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That Stupid Fear of Thunder	By : Nightspore Category: 1 through F > Back To The Future Views: 8949 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Back to the Future series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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2) FLESH AND
BLOOD

I'm
never gonna give up the ghost, no, never gonna give it up.
Cause
I haven't the strength to hold out too long,
But
if we both hang on together we can make each other strong.
After
all, we're flesh and blood. After all, we're flesh and blood
. . . after all, we're flesh.

Marty woke. It was dark, too
dark to see. Someone's arm was flung around him, pinning him to the bed. It
took him a long moment to remember exactly what had happened.
He'd knocked poor George out
cold. He remembered trying to haul him up into a sitting position, but George
slumped bonelessly forward, his eyes glazed and unseeing. He was horrified,
stricken with the fear he'd damaged his father so badly that he himself would
blink out of existence, out like a light.
"Snap out of it," he
begged, dabbing at the bleeding wound on the back of George's head where the
edge of the stone porch step had hit him. "Let's go inside and get you
cleaned up, okay? Okay, George?"
He nodded slowly, but stayed
sitting, obviously not all the way there yet. Marty slung one of George's arms
over his shoulder and held onto his wrist, and wrapped his other arm around the
boy's slender torso. He stood, straining with the effort of lifting his dead
weight. As tall as he was, George only weighed about the same as Marty, but
with his muscles slack he felt like a sack of concrete.
George leaned on him heavily,
just barely aware enough to shuffle along. When they go to the steps he simply
stood there, staring vacantly as Marty tried to encourage him to take a step
up. Finally, he had to hook his own sneaker behind George's ankle and,
balancing precariously, lift his fontoonto the stairs. After that he seemed to
catch on, although he still moved like he was underwater.
It took them a good ten minutes
to get up to his bedroom, where Marty dumped him in the chair at his desk. He
fetched some antiseptic and a washrag from the bathroom and swabbed out the cut
on his head. As bad as it was bleeding, the cut was thankfully small and could
barely be seen. As soon as the flow ebbed to a slow seep, he took off George's
ruined jacket and his shoes and had him lay down on the bed.
The boy lapsed instantly into
sleep.
Marty sat down beside him on the
bed, shoving the Weird Science-Fantasy and
Amazing Stories magazines and a
half-built model airplane out of the way. Asleep, George looked mild and
inoffensive, even younger than his seventeen years. What the hell had gotten
into him just now? Marty had just been trying to goad him into defending
himself to prove to him he could throw a decently realistic punch if he wanted
to, but George snapped and started attacking him like a lunatic. And as soon as
he realized he was actually hurting Marty, he'd stopped dead and . . . and . .
.
He touched his lips and shuddered,
still feeling the kiss.
Now, what the fuck was that all
about?
Suddenly, he wanted off the bed,
and now. Watching George sleep, he must have fallen asleep himself. It had been
a stressful week and he certainly wasn't sleeping well at night. As the two
boys slept side by side, George had cuddled up to him instinctively, seeking
warmth. It wasn't another assault . . . but Marty still wanted to be as far
away as possible.
He rolled over onto his back and
tried to lift George's arm as slowly and gently as he could.
It didn't work. George snuffled
and blinked, waking suddenly. He looked at Marty, his eyes widening, then
snatched his arm away. He sat up and immediately put a hand to the back of his
head, grimacing in pain.
"Hey, buddy," Marty
said, his voice cracked and straining. "How's your head feeling? We were
roughhousing, you know, and I kind of pushed you too hard, remember?"
Clearly, he remembered
everything.
"Sorry about that."
"No, no," George said
bitterly. "I guess you're gonna leave now. I guess I'll never see you
again."
"What? What're you talking
about?"
The door to his bedroom swung
open. Marty found himself looking at his grandmother, minus thirty years of
wrinkles and blue hair.
"George, sweetie," she
said, smiling with delight. "I didn't know you had a little friend over.
You should have told me! I made oatmeal cookies this afternoon, and I could
have mixed you up some lemonade."
He shrugged and mumbled
something in reply, idly kicking at a magazine on the floor.
Grandma McFly didn't appear
bothered. She turned her beaming smile - wide, with a pretty little overbite -
on Marty. "Did George invite you over for dinner?"
He gave his father a guarded
look. George sat stubbornly silent, his hands clasped in his lap.
"Yeah. Uh, sure,
thanks."
"Well, come on, it's almost
ready." He followed her down the stairs, trailed by George, who was
sniffing and rubbing his nose on his sleeve. He was probably still a little
stuffed up.
"What have you boys been up
to?" Grandma asked blithely.
