Behind the Net: Across the Distance (A Sequel) - Chapter 29
Title: Behind the Net: Across the Distance (A Sequel)
Author: shmorgenheigen
Chapter: Twenty Nine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pierre/David
Word Count: 5544
Summary: The continuation of the story Behind the Net, picking up right where the original story left off. David and Pierre explore their new relationship while navigating a long distance relationship. While Pierre is in Anchorage in his first year of college and playing college hockey, David is stuck back in Juneau to finish his senior year of high school. When an unlikely person from David’s past shows up and forces their way back into David’s life, things take a turn for the dramatic. Will David and Pierre be able to maintain their love for each other while separated and stave off those pesky feelings of loneliness, jealousy, and depression?
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, didn't happen!
Author's Note: When I started to re-write Behind the Net from Pierre’s perspective, I started to think about how much story there would be to tell when Pierre went off to college, leaving David alone in Juneau. I became obsessed with the idea of writing the next chapter in their story and now that it’s finished, I am absolutely in love with how it turned out and the original characters I added into the story! If anyone reads this, leave me a comment and let me know!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
That night when Pierre called, David felt nervous to answer. He looked at his phone for a second and chewed on his lip, terrified of how he was going to take the news about what had happened. He glanced over at Ezra who took his controller and quietly said, “You can go in my room if you want.”
David nodded and stood, and with a deep breath he answered, his voice shaking as he said, “Hey.” He tried to sound casual but his voice raised in an unnatural way and the word came out weak.
“What did he do?” Pierre asked seriously, anger staining his words and making him louder than intended. David walked into Ezra’s bedroom and closed the door behind him, moving to sit on the edge of his bed again.
“He yelled at me,” David admitted, his voice quiet. “The guys noticed my ring at lunch and they were making a big scene about it and Hunter saw… a-and he didn’t like it.”
“What did he say?” Pierre questioned, his words coming out hard and fast as rage boiled inside of him.
“He asked if I was serious and he said I’m seventeen and can’t know that I want this for the rest of my life,” David replied sheepishly. “He used a few extra strong words in there but… that’s the gist of it.”
“Did he touch you?” Pierre continued, feeling as if his body had caught on fire.
“No… He tried to come over to me but Ezra got in his face as soon as he walked up to us and told him to walk away… and then Ben and Noah got in between us too and they blocked me from him. When he tried to take a step toward me Ezra pushed him and yelled at him and made him leave,” David recounted slowly. He felt the fear from the moment working up inside of him again and he tried to push it away.
Pierre sighed heavily and closed his eyes, his free hand finding his face and rubbing it slowly in his frustration. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice softening a little but his frustration still apparent.
“I am now... I’m still at Ezra’s house. He said I could stay for dinner if I wanted to,” David told him. He hesitated a moment, knowing he needed to admit how useless he’d been but not wanting to. “When I saw Hunter I just panicked. I couldn’t move or talk and I just… froze.”
“It’s lucky your friends were there to stand up for you,” Pierre said, not knowing what else to say. The distance between them made him feel suddenly trapped and useless, a distance that would continue to separate them for the next two months whether he liked it or not.
“Yeah…” David responded quietly. “I’m sorry, I forgot everything you taught me as soon as he looked at me,” he whispered, his eyes flooding as the apology left his lips.
Pierre shook his head, his hand moving into his hair and pulling. “It’s not your fault,” Pierre told him firmly.
“It sure feels like my fault,” David admitted, his voice cracking as he struggled to keep his emotions inside.
“Well it’s not,” Pierre said again.
David nodded but didn’t respond, knowing logically what Pierre said was true but not able to fully believe it, either. “As soon as he walked away I had a panic attack. Ezra and the guys got me to a quiet hallway to try to calm me down but I just kept seeing him and thinking about how helpless I was and how if I had been alone he would have been able to do whatever he wanted to me with the way I froze up. They didn’t know what to do so Ezra just took me to his house… and I’ve been here ever since,” David told him quietly.
“Well… I’m glad he was there for you,” Pierre told him, still gripping at his hair and squeezing his eyes shut tight. His inability to act and to be the one doing the saving drove him crazy and he sat there, feeling like he needed to do something but knowing there was nothing he could do.
“Me too,” David told him softly. “Honestly… I knew I had to tell you about it but I didn’t really want to,” David admitted, his voice so low that Pierre barely heard him through the phone.
Pierre’s hand fell from his hair at those words and his eyes opened, looking blindly across his room. “Why?” he asked softly.
David chewed on his bottom lip, wishing he hadn’t spoken that thought, able to hear the pain in Pierre’s quiet response. “I know what it does to you that you’re so far away and can’t do anything,” he told him softly. “And… I didn’t have the taser or the pepper spray on me. They were in my jacket in my locker and I was scared you would… be mad at me.”
Pierre sighed again and dropped his face back to his hand, propping his elbow up on his knee. “It’s not like you could have used it in the middle of school,” he reasoned gently. “I mean, if you absolutely had to then obviously you should but in the middle of the day with a bunch of people around you shouldn’t have to. Just stick close to your friends, they’re clearly ready to stand between you to keep you safe.”
David nodded and blinked slowly, forcing the tears back down inside of himself. He’d already cried so much over the last two days, he was sick of it and didn’t want to indulge in his pain anymore. “I don’t know what I did to deserve them standing up for me like that,” David said, his voice tinged with pain.
“David, how many people have to prove they love you before you start to believe that you’re worthy of it?” Pierre asked him suddenly.
David’s eyes opened wider and his lips parted, surprise overtaking his senses. “I-I… I dunno,” he responded lamely, his cheeks flushing.
“You don’t seem to believe it but you’re good and kind and special. People like being around you, no matter how much you try to put yourself down or hide from everyone around you.” Pierre leaned his head down further into himself, pain ripping through him as he recognized again that this part of David’s personality was his own doing, having beaten the other boy down over and over for the first ten years of knowing each other. He gripped his hair again, hating himself for who he had been and what he had done, knowing David had spent his formative years from the time he was six years old being told he was too different, too wrong, that nobody liked him and that he wasn’t worthy of friendship or being seen, and knowing that he had been the one doing it to him. “I’m so sorry I did this to you,” Pierre told him, his voice shaking as he spoke.
