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Summary: One day, Allen Grey has had enough and ends up punching his father. Now, he’s determined to get his mother and himself out of an abusive house. But he finds out that freedom has a price, and will he accept help in the hands of a young student teacher?
Warnings: This story is a SLASH story. In other words, the main pairing of this story is male x male. Even better (or worse), the pairing is student and teacher. It will not be explicit, but if you cannot handle it, please press the back button now. There should be a warning for other things, but I cannot think of them now, and you, as the reader, always have the choice to stop reading at any time. Please remember that, and enjoy.
To Capture Freedom
Chapter Two: In Which Mac Helps Out a Best Friend
Mac’s Point of View
Fuck. My parents are going to kill me. That’s the first thought that pops into my head when I open the door to see Allen and his mother. My second thought is: Fuck. I’m in nothing but my boxers. It’s not exactly the best choice of clothing to be in when your best friend and his mother comes knocking at your door. So back to my first thought: Fuck.
“I need a place to stay for the night,” Allen greets me. Well, it’s not really much of a greeting. No “Hello!” No “Hey there!” No “How are you, Mac - ol’ buddy, ol’ pal?” Just a request. Hell, it’s more of a command than a request.
I think about it, but I’m a little hesitant to just say yes. Allen has slept over at my place a few times before, but it was always with my parent’s disapproval. Ever since the incident a few years ago, they’ve begun to believe that Allen is some sort of bad influence on me. It’s ridiculous really, since he has a 4.0 GPA and several Advanced Placement classes while I struggle to maintain a 3.0 average in only regular classes. They’ve more than just subtly hinted that I should stop being friends with Allen, and we’ve actually gotten into fights about it.
At the moment, I’m on good terms with my parents, and I would hate to drop a giant boulder into a relatively calm lake…
“Come on in,” I sigh, moving out of the way for them to come in. Fuck it. My parents and my brother are out of town anyway, and they won’t be back until next week at the earliest.
“Thanks,” Allen mutters. Mrs. Grey walks in first, and I wonder why she’s even here in the first place. I mean, I guess I don’t really mind that she’s here since Evelyn Grey was like a second mother to me when Allen and I were just kids, but it is awkward when I haven’t even talked to her all that much this past year.
But then I see it.
It’s hardly noticeable, really. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if my dad hadn’t replaced all of the light bulbs in the house before they left. But in this bright light, I can see a slight swelling around Mrs. Grey’s right eye. The swelling is stands out even more as her normally fair skin is blotched with a dark pink, its shade close to a light purple. If I stared at it long enough - not that I was - you could say that the bruise faintly resembled the shape of a flower. A flower that was engulfing her eye…
“Y-you - ” I stumbled over my words, a little uneasy. Allen notices and glares at me. Don’t you dare say anything, Allen snarls with his eyes. “You can use the first room on the right, Mrs. Grey,” I finish lamely, pointing at the hallway on the right.
Evelyn doesn’t say anything or even look up at me. The only response I get is a very weak nod right before she heads for the hall. Allen starts to follow his mother, but I grab onto his arm and pull him closer to me before he could.
“What happened?” I whisper urgently at Allen. Now that Allen is closer to me, I notice that Allen also has a matching bruise on his face, just like on his mother. The only difference is that his bruise is much darker and uglier. “What happened, Allen?” I repeated. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”
He looks distracted for a moment. He doesn’t even look me directly in the eye. In fact, his whole face is turned towards the hallway where his mother has just disappeared into. I shake him roughly to get his attention, but when he does give me his attention, I admit I’m a little unnerved by his glare.
“What happened?” I repeat once again, only a little bit slower and calmer this time.
At first, Allen doesn’t answer. Instead, he roughly pulls his arm out of my grasp and takes a step away from me. He wastes a few more seconds by combing his bronze hair back with his fingers and sighing. I’m about to ask him again, but he finally answers.
“It’s nothing,” he shrugs indifferently, still not looking at me - his best friend. “We just got mugged on our way home after a walk in the park, is all.” He finally turns to look at me, his eyes daring me to call bullshit.
