#rest up after falling in the sinkhole lads

[grim-faux]

2 _ 17 _ Where is His Hat

First

 The building was falling apart, through the eroded walls and to the unraveling ceiling. Water soaked the floors and swirled within spaces caved beneath the tile, the foundation itself buckled underneath the shelves spaced across the main floor. Some of the lights still worked, a benefit, since it was late in the evening and the outside environment black beneath the brewing storms.

 “Be careful,” the Thin Man cautioned, as the child waded by once more. His own attention fixed on the front counter and the products stashed at the back wall. At random he selected one of the packages and gave it an examination, frowning. Variety would be nice.

 Dismissing the assortment of flavors, he turned away, and noted the child perched on the counter staring at him. The hat this time the former one confiscated, when he had forced negotiated the child into rest. The feather as well, though now it was matted by static and drenched and no longer did much. The boy seemed satisfied to let it ride in the band on his hat.

 The child was gone in a blink, back in the water and sloshing away. The Thin Man hummed to himself, the lamps above pulsed. It had been this way for a while, though the lad was comfortable enough around him. At a distance, at least.

 In short time, the splashing diminished. Either climbing a shelf or some other obstacle, or located a relatively dry space of the floor. The Thin Man drifted easily among the aisles, unhindered by the depth. For Mono, it was knee deep. Still, the liquid concealed sinkholes or perhaps aquafers that could be hazardous if not lethal.

 Most of the viable food stuff was junk stuff and candy treats. Children didn’t typically go for sugary things due to ‘sugar burn’, and the vile sickness that came about. But at times children became desperate, and food was food regardless if it was tolerable.

 Overall, the small shop still carried enough edibles that could stock Mono for a few days, but no more. Staying was not an option, given that anything could come in – the walls so depilated that anything might haphazardly stumble through, or punch through the ceiling. He and the child didn’t stumble through a front door, but a crumpled wall of the building which led into an alleyway. And a television there.

 As soon as the boy recuperated some vigor, he could take a scout around for a secure haven. He would revisit the shop and pilfer the rest of the food, Mono could have a short break from the endless wandering. That might cheer him up.

 For a while the child disappeared, but he was not concerned. Initially, he thought the boy was done following him around and ready to set out on his own. That didn’t happen. Even so, the Thin Man prowled through the stocky shelf arrangement, disinterested in the broken or vandalized items. In a few of these pathways, sat the melted box stuffed to bursting with fresh merchandise, all of it never reaching a shelf.

 It took no time at all to locate the child, given he wasn’t going anywhere. As expected, the boy located a dry segment on one side of the store and was crouched, with his back to the wall, sleeping. Or half sleep. Or not. It is difficult to tell with Mono; the child didn’t stir an ounce when he drew near.

 After drawing a cigarette from his coat, the Thin Man let the boy be and went to check the doors of the shop. He made certain they wouldn’t budge an inch, then, did a walk of the inner store perimeter. Most of the iron bars in the windows held firm against the beating rain, the glass crumbled in sections but what surface retained substance barred out any muddled illumination offered by the clouds. No hope spang eternal for some reading material, given the overall state of the building. With his patrol satisfied he returned to where the child was huddled down, and took a seat on the floor.

 The shop did have a dining zone that remained in bearable condition, but for whatever reason the child picked this particular spot. For the first few hours Mono did some sleep, and the Thin Man is always a little surprised whenever the child awoke. But it was half sleep, thus his presence did not go unheeded. When the boy snapped his head up, it was to give the vicinity a brief search. Once assured all was in order he tucked his head down, and gave a little sigh. Back to half sleep.

 With nothing else to occupy his time, the Thin Man smoked. And almost envied his younger-self’s capacity to just… curl up into his coat. That was one thing he missed dearly when he aged, in the Tower. Some days (?) were worse than others, when his fortitude faltered, and the Eyes of the Flesh wanted to jeer at him more than usual. Wear him down, weaken his resolve. It was an endless contest to see which would blink first, and the Tower knew it all already. Knew every in and out of his existence, every ounce of his vitality. Toyed with him. Cryptic riddles. Mocking. Insinuating it knew more than let on, knew the core of his sum. Hauled him to the brink of his sanity, toward a dark slice of his psyche that was potentially as dangerous to himself as it was lethal to the Tower itself.

