boys will be boys ✰ 5sos

ten

"when she's 20, a boy touches her hips and she jumps

he asks her who the hell taught her to be scared like that and she wants to laugh

doesn't he know that boys will be boys?"

-

Iris escaped from the city just a few months after Michael took her there. She remembers this night from two years ago, as well as the six shots of vodka would let her. She remembers the yelling and fighting as it was any normal night, but this time they were fighting over the packed bags in Iris's hands.

She didn't really want to leave Michael, she wanted to leave the city. She missed her best friend who also longed for her return home. So in the middle of the night she built up her courage and left, escaping with only a sore shoulder. Her taxi driver on the ride back home constantly checked on her through the rearview mirror. The most attention anyone has ever paid to her.

Iris was 20 now and was in Luke's apartment that he just recently moved in to. She had her own home just a few miles away, but home was anywhere Luke was. And if those were spoken facts, then home was his couch.

She had just woken up and immediately sat up to check her phone. She suspected it was 10 in the morning since she could hear that Luke was awake. He also didn't understand that life before 9am existed.

Iris messaged her father back asking about how her mom was. Ever since that one incident from the dining room, her mom was more traumatized than Iris was. Iris didn't care about her cheek, only her mother's wellness.

Luke appeared from around the corner, his eyes looking heavy. He gave her a small wave and sat down right next to the girl and admired her from the short distance. Even with falling, messy hair and faint dark circles under her eyes he still loved her just as much.

She left him there on the couch to go and shower and start her day even though afternoon was quickly approaching.

She came back with a few droplets of water soaking through her white t-shirt. Iris looked refreshed with a burgundy towel wrapped tightly around her head. Luke let his eyes trail down her dewy pale skin, no longer bruised or scratched, just lightly scarred.

She sits back down in her corner where she was before she left. Luke takes advantage and grabs onto her hips to pull her closer to him. She jumped from the contact, immediately turning around to Luke with a look of fear for just a mere second before it vanished from the sound of his laugh.

"It's just me," he told her. "I didn't mean to scare you." He apologized a hundred times after that.

Luke never once asked her if she had been hit by her boyfriends, but he finally knew it. The closest he got to her telling him was a few years back in high school when all the counselor did was yell at her for provoking him. Deep down, though, he did know and he had no clue how to help. There was always that fear for his own self, his own selfish fear.

Iris pretended it hadn't happened. It would be late at night when she fell asleep in Luke's arms for the first time that she finally knew that he wouldn't be the one to hurt her. Something about him, whether it was the beat of his heart or the tickle of his nose against her neck, secured her. Luke treated her with such delicacy, like she was glass.

But in the back of her mind the phrase that ran her life kept repeating, "Boys will be boys." And for a second, she feared the worst. She feared his warm hands would turn cold, and it would be only a day before her lip was bloodied then coddled with apologetic words.

But in this moment, her fear was freed. The chain around her ankle was broken. She was no longer a slave to her own fear.