If I could help, why wouldn’t I? It’s not just the right thing to do. It’s the only thing I should do.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values || Story – Food Fight
Current Date: January 9, 2024

Character: Osiris Ikin
Race: Human
Age: 22
Current residence: New York City, New York
 

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Coming across someone who is genuinely willing to help me with no strings attached whatsoever is very strange for me. All of my younger years, up until Francis took notice of me and Edgar along with Leslie took me out of the school, I was fending for myself. Even at the school in the big city, I preferred to keep to myself though there were times when I allowed myself to spend time with others—not Francis, Shaw, or Zander. It was rare though and I better spent my time with the ones I felt safe around.

Earlier today, I stepped out, telling Francis I was going to be picking something up from the store. Usually, I prefer to go with him. It just feels safer. It might have been years behind me now, but I think that the scars that have found their way into my life from my time at the school and the whole thing with my parents are just never going to be any easier to deal with. I don’t handle being on my own so well.

Still, I had a small list with me, and I just wanted to buy a few things for everyone. Christmas might have come and gone—and that, too, is still something I’m wrapping my mind around even now—and I did get them all small things, but this was different. I’d seen the store in passing while we were on the way home some weeks back and, well, it had captured my attention.

So here I was.

I took a little arm basket as I stepped inside and I just… roamed. I tried to look at the items that were all around me, but I felt as though there was a language barrier keeping me from reaching out to look closer at most of them. The vast majority of things were imported and while I’m sure there was some English somewhere on the package, I couldn’t bring myself to reach out for any of it.

Cue this sweet little old Asian—she looked Asian to me, I could be so very wrong—lady. She came up to me, I wasn’t sure I understood her at first because her accent was so strong, but with a bit of back and forth, I think we started to understand one another, and she was just… offering to help me pick whatever I needed from the store. I asked her why she would just randomly offer her help this way and she told me that if she could help, why wouldn’t she? It was the right thing to do, and she liked helping others in this way.

It confused me but I wasn’t about to say no; she was just so sweet. It took me almost an hour in the store—and two texts sent off to Francis to let him know that I was fine, just being a little indecisive about what I was trying to get—to be able to pick a couple of things for each of the guys. There was English on every packaging. Most of the time, it was a sticker added on with the necessary info, but it was there. She was patient with me as she explained what everything was, at least, of the things that I was curious about.

When I moved to the register, she followed right along… and plopped her tiny little self behind that register. I was even more baffled by her offer for help at that point. She had left her register unattended all the while she’d been helping me and that just—I have no words, it felt so strangely sweet in a way? I’m aware that the whole store in and of itself had been pretty dang quiet all the while but still.

She still was an absolute sweetheart as she scanned every item. I bagged them carefully in the two bags I’d brought along, and I told her that I would be back. I did mean it. She left such an impression on me that I do want to go back and, as is, if they like the items I got them—food items for the most part—I feel as though we’ll all be dropping in now and again.

It’s such a small little store, a hole-in-the-wall sort of thing but it was interesting to discover a lot of what there was in there. It might not have been a short outing, but I think it was an outing through which I actually learned a little more about a culture that’s just completely different from mine. A culture that I might have never really realized existed and while that might just be me and my upbringing, I can’t wait to see their reactions when I get back home.

Final Word Count: 804

Last time you made me into a glorified babysitter, things quickly went to chaos and now you want me to do it again?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values || Story – Food Fight
Characters: Osiris Ikin
Race: Human
Age: 20
Current residence: New York City, New York
Final Word Count: 795 words
 

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I hadn’t expected to come across one of the security guys that had been at the old school. I mean, the guys had plucked me out from the middle of nowhere, hours deep into a forest, and brought me into this bustling city. What were the odds that I would come across someone I’d known while at school? The one person that made me duck my head worse than the others because I fully expected a physical blow from him?

I hadn’t expected it.

When I first saw him, just a few paces away, in the same store I’d briefly stopped at, I froze. It was hard not to recognize him. He’d haunted my dreams while I had been in ‘solitary’ out there. He’d turned those very dreams into nightmares and that had been years ago, long before Francis had possibly even started to notice me. It feels as though that particular man had always been there. I’m sure it wasn’t the case but, to me, that’s how it feels.

