Chapter 8
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Wufei admitted, if only to himself, that he was terrified of these outings.
His father had for some reason decided they were all going to have a happy family gathering at the circus. Maybe he wanted to make up for ignoring them these past few weeks or maybe he genuinely wanted to see them. The reason didn't matter because it was going to be unpleasant either way.
Wufei would have faked illness, but he didn't dare leave his siblings alone with Tyler. At least as long as he was there, his so-called "step-brother" would have someone to subject his aggression and boredom to.
He would never want any of the things that had been done to him to be done to his brothers as well. He couldn't even bare thinking about it because it made his chest tight and his heart hurt.
So far, the kids were enjoying the festivities. They watched everything with wide eyes and Wufei found himself not enjoying himself but enjoying their happiness. As much as he could, anyway, with Tyler's presence looming over him.
Luckily, Tyler had only managed to corner him once. His side hurt like hell from where he had been hit, but he had long ago mastered the ability to steel his face so no one would know he was in pain. He wished Duo was there, not only because he would beat Tyler's face in for hurting him, but because he was on his side. Duo knew what was going on. He knew everything. He didn't have to hide anything from him. He could just be himself and not have to think about what he did or said. Everything would have been so much better if only Duo had been there to stroll along his side and make sarcastic remarks about people's sense of dress and stupidity.
But Duo wasn't there and wouldn't be with him for another two days. His father had decided that they were going to the circus and then home for dinner. That was the plan and Wufei wished he had some kind of excuse, so that he wouldn't have to spend the night. But he had none, something he tried not to think about as they walked around the circus area.
The girls had been left at home, much to their disappointment, but that was the deal his parents had made. The boys went on one weekend; the girls on the other.
It was probably his father's idea since he not only had five biological children, but his new wife had three children of her own. Now, all of a sudden, they had a newborn too. He could only assume that it was because there would be too many children at one time.
If he had the choice, Wufei would have stayed at home. He would have been able to play with his sisters; he could have had his boyfriend over and figured out more ways to be intimate with him. Instead, he was stuck here.
Walking next to him, his father was asking him about school and how he had done on his tests and other pointless things. Wufei had a hard time remembering how he had done on a test he had taken weeks ago. So many other, more earth shattering things had happened in his life. He had a boyfriend now. A friend. He no longer spent most of his time trying to hide from his bullies. He was happy.
He wondered if his father suspected that he was gay. He wondered how he would react when he found out.
His father then seemed to have run out of things to ask him and turned his attention to Tyler to talk about some sport. Wufei didn't care. Instead, he let himself be led into the tent by his excited brothers and they found seats together.
Jian was still scared of clowns, so they took seats pretty high up. Wufei pulled him into his lap and wrapped his arms around him. Jian relaxed, clutching a plastic shark he had won from a lottery outside.
His brothers were talking nonstop, pointing things out to him and telling him things he already knew. Wufei just smiled and nodded, letting their happiness calm him. He didn't look up as his father walked up behind them to step over the bench and sit down next to him. A second later, he muffled a pained grunt when Tyler rammed his knee into his back as he passed behind him and took a seat on his father's other side. Shit, that hurt.
His father didn't notice a thing and if he had, he would probably have written it off as roughhousing; just another part of being male.
The show started, but Wufei wasn't really paying attention. He absently rubbed his hands on his aching ribs, watching half-heartedly as jugglers in skin-tight cat suits bounced around on the stage, and silently wondering what Duo would have thought about them. He would have probably made fun of them; complained that it was costumes like that that gave gay men a bad reputation or something. He once again wished Duo was there next to him so he wouldn't have felt so isolated and alone. He would have made him feel like he belonged, unlike the man next to him.
Rearranging his arms around his laughing brother, he glanced up at the man next to him. His father had grown a moustache, and Wufei tried to remember when he had last seen his father and if he had had it back then. He couldn't remember and, in a way, he didn't care anymore. His father had a new life and it didn't feel like he had any part in it. He might as well have been sitting next to a stranger.
