Frathouse Boxboy: Cam takes Z2 home Part 2
content warning: abusive parent, physcial abuse, emotional abuse, homophobic language, alcohol abuse, and food. please be aware none of those are implied this time, they’re very much in the direct story.
Z wakes up confused. He has no idea where he is, only with the sense a loud noise has woken him. Unsettled, his mind makes suggestions. He’s in his old master’s house, the one that overlooked the water. No. A small room. He jerks his wrists up in reflex, half expecting to be tied in thick restraints. Nothing. Just his collar, which is safe. His collar is safe, it’s good.
He jumps at another loud noise. Someone is pounding on the bedroom door. It rattles on its hinges, cracked in places where a fist has splintered the wood.
His memories of the night before come back, instant and clear. Cam’s arm is slung around him, holding him how the fell asleep. They’re both too tall for the skinny single mattress, their feet nearly hang off the end. Cam groans.
“What?” He hollers at the door. The answer from the other side is unintelligible—angry. Cam slumps back down on his pillow, drapes a hand over his eyes. “If it isn’t a fire I don’t wanna hear about it.” He says more quietly.
“Deb! Deborah!” More pounding. The bolt on the door jumps. Z shrinks back against Cam, heart thudding.
Cam sighs, squeezes Z’s shoulder. “Deborah is my mother’s name. Son of a bitch is still drunk. Jesus. What time is it?"
The pounding on the door falls silent. Z holds his breath, hoping that Cam’s dad has simply given up, wandered back down the hallway.
Suddenly, the wood holding the bolt to the door splinters, breaks clean off and slams into the opposite wall. Cam sits up straight, throwing the blanket off his torso.
Cam’s father is in the same flannel from the night before, the same faded jeans. He’s red-faced and bleary-eyed, arms hanging at his side like Frankenstein’s monster. He looks almost surprised at the damage he’s done to the door, gaze roving over to the two of them in his son’s bed. Z cowers back against Cam, wide eyed.
“The hells this?” He makes a sloppy gesture. “What’re you two doin?”
“Seriously? We were sleeping. My door, Dad.”
“You sharin’ a bed with boys now? They teach you that in college?” He takes a step closer, unsteady as a toddler. “That what you left to go learn, huh?”
“I’m not making him sleep on the floor. That’s all. It’s not a big deal.”
Z can’t tell how much of what Cameron says is registering. His father is easily 6'1", looks like he’s going to brush the ceiling fan with the top of his head. He’s still strong even with his whitening beard, broad and muscled from manual labor. His bloodshot eyes narrow and he lunges, grabbing Z by the arm and dragging him out of the bed.
Z yelps in pain. His shoulder is still tender from being dislocated, and the man’s grip is bruising. He lands sharply on his hip on Cameron’s floor, accidentally knocking over last night’s plates and forks from the nightstand with a crash.
He’s barely registered what’s happened when the man hauls him up by his shirt, slams him into the wall just like Cameron did in the bathroom the night he met Amber and Emily.
He croaks and gasps— the wind knocked from his lungs. All he can smell is stale beer and cigarettes, cloying and sickly as he grasps desperately at the man’s thick wrists, his bulging knuckles. He pulls him forward six inches, slams him against the wall again so his head bounces off it, what little air he had left is forced from his lungs.
Cam is out of bed and lunging into Z’s view, grabbing his father’s arms with both of his, pulling him away. “Dad no! Stop it! STOP!”
Cam manages to unbalance him, and he has to let Z go to stumble and avoid falling. Cam jumps between the two of them, back facing Zee, holding his arms out at his side, like he can shield Z from further harm.
“I said don’t touch him.”
Cam’s father squares up, tugging his shirt back in place. He stares at Cam a moment before he slaps him, a crack so surprisingly precise that Z whimpers and flinches against the wall. Cam says nothing. He does it again- another open handed slap to the face like he’s trying to provoke him.
“You gonna hit me, Cammy?"
"Gonna hit your old man?”
Cam’s shoulders stiffen with each slap. Z looks on in confusion and disbelief as he takes it without any retaliation. He’s never seen Cam not react, even to the slightest provocation.
“C'mon.” His father goads. His shirt is unbuttoned at the top and Z can see his chest hair has gone mostly white, too, the skin leathered from sun damage. “You gonna just stand there? You’re such a pussy. I don’t even know you. Go on. Move. I bet your little boyfriend takes a swing at me.”
Cam sounds like he’s talking around a lump in his throat, but he doesn’t waver. “No.”
He tries to push him aside but Cam digs in his heels. “I said no, Dad.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. Birds have begun chirping outside the window— the sky is getting light behind the curtain. Z’s adrenaline has worn off so he’s visibly trembling, pressed against the wood panelled wall. The only thing between him and this frightening, unpredictable man is Cameron.
“I don’ know you.” He growls at his son, words slurring slightly together.
Cam doesn’t move. His father turns like he’s leaving, only to turn back and throw his weight into his right fist, uppercutting Cam in the stomach. Cams arms drop to hold himself around the waist, almost doubled over. He coughs, but doesn’t move until his father leaves, kicking the broken door into the hallway, still nearly tripping over it as he goes.