These words made David feel worse and he shook his head, wanting to deny them despite the way that he knew they were true. “Pierre, you didn’t-”
“Yes I did,” Pierre cut him off. “And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life fixing it, even if it kills me.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence, David chewing on his bottom lip and fidgeting with his ring idly with his thumb. “I love you,” David said, breaking the silence between them. “You know I don’t hold anything against you, right?”
“I know you don’t,” Pierre responded. “But honestly that’s part of the problem. You should hate me. You should value yourself enough to realize what I did to you and hate me for it. The selfish part of me hopes you never resent me for it but if someday it all clicks for you and you do start to resent me I won’t be able to say anything about it because that’s what you should feel.”
“That’s never gonna happen, no matter what journey I go on or how I might start to think or feel about myself down the road. I will never stop seeing the person you really are and loving you for it,” David told him firmly.
Pierre’s eyes opened and he looked down at his own knees, not really seeing them. “I’m the one that doesn’t deserve you,” he said weakly.
“And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life proving to you that that’s not true, either,” David responded.
Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes, the silence that fell over them heavy and thick. Then Pierre spoke and brought David back to the present with a horrible sinking feeling. “What are you gonna do about Hunter?”
David shook his head as Hunter’s face flashed through his mind and the way he had stared at him with such anger and devastation, unable to control himself in his pain. He knew it was because Hunter loved him in his own sick and twisted way and that he couldn’t contain his feelings in the face of losing David forever, no matter what had happened between them and how far apart they had fallen. “I don’t know,” he responded honestly.
“God damn it,” Pierre muttered suddenly, his voice strengthening as his frustration overtook him again. “There’s just over two months left in your school year. Why did he have to bug you now? Why couldn’t he have just left you alone?”
“Because he…” David started, but he trailed off, afraid to speak the words that had crossed his mind.
“He what?” Pierre asked quietly.
“He loves me,” David admitted, feeling sick as he did.
Pierre took a moment to respond, his chest rising and falling heavily and his eyes falling closed again. “He’s got a sick way of showing it,” he said finally, his voice hoarse and bitter.
“Yeah… He doesn’t know how to hold himself back from what he wants, and seeing me slipping away from him for good… He’s lashing out, and it makes him dangerous,” David explained quietly, hating how well he had come to understand Hunter.
“I want you to go back to keeping your taser and your pepper spray on you at all times,” Pierre said, his voice giving more of a command than a request.
“I will,” David told him quietly.
“If he touches you again, I’m not gonna be able to stop myself from going after him,” Pierre warned, his voice shaking again in his anger.
“He won’t,” David said firmly. “I’ll make sure I’m never alone and he never gets the chance.”
“I want to believe that but… it’s not easy,” Pierre told him honestly.
David nodded and responded with a soft, “I know.” Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, David tried to relax his body and bring himself back down from all of the negative emotions that had just rushed through him. “I have to go,” he said, knowing he couldn’t sit on the phone with Pierre in Ezra’s room the whole night.
“Okay,” Pierre responded, sitting up and dropping his hand down next to him on his bed. “Just… tell me right away if anything happens tomorrow.”
“Okay,” David agreed, his voice soft. “I love you,” he said again, sounding sad.
“I love you too,” Pierre responded gently. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Talk to you tomorrow,” David replied, and he pulled the phone from his face and watched as Pierre ended the call. He hugged his phone to his chest, feeling the urge to cry again welling up inside of him. It didn’t seem real that just the day before he had been on a plane with Pierre, cuddling his arm and watching movies, or kissing each other goodbye at the airport. How had so much happened in the course of twenty four hours? How had he managed to feel so much pain and sadness and terror without exploding?
With another steadying breath David stood and put his phone in his pocket before making his way out into the living room where Ezra was standing talking to a woman who he assumed must have been his mother. She turned and looked at him, giving a soft, “Oh!” of surprise and David gave her a nervous smile, trying to look casual but knowing he wasn’t doing a good job of it. “You have a friend,” she said, looking back at Ezra.
“This is David,” Ezra told her. “Is it okay if he stays for dinner?”
“Of course it is,” she replied kindly, before turning back to David and adding, “It’s nice to meet you, David.”
“Nice to meet you,” David replied back, his voice quiet and shy and his expression timid.
She smiled again and moved through a doorway that David guessed most likely led to the kitchen and suddenly David felt a nudge on his elbow. He looked back at Ezra who was smiling at him in an amused fashion as he inclined his head toward his room. As they walked down the hallway together Ezra leaned a little closer and said in a hushed tone, “You don’t have to be nervous, she’s not gonna bite you.”
“Shut up,” David replied under his breath with a playful glare. They walked into his room and shut the door and he added, “I just have a hard time meeting new people.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Ezra said as he moved and sat on his bed again. David followed after him and sat at the foot of his bed again, not sure what else to do. “It took you a while before you started talking to us. I had to practically force you out of your shell.”
“I’m shy, okay? Sue me,” David muttered, and he heard a soft chuckle from the side of him. He smiled and looked off to the side as he continued, “Honestly… I was just bullied my whole life so my instinct is to try to be invisible.” Ezra didn’t comment back for once and David worried he had made things awkward. Wanting to add a little levity back into the room, he looked back at him with a smile and a shrug and added, “Girly and gay, right? I’m an easy target.” Ezra looked like he wanted to say something but was hesitating, something which David found a little surprising. He was used to words just tumbling out of the other boy’s mouth without a second thought, no matter how inappropriate or inconsiderate they might be. “What?” David asked, curious about what he might be too worried to say.
“It was your boyfriend that bullied you, right?” he asked slowly, sounding hesitant.
David’s cheeks flushed a little and he blinked a few times. He wondered if Ezra had heard this as part of the gossip that had gone around with the picture of him and Pierre making out the year prior or if he had heard this on the bus during the argument he’d had with Hunter back in October. “Yeah… He feels terrible about it now. He really beats himself up over it because he knows how much it affected my personality and how it made me so… scared of people,” David admitted, finding it easier to admit this to Ezra than it would have been Hunter because of the way he felt no animosity from Ezra.
“So… How’d you end up together, then?” Ezra asked, still sounding hesitant, like he was worried he was overstepping.
