[Fic] Fathers and Sons

[kittydesade]

Title: Fathers and Sons
Fandom: The Covenant
Characters: Caleb, mostly
Prompt: Ghosts
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,822
Summary: Caleb learns that his new relationship may not be as new as he thought. Written for lover100

Caleb would have been welcome at the Parrys' if he'd wanted to spend the summer break there, even with the new developments. In spite of, because of, he wasn't sure. Maybe they just took it as it came, it didn't matter because Caleb was one of the boys. He wasn't sure how long the Parrys' had known their son was bisexual. He'd gotten to know Richard Parry a little better in the last couple of years, and realized that the man saw a lot more than he let on.

Not that he and Pogue were going to stop seeing each other just because they didn't live together for three months. Hell, they'd seen each other almost every day even when they had lived at their separate houses, even on summer breaks. Someone would get bored and call over to someone else's house. He'd get Tyler on the phone, or Pogue, or Reid complaining that there was nothing to do and in the next blink they'd be out on the cliffs or at Nicky's or playing paintball somewhere.

And Pogue hadn't even said anything when he said he wanted to stay at home with his Mom. Just nodded and it was okay, and he had a funny look on his face that Caleb wasn't sure about but he still hadn't said anything.

Now that he was lugging his duffel bag upstairs he thought maybe Pogue had been meaning to ask if he wanted him to stay there with him. It was possible. Probably not.

"Someone could get that for you."

He turned on the landing, not having expected that. As often as his mother tended to pop out of nowhere when he came in expecting her to be asleep, he should be expecting it by now. He hadn't.

"I know." Caleb shrugged. He just wanted to get upstairs and curl up in his bed, go to sleep. He missed Pogue, not sharply, but at sudden and strange moments. He wanted to call him now, but it didn't seem right to interrupt what was probably shaping up to be a strained and stilted conversation with his mother to phone his boyfriend. Even if he wanted to. Especially if he wanted to.

"How was school?" As if school had lasted for a few hours only, instead of a few months.

"School was fine. Grades should be coming soon." He shifted his bag from one hand to both hands in front of him and then realized how grade school that looked.

"You look good."

Her voice was soft and surprised, and Caleb was surprised to realize that she was sober. At four o'clock in the afternoon. She had been bad when he was there, and worse after his father had died for real and he'd gone off to college, and something was different now. He wasn't sure what.

Caleb shrugged after a second, not sure how to respond to that. "It's been a good year."

"Richard told me about you and Pogue."

Oh. His face went flushed, and then he was shivering in a cold sweat, and he couldn't put his finger on why. He just stood there, bag in his hands, staring at his mother. It wasn't what he'd expected to happen. She kept surprising him. He kept not quite disliking it.

"Oh." He didn't know what else to say. "I was going to tell you…"

"You just got in," she waved it off and turned away, back to the lounge. To the table with the glasses and decanter. It was unfair of him to think it. But he was thinking it anyway. "You come tell me when you're ready."

"M--" Caleb shook his head and almost ran up the stairs.

He meant to grab a shower before he lay down but the duffel bag was slung across the room with enough force to send his dresser rattling, and that was a pretty good sign that Caleb needed a nap. At least it was to him. He pulled down the comforter, blanket, sheet, then curled up and covered himself with the sheet again just to feel something soft wrapped around him.

Maybe he should go over to Pogue's place. But if he left now he'd be sneaking out the roof again, and he didn't want to do that. He wanted Pogue's warm arms around him, to hear that it was okay, that nothing was wrong, and he didn't want to go running to his boyfriend for comfort at the same time. It felt wrong, somehow. Or at least shameful.

And the word held heavy significance now that it hadn't when they were in their townhouse, dealing with classes and career center paperwork and all the social events of college life. Pogue wasn't just his boyfriend now, he was a Son of Ipswich. They both had duties, obligations to the family line. To their powers. And people looked at you differently in Ipswich than they did at Harvard. Harvard was college, licentious, sexual. It was college, it was a place where you experimented. Just like he'd told Pogue to, and he smiled when he thought about it like that, to get him into bed with him.

No one was experimenting now. They were serious, things were serious, now. Life is serious business.

