Baby Lotion (Larry Stylinson)

chapter 1

                  

                  

Chapter One:

He'd always rub it all over himself. The baby lotion, not whatever you sick fucks were thinking. Every day since he was just big enough to toddle over to his mum's cabinet and reach the second shelf to grab it.  Baby lotion became his favorite thing. He loved the smell of it, he loved the bottle it came in, he loved the shade of pink it was, and most of all, he loved how soft it made his skin. After he would apply the lotion, he would lightly glide his hands over his skin just to feel the smoothness of it. And every year for his birthday and Christmas since he was about five or six years old, he would ask for baby lotion from everyone in his family. "Harry, you're lucky your dad left us before this crazy obsession of yours started; you'd probably be dead by now." His mother would tell him. He never knew much of his father except for what his mother would tell him when she wasn't working or sleeping too much to actually talk to him. What he knew was that his dad knocked up his mother and left her as soon as Harry was born. She'd told him about how he hated nearly everyone who wasn't a completely white, catholic male or female. She knew for a fact that if he'd stayed around to see how Harry grew up, he'd already have beat the shit out of him to the point of Harry dying. The thing is, Harry knew he was gay, but he never told his mother, but she already had a little insight that he probably was. She thinks that's why he collects baby lotion: because he's too afraid of people finding out about this other thing people seemed to think of as a "disorder".

He'd apply the baby lotion to his body twice a day. Once as soon as he got out of the bath in the mornings, and another time right before he went to bed at night. He always carried around a little bottle of it with him just in case his skin wasn't as soft as he had liked in a particular moment. He's applied the lotion every single day of every single week of every single month of every single year for 12 years; him first finding out about the substance at age 4 and him being 16 now. Yes, there was always the occasional bully who would laugh at him and call him names if he/she ever found out about his habit. Yes, that hurt him, but it was nothing that a little lotion and a razor blade couldn't help.

He wouldn't damage his skin often, but when he hurt enough he would. He often thought about the irony of what he was doing. When he was in emotional pain, he would cause himself physical pain to "help" it. This other less-demanding habit had started in grade 8 when he found a boy he developed feelings for. The boy's name was Nick, and he and Harry had every class together and always sat together in lunch because neither one of them had that many friends other than each other. This was around the time that Harry had come to terms with his sexuality and accepted his new reality: he likes boys. He told Nick about him being gay and Nick was very accepting until a few weeks later. Harry began to develop a crush on Nick and when he finally had the guts to tell him, Nick laughed in his face and called him a fag. That day Harry lost the only true friend that he'd ever had and when he realized this, he locked himself in the bathroom and cried until his eyes were puffy. He remembered something he'd seen on Tumblr in that moment; it was a girl with a razor cutting her wrists to ease her pain she felt in her mind. It seemed to work for her so it should work for him as well. He found the razor he used to shave his legs -yes, he shaves his legs, he just loves everything on him to be soft- and he broke it so he could get one of the blades out. He stared at the blade for what seemed like hours until he finally took it to his skin. He winced and hissed in pain as it sliced his pure skin open, the blood trickling down his arm. He felt something in that moment that he hadn't felt in a long time: relief from his pain.