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)
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.
He’d agreed to get one just to make Nate and Ryan feel better, and that feels like a real thing, a thing that actually happened. He owns a cell phone now. He texts people. He found some of his old gaming buddies, right?
Did that happen or is he imagining-
His breath catches again. Don’t think about it don’t think just get the phone. He has to get the phone and he doesn’t know why. His heart is pounding inside his chest, trying to break out, and there’s a pain that keeps coming and going alongside the pain in his back. Knives, blades everywhere, sharp flashing bits that will slice him apart for his sins, for what he’s done.
He has to drag himself along the floor, just like in the second house, with his fingernails digging into grooves in a hardwood floor to pull himself forward, blood pouring from his back. Nate will find the trail of blood, Nate will know to follow the blood and it’s okay, it’s okay, he’s already ruined but this way Ryan won’t be- it’s okay to be the one to take the knife- this way Ryan can get back up, even if he can’t... it’s okay...
It’s okay. The words rattle around inside his head. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
He doesn’t have to be the one who walks away. He knew that from the second Abraham Denner was inside him again. He won’t be the one who lives, Ryan will, and that’s okay.
His fingers scrabble along the edge of the phone case, and he manages to drag it just far enough for it to fall with a soft clatter onto the ground. Danny’s back is an agony of pain, he can feel the blood running out of him, staining the floors so deeply they’ll demolish the house because the blood won’t come out, it won’t come out, he’s been scrubbing for days and the blood won’t out.
The phone lights up, briefly, when it hits the ground.
3:42 AM.
There’s a Skype notification, and Danny lets out a hoarse, half-broken sob when he sees the message preview from Lev.
Okay fine you win, Fabulous Killjoys is actually amazing
His heart burns, beats harder. He won’t get to meet Lev because this isn’t real, Lev isn’t real or if he is, he’s still trapped with his monster a whole world away. They’re both trapped with monsters who will get bored and kill them one day and he’ll never get to meet him, and he-
And he-
Danny whimpers, unlocking his phone, opening Skype up, all of it with shaking hands, fingers that miss his target again and again. He has to talk to Lev, has to tell him he’s so sorry they won’t get to meet each other in real life, that this is just a dream he’s having and it was such a good one, too, to come home and get married and meet Lev in person and the drunk kissing and all the other stuff was so good-
He makes the call, letting his sweaty forehead rest on the cool floor.
There’s blood soaking into the floor, and he can’t scrub it out. He can’t move to scrub it out because it’s his own blood and he’s the body, now, he’s the think that has to die.
“I’m a body,” Danny whispers. “A-A body, my body is, belongs to Abraham-”
“Hullo? Danny?” Lev’s voice comes tinny through the phone’s speaker. “It’s got to be the middle of the night there, what’s up?”
“He... help me,” Danny whispers, and tears run to pool with the blood he can’t see, but he knows is there, on the floor beneath his body. “Help, please, help, I’m s-sorry, I’m so sorry-”
There’s a pause.
“Danny? Are you safe?” Lev’s voice is slightly tight, questions he’s not asking, and Danny whines in his throat at the pain as he reaches his arm up, the agony races along the nerves from his wounded back-
How is it still like this, I went home, I was in the hospital forever it felt like, there were surgeries, they took the knife out - was none of that real, was none of it- am I will in the cabin- was there ever a second house at all Ryan please don’t stop looking we’re in the woods you have to look in the woods-
He manages to push the speaker button, just as Lev speaks again.
“Danny, please answer me now, please.” Lev’s voice is shaking, too, and Danny closes his eyes tightly. He’s having a dream and he’s worrying his friend in his dream, and he can tell Lev to talk to Ryan, to tell him to look in the woods. He takes a deep breath, shaking, trying to breathe around the pain in his chest that won’t quit, a vice grip around his heart.
“Help me,” He manages. “I don’t think I’m, I don’t know where I am-... I don’t think I’m real, I think-”
“Okay.” There’s a rush of something like relief in his friend’s voice, his accent a little thicker, less strained. There’s a shuffle of sound and Lev saying, muffled, I think he’s having a moment.
