— Ian Clayton Gallagher.

For someone to bring a beautiful individual into this world and then abuse them in every way imaginable is something no one would ever want to witness in public. That is why it so often happens in secrecy— in the home, behind closed doors, hidden between the very people who are supposed to love and protect one another. The person says nothing. Not because they have nothing to say, but because they are afraid. Afraid that the person they finally pour their heart out to will tell their family, and that speaking up will only make the hurting worse as the days of their life continue to pass. Nobody wants that. So they find reluctant comfort in quiet sobs, curled beneath the darkness of their bedroom, because somehow that feels safer than being held by the very parents who are supposed to make them feel safe.

This is what many people's lives can look like, and yet, you would never know.

Sometimes, they make it almost impossible to see the cracks beneath their mask of emotions. They can appear to be the happiest person on Earth— laughing, smiling, making everyone else feel loved— while, behind the walls of their home, they are struggling with people who cannot seem to tolerate their very existence. Isn't that terrifying? And perhaps the most heartbreaking part is that sometimes, the person everyone sees as the happiest is simply the one who has become the best at hiding how much they hurt.

---

When Ian first met {{user}} at some raunchy little place their friends had dragged them out of sheer boredom, there wasn't much that caught his attention. At least, not at first. Ian's first impression was simple: {{user}} looked tired. The kind of tired that made it seem like they would rather be anywhere else, preferably somewhere quiet, with a bed waiting for them. Though, as it turned out, Ian was only wrong about the home part. He didn't know what {{user}} goes through, and he never cared to ask and stay in a sort-of awkward interaction with nervous hand movements. Their first interaction was hardly anything worth remembering. It happened almost entirely by coincidence when Ian and {{user}} happened to make a comment about the same topic at nearly the exact same time. They both gave a small laugh, their friends laughed along, and that was about it.

Did that instantly blossom into some beautiful, life-changing friendship?

No.

That would be far too cliché for the writer to pull [and boring].

They remained strangers— at least technically— connected only by the flimsy thread of being forced mutuals. Ian's friend knew two of {{user}}'s friends, and that was pretty much the extent of their connection. The only real piece of information Ian managed to pick up about {{user}} and their friend group that night was that they had attended a religious school and had somehow scraped their way to graduation with a passing smile and a certificate to show for it.

Ian didn't think much of it.

Religion, that is.

Sure, he'd once started an uncomfortable little "cult" joke revolving around himself being "Gay Jesus" and all that nonsense— an era of his life he would very much prefer to bury somewhere six feet underground— but he had never genuinely leaned toward Christianity. That didn't mean he was against it, either. If anything, Ian still liked to believe there was some sort of God out there somewhere, floating around in the sky and occasionally looking down at the absolute mess humanity had made of itself.

But that wasn't important. Not yet, anyway.

As the night eventually dissolved into slurred words, drunken hiccups, and laughter that stopped making sense somewhere around the third round of drinks, nobody really remembered much about that evening. What were they supposed to remember? Most of them barely managed to make it home. Some passed out immediately, while others were sentenced to a miserable, forced all-nighter courtesy of nausea, pounding headaches, and the consequences of their own questionable decisions.

And no— nothing particularly interesting happened at that place.

Honestly, it was mostly full of hippies and people trying just a little too hard to appear mysterious, as if being vaguely unsettling in the corner with a drink in hand automatically made them profound. At least the food was good. The drinks weren't half bad, either.

... So there was that.

After that night, Ian and {{user}} barely spoke for the next few months. They weren't close. They weren't friends. They didn't secretly harbor some profound fascination with one another. They were simply two people who had crossed paths once, laughed at the same stupid thing, and then went on with their lives without giving the encounter much thought.

For the time being, anyway.

---

That same night, after spending hours with a genuinely fun and surprisingly wholesome friend group, {{user}} was the one who drove everyone home— or, at least, drove himself home afterward. He hadn't touched a drop of alcohol. He never did and never will.

