In which Andric's life is told. Inspired from a conversation with @thehollowwriter
TW: grooming, depression, suicidal thoughts, alcohol consumption, ableism(internalized), ageism(also internalized). Andric is overall a shitty person with a shitty worldview for most of it. Let me know if you want a trigger warning added
Andric is six years old. This is his first photoshoot. He doesn't quite understand what's going. I want to go home, he thinks. His favorite tv show is running soon. It's a season finale, and he doesn't want to miss it.
"Mom?" he tugs his mother's sleeve. "Can we go home? I'm bored."
"Not right now, hun. The photographer still wants to take a few pictures."
Little Andric looks down with a pout. He didn't like the photographer. He looked at him weird, like a predator admiring the helpless prey in it's claws before gobbling up. Sometimes, when no one else was watching, Andric saw him lick his lips hungrily. It gave him chills.
"What a pretty boy you are. Smile for the camera, will you?"
The next week, Andric is the star of an ad playing everywhere. All his kindergarden friends look at him in awe. The boy's torso fills with pride. He hated the photographer, but if it got him attention like that, he didn't mind.
Andric basks in his celebrity. After all, doesn't he deserve it? He is a pretty boy.
Andric is eight years old. He is in the hospital, watching his newborn sister cry in his mother's arms. Both she and his father sob, while the nurses coo.
"What a beautiful baby!" they all say. Andric's face tries not to betray his disgust. He disagrees. His little sister's face is all wrinkled uo with no teeth. She looks like an old, rotten potato.
An old, rotten potato couldn't be related to a pretty boy like him.
Andric is telve years old. His life consists of school, photo studios and meetings with his manager. Audrey, his little sister, keeps bugging him for attention. He refuses every time, before going away from a photoshoot, leaving her frustrated and teary.
He tries on a few clothes for a contract with a teen's magazine company. The photographer watches him intensely. Andric knows it's because he's pretty.
Contrary to his classmates, he has no zits, no acne. His hair is woven into shiny raven locks. His skin is smooth and his lips fill in perfect shapes. He is thin and slender. No matter if he has to starve himself to attain that. He even manifested his magic not too long ago. He is perfect. So why does he recoil everytime his manager puts is hand on his shoulder?
Andric is sixteen years old. He received his Night Raven College letter a few months ago. He stands in all his glory in front of the dark mirror. The whispers behind him fill his ego to the brim.
"Pomefiore!" the mirror blurts out. Ha, of course the prettiest student would get sorted into the fairest dorm.
The boy goes to join his dormmates. Yet he does not stand with them, but by them, his shine overshadowing his dormmates.
Andric is nineteen years old. For his fourth year, he's pursuing medicine to research cosmetics. While he studies during the day, he parties hard all night. He plays both men and women, breaking hearts and drinking away just to feel something. But he never does. So he tries again. Party, sleep, hungover, class, party. Rinse and repeat.
Then, he graduates. Despite his nightly activities, his grades are stellar. Nothing less from the perfect Andric.
Andric is twenty-three. He watches his parents wrinkle up and die. It's sad, really. In their final moments, they didn't even have the priviledge of beauty. Andric swears to never age, because to grow old is to decay.
Andric stands at his parent's funeral. His sister, fifteen and an orphan, is sobbing loudly. Andric does not shed a tear. Crying gives you wrinkles.
Andric sends Audrey to live with their aunt. As a legal adult, he could've taken her in, but he didn't. His home was like him, perfect, and everything that lived in it had to be perfect as well. She wasn't. So she couldn't come.
Andric is tenty-five. He meets Cindy, the most beautiful woman alive. She takes his breath away. Yet, she hates herself. She wishes her voice was deeper, he shoulders broader. Andric finds it ridiculous. Why change something already perfect?
Few months later, Andric and Cindy recite their vows. It was only natural for the fairest of each gender to get together.
Neither of them smile in their wedding pictures. Smiling gives you wrinkles.
Andric is twenty-eight, and is now growing anxious. His contracts keep getting denied in favor of younger models. He sends every application he can, until one finally calls him back.
He drives to the studio giddily. He is still has worth. He's still pretty. He wasn't prepared for what was to come.
In the middle of a shoot, a defective projector falls on his leg. He's rushed to the hospital, and a sense of dread fills his stomach.
Andric is only tenty-nine, but his life is already over.
His broken leg healed, but the nerve damage was so bad he can'T walk without a cane to support him. He stays in bed all day, even when he gets hungry. Why eat? It won't repair his leg.
Cindy tries her best to cheer him up, to get him out of the house. Nothing works. Defeated, she demands a divorce.
Andric has nothing. No wife, no beauty, no money, no worth. No one will make a contract with a disabled man. No one will put a man using a cane on the cover of a magazine.
Andric is only twenty-nine, but he wishes he was dead.
Andric is thirty years old. He hasn't left his home in a year. A friend from his medicine internship comes to visit him. Compared to Andric, who is a dead man walking, this friend is successful. He is a famed doctor teaching at an even more famed university.
The man comes with a suggestion. Andric already knows basic medicine. He could pick up the practice again, and enter his friend's univeristy. He could get a doctorate. Andric gives it a thought, and finally accepts. It's not like he has anything else to do.
Andric is thirty-six years old. His studies are finished and he gets his certificate and permit to practice medicine. He's still not happy, but he did something of his life.
Night Raven College offers him a place as school nurse. He accepts and moves in.
Andric is forty-five years old. His life is stable. He takes his job seriously and cares for his students. The years softened him up, even if he's still searching for something to fill the void that empties his heart.
He watches the orientation ceremony, and notices a boy. He looks exactly like his sister, he realizes. That day, he learns that he has two nephews he never bothered to ask about.
Andric goes back to his office and grabs a drink. Maybe it's finally time to apologise to his sister and reconnect with his family.
Andric is forty-six years old. It's his tenth year at NRC. This time, a girl shows up at orientation. She's lost, and distressed. Andric pities her.
A month or two later, she shows up at the infirmary, injured. An overblot happened, apparently. He treats her, like he does with everyone else.
Then she comes back again. Over and over again, with even more concerning wounds. He could see the scars settling in on her skin.
Andric doesn't know when or why he became attached to her. Maybe she reminded him of the person he could've been when he was younger, strong in the face of hardships. Maybe she just made him think of a wet kitten in a cardboard box who needed a home. He'll probably never know.
Either way, he ends up with adoption papers in his hands.
Andric is forty-seven years old. He is not a perfect pretty boy anymore. Maybe he never was. He is wrinkled and cannot see without glasses. Strangely, it doesn't bother him that much.
His work as a model is long gone. He's a doctor now, and it fulfills him more than standing in front of a camera ever did. He donates to campaigns who promote anti-objectification and grooming of children in the entertainment industry. He doesn't want anyone to be like he was.
He apologized to his sister. She doesn't forgive him, but he understands he can't undo all the pain he caused in years in only a short span of time. He's just thankful she lets him see his nephews and lets his daughter be a part of their lives.
Speaking of his daughter, she isn't lost anymore either. She found a place in this world so strange to her. You almost don't notice the scars when she smiles.
He also got some news from Cindy, or rather Corey. During the years after the divorce, Corey found out he was happier as man. Andric and him go out for dinner sometimes. Extinguished flames seemingly can burn again.
Finally, Andric doesn't flinch at the flash of a camera anymore. He also eats healthily, skipping no meal. He walks with his cane openly and proudly.
Andric is forty-seven. And he feels alive at last.
Thank you for reading! Reblogs and comments are appreciated, but no pressure!
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