And that’s what it is. He’s lying. I can’t believe he has the balls to lie to my face after I told him not to.
Once again, his eyes are silently daring me. Go ahead, he calls. Go ahead and say what you’re thinking. You know I’m lying. Call it out into the open.
And I seriously want to do just that. But I don’t.
I sigh and turn away from him, unable to look him in the eye anymore.
“So why do you have to stay at my place?” I ask him. Hell, we both know he’s lying, and he won’t admit it, so I might as well play along. “You have your own home to sleep in still, right?”
“The thieves took our keys, and my father’s off on a business trip for the month,” he lies smoothly.
I notice that he says “father.” It’s like that one rule: “Daddy” or “Dad” means you’re close; “Father” means something bad has happened. Also, I know for a fact that Peter Grey was not on a business trip. I had seen him earlier that day coming out of a liquor store. I had a bad feeling about it then, and I still do.
“You should go to the police and report this,” I offer. Then, I realize what I had just said, and I mentally smack myself on the forehead.Smart, Mac, very smart. You just had to bring that up.
Thankfully, Allen doesn’t bite my head off. He just smiles lightly and shakes his head.
“Mind if I just crash on your couch? I‘m just fucking tired right now,” he asks me even though he’s already heading for the living room.
“Sure,” I nod. “‘Me casa is su casa’ or however the saying goes.” Okay, so I think I just totally butchered that phrase, but I just want to say something to wash away this unease surrounding us.
Allen smirks and jumps onto the sofa. He yawns, and for a second - for the first time today - he looks relieved.
“You need anything?” I ask him. “Blanket? Pillow?” A glass of warm milk? I joke to myself.
He thinks about it for a second, but then shakes his head. “No, I’m fine.”
I nod and start to head to my own room to get some of my own sleep when Allen calls me back.
“Mac. Can you just… Can you do me a favor? Can you just check on my mom for a second. You don’t have to come back and report. I just want to make sure she’s not…”
He drifts off, and before he could finish, I nod. “Sure.
“…Mac?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. Really.”
I could hear actually the embarrassment coating Allen’s voice. Too embarrassed myself to look at him, I just turn off the lights and walk away.
“Shut up and get some sleep, you wuss.”
“…Punk.”
I can’t help but smile at that. Now, it’s time to get some sleep for myself…
--
The name “Wyvern’s River” is undoubtedly the most fitting name for it, no matter how uncreatively poetic and cheesy the name may sound. Snaking its way through the middle of the town, weaving through the miscellaneous shops and homes settled in an unorganized plot, the river’s sinuous body effectively divides two halves of a whole.
On the right is where most of the police spend their hours. Never having been on that side of the Wyvern before, I can only rely on rumors and stories about it. In other cities, they’ll say it’s not safe to wander around at night. Here, it’s not safe to be out any time of the day. Gangs, guns, violence, rape. Theft, prostitution, vagrancy, homicide. You name it, they’ll give it to you on a stolen silver platter. (Although why you would ask for such vices is beyond me. Stupid, really.) The fact that the ground is slightly lower than the river level did not help the situation any, especially in the rainy season when the rivers tend to flood.
Over the left bank of the river is where the better half lives. Up on the hills, the rich and the glamorous look down upon the rest of the world with their long, pointy - and often plastic - noses pointed high up into the air. There’s no time to worry over the general welfare of your neighbors or even society as a whole when the only thing that really matters is how society perceives you. It’s like an unspoken rule: The bitchier you are, the richer you must be. They are just as - if not more - corrupt than their counterparts.
More or less, it’s a battle between two evils, between the “haves” and the “have nots“. The “haves” fight in the shadows with money, bribery, and guile. The “have nots” fight physically with force, threats, and a lot of shiny new weapons. Both sides are divided by the river, and both sides converge at the only high school of the town, conveniently located alongside said river.
That, of course, makes the sloping banks of the Wyvern River the place to be before and after school for all high schoolers as well as a few brave junior high students here and there. It used to be where our group of friends got together, too. However, that was a year ago, at least, so the fact that we were there now meant this could only be a dream or a memory. Perhaps it’s both.
