Unaware chapter 6.5: ...and another surprise
So, here's the penultimate chapter of Unaware. The morning after chapter 6. This time we get to know who Michal is... whether we like it or not. And we get just a little bit of magic, as well as some answers. And then we sulk.
And really, I think that's about all I need to say. So here you go.
Chapter 6.5
...and another surprise
When I woke up, I was pleased to find that the blindfold had disappeared. My glasses were nowhere to be found, so the world was more than a little blurry, but at least I could see something, particularly the blanket covered shape curled around me, radiating a warmth that was actually rather pleasant. I realized almost immediately upon waking that they had the air conditioning turned down way too far in that room, enough to give me goose bumps when I sat up in the bed and the blanket fell off of the top half of my still naked form.
Michal was fast asleep when I woke, breathing deeply but not snoring, cocooned in the blankets, somehow without having stolen them all from me. (I never quite figured out how all of that worked, and I've never been able to repeat it, either.) What I did know was that there was just enough light in the room that I would be able to test my theory about him being someone that I knew, if I squinted really hard. It would be a long shot, and if he wasn't a really familiar face I probably wouldn't be able to tell for sure, but the moment the thought came to me I knew that I had to try it out before my curiosity decided to murder me.
So, the first thing I did upon waking, other than sit up and "look" around me, was to lean over and attempt to peel the blankets away from Michal enough to get a glimpse of his face. It was hard work, since he apparently agreed with me about the temperature of the room and did not want to give up any of his heat-trapping blankets, but in the end my patience and carefulness won out. And after that...
After that I froze.
Completely.
I did recognize that face. And I was surprised that I didn't recognize the voice too. I should have recognized his voice from the beginning, seeing as I had been hearing it almost all my life. (Of course, I realized later that the voice that I was used to hearing him use and the voice that he used when "training" were almost like two completely different people, so I wasn't to be blamed for not realizing it just by hearing him.) But yeah, there was no way I would have been able to not recognize him, and the only people who could possibly be easier to recognize would be my family, and Mark.
It didn't hurt that I had just seem him the day before. Or maybe it was two days ago; I wasn't sure anymore. Between getting drugged to unconsciousness and falling asleep after sex, I wasn't quite sure what day it was anymore. For all I knew, it might have been an entire week since the day that the scary woman and her companion picked me up from Perkins by force. Or it might have just been an hour or two, and my brain was playing tricks on me, trying to tell me that I had slept a full night's sleep.
But anyway, I had seen him, less than a day ago if you only count the time that I was conscious and/or aware of the passage of time. He hadn't said anything, just shown his face, but I remember acknowledging his presence and then going back to my business. And that had been not even a half hour after I had fled from him, proving that he was a far better actor than I could ever have been. Had I known then that he was Michal, I wouldn't have been able to keep any of it quiet.
The man lying cocooned in blankets next to me was none other than Mark's dad. And that was enough to creep me out more than a little, since I was pretty much certain that Michal had not crept off in the middle of the night to be replaced by Mark's dad. Unfortunately, that left me with the knowledge that I had just woken up in the same bed as my best friend's father, and that I had had gotten screwed by him, literally, just before falling asleep. As if it wasn't enough that Mark seemed to want to pound me into the bed, but now his dad... (Of course, come to think of it, Michal had tried before Mark did, not that that helped.)
I did the first thing that came to my not-quite functional brain the moment I could get myself moving again. I jumped up from the bed, not quite noticing the fact that I was still buck naked and now had no blanket covering me, and I looked around the room frantically, squinting as hard as I could so I could at least see something. I noticed an open door to my right that looked like it might lead to a bathroom, so I bolted in that direction. It turned out that I was right, and I ended up shutting myself in the bathroom and locking the door behind me. It was about then that I noticed the persistent, but not quite fully noticeable, ache in my behind. Of course, I knew where that came from.
A few moments later, I had the shower going, just barely cool enough to avoid scalding myself with the water, and I had jumped in without another thought. It wasn't really that I felt "dirty," though it was more than a little weird to wake up and realize that I had just slept with my best friend's dad. It was more that I was dirty. Even though he had wiped things up before lulling me to sleep, I felt sticky with fluids that I didn't really want to think about it, and now that I had access to a shower, I needed them off.
And then, while in the shower, I discovered one of the results of the night before. The tickling, when he had been "preparing" for something that he never explained to me, had been a marker. A Sharpie, from the looks of it, which had been used to draw complex patterns all over my stomach and sides. And, being a Sharpie, or another brand of permanent marker, it wasn't coming off very well when blasted with hot water and scrubbed at with soap, despite the fact that I was rubbing far harder than was comfortable. It faded a little, but didn't disappear, which just made me swear under my breath and rub harder.
While I was still scrubbing at my stomach, I heard a knock on the door. Either Michal had woken up or someone else had shown up, and whoever it was had realized that I was in the bathroom, probably based on the locked door and sound of water running. I ignored it, concentrating on trying to get rid of the marks on my stomach instead.
"Arin?" I heard Michal's voice (not Mark's dad's voice, but Michal's... he apparently hadn't realized that I had recognized him yet... or maybe he was just staying in character, despite the fact that he had no real need for it anymore) call faintly through the sound of the water rushing around me.
"Arin?" He repeated himself when I didn't answer after a few moments. "Are you in there?"
"I'm trying to take a shower." I winced a little as my shout echoed through the stall and came back to me slightly magnified.
"Are you all right?" He actually sounded worried, but I was a little too preoccupied with trying to get rid of whatever he had drawn all over my body to care about that.
"I'm trying to get off this stupid stuff that you drew all over me! So just leave me alone for now." I don't think I even really realized that I was more or less ignoring the fact that I had other problems to deal with and think about than just him having drawn on my stomach, like who he was and what we had done together the night before. Not that that was a bad thing.
Then all of a sudden he was trying even harder to get in the room. I don't know why it really worried me, but I was afraid that he would break the door; that was how hard he was yanking at it. So, sighing, I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, pulling one of the oversized towels hanging on the bar next to the tub around my waist (and everything below) in the process. Then I went over the door, unlocked it, and opened it before he could do any damage.
He was naked, something that I noticed almost immediately, probably because he was also about half a foot taller than I was, leaving me staring at his bare chest, and my eyes just naturally followed the bareness downward to discover that there was nothing below the waist either. This, of course, was not the most comfortable thing in the world, seeing as I couldn't think of any time when I had seen a man naked in person, aside from myself that is, in my entire life. And having the first be him... that was almost as bad as trying to reconcile the fact that I had not too long ago lost my virginity to the same person.
