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He preferred the beatings to this.
The beatings were sudden, not really something that Neil thought about before he did them, but this? This was when Billy really knew that he’d fucked up, because he might have gotten slapped for forgetting to pick Max up from the skate park on time but the screaming in his arms was a constant mantra of how deep his flaws ran. You want to skip class to go to the beach huh? Well if your grades aren’t that important to you then I know a good way to waste 8 hours.
He hadn’t broken his board though. That was the important thing in that moment, that Neil hadn’t taken his board. Buying a new one probably would have been better than this.
He’d gotten up and dressed like usual, spent a bit of time fixing his hair right, and walked out with the intention of driving Max to school like usual. Neil was already awake when he walked out which was the first sign that his life was about to get fucked up because Neil didn’t get up on his day off for anything less than a date or a championship ball game. The second was when he said “Susan took Max to school, since it’s not important .”
He hadn’t even fought the orders of ‘kneel with your nose to the wall, back straight, don’t you dare sit back’ or ‘arms to the side, don’t touch the wall’. There wasn’t any fighting days like that. The first ten minutes were okay, the next weren’t so bad either. Billy was pretty damn strong and he could hold position with the best soldiers. So the first hour went as he tried to imagine the ocean in his ears and the sun on his back. The second hour had his shoulders screaming but every time they fell more than an inch Neil would clear his throat over the sound of the TV and Billy would grit his teeth and bring them back up. He was crying by the time he was allowed to relax, silent tears dripping down his cheeks and he knew that if he turned around he’d just get it worse. He breathed.
“You can have some water and a sandwich. Fifteen minutes then resume.”
It’s lunch time. Sometimes there was a bit of mercy in hell after all. He drank a glass of water and scarfed down a sandwich, counting down the seconds before he returned to the horrible cream wall and knelt. His legs were screaming like banshees and his shoulders were twitching but not doing it wasn’t an option. He swallowed the whimper in his throat and tried to imagine the ocean.
Sweat dripped down his back. His eyes blurred and he began to list sideways. Neil’s cough startled him so badly that his arms slammed against the wall to right himself and he apologized around the lump in his throat.
You can be strong. You just need to find the ocean.