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Royal and Cecilia Abbott were fairly certain they were good parents. Not the best, not perfect in any way, but they were good. They loved their kids, supported Perry when he told them he wanted to go to college, supported Rhea when she insisted on taking up bull riding like her father. Gushed about Perry’s sweet new girlfriend to anyone who would listen. Gave Rhea love when she cried and admitted she wanted to be a boy. Fawned over Perry’s perfect test scores. Held Rhea, now Rhett, as he started his transition. Yes, they were good parents.
And maybe, unfortunately, a little forgetful at times.
“Royal!” Cecilia shouted through the house. “Royal! Old Bones is out on the porch again!”
Royal grumbled, stopping in his carrying of the blankets Cecilia had asked him to do so he could herd the old dog back into the house. “C’mon,” he muttered. “C’mon, in you get, you old thing. Cece?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you seen Rhett? He ain’t outside, and he ain’t upstairs either.”
Cecilia shook her head. “He said he was headed into town for a bit. Needed to pick me up some stuff for dinner and mentioned getting a haircut while he was out that way. Said he’d be back before dinner.”
Royal nodded. “S’long as he ain’t in any trouble. I don’t wanna have to smooth shit over with anyone else on that boy’s behalf.”
“You know he doesn’t pick half those fights,” Cecilia reminded her husband, dumping a large pot of stew into the crockpot and stirring it slowly. “Those local kids he’s always fighting with are assholes.”
They continued to move quietly through their chores, finally hearing a knock at the door as the sun began to go down.
“Perry!” Cecilia said happily, hugging her oldest son as she opened the front door. “Oh, you’ve gotten so much taller!”
Perry chuckled, hugging Cecilia tight. “Dunno how that’s even possible, Ma,” he said. “I saw you not even two months ago for spring break.”
“How’s school been treating you?” Royal asked, nodding to Perry. “Everything still good?”
“Scholarship’s holding strong,” Perry reassured them. “Rebecca’s sorry she couldn’t make this one. She wanted one more summer back home before her final semester. Is Rhea home, I have something for her,” he added, moving into the kitchen.
Royal and Cecilia looked at each other, wide eyed, a silent game of ‘I thought you said’ going between them. Perry watched, eyebrows raised. “What’s going on?”
Cecilia took a breath. “We just realized we forgot to tell you something,” she said. “Royal?”
“Your sister,” Royal began. “Well. It’s been a tough while for her. She’s been,” he sighed, leaning on the back of a chair, “she’s-“
“Oh my god!” Cecilia shouted, interrupting anything Royal was going to say as the back door of the house opened and Rhett walked through it. “Rhett James Abbott what happened to you?” She immediately took Rhett’s face into her hands, examining the deep cut to his lip, the sluggishly bleeding nose, the blooming black eye and the stunning bruises across Rhett’s cheekbone. “Royal, the first aid kit, now!”
Royal ran to the bathroom, grabbing the first aid kit while Cecilia urged Rhett to sit, grabbing a bag of frozen peas for Rhett’s black eye. Rhett was moving slowly, wobbling on his feet as he walked the six feet from the door to the table. Cecilia hoped he wasn’t concussed.
“Ma,” Rhett said thickly, wincing away from Cecilia and the cotton ball of peroxide she was dabbing on his face. “Ma, it’s not that bad.” Despite his reassurances, he was talking like someone had shoved a golf ball in each of his cheeks. “Hey Per. When’d you get home?”
Perry was frozen to the spot, staring at Rhett, wide eyed. “Rhea?”
Rhett’s non-swollen eye widened. “You didn’t tell him?” He asked Cecilia, almost at a whisper.
“It slipped our minds,” Cecilia said softly. “Plus, we thought it would be better if you told him.”
“Perry, I’m gonna be blunt,” Rhett decided, looking at his brother. “‘M not a girl. Never was. Name’s Rhett now. ‘M a boy. Jesus Ma!” He added sharply as Cecilia poked at his lip.
“I’m sorry!” Cecilia said, equally as sharp. “You’re still bleeding! If that doesn’t slow by tonight I want to run you to the ER. Get some stitches in there or something.”
Royal sighed. “Who was it this time?”
