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Chapter 14 - No Son Of Mine.

So, falling asleep before eight in the evening after a drunken afternoon leads to many unpleasant things. It leads to waking up really, really early the following morning. It leads to three am puking. It leads to being hungover when its still not even light out. It leads to a stiff neck and sore back from falling asleep on the couch, which in turn leads to grumbling and muttering and complaining after the hangover victim eventually stumbles off to bed. And, when all these symptoms are accompanied by an unwelcome and overly solicitous house guest, it may even result in uncontrollable bouts of angry seething and repeated warnings to ‘fuck off already’. 

Unfortunately for Justin, he couldn’t just fuck off and leave Brian to enjoy his hangover in peace. Not only was it still too early for any buses to be running, but one glance out the window revealed that it would likely be hours before the snowplows had the city dug out after the prior day’s storm. He was now regretting that text he’d sent to his mother the previous evening letting her know he was going to stay put where he was, citing the snow as an excuse; especially since he hadn’t accomplished his main purpose of emotionally connecting with Brian in order to try and locate Gus. Yeah, being snowbound with a grouchy, hungover, and generally antagonistic Brian Kinney wasn’t the kind of sleepover he’d hoped for. Mostly, though, Justin tried to just make himself as unobtrusive as possible and wait out the worst of Brian’s mood.

About nine am, Justin was busy scrounging through his host’s mostly-empty refrigerator and cupboards, looking for sustenance, when his phone pinged. 

Daphne: Your mom just called looking for you. She didn’t sound happy. She said to call her asap. I could hear your dad in the background too. Good luck...

“Shit . . .”

“Here,” Brian picked up his wallet off the counter and threw at Justin’s head then went back to moaning into his crossed arms. “Just order something in and quit slamming the cupboard doors already before my head explodes.”

Justin rolled his eyes and tried to control the snark in his voice. “Have you looked outside, Brian? Nobody’s going to deliver anything with the streets like that. It’s Snowmagedden out there. We must have got at least ten inches last night.”

“At least somebody got ten inches,” Brian mumbled, even his sense of humor seeming under the weather. 

“Besides, that’s not why I was complaining,” Justin continued to explain, ignoring Brian’s lame joke. “Apparently my mother is looking for me and it doesn’t sound good. I’m, technically, still supposed to be grounded after skipping school yesterday. And when she finds out I’m not really sleeping over at my friend’s house while we work on a school project, things are likely to get bad. Really bad . . .” Justin started tapping at his phone, accessing the app that showed the local bus schedules and groaned again. “It doesn’t look like any of the bus lines that head out to the suburbs are running yet. At least not on time. According to this, it’ll take me, like . . . Four hours . . . To get home. I’m fucked.”

“Fucking drama princess,” Brian muttered, getting off his stool with another dramatic groan of his own. “Give me five minutes to go puke again and I’ll fucking drive you home.”

Justin managed - just barely - to stifle his doubtful reply about whether Brian was in any condition to drive. He couldn’t afford to be picky; he really did need a ride if he was going to make it home before his parents discovered his latest deception. So he merely went about the task of gathering his stuff together and said nothing. He didn’t even comment on the rumpled-looking driver that eventually emerged from the bedroom, with untamed bedhead, his shirt mis-buttoned, and the bags under his eyes drooping below the bottom rims of the dark shades Brian had donned.

The drive out to the ‘burbs was slow and silent. Even with the Jeep in 4-wheel drive it was a bit dicey. Brian seemed to be a pretty good snow driver, though, and they made it all the way without landing in a ditch, which Justin counted as a win. At the last minute, he decided it wasn’t safe to have Brian take him all the way to his own house, though, and instead directed him towards Daphne’s; Justin figured he could hoof it the mile and a half from there to his own house without Brian’s help. 

Just as they pulled up in front of the split-level brick house where the Chanders family lived, the first snow plow made its way down the street, effectively burying Brian’s car in a large bank of dirty, muck-filled snow. Brian got out, climbed over the pile of snow that almost blocked the driver’s side door from opening, and loudly cursed the snowplow driver with an inappropriate finger waved at the plow’s rear bumper to top it all off. 

