A/N I know we are going to get an Alex centric episode later in the season but I wanted to have a go at the story first. This is AU but with roots firmly in canon. Characters are obviously not mine!
Alex had crawled into the small space between the wall and his baby brothers crib when he heard his dad coming up the stairs. He knows it's late, too late really for a little boy like him to be awake but he heard his mother crying a little while ago and he's feeling sick waiting for what he already knows will come next. His mom has cried a lot since the baby was born and his dad does not like it. He gets even angrier when the baby cries which is why Alex is pressed up against the crib willing Aaron not to make a noise, hoping desperately that his dad is tired and will just go to sleep.
No such luck. He can hear the muffled sounds of his dad shouting at his mom as she cries and plead with him. It seems to go on forever as he shivers in the half light of the room, Alex bites his lip and tries not to cry as the voices ebb and fall across the landing, angry and fearful by turn. Then there is a loud noise, loud enough to make him jump in the shadows and a final sob from his mom and then silence as he creeps back to his bed and continues to shake under the thin blanket.
Alex is sitting on the decrepit porch of the house waiting for his dad. Last week they had travelled to the fairground outside of town for 'boys' night' and it had been about as perfect a night as he could remember. They had laughed all night until Alex forgot the worry about his mom who has been acting strangely. They had ridden rickety rides, even those where Alex did not quite reach the height limit and he had been entranced by the feel of his fathers strong arm thrown across his chest protecting him as they climbed high into the sky. They had eaten sugary snacks until Alex felt joyfully ill. Still, thought Alex as the sky darkened that had been last week. This week when boys' night was supposed to take them to the movies there was no sign at all of his dad. And yet he still sat on the porch, legs swinging as the night pulled in and he waited.
There is a tense atmosphere in the house, one so palpable that Alex lying in the shadows and not yet quite ten can feel. His mom is better these days with new medicine that Alex reminds her to take every morning before he leaves to get on the bus to school. She is though, still afraid of their dad and did nothing to stop him tonight as he blundered through the house, slurring as he yelled that real boys did not need night lights, that his boys were being spoiled and going soft. She'd watched from the doorway to their room as he marched in smashing the little light, yelling at all three of them as he did so. It was Alex who pushed his little brother, as skinny as Alex is solid, into the corner and away from their father and his temper and his waving arms. For a moment, high on what he will later find out was adrenalin, Alex had stood his ground and glared at his father. For a moment the man had faltered under his son's angry resentful glare before raising his hand and punching a hole clean through the wall next to the door. He had left shortly afterwards with much banging and shouting leaving behind the tense atmosphere and a strong sense that something had changed.
Alex rubs the arnica cream ineffectively into the bruise blossoming on his face. The kind old lady at the end of the street who clearly imagined she knew what was happening behind their slowly rotting front door had given it to him along with a bag of cookies one day as he'd walked Aaron home from the bus stop. He looks in the small mirror over the sink and winces as he takes in the split lip, the puffiness, and the shades of green already showing around his eye. There is no way he will be able to go to school for a few days without being on the receiving end of some tough questions and he is resentful as they have just started a science module that fascinates him and lets him escape from the reality of home. Still, he thinks they do not need the social worker sniffing around the house again especially now his mom is off her medicines as her belly grows with what Alex knows is another baby even if no one is talking about it. At least he thinks, as he carefully hides the tube of cream behind spare toilet rolls, if his dad shows true to form he will not be home for a few days after such a show of temper at his eldest son.
Alex creeps back into the house, a loaf of bread and two tins of soup falling to the kitchen table from under his jumper. He glowers at his little brother, painstakingly copying out his spellings for the night onto the back of an envelope and apparently oblivious to the shrill wails of the baby upstairs. With a loud huff he heads upstairs noting his mom curled up in the middle of her bed still in her night clothes despite the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window. He gingerly lifts his little sister from the crib and notes that her diaper is sodden. Her wails slow down into pathetic little whimpers as she feels the warmth of her big brother's uncertain grasp. Her little arms flail as he carries her hopefully to the doorway of his mother's room, but she does not stir. He grits his teeth and lays her on the floor of the room looking at the instructions on the packet of diapers desperately. Ten minutes later he wipes the sweat from his face and lifts the little girl back into his arms now smiling and babbling as he is filled with a foolish sense of accomplishment.
