#past child abuse tw

[cynicalone94]

Leave Me Alone

**Trigger warning for discussion of past child abuse**

Voight scans the crime scene.

The murder of a witness is a big deal and the DA’s office is begging them to figure out who killed him. And fast.

“Halstead, Upton talk to the widow.” he orders. “Burgess, -”

“Sarge.”

He freezes at the quiet interruption from his lead detective, turning to the man with a raised eyebrow.

“I can’t interview her.” Halstead says, staring past him to the woman standing with a pair of patrol officers.

“You wanna tell me why?”

“I can’t..” Halstead shakes his head, a sheen of sweat covering his forehead. “I can’t.”

He turns and races toward the truck. Voight nods for his partner to check on him and then returns his attention to the scene.

After assigning out tasks, he heads over to talk to the widow himself.

Jay Halstead doesn’t scare easily and he wants to know what this woman had done to his kid.

Jay hears Hailey climb up into the passenger seat of the truck as he sits there, staring at the dashboard and trying to will the past to go back to where it belongs.

He’d never expected to see Katie Springer again.

Now he can’t contain the panicked memories of the past, of some of his earliest trauma, faced when he was still too young to have any defenses built up.

“Jay?” Hailey says quietly. “Are you okay.”

He just shakes his head.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No.

“Is there anything that I should tell Voight about her? For the case?”

He shrugs.

The last time he’d even heard her name, he’d been eight years old. He hasn’t exactly kept up on her life.

“Jay? Who is she?”

“Leave me alone.” he begs. “Please. Just leave it alone.”

“Okay.” she says. “What do you need?”

“Can we just… get back to work?” he says after a long moment and she nods.

“I’ll check with Voight and see where he wants us.” she says, brushing her hand over his shoulder.

He flinches away from her and she grits her teeth.

Voight needs to keep her away the grieving widow too.

Complicated as it is by the fact that neither detective on the team will even look at their victim’s widow, they solve the case.

They’re able to tie the man’s death to the man that he’d been scheduled to testify against, making the DA’s office very happy.

The only remaining question is what do they do about Katherine Wellman?

Voight calls Hailey into his office to discuss it.

“He won’t talk to me.” she says, twisting her hands. “Anytime I try to ask him what the deal is he just shuts down, begs me to leave him alone. I don’t like it Voight.”

“I don’t either.” he says, shaking his head. “But he isn’t the only one who knows what happened. And now that the case is closed, I can ask her about it.”

Hailey agrees to the plan and an hour later, they’re sitting in the Wellman living room.

“I wondered how long it would take you to ask me.” Katherine says with a wry smile. “I didn’t recognize him at first. It’s been almost thirty years.”

“You want to tell me what happened?” Voight presses.

“I was a bitch.” she says. “I was fourteen years old and so selfish. So stupid.”

Voight doesn’t say anything.

She is ready to talk and doesn’t need any more prompting.

“Jay was practically a baby when his mom got sick. Just five years old. My mom was friends with Eileen and she knew they needed help. Eileen spent so much time in the hospital and in for treatments. And they couldn’t afford for Patrick to take time off work to stay with the boys or to pay for a sitter. They were drowning in hospital bills. So my mom volunteered me.”

“Without talking to you?” Voight questions.

“I was dating an older guy.” Katherine says. “Mom didn’t like him and wanted me to stay away from him. So I got volunteered to babysit a five and eight year old for free. It wasn’t so bad. I picked the boys up and walked them home from school. Then I did my homework while they played in their rooms, fed them dinner and then got them into bed.”

“When you wanted to be somewhere else?” Hailey asks.

“Yeah.” Katherine agrees. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jay… his mom had had to take him with her to one of her appointments because she didn’t have any choice. And he… saw something. I never knew what it was other than that he’d slipped away from the nurse who’d offered to watch him and that he hadn’t stopped crying for days afterward.”

“Babysitting a traumatized little boy is a lot for a fourteen year old.” Voight says.

“Don’t.. pity me.” Katherine says, shaking her head. “I should have told an adult that I was overwhelmed. Instead I… I complained to my boyfriend. I whined endlessly about how hard it was to have him waking up crying every single night. How hard it was for me.”

“And he had a solution?”

“Oscar was a jerk.” Katherine says. “But he was older and he was interested in me and I thought he was hot. When he suggested gagging Jay when I tucked him into bed I told him I wasn’t going to do that. But over the next week or so he kept suggesting it and Jay kept waking up crying. And I was losing hours of sleep every night trying to calm him down and get him back to sleep and I was exhausted so one night I… I tied one of the scarves that his mom kept around the house to cover up the hair loss in his mouth and told him he had to leave it there so he wouldn’t wake Will up anymore.”

“And then you kept doing it?” Hailey asks.

She’s trying hard to keep the sympathetic tone in her voice but it’s obvious that, as the details of what this woman had done to her partner are starting to unfold, anger is beginning to take over.

“Not every night, not at first.” Katherine says. “But once I’d done it once it got easier. And when I didn’t for a few days the lack of sleep would make me cranky, angry. It had been about a week that I hadn’t before the first time that he took it off. I woke up to him crying and I was confused because I knew I’d gagged him and I… when I went into his room he was crying. Said that he didn’t feel well and it had gotten hard to breathe. But I was tired and a selfish bitch so I tied the scarf back in his mouth and used a second one to tie his hands so he couldn’t take it out again. And then I went back to sleep.”

Katherine is crying now but Hailey is having a hard time finding any sympathy for her.

She’d tied up a crying, sick five year old and then left him to face his nightmares alone.

“That went on for a couple of months.” Katherine says. “And then one night Oscar showed up after I put the kids to bed. I thought he wanted to spend some time with me but he was more interested in Jay. And he… he started burning him with a cigar. I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t. I grabbed my phone to call… I don’t know, the police or my mom. That’s when Oscar told me that if I told anyone he would tell them what I’d done. That he’d say that it was me who burned him.”

“So you let him keep doing it.” Voight concludes, face steely.

“Yes.” Katherine admits. “For weeks. He would burn him and cut him and Jay would just cry the whole time. Until… one night he didn’t. He just laid there and didn’t make a sound the entire time. I called the police in the morning.”

“Did they know what you did?” Hailey asks.

“I admitted to everything.” she insists. “I got a deal in exchange for testifying against Oscar. It was expunged after I turned eighteen and there were no other charges but I… I know how badly I screwed up. Pat and Eileen trusted me with the most important things in their lives and I treated one of them with completely unforgivable cruelty.”

“Did you ever do anything to Will?” Voight asks.

“No.” she says. “He… he never cried or even woke up in the night. I don’t think he even knows what I did. I saw him at a church thing a few months later and he asked why I wasn’t watching them anymore. I didn’t even get the chance to answer him before Eileen showed up. And the look she gave me. I didn’t know it was possible to feel more guilty than I did then. Until I saw Jay the other day. Until I realized who he was and why he was looking at me that way.”

Hailey just raises an eyebrow as the woman looks at her.

“I’ll never be able to make up for what I did.” Katherine says. “I was stupid, selfish, immature and I will never forgive myself. I don’t expect you too either. That’s not why I’ve told you about what happened. I know how much seeing me again must have hurt him. He needs someone and you need to know what you’re helping him with.”

Hailey has heard enough.

She doesn’t know if she buys the woman’s remorse but she is right about one thing.

Her partner needs her.

Jay’s been a detective too long to not know the second he opens the door that Hailey knows everything.

“Come in.” he says, stepping back.

Hailey heads for his kitchen, wasting no time arranging their usual glasses of whiskey.

“How much do you know?” he asks, picking up his glass.

“Voight and I talked to Katherine.” Hailey tells him. “She told us everything she did to you and everything she let her boyfriend do to you.”

He nods, taking a gulp of the whiskey.

“I’m sorry, Jay.” she says, using holding her own glass to keep from reaching out for him.

“It was a long time ago.” he says.

“You were five.” Hailey says. “And you trusted her.”

“She was pretty cool.” Jay says, looking up at her. “She used to play with me at church functions when I was like two or three. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom talking to someone and she’d come over and play peek-a-boo. I was pretty excited mom told us that she was going to be watching us.”

Hailey’s stomach clenches. That knowledge only makes things worse.

“I thought she was actually trying to help me at first.” he admits. “I didn’t understand how but I… I thought she was my friend.”

“Why not say something when you realized?” she asks gently.

“Mom and dad needed her.” he says. “They couldn’t afford to pay someone to watch us. I’d heard mom say that Katie was a godsend. I knew that Will was losing sleep. And I heard Katie crying a couple times. I knew how tired she was, how hard my nightmares were on her.”

“You blamed yourself.” Hailey fills in.

“I was enough trouble.” Jay says. “For everyone. I didn’t want to be any more.”

“Oh Jay.” Hailey says, setting down her glass and stepping toward him.

“I know it’s not true now.” he says as she reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. “But back then it felt like I just needed to shut my mouth.”

With a sob, Hailey pulls her partner into a tight hug.

“I’m not going to insult you by pretending you’re never any trouble.” she whispers. “There isn’t a person alive that doesn’t cause trouble from time to time and we both know that. But you are worth every bit of it, you hear me? You are worth everything.”

He hugs her back, letting his face rest against her shoulder.

#whumptober 2023 #no.17 #leave me alone #Chicago PD #fic #past child abuse tw #Jay Halstead

[nagiru]

Some days, the Doctor feels fine. Some days, even the barest touch sends memories back that she does not want to deal with; at all.

#whumptober2023 #no.17 #touch aversion #doctor who #fic #past child abuse tw #panic attack tw #no.29 #troubled past resurfacing #my fics #13 doctor #tecteun is involved

[betrayedbycinnamon]

Day 1 Whumptober lets GOOOOO

#whumptober2023 #no.1 #“How many fingers am I holding up?” #Marvel #fic #vomit tw #past child abuse tw #passive suicidal ideations tw #winterhawk #ivvic writes

[faofinn]

22 & 23. Common Cold/Flu & Tepid Bath

These two fit so well together we couldn't help but do a combined little ficlet

@sicktember

Hars hadn't been feeling well for a while. After adding in a few too many late nights and even more bad decisions, it well and truly reared its head.

 He'd been unable to settle overnight, tossing and turning, somehow both too hot and too cold. 

Steve was worried about Harrison too. He could see him getting more and more run down, late nights and too much alcohol. He’d not long been part of the family, the adoption papers having only come through a couple of months ago. 

When Monday rolled around, he got dressed as usual, intending to go to college. He struggled to actually dress, ending up with his shirt on backwards and two socks on the same foot. He didn't seem to notice, and headed downstairs for breakfast, apparently missing the fact it was almost lunchtime. 

From his position on the sofa, Steve looked up from his laptop. Harrison looked a state, hair a mess, clothes all over the place, bags under his eyes. 

“Where are you off to?” He asked, trying not to grin. 

"College." He said simply, attempting to pack a lunch. 

“What time is your first lesson?”

"Same as always." He grumbled. "You know that."

“Have you checked the time?”

"My alarm went off."

“And you’re wearing that?”

"It's clean."

“It’s inside out. And it’s nearly 1pm.”

"Is not." He wasn't entirely paying attention to Steve's conversation, and headed to the front door, still determined he was leaving. 

“Go back to bed, Harrison.”

"I've got college." He said firmly, struggling with the door. 

“You’ve already missed the entire morning. I called you in sick at 8.”

"Because I can't get out of the house!" He argued, frustrated. "What have you done to the door?"

“It’s locked, because you’re sick and you need to go back to bed.”

"I'm not sick! It's just a cold or something. I just need to go to college."

“Do you remember what happened last time you got sick and it was ignored?”

"Wasn't even sick then." He grumbled, though gave up with the door. 

“Go back to bed, Harrison. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

"Just half an hour, that's all."

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

"Yeah." He sniffed, his determination and energy gone.

“Go on, to bed with you. I’ll make you a hot chocolate.”

"Thank you." He gave a weak smile. Steve always knew how to make it better. Bed sounded great, and he dropped his backpack on the floor, slowly padding upstairs. 

Steve shook his head fondly, going to the kitchen to make Harrison’s hot chocolate. He’d want it, and hopefully it would make him feel better. The last thing Steve wanted was him getting any worse - the admission the last time he’d been sick had been absolutely terrifying.

Harrison didn't bother changing out of his clothes, though shuffled out of his jeans. He wrapped himself up in his duvet and blankets, his little excursion downstairs having tired him out and made him cold to the bone. 

Steve came up after a few minutes, knocking on the door before he pushed it open and headed inside. “Hot chocolate. Have you had any meds?”

Harrison was barely visible through his cocoon, but he shook his head. He’d had none in his room, and hadn't wanted to go downstairs or disturb Steve. 

Steve tutted. “I’ll go and get some.”

"Do you have to?"

“It’ll make you feel better.”

"Okay." He said quietly, taking Steve's bribe of hot chocolate. 

"I'll be right back." Steve promised, grabbing some paracetamol and a thermometer while he was there. A bottle of water wouldn't harm either, so he brought one up with him, knocking again before entering. 

"Hars? Got you some meds and some water to take them with."

Harrison jumped slightly, having drifted with the silence. He reached for his chocolate again, swallowing the meds with a grimace. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Can I take your temperature? You look really flushed."

"Do you have to?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so." Steve said gently, sitting on the side of the bed. 

