Family Ties

Family Ties Chapter Twenty Six (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch, I’ve spread Sertab to Texas,
lol. InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are
lovely bunnies for archivi J J ProPhile gets extra cookies for correcting
my faux pas with the virus warning (I admit…I am a huge flaming dork sometimes
so send all flames to that effect to the ducks so they can deal with them). Jubilee gets sparkles for the underwear line
(you’ll see sooner or later, lol) and Ramsey and Tex get extra muses because
they’re there. Readers/Reviewers: Some
of you may know I’m a huge flaming dork by now, but you read anyway. Thank you sooooooooooo much for that,
lol. J

 

A/N 2: This has some mild slash. Not much, but a little.
Thought I’d warn ya…

 

 

 



“How do I
look?” Bobby asked nervously, shifting anxiously from side to side.

St John
smiled ruefully. “Good enough to eat,”
he said sotto voce, making Bobby color slightly. “Sorry. Getting it all
out of my system now so I don’t say something in front of your folks.”

“Your tie’s
crooked,” Bobby sighed by way of changing the subject, approaching St John with
purpose. “My parents are mostly harmless. They’ll probably ask you about school,
hobbies, your family…” He frowne“Thi“This is the most evil tie in the history of
ties. It won’t stay straight.”

“Like
owner, like tie,” St John muttered, though he smiled. “Let me fix it.” He
gently disengaged Bobby’s hands and turned to the mirror to straighten his
tie. “You’re not wearing one!” he said
accusingly a moment later when he glanced at Bobby again.

Ah, Ah,
observe,” he grinned and produced a clip-on tie from his pocket, attached it to
his collar and bowed. “You are young,
Grasshopper, with much to learn[1].”


St John
growled in mock-irritation and dove at Bobby, pushing him back onto the bed
with very little effort at all. “You,”
he said sternly, kissing his boyfriend along the line of his jaw, working his
way upwards, “are going to be difficult, aren’t you?”

“Whatever
do you mean?” Bobby murmured, tilting his chin as St John’s breath tickled his
ear. “We don’t have time,” he began,
but trailed off in a sigh.

“There’s
always time,” St John corrected him, nipping his earlobe sharply. “The day when there’s no time for kissing
will be a sad day.”

“Have you
always gotten corny when we make out or is this a new development?” Bobby
wondered aloud, earning a chuckle and sharper nip from St John. With a great dint of will, Bobby pushed him
away and slid off the bed to his feet.
“My folks are going to be here in a few minutes. Are you ready?”

St John
groaned softly and rolled onto his stomach, wincing at the discomfort resulting
from the action. “Give me a
minute. I’m ready but not for them.”

Bobby
cleared his throat and chuckled nervously.
“You know,” he began, but the sound of the doorbell made him jump. “They’re here!”

“And you
just iced my desk chair,” St John sighed, getting to his feet. “We’ll be fine. Just friends. No
problem.”

“I’ll make
it up to you later.” Bobby tried a
hopeful smile but the best he could muster was a very sickly grimace.

“Don’t look
so tragic,” St John sighed. “We’ll do
fine. Now let’s go before they end up
having a nice, long talk with Beast or something.”

“Oh,
God! Obvious mutations!” Bobby was out of the room like a shot,
thundering down the stairs and skidding to a halt in the foyer as the bell rang
for a second time.

St John followed more calmly,
though inside he was quaking. Why do
I keep thinking I’m about to meet members of the John Birch Society here?[2] He could hear Bobby greeting his parents and
paused on the landing, just out of sight of the people in the doorway. Here goes nothing… With measured steps and a cheery smile, he
approached Bobby and restrained the hand that wanted to come to rest on his
boyfriend’s shoulder. “Hi, I’m St John
Allerdyce, Bobby’s friend.”

A woman too strong featured to be
called pretty but still lovely nonetheless smiled openly at him, as did a
rather short man, barely as tall as Bobby, who held out his hand for a
greeting. “I’m Robert Senior and this
is Alice,” he introduced himself and his wife.


St John could feel the tension
emanating off of Bobby as he shook hands with his parents. “Pleased to meet you,” he said
politely. “Bobby’s told me a lot about
you.”

Alice’s smile became a moue of
interest. “He’s told us some about you,
too, but not nearly enough!”

Bobby’s groan was nearly inaudible,
but St John heard him by virtue of his proximity. “Come on, Mom, Dad…we don’t want to be late for the
reservations.”

St John lingered to walk with Bobby
towards his parents’ car. “Calm down,”
he soothed. “It’ll be fine.”

“Wait for it…”

 

The restaurant was one of those
places upper middle class people who are new to money choose when they try to
be refined. The waiters had Sloaney
accents quite out of place in the almost rural corner of upstate New York they
all hailed from and the food was a vague imitation of Continental cuisine that
seemed just half a step above a chain restaurant. All in all, Bobby sighed inwardly, it could have been worse. At
least, he thought to himself, no one had mentioned prayer meetings yet.

“Sally Johansen asked about you the
other day,” his mother said, apropos of nothing. “Her daughter has quite the crush on you.”

I was wrong. “I haven’t seen her daughter in two years!”
Bobby said around a mouthful of potato.
“She’s the one with the headgear, right?” He was not sure, but he thought St John was trying not to choke
on his ginger ale.

“No, dear, that was Evelyn Naught’s
daughter June. Annie Johansen is the
one with the blonde hair and freckles.”

“Oh,” Bobby said, remembering,
“Scabby Knees.”

St John’s left brow arched. “Do tell…”

“She always had scabby knees,”
Bobby shrugged. “Not much to it.”

