ONESHOTS ⊳ gavin reed x reader

[Keeping homes]

[The second part to the child!Gavin fic. Enjoy, and please note that this takes place 7 years after the events of the previous chapter.]

Gavin felt the cold temperature of Elijah's sigh on the back of his hand, flinching when his brother pressed ice to his knuckles again.

"You won't be able to write your chemistry homework like this." He finally spoke up, breaking the silence, nimble hands working to bandage Gavin's knuckles as painlessly as possible. "You should stop getting into fights, Gav."

"And you should quit letting every fucking maggot beat you up." Gavin answered and took another tissue from the pile on their kitchen table, wiping his busted nose with it again, scoffing in disgust at the blood on it. "Seriously. Fight back for once."

"And get sent to the principal's office every two days like you do?" His brother chuckled. "No thanks."

"That happens because I always protect you." Gavin retorted. "It's not my fucking fault the entire school despises you."

"Well it's not my fault that I got placed in eleventh grade because of my highly above average results." Elijah shrugged, then looked up at Gavin through his lashes, seemingly satisfied with the work on his brother's knuckles and pulled away the ice pack.

"Weird flex but okay." Gavin grinned.

Elijah sighed. "Stop quoting memes."

"Stop being a stuck-up bitch, then, Eli." Gavin answered, playful sarcasm practically dripping off his sentence. "Come on, chill. You up for some PUBG?"

"Don't think you're in the position to play PUBG, much less go anywhere near your computer before you manage to pass chemistry this semester." The self-satisfied, well-concealed smirk was still unmissable for someone who knew Elijah as well as Gavin did.

"Asshole." He answered playfully.

"Retard."

"Your mom's a hoe." The boy shot back cheekily.

"We have the same mother, dumbass."

"No we don't." He answered, yet his voice had turned rather...quiet, in comparison to his fiery, playful tone from not more than a few seconds ago.

"Not this again." He could literally feel the suppressed anger just from his brother's way of spitting out the words. That was the main difference between them. Elijah internalized almost every single emotion, while Gavin didn't bother bottling them up, and instead let them explode, going with the (admittedly irrational) instructions he could make up out of his rage.

But Elijah was something else. The boy never used fists or physical violence to let out his anger. His rage was like poison seeping through a small cut before infecting everything in its path. Gavin knew that—knew Elijah. Better than anyone else. He knew how much his brother disliked the fact that he still hadn't accepted Molly as his mother. "She's done more for you than that whore, and you know it."

That was enough to make Gavin practically explode with anger. The chair squeaked against the floor as he stood up, slamming his hands down on the kitchen table. "You don't fucking get to talk about her like that."

"You always claim telling the truth is the best thing to do. So why not accept the truth about Emilia?"

"You're a fucking piece of shit, Elijah Kamski, and I hope you know that." Gavin clenched his hands into fists, then added. "It's our first year of highschool and everyone hates us already."

"Correction, the third for me."

"Correction, everyone hates you."

For less than a millisecond, he saw Elijah's eyes glisten almost hurtfully, just the way they had when they were younger and he had hurt himself falling down from a tree. Gavin knew that look, and that it meant he had struck a nerve.