Book: None!

Ghost Of You

Summary:

Peter Parker, a high school junior, has done his best to manage his secret identity and school work. He had a healthy system set in place that somehow, miraculously, helped him manage everything in his life. At least he did until he runs into you one night while out prowling the streets for criminals. Your hands are buzzing with electricity, and the joy spread out across your face at the mere thought of helping make the streets safer is alluring. He vows to get to know you - to know everything about you. Something inside him is telling him that you’re the one person he knows he’s not afraid to unmask himself to. In his determination to learn everything about you, he ends up discovering a fatal secret that he’s not sure he can save you from.

Chapters:

Prologue

Extra Scenes:

Inspired Works:

Song Inspiration

My Stranger things 4 controversial opinion...

Eddie and Steve have the potential to be what harringrove could have never had (because Eddie is essentially what a lot of people wanted/imagined Billy to be)

happy pride month to the gayest old men alive. love wins 💥💥

preliminary cover drop 😌

The Ones You Save [Prologue]

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word count: 1,759

Summary: The one where your chaotic mind is reset.

prologue | part 1 | part 2

There is a part of you that believes you used to know what life was like before you were stuck; stuck in whatever chaotic mess this was. A mess of what you could barely recognize as an endless cycle  ― one that Alexander Pierce constantly thought of; one that involved strange, sickly liquids being pumped into your system; one that had parts of your brain constantly being erased. The endless cycle of you searching for orders in the brains of agents who were deemed superior to you, completing the orders  ― going through with horrendous actions that would leave your hands more blood-stained than before.

Your superiors don’t care about that, though. They don’t care about the amount of blood that tarnishes your hands. They don’t care about the screams and pleas that echo in your head. They don’t care about how unclean you feel; how wrong, how disgusting, how tainted. They only care that you can complete your missions, that you can pave their way in the messy world. As long as you’re a determined, dangerous tool  ― they don’t need to look into your mental state.

There’s an urge in your brain  ― an urge to dig through the mess of barriers and fragments that the electricity from the machine has left behind. But you shove the urge down; trying to hide it deep among the broken, shattered parts of what you once were able to recognize as a person with free will. There’s another urge right alongside that one. It’s telling you to escape from this room, the compound. It’s telling you to get out before the doctor can bother to mess with your mind again. It’s the again part that catches you off guard. You can’t remember another time that you were in this room  ― a cloth shoved between your clenched jaw, metal bonds holding down your arms and legs. You can’t remember anything, actually. Except in uncontrollable spurts. But the thought of trying to conjure up a past memory sends a shockwave of pain through your frontal lobes.

Your eyes focus around the room and you let go of the guard that you had yanked up on your mind. Your eyes are quick to close as every single thought in the room hits you at once. You can tell that your mind and your control have become unstable  ― everything is so loud and you can’t concentrate on a single thought. You’re only able to catch a few keywords, ones that add up to a splintered sentence: seventh time in, looming cryogenic chamber, a mess. The fragmented sentence seems to match your mind and your emotions, making you feel like you have been tossed into a never-ending vortex that happily holds you captive. It seems dead-set on tearing you down.

An extreme pain explodes throughout your head and you immediately realize that your brain is trying to push back your mental barriers. You know that a memory is trying to be brought up, one that you don’t want to recall. You thrust it back down. You thrust it as far down as you can, pretending that you are locking it away in a hidden chamber  ― chucking the key to the opposing side of a very long, very deep ocean. The memory disappears and your eyes lock with a man who is kneeling in front of you. The cold, empty look in his bright green eyes throw you off. You instantly recognize him as your primary doctor.

"Ghost, if you don't get your shit together soon ― we're tossing you in the chamber."

You know that already. You gathered that much from the mess of a sentence that your mind inherited. You’re thinking, though, that you wouldn’t mind the chamber. Your body yearns for a break. You don’t sleep much outside of it. Maybe being chucked into the cryogenic chamber would fix you, maybe it would soothe your aching mind. Maybe you could get some answers for why your mind is so mangled. But you know that it wouldn’t work in the long run. You’d be thrown back into the dreaded chair and your mind would be wrecked even further.

"We're using a different drug today." The doctor speaks again, easily catching your attention. You hadn’t noticed before but the protective barrier in your mind has been pulled back down, everything has become increasingly quiet. You barely acknowledge that you enjoy the silence.

