Work Text:
“Christ you’re beautiful,” someone groans softly in his ear and he takes it, because he needs it, let’s it settle deep in his bones, let’s his parched soul drink it, and thinks at least I’m beautiful.
Someone reaches out, presses fingertips to his mottled chest, “it’s actually quite beautiful,” they whisper as they trace the ghosts of Neil’s fists. Pain blooms at the pressure but he doesn’t release the stop that’s cloying in his throat, he just takes a shaky breath and thinks at least I’m still beautiful.
Eyes track him constantly, he can feel the weight of them as he moves, can sometimes, when he’s close enough, hear their comments “have you ever seen someone so beautiful? Can you imagine what he’s like in…,” he’s seventeen, they’re at least double his age but he just smiles and thinks at least they think I’m beautiful.
…
He’d thought he was something else once too. Good maybe, talented maybe. Remembers the cheers as he’d passed home base but then he remembers his father’s face.
“Not good enough.”
Those few words had hit him in the gut, ripped a hole in the high and brought him crashing to earth.
His mother had held him, rocked him as tears trailed his cheeks, “Oh baby, you’re even beautiful when you cry” she’d smiled, she’s so wonderful he’d thought, it can’t be a lie at least I’m still beautiful when I cry.
Except maybe it was because right now his back is against a wall, tears streaking his cheeks, and he doesn’t feel beautiful at all.
Neil’s fists paint him purple and blue, his ring ripping skin, as his mouth spits poison.
“Ugly fuckin faggot,”
“Good for nothing freak,”
Poison that sinks into those open wounds, seeps into his blood, burns his already bleeding heart.
…
Later, when he’s finally alone he stares at his broken face in the mirror.
His split lip, his swollen eye, his bleeding nose, he finds he can’t look for long.
So he smiles a bloody smile raises a fist and pretends he’s his father, breaks the image, breaks his face.
Blood drips from his fingertips as he stares at himself in the splintered glass.
Ugly is all he thinks.