Chapter Text
Will always knew that darkness lied with him. He was familiar with pretending to be a normal he never was. He pretended to know how to smile and be human when at night he wondered if he had been born wrong, if he had lived in sin in a past he didn’t remember for his life to be the way it was laid for him.
For his evilness to be the blame for his mother leaving and for the tar in his soul to drive his father to drink.
No matter how much Will pretended to be normal- he was still the boy who talked to bugs and to the shadows of his room and the ones everyone looked at too long to study and looked away too quickly when they were finally noticed.
Not only was Will Graham a wretched boy for laying in the fields and talking to the stars- no longer was he called a witch or freak but rather he felt the stones from the street and the belt of his father the day he was found kissing another boy behind the football field equipment shed.
Because Will Graham was born a wrong and wretched thing. Because Will Graham was born a wrong thing in the wrong body with a dark soul that not even God could forgive. He was a man who had the audacity to love another.
The crosses he buried with that secret he tried to keep close to heart ended up being burned into his skin- every time he was brought to his knees in prayer for thinking wicked thoughts.
A burnt cross and scar on his wrist for every wicked thought. At night he let his hands trail them- he let himself wonder what would happen when his arms would run out of space for more.
Then he would face his pillow and scream.
Every time he felt the need for touch- something not even his father gave now unless it was to bruise Will’s body and his fists- something he didn’t even get at school. Before anyone took the opportunity to shove Will into lockers and try to make him cry, now it was as if Will never existed at all. No one came close enough to even brush past him because to touch Will Graham and to touch his rot would be to make a deal with the Devil and to wish eternal damnation of their own souls.
The crosses were burned into his body and his knees were scarred from hours of prayer he held with a priest and his father- both men who were more wicked in life and body than Will ever was- but with a God defending their actions- defending a priest’s power and a father’s right to his child's body- Will was the wicked thing. A wrong and dirty thing who’s soul was filled with rot and his only salvation was The Word. The words of the Bible could fix the rot in his soul and Will could fix his wickedness.
Will could use the Bible to find a way to no longer be a wrong man but rather one who could find an eternal life, with a God he wasn’t even sure existed.
But to say that would lead to prayer and damnation until Will learned just like he had before- There is a God just as a man does not love another. There is a God and he was the only way Will could be forgiven from his rot and the only Will could be saved from eternal damnation.
Will Graham was a wicked, evil thing.
But more than anything he was a boy, who only thought he could be loved and saved if he changed everything about himself until the rot was cut away and there no longer was Will Graham.
Because there wasn’t a fate where God could love Will Graham. The destiny of his damnation was in every life he seemed to be born in. That is what Will Graham truly believed. Not in God- but in his own Damnation.