“Ehhh… It’s kind of…” David looked away again, and suddenly he was visited with the urge to tell Ezra everything. He looked back at him, contemplating him for a second, for some reason feeling like he could trust him. “Do you want to hear a really embarrassing story?” Ezra smiled a little, clearly intrigued, and nodded. David sighed but smiled all the same, telling him, “But you can’t judge me, and you can’t tell anyone else.”
“I’ll take it to the grave,” he replied playfully, holding a hand over his heart.
David smiled wider at that and gave another sigh before launching into the whole story, every detail of the whole messy ordeal. He told him of his history with Pierre and how much he’d always hated him. He told him of the way he and Jenny had devised a plan to get him on the hockey team to ruin Pierre’s shot with the recruiter and the way he’d had to improvise and continue to be on the team when the recruiter didn’t come to the first game. He detailed the emotional back and forth with Pierre and the way he would be so sweet to him one minute and a monster to him the next. He included details Pierre had told him into their appropriate spots in the story, such as David grabbing Pierre’s hand in his sleep and pulling him onto him which forced Pierre to realize he was attracted to David and that he always had been.
David blushed when he told Ezra of the car accident and the almost kiss in the back of Pierre’s car, and of the awful things Pierre had said to him the next morning and how much it had broken David’s heart. He explained the way Jenny had come up with a new plan to get Pierre to kiss him and take a picture of it to spread through the school, and the way Pierre had come to apologize to him for everything on Christmas which made David come to grips with the fact that he had deep feelings for Pierre. He told him of the way the two had spent the next two months pining over each other in secret, both of them thinking the other didn’t want them. He recounted the fight he had with Jenny when she realized he’d fallen for Pierre and how it had led him to Pierre’s house where they had made out for the first time. He told him of Jenny following him into the locker room to apologize for the fight but finding him making out with Pierre, and the way she had taken a picture and posted it all over the whole school.
Shame bit at his stomach as he recalled how he hadn’t told Pierre that it was Jenny when he realized it was her or told him his part in the planning of what had happened, and the way he spent the next month hiding it from his boyfriend out of fear that he would hate him. He told him of the way he’d broken and hadn’t been able to hide it anymore, and how Pierre had broken up with him without him being able to explain anything to him. He told of the way he’d intended to take the blame for the picture to save the hockey team from being disbanded and the way Jenny had done it to save him from that fate, and the way she had locked him and Pierre in the locker room together and wouldn’t let them out until they talked. He told him of the way he told Pierre the whole story hoping he was listening and how he’d ended by telling him he thought he loved him, and the way Pierre had come to him and told him he thought he loved him too, and how the whole story ended with them getting together for good with a kiss.
The whole time he was talking he didn’t look at Ezra and instead shifted between looking at the things in his room or his own hands or feet or knees. He knew that this story was dramatic and ridiculous and silly and embarrassing, and he had honestly never imagined he would tell it to anyone other than Pierre, but there was something about getting it out to someone uninvolved that felt freeing, like a weight was lifting off of him. When he finished telling the story he looked over at Ezra finally who had been quiet the whole time he’d been talking, and suddenly he was nervous about what the other boy was going to think or say. To his relief, Ezra was smiling at him with surprised amusement and he knew before the other boy even spoke that his story hadn’t changed Ezra’s opinion of him.
“It’s a lot,” David admitted, blushing a little. “You’re the first person I’ve told that to, other than Pierre… and my dad.”
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Ezra said, and David laughed at his words, thinking this was the best possible thing the other boy could have said.
“Yeah, you never know, I might try to ruin your life and make you fall in love with me,” David teased, grinning wide.
“We can’t have that, just one look at your boyfriend’s picture tells me he could kick my ass without trying,” Ezra quipped, and David nodded, knowing it was true.
There was a fast and loud knock on the door and within a few seconds it was opening. A tiny version of Ezra stuck his head into the room and he said, “Mom said come eat.”
“Kay,” Ezra replied, standing as his little brother disappeared and closed the door behind him.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” David told him, standing as well.
“Yeah, that’s Elias. He’s seven,” Ezra replied.
“He’s so cute, he looks just like you,” David told him, smiling with a look of surprise in his eyes.
“So you think I’m cute?” Ezra joked as he stepped forward and opened the door.
David rolled his eyes and shoved his arm a little, muttering, “Shut up, you know what I mean.”
David followed Ezra out to their dining room and sat at the table next to him, seeing another person he hadn’t met yet sitting at the table, a man who appeared to be in his late thirties who David assumed must have been Ezra’s dad simply due to the fact that he was a man sitting at the table. He looked far too young to have a son Ezra’s age, and as David contemplated Ezra’s mom he realized the same was true for her. There were aspects of Ezra’s dad’s facial features that David thought he could see in Ezra but this man was as far from the other boy in style as he could have imagined. He had a horseshoe mustache and wore an old camo hat that had a fishing hook stuck through it. He was covered in grease like he’d been working under a car all day. He didn’t appear to be anywhere close to as tall as Ezra was, and he very much gave off the impression of someone who loved hunting, fishing, and all things outdoors.
Ezra’s dad offered no greeting to David and David was slightly relieved by it, feeling out of place and intimidated by him. He couldn’t help but notice the way the man also didn’t greet Ezra and seemed to be in his own world, like he would rather be somewhere else. David took the food that was offered to him and soon his attention was drawn to Ezra’s little brother Elias who started to chatter excitedly, his eyes glued to Ezra as if his opinion was the only one in the room that mattered. David could see the way Elias obviously idolized Ezra and looked up to him, and he couldn’t help but think that Ezra was really good in the way he interacted with the younger boy. He seemed patient and kind and he worked to show interest and enthusiasm about the things Elias said, even though they were the types of silly things that only seven year old boys would care about. Ezra’s mother occasionally asked David questions and pulled him into the conversation and David always responded politely, though he struggled to hide his timid nature and he could tell the way it amused Ezra to see him so shy around his family.
Being with Ezra’s family like this sent stabs of pain through David’s chest remembering a time when he had sat around his own dining room table with his mom and dad, eating and talking as a family, the room full of love and happiness. The cold emptiness of his house stood out to him in comparison and it hurt more than he would ever be able to explain. What he would have given to have that warmth back for his own family, and to get to sit around the table and talk about nothing in particular, laughing and smiling and hearing lame jokes. If there was anything he could have changed about his life, it would have been that.