 He jarred from his slouch, smacking his back against the wall. The child cringed against his side, still sodden from traipsing through rain, and clinging to his coat. For his merit, Mono hoisted himself up by the coat and clambered onto the Thin Man’s middle. The boy was still soaked through, and still, curled up and dug into the suit, as if the man in the hat would evaporate between his fingers.

 During this, the Thin Man rubbed the dull ache out of his neck. His back was vibrating almost as intensely as the thick vapor threading through the stale building, but he was not able to stand now. Instead, he settled a hand over the child and brushed his thumb along Mono’s neck. The child emitted a muffled whimper and bore down tighter (he should really check for claws) but didn’t vault loose as he was prone to. This at least settled some of his misgivings – he didn’t know if the boy was frightened of him now or simply hated him, over the book incident.

 The child was… distressed, clearly, when he tried to confront him about the book. It was a day or more later when Mono would finally emerge from his nest, for food, which the Thin Man had acquired. Though, he was uncertain if Mono would remain in the residence, upon the desertion of the threat. He left the food beside the dresser within easy reach, and it was uplifting that the boy chose to eat in the open rather horde the food away.

 The Thin Man lingered in the doorway, confident Mono was aware of his presence. It wasn’t about the book, he didn’t care, really. He wasn’t mad. But of all the things available in the dwelling – the doors, the cabinets, the walls, anything at all – why did he chose to destroy a book of His. Was it out of spite? Was it boredom, plain and simple? And what did he do with the pictures, he’s most curious. Any reason would suffice, he didn’t care. He just wanted to know why?

 He rethought ravaging a pointless question. Did the child really need a reason for what he did? And… really, what could the boy say?

 While Mono was preoccupied with choking down the food thing, the Thin Man went to the main entry. He was not expecting the faint chirp out of the blue:

 “Where?”

 Then and there, the Thin Man didn’t know what to think, and very nearly stalled out. He peered back at the child – he was not close – but there all the same. “I need to go… check on some things.” Mono was still shoving the food – he really didn’t know what it was – into his mouth. “You should stay here.”

 The boy swallowed and tipped his head, only one eye peering out from the current hat of the time. “T’n stroll? Leave. T’h come w-fh?” He wasn’t sure if Mono looked anxious because he had to venture out and address him, or due to the prospect of him leaving. He didn’t know. The child clutched the food until it was falling to bits between his fingers. “M’to follow?”

 A bit reluctant, he did open the door to step out. “You don’t have to come. You can go wherever you want.” But the child did inch closer to the doorway, while he stood there indecisive himself.

 “B’t follow? Can keep.”

 He caved and left the door open. Mono followed, as he was prone to do now. Did the boy know no other way? The Thin Man didn’t understand this child. No middle ground. Distress or exasperation.

 Mono slept on without hitch or fidget. It was becoming alarming, the Thin Man was on the verge of panic and closer to intervention. If not for the very shallow breathing, he could mistaken the child for… he’s worried he might’ve fallen into another coma. For what reason, he couldn’t say. Rarely anything Mono did made sense lately. Or, did the child just need that much rest? That in itself was alarming.

 While it wasn’t a crisis, he let the child alone. It only felt like an arduous and long time, because he didn’t have anything to do but wait and smoke. Though this pitiful ounce of good fortune shouldn’t be overlooked, given Mono could’ve easily collapsed in the street. Again.

 It is possibly the second day, or maybe more, he doesn’t keep track anymore, but the child finally stirred. The Thin Man raised his arm to his knees, while the child collected himself. Hat more rumpled now, Mono raised his head and looked around blearily. Only a good portion conscious, but at least he was calm.

 “You’d wake up more if you would get moving.”

 Mono’s response was nestle down. The only difference, he pried his fists free of the coat and tucked his arms against himself. He mumbled something incoherent. “Mh….”

