Chapter 40: The Workshop Confrontation
The sawdust was a golden haze in the late afternoon sun, swirling in the thick beams of light that cut through the workshop windows. Willum ran the fine-grit sandpaper along the curve of the maple table leg, his movements rhythmic, practiced. The wood was singing under his hands, smooth and cool.
A familiar weight shifted on his left shoulder. Josh, perched there, his own small hands tracing the muscle movements in Willum’s neck. He’d been quiet for a while, just watching the grain emerge from the cloud of dust, his tail draped down Willum’s back like a lifeline.
“That’s gonna be a sexy leg,” Josh commented, his voice cutting through the soft scritch-scritch of sanding.
“It’s for a dining table, Josh. It’s supposed to be sturdy, not sexy.”
“Can be both,” Josh said with a grin, leaning out to poke the wood. “Like you.”
Willum huffed a laugh, shaking his head, which made Josh grab onto his ear for balance. The warmth of the small body against his neck, the utter normality of the moment, was a blanket. This was their life. The constant, teasing intimacy of the last week still hummed just under his skin, but here, in the quiet of his work, it had settled into a contented glow. He felt… owned. In the best way.
The sound of the workshop door crashing open against the wall was a physical shock.
The peace shattered like glass.
Willum jerked upright, the sandpaper falling from his hand. Sawdust plumed. Josh’s tail tightened around his neck, a sudden, instinctive cinch.
A man filled the doorway. He was tall, almost as tall as Willum, but built thicker, with a bulldog jaw and a face flushed deep red. His clothes were expensive but rumpled, his eyes scanning the cluttered space with a look of pure, boiling contempt. Willum didn’t recognize him, but the shape of the eyes, the set of the brow—it sent a cold trickle down his spine.
His gaze landed on Willum, then snapped to his shoulder. To Josh.
“There you are,” the man snarled. His voice was like gravel in a cement mixer.
On his shoulder, Josh went perfectly, terribly still. Willum felt the tiny, rapid-fire pulse against his neck.
“Mr. Mattison,” Josh breathed, the words barely a whisper of air. It wasn’t a question.
The man—Josh’s father—stormed into the workshop, his heavy boots kicking up little clouds of sawdust. “You think you can just take my son?” he spat, advancing. “You think you can just hide him out here in your… your hobby shack?”
The other pipkins, who had been scattered around the room—Patrick on a shelf examining a drill bit, Malcolm on the bench reviewing a contract, Tyler sketching in a dusty corner—vanished. Not a sound. They were experts at disappearing when humans who weren’t Willum came in. But they were there. Willum could feel their watchful panic in the air.
Willum slowly set the table leg down on the bench. He positioned himself squarely between the advancing man and the rest of the room. His heart was hammering, a frantic drum against his ribs, but his hands were steady. He willed his voice to be calm.
“Josh isn’t a possession, Mr. Mattison. He can’t be taken.” He kept his tone even, low. “He chose to live here. This is his home.”
“Home?” Mattison barked a harsh, humorless laugh. He was close now, close enough for Willum to smell stale coffee and expensive cologne undercut with sweat. “This is a dump. He’s a Mattison. He belongs with his family. Not as some… some pet for a lumberjack.”
The word ‘pet’ hit the air like a slap. Willum’s jaw tightened. He felt Josh flinch.
“I’m not a pet,” Josh said, his voice stronger than Willum expected. It trembled, but it was clear. He didn’t crawl to hide. He stayed on Willum’s shoulder, his small body a defined silhouette against the window light. His tail was a vice around Willum’s throat.
“You’re a disgrace,” Mr. Mattison shot back, his eyes glaring at his son. “Running off to live on a giant. Climbing like a common squirrel. We had plans for you. Real plans. And you threw it all away for this… this charity case.” He waved a dismissive hand at Willum.
“The plans were to marry me off to the Prentice girl for your merger,” Josh shot back, the old hurt sharpening his words. “I was a business transaction. At least here, I’m a person.”
“You’re a pipkin!” his father roared, taking another step forward. The workbench shook. “A two-inch-tall liability! And you’ve shackled yourself to another one! A giant one, but just as useless! Do you pay him rent?” He turned his furious gaze back on Willum. “Do you even charge them? Or do you just let them crawl all over you, taking up space, eating your food, for free?”