Unfortunately, Daphne’s father opened up the front door right at that moment, so he got the full Kinney show. Justin cringed. Daphne’s dad had always been a pretty nice guy - it was Daphne’s mom who was the disciplinarian in the house and who would have thrown a fit at hearing that kind of language - but still, it meant that Mr. Chanders was now officially in on the secret of Justin’s unconventional association with one Brian Kinney and Justin didn’t know how that would fall out.

“Hey, Mr. Chanders,” Justin waved with a conciliatory smile. “Enough snow for ya?”

“At least it’s the weekend, right?” Came the reply before he added, “Your parents have been calling a couple times this morning, son. Anything you want to tell me?” 

Justin noticed the appraising look his friend’s father gave to the disreputable-looking person who’d driven him that morning and internally groaned. This wasn’t going to turn out well. As nice a guy as Mr. Chanders was, he wouldn’t cover for Justin if confronted by Jennifer and Craig Taylor. There would be seriously negative fallout from this. Justin knew that. The only question was just how bad it would get . . .

A question that was answered less than a minute later when Craig Taylor’s Audi sedan came tooling down the newly plowed street and parked right behind Brian’s Jeep. 

Justin didn’t have time to hide. He was still standing there on the Chanders’ unshoveled front walk when his father stormed up to him, already yelling. And, judging by Craig’s florid complexion and the veins visibly pulsing in his temples, the man was NOT in a good mood. 

“There you are!” Craig growled at the boy who’d retreated as far up the walk as he could with Mr. Chanders still blocking the entrance. “Did I NOT make it clear to you yesterday that you were grounded until further notice, young man? How dare you defy me like this? I don’t know how you managed to manipulate your mother into letting you come over here in the first place, but she definitely didn’t give you permission to stay the night over here. You need a SERIOUS attitude adjustment, Justin - you hear me? I’m not going to let you run roughshod over your mother and I like this. I don’t care how old you are. As long as you’re living in MY house, you WILL obey my rules. Got it?” Craig snarled nastily at his son.

“I’m sorry, Dad . . .” Justin started, his voice carrying a pleading tone that he hoped was best calculated to defuse the blaring fury he was sensing coming off the irate man.

“Oh, you’ll be sorry all right,” Craig replied, reaching out to grab hold of Justin’s arm and yanking so hard as he tried to get the boy to start moving towards the waiting car that Justin stumbled and almost fell. 

“Now, Craig. I don’t think that’s necessary,” Mr. Chanders cautioned, reaching out a stabilizing hand to help keep Justin upright.

“This isn’t any of your concern, Geoff. I’ll deal with my own son in my own way,” Craig bit angrily back, his hand tightening around the youth’s biceps to the point that the fingers began to dig into his flesh. “Get your rear to that car, boy.”

“Ouch,” Justin complained, trying ineffectively to wrench his arm out of the older man’s grasp. “I can walk by myself, Dad. You don’t have to pull my arm off.”

Criag’s response was to jerk at his son’s arm even more viciously as he towed the boy in the direction of the street.

Before Justin could react, however, their combined progress was halted by the looming presence of a tall, forbidding, and unamused Irishman blocking the walkway.

“Get your fucking hands off him,” Brian snarled at Craig, his eyes laser focused on the spot where Craig’s hand was wrapped around Justin’s upper arm. 

“Excuse me?” Craig seemed surprised that someone had the temerity to stand up to him. “And who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s going to break your hand if you don’t remove it from the kid’s arm in the next ten seconds.”

Justin had been aware of Brian’s continued presence in the background of the situation from the moment his father had arrived. He’d been hoping that his dad was too incensed to pay attention to the stranger lurking in the background. What he hadn’t planned on was the instantaneous rage that erupted out of Brian the minute that Craig’s anger got physical. In the seconds after Justin let out that involuntary ‘ouch’, he felt Brian’s previously closed-off emotions erupt in a wave of furious protectiveness. It was the strongest emotion Justin had ever sensed from the man. Craig had obviously triggered some long-repressed emotions that Brian simply couldn’t control. The reaction proved that Brian’s emotions were just as strong as Justin had always suspected they could be. If the situation wasn’t about to explode in a very unpleasant way, Justin might have even been happy to discover that his hypothesis about Brian being a strong empath had been proven correct.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, Buddy,” Craig gnarled back, planting himself defiantly in front of the significantly taller Brian, “but nobody tells me how to deal with my own son, so back the hell off.”

