Content: Arthur/TMWTPF, Trauma response

"You're shivering," The man with the painted face says. He's straddling Arthur, engulfing him with his body, and it had felt good until it didn't.

Arthur is shivering. Uncontrollably and violently. It's painful, and it's humiliating. He laughs and the sound is stabbed through with the clicking of his teeth. The man with the painted face lingers for a moment with his mouth at his neck, and then the shadowed weight of him is gone.

"Get up," he says, and Arthur feels himself rise and stagger to the bathroom. His body drags itself against the walls, scrapes against the doorframe, and lays itself down on cold tile. It's not soothing but it's grounding; the feeling of his bones vibrating against the floor. The air shifts above him and color blooms behind his eyelids.

The man with the painted face kneels and rests a hand on his side. He rubs him, and it's a distant warmth. Arthur feels like an animal curled up at his feet, bleeding out from an open wound. He knows that he won't die, that he will stand again on shaking legs and lick the blood from his fur, but all of him will be sticky and tender until a new scar forms. And inevitably, the same wound will tear itself open again, leaving him just as vulnerable as he is now. Feeling just as vulnerable as he had been when it was made.