by Dawn Sister
“Are we in hospital?” Tristan asked, frowning in confusion as he tried to figure out just why that might be. His head felt full of cotton wool and his memories were clouded and foggy,
“Yes, Tris.” Danny nodded, his voice soft, “Do you remember what happened?”
Tristan’s frown deepened as he tried to clear the fog in his head. It was hard because of the incessant pounding but things were starting to come through. Memories were beginning to form.
Halloween party; daring costumes; dangerous dares; the fight with Troy; or rather the beating Troy gave him. The aftermath of that: kissing Danny.
Kissing Danny?
No not just kissing him; making love to him; lying next to him; their bodies entwined; skin against skin; then the argument and the punch. Tristan gasped. His eyes moved over Danny’s face to look at the deep purple bruise on his cheek. He swallowed and reached out to touch the bruise gently with his finger tips,
“Did I do that?” he gulped, tears pooling in his eyes. Danny nodded,
“I’m sorry,” was all he could manage before he broke down. Danny gave a strangled cry and pulled Tristan into a fierce embrace,
“So am I, Tris. So am I.” he whispered into Tristan’s hair. Tristan clung to him. Danny clung back, “I shouldn’t have said the things I said.”
“But I shouldn’t’ve hit you, Dan, there’s no excuse for that.” Tristan gasped between sobs, “Do you hate me?” that had been the one thing he had worried about after he had left their dorm room: that Danny hated him and never wanted to see him again. Danny held him even tighter, if that were possible,
“No.” he sobbed, “I don’t hate you. Shit, Tris, how could I hate you?”
They held each other for a few more moments and then Danny gently lowered Tristan back down onto the pillows. There were noises from other parts of the room and Tristan looked around him. Two nurses were fussing around his bed and the monitoring machines,
“It’s good to see you awake, Tristan.” A diminutive, motherly, middle aged nurse said to him, smiling brightly as she checked his pulse “Is there anything we can get you? Are you in any pain?”
“My head hurts.” Tristan told her as he held his head and moaned, “Shit, fuckin’ everything hurts.” Danny chuckled with relief at hearing Tristan cussing: at hearing Tristan again full stop. Tristan apologised for his use of language in front of the nurse though, “I don’t want anything, thanks.” She gave him a sympathetic, understanding smile,
“We’ll leave you with your friend, but call us if you need anything. We’ll check on you in thirty minutes.” With that she and the other nurse, whom Tristan didn’t even get a good look at, left the room. He groaned again, holding his head,
“Do you want me to call them back?” Danny asked, sitting at his side again because he had stepped away from the bed when the tiny nurse had checked Tristan’s pulse. He reached for the call button but Tristan shook his head, wincing because that made the pounding worse,
“No.” he whispered, “I don’t want you call them; I want you to tell me why I’m here.”
“You really don’t remember?” Danny asked, concerned. He had been warned that this might be the case, “You remember hitting me though?”
Tristan looked up at him, his blue eyes full of sorrow and remorse. He nodded then closed his eyes again, to fight against the pain,
“After you hit me you left the dorm room.” Danny reminded him, “Do you remember where you went?”
Tristan frowned. Did he remember? His hand was still in Danny’s and he absently twined their fingers together. Danny’s hand tensed slightly but then relaxed into the intimate hold as if it was perfectly natural. Tristan regarded him with even more confusion,
“I don’t remember where I went, bud.” He said, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth, “But I remember everything that happened before then, with crystal clarity.”
Danny bit his lip and looked away, blushing, but he was smiling too,
“Everything?” Danny asked, almost shyly,
“Everything.” Tristan told him, reaching up to touch his friend’s cheek, turning his head so that he was facing him. Then, to make sure that Danny knew exactly what he meant by everything, he cupped his hand around the back of Danny’s neck and pulled him down to press their lips together. Danny gasped then sighed softly, allowing himself to be pulled into the kiss,
“Am I forgiven?” Tristan whispered his lips brushing Danny’s lightly as he spoke. Danny pulled back a little to gaze into Tristan’s amazing blue eyes. Eyes that he feared, at one point, he might never see again. His own eyes filled with tears and he bowed his head to lean it against Tristan’s shoulder,
“Oh, Tris.” He sighed, and his shoulders shook with soft sobs.
Tristan folded his arms around Danny’s sobbing form. He was completely baffled by Danny’s sudden break down. His head still pounded and he still felt dizzy and groggy. Whatever had happened to him had been bad enough to upset his usually laid back, calm, confident friend. It had been bad enough to warrant him lying in a hospital bed with monitors and an oxygen tube stuck underneath his nose. He was sure he would remember eventually, but right now Danny needed him, and he was quite happy to be holding his friend and soothing his sobs and cradling his head against his chest.
