darker_london | These are things I am doing (Danny, his friends, Abby at the beginning)

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These are things I am doing (Danny, his friends, Abby at the beginning)

"Nooooo!"

Danny had his arm flung over his face and he was hiding in the crook of his elbow from a very bossy Abby. "Daniel Marlow, you need to finish your lunch."

Danny groaned, fairly sure if he ate anything else he was going to throw up. Abby had informed him, however, that he needed to eat more than he had been to put some weight back on. Something about not fucking his heart up more than it already was. In order to do that, considering his stomach had shrunken from disuse, he needed to not give up on his meals after three bites. "You are mean to me!" he accused her, still hiding.

"Yep, I'm a dragon lady. Not literally, in case that worries you. Now eat your damn tater tots before I tell your mother on you."

Behind Abby his friends filed into the room, though Danny didn't entirely hear them. He was still hiding in his arm. "That's a dirty trick, Dr Abby. A dirty, dirty trick."

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"Nah, not so bad," he agreed with Cai, popping another one of the tater tots in his mouth. "Then my clothes will fit again too."

Danny leaned forward to kiss Rachel's forehead and then he looked a little thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. He hated the idea that he might upset his friends with depressing subject matter, but considering what had happened to him, that was really all he had.

"Losing all that weight wasn't completely my fault though. I mean...yeah okay, the last bits of it were but not most of it. Have any of you guys ever been hungry? Like...like really properly starving?" Rachel had mentioned a feeding tube and Danny was afraid that meant she had. Zoe had been held captive too. Danny just hoped Cai hadn't had to suffer through that. "I mean... guess it's different? Uhm...being hungry and being kept hungry." Danny glanced at Zoe, his expression apologetic. "D-do you know what I mean?"

Zoe frowned, sucking her lips into her mouth at the memory of that vulnerability. Sometimes she hated that her friends knew about it, knew what she'd been through. She hated wondering if they thought about her as a kid, locked in a cage. "I wasn't kept hungry," she said, her voice hard. She didn't add that it was because she was supposed to look as healthy as possible for the sale, but she figured they could work that bit out on their own.

"I'm glad," Danny said quietly, wishing he could hug her. She looked like she might knock out anyone who tried though. "It's-" He shook his head hard and swallowed roughly. "It's just...really awful. And at some point I thought you'd never find me and if I was going to be Greg's fucking sex slave for the rest of my life so not eating seemed like the best way- No. No, it seemed like the only way to escape," he amended. This was so difficult to talk about so Danny just closed his eyes and kept talking.

"He only fed me enough to keep me alive anyway because I tried to get out in the first few days. So I guess keeping me a little weak was the best way to make sure I wouldn't try again? So I just stopped eating what he gave me for like...four days, I guess? And god...it was so bad. I remember vividly thinking I would punch Cai in the face and take his food from him and not even feel bad." He opened his eyes so he could give his brother a guilty look. "Sorry, Cai."

Cai was sitting at the end of Danny's bed now, his fingers hooked over the foot of it and his mouth pressed against the back of his hands so half his face was hidden. He was trying to be really careful about facial expressions. He wanted to scream and bash his head against the foot of the bed in sheer frustration that Greg had ever been anywhere near Danny.

There were some things - sex slave, not eating- that he could picture (or remember) too clearly and he really didn't want to think about it and sometimes he really wished he didn't know.

"S'okay," he said, in a strained voice as he tried to be normal.

"No," Danny said, shaking his head. "No it's not." There was no maliciousness behind his voice though. He certainly wasn't mad at his brother. "It's not okay because that man did that to me and it took how many days until I might have knocked someone out for a crumpet? I kept dreaming about food and it got to the point where it just...it hurt. It hurt so much and the next time Greg offered me food I took it. And after that every time he left I was terrified he might never come back which is so fucked up. But I didn't want to starve. Every time he walked back into that room I started being just a little bit grateful because sometimes it meant food. He would give me little treats- God. I hated myself so much."

"But that's not you," Zoe frowned. "I mean, it was you. But it was you trying to survive, and that kind of primal... drive, I guess, doesn't care about morals and ethics and whether or not you punch your brother in the face because it needs to survive, and..." she ran her hands over her hair, trying to set her thoughts out in straight lines and lay them out for Danny to follow.

"And there's no shame in trying to survive," Cai finished for her. She shot him a look, half annoyed that he stole her train of thought and half grateful that he understood as well.

