Chapter Text
They’ll Find Another Son To Love
The lights are harsh.
TK reels back in his seat and tries to ignore them the best he can.
The cutlery scrapes abrasively against the plates.
It hurts his ears and he downturns his head, wincing.
“So, no Alex tonight?”
His father’s voice swims in one ear and out the other. TK claws at his thighs to force his hands to stop trembling.
“That boy’s never once cared about Shabbat.” His mother says, dismissive.
TK would probably agree. Alex doesn’t want to spend time with him anymore, let alone his parents.
Not that it involves much participation to be around them. Their conversation has carried effortlessly over TK’s head for the better part of an hour, while he’s sat and felt his stomach do backflips.
Their conversation could only go on so long, though. His mother focuses on him now. “Tyler, have some more. You’re not eating enough.” She says, snapping her fingers at his plate.
He’s done an expert job pushing the food around it, but he’s not taken more than five bites. Owen just scoffs at her.
“He’s a grown man, Gwyn.”
She slaps his arm, “Maybe. But he’s still my little boy, and I want to make sure he’s eating.”
Again, she looks at TK and waves towards his plate, encouraging him.
Owen, typically, doesn’t budge. His parents always were the definition of an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object. He rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his drink, “I’m sure he is. He’s not wasting away. Not like before.”
The second slap is harder and her tone is almost hushed, like she doesn’t want TK to hear them. Whether it’s because they had promised not to argue in front of him tonight and they’ve already started, or because she’s afraid mentioning his last stint in rehab will trigger him, he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t really care.
“Owen!” She hisses, “We’re not having that kind of talk at the table-“
TK knows if he lets them whisper-yell for a while, it will eventually turn into a sparring match, and his head will just explode.
“Stop.” He cuts in, “Okay?” He says, “Mom- I’ll- veggies are good for me, right?”
He scoops up some peas and takes a bite. In, chew, swallow.
Gwyn, for once, pauses, “Thank you, Tyler.” She cuts her eyes sharply to Owen, “Not so hard, hm?” Before smiling at him again.
After he’s taken a few more bites, he goes back to pushing the meat and potatoes around his plate.
He pretends not to notice the looks they share over his head again.
Eventually, his mother leans forwards onto her hands, “Now, we actually have a bit of news.”
He doesn’t want to know.
“What is it?” He asks anyways, sucking in a deep breath.
“Oh don’t sound too defensive! Look-“
His mother produces something from her pocket. It’s short and thin and mostly white, with a blue cap.
The first side is blank.
He rolls it over in his palm.
Two red lines stare back at him, distinct and clear.
He says… nothing.
The silence becomes heavy, the walls of the apartment close in around them.
Eventually, he looks up, and passes it back.
The expressions on both of his parents faces are utterly crushed.
He can’t stand it.
Can’t stand that both of them are so wrapped up in themselves that they can’t see how much he’s hurting right now. How much he won’t be able to cope with yet another explosive break up, and how it’s entirely unfair to do this to another child.
“Why the long face?” Owen asks, oblivious to his son’s sour mood still. He laughs and tries to lift the mood of the room, “We’re pregnant! I’m going to be a father, TK.”
He bolts from the apartment as fast as he possibly can after that, even as his mother yells after him.
Literally, he just shoves his chair away and runs to the door. The last thing he sees of his parents is his mother’s panicked face storming towards him, and his father’s back as he calls out for her to let him go.
TK nearly crashes into their neighbour as he slams the door and breaks for the stairs, but he doesn’t stop to apologise.
He takes each step two-by-two until he’s back on the ground floor and shouldering out onto the street.
Well, fuck.
He wants to get high.
He stands in the street, freezing cold and stomach churning, desperately wanting to get high, but even more desperately, he finds he’s yearning for a feeling of home.
He doesn’t even know where that is anymore- home, with Alex the emotionally distant boyfriend? Home, where the parents who raised him don’t exist anymore? Home, where? Maybe that’s why he’s so lost, now. Floating aimlessly along the course of his life, always feeling like he gets the worst shake. He has nothing to stand on, no one to fall back on.