He didn’t see me, not at first. I turned, hood over my head, and went back to trying to find what I needed in the aisles. I refused to let myself be intimidated by someone from my past who now had no longer any reason to have an effect on my life. Still, it was a little shop and to see that big brute there made no sense to me. I didn’t know the man, though, so there were chances he had all the reasons in the world to be there, just like me, but I still didn’t want to hear it.

It was hard to ignore his presence, though, the whole of the little store was fairly quiet, only a few clients, and he spoke loudly. At first, I thought he was talking to himself but, I eventually realized that he had one of the little in-ear things that connect to the phone, so he must have been talking to someone on his phone. That didn’t mean that he had any right to be as loud as he was.

I found myself almost three aisles off from him—though he could have moved as well, and I wouldn’t have noticed—and I still could hear him clearly. He was talking about someone turning him into a glorified babysitter and how things had all gone to hell and now, whoever was at the other end of the call, wanted to do it all over again.

The idea of this man doing any type of babysitting struck me as completely unreal. He’d hated kids as far as I could tell. He only had the job back at the school because it paid well but man, he had been rough all around the edges and he’d been a complete arsehole to me, though in a way, back then, I partially believed myself to be at fault. I was, after all, a troublemaker who was constantly being walked back to so-called solitary. I was the one kid everyone had to watch out for.

Man, the lies I could keep on telling myself about what my life was like while we all still were at school, I don’t know that there truly would be an end to them. I think that if I’d been left to die that one night of the big storm, it would have been fine. I still don’t like to think about it much and the look of horror on Francis’s face when I told him about it still remains with me. I know that it’s no fault of mine that I was left down there but for a long, long time, I told myself that I couldn’t blame any of them. It was my fault I’d been in solitary, and it had been my fault that they’d forgotten about me. Just so many other students to keep track of and bring into the big room.

Eventually, though, I think I finally lost track of the man, because everything just sort of ended up going quiet. I remember finding the few things I’d stepped in to find, I remember walking back towards the door where the cashiers were. I faintly remember paying for my goods and stepping outside.

What I do mostly remember more clearly was the bite of cold air when I stepped outside and how it brought me out of that sort of daze that I’d fallen into while in the store, falling back into a pit of memories while trying to keep unseen by the man I was trying to avoid.

I made it home faster than I expected but, you know, that’s just fine. It’s rare that I go out without Francis but, every now and again, I just have to.

Let the party commence. Try to get rid of that stick you have and enjoy yourself for once.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values || Story – Food Fight
Characters: Osiris Ikin
Race: Human
Age: 18
Final Word Count: 723 words
 

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The moment that invitation had been in his hand, Osiris had known that he couldn’t go. He couldn’t recall Francis ever mentioning a party of any sort around graduation and it left him to figure that, just maybe, it was the kids that had wanted it more than it had been provided by the school and that made him even more hesitant to consider going at all.

Sure, they’d all graduated just months ago, school done forever should they want to. Osiris didn’t know what he wanted. On certain days, he still was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he was alive; that his time at the old school was gone; that little by little, the nightmares he’d been having about his old life had faded to the point where he honestly could not remember the last time one had come.

The little invitation had simply said: ‘Party!’ on one side. On the other side, there had been the date and hour at which they were expected to show. There was nothing about the type of wear they had been expected and what would happen once there. Everything about it made him balk and he hadn’t even asked the other two if they’d gotten one too. He had to assume that everyone in their class had, otherwise his brain was going to work itself into a stressed mess.

Then again, it did work itself into a stressed mess.

The night following the arrival of that innocent little invitation, he’d had a nightmare. Usually, where parties were concerned, his brain would have brought him to the one that had happened on the first summer when he’d truly realized that his parents had stopped giving a damn about him. This time around, it had been one of the summer parties that had happened in his early teens. They usually gathered in the large yard, just celebrating another year gone by before their parents came to pick them up. One had given him an invite, a cruel look in his eye, and told him that just maybe, if he attended the party for once, he’d get rid of the stick he had and would enjoy himself.

He hadn’t gone. Of course not.