"You're going to break the door." I forced my gaze up to stare him eye to eye and tried to ignore the fact that my cheeks were starting to heat up.
"Is it still there?" He actually sounded worried, about the damned markings. I saw his eyes travel up and down my body, and I saw the relief spread across his face almost right after that.
"Is what still there?"
"The spell patterns, of course! The things I drew on you last night. You just said you were trying to wash them off..."
"Permanent marker doesn't come off that easily." I crossed my arms across my chest. "Not that I didn't try."
"But it looks like you managed to get some of it off. I might have to redo some of the lines." He reached out to lay a finger on my stomach and pull it along one of the lines that he had drawn.
"Don't touch me!" I snapped, slapping his hand away as fast as I could. "And don't even think about trying to draw on me again. I'm not a piece of paper!"
"I'm sorry." His voice was low and soft. "I forgot to warn you that I would have to have you awake and conscious to finish the spell. But I think that we should be able to salvage the pattern if we get started right now." He grabbed my arm and started pulling me out of the bathroom.
"Get started with what?" I yanked my arm back, stubbornly refusing to let him pull me into the room.
"With the last steps of the spell that I cast last night. It's going to have to last you until December, so I need to get it firmly entrenched and keyed to you before the lingering power that I pulled last night dissipates. The fact that you started trying to wash off the framework leaves me with little time, so we need to get started. Come on."
"I'm not going anywhere."
He sighed. "Listen, Arin," he said, his voice turning harder and sharper. "You have two choices at the moment. One, you can cooperate with me and get the spell fixed before the power that I called forth last night fades away so that you won't have every other power hungry little magician hopeful at the Academy after your ass for the next six months. Or, you can continue to be stubborn and let the power dissipate. If you do that, however, we will have to have sex again, the sooner the better, so that I can summon the power up again. And since I will have to complete the spell during the act, you can believe that I will not be as gentle with you the second time."
"How about choice number three?"
"That being?"
"You let me go home as I am, without any more sex, and I try to forget that I just got fucked by my best friend's dad."
"I'm afraid that that is not one of the options at this point. As much as I wish that I could let you just try and return to a normal life, your grandfather would probably try to kill me. And it would most likely be better for you to try to think of me as simply your trainer."
"But that doesn't change the fact that you are Mark's dad, Mr. Jensen. So is Mike supposed to actually be short for Michal? Mark told me that your name was Michael." For the record, Michal has a slightly different pronunciation from Michael. A slightly different sound and stress to the second syllable. It's not a huge difference, but enough of one that you can tell which is which.
"There are a lot of things that I can't tell Mark about myself."
"Like the fact that you just screwed me? Or... didn't you tell me the other day that you're not really human? Does Mark know that? Or is he going to be like me, and all of a sudden have it sprung on him?"
"You're trying to change the subject. To get out of finishing up the spell. I can't have that." He reached for my arm again, and when I stepped to the side to avoid it, he ended up just grabbing me around the waist and slinging me over his shoulder. Moments later he dumped me on the bed that I had fled just a little bit earlier.
It was when he reached for the towel at my waist that I really started fighting. I don't quite know why it bothered me so much, especially when I knew that he had to have been able to see everything the night before when he had me begging for more. But for some reason the thought of having him see it all again bothered me in ways that I can't even begin to describe. Or maybe it was just because the night before I had been under the influence of whatever sort of drugs they had given me...
"Calm down." His voice took on an authoritative tone that immediately reminded me that he was a father (though my own dad had never used that sort of tone around me, ever). "I just need to be able to see the entire spell pattern to make sure that it's still intact. Unless you'd like to just start over from the sex again, in which case I won't need to check on this one."
"No more sex."
"For now. Though I will eventually have to continue with your training."
"And if I refuse?"
"I can always ask Lyrra to have her pet give you his special treatment again. I'm sure that your grandfather would allow it, for the sake of your training."
I couldn't think of anything to say in response to that. Obviously, I didn't want to do that again, not that I wanted to have sex with him by choice either. But if he wasn't looking to have sex again right now, I wasn't really in the mood to think about either road. So I just stayed silent, and I think he took that as a sign that he could continue.
To my surprise, he actually only lowered the towel far enough to be able to see all of the pattern that he had drawn on me. This left the towel covering the part that I wanted covered the most, which helped me relax quite a bit. Though I tensed right back up when he licked his finger and started tracing over some of the lines on my stomach, leaving a slightly damp line behind.
"What the?"
"A few of the lines have gotten weak. And since we will not be calling forth anymore sexual energy, I need to retrace them with something a little more strongly tied to myself than a marker. Ideally I should be using my own semen, but that would take far too much time at the moment, so saliva will have to do."
"Oh..." I really didn't know what else to say. I had the feeling that complaining about the thought of him using his own semen to trace patterns on my body would be rather pointless after he had already said that he wasn't going to do it. So I stayed silent about that. Instead, I just let him continue with what he was doing, until he looked up from his work with a satisfied look on his face.
"There, that's done. Now I just need to get you tied in as a possible activator, and seal it." Then he held up his finger, the same one that he had just been using to trace over the lines on my body. "Could you lick this for me?"
"What?"
"I need some of your essence in order to tie you into the spell. And just as before, we'll have to do with saliva, since the alternative would be a hassle, and I can't stand blood magic."
"I... I guess I can do that..." Then I leaned forward to lick his finger once.
He sighed, but didn't move the finger. "It's going to have to be more than that. Enough to get it wet, at least. If you suck on it a little, that should be good."
I stared at him, trying to tell him without words that I thought he was crazy, but he didn't even seem to notice. He just pushed that finger closer and closer, and eventually I had no real choice but to open my mouth up and take it inside. I then closed my mouth around it and sucked a little. He started to pull his hand back, and the finger slid out of my mouth wetly. Then, I felt him using that same finger to draw on another part of my stomach, one that he hadn't just traced over. It didn't take him long, and after that he sat back with a satisfied sigh.
"Okay. Now to seal it..." He took both of his hands and placed one on either side of my stomach. Then he muttered a few words, and the traceries on my stomach started to get warm. I bent my neck to try and get a look at what he was doing, and I noticed that not only were the drawings on my stomach warm, but they were glowing. A moment later, the glow faded, and so did all of the things that he had drawn on me, except for a few marks right around my belly button.
"And that's it." He was actually smiling. "Sorry about the couple of marks that I had to leave. Those were part of a different spell that I did last night. They might come off if you scrub them hard enough, but it's possible they may stick until the spell is no longer active.."
