Chapter Text
ONE
Calls in the middle of the night were the worst.
Calls from the police station to tell you that not one, but TWO of your kids weren’t home and had so-called pranked a guy’s car to blow up were downright indescribable.
Michael Merrick was about to be arrested for murder.
At least, that’s what it felt like as he walked into the station, almost two in the goddamn morning, with his (only good) brother Nick at his side.
Gabriel and Chris had been chastised, but no charges. But still, they had had to wait for their guardian – Michael – to come collect them.
A part of Mike wanted to leave the two idiots in there for the night. But, he wouldn’t have gotten much sleep, thinking about how two of the boys weren’t home and what was happening with them. And it wouldn’t exactly look good on him, as their guardian, when the state checked up on them.
Even if they totally deserved it.
Michael had stood there, listening to the Sargent lecture his brothers, and him, for a good ten or twelve minutes. He was tired, pissed, and not even trying to keep the scowl off of his face.
He was fighting all of his instincts of the last five years that told him what those boys needed – and really he was thinking Gabriel more than Chris (baby brother wouldn’t have thought up such a shit stupid plan on his own).
But Michael had barely managed to pull his jeans on and grab a shirt as he roused Nick to drive them over to the station.
He should have the cops charge them for stealing his truck, but that was something Michael could handle on his own.
When they finally got out of the station, Chris had tried to lag behind and get into the SUV with Nick.
Fat chance.
“Let’s go,” Michael had growled. He’d shoved at a statue-still Gabriel to get him moving and when Chris had still not budge, he yanked on the boy’s ear.
“Ow! Michael!” he growled.
Michael’s glared reply had to tell the youngest boy that he was not to be trifled with. With both of the troublemakers in the truck, Michael was contemplating curfews, groundings, and even locking their windows.
It was not going to be an easy night.
***
He wasn’t sure what was worse, Gabriel’s seeming nonchalance about the whole thing, or the fact Chris defended his brother like Gabe was his new hero.
Michael was going to lose his shit.
Again.
He shouldn’t have given into Gabriel’s goading – hell, he knew that Gabriel was looking for a fight. The kid probably felt like he had been cheated out of one that night – but Gabriel had struck him first.
While driving.
Damn hard to keep control and maturity in mind when a fucking kid is coming at your face. Not an excuse, and certainly not something he wanted to repeat – but that’s what had happened.
Him and Gabriel were too much alike. Too fired up. Too easy to get into fights and shit.
How many times through the years had Michael with their father because he felt the man was too soft and wasn’t protecting their family? It had felt like the man couldn’t care less what happened to his sons, and it had made Michael furious.
He had been looking forward to graduating and college and getting away from his family and the stupid community.
Now, he was spouting out the same shit his father had all those years ago.
Control. Emotions. Back off. Don’t agonize them.
As if Michael didn’t know himself, first hand, that the others didn’t need a reason to come after them. As if it hadn’t all started with Michael, eleven years old and without a clue what was going on as he fought tooth and nail to be outside and with his Earth element.
Now they stood in the front lawn moments away from going at it again.
Chris had had to spring up from the backseat and hold Gabriel off of him to let Michael drive them home. And now he stood beside Nick as they watched Michael and Gabriel’s little screaming match.
“What The Hell Were You Thinking?” Michael yelled as he caught up to Gabriel, grabbing his arm as he tried to rush inside. “You trying to get us killed!”
“As if you’d care!” Gabriel shoved him away. “You’d probably be glad to finally get rid of us!”
“Gabriel!” Nick yelled at his twin, trying to get him to stop.
But the hot-headed twin was already too fired up to stop himself.
“If you could think past your own fucking self - past two fucking minutes into the future – you’d see how fucking close you are to ruining everything!”
“For you!” Gabriel growled. “You’re not the one going day in and out with these idiots who think they can mess around with us because if we strike back, we’re fucking murderous!”
“You seriously think tonight made things better for you? For Chris?” Michael scoffed.
Gabriel took that as an insult and started to launch at him. But Michael felt the fight coming.
The rise tug from Gabriel’s power.
The push off against the grass lawn.
The dangerously loud crack of lightening from the stormed sky.