Danny hitched his legs up onto the bed so that he was lying alongside Tristan and they lay there for some time. Tristan stroked Danny’s hair and murmured softly,
“You gonna tell me what happened?” he asked eventually. Tristan felt his friend’s body tense up in his arms. Danny sat up, a little reluctantly,
“You really don’t remember where you went after you left our room?” He asked. Tristan shook his head, “You don’t remember driving off in your car?” Danny remembered the terrible feeling of watching Tristan drive off having reached the parking lot too late to stop him,
“Did I have a crash?” Tristan asked. He gasped, eyes wide, “Is my car okay?” Danny chuckled and nodded his head,
“Your car is fine. You didn’t have a crash, Tris.”
“Then what happened, Danny?” Tristan was beginning to sound a little panicky,
“Do you remember calling me from that bar?” Danny asked him, watching Tristan’s face for any reaction. Tristan frowned,
“What bar?” his eyebrows were furrowed as he tried desperately to remember. He groaned and held his head, “Fuck, I cain’t think straight; there’s a damn kettle drum playin’ in my head, Danny.”
Danny shuffled up the bed so that he was sitting with his back against the head board. He wrapped his arms around Tristan’s shoulders. Tristan laid his head down onto Danny’s chest, their positions now reversed,
“Are you sure you don’t want me to get a nurse to give you some pain killers or something?” He asked. He knew why Tristan’s head was pounding and he shuddered to think of the effect the drug Troy had given him had had on his friend’s body.
Tristan’s arms curled around and behind Danny in response to his shudder, his fingers grasping onto the front of his shirt, teasing the skin beneath with feather like touches,
“I don’t want anything, Danny, you know I cain’t take anything like that: they just make me sick.” Danny laughed ironically, “So you gonna tell me, what happened already?” he sounded impatient, frustrated. Danny sighed heavily,
“Troy happened.” He said his voice flat and angry. Tristan gasped as the name sparked memories, the fog clearing from his brain,
“Danny, I c’n remember talking to Troy in a bar?” he said, confused as to why he would remember that. Why they would have been there together? He sat up to look at his friend. There was such a play of emotion on Danny’s face that there was absolutely no doubt that Troy was the reason he was here,
“What’d he do to me?” he asked darkly, “Did he beat me up? Is that why I can’t remember?” Concussion would explain his memory loss. How had he got into a position where Troy could have beaten him up so badly anyway? After Halloween
night, he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near the guy, “Did he come lookin’ fer me?” he asked. Danny shook his head,
“You went looking for him, Tris, and I have no idea why, after what he did to you at Halloween, so don’t even ask me.” Danny sounded angry, but Tristan couldn’t tell if he was angry with Troy or with him,
“I went to meet him?” Tristan asked, frowning. “Why, fer fuck’s sake?”
“I said I don’t know.”
Danny shuffled off the bed at that point and Tristan felt suddenly cold as he watched his friend and lover standing with his back to him stretching out the kinks after sitting for so long in the same position. He wanted to get up too and help him stretch those kinks; rub the tension from Danny’s shoulders; hold him until things were right between them, even though he couldn’t yet remember what was actually wrong. He didn’t really trust his legs to hold him, though. They felt heavy, like lead weights were attached to them. He felt that if he tried to stand he would fall over. Something about this jogged his memory again. His brain was gradually putting together his broken memory like the pieces of a jigsaw,
“Did I call you from a toilet cubicle?” he asked confused. Danny turned to him, his grey eyes were wide; he nodded, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. He bit his lip and Tristan could see he was fighting back tears again, “I couldn’t stand up, I was apologisin’ for hittin’ you and I couldn’t stand.” Danny nodded again.
Tristan could feel panic rising in him because now he could remember. He remembered why he had agreed to meet Troy. He remembered the things that Troy had told him about his family and past and then he remembered feeling there was something not right about the way Troy was being suddenly so open with him. He had escaped to the bathroom and called Danny. He gasped at the memory of when he had realised that something was wrong. He hadn’t been able to stand up. Then his memories became sketchy and foggy once more. He remembered Troy’s laughter, then his hands on him: lifting him, touching him, hitting him. He suddenly felt very sick. He closed his eyes against the memories and the wave of nausea that washed over him.
