#jaafar!michael

His pulse pounds against his throat as he reaches his parents’ bedroom. There is no other way to get to his own room. He has no choice but to pass it. Holding his breath, he continues on his way and hears someone walking through the entrance hall, likely a maid. Suddenly, he hears a sound from behind his parents’ bedroom doors, as if someone is moving inside. He startles, a sharp breath catching in his throat, and hurries past.

His bedroom door at the end of the hall comes into view, and with every step, the sound of his heartbeat grows louder in his ears, drowning out everything else. His hand trembles as he reaches for the doorknob and steps into the safety of his room. Leaning his back against the door, basically blocking it, he immediately lets out a breath, relieved that no one has seen him.

Michael knows he cannot hide his nose surgery forever; it is far too noticeable a procedure. Yet, in his mind, it makes sense to put off the inevitable revelation as long as possible, especially since he hasn’t told a soul about it. One morning, he simply looked in the mirror and saw Joseph staring back at him through his own reflection – specifically Joseph’s nose, that is – and booked the consultation before he could lose his nerve.

He was terrified, incredibly and utterly terrified. Medical procedures always frightened him and the significance attached to this one made it all the worse.

He dreads the day he will have to stand before him and admit what he has done. The day he gives him the satisfaction of knowing what his ugly words drove him to do. That years of being told he was ugly, that his nose was too big, too awkward, too wrong, had finally gotten to him.

“You’re back!”

Michael’s body goes rigid when he realizes he isn’t alone. You lie sprawled across his bed, absentmindedly kicking your feet as you flip through a magazine. You haven’t looked up yet; the article you’re reading apparently too interesting to spare your boyfriend a glance. For one fleeting second, Michael is grateful for it as it gives him a few extra seconds to figure out his next move. However, his mind has gone completely blank; he can’t think of a thing, except – SHIT!

You lift your gaze from the magazine and smile at him, but he immediately turns his head away, his cap and sunglasses obscuring his face. You caught a brief flash of something white on his face, your smile fading almost instantly. You frown, sensing that something is wrong.

“Michael?”, you whisper, barely making a sound, and swing your legs over the edge of the bed, the magazine long forgotten. With each step you take toward him, he flinches and your stomach drops. His entire body is tense; he presses his back against the door so hard he’s practically trembling. One hand is behind his back, gripping the door handle tightly, as if he’s about to bolt at any moment.

“What’s.. going on?”, you ask, but the question dies halfway through.  You are close enough now, close enough that him turning his head away no longer helps. Your gaze falls on his nose and the bandages wrapped around it.

“What..?” The word escapes in a shaky breath. Michael presses his lips into a thin line and his eyes remain fixed on the floor. Because he is terrified of what he might see in your expression when you look at him like this. He couldn’t bear it if you were to see him differently now.

You cautiously raise a hand, very slowly. He notices from the corner of his eye and instinctively shrinks away, as though making himself smaller could soften whatever you’re about to say. You gently cradle his chin and turn his head toward you, leaving him no choice but to look at you. He doesn’t resist.

The extent of what he has done is now unmistakably visible right there on his face. Behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, his eyes shimmer with unshed tears. When he spots a hint of sadness in your gaze, not disgust, not disappointment, his shoulders loosen ever so slightly. Evidently, he senses no threat coming from you. You had never given him any reason to fear judgment or condemnation, but Michael’s mind liked to convince him of the worst.

Without saying a word, you gently remove the sunglasses from his face to look into his eyes. You almost drop it when you look into his deep brown, big, beautiful eyes, a hitched breath escaping your throat. Dark purple bruises surround both eyes, a sign that his nose was likely broken. His eyes radiate such profound sadness and vulnerability that it takes your breath away, leaving you momentarily dizzy as you realize what it all means. Why he did it.

You don’t dare touch his face, afraid even the gentlest contact might hurt him, so your hands just hover uncertainly beside his face while you’re searching for the right words to say. You can’t come up with anything and because Michael can’t bear it any longer, the uncertainty of it all, he beats you to it.

“It’s for my sinuses”, he says softly, his voice cracking at the end. He can’t even look at you when he says it, averting his gaze once more.

“Oh, Michael”, your breath trembles as the words leave your mouth. You know he’s lying and he knows that you know that he’s lying. You know why he did it and he knows that you know why he did it. He has told you about it often enough. That he wants to look like a real superstar, that his nose is simply too big, too ugly. All words his father drilled into him from early childhood, until eventually, he came to believe them.

