Detox

He hates the orphanage. He hates the word orphanage, too.

With silver hair like that, it doesn't startle him at all that she's banging half the castle, because she can't keep her mouth shut or take a social cue or keep her legs shut, either. Tom doesn't cut her for this out loud, because that would be cruel and Tom may be bad but not to her, never to her, if he can help it, although most days he can't help it. Even with him, she can't keep her legs shut, even when she finds the animals in his ground or catches his bodies flipping. They're just bodies, nothing more, same as he is.

He's known for a while, and Dorcas has known that Tom knows for a while, and then he stays, and then she tells him not to anymore. No more balls on her arm at her parents' invite. No more drawer in her dormitory armoire to piss off her roommates when they catch him naked on schedule.

Tom has never loved much, and now Tom thinks it best that he not love anything. It relieves him. Dorcas and her silver hair and her open legs continue to bang half the castle, because the others don't claw her open and she has always had her fixes to recover from him, and Tom continues to practice.