A few weeks ago, when I was checking the Goes Wrong Show tag on AO3, a fic caught my eye: a fic about Trevor, tagged with 'noncon' and 'transphobia'. I didn't open it, but it stuck in my mind because it was the first Goes Wrong fic to use the noncon warning. I was glad to see some darkfic in the tag; it's good for the ecosystem!

A few hours later, I checked the tag again and found that the fic had disappeared.

I'd noticed the author, and I knew how to contact him; we didn't really know each other, but we'd interacted in passing just by virtue of both being active in this relatively small fandom. I sent him a message just to check he was okay; I said that I'd noticed his disappearing darkfic, and that I hoped no one had given him a hard time for the themes. He explained that he'd just got nervous, thanked me for reaching out and said he might post it again some day.

Yesterday, he got in touch and said he'd found the courage to repost his Goes Wrong darkfic. I was thrilled! I promptly read it and left an enthusiastic comment. (The fic in question is Corrective by Kestrel_Wylde. Be aware that it's very dark; it's explicit noncon in which transmasc Trevor suffers at the hands of an OC, featuring drugging and misgendering.)

And then I kept thinking about it. How would the Cornley Drama Society, who barely have a teaspoon of emotional intelligence between them, deal with something terrible happening to one of their own?

And then, with the author's permission, I wrote a follow-up.

This fic is less dark than the original on account of being about the assault's aftermath rather than the assault itself, but obviously it includes a lot of the same dark themes. It should be understandable even if you haven't read Kestrel_Wylde's fic; I wanted to make sure it would be accessible to people who want to read about Trevor's recovery without wanting to read the explicit noncon that precedes it.


Title: Kintsugi
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 15
Pairing: Chris/Trevor
Wordcount: 3,400
Summary: In the aftermath of being assaulted, Trevor tries to piece himself back together with the help of the drama society.
Warnings: Past noncon, mentions of misgendering.
Notes: A follow-up to Corrective by Kestrel_Wylde (mind the tags), written with permission. Trevor is transmasc.


When everything’s falling apart on stage, when it’s getting overwhelming, Trevor will take a breath and try to figure out what order to tackle things in. Fires and serious injuries get dealt with first, then set malfunctions, then minor injuries, then prop malfunctions, then whatever trivial fucking thing Robert is demanding from him this time.

Trevor opens his eyes. Stares up at his ceiling, the morning sunlight coming through windows he never shut the curtains on. The floor is uncomfortable under his back. His whole body is uncomfortable; there’s an ache somewhere below his stomach, his skin tight and wrong and wrong and wrong in a way he hasn’t felt since—

Fuck. Okay. First things first.

He climbs to his feet, slowly, painfully. There are hands on him. There aren’t hands on him; it’s over, it’s over.

It’s over. Which means it happened.

First things first: stumbling to the bathroom to throw up what little he has left in him, apparently.

Second things second, he guesses. He checks the entire flat. Doesn’t take long; it’s not a big place.

Nobody here. He’s on his own, thank fuck. And his spare key is still by the front door; that hasn’t been taken, although maybe he should still change the locks, just to be sure.

What next? He needs something to deal with, something concrete to do, or he’s just going to be thinking about—

God. Okay, there’s definitely something he needs to do; that fuckhead, that piece of fucking shit—

He heads for the door.

He reaches the door. He’s standing there, staring at the door.

It’s fine. He just has to get to the chemist’s. It’s barely any distance at all. It’s probably even normal for blokes to ask for it; they’ll just think he’s picking it up for his girlfriend or something. All he has to do is open the fucking door and step through it.

Fuck.

He grabs his phone.

Annie; it’ll have to be Annie. But what does he say to her?

He starts writing a message to her, deletes it four or five times. He ends up just standing there, staring at the words I was raped for a full minute, his thumb hovering over the send button.

Deletes it.

need morning after pill, he sends, in the end. bring here. And then, hastily, please?

