Look After You

The Secret

     Bo stared at him.

     Like he was watching the sun implode or the moon breaking into fragments, he watched him closely. Waiting for him to be finished, waiting for him to be quiet. The silence that settled in between the two was thicker than it had been in a while. Usually, Ryan found comfort in the frustration that they had with one another, but now there was only grief. Pure, unbridled desolation that could only be distracted by petty rage for so long. The harder he fought back against it, the more of him it consumed. There was nothing but glue and duct tape holding his heart together when he finally noticed that Bo was crying. Ryan never would've known if he hadn't heard him sniffle. His tears were small and silent, but they were making their way down his red face and stopping just under his chin.

     The sight scared him more than anything else he had seen in the past week.

     Ryan didn't try to comfort him. He had learned from growing up alongside Luke that sometimes the best thing he could do for someone else was to just let them cry. The most that he did was hobble over to him, gently sitting on the edge of his bed and taking his warm hand whenever he would cough over a whimper. As much as the sound twisted his chest, he gave him the space to cry for as long as he wanted to, and when his weeping slowly turned into a heavy downpour of old sorrow, he wondered if he had ever been given that before.

     Ryan wasn't sure how long he sat there. It was hard to think about time with so much going on in his head. He just knew that, after a while, Bo's hand lost the heat that it once had before. He seemed to notice that once he finally pulled himself back together, but instead of yanking his hand away, he flipped it over so that the back of it was in Ryan's palm. He noticed purple bruises surrounding his IV.

     Bo followed his gaze. "You want to hear something ridiculous?"

     He nodded.

     "I've always been scared to death of needles."

     "Really?"

     "Yep." He ran his other hand across his face. "I've had my blood drawn monthly since I was young, just in case I had ever gotten badly hurt. I don't know what my blood type is and neither do most doctors, so taking some of mine and storing it in the castle was the best way to prevent any tragedies. I understand that now, but I always hated it as a child. Kyle had to sit next to me every time and hold my hand so that I wouldn't run away."

     "I wouldn't have expected something like that from you. How come you never told me?"

     "Well, I need to keep a few secrets to myself, Star."

     He tightened his grip. "Speaking of secrets, can I ask you something?"

     Bo looked at him.

     "Why exactly did you overthrow your dad?"

     "A lot of reasons. He did terrible things to me, terrible things to Kyle, terrible things to the kingdom. I just couldn't keep watching him hurt people."

      "Do you think you could finally tell me what he did to you?"

     He shook his head. "Not right now."

     "That's okay. It's whenever you want to talk about it." 

     He turned towards the window again. "Where is my father anyway?"

     "Hell, if we're lucky. I shot him with every bullet I had, but even if I hadn't, what you did probably would've done him in."

     He nodded slowly. Ryan wasn't sure if he had heard a word that came out of his mouth.

     "I wonder if he still has the crown...." He muttered under his breath.

     "I think the police might have it, but I'm not too sure," Ryan said. "I haven't been talking to them. I didn't know what to say."

     "Have you talked to anybody about what happened?"

     "Before this moment, no. I've been trying to think of what to tell them though. I was thinking of telling my brother that you and I met online or something to explain how we know each other, but I don't think we can give the same story to the paparazzi outside."

     Bo paused. "Paparazzi?"

     "Yeah. There's a bunch of them outside. They want to know what happened and they're not leaving until they do. It's not often that something like this happens, so it's probably easy news."

     "Damn vultures...."

     Ryan realized that he was staring at that bandage on his face. He tried his best to smile. "I like the new decoration for your face, asshole. It makes it a little easier to look at."

     Bo touched the bandage with his fingertips. "You think so?"

     "I'm not gagging like usual, so yeah, I do. Any idea of when it's coming off?"

     "Nope. Not any time soon though, I'm sure."

     He sighed. 

     "When I attacked my father, I had forgotten that he still had that knife in his hands. He went for my eye before I managed to get it away from him. In the heat of the moment, I hadn't given the injury much thought, but my doctor later told me that it was damaged beyond repair. Their only option was to remove the whole thing."

     Ryan shouldn't have been surprised. When he thought about how much blood had been running down his face and how tightly he had squeezed his eye shut, it was obvious that the wound had been a lot worse than he initially thought. All of those clear signs didn't stop him from feeling like he had just been run over by a truck.

     He eventually asked. "What else did your doctor say?"

     "That I should be back on my feet in a few months. I was very lucky that the bullet in my back didn't hit any major organs. Very, very lucky...."

     Ryan wondered if every doctor in this damn hospital had the same material.

     "I'll need a wheelchair to get around for a while once I'm discharged, but it's temporary." He continued, "The only permanent harm done is to my eye, and if all goes well with my recovery, I can get a prosthetic to fill the socket."

     He didn't sound particularly upset about any of that. In fact, when Ryan processed the tone of his voice, he didn't sound too bothered by anything that had happened. He was mechanical and automatic, repeating words instead of truly speaking to him like before. Ryan had to do everything he could to keep him from shutting down on him.