Harrison sighed heavily. "Okay."

Steve patted Harrison's leg, shooting him an encouraging smile. He was quick to check his temperature, frowning at the numbers. 

"Let me check the other ear." He'd hoped it was a mistake, but he knew it wouldn't be much different. 

Unfortunately, it was even higher than the first, and he sighed heavily. They really didn't need him being this sick again. 

"That bad?" There was a flash of panic across Harrison's face. 

"You've just got a fever, kid. Just means your body is fighting off what it needs to do. But, it does mean you can't be swamped by your duvets. I can get you a sheet instead?" He offered. 

Fear settled in his features. "No. I need the duvet. I need my blankets."

"Hey, it's okay. It's just to keep your temperature down. Just like taking a cool shower or bath, it just makes sure you're not going to overheat." Steve kept it simple, aware Harrison wasn't entirely firing on all cylinders. "Tell you what, eh? You can keep your duvet but you need to keep it at your feet or by your side. You're not allowed to wrap yourself up in it, okay?"

Harrison hesitated. Steve had just told him he wasn't allowed it, he hadn't dragged it from his grip, hurt him to try and get them away. He took a deep breath, and slowly pushed it to his feet. 

"There you go. Thank you, Harrison. I know it's not nice to take it off when you feel rubbish. I'll let you get some more sleep, okay?"

"'kay." Harrison nodded, snuggling under the blanket he'd been allowed. "Thank you."

Steve left Harrison to sleep, hoping that just being under the thin blanket would be enough to stop him getting hotter. He really was worried about the kid, all too aware how it had ended before. His chest seemed okay, at least, just the fever that was concerning. Surely the sleep would help, as would the meds and the water. It was just a waiting game, hoping his body would fight off whatever he’d picked up. Didn’t help that he’d been so run down, the alcohol certainly not helping him. 

A few hours later, Steve returned. Harrison had been quiet, hopefully sleeping, and he knocked on the door again before he stepped inside. 

“Harrison?” He asked gently. 

He stirred slightly, squinting at Steve. He didn’t quite understand why he was so insistent on pestering him. 

“Can I check your temp again?”

"No."

“Please?”

"No." He whined. "I wanna sleep."

“It’ll take two seconds, and then you can sleep again.”

He groaned, pulling the sheet over his head. "No."

“Come on, Harrison.”

"Steve, please."

“I just want to check it’s come down.”

"It has."

“I don’t know unless I check.”

"Fine." Harrison was always more agreeable when Steve was around, and he couldn’t help but try and do what he wanted.

“Thank you.” Steve said gently, pulling the blanket back. 

The lack of blanket made it so much colder, the small pocket of warmth quickly dissipated. He whined despite himself, burying his face in his pillow as he curled up tighter.

“I know.” Steve soothed. “Just check your temp, won’t take long.” He said as he did it. 

"It's better?"

“Afraid not.” Steve said. It was worse, but he wasn’t about to tell Harrison that, he didn’t want to panic the poor kid. 

"Oh. Okay. More sleep, then."

“How are you feeling?” 

"Cold."

He hummed. “Your temperature is pretty high.”

"That's okay."

“No, it’s not.”

"I'll fix it."

“Oh?”

"Yeah." He settled back down. "It's all fixed now."

“Not sure I share your confidence.”

"That's a shame."

“Here, let me check again.”

"You just checked."

“I need to double check.”

"No you don't."

“I do.”

"I'm asleep."

“Funny, talking whilst you’re asleep.”

"You can check it later."

“If you’re asleep I could just do it now.”

"No."

Steve huffed. “You’re not well.”

He couldn't help the tears that started falling. "I'm sorry."

“Hey, don’t cry.”

"'m cold and you won't let me sleep an' you keep taking my blankets."

“Alright, I know. But you’re far too warm.”

"I'm not."

“You really are.”

Harrison shivered as if to prove his point, managing to push himself up and into Steve's side. 

Steve wrapped his arm around him. “I know you feel miserable.”

"A lot."

“Yeah. You’ve got a bad temp.”

"I'm cold." He murmured, snuggling in properly.

Steve sighed, patting him on the shoulder. “Alright. Get some sleep. I’ll pop back later.”

"No." He said quickly. "Don't go."

Steve softened. “Oh. I’ll stay.”

Harrison gave a quiet, happy noise. "Thank you."

Steve settled down to sit with him, still worried but glad Harrison wanted his comfort. 

Harrison slept for a while, only growing increasingly warm by Steve's side. At first, it was quiet, but soon enough the nightmares leached into his dreams. He struggled against the sheets, whimpering and crying quietly. Nothing changed, and his nightmares only grew worse, the fever only adding more power to them. He woke with a shout, trying to make himself smaller, to keep himself safe.

Steve hated Harrison’s nightmares. He felt so powerless to do anything about them, unable to wake him and worried as he got hotter and hotter. He managed to get the blanket off of him, hoping that would at least help, but he doubted it would make much of a difference. 

“Harrison?” He said gently, once he’d shouted himself awake. “It’s alright, you’re okay.”

He fought against Steve, torn between trying to get away and trying to disappear into the bed. His cries and pleads didn't make sense, talking to people that weren't there.

He was much, much worse than before. Steve’s stomach twisted with nerves and he sighed. “Alright. We really ought to get you cooled down.”

Harrison pushed at Steve's hands, uncoordinated and weak. He was already cold, and couldn't understand how Steve didn't get it. He was supposed to be smart.

Harrison’s skin was so hot it almost burned. Steve didn’t have much of a choice, he needed to cool him down, else he was going to end up in hospital again. Harrison was too agitated for him to bother with trying to take another temperature, and instead he just scooped him up in his arms and carried him to the bathroom. 

His heart almost stopped as Steve carried him onto the bathroom, suddenly gaining strength. He writhed and fought against Steve's arms, begging him to stop. After everything, Steve was going to kill him. 

Luckily Steve was stronger than Harrison, still skinny and weak. He kept him close to his chest, his heart breaking as the teenager fought him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m gonna help, I swear.”

Harrison gripped tightly onto Steve's shirt, tears streaming down his face. He'd turned to begging, trying anything to stop it.

Steve hated it, apologising constantly as he turned the tap on and waited for it to warm up a little before he set Harrison in the tub.  Clearly he was upset, and ordinarily he’d never push him this hard to do something that was this upsetting, but it needed doing. He let the water run over his legs, cupping his hands to trail it over his back. “It’s okay, I promise you’re going to be okay.”

Harrison screamed as the water touched him, trying his best to arch away from it, his hands clawing at Steve's chest. He couldn’t breathe, and each drop of water burned his skin. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please." He begged, his words split by sobs. "Dad, please, I'm sorry. I'll be good. Please."

Steve’s throat tightened, and he tried his best to keep Harrison’s face from getting wet. He knew he’d fucked up, he’d hit a trigger or something, clearly that he knew nothing about. It must have been his old family, his biological family, and Steve hadn’t had any information. But Harrison needed this, else he was going to get much, much sicker. After a while he stopped the running water, just leaving the teenager sat in the tub. He did his best to keep the water moving over him, where he could avoid clawed hands and kicking legs. Steve himself was soaked, his T-shirt clinging to him, but he pushed on. He needed to get Harrison’s temperature down. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. You’re okay, you’ve not done anything wrong. Cooling you down, kid. Cooling you down.”

His words didn't register with Harrison, still fueled by adrenaline and terror. He continued to try his best to scramble out, grabbing at Steve where he could. Steve kept putting water on him, kept him trapped in the bath. He was obviously just dragging it out, making sure Harrison knew how much trouble he'd caused, how much he deserved the punishment. 

Steve hated it, the way Harrison grabbed a t him and tried to free himself. It seemed to be working, though, the boy’s skin wasn’t so warm to touch, he seemed slightly more with it. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m not gonna do anything to hurt you. I just want to help you. I promise I’m helping you.”

Eventually, his strength died down. He didn't have the energy to fight any more, and slowly resigned himself to whatever was coming. 

When he stopped, he expected punishment, to be pushed under and held there, but it didn't come. 

The hands on him no longer burned, and he slowly realised they weren't pushing him down but keeping him up, out of the water. They were slow and gentle, each move careful and considered. Gradually, his sobbing stopped, though his breath continued to catch in his throat. He couldn't help himself as he collapsed into Steve, unable to hold himself up any longer. 

“Well done, that’s it. You’re alright, I’m not trying to hurt you. Just helping you cool down, yeah?” He said gently, stroking through his hair. “I’m sorry. You’re going to be okay, Harrison I’ve got you. Just breathe. It’s okay.”

#sicktember 2022 #sicktember day 22 #sicktember day 23 #common cold/flu #tepid bath #harrison is very very triggered by baths #whump prompt #whump writing #whump #harrison #steve cunningham #dad!steve #steve doesn't know harrison's triggers #which is unfortunate really #hars never does anything by halves #if he's sick he gotta be *sick* #triggered hars #ptsd #past child abuse tw #referenced child abuse #triggered #nightmares #poor hars im sorry bby #steve feels really bad

[littledemonlorne]

#transphobia tw #past child abuse tw #past child abandonment tw #threats of violence tw #death tw #the Dad isn't off the hook #he has a long way to go #but I like the idea of reconcilliation

[obsidiancreates]

Henry Spencer Is A Bastard (With A Broken Nose)

Shawn and Jules have been living together for two weeks when Jules storms into the precinct, grabs Lassiter by the arm, and drags him into the interrogation room.

“O’Hara, what the hell is-”

“You’ve spent time alone with Henry,” she says, sitting Lassiter in the suspect chair. “What was he like?”

“What?”

“This is important, Carlton.”

Lassiter sighs, looking around the room for a moment before answering. “Unpleasant and judgemental. He had every quality of a great cop but none of an actual person I’d spend time with.”

“Which for you is saying something,” Jules mumbles, looking to the side. “Would-would you say you think he’s capable of intentional child endangerment or neglect?”

Lassiter sits up more. “What? O’Hara, what is this about?”

Jules takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. “I was helping Shawn get some stuff from his old room, and we found an old journal from when he was a kid.It was mostly just doodles and half-finished homework, and he said to just throw it away, but… I kept it. I thought it was cute, to be able to look at what went through his brain as a kid.”

“O’Hara. If you’re alleging what I think-”

“I read more later while he was out with Gus and one of the pages was a failed writing assignment. He was supposed to write about what he did over the weekend and he wrote that his dad locked him a trunk and made him pretend to be kidnapped.”

Lassiter lets out a breath. “Okay. But you and I both know Spencer’s imagination-”

“Carlton, remember the kicked-out tailight? When he got shot?”

“O’Hara, I was with Henry through that whole investigation, and I don’t think I can say that the man I investigated with would purposefully hurt or neglect his son. He was like a machine through the whole thing.”

“There was more, though, Carlton. One of the assignments was to write about how they spent Easter and Shawn’s said he got cut on some glass trying to dig up his eggs. He drew a picture, it-”

She pulls out her phone and hands it to her partner. Lassiter looks at a crude drawing of a small stick figure on it’s hands and knees, overly-large shards on the ground in front of it, and an egg a good few lines below it. There’s a taller stick figure behind the small one, with a wide-open mouth and the words ‘You can do better, Shawn,’ written beside it.

The teacher’s note on the side says that Shawn needs to stop making up stories for assignments about his real life.

Lassiter hands the phone back. “O’Hara…”

Jules sits back in her chair a bit, the tension giving way to a slumped tiredness. “I know they’ve never had an… easy relationship, but Henry has always been so present, ever since we’ve known Shawn. I thought that was a good thing and Shawn’s discomfort was just Shawn being… Shawn.” She looks down at her hand in guilt. “What if I completely missed that he has reason, Carlton?”

Lassiter grabs one of Jules’s hands. “O’Hara, Henry Spencer is a bitter, unlikeable, and overbearing old man- but I really don’t think he’s capable of child abuse.”

Jules holds his hand back and gives it a squeeze. “I just… don’t know how to ask Shawn if these are real. He’s not exactly forthcoming about messy emotions and memories.”

Lassiter nods, and then blinks. “So let’s ask Guster. They’ve been stuck together like flies on a flytrap forever.”

Jules shakes her head. “If Shawn isn’t going to say anything, I really don’t think Gus will.”

“Well, you can either ask Guster if these are real, or you can worry about it forever and never get any answers.” Lassiter knows his partner well enough to know that’s unacceptable to her.

She gives his hand one more squeeze. “I’m just worried. Henry works here. He’s in charge of Shawn.”

“And I’m sure that when we talk to Guster about all this, we’ll learn that Spencer was just exaggerating like he always does.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gus reads the page with wide eyes. “Wait, he was serious about that?”

Lassiter stifles the urge to shout ‘Come on!’ when he hears Jules suck in a breath.

“You mean you knew about this already?”

“I mean, Shawn told me once that he liked Easter at my house way more because there was no ‘manhunt training’, but I thought he just meant something like when his dad would have him stakeout their porch.”

“He what?”

“It, sounds worse than it is. … I think.” Gus looks down at the old notebook again. “I thought. … I mean, Henry was always a little intense. When Shawn and I were boyscouts he used to set up challenges that were impossible to win, and then make us feel bad for not winning.”

