Falling Falling Stars

Efnisien is a victim who has done terrible things, and had terrible things done to him, trying to get his life back on track after spending time in a juvenile facility. Arden is a co-owner of a bookstore, who meets Efnisien one day and goes from thinking he's a homeless addict, to realising there's a lot more to this guy than meets the eye, and eventually a tentative friendship becomes something more.

Efnisien explores his new life, abandoned by people he loves, negotiating therapy, the difficulties of making friends, and falling in love when you're asexual and plagued with intrusive thoughts and the belief that you're the most evil person to have ever existed.

"Imagine me deciding to feel bad about everything I've ever done, and then imagine what kind of life I'll have. Because I'm not brave enough to live in some fucked up eighteen-hundreds-style purgatory. I'd rather die. There's no one who wants me, and there's no one who will. Which is exactly what someone like me deserves, isn't it?" A story about a broken boy, who is learning how not to break everything else around him.

Quick tropes/themes: Trauma recovery / Ace rep / Kink awakening / Found family / HEA (Happily ever after)

Content warnings: BDSM, graphic violence, PTSD, child abuse, graphic intrusive thoughts, historical animal cruelty and sexual molestation, revictimisation, disturbing themes.

Note: A spinoff to my other story, Spoils of the Spoiled, but you do not need to have read that to read this, and the stories can be read out of order.

[[Originally published on AO3 under the username @not_poignant - which is me, lol]]