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The basement is colder than Tommy remembers. Maybe it’s just him. He sits hunched on the narrow cot, shoulders tight, fingers worrying at the frayed edge of the blanket Techno tossed at him earlier without comment. The lantern on the table throws a small circle of gold around him, leaving the corners in shadow. It feels safer that way, less exposed.
Techno stands near the stairs, not quite leaning on the railing, not quite blocking the exit. He’s just standing there. Present in that quiet, immovable way of his, like a mountain pretending it’s a man. He hasn’t asked anything, he hasn’t said anything that matters. Tommy is grateful for that and furious about it at the same time.
He keeps his eyes on the floor. It’s easier to talk when he’s not looking at anyone.
“You’ve got… stuff upstairs,” Techno says eventually, voice low, almost bored. “Boot prints. Lots of mud. A broken mug.”
Tommy shrugs, a small twitch of his shoulders. “Didn’t exactly plan on being here.”
Techno grunts, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, the sound settles between them like dust.
“I can clean it,” Tommy adds after a moment. “If you want.”
Techno shifts, the faint scrape of armor against stone. “Didn’t say I wanted that.”
Tommy’s jaw tightens, he hates how brittle he feels, how everything inside him rattles like loose bones. He hates that Techno notices without even saying he notices.
“I wasn’t running here,” he mutters. “I just… ended up here. In your fucking basement.”
“Basements are good for that,” Techno replies.
Tommy glances up, confused. “For what?”
“Endin’ up.”
The words land heavier than they should. Tommy looks away again, blinking hard, his throat feels tight.
“I’m not staying,” he says. “Just, for now. Until I figure out something.”
Techno nods once, slow. “Figuring out something takes time.”
“I don’t need time.”
“Sure.” A pause. “You look like you do.”
Tommy’s breath stutters. He hates that, hates how easily Techno can knock him off balance with a single observation he refuses to frame as concern.
“I’m fine,” he snaps.
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
Silence stretches, the lantern flickers. Tommy rubs his palms over his face, trying to scrub away the exhaustion clinging to him like smoke.
“I don’t want you thinking I’m fucking weak,” he says quietly. “Or whatever.”
Techno steps closer, slow enough that Tommy doesn’t flinch. “Didn’t say that either.”
He stops a few feet away, close enough that Tommy can feel the warmth radiating off him. It’s grounding in a way Tommy doesn’t know how to accept.
“You’re alive,” Techno says. “That’s… something.”
Tommy huffs a laugh that isn’t a laugh. “Barely.”
“Barely still counts.”
Tommy swallows hard, h is eyes sting, but he refuses to let anything fall.
“I didn’t come here for help.”
“Good,” Techno says. “I’m not offering any.”
But he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t tell Tommy to leave. He doesn’t close the door behind him.
Tommy looks up, finally meeting Techno’s eyes. “So what, I’m just… here?”
“Looks like it.”
“Why?”
Techno shrugs, gaze steady. “You’re cold. And loud. And terrible at hiding. And you’re… here.” Another shrug, softer this time. “Sometimes that’s enough.”
Tommy nods, small and shaky. It feels like agreeing to something he doesn’t have the words for.
Techno turns toward the stairs, pauses halfway up. “If you need anything,” he says, not looking back, “don’t tell me. Just take it.”
Tommy lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Right. I won’t tell you.”
“Good.”
Techno disappears up the stairs, leaving Tommy alone with the lantern glow and the quiet hum of the basement. For the first time in weeks, Tommy breathes without feeling like someone might take it away, for the first time in weeks he feels like he can finally sleep.
Tommy wakes slowly, the way people do when they’re not sure if waking is safe. For a moment he doesn’t move, just lies there staring at the low ceiling, listening to the quiet. No footsteps above, no shouting, no crackle of fire too close to his skin. Just the faint hum of lanterns and the soft rustle of the blanket when he shifts. It takes him a minute to realize he’s warm.
It takes him another to realize the blanket is tucked around him more neatly than he remembers leaving it.
He sits up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and that’s when he sees it: a wooden plate on the small table beside the cot. Bread, slices of cheese. A few berries that Techno definitely didn’t pick himself. And a mug of something still faintly steaming.
Tommy stares at it like it’s a trap. Techno is nowhere in sight. The stairs are empty. The door at the top is closed. The food is arranged with the kind of careless precision that only happens when someone tries very hard to make it look like they didn’t try at all. The bread is torn, not sliced. The cheese is uneven. The berries are scattered like they fell there by accident.
Tommy’s throat tightens.
He picks up the mug. It’s warm, not hot, warm in a way that means Techno was down here recently. Maybe minutes ago, maybe he stood right where Tommy is sitting now, looking at him, deciding whether to wake him or leave him sleeping.
Tommy swallows hard and takes a sip. It’s tea. Bad tea. Over-steeped and slightly bitter. Techno’s tea. He sets the mug down carefully, like it’s something fragile. He doesn’t say thank you, there’s no one to hear it anyway. But he eats.
The days blur, but not in the way exile blurred them. Not in the way fear made everything sharp and dull at once. Here, the blur is softer. Slow, like the world is giving him permission to breathe at a pace he can manage.
Techno never says he’s checking on him. He just… appears. At odd hours, with odd excuses. He’ll come down the stairs holding a stack of books.
“The basement's too quiet,” he’ll say, dropping them on the table. “Thought you might want noise.”
Tommy doesn’t point out that books don’t make noise unless you read them out loud. He just nods and picks one up, pretending he doesn’t notice Techno lingering on the stairs for a moment longer than necessary.
