"you and me" (tnn - shivian)

Part 1 - Cardiac Arrest

TW for the whole fic - domestic violence, sexual assault, controlling behaviour , homophobia and panic attacks

I wake up to the sound of my alarm piercing through my head. I blindly reach over to my bedside to turn it off, only to discover it's an incoming call from Roger. What reason this man has to call me at 5am isn't even something that I bother to question anymore. Reluctantly, I answer the call, mentally preparing myself to get an earful of insults and complaints. What I don't expect, is for him to be yelling angrily down the phone so early in the morning. I pull the phone away from my ear and hold it at arms length, his voice still clearly audible from all that distance. Today his problem is that he's misplaced an expensive ring of his, and he's convinced I stole it. I didn't, but I barely bothered to argue my case because I knew he wouldn't listen. It was so tiring.

Once that was over, I stare at the clock. It's too early to be up, yet too late to go back to bed. I take a deep breath and get out of bed, ready to start yet another day living in Roger's hell. Since it's so early, I decide to run a bath, to hopefully get some of the tension from last night out of my body. Not that I feel I can even call it my body anymore, he's basically claimed it as his own. The knowledge of that used to sicken me, but now it's just turned into a dull emptiness, much like everything else in my life since him. The worst part of it all is that everyone seems to believe I'm living a life of luxury in a magical castle, despite knowing how Roger treated his own children and Mia as kids. Why do they expect me to be any different? Why did I expect me to be different? As a kid, I never really knew love, money had always been more important to my family. I used to think I'd be able to put up with any antics of a man as long as he provided me with plenty of money, but Roger had been quick to prove me wrong. Now I'm stuck with him and I don't know how to get out. I barely feel safe on "good" terms with him, and I fear for what would happen if I were to get properly on his bad side.

Once the bath is full, I slowly sink into the tub, feeling the muscles around my vagina tense and ache, still tender from his rough violation of the area last night. This was nothing new though, so I just winced through the pain until it wore off. I actually hate baths. They leave me with too much time to do nothing, to sit with my thoughts, to relive the past. And now there is a lot of past I never want to relive, and yet I can never stop. Everything Roger has ever done to me plays on a constant loop in my mind and it's agonising. The more time I have to think, my breath and heartrate increase until the room is spinning and it's all I can think about. A panic attack. These are pretty normal to me now, but since I have no clue how to ask for help, I have no clue how to make them better. I try my best to focus on my breathing and eventually it slows down to a normal pace. I'd had enough of this bath, I thought it would help with the tension running through my body but I'm beginning to think nothing will help anymore. I just feel so helpless.

By the time I'm in my car and driving to work, I feel a little more in control. I love driving because it gives me time to clear my head, but still gives me enough things to think about to stop my mind wandering to the darker places. I pull up to Marjorie's nursery car park because her and Autumn are out today so I'm covering for them. I walk up to the front door where Charlotte is waiting for another staff member with her girlfriend, Mia. As I walk up, they kiss goodbye and Mia gets in her car and drives off. I hate them for so openly showing such disgusting affection in front of a children's nursery and roll my eyes at Charlotte to show my disgust. A small part of me whispers that I'm just jealous and want to feel love as much as they do, but I silence it. I wouldn't be seen dead kissing a woman.

Not long after I've settled down in my office, the parents are arriving and I walk down to the rooms to help do handovers quicker, seeing as we're short on staff. It was pretty uneventful, apart from this baby who came in absolutely reeking from an unchanged nappy, which I scold the parent for. They apologise with some crappy excuse along the lines of "we were in a hurry" but I really don't care. I'm too busy thinking about how I've left my phone in the office and Roger could be calling or texting frantically. As I sit down at the desk in the office, I discover I was right so I call him back as quickly as I can. Unsurprisingly, he's absolutely furious at me for ignoring his calls. I try to reason with him that I was in the baby room and we aren't allowed phones in the rooms, as he should know. He says I should make exceptions to the rules for him, but just before we launched into another massive argument, a parent walks in so I have to hang up. Not before promising I would call him back when I was done though.

