I Don't Have The Patience

Danny. IED, Depression You could probably sum me up through Kanye West's tweets.

[ksenia-lopez]

[Life is not the same here as it is stuck inside of one house. Ksenia has been trapped in boxes, in houses, with four walls surrounding her, all her life. This place has more space, more walls, and less freedom. She doesn’t understand the concept, the part about how this is supposed to help her.

She’s afraid of being near anyone, yet this place is filled with people she’s forced to interact with: roommates, free time having to be outside of her room, staff. She has to tell everything that happened to her to someone she barely knows?

On her twenty-first birthday, he brought her a cheap bottle of vodka and told her happy birthday. He was he was sorry he couldn’t afford more.

It was around that time that she was in love with him. It was for that thought, the bottle of vodka, that she fucked him. She swore she was in love. And the next few days, he took her out to dinner.

Now, she can’t think about alcohol and she can’t eat anything.

So she’s kind of just been sitting here in the cafeteria, fork in the mashed potatoes as if they won’t slip through when she tries to shovel them off the plate and onto the table, so if they spill onto some gross, unclean part of the asylum, she has an excuse.

After the first part of potatoes hits the table, she looks up to check her left and right to make sure that no one saw it, though, to her demise, a brown-haired male stands before her.

And he looks nothing like him.] Uh, if the food touches the table, they can’t make me eat it.

[iamnotmercy]

I mean... [The words drop from his lips before he can really think to save them. Not that Danny has ever been eloquent, or good with the wounds of others -- good at being careful not to run his sentiments along yet-to-form scars. But he has the sense to want to be, and to think, in hindsight, that maybe he shouldn't have said anything at all.] They start watching after so much of it ends up there.

[The words aren't encouraging, but they could be, he thinks. To someone who wants to hear them as a warning, they are. He doesn't know what she wants to hear, though.] Your cleaning will give you away.

[And he sits, when he shouldn't. Props his head on his hands and gazes at her plainly from across the table, when he shouldn't. He's too friendly for his own good. For the good of others, too. If she does have an eating disorder, he won't know how to talk around it the right way. If she doesn't want company, or simply can't stomach living here, he won't know how to talk around that either.

Just how to stumble, word over tongue, until meaning is lost and time is wasted sufficiently. To cover distance, but not with quality.

Still, she looks kind enough. Danny doesn't want to ruin things this time.

As if that is not inevitable.]

They really are so gross, though. I hear holding your nose blocks out the taste.

[madokamusic]

Visit Original Link

[iamnotmercy]

And they're turning us into monsters Turning us into fire Turning us into monsters It's all desire It's all desire It's all desire

[observernumber5]

Visit Original Link

I don’t think I’ll be here too long.

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny is needless to say startled to walk into class and find the man from the train standing at the front of it.

It's the kind of thing that part of him wants to bury forever, and the other part wants to take advantage of. Because the universe did somehow give them that second chance, but it did it in probably the worst way imaginable. If Danny is an underwhelming presence on a train, he can only imagine how far he will sink with the other reading his papers, and grading them.

It's that shaky, toppling, unsure feeling that takes his feet to the back of the room, rather than the front of it.

Danny's brain justifies that if enough people sit in front of him, he won't be seen. This he knows is necessarily true, or even what he wants, but it's how his head works.

He's content, for most of the class, just to sit there and listen. Taking the notes that he needs to take, and doodling in the margins of his paper keeps his nerves from fraying any further than they already have.

Time still moves, though, and eventually the class ends. He's got no excuse then to put off talking to the other. And he knows it's unlikely he will make it out of the door unseen.

He doesn't even want to. He wants to drag the familiar man down by his shirt collar, and kiss him until his lips are swollen and taste only of Danny.

This just isn't the time for that, or the place.]

Well this is a pleasant surprise.

[He says, when he's close enough. Danny keeps his posture tall, and relaxed. It doesn't entirely hide his interests, or his nerves.]

[amcta-deactivated20160622]

[Seth acknowledges that he ruined the moment, but the moment only really existed for longer than a moment in movies and TV shows. They were meeting on a train. There was graffiti and other people on either sides of both of them. However, there was something infinite about meeting someone so puzzling in a place so average. It was defying what romantic moments were supposed to be.

