Chapter Text
The room he lays in is dark, but the bed is comfortable.
The shallow breaths he takes in are the only sounds the he hears with his dog-like ears, and he’s surprised by the stillness in the usually vibrant household just outside the door of his room. He’s not complaining, since less people usually means less unpleasantness. However, he’d prefer to have more air, so he sits, and waits for Mr.Est or Poppi or someone else in the town to come and get him, even if it means getting yelled at for his appearance.
A few minutes, or is it hours, or days? It’s not days, surely, since he’d be much more hungry and thirsty than he is, but it’s been a while, to say the least. He doesn't really know how much tie has passed, but all that matters are the steady footsteps making their way to his door.
The door creaks as it opens, and all he sees is a pair of bright green eyes that seem to glow in the dark stare at him.
It’s someone new.
He scrambles back at their arrival, pushing his back up to the wall, his bushy fur tail a cushion for his wounded back as he frantically tries to shift back to being normal, but when he tries to his body aches and screams at him not to, so he settles for baring his fangs and brandishing his claws to keep the intruder away.
No one new ever came without Mr.Est by their side, and this person is alone.
It’s a woman with a short sleeved green shirt on that matches her bright green eyes, along with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and light colored skin. He tries to find an escape route around her, but she seems to be deliberately blocking the exits, which doesn’t bode well for her intentions. The collar around his neck does nothing to help his frantic breaths, the leash connected to it almost tangling around his legs, and he feels the creeping darkness of unconsciousness swirl around his eyes before he clamps down on his fear and takes in deep breaths, albeit more shallow than he’d like, but there’s the collar, so he can’t do much about it.
The lady raises her hands in a placating gesture, and for any other normal child it might have worked to calm them down, but he knows how conniving and awful adults can be, how they can earn your trust, can break it, and then take it back with a few kind words and gentle smiles because they have the power of your unconditional love and admiration on their side. He says nothing as the lady observes him, and when her eyes meet his he glares, vainly hoping that she’ll leave if he makes it clear that he doesn’t want her around.
“Hello. How are you?” The lady asks kindly, and her voice is soft, but the emptiness of the house makes it unbearably loud. He shakes, because he needs to answer it right, but he doesn’t want to speak, remembering the words of Mr.Est telling him to not talk to strangers. He knows that if he doesn’t speak it’ll be a wrong answer, and he can’t answer wrong, he just can’t.
His eyes dart around once more, and his breaths get rushed until he can’t breathe at all.
The lady doesn’t say anything, but she reaches her hand out to touch his face, fingers wiping away the small worried tears that had grown at the corner of his eyes, even as he flinches violently away. Her other hand moves much quicker and he shuts his eyes in fear.
The vice on his neck is undone, his airways clear, and when he opens his eyes, the collar is thrown carelessly into the corner of the room, clacking harshly on the wooden floor far away from his bed, the sound echoing in the empty house and ringing in his sensitive ears.
He doesn’t understand.
She stares at him with a concerned gaze, but his eyes are wide and confused because that’s not how it works! He’s not supposed to take off the collar unless someone in the town allows it, and that’s only when he’s normal! And yet…she took it off of him anyway? That doesn’t make any sense! Blood from the tiny spikes that had poked him while the collar was on stains his blue turtleneck, but he refuses to take his sweater off in front of anyone besides Mr.Est or Poppi.
The lady’s eyes are wide with an unusual amount of horror as she stares at the growing red spots on his neck, and her eyes dart quickly to the collar and then back at him. “I’ll be right back,” She promises, before running out the door, leaving it unlocked and slightly ajar, tempting him to run out and escape.
He tries to shift back at least first.
With a considerable amount of effort that causes him to grit his teeth in pain, his normal ears appear, leaving the unacceptable ones to disappear, along with his tail, sharp teeth, and his claws. His vision blurs from the amount of head rush that accompanies the forced shift, but he grins proudly to himself nonetheless, before turning his attention back to the open door.
He moves towards the door, slowly inching his feet across the floor, half terrified that someone besides the lady will jump out at him and yell at him for trying to leave. His trembling hands cautiously move to touch the doorknob, when he hears footsteps coming towards him again that cause him to run back to the safety of his small bed, bouncing off of the mattress as he jumps back onto it, before pushing his back up against the wall once more, this time without a tail to cushion barely healed cuts and burns on it.
The lady comes in with some gauze and some band-aids, looking as though she had just seen something unpleasant, and he eyes the items warily. She stares at him for a moment, her scrutinizing gaze scanning over him, and he stays perfectly still, holding his breath so as not to move any part of himself. “Where did your ears and tail go?” She asks, and the question is asked innocently enough. He simply cocks his head to the side in fake confusion, because he knows he’s not supposed to act like he even knows what those things are when he’s normal. She stares at him again, and he finally gets it.
This is a test.