Rhett deflated. “Trevor,” he muttered. “Called me a couple’a slurs. Punched me first, I swear.” He hesitated, looking at Royal with nothing short of terror. “Said he was gonna fuck the girl back into me. Said that all I needed was a good dick to remind me of my place.”
Royal saw red. “Tomorrow morning,” he said firmly. “I’m gonna go have a chat with the Tillersons. They can’t say those things about my son.”
“Just wanna sleep tonight,” Rhett said softly. “‘M tired.”
Cecilia pushed a wayward blond curl off Rhett’s forehead. “I see you never got around to that haircut,” she said, adjusting the frozen peas on Rhett’s face. “That’s okay. I’ll take you next week.”
“I’ll take him,” Perry offered. “No offense Ma, but I’m more intimidating than you.”
Rhett smiled, wincing as the action split his lip further. “Thanks Per.”
They ate early, Rhett going slow around the cotton taped to his lip to hopefully slow the bleeding. He was quiet through dinner, heading up to his room as soon as he was done. Perry watched him go, concern turning his stomach to lead.
“Like I said,” Royal said as soon as he heard Rhett’s door click shut. “It’s been a hard while for Rhett. You remember being eighteen. It’s tough for him, especially out here. We’re doin’ our best, but sometimes we worry it ain’t enough.”
Perry nodded slowly. “How often does he come home like that?”
“Every two weeks someone’ll say something,” Cecilia said. “Sometimes it gets a rise out of him. Sometimes it doesn’t. This wasn’t even a bad one. Royal, remember when those kids from school ambushed him behind the diner and broke his arm? He punched the kid with a broken wrist, broke one of his fingers in the process and shattered his wrist. Doc said it wouldn’t ever be the same.”
Royal nodded solemnly. “Took those fuckers to court,” he said. “We won. They paid his bills in full. I wanna say Rhett was the first arrest Joy made after she joined the force.”
Cecilia smiled as she remembered her younger son’s first arrest. Technically it was less of an arrest and more of a ride to the closest ER in the back of a wailing cruiser. “We’re taking him to a doctor a few towns over in a couple weeks to see if we can’t get him on some hormone changing medicine. It should help. But until then, we just have to keep an eye on him when we can,” Cecilia said with a deep sigh. “It’s a hard job keepin’ that boy in line. Sometimes I wonder where he got that stubborn streak from, because I swear-“
“Talkin’ about me?” Rhett asked, coming back down the stairs wearing a pair of blue checkered pyjama pants and a faded Top Gun shirt that was two sizes too big on his frame. He still looked like a mess, face rapidly changing colors as the bruises developed.
Royal chuckled. “Only a little. You gonna be good to ride this weekend, or do you want me to call Stevie and ask him to pull you from the roster?”
Rhett mulled the question over, spitting out the soaked wad of gauze in his mouth and replacing it with a fresh one. “Don’t think I wanna ride like this,” he decided eventually. “Next week I’ll give it a shot. Wrist hurts.”
“You wanna curl up?” Cecilia asked, already digging a few popsicles out of the freezer. “Movie’s still in the player if you wanna watch it again.”
Rhett smiled, taking a popsicle and nodding. “Think I will,” he said softly. “Thanks Ma.” He trotted off to the den, cuddling up on the couch and turning the TV on. Old Bones ambled over, tucking her head in Rhett’s lap and grumbling happily when Rhett scratched behind her ears, the popsicle balanced between his teeth as he worked the DVD menu.
“Top Gun?” Perry asked, sitting beside Rhett. “Still your favorite?”
“I love this movie,” Rhett said sleepily, smiling as the familiar opening music played. “Wanna be like Maverick when I grow up.”
Perry laughed. “A scrawny troublemaker who won’t ever back down from a fight?”
“A man,” Rhett said, his voice bordering on downright dreamy as he talked. “Although you might be right. Maybe I wanna be Ice instead.”
“I’m more of a Goose man myself,” Perry said. “But you do you, little brother.”
Cecilia walked into the den an hour later, ready to tell her boys to head to bed. It was late and they had had long days. They needed their rest. What she found, curled up on that threadbare couch, melted her heart.
