Work Text:
stupid mirror.
every day.
the same stupid mirror.
standing there.
tainting and mocking him.
poking fun at him and manipulating his body.
making it look disgusting. warped. wrong.
making him look wrong.
all his life, the bathroom has been kaveh’s only place of privacy. the bedroom’s never been anything more than that; a room which his bed is in. the boy has no sanctuary, no safe place, no spot to hide from his troubles. nowhere except the bathroom. something about the cold, white tiles and the blank, almost-white walls has become comforting. the cobwebs where walls meet ceiling and the door stopper bolted down and jutting out. the cold, hard dirt-red and slush-white marble countertop with lightning-like streaks of dark grey -almost black- which rip through the curious pattern.
his bathroom is kaveh’s one safe haven.
except that fucking mirror.
standing without clothes, he stares at the shining, reflective surface. about a footstep away from the counter, he can see everything from the top of his head down to just below his knees. the pair of old-fashioned, brilliant, hanging lights -one white and one yellow, as specifically requested when bulbs were replaced- put his entire figure on display. every curve and roll, every pore and body hair. all for the world to see. no. just for him to see.
but kaveh can’t help imagining that this revolting body is what the whole world sees when they look at him. he can’t help imagining it’s the whole world staring back when standing in front of that mirror. they stare and laugh and whisper and point because they’re all obnoxious enough to think he doesn’t notice. the world sees him for what they say he is; a girl playing dress up. because the whole world is staring his bare, exposed body in that mirror, the whole world only sees him as that. everyone he speaks to only sees him as a girl.
i’m not a fucking girl. this isn’t my body.
that’s right.
this image has had a choke hold on him since longer than he can remember and it pisses him off. kaveh never wore girl’s clothing, he never sat with or played with the girls and their dolls or coloring books.
with a grumble, the boy pulls on a binder and a shirt and a sweater. but that is nowhere near enough to rid himself of the disgusting feeling that comes with residing in a body which is not one’s own. of being a square forced into the mold of a circle. kaveh frowns as he realizes he needs to get out. het out of his skin. he needs to stop anyone from looking at his body again. he needs to get rid of that damn mirror.
i need to smash it.
the thing is that it’s entirely possible and he would entirely do it. the shed outside has a hammer and thick gloves. he can hide behind the door and smash it and take all the pieces to the trash. if he gets cut, who cares? the blonde has the perfect lack of self-preservation needed to not worry about that.
i might wake up mom. i don’t care. but i do. because she would know that i did it on purpose. but it needs to be gone and nobody will take me serious until i do something radical like this. i have to break it.
the wooden handle of the hammer feels nice with his fingers wrapped around it. slender and smooth, able to survive the tight, angry grip. the weight is balanced, too. swingable. a good weapon to take to anything, really. a mirror, a wall, some sort of living tissue like a plant or maybe even some animal. a good metal hammer can dig through any of that with no trouble. so why can’t kaveh break this mirror? why won’t he swing it, when he wants to so bad? why is he so pathetic that he can’t even do this one thing?
i can’t fucking do it.
kaveh briskly returns the hammer to the toolbox it’d been fished out of and finds himself again in front of the mirror. his gaze travels along the edges, where the reflective substance on the back of it has long begun to wear away. attention lingers on the small, rusty handles which keep this image of mockery up. there’s a good idea. climbing up on the marble countertop, he tries to get his fingers around each side, only getting about a centimeter of space between the mirror and the wall. it’ll do.
because of the way the sheet of glass is attached, he can’t simply pull it off. there are handles wrapped around it on the top and bottom, meaning it has to shimmy one direction or the other to get out. or that’s what it looks like. so kaveh does that. pushing carefully, but with so much force that his fingers begin to turn white, he pushes and shifts it up and down and up and down until finally it was free of one pair of handles. it’s infinitely heavier than kaveh had assumed it to be and thus immediately tilts, but doesn’t fall or break. step one is done.
carefully, the boy moves over to continue to push it out that same way. he almost gets it- almost pulls it out from the latches to pull it from the wall, but something on the other end of the mirror stubs it. kaveh’s gaze flicks to what had- oh. his shower, because it’s a bath with a shower head, or maybe a shower with a bathtub, has a thick, ugly rim that comes out from the wall. usually it’s tolerable, because it’s some sort of porcelain or plastic or something the water won’t damage when it will the rest of the bathroom. but now it’s in the way. kaveh tries to tilt and bend the mirror just enough to get past the rim, but he can’t do so without breaking it.
so he goes the other way. back past the handles he’d already escaped from, it wouldn’t be so hard to just slip out from this pair and be free. but, again, kaveh is stumped. the mirror bumps the wall where it turns to meet the door before it can escape.
