Love Like Only A Family Can

Chapter 12

Wes stomps into his room and slams the door behind him.

Fuck Harry, fuck Wes, fuck Alex and Mr. Ozobu and that stupid ass school! Fuck everything and everyone everywhere!

Wes pulled out his phone and went to his text messages. He was a pretty popular kid, and a result of that was 50+ unread messages, all of them having been sent that very day.

Where are you?

Are you coming?

Did you puke, or...?

You aight dude?

Over and over again, fifty plus times. The texts made him happy.

At least someone cares. He thought in a bittersweet tone.

He knew Harry would come in sooner or later, demanding all of his electronics for a certain amount of weeks, lecturing all the while about how irresponsible he was.

How disrespectful he'd been.

How he was a teenager now and he should begin to act like it.

Wes wanted to come right back and say stupid things like, "Well at least I don't paddle my siblings in front of teachers." Because that was exactly what Harry had done.

Did Harry think that would somehow make, persuade Wes to respect that bitch of a teacher?

And further more, did Harry take that assholes word over his own brothers? Because Wesley had clearly stated several times, that the only "curse word" thatched come out of his mouth was damn.

But had Harry believed him? No.

Had Harry given him twenty hard whacks across the ass, with yet another paddle in front of his least favorite teacher, lecturing the entire time about how he could've approached things differently? Yes, yes he did.

Then on top of that, after mentor time was up, Harry forced Wesley to walk to all of his remaining classes and ask his teachers for his classwork and homework. Once he'd finished every teeny tiny part of it, all the while Harry breathing down his neck, he was forced to run the track for the remainder of the day.

Thankfully the remainder consisted of thirty minutes. And thankfully Wes had masters the skill of runwalking. Walking but it looks like you're running.

And thankfully it worked.

They'd picked up Harry's angel of a child, Alex, from Brendon's house and then drove home.

Scrolling through random social media platforms until he was bored, he finally settled on a time-consuming show that didn't really require your full attention.

He then grabbed his favorite book, Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix and read that until dinner time.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Sitting at the dinner table was hard for everyone as anyone could feel the tension from a mile away.

Even Alex who was mostly oblivious to the goings on of the family, noticed the elephant in the room.

"Alright boys." Harry said breaking the tension for the first time hat night. "It is Wednesday so that means it is midweek cleaning day! I want Ollie to do the dishes, Alex you'll help with dusting and Wesley will sweep and mop and then vacuum the carpets. Everyone in agreement?"

Ollie and Alex nodded their heads while Wes looked at Harry with a scowl. He didn't understand why he had to do so much more work than everyone else.

"No."

"What's wrong, Wesley Donald?" Harry said in an exasperated tone.

"Why do I have to do so much and everyone else so little? And follow up question," he said before Harry could even open his mouth. "Why aren't you doing anything?"

"I'll be doing laundry and those things go together not separately."

"Oh, of course. Laundry is oh so easy. And who cares how much I'm hurting because the man that's supposedly protecting and caring for me has recently given me forty whacks of his thick ass paddle!"

"WESLEY!"

"HARRISON!"

"Go to your room." He said in a tone and look that would scare anyone straight.

"I thought I had chores?" Wes said in an innocent voice.

"Unless you want another forty whacks, I'd suggest you to to your room and we can talk about your outburst at a later time."

"Whatever." Wesley grumbled as he stood from his place at the table, not even bothering to finish the rest of his food.

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:)(:)(:)

Alex looked down at his plate, the tension in the room having intensified so tenfold.

It was only after another ten minutes of complete and utter silence aside from the small, muffled yells from Wes's room, that Harry cleared his throat to speak.

"Alex, Oliver. I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I still want you on your chores and Alex, I'll show you what I need you to do.

"Ollie, I want you clean the whole kitchen tonight, please and thank you. I mean the counters, the oven, pots and pans. Spotless."

"Yes sir." Ollie nodded and stood from his place at the table, rushing to do as his older brother said.

Harry showed Alex how to dust before collecting dirty clothes from the rooms, skipping Wes's for the time being.

Later, around nine, after everyone had showered except for probably Wes, the boys sat in the living room watching random Disney movies.

Without Wes of course.

The boys went to sleep around eleven with some persuasion from Harry.

Later, standing outside of Wes's room, he sighed. Wondering if he should go in or not he thought deeply about times were before...

Alex.

And even though those times were only a few days ago, he couldn't help but think that he'd made the wrong choice.

The wrong choice in housing Alex.

Because if his real brother couldn't stand him,
how would a complete stranger?