Healing Gabriel
Copyright © 2019 Cianna Valdez
All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT:
This story, "Healing Gabriel" including all chapters, prologues/epilogues and associated content (i.e fanfics, teasers and content within blogs, social networks and eReaders) is copyrighted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights are reserved by the owner and creator of this work (Cianna Valdez) and any unauthorized copying, broadcasting, manipulation, distribution or selling of this work constitutes as an infringement of copyright. Any infringement of this copyright is punishable by law.
Any links, images, brand names or otherwise copyrighted material is not my own, and is not covered by my copyright.
If you have a query, please contact me via this site.
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Note
Ahh! My second story! Think I can do it? I think I can!
Healing Gabriel is a boyxboy story, meaning the two main characters are both guys and most likely (definitely will) develop a "thing" for each other. It's a lot more serious than my other stories since it has to do with fixing a sexual abuse victim's heart and soul. I got this idea for this book when my mom told me to go throw some empty pop boxes away, and at the time the house across the street was for sale, and...yeah, that's how this story came to be!
So...yeah! Read on about Evan Ricci's and Gabriel Adams's journey, and how their love for each other seems to be slowly unraveling more and more each and every day. But, of course, they have one giant obstacle in their way;
How are they going to show each other their affections when Gabe is petrified of the human touch?
***IMPORTANT NOTE: The story will occasionally shift between two point of views--Gabriel's, which will be told in first person, and Evan's, whose will be told in third-person omniscient. During Evan's POV, there may be an occasional third-person telling of Gabriel's POV. This will only happen during the first couple chapters--in later chapters, each chapter will only either be told through Gabriel's POV or Evan's POV.
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Copyright © 2019 Cianna Valdez
Healing Gabriel: Prologue
Gabriel's POV
"Gabriel, would you mind throwing away these pop boxes in the outside bin?"
Fear. That was the material of the rope that began winding itself around my throat, tightening and constricting itself against my windpipe so that I could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
Only one word registered within my head--the word that was the single cause of all this onslaught of mental strife.
Outside.
I looked up from my summer homework to see my mother looking back at me, her hands held out in front of herself as she offered me three empty pop boxes to throw away. Her pale blue eyes were gentle, and they matched the softness of her voice. She was trying to make herself seem as non-threatening as possible because she knew exactly how baleful the task she just gave me was.
I gave a quick, negative shake of my head, the skin on my neck burning as it rubbed against its twine restraints. Was anyone else starting to get hot and clammy in here? The kitchen window was open, yet despite the cool August breeze making its way throughout the room, I felt beads of sweat forming across my forehead.
"Gabriel, please." Her sad, tired voice matched the sorrowful, exhausted look in her eyes.
"You know that Dr. Andrews thinks it's a good idea for you to do things yourself, to practice going outside a little bit each day," she continued. "She says it'll help you regain some of your autonomy, and ultimately allow you to move on from the past."
I forced myself to exhale the air I had been holding within my lungs--forced myself to remember how to breathe through the anxiety, the panic, the adrenaline searing at my veins, screaming at me to fight or flight. Preferably the latter.
"...Mom. I...I already went outside today. In the morning, I watered the flowers in the backyard for you. Remember?"
She frowned. "You were barely out there for more than 5 minutes--and you only watered two pots. You skipped the whole garden."
"...But still, I did what I was supposed to do. I went outside."
"You're not pushing yourself to make more progress, Gabriel. You're going back to school in less than a month--Dr. Andrews said that it's important for you to feel comfortable enough outside the safety of your home in order to attend high school everyday. You know this."
School, I thought, chewing on the inside of my cheek to distract myself from the harsh anxiety that had begun to twist itself into tiny little knots within my stomach--knots so small, so numerous, they'd be impossible to undo.
I had been attending online school for the past three years. I liked it--I never had to leave my bedroom, much less my own house. That was how I was able to catch up on five years of missed schooling in a little over a year. I know, it sounds impossible--but I did it. I was told by a number of doctors and psychologists that performing well in school was a coping mechanism I had developed to protect myself from trauma. By focusing solely on learning all the required subjects like math, science, history and english, and ignoring all other aspects of life such as socializing, partaking in hobbies, practicing good hygiene and keeping a proper sleep schedule... I was able to catch up to my studies just in time.
