Flack wasn't sure what he expected to find when he arrived back at Danny's apartment, but as he unlocked the front door his nerves felt like piano wire stretched too tight over a hot flame. When he thought over what he had just done it was not surprising. The detective had left a man whose emotional stability he considered questionable at the best of times, alone after the man had been beaten up and raped. To say his actions were deplorable would be to give himself a kindness that he was sure he didn't deserve.
Judging by the surprise that stilled him in his tracks after opening the door to Danny's bedroom however, what he found was not something he expected.
Aside from slight differences in position the blonde was lying asleep in exactly the same place Flack had left him. The smaller man had turned slightly in his absence, so he was positioned more on his side than flat on his back, facing the doorway, cheek buried into a pillow and right arm escaped from the blanket to sprawl over the edge of the bed. He looked almost normal, almost peaceful. If it weren't for the bruises and the angry stitched cuts running up the man's visible arm Flack could pretend that he really was OK and that peaceful expression wouldn't disappear as soon as he awoke.
Now his fears had been proven false and Danny was not in some dangerous fear driven psychotic state the adrenalin leached slowly from his system. Causing the detective to slump slowly to the floor as he realised that tension driven energy had probably been the only thing keeping him upright for the last few hours. Flack raised a hand to run slowly through his dark brown hair in a self soothing motion as he finally allowed the days events to wash over him. It had only been a day – a little less in fact if one were to get overly precise since they had said their goodbyes and he had left Danny to walk home by himself.
If he had one of those time machines from those odd programmes Adam loved to watch so much and went back in time just twenty four hours, they would still be laughing and playing pool. None of this would have ever happened. It seemed so weird to think of it being such a short while ago. It felt like a different era entirely when Flack had believed whole heartedly that nothing like this could possibly happen to his friend.
Though as his grandma had so wisely said during his youth, "what has been done can not be undone". It would do no good to Danny or himself to just focus on what went wrong, what he could have done differently. Although they still nagged at his mind, and he knew would haunt his sleep instead he had to focus on something more productive to his friend. Flack would be there for Danny, he didn't have any idea what he needed to do to help the blonde but the detective was repulsed by the idea of just leaving him alone again so soon. He didn't know how much help he could be in a situation like this, but apart from Stella who he needed concentrated on the evidence side of things he was all Danny had, who knew enough about what had happened to help.
Flack didn't plan on letting Danny down again.
Waking up was possibly the most painful experience Danny Messer had ever felt. Well, not quite. His mind was sharp enough that he knew the painkillers must have worn off, but ragged enough from the pain itself that at first he didn't recognise where he was. It took many head spinning moments of looking around the room before he realised why the unfocused blur was not falling into place. Sometime last night during all that had happened he had lost a contact lens and after so long spent sleeping the other had dried out enough to rub irritably again his cornea like sandpaper and aided his vision only slightly. It was only by smell and the pattern of his sheets that he recognised the place he was in as his own bedroom.
Impulsively the blonde reached up to rub the intrusion from his right eye with his left arm, the one that seemed to protest the least at being moved, only to stop upon seeing the gauze. It wasn't like he didn't remember it being bandaged, he did, but it was far away and disconnected from him. Almost like it had happened to someone else and Danny had just been there as a casual observer.
From this distance he could see the bruises that twisted around his wrists and down his arm, every bone under the slowly darkening skin felt like it had shattered. Though Danny knew from the doctor that that hadn't been the case, she had sounded so happy when she'd told him that he'd suffered no broken bones. The blonde swallowed a pit of nausea at the memory. He knew that was bull shit, that it was just proof that he could have fought back some more.
Every finger tip on his left hand had been scraped free of skin, the little finger was even missing most of its nail. Danny found he had to swallow again at the memory, of scrabbling for some kind of way out till his hands left bloody lines and smears. Still, the irritation refused to leave so with arms that felt like jelly and raw fingers he managed to pluck out the remaining lens, tossing it carelessly to the floor.
Irritation dealt with, Danny reached blindly toward the night table where he kept his glasses, moving the rest of his body. The pain exploded in protest, reminding him firmly of the rest of his wounds. Lights danced behind his eyes as his body jerked back to vaguely its former position in an attempt at appeasement but the damage had already been done. A high pitched whimper turned into a whine and the blurred room faded in and out of darkness like a broken television. It felt like someone had set fire to all his nerves, the only way he could think to describe it was that parts of his body felt not only beaten and broken but shredded as well.
It was during one of those out of sync moments where the world faded to confusing static that the arms looped his chest and back, raising him to an odd sitting position. So it took Danny a few seconds to register that someone had perched on the edge of the mattress, holding him up. A large arm circled his chest, leaning him into the side of a larger body so the blonde wouldn't have the discomfort of sitting fully vertical. The second hand smoothed his hair in a way his mother had done when he was a small child lying in bed with a fever. Honestly, right now Danny couldn't decide whether it was comforting or disconcerting.
"I'm sorry Danno. You were sleeping so peacefully I didn't want to wake you to give you your pills."
Danny knew that voice, had known it for years. In his pain fogged state the image came before the name: tall, dark hair, sharp wit, protective nature, friend. He could see clearly in his mind Don Flack presenting him with a steady smile after one of his jokes or shouting at the television beside him during a basket ball game. The smaller man felt his cheeks heat up, almost choking on the next wave of nausea. God, Don knew what happened to him.
