WIP Chapter 1

He was in a dark room, small, pitch black. He could tell it was small because everywhere he turned, he banged into a wall. One of the walls had to be a door, but he would never be able to tell which one - there was no knob on this side. His legs were cramping and he wanted desperately to sit, but there was no room. It was like a fucking coffin stood on end, that’s how much space he had. And to make matters unbearably worse - if they could be so - a shrill beeping pierced his eardrums, making it impossible to even try falling asleep standing up. The sleep deprivation felt like it had been going on for days, and the noise was driving him out of his mind...
         Trev jolted upright, limbs flailing as he burst out of the nightmare. The room was dim, but not pitch dark, and he had been lying horizontally in bed, not struggling to keep upright in a closet, but the noise continued. Thrashing his arms, he banged into the bedside table and fumbled at the alarm clock, desperately trying to silence it. “Goddammit!” he yelled, and finally just yanked the alarm off the table so hard that the cord popped out of the outlet and it went mercifully silent.
         “Fuck,” Trev moaned, flopping back. Now that the alarm had stopped screaming at him, he realized that his head was throbbing and his stomach was none too happy, either. His mouth tasted like something had died in there. Last night’s bender, rearing its ugly head.
         A knock at the door, followed by a soft voice, female. “Trev? You okay, sweetie? It’s time to get up. You don’t want to be late for your first day.”
         “Ugh,” he replied. But he was careful not to voice his thoughts beyond that. Nina had been more than decent with him, considering, and he felt he owed her a little courtesy back.
         He ran the shower scalding, per usual, turning his skin lobster red before he was sufficiently done scrubbing and scouring. He carefully dried and dressed, buckling the black wrist cuffs back on before anything else. The last thing to go on, over a long-sleeved t-shirt and dark, baggy jeans, was his oversized dark red hoodie. Automatically tucking the cuffs into his palms and fisting his fingers around them, he tucked his hands into the front pocket and wandered into the kitchen, drawn like a moth to the smell of percolating coffee.
         Nina held a mug out to him as he came in, then turned her attention back to what looked like scrambled eggs cooking on the stovetop. Trev hoped she wasn’t planning on sticking those in his face; he didn’t think his guts would be able to handle the sight or smell up close this morning. He glanced into his mug, trying to calm the slow roiling that had started up at just the mere thought of food. Black. Perfect. He took a burning, grateful sip.
         “How are you feeling?” Nina asked over her shoulder. “Nervous? Excited?”
         He swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “Hungover.” He saw her stiffen slightly, but she didn’t say anything, just opened the cabinet to the left of the stove and started to pull out a plate. “And don’t even think about putting those nasty things in my face, either,” he warned her.
         She sighed and finally turned to face him fully. “Trev, you need to eat something. It’s your first day. You want it to be a good one.”
         He laughed, incredulous. “You really think breakfast is gonna make it a good day for me, Nina? Has that been the secret this whole time? Hell, if I’d known that’s all it takes to guarantee a good day, I would’ve started eating it when I was five.” He slammed his mug down in the sink and turned to heft his messenger bag over his shoulder, ignoring when Nina said his name again, reached out an impotent hand toward him as though she could take back her words. He’d seen that look on her face, that combination of guilt-stricken and pitying, plenty enough this summer, and he couldn’t handle it right now. “I gotta go,” he said roughly, “don’t wanna be late on the first day, right,” and let himself out. He was pleased when the door shut quietly behind him. In better control now than he had been with the mug. Good. He was fine.
         Fine. Well, that was all relative, wasn’t it? If he tried to ignore the hangover, if he tried not to think about the fact that he was walking two miles to get to the first day of senior fucking year. Yeah, then he was just peachy. God. Senior year. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to bow out of this day a couple of times this summer. Poor Nina. She was so damn patient with him. She could’ve tossed him back after the first attempt - well, the first with her, anyway - but she’d kept him even after the second. She deserved better than him getting in her face over stupid eggs. Really deserved better. But he couldn’t give better. It just wasn’t ever going to happen. This was the best he could do.
         The high school was a low, sprawling brick beast of a building. It looked like it would be just as comfortable as a jail, but then he supposed there really wasn’t much difference between public school and juvie. Except that here, you got to go home at the end of the day. He supposed that probably some kids looked forward to that.
