demonpuppy | (no subject)

The months are getting cold fast, but for once Chip and Foster have come upon a bit of luck. An old, abandoned store that still has solid walls and only a few broken windows has stood empty for a while, and the kids were quick to take advantage. The other homeless in the area avoided it for some reason, which Chip could only assume was because of some nasty blood stains in one of the back rooms and some spectral figures they had seen lurking from time to time, but the ghost seemed willing to leave them both be and Chip honestly could care less. Shelter is shelter, and with the shelving left behind by the former owners they were even able to mock up something almost like a real house. Still nothing to sleep on, but after so long the privacy felt like an honest luxury.

Unfortunately, it also encouraged certain horrible habits.

"...Foster, what are you doing over there?!" Chip sat up from their tightly curled up ball, glaring at the shelf that they could hear Foster's ragged breaths from the other side of. "Are you sick?"

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"How can you not help it?! It's your own hands!" Their voice cracks and breaks and they hate the sound of it, hate the squeak and curdling feeling in the back of their throat. Keep it together, you can't be freaking out because he needs you, stop it stop it stop being like this! Chip stumbles a few steps away, too disgusted to want to be near a body like that, remembering a smell of stale sweat and the scratchy feeling of a beard against their cheek, too close--

"Why would you--why do you want that, it just hurts!" They don't understand this! It keeps happening, over and over they catch Foster grabbing at himself--does he think he has to? Is that what that stupid bastard taught him? How do they pull that out of his head, how many more horrible things will they have to unteach him, protect him from? How many times have they failed him already?

"I don't know!" Foster's voice rises in response to Chip's own, some kind of suppressed, desperate panic in the background of his mind. He doesn't know how he can't control it, doesn't know why he does it, he just has to do it, he needs to touch himself, needs to feel himself, needs to... to... feel himself filthy and ^wrong_right like he is.

"It doesn't hurt!" is all that comes out. He's half-pleading, eyes screwed shut, but doesn't go further, because he knows it's all wrong.

It doesn't hurt. It doesn't, it's good, but it's not, it's more like the opposite, like he's hurting and hurting and touching there makes it hurt less, or not at all, a bruise that only stops aching when he presses fingertips into the dark purple and yellowed flesh. And then it's like... just like pressing into a bruise, it feels so good but in the wrong way and he hates it and he knows it's dirty, he feels filthy, the sick feeling of disgust inside of him welling up at the feeling of his own body. And it's in his head, always in his head.

"I have to, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just can't, I don't know!"

"Yes it does, yes it does, don't you dare try and tell me I didn't hurt!!"

They're screaming at the top of their lungs, and Chip can tell their eyes are black as pits but they don't care, they don't care, let the evil come crawling out, maybe it will scare Foster off of it, make him stop doing these horrible things to himself and just be how he's supposed to--

Chip whirls and brings a fist down onto one of the shelves, cracking through part of the wood with a frustrated shout. Break it, break all of it, break it apart and turn it into something right, turn it the way they want, the way they need...

Foster physically flinches, the one hand still holding his erection letting go at last to curl reflexively up by his chest as Chip cracks a fist on the white wood of an old display shelf.

The hot ache is still there, but self-preservation, sick though its hold on someone like him is, is already shouting that he's sorry, he's sorry, he didn't mean to, he's sorry--!

He knows it's his fault, it's always his fault, and it's because he's wrong, he is wrong on a level unachievable by other people, he can never make up for it. He knows how he should have said no, should have said no but he was too stupid, too disgusting to say it and if he only had, then Chip wouldn't have had to. But now he's doing it again, he's hurting Chip again because he never does it right and it's his fault again, again, again, yes and yes and yes....!

Chip slams their fist down on the wood again and again, cracking it further and further apart.

"You just have to stop! It's your body, it doesn't control you, so just stop doing these things and hurting yourself all the time! Why are you still letting him control you, he's dead, he's DEAD and he can't hurt us anymore!"

One final smash on the last word breaks it into two and Chip whirls, glaring--

And stops.

He's scared. He's scared of them.

The black feeling around them seeps away and it feels like the ground will open up and swallow them whole. Why do they do this, why, they're supposed to protect him, but they just keep hurting him, hurting him over and over! Why are you like this, Chip?

"Foster..."

Nothing Chip is screaming is new, but it's like a series of blows all the same. He knows, he knows He is dead, knows he made a mistake, that what he thought was wrong, that he was misled, Chip showed him and told him and tells him and tells him but it never works because he's defective and he can't understand what normal people can.

Foster doesn't move or speak for a few seconds after Chip stops yelling, just lies totally still, both hands now curled tightly into his hair, pulling for the pain, the pressure from his scalp to drown out the panic his brain wants to make him feel.

It's only when he's absolutely certain Chip isn't about to go off that he tries--his voice is ragged, his eyes still tightly shut, just in case it goes bad again--he knows, logically, he shouldn't say anything, he should say sorry again, that apologising again might make Chip forgive him, but he doesn't truly register his mistake until after it's left his lips.

"It's not like that!" Foster's one protest dies as soon as it's out. "I'm sorry, I know, I know, I'm sorry..." he trails off there, waiting for a reaction, to know what his fate is and how bad his mistake was.