So what that meant was, Seth was perfectly fine with the brunette before him having not given his best in terms of wit and the way he reacted upon hearing Seth ruin it.

Though, while Seth doesn’t agree since it isn’t applicable there like it was when he said it to the male, he does want to do better.

He wants to capture, somehow, a way to tell him that he’d absolutely love to kiss his lips raw and leave a mark on his collar bone or neck or some patch of skin not away from eyes, but not screaming (though, fairly, even hidden patches of this boy’s skin scream at him).

So he does better, with what he does best:]

"Passing stranger! you do not know  How longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking,

…I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night, alone  I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

[After a few beats of as much silence as the wheels on the tracks allowed, he tried again,] Any better?

[iamnotmercy]

[If Danny were standing, his knees might have gone weak. He can tell because his whole body feels light and airy in the wake of the other man's words.

He's got no way to really follow it either, as much as he wants to. Nothing in his mind provides that easy sort of grace. His cadence, his jumbled, unsorted thoughts -- they don't breathe the same air.

Soon, he knows, he'll have to take some kind of literature course at school. So maybe that will help in situations like these, but it will be too little, and much too late for here. For now.

So he gives all that he has to give, and tries not to think of what it would taste like to catch the other's lips with his own. Or what it might feel like to rest his fingers at the curve of the man's neck; warm and soft, pressing more only as the heat of the moment grew.

There was nothing for him there.]

Much. [And his lips curve up; warm, smitten, amused.

Danny is good at hiding, but he does not want to hide how blatantly pleased it all makes him feel.

So it is both his luck and his misfortune that the overhead calls for a stop just then. Not his, but one he knows the route from. He stands, just to save himself the mess of ruining the moment with his own inadequate words.]

Until we meet again, huh? [His words are a soft peal of laughter, sweet and low, and then he is out of the doors. Gone.]

[amcta-deactivated20160622]

[There have always been towering insecurities within Seth. He has always fretted at the idea of being caught, found out, told on— at the idea of letting anyone know such information that they could. Though, the crime was all just any reason to hold, at arms length, getting to know anyone. It was easy to hold anyone far enough away and not think about the damages of never letting someone in.

He wanted in this one, though. Sexually (overwhelmingly so), emotionally. He was incredible at getting in other people’s heads. He could knock someone down two days after knowing them.

Seth makes a face: slightly disinterested, slightly disappointed, masking the true feeling of that he wants to bring the boy in front of him home and fuck him sore.

However, his words were terribly cliche and held oh, too little significance. And if there was anything he knew about anyone, which he didn’t, everyone was good with words when they tried. Those that stuttered, those with lisps, were more often poets.]

Oh, you could have done better than that.

[He was everyone’s worst critic, including himself.]

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny raises an eyebrow; not necessarily in disagreement, but for the sake of reaction. He's not put off by the words as much as he is simply amused. But he's never been the eloquent sort either, and he's sure that what the other wants to hear, he will never quite reach.

So then maybe it's a good thing that this is simply a stranger on the train. That for as cute as the other is, Danny doesn't have the weight of leaving an actual impression settling atop his shoulders.]

Most likely. [He admits, keeping his tone playful -- sitting on the edge of laughter.

Still, his tongue winds around less than impressive words. His speech patterns fall similar to those too quick with their tongue, than those patient enough to think about what they say.

Danny is, and he knows it, just a mix of slang and half-honed humor. Everything is shoddy, in-eloquent, and sometimes blunt.

But it's where he's comfortable. And it's why he doesn't think as consciously of it as he could when he shoots back:] But then, you could have to.

[amcta-deactivated20160622]

[Somewhere, there’s probably something poetic in the way this man’s hair across from him rest son his head and spills onto his forehead. Something about vines and their everlasting growth, curls ricocheting into tendrils that won’t grow leaves, so much as wisps.

But, also, he just sort of finds that in people.

In himself? Well, he’s only mostly a mistake. Mostly.

The one in front of him? Probably thinks he was. Maybe he wasn’t ever told it, but he probably thinks he was. And he stares back because not only is there plenty worth looking at, but he’s interesting. He’s sad, dark, and reserved in it.

There’s several seconds of blatantly avoiding eye contact until he licks his lips and sits up, as if telling him he can hear him staring so loudly.] As much as I like cute and broody, you are staring.