Osiris knew that he had trust issues. That would likely never change; he was broken. That was all there was to it. He was just so broken that trust was nearly impossible for him to achieve. Francis had been different; he’d been persistent and, little by little, had made it clear that at least even just a little trust could go a long way. He trusted the men in his life. He trusted them in a way he doubted he could ever trust anyone and yet, here he was.

Anyone else, however, was something else entirely and, well, he just didn’t really trust anyone else. Did it make for a difficult daily life? Somewhat, but he made the best of it. He had trusted his teachers just a little—enough to manage to learn what they were teaching. Did he trust his fellow students? Just barely; only some of them, the ones he’d seen daily and that had shown no signs of wanting to back stab him.

Maybe, now that several months had gone by and life had settled into a small routine where he worked—from home!—and he felt at peace with himself, Osiris would bring up the invite, see, if maybe, he’d just overreacted. He couldn’t remember if Shaw and Zander had been home on that particular night. He just needed to get it out of his mind, he knew. Getting it out of his mind would require that he did talk about it, at least a little and he finally felt ready enough to bring it up. He knew that Edgar and Leslie wouldn’t be mad at him; he’d never seen either one of them mad at him, just as he knew that Francis wouldn’t be mad at him either. Maybe just a little exasperated but, even that, he doubted.

On certain days, Osiris did so wish that his brain wasn’t quite as broken as it truly was but there was little he could do about it but make the best of it, in the end; and, best of it is what he tried to reach for.

I thought I’d pair you two together, seeing as you can’t behave whatsoever.

 
Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Home || Story – Food Fight
Characters: Osiris Ikin
Race: Human
Age: 17
Final Word Count: 619 words
 

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The teachers used to pair him with other troublemakers as though somehow they would null one another out. The issue was, he wasn’t a troublemaker, not really. Not as much as others. He did get in trouble every so often, merely desperate for attention since his parents had abandoned him to that school, but he wasn’t a troublemaker in the bad sense of the world.

He wasn’t a bully.

After a while, however, the teachers stopped trying. They didn’t even bother with him unless they absolutely had to but the harm had already been done and the bullies had found their perfect victim. No one would believe the boy who cried wolf, after all.

Osiris had lost count of how often he’d gotten in trouble because of something someone else had done. He’d become the school’s scapegoat and the teachers didn’t even look very far for someone to blame, even when it was clear that he wasn’t at the source of the latest problem.

Just the same, he’d lost count of how often he landed down in solitary because of these bullies but there was nothing he could say that would change a thing, so why bother? No one listened to him, no one noticed him unless it was to blame him for something he hadn’t done. No one but Francis. His one, his pair, his everything, his Anubis.

Osiris hadn’t known what to make of the other boy when they’d truly talked for that first time. Then again, he’d been in no mood for talking. He’d heard the rumours though he tried hard not to believe in them, more than aware of how wrong these rumours could be, but he hadn’t wanted someone’s pity, not at that point in his life. He was sick and tired of being something he wasn’t and he’d been ready for the school to just release him from their clutch when he was eighteen. Of course, that had been some time yet.

Now, with his new life and his new school and his new friends—there still were days when he couldn’t wrap his mind around that—it wasn’t so bad. No one really knew him, not in the way he’d been known at the old school and the only time a teacher paired him with someone else, it was for the sake of school projects and he could work on them well enough. He still didn’t trust easily but he did his best.

Francis was probably the only one who’d ever seen his truly vulnerable side. The side of him that came out after still-happening nightmares, though they were rare. After bad days at school though those were rare too. There were the days when he needed a constant contact to feel alive. When he felt as though his world might crumble if he wasn’t breathing the same air as his Anubis. His protector, his everything.

Those days were also the ones during which he was most worried about everything eventually crumbling because he was too needy or at times distant because he was lost in his memories, perhaps recall parents that he hadn’t seen since too many years, parents who hadn’t really wanted him. Parents whose personal lives had been so much more important than that of their only child.

He would never be ‘fixed’ from what broke in him when his parents abandoned him, that was all there was to it. No shrink would ever be able to pick up all of the slivers from the shattered pieces to put him back together. Only Anubis can keep him from falling apart and Osiris cherishes him to the very best of his abilities. It truly is all he can do.

