The Tragedy of Daniel and Jake Chapter 6 By John Meyers
Disclaimer: Oh here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again! Time for the disclaimer. First things first, I do not own the song "Here it Goes Again" by Ok Go. Next I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters. I do not own any of the franchises that I mention, whether restaurant, media, or retail. If this story or the contents of it are illegal where you live, prepare for roving Secret Service forces to jump through your windows. All the characters and events are the product of my imagination. If you are under 18 yrs. of age, just be at least 12 or 13. If your reading this and your younger than that then you do in fact 'need' to get off this page. Oh, though if you're 14-17, you still shouldn't be reading this, by law anyway. Personally I couldn't care less, but not everyone feels that way. I want to tell all of the people who review that I have a special place in my heart for each of you, and I really appreciate all the feedback. I'd also like to encourage you to respond to the questions at the end of this chapter. Anywho, I guess that makes it story time...
Daniel's POV
I sat down in the lobby, waiting for them to come through the elevator. As I sat there, face buried in my hands I just found myself constantly brought up short about Mark. 'How could he do that?' I wanted more than anything to be angry at him, but my thoughts kept bouncing back and forth between being mad at him and trying to defend him. Maybe he genuinely didn't think you'd want his parents to know? 'Why? Why would I come out to everyone and not want his parents to know?' Well, would you just randomly tell strangers on the street that you're gay? 'Probably not, it would depend on if they said anything that presumed otherwise.' Well then there you go. He was just trying to defend you from his parents. You saw how they reacted. 'I don't need protecting. Whether it's from his parents or whatever. I knew how his parents would react, it's part of the reason I wanted them to know.' So you wanted them to know so you could have a reason to be mad at them? 'No, or well, I knew how they'd react, so I was already mad with them.' You just wanted confirmation, reason to voice your anger? 'Yeah, I guess.' The Daniel I know would never do anything like that. A sigh escaped my mouth as I came to this realization. I wasn't being fair.
The front doors opened and a kid, he looked to be my age, walked through the door. He was probably just smaller than me and his blonde hair was in a fohawk like Eli's, except he had small spikes here and there, giving him a mad scientist look. He was wearing an aqua blue shirt and dark blue jeans, in addition to shoes that looked to be the same color as his shirt. When he looked at me I noticed that his eyes were a very striking blue green. He glanced at me, walking over to the elevators. There was a ding, and my mom, Tyler, and Eli come out of the elevator. The kid entered their elevator. I stood up, popping my neck as my mom came up to me and before she even said anything I stopped her.
"I don't want to talk about it." I turned and started walking out the door, knowing that they'd follow. As I got closer to the door I heard the doors unlock, so I opened it up and hopped in the passenger seat. My mom got in, followed by Eli and Tyler. As we were backing out my phone vibrated. I checked it, expecting it to be Mark, but it wasn't. It was Eli.
I know you told her you didn't, but do you want to talk about it?
-Eli
I clicked the reply button and typed up my message:
Sorry you had to see that. I didn't mean to get so angry.
-Danny
I heard his phone vibrate and heard him flip it open. He kind of scoffed, like he couldn't believe what I'd said. My phone vibrated.
You had every right to be angry. Everyone gets angry Danny,
you didn't do anything wrong.
-Eli
I sent him my reply:
I'm not supposed to though. That's me, I'm not supposed to
get angry and selfish. That's what people expect out of me.
-Danny
'You' expect to much out of yourself. You're only human
Danny.
-Eli
Yeah. :) Ain't that a bitch. Lol
-Danny
My mom glance at me out of the corner of her eyes. She knew Eli and I were texting eachother. It probably irritated her. She picked up her phone and texted something. That got me.
"Mom! What the hell do you think you're doing?" My eyes widened and Eli jumped from surprise. A kind of dreaded heat flared through my body and I was instantly sweating.
"Excuse me?" Normally I'd never use language like that with my mom, but frickin' seriously!
"Did you really just text while driving!?" She glanced at her phone quickly, looking guilty as frick. Sorry, but I mean come on, who do we know that just saw the consequences of texting while driving?
Uh, Your mom wants to know where we want to go for
lunch.
-Eli
I thought about it for a moment. I briefly considered texting back, but thought better of it.
