Work Text:
She regretted looking in Reese’s trash.
Usually it wouldn’t be the type of thing she’d do, but the kid hadn’t taken it out in weeks and it was starting to smell, so she’d gone on a mission into his room and retrieved the bin. And then the canvas just wouldn’t slide into the street trash without her pulling it out with a glove.
She regarded it with horror.
Reese did a lot of really unsettling paintings but this one… she could see why he’d thrown it away.
In this one, he’d painted her. It was a rough representation, with baggier skin drooping down over her face, her eyes and mouth distorted in an exaggerated grimace of terror. But it was her alright, from the point of view of someone towering over her.
He didn’t seem to have any clear memory of what had happened the other night, but what else could the painting be?
The figure was hunched over in the corner of the kitchen where she’d fallen when he’d scared her into tripping over the chair leg, and out of the darkness, clawed hands were reaching out for her. One reached down to assist her up, the way he had in the real version of events. And a series of others were reaching out of the gloom as though trying desperately to tear her to shreds.
As if a part of him still wanted to.
He had cried hot tears into her sweater that night as she held him and the two apologized to each other. After she had tucked him into bed and was doing research on possible medications for anger problems in pre-teens, she too had cried, quietly, so she wouldn’t wake him.
And then she had buried the feeling deeply and put in an order for some Ativan.
She stared at the painting. Maybe time for something with a longer half-life—a medication that would stay in his system a little longer and keep him calm longer into the day. Klonopin?