry: guilt for ruining Gus’s time with Luz. Easy peasy.

“Hunter! He triggered you so bad that you had flashbacks where you didn’t even know where you were! And you had a panic attack about it for like, ten minutes!” Luz says.

Now that’s a dramatic way to word it. He knows Gus didn’t mean to scare him, and the poor kid apparently feels awful about it. If Hunter could keep himself from having panic attacks over the dumbest things, no one else would have to feel guilty. So really, it’s no one’s fault but Hunter’s that he had a little freakout moment. It was fine, though—he got through it.

“I was not triggered,” he air quotes, rolling his eyes, “I calmed down. Your mom even said I did good.”

“After she talked you down, yeah! ‘Cause that’s a scary thing to go through, and she gets that! But what’s going to happen when she’s not around to calm you down? When you’re on your own and can’t tell what’s real? She’s stressed to the max and at a loss on how to help you. You need to go to therapy.”

Her voice is drilling through his eardrums, a dog whistle only he can hear. She pets his fur against the grain, and like always, he bares his teeth at the frequency that won’t stop ringing in his ears even after the words stop. Desperation claws at his chest, hurt and longing, but he knows good and well how to stitch up festering wounds.

“If she doesn’t want to deal with me, that’s fine! Nobody has to. You guys know I can handle myself,” he snaps, “I always come out of flashbacks and panic attacks and tic attacks eventually when no one’s around. None of this is new to me. Everyone is welcome to leave me alone when I’m being annoying.”

He’s suddenly ticcing with his face a lot; he knows he is, but he’s so furious and devastated by Luz’s revelation that he can’t bring himself to care about what his body’s doing. It’ll do what it wants without his input, so why worry about that when he has bigger things to worry about? Like how he's reached the last straw with them?

He truly hadn’t realized he was being that much of a burden here, too, but he supposes nothing changes. That’s what he does best. He takes and takes and takes until someone decides he’s more trouble than he’s worth to keep around. He lasted with Belos for thirteen years, Darius a week, and the Nocedas for three weeks. The humans always say that “the third time’s the charm,” but Hunter’s not had the best luck with threes lately, no matter how much he tries to force it. Honestly, none of his good numbers have been working well lately. He needs a new one.

Vee jumps in. “She’s not saying that no one wants to deal with you! She’s saying that for your own sake, you’ll feel so much better once you learn how to deal with your trauma. At least enough that you’re not PTSD-ing it up all over the place every single day of your life.”

“Yeah!” Luz agrees. Her eyes soften, “Face it, you’re exhausted, ‘mano.”

He is, but he's fine. He always pushes through. He always does just one more. He's always tired, but he never stops.

It's possible four could be his new right number.

Maybe Raine, with their soft-spoken nature and fierce protectiveness, will take pity on him next. At least Raine will probably get it, at least a little bit—they were possessed too. Maybe they’ll understand how hard it is to do the right thing. Maybe they’ll even teach him the violin, and he can be cured. Maybe he can live with them and be loud with an instrument in a way that soothes people rather than irritates them. Maybe he won’t be too much this time, because Raine's the fourth, four is a good number, and good numbers work on good people.

He's probably getting ahead of himself. They probably won't want him either.

Possible, maybe, probably—his life is nothing but a perpetual attempt at balancing an un-tared scale, and he would kill for some certainty.

He wouldn't. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t.

Rubber mallets turn back to knives and guns and staves and ropes and he’s not going to kill Luz. He’s not going to kill Vee. He’s not going to kill Camila. He’s not going to kill Gus. He’s not going to kill Amity. He’s not going to kill Willow. He’s not going to kill Darius. He’s not going to kill Eber. He’s not going to kill Raine. He’s not going to kill—

He’s safe, he’s safe, he’s safe, he’s safe.

He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine.

He’ll go, he’ll go, he’ll go, he’ll go.

“Hunter?” Luz asks.

“I’m done here. I’ll talk to you guys later,” he says coldly, “Thanks for the game.”

“Hunter…” Luz says.

She sounds so exasperated he wants to cry.

He ignores her and walks out of the room. He goes downstairs to get ready for the day, finds his money, throws his shoes on, and walks out the door. He avoids the cracks on the sidewalk and tries not to think about how it’s a three minute walk to the closest store.

