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ashintheairlikesnow · 1 year

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🫂 Comforting hugs

i‘d sell my firstborn for this trope

"Chris? Chris, honey, where'd you go?" Nat tells herself not to worry. The newest of her household of runaways never goes far, but he isn't in the yard and he's not in his room and he isn't answering her voice. She swallows, hard, checking the linen closet, where he sometimes hides - nothing. She tries the bathroom - door is open, nobody's inside.

She sighs, worrying her long brown braid between her hands. His lunch is downstairs getting cold, and no one has seen him in at least two hours. Jake's at class, or he'd be tearing the house apart the way he does when Chris might be in danger.

Jake has never shaken off the way it felt to leave Chris behind during the raid, hope he'd still be there. She's not sure he really will - her first raid shook her up, too, and some part of her is always braced for the next one.

She finally decides to head back up to her bedroom in the attic, where she can grab her cell phone and just... give up and ask Jake to come back.

Chris always answers Jake, even if he's deep inside himself.

She climbs the attic ladder and comes to a stop just before her bed.

Chris is already sitting there, in the only place she hadn't thought to look. He rocks back and forth, shaking his head in a way that isn't in response to anything, just chasing the stimuli of his soft hair against his cheek, the way the air moves over his skin. His fingers twist and turn at a plastic pendant they've bought him to chew on. Now, he just pulls it on way and then the other, turns it upside down, runs his fingers over it.

"Chris?"

He doesn't react to her, but his cheeks are red and she can see light moving off wet tracks from eye to jaw.

"Chris... you okay, honey?"

His mouth moves. Maybe he's trying to answer her, but nothing comes out except wordless sounds, a sort of 'ah ah ah'. Nat presses her lips together, trying to think, and then steps slowly forward.

"Hey... hey, honey. It's okay. Can I-... can I touch?" He doesn't react, but she decides to give it a try regardless. If he pulls back, she'll step away, sit over at her computer and just... be with him. If he flinches, she won't touch until he's ready.

He doesn't answer. Maybe he can't. But after a moment, he flings himself forwards and throws his arms around her, holding so tightly to her waist that it hurts. Nat's hands fly up in surprise, but then she drops her hands to rub his back, leaning over him. His head presses against her stomach, and she can feel the low vibration of his continued 'ah ah ah' somewhere deep inside herself.

"It's okay," She whispers, running fingers through his hair, again and again. His trembling starts to settle, after a second. She closes her eyes and listens to the way his breathing slowly starts to settle. "I'm not sure what's wrong, but it's okay, Chris. I've got you. I've got you, honey."

He can't tell her what's in his head, not right now. But he came up the ladder looking for her, she's sure of it. He needed someone to keep their arms around him and pull him back to earth.

She manages to finagle her way into sitting beside him, although he won't let go of her. She rests her chin on top of his copper-red hair, and breathes slowly.

All she can do is hold him, and hope it's enough.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #chris the strawberry blond romantic #chris during early days #nonverbal whumpee #meltdown

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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"Hey! Spit that out!"

"Hey! Hey, what do you have-... don't you run away from me, what do you fucking have-"

An orange and white blur goes flying through the room and Nat looks up, slightly wide-eyed, as Jameson comes right after. He only needs one crutch today to chase Trash Cat down - that's a good sign, he must be feeling good - and she watches him move with fluid speed and ease, hiding her smile.

He must catch her, because Nat hears his rasping voice scolding but never harsh enough to seem sincere. "I said show me what you fucking have-... That's not even food, damn it, hey! Don't you-... Hey! Spit that out!"

A thump and then quick patter of paws tells Nat the wily former stray has twisted out of her owner's arms and taken off again. "What's she got?" Nat calls, lifting her coffee to her lips, hiding her smile.

There's a pause.

"One of your goddamn bracelets!"

Nat's smile disappears.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #jameson bb #trash cat #pure fluff #five sentence fics

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

"That's not what I meant, and you know it." Nat keeps her voice low and calm, refusing to be baited into the anger he wants to see. Jameson sits across the table from her, glaring daggers down at the scratched, scuffed, solid old wood.

"Then what did you fucking mean, then?" He asks, and under the hostility, she can hear the hint of something far more vulnerable he's afraid to show. "Huh? What did you fucking mean?"

"I meant," Nat says gently, "That Jake was thinking of the others in the house and of himself, but not necessarily extending that to thinking of you. He wasn't trying to say you're dangerous, Jameson-"

"But I am. Right? I am dangerous, that's why I can't go back, can't be-... I wasn't really part of the house anyway, but-"

"Yes, you were, honey, I swear-"

"I fucking wasn't." He snorts and pushes himself to his feet. Nat catches herself before she jerks forwards when one of his knees threatens to give out, nearly refuses to hold him, but he catches himself first. And he'll hate her if she acts like he can't catch himself. "I get it. I'm not part of any-fucking-thing."

"You're part of my house," Nat says quietly, but firmly. She stays in her seat. She isn't a threat to him, she keeps her hands visible on top of the table. "Do you hear me, Jameson? You're part of my house."

"It sucks," He snaps back, not even hearing her, pulling into himself. His shoulders hunch as he stalks away from her, headed for the stairs. "You know? I didn't want to be this way, and i get punished because-... because I didn't die when he did, that's all. Over and over and over again, I'm the asshole who gets all the bullshit because I didn't just lay down and fucking die."

He stomps up the stairs and she watches him go, then slowly lowers her head into her hands.

#jameson bb #natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #angst #ptsd tw #trauma recovery #recovery whump #bbu #box boy

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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I'm sending ing you a happy prompt to hopefully spend the vibe.

