Flowers Among Thorns || Bob's Burgers

4- Hands

Trigger Warnings: mentions of suicide, anxiety, and rape.

Day Two

Bob

"DON'T TAKE HER FROM ME!" I scream over the phone, my body shaking in emotion.

"You're too late, Mr. Belcher. I took her. I deflowered your...little girl. And you'll never see her again." Tina's captor replies menacingly.

"TINA I LOVE YOU! I LOVE-" He hangs up, leaving me to fall to the floor in despair.

"OH GOD!" I cry. Linda runs into the restaurant, having heard from upstairs. "I heard screaming! Bob, it's not even 8 am!"

"T-T-Tina..." I whimper.

"What's going on?! Did the police call?!" She asks, sitting on the floor next to me.

"He..." I gag just thinking about what I was told by my child. "He... r-r-r"

"What, Bobby?!" Linda shakes my shoulders.

She nearly faints from the anticipation of it all, but like the coward I am, I beat her to it, falling into darkness.

...

I wake up in a restaurant booth, sitting up. "Wha?" I mumble, my head spinning.

"We couldn't drag you up to stairs but you've been out for just a couple a minutes." Zeke says.

"Zeke...she...Tina, she-" I try to tell him.

"I know. Mrs. Belcher told me. And the police are comin' to investigate what's goin' on." He looks stressed, but hopeful.

How could I possibly break his heart in such a way? To tell him his girlfriend has been...raped. There's no way to break it to him softly. And God knows I can't hurt Linda. I'd forever feel guilty. But what choice do I have?

"Z-Zeke..." I mumble in devastation. "She...She was r-r-raped."

Zeke goes pale, clenching both his fists and his jaw. "Wh-What?"

"I...I c-can't...Oh God..." I heave.

He paces, punching the countertop. "Fuck...FUCK!"

I didn't know a young boy like him could cry the way he is in this moment. But here he is, the tough wrestler, drowning in an ocean of tears shed from heartbroken eyes so full of pain that he looks to have aged twenty years.

I wish I could say Zeke's reaction is the worst it got. But I know better. I knew that I'd utter the words and break my wife's heart and soul with one phrase. Tina was raped. Her daughter. Her baby. Our baby.

Linda falls into me, her body seeming to fold into itself. And with a crushing wail of grief, I watch as the love of my life becomes forever scarred. "Bob...Bob, No! You're lying to me! YOU'RE LYING TO ME!"

I say nothing, holding her with shaky hands. Only holding my wife in my arms can tame the anxiety. I am consumed with grief and guilt that I have never known before. And I have no idea what to do. But holding her keeps my hands from doing something self-destructive.

Like when I was a child and the only thing that could help me then was when my mother would hold my hands in hers, telling me everything would be alright. But I don't have her now. And I haven't had her for a long long time. I'd give anything to hear her calming voice once more.

I was ten when my father told me she died in her sleep. Which was somewhat true. She took pills and never woke up. I can't imagine it was as peaceful as he made it sound though. And I hadn't even known it was a suicide until I was sixteen.

The way I found out was the worst part. I had even found her when she died, thinking she was just asleep. But at sixteen, I found her suicide note inside the music room my father never let me inside.

My mother had a room in our home dedicated to music. A baby grand piano being her favorite thing to play. There was one piece she'd always play that I never knew the name of, but it often calmed the anxiety both she and I had.

She'd play when I got home from school and we weren't working in the family restaurant. And my father would even dance. He was happy then. An unbroken man with a family that didn't know tragedy.

I was at home while my father was late in traffic, and my own anxiety began to peak. Thinking of my mother, I practically broke the door down just to return to the familiar space she'd play songs for me in.

Opening the songbook I hadn't seen in the six years since the day she died, my eyes fall upon a page that falls out and drifts to the floor without a sound. It was her suicide note. It told me to be brave. And that she loved me. That it wasn't my fault.

It wasn't my fault.

Whenever my dad got drunk, he painted a much different picture. Of course, he'd soon forget the stinging words he'd spoken the night before, but the words lingered in my mind regardless. He blamed me.

If I had this note in middle school, I wouldn't have been so full of regret and pain, thinking I was a bad son. That I had killed my mother. And my dad still hasn't apologized. For years of self-loathing that easily could have been avoided by showing me her note.

I guess he just had to blame someone other than her and himself. But I know for a fact my mom wouldn't have wanted that for a second. She loved me. Goddamnit, she loved me. I was her world and she was mine.

So with my stupid fucking shaky hands, I dropped the note to the floor and raced to do something. Anything to take the pain of this discovery away. So I got a knife from the kitchen and slit my wrists in the bathtub.

My father came home to his son bleeding out, basically half dead. But when I woke up in the hospital, all that came were angry tears. Not sad. Not even happy ones to show his relief that I was alive, though I know he was glad.

We never spoke about it after that. Not about my mom's note, my attempt, or that he'd nearly lost his only child. And any shred of decency he shows now is only for the sake of the kids and Linda. Though I'd like to believe he loves me in his own way.

So here I am with my shaky hands, holding Linda to stop myself from doing something worse. Something irreversible. My hands are calloused now from years of cooking, most of the burns earned from being an anxious idiot.

Even Linda doesn't know the extent of my anxiety. It flares up in moments of fear or grief, and right now I'm feeling both, struggling to control my breathing. I seek a sense of control I simply cannot have.

I want control over this man Tina called The Gardener. I want the control to take her away from his sick abuse and just hold her for the rest of my life. But I just...can't. And that's incredibly difficult for me to admit.

My baby is somewhere I can't reach her. So just as always, my hands fucking shake.

I wish these hands could be holding Tina right now. Keeping her safe from all of this. Wiping her tears as I shed my own.

Or around The Gardener's throat.

A/N: this feels like a really short chapter but I wrote it on my laptop so IDK. Thanks for reading. I lost this entire chapter last night and had to rewrite it. My soul may have died. And I feel like the first draft was better than this one, but I tried.