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Mischa Bachinski was no angel, even he could admit that much.
He did badly in school and got into fights, often coming home with a black eye and bruised knuckles. He argued with his teachers and swore at people who bumped into him on the street. He would sneak out of his basement most nights to go get wasted in some park somewhere with the vodka he had stolen from the corner store while on the way to meet his dealer in the old alleyway behind the post office.
Anyone could look at this stoney-faced, scruffy teenage kid and agree that he was “troubled”. He was from a “broken home”, as the councillors at Saint Cassian always said with a reluctant smile as they reproachfully looked him up and down. “Fucked up” like the kids at school would say, either spat with a sneer or whispered behind trembling hands.
But Mischa didn’t care much for all of that.
He knew he could get a little angry sometimes; rage was his thing. But he also knew that he wasn’t all just violence and profanities, and that there was more to him that he honestly preferred to keep to himself. The passion and the love he held for his Talia, and for his new friends.
He liked who he was. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that no one else seemed to.
“Mischa, come upstairs. We need to speak to you.”
Mischa looked up from his phone, frowning at the stairs up from his basement. It wasn’t often that his adoptive parents even acknowledged his existence, let alone address him directly. Mischa sniggered bitterly. Whatever he had done wrong this time must have been pretty impressive.
Still, he couldn’t really be bothered. He’d had a long day already: beat up some kid that was picking on Ocean, yelled at a teacher for being insensitive to Connie. Spent the afternoon studying for an English assignment with Ricky and Penny that he just could not understand at all, that had eventually resulted in him politely excusing himself from the library to go punch a wall. And whatever the fuck was going on with his brain whenever Noel smiled at him was pissing him off too.
He didn’t have the energy to unpack all of that and deal with the bullshit from his “parents”. So he ignored them and carried on chatting to Talia.
“Mischa Clayton, come up here right this second.”
Mischa’s stomach twisted as it always did whenever his “father” addressed him like that. He was not a Clayton.
But still, Mischa huffed and threw his phone down, trudging up the stairs with a practised, sour scowl on his lip. He walked into the large, marble kitchen and saw both his parents sat around the breakfast bar waiting for him. Richard had his arms crossed and a creased brow, while Kim (unsurprisingly) had her head dipped to stare down at her lap, lip already trembling upon her adopted son entering the room.
No one said anything while he just stood there, looking back and forth between them.
“What?” he eventually snapped, growing frustrated. Richard glared and put his hands down on the counter.
“Don’t use that tone with me, young man,” he said quietly. Mischa rolled his eyes and reluctantly trudged over to fall into a seat at the table, choosing to ignore the way both of them immediately flinched back at his abrupt approach.
“It has come to our attention…” Richard started, clearing his throat and speaking very, very slowly. “That you have been smoking in my basement again.”
Mischa blinked, unbothered. Richard bristled.
“Care to contribute?”
Mischa scoffed and slouched low in his seat. “Yes, I smoke in basement. Where else am I supposed to? You do not let me in garden.”
Kim made some sort of whimpering noise and hid her face in her hands, mumbling something like, “You’d destroy the hydrangeas!”
“Mischa Clayton—”
Not his name.
“You are not to smoke under this roof. You know this.”
“I do, yes.”
“And yet you still do it.”
“Mhm. Weed, too.”
Richard’s wide eyes seemed to flare up. He stepped around the breakfast bar, staring at him. Despite himself, Mischa shrunk back a little.
“What did you say?” he asked, deadly calm. Mischa gulped but didn’t back down.
“I smoke weed in basement sometimes,” he said, crossing his arms and letting himself smile at his “father’s” outrage. Richard seemed to buffer for a second as he tried to control his anger, and for a moment it was funny to watch. His long, stretched face contorted and twisted into an ugly mess, and his silly little nostrils flared like a not-so-terrifying bull.
But then he sighed aggressively and walked back around to Kim, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Your mother and I—”
Not his parents.
“—have told you time and time again that if you are to continue living in our basement, you need to respect our rules.”
Mischa barked out a sudden laugh, rage bubbling in his gut as he stood up.
“You were ones who chose to adopt me,” he yelled, bewildered grin falling. “You are ones who pretend I do not exist! And I am wrong for pretending you do not as well?”
Kim stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. It was pathetic. Mischa shot her the dirtiest glare he could, and she hid her face again with a squeak.
“Do not treat your mother like that,” Richard hissed, stepping forward again.
Not his mother.
