A New Kind of Denial

“I, uh, well, I’ve got something possibly important to tell you guys,” I said to Jason and Ianto that night at dinner. We were sitting at our round dinner table, spaced out just about evenly, chatting back and forth and little and unimportant things while we ate. I think we were all really still in shock from the news about Camron, and maybe a bit worried because we hadn’t heard anything from them since the initial phone call.

“What do you mean by ‘possibly important’?”

“Well, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that this is something I’ll have to deal with, and this thing is pretty important. So it’s possibly important for us because I don’t know if it’s my responsibility yet,”

“What kind of responsibility are we talking about here?”

“The big kind,” I muttered, turning my eyes back to my plate of food shyly.

“Gavin, you’re the one that brought it up. Do you want to talk about it or do you not?” Jason asked, using a slightly stern tone of voice with me. He sounded cooperative before, but he was starting to get fed up. “We’ll understand if you decided you don’t want to talk about it at the moment, but you brought it up and it sounds like it might be a nice thing to get off you chest-”

“I might possibly be a father,” I said finally, looking up suddenly to look them in the face.

“Wait, you what?” Ianto gasped, almost choking on his drink.

“Tanya’s pregnant and I’m one of the possible fathers,”

“You’re using the word ‘possible’ a lot,”

‘It’s a very appropriate word for this situation,” I shrugged.

“So,” he started, setting down his fork on his plate and leaning back in his seat looking at me as if he was sizing me up or something. “You might be the father of a baby that belongs to your ex-girlfriend, but you aren’t completely sure if you are or not.”

“Ye-”

“Plus,” he interjected loudly, “while your ex-girlfriend is in New Jersey, duking this out by herself - unless the other maybe-baby-daddy is helping out - you are up here in Canada having plenty of fun with a new boy-friend, friend-boy, whatever you want to call each other. Did I get all of that right?”

“Well, you kind of missed the part where Tanya and I got into a fight and she hung up on me. Twice,”

“Gavin!”

“What?”

“You fought with her?” Jason squeaked, his eyes popping as if he couldn’t believe me, his gayness really showing.

“She was insulting something I believe in very much! It’s common instinct for me to defend my beliefs!”

“She’s pregnant, though! Stress can do horrible things to pregnancy, Gavin, even I know that! And fights are pretty damn stressful if you ask me!”

“Well I’m sorry!” I yelled, frustrated out of my mind.

“Don’t tell me that; tell her!”

“I don’t want to talk to her right now,” I muttered.

“Why not?” Ianto asked, thankfully getting into this argument to calm things down. He does that a lot, and I’m really glad to have him around when things her a little bit crazy. That actually seems to happen a lot when Jason and I are around each other. I don’t know; we’re just so much alike that sometimes we seem too much alike and we just fight with each other constantly. Even though Jason’s a therapist and should be able to keep his composure better than he does, that all seems to go down the drain when he and I go at it with each other. Ianto’s always like our mediator in the fights.

“Because she’s pissing me off,” I sort of growled.

“What exactly did you two fight about?” he asked before Jason was able to put in his thoughts at all.

“Adoption,”

“What about it?”

“She was pretty much insulting it and saying that it’s an irresponsible thing to give up your child for adoption. It just made me so mad, not only because I’m adopted, but because I firmly believe in adoption for people that cannot have children of their own,” I sighed, playing with my food some more. I felt like I was giving a speech.

“And you fought with her about it?”

“Yeah, but that was after I tried to talk it out with her. But she hung up on me! She just wouldn’t listen to what I had to say, no matter what. She’s just so freaking stubborn, I swear! That’s why I broke up with her in the first place and this is why we’re not good together! Trust me, if it were any other pregnant girl, I wouldn’t have argued with her like I did, but she just makes it so fucking difficult to not fight with her! She knows I can’t help it, but she still agonizes me and it’s like I just can’t stop once I start! It’s not my fault!”

“Yes, Gavin, it is you fault! You could choose not to argue with her, at least while she’s carrying your b-”

“Possibly my baby,”

“Possibly carrying our baby. You could choose not to fight while she’s pregnant, so that if it is your baby, the stress of fighting won’t mess up the pregnancy. Think ahead, Gavin! Use your brain here!”

“Okay, I know no not to fight with her!”

“You should have known that in the first place!”

