Prologue
“You said you’d tell me you story? That If uh- if I kept developing feelings I’d need to know the details.” Eryn’s voice is careful and I take a deep slow breath.
“Yeah, you’ll need to know them but.” I glance at my lap and steel myself for the request. “I need to know if you can hold me without it going in any direction except calm and protective.”
He blinks at me a few times and frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I need to put my back against your chest and sit between your thighs while you wrap your arms and legs around me holding my wrists across my chest and doing your best impersonation of a koala bear while I tell the story,”
I take a breath for the part I know will sting my voice tight with anxiety, harsh without the intention.
“I need to do this without you popping a boner because my ass is touching you. Because this story has a lot of really traumatic shit in it and you getting a boner is not going to be conducive to trust or me staying sane.” I snap the words out harsher than I mean to and run my hand over my face.
“Sorry, that- that’s anxiety, I’m not mad at you for not understanding why I worded it that way. It’s just- I’ve never told the entirety of the story to anyone before. Not from beginning to end.”
He sighs and drags me toward him by my left arm placing me between his thighs and freezing.
“Walk me through it from here, I don’t know exactly what you mean.” His voice shakes and I feel his hand twitch on his knees where they brush against me.
I roll to my feet and stand turning back towards him and holding out a hand.
“Come on I’ve told part of this story on a courtyard floor before, it’s not comfortable and I swear Johnathan walked stiffly for like a week.” I grab his hand as he pushes himself to his feet and drag him behind me settling him on my bed in the corner against the wall and the headboard before settling myself between his thighs and grabbing his wrists before crossing my arms.
“Now you just hold me tight enough that I can’t freak out and hurt me or you, and if I go coo-coo bananas on you just holler Johnathan is in the room with the blue door.” I point with our hands at Johnathan’s door which he gives an adorably possessive and suspicious glare at before turning his attention back to me.
“well first let me start with, this is going to be a long and fucked up ride and it starts back before I knew the Ledger would always be unbalanced.”
I press my shoulders back against his chest and let my head drop back on his shoulder staring at the dark ceiling, at the spot in the corner where the water from the fountain reflects moonlight.
“Before I start I need to clarify, I know that none of what I’m about to tell you was love. None of it, except what I shared with Levi.” he lifts his head and I nod. “Yeah that Levi, the guy this place is named after, Johnathan and Caleb’s brother. We’ll get to all of that eventually. But except for what I shared with him; I need you to know that I know it wasn’t love. It felt like it at times, at other times I had to force myself to believe it was. each instance broke me a little more each time someone took without my permission I broke in just a slightly different way and until Levi came into my life after damn near a decade of straight abuse no one bothered to put me back together.”
I twist one hand and thread my fingers through his staring at his knuckles alongside mine.
“What I’m about to tell you is something I’ve never actually put into words. I’ve told the basics. Daddy beat me, mom was a drugged-out whore after, foster care is full of predators. Things people know already. But I’ve never told the real details. If y-if you’re going to try and have feelings, maybe even to love me one day even I want you to know all of the details even the one that hurt me to say.”
I bite my lip drifting for a moment.
“You know, you don’t actually have to tell me if you don’t want to, or if it’s too much. Or we can break it up into manageable pieces.” He smiles down at me. “I mean we don’t know, maybe I’ll need a break from watching you hurt yourself on the sharp edges of your memories.” He tries to laugh but it’s wrong, too tight, to nervous. Whether from proximity to me while still trying to figure out how he feels or if he should feel it at all. or from the idea that I’m about to rip myself open. Either way it doesn’t land and we both feel it.
“No, I need to, the shit’s been festering for a little over eighteen years. If my trauma was a person it could vote now.” I deadpan and look up at him flinching as my nose drags over his jaw. I hadn’t realized he was looking down still. I look away and hook my chin over my own shoulder and start.
“I was born October the thirtieth nineteen ninety-one. My mother was only seventeen my father was almost thirty. Like I said I have an long history with age gaps going wrong. the worst was Carrington, but it started at the beginning. My mom had just finished their ancient Greek and Roman section in school while she was pregnant with me my dad was something Ethnic dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, but he was also short as sin. Robert Odyrian was also mean as a rattlesnake to anyone who wasn’t my mother back then, so he convinced her that she was special because that’s what predators do.
My grandparents were very religious, Catholics of the roman variety and very devout so when their daughter popped up pregnant, they didn’t string the monster up by his balls and beat him like a pinata or else my story would be much different I assume. No, they forced her to get married to him three months pregnant. She once told me I ruined her life, I told her the feeling was mutual. But when I was born she was still enamored with him and the life he was promising to her so because she thought his last name Odyrian sounded similar to Odysseus she decided to name me Noctis Eryx Odyrian. Noctis because my hair and eyes were as dark as night though my complexion matched hers pale as freshly fallen snow even then. Eryx because she wanted me to be as strong as the man who stood against Hercules, everyone failed to mention to her that Eryx lost, his strength failed him and he died.
The first few years of my life were fine; I spent time with my grandparents and went to church on Wednesdays and twice on Sundays. I played with the neighbors and got into fights with people in defense of my mother’s honor and in my Dads defense once I was old enough to understand that people in the neighborhood talked shit about their age difference.
I think that’s eventually what did it, what set him off completely, His Boss’ wife found out that my mom was almost twenty years his junior and made her husband fire my dad. and somehow that became mom’s fault.
He came home from work and headed straight to the fridge and when she asked him what was wrong he just turned and backhanded her like it was nothing told her, ‘you are’ and then grabbed a beer and walked into the living room to flip channels. Neither mom nor I knew how to deal with it. so, we didn’t.” I shrug and shift settling back against Eryn’s chest a bit more. “it got worse from there, mom had to work to keep us a float, but a woman drop out in the late nineties was basically only able to get fast food or diner work unless she was willing to work as as stripper. And my dad was too jealous for her to even think of that, until he wasn’t.
That’s actually how I ended up in the hospital. It was three days after my seventh birthday, I still had an entire bag of candy from Halloween stashed under my bed, I had made plans to walk over to my friends house after school to watch some stupid cartoon that was airing because his mom had gotten cable and they had Cartoon Network. It was a Monday I remember that because I knew my mom was supposed to be at work so I was dragging my feet getting home because it would just be me and Robert Odyrian and his disappointment.”
