Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

With puberty came a new desire to bend Chris over and hump his brains out.  

This shameful, intrusive fantasy caused Dan a great deal of mental distress.  If Dan’s Dad ever found out that Dan was harboring a secret crush on another boy, he would probably take off his belt and whip Dan bloody.  If Dan’s Mom ever found out, she would probably beat his ass until it was black and blue, then, burn his neck with her cigarette. 

Though Dan’s parents were separated, the one thing that they could always agree on is that Dan required regular beatings.  Dan got painful, severe, and extended whippings, for little, seemingly unimportant offenses, like breaking a vase or giving Mom “that look.” Dan shuttered to think what kind of a thrashing he would receive if it his parents ever found out that he was attracted to Chris.

Chris…was just so…so Chris.  There really wasn’t any other way to describe it.  Dan would find himself thinking about Chris almost constantly, during class, before bed, while kicking empty beer cans and discarded takeout containers around his Mom’s cluttered and filthy apartment.  Dan sometimes even thought of Chris, to calm himself down, while trying not to breath too aggressively or make too much disrespectful eye contact at his Dad’s place. 

Dan thought of Chris’s light brown hair and blue eyes, while taking his daily beating from Mom for looking and acting too much like his father.  Dan thought of Chris’s shy awkward smile and the wedge-shaped gap in his teeth, while taking his weekend beating from Dad for touching, or breathing on, yet another “valuable” piece of crap.  To distract himself from the sting of the belt, Dan found himself thinking of Chris’ big, soft body, and his strong arms; those awkward squeaks that the larger boy made in his throat when he was nervous. 

Sometimes, when he was hurting, Dan would imagine Chris’ warm embrace.  There was safety in that embrace and comfort.  Nobody messed with Dan at school anymore, not with a big dude like Chris as his henchman.  Chris was a loyal lackey.  His reluctant participation had become integral to Dan’s various sinister plots and schemes. After all, who else would help Dan pelt Suzie Johnson’s convertible with garden gnomes for calling Dan “a smelly little troll.”  Who else would help him rig up a catapult?  Who else would lug the crates of garden gnomes?   

Hanging out with Chris after school was the highlight of Dan’s pathetic, otherwise miserable days.  The two would talk about the Space Monkeys from Planet Space movies, and eat lunch at the local taco place.  Then, they would usually wander around town, while Dan plotted vengeance against his perceived enemies and Chris attempted to talk him down. 

“I was thinking first, we get some barbed wire, duct tape, fire arms, and explosives, then…” Dan grumbled angrily as he was walking around the neighborhood with Chris, who shuffled along timidly, a few steps behind Dan.

“I don’t know Dan…that sounds pretty violent…I mean…all she really did was spit her gum on the floor.  Maybe you should just let this one go,” Chris interjected meekly.

“Just let it go?  Just LET IT GO?” Dan snarled, practically foaming at the mouth as he seized Chris by his shirt collar and shook him aggressively, “We live in A SOCIETY, Chris!  People can’t just go around willy nilly, spitting their gum onto the floor!  It’s unsanitary and it’s DISGUSTING!  If we let that go then WHAT’S NEXT?  Dumping your toxic waste on a home for disabled orphans?  PUBLIC DEFICATION?” 

“Let go, Dan.  You’re hurting me,” Chris muttered, prying the fingers of Dan’s white fists off of his shirt collar, one at a time.

Dan put his hands in his pockets, hunched, and scowled.  Then, muttered under his breath, “Yeah, well, you had it coming, you big chimpanzee.  Let it go…I’ll let YOU GO, over the side of a cliff…”

“Hey! I heard that!” Chris squeaked in a small, affronted voice.

“Good!  So, are you going to help me or not?” Dan said, “I need someone to lug the body.”

“Dan, no.  Death or serious disfigurement is too severe a punishment for making you step in gum.  And even if you feel like she deserves it you could still go to jail for like, a really long time. I’m sorry.  I can’t be a part of this.”

“Aw come on…,” Dan moaned in a pleading voice.

“I’ll help if you think of a way to get back at her that’s not violent or illegal,” Chris stated his terms, crossing his arms.

Dan exhaled and conceded: “Fine.”

It was always that way with Chris, since the day they met, he had always acted as the “responsible” one.  Chris always tried his best to keep Dan out of trouble.  He always made a timid attempt to calm Dan down, on the frequent occasions when Dan became unreasonably angry.

“Hey buddy,” Dan remembered Chris interject with that soft little nervous squeak in his throat.  Dan could not help but picture Chris’ big dumb blue eyes, and the dumb little adorable gap in his teeth. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, you big dumb idiot,” Dan grumbled miserably and unconvincingly under his breath, in response to the phantom Chris of his imagination, “—Aghh!”

“What the hell are you muttering to yourself for, Dan?” Dan’s Mom shouted angrily, smacking his red ass hard and eliciting another indignant cry of pain.

“Aghhahh! Quit it!  You jerk!”

“Don’t sass me, Dan!” Dan’s Mom shouted angrily.  She had a southern accent and dressed like trailer trash.  There was always a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, “I an’t gonna’ stop until you cry!”

“Yeah, well, then we’re gonna be here for a long time!” Dan shouted back stubbornly.  He didn’t want to give his mother the satisfaction of letting her see him cry.  He couldn’t stand that look she got on her face when he cried in front of her, that amused little triumphant smirk. Since Dan was hit often, his pain tolerance was high. However, the one thing he COULD NOT tolerate was letting his mother win.  And so, his backside always sustained a significant amount of damage before he broke, and the tears came.

“You can’t hit me anymore, I’m too old!” Dan shouted angrily to disguise the fact that tears were now running down his face.  However, the tears were clearly audible in his voice.

“As long as you live in MY house, you’ll live by MY rules, young man!” his mother shouted back, delivering another angry slap.

Dan knew very well that the bitch always ended his punishments by putting her cigarette out on his skin, so he gridded his teeth and braced for the pain.  

“That’ll teach you to talk back to ME, you little piece of shit!” Dan’s Mom drawled.  Dan opened his green eyes wide and screamed bloody murder, as he felt the tip of her lit cigarette sear the crack of his ass.  “Now pull up your pants and go get me a few things from the liquor store.  Just the things on my list.  Don’t come back with any dumb shit this time.”         

Dan did what he was told.  He wiped the tears off of his face and scowled a miserable, furious scowl.  Then he took his mother’s list and exited the apartment.

On his way to the liquor store, Dan stopped at Chris’ house, and knocked on the door.

“Chris!” Dan bellowed abrasively. Dan always knocked on the front door, like he was trying to punch it down, “Chris, get out here!”

Chris opened the door and walked outside.

“What do you want Dan?” he sighed tiredly.  Then, he noticed the tearful look on Dan’s face and the red around his eyes.  His expression softened and he asked in his gentle way: “Hey Buddy…are you ok?”

“Of course I’m ok, you big dumb idiot!” Dan shouted back.  He couldn’t tell Chris that his bottom was currently in critical condition.  That would be way too awkward and embarrassing to admit.

“Ok…it’s just that you look…” Chris pointed out timidly.  Before he could complete his sentence Dan punched him in the gut, and knocked the wind out of him.

“Shut up!” Dan shouted.

“Ow!  HEY!  Dan, that HURT!” Chris complained indignantly, rubbing the spot on his belly where Dan’s fist had made contact.

“Quit your belly aching and come with me,” Dan shushed him dismissively, “The guy at the liquor store is getting suspicious of my fake ID.  He probably won’t card you.”

“But what if he does?”

“Yeah, he won’t because you’re freakishly tall, and look like you’re 35,” Dan assured him with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“I don’t know about this Dan…should we be drinking anyway?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for my Mom,” Dan said.

“That’s weird…shouldn’t she go get it herself?  Why is she sending you?”

“Because she’s lazy.  Now, let’s go,” Dan said.

Chapter Text

Chris couldn’t help but think that Dan was cute when he was pretending to be tough. Underneath of all of the angry rants, mean condescending comments, and violent outbursts, Chris new that Dan was just an sweet, innocent, vulnerable guy teetering on the edge of a psychotic break.  Chris really felt that Dan had something in him worth saving.  Dan was smart, he was intellectually curious, and he was passionate about things like history and art.  Dan knew all the lines to Space Monkeys from Planet Space 5: Oh No Not This Again, and he could quote them perfectly.  He had strangely encyclopedic knowledge of strangely specific things—and striking green eyes that burned a hole in Chris’ heart every time he looked at them. 

Chris smiled apologetically, flashing the awkward, wedge-shaped gap in his teeth.  The man behind the counter at the liquor store stared back and arched an eyebrow.

“Can I help you?” the cashier muttered suspiciously.

“Ah, yes, hi.  I am…I am an adult man…eh hem….who is interested in purchasing this fine alcohol,” Chris panicked and sputtered.  Sweat prickled his forehead.  Why was he doing this for Dan?  Why would do literally any fucking thing for Dan?

“Whatever you say, sir,” the cashier replied with a suspicious eye roll, and then he rung up the alcohol, put it in a paper bag and handed it to Chris. Chris made a nervous squeak in his throat, simpered apologetically, then, bolted out of the store.

“What took you so long?” Dan complained when Chris emerged from the liquor store, covered in nervous sweat and breathing hard.

“I couldn’t find strawberry schnapps!” Chris exclaimed overly emotionally.

“What do you mean you couldn’t find strawberry schnapps!” Dan exclaimed with a mixture of panic and rage.

“All they had was apple and raspberry,” Chris informed him. 

“Fuck,” Dan swore, putting his face in his hands for a moment.  Then he muttered, “She won’t be happy about that.”

Chris didn’t like disappointing Dan.  For some reason, disappointing Dan always made him feel like a real piece of shit.  Compared to Chris, Dan was just so small and skinny, it gave him a cute, vulnerable appearance that was contrary to his Napoleon-sized personality.    

Dan curled his pale fingers in his messy black hair and swore again.  He pulled at his hair and swore louder.  Seeing that this gesture had the potential to devolve into an act of self-harm, Chris moved fast to prevent its escalation. 

“Dan, stop it, no,” Chris said calmly, grabbing Dan by both of his wrists and pulling his hands out of his hair, “Stop.”

“Unhand me, you lummox,” Dan demanded angrily.  For a moment, those green eyes of his bore into Chris’ soul as they locked on him furiously.  Chris felt like he was in the cross hairs of a bazooka.  If looks could kill, he would have died at least twice by now.

“Ahh…oh…right s-sorry…,” Chris stammered awkwardly, blushing and looking down at his sandals to evade Dan’s vicious glare, “I’ll let you go, just please don’t pull on your hair anymore…it’s—”

Chris stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed that Dan was crying.  Pools of tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes and threatened to fall.  Dan’s lip quivered. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Chris apologized quickly, dropping Dan’s wrists as though they had burned him.

Dan sobbed and a pair of tears rolled down his face.  Before Chris knew what he was doing, he had embraced the smaller boy tightly.

“Don’t cry, Dan.  It’s ok.  You’re ok,” Chris said quickly.  At this point, Dan broke down completely.  He sobbed and sobbed into Chris’ t-shirt, hugged him back and trembled with sobs.  Chris could feel the tears moisten the front of his shirt.

After a few long, awkward seconds, that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, Dan let Chris go and pushed him away.  He frowned and wiped his red-ringed eyes with the backs of his hands. 

“Is something wrong, Dan?” Chris inquired again, with increased concern.

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Dan.  Something is clearly wrong.  Just…tell me what it is.  I want to help,” Chris said. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  

“Dan!”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it!”

It was so strange for Dan to not talk about something that was bothering him.  Dan always, ALWAYS talking about things that bothered him.  It was really strange for Dan to keep a secret like this, and that made Chris worried that something might be seriously wrong.

Chris sighed exasperatedly and said, “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, then I won’t ask about it anymore.  Just know that you can talk to me, if you need to.”

Dan crossed his arms and scowled dangerously.  Chris frowned and looked him over with a nervous, concerned expression, but he did so from a safe distance.  The furious look on Dan’s face told him that if he got too close, he could be in danger of getting punched again.

Chapter Text

That night, Dan dreamed of Chris.  In Dan’s dream, Chris was dressed in a suit and tie, and holding a glass of red wine.  He grinned at Dan in an amorous way, flashing the disarming gap in his teeth.  Then, he lifted the glass of wine to his mouth and took a rehearsed-looking flirtatious sip. 

“Hey, gorgeous,” the Chris in Dan’s dream said, “Happy anniversary.”

“The anniversary of what?” Dan muttered with annoyance, narrowing his eyes with disdain. 

“The anniversary of when we got dude married at the gay chapel.  Don’t you remember?” Chris asked, setting the wine down on the kitchen table and loosening the tie around his neck.  He unbuttoned the top button on his shirt.

“Oh, right.  The gay chapel.  How could I forget?” Dan groaned.  He hated his subconscious mind for subjecting him to this utter torture.  If Dan ever confessed his weird, unwanted attraction to Chris, it would probably be the end of their friendship, and Dan couldn’t risk that.  He just wouldn’t.

The Chris in Dan’s dream unbuttoned the rest of his shirt, revealing his broad chest and fleshy belly.  Christ posed seductively and winked.  Dan experienced an utterly revolting stirring in his loins that he wanted to disown completely.

“You look tense,” the Chris of Dan’s dream said, then, he started rubbing Dan’s shoulders.  Dan opened his mouth to protest, but it felt good.  Fuck.  Why did Chris smell so good?  How did he look so damn dashing?

“I like girls,” Dan grumbled, as Chris worked the muscles in Dan’s shoulders with his big, meaty hands.

“And boys too, right?”

“Fuck off, Chris,” Dan growled with a dangerous glower.

Far from being intimidated, Chris’ handsome face split into a playful grin, and he replied: “Ok, you can fuck me off right now—if you want.”

“Dan, wake up!” a furious voice interjected.  Dan turned in his bed and drooled.

“Mmnnh…Chris…,” Dan muttered in his sleep, flipping onto his side, and kicking the covers off.

“I said, get up!” the furious voice shouted.  Then, someone kicked the side of the bed.

“Gah!” Dan’s eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright. 

It was Saturday, and Dan’s father had weekend custody.  Dan’s room at his Dad’s house was a lot bigger and cleaner than his room at his Mom’s house.  Everything at Dan’s Dad’s house was a lot bigger and cleaner, because unlike Dan’s Mom, Dan’s Dad had money.

“Get up right now, Dan,” Dan’s Dad bellowed furiously. 

“Ow…my head…,” Dan complained loudly, rubbing his eyes.

“I swear, you’re just like your mother…that redneck, hoarder, bitch pig couldn’t wash a dish to save her life either!” Dan’s father looked like a taller, older, and grayer version of Dan.  The two had the same round face and diminutive build.  Their voices were similarly abrasive and pompous. However, Dan also resembled his mother a great deal.  He had inherited her green eyes and raven hair; her nubby, round, neglected teeth. 

Dan looked just enough like his mother, to piss his father off just by existing.  After all, Dan’s Dad was trying to enjoy his beautiful new, much younger wife, and their better baby.  How was Dan’s Dad supposed to do that properly with Dan (the infuriating byproduct the worst relationship of his life) in his presence?

“Now go clean up the mess you made in the kitchen, or I swear to God, Dan, you won’t sit right for a month!” Dan’s Dad threatened. 

