[fic] I am stupid and immoral and so can you!
Title: Riona and Del Go Straight to Hell, and You Can Come Along as Well
Authors: rionaleonhart & apiphile
Fandom: Waterloo Road
Word Count: 5,360 [how? How did this happen? I DON'T KNOW THIS FANDOM]
Rating: R or possibly NC-17.
Pairing: Josh/Tom
Warnings: have a look at the pairing line. Also, I wrote a lot of this with my hand over my eyes so the prose is not always good.
Disclaimer: Uh. I don't even know who this shit belongs to. Some TV place. One of them.
"Don't," Josh gasps through his laughter, batting ineffectually at him. "I'm not five."
"I'm your dad, aren't I? It's my right."
Josh goes very quiet at that, and Tom, sensing that the time for tickling has passed, withdraws his hands. "Something wrong?"
"I don't know," Josh says, after a moment. "It's just - you're not, really, are you?"
"Not really what?"
"It's just," Josh says, and then he hesitates. "You weren't there when I was growing up and that. So it's not like you're..."
Somehow, in all the tickling, Josh has ended up pressed against his side, almost in Tom's lap. He's got one hand braced on the other side of Tom's legs, and he's staring at him with an intensity that makes Tom a bit uncomfortable.
"Josh," Tom says, carefully. "What are you doing?"
Josh keeps looking at him. His eyes seem a little wider than usual.
"Josh."
Josh swallows, and darts his tongue over his lips, quickly, and then he says, "Nothing."
Tom hesitates, not sure whether what he's feeling is relief or something else. "You sure it's nothing?"
Josh closes his eyes for a moment. "Dad," he says. "Just don't push it, all right?"
He's pulled away now, and somehow the loss of his weight and his warmth feels more intrusive than his presence did in the first place. It only takes Tom a moment to decide that maybe not pushing it is the thing to do here.
"Okay," he says.
They spend the rest of the film on opposite sides of the sofa.
Tom is dimly aware that his son spends far too long on the internet that evening, but as always, there are bigger problems.
He is late for his own breakfast, overtired and filled with an unsettling feeling of something not quite right that he can't put his finger on until he finds four sheets of A4 still warm from the printer, arranged under his bowl. It's obviously a website - the URL is slathered across the bottom of each page - but he's in too much of a hurry, and folds the pages in two, shoving them into his coat pocket.
They languish there until first break, half-forgotten until he bumps against it hanging in the staffroom, and hears the crinkle of paper.
"What's that?" Cesca asks, talking around coffee.
Tom shrugs. "Josh left it on the table this morning. Some website." He unfolds the paper and frowns his way down the long page, the grayscale rendering of colour pictures, the underlined words, and the helpful and unfortunately extremely descriptive URL printed on every sheet like a slap to the face.
He puts the paper back in his coat pocket and without stopping to think for even a second, thunders through the corridors like the wrath of a discombobulated god.
"Josh." Tom keeps his voice as low as he can, which is not easy with the blood in his ears stifling his sense of volume control, place, and propriety. "What is this about?"
"It's just - it's just a website," Josh says, taking a step back. Tom is getting slowly better at spotting when Josh is lying, and even if he weren't, the way he looks anywhere but at Tom is something of a give-away.
"GENE--genetic sexual attraction? Just a website?" Tom hisses, trying to keep his voice down.
"I just," Josh says, and then he pauses, licks his lips. "I thought -"
"Tell me this is just a joke."
Josh meets his eyes, then, but only for a moment before he glances away. There's a long silence, longer than Tom would be comfortable with even if he weren't already about as uncomfortable as it's possible to be, before he says, "'Course I was joking."
"Right," Tom says, waving the printouts in his face. "Don't - I mean, why would you joke about this? What were you thinking?"
Josh is still looking at some point somewhere on the floor. "Guess I wasn't really thinking, was I?"
Tom's anger and confusion isn't enough to keep him from seeing that Josh has closed himself off; it brings back the memory of the time Tom cornered him in the art room and asked him whether he was gay. But it's nothing like that, because that was real and this is a joke. It has to be.
"Even if you weren't being serious," he says, quietly, "you can see how this makes it difficult for me to be around you, can't you?"
Josh looks up at him, quickly. "Are you sending me back?"
"I don't want to have to do that."
"You don't," Josh says. "I mean, I only printed it out 'cause I thought it was weird. Just forget about it, okay?"
"Okay," Tom says, after a moment. "Just don't go looking up things like this again, all right?"
Josh nods, and smiles a little, and pulls pointedly on the strap of his bag. "I'm gonna be late for class."
"Hurry up, then."
He watches until Josh is out of sight, and then leans back against the wall and stares at the ceiling. His own lesson will be starting, but it can wait a moment.
How can he forget about this?
Tom's evening is fraught with marking, and if he were ever honest with himself he'd admit that this fervour goes above and beyond the degree of attention the task really requires; he immerses himself stubbornly, shutting out any other thought processes that might conceivably start up otherwise.
He's dimly aware that Josh is late back. It's Wednesday, and there's no club that immediately springs to mind; probably hanging around with bloody Finn again - Tom is surprised when his pen goes straight through the sheet of paper as violently as if he's stabbed it.
Time for a break. He finds himself checking the hallway for bags on the way to the bathroom (it was just a joke, Dad), his hand rifling for a crumpled print-out in his coat pocket on the way back. It's not funny.
Instead of marking three more thuddingly awful essays about Themes In Tess of the D'Urbavilles and noting the places where the little plagiarists hadn't even had the presence of mind to remove the links from the text, Tom spreads the crinkled sheets out almost exactly where he found them, and reads again.
At eleven he realises he still hasn't heard the door go, nor Josh's traditionally uncertain "alright, Dad," with the undercurrent of eagerness in the address.
Probably no need to panic.
Tom pushes open the door to Josh's room without knocking - a question on his lips, hand already in pocket to call the little bugger (and yes, alright, he may well be taller than Tom already) and find out exactly where he thinks he is -
"Jesus Christ, Dad," Josh says softly. There's none of the affront Tom expects from such an awkward intercession, and for some reason he neither turns his back nor puts a hand over his eyes.
"Didn't realise you'd come in," he says without inflection, hardly listening to his own words.
"Shut the door," Josh says in the same voice, licking his lips. He holds Tom's gaze for so long that Tom's palms start to sweat.
"Aren't you going to -"
"Like you've never."
Tom tries to shift the lump of concrete (which may possibly be his heart) from his throat with vigorous swallowing, but it does nothing but choke him further. He's not sure where Josh is taking that sentence, but none of the outcomes bode well for him.
