Richie woke up early, having spent the night tossing and turning in the chair. He refused to sleep in the bed though. He had thought about going into the kitchen but didn't want to run into Mac or Tessa. He felt trapped again, now in his own room. He looked around it appraisingly. This was his home, more than anywhere had been in a long time. Mac despite the fact that Richie was sure he drove the immortal out of his mind with annoyance was the closest thing to a father the teen had ever had. He looked up to the guy, cared what Mac thought of him, and secretly modeled his behavior after the man. And Tessa…she was like an older sister. She looked after him and worried about him, babied him and bitched at him. They fought like cats and dogs and then sat up til midnight talking over hot chocolate. It had taken time to get them all to this point, they had all had to work at it and trust each other but now…now Richie felt like it was all slipping through his fingers. He didn't want to see them, didn't want them to look at him and 'know', know how pathetic he was.
Duncan knocked at the boy's door at the usual time, eight am an hour before the shop opened. There was a flurry of movement inside that he could hear it through the door. What was Richie doing in there? When Duncan looked in though, the teen was simply standing next to the bed, but he looked as if he had been caught doing something else. And he was wearing pajamas.
"You were up already?" Duncan asked the teen, suspiciously.
Richie shrugged. "I couldn't really sleep." The teen didn't look Duncan in the eye. He decided to leave it alone for now; Richie's defenses were already up. Maybe after breakfast…He left the room still obviously discomfited.
Twenty minutes later the redhead appeared in the doorway of the kitchen looking oddly hesitant. Finally he took his seat at the table. He was staring down at the plate as Duncan slid an omelet onto it. Minutes later when he slid into his own seat, Richie had neither said anything nor eaten anything. Now Duncan was scared. He had never seen the boy like this. Sullenly stomping around, yes. Stubbornly refusing to talk, yes. Being too upset to eat, yes. But never this quietness, this fading into the background, never this sense of hopelessness. He shared a long look with Tessa.
The Frenchwoman reached a hand out to stroke Richie's cheek, opened her mouth to speak, but the teen jumped back as if burned, knocking his chair over in the process. Tessa and Duncan stood up but the boy practically fell over himself in his hurry to pick up the chair and get out of the room. Richie fled the kitchen with a breathless, "Sorry." Tessa started to go after him but Duncan caught her hand.
He dropped back into his chair and pushed his own food around his plate, his appetite now gone as well. Beside him, he could feel Tessa tsking and moving restlessly. "What is the matter with him? Did anything happen to him last night? Did they hurt him somehow?"
Duncan thought hard. He didn't know what had happened to the kid. He had been kidnapped before, much to Duncan's chagrin. The boy had been hurt and threatened with death and that was just since moving in, much less the little Richie had told them of his past. The only thing he could think of was… "He told me last night that his female captor had sex with him while he was chained up. Do you think that could be it?"
Tessa's head snapped over to look at him. Her face showed a mixture of horror and 'how could you be so stupid'. Duncan assumed that last was directed at him. He tried to imagine how he would feel if the same had happened to him. If he were chained down and blindfolded, worried about Tessa and Richie, his own life threatened, and then to have someone touching him.
"He was raped," Tessa's voice brought him out of his reverie. He stared at her, allowing the words to sink in. Oh god he thought. How could this have happened? How could he have /let/ this happen to Richie?
They both looked up at a noise at the doorway drew their attention. Richie stood there, his eyes wide and impossibly blue against his suddenly white face. Even as they watched his expression changed, his features tightened in anger and his eyes deadened. "What?! I was not! How could you think…?" He was sputtering, unable to finish his thought or to think at all. Then he ran away again.