 Not this again. The Thin Man nudged the child off and stood, in a crackly glimmer. He fixed the wrinkles in his coat, and inspected the boy… laying on his side. “Child. You need to eat something. Get up.” Mono made it to his knees, and sat there. Still utterly out of it.

 This was still better than dragging him off the street half dead.

 Getting Mono to wander through the water gave the child a jolt, and he’s mostly fully awake, able to reach the aisles with food and do some foraging. The Thin Man assured himself Mono could scale the platforms without a tumble, before letting him be, to check through the murky pathways as before.

 It had been an unknown span of time, anything could have slunk in without his knowledge. Though he doubted it. The Thin Man needed to stretch out and knead at the bruise in his back. This would be worth it, he could get the child to a suitable shelter and not need settle for whatever doorway the lad happened to collapse in. While patrolling along the outer wall, he perused the outdated objects melting down the slots and slates. Whatever this inventory once was, he cannot discern—

 A sudden but stifled squeal cut through the store. It’s quiet, but he knows it is Mono. The Thin Man reacted immediately, flashing across the rows, some of the items formerly cemented by time and rust toppled off the slates. He streaked to the end of the aisles and addressed the scene.

 A familiar rectangular shape peered back at him, the little rumpled hat seated on the cluttered shelf beside him. The Thin Man gaped, stunned. Hats made sense to him, but he thought the child was beyond the paper bag now. Really, he shouldn’t be surprised. Whenever Mono made speek with his own likeness, it was always topped with one.

 Mono took the bag off and worked at the eye holes a little more, trimming carefully with studious precision, turning the bag this way and that or flipping it around. He checked a few times, assuring that the eye holes lined up. It was looking exactly like the one he wore, when the Thin Man emerged from the television.

 “You don’t need that,” he rumbled, moving closer to the shelf. “Child.”

 Mono mumbled a noise and scooted away, focused settled on his mask. “Fix.” Upon reaching for the paper bag in his hands, the child wrenched away with a little snort and turned his back.

 Sighing, the Thin Man plucked up the hat and held it closer to the boy. “Hats suit you better. And, your little feather.”

 “Feh-th’rrr,” the child muttered, still fixated on the paper bag. “S’maj-ee-kal. H’s fet-err mah-jik g’t tol.” He stashed the paper bag in his coat, then turned to the Thin Man reaching for the hat feather.

 The Thin Man didn’t comment. That mask would resurface soon enough, but Mono was responding to him now. He relinquished the hat and watched the child drop off the shelf, into the shallow water.

 “Fea-therr,” he enunciated, as he followed the child.

 “Feht-err. Feaa-th’r.”

  “No. Feath-Eer.”

 “Fe-thf-RR.”

 Was he doing that on purpose?

 The child elected one aisle to wade down, scanning the surface prospects for anything appealing. Some of the food labels and packaging didn’t endure, but some containers would have safeguarded the contents. With a leap Mono began climbing the slates, checking packages – occasionally stopping to peer through the gloom – other times, he tore plastic or aluminum wrappers apart and sniffed at the contents. Or stuck his tongue to something that looked mostly edible.

 For a while the Thin Man watched, but not directly. He watched the other end of the aisle, keeping Mono in the fringe of his view. If he turned away an inch, he had no doubt the boy would flutter off again.

 “Can you speek, ‘I am Mono’?” At current, the child was digging into a food paste container. He stared at the Thin Man, while licking his fingers. “Mono. Try this speek. I.” The boy slowed at reaching into the container again, just… staring. “Mono. This speek. Can you repeat this? I. Come now. I….”

 At last he ventured, quietly, “I….”

 “Am.”

 “Mm.”

 “No. Aa-Mm.”

 “Mono.”

 “No. Listen now, like this. ‘Aam.”

 “Aam.”

 The static bristled, he brought a hand to his face. Unhindered, the boy rifled through some other package. “What do you want to eat? What have you got there?”

 The child shrugged. He adjusted the container, still working on the food paste, and dug out another handful of unappealing goop. He would be eating faster, if it was not so goopy.

 The Thin Man took a long draw on his cigarette and exhaled. “What sort of food is that? What would you call it?”

