SECRETS

AN: This is the longest, plottiest and generally darkest section of this story - it's also the penultimate part, so it won't be long until the story is posted in its entirety. I'm sorry it took me so long to put this up, but I've been distracted with other projects. There were courtesans and slave boys involved. I feel that no one would blame me.

Another warm thankyou to catseye348 for being a lovely reviewing angel, and to those folk who favourited the story without reviewing - I appreciate the gesture, but I'd appreciate a few words quite a bit more!

Part 5

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them." - George Eliot

Eleven o' clock on Saturday found Eric in a coffee shop, nursing a black Americano, fiddling with his watch, and wondering if Tom had overestimated his powers of persuasion. He needn't have worried, however, for at five past the hour the door swung open, and in walked three people, Tom and a stranger shepherding David.

David took a few steps towards the counter and stopped, catching sight of Eric first with an expression of wary surprise, and then with dawning irritation. "Can't you hold off from interfering with my life for ten minutes?" he demanded of his companions, only a touch of resignation joining the real anger in his voice. Evidently they hadn't informed him of the assignation they had arranged.

The girl took his arm, and guided him over to Eric's table (as indicated by a nod from Tom), smiling pleadingly up at him. From the similarities of their features, she could only be the sister David had mentioned - Katie. Seen together, David's fine bone structure was even more emphasised by her slightly more healthy facial curves, and Eric realised with a jolt that the man was more deserving of the term 'unnaturally thin' than 'slender'.

He gave David an apologetic glance as Katie all but pushed him into a chair. "Now, play nice," she bade them both, winking conspiratorially at Eric over her brother's shoulder. She ignored the fact that he was disapproving enough of her duplicity not to respond in kind as she flitted over to confer with Tom over what drink they should purchase for the reluctant romantic.

Seemingly on automatic, David rubbed a hand over his eyes, digging the other into his pocket to retrieve a cigarette and lighter. As he began to light up, Katie returned and snatched it away from him, taking his lighter as well as a preventative measure.

"None of that," she said sharply. "I'm beginning to think you don't deserve the muffin we got you." Nonetheless, Tom deposited it on the table - double chocolate, with a be-chocolated, be-creamed hot chocolate to go with it. "Please, please be good for once?" she continued, sounding in her exasperation more like the tired mother of a recalcitrant toddler than the younger sister of a man in his late twenties. She bent to kiss him on the cheek, and retreated to the exit with an absent wave for Eric. "Nice meeting you, by the way."

"Yeah, it's good to see you again, Eric," Tom agreed as he likewise pressed a kiss onto David's cheek before following Katie out.

David had sat, passive and unresponsive to both their farewells and their affections, but once they were gone he sighed his annoyance and rooted through his pocket again. "I swear I didn't know they weren't going to tell you I was here," Eric said, not without embarrassment.

"Never underestimate how bloody interfering they can be," he replied in a preoccupied fashion, his hand emerging with another cigarette. He turned in his seat to smile endearingly at the girls seated at the next table. "Got a light, darlings? Thanks." He turned back to face Eric, but closed his eyes as he smoked, ignoring the sustenance Tom had bought him.

Eric wasn't sure what to think, whether to be flattered or insulted by David's unconcealed smoking. He seemed, from what he'd witnessed, to smoke when anxious, which wasn't exactly a compliment to Eric's company, but at least he didn't feel he had to hide it? Maybe?

And how did he manage to switch from sulky reluctance to charming flirtation and back with no more than a bat of his long, dark lashes? Undeniably, this man was fascinating.

And the way he smoked, his style, the elegant line of his wrist and the dip of his long, graceful fingers... Eric was normally entirely ambivalent about such things, but in David the affectation was... attractive. Even if it wasn't really an affectation.

David opened his eyes and met his gaze with blank grey eyes. Aware that he was staring, Eric ducked his head. "So," he began, deciding to start the conversation on neutral ground. "Which way does Tom swing? He said he had a girlfriend, but he seems a little too... comfortable... to be entirely straight."

"He's bi," David supplied with a nod for Eric's topic choice. "Almost precisely so, by all accounts, although he and Katie have been casually together for a couple of years now."

"He sleeps around?" Eric enquired curiously, with raised eyebrows at this brotherly tolerance. "And Katie doesn't mind?"

"He's been fairly circumspect lately, I believe," David shrugged. "But yes, Katie seems to be happy with it. She was always more confident than me. Or perhaps she's so busy mothering me that she doesn't feel up to a monogamous relationship as well." His tone was increasingly cynical as he leaned forward to tap ash off the end of his cigarette, and pensively stir the cream into his hot chocolate.

"Is she always that maternal, then?" Eric asked with a hint of humour.

"With me? Always," David said bitterly. "It's strange - I used to be her protector, but ever since... the crash..." He closed his eyes for a moment on a flash of Philip's smiling face. "...She's insisted on managing me, whether I want her to or not."

"Aggravating," Eric commented, striving to keep the tone light. "At least my brothers and I only have to suffer that from our parents."

David paused, playing with the last vestiges of cream in his cup. Then, "Your parents don't mind you being gay?" he asked abruptly.

"Technically, I identify as bi as well, even though I prefer guys," Eric corrected him. "And no, they don't mind. I got the expected freaking out from my brothers, and my parents were both very awkward over it for a while, but it's all settled down, now. I even introduced them to Chris - my last boyfriend - and they managed with a minimum of bigotry and fuss." He took another sip of coffee as he regarded David thoughtfully. "I think you said that Katie was your only family. Did your parents disown you or something?"

"My parents are both dead," he replied evenly. "My mother of cancer, about five years ago. And my father -" He swallowed, speaking on in a quick, clipped monotone. "My father was a very unpleasant person, and spent ten years in prison for domestic abuse and grievous bodily harm after I came out to him when I was seventeen. He was in the other car in the crash a year and a half ago, and died of his injuries." Spiel done, he hid his face behind his cup as he took a long sip of rapidly-cooling chocolate.

"Damn," Eric muttered after a shocked moment. "You've had a shitty life, David." His voice was full of sympathy.

"You don't want to date me," his companion declared flatly. "And if you do, you're an idiot who should be prevented from doing so for his own protection."

Eric swirled his coffee thoughtfully. "Did you try to scare Philip away as well?" he asked softly.

David winced. "I gave him an escape route," he managed to say. "He... chose not to take it. His father was a bastard, too, and we both needed someone who would understand." Who could understand bruises, hatred, and fear of the dark. Who could understand everything, none of the dirt or blood hidden away, no whitewash discreetly splashed over the stains.

"Is that my notice of rejection?" Eric asked quietly. "Because I don't want it to be. Just because I was - luckier than you, that doesn't mean I can't try to understand."

"Why aren't you running yet?" David asked him, almost angrily. "You're crazier than me not to want to get out of this."

"I don't give up," Eric said calmly. "Yes, you have problems - a frightening amount, truth be told - but no, I won't let that intimidate me away. I like you, even if I don't know why. You fascinate me. I want to see more of you, problems or not." David looked away, beginning to pick restlessly at the muffin. "Besides," he continued softly. "I may be hopelessly optimistic, but I get the feeling that if you really wanted me to leave, you wouldn't be trying to scare me off - you'd be running yourself."

David flinched back from him. Was he right? Did he want to spend more time with him? Maybe. Someone who wouldn’t interfere, who couldn't hurt David, because he didn't care enough... Someone safe. And was it a betrayal? (But he was so lonely.)

And Eric couldn't break him, like David had once feared Philip might, for Eric hadn't his heart to bruise or his trust to betray.

David looked up, and met the steady brown gaze. At least he didn't have green eyes; he couldn't have borne for anyone else to have green eyes. Alice had had brown eyes, too, but they had been lighter and far from steady, shaking in his memory with desperation, tears, and the edges of madness.

"I need a friend right now more than I need a lover," David said quietly.

"That's alright," Eric replied. "I don't mind being your friend."

He stole a mouthful of muffin, and David almost managed a smile.

"Katie, I'm not interested."Eric blinked as David's weary voice sounded on the answering machine. "Tom, I won't pick up for you either. Lisa, I'll talk to you at work. Richard, just email me. Telemarketers, don't bother. Anyone else, you have the wrong number. Leave a message after the tone."

He smiled. "Hey, David, it's Eric," he informed the phone. "I don't think this is the wrong number. Anyway, just calling to -"

There was a click as the phone was picked up. "How did you get my number?" David asked, sounding somewhat surprised.

"Tom gave it tom me," Eric said cheerfully. "When we first met, just in case you didn't."

David muttered something to the effect of 'damn meddler' before clearing his throat a little. "I had your number," he pointed out. "I could have called you."

"Ah, but would you have?" Eric countered. While David had appeared - eventually - amenable to his advances, he wasn't sure if a day or so to think things over would have returned him to his initial reserve.

"Well, I guess we'll never know, now, will we," David sighed. "What were you calling about, anyway?"

"Dinner and a movie," Eric said promptly. "We'll have to do this again sometime," he had said as they parted on Saturday.

"Yeah," David had agreed, giving him that half-almost-smile. "Sometime."

"I don't know..." David hedged now.

"No?" Eric said, sounding regretful. "Shame. I would have enjoyed your company."

There was a brief silence, and then David laughed, shortly and humourlessly. "I must be spending too much time with Katie," he said ruefully. "I was expecting the reply, 'but you need to get out more'."

Eric smiled, but wistfully. "If you want to stay in, it's up to you," he shrugged. "I'd simply prefer it if you came out with me. I enjoy your company." And Eric wasn't foolish enough to suggest a liaison at one of their apartments, oh no... He got the feeling that so bold a move would have sent David running for the border. After a brief pause to let David consider all this, he continued. "What did Katie think of you managing an entire conversation with me, anyway?" he asked teasingly.

David sighed in exasperation. "The only reason she didn't badger me into calling you the day after was because Tom, blessedly, has a sense of decency and told her to stop bugging me before I did something perverse." He paused. "Although I guess he was only relaxed about it because he knew you'd call me," he finished, a wryly sour tilt to his voice.

Eric laughed. "I can't really apologise, seeing as I benefited quite happily from his scheming," he said, quite unabashed. "So, that's a 'no' on the movie?"

David hesitated. "You'd really enjoy my company?" he asked uncertainly. "I still can't entirely credit that this isn't a conspiracy from my friends, trying to make me be more sociable."

"I really would enjoy your company," Eric assured him, wondering with a shake of his head at how foolish David's friends all were.

"In that case, what movie is it?" His voice was quiet, but the delivery of the words was a little too fast. Eric wondered how he was standing... was he tense, fists clenched, or fingers playing nervously with a lock of hair? Or was the tension in his voice a product of Eric's imagination? Perhaps he was sitting in a chair, completely at ease.

"Well, I hadn't made any firm decisions on that score," Eric said casually. "Unless you've got any ideas, I figured that we'd just decide that when we got there."

"I don't have any knowledge of current films, I'm afraid," David confessed. "So, my day off is Friday, this week..." His voice was so awkward that Eric knew instantly that he hadn't imagined the earlier tension.

"I can pick you up at six, if you like," he said at his smoothest and most calming.

"Sounds good," David replied. "Do you need my address, or did Tom give you that, too?"

"Oh, he didn't go that far," Eric replied lightly.

And as David gave his address and bade him goodbye, Eric wondered at the warnings-off; David was beautiful, clever, charming and witty when he put his mind to it - not the messed up ruin he'd made himself out to be, or that his friends so clearly saw him as.

And Eric had always liked protecting people.

"You're leaving me, aren't you?" Philip was sitting cross legged on the ground, toying with his overlong sleeves. He was wearing green silk pyjamas, the shirt hanging open to expose a thin line of white skin. He cocked his head and looked up at David, half-smile hovering on his lips, his eyes achingly sad.

David wondered why he wasn't running to him.

"I'd never leave you. I love you," he whispered.

Philip shrugged. "You're still going to leave me," he predicted. He laughed a little. "Funny, isn't it? You were always afraid I'd get bored of you, but it turns out that you're the one moving on first."