[The gray-haired woman, either woefully that old or a poser ready to rush to the end of her life (though, probably not to the actual end), glances at him when he speaks, he glances at her, and a smile is had as he looks away, back to the curly-haired boy.]

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny blinks, once, twice, back into existence. Not that he had ever really left it. If he were still a teenager, he would have blushed. Now, he only ducks his gaze away; down the aisle, towards a window. Anywhere but where he wants it to be, because the man is pretty, but not worth making uncomfortable.

Danny's got the decency to feel a little sorry. He says as much.]

Sorry. I zoned out for a moment. [And then, because fuck it, the guy called him cute.] It was a pretty nice view.

[Danny's confidence was a funny little thing. Gone on all the days he needed it most, but here to rest on the shoulders of a man he'd likely never see again. Like he can only have faith in himself if the person he's facing never gets to know him.

If there's no chance of that confidence ever falling through.]

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny isn't partial to trains. There's no objection to it the way that he's heard other people voice. He's never felt trapped, or small, or squished. But trains tend to involve train stations, and stairs. They're further from both where he lives, and where his end destination usually is.

Buses are just easier, he finds.

Still, it isn't unpleasant. He's been on for nearly four stops now, with at least another ten to go. If his ipod hadn't died that morning, he'd have had his headphones on already; drowning out the world. Instead, it lays cold in his jacket pocket, and Danny fixes his eyes absently on the row of seats across from him.

He doesn't mean to star.e

But he doesn't mean not to, either.

Two people alone occupy the row; open seats spanning between them with a comfortable sort of reach. One is a woman with her hair stained gray; crimson coat pulled tight around her throat; fake fur brushing her ears, keeping her rosy cheeks warm.

Danny had seen her get on a stop or two ago. He could still feel the chill of the air outside his own stop. So the man empathizes, deeply.

The other is a man, somewhat older than Danny himself. If he weren't a stranger on the train, Danny might have found it in himself to flirt. The other doesn't look particularly welcoming, but there's no sense of being entirely closed off either.

His lips looks soft, his eyebrows attractively full, and his stature --

Danny really wants him to stand up. And Danny isn't short himself.

So maybe he's staring a little. It's mostly a mistake. Mostly.]

[imogen-alvarez-blog]

[First, Imogen is crazy. She’s hearing voices and she swears she remembers her mother telling her she was schizophrenic when she was younger except for the fact that the memory resonates somewhere around eleven years old and she was nine when she moved (a kind kin of a word to what really happened: was ejected — “was” being the adverb or preverb or verb friend that suggests her parents shoved her past the security checkpoint at the airport).

So she simply stares, hand on the doorknob, taking in before her the furnished living room. The old couch the man lays on is the one that has been here for the past two and a half years where she has found her safe haven. Only it’s been turned and there’s an old box TV on a shelf across from it, playing what seems as interesting as sitcom reruns.

Second, she closes the door. She doesn’t step inside, but instead closes the door. She opens it again like a very deliberate double take just to be sure that she’s not, in fact, crazy. —Her mother mentioned schizophrenia to someone.

When he’s still laying there, she huffs, hair moving with the breath that suddenly escaped her lips. Was he intruding or was she?] …Hi. When did you move in? I draw here. [Sure, it’s been a few weeks since she’s been here, but did someone really move in in the mean time?]

[iamnotmercy]

Um... [There's a long moment where words fail Danny entirely. His brain short circuits on the pretty stranger in his doorway, and the fact that apparently the door had been unlocked enough for her to just walk in.

Unlocked enough, he thinks, as if there are middle stages to being unlocked. His life is a middle stage to being unlocked.] Recently?

[The word doesn't really fit, but Danny hasn't got a grip on the exact date anymore. It's something both too big to not pay attention to at all, but too small to for him to want to know by heart.

She draws here, she says, and he can appreciate that. A previously quiet house is always a good place to go. He'd done somewhat the same as a teenager looking for places to sod off to when he wanted to write. Usually it was small cafes open way too early, or the back parking lot behind his high school.

He understands, he thinks. He could more, if she would let him. If he would let her. He's absolutely going to let her.]

There's drinks in the fridge? [Danny offers it like some sort of peace -- 'Stay as long as you like. I won't push it.'] Soda, water, all that jazz.