“What do you mean, impossible to win?” Lassiter is starting to get concerned now. Shawn’s incessant need to show everyone up has been a pain in his ass for years, and if Henry reinforced that grating attitude and now acts like he tried to quell it-

“Stuff like telling us to go find a rocket in the middle of the woods and then going and grabbing it himself. He used to promise us ice cream if we won, then say he’d eat it himself if we didn’t win next time.” Gus’s face pinches the more he talks about the memories. “Gosh, I haven’t thought about that in years. I guess I didn’t realize how messed up that is until I said it out loud.”

“It’s horrible,” Jules says.

“But not criminal,” Lassiter reminds her. “And as… weird and dangerous as the eggs thing is, that’s not criminal either. … I think.”

“What about the trunk, Carlton?”

“... Yeah, that part’s looking pretty bad.”

Gus shuts the notebook. “We need to talk to Shawn about this. I don’t know if I’m even remembering right, but I know he will.”

“He’d never open up about something like this,” Jules says, gesturing to the notebook and letting her arms drop back to her sides with a flop. “He barely tells me about his childhood at all.”

“Well I was there for most of it, and I need to make sure I didn’t miss some serious abuse going down for our entire lives. Do you know how many times I’ve defended his dad to him, Juliet? … Oh my god, on that same boyscout trip with the rocket, he told me his dad had never said he loved him!”

Lassiter doesn’t need to look at Jules to know she’s probably seething with the rage of the entire underworld- if he believed in such a thing. 

Henry better hope they find out it’s not as bad as it’s seeming.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Shawn gets home, Jules, Lassiter, and Gus are all sitting on the couch looking somber. Well, Jules and Gus look somber. Lassiter looks mildly offput.

“Guys! What’s all this, are we having some kinda surprise party?” Shawn looks around for decorations, but there’s nothing. He looks back with excitement. “Is it a case? A big one?”

“Shawn, sit down, we need to ask you about something.” Jules gestures for him to take a seat on a different chair.

“Uh-oh. That’s not your happy voice.” Shawn sits down and leans forward. “Hey, babe, what’s wrong?”

Jules takes a deep breath, and pulls out the notebook. Shawn looks at it. “Oh, that? Please don’t tell me that my drawing skills when I was eight are a dealbreaker.”

“Shawn, did Henry…” Jules falters. Shawn’s expression… 

It doesn’t harden, per say. It just… shifts. Becomes a little closed-off.

“Spencer, did Henry actually make you dig through broken glass to find ridiculous holiday candy?” Lassiter says, offering Jules his hand for support. She takes it.

Shawn’s mouth quirks up in the corner, a huff-laugh escaping him. His eyes aren’t as amused, a dark look in them. “What? How-how’d you know about that?”

“Oh my god.” Gus looks sick.

“Guys, seriously, what is this?” Shawn reaches out and snatches the notebook, flipping through it. Fast at first, and then slower. The slight smirk disappears completely, and Jules and Gus know that habit of sticking his tongue over his teeth means Shawn is not in a good emotional space whatsoever as he reads.

He closes the notebook and tosses it onto the coffee table, sitting back into the chair and sniffling. “It’s uh- it’s nothing.”

“Dude, that is not nothing. I thought you were making that stuff up when we were kids!”

“What? Why would I make that up?” That just seems to confuse Shawn.

“Because you were always making things up!”

“Not about my dad! You were like, the one person I could talk about him with! You thought I was lying about everything the whole time?” Now he looks hurt. 

“Not everything, but crazy stuff like him locking you in a trunk in the middle of a hot day and putting broken glass over your eggs, yeah! Oh my go- this makes me look back on everything I know in a completely different light, Shawn!”

“Okay, you can’t actually be this surprised, Gus. I mean, you were at my house all the time, you know how he was. We couldn’t even play hide-and-seek without me getting a lecture about hunting perps the right way.” The bitterness in his voice is familiar to his friends, the way he keeps from meeting their eyes, the arms crossed over his chest and tense body language. It’s not that they’ve never seen him like this. But they’ve never seen him like this and truly understood it. Even Gus.

Gus, who looks increasingly horrified as he thinks back on more and more memories. “When we were really little and you told me your dad would throw you out for reading comics, were you serious?”

Shawn scoffs a little. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Did he actually ban them?”

“... Yeah. That part he did. He said they made cops look bad.”

“Good god, Spencer, you’re talking like everything in your house was about cops twenty-four-seven.”

“Gee, Lassie, I wonder why. You’ve met my dad, right?”

“But you’re talking like he expected you to be a perfect cop from the second you were born.”

Shawn goes silent. He still won’t look at any of them.

“Oh, my god.” Jules reaches out to put a hand on Shawn’s knee. “Shawn, did he expect that?”

“... Look, guys, it’s… it’s done, alright? It is what it is, and… I’ve accepted that, and I’m working on making things work with my dad. I don’t… I don’t need this. Okay? I don’t want to think about it and get all…” He huffs. “Last time I thought a little too hard about all this stuff I ended up on my motorcycle with nowhere to go, and-and I don’t want to do that again, alright?”

“Shawn, this is important. We’re all working with Henry constantly, watching how he treats you, and this changes how some of that looks.”

“How?” Shawn finally looks at Jules, right in the eyes. “How does this change anything? He’s the same person, Jules. He-he’s controlling, and-and expects way too much, and is disappointed in me. That’s not different now just because you know he went overboard with stuff when I was a kid.”

Lassiter lets out a deep breath. He’d really… really been hoping this wouldn’t be the case. “How overboard, Spencer?”

Shawn looks at Lassie, and then clicks his tongue and looks away again. “Not in that way, man. He never hit me or anything.”

“So what did he do?”

“Why is this an interrogation?” Shawn stands up, pulling away from Jules’s outstretched hand. “This is stuff for me, and my dad to hash out, okay? Just me and him.”

“Did your mom know about this stuff?” Gus asks. 

The mention of his mom seems to make Shawn shut down even more. “Now this is really over.” He walks away, and pauses for just one second to turn around and say, “Don’t- don’t go my dad about all this. I don’t want…”

“... Don’t want what, Shawn?” Jules’s voice is soft and careful.

Shawn doesn’t seem to be able to find the end of the thought. He just shakes his head and walks back out the door.

The three sit in silence for a minute. Jules has tears in her eyes. Gus looks almost shellshocked.

Lassiter stands up. “Alright, I’m officially taking lead on this case.” He looks down at his partner. “O’Hara, find out who in the precinct knew Henry well and still works there. We’ll interview anyone who he might’ve talked to his son about, see if we can dig up any leads there.”

“Whoa, Shawn just said he didn’t want his dad finding out we’re asking about all this, and we just learned he’s way worse than we thought,” Gus says, standing up too. “We can’t start poking around the precinct, because in case you forgot Lassie, he works there!”

“Part-time.”

“He’ll know something is up.”

“Please. I think I know how to run a discreet investigation, Guster.”

“Could you hide something like that from Shawn?”

“... Of course.”

“No, you couldn’t, and if you can’t hide it from Shawn it’s a safe bet that you can’t hide it from his dad.”

Jules stands up. “No, Carlton is right. None of us realized how these pieces fit together until we all talked about it with each other, right? If Shawn won’t… can’t, open up to us about it, the next best thing is getting as many witness statements as possible.”

“Why? It just feels like digging things up to dig them up at this point.”

“Because Henry is currently in charge of Spencer’s livelihood, Guster.”

“I know! He’s in charge of part of mine too!”

“Right.” Jules looks up at Lassiter. “And if we can prove to The Chief that Henry has a negative, unreliable bias against Shawn, we can lessen some of that control!”

“As much as I’d hate to see Spencer off the leash again, I’d hate to be helping enable an abuser even more,” Lassiter agrees. 

“Abuser is a strong word.” Gus doesn’t look like he feels that sentence is 100% true. “He wasn’t all bad a lot of the time. I mean, he loosened up on the comic thing when we were older.”

“We know he cares, Gus,” Jules assures. “But, caring doesn’t mean he didn’t do something wrong. Really, really wrong.”

Gus swallows, and then nods. “I know.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They collect a good few statements over the next week.

One statement claims that Shawn would play poker with some of the officers when Henry brought him to the station- why Henry was bringing a seven year old to an active police station and then not keeping an eye on him was something that went unanswered- and that Henry was obviously upset when he discovered this. Another statement corroborated the story, and added that he caught sight of Henry taking all the money Shawn made from the games and shoving it into the police donation box.

One statement was from an elderly file sorter, who claimed that Shawn was sometimes sent down to grab files for his dad and used to complain to her that henry would only buy Shawn cop car toys, and no others. When she’d asked Shawn if he wanted to be a cop when he grew up, Shawn had reportedly said quote, “Something about not getting a choice.” Other statements claimed, when this was brought up, that Shawn seemed very excited by the idea of being a cop when he grew up- until his arrest.

One statement, given by someone Lassiter vaguely remembers being rookies with back in the day, lends more credibility to the recollections of the elderly woman. The statement claimed that when the rookie would go on ride-alongs with Henry or work under him, Henry would almost always complain about Shawn. Everything from Shawn having an interest that didn’t relate to being a cop, to Shawn ‘acting like a child’ when he would have been under twelve according to the timeline, to Shawn ‘not even trying’ during a specific incident where Henry claimed Shawn forged his signature to go on a field trip and quote “hesitated for a second with his pen or something- I remember it was something really minor, and Henry couldn’t stand it. I thought it was weird that he was teaching his son how to forge signatures and then expecting the kid to never use the skill, but it wasn’t really my place to say.”

By the end of the week, Jules is steaming and Shawn hasn’t come around the precinct at all. Gus keeps dropping by, digging up old journals of his own to use as cross-references when possible. Shawn is quiet with Jules at home, like he’s waiting for something big to happen and he’s worried he could trigger it early.

It makes Jules more upset at Henry, because now her boyfriend’s emotional immaturity seems a lot less like a natural childish nature and a lot more like having genuinely never been taught how to handle anything.

No, according to the information she and Lassiter have gathered, it looks like all Henry taught Shawn was that winning is everything, being the best is non-negotiable, and Shawn was born to be a cop and anything that didn’t align with that idea just… shouldn’t be there.

“Wow.” Lassiter tosses the latest statement onto his desk. “And I thought Henry didn’t discipline Spencer enough as a kid. Some of this stuff makes it sound like Spencer grew up in a boot camp.”

“He basically did,” Jules says bitterly, reading over one of Gus’s old notebooks. “Gus wasn’t even looking for evidence of it, and these journals are full of casual, offhand observations that look worse and worse the more we know. Listen to this one. ‘Today Shawn was in a bad mood, and when I asked him why he said his dad stole his mood ring after showing him to turn the box upside-down. I said that’s cheating, and Shawn said it can’t be if his dad said to do it.’ Who the hell steals a mood ring from a kid?”

“You’re getting caught on the small stuff again, O’Hara.”

“I know, I know. I just- now that we know some of the major things, even the small stuff is making me just unbelievably angry.”

“Yeah, it’s rough to read. At least you and I wanted to be cops.”

“Right? No wonder Shawn ended up a psychic detective, how do you just do something else after being raised so specifically like that? And no wonder he-he buys EasyBake Ovens and goofs off all the time, he had it so strict as a kid…”

“Mmmmm… let’s not excuse every antic, O’Hara. A lot fo it is still just him being a jackass.”

“I won’t get into this with you again, Carlton.”

“Good, I don’t want to get into it again either. … Heads up.”

Jules closes the notebook and tucks it into a desk drawer as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible, Lassie doing the same for his file. Henry walks past them, barley sparing a glance as he makes his way somewhere else.

Jules stares daggers at him so intensely that if dropped to the ground covered with enough puncture wounds to imitate Julias Caesar, Lassiter would think it was a mild scene all things considered.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s three weeks since Jules found the notebook when Shawn rolls over in bed, puts his arm around, and mumbles “I have an eidetic memory.”

Jules puts her book down and looks at Shawn with furrowed brows. “What?”

Shawn sighs and sits up properly. “I have an eidetic memory,” he says again, “And… I don’t like looking back, because I remember everything perfectly. Which means I usually remember what I felt perfectly too, and it usually wasn’t great feelings.” He can’t look her in the eyes this time, either, but instead of the tense, protective body language of before, he’s holding a pillow close to his chest and slightly burying his face into it, almost sagging around it.

Jules starts to rub his back. She knows how hard this kind of… difficult emotional discussion, is for him. Now she even knows why- suspects why, really, because not all of it is proven in full, but still she thinks she can cout is as knowing. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“About the memory?”

“Yeah. That sounds… really difficult to deal with, Shawn. Does Gus know?”

“Yeah, he knows. I think other than my dad, and… and you, he’s the only person who knows.”

“Shawn…”

“I just, I just want you to know… that I’m not asking you to drop it for no reason,” Shawn says, “Or-or because I don’t feel like it’s important. I know it is, I do. I just…”

“Don’t want to relive a lot of it,” Jules says softly. “... Shawn, does this mean you remember everything perfectly? All the time?”

“Eh… fifty-fifty. The ADHD gets in the way sometimes.”

“... But when it doesn’t?”

“I just try not to think about a lot of it.” Shawn moves again, to look her in the eyes, He takes a deep breath, and he looks a little pained. This kind of thing is painful for him, he’s so unsure how to navigate it. “I have to keep moving forward, Jules. It’d be so… so easy to just get stuck, forever, in all the stuff stored in my head. And I’m really, really trying to, I mean that. It’s difficult, and I’m not… always great at it, but I’m trying.”

