Original - Hot Chocolate Drabbles 2011-12
Title: Soul-Light
Universe: Menagerie (alt.)
Prompt: “crackling”, from pulped_fictions
Wordcount: 165
Genre: Not quite sure. XD
Rating/Warnings: K
Summary: Dusk and a ghost story from Toni’s childhood.
Author’s Notes: Decided to do Will and Toni, like last year. :)
It’s the silence that hypnotizes him.
The swamp is never silent, Toni forgets to think, except on nights like this. Days. Nights. Somewhere-in-between. Dead leaves are floating down to land on tiptoe across the water, and the sun is melting into the trees, and he doesn’t know how the world can be so golden when there’s so little light. Fireflies are painting yellow streaks across the dimming background, and he shivers a tiny bit, because his family always says the luminescent specks are the souls of the dead trying to find their way home - and eighteen should be too old for ghost stories, but not on a cool, honeyed autumn evening like this, not when the smell of the wind makes him feel twelve again. Something is changing.
Distantly, someone calls his name, and the spell is broken as the sun slips below the horizon and the night-sounds of the swamp come to life.
He tries not to look at the lights.
-
Title: Ghosts
Prompt: holiday drinks
Wordcount: 251
Genre: Drama?
“Drinking alone?” Will asks, and Toni spares him a disdainful look before waving the glass of water under his nose by way of reply.
“I don’t know what your college days were like, William,” he murmurs with a small smirk, and leaves the rest implied because he doesn’t feel like finding the words. It’s only gentle teasing - now that the initial dislike has faded, he’s finding that there’s something about Will he really likes, maybe even deeper down than he hated him.
“I was a model student,” Will sniffs, joining him. “Not that you’ve even been to college.”
It’s true. Toni was twelve when the war came; twelve the last time he stepped foot in this house. It’s probably why Will thinks he’s taken to drinking now that they’re back.
“I could still drink you under the table,” he comments idly, more because he’s used to challenging Will than because he thinks it’s true. Will snorts softly.
“I highly doubt that. You weigh what, a hundred and twenty pounds? I’m not even going to challenge you on it, that’s how little I believe you.”
Toni grins crookedly. “Fair enough. I’ve never actually tried alcohol.”
“Never?” Will raises an eyebrow, but looks more interested than surprised. Toni shrugs.
“I don’t need it. I’ve got my own ways of coping with things.”
Will doesn’t ask what those are, just falls quiet and leans back against the wall.
Then again, he’s a light sleeper, so maybe he knows.
-
Title: Monochrome
Prompt: “Winter Song”
Wordcount: 233
Genre: General
Toni remembers thinking that the seasons were magical when he was a child. As each one changed, his impressions of the others faded to a wash of color and a collection of images and scents: spring green, soft with the smell of moist earth and fresh rain; summer gold, sleepy and full and long; autumn a deep rust, cold air alive with leaves dying and change; winter nothing but yellow light shining out amidst a universe of white.
Tonight reminds him more of his childish impression of winter than the season’s actual days ever do - so foggy that everything is enveloped and dissolved in it, appearing as indistinct shadows and blurs of color. He looks out into the nothing-but-white and feels lost. The home he grew up in reminds him of days that are like a beautiful picture now, memories that twist into his heart until he wants to let them tug him back by it, but his childhood is as impossibly gone as those who have died, and the world will never again be as simple as a landscape painted in two colors.
“Toni, come inside,” says Will, the bright yellow beam of a lantern cutting through and warming the white domain of the mist, and Toni closes his eyes and thinks about golden sunbeams and endless days of nothing but grass and sky and summer-rough hands in his.
-
Title: Secrets
Prompt: “Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.”
Wordcount: 333
Genre: General
The kitchen will always remind Toni of sneaking in with his siblings to steal sweets - Bianca’s idea, of course, even though she never ate any.
He has to think to remember how old they would have been. He was twelve when the war came, and his older siblings had just had their seventeenth birthday, though most of his memories are from much earlier than that. He imagined that it always started with Paolo having a bad day, those bleak, smothering fragments of desolation he carried deep inside him rising up to choke him in a way Toni had sensed at the time but not really understood until years later. Somehow, Bianca always knew when it was worst for him, and Toni suspected it was less because of some mystical power of twin-ness and more because Bianca’s eyes were sharp enough to cut glass and she cared more about her family than her own life.
