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Luke always thought that these things happened in the dark. He’d thought about back alleys and men in ski masks and the glint of a knife in the moonlight, but instead the lights are on and it’s his own damn bedroom and the only weapon the man has is leverage.
The man’s voice is soft when he asks Luke if he wants his dad to lose his job, the low, gravely cadence of it like a caress rather than the barbed threat it is. Or perhaps he can pay Luke’s mother a visit, he suggests, making Luke’s skin go cold, because she’s such a beautiful woman, isn’t she, Luke?
The thought makes Luke shudder. “Leave my mom out of this,” he says, more like a plea than an order. “Don’t go near her.”
The man frowns at him, full of faux sympathy. “I don’t want to, but what option do I have? Unless…” He trails off, eyes trailing down Luke’s body and making him squirm. “We could solve this little problem together, what do you think?”
Luke thinks he wants to scream. He thinks he wants to scream and cry and run from the room and keep running until he reaches the ocean and then he wants to drown. He wants to die. But then his dad will be destitute and his mom will be in danger and no one will be any better off, especially not Luke.
So he nods and trembles and lets his dad’s boss take him to bed, too rough and too old and too terrifying, and there’s blood on the sheets when it’s over and Luke is barely sixteen and he’s never even gotten to kiss anyone yet and when he takes a shower, he scrubs so hard at the skin on his arms that he bleeds all over again.
He picks and picks at the scabs on his arms for days, weeks and doesn’t let them heal, watching with morbid interest as blood beads up on his skin and then spills over. One day his shirt is white and the smear of blood across the sleeve takes him back to dirty sheets and hands pinning his wrists and Luke has taken scissors to his shirt before he even realizes it. He cries and panics and cuts up anything that constricts him, that holds him in place, and when his vision clears it’s full of blood, but he can finally breathe. He can finally move.
His parents don’t ask why he doesn’t wear sleeves anymore or why he’s been sleeping on the floor or why the tissue box is always empty, balled up and overflowing from his garbage can. Luke wants to stop, wants to get back to the normal, healthy relationship with his body that he used to have, but every night he wakes up drenched in sweat and panting for breath, the last fragments of dreams swirling in his head. Big hands, a cruel mouth, pain exactly where he doesn’t want it. No matter how hard he tries, sleep won’t come until Luke does.
It's reprehensible. It’s disgusting and scary and so fucked up, the deep, rugged voice murmuring into his ear until he gets off, then haunting him again as soon as he wakes up in the morning. Never before has there been such a disconnect between Luke’s mind and his body, everything spiraling out of control. Sometimes he even has to hide away at school, holed up in a bathroom stall and biting on the collar of his shirt to keep quiet. It brings relief, yes, but, more intensely than that, it brings shame.
Luke has never cried this much in his life.
His problems spill over onto his friends about a month after that night, all scrunched together on the couch watching a movie. Bobby moves to get comfortable, his thigh shifting against Luke’s, and suddenly Luke’s heart is pounding and his pants are tight and that voice is growling on the edges of his awareness. He runs away without explanation, ignoring their shouts of confusion as he disappears out the door.
He can’t bring his friends into this, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—and Luke skids to a stop behind the liquor store, unable to run another step. The voice has only gotten louder, grinding out encouragements and empty praise, but he has to find a way to drown it out, can’t touch himself when it was Bobby, good, innocent Bobby who would hate Luke if he knew how fucked up he was.
“How old are you, kid?” a woman says, cutting through the good boy you’re so close just let yourself feel it that’s ringing through his brain. She’s leaning against the brick wall of the store, a joint pinched between her fingers.
Luke blinks and lies. “Eighteen.”
They fuck in the backseat of her car, breathing smoke into each other’s mouths and steaming up the windows. Luke gets to be in control this time, hovering over top of her and getting to move how he wants and nothing hurts and it feels good and even the voice shuts the fuck up, only static in Luke’s ears when he reaches the edge, collapsing onto her with exhaustion. She strokes his sweaty hair and tells him he did a good job and he dreams of her that night, instead.