“And you’re worried we’ll set you back?”

“No! No, I… I don’t know.” Shawn lets Jules pull him close to her chest and begin running her hand through his hair. “My dad and I don’t solve stuff, Jules. We just… argue over it. I’m getting tired of it.”

“... I understand.” She kisses the top of his head. “But I don’t like him being in charge of you when you’re a grown man anymore.”

“You think I do? … But it’s making him a lot happier than he’s been in a long time.”

“You should be happy too, Shawn.”

“Hey. Hey, I am happy.” He looks up into her eyes. “Look at me right now. I’m being cradled like a sweet little baby seal by the most beautiful, badass woman in the entire world. Of course I’m happy.”

Jules laughs a little and contorts a bit to kiss him on the mouth. “I’m glad you told me that, Shawn. And I promise, I won’t ask you to relive anything else for me.”

“... But you’re not going to stop investigating my dad, are you?”

“Did you stop with mine?”

“... Fair enough.” Shawn lays his head back down, and soon enough Jules hears soft snoring from him and mumbled phrases in his sleep.

…

An eidetic memory. Perfect recall.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Jules goes over everything they have so far knowing Shawn has a perfect memory, it makes her angry to such a degree that she thinks it might kill her. Not literally, but it feels strong enough.

She has some of Shawn’s old report cards, some statements she got from former teachers via social media contact, and some copies of pages of one of Gus’s old journals laid out in front of her, and she sees a pattern.

Shawn didn’t do good in school. His report cards are less than average, and are packed with notes about how he doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t seem to absorb any information, and doesn’t remember anything he’s taught. The statements from the teachers describe Shawn as hyperactive, passionate about everything but his schoolwork, and having difficulty with staying observant in class.

Gus’s old journals are full of the same, but also the opposite. Shawn didn’t pay attention in school, but sometimes he could pull something the teacher said from his memory word for word without even trying, and then a few entries later Gus would mention Shawn failed a test on that exact subject. Shawn got beat up because he told a bully he memorized the pattern of answers used in the math tests, but his dad told the teacher and let Shawn know he was doing it. And most of all, Gus writes about how freaky his friend’s ability to look at people and figure them out is. How Shawn notices almost everything almost all the time, and usually makes some dramatic conclusion that isn’t right, but he still notices things and Gus can’t figure out how Shawn fingers things out.

Detective training, and an eidetic memory, and psychic visions. Jules is now pretty sure that Shawn covers up some of his deductions using his visions- he’s known enough impossible information that they can’t possibly all be deductions in disguise, but when she thinks back there’s a few times where it’s obvious in hindsight he used his abilities to cover up the fact that he’s an incredible, highly-trained detective.

Maybe she’s jumping to a conclusion, but she finds herself thinking ‘Because Henry made him hate that he can do it so well,’ as she pieces it all together.

Gus’s journals lend a lot of credit to that theory. Shawn is smart, and Gus knows it, but Shawn acts dumb sometimes and Gus doesn’t understand why, and then Gus mentions that it’s weird that Henry kept Shawn up all night before to stakeout their porch and now Shawn is tired during Little League and Henry tells him to get his head in the game because Henry is the coach.

Henry is the coach, Henry is the chaperone on the field trip, Henry is their Scout Master- he’s in charge of every part of Shawn’s life except for school. And Maddie is rarely brought up, even when Gus writes about spending all day or night or even weekend at the Spencer house. Jules hasn’t seen Shawn’s Mom since Yang almost blew her up, and she just figured that Maddie wanted to stay out of Santa Barbara after that, understandably. She’s getting a different feeling about Maddie staying away now. It seems a lack of presence was her main impression in Shawn’s life, or at least, Shawn’s life through the lens of Child Gus.

So it was basically just Henry. And her heart aches for the thought of someone being stuck in a bad marriage, basically raising a kid alone, and that kid being as hyper and curious and chaotic as Shawn. But the ache is smothered in the sense of righteous rage when she reads other entries about things like a girl throwing a ball at Shawn and missing, and an ostrich choking on the ball, and Henry dragging Shawn away. The entry goes on to say that Shawn told Gus that Henry didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t do it, even after then-superior officer Captain Connors came in and tried to vouch for Shawn.

Henry always assumed the worst. Assumes, the worst, still.

Shawn tries so hard, sometimes, with his dad, and Jules is starting to realize that Henry doesn’t put the same effort in. He tries some, she knows it, she’s seen it, but she also sees him constantly berate, put down, and insult Shawn, publicly and privately. 

Suddenly she remembers something from when Shawn went undercover on the dating show, something she’d been too upset over about Shawn being there at all to really take in in the moment.

“I’m sorry, this woman is way too good for my son. If it was me, I’d vote no.”

She doesn’t have Shawn’s memory, so without rewatching the clip she can’t be totally sure those are Henry’s exact words, but she’s certain that it’s the exact sentiment.

First of all, she takes a little offense to that for herself. But secondly and more strongly, she takes offense for Shawn. As she thinks about it she can remember the way Shawn tried to cover up the awkwardness in the clip, the way the girl on the show whispered “Is this a joke?” and the way it absolutely was not. The way Henry said that on TV, to Shawn’s face, with no hint of shame.

“O’Hara.” She looks up to see Lassiter holding a cup of coffee and a bagel for her. She takes them and Lassiter says, “There’s more steam coming out of your ears than there is that cup.”

“Sorry,” she sighs. “I just… I don’t know if I can control myself tomorrow when Henry comes back in. The more I dig into this, the more I want to just- go back in time and pick little Shawn up and take him somewhere better.”

“Well as much as we don’t like it, O’Hara, Spencer is who he is because he was raised the way he was raised.”

“I know. And I like, who Shawn is!”

“Inexplicably.”

“Carlton.”

“Mmm.”

“Anyway… I love Shawn, and who he is, all of him, but I still wish he could’ve been who he is without going through all of this. It’s not okay.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Lassiter sighs. “Look, O’Hara, put the case down for a while. At this point we’ve got enough to at least make The Chief doubt some of Henry’s intentions and judgements when it comes to Spencer and, well, that was the goal.”

“... Yeah. Yes, okay, I will… I will put this down for a few days.” Jules closes up the file and puts it back into her drawer. “Shawn is still less than happy I’m working on this, anyway. He understands why, but I know he wishes he didn’t.” He probably understands a lot of things he wishes he didn’t. Jules has had to grapple with the realization that she actually doesn’t know as much about how Shawn’s mind works as she thought she knew, and that it’s possible she’ll never know a lot of it. There’s more than just psychic visions to the mystery of his mind, and some of those mysteries are locked up with a key cast out of self-resentments and resentments of his dad.

God, she hopes she can keep up a poker face when Henry comes in.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her file is missing from her desk the next day, and so is Lassiter’s. They both know why.

They march over to Henry’s desk just as Gus comes in to collect a check, and all three end up standing over Henry as he openly and unashamedly reads through the Spencer Upbringing Case File. Gus takes a step back when he realizes that’s what’s happening, as does Lassiter.

But not because of Henry.

Jules looks murderous.

Henry purses his mouth in a frown and nods, raising up the file and then closing it and tossing it onto his desk in one smooth movement. “It’s comprehensive,” he says, like he’s grading a paper. “But it’s a bunch of biased bull.”

“Give them back.” Jule’s voice is ice-cold. 

Henry shrugs, moving his head side to side for a second, still frowning, and then says, “Nah.” He takes the files, and drops them in the trash. “I think you owe me an explanation for why the head detective and his partner are investigating the way I raised my son. Why’d Shawn put you up to this?”

“He didn’t.”

Henry scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

Jules slams one hand onto Henry’s desk. The whole bullpen goes quiet.

“I was helping Shawn get something from your house, and I found a notebook,” she says. 

“Oh, so, you found one of Shawn’s little projects where he exaggerated things to make himself look like a victim of the world?”

“I found the writings of a little kid who didn’t seem to realize at the time of writing that being locked in a hot car trunk and digging through broken glass for Easter Eggs wasn’t normal.”

Henry laughs, crossing his arms. “That’s what you have a problem with? It’s called training, detective. You went through it yourself.”

“When I was an adult, by my choice, and I sure as hell never had to dig through glass.”

“You’re really hung up on that.”

“Because it’s genuinely evil!”

Henry’s smug look melts into a scowl. “How dare you.”

“How dare I?! Do you understand how much all of this is still affecting Shawn, even right now?! He can barely talk about all of this!” “Oh, well, he sure seem capable of reminding me of it.”

“Because you did it! You’re the only other person in the entire world who understood what was done to him in the name of training because you did it!”

“Done to h- you’re overreacting, detective!”

“I, agree, what is going on out here?” Chief Vick hurries over to Henry’s desk from her own. “Detectives, there had better be a damn good reason-”

“There is, Chief.” Lassiter reaches into the trashcan and pulls out the files.

“Karen, Detective O’Hara has allowed her romantic entanglement with my son to-”

“Henry was borderline abusive during Shawn’s childhood,” Jules interrupts, facing her Chief. Chief Vick’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open, a disbelieving laugh escaping her even as she accepts the files and flips them open. “You understand what it is you’re alleging, O’Hara, and against who?”

“I do, Chief, and I think our case file speaks for itself.” All eyes are on them now. Jules doesn’t back down. “I’m well aware of my emotional ties to this case, but I assure you I’m not allowing it to cloud my judgment. If I was, I wouldn’t have used the word borderline to describe the conclusions I’ve come to.”

“Karen, this is ridiculous.”

But Chief Vick is focused on the files in her hands. Her eyes flick up to Henry. “Is it?” She looks over to Gus, who’s been watching with the quiet tension of a prey animal waiting to make a run for it. “Mister Guster, can you genuinely testify to the validity and accuracy of the claims in these files?”

“Oh, um, well, most of those are from my own journals.” Gus’s eyes flick between Henry and Jules. “I’d say that’s even more reliable than just plain memory.”

“It certainly is.” Chief Vick turns her eyes back to the file. “Henry, I think after I’m done going through these we’re going to have a chat about some of your current responsibilities and extent of authority over consultants.”

“Oh, come on, Karen!” Henry looks around at the entire precinct staring, and judging. “This is completely unfounded, and-and blown way out of propor-!”

Henry doesn’t finish the sentence because Juliet O’Hara punches him in the nose.

There’s gasps from everyone in the room. Jules’s fist is bloodied. Henry’s nose went CRUNCH! when her fist made contact.For a long moment it’s like the whole room has collectively stopped breathing. 

“I don’t make unfounded accusations, Henry,” Jules breathes. “Especially not when I have been building a case for over a month, and have watched Shawn completely close off whenever I asked him about this.”

Henry holds his nose, looking at Jules with fear that Lassiter and Gus don’t think is nearly intense enough. “Juliet,” Henry pants, blood streaming out from between his fingers. “This is insane.”

“Quiet, Spencer.” Lassiter moves Jules a little farther away. Her fist is still raised. “I won’t tolerate you disrespecting my partner, especially not in the same way you do your son.”

“What?! You can’t believe all this too, Lassiter.”

“You know I’m not Shawn’s biggest fan, but if you think what O’Hara has done over the last month is anything less than the best damn investigation possible then I have to seriously reconsider some of our shared opinions of your son’s work.”

Gus glances at a box of tissues on Henry’s desk- and then subtly moves to knock them on the floor and kicks them away.

“Herny, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the precinct for a few days while this gets handled. O’Hara, I’m going to need to speak with you in my office.”

Jules lowers her fist, and nods. She knows she can’t just punch Henry and get away with it scot-free, and she accepts that.

No-one moves to help Henry. Not a single soul. He grumbles as he makes his way past Gus to grab a different box of tissues.

“It’s like he just sucks the respect out of people,” Henry grumbles. 

CRACK!

No-one is more surprised than Gus when his fist slams into Henry’s jaw. Gus reels away immediately, shrinking and cradling his hand, as Henry goes down.

“Mister Guster!” Chief Vick moves forward to try and catch Henry.

“Uuuuh!” Guss whines, shaking his hand. “I-I mean, you don’t get to say that about Shawn! He asked us not to keep doing this! You gotta stop assuming the worst of him all the time!”

“When he earns it!” Henry barks out, then groans and spits. It’s mostly blood.

“You won’t let him earn it!” Jules is furious again. “How many killers does he have to catch for you to see that your son is an amazing man?!”

“It’s not about catching killers,” Henry says, spitting again. “It’s about growing up.”

“Says the grown man who can’t even tell his son ‘I love you’.”

“He doesn’t say it either.”

“That’s not helping your case, Spencer.” Lassiter has his eyes on Jules and Gus. “And considering I’m the only one on said case who hasn’t taken a shot at you yet, I’d say keep your mouth shut.”

“Oh, what do you know.” Henry spits a third time. The Chief looks about ready to punch him herself. “Father-son relationships are complicated, especially when the father wants what’s best for the son and the son just wants to throw everything away and get himself killed!”

“You wanted him to be a cop, Spencer, you didn’t exactly put him on a path to a peaceful and easy life.”

“I put him on the right path, and he never appreciated it, and that is what your case file should say!”

