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Grant doesn’t know what’s wrong with him today.
Nothing had happened- nothing big, anyway. He just woke up and went to school and everything was normal at first. But as soon as he stepped in and had to walk around the crowded hallways some sort of switch was flipped. Suddenly everything was too much. Suddenly he had a thin veil of irritation coating everything, and he doesn’t feel quite real.
It’s frustrating. He tries not to let it show, and he tries to act like he’s fine even though it feels similar controlling a puppet than being himself. Nobody notices. Something about that stings.
When school gets out he texts his dad and says he’ll be spending the night with Nick; it’s the most probable of all his friends, since Glenn just went out for a two-week tour, and it makes sense Nick would be be more lonely and prone to last-minute plans. Five minutes later he gets a text telling him to have fun and asking him to please come home tomorrow by noon. The thought that he probably didn’t need to think so hard about who to choose crosses Grant’s mind, but he ignores it. He likes to think his precautions are necessary. He likes to think he’s being monitored closely.
But deep down, he knows his dad won’t even call anyone to check.
Grant sends back a thumbs-up.
It’s a lie. Obviously. Grant shoves in his earbuds and gets on his bike. He presses play on his music and just starts going with no rhyme or reason as to where.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know why, but the wind feels good on his face and the burning in his legs is repetitive.
What Grant does know is this: sometimes, he doesn’t feel completely human, or completely alive at all. Sometimes things get on his nerves for no reason and he thinks he might explode. And on days like those, he rides around the city at top speeds, keeping his mind quiet by listening to music that’s so loud it leaves his ears ringing afterwards.
He doesn’t pay much attention to the road or the path, because he doesn’t need to. Everything is auto-pilot here. Being conscious is dangerous. Being conscious doesn’t matter.
And that, exactly, is why Grant crashes his fucking bike.
He isn’t really sure what happened, because he was still in and out of paying real attention. One moment he was riding along the bike trail. The next he’s falling over, letting go of the handlebars as he tumbles down into a ditch. Grant groans and pushes himself up to stand.
He’s not hurt, nothing much other than a very dull ache anyway, but when he looks at the bike he can see it’s much worse for ware. He… doesn’t think the wheel is supposed to be turned that way. And the axle- it’s a total wreck.
“Dammit.” Grant mutters. Annoyed. And something about the dullness of his emotions pisses him off further.
Why isn’t he freaking out? He should be. This- this is fucked, he’s fucked, and he just crashed his only mode of transportation in the middle of nowhere and with no idea how to get back home, or to Nick’s for any matter.
The old Grant would have freaked out. He would be calling his dad, frantic and looking for some answers as to what to do. And his dad would have told his mom, and then she would have done something, because she’s always level-headed in situations like this. But now he’s only numb. Now he barely even feels like this is happening.
It doesn’t make sense. Why can’t he be normal? Why can’t he-
The anger flares and burns but it still isn’t enough to break him through his fog. Grant looks down at his hands. They’re not his. Why’s he so…
The next actions are almost second-nature, deliberate but also not. He wants to be in control. He knows how to do that. So he makes his hand a tight fist, so tight he hears some knuckles pop, and he turns towards the nearest object, and-
His fist collides with the bark hard. Harder than he’s ever hit anyone on purpose. It sends pain down his arm, fresh and electric, and all the sudden he feels every sensation and every fiber of his being with an energy that pulses so hard it makes him feel wide-awake again. He’s here.
He’s here, and it fills him with relief, but also terror as he realizes all the nerves from his fingers to his shoulder are buzzing in a silent scream.
Grant looks down at his hands. They’re his. And he’s just fucked up one so bad that his knuckles are split and bleeding and the rest is throbbing painfully.
“Shit,” Grant whispers. “Shit, shit, shit-”
Now he’s freaking out, true and proper, just like he wanted. What the hell is he supposed to do with that? He tries to breathe in the ways his therapist tells him to and tries to channel his mom. What would she do? She’s always so collected in emergencies. He thinks of her, and listens hard for her voice.
“What are the facts?” She asks him. Grant takes an unsteady breath in.
The facts are that Grant just hit a tree with enough force to possibly break his hand. The facts are that his bike is broken and unrideable. The facts are that he has no idea where he actually is.
“Take it one step at a time, champ.”
