Callum’s POV

I sighed as I began walking downstairs. Yesterday had been a complete shit show. After my little talk with Andrew, we had come up with a plan of not letting Axel get either of us upset. I had warned Andrew before that Axel was going to try his hardest to get the therapist to lose his shit and he’s had enough family sessions with me by now to know that’s just what Axel does when he meets new people but Andrew had only shrugged.

“Then we won’t let that happen,” Andrew said with a shrug. “I know it’s difficult but we’ve worked on your anger enough, I feel confident in your ability to keep yourself calm. And I’ve been working at camp for a while now so I won’t be a weak spot. If he tries to go after one of us too much then the other can step in and take the focus off of them.”

“I guess that would work,” I said with a frown. “I don’t know how he’ll react to that though. He might not like it.”

“He likely won’t but it’s better than one of us getting upset. Until I can get him into a session he needs to learn that he’s not always going to be able to get a rise out of people.”

I hadn’t really liked the plan but Andrew hasn’t done wrong by me before so I thought it would work out at least decently well. Nothing could have prepared me to see my brother scream at the two of us in clear frustration before walking upstairs and slamming the door to his room. 

Andrew had looked a bit nervous at the reaction too but he didn’t seem too worried about it.

“I think it’ll make his future appointments a bit rough at first but I think the two of us will be able to push past it with time. I mean I did get through to Jax after all.”

Still, I didn’t like it and I would do my best to make it up to him and try to keep it from happening as much as possible. 

The second I made it down the stairs my eyes turned towards the living room. Jax hadn’t been sleeping in the bed when I woke up so I could only assume he had been up last night and fell asleep on the couch. It was a normal thing for him sadly but what I didn’t expect to see was my youngest brother curled up beside him. 

Weylyn was completely knocked out. His legs were sprawled out on the couch as far out as they could go while his head laid on Jax’s lap. His arms had wrapped around Jax’s middle like it was a stuffed animal and Jax had a hand in my brother’s hair playing with it as he sat there, awake watching something on the muted TV. 

“And what do we have here,” I whispered as I walked up to my husband and placed a small kiss to the crown of his head.

“He came down about 2 last night. Carter was up and convinced him to hang out for a while. He was out not even a full hour later. Carter seems to think he doesn’t like sleeping alone and Axel wouldn’t let him in.”

I hummed as I looked down to Weylyn. He had always been my easy kid. I loved both of them so much and I hated that I was messing this up twice in a row now. I wanted to go back to the days of our biggest problem being that Axel was beating up 10 year olds on the playground while Weylyn let it happen. 21 year old Callum could handle that, he could not handle Axel being a brat at every turn and Weylyn refusing to be alone without telling any of us why.

Before long the house came to life. Pancakes were cooked, my husbands were taking a shower, Weylyn had woken up, looking a little bit grumpy and staring at Jax with a bit of distrust but other than that seemingly okay, and Axel was just now coming down the stairs.

His eyes found the pancakes and to my surprise he actually smiled. His face was a bit red and I hated the thought of him possibly crying after last night but without knowing why there was little I could do to help him other than making sure he was okay now. 

“Good morning,” I said when he sat down and started dumping an insane amount of syrup on his pancakes. Axel only hummed.

Jax had headed upstairs to get ready for the day so the three of us were alone. Probably best to address this before we have an audience.

“So,” I said as I played with my food. “About last night-.”

“What part of the pancakes did you not get,” Axel asked with a small glare on his face, it didn’t match with puffy eyes. “The whole part of the pancakes is that we don’t talk about the reason for the pancakes.”

“In the past yes, but we both know we can’t keep doing things the way we used to. We need to talk these things out or nothing will change.”

“If it it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” Axel waved off.

“It is broken Axel,” I sighed. “What made you upset last night?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you act like that over nothing,” I said wit a frown.

“You pissed me off,” he said after a while with an eye roll. “It happens. Get over it.”

“We pissed you off,” I asked, not even caring about the cuss word right now. 

“Yes.”

“Because we wouldn’t get mad when you tried to piss us off?”

“Fuck off,” he scoffed. “I wasn’t trying to make you mad.”

“Yes you were,” Weylyn said with an eye roll of his own. “It’s like the main thing that you do.”

“Whatever. We have pancakes, lets just focus on the pancakes.” I go to argue but Jax picks that exact moment to come down the stairs and Axel immediately puts his guard back up.

“God I love food that I don’t have to make,” He said as he sat down next to Weylyn. Axel glared at him the second he sat down but didn’t say anything when Weylyn didn’t tense up.

“So school is coming up,” I said after a while of us eating in silence. Liam and Ryder had come down a few minutes ago and even that didn’t break the silence.

“We still don’t have to talk about this right now,” Axel scoffed. “We still have several weeks.”

“Three weeks and we don’t even have a school to enroll you into yet,” Liam said with a frown.

“Not to mention back to school shopping,” Jax said.

“And working out a schedule for drop off and pick up.” Ryder added.

“There’s a lot left to do,” I sighed.

“We can walk ourself if it’s close enough.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” I said with a frown of my own. “You’re 15, I don’t want some creep to kidnap you on your way to school every day.”

“We used to walk every day back home after you left,” Axel pointed out. 