“Make Susanne clean it!” Dan shouted back.

“She’s not your maid, Dan!”

Dan muttered to himself and limped downstairs to the kitchen.  The wounds on his butt from the paddling he’d taken yesterday still ached.  The burn from his mother’s cigarette, like always, hurt the worst. 

“Stupid old jerk…” Dan grumbled under his breath as he started the water in the sink and started washing the dishes.  All Dan really wanted was to do was lay down and nurse his spanked ass privately, but he didn’t have the luxury of doing this.  The last thing that Dan needed was a thrashing from his father’s belt on top of the existing damage.

Dan rinsed the dishes, dried them off roughly, and angrily threw them back into the cabinets.  While he was doing this, and muttering curse words under his breath, he accidentally dropped one of the dishes, and it shattered.

“Oh no!” Dan gasped in a small, terrified voice.  He stared down at the broken pieces for a few moments and panicked, “Oh no, oh no, oh no…no, no, no.”

Dan knelt down and hastily attempted to clean up the jagged fragments.  However before he was able to gather them all, his young stepmother wandered into the room, holding the better baby.  Dan looked up at her pleadingly, and held out a finger up to silently shush her—but she promptly ratted him out.   

Dan’s Stepmother, held the better baby tightly and shouted her husband’s name, as though having spotted an armed intruder.  In the next instant, Dan’s Dad was staring him down, breathing hard, trembling with disproportionate rage.  He looked just about prepared to murder Dan.

“You did this on purpose!” Dan’s Dad raved, kicking the shards of the shattered plate around the kitchen. 

“I didn’t! It was an accident! I swear!” Dan defended himself quickly.

“Liar!  I know you, Dan!  I know you did this on purpose, you lazy, ungrateful little hooligan!”  Dan’s Dad raved, “I’m gonna’ beat your ass for this!”

“Oh, yeah, well…you can’t hit me anymore, I’m too old!” Dan shouted back.

“You’re 17 and I’ll hit you as much as I want to!  It’s my RIGHT to hit you as long as you live in my house!” Dan’s Dad yelled, “You broke my dish on purpose, I’ll break your ASS on purpose!  And don’t you forget it!”

“I told you it was an accident, you JERK!” Dan shouted back.  Then he took a second dish from the cupboard and deliberately smashed it on the floor, right in front of his father’s feet, “There, THAT ONE was on PURPOSE!  Threaten me again and I’ll smash a THIRD ONE!”

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Dan’s Dan whispered in a very dangerous voice.

“You heard me, old man,” Dan snarled back, matching his father’s tone. 

“You apologize to your stepmother right now!  Then, pull your pants down, and take the whipping you earned!” Dan’s Dan demanded furiously, talking off his belt.

“NO,” Dan refused, confident that he was too big and strong to be overpowered at this age.

“You little—”

“OW!”

Dan’s Dad punched him in the face and gave him a black eye.  Dan recoiled clutching his wounded face and trembling.  Though Dan was, by this point, physically mature, and at the height of his physical prowess, his Dad was still a lot bigger and stronger than him.  Dan’s Dad grabbed Dan’s arm and twisted it behind his back.

“Ow, OW!” Dan squealed attempting to wiggle free.

“Now apologize and take your whipping!”

“NO!”

Dan’s Dad shoved Dan’s face against the kitchen counter, and struck Dan across the chops with the buckle end of his belt.

“Apologize!” his Dad demanded.

“Never!”

Dan was stubborn, and he was used to being hit a lot.  It took a lot of pain to break him.  It took a lot of welts, a lot of bruises, and a lot of blood.  It took a lot of time, a lot of patience, a lot of physical exhaustion, and a very, very sore wrist, to make him apologize for anything. 

By the end of Dan’s beating, it was noon and he was crying like a baby.  His father laughed at him triumphantly, then, forced him to swallow his pride and apologize to the stepmother for breaking her dishes.  Dan cried and rocked himself, choked out an insincere apology, then, hitched up his pants and stomped out the front door.

Chapter Text

“Chris!” Dan yelled angrily, knocking on Chris’ from door, like he was trying to punch it down, “Chris, get out here!”

Chris opened the door and stepped outside.

“Hey Dan,” Chris said, and then, his pleasant little gap-toothed smile sank into a worried frown, “Whoa, what happened to your face?”

Dan swiped some lingering tears out of his red-rimmed eyes and muttered: “I don’t wanna’ talk about it.”

“Really, the guy who sets hornets loose on people for j-walking, is just going to let somebody do that to his face and get away with it,” Chris inquired with a cautious and skeptical raise of his eyebrows.

“It’s complicated, ok?” Dan whimpered, cupping his swollen shut, purple eye, and biting his quivering lower lip.

“Ok, you’re clearly upset,” Chris pointed out, sounding both frustrated by Dan’s stubbornness and concerned for his wellbeing. 

“Am NOT,” Dan argued childishly. 

“Come on, let’s take a walk,” Chris sighed.

Dan was uncharacteristically silent while he wandered around the neighborhood with Chris.  Even when Chris didn’t know what was going on, Dan always found it comforting to be in the presence of Chris.  He derived comfort from Chris being Chris—Chris going on and on about some dumb, low budget sci-fi movie he watched last night; Chris gobbling up two or three chocolate candy bars without ever once pausing for breath.

“Then, it was revealed that the aunt was the aliens’ leader all along!” Chris told Dan excitedly.  How he could speak so clearly with his mouth so full of chocolate, was a mystery.  Chris swallowed what was left of the candy bar, then, finished his synopsis with: “Sorry, spoilers.”

“That’s ok.  I’m probably never going to watch it anyway.  It sound really dumb,” Dan said.

“You sound really dumb,” Chris complained with a teasing grin.

“Say that again, jerk,” Dan challenged shaking his fist, “I dare you.”

Chris knew better than to say it again, even in jest.  The larger boy grinned apologetically, pulled a fourth candy bar from the pocket of his jeans, and started nervously gobbling it down.  

It was at times like this when Dan’s shameful attraction to Chris flared up.  Dan shuffled his feet and frowned, while cursing himself for harboring a crush on this goobery lard-ass.  Why did Chris have to be so sweet and wholesome?  Why did he have to smell like chocolate? 

His kisses probably taste like chocolate, Dan’s treacherous brain teased him. 

Shut up, gay brain.

“Hey, Dan…you’ve been awfully quiet.  Are you sure you’re ok, buddy?” Chris inquired cautiously. 

“Yeah, I’m great,” Dan grumbled unconvincingly, scowling and crossing his arms in a defensive gesture.

“How’s your eye?”

“What kind of a dumb-ass question is that?  It hurts like hell!” Dan seethed hatefully, throwing up his hand with exasperation. 

Chris sighed and assumed that serious, responsible tone, the one that he always acquired when he was trying to talk Dan out of committing a felony, “Dan…why don’t you just tell me who did it, so I can—”

Dan cocked an eyebrow. Chris clenched his fists and completed his sentence with a tone of uncharacteristic malice: “—pound the crap out of them.”

Dan couldn’t imagine Chris pounding the crap out of his father.  It was more likely that Chris would chicken out and eat an entire box of chocolate éclairs instead.  And besides, Dan didn’t want Chris have assault on his permanent record because of this.

“I fell down and hurt myself,” Dan lied, because it made things simpler.

“Bullshit,” Chris confronted Dan, “Tell me who did it, Dan.  I’m going to make him sorry.”

“Yeah…I’m going to turn 18 soon, maybe let’s just let this one go,” Dan replied, looking uncomfortable and wringing his hands.  He avoided looking directly into Chris’ glaring blue eyes. 

“Our whole thing has been getting revenge on people, for messing with us, since summer camp!  And, for some reason, I’m just supposed to let THIS go?  No.  Uh uh.  I don’t think so.  If there’s one thing you taught me, it’s that the only way to deal with a bully is to go lower than he goes.  I know you’d do the same for me.  If someone was beating me up everyday, like this, you’d take him out, wouldn’t you?”

Dan imagined the proposed scenario for a moment; Chris getting beat up by somebody every day.  The vivid, intrusive, image of Chris whimpering and covered in bruises flashed in Dan’s brain, and incited a maddening rage.  One thing was for sure, Dan would make any jerk who dared to hurt Chris like that, very, very sorry that they were ever born to begin with. 

“Wouldn’t you, Dan?” Chris said again, jarring Dan out of his violent revenge fantasy.

“...He’d be in so many pieces that the cops would NEVER find all of him,” Dan seethed hatefully, clenching his hands into tight fists and shaking them at the sky.

“Exactly!  So, why are you protecting this guy?” Chris asked, sounding exasperated.

“Because he’s my parents, ok?” Dan admitted shamefully.

“Uh…what?” Chris replied with some confusion.  Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting this development. 

“Because he’s my parents,” Dan said again, “I’m not getting beat up by a bully from school or anything…it’s just my parents.  They’re big on corporal punishment.  I’ve always gotten hit a lot.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that your parents…gave you that black eye?” Chris inquired with disbelief. 

“My Dad, actually, but my Mom’s no peach either,” Dan said, “It’s no big deal though.  I’m sure everybody’s parents are pretty much the same.”

“Not my parents,” Chris argued to the contrary, “They’re both really sweet and they’ve never hit me once.”

“Psh.  Well, that explains what’s wrong with you,” Dan grumbled dismissively.

“Dan…I can see how this has been affecting you…and…well…whatever your parents are doing to you, isn’t right,” Chris insisted passionately, “I know when I’m sad or hurt my parents are always there to make me feel better.  I remember once, when I was little, I fell off of my bike and scraped my knee.  My Mom was so upset I got hurt, she cried and she baked me my favorite cookies.  And then, my Dad put a band aid on my knee and rocked me until I stopped crying.”

“Stop rubbing your stupid, perfect life in my face!” Dan complained, crossing his arms defensively.  He hoped that Chris didn’t notice the jealous tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes during Chris’ insufferable cookie story, “It isn’t nice!”

“What I’m saying, Dan, is that this needs to stop, ok.  It’s not good or right that your Dad hit you in the face,” Chris said.

“Well, he is a big jerk, but so is my mom.  When she’s not putting cigarettes out on my skin, she’s beating my ass, destroying my stuff, or poking me with pins.  One time, when I was four, she locked in a closet for two days without food or water because I wouldn’t eat my vegetables.  The jokes on her though, I still don’t eat my vegetables, and guess what. I never will,” Dan said angrily, gritting his teeth and shaking his fist, “Take that you lousy trailer tramp bitch.”

Chris, who hadn’t been expecting Dan to unload all of this traumatizing baggage, looked visibly uncomfortable.  He leaned against a nearby telephone pole and frowned sadly.  Suddenly a lot of Dan’s self-destructive quirks made sense. 

“Not that my stupid dad’s any fucking better,” Dan muttered, kicking a few little rocks off of the sidewalk and into the street, “He’s been insufferable since he left my mom for that younger woman.  With his perfect house, and his perfect life, and his perfect new better baby.  Man, I hate that stupid baby.”

“Yeah, well, good news, Dan.  I don’t think the baby’s much better off.”

“Shut up, Chris.  He loves that stupid baby.  He never loved me.  He just yells at me and hits me all the time.  And when I try to stand up for myself, he makes me pay for it.  The truth is…I’ve been thinking about getting revenge on both of my parents a long time.  I have whole journals full of torture devices I drew in crayon when I was six.  I was thinking about blowing my Dad’s face up when I built my first bomb…but I just…I could never go through with it,” Dan sighed.

“Because deep down you really love your parents?” Chris guessed innocently. This dumb, infuriating comment made Dan want to slap (and then kiss) Chris’ stupid, sheltered, innocent, adorable face. 

“No, you bobolyne.  Because I knew that if my plans failed, there would be hell to pay.” Dan corrected, “My parents aren’t like your goody-two-shoes, mollycoddling parents, Chris.  They both scare the living bajeezus out of me….but maybe…MAYBE today is the day to plot…my revenge.  I’m just old enough to seek legal emancipation…so…if a few of my schemes go awry, it’ll be a lot harder for them to retaliate.”

Dan’s angry scowl curled into an evil smirk.

“Oh no, I know what that look means,” Chris sighed apprehensively.

“Chris, fetch my black trench coat and illegal firearms!” Dan announced with that same deranged, sadistic grin, “My parents…are going DOWN!”     

Chapter Text

There was a chalkboard in Chris’ bedroom, where Dan always drafted his revenge plots.  Chris sat on the edge of the bed, looking apprehensive, while Dan angrily erased the lawn gnome catapult scheme and started hastily scribbling a new one.

“I was thinking, for my Mom…I’d trap her in a steel box for two days without food or water.  That’ll teach her to stunt MY growth with malnutrition!  And because once, she beat me for playing favorite song too loudly, I’d play the song, outside the box, the entire time, over and over again, as LOUDLY as possible.”

“Um…ok…so, just remember, Dan.  If you kill her, you’re going to jail.  Probably for the rest of your life,” Chris pointed out seriously.

“I’m not going to kill her.  I want her to suffer,” Dan seethed, drawing the metal torture box on the chalkboard with short angry strokes.  “Eh. Eh. Eh! Grrrr…”

“Dan, are you…growling?”

“Shut up, hench-monkey.  

Dan cackled evilly and sketched a second torture device on the chalkboard: “And for my Dad…”

“Oh wow, that looks way too complicated for you to actually build,” Chris pointed out.

“Nuh uh, I can build it.  It’ll work too,” Dan complained.

“But, your jetpacks never work right,” Chris pointed out. 

“Well, my jetpacks aren’t usually motivated by PURE SPITE,” Dan growled, snapping the piece of chalk he was holding in half.

“I’m pretty sure everything you do is motivated by pure spite.”

“Shut up.  Anyway…for my Dad…I’ll construct a dastardly spanking machine! Then, that jerk will finally know what feels like to have so many bruises on his ass that sitting in a chair feels like SITTING ON A LIT BARBEQUE GRILL!  MAUH HA HA! MAUH HA HA HA HA HA!”

When Dan got like this, he reminded Chris of an evil genius, like the ones on TV with the white lab coats and the nefarious plots.  Except, instead of the white lab coat, Dan was wearing his tattered, black, school shooter, trench coat (that was almost certainly lined with explosives).  

In that moment, it became clear to Chris that Dan had modeled himself after a super villain. A hot, sympathetic super villain motivated by tragic woundedness—but a super villain never the less. 

Chris knew that it was probably his responsibility to rein Dan in before he committed a violent felony. But it was hard to reason with Dan when he was angrily plotting like this.  Dan may have been endearingly pathetic, but he was also very dangerous.  He probably belonged in a mental institution with a straight jacket, yet…Chris just couldn’t say no to him.  He thought the word ‘no’ he even started to mouth the word ‘no.”  But when Chris opened his mouth to speak what came out instead was:

“Ok, so then, how are we going to lure them into these traps?  I don’t think they’ll just voluntarily walk inside.”

“Well, I was thinking…what’s the one thing my parents hate more than anything in the world?  More than me even?”

“The bubonic plague?”

“No Chris, each other.”

Chapter Text

That night, Dan dreamed of Chris again.

“Chris, take off all of your clothes!” Dan demanded abrasively, “I need you to pose naked in this window display.

