Prequel Short Story (Don’t Let The Forest In)

I'm so excited to share this Don't Let The Forest In prequel short story with you, told from the point of view of Thomas, our feral October boy. It’s around 30 pages long and takes place the summer before the events of DLTFI (it’s set just before the flashback on page 298 happens). Contains the slightest of spoilers for DLTFI but it is a prequel so technically you can read it without reading the book first if you wish.

Hope you enjoy!

You can also access a downloadable ebook version of this over on my Patreon.

THOMAS SHORT STORY

He had always been the kind of boy who kissed trees.

The thought of awakening some sort of forest god sleeping deep within an oak was Thomas Rye’s current obsession; he thought every day of slipping into the woods and brushing his mouth against rough bark. If there was an eldritch god to be found folded between roots and leaves, it would be in the forest behind Wickwood Academy. But exam season had him by the throat and there had been no time to sneak into the woods lately, no time to daydream about fairy tales scraping teeth against his jaw or lovely monsters rotting amongst the leaves.

No time to admit that trees were not the only things he thought about kissing these days.

The closest Thomas could get to the forest right now was this: a fistful of inky pens and his battered, abused sketchbook. Drawing wasn’t just his deepest joy, it was a compulsion bound so tight to his bones that he couldn’t go a day without bleeding the outline of a monster across a page. Necks twisted with vicious vines. Mouths vomiting the nubs of violet stems. Antler crowns dripping gore. No one understood his need, his addiction to horrors both lovely and foul.

No one except Andrew.

A small smile played at the corner of Thomas’s mouth and he stopped sketching long enough to glance down at Andrew, who was currently being a supportive best friend by letting Thomas use his head as a resting place for his sketchbook. In truth, Andrew was asleep. His head was a dead weight on Thomas’s lap and he’d clocked out with the intensity of someone so stressed out by all the exams and late-night studying that he stood no chance against this 2 p.m. lull between classes.

Both of them had flopped down outside Dove’s classroom to wait for her—a fair plan, they decided, since they had a free study period and no idea what to do with themselves unsupervised—and the hallway was empty and comfortably warm, dust motes dancing in the spaces between long, elegant windows.

Muffled voices drifted under the nearby classroom door as the debate team practised, but it was oddly lulling. Andrew had fought against his drooping eyelids before tilting sideways to rest his head on Thomas’s shoulder. It had been Thomas who gently dragged Andrew’s head onto his lap and then watched with soft fondness as Andrew fell asleep in exactly two seconds. No fight. No grumpy protests. No uneasy discomfort that they might be seen like this, too close and too soft and too familiar.

He was lovely asleep, his honey-gold hair mussed, his body drained of its usual taut anxiety, the perfect curve of his slack jaw so wretchedly beautiful that Thomas had to look away. It hurt too much, all the things he felt about Andrew.

He had always felt there was something otherworldly about Andrew, about his slender elegance and melancholy mouth. He was a matched set with Dove in that way.

Thomas was forever driven mad with furious, ruinous love for both of the Perrault siblings. He wanted to scream, to implode, to stand on a mountaintop and fight the whole sky if only to make someone understand how much he loved them, how much he needed them. They were all twisted up together, the three of them, their limbs woven in a lattice of roses and thistles, their hearts cut from the same bloody redwoods.

They were his.

He’d protect them with teeth bared.

And, well, he’d also use them when the situation warranted it—such as now with his sketchbook propped atop Andrew so he could keep drawing monsters while he waited for Dove’s class to let out. One of his pens had started leaking and indigo had spilled down the back of Andrew’s white school shirt, but it was probably fine. He might not notice.

Clattering sounded from behind the classroom door, their voices relaxing into joking around as everyone prepped to leave. Thomas thought about moving, but he couldn’t bring himself to wake Andrew, and he was half-confident the people in Dove’s AP classes weren’t the kind to hassle them. He’d core them all like rotten apples if they tried.