He can’t even fall on himself, because he trip-fall-stumbles to a pill the first chance he gets.
The thought sends him spiralling, again, so he shoves all his messy, complicated feelings about this baby and what it means for him down into the box at the back of his head labelled ‘do not open’.
Then he shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks around, needing a distraction.
The street to his left looks dark, cold, and empty.
The street to his right is more of the same except there’s a bus stop. It’s lit up by a single lamp post, which makes it look more eerie than anything else, even as a group of people pile off and the place is lit up by noise and chatter. He watches absently as the group turn and wave at someone else still on the bus, before loudly complaining that it’s cold and bustling away, all wrapped up in their winter coats.
Momentarily, his heart seizes.
For the first time in a long time, he’s terrified that if he doesn’t do something, he’ll end up at his dealer’s house, and it won’t be fun anymore.
He knows the route there from his parents’ apartment like the back of his hand. He’s walked it before, on quite a few evenings not unlike this one.
It’s probably where his parents think he’s headed.
He makes up his mind.
His feet slap against the pavement, and when the bus doors don’t stop closing, he waves his arms above his head almost frantically.
“Wait!” He hears his voice holler, bouncing off the glass walls of the bus stop as he ducks underneath it.
The door to the bus is closed, and it’s half pulled away from the curb, but the driver had stopped.
“Wait-“ TK huffs, pacing up to the door.
It takes a long moment, but it opens.
The driver looks thoroughly unimpressed, but gestures anyways to the ticket machine, “What stop?” He asks, bluntly.
There is not a shred of doubt in his mind when he scans the list on the wall and decides, “The last one. The very last one. How much?”
The driver looks at him, again. Really looks. Up, then down.
TK huffs and puffs as he scrambles for his wallet. He has it in his hand when the driver sighs and shakes his head.
“Just get on.” He says.
TK knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.
His body slumps into the first empty seat he finds. Quickly, they pass his parent’s apartment complex and drive away from the centre of the city.
Even if he wanted to spin out, now, he would simply be too far away.
——
“Hi.”
The woman at the front desk looks up.
Bags hang under her eyes and her pen taptaptaps against the arm of her chair.
Her gaze feels hot and uncomfortable as she looks TK up and down, gaze dragging over his sweats, flushed face, and lack of luggage.
Probably, anyways.
He’s felt for the last four hours that everyone has been judging him, and this receptionist is no different.
After a moment, she inhales sharply, and a pained smile plasters her face, “How can I help?”
The question makes him jump.
He fumbles with his phone, “I, uh-“ He feels himself frown, and in a panic he looks up at the looming departure board above their heads.
“Connecticut?”
It’s the first name on the board. He looks back down at the woman, who stares back with that customer service smile frozen in place like she’s forgotten it’s there.
More seconds tick by, before she coughs, clearing her throat, and mutters under her breath before typing quick-fire into her computer. It beeps back an unhappy sound, which doesn’t fill TK with much confidence at all.
Even the technology is having a hard day.
“Sorry.” The lady’s smile falls into a half-grimace as her finger absently traces a line on the computer screen, “There are no seats left on that flight.”
Right. He hadn’t thought of that. TK glances back up.
“Ontario?” He asks, passing his phone to his other hand and squeezing.
The lady doesn’t even type this time, simply sighing, “Do you have your passport, sir?” She asks.
Right. Fuck. TK feels his entire body slump. It’s not the end of the world, but this is starting to feel hopeless.
He had tried so goddamn hard-
“There’s a flight to Austin in three hours. The last minute ticket is two hundred dollars. I’ll get you a discount to one hundred twenty two dollars and sixteen cents, after taxes.”
Years later, he’d wish he could somehow thank that overworked receptionist with every dollar in his bank account, because she’d saved him.
Totally, accidentally, and completely without meaning to, but she had.