Change - (boyxboy)

Chapter 13 - Failed

A/N: A lot of really shitty things are said and expressed in this chapter. I hope that nothing triggers anybody but I want to remain true to who the character is as was intended in my mind, and what he thinks and feels is not right in the slightest. He is a horrible person with horrible views.

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"What did you just say to me?" Mr. Hughes growled, absolutely sure that he'd heard what he'd just heard but still wanted to make sure. How could his son, his own flesh and blood do something like this to him? Where had the respect gone with this society to completely disregard your own father's wishes? How was it that his son, a normal teen who didn't act like a fairy and had a girlfriend not too long ago, was now telling him that the person seated next to him was his boyfriend?! 

It was too deplorable to even believe. But his son had said it.

Oliver looked down at his plate, watching as the bloody juices of his steak seeped into the mashed potato. Part of him wondered if that was an ominous sign of things to come as his father was known to be a somewhat violent man. Another part of him wondered why his brain had gotten so dark all of a sudden. 

The blonde felt himself shrink lower in his chair at his father's tone, as if any confidence and hope he had was leaving his body and reducing him into a smaller, weaker person who wasn't able to handle this at all.

The silence at the table was suffocating. Mr. Hughes was glaring intently at his son, waiting for him to man up and respond to his request like a grown man. When it was evident that Oliver was not going to speak, Mr Hughes' attention shifted around the table, landing on his wife who sat at the other end of the table.

"Moira, what do you have to say about this?" he asked, surprised that she didn't seem so upset over this as he was. She should've been questioning where they went wrong in Oliver's upbringing like he currently was. They certainly made a mistake somewhere. 

Probably choosing that school, who prided themselves on their traditional values and teachings that sold Mr Hughes over during the school's Open Day. That obviously wasn't true, letting the students ruin his son the way they had. 

"Moira," he repeated himself, raising his voice a little this time to actually get a response out of his wife, out of anyone at the table for that matter. All the others were looking down at their plates, silently sitting there as if they were mentally handicapped. 

"What do you want me to say, Stephen?" his wife finally said, her tone a mixture of sadness and annoyance.

Mr Hughes cocked his head to the side, confused by her reaction. "You don't have a problem with this? We've failed as parents here," he tried to reason, wondering how she didn't see this.

"How does our son having a boyfriend mean that we've failed as parents?" Moira countered, looking at him as if he said the stupidest thing in the world. "I've met Will many times before and let me tell you: he's a smart, caring, thoughtful young man who I've watched and seen make our son's life happy. And if our son is happy, then I don't think we've failed as parents," she continued on, completely blindsiding her husband by what she was saying, before adding, "I'm certainly not the one who's failing as a parent here," shadily, the disdain for her husband's reaction evident on her face.

This comment elicited a snicker from Xavier, who had been silent the entire time. He'd tried hard not the laugh, his hand covering his mouth as he'd attempted to keep it in, but his mother's statement was too perfect not to have some sort of reaction.

"You knew this was going on and you didn't do anything about it?" Mr Hughes asked, his world being turned upside down right at that moment at the fact that so much had been going on under his roof without his knowledge. He honestly felt betrayed by all of this.

"What would you have wanted me to do about it?" Moira asked in return, eyebrow raised as she waited for his response. She was sure that she and the rest at the table was not going to like what her husband had to say.

"You could've stopped it!" Mr Hughes exclaimed. "You could've stepped in and stopped this whole silliness from happening. Our son isn't some queer, alright - he's been ruined by this one," he continued on, finally turning his attention to the boy who was destroying his family. "You're never to see my son again and fill his mind with disgusting ideas ever again, do you hear me?" he ordered, glaring menacingly at the teen.

But Will was not having it, shaking his head at the older man. "You have no authority over me, Mr Hughes. You cannot tell me what to do and you cannot tell me, or Oliver, how to feel. You have no right to speak to me, or to anyone, the way that you do, which is the most deplorable thing I've ever witnessed," he retorted, shaking his head at how horrible this grown man was. "How dare you speak to anybody like that?" he added, wondering how someone like this produced such a wonderful person like Oliver. 

Part of Will was surprised that he'd spoken to Oliver's father the way he just did. It wasn't like him to speak like that at all, more the meek type who reverted into their shell when things went wrong. But that's what Oliver was doing right now, and Will understood why. Maybe that's why he was being so assertive now, to protect his boyfriend from the horrendous things his father was saying. He needed to be strong for Oliver, who was weak from the situation at hand.

Remembering who he was here for, Will reached over to the seat next to him and took hold of Oliver's hand, giving it a squeeze to give some sort of reassurance to him that all was going to work out and that he was going to be there for him during it all, no matter what happened.

"How dare you speak to ME like that?!" Mr Hughes replied, his tone getting angrier and louder by the second, incredulous that this teenager had to the audacity to talk back and disrespect him like he just had. "If you don't like how I talk, then you can get the hell out of my house and never come back. I'm forbidding you from ever seeing my son ever again. I'm going to take you out of that school, Oliver, it's done nothing but mess you up. You can finish the school year at home," he ranted on, shifting his attention to his son, who'd still stayed quiet the entire time.

"No," was Oliver's reply. His voice was wobbly, thick with the emotional storm that he was feeling inside, but was still loud enough to be heard.

"What did you say?" his father asked, not because he didn't hear him but because he was surprised by his son's insolence.

"You heard me: No. No, dad. No," Oliver stated louder this time, making sure his father heard every word he said. "No, I'm not leaving school and finishing it here. No, I'm not never seeing Will again. No, I'm not going to apologise for who I love. No, dad, I'm not going to suffer to make you happy," he continued on, his tone getting firmer as his confidence grew again.

"Get out of my house," was Mr Hughes' only reply.

"Fine," Oliver agreed as he burst up out of the chair, pulling Will up with him. "Let's go, Will. We're obviously not wanted here and I don't particularly want to be in the same house as a fucking bigot either," he said before pulling his boyfriend along with him upstairs.

Mr Hughes could hear scuffling around upstairs, presumably as his son packed some of his things, but he paid it no mind as he returned to his now-cold steak. Not only had his son and his boyfriend ruined the evening, but they'd also ruined a perfectly good steak.

Suddenly, he heard a rushing down the stairs as Oliver and Will exited quickly, with Oliver yelling over his shoulder, "Bye Xave, love you Mum, fuck you Dad!" on his way out, followed by a heavy slam of the front door closing.

The table was silent after that, only broken as Moira shook her head and sighed, "sometimes I forget why I ever married you, Stephen."

Mr Hughes closed his eyes at the comment, hurt by her words.

How did this all go so wrong?