"Are you going to tell me what you just did?"
"It probably won't be of much interest to you. But if you insist, will. Still, I thought you might want to know how Mark fits into all of this instead? Since you were asking so much about him earlier."
"I want to know that too." But something occurred to me before I could continue on that train of thought. "But I'd like to get some clothes on first."
He laughed at this and then got up off of the bed. A moment later, he held out his hand to help me up. I took it, using my free hand to keep the towel in place enough to continue to cover me. Then he walked across the room to a closet, where he took out two sets of clothing. He tossed one over to me, with the comment that it should fit me, and he didn't complain when I bolted for the bathroom to get dressed there.
The clothing fit perfectly, and I would have almost thought that he had somehow gotten it from my closet, except that there was far too much black there for it to be anything that I owned. I liked the way the jeans fit, but they definitely weren't mine (at least they weren't black). And as for the shirt(s)...
There were two shirts there, one a black button-up short sleeved shirt made out of some super light material that I couldn't quite put a name to. The other one was a long sleeved shirt in a hunter green, but it had a gigantic logo for some company that I had never heard of plastered across the front, in bright red. In the end I chose the black shirt, despite the fact that it was black, because the green shirt looked overly warm, and because I wasn't about to wear something with a bright red logo on the front. Besides, the black shirt turned out to fit rather loosely and comfortably, so I was a little more willing to put up with the fact that it was black.
When I emerged from the room, he was dressed as well, and just finishing up by putting on a pair of plain white socks and tennis shoes. Or at least, I was pretty sure that was what he was doing, as the world was still more than a little blurry and I couldn't quite get things to resolve enough by squinting. So I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to do anything else until I got my glasses back, if only because I would be getting a massive headache in the near future without them.
"Where are my glasses?" I asked, and he looked up from what he was doing suddenly, almost as if he hadn't heard me come out of the bathroom. He stared at me for a few moments, as if he hadn't quite understood the question. "My glasses?" I asked again.
"Oh, yes. Just let me finish tying this..." He finished up the shoelaces that he had been tying when he looked up and then opened a drawer in the table that was sitting next to the bed. A moment later, he pulled out my glasses, and I went over to get them. I breathed a sigh of relief as I put them on and the world came back into focus.
"Now, I was thinking that we might be able to go out for breakfast and talk about things while we eat. Get away from your grandfather's territory for a bit, so we can both relax a little. How would that be with you?"
I'm not quite sure why, but there was something about the way that he said it that reminded me of how Dad was when he was trying to avoid talking to me about the truth. Obviously it wasn't quite the same situation. He wasn't trying to take me somewhere "fun," and I got the distinct feeling that he was actually willing to explain more things to me, just that he wanted a change of scenery first. But it still reminded me of Dad, and I sighed because of that.
"Hm?" he asked.
"Oh, no, nothing... I was just thinking that all of the adults in my life seem to be acting the same when they aren't quite comfortable telling me things right now. Dad was acting pretty much the same as you are the other day."
"You are an adult yourself, you know."
"I know that! But you know what I mean!"
"Yes, that I do. So, would you care to join me for breakfast?"
"As long as you promise not to do anything weird to me in public..."
"I wasn't planning on anything of that sort. Especially since that would trouble me as well as you."
"Then, sure."
After that he went to the door and had a short conversation with someone who had apparently been waiting right outside. He motioned for me to stay where I was while he talked, so I did, though I was more than a little curious to know what they were talking about. Then, after a bit of talking, he waved me over and explained that Grandpa was more than a little wary about letting me out of his sight at the moment, and was not in the mood to let me leave the building. But he had bargained with the security people and had managed to get them to agree to let us go out for breakfast, provided that someone accompany us. That person would stay outside of the restaurant while we ate, but would be more than ready to chase should I decide to bolt.
I didn't bother to tell them that I wasn't really in the mood to be running away again at that moment. I was still tired from the night before, despite having apparently slept all night long. And my ass hurt, though not quite enough to prevent me from walking. Besides, if they had managed to track me to a hotel room before, they would definitely be able to catch me if I somehow managed to get away again, so what was the point? It wasn't like I had anywhere to run that wasn't somehow connected to them. But I didn't think that they would believe me if I told them that I wouldn't run, so it seemed stupid to try and tell them in the first place.
So, some time later, we ended up at a nearby family restaurant. It wasn't Perkins; it wasn't even any restaurant that I recognized, but it didn't seem like a bad place. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that I realized that we were in Appleton, not Green Bay, after leaving the building. And, as we left the building, I realized that it was not the same building that I had seen Grandpa in before, so they had apparently moved me while I was unconscious. Anyway, we ended up at that family restaurant, with the same woman in the suit from the day before waiting outside while we went in. She had that man with her again, though I had tried my best to ignore his presence ever since he started smiling at me the moment he saw me, a creepy smile that sent shivers (bad shivers) down my spine the moment I noticed it.
Once in the restaurant, it wasn't hard to forget that the woman and the creepy guy were out there, which was a happy thing for me. And, despite the fact that it was still kinda weird being with Michal and knowing that he was Mark's dad at the same time, eating with him was better than the alternatives at the moment. So breakfast was actually fairly enjoyable, up until the point that I remembered that he was supposed to be explaining things to me, but hadn't started yet. So I started with the question that I wanted to know the answer to the most, one of the ones that he had blatantly avoided answering earlier.
"Does Mark know about any of this?" I think the main reason that I wanted to know was because of how Mark had assaulted me earlier. Knowing that his father was involved in all of this made me wonder if maybe he hadn't been in on it as well, since they had to have known that I would flee to him first.
"Not a single thing. Traditionally he would have already been inducted into the family "trade" by now, and he would be in charge of your training. But the blood in our family is running thin at the moment, so Mark hasn't inherited enough of it to hold the same position that I do."
"So are you saying that, unlike you, Mark is more or less human?"
"Not quite. He simply hasn't inherited the magics that are needed in a trainer such as myself. He has all the instincts of our kind, as I'm sure you've noticed over the years."
"What do you mean?" I probably didn't need to know the answer to his question, though I asked it anyway. As it was, I had a feeling I knew exactly what he was talking about when he said Mark had all the "instincts," just none of the magic.
"He is particularly popular with the other sex, is he not?" I nodded. "And I'm sure that he's also popular with any men he might know that are also attracted to men, though you may not have seen quite as much of that due to cultural pressures."
"But normal people can be popular like that too."
