#i vent through jake but ii'm fairly certain that if my circumstances were different i'd be his brother

[red-writing-on-asylum-walls]

Survival

Emily wants Pierly Family fics, Sage will deliver Pierly Family fics. And then no one was happy ever.

Content warnings: physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional manipulation, suicidal ideation, self harm, implied self harm, homicidal tendencies, Aaron and Donna Pierly, Sage venting vicariously through Jake as per usual

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Jake doesn’t realize their mother has left the house until Aaron has a fistful of his shirt and has dragged Jake off the bed, letting him slam into the hardwood floor and bruising his hip.

Jake digs his fingernails into Aaron’s arm as his brother hauls him out of the room. He scratches and kicks and beats his fists, twisting and pulling and trying to get away. But Aaron is stronger than him, has always been stronger than him, and he throws Jake into bathtub so hard Jake sees stars.

Then he pins Jake down in the tub, sits on his chest and crushes his arms to his sides, and turns the water on. And Jake can’t scream because there’s water pounding into his face, soaking into his hair and pouring into his nose, his mouth, and he’s going to drown.

Aaron turns the water off and sneers as his brother sputters and coughs and tries to breathe.

Then he turns it back on again.

*****

The next time their mother is on a rampage, Jake hides.

He knows he’ll get shit for it later, but he hides because he just can’t deal with her stinging words today. He thinks about her barbed comments and her scolding tone and the disgust on her face and he feels sick. So he hides.

Unfortunately, it’s Aaron who finds him.

It’s Aaron who finds him tucked into the hall closet, shrinking back among the vacuum and the folded towels when light spills in from the open door. It’s Aaron who snatches up his ankle and drags him out into the open despite Jake’s gasping pleas and stuttering apologies. It’s Aaron who heaves him down the hall even as he kicks out and digs his fingers into the carpet, pawing for purchase, scrambling to get away.

It’s Aaron who finds him but it’s his mother who watches as Jake is hauled, screaming, into the spare bedroom. Her expression is blank but Jake can see a fire in her eyes that says it’s what he deserves.

*****

Once—and only once—Jake bites Aaron.

He’s so angry and so scared and so fed up with his brother’s bullshit that he sees red. Then he lunges forward and sinks his teeth into Aaron’s arm, biting as hard as he can into the flesh, biting down, down, down until he thinks he could reach bone.

Aaron’s fist colliding with his skull knocks him silly but he still has enough sense to get up and stumble away before Aaron can recover.

There will be hell to pay for it later but, Jake thinks as he licks drool and a tiny smear of blood from his lips, it was definitely worth it.

******

Hell comes knocking the next day.

Aaron jumps him outside the bathroom and slams his head into the wall.

When Jake manages to make the world come into focus again, Aaron’s tied him up with electrical tape and an extension cord to one of the kitchen chairs. Jake panics, bucking against the restraints, trying to kick his way out only to find his ankles taped to the chair legs and now his heart is going to tear itself out of his chest and he can’t breathe and—

Aaron has a knife.

Aaron has a knife and he points it Jake and in his other hand he’s got a handful of dirt and Jake doesn’t quite understand when Aaron tells him to open his mouth.

“You wanna bite, fuckass,” Aaron growls and the tip of the blade is sharp, so sharp, so bad, so cold, against Jake’s neck, “Then you can eat fucking dirt. Or I’ll cut out your fucking voice box. Let’s see you sing your dumb songs then.”

Jake opens his mouth.

Aaron crams the dirt in, holds his hand against Jake’s mouth and snarls, “Swallow it.”

It’s a struggle, but he does. He’s shuddering and crying and he wants to puke but he does it. Aaron makes him stick his tongue out to check.

“A-Aaron, please…I’m s-sorry, please just l-let me go.” He chokes, his breath gasping and broken and god but his heart is going to explode, he’s sure of it.

“But Jackie boy,” Aaron sneers, “You haven’t finished your lunch yet. That was only the appetizer.”

He shows Jake the collection of bugs and spices and the entire stick of butter and the clearly moldy cheese and Jake thinks maybe this is the day he dies.

******

There is one day where Jake is alone in the house.

He considers the second floor window for a moment, looking at the drop below, and decides against it.

Once, he looks at the phone, rolls Dan’s phone number over in his mind. Then he walks away to find the extension cord his brother is oh so fond of strangling him with. But it’s too much effort to try and hang it from somewhere high enough.

He casts a single glance at the cleaning chemicals. Spends an hour or so staring at the pill bottles in the medicine cabinet.

