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“...engaged?” Patsy echoed without much enthusiasm.
“To be married?” Harry added, his doubtful expression quickly morphing into a forced smile when their father shot him a glare.
John swallowed, his mouth dry and still a little fuzzy from the hangover he had woken with after his stupid stint with the wine yesterday.
He braced his forearms on the edge of the already cleared table, too aware of all the eyes on him, and tried not to remember the way Alex had looked last night, the betrayal in his eyes that was so clearly visible even in the dark, the flash of fear just after he’d realised, the way he’d flinched away from him-
John forced the memory aside with difficulty, only for another to slide into its place.
Martha on that fucking bench with the stupid ring on her finger, tears in her eyes as well but for entirely different reasons.
He didn’t think he’d ever hated himself this much before.
“Engaged to be married,” his father said in that calm voice he only ever used when he was running out of patience, and John’s stomach cramped. “Patty Manning is a lovely girl, and your brother made the right choice, as I always knew him to be capable of.”
John didn’t raise his eyes from the tablecloth, even though he could feel his father’s gaze on him.
Nothing about this had been his choice.
He had just carried out Henry fucking Laurens’ orders, as he always did, as he’d been forced to do ever since he’d gained the ability to think for himself.
If John could have had it his way, this house with its stupid familiar walls and its loaded silences and missing pieces would be nothing more than a bad memory right now. He wouldn’t be sitting at this fucking table with the man who’d almost cracked his head open on it on more than one occassion, and there wouldn’t be a girl across town with ‘his’ ring on her finger, and Alex-
Alex wouldn’t hate him.
He would be with him, far away from here, and he would smile, and John would make sure he would never have another reason to stop again.
“The most important thing,” his father began, enunciating every syllable, slow and clear and now definitely impatient- John raised his head and met his eyes, just barely kept himself from flinching. “is that Jack is happy.”
His stomach lurched, violent and sudden. John dug his fingernails into the tablecloth and drew a few deep breaths, swallowing the bile back down.
“Are you happy, Jack?” Patsy said, and he forced himself to look at her, forced himself to smile and pretend like he didn’t notice the concern in her eyes.
“Never been happier, sweetie.”
“Of course he is!” Polly chimed in and turned pleading eyes to their father, who gave his permission for her to get up with a vague wave of his hand. “He’s getting married!”
She hopped off her chair and came barreling around the table, throwing herself over John’s lap and wiggling to sit upright, her smile so big her little button-nose crinkled with happiness-
John couldn’t help but laugh, and he wrapped his arms around his baby sister, pulling her snug to his chest and dropping a kiss to the top of her head.
His chuckles died down, leaving his throat raw and tight.
“Jack?”
He glanced up and blinked past the blur of his vision to be presented with his little brother, watching him from wide eyes, a little pale around the nose.
“Are- are you crying?”
He ripped a hand up and brushed his fingers over his lashes.
They came away wet.
Shit.
“Just. Happy. I’m so happy,” he said and looked from Harry’s unconvinced expression to Patsy’s, whose eyes were flickering between him and their father, and last to Polly, who had scooted back on his lap just enough for her wide, innocent doe-eyes to stare straight into his rotten soul.
“Jack,” their father said in a tone that left not an inch of room for argument, hard eyes drilling into him. “A word.”
The man stood, turned, and walked from the room without a glance back, knowing John would do as ordered.
He swallowed and gently set Polly back down, then got up himself.
John left without meeting any of his siblings’ eyes, head hung low.
“Sir?” he said quietly once out in the hallway, the dining room door shut at his back.
“Get a goddamn hold of yourself, Jack,” his father hissed and grabbed him by the lapels; John tensed but didn’t resist when he dragged him farther down the corridor. “You ungrateful brat don’t even realise how lucky you are. A lesser man would have thrown you to the streets the instant he found out he raised a faggot, but not me, Jack, not me.”
John squeezed his eyes shut, all his focus on holding back his tears and keeping his expression as neutral as possible.
Faggot.
That word still crashed through his defenses without trouble, shattering all his shields and leaving him vulnerable. Especially when it was said with such venom, such genuine disgust and hatred.
Especially when dad was the one to say it.
The hand still fisted around his lapels released the fabric only for those fingers to close around his throat.
John’s eyes snapped open in alarm just as his father’s thumb pressed into a tender spot at the side of his neck, and John opened his mouth to- to agree with him, to apologise, to beg his forgiveness, but the fingers tightened abruptly and cut off his voice.
His heart thumped sideways, lodging itself between his ribs.
He kept breathing, shallow and uneven, frozen to the spot and dead silent, watching his father’s furious sneer deepen from wide eyes.
Two tears fell, and the hand gripped harder.
It was getting difficult to breathe.
“You look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you,” he growled, and his bruising grip eased up by a bit. John didn’t dare gulp in a breath of air despite his straining lungs, terrified his father would take the noise as a disrespectful interruption. “And you answer when spoken to.”
“Yes, Sir,” he choked, but the fire in his father’s eyes didn’t die down. No, the corner of his mouth curled into a proper snarl, teeth bared in disgust, fingers pressing bruises into his throat.