“Why is this part of the plan again?” The Chris of Dan’s dream squeaked in a small, mortified voice. His entire face hand gone bright red.

“Because, shut up.”

Dan watched as the Chris of his dream reluctantly disrobed.  Dan had seen Chris naked before, in the shower, after gym class.  He always pretended not to look, but the truth was, he’d stolen his fair share of sneaky glances.

The Chris of Dan’s dream hunched behind a rack of novelty t-shirts to conceal his nudity, so that Dan could only see his bare feet and fuzzy, muscular calves.  This was the part of Chris’ body that Dan remembered best, the part that he glanced most often while pretending to look at the floor in the school shower; and the part that was usually visible in the summer, under Chris’ shorts and sandals.    

“Now get in that window and pose like a manikin, before security notices us!”

“But, DAN!”

“Chop chop, window monkey!”

The Chris of Dan’s dream scrambled up to the window display, and posed on one foot with his arms stretched out.  Dan observed Chris’ wide back, long legs, thick strong, arms and plump bottom, the way that he imagined a snooty rich guy observes fine art.

“Dan, WAKE UP!” a woman’s furious voice shrieked.

“Nnghh…Chrisss….you look so….ngh…dumb…,” Dan babbled in his sleep.

Dan’s Mom tipped the filthy mattress and rolled Dan onto the floor.

“Gah!” Dan exclaimed as he was jarred away by the impact of the floor.  He spit dirty grey carpet out of his mouth and rolled onto his back.  Then, shouted angrily: “WHAT?”  

Dan’s Mom held up a tattered notebook, covered in sloppy, angry scribbles.  Dan gasped with horror, as it finally registered that his mother was holding his diary.

“Hey, that’s private!” Dan protested, feeling utterly mortified.  His entire face had gone bright red.  

“You know, Dan.  I was expecting the mopey, crybaby, woe-is-me shit, and the drawings of me with my head cut off.  But these…,” Dan’s Mom shuttered visibly and clutched the crucifix that she was wearing around her neck, “LOVE LETTERS…to a BOY named CHRISTOPHER…these…these came as…a surprise.”

“Uh…yeah…that’s just a joke…don’t pay any attention to that please,” Dan lied quickly, still blushing hard.  He could feel the sweat pouring down his forehead.  His heart was racing so fast that he felt like he was about to pass out. 

“IS IT, Dan?  Is it A JOKE?  Because I DON’T THINK IT IS!  Is that why you hang around with that boy day and night?  Because you’re fucking QUEERS?”  Dan’s Mom yelled, throwing the journal back at his face, “I’m not going to stand for this, DAN!  I FORBID you from ever seeing that boy again, you hear me?”

Dan tried to ignore her and started getting dressed.  Before he could pull his jeans up, she became enraged, grabbed him by the shoulders, and started shaking him. 

“Do you hear me, Dan?”

“Take your hands off me, you malevolent shrew.”

Dan’s mom pulled the crucifix she was wearing off of her neck and shoved it in Dan’s direction, likely expecting him to take it, drop to his knees, and pray for forgiveness.

“—And stop trying to ward me off with that crucifix—I am NOT a vampire!” Dan shouted angrily, smacking the crucifix out of his mother’s hand.

“You little shit!” Dan’s Mom shrieked furiously, backhanding him across the face with as much force as she could muster. 

“OW!”

“I’ll KILL YOOOU!  Dan’s Mom shrieked, practically foaming at the mouth with mindless rage.  She grabbed a rusty frying pan off of a pile of dirty clothes and empty pizza boxes.  Then, she swung it at Dan’s face. 

“Aghhhh!” Dan cried out fearfully.  He ducked to avoid having his head taken off by the vicious blow.  The frying pan hit the small TV sitting just behind him and shattered the glass screen.  Before his mother could swing a second time, Dan screamed and ran into the bathroom, then, locked himself inside.

“Get out here, Danny, so that I can—BEAT YOUR LITTLE ASS!”  Dan’s Mom screamed, pounding on the bathroom door with all of her might, “Get out here right now, you little FAGGOT—or you can FORGET about EATING!  I’ll break EVERYTHING YOU OWN! You can’t stay in there forever!  Eventually, you’ll get hungry and come out and when you do—I’ll BEAT YOU TWICE AS HARD!”

Dan tucked himself in the corner of the room, between the toilet and the filthy tiled wall.  His heart was beating rapidly; his body was trembling.  He could hear his mom stomping around his bedroom, violently smashing things to pieces with the frying pan.  Feeling trapped and hopeless, and fearing the pain that his mother would surely inflict if she ever got her hands on him again, Dan began to whimper quietly.  His green eyes streamed with tears and he rocked himself.  He could hear his mother systematically destroying all of his possessions in the next room.  He flinched when he heard what sounded suspiciously like his video games being smashed with a hammer.  The rage was building in him, as his mother loudly boasted that she would cut up his clothes and burn his toys.  The rage was always there underneath it all, slowly growing, slowly leaking into his wounded mind, consuming him with bile.   

“I’ll get you for this…you’ll be sorry.  I’ll get you…one day soon,” Dan murmured furiously under his breath.  Though he had said this to himself many, many times before, this time he truly meant it.  He didn’t care what it cost.  He would find a way to make her pay.

“Just wait until YOUR FATHER hears about this!” Dan’s Mom shrieked at the top of her lungs, pounding on the bathroom door like she was trying to punch it down.

Dan stood up, and scrambled onto the toilet tank, then, onto the window sill.  He glanced back at the bathroom door and shuttered as the hinges shook with the fury of his mothers violent, determined blows.

Then the door flew open.  Dan yelped, thrust the window open, and jumped through it, onto the fire escape.    

“Danny, you better get back in here!”

Dan bolted down the fire escaped.  He tripped on the last step, stumbled and hurt his ankle, but he didn’t have time to let that slow him down. Mother was on her way.  Dan swore and jumped to his feet, then, he ran as fast as he could.  He ran and ran until he was sure that he had lost her. 

Once it became clear that his mother was no longer following him, Dan slowed to an exhausted limp.  His ankle hurt badly.  It seared with the impact of every punishing step.

Dan furrowed his brow and scowled miserably.  He knew that he could never return to his mother’s house and expect to emerge un-brutalized.  He knew that right now, his mother was probably calling his father to rat him out for having a crush on a boy.  He imagined that his father would not be too pleased by the news.  He imagined that his father would arrange to have him basically tortured in a furious quest to correct his abnormality. 

The thought of returning to his dad’s house, after the truth about his sexuality got out, made Dan want to be dead.  In that moment he figured it would be better to throw himself off of the side of a bridge than to return to his dad’s house.  At least then, his death would be swift and merciful.

Instead, Dan ended up doing what he always did when he was distressed, he wandered over to Chris’ house, and banged on the front door.

“Chris, CHRIS!”

Chris opened the door and stepped outside. 

“What is it now, Dan?” he sighed. 

“Good news, Chris,” Dan said in a very measured and casual tone, “I’ve decided to kill myself.”

“Oh, Jesus.  Not again,” Chris sighed, putting his face in his hands, “You know Dan, you can’t just go around telling people that you’re going to kill yourself.  The first six or seven times you said that, it really upset me.”

“Well, this time I’m really serioussss!” Dan moaned petulantly. There was a pleading look in his green eyes that he always got when he was about to ask for money or a favor. 

“Is this one of those cry for help things?” Chris asked, looking concerned, despite his initial skepticism. 

Dan sniffed, then squeaked out the word: “…Maybe.”

Dan had a tendency to be a little overdramatic for attention.  But Chris couldn’t help but notice that Dan was still sporting the black eye from yesterday.  Dan’s left eye, the clean, open, un-damaged one, was very red.  It was clear that he had been crying.

“…My parents are evil…I can’t go back home…,” Dan whimpered miserably sounding very close to tears.

“…Aww,” Chris cooed sentimentally, his expression softening. 

“…Can I stay here?” Dan pleaded.  His eyes got real big and shiny when he said it.  Chris knew he couldn’t say “no.”  

“Come inside, we’ll talk,” Chris invited warmly.

Dan didn’t need to be asked twice.  He staggered quickly inside.  Chris noticed right away that Dan was limping badly, so he offered his body as something for Dan to lean his weight against.  Dan staggered over to the living from couch, while clinging to Chris to for support.  Chris set Dan down gently, then observed his shattered countenance with a nervous frown.  

“You’re a real jerk, you know,” Dan said crossly, though he still looked as though he were about to burst into tears, “…Not taking me seriously when I said that I was going to kill myself.”

“Dan, you said you were going to kill yourself when the school cafeteria ran out of tatter tots.”

“Well, that was an emotional moment for me!”

“Your ankle looks pretty bad.  Should I get some ice for it?” Chris asked, having noticed how red and swollen Dan’s bad ankle was.

“Yes please.”

Chapter Text

Chris propped Dan’s leg up on a pillow and put an icepack on his red, swollen ankle.  Dan would have been more than satisfied with that gesture of good will, but Chris was a really warm person and he always went the extra mile to make the people in his life feel comfortable and cared for.  So, Chris sat at the other end of the couch, near Dan’s feet, and applied gentile pressure to the icepack.  In that moment, Dan couldn’t help but think that Chris was a perfect gentleman; in may ways, the polar opposite of himself.  

“Ugh…You’re such a good henchman, Chris,” Dan groaned closing his eyes and huffing with exhaustion. 

“Aw…Dan, did you just say something…nice?  You never do that,” Chris said, sounding genuinely pleased.  There was something about the way that Chris’ big, sweet, innocent eyes lit up when he realized that he was being praised.  It just did things to Dan.   

“Yea, well, don’t get used to it.”

“Your ankle looks like it’s twisted up pretty bad,” Chris said, looking worried, “What happened?”

“My psycho mother tried to murder me and I hurt myself on the fire escape while I was running for my life.  I can’t go back now…if she ever gets her hands on me again, I’m fucking dead,” Dan said.

“Can you stay at your dad’s place until she cools down?” Chris proposed as a possible solution.  His infuriating naivety made Dan want to smack him. 

“No, Chris…he’ll want to murder me too.  It’s…it’s complicated ok?  I don’t expect someone like you to understand.”

“Someone like me?”

“A big, fat, spoiled, privileged BABY.”

“Hey!”

Dan shrugged and added: “No offense.”

“You can just add ‘no offense’ to the end of something that’s clearly intended to be offensive, Dan,” Chris complained, taking his hand off of the icepack on Dan’s ankle to cross his arms and pout a bit.

“Sure I can.  I just did,” Dan said.  After a pause, he muttered loudly, for good measure, “…you big BABY.”

Chris blushed a bit and glared at Dan indignantly, Dan stared back at him defiantly, as he always did, daring Chris to argue. 

“…Ok, because you’re hurt, I’m going to let that one go,” Chris sighed with resignation.  Then, he stood up, smiling warmly, “I know what always makes me feel better when I’m hurt…hot chocolate!  Ooh—and blueberry pancakes!

“You better put milk in those!” Dan reminded Chris abrasively, as he watched the larger boy, from his spot on the living room couch.

“Don’t worry, my recipe is dairy free!”

Chris walked into the kitchen and started assembling his ingredients.   While Dan was accustomed to stale bread and expired lunch meat, Chris was known for strolling around with a whole chocolate cake tucked under one arm.  Chris always came to school with lots of decadent, high-calorie, usually homemade, cheeses, pastas, and deserts in his lunch.  It hadn’t occurred to Dan, until this moment, that Chris might have prepared some of those meals himself.  Or, that Chris might have amended some of his recipes to accommodate Dan’s lactose intolerance, after noticing that Dan’s lunches were unappetizing, and sometimes even, unsanitary.

“Your sandwich is green, Dan,” Dan remembered Chris point out one day, when they were eating lunch together at school, “Is there…lettuce in there?”

“Lettuce? Gross.  No.  The meat’s just a little old,” Dan remembered himself reply before opening his neglected mouth to take a bite.

“Dan…you know it hurts me to share food, but I really can’t let you eat that.” 

Against all odds, Chris had dairy-free everything with him that day.  In hindsight, this was probably by design.  It made Dan a little embarrassed and pissed off to realize (in retrospect) that his mom’s garbage lunches could evoke this kind of pity in someone.  Chris was a bit of a glutton usually.  Before that point, he very rarely offered to share food.

Back in the present, Dan turned on the TV and made himself at home.  He could still hear his mother’s screaming in his ears.  It competed with the gentile sound of Chris cheerfully humming as he stirred his pancake batter in the next room.  Dan’s head was filled with all kinds of noise.  His head was a mess.  He was just a mess.  An angry, beaten, hurting, traumatized mess.  He hid it well most of the time. 

Dan had learned quickly that it was better to mask the pain with a dangerous scowl.  Tears were shameful, they advertised weakness, and invited sadism.  It was better to be angry than to be broken.  It was better to be a jerk than to be a victim.  

The TV was doing little to distract Dan from the noise in his head at the moment.  He scowled in a furious, indignant scowl, cursed his mother, and stewed in the smarting sting of his collective mental and physical wounds. 

Dan noticed Chris’ parents emerge from their bedroom.  They were both fat and jolly, like Santa Clause.  It made Dan a little bit sick to his stomach, when they greeted Chris with a hearty good morning, instead of screaming their heads off because their son had let in an uninvited guest.

“Can he stay with us for a few days?  Please, please?” Chris pleaded with is parents, Dan could practically hear Chris batting those big blue eyes of his, flashing that gap in his teeth with that apologetic simper. 

“Um…Isn’t that the boy that disassembled our vacuum clearer to make a ‘death machine?’” Chris’ mom pointed out worriedly.  

“Yeah, but he put it back together again…and it almost works even…sort of.  Well, the point is…he tried to make it right,” Chris defended Dan passionately.

Chris’ dad turned his head to look at Dan for a moment.  He squinted and frowned, then said:  “Wait…isn’t that the kid that set our garage on fire multiple times?”

“The fires were an accident!” Chris defended Dan quickly, “And Dan’s real sorry, right Dan?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Chris!” Dan shouted angrily in reply.  He didn’t like these people talking about him like he wasn’t there.  Who did Chris think he was, apologizing for him like that, the mayor of—self-righteous town?

“Please let him stay?  Please?  He has a really rough home life and—”

“Don’t tell them that, stupid!” Dan interrupted him furiously. 

“Ah, I mean…we’re working on a group project about uh…a-ants and…well you see,  they’re night ants…and they only come out at night…so…Dan’s got to stay overnight or…” Chris babbled, attempting to come up with a lie on the spot, but then failing miserably.

“What Chris is trying to say is that my house is being fumigated.  So, he invited me to stay over for a few days until the roaches are gone,” Dan said with confidence even though, the truth was, his lie wasn’t that much better.  Follow up questions could have easily dismantled it.  Luckily, however, it just so happened that no follow up questions were asked.

“Um…alright…,” Chris’ mom agreed reluctantly, “You can stay here a few days, Dan.  As long as your parents are alright with it.”

“I already asked them.  They’re fine with it,” Dan lied with confidence, because unlike Chris, he was pretty used to lying.  Too often, the truth had earned him a painful spanking or a tooth-loosening smack in the face.  Too often the truth was a path to punishment and humiliation—a swift and degrading retribution.  Stupid Chris never had a reason to lie before, and that made him useless in these situations.      

