#poor scott

jock!scottbarringer x shyfem!reader

hi! pt 3 of the scott barringer So High School series is here! this one is a little angsty, and I had so much fun writing it. the last part of this series <3

warnings: angst, mentioned sa (nothing explicit), mentioned drinking/drugs, dv, swearing, panic attack, hurt/comfort (😏)

A week later, you were humming softly to yourself as you curled your hair around the iron in front of the mirror. When you finished the last strands, you switched off the device and set it down on your duchess. Gold bangles slid over your wrists, and you applied lip gloss, giving the glass a playful kiss. Smiling, you laughed quietly, thinking about how Scott would always get adorably flustered when it was you who kissed him first.

You flipped your phone lid up, expecting to see the usual message he left before you came over. But the screen stayed dark.

Refresh.

Nothing.

Shrugging, you grabbed your purse, slipped on your favourite pair of kitten heels, and made your way downstairs and out the door with a quick goodbye to your mother.

The drive to Scott’s house was only 10 minutes, and you blared your new favourite album through the car stereo, singing along like any other Saturday afternoon. As you pulled into Scott’s driveway, you noticed both of the cars that normally sat there were gone, and his basketball hoop was knocked over on its side. You turned off your car, and the cheerful music from earlier cut out instantly, leaving you in eerie silence. None of Scott’s neighbours were riding bikes on the street or outside tending to their gardens. Frowning, you got out of the car, an uneasy sensation prickling at the back of your neck as you stepped up to the screen door—which was creaking softly from the wind, already open.

“Scott?” you called, your voice echoing through the bottom floor of his house. From the living room, you could hear the quiet hum from the TV, an NFL game on. Usually, he’d be sitting there on the couch, watching intently and only getting up to let you in. Swiping your tongue over your lips, you took a step into his house, the floorboards groaning beneath your heels.

“Scott!” you said loudly, climbing the old stairs that led to the upper floor. Pausing at the landing, you bent down slowly and picked up a broken photo frame that lay face down on the carpeted floor. Turning it over, a smile graced your lips as you saw a photo of little Scott, probably about nine, with a football helmet lopsidedly placed over his head. His dad, who you’d only met once before two weeks ago, had his arm slung around Scott’s tiny shoulders and was grinning at the camera. The photo was taken in his backyard, and you looked behind at the window to the living room, spying the reflection of a young woman holding the camera. You figured it was Elaine; Scott’s stepmother you hadn’t heard much about from him.

Setting the frame back on the table, you quickly climbed the rest of the stairs to the hallway and Scott’s room, eager to see him. As you entered his room, you stepped on something with a clink, instinctively moving your foot to see what it was. Looking down, you discovered a small shard of glass underfoot. Kicking it aside, you froze in the doorway when you heard a quiet sob from further back in his room.

“Scott! Are you there?” you yelled, creeping forward. Panic crept into your voice, making it higher pitched than usual and wiping the smile off your face.

All you heard in response was another sob, louder than the last.

You ran fully into Scott’s room, shock and worry washing over your features at the sight before you.

Shards of glass littered the wooden floor all the way up to where the boy was sitting— no, slouching— against the foot of his bed. A half empty bottle of vodka rested loosely in his open palm, and his other hand was clenched into a tight fist, blood smeared across his knuckles. As your wide eyes travelled up to his face, he bit his bottom lip in an unsuccessful effort to stop the flow of fat tears falling down his cheeks.

The initial shock of the discovery faded, and you remembered how to walk again.

Hurrying to his side, you sat down on the floor, putting a hand on his shoulder and instantly removing it when he flinched away. “Scott, what happened? What’s wrong?” you said in a hushed voice, your own hands shaking.

“I’m fine, you can just—” Scott started, his voice low and croaky. “Just go home.”

Your heart dropped. This was so unlike him. You were questioning everything you knew about your boyfriend. Reaching out slowly, you carefully took the bottle of liquor out of his open palm, setting it down somewhere behind you.