He’s going to the one fourteen minutes away, instead.

It's close enough, right?

Chapter Text

When a person has Tourette’s, it’s quite challenging to stay quiet, much less stay quiet enough to sneak out of the house. Luckily, he’s able to take advantage of a lull in the tics in the middle of the night to start off on his mission. He’d already prepared his bag of things after completing his chores yesterday. He didn’t have much to pack. Really, all he had to pack was the stuff Ms. Noceda had given him. It’s not like he was able to salvage any of his stuff from Darius’s before he moved in here.

He breathes through the flare of rage that accompanies that thought. He’s not going to think about Darius. He’s not going to think about Ms. Noceda. He’s not going to think about Luz, or Vee, or his friends. He’s not going to think about anyone ever again except Raine, and that’s just to secure a place to sleep. For now, he just needs to focus on the mission and make it to their home before sunrise. He’d rather die than have anyone else catching him running with his tail tucked between his legs in the broad daylight.

The Isles are chilly when he crosses through the portal. The Demon Realm has some pretty strange weather compared to the Human Realm. Right now, the Demon Realm is in the Human Realm equivalent of ‘Winter,’ so the normally Boiling Sea has cooled off considerably. With this change comes cooler winds, and with cooler winds comes a freezing Hunter. 

He had a jacket that fit him at Luz’s house, but he felt bad taking it with him. It was Manny’s. Hunter refuses to steal from Ms. Noceda like that. It’s bad enough that he’s wearing the clothes he bought at the mall with her money. He can tough it out until he earns enough himself to buy his own jacket in the Demon Realm.

Speaking about essentials he doesn’t have, without a palisman, it’s a bit of a commute to Raine’s house. He’s exhausted by the time he takes two transport worms and walks about five miles. Once he makes it to their doorstop, it takes every ounce of courage in him to lift up his hand and knock. He hears them fumbling about inside the house. They struggle with the lock on the door, and once they pry it open, stare at his slightly bowed head.

“Hi,” Hunter says. He stares at the welcome mat and rubs his arm.

“…Hi,” Raine responds. 

He makes himself look up at them, and in the process, notices that they’re in their pajamas. It shouldn’t be as surprising to him as it is. Hunter snuck out at the completely normal hour of 1 AM with a stolen trash bag of his stuff and showed up at their doorstep like some abandoned cat from Camila’s office. What, did he expect them to be in their coven uniform like he remembers them, ready to wait on him hand and foot? If Raine turns him away, it will be completely understandable, and quite frankly, probably the wisest decision they can make for themself.

“I um…” He starts.

They’re looking at him like he’s nuts. It’s dawning on him that he is.

“I’m sorry. This was a mistake,” he says. His ears burn as he turns on his heel to walk away.

“No, wait!” Raine yells, “Why don’t you come in for a while? You can tell me what’s going on.”

Hunter turns back around slowly, hugs his trash bag close to his chest, and glances up to meet theirs. Their eyebrows are pinched together in concern, and shame bubbles up to squeeze his chest. He averts his eyes and toes the rough thatch of their welcome mat with his foot.

“No— Mm-mm—I appreciate it, but I…I shouldn’t have come here. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you up.” 

He curses at himself over how quickly he lost control over his vocal chords. He thought he’d at least have a few minutes before embarrassing himself in that way, but he supposes it shouldn’t be surprising that he can’t even apologize right. His only comfort is that at least it was just one tic. It might have blended in with the context of his sentence, too. Raine doesn’t look terribly confused, so perhaps he can keep this up just a little while longer.

…He’s not entirely sure what he’s trying to prove with the self-imposed challenge. He’s going to fail eventually. Maybe it’s the thought that counts…?

“It’s really okay, Hunter, I was only dozing off. But even if I wasn’t, I still wouldn’t have minded,” Raine says.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that. They seem earnest enough, but lots of people are before they realize how annoying he is. 

“Why don’t you go ahead and come inside,” Raine insists, nudging their head towards the door, “We can have some tea, and if you still want to leave after that, you can.”

He knows that he should turn away now before he hurts them or inconveniences them further, but Luz’s voice rings in his ears with the truth he doesn’t want to remember. He’d rather drown in the Boiling Sea than see the look on Camila’s face when she realizes she's failed to run him off for good.