Chris breathed a sigh of relief, then, said with palpable stars in big blue eyes: “Does that mean Dan can stay?”

Chris’ dad sighed, then, agreed with his wife: “Sure…I don’t see why not.”

“Yes!” Chris celebrated.  He behaved as though his parents had just given him permission to bring home a new puppy.  Dan half expected the larger boy to promise his parents that he would take care of Dan, and feed him, and walk him every day. 

Chapter Text

Breakfast was Chris’ feel better blueberry waffles, with a side of decadent dairy-free hot chocolate.  Dan ate ravenously, as he anticipated that he would need the fuel for his revenge.  He grunted with annoyance when Chris’ stupid parents asked him stupid questions about his stupid life.

When Dan was done eating, he stood up and said: “Chris, to the war room!  We’ve got some plotting to do!”

Chris simpered at his parents apologetically and explained with a Chris-like squeak: “He means the school project…about the night ants.”

Chris’ parents nodded in unison.

“Ok, then,” Chris’ mom said. 

“Sounds plausible to me,” said Chris’ dad, taking a long, indifferent sip from his mug of hot chocolate.

Chris and Dan went up to Chris’ bedroom.  The instant the door shut behind them, Dan said: “Ok, so phase one of the plan…I managed to escape with these photos of my parents making out…they’re not recent, but my dad’s wife is pretty stupid, so they should do the trick.”

Dan pulled a crumpled envelope out from under his shirt.  Then, he opened the envelope and pulled out the photos for Chris to see. 

“Huh…the woman looks like you in drag and the man looks like you on stilts with a mustache…” Chris observed, squinting at the picture of the short, dark haired couple locked in a passionate embrace. 

“Shut up,” Dan said, “Anyway, my Dad leaves for work 8 a.m. and he’s gone until at least 6 every night, so you’ll have plenty of time to show these pictures to my step mom.”

“Why do I have to do it?” Chris asked nervously.

“Well, she’ll recognize me and know that I’m up to no good.  She doesn’t know you.”

“Ok, fair.”

“While you’re doing that.  I’ll sneak back to my Mom’s house and plant this letter,” Dan said, pulling a second envelop from under his shirt. 

“Right…so, how is this supposed to work again?” Chris asked.

“Susanne sees the picture and thinks that my Dad is cheating on her with my Mom.  Meanwhile, I plant this letter at my Mom’s house, from by Dad, saying that he wants to get back together…little does she know, the author is actually…muah ha ha…ME,” Dan explained with a mischievous grin.

Chris took the letter out of Dan’s hands and read it in an incredulous tone, looking skeptical: “Dear Dee…I’ve been thinking how I want to….”

Chris’ face turned bright red and he became visibly uncomfortable.  He skipped a few lines and kept reading,  “Um huh…ok….and how I want to…” Chris’ blush deepened and he sighed: “….christ Dan…Dee, I think you are a hobbleslompt…”

“A hot, sloppy slut,” Dan corrected.    

Chris sighed and read the end of the letter: “…and I want to cheat with you behind my wife’s back.  Meet me a behind the dumpsters at the Gigundo Mart for a night of nasty, dirty, filthy…..ah…a-anal sex…I know you won’t refuse, because you are a gross pig.  P.S. Please bring a paper bag to wear over your head. XOXO, Dan Senior.”

Dan snickered mischievously, as he took the letter out of Chris’ folded it up and stuck it in the front pocket of his jeans. 

“Dan, WHY would you write this?” Chris sighed exhaustedly, his face was still bright red.

“Because, Chris, when my mother reads this she’s going to be PISSED,” Dan said with a mischievous grin, “She’ll either go directly to my Dad’s house to scream at him about this, in which case, Susanne will see her and have her suspicions about my dad’s infidelity confirmed. OR, she’ll go to the dumpsters behind the Gigundo mart to confront him, in which case…she’ll fall right into my trap.”

“The trap, right…,” Chris recalled, “But…you haven’t built it yet, right?”

“No, that’s why its phase 2 of my plan…phase 1 is…is...rrghh…” Dan growled with frustration when he realized that he was getting confused about the plan again.  He walked back over to the chalk board, erased everything, and then, started furiously scribbling again. 

While Dan amended his plot, Chris watched him timidly, from the edge of his bed, looking slightly troubled.

“You know, Dan,” Chris said, after awhile, “You might want to consider seeking some SERIOUS psychological help…”

“Psychologists are scam artists, Chris.  We’ve been over this,” Dan asserted scathingly, without turning his head to acknowledge Chris’ comment.  He continued furiously scribbling on the board.

“Yeah, Dan, I know…you say that all the time.  It’s just that…I can’t get what you wrote in that letter out of my head!  HOW could you write something like that about your own mother?

“Well, it had to sound like my Dad,” Dan said with a casual shrug.

“…I feel sorry for whatever girl ends up with you.”

Yeah, well, if you crossed out the name Dee and wrote ‘Chris’ this letter would be closer to the truth, Dan’s thoughts intruded.  It was hard not to think about Chris, while contemplating anything sexual.  Chris had a way of popping up in Dan’s sexual fantasies uninvited—with his stupid wholesome, gap-toothed smile, and his stupid blue eyes, and his stupid big, strong, hairy, bear body, and his STUPID nine-inch monster, sasquatch cock.  So, naturally, while writing his little fan fic about his parents hate fucking, Dan had imagined himself in the role of his dad, hard-core hate fucking adorable idiot Chris.   

“Ok…NEW phase one of my plan!” Dan announced, putting the chalk down, and turning toward Chris.  “Tonight, I build the traps in your dad’s garage, while you break into my mom’s house and retrieve what remains of my possessions!”

“Break in?” Chris repeated with some alarm.

“Yeah, why not?  We break into places all the time,” Dan said, not sounding concerned, “You still have that climbing harness and ski mask I gave you, right?” 

“Yeah…I do…but…I’ve never done a home invasion without you, Dan.  What if I get caught and charged with breaking and entering?” Chris voiced his concern timidly. 

“Eh, you’re seventeen, they’ll probably let you off with a slap on the wrist,” Dan shot down Chris’ timid protest dismissively. 

“Yeah, but I’m going to be turning 18 in like a week, and people always say I look older…what if I get tried as an adult?” Chris fretted, looking fearful at the prospect. 

“Just don’t get caught, and we’ll be fine,” Dan said dismissively, clapping Chris on the back.  Chris let out a surprised, Chris-like squeak of alarm, and flinched.  Then, slowly; reluctantly—he picked up his ski mask and pulled it over his head.   

Chapter Text

Chris couldn’t stop thinking about Dan’s letter.  The sex acts that Dan had described in that letter were just so angry and dirty…so violent and deranged, they were the psychotic scribblings of someone deeply unwell.  And yet…Chris could not get those haunting images out of his head. 

Chris pictured Dan hunched over a desk in his filthy bedroom, furiously scribbling the shocking depravity, depicted in that scandalous letter, while he cursed and grumbled to himself.  Maybe there were tears in his acid green eyes, while he seethed hatefully and wore his pen down to a nub.  Maybe he wrote that letter while sitting on a pillow because he was bruised up from an ass beating.  Maybe he wrote that letter while laying on his belly, shivering and whimpering, while his butt ached from a merciless whupping. Maybe his searing green eyes had been streaming with tears of pain.  Maybe his heart had been hurting. Maybe he had wanted a hug and he was too scared to ask for one.  The later scenario, Chris decided, was probably the most likely one.  Poor Dan was always destined to become the villain.  He never really had a chance to be anything else. 

Despite Dan’s violent tendencies, many character flaws, and near constant verbal abuse, Chris believed that, deep down, Dan was good.  He believed that Dan was a kind and gentile person; a sensitive sole who needed love and protection.  That’s why when Dan got bullied for his height, his bad teeth, and his poor hygiene, Chris was always eager to serve as Dan’s revenge buddy and loyal sidekick.  Chris wasn’t above beating the snot out of a bully.  He wasn’t above busting Keith Sanders’ nose for encouraging kids at school to call Dan, “the stinky trash goblin.”  He wasn’t above kicking in Don Roger’s ribcage for pulling down Dan’s pants in front of the entire gym class. 

But…this was different…breaking into Dan’s mom’s house to steal…it just felt wrong.  This poor woman was Dan’s mother after all, and even if he parenting style was a bit harsh, she must have loved Dan in her own way.  Maybe she was feeling guilty about hitting Dan earlier.  Maybe she was worried about him. 

Chris sighed and removed his ski mask.  When he entered Dan’s mom’s apartment, he left the climbing harness and the can of spray paint (that Dan had given him to vandalize his mother’s possessions), in the car. 

Nervously, Chris walked up to the front door of Dan’s mom’s apartment and knocked on the badly damaged door.

The front door creaked open.  A small, dark-haired woman with acid green eyes peered out from behind a short lock chain.

“What the fuck do you want?” she muttered in a raspy southern accent, taking the cigarette out of her mouth and putting it out in a thoroughly dead potted plant. 

“Hi-hi, Ms. Mandel?” Chris stammered nervously.  He had never met Dan’s mom before.  He had only heard tales of her, and none of them painted her in a very sympathetic light. 

Dan’s mom cocked an eyebrow and muttered, “That’s my fucking ex-husband’s last name.  Who the fuck are you? Cause I don’t CARE if the IRS is sending hunky young-looking sexy men now—I an’t payin’ taxes!”

“Um…,” Chris fidgeted uncomfortably.  He flashed her an apologetic simper and held up the short list of items that Dan had asked him to retrieve, “Actually, ma’am…my name is Chris.  I’m Dan’s—”

At the mention of the name “Chris,” the older woman’s face sank into a threatening glower. 

“I know who YOU are,” Dan’s mom growled dangerously, unnerving hatred dripped from every syllable, “My son sent you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am, he did,” Chris confirmed timidly, “Um…so…I’m here to pick up Dan’s things.  He wants his radio, his lucky hand grenade, his clothes, his old notebooks, and his teddy bear, Brutus.  So, if you could just let me in real quick, I’ll just pack everything up and…”

The look on Dan’s mom’s face told Chris plainly that it was time to stop talking.  He let out a timid squeak of apprehension and fell silent.  Then, attempted to correct his mistake in a small terrified voice: “Or you could just gather everything up and pass it to me through the door…if that would make you more comfortable.” 

There was a long, uncomfortable silence, during which Dan’s mom lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew a cloud of smoke in Chris’ face.  Chis cringed, and wheezed, then, backed away.

“Where the fuck is my son, you massive faggot?” Dan’s mom muttered, taking a long, slow drag from her cigarette. 

“Now, ma’am, I don’t think that kind of language is called for—”

“Let’s cut the bullshit, ok.  I’m not giving you any of the things that you asked me for.  If Dan wants them, he can come back here with his tail between his legs, BEG me for forgiveness, then take the whuppin’ he’s earned.  Now tell me, you big, stupid, pansy-ass pretty boy, WHERE is my son?”

“Right…about that…Dan says he’s not coming back,” Chris informed her with an apologetic simper, sweating slightly.  The pleading look in his eyes screamed “please don’t hurt me.”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, he said that he wants to get legally emancipated before he turns 18,” Chris blathered because he didn’t know what else to do.  Maybe trying to reason with Dan’s mom was a mistake but this was the route he had chosen now.  It was too late to turn back “He didn’t want me to tell you that…actually he didn’t want me to talk to you at all.  Funny story, he actually asked me to break in and destroy all of your stuff—AH but I thought that that was wrong, so I didn’t!  Dan says you’re bad!  But I don’t think you could be THAT bad, because you raised Dan and, well…I think Dan’s pretty great!”

Chris’ heart was beating a mile a minute now.  That look on Dan’s mom’s face was positively horrifying.  Her continued silence spoke volumes. 

“Come on, Dee…you care about Dan, I care about Dan.  Maybe we should talk about this and work it out like grownups?” Chris offered a cautious but warm smile and extended his hand through the crack in the door for Dan’s mom to shake.

There was a long awkward pause, during which, Dan’s mom frowned at him.  Then, she pulled the lit cigarette out of her mouth, and put it out in the center of Chris’ upturned palm.

“AAAaaaaghhhh!” Chris hollered in pain, withdrawing his badly burned hand, and cradling it protectively.  Tears of pain pricked the corners of his blue eyes, and his heart rate picked up.  He could hear it thumping in his ears.  Every instinct he had was telling him to run.  Every instinct he had was telling him that the decision to try to reason with this woman had been a terrible, terrible mistake.   

“Tell me where my son is!” Dan’s mom demanded angrily. 

“Um…he told me not to…” Chris informed her in a small, timid warble-y voice, avoiding her gaze.  The circular cigarette burn in his palm hurt so bad that he felt dizzy and nauseous.  He wanted to cry.  But this was neither the time, nor the place.

“Tell me where the fuck my son is!” Dan’s mom demanded, holding up Dan’s ragged teddy bear, Brutus, for Chris to see, “Or I swear to god, I’ll rip the bear’s head off!”

“Oh gosh…please don’t do that.  That would make Dan REALLY upset,” Chris pleaded with her nervously. 

“Talk, fudge packer,” Dan’s mom demanded.

Chris couldn’t help but fret about how angry Dan would be with him if Brutus got decapitated due to his stupidity.  It was bad enough that he’d failed Dan by not sticking to the plan, but being personally responsible for getting Dan’s teddy bear assassinated…that was level of guilt that Chris didn’t think he could handle.

Before he knew what was doing, Chris had blurted out Dan’s location: “He’s at my house right now…just-just give me the bear so that I can give it back to him…please.”

“What’s the fucking address?” Dan’s Mom demanded, shaking the bear threateningly.

Chris quickly wrote down his address.  Then, he said in a nervous, trembling voice, “I-I’ll trade the address for the b-bear!” 

“Address first, then bear.”

Chris handed Dan’s mom the address.  Dan’s mom ripped the bear’s head of and threw it at Chris’ face.

…

Chris retreated to his car, totally defeated, and feeling like stupid trash.  He had assumed that, given Dan’s tendency to blow things out of proportion, trying to reason with Dee was the most logical course of action, but the prize that his naivety had won him was a painful burn wound and the decapitated head of Dan’s most beloved childhood toy.  Dan was going to be furious when he found out.  Chris put his head down on the steering wheel and wept in despair.  Dan was going to HATE him.

Chris wiped his eyes and choked back the tears, then, quickly whipped out his cell phone and called Dan to warn him: “DAN!  She caught me!  She caught me and I told her!  I told her everything!” Chris fibbed frantically, because it was probably better for him if Dan didn’t know that he deliberately ignored the plan.  It was better if Dan thought he was just bad at crime.

“Fuck!  Are you ok?  Did she call the cops?”

“Um…no…actually, she just hurt me and made me tell her where you are.”

“She WHAT?”

“You need to get out of there, Dan!  You need to find somewhere else to hide fast!”

Chapter Text

Chris raced home as quickly as possible, nearly taking out a cyclist and a buss full of elderly nuns in the process.  He accidentally mowed down his parent’s mailbox and a few of their tacky lawn ornaments on his way to the garage.  In his frantic bid to get to Dan before his Dee did, Chris didn’t even notice the damage he had caused.  The clunk of the metal mailbox and the loud shattering of plastic gnomes and flamingos didn’t even register.

