Title: Elsewhere
Summary: It's an emotional rollercoaster, taking care of three little boys, especially when they're not yours and you don't know how long they're staying.
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The night was pitch black and moonless, a fierce wind howling around the sides of the house and pitching the bare tree branches back and forth against the sky. Andy had opened his eyes while the beam of light from the living room had still shone through the half open door, a sign that Troy and Sharpay were still up. Andy glanced over at Zac. He was definitely asleep. Kevin, however, was lying on his side, facing the wall. Andy wondered if he was up. He decided to go over and check.
The floorboards were cold beneath his bare feet, and Andy scampered up to the edge of Kevin's bed, peering over at his brother. "Kevin," he whispered, shaking Kevin's shoulder. "Are ya up?"
"Wha?" Kevin shot up, his eyes wild and disoriented. "What happened?" he demanded, breathing hard.
"Oops, sorry." Andy giggled nervously. "I guess you weren't up."
"Yeah," Kevin lay back down, rolling his eyes. "I guess I wasn't."
Andy perched on the edge of the bed, looking hopeful. "Can I sleep with you? Can I, please?"
Kevin sighed. He was about to protest, but thought the better of it. "Sure. Sleep next to the wall so you don't fall out." He moved over to make room.
"Thanks!" Andy whispered. "I never get to sleep with you anymore. Only with Zac."
"If Zac falls out of bed, he's gonna cry," Kevin informed Andy. "It'll be your fault if he falls out."
"He won't fall out," Andy told him. "He's right up next to the wall."
"Well, if he wakes up and wants to sleep in here, it's going to be really crowded tonight," Kevin went on.
"I'll make room," Andy assured him, yawning.
"You better," Kevin told him, "or I'm kicking one of you out."
"Kick Zac out," Andy suggested, charitably. "I got here first."
"Yeah, well I got here before either of you did, and I get to pick who has to go sleep in the other bed," Kevin protested. "And you kick."
Andy shook his head. "I do not kick."
"And you hog all the blankets," Kevin added, grinning.
Andy scowled. "I don't do it on purpose. You're lucky I'll sleep in the same bed as you, Kevin. I could just go sleep in the other bed and leave you all alone."
Kevin rolled his eyes. "The horror!" It was a phrase he'd picked up from Troy, and was now employing with some regularity.
"Yeah," Andy agreed, earnestly. "If you got scared, I'd be all the way across the room."
Kevin rolled his eyes and shifted onto his stomach. "Andy, I don't get scared."
Long after Andy had fallen asleep, Kevin lay awake. His brother was the worst person to share a bed with in the world. Not only did Andy change position frequently, he kicked, as well as murmured things under his breath, and he definitely hogged the blanket. Kevin sighed. It wasn't really Andy's fault. You weren't really aware of what you were doing while you were sleeping. Anyway, if Andy woke up and realized that he had the whole blanket and you were clutching onto a corner, he'd start pulling the blanket over to cover you back up again, shaking the whole bed and waking everybody up in the process. Kevin sighed again as Andy's bony elbow pressed against his ribcage. At least his brother's intentions were good.
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Zac woke up with a start. His ear hurt and his head hurt and he'd banged his knee on something. The floor. He was on the floor. First he'd been in the bed and now he was on the floor. He looked around, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. Where had Andy gone?
The nighttime was scary. There might be monsters in here. There were probably monsters under the bed. Zac's thumb went back into his mouth. The monsters under the bed wanted to eat him.
He had to get out of the room. The hallway was dark and shadowy. He didn't know where to go. Zac glanced behind him into the bedroom. He was sure he saw something black and slimy gliding across the floor.
Zac didn't waste any time after that. He ran, his bare feet slipping on the scratchy carpet so that he could scarcely keep his balance. He hit the ground right in front of Troy and Sharpay's door and scrambled to his feet again, certain that a monster was behind him.
He turned the doorknob and padded into the room, closing the door so that the monsters would stay out. Troy was snoring. His bony white feet poked out from beneath the covers, standing out brightly in the moonlight.
Zac put his hand on the edge of the bed and followed the curve of the mattress until he was standing right in front of Troy. Troy didn't wake up.
Tentatively, Zac stretched one hand over to Troy's shoulder and patted him several times. "Wake up," he whispered, frantically. "Troy! Daddy! Get up! WAKE UP DADDY!"
Startled, Troy jolted awake. "Zac?" he murmured. "What's the matter?" He struggled into a sitting position. "Are you okay?"
"Monsters!" Zac wailed. It was all he could manage.
Troy lifted Zac into the bed. "What monsters, buddy?"
"Troy? What's going. . ." Sharpay rubbed her eyes and smiled sleepily. "Hi, Zac. What are you doing in here?"
"Zac," Troy interjected. "Close your eyes for just a second, buddy. Shar, babe, we need to put on some clothes, for god's sake."