Other times Techno will come down with tools.
“Need to fix the lantern,” he’ll mutter, even though the lantern works fine.
He’ll fiddle with it for ten minutes, tightening screws that don’t need tightening, adjusting the wick even though it’s perfect. Tommy sits on the cot, pretending not to watch him. Techno pretends not to notice.
Sometimes Techno brings food. Always in the most deniable way possible.
A loaf of bread was left on the stairs “because I didn’t want to carry it back up.”
A pot of stew placed on the table with a shrug. “Made too much.”
A blanket tossed at Tommy with a grunt. “Found it.”
Tommy never says thank you. Techno never asks for it.
But Tommy eats. Tommy sleeps. Tommy breathes.
And slowly, the basement stops feeling like a hiding place and starts feeling like something else. Not home. Not yet. But not danger either.
He learns the rhythm of the house. The quiet mornings when Techno is out feeding animals. The afternoons when he hears the soft thud of training dummies being destroyed. The evenings when the whole place settles into a kind of peace Tommy didn’t know existed.
He learns that silence can be gentle. He learns that footsteps overhead don’t always mean someone is coming to hurt him. He learns that a closed door can mean privacy, not punishment. He learns that Techno’s presence even though it is heavy, steady, unspoken, is not a threat.
He learns how to exist without flinching.He learns how to exist without apologizing for it.
And one night, when Techno comes down with a stack of blankets he claims he “found,” Tommy looks up and says, very quietly, “You don’t have to pretend.”
Techno freezes for half a second.
Then he shrugs. “Didn’t say I was pretending.”
Tommy smiles, small and real.
“Didn’t say you weren’t,” he murmurs.
Techno huffs, something like a laugh, and sets the blankets down.
They don’t say anything else.
They don’t need to.
Tommy spends three days pretending he doesn’t notice the food that keeps appearing. Apples on the stairs, bread sitting near him when he wakes up. Honey suddenly in his tea making it less bitter.
He eats it all, of course. He’s not stupid. But every bite tastes like something he doesn’t know how to name, safety, maybe. Or care, or the terrifying possibility that someone might actually want him alive.
By the fourth day, the feeling becomes unbearable.
He needs to do something. Needs to give something back. Needs to prove he’s not just taking and taking and taking like he did in exile, where survival meant clinging to scraps and hoping no one noticed.
He needs to repay Techno.
But he can’t say thank you. That feels too raw, too exposed. And he can’t offer help, Techno would just grunt and say he doesn’t need it. And he definitely can’t talk about feelings. That’s not happening, ever. Especially not with Techno.
So Tommy does the only thing that makes sense to him.
He cleans. Not the basement, that would be obvious. That would be admitting he’s doing something for Techno. No, Tommy picks the one place Techno never goes unless he has to: the small storage room off the kitchen, the one filled with crates and barrels and dust.
It’s a disaster. Cobwebs in the corners. A barrel of potatoes that has definitely gone off. Shelves cluttered with tools Techno hasn’t touched in months. Tommy rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.
He sorts the tools. Sweeps the floor. Throws out the rotten potatoes. Rearranges the crates so they’re stacked neatly instead of haphazardly. He even wipes down the shelves, muttering under his breath the whole time, as if complaining makes it less like he’s doing something kind.
By the time he’s done, the room looks… good. Organized. Useful.
He stands there, breathing hard, hands on his hips, staring at his work with a strange mix of pride and embarrassment. It feels like he’s exposed something, even though no one saw him do it. He slips back to the basement before Techno returns, heart pounding like he’s committed a crime, because it feels like he did.
Techno doesn’t say anything that evening. He comes down the stairs with a plate of food and a hot mug of tea, he sets them on the table, and leaves without comment. Tommy pretends not to watch him go.
But the next morning, Tommy hears footsteps in the storage room. Heavy ones. Techno’s.
There’s a pause. A long one.
Then a grunt. Then another. Then finally silence.
Tommy freezes on the basement stairs, listening so hard his ears ache. He can picture Techno standing in the doorway, staring at the cleaned shelves, the organized crates, the absence of rotting potatoes.
He can picture the exact expression: the faint narrowing of the eyes, the slight tilt of the head, the look of someone who has discovered something unexpected and is trying very hard not to react.
Techno emerges a moment later, passing Tommy on the stairs without looking at him.
“Storage room’s… different,” he says, voice flat.
Tommy shrugs, too casual, too fast. “Yeah, well. It looked like shit.”
Techno nods once. “Suppose it did.”
Another pause.
“Good job,” Techno says, like the words are heavy and unfamiliar.
Tommy’s chest tightens. He shrugs again, smaller this time. “Didn’t do it for you.”
“Didn’t say you did.”
Techno walks away.
Tommy stands there, gripping the railing, feeling something warm and painful bloom behind his ribs. After that, things change in ways neither of them acknowledge.
Techno starts leaving food in places Tommy can’t pretend he didn’t see. On the table. On the stairs. Once, directly on the cot.
Tommy starts fixing things around the house, a loose hinge, a cracked lantern, a drawer that sticks. He never says he’s doing it, Techno never asks.
They orbit each other like two stars that refuse to admit they’re caught in the same gravity.
Tommy sleeps easier. Breathes easier. Moves through the house without flinching at every sound. Techno lingers more. Talks more, though never about anything important. Weather, animals, the state of the potato farm.
And Tommy listens, not because he has to, but because he wants to. Because the house doesn’t hurt him, because Techno doesn’t hurt him. Because maybe, just maybe, he is allowed to exist here.