Heartbeat racing in his chest, he turns the handle to the door and opens it slowly, lifting the door a bit so it doesn't creak. He then carefully puts one foot inside, and then the other, and just as silently closes the door behind him. It is dark, perhaps half past one in the morning, and so he cannot see where exactly he is going, but he doesn't dare to turn on a light. Turning on a light would be a dead giveaway; a fool's move. So he navigates in the dark, feeling his way along the rough, cheap wallpaper of his home, navigating around the elderly furniture and knowing from memory where the threadbare carpet turns into scratched pine wood, where he will have to be even more silent with his feet so as to not make any noise.
He nears in closer to where he knows his bedroom is, shivering a little in anticipation to get the whole night behind him, the moisture of his sorrows marked in the redness of his eyes and the slump of his posture. Still, he keeps a strict hold over himself, knowing what the consequences of being caught sneaking home this late at night are, having experienced these consequences before.
He gets to his room and closes the door silently, then exhales in relief, glad that risky part of the night is over. His mind free of just one of the many problems he faces in his life, he flicks on the light.
"You little shit." The voice is a flat, emotionless monotone, so menacing and full of malice in its dullness that the skin on Robbie's arms and legs break out in goosebumps, and he starts sweating even more in his hoodie. Robbie turns, slowly, to face his father. His father is sitting on Robbie's bed, normally bleary but now clear brown eyes staring icily; beard stubble spread like a mutation on his rugged face; greasy hair that is so black like Robbie's tossed in a messy wave on his head; slim hairy body partially exposed in an unwashed, sweat-stained, once-white singlet.
"Dad, I–" Robbie starts, in a frightened yelp, but his father simply cuts him off by raising one of his seemingly always sticky, gross-smelling hands.
"I don't want to hear your excuses," Robbie's father says, gently, leaning in a bit and gesturing with a hand. "Come here." His voice is soft, cloudlike, floating. It would have an instant calming effect on anyone who didn't know him.
Robbie hesitates, knowing exactly where this is going.
"Robbie, come here," his father whispers, tenderly, smiling his slightly crazed smile he always smiles when he's excited about something.
"Dad–"
"COME HERE!" his father explodes, standing up, spraying spit everywhere, slamming his outstretched hand down on to Robbie's writing desk he always nags about not being able to afford.
Robbie goes over to his father.
"What have I told you about getting back late, Robert?" his father asks, softly again, hands on his son's shoulders, intent brown eyes twinkling. "What did I tell you?" he is so close to Robbie's face that Robbie can smell his rancid beer-smoke breath.
"I can explain," Robbie begs, starting to cry a little bit again, trembling. He thinks to himself, this is the worst day of my life.
The fist into his stomach comes and goes quickly, like being run over by a fast-moving car: it's there one moment, gone the next, but the pain and breathlessness and fear remains. Robbie bends over, completely winded, gasping for breath, feeling like he's going to puke.
The next strike from his father comes in the form of a knee in the face, more specifically the nose. This isn't nearly as hard as the blow to his stomach. This is a temporary lapse of control on his father's behalf. Robbie knows that his father would usually never hit his son's face, for fear of the 'bloody child protective service shitmen' coming. Absentmindedly, as his whole face and, surprisingly, the back of his head explodes in pain, Robbie wonders what the excuse for his nose will be. It isn't broken, he doesn't think. Doesn't feel like that. Doesn't have that internally crunched up and uncontrollable feeling he is so familiar to.
Robbie collapses on the floor, sobbing, not able to breathe, his nose a funnel through which pain seeps happily into his weary body, his mind full of static.
"Stop crying," his father tells him impassively, from somewhere in another world above him. "You look like a faggot."
"I'm sorry," Robbie manages to choke out, coughing and covering his nose so that the blood doesn't stain the darkly carpeted floors. His father lets him lie here for a few minutes, allowing him to get his breath back and his emotions under control, which Robbie is the absolute master of now.
And then his father asks: "What happened?" in his friendly, light, charismatic voice again, forcing his son to his feet in a pseudo-helpful way and making him sit next to him on the bed, which creaks and groans under their combined weight, too fragilely built to properly support them. Robbie's father puts his smelly, sticky hand on Robbie's other shoulder in an act of consolation Robbie knows is only an act.
"Wendy," Robbie says after a slight pause, his blocked-nose teenage voice betraying almost nothing of his inner turmoil and anger and frustration and pathetic pain. "She… I… we broke up."
"Wendy? That redhead? Why?" his father gasps in staged shock, his soft voice thinning to a fatherly everything's-going-to-be-alright purr. "What happened, son?"
Robbie considers. Of course, Dipper is a total douche and fully deserves anything he gets… but not from Robbie's father. He knows if his father knew the real reason for their split-up, which was that Dipper did it, Daddy, it was all Dipper's fault – there would be a lot of trouble for Dipper. Dipper, who is a meddling cheat and a liar and a snake and a thief and so many other horrible things… whoever he is and whatever he is, he doesn't deserve that. And of course Robbie isn't going to blame any of it on Wendy. He loves her. It's funny when he thinks this. Love. What is it? How does it develop? And, an even more important question: does it matter? And how long can it last?
So, simply, Robbie looks his father in the eyes and tells him, "We just weren't working out, Dad." He leans back on his bed, in the one section of the wall which isn't plastered with rock band posters or crude drawings or stapled-on pictures, and looks at his feet.
"Just weren't working out," his father mumbles, calculating and wondering. Then, almost casually, and without even looking, he sharply elbows his son in the stomach, hard, winding him again and making him send a spray of nose blood out on to the dark purple bedsheets and Robbie's jeans. Robbie starts gasping again, trying to plug his nose, also trying to brace himself for another attack which may or may not be coming. "You don't take until one in the morning to break up," he says flatly. "And you probably never even liked the bitch anyway. You're pathetic."
Robbie watches with watery eyes as his father leaves the room. There's so much he wants to say – he wants to explain how he went for a drive to clear his head and cry alone; he wants to explain how he spent a whole hour by the beach trying to write the perfect apology text and, when he'd got it right, not having the courage to send it; he wants to explain how he just sat there, alone, hating everyone in the whole world and especially himself; he wants to explain how empty he feels inside after her rejection, how the colour has faded from his mostly black-and-white world; he wants to explain, he wants to explain, he wants to explain, just so that his father can understand, smile at him maybe, anything but look at his only living son without that disapproving, judging, disgusted glare that he always dons especially for him.
But, sitting on his blood-splattered bed by himself, alone in his room and alone in the world, Robbie explains nothing to anyone.
There's nothing to say.
AN:
Well, how was that? Terrible? Fantastic? Moderately acceptable? (Sorry for the mood-killer this AN is doing). However you found it, I'd just like to thank you for reading this and if you want to review and help me out, great! If not, cheers anyways!
Sorry if I offended anyone by the father's calling Robbie a faggot… I just needed to get the image across as to how big a douche his dad is, and also hint at his limited vocabulary.
I'm most likely going to be writing more. Just a warning.
Bye!