“Spoken like every abusive loser in history ever,” Brian scoffed without backing down. “I said, get your hands off him and I meant it. Or would you rather lose that fucking hand.”

Something in the menacing delivery of those words apparently penetrated Craig’s righteous anger and caused him to pause. He looked from Brian to Justin and then back at Brian, his stormy frown getting more pronounced in the process. Then he looked over towards the waiting Jeep and something in his memory seemed to snap into place. 

Justin didn’t need to be an empath to read Craig’s ongoing thought processes from that point on. He remembered back to the previous fall, after he’d gotten in trouble at school due to the altercation with Chris Hobbs, when his father had confronted him about the rumors of Justin’s homosexuality. Craig had asked him about the reported incidence of his son showing up at school in a Jeep spray painted with the word ‘Faggot’ on the side. Justin had demurred back then, refusing to disclose anything about the ‘older man’ he’d shown up to school with that day. But he was sure his father hadn’t forgotten the stories. And he was equally sure that Craig Taylor had just put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

In a probably futile attempt to de-escalate the situation, Justin reached out and touched the back of Brian’s wrist - hoping to transmit an infusion of calm through his contact. “It’s okay, Brian. I can handle this. You don’t have to stay.”

“I’m not going to just walk away and leave when someone's hurting you, Justin,” Brian insisted, broadcasting a stubbornness that Justin could have read from a block away. “I don’t care if he is your father - he needs to take his fucking hands off you right now or he’ll be left with only stubs after I’m done.”

Craig ignored Brian’s words, turning instead so he could directly confront his son. “So THIS is the pervert who corrupted my son? This . . . creep . . . is the one everyone’s been talking about? The one you flaunted in front of your entire school last fall? And here I was, hoping that all that shit had finally blown over . . . That you were getting over all this gay nonesense . . .”

If Craig thought those comments would shame his son into repudiating Brian, he was 100% wrong. “I’m not going to just ‘get over’ being gay, Dad. It doesn’t work like that. And if you weren’t such a homophobe, you’d have realized that by now,” Justin replied, finally making the effort to pull his arm out of his father’s grip. “I’m gay, Dad. I’m always going to be gay. You complaining about it isn’t going to change a thing.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Justin. Just because this pedophile has been whispering lies to you, it doesn’t mean anything. You’re confused, I get that, but you don’t have to listen to his bullshit. You can make better choices . . .”

“Brian isn’t a pedophile or a pervert or any of the other names you’ve called him,” Justin countered, letting his own anger finally have rein. “And being with Brian didn’t ‘make me gay’; I’ve always BEEN gay, Dad. How many times do I have to say it? YOUR SON IS GAY, CRAIG. GET OVER IT ALREADY!”

“DON’T YOU DARE TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, JUSTIN,” Craig shouted back, his face turning a darker crimson as his anger mounted. “I’M YOUR FATHER AND AS LONG AS YOU’RE LIVING UNDER MY ROOF YOU’LL TREAT ME WITH RESPECT, YOUNG MAN!”

“Respect is earned, Dad. I’ll treat you with respect when you start respecting me,” Justin replied, not giving in even though he recognized that the situation was getting out of control and tried to modulate his voice a bit. “But you can’t just order me not be to gay and you can’t control who I see or don’t see; I’m eighteen now, so you have no say over any of that.”

Unsurprisingly, Craig didn’t take Justin’s continued defiance well. “I’d think twice about that if I were you, Justin,” Craig spat back, his voice dropping to an ice-cold hiss. “I’m still your father and, as long as I’m the one paying for the roof over your head, the food on your table, the clothing on your back, and the school you’re attending, you’ll comply with MY rules. Otherwise, you can take your ‘gay’ ass and get the fuck out of MY house. So, what’s it going to be, huh? You going to get your butt in that car right now and stop talking back to me, or do you want to go clear out your room?” 

Justin could sense that his father was completely serious. Craig wasn’t just making an idle threat. The man felt that his back was up against a wall. If he gave in, he’d lose face, and capitulation wasn’t something Craig Taylor ever did well. Justin knew he was being given zero options; he could either comply with his father’s dictatorial demands or end up homeless. 

