The phone rang and woke him up. Val’s hand groped out, smacked about his nightstand until he found it and pushed the button to turn it on. “Yeah.” He mumbled out, trying to wake enough to read the glowing green numbers on his alarm clock.

“Val?” A small, obviously upset voice whispered across the line.

“Trist? It’s,” he lifted his head and squinted. “God, it’s three twenty, what’s wrong?”

There was a snuffling sob before Trist could speak again. “I’m sorry, I can’t make it stop, I can’t, and there’s blood everywhere, I…”

Val sat straight up and was turning the nightstand light on instantly. “Stay put, don’t move, I’ll be there in a moment. Okay?”

Another sob. “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Stay still! I’m on my way.” He clicked off the phone and dropped it on the bed. Visions of pools of blood and a dead Trist floated behind his eyes and hurried his steps. He didn’t bother with shoes, or a robe, or anything, he grabbed the keys from the basket by the door and was on his way to the elevators at a dead run.

The keys rattled but didn’t want to be shoved into the lock, Val forced them. He pushed the apartment door open with such force that it slammed into the wall and bounced back at him.

“Trist!” He called and scanned the living room. There was spots of blood on the carpet, smears on the wall. The charging station for the portable phone had blood streaks around it. It wasn’t the pools of blood he’d feared but it was a scary sight. “Trist!” He called again and followed the blood to the slender man’s bed room.

The smears, splatters and spots lead into the bedroom. A lamp by the bed was on but the room was dark. The covers were kicked from the bed, pillows thrown across the room but there was no Trist in sight. The light was on in his bathroom and Val distantly heard soft crying. He followed it and the blood trail to the bathroom.

He pushed the door open. “Trist?”

The bathroom was a mess. Pills lay scattered everywhere, small round red and yellow ones, long, slender white ones, and rolling with them were empty aspirin and Tylenol bottles. The mirror had been smeared completely with what looked like petroleum jelly, a small tub of it lay on it’s side on the counter. It’s contents had been scooped out and apparently used to obscure the mirror. There were small pools of water on the counter and broken glass lay in sharp and dangerous shards everywhere. Across almost ever surface, blood was smeared.

None of that mattered. Trist was huddled along the wall, crammed into the space between the toilet and shower stall. The phone was dropped near by, blood smeared. His knees were drawn up, his head was bowed down, arms wrapped tightly around as if blocking out a great noise. He was rocking in short, frantic motions and muttering but not forming words.

Blood was everywhere. The clothes looked to be same one’s he’d been wearing when Val had left, they were splattered and soaked in spots, fabric soaked dark in blood. Blood ran down in small streams across slender arms and dripped from the points of elbows. Blood pooled around his feet, thick, dark red.

Val’s eyes scanned and saw nothing gushing, nothing spurting to show a vein had been severed and he relaxed a little bit. “Trist?” But the man didn’t move or seem to hear him. He pulled a towel from a towel rod and knelt down. The towel made a good broom, he spread it out and pushed the broken glass and pills tight against the vanity cabinet.

With the way swiped clear, he slid across the tile to kneel near Trist. He reached a hand out and stroked it across the back of Trist’s head, smoothing the unraveling hair back into place. Val pulled his hand back, for a moment, it had felt like it was burnt. He stretched a hand back out toward Trist and sure enough, the closer he got, the warmer the air felt.

“That’s crazy.” He closed his eyes and focused. Sure enough, it was there, the way Gavan had described, a sense of being too close to a fire. Val could almost feel the warmth on his skin. So he tried to picture the fire lessening, tried to feel it cooling down and it did, if only slightly.

“Val?”

He opened his eyes and stared into Trist’s red, tear stained face. He smiled a little. “Welcome back.” His hand continued out and stroked the frazzled hair again, only this time his fingers didn’t feel burnt, just warm.

“You’re real?” The small, shaken voice asked, blinking away more tears.

“As far as I know.”

Trist sobbed and dropped his head back onto his knees. “I can’t, I can’t make them stop, I can’t.”

“Shhhh, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.” He stroked the hair again. “Focus on me Trist, okay? On me.”

The hidden head bobbed. “Trying.”

“Will you slid out here? So I can see where you’re cut?” He slid back and patted the tile beside him.

