"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?" Theo asked as he watched Joe put his clothes on his damp skin. Fatherly love. It could only be that which made the man leave work early, rush home, shower, and be immediately on his way to the hospital to his daughter.
Running his hands over his hair to style it a bit, Joe placed a quick kiss on his lips. "You should rest, my love. It's a VIP room but no bed will ever be as comfortable as ours. I'll see you in the morning." Dashing for the door, Joe ruffled William's hair on his hair out with a gentle smile and a nod. His husband had asked if the boy could stay with Theo for the night. Basically, William was Joe's personal CCTV.
After dinner, they ended up in front of the TV. Watching movies was never easy for Theo because the volume would go unexpectedly high all of a sudden and if he kept it low then he couldn't hear the conversations very well. Which was why he had given up on it for years but he had nothing else to entertain the boy with. He had let William scroll through the movies to pick something and was honestly zoning out, thinking about Daisy and how he had to treat her, how she would react to him after 2 months, and after all that happened before he left. He was so swarmed by his own thoughts that he didn't realize the boy's struggle before William's quiet sniffle caught his attention.
Looking to the side, he found the boy trying to blink back the tears in his eyes. The shock that came over him overtook all his other worries. "William," He closed the gap between them on the couch and cupped the boy's face to make him look up. "What is it?" He asked carefully.
"I'm sorry," The boy swallowed hard, looking everywhere but at him.
"Hey, darling. What happened? You can tell me." He caressed the beautiful eye with his thumb. The tip of his finger brushed over the long eyelashes, felt each of them pass by his skin, and caught the single tear the boy had tried his best to keep in. It rolled down his thumb and broke his heart all the more.
"I— the movie,... it just hit too close to home. I'm sorry." William tried to escape but Theo stopped him as he got over his lap, one leg on each side of the younger's body. He made sure to keep his weight off of the legs which were now even skinnier because of the stress he had caused.
"There's no need to apologize, William. You never apologize for your feelings." Placing the kiss on the boy's forehead, he leaned closer to have the boy pressed against his chest, giving him that safe aura he needed at the moment. "If you want to talk about it, I'm here."
Hesitant hands traveled up his back as the younger hugged him. William's body was shaking slightly against him and he couldn't explain the pain he felt in response to the boy's agony.
"My parents,... they... well,... it feels stupid to say when you've probably had it so much worse."
"Nonsense. No one's experiences, no one's traumas should ever be compared to another's. Each person has their own mental strength. Something that's too much for me might not be that big of a deal for you and vice versa. Please don't ever downplay your pain again. Certainly not because of me."
Arms tightened around him as William pressed against him more. He felt the long fingers clutch onto his shirt as the boy got ready to speak.
"I don't know why but I always felt like my parents hated me. Nothing I did was ever enough in their eyes. I could get straight As but that one B+ could ground me for three months. If I talked, they wanted me to shut up. If I didn't talk, they yelled at me to be more social. If I did socialize, it was never with people worthy enough or it was with people with whom my manner of speech ended up embarrassing them. And on top of it all was my illness. Of course I was always stress-eating but I never ate too much to be as big as I was. It embarrassed them that there were never clothes that could fit me in most of the shops growing up. They always shamed me for it. So I... developed a habit. I would overeat because of anxiety and then I would force myself to throw it all up when the feeling of guilt came over me after I was done eating. In time, I started to gag at the sight of anything edible at all. I lost some weight but I still was big and... I felt so helpless. I was practically not eating anything unless I was on the edge of passing out so why... I remember one night I was doing research for an essay and I read about thyroid. And what do you know? All my life, that had been the problem. As soon as I went to a doctor and after a few months of medication, I started losing that weight. But I never found it in me to eat the right way again. Even then, even when I told them it wasn't me, that it was the illness, they didn't believe me because neither of them had it. They said I was making it up because I was desperate for their attention. They called it a pathetic attempt. I left for college soon after that and never looked back. They never called me and I never reached out either."
YOU ARE READING
STUCK | MxMxM
Romance"Don't come in without permission. Don't make loud noises. Don't make sudden moves. Your phone must be on mute all the time. The office phone is at the lowest volume, leave it like that. Just whatever you do, do not make him upset" William's new bos...