All in all, Wufei decided, the circus wasn't something he enjoyed. It smelled bad and he had seen better on TV. Leaning his chin against Jian's soft hair, Wufei hoped that the rest of the night wasn't going to get much worse.
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His father's wife, Alice, had been at home with the baby and she greeted them happily when they got back. Wufei was the last through the door and as he passed her she asked him if he had a good time. Wufei answered her vaguely and rather curtly as he hung up his jacket. He didn't know how to act around the woman who had taken their father away from them. She seemed like a nice woman, a bit too nice even.
Wufei didn't want to like her, but he didn't want to be rude either. He wanted nothing to do with her; he wanted her to leave him alone, to stop trying so hard to be nice to him. It was just awkward and it made Wufei want to be anywhere else. Luckily, she didn't try to talk to him more than that and they all went into the kitchen to have dinner.
It was a kitchen that freaked Wufei out. It was far too clean and orderly. There were porcelain jars with words like 'sugar' and 'flour' labelled on them, sitting in rows on the counter. The walls were filled with framed pictures of chickens and fruit baskets. It looked like something out of a magazine. But houses in magazines weren't for living in; they weren't real. Nothing felt real in this place. There were no dishes in the sink, no piles of mail on the table, no dirt on the cupboard doors and no drawings on the refrigerator. It was all spotless and fake. Wufei tried to ignore everything and eat his food. Tyler had luckily ended up sitting far away on the other side of the kitchen table and couldn't reach him; otherwise he would have been in trouble. So when they ate, he was safe.
Of course it didn't last long. When everyone else left the table, Wufei lingered behind to help clean up. Not to be nice, but because he needed to get away from Tyler a little while longer. His need to prepare for the worst at any given moment was giving him a headache.
"Oh, you don't need to do that," Alice protested brightly, reminding Wufei once again of a sixties housewife who was either faking happiness very well or had swallowed a few pills. She was just too perfect to be real.
"It's all right," he mumbled, bending down to fill the dishwasher.
In the corner of his eye, he could see her lips tightening, trying to think of something to say to her husband's oldest son who she had barely met more than a handful of times before. If Wufei was a better person, he would have tried to help her out; maybe start a conversation about one of the ridiculous animal-shaped hooks she had hanging over the kitchen counter. But he wasn't. He was a teenage boy who wanted to be anywhere but there and she was the woman who had taken his father away from him. The heavy silence continued.
Feeling the tension in the awkward moment build up, he stayed until the dishwasher was filled and the table cleaned, then turned to walk out of the kitchen.
"Thank you Wufei. That was really nice of you," she smiled gently down at him, hands smoothing down the front of her already perfectly pressed skirt.
Wufei wanted to snap out that it had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with her jackass of a son who was likely going to ambush him as soon as he left the kitchen. Instead, he merely nodded.
"I just—" she started, pushing one of her perfect blond curls behind her ear. "I just hope you'll feel welcome here, and that this could be your home away from home."
Wufei almost laughed. His home away from home? Never. Not with her and her children there. Not when he had to watch every move he made and every word he said. No, this would never be home.
Wufei just nodded again, brightening her already disgustingly perfect smile even more.
"Good. Tell the rest that we'll have dessert in half an hour or so."
"Okay," he said, turning away. He was going to do no such thing. The last thing he wanted to do was go looking for trouble.
He walked out and found Jian aimlessly walking around the living room—if you could even call it a living room when you couldn't actually live in it. There was a large piano, black and intimidating, to his right. He wondered if it had been strategically placed there ostentatiously since it would be the first thing a person would see when they walk in. Several large candlesticks with elegant arms stood on top of it, holding varying kinds of candles from long and slim, to big globes. It looked like something belonging to a stage in front of hundreds of watchers instead of in this scarily neat living room.
It was as if nothing in this room was meant to be used. The couch looked brand new. There was no way anyone could have ever sat on it while eating popcorn or ice cream. The numerous pillows on it were perfectly orderly and all matched in colour. The thick rug on the floor was so neat, it looked like someone had brushed the whole thing down, one thread at a time. The bookshelves along the far wall were filled with books that didn't look worn. There were photographs of Tyler and his brothers who even managed to look like nice, young gentlemen and an endless line of porcelain figurines. The whole thing made Wufei, who had never vandalized anything in his life, want to take a spray can and just spray-paint it all over, just to get rid of the perfection. It wasn't real; none of this was real.
In the corner of his eye, he saw Jian pick up something from the living room table, but he didn't pay him any mind. He was too busy staring in disbelief as one of the photos on the bookshelf caught his attention. In it, his father was standing proudly between Tyler and one of his brothers. The man had his arms around both boys' shoulders. It seemed to have been taken at some kind of sporting event because everyone was wearing the same yellow shirt. Resentment bubbled up in Wufei's stomach. It seemed like his father had gotten just what he had always wanted: big, strong sons who liked to play rough and enjoyed sports mindlessly, and not the weak, bookworm who ducked whenever a ball came at him. He stared hard at the image, wanting it to catch fire from the heat of his anger.
"What the fuck!" Wufei spun around at the sound of Tyler's angry shout, heart racing and muscles ready to run.
"Hands off, you little shit," Tyler hissed, grabbing a hold of Jian's ear and ripping whatever it was he had been holding out of his hands and away from him.
Jian's scream of pain made something dark lash out inside of Wufei. Tyler was lifting a hand to strike, his cold eyes staring down at the boy. Before he had time to think, Wufei had grabbed a hold of one of the tall candlesticks that stood proudly on top of the piano. His fingers closed tightly around the cold metal, the white globe candle on top tumbling off as he jerked it down. He lunged forward and swung it, hitting Tyler straight in the face, with the force of the hit ricocheting up his arm.
With a cry of pain, his so-called foster brother stumbled back, hands over his face, blood running down between his fingers.
Wufei felt no sympathy and didn't spare him much attention as he dropped the candlestick and darted towards his brother. Jian was crying almost hysterically, his small arms tight around Wufei's neck as he was snatched off his feet and hurried away from Tyler, who was cursing and shouting about just how much Wufei was going to pay for what he had done.
"What is going on here?" Wufei's father called out, as he came hurrying through the doorway.
"Wufei hit me with the candlestick!" Tyler shouted, pointing at Wufei who had Jian wrapped around him like a monkey.
From the shocked gasp from Alice, who was standing behind her husband, to the angry look on his father's face, Wufei knew that this was not going to end well for him.
"He was hurting Jian," he defended.
"He was breaking my phone," Tyler shot back, blood running down between his fingers.
"I wasn't! I was just looking!" Jian protested between his hysterical sobs.
"He was looking at what was inside my phone by picking it apart," Tyler cut in, authoritatively.
"He dragged him by his ear," Wufei hissed angrily, hiding his shaking hands by gripping Jian tighter.
"You have to be more careful, darling," Tyler's mother's gentle voice interrupted. She hurried over to inspect the cut on his temple, pressing a cloth against it to stop the blood flow. "He was just curious and you can't treat him the way you treat your brothers. He's too young."
His father turned towards his sons. "Jian, come here. Let me see."
The boy reluctantly let go of Wufei as his brother put him back down on his feet. He walked over to his father who inspected his red ear. "You're fine. Just be more careful with other people's things."
"I wasn't touching it!"
His father sighed. "Right, just— just go outside and play. We'll talk about this later."
"But—"
"Now, Jian," the man bit off sharply.
Angry tears fell from the boy's eyes as he turned and ran out.
The older man rubbed his hands over his face. Then, with a heavy sigh, the man turned to Tyler. "I know you're not used to kids so young, but you need to be a bit more… careful."
His father was looking over at his wife while he spoke, as if he wasn't comfortable disciplining her children. Then, when Alice nodded her approval, he turned to Wufei, his face tightening, becoming cold and angry. "Well, Wufei?"
Wufei glanced over at Tyler, who was getting fussed over by his mother. The other boy had a pained, almost scared expression on his face that Wufei knew successfully fooled both their parents.
Wufei felt completely powerless. There was nothing he could do. He couldn't win. They would never believe him; no one ever did. But, if befriending Duo had taught him anything, it was to stand up for himself and to always go down fighting.
He straightened his back and looked his father right in the eye. "He was hurting Jian and I made him stop."
For a second, his father looked beyond shocked, as if he had never expected him to challenge his authority. "Then you should have told him to stop. You do not go around hitting people with candlesticks!" the man shouted angrily.
Momentarily, Wufei could only stare at his father, trying to think of a way to tell him that he was being a naïve fool. Why couldn't he understand that anything Wufei might have said would not have made any difference to someone like Tyler? Bullies didn't care. They only cared for themselves and they would do or say anything to have their way.
"He wouldn't have listened," was all he said, as he crossed his arms over his chest, as if to protect his rapidly beating heart.
His father's angry stare didn't waver. "What you did was totally irresponsible, not to mention very dangerous and I want you to apologize right now."
Wufei's mouth dropped open.
His father's eyes were hard as steel as they stared him down. "Right now, Wufei, or you are going straight home to your mother."
"Tyler didn't mean to hurt him, did you?" Alice questioned her son, obviously trying to mediate between them.
Tyler shook his head with a look of regret. "No, I just wanted him to stop. I didn't mean to be so rough with him." He had the perfect look of regret on his face. "I'm really sorry."
Both parents looked back at Wufei. The look in their eyes made him feel sick. They believed every word; they embraced it because it was what they wanted to believe. They didn't want to know the truth because it was ugly and didn't fit into their nice little world that they were building up around themselves.
Wufei looked over at Tyler and saw the satisfaction in his eyes. The bastard knew he had won.
Wufei looked back at his waiting father. He had never considered himself to be a prideful person, but as he stood there, he felt that he did have some pride; pride and a sense of justice that would not allow him to sink so low.
He saw how everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to obey, to apologize. He met his father's eyes again. "Never."
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They were dropped off in front of their house.
Their father had tried to comfort Jian, but had clearly been unsuccessful as the boy looked far from comforted. He had been glued to Wufei's side the whole way back, like he was the only thing real in the world. The whole thing seemed to have scared the little boy half to death and Wufei didn't blame him because, if he felt anything like the sick feeling Wufei had in his stomach, he would have glued himself to someone he trusted too.
Wufei and his father hadn't said a word to each other, much less looked at each other. There was a strained silence between them. Neither was going to back down, so the tension remained.
When they arrived, the first and only thing his father told him was to go to his room; an order Wufei had no problem following. He didn't want to spend another second in that man's presence.
He had barely gotten up the stairs before he heard his parents starting to argue. His mother was cursing his father out, who held nothing back in retaliation. It wasn't long before old injustices were dredged up, shortcomings pointed out until the argument was no longer about what had happened.
The girls were quiet as they disappeared into their room, leaving the toys they had been playing with in the hallway. Wufei watched them go, wishing that there was something he could do to distract them from the fighting downstairs. At least, they hadn't been there with them, so they were spared the scene in the living room. He just hoped that Tyler wouldn't hurt the girls when it was their turn to go over to their father's place.
With a sigh, Wufei went to his room. He was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Dropping his backpack on the floor, he stumbled over to his bed and more or less collapsed on it.
Jian was crying silently on his bed, with Chuanli looking lost and helpless from his spot on the upper bunk bed.
Wufei bit back a groan. Sometimes, being the oldest was just too much. He wanted to be just a kid too, and be comforted and assured that everything was going to be all right. But, that wasn't going to happen. Wufei dragged himself out of bed and walked over to Jian's curled up shape.
"Are you okay?" he stroked his brothers back in comfort, as he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Does your ear hurt?"
Jian sniffed into his pillow, turning his head towards him. His eyes were red and wet. "A little."
Wufei reached out and carefully stroked the still slightly swollen ear. "It'll be okay," he promised.
"I was just looking at it," the boy said, looking up with eyes that begged for someone to believe him.
"I know," Wufei whispered, lying down to gather Jian in his arms and holding him tightly as the boy cried silently. Small hands gripped his t-shirt and Wufei wished he had some kind of magical solution to everything so he could be happy again. The bed creaked as Chuanli climbed down the ladder and joined them on the bed.
"My stomach hurts when they scream," Chuanli whispered like it was a horrible secret.
Wufei swallowed thickly. "Mine too," he said, pulling Jian's soft, superhero blanket over the three of them. Together they curled up, listening to the distant sounds of yelling.
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A/N Well that was all for now, I'll try to update again as soon as I can so I don't leave you with this depressing image for too long.
Now please take a second to leave me a word about the chapter, it will make me very happy if you do. :)
Annoying Little Twit – Glad you thought it was worth the wait, I'll try not to keep you waiting that long again :) nightcrawls – Thank you! I hope you liked the new chapter :) hugglesbunny – hehe glad you enjoyed the awkward teenage fumbling because I sure had fun writing it. There will be more of Duo's background in the next chapter, I promise. anonymous reviewer - I sure did :D simys – I'll try to keep the chapters coming regularly but sooner or later I'll work my way through this story. killing u with umbrellas – Glad to hear it! :) LovelyRose5001 – Thank you :) More cure relationship situations coming up. O.O – LOL! No way, I might drop off the radar while I reload but I will never be gone. I'm too stuck on this paring and this fandom to leave it. Well, maybe in twenty years or so, then I might consider retiring then. But until then I will be back with more sickeningly sweet stories. One Fujoshi Otaku Among Many – I'll change the rating right away. To be honest I never remember the rating thing since I always found it a bit ridicules, but since people out there care I'm grateful that you reminded me so thank you. Amyeyl – I'm happy you like it :) I'll try to get it updated again as soon as I can. HybridPlaything – Glad to be back :) I'm happy you enjoyed the adorable clumsy virgins, will try to fit more of that in the story. Because really, what kind of teenage boy wouldn't try to have as much sex as they could? Turtle Kid the Woolgatherer- Well you sure didn't get your wish on the story not being depressing. Ooops, sorry about that. But I do promise that there will of course be a happy ending for everyone but the bad guys. snowdragonct – LOL! I just had this picture of you putting a chair under the door to get away from the kids on the other side. Who knows, it might work. And not to give you any spoilers or so, but you're right, they are going to make each other happy in very different ways. Random GW fan 58- I so wish you left somewhere for me to reply because this is going to take so much room XD Now, to answer your question why I don't just write my AU's as original stories for a larger audience. To be honest there are several answers. The first and most obvious answer is that I love and identify myself a lot to these two characters. Another answer is that I love to play around with their original personality and only keep parts of them, only to let other parts pop up every now and then. To take Wufei in this story as an example. I asked myself, what would happen if you took the original Wufei and put him through low self-esteem, no family pride and bullying. And this is what I think would happen. As you might have noticed in this chapter, Wufei is starting to grow so balls and his sense of justice that drives him so much in the manga is starting to develop, just as Meilan's death did to him in the books. As you said, original Wufei doesn't take crap and when I'm done with him, neither will this Wufei. Another answer is that I've found that original stories, compared to fanfiction doesn't flow off my fingers as easily. I don't know why but I guess I don't feel as much pressure since fanfiction is just that –fanfiction. I do have a big original story that I'm working on so keep an eye out for it in the future ;) As for being "detailed about something at first but when something new came into play it got sort of neglected in favor of that new thing instead of interweaving smoothly." -was my way of trying to illustrate a teenage crush where it just feels like you are in a totally different world from the rest. I should probably have made that more clear and as you said, more detailed. I'll try to work on that. As for the twins I think you are the first one that spotted that XD I was going to work it into the chapter that they were staying at their neighbor's house as a way to introduce a new original character but I couldn't get it to fit so I just took it out and then totally forgot to mention where they had gone. A total fail on my part. And finally, thank you for your review, I'm really flattered that you took the time to write your thoughts down.