"Com'n Dan. Open up."
Danny didn't even realise he'd closed his eyes until he opened them again and saw the hand held out in front of his mouth. He could barely see the small colourful objects that he supposed were pills. Thinking logically, at least some of them would be painkillers, so if he took them then the pain that was flooding his senses and fogging his brain should go away. Only Danny wasn't thinking logically, so instinctively his jaw clamped shut.
"You bite down and I'll shoot out the back of your skull."
"Com'n Dan" Don sounded near tears. "It'll make you feel better I promise."
The blonde could feel himself being shifted, and felt warm skin against the side of his face, and movement as the other man swallowed. Danny wasn't sure if he should be feeling uncomfortable having someone so close to him after what had happened. He wasn't sure what he should be feeling.
"Just take this one at least Danny. It'll stop you hurting."
The arm tightened around his chest, the other hand reaching for his mouth. A weight settled on the top of his head that made it difficult to move, it took a couple of moments before he realised his head had been tucked under the someone – Don's chin. The blonde couldn't count the time between that moment and when he felt fingers at his lips attempting to pry his teeth apart. Time before that and after was jumbled and twisted in pain but that one bare second when the hand wrapped around his jaw flashed in his brain so bright Danny wasn't sure he would ever forget it or that he could.
If it didn't involve opening his mouth Danny would have screamed. As it was something like a strangled whimper escaped between clenched teeth.
"Oh look, he's crying like a little bitch" laughter rolled around the air as metal was removed from between his teeth, blood dripping after it.
Hot tears stained his cheeks and Danny couldn't remember when they'd started falling. He also couldn't remember when they'd ended up on the floor. Air quaked in and out of his chest at such an unsteady speed that his whole body seemed to twitch and spasm at the pressure. The arms were still there, one resting on his back below the bump of the bandage, the other with a gentle hold on his right wrist.
The presence at Danny's left side was making sounds, all of them soothing. Eyes fixed on the royal blue carpet that covered his bedroom floor, the blonde couldn't force himself to look up at the man knelt by his side. Instead, now that no one was moving or making him open his mouth he focused on slowing his breathing, until finally he could make out some words the other man was saying.
"Its fine Danno, you don't have to take pills. I'm not gonna make you. Just stay still or you'll pop some stitches" Don sounded scared, terrified in fact and in a half aware state Danny wondered what on earth could make his friend so terrified. He didn't think he'd ever heard Don so scared.
Pain had twisted his insides into mangled knots, but above anything else his ass and his back burned. The headache throbbing within the blond's skull was almost a blessing as every time the pain beat out its savage rhythm, it came close to drowning out all the other screaming complaints. At least for a moment, before it paused, mallet held high above his skull to allow everything else to screech up through his nerve endings, before descending another crushing blow.
Danny wasn't sure whether it was the pain that had caused his cheeks to be so wet, or if it were something else. The tears seemed to be thinning now but as he disentangled his hand from Don's grip to gingerly wipe at his eyes it felt like he must have been been crying longer than he thought.
Last night felt so surreal it was more like a nightmare than it was reality, and yet the memories themselves were so bright and vivid and painful that Danny knew without a doubt what had happened. Though the words that would be used to describe it, to classify what happened still stood shrouded in too much confusion and denial to employ within his mind. It was as if the entire night's events after leaving his friends, after hearing those footsteps, all of it until the present moment was still waiting to be processed in his brain. And Danny had no problems in letting it wait.
"Good Danny, just breathe." Don's hand moved against his back he supposed to be soothing but Danny could not help but tense. The smaller man knew that his actions didn't make sense. Don had been damn near hugging him only a few minutes ago and it didn't seem to matter. Maybe it was just that he was further from the point of waking and so further into reality. Or maybe there was a part of him still blaming the man for taking an action that reminded the blonde so painfully and vilely what had happened. Maybe it was neither of those and he was just messed up and taken a little longer to realise it.
"Just leave." Was that really his voice? It sounded like he'd been gargling sandpaper. Danny blinked, eyes still fixed on the blue carpet, wondering at how such a hoarse fractured sound could possibly be coming from his throat.
For a moment the room was still. The only sounds swimming through Danny's head being two sets of breathing, one quiet, the other heavy and wet like someone who had been crying. One of those was his he knew but he couldn't immediately discern which. Blue carpet blurred before the blonde's eyes then sharpened just a little then blurred again. Pounding within his skull the headache brought with it a peculiar sensation stinging in the pit of his stomach like he was falling really fast.
Only when a hand upon his left shoulder fixing him in place did Danny realise that he'd been moving, leaning forward unconsciously in search of some kind of support. The hand had disappeared from his back, that was what must have caused the change. Settling itself into even blur before his eyes he frowned at the carpet, wondering why on earth he would choose something that looked so soft and comfortable to cover his floors. God he was so tired.
"You can whine all you want Danny boy, I'm not leaving."
Danny shook his head slightly, trying to gather his thoughts but no matter how hard he tried every time he gained some others seemed to fall out and become lost again. When had he asked the other man to leave? Had he really spoken? The memory was faint, the tearing pain in his raw throat like choking on acid, the words that barely sounded like words at all. Thoughts and memories danced around his head like teasing sprites intent on making him claw and clamber to get them back.