"Cracker Barrel, please." She just nodded and turned down an exit.
Such a gentleman. You okay?
-Eli
Ugh, this is a load. My heart was racing and my palms were sweaty.
Yeah, just shook up a little. Sorry again, for snapping
like that.
-Danny
Your fine, I'd have said something if you didn't.
-Eli
Yeah, but you'd have probably said it a lot nicer.
-Danny
Well, yeah. :P
-Eli
How very eloquent of you.
-Danny
What's that mean? X[
-Eli
I didn't have time to text back, because we pulled into Cracker Barrel at that second. We all got out and as we walked up to the front door I came up beside Eli. "Eloquent means, 'well spoken'. And I was referring to the meh!" My tongue sticking out at him when I said 'meh'. He laughed.
"Right back at ya'." We walked into their little shop and my mom told us it would be about five minutes. We went exploring. I was over by the scented candles, just killing time. "You need a scented candle?" Eli walked up behind me, hands in his pockets.
"Yeah, but not from here, they're way to expensive." Eli laughed at me, shaking his head.
"Your more gay than I am." His pearly white teeth shone in his best shit eating grin.
"What exactly does that mean, more gay? Am I more attracted to men than you are?" He rolled his eyes.
"You know what I mean. You're much more flamboyant than I am."
"Because I want a scented candle? Forgive me for wanting my room to smell nice." He just laughed. Our name got called and when we got seated I just put my menu on the side. I already know what I want, given what day it is.
"You know what you're getting?" Eli was perusing the menu.
"Sunday chicken."
"Oh, how convenient." Eli, it seemed, had no idea what he was going to get. It struck me again at how odd this must be for him, after the way he'd been living for lord knows how long. The waiter came up and got our drink orders and went ahead and took our food orders as well.
"I want the Sunday chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes." I handed him my menu. Eli just said, "The same." and handed his menu to the guy. Mom and Tyler ordered their food and we talked until the food came. When my food was put down in front of me my mouth watered. I loved fried chicken, especially 'good' fried chicken. Eli looked just as hungry as I did, I'd forgotten that he hadn't gotten to eat breakfast. We all dug in. Eli, I think, was especially enjoying the meal. I wonder when the last time he'd had fried chicken was...
After the meal my mom got the bill, went up to the register, and paid, and then we were off. About a block away there was a Books-A-Million, so we stopped in there. I didn't find much, although, interestingly enough as I was looking through the books I came across something.
As I stood there I reached down and pulled a book from the shelf, and I looked at the cover:
"The Tragedy of Daniel and Jake"
By John Meyers
Wow, how coincidental. I opened up the first page and was about to start reading when my mom called my name. "Daniel!" Damn. I put the book back down and went to find her. When I found her she was by the entrance so we left. We ran over to Party America and killed some time in there. I grabbed a Dumbledore hat from the costume area and picked up a fake wand.
"Bombarda!" I shouted at Eli. He ducked laughing, picking a wand of his own and we had a little Harry Potter fight right there in the aisle.
"Petrificus Totalus!" He shouted at me. I waved my wand shouting, "Protego!" By the end of it we were both hunched over laughing. I pulled off the Dumbledore hat and put it back, but I pulled off a pirate sword and turned around in a flash. Eli already had one. We both made evil eye stares at eachother before, "En Garde!" I lunged and he parried. We stood there, hitting and blocking for about five minutes before he got me in the chest. "Ugh, Oh! The Light! Agh!" I sank to the floor, on my knees. "I see a light at the end of a long tunnel. Mother? Is that you? I don't want to die, I feel cold." Clutching my heart and, as overdramatically as I could, I leaned on the aisle, pretending to be dead.
"Bravo! Encore!" Eli fake clapped and I took a bow. My mom came around the corner and just gave us the eye. We returned to messing around in Party America. We found some balloons and paid the chick to fill them up with helium. Afterwards, walking around the store I bit a hole at the base of mine and sucked in some helium.
"OMFG like totally TTYL." I had the nasaliest voice I'd ever heard and Eli busted up laughing. He bit one in his and sucked in some helium.
"Hi I'm Theodore." He went to shake my hand.