He does. He figures out where he’s stranded using Google Maps, and then he calls an Uber to come pick him up in the meantime. He can’t go to Nick’s house like this- he can’t let anyone know. What would he even say? He doesn’t know how to explain it.
So he needs to go home, then. He checks the time and winces. It’s around 10, and the ride will only buy him around 20 minutes. Grant chews his lip and tries to think.
Would Dad be awake around this time? He’s been trying to go to sleep earlier for the past few weeks, since he says it’s healthier than staying up only to feel like crap in the morning because of it, but they both know he has some days where he gives up. Will this be one of them?
Especially since Grant isn’t expected home till tomorrow. God, what if he walks in on his dad taking over the living room and watching some stupid shit neither want to talk about in the morning? How awkward would that be?
He doesn’t have much of a choice, he decides glumly, giving the Uber driver directions to his house. Maybe if he’s as quiet as possible he won’t be caught. Then in the morning he can say he felt sick so he came back or something. He doesn’t know how to explain the injury yet, or the broken bike. He’ll figure something out. He just needs some time.
Grant hides his hand in his hoodie pocket for the whole ride, because he sure as hell isn’t getting snitched on by some middle-aged woman who keeps glancing at him in the rear view mirror. He wants to snap at her and tell her to stop watching him, but he knows he can’t. He shouldn’t. And he doesn’t know exactly why not right now, with his fading in and out of feeling real and feeling like he’s floating, but he knows he’ll understand later.
He pulls out his earbuds and sticks one in. Turns on his music, this time so that it isn’t too loud, and he watches the scenery pass outside his window.
Whenever he feels not-quite-there he squeezes his hurt hand and winces at the jolt of pain that is keeping him alive. It’s not good to do that, he thinks to himself, always so responsible. That’s not healthy.
He squeezes harder until those thoughts are drowned out by sight of passing cars.
Grant stands outside his house door for a good five minutes. Not exactly anxious, but definitely not calm, either. The living room lights are off but the TV is on.
Does that mean his dad is awake? No, he reasons, they’re both prone to forgetting to turn things off when they leave the room. But does it make Grant’s dread spike?
God yeah it does.
Breathe in for four, out for eight. The door creaks when he pushes it open. Grant holds his breath for a good minute; there’s nobody in the living room. The kitchen light is on, but he can’t hear anything over the sound of the TV. The house seems, overall, quiet.
Grant lets out his breath. He’s safe.
But then he lets the door shut with a loud ‘click’ behind him.
“Grant?” He hears from the kitchen. “That you, bud?”
Shit.
Grant groans internally. Fuck. He should have waited until the TV was off. What an absolute rookie mistake, Jesus Christ.
“Yeah,” He calls out, voice-cracking before he clears it. “Yeah, I- I’m here!”
Now it’s time for him to be fast. He kicks off his shoes and locks the door behind him, just like it was before he’d unlocked it with his house key, all while hearing his dad say things he isn’t really listening to.
“-so it’s a late dinner tonight for me, since the meatloaf ended up not working out. Sorry if it smells in here because of that, uh- hey, what’s got you home so soon?”
Grant makes non-committal noises throughout the conversation. He starts up the stairs, trying to be quiet so Darryl doesn’t realize he’s as close to freedom as he is and doesn’t have a chance to stop him. “Yeah, uh huh, I just wasn’t feeling well. I’m gonna head up to bed.”
He’s halfway up the stairs- so close, yet so far- when Darryl steps out of the kitchen and they’re suddenly facing each other.
“You’re feeling sick?” He asks, obviously worried. “Why don’t you come down here and let me get you some tea. It’s not good to go to sleep with an upset stomach.”
Grant pauses and sighs. He turns, one hand on the banister and a shoulder hitched up near his ear. “Dad, I don’t really think-”
“Come on.” Grant knows what that tone means, and it’s enough to make him let go of any hope he had of getting up to his room without a fight. Darryl is looking at him kindly.
“Just to ease your old man’s poor heart.”
And well, he’s got nothing to rebuff that one. His hand throbs from inside his hoodie pocket.
“Okay dad,” Grant finally relents, and he steps back down the stairs. Darryl smiles at him from the kitchen opening and claps him on the back when he gets close enough. Grant tries not to flinch.