“Please, please, Val, please…”

“Yes?” He tried to see into the face and couldn’t.

Trist sobbed a little and shook his head, when he spoke, his voice was small and frightened. “Don’t let me hurt myself. Please.”

“I promise, now, can you slid out here? You’re bleeding.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.”

Trist looked at his arms, at his feet and the blood on his clothes. “Oh, God, oh, did I do this?”

“I don’t think you did it intentionally, please, slide out here and let me take a look?”

There was a pause before Trist nodded and gingerly slid out of the corner he’d curled into. Tears still streaked down his face, his whole body still trembled but he was moving and starting to think a little more clearly. When Val took a hold of his arm, he let the man turn it over and inspect it.

Val looked over both arms and legs as much as he could. The cuts all seemed to be from the broken glass and while messy, seemed fairly superficial. “Trist? I should take you to the hospital.”

“No!” He tensed back up and pulled away from Val’s careful inspection, which started some of the cuts to bleed sluggishly again.

“There’s a piece of glass in the side of your foot. They should take it out, not me.”

“No! No! They’ll lock me up and shoot me full of shit and I’ll be stuck listening to all this forever. No!” He started rocking again.

“Okay, okay, no hospitals. Hear me? No hospitals.” Silently, in his mind, Val added so long as the bleeding stopped and the wounds didn’t get infected but by then Gavan should be home and he could make that choice. “Trist, can you hear me?”

Trist just nodded. “No hospitals.”

“Yeah. I need to go down to my apartment, get some things. I want you to sit right here, don’t move.” He tried to slid away and stand but Trist reached out and caught his arm.

“Please, don’t leave me, please, please, I don’t want them to be right, please don’t go.”

“I’m not leaving you, I’ll be right back. Count to three hundred, I’ll be back before you finish, okay?” There seemed to be some sense in Trist’s eyes but Val couldn’t swear how much.

“Three hundred, okay, I can, okay. One Mississippi, two Mississippi.”

Val stood and hurried from the bathroom before three Mississippi. He tried to keep count in his head but lost it before he reached the stairwell. There was too many things to think about. He wondered if he should call Gavan, and about the cousin’s first aid supplies. It was likely they were well stocked but could he get Trist to tell him where they were kept? He doubted it, hit the stairs and made up his mind to grab anything he might need from his place.

This time the keys to the apartment didn’t fight him. From within the kitchen he grabbed a plastic bag, flicked it open with a sharp shake and pulled open his utility drawer. The silver grey roll of duct tape was pushed to the back, he fumbled, found it and pulled it out. From there he hurried into his bedroom, pulled open drawers. A pair of boxers, jeans and a sweatshirt joined the duct tape inside the bag and went into the bathroom. His first aid supplies were kept under the sink. A big, plastic box full of them.

There was no point in wasting time being neat or tidy. The cabinet door flew open, the box got yanked out and he pried the lid off. From inside he pulled the big bottle of iodine, checked to make sure the lid was still tight, and tossed it into the plastic bag. Kelly’s cotton squares, she didn’t like cotton balls, said they left fibers behind, that she used to remove her toenail polish followed the iodine. He dug and found a roll of gauze and a box of various sized and shaped band-aids. Just for good measure, he added in a tube of antibiotic cream.

Something in the back of his mind said he was running out of time. Val glanced around the box, around his bathroom, figured he’d have to make due if he’d forgotten anything and turned out the bathroom light. On his way to turn off the lamp beside his bed, he tripped over his sneakers and added them into the bag as well. The plastic was straining now but he didn’t waste the time fussing at it. Lights went out, keys were snatched back up and he was heading for the stairwell at a dead run.

“Trist!” He called out, sidearm throwing his keys onto their kitchen counter and kicking the apartment door shut behind him. “I’m back!” The bloodstains, he’d forgotten to get something to put on the bloodstains. Deal with Trist first, worry about ruined carpets a distant second.

He rounded into the bedroom, winded from such a quick sprint and pushed the bathroom door open. Trist sat where he’d been left, head folded back down.

“Tw… tw… two ninety f…f…four Missi-f..f….fucking something.”