It was the first time Nats ever seen Vince truly smile wide.

It's the first time she's ever even seen the movie star who's been writing her checks smile in a way that didn't seem like just another performance.

"My parents grew up in the Midwest, actually," Vince says, eyeballing the steak she's put on a plate in front of him. "I was born there, before we moved out here for acting after I got that commercial. But I was never this Midwestern. What is this, well-done? That's a crime, Ms. Yoder."

"Just Nat, please, and no, I made yours... medium? Medium-well? I don't know. Look, if it's too dry, you can use steak sauce, I always have steak sauce."

Vince laughs, and the way he laughs in front of her is totally different than how he laughs in every movie he's ever made. She leans her cheek on one hand, wondering just how much of him is artifice, and how much of the person beneath is still around. If he's more like the runaways she cares for than he thinks he is.

"Nat. If you need steak sauce, it's already too dry."

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #vincent shield is not a hero #pure fluff #crimes against steak

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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Stubborn as Hell

Many, many times I’ve been asked who really gave up Nat’s safehouse and put them at risk during the Safehouse Raid Mini-Arc. Many, many times I’ve demurred, said nobody knows, refused to answer.

Well…

Nat knows. Now, because of @amonthofwhump’s 12 Days of Whumpmas, so do you

(See the bottom for the links to the safehouse raid arc, if you haven’t read it and need context)

CW: Interrogation, mentioned character deaths, electric shock torture, beating, lady whump

“We know you have him, Natalie.”

Nat inhales through her nose, exhales through her mouth.

A wry, sardonic smile lifts her lips at the corners, thick brown eyebrows raising a little, as if merely puzzled. Her face aches, cheek to jaw throbbing all down one side, but she ignores it, sets her jaw against the pain. “Oh, do you?”

“We do. You’ve been running your little operation for ten years, Natalie, and we’ve allowed it to slide under the radar.”

Karen Renford sits on the other side of the metal table in this little police interrogation room. Compared to its flat dark gray brick, concrete floor, and the metal, Karen seems like a shock of color by comparison in her red pantsuit, red lips, perfectly shellacked red hair.

And yet she’s still the coldest thing in here.

That at least hasn’t changed, in the past twenty years. Karen always could pull every hint of life out of a room just by standing there.

“How generous of you,” Nat answers, taking the moment to look down at her fingernails. Torn, and there’s blood under some. Can’t say she doesn’t give as good as she gets, now can you? The handcuffs are uncomfortable, but not as tight as they could be - she thinks a couple of the cops are on their side, sympathizers.

“Indeed. It has been generous of me, hasn’t it? I’ve allowed you to make off with WRU property over, and over, and over again. I’ve allowed you to fill their empty heads with notions of independence and intelligence, sentience-”

“There is nothing you can do to a human being that stops it from being human,” Nat says, bristling a little now. She never could help it, with Karen Renford. “Nothing you do changes that. We just remind them of what’s already there.”

“Yes, Natalie, we’ve all read your brochures.” Karen waves one hand, dismissing the argument entirely with barely a breath. “Are you going to tell me the whereabouts of young Baldur?”

Nat hasn’t heard that name in a while, not said aloud. Not when it wasn’t Chris himself crying, terrified of returning to that life.

She lets her back rest against the back of the folding chair she’s in, shoulder blades touching cold metal through her shirt and housecoat, dropping her hands to her lap so she can safely close them into fists until they ache. “I don’t know who that is,” She replies, voice carefully light and sincere. “I already took a lie detector test, Karen-”

“Lie detector tests are so notoriously unreliable they are not allowed in trials as evidence,” Karen says, voice flat as always, but oddly warm and deep at the same time. “And I know that the pet lib movement encourages practicing ways to fool them. Don’t try that with me, Natalie. You know I’m smarter than that.”

“Fair enough.” Nat tips her head in acknowledgement, and thinks she sees the faintest flicker of a smile on Karen’s face, too.

Funny, how they end up like this, respecting each other as enemies more than they did as coworkers. “I’m not going to tell you about any rescues I may or may not be working with at this time, and you damn well know it.”

“Do you know how we found your address, Natalie?” Karen stands, her heels clicking across the concrete as she stops at a long counter along the wall, where a pitcher stands with water cups, a coffeemaker even.

Nat shifts.

The shackles around her ankles that keep her tethered to the floor rattle a little with her movements. It’s freezing in here - Nat is glad she grabbed her housecoat when the raid began.

Karen never seems to notice the cold.

Maybe demons don’t, Nat thinks, and has to stifle a childish giggle.

“I don’t know, actually,” She says, watching Karen’s ramrod-straight spine as she pours herself a cup of water, takes a long drink. Her lipstick doesn’t leave prints on the clear plastic cup. Karen Renford, as always, is a cold marble sculpture that somehow learned how to breathe. The world never seems to be able to fully touch her.

Pygmalion would only ever have made monsters like Renford, Nat thinks to herself, and then wonders what nook and cranny of her college education dragged that up at a time like this.

“You’ve been asking yourself, no doubt. Was it a friend? Someone at Jakob Stanton’s college? Could it have been a fellow safehouse operator, selling you out in order to save his or her own skin?” Karen walks back over, a folder in her hand, and sets it down on the table, leaning over Nat’s shoulder.

Her perfume is woodsy, deep and dark, with hints of smoke and cedar. Maybe it’s a cologne, actually. Nat never could tell the damn difference, except one usually had flower smells and the other didn’t.