“god damn it. i can’t do this without breaking it… no, fuck, it’s going to break.”
he tries his best to maneuver the large, fragile sheet to his whim, trying to escape the hooks on the wall. right when he thinks he has it, there’s a loud crack and a crash and the piece he’s holding onto is free. perfect. adrenaline kicks in and kaveh finds himself… not panicking. he simply looks at the large chunk of mirror in his hand; about the top half of what had once been a massive sheet of glass. well… that works. quietly, the boy opens the bathroom door and peeks into his mother’s room just down the hall. she’s still fast asleep.
fuck. yeah.
thinking quickly, he retrieves this big piece of glass and closes the bathroom door behind him so the dog doesn’t get in. with a chuckle to himself, kaveh pulls his shoes on at the front door and hastily walks down to the gravel patch in front of the garage. slightly shaky hands set it down carefully and, with a skip in his step, he makes his way back to the door. though while he moves, bright red catches his attention. a glance to his hand tells of blood.
“oh, shit. did it get me? fuck, that’s a good gash..”
he speeds up to get inside and watches the red spread across his hand- covering about half of it and dripping down his ring and pinky fingers. before he realizes it, kaveh’s back in the bathroom. convenient. the boy merely runs the wounded hand briefly under the tap before grabbing the next largest chunk and making his way back outside. when the mirror broke, an adrenaline rush must’ve immediately come and kept him from feeling the pain. though it would’ve been interesting to watch the sharp corner sink into his finger like that; the mirror snapped right on his hand.
once done with this second trip, blood on the mirror helps him decide that something more should probably be done about this wound. so, quietly, he creeks his mom’s door open and sneaks to her bathroom, where the only bandaids are kept. kaveh washes the wound again, then shakily wraps one bandaid right over it. but that doesn’t feel like enough— it’s too easy, so another is added to keep the first down. if it works it works. the boy can swear his mother woke up as he snuck back out of her room, but his heart is going too fast to pay any attention; instead allowing a simple return to his duty of picking up the broken glass chunk by chunk and taking them outside to pile in the driveway. even the smallest ones he can find get carefully picked up and either put in a trash can or brought outside.
when the job is said and done, kaveh stands in front of where the mirror was. the bare spot left behind it is dirty and, funny enough, unpainted. it’s obvious where paint rollers had begun to run dry and where the job had been stopped, called good enough- it was going to be covered up after all. that part made kaveh laugh, among all the detachment from the moment. as if nothing had happened, he returns to what he’d been doing before.
it might as well have been days before mother woke up and greeted him at his door. kaveh stood and looked to her, swallowing all his pride before speaking.
“my mirror’s broken.”
“what?” she looked genuinely surprised. “what do you mean?”
“i broke my mirror.” even kaveh was annoyed by how casual he was being about it. “i don’t like looking at myself so i was taking it off the wall and i broke it.”
simple as that, it’s not his problem anymore. having told his mother the truth, she can get his father to find a new one. no, that would be useless to get a new one.
“don’t get a new one until we move out. or get one and cover it up. i don’t like to look at myself. i hate my body.”
with that, he leaves and takes the dog out. not to avoid his mother, who simply sighs and accepts it, but because duty calls. they play for a long hour, and when they’re on the way back in, kaveh’s eye catches the glass “gazing ball” which his father bought and propped up on a stand. fuck that guy. the blonde narrows his eyes and grabs the ball, surprised at how light it is. without hesitation it’s thrown to the gravel driveway. the sound made as it shatters is so pleasant to his ears, kaveh wishes he could do that every day. but that’s not happening, so he shrugs and goes inside and back to bed. he’s already thought up a lie to cover for it anyways.
“the dog bumped into the stand and it fell over and broke.”
kaveh lets out a long breath, climbing up to his bunk bed. under the thick blankets, he curls around himself. hiding from everyone in the world. the boy still finds himself pissed off.
i wish i could say i smashed that mirror.