“That doesn’t surprise me but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let it keep happening now that I’m responsible for you. You never waked alone when I watching you before, you aren’t doing it now. End of story.” Axel gave a loud groan but let us move on.

“As for back to school shopping we can get that done this weekend,” Jax said as he looked over at our calendar on the wall. “It’s just a bunch of paper and binders right?”

“And we can get stuff for their rooms while we’re out,” Ryder squealed, a wide smile covering his face. Jax face dampened at the thought of having to do more shopping than what he had anticipated.

“We don’t need a lot for our rooms,” Weylyn said in the small voice that he only ever had when he was talking to more than one person at once. 

“Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean you can’t have things,” Liam said with a smile but Wey didn’t seem to buy it. “Surely you can think of some things you could want. A bookshelf maybe, some books, a few movies, a poster or two? Anything to make the room feel more like yours and not just a spare room.”

“Isn’t that what they are though,” Axel asked. “Just spare rooms that we happen to live in? You’ll take the beds and posters and bookshelves out the second we move out when we’re 18.”

“That’s not happening,” I said. Jax was frowning at his words, Ryder looked shocked, and Liam just stared at them like he suddenly understood everything about them. “Those rooms are yours. They were yours the second we all sighed those papers and they will still be yours if you move out and need a place to stay for a few days, weeks, or months. You will always be able to come back here if you need to.”

Weylyn looked at me like I hung the stars and I hated it considering it was literally the bare minimum. Axel looked like he didn’t believe me and I hated that too.

“I’ll look for schools today,” Jax said as he wrote something on his hand he and his alters didn’t forget about it. “And if I find a good one I’ll send it Callum to approve it, then we’ll get you two enrolled and we cans see about that list.”

“We want to be in the same class,” Weylyn said again.

“I will try my absolute best to make that happen but I don’t have control over that.” Weylyn frowned.

“So school, shopping, and room decor,” Liam said. “Are we missing anything?”

“We’ll figure it out later,” I sighed as I looked at my phone. “Most of us are late. I’ll let you guys decide today.” After the outburst yesterday Andrew suggested we should just let them decide where they go unless we just can’t control it. “You can either come to the shop with me and Ryder today or you can stay home with Jax.”

“We can stay here,” Weylyn said at the same time Axle said, “We’re going with you.”

Axel whipped his head around to meet Weylyn’s eyes. Weylyn shrank back a bit but stared at him head on.

“We aren’t staying here with him.”

“You don’t have to,” Weylyn said matter of factly. “I think Carter is nice.”

“It’s Jax right now,” Jax noted in case anyone cared.

“I haven’t been around Jax much but if Carter is nice so Jax has to be nice too right?”

“We need to get them a book about this,” Jax said with a frown. “Listen I’m not going to speak for all systems but please don’t go around assuming everyone in a system is nice. Some alters have a role where they are actively mean to make other alters step up and essentially beat the trauma to show them they are strong they are. I will say everyone in my system is nice; at least nice in our standard. None of us are going to do anything to hurt you, that’s not what we’re here for; we’re here to help each other. So as long as you don’t try to actively trigger us in a negative way, we aren’t going to do anything to you. I know a lot of movies and shows make us out to be the bad guys but we aren’t. We are just a couple of people who share a body.”

Axel frowned. 

“I don’t care about your disorder. I care about the fact I don’t know you and we aren’t going to be around someone we don’t know.”

“He was nice to me last night,” Weylyn pointed out.

“What do you mean ‘he was nice last night’?”

“Someone wouldn’t let me in their room last night,” Weylyn said in a whispered voice and a weird look on his face that I couldn’t place. “Carter let me hang out with him for a while.”

“Alone,” Axel asked completely appalled.

“We are never really alone,” Jax corrected.

“Did you just not sleep last night,” Axel asked, completely ignoring him. 

“I fell asleep on the couch.”

“With him,” Axel asked again, his voice growing more outraged by the second.

“Next to him.”

“We don’t know him!”

“I asked if he was a pedophile first,” Weylyn defended. Ryder choked on his juice and Liam’s eyes widened.

“People don’t just admit that kind of thing!”

“If someone had let me into their room last night I wouldn’t have had to do it. Beside, it’s not like it affects you since it didn’t happen to you,” Weylyn said. His voice had lost most of it’s emotion as he he stared at our brother with the most hateful glare I’d ever seen on his face.

Axel looked like he had been slapped before a harsh glare covered his face too.

“Fine. Stay here with him then. By yourself. I’m going with Callum.” Weylyn looked like he was about to argue but stopped to just glare back.

“Fine. Have fun sitting in an office all day!”

“I will,” Axel said as he stood up and began walking to the door. “Have fun staying here all day with hat random fucking dude!” 

“Fuck you,” Weylyn shouted just as Axel opened the door and slammed it behind him before marching to my car.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to use that language,” Bram said with a small smile that went completely ignored as Weylyn marched off up the stairs.

“Can we not just have one morning,” I asked as I picked up my keys. “Just one morning where we all leave the house feeling happy and ready for the day and leave without a fight happening?”

“We have teenagers,” Liam said with a shrug as he followed me to the door. “Say good bye to those days.”

“God help us.”