Eventually, Landen spoke again.
"Do you want to talk about it?" His voice was careful. Gentle. "We don't have to. Not if you're not ready. But if you want to, I'm here."
Adriel thought about it. He thought about all the times he'd swallowed his words, buried his feelings, kept everything locked inside because no one had ever made him feel safe enough to let it out. He thought about a lifetime of silence, of smiling through pain, of pretending everything was fine when it wasn't.
He thought about Landen's arms around him, his voice in his ear, the way he'd held him through the worst of it without asking for anything in return.
He wasn't lying to his parents when he told them about him.
He lifted his head. Met Landen's eyes.
"I want to," he said, his voice rough. "I want to tell you."
Landen's hand stilled on his hair for just a moment. Then it started moving again, gentle and encouraging.
"Okay," Landen said. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."
Adriel took a breath. Let it out. Started talking.
He told him about his childhood. About growing up in a house where the walls were thin and the fights were loud. About his parents, two people who hated each other, who couldn't be in the same room without the air turning sharp, who had nothing in common except their mutual conviction that their only son was a disappointment.
"They couldn't agree on anything," Adriel said. His voice was quiet, flat. "Not on money, not on the house, not on whose fault the marriage was. But they agreed on me. That I was too much. Too fat, too soft, too lazy. Too stupid. Not enough of anything that mattered."
Landen's arms tightened around him. He didn't interrupt.
Adriel kept going. He told him about trying to be better. Better grades, better behaviour, better at hiding the parts of himself they didn't want to see. He brought home good reports, stayed out of trouble, did everything he could think of to earn their approval.
It didn't matter. Nothing ever mattered.
"They didn't care," Adriel said. "I could have been perfect and they still would have found something wrong. Because the problem wasn't me. It was them. I just didn't know that yet."
His voice cracked on the last word. Landen's hand moved to his back, rubbed slow circles.
He told him about the bullying. About the boys in elementary school who called him names, knocked his books out of his hands, laughed at the way he looked. About coming home one day, ten years old, and finally telling his parents. Hoping, maybe, that they would be on his side for once. That the two people who couldn't agree on anything might at least agree that their child deserved to be defended.
"My mom rolled her eyes," Adriel said. "Didn't even look at me. Just kept reading her magazine." He swallowed. "My dad said..." He stopped. The words stuck in his throat.
Landen waited.
"He said,'Well, is it bullying if it's true?'"
The silence that followed was heavy. Adriel felt Landen's body go very still beneath him. Felt the shift in his breathing, the tension that suddenly ran through him like a wire pulled taut.
"I never complained again," Adriel said quietly. "Not about anything. Not to either of them. Even when it got worse, which it did, all through high school. I just... stopped telling people. Stopped expecting anyone to care. Because why would they? My parents certainly didn’t."
Landen's arms tightened around him. Almost too tight.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. You didn't deserve that. None of it."
Adriel nodded against his chest. The tears were threatening again, but he pushed them back.
He told him about today. About the birthday dinner — the yearly ritual of sitting between two people who can barely look at each other and enduring whatever they decided to aim at him instead. About his mother starting in on his clothes, his hair, his weight, the same script she'd been reading from for twenty-five years. About his father sitting there, saying nothing, cutting his steak, letting it happen the way he'd always let it happen.
And then he told him what he did.
"I told her," Adriel said. "Everything I've never said. That I pitied her. That her obsession with how I look is about her, not me. That it's tragic."
He paused.
