Loving Spencer was the easiest thing in the world to you… so every story, every single time he recounted to you how terribly he’d been treated his whole life, you were dumbfounded. Heartbroken. How could anybody treat such a beautiful human being with such contempt?

But you, you gave Spencer the absolute world. You showed him what it was like to be loved, to be cared for when he’d had to take care of everybody else and himself his whole life. You showed him safety and comfort.

He confided in you for everything. It was difficult at first — being vulnerable, showing you the worst parts of himself. He’d learned that showing the less-desirable parts of himself lead to heartbreak, to abandonment.

He was terrified of losing the person who loved him more than anything. The person he loved more than anything.

But you only seemed to gravitate closer to his heart with every supposedly bad part of himself he revealed to you. His mother’s schizophrenia. How the people who he thought cared for him had abandoned him. The bullying, the humiliation in school. All of it, and yet there you were, loving him anyways.

You’d been together for two years, living together for almost five months. Tonight you and Spencer are going through a box of your childhood things you’d brought from your recent visit to your parents’ house. Both sitting on the floor of your apartment’s living room, your foot on his lap and his hand occasionally rubbing your knee, or your thigh, as you looked through the pictures.

“What’s this from?” Spencer asks as he digs through a certain small box, pulling out a printed photo and turning it to you. On it is a photo of you in high school, prom dress adorning you as you stand next to your date for that night.

You smile softly and take the photo, looking it over. “It’s from my high school prom. That’s my boyfriend at the time,” you explain, a hint of nostalgia in your voice.

He’s quiet for a few moments, a small smile on his face before he takes the picture back. “You looked beautiful,” he says quietly, thumb brushing over your photo. “I wish I could’ve been your date.”

“Well you were twelve at the time so I’m not sure that would’ve been possible,” you tease with a soft laugh.

And you would’ve teased him further, if it weren’t for the small frown that formed on his face as he kept looking at the photo.

“Hey… I’m just messing with you,” you whisper, cupping his chin to turn his gaze back up to you. “I’m not making fun of you for being young in high school. You know that.”

“No… no I know,” he says, clearing his throat, brows knitting a bit. “I just… we had such different lives. You were… this, and I was the kid that got invited so he could have punch dumped on his head in front of the whole senior class.”

That makes your own face fall. And of course he pick up on it immediately, shaking his hands, a bit of panic making its way to his eyes. “I- I don’t mean to make this about me I’m just saying- saying I don’t know how I ended up with you when I’ve always been so-“

You shake your head, gently taking his hand, and he shuts up immediately. “No, Spence I just… I’m so sorry you didn’t get any normal high school experiences. Prom…”

You’d heard stories other than this one. How he’d been stripped naked and tied to a pole by the football team, how he was blindfolded and touched by a girl at his school only to realize the entire senior class was watching… your high school experience was normal and his was traumatizing.