Why was Flack here at all? Why were they just seated on the floor like this? Danny had been in his bed a short while ago, hadn't he? Then Flack had done something wrong and now they were on the floor. And God he was so tired and the carpet looked so soft. Pain screamed at him as he moved but if he could just lie down and curl up he was sure it would fade away. Only there was a hand gripping his shoulder and keeping him upright.
"'ired" the blond moaned, sounding in his head like a petulant child, sounding in the air like a smoker who had coughed his lungs raw and bleeding. "Fuck off."
"Ok then Danny, lets get you back in bed so you can sleep some sense into that skull of yours." Words were traced with disappointment, though Danny couldn't quite remember what he'd done wrong. It was something to do with the dark and the laughter and the smell of smoke. Everything that happened last night was so clear and yet not. It was a little like watching one of those old fashioned foreign movies, he could see it in his mind and remember it, but when it came to understanding it or explaining it to someone else he was at a loss. And the scenes, they jumped around like the person in the editing studio had done a hack job.
Something impulsive came over him as he felt hands steady themselves under his arms again, beginning to lift his form from the floor. "No" Danny stated, pushing out angrily with his bandaged palms.
It shocked him how quickly he was lowered back to the floor, though not ungently. The blonde sat there for a moment on the royal blue carpet. Despite the pain an exhilarating feeling surged through his veins and his lips quirked up just slightly on his bruised face. It was a sudden burst of light, of good feeling that made him realise what a dark place his mind had hidden away in, and he suddenly wanted, no needed to feel that again.
"Flack" God his voice was beat up, almost as painful to his ears as it was to his own throat. "I'm gonna to sleep on the floor, not the bed."
Silence thickened between them as Danny stared at the carpet, couldn't make himself look up. If Flack said no and forced him into the bed, the blonde wasn't sure what he'd do. No, that wasn't right. Danny knew what he'd do. Another brittle piece of him would break and he would scream, cry and lose it like he'd done before when Flack had tried to get him to swallow the pills. Not that he knew why. Just knew that right now his nerves were raw and exposed, any sensation enough to grate and tear.
"Sure, just don't come to me moaning when you feel like shit because of it."
For some reason that seemed to be exactly what Danny wanted to hear. Like he'd been caught in a sudden wave of warmth water, the feeling enveloped him, tickling at his raw nerves. Laughter when it trickled from his mouth startled the blonde as much as it startled his taller friend. It wasn't much, a bare few notes but given the setting it was unexpected.
Both were quiet for a while. Flack had removed his hand at some point from the blonde's shoulder so he could lie down, but Danny wouldn't, not yet. The smaller man leaned forward on his left arm, legs crumpled beneath him in an awkward way that was painful, but not as painful as if he were to try and to move them to get into a better position. There were no bandages on his right arm except his palm. The stitches looked terrible, running on and off up his forearm to his elbow. Small burnt circles of flesh dotted the arm pink, more visible now that they weren't hidden in the blood of other wounds. Hours since the attack had allowed bruises to start to darken from their shocked red. They were more accented now, showing details: wrapped hands, fists, the material used to tie him up. Seeing them, Danny didn't want to know what the rest of his body looked like.
"Give me the pills" Danny ordered, eyes still on the unfocused carpet.
Flack just about leapt to fulfil his command, making the blonde smile again as the small blurry objects were held out in front of his face. The smile wasn't smooth, full of too many angles to look natural. It slid easily from his face when a glass of water was placed on the carpet in front of him as well. He hadn't told Flack to get that.
Still, it didn't seem to matter that much. So Danny took the pills one at a time and used the water to wash them down his dry throat. Painkillers would make this better.
Danny grew more confident, bringing his eyes up to the man's chest, though no further. It was blurred, but close enough that he thought Flack might be wearing the same shirt from last night, at the hospital. The blonde remembered staring at it while the doctor had collected the evidence. It looked like the same small smears of blood were still there from where he had noticed them last night.
"Give me the duvet" the blonde told his friend's shirt collar with a firmness he thought he had lost.
The duvet landed quickly by his foot and the tickling good feeling was back, forcing more notes out of his mouth. Danny had a feeling he could get used to this. It wasn't as good or as safe as he'd felt before last night but it was a unexpected important feeling that brought him closer to feeling all right, if only for a moment.
"Give me the pillow Flack" Danny asked, glancing into his friend's eyes for long enough to tell that Don was very confused right now. To tell the truth so was Danny, but there had been so much recently for the blonde to become confused about that he didn't want to add to it. This could be confusing, and it could stay confusing. There were other things he probably should work out first.
The pillow was held out towards him and Danny shook his head, laughing. "No, put the pillow back."
Danny could feel the frown even if he didn't look up to see it on his friend's face. But Flack did just that. The blonde laughed, curling forward more as his throat and chest started to complain. There was something hot and liquid sliding down the sides of his face.
The blonde shook his head violently as soon as he felt the whisper of finger tips on his shoulder. Abruptly his good humour vanished.
"Don't touch me" Danny stated quickly, sharply at his taller friend. And Flack didn't. Danny laughed so hard he thought his slides would spilt.