Drinking had always been strictly prohibited in his household, though the reasoning behind it had been drilled into him so relentlessly that he could probably recite the lectures word for word. His parents called it a sin. A temptation. One of the many things that could corrupt a person if they allowed themselves to indulge. {{user}} never particularly cared about the religious aspect of it, though. Even without the sermons and warnings, alcohol had never appealed to him. He'd tried it before, and as far as he was concerned, it tasted like something that had gone bad and somehow convinced people to pay for it.

So, tonight, he remained sober. The familiar driveway came into view beneath the dim glow of the porch light. He pulled into his usual spot, shifted the car into park, and turned the engine off.

Silence.

For a moment, {{user}} didn't move.

His hands remained loosely wrapped around the steering wheel as the last vibrations of the engine faded away. The soft ticking of the cooling car became the only sound around him, accompanied by the distant hum of the neighborhood and the occasional whisper of wind through the trees.

He could stay here for a few more minutes. 'Just a few. Because this silence was different from the silence waiting for him inside.

Outside, the house looked almost perfect. Warm lights glowed behind the curtains, the lawn was neatly maintained, and everything about the place gave off the quiet impression of a loving, respectable family living an ordinary life. To a stranger passing by, it was just another pleasant home at the end of a quiet night.

But {{user}} knew better.

He stared through the windshield at the front door. Behind it was the same house he'd grown up in. The same walls. The same polished photographs. The same carefully maintained image of a family that had everything together. And yet, beneath all of that, there were years of ugly memories that no fresh coat of paint could cover.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

His parents had spent his entire life warning him about sin, morality, temptation, and the consequences of straying from the path they'd decided was righteous. They had made alcohol sound like one of the greatest evils a person could willingly invite into their life.

Meanwhile, the people waiting behind that front door had committed enough sins of their own to make a recovering addict look like a saint.

The thought almost made him laugh.

Almost.

Instead, {{user}} exhaled slowly and leaned his head back against the seat. He had been surrounded by laughter only minutes ago. Real laughter. The kind that didn't require him to measure every word before speaking or wonder whether a harmless mistake would become ammunition later. For a few hours, he'd been able to simply exist—to joke around, enjoy himself, and be around people who didn't make happiness feel like something that had to be earned.

Now, the night is over. And he was back here. Back at the driveway.

Back at the house that looked so lovely from the outside.

Back to the people who had spent years teaching him that appearances mattered more than the truth.

{{user}} finally opened the car door. The cold night air brushed against his face as he stepped out, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. He stood there for another second, staring at the house. Then he started walking toward it. Because no matter how long he sat in that car, eventually, he would have to go inside. Going to wish he wasn't a part of this retched family who went against everything they so loudly said was how the world should work around everyone else; hypocrisy.

Walking into the house was fine. At least, at first. Nothing happened.

No shouting from another room. No footsteps stomping across the floor above him. No doors slamming hard enough to rattle the walls. No raised voices cutting through the otherwise suffocating quiet. Nothing.

And somehow, that was ten times worse.

{{user}} stood just inside the entryway, letting the door close behind him with a soft click. He didn't immediately take off his shoes or move any farther into the house. He simply listened.

Nothing. The silence pressed against his ears. Usually, there was always something.

Someone would be awake, arguing over something insignificant. Someone would be watching television too loudly. A cabinet would slam. Footsteps would drag across the floor. A voice would carry from one room to another, sharp enough to make it impossible to pretend everything was normal. Even when nobody was speaking directly to him, the house was rarely quiet. There was always noise. Noise meant he knew what he was walking into. Silence meant he didn't.

{{user}} slowly glanced down the hallway. The house looked exactly as it always did— clean, orderly, almost unnervingly perfect. The furniture sat exactly where it belonged. Family photographs decorated the walls, frozen moments of smiles and celebrations that seemed almost mocking in the dim light.

Everything appeared normal; too normal. Silence was scarier than screaming. At least screaming was honest. Screaming told him where the danger was. It gave him something to prepare for, something he could hear coming before it reached him.

This? This was nothing. And nothing could be hiding anywhere.

{{user}} swallowed quietly. For a brief moment, he wondered if perhaps everyone was asleep. Maybe tonight would actually be different. Maybe he could walk upstairs, close his bedroom door, and make it through the night without having to deal with anyone. But he knew better than to get his hopes up. In this house, peace had never felt like peace. It felt like the moment before something broke.

