Quiet (Danny, Open to anyone at London College)

[daniel_marlow]

Danny hadn't slept well the night before and there were dark circles under his eyes. By this free period, right before lunchtime, it was a struggle just to stay upright and he had to appetite to speak of. Instead of eating, he got a huge cup of coffee and went to a bench outside to sip at it.

Once parked on the bench, he pulled out his journal and started to record the details of his nightmares the night before. His therapist wanted Danny to keep track of them and if the woman thought it would help, Danny would try it. By this point he didn't think anything would ever make them go away, but he had to try. He idea of his entire life being like this was unimaginable.

He heard people walk around him from time to time, but he didn't really look up. He figured if they wanted him, they would say something.

Comments

[daniel_marlow]

"Zoe Kemp?" Because who else could that be? "She's in my art class," Danny mused. "She's talented. I've never really spoken to her though. I guess my family isn't really rich, so I don't do the 'hide all the things' thing. No one else has really talked to me about my shit either though, not even my best friend."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Rachel nodded, yes that Zoe. "I kind of grew up pretty poor but then my Dad married again and she has lots of money because she's an investment banker. I never really knew anyone rich until he met her. And people in my old school might have been mad I guess? But everyone just got on with it. Like... my old therapist said that money didn't mean you didn't have problems, but it never felt true, you know? And then I found out I was going to be coming here, and I thought... welp, this isn't going to work. But then there was Zoe, who had issues and a mansion. And then there's you too. I don't know. Maybe I don't know anything anymore."

[daniel_marlow]

Danny shook his empty coffee cup around to see if there was any liquid left inside, and then sadly shoved it back into his bag when he was denied. "Maybe money just means you hide it better, but Zoe doesn't see the point? Or maybe she's too tired like me." He felt like maybe he should try to talk to her now, if Rachel said she had issues. He didn't so much care about the mansion part.

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"I don't think she sees the point!" Rachel was almost grinning, not because of the subject matter but because Zoe had the audacity not to give a shit about pretending to be normal. "She doesn't seem tired anyway."

[daniel_marlow]

"Not seeing the point is pretty good," Danny smiled. "And being tired sucks, so it's better if it's the former anyway. Zoe always seemed pretty cool."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"Zoe is so cool," Rachel agreed. "And she's smart. Scary smart. And her lesbian mums are the weirdest people you will ever meet. They are so nice it's unreal." Rachel was in awe of the lesbians, a little bit. Quite a lot, actually.

[daniel_marlow]

"She has lesbian mums?" Danny asked, a little shocked but not in a bad way. "Awesome. I think my mum would be a lot happier if she was a lesbian." It was just random rambling now, but Danny had thought about it a few times. It would just make some things a lot easier. "Guys are such dicks anyway."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"I guess. My dad can be kind of a dick sometimes. He's been okay at the moment though," she added, because the last couple of weeks at home had been okay. She'd dropped and cracked her phone and he hadn't said a word about it; instead he'd bought her a new one with a tiara sticker on the back, kissed her forehead and called her princess. So she felt disloyal calling him a dick.

[daniel_marlow]

"Mine tries to call me sometimes," Danny muttered. "Like he thinks it doesn't matter at all that he basically abandoned me. I was too much to deal with but I'm older now so he doesn't have to go out of his way. So he calls and I never really know what to say. I sort of wish he'd stop trying, but I'd be pissed off if he did too. Does that make sense?"

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"I guess," said Rachel, though she didn't really understand. "My dad was mostly not around when I was a kid, I guess that's kind of like yours too? Except then everything went into the shitter and each other was all we had left."

[daniel_marlow]

The thought of his father being the only person he had left was horrifying to Danny and it made him go a bit pale. He'd thought about it before, sure; about how he would be up shit creek without his mother. It was still a little harrowing to be reminded of it, and his heart went out to Rachel.

"Sounds like mine, yes," he nodded. "I hate it when things go in the shitter. Sometimes you find out what's important though."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Rachel made an uncertain face. She knew that people were supposed to learn and grow from adversity, she knew that people were supposed to be stronger in the broken places and survivors were supposed to have indomitable spirits but it had never truely felt like those messages were meant for her. "I don't know," she said. "Sometimes you just find out that everything is crap."

Then she remembered her expensive new phone, and felt bad again.

[daniel_marlow]

It was then that Danny decided he really liked Rachel. He had tried to put a happy spin on it because his therapist did that, but he had always sort of felt like it was a little hollow. He had gotten closer to his mother, but at what cost?

"Yeah!" he said, like it was a revelation. "Sorry, I guess in therapy you're supposed to look for a silver lining but sometimes there's just a shit lining and then more shit. And there's really not that much you can do with it. You're right."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Rachel was right? Well that was a first. "When I was in therapy I guess we didn't really do a whole lot of silver lining looking," she said, thinking about the school counselor at her old school, who was calm and rational and concerned and thankfully not all that cheerful. "Mostly just went over coping mechanisms," she said.