It shouldn’t be something to snicker at, being soft around your friends. He hated that it always was for boys.

The door swung open and students trickled out, stacks of books in their arms as they yawned and traipsed past. Only a few flicked glances down at Thomas and Andrew’s encampment by the door as they drifted down the hall. No one commented.

Dove came out last, struggling to hold her nine hundred colour-coded binders. The day had worn on her: wisps of her honey-gold hair escaping her usual perfect ponytail, the pleats of her plaid uniform skirt a little flattened, a bright pink Band-Aid on her thumb. She pulled up on sight of Thomas and Andrew and her eyebrows rose.

“Why are you two here?” She fought a smile. “And why are you using my brother as your desk?”

Thomas shrugged one shoulder. “I dunno. His head was right there.”

 “Why is he asleep? Also why aren’t you both in class? Also, why do you guys become lost and directionless when left alone for five minutes?”

“It was more like forty minutes,” Thomas said, earnest. “And we had a free study period.”

Dove adjusted one of her slipping binders, her amusement morphing to disapproval. “So... Where is the studying?” 

Thomas decided he couldn’t hear her anymore and stuck his pen in his mouth so he could fish around in his front pocket for one that wasn’t leaking. His shirt sported an indigo stain that had blossomed like a gunshot wound over his heart, and if he didn’t end up with a uniform infraction and a detention over this, it would be a surprise.

Dove started grousing about his poor life decisions before dropping to her knees to dump her binders and sort them into more efficient stacks. Papers and sticky notes slipped out and she scrabbled to fix everything. It always made Thomas smile, the way she insisted on being so neat and meticulous and careful, while he was so wild and unkempt and unmanageable.

They were opposites and fought about it, but he kind of loved that about them. Fighting with him was Dove’s excuse to burn messily when everyone expected her to be flawless.

But he didn’t tease her today, he just watched her slip flash cards into a plastic sleeve within a binder that seemed to have a pocket for everything.

“Remind me to give these cards to Andrew later,” she said. “Actually, remind me to glue them to his hands so he actually memorises them. Why is he asleep, though? Did he not go to bed early enough last night? I keep saying you two have to get a full eight hours during exam season.”

“We did,” Thomas said vaguely. “We were watching a movie is all.”

Dove raised her head slowly, her brow furrowed. “Thomas Rye.”

“It ended, um, earlyish.” He added horns to his drawing. “I think like …1 a.m.”

Dove threw her hands in the air in exasperation.

“It was educational.” He shifted slightly, unwilling to admit his legs had gone numb from Andrew’s weight. Disturbing him would be unthinkable.

“If you call a movie with dragons or elves in it educational,” Dove said, warning in her voice, “I will smack you with a highlighter.”

Thomas made a face at her and she made one back, which pleased him. Faultless Dove would never do that in front of her perfect classmates or her esteemed teachers. This was the way she was only for him and Andrew—sometimes silly and always wicked and wonderful.

Andrew made a tiny sigh in his sleep and his hands curled against his stomach, sinking deeper into Thomas. The way he had let go so completely spoke of safety, of trust, and Thomas ate it up. He was never moving again.

“You’ve got art next, right?” Dove pulled out a sheath of notes and restacked it into a different binder. “And Andrew has tutoring.”

Thomas figured she’d know, not him. “I guess? Andrew’s kinda warm. Do you think he’s coming down with something?”

Worry creased Dove’s brow and she leaned forward on her knees to press the back of her palm to Andrew’s forehead. Thomas removed his sketchbook helpfully and hoped she didn’t notice the inky smudges he’d left on Andrew’s skin.

“Maybe.” She chewed her lip. “I’ll take him to the nurse for ibuprofen.”

“I cannot wake him.” Thomas’s voice stretched. “That would be a sin most cruel against a glass prince left to sleep for a thousand years amongst the roots of a wild red oak.”

Dove gave him a long flat look. “Poke him in the ear.”