Can he wake up Nate?
I think he’s a bit too deep in it for that. Graham, you call Nate, I’ m going to talk Danny through this until he’s up, okay?
Yeah, love. I’m on it. The one night I leave my fuckin’ phone in the other room...
Then silence, and it stretches too long, and Danny sobs again. He made it up. He made it all up. He made everything up and nothing is real and he belongs to Abraham Denner-
“Danny, I’m right here.” Lev’s voice is low, but firm. “I’m right here with you, all right? I’m going to talk to you, yeah? Can you answer me?”
“Y-Yes.” His voice is whimper. “M-my... my back hurts, Lev, none of it’s real, I don't know where I am...”
“You’re in your apartment. All right? Take a deep breath and look, what’s closest to you right now?”
“The, um, the-the coffee table is right there...”
“Okay. Reach out and touch it. I want you to feel that it’s real. Touch it and count to five.”
Danny nods, even though Lev can’t see him through the phone, and stretches out his arm. “H-hurts, there’s, there’s a knife in my back-”
“I know,” Lev soothes. His voice is soft, gentle, his accent singsong-sweet, and Danny takes the first deep breath he’s taken since he got lost in the hallway. His fingers touch cool wood and he runs them down the coffee table’s leg, feeling its hardness under his fingertips. “D’you have it?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“Okay. Let’s count to five together.”
“Okay, okay... c’n, I can do that, I can do it...”
They count in unison, Danny’s voice a trembling, terrified whisper and Lev’s a calm, collected monotone. The coffee table doesn’t fade away or dissolve under his fingers. It stays solid.
He takes another deep breath.
“There we go, I heard that,” Lev says, encouraging. His voice is like a hand on Danny’s forehead through the phone. “I heard you breathe, that’s good, that was a good breath. Okay. Let’s pick something else. What else is nearby?”
“Th-there’s a, a book, on the coffee table... Nate’s book, he bought it... oh god, Lev, I’m so sorry, I’m-... I made you up and I m-made you suffer just so I’d have someone like me-”
“No you didn’t. Honestly it’d be a relief if the world had some kind of order like that.” Lev’s voice is slightly dry, cutting through the white noise of panic that Danny can’t escape on his own. Behind him, he hears a phone ringing, distantly. Nate’s ringtone for everyone is an old rock song, and there are tinny, barely-audible guitar-sounds from down the hall. “Grab the book, Danny. Get it in your hands.”
He has to grab onto the coffee table and pull himself up onto his knees, groaning at the pain in his back, muscles seized up tight around the knife, the invasion. He grabs at it, pulling it close, then collapses back onto the floor. “H-hurts,” He whispers. “My back, it hurts, the knife-”
“I know, Danny. I know. I know it does. Tell me about the book.”
“It’s, um, it’s...” He lays his head on the floor, holding the book to his chest. The rough-edged cover feels more like fabric than cardboard, and he lets his fingers run back and forth, back and forth. “It’s a, uh, a book on... on something t’do with... literature, I don’t know, someone he went to college with published... it...”
“Good, good. Right, yeah, we’re gettin’ somewhere now. Okay. Keep talking to me, Danny, keep talking. Graham’s got your man on the phone, you’re going to be okay, yeah? You’re going to be okay. Keep talking.”
“I-I don’t know where I am,” Danny whispers. “I can’t remember what really happened and what didn’t. Did I make you up, Lev? Did I make you up to make it hurt less to be me?”
“No, Danny. No, I’m real as anything. Remember? Coming to visit me?”
“What if I didn’t?” Danny whispers.
“Then who the hell left his pants jammed in a ball under my bed? and left wearing my pants and with his t-shirt on backwards the next day?”
Danny lets out a breathy laugh.
“There it is. There you are, there’s Danny. Okay, there you go… there it is-”
A door opens and closes somewhere behind him. Hurried footsteps in the hall, the familiar scent of Nate’s cologne - and the man himself. A warm hand on his back.
“N-Nate, the blood-”
There isn’t any blood.
“Nate? You’re with him?” Lev’s voice sounds like he’s breathing out all at once, pure relief.
