Chapter One

"This seems like a shit idea Hartley." Aaron muttered.

"Stupid but fun." Hartley said dismissively.

"I don't wanna be there when you come out to your parents!" Aaron whined. "I didn't even wanna be there when I came out to my own parents."

"Yeah, well you wanted to see what a servants-rich house looks like, and to do that you have to come home with me. My parents are going to be there, and I'm not going to pretend we're not dating."

"How can you be so damn confident?" Aaron asked, an awkward half-smile on his face. "You should be tweaking out, not me."

Hartley shrugged. "My parents don't have that much power over me anymore. Besides…"

"You like pissing them off." Aaron pointed out. Hartley smiled sweetly at him, all mock innocence.

"It's fun. Father gets quite theatric sometimes."

"As long as you know what you're doing." Aaron let out a disgruntled sigh and leaned on the window. Hartley scooted closer to him on the stiff imitation-leather seat, nuzzling his face against his shoulder and twining their fingers together. Reluctantly, Aaron smiled and kissed the top of his boyfriend's head.

"So you've really never visited anyone with servants before?" Hartley asked, tone colored with sincere disbelief. Aaron laughed.

"In my neighborhood we thought the house with two floors was a mansion. I thought servants were just plot devices for murder mysteries until I was ten."

"I used to think something similar about grandmothers and sitcoms." Hartley murmured sleepily.

"You didn't have a cuddly grammy to make up for your asshole parents? That sucks."

"Yep."

"S'okay. After we visit your folks we can have them fly us down to Florida and you can borrow my grammy for a bit. She's been wanting to meet you anyway." Aaron said dismissively.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. She's thrilled I'm dating a music kid. She's gonna ask you to play some Glen Miller and Rosemary Clooney and stuff."

"Aaron, I suck at playing music-I just like to listen."

Aaron wrapped an arm around Hartley and pulled him closer. "You only suck when you notice anyone's listening."

"So for practicality's sake, I suck."

Aaron rolled his eyes. He'd developed a taste for 'napping' in a seldom used commuter lounge on campus that happened to house a piano, and had found out first hand just how good Hartley could be when he wasn't expecting criticism.

Hartley napped for most of the train ride after that, and Aaron enjoyed the warmth at his side. In many ways the idealistic, sheltered rich kid was more of a pain in the ass, or almost too much of a pain in the ass to be worth the effort, but he had good qualities too. For the moment Aaron was pleased to feel warm, steady breath on his neck and soft auburn hair on his chin. He watched the sky darken and rain collect on the thick plastic window until the train ground to a stop, bringing Hartley to sudden wakefulness.

He clamped his hands over his ears and cringed, and almost fell off the seat. Aaron caught him, steadying him.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Next time we ride a train together and I nod off, please wake me up before we stop." Hartley ground out through gritted teeth. "My ears are still ringing."

"Oh, right, sorry. I didn't even think of it."

"It's alright. I can hear our driver outside, come on. He wants to leave without us."

Aaron shook his head, amused, while Hartley hefted his backpack over his shoulders and retrieved a duffle bag from the rack above them. "I can't believe the shit you can hear sometimes."

"Well if I hadn't heard you talking about the cute red head from across the green we wouldn't be here now."

"Hey, I asked you out." Aaron reminded him, grabbing his own luggage and following Hartley to the door.

"Yes, but I chose to wait on that bench while you psyched yourself up talking to your friends." He answered. "You took twenty minutes. I'd almost decided you weren't hot enough to wait for when you finally made up your mind."

"Should've listened to my instincts about your attitude problem."

Hartley leaned backwards suddenly, whacking him with an over-stuffed backpack and knocking Aaron into one of the seats framing the walkway.

"Behave."

"I'm good. I'll be good."

"Okay then."

At best, Aaron was hoping Hartley's plan would backfire and his parents would be overjoyed their son had hooked up with an attractive, intelligent geology major. At worst he was expecting his mother to cry and wail about not having grandchildren and his dad to yell and cuss.

When Hartley was literally thrown outside, Aaron was surprised. He watched the skinny eighteen year old land painfully on the tiled porch floor, his father having shoved him so suddenly he'd lost balance. Aaron darted after Hartley to help him up, at which point their stuff was thrown on the porch, the door was slammed and the lock clicked shut.

Hartley was dumbstruck, a rarity for him. "Th-they threw me out?"

"Looks that way." Aaron said, equally dazed.

Hartley dove for the door, which obviously didn't open for him, and started banging on it. "Hey! Hey! You can't do this! Come on, let me in! I'm your son!"

Mr. Rathaway opened the door, but he didn't step aside. His features were set in the really quiet kind of fury you had to worry about-like Aaron's buddy Mike from the GSA had told him about. When Mike had come out, his stepdad had been calm like that for a few minutes before he'd started throwing things and tearing the house apart. Mike hadn't spoken to his family since.