Thomas glared at her. “Don’t give me ideas. You know I don’t have impulse control.”

“What I do know,” she said, “is that the three of us need to talk sometime. Like, really talk.” She eyed them both, the easy comfort between them, conjoined there on the carpet and haloed by golden dust motes.

“Good luck,” Thomas said, deciding to pretend he had no idea what she wanted to talk about. “Andrew hates that kind of thing.”

She started to roll her eyes before pausing and then leaning forward again, her brow furrowed as she tugged at the already untucked edge of Andrew’s shirt. It had rucked up while he slept, a thin sliver of pale skin visible. Thomas had purposefully not looked hard at that, lest the urge to rest his thumb against warm, bare skin became too hard to resist. Now he followed Dove’s gaze to the dull edge of a purple bruise peeking out from under Andrew’s uniform.

Dove pulled the hem up the barest an inch and they both stared at the medley of bruises splayed out just above Andrew’s hip.

He didn’t stir, his breathing even and calm, his face nestled against Thomas.

A sudden wildfire fury split through Thomas’s chest. He could barely hold it down, this indigo ink monster of pure vitriol and rage. One look at a single blemish on Andrew and Thomas wanted to burn down the whole world.

His fists had clenched so tight around his pen that Dove reached out and placed both of her hands on Thomas’s cheeks. They were close, nearly nose to nose, and she frowned right into his eyes.

“Take a breath,” she said, quiet and stern, “before you lose your ever-loving shit.”

“Look at you swearing,” he said, but it was hard to make it sound like a joke when he was still burning with fury. It took a second to relax his grip on his pen, to sag back against the wall, to breathe again.

He would be reasonable. He would not explode.

Cold rage was better anyway, for landing punches.

“He’s not telling us everything that’s going on,” Dove said quietly, releasing Thomas and sitting back on her heels. “I know the bullying has been worse this year, but I didn’t realise it was this kind of worse.”

“I’m going to murder Bryce Kane and his vultures,” Thomas said, measured and low.

“Or we could tell the principal,” Dove said.

“Um, Andrew would have to cooperate for that and we both know he won’t.”

She sighed. “He literally doesn’t hurt anyone. He’s just quiet and sweet and they give him hell. For what? Why?”

A tiny shred of annoyance over the word sweet blurred in Thomas’s chest, but he let it go. He didn’t think Andrew was sweet and he liked that about him, liked how a liquid darkness frothed behind his rib bones and turned the stories he wrote into little tales of horror.

“Shit people don’t need a reason,” Thomas said. “They hurt him because they can.”

“Don’t.”

He looked up, frowning because he hadn’t done anything, but when his eyes met hers, he knew it was a prophetic don’t. She could already see his split knuckles and bloody mouth and the suspension that would destroy his chance of passing junior year.

“If I see you with a single bruise on your hands or blood on your clothes,” Dove said quietly, “you will seriously regret it, Thomas Rye. Violence is not the answer.”

His fingers had subconsciously curled into a fist in the back of Andrew’s shirt. He didn’t loosen them as he stared again at the fresh bruising, trying to imagine if they shoved Andrew into a door, down stairs, or tripped him and then aimed a kick at his side with their shiny, expensive oxfords.

“He can’t take care of himself,” Thomas hissed. “I have to.”

“Not with your fists, you don’t. I’ll talk to him later,” Dove said. “Try to get the truth out of him. Best we can do is not let him be alone, okay? At all, ever.”

“Done,” Thomas said, because that was his preference anyway.

It was best when it was the three of them, liquorice twists never apart.

Dove started stacking up her binders again and stood, a tired sadness in her eyes as she looked at her brother. He wasn’t sweet, but he was fragile. Thomas couldn’t argue against that. Andrew had always been a glass boy made of wishbones and skeleton leaves and soft, mottled feathers, but between the two of them, they could stop him from being broken.

This was the thing they both wanted the most—for nothing to ever shatter Andrew.

