Throughout the next few days, I had begun noticing subtle differences regarding my father and his behavior toward me. For the first time in his life and in mine it seemed like he might actually be trying in regards to our relationship, suddenly becoming more affectionate and attempting many times to make different forms of small talk. He was also beginning to acknowledge that I was gay, a change in his past behavior of more or less sweeping it under the rug.
"How are you feeling?" He asked me, touching the back of his hand to my temple.
"I was drugged, I don't have the flu…"
"I just wanna make sure you're taking it easy."
The after effects of the roofies were slowly beginning to leave my system throughout the next few days, resulting in tremors and some problems regarding my memory. It wasn't uncommon for me to briefly blank out, needing several seconds to get my mind back to where it was supposed to be. My dad hadn't asked me any specifics of what had happened to me once he realized that I hadn't been full on raped, likely leaving it up to me to decide if it was something I wanted to talk about.
"I'm fine." I mumbled, resting my head on the pillow that he had insisted on moving to the couch in an attempt to keep an eye on me.
I wasn't sure exactly what he thought I had run away for, acting as though he had expected a phone call telling him that I had jumped in front of a train or off of a bridge.
"Maybe we can order in tonight." He said. "We haven't had a warm meal since before-" He paused, side eyeing me awkwardly. "It's been a few days since we've eaten real food."
Since before what? Since before I ran away from home or before his wife decided to leave with their child due to concerns she had regarding what sort of role model she had agreed to allow into their lives? My father had been able to convince Hana to allow Riku to talk on the phone with him, assuring him that everything was going to be okay and that they would see each other soon enough. I don't think he thought I was listening when he asked about Riku being able to say hello to me, causing some sort of small argument between the two of them over the phone.
In the beginning, my step mother seemed to like the idea of a blended family, even going out of her way to give Riku and I names that fit together; now it was clear that she regretted asking my father to reach out. At the end of the day, she wasn't my mother… she had no obligation to want me in either of their lives.
"It's up to you." I shrugged. I didn't have much of an appetite and really didn't want to be an inconvenience, I was quite good at pretending I wasn't picky and had mastered the subtle art of pretending I had eaten more than I actually had.
"Do you still like syrniki? There's a place nearby that I've been wanting to try out, you used to love having breakfast for dinner when you were little, we could order a side of porridge, even."
Perking up slightly, I sat up on the couch, finally acknowledging for the first time in weeks that my stomach was growling.
"Actually, I haven't had syrniki in years." I mentioned. My father was trying to stifle his laughter as he looked at me, causing me to blush and wonder if I had done or said something embarrassing without realizing it. "What's funny?" I asked, frowning and raising an eyebrow.
He touched a hand to my head, playing gently with my hair and attempting to brush my bangs from my face.
"You just suddenly got excited." He smiled. "It brings back memories for me, from when you were little."
Although he was beginning to accept who I had grown up to be, it was clear that my father still mourned the child he left behind, always making sure to mention any childhood quirks and mannerisms he took notice of. He missed the life that had been taken from us…
"It comes back in bits and pieces." I admitted sadly. "Sometimes I wish I remembered her more..."
"Your mother?"
I didn't answer, instead curling up inside myself once again.
"She loved you." My father continued. "At the end of the day, that's what matters."
"Grandfather always told me that she left the same time you did." I admitted. "He said that neither of you wanted me anymore..."
"Misa would have slapped my father right in the face if she had heard that." He smiled slightly. "She was one of the only people who never feared him."
"Yeah… Look what good that did her..."
"Kai..."
"It isn't fair." I looked away from him now, taking a moment to regulate my emotions. I had gone so long without giving any thought to what had happened to my parents, accepting that although I believed them to both me living, I was an orphan. It was easier to accept abandonment than to accept that I had once had a loving home, even if we had lived in poverty. "I want my mom back."
Tyson was the only one who somewhat understood, although I didn't have knowledge regarding Rei's family situation… Tyson understood what it felt like to have a parent taken from you.
"Your mother isn't gone. Not entirely." My father said sadly, picking at a stray string that hung off the couch. "We made you together, you're part of both of us."
"It sounds gross when you say it like that."
"At least I missed out on the stage of needing to explain to you where babies come from." He smirked slightly, "Although when we told you we were having another baby you did ask how it got into your mamas belly."
"Please stop explaining this to me." I couldn't help but smile, even if I still felt sad on the inside. I liked knowing about her…
"I know you hear this all the time, but you look so much like your mom that it sometimes amazes me. That's why I don't think I see her as completely gone… So much of her resides within you, especially in regards to how stubborn you both are."
I was no longer bothered by being told I was feminine looking, instead choosing to just accept it and appreciate the resemblance my mother and I had.
Sighing slightly, I got up and onto my feet.
"Do you trust me to bathe and not drown yet?" I asked.
"You've been sleeping less today and seem to be able to hold a conversation without difficulty, so I suppose so, just keep the bathroom door unlocked."
I nodded, allowing my legs a moment to gather strength and balance back before walking from the living room and to the hallway, stopping in my room for a moment to gather clean clothes.
My phone sat on the dresser still, not moved at all from where I had placed it before running away what was now a few days ago and realizing how long it had actually been since I looked at it… how long it had been since I had spoken to Wyatt.
Picking it up, I opened it to several messages and missed phone calls, most ranging from right before I ran away to right after I was brought back home.
We should probably talk about yesterday.
That was what he had texted me… it had been right after we slept together… along with calling me twice that day. My inbox was still full and I wasn't able to get any messages, but he had continued for a few days to make an attempt to get a hold of me.
Where are you? You aren't answering your phone.
I don't have a lot of time before starting my scholarship program, can you please call me soon?
Did the other day freak you out?
Kai?
I really need you not to do this right now… please talk to me.
Why are you ignoring me?
Look, I have a lot to deal with while my parents are here and I really can't handle your drama right now, I need you to cut this shit out and just talk to me. Please.
I'm not doing this anymore, Kai…
This is your last chance… I'm done…
I'm getting angry.
I knew you weren't ready…
I'm not waiting for you anymore.
That was the last thing he had sent me, dated from right around the time I had come home from the hospital. If I had checked my phone when I came home I would have seen it, but to be honest I hadn't thought about any of that stuff. I had struggled to think about anything at all that day. It's was all still blurry…
Taking a moment to think, I set my phone back down, deciding that I could clear my head while taking a bath and figure out what I was going to say to him when I was finished.
Going into the bathroom, I closed the door and turned the warm water on before stripping naked and taking a shower head to my hair, letting the water fall down and onto my face. How was I possibly going to start a conversation like this? I didn't want him to know what had happened to me that night. I didn't want anyone to know.
I let my wet hair cling to me as I finished washing, turning the water off as soon as the bath was filled and taking some time to just relax myself, leaning backward and closing my eyes.
No one had given me any time to just take in the sheer amount that had happened within the last few days, instead forcing me into scenario after scenario until my mind had finally had enough.
Wyatt had scared me into believing that he was on the verge of leaving me… a fear that caused me to gift him the only thing I felt that I could…
When he took my virginity I expected that everything would change for the better, that we would be together and everything would go back to the way that it was supposed to, but we hadn't even gotten the chance to figure it out.
As fast as everything had happened, it had all gone down hill just as quickly. I was no longer someone who had experienced their first time with the person they love, instead finding a cruel twist of fate leading me to believe that I had given him something permanent.
As the worry continued to take over every piece of my mind it could grab a hold of, it had become too much to handle.
I had cracked… I had cracked and I had run away within twenty four hours of being tested, unable to wait another day for the test result that I would be called about. If I had waited, they would have told me that I was negative… I couldn't even manage something as simple as waiting for a phone call without my drama taking everything over.
The train… the club… the alcohol…
Even days later I couldn't remember his face, only recalling the feeling of disgust I felt as he whispered that he wanted me and begged me to suck it before forcing himself into my mouth and causing me to vomit. He had to drug me to make me do what he wanted, unable to hold my body down forcefully as I cried the way I remembered doing when I was small.
Had I begged him to stop the way I had begged Yasha to stop?
He hadn't used a condom, would he have forced me to swallow it just like how it had happened before?
I was getting better; I had been remembering less, I had been sleeping without having nightmares and now the progress had been destroyed. Now I couldn't close my eyes without seeing everything that I had worked so hard to overcome… to forget.
I had just washed myself, yet I was still dirty.
Deciding that relaxing or clearing my head wasn't doing me any good, I drained the bath tub and dressed, taking an extra moment to dry my hair before walking once more into my bedroom. It at least felt somewhat nice to be clean and wearing fresh clothes, even if I was only in a tee shirt and sweat pants.
Rubbing the exhaustion out of my eyes, I grabbed my phone once more, sending Wyatt a quick text message.
I'm sorry. Things have been complicated the past few days. I can call and explain better.
Thankfully, he had always been quite fast in replying, meaning that even though I was caught somewhat off guard my how quickly my phone went off, it wasn't something I would deem as unusual, especially if he had been waiting for awhile to hear from me.
Opening the message, I was caught off guard by what it read.
Delivery error
I had full service on my phone and had never had any issues in the past with sending texts, meaning that it wasn't a message that I was accustomed to getting. Still, I simply hit resend, waiting once again for the immediate buzzing to tell me if it had simply been a mistake, or if something was currently very wrong.
Delivery error
Clicking onto his phone number, I pressed the call button and brought my phone up to my ear, waiting impatiently for him to answer before realizing that I was actually waiting impatiently for the phone to even ring. After a brief silence, I was met by the sound of a dial tone, followed by a repetitive beeping and an automated message.
"This number cannot be completed as dialed, please hang up and try again."
What did that mean? Was there something wrong with his phone?
Attempting once more to call, I was met with the same message replaying in my ear.
Setting my phone down, I figured I could try again a bit later, wondering if maybe he was having service issues or something similar. I had never been unable to get a hold of him before, even if the same couldn't be said about me.
Yet at the same time… something didn't feel right.
Xxx
By the end of the week, it seemed that the drugs that had been forced upon me had managed to make their way fully through my system, meaning that I was beginning to at least mentally feel like myself again.
I had been having nightmares fairly regularly once more, typically unable to recall them once I woke up in a cold sweat and rarely being able to fall back asleep.
It was taking a toll on me…
Now laying in bed in the middle of the day with a pillow over my face, the effects of my sudden onset insomnia wave kept me mostly locked up, only really leaving my room to get caffeine, smoke, or attempt to call Wyatt.
I had gone back to the hotel that he was staying at, but still no one seemed to be able to tell me anything, repetitively informing me of the privacy rights of those who stayed at the facility. He hadn't even told me where he was studying now, meaning I couldn't go out and look for him, although I did wonder whether or not the building he was staying at could be the issue, possibly affecting his reception.
Turning to my side while lost in thought, I took only a mild notice to the sound of the garage door opening, hardly remembering what my father had said before he left and only getting up when I noticed him speaking to someone, realizing quickly that he had Riku with him.
Rubbing the exhaustion out of my eyes, I opened the door of my bedroom to see what was happening, neither of them paying me much attention as my father walked him to his room before turning to give me a sad look.
It was out of character for Riku to be quiet, something I normally took for granted. Now, peaking into his room, I saw him not even bother to pick his head up, instead dumping out one of his containers of rocks and crystals that he collected and sorting through them.
Most kids liked action figures and toy cars; I had learned quickly that Riku liked, of all things, rocks.
"Doing okay?" I asked him quietly, leaning into the frame of the door.
He didn't answer me, which would happen occasionally if he was upset enough. He liked me, but he still had the ability to get mad at me if things weren't going his way; he was still a kid at the end of the day. Instead he grunted, a noise that caused me to temporarily wonder if I was actually looking at the child version of myself. He had been through a lot within the past week, he had every right to be angry with me for the changes that I had caused in his life.
Sitting down on the floor, I didn't continue speaking, instead choosing to just watch him and see what he did. He knew I was still in the doorway, he could see and hear me, but there was no point in small talk if he didn't currently have anything to say.
Carefully, he began stacking rocks on top of one another like building blocks, using extreme caution in the way he balanced them and making sure their weight was being properly distributed. He seemed to have quite the understanding of basic physics for a child who had barely entered elementary school.
Even so, it didn't take long for his unusual tower to collapse, causing him to knock everything over in frustration and throw himself onto the floor, face hidden in his arms.
I had experienced his temper tantrums before, occasionally finding myself witnessing multiple in one day, but I had never seen him look so distraught; not to mention so rightfully so. He was confused about the current changing world around him and coming to the realization that it wasn't always a happy or child friendly place.
Turning his head so that his eyes were visible, he glared at me.
"Go away." He huffed, picking his feet up and then kicking hard at the carpet under him.
I wasn't sure if I should listen to him or not… I didn't read people very well and since he was only a kid it wasn't uncommon for him to not truly know what he wanted. Sometimes he would yell at our father to leave him alone and then chase after him crying when he dared to obey the order he gave him. Instead I chose not to look at him, turning my head and finding something else to focus on, even though my body stayed where it was.
He didn't say anything, and I couldn't figure out exactly what he was doing just through the noises that he made. He was either cleaning up his mess or trying again, possibly both.
Peeking through the corner of my eye just enough to catch a glimpse of him, he looked back at me, attempting again to stack his assortment of polished gems and glaring when he realized I was looking in his direction.
"I'm sorry..." I said sadly, twiddling my thumbs in my lap and breaking our eye contact. "It was stupid of me to run away."
"When is my mama coming back?" He asked me, curling into himself and resting his head on his knees, eyes focused on the ground beneath him. "She said that only I'm staying this weekend; why won't she come home?"
"Adults are complicated."
"She doesn't like you." His voice cracked slightly and he hid his face, trying unsuccessfully to catch his sobs before I realized that he was crying. "I don't want her to leave."
I scooted myself closer to him, touching a hand to his head and brushing at his hair the same way my father had been doing to me lately. I was the one complicating everyone's lives, I was the reason that all these changes were happening.
"You'll see your mom soon." I tried to reassure him, wishing I was a tad less terrible at giving pep talks.
"No, mama is gonna leave… than papa is gonna leave; they aren't gonna come back."
"Your parents aren't going anywhere."
He glared at me aggressively, eyes sharp as daggers and looking as though they were about to dig into my very soul.
"You said that your mama left and then papa left and that no one came back!"
He was wiping aggressively at the tears that clung to his cheeks, doing little to actually clean his face and instead just spreading around a disturbing amount of mucus. I had always believed strongly in being honest with him, even if he was a little kid, never taking into consideration how his developing brain would interpreter it.
"That's not-"
"I don't want them to leave me! You leave! If you leave then my mama can come back!"
His words stung, even if I understood that he didn't truly mean them. Riku was the only member of my living family who had genuinely convinced me that I had someone who cared about me, even if that someone was a six year old, previously untraumatized version of myself.
"No one is leaving you." I attempted to reassure him. "Your parents love you."
"Then why doesn't papa love you?" He asked. "If he left you but not me then did he not love you?"
"Is that what this is about?" I responded. "Do you think that your dad is gonna stop loving you?"
"He's your dad too. Why do you only call him my dad?"
Sighing slightly, I wrapped an arm around him, pulling him into me gently until he squished his tiny body into me, hiding himself in his knees.
"I'm not sure you're old enough to understand."
"Is it because you hate him?"
"Hate is a strong word."
It was also a word that I regularly used to describe how I felt about our father…
"Does he hate you too?"
"I don't think so."
"Does he hate me?"
"Of course not."
He had nuzzled his face into the side of my shirt just as our father stepped into the doorway, crying less than quietly as everything he had been bottling up because of me came out. I had explained so much of my life to him without thinking about how it might effect him or asking him if he might have any questions. I had never questioned what language I had used around him or any fear I might be causing. The father who I had always said I hated was the same father who he loved dearly… I had never even considered the confusion that might cause him.
"Riku," Our dad spoke, kneeling down and touching his cheek gently. "I know a lot has happened the past few days..."
"Are you and mama gonna get divorced?" He asked without looking up, causing our father to stop in his tracks, needing to think about what he could say next that wouldn't make things worse.
"You shouldn't be worrying yourself with grown up problems." He said. "Your mother and I have a lot to talk about and figure out, but we love you just the same. How about we eat in the living room tonight? We can watch a movie."
"Mama says we're not allowed to eat in the living room." He said without looking up. "And I'm not hungry."
"Maybe I can just get you a snack-"
"You can't just break the rules because mama isn't here!" Riku yelled, standing up somewhat aggressively and staring intently as him. "If I don't eat then I go to bed hungry!" He yelled, "That's the rule!"
I wasn't sure if it was Riku who was hard to read or if it was children in general. He seemed to have his mothers quirks when it came to rules and expectations and he didn't like being off of a routine, causing me to wonder if he might have some sort of mild OCD.
Without asking his permission, I decided instead to take matters into my own hands, getting onto my feet and picking him up, carrying him into the kitchen.
"Then we won't break the rules." I stated. "Let's just make dinner and eat like we always do."
He didn't negotiate, wrapping his arms around my neck and allowing me to continue holding him like a toddler with his face resting gently on my shoulder, recalling the way my own mother used to hold me when I was upset, even if I pouted about it.
Our father touched a hand to my shoulder, giving an appreciative smile as we walked together in silence; the most pathetic excuse for a family that you would ever see.
