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The red one was a bit confused.
Recently, the yellow one (amongst his two housemates) had gotten into a sort of habit.
He would waddle up to one of the two others and open his arms wide, trying to close them around the one in front of him. A hug, the red one understood after seeing it happen in an episode of Grolton and Hovris. The yellow one was trying to hug them.
The green one would always push him back harshly, preferring to stay focused on his newspapers or lists or literally anything else. That one was always a bit too cold and stern, the red one thought privately, which was a bit mean to the yellow one (who seemed like he was a very young one, compared to the rest of the household).
He would also decline the yellow one’s offers, but a bit more politely. Whenever he came up to him with his arms wide open and a big smile on his dumb looking face, he would raise his mitt-like hands and back away. He wasn’t keen on being touched. So far, any thing or person touching him had done it with the intent to hurt.
The other ones were nice enough (tolerable, he corrected himself), and probably would not hurt him, but he still didn’t want to be touched or hugged.
The idea of a hug especially made him uncomfortable.
He might have been a little scared of it.
However one day the yellow one hadn’t tried to hug either of them. Instead he had sat at the kitchen table with his head down, perfectly still. Thinking he had been dead, the red one had placed his very large hand on top of his head to check. His hair had been surprisingly soft to the touch. He liked the color a lot.
The yellow one had looked up with surprise and a disarmingly large amount of happiness. Well, he is alive. The red one had pulled away his hand and gone to sit in his place for breakfast. The yellow one had then spent a good portion of the day leaning his head at an odd angle to try and get it close to the red one’s hand, which had been comical for the green one but a bit awkward for the red one.
So the next day he had decided to vanquish his timidity and lay his hand once more on the yellow one’s head. With purpose. Then, as he had seen Grolton do to Hovris, he had pet the blue hair carefully.
The yellow one had apparently liked that. Liked that so much that the next day he had gone up to the big red one and grabbed his hand to put it on his head, but the red one had instantly recoiled and scrambled away to his armchair.
- N-No. I don’t- Please don’t do that,” he’d said once the smaller one had gone up to him and asked what was wrong. He had then pointedly avoided him the rest of the day, the white hot burn of unexpected touch still squeezing his wrist tight.
The yellow one understood surprisingly fast for once. The red one should always be the first to touch.
After a few days or so of awkward distance, he eventually did it again. The petting thing. The yellow one reminded himself with great efforts to just let him do it and try not to reach out first.
The biggest one got more comfortable over the days and eventually started laying a hand against the yellow one’s upper back, rubbing clumsy circles. He figured out he was okay with touching his head, face (covering his entire face with just one hand had been an amusing experiment), shoulders and back.
One morning he tried to place his hand on top of the yellow one’s, but failed to go all the way. It took him a few hours and several attempts, but he managed to hold his hand remotely somewhere during dinnertime. The yellow one had been super excited about the development and nearly made the mistake of reaching out first several times, thankfully catching himself mid-action every time.
So during any ‘lesson’ that made the red one feel extra nervous and wrong, he could just grab the other one’s hand tightly. Focus on the way it felt so small in his. It always made him feel like the biggest one, the strongest one; it made him a little braver. He would also reach out when the yellow one looked uncomfortable or confused in their daily lives, which seemed to calm him down greatly.
Eventually he got brave enough to, one day, loosely wrap an arm around the other one’s thin shoulders. He was shaking badly, but he pushed on and wrapped the second one around him too. The yellow one was shaking hard too but that was because he wanted to hug back really bad.
- See, ah-m not huggin,” he stuttered proudly, because he just had to say something, even though his voice was muffled into the red one’s chest.
- Thank you for that, mate,” the taller guy replied shakily, raising a hand to pet his blue hair, something familiar to soothe himself. “Thank you.”
The next day the red one didn’t hug him. He didn’t hold his hand or rub his back either. He only pet his head once during the day. The yellow one was a bit sad, but after working hard to understand what he did wrong he realized the red one was probably very drained after the hug.
The red one had tried to teach them something like that on one of their Nothing Days, he remembered. Without singing or doing mean things, which was a bonus.
- So, um, you see, it’s like you have a number of, uuh…”
His gaze had wandered the kitchen thoughtfully.
- Let’s say a number of spoons.”