[daniel_marlow]

"Been there," he nodded. "I did a lot of...not nice things for awhile." He had cut himself on his thighs for several years after going through puberty. At the time he had figured anyone who saw it would might hesitate before they hurt him, and it might give him time to get away. Danny hadn't hurt himself like that in a year or so though, but he still thought about it sometimes. "I was just trying to get through the day. I guess I have better coping mechanisms now. Maybe. I don't know."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"I did a lot of not nice things," Rachel nodded, both echoing his words and telling the truth about herself. "I don't even know why I do things sometimes. Like I'd hide stuff important to my dad and made him think he'd lost it, and he'd really start freaking, and then he'd find it somewhere really obvious but stupid and he'd think that he was losing his memory. I don't even know. That's horrible. I know that's horrible. But sometimes it would stop me cutting, you know?"

[daniel_marlow]

Danny nodded because he did know. He hadn't acted out against his mother much, but sometimes he had taken it out on his sister. He was fairly sure he would never stop feeling guilty about that.

"Maybe it's not so nice, but I don't think it's horrible. I don't think much stopped me cutting. Not when I was at my worst." He pulled up his sleeves a little to look at the pale scars along his wrists. While his thighs had been where he did it the most, his wrists had been what he attacked at his lowest point. When he'd tried to end it all, he hadn't bothered hiding his pain. "Until about a year ago when I started drawing every time I felt like doing it. It's worked so far."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Danny wasn't going to convince Rachel that she wasn't horrible, but it also wasn't an argument she was going to have with him here are all the reasons why I am shit and you should never like me. Because she wanted him to like her. She wanted him to like her like she wanted Zoe and Liz and Emma to like her (except with Liz and Emma that felt like a far more distant hope since they were adults and adults had a knack for forgetting they had once been horrible and were far less forgiving of horrible children than other horrible children were; but Rachel still wanted it.)

"I run," said Rachel, looking at his scars and thinking about her own.. "When things are so bad, I run. And then when things aren't as bad I practice running so I can run for longer when they are." She reached forward to touch his wrist, not the scars themselves, but the skin nearby.

[daniel_marlow]

It actually surprised Danny that he turned his wrist towards her so she could run her fingers along it. He usually didn't let people touch him, but here she was talking to him about real things and he didn't feel so disconnected from the world like when he talked to other people. They would go on about movies or test scores like they mattered, and Danny usually phased it out.

"I'd probably fall over if I tried to run, much to my mother's horror," he laughed then. He was in shape, but quite clumsy. "And I never get much sleep. Nightmares. But I could watch running."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

"Hah," Rachel laughed gently. "Watching running might be boring," she warned. She couldn't stand sitting still while other people were up and moving. Watching sport was horrible. "Sometimes I stay up for days," Rachel said, understanding that sleep was sometimes an impossibility. "Not so much nightmares as... I don't know. I never remember my dreams," she finished with a shrug.

[daniel_marlow]

"I could listen to Chariots of Fire on my iPod," he said, grinning. "All I tend to do during lunch is try to stay awake anyway. Sometimes I sit with Dylan, but he's usually with Lydia and she tends to have her posse around. We don't get on. Apparently I'm too weird for them," he said with a shrug. He clearly didn't give a shit. "You don't remember your dreams? Fuck, I wish I didn't remember mine. They're terrible."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Rachel smiled in a sad kind of way. "I guess this is the first thing that's made me kind of grateful for my shitty shitty memory," she said with half a shrug. "No nightmares?"

[daniel_marlow]

"Is that a silver lining I hear?" he asked her jokingly, but smiled a moment later. "Did you forget stuff? I did a bit of that. Repressed memories? But most of the stuff I went though I couldn't forget. And now I have nightmares of it and it sucks."

[runrachelrun.insanejournal.com]

Rachel made a shocked face at his joke followed by a squawk of laughter. Some people laughed prettily. Rachel squawked or shrieked or snorted. Laughter often caught her by surprise. Like Zoe caught her by surprise, standing a little way behind Danny. Zoe had been the first to clean up her chemistry bench so she'd been allowed out a couple of minutes before the bell. "What's so funny?" she asked, giving Danny an awkward hello-I-don't-know-you-but-you're-making-my-friend-laugh smile.

She knew who Danny was though. Mrs Marlow's son, and Gloria had killed his sister. Zoe thought it was very important to know all the people who had lost someone to Gloria.

"Repressed memories mean I don't have nightmares," Rachel explained.

"That is a riot," Zoe agreed.

[daniel_marlow]

Danny gave her a similar smile back and then he added a little wave. "I'm Danny and I do have nightmares," he said as an introduction. "You're in my art class and you're awesome at it." He didn't add that Rachel had told him she had issues and a mansion, because he didn't think it was necessary. "Want to sit?"