         The matronly secretary in the office had no trouble locating him in the system. “Winegarten...okay, honey, here you are. Give me half a sec to get this printed out for you.” She came back to the desk a moment later with a sheet of paper detailing his schedule. As she handed it to him with her right hand, she wet her left thumb and pinched up one of the school maps stacked on the corner of the counter. “There you go, sweetie. If you have any problems, just come back and see me. Have a good first day.” He tried to quirk up the corners of his lips in response to her smile, but suspected that it probably came out more like a slight grimace.
         Nothing weird or unusual in the schedule. The morning passed in a monotonous blur, broken up only by a minor change of scenery as he moved from room to room accepting textbooks and syllabi. He thought that it was probably social studies followed by math followed by English, but it might have been math first, and maybe that had been American history that he’d had right before lunch. He didn’t really care enough to check his schedule again. He paid for his industrial pizza and little cardboard carton of milk using money he’d found tucked into one of the little front pockets in his bag in whatever class had been first this morning - must have been math; hadn’t he been digging out his calculator? - and slipped out of the cafeteria to find a quiet place to eat.
         A closed set of double doors beckoned him at the end of the hallway. Dark, with the narrow windows set in above the handles throwing out only dim light, they promised refuge. Balancing milk and plate in one hand, Trev pushed a handle down and pulled, then slipped inside.
         The sound of a piano, playing live, bounced around the acoustically-well-designed auditorium he’d breached, startling him nearly into flight back into the hallway, his anticipated escape foiled. But the noise wasn’t altogether unpleasant, he realized. From this angle he couldn’t see who played - he’d come in through a recessed side door at the back and hadn’t walked far enough in to see the stage - but whoever it was was good. Trev didn’t listen to much music, but he could at least appreciate that this player had some talent. He’d frozen there in the doorway when he’d first come in, but now he relaxed, letting the music sweep and flow around him.
         A discordant note, then a soft, “Shit,” accompanied by sudden silence. Trev edged forward slightly. A boy with sandy blond hair sat leaning over the keyboard, an intense look on his face as he erased something from his sheet music and scribbled in something else. Despite the harsh susurration, he didn’t look angry. Maybe frustrated, but mostly just incredibly intent on whatever he was doing. He sat back, putting his pencil on the lip of the stand and replacing his hands on the keys. The chord that resonated up from the body of the baby grand this time came rising clear and pure to Trev’s ears - a haunting, almost desperate harmony that sent a shiver up his spine. A look of satisfaction came over the pianist’s face and he threw himself back into the music.
         When the bell rang for the end of lunch, Trev jumped. He had been so immersed in the rapture unfolding around him that he hadn’t realized how late it was getting. At some point he’d slid down to sit against the wall, and he was still folded there; despite the shadows, he would be visible if the pianist glanced in his direction. As if reading his thoughts, the boy looked up, but his eyes swept north of Trev, checking the clock at the back of the auditorium even as his hands reached to gather up his music. Trev slowly eased himself towards the door, ready to pop up and disappear as soon as the pianist looked away again.
         Then the pianist gazed right at him.
         There was no mistaking it; their eyes locked. The pianist looked a little startled - clearly he hadn’t realized that he’d had company - but in a cool, unruffled sort of way, like the attention wasn’t exactly unexpected, nor unwelcome. Trev expected that he himself just looked shocked - a child caught somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. For a long moment, he couldn’t remember how to work his limbs. Then his brain finally kicked into gear and he pushed himself upright and fled the room.
         For the rest of the afternoon, he was painfully present. Every torturous moment of science and computer class passed by in Technicolor and 5-point surround sound, set to a piano soundtrack in his head. Why the hell had that made such a fucking impression? It wasn’t like he’d never heard a piano before in his life. He was exhausted by the time he made it, finally, to the last class of the day. He slumped into a seat at the back of the room, hoping desperately that he would be able to find his happy dissociation place again.
         Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of gold. No, oh shit, no way. His hands clenched around the cuffs of his hoodie and he kept his eyes resolutely on his desk. But he could still feel that gaze on him, curious, maybe amused, but still fucking unruffled. Did anything faze this guy? Trev hoped that the pianist would not choose to sit next to him. He lifted his lashes enough to see the boy claim a desk in the second row, on the far side of the room. As he dropped his backpack, he was already turning to talk and laugh with the person to his right.
         Trev felt his face burn. Of course he wasn’t anything important or special enough to worry about; he was just the freak who’d been sitting in the dark trying not to be noticed. Why would he have worried that this dude would think about sitting next to him even for a second? God, he was paranoid. He slouched further in his seat and imagined that he was invisible.
