Chapter Text
I was trying to stay asleep for as long as possible when my parents got to New York. I heard them already upstairs, talking to Bran and Samuel. I knew Charles and Anna eventually joined them. Ben was giving me an impatient look, having moved to block me from laying back down when I sat up for a moment to stretch.
“I don’t want to go out there.” I hissed at him. They were on their way down, all of them.
“Is she awake?” Mom asked. Ben gave me a grin and I tried my best “don’t you fucking dare” look but he made some sort of wolfish yip-bark to let the others know where we were.
Awake.
“Fuck you, seriously.” I muttered to him and he licked my hand.
“She’s awake.” It was Bran’s laugh that frustrated me most.
My apartment upstairs was pretty big, but wasn’t going to fit eight people. The apartment we were in was slightly smaller, you can imagine the discomfort of everyone crowding in the doorway to the bedroom.
“Hi.”
I had no idea what else to say. What do you say? “Hey mom and dad, it’s really fine. I really made a large mistake and I’ll just figure this back out.”
The whole ordeal was making me anxious beyond belief.
“Adam,” My mom’s hand flew to his shoulder. “I’m going to talk more with Bran about what happens next.”
I felt immediately guilty. She had made the immediate assumption that I would rather talk to my dad over her. I hadn’t called her once since the move.
I didn’t want to talk to her because she’s less easy to fool than my dad. He’s overprotective, his mind will race when you tell him something even remotely worrying. He won’t try and figure out why. My mother is a puzzle-solver.
I would be in Washington already if I had told her anything.
The door way became a little less huddled. The group spread out to talk about different things. Anna offered to take Charles to go get food rather than cook. Samuel opted to stay with my mother and Bran and the trio went upstairs.
I was paying closer attention to where everyone else was and completely avoiding the idea of my father.
“Thank you.” I frowned and then realized he wasn’t speaking to me. “For listening to her.”
Ben dipped his head and turned back to me. He was waiting for me to speak and so was my father.
“I just needed a little help.” I made busy with identifying the different shades of red in Ben’s fur. “I didn’t want everyone to come, that’s why I asked him.”
“You should know you could have trusted any of us with this.”
“And then it becomes this whole big deal.” I told him sincerely. “Dad, everything that happens becomes a big deal. I wanted to be able to figure this one out. I just needed a little extra push. I know what I needed and I only needed one person.” “You have a lot of people who care about your well-being.” He agreed. He seated himself at the edge of the bed near my feet. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“Dad, you don’t let me do anything for myself.” I didn’t disagree, it wasn’t a bad thing. “How am I supposed to learn anything for myself? You’re all so quick to compare me to mom, you don’t give me a minute to learn from my own experience. I’m not mom. Sometimes I think you know that, other times I’m not so sure.”
I was maybe a little more whiny than I had wanted to be. I didn’t know how to get the problem across, though. I was living in this weird shadow of who everyone expected that I was. I wasn’t saying I didn’t get into trouble, I did it all the time. I also grew up in an entirely different scenario from her.
“Ben is pushy. He wants me to go home, but he isn’t going to step all over me to get me there.” I explained, more quietly.
“Ben isn’t your father.”
Ben picked his head up. Somehow, after a year of not speaking, he was entirely aware of the joke I was going to make, but thought better of.
“He’s not.” I agreed. “It gives me some wiggle room.”
“Do you know why I’m upset?” Dad was probably upset over a lot of the stupid shit I did and continue to do. He was probably upset over the idea that I wanted more freedom in my life to choose what to do with it.
“Because dogs shouldn’t be allowed on the bed?” I motioned to Ben who made some sort of disgruntled noise. “He’s really very well behaved. Potty trained and everything.”
“Porsche, you lied to me.” He emphasized it.
“I shouldn’t have to write you a list of all of the people I’ve slept with.” Probably not the greatest sentence for a room where it’s just you, your father, and the dude you’ve had a giant crush on since you knew what a crush was. “It was a poor choice.”
“You should talk to someone.”
“When I’m ready.”
“Porsche—“
“Dad!” I was losing patience. “It wasn’t anything I can’t come back from. I’m still alive. I’m breathing. There are some things to work out, but I have to work those out on the inside first. I’m not avoiding it because I don’t want to think about it, I’m avoiding it because I don’t understand it yet.”
“The worst of it aside,” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t need to sleep with someone to feel safe.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I made a mistake, it was poor judgement. I was scared and I did the first thing I thought I could do.”
There were plenty of other things and people who could make me feel safe.
“You asked for help.”
“I did.” I nodded. “I’m not entirely stupid.”
He smiled and shook his head. Taking it as my cue to hug him, I got up and moved to where he was in order to squeeze him. Ben whined and I laughed.
“You can get a hug later.” I promised.
“Your mom wants to talk to you. She hasn’t heard from you in a while.” Dad sighed. “And I still want to hear from you what happened.”
“I know.”
“And I want you to see someone, please.” I looked up at him. “It would make me feel a lot better about everything.”
I sighed and finally agreed.
“What do you think the next step is from here?” He asked me seriously. “What are you going to do?”
“Bran told me to leave the pack. I think he knows it would make me uncomfortable to stay, and he’s not wrong. I don’t mind being alone for a little, I don’t run with the pack the right way anyways.” I shrugged my shoulders. I really had no idea what happened next. “I don’t want to leave school, dad.”
“You might need a semester off at the very least.” He tried to be relaxed about it, but I knew he wanted me home just as much as Bran had suggested it. They both wanted me in their direct line of site.
“I want to finish this semester.” I took a deep breath. “And then I’ll study closer to home. If I can keep my grades up here, I can get good enough grades anywhere.” I gave Ben a look. He looked quite pleased with himself and I smiled, turning back to my dad.
“We can work that out.” And he kissed the top of my head like when I was little and scared of the dark.