Amber is toddling around the kitchen banging a bowl with a wooden spoon as Alex carefully slices the cheese he had just liberated from the market near school. Aaron is playing a complicated game at the table and just for a moment Alex feels as though he's part of a normal family like the kind you see on tv. The moment passes quickly as their father returns home after almost a week away, his entrance heralded by several ominous bangs as the front door slams shut, his keys are thrown to the table and both of his boots are kicked off with vigour, flying into a wall. Alex, nervous takes the spoon from a reluctant Amber and wrestles her into her highchair. Their dad has never hurt her, but Alex has learned the hard way to be wary of being down at floor level if his temper spikes.
To their surprise he is mellow and not surrounded in the now familiar smell of alcohol as he greets each of his children with warm hugs, although Alex, more cynical and attuned to trying to figure out if their mom has been taking her medicine notices that his eyes look strange and he is oddly jittery as he tickles the baby under her chin and feigns interest in Aaron's game whilst demanding the first sandwich from Alex. He does not stop to ask where his wife is.
Alex sits on a swivel chair in the bar and looks surreptitiously at his watch. It's much later than his dad had promised, and he finds himself worrying if his mom took her medication and remembered to put Amber to bed or if she is still pottering around the house, scared and over tired. He wonders if Aaron ate the snack he had left for him and is himself fretting about the test tomorrow second period. He is however also baffled to see his dad in his home environment. Alex think he has seen the man smile more tonight than in the last three years as he greets customers, slaps backs and pours drinks. Alex thinks he now understands how his dad is always so drunk when he comes home as he watches him down shots with his patrons, tell loud booming stories and even be persuaded to do a song or two on his guitar. He returns to worrying, this time about having to get in the car as he watches the man throw back another shot of bourbon.
Alex has been allocated a room on his own and he sits on the narrow bed for a moment and thinks. He is not the first of the boys at school to do a stint in juvie, but he swears to himself in the momentarily quiet room that it will be his only stay. He is still incredibly frustrated with himself that he had not noticed the new security cameras at the front of the market. He worries about his siblings who he knows have been taken into the system and hopes that the kind, but ineffective looking social worker meant what she said when she promised that they would try and keep them together. He worries too about his mom and whether she will remember to take her medication whilst he is not around to remind her and whether his dad will go easier on her without the kids around to wind him up. Dimly he recognises that life is likely to be tough for his mom whilst his dad seethes over the shame that Alex has brought down on them all. Behind it all however he is guiltily relived. He knows that juvie won't be easy and he will need to watch out for himself and stay alert but the idea of 90 days where he knows he will have food, where he will not need to worry about his fathers fists or sleep with half an ear open for his sisters cries sounds a little bit like a vacation.
Alex sits in the front seat of the social workers car as she drives him away from yet another failed foster placement. His jaw is set and he is staring ahead, with cold eyes, down the straight road impervious to her gentle scolding about trying harder to fit in. In his head he works through his homework as he grinds his teeth and wonders if they are ever going to let him stay at home again. Amber and Aaron are back at home with their mom and whilst his dad is apparently on the road with another of his rag tag bands he cannot help but torment himself with images about the three of them alone. His mom is never great at remembering regular food even if she stays on her meds and whilst Alex has been sneaking over bringing what he can manage it is not enough. More than that though, there is always the risk that their dad will show up unannounced. Alex has grown taller and is broadening out, but Aaron remains rake thin with a vague hint of malnourishment and Alex does not think he would be able to take their dad lashing out let alone a full on beating. The car pulls up at his new placement and he reluctantly gathers his things.
Alex knows the girls at school talk about him, can feel their eyes follow him around the hallways as he heads towards the schools make shift med centre. They think he's an enigma and there is nothing a teenage girl likes more than the idea of a tortured soul. They see him at the park pushing his little sister on a swing or encouraging his brother with a baseball bat and they think he could be a good guy. Yet he rarely smiles, speaks little, but walks with a confidence through the halls even when he sports one of his regular war wounds from a run in with his father. The story of his time in juvie follow him and add a cachet of bad boy although a little bit of shop lifting still feels safe enough. After all he's no Stevie Watts now doing serious time for trying to stab a kid at the movies or even Jonny Sinclair back in for his fourth-time joyriding. For those who share classes with him he his disengaged; he works hard to look uninterested, but a closer look would show that he is pulling almost perfect grades. Yes, Alex thinks as he knocks on the nurse's door he can feel them watching and it's another pressure. His brother, his sister they watch him; looking to understand how to stay safe, how to survive in their unhappy home. The myriad of social workers and guidance counsellors are always watching waiting for him to trip up and say something that will split them all up again.