Tears stung his eyes, even sleeping. "I don't want to move on." His voice broke. "I don't want to!"

"Shh," Philip told him comfortingly, though his voice was still sad. "I don't mind all that much, you know. I don't want you to be alone." He rose to his feet, and wrapped his arms around his lover; David clung to him, leaning his head on that shoulder, as he had so much longed to do. Philip laid his cheek on David's hair as he whispered soft words in his ear.

"A place in thy memory, dearest

Is all that I claim,

To pause and look back when thou hearest

The sound of my name.

Another may woo thee nearer,

Another may win and wear:

I care not, though he be dearer,

If I am remembered there."

"Gerald Griffin," David murmured back, remembering the poem from the long ago days when they had enough life left to memorise poetry.

"You were always better at remembering the names than I was," Philip shrugged.

"'The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living,'" David managed. "Cicero said that. You don't just hold a place in my memory, you are my memory. I can't go a single day without thinking of you."

"Could be worse," Philip said with the old ghost of a smile. "You could have a James Blunt song stuck in your head."

David laughed a little, and Philip pulled away for long enough to kiss him. "Just don't forget about me," he said softly, and was gone.

And when David awoke the next morning, he could have sworn he tasted Philip on his lips, and tears ran down his face. "I don't want to move on," he whispered futilely again to the empty room. "I don't ever want to move away from you."

When Eric tapped politely on the door to David's apartment, it took him several moments to answer, and when he did his shirt was only half buttoned, and he was holding his shoes loosely in his right hand. He smiled tightly at his date, and waved him inside as he sat down on the sofa and pulled on his shoes one handed, his left arm resting on his lap. This done, he turned his attention to his cuffs and finally to the buttons of his shirt.

While he was occupied, Eric was taking a look around the apartment, noting with the kindred smile of a bibliophile the well-stocked shelves, the music stand in the corner, the ashtray balanced on the windowsill, and above all the bland, indifferent neatness of a place that is not so much tidied as never messed up. "I had rather pictured you as the type to be ready long in advance," he commented, inspection done.

David looked up, but his eyes dove self consciously away again as he nervously tugged at his left shirt cuff. "I got distracted," he muttered.

Eric noted his anxieties with a slight frown. "We could always take a rain check?" he offered gently, if reluctantly. However eager he himself was, he didn't want to compel David into dating him.

"No, it's alright." The smile David gave him was bright, automatic, and patently false. Still, it was a smile. "I just had some... odd dreams last night. They've been weirding me out all day."

"If you're sure..." he said doubtfully.

The smile turned rueful, and it trembled at the edges. "I've already worked myself up for a date," David said. "It would be a shame to let it go to waste."

Eric wondered if he ought to ask further, but he remembered how David had shied away from his interfering friends, how he clutched his reserve like a shield, and let it be. He'd tell when he was ready.

When they arrived at the cinema, it seemed that the only movie showing within the next half hour was some generic horror. "Do you scare easily?" Eric asked lightly, the hint of a challenging grin on his face.

"Well, don't ever ask me to watch a psychological thriller, but I should be able to manage this with a minimum of screaming," David returned dryly, looking around the cinema lobby with all the clinical detachment of a scientist observing the antics of some previously unknown species of monkey.

"Good," Eric smiled, inwardly wondering if this was the first movie outing he had made since his lover's death. "Because I'm a real girl about them,"

David rolled his eyes, and simply followed him in, carrying the popcorn that Eric had bought. Still, if he'd thought more deeply about the comment, he probably would have chosen to sit on Eric's left; an unfortunate oversight.

It might have been an exaggeration to describe David as spellbound, but he was at least managing to suspend his weary scepticism enough to enjoy the movie. However, he had forgotten his companion entirely, and thus when a hand grabbed his forearm in alarm at a tense moment, the sharp pain was unprepared for and made him gasp, the resultant surge of adrenalin far more than what the movie had given him and far more nauseating.

Eric's grip faltered as he peered over in the darkness, momentarily distracted from the film. Furious dread rose in David, and before any enquiries could be tendered he moved his arm until he could take Eric's hand in his instead, squeezing it reassuringly. David could almost feel him smile as he shrugged off his anxiety and turned back to the film.

Listlessly, he turned back himself, attention more focused on the fingers interwoven with his, and the pain that throbbed with his heartbeat along the cuts on his arm. A lump came to his throat, and he closed his eyes as he wished for Philip to come, to plead with him, to make him roll up his sleeves, and stare at him with hurt and dismay and tears in those green eyes... to know that someone else truly cared, even if he could not.

Before David could fully recover from his abstraction, the lights were rising again at the end of the movie, and Eric smiled over at him. Not Philip's smile, edged with mischief, anticipation, and all the love in the world; it was just a smile, and David felt no corresponding tug within himself as he disengaged his fingers from Eric's.

"Well?" Eric prompted hopefully as they left together.

"Amusing," David said tolerantly. "Although judging from the death-grip you had on my hand, you found it more absorbing than I. Don’t you know to be careful of a musician’s fingers?”

From his smile, you'd have thought that David's forced, idle teasing of Eric was a compliment of world-class standards. "Well, you held my hand, so I have no complaints," he returned lightly.

"Anyway, what did you really think of the movie?" Eric asked again later as they sat down to dinner.

"The soundtrack could have used some work," David replied, giving it a moment's thought. "They really overdid it on the creepy, suspenseful music." Eric laughed, and David smiled ruefully. Such a detailed pretence. "So says the musician, of course. But apart from that, and the fairly typical lack of character development, it was fun."

Eric smiled, and nodded polite thanks to the waiter who gave them each a glass of red wine. A second waitress appeared, startling Eric as she asked if they were ready to order. He swivelled around quickly, knocking his wine glass dangerously with one elbow, and sending wine in a spreading stain across the thin white tablecloth as it toppled. David quickly righted the glass again, and clapped his napkin on the wine to staunch the flow, but the damage was done, and the apologetic waitress was dispatched to replenish the glass and bring more napkins.

"Ah, it's probably best that you know the dreadful truth," Eric said cheerfully. "I do have a tendency towards clumsiness at the most inopportune moments."

David just shrugged distractedly as he tried to mop up the stain. "Happens to everyone at times."

"Oh, damn - did I get some on your sleeve, too?" Eric asked abashedly as he caught David's left hand and turned it up, so that the splot of red on his white sleeve could be seen. "Here, let me -" He plucked up one of the napkins to try and dab away the mark.

"It's nothing, really," David demurred as he hastily pulled away.

"Huh," Eric said softly, looking from the wine-stains on his napkin to the spot on David's arm. "The red's wrong."

The waitress returned, then, and Eric accepted the refilled glass from her with a pasted on smile and a murmur to the effect that they'd order in a few more minutes. He barely took his considering gaze off David throughout this, and the violinist slumped back into his seat, his left hand and arm resting in his lap as he ran his right hand over his eyes.

"You have blood on your arm," Eric stated quietly once the waitress had retreated.

David nodded, pulling a lighter and cigarette from his pockets, as much to keep his hands from visibly trembling and to negate the need to talk as from a need for the nicotine fix.

Eric sighed. "Now I'm torn, because I'm as curious as anything, and not a little worried, but... I don't want to pry, especially when it could be something as stupid as a nick from shaving."

He'd have preferred prying. "I cut myself," he said. "Sometimes." It had once been so hard to admit it, but now... there were things that hurt far more, too much for this to be consequential.

Eric's eyebrows went up. "And when I grabbed your arm in the cinema," he said slowly as he put the pieces together. "I landed on fresh cuts?"

David shrugged. "That's pretty much it," he agreed dully.

There was a long silence. "Okay," Eric said eventually.

"Okay, what?" David's eyebrows were raised as he daringly met Eric's eyes again.

"Okay, it's your business, and I'm not going to interfere." Eric looked at David frankly. "I can't say I like or understand it, but I'll try to accept it as none of my business."

David wanted to bury his face in his hands and cry. He didn't want acceptance; he wanted someone to save him.

David felt like he owed Eric something, in thanks for him actually wanting his company, and in apology for cutting, even if it hadn't been Eric he was hurting. That's what Dr. Gillian would say. "You need to apologise to yourself, that's why you feel so guilty for self-harming, and fear that others will be angry with you about it." David didn't see it that way; what he needed was to apologise to Philip for breaking his promise. He wasn't even trying not to anymore.

He didn't know what else he could give, and so he pretended for Eric, smiling as best he could and making easy conversation, a skill that he had long allowed to elude him.

Assume the attitude of prayer, and in time the attitude will become the prayer. David smiled hurtfully to himself. Was that it? If he pretended for long enough that being with Eric could cure his depression, would it come true?

"I had a good time tonight," Eric said as he drove David back to his apartment.

"The outing certainly added some variety to my life as well," David replied with a wry smile.

The car stopped, but before David could get out, Eric put a hand gently on his arm. "I had a really good time," he repeated sincerely, and pressed a soft kiss onto David's cheek. "We'll have to do this again."

David closed his eyes briefly as he fumbled with the door handle. Eric liked him, so much... How could he hurt someone who liked him so much? "Sometime," he agreed quietly, and left the car.

An hour later, he still couldn't seem to stop crying.

-

"You've actually been on two dates with a guy?" Lisa asked, incredulous and delighted. "And you're going on a third?" Fran and Mark both had colds, and Lisa was taking the opportunity to grill David about his love-life. How else would Eric be able to get any relevant information about his - boyfriend's? - feelings in the matter? "What are you guys, anyway?" Lisa asked as the thought occurred to her. "Boyfriends? Lovers?" Her tone became salacious as she drawled the last word.

"Friends," David told her flatly. "We're friends."

"Your third date is tonight, and you're still just 'friends'?" Lisa asked, with a tolerant sigh for David's foibles. "Ah well. It's your labelling system, I guess. What are you doing, anyway?"

David shrugged. "Watching a movie, at my place." Eric had been very... tactful about which venue would make David more comfortable. "Brokeback Mountain, I think." Eric had asked him what his favourite movie was; David's mind had immediately leapt to Velvet Goldmine, Bright Young Things, Wilde - but those had been Philip's favourites before they were his, and he couldn't cope with that haunting. Brokeback Mountain was at least one he'd never seen.

"So," Lisa asked slyly. "Is Eric going to get lucky tonight?" She'd asked him the same question, and he'd said that he doubted it. Such low expectations.

David evidently doubted it, too; he stiffened, turning away from the music he'd nominally been studying to stare at her. "Wh-what?" he stammered.

"You're quite ridiculously unworldly, David," Lisa laughed at him, but finally took pity on his wide, half-wild eyes. "Don't worry, Eric's a nice guy. He doesn't expect you to sleep with him tonight."

David nodded mutely, but it struck Lisa that the way he lifted his violin to his chin was oddly clutching, as if he desperately sought some kind of reassurance.

After the movie was over, Eric looked over at David, who was curled against the arm of his couch, toying with an unlit cigarette and staring blankly at the screen. Eric shook his head, amused.

"I've seen grown men cry like babies at this movie," he remarked. "Grown, straight men no less. And yet here you sit, pensive of expression but entirely dry of eye."

David shrugged. "There are sadder things," he said flatly, apparently indifferent.

"Not even a tear for Jack's death?" he suggested.

David flinched, but smiled bitterly. "It would have been worse if he'd survived it," he said quietly, voice almost musing. "To know that someone had hated him enough to end his life; to be friendless."

Eric shook his head. "But maybe, if he'd lived, there would have been hope for him and Ennis after all? They could have gone to Mexico."

"Run away with me," Philip had whispered. David shook his head again. "You can't go chasing after dreams," he said softly. He laughed, an incongruously angry sound. "They don't come true. Better that Jack die than be forced to realise that."

Eric stared at him a little longer, and sighed. "I never know where I am with you," he said sadly. "I never know if you've really enjoyed something, or if it means something entirely different to you than it does to me."