"Its about control" Stella explained later down the phone line once Danny had fallen back asleep.
"What happened to him" she still couldn't say it, not that he blamed her. "Its all about loss of control, and people need to feel in control over what happens to them Don. Right now Danny's just trying to get that back."
"So if I keep letting him feel like he has control over what's going on he'll start feeling safer?" It was half a question, half a statement but the dark haired man didn't give his colleague enough time to answer. "When he feels safer, when he gets better will he stop wigging out like this?"
A sigh and Don knew he'd said something wrong.
"Don, you know its going to take time. You know that." The woman's voice was deeper now, heavy with tiredness. "Danny's coping the best way he knows how, and right now that's all we can really ask. The only thing we can do is make sure he knows we're here when he needs us. That and solve the damn case."
"I need to do more" he whispered harshly, the words seeming to spring from his throat with desperation to do something, anything to fix this fucked up situation.
"I know" she answered in a soft voice inflected with enough sincerity to show him that Stella really did. "And you will by being there for him when he next needs you, and again after that and after that and after that. Just like you always do."
Flack leaned back against the beaten couch, resting his head on a threadbare pillow. This wasn't like any other time when Danny had needed him. It was different this time.
"I can't just be there for him Stell. That doesn't work any more, he's different. I thought it was just a short term thing. You know, the shock of it or something, but he's really changed. I can't just sit here while he's there fucked up in the head, doing all kinds of crazy. I need to do something. I need to get Danny back."
"Don" the words were sharp and reprimanding, shooting jolts straight down his spine. Swallowing, he sat up a little straighter against the couch cushions. The alarm his mother had so carefully set to jangle in his head whenever he was close to swearing in front of a woman was blaring full force. "I need you to get into your head that there isn't a magical short term solution to this. Thinking that way is not going to help Danny one bit, and so help me god Don, if you hurt him. If you hurt him by putting so much pressure on him you do not even want to guess what I will do to you."
Stella sighed down the mobile before continuing, "You know as well as I do from the cases we've seen that a victim of trauma is not someone you want to make a wrong step with. I know this time its personal, and that's terrifying but you need to keep a clear head."
Flack blinked several times inclining his head slightly to the left to watch Danny's ajar doorway. The man was still in there conked out by painkillers and curled up in a mess of blankets and pillows on the floor. The dark haired detective doubted that there was a man more stubborn in all of the world.
"Thanks Stell" he finally sighed, keeping blue eyes locked on the still wooden door and the glimpse of blue carpet behind it. "I needed a bit of perspective on all this."
"No problem" she laughed, the notes wet and nervous as if crying was what the brunette really wanted to do. "If I was cracking up you'd put me in my place too."
"You better believe it."
Laughter then silence, both of them knowing which topic was going to be brought up next and neither wanting to be the one that started it. Finally Flack steeled himself, closing his eyes for a moment as he lifted the ugly subject.
"Any word on the test results?"
It was bad enough that the detective had been there, held his friend's hand as they took all kinds of gory evidence samples from the blonde. Somehow it was almost worse that now those same samples were sitting in a brown evidence box marked with tape, or whizzing through one of those high tech machines. Contents just waiting for someone to come along and run them through CODIS, the combined DNA index system, to search to see if any of the bodily secretions left on his friend matched an ex offender.
It was something they did every day. It was almost routine, and now this was so far from routine it felt like the earth had dislodged from its axis, and life was just spinning madly, randomly by.
"I pulled some favours and got to jump some DNA samples down the line. Its still going to take much too long but if we're lucky, some or hopefully most of the samples will be entered in for testing some time tonight or early tomorrow morning."
"Then what" Flack frowned trying to remember all the things his geeky friends had taught him about how the machines worked. "Its one hour per DNA sample?"
"One hour per several samples with the new machines" there was a smile wrapped around the words. "That should speed up the process some. If we're lucky sometime tomorrow we should have some profiles, then we just need to run them through CODIS and piece together the paperwork."
Don could not help but sag a little against the back of the sofa. Sometimes he wished that all this science stuff went as fast as it did on the television shows. Assuming a normal backlog of cases, it would usually take about a week to get back a sample including paperwork. That number could double or even triple if the system was particularly crowded. Stella must have seriously pulled some major favours to be able to get the samples in for processing so soon, but the paperwork would still add another day or two before it was coherent enough to be able to request a warrant.
Up till now the man who had done this to his friend had remained a nameless entity pushed to the back of his mind by the fact that Danny had needed him. Now Don could not help but imagine warped faces and names that would appear across a computer screen blaring a match to the samples. Somehow it didn't seem to make sense that this man had both a human face and a identity, maybe even a family. In Don's mind and perhaps Danny's too the samples and injuries came from a monster.
When thinking of a monster like the boogyman who hides in the back of your closet you don't picture their face. You feel them more than see them, as something evil. With some of the worst criminals Flack had dealt with, the ones that he dreamed about hitting over and over until skin became blood, blood became tissue, tissue became bone and bone became brain matter. Even once the detective had learned what they looked like, most disturbingly normal. Flack had looked past that to their eyes and seen that although monsters have human faces, it is behind the normal that hid the monster.
