What a Catch - Phan

Back When I Was Twelve

*4 years before* (A/N: Yes I do understand that this is a flashback in a flashback and it probably shouldn't be like this but oh well this is how I wrote it)

"Hiya Dan!" My dad called down to me cheerfully as I walked into the house with my mother after school.

"Hi daddy!" I replied happily, taking off my shoes slinging my backpack off of my shoulders, letting it fall onto the floor on top of my school shoes.  I scrambled up the stairs and ran into the computer room, where he was working.  I hugged him tightly.

"See any pretty girls at school today?"  Dad joked.

"No, but there are some very very pretty boys.  I really like them.  Especially Aiden, he's really nice and pretty.  I think I love him."  I replied innocently.  I was only eight, I didn't know what love really was, but I had a crush on Aiden and that was good enough for me.  My father's face drained of colour.

"What do you mean?"  He asked, his voice more restrained, as if he was forcing the words out.  I took no notice, and just shrugged.

"I just really really like him." I said truthfully.

"No, not about that.  About boys being... pretty."

I shrugged again. "They just are.  Much more than girls.  I don't understand why you like girls so much."

"Are you sure there's... No girls who you find pretty or anything like that?"

I shook my head, looking down awkwardly.  I didn't understand why I was different now that my dad knew I liked boys.  I wasn't any different to anyone else, was I? 

"Don't say that!" He said angrily, and slapped my cheek.  I clutched my pained cheek, tears brimming in my eyes, my chin wobbling as I looked back up at my dad to see him staring at his hand, shocked.

We didn't talk for the rest of the evening.  Dinner was awkward; I just pushed my food around on my plate aimlessly, not eating any of it, my eyes watering whenever I thought of looking up to my dad after what he had done.  That night, he went to the pub.  He came back quite late, I was asleep at the time.  He came into my room and started hitting me and shouting horrible words into my innocent ears.  I didn't go to school the next day, and once again he went to the pub and and beat me again.  He had been trying to drink away his problems, but it had just made him worse than before.

I shivered at the memory.  Every day since then he had been hurting me, each time worse than the last.  I decided to think nothing of it, and even started believing what he told me.  But I'd had enough.  I couldn't deal with it.  Before he could bring the belt down a third time, I punched him.  Square in the face. He hesitated a bit, the shock of what I had just done clear on his face. I started to turn around, propelling myself away from him so that I could run to PJ's or Chris' to stay there for a few days until dad would get over what had happened. He grabbed me before I could make it more than two steps away from him, and punched me. He hit me so many times that night. I had squeezed my eyes shut, and was laying in the floor in a foetal position, whimpering. I could hear every time the belt was slapped down onto my body, whipping through the air before pouncing on its target like a vicious viper.  

He went to the bar again soon after and came back no more than an hour later, his veins pumping with more alcohol than was healthy. He hit me again, smashing a half-full bottle of beer onto my side at one point, before yelling at me for wasting his drink and telling me that I was a disgrace to the family and shouldn't have been born. Mum was out that evening, but she usually wasn't any better. She didn't physically abuse me, instead she ignored me the majority of the time, and whenever I brought up dad hurting me, she would brush it off as if it was nothing, telling me that it was my fault that I was gay and I shouldn't be like that. He carried on abusing me until I passed out, and probably for a while after that too.