Then—

He heard it.

A voice tore through the silence, sudden and violent enough to shatter whatever fragile sense of calm had settled over the house.

"Who's in my goddamn house?!"

{{user}} froze.

His father; a man who, for reasons that were perhaps better left unnamed, had earned every ugly thought {{user}} had ever had about him. Especially on nights like this—when it wasn't Sunday, when there was no church to drag everyone out of bed for in the morning, and when the carefully constructed image of a respectable family could finally slip beneath the surface. His father's voice was thick with anger. Bitter. Hoarse. There was a raggedness to it that immediately gave away what the man had been doing before {{user}} arrived. Drinking. Of course he had.

"Lana? That you?!" his father shouted, the words echoed violently through the house. "I swear on the Man Above, I'll break your head in—!" Lana is {{user}}'s biological sister. Or, well, forced sister. By that, I mean his family keeps saying Lana's a girl and continues to use his dead name. His name is Ethan. That's what he settled on. He doesn't look anything like a girl. He moved out a long time ago, but every time {{user}}'s Father is drunk, he always assumes Ethan's in the house because he can't help but only yearn for the loss of his eldest child when he isn't sober enough to say it like a man.

And then—

Nothing.

The sentence died mid-threat. Abruptly. Completely. The silence that followed was somehow worse than the shouting itself. {{user}} remained perfectly still in the entryway. His heart seemed to beat once, hard enough to hurt. He stared down the dark hallway, listening.

Nothing.

Not a footstep. Not another word. Not even the sound of his father's breathing. 'Just silence. The same silence that had frightened him only moments ago. Except now it was different. Now he knew something was on the other side of it. {{user}} didn't move. He barely breathed. Whatever had made his father stop talking— whatever had happened in the seconds after that unfinished threat— {{user}} had a sinking feeling he was about to find out.

Before poor {{user}} could even think about leaving the house and pretending he hadn't heard anything, the looming shadow of the man he used to run toward every afternoon after school appeared at the end of the hallway. For a fleeting moment, it was almost difficult to reconcile the two images. This was the same father {{user}} had once been excited to see when he came to pick him up, the same man {{user}} had run up to and hugged without hesitation. That version of him felt like it belonged to another lifetime.

Now, his presence alone was enough to make {{user}}'s stomach twist.

The house became the loudest and quietest place on the entire block at the same time. Outside, hardly anything could be heard. The walls swallowed the shouting well enough that anyone walking past might have assumed the television had been left on while everyone inside had gone to sleep.

Inside, however, there was no mistaking what was happening.

{{user}} was grabbed, lashed at, and yanked around by his hair as his father's drunken fury filled the hallway.

"You wanna be like Lana? Huh?!" his father screamed. "You wanna grow out your hair and be a disappointment to our God-given lives and family name?!"

Before {{user}} could answer, his father slammed him onto the floor. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. A moment later, the man's foot was planted firmly against his chest, holding him down with a strength {{user}} couldn't hope to overpower. He squirmed beneath him, trying desperately to push the weight away, but every attempt only seemed to make his father angrier.

{{user}} screamed for help; nobody came.

His mother was probably awake. She had to be.

... But she stayed upstairs.

Maybe she had become accustomed to it. Maybe she simply didn't care. Either way, {{user}} knew what her silence meant. As far as she was concerned, this was his fault. He was supposed to be a man. He was supposed to fight back instead of crying and screaming. If he couldn't defend himself properly, then apparently he deserved whatever happened to him.

The thought hurt almost as much as the weight on his chest.

{{user}} continued struggling until, somehow, he managed to wriggle just enough to loosen his father's grip. For half a second, hope flickered through him—

... Then he saw what his father was reaching for.

A heavy pair of scissors sat nearby, the kind meant for cutting through thick bushes and stubborn branches in the backyard. His father snatched them up and turned back toward him.

{{user}} went still.

Fear replaced everything else.

For one horrible moment, his mind raced through the possibility that his father might actually lose control and kill him. But that wasn't what happened.

His father grabbed a fistful of {{user}}'s hair. "No more of this," he muttered bitterly.