The fear in Willum’s gut began to solidify into something colder, harder. This wasn’t just anger. This was the toxic heart of every quiet worry his friends had ever whispered in the dark. This man was giving voice to the monster under all their beds.
“They’re my family,” Willum said, the words flat and final. “What they contribute isn’t your business.”
“Family?” Mattison sneered. “They’re strays. You collect strays because you’re too weak to have a real life. My son is not a stray. He’s coming home. Now.”
He reached out, a thick, meaty hand aiming not for Willum, but for Josh.
It happened in a blur.
Willum’s hand snapped up, intercepting Mattison’s wrist. He didn’t grab, didn’t shove. He just blocked. His carpenter’s grip was immovable, clamping down on the man’s arm, stopping it dead in the air between them.
“Don’t,” Willum said. One word. It wasn’t loud. But it filled the room. The calm was gone. What was left in his voice was a quiet, terrifying bedrock. “You do not touch him.”
Mr. Mattison tried to yank his arm back. Willum held it. For a long, shock-filled second, they were locked, the bigger man struggling against the lean, unyielding strength in Willum’s hold. The anger in Mattison’s eyes flickered, diluted by a shot of surprise, then rage.
“You have no right!” Mattison shouted, spittle flying.
“I have every right,” Willum said, his eyes locked on the man’s. He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a tone Josh had never heard before. It was the sound of a foundation cracking. “He was shivering in a public park bathroom when I found him. He hadn’t eaten in three days. He thought he was a burden for needing a single grape. You did that. You don’t get to call him family now. You lost that.”
He released the man’s wrist with a slight, deliberate push.
Mr. Mattison staggered back a step, clutching his wrist as if it were burned. He looked from Willum’s set, furious face to Josh, who was staring at his human, his blue eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe.
The father’s expression crumpled, not into sadness, but into a mask of bitter, final disdain. “Fine. You want him? You keep him. He’s dead to me. A dead, climbing, giant-fucking loser.”
He turned on his heel, his shoulders hunched. At the door, he paused, throwing one last look over his shoulder. It wasn’t at Josh. It was at Willum. “They’ll leave, you know. When something better comes along, or when they finally realize what a pathetic crutch you are. They always do.”
He slammed the door behind him. The boom reverberated through the workshop, shaking the tools on the walls, settling the dust once more.
Silence.
A thick, painful silence.
Willum stood there, breathing hard, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. The adrenaline coursed through him, a sharp, metallic taste in his mouth. The awful words hung in the sawdust-thick air. A pathetic crutch.
Then, a tiny, broken sound from his shoulder.
He turned, his own anger evaporating into instant, breathless concern. Josh was still perched there, but he was curled in on himself, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, ragged sobs.
“Josh. Hey. Josh, look at me.”
Gently, so gently, Willum brought his hand up, cupping it beside his shoulder. Josh didn’t move. Willum could feel the tremors running through the small body.
From their hiding places, the others emerged. Patrick scrambled down from the shelf, his face pale. Malcolm stood on the bench, his contract forgotten. Tyler peeked out from behind a timber, his grey eyes huge.
They gathered on the workbench in front of Willum, a silent, stunned audience.
“He’s wrong,” Willum whispered, his voice rough. He stroked a single finger down Josh’s back. “You hear me? Every word was wrong.”
Josh shook his head, a minute, desperate motion. “H-he said… what you’re afraid of,” he choked out, his voice muffled by his hands. “He said it out loud.”
And there it was. The poison, injected straight into the vein.
Willum closed his eyes. He felt laid bare, gutted. His deepest, most secret fear had just been shouted by a stranger in his safe place. It gave the fear a shape, a voice, a terrible credibility.
He opened his eyes and looked at the four of them—Patrick, solemn and scared; Malcolm, analytical but deeply shaken; Tyler, radiating empathetic pain; and Josh, shattered on his shoulder.
“He gave voice to a lie,” Willum said, forcing the words past a tight throat. He wasn’t sure if he believed them, but he had to say them. For them. “I’m not a crutch. This isn’t charity. This is my choice. You are my choice. Every single day.”