You can say you’re not cold, but I can see you shivering from all the way over here.

Timeline/World: Story: Food Fight / Alternate Earth – Home
Characters: Osiris Ikin
Race: Human
Age: 16
Final Word Count: 938 words

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Huddling in on himself, Osiris glares at the small group of students who are sitting by the roaring fire. He shivers a little but ignores it, refusing to let them see just how bad this is affecting him. They are always teasing and taunting him, sneering when they think he’s not looking. They talk behind his back as though he was deaf and laugh at the fact that he’s always in trouble and truly through no fault of his own. He misses his mother—no, not really, not anymore. He missed his parents for a year or so when they abandoned him behind but now he’s partially indifferent, partially bitter about it.

Not that any of it matters right now, he feels so cold he wonders if he won’t just fall asleep and die. Maybe, just maybe once he’s dead, the school people will realize how badly they mistreated him and change their ways. Not that it would help him, he would be dead but that still would be something, wouldn’t it?

He shudders at the hand on his shoulder but eases to his feet nonetheless. This is his curfew, he’s been sleeping down in that basement bedroom and he hates it. It’s cold and dark and humid. Still, he walks away to the snickers behind his back, shivering a little as he goes. It isn’t that the heat isn’t on but it feels like it’s not reaching all the way through to his very core. The snow storm outside is bad, the electricity has flickered once or twice and while he knows that they have generators, the heaters will only barely run to keep the pipes from freezing and the boys will all be brought back down to the room with the fireplace if the electricity goes. He hopes it doesn’t.

They stop by one door at the end of the corridor and he steps in, walking to the toilet to empty his bladder for the night. He washes his hands and dries them as best as he can on the thin, worn cotton towel before he steps back out and walks all the way to the door that is his, the only open door down there. He steps inside and makes quick work of changing into his pyjamas because his room feels like it has near to no heat and he can almost see his breath. Once he’s settled in his bed and huddling under his threadbare blanket, he hears the door as it closes and locks—they always lock him in—and the light click because the switch is outside his door.

Someone will come for him in the morning.

Keeping his mouth shut tightly so that his teeth don’t chatter, Osiris closes his eyes, huddling in tightly on himself and he tries to sleep.

He wakes up a little while later, uncertain as to how long it’s been but it’s so dark in his room and there are no alarm clocks that it’s hard to tell. He can’t hear the usual soft, low click of the heater as it tries to keep the massive building warm and as he exhales, even in the pitch black that is his room, he knows his breath comes out as a cold mist. He closes his eyes again, refusing to let the tears fall, wondering if maybe now he really was going to die, finally. If maybe now, his misery would be over. He hated them all and he felt hollow inside.

After a little while, he begins to feel warm and a low laugh escapes him. He’s read a few books, not many but a few and most were on medical things because they didn’t let him in the library either. He knows what hypothermia does to the body and he lets it, he’s too tired to fight. Instead, he closes his eyes again and lets the false heat slowly sweep through him.

~

He wakes up with a start and a strangled sob, feeling sweat pooling a little around the base of his neck where his hair is loose. Osiris knows he should have braided it before bed but he’d been so exhausted that he hadn’t bothered. Struggling to keep the tears flooding his eyes from falling, he squeezes them tighter and presses closer to the body against which he’s resting. He presses his nose to a shoulder, drawing in Francis’s familiar scent and he feels his heartbeat begin to slow.

He hadn’t died that night though he’d desperately wanted to and that memory hadn’t haunted him for a while. He hadn’t died but it had taken him a few weeks to get his fingers to respond to things properly and he’d gotten into even more trouble during that time because his homework wasn’t given in back in time.

There is plenty he’s never brought up about his time at the school, of what he’s brought up, there are details he’s refused to discuss, just ghosting over some of them. They haunt him and he doesn’t want to make his companion mad, there is nothing they can do about it anymore, after all. They already did all there was to do and from the news, they get now and again, the new teachers and head of school are much better people now.

Exhaling a softly shuddered note, he presses all the closer, needing that feeling of safety despite the slight bit of uncomfortable heat in their bedroom and he lets himself slowly settle back into slumber, aware he would likely have to talk about this one in the morning but for now, he just wanted more rest.