Not much of a choice, really. 

With a brief, apologetic look over at his lover, Justin sighed and then started walking towards his father’s car. 

He could feel several pairs of eyes watching his humiliation but didn’t say anything as he walked away from where Daphne and both her parents had come out to stand on the front porch; he couldn’t face the outpouring of sympathy he was feeling from those three. He couldn’t face the radiating concern or the hints of repressed rage he still sensed coming from Brian. And he definitely didn’t want to deal with the overwhelming flood of superiority and gloating from his father. 

He knew he was a coward, but what else was he going to do? He had no where else to go if Craig followed through on his threat and kicked him out. So, for the time being at least, he would have to comply with the man’s authoritarian dictates and hold his tongue. 

Even though he felt like it might kill him.

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“. . . Seriously. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Justin,” Craig’s lecture had been droning on from the moment he got in the car for the short drive home. “You used to be such a good kid. But now look at you. You get in fights. You skip school. You sneak around and refuse to tell your parents where you’re going. I don’t even recognize my son anymore.” Craig signalled the turn onto the street where the Taylor home was located. “But I promise you, things are going to change and they’re going to change right now! I won’t have any more of these shenanigans. You hear me?” 

Craig stopped the car in the driveway, waiting till the garage door rattled open, and reached out a hand to stop Justin before the youth could escape the car. 

“You’re grounded until further notice and there will be *NO* exceptions. Got it?” Justin nodded, tight-lipped and refusing to meet Craig’s gaze. “And as soon as we get inside I’m confiscating both your phone and your laptop so your mother and I can monitor your communications from now on; I don’t want you contacting that pervert who’s corrupted you. In fact, you are NEVER to see him or talk to him again. Is that clear?”

Justin sat there and refused to respond in any way to his father’s dictates. He didn’t have any choice but to comply with Craig’s immediate demands, but there was no way he’d agree to never see or speak to Brian again. Right at that moment, however, the only act of rebellion he could afford was to just sit there, like a lump of stone, and endure without comment. 

He’d let Craig rant and make demands and work himself into a tizzy, but there was no way the man would crack Justin’s passive resistance. Let Craig beat himself silly against the wall of his son’s immutability. Let him exhaust himself. All his angry, bigoted words wouldn’t change a thing. And Justin only had a few months left before he would be finished with high school and get to move away to college. Then he’d be free. 

He just had to hold out until then. 

“And I expect your attitude to improve as well,” Craig continued even as Justin was about to get out of the car, with or without his father’s permission, finally fed up with the bombastic list of new ‘rules’. “I won’t have a son of mine running around like some damned degenerate, flaunting himself in front of everyone we know . . .”

Before Justin could push open the door, however, he was hit with yet another vision. This one featured that same dark room, with a baby lying in a drawer on the floor, the little nest illuminated by a blinding flash of light. He only got a brief glimpse of the baby, though; Gus was lying there, crying his poor little heart out, seemingly all alone. But within just a few seconds, the light began to shift and the portion of the scene that was visible was quickly reduced as the illumination wedged smaller and smaller until the whole thing was plunged into darkness again. 

There was the sound of a door shutting. Then Justin heard a voice - it was muted and the words were difficult to make out, as if the speaker was a great distance away or, maybe, off in another room - speaking in a distorted wah-wah-wah of complaint. 

“. . . I don’t KNOW why he’s always crying. I’m sure they probably just spoiled him rotten . . . Coddling him all the time . . . Although, heaven knows his father was always a brat too . . .”

Justin lost his connection to the scene and was startled back into the present as the car door was tugged out of his hand. He looked up to see Craig standing there, next to the open passenger door of the car, looking down on a still-seated Justin. 

“Sitting here all day brooding isn’t going to change things, Justin. Now, get your butt inside while I inform your mother of what’s happened.”

Justin bit his tongue and followed orders, marching in through the garage door on his father’s heels, but all the time he was internally screaming. 

His deluded father was preventing him from even contacting Brian to let him know what this new vision showed. Justin was so frustrated he felt like hitting something . . . or someone . . . Of course that would just land him in even more trouble. It wouldn’t help Gus. 

But how could he just sit at home, doing nothing, while little Gus was still being held by a monster? 

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