The Lonely Rabbit and Broken Thief

Chapter Sixteen

Warning: self-harm, mentions of child abuse/neglect, hurt/comfort

Shifty stared at the phone in his hands. Cuddles hadn't texted him as much as he used to for some reason. Sure, he hardly ever responded, but he still liked having the texts pop up. He frowned bitterly as he sent a small text.

FedoraBrat: you coming over tonight?

Shifty put his phone away, thinking that would elicit a response from the blond rabbit from whatever it was he was doing. He didn't have a concert coming up to travel out of town to do. He had already done it. It's been almost a month since he got B.M. as a bodyguard. He hadn't seen Dreamy in that time, so he assumed B.M. was doing a great job keeping that weird pervert away from him.

"Shifty? Am I doing this right?"

Shifty looked over at Jingles, who had joined him at work as a bus-boy, "You've been cleaning the condiments after you clean off the table right?"

"Yes, sir." He said, a bright smile on his face.

"All the plates are cleaned and put up for Ummy to wash? Same with the cups and utensils?"

"Mhm! And I make sure none of it gets thrown away by accident!"

"Then you're doing great. If there aren't any tables to clean, go wash your hands and wrap silverware for us."

"Okay!" He walked off as Shifty watched after him.

He was a very cute kid. Though it was clear he was on the spectrum. He was high functioning, but it did have issues he could see since they started working together. The kid hated seeing things out of place. He got frustrated when he couldn't understand how to do a task. And sometimes he'd get lost in conversation and completely derail from the topic.

Lifty was definitely on the specrum. He had sensory issues and got overwhelmed when he was touched. He had issues reading social cues. He had dyslexia and an speech impediment that they were working on when he was in school and all. Unlike Shifty, Lifty had kleptomania, which got them into trouble when he got caught doing it when they didn't need to steal.

I wonder how he's handling that now that he's with that redhead bastard...

"Shifty?" He looked over at Dandy, who was coming over with some food. "I got your table's food."

"Thanks, Dandy. I'll go and stock up the drink station." Shifty said, the irritation in his voice was more than he expected when Dandy frowned a bit. "Ah, sorry. I didn't mean to get snappy with you."

Dandy smiled and nodded, "It's okay. I understand."

Dandy walked off and Shifty went into the drink area, briefly looking at his phone again. He felt disappointment at the lack of texts from Cuddles.

First he promises to be with me and then he's ghosting me. Fucking dick.

Shifty huffed as he started cleaning up the mess from dinner rush. He felt anger and embarrassment at the fact he was allowing himself to be consumed by Cuddles once again. He knew it was a mistake to let Cuddles enter into his life again. The obsession for the blond would do no good for him.

Stupid Cuddles... stupid everything...

Towards the end of his shift, he felt his pocket buzzing. His heart raced a bit and he picked up the phone.