Dreamer's Disease

Chapter Two

Elliot was silent as he slipped into the large house on the end of the silent street he'd lived on for his whole life. It was a "neighbourhood watch" sort of area, in which everyone knew your business, and your business was everybody's. The next-door neighbours were close friends of Elliot's parents, a pair of over-religious nuts with four adopted daughters and an application being processed for a fifth. They had, as always, given Elliot a disapproving look as he slipped into his house - to call it a home would be pushing it. Elliot, in this sort of neighbourhood, was used to religion, bigotry and a lack of privacy being rammed down his throat. It was for this particular reason that Elliot was terrified about talking to his parents over dinner.

Dinnertime in the Stevenson household was sacred - Elliot had heard his father spout that very line so many times that it was now almost like a mantra for the man. Elliot and his mother and father would sit at the round wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, his father would say grace, and then they would eat in silence, with the exception of a few accusing questions directed at Elliot about school and practise. It was the only time that his parents bothered to take any interest in him, Elliot knew; they wanted something to brag about to their neighbours outside church on Sundays, something to hold above all the other parents in the neighbourhood. Elliot had heard it all a million times, the "innocent" conversations that he could simply translate as "our child is better than yours!" Their bragging disgusted Elliot to no end, but he knew he couldn't voice that particular opinion; his father would have his guts for breakfast if he ever dared to.

So, instead, he held his tongue, spoke only when spoken to, and pretended he was a perfect kid with girls hanging off his arms. After all, that was what his parents wanted to hear, whether it was true or not, right?

Sneaking up the stairs, he made it only six steps from the top before he heard someone clear their throat. Elliot found himself biting nervously on his lip as he turned on his heel, glancing down the stairs to see his father standing at the bottom of the staircase, his arms folded tightly across his chest. Simon Stevenson was a 6-foot-three bulk of muscle, thinning hair and anger, and from the look on his reddened, round face in that moment, he wasn't in too pleasant a mood, as always. Already, Elliot braced himself.

"Where do you think you're going, boy?" He growled out. It was always "boy", Elliot had come to accept. Never "Elliot", never "son". Boy was this man's pronoun of choice. It sickened Elliot to his very stomach to be called "boy". He hated being called a boy, but he knew he couldn't tell his parents that. Well, not just yet, anyway.

"To study, in my room." Elliot replied simply, carefully.

"You know damn well it's chores, dinner, then studying, boy." Elliot lowered his head in shame, then, avoiding his father's accusing glare that made him feel about two feet tall and worth less than a fleck of dirt on the man's business suit - he hadn't been home from the office for very long, Elliot silently observed. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, dammit!" Elliot snapped his head right up to meet his glare, then, his gut tightening anxiously. Today was to be a bad day, he realised.

"Sorry." Elliot had messed up again. Now his father was in a foul mood, and it was all his fault.

"Sorry doesn't even begin to cut it, boy." He growled out. "I got a call from the school earlier."

Shit. What about? Did the school know about Elliot's conversation with Blake? Had someone heard and blabbed to a supervisor? Had Blake blurted something out? Dammit! He knew he should never have told anyone!

"Your grades are dropping again, boy. You'd better have a damn good explanation for that." Not, 'is something distracting you?'; 'is something bothering you?'; 'is the work too difficult?'; 'is there something on your mind?'. No, Simon was all about results. He didn't do caring, or fatherly, or reasonable. Giving his child the third degree the first chance he got was his method for solving even the most miniscule of problems. Elliot had been forced to get used to it over the years. Now, it was just normal to him. Wasn't that how all parents acted? That was what he'd always been told. He'd never been able - never been allowed - to hang around anyone else's house long enough to figure that one out, so he'd just had to accept it as an unchallenged truth.