"I didn't mean anything," Josh says suddenly. He hasn't moved his hand. That's the problem. His mouth says I didn't mean anything but he's locked gazes with Tom and he's making no move to pull up his trousers or take his hand off - he's still -
Tom blanks out the words in red pen in his head but the situation they describe remains.
"Didn't you."
"I swear."
It's what neither of them have said that's bothering him. No 'put your clothes back on'. No 'Dad get out and give me my privacy'. There's been none of the script he was expecting, if he expected at all; just this deliberate reiteration of a lie and its acceptance.
"You done your homework?"
"Yeah."
They're notes in a very different song. Tom is hot and heavy on the threshold of his son's room, his clothes small and itchy, his throat tight and tormented.
And the silence stretches away between the meaningless words, so hollow and reverberant that the passage of a night-time flight overhead is as stark as if it is thundering through the attic of the house. If Tom keeps his eyes frozen on Josh's unblinking stare, he's sure something will slip from his mouth, but if he moves his attention at all it'll drift downward and horrify his curiosity.
He blurts, "You weren't joking, were you?" but it gets tangled in Josh's simultaneous and heavy, "what are you going to do?" and they collapse back into the silence that is far more electric than companionable.
After what may or may not be an entire eternity, gift-wrapped in hot-cheeked shame, Tom clears his throat abruptly and on first go manages only to whisper, "It's time you," before jerking his internal volume control up a little higher, "it's time you went to sleep."
Josh says nothing, frozen to the spot like the proverbial rabbit.
"Goodnight, Josh," Tom says, backing slowly out of the room with his heart thudding somewhere in his tonsils.
"Night Dad," Josh says sullenly from behind the closed door.
Tom sleeps poorly.
"Who?" Tom grunts, losing the rest of the question in his ire. The book is old and cheap-looking, some 70s paperback printing with an awful cover, probably purchased from a charity shop - he checks the inside cover again. Alongside the printed label bearing his name is the price 75p, in pencil.
Chris shrugs. "It was just there."
The Oresteia. He doesn't need to ask, not really. Under any other circumstances he'd be proud of a student of his for reading so widely and making intelligent connections (thematic connections, too), but this feeling is to pride as a punch in the chest is to a hug.
Tom tries to remember when, if ever, he hugged Josh last.
The responsible thing to do, Tom knows, would be to cut the whole thing off, send Josh back to Georgia. Only see him on weekends, or maybe not at all. Forget about this having-a-son thing. Isn't working out.
But he can't do that. Because, after everything that's happened - the miscarriages, the secret abortions - life has given him one last chance to be a dad, and he can't throw that away.
So he tracks Josh down in the lunch break. He's not anticipating the way his throat constricts at the sight of him, but it's just the lingering embarrassment, he tells himself. It'll pass.
"Josh!"
Josh half-turns to look at him, wary.
"Fancy a kickabout after school?"
"You know I'm rubbish."
"Only 'cause you don't get enough practice," Tom says. "Besides, I thought we should spend some father-son time together. Might be good for us." He holds up the Oresteia, trying to keep his voice steady. "And no more of these games, eh?"
Something goes hard in Josh's eyes. "No, thanks," he says. "I'll see you at home."
Josh is sitting on the sofa where it all changed when Tom gets home, staring at the blank TV. Tom deliberately takes his time putting his shopping away, checking the post, and then he sits down as well, keeping a fair distance between them.
"Shame you weren't up for the footy," he says. "It's great weather for it."
Josh doesn't say anything, doesn't look at him. Maybe the only way out of this is annoying him so much that he never speaks to Tom again.
"Think I'll have an early one," Tom says, eventually. He almost pats Josh on the shoulder but decides against it. "'Night."
"So that's it, then? You think you can just... be my dad?"
"In case you hadn't noticed," Tom says, and it's supposed to be light but there's a hint of anger behind it that he can't suppress, "I am your dad."
"My mum raised me on her own for fourteen years," Josh says. "I don't need a dad."
There's a long silence.
Tom swallows. It does nothing to dispel the dryness in his throat. "What are you saying?"
Josh just looks at him.
They can't talk about this. Tom closes his eyes and breathes out, slowly, and then he hears Josh shifting on the sofa and he knows he's too close, he can feel Josh's body heat radiating out from him, and he still doesn't open his eyes.
He almost flinches - definitely stiffens - when Josh pokes him hesitantly in the leg. It's a sofa cushion, or Josh has far limper wrists than he'd ever imagined, but the extension of his son's arm (his son) might as well just be his hand for all the difference it makes to his overtightened chest.
Tom presses the tip of the tongue to the roof of his mouth and keeps his eyes shut.
"Da-Tom?" Josh asks.
He's being weird, and the whole situation is weird, so that's okay. What's not okay is the twinge of vague bereavement at the switch from Dad to Tom in mid-question.
The only thing that made any of this make sense, the one factor which has kept this from completely destroying his mind is that while he may be Josh's biological father, the stark social facts say he's just some bloke whose sperm was stolen, that the thoughts which press in on his mind when he's too tired or distracted to stop them are illegal and immoral but not that illegal and immoral. An abuse of his position as Josh's teacher, a crime under statutory rape laws, and completely against everything he's ever believed about himself, but at least it was only technically incest, right?
If that's the case, he has no business feeling despondent just because Josh has changed his mind about calling him Dad.
He holds his arm out and opens his eyes. As an invitation to hug, it's a bit lacking, but the point is he's not talking about it and he's not freaking Josh out any more by sitting there like a stone.
Josh regards him with an implacable expression, and lunges.
It's quick: just a brief press of Josh's lips to his. He could almost call it chaste, but he can feel the intent burning behind it, and when Josh sits back to watch him Tom can see the question in his gaze, the one that's been haunting him since he closed Josh's bedroom door on something he was never supposed to see: what are you going to do?
Somehow, although Josh has hardly been subtle, Tom hasn't braced himself for this. He's been trying to pretend that nothing's going on, and maybe he's been better at pretending than he thought, because this is such a shock to the system that it's tricky to keep his mind from completely shutting down. It was never meant to get this far. He should have stopped it. He could have stopped it. Why didn't he stop it?
"I think you should think about this," he says, quietly.
"What's there to think about?"
Tom almost laughs, but Josh lunges again, pressing a quick, sloppy kiss to the corner of Tom's mouth, and it turns into a sharp intake of breath. He puts a hand on Josh's shoulder, not-so-gently keeping him at arm's length. Josh looks mutinous.