- Can it be sporks instead?” the green one had requested.
- Yeah, fine, you have a number of sporks. Everything that you do it’s – you have to use a certain number of sporks to do the thing.”
- I don’t need sporks to brush my teeth. Or do crosswords. Or-“
The red one had banged his fist on the table to interrupt the green one.
- The sporks don’t really exist. My point is, when you do too much things that cost sporks, you run out of sporks, so you can’t do things anymore.”
A moment of silence had then occupied the space. The yellow one had been focused really hard, so hard to the point that his head hurt. The green one had raised a hand thoughtfully.
- What if you wash the sporks?”
The Nothing Day had immediately been interrupted by a sponge coming out of a drawer to teach them about cleaning.
- Are- have you gotten sporks back? Like you taught us.”
The red one stared at him in confusion. They had been both in the bedroom, ready to follow after the green guy who was always the first one to go downstairs on mornings.
- Oh, sporks, that… Yes, I think I’ve gotten a couple back. What for?”
The yellow one stared up at him, his hands touching together in nervousness. He was rocking back and forth, steadily.
- Then would it, uh, are you would be okay to do that thing once more?”
The red one understood him, luckily. You don’t live with two others for so long without learning some things about them, he supposed.
He reached down and grabbed one of the yellow one’s fidgeting hands, holding nice and firm like he preferred it.
- Maybe not the whole arms-out-body-squeezing thing yet, but this is fine. I think just the hands should be… nice.”
The smaller one still looked excited about it. He stared, transfixed, at the red one’s larger hand around his, almost perfectly immobile except for disorganized full body sways. He got like this sometimes, which was okay. Unlike himself and the green one, that one seemed to have trouble focusing on multiple things at once.
- Hey, we should go downstairs. The other one is probably waiting for us,” he suggested gently after giving him a couple more minutes of silent staring.
Downstairs they went, hand in hand (it was also easier to keep the yellow one in sight, because he was staying close to the red one most of the time now), only to find out the green one had finished the bag of Chuddle Dollops all by himself like a greedy creature.
So they all argued viciously about it first thing in the morning, and it felt good, it felt normal. Everything was exactly how it was supposed to be.
The TV came to life in the afternoon, which was unexpected but also normal – surely, today will be okay in the end, the red guy thought as he squeezed the small yellow hand nestled in his. For what felt like the first time in centuries, he was optimistic, and maybe hopeful.
It would be alright.
It wasn’t alright.
It definitely was not fucking alright.
The evening had rolled in, darkening the skies. The TV had been thrown against the wall, reduced to a pile of broken glass and wood. Large blood stains sullied the wall and floor of the living room.
And behind a makeshift barrier consisting of their three seats and other furniture, in the corner furthest from the destroyed TV, the three inhabitants of the house were suffering the aftershock.
The green guy was curled up into a tight ball, immobile except for his hands holding a pencil; he had been frantically going over the list of things pinned to his beloved clipboard since the end of the ‘lesson’. The yellow guy was occasionally hitting his head as quietly as possible, or pulling at his hair with low pained noises, rocking back and forth continuously.
And the red guy was crouching right behind the ‘barrier’ protecting them, facing outwards and keeping his eyes locked straight on the TV’s bleeding remains. He could not look away. He could not afford to look away even for a second. If he did-
If he-
He didn’t want to think about what could happen if he looked away. He was perfectly still, focused on this single task of keeping watch.
What had happened in the lesson, he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He felt like he couldn’t even think to think about it, like his mind was working against him to push him away from the memories. He just knew that it had been very bad.
A stray spark of electricity ran along what was probably a broken wire among the jagged remains of technology. The red guy felt his mouth open in a threatening display behind the red strings covering his face. A soundless growl left his throat, and a broken whimper echoed behind him, on his left.
That was where the yellow one was. The green one was behind him on his right, he knew as much from the desperate scribbling sounds.
The yellow one had been breathing pretty heavily and sometimes making very low, quiet noises, but the whimper was a first.
The red guy wanted to turn around to check on him, but he also had to keep watch on the TV, so he reached back blindly with his left hand and pat the area clumsily, trying to find the yellow one. A hand soon touched his and he easily recognized the other one’s fingers.
