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Marco woke up from blissful, joyful sleep to Jean being ripped from his arms. Marco was about to open his eyes and reach out to bring Jean back, only to freeze when he registered the voice of Jean’s father shouting in the room. It was followed closely by the sound of Jean thudding to the floor and groaning in pain, making Marco’s stomach lurch.
“I guess this answers one question. Doesn’t answer the others that I had when I walked in here to you cuddling a man like a fucking queer,” Jean’s dad spat, his contempt on full display.
Hearing Jean growl and the sounds of him scrambling to his feet, Marco braced himself for the impending confrontation. He was utterly terrified, the mere presence of Jean’s father making Marco feel threatened. He should have known not to sleep over. He knew how hateful Jean’s dad was from the stories Jean had told and the times he’d vented about it, so why did he put himself in this position? What could he hope to do if Jean’s dad went after him?
Fighting down the urge to tremble or get up and run, Marco decided to feign sleep. He was hyper-aware of his movements as he reached out for Jean’s stuffed axolotl. Pulling it to his chest and hiding his face against the creature’s, Marco tried not to give himself away as he shook and curled in a little tighter. The joy he’d felt kissing Jean the night before felt so distant now, replaced with alarm over what their newly-changed relationship would mean for Jean’s home life.
“I’m not gay. I can be close with my best friend and not be gay.”
Marco silently praised Jean for dancing around what was making his father so angry. Things between them were too new and unsure for Jean to commit to telling his dad anything. The risk of what he might do was far too great, and Marco couldn’t bear the thought of Jean getting hurt over whatever they had. Even so, a tiny piece of Marco felt wounded at Jean’s denial. While he didn’t have to be gay for them to have something, the resolution with which Jean answered felt like it took away any other possibilities, too.
"The neighbors told me they saw you kissing someone on the roof last night–" Jean’s dad accused, and Marco cursed whichever loose-lipped neighbors had contributed to this mess.
“I didn’t kiss Marco–” While Marco knew Jean had to say that to protect them, it still stung to hear him deny it.
"Then who was it? I don't see a girl in your fucking bed this morning, just a sorry excuse for a–"
"Don't you dare drag Marco into this. This isn’t about him, and if you try to make it about him, I’ll make you regret it." Jean’s voice held a dangerous amount of conviction, and Marco held the axolotl tighter as panicked tears began to prickle at his eyes at the dry laugh Jean’s dad let out.
"I want to see you try you fucking fruity bitch. I swear to god if you kissed that boy I–” Marco winced at that insult, various times throughout his life when he’d been insulted the same way forcing their way into his mind.
"If we did, we were drunk." Marco’s panic intensified as Jean’s backpedaling only worsened the situation.
"If you did, you're not my fucking son!" Jean’s father bellowed before his voice lowered again, replacing its volume with venom. "Seems to me that he’s rubbing off his disgusting nature onto you.”
Marco stifled a sob and curled his fingers into the axolotl so hard his fingers hurt. He knew Jean’s dad was far from accepting, but Jean had apparently done a great deal of censoring with his stories about just how awful his dad was. Marco had never faced his dad’s violence so head-on before, and it was horrifying in a way nothing else in his life had ever been. He’d never outright feared for his safety before, not like this. A brief flash of gratitude for his family’s supportiveness cut through his terror just long enough to stop another sob from risking his cover of being asleep.
“There’s nothing wrong with liking men. There’s nothing wrong with Marco.” Jean held his ground, but Marco wanted him to back down, to stop before he got hurt for being so stubborn.
“Oh there’s definitely something wrong with him if he’s thinking he likes boys. It doesn’t work, and it's not what God intended. Gay people are just sad, confused individuals who don’t know what the fuck they want from life, so to get more attention they–” Marco felt pinned to the bed, drowning in the hate Jean’s father spewed like water from a hose until the slap of skin against skin interrupted the flow.
Marco stopped shaking. He did not need to open his eyes to know that someone had been hit, and the way Jean’s father was cut off made it clear he’d been on the receiving end of the strike. Something in Jean had snapped in a way Marco had never seen before. This was above and beyond what Marco could have braced himself for, Jean’s stories of his dad doing nothing to communicate the intensity of their confrontations.
Marco stopped shaking; he went limp, feeling cold all over and trapped in a nightmare.
“You have no right to speak about Marco, or any–” Jean growled until he was interrupted with a sickening thud followed by his body hitting the ground for the second time that morning.
When Marco realized the thud was the bottle in Jean’s dad’s hand colliding with Jean’s head, his panic shifted from his own safety to that of Jean’s. Marco couldn’t begin to imagine what it felt like to have a bottle of whiskey slammed onto your head. When he didn’t hear Jean groaning or moving for several seconds, Marco almost opened his eyes. He stopped with the realization that looking could confirm the worst-case scenario as reality.
“I WILL NOT HAVE A GAY SON!” If Marco had thought Jean’s dad was bellowing before, he was roaring now.
“I’M NOT FUCKING GAY!” Jean got up again and shoved his father into the hallway before stepping out, slamming the door behind him.
Marco’s relief that Jean was conscious was short-lived, ending when he heard more physical fighting on the other side of the door, and that was his breaking point. Bolting up in the bed, Marco shoved the axolotl aside and hurried as silently as he could through sliding his shoes on and opening Jean’s bedroom window. It felt terrible to run away when Jean was clearly being hurt, but Marco knew his interference would only make things worse.
On top of the utter terror and concern pumping adrenaline through Marco’s veins, there was also the hurt of hearing Jean so vehemently refuse being gay. Marco felt disgusted that he was even thinking about this at the moment, but it was hard to ignore the breaking of his heart. Aside from Jean’s insistence that there was nothing between them, there was also the fact that having anything between them put Jean in danger Marco couldn’t possibly justify.
Reeling from the extremes of emotion he’d felt in the past 12 hours, Marco crawled out Jean’s window and quietly endured the scratching of falling into bushes. The thorns dug into his exposed skin and itched through his clothes, but the sensation was grounding in a way Marco desperately needed. Rolling out of them with ragged breaths and tears streaming down his face, Marco’s control over his fear was almost immediately lost upon getting out of Jean’s house. Marco gave himself a minute to think about the best way to get home on foot, trying hard to tune out the yelling that still echoed behind him.
Glancing around to make sure nobody would see him, Marco sprinted off towards his house, leaving in the bushes any hope for happiness with Jean.