Michael’s own Element called out to him. His anger was urging the ground at their feet to split open and pull the threat away.
Pull Gabriel away.
Michael felt the fight coming, and he couldn’t do much in stopping the punch from landing, but that was as far as he was going to let it happen.
It was too easy to hurt his brother. Too easy to lose control.
To give in.
Michael grabbed at Gabriel’s arm, and used his own momentum against him. He twisted the teen until they were back to chest, with Gabe’s swinging arm twisted up between them.
“Michael!” Chris cried out at the same time that Nick shouted at his twin.
“I’m not fighting you,” Michael growled at him.
“Fucking get off me!” Gabriel yelled, trying to twist out of his hold, but that just hurt him more.
“You’re going to hurt his arm!” Nick was at their side, eyes pleading at Michael.
“Stop moving,” Michael growled.
“Get the fuck off me!” Gabriel insisted.
“Gabriel, calm down!” Chris cried out as more lightning struck closer to them.
But the enraged teen wasn’t calming and he wasn’t stopping. If anything, he was getting more worked up.
Lighting struck their lawn.
A small fire started, but it was quickly enough doused off, likely by Chris’ insistence.
“It’s too much,” insisted Nick. “He can’t control it.”
Gabriel started kicking out and thrashing about and the sky was putting on quite the light’s display from his temper.
Michael swept at his feet, and knocked them both to the ground, catching them both before they landed with a twist that he then turned, getting the now disoriented Gabriel pinned to the ground.
The front yard light up from the thunder.
“Damn it, Michael, let him up!” Nick yelled, coming towards them once more.
Michael surveyed the area around them and stared down at Gabriel. “Try that again and see what I do to you!”
“Fuck you!” Gabriel yelled out, his eyes filled with fury.
Michael felt Nick coming at him, and while he wasn’t as keyed up as Gabriel, he wasn’t exactly looking forward to another confrontation.
Even if Nick was likely just trying to get them to stop.
Instead, Michael did what he had done to keep the fire-head in controllable chaos for the past five years.
Much like the first time – when Gabriel had been fighting Michael because he didn’t think he needed to show Mike his report card and instead burned it in his hand – Michael didn’t think it through.
He had never once had to smack one of the boys in public, but he had certainly had to threaten them.
And it was almost always Gabriel.
Gabriel who didn’t know when to stop giving off lip. Or when to let a situation go and walk away. Or when to take a deep breath and listen to his brother.
Gabriel who liked teasing his brothers and agitating everyone else.
Gabriel who usually toed the line until he thought no one was looking, and then he played hopscotch back and forth like he wasn’t breaking all kinds of rules, laws, and courtesies.
So, no, Michael didn’t warn him this time. It was three in the morning and they were dripping wet from a storm. Chris had already been dragged home that night, torn into by two kids older and stronger than him and saved by a girl. It was not the kind of night Michael looked forward too, and certainly not the wake-up he appreciated.
Three smacks. Hard and fast. The last coincided with a lightning strike - natural or Gabe-made was debatable.
“AHH! Fuck!” Gabriel hissed.
“Dude,” Nick cringed for his twin. He was at Michael’s elbow, trying to pull Michael off of their brother.
“Get Off!” Gabriel.
Michael ignored the both of them. Gabriel was still wriggling and growling at him. The sky was telling him that it was more than willing to join in, per Gabriel’s request.
Michael smacked him again.
“Michael!” both twins hissed.
“You better calm down,” growled Michael back.
“Who can be calm? Nick scoffed.
“Damnit!” Gabriel growled as another clash sounded the sky.
“Guys!” the youngest insisted.
Michael took a glance over at him then. As if the darkened stormy night could made the bruising on the kid’s face easier to come to terms with.
If anything, it rung out stronger still, how much of a failure Michael was in protecting them.
“Michael,” Nick insisted again, tugging at Michael’s elbow.
And he didn’t want to continue. Michael didn’t want to have to chastise anyone. He didn’t want the two-in-the-morning, wake you from the dead of sleep, wake-up calls either.
Such was the roles they were given to play.
“Gabriel,” Michael sighed. “Calm down.”