He shoved him into the wall at his back, and the impact drove the little air he had left from his lungs, blackness flickering across his vision.
“Now listen here and listen good. You are fixed, do you understand me? Your perversion is healed, that stupid little whore of yours forgotten, and you will marry that girl and be happy about it. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he breathed, eyes fixed to the ceiling, the edges of his vision swimming and fading.
He sent a mental apology Alex’s way, feeling sick to his stomach about not being able to defend him, about letting his father call him that horrible name his darling so loathed.
“Look at me, boy!” he screamed in his face and shook him by the neck, and John’s head spun but he did as told. “You will marry the Manning girl, and you will be a good husband to her, you will work hard, you will take over the firm, you will give her a good life and however many children she damn well pleases to have, and you will be happy to do so. You will be normal, do you understand me? Normal.”
His father yanked his hand back and released his windpipe, and John just couldn’t, he couldn’t keep himself upright, his legs were too weak, too wobbly–he collapsed to the floor in a heap, gasping for breath.
The spots dancing before his eyes cleared with every gulp of air that flooded his lungs, and some of the panic ebbed away.
The sick feeling in his stomach did not.
“No son of mine is a fucking fag. You just have to be with a woman, that’ll fix you right back up and make you forget about that slut you picked out from a poorhouse. Patty is a lovely girl, and she is what you want.”
Silence hung heavy enough to suffocate in the small space between them. His father was barely a foot away, but John had never felt further removed from him before.
John swallowed and winced at the throb of his raw, tender throat, raised his trembling hands, rubbed them down his face. He knew he had to answer, but-
What… what was he supposed to say?
His lip wobbled as the tears returned to his eyes, burning away behind his screwed shut lids and making his battered throat even tighter with grief and desperation. He hid his face in his hands, afraid, so very terrified, of letting his father see his weakness.
Martha would never be what he wanted. He couldn’t force it, if he could, it would have happened already.
But there he was, engaged to a girl he had been dating for a year and could still only just tolerate, and head over heels for a boy he knew he wasn’t supposed to love–but love him he did nonetheless. So much. More than he’d thought himself capable of.
“I’m sorry, dad,” he sobbed, muffled by his hands; unable to hold his tears back. “I- I’m sorry I’m not enough. Sorry I never made you proud. Sorry I c- can never get it right. I’m sorry. Sorry, dad.”
He was met by nothing but silence, and John calmed his cries–something he had mastered over ten years ago–and wiped at his tears before he dared raise his sore eyes to his father.
Dad looked down at him with distaste, eyes narrowed. He shook his head.
“As you should be. It has always been nothing but disappointment after disappointment with you,” he said and scoffed, turned away. Shook his head again. “Stop this undignified sniveling at once. You’re embarrassing us both.”
With that, he walked back down the way they’d come and disappeared into the dining room.
John just sat there, throat aching, his dried tears crusting his eyelashes together, his chest still and empty and dead. Hollow.
Numb.
Sometimes he wished he wasn’t too much of a coward to just swallow half a bottle of pills and be done with it.
Their father left a few hours later.
After John had done a frankly horrible job at covering the nasty purple bruising around his throat up with some of his sister’s makeup he had… borrowed without asking, he made his way down to the kitchen–where his eyes didn’t linger on any knives at all–and started cutting up some veggies.
It was movienight, and the kids would have something healthy before he would let himself be nagged into making them popcorn.
“I knew you’d resurface at the latest to bully us into eating tiny carrot-slices during the movie,” came a voice from behind, but John didn’t even pause.
Patsy sighed and leaned the small of her back to the counter next to John, her arms crossed.
He didn’t look up, but he did let a small smile crack his impassive expression.
“Jack. I’m serious. This is my serious face,” she said, and John glanced up, his smile growing. Yes, that indeed was her serious face. “Are- are you happy? Will this marriage make you happy?”
John let out a long breath through his nose and set the knife down. The slices of chopped carrot, cucumber, celery, and bellpepper stared up at him, almost accusing, as if they were shaming him for lying to his sister’s face.
Maybe they were just shaming him for having forgotten the dip, though.
He went to fetch it.
“I am and it will, sweetie. Look at me, do I not look happy to you?” he said, praying she would just play along. John knew what he looked like, and ‘happy’ was not the word.
“You look like you have makeup on your neck,” she said just as he returned to spoon some dip onto the large plate and dump all the slices on it.
John paused to rub at his brow, forcing himself to breathe deeply and evenly, to not let the pain shine through.
“Do you think Harry and Polly will notice?”
Patsy shifted against the counter, trying to appear unbothered, but he could see straight through her act. “No.”
“Then please don’t bring it up, hun.”
He picked up the platter and walked off. His sister heaved another quiet sigh at his back, but she followed without another word.
Both Harry and Polly let out audible–and overdramatic–groans when he set the plate down on the coffee table, but John didn’t let that perturb him. He just sat on the couch and motioned for Polly, who was laid out on her belly in front of the TV set, to change the channel.
“You know the rules, guys, you get candy only after you finish the healthy stuff,” he said with an unapologetic shrug and propped his feet up on the unoccupied end of the table.
