Chapter 1: Not new to this place

A/N thanks to Jim or editing!

It wasn't my first day at a new school. I had actually been there for a little over a month, but I'd transferred in the middle of the year. I didn't really know anyone yet. I didn't really want to know anyone. I guess you could say, at the time I had a pretty shitty attitude about life in particular.

The problem was people. I hated people. I know; that said, sounds like the problem was me. But it really was people. I hated people. I felt like every time I met someone new, or trusted even an old acquaintance, something bad came of it. I knew that this was a bit irrational, and I was working on it, I really was; but it was happening slowly.

I didn't trust anyone. I purposely avoided making any friends at my new school, even when people went out of their way to be nice to me. And that happened more often then I would have expected it to. There was even a group of kids who hung around me at lunch and tried to include me in conversations as if it had always been that way. I knew their names, but they were only acquaintances, people who didn't really know me. But that was okay. I really didn't want them to know me.

There were only two people in the world that I trusted. Christopher and Anthony Dovan. Chris and Tony. My brothers. They were both twenty-one, four years older than me. They'd moved out of my parents house at age eighteen. I'd only reunited with them just over two months ago, after three years of separation.

I was only fourteen then, and didn't really understand it at the time. I vaguely remember that Tony and my father had an argument not long before my brothers disappeared from my life. My mother had dragged me away before I could figure out what was happening, but the next thing I knew, Tony and Chris were both gone. I wasn't that surprised that Chris left too. Even if Chris wasn't a part of whatever differences Tony and my father had. That's just the way Tony and Chris were. They did everything together. They were twins.

I remember that when I was really young I was always jealous of the bond they shared; but then again, I'm not sure I would have wanted a mirror image of myself walking around, either. I guess it was just the bond that I wanted. Their whole lives, they even shared a room at my parents' house. There were five members of our family and six rooms in our house, but they always shared. I never understood that. I loved having my own room. But it must have been that special bond thing between them again.

Not that I didn't have a bond with my brothers. They always looked after me, and included me every time I started to feel left out. I was close to both of them. In fact, I was the only one who could tell the two of them apart, my parents included.

They were both identical in every single way, but I was always fortunate enough to know which one I was talking to. I think it was something about the way they looked at me. Tony was always more serious--he had a penetrating gaze, like he was always trying to read you; while Chris was more of a free spirit with this spark in his eyes that left you wondering what he was about to get into next.

But other than that, they were identical in every way. At eighteen, they stood just over six feet tall, with the same broad shoulders that every male member of my family seemed to have, with a natural hockey-player build that none of us really had to work for. They had dark blue eyes and blond hair; they even kept their hair the same, longer, cut to frame their face. And I'd never tell them because they'd just get big heads over it, but my brothers were definitely studs. They inherited my father's facial features as well, with strong jaw lines and straight noses. They even had the same dark freckle in the same spot, just below their left eyes.

I remember realizing what good-looking brothers I had at a very young age. I idolized them, and not just because they were handsome. It was more than that. They were so outgoing, and could draw people to them on their charms alone. Later, I discovered that I could muster the same charisma, but I credit even that to my brothers. They were everything to me, and when they left, it hurt.

It really hurt. They didn't even say goodbye. I begged my parents to tell me what had happened, but no one would say a thing; they wouldn't even tell me where Chris and Tony had gone. When I kept asking, it was my father who put an end to it.

Dad was a harsh man. I'll never deny that. I won't say that he beat us when we were younger, because he didn't. But more than a few times he'd raised his hands to his sons, usually in the form of a harsh slap on the back of the head, or an open-handed slap in the face. But it was the verbal discipline that kept his boys in line.

My father had a way of letting you know when you were a disappointment, and after my brothers left, I was always a disappointment. After he told me that Tony and Chris were no longer his sons or my brothers because they had gone off to 'sin with the devil, ' I was no longer able to ask about it. I just had to take Dad's word for it or suffer the consequences.

My parents never spoke my brothers' names anymore, but they were anything but forgotten. It was like our family was broken, and all of a sudden the full attention of both parental units had turned to me, and it couldn't have come at a worse time.

The year I turned fifteen I'd started to realize things about myself. They were things that had been there long before I turned fifteen, only now, I was beginning to identify certain feelings I had. Of course I tried not to think much of it at the time. I thought it was a phase. I even had a girlfriend, Anna Crossle, and she was perfect--gorgeous, with long, auburn hair, and she was sweet too. We'd grown up two houses away from each other, so she was a friend as well as my girlfriend, and I really did love her. Even better, was that my parents loved her, too.