The doctor moves and you’re focusing on his face again; observing the concentration that has sprung up on his facial features. Your eyes flicker over to the IV and you watch as the substance begins to flow down from the bag. Your gaze is forced away from the substance as your head is moved forward. You try not to tense as your head is secured with the headpieces of the chair, the pressure mainly on your frontal lobes. You settle with curling your hands into fists ― your eyes closing as the chair is slammed back. You’re not ready for the procedure to begin, but they don't care that you’re not ready.

You can almost feel the liquid moving through your body ― a freezing cold sensation taking over every inch of your being. There's a quick, fleeting memory that whirls around in your brain; reminding you of the month that you were stuck out in the Russian wilderness, a strange man accompanying you. The machine you are hooked to gives a soft whirl and pain erupts throughout your brain, yanking the memory out of your grasp.

The pain itself is unbearable. It is searing and bright; spreading quickly throughout every inch of your body. It seems to fill every nook and cranny within a split second. In response, you shove yourself up ― your body beginning to convulse against the bonds that chain you down. Your jaw is incredibly tense, tenser than it has been in a while, and you want to scream. You want to scream and cry and thrash, but you fight the urge. It will give the sick minds around here some sort of satisfaction and you refuse to give it to them.

The pain is suddenly disappearing, but it leaves behind an electric feeling. It's a muddled type of electric, though. The pain is still slightly buzzing about your body, lessened by the murky black medicine that's still sluggishly crawling around in your veins. The freezing effect of the strange drug has worn off. In your mind, it's probably due to the electricity that has just bombarded every single cell in your body. You don’t yearn for the cold, though, because the medicine has made you feel numb ― like you’re unreachable to the world around you.

You don’t feel when the needle is pulled from your skin, barely registering what is happening as you are being pulled to your feel. The numbness you feel is intoxicating and, in a way, you yearn for more of it. Your dangerously trained mind would recognize it as a danger if you were fully functioning  ― you’re too apathetic to really care.

Your instincts have kicked in to give you a helping hand. Your back is as straight as it can go and your eyes are void of emotion; like a robot waiting patiently to be programmed. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the doctor's eyes, but you are more confused by the look on his face. It is filled with humor. You are puzzled by it; if you were sobered up, you could take his tall build down without effort.

"Longing." Your eyes blankly focus on a man standing behind the doctor. His eyes seemed so dark that they were nearly back. His voice seemed to penetrate through the numbness; your skull exploding with a dull ache. You want to curl into a tight ball and press your hands tightly against your ears. You want to do whatever you could do block out his voice, to preserve the sweet numbness ― you don’t want to know what the punishment would be.

"Rusted. Furnace."

The second and third words seemed to roll off his tongue effortlessly. Your conscious mind begins to slip out of your grasp. It was becoming increasingly difficult for you to fight to hold on to your self-control. Usually, it was easier for you to cling to what broken bits of free will that you had. The drugs in your system were making it easier for them to brainwash you. Clinging to control would be an extremely hard predicament for anyone in your situation, though. It didn't matter how many cc's of the drugs were in your system when the words officially took hold. You would become dangerous.

"Daybreak. Seventeen. Benign. "

The ache in your skull seemed to be getting worse with every word that slipped out of his mouth. Your whole being seemed to be screaming at you to resist the words ― to block him out, to run far away from this place. But you couldn't. There was no way for you to resist the words.

"Nine. Homecoming."

The words had begun to echo around in your brain. It didn't matter what anyone else was saying or thinking at this point. All that mattered to you was the right words that had already been spewed out of his lips. They seemed to be booming among your skull, reverberating among the soft tissue and harsh bone. They began to take away every thought you had about the drugs in your system; instead shattering the identity that you once thought that you still had a tight hold on.

"One."

You let your eyes flutter close. The darkness you were met with was almost welcoming. It was far more easy to deal with than the agents that were in the room ― entranced by the process that the lead doctor was in the process of completing. Many of them had seen the process before, had watched the transformation that took place after your mind was scrambled like eggs. But they were repeatedly astounded by the process, almost like it was a strange fetish of theirs. Your muscles relaxed against your will, losing all the tension you had been holding on to.

"Freight car."