“I’m curious,” Nat admits, unwillingly, but if she gives up a little, maybe Karen will read it as more. “But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have what you want, what you’re looking for. We don’t have any rescue named Baldur in my house.”

Not a lie - as soon as he chose his new name, Chris stopped being that silent, still boy that had arrived on her doorstep and became the blur of movement and life and happiness he is now. As far as Nat’s concerned, Baldur had disappeared with Chris’s fever, the moment he chose to be someone new.

“Hm.” Karen flips open the folder, and before Nat’s eyes can really grasp what she sees there, Karen’s hand is on the back of his neck, slamming her head down on the table.

Nat’s forehead bounces off of metal, and the world sparks white and black around her. She cries out, voice hoarse around its edges, as pain blooms on a delay behind her disorientation. Karen’s fingernails dig into her neck on either side, palm pressed so hard against her spine that she feels like the fucking discs will start to crack. She jerks her hands up to defend herself, only to have Karen pull suddenly away, spinning her chair around. The disorientation and dizziness is too much, and Nat barely sees a flash of her red hair before she slams a fist into her face.

The world explodes in nothing again, and Nat’s cry comes out more of a grunt this time. She slumps to the side, only to have Karen pull her back before she can fall to the floor.

Karen’s fist hits her stomach, knocking the breath out of her. Her ankles are tangled in the chains to her shackles, and she kicks ineffectually, coughing with airy breathlessness, desperate for air as Karen hits her again, and again, and again.

She always was an excellent handler. There was a reason she’d gotten so many promotions.

Nat’s grunts turn to whimper, then to little more than gasps.

Finally, it stops, and Nat jerks in shallow breaths that only gradually deepen as her lungs start working again. Then she’s gulping oxygen as black spots dance around the corners of her vision, framing Karen.

Karen Renford, whose hair isn’t even out of place. Who looks down at her knuckles with slight, distant curiosity, and finds that even her fingernails are still perfectly lacquered red. The light above her gives her a cool, lifeless halo.

“I’ve waited a long time to do that,” Karen says, casual and carefree, as if they were still two coworkers meeting at the vending machines. “Natalie.”

“I just-... jus’ go by Nat,” Nat manages to gasp out, another round of coughing wracking her entire body. “Wh-... are you doin’ this shit to Jake?”

“Yes.” Karen doesn’t even pretend to lie. “We are. Much worse, actually. My handler has carte-blanche to do what he believes will work. Mr. Stanton seems the weaker link-”

“If you think that, you’re a fucking moron.” Nat’s lip is throbbing.

Karen sighs. “You were always hard-headed, stubborn. Strong. It served WRU well. It serves less well now.”

“Better. It’s… better, used this way.” Nat spat pink on the floor next to Karen’s pristine black shoes with their blood-red soles. “My dad always said I was like a mule in mud when I wanted to be.”

Karen’s eyebrow quirks upwards. “Quaint. Sometimes I forget you’re the physical embodiment of flyover country.”

“Should see me in my flannel.”

“God forbid.”

“Honestly, I’d say sometimes I forget you’re a cold fucking bitch, but I can’t say I ever have.”

Karen smiles. “Good. I like people to remember that about me.” She spins Nat back around, jamming her finger down on the black-and-white photo. “Remember him?”

Nat’s lips part a little more, taking in what she sees. A man, only a few years younger than she is, looking haunted and oddly delicate, staring off into space. He isn’t looking at the camera, but then he never did, did he?

Yes, she remembers.

“Stellan,” She says, in a low voice. “My fourth rescue. But he’s-”

“Been smuggling across the Canadian border for, what, fifteen years, since he left your house?” Karen sighs, badly feigning sympathy and sadness, drawing her red fingernail in a slash across Stellan’s throat. “He was, you are correct. Cost us a lot of lost profits, since he had such a way of bypassing security systems and breaking into our very facilities. Someone helped him, didn’t they? Someone who knew how to break into our security…”

Nat will die before she gives up Nine.

He’s the reason it ever works, getting them out of the Facility before they’re ever even sold. She doesn’t say anything, only shakes her head, but she can’t look away from Stellan’s haunted eyes. “What-... what did you do to him, to get him to talk?”

“We asked, Natalie. And he told us what we wanted to know, at least he did after a few of his associates were dead in front of him, and only two remained. He told us the location of six safehouses, and oh, how fascinating, yours was on the list. I already knew about you, of course.”

“Of course.” Nat’s lips are barely moving. Oh, Stellan, no. No, honey, no.

She’d been so proud of who he’d become.

“Then, when our customer told us that his darling Baldur was missing, and the link is an actress who knows Vincent Shield… the actor known to associate with degenerate safehouse operators like yourself… and Stellan told us that he’d heard you very recently took in a young Romantic because of Shield… and recognized the boy in a photograph as someone he’d seen at a group meeting…”

Nat’s eyes slowly close, and then open again.

Her heart is in her throat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, we take new people in all the time.” She keeps her voice low, and steady. She’s cracking apart, inside. Stellan betrayed six safehouses, betrayed her, and god he must have been so scared and hopeless to give them up to try and save anyone he could.

She’s so proud of how much he cares for the friends he’s made since he left her house. She’s so proud of him.

“I can hurt you very badly, Natalie,” Karen Renford says, voice quiet, dragging a fingernail down Nat’s throat, toying with the neckline of her shirt. Nat doesn’t even shiver - she knows as well as anyone that Karen’s bluffing, with shit like this.

But is whoever has Jake also someone who bluffs?

Does Jake know that it was Stellan?