The nurse drops him off two blocks away from home. Over the last year she has tended to more of his cuts and bruises than Alex can count, but now especially after their encounter in the car in the woods, he is embarrassed for her to see the squalor of his home and tries to cover it with a transparent swagger. He thinks about what has just happened and feels a vague sense of relief, a little like a job ticked off his never-ending checklist. He does not stop to think that this is another adult who has taken advantage of his vulnerability. He has long since stopped thinking of himself as a child.
As is all too often the case Alex is nervous as he pushes the front door open after a full day of school and wrestling practice. He creeps in and listens carefully, adept at reading the sounds and even the silences of the house. He is, he decides, alone. Aaron was going to a friend for dinner after school he knows but he wonders where his mom and Amber are. They should have been home by now and he feels the familiar pang of worry hit him. He moves into the living room and sees his dad passed out in an armchair an empty needle beside him. He feels the bile rise up his throat. He had known, had suspected that it had not been just drink for his dad for a while, but he does not have a clue what he should do about this and feels dangerously out of his depth. If he disturbs him there is a high risk of a beating, if he leaves him there is a chance Amber could come in and find the needle and do some damage. He grits his teeth and leans over to gently touch his father's shoulder only to be wiped off his feet by the right hook that takes him unawares and sends him flying across the room.
Worry is Alex's constant companions these days. His father is more volatile than ever before; he regularly goes missing for days and weeks at a time and comes home alternating between angry and vicious to sad and incoherent. His mom's meds do not seem to be working as well as they used to. Amber is starting to want pretty, girly clothes and toys and there is a struggle to make the family money eke out enough for the basics let alone sparkly things even when he supplements the cashflow with money he makes taking on odd jobs. Aaron is not doing well in school and Alex is spending time he needs to invest in his own studying working through middle school math and science with his brother whose attention span is painfully short. Cutting through the worry however is the guilt from the offer letter, carefully hidden in with his socks in the top drawer of the dresser. He knows there is no future here for him in town, employment options are limited and memories run long. He also knows that he can do more than his peers, already in trouble with the police; two of the girls pregnant. He understands that his best chance is to take the letter and run as fast as he can, but it is not he thinks, as he watches his brother grapple with a straight forward problem, not quite so simple.
When the offer letter was followed up by an additional offer of an almost full scholarship Alex had returned the papers confirming his acceptance with a pain in the pit of his stomach. All through the spring he had coached Aaron to take more responsibility, tried to encourage his aunt to spend more time with his mom and encouraged Amber to be more self-reliant. All the time he said nothing and wondered what he was going to do about the biggest problem of them all. His father had been notable by his absence. The bar had changed hands and whilst he was still there regularly he was also off on the road and the unpredictability cast as shadow over all their lives.
Today though he thinks he will not worry. Today he is going to go to prom and do one of those typical high school things the guidance counsellor has assured him he would look back on with joy. He is readying his jacket and listening as Amber instructs him on all the things that he should do and demonstrates the latest dances. They both freeze as they hear the door bang downstairs and their father's drunken yell announcing his arrival. As Alex encourages his sister to stay upstairs and to lock the door they hear a loud smash which Alex notes is likely a lamp in the living room breaking. It is followed in quick succession by more noises of destruction as something is picked up and hurled against a wall. Alex hurries down the stairs to find his father in a rage, apparently intent on razing the house to the ground. He pauses in the doorway for a moment and finds that he is both angry and exhausted. He watches the older man stagger as he smashed a vase against the table and sees his chance.
In the space of three heartbeats his father is on the floor, nose broken. Alex is crouched over him, knuckles throbbing and instructing him to never come back as he raises his hand for the forth time to the man cowering beneath him. Their father struggles to his feet, staggers to his guitar, picks it up and leaves.
The power and sense of achievement thrums within Alex even as the doubts hit. Can it really be so easy? Maybe he should have done it years ago. And then, finally as he sees Aaron's horrified look at his split knuckles he wonders, is he more like his dad than he thought?