“You better wake him, though,” Dove said. “You’re late for class.”

Thomas gently patted Andrew’s cheek until he moaned, swatting aimlessly at the disturbance until Thomas switched to putting a finger in Andrew’s ear. This got him sitting upright with sleepy grumbles, his cheeks flushed with a fevered haze as he rubbed at his eyes. He looked mussy and disoriented, his frown tired and his uniform all rumpled. The soft disarray of him right then was so unbearable that Thomas wanted to put his head through a wall.

“Sleepy head.” Dove nudged Andrew’s foot with hers. A few minutes ago, she’d probably intended to chew him out for the late night, but now she’d folded into a cautious, gentle version of herself, the sister who’d knit soft walls around the world’s sharp corners if only to be sure her twin stayed intact.

“What… is it?” Andrew mumbled.

“Time or year?” Thomas said.

Andrew blinked at him, slow and languid, as if the concept of Thomas’s face was hard to grasp. Then he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “Why is my collar wet?” He stared at the smear of indigo on his fingertips with pure incomprehension.

“I have no idea,” Thomas said kindly.

Andrew glowered at him and then scrubbed his inky hand hard against Thomas’s pants while Thomas yelped in protest.

“You have tutoring,” Dove said, ignoring their antics. “But I think you need sugar first. Chocolate, probably.”

“You have chocolate?” Andrew squinted up at her.

“I’ll acquire chocolate,” Dove said.

“Mafia style.” Thomas grinned. “She’ll beat someone up and then shake ‘em down for it.”

“Or,” Dove said flatly, “I will ask Lana—her parents sent her a whole box of bars as exam motivation. Now get up. You’re both ridiculously late.”

Thomas reached over to sort out Andrew’s hair, though he just ended up mussing it more. There was an angry red imprint on Andrew’s cheek where he’d been pressed hard into Thomas and he looked wobbly as he stood, trying to tuck in his shirt and fix his tie. Evidence of the bruises vanished. He rebuttoned his cuffs and rubbed at his weary eyes. But when he moved, there was a stiffness to him that Thomas hadn’t picked up on before, a slight limp to his gait that he hid after a few steps.

Dove started down the hallway, Andrew trailing after her like a reheated zombie. But when they reached the corner, Dove stopped and shot a pointed glare back at Thomas.

It said: Do Not Start Anything.

Thomas gave her a smile that was all teeth.

* * *

Art was the only class at Wickwood that didn’t make Thomas want to gouge out his eyes with a fork, though today tested his love for Ms. Poppy after the amount of revision she’d given them for the upcoming practical exam. He wanted to splatter ink, wild and mad, over a page, not sit here taking notes on art history. Ms. Poppy had already drifted by his desk and confiscated his sketching pencils—he kept drawing trees instead of focusing on her lesson—and it had put him in a foul mood.

Not that he needed help sinking deeper into festering, bitter darkness. He wanted to hurt something. Someone.

He also wanted cup his hands over Andrew’s bruises with aching, tender reverence and protect him from the entire world.

Instead, Thomas doodled in the margins of his textbook. The half-hearted notes he’d copied from the board looked abysmal and he chaffed for the period to end. He was grateful, at least, that Ms. Poppy’s class wasn’t strict or clouded with insufferable intensity like everything else in Wickwood. The art room was airy and open, set above the newer library building and more modern than the rest of the school. All the desks were tall with stools and had useful amounts of drawers for art supplies. Thomas had an excellent space by the window and he’d lined the sill with jars of clippings from the forest for inspiration. In here, everything smelled of fresh begonias and pencil shavings, acrylic paint and chalks and charcoals.

The second Ms. Poppy stepped out of the room in a swirl of paint-flecked pastel skirts to guide a tearful, exam-stressed girl to the nurse’s office, revising stopped and everyone’s phones came out. They speculated on who’d get the best marks for the art assignments and how they’d spend the summer, typical rich kid talk of cruises and private jets and trips to Europe.

