Own Me

Chapter Nine

A.N. Gif of Patrick Schwarzenegger, doing what he does best: looking mighty fucking fine. Things are getting sweet, aren't they? Unusually sweet, for my tastes. I did promise positivity, if only for a little while. There's always got to be positivity, to cancel out all that negativity. Vote and comment, if you like it when I'm sweet and lovely to my darlings. You never know when it'll change. Xoxo, Clay.

"At the end of the day, you won't be happy until you love yourself."

-Lady Gaga

♔ Chapter Nine ♔             

I felt so fucking stupid, so absolutely fucking stupid. I liked him. I liked Isaac. God, even thinking it in my head felt wrong, even realising that it was true felt wrong, letting it sink in. It all felt so unbelievably wrong. I mean, how could I like someone like that? Someone like him? Someone so messed up, so psychotic, so unlovable. Someone so beyond the capability of ever feeling anything actually real in return. Maybe that was the biggest cosmic joke of it all, falling for someone like that, someone destined to be incapable of loving me back.

I should have hated him, I knew that the first time I laid eyes on him in the alley. I shouldn't have called him over to me, I shouldn't have flirted, I shouldn't have welcomed him in. Even then, I had no idea why I did it, why I was so attracted to his darkness. Knowing all of the bad things he had done, knowing everything that he was capable of, and yet I let him into my life anyway. I let him own me, fuck around with me, and now, now I had feelings for him. Somewhere along the line, I started liking more than the sex, and around the same time, I'm guessing, so did he.

Ever since I was younger, I never believed that people were black and white. Everyone had tints of black, and speckles of white, and they all came together in shades of grey. There were no good people, no bad people, until I met Isaac.

Finding out everything that he did to Tom, watching it play out before my eyes and knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop it - I'd convinced myself that he was a villain. I told myself day after day that Isaac was a bad person, an evil little bastard. It was easier to cope that way, thinking that he was twisted and cruel and abusive. But I was wrong about it all. For the first time in my life, as I'd sat on Isaac's bed and looked over at him, seeing him looking so human, I realised how wrong I was about him.

Maybe it was easier for me to convince myself that he was a villain, to see him as a villain. Maybe it helped me get over Tom's suicide, and made me move on faster. The Isaac that I'd created in my head, the Isaac that I thought I knew and understood, maybe he wasn't the real Isaac. Maybe the Isaac in my head was just simply in my head, and I'd been painting him as this awful person, when the entire time, he's just been like everyone else. He had his secrets, his fears, his troubles, just like everybody else. It was just easier for me to see him as a villain, rather than accept the truth that he was just like me. Broken, alone, and afraid. Left behind, forgotten by our so-called family or friends. Abandoned. We were exactly the same. So, in a strange kind of way, perhaps we belonged.

"I should probably go soon," I said aloud, breaking the silence that had invaded his bedroom.

"Oh," he mouthed. "Really?" He wasn't looking me in the face. The boy in front of me, sitting on the edge of his bed, in his childhood room, he didn't even seem like the Isaac that I knew. He seemed smaller, more afraid. His eyes were different. They didn't seem cold, as they usually were, or empty, as they'd so often been. They seemed something a whole lot worse - lost. He didn't look away from his hands, sitting in his lap, as I raised myself up off of his bed, and went for the door.

"Unless you want me to stay," I offered, my hand resting on the handle of his door, holding it there, twisting it slowly as I waited for his response.