Nat raises her chin, and tells herself that if Jake doesn’t know who did it when they get out of this, then she’s not ever going to tell him. She’ll make up a story, she’ll tell lies, even to Jake when she tries so hard not to lie to him at all. It doesn’t matter.

Her rescues come first, they always have, and that still counts even when they’re not in her house any longer. Stellan did what he had to do, and Jake won’t understand. He’ll be angry, he’ll judge, he’ll be cruel if Stellan escapes again.

Or... he might trust the rescues less. Lose faith in the mission.

Nat won’t do that to him, and she won’t risk the runaways. Even if it means lying to Jake. She can take secrets to her grave, and she adds Stellan’s betrayal to the list of the things she will carry inside her and never, ever let out.

“I’m not scared of you, Renford,” Nat says, voice flat, and she means it.

Stubborn as a mule, her dad always said. She can almost hear his voice. That woman don’t know what she’s dealing with, Nat, if she pisses you off. I’ve seen you take your fists to a boy three times your size and leave him calling for his mother. I’ve seen you wear blue jeans to high school graduation just because they told you not to.

No one who takes on my daughter stands a chance.

When Nat smiles at the memory, a sharp ache telling her that her bottom lip has split, the taste of copper filtering into her mouth shortly afterward, she sees Karen pull back, just a little.

Uncertain.

Maybe even nervous.

Nat’s smile widens, and she spits blood right in Karen Renford’s face.

“We both know you’re not allowed to kill me, or you’d have done it seventeen years ago,” She says, voice rough and hoarse, watching Karen wipe the saliva off the side of her face, her hazel eyes blazing with a cold, cold fury. “So what’s the plan?”

Karen stares at her, she’s off-script and she can tell Renford doesn’t know how to handle it. There was a way she was supposed to respond, and there’s one thing about Natalie Yoder that’s been true from birth and that will be true to her death:

Tell her she has to do something, and she’s going to do the exact damn opposite of what’s demanded, what’s expected, just because she can.

She has just enough space in the chain to her shackles to kick out and sweep Karen’s feet out from under her, sending her crashing to the floor, and she’s laughing when Karen pulls out the baton. “Y-your lipstick is smeared, Renford-”

Nat screams when the shock lights her up, setting every nerve aflame, and yet part of her is still laughing.

If she screams in pain and laughs in her flat, small triumph, she doesn’t have to think about how one of her favorite rescues sold her out. She doesn’t have to wonder if Jake will do the same. She doesn’t have to worry about what they’re doing to him.

She only has to hurt, and to hold out a little longer. She only has to keep Chris and all of her other runaways safe.

She only has to be stubborn as hell.

That, she can do.

Stubborn as a mule... that’s Natalie Yoder.

Karen Renford doesn’t know what she’s dealing with.

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @orchidscript @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @hackles-up @sableflynn @wildfaewhump @card-games-and-pain

Safehouse Raid Mini-Arc:

· Come Back: Safehouse Raid

· Safe in the Dark: Antoni and Leila

· Shut Up, Slut

· Interrogation, Part One: Jake

· Just Right: Chris

· Interrogation, Part Two: Jake

· I’ll Die First

· (Guilt: Antoni)

· If They Knew: Chris

· Interrogation, Part Three: Jake

· Promise Kept

· Trust (featuring @deluxewhump’s Alex)

· Jake Passes Out

· Jake Has Trauma, Too

· Come Home, Part Two

· This Isn’t About Dad

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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📚 with an early chris and nat?

Nat flinches back as Chris lets out a scream of frustration and throws the book across the room. It smacks into the wall and drops to the ground, open to a random page, the oversized letters easily readable even from this far away.

Easily readable for her, anyway.

"I, I don't want to do this anymore!" He snaps, shaking his head, rocking almost violently forward and back, forward and back. Nat takes a breath, trying to decide what to do - hug him? Wait it out? Sometimes a hug helps, sometimes it makes things worse. Waiting might just mean Chris cycling down into his self-hatred again, or it might give him time to calm and get through it on his own.

She settles for getting to her feet, with a slight groan as her knees protest, and walking over to pick the book up. "Chris-"

"It, it, it it it hurts! It hurts and it's, I'm too, I'm never gonna read again and I shouldn't even try, I, I I I'm too fucking stupid to read!"

He smacks his hands into the floor, and Nat holds the book, running her own hands back and forth over the slightly shiny cover of the book. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she should have known better - in retrospect, it was a hard day for Chris right from the start. Waking from a nightmare, struggling with leaving his room, getting overwhelmed when the roadwork guys had gone down the road - and then something about lunch had been wrong, but he hadn't been able to say what...

"Chris, it's okay," She says, softly, and takes a seat on the couch. "It's okay. We can stop for now, all right? We can try again later."

He looks up at her, eyes red-rimmed with tears, wiping almost viciously at them with the back of one hand. "I'm too-... they they they made me too stupid to read," He says, and the awful misery of his voice cracks her heart in two. "They hurt me and I can't-... I can't do it and I want to get better, but-... but but but I can't, I can't get better-"

"You can. You can, Chris, and you will. But there's no deadline, you don't have to hurry." Nat sighs, and then looks down at the book, thinking. "Would you like me to read to you for a while?"

He goes quiet, sitting in sullen silence for a few seconds, and then gets to his feet, moving across the room and flopping dramatically onto the couch next to her. "Yes," He says, in a low voice, his hair hanging over his eyes. "Please."

"No problem. Let's just take some deep breaths." She opens the book and starts to read from the spot they'd left off, keeping her voice low, a soft soothing near-monotone.

At first, Chris sits with his knees pulled up, forehead resting against them, humming soft and rocking. The humming comes to a stop, until Nat's voice is the only thing in the room, and then finally the rocking stops, too.