Thomas didn’t care about marks much beyond not losing his place at Wickwood. Ms. Poppy loved his work, monsters and all, so he wasn’t worried. He just needed to do passable at an essay about baroque sculptures during the exam and then he’d be free.

Free to face summer alone.

A noxious pit opened up in his stomach and he tried to ignore it. He found some coloured pens Ms. Poppy hadn’t noticed and shoved aside his textbooks so he could slap his sketchpad atop, focusing on giving his monster bloody hair and a thousand freckles and a jaw that dislocated wide enough to swallow a forest. Or rip the limbs off a few of Bryce Kane’s vultures.

“Are you spending summer with the Perraults?”

Thomas froze, his shoulders hunched to his ears and his face crammed close to his drawing to try and hide it from prying eyes. He cast a dubious sideways glance at Lana Lang. They had a mostly neutral relationship, on account of her being Dove’s friend, but she had scathing critiques of his art and he didn’t like her abstract style. They didn’t talk. They preferred to circle each other, warily, and only interacted if grouped together for projects.

“No,” he said and hated how the word felt like a punch to his gut. He’d done so well, this far, not thinking about the hollow despair of his upcoming summer without them.

Lana kept her black hair short and jagged, her mouth a flat, unimpressed line. She was Asian-American, the same height as Thomas, and managed to wear tiny skull stud earrings and never get a dress code detention over it.

Lana bent again to her notebook to highlight precise lines. No wonder she and Dove were kindred spirits. “I’m surprised. Thought you and Andrew were glued together.”

“Ha, ha.” He found a broken red pencil and set about making his monster worse.

“He’s kind of having a hard time, isn’t he?” Lana said it casually, her eyes still on her work, but Thomas lowered his pencil and cast her a guarded look.

They don’t chat. What was this?

Lana noticed his expression and rolled her eyes. “Please. Dove and I talk about everything. Plus, I can see. He was having a weird conversation with Liam Newton today.”

“About what?” Tense heat spread through Thomas’s jaw. He did a quick check to see if anyone was paying attention to their conversation, but everyone else was absorbed in their own chatter, the noise levels a nice cover for Lana’s careful tone.

“I wasn’t breathing down their necks eavesdropping.” Lana shot him a scathing look. “I just noticed them walking together and Newton seemed really in his face. But then they went separate ways, so. Maybe it was nothing.”

“Sure. Totally nothing.” He was making a very short mental hit list, because Andrew’s bruises had been fresh. Very fresh. “Did you tell Dove?”

“Not yet. I haven’t had a chance. Newton is one of Bryce Kane’s friends, though,” she added, sliding Thomas another cautious look.

“I know,” he grit out.

She must’ve caught sight of his drawing then, because her usual flat disgust returned. “Nice self-portrait. Also, if you do spend summer with the Perraults… don’t ruin it.”

Thomas gave a very loud sigh. “Gee, Lana. I appreciate your warm interest in my life.”

“I mean,” Lana said, “the three of you mean a lot to each other. Like I said, I talk to Dove. Oh, and I’m allowed to care about my best friend’s brother, by the way. You don’t get a monopoly on the Perraults.”

He wanted to snap, They’re both mine, not yours, but he would sound like a toddler—and also he couldn’t be unfair like that. Dove had never been only, wholly his. He was allotted space in her life and that was a gift he was grateful for.

But it hurt to share them and he hated it. Hated how vulnerable acknowledging the jealousy made him feel. He was terrified that Dove and Andrew would find better friends, people who were interesting and nice and agreeable and charismatic—and then they’d leave him in the loathsome muck where he belonged. He’d never even had friends before them. He’d never been liked.

But at least there was no competition with Andrew. He had zero social life aside from Thomas and Dove. Thomas hated himself, just a little, for being relieved about it.

“Don’t unbalance things,” Lana said simply and then turned back to her work as if the conversation had closed.

