Chapter Text
Tina Belcher woke up to somebody shouting her name.
She'd been worried that either Gene or Louise were crying for her after they had woken up from a scary nightmare, until she realized that whoever had been shouting her name wasn't anybody from her family. She recognized their voice from somewhere, and after a few seconds she'd realized that it was Zeke. Why would Zeke be standing outside her window and shouting her name when everybody was asleep?
Tina found her glasses and sleepily dragged herself from her bed. She hoped that nothing serious was going on. Like, if her family's house caught on fire and Zeke happened to walk by at exactly the right second to warn her family before they were all burned alive, or if Tina had somehow slept through a zombie apocalypse and they were the only survivors still alive.
Zeke was shouting from below her bedroom window. Tina walked over and looked down to ask him what he was doing outside her bedroom window so late.
"Zeke?" Tina shouted down to him. They probably should have stopped shouting at each other unless they wanted to wake up her family.
"Tina! I was hopin' you'd be awake," Zeke said. He looked surprised that Tina had answered him at all.
Tina decided that any reason Zeke had to be standing outside her bedroom window and shouting for her couldn't have been serious or life-threatening because he would have told her right away if it was. She still didn't understand why he was standing outside her bedroom window when they were both supposed to be asleep, but Tina could only ask him one question at a time.
"You woke me up," Tina said. "Why are you standing outside my bedroom window, Zeke? Is something wrong?"
"You got any toothpaste I can borrow?"
Tina blinked. "You walked over to my house in the middle of the night and stood outside my bedroom window shouting my name... because you wanted to ask me for toothpaste?"
Zeke didn't reply for a few seconds. He stood there awkwardly and looked down at his feet before he finally spoke up. "If you don't have any toothpaste I can borrow, I understand. Jus' figured I would ask."
"No—No, I'll get you toothpaste from our bathroom cupboard and meet you by the entrance of our house. Do you want kids' toothpaste or regular? Louise hates brushing her teeth with regular mint-flavor toothpaste, so we usually have both."
"Regular is alright," Zeke told her.
Tina walked to their bathroom and found toothpaste for Zeke in their cupboard before meeting up with Zeke outside of their house. She was still wearing her ugly laundry-day pajamas, and her hair was completely tangled because she hadn't brushed it since she'd gone to bed a few hours earlier, but Tina decided that if Zeke was going to come over to her house and wake her up to ask for toothpaste he didn't have any reasoning for judging how she looked or what she'd been wearing.
"Here's your toothpaste," Tina said awkwardly as she handed Zeke his toothpaste. You can keep it, uh, if you want to. My dad buys our toothpaste in bulk at the restaurant supply store because he says that it's cheaper that way. We always have extra toothpaste that we don't need in our bathroom cupboard."
"Thanks, T."
"Why didn't you wait until tomorrow to ask for toothpaste?" Tina asked him.
She didn't understand why Zeke was asking her for toothpaste to begin with, and she thought he would've asked Jimmy Junior or another friend if he really needed toothpaste that desperately, but it was easier for Tina if she didn't start asking him too many questions. It wasn't that big of a deal, and her family did have A LOT of toothpaste.
"I ain't gonn' be here tomorrow," Zeke replied.
He was looking at Tina as if that answered her question, instead of raising even more questions that needed answering. Zeke had always been a little weird and she didn't understand what he was talking about sometimes, but this conversation was different than before. Tina was seriously starting to worry about him.
"What do you mean?" Tina leaned against their door frame as she asked him this. Zeke was the only age-appropriate boy from school that she couldn't remember ever having a crush on, and that led to her being less anxious and more confident when around him than with anybody else. She genuinely thought of Zeke as her classmate and friend, and nothing else.
"I'm runnin' away. I only realized I forgot to pack toothpaste for myself after I'd already left my house. That's why I'm askin' you so late. I would have asked J-Ju but he's stayin' with his dad this week, and it's a lot harder to sneak into an apartment without wakin' up his family and startin' trouble. Your folks are cool, right?"
"I don't think they'd have a problem with me giving away toothpaste," Tina shrugged.
Tina was lucky that her mother and father were usually understanding when she did something that got herself or her siblings into trouble, and that they trusted her enough to ask why she'd done something before they punished her. She knew that not everybody had a family who were understanding or willing to listen to what they had to say.
"Why are you running away?"
Tina wasn't stupid. Zeke and her had never been close friends, but even she knew that his home life was troubled. His biological mother was more concerned with drugs, sex and alcohol than she was with her own son, and his father had anger issues and a drinking problem. He punished Zeke when he didn't deserve that. Cheryl was supportive of him, but she had her own issues and Zeke had mentioned before that she would disappear for days at a time without contacting her family or letting them know if she was okay. Zeke's family didn't have a lot of money to begin with, and Tina knew that Jimmy Junior always paid for him when their school was planning a field trip or they were going to Wonder Wharf together.