Caleb curled his fingers in the sheets and held on tight, because that last part had been said in his father's voice. Kindly but chiding, the way he was when Caleb had gone off and done something with typical adolescent stupidity. Not like his father hadn't been young ever.

God, sometimes it seemed that way, though. Not just because of the chiding.

William Danvers hadn't ever had to deal with something like this. With pulling into himself, into their lives more completely than anyone else in the families. Dating Pogue meant that his social life stayed in the group as well, and while most of the time that wasn't a bad thing it felt stifling now. The way he felt stifled in his room, and too afraid to go out of it.

When the tears wouldn't stop and he didn't know what else to do, he finally got up off the bed. He was moving through a fog, numb, walking at the behest of thoughts he couldn't untangle and impulses he couldn't explain. His father's study had been closed since they'd moved him to the old colony house. His mother went in there to put affairs in order, and after that any paperwork or correspondence that had to be done was carried out from her bedroom. It still smelled like him in there. Like the old him, Caleb's real father, not the wrinkled husk he'd turned himself into. God, he hated him for that.

Caleb sat down at his desk heavy, but without any self-consciousness. The desk might as well have been his own, it wouldn't have registered. He rummaged through the drawers without knowing what he was looking for, stopping when he found a picture of him and the other three at thirteen, no, fourteen. At their first real swim competition. All of them with their arms around each other's shoulders, grinning like idiots. It was framed, and covered in dust. Caleb wondered who had put it away.

There were more pictures in the drawer, underneath papers and letters, some unsealed and unsent. Pictures of him and Pogue's dad, mostly, pictures of some of the four of them. Caleb stopped on one picture, him and Richard Parry mugging for the camera, making faces Caleb wouldn't have believed their parents could make. They must have been in college, too.

And maybe it was thinking about college that made him wonder, or maybe it was the fact that he recognized that room. Or that he was more sensitive to that kind of thing after watching Pogue for so long, figuring things out in his head before he even asked.

He sat back in the chair and looked at the picture for a long time. Then he went rummaging through the desk again. Letters. There had been letters, that was what he thought. Everything else was a blank.

After the first letter asking Richard to reconsider (although he never said, reconsider what) the letters stopped for three months. And then they started up again, but Caleb could tell he was mad about something. They had that prissy, pissed-off tone. There was a lot about his mom, and Pogue's Mom. Nothing obvious, just what they would think. It spun his mind until he couldn't think even that much anymore.

Shades of the past come back in the present. The fathers come out in the sons, was that what they were doing? Did Pogue even know? He couldn't imagine that he did, Caleb had listened between the lines and the one or two times Pogue had come right out and say it. This had been going on longer than anything. Since before they would have been able to tell that their fathers had been very good friends, once upon a time.

But it was an echo. It was a mirror image and Caleb could feel the weight of his father's ghostly hands pressing down on his shoulders, forcing him to make a choice. To choose. Somehow. Choose what?

"Choose what?"

No one answered. No one knew. It was a stupid question, and this had been a stupid idea. There weren't any answers here, just old paper and heartbreak memories. He threw the pictures back down into the drawer so hard that the glass cracked in one of them, dumped the letters down on top of them. He wasn't his father. Not in Power, and not in this.

And he wasn't going to be afraid of a damn phone call, either. He stalked out of the room and by the time he got back to his own room he was running. Belly-flopping onto the bed and reaching over and down to grab his cell phone.

"Hey…"

There was noise in the background. He wasn't sure what Pogue was doing, but it sounded like his idea of unpacking was opening up his bags and dumping everything onto the floor. Caleb had to smile at the idea.

"Hey…" He rolled over onto his back, feeling better somehow. "Miss you."

He heard the flash of startlement before Pogue laughed softly, smiling. "Miss you too."

"You wanna grab a beer at Nicky's?"

"Sure. Your car or… shit…" Sounds of a scuffle. He'd tripped over something.

"You dumped everything onto the floor didn't you."

"I had to find my jacket! Was going to drive over there anyway, and even in summer the wind'll kill your arms if you…"

"Drive as fast as you do, yeah. Your bike. See you in twenty minutes." Caleb smiled, something easing in his chest.

"Twenty minutes." There was a slight pause, as though Pogue wasn't sure he should say it now that they were home.

Caleb was. "Love you."

"Love you, too."