When dinner was over, Ezra stood and started to clear plates off of the table and David helped without comment, following after the other boy into the kitchen and handing him the stack of dishes he’d brought. Ezra rinsed a couple of them off and started to load them into the dishwasher, and as he did David took over rinsing the rest of the dishes, putting them in a stack on the other side of the sink for Ezra to continue to load. Ezra looked over at him with a crooked smile which David returned. As they cleaned, David could hear Ezra’s mother putting away the leftover food in the fridge and again David had memories flood back to him of what it had been like to actually have a family. A look of sadness crossed David’s features and he stared absentmindedly at the silverware he was rinsing for a second, though when he saw Ezra looking at him with mild concern he hitched a smile back on his lips and handed him the last of the dishes.
When all was cleaned up, David followed Ezra back to his room where he grabbed his keys and said, “I guess I should probably get you home.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of homework still,” David replied, walking over to where his bag sat on the floor and picking it up.
“I’d say you could just stay the night but my bed is tiny and I’m a sleep cuddler so you don’t want that,” Ezra mused with a crooked grin.
David laughed quietly and put his bag on his shoulder, and without another word the two walked out to the front of Ezra’s house. David looked at Ezra’s truck this time as he walked up to it, taking in its appearance with mild surprise. It was a small bodied truck with a slight lift, the tires a little bigger than what would normally come on it. It appeared to be ten or fifteen years old if he had to guess and its black paint was chipped and worn off in places. This time as he got into it he noticed the way it smelled like engine oil, reminding him of an auto repair shop.
“What?” Ezra asked, and David looked over at him seeing that his eyebrows were pulled together and he was smiling, seemingly curious over whatever expression David had been displaying on his face.
David shook his head, matching his expression as he replied, “Nothing, I just never would have seen you driving a truck.”
“Well, that should teach you not to judge a book by its cover,” he replied as he started the engine.
David noticed as Ezra shifted the gears and started to drive that it was a manual rather than an automatic and felt mildly impressed and even more surprised. “I guess so,” he responded. He looked around as Ezra drove, occasionally giving him directions to his house, and soon they were pulling up into his driveway. As David started to unbuckle his seatbelt and grab his bag, Ezra made a noise that caught his attention.
“Oh…” he started, and David looked over at him curiously. “You’re gonna need a ride to school tomorrow,” he stated, and suddenly it dawned on David that his car was sitting in the school parking lot.
“Oh… crap,” David replied, feeling suddenly awkward.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Ezra said with a smile.
David felt awkward, hating that he was imposing further on the other boy when he had already caused such a scene and thrown his whole day into chaos. “Are you sure?” he asked nervously.
“I’m not gonna make you walk, idiot,” Ezra replied, bringing a laugh from David.
“Okay… thanks,” David responded quietly. He opened the door and started to get out but again Ezra stopped him.
“Ya know… I wouldn’t mind just… picking you up and taking you home,” Ezra offered, and David turned back to look at him, curious again. “Like, until your boyfriend is here and can make sure Hunter doesn’t follow you home and… ya know.”
David’s eyes widened a little and his cheeks flushed pink. “No way, you don’t have to do that,” David told him quickly, shaking his head as he did.
“It really wouldn’t be a big deal. You don’t live that far from me and you’re only a little out of my way,” Ezra told him, sounding serious.
“No, that’s too much. I really appreciate the offer but I can’t ask you to do that,” David politely declined again.
Ezra smiled at him knowingly for a few seconds before saying, “You feel bad letting people help you, don’t you?”
The pink tint in David’s cheeks darkened and he blinked rapidly again, unnerved by the way Ezra had an uncanny ability to see right through him and was unafraid to call it out. “Kinda,” he replied hesitantly.
“David, you’re worth going a few minutes out of my way for, especially if it keeps you a little bit safer,” Ezra told him, smiling in a way that told David the other boy could see just how insecure and self-conscious he truly was. Suddenly the things that Jenny, and Pierre, and even Olivia had said to him came back to him, all of them pointing out in their own way how little David thought of himself and how unworthy he generally found himself of other people’s time and effort. He knew this situation was no different and that Ezra could see this in him, too. “Let me help you, as your friend.”
“Okay,” David replied quietly, his response barely above a whisper as a result of how badly he didn’t want to say it and how much agreeing to such a huge favor went entirely against his nature. “Will you at least let me give you gas money?” he asked, though the way Ezra laughed at him told him his answer.
“Absolutely not, it’s seriously barely out of my way,” Ezra told him, grinning wide and shaking his head. “We gotta work on that sense of self-worth,” he added, patting David on the shoulder.
David blushed a little harder and looked down, muttering, “Yeah… I’ve heard that from a few people.” He started to get out of the truck again but stopped and looked back at Ezra, asking, “Do you eat breakfast? I always make myself breakfast, I could make you breakfast.”
“If it would make you feel better, you can make me breakfast,” Ezra told him, inclining his head a little.
“It would make me feel better…” David replied quietly.
“Alright, get outta here. I’ll see you in the morning and I promise I’ll show up hungry,” Ezra teased.
“Kay, see you tomorrow,” David replied with a nervous smile before getting out of the truck and shutting the door. He walked up to the front door and unlocked it, turning to wave at Ezra who hadn’t pulled away yet and had waited to see him get in the door. When he got inside he closed the door and locked it, and immediately he began to check the entire house for any unlocked windows or doors. Now that he was alone that sense of fear came over him again and he wanted to turn every light in the house on just as much as he wanted to hide in the dark and pretend no one was home. The fact that Hunter knew where he lived plagued him and suddenly he was glad for Ezra’s insistence on picking him up and dropping him off from school until Pierre was back, no matter how uncomfortable he felt at the idea of imposing.
He went to his room and closed the door, locking it behind him despite the fact that he was the only one there, before sitting down at his desk to start on his homework. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night for him with a lot of jumping at tiny noises, and that it was going to take a while before he was able to feel comfortable in his own home, something which more than likely wouldn’t be happening until Pierre was there with him, able to wrap him up in his arms and make him feel secure and whole once again.