Your eyelids snapped open, eyes focusing on the black orbs in front of you. You recognized the glint in them, but you didn't acknowledge it. You had no reason to question the malice that the dark orbs held. 

You instead spoke, your tone matching his cold heart, "I am ready to comply."

Jake the Gatekeeper

So, anyone else want to talk about Jake being the gatekeeper? And how in death, Jake had been locked up and prevented from doing his job? YET HE STILL DID IT.

So what is a gatekeeper? Please feel free to correct me because sometimes my meaning gets lost in my inability to language at times... But they are in charge of keeping things running. Keeping people where they need to be and keeping memories and ares of the inner world locked off from those not meant to see.

Basically they go, "That memory? That memory only causes you to be in horrible pain. You don't need to keep looking at it." And they lock it up. Sometimes in a room, sometimes in a box, sometimes just somewhere out of reach.

They also go, "Hey. You shouldn't be fronting right now" and they can pull you out of that seat. They are grounding. They can help people stay grounded, they can help people front. They are in charge of keeping the traffic flow going. It's sort of a big deal.

Some never front. They have a lot going on inside and they like to stay there. Some front a lot, letting others rest, giving themselves time out.

(Side tangent, I know a system where the gatekeeper was having a stressful time thanks to a new medication. They decided to take a day off and didn't tell anyone else. They just went to their area and disappeared for a day. The rest of the system went into PANIC mode for the whole day. Someone that usually only fronts for an hour at a time got stuck in the front position for the day and couldn't switch out, everyone else didn't know what to do and ran around looking for the gatekeeper. When they finally came back it was a lot like that scene from community where he walks in and everything is on fire).

SO. Marc and Steven have no idea about Jake, about what he does, and how important he is. If we follow that Steven holds emotional/spiritual protector and Jake holds gatekeeper AND physical protector, Jake is a busy man.

When they die, things get a little messed up. Steven is locked up, Marc is lost in his own tormented emotions/memories/thoughts and whatever else the afterlife is doing to him, and Jake is locked up.

Here's the interesting part. Was Marc even supposed to find Steven? Was it a fluke? Did Marc choose to find Steven because he needed his emotional support? I believe yes. He has to OPEN the door to get into Steven's room and then free Steven from the sarcophagus that is closed.

YET: Just down the hall from Steven's room, there is an OPEN DOOR and the Sarcophagus is upright and halfway through the damn doorway.

He can't get out because Marc does not let him. Marc is in control here and he is not ready to know about Jake. BUT LOOK AT HOW FAR JAKE IS TO GETTING OUT ON HIS OWN.

Even more, most of the doors are STILL LOCKED.

Steven happens into the important door and locks Marc out. Marc can't get into these doors on his own. Only Steven is actually opening doors here. When Marc is in panic mode, none of the doors open. The only door he actually gets through on his own opens by itself, inviting him in. Steven is already there, ready for Marc to come back.

Steven is navigating the memories, probably with the help of what ever if happening in the Duat, but he is still in control. Even falling into the memory of the night Marc met Khonshu.

But what if Jake is the one navigating them? The doors are locked. The memories are a mess. Jake can't get out, but he still might have control. What if he's the one that let Randall out to guide Steven? What if he's the one that pulls them through the never ending staircase of pain? Lets them fall into the desert with Khonshu?

What if Jake understands that it's time to let Steven do his job because he can't? What if he realizes at long last that it's time that Steven knew about his own job? Marc is spiraling and becoming too destructive. Too much is at stake and Marc would rather just die than face anything. So finally as they die, Jake is like, "Steven, I can't do this. It's your turn." And the gates are opened.

Book: Cacoethes

Word count: 2,244

Summary: Draco finds Isobel after the war. But it’s too late.

Drabble, Cut Scene, or Request: Cut Scene; was once another short ending option to Cacoethes.

The battle was raging across the Hogwarts ground. She tried not to pay attention to those around her that had fallen - tried to ignore the various shades of house colors laid across the lifeless victims. It looked wrong, beyond wrong, to see fellow students splayed out across the ground, to see them lying mangled, broken, dead on what was once their home grounds. Her heart ached and her lungs burned at the thought of all who she would never get to see again.