Zeke's home life was obviously troubled, even without Tina knowing all the details, but he'd never talked about running away before.
He talked about wishing that he was allowed to move in with his grandmother in her retirement home, but Tina always assumed that he was joking because he had such a close relationship with his grandmother and wanted to spend more time with her.
Zeke didn't respond to her question. Tina looked at him and realized that he had several painful-looking bruises and dry blood underneath his nose. She was hoping they were injuries from yesterday's wrestling practice with Jimmy Junior.
"I don't wann' talk about it," Zeke finally said. He sounded nervous, which was very unusual for Zeke. "Thanks for gettin' toothpaste for me, Tina. I'll be outta yer hair."
Tina had started to wake up her exhausted brain and she realized that if she let Zeke walk away from her, she was never going to see him again. She didn't know if he was safe, or if he had an actual plan for where he was going to go if he ran away. She didn't want him to walk around hungry and alone in the dark of Seymour's Bay.
She needed to do something.
"Wait—Zeke! Why don't you come inside and I'll get something for you to eat? Are you hungry?" Tina asked.
"It's alright, T-Bird. I don't wann' trouble you for any longer than I already have," Zeke took a step backwards from where he'd been standing and raised his hands in defense.
"You wouldn't be giving me any trouble, Zeke. I'm already awake. My family wouldn't mind if I got you a snack from the kitchen. How long have you been outside?"
"I decided to run away after my dad and Cheryl were asleep, and it's been—uh, I don't know? A few hours since all of that happened. It's not all bad, though. I was sitting on the beach outside of Wonder Wharf and thinkin' about where I'm headed to next when I realized that I forgot to pack toothpaste for myself. That's when I decided to ask if you had any, 'cause I knew that your house was nearby."
"Did you eat dinner?"
"Nah, my dad was gettin' angry with me and I didn't want to risk goin' downstairs and seein' him," Zeke replied.
He talked about this like it was a normal life experience that every teenager had, and that there was nothing wrong with somebody being so scared of their father that they would skip eating dinner to avoid having to talk to him. Tina couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to be afraid of her own mother or father, and she was beginning to realize what a privilege that was.
Tina felt sick to her stomach.
"I'm going to get you something to eat," Tina told Zeke.
She began walking back upstairs, and to her surprise Zeke closed the door behind him and followed her without any further argument. He was hungrier than she'd thought he'd been.
A few minutes later, Zeke was sitting at their kitchen table and eating cookies that Tina had found in their cupboard. They belonged to her mother and she wasn't supposed to touch them without asking, but Tina decided that using them to feed a hungry friend who was running away from home was an exception to that rule. Nobody was going to get angry at her for giving cookies to Zeke. Everybody in her family loved him. Tina knew that her father had grown closer with Zeke during that week when he'd taught Home Economics at their school, and her siblings always said that Zeke was hilarious and fun to be around, even though Gene still wasn't a huge fan of his physical aggression and wrestling.
Even if she'd been giving food to somebody annoying and rude like Tammy was, Tina's family still wouldn't be angry at her. Tina didn't like Tammy either, but if somebody came to her asking for help she was going to help them without asking them any questions. It was the right thing to do.
Tina started talking as she looked through her family's kitchen for something else that Zeke could have. "You don't have to tell me why you're running away if you don't want to, but could you at least tell me where you're planning to go? I don't want to... are you still going to go to our school? Does Jimmy Junior know?"
"Nah, J-Ju was asleep when I texted him. He'll know I'm runnin' away when he wakes up. I don't know where I'm goin' yet, but I figured that it's Friday afternoon so I have all weekend to decide without gettin' in trouble for skippin' out on school."
"It's Saturday morning," Tina corrected him. She gave Zeke a bag of chips and sat down next to him at their kitchen table, stealing a cookie from him in the process. "I don't think that it's a good idea to run away if you don't actually know where you're going or how you're going to get there. What if something bad happens to you?"
"Look, Tina... I couldn't live at that house anymore, and I know that my mom doesn't give a crap about me. I don't want to run away, but what else am I supposed to do?"
Zeke looked so defeated, and it broke Tina's heart. She wanted to have an answer for what he was supposed to do, or where he should go. She wanted to be a responsible adult who could do something to help him and keep him safe, but she was just his classmate and she wasn't prepared for anything like this. She had no idea what she would do if she was in Zeke's situation.
"I don't know," Tina told him. "You don't have to go back to living with your dad and Cheryl, but I don't want you running away if you don't have an actual plan. I care about you, Zeke. I don't want something bad to happen to you, and I don't want you getting yourself hurt."