He’s not sure why it makes something needy inside him bang tiny fists on the walls of his chest, or what about Ms. Noceda’s hugs in particular make him feel like he’s entitled to anything other than a roof over his head if he’s lucky, but he can’t stand himself for it.

Raine offering to humor him for a little while is to be expected, considering he’s taking advantage of their polite nature, but he is surprised by their insistence despite his acknowledgement of his rudeness. Like the little leech he is, he considers their offer, but he at least does them the service of squashing his embers of hope into a lazy trail of smoke before they can burst into flames. 

He ducks his head a little, “Are you sure it’s okay if I come in?”

“I’d much prefer it to standing out here where the fairy flies can bite us, don’t you think?”

Hunter shrugs. He almost wants them to send him away, not twist his words and act like it’s a given that the two of them are going to talk, but he’s surprisingly okay with being manipulated if it means not feeling awful about taking up their space.

“I guess,” he says, “But no tea please.”

His tics aren’t bad right now, but knowing his luck, he’d rather not risk hurting them with their own olive branch if he can help it. He doesn’t trust himself not to throw the tea on them on purpose, either. The images bombarding his mind of their melting face don’t exactly put him at ease. He’d rather they keep anything hot 20 feet away from him at all times, actually, but who is he to tell someone what to do in their own home?

It’s okay. He just needs to control himself. 

Easy.

Raine smiles softly at him and opens the door all the way. They usher him in and close the door behind him. Once the cold air is sealed out and the warmth of their apartment wraps him up in tentative safety, Raine gestures to the sofa straight ahead to the left.

“You can make yourself comfortable in the living room. I’ll make us some tea,” they pause and tilt their head slightly, tapping their curled index finger against their chin, “Well, make myself some tea, I suppose. What drink would you like instead? I have water, apple blood, hot chocos smilk…”

Hunter stares at the floor the best he can while his head jerks and blinking tics work against him. He tries to hide them as much as possible, but with the pumpkin-spiced air filling his lungs and the pressure in his throat building exponentially, he’s not sure how much longer he can keep the more noticeable tics from slipping out. 

“I’m okay on the drinks, thank you,” he says, “I don’t wanna…You know.” 

He mimes throwing something across the room.

“Throw…Something…?” Raine asks.

His face burns. “The tics, Raine.”

“Oh,” they say, “I guess I didn’t realize you still have those.”

Akin to someone becoming hyper-aware of their every breath once they’re reminded they’re breathing unconsciously, the more Hunter talks about ticcing, the harder the urges are to ignore.

“I mean, most of the time, I can hide them well enough. But lately, they’ve— Haha!—I feel you,” he snaps his head back, then cringes at himself, “Lately they’ve been flaring up pretty bad. Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry; it’s not your fault. What if I got you some water in a plastic cup? That way, if you throw it, there’s no harm done.”

He wants to argue. He wants to tell them that if he can’t control himself, he doesn’t deserve to have a drink placed in his hand. That’s what Belos would have told him, and now that he’s outside of the fantasy bubble of the Noceda household, he’s inclined to agree. It’s too bad that leeches don’t have a conscience when their throat is parched, apparently.

“That’s a smart idea actually,” Hunter says, “Um, sure. Thank you again.”

“Of course,” Raine says. They give him a soft smile, “Now seriously, go make yourself comfortable. I think there are some magazines on the table if you get bored.”

Hunter nods and follows their instructions, setting his bag of stuff at his feet. The couch is firm, but at least it’s soft enough to prevent him from getting a goose-egg on his scalp when he snaps his head back a few times in Raine’s absence. He doesn’t touch the magazines—he’s never ripped things as a tic before, but he doesn’t want to risk it in Raine’s home. Resourceful as always, he tries to get some bigger motor tics out of his system while they’re outside of his line of sight. His body feels a bit calmer by the time they return with the tea kettle, their mug, and his cup of water, and when their eyes meet his, whether by coincidence or muscle memory, he goes perfectly still.

“So,” Raine starts, handing him a cup of water and sitting down a few cushions away, “What brings you here, Hunter?” 

He cradles the cup in his hands and takes a sip while he thinks about it. They take a sip of their own tea, then set their mug on the coffee table. He follows their implicit direction to copy their actions with his own water.

