"Friends just sleep in another bed"
"Friends shouldn't kiss me like you do."
"But my friends won't love me like you."
In which on the worst night of their lives, two best friends simply can't keep their hands off each other, and with...
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EIGHTEEN - "COEXIST."
Later that night in the hospital, Danny Bixler woke up from surgery. He was alone when he came around and the room was flooded with a dim blue light only he could understand to be safety.
He stared down at his arm, taking note of the needles and wires and bruises that littered him, but the one that tantalised his vision the most was the sight of his arm stitched up and bandaged.
It felt as if it had only been moments ago that it'd been stabbed and ripped open and there it suddenly lay before him, neater than ever, stitched closed and clean.
He hadn't been clean in almost 24 hours either, of sin, of tragedy, of blood. His body was well and truly mangled.
He thought on his mother, and how he would never see her again, how he would probably be forced to move away and live with his absent father all so that Kassie wouldn't be alone. He was old enough to say no, old enough to go to college and never look back, but he couldn't leave the glass child if it killed him. He'd proven that much so, and so it was there Danny decided that if Beth couldn't get custody, that if his dad fought for it, then he would too. She was never going to grace the arms of any one else except for the three of them who faced the tragedy with her.
If his father even attempted to understand, after everything he did, then he'd only resent him all the more. Because truthfully no one would ever understand any of them again, not in the way they would each other, not in a way that anyone of sane mind could ever begin to.
He shuffled slightly in his bed and the over head light flickered on, destroying any blue light left behind for him to sleep beneath. Danny sat up fully then - there was no way he'd be sleeping tonight.
Someone however, was. When he looked to his left, to the dark brown plastic covered chair in the corner, a sleeping figure lay upon it, none other than his fellow survivor and somewhat lover.
He almost crumbled there and then, almost ripped the needles out of his arm and crawled to her, almost cried out for her, but then, he saw how peacefully she was sleeping. Her mouth somewhat ajar, eyes shut and the most gentle snores he'd ever heard escaping her throat, she was finally, after the 24 hours from hell, in some state of remote peace and to even witness her beauty in such a form eased his woes entirely. Their reunion could wait.
She was at peace.
Peace. Would he grow to know it too? Like an old friend reaching out a crooked hand? Or a distant planet never to be reached?
Would Lyds be his peace? After everything did she only love him in the moment? No. It couldn't be. She was peace, she was safety, she was the future for him. She had to be.
