#this is one of those drabbles where I'm kinda hesitant to post bc I don't know if people will find this heartbreaking and good

[pine-lark]

later at night

Hi so last time you heard of Ven in “soup” was when he was just starting to let his sympathy get the best of him, right? Well, I have a bad habit of skipping around in timelines, and this is a big leap! There’s a lot of development coming in between these drabbles but for now it’s just… a BIIIIG jump from “hi I’m a decent person now probably” to “oh look they’re in love now”. So uh. Without any context or further ado, enjoy! ✨

(also, for those of you who looked at the masterlist going, “wait wait wait…. RECAPTURE ARC???” uh…………. Yeeeeah. About that. *slips into vent*)

CWs: tiny!whumpee, tiny!whumpers, tiny!caretaker, romance (nonsexual- these are my lil tiny hopeless ace romantics!!), forced nudity (nonsexual), implied recent noncon/aftermath of noncon, captivity and implication that only some captives are ‘allowed’ clothing, implied starvation, implied wing whump/amputation, implied reluctant!whumper/caretaker dynamic where Ven essentially has no choice but to participate in the torture of Arion and then comforts him when no one else can see, this is generally just a pretty sad drabble about Ven sacrificing the few things he has for Arion who he feels needs it more. 

Arion’s legs collapse when he tries to stand, so when he slips into Ven’s cupboard, quiet and hurting, he’s half-crawling, half-sliding. He’s a mess. A bleeding, aching mess with sharp, pained eyes and tear-stained cheeks, still red from the backhand slap and the following deep, burning shame. He feels horrible. Used. Disgusting. Uncomfortably warm, that same sickening feeling on his skin that a fever may invoke. But it’s not a fever.

Being completely spent, with no more energy to spare, his arms tremble to a halt once he’s within the safety of the cabinet’s walls and he collapses right there, headfirst, one limb failing at a time.

“A- Arion?” Ven yelps from somewhere in the room, surprised and panicked and heartbroken all at once. Arion barely registers Ven’s hurried footsteps before he’s at his side, handing him a thin, worn blanket to cover with, brushing careful, fleeting hands over his shoulder and through his hair. Ven’s black wings move to shelter him, to hide him from the lingering gazes and hands that aren’t there anymore, but still stain like ink in his mind. “Arion… what- what did they do to you, what did they- Ari…” His voice drops to a hoarse whisper as Arion breaks into sobs. Ven reaches for him, pauses to ask before touching. Gathers him in his arms.

Arion seems thinner than he was the last time Ven held him. His hair is matted, greasier, thin. Brittle. All of him is brittle. Ven’s noticed his healing is slower than it used to be. It only took a few days to mend his own bones when he first got here, Ven remembers, after Heston lost it and broke both Arion’s legs with the big sledge hammer that always had hung near all the knives. Ven had cowered then, safer in his cabinet with his hands over his ears, backed up in the corner with wide eyes as he heard the screams and Heston’s yelling. You thought you could run? Just thought you could pack up and leave? That you had a right to go to some nice little house, and heal and sleep and eat like a pig, and you thought that was fine?

His body had healed quickly then, from nearly a year of mending, nearly a year of being safe in a warm cabin with someone there to protect him. But now… now it’s been a week, maybe two, since Arion had been knocked off the garage desk and crippled; and he still limps, if he can even manage to walk at all.

The blanket, the one that’s been there even before Ven, is scarce and small and full of holes and barely covers Arion, let alone keep him warm. It’s been passed from captive to captive over the years, Ven assumed, until finally it was himself who landed the luck to be placed in a cabinet like the others, and not a cage.

Ven’s stomach lurches. It wasn’t really luck, though, was it.

Arion chokes on his own tears and coughs at the breath that catches in his cracked ribs. He shifts closer to Ven, arms to his chest, nuzzles pleadingly at the collar of Ven’s shirt. Closer, please, closer, hold me closer, the gesture says, but Ven’s afraid of holding him any tighter, afraid of brushing up against an open wound, afraid of hurting what’s already hurt. He presses a kiss to Arion’s temple, instead. “Want to lie down?” he whispers. “We can lie down on my mat.”