He looked so wistful. You don't always have to make everything alright, part of David whispered, but in another part of him the old black memory stirred, Evans pleading for his help in the darkness, help he'd never given. Evans' blank eyes... "I do enjoy your company," he said consolingly, to push away those memories and the sadness.

Eric's smile was not like Philip's, a wild and beautiful secret, but it was warm and solid. "Thank you," he said simply, and leaned forward to press his lips to David's.

David neither locked his lips nor pulled away, and when Eric tentatively deepened the kiss, he allowed it. But he didn't respond, and after a moment, Eric moved away, looking at him seriously. David wouldn't meet his eyes; instead he stood, lighting the cigarette he'd been holding so restlessly, and going over to the window to smoke.

"I shouldn't have done that, should I?" Eric said after a long silence. There was no answer. "David, I'm sorry."

"Don't be stupid," came at last a curt response. "It was just a kiss."

"One you were obviously of two minds about receiving," Eric countered.

David shrugged again, and Eric mentally kicked himself. He'd obviously missed some very important 'don't touch me' vibe. "Do you know what Lisa asked me today?" David asked abruptly. Eric leaned on the back of the sofa, shaking his head - not that David was looking. He continued anyway, tone oddly conversational, as if that were the only way he could make himself speak. "She asked me if you were going to get lucky tonight."

Eric groaned aloud. Damn her, of course she would. "I'm in this because I like you, not because I want to get laid," he said firmly. "Yes, I want to be your boyfriend. I certainly want to be able to kiss you, but only if you want me to. I don't expect anything more - not on a third date, David. Maybe with any other guy - but not with you." Again there was no answer, so Eric lifted himself from his perch entirely and came up behind David, touching his hair caressingly, and gently slipping an arm around his shoulders.

Philip had hugged him like this sometimes - a half playful sprawl that left David bearing much of his weight, or a more quietly intimate embrace in which Philip would let his chin rest on David's shoulder, or press a kiss onto his neck. It was different, when Eric did it; his chest was broader, and there was no suggestion that David would ever have to be the one holding him up.

"Stealing scenes from the movie, are you?" he asked with barely managed lightness.

"Seeing as you'll let me, yes," Eric replied, a smile warm in his voice. He held David closer, and without meaning to he relaxed into the comfort of the embrace. It felt so nice to be held, and he was so lonely... "I want to be with you," Eric said, softly, persuasively. Philip had been able to persuade David to do anything, absolutely anything, and consequently had never tried to. And it felt so good to be wanted for himself, rather than who he should be, that David felt himself nodding, and turning his face up for another kiss.

Even if the stricken expression on Philip's face was so vivid that David didn't know if he was imagining it, or if a ghost truly was watching them both from the corner of the room.

-

"You look much happier," Katie murmured to him. "I'm so glad."

David, not trusting his voice, let his eyes roam around the room so he wouldn't have to look at her face, at her smile, trembling with happiness and relief. Tom and Eric and Lisa and her latest man - hardly worth learning his name when he'd be gone in a month or so - were all talking together, lending half an ear to the music someone had put on. Eric looked so infernally comfortable, clasping a drink casually in one hand as he laughed at their sallies. As if feeling the eyes on him, he looked over at David, giving him an affectionate glance; David's gaze fell to the floor.

"It's only been seven weeks," he muttered. How could he look happier after seven weeks? More cogent, how could he look happier when he felt no different? Or was Katie just content to fool herself that a David with a boyfriend, a David going on dates, was a happy David? "I wish Richard was here," he whispered to himself forlornly. Richard would save him, would ask him if he was in this because he wanted to be, or because Katie and Tom and Lisa and Eric were all so keen, and because David was lonely, and wanted something, anything, to fill the awful, gaping void that Philip's death had left, even if Eric was a square peg trying to fill a round hole, and could never be anything else. Not that he'd have answers for Richard, either, but at least the questions would have been asked; at least he'd feel like someone cared.

"Who's Richard?" Eric asked curiously. Was that wariness in his voice, or just bemusement? And when had he walked over?

"Richard was David's best friend back in college," Katie explained brightly. "He lives ages away, though, so we don't see much of him - although he did come to stay here for a while when David was... when David was in hospital."

"And why do you want him to be here?" Eric asked, pulling David into a casual half-hug.

Because Richard knows how I hate to be touched, David thought, half angrily, half despairingly. And he knows why. And he knows that I love to be touched and I need to be touched, and maybe it's a good thing that I have someone who I have to let touch me, but you don't know, and you don't touch me like you know, but I can't bear to tell you, can't bear to tell you when you'll be sympathetic,and accepting, but you still won't know...

Not like Philip knew.

"I'd just like to talk to him," he said wearily. "Face to face." On the phone, over the internet, Richard could be as clueless as Katie, but he'd know something was wrong if he saw David in the flesh. And that was the only way David would ever be able to tell him, really tell him; he couldn't articulate problems to a cold uncaring phone line any more than he could to a warm uncaring therapist. He needed someone who already knew his secrets. "I sometimes wonder if I should have gone back with him, to help with his charity," he continued musingly. "He did invite me." But he'd gone before, for days or weeks, and he couldn't stand it - he wondered how Richard could. All those poor people, those poor children; their agony grated like a bone saw over David's nerves. But Richard had always been stronger than him; strong enough to testify, as David never had, against the friend who had betrayed him. Wise enough to encourage others to do the same.

"Well, if you'd gone with him, you'd never have met me," Eric said with the hint of a grin.

David smiled back a little, and shrugged. The reality was that he just hadn't been able to bear leaving the last ghosts of Philip behind. "As long as you love me, I won't leave," the hallucination had told him.

And as long as I love you, I'll stay.

Who was it had said'The heart that has truly loved never forgets, but as truly loves on to the close'?That was David's problem. Too many quotations, not enough answers.

Later, after his friends had gone home, David tapped quietly away at his computer while Eric cleaned up. He'd said he could do so by himself, cheerfully shooing his boyfriend away.

"Who are you writing to?" Eric asked curiously as he put the newly washed glasses and plates away in David's cupboards. Had he been around long enough to know where David kept things, then? It seemed strange to see him so comfortable in David's domain.

"Richard," he replied absently, continuing to type yet another futile attempt to tell him the realities of the situation. 'I don't know what to do. I need advice, Richard; how do I cope with someone when he is so emphatically not Philip? How do I talk to him when he will never understand?'

"Is he the one you're always emailing, then?" Eric continued.

"Mmhm." The reply was almost deliberately absent.

"David." Eric came out of the kitchen, and the man hastily minimised the internet window, whirling around to look at him. "Do you actually want to be with me?"

David froze in place. He'd wanted someone to ask, wanted someone to see, but he didn't want this to end, he didn't want to be alone...

But Eric wasn't finished. "You don't really speak to me about what you're thinking; you always tell Richard, on the phone or in your emails, and I know it's stupid, but I'm so jealous that you'll be open with him but not with me." He paused awkwardly. "And even though we're supposedly boyfriends, and we kiss and stuff, and I don't want to pressure you... David, it's been nearly two months, and we've still never slept together."

David remembered with sudden, nauseating fear the feeling of rough hands on his skin and restraints on his wrists, and crying that no one ever heard or heeded, and fought down the frantic urge to hyperventilate. No. Nobody needed to know about that but him. It was a long time ago... Such a very long time ago.

"So, David, I need to know." Eric looked apologetic, but also determined. "Is this ever going to go anywhere? Because if it's not, that's okay. I'll still want to be your friend, I'll still be on hand to go out places with you, to chat or give you a hug if you need it. But I want to be in a real relationship - a real, full relationship - and if this isn't going anywhere, I need to know, so I can say that we're friends, not boyfriends, and I can stop this before I fall for you even more than I already have, and so I can start dating other people instead."

David wanted a smoke. He wanted to throw up everything he'd eaten that day. He wanted a knife, to drive all the conflicting emotions out, so he could think, so he could stop remembering, stop his stomach clenching in fear. How many cuts would it take? Ten? A hundred?

He wanted Philip. Philip, who had never tried to hold him after a nightmare, but had always been there if David wanted comfort. Philip, who had bad dreams of his own, who didn't need explanations, who didn't need excuses, who would cry on David's shoulder and no one else's. Philip, who was as crippled without David as David was without him.

He bent over his lap, rubbing his hands over his eyes and running them into his hair. Clenching tight fists to pull on the dark locks, as if he could pull out all his too-many thoughts.

Philip would have held him, or shaken him, or kissed him, or something. Eric just stood back, giving him space.

Was that the solution? Let Eric leave him? It would answer all his questions, stop his feelings of guilt and betrayal...

"A place in thy memory, dearest, is all that I claim." Philip's voice, unbearably mocking. Philip, leaning against the wall near Eric, mouth twisted in cold, sneering pain.

But it wasn't real. Philip wasn't real, and Eric was, and how could he bear it, how could he bear Eric dating other people? Bear meeting his boyfriends, girlfriends, knowing that he wasn't the most important person anymore, not to anyone: not to Richard, who had his charity, his life's work all set out; not to Katie, who had Tom? Least of all to himself, who had only ever had Alice, Katie, Philip to be his world, and now had nothing but bad memories and secrets.

"I don't want you dating anybody else," David said miserable. Selfish... You're so selfish... Philip looked at him with contempt... But it's not true, don't look, it's not true.

"That's hardly the full-on enthusiasm I'd hoped for," Eric said evenly.

"I don't know!" David said, raising his head from his hands to stare at him in frustration. "I had one boyfriend in my entire life, and that was Philip. I haven't been with anyone since his death - what's that, nineteen, twenty months of chastity? And I can cope with that just fine, but I can't cope with you being with someone else, and take that as your declaration of affection, if you like, that even if I'm still in love with Philip and grieving for him, the thought of you leaving me makes me so jealous I can barely think, and so if you say you need a deeper relationship if you're to stay, then I guess that I have to be alright with that."

Philip had said it was alright, said that he'd never need anything but for David to love him. But Philip had known, about dark rooms and helplessness and being unable to fight back, even if David had had no escape route and Philip had gone into it as willingly as cattle into a slaughterhouse - perhaps knowing the outcome, but unable ever to stop.

Eric gazed at him for a while. "I'm not sure whether to be flattered that you've put aside your reservations," he said slowly. "Or hurt that you don't find me attractive enough for the decision to come easily."

"Be flattered," David told him, closing his eyes and surrendering to the kiss that Eric gave him. He could enjoy this, he supposed, if he tried. But as Eric's arms came around his waist, snatches of yet another old quote came into his mind. What yesterday I did in passion, today I do in memory.

Selfish. But he needed Eric to stay. Even if the sight of Philip's bitter, losing smile was branded into his mind; even if later, much later, he wept silent tears in the shower, and scrubbed at scabbed over cuts on his arm until the water swirling down the drain was tinged a gentle apricot.

Even if the cotton sheets reminded him of a hospital gown, and he couldn't help remembering rough hands on his skin, and the sound of screaming in the night.

-

Possibly the strangest thing, David mused, was that Eric was an early riser. Philip had been so different that it was practically farcical, inclined to lie in bed all morning if he could convince someone to bring him coffee or keep him company (or both) or making a belated, sandy-eyed appearance in his search for caffeine if no one chose to oblige him. Even David, far less slothful than his lover, tended to spend a at least a few minutes lying in bed after waking, as he gathered himself for yet another day.

Eric was different. He would wake up all at once, and immediately set about extricating himself from the blankets, while David put his head under his pillow and wondered at his own indifference. Eric sang, too - or rather hummed, absent snatches of songs. When Philip was alive, there was always music playing, but David was too reserved to sing except when Philip asked him to, and Philip's musical ear had far outstripped his voice.

He was also far more keen than David was used to on the institution of breakfast. Neither Philip nor David had ever had much desire for anything other than toast and coffee in the morning, but Eric preferred more substantial foodstuffs. Nothing as crass as bacon and eggs, thank God - no one should have to face the aroma of fried foods first thing in the morning - but the first day he'd awoken in David's apartment, he'd been both amused and disapproving of the total paucity of cereals. David hadn't yet rectified the situation, and Eric was too polite to do so himself, in spite of the fact that he was waking up at David's apartment most weekends and even the occasional weekday. David had, of course, spent the occasional night at Eric's, but despite its pleasant aspect he found himself uncomfortable there. Perhaps, he thought cynically, it was because it seemed less of a betrayal to let the enemy into your camp than it did to willingly enter the enemy's.

