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Philip sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, steeling himself, before he knocked on the door to his father’s study.
His throat closed up at the muffled call of come in from inside, and he shook out his hands in an effort to stop them from trembling and inched the door open carefully.
Pa sat behind his desk and didn’t look up when he set one foot into the room and hesitated there, stock still in the doorframe, his hand still white-knuckled around the knob. The quiet scratch of a quill on parchment filled the room–a sound that was usually calming to him, something he had known since earliest childhood, but now served to unnerve.
His father didn’t look at him, didn’t speak, and Philip wondered quietly, tears burning behind his eyes, if this was what awaited him on the other side of the conversation he had come here to have.
He swallowed heavily and cleared his throat–too loud in the silent room–so his voice wouldn’t betray his fragile state of mind.
“Father? Is it a bad time?” he said, and finally Pa raised his gaze from his writing and regarded him with a faint smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners behind his glasses before they dropped back down to the parchment in front of him just a moment later.
Philip thought this should probably loosen the knots that tensed his stomach, but it only coiled them tighter. Did he truly deserve his father to smile at him like that? With what he was about to reveal to him? When he was just moments away from giving him all the reason to regard his firstborn with nothing but disgust and contempt?
“No, no, come in, Pip. I’m just finishing up,” he said, and Philip drew another shaky breath, doing his best to remain calm around his racing heart. He stepped the rest of the way into the room and closed the door carefully behind himself, both in an attempt to leave his father undisturbed, and to make sure the door really was closed.
This conversation could not leave this room.
By the time he had gathered himself enough to turn around and approach his father’s desk, Pa was laying down his quill and covering his inkwell. He took off his glasses next and put them down on his desk, his eyes lingering as if to create a mental image of where he’d last seen them for later. Mama had gotten into the habit of fondly declaring him senile every time he asked her if she’d seen his glasses; as was her good right, he thought, with just how often Pa misplaced them lately.
His father remained for a few heartbeats longer, checking again if everything was in order, before he nodded to himself and stepped out from behind his desk to meet him where he stood in the middle of the room.
“So, what brings you to me, son?” he said, and Philip almost choked on his own spit when his intestines suddenly constricted all at once.
God. Good God, dear Lord above, how was he supposed to-
“Um,” he said, small and unsteady, and blinked a few times. His lashes were damp and heavy with tears, and he cursed himself for it, because he was a man, eighteen years of age, old enough to marry, to have his own family, even-
If only he could.
His father’s brow crinkled with faint concern, and Philip bit down hard on the inside of his lip to keep it from wobbling. He wasn’t a child, goddamnit.
“Well, uh, you see-” he began again but cut himself off when his voice cracked, and he just stood there, back ramrod straight, his linked fingers shaking in front of his dread-hollowed chest, slowly but surely losing the bitter fight against the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks any second now.
“Pip,” Pa said, so very softly, and reached a hand out for him just in time to brush away the first tear that dropped from his lashes despite his best efforts. “My darling boy, what’s wrong?”
Curse him thrice over, he just couldn’t help it–an iron stake drove itself right into his heart and ripped a hole into the dam that held all the desperate confusion, the doubts, the self-hate, back.
Everything spewed out at the same time, and the only thing Philip could do was stand in the middle of his father’s study and sob like a child, desolate and overwhelmed.
All he wanted was for his Pa not to hate him. That was all he asked for.
And yet, he was convinced he asked for too much.
“I- I’m sorry,” he forced from his resisting throat and wiped his cheeks, only for fresh tears to wet them again immediately. Pa took a step closer, his eyes widened in alarm, but Philip withdrew from his reaching hands, clasping a palm over his mouth to stifle his borderline hysterical cries. He couldn’t afford one of his siblings, or worse, Mama to hear; then he’d have to tell them, too.
“I’m- wrong,” he choked and wrapped an arm around himself, as if he could protect himself from his father’s judgement like that. “Wrong,” he repeated in a whisper, followed by a hiccuping sob that made his father flinch and come another step closer, his arms outstretched in front of himself, palms open, as if approaching a spooked animal he was mindful not to startle further.
Philip remained rooted to the spot, hugging himself, crying quietly into his palm, eyes stinging, lungs seizing, heart racing bleeding breaking in his chest, and let his father come closer.
Still, when Pa raised a hand to dry his tears, he turned his face away, reluctant to let his father touch him when he would most likely regret having done so in just a few minutes’ time. Something akin to hurt flashed over Pa’s concerned expression, and he let his hand drop back down to his side.
“Would you rather speak to your mother, Philip?” he said, almost helpless, and Philip snapped his head back around, his eyes wide.
“No!” he said, the panic too obvious in his voice despite it being dampened by tears, and Pa raised his hands in front of himself in surrender.
“Alright, then- speak to me, my sweet. What’s wrong?”
“I am,” he said, willing his father to just understand his meaning, to not make him say it out loud.
Bad enough that he felt this way. He couldn’t admit to it, too.
“In what way?” he asked, calm and gentle. Patient–Philip didn’t deserve his patience, didn’t deserve his kindness. Didn’t deserve anyone’s kindness.
