Frenemies? Or Something More?: a Blake Gray Fanfiction *completed*

38

-fifteen years later-

"Ben! Get down here!" I yelled from the kitchen. He spent all his time in his room, and it drove us insane.
"What?" he said, appearing in the doorway.
I looked at Blake for a little assistance. "Don't talk to your mother like that," he said, never looking up from his phone.
"Blake, remember when I said that we needed to talk to him?" Picking up the hint, Blake put his phone down. "Ben, can you take a seat, please?"

Ben sighed, throwing himself down at the kitchen table. "What now?"
"Hey, you need to calm down, right now," Blake said sternly. It was hot when he disciplined. I shook my head to bring myself back to the situation at hand.
"Ben, we got a call from your school today. Can you tell us why you've been skipping your classes?"
Ben laughed. "I don't need to go to school. I'm making bank on a platform that you guys made popular. You don't need a degree to do that."
I shook my head again. "Your dad and I both graduated from high school. Having a high social media following doesn't mean that you should abandon the rest of your priorities. If we have to, we'll take your phone away until you've gotten your act together. This is completely unacceptable."

Blake's jaw fell. "We can't take his phone away. There has to be another punishment."
"Whose side are you on, anyway?" I yelled. I watched Ben smirk from the corner of my eye. Blake and I clearly should have discussed parenting tactics before he was born, and Ben knew that.
"I'm gonna let you guys fight. Uncle Bryce and Aunt Addi asked if I wanted to hang out tonight," he said, scooting his chair back from the table and heading out of the front door.

"Nice, Blake. We could try presenting a united front when we punish him, instead of you going against everything that I say."
Blake threw his hands up in frustration as I turned back to the stove to continue cooking dinner. "Did your parents take your phone when you were in high school? You were an influencer. Your entire job depended on your phone."
"A few days without a platform giving him an inflated ego would probably do him some good. He's been so disrespectful lately. He walks all over both of us, and it's because you have made it clear to him that he can," I replied, stirring the pot in front of me.
"I just think that maybe you should relax a little bit. He skipped a few classes. As long as his grades are still doing okay, I don't see what the big deal is," Blake replied, standing up and crossing the kitchen to sit on the counter next to the stove.

I sighed. "He's an influencer now, too. What kind of parents would we be if we let our son be a bad influence on other people's children?"
Blake sighed too. "Okay, I get it. We'll talk to him again when he gets home. I think we need to stress the 'influencer' piece. Maybe I can find that article from when Bryce and I got in trouble for that party. Maybe it will remind him that there are consequences for his actions."
I kissed him softly. "Thank you. I'm glad that we figured that out together."

Blake left the kitchen, leaving me alone with my thoughts. How did I end up with a kid that was so damn defiant?
I finished up dinner, calling Blake back into the kitchen. We had opted not to have any more kids after Ben, so when he was gone, we ate dinner alone, which was weird for us. We had gone straight from living in Sway with all of our friends to living in a house with our son. On our own wasn't something that we were really used to.

Ben walked in the door, and I stopped him. "Can you come back in here, please? Our conversation wasn't over."
"Sit down," Blake demanded before Ben could argue. "I was going through some of my old stuff, and I found an article that I want you to read." He handed him a printed out copy of one of the countless articles that had been written about the party that they had thrown for Bryce's twenty-first birthday during the coronavirus pandemic.
"'Los Angeles' top prosecutor announced yesterday that TikTok celebrities Bryce Hall and Blake Gray could face up to a year in jail and a two thousand dollar fine for throwing parties at their rented Hollywood Hills mansion during the city's COVID-19 restrictions.' What does this have to do with me skipping school?" Ben asked, reading out the first line of the article.
"We were dumb kids. We thought that, because we were influencers, the rules didn't apply to us. We weren't providing a good example for our followers. Thankfully, everything ended up okay for us, but we shouldn't have made choices like that. Granted, your choices aren't as bad as endangering people in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, but you can't encourage kids to stop going to school," Blake said, giving Ben a stern look.

"Fine," Ben sighed. "I won't skip class anymore. I didn't realize that this was that important to you guys." He left the kitchen, stomping up the stairs.
I looked over at Blake. "You said that really well, my love. I just hope that we actually got through to him."
Blake stood up, wrapping his arms around me in the chair that I was in. "I think we did, and if we didn't, I pull up some more stupid stuff that's gotten Bryce canceled. Maybe I'll have Josh give him a pep talk about dropping out of high school. We'll see."
I kissed his hand. "I hope so. I won't have a hooligan for a kid. We raised him better than that. You and I both know that."
Blake returned the kiss on the top of my forehead. "You think that we're good parents, right?"
I nodded. "It's like you said: no one really knows what they're doing until they do it."