"This isn't okay," Tom says. "You must know that it isn't okay."
"Don't see why not," Josh says. "Not like you're making me do anything, is it?"
"I could lose my job," Tom says. He draws in a long breath, slowly becoming aware that he is shaking. "And a lot else besides."
Something changes in Josh's expression. "Is that what you're worried about? Your job?"
Is that what he's worried about? It's not what he should be worrying about. He shouldn't need his job as an excuse; he shouldn't want this. He doesn't want this. He can't.
Tom stares at Josh, and Josh looks determinedly back. What are you going to do?
It takes Tom a moment to realise that he's let his hand fall from his son's shoulder.
Josh climbs clumsily over him, straddling him, and puts a hand on the side of Tom's face - it feels cold, but the way Tom's skin is burning a working iron would probably feel only mildly warm against it, and he can't help thinking that an iron to the face is what he deserves - and his curls are tickling Tom's cheek and he's licking into Tom's mouth and that's it, there's no going back. Tom lets his head fall back against the sofa cushions, surrendering to despair and perhaps to something else, and Josh follows with his mouth and his tongue, hooking his fingers under Tom's collar.
Josh's eyes are closed. Tom keeps his eyes open, and all he can think of is that Josh is fifteen, as if he can fool himself into thinking that waiting a few months would have made this okay.
Josh's eyelashes are a dark tangle at the top of his cheekbones, and his lips taste of salt. He is appalling, but there's something in that which digs into Tom's stomach and makes him kiss back the way he absolutely never intended to; the clumsy enthusiasm of Josh's mouth does terrible things to both Tom's willpower and his libido, and leaves him clutching uncertainly at two juvenile shoulder-blades as if that will keep him from going directly to hell.
After a minute he registers that Josh is clinging quite tightly to his shirt collar, as if he's riding a particularly uncooperative bike, and also that his own hips may be moving up and down of their own accord just a little. Tom revises his destination. There is a new and special hell waiting for him somewhere beneath the others.
He is still kissing back, weakly and limply, in the face of the onslaught of his s-- of Josh's tongue. As if pretending not to like it will save him; his fingers, though, are going to leave bruises if he doesn't slacken his grip on Josh's back, and he can't. He can't.
"Fucking 'ell," Josh says breathily, his mouth still touching Tom's, his lips surely kiss-burnt and raw with saliva. "You're, uh."
"So are you," Tom says, swearing internally. He's awash with gratitude that the sentences aren't getting finished, here, not when every possible word is like an anvil to the skull. He doesn't need telling that he has an erection, and he doesn't need to think about what that means, no matter how much he wants to explain it away with it's been a while, and just biology. He also doesn't need telling that every time Josh leans forward, his hands still fixed to Tom's shirt collar as if they've been glued there, his bloody own is brushing against Tom's stomach. He doesn't need telling any of this.
This time it's he who plants mouth against mouth, just to be certain no more unnecessary words leak out; that's fine, that's reasonable (it's not reasonable), he can explain that away to himself if he just distorts reality enough to a point where saying "shut up" wasn't possible, but there's no explanation beyond the obvious for him pulling Josh closer with his hands on his back, and there's no argument in favour of the way he pushes up against the weight of a teenage boy on his lap and feels his spine shiver.
Worst of all, the racing pace of his heart isn't even down to miserable shame any more.
Forgetting his own determination to keep words to a minimum, Tom tries to bark a what are you doing a minute later and succeeds only in making a weird noise that could even pass for a sound of passion; Josh prompts this by shifting the lie of his hands just far enough to start undoing the uppermost button of Tom's shirt.
He refuses to take responsibility for the way Josh's own shirt crumples further and further up his back, or the way his own hands are slipping further and further down in response, diving for Josh's waistband as if they have a mind of their own.
Josh slips his hand inside the gape of Tom's shirt, his breath hot and uneven in Tom's ear, his hand shaking enough that Tom can feel it ruffling the hairs on his chest. He could grab his wrist, he could pull him away: stop all this before it can get any worse.
Instead he rubs his thumb against the small of Josh's back, where sweat has stuck his fine, downy hairs to his skin, and pushes up against him through two layers of clothes, murmuring, "God," in either self-recrimination or a plea for forgiveness.
Josh licks his neck, jerky and uncertain, and Tom swallows the next humiliating sound as best he can; some small hysterical part of his mind laughs bitterly and says well at least he can't get pregnant. His hands merely tug Josh harder down against his wretched dick.
Tom bargains with himself - if he keeps his hands where they are it's not his fault, if he only kisses back gently he's not a bad person, if he acquiesces wholly passively then he hasn't really passed the point of no moral return.
His capacity for self-delusion will only take Tom so far.
Josh runs his fingers over Tom's breastbone, wherever it is under an accumulation of age and hair; there's no confidence in his movements, no practice, just intent. Tom finds himself learning forward to bury his face against Josh's collarbone without ever registering the desire. He is crushing Josh's hand against his nipple and Josh's erection against his stomach, pulling them both too close together with unthinking pressure on the bare slice of hot skin his fingers have sought on Josh's back.
He's terrified Josh will say something - not later, to others, but now, his not-quite-settled voice croaking out some terrible words that will haunt Tom in his sleep - but instead of stoppering his so--Josh's mouth, his lips curl back and dig his teeth none-too-gently into the length of his collarbone that shows above his increasingly unbuttoned shirt -
- the part of Tom's brain that is still firmly Josh's Dad notes that there are buttons flying off his son's school shirt like pennies into a wishing well -
- his own shirt is open to the waist, Josh's hands clutching at him as convulsively as he is tugging at Josh.
His skin is hot, and Josh is heavier than he looks; Tom repositions him without care or caution, bites the inside of his own mouth to force back a sudden groan, moves Josh again. Again. Again. He breathes hard against Josh's clavicle, and shifts him again, lifting with his hips as an ugly noise nestles under his Adam's apple, an unattractive sound both for how guttural it is, and for how unfaked.
Josh has no such qualms, no such self-restraint, and as he shoves himself bodily at Tom, an angular length of heat and soft, wet mouth (leaving cooling patches of saliva on Tom's neck), he lets out a cry that's half-sob and half weedy, reedy growl. It breaks in the middle, streaking halfway down an octave in a heady jump-cut between juvenile and adult.
Tom shifts his fingers slowly; Josh is sweating, his hair - when Tom can see his face at all - dangling in damp curls over his half-closed eyes, his mouth drooping open. He has some brief, illustrative thoughts about what could be done with a mouth that beautiful but savages them back, brings his hips up and shoves Josh's down so hard that both of them make the same sound, an -urf- separated by a couple of decades and a few cycles of frequency, but by no change at all in intent.