She shoved the thoughts down and rearranged her grip on her wand, forcing her tense body to relax - just a tiny bit. She was doing all she could. It was overwhelming, jumping and dancing and bouncing from one stand off to another. She was trying to save everyone she could, throwing curses and spells and even unforgivables. She didn’t care that she was breaking the Wizarding law. She had people to protect. The Ministry would have to understand that she had to do all she could to save the students. She had to give them their futures, had to give them more time to live out their dreams. 

She was beyond overwhelmed. Her body was worn out, running on its last stretch of energy. She was determined to keep going, to keep fighting, to keep taking hits meant for those who looked up to her. There was a small part of her filled with pride at all the houses coming together to fight. It kept her going to know that her fellow students were all fighting to protect each other, to protect their school, to protect their world. She had never been more proud of all the students that snuck into the Room of Requirement to learn how to defend themselves from the war that was creeping across the horizon.

Her adrenaline was starting to wear off. She was beginning to feel the full extent of all the hits she had taken. She was starting to move slower and all of her knowledge was beginning to slowly leave her head. It was a struggle to keep fighting, but it was also a relief for her to see that the war was winding down. They; the students of Hogwarts, their parents, their professors, their Wizarding world supports; were winning. The Death Eaters were retreating, running the opposite direction of those fighting on the right side of the war.

In a split second, she was tossing her arms up - sending a spell to protect a younger year from a Death Eater’s last attempt at ending their lives. Her brain gave her one more spell, allowed her the time and energy to petrify the wretched Death Eater. She sent a faint, tired smile to the young boy before she stumbled. Her knees met the harsh, wet ground. It took her a moment to realize it was wet with blood, her blood, that had been sleeping from the wounds that her body had sustained. Her eyes widened as she uncontrollably watched her wand hit the ground, focusing on her left forearm. The mark. She watched as it stopped moving, as it slowly became what would have been a simple muggle tattoo. They had done it. She tried to choke back a sob as she realized that Harry, the boy she had grown up hearing vehemently about, had succeeded. He had killed the Dark Lord.

She brushed her hands slowly against the damp earth, allowing the soaked dirt to ground her to the world. She was slipping. She could feel it. She was barely holding on, barely forcing her lungs to breathe and her eyes to blink and her heart to beat. The world was blurry, churning, turning and she felt that she would fall into a blissful state of sleep at any moment - sleep she knew she would never wake up from. But she had to find Draco first. She had to say goodbye. 

She mustered up the energy, thought of all her memories with Draco, in order to produce a gleaming silver Dragon. She sent it forth into the ruins of the battlefield, knowing, hoping, and maybe even praying that it would find him, that it would get him to her in time.

The time it took for it to reach him wasn’t something she had the mental capacity to track. She just knew that one second she was slipping in and out of consciousness, barely holding her torso up right. And then in the next, Draco was screaming at her, yelling frantically for Neville - telling those that he ran past that they needed to get Neville to him. Neville knew so much more about healing than he did, and he knew that he needed the other teenager to help him.

She barely registered as he slid onto the ground next to her, pulling her body against his. She recognized that he was warm, that his body felt nice against her cooling skin. That he was pleading with her to talk to him, to wake up more, to stay with him. He was holding her as tightly as he could without hurting her, that he was pressing down on the wounds he could cover with a button up she hadn’t even realized he had taken off. The world was muffled to her, like she was listening to everything while her head had been shoved underwater.

Draco yelled out again, struggling to come up with his own patronus without his wand. His wand had been the reason that they had won the war; Harry had used it to get rid of the main threat. He couldn’t say he wished he hadn’t done it, but he wanted more than anything to have his wand so he could try to heal her in whatever ways he could. The panic that was overcoming his body was paralyzing, making everything feel red hot and tingly and making it hard to breathe. He forced it away, forced himself to try to calm down as her hand gently found its way to his moist cheek. He had started crying.

“Bel, we did it. We won. We can live our lives now. We… we can be free.” He told her, feeling more tears rush down his face. “We can be whoever we want to.”

“You…. you can. . . be a healer. Treat everyone…. Live… for us.” Her voice was quiet, her breathing wheezy and strained. “We…. did it.”

“We can both be healers. We can, well, we can finish our last year here and then work together at Saint Mungo’s and live together and just be…. us.” He choked out, softly brushing hair away from her forehead. He needed Neville to be here now, and it broke his heart further to know that they couldn’t apparate because of Dumbledore’s stupid rules.

