Chapter 87

“Are you alright?” he asked quietly.

Danny shrugged. “Nurse looked me over.”

“Not what I meant.”

Danny gave him a look that said it was all Eli was going to get.

Eli snorted.

“God, you’re both emotionally constipated,” he mumbled.

“How d’you think I am?” Danny grunted. “Imagine…like, fucking imagine having the one person in the world who ever gave a fuck about you, going down. Imagine that. Even when he were in prison, he were alright.” He said arreet again, his accent thickened by fear and exhaustion. “But the doctor said he’ll be fine, so I’m fine. S’easy.”

Eli knew it wasn’t quite so easy as all that, but let it go.

“How’s your sister?”

Eli shrugged. “Upstairs having a baby,” he said. “She was due in, like, three weeks anyway so I don’t think there’ll be a problem, but I don’t know shit about babies.”

“Aw, I’m not gonna be an uncle?”

“Me and Rob, with a baby? Are you kidding me?”

Danny sniggered, some of the weariness easing out of his face. The absence of his cheery demeanour was oddly even more unsettling than Rob sleeping soundless between them. His face resettled, then he whispered, “He started beating kids up for me when I was, like…five.”

Eli blinked, cheek still rested against Rob’s forehead.

“This girl at school made me a daisy-chain and I wore it ‘cause that’s what you’re meant to do when a pretty girl makes you a daisy-chain, y’know? And this other kid laughed at me and nicked it, and Rob smashed his head against a door.”

Eli grimaced. “Oh my God, seriously? When Iwas five we called each other booger-brains, we didn’t commit GBH.”

Danny laughed. “Yeah, well, you grew up in fuckin’ Dore.”

“Touché.”

“S’just weird seeing him out for the count,” Danny mumbled. “You can beat the shit out of him and he’ll just smirk and spit the blood out. Dad used to do it all the time. Never touched me, ‘cause Rob’d get in the way and sound off. And he tells me shit, you know, how you ‘n’ your old man keep clashing about it. I get where you’re coming from, you know, ‘cause he’s not what everyone else reckons. Me ‘n’ you, we’ve seen Rob for real, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eli whispered, stroking Rob’s upper arm gently.

“He used to blow off hanging out with his mates to take me places ‘cause Mam and Dad flaked out on doing it. I remember being, like, nine and being dead upset ‘cause Mam had promised to take me to the zoo and didn’t, so Rob just got me up in the middle of the night and we broke in and went anyway.”

Eli laughed quietly. “I can see that.”

“It was awesome,” Danny admitted, face lighting up. “When Rob left care and I was still there, I just kept running away to go to Rob’s flat. He used to sneak me bus fare to hide in my socks when they’d come and get me, so I could go straight back the minute they left me alone. Even when he was in prison, he was there. Tonight’s…tonight’s first time he’s really threatened to fuck off, y’know?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t,” Eli said quietly. “Didn’t even threaten to, not if he was swearing at you all the way to hospital.”

Danny half-smirked.

“You know, there’s plenty of opportunity for revenge,” Eli murmured. Rob’s skin was a comfort, and the panic had washed away, leaving him tired and in need of sleep. “He’ll be sore and stiff and in need of help when he gets to go home.”

Danny’s smirk turned vicious. Eli twisted his face to kiss Rob’s hairline and whisper an apology to him for the hell Eli had just dropped him into.

“Eli?”

“Mm?”

“Thanks.”

Danny’s grip on Rob’s hand wasn’t quite so tight anymore.

* * * *

Eli didn’t realise he’d slept until the pillow stirred. And only when it stirred did he realise it wasn’t a pillow at all, but someone’s shoulder.

He sat up, and his jacket slid off his shoulders where someone had tucked it. Danny was gone. The cubicle curtains were half-open, sunlight streaming across the gleaming floor of the ward, and Rob—his shoulder having seemingly served as Eli’s pillow—was shifting restlessly in the bed.

“Hey, ssh,” Eli soothed, reaching out to stroke his hair with one hand and press the call button with the other. “It’s alright, babe.”

Grey-white eyes appeared through the slimmest of cracks between cheek and lid. Eli kissed one stern eyebrow, stroking Rob’s hair and swallowing down the lump of pure relief in his throat, even as Rob made a faint noise of discomfort.