"You probably have not had a chance to get much exposure to the other signs of his heritage. One of the other signs would be an abnormal skill in all matters sexual without corresponding experience. I'm sure that you have not had a chance to test this, though I believe you already know that he's quite a good kisser." He smiled a little as he said this, probably because I felt my face flush the moment it came out of his mouth.
"And the last sign would be a particular sensitivity to whenever someone is encroaching on "his" territory. This one borders on the magical, by the way, since some of the senses used to achieve this sensitivity are not ones that any human has. But I do believe that Mark has this sensitivity, based on his actions toward you the other night."
"What in the world do I have to do with this?"
"You may not be an established lover of his, which would generally make you "his" for this matter, but you cannot deny that there is a stronger bond than mere friendship between the two of you And that bond is enough to make you "his" in all the ways that matter. So when you came to see him after almost getting involved in a sexual situation with another man, particularly another man of the same demon heritage, he sensed that and reacted to it in the same way that anyone of our line would. He tried to assert his own claim on you."
"You're making it sound like he's some kind of animal."
"He was acting strangely that night, wasn't he? Even you would admit that. Besides, that isn't a bad comparison, and I say that having gone through much the same experience in the past, before I was fully in control of my own nature. I'll probably have to take you to visit him sometime today or tomorrow and make sure that he's all right."
"After you went and screwed me?" I asked, after looking around several times to make sure that the waitress wasn't on her way over at that moment. We had our food already, but that didn't mean that she might not show up to make sure that everything was going all right. And I didn't want her hearing that, even though she was a complete stranger and I should have been worrying about what a stranger thought about my sexuality. "Wouldn't that just fuck things up even more."
"Not as badly as you would think. Particularly since I believe I will be transferring the responsibility for your training over to him once I have explained things fully."
"You what?" I shouted, though I then ducked my head in shame as pretty much every person in the restaurant turned to look at the two of us.
"I told you that traditionally he would have been the one training you from the beginning, had he the proper magical talents The training is usually quite a bit more effective when trainer and trainee are close in age."
"But you said he didn't have any magic!" This time I managed to keep my voice quite a bit softer than before.
He grinned at me. "That would be what the spell I did earlier was for."
"What was that spell?"
"I would need to explain a bit of the logic behind sex-based power in order for it to mean anything to you. Would you mind that?"
"Go ahead."
"Do you remember when they tested you for something called your "virgin potential" at the Academy?" I nodded. "Well, that comes from sex-based power, and where, or when, it gathers the most. The largest concentration of power that can be gained from sex happens to be a massive amount of energy that is released when a person loses his or her virginity, thus the name "virgin potential." It varies from person to person, but it is always quite a bit more than can ever again be gained from a sexual ritual from that person. There are sex magic users all over the globe who merely go around deflowering both men and women for their virgin potentials, though the average human has little to give.
"However, non-humans, particularly those of the Cellen family, like yourself, tend to have a rather high virgin potential. And your is higher than normal for your family, which makes it quite the coveted bundle of energy."
"But didn't we... last night?"
"Yes, that we did." He laughed softly. "Which is why I drew all over you. That was a rather complicated spell pattern designed to trap your potential and keep it through your first experience. And then, this morning, I sealed it, so that you should be able to keep your potential intact for a while longer. You will be expected to give it up to the young Nelene master, you see, but you will have to have sex quite a bit more before then. So I sealed the spell pattern to keep it alive and keyed it to you. You won't have to actually do anything to have it take effect, mostly because at this point in time you do not have any magic to actually keep the spell alive yourself.
"And that is really the only magic needed from your trainer, so now I can safely pass you over to Mark, who doesn't have enough magic to break through the sealed pattern I put on you. Because the next step, besides having you learn how best to please a man in bed, is to achieve your awakening. And that works far better when you have some sort of bond with your partner, which would make Mark a far better candidate for your awakening that I could ever be. Even if it isn't a reciprocal desire, your friendship is still far stronger than anything between you and myself."
"Yeah, but..."
"I'll put it this way. Your choices at the moment are continuing with me, or having your training switched over to Mark. Refusing is not an option."
I had absolutely no idea what to say in response to that. Obviously I didn't want to just agree with him, but by that point in time I was starting to realize just how impossible it was for me to get any say in any of the things that were going on. I could complain all I wanted, but they weren't going to listen to me. So what was the point in complaining, or even voicing my opinion? I was just going to get screwed, literally, in the end anyway.
So, I didn't say anything back to him. Not in response to his last statement, nor when he tried to get me to talk several other times before we left the restaurant. It was childish, but I figured that if he wasn't going to listen to me, then I didn't really need to talk to him. We finished eating like that and then proceeded to leave, again under the guard of the woman and her creepy companion.
I think that Michal was starting to worry about me by the time we got back to Green Bay. It turned out that we weren't going to return to the building we had just come from, so we ended up riding in tense silence the entire half hour drive from Appleton to Green Bay. Michal tried a couple more times to get me to talk to him while we were in the car, but each time I just turned my head away from him to stare out the window at the passing "scenery." (Not that I would ever consider farmland to be worthy of the name scenery...)
They brought me back home once we were in the city. And while that was better than going back to either Grandpa's place or the building that we had been in earlier that day, it still wasn't somewhere that I wanted to be. To be completely honest, I was probably more pissed at Dad at that time than at anyone else. And that includes Michal, who had fucked me, Mark, who had tried, and the creepy guy, who had drugged me. It was just that Dad was the one who I thought should understand what I was going through the most, but hadn't done anything to help me, besides tell me some of what was actually going on.
So, needless to say, I wasn't in the mood to talk to Dad either when we reached the house. He was waiting for me, since Michal had given him a call on his phone when we got off the freeway, and was probably ready to escort me in the house to make sure that I didn't run for it the moment I got out of the car. I'm pretty sure that he was hurt more than a little when I just glared at him as the woman ushered me out of the car and into his custody, but didn't say a word.
It was about when Dad started babbling at me to try to get me to talk to him that I decided that I was going to continue. I had been planning on stopping it sometime later that day, maybe once I was a little less pissed off at the world in general. But seeing Dad, and a little later Mom, acting like that to try to get me to cheer up, it just pissed me off more. So, like the child that I no longer was and hadn't been for several years, I decided that it was time to give each and every person involved in the entire situation the silent treatment. Mom, Dad, Michal, Grandpa... all of them.
With that in mind, I retired to my room for the rest of the day, with absolutely no intention of emerging for anything other than the bathroom and meals. After all, it wasn't like they were about to let me go anywhere. Even if they hadn't told me about it, I was sure that Grandpa no longer trusted me to stay where I was "supposed" to be and behave the way he expected of me. They didn't need to tell me that I wouldn't be leaving the house unsupervised for a long time, because I had already realized it on my own.
