I've seen a lot of Chase abuse stories before, and a lot of them have Mr. Davenport as an abuser. -_- LR fanfiction pet peeve. At least tell me it's going to be OOC before I read. (Maybe when they were kids he did things that could be seen as a bit, ahem, unethical, but he's never nor will he ever be abusive.)
So anyway. This is a scenario I think is a little more likely. Plus it draws attention to a problem many people don't take seriously enough.
Lots of warnings for this story. Abuse of multiple varieties, violence, and slight references to sexual relationships, adultery, and drinking. Not to mention a very unhealthy thought process through the whole thing, but hopefully that will be remedied by the end.
I don't own Lab Rats. I do own this story. Enjoy.
* * * I'd Take a Thousand Bullets for You, My Love * * *
They got married on June 21, 2023. A beautiful ceremony, with him in a tux and her in her white dress, as tradition required. He fussed for months beforehand, striving for perfection, but when she came down the isle, all worry flew out of his mind. She looked lovely.
They had their first date January 3, 2019. Roasting s'mores on the roof of his father's house and watching the Quadrantids Meteor Shower after midnight. Together, just the two of them, yammering on about celestial events. At 1:19 a.m. when she delved into her thoughts on the theories that the Apollo missions had been faked, he knew he had found his soulmate.
Four years of dating, but everyone around them knew it was meant to be. They did everything together, and they loved each other. True love, pure love, perfect love. Almost too perfect, but he never thought about that.
His family teased him for it. He had finally found a girl, and a girl who would be willing to spend the rest of her life with him. Yes, his family teased, but they meant well. They were happy for him, and he knew it.
Sure, she wasn't perfect. She had her moments. She had a temper that flared up every so often, but who didn't? A quick hug from him usually calmed her down. No problem. He had a temper himself, one that manifested into a dangerous monster who wanted to rip organs out of bodies. He couldn't fault her for who she was.
So they got married on that warm June afternoon, staring at each other, kissing each other, loving each other. Perfect love bound in eternity.
Yes, she could be what some called manipulative. She played on her husband's weaknesses to get what she wanted. He knew it (hello, super-genius!), but he let it go on because he found it adorable. Besides, he never regretted her manipulations in the end.
Almost never, that is.
The first time it really struck him as odd was when she threatened to leave him if he didn't take her to Hawaii for their first anniversary. He raised an eyebrow. She laughed. He laughed. They went to Hawaii. Together.
Because that's what people who are in love do. She could toy with him. He had let his older brother toy with him his whole life (some people needed that little satisfaction in their lives), so why couldn't he let his wife? They loved each other. They were fine. Everything was fine.
He wanted to go home for Christmas. She wanted time alone with him. Such workaholics, both of them, she said. Time together, she said. Aruba? she said. He had the money.
He wanted to go home. His family. They'd grown up as a team, and now he worked so much he didn't get to see them often. Their missions were solo now. They had drifted apart, and he wanted to get back together.
No, she said.
That decided it.
Not quite so simply; it took much conniving and many tears on her part, but he wound up on an island in the warm sun for Christmas. He could video-chat family anyway. They seemed disappointed, but was he supposed to let his wife down? Second Christmas together, after far too much time apart, and they both spent time analyzing the soil and sand they collected. A perfect vacation.
Without his family, but wasn't she his family now?
She got pregnant with a baby boy. Their baby boy. They related the news joyfully to family and friends, and they readied a room for a new human life.
The super-genius knew pregnancy would be hard. Just not this hard.
She got mad more often. She swore. Often. By the third trimester, daily. She swore at him. She said things that left him speechless—and he was never speechless. He didn't know how to take it, and when he tried to comfort her, it only got worse.
Hormones, he said. She's carrying another human being inside her, he said. Give it time, everyone said. Women get crazy. He would give it time.
Stillborn.
She didn't get angry for a long time after that. She only got sad. She cried most nights.
People said that having a newborn in the house meant no sleep. He also discovered that having an utterly depressed wife in the house meant no sleep. He felt sad himself—not just sad, but miserable. They had even picked out a name, and now every time he met an Issac on the street, he wanted to go home and cry.
But her. Maybe because the dead child had come out of her own body, but it hit her harder. Or at least, he had to focus more energy onto her, leaving less time for himself. Less time for work. Less time for anything but her, and he didn't mind.
Didn't she deserve it? She couldn't even move most days she was so depressed.
