Sweet Little Birds (BxB Romance, Completed)

Chapter 28: Bitter medicine

Robin's room was usually his sanctuary. It was where he could breathe after an intense day at school or a straining weekend with his mother. It was a place where no one could hurt him. It was his impenetrable castle.

But now the castle was taken by the enemy. An enemy who looted every corner and took possession of even the most sacred of places.

The invading queen sat on the bed when he walked inside. The same bed where he mere hours ago had shared intimate moments with his beloved consort. It seemed so distant and unreal now when the walls were besieged and the castle had fallen. All the kingdom's most revered secrets were revealed and its stores were looted.

Drawers were opened and emptied, and counters, tables, and shelves were bare. His TV, laptop, and school books were missing and even the periodic table on the wall was torn down. Only the furniture that had been there when he moved in remained.

"Where are my stuff?" Robin asked meekly, as he looked at the oddly bare space and tried to process what had gone down.

His mother didn't answer his question, nor did she greet him with any pleasantries or polite phrases. "Who do these belong to?" was her only question as Robin sat down on the desk chair opposite of her. In an attempt to shield his heart, he curled up with his knees in front of him.

A pile of clothes lay beside her. Hoodies. Underwear. A red Liverpool jersey. A pair of ice cream cone-covered pajama pants.

On top of the pile, a pack of condoms balanced. They hadn't used them. They hadn't even talked about it yet. But Robin had thought about it since that day when they went to the beach. Like a lot. So he kept the package from the rainbow bag in his bedside table. Because, maybe, one day, he and Ty would want to try the kind of activities where prophylactics were needed.

He certainly didn't want to discuss his curiosity about such activities with his mother.

His face turned scarlet red at the mere sight of the silvery packaging and he momentarily forgot about the looted room. "No one..." he mumbled in reply to her question. No matter what, he didn't want to divulge Tyler's identity to his mother.

"Don't play dumb with me, son," she spitted back at him and pulled up her phone from her pocket. "Is this no one?"

A picture on the screen was shoved in his face. A picture of Tyler and himself, dressed as Batman and Robin, wrapped up in sweet kissing among blinking pumpkin lights. She flipped through more pictures. Him and Tyler cuddling on a bench on campus. Them walking side by side to class. Even them eating dinner at Rose's Diner.

"You had someone spy on me," Robin surmised, realizing now where the feeling of being watched had come from. It had not been paranoia or an overly active imagination.

"Well, what was I to do, Robin?" she sneered. "You were being unreasonable and it was obvious that you were hiding something."

"You could have just... asked me?" he replied meekly. "Or you could have let me be. I'm an adult. I'm allowed to be with whoever I want."

Liza just huffed in response, like the statement was preposterous.

"So who he is, Robin?" his mother urged him. "Who is it that has turned your head like this?"

"No one," he repeated in a weak voice. Because Tyler wasn't hers. Tyler was his. And he would never let her take him. Like she took Tristan Conway. "He's no one you need to know about."

"It's the guy you were tutoring, right? I should have known... You became different after you started doing that."

"I became me," Robin mumbled, but his mother didn't seem to even hear him.