Taylor: Part I
"How are you feeling this morning?"
"Terrible," Taylor croaked, resting his good hand in his lap as he stared at the dull tiles in Benson's office.
The other man sat at his desk, crossing an ankle over his knee as he watched, stroking his bearded chin. Like most days, he was well put-together, wearing clean clothes that somehow still held crisp creases. It was the freaking Soapie invasion — people had died, they came into the facility with all sorts of tattered rags, filth, and battle scars. But Benson? He was a poster boy soldier of a blockbuster film. Or streaming made-for-TV special.
"How long have you known Jayson?" he asked mildly.
Hot tears spilled from Taylor's eyes as he closed them, picturing all the best moments of his friendship with the former behind the lids. The game nights, telly, beer, and dinner. Even that creepy ass ferret. And the Soap Wars. Especially the Soap Wars where the two pranked each other.
In a tight voice, he uttered, "Ten years."
Or was it eleven now? Time no longer seemed a concrete object now the world had ended.
"Not including your recent encounter, how would you describe your overall friendship together?"
Taylor lifted his head with a glare, blinking through blurry vision. His entire body trembled, begging to leap from his chair and punch the other man in the face. It's what Jayson would have done. "None of your damn business."
Whether Benson was genuine or scheming didn't matter. Even Monica telling him to play nice had no effect. None of this would have happened if Jayson had been treated better. By Benson, Dad, and everyone else. Diego wasn't a fan, but that wasn't his fault. Two alpha males would always engage in a battle to see who could pee the farthest.
Benson hummed and wrote something down on a legal pad. Then he met Taylor's seething gaze with a mild stare. "It's okay to be angry. You've been through a lot of trauma in a very short period of time. Emotional scars don't heal overnight."
Angry? Taylor was beyond that. His insides burned and twisted, gutting him from the inside out. He was tired of losing the people who mattered. Sick of people trying to control his life and day to day activities. Exhausted from taking things one day at a time.
"I really don't feel like talking," he finally mumbled. "Can I go?"
"We've only been here five minutes," Benson replied, rolling his pen between his hands. "It's not good to bottle things in."
Taylor rolled his eyes and snorted. "Oh for heaven's sake, get stuffed already. I've made it pretty clear since day one I don't want to be bothered. Are you going to make me disappear too?"
He shouldn't antagonize Benson, but he finally understood why Jayson had hated him. He couldn't speak for Monica's reasons, but her loathing radiated with the power of a nuclear meltdown.
"No." Benson's voice dropped, revealing an odd sadness Taylor hadn't previously noticed. "Did you know I lost a son? You remind me of him. He was quieter, but kind. Saw the world in a different light, much like you do."
Taylor's head snapped up, and he studied Benson carefully. If this was a trick to get him to talk, it was in very poor taste but the turmoil reflecting within the man's irises spoke of a painful loss. One Taylor was becoming more acquainted with lately.
"What happened?" he asked tentatively, taking the bait.
Taking a photograph from the desk, Benson passed the wooden frame over, speaking as Taylor inspected it. "That's my son, Mark. He was in the military too; he went into the Engineering Division after college."
Mark stood in his dress uniform, smiling wide with Benson for the camera and holding a certificate. The resemblance was striking, leaving no question of relation. Mark possessed the same striking eyes and Roman nose, uncanny grins that were uneven on one side, and similar body frames. Mark had an innocence in his smile, contrasting against his father who'd seen too much, but Taylor had no doubt of the elder man's claim.
"Where is he now?"
"Six feet under," Benson stated in a bitter tone, reaching for the photograph. His cheeks clenched as his lips contorted in anger, and venom dripped from every word after. "He wanted to serve his country, just like me. I didn't want him to go because I worried, but I tried to support his dream; I really did. After he'd completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton, he received his commission and went to his post in Hawaii. Last time I spoke to him, he was having the time of his life. I got a phone call in the middle of the night a week later with the news his fellow soldiers had killed home in a hazing gone wrong."
Holy shit. Why was Benson sharing this? The pain seemed so fresh, but if Taylor were a parent, he would probably have it at the front of his mind, no matter how much time had passed.
Taylor bit his lip and swallowed as he stared at his feet. Nothing could alleviate that kind of grief, and no matter what Monica and the others said, he couldn't help the overwhelming empathy swelling inside his heart like a balloon stretched to its limits. No one deserved to lose a child. "I'm sorry."
