Phil stood at the doorframe and looked into the dark room. With every second passing he felt like the walls were closing in on him as Dan's screams turned louder, were mixed now with sobs as well. Not knowing what to do, he got out his phone and dialled PJ's number, ignoring the fact that the clock showed four a.m..
"Have you lost your mind, Lester?"
"Dan is having a nightmare and I don't know what to do." He himself could hear the desperation in his voice and apparently so did PJ, because he sounded wide awake. "I'm on my way."
"And what am I supposed to do n-" PJ had already hung up and Phil was on his own again. Dan's friend would not arrive for another half an hour at least.
Phil turned on the lights in Dan's room and squinted at the brightness of them. He could see Dan's face now, the distress clearly written on his features. He didn't want to go and wake him up, didn't want to break the promise he had given, but Dan sounded scared and he couldn't just stand there and listen to his cries either until PJ would arrive.
When he took the first step inside, it felt wrong. For a moment he thought Dan might open his eyes and scream at him for not keeping his word, but the younger man was still asleep and trashing around and Phil took note of the sweat covering his skin.
"Dan?" he asked hesitantly as his shins pressed against the edge of the bed now. His hand reached out but he didn't dare touch. "Dan?" His voice increased in loudness but it wasn't enough to wake the other man up. Dan stilled, however, in his movements for a few seconds, only quiet whimpers escaping trembling lips.
Watching him like this, Phil felt almost a physical pain in his chest. It was an intimate moment and Dan looked beautiful with eyes closed and mouth slightly apart, but the tear tracks on his cheek and the heavy breathing destroyed the magic of this moment that could have been.
"Dan?" Phil sat down on the edge of the mattress and placed his hand on one of Dan's shoulders and started shaking him lightly. Dan's body jerked away from the touch as if Phil's hand was made out of burning hot coals. "Dan, it's okay."
Panic was slowly taking over Phil's thoughts. He increased the pressure of his hand on Dan's shoulder, shook harder, talked louder. "Dan, you need to wake up. Can you hear me? Dan!"
Their heads nearly knocked together as Dan shot up in bed with a scream dying on his lips. His eyes were unfocused and his brown orbs swimming in tears. Phil still had his hand on Dan's shoulders and they were close to each other, face to face, and he could feel Dan's body tremble under his fingers, his t-shirt wet with cold sweat of fear. "Dan!"
Dan finally snapped out of his stare and seemed to comprehend the situation. He looked around his room and then his gaze was on Phil, and then he opened his mouth as if to say something- and Phil could already hear him going on about broken promises- when Dan shifted away from his touch and out of bed in record speed and kneeled down on the grey carpet floor.
At first, Phil watched with curious eyes, thought that maybe Dan had to throw up from the intensity of the nightmare. But as he saw what Dan did, he felt like he was the one about to need a bucket. Dan was kneeling on the floor, knees spread apart, hands behind his back, which was straight as a line and bent slightly forward, his head bowed as far down as possible.
He was in the perfect position of submissiveness.
His entire body was still shaking and he tried to hold the sobs in now, pressed his lips together as he faced Phil in this position of subjection. The older man, who had been sitting on the edge of Dan's bed, slid from the soft mattress to the hard carpet floor in front of Dan with unease. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong and he didn't know what it was and what he could do to fix it.
"Dan?" he asked hesitantly and reached out a hand, pressed his palm against one of the tear-stained red cheeks and watched as the boy before him- because that's all he was right now, a broken boy- squeezed his eyes shut tight but did not shy away from his touch.
"I'm sorry master, I'm sorry. I'll be good." Broken words tumbled over chapped lips in between sobs and taking in heaps of breath. "I can be good for you, please, I can be good."
If Phil's heart was made out of glass, this would have been the exact moment it would not only have cracked, but split into one million shards. He'd never encountered a situation like this before, never seen someone so truly terrified right down to their bones. He's never felt this helpless in his entire life.
