Fixing Nico [boyxboy / yaoi]

Ch 5 - Memories

The tension from his jaw disappeared immediately - his mouth hung open. His eyes widened. Like this, he looked almost… innocent. The fist that clenched my hair slackened, dropping to his side.

'I love you,' I said again, through shuddering breaths.

That's when his expression began to shift - his lips pulled down into an ugly, crooked frown. His eyes began to shine even brighter - but they glinted with malice, with anger, with… pain - with everything bad, everything I didn't want to see.  'You love me?' he spat, his lips curling into a sneer. 'I'll kill you… I'll fucking kill you!' he growled, shoving me back. I stumbled and tripped, falling over. I felt my skull hit the concrete with a sickening crack. Above me, Jason balled his fists.He lunged at me with a renewed, even greater forced than before. 'Fag!' he shrieked - both of his scraped knuckled plummeted at my face - one fist connected with my jaw, the other my cheekbone, and my face exploded with white-hot pain. I think I was screaming, too - I'd never screamed before when he'd hurt me. This seemed even worse than any other time - that word echoed through my mind, over and over. Fag…

The concrete was cold, hard, the gravel-like bits were poking painfully into my skull and my spine as I lay on my back, squinting up at the sun, at the angel above me. At least, he looked like an angel - the sun's rays were beating down in the back of his head, turning his unkempt, blonde hair into a halo around his head. His green eyes were bright, malevolent, malicious. 'I'll kill you…' he muttered, sneering. His yanked his leg back, and with all his force, rammed the toe of his shoe into my ribcage.

I howled pitifully as he kept kicking, unrelenting. My ribs cracked under my skin, with an audible sound that made Jason smile. I was crying now, crying and screaming like a newborn baby as my ribs crunched and my face and my body was slammed over and over, and engulfed in unimaginable agony.

Jason's smile didn't waver. Not even as my vision went blurry, not even when everything before me faded to black, Jason kept on smiling.

Gasping, I tried to control the shuddering breaths that escaped past my lips. It had felt like I was reliving the memory… a phantom pain made my ribs ache dully.

There was a soft knock on my door - furiously, I rubbed the tears from my cheeks. 'Come in,' I croaked.

Mum poked her head through the doorway - once her dark, chocolate-coloured eyes scanned me over, she frowned. But she didn't say anything, she just stared at my tearstained cheeks awkwardly. 'Uhh…' she piped up finally, still keeping her body outside of my room. 'It's dinnertime…'

'I'm not hungry,' I mumbled, dropping my head so that my fringe covered my puffy, red eyes. 

'You have to eat something,' she huffed, her voice more insistent this time. The creak of the door signalled Mum had finally stepped through the threshold and pulled her whole body into my room. 'Nico?' When I didn't answer, look up, or acknowledge her existence, she sighed wearily.

Soft footsteps on the rug indicated that she was coming closer - I tensed as the shadow of my Mum flickered over me. She stepped carefully over the fuzzy rug beneath us, and took a seat on my bed beside me. The bed sunk down at she perched right next to me - so close that our arms brushed and I could hear her steady breaths going in and out; a contrast with my own rapid, shallow ones.

'So,' she started, 'what's wrong?'

I swallowed uncomfortably. 'Nothing,' I mumbled, but glancing up at her, she looked unconvinced. 

'Really?' her voice dripped with sarcasm.

'Really,' I confirmed with a singled nod. 'I'm fine.'