“Dan!” Chris shouted as the flung the driver’s side door open and jumped out of the car.

Chris knew that Dan’s mom wasn’t far behind him, he could see her following him for most of the ride home, in the rearview mirror.  Dan emerged from the house.  He was disheveled and smelled like motor oil, wearing a welding mask, and carrying a torch.  Clearly he had been tinkering away at his traps up until the second that Chris pulled up.

“Dan, we need to go!  She’s on her way!  Hurry!  Get in the car!” Chris cried out frantically.

Before Dan could open his mouth to respond, Chris grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him in through the driver’s side. 

The loud screeching of tires caused them both to flinch.  A car door slammed shut with surprising force and Dan’s mom started to holler: “Danny, you little BRAT!  When I get my hands on you, I’m gonna’ give you SUCH A SPANKIN’!  Do you hear me, young man, when I get through with you—YOU WON’T SIT RIGHT FOR A MONTH!”

“Aghh! Drive, DRIVE!” Dan demanded fearfully, punching Chris in the arm.  Chris let out a fearful squeak of alarm, and put the car in reverse.  He hit what was left of the mail box a second time on his way out of the driveway.

Chris didn’t know how Dan could always manipulate him into doing dangerous and criminal things, like running red traffic lights, speeding 120 miles-an-hour through a residential area, and taking out the level crossing signal, in front of the railroad tracks, three seconds before the train sped by. It was just so hard to say no to Dan.  Chris didn’t have it in him to slow down for a stop sign and let that evil witch catch up to them.  He couldn’t bare the thought of poor little, sensitive, mentally unstable Dan getting hit again because of him. 

Idiot, if you keep driving like this you could DIE and get Dan killed along with yourself, Chris chastised himself bitterly as he sped past a school and a hospital, nearly knocking out a few girl scouts that had set up their stand by the road. This is stupid.  Why are you doing this? Why? So that Dan won’t get another spanking?  It’s not like she’s going to saw his legs off!  He’ll live!  Oh man…I’m breaking so many traffic laws.  I should get the spanking, not him.”

Despite his internal turmoil, Chris found that he could not slow down.  One glance at the scared look on Dan’s face was all it took to silence his guilt at once. 

Eventually, Chris managed to lose Dan’s mom.  Once it because clear that she was no longer tailing them, he slowed the car to a crawl and exhaled nervously.

The sound of Dan laughing, was a jarring shift in tone.  Chris laughed nervously along with him, though he still felt a little bit like he was going to throw up.  The adrenaline was calming down now, and he could feel the sting of his wounded hand again. 

“Oh, man!  That was awesome!” Dan laughed, punching the air victoriously, “Ah ha ha…did you see the look on her face! 

Maybe now wasn’t the best time to show Dan Brutus’ severed head. 

Let him have his moment, Chris thought.

“Muah..ha ha…Excellent work, my minion!” Dan celebrated loudly.

 “Wait…you’re not mad…that I messed up the plan?” Chris observed with a touch of incredulous disbelief.  Dan got mad at basically everything.  Dan got mad at neighborhood dogs for breathing too loudly.  Dan got mad at bratwurst for being stupidly named…and for being too “tubular.”  Chris knew from experience that he was far from immune when it came to Dan’s violent fits of disproportionate rage.  He had been expecting Dan to be furious with him. 

“Aww, you know I can’t stay mad at you, buddy,” Dan crooned, ruffling Chris’ hair affectionately, “Good work.”

Chris felt butterflies flapping around in his stomach.  He could not help but grin a bit, and flush slightly.  This praise from Dan was the only reward for his trouble that he would ever need.

Chapter Text

That night, Dan used a credit card that he had swiped from his dad to rent a hotel room.  Chris didn’t leave right away.  He lingered because he was afraid that his parents would be mad at him for trashing their yard.  Dan watched him stress eat nearly an entire box of jelly donuts, while they were watching Space Monkeys: The Animated Series reruns on the hotel TV. 

Chris was acting a little odd.  He looked a little bit more pathetic than usual and he was rubbing his palm a lot.

“Let me see your hand,” Dan said, grabbing Chris’ wrist and pulling it toward him.

“Ow!”

“Did SHE do this to you?” Dan asked, frowning petulantly at the circular burn scar on Chris’ palm.  This wound was familiar to him.  He bore many similar scars of his own.  

“Yeah, when she caught me breaking in,” Chris said, looking slightly ashamed of himself.

“That—,” Dan’s face got red and he started calling his mother every name in the book, while stomping around the hotel room, kicking furniture and knocking things over like a maniac.

“Uh…Dan…”

“She hurt my bear!  She hurt my Chris!  The bitch MUST PAY!”

“Dan, you have got to calm down!” Chris interjected exasperatedly.

“These are WAR CRIMES, Chris!  WAR CRIMES!” Dan fumed.

Dan punched the light on the bedside table over, shattering its glass base, and hurting his hand in the process.

“Ow!” Dan shouted furiously.  Then, he directed his fury at the inanimate lamp: “Hurt MY hand, will you!  Well I’ll show YOU!”

“Dan, no!  Stop.  You can’t teach the lamp a lesson, Dan.  You’re just going to get cut on the broken glass,” Chris sighed sadly.  He grabbed Dan around the middle and pulled him back before he could injure himself further by taking a second swing at the jagged lamp. 

“Let. Me. Go.” Dan fumed furiously struggling to free himself from Chris’ tight bear hug.  He wiggled, kicked his legs, and swore uselessly, but Chris was a lot bigger and stronger than him.  Dan exhaled a grumpy sigh of defeat, and went limp in Chris’ arms, once he was finally forced accept that he was hopelessly overpowered.

“Sh…it’s ok, Dan.  It’s ok,” Chris whispered softly to try and calm him.  Dan’s messy black hair smelled strongly of perspiration and motor oil.  The heart in his tiny chest was pumping a mile a minute. 

Dan whimpered with a mixture of petulant frustration and reluctant surrender.  He hung his head in defeat, and started quietly sniffling.

“Shh…you’re safe here.  It’s ok to cry,” Chris said softly, giving Dan a tight squeeze. 

“I’m NOT crying!” Dan wept furiously, as tears and snot ran down his cringing face.  Despite himself, he leaned into the warmth of Chris’ strong chest, and inhaled his manly Chris-like odor.  Unlike Dan, Chris was well-groomed, and wearing deodorant and cologne.  The scent was sweet and spicy with a hint of chocolate.  It was familiar smell; comforting one.  It signaled that Dan’s trusty sidekick was close at hand.   

Chris picked Dan up like a little baby and carried him to the double bed near the hotel window.  The shades were drawn.  Piles of coat hangers, white towels, and little hotel soaps that Dan had tossed during his rampage littered the floor.

“Why is she such a jerk?  Why…why is everyone always so mean to me?” Dan whimpered, between loud hiccupping sobs.  Chris laid him down in the bed, and pulled  the covers over him.

“Shh…I promise we’ll make them pay,” Chris said softly.  Turning out the remaining bedside light. 

The room was silent for a few moments.  Chris frowned and looked Dan over with a worried expression in his sweet, blue eyes.  He rubbed the burn on his palm and whimpered.

“…Hey stupid, put some ice on that burn, idiot,” Dan mumbled in a tired but grumpy tone, shutting his eyes, “It’ll help with the pain.”

“First I should…”

“What, did I stutter?” Dan grumbled demandingly, “I SAID.  Go put some ice on it.  NOW.”

“First, I should call my parents…they’re probably worried,” Chris finished his sentence, sounding slightly guilty, “It’s kinda’ dark…and I don’t know exactly were I am…maybe I should wait until morning to drive back.”

“….Good idea.  Because you suck at driving,” Dan interjected tiredly.

“Hey!  I DO not.”

Dan was quiet after that.  He opened his mouth and started loudly snoring.  Chris frowned and stared at the smaller boy for a moment while he slept.  Dan’s teeth had been worn down to blunt numbs from all of his furious grinding.  There were light burn scars on his neck and chest, and on the backs of his ears.  Chris hadn’t paid much attention to them before.  He had always assumed that Dan was just clumsy and foolhardy; prone to accidental damage.  It had never occurred to him that his best buddy was getting regularly singed with the tip of a lit cigarette, as a form of punishment.  In hindsight, he supposed, it should have been obvious.   Why else would Dan be so fixated on punishing everyone around him?

Poor Dan, Chris thought sadly as he dumped a Styrofoam cup full of ice into a hotel towel and wrapped it around his smarting hand, You’ve been getting lots of painful punishments the entire time that I’ve known you, haven’t you? No wonder you’re always so mad all the time.

Chris got in the shower to prepare himself for bed.  While the hot water was running, he kept the towel full of ice wrapped around his hurt hand, and thought back to his junior year of high school. Back then, Dan was getting bullied a lot by some of the other kids at school.  At the height of this trend in Dan being targeted for abuse, a boy named Don Roger yanked Dan’s shorts down in front of the entire gym class, mocked his small genitals, and encouraged everyone to start calling him “the little prick.”

Dan pulled his pants back up pretty fast, but by that point, the damage was done.  Every kid in class was waving their pinkies around (to represent Dan’s smaller than average penis), while laughing their heads off and shouting, “little prick, little prick!” over and over again.  Chris had been standing behind Dan at the time, so he couldn’t say to what extent this mockery was an exaggeration.  However, during the event, he had glimpsed some pretty painful-looking black and blue marks on Dan’s butt.

While the kids laughed like crazy and lost their minds to the pure sadistic joy, that was degrading Dan until he his face was red like a tomato and he looked like he was about to cry.  Chris glowered furiously.  

“Dan…it looks like you hurt your bottom pretty bad...Did something happen?” Chris whispered cautiously.

“Shut up, you stupid, dumb IDIOT!  I fell down the stairs!” Dan shouted with fury and humiliation, punching Chris as hard as he could in the gut, and knocking the wind out of him, for daring to notice the bruises.   

Chris automatic assumption had been that Dan must have gotten kicked in the rump or shoved on his ass by someone at school, most likely Roger.  This realization filled Chris with rage, and a desire to avenge his best friend’s honor.  Chris wasted no time hunting down Roger after school and making an example of him. 

If there was one thing that Chris had learned from his years of serving as Dan’s sidekick, it was that some people deserve to be punished. 

Consumed by blind rage, Chris exacted violent vengeance on Dan’s tormenter.  It wasn’t until Rodger was a crumpled heap on the floor and Chris was standing over him with his fists covered in blood, that Chris felt satisfied.  The fucker was broken now.  He had been punished sufficiently.    

“Touch Dan again, and I’ll fucking kill you,” Chris warned, grabbing Rodger by the collar and shaking him.  They were in the hallway, in front of Rodger’s locker, and everyone was looking at them, but Chris didn’t care.  He didn’t care that people were filming him.  He didn’t care that he would be suspended for this, and kicked out of his clubs and the yearbook committee.  He didn’t care that someone had called the police. 

“Y-you’re fucking crazy, man!” Roger gasped in defiance, choking up blood.  Chris was huge for his age, and very strong.  Though he was typically very gentile and soft spoken, his considerable physical power could be extremely frightening once unleashed.

Chris sighed with regret, as he contemplated this event.  Kicking the crap out of Don Roger had been one of the most violent and personally damaging crimes that he’d ever committed in the name of Dan. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have let my emotions run away with me like that, Chris lamented as he lathered his light brown curls with the hotel shampoo, rinsed, and then, squired on some conditioner, Maybe Dan really is a bad influence.

Chris rinsed off and toweled dry.  Then, he dressed himself and walked back to the bed.  Here, Dan was sprawled out, snoring loudly.  He was grumbling angrily in his sleep and flopping around, taking up most of the bed.  Chris nudged him cautiously with his index finger, causing him to grunt and roll over on his side.  Seeing this, Chris could not help but smile gently and feel an affectionate warmth spread over his entire body.  Dan sure was cute….for an angry little misanthropic, criminally insane, pyromaniac.  

Chris climbed into bed and shut his eyes.  The not-so-gentile sound of Dan banging his head against the pillow, and cursing in his sleep, lulled Chris into a semi-conscious state. Chris had more patience for Dan than probably anyone else ever would, and this was because he understood that Dan’s angry self-destructive tantrums were fueled by trauma and pain.  Chris had always suspected this, even before he knew that Dan’s parents were beating him senseless twice a day.  He had always sensed the pain was there, lingering just beneath the surface.  There was vulnerability lurking behind those green eyes. It didn’t take a genius to see it.  Dan’s insecurity, isolation, emotional woundedness, and self-hatred were apparent.      

Having met Dan’s horrible mother, Chris now understood Dan’s gripe with humanity better than ever before.  Chris shut his eyes and tried not to imagine the cruel woman’s cold stare.  He tried not to imagine what life must have been like for Dan as a toddler— completely dependent on this woman for survival.  He tried not to imagine baby Dan waddling around a trashed apartment in a soiled diaper, hungry, hurt, and crying; baby Dan stepping over dead rodents and broken glass; hugging his teddy bear for dear life…because SHE wouldn’t hug him.   

“Dan…,” Chris squeaked incoherently in his sleep, “Don’t worry about the waffles…they’re…they’re alive…but they love you…SHE won’t know…she has too many…too many newspapers to file…”

Chris rolled over in his sleep and, without realizing it—without meaning to, put his arm around Dan.  Dan’s eyes shot open and his cheeks flushed pink.  Chris tightened his grip on Dan’s torso and nuzzled his chin against the top of Dan’s head.  Rather than attempt to break free, Dan shut his eyes and allowed himself to be lovingly spooned by the big fella.  Chris was so warm and strong, and he always smelled so good—right now he smelled like the fresh, citrusy hotel conditioner.  Chris made Dan feel so safe; so insulated from the evils of the world.  With Chris’ large body curled around him, Dan felt happy; complete; he felt like standing up and loudly shouting his love for Chris from the rooftops.  Dan would have laid with Chris that way for an eternity, if given a choice, but he couldn’t risk Chris finding out how badly he wanted this.  He would have to wiggle free before morning, and pretend like this never happened.

Chapter Text

Before dawn’s first light, Dan pried Chris’ big arm off of him, and scrambled out of bed.  Chris snorted in his sleep and rolled onto his belly. Dan’s green eyes narrowed with a mixture of arousal and impotent self-loathing, as he observed his sleeping sidekick’s big, round backside. Dan couldn’t help himself.  The way that the hotel blankets clung to the contours of Chris’s wide back and buttocks made it pretty much impossible NOT to leer at him. 

Chris’ broad shoulders rose and fell with every slow breath.  He grunted and kicked the blankets off of his bare feet, arching his back as he muttered something nonsensical about food.  Dan was entranced.  He sat at the edge of the bed and stared at Chris’ bare feet for hours.  This was a vulnerable bare patch of skin that Dan didn’t see often—the soles of Chris’ white feet, so pinky-pale and insulated from the sun.  For more than a few moments, Dan was tempted to behave as a true dick and wake Chris up by ticking him—or by smacking his fat ass—or both.

Eventually, Dan settled, for grabbing Chris’ shoulder and shaking him roughly: “HEY, Sleeping Ugly—Wake up!  We’ve got WORK TO DO!” 