"I see him in you," Benson replied, prompting Taylor to meet his gaze once again. "He valued loyalty so much; he loved his friends."
"Were these the same friends who killed him?" Taylor wondered aloud, instantly cringing. He hadn't meant to voice that thought. "Shit, ignore me. I misspoke."
Tracing the edges of the frame in his lap, Benson's lip quirked upward at the corner. "Mark used to say uncomfortable truths too. It's okay. But yes. His friends didn't even call the MPs. They panicked and left him for dead — they abandoned their moral code every soldier is sworn to live by and ran like cowards. I miss him every single day, and there is no amount of justice or atonement to fill the void he left behind."
His voice rose with each word until it trembled, and his eyes watered until they brimmed with moisture. It was the first time Taylor had seen a normal, human reaction from anyone outside his small circle of friends. The women hated him, and though he couldn't discount their warnings, Taylor understood what it was like to lose the most important person in his life. For him, Jayson's death was too fresh and painful to process. And he might not have been a child or a parent, but he was the closest thing Taylor ever had to family.
"I feel that way about Jayson," he admitted quietly, picking at a hangnail left from biting then down to the nubs. "Everyone says he deserved to go because of what he did, but imagine the one person you love more than anything being torn from you. I know he made a terrible mistake, but it was because he was off his medications. No one gave him a chance to defend himself — not even you."
As he dragged his sleeve across his eyes, Taylor realized why he'd been so resentful all this time. Jayson had screwed up, but he never would have abandoned Taylor. The other man would have beat himself up and accepted the responsibility. Everyone else tried to change Taylor and mold him into the image they envisioned. Never Jayson. Not once.
Carefully setting the picture back on the desk, Benson rubbed his hands on his thighs and leaned forward. "Try to see this from my point of view. Everyone watched him viciously attack you in the promenade. The assault was unprovoked, and you didn't fight back. He could have killed you if your boyfriend hadn't pulled him off."
The man's tone remained mild as though he were discussing something as simple as the weather, but a spark ignited behind his gray eyes. "Forget that I'm a licensed psychologist for a moment and imagine my reaction as a father who lost a child. Even if I wasn't aware of his emotional instability, the incident would have raised serious concerns. Sergeant Recklaw was enraged, and for what?"
"He thought I lied about Jeannie," Taylor interrupted, blinking through a fresh wave of tears. His throat tightened as he recalled the incident. Despite the need to defend Jayson, the man who'd attacked him had behaved like a stranger.
"He was off his meds," he added in a weak voice. "Jayson was never good at expressing those deeper emotions. I lived with him for years. His nightmares could be really intense."
Which was true. Eric had told Taylor the stories of their deployment and how rough it had been. More than once, Jayson had screamed in his sleep, shouting to 'save her.'
Eric's trauma had been different, but over the years, both men had pretty much internalized their feelings, never discussing their experiences overseas. Neither man had ever shown a propensity for violence. For the most part, they'd both seemed to function like normal people. Unless someone knew them well, no one would know either of them had PTSD.
"That doesn't excuse violence," Benson countered with a sigh. The crow's feet around his eyes seemed to intensify, making him suddenly appear so much older. "I've treated hundreds of men and women with this condition, and I understand its complexity. The smallest thing can trigger an episode. But in a post-apocalyptic world with only a handful of survivors, I need to consider the needs of others in my care as well. We can't afford to be at each other's throats, and his explosive temper, combined with his refusal to seek help, left us no option but to send him away."
Taylor didn't know how to respond. His cheekbone still twinged with occasional pain from where Jayson had fractured the bone, and it hurt to smile or chew, but sending the guy into a world of Soapies on his own was extreme. In his mind, nothing could justify a death sentence for something his friend couldn't control, no matter how wrong his actions had been. Yet Benson had a solid point about protecting those left in the facility.
Slumping his shoulders in defeat, Taylor mumbled, "It's not fair."
"I know. If I could have helped, I would have." Benson left his chair and approached the window, staring into the bright desert beyond the gates. This late in the year, the sun took longer to rise, casting a glow over nature's endless expanse. This office faced the north so it didn't catch the glare, providing a perfect view.
Taylor stood and tentatively approached him, daring to stand just out of arm's reach. With Monica's warning and Jayson's death fresh in mind, he wasn't ready to trust Benson just yet, but he missed those precious moments of enjoying something as simple as looking out a window.
