Chapter 1
Barty's head hits the castle wall as some girl's lips slide along his neck in the dark. Barty shivers every time she pulls away and he can feel her breath on his neck. He slips his hand into her hair and pulls her face up to press their lips together. The girl pushes impatiently, grinding against his hips and eliciting a moan from Barty.
Barty pushes his hips to meet hers and she gasps, pulling him closer by his tie.
But then she slides her hand behind Barty running it up his back and he flinches away from her as if she'd burned him.
"Um, what the fuck?" Her voice is high pitched and demanding. Barty tries to control his breathing, his mind filling with images of his ex.
Barty almost trips himself, backing away from her,
he can't focus,
he can't breath,
all he knows is that he needs to get away from her- from Avery?- no, not him, someone else.
See? It's fine. The voice in his brain tries to tell him. The voice that sounds exactly like his dad's whenever Barty had tried to tell him about what Avery had done.
The voice that told him not to tell anyone.
The voice that had beat him.
.
Barty slams the door to his dorm, startling everyone awake. He doesn't even look at them he just storms into the bathroom and locks the door before any of them have time to figure out what just happened.
His face is red and tears are pouring from his eyes, his breaths coming in waves. he wipes his eyes desperately, stumbling backwards cuz he can't get the images out of his head. He can feel the way his father had kicked him while he was laying curled up on the floor.
his back hit the wall and it sparks the memory of Avery grabbing his throat and holding him in place.
He needs air, he can't see, he can't breath, oh god, he can't breath, he can't breath,
he can't fucking breath.
There's a loud bang on the door and Barty' body jerks sending him to the floor when his knees buckle. Barty can't hear Regulus calling for him through the door, all he hears is muffled knocking and it doesn't register, it feels like the time his dad had forced his head under the water in the tub when he was a kid. He couldn't hear then either, he couldn't scream.
He still can't scream.
He wants to so bad, more than anything, it just gets trapped in his throat and in his lungs, almost as if Avery still had his fingers gripping Barty's neck.
Barty can feel the way Avery had pushed onto him like it was happening all over again and it made his skin crawl, it made his skin burn. It scratched at his skin and Barty desperately crawled into the shower and turned on the scorching hot water watching shakily as his skin quickly turned red.
Then out of nowhere, Evan appeared at his side with Regulus standing behind him and it was like seeing through the fog. Evan's eyes peered through Barty's and he slowly pulled him out of the shower and held him up on the bathroom floor until, slowly, Barty came back staring up at Evan.
Barty and Evan sat there for a full minute just staring into each others eyes. And then Barty recovered.
"'Gerroff-" Barty pushed himself away from from Evan, willing the bright red in his cheeks to go away. "No one asked you to nanny me."
Evan rolled his eyes, "Next time I'll just let you burn to death in the shower then, yeah? How's that sound?"
Barty scowled at him trying to hide the humiliation. "Go fuck yourself, would you?"
"Only if you promise to help." Evan winked at him.
Barty's eyes flew wide and he groaned, shoving at Evan's shoulder. Evan snorted and Regulus audibly released a sigh of relief.