“Agh!” Chris shouted with surprise.  His blue eye’s popped open and he rolled onto his back.  Then, he chided Dan for his dickish behavior with indignant and exasperated: “Dan!”

“I don’t pay you to get your beauty sleep,” Dan said, putting his hands on his hips and glowering demandingly.

“You don’t pay me—at all!”

“Well, you better not be thinking about unionizing.  Come on, let’s go.”

Chris sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“I had the strangest dream,” he said, “You were in it…”

“I was?” Dan inquired, actively trying not to sound too anxious about the idea.  Chris was dreaming about him?  Could this mean that Chris had a thing for him too?  Could this mean that there was a chance that Chris might want to be—more than friends?

“Yeah…in the dream…you were a big meat ball on top of a plate of spaghetti,” Chris said. 

“Uh…WHAT?” Dan muttered, sounding more than a little disappointed.  There was nothing less sexy than a horrifying humanoid meatball.

“Yeah, it was just a big meatball, about the size of a human head with your face on it…and the face was made of meat…and it was yelling a lot.  The meatball was on like…a really big plate of spaghetti…I think I mentioned that… the spaghetti pile was about as tall as I am.  You know, it’s a shame I left my dream encyclopedia at home.  I’d really like to know what that means…”

“It means you’re a dope,” Dan said.  He narrowed his eyes with annoyance, then he muttered, against his better judgment, “Ok, so what happened next?”  

“Well…then the Dan meatball started rolling down the pile of spaghetti, and screaming like crazy. You rolled through a sewer, and then a garbage dump.  Then, you got…all kinds of broken glass, bugs, and hairs and stuff stuck to you.  Then, a pterodactyl, swept down, and grabbed you, and dropped you in a big dirty toilet,” Chris said.

“Great.”

“Wait, I’m not finished,” Chris continued, “Then, this really fat guy covered in gross moles walked into the bathroom, where you were floating in the big toilet.  He used the toilet while you were screaming and floating in it.  Then, he flushed you.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” Dan muttered. 

“Hm…I wonder what it means.  You know I remember reading that meatballs represent money?  Maybe it means I’m going to get rich,” Chris mused optimistically, his eyes lighting up with joy, as he contemplated this potential future event.  

“Maybe it means you’re going to get—punched!” Dan snarled, balling his hands into fists.

Hearing this, Chris snorted with laughter.  Dan was positively incensed by this progression.  He bared his teeth like a rabid animal. 

“What are you LAUGHING at!” Dan snarled indignantly, his face going red with impotent rage.

“It’s funny that you’re mad about the meatball dream,” Chris chuckled pleasantly.

“Next time you dream of me, dream that I’m not a gross ball of soggy toilet meat!”

“I can’t control my subconscious mind, Dan.”

 “Enough of this incessant prattle—let’s focus on the plan!” Dan redirected.

Stupid Chris and his STUPID subconscious mind, Dan thought bitterly.  He pictured the crude spanking machine that he had cobbled together and left in Chris’ parents’ garage.  It was mostly just a paddle-shaped, cricket bat duct taped to an electric fan, and some restraints.  Drugging the unwilling victim would be necessary to tie him up.  Drugging Chris would be so easy—I bet he’d eat basically anything, if I told him it was food, Dan couldn’t help but muse deviously, “No, it’s designed to inflict a severely painful prolonged paddling.  Chris is too soft to endure that. And too precious.  I should probably just spank him with my hand.  No.  Shut up.  Stop being so gay. 

“Can we discuss the plan over breakfast?” Chris said.  His innocent blue eyes got that dreamy, pleady look that they always acquired when he was anticipating shamelessly stuffing his face.  

“Alright, fine,” Dan muttered, gathering up notes and blueprints, “But after that, its right back to your house to pick up those traps.  Since my mom’s been tipped off now, I figure we better start with my dad.”

Dan’s face split into an evil grin, and he cackled sadistically as he anticipated his long anticipated vengeance with delight: “I’m about to make that old bastard sorry that he was ever born.”

Chapter Text

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Chris inquired of Dan in a timid, apprehensive voice, straightening his tie. 

Chris was dressed up in one of his father’s old business suits.  The outfit included a pair of formal loafers, grey slacks, a grey suit jacket, and a white collared shirt with a blue tie.   Dan arched a dark eyebrow and assessed Chris’ disguise with a critical eye. 

“It’s missing something,” Dan said with a pensive little scowl.  Then he snapped his figures and exclaimed: “Ah, I’ve got it!  It’s the hair…”

Dan opened the medicine cabinet in Chris’ parents’ bathroom and started rooting around in it. 

“I don’t know about this, Dan…,” Chris pouted uncertainly, “Do you really think I’ll fool him?”

“Sure you will, just don’t Chris this up and you’ll do great,” Dan said with confidence, extracting a jar of hair grease from the medicine cabinet, and unscrewing the cap.  

“I resent that phrasing,” Chris said.  Dan removed some of the gel from the jar and spread it against Chris’ scalp.  Then he ran a comb through it, and smoothed back Chris’ light curls. 

“There.  Perfect,” Dan said with a grin.  Chris glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, and posed experimentally.  He assumed a serious scowl and checked a non-existent watch—as though he were a very important and busy businessman.  Then, he grinned in a very pleased-with-himself, Chris-like way, and spoiled the effect.  Dan handed him a briefcase. 

“Let’s go over the plan one more time.  How does it go?” Dan quizzed Chris in a serious tone, narrowing his green eyes critically.

“I meet your Dad at the place for a business lunch…we discuss…what does your Dad do?”

Dan shrugged:  “Corporate stuff.” 

“Um…right…I offer him the Champagne.  I drug the Champagne.  We toast.  After he looses consciousness…I put him in the trunk of my car.”

“Eh!  Wrong.  You have to put him in the back seat and tell people that it’s because he drank too much. It looks less suspicious that way,” Dan said with a casual smile, as though he were discussing something pleasant and mundane, like the weather. 

“But what if he wakes up?  What if someone sees him in my car and calls the police?” Chris fretted nervously. 

“Won’t happen.  There’s enough sedative in capsule to put down a bear,” Dan assured him.

“People can die from being drugged, Dan,” Chris said, “What if he dies?  Then, I’ll be a murderer!”

“Psh.  He won’t die.  You worry too much,” Dan assured him, “So, what’s next genius?”

“I drive him to the hotel room.  Tie him to the machine.  Turn it on.  And leave,” Chris recited uncertainly.    

“Great memory, A+,” Dan said, clapping Chris on the back.  Chris winced with surprised, and smiled uncertainly, flashing Dan the thumbs up.

“But just incase you forget where the hotel room is, I left instructions in your car,” Dan said.

“Good thinking.”   

“Now, go, GO—my minion!  Go get that son-of-a-bitch!” Dan exclaimed with a celebratory cackle.

Chapter Text

What followed was one of the most awkward, and unpleasant encounters of Chris’ life. 

“Uh…Mr. Mandel…thank you for meeting with me today…” Chris said, sticking out his hand for Dan’s dad to shake.  The older man frowned, and slowly, perhaps even reluctantly, shook Chris’ hand.  There was something, subtly menacing about the older man’s expression; about the way those thick, dark eyebrows furrowed with distain.  It made Chris choke on one of the free, pre-dinner, bread rolls he had been shoveling down.  Was Dan’s dad already suspicious of him? Chris choked and gasped for air.  Dan’s dad’s scowl deepened.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, quite,” Chris replied between spasms of choking up bread. ‘Yes, quite’…who says ‘yes, quite,’ Chris fretted internally. A fucking British guy, in period costume, with a top hat and a monocle, that’s who!  

Chris simpered nervously and pulled at the tight knot of his tie, with his index finger.   Dan’s dad stared daggers at him from across the table.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the policy of my firm,” Dan’s dad said, and then he proceeded to talk a lot of business nonsense that Chris didn’t fully understand.  Chris relaxed a little bit, as Dan’s dad droned on, and the boredom set in.  Maybe Dan’s dad really wasn’t suspicious of him.  Maybe sullen and intensely unpleasant was just his default setting.  

Every once in awhile Chris nodded in agreement and interjected with a non-incriminating comment like “Alright then,” or “Yes, I see.”

“Say, you look a little young to be the CEO of a multi-national corporation,” Dan’s dad observed with a degree of poorly disguised disgust, perhaps even a touch of jealousy.

“Uh-well, you see…uhh…Mr. Mandel, I have a condition that makes me look fifteen years younger than I actually am,” Chris blurted out nervously.

There was a period of awkward silence, after which, Dan’s dad must have decided that the statement had been intended as a joke.  Dan’s dad threw back his head and laughed heartily. 

“A condition that makes you look fifteen years younger, huh?  I’d like to catch that one!  Hahaha…for a second there, I actually believed you!  You just fuckin’ with me, kid?”

“Ha, guilty!  Yeah, I was just fuckin’ with you,” Chris laughed in reply, feeling emboldened, by Dan’s dad’s apparent lack of suspicion. Chris popped the cap on the Champaign, and quipped: “The real reason I look so young is nepotism!” 

Hearing this, Dan’s dad broke into a fresh spasm of laughter, and slammed his fist down on the table.

Chris poured the Champaign into two bottles.  While Dan’s dad appeared to be distracted, he pulled a vial from his suit jacket sleeve and dropped some white powder in one of the glasses.

Dinner arrived and Chris ate heartily.  He waited patiently for Dan’s dad to drop from the drug in his drink, but it never happened.  Dan’s dad picked the drink up and tipped it to his lips, Chris watched with anticipation, but apparently, the drug was taking its sweet, frustrating, nerve-wracking time.   Chris got up to go use the bathroom.  While he was away, Dan’s dad reached over the table, and quickly switched the drinks.   

Chris returned to the table and sat down.

Dan’s dad exclaimed, with celebratory gusto: “Let’s toast to—the future of the company!”

“To the future of the company!” Chris agreed. 

The two business men clinked their glasses together.  Then, they both drank down the Champaign.

Chris staggered a bit…the room wobbled and he felt ill.

“You alright, son?” Dan’s dad inquired with a tone of fatherly mock concern.

Chris staggered and his vision blurred.  Now, he was fighting to keep his head up.

“I…I don’t feel so good,” he whimpered.  Then, he collapsed face-first onto the table.

“You must have drank too much.  Do you need me to help you back to your car?” Dan’s dad said, in that same tone of fatherly mock concern.  He sounded just authentic enough to make Chris feel like a piece of shit for trying to drug him, yet…there was something in the old man’s eyes that didn’t match.  Chris couldn’t see the old man’s eyes.  The room was a disorienting swirl of noise and color.  The terrible throbbing in Chris’ skull didn’t leave room for any alarm bells.

“…Yes, please…,” Chris agreed with a disoriented squeak of distress.  Before he knew what was happening, Dan’s dad had put an arm around him, and started guiding him through the parking lot, back to his car. 

“It’s alright, he’s just had a little too much to drink,” Dan’s dad assured someone in the parking lot. Chris wasn’t sure who, by this point, his eyes were shut.

“Poor dear…does he need an ambulance?” 

“No, there’s no need to worry.  I’ll get him home safe and sound.”

That was the point at which, Chris blacked out. 

Chapter Text

When Chris came to, he was in an awkward position, face down, in a dark room.  He tried to move his hands, but he found that he could not.  Something was restricting his movement.  He tried to stand up, but once again, he found that his movement was seriously restricted. 

The lights were flipped on.  Chris was disoriented for a moment, but once his eyes adjusted, it became painfully apparent that his predicament was dire.  His body had been bent over, and bound to a chair with rope.  The ropes were forcing him into a vulnerable, undignified position, with his knees bent, his rump elevated, and his head bowed.  Chris panicked and struggled against the restraints.  His heart raced.  Though, thankfully, he seemed to be fully clothed, he knew that nothing good could come of this unexpected turn of events.  

Now hopelessly immobilized, Chris watched with a look of helpless terror as Dan’s dad stepped into the light, snarling dangerously.

“You tried to fucking drug me, didn’t you?” Dan’s dad growled, holding up a piece of paper.  Chris recognized the paper as the directions to the hotel room that Dan had left for him in the car. 

“I…no—that’s not true!  Please!  Let me go!” Chris blurted out desperately, struggling uselessly against the tight restraints.

“Don’t fucking LIE to me, kid.  I know that DAN sent you,” Dan’s dad muttered exhaustedly. Then, he read the note on the back of the directions that Dan had left in the car out loud: “Dear Chris, My dad must pay…blah blah blah…I’m a little dick head…blah blah blah… after you tie him up tell him that ‘This is from Dan’ and then turn the machine on and leave…Remember, don’t CHRIS it up.”

Chris realized, with a pang of embarrassment, that he had gotten himself hooked up to the spanking machine instead of Dan’s father.  He could feel the stationary cricket paddle resting against the seat of his formal slacks.  All Dan’s dad had to do was turn the machine on and he would receive the ass beating of a lifetime.  

“I’m sorry, ok!  Dan told me to do it!” Chris pleaded desperately.

“Yeah, I know he did.  You two idiots made that abundantly clear, didn’t you?” Dan’s dad said.  Throwing down Dan’s letter with victorious disgust.  

“Mr. Mandel…you seem like a reasonable man. Let me go…please,” Chris squeaked, trembling and looking extremely pathetic, with his pleading blue puppy dog eyes.

Dan’s dad was silent for a moment, as though considering this option.  While anxiously awaiting a response, Chris dared to hope that this was just a scare tactic and that he would be released.  Perhaps the old man was not as devious as his son.  

“Nah.  I don’t think I will,” Dan’s dad concluded with smirk, after a long pause, for dramatic effect, “I think I’d like to see you get the punishment you deserve.  Oh, and when my son come back here and finds you, relay him this message for me, would you?”

“Uh…sure,” Chris replied uncertainly.

Dan’s dad switched on the machine, and the fan swung in a swift, quick arch, launching the paddle at Chris’ elevated rear.  Chris let out an undignified cry of pain, as the paddle spanked his rump, badly stinging his cheeks even through his pants and underwear.

“Tell him—HE’S NEXT.”

With those words, Dan’s dad exited the hotel room, and drove away, leaving Chris to be mercilessly paddled by Dan’s nefarious device.

Chapter Text

As soon as Chris heard the hotel door slam and lock, a sensation of sinking dread constricted his heaving chest.  He cried out for help and struggled against the restraints, but this lame escape attempt proved a futile endeavor.  Chris found that he had no choice but to give up and submit to his humiliating fate.  He was going to be paddled by Dan’s janky revenge gadget whether he liked it or not. 

At first the intermittent WHAP sound of the paddle smacking Chris’ backside, was followed by a mild sting, which slowly faded to nothing.  Each fresh WHAP reintroduced a fresh spasm of shameful, punitive butt hurt.  Chris whimpered and clenched his butt cheeks reflexively, but he could still take this punishment without hollering.  He bit his lip and resolved to endure his licks with as much dignity as possible until Dan returned to set him free…whenever that was going to happen.  Chris was confident that this would happen eventually, as he knew that Dan had planed to return at some point, after his father’s capture, and gloat over his successful revenge scheme. 

Hours passed and Dan did not return.  Chris was experiencing more and more intense and lingering pain with each whack of the paddle.  Soon, he could not stop himself from letting out an undignified holler of pain after each smack.

