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chapter eight: wilting
a/n:
tw(s) — gwen has issues, a brief mention of pee, br*dy mention, blood, phillip banks is a bad dad, slut shaming, charlie conway has internalized homophobia
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Sometimes, Gwen wishes that she could let a person love her.
It's a quiet thought, one never voiced in fear of ridicule, and it's not one that frequently crosses her mind. She's got bigger, more urgent things to concern herself with, after all (like applying to college, or the three people who rely on her to make it through the day.) It's just a thought that tends to linger in her mind whenever she has the misfortune of thinking it. It would just be nice, she thinks, to be loved in return for all of the love she has within her. To have a boy pick her up at seven and drop her off before her imaginary curfew, and collect a shoebox of memorabilia that she hides under her bed and away from her brothers' prying hands, and truly enjoy sex, maybe, for once in her short life.
But, as much as she wishes, she knows better than to think any man would be capable of loving her. She knows that men's hearts, unlike their skin or a woman's womb, are tough and will not stretch to fit her. A man would never understand that she only has so much room in her life, too, and that she can't center herself around him. Her father, however absent, had taught her that much.
As nice as it is to get lost in such saccharine thoughts, she's aware that they're just the dreams of a little girl who thought life would be different when she hit this age.
Which is why, when she wakes up with Rick's arms around her and Scott's heartbeat in her ears and so very warm, she doesn't let herself enjoy it. Enjoying it would mean a moment of weakness, and she was already feeling so low from the hangover that thinking about her lack of a love life would probably drive her to start drinking again.
Gwen, instead, carefully unwinds herself from Rick's tight grasp and slowly crawls down the bed.
He doesn't wake up, just rolls toward the middle and wraps himself around Scott, who makes a strange noise in his sleep but doesn't stir too much. She stands at the foot of the bed, her head throbbing, and quietly watches them until her world stops spinning enough for her to make it to Scott's bathroom.
The shower water is almost too hot, but Gwen pushes the thought aside.
She washes herself with Scott's Old Spice and scrubs her skin with a cloth until it's raw, red, and stings; sniffling, she looks down at a patch that's particularly dark and knows it will bruise, but feels relieved as all evidence of Dom slide off her body and circle the drain.
Sleeping with Brody had been a worse choice by a long shot, but this is a heavier emotional weight. She hadn't cared if Brody was hurt or not because she's required to hate Brody. He's someone she's never going to see outside of a few hockey games, and even then she won't have to interact with him.
Dom isn't just someone she can avoid.
He runs in the same social circles as her. If Rachel keeps using Jeff as a distraction from Cole, then they're going to be seeing a lot of each other.
He's in her gym class. Or, at least, she thinks he is.
She was going to have to see him again, and she was going to have to look him in the eye. How was she supposed to do that without seeing that crushed look on his face?
(And how was she supposed to do that without hearing an echo of her drunken father's voice telling her that she was a bottomless pit—— a black hole when it came to love.)
Gwen is alone with her spiraling thoughts, not even awake enough to enjoy the endless stream of water on her body, until someone knocks.
"Gwen?" Scott's voice, hoarse from sleep, drifts through the door. It's so muffled that she can barely hear him. "You in there?"
"Yeah." She calls back, doing her best not to be too loud.
"Oh, okay... Let me know when you're done."
Gwen takes a deep breath, shakes her head as if it will shake the thoughts out (because she's Gwen Fucking Banks and there isn't a problem in the world that she can't get herself out of), and she turns the water off. She gives Scott the okay to come in when she's wrapped up in a towel and steps forward, hips pressed against the counter, so he can walk past her. Her mind was still fuzzy enough to not be bothered that he peed while she was brushing her teeth.
He clears his throat as he washes his hands in the sink next to her. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah." She shrugs and spits suds in the sink. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Scott stares intently at the side of her face until she looks at him. "'I don't know. What we talked about last night... I've never seen you so messed up about it, that's all."
Gwen sighs and rinses the toothbrush in the sink.
"I'm alright, Scott. Honestly. I slept with a guy I shouldn't have, he may have thought it was going to end differently, and I think I hurt him when I let him know I didn't enjoy it. He wasn't the first, he won't be the last. It's nothing."
He nods but it's so slow that she's not sure he's believing what she's saying. She smiles and then tried to slip away, but he grabs her by the bicep. His hand is warm despite the water.
"Just—— do I need to kick this guy's ass?" Scott's words seem to carry an ulterior message and his eyes burrow into hers.
"No. I wasn't that drunk, and he was perfectly nice to me. I'm the asshole here, okay?"