Which was stupid. Eric wasn't his enemy.

Eric is a nice man, David repeated dully to himself the approving words he'd heard so often from his friends. He cares about you. Eric is nice nice nice and good for you, so stop being selfish and unlock the bathroom door before he starts to worry about you.

And David would get out of the shower that he and Eric had never shared (done nothing inventive at all, nothing spontaneous) and go into the bedroom to find another long-sleeved shirt and carefully adjust the cuffs. (Smile!)

David was being ridiculous again. He should stop wanting perfection, Tom had told him that.

"No one's completely happy all the time," his friend had said.

"I was once," he'd replied listlessly.

Tom had shaken his head. "Stop living in your past!" he'd said, frustrated.

David had tried to smile. "'Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again,'" he'd murmured, ending the conversation. Strange, the ancient quotes that fell to his tongue from the cold recesses of his mind, now that all real poetry in his life had vanished.

He needed to stop dreaming of times gone by. It wasn't so very bad, to walk into the kitchen and find his appliances taken over to produce him coffee, and Eric's humming was a lot like Katie’s, really. Companionable. And he burnt the toast less often than Philip used to.

And they had nice times together; watching videos and discussing them (although they never planned weird and wonderful sequels and spin-offs the way he and Philip once had), amiably exchanging stories of their work and bosses and friends. Reading together, even, particularly on the weeknight evenings when they were both too tired to think of more adventurous pastimes (not that David ever seemed to think of them for himself, although he only occasionally demurred when Eric suggested sex). Then, it seemed, David could relax, uncoiling his nerves and draping himself languidly along the sofa while Eric took the chair, reading together in comfortable silence - occasionally broken by a comment such as "It was Lady Heatherington, depend upon it," from Eric, who took an unabashed pleasure in detective stories, taking far more interest in the collections of Sherlock Holmes stories than David ever had (he'd whimsically bought them second-hand more for the sake of the leather and gilt bindings and the suggestive nature of the relationship between Watson and Holmes than for any great love of the genre). Eric liked courtroom dramas as well; he claimed it was sheer egotism, reading books where the heroes all shared his profession, even if the lawyers written about by Jodi Picoult were typically heroes of the courtroom rather than the office.

"You read a lot of her work, don't you?" David asked idly one evening, giving up with a sigh on The Folding Star: The obsession portrayed therein was much too stalkerish to make him easy, and he'd decided to let it wait for another day.

"I think she's very good," Eric agreed with a nod. "Besides, the protagonist always comes out on top. Unrealistic, perhaps, but relaxing." Demonstratively, he smiled a little as he scanned the last page of his book before offering it to David. He shrugged, accepted it, and settled back down to read Salem Falls without even remembering to glance at the blurb until he paused, frowning, a chapter or so in.

"Is something wrong?" Eric asked him curiously, returning to his chair with a glass of water.

David waved the book. "Did he get accused of seducing one of his school students?" he asked, voice oddly constrained.

Eric just shrugged blithely. "Read on," he said encouragingly. "It's quite interesting."

David bit his lip, and lowered his head back to the book. However, the languid posture that characterised these lazy evenings was gradually caricatured into a tense hunch as he continued. He wasn't much beyond page forty when he rose abruptly, letting the book thud callously to the floor as he stalked off to the kitchen.

Eric, frowning after him, folded down a page corner in his own book and flipped it shut, rescuing Salem Falls and peering inquisitively at the page that had driven David away. It was one of the prison flashbacks; not particularly light hearted, perhaps, but surely not enough to cause that immediate distaste? Smoothing the book and putting it on the table, he followed David into the next room.

He was standing before the sink, hands clenched rigidly on the edge of the kitchen counters, head bowed over it, his hair falling loose to hide his face. Something about his hunched shoulders, the way he stared so intently into the stainless steel basin, his jaw clenched tight... Eric wondered for a moment if he was about to be sick.

Eric touched his shoulder gently; David flinched, and he immediately withdrew his hand. "What's up?" he asked softly instead.

David was taking carefully deep breaths that sounded almost like gasps. "That book was just... rather awful," he managed, voice forced into evenness.

"People do get raped in prison," Eric said, raising his eyebrows.

"That doesn't mean I'm tasteless enough to want to read about it!" David snapped.

"David, why are you taking this so personally?" Eric asked, perplexed and somewhat worried.

"He rapes a girl, doesn't he?" David asked voice choked of both emotion and air. "The main character rapes that Gilly girl."

Eric gave him a long look. "Well, she claims it," he admitted.

"And he gets off," David said, low voiced but furious. "No one believes her, and he gets off."

"David, she was drunk, stoned, a total bitch, and the product of hysteria. That's the point; it's a comparison to the Salem witch trials."

"They should have believed her!" he shouted. "They shouldn't have made her both victimised and dismissed. Even if she was lying, she still needs help. Don't you see? They shouldn't just ignore her claims. You should never ignore the victims, never!" His voice broke a little. "Victims deserve to be believed."

Eric was silent for a long moment. "Your father was abusive, wasn't he?" he asked slowly.

David gave him a look that might have been amused if it wasn't so miserably scornful. "If you're asking if my father ever raped me, the answer's no," he half spat. "He was as homophobic as they come. It was my sisters who were in danger on that score, not me."

Eric regarded him a moment more. "So, you aren't taking this personally because of something that happened to you?"

"Oh, fuck off," David snapped. "Sometimes a cigar is just a bloody cigar."

"Freud isn't really a good person to quote," Eric pointed out. "Seeing as he was molested by his nanny."

"Will you shut up?" David asked irritably. "I do not want to have a conversation about the likelihood that I was raped! I have it on very good authority that I wasn't, so you can do me a favour and stop trying to psychoanalyse me. I've already had enough headshrinking to last me a lifetime."

"How sweet," Philip said, lips twisted in black, mocking amusement. "You lie for him when you tell the truth for me. Why, darling? Are you scared to tell?"

David refused even to look, not when there was nothing of his lover in this cold eyed demon that tormented him; not when it made him recall needles and restraints and blood and screams. "Richard," he said wearily instead, pushing away from the sink and stepping around Eric to get a glass from a cupboard with shaking hands, shoving it under the tap. "My friend Richard was raped by someone he trusted, when he was twenty. He testified, it went nowhere, and the man who did it never paid for what he did. If it's one person's word against another, then the victim should be believed, I think, even if no conviction is given. Victims need to be believed." He took a sip of water. "He started his victim support charity because of that. He gets a couple of people who are making it up, but they still believe them all they can, because they're victims in their own heads, even if not in reality."

Eric stood silent, trying to understand his words and his anger. "I didn't know you had such strong feelings about it," he said humbly at last, and David had to clutch the glass so as not to smash it on the floor.

Don't back down! he wanted to shout. Don't be humble, don't just give up, don't you care?

"It's such a dreadfully hard thing, to tell the truth," David murmured, fighting down his despair. "If it isn't believed, how will they ever find the courage to speak again?"

Eric sighed to himself as he left shortly afterwards, asking himself - as he always did - why. Why was David so infernally reticent? Why did he switch between reserve and fury in the blink of an eye? Why did he say he was fine, but spend hours on end without speaking or moving, in his bed or curled in a chair? Why would he never let Eric love him?

And why was Eric so unable to give up, when it was so clear that there was nothing here for him?

-

When Eric came over to David's, he found the door unlocked, and his boyfriend sitting in a chair by the window, gazing out at a rain-damp world. For a moment, Eric wondered anxiously if this was another one of those days he feared and hated, when David would be sunk back again into some impenetrable depression, and spend the whole day in silence, just staring...

But no, he looked up when Eric opened the door and smiled a peculiar, twisted smile, holding out a hand for inspection; a key ring dangled from one finger, proudly displaying what appeared to be a car key.

"And what are you doing with that?" Eric asked curiously, closing the door behind him and walking over to claim a kiss. "Don't tell me you went against Katie's orders and bought a car?"

David shook his head ruefully. "No, I'd quail at the thought of all her nagging. If you'll believe it, the whole thing was her idea." He sounded nonplussed. "She said that it was getting irritating, having to chauffeur me everywhere." He twirled his finger thoughtfully, making the key ring spin. "I suppose this means she trusts my sanity," he surmised.

"Daring of her," Eric ventured teasingly, but the lightness in his boyfriend's face, so rare, faded slightly at even this gentle quest for fellowship.

"Let's go out somewhere," David said, pulling a smile forth from his repertoire. "Let's go out somewhere to celebrate."

And so they did, and David even a laughed in a way that almost seemed genuine, and Eric thought that maybe for once his heart was, for a brief while, in the present.

-

Eric hadn't been looking for it - although he couldn't deny that he'd been curious. He'd found it on the bookshelf, slipped between a copy of The Portrait of Dorian Gray and one wooden wall. A photograph.

Replacing the book, attention now caught on other things, Eric pulled it forth and rotated it slowly - although he'd already identified one of the people shown, for David was standing in the centre. He was smiling, all trace of reserve and sadness gone, his eyes curled at the edges with laughter, strands of dark hair blowing into his face.

There were two others in the picture with him: a boy with brown hair and blue eyes who stood to his right, and someone else, a redhead, slightly behind his left shoulder, with an arm around his waist.

Philip. It must be. Eric had seen no other photographs of him; they were all hidden away somewhere, where casual eyes could not simply fall upon them. Nevertheless he was certain, and for the first time he studied the face of his rival - and knew an irrational flare of jealousy. No wonder David had loved him; anyone would be entranced by the green eyes, the pouting lips, the ruffled red of the hair. Even in a single still portrait, something came through of wickedness, the somehow lascivious curve of his slim body, the sultry darkness of his eyelashes that had to be cosmetically enhanced.

Tom had said once in passing that Philip had been a player; he looked it even here. A flirt. Unreliable.

And yet David looked so happy, and Eric ached with envy that he could never make David's lips curve with such honest, innocent mirth, no matter how hard he tried.

He didn't tell David that he'd found the picture, and while his fingers itched to rip it in half, he didn't even do that. He slipped it back into place with the book, and decided to read one of David's Alan Hollinghursts instead.

-

"What would you do," Philip whispered, "If I said that by killing someone you could bring me back?"

David kissed him, tears on his cheeks. "I'd buy a gun."

-

David didn't like to get undressed while Eric was watching.

It was different, sometimes, if they were getting undressed together, or if Eric was undressing him; then, discomfort could be smothered in something that wasn't quite desire but did almost as well, in a pinch, and he'd forget. But when they got undressed separately, on either side of the bed, either side of the wardrobe, with Eric already ensconced in the bed, David could feel the weight of his gaze, warm, interested, resting on his skin, and it felt wrong. He wasn't meant to be looked at. It felt like gym class had felt before he'd stopped going, and gym class had tasted like bile, constricting the back of his throat.

That gaze made his fingers fly faster and fumble on the fastenings of his clothes, hastily pulling on pyjamas to shield his bare skin. Once there had been a time when he'd barely ever bothered, when he and Philip had slept each night in a tangle of naked limbs; even when sweaty skin stuck sometimes, in the morning, it was better, more safe, to touch skin on skin all night long and know that the person would never disappear, not ever, even if they did.

But with Eric, sleeping bare-skinned felt too vulnerable, too helpless. Like a knight going into battle wearing nothing but a linen robe. And he knew he shouldn't be thinking of every night beside Eric as a battle that had to be suffered through, but he just couldn't stop.

There were ways around it, and sometimes David let himself take them. Early nights, a kiss on the lips an easy price to pay for the privilege of the privacy that he just couldn't find any other way. So he could imagine the world as being silent and empty, like him. He could slip into a bed with cool sheets, and close his eyes, and not turn off the light.