The tips of Thomas’s ears started to burn. His ribs felt splayed out, dissected and bloody, and he hunkered down over his artwork as if she’d never spoken.

But he couldn’t get her words out of his head. Don’t unbalance things.

They gnawed at him through the rest of the period, and then during P.E., and he picked at them like an old scab during dining hall while listening to Dove and Andrew having an unheated argument about if Wickwood’s chocolate cake was any good. It was, but Thomas’s opinion was heavily influenced by the fact he liked how the food at school was always on time. Back at home, there was either nothing in the pantry except boxed noodles or else his parents were ordering in obscene amounts of takeout and going out to extravagant restaurants. That would be his summer.

His stomach kept cramping.

Maybe he was the one coming down with something.

After dining hall, Dove abandoned them to watch a drama rehearsal and support Lana, and Andrew and Thomas dragged themselves through an unfocused forty-minute study session before giving up and heading to the dorms.

“Want to watch another movie?” Andrew had flopped onto his bed, his attention on his phone, so he didn’t notice the tense way Thomas sat on the floor, knees pulled up to his chin as he paged through an old sketchbook.

They roomed together, their chaos woven together until it was hard to tell what belonged to who. Thomas’s wall was layered with drawings, scotch-taped to the plaster, and Andrew’s side had too many stacks of books and torn out, crumbled pages from failed stories. He had his notebook open now, pen cap off, but he seemed too sleepy to write.

Thomas was the furthest thing from tired. Below them, noise rumbled from the boys’ common room where most of the students hung out before lights out. Bryce Kane and his vultures would definitely be there, preening and messing around, an untouched king and his court of sycophants.

“And get murdered by your sister? No, thanks,” Thomas said.

Andrew huffed. “She doesn’t get to tell us what to do.”

Thomas looked at him long and hard, and Andrew rolled onto his side to face the wall, still grumbling.

“Fine,” he muttered. “She does.”

“Who are you even texting?” Thomas said. “You don’t have friends.”

“Rude. And…well…” Andrew’s shoulders twitched, but he still didn’t roll back over. “Dove. But we’re just sending memes.”

Thomas snorted and allowed himself a fond smile since Andrew wouldn’t see. They didn’t work well apart, the three of them; it was better to leave pieces of themselves in each other’s pockets.

The hem of Andrew’s pajama shirt had rucked up, a sliver of soft skin visible—and the edge of that malicious bruise.

Thomas unfolded from the floor. “Be right back.”

Andrew grunted an unbothered response, still on his phone.

Thomas grabbed a dirty sock from his shoes and then padded out into the hallway, careful to close their room door behind him. He prowled downstairs and fit himself into the shadowy entryway to avoid detection from the dorm teachers and any nosey prefects. The front door was still open for stragglers to wander in, but final curfew would be in about ten minutes. Warm night air skidded through the hall, ghosting humid fingers along the back of his neck. Summer is nearly here. Thomas wrapped the sock around his hand.

When Newton finally appeared, yawning as he wandered towards the kitchenette, Thomas stepped out of the shadows. It had been a gamble if Newton would separate from the pack, but here he was, lean and tall and reedy, with a dull mop of dishwater blonde hair and a smarmy face.

“Hey, Newton,” Thomas said.

“Huh, what?” Newton half turned, his expression bored and uninterested, no recognition on his face until Thomas grabbed him by the front of the shirt and hauled him out the dorm front door.

He stumbled outside with a confused yelp, scrabbling to get his footing as Thomas propelled him around the side of the dorm where roses bushes twisted against the ivy-strewn walls. Newton yanked free, finally registering who Thomas was. He shoved Thomas back, hard, his sneer all contempt.

“What the hell are you doing, you half-size freak?” Newton snapped.

“Having a chat.” Thomas stepped sideways to block Newton’s attempt to storm around him and get back to the dorm. “Are you messing with Andrew?”