It feels like a step forward. If he was older and wiser and less broken, he might have recognized it as when he first broke ground for his own grave.
Because now that he knows what it feels like to be given the choice, to chase what he wants and not what is demanded from him, he can’t stop. His body is still out of control, geared up at the slightest of provocations, but at least his mind can get a break every once in a while. To Luke’s relief, no matter how angry the voice gets – you’re my good boy you’ll only ever be mine – it can never quite overpower the pleading gasps, desperate moans, and pleased murmurs of whoever he’s in bed with.
Mom stops having to buy so many tissues, but Luke knows she wouldn’t consider this a good trade off. She can never know.
Bobby, Reggie, and Alex get girlfriends and boyfriends and come back from dates with bruises on their necks and smug smiles on their lips, while Luke goes down to his knees in darkened streets and rolls around queen-sized beds in studio apartments and hopes no one asks to see his ID. His friends can tell he’s getting more than his fair share of action, but this is one thing he manages to stay tight-lipped about, shrugging them off and ducking their questions and pretending it’s out of respect rather than fear. Out of propriety rather than overwhelming, cold-blooded shame.
Because he may have found a way to banish that voice, but it still lives inside of him. It still owns him. Any time he’s not distracted, he flashes right back to his bed all those months ago, sheets smeared with blood and threats and his own pitiful weakness.
But it’s okay, because he has it handled. He’s seventeen now and he’s burning out all the impurities and he has it handled. That is, until three events happen one right after another that blow holes in the entire thing.
First, Alex kisses him. Alex stands before Luke and admits that he’s loved him for years and he kisses Luke and Luke cries out in—in what? He isn’t totally sure, but it feels like rage and revulsion and mourning because now he’s gotten Alex all dirty, Alex who he’s tried so hard to protect from this monstrous thing that lives inside him. He cries and Alex cries and Luke takes a layer off his lips trying to clean them of Alex’s innocence, Alex’s goodness. Then he goes out and drapes a college girl’s leg over his shoulder at a house party and coats his mouth in something else.
Next, Luke starts having stinging pain in his middle that travels down between his legs, tears dripping off the end of his chin as he hunches over the toilet trying urgently to empty his bladder. His urine feels like fire on its way out but there’s too much to hold in, especially for a whole day of school, and he ends up missing the first half of Biology class sitting on the toilet, relieving himself drop by drop until he’s sobbing. He’s in the nurse’s office by lunchtime and his mother’s car twenty minutes after that, on his way to the emergency room.
They have his mother leave when the doctor asks him questions about his sex life, even let him keep his diagnosis to himself, but there’s nothing Luke can do when the pharmacist warns him that though this particular STD is curable with an antibiotic, it comes back easily. Mom makes a sound in her throat like she’s choking, grabbing out for Luke’s wrist and digging her nails in. It makes Luke’s skin crawl, makes him feel pinned and small and bloody, and he wrenches away from her in a panic, snatching his prescription before he races back to the car.
Mom doesn’t talk to him for the rest of the day, not even when Luke ends up crying on the toilet again sometime after dinner. He’d wanted to protect her, had given up everything to keep her safe, and all he’d done is hurt her, anyway. Life is cruel and irony even more so.
Last, Luke meets Julie. She moves to LA from somewhere upstate and joins his music class and steals his heart. He fights against it with everything he has because Julie is good, too, Julie is spotless and whole and not fucked up and he can’t get her dirty the same way he did to Alex. He won’t be able to forgive himself. But somewhere along the way she wiggles her way into his arms and Luke has a girlfriend for the first time in his life.
He stops cold turkey, no more shadowy places, no more college parties, no more backseats and dingy bathrooms and parks after dark. He can’t, won’t go behind Julie’s back; she deserves the best and he’s going to do everything in his power to give it to her. It’s barely a week before the voice comes back, before the dreams come back, dragging him out of sleep to growl into his ear – baby boy I’m all you’ve got now – until Luke’s sweatpants are sticking to him with more than sweat. He cries himself to sleep and then does it all again in the morning.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Julie wanted to have sex, but she doesn’t. She’s all pink cheeks and bashful smiles and holding his hand like it’s the most exciting thing in the world, and Luke respects that. He does. He’s the last person that would ever pressure someone or make them feel bad for not wanting to fuck, but it’s just…hard. In every meaning of the word. He’s back to touching himself three or four times a day and he hates it.