You have witnessed firsthand how Joseph talks to him even to this day, how he tears him down at any chance he gets, mocking him, belittling him, calling him ugly when he is quite literally the most beautiful man in the world. The irony of it all makes your blood boil.

You had loved his nose, it fit him so well. You still do. His entire face was perfect to you, is perfect to you. Changing it won’t change how you see him. But it hurts knowing he never got the chance to see himself through your eyes instead of Joseph’s. You feel like you’ve failed him. That you didn’t do enough to blur Joseph’s words out, to make him feel comfortable in his own skin, to accept himself the way he is. But you never had any chance, Joseph’s damage had been done long before you came into his life.

What hurts most is watching him try to hide from you.

It’s all becoming too much for Michael. He simply can’t meet your gaze, a single tear slipping down his cheek. He reaches for his sunglasses and squeezes past you, flexing his hand because he had been gripping the door handle far too tightly. You don’t let him get far, though. Quickly, you grab his wrist. He stops abruptly and looks at you, so sad and hurt that it breaks your heart. A grown, beautiful man, broken by the words of a man who ought to be supporting him, who ought to love him just as he is. Who terribly failed him.

Without hesitation, you pull him into a tight embrace, careful not to touch his nose. At first, Michael is taken aback and stands rigid in your arms, caught completely off-guard.

“Does it hurt?”, you murmur against his shoulder, planting a feather-light kiss there. His breath shudders and then, slowly, almost hesitantly, his arms wrap around you. He pulls you close until there’s no space left between you, squeezing you tightly against his chest.

Only then does his body relax and he wraps his arms around you, pressing you closer, chest to chest. You can tell by the way he hugs you back, that he’s so grateful to have you, to have someone who will always have his back, no matter what. You can feel his heartbeat underneath his skin.

“A bit”, he sniffs. You both know he isn’t talking about the surgery. The deepest wound had been there long before the bandages ever were. Neither of you says so.

Michael’s grip tightens almost imperceptibly. You feel it in the way his fingers curl into the fabric of your shirt, in the way he leans just a little more of his weight against you, as though holding himself upright has suddenly become too exhausting. Silence stretches between the two of you, broken only by his uneven breathing against your shoulder. Gently, you rub your hand up and down his back, reminding him that you are there.

“I ruined my face.” The words are so quiet you almost miss them. Your heart cracks and you pull back just enough to look at him, keeping your hands resting lightly against his sides so you don’t risk brushing his nose.

“What?”

“I know you loved my old nose. Now I look like this, awful”, he swallows hard.

“Do you want to know why I loved your old nose?”, you ask, adjusting the collar of his shirt.

“Why?”

“Because it was yours”, you explain, your fingertips carefully smoothing the sleeve of his overall. “And I’ll love this one for exactly the same reason.”

For a long moment, you simply look at him. Michael doesn’t know how to respond to that. He is overwhelmed by the gentleness in your voice, in your eyes. It feels almost foreign, being looked at with so much love when he’d spent most of his life expecting criticism instead. He wants to believe you, desperately, but Joseph’s voice is louder, older, woven into him too tightly to simply disappear.

With the same care you’d shown when removing his sunglasses, you reach up to the brim of his cap now, lift it from his head and set it aside. Soft curls, flattened from being tucked beneath it for hours, spring free. You gently comb your fingers through them, brushing them back from his forehead, careful not to go anywhere near the bandages.

“I just..”, your voice catches for a moment, unsure how to phrase it. “I just wish you would’ve told me.”

He lowers his gaze, feeling embarrassed that he ever thought, even if it was only for the split of a second, that you could ever resent him for what he’d done. You slip your hand into his, the touch making him look up nervously as he squeezes your hand.

“I would’ve been there to hold your hand”, you tell him, your thumb stroking over his knuckles. “You didn’t have to be scared by yourself.”

A fresh tear rolled down Michael’s cheek. “I know”, he whispers hoarsely. “I just.. I couldn’t.”

“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you”, you say, your own voice trembling now. “How incredibly beautiful you are, inside and out. I hate that he spent your entire childhood convincing you that you weren’t enough. Because you’re more than enough, Michael.”

The bandages are covering the aftermath of what has been done to him. Years of shame, years of hearing the same cruel worlds, years of pretending they didn’t matter – all of it crashes over him at once. Immediately, you wrap him in your arms again. This time he doesn’t hesitate and buries his face against your shoulder as carefully as he can, mindful of his bandaged nose, while his body shakes with quiet sobs.