Long ago, when they'd still been simply strangers sharing a room, Philip had laughed at him, for that; that every time Philip went out too late for David to wait up for him, he'd leave the light on as he slept, unable to face the dark on his own. Better not even to try, with Eric here; you could almost drown in the shadows, they could slide down your throat until you choked on them, until you couldn't even scream, and he didn't want to be asked any questions.

He tried to sleep, facing inwards towards the middle of the bed, so it would be easier to shrug off any arm that Eric casually draped over him, duvet clutched selfishly to his chest, both as another barrier for when Eric came and in place of the lover he could never hold again. He relaxed, feeling his bones collapse into the mattress. He waited.

His mind was blank, hollow. Like a blown egg. Golden treasure inside is hid... but not anymore. Only a few scraps of brass, all their gilding long since worn away. No buzzing thoughts, shattering themselves to death on the walls of his brain - but nor was there peace, no contentment, no sleep. He slowed his breathing, felt the prickle of the pillowcase as it moulded more willingly around his head. He pretended to sleep. Let time pass.

Not asleep, but he'd passed into a state of non-being by the time the door opened softly to admit Eric, carefully balanced in the grey state between life and memory. The door closed again, a muted click; David didn't move as he felt eyes lingering on him. A textured rustling as Eric undressed, pulling on the pyjama bottoms he kept here. The light clicked off, darkness coating David's eyelids, and he turned away from the involuntary upsurge of fear as Eric lifted the blanket and slipped into bed next to him.

A moment's hesitation, and Eric reached out to brush one finger over David's cheek. Even with his eyes closed, unresponsive, David knew the tenderness of the gesture, and wondered at himself that he could be so unmoved. Eric's hand fell away. "I love you," he murmured ruefully into the darkness, and the duvet whispered as he settled in for sleep.

It was shock more than prudence that kept David from an exclamation of guilty horror, and the miracle of long practise that kept his body relaxed. Body memories, of being tucked securely into single beds, told to sleep, holding the pills beneath your tongue, tucked under your upper lip, concealed in your cheek beside your back teeth. Spitting them into your hand, and when the nurse wasn't looking, kicking them under someone else's bed. Being awake all night, wondering if the tap of the next nurse's feet would herald the prick of a needle in the arm, a groggy slumber that could not be fought off.

Keeping very still.

Just as he kept still now, listening to Eric's breathing slow and deepen, trying to think, or not to think. He loves me. The thought that should have warmed him left him bereft. What had he done? He should stop it, now. He should leave. He knew that Eric couldn't really love him, not like Philip had loved him; it simply wasn't possible for such an emotion to be found twice. And better for him to leave now than to let it get any worse...

Silent tears. That was another legacy of his teenaged years. Tears that could squeeze from under closed lids and paint streaks down his face without hitching his breathing even once.

Keep still. There might still be a glint or two of light left in the room, ready to glisten off a teardrop as it quivered down a cheek, drawing the eye with dancing reflections.

Keep still, and keep breathing, and know you'll never leave.

-

David smiled at Eric as he opened the door, and Eric knew a hapless thrill that his more cynical side disdainfully decried. He grinned back as he stepped inside.

"Happy Valentine's Day," he said by way of a greeting, kissing David briefly on the lips.

"Good Lord, I completely forgot!" David exclaimed, an embarrassed hand creeping up to self-consciously cover his mouth, smoothing away the recent kiss. "I can't believe it, I'm so sorry!"

Eric wondered for one hurt moment how this could be so, when all the shops were full to bursting with pink banners, foil wrapped chocolates, and fluffy toys. But then, how often did David go out, really? Eric should count himself lucky that the day had fallen in one of the violinist's good patches at all. "Eh, don't worry about it," he said easily. "I know your boss keeps you hopping. But here -" He moved his arm, juggling to the fore a bouquet, wrapped in clear cellophane and red tissue paper. "I got these for you."

David stared for one blank moment before reaching tentative hands for them. "Roses," he said, the smile on his lips one of half-despairing, incredulous laughter rather than real appreciation. "You bought me red roses."

"I thought red would look good with your hair," Eric explained himself fondly, if worriedly - should he have presumed...? - reaching out to caress one dark, wayward lock back into place. David didn't stir from his wide-eyed scrutiny of the flowers, and the anxiety grew. "Was that - wrong?"

"What? Oh, no!" David lifted his eyes to meet Eric's worried brown pair, and pinned a smile on his face. "They're lovely. It's just - been a while since anyone brought me roses." Philip had done so all the time, every time he passed a florist with money in his pocket, an endless stream of snowy blossoms. Never anything that might clash with his hair. It was better, David thought, that Eric had not given him white roses; his favourite they might have been, but never would he be able to buy or receive them again, not with Philip gone. Better to have red roses, even if they did remind him of how blood looked when it bloomed wetly against a bandage. Even if, as he trailed a reminiscent finger down artificially smooth, straight stems, he could remember how a thorn from an unpruned stalk had bitten his finger, the last time he'd held red roses, years ago now - and how appropriate it had been, to leave that blood drop as tribute on the pale grey tombstone of a boy who he saw drowning in blood in his nightmares.

"You should put them in water," Eric suggested, shuffling his feet a little as he took in David's lost expression. David was remembering a boy with blond braids and pale blue, staring eyes, with blood like rose petals on his clothes, but he started back to life as Eric touched his arm.

"Water... yes..." he agreed absently, and kept gazing at the flowers as Eric sighed and went to the cupboards himself to find a suitable receptacle. A fluted, green glass vase was quickly unearthed, smooth under his fingers as he began to fill it from the tap.

Behind him, David's eyes locked on a crisp white rectangle, demurely tucked among the bloodied green of the stems. Laying the roses on the counter with a dead crinkling of tissue paper and plastic, he extricated the envelope delicately with two fingers, seeing on the front the neatly printed 'DAVID', so different from the calligraphied scrawl there might once have been. Still, he slipped it open, pulling forth the diminutive card, with its red gilding. He looked at Eric before he opened it, the brown head by the sink; he didn't look around, lacking Philip's ability to meet his gaze with green eyes and a smile, just as he lacked the artist's ability to make the most ordinary of postures a pose.

The text inside was written in black ball point against the cream of the card. Had Eric ever used a fountain pen, David wondered, or a feather quill, with the pots of green, turquoise, royal blue ink that had long ago been packed into boxes with sketchpads and oil paints, locked away in a cupboard? Of course he hadn't. That doesn't make him a bad person... But David could never even begin to count Philip's reckless whimsicality as a flaw.

David focused on the words, trying to push long ago might have beens from his head - until painfully pounding heartbeats and a tongue that tasted bile brought them rushing to the fore again.

Sonnet XXVI

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tottered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

- William Shakespeare

How could he, how could he? How had he found this, written this? Why hadn't he known, instinctively, not to?

"David?" Eric's voice was soft, as was the hand on his shoulder, sliding down to touch his elbow. The violinist shuddered away from both. Eric dropped his hand. "David, what's wrong?"

David realised that he was gripping the card rigidly in both hands, and without taking his eyes away from the neat black lettering, ripped it convulsively in two. Eric made a sound as if in shocked protest; furiously, he tore it again and again, until scraps of cardboard were slipping from crazed fingers, and the remaining wad of cardboard was too thick to tear. It was at this point he realised he was crying; he threw the black smeared remains of the card on the floor, and turned wet, angry eyes on Eric, who watched, appalled into silence.

"How dare you?" he hissed hurtfully. "How dare you write that? That sonnet, God, any sonnet, how dare you?"

"David, what did I do?" Eric asked, bewildered by the sudden onslaught. "I thought you liked Shakespeare - you have a copy of his Complete Sonnets on your bookshelf -"

David let out a sob that might once have been a laugh. "Philip gave me that book!" he said in anguish. "He used to memorise them, page after page, and he'd recite them to me..."

Eric closed his eyes as the realisation of his own error sunk heavily into him. "David, I'm sorry -" he tried.

He wasn't listening. "How dare you be like him," he whispered miserably. "How dare you be anything like him..." Now no more would Shakespeare, whispered in darkness, written on the corners of thick, expensive artist's paper, murmured against skin, be a sacred thing, a memory of only the two of them. Now it was broken, because Eric had done the same. "Why do you have to be where he was!"

Remorse turned to bitter, frustrated jealousy, and Eric found himself shouting. "Can't you just forget about him for one minute? He's dead, it sucks, but I'm here, and I love you, and I know I can't ever be to you what he was, but God, can't you just try, just once, to look at me as if I wasn't an interloper, as if I didn't measure up? Can't you just forget him?"

Eric wondered if he'd gone too far, but the words hung between them, and the glassy sheen of David's eyes still looked too angry to be despairing. "I can't forget him," David said, his voice choked. "Because every happy memory I've ever had is because of him!"

Eric went cold. Had David not been happy with him sometimes, just sometimes? "What do you want me to do?" he asked, voice numb and stiff.

"Go," David whispered. "Just go."

Eric took a step back. "Are you breaking up with me?" he managed to ask.

David raised eyes to meet his that were grief stricken and half mad under the fringe of dark lashes. "Go," he said, the soft word grating in his throat as unmusically as a shout.

Eric left, shutting the door behind him and returning to his car, anger and regret and worry all burning with the jealousy within him. Upstairs, David stood alone, the tiles of his kitchen floor cold beneath his bare feet.

He'd seen the sunrise that morning. The clouds had broken to let the light through, and for a little while, a brief, blessed while, he had been at peace. But peace, it seemed, could be shattered all too easily, with a gift of dark red roses that were impossibly like the ones forever frozen in his memory on Andy's grave, and a poem that should have been left sacrosanct.

The flowers were too colourful; they made the rest of the world seem pale and sickly by comparison. Too bloodily real, a cruel reminder of passion in the washed out nothing of his world. Too prim and perfect a bouquet for him to tolerate. There was a knife in one of the kitchen drawers, and slicing through the red ribbon and tape he spilled all the roses to the floor, a haphazard pile next to the shining sheet of cellophane and the crumpled red tissue paper. Not quite the right red to be blood; David wanted to open a vein and let the right colour drip down next to it. Show it what it was doing wrong.

Long habit made him walk into the bathroom first. In the bathroom, you could lock yourself in, wash all the blood away with a shower head and a bathtub. As he walked inside and shut the door behind him, he wondered why there was no one to stop him, pull the knife from his dazed fist and turn him gently towards his bed. No one to drug him into compliance. Hadn't they realised yet? The doctors of his youth were right. David was a danger to himself. Depressive, schizophrenic... He should never have been allowed out of the asylum when he was a teenager. He should have been committed long ago. And maybe, if he'd screamed for long enough, they would have made him forget. Electric shocks, drugs, there had to be a way, some way that hurt more, worked better than blood pooling around the knife blade pressed into his arm.

He pressed the knife down again, in a different place - a new ladder of scars to hide, and he was glad again that Eric wasn't Philip, that he didn't love Eric, even as that knowledge twisted with self-hatred and misery inside him. Once had been enough; at least Eric's harsh words couldn't flay him skinless or rip the will to breathe from his lungs. Only make him wish to bloody himself enough to forget red roses and dead bodies. And even if Eric never came back, it would be alright. He'd wake up tomorrow a little more lonely, a little colder, but it wouldn't be anything like that one week of hell he'd lived with the taste of Philip's hatred on his tongue before he'd come back and kissed the blood from his lips. The week which ended in David trailing broken fingertips over the purple crescent-moons pressed into the front of Philip's hips, one to match every callous nail of whoever it had been, and neither of them saying a word because it hurt too much to speak, and they didn't need to anyway.

But Philip would never come back now to fix him. And maybe it was worse to live with a memory of dead love than it was to cope with living hatred.

Pain suddenly flared in David's arm. Hazily, he looked down, realising that he'd cut too deep; the silver of the knife was almost obscured, and more blood pulsed out with every heartbeat.

"It'll kill you eventually," a voice said softly.

David lifted tear-filled eyes; Philip was blurred, but he was there, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from him.

