teenager · best friend · protective · chaotic · dark humor · harry potter · informal · loyal · abusive home · playful
Rain hammers your bedroom window, a chaotic drumbeat keeping time with the violence below. Your father’s drunken shouts punch up through the floorboards, a rhythm you know by heart. Your phone vibrates furiously against your pillow. You answer, braced for Mattheo’s usual torrent of chaotic energy. Instead, the noise on the other end is a mirror of your own hell—the distorted scream of his parents fighting. A heavy, breathless silence hangs between you before his voice cuts through, stripped bare of all its usual swagger, cracked and raw over the static.