He hates himself. He’d give anything just to be normal again.
Everything builds and builds for months, the voice getting louder and louder until it’s all he hears all day, every day. Every touch of someone’s hand or bump of their shoulder gets him shuddering, has him scrambling for the bathroom, and he’s even stopped hanging out with his friends, scared that he’ll make a mess of himself and their relationship, too. It definitely effects things with Julie, makes him pull away when he wants to press closer, makes her face fall when he cancels dates because he’s been crying for hours and doesn’t want her to know. Sometimes Luke is terrified that the voice is right, that in the end he’ll be alone with no one but it for company.
When Luke fucks up, he fucks up big, dragging himself out of bed in the middle of the night to a party he can hear still blaring down the street. This one is a high school party, thankfully, and everyone is his age, giggling about not getting caught by their parents or the cops. Luke lets some huge jock pour cheap vodka down his throat and then hooks up with three girls at once in an upstairs bedroom. It’s exactly what his body has been crying out for, every inch of him occupied and mind full of nothing but a low hum, quiet at last.
When Luke comes clean to Julie, she throws a book at his head. Then a shoe and a cup of pencils and every cutting word she can think of to describe him. He stands still and takes it, doesn’t beg for her forgiveness, because he knows this is exactly what he has coming. They both cry and then they part ways, broken beyond repair.
And finally, after soiling Alex, getting sick, and hurting Julie, Luke realizes he might not have this handled after all.
Even so, he’s helpless to fight it for a while, making up for lost time wherever he can. He celebrates his eighteenth birthday on his back in a trailer home, a boy with green eyes moving himself up and down while Luke watches, enraptured. When they go for round two, the boy asks to switch places, but Luke can only shake his head wordlessly, clapping his hands over his ears against the raspy whisper that flares up. C’mon baby c’mon you know you like it like that. The night ends quickly after that.
In the end, it’s Luke’s own carelessness that brings him to rock bottom.
Because he’s at some frat party and he’s out of condoms by the time he’s on his third partner of the night and the girl says she has one but Luke knows by the packaging that it’s going to be too big. It’s not embarrassment that makes him accept it anyway – he’s perfectly average and it’s not like he’s ever had any complaints – it’s just sheer desperation. He’s not ready to go home yet and he’s not going to let something stupid like a too-big condom get in the way.
It ends up slipping off and they don’t realize until the end and everything’s a huge mess and the girl slaps him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Luke throws up in the bathroom, light-headed with worry, and gives the girl his number because he doesn’t know what else to do. If he’s just ruined some poor girl’s life, he’ll take responsibility for it but, god, this is the last thing he wants to deal with. He thinks he’d rather die.
Feeling cold, paper-thin, and endlessly fucked up, Luke finally does what he should’ve done years ago: he goes to his friends.
They’re all huddled up in Bobby’s garage, passing bags of chips back and forth and laughing as they tease and shove at each other. He watches them through the window for a few minutes, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth at the familiarity of it all. He may be different, busted up beyond recognition, but they’re still the same. They’re still Bobby, Reggie, and Alex and maybe, just maybe, they still love him.
Their faces are written with surprise and suspicion when they see him, which Luke can’t blame them for. Alex abruptly gets up and goes to the bathroom, which Luke also understands. It’s been a long time since they kissed and Luke yelled at him with no explanation, but not long enough. God, he’s hurt so many people.
“The fuck do you want?” Bobby huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s been months, Luke.”
Reggie’s eyes are wide as his gaze flits back and forth between them, tinged with something like trust as he waits to see what’ll go down. He’s always been better than Luke deserves and he finds himself breaking into sobs against his will.
“I need help,” he finally says for the very first time, the words coming out choked and broken. “I’m all—I’m fucked up and I need help.”