He wanted to join her, but he had to take care of her first. So he did. He took care of her, trying to ignore himself. He knew two hours of sleep at night—if he even got that—would do bad things to his body, but he didn't see any other way. Skipping meals also had adverse health benefits, but who could bring themselves to eat? He shook off the waves of nausea and frequent chest pains. She needed him, and he would be there, no matter the cost.
Things got better. They did. She went back to work, took many deep breaths, and reinstated herself in society. It took time, but she healed.
Did he?
Who cared? She needed healing. He cared about her, and he wanted to love her. He wanted to take care of her. So he did. When she felt better, she constantly showered him with thanks—often in the form of kisses, or much further—for loving her so much and staying with her through trying times.
Things got better. Yes, he had lost his normal sleep schedule, and yes, he had bungled more than one of his solo missions. No one had gotten hurt—except himself, but who cared? He was the bionic hero. He saved others. He didn't need saving.
So he saved her.
He lost his job. He tried to work for his father, but they had no openings. None. He got desperate. So did she.
She stopped talking to him as often. He hit a low point in his life. His minimal hours of sleep dropped to minimum. Food became an afterthought.
Yes, he still had his missions, but those didn't pay. He did those for the good of humanity.
And unfortunately, many of the top programming companies thought that was all he was good for. Who wanted to hire a bionic freak, anyway? A lab offered to use him as a test subject, but he turned it down. He didn't want to be a lab rat anymore than he had been in his life. Only his father got to "study" him.
The hard thing was how she pulled back. With a sudden downgrade in their living style, she withdrew. Out of fear? He didn't know. So he had to work to bring her back. She said she wanted to believe in him. But could she? Could she?
"We've been together so long now. Trust me. I love you. Don't leave now. I'll find something. Stay with me. Be with me."
She kissed him. She stayed. He still felt sick.
He found a job. Not prestigious, but enough. Enough to make her stay.
She got pregnant. She miscarried two months later. Another attempt to have a child would kill her, they learned. She didn't get quite as depressed as before—she had suspected it for a while now—but he still had to take care of her at times inconvenient for him. Who cared? He loved her.
She hit him.
He would've thought nothing of it; he was a boy who had horsed around with his siblings often enough. But the next day he had a bruise. His tricep hurt so much he couldn't lift anything heavy. She had strength.
He told his coworkers it had been a door. Not his wife. His wife was a slender thing, and he was a bionic hero; they wouldn't believe him anyway.
She hit him because he wanted to go home. His biological father—not the one who raised him; the one he referred to as his uncle for the sake of simplicity—had been involved in an accident.
Hospital. ICU. Trauma. Slipping. Get. Home. Now.
He wanted to go, but she hadn't recovered. Only a month after her miscarriage, and she didn't want to be alone. She couldn't get the time off work. She couldn't be with him.
He needed to go. He couldn't stay. She lashed out. She needed him. He felt torn.
Finally, he went. She scratched his cheek before he went out the door, drawing blood. Then she fell into his arms, flat-out weeping. She kissed him over and over, apologizing, making him promise to call every night.
His family asked about the scratches. Stray cat. Plausible enough. They believed him. They had bigger things to worry about.
His uncle recovered fairly well and went back to his old crotchety self. Crisis averted. He went home to another loved one who needed his tending.
She threw a pot at him when he entered the bedroom. Wiping the dirt out of his eyes. Defending against accusations. Holding her while she cried.
She apologized for her irrationality. He held her tighter and whispered in her ear. He shouldn't have left. She needed him. She was more rational than him, surely. He had never understood love very well, but he knew love didn't mean abandoning someone in their time of need. His uncle had been fine, anyway. Why had he gone?
A mission alert came up for his area. He ignored it. His mission was her. Always her.
She cried more. She petted his cheek. She apologized again. Then she fell asleep.
He hit her.
Self-defense, he said, but he couldn't convince himself it was true.
He couldn't ignore his missions all the time. He loved her, she was a priority, and he tried to tell her that every chance he got.
But he still had a job. He needed to provide. He needed to save. His software and hardware both required it of him.
He came from a mission, breathing heavily, to find her with a broken mirror. She picked up the glass and threw it at him, supremely cutting her own hands in the process. He ducked and found a shield in the door, but not before a good chunk of glass cut his eyebrow.
With blood dripping into his eye, he made his way over to her. She screamed at him, still hurling glass. Obscenities. Accusations. He knew they were true.
