It's Understandable: A Tronnor AU

32. Talks

Troye couldn't see the room. Troye couldn't process the colour of the walls, or hear the ceiling fan, or feel Connor's fingertips just above his elbow. There was only blank space, the edges red, and everything was angry nothing. Except for the one something, someone, that did nothing but increase that crimson lining of Troye's vision. He wanted so badly for this man to recede into his haywire mind's vacuum, but slowly approaching Shaun was the only thing he could see.

"Troye, I get it if you're mad." He began, holding his hands up as shields to the murderous thoughts lurking behind his son's face. "It was a shitty thing to do, I know that. But you have to understand..."

"How? What? Wait, I can't...what is...but how are..." Troye cut him off, gasping and throwing up his hands and just feeling, in general, like a black bonfire of confusion was lighting him up. His jaw steeled in an uncomfortable position of grinding teeth. His lungs set afire too, and the searing was evident in the smothering clogging of his windpipe and he looked at this man. This nasty, lying man. "It was all...a setup? A fucking trick?" He growled, the flames rolling off his tongue and curling from the insides of his lips. "You got someone to tell me that you, my dad, had a heart attack--that you were dying--just to lure me over here?"

"Troye, I..."

But Troye wouldn't stop to consider even the tiniest thing. He thought he'd been as mad as he could ever get at his father, that his hatred had stabilized years ago, but this was a whole new low. "I have to understand?" He spat, balling his fists as this hurricane of fury whipped his organs from side to side. He felt nauseated. "How am I supposed to understand that? It makes no sense! It's fucking diabolically insane, that's what it is. Crazy!"

"Troye." Shaun tried to remain calm, even though he was feeling a bit queasy as well. "Just hear me out, I wasn't trying to make you upset, I was just trying to..."

"You're a sick fucker, you know that? Sick! Sick! Sick!" Troye yelled, his voice bouncing off the walls and stabbing everyone in the small room with the uncomfortable volume. It was tantrum-like, but nobody in the room could blame him. "Who the fuck does that to their own son?"

Shaun had been trying to keep cool. For years, he kept it cool. He listened to all the fuck-yous and I-hate-yous, and he let himself deserve it. He let his son loathe him, but he couldn't deny that every spiteful word stacked up hurt within him. Guilt, remorse and hurt, which, for the first time, was converting into desperation. He couldn't be calm anymore. He couldn't. It had boiled over, and he suddenly found himself screaming.

"HOW ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET YOU TO TALK TO ME?" He exploded, knocking every emotion off of Troye's face. The younger Mellet's expression was blank, then his eyes widened, then his lips broke open, then his face got pink and his eyebrows lowered.

Perplexed and disturbed and sick to his stomach, he took a step back, and then a second step, and then a third. He pushed gently, cautiously into Connor, silently asking--no, begging for him to make everything make sense. Connor couldn't do that specifically, but could hold his boyfriend's arms from behind, supporting him in any way possible. And that's what he did, as they both watched Shaun rub his face in his forefinger and thumb.

"I shouldn't have yelled." He regretted sullenly. "And I shouldn't have done something so terrible as what I did, but I needed to have a serious conversation with you. You have to understand that I had no other choice."

"What are you talking about?" Troye asked, now more strained and stressed than angry. He felt a dull ache bloom behind his Adam's apple, and tears brewing behind his eyes, but he gulped it all down and tried to figure this debacle out. "You could have just taken a day off, spent some time with me, like normal dads do." He felt his voice beginning to fade along with his ability to cope.