 Another shrug. Mono pulled over another open container, some sort of bag, and dumped some of the contents into the partially eaten goop paste.

 “I want speek, child. What sort of food is that? Can you tell me?”

 The child pushed his hat back a margin and stared. He shoved the container a fraction along the shelf edge closer to him, but couldn’t travel further than an inch due to the clutter of packaging and intolerable food things he shoved aside (but not off to the floor). “T’n… share?” he whispered. “Th’s good. N’plenty. Lot’s un—”

 “No, I don’t want that.” He pinched his brow. This child. He did this on purpose, he swore. “Food.” The boy tilted his head. He stood there, hugging the container to his chest. “Can you repeat my speek. I have food.”

 A tentative, “Do’y?”

 He took a long deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Pay attention. Listen. Repeat. This speek. I. Have. Food. I. Have. Food.” This was going nowhere. The boy just… wouldn’t respond. He tried slower this time, “Mono. You know how to do this. Just repeat. I. Have. Foo-ood.”

 “I-h’ve ffh-ood.”

 “Slower.” He took a quick nip of the cigarette, and once more, “I. Have. Food.”

 “D’food.”

 Why? Just why?

 This time, he elected a container from the shelf that looked viable – a jam or jelly – and stepped closer to the boy. “I have food.” He held it up. The boy crouched down and looked from the newly presented container, then to the tall thin man. “I. Will. Give. Food. Can you repeat that speek?”

 The boy huddled there looking bewildered, like his hat was doing acrobatic flips. “Speek?”

 “Just repeat it, child. Repeat what I speek.”

 “N… t’share?” The Thin Man clapped the jar on the shelf beside Mono, and the boy winced aside.

 “My word, child. I don’t want the food.” He stepped back when the boy released his container, and it splashed into the floor below.

 “S’speek share?”

 “We know the same speek. You know this, we’ve been over this.” He clasped his hands over his face. “You just garble everything.” Was it something he did? Did he actually break the child? Did he foul up when he tuned the transmission? For the life of him, he didn’t grasp the problem.

 “M’speek? S’not good?”

 The Thin Man grimaced behind his hands. “It… needs work.”

 “Oh.”

 ‘Oh,’ he says. As if they hadn’t spent a half hour or whatever on this.

 The boy tore open a new package and began stuffing his mouth with the food. He did better with something dry and lighter.

 “All right,” he sighed, through smoke. “Let’s try this. I am tired.” Mono rasped a sound in his throat and scooted away, further back onto the shelf among containers of food. He turned his back to the Thin Man and kept eating. “Child….”

 Mono coughed, then choked out, “Eat.” Then resumed chewing.

 For now, the Thin Man let it go. He imparted, “Be sure to breathe.” And let the boy be.

 The whole mess of linguistics frustrated him to no end. How did it get this bad? By the time he was abandoned in the Tower, he had a firm vocabulary established. The child too, they could carry conversations during their alliance and following the treachery. What had gone wrong? How did he fix this?

 Then, the child would get frustrated and shut down. Wouldn’t push himself to do better, or try to learn. This intolerable child. Completely content to butcher through a mediocre dialect.

 The Thin Man returned to the dry patch of floor where the child rested before, and slid his back against the wall to drop into his slouch. He hoped Mono didn’t shred through all those packages and left some food viable, so he could leave him somewhere for a time. He needed a break from this.

Next

#little nightmares #mono #the thin man #thin dad #little nightmares fanfic #little nightmares fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #mono trying so hard to do the speek #then being told its still very bad

[neverlearnedtoread]

The Bride Test

⭐⭐⭐; would have been a 4-star read had it not coincided with a fandom sinkhole so strong i hit the earth’s core head first

Oh?? 👌😉😏

#ownvoices neurodivergent rep - male love interest (and deuteragonist) is on the autism spectrum

diversity!! most characters are PoC - either american-vietnamese or vietnamese. the story itself also touches on racial identity and asian diaspora, and both main characters are bilingual

intense secondhand embarrassment not withstanding - dudes being dudes and talking about sex in a mature and open manner because they’re adults, dammit!