The parent in question has black shoulder length hair, deep brown eyes, and a blue striped shirt. She also has this lovely smile that feels like a ray of sunshine, cutting through the dull nothingness that my life has become. She greets me with a cheerful "hiya", which I feel is simply a waste of both of our times. Can she not just tell me what she wants and leave? She then goes on to question me on why it's me here and not Autumn and Marjorie, which I should've expected but it still annoys me. With a sigh, I tell her that a staff member recently had a baby so they're on leave to see it, which really doesn't feel like a good enough reason to be off work. Why not just see the baby on the weekend? Not like I would know anything though, nobody here likes me and that's just fine with me. The woman immediately picks up on the fact that I referred to the baby as an "it" and not a "she" and that's really lovely and all but I wish she would hurry up. Roger's waiting for me and he's not the type of man to be very patient. She finally hands over a reply slip for some event for her son, Jamie. Just as the slip gets into my hand, the flurry of text messages begins. I try my best to talk to her over the notifications, to try and distract her from it. It clearly doesn't work because she eyes up my phone and attempts to make a crack on how he's insistent. If only she knew. I give her a glare and ask her if there's anything else she needs, so she takes her cue and leaves. Reluctantly I call back Roger and just let him chew at my ear for an hour or so whilst I numbly reply with whatever will please him most.

Aside from that, the day is pretty boring and before I know it, it's time for the last kids to go home. Just as I'm packing up, Charlotte comes into the office with some ridiculous nickname that she tries to play off as misspeaking, but I know it wasn't that. I've heard the name Shibby thrown around a few times when people think I'm not listening. That aside, she came here to tell me that Jamie is still here. Great. Now I'm going to be late to Roger's and he's going to have even more reason to hurt me in every way he possibly can. Annoyingly enough, Jamie has no contacts on his form other than his mother, and her phone is going straight to voicemail. I have half a mind to just dump the kid at a police station and run so I can get to Roger on time, but realistically he would find out and be even more mad at me for the possible lawsuit. Charlotte gives me some emotional speech about how Jamie and his mother are new to town and all alone, but I don't care. It's hard to care about anything when all you're doing is dreading what's going to happen when you see your fiancé.

Finally, Jamie's mother arrives, an hour late. It's the same woman from this morning, who thought it was funny to joke about situations that she has no clue about. Though I knew I was hardly one to talk on being insensitive. I begin to scold her for being so late without notifying us and she tries to give me some sob story about how she was at work and her phone died so she didn't bother charging it and just rushed straight here. What a ridiculous story. I ask her what kind of "emergency" could possibly hold her back a whole hour, and the response she gives shocks me. Cardiac arrest? I ask her if she's a doctor and she explains that she's a nurse and she spent the last hour saving someone's life. If I'm going to be honest, this impresses me a bit. It's amazing that people like her can be out saving people so generously, whereas people like Roger are destroying people heartlessly. I'd rather be around the first kind of person, but I have no clue how to make friends. I'm always too cruel without seeing it until its too late. Bearing this in mind, I decide to spare a little generosity back to her, by waiving her late fee, though I throw in a small insult about her income because I don't want to come off as too kind. She thanks me and leaves. I watch her leave, feeling an intense longing to have a friend like her. Someone generous and kind, cheerful and loving. Roger chooses that exact moment to call me, a silent and cruel reminder that I'll never have a friend like that. I tell him that I'm on my way and that a kid was being picked up late and he vaguely accepts the excuse with an angry grunt. Not exactly cheerful, but it could've been worse.

I knock on his door, and apparently he watched me come up the drive because the door flies away from me before I can even hit it a second time. He grabs me by my wrist and pulls me inside, before shutting the door and shoving me up against it. This is the part where I turn my brain off and go numb and pliable, to make this experience as bearable as it possibly can. Afterwards, he drops me to the floor where i practically collapse against the door. I pull myself away from the door to leave, but not before earning a smack around my ass because he'd decided I wasn't quite good enough for him today. I sit my sore ass down in the car and drive home, knowing that's (literally) going to be a pain in the ass tomorrow when I find myself incapable of sitting down properly and comfortably. But that feels like a future problem. Right now, I just want to chuck a couple sleeping pills down my throat and become numb to the world for my few hours of peace.