HC ;; ROBERT THOMAS WILLIAMS
to this day, the name of teddy’s older brother strikes fear in his heart. he doesn’t talk about it much, refuses to tell people what happened between them and why it seems that every time he goes to visit his family, he comes home with a black eye or a busted lip. robert, seven years his elder, was always a terrible older brother. he didn’t like teddy from the start, and made sure that he was constantly reminded of it. there was no real reason behind the hate, not one that teddy ever figured out, anyway, but he was sure never to forget.
it started when he was young, the constant insults and shoving, all of which were forgiven by his parents as being ‘just boys roughhousing’ when it was really anything but. teddy didn’t understand it when he was younger, thought it was just how things were but things got worse and worse as he got older, as his brother realized it took a lot more for him to stand down.
teddy hated fighting back. he hated having to hurt his brother because, truth was, he idolized him. even after every punch, after every bruise that left teddy feeling like he couldn’t breathe, he still looked up to his brother. that is, until he was thirteen.
he should’ve seen it coming. looking back, it makes total sense that robert would one day hurt him so bad he wouldn’t recover. it was like any other day, robert was picking up teddy from the bus stop to walk him home, shoving him and making him trip the whole way when teddy had already had a crap day and decided to talk back. he knew he shouldn’t have as soon as he saw the look on his brother’s face: robert went quiet the rest of the way and honestly, teddy hasn’t felt fear like that since.
it was quiet until they got home. he stopped hitting teddy, didn’t lay a finger on him until they got home. as soon as they’d walked into their front yard, the twenty year old grabbed teddy and threw him on the ground. paralyzed with fear, all he could do was watch has his brother hit him over and over, accidentally ripped open his shirt when he picked him. robert says he has no memory of what happened next, but it’s a memory that’ll haunt teddy forever.
he’s standing up. he can barely see because robert busted open his eyebrow and it’s bleeding onto his face. everything hurts, but he can’t yell, because he knows robert will hit harder. so he waits. waits for everything to be over. except it doesn’t seem to end, no, it’ll never end. all of a sudden, robert’s throwing him. he goes flying. he lands on their high fence, the one his dad felt the need to put barbed wire on. he’s screaming. he’s screaming and his chest hurt and robert where are you —
teddy was left there until nightfall, when his mother came back from work. left hanging by the delicate skin on his chest, left for DEAD by his older brother. it took a long time, but he healed and learned to stay out of his brother’s way, learned to stop fighting back so nothing like this can never happen again. he learned that when someone hits you, you just wait until they’re done and you walk away.
it’s a memory that he tries to forget, that his family acts like they’ve forgotten but teddy can never forget. no, the scars on his chest that will never heal refuse to let him forget, refuse to let him know peace. he still gets nightmares about it sometimes, still gets occasionally hit by his brother when he visits but he’s learned to ignore it, to act like it’s nothing because, well, no one likes a tattle tale, do they?
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