He tried to reason, but she said What good would reason do if he never listened to her? He never listened. He always left.
A shard cut into his knee. He loved her so much, and he wanted to protect her, but for the first time in a long time he thought of himself first. He regretted it.
She ran out of the house with a swollen eye. She had been chucking glass at him, he told himself. He didn't want to get hurt anymore, he told himself. But why had he hurt her so badly? Why had he reacted so violently?
She would go to the police now. She would show them her eye. She would cry. They would come to arrest him, the bionic freak. He deserved to be in jail anyway. He had been sentenced from day one.
So he paced, wanting nothing but to have her back in his arms, to shower her head and face with kisses, to apologize. He had hurt her, and he didn't want to hurt her. He loved her.
She came back in with wet hair. She had walked through the rain.
He ran up and engulfed her in his arms. Apologizing, profusely apologizing, and asking what he could do to make up for it.
He got her ice as she explained she hadn't gone to the police. She wanted to, but she didn't. She wanted to give him a second chance. His heart warmed. That was the kind of person she was, always merciful.
They kissed. They loved each other. She apologized. He laughed. A cut on the eyebrow—and one on the knee—was nothing. She had been rightly angry at him for leaving her. He saw that now. He didn't ever want to leave her again.
"Now promise me you won't leave."
She looked up at with him those soulful brown eyes he loved so much. She said she couldn't make that promise, and his heart dropped to his shoes.
But.
But, if he treated her right, she would stay.
If he didn't hurt her, she would stay.
If he loved her, she would stay.
He loved her to the ends of the earth and beyond. He would never hurt her again. He wouldn't leave her. He would do anything for her.
Anything.
She didn't leave, but she didn't stay. She started to go out at night. She would sneak out and leave him behind to work—he never had caught up on sleep.
At first he saw it as something innocuous, nothing to worry about. She always said she wanted time with her friends, and he could respect that. In some ways it freed him, as he now had more time for missions and the ever-present work that kept food on the table.
But soon he realized that things were not as well-off as they seemed.
Other people drove his wife home—sometimes friends, and sometimes people he didn't know. She'd stumble in, smile, and collapse into bed. If she tried to talk, she slurred her words. She'd giggle before falling asleep. This all happened very late at night or very early in the morning.
Sometimes the people that drove her home were men.
She grew distant, emotionally and physically. He wondered what he had done wrong. Where had he failed her? He went to every extreme to win her back, but nothing seemed to work. He'd please her and, for one night, she'd stay with him and once again they would be whole. Then the cycle repeated. She grew distant, and he broke into his monetary bank account and his emotional bank account to draw her back in.
He began to feel as he had a few years ago, when their firstborn child died before actually being born. But he couldn't put himself first now. She was his world, and he had given up so much—so much of himself—to make her happy. He wouldn't quit now. He couldn't. He loved her.
He confronted her about her late-night escapades.
He had long had a suspicion that those men did more than just volunteer as her designated driver. At first he had waved it off as jealousy, but her texting got more and more secretive and he wanted to know the truth.
Yes, he put her and her happiness first. Always. That's why he wanted to know. He wanted to know what he was doing wrong. He wanted to know how to make it better.
She was making dinner. She was being coy. She wouldn't really answer him.
He wanted to know why. He wanted to know how to be better.
She got angry. She glared at him. Didn't he care about her happiness? she asked.
Always, always, above everything.
Then let her be. She needed to have fun.
Was he not fun enough?
Girls will be girls.
But she was his girl.
Her face softened and she turned to look at him. Always, always, above everything.
He smiled and came to wrap his arms around her. He'd never leave. But maybe, he said, but maybe they needed to talk more. Maybe they should take a deeper look into her nighttime life. Maybe they needed to mend some things that had been broken.
Her face darkened, like the storm above the sailors. Unlike the sailors, he found himself in hot water instead of cold.
Extremely hot water.
Boiling hot water, to be exact.
She had tugged his wrist from her waist and plunged it into the pot in front of her. She held it down while he screamed, unable to react, only to be aware of the searing pain.
Tears streamed down her face. Don't do this, she whispered between his yells. He shouldn't change her. He should love her. She'd always loved him. Why couldn't he love her? Why?
And as his skin melted, for the first time in four years, he, the super-genius, finally realized the obvious.
"Chase."
Chase Davenport sat with his back erect, his heart still racing. Bandages coddled his right hand, as they would for several more weeks. His face looked as white and as blanched as the walls around him.
