Work Text:
You’re standing in front of the cracked full-length mirror you’ve had since you were 16, since this started. You were the one that put the cracks there, in fits of anger at what it was telling you.
Who is the fairest one of all?
You’re naked save for a pair of boxers, thin and threadbare, but they don’t fully cover up the marks trickling down your thighs, your first clumsy attempt at a homemade tattoo hovering crooked and moldy above your knee – ‘scars will heal soon’. They have healed, but they’re still there, and that’s what you hate.
Well, they’re part of what you hate. You hate that they just draw even more attention to your thighs, the fetid sacks of flesh that always betrayed you, got you slapped with ‘girl’ and ‘she’ and ‘her’, which is what made you carve them up in the first place.
You sliced his name into your inner thigh, but the two of you never talk about it. All he’ll do is kiss it, gently.
All you see is cellulite, mottled skin and stretch marks and the sagging, sickly legs of an old man. You hadn’t planned on growing this old, but he came into your life and you had to. You didn’t eat so that he could, but you weren’t eating to begin with.
The waistband of your boxers is hanging below your hipbones, which jut out and guide his hands as he runs them down your body to the mess between your thighs, the scars and the thing that ever got you labeled as a woman in the first place. He’s always so soft with you.
With a shaky sigh, you allow yourself to run a dry, cracked palm down your front, fingers tracing along your ribs, prominent but not prominent enough. You used to have muscles, but they’ve withered now. Where did your discipline go? You pinch at your stomach, squeezing the flesh and grimacing at the small scars littering your belly button from where you’ve dug at the hair there with tweezers. Better that than pulling out the hair on your head, which is already starting to go thin and brittle. You hadn’t planned on growing this old.
Your touch moves to your side, squeezing at what little fat you can grab. It feels like so much. You want to get rid of it. You’re not sure how long you’ve been standing there when you hear the front door open, the slough of his jacket as he shrugs it off. You close your eyes, shadesless, puffy and rotten because you don’t know how long it’s been since you last slept. Those aren’t the numbers you focus on anymore. You used to be so good at math, physics, engineering. Where did your discipline go?
He’s noticed you, because he breathes out, “Oh, Bro…” in that way that he does when you know all he wants to do is fold you up like a doll. You keep your eyes closed, blueish fingers and toes curling and tensing, ashamed to be caught looking at yourself like this – ashamed to have to look at something so disgusting at all.
When his arms loop their way around your middle, you can’t help but flinch at the touch, sucking in a sharp breath, curling in on yourself. Immediately, he’s cooing, “Baby, baby, oh, I’m sorry…” His voice is warm against your ear, and it feels nice. You always feel so cold. His chin comes to rest on your shoulder and you can smell his breath, taste the sweetness of his cigarettes, and you want to take him in. It’s just hard to let someone else touch you when you can barely stand to touch yourself.
The two of you are silent for a little while, you trying to slow down your breathing and your pulse, him just tenderly holding you, nothing more. He won’t begin touching you until you’re ready. Gradually, you crack your bleary eyes open, and it’s once he feels you relaxing against his arms that he speaks, voice low.
“You deserve to feel okay.” God, you feel so cold. “You deserve everything, Bro.”
He’s taking one of your hands, then, lacing his smooth fingers with your gnarled ones, and he brings your arm up, exposing the underside. He takes his other hand from its place on your side and traces along the thick scars littering your wrist, lingering on the greatest gash, the one you’ve had since you were 16, since this started.
You hadn’t planned on growing this old, but he came into your life and you had to.
Protest falls dead on your lips, and you remain silent for a long while, letting him touch you, letting him stroke his way down the long list of your past mistakes. Where did your discipline go? Eventually, he eases your arm back down, hands moving to rest against your hips, thumbs settling in against the bones there.
“Please,” you find yourself murmuring, voice slow and heavy like your eyes. You can’t cry, you haven’t cried in so long, but you want to. You wish you could. “Just- compare me to someone else.” You pause. “So that I don’t have to do it myself.”
Any time the two of you are naked, you can’t help but stare at him. He’s gorgeous where you’re not. He has beautiful breasts. Yours are gone now, but you always hated them. Even as a woman, you were hideous. Where you have a narrow waist, his is broad, with only the barest tapering out to his slim hips. He looks male. You look like a joke.
“Bro…” He murmurs, his chest now pressed against your back, his breath on your hair as he kisses your scalp. He never does as you ask. You’re trembling when his hands make their way up to your ribs, the press of his palms against your skin so gentle. Nothing ever feels like enough.
“I love you.” He sighs, and the sound travels down to the tips of your frigid toes. The two of you are in the cracked mirror now, and it makes you feel a little less alone, but only a little. Ultimately, you are alone in this, but you know he’ll always be there to support you. You just hope he doesn’t try to feed you tonight.
Shaking, you place your hands on top of his, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze as you stare with wide, tired eyes at your mutual reflections – at your fat thighs, your knobby knees leaning inward, your surgery scars and your self-inflicted ones. He is so beautiful. You are not. But you both hope that someday, you’ll be able to believe that you are.
“I love you, too.” You mumble, gaze shifting to the floor, away from yourself and away from all the things you hate most. You hate this mirror, hate the way it reflects every awful part of yourself right back at you, showing you just what the rest of the world sees – this fake, fat man, this failure. At least, what the rest of the world aside from Dave sees. His vision has never been the best.
“I love you so much.” You don’t offer a reply to that, just stare at your thick, cold toenails, mulling over the numbers in your head. That’s a redundancy - you’re never not mulling over the numbers. But maybe – as his hands move to turn you around, tearing your gaze away from the mirror, cradling your cheeks as he leans in to press his full, soft lips to your dry, thin ones – maybe, tonight he’ll be able to distract you from them, if only for a minute.