He should do something else while he’s waiting for a response. Order new locks, or start on cleanup, last night’s vomit still there on the floor where it happened. But he’s just watching his phone screen, waiting for a response.

It comes within a few minutes.

Yeah no prob, can be there in an hour
Wild night? ;)

Trevor throws his phone onto the couch and heads to clean up the mess.

-
Trevor tenses up when there’s a knock on his door. That man was here, he knows where Trevor lives. Trevor’s not sure he’d even recognise him, he was so out of it last night. On the other side of that door, it could be – he might not even know if it’s—

He’s being stupid. He asked Annie to come over; it’ll be Annie.

He braces himself and opens the door.

“Morning!” Annie says, brightly. “Got your pill.”

She looks and sounds so fucking normal and familiar, and something inside Trevor breaks down. His throat tightens, his head swims, he brings a hand to his mouth – he can’t be about to throw up again, what the fuck is even left to bring up by this point—

“Trev?” Annie asks, alarmed, and—

He doesn’t mean to lash out at her. But he feels her hands on him, and in the moment all he can think of is getting away.

They stare at each other for a moment. Trevor’s hand is still raised. Annie is clasping her arm.

“Shit,” Trevor says. “Shit, did I hit you?”

“Okay,” Annie says, “something is seriously up with you.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” Annie says. “You’re not. What’s going on?”

He can’t talk about this. How the hell is he supposed to talk about this? What is he supposed to say; how is Annie going to look at him?

“Oh, God,” Annie says, softly, her eyes widening. “Is this to do with why you need the pill?”

And that’s it. The cat’s halfway out of the bag already, and all Trevor can do is stand there and watch it escape.

-
It feels like he’s describing something that happened to someone else, like he’s reading it from an autocue, discovering each detail as he says it aloud. He was drugged, it’s obvious, and yet it doesn’t really hit him until he’s telling Annie how hazy he was feeling, how time kept slipping away from him.

He leaves out some of the details. The things the man said, the things he made Trevor say. The words good girl are still in his ears, unbearably soft and gentle.

But he says enough. Too much, probably. Annie is staring at him, her hands over her mouth in horror, and some detached part of Trevor thinks, Oh, yeah, I guess this is really bad, isn’t it?

“Are you... okay?” Annie asks. Wide-eyed, hesitant.

Probably not, right? “I don’t know.”

Maybe a normal person would be crying right now. What does it say about him, that he’s not? Did he want it, really?

Maybe it just wasn’t that bad. It’s not like the guy really hurt him.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Annie says. “What’s his name?”

Fuck. It sounds like Annie thinks it’s that bad. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know if I could pick him out of a lineup. I...” He shrugs. “My head, y’know.”

Annie reaches out towards him. Trevor tenses a little, finds himself watching her arm like it’s an approaching snake.

She pulls her hand back. Breathes, deep and slow.

Trevor’s startled, and a bit embarrassed, to realise he can see tears at the edges of Annie’s eyes. It doesn’t seem like other people should have to cry for him when he can’t even cry for himself.

-
Annie asks for Trevor’s GP details, calls on his behalf to book in an STI screening. He hadn’t even thought about that.

“You eaten anything?” she asks, once she’s hung up.

She ends up making pancakes. Trevor sits there, watching all of it: the way she gathers together the ingredients, mixes them, starts frying. It feels good to see someone doing something so normal, somehow.

She insists on flipping them with a jerk of the pan, rather than using a spatula. At least forty percent of the pancakes end up on the counter or hob or floor at some point. It’s fine; Trevor’s not fussy.

He eats them without really tasting them. But at least he’s eaten something. It helps to settle his stomach a little, maybe.

-
They sit quietly for a while after breakfast, both of them on their respective phones. It feels awkward. Trevor’s spent plenty of time in silence with Annie, especially back when they were both part of the stage crew; it’s never felt uncomfortable before.