Even as hurt as he is, Alex can’t hide away once the waterworks start, tiptoeing back out of the bathroom as Luke cries and falls to the floor and curls up in a little ball. All anger forgotten, his three best friends sink to the ground with him, rubbing his back and shushing him and letting him cry until his throat is raw. The story comes out between sobs, starting with his dad’s boss and continuing through every terrible, harmful thing that’s happened the past two years, right up until tonight.
“I’m sorry I was so mean to you,” Luke whimpers, reaching out for Alex and nearly choking on his tears when Alex takes his hand without hesitation. “I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t want to get you dirty. I didn’t want you to be ruined like I am.”
“You’re not ruined, Luke,” Alex says, stroking his hand over Luke’s tangled hair, uncaring that it’s filthy and stiff with dried sweat. “I’m so fucking sorry that you’ve been hurt so badly and, fuck, I wish we would’ve been there for you more, but you’re definitely not ruined.”
Luke doesn’t remember how to do anything but cry.
Once they’ve all calmed down, gone silent with the weight of it all, Reggie pulls Luke into his arms. Luke is gross and he smells like sex and every last shameful detail has been laid out on the table, but Reggie just holds him and hums soothing notes into his ear and tells him over and over again how much he loves him. Luke doesn’t deserve it, especially not when his body responds to their proximity in the very worst way, heat rising between his legs until he’s straining against his zipper. He’s already gotten off multiple times tonight, but it’s not enough, as usual. It’s never enough.
“I’m sorry,” Luke says, bursting into tears again and yanking himself away from the gentleness he’ll never be able to earn. “It’s—my body’s all—I’m not trying to…!”
“Luke, it’s okay,” Reggie quickly cuts in, grabbing onto Luke’s shoulders before he can get too far away. “It’s not your fault, alright? And that thing he did to you…? It’s also not your fault. That wasn’t supposed to happen and it messed you up and—it’s okay. Just come here, dude.”
And then he’s back in Reggie’s arms again, his shame dissolving like soap bubbles.
After a couple minutes, Luke pulls back and says sheepishly, “It’s not going to go away unless I…” He cringes, letting the statement stand.
“Do what you have to,” Bobby says, not a drop of judgement in his voice. “It’s no big deal. We’ll turn a movie on or something.”
Face red, Luke nods gratefully. “Thanks. I know it’s weird, it’s just—I can’t help it.”
“Not your fault,” Bobby echoes Reggie’s words and Luke hopes he might be able to believe him some day.
The voice is quiet this time as Luke locks himself in the bathroom and does what he needs to, like it’s being muffled beneath the buzz of genuine love and care. He knows it’s not going to stay like that – it’ll probably wake him up tonight like it always does – but it’s a relief for the time being.
He doesn’t stay the night in the garage, needs to be alone in case the dreams come back, but he stays through the rest of the movie and cries a little more when his friends hug him goodbye and promise to always love him. It settles something inside him, makes him feel cleaner than he has in years.
Once he’s had a glimpse of the other side of things, he wants to follow it with all of his might.
Luke has no tears left when he finally tells his parents, leaving out the gorier details. He’s too tired. It’s just as well because they cry enough for ten people, touching him with trembling hands and pressing kisses into his hair until he has to beg them to stop, scared and preemptively mortified of what might happen. He manages to make it through the confession with his dignity intact, though he’s not sure his parents will ever look at him the same way again. He knows they love him, have said as much about a thousand times since the conversation started, have even apologized for not picking up on the signs sooner, but this isn’t something you just come back from. Not when it’s your only son.
He knew professional help was the next step, but he never thought it would take the form of an inpatient unit. His friends bid him farewell in the driveway, full of quick hugs and promises to write, and then his parents take him clear across the city and check him in until further notice. There are many tears at the door, but Luke knows it’s for the best. Here he can be monitored and taken care of and, hopefully, unfucked in the head.
The days blend together, meetings with shrinks and adjusted medications and studying for his GED test so he doesn’t end up too hopelessly behind his peers. He grows up like he hasn’t in years, cut off at the knees by trauma and poor coping mechanisms, and sometimes he even finds it in himself to be proud.