Cam slumps to the floor. He coughs again like it hurts him, wincing and holding his stomach.
Z drops to his knees beside him, shaking too hard to be of much help. Is he coming back? What if he just went to get a belt, or a baseball bat, or a gun?
Cam sees the fear on his face. He laughs hoarsely, raising one arm away from his stomach and toward Z.
“Hey. It’s okay. C'mere. C'mere, Zee."
Z crawls between Cameron’s legs, careful not to hurt him. He’s reminded of the other boy’s own wiry strength when he drags him closer, wraps an arm around him.
Z takes a shuddering breath and rests his chin on Cam’s shoulder.
“Sorry about that. He’s usually…better. Since I left for school. I thought it’d be fine.”
“Are…are you okay?” Z asks tentatively.
“Fine.” Cam shifts slightly, careful of his ribs, begins rubbing Z’s back with his palm, up and down. “Don’t worry about him. He’s gone to pass out. You’re okay.”
Z lets himself relax into Cam’s arms. He’s gotten a little more used to Cam, to being allowed on the bed, to touches that are not always weighted with any intention other than just touching.
Something tells him it should be harder to reconcile the boy who just used himself as a shield to protect him with the boy who shaved his head, who held him underwater, who threw darts at his arms while Tyler held him and punished him with eight papercuts, and then one to the tongue.
But something trained rises eagerly to meet this gradual closeness. Something tells him he’s doing a good job, he’s being good.
“Shhh. I know, Zeezee.” Cam whispers close his ear, keeps rubbing his back in a way that reminds him oddly of Alex. “I’m gonna take you home. You don’t need this shit. You didn’t do anything."
He pushes Z away from him by the shoulders, ducks his head to make eye contact. "Did he hurt you?”
Z blinks at Cam in disbelief. Cam usually blames him for the fights that break out around him, for the times he’s gotten into it with Alex, and the time four of them got in a fight. Besides, Cam’s the one that got sucker punched with a closed fist. Sucker punched. He doesn’t know where that phrase comes from, why he knows it. A flicker of pain in his head makes him whimper and Cam’s eyes only soften.
Z pulls his shirt collar away from his neck. Two bruises are already forming under his collarbone from those clumsy, meaty fists that slammed him not once but twice into the wall.
Cam prods Z’s chest with two fingers. He’s being gentle, which comes and goes but stays longer lately. Nothing is broken. Nothing makes him cry out in immediate pain. Cam stops poking at him.
“C'mon. I’ll take you home.” He winces as he climbs to his feet, helps Z to standing. Z scoops Dom’s hoodie off the floor, holds it to his chest.
Cam pulls his phone charger out of the wall, pockets it. He swipes his keys and wallet off the top of the dresser. He turns to ask Z if he’s ready, but Z has knelt by the bed to pick up the plates he’d broken, piling the shards carefully in one hand with his other.
Cam looks down at him like he’s about to tell him to leave it, but something stops him. He kneels next to Z and helps, picking shards out of the carpet. Z follows him gingerly down the hallway, afraid his father is going to jump out of every corner, every shadow like a Boogeyman. But his chair is empty, and his bedroom door is shut. Z and Cam empty the plate shards into the kitchen trash can.
They put their shoes on in silence in the entryway, grey dawn giving everything a heavy stillness. Shadow trots in and tilts her head, whining.
Cam lays a hand on the dog’s copper fur. “Don’t look at me like that. He likes you better'n me. You’ll be alright.”
Shadow watches them hopefully right up until Cam shuts the door behind them, leaving her in the muddy entryway as her tail slowly stops wagging.
The morning air is chilly. Z shivers in Cam’s car, watching him crane his neck over his shoulder to reverse out of the driveway.
“You hungry? There’s a Waffle House before we hit the interstate."
Z is wary of how cavalier Cam is being. After what just happened, it doesn’t make much sense. He knows all too well how it can change course at any moment.
Cam looks at him almost apologetically. "Not a trick question, Zee.”
The sun comes up as they eat waffles in a booth in silence. Cam let him leave his collar in the car. They drink coffee with cream, and when Z’s hand gets sticky from the syrup dispenser Cam points behind his head at the bathroom, lets him go wash it off.
Cam pays at the register, turns to cough into his elbow. Anyone else might have missed the way he winces as he does, but Z’s own bruises twinge in sympathy.
“So.” He says in the car, pulling onto the southbound ramp. “You gonna tell our friends how you got those bruises?”
Z glances at Cam’s face for a clue how he’s supposed to react but he’s focused on the road, pulling down the visor against the sun. “You could tell them it was me.” He suggests.
“But…it wasn’t.” Z says, genuinely confused. He’s tired, and now full. He never eats breakfast. And the heat vent is blowing warm air in his face.
“I won't… I won’t tell them what happened. I promise.”
Cam looks straight ahead at the road, re-adjusts his palms on the steering wheel. He clears his throat.
"Okay. Thanks. Really, Zee.“
They drive back to the house in silence.