When he leans slowly over until his head rests against her, Nat never misses a beat. She keeps reading, even as she slides an arm around his shoulder and holds him.

"I'm, I'm I'm-I'm sorry," he says, in a voice so small she can barely hear him.

Nat places her finger on the last word she had read to mark her place, and turns, resting her cheek against the top of his head. "It's okay. Hard days are a part of living, Chris. I understand. It's okay."

"Are you-... are are are you mad at me, for throwing the, um, the book?"

"No, honey. But can we try again tomorrow?"

He nods, closing his eyes.

Nat starts reading again, and feels the tension in his body very slowly relaxing.

Maybe tomorrow will be better all around.

Chris has so many good days, it's not such a big deal to roll with the bad ones.

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #chris the strawberry blond romantic #comf micros #angst #negative stimming tw #meltdown tw #box boy universe #bbu #box boy #caretaker and whumpee #recovering whumpee #neurodivergent whumpee #trauma recovery #conditioned behavior

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

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🤝 - Some help performing a basic task COMF ANTONI COMF HIM WITH HIS LOVE LANGUAGE OF HELPING 🥺

"Hey."

Antoni blinks and looks up. "Yes?"

"You work so hard around here. Take a break sometimes, okay?"

He shakes his head, smiling, but she plucks the rag out of his hands before he can protest. "Nat-"

"You always worked too hard. Sit and drink your tea before it goes cold."

"You have had many coffees go cold while you worked," He points out, and she laughs, but she still shoos him to his seat anyway.

#antoni sings lullabies #natalie yoder: here to help the rescues

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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"What do you think of the song?" For Nat

A long time ago, when Nat's life was very different...

"So?" Stephen turns to look at her, expectant. Behind him, the end of the commercial - still rough, editing isn't quite done yet - is frozen in time, a woman smiling and leaning against a doorway as she watches a Domestic happily helping her young children with a homemade-volcano project.

Renfro had really thrown himself into the role, and Nat found herself wondering if he’s naturally a bit of an actor, whoever he'd been before. He'd had to take his collar off for it - the focus groups were unsettled by the collars, and they were leaving them out of commercials to see if that would help the reception - and he'd been terrified at first, had required a lot of reassurance.

But once he'd settled and trusted her that he wasn't in trouble and they would take good care of him... he'd just nailed every single line.

"Nat? Miss Yoder?"

Startled out of her thoughts, Nat looks away from the image of Renfro's smiling face and back to Stephen's nervous hopefulness. "Oh, sorry. What, Steve?"

"Stephen," He corrects gently. Nat winces, but Stephen powers on without waiting for the apology. "What do you think of the song? Is it too cloying, maybe?"

Nat considers, and then slowly shakes her head. "No, I think it's perfect. You designed this commercial to really aim for Middle America, and look. I grew up in the Heartland. This'll play well there."

"Perfect." Stephen smiles brightly. "We're really looking to nail down those wealthy suburban markets, get them to see the investment. You know, you'd spend more paying a nanny for less devoted care, that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I think this is perfect for that."

"Good, good." Stephen clicks on the video, and it moves again, the final notes of the little jingle dying out as Renfro, acting as 'Mike' the Domestic caregiver pet, turns to look directly at the camera.

His smile is bright and brilliant.

"This is exactly what I wanted," He says, as the image fades out to a soft feminine voiceover about the investment in early childhood development and financing options.

Nat feels a trickle of unease down her spine, and carefully, pointedly ignores it.

Renfro doesn't know what life he wanted. He can't remember any longer.

"I'm going to go take my lunch," Nat says, glancing over at the clock on the wall. "I know it's early, but I want to pick up a treat for Renfro. He really went above and beyond on this shoot."

"Yeah, I definitely don't know if it'd work without him, he's just so good at this. Hey, here." Stephen digs into his khakis and pulls out a five-dollar bill, folded until it's nearly the width of a pencil. It's clearly been through the wash once or twice. He presses it into Nat's hand. "Pick him up something from me, too."

"Will do." Nat gives Stephen a cheery little wave and walks away, her sensible heels not quite clomping. She's never gotten the hang of heels.

Just below-ground, in the first floor where the demo pets live, Renfro will be in his room, probably reading one of the approved books and hanging out on his little bed. Still... he'll probably love a Snickers bar, or something that isn't the regulation uber-healthy meals they all get fed, just plain meat and vegetables and a piece of fruit here and there, along with multivitamins to swallow.

Nat wonders, idly, what kind of food he liked when he was someone else.

That bit of uncertainty settles inside her again, the prickle against her back, and she steps into the elevator and presses B1, telling herself she's just being silly thinking about any of the pets' former lives.

After all, it's not like they can think about them anymore.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #wru #bbu #pet whump #pet whump tw #box boy #box boy universe #conditioned behavior

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

"she wasn't expecting this"

@panicked-goose let’s call this your mother’s day nat comf

She wasn’t expecting this.

“What-”

“It’s a, a, a cake.” Chris bounces on his toes in front of her, leaning over to nudge the serving tray closer, cool blue ceramic scraping against the warm wood of the table. His hair flops copper over his eyes, and she tries to remind herself to give him a haircut, but she’s too distracted by everything else.

“I know it’s a cake, Chris, hon, but why did you make it?”

He grins, stepping back, gripping his fingers around the back of the kitchen chair on that side, swaying a little, perfectly pleased with himself. “Be, um, because you, you didn’t tell me your birthday. So, so I made one up.”