“I’m h-here,” Nate says, gently, whether it’s to Danny or Lev or to them both he can’t tell. “I’m here. Graham c-c-called me.”
“Right. He’s having a flashback, I think.”
“I don’t know where I am,” Danny says, trying to help, to be helpful. Nate’s hand on his face is warm, and Nate bundles him up in his arms, pulling him tightly. The pain in his back is immense but it fades, a little, at the warmth of Nate’s hand slipping around to settle there, a gentle pressure against sparking nerves. “My body belongs to-”
“Your body belongs to you,” Nate murmurs. “We f-f-fought for that. Your b-body is yours. I can handle him from here, Lev. Th-thank you for t-t-talking him through this.”
“Anytime, Nate. You know that.” Lev’s voice goes soft, and sincere. “You’ve talked me through more’n one of these yourselves. You call me later, yeah? I want to talk to Danny later.”
“He’ll c-call,” Nate says. “Bye, L-Lev.” There’s a warm, deep affection in his voice, and Danny smiles at a vague memory of a drunken conversation and tangled limbs and Lev’s voice soft in his ear and Graham’s hands on his, Nate’s low laughter. “He’s s-s-smiling. We’re, I’ll c-call you. He’ll c-call you. Bye.”
Lev’s voice murmurs a farewell and Nate hangs up the call, getting his feet under himself and picking Danny up like he weighs nothing at all.
Danny’s head lolls onto Nate’s shoulder - suddenly he’s exhausted, so weighed down he can barely think. His eyes slip shut, and his heart is still pounding but slower, slower.
Finally, slower.
“I’m bleeding-”
“You’re n-not.”
“I don’t know wh-where I am-”
“You’re home.”
“What’s... what’s home?”
“California. We bought the house but it’s not ready yet, we can’t m-m-move for three months.”
He’s quiet, and then asks, in a small voice, “What’s my name?”
“Y-your name is Daniel Michaelson.”
“Who... who do I belong to?”
“Yourself.”
Nate carries him back to the bedroom, answering every question he asks along the way.
gibel // гибель (russian, n.) - not death, not suicide, but simply ceasing to exist; deteriorating in a way that is painful for others. I want pain
CW: Aftermath of violent stabbing, includes description of intubation, wound/bandaging, painkiller use, etc in a hospital setting
Danny drifts. For a while he wasn’t there at all, his mind was white fuzz wrapped comfortably around him, keeping him so far away from pain he couldn’t feel it. Then there was the sense of something down his throat, struggling, not again not again not again-
Then the thing in his throat was gone but there’s still a needle feeding him something from bags he can see out of the corner of his eye and a sense that he is wrapped so tightly in bandages and cannot move.
He drifts.
For a while, he thinks he might actually be dead, because he doesn’t feel like he’s in his body at all, more like he’s observing its final fight from some distant place. Let Someone Else have the body, Danny doesn’t need it anymore.
Daniel Michaelson’s body does not scream. It does not think. It does not beg or plead or cry or sob any longer.
It drifts.
Sometimes, though, he thinks he hears Nate crying.
Can pretty please I get a Ryan bonding with Danny or Nate about dealing with noncon trauma? If you're still up to doing micro fiction tonight
CW: Discussion about past noncon/torture
"They’re going to know.” Ryan forces the words out, he doesn't want to, he doesn’t want to talk about this but he has to, it’s driving him crazy not to say something, not to ask.
Danny is lying on his side with his back to Ryan, staring out the hospital window, at a cardinal in a tree outside. A bright red and black flash of wings and a song he recognizes, from Canada. Has he seen a cardinal, before, in California? It’s like he never thought about it. Never paid attention.
Nate, sitting next to him in the stupid fucking visitor chairs, looks up from a book to blink at Ryan in the doorway, standing in his own clothes for the first time since they were saved. Not the sweatpants and shirt Abraham made him wear, not a loose hospital gown, but his own soft cotton pants and shirt.
“What?” Nate’s voice is calm. Danny doesn’t turn back, but Ryan knows he’s listening, somewhere in there. Danny comes and goes right now, sliding into Red and back into himself again, struggling more than any of them.