“You hungry too?” Darryl asks. “I know you don’t like the chili, but I can pop another grilled cheese on the stove.”
Ah, what the hell. He’s already this far deep, and Grant’s stomach rumbles at the thought of one of his dad’s grilled cheese sandwiches. He nods and Darryl beams at him before going to pull some bread out of the pantry and cheese from the fridge. Grant carefully pushes himself up so he’s sitting on the counter. The sandwich and tea will be quick; there’s no point in getting comfortable at the table, he thinks.
“So how was school?” Darryl makes small talk as he butters bread. Sometimes Grant enjoys the small conversations like this, but this is not one of those times. He’s tired. He just wants to go up to his room and less-than-subtly look up how to tell if a hand is broken, and how to hide a cast from everyone you know.
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Yep,” Grant says, brushing off Darryl’s nudging tone. Before Darryl can say anything else to get him to talk he sniffs the air and scrunches his nose. “Why does it smell like metal in here?”
Darryl eyes him. “…I already told you. You sure you’re good, bud?”
Grant thinks this over. And yeah, no, that does sound familiar, doesn’t it?
“…You ruined the meatloaf,” He finally gets out. Darryl nods and flips a sandwich.
“Fell asleep when it was cooking,” He informs Grant. “It got burnt to all hell- thank god I was alone because I don’t think I could have lived it down if anyone else were here. Henry would have barfed. This smell is the result after a can of air-freshener and a good cleaning of the stove.”
Grant snorts. His dad is suck a dork. “Loser.”
“Oh shush.”
Darryl plates a grilled cheese and walks over to their coffee maker, where he pours hot water over a cup with a teabag and then goes to stand in front of where Grant’s sitting. He holds them both out.
Grant goes to pull his hands out his pocket to take them.
...He pauses.
Ah.
Thinking fast, he first grabs the grilled cheese with his good hand. The tea waits there for a long beat. Darryl’s eyebrow raises. He doesn’t say anything, but they’re both noticing this is weird, and Darryl is definitely waiting for an explanation without having asked.
Grant takes a moment to panic and think, almost certain he’s screwed, but then he comes across the realization that he is a fucking genius. He puts the grilled cheese down on the counter next to him and quickly reaches out for the tea. Why didn’t he think of that sooner? He doesn’t need to have both, he can just stand here and eat. Jesus. “Yeah, uh, sorry-”
His grasp on the mug and hurried and flustered. In his rush to grab it and seem normal he does not take into account the steam coming out the top, or the fact that this tea was just brewed, or the heat radiating off it in waves. Instead he just-
grabs at the cup’s base, because Darryl is holding onto it by the handle-
and almost instantly he gasps and-
“Shit!”
He drops the cup at the same time Darryl lets go to hand it over. On instinct, he reaches his other hand out of his pocket in an attempt to catch it, but when the porcelain hits his bruises he hisses and flinches back. It crashes against the tile just as fast.
Grant freezes. Darryl jumps. He looks from the mess to Grant with clear surprise that only gets wider when he notices Grant’s bad hand before he can think to shove it back in his pocket.
“Shit, sorry-”
“What happened to your hand?!”
“Are you okay?” Grant asks. “Did you get burned?”
“I’m fine,” Darryl says. Grant looks down and can see he’s wearing slippers, thank god, so he won’t get cut in the glass or anything, but it’s obvious tea has started to seep into the fabric. He looks back up and notices the surprised stare Darryl is still giving his hand.
The damage has already been done, and there’s no going back now. But Grant still hides his hand again, and at the action Darryl snaps out of it and look down at the mess again.
“Stay there,” He orders, going into action mode, “and I’ll clean this up. We’ll talk about your hand in a minute.”
And it’s the funniest thing, because Grant doesn’t even want to talk about his hand. He wants to pretend nothing happened and that his fingers aren’t scabbing. He wants to go on in his life and pretend he’s not got a painful mess in his pocket. But it’s the phrase- it’s the ‘in a minute’, it’s the ‘we’ll talk about it later’, that somehow brings back all the frustration he’d been feeling before. And it’s fresh now, it’s bright, because Grant is alive and he’s here and his dad is looking back and forth from a broom and a mop.
Grant doesn’t want to talk about this but he also wants to be the center of attention. Grant doesn’t want to explain but he also wants to be obvious.