“The girl was a tomboy,” Robert the
elder put in, sounding disapproving.
“Always running around after boys, trying to play football and
roughhouse…” He clucked his tongue like
an old hen. “Inappropriate for girls to
act that way. It says in the Bible…”

“Dad,” Bobby groaned. “Don’t…”

Robert Senior frowned deeply but
desisted on the Biblical topic, instead saying, “I’m just glad she straightened
up and got some good sense into her. A
more feminine girl you’ll never see, Bobby!”

Bobby grimaced and hoped it passed
for a smile. “It would be wasted on
me,” he muttered into his steak.

St John sipped his ginger ale again
and asked almost absently, “So how was the drive from Boston?”

“Lovely,” Alice sighed.

“Awful,” Robert senior said at the
same time. “Had to stop at every road
side stand and curio shop between Boston and Bayville…Alice collects knick
knacks and apparently, we can’t have too many sad hobo figurines.”

Bobby shot St John an embarrassed
glance and said, “Well, Mom does have the biggest collecting I’ve ever
seen. It’d be a shame if she were
missing some just because she didn’t check the shops…”

Robert senior snorted. “If you say so…” Silence fell for a few moments as the party ate. Robert senior
spoke again when Bobby’s mouth was good and full. “Reverend Mahoney said that he’d love for you to take up his
offer of seminary…You never told us he offered to pay for training!”

St John thought Bobby might
actually explode there and then. Alice
and Robert senior were going on about becoming a reverend, girls in Boston and
in a strange sideways leap, the moral decay of America. “It’s all those fags in office,” Robert
senior said firmly. “The dissolution of
family values and the slow movement away from God is what’s making this whole
country go to pot.” St John found it
possible to burst a major blood vessel quietly.

Bobby’s countenance had become waxy
and panicked. “Dad! Not here!”

“It’s the truth,” his father
insisted, wheeling on St John. “What do
you think, young man?”

“Pardon?” St John pushed his half-finished soda to one side, willing his
opinion to stay behind his teeth.

“These fags in office…All we need
now is somreigreigner for president and we’ll be right there in Hell,
handbasket and all.”

Bobby seemed to be praying
fervently at that moment and St John retrained himself only for the sake of his
boyfriend. Carefully, the mutant known
as Pyro said, “I think that there’s room for everyone in a country that was
stolen from one people and populated by many other nationalities and creeds.”

“We were founded,” Alice began, her
voice oddly smooth when St John expected it to be shrill, “by God fearing
Christians and only by maintaining those values will we remain a strong nation!”

St John inhaled slowly and then let
his breath go to a count of twenty. “We
were founded by religious fanatics kicked out of two countries who then came
here and began the slow decimation of an indigenous people through intolerance
and ignorance. And, just to point this little tid bit out, most people aren’t
descendents of the alleged Pilgrims but rather recent immigrants. My own grandparents came here from France
just before World War Two…” He sipped his ginger ale again, then gave in and
drained it, wishing for something stronger.
Sorry, Bobby. It’s the best I
could do…

Bobby leapt into the conversational
breech. “Hey, wasn’t Grandpa Cotter
from England?”

Alice folded her hands primly in
her lap and said, before her husband could open his mouth and vent whatever
venom was making his face turn purple, “I think you are sorely misdirected in
your education at this school. You
sound as if you have abandoned the Christian principles that make our nation
great.”

“For the love of…”St John breathed,
looking around desperately for some escape.


“Mom, Dad,” Bobby said suddenly,
his face so pale the blue veins under the skin stood out like a bas relief, “I
have something to tell you!”

“Not the time,” St John hissed,
suddenly panicked.

“No, it’s the perfect time,” Bobby
insisted.

“Bobby!” St John said sharply, not
sure which way his boyfriend was about to jump.

“I am gravely disappointed, Bobby,”
his father intoned, glaring daggers at St John. “I would have hoped you would have held closer to the values we
taught you and not have fallen in with such immoral company.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” St
John muttered, edging closer to Bobby. Whatever
happens, he thought, this is going to be messy…

“Mom and Dad, there’s something
about me that you need to know, something that St John knows about and…and…shares
with me.”

Oh, shit, St John groaned
inwardly. Fuck in a bucket. “Bobby, no…”

“Please, St John, I have to. I can’t listen to this and live a lie! I can’t have them go on like this and not
know that someone they love, that’s related to them, is someone they’re
supposed to hate!”

“Oh, God,” St John groaned. Alice and Robert had fallen dead silent and
still as stone. “Okay, I’m with you.”

“I’m a mutant!” Bobby said
defiantly.

“I’m gay!” St John said at the same
moment. Both teenagers looked at each
other, then at Bobby’s parents. St John
said sotto voce, “That did not go so well.”

“What?” Robert senior hissed. “What?”

“A mutant,” Bobby said, choosing
the difficulty least likely to result in screaming in public. “I have a genetic anomaly that is the first
step in the evolution of mankind…”

St John winced as Bobby began the Professor’s
patented Mutations for a Brighter Future speech. He laid a quelling hand on his arm to stop the flow of
words. “We had better go. Your parents have a lot to think about
tonight and we’ll only prevent them frrocerocessing the information if we sit
here and chatter onward…”

Bobby fell silent and stared at his
mother. “Mom?” She turned her face away. “Dad?”

“Go. Now.” His voice was so
dull and flat that it made even St John’s heart ache.

“Come on, Bobby. Let’s go…”


 



[1] Random Kung
Fu reference.

[2] http://www.jbs.org/student/about/jbsbelief.htm For liberals like me and many others, this
is a scary little group. Scary, I tell
you. Believes things like the family is
the cornerstone of the United States and therefore, homosexuality is an
aberration.