May. That had been the last time that Michael had had to put this kid across his lap. Gabriel had gotten it into his head to take Lindsey Brinkley to Atlantic City for a concert that she was dying to go to. At a club that not only were they too young to enter, but of which Michael had already negated.
It had been four in the morning then, as Gabriel tried to sneak back into the house – because the teenaged brain somehow thought that his being gone almost twenty-four hours wouldn’t be noticed.
Michael had been beyond horrified then. And it was only Nick’s reassurances and calming nature that had kept Michael from driving out there after the idiots after the school had called to tell him that one out of three Merricks wasn’t in school that day.
Maybe it had been too long.
“Get off, Michael!” Gabriel insisted.
Michael swatted him twice more. In plain view of anyone who wanted to drive down into the cul-de-sac or look out of their windows towards “those poor Merrick boys’ home”.
It was Gabriel’s own fault.
With quite the displeasure displayed from his taunt facial features to his rigid back, amazingly, Gabriel was starting to relax.
Michael waited. He could feel Gabriel trying to reign himself back in, but he was cautious. It would be just like Gabriel to start calming and then attack as Michael was dropping his guard. He’d known the kid for seventeen years, it wouldn’t exactly be the first time.
“Michael!” Gabriel groaned again.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Michael warned him, and he started to get up, allowing Nick to pull him to his feet.
“Jerk,” Gabriel muttered, fury still in his eyes as Chris lent him a hand up.
Michael stared at him. He could feel the power radiating off of Gabriel now. The height of the storm around them, the back and forth of the fight, and whatever residual energy was left from the boys’ late night escapade.
“Don’t,” Nick shook his head at his twin. “You idiot.”
Nick was pissed. Chris was still hurt. Gabriel was fuming.
And they were all dripping wet.
All in all, Michael would grade that night an A+. In disaster.
Gabriel glanced at them. He could hear the annoyance in his twin’s voice too. Some of the arrogance left Gabriel’s expression and his shoulders dropped. He glanced from Nick and then to Chris.
Gabriel took steps towards Michael, stopping right in front of him. He spoke, his voice carrying even through the howling wind and the rain barreling against them.
“You’d make a shitty father,” Gabriel growled. “But that’s okay,” he continued before any of the others could respond. “You’re not supposed to be.”
“Yeah?” Michael glared back at him. Eye to eye and almost a matching built with how much Gabriel put in with sports, helping out in some jobs, and his overall energetic teen ways. Stronger than Michael was at that age – but not quite matching Michael’s strength now.
“Just what am I supposed to be then?”
Gabriel shoved at Michael’s shoulder nonetookindly and shook his head.
“Our brother, asshole.”
He turned then and headed for the doorway. “Come on guys,” he muttered to the other two.
Nick groaned and shook his head, following behind his twin.
Chris looking at Michael a moment longer.
“Am I next?” he finally asked, once it was just the two of them.
Michael was about to ask him what he was going on about – as if Michael and Chris had ever entered that level of fighting between them.
But he realized maybe Chris felt he was the next one to be punished. Hadn’t he stated in the car ride back home that he was just as guilty as his brother? Not that Michael believed that, but he could see the youngest trying to square his shoulders into the situation at hand.
Growing before his eyes.
The bruising eye and jaw proof of his toughness and his involvement in all of the chaos around them – whether either of them wanted him to be or not.
Michael reached over and grabbed the boy’s elbow, tugging him and his slight resistance against his chest.
He could remember the first few months, the first two years especially, after their parents were gone. Michael couldn’t seem to have a moment’s peace without Chris somehow underfoot. Nick was clingy, asking for reassurance through his assistance and his overall willingness. Gabriel was the most withdrawn, understandably.
Now, Michael couldn’t remember the last time he did this – just hold Chris to him and not need or want anything in return. Holding the kid to let him know that he was there and that they were not alone in all of this.
Chris didn’t hug him back. His hands came to grip at the hem of Michael’s shirt instead.
Two minutes tops. It was raining and while Chris probably didn’t mind, Michael wanted to be dry sooner rather than later.
“Go to bed, Christopher,” he said, kissing his temple and releasing the teen without another word.