Sitting to the right of me is Derick, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, and to the left are Michael and Ben who are passing a football back and forth between them without using any real effort.
I flip open my cell phone in my hands and close it just as quickly. The now lit-up screen on the front of it reads: 4:15pm. The date says it was just over a year ago. Well, that makes sense why we’re here. This is a memory after all.
“You know what?” Derick mumbles around his cigarette. “I don’t think Allen’s showing up today.” And Derick’s right. Allen never did.
Michael laughs at this before catching the football that almost flew over his head. “That’s a given. He hasn’t been at school for the whole week.”
I nod, a little unsettled. This conversation sounds familiar, like déjà vu.
“I wonder if he’s sick,” Ben asks quietly.
Michael again laughs at this. “Yeah, he’s probably sick. Something like that,” he replies, his taunting voice irritating me as much as it did the first time I heard it.
“Got something we don’t know?” I ask him even though I’m sure that he’s already hiding something from us and exactly what he’s hiding. After all, we’ve gone through this conversation before.
He’s still smiling arrogantly but he gives me this look. “Damn, Mac, what the hell’s your problem?” he quips before throwing the football straight at me. Knowing that this was going to happen, I catch the football easily, but it still hurt my hands. He had put his full strength into that throw. Bastard
“Nothing’s my problem,” I answer a little defensively, “but if you got something to say, just say it.”
I throw the football back at him, but since he didn’t expect it, the ball bounces off his fingertips and rolls down the hill towards the river. Michael just stares at it for a while before turning towards Ben. “Care to get that?” he smiles obnoxiously. Ben rolls his eyes but gets up anyway to get it.
“Anyway,” Michael says to us, “I’m just saying that maybe we don’t know Allen as much as we thought we did.”
“And this is why no one likes you,” Derick sighs heavily, finally taking the cancer stick out of his mouth. “Will you just fucking get to the point already or do we have to beat it out of you?”
“Alright, alright. Damn… It’s just that I heard that Allen was messing around with the wrong people, and he got into a fight. That’s why he hasn’t been at school for a while.”
“Whoever told you that is bullshit,” Derick says angrily. We turn to each other, and my expression is probably similar to the look on his face.Who the hell does Michael think he’s kidding?
“What’s going on?” Ben asks obliviously, back from searching for the football.
“Michael’s being a - ”
“The person I heard it from, my dad,” Michael interrupts, “is the fucking Chief of Police. He’s also a friend of Allen’s dad. I dare you to call my dad full of bullshit again.”
At this point, Michael’s already up in Derick’s face, and Derick looks just as ready to punch Michael in the face. Ben’s big eyes shows that he’s afraid, but I’m not all that worried as my phone conveniently starts ringing.
“It’s Allen,” I announce, and the three of them amusingly freeze up in whatever pose they’re in. Derick takes the opportunity to push Michael off of him, and before Michael could jump back on him, Ben holds him back from behind.
“Hello? Allen?”
Michael’s heavily struggling to escape Ben’s grip. Derick’s straightening the tie around his neck, his nostrils flaring in anger.
“Mac….”
“Allen? Why do you sound so…?”
Derick touches the top of his lip with a finger, and when he sees blood on that finger, he punches the restrained Michael in the face. The force knocks down both Ben and Michael.
“Have you seen -”
Allen’s words are cut off by Michael’s angry shout. Knocked off balance, Ben loses his grip on Michael who breaks loose and aims a punch at Derick.
“Wait, what did you say?”
“I said -”
Again, Allen’s words are lost when Derick stumbles backwards into me. We both fall towards the ground. I know it’s supposed to hurt - it hurt when this happened the first time - but I don’t feel a thing. The cell phones falls out of my grasp, but I easily catch it again, and I place it to my ear.
“I’m sorry. What - ”
“I SAID, ‘GET THE FUCK UP, MAC! WE’RE LATE FOR SCHOOL!’”
….Fuck. That’s my first thought on this fine morning.