“Trist!” He dropped the bag and knelt down. “Hey, I’m back.” Now that he wasn’t so focused on the blood, Val saw Trist’s hands were glossy with petroleum jelly, it was smeared in spots on his clothes, his skin, into his hair. The skinny, trembling man was mess. He reached out and touched a shoulder. “Hey, I’m back.”

Trist’s eyes focused slowly. “You’re back, see, I was right, he came back, he came back. Oh God, shut up!”

Val caught Trist’s face between his hands. “Focus on me, not on them. Trist!”

He nodded in the warm hands. “I’m so cold.”

“First things first, I need to clean up these cuts okay?” He started tugging on the bloody and ruined shirt.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Trist tried to pull away.

“We need to get this off, make sure you’re not cut somewhere else.”

Trist’s face screwed up and went bright red, tears started falling again and Val wasn’t sure if it was from the voices or from his desire to strip the shirt off. It didn’t matter, things had to be done. This time, when he tugged, there was no protest. He tossed the fabric toward the towel he’d used to brush away the broken glass but had to pause at when he saw Trist minus a few clothes.

It was clear the man had never been a large man. He didn’t have the frame for it, even if Val was starved down to the same bone slenderness, he’d still be thicker and wider than Trist was. So some of the initial shock was made worse because Trist would never be a physically intimidating man. There was little left to soften the lines to the slender torso.

Trist’s body wasn’t to the point of anorexic patients Val had seen, it had yet to start eating away muscle tissue, but there was nothing extra left. The ribs were sharp under skin that looked too pale and too thin. There was a sharpness around the inside of his elbows that shouldn’t have been there and Val swore as the man moved, he could see the muscles under the skin gliding. Even with how obviously unhealthily skinny Trist had become, Val’s stomach still fluttered.

To distract himself and buy him the time to remember he had to think of Trist as a wounded child right now, Val opened the bag and started pulling things out. “Towels?” He asked.

Trist kept his eyes shut, he couldn’t stand to see the revulsion in Val’s eyes that had to be there. “Closet.” He pointed to a narrow door along the bathroom wall.

Inside the closet, towels, washcloths and hand towels were perfectly folded and stacked neatly. They were all dark blue, fluffy and certainly not the cheap make due towels Val had bought for his own place. “Ah.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Trist shook his head. “If they get ruined they get ruined.” He’d normally be screeching about the stains but he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

Val nodded and snagged a washcloth. He ran it under cool water in the sink and started to gently wipe blood from Trist’s arms. As the blood came away, it was pretty clear the cuts were superficial.

“See, not so bad. Glass and razors and really sharp things, they cut cleanly. Our platelets that start the blood clotting, they respond to ragged edges so a clean cut is harder to get the clotting started. It’s why a small, razor sharp cut will bleed more then a larger ragged tear.” He poured iodine onto the cotton squares and started dabbing at the cut lines. Val couldn’t swear they hadn’t been self inflicted. The lines were straight, five on Trist’s right arm, two on his left, and none were any where close to vein. He finished and started slapping band-aids over them, most had stopped bleeding.

“Here now, let me see your feet?” He tugged and pulled until Trist uncurled enough to extend his legs and it was then that he pushed the loose pants legs up to check lower legs. “Cut anywhere else I need to know about?”

Trist just shook his head, crying in hitching sobs still, eyes shut.

There were a couple of slashes on Trist’s feet, all but one on the tops. They could have been from when the glass broke and fell but they could also have been slashed into the skin. He cleaned and iodined and bandaged which left him only the point piece of glass stabbed into the side of Trist’s foot to worry about.

“This is going to hurt.” The idea turned Val’s stomach.

Without pause or warning, Trist reached out, gripped the flat sides of the glass and pulled. There was a sickening wet sound and the clink of the glass shard hitting the tile floor but Trist neither flinched or made a nose. His eyes didn’t even open.

Val pressed the damp cloth to the bleeding wound and picked up the shard. A good half inch of the point was bloodied, the wound was deep. “Since you won’t go to the hospital for this, we’re going to wait a moment to see if the bleeding will slow down. Okay?”

Trist nodded.