She gave him a smile, one that looked so sad and broken and hurt. But her eyes showed no trace of her pain, of her knowledge of what would come next. They radiated pure adoration, showing him how much she truly cared for him. 

“I’ll never leave your side again, Isobel. I’m here, okay? I’m here. I’m not going anywhere ever again. You’ll always have me to fight by you, okay? Just stay here. Don’t leave me. Fuck, don’t leave me. I know you can fight through this. We can live through this, Bel. We can. I know we can. Don’t leave me.” He stumbled over his words, a lump growing in his throat as he felt his heart slowly begin sinking in his chest. He was pleading, begging her to stay with him, to not leave him. She was the one thing he had always had, the one person who always promised to never leave him. He couldn’t live without her. He didn’t want to.

“Hey….” Her voice drew his attention, her hands slowly moving to cover his, the ones covering wounds. “Dra… It’s. . . . It’s okay. Y-you know..? Let . . . Go. And…. and. . . L-l-live..”

“Not without you, Isobel. Not without you. I have so many plans for us, so many things for us to do. You… you can’t leave. Not now.” He was shaking, trembling, trying to stop himself from crashing down, from breaking, from shattering. Trying to stop her from leaving him.

“D-Dra-Draco…,” She shuttered for a moment, struggling to keep talking, to keep conscious. “M-Malfoy. . . I. I lo-love….. you…” 

His heart plummeted as her eyes started fluttering shut, her chest making its way to a paused position. And his heart, it didn’t stop, plummeting through the seemingly endless abyss that was his stomach - shattering, collapsing, crumbling, fragmenting all at once. He couldn’t keep track of the pieces as they scattered throughout his body, his chest igniting in overwhelming pain - completely burning as the pain reached a level he had never experienced before. His lungs stalled as his world did, aching and struggling to take in air as he realized that she was gone. The one person that he had always had, that had always been there, had left him. And there wasn’t anything he could do to bring her back. No magic in their world would be able to coax her back to the land of the living. 

And so he broke, letting his world crumble down around him as his sun left. He hugged her tight to his chest. He didn’t miss how she was like a rag doll, body so willingly following the motions he did. She was gone, and the light that had constantly been in his life was diminished. She was gone. His world tumbled and turned and churned and fell apart as he let out a heart-stopping, blood-curdling scream. She had died and all he felt was waves of drowning agony washing over his entire being. All the things he had planned, all the things they were going to do, were never going to happen. And he couldn’t breathe with those thoughts running in his brain.

His head slowly moved as he felt pressure on his shoulder, breaking down even more as he saw Neville kneeling beside him with tears in his eyes. He clung to Isobel, feeling even more shock hit his body as he felt the way her skin was cooling. It was so easy for him to collapse back into Neville, to allow the fellow teenage boy to hold him and his broken world as everything disintegrated around him. In this moment, it was just him holding her mangled body and Neville trying to anchor him back to a reality he no longer wanted to be in, 

“Draco, you have to let go of her. We have to get her inside.” Neville choked out, trying to loosen the boys grip on his best friend. “We need to take care of your injuries.”

“No,” He cried, his body vibrating with panic that Isobel could have stifled by now. “No. No no no nono nonononono. . . She’s not… she’s not gone, right? Neville, she’s still here, we can bring her back. We can save her. Neville, please. I know, I know she’s not gone. She wouldn’t just leave us like this, she wouldn’t just give up…”

Neville’s heart broke alongside Draco’s as he quietly pried his grip off of Isobel, pulling the deteriorating Slytherin into him. “Draco, we can’t. You know that we can’t. There’s nothing we can do. I’m… Im sorry….”

“I didn’t get to tell her.” He blurted out, his words and voice cracking at the realization. “I didn’t get to tell her! She’ll… she’ll never know… Her last words were that she loved me and she died before I could tell her. I’ll…. I'll never get to say it to her…. S-s-she’ll never kn-kn-know….”