Danny watched the play of emotions on Tristan’s face as he began to remember. He watched helplessly as his friend realised that he had not just been beaten up,
“Troy spiked my drink, didn’t he?” Tristan asked quietly,
“Yes he did.” Danny’s voice sounded strained as he sat back down on Tristan’s bed. He once more wrapped his arms around his friend and leaned back against the head board,
“I shouldn’t have gone to meet him.” Tristan whispered,
“No you shouldn’t.” Danny told him, unable to hide the anger in his voice,
“Are you angry with me?” Danny’s arms wrapped tighter around Tristan’s shoulders,
“A little.” He admitted, “But not as angry as I am with Troy. He’s a first grade bastard and he deserves to rot in hell for what he did to you.”
For a long time they were silent as Tristan mulled over the returning memories. The only noises in the room were the hum and hiss of the oxygen and the beep of the machine monitoring Tristan’s heartbeat,
“Dan?” Tristan’s voice sounded small and scared,
“Yeah?” Danny answered, he knew what Tristan was going to ask him and he wasn’t at all prepared for what he was going to tell him. He closed his eyes, feeling sick to his stomach,
“Did he rape me?” Tristan’s voice was, if possible, even smaller, even more scared. Danny swallowed against the nausea,
“The witnesses at the bar reckon he wasn’t in the bathroom with you long enough, Tris.” Danny told him, “But they did tests anyway. I had to provide a DNA sample.”
Tristan sat up to stare at his friend,
“You had to what? Why?” he asked, shocked at the statement,
“The rape crisis team wanted to get swabs to see if they could gather any evidence against Troy. They couldn’t wait for you to wake up because at the time they didn’t know when you would wake up.” Tristan shuddered at the thought of where they would have had to take swabs from,
“But why did you need to give a DNA swab?” It was Danny’s turn to stare,
“Why the hell do you think I did, Tris? It was only a few hours after we had, well, you know…” he didn’t know how to say it without making it sound dirty and degrading; because it hadn’t been dirty, or degrading; what had happened between them, it had been amazing. What Troy had done, that had been dirty, degrading, wicked and horrible,
“Shit Danny,” Tristan gasped, a look of pure horror on his face, horror for his friend’s ordeal, “I’m so sorry.” He felt for his friend, having to go through that. He couldn’t begin to even know how Danny must have felt having to tell a complete stranger about them. There had hardly been any time for him to even start thinking about what had happened between them. Danny’s grey eyes looked sad but also reassuring,
“None of this was your fault, Tris. Don’t ever start thinking that it was.” He told his friend firmly, “Troy planned this. He lured you to that bar and he drugged you. We got there in time to stop him taking you somewhere else.” His eyes clouded over at the memory and the thought of what could have happened if they had been a little later pulling into that parking lot, “He’s in a lot of trouble anyway, without adding rape to the list. If we hadn’t got there when we did who knows what might have happened.”
“We?” Tristan asked,
“Reuben, Jason and Scott.” Danny explained to him, “Reuben drove. After you called me, and I realised there was something wrong we jumped into his car and drove like hell. I think we went through about four red lights, but we got there in time.”
“I was in his truck.” Tristan gasped, another memory surfacing, “I tried to get out. I opened the door when he tried to pull away. He was so angry…” he gasped, “All I could think about was that if he drove away you wouldn’t find me, and I knew you were coming, Danny, I knew you would come.” The last words were almost a whisper.
They stared at each other, blue eyes meeting grey ones. Danny pulled Tristan back onto his chest,
“I will always come.” He told his friend; his dear friend, “Wherever you are, whatever you need I will always come: always be there for you.”
“Even when I’m bein’ a stupid, reckless asshole?” Tristan asked,
“Even then.” Danny assured him, smiling,
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or if it means you think I’ve been a stupid asshole.”
“Take it as both.” Danny told him, and the statement earned him a poke in the side, “Hey, that hurt, stupid asshole.” Another poke in the side, “Ouch.”
“Stop callin’ me an asshole then.”
“I will when you stop actin’ like one.” Danny told him in a fair imitation of Tristan’s accent. Tristan laughed and Danny’s spirits lifted, “That sounds so good, hearing you laugh.” He whispered into Tristan’s hair.
Tristan’s fingers once more teased the skin of Danny’s chest through his T shirt and Danny’s breath hitched at the sensation. His arms tightened around Tristan and his fingers carded through his dark hair. He brushed his lips across Tristan’s forehead, then his cheek, then lifted his head so he could reach his mouth. Tristan moved to meet Danny’s kiss, soft and tender. Then settled his head back onto Danny’s warm chest with a contented sigh,
“How’s your head?” Danny asked softy,
