Fanfiction Archive

After the Incident Bloberta had left him. Clay hadn’t really believed that it would really happen. That there would ever be a line he would cross that would be too far.

And yet somehow he had.

She had left him, and she’d taken Shapey. She tried to take Orel too.

Orel had refused to leave.

“I can’t just leave him all alone! He’s my father, no matter what!”

The words were burned into Clay’s mind.

After everything that he had done, after all the ways he’d hurt his son, Orel still stood by him.

It had taken a while for that realization to set in.

There had been days of screaming himself hoarse; of drinking to sickness and insensibility. Finally he’d had a fit, and smashed almost every bottle and most of the furniture in his own study.

Heaving and gasping on the floor, his hands bleeding, Orel had come and half carried his father to bed.

He’d picked the glass out of Clay’s hands, rubbed them gently with ointment, and bandaged them, all while a barely conscious Clay had babbled and cried.

Clay remembered, hazily, Orel sitting with him for a while, until he must have fallen asleep or passed out. When he woke up, the study was clean, and all the broken glass and furniture was gone.

That was when Clay understood. Unlike anyone else who had ever been in his life, Orel loved him unreservedly and unconditionally. Clay had done nothing to deserve it. He had done nothing but cause his son the same pain that he had always known.

Clay didn’t replace the liquor bottles.

When the shaking, and the sweating, and the vomiting started, Orel had stayed by his side. Orel had cared for him. Made sure he stayed hydrated. Cleaned up his messes.

Looking back, Clay felt lucky he never had a full on seizure from the withdrawal. What he’d had instead were vivid hallucinations.

Orel had been there for him through those too.

Clay would never know– could not bring himself to ask– if the first time Orel had kissed him had been one of those hallucinations.

It had been like a kiss from an angel. Tender, and soft, and reassuring. Clay had held him, and cried.

Days later– after Clay’s eyes were finally clear and he could hold more than liquid in his stomach, and the hallucinations had passed– he’d caught Orel’s wrist as he was turning to leave after bringing him a tray of lunch.

Clay had seen the surprise in Orel’s face as he pulled him in to steal one more of those angelic kisses. Orel was so soft, and warm, and comforting.

“Is this okay, dad?” Orel had whispered.

Clay touched his son’s face with trembling fingers. “Of course it’s okay, Orel. How else can I say I love you?”

Orel’s face had lit up like the sun.

Clay knew that it was wrong. But god damn it he was not going to say no to happiness even one more time, no matter how wrong it was.

From that moment his and Orel’s relationship changed completely.

Orel helped him slowly recover from a lifetime of addiction and abuse with all the patience and love of a saint.

In that house with just the two of them, they cared for and comforted one another. They spent days in bed with their fingers entwined. Orel taught Clay what it was to love with his whole heart, and Clay spent that love indulging and coddling and showering his son with affection.

And slowly all of Clay’s bad habits fell away, and faded into memory.

All except for one.

The secret love he shared with his adoring son.