Those Who Trust (Phan)

Part 5

The feeling around Dan's wrists was familiar. The coldness. The pain. There was a feeling bubbling up in his chest, something inside him that screamed, wanted to escape. With every yank against the cuffs, the metal only dug deeper, the pain only got worse. Then there was the laugh- the familiar laugh that sent shivers down Dan's spine and caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. He wanted to close his eyes, didn't want to look, didn't want to see, but he couldn't. The face before him was too well known, every little detail of it he was familiar with. Lips were stretched wide, revealing pearly white teeth. It was a malicious grin. And the hands roaming Dan's body, they were familiar too. They were big and rugged and never felt gentle, always caused him harm. He knew the pain was to come soon and he trashed in the cuffs that chained him to the wall, the cold stone behind him only digging deeper into his skin. The pain was everywhere, consuming his body from top to bottom and he screamed no, no no no no no, but no one was listening. Home. He screamed home over and over and over again, but the hands didn't stop, the pain didn't stop, the cuffs around his wrists didn't disappear. There were fingers were he didn't want fingers and it hurt when they touched him, they never asked for permission anymore. He wasn't sure how many days he's been here, but the pain never lessened and the hands never stopped and the grin only got bigger when he screamed home, screamed it so loud that his voice was hoarse.

Dan shot up. There was a hand on his shoulder and he tried to swat it off. His entire body was covered in cold sweat and he shivered, although the temperature in the room was hot.

"Dan, can you hear me? It's alright, it was only a bad dream."

PJ. He was kneeling on the floor beside the couch Dan had been asleep on with concern etched all over his face. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he remembered his surroundings, remembered where he was and why he was here. A cold glass was pressed into his hands and he drank the water offered voraciously. When he had calmed down from his nightmare, comforted by PJ's voice, his friend had told him to try to go back to sleep for another few hours before returning to bed himself.

Dan couldn't close his eyes. He was scared that the images of his dream would return again. They didn't happen too often anymore, the nightmares, but when they did, they left him shaken up, unable to fall asleep for days, until his body would knock itself out and take back what was refused.

It was 4 a.m. and Dan was wide awake on the couch in PJ's living room. He knew that the sun would rise soon and the weather forecast had predicted another hot August day.

Dan had been living at PJ's and his girlfriend's place for a few weeks now, since the end of the university semester. He had contemplated staying at the dorm rooms, but decided against it as he thought it was time to finally find a place to call home for longer than a few months. The only problem was that in London that was quite a difficult thing to do. The rent was enormous and the apartments often looked worse than a pig stall. There was blood on the carpet floors or the pipes were rattling loudly. He had given up on finding a place to call his own pretty quickly. It was impossible to find an apartment without a flatmate, and that was his next problem. All the people he had met so far and whose flats he had looked at, turned out to make him really uncomfortable or were absolutely nuts. Time was ticking, university was going to start up again soon and he knew that PJ and his girlfriend- as much as they liked him- were already annoyed by his presence.

Dan and PJ left the apartment at ten in the morning, PJ well rested, Dan without having closed his eyes even once after the nightmare. He was tired and in a bad mood. PJ was his assistant in finding a new place to stay, no matter where he went he had his friend with him for feeling safe and secure. The apartment they were looking at today was located in one of the nicer parts of London, not too far away from the University College London. Dan had found the annunciation for it online, the pictures of the place looked promising and it came with a flatmate who stated that he had an empty room left and would enjoy the company of someone else. Dan had contacted the man via mail and he had seemed nice enough. The place had looked promising online and if Dan was lucky, he was returning to PJ's apartment with a place to call his own.