Just Like Stamps » Places

         Mason was almost sad when the little creature crawled off him and returned to its true owner… friend…whatever, but flashed a genuine smile at Austin nonetheless. He appreciated the attention, especially because Reni was currently unhappy with him. It was cute to watch the way Austin put his face right up the mouse, undeterred by the chance of being bitten or catching some disease or something. He wondered what Austin was like in normal circumstances, in the real world. If he was as gentle or kind. If Mason would have thought he was cute, not just the way he acted with something small and furry. But such thoughts didn’t get them anywhere here. He accepted that, and the thought passed just as quickly as it had come.

“You named it G?” Mason asked curiously, his voice quiet due to his paranoia of speaking too loudly. “Does it stand for something?” He thought about adding how cool he thought it was that Austin was sharing his hand-sanitizer with the girls, but in the end wasn’t quite sure how to shift the mouse-centered conversation to Austin’s selflessness, so he said nothing. But as he looked at their cuts and bruises and contemplated this, he realized he was probably in far better shape than most of them. True, he’d been there a shorter time than most of them, and he wasn’t without injuries. The bruise on his back from the door, a broken thumb that was clearly setting wrong and would probably be crooked forever, a thin cut here and there and sore spots that never seemed to completely heal. But he had nothing that made him worry, nothing that kept him up at night. In fact, the nightmares he had about the Collector were never ones where he was violent. The pain had never compared to the fear of what he could do. One broken foot that healed about as well as his thumb, and he would never dance again. But so far, that hadn't happened. Mason wasn’t sure if that was because he’d been lucky, or he just hadn’t made him angry enough for real torture yet. Or if he was just saving up for something even worse.

Mason put his focus back to Austin then, not wanting to think about it anymore.