But there was also Nicky Davis. He was my best friend and actually lived in the house between Anna and me. He had dark brown hair, a never-ending golden tan, and a certain grace about him that I had always admired. And most of my wet dreams revolved around Nicky, not Anna.

By the time that my brothers left, I was pretty sure that I was in love with Nicky. Not that I didn't notice other guys, but Nicky was special. He was also as straight as they come. I discovered that after I was able to put a word to the feelings I was having. I was gay.

Unfortunately, liking boys instead of girls was not acceptable for my family. The narrow-minded, bigoted comments were never really spoken in my house; but they talked about it in church, and my parents were very strict about church. If the preacher said it, it was true. I'm not really sure which religion we were; my mother came from a Mormon background and my dad was catholic--you figure it out. But being gay was a sin, no matter how they looked at it.

I could never bring up being gay with my family. But I couldn't hide it from myself either, so I ended up breaking up with Anna. She wasn't exactly happy about it, but I managed to keep our friendship intact and a month later she was going out with Nicky. Lucky bitch.

But Anna was not the only one unhappy with the breakup. My parents were even less happy, and all of a sudden I was being introduced to every girl from my church. It was weird to me. I was only fifteen, and my parents had never taken an interest in my love life before. Before my brothers left, my parents hadn't even taken an interest in me before. I really didn't get it.

At first I showed no interest in the girls my mother introduced me to. I was too busy struggling with the idea of being gay. I was pretty sure that I was; I mean, I could appreciate a pretty girl, but it was completely different than how I appreciated a good-looking guy. Unfortunately, when I didn't show an interest in the opposite sex, things started to get really weird.

My father began to make comments when I fucked-up. Fucked-up meaning, I didn't go out for football, or when I brought home cookies from a home economics class--which was required by the way, and the cookies were burnt. Suddenly, I was a no-good fairy. I had no idea what that meant. I asked Nicky about it once and he said that he heard some guys at school calling a faggot that.

The realization made me sick. Like I said, bigoted terms were foreign in my house, until then. My mind became a paranoid place as I constantly wondered if my parents had managed to discover the secret I'd been struggling with. I was terrified that I'd managed to slip up and my queerness had somehow become as obvious to them as the fact that I was a blond. Every time he looked at me through suspicious eyes, the same question rang through my head: Did I do something to make my father think that I liked boys? I wasn't about to take any chances.

I went from showing no interest in girls to dating every one of them they threw at me. This tactic worked for quite a while. I even went out for football and took up everything else that might seem straight to my parents. For a while, when my father started commenting on people he thought were gay, I'd even agree with him. The words faggot and queer, and cocksucker left my mouth more than I could count, and every time they did I hated myself a little more.

And the lie was taking its toll on me. I knew what I was and I hated it. And I hated my brothers for leaving, placing all of this undesired attention on me. But I survived. I learned to survive. It wasn't until after my seventeenth birthday that everything turned to hell.

There was a new kid at school. Dan Pierce. He wasn't the most attractive guy I'd ever met. He was short and had a round face, but there was something about him that drew me in right from the beginning; and although he was no Nicky Davis he was what I would call cute.

I didn't really go out of my way to be friends with him; actually, he was the one who did all the work at first. It was strange, really; he just came up to me one day and said he lived in my neighborhood, and that he needed a ride home.

I was completely stunned at first. For one thing, I had never spoken to him before, and for another, we didn't exactly run in the same circles. He was what my friends would call a complete social disaster. I'm sure if he'd approached me in front of Nicky or anyone else, it would have raised some sort of suspicions, but he didn't, and I agreed to drive him home after school.

Dan turned out to be a talkative guy, and really easy to just be with. When we got to his house he mentioned that his parents weren't home and he asked me in. I really considered not accepting the invitation, but there was just something about Dan that I wanted to know more about, so we went inside and spent the entire afternoon together, just getting to know each other. It was in his small, video-game-filled bedroom that he put me on the spot with no warning whatsoever.

"I'm gay. You are too, huh?" He said it in the form of a question, but I didn't hear much of one in his voice. Obviously, he'd forgotten that I was fully capable of kicking his ass.

I couldn't believe him! I mean, he said it so easily and I tripped all over myself trying to deny it before I finally gave up and told him that I thought I was. And it really did feel good to be able to say it out loud, and I felt somehow that I could trust Dan. So I confided in him, but I also made it clear that I thought the feelings I had for other boys were wrong. Gay people were sick. They were perverts. I couldn't be one of them. If Dan knew what was good for him, he wouldn't be one of those people, either.

