Tree Bros Oneshots For Forever!

Murphy

She smelled it before she even saw him. Oh God, how she hated that stupid smell, it always stank up the house and there was no way to fully get rid of it. That smell was the lingering reminder that her son was falling apart by the second. And that she was the fault of it.

Oh, how much she dreaded seeing her son walk through that door, with his black hoodie that he wore every day no matter how dirty and worn it looked and his faded black jeans. With his messenger bag filled to the brim with old homework that he never bothered to do and old pins on the pockets to hide the burn marks from the joints. With his long messy hair that looked so much like hers when he brushed it, which was on rare occasions but when he did the resemblance was uncanny. With his eyes like ice that were like his father's, sweet and welcoming on the outside but cold and harsh underneath. He looked just enough like each of his parents to look like he belonged there, but if he ever said they weren't his family, you could also believe him on that end.

She hated to admit it, but she was terrified of her son. But it wasn't just him that she was so scared of though; it was what he was capable of doing.

Because when Connor Murphy was high, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

Sometimes he would just lock himself in his room for days at a time, refusing to come out. Other times he would sit in the living room on the couch and stare at the wall, his eyes empty of all traces of emotion. And occasionally he would sneak into his sister's room when she wasn't home and throw everything around before leaving like nothing happened. But on most occasions, he was loud and impulsive and aggressive and cruel.

But there were always good days, too. Days when him and Zoe could watch TV together without fighting over the remote. Days when Larry might take him out in the backyard to toss a baseball around. Or days when Cynthia might find him on the office computer, his eyes glued to Minecraft or some other game he used to play when he was younger.

Those days were rare gems. Today wasn't one of those days.

Today was one of the days when Cynthia would sit by the living room window and wait as patiently as she could for the black pick-up truck to pull in the driveway. She would wait for hours upon hopeful hours, sometimes sitting there past midnight.

The waiting was what scared her the most, She thought to herself. Because while she sat there her mind couldn't help but wander to the worse case scenarios, and she couldn't help but think:

What if he doesn't come back?

It was a question that was always in the back of her mind, one she could never find a good answer to. Sure, maybe he had made some terrible choices and maybe he would never get better no matter how hard she tried to believe it, but she still loved him. He was her son.

But then she saw the glare of two bright headlights pull up the driveway, and she felt herself relax  and her heart fall into the pit of her stomach at the same time. Because him coming home was only half the battle. This was just the eye of the hurricane.

The front door slammed open, the brass doorknob ramming into the same dent in the wall, making it deeper every time. Larry had fixed that dent on so many occasions that he eventually gave up and just let it be. Another reminder to Cynthia of all the mistakes she'd made.

"ZOE!!!" she heard him scream until he had no breath left to spare, and his harsh voice and heavy footsteps echoing off the walls. "ZOE WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!"

"She's not home, sweetie," Cynthia stood up when he stomped into the living room, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "She's out with some friends."

"She doesn't go out on Wednesdays," he grumbled to himself, running a hand through his hair in slight distress. She could tell he was nervous. She'd never seen him thus nervous before.

His mother sighed. "It's Friday, Connor."

She could see his hands shaking wildly from the his high. "It is? I could have sworn..."

"Why do you need her?" Cynthia crossed her arms over her chest.

"No reason," Connor averted eye contact before turning around and sprinting up the stairs without another word.

She sighed before reluctantly deciding to go up after him. "Come on, Connor you know can talk to me if you need to."

"Just me the fuck alone," he didn't even bother to look behind him before slamming the bathroom door in his mother's face, the wood gently rubbing against the tip of her nose. She could hear the sound of the cabinet being pulled open harshly, the sound of pill bottles crashing to the ground, and he seemed to be muttering to himself, something that Cynthia couldn't hear through the door. But she knew he was losing it.

Something happened at school that day.

Cynthia rapped her knuckles on the door. "Are you okay in there?"

"Yeah, I just...I've got a headache, that's all," he snapped, before opening the bathroom door again, his hands stuffed in his sweatshirt pockets. "I'm going out."

"Again?" she frowned, briskly following him down the hallway and down the stairs. "You just got back."

He huffed. "Yeah, well I just remembered I have to do something. I'll be back in like..."

"No, I'm not letting you go out," Cynthia put a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped in his tracks. "You can't."

"Why not?" he turned around, his icy eyes filled with frustration. Oh God, those eyes. Just like his father's.

"You just got back home, it's super late..."

"So what, you just let Zoe go out and do whatever the fuck she wants while I have to be trapped here?" His eyebrows furrowed, and Cynthia could tell the anger was boiling.

"Connor you've been out all day doing God knows what and..."

"That's so not fucking fair and you know it," his hands balled into fists. He was fuming. "Zoe gets to do everything because she's so perfect. Everyone loves her more than they love her stupid brother. 'The burden of the family.' The fuck up. The..."

"Connor stop that," Cynthia begged, tears forming in her eyes. "You know that's not true, I..."

"No, it is the fucking truth, and you know it too," he sneered, violently waving his arms around. "You know that she's going to grow up to be a great success and I'll probably end up in a dump. You know that I'm a failure. You know that I don't deserve to be living here. It's not fair." And with that, Connor grabbed his keys and closed the front door with so much force that Cynthia could have sworn the whole house shook. She was left curled into the wall, her face guarded by her hands, and a stream of tears falling down her face.

Shaking it off, she decided to just sit back on her chair by the window again and wait for him to come back. They have had a lot of discussions similar to that one, so she just figured that if he wasn't back in a few hours, she'd find him in his bed the next morning.

But little did she know that those were the last words that she would ever hear come out of her son's mouth.

This is what I think the real Connor was like, or at least, something like this. I hope it was okay.