I'm back with updates to this story! You love to see it!
Loosely based on what we learned at the end of 3x10.
Chapter Summary: Sometimes the silence speaks the loudest, especially to a kid who has no idea what's going on.
He sat in a sad silence as he ate his breakfast alone. May wasn't there, a normal thing these days. His mom and stepdad already gone to work, also a normal thing. It wasn't like we'd have breakfast together anyways. He sighed, unable to finish his cereal, allowing the metal spoon to drop with a clank against the ceramic bowl.
Rising from the table, he got up to dump the rest down the garbage disposal. He was oddly thankful for the few seconds of annoying humming, distracting him from his thoughts. He placed the bowl in the dishwasher and checked the time. 7:22 A.M. the bright, digit numbers read. He knew the bus would be pulling up any second, so he needed to leave. Checking that he had everything, he grabbed his bag and locked the door behind him. He remembered the days he would kill for the chance to be old enough to stay home alone. Now, it was just a hollow victory, if this was what it meant.
"I can't believe you kept this from me!"
"It wasn't my secret to tell!"
He shook his head, refocusing his attention on the social studies book and work sheet in front of him. As hard as he tried, he'd found it harder to focus in recent days. He couldn't figure out why this was affecting him so much. He looked up at the clock, 12:30 P.M. . Shit! He had 15 minutes left in this period and he'd only answered two questions out of the 30 that he had. Looking up, he met the questioning eyes of his teacher. He returned back to his book sheepishly, scrambling through the pages, hoping he would actually finish.
"I'm your wife, we don't keep secrets from each other!"
"I'm not apologizing, not for this. I did nothing wrong here!"
He felt the balled up napkin hit him in the forehead. His vision refocused on the cafeteria he was in and the spaghetti he'd stabbed to death with his fork subconsciously. He looked up to see his friends, sitting across from him, trying to get his attention. He hated that he'd been ignoring them, but he couldn't stop these thoughts from taking over. They were on loop in head, like an annoying song. After fielding questions asking him if he was fine, he allowed himself to be immersed in whatever his friends were talking about. He was fine. Maybe if I say it enough, I'll start to believe it, too.
"If you can't see where you went wrong here, we have nothing else to talk about."
"Do you think this was easy?! That I wanted to keep this from you?! If you're not even trying to see my side in this, I guess we don't."
As he stepped off the bus and it pulled away, he hesitated a bit, seeing his mom's car in the yard. He wondered why she home so early, she said that she had to work late all this week. Well, she didn't exactly say it, she'd just been doing it and he'd been rolling with it. Pulling his house key off the side of his book bag. He let himself in the home. Silence greeted him. The silence didn't bother him. The more he thought, he'd rather have the silence than the alternative.
He tossed his bag over the arm of the back of the couch, he hopped over, kicking off his shoes, sinking into the cushions. He pulled out his phone from his back pocket and pulled up a random game, nowhere near in the mood to start his homework. Engrossing himself in the targets he was shooting at, he didn't hear his mom enter the room.
"Hey, Harry." His mom greeted as she sat down next to him.
Without pausing, he gave her a quick glance and said, "hey mom," as he turned back to his game.
He started missing his shots and getting hit as he could feel his mother's eyes on him. "How was school?" She asked.
"Fine" he answered, simply distractedly. He knew something was coming. There was a reason she was home early. There was a reason she was sitting next to him. He found himself pressing his thumbs into the screen frantically, trying to hold on to little bit of health he had left.
"One of your teachers called me today." She said calmly. Damn it! His player had been killed. He sucked in sharply, closing the game, and tossing the device off to the side.
"I didn't do it." He still hadn't met her eyes.
"What didn't you do?" She asked equally as calm as earlier. Harry chanced a glance at his mom, he didn't sense any underlying anger anywhere, her expression was almost platinum as she raised an eyebrow, maybe it wasn't as bad as he thought.
"I don't know, but the if the school called I must have done something." Harry still didn't trust that he was completely in the clear.
"No, it was nothing bad," she said eyeing him carefully, "but if you have done something, now would be the perfect time to tell me." Harry shook his head. "Your teacher was concerned about you. She said you've been seeming distracted all this week. And today she noticed that you were so distracted that didn't finish an assignment."
Harry was brought back to class and the reason why he didn't finish. He pulled his bottom lip between his nervously.
"Harry, we've said many times, if something's bothering you we can talk about it."
He swears he was going just write it off, try to convince his mom and himself that he was fine, and move on, but what ended up coming out was, "I'm not sure you want to talk about this one."
He felt his mom move closer to him and put a hand on his back. "What do you mean? Harry, what's going on?"
"If you and Bobby are getting a divorce can you just tell us."
"Woah. Baby, me and your stepdad are not getting a divorce. What gave you that idea?"
"The yelling and arguing," Harry rose from the couch and turned to face her, "and was I not supposed to notice that you've barely spoken two words to each other last few days? Or that we've barely had a meal together in that time?"
"Well, you know how our job-"
"Mom, I'm not a little kid anymore, you don't have to make up excuses. I've been through this before, I can take it. I just can't take the drag out. The silence, the awkwardness. I don't want to go through that part of it again."
He heard his mother sigh audibly. "Harry come here, sit," he did as she told him, "look at me, I want to be looking you in the eye when I say this," he lifted his eyes from his fidgeting hands and turned to look at her, "Bobby and I are not getting a divorce. I'm not going to lie and say I'm not angry with him, very angry, but it's nowhere near that serious. We will work this out."
"But what has you so angry? What could he possibly have done. I mean, I over heard some of it," he saw a flash of something he couldn't place in his mother's eyes when he said that, "what secret did he kept from you?" She blew out a breath.
She hesitated, he could see it, almost like she was trying to figure out what to say. Dang, must be serious. "Something very important that you don't need to be worried about right now."
He wanted to push, but he knew better. "Okay."
"Harry, I'm sorry this was affecting you like it was and I'm sorry that I was so caught up in everything else that I didn't notice. But I hope this cleared, at least, some things up."
"It's okay, mom. I never said anything and I was hiding it. I guess I was afraid if I asked or said anything it would cause more trouble or, worse, you would tell me that you and Bobby were getting a divorce."
"If you feel you need to talk to either of us about something it's not going to cause any trouble. And you don't have to worry about us getting a divorce because it's not happening."
"Good. Sorry about all of this."
"Nothing to be sorry about. Listen, I promise you that if anything that life changing were to happen you and your sister would be the first to know."
"Okay, sounds good to me."
"Great." She pulled him in for a side hug and kissed the top of his head. Now that, that's settled you can get started on the homework I know you have."
He gave an exaggerated sigh, "fine," he said as he grabbed his book bag and walked towards the dining room.
As he pulled out his books and sat down he could overhear his mom as she made a phone call: "Hey, no, nothing's wrong with the kids. We need to talk when you get home..." it was all he heard before the click of his mom's bedroom door drown out the rest of the sound.
Harry smiled slightly as he sat down and opened his book, feeling a bit better. He still feel there was something that his mom wasn't tell him, but he felt better that it wasn't a divorce. Maybe after today the house won't be so silent anymore.
Whew, ending on a bittersweet note. I know it was subtle, but I hope everything that I was trying to hint at did come through.
Let know your thoughts!