Breathe (Tronnor One-Shots)

Wake Me Up

Genre: Angst and also trigger warning for allusions to rape. I wrote this literally a billion years ago and just found it again in my drafts, so excuse the shitty fetus writing. I fixed what I could and I like the overall premise of it so here, have a thing. Possibility of being continued.

Word Count: 1.1k

He hadn't made a noise, then. It wasn't the hand clamped over his mouth or the harsh whispers of "scream and I'll kill you". It was the weight on his chest, the lump in his throat, the tears burning at the backs of his wide eyes. He hadn't been able to close them, then, hadn't even been able to turn his head and look away because there was something in him that forced him to watch himself break. He hadn't screamed, then, but he did now.

He woke in a cold sweat, thrashing in his bed as he fended off invisible enemies that hadn't been real in any place but his mind for years now. His throat tore with the force of his cries, his cheeks burning with the salt of his tears, and later he would find the pain to be a welcome feeling, quelling that which still clawed hungrily at his mind, where it healed far less easily than any physical wounds ever would. His hands ached when he unclenched them from the fists they'd been twisting into the sheets, violent red gashes splitting his palm where his nails had dug in and torn.

He didn't move after that, an icy terror ripping through him every time he shifted his eyes the smallest bit, and there was a part of him that wished he weren't alone on this side of the house because more than anything Troye was suddenly terrified by the idea of being left in solitude with his own aching mind. The larger part of him, the part that won every argument he'd ever had to have with himself, was grateful that he was. There was nothing in him that could bear the thought of anyone seeing him the way he was now.

What must have been only a half hour later, he managed to drag himself out of bed and into the adjoined bathroom, slipping into the shower with a cold shiver and a rough swallow to keep the bile from finding its way up his throat. The water beat hard at his aching muscles, rendering them so numb he couldn't feel its burning heat, and Troye sank heavily against the wall under its spray, curling into himself with a wretched sob and the angry digging of his nails into his sides.

He'd done this then, too. Had wound himself into a tight ball as the water hammered down like liquid fire and dug his fingers into the bruises at his hips before registering that it would only make them last longer. Somehow, he'd managed to convince himself that as soon as the bruises were gone, the cuts and scrapes and angry red marks, he could lock the whole thing neatly away past the back of his mind where it would never venture to cross over in the form of so much as fleeting thoughts. He'd been so stupid then, so desperate and hopeful and still just a little kid and there was no part of him that could deal with the horrible enormity of what had been done to him.

He was not thirteen anymore, though, and the horrible enormity of it dug sharp claws into his heart and dragged it below a thrashing tide until the pressure of the water made him feel like his head was going to explode, his chest aching with the inability to perform such a simple and yet vital task as breathing. He was choking on the water now, the liquid fire filling his body and burning it from the inside out. He didn't know how to make it stop; how to breach the surface and suck in gasps of real air for the first time in years. He didn't know how to swim.

By the time he left the shower, pulling on a pair of dirty sleep pants he must have left there the last time he washed himself off, the water had run ice cold and his phone blinked 3:57 at him in obnoxiously bright white script. He sucked in a breath, curled back up on the bed, and hovered his finger over the number three speed dial.

He knew Connor would be mildly irritated at having his sleep interrupted when Troye wasn't dying or in perilous danger and he also knew his boyfriend would be immensely concerned when he realized neither were the case, wondering why he was then being woken up in the insane hours of the morning if there was no great threat present. Connor was terrifyingly perceptive, as it was, and would be able to tell after the first few sleep-dredged moments that something was up. Troye didn't want that, didn't want the questions he couldn't find it in him to answer or the silences he couldn't find it in him to fill. He just wanted Connor to talk and joke and tease him and act perfectly normal as Troye's world crumbled into pieces, to make it so he could pretend that wasn't what was happening here.

He wanted that so badly it hurt, wanted to be able to tell himself nothing had ever happened and be telling the truth, but he knew in the back of his mind that would never be the case. It didn't matter how much he wanted it; he couldn't erase what had happened anymore than he could stop himself from reliving it in the throes of fitful slumber. And Connor, as much as he loved him, couldn't provide comfort against something he had no knowledge of.

Maybe Troye should have told him. Maybe he should call him right now and spill the dark secret he's kept in the bottom of his heart where it could eat away at only him and no one else. Maybe he should be honest and open in the way he'd always desperately wanted Connor to be. Maybe he should tell someone, lift the weight from his chest and air out the demons that have clung to him like vindictive mistresses for so long now, but he knows that he can't. Even if he managed to dial the number or go down the hall, he knew he would balk at the words he'd never said aloud before.

Staring at the phone a moment longer, he put it back on the desk and drew the covers over his head.