“You know what, Spencer?” Lassiter takes a step closer to the bleeding man. “I’ve put up with a lot of crap from both you and your son over the years, and you two are a lot more similar than you think. But one thing I can say that Shawn has over you is that he doesn’t mean it when he says stupid crap like that.”

“He looks up to you, you ass,” Jules adds. “And he is willing to put aside all of the things you say and do to him to have a good relationship with you. Do you understand how incredible that is? That you don’t even have to work to have him in your life? That he comes to you no matter how many times you tear into him for it?”

“He comes to me because he never listens when he needs to.” Henry’s face is starting to become very purple as the bruises set in. “I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but he needs, my help.”

“Exactly! And he feels like you’re reliable enough to give it to him, and you do! So why do you treat that as though it’s a fault? Do you have any idea what I would have given as a kid, and even now, to be able to just-just go up to my dad and say ‘I need help,’ and have him be there to help me? That means the world!”

“Not to Shawn.” Henry looks pained beyond just the broken nose and possible broken jaw. “The kid is too focused on himself.”

“You don’t know your son at all, then.” Jules turns and walks with The Chief to her office.

Gus shakes his head, grabs the check out of Henry’s paperwork pile, checks that it’s signed, and leaves. 

“Oh, really? It’s up to me to take him to the hospital?” Lassiter looks around and then huffs. “Alright, Spencer. Don’t bleed on my seats, or my dashboard, or anything but yourself.”

“I’m not a bad father,” Henry says, still holding his nose. “I care about my son.”

“Yeah, and somehow Shawn knows that even though you act the way you do.” Lassie buckles Henry in for him so that the nose remains pinched. “But here’s the thing, Spencer. Your son is an arrogant, attention-hogging, impulsive, completely absurd person, and he didn’t just become like that out of a vacuum.”

“Yes he did. I did everything I could. I did everything right as much as possible.”

Lassiter sighs as he gets into the driver’s seat. “You seriously think that? You’d be okay with your grandkid being raised that way?”

“If they had Shawn’s potential, yes.”

“... Dammit.” Lassiter turns to Henry, and punches him in the gut. Henry coughs, and then chokes on his own blood, and then coughs again.

“What the hell?!” Henry gets out between hacks.

“O’Hara would’ve done it. I feel like I owed it to her. … And honestly, Spencer, after compiling that damn case, I’ve been wanting to do it for myself anyway. I already knew you were an overbearing perfectionist with a control issue, but you wishing your son was more like that than he is is even worse.”

“Shawn’s no perfectionist,” Henry wheezes. 

“But he is overbearing with a control issue more often than not. Like I said inside, you two are a lot more similar than you think, and frankly I blame you for the parts of Shawn that go past mild annoyance and into infuriating obstacle.”

“I’d never just hand a collar over to save someone’s ego,” Henry coughs out.

“See, that’s where I wish Shawn wasn’t like you.”

“He’s handed you a collar twice.”

“What? He has not.”

And Henry must be a little delirious from the repeated blows, because Lassiter is pretty sure his next words of “See, this is why Shawn should’ve been head detective,” wouldn’t come out of him otherwise.

Lassiter grips the steering wheel tighter and makes a sharp turn into the hospital parking lot. “Well he’s not, and from the sound of things he never would’ve been anyway.”

“He could’ve been a perfect cop.”

“He’d have been miserable and you know it.”

“He’d be doing things right.”

“You’re hopeless.” Lassiter isn’t any gentler helping Henry out of the car than he was helping him in. “I’m not picking you back up when they’re done with you.”

“I’ll call Shawn.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you will.” And Shawn will come, and probably be mad on his dad’s behalf, and will definitely be mad at all three of the punchers, because he loves his dad enough to overlook years and years of mistreatment that most people would probably consider ground for cutting contact. “And Spencer? If you ever insult O’Hara’s work again, or say anything that gets her that angry, I will help her cover up your disappearance.”

“You don’t mean that,” Henry scoffs.

“Try me.” Lassiter gets back in his car. “And if I hear from her that you’re still badmouthing your son to his face, I’ll make you disappear myself.”

And then he drives away. 

And Henry walks into the hospital alone.

#psych #psychusa #psych usa #psych 2006 #blood tw #blood mention #violence #juliet o'hara #carlton lassiter #burton guster #burton gus guster #shawn spencer #henry spencer hate #I hate Henry Spencer #psychfic #fanfic #my attemps at fanfic #abuse mention #child abuse mention #past child abuse mention

[queermentaldisaster]

“There's a Revolution Coming”, part three of “The Devil Made Me Do It; But I Also Kinda Wanted To”.

First thing's first. If you read this on AO3, please, please, please pay attention to the tags. I will add sufficient warnings for each chapter here as well, but this is very much a Dead Dove fic. What you see is what you get. So please, proceed with caution when you see the tws/tags.

Tags: @forestshadow-wolf @axelaxolotl09 @im-here-and-im-confused @bringinsexybackk69 @rainerestored @8-rae-rae-8 (if you want to be added or removed from the taglist please inform me)

(Possible) tw: Children in captivity, mental breakdown, mentions of torture and mind control, discrimination towards demons, and implied child abuse. Proceed with caution.

Chapter 1 under the cut.

The helo landed, and Mirror grabbed Soap's bound wrists and began dragging him towards the military base. Soap's eyes trailed upwards, and his eyes narrowed. With the amount of security around this place, it reminded him of a castle. He looked back down, taking a deep breath. ‘Och, poor Si…he's probably terrified right now and masking it with anger…’ he thought. His thoughts were on Ghost, even as Mirror dragged him through the base. Then, he looked up, and saw just how many demons were here. More than a thousand. The rest must've come from all over the world, then. ‘How many demons did Meister break?’ Soap thought, as his mind drifted back to a conversation Ghost and him had while he was still recovering.

“You know, Meister tortured us to make us weak to mind control.” Ghost murmured. Soap's head snapped up from his sketchbook. “Mind control?” He asked. Ghost nodded. “Affirmative.” He brought his hand up to his neck. “He’d collar us, then attack us. He saw us as nothing more than tools.” Ghost's wings tightened around himself. Soap's eyes softened and he touched Ghost's hand. “Yer so much more than a tool to me, Simon. Yer as alive as the rest of us.” he murmured. Ghost looked back at Soap and his eyes spoke volumes. “Thanks, Johnny.”

A tear rolled down Soap's cheek. God, he hoped Ghost was looking for him. He was scared.

Mirror dragged him into a room, shoving him in and locking the door behind him. Soap fell to the floor, and knelt there, his hands clenched into fists. He let the tears begin rolling down his cheeks, as he tried not to sob. He was in the lion's den and all alone. Too weak to fight against demons and vampires and…whatever Shepard was. God, he'd never wished for anything, not even to be a monster…but now, he was cursing his human heritage. ‘Ah’m useless. Cannae even save maself, much less love Simon how he wants.’ He bit his tongue. ‘Ah’m pathetic. Fought tooth ‘n nail ta get where ah was, and now ah'm here. In an empty room, captured, unable to save maself.’ A sob escaped from the gag, and the dam broke. He curled up, sobbing.

•✧-----------------------------------✧•

He didn't know how long had passed, and he didn't care. He'd managed to get the gag out at some point, and he was now staring at the ceiling, counting the tiles. “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six-” He was interrupted by the door flying open. Graves was standing there, his eyes narrowed. “Do you ever shut up!?” He snapped. Soap sat up, placing his bound wrists on his knees. “Ya ken, Graves, ye have a really bad track record with kidnapping. Twice in two months. Ghost isnae goin’ tae be happy with this.”

Graves's eyes narrowed. “I do not care what that beast thinks. He's nothing more than an animal, a tool to use as we see fit. He doesn't have feelings, he can't.” Soap's eyes narrowed. “...” He lunged at Graves, only to be tackled by one of the other demon guards. Graves's eyes narrowed. “Take him to the little room.” The demon nodded and dragged Soap off as Soap screamed his head off at Graves, in pure rage.

The demon threw Soap in another room, this one with three beds, and paper strewn around the room. He hit the ground roughly, and he let out a groan. He felt hands grab his binds and he almost struck the person…until he looked ahead…and saw a child with pale tannish skin, her right eye being a purple color, her left eye being a pink color, blonde hair, and tiny red horns. “Evelyn! He could be a threat!” came a voice. He turned his head and saw a girl, no older than fourteen, shielding a smaller boy. The girl had light grayish pinkish-purple hair, her right eye being orange and her left eye being a dark grayish magenta color. She had a burn scar by her right eye, and she had horns of a dull gold color that curved like a ram's. Soap looked around, spotting two other kids. His heart sank.

#call of duty #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #call of duty mw2 #ghostsoap #ghoap #ghost mw2 #soap mw2 #soapghost #original character #original characters #demons #tw: implied child abuse #tw: mentions of past torture #tw: discrimination #tw: degradation #ao3 #ao3 link #ao3 author #dead dove do not eat #cod fic #my fic #call of duty fic #ao3 fanfic #call of duty fanfiction #call of duty fanfic #fanfiction #cod fanfic #cod fanfiction

[sulasnsleep]

“i do not recall the taste of love. i remember being fed poison and told it was sugar.”

— sulasnsleep

#tw self destruction #tw abuse #tw child trauma #tw child harm #tw childhood abuse #tw childhood trauma #tw childhood neglect #tw neglect #self writings #self written #self written quotes #tw past trauma #tw past abuse #past abuse #past trauma #tw manipulation #manipulation #manipulative #depressing quotes #sorry for being depressing #depresjon #kinda depressing #depressing poem #tw depressing stuff #tw depressing thoughts #this is depressing #depressiv #depressing shit #depresión #depressing life

[mariamakeslemons]

I found I'm actually enjoying writing in @ghouljams fae!AU. Here's Lilac's first meeting with Price, Keegan, and the Changeling/Ainsley.

Lilac stares in terror at the man, fae, standing in her mentor’s garden. He smiles at her and she chokes, shaking as he takes a purposeful step toward her.

“Calm down, little witch,” he chuckles, dropping his heavy hand on her head, “I don’t eat children.” Lilac squeaks at his rough pats before watching with wide eyes as he walks past her, into Miss Witch’s house.

“Price! Stop scaring Lilac!” Miss Witch scolds, her hands on her hips and a frown on her face. The fae, Price, chuckles and strides up to Miss Witch. Suddenly, Lilac sprints to stand between them, her arms outstretched in an attempt to block him from hurting Miss Witch.

“Y-you can’t h-hurt h-her!” She yells, fighting to keep her fear off her face as she stares up at his blue eyes. Price raises an eyebrow at Lilac’s declaration, tilting his head curiously.

“Oh? Are you going to stop me?” he asks, not mocking, but curious. Lilac freezes, unsure of the correct answer when Miss Witch huffs behind her.

“Price,” she intones. The fae raises his hands in surrender, chuckling as he once again steps around Lilac. The girl spins, terrified for her mentor. She knows Miss Witch is heavily warded, that’s just what generational magic does, but Price feels strong. Maybe even stronger than Miss Witch, although magic does what it does, so she might be stronger?

“Lilac,” Miss Witch calls, pulling Lilac from her panicked thoughts. She’s sitting on the bench while Price still stands, looking over his shoulder in amusement, “Go put the herbs back for me please. Then, you can copy down more of those minor spells.” Lilac hesitates, but ultimately, she nods and scurries back into the house, glancing over her shoulder worriedly to the garden.

Cleaning up the herbs takes a minute of squinting at Miss Witch’s handwriting and comparing it to the notes she’s made on the spare notebook Lilac brought. It takes almost ten minutes, but she’s confident at her accuracy. Another forty minutes is taken up by carefully writing out the most basic of spells in various colored pens. Miss Witch mentioned one of her accomplices likes using multiple colors for notes and wanted to see if it would help Lilac concentrate. It worked and now, her grimoire is currently being cleansed of all the black ink that barely meant anything, and they’re waiting for a proper quill and ink set that will copy the multi-colored system that helps Lilac keep her thoughts in order. Beaming at her steady progress, Lilac stands up from her seat and scurries over to the door to the garden, opening her mouth to ask Miss Witch to look over her work, only to stop.

Price is laying on the bench, his head in Miss Witch’s lap, and a soft look on his face as he stares up at her. Miss Witch is humming a song Lilac swears she knows, her fingers combing through the fae’s hair softly, her expression just as soft.

“Y’know, Soap’ll pout when I tell ‘im how nice you are t’ the little witch. Especially when y’re so mean t’ ‘im,” the fae rumbles. Miss Witch scoffs, going so far to tap his nose as they smile at each other.

“Soap’s a grown fae, Lilac is a child. They are completely different, and you know that,” Miss Witch reminds him with a smile, teasing. Price chuckles, his eyes fluttering closed when Miss Witch bends down enough to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Doesn’t mean ‘e won’t bitch,” the fae reiterates before silence surrounds the couple once again. Lilac can’t help but stare, awe and confusion mixing together.

Witches and fae don’t mix, one of the biggest rules Granny beat into Racheal. No witch worth their salt would ever allow a fae into their home, their sanctuary, willingly. But, here they are, Miss Witch completely at ease while Price does nothing more than tease her. No threats of violence, no attempts at violence. It’s a strange thing to witness, after being told and shown reasons that they can’t interact.