“Chris, I don’t need birthday celebrations, at my age it’s just another day.”

“No, no it’s not.” Chris leans over, expression going serious, eyes enormous in his narrow face. “It’s, it’s not. Not to me. It’s important to me.”

“Okay, fair enough. If I eat some, will you at least promise to have a slice with me?”

“Yes! Yes, yes I will.” Chris moves in a flurry to get plates and a butter knife, carefully cutting to squares from the cake to serve each of them. For all his happy energy, Nat can see the improvement since he started taking medication, too. Less jittery, better able to focus on and finish a task.

After all, he baked a cake. And Antoni is out for therapy, so he definitely didn’t get help. Or at least not help from anyone who actually already knew how to bake...

She takes a bite, then hums at the flavor. “Oh, it’s lemon. Did Jake tell you I like lemon pound cake?”

“No, but, but, but when you go to Starbucks, you, um, you always get theirs so I thought...” He shrugs. “I had Jake do measurements and, and then, um, and then, read the recipe to me but but but I did the actual... everything.”

“Well, it’s amazing. And so are you.”

He smiles, beaming sunlight as bright as what comes in through the window over the sink, and Nat wonders, not for the first time, at how quickly Chris has felt less like a runaway she’s caring for until he moves on and more like a cousin or a little brother or a son here to stay.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #chris the strawberry blond romantic #just fluff #big old fluffy fluff flufferson #man I don't know #nat being maternal is my jam okay

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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do you think we could get some Nat comf? for mothers day? pleeeaaase

I’m going to do a Dear Diary for Nat

Jake asks me sometimes how I’m so calm, how I just get through things. Like with Chris getting sick - Jake asked for days how I could talk about him going back like it wasn’t any big thing after we’ve already been raided when they were looking for him. How I could just drive him to the hospital, how I could just sound like it didn’t bother me, like it didn’t matter.

What do I tell him?

Do I start with how I’ve lost them before, and you keep moving? I’ve had them turn themselves in before, I’ve had them go missing only to pop up as ‘back home’ with the assholes who hurt them?

Maybe I’m just worn down.

Jake is young, he’s still got all his edges and all his spark. Maybe I’ve just lost mine. Maybe he’s a volcano and I’m just a glacial plain, worn so flat I can barely rise even after centuries, millenia.

But of course, the answer is just that when it’s all on you to carry it, you just... carry it.

What happens if I cry? Right? What happens? Nothing gets fixed, and everyone would be terrified, because they need me to be strong. They need me to be the one who makes the hard decisions, even when it hurts. They need me to give and give and give and give and it’s the least I can fucking do after being part of the reason they need me at all.

When you’re who I am, you don’t get the option of giving up. You don’t get the option to throw shit at the wall and scream. No, you stare down the cops and you stare down WRU and you stare down the people who say they can’t do it, they can’t learn to care for themselves, they can’t live on their own, and maybe you give them the middle finger in your mind but you show the runaways exactly what they need:

you show them that you believe they can do it, even when they don’t.

You just pick up what other people toss aside, you open the door to a teenage boy in a collar half-naked in the rain, you open the door to Kauri drunk and crying, you open the door to Krista too scared to speak, you open the door to Leila who looks at you like she’d sooner murder you than believe a word you say. You just keep opening the door.

And when they curse at you, and call you names, and try to hit you in their fear of people who aren’t you at all, you stand there and take it and you love them anyway.

I love them all anyway.

Jake wants to know how I do it, but the truth is that I don’t know any better than he does.

I just keep holding on to them for as long as they need me, and if I’m very good at what I do and I do it all just right, one day they won’t need me at all.

Oh, just saw lightning.

And... there’s the thunder. Six seconds, give or take. Chris’ll be in with Jake after another crack or two. If I listen, I could probably hear him moving, sneaking down the hall to find his way to safety.

Jake asks me how I do it, but Jake is already doing it, too.

When they need you, you keep holding on.

And you hope one day they’ll be the ones that let go first.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #dear diary oc asks #angst #bbu #box boy universe #nat asks

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

Five sentence prompt for Kauri, Chris, or Nat: “Come on, breathe, I know you’re in there”

CW: Panic/fear response, mute whumpee (not really but not talking), minor whumpee (OC is 17), referenced pet whump, referenced collars

Timeline: Chris's first full 24 hours or so at the safehouse.

Also includes @outofangband's prompt!

"Come on, kiddo. Breathe. Deep breaths."

Her voice is solid, low and soothing, but his nerves all spark with the knowledge that the people with the softest voices are the ones who hurt him worst. He curls up more tightly instead, jammed into the corner between the bed and the wall, as far away from her as he can get.

He can see her dark eyes, considering him, her long braid swinging to the side as she peers through the underside of the bed to try and catch his eyes.

The last dose wore off... yesterday? He doesn't know how long he's been here. His mind is spinning, running a million miles a minute, uncontrolled trains full of terrified passengers and no destination. The thoughts loop through his mind, again and again, over and over.

He's not safe here. He needs his Sir, his Sir is safe, the hallway is safe the big bedroom is safe the pain is safe his collar is safe and this is not safe, this isn't safe at all.

"I know you can talk," She says, her voice still gentle - a trap, a trick, something he can't predict yet. He doesn't move and he doesn't look away from her, lying on his side with his knees nearly at his chin. His heart pounds behind the thin barrier of his breastbone and skin. "I know you're in there, Baldur."

He shivers, at the name.

His name but not his Sir and not Miss Nancy either.

He presses his lips together and stares back at her, silent, waiting for her to yank the bed back from the wall and start barking orders, or worse - to lower her voice more and speak like... like a handler.