         This time, it worked.

All that week, Trev found himself sneaking back into the auditorium at lunchtime, drawn inexplicably like a moth to a flame. He hadn’t told Nina anything about the pianist yet, preferring to lock himself in his room each night and lose himself for a little while, emerging only when she called him to dinner. She had tried to pry words out of him, but the only thing worth thinking about or remembering each day was something he wasn’t ready to share. Mostly because he himself couldn’t articulate the experience, couldn’t have explained why, when he shut himself in, it was to replay the music in his head and not to cut or drink or pop pills or do any of that other destructive shit that had formerly occupied his time in there. And trying to explain would have destroyed the magic. So he kept mostly quiet, and she’d stopped trying after a little while.
         But when he’d woken up the following Monday, he’d had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that had nothing this time to do with alcohol. He felt like he’d been promised something special that he’d really been looking forward to, only to have it taken from him at the last minute. He couldn’t be sure, after a weekend off, that last week hadn’t been all in his head, or maybe even just a dream. So he’d bounced anxiously from class to class this morning, hardly breathing until he’d eased open the auditorium door and heard the first strains of music from within.
         He wasn’t sure if he had been noticed again after last Monday. He’d been careful not to be surprised by the bell anymore, at least, slipping back out a few minutes before it rang, and the pianist had not given him a second glance in the class they had together, so he figured he was probably okay. He tucked himself into the shadows by the door, letting his hoodie cloak him in its oversized formlessness. He had found an angle that let him stay fairly hidden while still having a good view of the stage; he was fascinated by the intense expressions that the pianist always wore when playing.
         As he’d entered, the song was crescendoing into a series of angry runs. The blond pianist played with a pained expression in his eyes as his fingers wrenched wails from the instrument, and Trev found himself clenching jaw and fists in response. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, the music dredging up emotions he’d long thought buried. Images flashed behind his lids.
         A bare room, single window locked and barred. A bare lightbulb hanging from a ceiling. The flash of a blade. A bed, straps at the post. A child’s screams of pain and terror. “Relax, boy. You know you want it.” “Ah, there now. Doesn’t that feel good?” Sobbing.
         Trev slapped his hands over his ears, trying not to listen, trying to drown out the noise. A hand fell suddenly on his shoulder. Trev jumped a mile, eyes snapping wide as he flattened himself against the wall.
         The auditorium. He was seventeen years old and sitting in the back aisle of the high school auditorium, and the sandy-haired pianist was crouching in front of him, face concerned and his hands now held up by his shoulders, palms forward in a gesture of peace.
         “Are you okay, dude?”
         Trev blinked at him. “What?”
         “Are you okay?” the blond repeated. “You’re shaking. And - are you crying?” His voice, rather than becoming mocking or patronizing, softened at the last question.
         Trev put his fingertips to his cheeks and felt dampness there. Annoyed, he roughly swiped the cuffs of his sleeves under his eyes. “I’m fine,” he said shortly, and pushed himself up.
         The other boy followed him up, looking unconvinced. “You don’t look fine,” he pressed. “What’s wrong?”
         “Nothing the hell is wrong!” Trev snapped. “Just...fuck off, okay?” He spun on his heel and stalked toward the doors.
         “You’re the one who keeps coming back,” the pianist called after him. Trev flinched, but stiff-armed the doors open and resolutely walked out.
         Why the hell did he keep going back? He couldn’t remember now. Without paying attention to anyone or anything around him, Trev marched directly to the nearest set of doors that would take him out of this godforsaken place. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do once he was outside, but he was suffocating here. His breath was coming in shallow hitches and a stitch was starting to burn in his chest. He threw the door open and stepped out into an overcast afternoon, drawing in a gulp of cool, fresh air as the door banged shut behind him.
         The breeze blew especially cold against his cheeks as he stood there trying to regulate his oxygen intake. He scrubbed his sleeves against them and took them away nearly black with wet. With a detached sense of interest, Trev realized that those staccato breaths had actually been soft sobs; his sleeves were wet with the tears that had continued to flow unchecked. Strange how his body went on autopilot, carrying on with the last emotion he’d felt even when he himself no longer felt it. Whatever had gone on the auditorium, he was now husked clean, an empty shell. Better that way. Better to be empty than filled with those damn flashbacks and the feel of those concerned coffee eyes. He started walking.