She avoided looking at the bruises on his body as she said this. Tina knew that there was a lot more to Zeke's story than she knew about or that she could ever understand, but that would have to be a conversation for tomorrow, or for whenever Zeke was ready. Tonight she just wanted to know that Zeke was safe, and that he wasn't going to do anything impulsive or dangerous. Her mother and father would have a better idea about what Zeke should do in this situation, or where he could go if he couldn't go back to his father.
Tina suddenly had an idea.
"You can sleep at my house for tonight, and we can figure everything out tomorrow," Tina said.
Zeke was immediately defensive. "No, Tina. You already got me toothpaste, and these cookies and a bag of chips. I don't wann' ask for anything else from you. Besides, would your folks even be alright with a stranger sleepin' in your house?"
"You aren't a stranger, Zeke! My family already knows who you are, and I'm sure that they would understand if I explained the situation to them. I would rather you spend tonight at my house. If you left and slept outside tonight, I wouldn't be able to sleep because I would be awake worrying about you and if you were okay. This would be better for both of us."
Tina was surprised that they hadn't woken up her family with their loud conversation, but she wasn't going to start asking questions. She would rather they both went back to sleep and talked about everything in the morning while they were eating breakfast, because she was starting to feel exhaustion creeping back into her body and she wanted to go to bed.
"Where would I even sleep?" Zeke asked.
"You could sleep on the couch, or you could sleep in my room," Tina said. "Actually, it would probably be a better idea if you slept in my room. I'm not sure how my family would respond if they woke up and found somebody sleeping on the couch, and they didn't know who it was or how they got here. If you sleep in my bedroom, I can explain everything to them."
"Yeah, you're right," Zeke agreed. He seemed to have accepted that he would be sleeping at Tina's house, and she was happy that she wouldn't have to fight him about that. She was worried about him, and she didn't want anything bad to happen to her friend.
Zeke yawned and Tina realized that he was even more exhausted than she was because he hadn't slept at all, and he'd been standing outside in the cold. They should both go to sleep.
Tina walked back to her bedroom with Zeke following behind her and looking more exhausted with every second that passed. He didn't brush his teeth with the toothpaste she gave him before going to bed, and Tina thought that was funny because it was the reason that he came to her house to begin with. She was happy that he did.
"Your bedroom has a lot of horses, Tina," Zeke said as they walked into her bedroom. He dropped his backpack onto the floor and pointed at one of her horse posters. "I like it."
"Thank you. I can give you an official tour of all my horses tomorrow, if you want. I have a backstory for all of them, and they all have names too," Tina smiled. Nobody that she was friends with ever seemed to be very interested in her horses when they came over, and even Gene and Louise were getting sick of hearing her talk about the backstories and personalities of her horses over and over again.
"Sure," Zeke yawned again. "Where am I supposed to sleep?"
Tina hadn't thought her plan all the way through because she realized that there wasn't anywhere in her bedroom for Zeke to sleep. He could sleep on the floor with cushions from their couch, but that honestly sounded more uncomfortable than sleeping outside. Tina had slept on the floor at sleepovers before and she always woke up with horrible pain in her back. They had sleeping bags somewhere, but Tina couldn't remember where they were and she was too exhausted to go looking for them. She wanted to go to bed, and try to sleep for a few hours before it was time for her to wake up.
They weren't having a sleepover but Tina's brain was pretending that they were, so that she didn't have to think about the real reason Zeke was sleeping at her house, which was because he didn't have anywhere else safe to go.
"You can sleep in my bed," Tina said.
"Where would you sleep?"
"Oh, I guess I didn't think about that. I could sleep in my bed, too. Gene, Louise and I have sleepovers in my bedroom, and they both sleep in my bed with me, uh, so you'll probably be okay," Tina shrugged. She was too exhausted to think any harder about sleeping arrangements, and she could tell that Zeke felt the same way. "Hopefully you don't fall out of bed."
Zeke laughed, and Tina was happy to see him smiling again. "Wouldn't be the first time."
Tina climbed into her bed and Zeke followed behind her. There wasn't a lot of room for them to stretch out or move around, but they both fit well enough and as long as they had a pillow under their heads and a blanket over their bodies, neither of them cared about where they were sleeping. Tina had a lot to worry about when it came to Zeke, but that would be a problem for tomorrow.
All that she needed to focus on right now was falling asleep with Zeke's arms wrapped tightly around her. She could hear him snoring loudly in her ear.
She wasn't going to question him cuddling with her, because she knew that he was a very physically affectionate person and that he probably needed to be comforted by somebody who he knew was safe. He acted like he was totally fearless and never scared of anything, but she knew that he was even more terrified than she was and that he had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
If falling asleep while cuddling Tina helped him with those terrifying emotions and all the pain that he'd experienced in his life, she didn't mind that at all.