“Have you told anyone else?” Annie asks at last.

Trevor shakes his head. “Wasn’t even planning on telling you.”

“I’m glad you did,” Annie says. “I... I don’t know if I can do much to help, really. But... I don’t know. I’m just glad.”

She’s helping. He thinks she’s helping, at least. He doesn’t exactly feel good, but it’s probably better to have her here; he doesn’t like the thought of sitting here alone, nothing to do but think about this.

He doesn’t want to say this. But... “I guess I should tell Chris.”

It’s not like he and Chris are boyfriends, exactly. He doesn’t think they are, at least. But they’ve had... moments, a couple of tipsy nights celebrating after performances that were slightly less shit than usual, and, God, he can’t even think about those now. The buzz of the alcohol felt good, at the time, everything warm and fond and fun. He looks back now, and – was that real, were we thinking clearly, did I really want that, did he really want that—

No. He can’t think like that. It was different, it never left him feeling like this.

“I can be there,” Annie says. “When you tell him, I mean.”

-
“What’s the issue?” Chris asks, taking a seat next to Annie on Trevor’s couch. “Set, props, casting?”

Trevor stays standing, shifting on his feet. “I know we’ve, y’know, we’ve had a couple nights together. I figured I owed it to you to say something.”

Chris casts a quick, startled glance at Annie. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, mate, don’t do that. Okay? I can’t have people lying to me right now. I just need to know what’s real.”

“Trevor,” Chris says, “what are you doing?”

Trevor takes in a deep breath. “I had sex with someone else.”

Chris inhales, softly and sharply.

“Trevor!” Annie exclaims. “Chris, that is not what happened.”

“You’re—” Chris looks bewildered, so confused it’s hard to judge if he’s even hurt. “Trevor, you’re telling me you and Annie—?”

“Me and Annie?” Trevor echoes. “Annie? Wait, you think this is about me and Annie having some kind of wild night?”

Chris flushes. “Well, how else am I supposed to interpret this? You call me out here looking like the venue’s cancelled, you make this... bizarre confession about your love life, apparently Annie needs to be here for some reason – stop laughing!”

Trevor can’t stop laughing. He slumps into his broken-down armchair, his hand over his face, and laughs himself to tears.

“You want me to explain it to him, Chris?” Annie asks, hesitantly, once Trevor has spent a couple of minutes losing it.

Trevor waves a go ahead at her, still shaking with laughter. Probably the best option. He can’t function like this.

Annie gestures towards Trevor’s bedroom, with a significant look at Chris. From Chris’s sudden alarmed expression, he might have the wrong idea about why Annie is leading him towards a bed, and Trevor laughs harder.

-
Trevor’s calmed down by the time his bedroom door creaks open again. Or he’s stopped laughing, at least; maybe calmed down is the wrong phrase.

Chris seems a little unsteady as he walks out. He’s looking at Trevor like he’s just learnt Trevor’s dying. Trevor really doesn’t feel like laughing any more.

“I’m sorry,” Chris says. “I’m... I’m so sorry.”

Trevor shrugs. He doesn’t really know what to do with that.

“Do you... need a break from your drama society duties?” Chris asks. “I’m sure we’d be able to manage.”

That... that helps, actually. That’s a solid offer, that’s something real. Trevor can make sense of that.

“Nah, it’s fine,” he says. “Probably not a bad idea to have something to focus on.”

Chris raises his eyebrows. “Do you need more drama society duties? I can certainly oblige, in that case.”

Trevor nods. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

They spend a while ironing out what else Trevor can do for the next play. They don’t talk about what happened. Trevor catches Chris looking strangely at him sometimes, just stares at him until he drops his eyes.

Chris hesitates for a moment when he’s leaving, turns back, like he’s about to say something. But then he just leaves.

Fair enough. Trevor wouldn’t know what to say to himself either.

-
“Ah, Trevor.”