Then again, Ryan isn’t on half the painkillers Danny is, his back wrapped carefully in layers of bandaging. Ryan hurts, deep inside of himself, in ways he never knew he could. His neck and wrists itch and ache as the skin heals over and scars from the iron collar and cuffs.
But - just like every other goddamn time the demon looked at them both - Danny had pushed himself in front of Ryan to take Abraham Denner’s rage... and taken a knife to the back for his trouble.
“When I go back to work,” Ryan says, uneasily. “When I put my suit back on and walk back into my office, into the, uh, the boardroom... everyone there is going to look at me and know what happened to me, Vandrum. What, um... what... he did.”
Nate closes the book, carefully marking his place first, and sets it aside. “They will kn-know you were held, and h-h-hurt,” Nate says evenly, calmly. “That’s all, M-Michaelson.”
“No, it’s not.” Ryan has tear threatening, but he pushes them down. Danny shifts a little but his foggy, flat gaze is still locked on the cardinal he can see through the blinds. “All those people already knew what he did to Danny-”
“Red,” Danny said faintly.
Ryan and Nate both winced.
They’re... they’re going to assume... that it happened to me, too. And they’re right.”
Nate considers that for a moment, reaching up to lay a hand over Danny’s, rubbing his thumb gently over the scarring. Danny’s eyes close, slowly, but then push open again. “Yes. They are. D-Does that matter?”
“I don’t know, how can I fucking work, if everywhere I go, people know I was... that I... that he did that to me, Vandrum?” Ryan can hear the desperation edging his voice, but he can’t seem to stop himself, the words well up and don’t stop falling like stones from his mouth, a kind of avalanche of his shame and loathing for every time he did what he was told. “I can wear the suit and I can use the words and I can talk like Dad but I’m still Abraham Denner’s goddamn toy, aren’t I? Even if he’s dead, he still-... that shit doesn’t leave your head! How do I-... how can I ever-...”
Nate is quiet, only watching him with gentle understanding, and somehow that’s more infuriating than his anger ever was, because Ryan doesn’t want the understanding but he needs it.
“Ryan, the n-n-number of people who have been... who uh, understand us... is greater than w-we know,” Nate says, softly. “You g-go to therapy, and you d-d-do the work, and it couldn’t h-hurt for you to read a book-”
“You and your fucking books as the answer to fucking everything!”
Danny flinches, and Nate tightens the grip on his hand Ryan sighs and steps into the room, closing the door behind him. “I’m sorry, Dan.”
This time Danny doesn’t correct him.
“Sometimes,” Nate says softly, “Books actually do provide a v-v-valuable resource for healing, M-Michaelson.”
“Yeah, okay. But unless you have a book on learning to run a goddamn company when every one of your employees can look at you and see someone Abraham Denner bent over the couch in front of his own fucking brother-”
“They d-don’t see that.” Nate shook his head, slowly, giving Ryan a faint smile. “I promise. Put your f-fucking face on, Ryan, and walk in like you oh-own the place, since... you do.”
“Not yet.” Ryan smiled weakly.
“Fine. You will own the place. But... listen. Come see Dr. R-Rosa with us, with D-D-Danny and I. Do some joint appointments with him. You two... need to hah... to handle what happened to you together, at least a l-little. I c-c-can’t tell you how you’ll have to live with it, R-Ryan.”
At the use of his first name, Ryan swallows. “What can you tell me, then?”
Nate is silent for a moment. Ryan watches him squeeze Danny’s hand, watches Danny, even foggy and distant from the painkillers, squeeze back.
“All I can tell you, Ryan, is that after living with you for so l-long... you’re irritating and an an, angry drunk and I c-c-can’t stand the way you eat and your disdain for my b-b-books is palpable, and...” Nate sighs and runs one hand through his hair. “Ryan, no two p-people live the same way through what we’ve survived.”
“Abraham told me nobody else ever survived him unless he let them go,” Ryan says. His voice is small.
