Chapter 6

I thoroughly checked my entire apartment and under every crevice where I had seen Chuck lingering nearby. I started with the bedroom, wondering if he had lost his raccoon in my bedsheets. But even tearing them off the bed completely didn't make the little raccoon appear. I checked under the bed, but nothing but dust bunnies inhabited the dark cave. I picked up the pace as I heard Chuck's cries grow steadily more and more psychotic, crawling across my bedroom floor and checking under everything in hopes of finding the raccoon.

I last remembered Chuck holding his raccoon when Kai approached him and he ducked behind the couch. I wandered over to the sofa in the living room and checked it carefully, scanning for any signs of worn grey fur. After I failed to find it there, I wondered if he possibly dropped it when he ran to my bedroom, but before I could check there, Chuck flipped out.

Chuck had been whining loudly my entire search, but practically out of nowhere he began screaming bloody murder. A freezing chill ran down my spine and I ran to try and calm him down. His shrieks were so shrill that I was afraid someone who lived nearby would call the cops. I found him on the floor, flailing around like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

"Chuck!" I barked. "Calm down!" When Chuck continued to scream, I grabbed both his arms and tried to restrain him, but then quickly moved one hand from his arm to his mouth. I held him firm if not somewhat harshly, my fingers stretching across his jaw. Hot tears painted his face, and I had a feeling he was having another vision of his father. I closed my eyes and focused hard on his mind, and it didn't take long before another disturbing image came out of the darkness.

"What the hell is this?" a familiar, scary-looking man asked as he held the raccoon.

"Leave her alone!" Chuck pleaded. "Give her back!" He lunged for his father and grabbed him by the shirt, reaching for the raccoon that his father purposely held out of reach.

The man grabbed him by the neck and threw him backward. Chuck landed and banged his head against the wall. I could hear him crying.

"Do as I say and we won't have trouble," the man said. But the way he said it was so chilling, so dark and evil. He sounded ready to murder Chuck.

I blinked and my vision transitioned back to reality. Chuck continued to whimper and squirm beneath me.

"Chuck…" I whispered, my voice softer. "Look at me."

He didn't even seem to hear me.

"Look at me, Chuck," I repeated. "Come back to me." I turned his head so that he faced me but his eyes were still clouded. "Your father's not here. You're safe."

Chuck froze suddenly, as if he had been turned to stone.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I promised. "But I need you to stay here."

When I removed my hand from Chuck's face and let go of his arm, I sat next to him as his body slowly melted into the carpet. He looked at me with large, confused eyes.

"She'll turn up eventually," I assured.

Chuck shook his head. "No…no…"

"Sure she will," I said. "She has to be around here somewhere."

Chuck cringed hard and shook his head again, then turned away from me and curled into the fetal position with his hands over his head. I heard him uttering something along the lines of: "It's just a toy, Chuck. It's not real. It's a stupid toy."

The way he said it didn't sound like he was trying to convince or reassure himself of anything. His tone of voice sounded frighteningly similar to his father's voice, and I wondered if he was having another episode. "Chuck…"

"IT'S A DAMN TOY, CHUCK!" he barked. His outburst was quickly followed by rapid sobbing and whimpering.

"Easy, easy," I whispered, stroking his arm. Chuck didn't say anything, and he appeared to still be trapped in the episode. "Chuck, please come back. I don't like it when you shut me out like this."

He seemed to not even hear me. I sighed deeply and stared down at my lap, unwilling to do anything else. I sat there and listened to Chuck's whimpering and disturbing muttering for what felt like an eternity.

…

I was awakened in the middle of the night when I heard what sounded like a loud bang. But the virtual silence afterward made me wonder for a moment if it was a noise from my dreams. I rolled over and tried to return to sleep, managing to nearly fall back into slumber. Suddenly, my bedroom door was thrown open and made a terrifyingly loud noise in the otherwise silent room. I was shaken fully awake and nearly wet myself at the sheer suddenness of what had happened. Before I could fully process what was going on, I felt the bedsheets being tugged off of me. I dared not turn around for fear of what was happening, and I nearly bolted when I felt the opposite side of the mattress sink behind me. I felt a pair of long, bony hands grab my arm and begin shaking me.

"Steve! Steve!"

I recognized Chuck's terrified voice in the midst of my confusion. It felt slightly odd to hear my name coming from Chuck, but it suddenly occurred to me that he had never said my name before. I was almost starting to think he forgot it.