“I- I can’t… marry,” he said, sniffling. He took a deep breath to calm his cramping insides, but it just made everything hurt worse.
Pa flashed him a brief but worried smile. “And who is asking you to? You’re so young-”
“No,” he cut in bluntly and swallowed the shame of treating his father this way back down. “No, I don’t mean- I don’t mean just now. I mean ever. Ever. I can’t ever marry.”
He furrowed his brows, calculating eyes searching him, and put a hand to his own chin. “And why is that?”
Philip closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch Pa’s expression morph into one of disgust, of disappointment. The words sat like a leaden weight in the pit of his stomach, making him sick. Perhaps he would feel better once they were out, just like a spell of nausea usually dissipated after he’d thrown up.
Or perhaps he would be sick forever. Maybe this was the punishment for his sin while he still walked the mortal coil. Before he could be thrown into the depths of hell for eternity.
“I do not… desire. The company of women. I, um. Find myself drawn to-” He swallowed, exhaled a shaky breath, whispered into the patient silence of the room. “Men.”
He screwed his eyes shut even tighter as he awaited the onslaught of cruel words, rejection and renouncement-
The silence stretched.
Philip waited, his whole body taut like a bowstring, tears falling quietly, the only sound bouncing off the walls that of his own erratic breathing.
“Philip,” his father said after what felt like an eternity of quiet, and Philip flinched as if he had struck him even though he hadn’t even so much as raised his voice. “Please look at me.”
It took all of his willpower to crack first one eye open, then the other.
To his immense astonishment, his father didn’t look mad. He didn’t even look mildly displeased, oh no, he regarded him with a worry-creased brow and a sort of soft compassion in his eyes Philip didn’t deserve.
“I don’t think you’re wrong, Pip,” he said, and all the air was punched from his lungs as if he’d taken a blow to the chest.
“What?” he breathed, and his voice broke despite his low volume. “But- but I, I’m the oldest, and I need to carry on the- the family name, your legacy, I need to marry, start a family, and I can’t-”
“You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do,” Pa interrupted him gently and stepped closer, grasping him by the upper arms, his thumbs drawing gentle shapes into the fabric of his shirt.
Philip just stood there and gaped. He didn’t-? But that couldn’t be right, because that was what every firstborn son was supposed to do, every son, fullstop. That was what his life was supposed to be. Study well, make good money, raise a family. What else was there?
“But-” he croaked, only to fall silent at the shake of his father’s head.
“Why do you think I married your mother and had all of you little menaces?” he said, and Philip couldn’t help the wet chuckle that escaped him. He stayed silent and watched his father expectantly from still leaking eyes, so he went on, “Because I wanted to. Because I love her. Because I love getting to raise a family with her.”
“Oh,” he said quietly, not quite knowing what else to say.
“Oh,” Pa echoed, his eyes crinkling in a fond smile. He raised a hand from his arm and ever so gently cupped his palm to his cheek, stroking away dried and fresh tear tracks with a sweep of his thumb, and Philip leaned into the familiar touch, some of the raw hurt that still made his heart ache soothing away. “My darling boy,” he mumbled and drew him closer still, and Philip went along willingly.
Pa kissed his brow, in spite of what Philip had just laid at his feet, in spite of the way he was, and fresh tears fell from his salt-crusted lashes, wiped away by his father before they could drip from his chin.
He wrapped his remaining arm around him and hugged him close, the hand from his face sliding around to cradle the base of his skull, his fingers massaging gently along his scalp.
“Your mother and I did not bring you into this world so you could make yourself unhappy,” he muttered to him, and his face crumpled into a sob he muffled against his father’s shoulder. “Your happiness is all that matters to us, Pip.”
The rest of the tension, the apprehension, the bone-chilling fear, seeped from him, melted away like a dune of snow in the springtime sun. He slumped against his father, barely able to keep himself upright when all that crushing weight was suddenly wrenched from his shoulders, and breathed in Pa’s cologne.
Happy tears pricked at his eyes, and he finally let himself hug his father back, clung to him like he hadn’t in probably years.
“You promise?” he croaked, and Pa huffed a laugh and hugged him closer still.
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Papa,” he mumbled. His father kissed the top of his head, and they remained like that for a few moments, silent, Pa rubbing a gentle hand up and down his back.
“You know, you’re not alone in this world, Pip,” he said quietly and put another kiss to his hair, and Philip blinked his still misty eyes, turned his nose into his father’s collar. There was a brief, almost contemplative pause, before he continued, “You’re not alone in this family.”
Philip frowned to himself as he processed that pregnant statement and lifted his head from Pa’s shoulder so he could look him in the eyes.
“What are you-”
His father regarded him with a sad smile, his eyes clouded with memories of another time as he brushed a few curls from Philip’s forehead, tucked them behind his ear.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said, and Philip nodded his head, the breath sticking in his throat.
Pa drew him close again. He held him tight, like he never wanted to let go; his lips brushed the crown of his head when he next spoke, words quiet and deliberate.
“I was just a few years older than you are now. His name was John Laurens.”