Title: Schwuchtel
Disclaimer: Characters not mine, etc., etc.
A/N: Fffffffffff, Egon, you make me mad. Finally posting my AWZ stuff to !
He'd been cocky enough, for a while, to believe that he was above it.
That he could handle the jeers, the name-calling. That he could explain it away, because he was a man, not a boy, and because he was intelligent enough to know just how juvenile it was. He was successful, to a certain extent, talented, driven, further up the social ladder than any of those morons would ever be. It no longer stung to be called queer, fag, fairy; the hurt had evolved into pity and exasperation.
Then Deniz, fucking Deniz, came along.
Friendly and charming and unfairly attractive, mixed signals all over the place, confused and desperate, and so very, very young. And until now, Roman had handled the insults from the hockey team with cynicism and scathing wit and verbal retaliation. He knew that Deniz played along with the rest of the team to some extent, bent to their collective, homophobic expectations. Knew also that underneath his macho bravado, Deniz was mostly just an angry, conflicted kid.
But knowing hadn't prepared him for this – for his reaction to Deniz's words.
There was something more in the way Deniz said it. Schwuchtel. It wasn't ignorant or mindless like the stupid barbs from the rest of the team. Oh, no. Something about the way he said it was deliberate. Spiteful and hateful, and when Deniz said that, he meant it. When Deniz said it, it was personal.
As soon as the word came out of Deniz's mouth, Roman felt himself stop. Images that he'd shoved so far, so very far, into his past, suddenly came back. Images of his mother, her face sad, resigned and helpless; of little Florian in his highchair, eyes wide and unknowing. Of Egon, furious and bitter and resentful, his hand raised decisively, cheeks flushed a violent red. Schwuchtel, he'd hissed then. No son of mine.
And all of a sudden Roman found himself spinning, slamming himself into Deniz in a way he hadn't even known he was capable of. Words came out of his mouth before he even knew he was thinking them, and he let them. He kept talking until his mind finally caught up enough to shove Deniz away, and just like that, all his words were gone. His mind was racing so fast he couldn't think. He felt numb.
You've got exactly ten seconds to run away, Egon's voice echoed in his head.
He hadn't even realised he'd said it out loud until he heard the door close.