[Dying first, he thinks. He's got a gun he's not supposed to have in his bedroom closet, and enough experience to know he wouldn't hesitate using it if she were dangerous  But he doesn't think she's dangerous.

Dying f i r s t.]

[iamnotmercy]

[Noon is fast approaching, and though Danny doesn't feel sluggish or tired, he hasn't moved from his spot on the couch in nearly forty minutes. Not even an inch. His defense is that the television is turned on; channel carefully selected to be something interesting enough that he could conceivably be way into it, but not so much that he actually wants to focus.

It's a cover for a behavior he's not even sure he needs to hide. All the same, it's a thinking morning.  He woke up with a crick in his neck, an ache in his side, and a really, really strong urge to revisit a few old addictions.

Almost like it had been in anticipation, he'd bitten his lower lips slightly raw in his sleep.

And while the injuries themselves are minor -- nothing he couldn't get in a fight, or worse -- it's the self-inflicted nature of them that's put him on edge.

A commercial flashes in his vision for something that might be some kind of juicer. The clock on the wall becomes audible somehow, even over top of the commercial voice-over. There's a turning of the doorknob a room over that he assumes is Tabby, until he realizes he can hear Tabby moving about in the other room.

Danny is drawn from his cocoon of ambiance, head turning towards the doorway, and the view of the front entrance through it. Expression drawn and curious, he waits.]

Hello? [He'd be the first to die in a horror movie, he's sure. If he wasn't the killer, that is.]

[fassyinspirations]

Aaron Johnson♥

[iamnotmercy]

Danny Woods Moodboard.

[ifoundmyvice]

[Nathan hadn’t been looking for him, per say, but he had been looking. In each step, even if there was little bounce, it had been the bounce of a step of a man in love. Though, were his steps to truly bounce, he’d have to admit it. He’d have to let himself believe he said it. He said it. Not Danny. Still, it haunts him. But it’s been several days — a week, maybe, and he’s managed to let it go with the vigorous usage of avoidance some days and alcohol the other ones.

Nathan’s fingers are fidgety today. They move when he doesn’t, before he does, and they’re half. Where it’s not true that he is whole, his fingers are less. They had been lifting glass bottles, fiddling and scraping and slicing when he accidentally dropped one. He’d cut a hole in his jeans on accident and then used the cloth he cut out instead of cut in to stop the bleeding on the palm of his head and the headache looming where alcohol and broken skin meant blood loss. It was no suicide attempt: he was just getting the shit to stop.

And he finds Danny in the rec room. He smiles, slightly, his lips lifting up nearly as if someone’s fingers raised them for him. He slips into the comfort of the man, slightly taller than him, though all the same when they sit.

Today is a day in which they had guessed Asperger’s before SPD. He was uninterested all the same, but focused and taught, eager. His fingers graze the arm of the couch as he rounds it, then sits on the floor in front of the man who he’s sure would like him to leave, the man who wasn’t lying about his love for any rude way, but he had no heart to tell Nathan he wasn’t interested— invested.]

[iamnotmercy]

[Nathan's presence makes Danny feel some strange combination of elated sick. It would be easy to slide onto the floor with him; to pin him down, curl into his warmth. But the man wouldn't likely let it happen, and Danny settles instead for leaning towards Nathan in his seat. There aren't words to accompany the gesture, but it is acceptance in its whole.

Danny just wants things to be easy again. He doesn't have the energy for pining anymore, but he doesn't know how to fix anything either. All he's ever been good at is destruction. He resigns himself to the losses that come with that.

And though he reaches his hand out towards the other; he doesn't entirely expect the man to take it. Just hopes, like the feeling of Nathan's fingers curled through with his own might be enough to ground him in the present again.]

I miss you. [He says beneath his breath, and Danny isn't entirely sure he meant to say that. That Nathan did, or was even meant to hear it.]

[iamnotmercy]

[It's not that he feels close to death. Danny has sort of been there, done that with the whole near dead thing. And yes, it's a place he regularly finds hi way back to. But it's a distinctly different feeling than this -- the sense of hollowness infecting his lungs.

Each breath feels like an arctic breeze; too clear down his throat. Too easy to keep, and it's an abstract sort of comfort to feel it at all, without his breathing distorting to match perception.

He'd paid close attention to how he would breathe when he was much younger. He'd focused on the in, and out, until it slowed, or sped, the way he thought it would. And for minutes an minutes after, he'd be stuck on noticing it, unable to let it fall normal again.