Author: shmorgenheigen
Chapter: Twenty Nine
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pierre/David
Word Count: 5544
Summary: The continuation of the story Behind the Net, picking up right where the original story left off. David and Pierre explore their new relationship while navigating a long distance relationship. While Pierre is in Anchorage in his first year of college and playing college hockey, David is stuck back in Juneau to finish his senior year of high school. When an unlikely person from David’s past shows up and forces their way back into David’s life, things take a turn for the dramatic. Will David and Pierre be able to maintain their love for each other while separated and stave off those pesky feelings of loneliness, jealousy, and depression?
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, didn't happen!
Author's Note: When I started to re-write Behind the Net from Pierre’s perspective, I started to think about how much story there would be to tell when Pierre went off to college, leaving David alone in Juneau. I became obsessed with the idea of writing the next chapter in their story and now that it’s finished, I am absolutely in love with how it turned out and the original characters I added into the story! If anyone reads this, leave me a comment and let me know!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
That night when Pierre called, David felt nervous to answer. He looked at his phone for a second and chewed on his lip, terrified of how he was going to take the news about what had happened. He glanced over at Ezra who took his controller and quietly said, “You can go in my room if you want.”
David nodded and stood, and with a deep breath he answered, his voice shaking as he said, “Hey.” He tried to sound casual but his voice raised in an unnatural way and the word came out weak.
“What did he do?” Pierre asked seriously, anger staining his words and making him louder than intended. David walked into Ezra’s bedroom and closed the door behind him, moving to sit on the edge of his bed again.
“He yelled at me,” David admitted, his voice quiet. “The guys noticed my ring at lunch and they were making a big scene about it and Hunter saw… a-and he didn’t like it.”
“What did he say?” Pierre questioned, his words coming out hard and fast as rage boiled inside of him.
“He asked if I was serious and he said I’m seventeen and can’t know that I want this for the rest of my life,” David replied sheepishly. “He used a few extra strong words in there but… that’s the gist of it.”
“Did he touch you?” Pierre continued, feeling as if his body had caught on fire.
“No… He tried to come over to me but Ezra got in his face as soon as he walked up to us and told him to walk away… and then Ben and Noah got in between us too and they blocked me from him. When he tried to take a step toward me Ezra pushed him and yelled at him and made him leave,” David recounted slowly. He felt the fear from the moment working up inside of him again and he tried to push it away.
Pierre sighed heavily and closed his eyes, his free hand finding his face and rubbing it slowly in his frustration. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice softening a little but his frustration still apparent.
“I am now... I’m still at Ezra’s house. He said I could stay for dinner if I wanted to,” David told him. He hesitated a moment, knowing he needed to admit how useless he’d been but not wanting to. “When I saw Hunter I just panicked. I couldn’t move or talk and I just… froze.”
“It’s lucky your friends were there to stand up for you,” Pierre said, not knowing what else to say. The distance between them made him feel suddenly trapped and useless, a distance that would continue to separate them for the next two months whether he liked it or not.
“Yeah…” David responded quietly. “I’m sorry, I forgot everything you taught me as soon as he looked at me,” he whispered, his eyes flooding as the apology left his lips.
Pierre shook his head, his hand moving into his hair and pulling. “It’s not your fault,” Pierre told him firmly.
“It sure feels like my fault,” David admitted, his voice cracking as he struggled to keep his emotions inside.
“Well it’s not,” Pierre said again.
David nodded but didn’t respond, knowing logically what Pierre said was true but not able to fully believe it, either. “As soon as he walked away I had a panic attack. Ezra and the guys got me to a quiet hallway to try to calm me down but I just kept seeing him and thinking about how helpless I was and how if I had been alone he would have been able to do whatever he wanted to me with the way I froze up. They didn’t know what to do so Ezra just took me to his house… and I’ve been here ever since,” David told him quietly.
“Well… I’m glad he was there for you,” Pierre told him, still gripping at his hair and squeezing his eyes shut tight. His inability to act and to be the one doing the saving drove him crazy and he sat there, feeling like he needed to do something but knowing there was nothing he could do.
“Me too,” David told him softly. “Honestly… I knew I had to tell you about it but I didn’t really want to,” David admitted, his voice so low that Pierre barely heard him through the phone.
Pierre’s hand fell from his hair at those words and his eyes opened, looking blindly across his room. “Why?” he asked softly.
David chewed on his bottom lip, wishing he hadn’t spoken that thought, able to hear the pain in Pierre’s quiet response. “I know what it does to you that you’re so far away and can’t do anything,” he told him softly. “And… I didn’t have the taser or the pepper spray on me. They were in my jacket in my locker and I was scared you would… be mad at me.”
Pierre sighed again and dropped his face back to his hand, propping his elbow up on his knee. “It’s not like you could have used it in the middle of school,” he reasoned gently. “I mean, if you absolutely had to then obviously you should but in the middle of the day with a bunch of people around you shouldn’t have to. Just stick close to your friends, they’re clearly ready to stand between you to keep you safe.”
David nodded and blinked slowly, forcing the tears back down inside of himself. He’d already cried so much over the last two days, he was sick of it and didn’t want to indulge in his pain anymore. “I don’t know what I did to deserve them standing up for me like that,” David said, his voice tinged with pain.
“David, how many people have to prove they love you before you start to believe that you’re worthy of it?” Pierre asked him suddenly.
David’s eyes opened wider and his lips parted, surprise overtaking his senses. “I-I… I dunno,” he responded lamely, his cheeks flushing.
“You don’t seem to believe it but you’re good and kind and special. People like being around you, no matter how much you try to put yourself down or hide from everyone around you.” Pierre leaned his head down further into himself, pain ripping through him as he recognized again that this part of David’s personality was his own doing, having beaten the other boy down over and over for the first ten years of knowing each other. He gripped his hair again, hating himself for who he had been and what he had done, knowing David had spent his formative years from the time he was six years old being told he was too different, too wrong, that nobody liked him and that he wasn’t worthy of friendship or being seen, and knowing that he had been the one doing it to him. “I’m so sorry I did this to you,” Pierre told him, his voice shaking as he spoke.