"I'm Alvin." We were so totally the chipmunks. Tyler walked up, and we both said, "You must be Simon." He jumped, not knowing about our voices and then he laughed at us. "Come on, we'll go get you one." I felt the voice wearing off so before I went up to the lady, I took in another huge lungful. I walked over and said, "Excuse me, could you get my brother a balloon please?" The chick's head shot up, not realizing what the heck was going on. She laughed, rolling her eyes while she got my brother a balloon. When I gave it to him I said, "Okay, now you just bite at the base right here, put your mouth over it, and suck in." He did that.
"Hi, I'm Simon." Eli and I, in our nasaliest voices both shouted, "YAY!" Then we went around singing, Bad Day by Daniel Powter. Everytime we felt it wearing off we took another hit, so to speak. By the end of it we were all a little light headed. My mom kept walking away, rolling her eyes. Eventually we made our way back to the Harry Potter section and we all three had a spell fight. Our nasaly voices ringing out the whole time. "Levicorpus!" "Confrigo!" "Sectumsempra!" We were all yelling spells at eachother. Eventually we put the stuff up and Eli got a wig that looked like Bella's hair from twilight, so I got one that looked like Edward.
"Oh Bella, I'm so in love with you!" We still had nasaly voices.
"Oh Edward, I know, but unfortunately there's this hot as hell werewolf who could totally kick your ass that I love!" We both laughed.
"So you're Team Werewolf, huh?" I couldn't resist asking.
"Yeah, what about you?" Eli was taking off his wig and our voices were starting to wear off again, but we were out of helium.
"Dude, I'd have Taylor Lautner's shirt off so fast, he himself wouldn't even have time to take it off. You know, given that he 'apparently' loves taking his shirt off." I set the Edward wig back up.
"Mmm believe me I know what you mean. He'd have 'me' howling, I know that much." We both laughed, just enjoying the moment, joking about the only-in-our-dreams possibilities of sexual interaction with the world's hottest werewolf... -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jake's POV
I felt like I was deep underwater. My head was pounding and there was an intense pressure on my ears, like my eardrums threatened to blow. My thoughts were fuzzy and every movement seemed to take tremendous effort. I went to breath in but I felt it stick in my throat, the air getting caught by some invisible barrier. Then my mouth flooded, the water taking the place of where the air was moments before, I clutched at my throat, trying to breathe back out to expel the water, except I'd had no breath before to breathe back out. The water shot up my nose leaving it stinging and I opened my eyes. Looking up I saw nothing but the sun, marred and diluted by the water around me. Seaweed tangled itself around my arms and legs and I felt myself sinking, being dragged down to die. Then of course, I began wondering how it was that drowning, a not altogether 'terrible' experience, could take so fricking long... Good Lord just let me die already...
A falling sensation engulfed me and where once I saw seaweed I now saw ceiling tiles... Damn, you'd think that a car crash victim would be having dreams about crashing, not drowning. I guess God does have a sense of humor. Perhaps a confusing, deliberately misleading sense of humor with hints of dramatic irony, but a sense of humor none the less. I groaned out of the annoyance and confusion I felt... Danny. I sighed. Danny, Danny, Danny. What ever am I going to do about you? My mom was sitting next to me, a cup of coffee sitting on the windowsill. The clouds were quickly converging on top of the hospital. Good, I thought. Maybe the rain will help me get in a better mood. I happened to love the rain. I could listen to it all day. I briefly thought of the possiblity of it turning to snow, but it seemed a little late in January for that. When the first fat raindrops began hitting my window I heard a distant rumbling... Thunder. Just as this happened the rain immediately picked up, advancing like a curtain of water, closer and closer to the window before finally it engulfed us. The window panes shook and the outside was temporarily lit up as lightning shot out, forking across the sky. Then came the, 'CRACK', the kind that only comes after the really violent lightning strikes. The entire hospital shook with the force of the rumbling and my mom startled awake.