Suddenly, a soft knock on the front door startles Lilac from her staring. She slowly turns to the door, blinking in confusion. She’s been here for a few days already, but Miss Witch always knows when customers are coming. Lilac’s never heard a knock at the door and she doesn’t know what to do. Another knock sounds out, low on the door but insistent. Suddenly, Miss Witch strides past Lilac, a fond smile and shake of her head while Price follows with a frown.

“Hello there,” Miss Witch says upon opening the door, “You really need to stop doing this, sweetie. Your mom is going to be worried.”

“And Russ’s gonna be a pain in the ass,” Price grumbles beside Lilac.

“Russ?” she asks, only to jump and squeak when a little changeling wraps their arms around her legs, looking up at her curiously.

“Who?” the little one asks, their voice taking on Miss Witch’s and Price’s and maybe a few other people. Lilac blinks, before slowly raising her head. Miss Witch winces at the sound of so many voices at once, but she smiles.

“She’s my trainee,” Miss Witch explains patiently, “Her name is Lilac.” The changeling hums and chitters like a chipmunk, a smile crossing their face that make’s their cheeks appear chubbier. Lilac smiles back nervously, only for her nerves to be soothed when the child lets go of her legs to grab her hand. They ramble about decay and how it affects objects differently, from leaves turning from green to black, and a squirrel’s body caved in on itself before some birds got to it. It’s interesting, how passionate the kid is about their topic.

“D-do you want t’ read a b-book?” Lilac asks, smiling when the child looks up at her excitedly. They nod and point at a book Miss Witch had told Lilac was about a dog’s life. Taking the book gently from the shelf, Lilac sits on the ground and jolts in surprise as the child climbs into her lap, forcing her to wrap her arms around the kid and rest her chin on their head to read.

They get through two chapters when a man appears with a dog. Lilac looks up and tightens her hold on the changeling fearfully. He’s a tall fae, one that makes promises and demands rewards. One that can stack any deal in his favor.

“I’d appreciate if you’d let my kid go,” he drawls, the German Shepard beside him giving Lilac a warning growl. Swallowing and shying back, she glances down at the changeling worriedly, unsure as to the older fae’s plan for the little one. The fae’s face shifts, from a fake neutral expression to something softer, almost like comfort.

“I’m not gonna hurt him. I need to take him back to his momma,” the fae explains. The changeling on Lilac’s lap beams up at her and nods. Lilac swallows again, before nodding and releasing her hold. The changeling scrambles over to the man, giggling happily as they’re scooped up.

“Alright, you monster,” the fae teases, “Say bye to your new friend.”

“Bye-bye!” the changeling chirps, birdsong weaving through their voice. Lilac relaxes a bit and waves in return, watching as the fae says something to Miss Witch, only for her to scowl at him and Price to narrow his eyes. Quickly, he, his dog, and the changeling leave the cottage, as if this is a normal occasion.

“Is th-this normal?” Lilac asks.

“About every other week,” Miss Witch sighs, rubbing at her temples, “Keegan is a pain, but he’s fairly harmless. Especially around his kid. Just be careful if you see him on the street without his kid or partner.”

“You have trouble with him?” Price asks her, his head snapping to look at her in concern and an almost righteous fury. Miss Witch waves it away.

“No, more like he enjoys getting a rise out of people,” she explains with a sigh. Lilac swears she hears Price mutter about sounding right, but she’s more concerned with her teacher’s frown.

“U-um,” Lilac stutters, “D-do you want t-to have your t-tea out in th-the garden? I-I-I can make it!” Miss Witch blinks at the offer before smiling, patting Lilac’s head.

“Yes, please,” she agrees, turning to her garden and heading out. Lilac feels warm from Miss Witch’s kindness, unable to help but touch where the woman’s hand had patted.

“You’re a pretty good kid,” Price says, startling Lilac from enjoying her warmth. Looking up, a sudden chill runs down her spine at the cold blue that stares down at her. He leans close and warns with smoke curling from his maw, “Don’t do anything too stupid. You hurt her, you can disappear. Clear?” Lilac nods, mute in terror as examples of her ‘disappearance’ form from his smoke. He leans back and suddenly, he’s Price, the strange fae who likes Miss Witch again. He pats her shoulder and saunters out to the garden.

Lilac fixes up the tea and pours out a mug of wine that Miss Witch does every time she goes into the garden, her mind spinning at the whiplash of this past few hours. Especially Price’s threat. Did she do something to upset him? Did she seem like a threat? Carrying the drinks out, Lilac notices that Price is now on the other side of the gate, almost pouting as Miss Witch scowls at him.

“U-um,” she starts, only to tense when Miss Witch snatches up the mug of wine and slams it on the wall.

“Finish that, then on your way,” she snaps.

“I only did that for your protection,” he says, like a reminder or an explanation.

“Just because it was in good intentions doesn’t excuse you for basically threatening my trainee!” she snaps. Price huffs and takes a long drink from his mug, averting his eyes. Miss Witch sighs and turns to a confused Lilac.

“Sorry about the overprotective idiot,” Miss Witch apologizes.

“O-oh, no! I-i-it’s okay!” Lilac tries to assure her, “I m-must’ve done something wrong! I-I can’t do m-m-much right, s-so it’s fine.” Miss Witch gets that pinched look on her face, the same look she gets when Lilac mentions things Granny yelled at her. From the corner of her eye, Price grimaces, putting down his mug.

“No, little witch. Keegan just riled me up and you were an easy target,” Price explains with a sigh, setting his mug down. Lilac blinks at that declaration while Miss Witch sighs. The woman gently scolds the fae while Lilac mulls his words over. Is she an easy target? She’s never been told that, so she’s not sure. Maybe it’s something that will make sense when she’s older.

#my work #captain john price #Witch #keegan p russ #Ainsley the Changeling #Racheal Lilac #Price x Witch #Riley the Dog #TW: implied child abuse #It's in the past but still

[navysealt4t]

first official day of napowrimo!!! april 1st prompt is: poem that recounts the plot of a novel you haven't read in a while. (warning for themes of war, bombing, & past abuse)

overnight in a bomb shelter

if the world ends this week  please brush my hair  i won’t ask you to be gentle  let me walk barefoot  farther away than the eye can see  in weather cold or warm  i may bite you  sting and curse you  don’t come too close  feed me and bathe me  that’s all i ask   but bombs scream overhead  planes shriek with their engines  sirens blare from the streets  in a murky shelter  buried beneath the mud  of your childhood home  your calloused hands are soft  dropping a blanket ‘round my shoulders  reading a book in the dark  my ears ring and my hands shake  you shield me with your palms  you promise to teach me to sew  to read and write  to run and climb  in moments in the dark  where the world might end  where all i smell is mold  you treat me like a child  who has never known love  i treat you like a woman  who has never known love  and for a moment  the world feels right  as the bombs scream overhead  ‘cause the world might end tonight

#napowrimo #napowrimo 2024 #blue’s writing #poetry #poem #tw war mention #tw bomb mention #tw past abuse #just for tw warnings <3 #the book this is based off is 'the war that saved my life' by kimberly bradley :] #first introduction to found family trope that i like. actually processed was found family #hence the 'child woman' not 'daughter mother' #<333 oh man ada and susan <3 #i love this book sm i needed to write about it #highly rec u read it. rlly good and complex #also ada is disabled and still living her life fuck yeah. god i love ada sm. just like me fr #also yes im posting this 3 am on april 1st. early bird gets the worm or whatever

[hargrove-mayfields]

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer

for Day 7 of MungroveWeek @mungroveweek

rating: teen

prompts: Big Spoon/Little Spoon, Touched after being touch-starved, Bruised skin, First kiss, Dungeons and Dragons.

content warnings: Referenced child abuse and abandonment, past relationship abuse, and mental health struggles.

————

Billy is the kind of guy that sees sex as the endgame in a relationship.

All the flirting and the posturing and the touchy-ness, it’s all just the build up until whoever is on the other end can get him in their bed, and then it’s over.

Not that he’s scared of commitment, that’s all that he could really want is some damn stability for once in his life, but he’s scared of what comes next. After they get that first time under the covers with him, they only want more and more from there. They just want to keep taking and taking and taking from him, until they’re demanding those three little words he hasn’t been able to utter in forever, and he can’t bear it.

Love just isn’t something Billy Hargrove is good at. That’s what he’s decided anyhow. It scares him and makes him think too much. But when he holds hands with a girl and feels that swell of pride in his chest, he wonders how much more intense that feeling would be like if there was a ring on her finger. When he kisses a boy and feels warmth all over, he wants that vulnerability to be a feeling he wakes up to every morning. So, maybe he’s just too messy to settle.

But the future isn’t something he has the luxury of looking forward to when he’s always stuck in the past.

So when Eddie Munson comes along in the harshest winter of his life, Billy gets attached real quick.

They don’t even have to touch for the butterflies to start twisting him up on the inside. Just that snarky laugh is enough to have him blushing like some goofy cartoon character. Eddie’s sort of like that, all animated and full of life.

Mostly in that Billy can’t believe he’s real.

That somehow he’s fallen in love all over again with some dork who brings him pretty leaves he found in the woods and who steals Billy’s pencils and returns them with ink all over them and who knows prose and lyrical shit from his musical endeavors but can’t pronounce Hargrove without a tiny bit of his uncle’s southern drawl slipping into his accent.

Everything about him is endearing, except maybe how he leaves crumbs in Billy’s car and doesn’t brush his hair more than once every three months, but that’s just part of his charm, as Eddie easily convinces him.

Especially since the first time he’s in Eddie’s bed, it isn’t for sex.

Before he could even get his hopes or his fears reared up, he’d been beaten back down, literally, and the only place he had to go was Eddie’s.

Eddie, who didn’t care that Neil Hargrove called him a fag and a bad influence as he hit his child just for knowing him. Eddie, who wrapped his lanky arms around Billy’s bruised up body and told him a story about a raccoon he saw from the window they’re both looking out of. Though Billy’s vision is blurred with tears, he’s just happy to be settled back to chest with his crush, held and cared for for the first time in hell, probably his eighteen years.

There’s no sex appeal to showing up snotty and bloody on Eddie’s stoop, just like there’s no ulterior motive to helping him.

It’s more like…

“Oh hey, the shaking stopped! That’s a sign, that’s a sign.” Eddie trying to break the silence is what it’s like. But Billy isn’t ready. His thoughts are racing too fast for his own good.

Nervousness clamps his stomach like a vice and makes him feel sick. So it’s back to Eddie to keep it from becoming too real, “Want me to give you some space?”

Somehow, that seems worse. Right now, Billy’s comfortable, safe. Take Eddie away, and he loses that glimpse at security. He hopes he doesn’t sound as distraught as he feels when he gives his brief answer to the air, “No.”

Audible panic or not, Eddie stays, well, Eddie. All nonchalant, like he’s done this a thousand and one times before. Billy hopes, despite himself, that that isn’t the case. Selfish maybe, but he’d really like this sort of care all to himself.

“Cool. I might fall asleep back here though. I can’t wiggle.”

Oh. Maybe he’d gotten his hopes up.

Billy acts to apologize, not only saying, “Sorry,” but also peeling away from Eddie's big spoon, about to slip out of the bed when those skinny arms flex and are able to use whatever they can muster to get Billy to stay. Call it desperation, judging from the speed and the airiness in Eddie’s voice once he pleads with him.

“No, it’s good. Wiggling is bad. It keeps me up all night and then I pass out in the middle of English class. Again. And when I conk off in English class I fail, and then I’ll stay up all night for the rest of my life thinking about being a loser. A never ending cycle.”

At least Billy isn’t the only one that feels like he isn’t enough. Not that it would’ve taken that to convince him, but he decides to breathe out his tension, and let Eddie bring their position back to the center of the mattress. The way he talks, so honestly and smoothly, it’s no wonder Billy’s chest feels like it could explode from how his heart pounds against his ribs.

To distract from the obvious, he decides to leave the moping and join in on the higher energy, to tease Eddie, pull his puffy pigtails a bit, “Now you’re gonna put me to sleep.”

“That’s a first. I'm usually annoying everyone clear into like, outer space levels of awake.” Eddie retorts, but there’s way too much emotion in it to just be a reciprocal joke.

Billy tries, in an overly casual way, to help, since Eddie is doing so much for him right now. The least he can do is let him vent back, and maybe offer a little comfort, “Nah. More like white noise to me.”

It lands. He can almost hear Eddies smile turn back on like the flick of a light switch, though he can’t see his face with the way Eddie is cuddling him like a child with his favorite teddy bear.

“That’s the nicest way anyone’s ever told me they’re ignoring me. And I mean that.” The actual words there are just light hearted and jokey, but his tone sells something a lot sweeter. Something that restarts Billy’s heart all over again, especially when the context catches up in Eddie’s next soft response, “You’re different, Billy.”

His instinct is to reject that comment, obviously said with warm intent, “Yeah. What other queer would show up and ask for fucking cuddles from a dude?”

But Eddie doesn’t flinch for even a second. Actually, he stuns Billy yet again with an even sappier comeback, “I dunno, I would probably. Especially from you. ‘Cause I like you so much.”

“You don’t gotta lie to me.” Billy’s voice quivers slightly. He can’t tell if he’s shaking in Eddie’s arms, but he feels like he should be.

Eddie Munson said he fucking likes him. While he’s in his bed. Honestly Billy should be used to that, but maybe it’s the outcome he knows is coming that makes him feel so anxious. He can’t stand to have to let go already.