He nods in answer but as soon as Ven shifts to stand, Arion’s voice breaks, his fingers tuck into the folds of Ven’s shirt with a white-knuckle grip, he holds tightly to him with renewed desperation. Don’t let go, he says, words broken and taught and barely audible, please don’t let go, please, don’t let go of me, I need you, I need you, and by the time he says those last words his voice is gone and he’s just mouthing them. Just silent, heavy truths.

Ven hushes him in the gentlest, most patient voice, weighted with the sheer ache nested deep within his chest. “I won’t. I won’t,” he promises. “I’m not letting go, Arion. Not until you ask me to let go. I’m here.” He moves to stand once more but this time he makes certain to keep a firm hold on the other shaking arivie. “I’m here, I’m staying,” he murmurs. “They won’t find you here.” With some effort he helps Arion to stand, but only so that he can easier sweep him off his feet, and carry him the rest of the way.

Ven’s mat is no nest, and it’s no dollhouse bed. It’s dirty and worn and the old fabric is itchy but it’s so much better than the floor, so much better than the cage. Arion melts into it as Ven sets him down. The tension in his shoulders eases and the growing headache at the base of his skull begins to ebb. His breathing still hitches but its slows, deepens. Ven sits at the side of the mat, but hesitates there.

It doesn’t sit right with him, that all Arion has is the pathetic little piece of cloth to cover. Ven’s own clothes start to feel too hot, though he’s only wearing a black t-shirt and pants that feel of thin, synthetic fabric. He knows it’s wrong. Knows that Arion wouldn’t be here, cold and bare and terrified and starving, if it weren’t for Ven’s selfishness.

He’d still be at that cabin.

He watches Arion try to curl in on himself, draw his legs closer to his chest, move the flimsy blanket forward to feel less open, less seen, less vulnerable. Ven feels a sharp pang in his chest, just from the sight.

“Do you remember, when, when I said I would give you the clothes off my back, Ari…” he says, quietly.

Arion turns his head to meet his gaze.

“I, um.” He swallows. “I meant it, you know.” He thumbs the hem of his shirt, just a little too big and meant for a doll. He lifts his arms, pulls it over his head.

“Ven, I, no no no no no, you don’t, don’t have to-“

“Please take it.” He says. “Both. I- I’d rather you have them.” He watches the sad way Arion regards his long, pale scars. He hates having them uncovered. His skin starts to crawl. But it’s better than what he knows he’d feel if he deliberately let someone he loves go unclothed while he didn’t, while he held them but still wouldn’t let them have what he was unrightfully given. Ven swallows thickly against the crashing, threatening waves of guilt resting in his throat like a stone. “It’s not fair. Ari, please let me.”

Arion shakes his head, wipes away a few stray tears with a bruised wrist. “I-I can-can’t, can’t, can’t, I, I can’t, Ven, can’t. Don’t. You need- they’re yours.”

“I have wings, Arion, I- I’m okay. I’d rather it be me than you. I’d rather it be me.” Those words have more weight to them than he voices. I’d rather it be me.

Arion takes the shirt in his hands, but he doesn’t move to put it on. “I’ll, I’ll get them, I’m dirty, I-“

“They have a little blood on them anyway. I don’t care. Arion. Please.” He waits for Arion to shift to slip it over his head before he sinks his hands to his waistband- and Arion softly turns to look away- and Ven pauses only briefly at the vague breath of a horrible memory before sliding off the only other layer of clothing he’s allowed to wear. His wings circle around him, wrap over his sides like a long, thick black towel, and even still he feels guilty that at least he has that, at least he always has something.

Arion looks like he’s about to cry, as Ven hands that last piece of clothing to him. Like he’s about to refuse, like he wants to so badly, but he knows that it’s only out of love that Ven’s doing this and for that reason he can’t quite bring himself to. It’s as if this is some grand gift, the greatest sacrifice, something so tremendous that he can’t except and it shouldn’t be that way, it should never be that way. Ven whispers small assurances that yes, he still means it. Yes, take it. Really, he’s okay. He’ll be okay. He’s just fine. Please take it. Please sleep.

And even as he says it he knows that if anyone found them like this they’d both be dead or worse by morning. But, at this point, for both of them, to be alone and to have the opportunity for a little comfort among all the suffering…

It’s worth the risk.

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