“She knew. Draco, she knew.” Neville gently grasped the face of the panicking boy, making him look at him. “Isobel Ville knew, without a doubt, that you love her with your whole heart. She never doubted for a second how you felt about her. She knew…” 

Draco twisted his body around and threw his arms around Neville’s shoulders, collapsing completely into the Gryffindor’s hold. And Neville clung back, holding just as tightly to him. Neville tried to stay strong for Draco, tried to hold back his own pain because he knew that Draco’s had to be millions, billions, trillions of times worse than his. He had loved her, yes, but not to the extent of level that Draco did. He had to be there to help him through it. 

The Slytherin let the brave lion hold him as he completely broke down, yearning to fall into dreams that he would never want to wake up from. Just so he could see her, be with her, even just one last time. So he could hear her laugh and see her smile and look at her, see the life radiating positively throughout her body. She shone with life in a way that no one else could, bringing light into even the darkest times of his life, offering the world her own sunshine. And it was gone. It had imploded, causing his world to collapse within itself - almost as if his own personal little galaxy had collided with the black hole that was now her life, and had been consumed by the Inky blackness. He wanted just one more moment with her. Just one more small second to tell her how he felt, to hold her and be with her and just soak in her rays one last time. His universe would never be the same without its main source of light.

Panacea [0]

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Word count: 1,635

Warnings: Mentions of triggering/tough topics - such as abuse, racism, sexual coercion, and overall just toxic relationships. This is a general warning that will accompany every part of this little series. 

Summary: The one where you are given an introduction to your story.

Taglist: @sydneekomspacekru

(shitty) short introduction | part 1 | part 2

Roane County in Indiana, otherwise known as Hawkins, was supposed to be your new beginning. It was your way of starting over - of leaving behind your deadbeat father and your dead mother, of purging yourself of the sins of your family. Indiana was a huge change, especially in climate, when it came to your place of origin in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. Admittedly, it took you a while to get used to the colder temperatures - but you did what you’ve always done; you adapted. This was a skill you had to learn from a young age, especially with how poisonous your relationship was with your father. And, thankfully, your adaptive nature enabled you to quietly slip into the social structure that made up Hawkins's High - your extroverted, friendly nature helped as well, gaining you quick traction among the clichés of popularity. It was with ease that you blended in among those in town that held good names; after all, your mother had lived here for the first seventeen years of her life. Even though she had chosen to leave Hawkins all those years ago, you were welcomed back with open arms - and it was like you had lived your entire life within the small square footage that made up the strange town.  You have to suppose that a town of this magnitude never truly forgets who it marks as its own. 

And, well, it didn’t take long for Hawkins to mark you as one of its own. The ease you had with moving there seemed to infiltrate every aspect of your life. You got good grades - A’s on practically every assignment, quiz, and test, got along well with the teachers and the students, had no difficulties finding a job at the local diner, and you even hit the jackpot with a bewitching  significant other. At least, that last part is what every girl in your friend group told you. Now, Billy Hargrove was - in and of himself - a conundrum, to say the least. This was something you had figured out quickly about him; right after he had decided that your welcome to the town from him was his shirtless body hefting your heavy boxes into your new apartment. Before promptly deciding to spend the rest of the evening in the local diner with you, flirting more than you had ever seen a teenage boy do. In a way, you were still set apart from the others. Because you saw behind his façade; you saw behind the flirtation and sex appeal. There was a brokenness that you had only ever seen in one other place, and that was in the eyes that stared back at you when you looked in a mirror. The life he had at home wasn’t good - and your suspicions were confirmed the first night his younger step-sister had showed up to your apartment with him sprawled out in the backseat of his Camaro, with wounds that only could have been inflicted by a man in a drunken rage. 

His sister, Max, was another person you had quickly formed a bond with. That night, when she brought Billy to you because she had no other place to take him, she found out just how far your generosity could spread. From that moment forward, after you had patched up the wounds on a moaning Billy, your apartment became a safe haven for the two of them - especially for Max. Every time their house gets too loud or too violent, Max finds her own way to you; a frequent occurrence that caused you to give her your spare key. Unfortunately, though, Billy’s conundrum of an existence only grew bigger after the night you patched him up. Even though you were supposed to be his nepenthe - the one thing that takes away all his pain and sorrows, the one thing that helped him heal - he refused to admit that you did anything to help him. In his mind, it was a weakness he couldn’t afford and - frankly - that never happened. Honestly, you see more of Max these days than you do of Billy. And you’re naïve about it. You think that just because you’re helping Max that you’re helping Billy; you believe that he’s embarrassed and doesn’t want you to be pulled into his horrific domestic life. 

