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Where He Is

CW: PTSD flashback and panic attack, includes some references to Danny’s captivities (both of them). Lev and Graham belong to @evermetnotforgotten and are used with permission.

Timeline: Post-Bad Arc, pre-Dad Fluff

I had a prompt for “panic attack” for Danny and owe Dotty something for the Fucked Up Support Group (it’s not owe, really, this is a fucking joy and I love writing them together)

Tagging Danny’s crew: @slytherynjolras, @whump-it, @bleeding-demon-teeth, @finder-of-rings, @burtlederp, @whumpywhumper, @18-toe-beans, @pumpkinthefangirl, @special-spicy-chicken, @whale-whumps, @swordkallya,

Everything is dark and quiet and Danny can’t breathe.

He got lost somewhere between the bathroom and his bedroom and he can’t find his way back, because he doesn’t know exactly where he is. The hallway was long, it felt so long, like it would never end. Somehow he’s staring towards a living room but he’s not in the cabin and he doesn’t know where he is.

Wake up, puppy, wake up

But he’s already awake. Isn’t he?

Is he?

All of this is the dream. I’m not really here. I’m going to wake up on the mat and it never ended and it was never better and I’m still there, still there, still there-

Danny’s gasping now, breathing in wheezes through the pinhole his throat has become. Somewhere Nate is sleeping but he can’t remember where or how to find him, because this is a dream and when he wakes up he’ll be in the bed with Abraham and tears are on his face but he can’t remember crying at all.

Maybe he’s crying for real, wherever he really is.

Maybe he’s not in Abraham’s bed, but in the cellar, closed up in the kennel, all alone inside his head in the dark and they’re reaching out for him, the things that move in the shadows, they want him and all the things inside him and-

“Help.”

Danny can’t speak above a whisper.

No one can hear him.

“He... help...”

His whisper is shaking, it’s not even human - and he tries to get up but his back twinges, a sudden flash of agony. The knife is still there, the knife, they never took the blade out of his back and he whimpers, dragging himself along the floor by his hands until he finds a couch, curling up on the floor next to it even though the mat is gone, there isn’t a mat. This isn’t a place where there’s a mat, but there will be, when he wakes up.

He misses his mat, misses the way it stuck to him when he slept and crinkled whenever he moved. He misses the simple certainty of it, because when he wakes up there’ll be a knife in his back and maybe he’s dying or dead and this is what hell feels like and he deserves to be in hell after everything Abraham Denner has done to him-

Danny sees a flat rectangle lying on a coffee table and his eyes catch.

A cell phone.

His cell phone.

a barely conscious Graham from a piece by @untilthepainstarts where his injuries were infected 🌤🌻

#whump #whump art #injury #infected wound #graham pierce #gore #drawn #clover #hi yes this is why i asked abt his glasses lmaoo #behind this drawing is a handful of questionable reference photos i took of myself on the floor #soundtrack today was my Broadway whump playlist bc as u can see by my previous posts I'm deep in it rn #......also hello my queue posts at my 3pm which should be around your 6am so good morning bro rise and shine bud #clover draw

Another Place: Lev and Danny

I just had this thought and had to go with it. Consider this the final (maybe? Probably not, I am having too much fun) installment of this, this, and this involving Danny becoming friends with @untilthepainstarts‘s Lev as part of an online support group for trauma survivors, realizing the similarities in their experiences, and eventually meeting in person! Thanks, Dotty, for help with this one!

CW: Vaguely referenced past trauma/torture and noncon.

“Are you absolutely certain this is food?” Danny cocks his head, staring down at the plate that sat between them on the kitchen table.

Lev laughs in response, shaking his head, a bit of dark hair falling over his face as he pushes the plate just a little closer, a soft scrape along the surface. “I promise it is! I promise. If you’re here, you have to try vegemite, right? It’s basically our national food.”

“What is it?” Danny leans in closer, his eyes slightly crossed, as he focused on the single piece of toast sitting in front of him, with a light spread of something incredibly dark brown, vaguely shiny, and a touch nerve-wracking. He looks up at Lev like a child looking up at their mother over a plateful of steamed broccoli sprouts, and Lev laughs again, hardly able to stop himself.

“I just said, it’s vegemite-”

“No, I know you said that, but, um, what… what is vegemite? It looks like chocolate-”

“Tell him that’s what it is,” Graham calls from the couch, where he and Nate had been sharing stories in low voices the other two couldn’t quite hear. There’s a grin on his face that tells Danny without having to try a bite that it definitely isn’t “Tell him it’s chocolate.”