Once Sharpay tossed Troy some boxers and was in a fresh nightgown and back in bed, Zac stretched out his arms and let Sharpay help him into her lap. "There was monsters, and I fell out of bed, and Andy wasn't sleeping with me, and I was running down the hall. . ." he gasped. "And I fell down, and I came in here. . ."
"Shh. . ." Sharpay rubbed his back, smiling over at Troy. "You're shaking, baby. You must have been really scared."
"Really scared," Zac told her. He could feel himself calming down. "I was really, really, really scared. And my ear hurts."
"Your ear hurts?" Troy felt Zac's forehead. "Shar, does he feel warm to you?"
Sharpay felt Zac's forehead. "Yeah." She frowned. "Your ear hurts?"
Zac was worried they might kick him out of bed if he was sick. "I don't think I gots germs," he said. "So you don't have to worry that you'll catch it or anything."
"Honey. . ." Sharpay held Zac closer. "Don't worry about that."
"My ear hurts lots and lots of times," Zac said, "but Kevin and Andy never get it. So you probably won't get it."
"Buddy, we don't care if we get it," Troy said. "If you have an ear infection, though, the only thing that'll make it go away is antibiotics. Medicine."
"I never tooked medicine before." Zac looked dubious. "Not anabotics or nothing."
"They make ear infections go away faster," Sharpay said.
"Is it the kind of medicine you have to go to the doctor's and get it?" Zac asked.
Troy smiled. "Why go to the doctor's when you're sitting in one's lap?"
Zac looked up at Sharpay and smiled.
Five minutes later he was sitting on the counter in Troy and Sharpay's bathroom, while Sharpay peered into his ears with an auroscope. "Ow. . ." Zac gripped Troy's hand as the pressure built. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"
Sharpay winced. She felt terrible about hurting him. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I know it hurts. It'll be over soon."
"Do I have a ear perfection?" Zac asked.
Troy guffawed. Sharpay held back a grin. "Yeah, honey, I think you do. I can't get you any medicine for it until early in the morning, though."
"That's okay." Zac lied. "It doesn't hurt so bad."
"Do you want to go back into your bed?" Troy asked.
"We'll give you some Children's Tylenol," Sharpay agreed, "and then we could tuck you in again." She sighed, wishing she had some antibiotic samples, which drug company representatives seemed to disperse so freely when you didn't need them, on hand.
Zac shook his head, terrified. "Don't make me go back into that room! I don't want to go back in there!"
"Okay. It's okay." Sharpay lifted him onto her hip. "You can sleep in here, if you want."
"Yeah," Zac murmured. "With you."
"I don't think we're supposed to get too attached," Troy whispered, "or let him get too attached."
"That room's all the way down the hall, Troy," Sharpay pointed out. "If he called, we'd never hear him."
Troy nodded. "Just this once, Zac. Tomorrow night, if you feel better, it would be better to sleep with Kevin and Andy."
"I will," Zac promised.
"Okay." Troy nodded. "If you get scared, wake us up."
"Troy! Troy, Troy, Daddy!" Zac whispered.
Troy opened his eyes. The bedside clock read 4:02. "What's the matter, Zac?"
Zac sighed. "I can't go to sleep. My ear hurts too much."
"Okay," Troy whispered. "Do you want to go down and watch TV?"
"In the middle of the night?" Zac asked.
"It's what I do when I can't sleep," Troy told him.
"Okay." Zac agreed. "Let's go downstairs."
"We have to be really quiet though," Troy cautioned him, "because Sharpay has to get up early for work tomorrow."
"Okay." Zac was silent as Troy lifted him out of bed and tiptoed out of the room.
"We're going to get the blanket from your bed, okay?" Troy asked. "So you won't be cold."
"Okay," Zac whispered. He tightened his grip on Troy's neck as they entered the darkened bedroom. "Monsters," he thought.
Luckily, there weren't any. Andy and Kevin were in the other bed, fast asleep, with Andy hogging most of the blanket. Troy lifted the comforter from the empty bed and he tiptoed down the stairs. When a floorboard creaked, both he and Zac grimaced.
"Shh. . ." Zac whispered. "You were the one who said be quiet."
"I was," Troy agreed. "Sorry."
Zac nodded. "It's okay."
Troy grinned. "Thank you for being so understanding." He felt Zac's fingernails dig into his skin as they stepped into the undiluted blackness of the living room.
"Something could be hiding in here," Zac whispered. "And then it'll jump out and kill us."
"No it won't," Troy assured him. "There's nothing in here."
"Maybe they're being quiet," Zac proposed.
"Nah." Troy shook his head. "Monsters could never be that quiet."
He set Zac down on the couch and fumbled around for the TV remote control. It was on top of the TV, exactly where it was supposed to be, though of course that was the last place Troy checked. "Do you have anything in particular you want to watch?" he asked Zac, stretching out next to him on the couch.
Zac looked over at him. "Do you?"