girl is more sexually experienced than the guy, but isn’t pushed into a ‘femme fatale’ archetype. sexy 🤝 cute rights!!

familial relationships - even if they are not a ““traditional”’ family! family is family because they love and support you as a person, not because a billion years of filial piety and tradition forced them to

No.. ❌🤢🤮

some leaps of logic and plot progressions that felt rushed to keep the story moving forward

weird miscommunication stuff (less than there was in The Kiss Quotient)... sometimes they talked it through, and sometimes they simply...did not

‘almost get married to the wrong brother so your real love will have to reconcile his true feelings’ is a trope that happens, which lowkey squicks me out

not really that big of a deal in the long run but that one time got Mỹ got blueballed so hard i felt shortchanged....big oof. pour the whole six-pack out for her lads

Summary: A mixed-race girl working as a cleaning maid in Ho Chi Minh City, Mỹ Tran gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to travel to America, where the father she’s never met came from. If she pulls this off, she could get her family out of poverty, give them the better life they deserve. The only catch? She’s technically supposed to be there to seduce the youngest son of some rich Vietnamese-American lady who waylaid her in the hotel bathroom. Despite her generous benefactor’s high hopes for the match, Mỹ learns that the son in question, Khải, believes he’s just not cut out for loving people, having struggled internally to match the depth of emotion he’s observed in others his whole life. What’s a girl to do when the better life you’re trying to build rests on marrying someone who’s convinced they’ve got a heart made of stone?

Concept: 💭💭💭

I read the blurb for this book in the back of the Kiss Quotient, and I really liked the set-up - technically I’m not asian diaspora, but also I kinda am? So I definitely gravitate to reading stories like this one, especially with both characters being PoC while also having a different relationship with their shared culture. And I’m not gonna lie - I like the arranged marriage trope. It’s all about the fiction of living in close proximity with someone you don’t know well and that somehow actually working out great for you! The inherent romanticism of developing genuine intimacy through artificial domesticity!! 

Some spoilers under the cut!

Execution: 💥💥💥

I got what I wanted, and I wanted what I got, which was a cute fluffy story about two people really attracted to one another who have to live together and then they fall in love and everything is great. Good vibes all around, serotonin aplenty in the air - it was a great read, up until the point I fell into shipping hell for a pairing I have only experienced through tumblr osmosis. The sheer quality of fan content I had accidentally stumbled into slapped me full across the face and before I knew it, it had been four whole days since I had thought about this book, having burned a hole into ao3 with the force of my speedreading. For better or worse, there’s nothing like reading fanfiction.

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤

That being said, I did really like this book! I was definitely taking my time with it before I fell into fandom hell, rereading chapters and bookmarking cute parts. The interactions between the two main characters felt a lot more nuanced, the plot development less choppy, especially compared to the author’s debut novel. There were some parts I felt were kinda rushed, like the race to clear everything up by the ending, but it was definitely better handled and more believable this time around! I liked the brothers’ interactions in particular - siblings being there to annoy and support each other every step of the way is always the best. And I think Hoang is going to centre her third book on Quan, so I’d be interested to see him in the spotlight!

Favourite Moment: When Esme cut Khải’s hair and he explained that he liked firm touches but not light ones. In general I liked the exploration of his character, because I liked the variation in Hoang’s neurodivergent characters. Plus it opened up a lot of cute opportunities for both of them to figure each other out, and then learn to reach a new equilibrium. The hair cutting scene was an intimate scene without necessarily being a sexy one. I liked those well enough too but there’s something about letting your love interest gently touch your face as they make you look nice, you know?

Favourite Character: I loved Esme (or Mỹ)’s character arc. Khải was great! But Esme’s personal development and her decision to take this opportunity to find her father and maybe give her kid a better life, alongside her determination to just work really really hard to achieve her goals...oof. Oof. The Real Immigration Wish-Fulfillment Fantasy (TM). We love to see a good person get their happily ever after by simply never giving up!

#the bride test #helen hoang #book review #bookblr #booklover #reading #books