Phil reached out and cautiously wrapped his arms around Dan, whose position did not change but posture stiffen even more when bodies collided.
"I'm sorry master, please don't hurt me."
"Shhh Dan, you're alright, you're safe." Phil threaded his right hand through Dan's soft brown hair, something he had wanted to do since the first second he had seen the submissive at the club all those months ago, but in a completely different context. He guided Dan's head to have his face hide in his own neck, his skin immediately damp with the other's tears.
"Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me," the words were repeated and it felt like they etched themselves into Phil's skin. They were unintelligible by now and Dan's body was wrecked with sobs that Phil feared he would fall into pieces under his fingers.
Phil tightened his arms around the younger man, made sure that he held him close and rubbed his back, not sure what else to do. "Not going to hurt you Dan, I'm never going to hurt you," he whispered In Dan's ear, knowing that the words wouldn't be heard anyway. "It's me, Phil, and I am not going to hurt you, do you understand? You're safe Dan, you're safe."
He kept the stream of comforting words upright without thinking of what slipped out of his mouth, too concerned when the intensity of the crying didn't stop. And then PJ arrived and rang the doorbell from the very moment he arrived until Phil had untangled himself from Dan and opened up the door for him.
THERE WAS barely time for a "Hello" as PJ passed him and ran up the stairs, down the hallway and taking the right door into Dan's room. Phil could hear his voice from where he was stood at the other end of the corridor by the entrance to the lounge. He really wanted to go there, wanted to comfort and make sure that Dan was alright, but he feared his presence would not help the situation at all and decided to make tea instead.
His fingers were shaking as he started the kettle and his thoughts did not stop racing around the images he had seen. He took two cups out of the cupboard and filled them up with boiling water, added teabags and carried them to the lounge, careful not to spill the hot liquid over the edge as he couldn't seem to calm the trembling.
By the time PJ came into the lounge, his tea was cold and Phil's cup empty. Phil was curled up on the couch staring at the wall, thinking about everything and nothing at all, lost in thoughts deep enough to first not notice the other man entering.
"He's asleep now." PJ sat down on the couch next to him and grabbed the cup of tea, taking a sip of it before putting it down again.
"That's good."
"It really is, because he normally doesn't go back to sleep after nightmares."
"PJ," Phil uncurled himself from his current position and turned to him, "what happened to him?"
PJ held his stare almost challengingly. "It's not my place to tell you and you know that, Phil."
"Fuck it!" Phil raised his voice and kicked the coffee table with his foot, startling PJ. "You haven't seen him earlier. He dropped to the floor, knees spread and hands behind his back and called me master, begged me to not hurt him. You can't expect me to deal with this without knowing what the fuck is going on! He felt like he was falling apart under my hands the way he was shaking and I didn't know what to do. How can I help him when I don't know what to do?" His voice got quieter with every spoken word, barely above a whisper at the end.
He didn't expect PJ to hug him, but once he found himself in comforting arms he could feel the prickling of tears behind his eyelids and hugged back as hard as he could.
"I just want to help him." His words were choked up and he felt embarrassed for feeling like crying. "Why did you ever allow him to move in with me?"
"Because he wanted to move in with you."
Phil pulled back from the hug and blinked a couple of times to clear his view of blurry tears. "What?"
"He wanted to move in with you. He saw your anime collection and the Muse poster on the wall, all the little things you have standing around here that he's a fan of as well. I think he liked the idea of having someone to talk about these things with as I am not really a fan of the things that interest him."
"He never talks with me about anything though."
PJ looked guilty as he bit his lower lip and avoided Phil's eyes. "It's very hard for him to open up to people."
"And you're going to tell me what happened now?"
"I- I honestly shouldn't tell you, but he's not going to tell you either and you deserve to know at least something. I'm the worst friend in the entire world right now."
Phil leaned forward to catch PJ's eyes. "I promise you're doing the right thing here."