Instead, she sighs, and pulls away. "I know you're scared," Her voice says. He can't see her face any longer, just her beat-up tennis shoes with gray laces. "We'll get there. But you gotta eat, kiddo, okay?"

He doesn't answer.

The sneakers shift and walk back and away from him, and he watches them go. The door opens and closes. There's a silence, and he takes a breath.

"You should speak to her, you know," A low deep voice speaks from the one across the room in the other bed. Baldur swallows around the lump in his throat. "She is really quite kind. You are safe here."

Other ones can lie, too, and this one isn't like him. He knew as soon as he saw him. This one isn't Romantic, and he'll be cruel, like the other ones in training could be.

Baldur doesn't move, makes no sound. He doesn't even breathe.

Eventually, the other one sighs and turns the page in the book he is reading.

The boy under the bed wishes he could read, too.

#chris the strawberry blond romantic #baldur #antoni sings lullabies #natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #whump #pet whump tw #minor whumpee #conditioned whumpee #fear response #caretaker and whumpee #box boy universe #bbu #box boy

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

“I’ll do better” for Jake, Kauri or Antoni please? (I haven’t done this before so I hope I’m doing it right!)

(Perfect, Anon!)

CW: Referenced past trauma of a minor (it's a vague reference), referenced medical trauma, brief alcohol reference

Takes place after Chris's appendix bursts, during his time spent recovering

"I've gotta do better by him. I'm... you know, I'm just tired of fucking up," Jake says heavily, leaning his elbows on the worn warm-toned wood of the circular kitchen table, head in his hands.

There's a scrape along the table, and he looks up to see a shot glass full of a light brown liquid, slightly yellowed by the kitchen light. Nat smiles at him, sympathetic and compassionate, the bottle of bourbon she keeps in the top cabinet where no one can reach it, not even her, held in her other hand. "Why do you think you're fucking up?"

He takes the shot.

It burns, then settles into a softer heat down his throat and into his chest, spreading through shoulders. When she offers another, he shakes his head. One's enough.

"Since he came home... I'm in there fucking guilt-tripping him into taking his meds, bullying him into staying down on the couch or in bed and not letting him do any of the shit he wants to do... I'm being the shit he hates, Nat."

She's quiet, for a second. Then she asks, softly, "Do you remember the first time he yelled at you for asking him to do the dishes?"

Jake swallows. "Yeah. Why?"

"Do you remember what I said?"

Jake quirks a smile at that, slightly one-sided. "Sure fucking do. You said he was acting like the teenager he is, like my little brother, that he felt safe enough to be a little shit about something."

"Somehow I doubt I said he was being a little shit." Nat's voice drops into the wry, dry humor she's known for, delivering the line in a way where it's impossible to know if she's joking or serious.

"You didn't, but the spirit of the-"

"The spirit of my words is what I said," Nat says, with a huff of nearly-soundless laughter. "I've always said, Jake, part of this is having to do the hard stuff, make the choices that hurt us to try and help them, if it's what has to be done. That's all you're doing now. One day, he'll get that. Right now he's sick, and it makes him sort of totter on this line, inside him. He knows that pills have been used to tear him apart - pills, and medicine, and environments like hospitals have all been part of what broke him down to be tortured into what they want. But to recover well, he needs to be able to get through it, take his painkillers and antibiotics and keep going."

"It fucking sucks, for the record," Jake says, and he feels immensely heavy. Weighed down. "Having to make a scared teenager do something he fucking hates. Being the one who gets that fucking look on his face. I hate it."

Nat smiles at him, still. "I know. But you're the only one he trusts this much. He won't take those meds from me, Jake. Just you."

"Lot of fucking pressure," Jake whispers. "Being somebody's most important person. Last time I was that, my mom..."

"Your mom did the hardest thing imaginable, for you. She carried you through it. But that's being family, isn't it? You carry the weight, when you have to. One day he'll carry yours." She pauses, takes a drink herself right from the bottle, and winks at him. "Assuming, of course, you're not being a little shit at the time."

When he laughs, sounding relieved by the simple humor layered over all the things that drag him down, she looks supremely pleased with herself.

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #jake the shelter guy #referenced trauma #medical trauma tw #caretakers #comforting caretaker #angry caretaker #alcohol tw

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

“I don’t care! I don’t care! Pack your shit and go!” For either Jakob or Natalie, please.

CW: WRU, callous reference to the Box Boy system

Approximately twenty years before Chris shows up in the dead of night on Natalie Yoder's doorstep, Natalie herself had a very different way of living...

"Nat, you can't be serious. The next big marketing push happens in a month!"

"I don't care."

In goes the framed photo of she and her parents standing near the oldest still-operating gristmill in the country. The glass might crack. She can get a new frame. After that she sets down the mug she bought in the employee store, the happy peppy bubble text on one side reading WRU, Designed For You! Pens fall out of it and scatter all through the bottom of the box.

"You're leaving the whole goddamn department in the lurch!"

"I. Don't. Care."

She picks up the little certificates she"s received, awards and recognition of her hard work, her successes. Her slogans adorn the framed posters of happy demo pets and smiling handlers all along the walls. Her heart twists, when she looks up at them.

It had been so easy to ignore what was really happening here. So easy to believe the hype, all too easy to build it.

"You're letting the whole team down, Yoder. All of us."

"I said-"

"I thought you were really bonding with Renfro, too, he really liked you."

Nat pauses, her custom mousepad with its image of yellowed cornstalks against a blue sky held, crushed softness in her hand, and looks up.

