Estrangements (Phan AU)

Safeguard

noun

       • anything that protects against injury or danger; a proviso against foreseen risks.

transitive verb

       • to protect. 

Dan is twenty-one when he meets a young teenager with a penchant for snatching his joints and stomping them out, tossing off easy banter over how the weed must be fucking up his mind. Troye's young, fourteen with a mind like he's twenty, but he's got a look in his eyes like he's seen more than any adult and a way of carrying himself that proudly declares how painfully aware of all the awful things in the world he is.

Dan gives him socks and sweaters even when it leaves him shivering, lets him share his blanket every time he makes a break from whatever foster home he ends up in. He watches him carefully, counts the bruises he can see and keeps track of how long it takes for them to heal, adamantly refuses when Troye comes to him at fifteen asking if he'll let him take a hit from his joint.

He's not sure where it comes from - maybe it's the haunted way he approaches the park Dan's always seated by, maybe it's the way he flinches at some touches and hardens at others, lashes out instinctively when prodded at over the wrong subjects but easily matches Dan's wit and keeps him on his toes through every possible second. It doesn't really matter why he feels so protective of this boy, like he wants to make the bruises vanish and the bright red scratches down his arms disappear.

At twenty-four, their relationship is a complicated mess of insults and thinly-veiled familial love. Troye is seventeen and no longer flinches at any touch, though he hardens at them all. He's strong and confident and there's a chip on his shoulder chiseled with distrust, but he comes every Tuesday like clockwork with a run-down piano to play to the crowds.

It's sad, that this viciously volatile kid full of cynicism and doubt is probably his only friend, but Dan doesn't have it in him to ever be unappreciative of this wayward brother of his. Because they are - brothers, that is. They bicker and tear each other apart and stomp purposefully on their weakest toes, but they exchange sweaters and food and the consistent reassurance that they're always going to be there, even when they aren't. Dan may not always like him, but he always loves him.

Three years of consistency is when it begins to change, though, and suddenly Troye isn't showing up every Tuesday like clockwork anymore. He's gone for three weeks straight, during which Dan finds himself getting high twice as often, before he makes a random reappearance on a Sunday.

He's different, when he arrives, and Dan wants to be mad and hate him and probably berate him for being such an idiot as to having him half convinced he died, but he can't. Troye looks a little less like he hates the world, a little less like he has no faith or trust in humanity, and when he laughs at Dan's offhand remarks, it doesn't sound as hollow as it usually would.

It's not much, the change. Minute and impermanent in the truest sense of the word. It still leaves Dan looking after him with a heavy heart and a worry that he's being left behind, that Troye is going to be happy and okay and Dan never will and one day Troye will inevitably realize this and he'll be left alone. He doesn't want to lose the one clutch to humanity he has, doesn't want to lose another person he loves to a changing persona, but he also doesn't want to keep watching Troye fade away into nothing but bruises and scratches and a twisted expression every time he spends the night.

So he doesn't say anything. He snorts derisively and brushes off comments about the drugs he refuses to give up, counts the scars sinking into his friend's skin and takes slow drags of his blunt like he's inhaling a cleanse for all the bad in the world. He watches Troye leave and tries not to worry when he doesn't return that week, folds himself up in front of his park and lets the crowds pass him by.

It's hard, ignoring the feeling of loneliness wrapping an anchor around his heart and dragging it heavily across the jagged ground, but he manages. If there's one thing Dan's good at, it's not feeling the things he should.