Grant wants- Grant wants control.
‘We’ll talk about it later.’ Fuck that.
“I’m going to bed,” He declares. Darryl turns around just in time to see Grant push himself off the counter and tread clumsily between cooling tea and glass towards the hallway opening. Confused, he leaves the cleaning supplies behind and follows. He’s quicker since he walks around the other side of the counter and he manages to get in the way of the stairway just in time for Grant to leave the kitchen tiles and reach the plush carpeting.
“Where do you think you’re going? We still need to talk!”
“I don’t want to talk.” Grant says stiffly. As soon as he sees he won’t be getting up the stairs he turns towards the living room instead and makes a bee-line towards the door. Darryl trails behind.
“Sit down, Grant. You’re hurt.”
“I’m going.” He starts shoving his feet back into his shoes without really caring if the backs bend inward. He just needs to leave. He just needs to get out of here. He just-
“Grant.”
It’s gentle but convincing. It makes Grant let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in, and the realization that he can’t leave sinks into his bones. His bike is broken. He’s not running around the neighborhood at thirty minutes till 11- not even his anger can justify that one. He’d be back in minutes.
There’s a hand on his arm, holding him steady and firm. Grant bites the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping.
“Stay with me, bud.”
What’s he supposed to say to that?
The anger quells, just a bit. He lets himself be gently pulled and turned around so he’s facing his dad, who is now bent down on one knee and looking up at him. He doesn’t meet his gaze.
Darryl pulls his hurt hand out of his pocket and inspects it with the light from the TV. His mouth is pressed into a fine line, and Grant thinks that probably isn’t a good sign.
They’re both quiet for a moment.
“What happened?” Darryl finally asks again. Grant doesn’t know why the question makes him so angry. “Did you get in a fight? Or an accident? Or-”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” Grant yells. Darryl instantly goes quiet, jaw clenched. It feels good. “What the hell don’t you understand about that? I’m fucking fine, so just- leave it alone.”
Darryl does not say anything for a long, long time. Grant breathes heavily through his nose and stares down at his shoes. He wants to scream. He wants to throw something. He wants to sleep.
“Okay.” Darryl finally says. He stands, lets Grant take back his arm, and walks off down the hall. It leaves Grant disoriented and with a swirling disappointment he doesn’t understand. Did he just… leave? Like that?
His questions are quickly answered by Darryl coming back into the room with a first-aid kit in hand. Of course, Grant thinks, shoulders relaxing. That makes sense.
Darryl sits down on the couch so that’s he’s sitting sideways and facing the other end. He pats the seat in front of him.
“C’mhere,” He encourages, bringing out some gauze. “Let’s get you fixed up.”
“Do I have a choice?” Grant snips.
Darryl doesn’t respond. He just rummages through the kit and pulls things out to set on the coffee table. With nothing else to say Grant begrudgingly sits down on the couch square in front.
Darryl holds out a hand, palm-up, a silent request. Grant complies.
“Tell me when it hurts.” Darryl tells him, gingerly splaying out Grant’s curled-in fingers and keeping a stable hand on his wrist. When, Grant notes. Not if.
Releasing a hiss of breath through his teeth, Grant knows his dad was right in his confidence, because with gentle pressure against his throbbing palm he already feels worse for wear. Darryl frowns. Apologetic, he presses his fingers over and between Grant’s knuckles, gauging a reaction. Grant finds himself nodding a lot more than he shakes his head.
“So,” He says. “I’ve got good news and bad news.” He waits for a response but Grant doesn’t say anything. Awkwardly, he continues. “The good news is that I don’t think it’s broken. But the bad news is that we’re gonna have to take you to the hospital in order to figure out everything that’s wrong.”
Grant feels sick. God damn it.
“Do you want to go tonight or tomorrow?” Darryl asks. “I think you’ll be good to wait if you’d like.”
Grant shrugs. He doesn’t care. Darryl sucks his teeth and brings out some wound-cleaning supplies. It seems like they’ll be going tomorrow.
Nobody says anything for a while. Not when Grant winces at the way his wounds burn against Darryl’s wash cloth and not at Darryl’s sympathetic pauses. Not when Darryl gets up in order to clean up the glass and tea and bring in some coffee for the two of them. Grant thinks he probably knows he lied about feeling sick. Darryl brings back Grant’s untouched grilled cheese.
