Chapter Text
Tell Me Where It Hurts by MYMP (4:19)
“Give me a chance to put back all the pieces, take your broken heart, make it just like new. There’s so many things that I can do.”
—
The first time Cook hears it, he thinks he’s only dreaming.
He turns over in his bunk to blink blearily at the roof of the tour bus—and he hears it again.
It strikes at his heart like nothing else.
“Archie?” Cook calls out softly.
The sniffling stops immediately, and Cook frowns. He rolls out of his bunk and climbs to the top to where the boy is curled into a lonely looking ball in the middle of the bed.
Cook settles himself at the foot of the bunk, letting Archie know he’s there before he speaks.
“Do you…” Cook hesitates. “Do you need some company?”
He sees the way Archie’s body stiffens at that question, and Cook wonders if he has crossed a boundary he isn’t supposed to.
He’s ready to slide back down to his bunk, because… because he doesn’t have a right to this, does he? Who is he, really, in Archie’s life?
“Please,” he hears Archie suddenly whisper, and Cook’s heart suddenly breaks at such a weak sound.
Gently, he crawls over to the space Archie makes for him, and Archie immediately rolls over to curl against him. Surprised, Cook wraps his arms around the shaking boy, and suddenly wants, more than anything in this world, to take away whatever it is that’s making him cry like this.
It doesn’t matter if he won’t ever know what it is.
What matters… is that he can make Archie stop hurting.