Rhett had fallen asleep, snoring slightly in the shifting light of the TV. Perry was dozing, eyes barely open, one arm wrapped protectively around Rhett, who was curled in towards Perry’s body, legs tucked up under him, a blanket across his lap. They were asleep together, cuddled up against one another. Something they hadn’t done since Rhett was eleven.
“Perry,” Cecilia whispered, shaking Perry awake and ruining the sweet scene. “Perry. C’mon, let’s get you and Rhett to bed.”
Perry blinked slowly, looking down at Rhett and smiling. “Can you ask Dad if he’ll carry him? Think he twisted his ankle, he was complaining it hurt.”
Cecilia nodded, recruiting her husband to carry their younger son to bed. Rhett barely moved when Royal picked him up, simply turning towards the closest source of heat. He blinked a few times, yawned, and went back to sleep.
“That’s it son,” Royal murmured, laying Rhett in his bed and tucking his blankets around him. “That’s it. You sleep now.” He grabbed a small stuffed rabbit and nestled it between Rhett’s arm and chest. Rhett breathed out, soft mumbles following before he fully fell back to sleep.
“He’s out for the night,” Cecilia said from the doorway. “Tomorrow I’ll take him to see Dr. Bells. If he’s complaining his ankle hurts,” She let her sentence hang, the unfinished end heavy in the air. “Perry offered to help with the morning’s chores so I could take him.”
Royal nodded, leaving the room and shutting the door as quietly as possible. “Right now, all he needs is rest.”
They bid good night to Perry, who nodded to them before slipping off to sleep himself.
Two in the morning, Perry’s door opened. He sat up, squinting in the dark. “Ma?” He whispered.
There was shuffling, and Perry felt something crawl into bed with him. Briefly, he wondered if Old Bones had figured out how to open doors before he heard a sniffle and a small whimper.
“Rhett?”
“‘M not here,” Rhett mumbled into Perry’s pillow.
Perry smiled, settling back down. “Sure you’re not,” he agreed, tucking himself around his little brother. “No Rhett Abbott in here, no sir.”
Rhett sniffled again, burying his face in Perry’s chest. “Don’t tell Ma.”
They settled in, five minutes passing before Perry said a word. “Nightmare?”
“Yeah.”
And that was the end of that conversation.
The sun rose early, neither Perry nor Rhett moving from their soft cocoon of blankets. They didn’t move when the sun began to stream through the curtains. They didn’t move when Royal dropped a coffee mug and swore loudly in the kitchen. They didn’t move when Cecilia knocked gently on Rhett’s door and immediately began to panic when he wasn’t in his bed.
They did move when Cecilia burst into Perry’s room, frantically telling him to get up.
“Rhett‘s missing!” Cecilia said. “He’s not in bed, his horse and truck are still here, and we have no idea where he could’ve-“ she stopped, seeing Rhett’s bed head and bleary eyes beside Perry, “gone.”
“Hm?” Perry glanced to his right, chuckling. “You woke him up.”
Rhett glared at everyone in the room in turn, grumbling something about ten more minutes before burying himself in Perry’s blankets once more.
“Wake him up,” Cecilia said with a sigh. “I wanna get him to the urgent care before it gets crowded.”
Perry did his best, hauling Rhett out of bed and chuckling as Rhett fought him every step of the way, even when Perry dropped one of his old hoodies around his shoulders. Rhett was swimming in the old grey fabric, but he accepted it, keeping it on as he grabbed jeans and socks. His face had stopped changing colors, but the shade it had settled in to was concerning. Deep red wine burgundies and sharp purples, dappled with sick yellows and greens around the edges, his eye swollen nearly shut. His lip was still messed up, although the bleeding had stopped, giving way to a sharp scabbed slit against Rhett’s face.
“You look like shit,” Perry said bluntly, seeing Rhett’s face. “How’s your ankle?”
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” Rhett grumbled. “Thanks for asking.”
Perry hesitated before Rhett walked down the hall, watching his brother walk away slowly. “Rhett!”
Rhett turned. “What?”
“Just-” Perry took a breath, trying to collect his thoughts, “stay safe. Please.”
Rhett smiled, soft and hesitant, but he smiled. “Thanks Perry,” he said. “Can’t say I will, but, y’know, thank you.”
And he found, as he struggled down the stairs, he actually meant it.