Stand By Me

Chapter Six

And then Paul leaves; calls him worthless and spits at him, tells his mother that she's a bitch, tells them he's going to the pub, and leaves. This time, Mum doesn't scrape him up from the carpet of his bedroom, he has to do it by himself. He hears clattering down in the kitchen as he stands on weak legs in front of the bathroom basin, his entire body hurting so much that he wishes for it to just stop — all of it, everything. He doesn't care what he means by that, as long as it ends, the pain and the fear and the constant gnawing panic that he feels at the thought of next time.

Because there always is a next time. It never stops. It repeats and repeats and repeats, that old movie behind his eyelids stuck on play forever.

His chest aches, and one of his hands manages to let go of the sink to fumble at the t-shirt that he had been wearing when he'd left Harry's house, just a couple of hours ago. Maybe less. He doesn't really get to think about time when his step-dad is beating him senseless.

The heel of his hand presses painfully into his sternum, trying to force his chest to expand again, to force oxygen into his bruised lungs.

A sob bursts from him instead, unexpectedly yet inevitable all at once. A ragged gasp follows at the pain that crying causes and he tries to stop, tries to swallow it down, but it's too much. It's all too much, and he wishes he stayed at Harry's and never came home because he hates this. He can't handle the hurt anymore.

Fighting back the tears because he's in too much pain to even grieve the life he longs to have instead of this one, he pushes away from the sink and out of the bathroom, every step taking so much longer than he knows it should, every bruise and wound making itself known.

As soon as he reaches his room, he doesn't climb up onto his bed. Instead, he gets down to his knees and crawls underneath like he would when he was little after his mother would bring home another of her 'friends' who would talk loudly or laugh in a booming way that he was unused to, hiding until they would eventually leave.

He feels like a baby and a grown up all at once, so afraid and small yet tainted in the way he knows that twelve year olds shouldn't be. Despite his aching bones, he manages to bring his legs up into himself, wrapping one arm around them and the other folding beneath his head to cushion it from the duster carpet. He feels safer, like that, with the metal underbars of the bed frame mere inches above him, his duvet draping down to shield his view of what's outside of his little nest. It's dark and quiet, and there are a bunch of his stuffed animals that he'd been forced to hide when Paul had moved in pressed softly against his back and legs.

He closes his eyes again, the throbbing of his left becoming more apparent every time he attempts to blink the half-mast lid. Listens as footsteps make their way up the stairs, too light to belong to his step-father. The floorboards creak beneath his carpet as his door opens, and then the side of his duvet is lifted.

His mother sets something down on his bedside table before she crouches down beside him, tilting her head to one side so that she can peer beneath, her eyes shadowed by something that Niall can place as a mixture between exhaustion and pain. He knows his own eyes look the same.

He stares back at her for a moment, the sudden influx of light making his head pound a little harder.

"Honey," she breathes, pausing to stare at him some more, gaze dragging over every added imperfection to his skin. He knows that it'll take days just for the swelling to go down, that it'll be halfway through the week at least before his bruises stop being too tender to cover with his mother's makeup.

That means missing Harry's birthday, he realises instantly. His stomach churns at the thought because he and Harry have never missed each other's birthday before, and he knows how excited his best friend has been about finally becoming a teenager. He'll have to message him, let him down, be a bad friend again.