Scott sobbed again at the loss of it, pulling his knees up to his chest and putting his hands over his head.

Using your fingers, you brushed the largest shards of glass away from his legs. Your breath hitching slightly when you caught your reflection in the broken pieces- face ghostly pale.

“I’m fine; it doesn’t matter. Please just go,” Scott repeated, forcing the words out of his throat like knives.

You took a deep breath, trying to control your own breathing first. “I’m not going anywhere, Scott.”

He visibly shook at your words. “You should leave, this wasn’t supposed to happen like this, ‘m so sorry.”

You didn’t listen to that. “Here, c’mon. I’m not leaving. Can I touch you?”

Scott nodded, bottom lip trembling at your refusal.

Reaching over, you tugged him gently into your grip, so he was lying sideways with his head tucked against your chest. His breath fanned across your collarbone, hot on your skin. “Shh, it’s okay,” you murmured, your hand moving to card through his blonde curls. “I’ve got you now.”

Scott’s tears dampened your clothes, soaking through the fabric as he sobbed into you, shaking. “She did it again—,” he choked out, arms loose around your waist. “She came in last night and this morning my dad—my dad caught me with the pills.” His words were jumbled together, and they made no sense at all to you.

His heartbeat was racing quicky, and you could feel it through his shirt as he looked up at your face. Those normally sparkling blue eyes were glistening with wet tears, and his bottom lip trembled. “You weren’t meant to— you shouldn’t—” Scott tried. But his throat was closing up on him, like rough hands wrapping around his neck and pulling him away. He pushed himself up off your chest, trying to stagger away, which only resulted in Scott’s foot knocking over the almost empty bottle of vodka and smashing it, adding to the shards of glass on the ground.

He jumped at the noise, backing into the wall with shaking hands over his eyes. Short, uneven breaths spilled from his lungs into the room that was suddenly too small, too close. Everything was too close! He couldn’t breathe, every attempt at sucking in thin air clouded by the buzzing ringing in his ears. “I can’t—” he half-sobbed, chest too tight to finish the sentence .

You stood up and approached him slowly, carefully prying his hands away from his face. “I know, I know, you’re scared,” you murmured quietly, watching his shoulders shake. “It’s a panic attack, Scott. But you’re okay. You’re with me. I’m not gonna leave.”

You put your hands on his shoulders, sliding them down his back when he collapsed into your neck again. “Shh, shh,” you whispered reassuringly, rubbing his back and shoulders gently as he cried for something you didn’t understand.

Guiding him towards his bed, you sat down first, your head against the headboard, and pulled him back to you. Scott immediately clung to you, squeezing your hand and bringing it up to his mouth. His soft lips grazed over your palm in a shaking touch, something meant to soothe him and pull him from the evil hands that held his mind. But another sob racked his body, and soon he was only sucking desperately on your fingers, needing the warmth and grounding it brought him.

Your other hand trailed along his toned back muscles soothingly, trying to calm the ragged breaths that were leaving him. “I’m here, I’m here… I wanna try something, Scott. You reckon you can try f’ me?” you whispered, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his sweaty sandy blonde curls.

Waiting for him to nod shakily in agreement, you started to explain. “I have a little trick I use sometimes, if this ever happens to me. Can you list five things you can see to me?” you started, hand not stilling on his back.

Scott thought for a moment, before pointing a shaky finger over to the shattered mirror that had fallen off his dresser on the other side of his room, his Arctic Monkey’s poster, the old car photos, his varsity jacket that lay strewn on the floor, and the smashed glass bottle.

He looked back at you with wide eyes, cheeks tear streaked and red.

“Can you use your words?” you asked softly, tugging gently for him to release your fingers from his mouth with a soft pop. “Trust me, okay. You’ll feel better.”

As you waited for Scott to finish slowly relisting the items he had pointed at in a quiet, shaky voice, you explained the next task. “Well done, Scott, that was really good, see? Now I want you to tell me four things you can feel.”