Suddenly aware of just how hungry he was- is-, Grant takes it without a second thought.
“Thanks.”
“I used to get into a lot of fights as a kid.”
It’s said so impulsively that Grant almost thinks he misheard. Darryl begins squirting out little dots of wound-cleaning cream and pointedly does not meet Grant’s searching gaze. In a fascinating sequence of events, the grilled cheese is once again forgotten.
“…Bullshit.” He calls.
Darryl chuckles quietly. “No shit.”
Grant’s head is spinning. That doesn’t check out with anything he knows about his dad’s high-school years. He was a jock, not one of the rough ones, and an absolute nerd. Fighting doesn’t fit into that.
When he finishes rubbing cream around Grant’s wounds he holds out his own hand for Grant to look at, palm down. Grant looks down at it closely for the first time in his life, and he realizes with a start there’s silvery scaring in a similar mirror to Grant’s own cuts.
“I got sort of scarred before I learned how to fix it myself,” Darryl offers, finally meeting Grant’s eyes when he looks back up, “but even after that I had my fair share of fist-fights after school. Some with my own pals- it felt like a good way to let off steam. We were back to friends right after.”
Darryl doesn’t say it like it’s a bad thing, or something he’s embarrassed of. No, he talks about this with a cool calmness that makes Grant almost eager to hear more.
Darryl glances down for a half-second before meeting Grant’s eyes again. He raises an eyebrow.
“Give it to me straight, bud. Am I gonna have to call Glenn about this?”
Grant feels the tips of his ears go red and he huffs out a breath. He’s not really sure who would win between him and Nick, but he knows one wouldn’t stand a chance against the other. Which one that is he has no idea. Maybe it changes every month.
“You’re safe,” He assures his dad. “Nick and I are cool.”
Darryl hesitates and Grant can tell it isn’t because he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. Than he asks, “So the fight had no bad feelings in it?”, and Grant has reached a crossroad.
Grant has been in therapy for the past four months, then another three if you split it up between time his dad has been back and time it was just him and his mom. Thus far, he has become very good at ignoring things and only talking enough on a surface-level basis so he doesn’t get in trouble.
He knows what a fishing question is.
He knows the question isn’t really asking about the nature of the fight, but it’s asking if there was a fight at all. His dad doesn’t actually want to know if he and Nick are still chummy; he wants to get more clues as to what the hell happened. Grant can admit it’s clever. If he weren’t so aware of his own need to keep everything a secret from Darryl he probably would have fallen for it.
Grant can also admit it’s tricky as hell.
On one hand Grant wants to shut down. He still does not want to talk about what happened, because that opens a whole other can of worms he needs to explain, and- he just wants to be normal. Grant just wants this to pass. He doesn’t want to be a kid who needs therapy, or who gets scarily spacey sometimes, or has a temper he doesn’t know what to do with. Grant wants to go back to how he was before, and that means hoping for the best, because deep down he knows something inside him has fundamentally changed.
On the other Grant is desperate. He wants his dad’s approval. He wants to spill his guts and he wants his dad to do the same and he wants to be a kid again. Grant want to talk to his dad and he also doesn’t and it’s so confusing he’s constantly disoriented.
So he compromises. He’s always been good at keeping peace.
“It actually wasn’t a fight,” Grant confides to his father, loud enough to sound confidant but not cocky enough to seem proud. Darryl’s eyes flicker with a look almost similar to the one he makes when he’s trying to figure out the daily crossword, then he nods and he starts applying gauze to Grant’s hand.
Grant takes a bite of his now-cold food. It still somehow tastes like heaven.
He can feel Darryl thinking hard in front of him. This is how things are, he’s reminded. There are no direct questions in the Wilson household when it comes to emotions. Before it was because Grant knew his dad just wouldn’t answer them. Now it’s because Grant finds a sick sort of humor in seeing his dad struggle to find some way to phrase things without him either shutting down or going off like a bomb.
God, what’s wrong with him?
“Grant, I-” Grant wants to go to bed again. “I know you don’t want to talk about this, and that’s okay, because you don’t owe me honesty or anything like that. You’re allowed to have privacy. But do you know what my job is, as your parent?”