He nods again, hesitantly, and squeezes her arm once before letting her go.
"Okay." Scott concedes. "I think I've got some clothes you can wear in the leftmost dresser. Fourth drawer from the bottom."
She tilts her head. "What about Rick?"
"He's still out cold, but if he's not you can kick him out of the room."
Scott opens the medicine cabinet as quietly as possible and rifles through the objects before plucking a bottle from the shelf inside.
"Aspirin. Take it, then force him to take it if he's being a child. I refuse to deal with the two of you this early."
Gwen narrows her eyes in a withering glare but takes the bottle from him anyway.
"What if I bump into your dad? I'm naked under this towel."
"Then you bump into my dad." Scott shrugs and then laughs a little when she punches him in the chest. "What? He's been married for thirty years. If he was going to throw it away and chase young tail, he'd have done that a long time ago."
"Young tail? Is that all I am? Young tail?"
He bats her hand away when she goes to punch him again. That stupid smile is still on his face, and the fact that he feels good enough to smile makes her even more nauseous.
"Would you go, already? I have to wash Rick's booze-flavored sweat off me and that means I have to get naked, so unless you want a show..."
Scott hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs and wiggles his fingers for emphasis. She scoffs and averts her eyes so she can grab the doorknob.
As soon as the door closes behind her, the smile falls from her face.
Gwen finds that Rick is, in fact, still asleep after her mad dash across the hallway. He's replaced both of them with a pillow that he clutches to his chest and the sheets are askew, the taut muscles in his back flexing with each breath he takes. For a second time that morning, Gwen watches him sleep, wondering again how the both of them can be so peaceful after a night like that, but she gets startled out of her train of thought when he shifts to scratch the back of his neck.
The basketball shorts and t-shirt Gwen takes out of the drawer are also comically too big for her, but she figures it's better than the possibility of Scott's parents seeing her in a cocktail dress.
She's dry-swallowing the aspirin when Rick grabs her attention.
"Were you naked?" He rasps, stretching languidly in the bed.
"Good morning to you, too." She teases in a dry voice.
"You were naked." Rick says, squinting his eyes.
Gwen tilts her head and looks him up and down. He's turned on his side to face her, laying there with his head propped up on one arm like he's posing for an artist, and she notes that he's still wearing his chain.
"I was. And so are you, sort of." She gestures to him. "I can see your nipples."
"Oh, well, it's only fair to return the gesture, right?"
She purses her lips and considers pushing him. He winces, though, and a low groan rumbles in his chest as he runs the heels of his palms into his eyes.
"Fuck me." He heaves a sigh, sounding like he's going to vomit any minute now. "I think I'm dying."
Gwen clicks her tongue and coos with faux sympathy, "Aw, poor baby."
"This is it. I'm never drinking again."
She sits on the edge of the bed right next to him and gently pulls his hands from his eyes.
"You say that every time you drink, Rick." She hums.
"I mean it this time, Winnie." He whines but lets her take his hands. "This is rock bottom."
A beat of silence passes. He cracks an eye to look up at her.
"...I say that every time, too, don't I?"
"Mhm." She confirms with a bob of her head. "Do you want aspirin or do you want to keep whining?"
Wordlessly, his eyes now clenched shut, he sticks a hand out blindly. Gwen puts a little pill in his palm and then puts the bottle on the nearest flat surface.
"Where's Scott?" He manages to ask after he's swallowed the aspirin and his vomit.
"Showering." She shrugs and pulls her knees to his chest. "Do you think breakfast is ready yet?"
Rick lies back and slides both hands under his head. "How could you eat?"
"I'm not hungry. I just don't want to take this on a completely empty stomach... besides, it's rude, isn't it? Sleeping in their house, using their hot water, and not at least saying hi?" Gwen fiddles with a loose thread on the seam of the shorts.
Rick mindlessly puts a hand on her waist and rubs small circles into her back with her thumb.
Scott's parents, Reginald and Katherine Holland, are a solid decade older than their parents, but they're much better at the job. They got married in their twenties and started trying for a family right away, and continued to try after a doctor told them that she wouldn't be able to carry a baby full term. Almost a decade after they were told they'd never have a family, Reginald went into a hospital chapel and told God that he'd go to church every Sunday if He gave Kitty the baby she wanted. Ten months later, at the ages of forty and forty-two, they had Scott, their miracle baby. (And Reginald has gone to church every Sunday since.)
They treat Scott like he's a miracle, too.
Gwen's never been sure how she's supposed to interact with parents that love their children so wholly. Rick doesn't, either, if the way he stares pensively into the distance is anything to go by.