Danny tries to avoid those moments now. Today, they avoid him. If he listens very closely, he imagines he can hear each huff sway the stale air of the empty rec room around him. What he actual hears is the couch cushions crinkle beneath his feet, and the sounds of other patients moving in far off halls.

He pretends it is his breathing. He pretends that he feels steady.]

[ifoundmyvice]

Me? I’m always off. [The quiet, bitter words have no honesty behind them, though. They aren’t genuine, even if they’re true. Nathan is always purposeful at what he does. He is always closed and cruel because it was the world and not himself in charge of moulding him. And he was made so that he may never break the mould, only the family.

The reasoning is that their father pays attention to he and Dec now. But Dec, despite her outward apathy, is still forgiven. She did it on accident. And the courts used Dec as his person scapegoat. With Dec in hospital, there was a history of mental illness in the family. He imagined a different trial where he begged the court not of mental illness, but neglect, where Dec, who didn’t care to place the blame despite her anger, was an example to be made. Their parents, the real criminals.

The difference, however, between dad’s love for December and disdain for Nathan is that she killed their mother by accident. She was a little obsessive, a little unwell. He was a cold-blooded murderer. He just couldn’t look at him. He looks at his son more now when he visits than he did before.

And Nathan couldn’t explain that to Danny. He couldn’t explain that he didn’t know what to do with love simply because he had never been taught it. He’d learned how to take care of a little sister, but never how to be taken care of, even when she did help him. He only accepted it drunkenly. And here is a man willing, knowing what he’s getting into.] I stabbed my brother. Killed him. And I don’t feel bad. But then I feel the worst knowing you think I’m a liar. All it did was make it easier to say. You think I lied to you? It just made it easier to say. I can’t let someone love me, but I think you already do. And I f— I need help.

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny scrunches his face, bringing his hand up to rake through his hair.] It's not that I think you're lying. I know it's not a lie, I just know that you can't... You can't mean those sorts of things about people like me.

[But he lets it drop. Because that is the point of their whole issue, but it isn't what needs attention at the moment. What needs attention is what follows it all. That small 'I need help' in the wake of 'I murdered my brother.'

Danny is no stranger to familial blood. He lives on patricide, and bloody revenge. But he hadn't been strong enough to seek help in the aftermath. He'd taken a knife, dug it deep into his chest, and waited for the end to take the pain away from him. And it hadn't worked. It hadn't fucking worked, so he'd trudged on. Through life, through attempts 2 through 5. He'd sucked in air like it meant the same, trying to make people feel better about themselves -- to give them every ounce of preservation he had left, so that at least he could say he had tried to atone.

Like he ever can. Like he ever could. And Danny is dragging Nathan to the depths to drown by staying here. He recognizes that even as he reaches out to the other; his face too blatantly bare of composure. It's not as if Nathan will accept his gesture, but he's stepping forward and holding out to draw the other in all the same.]

I want to help you, but I'm so scared that I'll break you. [He doesn't know how to do anything else.]

[ifoundmyvice]

[Nathan moves his head away from the wall like it might save him some dignity. That is, some he doesn’t have. Some he doesn’t deserve. The kind of thing that left when the headache came and the alcohol beat drum lines against his skull and stomach. And his body did this to himself just to prove that he’s destroying himself. This is his body reacting to poison. And it’s exactly why he continues.

His eyes feel so sunken into his skull that he doesn’t remember he has them. He doesn’t look at Danny, just the floor. He stares at the linoleum like it’s his default, as if he walks around looking at his shoes all day. And when he’s not around Danny, he does. He doesn’t look at anyone but Danny and Dec, and the occasional times that he sees his brother’s face in someone else’s and he has to pretend, has to imagine a world where he didn’t do what he had.

The problem, and so every doctor said, was not that he felt guilty. He regretted it, but only because of the consequences. He regretted it, but not because he felt guilty. Nathan did not feel like a murderer, despite murdering someone. His own brother. It was not born of revenge or hatred or attention. He stabbed him with anger and alcohol fueling his veins.

A part of him wishes he could stab Danny now. He wishes he could save him from what he’s already gotten himself into, from the bloodied knuckles he keeps and wears like a tired crown, world renowned for being a boxing champion.