“Agh!—Ow!—OH!—Ouch!” Chris yelped each time he was struck. He trembled and whimpered, whiling hoping and praying that Dan would return and rescue him soon. 

Tears welled in Chris’ eyes.  Dan was going to be so pissed that he managed to screw the plan up so royally.  Dan was going to yell, and call Chris a moron, and after that he was going to make fun of him forever.  Dan would never let him forget this.  Chris anticipated that he would never live down this humiliating slapstick blunder.

“Ah!—Ooh!—Ow!—Oww!” Chris flinched and yelped as his already severely spanked tush endured a prolonged and relentless beating.  His butt felt hot and sore, stingy, bruised, and achy.  The painful discomfort lingered even when he wasn’t being struck.  Tears rolled down Chris’ face and he started to sob, with loud, dignity-forgotten abandon.  He cried until his eyes were red and his nose was runny.  He cried until his vision blurred and his head hurt; until his throat was raw from bellowing with despair.  But still, Dan did not return.    

Chapter Text

“Aaagghhhhh!”

Dan felt extremely pleased with himself when he heard the screams coming from the hotel room.  Right now, his father was probably receiving a hearty dose of his own medicine.  Maybe by this point, he was even feeling repentant for subjecting Dan to so many severe beatings over the years.  Maybe he was feeling like a big, stupid, JERK.

“Aaaghh!—OWWIE!—Wah ha haaa!—I want my Mooommy!”

“Huh…wait a minute…my dad sounds a lot like……CHRIS!”

Dan’s fumbled for the hotel key in his pocket and unlocked the door as fast as he could. Inside, Chris was bound to the spanking machine, and getting hit hard by the pivoting paddle.  He yelled out each time he was struck, as tears rolled down his red face.  He was sobbing, trembling, and whimpering.  The machine had somehow managed to spank a smoking hole in his formal slacks and underwear. 

“DAN!  HELP!” Chris exclaimed between loud yelps of pain.

“CHRIS!” Dan cried out, scrambling over to his faithful buddy and quickly, switching off the spanking machine.     

“Wah haahaaaa…,” Chris sniffled, as Dan pulled a switch blade from the pocket of his jeans and quickly sawed through the ropes that bound Chris to the chair.

Chris straightened up and his hands flew to his wounded backside.

“Ow…ow…ow…”

“What the hell happened?” Dan exclaimed with exasperation, glowering dangerously and tightening his hands into fists.

“I’m sorry Dan….,” Chris whimpered between humiliated sobs of pain, “He tricked me…I-I fucked it up.”

Dan’s expression softened.  It was hard to stay mad at Chris, when he was crying like a big, stupid baby.  Chris was just so goddamn adorable.  Useless.  But adorable.

“Hey, it’s ok.  Don’t cry,” Dan said in a soft, comforting tone, while looking extremely guilty.  It was Dan’s fault, after all, that Chris had gone up against the cunning old man to begin with, “Never send a Chris to do a Dan’s job….I’ll get the old bastard myself next time.  Dry those tears and suck it up already.  It’s not that bad.”

Chris sniffled and said: “…I’m hurt, Dan!  I think my tailbone’s broken...”

Dan sighed, and then, said softly: “Ok, fine…let me see your boo-boos.”

Chris whimpered and removed his hand from his backside.  His pants were ripped open and his spanked cheeks were on display.  His exposed rump looked red, shiny, welted, and raw.

“Ouch…that looks like it hurts bad,” Dan said, with a worried frown, “Why don’t you lie down.  I’ll bring you an ice pack and a donut.”

“T-thanks, Dan,” Chris sniffled gratefully.

Chris laid down on his belly on the little sofa in the hotel room.  He rubbed his smarting backside and trembled brokenly.  Dan patted the big guy’s big arm awkwardly, and passed him the half-eaten box of donuts from the hotel fridge.

Chris had never been spanked before in his life, and he wasn’t accustomed to the lingering, stingy, sore, throbbing ass pain that frequently-disciplined Dan had grown numb to.  He had never experienced sitting on bruises all day at school, or not being able to lay comfortable on his back at night. 

“Owwww…Dan, do you really get hit like this every day?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder you’re so mean…”

Dan put some ice from the hotel fridge into a paper towel and set the make-shift ice pack down on Chris’ red bottom.  Then, he threw a blanket over Chris to obscure his nudity.

“There now, you’re ok, buddy.  Don’t cry, ok?” Dan said with uncharacteristic gentleness, gripping Chris’ hand in his for a moment, “It makes you look like a dork.”

Chris sniffled, Dan’s comforting had calmed him slightly, but the tears were still trickling down his red face: “How long does it usually hurt like this…”

“It can hurt for days,” Dan said quietly, as he recalled the many, many times he’d been spanked severely for various infractions.  He recalled the lingering sting in his backside, and the painful sitting.

“That means I’ll be probably still be hurting on my birthday,” Chris said, with a tearful frown.

Dan had forgotten completely about Chris’ birthday. 

“Oh, right? When is it, again?”

“Thursday,” Chris answered, “I’ll be turning 18.”

“Wow,” Dan murmured pensively, as he recalled the first time he’d met Chris.  It had been many, many years ago, in summer camp, when the two men were both still small children, “Time sure flies.”

Dan left Chris like that, face down on the mattress, in the hotel room, quivering and whimpering with pain.  It was too hard to look at Chris in that state and not feel a torrent of complicated, confusing, intensely homosexual feelings.  At that age, Dan found his annoying, unwanted attraction to big, strong, muscular, hairy, masculine men—deeply shameful.  More than anything, he just wanted to be normal, and like girls, like he was supposed to. 

As hard as he tried, however, Dan just couldn’t force himself to give a crap about girls.  Of course, there was always social pressure to pretend.  Dan was keen on the idea of attaining a beautiful woman, purely as a fashion accessory.  This woman would not be his lover, she would be a trophy of his success.  She would serve the function of making lesser men jealous of him.  Dan’s dream was not to make love to her, but rub her in everyone’s face with spiteful glee, and then say: “Ha!  Whose the loser, now?  You LOSERS!”

Dan walked out to the balcony, and sighed, as his treacherous gay brain hyper fixated on the recent memory of Chris’ bare ass.  Chris’ big, strong, broad, hairy, muscular, masculine ass.  The mental image sent shivers down Dan’s spine.  He felt his wiener grow stiff with an intense and undignified yearning.  This was a feeling that he wished to disown completely.  Dan hated himself for salivating over this big, strong, manly dude’s red, shiny, paddled ass.  Dan despised himself for not being able to erase the sultry image from his mind.

“Gahh!” Dan screamed out in frustration, and he bashed his own head against the railing several dozen times. 

Stop it!  Stop thinking about him like that!  Stop it you stupid JERK!  I hate you!  I hate you!  I HATE YOU! DIE!  DIE and BURN IN HELL!, Dan thought viciously, as he smashed his own head against the metal railing again and again.  He didn’t feel the pain at first, just a trickle of blood.

“Screw you, GOD!” Dan shouted at the sky, shaking his fist with mindless, petulant rage.

Dan paused for a moment, as though waiting for God to reply, but all he heard were a few seagulls, that had perched themselves on the roof of the hotel. 

Wasn’t it bad enough that you had to make me short and ugly, with a four-and-a-half inch dick—you had to make me A FREAK too!, Dan thought furiously.  Then, he pulled the note pad from the back pocket of his jeans, and scribbled a quick note, “Well, Don’t worry!  You’ll get yours!  Right after I’m done with my parents!”

Chapter Text

“Never send a Chris to do a Dan’s job,” Dan grumbled, walking back into the hotel room, and cracking his knuckles menacingly. 

Chris paused his undignified stress eating to ask meekly: “Dan, are you ok?  I heard you out there screaming.”

“Shut up.”

“But Dan…,” Chris attempted to interrupt again.

“I said—SHUT UP.  I’m thinking,” Dan snapped, as he paced the room, racking his brain for a fresh revenge plot, something smarter, something that his dad would never see coming.    Dan thought back to the dirty letter that he had written to his mother, during the early planning stages of his revenge scheme.

Dan removed the letter from his pocket.  He read the letter over again, and slammed it down on a table.  Then, he cackled diabolically, and crossed his mother’s name out, with a black pen. 

“It’s too perfect,” Dad said out loud, “How did I not think of this before?”

“Think of what before?”

“Susanne,” Dad said, with a sadistic smirk.

“Who?”

“My Dad’s new wife.  The one that’s too young for him, whose using him for his money.  Her name is Susanne.  I can use her against him.”

“Really...how?” Chris asked curiously, as he finished off the box of donuts.  He shifted into a sitting position, and winced, as a jolt of pain shot through his injured backside, prompting him to yelp and stand up abruptly. 

“My parents would be suspicious of a letter like this.  They know me too well…they’ll be expecting it.  But Susanne…how do I put this delicately…Susanne has the intellect of a lobotomized chimpanzee.”

“That’s really delicate, Dan.”

“Oh, right, and she smells like one too,” Dan doubled down, “It’s too easy really…all I have to do is put her name on this letter…or something like it…and entice her into my trap.  Once I trap her and ship her to Siberia, she’ll be a missing person.   And once she’s a missing person, who do you think are suspect number one and two?”

“Your Mom and Dad,” Chris pointed out with an exhausted sigh, rubbing his behind with both hands.

“Exactly!  Think about it, they’ll think my dad killed her because she was cheating on him with a younger man…OR they’ll think my mom killed her because she’s jealous of her being with my dad.  Cops are so lazy and stupid…they’ll never figure out that it was really us.  It’s perfect really…hee hee…they always suspect the spouse first.”

“I don’t know about this, Dan…kidnapping…human trafficking…framing your parents for murder.  Your new plan sounds highly illegal.”

“It’s only illegal if you get caught, Chris” Dan assured Chris dismissively.  He spoke in the patronizing tone of an adult explaining primary colors to a toddler. 

“So, what if we get caught?”

“We won’t get caught,” Dan assured Chris with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“No, Dan. Ok, you’ve gone far enough.  I refuse to be a part of this anymore,” Chris said, crossing his arm in defiance.  His eyes were still red from crying, which really spoiled the expression of stern disapproval that he had been aiming for.  What showed on his face instead was more of a wounded pout.     

“Oh, come on.  You’re really going to chicken out now?”

“No.  I draw the line at kidnapping an innocent person.”

“She’s not an innocent person.  She’s Susanne.”

“I won’t do it, Dan.  She’s not responsible for your terrible upbringing.  She’s go nothing to do with this,” Chris complained.

“You talk about her like she’s a human being.  She’s just a plastic object that my father owns.  Getting rid of her is like blowing up his car or something.  He probably won’t even care that much.”

“Dan!  I am hurt.  And I am humiliated.  And I am done playing revenge games with you, Dan.  I am done.  Ok.  No.  No more revenge plots.  I really mean it this time,” Chris pouted, cradling his smarting backside with both hands.

“Oh, yeah, well you’re a big, wimpy, push over, cry baby!  If you were a real man, you wouldn’t take what my dad did to you sitting down!  You’d stand up and FIGHT!”

“You know what, Dan.  I’d rather be a big, wimpy, push over, cry baby if that means I get to stay out of prison,” Chris pouted miserably, “You’re not going to bully me into doing this.  I told you already, I’m done.” 

“Aw, come on, please,” Dan pleaded, leaning in close, and batting his big green eyes at Chris, “I’ll let you detonate the fireworks.”

“Wait…fireworks are a part of this plan?  How does that make any sense?”  

“It’s part of phase two of my plan. Also, there will be cake.”

“Well……I guess I could do it if there’ll be cake,” Chris finally gave in, though he sounded a little unsure of his questionable decision.

Chapter Text

“Oh, shit! Oh no! Oh NO!  WHY did I agree to this!” Chris squealed as a mountain of fireworks detonated, all at once.  Chris was deafened by the resulting boom.  He jump out of the way to avoid being set on fire, tripped and landed face-first on the asphalt.

 By this point The Mundo Mart parking lot was littered with detonated explosives, and smashed birthday cakes.  The surrounding buildings were all on fire.  Chris coughed and wheezed, feeling dizzy from smoke inhalation.  Dan was nowhere in sight. 

“D…dan!” Chris wheezed between fits of coughing.  Their intended target, Dan’s step mom, had never made an appearance.  Instead, Dan’s ridiculous trap had been set off by a family of squirrels. 

The resulting crescendo, was a great deal more dangerous and destructive than Dan had intended.  The entire block was in flames.  Another stack of fireworks detonated, and a nearby building collapsed.  Chris was trapped under the rubble.  He screamed for help, but this merely sucked more smoke into his lungs, making him dizzy and lightheaded.  Chris’s vision blurred, and he struggled to free his bloody leg from the pile of rubble, fighting hard to stay conscious.

“Heelp!  Somebody help me!  Daaan!”

…

“Dancing Shadow.”

Having just completed training, Elise Pearson, was ready to embark on her first ever spy mission. 

Hearing her code name spoken by the boss, through her wrist communicator, Elise tensed, and waited attentively for further instructions.

“There is an emergency situation on 6^th street.  A fire has spread to several homes and businesses in the area.  Local fire fighters are currently struggling to neutralize the spread of the destruction.  However, its source seems to be the Mundo Mart parking lot, where two terrorists, continue to launch explosives.  Your mission is to apprehend the two perpetrators and neutralize the threat.”

Elise looked down at the screen on her watch to view the photos of the two perpetrators.  They appeared to be two young men in their late teens or early twenties.  One was short and dark haired, and the other big, broad, and handsome with striking blue eyes. Elise committed their faces to memory.  Then, suited up to embark on her mission.   

…

“Help!  Heeelp!  I’m going to die!  Oh God!  Oh GOD! I’m going to die!” Christ whaled as he struggled to free himself from the rubble.  Through the smoke, he could no longer see more than two inches away from his face.  In a few minutes he would either die of smoke inhalation or be consumed by the fames and be burnt to a cinder.  This was it.  This was the end.

Chris wept loudly and went limp from exhaustion.  He thought about his short, wasted life.  He thought about Dan—Dan’s wicked smile and his fuck-up, neglected teeth—Dan’s maniacal laughter.  

Just when Chris thought all hope was lost, just when he thought he might hear Dan’s laughter again in Hell—he saw her.  A curvaceous woman dressed in black.  She was wearing a gas mask, and running straight for him, with her gun raised.

“Who do you work for?” 

Chris coughed, and whimpered, flopping his teary face back down onto the broken pavement.

The woman lowered her gun.

“Young man, do you require assistance?”

“I’m hurt…please help me.  And Dan…you have to help D-dan…” Chris pleaded pathetically, his blue eyes were streaming with tears.  He didn’t LOOK like a terrorist, or like a spy from a rival agency.  Of course, looks could be deceiving.

Elise hesitated for a moment, while every female instinct that she possessed was screaming at her to rescue this handsome stranger, regardless of his potential enemy affiliation.  He didn’t look dangerous.  He looked scared and hurt.  And endearingly pathetic.  If this was an enemy honey trap.  Then it was a damn effective one. 

Elise knelt down and put a gas mask over Chris’ face.  Then, she freed his injured leg from the rubble.      

“Sir, can you stand?

“I—I think so…” Chris stammered wiping tears away from his face. He limped and staggered, so the woman put her arm around him, and allowed him to lean on her as she moved through the fire.  