"You're probably right." Rick sighs, eventually.
"I'm always right."
"Your ego is astronomical."
"That's rich coming from you."
Despite that whole conversation, Gwen, after a little (a lot of) persuasion, finds herself going downstairs alone. Rick claimed that he wanted a shower but she knows that he was too chicken to face Scott's father as hungover as he is right now and is effectively feeding her to the wolves. She figures it's only fair.
She's the master of holding the stern gaze of a father whilst unraveling inside.
Gwen doesn't find who she was preparing for, though. Instead of Reginald sitting in that old armchair and reading the paper, Kitty's in the kitchen. Kitty, with her grey hair up in curlers around her head and her faded pink bathrobe, smoking a camel out of the open window.
The sight made her stomach lurch.
(Another thing about Scott's parents that rattled her was this: her mother never got the chance to grow this old. When she died, her hair was still golden, and her eyes were still young.)
"Good morning, Gwen," The woman says before Gwen can think to make her presence known, "Did you kids sleep alright? You got in late last night."
Gwen swallows and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Morning, Mrs. Holland. And we did. Or, at least, I did. I can't speak for the others."
Kitty stubbed her cigarette, tugged her robe tighter around her frame, and then turned to Gwen with a pleasant smile.
"Ah, the vigor of youth. Do you know what a night out would do to me nowadays?" Kitty tittered wistfully. "I wouldn't be out of bed at seven in the morning on a Saturday, that's for sure."
She almost manages to smile, too. "Yeah, well, I think it's a me thing. Rick's bemoaning all of his life choices right now."
Kitty shakes her head. "Oh, that poor boy. He doesn't know when to stop, does he?"
"No, he doesn't. He's, uh, yet to figure that out."
"Hm, well, we best get started on breakfast then. What is it they say? Starve a fever, feed a hangover?"
Kitty giggles, thoroughly amused by herself, and Gwen's brows pinch. She doesn't get to ask her friend's mother what she meant by we because the woman cuts her off again.
"Can you get started on the eggs? I have to go to the pantry for something."
Gwen nods dumbly and steps around the older woman to get to the refrigerator. She takes the carton of eighteen out and removes six or so for scrambling, and tries to ignore the way that Kitty Holland floats around like the pale pink ghost of a mother she never really had.
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"Are you guys coming back later?" Gwen asks, leaning up into the driver-side window of Scott's truck, a plastic bag with last night's dress hanging over her shoulder.
Breakfast was quiet. Scott's parents asked him how school and hockey were going, and Gwen about her summer; Rick was much too sick to focus on more than one thing and gave nothing more than one-word responses, so they didn't bother to press him much. It ended with Reg Holland patting the boys on the back, kissing Gwen on the crown of her head, and leaving for work. That'd proved to be too much for Gwen, who'd been fidgeting amid such family togetherness and worrying about whether or not her brothers ate breakfast, so Scott drove her home.
The truck billows diesel exhaust into the already foggy morning as it sits idle at the end of her drive. While the smog tickles her nose, Gwen doesn't find herself complaining.
She likes the smell.
"Yeah, sure." Scott shrugs. "Why?"
"I don't know."
She's feeling lonely. Clingy. She'll never admit to it, though. (Is she getting her period? Is that why she's acting like this?)
"I got these gnocchi packages at the store the other night." Gwen chews on the inside of her cheek. "I could make dinner. Us, my brothers, maybe even James, if he'd like?"
The boys exchange a look across the cabin, Rick lifts his shoulders, and then Scott turns back to her to nod.
"Yeah. Alright. That sounds nice. What time do you want us to come?"
"Seven works."
"Do you need us to bring anything?" Rick asks around the end of his cigarette. He's wearing his sunglasses to hide from the light. "Other than my brother, I guess."
"I don't think so. I'll beep you if I change my mind."
With that, she steps away from the truck. For a moment, it looks like Scott wants to say (maybe even do) something more, but he doesn't. He just waves goodbye and pulls the vehicle away from the curb. Gwen watches them drive away, her nose wrinkled and her hair whipping her in the face.
She glances at the overcast sky in their absence and spends a second mourning her (half) wasted summer before she heads inside.
As soon as the door shuts behind her, the hair on the back of her neck stands up.
It's quiet.
Disturbingly quiet.
Gwen's ears strain against the silence as she puts her house key with the rest of them and takes her shoes off. Jake isn't an early riser by any means, but Adam always tends to be up when Gwen gets up. (She needed to keep an eye on him in the mornings when they were small, and old habits die hard.) The thought that he may have spent the night at Charlie's is quickly drowned out by panic when she steps in something wet and looks down to find a dot of blood soaking through her white sock.