"It'll be slow," he continued gently, green eyes more compassionate than anything human could be. "But it'll happen. You'll slowly pump out a lake of blood as you sit here. No one would find you. Katie, Tom, Lisa - they're all busy with Valentine's Day. And Eric doesn't believe you're this broken. He trusts you to look after yourself. By the time anyone looked for you, you'd be gone. At last."

The blood was soaking into his shirt and jeans; on the white floor tiles it looked just like the roses. Would they bury him with red roses? Wouldn't that be ironic... Red flowers to take the place of all the blood he had let so carelessly spill. To be endlessly alive and passionate in his place. Instead of going pale and chaste and frigid with a wreath of white roses, they would entomb him forever with a memory of bloody towels and red-stained sheets. "Would you stay with me?" he whispered. "Until the end?"

Philip smiled sadly. "If you wanted." And maybe there really was an afterlife, and he'd be able to kiss blood from his wrists again. And maybe his scars would dissolve, leaving his arms smooth and innocent of his sins, fading the marks of innumerable beatings and accidents from his torso. Maybe they could clean the blood from his mind and heart as well. Turn him into something clean, made of silver and glass, without all the dirt and the screams hiding in the corners.

For a while they just sat together, lost in the silence, watching the blood roll off David's bared arm onto the white tiled floor. It had lost the first urgency, but still it came, slowly but surely. It would work if he let it.

"What about Katie?" Philip asked him. "What about the promise you made her?"

David stared at his arm, at the blood squeezing past sliced flesh. "I promised her I wouldn't kill myself," he said softly. "But this... this is an accident. They'll know it was an accident. The cut isn't right to be an intentional suicide. And... I've done so many terrible things. In the end, what difference does it make?" He was weeping again now. "Why should I honour her promise any more than I honour yours? Why should I honour anyone's, when I ignored screams in the night, until all screaming stopped..."

Philip looked at him. "You've never broken a promise in your life if you could possibly bear to keep it," he said. "What happened to Evans wasn't your fault. You couldn't help him, no one could. He wasn't yours to save."

"She'll never know that it wasn't an accident..." David whispered the plea. "She'll never know I broke my word." His voice cracked.

Philip's smile came out wistful. "I'll love you even if you decide not to listen to her," he promised.

So gentle an offer, and it stabbed David to the heart. Now, as his blood beat out, it carried with it the thready feeling of selfish... selfish... selfish... His old crime; he'd leave Katie behind, alone, just because he was lonely. And what about Eric, who he didn't love, could hardly bear, but who loved him, so much, so stupidly much? How could he die, and let Eric blame himself for not stopping him, for arguing with him? Even if it was going to look just like an accident…

Philip's gaze was steady on him as he reached for the hand towel. He missed the first time, and when he did manage to catch hold, his fingers left rusty prints on the pale blue. Wrapping it tightly around his arm seemed to ease a throbbing pain he had barely noticed, and when the blood began to worm sluggishly through the cloth he was able to reach out and snag a second from the cupboard to wrap around the first.

Standing made him reel; he fell drunkenly against the wall. Philip looked up at him from his seat on the floor, tears in his inhuman eyes; David turned away, unable to look, and jerked the door open. He left red smudges on the carpet as he concentrated on walking steadily across the room; it was only then that he really took in the bloodstains spattering his white shirt and soaking into his jeans.

His hand faltered as it touched the phone. No ambulances... God, no ambulances, not again, with their panic and their shrieks and their questions. With the help of a card tucked beside the phone, David tapped in instead the number of a local taxi company. The phone dropped from clumsy fingers when he was done, and he made no move to pick it up. It could be left off the hook. What did it matter?

Shoes were pushed on sockless, uncaring of how the blood puddle in the bathroom had besmirched his feet. A coat was awkwardly hung loose over his shoulder, as much to prevent him being stopped for murder as for the warmth or the wallet and cigarettes weighing down the pockets.

He rode the elevator down, not wanting to fall on the stairs, having to focus on not slumping wearily to the floor. A slow trickle does a lot... Emerging into the daylight, the cab was already there. Must have taken longer than I thought to get clothes. The driver looked at him in horror as he walked unsteadily over.

"Man, you can't come in here!" he exclaimed, plucking a cigarette from between his lips and throwing it down for emphasis. "What you been doing? Killing somebody?"

"The hospital," David said stubbornly, exercising all his coordination to successfully click open the door handle. "I need to go to the hospital."

"Jesus! Call an ambulance next time!" he complained, but swung quickly into the driver's seat. "And don't bleed in my car!" He accelerated; David fell back against his seat, and closed his eyes, trying to count his heartbeats, imagining his blood sulkily pushing into the towels with each pulse, as the radio coughed out a mixture of static and incoherent, arguing voices, offset by the nervous tap of his driver's fingers against the wheel. "What'd you do to yourself, anyway?" he asked at one point. "You crazy or something?"

David didn't answer, wishing that Philip was here, even the hallucination would do; wishing that the last he'd felt hadn't been that gaze on the back of his neck, and nothing else.

The taxi jerked to a halt, and David plucked at the handle with weak, nerveless fingers. "Man, you owe me -" the driver began; David pulled a note from his pocket without looking at it and offered it to him. He looked uneasy at the blood smears on the fifty dollar bill, but accepted it gingerly anyway. "Door's there," he said, gruffly pointing him to the hospital. "Go get a doctor to look at your arm before you faint or something."

The car pulled away; David turned wearily, and began to trudge unsteadily to the sliding door, looking blurrily around the half empty waiting area with its orange plastic seats. Philip would have hated this place; the chairs clashed with the pink streamers someone had strung around the reception area. Even his hallucination would have been forced to make some sort of comment. And the spreading red of his wrist would only add to the unpleasant colour mix.

"Excuse me?" David called uncertainly. This was less awkward when you were unconscious and brought in by an ambulance; you didn't have to talk to the doctors and nurses before they'd treat you. They just slapped you full of something to wake you up or put you down, depending on how they felt that day, and brought out their sewing kits. "Excuse me, please, I need some help..." He was so tired, so dizzy; perhaps he should just faint. That might make people look at him before the vomiting child or the woman with the sprained ankle.

A nurse came up to him. "Where are you hurt?" she asked briskly, taking his arm in a careful grip as he hesitantly extended it from the shadow of his jacket. Loosening the outer towel he'd wrapped around it, she hissed as she saw the bloody cloth. "Come on," she ordered him, guiding him, stumbling, out of the triage area. "Sit down. I'll have to wash that out and look at it, and have a doctor come over to fix it up."

David just nodded and closed his eyes, and waited for the questions to descend.

At first, of course, the questions were benign; name, address, billing details. David had only one of his own: "Will there be any tendon damage?" he whispered. He doubted it, but it was deep enough that he needed to know. Too close to the wrist, too... he had to be more careful. "I'm a musician."

The doctor looked at him sharply before offering his reassurance, and then the questioning began again. "Are you on any medication?" he asked at one point. David shook his head once for no, and the doctor waved one disapproving latex finger at the scars on David's bared arm. "Ever thought that maybe you should be?"

David shut his eyes, and wished for sleep.

"Well, asking if you're suicidal seems to be rather pointless," the man muttered.

Here, at least, David felt moved to protest. "This wasn't a suicide attempt." It couldn't be put down as a suicide attempt, not another one; the many attempts in his adolescence to die might be wiped away from official and dangerous memory, but the bloody scenes from two years ago would not be so quick to fade. And who knew what could happen if they thought that? Katie would feel betrayed, for one thing, but far more serious - he might have thought bitterly earlier of being committed, but he couldn't bear it if he really was. Not again. Not like this; he'd break within a week, becoming a shattered wreck, silent in the day, whimpering unstoppably at night. Like he'd been before, in the dark times, when all doctors were demons. "It really wasn't," he insisted to the dubious expression. "I wrapped it, didn't I? I came here! It was just an accident. I got help when I realised how bad it was." He was looking half convinced; David pressed further. "Don't write down that it was a suicide attempt. My sister will find out, and she'll freak. I've got a shrink, I'm already getting help. If you write it down - God, it'll be awful. Please, it was just an accident. I pressed too hard, I lost track. That's all."

The doctor set one final stitch in the arm, and turned his attention to the shallower cuts that had also been dealt. "Alright," he sighed. "I'll set this down as self-harm, not attempted suicide." David sighed with relief, and relaxed, in spite of the sharp prick of the needle and the duller pain of the cuts themselves; the local anaesthetic he'd refused still stood to one side.

"You want us to call someone for you, honey?" a nurse asked kindly, pausing in her bustling circuit of the room.

David closed his eyes once more. "Not really," he sighed.

The doctor's doubtful expression, formed anew, didn't even need to be seen; it translated itself perfectly into his voice. "I really won't feel comfortable kicking you out of here without someone to go with you," he said firmly. "Even if I trusted you not to carry on, you've lost a lot of blood, you're probably woozy - thinking of which, grab us a glass of orange juice, will you, Lucy?" The nurse nodded smartly, and removed herself. "You definitely need someone with you right now. You mentioned a sister..."

"No," David said immediately. "It's Valentine's Day, she'll be with her boyfriend. I'm not going to spoil their day."

"Alright, is there anyone else? Other family? Friends? Ones that won't be celebrating?" The nurse returned with the juice; the doctor pressed the beaker into his hand. He took a sip to delay the inevitable answer as much as possible.

"Well," he finally gave his reluctant surrender. "I guess there is Eric."

"Who's Eric?" the doctor asked, professionally curious.

"My boyfriend," David said. "Though - technically, ex-boyfriend might be closer. We... had a fight this morning. But he'll probably come and get me if he knows I'm at the hospital."

"Sounds like a nice guy," the nurse commented, plucking a phone from the wall.

David smiled half-heartedly. "Everyone says that," he murmured, and gave her Eric's home number.

Eric had gone straight home after the argument, half wishing it was evening so he could legitimately go to a bar and drink himself into a stupor - or at least a passable imitation. Instead, all he could do was pace around his living room until his rash anger faded into ruefulness. David had warned him, after all. Hardly his fault if Eric had plunged in regardless, haplessly pursuing someone who would doubtless be far happier on his own. Well, it was over now, at any rate. Breaking up on Valentine's Day, fantastic. He was now perfectly set up for a thousand clichéd romance movies.

Eric sighed in frustration as he slumped down in a chair. Damn, but they'd made a mess of things. And despite all his efforts, it was finally over...

His phone buzzed, and Eric picked it up without thinking, realising only as the receiver touched his ear that it might well be David - or, more worrying, Katie, bent on avenging her brother. Not that David needed that; he was plenty hurtful enough on his own.

But it was neither of these; not even Lisa, alerted by her peculiar sixth sense for anything gossip-worthy, had called Eric to be the first to nag. It was someone entirely unfamiliar.

"Hello, is that..." She hesitated a moment on the name. "Eric Lee?"

"Yes, can I help you?" he asked politely, if wearily. Poor telemarketers, being forced to work on Valentine's...

"This is Lucy Anderson, I'm a nurse at St Stephen's Hospital. We've got your friend David Ashton here. He's not very well, and we wanted someone to look after him for the rest of the day. He mentioned that you might be okay with helping him out..."

A solid lead weight thunked into Eric's stomach. "What happened?" he asked quickly.

"There was a bit of an accident," the nurse replied soothingly. "He's lost a lot of blood, and had a few stitches, but he'll be absolutely fine."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," Eric blurted, and had already grabbed his car keys and was on his way to the door by the time he remembered that he and David had pretty much broken up.

And yet I still come running when he calls, Eric thought wryly. And it was somehow impossible for him to regret it.

When Eric strode into the hospital, he looked so concerned that guilt immediately started to burn. Why couldn't it ever be easy? David almost hated him, sometimes, for trying to replace Philip, but he couldn't help craving it, Eric's affection; being looked at favourably, even when he felt at his worst.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked, touching his cheek. The tenderness in the gesture hurt, but David smiled anyway, with just enough pain lurking in it to make it look like it wasn't entirely fake.