Josh releases his grip on Tom's chest hair and grabs gracelessly at his wrist, somewhere down by his hip-bones, just above the place his trousers are playing at sweat-sponge. He holds Tom's wrist tight enough that Tom could swear he can feel bones grinding together; he freezes.
But it's not the hasty brake of a boy coming to his senses - as Tom winces, his hand is lifted from Josh's hip (he tries to let go calmly, but he can feel his fingers half-scrabbling to be allowed to retain their position. Josh's hip is safe. It's plausibly deniable the way very little else is this afternoon).
Josh takes his hand, moving as if Tom is still shoving him up and down, his chest violently in-out-in-out, and presses it against his own dick.
For a moment Tom catches Josh's eyes under the screen of hair and eyelashes; his blown pupils and determination, and farther down, the way his lower lip shakes as much as his arms - Tom has a faint surge of nostalgia. He meets Josh's eyes, and Josh squeezes his hand, tightening Tom's on his dick through his trousers.
He mentally sketches out an argument from the lawyer for the defence as he flexes his fingers, and with a hellish synchronicity of both arms, drags Josh against his dick and presses his palm to Josh's at the same time. Josh catches his trembling lower lip in his teeth, a fricative escaping but the rest of whatever he has to say mercifully truncated.
He tries not to think that, what with one thing and another, this is probably the first time Josh has done anything like this … no, no. It's probably not, is it? He must have been fumbling about with Lauren - Tom bites the end of his own tongue as Josh rocks his hips, grinding both his behind into Tom's dick and his dick into Tom's hand.
Josh is making little breathy noises against his mouth now, shifting in his lap and clutching at Tom's neck and his shoulders and his sides as if he doesn't know where his hands are supposed to go. The thought hits Tom again that he's probably never done anything like this before; Josh only worked out his own sexuality a month ago, after all.
As if Tom needed a reason to hate himself even more.
For a while there's nothing but the thundering of his heart, the heat of Josh under his hands, the rhythmic pressure of Josh's backside against his dick and Josh's dick against and partially in his hand. For a while there's merciful silence and he can concentrate on not losing control, not biting down on Josh hard enough to bruise him, not struggling him out of his trousers or nipping his stomach or kissing him until his lips split.
Everything stays safe and somewhere closer to sane than he feels, for a while.
"Dad," Josh mutters, sounding kind of urgent about it, his hands knotted so tightly in the sweaty twists of Tom's mostly-off shirt that they might as well be growing from it, and Tom wonders if they're tearing it.
"What?"
Which is when Tom's hand becomes a lot wetter than it was; a hot, wet dark patch spreads through Josh's trousers and onto Tom's fingers, his palm.
"Uh." Josh bends briefly in the middle and pants as if he's just run a marathon but God bless him he doesn't stop moving, keeps his rhythm as if there's a metronome controlling his hips, even though he must have sofa burn on his thighs by now.
The lump of tension in Tom's lower abdomen climbs to an unbearable crescendo, and his vision begins to blur; he tightens his hand on the damp patch in Josh's trousers - it is not necessary, not at all, but he has the horrible suspicion under the white light in his brain threatening to destroy all his thought processes that he enjoys having his hand there.
The thought shakes him, and he tries to drop beneath it, in case it ambushes him again; Josh makes a delicate sound between his lips, still rocking back and forth like an outsized jockey, and brushes his mouth almost enquiringly against Tom's neck.
Tom bites down on his shoulder.
Josh makes a surprised noise and stops rocking, and for a moment it's just the two of them, completely still, the sound of their heavy breathing filling the room.
Tom pulls the duvet up over his head and lies perfectly still in the dark, his hands trapped between his thighs and his eyes fixed open, staring at the invisible-to-him pattern on the duvet cover. It's alright, it's alright, he didn't actually have sex with his teenage son. Because - Tom gropes through his brain for some reason, some fact which will undo the evening and make none of this have happened - because it can't have happened. Because he is not that kind of person.
Somewhat irrationally, his mind settles on "look, we didn't actually have sex-have sex so it's fine" as the rationalisation, and he grabs it with blind, desperate enthusiasm. Much as he grabbed - no.
Tom rolls violently onto his other side, and sinks into the mattress again with a whumpf. It's fine, it's fine, it doesn't count because he didn't have sex and therefore it's fine and he is not the winning candidate for Worst Parent In The World 2010, and there is no way any jury in the world would listen to this shit.
He might as well start admitting basic truths. One, he has spent the afternoon and evening at the very least sort-of having sex with a very definitely underage Josh who is very definitely in his care and apparently very definitely his son.
When Tom stops biting the inside of his mouth in a spasm of horrified shame, and the unavoidable swirl of bloody saliva has washed back over his teeth and down his closed-off throat, he takes a long, deep breath through the nose, and moves onto the next.
Two, thinking about what he definitely did this afternoon has relocated his hand to his dick of its own accord, and also made a certain number of changes to - alright, he's got a fucking hard-on again.
"Dad?" Josh says quietly, in the dark beyond Tom's bed.
Tom's tongue makes a spirited attempt to leap down his throat and choke him to death, but he succeeds in whipping his hand away from his crotch and muttering, "What do you want? It's time you were asleep," in a glue-mouthed manner.
"I was thinking," Josh says slowly, and Tom can hear the bedroom door's hinges creak. He'd put money on Josh leaning on the damn thing the way he's told him several times not to.
"It's -" Tom squints at the clock alarm, "-three in the morning. Out with it."
"I was thinking maybe I could sleep in here with you," Josh says in a rush, "you know, because, and that, and I think. You know."
"No," Tom says firmly, pulling the duvet down from his face properly and trying to stare through the darkness at his son's face. All he can see is a kind of ghostly inverted silhouette where the paleness of his skin isn't quite as dark as the night. "You've got your own bed, for God's sake."
"Oh right," Josh says sullenly, and Tom tenses against the mattress. "I get it. You'll fuck me but you won't hug me. I get it."
Tom unclenches his fists with difficulty and throws the duvet back like a conjuror revealing a rabbit; the cool air on his legs is almost delightful after the stuffiness under the covers. "Alright."
Josh hits the mattress like a felled tree. "Night, Dad."
By the time Tom unsticks his mouth enough to reply, fazed beyond all previous unease, Josh's breathing is already steady and slow, topped with a light whistle and followed with a throaty rumble in the bottom of his mouth.
Riona: *advises on removing smartquotes*
Del: *thinks* this is incest porn on the internet, I'm touched that you still care about presentation.
Authors: rionaleonhart & apiphile
Fandom: Waterloo Road
Word Count: 5,360 [how? How did this happen? I DON'T KNOW THIS FANDOM]
Rating: R or possibly NC-17.
Pairing: Josh/Tom
Warnings: have a look at the pairing line. Also, I wrote a lot of this with my hand over my eyes so the prose is not always good.
Disclaimer: Uh. I don't even know who this shit belongs to. Some TV place. One of them.
"Don't," Josh gasps through his laughter, batting ineffectually at him. "I'm not five."
"I'm your dad, aren't I? It's my right."
Josh goes very quiet at that, and Tom, sensing that the time for tickling has passed, withdraws his hands. "Something wrong?"
"I don't know," Josh says, after a moment. "It's just - you're not, really, are you?"
"Not really what?"
"It's just," Josh says, and then he hesitates. "You weren't there when I was growing up and that. So it's not like you're..."
Somehow, in all the tickling, Josh has ended up pressed against his side, almost in Tom's lap. He's got one hand braced on the other side of Tom's legs, and he's staring at him with an intensity that makes Tom a bit uncomfortable.
"Josh," Tom says, carefully. "What are you doing?"
Josh keeps looking at him. His eyes seem a little wider than usual.
"Josh."
Josh swallows, and darts his tongue over his lips, quickly, and then he says, "Nothing."
Tom hesitates, not sure whether what he's feeling is relief or something else. "You sure it's nothing?"
Josh closes his eyes for a moment. "Dad," he says. "Just don't push it, all right?"
He's pulled away now, and somehow the loss of his weight and his warmth feels more intrusive than his presence did in the first place. It only takes Tom a moment to decide that maybe not pushing it is the thing to do here.
"Okay," he says.
They spend the rest of the film on opposite sides of the sofa.
Tom is dimly aware that his son spends far too long on the internet that evening, but as always, there are bigger problems.
He is late for his own breakfast, overtired and filled with an unsettling feeling of something not quite right that he can't put his finger on until he finds four sheets of A4 still warm from the printer, arranged under his bowl. It's obviously a website - the URL is slathered across the bottom of each page - but he's in too much of a hurry, and folds the pages in two, shoving them into his coat pocket.
They languish there until first break, half-forgotten until he bumps against it hanging in the staffroom, and hears the crinkle of paper.
"What's that?" Cesca asks, talking around coffee.
Tom shrugs. "Josh left it on the table this morning. Some website." He unfolds the paper and frowns his way down the long page, the grayscale rendering of colour pictures, the underlined words, and the helpful and unfortunately extremely descriptive URL printed on every sheet like a slap to the face.
He puts the paper back in his coat pocket and without stopping to think for even a second, thunders through the corridors like the wrath of a discombobulated god.
"Josh." Tom keeps his voice as low as he can, which is not easy with the blood in his ears stifling his sense of volume control, place, and propriety. "What is this about?"
"It's just - it's just a website," Josh says, taking a step back. Tom is getting slowly better at spotting when Josh is lying, and even if he weren't, the way he looks anywhere but at Tom is something of a give-away.
"GENE--genetic sexual attraction? Just a website?" Tom hisses, trying to keep his voice down.
"I just," Josh says, and then he pauses, licks his lips. "I thought -"
"Tell me this is just a joke."
Josh meets his eyes, then, but only for a moment before he glances away. There's a long silence, longer than Tom would be comfortable with even if he weren't already about as uncomfortable as it's possible to be, before he says, "'Course I was joking."
"Right," Tom says, waving the printouts in his face. "Don't - I mean, why would you joke about this? What were you thinking?"
Josh is still looking at some point somewhere on the floor. "Guess I wasn't really thinking, was I?"
Tom's anger and confusion isn't enough to keep him from seeing that Josh has closed himself off; it brings back the memory of the time Tom cornered him in the art room and asked him whether he was gay. But it's nothing like that, because that was real and this is a joke. It has to be.
"Even if you weren't being serious," he says, quietly, "you can see how this makes it difficult for me to be around you, can't you?"
Josh looks up at him, quickly. "Are you sending me back?"
"I don't want to have to do that."
"You don't," Josh says. "I mean, I only printed it out 'cause I thought it was weird. Just forget about it, okay?"
"Okay," Tom says, after a moment. "Just don't go looking up things like this again, all right?"
Josh nods, and smiles a little, and pulls pointedly on the strap of his bag. "I'm gonna be late for class."
"Hurry up, then."
He watches until Josh is out of sight, and then leans back against the wall and stares at the ceiling. His own lesson will be starting, but it can wait a moment.
How can he forget about this?
Tom's evening is fraught with marking, and if he were ever honest with himself he'd admit that this fervour goes above and beyond the degree of attention the task really requires; he immerses himself stubbornly, shutting out any other thought processes that might conceivably start up otherwise.
He's dimly aware that Josh is late back. It's Wednesday, and there's no club that immediately springs to mind; probably hanging around with bloody Finn again - Tom is surprised when his pen goes straight through the sheet of paper as violently as if he's stabbed it.
Time for a break. He finds himself checking the hallway for bags on the way to the bathroom (it was just a joke, Dad), his hand rifling for a crumpled print-out in his coat pocket on the way back. It's not funny.
Instead of marking three more thuddingly awful essays about Themes In Tess of the D'Urbavilles and noting the places where the little plagiarists hadn't even had the presence of mind to remove the links from the text, Tom spreads the crinkled sheets out almost exactly where he found them, and reads again.
At eleven he realises he still hasn't heard the door go, nor Josh's traditionally uncertain "alright, Dad," with the undercurrent of eagerness in the address.
Probably no need to panic.
Tom pushes open the door to Josh's room without knocking - a question on his lips, hand already in pocket to call the little bugger (and yes, alright, he may well be taller than Tom already) and find out exactly where he thinks he is -
"Jesus Christ, Dad," Josh says softly. There's none of the affront Tom expects from such an awkward intercession, and for some reason he neither turns his back nor puts a hand over his eyes.
"Didn't realise you'd come in," he says without inflection, hardly listening to his own words.
"Shut the door," Josh says in the same voice, licking his lips. He holds Tom's gaze for so long that Tom's palms start to sweat.
"Aren't you going to -"
"Like you've never."
Tom tries to shift the lump of concrete (which may possibly be his heart) from his throat with vigorous swallowing, but it does nothing but choke him further. He's not sure where Josh is taking that sentence, but none of the outcomes bode well for him.
"I didn't mean anything," Josh says suddenly. He hasn't moved his hand. That's the problem. His mouth says I didn't mean anything but he's locked gazes with Tom and he's making no move to pull up his trousers or take his hand off - he's still -
Tom blanks out the words in red pen in his head but the situation they describe remains.
"Didn't you."
"I swear."
It's what neither of them have said that's bothering him. No 'put your clothes back on'. No 'Dad get out and give me my privacy'. There's been none of the script he was expecting, if he expected at all; just this deliberate reiteration of a lie and its acceptance.
"You done your homework?"
"Yeah."
They're notes in a very different song. Tom is hot and heavy on the threshold of his son's room, his clothes small and itchy, his throat tight and tormented.
And the silence stretches away between the meaningless words, so hollow and reverberant that the passage of a night-time flight overhead is as stark as if it is thundering through the attic of the house. If Tom keeps his eyes frozen on Josh's unblinking stare, he's sure something will slip from his mouth, but if he moves his attention at all it'll drift downward and horrify his curiosity.
He blurts, "You weren't joking, were you?" but it gets tangled in Josh's simultaneous and heavy, "what are you going to do?" and they collapse back into the silence that is far more electric than companionable.
After what may or may not be an entire eternity, gift-wrapped in hot-cheeked shame, Tom clears his throat abruptly and on first go manages only to whisper, "It's time you," before jerking his internal volume control up a little higher, "it's time you went to sleep."
Josh says nothing, frozen to the spot like the proverbial rabbit.
"Goodnight, Josh," Tom says, backing slowly out of the room with his heart thudding somewhere in his tonsils.
"Night Dad," Josh says sullenly from behind the closed door.
Tom sleeps poorly.
"Who?" Tom grunts, losing the rest of the question in his ire. The book is old and cheap-looking, some 70s paperback printing with an awful cover, probably purchased from a charity shop - he checks the inside cover again. Alongside the printed label bearing his name is the price 75p, in pencil.
Chris shrugs. "It was just there."
The Oresteia. He doesn't need to ask, not really. Under any other circumstances he'd be proud of a student of his for reading so widely and making intelligent connections (thematic connections, too), but this feeling is to pride as a punch in the chest is to a hug.
Tom tries to remember when, if ever, he hugged Josh last.
The responsible thing to do, Tom knows, would be to cut the whole thing off, send Josh back to Georgia. Only see him on weekends, or maybe not at all. Forget about this having-a-son thing. Isn't working out.
But he can't do that. Because, after everything that's happened - the miscarriages, the secret abortions - life has given him one last chance to be a dad, and he can't throw that away.
So he tracks Josh down in the lunch break. He's not anticipating the way his throat constricts at the sight of him, but it's just the lingering embarrassment, he tells himself. It'll pass.
"Josh!"
Josh half-turns to look at him, wary.
"Fancy a kickabout after school?"
"You know I'm rubbish."
"Only 'cause you don't get enough practice," Tom says. "Besides, I thought we should spend some father-son time together. Might be good for us." He holds up the Oresteia, trying to keep his voice steady. "And no more of these games, eh?"
Something goes hard in Josh's eyes. "No, thanks," he says. "I'll see you at home."
Josh is sitting on the sofa where it all changed when Tom gets home, staring at the blank TV. Tom deliberately takes his time putting his shopping away, checking the post, and then he sits down as well, keeping a fair distance between them.
"Shame you weren't up for the footy," he says. "It's great weather for it."
Josh doesn't say anything, doesn't look at him. Maybe the only way out of this is annoying him so much that he never speaks to Tom again.
"Think I'll have an early one," Tom says, eventually. He almost pats Josh on the shoulder but decides against it. "'Night."
"So that's it, then? You think you can just... be my dad?"
"In case you hadn't noticed," Tom says, and it's supposed to be light but there's a hint of anger behind it that he can't suppress, "I am your dad."
"My mum raised me on her own for fourteen years," Josh says. "I don't need a dad."
There's a long silence.
Tom swallows. It does nothing to dispel the dryness in his throat. "What are you saying?"
Josh just looks at him.
They can't talk about this. Tom closes his eyes and breathes out, slowly, and then he hears Josh shifting on the sofa and he knows he's too close, he can feel Josh's body heat radiating out from him, and he still doesn't open his eyes.
He almost flinches - definitely stiffens - when Josh pokes him hesitantly in the leg. It's a sofa cushion, or Josh has far limper wrists than he'd ever imagined, but the extension of his son's arm (his son) might as well just be his hand for all the difference it makes to his overtightened chest.
Tom presses the tip of the tongue to the roof of his mouth and keeps his eyes shut.
"Da-Tom?" Josh asks.
He's being weird, and the whole situation is weird, so that's okay. What's not okay is the twinge of vague bereavement at the switch from Dad to Tom in mid-question.
The only thing that made any of this make sense, the one factor which has kept this from completely destroying his mind is that while he may be Josh's biological father, the stark social facts say he's just some bloke whose sperm was stolen, that the thoughts which press in on his mind when he's too tired or distracted to stop them are illegal and immoral but not that illegal and immoral. An abuse of his position as Josh's teacher, a crime under statutory rape laws, and completely against everything he's ever believed about himself, but at least it was only technically incest, right?
If that's the case, he has no business feeling despondent just because Josh has changed his mind about calling him Dad.
He holds his arm out and opens his eyes. As an invitation to hug, it's a bit lacking, but the point is he's not talking about it and he's not freaking Josh out any more by sitting there like a stone.
Josh regards him with an implacable expression, and lunges.
It's quick: just a brief press of Josh's lips to his. He could almost call it chaste, but he can feel the intent burning behind it, and when Josh sits back to watch him Tom can see the question in his gaze, the one that's been haunting him since he closed Josh's bedroom door on something he was never supposed to see: what are you going to do?
Somehow, although Josh has hardly been subtle, Tom hasn't braced himself for this. He's been trying to pretend that nothing's going on, and maybe he's been better at pretending than he thought, because this is such a shock to the system that it's tricky to keep his mind from completely shutting down. It was never meant to get this far. He should have stopped it. He could have stopped it. Why didn't he stop it?
"I think you should think about this," he says, quietly.
"What's there to think about?"
Tom almost laughs, but Josh lunges again, pressing a quick, sloppy kiss to the corner of Tom's mouth, and it turns into a sharp intake of breath. He puts a hand on Josh's shoulder, not-so-gently keeping him at arm's length. Josh looks mutinous.
"This isn't okay," Tom says. "You must know that it isn't okay."
"Don't see why not," Josh says. "Not like you're making me do anything, is it?"
"I could lose my job," Tom says. He draws in a long breath, slowly becoming aware that he is shaking. "And a lot else besides."
Something changes in Josh's expression. "Is that what you're worried about? Your job?"
Is that what he's worried about? It's not what he should be worrying about. He shouldn't need his job as an excuse; he shouldn't want this. He doesn't want this. He can't.
Tom stares at Josh, and Josh looks determinedly back. What are you going to do?
It takes Tom a moment to realise that he's let his hand fall from his son's shoulder.
Josh climbs clumsily over him, straddling him, and puts a hand on the side of Tom's face - it feels cold, but the way Tom's skin is burning a working iron would probably feel only mildly warm against it, and he can't help thinking that an iron to the face is what he deserves - and his curls are tickling Tom's cheek and he's licking into Tom's mouth and that's it, there's no going back. Tom lets his head fall back against the sofa cushions, surrendering to despair and perhaps to something else, and Josh follows with his mouth and his tongue, hooking his fingers under Tom's collar.
Josh's eyes are closed. Tom keeps his eyes open, and all he can think of is that Josh is fifteen, as if he can fool himself into thinking that waiting a few months would have made this okay.
Josh's eyelashes are a dark tangle at the top of his cheekbones, and his lips taste of salt. He is appalling, but there's something in that which digs into Tom's stomach and makes him kiss back the way he absolutely never intended to; the clumsy enthusiasm of Josh's mouth does terrible things to both Tom's willpower and his libido, and leaves him clutching uncertainly at two juvenile shoulder-blades as if that will keep him from going directly to hell.
After a minute he registers that Josh is clinging quite tightly to his shirt collar, as if he's riding a particularly uncooperative bike, and also that his own hips may be moving up and down of their own accord just a little. Tom revises his destination. There is a new and special hell waiting for him somewhere beneath the others.
He is still kissing back, weakly and limply, in the face of the onslaught of his s-- of Josh's tongue. As if pretending not to like it will save him; his fingers, though, are going to leave bruises if he doesn't slacken his grip on Josh's back, and he can't. He can't.
"Fucking 'ell," Josh says breathily, his mouth still touching Tom's, his lips surely kiss-burnt and raw with saliva. "You're, uh."
"So are you," Tom says, swearing internally. He's awash with gratitude that the sentences aren't getting finished, here, not when every possible word is like an anvil to the skull. He doesn't need telling that he has an erection, and he doesn't need to think about what that means, no matter how much he wants to explain it away with it's been a while, and just biology. He also doesn't need telling that every time Josh leans forward, his hands still fixed to Tom's shirt collar as if they've been glued there, his bloody own is brushing against Tom's stomach. He doesn't need telling any of this.
This time it's he who plants mouth against mouth, just to be certain no more unnecessary words leak out; that's fine, that's reasonable (it's not reasonable), he can explain that away to himself if he just distorts reality enough to a point where saying "shut up" wasn't possible, but there's no explanation beyond the obvious for him pulling Josh closer with his hands on his back, and there's no argument in favour of the way he pushes up against the weight of a teenage boy on his lap and feels his spine shiver.
Worst of all, the racing pace of his heart isn't even down to miserable shame any more.
Forgetting his own determination to keep words to a minimum, Tom tries to bark a what are you doing a minute later and succeeds only in making a weird noise that could even pass for a sound of passion; Josh prompts this by shifting the lie of his hands just far enough to start undoing the uppermost button of Tom's shirt.
He refuses to take responsibility for the way Josh's own shirt crumples further and further up his back, or the way his own hands are slipping further and further down in response, diving for Josh's waistband as if they have a mind of their own.
Josh slips his hand inside the gape of Tom's shirt, his breath hot and uneven in Tom's ear, his hand shaking enough that Tom can feel it ruffling the hairs on his chest. He could grab his wrist, he could pull him away: stop all this before it can get any worse.
Instead he rubs his thumb against the small of Josh's back, where sweat has stuck his fine, downy hairs to his skin, and pushes up against him through two layers of clothes, murmuring, "God," in either self-recrimination or a plea for forgiveness.
Josh licks his neck, jerky and uncertain, and Tom swallows the next humiliating sound as best he can; some small hysterical part of his mind laughs bitterly and says well at least he can't get pregnant. His hands merely tug Josh harder down against his wretched dick.
Tom bargains with himself - if he keeps his hands where they are it's not his fault, if he only kisses back gently he's not a bad person, if he acquiesces wholly passively then he hasn't really passed the point of no moral return.
His capacity for self-delusion will only take Tom so far.
Josh runs his fingers over Tom's breastbone, wherever it is under an accumulation of age and hair; there's no confidence in his movements, no practice, just intent. Tom finds himself learning forward to bury his face against Josh's collarbone without ever registering the desire. He is crushing Josh's hand against his nipple and Josh's erection against his stomach, pulling them both too close together with unthinking pressure on the bare slice of hot skin his fingers have sought on Josh's back.
He's terrified Josh will say something - not later, to others, but now, his not-quite-settled voice croaking out some terrible words that will haunt Tom in his sleep - but instead of stoppering his so--Josh's mouth, his lips curl back and dig his teeth none-too-gently into the length of his collarbone that shows above his increasingly unbuttoned shirt -
- the part of Tom's brain that is still firmly Josh's Dad notes that there are buttons flying off his son's school shirt like pennies into a wishing well -
- his own shirt is open to the waist, Josh's hands clutching at him as convulsively as he is tugging at Josh.
His skin is hot, and Josh is heavier than he looks; Tom repositions him without care or caution, bites the inside of his own mouth to force back a sudden groan, moves Josh again. Again. Again. He breathes hard against Josh's clavicle, and shifts him again, lifting with his hips as an ugly noise nestles under his Adam's apple, an unattractive sound both for how guttural it is, and for how unfaked.
Josh has no such qualms, no such self-restraint, and as he shoves himself bodily at Tom, an angular length of heat and soft, wet mouth (leaving cooling patches of saliva on Tom's neck), he lets out a cry that's half-sob and half weedy, reedy growl. It breaks in the middle, streaking halfway down an octave in a heady jump-cut between juvenile and adult.
Tom shifts his fingers slowly; Josh is sweating, his hair - when Tom can see his face at all - dangling in damp curls over his half-closed eyes, his mouth drooping open. He has some brief, illustrative thoughts about what could be done with a mouth that beautiful but savages them back, brings his hips up and shoves Josh's down so hard that both of them make the same sound, an -urf- separated by a couple of decades and a few cycles of frequency, but by no change at all in intent.
Josh releases his grip on Tom's chest hair and grabs gracelessly at his wrist, somewhere down by his hip-bones, just above the place his trousers are playing at sweat-sponge. He holds Tom's wrist tight enough that Tom could swear he can feel bones grinding together; he freezes.
But it's not the hasty brake of a boy coming to his senses - as Tom winces, his hand is lifted from Josh's hip (he tries to let go calmly, but he can feel his fingers half-scrabbling to be allowed to retain their position. Josh's hip is safe. It's plausibly deniable the way very little else is this afternoon).
Josh takes his hand, moving as if Tom is still shoving him up and down, his chest violently in-out-in-out, and presses it against his own dick.
For a moment Tom catches Josh's eyes under the screen of hair and eyelashes; his blown pupils and determination, and farther down, the way his lower lip shakes as much as his arms - Tom has a faint surge of nostalgia. He meets Josh's eyes, and Josh squeezes his hand, tightening Tom's on his dick through his trousers.
He mentally sketches out an argument from the lawyer for the defence as he flexes his fingers, and with a hellish synchronicity of both arms, drags Josh against his dick and presses his palm to Josh's at the same time. Josh catches his trembling lower lip in his teeth, a fricative escaping but the rest of whatever he has to say mercifully truncated.
He tries not to think that, what with one thing and another, this is probably the first time Josh has done anything like this … no, no. It's probably not, is it? He must have been fumbling about with Lauren - Tom bites the end of his own tongue as Josh rocks his hips, grinding both his behind into Tom's dick and his dick into Tom's hand.
Josh is making little breathy noises against his mouth now, shifting in his lap and clutching at Tom's neck and his shoulders and his sides as if he doesn't know where his hands are supposed to go. The thought hits Tom again that he's probably never done anything like this before; Josh only worked out his own sexuality a month ago, after all.
As if Tom needed a reason to hate himself even more.
For a while there's nothing but the thundering of his heart, the heat of Josh under his hands, the rhythmic pressure of Josh's backside against his dick and Josh's dick against and partially in his hand. For a while there's merciful silence and he can concentrate on not losing control, not biting down on Josh hard enough to bruise him, not struggling him out of his trousers or nipping his stomach or kissing him until his lips split.
Everything stays safe and somewhere closer to sane than he feels, for a while.
"Dad," Josh mutters, sounding kind of urgent about it, his hands knotted so tightly in the sweaty twists of Tom's mostly-off shirt that they might as well be growing from it, and Tom wonders if they're tearing it.
"What?"
Which is when Tom's hand becomes a lot wetter than it was; a hot, wet dark patch spreads through Josh's trousers and onto Tom's fingers, his palm.
"Uh." Josh bends briefly in the middle and pants as if he's just run a marathon but God bless him he doesn't stop moving, keeps his rhythm as if there's a metronome controlling his hips, even though he must have sofa burn on his thighs by now.
The lump of tension in Tom's lower abdomen climbs to an unbearable crescendo, and his vision begins to blur; he tightens his hand on the damp patch in Josh's trousers - it is not necessary, not at all, but he has the horrible suspicion under the white light in his brain threatening to destroy all his thought processes that he enjoys having his hand there.
The thought shakes him, and he tries to drop beneath it, in case it ambushes him again; Josh makes a delicate sound between his lips, still rocking back and forth like an outsized jockey, and brushes his mouth almost enquiringly against Tom's neck.
Tom bites down on his shoulder.
Josh makes a surprised noise and stops rocking, and for a moment it's just the two of them, completely still, the sound of their heavy breathing filling the room.
Tom pulls the duvet up over his head and lies perfectly still in the dark, his hands trapped between his thighs and his eyes fixed open, staring at the invisible-to-him pattern on the duvet cover. It's alright, it's alright, he didn't actually have sex with his teenage son. Because - Tom gropes through his brain for some reason, some fact which will undo the evening and make none of this have happened - because it can't have happened. Because he is not that kind of person.
Somewhat irrationally, his mind settles on "look, we didn't actually have sex-have sex so it's fine" as the rationalisation, and he grabs it with blind, desperate enthusiasm. Much as he grabbed - no.
Tom rolls violently onto his other side, and sinks into the mattress again with a whumpf. It's fine, it's fine, it doesn't count because he didn't have sex and therefore it's fine and he is not the winning candidate for Worst Parent In The World 2010, and there is no way any jury in the world would listen to this shit.
He might as well start admitting basic truths. One, he has spent the afternoon and evening at the very least sort-of having sex with a very definitely underage Josh who is very definitely in his care and apparently very definitely his son.
When Tom stops biting the inside of his mouth in a spasm of horrified shame, and the unavoidable swirl of bloody saliva has washed back over his teeth and down his closed-off throat, he takes a long, deep breath through the nose, and moves onto the next.
Two, thinking about what he definitely did this afternoon has relocated his hand to his dick of its own accord, and also made a certain number of changes to - alright, he's got a fucking hard-on again.
"Dad?" Josh says quietly, in the dark beyond Tom's bed.
Tom's tongue makes a spirited attempt to leap down his throat and choke him to death, but he succeeds in whipping his hand away from his crotch and muttering, "What do you want? It's time you were asleep," in a glue-mouthed manner.
"I was thinking," Josh says slowly, and Tom can hear the bedroom door's hinges creak. He'd put money on Josh leaning on the damn thing the way he's told him several times not to.
"It's -" Tom squints at the clock alarm, "-three in the morning. Out with it."
"I was thinking maybe I could sleep in here with you," Josh says in a rush, "you know, because, and that, and I think. You know."
"No," Tom says firmly, pulling the duvet down from his face properly and trying to stare through the darkness at his son's face. All he can see is a kind of ghostly inverted silhouette where the paleness of his skin isn't quite as dark as the night. "You've got your own bed, for God's sake."
"Oh right," Josh says sullenly, and Tom tenses against the mattress. "I get it. You'll fuck me but you won't hug me. I get it."
Tom unclenches his fists with difficulty and throws the duvet back like a conjuror revealing a rabbit; the cool air on his legs is almost delightful after the stuffiness under the covers. "Alright."
Josh hits the mattress like a felled tree. "Night, Dad."
By the time Tom unsticks his mouth enough to reply, fazed beyond all previous unease, Josh's breathing is already steady and slow, topped with a light whistle and followed with a throaty rumble in the bottom of his mouth.
Riona: *advises on removing smartquotes*
Del: *thinks* this is incest porn on the internet, I'm touched that you still care about presentation.