"Adam?" She calls, voice wavering, as she follows the blood trail. "Jake? Guys? Is anybody home? Is everything alright?——"
The words die in Gwen's throat when she finds the source.
Phillip is in their kitchen, slumped against the table and still wearing what he wore to work the previous morning, the stench of booze and puke wafting off him. Gwen doesn't think about that for very long, though, because that's all normal, and he's bleeding. Or, at least, that he was. The front of his shirt is only dotted, but the hand that holds a towel to his face is sticky with it.
Lazily, like an old dog lifts its head, he looks up to meet her gaze. His eyes are bloodshot and glassy.
And, as sick as it is, Gwen's relieved that it's just him.
"A boy left you flowers." Phillip drawls, unusually nasal voice muffled by the towel. He points with a bloody finger to the bouquet on the counter. "He didn't leave a name."
She doesn't let her gaze linger on the flowers. Oh, god, does she hope that they're from Dom.
"I'm guessing those aren't his clothes you're wearing."
He's still drunk. He probably just stopped drinking.
It takes a lot of effort for Gwen to ignore the obvious dig at her sexual tendencies.
"They're Scott's. What the hell happened to you?"
"There was a disagreement at the bar." He pulls the cloth away from his face, folds it, and presses it back into place.
In the split second, Gwen can see that it was his nose that was bleeding. She sighs.
"Is it broken?"
"No." Phillip sniffs and winces, and she grits her teeth. "But feel free to check it, Doctor Banks."
She hesitates to get close to him but does. His blood gets on her fingertips when she grabs his chin and leans toward him to check his nose.
"That boy with the flowers—— was he the one that Adam saw you sneak out that morning?"
"I don't know. He didn't give you his name." Gwen releases him. "You're right. Your nose should be fine."
"Of course, I'm right. Just because you think you're smarter than everyone else doesn't mean you are."
"I didn't say that——"
"You didn't have to."
Gwen flinches and looks away from him as his (slurred) voice sours a level. There's no use in arguing with him when he's like this. He won't budge, and he won't remember any of it come tomorrow morning. The drips of blood on the floor catch her attention.
"Where are Adam and Jake?"
"I don't know."
Alarmed and more than slightly peeved, now, Gwen glances back up at him. "What? They're your sons. How do you not know?"
"There are more important things in my life to deal with than my perfectly capable children." Phillip counters. "I didn't know where you were and you're just fine, aren't you?"
"I'm practically an adult. Adam's fourteen."
"You better not be pregnant."
The words came so suddenly that Gwen briefly thinks she imagined it. They hung in the air, suspended, as she registered what he just said, her face slackening with shock.
"If only your mother could see you——"
"Well, she's dead, so she can't." Gwen silently and selfishly enjoys the way he looks at her like she just slapped him. "You're drunk, dad. Why don't you go sleep it off?"
There's a moment of heavy silence where Gwen thinks her father might hit her.
There's another, much quicker moment where she wishes he'd dare.
"Go to bed." She repeats in a much firmer voice and pushes him in the chest. "Go."
Phillip watches his daughter's eyes well up with tears and says nothing. He slinks away, that look of disgust still on his face, to go lick his wounds. Gwen stands in the kitchen and silently trembles with rage until she hears his bedroom door slam behind him. Unwinding her fists, she presses the heels of her stinging palms into her eyes until she doesn't want to cry anymore.
Once she's calmed down, Gwen robotically pulls cleaning materials from the hallway closet and gets to work.
She's on her knees and scrubbing blood out of the linoleum when the front door opens.
"What the hell happened?" Jake's voice is tired. His face is tired.
Gwen shrugs and squeezes bloody suds into the mop bucket. "Don't worry about it."
Wordlessly, he sits on the floor with her.
The flowers were still sitting untouched on the kitchen table.
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Gwen lays in bed that night, so much less warm than she was that morning yet just as lonely, and worries her bottom lip. The bouquet, though she definitely can't see it in the dark, taunts her from its place on her vanity.
The situation is so incredibly eighteenth century gothic, heartbeat under the floorboards that she might've laughed if she weren't so... shaken.
Up until this moment, she was in a great mood. The dinner with all her boys (excluding Adam) went exceedingly well. Scott and Rick managed to get James to come, and the food was good, and she even got to speak to Jake about his school life, but he did clam up when she asked about girls. Things went so smoothly that she could, for a while, forget her strange mood and the fact that her father's blood had been under her fingernails just hours before.
But that was then, and this is now, and Gwen, left alone with her thoughts and the dark and those goddamn flowers, might be losing what little mind she has left.