I spent all of 8th grade catching up on all those 5 years of missed schooling from 3rd grade to 7th grade. Then, I spent freshman year completing both my 8th and 9th grade requirements. Then I spent sophomore year completing my 10th and 11th grade requirements. In the end, I was able to not only catch up to the same schooling schedule as everyone else my age, but I actually surpassed them--I was supposed to be in my junior year of high school, but instead I was entering my senior year.
The doctors and psychologists thought it was a miracle, the fact that my brain development hadn't been delayed despite all the trauma I had endured. But I accredited my abilities to the fact that I did what I had to do to avoid thinking about my past--and that meant putting everything I had, applying every ounce of energy and every thought in my head, into mundane schoolwork. It meant locking myself away in my bedroom for days, suppressing the horrors of my past with geometric proofs and Shakespearan plays.
In a sense, studying and school came relatively easy to me. I had always completed my assignments and received high marks on all my tests and quizzes. So, you can imagine my surprise when, three months ago, my parents told me that I was going to spend my senior year attending the local public high school.
It would be the first time I attended a real school setting since I was eight years old.
I didn't understand their decision--I had been doing just fine! I did everything I was supposed to--
Well. Almost, everything.
For the past three, almost four, years since what I refer to as the "Incident," my therapist had given me a series of tasks to work on in order to help me overcome my trauma. I would tell her that I would work on it at home, but truthfully, I never really bothered. I never bothered to try and fix myself--I didn't want to think about my past, didn't want to remember all the horrible things I had done and had done to myself. So ever since the Incident, I had suppressed everything from those last five years. Every single dark thought and tainted memory of a happy childhood that had been torn to pieces by the monsters in that horrid room... I forced myself to bottle it up and suppress it all, and pretend it never existed.
But the truth was that the past was much harder to hide from than people thought.
The past was the past, and it couldn't hurt you anymore in the present or future--but I never believed any of that bull which Dr. Andrews chanted almost religiously into my subconsciousness.
It was my parents who pressured me to listen to her--it was my parents who reminded me of her little tasks, tasks that I always felt were impossible to complete, but that they felt were less than simple to carry out.
But that's because they had not experienced the things that I had experienced.
They had not lived through the same horrors that I had--they did not have to go through the same traumas that I had spent five years of my childhood experiencing. They did not have generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, major depressive disorder, nor post traumatic stress disorder.
And when you don't have those disorders--when you don't have to spend every single moment of your life living in a constant state of fear... Well.
Let's just say that telling someone with those disorders and those traumas to do something as "simple" as going outside for longer than five minutes to take out the garbage is much easier said than done.
"I still don't understand why you're making me attend public school. I was doing fine the past three years in online school. I was even able to skip a grade."
"Gabriel, we've discussed this multiple times. Just because you do well in school, doesn't mean you're doing well in life. You haven't left this house in almost four years, aside from your bimonthly therapy sessions. You have no social life, no friends--"
"I don't need friends! I don't want anybody involved in my life! I just want to be left alone!" I snapped, growing increasingly irritated.
This sudden change in mood was not uncommon for me--I was generally very quiet and nervous, and hardly ever had the courage to raise my voice. But when my anxiety got too bad, when I felt like I was under the immediate threat of another person, I would snap. The unrelenting fear within made me constantly on edge, and therefore made me easily agitated and irritable with those closest to me. And that fear, that irritation, made me lash out to protect myself the only way I knew how--with an icy harshness, with the goal of hurting the other person before they had the chance to hurt me.
It was hard to miss the pained look in my mother's eyes. I knew how badly she wanted to run her fingers through my hair and kiss the nervous furrow away from my eyebrows. Her maternal instincts screamed at her to soothe me, to hold me in a hug so tight that all my shattered pieces could be melded back together.
