Dan's has a terrible phobia of thunder and after a huge storm, Phil finds out. And things only get worse when someone from Dan's broken past comes back. For him.
//TRIGGER WARNINGS: ALCOHOL, ASTROPHOBIA, ABUSE, BLOOD, KIDNAPPING\\ do NOT read if you...
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14 year old Dan sits at the top of the stairs, listening to the profanity echoing from the TV downstairs. He was an awkward tall boy, with lightly tanned skin that was tight around his lanky frame. His eyes dark and tired. It was nearly one in the morning, but his father doesn't care. He sits down on the sofa in his boxers, a beer bottle in hand, with three empty ones on the coffee table. He shouts at the TV, causing Dan to jump.
He was accustomed to his father being drunk nearly all day every day now. It had been going on for nearly a month. He was an addict. And an addict, as Dans mother had told him, is someone who tricks themselves into thinking something is more important than the people you love. Dan suspected that was not the true definition. However, that did seem to apply perfectly to his father.
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His father would leave for hours- occasionally days- at a time and come home slobbering drunk. Words slurring, eyes dilated, breath foul, and clothes torn. Then he would hit Dan and his younger brother, Adrian, before locking them in their bedroom for the night. Dan never slept on nights like those. The yelling and crying coming from the other room was too much to sleep through for him. However, he always tried to comfort his younger brother and get him to sleep. He would sing in a shaky voice that Adrian had grown accustomed to.
After that their father only got worse.
Dan and Adrian came home from school one day to find broken bottles all over the living room. They caught their parents in the kitchen, their father holding the front of their mothers blouse in his bloody fist. She was bent awkwardly backward over the kitchen counter, her hair a mess, her eye black, her nose bloody. Dan pried them apart, forcing his drunk father to stagger angrily away. With thin, gentle hands, Dan cleaned his mothers face. After putting her in his own bed, and Adrian to sleep as well, he went downstairs to clean up the broken glass. He tread quietly- as his father was now passed out asleep on the sofa.
Dan didn't go to school for over a week after that. He stayed home, making sure the house was clean. Making sure there was fresh food in the fridge by throwing out the expired things. However, he couldn't go to the grocery store to buy the food, so the refrigerator was soon empty save for the bottles of alcohol. In fact- Dan only ever left the house to walk Adrian to the bus stop in the morning, and walk out to get him home after school every day. Adrian didn't seem to know any different. Though it had only been a few months, he was used to his brother being his parent.