“Then,” he peeked under the wash cloth before pressing it back tightly to the side of the lean foot. “I’m going to soak it in iodine, put an iodine soaked cotton square over it, put a wide bandage over that and we’re going to slap a piece of duct tape on it.” He checked again, saw it was still bleeding, but slower, judged that it wasn’t going to fully stop until it was taped shut and got to work.

“Duct tape?” The words had sunk in but not made any sense.

“Yeah, it’ll help keep it somewhat dry in the shower.” He unrolled the duct tape, used his teeth to start it tearing and gently attached the small piece to the side of Trist’s foot. “When you get out, we’ll replace all these bandages, take the duct tape off.” He reached out and got a grip on Trist’s upper arms, the slim body was still trembling or shivering, he couldn’t tell which. “Here, now, let’s get you up and set you on the toilet.”

He pulled, Trist tried to stand but it was only Val’s strength that got the man sitting. He swayed but stayed on the lid, but he was shaking harder now. “Let’s get that tie off your hair, can’t wash the blood off if it’s braided back.”
“Val?” Trist forced out, forced his mind to work. “I can’t. It’ll have to wait. I don’t think I can stand, I…”

Val knelt down so he could look up into Trist’s face and he smiled. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll help you.”

Trist groaned. “Oh God, just kill me.”

“Don’t say that!” He snapped back.

“Why not? I’m going to die of embarrassment.” He sobbed, his voice broke into a pain filled moan. “They’re right, they’re so right, I can’t make them stop when they’re right!”

“Who’s right?”

Trist just waved at the air around him as if it explained everything.

It didn’t, but Val could guess. “Focus on me, Trist, try to stay focused on me. Tell me what they’re saying that you think is right?”

“I, that, I’m a burden, and useless and awful and selfish and they’re right, they are! They’re right, I hate being this way, I hate it, I hate myself, I’m so disgusting!” That broke more tears out as the voices surged around him, mocking, pushing, hating him.

Val pushed forward and brushed his lips against Trist’s. It was chaste, gentle, and scared him silly to do it. “I don’t think you’re a burden or useless or awful or disgusting but I do think you’re a total selfish brat and that’s part of your charm. So shut up, don’t worry about it and let me help.”

The raw honesty and the shock of the shy kiss shook a choked, startled laugh from Trist. “Okay, not how I pictured showering with you though.”

“I’m not…”

“I know, you’re not gay. How’re we doing this?” He wanted to be clean, he wanted to be held.

“You’re wearing something under these pants?”

Trist nodded.

“Good.” Val stood up. He picked pills from the sink and plugged it before running cold water. He stuffed Trist’s dirty shirt into it, trying to soak it and maybe save it.

Trist glanced up and watched as Val opened the door to the shower stall and turned the water on to warm up. He watched as Val stripped off his shirt and peeled off his pants. God was truly mocking him, laughing, he could hear it, he was sure of it. Val had been responding but there was no way the fellow would ever look at him as anything other than a crazy man again. And, well, he hadn’t excepted to be undressed around Val for a while, if ever. He’d wanted time to ease the man into the idea of being undressed around another man and at how revoltingly skinny he was. Now, it was all ruined, yet again, he’d ruined it.

“Your turn.” Val refused to blush under the obvious stare. He was thinking of Trist as a client now, as someone he could be a caretaker to, not as the man that had kissed him silly a few hours ago. He was just glad his boxers were loose.

It took two tries to get Trist onto his feet and he had to hold onto the counter to steady himself. Every time he moved, he started shaking again, harder then before. He pushed the pants down to his ankles and used his toes to pull them off, grateful he’d worn a newer pair of boxer briefs in dark navy instead of an old, worn out, ugly pair. His foot throbbed at the weight he as putting on it.

None of that mattered. Val stood behind him and pulled the tie from his hair. Trist closed his eyes at the feel of the slender hands as they unwove the braid. Val did more then that, he ran his hands through the length, straightening it out. Only he did it way more then he needed to and it felt so good, Trist sighed and the voices backed down in volume as he started to relax.

He knew this was going to be a bad idea, but he let Val guide him into the shower, following him inside and shutting the door. Trist shivered and turned the heat up on the water.

“Man, you’re going to burn your skin off.”

“Cold,” he shivered and stepped away from Val’s supporting hands, only his knees buckled.