He lifted his finger, nudging Josh gently. “Come here.”
Slowly, Josh uncurled. His face was streaked with tears, his breathing hitching. He crawled onto Willum’s waiting palm. Willum brought him close, holding him right before his face, a warmth in the cup of his hand.
“You are not a liability. You are not a burden.” Willum spoke directly to him, but the words were for all of them. “You’re the guy who turns my body into a climbing gym. You’re the one who laughs while hanging from my nipple. You’re the bravery I don’t have.” His voice broke. “You’re my best friend. And no one, no one, gets to take you from me or make you feel small. Not even me.”
Josh looked up at him, at the warm brown eyes that were now glassy with unshed tears. He saw no pity. Only a fierce, protective love, and a matching, shared hurt.
He launched himself forward, wrapping his arms and tail as far as they would go around Willum’s thumb, holding on like he was clinging to a cliff in a storm. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered into the skin. “Never.”
The others piled onto Willum’s hand then, a heap of small, loyal warmth. Patrick pressed his forehead against Willum’s knuckle. Malcolm just held on. Tyler tucked himself into Josh’s side.
They stayed there in the quiet workshop, as the sun slid lower, painting the sawdust blood-orange. The confrontation was over, but the battlefield was inside them now. The words were out. The fear had a name.
But in the cradle of Willum’s hand, held close to his heartbeat, they did the only thing they could. They held on tighter.
They held on tighter.
The workshop held its breath around them, dust motes dancing in the dying sunbeams like unsettled sparks. Willum stood there, a statue with a living, trembling heart cupped in his palms. The slam of the door still vibrated in the timber, in their bones. His own rage had cooled into a heavy, leaden ache in his stomach, and the echo of those final, cruel words—pathetic crutch—scratched at the inside of his skull.
“Okay,” Willum said, his voice a rough scrape that broke the silence. He took a deep, shuddering breath that lifted the four of them on his palm. “Okay. We’re done here for today.”
He moved then, not with the frantic energy of the confrontation, but with a slow, deliberate care that felt like an act of defiance against the chaos. With his left hand, he began to clean up. He slung a rag over his shoulder, swept curls of maple into a dustpan with two broad strokes, and capped a bottle of linseed oil. All of it one-handed.
His right hand never opened. He kept it cupped snugly over his heart, a protective cage of fingers, his thumb gently curved over the small, warm bodies huddled within. He could feel the individual points of contact—Josh’s face still pressed against his life line, Patrick’s tail wrapped around his wrist, Malcolm’s steadying presence, Tyler’s faint tremble.
“You’re squeezing a bit, big guy,” Patrick murmured from inside the warm, dark space. There was no complaint in it, just a soft calibration.
Willum loosened his grip by a millimeter. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
With the bench cleared, the tools hung, Willum turned off the shop lights. The room fell into deep blue shadow, the last of the sun glowing along the edges of the windows. He walked to the door, his work boots loud on the floorboards, locked it, and pocketed the key. The simple, physical acts were a ladder he climbed out of the adrenaline pit.
He moved through the dim house, up the creaking stairs. The silence among them now was different from before—not shocked, but pooled, deep and reflective. He shouldered open the bathroom door and flipped the light on, the bright white tiles and chrome a stark contrast to the woody workshop gloom.
“We’re a mess,” he said, finally opening his hand before the sink.
They tumbled out onto the cool porcelain, a jumble of limbs and tails, all of them coated in a fine, gingery layer of sawdust. They looked like tiny, mythical creatures born from the forest floor. Josh’s tear-tracks had cut clean lines through the dust on his cheeks.
Willum wet a clean washcloth under warm water, wringing it out. He laid it flat on the counter beside them. “Go on. Clean up.”
It was a ritual, ordinary and intimate. They wiped their faces, their arms, dusting off their clothes, helping each other reach spots between their shoulder blades. Willum watched, leaning against the sink, his own shirt filthy with dust and sweat. He peeled it off over his head, the fabric clinging.
Malcolm looked up, his green eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Your turn.”
Willum ran the cloth over his face, his neck, the back of his arms. The water was soothing. He saw them watching him, their expressions a mixture of love and a new, raw protectiveness. He was their territory, and someone had just tried to invade.