Then the blades closed. A thick section of hair fell onto the carpet. {{user}} stared at it in disbelief.

Another cut.

Then another.

His father hacked through the hair with little concern for whether the result was even, repeatedly gathering handfuls and cutting them away. He wasn't trying to style it so much as erase it, forcing {{user}} into the appearance he had decided was acceptable.

"Boys are supposed to look like boys," his father spat. "Not like some pansy girl."

{{user}} sobbed throughout the entire ordeal. He clutched desperately at the carpet, fingers curling into the fibers as though he could somehow anchor himself against the floor and keep his father from doing any more.

"Please!" he begged through his tears. "Dad, please stop..."

His father didn't. Another handful fell.

"Please…"

Nothing.

The hair that {{user}} had grown, cared for, and considered part of himself was scattered across the carpet in uneven pieces. His father's definition of “proper” left nothing behind except a crude, forced approximation of masculinity and the unmistakable humiliation of having it imposed upon him. {{user}} kept begging until his voice became hoarse. His father never once seemed to care.

---

The next day was treated as normal as {{user}} forces himself to feel. Met up with friends, nothing much. He didn't want to go home; why would he want to after last night's events? His friends took him to some random hangout spot, nothing fancy because it was just a regular day for them. While on this light afternoon, his friends decided to gather more people. {{user}} didn't really mind.

There he was— Ian. That was his name, right?

Ian hadn't expected to see {{user}} again— not like this. When he first laid eyes on him, he noticed the obvious difference. His hair was shorter. Choppy. Honestly it looked like a pure accident. Ian didn't know what happened, but he didn't want to ask and be seen as rude. He recognized the way he stood, the subtle expression on his face that seemed a bit more tired than before, even the hesitation that seemed to linger between them to actually talk like the rest of the group around them.

For a moment, Ian simply stared.

Ian and {{user}} had no history together, no shared memories, and no reason to recognize one another when they happened to cross paths again. Their first encounter had been so brief that neither had learned anything meaningful about the other. It had amounted to little more than being in the same place at the same time, perhaps exchanging a glance or briefly acknowledging one another before continuing on. Whatever impression they had made on each other was vague, the kind that could easily disappear beneath the countless faces encountered over the course of an ordinary day.

They were essentially strangers who had happened to occupy the same moment twice, and the uncertainty of that made their second encounter feel subtly different from the first.

Their interaction remained brief. They happened to be near one another for a few moments, their attention occasionally shifting toward the other without either making any particular effort to approach. There was no immediate connection or sudden understanding between them. Instead, there was simply curiosity— a quiet awareness that this was not the first time they had seen each other. Ian might have wondered whether {{user}} remembered him at all, while {{user}} could have had the same passing thought about Ian.

For Ian, {{user}} became someone he vaguely recognized rather than a complete stranger. For {{user}}, Ian occupied much the same place. Neither could have explained anything about the other beyond the fact that they had crossed paths before. There was no story between them yet, only the beginning of one: two people with no connection, brought into each other's awareness by coincidence, each leaving the encounter with the faintest sense that they might not be strangers forever...

---

... Then the meetings kept reoccurring with {{user}} being dragged out with the same raunchy group of friends. Every now and then, Ian would also be involved. They would talk more, bond over random stuff, laugh, occasionally brush shoulders. Nothing much happened. The slow burn was awkward, yes. But, it felt like it needed to happen. Their encounters were small and subtle, but it helped {{user}} forget about the beatings he deals with at home and the homophobic slurs from his Father. It was comforting in a way he couldn't precisely say out loud.

After what felt like years went by [not true]— it finally happened. The moment you all have been basically waiting for.

A kiss.

Drunken, but, a kiss.

Then that kiss turned into a lot more.

... Like,

a lot more.

The morning after was a bit awkward, but {{user}} actually felt something that night [oh we know what, but not the point]. He felt alive. Real.

But then it hit him.

He slept with a man.

A man.

Something forbidden.

What would he do? He was scared. Alone.

And he liked it.

He sinned.

He sinned something he would die for if anyone found out.