But her rational side (gifted to her by four years worth of doctors, psychiatrists, and dozens of other mental health specialists) won over. She knew that I could hardly handle having someone in the same room as me, let alone someone actually touching me. So, she ignored her maternal instincts, and stuck with the advice Dr. Andrews had ingrained into her head.
Sometimes, I wish she would treat me less like an inpatient, and more like her son. I wished I could be comfortable with her touch--wish I could just feel her arms around me. Wish I could feel safe for a couple seconds, protected by my mother's embrace. Wish my ability to have physical contact with other people had never been warped by the man--no, the monster that had ruined everything for me.
"You know that's not what you want," she said, shaking her head. "You need to be able to move forward with your life, honey--and the only way you can do that is if you start being proactive about getting better and moving on from the past."
My stomach lurched at that word--past. The past. Move on from it.
I felt my fingers twitch in nervous agitation. If only it were that easy--to just move on, to just forget.
I had spent almost the last four years of my life trying to forget the hell I'd been put through. I had done my best to refrain from sleeping at night so the nightmares couldn't get me--so I could avoid ever seeing the monster again, could keep him from attacking me even in my dreams. I had tried so hard to pretend that I was safe now so that I could just go back to living the normal life I had lived before the Incident.
But I didn't know how to live a normal life anymore. I had become deeply, irreversibly traumatized by the Incident--it had turned me from a curious, social, sweet little boy into an empty, terrified, hopeless shell of a person.
"Please, Gabriel. Dr. Andrews has been working with you on this for almost four years--it happened five years ago. They caught the man who hurt you, and he's in jail for a long, long time. It's time you reclaim the things that man tried to steal from you--it's time to start living your life normally and healthily. And that starts with taking out the trash. Nobody's ever died while taking out the garbage--you'll be fine, honey," my mom said.
You'll be fine.
You won't. You won't, you won't, you won't, my brain screamed. If I went outside, anything could happen--He could be out there, waiting for me. I would be alone, and he would strike, and then I would be back under his control all over again.
Some would say that my thought process tends to be illogical. But I never overreacted--I didn't. I wasn't overreacting, I swear. I've been told that I tended to react irrationally at times, but I never overreacted. It was just the memories . . . the feelings . . . the horrors and havoc that came along with being locked in a room with several dozen animalistic young boys, of having my body grabbed and groped at in a variety of sick, twisted manners . . .
All it took was the tiniest of triggers, and all of the memories I have tried to suppress would be precipitated within an instant and come ravaging through the mental walls I had spent the past four years trying to build. The dreamcatchers I had once hung throughout my bedroom in an attempt to ward off the nightmares were no match for the hell I had spent my entire youth trying to escape.
An involuntary shudder tore itself up my backside. "Mom, please," I begged, my voice soft, shakey--stretched thin by the heavy ball of fear sinking itself deep within my throat. Anxiety's noose tightened around my throat, and I could hardly breathe--undoubtedly, the rope's fibres were going to leave a nasty indentation against my neck.
My mother's own agitation began to show--she had spent days, weeks, months, years trying to remain patient with me. And after so many years of watching her son slowly disintegrate into an empty shell, she had become desperate to save me. That desperation showed sometimes, when she'd force me to do things my psychologist asked of me. Someone would call it tough love, but I called it her desperate, last attempt to have control over me before she lost me completely--before I completely faded away into the empty shell of a person we both feared I would become.
I wasn't an easy person to deal with, let alone fix.
"Gabriel, you're sixteen, nearly seventeen years old," she beseeched. "You need to face your fears! I'm tired of seeing you like this! You need to get on with life. I know that your past has scarred you, but Dr. Andrews says you need to confront it! And both me and your father agree! You need to deal with it, you need to--"
"Do you and Dr. Andrews think it's easy for me to live like this?!" I nearly shrieked, losing my sullen exterior and exchanging it for the heavy price of a violent outburst--the only thing that would allow me to break out of the unbearably tight noose that had been constricting my airways to the point of feeling physically breathless. "Do you think I can just 'forget' what happened to me? Oh, yeah! I was kidnapped and forced into one of the world's most infamous human-trafficking rings--I was subjected to an array of abuse, for five years of my life, and suffered to the point that I had forgotten so much of my former life before the Incident that I couldn't even remember my own birth name!
