Don't Tell My Brother

Chapter 52 - Liar

As soon as they were out of sight, Damien pulled Lucas into a hug, holding him very tightly. With his face pressed to his chest, Lucas could hear the rapid staccato beat of his heart and feel him shake as he drew in a breath. Was Damien scared, he wondered, or was it just the adrenalin?

"Sorry." He mumbled into Lucas' hair. "Didn't think it'd be...like that."

The hug was a little too tight, but Lucas didn't pull away. "It's not your fault." He said, voice muffled by Damien's sweatshirt. "None of this is your fault."

"Shouldn't have brought you." Damien muttered, pulling away and running a hand through his hair. His knuckles were streaked with blood. "You shouldn't have had to hear that. You could've gotten hurt, for fuck's sake, why did you get up in his face like that?"

Half listening to Damien's ranting, Lucas reached up to catch his bleeding hand. "He looked like he was going to hurt you, or say something really awful." He answered simply, wiping at the blood with the hem of his shirt.

"So your answer was to get hurt instead?"

"Well..." Lucas paused. "...no? Maybe? I didn't really think it through."

There had only been one thought in his mind, one clear, obvious goal: to protect Damien. Even though in hindsight it'd been a futile idea, and probably made things worse for the both of them, and hadn't been planned at all, Lucas knew if he would have done it again. And again, and again, and again.

"Are you crazy? What if he'd hit you? What if he'd really hurt you?" Damien's voice had risen, loud enough to sound almost angry, and Lucas watched as he forced himself to pause. To breathe. "You can be really dumb sometimes, you know that?" Damien laughed a little, but it didn't come out quite right. His voice wasn't quite right.

Lucas knew he was only joking around to try and make himself feel better, to cover whatever was really going on. He didn't comment on it, instead running the pad of his thumb over Damien's knuckles.

"You're dumb. Look, you're bleeding."

"That?" Damien glanced down at his stained knuckles, and shrugged. "Not mine." He grinned then, looking down at the blood, crimson against his tanned skin. "I busted his nose, I think. Hope it's broken."

Lucas was conflicted. On the one hand, he was a firm believer that violence wasn't the answer, not for anything, but on the other...well, Leon had deserved it.

"Don't do it again, though. I don't want you to get hurt, or in trouble, or kicked off the team or something. It's not worth it."

"It was absolutely worth it." And there was something fierce in the way Damien said it that kept Lucas from arguing. "Fuck them. Fucking hell, we've been friends for years, and not one of them said anything. Even Leon...like, I knew his family were kind of conservative, but we were friends. I didn't think he'd be so...because he knew me I thought it wouldn't..." He was stumbling over his words, and the lost, sad sort of confusion in his face made Lucas' heart ache. "Maybe there were signs. People make jokes, y'know, but I guess they were more than jokes for him. For a lot of them, maybe."

Lucas didn't know what to say. Maybe there was nothing to say. Having this, right after his family...there weren't any words he knew that could fix this. He squeezed Damien's hand instead, and leaned against him, resting his head on his shoulder.

"Whatever." Damien said, shrugging with his free shoulder. Even to Lucas, it sounded hollow. "Fuck them. Don't need them."

They were standing on the side of the street, a block down from the football field. No cars drove by. It was quiet, and the weight of what had just happened hung heavy in the air. Blood from Damien's knuckles, Leon's blood, was pressed faintly into the grooves of Lucas' fingers.