And really, I think that's about all I need to say. So here you go.
Chapter 6.5
...and another surprise
When I woke up, I was pleased to find that the blindfold had disappeared. My glasses were nowhere to be found, so the world was more than a little blurry, but at least I could see something, particularly the blanket covered shape curled around me, radiating a warmth that was actually rather pleasant. I realized almost immediately upon waking that they had the air conditioning turned down way too far in that room, enough to give me goose bumps when I sat up in the bed and the blanket fell off of the top half of my still naked form.
Michal was fast asleep when I woke, breathing deeply but not snoring, cocooned in the blankets, somehow without having stolen them all from me. (I never quite figured out how all of that worked, and I've never been able to repeat it, either.) What I did know was that there was just enough light in the room that I would be able to test my theory about him being someone that I knew, if I squinted really hard. It would be a long shot, and if he wasn't a really familiar face I probably wouldn't be able to tell for sure, but the moment the thought came to me I knew that I had to try it out before my curiosity decided to murder me.
So, the first thing I did upon waking, other than sit up and "look" around me, was to lean over and attempt to peel the blankets away from Michal enough to get a glimpse of his face. It was hard work, since he apparently agreed with me about the temperature of the room and did not want to give up any of his heat-trapping blankets, but in the end my patience and carefulness won out. And after that...
After that I froze.
Completely.
I did recognize that face. And I was surprised that I didn't recognize the voice too. I should have recognized his voice from the beginning, seeing as I had been hearing it almost all my life. (Of course, I realized later that the voice that I was used to hearing him use and the voice that he used when "training" were almost like two completely different people, so I wasn't to be blamed for not realizing it just by hearing him.) But yeah, there was no way I would have been able to not recognize him, and the only people who could possibly be easier to recognize would be my family, and Mark.
It didn't hurt that I had just seem him the day before. Or maybe it was two days ago; I wasn't sure anymore. Between getting drugged to unconsciousness and falling asleep after sex, I wasn't quite sure what day it was anymore. For all I knew, it might have been an entire week since the day that the scary woman and her companion picked me up from Perkins by force. Or it might have just been an hour or two, and my brain was playing tricks on me, trying to tell me that I had slept a full night's sleep.
But anyway, I had seen him, less than a day ago if you only count the time that I was conscious and/or aware of the passage of time. He hadn't said anything, just shown his face, but I remember acknowledging his presence and then going back to my business. And that had been not even a half hour after I had fled from him, proving that he was a far better actor than I could ever have been. Had I known then that he was Michal, I wouldn't have been able to keep any of it quiet.
The man lying cocooned in blankets next to me was none other than Mark's dad. And that was enough to creep me out more than a little, since I was pretty much certain that Michal had not crept off in the middle of the night to be replaced by Mark's dad. Unfortunately, that left me with the knowledge that I had just woken up in the same bed as my best friend's father, and that I had had gotten screwed by him, literally, just before falling asleep. As if it wasn't enough that Mark seemed to want to pound me into the bed, but now his dad... (Of course, come to think of it, Michal had tried before Mark did, not that that helped.)
I did the first thing that came to my not-quite functional brain the moment I could get myself moving again. I jumped up from the bed, not quite noticing the fact that I was still buck naked and now had no blanket covering me, and I looked around the room frantically, squinting as hard as I could so I could at least see something. I noticed an open door to my right that looked like it might lead to a bathroom, so I bolted in that direction. It turned out that I was right, and I ended up shutting myself in the bathroom and locking the door behind me. It was about then that I noticed the persistent, but not quite fully noticeable, ache in my behind. Of course, I knew where that came from.
A few moments later, I had the shower going, just barely cool enough to avoid scalding myself with the water, and I had jumped in without another thought. It wasn't really that I felt "dirty," though it was more than a little weird to wake up and realize that I had just slept with my best friend's dad. It was more that I was dirty. Even though he had wiped things up before lulling me to sleep, I felt sticky with fluids that I didn't really want to think about it, and now that I had access to a shower, I needed them off.
And then, while in the shower, I discovered one of the results of the night before. The tickling, when he had been "preparing" for something that he never explained to me, had been a marker. A Sharpie, from the looks of it, which had been used to draw complex patterns all over my stomach and sides. And, being a Sharpie, or another brand of permanent marker, it wasn't coming off very well when blasted with hot water and scrubbed at with soap, despite the fact that I was rubbing far harder than was comfortable. It faded a little, but didn't disappear, which just made me swear under my breath and rub harder.
While I was still scrubbing at my stomach, I heard a knock on the door. Either Michal had woken up or someone else had shown up, and whoever it was had realized that I was in the bathroom, probably based on the locked door and sound of water running. I ignored it, concentrating on trying to get rid of the marks on my stomach instead.
"Arin?" I heard Michal's voice (not Mark's dad's voice, but Michal's... he apparently hadn't realized that I had recognized him yet... or maybe he was just staying in character, despite the fact that he had no real need for it anymore) call faintly through the sound of the water rushing around me.
"Arin?" He repeated himself when I didn't answer after a few moments. "Are you in there?"
"I'm trying to take a shower." I winced a little as my shout echoed through the stall and came back to me slightly magnified.
"Are you all right?" He actually sounded worried, but I was a little too preoccupied with trying to get rid of whatever he had drawn all over my body to care about that.
"I'm trying to get off this stupid stuff that you drew all over me! So just leave me alone for now." I don't think I even really realized that I was more or less ignoring the fact that I had other problems to deal with and think about than just him having drawn on my stomach, like who he was and what we had done together the night before. Not that that was a bad thing.
Then all of a sudden he was trying even harder to get in the room. I don't know why it really worried me, but I was afraid that he would break the door; that was how hard he was yanking at it. So, sighing, I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, pulling one of the oversized towels hanging on the bar next to the tub around my waist (and everything below) in the process. Then I went over the door, unlocked it, and opened it before he could do any damage.
He was naked, something that I noticed almost immediately, probably because he was also about half a foot taller than I was, leaving me staring at his bare chest, and my eyes just naturally followed the bareness downward to discover that there was nothing below the waist either. This, of course, was not the most comfortable thing in the world, seeing as I couldn't think of any time when I had seen a man naked in person, aside from myself that is, in my entire life. And having the first be him... that was almost as bad as trying to reconcile the fact that I had not too long ago lost my virginity to the same person.
"You're going to break the door." I forced my gaze up to stare him eye to eye and tried to ignore the fact that my cheeks were starting to heat up.
