Lover for Pay: The Escort & the Teacher (manxman)

IX - Vent

Chapter Nine

With Saturday upon him, London was exhausted from not being able to sleep the night before. He'd sat up in the living room for hours thinking over everything from yesterday. Having lost every penny he'd made escorting, the added confusion in finding out Marbell was married only made things a hundred times worse. He had an intractable migraine, couldn't, or more like wouldn't eat anything, and the threat of bursting into tears overwhelmed him every couple minutes. He called the antique shop in the morning to see if they needed any help so he could pile on more hours, but he'd already gone over during the week. Going to work would always give him the chance to keep his mind busy, but now he was stuck at home with not a thing to do.

As Joyce busied herself playing with her dolls and running around the house in her underwear, London dumped all the clean laundry on the sofa and began folding everything. Henry entered after a minute, almost tripping over Joyce who'd crawled out from around the corner. "You sure did sleep long," London said. It was one in the afternoon.

Henry stepped over Joyce's many dolls and the old superhero figures he used to play with, and dropped down onto the sofa. He wore dark jeans a black t-shirt with the words 'Death Note' on it, his black hair bundled under a purple beanie. "So...I was thinking earlier, and I wanted to ask you something."

Stacking his own shirts aside, London said, "If it involves money, I'm going to have to say no."

"It doesn't," Henry assured, "I want to ask you about Dad. You spent a hell of a lot more time with him than I ever did growing up, so I was wondering if it'd be alright if we talked about him."

London sighed, "All you need to know is that he was a total piece of shit."

"I know, but...he treated us totally differently. Compared to me and Joyce, he didn't even seem to view you as a human being. Why?"

This was true, even though they were brothers and lived together until Henry was ten, the now sixteen-year-old knew absolutely nothing about London's childhood with their Old Man. For heaven's sake, London hadn't known about his baby sister until he found out the Old Man was being locked up for fifteen years.

"You really want to know?" London asked, not that he was afraid to tell the boy, but sometimes it could be a real difficult time in his life to think about.

"If you don't mind."

"Alright," London continued folding shirts and pants, assorting socks and started. "He was always an asshole, I'll just begin with that, was always strict and a real tyrant and what not, but it wasn't until I turned fourteen when it got a lot worse. I had managed to get on his good side one day and asked if I could have one of my guy friends at the time come over. We were just going to hang out for a while. When the Old Man walked in on us making out...all hell broke loose."

Henry stopped London there, "Wait, wait, wait, you're gay?"

"Bisexual," London corrected, nonchalantly.

"Since when?"

"Since forever. I've never told anyone because I personally never thought it was a big deal."

"Not that it is a big deal, but, I don't know, I kind of wish I just knew that about you. You don't look gay or act gay, so I guess I just would have never assumed you were into dudes. And I'm starting to sound like an ignorant asswipe, sorry."

"I'm not offended, but I'm bisexual, Henry, I'm still attracted to women." When Henry didn't interrupt him again, London went on about their father. "The Old Man beat my ass worse than he ever had after catching me with my tongue down another guy's throat. I still remember how he choked me, threw me across the room, and kicked the shit out of me. I even blew chunks at how hard he was hitting me. And he left me that way, broken and battered in my room for two days. I wasn't allowed to leave the house or even go to school for two weeks until all my bruises were gone. The only person who knew of how badly I'd gotten it was the guy I made out with, but he stopped talking to me because of how scared he was. Even though you were nine at the time I wanted to make sure you didn't know either."