Sometimes he could see that in their eyes when the detective questioned them on the crimes they had committed. A cocky movement or flash in their expression that showed how remorseless they were about what they had done. The man wondered in his anger driven state whether if he left right now, and walking the streets of New York pulled over every male he came across to stare them down he would be able to see that evil. Whether he would be able to tell from the average man on the street the one who had changed his friend so badly.
Not so drunk on anger to ignore reason Flack knew that he couldn't do that. The only way they would find out who did this was if Danny told them or the samples gave them a match. Honestly with the way the blonde had been acting, the detective was only holding out hope for the latter option.
"Mac asked how Danny's doing" Stella said quietly, "whether he's feeling better from the flu yet."
"Tell him I'm having a hard time keeping him in bed. That he's currently passed out on the floor but I'm planning on forcing chicken soup down him in a little while."
"Seriously Don, the flu?" Don could hear the incredulous tone in her voice, "don't you think that Mac will suspect something if Danny just suddenly comes down with the flu and you stay home to keep an eye on him just after you tell him one of your guys. Just after you tell him what's happened?"
He ran a palm through his short hair which had already begun to accumulate a layer of grease from its short period of neglect. After that silent phone call the previous morning a lot of things seemed to have taken the back burner to his concern for Danny.
"Mac won't suspect a thing" Flack said, voice sounding cold even to his own ears. "Because he doesn't want to. Trust me Stell, I denied it all until Danny practically told me himself. Even now I think I'm still waiting for the moment when it all turns out to be some big mistake. You, I had to tell you myself."
His voice was quieter now, but still with a solid undercurrent of conviction. "As long as we don't tell him, Mac will rationalise every coincidence as just that. He's not going to want to travel down that line of thought that leads to Danny being raped. None of us wanted to, and that alone is gonna be enough to stave him from even considering it for a while."
"But not forever" came the equally quiet, equally firm response.
Don blinked, then hunched forward over the phone. Suddenly he felt so very heavy.
"No, not forever. He's Mac; he finds everything out eventually."
The rest of the day passed along in the manner of a nightmare. Slow dreamy hours of waiting were interrupted by harsh sudden reality.
When Danny next awoke Flack did as he had said he would do on the phone and prepared some chicken soup. Not the plain kind of course, but the kind with noodles and a kick of spice. It was Danny's favourite.
This time around painkillers made the blonde more docile but also more distant. Flack was reminded painfully of times he had visited his great uncle Stanley who had been firmly entrenched in the battlefield of dementia. For nearly fifteen years before the man had passed on his wife Gwyneth had waited on him hand and foot. She had changed him, fed him and sang him soothing songs when the confusion set in, making him anxious and lost inside his mind.
At first Flack's skills were employed in prompting the smaller man who seemed to space out at the least provocation. Sometimes the distant look would be accompanied by a pained concentrated expression that furrowed his forehead, as if the blonde were solving a particularly tricky mind teaser. During those times the taller man could not help but wonder what he was thinking about. Though somehow it occurred to him that he probably didn't want to know.
Then as the meal progressed Danny's hand wavered more and more. It was no surprise; with the covering of bandage the blonde could barely grip the spoon in the first place. Stiffness seemed to have taken residence in the man's joints, adrenaline dissipated enough for the limited function to make itself known.
"Finished?" Don questioned when more soup was getting onto the man's top than it was going in his mouth.
Danny nodded, dropping the spoon to reach for the water placed on the bed side table. Don placed the bowl quickly down on the bed beside the man, reaching up in time to stop the glass from tipping over. Though the blonde was now equipped with glasses, sore muscles and groggy mind worked together to make him just as clumsy. For the most part the smaller man seemed too preoccupied or wasted to notice, just waiting patiently as Don held the glass steadily in front of his face so he could sip from the straw.
Flack had used a brightly coloured purple crazy straw that he had recovered from the bottom of the blonde's cutlery drawer. He had hoped it would make Danny laugh. It didn't.
"Whoa there mister" Flack exclaimed as his friend absently pushed aside the blankets to angle his feet over the side of the bed. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Bathroom" came the muttered response as with one palm flat on the bed and the other gripped around the edge of the bed side table he attempted levering himself to his feet. Pale face turned quickly red at the effort, but somehow Danny made it. Teeth remained gritted together like he was four miles into a five mile run instead of just trying to stay vertical.
The first thought flashing through Don's head was to simply push him back down. Then he thought back to the phone call with Stella and Danny's crazy moment a few hours back. Maybe Stella was right and control was what was important to Danny right now. As much as Don wanted to look after his friend, he also didn't want to be the one that took that away from him.
"You need any help?" the taller man asked hopefully, looking at his friend's swaying form.
Blue eyes glazed over as they looked up at him, blinking slowly. It was one of only a few moments of eye contact over the past two days and Flack had learned quickly to savour them. At the same time though they pained him, looking so different from the confident sharp gaze he was so used to. Sometimes it was really like someone else with a completely different personality had taken over his friend's body. It was hard to remember that this slumped over distant stranger was really his best friend.
Danny moved his left arm slowly from the bed, wrapping it slowly around the taller man's arm. His approach similar to the manner in which a hungry child cautiously sneaks up on a forbidden sweet food, wary of reprimanding. Don noticed that he didn't use his hand at all. It must finally be causing him some discomfort.