He hasn’t had a test like this one before, to be honest, but he supposes that it’s just because Mr.Est wanted him to figure it out on his own. Maybe if he passes then he’ll get to go back to his old room. That would be a nice change from the drab little closet he was transferred to after he ‘compacted with the devil’ as Mr.Est had said. His thought process is interrupted by the lady asking yet another question.
“Could you take off your sweater please? I need to wrap your wounds, and I can’t with your turtleneck covering them,” He jolts, wrapping his arms around himself in a vain effort to comfort himself, and the motion is so violent that the lady actually moves back in surprise. She looks prepared to say something reassuring, but he steels himself and rips off the protective, soothing piece of fabric, setting it down next to him on the bed. The stinging pain erupting from the pinprick holes in his neck gets worse somehow, but before he can reach his hands up to touch the wound, the lady gets to work, gently putting some cream on his skin and wrapping gauze neatly and carefully around his neck, smoothing out the small creases and tightening it enough so it will stay in place, though not so much as to impair his breathing. He puts back on his blue sweater quickly as soon as her hands move away from his neck, reveling in the small comfort the fabric gives him with its familiarity. “What’s your name?” She asks out of the blue, green eyes wide and curious, but the curiosity is false.
He wants to tell her, but shouldn’t she know? It’s embroidered in bright pink on his collar, and since he’d been wearing it the moment she walked in, she would have seen it. Plus, there’s some sort of possessiveness he feels towards his name, like it’s something precious to him, and the word gets stuck in his throat when he tries to articulate the sound of it. He stays silent.
“You can call me Ms.Gold,” She says, rather than press him, and he wonders if he’s failing the test, because she frowns at his lack of an answer, though at the very least the frown isn’t accompanied by a glare. The thought of disappointing Mr.Est once again sends shivers down his spine. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?” She asks, and at this point he’s tired of questions. Still, he doesn’t let his irritation show, since he’s not supposed to disrespect anyone older than him. He nods slowly, watching for Ms.Gold’s reaction to the question. She doesn’t seem angry, though she might just be very good at hiding her emotions. She stands up, still stooped over a bit because of the low ceiling, and motions for him to follow her, but he refuses to leave the confines of his safe room, hiding himself under the covers when she tries to get him to move. With a sigh, she leaves to the kitchen, and he curses himself for his irrational fears. He’s most likely going to get punished when the whole ordeal is over. He wonders what the punishment will be.
When Ms.Gold gets back, she has a glass of cold water and a quickly made roast beef sandwich. She hands him the water, and he gulps down half the glass before setting it down on his tiny bedside table and grabbing the sandwich. He stomach rumbles contentedly at the food, and he enjoys having a meal, considering how he hadn’t eaten in a while. The food is gone much quicker than he would’ve liked, because he thought the sandwich was bigger than it actually was. He doesn’t dare ask for seconds; because he’s been told many times that gluttony is a sin, along with greed, and with how sinful he’s been, according to the town, he can’t afford to ‘blacken his soul any more than it already is.
Ms.Gold watches him eat, and after the sandwich is gone, she grabs the plate, moving back to where he assumes is the kitchen, since he can’t see where exactly she’s going. She comes back with yet another sandwich, and sets it next to him on the bed. Yet again he is thrown for a loop by this kindness, and he eyes the food with mild worry, fearing that if he grabs it he’ll get in trouble. Still, he reaches out, gauging Ms.Gold’s reaction as he does so, and when he puts the food in his mouth, she smiles. He doesn’t understand why, but he’s glad the reaction isn’t a negative one. “Since you won’t give me your name, do you have anything else you go by?” She asks, and he shrugs, thinking on the many nicknames bestowed upon him throughout the years.
After a moment, he speaks.
“Mutt.” His voice is small because of disuse, since he isn’t supposed to talk when he isn’t normal and when he is normal he doesn’t feel like speaking, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Ms.Gold, whose reaction to the nickname is unprecedented. Usually when someone calls him Mutt, the people in his town just glare at him, and the nicest ones simply look away, but Ms.Gold puts a hand open her wide open mouth in shock at the name, which is odd.
She has tears in her eyes, but she wipes them away quickly, a determined look set on her face.
“Who calls you mutt?” She asks, though the tone makes her sound like she’s demanding something, and he cowers from the anger in her voice.
“E-everyone,” He stammers out, and Ms.Gold’s tense posture relaxes as she tries to make herself seem less intimidating. He thinks that’s weird, because no one’s ever has tried to look less intimidating when they scared him. Still, he appreciates the effort.
For a while, the silence returns, bringing almost a lethargic feeling with it. He hasn’t slept in a while with all this waiting, and the fact that he just ate doesn’t help. He lays down on the bed, and just as he starts to close his eyes, she tucks him in.
He hasn’t been tucked in by anyone in a long time.
It’s…nice.