“No!” Lev puts on an expression of mock anger. “I’d never be mean like that! And look, you’ve made him all red.” He gestures with the vegemite-covered butter knife he’s holding in one hand at Danny, who has indeed gone a bit red, his scars paler than his skin in the moment, freckles darker than ever.

He’d come into the air conditioned apartment and pulled on a zip-up over his already-long-sleeved shirt, and to his relief neither Lev nor Graham said a thing. So he’s huddled up in it now, the closest he gets to warm, about to eat something utterly unrecognizable.

“No, I should have… I should probably know what it, um, is,” Danny mumbles, feeling kind of stupid for thinking it looked like chocolate at first.

There’s a low murmur, Nate speaking to Graham, Graham speaking back. Then Graham calls out, “I was just teasing you a bit, yeah, Danny? Sorry. We get it basically in our bottles, here, it’s kind of a novelty when someone doesn’t know right off.”

Danny doesn’t become any less red, but he likes the way Graham is always ready to apologize and doesn’t think Danny is weird for being tripped up, or embarrassed, or too shy to ask things on his own.

“It’s made of yeast,” Lev says, smoothly, as though the moment hadn’t happened, and Danny likes that, too. Move right past things, and let Danny pretend he’s better at this than he is. “Yeast mixed with… a bunch. Look, give it a try, it’s… salty.”

“Bit bitter,” Graham added.

Danny frowns. He reaches up and pokes at the side of the toast with one finger. “And you put it on toast? Like jam?”

“I can sense that you feel some trepidation here,” Lev says, not quite teasing. “Look, give it one bite, yeah? Then you can say you tried vegemite, you’re a proper Australian tourist then.”

“Can I ask you something?” Danny asks, picking the toast up with both hands If Lev’s eyes drop to the scarring that is dug so deeply into the backs of his hands, it’s not obvious, and Danny isn’t watching for it any longer.

He likes their apartment - it feels like his, a little, all cozy and all the signs of two people making a home together. It feels like people who know how much it means to get the chance. Knowing each other’s stories means that all the questions that normally ring so loud in Danny he can’t think are much quieter, because he already has the answers.

Did you ever get scared to sleep in the bed? - Yes, at first, less with time

Are you ever afraid that everyone knows? - Yes. That never fully leaves

Do you ever wonder, during, if you like something because he made you like it? - Yes, oh God, you don’t know what it means to have someone else ask that question, Chem

L, I’m kind of scared to ask this one - go on, ask, Chem, we’re friends here and you know I won’t lie to you, this place means something, being here - okay. do you still dream about him all the time and it’s not always a nightmare?

It had taken Lev two days to answer that one.

Then, finally, just when Danny had thought he’d fucked up and lost his first friend who really understood him before they’d ever even learned each other’s name, L had sent his reply. Can I tell you about the dreams? I can’t tell Bond.

Bond - L’s name for his partner, on the message board, and Graham Pierce might be the opposite of James Bond but Danny kind of liked the joke, anyway. He’d just called Nate the Badass, as in the Badass is ready for dinner, got to go.

Nate had hated that nickname. Danny used it anyway.

Sitting in Lev’s apartment, about to bite into what he’s fairly certain smells weirdly like soy sauce, he feels better than he feels anywhere else but his own home. In a place where everyone knows, everyone has lived it. There’s a shorthand they can all rely on with each other. There’s comfort in that.

Danny takes the bite, and it’s… there, in his mouth, and yes, salty and bitter definitely describe it. His very American brain is screaming at him that jam goes on toast, or peanut butter, something sweet and not this, not at all, get it out. Lev watches him with a smile, humor sparkling in his dark eyes, head slightly tilted to the side.

If Danny weren’t wearing a wedding ring on his left finger, and Lev weren’t head over heels for Graham Pierce, he could have flirted with Lev, he thinks. Well, if he weren’t also so traumatized he’d be terrified of the very idea.

Danny manages to swallow the bite, which feels like it gets lodged halfway down his throat just to spite him.

“Well?” Lev asks, flash of white teeth in his smile this time.

“Yeah, how is it?” Graham calls from the couch.