After I took a moment to recompose, I inhaled sharply and reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. I saw Chuck in the dim light, his eyes shiny and his face ridden with streaks of tears. He looked like he had just seen a monster—his eyes were wide with terror and his skin was a pale shade of green.

"Chuck, what's wrong?" I asked, although I began to have a pretty good idea.

Chuck shook his head violently, then leaned forward so that it collided with my chest. I grunted slightly on impact, but quickly gasped when Chuck climbed into my lap and grabbed my shirt on either side, clutching it tightly and sobbing against me. Although I had endured so many of his emotional breakdowns and scary visions, I had never seen him so broken. It was rather scary to watch.

"T-Too much…" he blubbered. "It's…to…m-much…"

I lay my hands on either side of him, which was still bumpy with protruding ribs. "Chuck, I'm going to need you to calm down. Breathe slowly."

I could tell he was trying to obey, but he struggled as every other urge inside of him only wanted him to cry harder.

"Breathe slowly," I repeated. "Follow my breathing." I breathed slowly and loudly, trying to guide him. It seemed to help him a bit, as he found it less difficult to ease himself out of his episode. "That's it. Just like that. You're doing good."

I felt his chest beneath my hands move more gracefully as we breathed in sync, not speaking for several moments until Chuck was finally calm.

"Can you tell me about it?" I asked.

Chuck sniffled. "N-Nightmare…"

Chuck's breathing became uneven again, but he didn't resume freaking out. He did, however, press his cheek against my shoulder and bind his arms around me. I couldn't help but blow out a contented sigh. Chuck was unbelievably warm, and while I was supposed to feel sorry for him because of whatever frightened him, my senses were mostly overtaken by how amazing his warmth felt. I had never been this enveloped in it, and it was such a new sensation that I nearly lost my train of thought. But there was a new feeling there—one that was so new, so unfamiliar that it scared me. No, it wasn't new. It had always been there, nestled in my subconscious, and it took me until now to notice it. But it was still scary, and I had no idea whether or not to act on it. I was afraid of how Chuck would react.

"What…kind of…of nightmare?" I finally asked, suddenly finding it difficult to form words.

"My f-father was there…" Chuck started. "And he…he killed you."

"K-Killed…me?"

"…And I saw…I saw your body. And plasma was c-coming out of…out of your mouth. And I told you to wake up, but…" He hiccupped and sounded ready to cry again. "…But you wouldn't wake up." He broke down right then and there, ruining my shirt with his profuse tears.

"Well I woke up this time, didn't I?" I whispered.

Chuck inhaled deeply, blubbering over another fit of sobs. "I don't…want you to d-die, Steve… I don't want…want you to…to die!"

"But I'm not dead, see?" I told him. "I'm fine."

Chuck continued to cry, rocking both his chest and mine with his loud sobbing. "It was…sc-scary…"

"Shh," I whispered. My shaky arms enveloped his tiny body, trying to hold him steady. This is when I lost it.

I didn't even realize what I did until it was too late. I was completely unaware of my body's uncontrolled actions until I felt Chuck's forehead firmly placed against my lips, and I pulled away to render a soft smack. I felt Chuck freeze in my grasp, and I had no idea if his response was good or bad. After a moment of stunned silence, Chuck raised a shaky hand to the spot where I had kissed him, and he leaned backward to look at me with wide eyes. As shocked as I was myself, my expression surprisingly stayed blank, as if my body had formed a mind of its own and overtaken me, and it had no regrets about what it was doing. Chuck's lips quivered, and he barely managed to form a sentence just loud enough for me to hear.

"Do that again…"

Without even a chance to restrain my instinctual urges, I grabbed Chuck's jaw and pulled him into a deep and passionate kiss that lasted nearly five seconds. I was flabbergasted by what I was doing, but something about Chuck's lips against mine felt too damn good…

Chuck fell limp in my arms and began shivering. He clung to me like I was his lifeline, and I was barely allowed enough flexibility to reach for the bedsheets and pull them over me and Chuck. I had to strain my arm to turn off the lamp.

"It's okay," I whispered. "I gotcha."

Chuck grunted. It was nothing more than a tiny, barely audible happy noise vibrating in his throat. His breathing became shallow as he drifted further into sleep, and all I could focus on was this incredible warmth that I felt surrounding my body. It was an amazing feeling, too incredible for words. This warmth…I hadn't felt anything like this since I was a human, capable of generating my own body heat.

After a few short moments, I fell asleep beside Chuck with a smile on my face.