At any rate, it always started for Toni with Bianca coming to find him, or, if they were all three already in the same room, asking if he was hungry - and he knew she was waiting for him to say yes, so he always did, dutifully, and then the two of them would go collect their brother and make the furtive trip into the kitchen, treating it like a much more dangerous quest than it really was. Afterwards, they would retreat to Bianca’s room - always Bianca’s room - with their spoils, and talk or play games for hours. Toni remembers falling asleep in his chair countless times, remembers waking up under a spare blanket on Bianca’s bed, with one of his siblings on each side of him.
Now that he can just walk into the kitchen and take his food, it feels too lonely, so when Will catches him tiptoeing in late in the evening and raises a curious eyebrow, Toni just puts a finger to his lips, and without asking why, Will sneaks the food out with him.
-
Title: Fairytale
Prompt: picture of apple
Wordcount: 224
Genre: Humor
“Wake up, Snow White,” a voice murmurs, and as a warm hand is laid across his forehead, Toni realizes that he’s freezing and his head hurts. Judging by the way it feels when he attempts to open his eyes, his optical nerves have just turned into spikes, so he pinches them shut again.
“Who d’you mean, Snow White?” he mumbles, feeling his words slur. It’s like having fallen asleep on a train, that horrible feeling of waking up cold, uncomfortable, and somehow more knocked-out exhausted than before.
“You,” says Will’s voice, sounding amused and a little bit relieved. “Black hair, pale - I’d say it fits. Honestly, though, who’s allergic to apples? And more importantly, how did you not know?”
“I don’t even remember what happened,” Toni says, curling up. “I just feel like I’m going to die. Why am I in bed in my clothes?”
“Because you passed out after we gave you the medicine, and nobody wanted to strip you. I can find you pajamas if you’d like.”
“Please. I don’t think I can open my eyes right now.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water, too. And I’ll tell James that nobody needs to kiss you awake.”
Toni’s eyes fly open, and from the way Will starts laughing, it’s apparent that the look on Toni’s face has just made his day.
-
Title: Eyes Open
Prompt: broken glass
Wordcount: 100
Genre: Drama
“It’s beautiful out at night,” Toni laughs, paying no attention to what he’s saying, as he poles the boat through the twilit haze of the swamp and golden lights come on around them. His companion says nothing. He’s not sure whether it’s the lamps or the fireflies, but the clearing is so bright that the stars fade away and the water shines gold, and he breathes in but doesn’t smell as he turns to face his companion and discovers that it’s the Thing from the stairs.
It smiles.
When Toni’s eyes fly silently open, nobody else is awake to know.
-
Title: Natural Disaster
Prompt: catastrophic
Wordcount: 251
Genre: Fluff/Family
Toni has just figured out why people have children: it’s so they have an excuse to play in the mud and have tea parties and do all the other little kid stuff they secretly want to but won’t admit to missing.
“Robin wanted help,” he tells Will calmly, and bam, completely selfless reason for the absolutely enormous pillow fort behind him, the result of over an hour and every piece of bedding in the house, as well as three sofas and two armchairs. It’s a masterpiece, and takes up half of the living room.
“That’s extremely impressive,” says Will, who looks to be trying to hold in laughter.
“We’re fortified against everything,” Robin says proudly. “We have a bunch of snacks and extra pillows to throw.”
“Do you.” Will’s eyes are twinkling, and it must be a side-effect of being able to act like a child for once in six years that makes Toni stick his tongue out. “I can think of one thing your fort’s not ready to deal with.”
“Ha, you-” is all Toni has time for before Will tackles him through the wall of the fort.
“Earthquake!” Robin shrieks delightedly, and all the breath whoomfs out of Toni’s lungs as Will lands on top of him in a pile of pillows.
Afterwards, he helps them rebuild the fort, and then the three of them sleep in it.
Toni’s last conscious thought is that he hopes nobody else in the house actually wanted to use their bedding tonight.
-
Title: Mirror, Mirror
Prompt: “The Pretender”
Wordcount: 163
Genre: General
Sometimes, Toni swears that James is looking at him and seeing someone else. He never slips up, of course - never calls Toni by the wrong name, never even hesitates. It doesn’t matter. Toni knows that James is looking at him and seeing a ghost.
It must be Paolo, he thinks. He knows that they look alike, knows that if he grew his hair out a little, just long enough to hang around his face and into his eyes, he’d be the spitting image of his brother. He looks like Bianca, too, save for the differences in coloring, but the wistful look in James’s eyes isn’t for her. She would eat him alive for looking at her like that.
James must think Toni hasn’t noticed, or at least hasn’t connected the dots, but he’s wrong.
Toni knows exactly what that expression is, because James has been so busy looking at Toni that he hasn’t noticed his cousin watching him in the exact same way.
-
Title: Fallout
Prompt: messy room
Wordcount: 154
Genre: General
The room doesn’t look like the site of a battle, but to someone who knows it, there are telltale signs. The Serpentynes were always scrupulously neat: even as children, Toni and his older siblings never left messes around. Their house was so tidy that even the little things glare out at him now, and the way a rug is creased out of place or a chair is knocked over makes what happened obvious. Sorcerers don’t leave bodies, melting away into dust when they die, and that’s the kindest thing that’s ever happened to Toni - but when he stepped back into this room for the first time in six years, he could still tell. That’s why the first thing he did was tidy up, and nobody questioned him.
Now there’s nothing out of place, and the room is pristine, so he doesn’t know why it is that he still looks around himself and sees death.
-
Title: Ace in the Hole
Prompt: “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”
Wordcount: 127
Genre: Humor
It’s not enough to say that Toni hates losing. Toni really, really, really hates losing. On the spectrum of things he hates, losing falls just beyond people who assume that nobody is immune to their charms and just shy of losing to Will Leone specifically. Furthermore, he’s a Serpentyne. So really, there’s no reason for Will to look so surprised and indignant.
“House rules,” says Toni.
“House rules involve cheating?”
“Well, yes. There’s a real art to it. Paolo was always the best in the family, and he and Bianca taught me everything I know.”
Toni quickly discovers that ‘rendering Will Leone speechless’ falls just beyond sunsets in the swamp and just shy of Robin calling him her big brother on the spectrum of things he likes.
-
Title: Role Model
Prompt: weave
Wordcount: 143
Genre: Humor
Robin is braiding her pasta.
“It’s for Toni,” she explains. “Since his hair is too short to braid.” A fact of which Toni is secretly glad, because he was the only one in the house to escape her hairstyling rampage this afternoon. Much as he loves the twelve-year-old girl, he still has terrible memories of the time one of his younger cousins came after him with a curling iron and left burns all over his neck and ears.
“That’s very nice of you,” he says, “but don’t you want to eat it?”
“I’m not hungry,” says Robin. “I had four cookies.”
Martin groans. “Of course you did. I thought I locked those in the pantry.”
“Toni taught me how to pick locks,” Robin says brightly, and four accusing pairs of eyes turn Toni’s way.
Suddenly, his own pasta seems very interesting.
-
Title: Lullaby
Prompt: End of the World
Wordcount: 163
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Martin’s voice drifts over, and Toni closes his eyes and wishes that he still believed in fairytales. It’s frightening, to remember a single day on which his childhood ended: in the morning, his world was full of magic, and that night, he went to sleep knowing his own survival depended on nobody but himself.
It’s all right. He doesn’t need anyone else.
“You’re going to catch cold,” Will says softly, and draws a blanket over him.
“When I’m too warm, I have more nightmares,” Toni says, but can’t resist curling into its softness.
“I’ll sleep with you, then.”
“I’m eighteen years old, Will.”
“I have nightmares, too.”
Wide-eyed with surprise, Toni forgets to protest when a larger body slips under the blanket with him and settles close; just shifts to make room.
He still has nightmares, but when he wakes, they stay behind, and he closes his eyes until he can fall back into sleep.
-
Title: And Goodnight
Prompt: End of the World (again)
Wordcount: 136
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Sometimes Toni gets a frighteningly far-away look in his eyes, like his soul has drifted out of his body to roam with the fireflies that haunt the swamp at night, and every time, Will is afraid that he won’t come back. That this time, the ghosts of his family will pull him away until he forgets that there’s a world to return to. So he tries everything he can to hold on, and every time Toni returns to him, it’s a relief.
The ghosts may be thick and potent in this house of memories, but they won’t have him.
Toni may be lonely, but he’s not alone.
And Will may be terrified and a little bit lost himself, but when he has someone else to hold and reassure, it’s so much easier to be brave.
Universe: Menagerie (alt.)
Prompt: “crackling”, from pulped_fictions
Wordcount: 165
Genre: Not quite sure. XD
Rating/Warnings: K
Summary: Dusk and a ghost story from Toni’s childhood.
Author’s Notes: Decided to do Will and Toni, like last year. :)
It’s the silence that hypnotizes him.
The swamp is never silent, Toni forgets to think, except on nights like this. Days. Nights. Somewhere-in-between. Dead leaves are floating down to land on tiptoe across the water, and the sun is melting into the trees, and he doesn’t know how the world can be so golden when there’s so little light. Fireflies are painting yellow streaks across the dimming background, and he shivers a tiny bit, because his family always says the luminescent specks are the souls of the dead trying to find their way home - and eighteen should be too old for ghost stories, but not on a cool, honeyed autumn evening like this, not when the smell of the wind makes him feel twelve again. Something is changing.
Distantly, someone calls his name, and the spell is broken as the sun slips below the horizon and the night-sounds of the swamp come to life.
He tries not to look at the lights.
-
Title: Ghosts
Prompt: holiday drinks
Wordcount: 251
Genre: Drama?
“Drinking alone?” Will asks, and Toni spares him a disdainful look before waving the glass of water under his nose by way of reply.
“I don’t know what your college days were like, William,” he murmurs with a small smirk, and leaves the rest implied because he doesn’t feel like finding the words. It’s only gentle teasing - now that the initial dislike has faded, he’s finding that there’s something about Will he really likes, maybe even deeper down than he hated him.
“I was a model student,” Will sniffs, joining him. “Not that you’ve even been to college.”
It’s true. Toni was twelve when the war came; twelve the last time he stepped foot in this house. It’s probably why Will thinks he’s taken to drinking now that they’re back.
“I could still drink you under the table,” he comments idly, more because he’s used to challenging Will than because he thinks it’s true. Will snorts softly.
“I highly doubt that. You weigh what, a hundred and twenty pounds? I’m not even going to challenge you on it, that’s how little I believe you.”
Toni grins crookedly. “Fair enough. I’ve never actually tried alcohol.”
“Never?” Will raises an eyebrow, but looks more interested than surprised. Toni shrugs.
“I don’t need it. I’ve got my own ways of coping with things.”
Will doesn’t ask what those are, just falls quiet and leans back against the wall.
Then again, he’s a light sleeper, so maybe he knows.
-
Title: Monochrome
Prompt: “Winter Song”
Wordcount: 233
Genre: General
Toni remembers thinking that the seasons were magical when he was a child. As each one changed, his impressions of the others faded to a wash of color and a collection of images and scents: spring green, soft with the smell of moist earth and fresh rain; summer gold, sleepy and full and long; autumn a deep rust, cold air alive with leaves dying and change; winter nothing but yellow light shining out amidst a universe of white.
Tonight reminds him more of his childish impression of winter than the season’s actual days ever do - so foggy that everything is enveloped and dissolved in it, appearing as indistinct shadows and blurs of color. He looks out into the nothing-but-white and feels lost. The home he grew up in reminds him of days that are like a beautiful picture now, memories that twist into his heart until he wants to let them tug him back by it, but his childhood is as impossibly gone as those who have died, and the world will never again be as simple as a landscape painted in two colors.
“Toni, come inside,” says Will, the bright yellow beam of a lantern cutting through and warming the white domain of the mist, and Toni closes his eyes and thinks about golden sunbeams and endless days of nothing but grass and sky and summer-rough hands in his.
-
Title: Secrets
Prompt: “Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.”
Wordcount: 333
Genre: General
The kitchen will always remind Toni of sneaking in with his siblings to steal sweets - Bianca’s idea, of course, even though she never ate any.
He has to think to remember how old they would have been. He was twelve when the war came, and his older siblings had just had their seventeenth birthday, though most of his memories are from much earlier than that. He imagined that it always started with Paolo having a bad day, those bleak, smothering fragments of desolation he carried deep inside him rising up to choke him in a way Toni had sensed at the time but not really understood until years later. Somehow, Bianca always knew when it was worst for him, and Toni suspected it was less because of some mystical power of twin-ness and more because Bianca’s eyes were sharp enough to cut glass and she cared more about her family than her own life.