He opened his mouth again, focusing on his sense of touch. “Uhm… your clothes against me, your hand on my back… the sheets on my bed. And… my socks.”

You continued steadily through the exercise, nodding reassuringly and pressing soft kisses to the top of his head when his words failed him. Finally, you could hear his breathing starting to return to normal as you reached the last question.

“And one thing you can taste?” you asked. No matter how many times you had used this technique to ground your own anxiety, this was always a difficult one.

“Just the alcohol from before,” Scott whispered, his voice starting to return to the low and husky normal tone he always got when he was tired. “I’m so sorry you saw that.”

He curled further into you, muffling his voice in your neck again.

“Don’t apologise. I’m glad I was here to help you.”

“I know I made no sense. But last night—she came in again, Elaine did. I hate her. I hate, hate, hate how she makes me feel, what she does to me,” he admitted softly.

“What do you mean?” You lifted your head from where it was resting over Scott’s.

“She does things. Inappropriate things, things a stepmother shouldn’t do to her stepson. We did…” he trailed off, breath catching on the exact words, but he figured you’d know.

You always did.

“Oh, baby, I’m so, so sorry,” you whispered, cradling his head closer. “You don’t deserve any of that, you know? That’s messed up, and she’s crazy. None of it is because of you, or anything you’ve done.”

“I know, I know. I hate her,” Scott repeated hoarsely. He hesitated for a slow moment, as if considering opening up, and you wondered if he was going to continue. “But then Dad came in this morning, and I was popping pills, just some stuff to make me forget it easier. He threw them into the trash, and he was yelling, calling me an addict. I yelled back, don’t remember what.” Here he paused again, taking a trembling breath in.

“But it must’ve not been anything good because he pushed me against the wall, yelled something else and took Elaine, and they left. And that fucking skank— she fucking stood there and watched the whole thing, mouth open in shock, playing scared. Of me.”

“And— and when they left, I went downstairs to get the vodka, and when I came back up I was just too fucking mad to think straight. And that’s how my mirror—”

Scott gestured to his shattered mirror and the shards of glass surrounding it.

You had been biting your lip, one hand wiping tear tracks from his cheeks with your thumb and the other rubbing his back gently still. “Scott, baby, I’m so sorry. I should’ve known something was wrong when you didn’t send a message this afternoon, or when you didn’t say good morning. I assumed you slept late.”

“No, it’s not your fault, beautiful. It’s my fucking dad’s wife, and him. I never meant for this to happen, or for you to find out this way,” Scott said, beaten.

“You can come stay at my house now, I’ll worry about you too much here.”

Scott’s heart stuttered again, but this time not from worry. This time, it was from having someone who cared enough to worry.

“You don’t gotta do that,” he whispered, burying his nose in your hair to smell the thick scent of your vanilla shampoo.

“Well, at least tonight,” you insisted, hating how reluctant he was to accept help but also knowing why.

“Alright. Thank you, my love.”

You nodded, and his room was bathed in silence again.

“You know baby,” Scott started with a soft sigh. “That morning on the beach— senior sunrise, whatever it’s called— she had done it to me the night before. I was in the worst fucking mood that morning, obviously. But when I sat down next to you, and you actually spoke to me, no less telling me you kept that little deer I won you at the carnival? I was so happy, for the rest of the day. Couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout it.” His usual smile crept onto his face, playing on his lips gently.

“I’m glad I could do that. I love Lilac,” you responded, giving his cheek a soft kiss and cupping his jaw.

He sighed, moving his head to kiss you on the lips, parting his mouth slightly. “Still don’t know why you stayed,” he murmured, pulling back and stroking your bottom lip with his thumb carefully.

“Because I love you. And I’m going to stay,” you whispered, feeling his slight flush on his cheeks underneath your hand.

“Love you too,” Scott murmured, kissing you again and guiding you slowly onto your back, blue eyes watching yours intently.

We always lose.