AN: Danny Reyes is the property of Judas Kiss. And he is in fact abused as a child in that canon.
When Danny loved Ivo
Broken bones heal, if properly cared for usually with no visible bulges at the fracture site. But a break ignored becomes a permanent bone callus, a mark carried for life just like a tattoo.
Ivo could feel the bumps under his gentle fingers, the telltale signs of damage incurred over the years: the odd bend of a finger; the slight dislocation of one arm; the unnatural indentation in the clavicle. He had devoted his life to the study of skeletal structures, knew the indications of injury and frequently the cause.
Danny's wounds weren't merely psychological.
Ivo never asked him what happened. Danny wouldn't have told him anyway. The boy's unwillingness to return home for the summer in and of itself spoke volumes. And so Ivo did the only logical thing a man in his situation – madly in love with his undergraduate student whom he had been seeing romantically for exactly one week – could do.
He took Danny to New Mexico with him. "As my cameraman."
Which of course every paleontologist requires….
Danny said nothing. But that day his heart began to grow again, began to love again.