“I don’t know. This was—Mmf, mmf!—a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

Raine shakes their head. “I don’t mind you being here in the slightest, but I will say, I’m a bit confused? I thought you were staying with Camila after Darius…”

Hunter blushes. He tries to keep his tone lighthearted, but something about it comes off hysterical to his own ears. “Yeah, well, you know me…” 

Raine gives him a good look-over. Under their spotlight, his efforts to to hold the tics back triples in intensity. 

“Not really,” they say.

“Right…” Hunter says, bouncing his knee, “Well, I can go. I just wanted to say hi, I guess.”

“At 1 in the morning,” Raine deadpans, raising an eyebrow, “Hunter, I don’t know what’s going on, but if you need a place to stay for the night, you’re welcome to stay here. If you follow my one condition.”

Hunter stills. Resists the random urge to reach over and smack them. Then nods.

“I want you to at least let Camila know that you’re here. I can’t imagine this is something you both agreed on.”

He shrugs and looks away.

“We didn’t, but…I know I’m too much for her, so I left. A–and I know that sounds bad, but if you let me stay, I promise it’ll be different. I’ll stay out of your sight. I can get a job, so you won’t even—Haha!—so you won’t even have to see me, and I can use the money to pay you! And—and—and—and—and—Mmf, mmf!—if I tic a lot, I’ll go outside. And I’ll buy my own food, and—”

“Hunter. Take a deep breath.”

He takes a deep breath in, holds it for a second, and tics on the exhale.

“You’re so gay, dude,” he says, his voice pinched and breathless.

Raine laughs. 

His face burns. “That was a tic!”

“And not an entirely wrong one, I suppose,” they say, still chuckling.

There’s an amused smile lingering on their lips as they reach over and grab a sip of their tea. He wants to die on the spot.

“I’m—Pshew phew, I’ll hit you!—Haha!—I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Hunter, it’s fine. I know. You don’t have to keep holding the tics in, either. I just want to talk. I couldn’t care less if you tic.”

It feels like a trap, but he just wants to get this over with. Maybe their mercy is a good thing. Maybe if he’s not so worried about suppressing, he can pay more attention to choosing his words more wisely. He allows himself to scrunch up his face, blink, and jerk his head to the side as needed, from then on.

“Right…” He says, “Well, um, that was really it. I don’t need to call anyone. No one cares, anyway. I just need a place to stay.”

“I’m not sure I trust your judgment on that. Camila loves you to pieces, as far as I can tell.”

He clenches and unclenches his fists. “Well—Mm-mm, mm-mm—Haha!—I,” he clears his throat and snaps his head back, hard, and it makes a muscle in his neck twinge. He’s lucky it doesn’t feel like a pulled muscle per se, but it still doesn’t feel great. Raine is watching him, so he powers through. 

“Ow—Haha!—Haha!—Maybe, but she thinks there’s something wrong with me.”

“I get the feeling you’re misunderstanding whatever she said,” Raine says.

“She didn’t say anything!” Hunter raises his voice. Blood rushes in his ears, “Luz did, because Ms. Noceda is too nice to ever say she doesn’t like me to my face or kick me out herself!”

“And what did Luz say?”

“Huh? I don’t—Shut up! Hey, that’s not nice!—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!” He huffs jerks his head to the side, “She…She said something about how I stress Ms. Noceda out too much, and that Ms. Noceda’s not going to be around forever to help me.”

Raine brings their mug close to their lips, “I feel like that’s a bad faith interpretation, but sure, let’s say that both of those things are true. Why do you think that means Ms. Noceda wants you gone?”

“Huh?”

“I said, why do you think that means she wants you gone?”

Hunter sputters, his hands flying about, “It just does! If she thinks I’m so awful, then what’s the point of me staying and irritating her?”

Raine takes a long sip of their tea, does one of those dramatic ‘ah’s that one does after a satisfying drink, and sets their now empty mug back on the table. He’s impressed with how quickly they drank the whole thing. Wasn’t that hot?!

“You know, there was a long discussion after the Isles were saved over who was going to take you in. Did anyone ever tell you that?” Raine asks. There’s a smile tugging at their lips.

Hunter melts into the corner of the couch and crosses his arms. “No, but you don’t have to rub it in.”