"But who gives a damn about all that, who cares if I have to live with that kind of mental torture every single waking moment of my life! Let me just act like nothing happened, let me just act like I don't want to blow my brains out or take an entire month's worth of prescription pills in a single minute, because that's clearly how you and Dr. Andrews want me to behave! As if nothing's freaking wrong!
"God! Finally, Mom--after four long years, you and that stupid, idiot therapist you force me to keep seeing have finally healed me! Thanks to your combined forces and the magical mind-altering abilities of Xanax--you've all done it, you all finally succeeded in fixing me!
"Hold on, before I throw those boxes away, let me go call a few friends to celebrate with--oh, wait a minute, that's right. I have no friends because I can't stand to leave my house long enough to make any! And even if I could--tell me, Mom. Who in their right mind would voluntarily agree to hangout with an anxiety-ridden, depressed, unsocial, loser, raped, gay, freak?"
My mother was silent, staring at me with those soft blue eyes that had become terribly saddened after years of dealing with me. She parted her lips to speak, but failed to emit any sounds. She closed her mouth--her lower lip trembled, and several tears welled within the corners of her eyes.
I was so sick of that look--the pity in her eyes, the way she stared at me as if I were a small, helpless child that needed to be saved.
But I couldn't be saved. I couldn't be fixed. Some people were just meant to spend the rest of their lives broken, and I just so happened to be one of them.
But I didn't want to be one of those people. I didn't want to be like this. I didn't want to make my mother cry at night, but I did. Because I was a horrible person, a cyclone of built-up trauma and anxiety, and if people got to close to me, they would be pulled into the roaring winds of my pain--and in the end, they would be left broken and ruined, too.
A wave of shame and regret flooded through me, so powerful that it chased all the viciousness out of my clouded eyes so that all I could see was the pain I had caused my mother.
My cowardice was no secret; I was unable to look at her, the woman whose love for me never faltered despite the sadness and stress I constantly caused her.
I hadn't meant to yell those things at her--hadn't meant to make her feel so bad, make her so upset to the point of tears.
Filled with lasting guilt and fading anger, I avoided my mother's tearful blue eyes as I retrieved the boxes from her hands. I stalked out of the kitchen, head hung low, carrying the three empty pop boxes tightly in my arms.
Free of the noose of fear, I was suddenly filled with a different type of adrenaline--one that didn't stem from the anxiety in my head and stomach.
Maybe she's right, I thought. Maybe I could do this. It was simple; the garbage cans were located by the curb, which was just across from the kitchen window--only a couple feet away from my front porch. My mother would keep an eye out for me, and nothing bad happens when a loving mother watches over her beloved baby, right? All I had to do was throw a couple boxes away for her, and she would be happy and proud of me again. She'd tell Dr. Andrews that I was progressing, that I was getting better, that I was becoming normal again--so what was the big deal?
The big deal was the fact that I had almost fainted when I saw the front door. My ten-second adrenaline rush drained completely and left me weak; I rested my forehead against the solid white door, breathing heavily.
I couldn't do this. I couldn't go outside. The only time I left the house was when I had to attend a therapy session. Other than that, I had no social life, no real purpose for existing, and I spent most, if not all, of my days in my bedroom trying to distract myself from the empty shell of person I had become.
God. How pathetic was I? I couldn't even go outside long enough to water the plants in my backyard. I couldn't even throw away some trash without developing a full-blown panic attack. How the hell was I supposed to attend a public school full of hundreds of people and noises?
I had no choice. I just needed to do this--to show my mother I wasn't completely useless, to give her some hope that I wasn't a total lost cause. She deserved that much, to know that the precious baby boy she had birthed sixteen years ago hadn't grown up to be a weak, nugatory person.
I took a deep, steadying breath.