         An hour later found him in the park, sitting on the swings, a legally-obtained razor blade held delicately between finger and thumb. The floating sensation, the feeling of being outside of his body, persisted, but at least he was getting better about the shoplifting. A shame, he mused detachedly, as he could have really used a drink. Nothing like the euphoria gained from a combination of cutting and alcohol. He could have taken himself to the moon like on the night before that first day of school. Oh well. The release would still be good by itself; it had been over a week since he’d opened the valve. Reverently, he rolled back the sleeve over his right wrist and unbuckled the wide leather cuff there. Underneath was the spiderweb tracery of previous lettings, some of them still lightly scabbed over. His left hand, holding the razor, shook ever so slightly, like an eager junkie anticipating his next fix.
         What the hell is wrong with you, boy?
         He gasped and almost dropped the blade.
         You know that if you just behaved your damn self, I wouldn’t have to do this to you.
         “You’re not doing anything to me,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re never fucking doing anything to me again. Now get the fuck out of my head.”
         But now images rolled up, burning and intense, behind his eyelids, giving visual to the soundtrack that continued to play in his head.
         A boy, dark-haired, rabbit-eyed in fear, cowers on a dirty wood floor, naked from the waist up. The shadow of someone much bigger falls over him, deepening the color of the new bruises blossoming on his face, chest, arms, stomach.
         “I’m sorry, sir,” he chokes out. “I tried to behave. He was hurting me.”
         “Nothing but goddamn excuses!” the voice roars above him. “You just cost me good fucking money, acting like a little baby. Are you a baby? Do I need to put you back in diapers and change you when you shit yourself?”
         “N-n-no, sir, please!”
         “We’d see about that after a weekend in the Box, wouldn’t we? But for now, I’ll let you off easy. One lash for every dollar you cost me today. Take off your pants.”
         “Please,” the boy sobs out, no louder than a whisper, barely articulated as he folds bonelessly against the floor.
         “Did you say something, you little bitch?”
         The boy lifts a mottled, tearstained face, hugging his thin arms tight to his battered chest as though he could ever hope to protect himself. “Please, sir. Please,” he begs. He cries out in pain and terror as a hand reaches down, takes a fistful of his hair, and yanks, bringing him very effectively to his feet.
         “Take off. Your fucking pants. Now,” the voice says, almost sweetly. “I won’t tell you again, Trevor.
         “Leave me the fuck alone!” Trev screamed. His eyes flew open. At first they focused on nothing, his gaze still tangled in a cobweb of ghosts. Then it cleared and he found himself solidly back in the park, shivering, frozen to the swing. He was stiff, his hands cramped and icy, and he was startled to realize that twilight was falling.
         And to find that there was apparently an echo here. Beyond the trees that marked the back boundary of the playground, Trev could hear his own yell coming back to him. He frowned. What the hell...? Carefully, he unfolded himself, paying no attention to the ache as his knees straightened for the first time in hours, ears pricked for more noises.
         And he heard them. A rustle of early fall leaves on the ground. A grunt, a harsh curse. “Settle down, fag. You know you want it.”
         Trev’s blood turned to ice in his veins, then thawed into a white-hot boil. You know you want it.
         No, he thought, No, I don’t. And he started running for the trees.
         Coming through the barrier, he found himself at the edge of a picnic area. Before him, a pavilion, the setting sun throwing the tables underneath into deep shadow. He stopped, letting his eyes adjust. After a moment, he could make out movement at the far end, then flashes of color. Heart pounding, he edged forward.
         Three guys. One clearly being attacked - his jacket was partway off, arms twisted up in it behind his back, which was turned toward Trev. He was struggling to stay upright against the force of the other two, who were holding him and trying to shove him face-first over one of the tabletops. He kicked at them, now and then landing a decent blow, the cause of the grunting and cursing.
         “Leave me alone,” he said again. His voice was strong, defiant, but Trev still picked out a note of fear. Two against one was bad odds. He was holding his own for now, but it was only a matter of time before he was overpowered. And Trev could fill in the ending that these assholes were hoping for. He wasn’t inclined to let that fucking well happen to anyone. Quietly as a shadow, he slipped up behind Jerkoff One, the one holding the kid’s arms behind his back, cocked a fist, and drove it hard into the spot just below the ribs where his left kidney would be innocently hanging out.
         The guy yelled in surprise and pain and spun to face him. Trev was ready for him, though, and threw a hard right hook to his jaw. Stunned and unprepared, the guy fell hard to the cement floor, cracking his skull very satisfyingly against a wooden bench on his way down.