Grant shrugs. Once again he’s refusing to make eye-contact. This bothers Darryl, he’s sure, but Darryl doesn’t tell him to look up.
“It’s to keep you safe.”
Grant glances to his hand that’s currently being held by both his dad’s hands, so big they overlap and cover the entirety of his bruising. Darryl finishes wrapping some elastic bandages and secures them with a clip. He doesn’t let go. While he’s looking down at Grant’s hand Grant glances up at him and notices wet eyes.
“This isn’t safe, Grant.”
“I don’t want a lecture,” Grant snaps without meaning it. Or maybe he does. He doesn’t know.
“You’re not getting one.”
Darryl’s gotten better about hiding his temper nowadays. Grant wonders what he’s really feeling now. “This isn’t me yelling or scolding you because you know better, because I know you know better, and I know you know this-” He shakes Grant’s hand a bit- “isn’t healthy. What’s happening right now is me telling you I trust you here. But I need to know what happened so we can adjust. If something’s not working, bud, we need to fix it. We need to find something that does help. Does that make sense?”
Grant hates this, he decides. The angry and defensive part of him just wants his dad to yell. He wants more reasons to fuel his anger and his feelings of not being understood. When did Darryl become to mature one? When did Grant fall so far?
But Darryl is- dammit, he’s trying, and it’s working, so Grant pulls out the big guns and ignores the part of himself telling him it’ll bite him in the ass later.
“I haven’t been visiting my friends as much as you think I have.”
Darryl looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t at fucking Nick’s tonight, dad,” He spits too loudly, “and I wasn’t at Terry’s last week, or the week before that, and I sure as hell haven’t been spending so much time with Lark and Sparrow. And you never called to make sure. You never- you never looked into it, or cared, or anything!”
“Where were you, then?” Darryl asks. It’s calm. But when Grant looks up he can see a panic in his eyes that makes him feel high and hysterical. He wants to ruin this. He wants it all to burn and he wants to get caught up in the flames. God, Grant wants to die.
He wants to die.
“I was riding my bike around town! I was going on the highway and I wasn’t really paying attention and I just crashed. I crashed and-” He cuts himself off. He doesn’t want to admit to what happened next. So instead Grant shrugs stiffly, because apparently shrugging is all he does nowadays.
Grant remembers some stupid thing Henry said when they were in the forgotten realms to Lark- something about it being okay to be angry but not to be cruel.
Fuck that, Grant thinks. He wants to be mean and he wants to ruin it. And he doesn’t even really understand why.
“I’d come back in the morning after sleeping over at whoever’s,” Grant continues on, “and you never noticed. You never thought anything was wrong.”
And there is this- this thrill, Grant guesses, that he gets from having these sorts of secrets and hiding them so well. It’s an unhealthy sort of thrill but it’s a rush nonetheless. Something rises from his anger over having to be the fair one and gets a cruel euphoria from seeing Darryl struggle to be on the opposite end of it.
But Darryl does not shut down. Darryl doesn’t yell at him. Grant wants a reaction, he wants something, anything, to keep his fire going, but Darryl is perfectly calculated in everything he’s showing.
“Why?”
Grant blinks. Darryl stares back.
“What?”
“I want to know why you’ve been riding around for hours on end,” Darryl rephrases. “And why you haven’t been asking me instead.”
“I…” Grant didn’t expect this. He didn’t expect to be asked such a simple question like why.
“You wouldn’t have let me gone.”
“Definitely not for as long as you’ve been doing it for,” Darryl relents, “and maybe not so late, but we would have talked it though. Gotten to something fair on both ends. You know that.”
“No,” Grant automatically cuts in, because Darryl isn’t understanding, and as soon as he says it he realizes he’s fallen for a question that leads to what he hadn’t wanted to talk about in the first place. Grant’s been played. But he’s tired, now, and the fire has been replaced with a dull melancholy, so he continues anyway. “You wouldn’t have let me gone because- you don’t like it when I’m alone. Not when I’m like… that.”
They both know what Grant means. When Darryl senses a bad day or a dangerous mood he tries to keep Grant inside or in his sight or with his friends. Grant gets it, even if he sometimes doesn’t want to. They both see the way Grant gets when he does the dishes. They both know Darryl puts away his knives right after using them.