I needed to do this. I needed to stop being so pathetic and remember how to be a normal, functioning human being. And in order to do that, I needed to at least learn how to walk outside of my house without losing my goddamn mind.
I took another deep breath in, then exhaled slowly, counting the seconds it took for me to completely expel the air in my lungs.
The sooner I threw the boxes away, the sooner I'd get this whole ordeal over with.
I adjusted the boxes in my arms so that they wouldn't fall and make this ordeal even more anxiety-inducing than it had to be. I slowly pulled the front door open and tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
As soon as I placed my trembling foot over the threshold and onto the porch, a chilled breeze blew across my face and shielded my gaze with my hair. I used the advantage of not being able to see the horrors of the surrounding outside world to scurry off the porch, down the sidewalk and towards the line of garbage cans on the side of the street.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, my God, no, no, no, this can't be happening, please, God, don't let this be happening, I thought, panic quickly setting in. In order to open the garbage can's lid, I had to first put down the pop boxes. But if I did that, the wind would surely blow them into the street. And then I'd have to run after them, and then a car--no, a big, black monster truck--would crash into me, and knowing my luck I wouldn't die right away, and then I'd be stuck outside even longer while I waited for the ambulance to come.
What was I going to do? How was I going to handle this situation? Come on, Gabriel--think, dammit, just calm down and think--!
"Hey, man, d'you need some help--?"
I yelped and immediately let go of all the pop boxes, my legs giving out as I crashed into the grass beneath my numbed feet. I covered the back of my neck with my hands as I curled up into a protective huddle, my forehead pressed against my knees so I wouldn't have to see the offender. "Go away, go away, go away, go away," I mumbled, desperately trying to force my useless feet to scoot myself backwards, but the person was following me. I could hear their footsteps against the pavement.
"Oh--um, are you alright? Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you--I thought you saw me, with the moving truck and everything."
His voice carried a certain...gentleness. It's a lie, my brain hissed. A lie meant to reel me in, make me trust him--all so that in the end, he could have his way with me and hurt me. Because that was all people did; they lied to you, and they hurt you.
"Go away!" I demanded, although my voice sounded pretty weak and pathetic coming from within my protective huddle. I hated strangers, absolutely hated them. Didn't this guy understand that? Wasn't it obvious? How stupid could someone possibly be?
Silence passed between the stranger and me. After a moment, I thought he'd left, so I lifted my head, peering over my knees to peak at the environment surrounding me in order to confirm his absence.
But I wasn't alone. There was a tall figure opening the blue garbage can's lid--he was wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off, and I could see the muscles in his arms flex with the movement of him throwing away the boxes I had dropped.
That was all I had to see in order to shut my eyes tightly again, listening to the sound of cardboard falling into the trash can's hollow abyss. I heard the plastic lid shut with a soft bang, and I felt the return of the stranger's presence right in front of me.
"Hey, it's okay if you're crying. I won't tell anyone. Hell, I don't even know anyone. I just moved here," the stranger comforted, and he sounded so sincere--the urge, no, desire, to look at him made my stomach twist anxiously, unsurely. I suddenly felt sick.
Great, yeah, that was all I needed: To throw up all over the new neighbor, and embarrass my parents and make them an even bigger laughing stock to the community than I had already made them out to be.
"Please, just leave me alone," I croaked, trying to stop the tears leaking from my eyes. God, why was I crying?! I was always freaking crying--I was such a child, I was so useless!
I couldn't fight against him, I already knew that. He was much taller than I was, and from what I had just barely been able to see when I had glanced at him, he was well-built with lean muscles that were definitely capable of strength.
He had the upper-hand on me--he could easily overpower me, if he wanted to. I was shorter and scrawnier than the average teenage male. I stood no chance against him--there was no way I could defend myself against someone like him.
I needed to protect myself from him--someone who clearly wanted to hurt me. I wasn't overreacting; I wasn't being irrational. I knew he wanted to hurt me. Everyone wanted to hurt me--every single person on this Earth had it out for me. I knew that they did--they had all proved that to me, had given me more than enough evidence to prove that the people in this world wanted nothing more than to break me down and destroy me.