Mischa felt that familiar old rage clawing its way up his throat and had to clench his fists tight to stop himself from raising a fist to his father.
“Ви обоє хворі,” he spat under his breath.
In a flash, Richard’s fists were curled into Mischa’s shirt collar, tugging him up onto his toes as he shook him hard, looking more furious that he had ever seen him.
“Don’t you dare use that fucking language in my household!” he yelled right in Mischa’s face, the harsh sound ringing his ears while spit splattered his face. Mischa heard Kim gasp from behind him, and a chair screech backwards on the kitchen tile.
“Richard, don’t—”
Mischa’s vision blurred and his insides burned with a visceral heat as he mindlessly struck out his fist to punch his father right in the stomach, with enough force to bowl him over and send him reeling back, coughing. Mischa just stared at the man, hunched over as Kim cried out and ran to him.
Mischa wasn’t processing any of it – his brain wasn’t keeping up. That anger was still there, flooding his vision with red as he watched his parents.
Richard slowly looked up, breathing heavily, jaw clenched.
“We took you in, even though we were lied to about who you were,” he croaked as he slowly stood up. “We put a roof over your head and food on the table. We dealt with the whispers around town for months as you tarnished our name with your disgusting presence.”
Richard had walked closer and was now standing tall, nearly chest-to-chest with Mischa. He felt his heartrate pick up, the adrenaline trickling away to be replaced with a tinge of fear. As pathetic as his adoptive father was, he knew what this man was capable of.
He had been subject to it before, once, and had vowed to never be subject to it again after he checked the place he had been kicked the next morning, to see a grim, horrible bruise .
But he still didn’t step down – he just couldn’t.
“And we paid the hospital bills after you were stupid enough to get into that accident at the fair!” he finished with an aggravated flourish as if he had said something life-changing.
Mischa scowled.
“You did not visit me,” he mumbled, barely a whisper.
It was silent for a beat.
“Excuse me?”
Heart thrumming miserably behind his ribcage, Mischa forced himself to meet Richard’s eye
“You did not visit me in hospital. You did not give me the bandage I needed when was discharged. My side got infection because you did not give me things I needed to better heal.” Mischa picked up the volume as his words began to roll out. He knew his English was sounding more and more broken, but he wasn’t thinking and wasn’t about to start perfectly translating his words in his head in a time like this.
“You put me in basement and ignore me. You barely feeded me and did never take me to any appointments or school. I had to work all out myself in new country, all alone.”
His eyes prickled with tears, and he furiously blinked them away. He tried desperately to control his breathing, but could feel his chest heaving already.
“When letter about my— my Мамі came, you yell at me for cry loudly!”
He was screaming now, the sound tearing painfully from his throat.
“You are bad people. You are bad to me and I hate it.”
Mischa saw the drops falling onto the ground before he felt the tears flooding his cheeks.
“Я так ненавиджу це, що мені боляче, і я просто хочу повернутися додому!”
CRACK.
He stumbled against the wall, head whipped to the side as he gasped for air, clutching hard at his jaw.
“Get out of my house.”
“Richard—”
“Get out of my house!”
Mischa didn’t need telling twice. He wiped at his eyes and slammed a fist against the wall with a deafening bang that shook the paintings, before darting from the room toward the front door.
“Mischa, wait!” he heard Kim shout. But the door was slammed shut behind him and her voice faded immediately into silence. The cold, Winter air stung at his sopping cheeks as he choked on the frigid air, jaw aching with such an intense pain he felt like he could barely support the weight of his own head.
He just stood there for a few moments, breathing in the air and letting his mind shut off. Letting himself cry.
Before he shook his head, wiped at his nose and stalked away down the driveway.
The night only got colder. His uniform shirt and sleeveless sweater did nothing to warm him as he shivered alone on a bench in the park.
He didn’t have his phone to call Talia. He couldn’t message Noel or Connie or Ricky or anyone for help or a place to stay – not that he particularly wanted to do that anyway.
He couldn’t go back to that house. There was nothing he could do.
So, he decided to suck it up and sleep on the bench. If he got hypothermia, that just meant more hospital bills for the Claytons, so that was a small win. He would just have to deal with the worried looks and concerned touches from the choir tomorrow, when he walked in with bloodshot eyes and an angry bruise blooming on his freezing, almost blue skin.
He couldn’t tell them, though. It wasn’t their problem. He could deal with this by himself.
He always dealt with it by himself.
At this point, dealing with things on his own had become Mischa Bachinski’s way of life.