"Hey, at four AM, it does not make much of a difference to me," Troy observed.
Zac shook his head. "Me either."
Searching for worthwhile entertainment at this hour of the morning was futile. There were scores of infomercials, old TV repeats, sappy commercials backed by tinny Christmas carols. Some guy was hacking people to bits with a buzz saw on Channel 346. On MTV, scantily clad young girls gyrated around a middle-aged man dressed in shiny black sateen and weighted down by gold chains.
Finally, Troy settled on ESPN Classic, showing an old Knicks' game from sometime during the 2015 season. With the boys in the house most of the day, he hadn't gotten to watch the eight to ten basketball games a week he was used to watching.
The two of them sat through fifteen minutes of the back-and-forth offensive pyrotechnics of professional basketball before Zac, who had inched on to Troy's stomach and was resting his head on his chest, sat up suddenly.
"Dad…I mean Troy is that you?" Zac asked, as the sportscaster announced, "Bolton checks back in for the Knicks, hoping to put a little defense on the red-hot Spurs."
"Huh, I guess it is."
"Well how can you be sitting here and also be running around in there?" Zac asked wide-eyed as he pointed to the television.
"It's an old game. Taped before you were even born." And there aren't actually people in the tv, he added in his head.
"And how come you don't 'member being on TV? I would tells everybody about going in the TV if I did it."
"I used to be in the NBA. I played almost 500 games that were on TV, so I can't remember them all," Troy explained.
"500. That's lots more than forty-eleven. Or sixty-ninety-three, even. How come you're nots in the BNA any more?"
"Cause I got hurt."
"But Sharpay tooked care of you, right?"
"Yeah, Sharpay tooked care of me."
By the time the sky had lightened to a dull gray, washing the walls in dim early morning light, Troy and Zac had both fallen asleep, the TV blaring "6:00 with Terrance Lewis," a sort of early-early show, featuring a bouncy, low rent version of Richard Simmons. Terrance Lewis, dressed in a tight black unitard and high cropped, tight white shirt, his permed black hair held back with a head band, bounced across the TV screen to a scratchy, pop-sampled soundtrack. He waved his arms around, shaking his head back and forth. Apparently ESPN also aired repeats of bizarre ninety's jazzercise shows.
"C'mon people!" Terrance squeaked. "It's time to get up and do some dancin!"
Troy yawned and opened his eyes. Zac was still lying on his stomach, fast asleep, and Troy didn't want to wake him. He closed his eyes again and concentrated on going back to sleep. Today was going to be a long day.
It suddenly occurred to Troy that a month ago he never could have seen himself in this situation. It was only a few weeks ago he'd handed out Halloween candy to little kids dressed as dragons and witches, Wonder Woman and Mickey Mouse, thinking to himself all the while that if he and Sharpay got a baby this year or next, it would be three or four years before he'd be taking someone trick or treating. He'd never imagined having such close contact with a little kid. . . any little kid. . . for quite awhile. These past few weeks had been entirely out of the blue.
And yet, he knew they'd have to end. These kids weren't his kids. Their mother would rehabilitate herself, and they'd go back to live with her. Troy wondered if he should have held back, keeping himself from forming such a tight bond with the boys. He didn't want to compete with their mother. He didn't want to make the inevitable separation harder on everyone. Maybe it was wrong to allow someone to trust you, and then cast them back out into the world again, as if they didn't mean anything to you, as if they never had.
That wasn't the message Troy wanted to send. He wished there was some way he and Sharpay could hand the boys over to their mother without completely disinvolving themselves, at least until Kathleen was strong enough to provide more emotional support. It would definitely be hard for her at first. Maybe she would appreciate it if Troy and Sharpay took the boys for the day every now and then, maybe for a weekend.
Troy sighed. He wouldn't let himself think about it. When the time came, he would do what he had to do, but for now it was just him and Zac, lying on the couch. There was, however, the small matter of Zac calling him 'Daddy'…
Troy closed his eyes. Maybe he could get a few more minutes of sleep. . .
"Troy?" Andy whispered. "Troy, are ya up?"
"Mmh?" Troy murmured. "Wha?" He glanced at his watch. It was 6:15.
"I was looking for Zac," Andy explained. He grinned at the TV screen. "I love this guy! Sometimes I get up early, and I see him on TV."
"Shh. Don't wake up Zac," Troy whispered.
"Okay," Andy agreed. He smiled again at Terrance Lewis. "Time to wake up and get energized!" he parroted. "Start yer day the Terrance way!"
Zac's eyelids flickered open. "Not this guy!" he groaned. "I hate this guy! Turn him off!"
Troy smiled to himself. Another day had begun.
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AN: Troy is becoming such an imaginary replacement for Mac's father I can hardly stand it. If only all men took to parenting as well as Troy seems to. Alas…it cannot be so…
Leave a review, tell me what you think!
margaret