“Well I know no and there’s no use for us to fight with each other over something that we can’t change. So can we please stop arguing? I can’t change what I did, but I can promise that I won’t do it again,”

Jason was silent for a little while as he watched me intently, kind of like he was figuring out what to do with me. He was starting to freak me out with the staring, so I just turned back to the plate of food in front of me. I was hoping that somebody would say something soon, whether it be Jason responding, or even just Ianto trying to break the silence, which is what happened.

“so when are you going to find out for sure if you’re the father or not?”

“Whenever she goes to get a paternity test,” I shrugged.

“When’s that going to be?” Jason asked hastily, trying to get back into the conversation.

“How am I supposed to know? I’m not her; I don’t know when she’s planning on doing things,”

“Well, I didn’t know if she said when she was going when you guys talked,” Jason shrugged, probably trying not to get aggravated with me.

“If that was the case, don’t you think I would have said that rather than comeback with a vague, smartass comment?”

“I don’t know, Gavin, you are known for your smartass comments,”

“But this is completely different!” I exclaimed, nearly exploding out of frustration. “You don’t understand how hard this is for me and how much I just don’t need this right now! My dad’s in a hospital - in a another country than I’m in - I haven’t spoken to Tanya for close to three months, then she tells me she’s pregnant and it only might be mine. Plus, I’m building up a good relationship with a boy that has, from what I surmise, some weird issues of his own. And it doesn’t help that on top of all of this, I’m only seventeen years old! I might be having a kid with my ex and I’m only seventeen. That’s not what I want for my life. Especially not at this point in it!”

“I know this is going to sound cliché, Gavin,” Ianto said softly, still attempting to be the calm one in the conversation. “But if you’re old enough to take on the responsibility of having sex, then you should be old enough to take on the responsibilities of the consequences.”

“And I understand that, but-”

“Then why are you using age as an excuse?”

“Because I didn’t want to take on that responsibility in the first place,”

“Then you shouldn’t have had sex, Gavin. It’s that easy,”

“No,” I said, laughing in aggravation. “You still don’t get it.”

“What don’t we get, Gavin? What do we not get?”

“I didn’t even want to have sex! That is the responsibility I didn’t want to take on! I never wanted to be with her, in that way at least,” I sighed, partially out of relief of finally getting that off my chest. The full truth, not only the half truth I told Tanya.

“Then why did you do it?”

“There was a lot of pressure and we had a bit of alcohol, for one,”

“Pressure from who?”

“Tanya, some of the people we were around beforehand…the alcohol,”

“You can’t blame alcohol for everything, Gavin,”

“I know, I know, but it was the first time I’d ever had more than a few sips of anything. That night was one full of firsts for me,” I muttered, looking down at the food on my plate that was most assuredly cold by now.

“How much did you have?”

“I think it was close to a beer and a half,”

“And you weren’t completely smashed?” Ianto asked, laughing slightly.

“No not really; just kind of buzzed,”

“Damn boy, you handle alcohol amazingly,”

“Even with all the pressure, why’d you do something you didn’t want to do? You’re strong willed enough to say no; or at least I thought you would be,”

“This is another one of those times, Jason, when we’re going to have to agree to not fight over this, because I can tell where this is headed. It’s in the past, I can’t changes the fact that I let all the pressure get to me, and nobody can change the fact that I didn’t really want to have sex with her, but I did. And now I’ve got to deal with it, however much I don’t want to.”

“Didn’t really want to, or didn’t want to?”

“Jason!” Ianto snapped, hitting his husband in the back of his head. “Let is go.”

“But-”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and speaking with a crisp, controlling voice.

“Alright,” Jason mumbled, hanging his head like a punished puppy. I couldn’t help but crack a small smile, seeing the way they interacted as a couple. They’re another couple that gives me hope; like my dads. No matter how much they bicker and fight with each other, they always seem to bounce back and be a happy and wonderful couple.

“And Gav?” Ianto said, switching focus - and tone of voice. “I really think you aught to tell Mason about this. You don’t even have to tell us why you haven’t told your dad, either. We understand that you don’t want to bother them with this right now. But you really should at least warn Mason. Even before you know for sure if it’s your or not. If you two are getting as serious as it seems you are, he’d want to know even if it’s not yours.”

By this time, Jason was out of his punished puppy trance and was listening to what Ianto was saying. He nodded his agreement and added, “I think he might have something to tell you too.”