“What?” They tilt their head at him, then after a moment, the ambiguity about what they said clicks, “No! I’m saying that so many people wanted you that we had to take a vote on who would be the best person for you to go with.”

“...Really?” Hunter asks.

“Really. Darius and Camila were neck-and-neck, but Darius won by one vote. Camila was so mad. You should have seen the look on her face when they announced it. Let’s just say, I never want to get on that woman’s bad side,” they shiver.

Hunter doesn’t either. That’s why he’s doing both Camila and himself a favor.

“Hm. Guess they feel stupid now,” Hunter laughs bitterly, “I’m—Tch, tch, tch—kind of insufferable.”

He realizes a little too late that he’s probably ruined his chances of making a good case for Raine to let him stay longer than just tonight, if even that. Oh well. He can run off to the woods somewhere. He didn’t do all of those wilderness survival courses for nothing. It’s fine.

“The only thing that I think is insufferable about you is that it seems like you refuse to see that people care about you,” Raine says.

“I know that people care about me, but I also know that no matter how much I try not to be, I’m too much trouble. I couldn’t even stay at Darius’s for a week without getting kicked out.”

“Hunter,” Raine says, “From what I understand of what Darius told me, you kept getting triggered by Darius’s abominations, so all he did was suggest you stay at Camila’s instead.”

“Yeah, and I got so mad about it that I threw a little temper tantrum upstairs and destroyed every single thing he’s ever given me! Then he kicked me out, and I—Mmf, mmf!—don’t even blame him.” Hunter feels his eyes burning with tears. He growls and wipes them away with the palms of his hands. He glares at Raine, “Don’t you get it? I’m always too much.”

They hum. “I think it starts out as the opposite. Maybe you try too hard to be too little, and that’s what makes you end up being too much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He sneers. 

They reach over to refill their mug with the kettle. They dunk a tea bag (that they seemingly acquired from thin air) in the hot water and swirl it around. They blow a barely perceptible note onto the surface of the water, then take a sip. It finally registers in his mind that that’s how they must have cooled down the tea earlier, too. How neat. He wonders if they could teach him. Well, if he could find a staff to borrow. Man, if Flap were here, maybe he could help—

Across the room, Hunter spots Raine’s palisman sitting in a little cot atop a bookshelf. He imagines five different ways he could destroy it and imagines watching Raine’s face fall as they realize what he did. He scrambles to pray in his head to the fallen Titan to keep him rooted to his spot on the couch. Thankfully, he’s able to get the fourth repetition in before Raine turns their attention back to him.

“I think you remind me a lot of Eda,” they say casually.

“The Owl Lady?” He raises an eyebrow.

Raine smiles. “Yes. The Owl Lady. You know she has a curse, right? That’s why they call her that,” their smile falls, “Sometimes, the Owl Beast takes over her body. It’s really scary for her, but she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Oh. Uncle had a curse too,” Hunter adds unhelpfully, “Or, maybe not. I don’t know. It’s all—Haha!—really confusing, looking back on it.”

“That’s understandable. I don’t understand half of my time in the castle either. But, what I’m getting at is that she does the same thing you do. Not as much anymore, but on occasion.”

Being compared to the Owl Lady wasn’t on his heart-to-heart bingo card, but he’ll hear them out. Being reminded of her curse makes him feel a sudden kinship with her.

 “And that is…?” He asks.

“You both think that you have to handle everything on your own, but you don’t. It always hurt me when Eda didn’t trust me enough to talk to me. That’s why I ended our relationship back in the day. I couldn’t keep pretending like everything was okay like she wanted me to.”

“Well, unlike her, I’m not pretending,” Hunter bites, “There’s nothing wrong with me. I really am okay.”

“I’m sure she thought that too.”

Hunter clenches his fists and resists the thought looping in his mind of hit them, hit them, hit them, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! If you were on our side of it—”

“If I’m honest with myself, I think I am,” they sigh, deep and sad, “I’ve been doing the same thing with Eda, lately. I keep having flashbacks about the possession—”

Hunter sucks in a breath, his heart aching for them, “Oh. You do too?”

He wants to reach out and hug them. Tell them that he gets it. Tells him that if he’s around, he’ll never let Belos hurt them again. It’s a fever dream, considering he was just as powerless as they were, but maybe, just maybe, protecting them could be his second chance to save someone from his Uncle.

