“Did you deserve it?”
The words are a slap that send Ben rearing back, sputtering. He gasps “Dad!” too loudly over Gil’s harsh breathing and his own thundering heart. His dad doesn’t even look at him, just raises a quelling hand, shushes him gently.
Gil somehow curls even tighter in on himself. “Screwed up,” He mumbles, so, so quietly. “Was my fault.”
“No,” Ben rushes to reassure. “No, no--“
“Probably.”
“Dad!”
His father still doesn’t take his eyes off the shaking shape of Gaston’s son. Ben can hardly breathe around the sudden, angry buzzing in his chest, prickling up his throat and behind his eyes. He knew his parents weren’t thrilled with Gaston’s kids being taken off the isle but for God’s sake, Gil is six months younger than Ben! He’s a kid. His dad can’t be serious!
It takes a second, through the urge to yell and cry and demand an explanation, for Ben to realize his dad kept talking right over his interruption. “Teenagers mess up,” He’s saying. “Teenage boys especially, and fathers are always too hard on our sons. So. Maybe you crossed a line, broke a rule you should have known better than to break. Maybe he was right, as your father, to discipline you. That isn’t what I asked, though.”
Gil looks... lost. Confused and young and unsure like Ben feels. He looks small, and a guy his size shouldn’t be able to pull it off but wonders never cease. He looks fragile. He looks easy to break, and that’s how Ben’s dad touches him, when he reaches out to rest his fingers on a knot of scar tissue twisting around Gil’s arm. Slow like he’s waiting for Gil to pull away, careful like he’s handling something delicate. “What I asked,” his dad whispers, “Is if you think you deserved it.”
And Ben understands.
“You’re a sweet boy, Gil. I don’t know what you did that made him so angry. Maybe it was something heinous, something no father could be expected to forgive. I doubt it, though. I think more likely you screwed up the same way every teenager screws up. Came home past curfew, flunked a test. Skipped out on some chore or responsibility to spend time with your friends. Fell short of expectations that were probably a little too high to begin with. I don’t know, though. The only person in this room who knows for sure what happened is you, so I’m asking. Were you really so far over the line?”
His dad leaves one scar to touch another, the crooked, healed-wrong bends of Gil’s fingers, the line slicing through one temple and down his cheek, the broken bump of his nose. He grazes fingertips across old injuries and Gil shakes and shakes. “Did the punishment fit the crime?” He pushes. “Did you deserve this?”
Gil makes the most -- the most awful sound, small and sad like they’re hurting him. Ben’s hackles are still up from when he thought his dad was -- from -- from before he understood the question, it’s hard for him to breathe out the fierce, protective anger and trust his dad to do the right thing, and that sound isn’t helping. Shouldn’t they be... gentler? More careful about this? Gil’s cheeks are wet and he’s trembling all over and other than that one, tiny noise of misery he’s silent, only his shaking breath and tearful eyes to show he’s crying.
It’s awful, for someone to cry so silently. Ben wants to cry, too.
“Nnnn,” Gil says, and only that. “Nnn-nnnnn.”
Ben’s dad shuffles closer at the same time Ben does, waits for Ben to finish curling up around Gil’s back before he rests his hands on both their heads, strokes down two sets of messy hair. Gil flinches a little at the touch. Ben tries to hold him steady, tries to hold him as he looks and sounds like he’s shaking apart. “Can you say that out loud for me?”
Gil only shakes harder. “Nnnn.”
“Almost,” His dad says. “Almost there, just a little more.”
Gil sniffs. Coughs. “Nnn -- nn.” Like a bridge giving out under a weight. “Nnnnnnnn.” Like a drill touching glass.
“Say it.”
“No.” Gil sucks in a gasping breath and whatever barrier he’d been leaning on crumbles, sends him collapsing forward to press his head against his knees. “No, no,” He sobs. “I didn’t do it on purpose I didn’t mean to piss him off he -- he didn’t have to -- fuck. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t fucking deserve it.”
In the next second Gil is out of Ben’s arms and into his father’s. His dad pulls Gaston’s son against his chest and holds him there like a kid barely into double digits, rocks him back and forth, lets him cry all over his suit jacket. “I know,” He soothes. “I know, I know.”
