#all my friends growing up sent ne suicide notes *to often*

[im-tempted]

The number one way to cause my fight or flight response

[etoilesdephan]

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? (Chapter 9: Ne plus ultra)

Chapter masterpost

Chapter words: 2.7k

Overall words: 23.3k

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Trigger warning: Mentions of violence, suicidal thoughts

The stitches on his forehead and cheek felt more offending than the black and blue bruises covering too many parts of his body in a familiar knuckle pattern. The black eye and the swollen feeling was nothing compared to the concussion that he had gotten and due to which he had been instructed to bed stay. He constantly felt nauseous and though he got some painkillers, they did a poor job actually blocking out the pain.

Everything felt too intrusive to his senses.

The cotton was just as scratchy in the prison's medical ward as back in his cell bed. Every little movement created too much sound, too much rough rubbing of threads against the patches of exposed skin.

And the irritation that the feeling sent through his senses didn't help him relax.

On top of the pain inflicted by the fight, he was plagued with the flashes of fear and anger. More often than not he would wake up due to the discomfort that the tension in his muscles would create, and in his less aware moments of awakeness he would zone back in only to feel his nails digging into his palms, leaving painful crescents in his skin.

Through the spotty sleep, he found himself struggling; the general restlessness was eating at his sanity, the pain - distorted his vision, and his emotions were running incomprehensible scenarios through his mind.

Perhaps it was also the bareness of his scalp that made him so restless.

After the fight, the three prisoners had been taken off to different parts of the prison. Dan had only heard about what happened to Rudy and Stanley a few hours later when he had come to it again, head full of scratchy cotton of where the initial stronger painkillers had still been numbing out the pain.

Rudy had been sent out for psychological reevaluation after a brief medical attention. His attack and reaction had been deemed dangerous for the inmates, though admitted as self-defense.

There was a guilt-laced part of Dan that wasn't sure that the other man would ever return. He'd seen the stares before, how people would deliberately avoid the other man and how they snickered at him when Rudy wasn't looking, as if the man was a loony.

The closest thing to a friend that Dan had made in this forsaken place was taken away.

Stanley meanwhile had been taken to the high security cell. His case had been reopened and, from rumours that his weary mind had pieced together from the guards passing through, the most likely outcome was that Stanley's previously dubious sentence would be cemented now with the record of the attack.

Dan knew that he was supposed to feel relieved hearing that. He understood how much of his lifeline depended on being separated far away from this man.

Yet he couldn't help feeling a bit regretful still.

Though Dan didn't miss the idea of being used as a punching bag, there was a certain familiarity in the fear and loathing. He knew who to avoid and what was to come if he failed to accomplish it. He knew the punishment, accepted it as part of his payment for what had caused.

Now he was left with a questionable future.

It was his rational mind fighting with that deeply rooted darkness that had resurfaced over the months spent behind the bars.

Dan himself had ended with a lot of open gashes, most of which he had no memory of getting. His body had pumped too much adrenaline into his veins, numbing the nerve endings. Upon awakening, however, he'd very soon become very much aware of the soreness and discomfort.

And there had been something else off about how he felt.

He soon realised what had been wrong when he'd brought a hand up in a trained motion, partially to rub his head in hopes to soothe the pain, and partially to brush his fringe aside. Instead he'd been met with a line of short, pointy hair.

They had taken the liberty of cutting his hair in buzzcut to reach a particularly nasty open gash that needed stitching and later justified it that it had been only a matter of time when he would have had the little machine running across his scalp.

He'd not lost his dignity, but he had lost a characteristic nonetheless.

And he had lost that strange continuity in his prison life.

======

“Shit, Dan, is that--” The words were an unquestionable shock as Dan slumped down into the seat across from Martyn, a slight limp showing in his walk until he sat down, exhaling a sigh of relief. As if to add an insult to his injuries, he'd soon realised that somewhere along the way he had also sprained his ankle and that had put an extra damper on his mood.

“I didn't want my parents to see this,” He croaked out, offering the older man a small, almost apologetic smile. He had made sure to tell his mum off over the phone, saying that he had some things that he needed to discuss with Martyn this week. “Think this will go onto my record?” He half-joked.