"Is it still there?" He actually sounded worried, about the damned markings. I saw his eyes travel up and down my body, and I saw the relief spread across his face almost right after that.
"Is what still there?"
"The spell patterns, of course! The things I drew on you last night. You just said you were trying to wash them off..."
"Permanent marker doesn't come off that easily." I crossed my arms across my chest. "Not that I didn't try."
"But it looks like you managed to get some of it off. I might have to redo some of the lines." He reached out to lay a finger on my stomach and pull it along one of the lines that he had drawn.
"Don't touch me!" I snapped, slapping his hand away as fast as I could. "And don't even think about trying to draw on me again. I'm not a piece of paper!"
"I'm sorry." His voice was low and soft. "I forgot to warn you that I would have to have you awake and conscious to finish the spell. But I think that we should be able to salvage the pattern if we get started right now." He grabbed my arm and started pulling me out of the bathroom.
"Get started with what?" I yanked my arm back, stubbornly refusing to let him pull me into the room.
"With the last steps of the spell that I cast last night. It's going to have to last you until December, so I need to get it firmly entrenched and keyed to you before the lingering power that I pulled last night dissipates. The fact that you started trying to wash off the framework leaves me with little time, so we need to get started. Come on."
"I'm not going anywhere."
He sighed. "Listen, Arin," he said, his voice turning harder and sharper. "You have two choices at the moment. One, you can cooperate with me and get the spell fixed before the power that I called forth last night fades away so that you won't have every other power hungry little magician hopeful at the Academy after your ass for the next six months. Or, you can continue to be stubborn and let the power dissipate. If you do that, however, we will have to have sex again, the sooner the better, so that I can summon the power up again. And since I will have to complete the spell during the act, you can believe that I will not be as gentle with you the second time."
"How about choice number three?"
"That being?"
"You let me go home as I am, without any more sex, and I try to forget that I just got fucked by my best friend's dad."
"I'm afraid that that is not one of the options at this point. As much as I wish that I could let you just try and return to a normal life, your grandfather would probably try to kill me. And it would most likely be better for you to try to think of me as simply your trainer."
"But that doesn't change the fact that you are Mark's dad, Mr. Jensen. So is Mike supposed to actually be short for Michal? Mark told me that your name was Michael." For the record, Michal has a slightly different pronunciation from Michael. A slightly different sound and stress to the second syllable. It's not a huge difference, but enough of one that you can tell which is which.
"There are a lot of things that I can't tell Mark about myself."
"Like the fact that you just screwed me? Or... didn't you tell me the other day that you're not really human? Does Mark know that? Or is he going to be like me, and all of a sudden have it sprung on him?"
"You're trying to change the subject. To get out of finishing up the spell. I can't have that." He reached for my arm again, and when I stepped to the side to avoid it, he ended up just grabbing me around the waist and slinging me over his shoulder. Moments later he dumped me on the bed that I had fled just a little bit earlier.
It was when he reached for the towel at my waist that I really started fighting. I don't quite know why it bothered me so much, especially when I knew that he had to have been able to see everything the night before when he had me begging for more. But for some reason the thought of having him see it all again bothered me in ways that I can't even begin to describe. Or maybe it was just because the night before I had been under the influence of whatever sort of drugs they had given me...
"Calm down." His voice took on an authoritative tone that immediately reminded me that he was a father (though my own dad had never used that sort of tone around me, ever). "I just need to be able to see the entire spell pattern to make sure that it's still intact. Unless you'd like to just start over from the sex again, in which case I won't need to check on this one."
"No more sex."
"For now. Though I will eventually have to continue with your training."
"And if I refuse?"
"I can always ask Lyrra to have her pet give you his special treatment again. I'm sure that your grandfather would allow it, for the sake of your training."
I couldn't think of anything to say in response to that. Obviously, I didn't want to do that again, not that I wanted to have sex with him by choice either. But if he wasn't looking to have sex again right now, I wasn't really in the mood to think about either road. So I just stayed silent, and I think he took that as a sign that he could continue.
To my surprise, he actually only lowered the towel far enough to be able to see all of the pattern that he had drawn on me. This left the towel covering the part that I wanted covered the most, which helped me relax quite a bit. Though I tensed right back up when he licked his finger and started tracing over some of the lines on my stomach, leaving a slightly damp line behind.
"What the?"
"A few of the lines have gotten weak. And since we will not be calling forth anymore sexual energy, I need to retrace them with something a little more strongly tied to myself than a marker. Ideally I should be using my own semen, but that would take far too much time at the moment, so saliva will have to do."
"Oh..." I really didn't know what else to say. I had the feeling that complaining about the thought of him using his own semen to trace patterns on my body would be rather pointless after he had already said that he wasn't going to do it. So I stayed silent about that. Instead, I just let him continue with what he was doing, until he looked up from his work with a satisfied look on his face.
"There, that's done. Now I just need to get you tied in as a possible activator, and seal it." Then he held up his finger, the same one that he had just been using to trace over the lines on my body. "Could you lick this for me?"
"What?"
"I need some of your essence in order to tie you into the spell. And just as before, we'll have to do with saliva, since the alternative would be a hassle, and I can't stand blood magic."
"I... I guess I can do that..." Then I leaned forward to lick his finger once.
He sighed, but didn't move the finger. "It's going to have to be more than that. Enough to get it wet, at least. If you suck on it a little, that should be good."
I stared at him, trying to tell him without words that I thought he was crazy, but he didn't even seem to notice. He just pushed that finger closer and closer, and eventually I had no real choice but to open my mouth up and take it inside. I then closed my mouth around it and sucked a little. He started to pull his hand back, and the finger slid out of my mouth wetly. Then, I felt him using that same finger to draw on another part of my stomach, one that he hadn't just traced over. It didn't take him long, and after that he sat back with a satisfied sigh.
"Okay. Now to seal it..." He took both of his hands and placed one on either side of my stomach. Then he muttered a few words, and the traceries on my stomach started to get warm. I bent my neck to try and get a look at what he was doing, and I noticed that not only were the drawings on my stomach warm, but they were glowing. A moment later, the glow faded, and so did all of the things that he had drawn on me, except for a few marks right around my belly button.
"And that's it." He was actually smiling. "Sorry about the couple of marks that I had to leave. Those were part of a different spell that I did last night. They might come off if you scrub them hard enough, but it's possible they may stick until the spell is no longer active.."
"Are you going to tell me what you just did?"