Renfro, one of the demos, soft and sweet and eager to make her smile, working so hard to hit his cues in the commercials they were filming now that the law banning advertisements on television for the industry had lapsed without being renewed.

Renfro, watching her while he practiced, to see if he said it right.

Renfro, twenty-two maybe, looking her way, like he wanted to see if she was watching, while he sat for an interview and repeated, smiling, the slogan Natalie herself had come up with, what all of them were being taught to say.

We signed up for this.

"I don't care."

Oh, she'll miss Renfro. Maybe the people she's been talking to, scrolling message boards in the dead of night, can help him somehow.

Maybe.

"Well... Fine. Just pack your shit and go, I guess. Didn't know you had such a heart of stone."

Natalie drops the last few things into the box, looks at her little desk, emptied of every sigh of individuality, of life.

She sighs, heavily.

"I don't have a heart of stone, Linda. We're not all Handler Renford."

"Oh, hush, she'll hear you."

"I don't care if she does. Listen to me." Nat looks up to meet Linda's worried, kind brown eyes. "What I learned? Is that I don't have a heart of stone, and that is exactly why I can't stay here."

#natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #bbu #wru #world-building #worldbuilding #pet whump references

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

nat seeing short hair forehead scar only-just-talking-again chris for the first time and wrapping him in a big comforting motherly hug🥺🥺🥺

CW: Post-meltdown, nonverbal, referenced self-injury as a result of meltdown, ptsd/trauma, vaguely referenced parental death

Takes place post-I’m Here

---

He doesn’t speak when she comes in, or look at her. He’s curled up on the bed in his room at Jake’s house, back to the wall. There’s a pillow behind him, and Nat knows Jake placed it there just behind the back of his head, and why.

Just in case he needs to, the option is there, a way to do it without hurting until he can be redirected to stop.

His pretty blue hair is gone - only the copper roots remain, nearly shaved, a shimmer of color with blue at some of the ends, like a penny slowly going green with time and neglect.

“Hey, sweetie,” Nat says gently, and he blinks, but he keeps staring towards the window. Jake’s pulled open the curtains, opened it up, let the air from outside, smelling like flowers, drift in. She can hear a plane flying low overhead, making its descent towards the airport a few miles away.

He has a feather in his mouth, just holding it there, the silicone plastic pressing against his lips, but he’s not chewing on it. His hands hold another one, a different color, rubbing his thumb up and down, up and down.

He looks his age, with such short hair, and it’s so startling that Nat nearly trips on the rug before she make it to the chair at his desk, in front of his laptop, to sit slowly down to face him. He looks like he’s twenty-four, going on twenty-five, in a way he almost never does. The angles of his face are drawn sharply, this way. There’s a darkness in his green eyes that she has only rarely seen.

“Jake says you had a breakthrough,” Nat says, keeping her voice low. She doesn’t expect a response, and she doesn’t get one. He’s listening - his thumb pauses on the feather’s vanes before it starts to rub again. Eyes flicker, not quite to hers, then go back to the window. “That you-... know yourself more, now.”

He might nod, a little. His teeth press down around the feather in his mouth. There’s a bandage over one side of his forehead, and Nat winces at the thought of how that must have hurt, another on his other cheek, some more on his bare arms he clearly did to himself.

It’s been so long since she’s seen Chris without his compression shirt (his armor, she’s always thought privately) that it’s unsettling, now, to see so much skin. Just a t-shirt and pajama shorts, like when he’d first come to stay with them. Only he’s older, now, a grown man - a grown man struggling to reconcile a boy’s life that was stolen from him.

“Is it okay that I’m here, Chris?”

Now, he looks at her, blinking in surprise, and then he nods, once. He moves, carefully and slowly, shifting along the bed. She realizes only after he moves the pillow behind his head, too, that he’s making room for her to sit beside him.

She moves in a heartbeat. His mattress gives under her weight, a slight creak of old box springs as she sits beside him. He slowly leans over until his shoulder touches her arm, until his head rests on her shoulder. She turns to kiss the top of his head and mourns how the newly-short hair brushes like the tips of feathers, rather than the waterfall of blue he loved so much, he’d been so proud of.

Nat digs her phone out of her pocket, opens up the Notes app, and holds it out to him. “Can you talk this way, for now?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “L-Later,” He manages, with obvious difficulty. His voice is little more than a rasping whisper.

Nat sets the phone down beside her. “That’s all right, Chris. If you change your mind, we’ll try again, but no pressure. I want to be here with you for a while, and we can just sit together, too. Jake says you got yourself back, today. He told me your name was Tristan Higgs.”

Chris doesn’t nod, but he hitches in a breath, and Nat can hear the answer in it.

“I heard something else, too,” Nat murmurs, and when his arms move to slide around her waist, she turns to make it easier for him, slips a hand up to the back of his head. “I heard that you were very, very loved by your friends, and your parents. I’m so sorry about them, Chris. But I was so glad to learn how much everyone loved you. So I guess that’s one thing that Chris and Tristan have in common, hm? You’re so loved, no matter what name you have. We love you so, so much.”

He turns his head into the side of her neck, and she lets his tears dampen the tendrils of hair that have come loose from her braid. They listen to the birds singing outside, smell the flowers in the air, and sit together.

He’ll talk when he’s ready, when he can.

Right now, he’ll have someone to see him through the silence.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump , @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @downriver914 @vickytokio

#chris the strawberry blond romantic #natalie yoder: here to help the rescues #meltdown tw #post-meltdown #nonverbal whumpee #referenced parental death #(vague)#trauma response #whump #trauma recovery #bbu #box boy #box boy universe

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