"Oh, you're up. How're you feeling?" I knew what she was really asking. Now that the immediate danger of me dieing from my injuries had passed, the prime focus of everyone's worries seemed to be my still very much concussed and addled memory. My latest memory was still kissing Danny, though, admittedly I didn't know what any of it meant. I still had this vague sense that I shouldn't have. Like, I don't know, I really don't know... I just know that something is telling me I shouldn't have kissed him, and of course there was that... 'I' had kissed 'him'. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me that it should have been the other way around, though of course, he'd corrected that soon enough. All at once it flashed through my mind for the hundredth time since it'd happened: the feel of his lips on mine, his frozen in shock, then the other way around when I moaned. How could I have moaned? Every time I saw him I smiled, hell everytime I 'thought' about him I smiled, but I didn't know why. Danny was always there, in the back of my mind, his amazing hair, his beautiful eyes, his smile, permanently frozen on his face in my mind. Everything about him sent tingly sensations in my stomach and this only made me more confused, because I didn't know what any of it meant. "Are you okay?" My mom's voice stole me out of my reverie.
"Uh, yeah." I smiled reassuredly. "I'm feeling much better actually." This seemed to abate her. I looked over at dad. "How long has he been asleep?" Dad was snoring and I think he may have been drooling a little.
"Oh, only a few hours. I just got him to sleep about half an hour before Danny showed up. He's been up all night." Wait a second.
"Danny was here?"
"Yeah, he came by earlier, but you were asleep so they said they'd come back later." I felt the tingling in my stomach again. Why though, I couldn't say.
"Did they say when?"
"No, but it probably won't be for a few hours." Damn.
"A few hours from 'then' or a few hours from 'now'?" She checked her watch.
"I don't know sweetie, they could come back at any time." Damn... -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark's POV
The doctor stood in front of me, looking at his little chart, just tell me the goddamn news doc, seriously!
"Alright, I think we'll be able to discharge you later today, we'll just have to brief your parents on taking care with changing your bandages, and NO football." The doctor enunciated the word 'no' to help drive the point home. This did 'not' sit well with my dad.
"What? What do you mean no football?" The vein was pulsing in my dad's neck.
"Dad, relax."
"I will NOT relax! There are talent scouts that are looking at you! You can't afford to be out at all!"
"Dad, it's off season."
"Sir, I understand your anger, but if Mark were to get tackled, or overexert himself, or even pull a muscle, he could wind up hurt much worse than he is and that could lead to him being at a disadvantage when the season came back around. If that happened, then he would be in a lot of trouble with talent scouts. As it stands sir, he simply can't do it right now." My dad seemed to be mulling this over in his head.
"When will he be back on the field?"
"I'd give it a month at least, maybe a month and a few weeks." The doctor sensed an imminent meltdown and so did I, but none came. It seemed like my dad had burned himself out. That's how it worked. Dad would get mad, scream and shout a little, realize he was wrong, and then get really tired and cave. He sighed.
"Alright, a month it is. I'll call your coach later." He sat back down. It started raining and the sky was lit up as a huge bolt of lightning arced across the dark canvas of clouds. I hated rain. It ruined good days and made the football field muddy so it always got tore up. There was a huge crack of lightning and the whole hospital shook. Damn, I hate rain.
"Going to be a 'fun' month." I could not have been more sarcastic if I'd tried. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eli's POV
Whilst we rode back to the hospital to visit Jake, I couldn't help but think about Danny. I'm not sure how to describe this. We laugh around eachother, we've both comforted and been comforted by eachother, we have so much fun together, and we don't even have to try. It seems so effortless, and yet... And yet, there was Jake. I knew that Daniel had a huge crush on Jake. And I knew that they'd kissed, a pleasure that had been, so far, denied to me. I didn't think I could compete with that. Hot as hell Jake, who was a major athlete, had a body to die for, was probably one of the nicest people I knew, with the exception of Danny. Danny made the number one slot on that title, but Jake could still have been top 5. How am I supposed to compete with that? Me, whose been emotionally abused for years, who doesn't have a body to die for, and is perpetually sucky at everything except swimming and cooking. As much as it pained me to say it, I had nothing on Jake, and that was the simple truth. If Danny had to pick between us, he'd pick Jake hands down. Hell, I'd pick Jake hands down. My forehead pressed against the cold glass while heaven itself seemed to be contemplating another biblical flood.
