Painful Love

This is Me Trying

The first time it had happened Alec hadn't given it much thought. He probably hadn't behaved properly; he had deserved that, for sure. Still, there had been something about his father hitting him like that hadn't sat right with him.

He had only been six.

The next time, only a couple of months had gone by. Robert had come back home, drunk and irritated. He had gotten it all out on Alec, who hadn't really understood what had just happened until he had found himself staring at his own reflection in the mirror, with a black eye and a bruise on his cheek.

This went on for years, gradually becoming something that happened on a regular basis. The abuse never stopped, not even when Alec was old enough to fight Robert back. He had grown up with his father's abuse, it was something rooted inside of him; just like the terror he felt every time his father walked into a room.

Alec somehow managed to get out of there, years later. Not by himself. He had met this guy just a few months ago, who had given Alec his number, at the café Alec had stopped by to get a coffee.

He had never gotten anyone's number before; it had made him feel special for some reason, so he had called him, Caleb, and they had hung out. It had been great to talk to someone again, Alec had noticed while talking to Caleb. It wasn't like he was the most social person out there, but after barely talking to anyone for a long while, he was grateful for Caleb's company.

And just like that, Alec had found himself falling for him. Turns out Caleb had been feeling the same way about him, the day Alec confessed how he felt to him. They started dating and for once in his life, as far as he could remember, Alec didn't feel so bad anymore.

Yes, the abuse was still there, his father hadn't stopped, but there was Caleb and he made him feel good. He made him feel loved, cared for in a way he could not remember ever feeling. Maybe that was what had blinded him.

Caleb used Alec's own inexperience against him. He was well aware this was Alec's first relationship. Him, on the other hand... well, he was quite the opposite. Caleb had taken advantage of him multiple times before Alec started feeling bad about it all.

Alec always brushed it off. He was feeling bad about it because he had never done anything of this before, he wasn't used to it, yet; that was what Caleb told him and Alec trusted him with his everything, so he was right.

When Caleb offered Alec to move in with him, the blue-eyed man had never accepted anything so fast in his life. An opportunity to get out of the toxic household he had lived in for years, how could he have let that go?

Little had Alec known in that moment, packing his bags, happier than he had ever been, that he was simply trading an abusive father for an abusive boyfriend.

At first it hadn't been much. Their relationship was still the same, besides these moments when Alec didn't feel so good about it all; it happened during sex, with house chores and then it went on with yells every now and then, slaps which became punches and beatings afterwards, controlling, gaslighting and abuse once more, in both physical and verbal senses.

Thankfully, this didn't last as long as Robert's abuse had, however it did feel truly worse for Alec. It was different with Caleb than it had been with his father. He didn't remember a loving father. He did remember the start of his relationship with Caleb, though, how he had told him he loved him, how he was the reason he smiled every day, how he had promised him to take care of him no matter what.

And that was what broke Alec even further. He had always blamed Robert's abusive behavior to his work and the stress it brought, generational trauma, his wife (Alec's mother, Maryse) leaving him.