"It probably won't be of much interest to you. But if you insist, will. Still, I thought you might want to know how Mark fits into all of this instead? Since you were asking so much about him earlier."
"I want to know that too." But something occurred to me before I could continue on that train of thought. "But I'd like to get some clothes on first."
He laughed at this and then got up off of the bed. A moment later, he held out his hand to help me up. I took it, using my free hand to keep the towel in place enough to continue to cover me. Then he walked across the room to a closet, where he took out two sets of clothing. He tossed one over to me, with the comment that it should fit me, and he didn't complain when I bolted for the bathroom to get dressed there.
The clothing fit perfectly, and I would have almost thought that he had somehow gotten it from my closet, except that there was far too much black there for it to be anything that I owned. I liked the way the jeans fit, but they definitely weren't mine (at least they weren't black). And as for the shirt(s)...
There were two shirts there, one a black button-up short sleeved shirt made out of some super light material that I couldn't quite put a name to. The other one was a long sleeved shirt in a hunter green, but it had a gigantic logo for some company that I had never heard of plastered across the front, in bright red. In the end I chose the black shirt, despite the fact that it was black, because the green shirt looked overly warm, and because I wasn't about to wear something with a bright red logo on the front. Besides, the black shirt turned out to fit rather loosely and comfortably, so I was a little more willing to put up with the fact that it was black.
When I emerged from the room, he was dressed as well, and just finishing up by putting on a pair of plain white socks and tennis shoes. Or at least, I was pretty sure that was what he was doing, as the world was still more than a little blurry and I couldn't quite get things to resolve enough by squinting. So I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to do anything else until I got my glasses back, if only because I would be getting a massive headache in the near future without them.
"Where are my glasses?" I asked, and he looked up from what he was doing suddenly, almost as if he hadn't heard me come out of the bathroom. He stared at me for a few moments, as if he hadn't quite understood the question. "My glasses?" I asked again.
"Oh, yes. Just let me finish tying this..." He finished up the shoelaces that he had been tying when he looked up and then opened a drawer in the table that was sitting next to the bed. A moment later, he pulled out my glasses, and I went over to get them. I breathed a sigh of relief as I put them on and the world came back into focus.
"Now, I was thinking that we might be able to go out for breakfast and talk about things while we eat. Get away from your grandfather's territory for a bit, so we can both relax a little. How would that be with you?"
I'm not quite sure why, but there was something about the way that he said it that reminded me of how Dad was when he was trying to avoid talking to me about the truth. Obviously it wasn't quite the same situation. He wasn't trying to take me somewhere "fun," and I got the distinct feeling that he was actually willing to explain more things to me, just that he wanted a change of scenery first. But it still reminded me of Dad, and I sighed because of that.
"Hm?" he asked.
"Oh, no, nothing... I was just thinking that all of the adults in my life seem to be acting the same when they aren't quite comfortable telling me things right now. Dad was acting pretty much the same as you are the other day."
"You are an adult yourself, you know."
"I know that! But you know what I mean!"
"Yes, that I do. So, would you care to join me for breakfast?"
"As long as you promise not to do anything weird to me in public..."
"I wasn't planning on anything of that sort. Especially since that would trouble me as well as you."
"Then, sure."
After that he went to the door and had a short conversation with someone who had apparently been waiting right outside. He motioned for me to stay where I was while he talked, so I did, though I was more than a little curious to know what they were talking about. Then, after a bit of talking, he waved me over and explained that Grandpa was more than a little wary about letting me out of his sight at the moment, and was not in the mood to let me leave the building. But he had bargained with the security people and had managed to get them to agree to let us go out for breakfast, provided that someone accompany us. That person would stay outside of the restaurant while we ate, but would be more than ready to chase should I decide to bolt.
I didn't bother to tell them that I wasn't really in the mood to be running away again at that moment. I was still tired from the night before, despite having apparently slept all night long. And my ass hurt, though not quite enough to prevent me from walking. Besides, if they had managed to track me to a hotel room before, they would definitely be able to catch me if I somehow managed to get away again, so what was the point? It wasn't like I had anywhere to run that wasn't somehow connected to them. But I didn't think that they would believe me if I told them that I wouldn't run, so it seemed stupid to try and tell them in the first place.
So, some time later, we ended up at a nearby family restaurant. It wasn't Perkins; it wasn't even any restaurant that I recognized, but it didn't seem like a bad place. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that I realized that we were in Appleton, not Green Bay, after leaving the building. And, as we left the building, I realized that it was not the same building that I had seen Grandpa in before, so they had apparently moved me while I was unconscious. Anyway, we ended up at that family restaurant, with the same woman in the suit from the day before waiting outside while we went in. She had that man with her again, though I had tried my best to ignore his presence ever since he started smiling at me the moment he saw me, a creepy smile that sent shivers (bad shivers) down my spine the moment I noticed it.
Once in the restaurant, it wasn't hard to forget that the woman and the creepy guy were out there, which was a happy thing for me. And, despite the fact that it was still kinda weird being with Michal and knowing that he was Mark's dad at the same time, eating with him was better than the alternatives at the moment. So breakfast was actually fairly enjoyable, up until the point that I remembered that he was supposed to be explaining things to me, but hadn't started yet. So I started with the question that I wanted to know the answer to the most, one of the ones that he had blatantly avoided answering earlier.
"Does Mark know about any of this?" I think the main reason that I wanted to know was because of how Mark had assaulted me earlier. Knowing that his father was involved in all of this made me wonder if maybe he hadn't been in on it as well, since they had to have known that I would flee to him first.
"Not a single thing. Traditionally he would have already been inducted into the family "trade" by now, and he would be in charge of your training. But the blood in our family is running thin at the moment, so Mark hasn't inherited enough of it to hold the same position that I do."
"So are you saying that, unlike you, Mark is more or less human?"
"Not quite. He simply hasn't inherited the magics that are needed in a trainer such as myself. He has all the instincts of our kind, as I'm sure you've noticed over the years."
"What do you mean?" I probably didn't need to know the answer to his question, though I asked it anyway. As it was, I had a feeling I knew exactly what he was talking about when he said Mark had all the "instincts," just none of the magic.
"He is particularly popular with the other sex, is he not?" I nodded. "And I'm sure that he's also popular with any men he might know that are also attracted to men, though you may not have seen quite as much of that due to cultural pressures."
"But normal people can be popular like that too."
"You probably have not had a chance to get much exposure to the other signs of his heritage. One of the other signs would be an abnormal skill in all matters sexual without corresponding experience. I'm sure that you have not had a chance to test this, though I believe you already know that he's quite a good kisser." He smiled a little as he said this, probably because I felt my face flush the moment it came out of his mouth.