These words made David feel worse and he shook his head, wanting to deny them despite the way that he knew they were true. “Pierre, you didn’t-”
“Yes I did,” Pierre cut him off. “And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life fixing it, even if it kills me.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence, David chewing on his bottom lip and fidgeting with his ring idly with his thumb. “I love you,” David said, breaking the silence between them. “You know I don’t hold anything against you, right?”
“I know you don’t,” Pierre responded. “But honestly that’s part of the problem. You should hate me. You should value yourself enough to realize what I did to you and hate me for it. The selfish part of me hopes you never resent me for it but if someday it all clicks for you and you do start to resent me I won’t be able to say anything about it because that’s what you should feel.”
“That’s never gonna happen, no matter what journey I go on or how I might start to think or feel about myself down the road. I will never stop seeing the person you really are and loving you for it,” David told him firmly.
Pierre’s eyes opened and he looked down at his own knees, not really seeing them. “I’m the one that doesn’t deserve you,” he said weakly.
“And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life proving to you that that’s not true, either,” David responded.
Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes, the silence that fell over them heavy and thick. Then Pierre spoke and brought David back to the present with a horrible sinking feeling. “What are you gonna do about Hunter?”
David shook his head as Hunter’s face flashed through his mind and the way he had stared at him with such anger and devastation, unable to control himself in his pain. He knew it was because Hunter loved him in his own sick and twisted way and that he couldn’t contain his feelings in the face of losing David forever, no matter what had happened between them and how far apart they had fallen. “I don’t know,” he responded honestly.
“God damn it,” Pierre muttered suddenly, his voice strengthening as his frustration overtook him again. “There’s just over two months left in your school year. Why did he have to bug you now? Why couldn’t he have just left you alone?”
“Because he…” David started, but he trailed off, afraid to speak the words that had crossed his mind.
“He what?” Pierre asked quietly.
“He loves me,” David admitted, feeling sick as he did.
Pierre took a moment to respond, his chest rising and falling heavily and his eyes falling closed again. “He’s got a sick way of showing it,” he said finally, his voice hoarse and bitter.
“Yeah… He doesn’t know how to hold himself back from what he wants, and seeing me slipping away from him for good… He’s lashing out, and it makes him dangerous,” David explained quietly, hating how well he had come to understand Hunter.
“I want you to go back to keeping your taser and your pepper spray on you at all times,” Pierre said, his voice giving more of a command than a request.
“I will,” David told him quietly.
“If he touches you again, I’m not gonna be able to stop myself from going after him,” Pierre warned, his voice shaking again in his anger.
“He won’t,” David said firmly. “I’ll make sure I’m never alone and he never gets the chance.”
“I want to believe that but… it’s not easy,” Pierre told him honestly.
David nodded and responded with a soft, “I know.” Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, David tried to relax his body and bring himself back down from all of the negative emotions that had just rushed through him. “I have to go,” he said, knowing he couldn’t sit on the phone with Pierre in Ezra’s room the whole night.
“Okay,” Pierre responded, sitting up and dropping his hand down next to him on his bed. “Just… tell me right away if anything happens tomorrow.”
“Okay,” David agreed, his voice soft. “I love you,” he said again, sounding sad.
“I love you too,” Pierre responded gently. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Talk to you tomorrow,” David replied, and he pulled the phone from his face and watched as Pierre ended the call. He hugged his phone to his chest, feeling the urge to cry again welling up inside of him. It didn’t seem real that just the day before he had been on a plane with Pierre, cuddling his arm and watching movies, or kissing each other goodbye at the airport. How had so much happened in the course of twenty four hours? How had he managed to feel so much pain and sadness and terror without exploding?
With another steadying breath David stood and put his phone in his pocket before making his way out into the living room where Ezra was standing talking to a woman who he assumed must have been his mother. She turned and looked at him, giving a soft, “Oh!” of surprise and David gave her a nervous smile, trying to look casual but knowing he wasn’t doing a good job of it. “You have a friend,” she said, looking back at Ezra.
“This is David,” Ezra told her. “Is it okay if he stays for dinner?”
“Of course it is,” she replied kindly, before turning back to David and adding, “It’s nice to meet you, David.”
“Nice to meet you,” David replied back, his voice quiet and shy and his expression timid.
She smiled again and moved through a doorway that David guessed most likely led to the kitchen and suddenly David felt a nudge on his elbow. He looked back at Ezra who was smiling at him in an amused fashion as he inclined his head toward his room. As they walked down the hallway together Ezra leaned a little closer and said in a hushed tone, “You don’t have to be nervous, she’s not gonna bite you.”
“Shut up,” David replied under his breath with a playful glare. They walked into his room and shut the door and he added, “I just have a hard time meeting new people.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Ezra said as he moved and sat on his bed again. David followed after him and sat at the foot of his bed again, not sure what else to do. “It took you a while before you started talking to us. I had to practically force you out of your shell.”
“I’m shy, okay? Sue me,” David muttered, and he heard a soft chuckle from the side of him. He smiled and looked off to the side as he continued, “Honestly… I was just bullied my whole life so my instinct is to try to be invisible.” Ezra didn’t comment back for once and David worried he had made things awkward. Wanting to add a little levity back into the room, he looked back at him with a smile and a shrug and added, “Girly and gay, right? I’m an easy target.” Ezra looked like he wanted to say something but was hesitating, something which David found a little surprising. He was used to words just tumbling out of the other boy’s mouth without a second thought, no matter how inappropriate or inconsiderate they might be. “What?” David asked, curious about what he might be too worried to say.
“It was your boyfriend that bullied you, right?” he asked slowly, sounding hesitant.
David’s cheeks flushed a little and he blinked a few times. He wondered if Ezra had heard this as part of the gossip that had gone around with the picture of him and Pierre making out the year prior or if he had heard this on the bus during the argument he’d had with Hunter back in October. “Yeah… He feels terrible about it now. He really beats himself up over it because he knows how much it affected my personality and how it made me so… scared of people,” David admitted, finding it easier to admit this to Ezra than it would have been Hunter because of the way he felt no animosity from Ezra.
“So… How’d you end up together, then?” Ezra asked, still sounding hesitant, like he was worried he was overstepping.