Danny glanced back and forth between them for a moment before smiling weakly at them. "I mostly know that now. I just remember feeling so weak for giving in. But I kept thinking about nachos and wanting to cry which is not the right kind of reaction to nachos." Danny sighed and he leaned his head closer to Rachel because he honestly needed the comfort.

"I guess I didn't see myself as the kind of person who could end up all Stockholmy but I honestly think if I hadn't been found and he'd managed to nip my other escape plan in the bud, I would have ended up- Fuck. I might have gotten to the point where I just stayed willingly. I think that's what he was trying to do. He would call me things like 'sweet boy' and give me ice cream. I think he's well clued in to how to fuck with people like that and apparently I'm a susceptible idiot."

Rachel wrapped her arm around Danny, her hand pressing his head against her like she could just absorb him right up. "You're not an idiot," she whispered fiercely. "You're the smartest person I know. Even smarter than Zoe even."

Danny didn't expect that to come from Rachel, but once the sentiment was out, he couldn't help but gaze at her with perfect adoration. "I'm going to remember you said that," he chuckled before leaning in to kiss her.

When he pulled away, he glanced at Zoe to see her reaction before continuing. "Though I'm not smart enough to be able to eat now. Before I would have done basically anything for crumbs, and now I have to struggle through my meals. Captive Danny would not be very pleased with me."

"Captive Danny is gone," Zoe said firmly. "You are Free Danny now, and you get to make your own choices, like deciding to eat even if it's a struggle. It'll get easier."

"Free Danny," Rachel said, amused. "You sound like that whale."

"I stopped eating properly after the shooting," Zoe said, quickly, before she could scare herself into silence by thinking of the consequences. "Not... like you. But everything tasted of ash." Her period had stopped for almost a year as well, because of the stress and the way she was treating herself, but she wasn't going to tell Danny that.

Captive Danny is gone. Danny latched onto those words like a lifeline, even if he didn't acknowledge them. Not yet.

Danny glanced sideways at her, his brows furrowed in retroactive worry. "Oh, Zo," he said, hoping she wouldn't punch him for showing her sympathy. "Yeah, when I first got back I wasn't hungry at all, and I couldn't fathom why. It was just...bleh. And then later-"

This was why he had brought all this depressing shit up in the first place, but that didn't make it easy to say by any means. "I think the reason I've been refusing to eat lately is like...punishment. Punishment for taking food from Greg." Danny's ears burned and he immediately hid his face in his hands because he was sure his friends were going to be mad at him.

"Well that's dumb," Rachel said, stroking his hair. "I take back what I said about you being smarter than Zoe because that is just dumb."

"I get it," Zoe said quietly, because she understood the complicated ways in which people punished themselves for living. "I mean, she's right, it's dumb, you don't need to punish yourself for that, but, I get it."

Cai just tried really hard not to crawl under the bed and hide from hos terrible the world was right now. He did quite well, but his face was inching past horrified and into devastated, while trying not to change expressions at all.

Danny was so surprised and delighted that Rachel's response was to call him dumb, that he laughed. It was nice not to feel like people were walking on eggshells around him, even though most of the time they had been doing so because he reacted badly to someone.

"I know it's dumb," he acknowledged when he stopped laughing. "I know it is and I do it anyway. But look, see?" he said, popping the last tater tot into his mouth. His fruit cup was still left but it was too hard to eat it now.

"Cai? Cai, you look like you need a hug. You think we could manage?"

Rachel's face broke into a grin as Danny laughed, so happy she was that he could laugh. She kissed his temple as he finished the last tater tot, leaning her head against his for a moment.

Cai shook his head, sitting up straight. "I dunno... I'm not feeling so... centered, right now." It sucked so hard that he had to tell Danny he didn't want to hug him, but right now he did not. He couldn't deal with another vision like that, and it would be even worse if he inflicted another flashback on Danny.

"I thought you'd been getting better," Rachel said, sounding innocent enough. "I thought you and Zoe had been working on it?"

Innocent my arse, thought Zoe, scowling.

"No, it's- It's okay," Danny said, trying not to show the slight disappointment and rejection on his face. He wanted to snark back that he wasn't feeling fucking centered either, but it wasn't fair. "I mean- Sorry I asked." His ears had started to turn red and he wanted to curse his idiocy. Cai wasn't Melissa. He should stop trying to make the poor boy act like her. "And I guess sorry I made you feel uncentered?"