"Walk" the blonde ordered with reassuring steel behind the voice. He had removed his right arm from the side table, leaning into the taller man to help support his weight.
That would be a 'yes I do need help' then Flack commented mentally to himself. The dark haired man allowed a small smile to perk up the corners of his mouth, glad that for now Danny had decided to give up on arguing.
Their progress was not as slow as Flack had expected it to be. Danny held up most of his weight which made a thankful change to the day before. Every step carried with it a heavy limp which made Flack's heart jump along with it. A part of him must have expected it. But seeing his best friend wince and monitor so carefully the way that he was walking seemed quite something different and unpleasant. Particularly when every movement implanted so firmly in his mind the reason why and what he would do to the perpetrator when they finally caught him.
As Danny let go of his arm to stumble painfully onto the toilet seat, Flack thought suddenly of the stages of grief. The blonde stared pointedly at the exit and Flack left the room, closing the wooden door behind him. The detective couldn't remember all the stages, something that he admonished himself on as being in his line of business there was little excuse not to. He did remember though that one of the first was denial. Straight after the doctor with her freckles and stern glare had told him he knew he had definitely gone through that.
Another was anger, he guessed that was what he was going through now. In the past couple of days he felt anger at himself for letting this happen, anger at Danny for getting hurt again and more recently anger at whoever had been more directly responsible for Danny's wounds. Not that he believed there to be a clear reliable set model for explaining what everyone was feeling on the worst days of their lives. It did however feel better to be able to put these unpredictable surges of emotion into a nice neat box to look at.
More than all of that it made him wonder. If he was feeling so horrible and lost over this whole situation, then how on earth was Danny feeling?
A while later while Don was hurrying around his friend's kitchen, trying to clean up and decide what next meal he should try and force down the man next, he heard the shower turn on. Curious, the dark haired detective poked his head around his friend's bedroom door to stare at the adjoining bathroom. He couldn't however think of a good enough reason to go through the closed door to check whether his friend was all right.
Eventually after much hovering and mental debates he walked up to the door and rapped the wooden surface hard three times.
"Hey you doing OK in there buddy?"
"Mind your own fucking business Flack!"
Flack blinked a few times then decided to take that for a yes. He'd heard of post traumatic stress disorder, even seen the early stages of it a few times. Enough at least to know that the early reactions to a traumatic event could be deceptive which at this moment in time was comforting. Victims could take things surprisingly well then spiral out of control a few months or even years down the line. Victims could take things badly like Danny seemed to be doing and never have the symptoms long enough to warrant a diagnosis of full post traumatic stress disorder. Or sometimes they could.
Whatever the case, Danny's mood was spinning from one to the other in a manner Flack had thought only teenage girls and pregnant women could achieve. The detective made a note to look it up along with the other million questions he had accumulated.
"Well, you need me then I'm just out here. So just yell." The detective replied lamely, moving away from the door as much as he loathed to.
No set task in mind, he hovered around the room before coming to a decision. Pancakes. Danny always said that he could cook some amazing pancakes. The secret was a hint of cinnamon – a trick his grandmother had taught him.
Thankful for something to concentrate on, Flack moved to the kitchen again to gather the ingredients. There were no blueberries which was his usual ingredient. He frowned, wondering whether it was worth popping to the store for when he turned his head toward the sound of the still running shower.
No way. He wasn't leaving Danny alone, particularly when he was acting like this.
Sighing he searched the cupboards before stumbling across a container of raisins, they would do.
Ten minutes later, the first pancake was cooking in the frying pan. Flack barely looked down as he flipped it, eyes on the blonde's bedroom door and the sound of the shower behind it. There was little reason why Danny wouldn't be allowed a shower. The doctor had even made sure the stitches were waterproof for that exact reason.
Don guessed that with the amount of issues Danny already had, the doctor didn't want to add to that list by making sure that the only way the man could wash himself was a careful sponge bath. All he knew was that if something like that had been done to him, having to pay that much attention to his body while washing it would have been further torture.
He added another cooked pancake to the pile beside him on the counter top. Somehow though worry still managed to sit pointedly where it had taken residence in his stomach two days ago, now repeatedly jabbing at him least he forget it was there. He couldn't see Danny, so couldn't convince himself that he was all right.
The next pancake burnt.
Half an hour after the last drops of batter were cooked and the stove turned off, Flack approached the bathroom door again. It had been almost an hour, and though he tried to convince himself that showers could last that long something inside him refused the assertion.
"Hey Danny, you done primping yet?"
No answer. Flack frowned, wondering if he had been too casual. Whether while pretending he was talking to the old Danny he had known for years, he had inadvertently offended this new changed man who had taken his place.
"Look, I made us some pancakes. My famous recipe of course. I was just wondering when you're planning on coming out so we can eat?"
Again, no answer. Like it was mocking him, the shower kept up its steady tune.
Flack placed a hand on the door handle, the silence drawing out new worries and scenarios that flittered around his head like pesky flies. He'd never thought the time would come that he regretted a childhood of building up his imagination with comics and fiction books but that day had definitely arrived. "Dan, you don't open that door in the next ten seconds and I'm coming in."