“I don’t mean him. I just mean... Look. I can’t tell y-you how to live with it. All I can say is that I know you... Wear your s-suit like armor, Ryan,” Nate says, quietly. “You sl-slayed a dragon.”
“You did.”
“We b-both did. I couldn’t have without your h-h-help.”
“... does that make my brother Rapunzel?”
Nate smiles, just a little - that odd quirk to one side thanks to the scar on his lip - and he turns to press a kiss to the top of Danny’s head. Ryan’s older brother closes his eyes and lets out a soft sigh, pushing his head into Nate’s touch.
“It makes your b-brother the center of the st-story, doesn’t it? Is he the s-s-symbol of my n-need to have s-s-someone to fight for in order to escape him, or of your j-journey from spoiled pr-prince to compassionate ruler of the land?”
Ryan just stares at him, blankly. “Is that your professor shit coming back to the surface?”
“I g-guess.”
“I don’t think it was our journey, Vandrum. Or not just our journey. The story isn’t about the fucking prince, Nate, it’s about Rapunzel.”
“The pr-prince had a story, too,” Nate points out, looking up at him. “He had a st-story before he had to rescue a princess tr-trapped in a tower.”
“Maybe. But that’s not the one that ends up in the books. You know, my mom used to read us really old versions of fairy-” Ryan winces. “Shit. I like that word so much less now that I know I am one. Fairy tales. She used to read us the bloody, really violent versions.”
“Of course she d-did.”
“In Rapunzel, the prince gets blinded. And Rapunzel has to take care of him, and there’s... just like a lot of blood in my mom’s version of the story.”
Nate just stares at him, and Ryan finally lets out a huff of laughter.
“Look, my point is that the prince saves Rapunzel from the tower, but Rapunzel has to save him, too. So maybe we’re all a symbol of something for each other. But none of this tells me how to be at work.”
Nate snorts. “Just be the f-fucking prince, Ryan Michaelson. Be exactly who y-you are, damage and all.”
Ryan goes still, surprised by the affection lacing Nate Vandrum’s voice.
Affection for him.
“When y-you go back to work, you’ll be every inch the irritating asshole you always h-have been... only stronger, for having been one of the ones to rip that motherf-fucker’s heart out for what he did to D-Danny... to you... to us. Nobody can t-take that from you. No one can take from y-you that when Danny needed you, you stood up.”
CW: Reference to noncon, torture, pet whump. Brief, non-serious reference to suicide.
“How did you fucking do it?” Ryan’s voice cuts through the air and Nate looks up with a shrug. He’s got one of his books open, falling back on old routine and familiarity - a pencil in one hand, marking important lines, making notations in the margins.
An old habit, a comfort, a kind of control.
“Do wh-what?” Nate blinks at him. The doctor is in with Danny, now, and Nate wants to be there. His veins are screaming with the need to go back to Danny’s side, to give him someone he can trust after all of this madness has ended. But Danny had asked him to stay in here with Ryan, instead.
Just for a few hours.
“Hurt him, and... and walk away from it without wanting to fucking kill yourself,” Ryan says. There’s a flash of brilliant yellow in his eyes, and Nate sits back slightly without consciously realizing it.
“I did, for a while,” Nate replies, and closes the book with a distinct thump. He sets it to the side, and sighs, heavily, rubbing his temples. “But y-you... didn’t h-have to-”
“No. But I had to do other things. Worse things.”
“There is nothing w-w-worse than violating t-trust,” Nate whispers.
“But, like... I see him, now, and I think... I think... I did that to you,” Ryan says, softly. “I mean, not the, uh, the thing in his back. But I... I made that new cut on his face, I made the bruises, I had to hurt him so that that fucking monster wouldn’t h-hurt him worse, and... and how do you live with that, Nate?”
Ryan’s eyes are full of tears, and he buries his head in his hands. Nate licks at his lips, presses them together briefly, and then slowly pushes himself up to his feet. He lays a hand against Ryan’s back, and feels the younger man’s shoulders shaking.
“You w-wake up,” Nate says softly. “You l-live. You go to, to sleep. And he f-f-forgives you everything.”