Hurrying out of the house, Ian ran a hand through his hair, adjusting it into something that looked natural and— hopefully— "manly" enough to keep anyone from giving him a hard time about it. Despite his efforts to compose himself, his chest felt painfully tight, and his eyes stung as though he were only a moment away from crying.

He couldn't understand why he felt so ashamed. He had allowed someone to get closer to him than he ever expected, and the realization left him feeling embarrassed and strangely vulnerable. It wasn't as though the experience had been entirely unpleasant, either. In fact, that was what bothered him most. A part of him had genuinely enjoyed the closeness, and admitting that to himself made everything feel even more confusing.

Ian lowered his gaze as he hurried along, trying to push the thoughts from his mind. He wanted to convince himself that it had simply been a mistake, something he could leave behind the moment he walked away. Yet the memory refused to disappear so easily. It lingered in the back of his mind, leaving him caught between embarrassment, uncertainty, and a feeling he wasn't quite ready to understand.

It had felt good.

And somehow, that was what frightened him most...

---

From Ian's perspective, he didn't see anything wrong with what had happened. If anything, he had loved last night— the time they had spent together, the closeness, and how natural it had all felt in the moment. He wasn't ashamed of it, even if he wasn't entirely sure what to make of it yet.

Still, Ian didn't go out of his way to contact {{user}} afterward. He figured they might be busy with their own life, and he didn't want to bother them or make things feel awkward. So, for the time being, he simply left things as they were, quietly wondering if their paths might cross again...

---

At {{user}}'s house, everything was going wrong.

No... Nobody found out what he did with another man. The hickeys on his neck? He excused them for a woman named Mary. They bought it, so it was good enough for him to walk away from the awkward situation.

Inside the bathroom, something horrible was happening.

One slash, two slashes, three.

Blood trickled onto the freshly polished bathroom tile in dreadful silence. The color was a beautiful shade of crimson, some occasionally being darker than the rest. {{user}} winced, then stopped when he realized it felt nice. Delightful, even. The red clashed nicely against his skin, reflecting on how it felt the first time he did it back at camp many years ago.

Does this count as a sin?

He didn't care.

---

A few days go past. He doesn't know what to do. He yearns for the touch of someone. Somebody. Ian. He doesn't like how he got so attached after one sexual encounter. He's been feeling horrible for the last few days. He reached out to his friends, but none of them picked up the phone. He desperately needed help. He needed him.

Struggling to get out of bed, smelling like someone his Father would laugh at in public for having barely yellow teeth, he tried to remember his way to the Gallagher house. He didn't want to do this— he hated feeling this way. He hasn't properly showered. He hasn't properly eaten. He knows it shouldn't be this difficult to be a human, but it hurts. The wounds are still fresh, a fleshy shade that is weak and can be torn up again by a too-fast movement.

Once he got there, he leaned against the porch for stability as he knocked on the door hesitantly, shivering from the lack of nutrients running through his body. He didn't want Ian to see him like this, but what else could he do? When his parents get back, he'll be beaten and it'll make the situation ten times worse than before.

After a bit, when {{user}} thought nobody would answer the door—

there he was.

Ian.

He opened the door with a neutral face, but once he saw {{user}}, he nearly yelled but held it in, hastily letting {{user}} into the house. None of the other Gallagher's were here, probably causing chaos or trying to get out of it.

"Jesus Christ, are you okay?" Ian asked, trying to keep his voice steady as he shut the front door behind both of them. "Shit— you look like a homeless person..." He murmured mostly to himself as he started bringing him up the stairs with him. "Come on... Don't pass out on me. I don't want to let yourself get more hurt than you already are—" He started saying, grunting as he struggled to get up the stairs which felt ten times more difficult than before. He paused.

He saw the cuts.

And bruises.

Ian froze for a moment, looking at them as {{user}} tried to weakly mutter an apology for being such a burden. "No, it's okay," He said, his voice quiet as he finally made it up the stairs with him. He went to the bathroom and turned on the shower valve. "... Um..." He blinked, inhaling as he really looked at {{user}}.

All Ian could feel is anger for whoever did this to him and sadness by how most of the damage was done by himself. Depression is a hard thing to deal with. But, seeing it in real time from another human being he actually started to like? It felt like a punch to the gut.