A place to belong

Chapter fourteen: Really?

When you grow up things start to get complicated, Paul sure knew about it, you had to take care of your own things like a job, money, a place to live, make a family, choose wisely, even relationships start to take a harder step and this was the square he was in right now. After what happened the other night things kept going exactly the same, no difference in the way Pat interacted with him, the playfulness remained, yes, but nothing more, not even a single comment about that kiss. Just nothing, and Paul couldn't be more frustrated about that, because at this point he had very clear he ended up developing some feelings towards the taller boy and the action from that night only made it worse.

There was no point on just keep on dwelling on it when he had other things to attend, like for example, payback the only way he knew how to, clean the dust away from the house. As he did so Tord was sitting and playing on the baby jail he managed to scape so easily and so many times before, so Paul remained in the living room where the little one was to keep an eye on him just in case, the news on the tv on to have some sound on the background as he cleaned the shelves.

"... and returning to another kind of news, it was early this morning that the body of Harry Peterson was found beaten and shot to death in the dumpster from the same building  where he rented-..."

For a moment he stopped what he was doing to look at the screen, there it showed a photo of the man he knew well enough, the bastard sure got coming to him what he deserved, just knowing a bit about him made it obvious that this day was going to arrive sooner or later and he couldn't care less about his death at the moment, who knew what kind of people he ended up pissing off to end up like that.

"Gun!" The little boy yelled in amusement as he then heard the word on the news, making Paul's attention go towards him for a moment.

"... even when the authorities still have no evidence clear about who could be the possible murderer, there are some speculations that his death might be related to the ones of young Jason Perk and Mr. Hudson, found close to the urban and problematic area of-..." right then Paul felt that same chill than run through him that night, the one where he saw how someone kidnaped this Hudson man. That night it was too dark to recognize a face, but now that the photos of those two people were shown on the screen he felt static. He saw the face of Mr. Hudson before, it was the same person from the little photo that fell from Patryk's wallet that time.

For the time being he decided not to overthink it, maybe this man had some relation to him? Who knew, over all, he hated to keep doubting him over and over with every little new thing he learned, he was starting to think himself over paranoid and he needed to stop, so after changing the channel to some cartoons he returned to the cleaning as he got his mind completely away from all of this.

"All done..." mumbled to himself once he threw the bag of trash to the container outside the house, just in time to see the family living next door entering the house.

"Oh, morning" saluted the woman with a smile, since it's been already a long time since Paul and Tord stayed at Patryk's house he already got to meet this people, they were very normal, your typical happy family who you don't want to spend more than three minutes with.

"Morning" said back not wanting to spend too much time with them, let's remember Paul is not exactly the most sociable out there.

"How are things going there? All fine?" And there we go, she didn't let him walk peacefully back in, no, she was this kind of woman that wanted to know every little detail about everyone's personal life.

"Yes, yes, all perfect" commented with obvious disinclination.

"My, I really do wonder how are you able to stand the man of the house" she chuckled. "It's still a mystery to me why you two haven't had a big fight yet. Not at least that I haven't heard from my house"

Paul raised one of his thick eyebrows curious by that statement.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes, you know how Pat is, so silent and serious all the time, like... I never saw him smile" she spoke with a curvature on her lips, like if she were excited to talk about Patryk in such way.

"Patryk? Silent and serious?" He scoffed, she must be kidding with him, because the only Patryk he knew was talkative, cheery and always trying to provoque him in any thinkable way. His expression changed making a grimace, to be honest it wasn't the first time that someone around the place that knew Pat made a comment exactly about his bad-looking expression and lack of words. It felt like they talked about a different person.

"Oh, yes, if only you were here a few months back to hear the screams shared between him and his friend" said the woman making a different tone on the last word, like if she suspected something was going on between them, and right after that she made an exaggerated sigh. "I swear, he has no temper, my boys are kind of scared of him, but I find it rather... attractive" she snickered and it was right there that Paul didn't want to hear more.

"Good day" he ended the conversation, returning inside the house as he mumbled things under his breath, that woman really was something.

Once inside, he heard little sounds around the place, probably Tord escaped once more, they really needed a solution right away to this or he'll end up getting hurt at some point. So, following the little sounds on the kitchen he walked in to find how the boy held onto a chair, standing on his little feet as he walked from one chair to the other, then towards the fridge and with happy giggles he would return on his walking until reaching the door where Paul was standing, silently watching until Tord held onto his leg.

This was something to be happy about, hell, Paul was already about to jump of the emotion, the little one was growing up and starting to do things by his own, his little one was growing up! It was somehow so precious and... ah, but that happiness literally lasted two minutes until the little one decided to sprint down the hallway to then knock something onto the living room.

Now he had more power.

"TORD!! NO!"

//A kinda short chapter to keep this going for a bit more, since it's still weekend (and in weekend's I get lazy) I on't get too deep on it, just enough to keep leaving something there for the plot~

Thank you so much for reading!!