Feeling generous, the detective allowed twenty seconds to pass before turning the metal and entering the room. Steam immediately halted his progress, the air heavy with it. Flack waited a few seconds to acclimatise to the new environment then began a slow deliberate walk toward the bath tub.
"Danny?"
The shower curtain was drawn. Its white smooth material dripping with moisture from the heavy steam. Despite sudden disorientation from the vapour Flack had control of his senses enough to check that everything else in the room was not out of place. Nothing was out of place but a pile of clothes by his feet.
He gripped a hand on the plastic curtain. Hesitated. To be honest he wasn't sure whether he was taking a step too far. Whether by doing this he was invading his friend's privacy. Whether this would be another thing that riled up Danny's mood and set his best friend against him.
"Danny. You there?" No answer.
Flack pulled back the curtain from over the solid white bath tub.
The water was pink.
It was a fact that set off alarms bells so loud that for a moment the detective could not hear the water falling inches from his head. The water trailed from Danny's curled up toes toward the opposite end of the bath and the plug hole. From the blond's hunched over position, chin on knees and arms wrapped around legs, Flack couldn't tell where the blood was coming from.
In a swift motion he switched off the shower. In response Danny increased his grip about his legs, hunched over more. The blond was probably cold.
Flack walked around the bathroom for a moment, grabbing two towels before coming back. It took longer than it should have to wrap the first around the blonde's naked form. At the base of the bath tub near the plug hole sat a pile of bandages. Bandages that had once covered the cuts that marred the man's upper back.
Only they weren't just cuts Don saw. They were letters. A word.
'PIG'
Most of the 'P' sat solely on the left shoulder blade with just the tail dripping off the edge. The 'G' started the same, in the skin on the right blade. The curve of the letter and an unsteady hand had led it to mutate so that the bottom dug into ribs. The top of the 'I' kissed softly over the vertebrae in the man's back, near the neck before sloping downward to the left in an increasingly savage manner. Or maybe that cut had started deep into the muscle and lightened as the weapon pulled upward.
Flack didn't know. That was the science side of things. Stella would know. Danny would know.
They would probably talk for hours about those wounds. About hesitancy marks, of which Don could see none. Or about how the angle each cut was made showed whether the person who had done this was right or left handed.
At least they would have talked about it if Danny hadn't been the victim.
Flack dropped to his knees and leaned over the side of the tub to wrap the largest grey towel over the man's frame. Secretly he was glad when it covered the marks so well.
"Danny?" He moved back the sopping wet hair from the smaller figure's forehead. The gesture was half caring, half desperate. Flack was surprised by how much he needed a response right now. For the blonde to look up, blink and tell him he was fine.
Danny did none of those things. Instead blue eyes remained pointed downward toward his toes. With the water turned off, the puddle beneath the blonde slowed from a dash to a meander in the direction of the plug hole. This fact had caused the pink to deepen in colour so it was more like the deep red that was its source.
Danny was still bleeding. The tinted water didn't indicate that he was bleeding too badly but that really depended on how long it had been going on for. Danny had been in the shower for almost an hour.
"Come on buddy. Where are you bleeding?" Flack was almost afraid to phrase the question. After all he wasn't too familiar with some of the more intimate wounds Danny had sustained. It was possible that this was normal. That he was over reacting. Had the doctor mentioned anything about this? He couldn't remember.
The water didn't lean any more toward red. If Danny were still bleeding then it was light, not enough to worry about. Though Flack still did.
No matter what Flack said. How he questioned, threatened, coaxed. Danny didn't raise his head from his knees or otherwise move from his curled position. The one time Don attempted moving his body, trying to force him to look at him the blonde let loose a whimper so pitiful that he had to let him go.
So with the distinct feeling that he had given in once again to his friend Don sat there with him. It crossed his mind that alone might be better for the blonde at this time, but the idea made him baulk. Danny was so out of it that Don didn't know what would happen.
Talking didn't last long before Don couldn't think of anything else that he hadn't said a million times over. Instead he moved the second towel gently through the man's hair mindful of the bump near the back of his head. The one that had panicked him so much at the hospital because it had traced blood over Danny's fair hair.
Water had been dripping from it onto Danny's face and though the smaller man made no mention of being uncomfortable Don found he couldn't bring himself to chance it. He was reminded again of his great uncle Stanley who had lost his mind before he'd lost his body. As a child he had puzzled over why on earth his wife spent so much effort nursing and taking care of him when she could put him in a home.
Now he thought he understood. There were some people you cared about so much already that really, a little bit more care was worth the effort. It was what family did.
Danny stirred, raising his head slightly to look up at him. He looked so confused like a child awaking from a dream.
"Nice to see you back among the living" Don smiled sitting back to leave the small white towel on top the blonde's head.
As if startled by the noise Danny flipped his gaze back again to fix on the bottom of the white tub. Hands pulled the grey towel tighter around his body, causing Don to notice a small dark smudge on the edge of one side. That was where the blood was coming from. The man's hand.
"Danny?"
"Flack. I messed up." The words were soft and wet. From the definite tone Don realised the blonde had been turning the statement over in his head for a while now.
"I doubt its that bad" the dark haired man said reaching for his friend's hand. "Let me see."