“He was wrong, you know,” Malcolm stated, not for the first time, as if reiterating a proven theorem. “His entire economic premise was flawed. We contribute. I manage finances and contracts. Patrick edits your website copy and handles client correspondence you hate. Tyler’s art sells. Josh’s climbing gym job pays his share. We are not a drain.”
“I know,” Willum said, his voice muffled by the cloth.
“But?” Patrick prompted, his tone gentle.
Willum lowered the cloth, meeting their eyes in the mirror. “But he said what I’m scared of. That you’ll realize you can do all that… without the giant, emotionally stunted carpenter in the middle.”
Josh, now clean, scrambled up the faucet and onto Willum’s bare shoulder, his small hands gripping. “Without you?” His laugh was a broken little puff of air. “Willum, you are the middle. You’re the whole fucking map. The gym, the camp, the art, the edits… it’s all just stuff I do out there. In here, with you, is where I live.”
Tyler nodded fiercely, his braid swinging. “The whispering… it only makes sense in your ear. Anywhere else, it’s just noise.”
Willum’s throat closed. He turned on the tap, splashed more water on his face to hide the heat in his eyes. When he straightened, he saw Patrick already climbing the towel rack, pulling a fresh, soft hand towel down for him.
“Thanks, Pat.”
“Don’t mention it.” Patrick dropped onto his shoulder opposite Josh. “Now, I’m starving. And I feel like we just survived a war. My treat. Let’s get greasy comfort food and not move for six hours.”
The ordinariness of it was a lifeline. Willum nodded, drying off. He didn’t bother with a new shirt. He just led them back downstairs to the living room, the familiar terrain of worn couch cushions and video game controllers.
He collapsed onto the sofa, a long, weary sigh escaping him. The four of them spread out across the vast landscape of his chest and stomach, finding their preferred holds in the familiar topography of him. Josh curled in the hollow of his throat. Tyler nestled in the space below his ear. Malcolm stretched out along his sternum. Patrick claimed a spot just over his heart.
Willum pulled out his phone, his thumb scrolling through a delivery app. “Chinese? Or that terrible, amazing pizza from Sal’s?”
“Pizza,” they chorused, a tiny, unified parliament.
He placed the order—extra cheese, extra pepperoni, breadsticks—and let the phone clatter onto the coffee table. The room was dark now, lit only by the streetlamp glow through the front window. The quiet settled back in, but this time it was soft, woolen, a blanket they pulled over themselves.
He could feel their warmth, tiny suns against his skin. He traced a finger lightly down Josh’s back, feeling the ridge of his spine. “You okay?”
Josh was silent for a moment. “He called me dead to him.” The words were small in the dark.
“His loss,” Willum said, and he meant it with every fibre. “It’s a fucking canyon of a loss. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
On his chest, Malcolm stirred. “The probability of him returning, or of his words having any lasting material impact on our arrangement, is statistically negligible.” He adjusted his glasses. “Emotionally, however, the data is… messier.”
“We’ll clean it up,” Patrick said, his voice sure. He patted Willum’s skin. “Together. Like we always do.”
The doorbell rang. The pizza had arrived impossibly fast. Willum went to get it, the four of them riding along, hidden in the folds of his skin and hair, a secret welcoming committee. He brought the boxes back to the couch, the glorious smell of grease and cheese filling the room.
They ate in the dark, a shared, messy communion. Willum broke off tiny, manageable pieces for them, and they sat on his knees, feasting. He ate slice after slice, the simple, salty food grounding him. The fear, while not gone, was pushed back into the corners by the tangible reality of this: full bellies, shared warmth, the soft click of a can of soda opening.
When the food was gone and the boxes lay discarded on the floor, Willum sank back into the cushions. They migrated back to his torso, settling in. His hand came up, not to tease or arouse, but to simply cover them, a living blanket.
In the safety of that dark, in the aftermath of the storm, with the taste of pepperoni and salt still on his tongue, Willum finally believed it might be true. They were here. They were staying. The proof was in the four steady heartbeats echoing against his own, in the quiet sync of their breathing as, one by one, they drifted off to sleep on him. He was not a crutch.
He was home. And so were they.