Dan had a slightly different opinion on the subject. He told me that we weren't sick. We weren't perverted. We were just different. He also told me that it wasn't a choice. I didn't want to believe him. If I believed him, then I would have to be a fag and my dad would hate me.

He showed me articles he'd saved. They said that being gay was just like a genetic thing, like being left-handed. It wasn't a choice. It was the way we were. At least after talking to him that first time, I had a few things to think about. Maybe I wasn't sick. Maybe I wasn't perverted. I was gay. I had admitted that to myself before. Now, I just had to accept it.

I won't say that I was interested in Dan, at least not in a sexual way--at least not that first day; but I definitely needed him somehow. I needed his friendship. I needed someone to confide in, and I found that in Dan my first afternoon at his house.

And Dan seemed to have more experience than I did when it came to being gay. He'd even had a boyfriend before he moved into my neighborhood. He'd accepted his sexuality; and although he wasn't out to most of the world, his parents knew about him, and they had accepted it. Needless to say, I was shocked about his parents. They were nice people, and if they accepted that being gay wasn't a sin, maybe my parents were wrong. That was even more to think about.

In three days I formed a friendship with him--one I kept separate from everything else in my life, but Dan seemed to understand. He was new, but he was outgoing and had already made friends of his own, so we didn't really see each other except after school.

But then on that third day, things took an unexpected turn.

Dan kissed me. All of a sudden, all of those feelings of not being interested in him as anything more than a friend vanished, and things escalated quickly from there. Dan introduced me to my first sexual experiences with the same sex, and I loved every second of it.

For almost a month we spent every free moment we had together. I never brought him home with me for obvious reasons, but I was always welcome in his home. I never really told his parents about me, but I'm sure they figured it out, and they were always kind. I always felt comfortable in Dan's house. Sometimes I never wanted to leave.

But then, tragedy struck. One day Dan never showed up for school. Halfway through the day there was an announcement. There'd been an accident. Dan's parents had been driving him to school when a larger vehicle ran a red light. The entire family was killed on impact.

I lost it. My friend, my lover, the only person who truly knew me, was gone. I broke down and left school. This puzzled everyone I knew because no one knew that I'd even known Dan. But I had, better than anyone else around that town, and I was devastated.

The details of that day are foggy enough, but I remember what happened well enough. It was Nicky who found me. I was such a wreck, and he, being the best friend that he was, took me to his house and tried to figure out what was wrong.

I broke down and told him everything. Nicky said he understood and he didn't even care if I was gay. He really was my friend and he said that nothing would change it. Others were less understanding. There was someone else that day, at his house, listening in. Anna.

Honestly, I don't think that Anna would ever intentionally hurt me. We really were friends, but she had heard everything--my entire confession to Nicky. She, too, came from a family where being gay was not acceptable within the family guidelines. She was afraid for me. She thought that I was sick, or in trouble. Maybe she only wanted to help me.

She didn't.

She went to my parents with the information she had, and that night, my parents confronted me. I was such a wreck. I'd lost Dan. Nothing mattered anymore, and I told my parents that I was gay, none too subtly.

I don't know how I expected them to react. I figured that the worst that could happen was that I could be thrown into the street. I was wrong. I never knew that my father could be so violent. The entire scene was so surreal.

I'm not as big as my father, but I wasn't small. I was a complete jock; at seventeen I was standing at five eleven and a hundred-and-seventy pounds. I was no lightweight. I wasn't out of shape either and I knew how to throw a punch, but something about the idea of striking my own father sat wrong with me. I couldn't do it. I wish I had.

I vaguely remember feeling like a punching bag. My body ached until it went numb. I could hardly stand by the time he stopped, and then I sat there, bloody and broken, as my father announced that he was going out for a drink and I'd better not be queer when he got back. When he was gone my mother went on to lecture me about sinners and hell in her most motherly voice, all the while commenting on the mess my blood was making on her floor.

I took that time to reflect. Were these really my parents? It was so hard to believe. I mean, I know that there are people out there who can't accept their own children, but why did my parents have to be those people? After meeting Dan and his family, it seemed natural that a parent should accept their child, no matter what.

But mine didn't. I didn't have my parents. I didn't even have my friends. Sure, I had Nicky, but how long would it be before he thought I was sick, like Anna did? Somewhere in the back of my mind and in my heart I knew that Nicky would never do that, but I couldn't trust it, not anymore. My world as I knew it was gone, and I didn't feel like I had time to grieve for it.