You’re naïve because you think you can fix him. You see the broken parts, the fragmented sides of this unhealed child that’s become your boyfriend - and you think that if you give him enough time, enough patience, that he’ll come forward, that he’ll let you help. But he won’t. Because, frankly, Billy Hargrove is past saving. He’s headed down a dark path and you’re only going to be caught in the crossfires. But you don’t know that; not consciously, anyways. He’s never laid a hand on you, so you think that things are okay. You don’t understand that it’s not okay that he doesn’t show up, that he yells at you when he gets mad and doesn’t talk about it after. You think that this is just his way of coping - that it’s different from what you did when you were with your father. And what makes your naivety even worse is that you swore you would never end up in a relationship like your mother. You watched, physical altercation after physical altercation, as your mother became more beaten and more bruised - and you swore, you promised, you vowed, that you wouldn’t become your mother. You broke that. Because you didn’t know that your parents started out the same way that you and Billy did. And as hard as it is to take it in, you are just as doomed as your mother was. You don’t have enough love to spare to put him back together again. But love isn’t what can fix him. Nothing can patch a boy together when he has crevices as empty and deep as Billy. 

And this doesn’t begin to touch the things that he does with you that you know are wrong. He’s a very high-driven, sexual person - and this is something that you found out decently quickly once you officially got together.  It never mattered if you were in the mood for it or not, you were too focused on trying to meet his needs when he finally told you about them that you didn’t realize just how bad coercion is. You think that you have it good because everyone else is jealous of the intimacy you have with him. You don’t realize that his coercion, his guilt-tripping to get you to please him is just assault. And even though he gets aggressive when you’re in bed, when he bruises you because you’re not doing something the way he likes, you don’t see the red flags. Deep down, you know that the way he treats you is wrong - but he’s never laid a hand on you outside of your private time together, so you think it’s okay. You think what you have is love and that it’ll get better once you get him out of his toxic household, but that’s not true. The abuse he experiences is so profoundly engrained in who he is that the toxicity will only follow him once he leaves. He might get out of the house, might leave behind his asshole of a father, but he is another victim that will fall into the idiom of the apple not falling far from the tree.

That’s just another way in which you and Billy are more similar than most people think. He’s turning out to be just like his father - and you’re heading down the same path that your own mother did; despite all your best attempts to pledge to her gravestone that you’ll be different. Your childhood was spent watching an abusive relationship pave itself; your father was always under the influence of something, whether alcohol or drugs, and it ignited an anger in him that could only be taken out in physical ways on your mother. You spent enough nights hiding in your closet with your blanket and pillow, trying to get away from the sounds of your mother begging and pleading, that you’d think you would know to get out of whatever you have going on with Billy. And one thing that makes you less similar to him, that sets you apart, is how you both coped with the abuse you’ve seen in your homes. You turned to books and school, delving into every interest and hobby that popped up as you grew. You found friends and a way out of the house and hyper-focused on how you would one day get out. But Billy, he turned to other things - like cigarettes and working out and blaring loud music. He found hookups and hyper-focused on how he was one day going to get back at his dad for all the pain, all the suffering, the man had caused him. Perhaps, in a way, you were two opposing sides of a coin - and maybe that was just another thing that added to your naivety about your relationship with him. 

You watched as your father, day after wretched day, slowly killed your mother. You watched as she dug her own grave, watched as your father finally - after years of her surviving - put her six feet in the ground. And Max, the girl who’s practically become your own little sister, the girl who would do just about anything to see you get away from her older step-brother, is determined to save you. The way she sees it, your fate is now in her hands - and it’s not something that she, or her “baby-sitter”, will take lightly.

anyway,,,

Between The Perennial Bloom

Summary:

Bleeding and broken, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes has finally escaped from the horrific grasp of HYDRA. While on the run, he finds himself stumbling into a small Canadian town - barely alive. He ends up stumbling on to your doorstep, going against everything he has been trained by begging you to help him. You barely accept before he passes out on your front porch. With a dangerous assassin in your house and a chaotic agency on the hunt for him, what will you do?

Chapters:

Prologue (coming soon)

Extra Scenes:

Inspired Works: