Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 20: The other shoe drops
Maury came back to the apartment with two agents and a full tank of caution. Matt had had a couple hours to have a change of heart and want his old man dead, plenty of time to arrange what he needed for it. Hell, all he had to do was get his gun out. Maury waited outside for nearly ten minutes, feeling his way around the very edges of Matt's consciousness. He was in there, awake and it seemed, not drugged. After his emotions stayed calm for most of that time, Maury moved in to wait outside the front door.
By now the agents had confirmed with infrared sensors that there were only two people inside, both fitting the height/weight ranges for Matt and Patty. The television was on a game show. There was no conversation going on. He waited another very long ten minutes, during which Matt and Patty had an exchange about Matt's car, with her demanding that he leave it behind and him being vague in reply. Matt's thoughts weren't focused on much of anything other than how much he wanted to hit up. He still hadn't, which made Maury happy. He slipped the earpiece into his pocket and prepared to go in.
The elder Parkman tried the door very carefully; he was aware it was visible from the living room. They hadn't locked it, so he opened it and went inside like he had a right to be there. The pair was sitting on opposite ends of the couch, watching TV. They looked up at him as he carried his duffel bag to the other bedroom without comment. He tossed it on the futon and went back out to his car, getting the sack that held the inflatable mattress. He sent off the agents with a signal. All was good. They would park a surveillance van down the street just in case.
Dinner was awkward, full of long silences and thwarted conversations. Patty kept trying to engage Maury, who ignored her but didn't use his ability to shut her up. Neither did Matt, who ate very little. He was feeling nauseous - not sure if it was caused by his back, the stress of the day, or quitting cold turkey, but he felt sick regardless.
He wanted to go to bed afterwards, but Maury got out a notebook and started grilling him about everyone he'd worked on and what he'd done to them. Patty sat by silently, listening, sullen. Matt didn't talk about the many people he'd been at she didn't know of. Anything she didn't already know about, he projected mentally. Maury didn't comment on the subterfuge - he just cooperated with it.
As the evening wore on, Matt's temper got shorter despite his best attempts to stay cool. His father pushed him nearly to the breaking point, backing off presciently just short of it. By mutual assent, they turned in for the night. Matt took three different kinds of over the counter painkillers and was relieved when his father didn't object. Apparently 'no drugs' meant nothing psychotropic.
While Maury was fiddling with the inflation of his mattress, Patricia was trying to be intimate with Matt. He refused her. He hurt all over, craved something she wasn't giving him and he felt horrible about himself. Ryan's death played fitfully behind his eyes. It was about as unsexy as he'd felt in his life and he'd had some doozies.
He could tell she was insecure and afraid. She'd tried to talk to Maury and gotten nowhere, so now she was back at Matt, begging for his attention, trying to find a way to salvage things for herself. He finally told her to fuck off. She had no idea how he was feeling and he had no intention of sharing with her. She lay unmoving, fuming, on her side of the bed for nearly an hour, finally getting up to go try to sleep on the couch. Matt drifted off soon thereafter.
He woke to find her back next to him, being amorous yet again. It was morning. He didn't feel appreciably better and his temper was still short. He told her, "Would you get the fuck away from me?" and shoved her roughly from where she was trying to encourage him to roll over onto his back. She slapped at him. She wasn't prohibited from touching him, just from harming him. What had slipped her mind was how much his back hurt. She didn't remember that until after her palm had struck the injured flesh.
Matt yelled inarticulately at the sudden pain and jumped up, trying to hit her. She dodged out of the way, eyes flashing. "Serves you right!" she yelled back at him. In his sleep-addled, surprised state, he imagined his father must have undone his commands to her. He hadn't mentioned her specifically last night, but they were planning to approach everyone.
When he couldn't get to her physically, he reached out mentally and dropped her to the ground with a torture of fire. It had hardly begun when his father's voice rang in him mind, Stop that, Matthew. Let her go. He struggled against the command for a moment, only to have it reinforced.
Get out of my head! Get out! Leave! You can't do this to me! His concentration faltered on Patty, who crawled to the nearest corner and cowered. Matt gave up on trying to hurt her further and focused on his father, trying to pry out the link by main force. He became the one who felt like he was on fire. He fell to his knees, then down on his hands too, head down as he tried to force it out with everything he had. The world went searing white and nothing existed except the pain. Then all was black.
He woke up to his father wiping his face with a wet towel, cleaning off the blood that had come from his sinuses. Matt shoved him away in an ill temper, then snatched the towel from him and pressed it to his aching forehead. He was laying on the floor, not in nearly as much agony as he had been before he passed out, but still in so much pain he could hardly move. The air itself was a burden and an irritant. Maury stood up and walked away.
"Get out," Matt groaned. His father didn't reply. After several minutes Matt gained his feet, but his head felt like it was going to fall off or explode - or both - at any moment. He staggered into the living room to see breakfast being put on the table. "GET OUT!" he shouted. Stars danced at the edges of his vision. If he hadn't been clinging to the wall already he'd have fallen.
He lunged towards the table with the intention of overturning it, only to have Maury tell him, Stay out of the dining room.
It pulled Matt up short at the threshold. He held the towel to the side of his head, unbothered by his nakedness for now. "You said you wouldn't command me!"
"I never said that," his father said calmly, pouring orange juice into three glasses.
"You said you'd leave if I told you to!"
"And I might. I made breakfast. I'm going to eat it."
"I want you to get out NOW," Matt said between clenched teeth.
The older man shrugged for reply. Impotent, shaking, Matt went to the couch and sat down, where he rocked slowly, holding his head.
A few minutes passed, broken only by the sound of Maury putting out a few last items and then calling, "Patty? There's breakfast if you want it." Mentally he told his son, If you promise to behave yourself I'll let you come eat… after you put some clothes on.
Go fuck yourself, Matt thought to him. Even that simple projection gave him a twinge of pain. He glared at his father, suddenly angry that Patty might share a meal with him while he did not. That the food smelled great only made him madder. He rose when she came out and pointed at her, "Get back in the room! Stay away from him. We're not eating with him."
She glanced between the two of them and went. Maury frowned disapprovingly at his son, but said nothing. He scooped eggs and bacon onto his plate silently and sat down to eat alone. Matt stalked into his bedroom to get dressed.
While he did, he caught snatches of thought from Patty, who sat on the edge of the bed and said nothing. As Matt pulled on his pants and fastened them, he realized she was thinking about something that hadn't happened. He walked closer, trying to read her more clearly. His head hurt too much for it, so he put his hand on her forehead. She pulled away, not aware his ability was clouded by pain, though it probably wouldn't have mattered if she did. He'd never had to touch her to use it before. He slapped her hard across the face in a moment of pique. "Hold still, dammit."
For a moment, he dared his father to interfere, but he couldn't even tell if the man was aware he was hurting her again, just not mentally this time. He grabbed Patty's head and forced his way into her mind, dredging out the memory he wanted. She was crying and shaking when he was done.
He knew he took his emotional state with him when he entered the minds of others - he just didn't care. His ability was still severely taxed by fighting the link earlier. He felt weak and light-headed from the additional exertion, then nauseous. He rushed to the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. As he knelt next to it, he tried to sort out what he'd seen.
She'd had sex last night. He was sure it hadn't been with him, but it looked like him in her memory. She'd been very satisfied by it, thrilled by his attention, his careful, loving attention to every detail of her pleasure. Matt shut it out. There was only one explanation. She'd gone to Maury, but he hadn't rebuffed her, he hadn't rejected her. Matt had been wrong.
Maury must have had sex with her, or made her think Matt did while he almost certainly watched her thoughts if he didn't give them to her entire. To Matt at that moment, that seemed just as bad. He'd been cheated on - again. The vision Matt had seen had not played out as he expected. There was one obvious solution to all his problems at the moment.
He left the bathroom and walked to his nightstand, getting out one of his many guns. This one was always loaded. He cocked it and took off the safety. He turned to go out, intending to get rid of his father forever. He stumbled and the whole world narrowed, closed in on him. His nightmare began to overwhelm him.
He was thirteen again and his father stood over him, but instead of giving him money and a pat on the head, a warped, distorted, and much older version of the man, as old as he was now in reality, looked down on him. "Matthew," he smiled cruelly despite his somewhat kind words. "I tried to be nice about this, I really did, because you're my son. But apparently the ties that bind aren't as tight as I'd hoped. I'll have to use other ties now, because I'm not going to let you kill me."
Matt looked down to see a huge gun in his small, early teen hand. He dropped it in surprise, unsure of how it got there. It vanished as it fell.
His father said, "You seem to think it's acceptable to dish out pain and commands to the people closest to you just because you can, because you can get away with it. If that's how morality works, then thank you for explaining it to me. I'd missed that part. I guess I just need to work a little harder on being an upright, moral guy in your lights, since that's so important to you. Let's start with your old favorites: You will tell me the truth and you will not conceal or omit the truth from me. You will do what I tell you to do. You will not harm me or allow me to be harmed. You will protect me. You will help me. And I'll add one of my own - You will help yourself and you will not hurt yourself, to be applied when it doesn't conflict with any of my other commands to you."
It ended. Matt was bowed over on the floor again, on his knees. The gun lay before him. He reached for it, but he couldn't pick it up, couldn't move it. He could only touch it. He knew he wanted to pick it up and shoot his father, but he couldn't do it. He looked over at Patricia, who had a red mark on the side of her face where he'd hit her. She was watching him fearfully. He wanted to tell her to take the gun and shoot Maury, but that was impossible too. If he hadn't been prohibited from it, at that moment, he might have picked up the gun and shot himself.