The Avengers x Reader Inserts

deserving | steve rogers | 1/4

A/N: This short series is for @/allisonbaelfire's writing challenge on Tumblr! Thank you for creating this fun challenge and letting me join! Also, this is just the prologue, so don't worry; Steve is coming, ladies and gents! <3 And Liam Murphy is just a dude I came up with to tell this story - he's not in any other Marvel movies or anything. I just made him up.

Also, this story is very dear to my heart. In fact, it leaves me completely vulnerable and honeslty I'm a little apprehensive to share. A couple of years ago I was in a very abusive and controlling relationship – hence my inspiration for the character of Liam. But I think I needed to tell my story to help others. Just because you might not get bruises or get tossed around physically by a guy doesn't mean he isn't abusive – if he doesn't respect you and willingly (and knowingly) goes against everything you stand and ask for, then it's abuse. If he doesn't treat you well, it's abuse. If you find yourself plummeting into depression and stress and anxiety because of him, it's abuse.

Remember, you deserve someone like Steve Rogers. Not Liam Murphy.

Summary: Reader is in an abusive relationship with a man who makes it his sole priority to violate her boundaries. As the relationship wears on, Steve is your confidant, your closest and dearest friend. You had known each other for many years, since the first days he had awoken from the ice. You confide in him with everything and Steve cherishes your friendship – but when will you learn that you're worth more than a selfish man who can't respect you? When will you realize that America's hero, Steve Rogers himself, is waiting for you?

Word Count: 912 (revised)

Warnings: abusive relationship, angst, a Steve-less beginning D:

Music: Loki's Lie by Patrick Doyle

When you had first met Liam Murphy, you were naïve and brimming with the hope of a girl who stilled dreamed of fairytale love. But you failed to see the wolf beneath the wool of the sheep. You were charmed by his humor, his boyish grin, and his ability to open you up in a way that made you feel like he knew you. You were sure you were in love, sure that he could be the one – the man you could live out your life with, the one you could overcome the world with. However, as your neared spending half a year with the man by your side, you found yourself lost in his deception.

Before he had conned you into his facade, you held fast to what you wanted. You were uninterested in a relationship solely focused upon the physical realm of intimacy. You wanted to get to know the man you'd marry without being swayed by lust or desire. From the failure of other's relationships, you knew that couples who founded their love upon those aspects never lasted. When your body became frail with age or something in your physique altered, there was nothing to fall back on. There would be no foundation of earnest, true love. Just a shallow attachment; a silly infatuation. You wanted to be sure that he loved you for your mind, heart, and soul – not just a temporary state of appearance.

Likewise, you found the older practice of courtship to be more appealing to you. Love wasn't only made up kisses and tender touches, but of words and experiences shared; the way your souls thrived together. You wanted to wait for marriage before becoming intimate and you wanted to wait for a mature relationship before you offered your lips to a man. You wanted to cherish your "I love you" 's. You wanted to be sure you loved someone enough to wait and most importantly, that he loved you enough to respect that. 

That's why when Liam slowly began to turn the tables on you and one day, when you looked up from your handfuls of pretty words and hollow apologies he had offered over time, you found the world around you greying and dimming. He had become the man you had always feared you would get involved with - or more so, simply revealed who he truly was. You were too stunned to fight back. His promises to respect your opinions faded so smoothly into condemnation and manipulation, it exhausted you to even attempt to stand up for your convictions. He was tired of being unsatisfied. Where he had once promised to be patient, he was now forcing you to yield.

You were being suffocated.

For several months, the charade of laughter and pure intentions was kept flawlessly. You believed every apology with eager acceptance, your good-natured heart offering him far too many chances. You gave a little up of yourself every day for the man, blinded by his crocodile tears, and moved by your own compassion to overlook his habit of inching beyond your boundaries. As the months passed, his innocent façade slowly transitioned into one of controlling oppression. Despite your growing attempts to stand up for yourself, the guilt he shoveled upon your heart made you rethink every boundary you had set for yourself.

Were you asking too much? Expecting something unrealistic? Did he keep inching forward because you gave him leeway to do so? Or was he just relentless? 

He forced you to hold his hand, even when you just needed a minute to yourself. No matter when or where, he feigned hurt when you didn't sit next to him or stay by his side – and the next time you were alone he would furiously condemn you for it. When you did sit next to him, he placed his hands wherever he pleased, knowingly disregarding your discomfort with being touched like a pet.

In the last few weeks, he had become dangerously dominant. He squeezed your arm too tightly when walking next to you, held your body in whatever way satisfied him, and became temperamental when you fought him on it. He ridiculed your desire for purity and restraint. Whenever you confronted him, he would quickly turn his tears on - and once the situation was back in his favor, he could turn them off.

Now, nearly seven months later, you were in the darkest pit you had ever been in. Under his thumb and his subtle, yet destructive control you now squirmed with despair. You lived every day with a looming feeling of disgust for yourself. Somehow in the span of six months your self-worth had plummeted, whereas it was once healthy. Over time, Liam's compliments and his reassurances over your appearance and your personality faded into condemning remarks of your shortcomings.

Every minute of the day your thoughts were consumed of him – but they weren't thoughts of adoration. You now dreaded seeing him, dreaded his shallow conversation, dreaded his disrespect for your own convictions. You were sick of feeling like a pet, like no more than a pleasure for his own sexual instincts. You wanted a friend, a man who would show his love for you with respect and understanding. Liam had completely ensnared you with pretending to be such a man - and now you were caught in his elaborate web of lies, tortured by guilt.

How did you let this happen to yourself?