He gnawed on his lip as they stood in silence, turning over his jumbled thoughts and emotions. Dozens of questions raced through his mind, conflicting with everything he'd heard and the side of Benson he witnessed. After a moment, he took a deep breath and asked, "Why doesn't anyone trust you?"
He probably shouldn't have said it, but everyone he'd spoken to so far had voiced some form of discomfort against Benson. That, and he was curious by nature, needing to understand how things worked. He went crazy when he didn't have the answers, and obsessed until he knew every last detail.
Hands in his pockets, Benson tilted his head, facing Taylor with a crooked smile and uplifted eyebrows. Quiet, as if pondering his words, he waited a moment before speaking in a bemused tone. "Why does anyone feel that way about people?" When Taylor shrugged, the older man chuckled. "I guess with some people, you instinctually trust them. Look at our past few presidents."
"One could argue most politicians are rubbish," Taylor muttered.
Benson chortled in response. "Yes, I would agree. But the citizens entrusted them with running our country despite these men and women having their own personal agendas. Riots and murders have been carried out in the name of these so-called benevolent leaders."
Okay... "Where are you going with this?" Taylor asked, angling himself to better view this enigmatic man.
Whirling around, Benson leaned against the window, folding his arms across his chest and relaxing his posture. "I'm getting to that. There are others, who might think of themselves as decent — who try to show kindness to their peers and strangers alike — only to be met with scorn. They aren't necessarily bad people, but one doesn't know someone simply because of a first impression. I suppose the question I should ask is how you feel, standing here with me now?"
Oh, wow. Taylor hadn't thought of it that way. But how many people had he met who'd given him a hard time for being different or weird? Monica certainly had. She'd thought his soap obsession was goofy until he'd literally predicted the zombie apocalypse. And Jayson... okay, no he didn't count. He'd mostly accepted Taylor, and he came with his own brand of weird. But Dad? That dude had thrown him to the curb for being in love with another man.
He puffed out his cheeks before releasing a gust of air. "I don't know. You seem okay."
Patting Taylor's good shoulder, Benson said, "Don't trust someone just because they say something as a fact. Open your eyes and observe. A person who says they're a friend could be a snake in the grass while someone who is socially awkward might turn you off. I'm not saying to not rely on instinct, but you shouldn't judge someone without learning the truth either."
Sound advice. Taylor could think of plenty of people he'd trusted over the years who'd led him astray — Ashley being one of them. She'd wanted to change him into something different, just because of a label. His last boyfriend had left him because he cared more about what his rich parents thought than the happiness their relationship could have brought. People were full of deception.
He found himself nodding before he realized what he was doing. "Huh. No one has ever explained it like that." Usually, everyone told him how he was wrong.
"Be careful who you place your faith in," Benson warned. "I know what your friends mean to you, and I can see how much you value loyalty. Souls such as yours are rare, and some would take advantage if they believed they could sway you."
Frowning, Taylor retreated a step, dropping his hand to his side. "What do you mean? Monica and Diego wouldn't hurt me."
They couldn't. They're all I have left.
Benson shrugged, raising his eyebrows. "Maybe. But discord often leads to secrecy and fear. Fear can move a person to make bad decisions. Unless you know the facts, you shouldn't make any rash decisions."
Like hacking into Dad's computer in the middle of the night? Not that he regretted it. Hacking alleviated his boredom, but most of the time, it tended to be harmless. This was classified government information though. He'd meant to go through it with Monica, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Now, he wasn't sure if he should touch the files. What if Monica had been paranoid? This place was kind of creepy, but that didn't mean something nefarious was happening. Right?
His graze dropped to the ground as he shifted from side to side in silence. He didn't want to give away the fact he himself had been up to no good.
Whether Benson noticed or not, he didn't say. Instead, the man guided him toward the exit and opened the door. "Think about what I said and make your own opinion. I'll see you next week at the same time."
Taylor nodded as he stepped into the hallway, more uncertain than ever.
***
I had to cut this off here. Otherwise this chapter would have been LONG. There's more to come though as Taylor ponders Benson's words.
What do you think? Do his thoughts make sense? It's funny how people can lead us astray with strong convictions, whether they're right or wrong. Let's hope he makes the right decision.
If you loved this chapter, don't forget to vote! Thank you all so much for reading!