Family Business
No. 3 A HAIR’S BREADTH FROM DEATH
Gun to Temple | “Say goodbye.” | Impaled
TWs: Child abuse, child whumpee, emotional abuse, child endangerment
He holds himself so still his muscles ache with the effort- yet his face is placidly calm, his posture deceptively loose, and he absolutely doesn't look away from the man pressing the gun to his temple.
Hazel meets hazel. His own eyes stare back at him, wizened by a few decades. Maybe three. Who ever really cared about that sort of thing?
"C'mon pops," he jokes. Two short words are not enough to betray the tightness in his throat or to allow his voice the chance to crack, but for a moment, he's sure his old man heard. His father has always read him well, but he's changing the pages every year, learning a cypher for his thoughts and his behavior to keep Dad out of his head.
After a long moment of uncomfortable eye contact, his father speaks. "Taunting your captor will serve only to irritate them."
That's the point, he doesn't say, but he allows his lips to smirk, allows that bit of information to pass through his filter. "Epic."
His father's brow furrows, a flash of confusion, before the barrel cracks against his temple harder.
He sees sparks and tastes the iron and heat that comprises them. His head spins on his shoulders, balance slipping and forcing him to adjust. The wire holding his wrists together cuts deeper into his skin. There's a wetness that tells him that he's making progress in at least slicing open his flesh. How lovely.
"Answer the question, son, before I shatter your jaw next."
"I wouldn't be of much use now would I?" he quips. He keeps his father's attention on his words, on his overly animated expression, on the smirk he paints across his lips, all to distract from what his hands are doing behind his back. It's difficult, his father's gaze trying to rip the intention from the slightest of tells, but he's learning, rapidly, and he's working just as quickly.
His fingers have gone numb hours ago, so he works carefully, but he slips them between the exposed cable and the bit of rubber coating, fibers catching and breaking his nails as he works.
"You'd be a damn sight less irritating, that's for certain."
Each metal strand, wound together, slowly frays. He's not sure if the blood from his nailbeds and fingertips helps or hurts his cause, lubrication of sorts, maybe.
"Don't push your captors to think of you as more trouble than you're worth."
"'And I'm not worth much'," he paraphrases his father's next words.
Dad almost smiles. It's just a hint of amusement, of warmth, in his gaze, but it's there.
But then Dad's eyes widen slightly. It's not much, but it may as well be a dramatic gasp, complete with heart clutching theatrics, for all the action is so out of character.
Smirking, he bats his lashes up at his father, the trick knife resting against where his kidney should be. His own blood trickles convincingly down his wrist, and the open sores on his fingertips stain Dad's pristine white shirt.
"Oops," he says, voice and head light with giddiness. "I'll pay for the dry cleaning, pops. My treat."
Once his hands were freed, it was child’s play to reach into Dad’s jacket pocket for the knife he kept there. Always on his right side. ‘Don’t be predictable’ had been one of his very first lessons, and yet, here they are.
Carefully, Dad schools his shock into something less visible, and for a split moment there's doubt- did he do right? Did he still fail?
But then the gun falls away from his temple and Dad is smiling, even more apparent now. He pats him on the head, not remembering the other cracks he's taken to the skull this week, and then wraps his arm around his shoulders to lead him out of the testing range.
His chest feels ready to burst and it's not the broken ribs. It takes everything in him not to grin at his father.
"Why not between the ribs?" Dad asks. It's not a criticism. It's a genuine question. The same sort he asks of his business partners when trying to understand their thought processes.
He feels for the first time like an equal to his father.
"Name of the game is switching roles. Making you as useless as a gasping fish wouldn't've helped my position."
Dad chuckles. "No, I suppose not. Good work, son. I’m proud."
The warmth in his chest overwhelms the burning pain in his hands.