Beside him, Adam ran his hands through his thick, dark hair. He had just heard the whole story, a story that should remain in books, not in the life of his younger brother. "Chase," he said again, unable to say anything else.
"Mandy's at home right now," Chase said, his voice shaking. "Sh-She didn't want to come here. Sh-She said she couldn't bear to see me like this . . . even if she's the one . . ." He couldn't finish his sentence. He still hadn't recovered from the realization four—eight?—years in the making. He still couldn't believe it. He didn't want to. He loved her. He had always loved her.
Adam's eyes flew to the scar on his brother's eyebrow. It had wound up needing stitches, but no big deal, right? Most people had gotten stitches in their lives. It hadn't even been his first time.
"That's why you've been so distant." Adam had grown up over the years, more of a man now than ever. He would always have his inner child, but now he had shut that child away to deal with a more pressing issue: his baby brother. "She kept you away from us."
"No!" Chase said, too loudly. "I mean, yes, but, well, no. I needed to be with her, Adam."
Adam shook his head. "Do you even hear yourself? Super-genius my butt. She's using you, Chase."
"And why on earth would she do a thing like that?" But Chase visibly shook. He knew the truth now. For the first time in his life, he hated the truth.
"I don't know, but she's doing it. To make herself happy?"
"Well, you did the same thing, didn't you? You hurt me a lot when we were kids. Isn't this the same?"
Adam bowed his head. "Yeah, I did. But I knew when to stop."
"Did you?"
"Yes! I knew exactly how much you could take. I did it to challenge you, Chase. You're bionic. You're smart, not strong, so I wanted to make you strong. B-Because if something happened to you on a mission, it would be my fault because I didn't make you strong enough."
Chase sat back, a little shocked at this information. It made sense. In fact, it made a lot of sense. Everything Adam had ever done prepared him for missions. He could take a villain's trash talk because he survived Adam's. He could take a punch because he survived Adam's. He could keep going no matter what the stumbling block, because Adam showed him how.
"She didn't do that," the elder brother continued. "She did it because she wanted to hurt you. I'm sorry if I ever hurt you, Chasey, but you know you're not weak, right?"
Chase started. He sure thought he was weak. His own wife had hurt him. He let her hurt him. How could he not be weak? It was his own fault.
"This isn't your fault." Maybe Adam could read minds now. "It's not your fault now, and it never was. This is all on her, Chase. Don't beat yourself up for it. Blame her."
"But—"
"But what? You love her? Well, she clearly doesn't love you back. Everything she's done is to hurt you. Even I can see that. You can't let this keep happening, Chase."
"Well, what do I do? Fight back?"
"Go to the police, Chase."
Chase frowned. "But I'm a bionic hero. You think they'll believe—"
"I'll make sure they believe. She might've burned you and scratched you, but she did a lot more than that. I mean, look at you. You're exhausted, clearly. You're way too skinny. You're not the Chase I know, and I want him back."
Chase nodded, numb. All of him, numb. Not from painkillers. From feelings. "I'm not weak?"
Adam shook his head. "Not at all. She's the weak one for picking on a guy as awesome as you." Adam grinned, a teasing glint still in his eyes. "You make it too easy, you know."
Chase tried to smile, but his lips would only tremble. He couldn't cry. Not in front of Adam.
No, no, he couldn't help it. He sobbed.
Adam didn't judge. He embraced. He made one offhand remark, but it was Adam. Chase knew better than to expect him not to tease. But it was only teasing. Mandy never teased. Mandy hurt.
On June 20, 2027, one day before his anniversary, he finally decided to take action. Yes, he would go to the police. It wouldn't be easy. He would turn in the love of his life for ruining his life. He had loved her. She had hurt him.
He still loved her.
It still hurt.
(Lookie, I even slipped in my own personal theory about why Adam throws Chase around so much. Hooray!)
Anyone, male or female, bionic or not, can be hurt by a domestic violence situation. If you have a partner who is emotionally manipulating you, physically harming you, or sexually violating you, get help. There are so many places for you to go. You don't have to suffer through that. Male or female, abused by either a male or female, you are not weak. Go to the police. Go to your family. Go to people who care about you. They'll believe. They'll help you. You deserve better. A slap is not love. A threat to leave if you don't do what they want is not love. Coercion is not love. Violence is not love. It's never love.
Reviews are appreciated but not required. As always, thanks for reading.