“Ehhh… It’s kind of…” David looked away again, and suddenly he was visited with the urge to tell Ezra everything. He looked back at him, contemplating him for a second, for some reason feeling like he could trust him. “Do you want to hear a really embarrassing story?” Ezra smiled a little, clearly intrigued, and nodded. David sighed but smiled all the same, telling him, “But you can’t judge me, and you can’t tell anyone else.”
“I’ll take it to the grave,” he replied playfully, holding a hand over his heart.
David smiled wider at that and gave another sigh before launching into the whole story, every detail of the whole messy ordeal. He told him of his history with Pierre and how much he’d always hated him. He told him of the way he and Jenny had devised a plan to get him on the hockey team to ruin Pierre’s shot with the recruiter and the way he’d had to improvise and continue to be on the team when the recruiter didn’t come to the first game. He detailed the emotional back and forth with Pierre and the way he would be so sweet to him one minute and a monster to him the next. He included details Pierre had told him into their appropriate spots in the story, such as David grabbing Pierre’s hand in his sleep and pulling him onto him which forced Pierre to realize he was attracted to David and that he always had been.
David blushed when he told Ezra of the car accident and the almost kiss in the back of Pierre’s car, and of the awful things Pierre had said to him the next morning and how much it had broken David’s heart. He explained the way Jenny had come up with a new plan to get Pierre to kiss him and take a picture of it to spread through the school, and the way Pierre had come to apologize to him for everything on Christmas which made David come to grips with the fact that he had deep feelings for Pierre. He told him of the way the two had spent the next two months pining over each other in secret, both of them thinking the other didn’t want them. He recounted the fight he had with Jenny when she realized he’d fallen for Pierre and how it had led him to Pierre’s house where they had made out for the first time. He told him of Jenny following him into the locker room to apologize for the fight but finding him making out with Pierre, and the way she had taken a picture and posted it all over the whole school.
Shame bit at his stomach as he recalled how he hadn’t told Pierre that it was Jenny when he realized it was her or told him his part in the planning of what had happened, and the way he spent the next month hiding it from his boyfriend out of fear that he would hate him. He told him of the way he’d broken and hadn’t been able to hide it anymore, and how Pierre had broken up with him without him being able to explain anything to him. He told of the way he’d intended to take the blame for the picture to save the hockey team from being disbanded and the way Jenny had done it to save him from that fate, and the way she had locked him and Pierre in the locker room together and wouldn’t let them out until they talked. He told him of the way he told Pierre the whole story hoping he was listening and how he’d ended by telling him he thought he loved him, and the way Pierre had come to him and told him he thought he loved him too, and how the whole story ended with them getting together for good with a kiss.
The whole time he was talking he didn’t look at Ezra and instead shifted between looking at the things in his room or his own hands or feet or knees. He knew that this story was dramatic and ridiculous and silly and embarrassing, and he had honestly never imagined he would tell it to anyone other than Pierre, but there was something about getting it out to someone uninvolved that felt freeing, like a weight was lifting off of him. When he finished telling the story he looked over at Ezra finally who had been quiet the whole time he’d been talking, and suddenly he was nervous about what the other boy was going to think or say. To his relief, Ezra was smiling at him with surprised amusement and he knew before the other boy even spoke that his story hadn’t changed Ezra’s opinion of him.
“It’s a lot,” David admitted, blushing a little. “You’re the first person I’ve told that to, other than Pierre… and my dad.”
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Ezra said, and David laughed at his words, thinking this was the best possible thing the other boy could have said.
“Yeah, you never know, I might try to ruin your life and make you fall in love with me,” David teased, grinning wide.
“We can’t have that, just one look at your boyfriend’s picture tells me he could kick my ass without trying,” Ezra quipped, and David nodded, knowing it was true.
There was a fast and loud knock on the door and within a few seconds it was opening. A tiny version of Ezra stuck his head into the room and he said, “Mom said come eat.”
“Kay,” Ezra replied, standing as his little brother disappeared and closed the door behind him.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” David told him, standing as well.
“Yeah, that’s Elias. He’s seven,” Ezra replied.
“He’s so cute, he looks just like you,” David told him, smiling with a look of surprise in his eyes.
“So you think I’m cute?” Ezra joked as he stepped forward and opened the door.
David rolled his eyes and shoved his arm a little, muttering, “Shut up, you know what I mean.”
David followed Ezra out to their dining room and sat at the table next to him, seeing another person he hadn’t met yet sitting at the table, a man who appeared to be in his late thirties who David assumed must have been Ezra’s dad simply due to the fact that he was a man sitting at the table. He looked far too young to have a son Ezra’s age, and as David contemplated Ezra’s mom he realized the same was true for her. There were aspects of Ezra’s dad’s facial features that David thought he could see in Ezra but this man was as far from the other boy in style as he could have imagined. He had a horseshoe mustache and wore an old camo hat that had a fishing hook stuck through it. He was covered in grease like he’d been working under a car all day. He didn’t appear to be anywhere close to as tall as Ezra was, and he very much gave off the impression of someone who loved hunting, fishing, and all things outdoors.
Ezra’s dad offered no greeting to David and David was slightly relieved by it, feeling out of place and intimidated by him. He couldn’t help but notice the way the man also didn’t greet Ezra and seemed to be in his own world, like he would rather be somewhere else. David took the food that was offered to him and soon his attention was drawn to Ezra’s little brother Elias who started to chatter excitedly, his eyes glued to Ezra as if his opinion was the only one in the room that mattered. David could see the way Elias obviously idolized Ezra and looked up to him, and he couldn’t help but think that Ezra was really good in the way he interacted with the younger boy. He seemed patient and kind and he worked to show interest and enthusiasm about the things Elias said, even though they were the types of silly things that only seven year old boys would care about. Ezra’s mother occasionally asked David questions and pulled him into the conversation and David always responded politely, though he struggled to hide his timid nature and he could tell the way it amused Ezra to see him so shy around his family.
Being with Ezra’s family like this sent stabs of pain through David’s chest remembering a time when he had sat around his own dining room table with his mom and dad, eating and talking as a family, the room full of love and happiness. The cold emptiness of his house stood out to him in comparison and it hurt more than he would ever be able to explain. What he would have given to have that warmth back for his own family, and to get to sit around the table and talk about nothing in particular, laughing and smiling and hearing lame jokes. If there was anything he could have changed about his life, it would have been that.
