hsavinien

Title: There's No Cowboy Yet
Author: H. Savinien
Rating: PG-13 for the aftermath of violence and swearing
Disclaimer: Wilby Wonderful belongs to its creators, the character of Duck MacDonald belongs to the writers and Callum Keith Rennie.
Word count: 300
A.N.: Written for the

ds_snippets challenge 41 prompt "red". Duck's quiet, probably dyslexic, and suspected of being gay in a small town high school. This doesn't always go well for him.

***

Duck coughs and there's red in it, on the hand he had over his mouth, he tastes blood on his teeth, and he's scared this time and his throat's raw and his face is throbbing in time to his heartbeat and it hurts to breathe too deep and fuck the island and his fucking drunk-ass useless dad and fucking Islander kids twice his weight. (He's working on the fishing boats every weekend and chopping wood for Mrs. Chan and he's getting stronger, but it doesn't do him much good against four footballers when they corner him on the way home.) Duck rolls onto his side and breathes in slow, waiting for the stabbing pain that'll mean a broken rib. When it doesn't come, he sits up and scoots back to lean against a maple tree. He spits and spits again and there's less red. Duck pulls himself upright using the tree for leverage, leaving a smear of spit and blood where his hand was. He grits his teeth against the pain, but that sets his face on fire, so he tries to just hold everything in his face still.

Just get home. His mum will be horrified and try to hide it and his dad'll ask what he did to deserve it and tomorrow the teachers will cluck and make comments where they think he can't hear about "that Mr. MacDonald" and one of them will mutter about "kid needs toughening up anyway" and the boys who did it will smirk and punch each other in the arm. Sandra will swear at them to try and cheer him up and patch him up as best she can.

Duck's going to get out of Wilby, off the island. Soon as he finishes high school. Anywhere's got to be better than here.