"Just dandy," he quipped dryly, his fingers twitching self consciously as Eric pinned his eyes on the bandaged arm.

"Oh, hell, what did you do?" he murmured, appalled.

David tried to regard the wrapped limb clinically; it didn't quite work. He felt queasy. "I was upset," he said softly. Eric didn't question the understatement, and for once David couldn't bring himself to resent what seemed like a lack of caring.

Eric took him home, and the silence in the car was soft and fuzzed with worry. He hovered protectively behind as David pulled himself up the stairs, refusing the lift or aid from sheer stubborn principle; David had never let anyone but Philip support him if he could possibly manage on his own.

Eric nearly stumbled when he saw the apartment, with the drying smears David's feet had tracked on the carpet and the red roses scattered on the kitchen floor. David dropped into a seat on the couch, and Eric quietly gathered up the flowers he had bought, bundling them in their wrappings and dropping them without ceremony into the trash. David's gaze dropped to his knees as Eric emptied the water out of the vase he'd begun to fill earlier, carefully placing it upside down on the draining board and dampening a cloth, walking back to kneel by the bloodstains and scrub angrily at them.

"You don't have to do that," David said quietly.

Eric didn't look up. "If I don't do something about it now, the stains will be impossible to budge," he said resolutely.

David picked a cigarette from his pocket and began to twist it restlessly between his fingers. His throat felt too tight. "When I was fifteen," he began distantly, "I was in a mental institution. I had a friend there called Andy." He swallowed. Even telling this much was hard. "I never thought he was all that crazy, but I guess I was wrong; he attacked one of the doctors with a scalpel, and then killed himself. I - I was the one who found them. It was... very messy."

Another image indelibly engraved in David's head... If you couldn't see it all, it was almost tragic, rather than horrifying. Like the blood clotting those fine, white-blond strands of hair, hair that Andy had always kept so clean, played with compulsively.

Eric had slowed his scrubbing, but David was so lost in his thoughts that he barely noticed. "A-anyway, when I got out, I found his grave, and I left a red rose. He'd wanted someone to attend his funeral who actually cared about him. I couldn't do that, so I had to leave a rose. A lot like the ones you gave me earlier."

"Jesus." Eric sighed, shook his head, and resumed scrubbing. The mark seemed to be fading a little. "Is anything ever normal for you?" he asked sadly.

"Precious little," David replied, equally wistful. It would be nice, he suddenly thought, to be normal. To not have all these shadows in his head. If he was normal, he'd still be grieving for Philip, but he wouldn't be haunted by him. He'd be able to move on. He'd be able to do away with secrets, laugh freely, sleep all night, hug a stranger without flinching. Maybe he'd even be able to fall in love with Eric.

But if he was normal, then maybe Philip wouldn't have cared for him, and he couldn't help thinking that it was worth every moment of pain just to have seen him smile with love in it.

The stains were cleaned from the carpet, or as much as they ever would be. Eric chose not to face the bathroom yet; instead he stood, abandoning his cloth on the floor, and walked over to David. "I'm sorry about the Shakespeare," he said seriously.

"It wasn't your fault," David said helplessly, skirting a yawning chasm of despair that threatened to overwhelm him.

Eric kissed him, a brief pressure of lip on lip. "Do you want to try again?" he asked simply.

Maybe, this time, he could be normal. And even if he knew it was a hopeless wish, it was a beautiful one. Beautiful enough that David found himself nodding, and kissing Eric back.

-

Eric could hear the sound of a violin threading distantly through the not-quite-soundproof walls as he made his way up the corridor, and he smiled to hear so sprightly a tune being played. He unlocked the door quietly, so as not to disturb the musician, and paused on the threshold to take in the scene.

David was standing near the window, his hair loose, his every line perfect and planned, from the straight curve of his spine to the precise elegance of his fingers on the bow and on the strings. Eric could see his face in a partial profile; his eyes were closed, his mouth touched with a small smile of pleasure as he played from perfect memory.

At last he stopped, drawing one last long note from the violin before laying it carefully down and letting his head roll on his shoulders while he flexed his fingers. Eric hadn't spoken yet, but evidently David was aware of his presence anyway; the smile on his face was half rueful, half hopeful, and entirely beautiful as he asked, "So, what did you think of that one?"

"I thought it was amazing," Eric said, shutting the door behind him. A real smile, of genuine happiness. He'd have to watch David practising more often.

David started, nearly falling over. He only just caught himself, whirling to stare at Eric with grey eyes that had gone huge with sudden fright. "Eric! I didn't see you there!" he exclaimed.

"Ah," Eric murmured, an abrupt stab of disappointment hitting him. "Who were you talking to, then?"

"No one," he said, a little too hastily. "No one but myself." And he tried not to look at the corner where a beautiful ghost, cruel mockery for once absent from his face, blew him a kiss and vanished.

-

Eric was holding him, one hand tracing absent circles on David's bare stomach, one leg flung over one of David's. He kissed the back of David's neck, pushing long strands of dark hair to the side, and the violinist cautioned himself not to twitch away. He didn't like to cuddle after sex, not with Eric; not when his body was broader, his fingers less delicate, less sinfully skilled, when his skin smelt so different, when he pressed his face against it, tasted so different that he had to turn away. But Eric had wanted to hold him, had pulled him close, and it didn't hurt, really, to let him. Just for once, he could bear it.

"You really are beautiful," Eric said admiringly, tracing a finger down the smooth skin of David's side, past ribs that were still a little too stark and clearly defined, over ragged scars that had never entirely faded.

David managed a sad smile, though he couldn't help doubting it just a little. "I've been told," he said, the words light enough to make up for the tone. "You're not so much of a troll yourself."

"Thanks," Eric said, smiling. "I'm glad you think so." He'd learned to take compliments where he could get them; other lovers might talk readily of his sweet nature, his prowess in bed, anything - but not David, the reserved and eternally mysterious.

A silence followed, for once unstrained and almost languid; David was tired enough, for once, that he found his eyelids drooping even though he lay naked in the arms of someone other than Philip. Then Eric laced their fingers together, and the strangeness was back, even after all this time; Philip's hands had always been as delicate as a girl's - hardly a shortcoming in an artist - but Eric's hand was wider, his fingers not fitting so perfectly in between David's. But all Eric could see was the fragility of the elegant hand in his; musician's fingers with their calluses.

"Do you ever think about the future?" Eric asked curiously, each breath he took pressing his chest against David's back.

David shrugged. "I imagine that in several years, global warming will cause the polar ice caps to gradually melt," he said sleepily. "And the resulting desalinisation will cause the ocean currents to alter, causing a radical change in weather, meaning that much of the world will be a frozen wasteland, and the rest of it will be uninhabitable because of flooding. Unless a comet hits the earth first."

Eric sighed. "David, that's not what I meant," he said, trying not to be annoyed at his lover's deliberate misunderstanding. "Our future. Yours and mine. Together. Do you ever think about it?"

David shifted, as if contemplating putting more distance between himself and Eric. "No," he said, voice distant enough to hopefully discourage him from continuing.

It didn't work. "You don't think of maybe moving in together, one day?" he persisted. "Of a house in the suburbs? Of - I don't know - adopting a kid?"

David's eyes were open, but all he could see was the dirty white of the pillowcase in the dim light, as his horizon, with a sky of the darker wall. "Philip and I once talked about adopting a kid together," he admitted. "But the idea fell apart after we were both equally reluctant to clean up after it. We decided we probably wouldn't be very good parents."

Eric drew a quick, hurt breath through clenched teeth; his grip on David's hand increased slightly. "Stop talking about Philip!" he said, voice half plaintive, half peremptory. "I wasn't asking about him, I was asking about you and me. Us. Does it always have to be about him with you? Can't I figure somewhere?"

There was a short pause, and then David broke their joined hands, pulling stiffly away and standing, shivering in the air of the room, skin tingling unpleasantly where Eric's eyes rested.

Eric stifled a curse. He'd said the wrong thing again. "David, please, come back -"

He turned, looking at Eric coldly. "You asked," he said angrily. "I answered. I haven't thought about a future with you, because Philip was my future! Philip was my everything, and you know that, so why do you insist on asking when you don't want to hear the answer?"

"I'm sorry," Eric said quietly. "I just hoped -"

"You always hope," David said curtly, turning away and grabbing his pyjamas from the drawer.

"Where are you going?" Eric said, struggling into a sitting position.

"To have a shower," David snapped.

"But it's past one in the morning!" Eric protested.

"I doubt the shower will object," David retorted, and was gone.

When he returned, a while later, he'd been immersed in the water for long enough that his fingertips were wrinkled as he touched Eric's cheek softly. "I'm sorry," David said quietly. "I'm not good at future things, and I'm not ready to live with anyone just yet, not ready for anything more."

Eric nodded, knowing that this was the best he was going to get. "It's okay," he said, pleased enough that David had apologised for his rudeness, had come back, was looking at Eric as if he meant something, to let the hasty words from earlier be forgotten. "Just come back to bed."

David felt guilty enough for his earlier cruelty that he even let Eric hold him.

-

In the dream he couldn't speak. It was as if his lips were glued together, his jaws wired closed. He could claw at his mouth, taste on his tongue the blood from his fingertips, but he couldn't scream loudly enough for help to hear him, couldn't scream enough to wake himself up. Could only whimper, choked, strangled, desperate.

It wasn't enough.

He wasn't dressed in his own clothes. When he'd been in the psychiatric hospital after Philip's death, he'd been allowed to wear his own clothes, but when he was fifteen, it hadn't been an option. Not when casual clothes had too many things that could hurt - and David was inventive. Instead he just had the rough, cool touch of cotton on his skin. Vivid enough, real enough that he could feel the coarse fold of double stitching as he fingered the hem.

They were all there. Andy, sitting cross-legged in an arm chair, lips twisted in a parody of a smile, hands buried in his silky hair, seeming not at all concerned by the blood that dripped from the second coy smile graven into his neck, staining his white smock a sick and glistening crimson. Daniel, the laces no longer knotted around his neck, but the pattern and twist of the fibres still pressed into the red and purple swelling that ran there instead. Daniel was playing a chess game against himself, and he smiled at David when he saw him.

Evans didn't smile. His hair was still as babyishly curled, still the perfect butter colour. A boy made to be Christopher Robin. Yellow head, in and out the daffodils. Eyes still that true, cornflower blue; tearless, despite the marks of tears on his cheeks. David couldn't have borne it if he was still crying after all these years.

But there was nothing in those eyes, not even the innocent vacuity of an infant. This was the true emptiness of a corpse's gaze, something no longer human. A moist robot; all the body's organs still functioning - brain intact, electricity all plugged in. Hardware with no software.

And David couldn't even apologise for letting it happen, watching it happen. He'd been the stronger; he'd been better at putting his mind somewhere safe, where all the pain in the world couldn't touch it. And yet he'd been so crawlingly, retchingly grateful not to be chosen, to be left alone to shudder and bite on his lip and try not to cry, to listen to the footsteps and cuddle close to his panic for company, that he hadn't done anything to stop it. Even when Evans had pleaded, even when the taste of blood and bile was so strong and the sound of other peoples' screams so loud that almost anything would be preferable, even for the screams to be his own. And he couldn't apologise, because his vocal cords had frozen long ago, and apologising would mean admitting that it had really happened.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was lying on a hospital bed. The ceiling tiles had tiny holes in them, and while counting them didn't help (and nor did burying your face in the pillow), after they started drugging you, the dots would swim and dance until you could get motion sickness lying in one place. But he wasn't sedated this time, and he could feel the restraints on his wrists and ankles, fabric oddly soft and impossible to fight against. David tried anyway, yanking against them over and over, no doubt bruising the skin despite the padding. If he could have screamed, he would have done so until his throat was raw, until the softest word would have him spitting blood and shreds of skin. He could feel, light and tickling, the tears slipping from drowning eyes on his cheeks. One rolled into his ear, the same temperature as his skin, an un-scratchable itch that made the bindings on his wrists seem even tighter and more constricting.