         “What the hell?” demanded Jerkoff Two. Stepping around his victim to see what had happened to his partner-in-crime, he came face-to-face with Trev, who could feel a manic grin spreading across his face. He was distantly aware of the victim turning, seeing him, and then backing away, but he was focused only on the dawning anger on Jerkoff Two’s face. Trev was strong. He was ready. He would take this bastard all the way down, down to the depths of hell if he had to pave the way himself.
         Jerkoff Two swung. Trev deflected easily, spinning into the attack and using the asshole’s own momentum to flip him over his shoulder. Jerkoff Two thwacked into another table on his own downward flight, and Trev unceremoniously followed this up with a brutal twist of the arm he’d deflected that brought it crunching out of socket. Trev let the arm go and raised a booted foot over Jerkoff Two’s screaming face, ready to stomp him into oblivion.
         A hand caught his shoulder. There was a voice in his ear, calm, but pleading. Trev paused.
         “Please stop.”
         He suddenly realized that he knew that voice. Not well, but well enough. He jerked his head over to look at the speaker.
         “It’s you.”
         The pianist gazed at him with wide caramel eyes; his voice might have been steady enough, but those eyes showed how terrified he had been, and was still. “Please stop,” he repeated. “He’s not worth it.”
         Trev laughed incredulously. “Not worth it? Not worth getting his fucking rapist face smashed in?”
         The hand tightened on his shoulder. “Not worth you getting in trouble for smashing in his fucking rapist face.”
         They gazed at each other for a long moment. Then Trev lowered his foot back to the ground.
         “Thank you,” the pianist whispered. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, letting his hand slip from Trev’s shoulder. “Oh God, thank you.”

It took Trev an inordinate amount of time, as usual, to come down from the rage that had seized him. In the meantime, he railed against everything around him. He spent several good minutes cursing out the two bastards, who had fled as far and fast as their cowardly little legs would take them, as colorfully as he could; then, when the sandy-haired pianist insisted that he wasn’t going to report them, Trev turned his anger management issues onto him for several more minutes. The pianist sat quietly under the verbal onslaught, head bowed.
         Finally, Trev dropped down onto the bench across from him, arsenal severely depleted. His foot continued to tap angrily, but his breathing was starting to come down. He suddenly felt exhausted, little aches and pains starting to finally make themselves known to him.
         “Oh, God,” the pianist said suddenly. “You’re bleeding.”
         Trev looked at him, confused. He didn’t think he’d gotten hit during the fight, but maybe he was wrong about that.
         “Your hand.” The other boy made a small gesture towards him, as though his impulse had been to reach out but that he’d checked himself. Trev was shocked to find that he wanted to be touched, that he didn’t want this guy to be afraid of him. He quickly looked away, down at his hands, and saw the drying blood that had run down his right wrist to pool in the cup of his fist. His fingers were red from the nail to the first knuckle.
         “Dammit,” he murmured, and pushed up his sleeve to assess the damage he’d managed to do in the grip of his earlier waking nightmare. It had happened before - he suspected that either the cutting was so second-nature to him by now that he was just operating on autopilot, or that it was a futile attempt by his subconscious to rip him out of the nightmares - but he hated when it did because he wasn’t there to feel it. A waste of a release, and trying to do it again right away, consciously, never fucking worked.
         He was vaguely aware of the pianist’s soft gasp of shock as the pushed-up sleeve revealed the 5 or so angry wounds, slashed like grim mouths across his wrist and forearm, but it startled him when hands shot forward and grabbed his, turning it warmly, gently, to inspect the damage.
         “This wasn’t from them.” The pianist spoke with simple certainty.
         Trev met his caramel eyes straight on. “No.”
         “You did this?”
         “Yes.”
         “Why?” The hands stilled on his, cupping it, thumbs pressed gently to Trev’s palm. The touch felt...reverent, almost. Like he was something sacred, worthy of empathy. Worthy of understanding. Worthy of love.
         Awkwardly, Trev extracted his hand from the warm grip that was now threatening to undo him. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, a pathetic lie, dropping his eyes to the ground. He fumbled his sleeve back down, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Ashamed, almost.
         The pianist’s hand came back up, touched him gently under the chin, pulling his gaze back up again. “Why did you save me?” It was a gentle question, and in his eyes, Trev could see that he already suspected the reason. Very bright, to put this particular two-and-two together. Trev gazed steadily back.