"You all right?" Danny shook my shoulder lightly and smiled at me quizically.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, just tired." Yeah, tired of feeling inadequate. Dammit all to hell, why couldn't I be someone worth having? The irony of the situation almost made me laugh. I suppose this is something that every teenage gay guy wants above all else, isn't it? Options, right? You know, the ability to actually be able to date, not be forced to because you know of only one other gay guy in your school. I mean, come on, how many gay guys did you know of, whom were out and date-able, when YOU were in highschool? Our school was a demographic mystery. We had at least 7 that I knew of, and that was just in the Junior class. There was Danny and myself, Jake, though you might count him as bi because I'm pretty sure Danny was his first gay kiss and he's probably pretty confused. Then there was Alex, Cody and Sean, I saw them kiss at Danny's party, and Dakota Warren, another kid in my grade.
Now Dakota, he's as firey as he is gay. The damn kid got sent to the principal's office for punching out some kid in art class. I think the kid, Nick, was talking bad about another kid at our school, a sophomore, because he's gay too. Then Dakota stood up, and knocked his ass on the ground. Anyway, when you consider that our high school, from 9th to 12th grade has about 400 people in it, total, I think that the demographics don't add up right. What is the estimate, 1 in 10, right? Although, I personally think it's more like 1 in 15, anyway, that should mean that about 26 people at our school are statistically gay or lesbian, which when you add in that I know of at least three lesbians at our school, that's at least 13 kids. Now, I don't know about you, but when you factor in that our school is smack dab in the middle of the bible belt, I still think that number is pretty high, and I don't even know about 'everyone'.
Anyway, I guess the whole point of that was that 'options', what I myself always wanted, is now the very thing preventing 'me' from making a move on 'Danny'. Now Danny had found a different option, and where was I?
When we pulled up to the hospital I realized I'd been doing math, by far one of my worst subjects, in my head for like 5 minutes. God I must really be losing it if I was doing math in my head. We parked as close to the entrance as possible, which wasn't very close by the way, and prepared for the inevitable, watery onslaught that we were about to go through. Danny pulled two hoodies out of the back and handed one to me, I think it was a size smaller than the other one, which was saying something, considering they weren't that big. They were made to not look bulky. The one he gave me was brown, and the cloth was very soft in my hands. I slipped it on over my head, messing up my hair in the process. When he put his on, his shirt slid up just a little, revealing smooth creamy skin beneath his shirt. When he pulled his hoodie, an ocean blue peice, back over his head, his hair was disheveled, giving him that, 'messy bed-head/just had sex' look. He pulled his hood up over his head, I did the same, and then all at once, we all got out of the car and bolted for the entrance. The sound was deafening, I think I heard the car beep from Elizabeth locking it, but I couldn't be sure.
By the time I'd reached the entrance the hoodie was soaked through. I stood there, dripping for a second before Elizabeth ran through the door, followed by Danny who had grabbed Tyler on his way. Dammit all, why does he have to be so nice? I pulled my hoodie over my head, my shirt riding up as I did so. When I got it off, I kind of looked around for what to do with it, not wanting to carry around a soaking wet hoodie the entire time. I finally grabbed two of those wet umbrella bags that were by the entrance and I double layered it so it wouldn't break, and I stuck my hoodie in there. So did Danny, whose hair had become appropriately disheveled again, and Tyler. I put another bag around the other two, just in case. When we went up the elevators, I could see Danny blinking a lot. It was a nervous habit of his. You could always tell when he was nervous because he'd blink a lot. Our footsteps thudded down the floor of the hallway and we turned into Jake's room. Jake looked up at each of us as we entered. He looked confused, and nervous. I noticed his temperature increase on his monitor thing as we walked in.
"Hey guys." Try as he might, Jake was NOT talking to us. You could hear it in his voice that the only one he was happy to see was Danny.
"Hey Jake, how're you doing?" Danny took the unoccupied seat next to Jake. Danny's mom and Tyler sat down on the other chair and I stood, leaning against the far wall. He and Jake talked for a while. Not about anything that had happened at Danny's house, but just about generic stuff. When it started looking darker Danny's mom decided it was time to go. We drove back to his house, the storm still raging overhead. When we got to his house we quickly ran inside, still getting fairly soaked.