He watched as PJ took a deep breath. "Dan moved to London about a year ago to go to university and it was then that he became part of the scene. I met him at the Dungeon when he was there the first time and as a new submissive he was highly sought after. I gave him a few tips, helped him that night when he had any questions. We met at university soon after and became friends. His visits at the Dungeon became regular and he loved it there, loved learning the rules and submitting to others and the dominants loved him and his looks, the way he was willing. He met an older dominant there that he liked to scene with a lot. He was relatively new at the Dungeon as well, had moved to London not too long ago so no one knew much about him, but they said that he had experience. I never really liked him. He always had this sinister vibe, which sounds really stupid. Him and Dan, they became kind of exclusive, but only ever met at the Dungeon. On Halloween last year they met there again and he invited Dan to come with him for the night. Dan agreed to the offer. I think that at that point he had at least a crush on the man. He was always talking about him, always in the best mood on the days he went to the Dungeon. So they left together and Dan disappeared for two weeks."
Phil hissed when he heard that, a bad feeling in his stomach that said he already knew where this story was going. People were warned so often not to go home together with someone else from a club like this if they didn't know them very well, because sadly there were always black sheep out there that did not play after the rules once out of the establishment.
"We don't know much about what happened in these two weeks because Dan doesn't talk about it much, but the police finally found him and he's never been the same after that. He doesn't have to really talk about it though anyway, the injuries on his body gave most of what had happened away. The sick pervert had turned him into his own personal sex slave."
PJ stopped at that point and took a few deep breaths to get his rage under control. "He's going to hate me if he ever finds out that I told you all of this."
"He'll never find out, at least not from me," Phil promised him, not knowing what else to say. He was too shocked about what he had just heard. Of course he had known that Dan had issues, that unpleasant things had happened to him in the past, but he had never thought that it had been this bad. He busied himself with making them tea again. What else could he possibly do?
Neither Phil nor PJ found sleep again. They both stayed in the lounge for the rest of the night and the early morning hours, drinking tea and watching TV, sometimes having quiet conversations but not bringing up the previous topic anymore. At 10 a.m. PJ decided to check up on Dan.
"He's not going to leave the room on his own today."
Phil was in the kitchen, putting dishes inside the dishwasher, when he heard them in the hallway and he poked his head out of the doorframe.
"Good morning, Dan." He forced a smile on his face, his words sounding cheerful when in reality he just felt empty inside.
Dan, who was a tall person, looked smaller than Phil had ever seen him before. He had his eyes averted to the floor, his entire posture screaming that he did not want to be where he was right now. PJ held him by the elbow and Phil was sure that if he didn't, Dan would run back into his room in seconds. His hair was ruffled and his t-shirt looked too big on him and all that Phil wanted to do was hug him and tell him that everything would be okay, that he could never hurt him, like he did last night. He couldn't do that though, and so instead he left the hollow smile plastered on his face and asked if they preferred pancakes or waffles for breakfast.
"Waffles would be lovely, am I right Dan?" PJ asked carefully.
The nod with which Dan answered was small enough to nearly not be noticed if Phil hadn't looked out for it.
"Make yourself comfortable in the lounge guys, I'll take care of it and bring you something to drink. Hot chocolate good with you?"
After PJ had again asked Dan's opinion on hot chocolate- and Phil saw what he was doing there, giving Dan choices, showing him that he was in control of something as trivial as food- he watched them retreat to the lounge and hoped that Dan would accept the food and drinks he was about to prepare. PJ was with him though, and that was what Dan required to accept food from others, so he was hopefully fine with it.
As he made the batter for the waffles and warmed the milk for the hot chocolate, he couldn't stop thinking about the haunted look in Dan's eyes and PJ's words and wondered what kind of person Dan had been before it all had happened. He wanted to get to know that person and he wanted to show Dan that he had nothing to fear when he was with him, but those were thoughts for another day. For now all that counted was to make sure that Dan was alright and knew that he was safe.