"And the last sign would be a particular sensitivity to whenever someone is encroaching on "his" territory. This one borders on the magical, by the way, since some of the senses used to achieve this sensitivity are not ones that any human has. But I do believe that Mark has this sensitivity, based on his actions toward you the other night."
"What in the world do I have to do with this?"
"You may not be an established lover of his, which would generally make you "his" for this matter, but you cannot deny that there is a stronger bond than mere friendship between the two of you And that bond is enough to make you "his" in all the ways that matter. So when you came to see him after almost getting involved in a sexual situation with another man, particularly another man of the same demon heritage, he sensed that and reacted to it in the same way that anyone of our line would. He tried to assert his own claim on you."
"You're making it sound like he's some kind of animal."
"He was acting strangely that night, wasn't he? Even you would admit that. Besides, that isn't a bad comparison, and I say that having gone through much the same experience in the past, before I was fully in control of my own nature. I'll probably have to take you to visit him sometime today or tomorrow and make sure that he's all right."
"After you went and screwed me?" I asked, after looking around several times to make sure that the waitress wasn't on her way over at that moment. We had our food already, but that didn't mean that she might not show up to make sure that everything was going all right. And I didn't want her hearing that, even though she was a complete stranger and I should have been worrying about what a stranger thought about my sexuality. "Wouldn't that just fuck things up even more."
"Not as badly as you would think. Particularly since I believe I will be transferring the responsibility for your training over to him once I have explained things fully."
"You what?" I shouted, though I then ducked my head in shame as pretty much every person in the restaurant turned to look at the two of us.
"I told you that traditionally he would have been the one training you from the beginning, had he the proper magical talents The training is usually quite a bit more effective when trainer and trainee are close in age."
"But you said he didn't have any magic!" This time I managed to keep my voice quite a bit softer than before.
He grinned at me. "That would be what the spell I did earlier was for."
"What was that spell?"
"I would need to explain a bit of the logic behind sex-based power in order for it to mean anything to you. Would you mind that?"
"Go ahead."
"Do you remember when they tested you for something called your "virgin potential" at the Academy?" I nodded. "Well, that comes from sex-based power, and where, or when, it gathers the most. The largest concentration of power that can be gained from sex happens to be a massive amount of energy that is released when a person loses his or her virginity, thus the name "virgin potential." It varies from person to person, but it is always quite a bit more than can ever again be gained from a sexual ritual from that person. There are sex magic users all over the globe who merely go around deflowering both men and women for their virgin potentials, though the average human has little to give.
"However, non-humans, particularly those of the Cellen family, like yourself, tend to have a rather high virgin potential. And your is higher than normal for your family, which makes it quite the coveted bundle of energy."
"But didn't we... last night?"
"Yes, that we did." He laughed softly. "Which is why I drew all over you. That was a rather complicated spell pattern designed to trap your potential and keep it through your first experience. And then, this morning, I sealed it, so that you should be able to keep your potential intact for a while longer. You will be expected to give it up to the young Nelene master, you see, but you will have to have sex quite a bit more before then. So I sealed the spell pattern to keep it alive and keyed it to you. You won't have to actually do anything to have it take effect, mostly because at this point in time you do not have any magic to actually keep the spell alive yourself.
"And that is really the only magic needed from your trainer, so now I can safely pass you over to Mark, who doesn't have enough magic to break through the sealed pattern I put on you. Because the next step, besides having you learn how best to please a man in bed, is to achieve your awakening. And that works far better when you have some sort of bond with your partner, which would make Mark a far better candidate for your awakening that I could ever be. Even if it isn't a reciprocal desire, your friendship is still far stronger than anything between you and myself."
"Yeah, but..."
"I'll put it this way. Your choices at the moment are continuing with me, or having your training switched over to Mark. Refusing is not an option."
I had absolutely no idea what to say in response to that. Obviously I didn't want to just agree with him, but by that point in time I was starting to realize just how impossible it was for me to get any say in any of the things that were going on. I could complain all I wanted, but they weren't going to listen to me. So what was the point in complaining, or even voicing my opinion? I was just going to get screwed, literally, in the end anyway.
So, I didn't say anything back to him. Not in response to his last statement, nor when he tried to get me to talk several other times before we left the restaurant. It was childish, but I figured that if he wasn't going to listen to me, then I didn't really need to talk to him. We finished eating like that and then proceeded to leave, again under the guard of the woman and her creepy companion.
I think that Michal was starting to worry about me by the time we got back to Green Bay. It turned out that we weren't going to return to the building we had just come from, so we ended up riding in tense silence the entire half hour drive from Appleton to Green Bay. Michal tried a couple more times to get me to talk to him while we were in the car, but each time I just turned my head away from him to stare out the window at the passing "scenery." (Not that I would ever consider farmland to be worthy of the name scenery...)
They brought me back home once we were in the city. And while that was better than going back to either Grandpa's place or the building that we had been in earlier that day, it still wasn't somewhere that I wanted to be. To be completely honest, I was probably more pissed at Dad at that time than at anyone else. And that includes Michal, who had fucked me, Mark, who had tried, and the creepy guy, who had drugged me. It was just that Dad was the one who I thought should understand what I was going through the most, but hadn't done anything to help me, besides tell me some of what was actually going on.
So, needless to say, I wasn't in the mood to talk to Dad either when we reached the house. He was waiting for me, since Michal had given him a call on his phone when we got off the freeway, and was probably ready to escort me in the house to make sure that I didn't run for it the moment I got out of the car. I'm pretty sure that he was hurt more than a little when I just glared at him as the woman ushered me out of the car and into his custody, but didn't say a word.
It was about when Dad started babbling at me to try to get me to talk to him that I decided that I was going to continue. I had been planning on stopping it sometime later that day, maybe once I was a little less pissed off at the world in general. But seeing Dad, and a little later Mom, acting like that to try to get me to cheer up, it just pissed me off more. So, like the child that I no longer was and hadn't been for several years, I decided that it was time to give each and every person involved in the entire situation the silent treatment. Mom, Dad, Michal, Grandpa... all of them.
With that in mind, I retired to my room for the rest of the day, with absolutely no intention of emerging for anything other than the bathroom and meals. After all, it wasn't like they were about to let me go anywhere. Even if they hadn't told me about it, I was sure that Grandpa no longer trusted me to stay where I was "supposed" to be and behave the way he expected of me. They didn't need to tell me that I wouldn't be leaving the house unsupervised for a long time, because I had already realized it on my own.