At any rate, it always started for Toni with Bianca coming to find him, or, if they were all three already in the same room, asking if he was hungry - and he knew she was waiting for him to say yes, so he always did, dutifully, and then the two of them would go collect their brother and make the furtive trip into the kitchen, treating it like a much more dangerous quest than it really was. Afterwards, they would retreat to Bianca’s room - always Bianca’s room - with their spoils, and talk or play games for hours. Toni remembers falling asleep in his chair countless times, remembers waking up under a spare blanket on Bianca’s bed, with one of his siblings on each side of him.
Now that he can just walk into the kitchen and take his food, it feels too lonely, so when Will catches him tiptoeing in late in the evening and raises a curious eyebrow, Toni just puts a finger to his lips, and without asking why, Will sneaks the food out with him.
-
Title: Fairytale
Prompt: picture of apple
Wordcount: 224
Genre: Humor
“Wake up, Snow White,” a voice murmurs, and as a warm hand is laid across his forehead, Toni realizes that he’s freezing and his head hurts. Judging by the way it feels when he attempts to open his eyes, his optical nerves have just turned into spikes, so he pinches them shut again.
“Who d’you mean, Snow White?” he mumbles, feeling his words slur. It’s like having fallen asleep on a train, that horrible feeling of waking up cold, uncomfortable, and somehow more knocked-out exhausted than before.
“You,” says Will’s voice, sounding amused and a little bit relieved. “Black hair, pale - I’d say it fits. Honestly, though, who’s allergic to apples? And more importantly, how did you not know?”
“I don’t even remember what happened,” Toni says, curling up. “I just feel like I’m going to die. Why am I in bed in my clothes?”
“Because you passed out after we gave you the medicine, and nobody wanted to strip you. I can find you pajamas if you’d like.”
“Please. I don’t think I can open my eyes right now.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water, too. And I’ll tell James that nobody needs to kiss you awake.”
Toni’s eyes fly open, and from the way Will starts laughing, it’s apparent that the look on Toni’s face has just made his day.
-
Title: Eyes Open
Prompt: broken glass
Wordcount: 100
Genre: Drama
“It’s beautiful out at night,” Toni laughs, paying no attention to what he’s saying, as he poles the boat through the twilit haze of the swamp and golden lights come on around them. His companion says nothing. He’s not sure whether it’s the lamps or the fireflies, but the clearing is so bright that the stars fade away and the water shines gold, and he breathes in but doesn’t smell as he turns to face his companion and discovers that it’s the Thing from the stairs.
It smiles.
When Toni’s eyes fly silently open, nobody else is awake to know.
-
Title: Natural Disaster
Prompt: catastrophic
Wordcount: 251
Genre: Fluff/Family
Toni has just figured out why people have children: it’s so they have an excuse to play in the mud and have tea parties and do all the other little kid stuff they secretly want to but won’t admit to missing.
“Robin wanted help,” he tells Will calmly, and bam, completely selfless reason for the absolutely enormous pillow fort behind him, the result of over an hour and every piece of bedding in the house, as well as three sofas and two armchairs. It’s a masterpiece, and takes up half of the living room.
“That’s extremely impressive,” says Will, who looks to be trying to hold in laughter.
“We’re fortified against everything,” Robin says proudly. “We have a bunch of snacks and extra pillows to throw.”
“Do you.” Will’s eyes are twinkling, and it must be a side-effect of being able to act like a child for once in six years that makes Toni stick his tongue out. “I can think of one thing your fort’s not ready to deal with.”
“Ha, you-” is all Toni has time for before Will tackles him through the wall of the fort.
“Earthquake!” Robin shrieks delightedly, and all the breath whoomfs out of Toni’s lungs as Will lands on top of him in a pile of pillows.
Afterwards, he helps them rebuild the fort, and then the three of them sleep in it.
Toni’s last conscious thought is that he hopes nobody else in the house actually wanted to use their bedding tonight.
-
Title: Mirror, Mirror
Prompt: “The Pretender”
Wordcount: 163
Genre: General
Sometimes, Toni swears that James is looking at him and seeing someone else. He never slips up, of course - never calls Toni by the wrong name, never even hesitates. It doesn’t matter. Toni knows that James is looking at him and seeing a ghost.