“… can I, um, have a beer, please?” Danny asks, and both of them laugh, Lev actually clapping his hands together and nearly resting his head on the table, he’s laughing so hard. Danny’s whole face flushes red, and he feels a little humiliated - look at the fucky American, can’t eat vegemite - but there’s too much genuine light and kindness in Lev’s face for the feeling to do more than come and go.

“I’m sorry, Danny, we’re sort of nationally terrible about doing that to Americans. Pretty sure it’s a rite of passage.” Lev gets up to look into the fridge, grabbing a couple of bottles of beer out. “Apparently we’ll find some brown sludge that sticks around after making yeast and our first thought isn’t ‘oh, that looks like engine oil’ but ‘that looks like it’d be nice on toast’. But we’re a country that eats kangaroo steak, so…”

Danny grins at that, taking the opened beer when Lev holds it out to him. “Thank you for giving me beer,” He says, automatically, some part of him briefly gone and then back again. “I am grateful for every gift I am given, and every breath-”

He goes still, for a fraction of a second the apartment had… shifted, and been somewhere else. Dark eyes had been colorless and shifting. His heart speeds up and he takes a deep breath, holds for five, lets it slowly out again.

My name is Daniel Michaelson, and Abraham Denner is dead.

Again.

My name is Daniel Michaelson and Abraham Denner is dead.

Lev has gone still, too, watching him closely, reading the change in posture and expression with the perfect knowledge of someone who has seen Danny’s expression on himself in the mirror. “You all right, Danny?”

Something in the tone of Lev’s voice catches Graham and Nate’s focus immediately and they turn nearly as one. It’d be funny if Danny wasn’t feeling unmoored, like he wasn’t supposed to be here, like this had never happened.

“Danny? Do y-you need a minute?” Nate asks, in a low voice.

“I’m fine,” Danny says, and his voice is a little weaker than he wants it to be. He hesitates, then takes a drink from the beer, swallowing again and again, half the bottle gone in one long go. He sets the bottle down with a thump on the table. The salty bitter taste is good, washed away by the darker taste of the stout. “I’m fine, guys. Really fine.”

“If you’re not really fine,” Lev says, softly, and his hand is on the table, a few inches away. No closer than this, but close enough for compassion to show. “This is the best place to be. You can be not-fine for a bit here, we do it all the time. I’m pretty much a professional at being not fine.”

Danny lets out a soft huff of laughter, and the world settles back into place, into time. “I promise I am. That, um, happens sometimes, still.”

There’s a shorthand they share. Questions already answered, knowledge that never needs to be spoken to be understood.

Sometimes I forget where I am, when I am. Do you do that, too? - Yes, on good days for a second or two, on bad days it feels like hours

Do you feel safe? - On the best days, I think I almost do.

Could you still say all the things he made you say? Do you remember them all? - Every fucking word. I could type it all out to you right now, without thinking.

“Happens to me, too,” Lev says lightly, as if they’re talking about having trouble remembering they left a book and not flashbacks and monsters that keep trying to climb out of the dark and back into their heads. “Tell me what you think of my idea, Danny - Fucked Up Support Group Movie Night? Only in person, this time?”

The world is solid and real around Danny as he smiles brightly, crinkling the scar at his nose, the lines dug into his jaw stretching a little. Nate, watching him from the couch, relaxes.

Graham, watching Nate, relaxes, too.

“That sounds fucking great, L. You pick.”

Lev grins, brightly. “I know exactly what I want to watch, Chem.”

Graham groans from the couch. “Damn it, I think I know what he’s going to pick. Is it-”

“The Mist!” Lev says, to Graham’s resulting good-natured groan.

“I haven’t seen that,” Danny says. “Is it good?”

“Is it-… yes. Yes, that’s what we’re watching tonight. Go on, get to the TV. I’ll bring you another beer. You two want them, too?”

Calls of assent and gratitude from the couch, and Danny settles into an armchair, folding his legs up and wrapping his arms around them, turning himself far smaller than it ever seems like he should be able to, drinking his beer and watching Lev bring the rest in to clink onto the coffee table, bottle opener beside them.

It’s nice to know someone else who knows without having to be told.

It’s nice for there to be another place in the world that feels safe.

It’s a good day.

He feels safe.

#untilthepainstarts #lev is my favorite #graham pierce #nate vandrum: a knight in soot-stained armor #daniel michaelson is a tall smol bean #fluff #I had to google how vegemite tastes tyvm #trauma recovery #actual fluff you guys #tw: brief flashback #references to noncon and torture #tw: ptsd

Would Danny and Nate ever ~have lev and graham over~ while Mina is around

If you're asking if a Recovery Foursome has occurred while Mina was in the house, nope!