"Alright Eli, I'm going to get the guest bedroom ready. Danny has plenty of pajamas." Elizabeth went up the stairs. Danny motioned for me to follow him and went up the stairs. When we got to his room he opened the drawers under his tv. He threw me a pair of pajama shorts and a white t-shirt. I went and changed in the bathroom. When I came back he was already changed in some basketball shorts and a not-too-tight-not-too-baggy Old Navy t-shirt. He was bent down turning on his ps3 and putting in a disc. His basketball shorts formed perfectly to his butt. I felt a part of me stirring at the sight. I noticed he had his duvet on the floor again, carefully laid out like a pallet. When he turned around and saw me looking at it, he said, "I figured you may want to sleep here instead of in there." He smiled and picked up his controller. "I put the 6th Harry Potter in, I figured we could watch it." Laughter escaped my lips as I thought about earlier. I put the clothes that he'd loaned me in his dirty clothes hamper and laid down on the duvet. He threw me a pillow and a blanket and after I got settled he pressed 'X', which in this case is the play button, and we watched Harry Potter.
I didn't last very long, it was only at the part where they go after the first horcrux when I fell asleep, slowly drifting off while Dumbledore made a fire tornado at some zombies...
When I awoke later the movie was over. I wasn't very groggy, but nevertheless I still found myself wondering where I was. A soft light was coming from behind me and I turned my head to find Danny typing on his computer. He glanced up.
"Oh, I didn't mean to wake you. I'm working on my paper for English." Such an overacheiver.
"That's not due until May, maybe you should concern yourself with sleep." I sat up.
"Oh, and how much have 'you' gotten done?"
"Hey hey, we're talking about 'you' here." We both laughed at my evasive answer. "What're you doing it on anyway?"
"The pros and cons of various political systems, policies, and regimes, and my theory behind the perfect one." He typed away again on his computer.
"Ooh, sounds vastly overcomplicated."
"Maybe, but I wrote down like 5 different things and drew randomly out of a hat." I looked at him to see if he was joking, but there wasn't a shred of humor on his face. He looked at me. "Maybe you should try going back to sleep."
"Can't, not sleepy anymore." I only briefly thought about what I wanted to do. I felt the butterflies and I had to steel myself. I was going to do it and damn the consequences! I sat up and looked at the window. It was technically impossible to look 'out' the window, due to the blinds. It was still storming, lightning lighting up the room. "Danny?" He looked at me.
"Yeah?" His face was bleached white from the computer screen. I prepared for what I was about to do.
"Do you think that there are things that people HAVE to do? I mean things that, even though they may not make a whole lot of sense, they just HAVE to do?" He thought for a second.
"What do you mean?" He sat up on his bed and put his laptop on the ground, closing it. I heard a click, and then his lamp came on.
"I mean like, a risk, a chance. Something that a person may 'know' could come back and bite them on the ass, but they HAVE to do it anyway?"
"You mean like something that they may regret if they didn't?"
"Yeah, exactly." I got up and sat down next to him. "What would you say to someone who was going through one of those crisises?" He looked at me concernedly for a second.
"Only you know how strong the feelings of regret will or will not be if you 'don't' do something. It's up to you to decide if the risk is worth the consequences. But, to be honest, I'd probably tell you to go ahead and take that chance. You never know what's going to happen." He smiled and I smiled.
"You're right." I said with a hint of finality... and I leaned foward, my heart about to burst from my chest, and I pressed my lips to his... -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, I know, the kiss was vastly overdue. I think that you could see it coming from a few chapters away, and that's not me saying I'm predictable, I meant for you to be suspecting, so if you weren't then I guess I failed at that. Anyway, so how are ya'll liking Eli so far? I've heard plenty about his home life, but not a whole lot on HIM. If you don't mind, could you tell me how you feel about how things are shaping up. I'm looking for a lot of feedback on the characters and which one's your favorite. You've got Danny, who feels torn and like the weight of the world on his shoulders. Then you've got Jake, the crush and he's in denial. Then there's Mark, the best friend who's been hiding his feelings for years. And you've got Eli, the roommate who hasn't been loved in forever, and sees that lost love in Daniel. How do you feel about the whole dynamic so far? The next chapter will probably be up late Sunday night because I've already finished it. It's a surprise chapter, because it's not what you think and I think it's about time we got a backstory on all of our main characters. Review to johnmeyerz36@yahoo.com Never text and drive peoples.