Cai shook his head, his eyes shut, and Zoe forced down the urge to hug him. Stupid boys that needed comforting. Stupid desire to comfort. She squeezed her arms around her own torso.

"Don't be sorry, seriously," Cai said, feeling pathetic. "It's been a long stupid week of trying not to have visions in the crush after class. I'll get there, I will, I want to, just... not today?" he added a silent please onto the end. Please don't make me risk seeing it again.

He couldn't even deal with seeing it, so how much worse must it be for Danny? Cai felt like a cowardly piece of shit.

Something in the way Cai stammered to explain himself calmed Danny's upset. "Cai," he said, his voice much more gentle this time. "Cai, it's okay. I love you. And look...I'll try to stop punishing myself," he said, switching back to the topic at hand anyway, so Cai doesn't feel pressured or guilty any more, "but I can't promise anything. Which is why I told you guys. I've been starving myself on purpose because I honestly hated that I let the bastard get to me. I've got the damn tube in now so there's not a lot of chance I'll get away with it now, but- I'm kind of sneaky? I just- I'd appreciate it if you watched me? Uhm. Just sort of...gently remind me punishing myself isn't necessary. B-because captive Danny doesn't exist any more, right?"

Cai grabbed onto Danny's reassurance, telling himself he should believe it, he should. His brain did believe that Danny meant it, but his heart didn't. He smiled at Danny though. He tried.

"Right," said Zoe, firmly. "Captive Danny doesn't exist any more. You're Free Danny, and Free Danny gets to choose to be a sneaky little arse, and Free Zoe and Rachel and Cai get to bully him into eating his fruit cup." Zoe said, raising her eyebrows at the untouched dessert.

"And Rachel wants to watch Free Willy," Rachel said quietly, as Zoe passed Danny a spoon.

Danny groaned at Zoe, but he accepted the spoon anyway. "You know, you could start badgering me tomorrow," he said, but he was already peeling the lid off the fruit cup. "I like the sound of Free Danny," he said, taking a big bite.

"What about you, Cai? I think it's more dignified than Free Willy. And I would like to state for the record here that I am refraining from making jokes about my willy and the state of it's freedom, and I think I should get some kind of recognition for that. Maybe a plaque or some kind of gold cup with an inscription?"

Cai winced at the joke but only for a moment. "I could make your fruit cup into a trophy," he offered. "Mount it on some wood. Um."

"HAH!" Rachel said, very loudly in Danny's ear.

"Jesus Christ," muttered Zoe.

Danny jumped at Rachel's reaction, but he turned and grinned widely at her. "And if you do really want to watch the movie, I reckon we could get it tomorrow. I could go for some family whale fun."

Then he sucked the remaining fruit out of the cup, licked it clean, and proudly handed it over to Cai. "See? All done. Trophy please. Maybe just create me an award for making really inappropriate jokes which cause you to do That Face and Zoe to blaspheme."

"Psh," said Zoe. "Zoe blasphemises all the time, she doesn't need a trophy for it."

"Cai was blasphemising before," Rachel said, in her same innocent-not-innocent voice.

Cai gave her a twisted smile. "You seriously were one of those annoying tattle-tale kids in primary school, weren't you?"

"I was a pain in the arse," Rachel agreed, leaning her head against Danny.

"But...trophy," Danny said, giving her a fake hangdog expression.

He snorted the moment Rachel admitted to being a tattle-tale, and he planted a kiss on her hair. "There's no one like my Rachel," he said, even if he had no idea why exactly would make Cai blaspheme.

"Guys? Do you- Do you think maybe in an hour we can order a pizza and all eat it together? I'd really like that. And it would please the nurses as well because they've been bothering me about my weight too." And maybe if they saw him eating they would believe he really was committed to getting better. "Once I'm in Priory I can get day passes and we can all go to Mariposa! Hopefully I won't have a tube in my nose then, it's not the best look..."

"I could eat a pizza," Rachel said, her cheek against his shoulder. "Can we get two?"

"Three?" Cai suggested. "I'm kinda hungry. Getting real jealous of your hospital tater tots." He narrowed his eyes at Danny, like he was an older brother that had stolen all his food.

Danny laughed loudly again at Cai and the very idea that hospital tater tots were somehow enviable things. "You could have said something," he remarked, tossing the balled up lid of his fruit cup at Cai's head. "Why don't we go for broke? Four pizzas. Oh yes. There will be four. But not for long!"

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These are things I am doing (Danny, his friends, Abby at the beginning)

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