“Bloody hell, what happened to you? This is inhumane, you need to--” Martyn's voice was loud, too loud for Dan's still mushy brain to be able to handle and he squirmed at the sound a little.

“Martyn, calm down. I got in a fight with another inmate. He's now being transported away,” There was tension that had settled in his back and he shifted a little, trying to stretch, only to scowl when pain shot through his body. “I'll be fine, I'm healing right,” He added when he noted the worry in Martyn's face.

“You can't do this, Dan...” The tone was low, careful, but ever so worried still as Martyn spoke, surveying the bruises and stitches, and Dan soon noted that the other man's eyes lingered on Dan's forehead, probably used to the fringe cover.

“Do you think I did this to myself? Honestly, Martyn, and here I thought that you knew me better,” Some hostility was beginning to boil again and Dan curled his fingers into fists when he felt the headache begin to return. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose, allowing the spark of strong emotions settle down again.

“Sorry, I just…. Shit, you look like a mess,” Any other time, Dan would've laughed at the amount of profanities, but now he just offered a small, crooked smile to the other man.

“Don't I always?” Dan tried to humour only to receive just as a half-hearted smile from the other man.

“And the hair?” Martyn then motioned towards Dan's head. It made him wish for one of the hoodies again, where he could just pull the hood over his head and hide away similarly to how he had behind the hair before.

“For stitches and apparently they have a single haircut option behind the bars,” There was a certain cheekiness in Dan's words, but the reality was clear; Dan was uncomfortable. The makeshift amusement in his face was soon exchanged by a frown and his fingers bunched some of his uniform clothing tightly in his grip.

There was a silence, and though he appreciated that, his whole being was restless and he shifted in his seat.

“So.” He began again and the dark eyes trained onto the other man whose summer attire was almost an offending reminder of how long Dan had been locked away.

“So?” Martyn mirrored, but after being stared at for moments longer, the man heaved a sigh, entwining his fingers as he leaned forward with arms resting on the wooden table and the hesitation alone made Dan's chest throb “There were….. Some complications.” It seemed like Martyn was trying hard to find the correct way to word it, and there was tension in his shoulders.

Dan felt the colour drain from his already pale features and his heart sunk to the bottom of his stomach, only to jump with the next bit of shooting headache, spilling the breath so hastily that his voice could barely keep up “W-what...”

“They noticed something off during the routine checkups. Apparently there was some liquid in his lungs, but don't worry, they attended to it and he should be fine again. He's being monitored carefully to avoid a relapse.”

Dan released a shaky breath and slumped more into the chair behind him ��Don't scare me like that,” he muttered and, out of habit, brought a hand to rub through his hair only to flinch away when his fingertips met with the short cut. He dropped his hand in his lap.

It felt like a first in a long time that his head felt so clear, even if for a second, when the news had been announced. For a moment he'd come to a conclusion that it was all over and they had lost.

“He's still out, and with how this is going, I'm just worried, Dan,” Eyes, achingly similar to Phil's in colour, were looking straight at him and he felt judged under the gaze though there was nothing but a genuine familial worry in them. “Look at what already happened to you; I don't think mum will be able to handle losing both of you.”

Dan blinked, at first surprised, then it dawned upon him. She'd said before that she'd accepted himself as her own son too, and though he'd found it heartwarming, he'd always set himself outside the Lester family. A stranger that is just always there.

He hadn't thought that they truly had accepted him as their own.

He leaned forward, holding the other man's gaze for a moment and there was a renowned life his dark eyes “Tell her that she won't.”

If he could do one thing correctly still, it would be this.

“She won't lose us.”

======

It was always an unpleasant reminder, whenever he stood by the sink, drawing the dull blade over his cheeks to rid his face of the light scruff that had taken over a week to properly grow. The metallic sheet mirror made his reflection a little distorted, but even if he kept that in mind, it didn't change the reality.

They said prison changed people.

For him, it just seemed like the prison tore the weak down and encouraged the most vicious.

He stared, and the familiar brown eyes looked back, but that felt like the only familiar feature at the immediate glance.

His skin was pale, discoloured with the varying degrees of healing bruising and his eyes and cheeks seemed to have sunk in, the black eye not helping. He looked at the man in the reflection, beaten and ill-looking, and he could barely piece together the person he had taken for granted during all those years of self-loathing.