"Hartley." Mr. Rathaway said coldly. "You've pushed, and pushed and pushed and your mother and I can only take so much. You've not only failed every expectation we ever had for you, you've mocked our attempts to shape your life and by extension our love for you. I can't do this anymore, and neither can Rachel. Clearly we're not meant for the burden of child rearing."

"Are…are you saying you wish you'd never had me?" Hartley asked in a small voice. Mr. Rathaway regarded him mournfully.

"That's exactly what I'm saying. This is it. Unless you change, you're dead to me."

"What about Jerrie?!" He asked. "Are you giving up parenting all together, or just me?"

"Just you. We might be able to salvage something with your sister. You're not welcome here anymore Hartley. You'll just upset your mother and poison Jerrie's mind. She's already delicate." Then he slammed the door again.

"But…but…" Hartley's shoulders sagged. Aaron watched him apprehensively, not sure what to do. And in his anxiety he said entirely the wrong thing.

"Well you certainly got your reaction."

Hartley rounded on him. "How can you say that?! What makes you think I would want my parents to wish they'd never had me?!" He yelled.

"Well what did you expect? Your dad's probably right about you pushing him to this. We could have pretended we were friends-you didn't have to tell them you're gay."

"Why should I have to hide that from them? They're supposed to love me but they never have, they just love what they wanted me to be! Well you got stuck with me!" He'd turned to face the locked door, angry tears streaming down his face. "I'm here damn you! You're not taking back my existence!"

Aaron looked at his watch. "I think there are a couple trains back to school still running. C'mon, we'll have to book it to get back to the station in time."

"I'm not going back to school. They have to let me back in. The dorms are all closed for summer. If they don't I'm homeless."

"Homeless?" Aaron repeated. 'Oh man, the drama queen so isn't worth it if he's homeless'.

Hartley wiped at his face, trembling slightly with emotion. "If I need to, do you think your roommate would let me crash on your couch for a bit?"

"Well I dunno, I mean Drew and I have this rule about bringing people home-"

"I've slept over your place at least a dozen times." Hartley's voice went cold, and suddenly he bore a bit more resemblance to his father.

"Yeah, it's a recent thing. I guess Drew wasn't cool with, I mean, I'll still ask, it's just-" Aaron fumbled, while Hartley started crying harder. "Don't you have, like, savings to tap into?"

"If they threw me out of their house then they probably aren't planning to buy me an apartment! My parents are my finances!"

"Well you should have treated them better."

"I'm not going to apologize for being gay! You're my boyfriend, why are you saying these things?"

'Fucking drama queen.'

"I don't know Hart. I'm going to the train station. You keep fighting with the locked door if you want."

Hartley really and truly believed that even if his father didn't come around and let him back in, his mother would argue on his behalf until the door finally opened. Then he would let them know that Aaron had gone back to the campus, and that if they never wanted to see him again that was fine, but that he wouldn't dump him.

As the hours dragged on and his rear got more and more sore sitting on the porch steps, he started to regret yelling at Aaron. He was really only mad at Aaron for being right, after all.

What no one seemed to get was that he didn't actually enjoy pissing off his parents. That was a defense mechanism, finding humor in something that hurt him. This endeavor was the latest in a series of attention grabbing displays crafted to give the Rathaways an opportunity to prove that they loved their son, no matter the circumstance.

Alone, achy and still crying softly to himself, he didn't feel terribly loved.

The deadbolt on the door rendered Hartley's house keys useless, but his car keys still had value, thank God. He waited until eleven o'clock, when he finally had to admit to himself that his parents meant business and he would need to find shelter, so he put his backpack and duffle in the back seat of his car and spent the next few hours driving back to school.

He buzzed Aaron's apartment and waited in the entryway, ready to apologize and hoping for sympathetic cuddles. It seemed pretty ominous when Drew let him in, looking confused and sleepy.

"Hey Hartley. I thought Aaron was crashing with you for a bit…?"

"I got thrown out. I was hoping I could sleep on your couch. I mean, just until I find something permanent."

"Oh yeah, no worries. Just, uh, Aaron's not here. If he's not with you…"

Hartley's stomach churned anxiously. "Oh God. He might be stuck at the Central City train station."

"Ooo, sketch." Drew seemed to wake up a bit at that suggestion. "Isn't that one of those cities with super criminals?"

"Yeah. I mean, only a few. There's a mirror guy and a cold guy and, um, Mr. Element, I think?"

"Well it's no Gotham but let's not leave your boyfriend on a bench in a place with costumed weirdos. I'll cover gas if you drive." Drew toed on his shoes and grabbed a sweatshirt, then the two were out the door.