I got angry.

I was angry because I was bleeding and my mother didn't care. She was too stupid to see it. And the girl next door, the one I had known all my life, had betrayed me to a father who would never accept me. And Dan--Dan had left me! He was dead, and I hated him for it. He left me, just like my brothers.

But suddenly, my brothers were all I could think of. I'd come to the conclusion a while back that my parents had somehow driven them away. Now I was certain of it. I started to ask myself questions, like, where were they? Why couldn't they have stayed? Would they hate me too, if they knew the truth about me? I needed to find out.

I'm not really sure how I got out of the house that night. I remember a lot of pain was involved and my mother was screaming at me. I thought of going to Nicky's house, but my father would find me there. So I thought of my brothers again, and then I remembered something. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.

Gina Leto. She'd been Tony's girlfriend practically all through high school. They'd been really good friends, too, and if he still kept in touch with anyone, it would be Gina. I happened to know that she'd gotten married recently, and lived just on the other side of town.

I managed to drive without getting into a wreck, which was a miracle because my left ankle was throbbing and I could hardly see out of my right eye; but I made it to her house just as it was getting dark. The last thing I remember that night was the shocked faces of both Gina and her new husband when I collapsed right on her front porch.

I woke up sometime the next morning, in a hospital. I had a few broken ribs, a concussion, a sprained ankle and a dislocated shoulder, and the doctors had all kinds of questions. I didn't answer any of them. Then there were police, wanting to know what happened. I didn't tell. My parents never came to see me.

It was sometime that afternoon when I woke up to find someone holding my hand, blue eyes gazing at me worriedly, eyes I hadn't seen in three years. It could have been one of two people, but I didn't have to ask. I already knew, and I burst into tears right then and there. It was the first time I'd cried since my brothers left.

"Tony," I sobbed.

My big brother leaned over the bed and gathered me into his arms as gently as possible and I held onto him for dear life.

"Shh," he hushed me. "It's okay, we're here. Let it out, bro."

I suddenly felt another hand touching my shoulder on the opposite side of the bed and glanced up to see Chris, the mirror image of Tony, also worried, his eyes red and tired--but he was still there. My brothers were there. I grabbed Chris's hand and cried harder as he sat on the bed and hugged me, too.

Apparently Gina had done the right thing. She'd contacted my brothers, not my parents, and I was grateful for it. After three years I had my brothers with me and I lost all feeling of being angry with them for leaving me. After I calmed down, Tony held my hand again, sitting on the bed as Chris paced the room, demanding that the nurses give me something for the pain before he decided to do it himself. I told him that I was fine before he decided to raid the hospital pharmacy, so he then took up residence on the other side of me and switched gears rather quickly.

"Owen," Chris said to me, "you gotta tell us what happened."

All of a sudden my panic was back. My brothers didn't know about me. I was going to have to tell them and I was terrified of their reaction. My eyes began to tear up all over again. Tony saw it and squeezed my hand.

"It's alright, Owen," Tony insisted after sending our other brother a sharp look that clearly told him to back off. "You're safe with us. You can tell us. Did Dad do this?"

I hesitantly nodded and heard Chris curse beside me. He was squeezing my hand a little too hard and I flinched. Chris immediately released his grip and looking sheepish, gave my good shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"What happened?" Tony asked gently.

"I fucked up," I croaked. "It's all my fault, Tony, I really fucked up."

"Bullshit," Chris said, forcing me to look at him with his matter-of-fact tone. "Owen, I'm telling you right now, whatever it is, you didn't deserve this and that fucker..."

"Chris!" Tony cut him off and then turned his attention back to me, as Chris suddenly left the side of the bed and began to pace again. "Owen, Chris is right; whatever it is, you didn't deserve this. We need to know what happened."

I felt myself pulling my hand away from Tony as I thought over the last twenty-four hours. Tony sensed that there was something wrong when I pulled away, but he still let me.

"I'm gay." I said it very quietly, pleading with my eyes as I stared at Tony, searching for his reaction when there was none to be found. "Dad found out, and..." I sobbed again. I swear I was turning into a blubbering idiot. I'd never cried so much before in my life.

I stared at Tony through my tears, needing him to say something, but he just stared at me with a distinct sadness in his eyes, so I looked at Chris, who had stopped pacing; his body had gone rigid and I was afraid again, waiting for him to reject me. And then my worst fears repeated themselves when Chris suddenly stormed out of the room. Chris hated me, too.

Chris's sudden departure only made me cry harder and I found myself desperately reaching for Tony's hand again.