Dan wanted to laugh when that thought crossed his mind.

Teenage years were angsty, and there had been a lot of of self-image issues that he had gone through. His grave humour always expressed openly the many things he had hated about himself, but slowly he had been finding his way to a stability.

The same stability that had been completely floored.

He had hated parts of himself before, but now the loathing had gone far and beyond and, as he looked in the mirror, he realised that he hated the person in the reflection. The one which he knew that he'll never get rid of if he wanted to fulfill the promises he'd made.

The blade made his skin feel itchy and he reluctantly set it aside, fighting the temptation to push the sharper edges into his skin more, eyes instead lingering on the edges and his teeth sank into his lower lip, chewing at it. It would be so easy to just cut himself away from all of this. To just run away from it all and save the trouble for everyone around him.

“Shit,” He muttered, and looked away from the razor and down at the sink, now filled with the water and he watched it for a moment before submerging his face into it.

He felt the bubbles tickling his face as they escaped his nose, and after a while his heart was beginning to jerk uncomfortably in his chest. When he finally pulled his head out of the water filled sink, a gasp escaped him loudly and he leaned against the edge of the sink, trying to catch his breath again.

When he looked up and at his reflection again, there was a solemn man staring back.

“Don't mess this up,” He muttered lowly and watched as the chapped lips of the reflection moved with the words “Don't you make this worse than it already is.”

And somehow, though he hated the man, he soon found himself nodding in agreement.

======

“Phil, I'm sorry...” He muttered, head hung low as he stood in front of Phil, too ashamed to look the other man in the eyes. He felt shorter, he was shorter than the other man and when he looked up, prompted by Phil's pale fingers on his chin, dark strands of hair fell into his view, but he brushed them aside with a trained hand movement.

The Phil in front of him looked so young, and his hair was just as long as Dan's, his skin was not quite as creased with the laughter lines yet and his frame was thinner. His lips were stretched into that familiar smile that always made Dan's chest tingle with emotion.

“Come on Dan, you know I can't stay mad at you,” And there was a dusty pink on Phil's cheeks, mirrored by the warmth Dan felt in his own.

“But you should, I'm being an irrational trash and I honestly don't understand why are you still putting up with me, living with me,” He felt the tears begin to well up in his eyes, but Phil just kept smiling that goofy, slightly crooked smile, his blue eyes soft as they regarded the younger boy.

There was a bit of hesitation, and Phil's cheeks grew pinker, eyes shifting for a moment before he took a small step forward, enough that Dan had to look up a little to properly look the other man in the eye.

“Don't you understand it still?” Phil asked and Dan swallowed, trying to shake his head but he was too mesmerised by those deep blues of the other man's irises.

“It's because I love you, Dan,” And with that, Phil closed the distance, their lips touching softly before Dan's eyes snapped wide open.

It had been a dream, again, but it was the calm nature of the memory, how it wasn't touched by the gore and guilt, that surprised Dan awake.

He lied in the stiff bed, eyes staring at the dark ceiling.

It had been 2012, just after all the troubles began and Dan had overreacted so badly. It was through all their fighting and Dan's meltdowns that they had ended up like that. Standing in their apartment, with Dan's shoulders slouching too much and he had been so sure that it would end there and then. Yet it had turned around completely, and it had been when Phil had finally confessed.

They had been dancing around feelings, sharing drunk and messy kisses before and messed around, but it had never hit the point where they actually committed to it, never truly agreed to the idea of being officially together. Too scared by how that would change everything, by how the world would react.

It had been the final push, Phil had later told him, those months of on and off fighting, that he finally understood that it had been time. He hadn't been able to imagine losing Dan and, Dan had admitted later, it had truly been a mutual fear back then.

So Phil had decided that it was time to confess.

Dan had been so used to nightmares, to the darkness and crimson flooding the peace of different moments of their life that he liked to recall. He had forgotten just where it had truly began, how it had felt and how, at his worst, Phil had taken him and raised him above the tallest mountains.

The strange amount of elation in his chest was unexpected and Dan found himself lying there, unmoving, for hours until the late summer sunlight finally began to pour in through the small window.