- You can c’mere, but I have to keep watching it,” he whispered to the yellow one, who only emitted a soft affirmative sound before shuffling closer, closer, going around his red counterpart until –
Until he sat between his legs, still holding onto his hand tightly. The red one let him, and used his free hand to pat him down, checking for injuries.
The yellow one had pulled a pretty big chunk of his blue hair out, which had caused his pained noise from earlier. The tall red one rubbed his head comfortingly, still keeping his eyes locked on the TV.
- Don’t do that.”
He was only scolding him gently but the other one still shuffled around shamefully, the dull sound of his palm hitting his forehead following the red one’s remark. He clicked his sharp teeth urgently at him, struggling between wanting to look down at him and needing to keep watch on the deceased teacher – which resulted in him pulling the smaller guy snug against his chest as a compromise. At least it got him to stop hitting himself.
He shifted his arms around to hold him less awkwardly after a few seconds, but no less tightly.
- Don’t do that, either. It’s – bad. It’s bad.”
- But it’s help me when things are wrong or – or scary.”
- Maybe, but it’s hurting you. It’s bad.”
Apparently this hadn’t been the right way to go, because the red one could feel the other one start shaking against him.
- Here, I have an idea – How about you just pull on my strings, if you need to use your hands to feel better? I don’t mind.”
- Huh? Really? But it hurts..?”
The red one could already feel small hands reaching out to touch his strings nonetheless.
- Not one bit, I’m a big strong guy aren’t I? You can do whatever you want with them, I don’t care.”
And so while the big red guy watched closely the smoking corpse of their TV, his yellow housemate groomed, ruffled, re-groomed, re-ruffled, braided and unbraided and re-braided the long strings of yarn covering his face. Shakily, at first. Then enthusiastically. Then with great fatigue, until eventually he was just sluggishly wrapping random strands around his fingers.
- Is it bedtime yet,” he eventually murmured quietly, so quietly the red guy almost didn’t hear him.
- I mean, it’s night time outside, so probably. But, I’m not sure it’s safe.”
- Safe?” grumbled the other one, melting in the bigger one’s arms. He just wanted to be comfortable in his bed to sleep properly.
- I’m not sure it’s safe for you to go by yourself,” he clarified. “I would rather have you stay here with me and that one.”
(That one was currently asleep on his clipboard.)
- Then get, take us both to the bedroom, me an’ that one? So no one stays by they self,” the yellow one offered, tugging very gently on a handful of strings.
- Huh.”
For the first time in the evening, the red one looked down to consider his sleepy housemate.
- I could do that. Let’s do that.”
The red one had the yellow one shake awake the green one as he moved their barrier slightly to the side. The best route to take, he decided, was to keep close to the wall and walk straight to the blue door. From there, he knew he could access their bedroom.
- Why did you wake me up?” the green one complained from behind him.
- This one, uh, wanted to know if, you were okay if, he could carry you an’ me to the sleep room?”
Silence. Strangely enough there was no further complaining from the green one, who let the red one pick him up awkwardly and pick up the yellow one with much more ease. Both of them in only one arm, too!
Then, with impressive stealth, the red one inched forwards (pressed so close to the wall he nearly melted into it), keeping a watchful eye on the broken TV as he went.
Once he was out of the room with his precious clump held tight, he bolted to the bedroom in record time.
He was just as quick tucking his housemates into their respective beds, before reluctantly pulling himself to his.
The room was plunged in darkness. He could hear the green one’s soft, whistling snores, and the yellow one’s quieter but quicker breaths. He was half asleep when he heard the pitter patter of socked feet on the floorboards and felt a familiar body sneak under his blankets, close to him.
He wrapped a large arm around his housemate’s shoulders and pulled him close, rubbing his cheek sleepily on the soft mop of hair.
- Ah’m a little scared,” the yellow guy admitted.
- M’here, t’s over. The TV’s turn’d off f’rever,” the red guy slurred out.
The next morning, the large stringed man was the first to wake up. He noticed the yellow one sleeping on his chest, head buried under his strings.
He also noticed the green one’s bed pushed as close as possible to his bed, and the bird-like creature in it slumbering with his body facing his, hand just short of touching him.
Welp. It appears the yellow one hadn’t been the only one needing attention.
The red one lifted his hand, and reached out to touch the green feather-y hand resting nearby.