Val pressed forward and wrapped his arms around the slender body. “Easy, careful now.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or Trist but it was a sight uncomfortable having a wet, trembling Trist curled tight to him when the both were more naked then dressed. He was glad the loose boxers he was wearing weren’t white.

It took a lot of work, Val had to almost hold Trist up the entire time. Together, they got his hair shampooed, his body washed off and a lot of the tense unease soothed. Sometime, while clinging against Val’s chest, Trist stopped crying. It was like, when Val was touching him, all the noise faded to background chatter.

Neither man spoke until Val turned the water off. “Those cuts must sting.”

Trist shook his head. They had but wasn’t unbearable, he was just starting to feel again, the numbness wearing down and leaving him exhausted. He wasn’t too exhausted to miss the way the cotton of Val’s boxers clung to his ass when he stepped out of the shower to grab towels from the closet.

Val pulled one around his waist more to cover himself before he turned around then because he was cold. Trist however, was so cold his lips were starting to turn blue. Even the hot water did little to keep him warm. He wrapped a towel around the slender man’s waist and threw a second around his shoulders before attacking the man’s hair and limbs with a third. Trist was unable to stay standing so Val pushed him to sit down again but he was shivering so much it made re-bandaging the cuts difficult. This time, he smeared a little of the antibiotic ointment on the wounds before again covering them with the band-aids.

“F..f….fu…fucking freezing.” Trist stuttered out and almost before he could finish an extra towel wrapped around him. “It’s, it’s not ph.. physical.”

Val glanced up from where he was tending the shallow cuts on the Trist’s feet. “How so?”
“Shock.” He was trembling. “Ha… ha.. Happens every time this ha… ha… happens.”

The duct tape had held and kept the wound underneath mostly dry but the tape was easy to pull off so it was just barely holding. Val shook his head at the still slowly bleeding cut, put iodine and ointment on it and finished it with wide band aids. He wrapped the entire foot in gauze trying to pad it a little and not sure that it wouldn’t bleed thru the band aid.

“Want to tell me what happened?”

“Na.. na…. na… not really.”

“Fair enough.” Val nodded. “Where do you keep your clothes? You’ll warm up faster out of those wet boxers.”

“Top drawer.” He whispered out and started to really see the mess he’d made of things in the bathroom.

Val disappeared into the bedroom. When he pulled open the top dresser drawer it held neatly folded underwear and flannel pants and t-shirts. Obviously what Trist normally slept in, all of it perfectly put away and right at hand. He snagged one of each, rooted one drawer down and found perfectly paired socks and found a warm looking set. He returned and handed them to Trist. “Can you?”

He blushed. “I’ll manage.” Trist forced himself to his feet.

“Be careful, there’s still glass everywhere.” He gathered up his plastic bag that only held his change of clothes. He stepped into the bedroom and pulled the bathroom door shut behind him.

Val quickly toweled his hair dry and peeled the wet cotton from his hips. The clothes he’d been sleeping in had blood and petroleum jelly on them, they were dirty and sticky and he couldn’t wear them. It was boxers alone then. When he was as dry and dressed as he could get, he moved to Trist’s bed and pulled the covers back over it, tossed the pillows back at the head.

“Thanks.” A soft voice said from the door way. Trist was still shivering but less violently now.

“Want to try laying back down. You have to be exhausted.”

He nodded and crossed the space to the bed with barely a limp. He dropped un-gracefully onto the bed and let Val pull the covers up over him. “Are you, I mean, I…”

Val brushed the loose wet hair back. “I’m staying up here. I’ll be over in Gavan’s room if you need me, okay?”

Trist shut his eyes and shuddered, grateful beyond words. “Thanks.”

Val moved to the bathroom and soaked a couple of washcloths before turning out the bathroom light. He dropped the wet fabric onto the worst of the blood stains on Trist’s bedroom carpet before he went back to the bed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, we’ll clean it up tomorrow. Try to rest, okay?”

Trist nodded but when Val clicked his light off, leaving only the pale moonlight from the windows that didn’t open, his eyes were still wide and sleep seemed impossible no matter how tired he was. He watched Val leave, pulling the bedroom door shut behind him. The light stayed on in the living room for a little while but it eventually flipped off and left Trist alone in the darkness.