Marty wondered what she would
say if he responded truthfully. Oh, your
son and I were in the middle of a death match, but he kissed me, so I had to
knock him unconscious, and then we took a nice nap together . . . .
"Just hanging out."
Marty didn't know his paternal
grandparents that well. He knew they'd had George fairly late in life, and by
the time Marty was five his grandfather had retired and moved to Florida, an
entire continent away. He hadn't seen them in almost nine years, since the old
man claimed it was too much trouble to travel, and he only had vague childhood
memories of their twice-a-year visits. His grandmother sat at the kitchen table
all day gossiping about their neighbors back in Florida while his own mother
nodded with grim boredom, disappearing more and more frequently into the
kitchen as the day wore on for liquid fortification. His grandfather had spent
most of his time in the spare bedroom with the air conditioner turned up as far
as it would go, occasionally emerging to yell at the children to settle down.
Now, as his grandmother set him
a place at the table, he snuck glances at them in between feeding them the
story he'd concocted to explain his presence here. George resembled his father
much more closely than he did Marty, who, like the rest of the kids, took after
Lorraine. The elder McFly had the same general cast of features as his son, but
he was short and rather heavily built. George had inherited his
yearling-thoroughbred build from Grandma, a string bean of a woman with curly
hair that had skipped a generation to be passed on to Marty's older brother,
Dave.
She took George's plate and
began cutting up his steak for him. If being treated like a kid embarrassed,
George, though, it was hard to tell. The other boy was staring warily at his
father, who was fully occupied trying to eat and read the newspaper at the same
time. When his mother set the plate back down in front of him he hardly glanced
at her.
His grandfather was more
interested in devouring his enormous cut of steak, but his grandmother was
clearly happy that George had brought a friend home, and barraged Marty with
questions. She accepted unquestioningly his slightly ridiculous story about
being a member of the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary on shore leave visiting his
uncle. It was a total fabrication, of course, and not the most believable, but
he didn't see any point in changing his story now. At least it would explain
his sudden departure at the end of the week, assuming he made it that far. She
seemed charmed.
Halfway through his steak,
Granddad suddenly seemed to realize George was at the table. He lowered his
newspaper. "How's school coming? Am I going to see all A's on this report
card?"
George stirred his mashed
potatoes and didn't answer. He didn't have to - his guileless, expressive face
told the story plainly enough.
"Oh, honey," Grandma
cut in. "I don't know why you don't do better."
"Because he's lazy. He
doesn't apply himself." McFly senior stabbed a piece of steak and jabbed
it in George's face to emphasize his point.
"We know you're smart
enough," she said. Turning confidingly to Marty, she said, "George is
very intelligent, you know. We had him tested. We took him to a head doctor
when he was in fourth grade because his teacher thought he was - " her
voice dropped to a whisper " - a little slow."
Marty glanced up to see how he
was taking this.
"We were so pleased, it
turns out he has a genius-level I.Q."
"So he doesn't have any
excuse," Granddad concluded. "Except sheer laziness."
"He's just in his own
little world, aren't you? He'll grow out of it." Grandma fondly mussed
George's hair. He ducked his head but did nothing to stop her.
"He's a bum. He only works
hard at something if it interests him, and the only thing that interests him
are those - "
"One of my stories almost
got accepted by Tales of Wonder,"
George said abruptly.
There was a long silence.
"The editor said," he
continued in a near-whisper, "He said it had a lot of potential. It didn't
fit their needs right now, but his letter said to consider them first for
anything I might write in the fe.&qe." By the end of the sentence his
voice had thinned to inaudibility.
"Hey, hey, great,"
Marty said.
"Almost accepted?" His grandfather snorted derisively. "Almost doesn't pay the bills, George. Almost doesn't put food on the table and
clothes on your back. When I was your age, my father pulled me out of school to
work at his shop. I was hauling coal all day long, a nickel a day. Do you know
what he would have done if I slobbed around staring at the ceiling and writing
Buck Rodgers stories?"
Marty wanted to squirm in
sympathy. George had never talked to him like that. In fact, the only fights he
could remember having, he'd always ended up yelling at his father, who never
yelled back.
When his grandfather pointed to
him, he felt even worse. "Look at Martin, here. You don't see him eating
up his father's paycheck. No, he went out into the world to make a name for
himself."
clasclass=MsoNormal> He twitched, and busied himself
picking up peas with a spoonful of mashed potatos. Some of his friends were
working at the McDonald's, or as bag boys at the grocery store, but he'd never
had a real job.
"I'm turning in early,
Lynda," the older man said, folding the paper with a snap. "Hawkins
has me swinging the morning shift again."
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That Stupid Fear of Thunder