His lips move like words will come out, but he doesn’t manage them. “Hey” is no longer appropriate. He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to curl into Danny and pretend he’s never been wrong before.

He remembers breathing first.] I’m sorry.

[iamnotmercy]

Don't be.

[See, if there's one thing that Danny understands intrinsically, it is that he doesn't deserve anyone's love. He's got a bad habit of only doing things that hurt everyone involved when he's loved. He's got a bad habit of breaking everything he wants kept whole the most. So it isn't an unfamiliar feeling for him to want to drink Nathan's words in like the truth. And hell, just because Danny rejects them, they aren't necessarily a lie.

But he can't do that this time. And despite that he wants Nathan to keep all of his love for someone who is worth it, -- like is, like he must be, because he can't have really meant it - Danny fights the thought that he should have to apologize.

It was a mistake, but it was Nathan's to make. Danny is a big boy. He can handle the disappointment. He can take the way it stings, and try valiantly not to drown in that. The man doesn't need Nathan's concern.

He just wants is, more than anything he can imagine ever having wanted before.]

I should have handled it better.

[And the thing is, that Danny wants to spill the truth. There's nothing he wants more than to say 'I love you too, and don't you ever forget it.' But what comes out is so much worse. So much more stiff, and plainly hurt. If he could choke the words back down again, he would in an instant. They give away far too much about how he aches.]

I didn't mean to make you feel unwanted. I just didn't want to.. take advantage, of whatever was off.

[But he can't, so he lets them ring. Danny flinches, and prepares for the worst.]

[ifoundmyvice]

[Nathan made the mistake of telling him that he’d live. He made the mistake of, ultimately, trying. And very hard. He did not consider slitting his wrists but only because he was afraid of what might lie where he couldn’t see, where it may be darkness or it may be a TV show, where he repeated the worst, which wasn’t stabbing his brother repeatedly.

Repeatedly. Down. Repressive. Depressive. Every word just sort of hung off of the ceiling in little China tea cups that their mother cherished, all now dangling above him and instead of reaching his arms out to catch the most valuable ones or the ones with sentiment, to salvage some of it, he doesn’t bother. He walks past the spot in the hall just in front of Dec’s room and he lets them drop, shattering as if he, the bull, shook the foundation.

Dec, despite all her protesting and all of her shared books, her favourite binds that she let him and only him touch and read, would never really want him. Love, maybe. A brother was a brother. But she, had she had the choice, would have picked someone else. She was simply good at tolerating him, better than anyone else. And she knew that if he passed out in the library, he’d bring no books with him. Just as long as he didn’t, she was fine with it. She would bring a blanket.

He rests his head against the wall, eyes closing because he was no longer drunk, just spinning circles in his head, just wobbly as he walked.

Why did he say it to Danny? Why was it haunting him?]

[iamnotmercy]

[Danny is far from being a reserved person. To say otherwise is the kind of thing that is, and always would be, more of a lie than the truth. He's absolutely stellar at saying things he doesn't mean, and then at saying the things he does -- at the wrong time -- as well. Reserve isn't really in his nature. Danny lives in the zones between 'bottle it until you bleed' and 'lay it all out like roadkill.'

It's not as if talking about himself doesn't often feel like getting run over by a truck anyways.

But this was different. This was Nathan, drunk, or fucked, or something admitting a love he couldn't possibly feel sober. And though Danny can see exactly where he'd fucked himself over with his chosen response, he can't help but defend it. It would have been wrong for him to press any real emotion on Nathan. It would have been taking advantage, and it would have been gross.

So why does he still feel like he's lost something genuine out of it? Why is his brain going blank trying to find the words to say to make it better? Why did he have to fuck this up? This, his one good thing?

Danny feels like a worm left to fry in the summer sun, and cold all at once, because there's no familiar form to warm the sheets beside him. He wants to laugh, and cry, and vomit, because he's not sure what else there is to do.

In the end of it, he does none of that. He tells himself that he never wanted to be a ghost, just a dead boy, and not even a dead boy walking. And he seeks out the man he'd hurt.

It's perhaps too easy to find him, though. And even as Danny steps forwards, he finds himself wishing he could run. Wishing he knew some sure way not to fuck things up further.]

Hey. [He offers quietly, like breathing too loud might shatter the world around them.]