         “You already know why,” he replied quietly, tiredly. “Why don’t you tell me?”
         “Because this happened to you.” The pianist cleared his throat. “But nobody was there to save you.”
         “Good job, professor,” Trev said. He’d meant to speak more strongly, but the words left him in a whisper.
         “Oh, God,” came the whisper back. “When? How long ago?”
         Trev sat back, pulling away. “Doesn’t matter. Happened. It’s over now.”
         “It’s not! Not if you’re doing...that...to yourself.” The blond waved a hand toward his wrist again, now safely hidden beneath folds of sweatshirt material.
         “I do ‘that’ because it feels good,” Trev retorted. “Are you gonna give me a fucking lecture about it? Because I’m not in the mood. Besides, there’s already a guy being paid to tell me once a week about what a masochistic psycho I am. I’d hate for you to be getting gypped, telling me all that for free.” He found that he was looking down at the pianist; at some point during his tirade, he’d stood up, muscles taut and ready to carry him out of there at the slightest provocation.
         “Wait.” The boy put up a placating hand. “That’s not... I didn’t mean...”
         Trev sighed. “Yeah. I know. Just...leave it.” His eyes added a stronger warning. Don’t push me. He paused, debating with himself, then carefully, cautiously, extended his left hand - the one not covered in blood - toward the pianist. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll walk you home in case those assholes decide to try their moves on you again.”
         The pianist regarded him with eyes that finally - finally - registered surprise. Uncertainty. Then he gripped Trev’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled upright.
         “I’m Noah,” he blurted.
         “Trev.” Trev gazed at him a moment, assessing. “Short for Trevor, but don’t ever call me that.” He released his grip, thought he saw a flicker of disappointment in the pianist’s - Noah’s - eyes, turned away before his brain could get the chance to analyze that. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The walk to Noah’s house, only a few blocks away, was quiet and uneventful. They paused on the sidewalk in front of the cozily lit porch, a little awkward with one another now that they were away from the immediacy of the threat at the park. Trev, hands shoved into the hoodie pocket, was back to feeling the impulse to flee. He wasn’t used to feeling this damn present - Noah seemed to ground him, force him to participate fully in reality, and with that weighing down on top of the events of this afternoon and evening, Trev was fucking exhausted.
         “Do you...want to come in?” Noah asked him. Again with the uncertainty, not at all like the self-assured musician Trev had seen for the past week. He didn’t get it; was Noah scared of him, now that he’d had the silent walk to reflect on what he’d seen of him tonight?
         “No, I’ve got curfew. I’m already gonna get chewed out for missing dinner,” he added ruefully, thinking of how frantic Nina must be by now. He’d left his bag behind in his locker when he’d skipped out this afternoon, and his cell phone with it, and as he wasn’t the type to not come straight home from school - at least, not so far - he figured she would be thinking the worst right about now.
         “Are you...” Noah trailed off, then tried again. “Are you gonna be okay?”
         Trev looked at him, uncomprehending. “Yeah...?” he replied, not sure if that was the right answer. “What do you mean? It’s not the first time I’ve cut, and I’m still standing here, if that’s what you mean.”
         Noah winced. “No. Well, yeah, that too, I guess. But...you’re not gonna...get hurt, are you, for being late?” He flinched back a little, as though expecting another tirade like at the park.
         But Trev laughed. Genuinely, for the first time in what felt like ages, thinking about petite Nina ever raising a hand to him. “No,” he reassured Noah. He got his giggles under control enough to look right into those worried eyes. “Told you. That happened, and now it’s over. I’ll be fine.” He shook his head. “Though why you’d be worried about me, after what happened - or almost happened - to you back there, and now that you’ve had the chance to really think about what a crazy I am...” He trailed off as Noah took a quick step toward him, grasped his hand.
         “No,” he said, voice forceful with some emotion Trev couldn’t name, eyes blazing. “I don’t think you’re a crazy, or a psycho, like you said back there. I think you’re brave. I think you’re damn strong. And I think...I think you’re beautiful.”
         Trev froze. Those caramel eyes were locked onto his with naked, unashamed truth shining out from them.
         Settle down, fag.
         He wrenched his hand away, took two steps backward before he even realized that he was going to move. “I’m not like that,” he said harshly. “Maybe you might’ve enjoyed it if those guys had taken you in the ass, but I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. So back the fuck off. Got it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, ignored the blanched look on Noah’s face, turned on his heel, and walked off, leaving the pianist to stand alone in the fallen night.