...But his voice. It had sounded...warm. Unmocking, unthreatening--inviting. And his choice of words... They were almost...comforting. Like he honestly had no other intention aside from wanting to help a person who was clearly helpless by themselves...
And then, I felt it. A physical pressure against my shoulder. I felt the pressure being applied by a pair of foreign fingertips just barely pressing against my shoulder--
And then, I knew for certain that this stranger was not the least bit comforting. His gentle, hesitant touch was a facade meant to draw me in--meant to lower my guard, thus giving him the opportunity to properly strike against me.
And that did it--the second's worth of physical contact between us was all it took for the fear and anxiety that I had been suppressing to explode.
I shoved myself away from him, the palms of my hands scraping against the curb as I nearly backed up into the street, I was that desperate to get away from him. "D-don't touch me! Go away! Go away, go away, go away, go away! Leave me alone!"
"Holy shit, Evan! What'd you do?" another voice called from across the street. Whoever it was, sounded like he was laughing.
Oh, no. Not another stranger--please, God, make them stay away from me, I thought. I hoped to God that a car would magically appear and run me over and just end this stupid ordeal.
"I don't know!" the first stranger--Evan--replied, sounding panicked. "I was just trying to help him and then he started freaking out--"
"Gabriel!" my mother's voice called from behind me. Jesus, finally! My mother had finally come to save me. I abruptly left my spot on the ground and ran behind her, trying to stop my tears. He'd touched me . . . Oh, no no no, He'd touched me . . .
"Is he alright? Did I hurt him, or something? I was just trying to help him throw some stuff away because his hands were full--I had no idea I'd cause...this," the guy said, the rest of his sentence trailing off. I assumed it was the first stranger--Evan--based on the soft tone of his voice.
"He's fine, he's fine. He just gets, um, spooked easily," my mother assured, attempting to laugh it off. Yeah, "spooked."
"Evander! Jesus, boy! We just got here--what do you think you're doing, already causing the neighbors trouble?" Another voice--it was a woman's. It reminded me of the voice that belonged to the type of mother on a television sitcom that would drag their naughty children by the tops of their ears, out of a troublesome situation that they had caused.
"Mom, I didn't do anything! I was trying to help him!"
"He's telling the truth," my mother said, and I felt my jaw drop in betrayal. I couldn't believe she just defended someone who obviously had it out for me.
"Oh, well...alright, then. I'm sorry for the trouble. Evan's really a very good boy--he's always been the helpful type, but sometimes he can be a little...too friendly. It gets him into trouble. He's just like his father," the woman, the stranger's mother, explained.
"No, no. It's fine. Gabriel just...isn't much of a people-person. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for," my mother reassured. I could tell by the little chirp she inserted into her voice that she was putting on a smile.
"Poor kiddo," the other woman said, sounding sympathetic.
"Oh, he'll be alright," my mother brushed off. I frowned at how nonchalant she was being--how she was treating this ordeal like it was nothing but another mess for her to clean up.
"I'm Emily Adams--and this is my son, Gabriel. You must be the new neighbors. The house you moved into is beautiful!"
"Oh, yes--it's gorgeous, perfect for me and my boys. I'm Katia Ricci, and these are my sons, Evan and Dylan," the woman explained.
And that was where the adults' conversation took off for the next ten minutes.
I heard one of the boys let out a soft snort, and I listened to their footsteps as they retreated back across the street. Had they both left...?
I peeked out from behind my mother, taking extra precaution not to touch her. The stranger's eyes briefly met with my own, but I ducked back behind my mother too quickly to notice his eye color.
It wasn't quick enough, though, before I saw him, the stranger who had sounded so sincere and looked so genuinely concerned, flash a tiny, awkward, apologetic smile that looked to be specifically geared towards me.
I was surprised by how non-threatening the smile made him look. It almost made me want to believe that he really was sorry--that he truly hadn't meant to cause me any harm.
Keyword, there: Almost.