Bruised and Beaten

It had taken no small amount of effort to get out of the hospital without someone being called. He was a minor, and technically someone should have been. But he was also nearly eighteen, and his injuries had been minor. He'd made the point that getting a call that his son was in the hospital would cause his father far more stress then just telling him himself, and he'd effectively snuck out with that.

He'd arrived home in the early afternoon, his side and hand bandaged. It was the shirt that was going to be trouble, and he was careful to creep up to his room, hoping to change before anyone spotted him in a bloody shirt.

Angelo was midway through peeling off his shirt when he heard a knock at the door. Busted. He peeled it off at a record speed, tossing it into the laundry basket, and then grabbed another shirt to pull on before he even got an answer out, sitting on his bed.

There wasn't going to be any fooling his dad, was there?

Hell no there wasn't.

So he just explained himself immediately, the moment he saw his dad's face.

"Before you freak out, I'm fine. Just a bit bruised."

Well, at least he wasn't breathing fire, even if his eyes were doing the lizard-eye-thing. Jude had been alarmed the first couple of times it happened, but generally speaking he was fairly safe in the knowledge that... well, it was his dad.

He was safe with him.

"Short version is that I jumped into a brawl to protect a friend. Elbow to the ribs, might be slightly cracked, and scraped my hand. Nothing serious. Light enough I managed to convince the nurse not to call you, because I knew you'd worry."

He had a pretty good feeling that the short version wasn't going to be enough. At another time, he'd have suggested his father come sit beside him, only that wasn't going to work, was it? Maybe later.

"I went to help sit in on Broen and his father. He's been stressed lately, and the situation wasn't good for either of them."

"No," Jude said quickly, before Basilio could decide to grow wings, fly out the window, and turn Broen into even more of a fine paste than he already was.

"Crawford," he said with a nod. "Things were going. Uh. Okay. They were talking at least. It was pretty jarring seeing Broen actually nervous, but then he started getting angry, which was better. Crawford continued to insist he'd done no wrong, which was bullshit..."

Jude winced. Too worked up, and he was too tender for that.

"Which was nonsense," he continued. "Anyone who heard the things he'd done would be horrified, but he insisted he stood by them, so Broen called his bluff. He stood up and started very loudly telling absolutely everyone about the sort of things Crawford did, and then Crawford swung at him. I jumped on Crawford's back, he jumped Broen, and it was a full on brawl. I caught an elbow to the ribs and skinned my hand falling--it's hard to balance on a guy's back with one arm--but Broen took the worst of it. He looks like he got hit by a car... mostly just on his face. When the cops showed up Crawford had totally lost it. He just kept going on Broen until they tackled him off him."

"He was literally dragged away by police and cuffed, yeah," Jude said with a small nod. "There's probably a dozen witnesses, and cameras, so there's almost no chance of him getting away with anything. He made the first move, and Broen barely even fought back."

But that led to Basilio's question, and Jude shifted in place for a moment.

"Broen's been... beyond agitated the last few weeks. Ever since Crawford showed up." He was taking his father's cue. Crawford. Not Frederick. It felt nice and detached. "I was worried that if something didn't get done, someone was going to end up dead. If I'm being honest, probably Crawford."

He hadn't thought Crawford would snap like that.