Scribbles and Drabbles

Notebook Drabble 43

"It's not a good idea to let someone in your state wander off into the night."

"Anywhere but here," August tried to yank out again but almost ended on the floor with a loud crash, but the dickhead refused to budge. 

"Easy," the stranger tried to reassure.

"Let me go!"

"No."

"Let me go!" August bellowed, almost all the pub looking at him as he started wailing at the guy, kicking and screaming for him to back the fuck off. Why the fuck was a stranger so into humiliating like this? He wanted out. The air was too hot and weighed heavy in his chest. He had nothing. Everything he owned, his bank accounts, his car, his soul all tied back to the cheating arsehole and his family was too far to help. He was trapped, and it screamed at him. 

The grip finally gave way, and August sprinted for the exit. He could hear his husband calling his name, ordering him to stop. John had got his trousers on then. 

Cool air blew across his skin as he broke out the door and outside. He didn't get more than a few steps before he slipped over into gravel. Pain dug into him and humiliation swallowed him as laughter exploded from behind him. Cruel, harsh laughter of men happy to see him taken down a peg. They never liked him. They pretended. 

He tried to scramble to get to his feet. Someone offered a hand. He expected the stranger again, or possibly John, but found himself looking up at a face not too dissimilar to his own. He swallowed. If he wanted to cry before, he wanted to weep now. 

"Hi," his older brother greeted low enough that it was between them.  

"Got here just in time for the show, Ric," the stubborn stranger yelled over the sounds of his husband being held back. 

"I can see," Patrick nodded.

August glanced back long enough to confirm that the stranger had John in a hold before taking Patrick's hand to get off the ground. The last time he'd seen his brother was when he was five or six. Patrick was his half-brother and was sent to boarding school to conquer the world. August's father didn't have the same funds to do that. He trembled, mud across his clothes and his heart bleeding from everything. 

Patrick curled an arm around his shoulders and guided him away from the shouting and noise. He stumbled with Patrick, moving slowly to let him walk at his pace. He got steered towards a car and guided into the warm, leather interior. Patrick, or Ric, climbed into the car with him. 

"Paul?" 

The man in the driver's seat started the car, and they drove off, leaving his friends behind. Ric didn't keep his arm around August's shoulders but held his hand loosely. August wanted to sob. Ric's thumb rubbed circled on his hand. Slowly, the peace in the car and pine-scented air refresher calmed his heart, and reality could land again. 

"Patrick?" August said, unsure how to ask what the man was doing there. "It's been a while." 

"Sorry for the intrusion. The pub had high ratings, and Marcus recommended seeing where you and your husband work," Ric said, able to guess what August wanted. His voice was kind and didn't hold any mockery for what Ric had seen. That would change once his friend caught him up on the night's events and August's humiliation. 

"You couldn't have known what would happen tonight," August's mouth was dried. 

"Do you have somewhere to go? Friends to stay with?" the driver, Paul, asked, his voice gentle. "You can't go back into whatever that was."

"No," August shook his head, voice on the edge of collapse. His husband didn't let him socialise without him. All of August's friends were his husband's first. Many of them agreed with the witch that John should get a girl pregnant even if they liked August. Every family needed an heir and all that antiqued bullshit.

"You can stay with us then. We're renting a house," Ric said, his voice determined. Paul didn't say anything against it. 

Ric was a mystery to August and his siblings. Their mother's other child has a better pedigree and a better job than all of them who never came home. Dad pushed it all under a rug and unless he'd met up with Ric, he never mentioned him. August wondered if the man existed outside of his mother's delusions at some point. Coming up with a reason to protest didn't work. Staying with a practical stranger was preferable to going back to the pub. 

August sunk in on himself and tried not to humiliate himself further. Rick knocked their knees together but didn't comment on it. They drive silently to the rental house, the air full of tension as Rick and Paul spoke calmly to each other. Paul asked a few more questions, and August did his best to answer. The man acted as if saving an estranged brother from a bad situation was normal. 

His Dad told Ric to come see him despite August not talking to his family for months. Maybe his Dad warned them that John had some massive red flags that August idiotically ignored. 

August tried not to flinch at the house RIck was renting. He knew it. The place was expensive to stay at and the owner would charge more for the affront of having August enter. They hated his guts. Another person who'd be happy that John had shacked up with someone else

 What happened next was a bit of a blur. He left the car, got swept into the warm living room and sat with a cup of tea and a sandwich. Ric stayed near with a collection of various men moving around them as they tried not to overwhelm him. The loud stranger from the bar appeared, eyes moving over August studying him. He smiled at August as their eyes met and knocked the back of Ric's hair lightly. 

"We got space for him to sleep?" the man asked.

"He'll be in my room tonight," Ric waved a hand to shoo the man away. 

"You can wave all you want, but Paul is coming up with a plan to send you to bed if you don't move soon," the man warned, kissing Ric's cheek and swanning away.

Ric grimaced and finished his tea. "Paul gets protective," he said to August with a slight blush on his cheeks. "I'm not known for being good at taking care of myself, so if he thinks we need to go to bed, we better do so soon." 

"Ok," August nodded, because what else could he do? Sleeping beside a stranger wouldn't be fun, but Ric was his brother. Nothing weird was about to happen. It was better than sleeping on the sofa in a house full of strangers or kicking someone out of their room for the night. 

A round of goodnights featured more should rubs and one kiss on the cheek that was definitely out of instinct and not meant for him as Ric herded him up the stairs and to the bedrooms. The stranger from the bar reappeared to pass over a bag with spare toilettes. It didn't take long to go through the standard nighttime routines, and then, August found himself in the dark, in bed with his half-brother. 

Something had deeply gone wrong here. 

"I don't have anywhere to go," August said into the black. 

"Home? Marcus and Mother miss you."

"I can't go home," August winced at the confirmation that his Dad had sent Ric to see him. John wouldn't have let his parents or anyone else in his known family anywhere near him. "I don't want him to follow me." Because that was an admittance that he didn't want to give. 

"Ok. Well, I go home in a few days. You could come with me to Scotland?"

It was not the worst idea in the world. It was no worse than marrying a man whose family actively wanted him to cheat. August cried, not audibly, but his face was wet. Ric reached over and squeezed his hand. 

"Scotland it is," Ric said firmly.

-x-

"He's not..."

"No, he's not, but I'm not leaving him alone. Best I can tell, he'd been isolated. He doesn't have anyone to go to." Ric cuddled into Paul's hold. "We can fix that."

A/N: Ric's in a polygamous cult - maybe the same one I used for the alien story I did? August needs help, they get him the help he needs, and he gets adopted into the family. (No romance with Ric or his partners)