Fingers, as cold as medical implements and just as unfeeling, familiarly touched the inside of David's knee, cloth dissolving away so that the touch landed on bare, clammy skin. David could no longer move, although something inside him whimpered, animalistic and keening, as they trailed higher, up the inside of his thigh. He felt like every muscle in his body was rigidly locked, fighting, and yet there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop the inexorable advance of the plastic, metal touch, nothing he could do to block out that voice; friendly, interested, and painfully cruel.

"Good boy," the Doctor whispered. "Now, if you're not going to fight, we can take these restraints off." Just like that, they were gone, spots of cooler air on the heated flesh of his wrists and ankles, followed by something colder, like ice stabbing into his bones, splintering them, as the doctor touched the fresh bruises affectionately. "Dear me," the Doctor said. "You really do make life difficult for yourself, don't you, David?" His voice was gentle, caring, a perfect mockery of kindness. A lovely bedside manner, over a heart so oily and dark and threaded through with convoluted worms that there was no reaching it.

Wake up, David told himself, trying to think through the old haze of panic, tight around him as a clenched fist. He's dead, it's just a dream, you've got to wake up!

But he didn't wake, and it seemed all too real when the bed gave an officious little squeak as the Doctor climbed onto it, his weight pressing into David's chest until he couldn't breathe, his body paralysed so he couldn't squirm away when the Doctor sensuously tasted the skin on his shoulder, couldn't even shudder when teeth replaced the lips. Couldn't respond when the Doctor's tongue clumsily probed his mouth, even though the memory of the taste made him think of stale alcohol and baking soda toothpaste and other unpleasant things.

David closed his eyes and tried to wake, tried to send his mind to some other, bearable place as the nightmare wore on. Fingers as cold as death, bone thin, poking and probing, by turns clinical and pawing as they swiped all over him. He tried to think of happy things, of loving green eyes and wicked, entrancing smiles, as the Doctor turned him over, rearranging slack and helpless limbs to his liking, but all he could see was the spiteful smirk on that stupid, guilty delusion of his lover as the Doctor thrust up inside him and the pain began all over again.

When he woke, when it hurt too much to torment himself any longer, he was smothering gasps and sobs into a pillow, wet with tears, and his hands hurt where he'd fought against the bed sheets. He lay there, trying to remember how to breathe, both hating Eric and breathing prayers of silent thanks to a deity he scorned for the fact that he had not woken.

Philip had been a light sleeper. Philip would have woken long before him, would have known to untangle his limbs from the binding sheets, would have known not to touch, simply talking, whispering sweet and comforting promises of love and safety to his nightmare-ridden lover, until David could wake and lie against him, crying on his shoulder, just as David had spoken to Philip or sung to him softly when the artist cried out in his sleep.

But Eric -

He was too close. David could feel the heat coming off him, and with it a feeling like rising bile. He pulled away, forcing himself not to do so with movements hasty and panicked, lest he wake and ask questions. Gently, slowly, wincing as he stumbled a little when he stood, he pulled free from the sweaty weight of the blankets and crept, furtive as he'd ever been as a child, into the next room.

It was cold, but he didn't want to go back to the bedroom for a robe, wrapping defensive arms about his midriff instead. Where skin accidentally brushed skin, it was damp with the sweat of a nightmare, and cold with fear. He hated it, hated it. He'd asked Richard, once, if he still dreamed of long ago times, of the betrayal of his friend; he'd said he probably didn't as much as David did. But Richard had been better at talking it out, at letting it go, where even the thought of telling Dr. Gillian made David shake. The memory of trying to convince the cold and disdainful psychiatrist, Dr. Blackburn, was still too strong and too sharp. His throat would go tight and dry, and he couldn't force words past the memories of all those dead bodies.

David sat in front of the window, watching how the dim light drifting up from the street touched the raindrops on the pane, making them into tiny half-shadows. There were no bars here, to stop him smashing the glass and jumping, and not even a hallucination of Philip to stay his hand, no memories of love or delusions of spite. But he couldn't; he'd never been as brave as Andy or Daniel, though he'd tried, and if he broke something, Eric would wake. He didn't want Eric to wake.

There was a packet of cigarettes and an ashtray on the windowsill. David's hands were shaking just like they'd shaken then; the flame the lighter flicked to life went out twice before he managed to hold it steady enough. The cigarette was warm and smelled comfortingly smoky, driving away the nightmare stench of hospitals, antiseptics, and cleaning agents. But it couldn't take away the feel of unseen restraints around his wrists and ankles, of phantom fingers clutching his skin.

A low and gasping whimper drew itself unwillingly from his throat. Why? Why why why, and he could ask the question a thousand times and it would make it no easier when he didn't have Philip to put between him and the past.

"David?" Eric's voice was blurry with sleep, more than half yawn. David closed his eyes, and crushed his cigarette in the ashtray as he stepped into the room. "David, what are you doing up? It's the middle of the night."

Philip wouldn't have asked him questions, when he so badly needed answers. Philip had been an answer, in of himself.

"David?" Eric repeated, stepping close enough to put his hand on one bare, cold-bumped shoulder. David tried not to flinch, and failed; Eric didn't notice, or at least didn't move away.

"Bad dream," the violinist said. His voice was unexpectedly hoarse, as if from a scream.

"Ah," Eric replied, and David was grateful that at least he knew enough not to ask further - or at least had learned that he wouldn't be answered. Silence reeled on uncertainly, broken by his sigh. "Are you just going to stay up all night smoking, then?"

"Yes," David replied. He knew that that was not the answer Eric wanted, but he felt boneless, empty, like he was made of cold shadows in the shape of a person, and he couldn't bring himself to care. He knew he should; he tried to soften it. "I couldn't get back to sleep now, anyway."

Eric's expression softened; David would have found it frustrating did he but have the energy. Why must he take every simple remark to be a confidence gifted solely to him? It hurt all the more, that David knew it could never be. "Come back to bed," Eric told him persuasively. His hand slid from David's shoulder down his bare arm, in a way that was probably meant to be soothing, and might have even been so if it was Philip or Richard or someone who understood (but not Andy or Daniel or Evans, because a touch from one of them was so loaded with pain and fear and sick, sick knowledge that it drowned you), but it made his skin feel as if all the warmth had been sucked out, leaving only a patina of creeping grease from Eric's fingertips.

Not true, David told himself, and tried to swallow back the taste of bile and a nauseating fear. "What's the point, if I'm not going to sleep?" he asked, his efforts in keeping the glittering edge of panic from his voice making the tone lifeless.

"I'll tire you out, if you want," Eric said, with a smile whose warmth seemed far more leering than it should have been. His arm slipped around David's waist lovingly, and all his muscles tensed to prevent him from jerking instinctively away. The man frowned, peering through the dimness. "Is something wrong?"

Tell him. It would be easy. Just three words. 'I was raped.' How hard could it be, how hard, but he'd never said exactly those words before, had he? Philip hadn't needed it and Richard hadn't needed it, and that psychiatrist with his hard, hard eyes and his smile and his uncaring diagnosis that had mocked what had happened, dirtied him as much as the Doctor had, how could he do that again?

Tell him. But if he told him, he'd have to admit what had happened, admit that he'd lost his faith because screaming to God for salvation did nothing, even if you did it until with every breath you tasted blood, and no one ever believed the crazy boy except the other crazy boys.

"I'm fine," he whispered, wishing he could pray for Eric to see through the lie.

But Eric was tired, and David's hair was tangled around his shoulders and his too-thin frame was softened and made pliable in the dim light despite his tense posture, and he really did mean well when he took David's hand to help him to his feet.

David walked in the curve of his arm back to the bedroom, wondering if this was what Philip had felt like, when he walked into bed after bed without love or desire, simply to feel something, even if it was hatred, and because he'd never learned how to say no. Philip had gone willingly, or so it seemed, had thrown away the money he gained from it on pointless, transient things. But David knew, as Eric's fingers loosened his pyjama pants and he closed his eyes against a wash of disgust, lay paralysed with horror on the bed as Eric kissed him, that what he was doing was worse. He wasn't even doing it for the momentary warmth, the passing sensations. Just because the questions scared him even more than the rape.

But then they were both naked, and Eric's fingers were on his skin, and it was suddenly too much, too difficult, too awful just to pretend it was alright. Stop, please stop! he thought desperately, tried to say it aloud, but his throat was frozen. It was just like the dream all over again, unable to protest, trying to scream but prevented from doing so, crying out inside his head until he thought surely, surely it must be audible to Eric, too.

He couldn't think. Couldn't convince himself that this was real or not real, past or present. He felt drugged, felt insulted, betrayed. Things weren't meant to happen this way. He wasn't meant to get trapped in a waking nightmare just because he couldn't face the truth.

At last it was over; David could feel tears pricking at his eyelids, tears of desperate relief, and he swallowed them down. Eric cleaned himself up wordlessly, before touching David's shoulder. "You didn't come," he said softly, his gentle voice a curious, embarrassed apology.

David could barely hear him. "I'm going to have a shower," he whispered - now, when it was all over, he could speak, and the bitter irony was horrible to taste.

He left the room without looking back, though Eric abortively called his name; in the bathroom, he twisted the shower spray up to hot. Stepping under, he let it warm him, more impersonal and easier to bear than an embrace; let it wash salt from his cheeks, and let pounding water cover the sound of his helpless retching as nausea overtook him, like a fist clenching in his stomach, the sharp smell of vomit battling with the steam as it slowly washed down the drain.

David stayed on his knees, staring at the bumpy, white plastic floor of the shower, for a long time. Blindly watching the water spiral away, and trying to stop shuddering. The shower was electric, or the water would have gone cold long before David was able to claw at the walls, rising unsteadily back to his feet, not trusting his weak legs to hold him, and not able to think properly anymore. He felt drunk; like he had to think slowly, hold tight to stop his mind shattering into a thousand different pieces. He felt like a small and helpless creature crouched before a car; unable to move or look away from the fierce glare of what had occurred, and yet not able to survive it, either.

He hit the shower off, and half fell out of the cubicle. When he reached out for a towel, he could hardly bear to touch himself enough to dry his skin. And nor could he bear to be exposed; his skin was still damp, his hair still dripping, when he gave up and simply clutched the towel around himself with clumsy, trembling fingers.

In the next room, only in the next room, was a man who David couldn't even think of without fear and a clenching of his stomach that made him want to be sick all over again. If he could think, he would have been able to tell himself that Eric hadn't meant it, would be horrified to see what he'd done - but all that David could see was a nightmare that had come to life.

He had to get out. Had to get out of this place where that man was so near. It didn't matter where - he just had to leave. Before he began to cry again and that man came to see what was wrong, and perhaps wanted... wanted... to do it again.

Swallowing down sickness, he forced himself to reach for the door handle, forced himself not to think of how exposed he was, with only a towel to hide him. He brushed against the door frame as he left, only just missing a bruising hit. There was something wrong with his balance. He was walking like Philip had, after one too many drinks from one too many charming strangers.

Clothes. He needed clothes. They were all in the wardrobe in the bedroom. Where he was. No, no, he couldn't go back in there...

Nevertheless he took one step towards the door, and another, and finally he was inside, like stepping into a predator's cave, the air warm and fetid. His fingers scrabbled desperately on the smooth wooden doors of his closet before catching on the handle only by sheerest chance; hastily he grabbed garments from the shelves, clutching them to his chest like armour.

The door creaked as it closed, and the man in the bed stirred. "David? Is that you?" he asked sleepily. "Come back to bed, love."

David froze with panic, sweat beading on his forehead, fingers clenching convulsively on the bundled clothes he held, breath scratching in his throat. He moved his foot slightly backward; it knocked against the corner of the wardrobe. The brief pain was what allowed him to keep moving, to walk haltingly to the door without answering. In the living room, he got dressed awkwardly, with frantic haste, ignoring how the fabric stuck to his wet skin, and stumbling to the front door. Shoes, coat and car keys were automatic additions, only dimly enforced by his dizzied brain.