Part of growing up is realizing that Dad’s boss didn’t have as much power as he pretended to, that he leveraged his age and authority over a child to make threats he never planned on putting into action. That was the hardest day in therapy by far, Luke sobbing into his knees and screaming at his assigned counselor as she tried to soothe him. They let him take a pill to go to sleep that night, but only that night. He had to face the nighttime on his own from then on out.
A couple weeks into his stay, Luke gets a call from a random number, patched through to the community phone in the rec room. His heart sinks when he recognizes the girl’s voice, raised in anger the last time he heard it, followed up by a stinging slap to his cheek.
She’s not pregnant, she wants Luke to know. She called his house and talked to his mom and got the number to this place. She’s also sorry that she hit him and she hopes he gets better, because if he’s the kind of guy that would take responsibility for a random hookup, then he deserves to get better. She wishes he hadn’t been so sick in the first place.
Because that’s what he is: sick. They’ve told him that time and time again since checking in. He’s sick, not broken. Not ruined. Not a bad person. As he sinks to the floor in a puddle of relief, tears springing to his eyes, Luke feels some of that sickness wash away.
It’s Alex’s eighteenth birthday when Luke finally goes home, a daily pill sorter in his backpack and a therapy schedule a mile long. His parents greet him with presents and hugs he doesn’t have to shy away from, then show him his new bedroom down the hall. It’s what used to be the guest room, painted blue like Luke has always wanted with a brand-new four-poster bed that looks nothing like the twin-sized that ruined his life. Walking into this room is comforting and new, so different from the tangible terror that had painted the walls of his old one. Luke is so overcome with gratitude, he can’t even speak.
He surprises the boys in the garage, crashing Alex’s birthday party and laughing when they scoop him up and swing him around, ecstatic to have their best friend back. They stay up all night even though it’s a Wednesday, even though the boys have to work tomorrow, even though their eyes are hurting and they’re yawning wide enough to crack their jaws by the end of it. They catch him up on everything he’s missed, like college acceptance letters and Alex’s coworker, Willie, that he’s going to ask out soon. Luke hopes with everything he has that it works out for him. Alex deserves a good guy.
They steer clear of anything less than G-rated, even keeping the jokes light and appropriate. Luke would feel a whole lot stupider about it if he didn’t appreciate it so much. He’s been doing so well; he doesn’t need to fuck himself now, so to speak.
At the end of the summer, Luke’s friends go off to college and he stays home. He’s seen the inside of enough frat houses and dorm rooms for a lifetime and the last thing he needs is that kind of temptation. He gets a job at a music store instead, pouring himself into his work and leaving early twice a week to go to therapy and making progress, progress, progress.
The first time someone flirts with him at the store, looking him up and down with thinly veiled interest in their eyes, Luke’s body goes hot with want and he has a panic attack in the storage room, waiting for the shoe to drop and undo every last hard-earned bit of improvement he’s had. But, to his surprise, that’s not what happens. The voice makes an appearance after ages of silence, panting and snarling at the forefront of his brain, but Luke shuts it down. For the first time in his life, he shuts it down.
You’ve neglected me, the voice grits out, wave after wave of heat rolling over Luke’s skin. I’m all you have and you neglected me so now you’re gonna be a good boy and do what I say.
You’re nothing, Luke spits back, taking control once and for all, grabbing hold of it and choking it until it’s nothing more than a squeak. You were nothing then and you’re nothing now and I’m not going to obey you anymore. I’m the one that gets to decide, not you.
It takes a few minutes for Luke to calm down, for the blood to disperse and the bulge in his pants to go away, but it does. And when he makes his way back out to the store, the person is gone. Luke’s manager gives him his spot at the counter back without scolding or even commenting, which he’s grateful for. Sometimes it pays to be known as the guy who spent time in the hospital.
There’s a rush about a week before Christmas and in the middle of it is Julie. Luke can only stare at her as she walks the aisles, flipping through records and CDs and letting her fingers trail over the keys of the piano in the shop window.