She wonders if she should call the number, but then the thought of it makes her stomach lurch.
What would it matter?
They'd still think she's a whore anyway.
Even if she forced it. Even if it was Dom on the other end of the line, and she let him talk to her about what happened, and she maybe heard him out, their opinion of her wouldn't change. She'd still be the girl who slept with all of those boys and lead them astray, just one that wore a good girl's clothing.
Her dad would still consider her sullied, even if he won't remember anything he said come the morning.
(And, even if she did go out with him, who's to say she'd even like it?)
Gwen sniffs in the dark. Rolling over in her bed, she's painfully aware of how big it feels, and she wishes that she'd asked her boys to stay.
Her door opens, slowly, with a creak. It shocks her right out of her thoughts and startles her so much that she, now sitting up, doesn't wince at the sudden light until her eyes catch up to her brain.
"The hell?" She groans and looks away before she looks back and squints.
"I'm sorry!" Whispers the shadowy figure in her doorway. It's Adam. "I didn't think—— I thought you were asleep."
Too tired to do much but too awake to sleep, she rubs the heels of her palms into her eyes.
"Where were you all night?"
Adam's shadow shifts from foot to foot.
"Charlie's."
"Should've thought to call there, I guess." She yawns her way through the sentence. "Are you just getting in? What time is it?"
He shrugs and lingers in her doorway.
"Can I... Can I sleep in here tonight?"
Gwen lifts her shoulders in a shrug, too, and pats her mattress. There's no way she's going to sleep and she won't deny him comfort, even if he's too old to still be crawling into her bed a night.
Adam shuffles around in the dark behind her as she settles back in. Eventually, she feels the bed dip with his weight and feels him curl up under her covers, the two of them back to back. He's pensively quiet. She can picture the tumultuous expression on his face before he rolls over to face her.
"Hey, Gwen?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to tell you something," He says, his voice wavering, "and I want you to promise me that you won't freak out."
She shifts and looks over her shoulder. "Okay?"
The next few seconds are suspended in tense silence, and her concern grows the more time ticks by.
"Gwen, I—— I think I'm gay."
"Oh."
Relief flooding her system, Gwen completely rolls over to face him. She blindly reaches out to brush her knuckles across his face.
"I know. I've known for a while."
"Really?"
"Mhm." She hums. Eyes half shut, she smiles softly and hopes that he can hear it in her voice. "You used to play with my Barbie dolls when you thought I wasn't paying attention. Used to leave Ken and Alan undressed."
Adam makes a noise that can only be described as pure, unadulterated embarrassment.
"Jake used to play with them too." She adds as an afterthought. "You both suck at sneaking."
"So you're... okay with it?"
"Of course, I'm okay with it. There's nothing... to not be okay about. I mean, AIDs is something to worry about, but that's not just a gay thing, and I don't think you've had sex yet—— Do I need to, like, have the talk with you or did dad do that?"
"Oh, God, please stop. Just stop right there."
"Okay, okay."
Gwen's small snickers fades into another long silence. For a moment, she considers apologizing for teasing him. But then she hears him sniffle, and her heart drops out of her ass.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't—— I don't——"
In mere seconds, Adam has dissolved into sobs. Gwen reaches over to wrap him in a hug and he gladly accepts the invitation, his sickly hot tears soaking through the fabric of her shirt.
"I told him I liked him."
Who? Gwen almost asks, but then she remembers.
"And we kissed."
"Oh?"
That... was not what she was expecting.
"And—— and then he pushed me away, and he said he hates me." Adam seems to choke those words out, fresh tears springing to his eyes and rolling down his cheeks.
"Oh." Gwen's shoulders deflate. "Oh, Adam, I'm so sorry."
(When he falls asleep, she'll make a phone call. Not to the mystery number. No. She'll call Rick and she'll tell him that it's open season, now.)
(The bouquet, and any silly thoughts that came with it, will wilt in a trash bag on the curb.)
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a/n:
edit: really funny how she was talking about a boy picking her up at seven n such when the boys were like 'yeah we'll be over at seven for dinner.'
I wonder who left the flowers? 🤔
dom was originally just pink from dazed n confused, but my brain keeps going to elton from clueless. do what you will.
phillip on his way to, after his one scene in which he was a semi-decent parent (he was letting his teenage daughter handle everything), slut shame said daughter first thing in the morning -
getting to write alcoholic parents is so cathartic tbh (it also makes me feel like shit)(you've never lived until you've scrubbed your parent's blood off the floor tbh)
thank you for 11k on this fic :)
comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you