Robert accosts him the moment he enters the rehearsal room, and Trevor braces himself for whatever the man’s decided he needs now. A crown? An autocue? A spotlight following him specifically for the entire duration of the play?

“Trevor!” Annie grabs Trevor’s arm, tugging him out into the corridor, frantic, and Trevor just catches a glimpse of Robert’s outraged expression before the door closes on him.

“Shit,” Annie says, letting go of Trevor straight away, “sorry, I shouldn’t be touching you—”

“It’s fine.” It hadn’t made him think of that night at all, actually. He can handle being roughly pulled around; that’s something he’s honestly pretty familiar with in this drama society. The hands on him had been so – so gentle.

He’s thinking about it now, of course.

“I’m so sorry,” Annie is saying, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know how he found out, I think he must have bugged Chris’s dressing room—”

“Robert?” Trevor asks, something cold feathering down his spine. “Robert knows?”

If Robert knows, they all know. Or they will soon enough. Jesus.

He should just turn around, head back to his flat.

He doesn’t want to. It’s been getting to him, being on his own at home, staring at his stained floor. The drama society are a bunch of weirdos, but they’re weirdos he knows, and he’ll be safe in a room full of them. They’re not going to hurt him.

Or, if they do hurt him, it’ll be by accidentally dropping a prop on his head or something. He can deal with that.

-
Trevor manages to avoid Robert for most of the rehearsal; fortunately, Robert is easily distracted by any opportunity to act. But Trevor lingers a little longer than usual in the playhouse afterwards, bracing himself for the journey back to his flat, and—

“I heard you came to harm over the weekend.”

Fuck. It’s just him and Robert left, isn’t it? “Maybe. I fucked up, that’s all.”

“Physical weakness is a longstanding issue within the drama society,” Robert declares, “and it has become clear that something must be done. I will be offering a self-defence course on Tuesdays, with a generous discount for—”

“For fuck’s sake, Robert, stop talking,” Trevor mumbles, pressing his hands over his face.

“Excuse me?” Robert demands.

Trevor lets his hands fall, looks up at him. “I don’t wanna hear about what I should’ve done to stop it happening. It happened. If you can fix that, great. If not, you can piss off and leave me alone.”

“You won’t be taking the course?” Robert asks, frowning.

“No, I won’t be taking the sodding course.”

Robert’s frown deepens. “I suppose I’ll have to act as your bodyguard, in that case. It would be a great deal more convenient if you simply attended the course.”

“My bodyguard?” Trevor echoes.

“Well, this can’t happen again, obviously,” Robert says. “If you won’t protect yourself, I suppose I’ll have to protect you. Give me a call if you’re planning to go out alone.”

“Are you serious?” Trevor asks. “I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life cowering behind you. I just need to get over it.”

He needs to get over it. It’s what he finds himself telling himself a couple of evenings later, his hand hovering, poised to open his front door. If he wants to go to a pub, he’s just going to fucking do it. He’s not going to let his own head hold him back, or the tightness in his stomach, or—

He grits his teeth and calls Robert. “You want to go for a drink?”

“You’re availing yourself of my bodyguard services?” Robert asks.

“Fuck that. I’m just asking you for a drink.”

“I do also make excellent company.” Robert sounds pleased. “But, given that I’ll be there in any case, I’ll also ensure no ill befalls you.”

“If you mention the bodyguard thing again, you’re uninvited,” Trevor says. “Dead Duck in thirty.”

He hangs up. His breathing comes easier. He opens the door.

-
Trevor invites Chris to his flat over the phone. Winces at how hesitant Chris sounds when he accepts. It’s not hard to know what he’s thinking about.

Is it just going to be like this from now on? Everyone so hesitant and delicate around him, like Trevor’s some kind of glass ornament they’re holding at arm’s length in a pair of tongs? At least Robert’s still bulldozing through every conversation, the way he always has.