That or it’s the never ending ease with which Eddie talks to him, like he’s this suave prince charming even though he’s seen the guy eat off of the cafeteria floor. That gentleness sends ripples of warmth down his spine from where Eddie’s breath puffs by his ear, “Who’s lying? Are you lying?”

Somehow that inspires Billy to be honest. As if that will change the outcome he has yet to avoid. He hopes, and he says, “Kind of. To myself.”

“So what’s the truth?” Eddie asks, even though, deep down, Billy was hoping he wouldn’t.

Because then he has to admit.. “That I like you back.”

A beat. Then Eddie squeezes him a tiny bit tighter, and says, like it’s the most casual thing, “Cool.”

Billy’s reaction of disbelief is visceral, a snorted, breathless laugh accompanied by a brief questioning, “That’s it? Just.. cool?”

Eddie’s arms move in what feels like a shrugging motion. Billy should have known he just said that and hadn’t meant it, should have the routine memorized enough by now to realize that he wouldn’t like him in that way.

Besides, Eddie has ICD. He doesn’t have control over his impulses the way most people do. It was stupid to assign meaning to the words that tumbled out of his friend's mouth just because he was being selfish. Or he was just hopeful that this time, the other person would care about him too.

Behind him, Eddie makes a sound like he’s thinking long and hard about it, before announcing, one hundred percent genuine, “Actually, no. I also meant to say- Yay!”

That’s all Billy can take. He just doesn’t get it. He wants to believe that Eddie isn’t just fucking with him, but his heart has been used too many times before. Seeking answers, and comfort, and a real love connection, Billy wiggles out of Eddie’s cuddles just to turn around and face him with questions in his eyes.

The happy little grin on Eddie’s face drops off when he sees that look in Billy’s.

Suddenly he’s so serious, and that almost hurts worse than any kind of rejection or loss, “Oh. Did I mess something up?”

Billy shakes his head to tell him that, no, Eddie hasn’t done a damn thing wrong. It’s his own stupid self that did this. But he does consider, for a moment, that the confession was authentic. He runs with it, can’t let go of that hope.

Still, he doesn’t understand why Eddie didn’t seem to want to take things a few bases ahead like everyone before him had, if he wasn’t lying about having feelings for Billy. “

You.. don’t want anything else?”

“Honestly, I’m just happy you didn’t climb out the window when I said I liked you.” As he speaks, Eddie smiles again, like he can’t keep the happiness away. He's always so lighthearted and genuine about everything.

Billy envies him. And loves him with so much of his heart, he can’t bring himself to speak for a moment.

Since he stays silent, letting his feelings play out through his expressions instead, Eddie offers a suggestion, emphasizing it with a gently placed hand to Billy’s cheek, “Let’s just take this at your pace. No expectations.”

“Kiss me?” Billy wills himself to ask, sacrificing his comfort in the silence to prepare for disappointment.

But Eddie provides something much more fulfilling, “Sounds easy enough.”

And he stays true to his word too.

Adjusting to once again close the tiny bit of space Billy had made between them when he turned to face this way, Eddie kisses him. It’s just a calm thing, the press of warm, slightly chapped lips together. The hand on Billy’s face cupping his jaw now instead, to make the gesture as strong and sturdy as the feelings behind it.

It doesn’t last long enough before Eddie dips away, so Billy decides to initiate another one. He misses the mark slightly in his overeagerness to reconnect, but Eddie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, not even when that corner of his mouth ticks up into a smile beneath his kiss.

Billy decides then and there that he’s going to take more chances, if this was going to be the reward.

~~~~~

“Are you positive you want to stay?”

Billy has all but moved into the trailer at this point, spending long nights and weekends on Eddie's couch or in his bed, wherever he falls asleep. Right now, it was the couch, with the hand crocheted blanket from Eddie’s late aunt Roxie around his shoulders, and his hair all tousled about from sleeping on it. He passed out hard last night, coming here straight after another argument with Neil that hadn’t ended well.

Eddie eventually had to wake him up, only to inform him that a group of his friends would be over this weekend to play some campaign they’d agreed on weeks ago and Eddie had forgotten until the Henderson kid called him that morning to say that Maddie would be filling for Gareth, since he couldn’t make it and apparently decided to tell Henderson first.

All of that was over Billy’s head, half of the names Eddie is rambling off to him barely recognizable when all is said and done, maybe more from his memory getting fucky again than anything else. There’s lots of reasons for why his head gets foggy, but his doctor wasn’t sure if they could blame it on being knocked around too many times or a little something called constant chronic pain.

Either way he was being dragged to Hawkins before any such diagnosis was official.

And here he is now, comfortable as fuck on Eddie’s old worn-in couch, wearing his flannel because it’s he only thing his boyfriend owns that isn’t several sizes too small for his shoulders, and using his family heirloom blankets.

He’s here to stay.

“I’m not goin’ home, so.. why not?”

Eddie still looks skeptical, and voices as much in a doubtful tone, “Okay, but, this is your final warning. It can get really intense. Like, really really.”

Somehow Billy gets the feeling this wouldn’t be the first time someone told Eddie his interests were too much. Not that he doesn’t appreciate the way he’s looking out for him, but Billy doesn’t want to be the one to crush his boyfriend's spirit.

So he makes a light joke of it, “It’s a board game, Eds. And I’m sorry, but you thought Jaws 3-D was a masterpiece. I’m not sure your definition of intense and mine are the same”

Special interest mode, activated.

“It is! It perfectly parallels how humans think poetic justice is only valid if they personally can identify with the hero! That’s all it takes to be defined as a hero or a villain!! That kicks ass!” Eddie rants passionately for the hundredth time, though the pointed laugh before he starts speaking is Billy’s sign that it’s all in fun.

So he keeps it going, “Eddie. As your boyfriend I feel obligated to tell you this, but whatever commentary a movie about a revenge driven, computer generator shark has to offer, it probably wasn’t intentional.”

“It’s not meant to be realistic. Metaphors, baby!” Eddie defends, the actual depth of this conversation many times gone over already. This is just a summary of it for a little joke, though they could be here for hours if they wanted to.

Which means it’s Billy’s turn to infodump, all those years spent researching the ocean in the library and local California museums not gone to waste yet.

“But sharks don’t even raise their young! Real world or not! Revenge doesn’t matter to the creatures that don’t even stay a day after their shark babies are born to abandon them. I mean, they could at least wait ten years like my ma-”

Stop. Oops.

That wasn’t exactly what he was supposed to say. Or even what he meant to.

He’s always defended his mommas decisions to leave him behind. Something about Neil constantly reminding him how difficult he was as a kid probably did some numbers on his ability to process the whole thing. But sometimes, his heart reveals some sadder truths in this process of healing it.

Eddie's love wraps around his bones like an extra layer of support, seeping out all the bad. Sometimes he’s got to expel those thoughts whether or not he realizes it until they come pouring out of his mouth.

And then he feels sad.

Because he’s thinking about his momma.

Eddie moves quickly into caring mode, holding his arms out to invite Billy for a cuddle. The whole boundaries thing is still a pretty big deal, even though it’s been weeks, proving Eddie meant it when he said they didn’t have to rush this. Hell, Billy thinks Eddie might never stop asking for his consent for even just cheek kisses, in the silent language the two of them are slowly developing.

There’s trust there that Billy isn’t used to. Throwing himself blindly into love and hoping to be caught hadn’t worked, and neither had acting cold. Then Eddie had shown him other options, and there was no going back.

Billy leans into his hug, pushing just a little so Eddie lays back against the armrest with his arms still around Billy, pulling them together into the perfectly nested out, cozy spot where Billy slept last night.

Even though they slept only feet away from each other, he had missed Eddie. He missed waking up from a nightmare and kissing him, the warmth and the pressure of his limbs scattered all over the bed and over Billy, and even the sound of his not so gentle snoring. He’s become the routine, the only constant in Billy’s life that he’s desperate never to let go of.

Still, Eddie is the one to change the conversation, so the effort, and the intention of their love, must be equal, “Agree to disagree?”

“Sure.” Billy gives him that, too comfortable to argue about stupid things or bring up more trauma. He hadn’t meant to and now he feels a little drained. Nothing a little early morning spoon session can’t fix.

That’s why he has the confidence to push the boundary again, just enough comfort flowing through their connected energies now that he isn’t afraid of making Eddie upset, “Still coming to dnd tonight though.”

~~~~~

“What bet did you lose?”

There’s six people, all wearing matching shirts, all accessorized in various articles of plaid and leather and whatever else they think makes them look like Eddie. Serious respect to the one who actually asked the question, he’s guessing Maddie from the previous conversation, who wears her shirt like a cutoff and actually has her own taste.

That proves Eddie right though. Billy had walked out of the bedroom for all of two seconds before he’s being glared at and asked stupid questions.

He just hadn’t realized the implications of Eddie’s friends being the overwhelming part, rather than the game. The confusing, twisting, hell of a game he’s too afraid to even attempt.

“Excuse me?”

Even being used to fighting and drama, Billy just isn’t really sure how to respond to that. He knows what Eddie’s friend means, but at the same time, he doesn’t. As far as he knew, everyone in town had heard about Billy Hargrove’s fall from grace after a few nights ago when Neil went on a bender looking for his runaway son and telling anyone who asked exactly what he thought of his kid. And for punching said kid in the face again, which is why Billy had come here to begin with.

But maybe the lowest of the Hawkins High hierarchy doesn’t fill up on the products of the rumor mill as quickly as he’s used to from his spot near the top.

One of the other nameless ones chimes in next, even more sarcastic and cold than the girl, “What ungodly punishment are you subjecting yourself to by being here?”

Billy just doesn’t understand what he did. His most notorious moments in school were still mostly aimed at whichever groupies tried to get too close to him. The best he can come up with is that these nerds were all jealous of him living with Eddie now, but, no offense to the love of his life, that doesn’t seem very likely.

Thankfully, Eddie takes the heat and changes the subject before Billy is forced to figure out what kind of response is needed from that level of passive-aggressiveness.

He steps right in the center of the room and claps his hands a few times, both to get everyone’s attention and to put accentuation on his demands, “Hey. Shoes off in my house, dorkuses. Or need I remind you of the last time?”

That sounds like there’s a story there just waiting to be told, and considering Billy would rather hear that than keep being questioned, he takes the obvious bait, “What happened last time?”

“Why, dear Jeffrey over there tracked in some dog shit surprise. Had to cut a square out of the carpet because it-“ Eddie starts to explain, but before he gets too graphic with it, Billy interrupts.

“I got it, Eds. Don’t need all the details.”

The obvious disgust on his face is probably what makes Eddie giggle like a self-satisfied little kid, before he says, “Suit yourself. Just be lucky you met me after. Took months to get the stink out.”

Dustin, the only one of the freshmen trio that still shows up to these things often enough to be considered an official member, is of course the one to interrupt the flow between Billy and Eddie, just because the smug little bastard would be, “Funny. I thought you still smelled like dog shit.”

Billy’s got to give it to the kid, if that wasn’t a snide comment about his boyfriend, he’d absolutely be laughing right now. And okay, maybe he can’t suppress just the tiniest chuckle, which of course gets noticed in an instant by Eddie.

Which is enough to make him spring into action against the insult, literal physical action because he puts Dustin in a headlock and ruffles the shit out of the kids hair after knocking his hat off.

Seeing that the tension has been successfully defused, Billy decides he’s no longer needed. That and, even though he’s grateful Eddie cooled the situation off, he’s not really looking to have to defend himself constantly.

Over the ruckus of the play-fighting teenagers and the crowd of their friends chanting for who they’re placing soda-pop bets on, Billy announces, “I’ll order a pizza and fuck off again.”

Instantly Eddie freezes, his hair half-way in his eyes and his shirt wrinkled like Billy hadn’t carefully hung it on the line this morning from all the commotion, “You know you don’t have to do that.”

Billy isn’t sure if he’s talking about the pizza or the leaving, but he’s down for both. He’ll make an appearance again when it’s time to eat. Slow integration with all this noise and personality will probably be the best for him anyways.

He challenges Eddie’s question so he doesn’t have to worry, “Who else is going to?”

Eddie doesn’t do phone calls. It’s one thing to be loud and energetic in person, but put a speaker up to him and it’s like he has no clue what to say. Maybe it’s his wired different brain, but something about not being able to stare people in the face makes it a hell of a lot harder to get his point across.

So yeah, Billy’s got him beat there. Whatever Eddie’s problem is though, times it by twenty for the amount of anxiety sitting around this place at this very moment. This is the best decision and Billy would’ve stood by it even if Eddie said anything else. But he doesn’t.