“You’re cruel, Jack,” Harry said and plopped down into the armchair, taking up the whole thing despite his scrawny frame like only a teenage boy could.
“Oh, yes. Making my little gremlin siblings consume a vegetable, may the Lord strike me down for my crimes,” he said with a grin and a fond roll of his eyes. A chuckle burst unbidden from his throat when Polly clambered up the couch and draped herself half over his and half over Patsy’s lap, and he couldn’t keep himself from wincing, his hand flying up halfway to his neck before he managed to stop it.
Patsy watched him with worry, but he didn’t even think to reassure her, too distracted by the memories from earlier flooding his brain, beckoned forth by that distinct ache.
Dad’s hand around his throat.
Dad laying his whole miserable life out in front of him, making sure he knew he would never escape from under his thumb, that he would be a prisoner forever, shackled to his keeper by law.
Dad’s hand around his throat, squeezing.
Dad calling him names, calling Alex names, saying horrible things about him, and the shame rushed back as he remembered how he’d done nothing.
Dad telling him he always was and always would be a disappointment. That he would never be enough, no matter what.
“Jacky?” Polly’s sweet, small voice ripped him back into the present, and he raised his head.
The kids watched him, tense and wide-eyed. Silent.
Polly slid fully into his lap again, careful, as if she thought him too fragile for any rougher movements. “Was- was daddy mean to you again?”
John closed his eyes and counted to ten, wrestling and stomping down on the almost overwhelming urge to cry until it had subsided.
It was okay. It was okay, it was good like this, perfect, this was good. He could take it, take the beatings, the pain, the heartache, because when he did, they wouldn’t have to.
“No, darling,” he said, as calm as he could get his voice. “Everything’s fine.”
He kissed the top of her head and leaned back against the couch, willing his tense muscles to relax.
“Movie’s starting.”
Patsy shot him a last concerned look before she scooted closer and rested her head on his shoulder, snuggling into his side as she had done ever since they were small children. He fought not to tear up again.
Polly remained where she was, seated in his lap, and tucked her head underneath his chin, her whole small body nestled securely against his chest.
His two favourite girls.
This was why he kept going. This was it- his kids. What would become of them if he-
He shook his head at himself and banished those thoughts again. Focus on the positive, John, focus on them, remember Alex, pretend he doesn’t hate you, pretend you haven’t been breaking his heart over and over for months now, just think about the way he used to look at you, before, remember his lips on yours and forget about that other girl.
John puffed out a breath and pressed a kiss first to Patsy’s and then Polly’s hair. His gaze drifted over to Harry on his armchair automatically, but his brother snapped his head around when he caught him looking, a faint blush creeping into his cheeks.
Hm.
“Would you like to come over here, honey?” he asked gently, but Harry shook his head before he’d even finished. “Why not?”
“I, um. I shouldn’t. That would be… weird,” he mumbled, eyes fixed to the images flickering across the TV.
“Weird?” he echoed, brow furrowed, before he realised. “Harry. What did dad say to you?”
“Nothin’!” he said, but it only took another second of silence from John to get him to break. “Uh. He said I was getting too old to keep being so close to you. Said it wasn’t good. For me.”
Great. Was their father afraid he would turn him queer as well? Did he think that was what had made John a fag? Too many hugs as a kid? No one had ever fucking hugged him when he was a child, least of all that man.
“Well, that’s stupid,” Polly said and cuddled closer as if to prove her point. “Patsy’s older than you and she’s still allowed.”
Harry opened his mouth, but closed it again.
“Hun, I won’t force you to do anything, but if you want to-” that was as far as he got before Harry shot off the armchair and was sat next to him in the blink of an eye.
“Hi,” he said, a bit sheepish, the colour still high in his cheeks.
“Hi,” John responded softly and raised his hand to ruffle it through his brother’s unruly curls.
Harry heaved a sigh.
“I’ll miss this when you’re married and have your own house and stuff,” he mumbled and leaned into his side, inching closer as if he was trying to be sneaky.
John froze, the breath sticking in his throat.
Right. He- with Martha. Forever.
…or until he kicked the bucket.
“I love you guys so much,” he said, pretending like that last sentence had never even penetrated his eardrums.
“We love you, too, Jack,” Patsy said and raised her head for a moment to kiss his cheek.
“Yeah,” Polly chimed in, wrapping her little arms around his torso and squeezing with all her might in a very aggressive hug. “You’re the best brother ever. Sorry, Harry.”
“No, you’re right,” he said, and John laughed despite the dull throb of his throat. “Even though he’s forcing us to eat vegetables on movienight.”
“I’m doing this out of love,” he said and delighted in Harry’s groan.
“Evil,” he mumbled under his breath and finally crossed the rest of the distance, his head resting just above John’s shoulder on the back of the couch.
John took the opportunity to kiss his temple, unaffected by his embarrassed grumbling.
This… was as close to perfect as John’s life would ever get, he reckoned. His kids right there with him, all of them close enough to touch, close enough for him to know they were there even without having to check. Close enough for him to rest assured in the knowledge they were safe and sound.
The only thing that could make this any better was Alex, but, well.
That wouldn’t happen.
Not in this life, at the very least.