But hey, what a fun coincidence that Ryan happened to be in town the same week Danny bought @untilthepainstarts's Lev and Graham tickets for a two-week visit to America? And that Ryan is the coolest uncle ever and Mina thinks hotel rooms are the best? And he promised her all kinds of fun stuff while she stayed with him?

What a crazy random happenstance!

#recovery foursome #i love lev so much #graham pierce #untilthepainstarts #daniel michaelson is a tall smol bean #nate vandrum: a knight in soot stained armor

content warnings: explicit (drunk) consensual sex, alcohol

It's the fourth time his phone flashes that he realises—shit, it's a call, not a text. Graham doesn't need to hear a voice to know that his late-night caller has taken a trip down the neck of a bottle tonight, but as soon as he does, it’s crystal clear.

"Heeey."

Stifling a sigh Graham rubs his cheek, his jaw. He suppresses the ‘bit early to have reached the bottom, isn't it?’ "Hey, Lev."

"M'lonely." The sound of something soft hitting the floor—a pillow, a pile of clothes. "Y'should come over."

#lgm writing #lev johnson #graham pierce #drunk sex tw #alcohol tw #angst #sorry for the sudden flurry i'm trying to finish a few things #for once

🗝 Graham, tell us more about those mercy kills

cw: murder, suicidal thoughts, referenced/implied torture

"I know I should probably regret it, but I don't."

The way his mouth is moving for him makes the story easier to tell, and yet harder to justify. "What's a person supposed to do when another is suffering? Help them, right? Ease their pain—eliminate it, if possible."

His smile is there and gone in a second, and doesn't reach his eyes.

"It was just after Caldwell's funeral... Martin invited me over to his place. Cooked us tea. Potato and leek soup. We drank the Manzanilla sherry he'd been keeping," he raises pitch to match the one in his head, "'for an occasion—or as good as one. Skål.'"

He's looking at his hands from then on, like he's counting the scars there. "I'd been there before. A few times. When the boss' favourite invites you over, you go, y'know? And everything seemed the same as always, a little kitsch but that's just what happens when you buy straight from a showroom... everything was normal. Until he left to get more booze. Until... I heard her."

He shakes his head, rubs his face, his neck. "I didn't know what to do. I kept thinking 'this makes no sense', like there had to be a reason there were three fucking people down there. The door wasn't locked. They were..."

For several moments, Graham looks like he's going to be sick. The pale of his cheeks is the worst it's ever been.

"It won't make sense to someone who hasn't seen it, but the look in her eyes... was... she was done. They showed me the scars on the back of their heels, and it was like... the final thing a person can go through. The bit that makes them want to die."

"About two weeks later, everything went to shit. Before leaving town, I brought a huge fuck-off pair of bolt cutters and broke into Martin's place. Left three bullets behind, torched the place. Because he would have taken them with him—knowing what I know now, he would have kept them."

"The only part I regret..." he laughs, thick with the weight of guilt. "...Is that it gave him the need to go out and get more."

#lgm writing #graham pierce #key asks #i give you... backstory #murder tw #death thoughts tw #referenced or implied torture tw

content warnings: body horror, death/death thoughts, intimate partner noncon, vomit

Graham holds a chain. Looks up into the sky, rose pink and vast. It’s calling, singing, and the splattered white of stars are like freckles that decorate an infinite place above.

He reaches up towards it, only to find his wrists and ankles shackled. The steel link chain he’s holding is anchored somewhere deep in the ground below. He starts to pull—pulls, and pulls, and pulls, but muscles threaten to pop free from their tendons before anything else gives.

#lgm writing #noncon tw #death thoughts tw #vomit tw #graham pierce #lev johnson

Oh Lev, what is going on. Graham what are we going to do

content warnings: alcohol use, whumpee in crisis

Graham checks the bedroom. The bathroom. The bedroom again, just in case. His phone is out, and already dialling.

It was just a short shift, only three hours, only three because they had absolutely no one to cover—but when he came back to the apartment, Lev is missing.

Three hours. Three hours. Time enough for anything.

His circle is a three-hour radius. He checks the bathroom cupboard, just in case.

The little smudge of blood on the floor steals the breath from him.

#lgm writing #graham pierce #lev johnson #alcohol tw