Author's Notes. For UraharaSteph.
String-boarding details from canon to make a timeline means Jeff should be 10-ish in the 'fic – and going from his lines in Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism he hasn't yet remade himself into his canon persona, so hopefully this is a believable kid Jeff.
Warning for references to child abuse.
Disclaimer. If it was mine, you'd know, but it's not.
That Sunday morning, Jeff walks straight out of his house. His mom hasn't been in the place for a week now – she said it's for the Divorce.
Divorce. That word's been thrown around a lot as of late. He doesn't care about any divorce, even though maybe he should given all the weird, no, pitying looks it makes everyone give him. But he doesn't care, except for the rare moments he does, when he's in his bed and it's way after curfew but he just can't sleep, or now, when he's been stuck in the house, with only his dad, for a week.
Maybe with is a strong word to describe it. More often than not his dad's out doing important work, coming back home far past the time Jeff should be in bed, smelling awful in that way he does whenever he takes a bottle from the cabinet Jeff's never been allowed to touch. That's what happened last night, and so today is the kind of day where his dad is late to wake up, and in a bad mood when he does.
So Jeff walks out. Seven days stuck with his dad, and he's at the point where he doesn't care about consequences, he just needs – well, he doesn't know what he needs, except to be anywhere else than here, really. And what he does know is that his dad wouldn't drive him out somewhere if he begged. One foot in front of the other, that's the Winger way, it might as well be. There's a good chance his dad's really going to give it to him when he comes home, but if he does that won't be the first time, and Jeff doesn't give a shit. At least he thinks he doesn't – he only really caught his dad using that word the once.
As far as days go, it's a nice one – just breezy and light on the skin, the way it is in late summer, with the sunlight broad on the sidewalk and uniform houses. He doesn't see anyone else as he walks past the countless yards and fences. Maybe they're all at church. Mom always brought him to church whenever grandma visited. He's starting to get tired of walking down empty streets with almost-same homes when he stops mid-step. Down from his neighborhood and following the sidewalk there's this squat building with a parking lot, and behind it is a small playground and a much bigger forest. He's never gone there without his parents, but he's got a good sense of direction and he's seen it through the car window enough times to get to it on his own.
What he should've done was grab his scooter (it's a bit old, but it still looks cool, and it still works, too), so he'd be able to get home quickly just in case he gets lost or something. He can't risk his dad seeing him, though, so he'll just walk faster on the way there.
Walking faster, as it turns out, just means that he runs out of breath once he's barely out of the neighborhood and has to stop and take a break, wasting any time he'd saved, so for the rest of the journey he just goes at his normal speed. It isn't as fast as he'd like – he was always picked last in P.E., or close to it – but as it turns out, he does know how exactly to get to the place, so there.
The parking lot is as empty as it always is, and he doesn't give the playground a second thought (it really is small), but in the forest is a mulch-piled path with a tiny metal barrier lining it that doesn't reach past his knee, so less than a minute he's stepped foot into the woods he's hopped the path, because he might as well. The soil feels spongy, almost like it does after rain, and there's endless crowds of bushes amongst the many trees. He thinks he can see where the floor dips off in the distance, and he'll go over there in a second, it's just that the bushes here are kind of thick and structured like walls, with groups of them almost forming a sort of space he can squeeze himself into. There's even a bush that's been stripped bare of all its leaves with a spiderweb of branches shaped like a dome.
It's almost like the neighborhood he just left, or really, a town, with different rows and groups of houses, and there's just something great about that. He's like a runaway, with an exciting new life somewhere else, instead of a kid who couldn't stand to be stuck inside another day. Maybe if he really ran away his dad would try to find him, bring him home and finally act like a real dad, like the ones he sees on T.V. sometime who play something as inane as catch with their sons – though he and his dad would have to figure out something else, because Jeff never liked sports.
Running away was something serious. It was entirely different from being left behind at the zoo. But until today he'd never even slipped out of the house farther than the front yard, and there's still the divorce, so it's just a stupid idea. And anyway, he's here to forget about his dad, not think about him, so he sets sight for the rim of the forest town where he can see a sharp decline downwards.
There's a stream down there, and even though he has no idea if or how he'll get back up, he takes a step forward. He's like an explorer in the jungle, first to set foot in the wilderness. He can feel the sweltering heat, the thick foliage, can see himself in the gear, and even though make-believe is for babies, in this moment it doesn't matter, because babies don't walk all the way to a forest behind their dads backs and then go hiking down to secret streams, explorers do.
Once he's down there, he takes a breather, because at a few points he felt like he was going to slip and had to grab a tree to keep balance. Surrounded by nothing by forest and beneath the ground he just left, he's in another world all to himself. The stream is pretty small and weak, coming from a hole in a big concrete block, but there are countless small rocks in it and when he stands in just the right position the small bit of sunlight that makes it down makes it all glitter. He'd walk further to the concrete block, but he doesn't know how long he's been in the forest, or how long it'll take him to get back up the hill and home.
The trek uphill is a gradual one, with the shifting soil always making him worry about sliding all the way back down, but eventually he conquers it, and then it's no time to walk all the way home. He slips in the front door, silent and braced for impact, fear having had time to set in during the walk back, but he doesn't see or hear his dad. It's only after he's taken off his shoes and made it to the living room that he sees the office door closed, and definitely locked. Thanking his luck, he bounds up the stairs, and spends the rest of the day in his room, almost as a way of making up for the time he spent outside.
If his dad secretly noticed his absence and stealthy return, he doesn't show any sign of it when Jeff goes downstairs for dinner. It's the same food as always, oven chicken and a side of canned peas – nutritionally satisfactory but kind of bland taste-wise – but something about having gone on a runaway adventure makes him not care in a way he usually doesn't. After dinner he thinks about asking his mom to take him to the rec center where he can play Foosball, and that night he thinks of well-trodden soil, a town made of branches and leaves, and the steady thrum of water before he goes to sleep.
Author's Notes. Originally posted 2021.11.04