“Do you get why I don’t like that?” Darryl asks. He does. He doesn’t respond.
“It’s because I don’t want things like this to happen.”
Grant’s hand is still throbbing. He is dully aware that Darryl is definitely aware this was some sort of self-inflicted. Relief and dread fill his veins.
Darryl doesn’t say anything for a long lull of silence. Then he says, “I thought- I thought you were getting better. I thought I was being better. You weren’t, you know, you weren’t being open much, but I thought you just wanted to save that for therapy. So I wasn’t open either, because I thought you would approach me first. I didn’t realize this was getting worse and I didn’t realize me not going out of my way to talk was enabling that. I thought I was being better by being clear I was around to talk, Grant. I didn’t- I’m sorry.”
His dad voice cracks, and Grant looks up to see his dad crying. His dad doesn’t cry. Regret, fresh and painful, seeps in at the sight. “Dad-”
“I’m sorry, bud, that I didn’t make you feel cared about. I should have reached out. I just thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t,” Grant defends, both to make his dad feel better and to make himself feel heard. Darryl considers this.
“But sometimes you need to,” Darryl points out gently. And, well. Well.
“I don’t want to because- because I don’t want it to be real,” Grant admits. It’s something he never thought he’d be telling anyone. “I don’t want to be this angry or this messed up or have these episodes. I want to be normal. I want it- I dunno. I just want to go back to normal, I guess.”
“But you are normal, Grant.” Darryl looks at him like he had never considered this a possibility. Like he had never considered that Grant might not be normal. Something in him gets warm and breaks. “You’ve gone through some shit, kiddo. Everything you’re feeling- everything you’re dealing with inside- is normal. You need help and that’s okay! You’re not okay and that’s okay too. You’re-”
Darryl suddenly cuts himself off and swallows. He reaches a hand over and rests it warmly on Grant’s arm. “You’re going to be okay.”
There is something so comforting about being told that that all the air escapes from Grant’s lungs. Words have left him. Darryl smiles and starts cleaning up the first-aid kit.
“We’ll talk about this more tomorrow,” Darryl says. It’s not a question. Surprisingly, it makes Grant feel secure instead of suffocated. He looks down at Grant as he stands and ruffles a hand through his curls, fond smile widening when Grant smiles instead of pushing him away.
“And then we’ll also talk about explaining this to your mom before your weekend visit.”
Grant groans. Darryl pats him on the shoulder.
“Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you too Dad.”
Darryl walks off down the hall. When he returns he grabs Grant’s empty plate and takes it back to the kitchen. Grant thinks for a long, careful minute.
“Hey dad?”
“Yeah?”
This isn’t like it was before, Grant notes. This isn’t the normalcy he wanted. Darryl is still unaware of the details that came from a disassociation and he still doesn’t know about Grant’s broken-down bike in a ditch twenty miles away. Grant still does not feel like he totally understands his father but he does feel a bit closer to figuring out what lies beneath a false sense of perfection.
He glances at the family photos and finds some of the more lovey-dovey ones between his mom and dad have been taken down. He thinks of scarred knuckles and wonders if his will look at least a little similar when everything heals.
“Do you- uh, do you want to watch a movie?”
The pause between the question and the answer is short but noticeable. “You sure?” Darryl asks. “It’s pretty late. You’ve had a long night, bud.”
He has. But he isn’t tired either. So Grant takes the first step forward and he tries to express his needs without being confusing. He tries to talk about his emotions directly without a real background fire to push him forward.
“I think I’d feel better if we sat down for a bit.”
“Okay,” Darryl concedes, and Grant can hear his smile. “I’ll pop some popcorn. Pick out something fun for us.”
It isn’t like it would have been before. Grant picks out a mostly-silly movie that’s filled with puppets and crystals. His dad talks about how he doesn’t understand what’s going on openly and Grant makes jokes at the expense of the film and Darryl laughs with him. Before they would have been quiet in their enjoyment(or lack thereof). It’s different.
And, Grant doesn’t know if that’s a totally good thing, because his hand still hurts and he decides to sleep sitting up against the couch to avoid rolling over on it. But he dad puts an arm around his space along the back of the couch and they share a blanket and a bowl of popcorn between them.
It’s different, Grant thinks. It’s new. It’s normal.
Grant thinks he can learn to adjust.