Glitch - Jaylor One Shots

why won't this die?

tw: sexual assault

Something drags it back up. You scream. You cry. It haunts you in your dreams. You take deep breaths. You bury it back down. It's over now.

Rinse and repeat.

This has been going on for over ten years. It's something you skirt around in conversations, smooth over in small talk but it's a constant shadow in your periphery. It's the heat that strokes your fire. You still wake up smelling smoke.

And then you turn 32. You ring in the age with gilded happiness and an Olympus filter but it's barely a couple weeks before it catches up to you. You were glad for the legal drama causing delays in production because it means you can put off rerecording that chapter of your life for as long as possible. You think maybe you've been dreading this for thirteen years. Maybe deep down some part of you has always known. Your baby brother is the same age you were. You call him your baby brother for a reason.

You dream you're there again, but this time you're on the outside watching her, wide-eyed and glass-half-full in her last teenage year. You almost have the blade in his back before he turns, flips your wrist, and plunges it into your chest. You will never be able to hurt him the way he hurt you.

You must've been screaming in your sleep because you wake to Joe half shaking you half holding you. "You're okay, you're dreaming," he mumbles, blinking the sleep from his eyes. You couldn't stop the sobs that shake through you if you tried.

"Joe," you gasp against the pressure in your chest. It's 3 in the morning and it's spilling out of you. You palm at your heart to make sure there isn't a dagger in it. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how he could have done that to me."

"Who?" his brow furrows. "Scott? Scooter?"

You shake your head fiercely.

He asks a lot more tentatively this time, "Jake?"

You shake your head again. You know you need to tell him. Telling someone will give it less power and you have been holding this alone for a decade. He's holding you but you're trembling and your nerves feel like a live wire. Sparks of anxiety zap through you. You don't even realize you're bleeding until he grabs your hands and curls both your fists in. Your chest is red and raw.

"Taylor." He uses your full name. "Talk to me. Please talk to me," he pleads.

"I was as old as Pat was, I don't know how he could've..." The shame feels crippling. The words get lost in your throat as you choke on the self-blame, but you're self-aware now. You've spent the last six years learning how to untangle your feelings from reality. "He knew I was a child. He knew that and he did it anyway."

The fact that strangers who study your secrets would be able to uncover the culprit faster than your partner makes you feel sick. Joe knows you inside and out, but he wasn't there for how it got twisted. How the whole world saw it happening and he came out of it unscathed. He's heard soundbites and felt the sting of your triggers, though. The two of you are just left there to pick up the pieces.

He lets you take your time to find the phrasing as he holds you steady in his arms. He presses a kiss to your shoulder. He pulls the blanket around you and leans back so you're laying on his chest.

It feels like something that is so fundamental to your being and yet, picturing it feels like it happened to someone else. Those kinds of things happen to other girls, not you. "He had to have wanted to hurt me, to put me through that. He didn't love me. He didn't even know me. He just wanted someone to stroke his ego, to make him feel powerful."

"Darling–is it alright if I ask–are you talking about John?"

You barely nod but you're close enough that he can catch it. Your voice is a whisper. You know once you say this you can't take it back. "He was my first time. And it was nothing like we were talking about at Ed's party." Joe's grip around you tightens and you can hear the quickness of his heartbeat from where your head rests on his chest.

You remember sitting in the living room at a house party with Joe's friends as they swapped stories and ignoring the churning pit in your stomach as you compared their awkward-but-sweet youthfulness to your own.

"I-I don't think I really had a choice," you finally choke out. Your voice is so quiet you're not sure how he hears but he does, because he pulls you close as you tighten your grip on his shirt.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you," he says and you can hear the shake in his words.

You feel so uncomfortable and stupid and dramatic and the confession lingers heavily in the air. Who are you to claim these labels when people have had it so much worse? You backpedal aggressively, jerking out of his grasp. "I mean, I did, kind of. It wasn't...he didn't hurt me. I enjoyed it. Sorry, I don't know why I said that. You don't need to know this." You're pacing now, running in circles from the elephant in the room.

"It sounds like something you want me to know, though," he says. "Don't worry about that." He stutters through the next part and you feel even guiltier. It's three in the morning and you're dumping this bomb on him, forcing him to be your anchor. "Even if you enjoyed it, that doesn't make it right. You were a kid, like you said."

You hear what he's saying and you know it's true but accepting it hurts. This is why you've been hacking through the weedy mess of it for years. This is why you've been dancing around it in therapy. The truth is a heavier burden to bear than the shame.

You force yourself to stop, take a minute, breathe. The implication of him dwarfs you in the corner. You feel so small, like a kid hiding from the monsters under your bed.

The voice doesn't sound like your own when you finally speak. "I just didn't know how to say I wasn't ready, or that I even could. He made me feel like it was something I owed him. Not a big deal. I was a Christian girl from rural PA, of course it was a big deal to me. But I also had people that would've helped me and I was so stubborn because I thought I was so mature and–"

"Taylor," he's caught up to you and pulled you in his arms again. You offhandedly told him physical touch was your love language six years ago in a dive bar and he has been learning to speak it ever since. "You don't need to explain yourself. I believe you. It wasn't your fault and it wasn't your responsibility, even if you were made to feel that way. He should've known better."

"He did know better," you say, bitterly.

"Yeah, I'm sure he did," his voice is even, but there's an angry chill underneath that you can only detect because you've been studying his vocal inflections for six years. He's not an angry person, which is part of what makes him so good for you, so it's always a little disarming to see this side of him. It's directed entirely outward though, and you feel incredibly safe in his arms.

"I just don't want to be the girl this happened to," you whisper.

He sighs. "I know. I'm sorry. But you survived it and you're okay now."

"I'm sometimes not okay though," you confess. "It's just gotten worse and worse the further I get away from it."

He kisses your forehead. "We'll help you process it then. I'm right here with you. I'm proud of you for recognizing that. I can't even imagine how hard that must have been. I love you so much." His voice is hushed but earnest, and you know he's trying so hard to get through to you. When you look at him there are tears shining in his eyes.

He guides you to the bathroom and you let him pat your chest with a damp washcloth and dab on some tea tree oil. "I can't call it...that" you say. "I know I could, at least, I think. But I'm not ready." You're begging him to understand.

"That's your choice. You don't have to like, package your trauma for anyone else. It happened to you."

"Mm." You'll get there, maybe. Finally be upfront with your therapist, learn how to repackage the memory and send it off so it's a little less suffocating. Maybe you'll try to write a song.

Before you go back to bed, you shoot Aaron a text. It might be time to pay a visit to Long Pond.