The door slammed shut and Brendan and Ste jumped apart.

Brendan's mind was racing, going over all the people it could possibly be. Could it be Seamus and Blanaid? Would it be Cheryl?

He suddenly realised he was still sitting on the bed, his hand touching Ste's. He pulled his arm back and quickly got up, sweat already forming on his forehead.

"Get the fuck out of my room!" Brendan shouted.
Ste's eyes were wide and alarmed.
"Okay…" Ste replied quietly, slowly standing up.
"And I'm not a fucking queer!" Brendan snarled, the veins on his forehead bulging.
"Don't ever come near me again!" Brendan continued as he grabbed Ste's forearm and pulled him towards the door.
"I won't tell anyone, I promise." Ste said, his voice quivering.
Did he not get it?!
"There's nothing to tell!" Brendan yelled as he pushed Ste against the wall next to his door.

"What's the fuss about?" Cheryl then asked, her face popping through the doorway.
Brendan immediately let go of Ste.
"Nothing." He said angrily.
"Nothing." Ste responded as well, his voice almost inaudible.
Ste's shoulders were hanging and he quickly left the room, Cheryl's eyes watching him move out, and Brendan staring at the floor, unsure of what had just happened.

Cheryl turned to Brendan, "Did you hurt him?!"
"No." Brendan replied, his words sharp.
"What did you do to him?!" She yelled, her voice only getting louder.
"Nothing! The fucking creep was pestering me, so I told him to fuck off!"
"This is so typical of you!" Cheryl protested while throwing her arms up, "You don't like someone, so the moment I have my back turned, you're a complete and total dickhead to them! Well, you know what, Brendan? Fuck you!"
And with that she turned around and slammed his door shut on his face.

Brendan let out a breath. Fuck. What was happening to him?! What was happening to his life?

He grabbed his coat off the floor and left his room as well. He had to get out of that house.

After a few hours of roaming around by himself, Brendan had ended up with some of his mates. Daniel and Orin to be specific. Brendan wasn't sure he would classify them as 'friends' in the same way most people would. They were often just there. They'd go to a pub somewhere together, get pissed, and find somebody to pick on.

They were occupying a booth in one of the pubs in town. Brendan was about three drinks in. The people around him just began to seem a bit fuzzy. Out of focus. That was it. There were some loud people across the bar, who were disturbing everyone else.

"Who do those fuckers think they are?!" Brendan slurred angrily.
"Just some twats probably." Orin responded, his voice also slightly slurred.
"I think we should go over there and teach 'em a lesson." Brendan suggested, already standing up and getting ready to go in for the kill.

Daniel and Orin slid out of the booth as well, and the three made their way to the other side.
"Can you please shut the fuck up?" Brendan asked the tall, and loudest one of the group.
"Excuse me?" He turned and stood up tall to Brendan.
"You heard me."
"Do you have a problem, mate?" The guy asked, not seeming to bite the bait.
"I'm not your fucking mate." Brendan hissed in response.
"Whatever, you faggot." The guy grunted.
Brendan saw red.
"I'm not a fucking faggot!" He yelled, his voice clear and loud.

Brendan lunged at the other guy and punched him in the stomach. The guy winced, but quickly got back up and took a shot at Brendan and hit him, fists closed, in the face. Brendan felt his jaw click, but ignored the feeling and decided to get back. He bent his head down and ran into the guy, slamming against a wall while doing it. He pulled his arms back and began hitting as hard as he could.

He wasn't sure what Daniel and Orin were doing exactly, but he assumed they were taking on the mates of his opponent. He heard some glasses smashing and the grunts of being winded.

Brendan kept on swinging and hitting for the other guy, getting punches back as well. He was sure his fists were covered in blood, because they almost seemed slippery now.

And suddenly somebody was pulling his back and pushing him onto the ground.

He felt weak.

A heavy body moved on top of him and began punching him in the face continuously. A constant pounding to his face and he started seeing all kinds of colours.

But it wasn't anything he wasn't already used to.

Brendan tried lifting his hands, but nothing seemed to work. His arms felt dead at the side of his body and his legs were just numb.

Then there was just darkness.

Brendan thought back and remembered some arms lifting him. He remembered hearing a voice. He remembered a car screeching, doors opening.

But now all he could see was the ceiling of his living room. The room was almost entirely dark. He wasn't sure how he'd ended up here.

He still felt extremely weak and his entire body ached when he tried to move.

"Got yourself in a mess, didn't you?"

Brendan jumped, immediately regretting the natural instinct when a piercing pain shot through his body.

"And there I was, getting a call that my boy had gotten into a fight." Seamus began.

He was sitting on the armchair a few footsteps away from Brendan.

"So I had to go and pick him up," Seamus continued.

"And you know what the worst part was?" He asked, putting down a glass of what Brendan assumed was whiskey.

"He lost."

Brendan then heard the springs of the armchair squeaking and heard as Seamus footsteps moved over to the sofa.

"My fucking faggot of a son lost the fight." Seamus' breath was now close in Brendan's face.

He reeked of all things unpleasant.

Brendan felt shivers running through him.

"At least now," He continued in an eerily calm tone, "Someone has already taught him a lesson, so I won't have to do that tonight."

Then he moved away, and Brendan sighed in relief, as the air above his face cleared once again.

"Don't you ever embarrass me like that, or I will make you regret it." Seamus snarled as he moved away.

Brendan could make out the dark figure moving out of the living room.

He choked on his breath as the tears began forming in his eyes.

He was a mess.

The daylight had begun to slowly creep in through the curtains. But it was dark enough for Brendan to know that it was still early.