Newton snarled and tried again to pass, before Thomas got up in his face with teeth bared. His eyes must have been black pits in the evening dark, a promise behind the lean curve of his taut shoulders and tensed fists.

Newton scoffed, but couldn’t seem to help the smirk. “If he’s off whining to you about his sad little feelings, then he’s more of a wimp than I thought. He barely even fell, the little fa—”

Thomas hit him.

It was a crisp, precise blow, the instant howl from Newton as he clutched at his bloody nose a good endorsement of Thomas’s aim in the dark. Blood spurted between Newton’s splayed fingers and he yowled, but Thomas grabbed him by the shoulders and rammed him backwards into the brick wall of the dorm. Ivy clawed at them both. Newton tried to swing, but Thomas blocked it and raised his fist again. He only held back when Newton started cowering and blabbering.

“Tell a teacher about this,” Thomas said calmly, “and you’ll be walking out of Wickwood this summer with a fistful of your own teeth.”

“Bryce will ruin you for this,” Newton snarled, but he was still cringing away, trying to protect his face.

Thomas gave him an unimpressed once-over. “Great, tell him to have at it.” He unwrapped the now bloodied sock from his hand and casually stuffed it in his back pocket.

Dove was never going to know about this.

“He’ll break you.” Newton peeled his hands from his face and looked furious at the blood still dripping down his lips. “You have no idea how powerful he is. He could destroy your family—”

“I truly don’t care,” Thomas said.

“—and he’ll fuck you up—”

“Would love him to try.”

Newton paused, breathing fast. “I’ll tell him to tear your pathetic little bitch of a boyfriend in half.”

“Again,” Thomas said, “if you like your teeth where they are, I suggest you back off.” His voice remained calm, but the warning was viciously cold. “Touch Andrew again and I will fucking kill all of you. Got it?”

Newton mumbled something that seemed like it wanted to be a bluster of strength but dissolved into a whine.

Thomas leaned in and Newton flinched away. “Do not try me.” He turned and walked away, every inch of him lit up like a wildfire, his mouth full of ash and thorns and the monstrous need to devour.

They had no idea how far he’d go to protect Andrew, what he’d do. Expulsion seemed like a distant concern, a threat that couldn’t touch him, and he stormed back into the dorm and upstairs on an adrenaline high pitted with vicious rage. Newton wouldn’t tell a teacher. But he’d definitely go sobbing to Bryce.

Good. Thomas didn’t just want that fight, he craved it.

He let himself back into his room and stuffed the bloody sock under a pile of dirty clothes. In the warm, cosy glow of his bedside lamp, his fist didn’t look bruised yet, just a little reddened. He’d will it to remain unblemished. He’d get away with this.

Andrew was almost asleep, one arm dangling off the bed and his phone abandoned on the floor. His half-lidded eyes tracked Thomas with vague interest, but he didn’t ask.

Thomas thought, then, what it might be like to flop on the bed beside him, to stretch out and let Andrew’s warmth seep into his skin until he, too, felt comfortable and disarmed. His anger slipped, settling to a low simmer.

“Are you okay?” Andrew mumbled, but his eyes drifted closed. His fingers flexed slightly towards Thomas, as if reaching for him.

Thomas slowly sunk down beside Andrew’s bed and just sat there, not touching him, but so close he could feel Andrew’s warm breath ghosting the nape of his neck. He’d be asleep in a second; he wouldn’t remember any of this.

“I’d be a monster for you,” Thomas whispered, “if you asked.”

Deep, even breathing behind him said that Andrew was already asleep.

On the floor lay Andrew’s notebook, a half-done story now blotted across the page in thick ink. Thomas reached for it, eating up the words with ravenous hunger. It was a tale about a boy who took a knife to his chest and carved himself open, his heart a raw and bloody and yearning thing beneath. It left off there, unfinished and macabre and compelling.

He hoped Andrew finished the story soon.

He wanted to know how it ended.