“...Yeah,” Raine says softly, “I do. They’re terrifying, quite frankly. I’ve been trying to deal with them on my own, but it hasn’t exactly worked out for me. I’m exhausted. Eda’s exhausted. We never get any sleep. She suggested I go to therapy, actually, so I—”

“You know she doesn’t like you, then, right?” Hunter laughs, all tenderness instantly forgotten in favor of making a bitter point, “You’re too much work. She’s warning you that she’s just about done with you.”

“You’re funny. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so good, yet so terrible at projecting.”

“I’m not projecting. Just telling you the truth. If she really cared, she would either leave you alone to—Tch, tch, tch—deal with it or punish you herself.”

Raine hums. “Tell me, then. What would you suggest she do, Hunter?”

“She could train you not to have panic attacks. It’s not that hard. She just wants to dump you off on someone else,” he shrugs.

“How do you propose she ‘train’ me? She’s not a therapist. She talks to me and she cares, but she’s not qualified to help me with topics this serious. There’s a difference.”

“She could just hit you. She’s got an arm left, right? Or a left arm, I guess.” He huffs out a laugh. 

“Hunter. Be serious.”

“I am!” He throws an arm up, “Everybody’s too scared to be mean. It’s so stupid. Everyone forgets that we were a part of the most cutthroat coven there was. We’re not made of glass, and it’s a method that works.”

“I’ve never been hit as a part of any type of training in my life. I think your experience isn’t universal,” Raine says sadly.

Whatever. He doesn’t need to be pitied. He actually likes the results of his training. He doesn’t necessarily think he has a problem, but if the people who love him do, he’d be more than willing to let them correct him in favor of getting sent away.

“Well—Mmf, mmf!—Haha!—Either way, it works. Hold a switch within five feet of me, and I guarantee I won’t make a sound. Eda can do that for your flashbacks, if you can get her to change her mind.”

“I’m not going to ask my partner to hit me, Hunter,” they grimace, “I’m going to go to therapy, put in the work to process through my trauma, and everyone’s going to be better off for it. No one wants to see me suffer, just like no one wants to see you suffer.”

Hunter stays silent.

“Aren’t you getting it yet? Everyone knows you’re hurting, but no one knows how to help—you won’t even admit to yourself that there’s a problem. And then when they try to suggest you get professional help for the things they know you’re struggling with because they care about you, you won’t listen. Which makes everyone stressed out all over again, because they just want the best for you. Like it or not, they want you to be happy.”

“...Do you really think so?” Hunter asks. His voice is small and weak. Pathetic.

“I know so. You’re very loved. You just need to accept that the people that love us can’t fix us. They will support you, of course, but ultimately, it’s you that needs to recognize that there’s a problem, seek help, and work on yourself. Doing what’s best for you has the ripple effect of doing what’s best for everyone. That’s how I see it, anyway.”

He wants to squirm out of his skin. He feels oddly raw, and while it’s incredibly uncomfortable, there’s a twinge of security there, like something’s finally clicking. He’s not sure how to describe it, but it feels like maybe someone actually sort of gets it. Raine says therapy’s a good thing. They say that it will make people less stressed when they’re dealing with him, so what if it is worth a try for him, too? Maybe there is hope that he can do the right things. Maybe he won’t be a fuck-up forever.

“How do I… do that?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“The therapy thing.”

A grin spreads across Raine’s face. “We’d just have to call around—see which therapists are available.”

“‘We?’”

“You and me, or you and anyone else. It doesn’t really matter, as long as you do it. It will have to be later in the morning, though. I don’t think anywhere will be open at,” they look at the clock on the wall, “1:37 AM.”

Hunter snaps his head back, then chuckles, “Yeah—Tch, tch, tch—I wouldn’t think so.”

Raine smiles at him. “Now, if you still want to stay, can you at least send Camila a text?”

“Stay the night, or…?” Hunter asks timidly.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. But! I will say, if you move out of the Noceda’s, I think they’d miss you very much.”

“Ha. Just like Darius misses me very much?” Hunter scoffs and pulls out his phone.

“Yes, actually,” Raine says, “He does miss you very much. He was just telling me this morning that he’s been debating on calling you to see how you’re doing.”