The wound on his palm was a little more gory than when he'd seen it being bandaged. A stitch had been pulled loose, maybe two. The wound itself was clean and had stopped bleeding but those stitches would have to be replaced. Don pulled the blonde's arm further from under the large towel, looking at the lines of stitches along the flesh. Some were tugged and annoyed but all were still intact.
"No. No Flack" Danny protested pulling back his arm. Blue eyes glinted with so many different emotions Flack failed to name them all. "I messed up. I really messed up."
With a jolt of surprise he realised that Danny wasn't talking about the damage he had done to his hands. The blonde was talking about what had happened that night. What he had done to make it happen that night.
He swallowed, mouth turned painfully dry. "Danny, it wasn't your fault."
"How can you say that Flack!" Anger through him from what little eye contact the blonde allowed him to see. It felt like an electric shock frying his nerves.
Then the shock really hit, making Flack feel like someone had replaced his stomach with a bowling ball. The taller man had been so wrapped up in his guilt that he hadn't even stopped to think that Danny might be blaming himself. At one point not long ago Flack himself had tried blaming Danny for what had happened. For getting himself in trouble again.
That fact alone was enough to raise the guilt up to the point that Flack felt he was suffocating underneath a mountain of it.
"This isn't your fault Danny" Flack stated firmly grabbing the other hand to check before the blonde could pull away. He hoped that would be the end of the conversation.
Another stitch had come loose leaving a gaping hole in its wake. It didn't look as bad as the first. Both would take seconds to suture up again, but Flack could think of no other way of doing that than returning to the hospital. He wasn't sure how Danny felt about it but right now that place had been tarnished by such bad memories that it was the last place he wanted to return to.
Well, that place and the alleyway.
"You can't say you're not thinking it too!" Danny all but roared, and though hours had soothed the sore throat there was enough pain in the action to make him cringe. "Com'n its Danny the screw up, Danny the trouble magnet. I know what they say about me in the lab. They even had poll going on when I'd next be mugged because that sort of screwed up stuff always happens to ME."
Flack didn't know what he was supposed to say to that. He was afraid to say anything in case Danny picked up the doubts. Realised the fact that though they had drifted to the back of his mind over the past day the desire to put some kind of blame on the blonde was still there.
It was because he trusted Danny so much. The idea that when it came to it the clever resourceful man he knew could do nothing to stop being raped was still too much a foreign concept to wrap his head around. He wanted so badly for nothing like that to have happened to his friend, the frustration that it had carried with it wave upon wave of blame.
The majority of that blame was still pointed at himself. Without the bogeyman behind this all having a face to point at (or pummel) that blame was left to shoot in any direction it could. Adam was to blame because he was there too that night and like Flack had not suspected anything amiss. Mac Taylor was to blame because he couldn't be there to help Stella and Flack sort it all out. The doctor was to blame for making him aware and making this his reality. Danny was to blame for being human and not being able to stop this from happening.
With a deep breath Flack pushed that line of thought to the back of his mind. Stella had been right. It would do no good to Danny's prospects of recovery if he pushed the blonde in the wrong direction. There was no room in this situation for those kind of thoughts.
"Danny" Flack said firmly, gripping the blonde's towel wrapped shoulder. The blue eyes didn't so much as look at him in response, as flitter hesitantly in his direction before returning to the interior of the white bath tub.
The dark haired man increased his hold on Danny's shoulder. Leaning in close so that his forearms were forced to rest on the edge of the bath. This close the smaller man looked even worse. Pale skin was clammy and tinted grey where blood rising through damaged tissue hadn't already coloured it red, blue or purple. Eyes were bloodshot and accompanied by tired circles.
Right now he looked more like a corpse than a living human being.
"What would I do to anyone that said crap like that about you?" Flack gently nudged the man sideways a little, trying to force some kind of reaction. "Eh?"
The words were delayed and soft, but after much deliberation the blonde finally let them spill through broken lips. "You'd kick their ass."
"Exactly. I'd kick their ass!" Flack said with a smile. "So what the heck are you thinking supposing you can get away with saying that crap as well?"
Finally eye contact and Flack made sure to savour it. There was confusion still and pain in the man's expression, but there was also understanding and fragments of trust. Then Danny rested his head once more on his knees, staring again at the white tub.
"I just" the blonde swallowed, eyes screwed up as if the words required extreme concentration. Either that or he needed his discarded glasses, but Flack was willing to bet on the former.
"I don't know what to do. I don't know how-" Danny swallowed again, attempting to control the words tendencies to break apart on his tongue. Flack remained silent knowing that this was the closest his friend had come to talking about what had happened.
Danny shook his head, not once looking anywhere near Flack. "I don't know what to do."
Flack nodded, leaning over the edge of the tub to grab the discarded towel that he had used to dry Danny's hair. With quick movements that slowed once he noticed the blonde begin to tense, the taller man dried off the floor of the bath tub before Danny's feet. Then he tossed in the man's discarded pile of clothing so that he could get changed.
"Don't worry about that Danny" Flack stated with a forced smile, trying to figure out how present his friend was right now. Whether he was here in mind enough to dress without prompting or help. Whether he would hurt himself again if Flack were to leave.
"I'll fix it" he promised with a hand still resting on the man's shoulder. Part of him was afraid that if he let go Danny would fall down or break. "I'll sort out this mess."
And he meant it.