“Remain calm.  We’re going to get out of here,” the woman said. 

“But what about Dan?” Chris squeaked with dismay. 

“Your accomplice is likely dead,” the woman informed him in a cold professional tone.

“No, NO!  I can’t accept that!” Chris bellowed in despair.  “Please…he’s not a bad guy!  I mean…he did all of this, but I swear he’s not bad!  He just needs help!”

Elise led Chris out of the fire and to a clear stretch of grass where a black van was parked.  Before Chris knew what was happening, the woman had flipped him around and cuffed his wrists behind his back. 

“Get in the van.”

“Ah, y-yes ma’am,” Chris squeaked timidly, and then he followed this instruction.  Jumping into the back of the van, and allowing himself to be easily apprehended. 

“I’ll go back and find this…DAN.” 

Chapter Text

“Chris!”  Dan called out as he staggered through the smoke and the flames.  He felt dizzy and lightheaded.  He pulled his black shirt up over his nose and mouth to delay the smoke inhalation, but this did little to help.  The flaming parking lot was spinning around him. Chris was no where to be seen.  The big fella was lost in the flames—probably roasted like a big, juicy, Thanks-giving turkey, by this point. 

Dan refused to believe that Chris was dead.  Dan opened his mouth to call out for his trusty sidekick again, but this only caused him to suck in smoke and debris.  His eyes watered and he dropped to his knees, coughing and wheezing.  Suddenly, a curvaceous woman in a black body suit, and a gas mask, leapt out of nowhere and tackled him. 

Before Dan knew what was happening, he was face-down in the cement.  The woman pressed her knee to the small of his back while he flailed and try to claw at her skin. She grabbed his arms, and with a great deal of difficulty, somehow managed to handcuff them behind his back.

“Chris!” Dan shouted out as he continued to flail and struggle.  Tears gathered in his eyes but he fought them furiously.  He refused—he REFUSED to believe that Chris was DEAD. “CHHHRRIISSS!”

“Chris is safe,” the woman assured him in a serious, businesslike tone, “Now stop struggling and come with me before you get us both killed.”

Dan wasn’t calmed by this masked stranger’s reassurance, and he wasn’t about to stop struggling or follow instructions.  Instead, he kicked and flailed like a rabid, cornered animal, prompting the woman to press a stun gun to the back of his neck, and incapacitate him.  Dan’s body jerked reflexively in response to the electric shock, and he went limp.  This woman was surprisingly strong.  She was able to pick Dan up and run with him over her shoulder.  

The disorienting sound of fireworks igniting filled the air as the flames spread.  The woman opened the back of a black van and unceremoniously chucked Dan’s limp little body inside.  Dan heard the trunk of the van snap shut and lock.  In the next instant, the van was moving at a breakneck speed. 

“Dan!” a deep familiar voice gasped with alarm.  Dan recognized the voice immediately as belonging to Chris. Dan breathed a sigh of relief, as bad as things seemed right now, at the very least Chris wasn’t dead. 

Dan sat up and struggled uselessly against his restraints, grumbling petulantly as he did so.

“…Dan!  I’m so glad that you’re alive!” Chris exclaimed with relief. A pair of tears ran down his face.  He sniffled.  He looked like he wanted to hug Dan, but he couldn’t with his arms handcuffed behind his back.  So he just smiled and said: “I thought you were dead for sure…”

“No time for that kind of talk now.  We have to get out of this van, before that woman murders us!” Dan shouted with alarm while still attempting to pull his hands free from his restraints. 

“Dan…I don’t think she’s going to murder us.  She just saved our lives,” Chris said, in the same calm responsible tone that he usually used while trying to talk Dan down. 

“Stranger danger, Chris,” Dan growled suspiciously, “Nothing good ever came from being forcibly handcuffed and thrown in the trunk of a van.”

“That’s a fair point…,” Chris conceded reluctantly.  He looked a bit foolish trying to argue that they were now safe, while his face was still wet with tears and his hands were cuffed behind his back, “But maybe…the pretty lady is nice?” 

“You are just the kind of guy who would catch Stockholm syndrome after 10 minutes of being kidnapped,” Dan grumbled rolling his green eyes all the way back in his head with irritation, “She’s probably about to torture us.”

“I think it’s more likely that she wants to help us.  If it wasn’t for her, we’d be dead, Dan,” Chris contradicted in that infuriatingly fatherly, responsible voice.  This was a tone of voice that someone as immature and irresponsible as Chris had NO BUSSINESS using, which made it all-the-more irritating to Dan at this moment.

Dan managed to slip one of his handcuffs off and free his left hand. 

“How’d you do that?” Chris asked in a small, surprised voice as Dan removed a safety pin from the pocket of his black trench coat, and started picking the lock on his other cuff.

“Double jointed,” Dan grunted distractedly as he concentrated on picking the lock of his remaining handcuff.

“Dan, I really think we should just stay handcuffed and be nice, polite hostages,” Chris suggested timidly.  

“Shut up, stupid.  If we don’t escape, we’re headed for jail or worse.  Now hold still, so I can pick your cuffs,” Dan muttered, flinging off his remaining handcuff.

“Dan….,” Chris protested meekly, as Dan started picking the locks on Chris’ handcuffs with the hairpin. 

“Now listen to me, ok?  I’m the brains and you’re the muscle,” Dan said, managing to unlock Chris’ left cuff with surprising speed.  Chris watched with amazement as Dan moved to the right cuff, and quickly unlocked that one as well.  Dan’s mental health problems made it easy for Chris to forget that Dan was actually really smart.  Maybe Dan really did know what he was talking about.  Maybe the pretty lady really WAS evil.

“I’m the brains…you’re the muscle, got that?” Dan repeated, pulling off Chris’ cuffs, and throwing them on the floor.

Chris nodded obediently and massaged his sore wrists.

“When, that woman comes back here again, I want you to tackle her, and throw her in the back of the van, then run like hell,” Dan said.

“Dan!  I’m not going to beat up a tiny woman!” Chris complained indignantly.

“Well, I’d do it, but it’s already been established that she can kick MY ass.  There’s no way she could overpower you though,” Dan said.

“No, Dan,” Chris muttered crossing his arms in defiance.

“Well, if you’re going to be a big crybaby about it, you don’t have to beat her up.  You can just restrain her,” Dan groaned with annoyance.

“No, Dan.  I’m not going to restrain the woman that saved my life, ok?” Chris protested, “It’s not polite.”

“Not ‘polite’? Well, excuse me.  I didn’t realize that I was locked in the back of this van with the queen of England,” Dan grumbled.

“Before we commit more crimes, Dan…at least let her talk to us first.  I want to find out who she is and what she wants,” Chris said.  Dan didn’t like the way that stars danced in Chris’ blue eyes when he said that.  It was apparent to him already that Chris was a little too intrigued by the thought of getting to know their kidnapper.

After what must have been an hour, the van rolled to a stop.  Dan heard the sound of their kidnapper’s black boots tapping against the ground, then, the sound of the trunk being unlocked and thrust open.  A flood of light from the outside rushed in. 

Realizing that he couldn’t depend on Chris in this situation, Dan immediately jumped at the chance to attack the woman in black.  He flung himself at her with his fists raised but before he had the chance to strike her, Chris promptly tackled him, and pinned him to the ground with the considerable weight of his large body.

The woman in black aimed her gun at Chris’ head.

“HOW did you get free? Who do you work for?” The woman demanded.

Chris kept the struggling Dan pinned, and replied in a shaky voice: “Don’t shoot! Please!  It wasn’t my idea to take the cuffs off!  It was Dan!  I said we should be nice, polite, hostages and leave the handcuffs on but he didn’t listen!  I’ll put the handcuffs back on, if you want!  You can take me to jail!  I’m sorry!”

“Are you associated with any terrorist organization?” the woman asked, keeping her gun trained on Chris’ head.

“No…no we’re not part of a terrorist organization!  We’re not part of a terrorist organization, I swear!  Let me explain!”  Chris sat up and hugged the flailing, struggling, furious Dan to his chest.

“Let me go, moron!” Dan shouted, then, he bit Chris on the arm with his nubby little teeth causing the larger man to yelp and release him.  Before Dan could scurry away, however, the woman aimed her gun at him, and fired. 

The woman’s weapon turned out to be a stun gun.   Instead of a bullet, it released a prong, which electrocuted Dan and caused him to go limp.

“I’m really sorry about him,” Chris said.  He handed a pair of the open cuffs back to the woman, got on his knees, and held his wrists out, “Look, you can cuff me again.  You saved our lives, and what we did was wrong so…if you’re going to send us to jail, then I won’t resist. We…deserve it.”

The woman hesitated for a moment.  Then, lowered her weapon.  She then removed her gas mask and head covering.  Underneath, she was young and pretty with a heart-shaped face and short, brown hair.  Her stern scowl softened slightly.  She looked down at Chris with large, glistening eyes, fill with inadvisable sympathy. 

Dan groaned and twitched, now immobile on the ground.  His body sparked.  He turned his attention to the woman in black.  Even in his current state of physical distress, he could recognize the woman’s expression for what it was—it was her recognizing that Chris was, objectively speaking, what most people would consider to be, a very attractive man.      

“Do you have a form of identification?” the woman asked Chris in that same, cold, business-like tone.  Dan could see her eyes though, and her eyes betrayed her—large and glistening—pupils dilated.  This woman was lost in Chris’ blue eyes, and soft curls—his wide shoulders, strong arms, and deep, calm, mellow voice.  She was feeling feelings for Chris, clearly.  And who could blame her?  Dan knew those feelings all too well.

“My driver’s license is in my wallet.  You can take it out yourself, if you don’t trust me to reach into my back pocket,” Chris said. 

Dan decided that this woman must have been a cop.  A plain clothes cop.  That was the most likely explanation.  He watched with irritation as she patted Chris down to check for weapons.  Chris flinched and flushed when her tiny hands patted his rump.  Dan gritted his teeth and tried to fight his stun-gun-induced paralysis.  The audacity of this pig, putting her hands on Chris like that!  Who did she think she was exactly?

The woman removed Chris’ wallet from his back pocket.  She opened the wallet, removed Chris’ driver’s license and scanned it with the device on her arm.  Then she put it back in the wallet and handed the wallet back to him.

“Ok, I’m listening,” the woman said in that same businesslike tone, “Tell me your story.

Seeing that the woman wasn’t about to cuff him again, Chris withdrew his wrists and sat down in the grass, pulling his knees up to his chest with his arms.  He bit his lower lip with is gap teeth and muttered under his breath, “Owwie.”

“Sir, are you injured at all?” The woman asked.

“Uh…no.  I wasn’t badly burned in the fire,” Chris replied, looking a bit embarrassed and fidgeting on his spanked bottom.  He shifted in the grass so that the pressure was on his knees and calves, “But thanks for asking.”

Dan stared up at the blue sky as Chris proceeded to spill his guts to this nosey cop lady.  Chris told her every detail of their plot down to the kind of clothes that he had selected for the occasion, and what he had for breakfast that morning.  Also, to Dan’s chagrin, Chris threw in every detail of their friendship starting with how they met at summer camp.  Chris paraphrased every conversation they ever had about how Dan’s parents deserved to suffer—he talked about the beatings, the cigarette burns, the decapitation of Dan’s childhood teddy bear—all of the embarrassing, personal trauma shit that Dan had chosen to share with Chris and Chris alone.  Nobody else was supposed to know about any of that.  Dan felt humiliated and violated as he lay there, powerless to stop idiot Chris from blabbing all of his (Dan’s) embarrassing secrets to this shapely woman he just met.  The woman nodded and looked down at Chris sternly.  She seemed to be holding some kind of a recording device, which she was using to document every word that Chris said. 

“I know it was wrong, and that a bunch of homes and businesses were destroyed.  And I know I deserved to be punished for that…I do.  I just…I did it because I wanted to help Dan, you know…we’ve been friends for a really long time, and he has a really rough home life.  I never meant for it to get this out of control.  I just didn’t want to see Dan hurt anymore,” Chris squeaked apologetically.  At the part where he said he didn’t want to see Dan hurt anymore, Chris’ blue eyes welled with involuntary tears, and started spilling over his face.

Chris sniffled and tried to wipe the tears away before the woman could notice.  However, the woman noticed immediately.  She took a pack of tissues from her pocket and handed them to Chris.

“T-thank you,” Chris sniffled as he removed a tissue from the back and used it to clean up his face.  Chris blew his nose, then asked: “Are you going to take us to jail now?”

The woman sat down in the grass, next to Chris.  She turned toward him, and replied: “I thought about it, and I decided…nah.”

“What, r-really?”

“You seem like a good kid,” The woman said, “I think I can let you and your friend with the rough home life off with a warning.”

“Oh gosh…wow.  I really appreciate it…thank you, ma’am.”

Dan cringed as the woman boldly tussled Chris’ hair: “No more explosives, alright? Keep your nose clean.”

“I’ll be good from now on, I promise,” Chris assured her in a tone of voice that made Dan a little sick to his stomach.  It was clear to Dan that Chris was attracted to this woman, by the way that he spoke to her and looked at her—by the way that he called her ma’am.

“You better,” The woman said, tapping him on the arm playful, “Oh, and I’m Elise by the way.

“Elise…that’s a pretty name,” Chris replied awkwardly, flushing slightly. 

“Yeah, a pretty STUPID name!” Dan contradicted him from the ground.  With some effort, Dan shook off his stun-gun-induced paralysis, and staggered back to his feet. 

“Do you have a problem with my name, Dan?” Elise muttered with irritation, standing up as well. 

Dan stepped between Elise and Chris, creating a physical barrier between them.  Then he replied with a hostile tone and a threatening glare, getting in her face: “I have a problem with a lot of things.”

Chris stood up as well: “Dan, be nice.  She’s doing us a favor.”

“Don’t tell me what to be, Chris.”

“I’m so sorry about him, ma’am,” Chris said to Elise, “He’s just threatened by beautiful women.”

Hearing Chris call her “a beautiful woman” made Elise giggle and blush.  Witnessing the obscene spectacle made Dan feel as though her were about to projectile vomit. 

“What you think SHE’S beautiful.  Psh.  Maybe on planet ugly,” Dan grumbled miserably, kicking a rock into the distance.

Chris and Elise had gravitated closer together.  As much as Dan wanted to stop it, he knew that he was powerless to stop it.  No matter how badly Dan wanted it, Chris was never going to fall in love with some short ugly GUY.  This was inevitable, and yet, Dan was unable to contain his pulse pounding hatred for Elise.  It was a hatred that made him want to claw his own eyes out—just so that he didn’t have to look at her standing so close to Chris—smiling at Chris, looking at Chris.  She had no business being ANYWHERE near Chris. 

“Did you say that your friend’s father is…Daniel Mandel?” Elise said.  Dan snapped back to reality, and started paying attention to their conversation again.

“Uh…yeah…why, is that important?” Chris asked.

“Daniel Mandel is an enemy of my—uh um…of the police force…yeah,” Elise said.

“So he’s a common enemy,” Chris asked.

“That’s right,” Elise confirmed, “So that means…our goals are aligned.”

“So that means…” Chris trailed off.

“That means I’d like to help you,” Elise confirmed with a smile.