“He has?” Hunter pauses his search for Ms. Noceda’s contact photo.

“Yes, I told him to call you. I guess he chickened out, since it sounds like he never did, huh?”

“After what I did, I wouldn’t—Mm-mm—Byeee!—want to talk to me either,” Hunter says.

“I don’t think it’s that. I think he thinks you’re still upset with him.”

“What? No, I—”

“It kind of sounds like you’re a bit upset with him, so I think that worry is justified. I do think he should get over himself and talk it out with you, though.”

“I’m not mad! I…Okay, maybe I am a little mad. But I shouldn’t be! Why am I so mad about it?”

Raine shrugs. “Abandonment issues? I have no idea, Hunter. All I know about you is what I’ve learned from seeing you a few times in the castle, talking to Darius, and talking to you right now. That’s definitely something a therapist could help you figure out, though.”

“So a therapist… Do they do the um, hitting thing? It’s okay if they do, I just want to be prepared—”

“I just said earlier that your experience isn’t universal, didn’t I? So no, that is not what therapy’s about. It’s really just where you go in a room and talk to someone who can help you figure out coping skills for the issues you’re struggling with.”

“So like, mission briefing and debriefing?”

“...Sort of, yes, but without the yelling or humiliation. Just talking, like you and I have been doing for the last 40 minutes.”

“Oh! That doesn't sound too bad, then.”

Their smile returns. “It’s not! It’s very nice, actually. I haven’t been in a long time, so I’m looking forward to going back.”

“Okay. I’ll try it. And I’ll text Ms. Noceda, too.”

“That sounds great. I’m proud of you.”

Hunter scratches his cheek and blushes. “Thanks.”

Raine gets up off the couch and gathers their empty mug in their hand.

“Of course. The guest bedroom is a little cluttered right now, so you’ll have to sleep on the couch. Take as many blankets and pillows you want out of that cabinet right there,” Raine points, “And make yourself comfortable. You can turn on the lamp if you need some light other than the nightlight, and you’re welcome to any food or drinks in the fridge. My room is right down the hall, and right across from it is the bathroom. You can’t miss them. There are night lights in the hallway, too.”

Hunter’s head spins from the information overload. “Okay. Thank you so much, Raine. I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing. Good night, Hunter. Sleep well.”

They walk off, then linger in the threshold for a moment, giving him an indecipherable look. “Oh, and Hunter?”

He snaps his eyes up to meet theirs.

“Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this together, alright?”

His eyes water. “Okay,” he chokes, “Thank you.”

“Of course. And this might come off as awkward, but I just want to say—we might not know each other that well yet, but I can tell you’re a good kid. For the millionth time, you have a lot of people who love you, and since I think they have pretty good judgment,” Raine teases, their voice sing-songy, before lowering it into a fond promise, “I think I love you already, too.”

With that, they turn out the light and walk away. He’s glad they miss the tears that fall after their disgustingly kind sentiment. He wishes that he could have gotten them to repeat themselves three more times for good luck, but it’s too late to go ask them now. To distract himself from the looping thoughts trickling into the forefront of his mind, through tears, he sends a text to Luz’s mom. 

In lieu of a text reply, she calls him immediately. She sounds incredibly sleepy, and knowing that he woke her up makes him hang his head in shame. Being so early in the morning, she hadn’t even realized he’d snuck out yet. Despite that, she tells him that he’s happy he texted to let her know he’s okay, and that she loves him very much. She says that they can talk in the morning. Hunter’s stomach twists at the thought of her being disappointed in him, but at least he’s not scared that she’ll hurt him.

She texts him again after they hang up and reiterates that she loves him. She adds little wolf emojis and hearts to the end of her texts. He smacks himself on the jaw. Not as a tic at first, but as a way to distract himself from his throat closing up. It turns into a tic, though. When he finishes the assault on his face, he tells her “I know,” and “Thank you.”

He gathers his blankets and gets comfortable on the couch. He says his nightly prayers four times under the hum of the radiator and the warm glow of the nightlight. After the final ‘amen,’ he tacks on a selfish four-repetition prayer to remain in everyone’s good favor. He’s still anxious, but it’s the first time in a while he’s gone to bed feeling like he isn’t stuck under black water with no light to guide him to the surface.