When dinner was over, Ezra stood and started to clear plates off of the table and David helped without comment, following after the other boy into the kitchen and handing him the stack of dishes he’d brought. Ezra rinsed a couple of them off and started to load them into the dishwasher, and as he did David took over rinsing the rest of the dishes, putting them in a stack on the other side of the sink for Ezra to continue to load. Ezra looked over at him with a crooked smile which David returned. As they cleaned, David could hear Ezra’s mother putting away the leftover food in the fridge and again David had memories flood back to him of what it had been like to actually have a family. A look of sadness crossed David’s features and he stared absentmindedly at the silverware he was rinsing for a second, though when he saw Ezra looking at him with mild concern he hitched a smile back on his lips and handed him the last of the dishes.
When all was cleaned up, David followed Ezra back to his room where he grabbed his keys and said, “I guess I should probably get you home.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of homework still,” David replied, walking over to where his bag sat on the floor and picking it up.
“I’d say you could just stay the night but my bed is tiny and I’m a sleep cuddler so you don’t want that,” Ezra mused with a crooked grin.
David laughed quietly and put his bag on his shoulder, and without another word the two walked out to the front of Ezra’s house. David looked at Ezra’s truck this time as he walked up to it, taking in its appearance with mild surprise. It was a small bodied truck with a slight lift, the tires a little bigger than what would normally come on it. It appeared to be ten or fifteen years old if he had to guess and its black paint was chipped and worn off in places. This time as he got into it he noticed the way it smelled like engine oil, reminding him of an auto repair shop.
“What?” Ezra asked, and David looked over at him seeing that his eyebrows were pulled together and he was smiling, seemingly curious over whatever expression David had been displaying on his face.
David shook his head, matching his expression as he replied, “Nothing, I just never would have seen you driving a truck.”
“Well, that should teach you not to judge a book by its cover,” he replied as he started the engine.
David noticed as Ezra shifted the gears and started to drive that it was a manual rather than an automatic and felt mildly impressed and even more surprised. “I guess so,” he responded. He looked around as Ezra drove, occasionally giving him directions to his house, and soon they were pulling up into his driveway. As David started to unbuckle his seatbelt and grab his bag, Ezra made a noise that caught his attention.
“Oh…” he started, and David looked over at him curiously. “You’re gonna need a ride to school tomorrow,” he stated, and suddenly it dawned on David that his car was sitting in the school parking lot.
“Oh… crap,” David replied, feeling suddenly awkward.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Ezra said with a smile.
David felt awkward, hating that he was imposing further on the other boy when he had already caused such a scene and thrown his whole day into chaos. “Are you sure?” he asked nervously.
“I’m not gonna make you walk, idiot,” Ezra replied, bringing a laugh from David.
“Okay… thanks,” David responded quietly. He opened the door and started to get out but again Ezra stopped him.
“Ya know… I wouldn’t mind just… picking you up and taking you home,” Ezra offered, and David turned back to look at him, curious again. “Like, until your boyfriend is here and can make sure Hunter doesn’t follow you home and… ya know.”
David’s eyes widened a little and his cheeks flushed pink. “No way, you don’t have to do that,” David told him quickly, shaking his head as he did.
“It really wouldn’t be a big deal. You don’t live that far from me and you’re only a little out of my way,” Ezra told him, sounding serious.
“No, that’s too much. I really appreciate the offer but I can’t ask you to do that,” David politely declined again.
Ezra smiled at him knowingly for a few seconds before saying, “You feel bad letting people help you, don’t you?”
The pink tint in David’s cheeks darkened and he blinked rapidly again, unnerved by the way Ezra had an uncanny ability to see right through him and was unafraid to call it out. “Kinda,” he replied hesitantly.
“David, you’re worth going a few minutes out of my way for, especially if it keeps you a little bit safer,” Ezra told him, smiling in a way that told David the other boy could see just how insecure and self-conscious he truly was. Suddenly the things that Jenny, and Pierre, and even Olivia had said to him came back to him, all of them pointing out in their own way how little David thought of himself and how unworthy he generally found himself of other people’s time and effort. He knew this situation was no different and that Ezra could see this in him, too. “Let me help you, as your friend.”
“Okay,” David replied quietly, his response barely above a whisper as a result of how badly he didn’t want to say it and how much agreeing to such a huge favor went entirely against his nature. “Will you at least let me give you gas money?” he asked, though the way Ezra laughed at him told him his answer.
“Absolutely not, it’s seriously barely out of my way,” Ezra told him, grinning wide and shaking his head. “We gotta work on that sense of self-worth,” he added, patting David on the shoulder.
David blushed a little harder and looked down, muttering, “Yeah… I’ve heard that from a few people.” He started to get out of the truck again but stopped and looked back at Ezra, asking, “Do you eat breakfast? I always make myself breakfast, I could make you breakfast.”
“If it would make you feel better, you can make me breakfast,” Ezra told him, inclining his head a little.
“It would make me feel better…” David replied quietly.
“Alright, get outta here. I’ll see you in the morning and I promise I’ll show up hungry,” Ezra teased.
“Kay, see you tomorrow,” David replied with a nervous smile before getting out of the truck and shutting the door. He walked up to the front door and unlocked it, turning to wave at Ezra who hadn’t pulled away yet and had waited to see him get in the door. When he got inside he closed the door and locked it, and immediately he began to check the entire house for any unlocked windows or doors. Now that he was alone that sense of fear came over him again and he wanted to turn every light in the house on just as much as he wanted to hide in the dark and pretend no one was home. The fact that Hunter knew where he lived plagued him and suddenly he was glad for Ezra’s insistence on picking him up and dropping him off from school until Pierre was back, no matter how uncomfortable he felt at the idea of imposing.
He went to his room and closed the door, locking it behind him despite the fact that he was the only one there, before sitting down at his desk to start on his homework. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night for him with a lot of jumping at tiny noises, and that it was going to take a while before he was able to feel comfortable in his own home, something which more than likely wouldn’t be happening until Pierre was there with him, able to wrap him up in his arms and make him feel secure and whole once again.