Spoilers for Worth's first name.
Pairing: High School Conrad and Med School Worth.
Fic is AU and Established Relationship.
Rated M Purely for language.
Reviews are always appreciated!
The Morning of Conrad's eighteenth birthday Luce had crawled through his window and woken him up by sitting on him. He then proceeded to hackle Conrad until he got up, dressed, and climbed back out the second story window. Luce swiftly grabbed the foliage growing up the side of the house to slide effortlessly to the ground. Conrad was less agile. Luce yanked him up from where he had fallen on his rear, and dragged him to his car.
They spent the day downtown, mostly loitering, and Luce bought him a Popsicle around noon, making terrible inappropriate comments for as long as it took him to eat it. They talked, they laughed. Luce found all of the opportune moments to jibe and insult him.
It was fun.
Then Conrad saw a familiar form out of the corner of his eye. His stomach clenched and he stalled mid-step. Luce looked down at him, cigarette hanging haphazardly out of his mouth, and read the fear in Conrad's expression. He followed Conrad's frozen gaze to the far side of the street.
It was a woman in her very late thirties wearing a purple blouse. Seconds after Conrad spotted her, she spotted him. Her face contorted through a short series of emotions: confusion, recognition, repulsion, rage. She immediately began to stomp her way over to where Conrad and Luce were standing.
"Conrad!" She called as she neared, "Just who is this?" She pointed a manicured nail at Luce's face accusingly.
"Who th'fuck are you?" He spat back at her.
Conrad cringed at Luce's word choice, then gulped.
"Uh. Mom. I. Uh. This is." Conrad twisted his hands, tripping over his words. Luce looked back and forth between Conrad and his mother with a solid What The Fuck expression on his face.
"My. Uh." His voice pitched to a high squeek, "Boyfriend?"
"Youre boyfriend?" She repeated, eyes narrowing, "It's not enough you're neurotic and OCD. Now your Gay?"
"I-"
"Why do you insist on doing this to me?" She jabbed her index finger at Conrad, "You refuse to talk to your psychiatrist, and now you're saying your dating this- This!" She motioned to the scruffy looking medical student, at least eight years his senior.
"Yeah, we're datin'." Luce draped his arms around Conrad's frame, pulling him in close as he grinned up at the boy's mother. "Yah gotta problem with that?"
Miss Atchenleck stood still with shock for several long seconds. Conrad could feel the blood pounding in his head, horrified and nervous, feeling as though he had been caught with his hand clamped in a poisonous monster cookie jar.
"M-mom, I-" Conrad started to stutter, trying to explain or excuse himself in some way, but Luce clamped a hand over his mouth and lowered his lips to Conrad's ear.
"Shh. Yah don't have to explain anythin' to her. Yer eighteen now, a free boy."
Conrad clutched Luce's arm like a life line, his fingers gripping the cloth and knuckles turning white. His mother terrified him. Luce scared the shit out of him. Each alone could be a good thing in some strange way of their own, but combined they pushed him over the edge into a state of petrified trepidation.
"I don't like you." Conrad heard Luce growl at his mother, "Yah've been screwin' with this kid eighteen years. Driving him fucking insane. He's got more problems th'n a fuckin' Sudoku puzzle."
Conrad found himself wondering hazily why Luce of all people would play Sudoku, his mind searching to think about anything but the most pressing and frightening issues at hand.
"I've 'ad enough of it."
Conrad's mind caught that one. What?
"I'm not lettin' you get your bitchy little claws on him again. He's comin' with me."
WHAT?
"You won't let me? He's my son!" She shot back, eyes tearing holes with their glares, "He's still a scared little boy. I won't let a pedophilic rapist like you take him."
"It's not yer damn choice!" Luce spit back, cigarette flying out of his mouth to land on the concrete pavement.
"It's not your choice!" She screeched, "You think you can just waltz in and take him because you said so?"
"Yah know what? He's not yer fuck'n property or pet. He's a damn hum'n bein' of his own. He should decide." Luce squeezed Conrad in a way that could have possibly been meant to be reassuring, "He's eighteen now, not a kid. And most fuckin' certainly not yours."
Conrad broke out of his mental fog, looking between his mother and Luce with panic. He would have to decide? As in, actually force the words to come out of his mouth? His throat suddenly crumbled, scratchy and dry.
"Conrad." His mother smiled her smile, sweet and sugary with a little bit of vile thrown in, "Tell him you want to come home."
Luce bent over and kissed Conrad's over-sized nose in an unusually kind gesture for him, then whispered in his ear, "Say what yah wanna."
"M-mom." Conrad stepped forward out of Luce's possessive arms. He faced his mother, and at the same time everything that had made up his entire life. It had been hell. It had been safe.
He reached backwards and grabbed Luce's hand, squeezing it tight.
"Fuck off."
Luce cackled.