glow•° || skz || nonbinary Felix ff

freckles•°

I often looked at my face in the mirror, staring at my freckles. Trying to count them. Wondering if it were more than before.

I don't know.

I wanted to like them. I wanted to like my freckles.

But it was hard.

Beauty standards wanted my skin to be light and clean, like porcelain. Part of me wanted that, too.

Yet my skin wasn't clean. And it was a few shades too dark to count as the clean white they wished for. Due to my childhood under the Australian sun, they said. I thought that it was just a normal skin colour, like every other too.

After all, I thought, we're humans, not porcelain dolls.

After all, I thought, I still don't love my face.

I'm so used to seeing it whitewashed in all our photos and videos that it feels like a shock to see my normal self - a slight tan, sometimes dark circles under my eyes, and freckles.

So many freckles.

Everywhere.

I even found a few on my shoulders.

•°

One day, I was alone at the dance studio to practice.

I was taking a break and scrolling through posts from stays.

I always do that.

You need to keep up.

Then I stumbled across a post that had me stopping and rereading.

And rereading.

Felix's eyes couldn't hold all the stars in them, so they spilled down on his cheeks - disguised as freckles.

It was beautiful.

It ripped open every wound in me I gained from all the battles I fought to like my face. My freckled face.

Suddenly everything hurt.

I felt so guilty for every time I covered them up with make up. For every time I felt good doing so.

They were a part of me. A part of me that was loved.

My stars.

I saw a teardrop falling on my phone screen.

My vision got blurry.

There was a fight in me ever since I got confronted with those beauty standards. It hurt.

After a while, I distantly registered how someone came into the dance studio.

Found me sitting on the floor, sobbing, crying my eyes out.

It was Seungmin.

He didn't ask. He wasn't like that.

He just sat down next to me.

I was so thankful for him.

I wouldn't have known what to say.

After a few moments, I wordlessly showed him my phone, let him read the words.

I could tell he expected to find hate, bad stuff said about us that got me this wrecked.

I watched him in my blurry view, how he read and reread, just as I did.

His whole expression turned soft as he looked up again.

He smiled reassuringly.

His smile was like a healing salve.

I started to sob again.

I didn't deserve him. No one does.

He hugged me tightly, let me cry into his shirt until it was soaked.

He didn't know half of the war in me. But he saw how deeply I was affected. And he was there for me.

My shoulder to cry on.

My soldier to get me through this.

We didn't talk that day, not a single sentence. Yet everything important was said.

.

.

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