So Billy puts his hand in the shape of a phone and shakes it, wanting to go kiss Eddie before he leaves the room but restraining the urge in front of all these people that probably wouldn’t get it, “Just call for me when Aggy gets here with the pizzas.”

~~~~

Later when everything’s said and done, they’re back to where they started.

Eddie is flat on his back, lanky limbs spread out like a starfish, while Billy curls up into his side, more like a koala. There’s a quilt over their tangle of bodies, but the slightly awkward yet somehow very comfortable position means they’re barely covered by it, though that’s fine anyways because Billy runs hot.

In his own little self-sustained furnace at his boyfriend's side, Billy’s also about to fall asleep, even just listening to Eddie’s extroverted self socialize all day having made him tired. His eyes snap open when Eddie asks him a question.

“Was today okay?”

The startle the abrupt cut in the silence gave him also earns him an apology kiss on the forehead from Eddie.

He’s okay though, because it reminds him that he wanted to put his head on Eddie’s chest, readjusting to get closer and comfier. His response is a sleepy after thought, a soft little hum of agreement, “Mhm.”

Eddie takes the opportunity to put his fingers in Billy’s hair and gently play with it, as he talks up at the ceiling, “I'm glad. Because I didn’t want to have to cut all of those dudes out of my life.”

“Like you’d choose me over all of them.” Billy murmurs, though he’s actually flattered that Eddie has even chosen him at all, no matter the order of importance.

And it only gets better when Eddie says..“I would. A thousand times over, I would. I love you, man.”

Because he says it so easily, like it isn’t a big deal.

Like it’s just a normal thing. Which it is. Billy can’t lie and say he doesn’t feel the same, but they haven’t said it out loud yet. He didn’t think they ever would, a fact he’d been okay with since the first time he realized he liked dudes and girls.

“Love.. me..?”

Eddie flushes red in an instant, all the way down under the collar of his shirt to where Billy’s head is resting, and he quickly tries to correct it like the questioning means he did something wrong, “Sorry. I promised to pace myself. I’ll take it back and lock it back up in my heart until you’re ready.”

Now Billy is just glad he already loves Eddie back, because that sickly sweet proclamation would have done him in otherwise. To ease the worry in his lover's pounding heart, he makes sure to let him know.

“No. S’okay. I love you too.”

So maybe Billy isn’t as bad at being in love as he thought.

He was once someone who thought all he mattered for was sex, a few moments of distraction for somebody who would forget him anyways. Over time, he’s been proven wrong

Billy Hargrove can be loved. It just took the right person- his match in love, the other half to his soul he found in Eddie- to show him that.

#mungroveweek2023 #mungrove #eddie x billy #tw neil hargrove #tw child abuse mention #tw past relationship trauma #tw relationship abuse #autistic eddie munson #autistic billy hargrove #eddie munson has icd #billy hargrove has ocd and bpd #bisexual billy hargrove #my moodboards #my writing #ej writer

[wayward-sherlock]

alexa play thumbs by lucy dacus (wip from one of my @bylerween2023 fics!)

@willelmikes >:)

#hehehehhe >:) #tw corpse #tw death #tw blood #tw mentions of past child abuse #byler #wayli writes #stranger things #bylerween2023 #🎃 #🫧🪴 #💛💙 #wip wednesday #miwip wednesday

[the-apples-were-monitored]

this is going to be a very uncomfortable and potentially triggering conversation so i suggest you scroll past if you have a lot of empathy because this isn't fun at all

also wanna preface this by saying i'm not interested in spreading conspiracy theories or "truther" claims because i feel that's incredibly disrespectful and potentially harmful to the people that need the most help. any allusions to unverified rumors will be presented as uncorroborated, not as fact (only bringing them up because i know that's the kind of rumor floating around and i don't want to seem like i'm participating somehow in dismissing concerns). because we simply don't know. and it's not our business.

i've had this bad feeling about amanda bynes for the past decade. it's the same pattern we've seen with child stars over and over again. the drugs, the mental breakdown, the conservatorship. but i pushed those nagging thoughts away. i didn't have the bandwidth at the time because i was living in an abusive household when her most public battles were happening. i didn't have the time or the emotional understanding to put towards what was happening to her even as i felt it mirrored what i was going through or what my mom was going through. then i found out about dan schneider a few years ago. i didn't really engage with the rumor and speculation about him - i was in my early 20s when this all broke and i didn't know most of the shows he'd been involved with except by the fact that my younger siblings watched them. i'd been an amanda bynes fan - hugely into the amanda show and what i like about you. my siblings watched drake and josh, icarly, and victorious. i didn't have the emotional bandwidth at the time to look into what people were saying. i knew it would upset me if i learned too much. but i couldn't stop thinking about amanda.

i heard about quiet on set from news websites. i saw the headlines about drake bell. it shook me to my core. the things i was reading were horrific and immediately put me in mind of what my sister went through as a teenage survivor of repeated sexual abuse by a man who was trusted with our care. she'd had a huge crush on drake when we were growing up. i wonder if she's heard about this.

this immediately made me think about amanda again. this time i couldn't push the thought away. i guess i'm finally ready to process the way this whole situation has felt to me.

the way people talk about amanda reminds me of how people in the 50s talked about judy garland. child star with incredible talent, far beyond her years, with incredible charm and personality and the whole world at her fingertips. everyone loved working with her. until she became erratic and had a mental breakdown fueled by drugs. (you could even argue there were parallels because both women were frequently typecast as the wholesome girl next door and not really allowed to break out of that infantilizing box.) and no one could ever think why. why does this happen.

i've come to believe that mental illness always has a cause. brain chemistry fucked up by trauma, whether that's long-term stress or a singular event or repeated traumas stacking on top of each other. the mind can't cope. i really, truly believe something horrific happened to amanda bynes. and i know people will say, well, maybe it wasn't dan schneider. she was doing fine for years after she stopped working with him. i want to make one thing very clear. trauma doesn't always manifest symptoms immediately. not everyone comes out of a trauma looking shell shocked. i know from my experience because i didn't have my breakdown until a year after my abuser was exposed and i'm still feeling the consequences to my psyche to this day. and i think it must be difficult for child stars to process this trauma. the pattern i've seen is the child star endures something terrible, gets incredible fame and begins taking on more and more pressure, then when this isn't enough to make them happy they turn to drugs. you think because they got out that it would all just go away? no. they were raised to play characters so they played those characters. there was incredible pressure to just play those characters because that's what the fans want. having struggles isn't part of the brand. it had to be especially rough on nick stars because there wasn't much separation between them and the characters they played. it was the amanda show. drake and josh used their real first names. the separation between who they were and who the character was was probably a very blurred line.

i wonder how long this documentary has been in production. tracking down these people and petitioning courts had to have taken ages. amanda was supposed to be at 90s con last year but cancelled due to illness and had another psychotic episode. 90s con itself may have been a trigger for her, but if someone had reached out to her or if she'd heard about this production...i could see that triggering her and making her relive the horror she went through. there are so many unsubstantiated rumors floating around. i can't speak to whether she was high on adderall during that interview when she was 12 (she could've just been a hyper child but they could've been pulling a judy garland on her and i don't trust these people plus she's said she got hooked on adderall when she was a teenager for weight loss but she may not feel comfortable disclosing if the studio has her under NDA). i can't verify if that side twitter actually belonged to amanda. it could be some sicko thought it was funny to accuse her boss of knocking her up and forcing her to get an abortion at 13 or accusing her father of various things.

but i get why she wouldn't speak up because people won't believe her no matter what she says. i went through something and people in my hometown still debate whether i'm crazy or lying for attention. my family did everything they could to put me under control and get me diagnosed as paranoid or delusional so they wouldn't face justice. (really don't get me started on how the mental healthcare system is used by abusers to cover up their sins.) i wouldn't put it past her parents to do that, especially considering amanda had a bad relationship with them as a teenager which sent her further into that groomer's clutches. she doesn't owe us anything because it'll start a firestorm that could retrigger her as people debate if she's delusional or scrutinize her past mistakes to determine if she's a perfect enough victim to deserve sympathy.

which brings me to drake bell. i knew he was the victim before i watched the doc but it still gave me chills when he sat down in that chair. like it felt like the air drained from the room. it was so obvious that what he went through has affected him so deeply and that he had no one to turn to. my abuser had so much community support, so many people making us out to be lying opportunistic bitches. i can't imagine having to carry that secret. i wonder if the people around him can pinpoint it in retrospect when he started being different. i want the other kids on set to know that it's not their fault they didn't know and that they had a bad opinion of him at some point. my sister and i were pitted against each other by the man who assaulted her and it's only with context later that i can see what was going on. i have no doubt that schneider employed these tactics so no one would feel comfortable disclosing what happened to them.

i admit that i cried watching the drake bell episode. that had to be incredibly difficult for him to open up about it after all these years and i hope he can get some closure and that someone starts a support group for these former nick stars.

and to drake bell himself. you were a child. you had no idea what grooming looks like. most grown people don't seem to know what grooming looks like based on how they talk about these issues. you are not at fault for what that man did to you or not knowing how to handle it. you didn't do anything to encourage this and you're not at fault.

and to his father. i appreciate that you did what you could to try to protect him. my mother had a similar experience trying to protect us from my abuser but everyone assumed she was psychotic and had her put away. try not to blame yourself when you were the lone voice of reason and everyone else insisted you were in the wrong. i do have fault to throw on amanda bynes' parents to some degree depending on what part of all this is true, but i can't find fault with drake bell's father who did try when he saw something wrong.

and i'm sorry but dan being super nice to drake afterwards seems like an attempt to make himself look better and get another hit show. i don't believe for a second that dan didn't know anything or that he had any motives beyond making his own star rise. he wanted to churn out product, and couldn't have that product if drake bell was visibly distraught.

i want to know how many people have known it was drake for 20 years and said nothing. how many people were in peck's side of the courtroom and yet still had the audacity to think this child was at fault in some way. that's vile and utterly unforgivable.

i just want to end this by saying to leave these people alone. don't harass anyone who hasn't spoken up because they may not be in a headspace where it's healthy of them to say anything. they don't owe us any explanation of why.

#this hit me incredibly hard i'm sorry #quiet on set #rape tw #abuse tw #i'm not addressing the jamie lynn spears rumors because it's ghoulish to speculate when she wasn't even a subject of the doc #i hope she's found some healing and honestly it is unforgivable how the public slutshamed a 16 year old #finding out from my sources that people at the time joked that dan knocked her up like #i'm sorry? you slutshamed her and made jokes and made light of a potential rapist??? #i will throw hands #also asking people to not bring up the past actions of drake bell or amanda bynes in this discussion #they're not perfect victims but nobody is #a vulnerable child is a vulnerable child and i would like to live in a world where we focus on prevention so people don't grow up disturbed

[acidic-eye]

Silent words and Cold hands: chapter 2 (the cold wind and water)

“Legend what is going on?” Time asked, Legend sighed in disappointment, a cane held tightly in his hands, leaning against it heavily as he stood before them. 

“Unfortunately, me and Wild had a little run in with a wizzrobe while out treasure hunting. Yadda yadda yadda, we got cursed, now we’re here. Everyone on the same page?” he ran his eyes over each and every one of them, fixating his eyes on Cub. “According to what I can recall, this curse is supposed to bring us through… generally the most painful either physically or emotionally, memories. Like the memory spells Wild gets but… we’re all watching.” 

“How many…” twilight trailed off, his own eyes watching Cub with sharp focus. “And the whole child thing—“

“After memories we will… most likely, go up in ages until we once again reach our normal form. Sound right wild?” Cub gave a weak thumbs up, Cub himself grabbed his hand down quickly, holding it by his side. “Yeah yeah. Whatever. Welcome to my home town, around… nine ish years ago?” 

“But why the age difference? I mean wilds five.” Sky pointed out, his wings tightly closed to his back. 

“Simple. I got a better childhood. The most painful memories came from my first journey and on. This…” he had a lost look in his eyes, “Based on what I can tell, this is the first day of my adventure… I would have thought that…”

READ MORE HERE:

#linked universe #fanfic #wild linked universe #legend linked universe #twilight linked universe #warriors linked universe #time linked universe #four linked universe #hyrule linked universe #sky linked universe #past abuse #child abuse #child au #tw blood #READ THE WARNINGS PLS #im sorry

[person-behind-books]

when shen yuan wakes in the body of the scum villain destined to die a gruesome death he is terrified.

sure he wasn't a perfect person but he never did anything so bad it would deserve this.

it's later, when he undresses himself and finds scars with horrifying implications.

cultivators don't scar so these must have happened when the scum villain was too young to cultivate.

the though makes him throw up.

#tw implied rape #tw implied abuse #tw child abuse #(past) #shen yuan #shen qingqiu #drabble #fic prompt #shen jiu #svsss #tw throwing up #(not explicit)

[holedyke]

of course the night i need to get to bed at a reasonable hour bc i have a early rise is ruined by my own brain working me up into a complete meltdown 😵‍💫 i am a prisoner to myselfffff

#i feel so so bad. tbh #tw for child abuse but i need to vent #i was watching a rlly good doc series on behavioral schools for teens which are pretty horrific and even though i never went through #anything like that. but just hearing the subjects from the doc talk about how they feel ruined after being destroyed like that as kids just #has me really emotional and i cant stop thinking about it bc i feel the same way i feel like ill never be who i could have or should have #been but what i went through just ruined me and ill never be okay i just feel fragile and mournful of myself i know nothing could have #saved me like its some big cosmic joke on me. and i never did anything to deserve that #no kid does amd yet it fucking happens and it happened to me witj zero repercussions which is almost what hurts the most #i just feel like a goddamn blubbering mess with a knawing black pit in my heart and i am never going to get to sleep at this point. #fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk i just for once would like to feel okay about my past and my future like is this the me that ill always be? #broken and blubbering? fuck it feels awful. anyway. prob delete later but i just needed it off my chest #h