Eventually, his mother and brother come home to find him quietly washing a steak knife in the kitchen.

He only gets grounded for two days because he used one of the good knives.

His mother tells him not to be so selfish next time.

******

“Is this…are these the reason you won’t go swimming with us?”

Jake won’t look Dan in the eye as his friend carefully bandages up the thin cuts on the inside of his thigh. The antiseptic stings something fierce but he doesn’t flinch.

“It’s not a big deal.” Jake murmurs.

“Yes, it is! Jake, this isn’t okay! You need to—“

A knock on the front door makes them freeze. Jake stiffens like someone’s put a gun to his head and quickly stands up, yanking his jeans back on despite the stain spreading down on leg. Another insistent knock. Dan glances at him and then hurries over to open the door.

“Um, hi, Miss. Pierly. Jake, it…uh, it’s your mom.”

Jake makes a tired sound of acknowledgement and shuffles out of the bathroom. He looks drawn and tired. Donna Pierly taps her foot impatiently on the doorstep, arms crossed, a scowl on her face.

“Jacob. Now.”

Dan can only watch helplessly as they leave.

******

The strangling thing is getting a bit old, really.

The only reason he feels any panic or adrenaline now is because his body tells him to. His instincts to stay alive kick in and he fights back. And sometimes he manages to kick Aaron away and run off. He might be smaller than his brother but Jake is faster and he can hide in places Aaron can’t easily get to.

But honestly, the strangling is so boring now. Typical.

At least he’s gotten more creative about how he does it though.

******

Jake decides he never wants to be a parent the day Aaron pushes him down the stairs.

He pushes Jake hard enough to make Jake sort of spin as he falls, making him land hard on his arm. The resounding crack is only drowned out by Jake’s scream of pain. Because it doesn’t matter how much you’ve endured, a bone bending the wrong way and tearing through the flesh of your arm is always going to make you scream.

Their mother comes out to see what all the noise is about, takes one look at her eldest son writhing in agony on the floor and tuts unsympathetically. She tells him to stop his belly aching and that she’ll take him to the hospital as soon as her stories are done.

Aaron’s still laughing from the top of the stairs when Jake limps out of the house to meet Dan’s parents at the end of the drive.

Making a phone call while you’re bleeding out through your shattered arm isn’t the hardest thing he’s done, but Jake’s counting it as one of the most annoying.

******

Blood’s really hard to get out of clothes and Donna Pierly doesn’t like shopping for her children.

Jake learns a few things from the internet and tries to make his shirts last through a whole semester.

******

“Maybe he wouldn’t pick on you if you would just toughen up.”

******

Aaron puts a knife in Jake’s mouth once.

Presses the flat of the blade against Jake’s tongue, the cold steel tasting sour and raising bile in his throat. Jake swears his can feel the point of the knife scraping the back of his mouth and he fights the urge to gag, terrified of impaling himself through the skull on the thing.

He stares, wide eyed and terrified at Aaron, who just grins. Jake’s eyes are hot and he blinks and there are tears and he knows that’s just going to encourage his brother but he can’t stop himself. Aaron’s fingers pinch into his chin, holding his mouth open. Jake can feel saliva pooling under tongue but he doesn’t dare try to swallow.

It feels like an eternity passes by before Aaron takes the knife away.

He laughs when Jake runs over to the sink to throw up.

******

They’d locked him out of the house.

Jake had snuck out to Dan’s and he thought maybe Aaron had seen him do it. But that wasn’t a big deal, the Pierly boys snuck out all the time and often it would only get them a nasty scolding and sometimes a missed dinner.

But Jake comes back one crisp, fall evening to find the doors and windows locked and no other way in. Even the spare keys are missing from their usual hiding spots. The lights are still on and Jake can peer in and see his mother and brother eating dinner at the table, pleased as can be.

But no matter how much he shouts or knocks or cries, they simply ignore him.

It’s getting darker, colder, and the buses have stopped running this late.

Jake wraps his arms around himself and hiccups, fighting off the tears as he crouches miserably in the door way. He can’t go back to Dan’s, not like this, that would only make things worse.

So he sits, shivering on he porch until it’s well after dark.

It’s only after he’s lost feeling in most of his exposed skin that his mother finally unlocks the door.

******

Dan has a big family.

When Milo asks, Jake says he doesn’t have any.

******

“You’re just like your father! Abandoning your family! I raised you!”

Yes, he wants to say, but I survived you.