“You can play it if you want,” Luke says quietly, letting his footsteps fall heavy as he walks up behind her so as not to spook her. “I know how good you are.”
Julie turns slowly, face guarded as she confirms that, yes, it’s really him. Luke knows every spark of suspicion and hurt in her eyes is completely justified, this wonderful girl that he was too fucked up to love properly. Instead of yelling or throwing something else at him like Luke expected, Julie sinks down onto the piano bench and says, “You stopped coming to school.”
Luke winces. “Uh, yeah.” He runs his fingers nervously over the side seam of his jeans, needing something to ground him. He finds a loose thread and twirls it around his finger until it hurts, cutting off the circulation. “That’s because I—well, because…”
“You weren’t doing well, were you.” It’s not actually a question. Julie knows the answer.
Luke shakes his head. “I wasn’t. But I’m getting better now. Um, little by little.” Then he hangs his head with a sigh. “I know that sorry is useless, but for what it’s worth, I really am, Julie. You’re—it had nothing to do with you, if you can believe that, and I’d take it all back if I could.”
“It’s not.”
Luke clears his throat, anxious. “It’s not what?”
Julie shrugs. “It’s not useless. I don’t think it can fix everything, but it’s not useless,” she says and then she starts to play, fingers flying over the piano and leaving Luke starstruck.
Julie comes in to use the piano every afternoon for the next measureless span of wonderful weeks, lighting up the store with her passion and talent and making Luke’s heart feel too big for his chest. Like a miracle, Luke watches as her walls come back down, as she smiles a little bigger and lingers a little longer until she turns to him one day after the last beautiful note rings out and says, “I forgive you.”
Luke ends up crying because that’s all he does now, dropping onto the bench next to her and begging, “You really mean it?”
“I mean it,” Julie whispers, her small hand rubbing comfortingly over his back. “Because that was all part of it, wasn’t it? Part of you not being okay.”
It tears Luke apart, strips him down, makes him feel seen in ways he’s not entirely comfortable with, but he nods anyway, needing her to know. Because none of it was ever against her; Julie is one of the best people he’s ever known and he wishes he could’ve done right by her.
She gives him a second chance to do so, accepting his invitation to coffee and listening without chastisement as he tells her only as many details as she needs to know. And when he’s done, she reaches across the table to place her hand over his, warm and present and not running away.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, clear and resolute. “You’re doing so well, Luke.”
Luke is proud, too.
They take it slow, building up trust and communication and openness until they’re ready to come together again. Luke is bashful and apologetic when he tells Julie that they won’t be able to sleep together, won’t even be able to kiss until he’s well enough not to send himself into a downward spiral of self-destruction, but she takes it all in stride, eyes full of love and smile on her lips.
“What about this?” she asks, reaching for his hand and stopping about an inch away, waiting for permission. “Is this okay?”
“This is perfect,” Luke breathes, so overwhelmed and so in love, as he links his fingers with hers, palm to palm. It’s what Julie’s always liked anyway, squeezing his hand affectionately and not letting go until she absolutely has to. Luke doesn’t even bother fighting the tears, letting himself feel every drop of emotion he thought he’d never get to experience again. Julie doesn’t laugh, just smudges the wetness away with her finger and stays.
It isn’t perfect, but it is good. Sometimes the voice will rise up out of nowhere or a dream will haunt him, sending him running for his parents’ room like he’s six again. Those are the nights that they’ll stay up with him, reruns on the TV or music from the old record player on the desk, until his eyes are heavy enough to send him back to sleep.
I’m not alone, Luke taunts that voice right before he drifts off. You said I would be but I’m not.
There are hard days, days when his body is out of control and he flashes back over and over to a dirty bed and huge hands on his wrists, but having people who love him makes it worth it not to spiral. It’d be easy to find someone to drown out all the pain, all the gravelly whispers, but it’s not that hard to be cared for either, so he chooses that instead.
He chooses friends and he chooses love and he chooses family and it feels a little bit like being saved.