And it was Monday. School again. That meant Brendan would have to face people.

He got up off the sofa and limped down the hall to the stairs. His knee seemed to be only worse now. The pain had seemed to disappear for a few days, but now it was just excruciating. His face felt like it was itching, but when Brendan put his fingers to his face, he immediately stopped and left it to itch. He hadn't seen the exact state of himself yet, but he knew, judging by how he felt, that he wasn't doing too well.

The spaces between the steps had never seemed so far apart. Brendan found himself stepping with his right leg and lifting his left leg while keeping it as straight as possible.

Once he managed to get upstairs, he got some clothes from his bedroom and moved to the bathroom, where he made sure he locked the door, before peeling his clothes off.

He carefully laid down his clothes, which he now realised were covered in blood, on the side of the bathtub. Brendan then looked in the mirror and carefully studied himself.

His right eye was completely bruised and shaded in purple and blue. He had some cuts running through his lips and cheeks. There was some dried blood coating his nostrils, and his nose seemed red. He looked down in the mirror at his chest and arms. His chest was spotted in small blue bruises, some much worse than others.

Brendan reached down and turned on the tap, letting the water run until it reached a nice warm temperature, but not too hot. Once it was at a decent temperature, he cupped his two hands and splashed some of the water against his face.

The truth was what scared Brendan the most. A bit less than a day ago, he had been kissing another guy. It was sick. It was disgusting. He was disgusting.

So he deserved it. He deserved for his skin to be broken. For his blood to be running. He deserved every little thing he had coming at him.

He kept gently throwing the water against his sore face. Soon he couldn't distinguish between the tap water and the tears that seemed to leak out of his already sore eyes.

His mind kept replaying the recent events, and the more he though about it, the more broken he felt, and the angrier he got. He kept seeing red, and his blood just seemed to boil. He deserved pain. Before he knew what he was doing, he turned the water up to the hottest temperature and was splashing it against his face, cringing from the contact.

Pain wasn't an excuse, because he deserved it all.

Explaining his bruises wasn't easy to do. Normally he had a few bruises on his stomach, and could just hide them from people by just wearing a shirt and skipping gym classes, but now his bruises were exposed to every person who walked past him.

Brendan had attempted to conceal himself behind a black hoodie, but the hoodie could only hide so much. And most of his teachers got angry at him for having his hood up in class, so he'd have to sit there and watch as they all got the same shocked reaction when he pulled it down.

But none of them cared to ask him what had happened, or if he was okay, because he already was the bad guy. Most of his teachers probably thought he'd had it coming. He was the bad kid in school. So he deserved everything. They knew it just as well as Brendan did.

At lunchtime Brendan went and hid away in the library, not wanting to talk to any of his so called friends, who had left him to be beaten at the pub. He couldn't deal with their shit today.

At the end of lunch, when Brendan decided to head on over to his next class, in order to slip in before anyone took bigger notice of him, he ran into Cheryl.

That morning he'd left before he had to be confronted by any of his family members. Not today.

"Chez…" Brendan started the moment he saw her at the end of the hall.
"I don't want to talk to you, Brendan." Cheryl replied coldly.
"Please, come on!" Brendan begged, "I'm your brother!"
"You being my brother doesn't stop me from telling you to bugger off!"
Cheryl then turned around and left Brendan alone in the school hallway.

Why was all this shit happening to him?!

He turned around and kicked some of the lockers, causing his knee to send a sharp pain throughout his body.

"Fuck!" He yelled, his voice echoing down the hall.

Brendan was just exhausted of it all. He could never seem to catch a break and just be. No matter what he did, he screwed things up. He couldn't get anything right. Brendan was a failure. He was a failure and shame of a person. Seamus probably knew it all along. He knew all along what kind of a disgusting freak Brendan was, and that's why he did what he did. He had to somehow fix Brendan.

The sobs escaping Brendan bounced off the walls of the empty hallway.

The day just seemed to drag on until the final school bell had rung. Brendan slid off of his seat, casually flipping his hood back over his head at the same time. The students in front of him rushed out of the class as quickly as possible, and he snailed along behind them, not caring if he would be a little late.

When he finally exited the building through one of the side exits, Ste came running up to him.

"Brendan!" He shouted.
Brendan ignored him and continued walking on.
"We need to talk!" Ste shouted, now approaching him.
"Just…" He started, "Just please can we talk?"

Something snapped inside Brendan, and he turned and pushed Ste against the brick wall of the school.

"I have nothing to say to you!" Brendan snarled.
Ste gasped and he was shaking.
"I'm not a fucking faggot, and if you go running off your mouth to anyone, I swear to God, I will end you!" Brendan yelled, his arms shaking as well.
Brendan let him down and stormed off towards the main courtyard.

He resisted the urge to look back. He didn't want to see how sad Ste would look. He didn't want to have to see the fear in Ste's eyes. The fear he had implanted. He didn't want to see the way he was damaging Ste.

In the courtyard Brendan spotted Eileen. He made his way over to her and gave her a hug when he reached her, followed by a kiss on the lips. He had to get her taste on his lips again. And get rid of his.

As Eileen began babbling on about her weekend, Brendan spotted Ste walking towards the main gate. He was walking so slowly, as if he was carrying the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. His fringe was messed up, and he looked tired.

Brendan felt a pull inside him.

Ste looked up and saw Brendan, so Brendan immediately pulled Eileen in and gave her a kiss. A longer one this time. That would show Steven. He wasn't interested in anyone other than Eileen.

When he finally pulled away and looked back to where Ste had been standing, he was gone.