He’s not even sure why he asked Chris here until they’re sitting on his couch. Trevor finds his eyes drawn to the stain on his floor again; he’s done his best to get rid of it, but somehow it’s still lingering.

Honestly, a part of him just wants to yank up the floorboards and chuck them in the bin. At least he’d be able to burn the bedsheets if it had happened there.

Good girl.

“I need you to touch my scars,” he says.

Chris looks alarmed. “Your surgical scars?”

Trevor nods. “Yeah. I just thought, y’know—” Wait. Shit! “I mean, only if you want to.”

What if Chris doesn’t want to? What if Trevor’s just forcing him to—

Fuck.

“Well, I don’t object in principle,” Chris says, after a moment. “It’s just... are you sure? After what you went through, well...”

That’s why, Trevor absolutely is not going to say. I need to know the scars are still there. I need to know I’m still me. I need someone I can trust, so I know I’m not imagining things. Nothing feels real any more.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he says. “I don’t want the last person who touched them to’ve been...” He gestures, vaguely.

“All right, I suppose.” Chris glances around at the couch they’re sitting on. “Here? Or on – on the...? I suppose it might be better if we’re just standing up.”

“On the floor.” He doesn’t know he’s about to say it until it’s out of his mouth.

Chris looks at the floor. Looks at Trevor, his eyes slightly wider than usual. “Is that where...?”

Trevor just looks back at him. If Chris isn’t going to finish his question, he doesn’t have to answer it.

Chris shakes his head. “Somewhere else. Please.”

Of course he wouldn’t want that. Trevor feels sick with himself for asking, suddenly. “Sorry. You can go home, if you want.”

“I want to help,” Chris says. “I...” He takes in a breath. “If I can, I want to help you. I just don’t want to... be him.”

It makes Trevor wince. “You’re not him. I don’t think you could manage it if you tried.”

“Maybe just here? On the couch?” Chris reaches out, takes hold of the hem of Trevor’s tank top, tentative. Looks up at him, waiting for permission.

Trevor strips the top off himself. He’s not ready for anyone else to undress him, yet.

-
Chris’s hands are so gentle on his scars, so gentle, so fucking gentle, and it’s making Trevor feel sick. He was gentle, he could say, but that’s just going to make Chris feel like shit. It’s not his fault; he’s trying to help.

“Can you stop touching me like I’m gonna fall apart?” he asks, instead. “Just... be firmer. I can barely feel it.”

“Firmer?” Chris asks. “How firm?”

“I don’t know. Just... as firm as you can manage without punching a hole in my chest, basically.”

Chris lets out a quiet, nervous laugh. “Sounds like perhaps you should be asking Robert.”

Trevor snorts at that. “God, can you fucking imagine?”

It makes him feel a little better, maybe, being touched by someone he trusts. A little worse, too, if he’s honest. But at least it’s not doing nothing.

He’s wondering, a little, whether this might go further. Maybe a part of him wants it to. Maybe that would be a fucking terrible idea.

It’s probably not going to happen, anyway. There’s something almost consciously, carefully unsexual in the way Chris is touching him, something deliberately uncharged; he’s stroking firmly along Trevor’s scars like he’s stroking a cat. It’s bothering Trevor, a little. But he can’t just order Chris to put more heat into it; what kind of person...?

“How are you feeling?” Chris asks, quietly.

Trevor considers that. “Not completely shit.”

“Oh,” Chris says. And then, cautiously, “Is that... an improvement?”

Is it? He feels safe around Chris; he feels bad for putting Chris in such an awkward situation; he hates feeling like he’s being held so carefully at arm’s length; he can’t shake the memory of that fucking guy on top of him. It’s a complicated mix, and he’s not really sure if it adds up to an improvement.

But Chris wants to help him. His friends want to help him. It feels like that means something, whether they’re actually helping or not.

“I don’t know if that really matters,” Trevor says. And then, “Thanks.”