It must be Paolo, he thinks. He knows that they look alike, knows that if he grew his hair out a little, just long enough to hang around his face and into his eyes, he’d be the spitting image of his brother. He looks like Bianca, too, save for the differences in coloring, but the wistful look in James’s eyes isn’t for her. She would eat him alive for looking at her like that.
James must think Toni hasn’t noticed, or at least hasn’t connected the dots, but he’s wrong.
Toni knows exactly what that expression is, because James has been so busy looking at Toni that he hasn’t noticed his cousin watching him in the exact same way.
-
Title: Fallout
Prompt: messy room
Wordcount: 154
Genre: General
The room doesn’t look like the site of a battle, but to someone who knows it, there are telltale signs. The Serpentynes were always scrupulously neat: even as children, Toni and his older siblings never left messes around. Their house was so tidy that even the little things glare out at him now, and the way a rug is creased out of place or a chair is knocked over makes what happened obvious. Sorcerers don’t leave bodies, melting away into dust when they die, and that’s the kindest thing that’s ever happened to Toni - but when he stepped back into this room for the first time in six years, he could still tell. That’s why the first thing he did was tidy up, and nobody questioned him.
Now there’s nothing out of place, and the room is pristine, so he doesn’t know why it is that he still looks around himself and sees death.
-
Title: Ace in the Hole
Prompt: “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”
Wordcount: 127
Genre: Humor
It’s not enough to say that Toni hates losing. Toni really, really, really hates losing. On the spectrum of things he hates, losing falls just beyond people who assume that nobody is immune to their charms and just shy of losing to Will Leone specifically. Furthermore, he’s a Serpentyne. So really, there’s no reason for Will to look so surprised and indignant.
“House rules,” says Toni.
“House rules involve cheating?”
“Well, yes. There’s a real art to it. Paolo was always the best in the family, and he and Bianca taught me everything I know.”
Toni quickly discovers that ‘rendering Will Leone speechless’ falls just beyond sunsets in the swamp and just shy of Robin calling him her big brother on the spectrum of things he likes.
-
Title: Role Model
Prompt: weave
Wordcount: 143
Genre: Humor
Robin is braiding her pasta.
“It’s for Toni,” she explains. “Since his hair is too short to braid.” A fact of which Toni is secretly glad, because he was the only one in the house to escape her hairstyling rampage this afternoon. Much as he loves the twelve-year-old girl, he still has terrible memories of the time one of his younger cousins came after him with a curling iron and left burns all over his neck and ears.
“That’s very nice of you,” he says, “but don’t you want to eat it?”
“I’m not hungry,” says Robin. “I had four cookies.”
Martin groans. “Of course you did. I thought I locked those in the pantry.”
“Toni taught me how to pick locks,” Robin says brightly, and four accusing pairs of eyes turn Toni’s way.
Suddenly, his own pasta seems very interesting.
-
Title: Lullaby
Prompt: End of the World
Wordcount: 163
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Martin’s voice drifts over, and Toni closes his eyes and wishes that he still believed in fairytales. It’s frightening, to remember a single day on which his childhood ended: in the morning, his world was full of magic, and that night, he went to sleep knowing his own survival depended on nobody but himself.
It’s all right. He doesn’t need anyone else.
“You’re going to catch cold,” Will says softly, and draws a blanket over him.
“When I’m too warm, I have more nightmares,” Toni says, but can’t resist curling into its softness.
“I’ll sleep with you, then.”
“I’m eighteen years old, Will.”
“I have nightmares, too.”
Wide-eyed with surprise, Toni forgets to protest when a larger body slips under the blanket with him and settles close; just shifts to make room.
He still has nightmares, but when he wakes, they stay behind, and he closes his eyes until he can fall back into sleep.
-
Title: And Goodnight
Prompt: End of the World (again)
Wordcount: 136
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Sometimes Toni gets a frighteningly far-away look in his eyes, like his soul has drifted out of his body to roam with the fireflies that haunt the swamp at night, and every time, Will is afraid that he won’t come back. That this time, the ghosts of his family will pull him away until he forgets that there’s a world to return to. So he tries everything he can to hold on, and every time Toni returns to him, it’s a relief.
The ghosts may be thick and potent in this house of memories, but they won’t have him.
Toni may be lonely, but he’s not alone.
And Will may be terrified and a little bit lost himself, but when he has someone else to hold and reassure, it’s so much easier to be brave.