Chapter 8 - Bedside Manner

By the time Asteria caught up with him, Damian had already found Marcus.

He was outside, standing by the drink table, laughing at a story another guy was telling him. His posture was light and easy, a red solo cup in his hand. He had absolutely no idea what was coming.

Damian did not announce himself or his intention. It wasn’t like in the movies where people would call out or shout before taking the first swing. He just walked up, grabbed a fistful of Marcus’ shirt, and slammed him back against the side of the house hard enough that the string lights above them rattled.

“What the fuck did you do to Asteria?!” He asked.

“All I did was…”

The first punch landed before Marcus finished the sentence. Marcus’ head snapped sideways and slammed into the wall of the house. Ironically, it ricocheted off the wall and then forward, where Damian’s fist was up and ready for the second punch to land.

It had none of the back-and-forth dynamics of an actual fight. Marcus got maybe one or two swings in, but it was sloppy and barely connected.

Someone near the drink table shouted that a fight had started. The phones came up, and the party rearranged itself around the fight, making it even more difficult for Asteria to push through to get to Damian. Somewhere in the distance, Christopher’s voice could be heard yelling something about his punch stains on the linen tablecloth, which felt like the least important thing happening in the entire yard.

And she needed to get to Damian.

Damian didn’t seem to notice or care about any of it. He followed Marcus down when his knees buckled, hauling him back up by the collar just to keep hitting him again.

“Damian!” Asteria called, pushing through the persistent crowd. “Damian, stop!”

He didn’t stop. Marcus tried once more to fend for himself. It was more of a lucky shot, really, as the punch caught Damian across the ribs. But that was enough to slow him down for a bit.

“You absolute fucking piece of shit.” Damian snarled. “If you ever even so much as fucking look at her…”

“Damian! Stop!” Asteria cried.

She finally got close enough to grab his arm. Not that he did much of anything. He had at least forty pounds on her, a murderous streak on Marcus at that particular moment, and every bit of momentum behind that fist.

But she held on anyway. She planted her heels firmly in the ground and made herself a weight he’d have to actively drag forward if he wanted to keep swinging at Marcus.

Something in her voice must have finally cut through to him. He finally stopped mid-swing: chest heaving, knuckles already split and throbbing, staring up at Asteria.

“But he…” Damian started.

“Yeah, but he’s had enough.” She said. “Look at him. You have to stop. Please.”

Marcus had very obviously had enough. His nose was broken, his mouth was bleeding, and he had a black eye. He groaned from the ground, curling in on himself, and didn’t look inclined to get back up any time soon.

Damian didn’t bother to look at Marcus. He knew from the tone of Asteria’s voice and the look in her eye that she wanted this to be over.

“Okay.” He said, his voice rough from the adrenaline. “I’m done.”

Marcus used the lull to scramble backward and disappear into the crowd before Damian could reconsider. Nobody stopped him. Half the party was still amped up by the beat down, already texting videos to their friends and narrating the event to the people who’d missed it but had just come out of the house.

“Good. Come on.” She tugged at his arm, pulling him away from the small crowd.

Christopher’s yard was huge, so there was a lot of space for them to have privacy.

She marched him past the pool, pausing only to grab a can of soda from the cooler that had been left out. She finally led him around the side of the house to a patch of grass under the abandoned tree house that looked otherwise out of place among the rest of the opulence surrounding it.

He lowered himself to the low stone wall bordering the flowerbeds, and she stood in front of him.

“Give me your hand.” She instructed.

He held it out. She pressed the cool can against his knuckles, and he hissed through his teeth. For a second neither of them said anything, the thrum of the music muffled in this corner of the yard.

“You can’t do that.” She said, finally breaking the silence. “You can’t just go find someone and start swinging because you heard that something happened.”

“He deserved worse.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point.” He wasn’t looking at her, focused instead on his bleeding knuckles. “That douche bag did or said something to you, and I had to hear about it from a guy that I met less than thirty minutes ago instead of from you. And he said that it happened on the first day of school, so that means you’ve been purposely keeping it from me.”

She opened her mouth to tell him he was wrong, but he raised a brow daring her to deny it. She said nothing for a bit.

“Okay, fine. You’re right. I was purposely keeping it from you.”

“Well, why would you do that?!”

“Because I knew you’d do exactly this.” She gestured back to the party, which had resumed like nothing even had happened. “I knew that if you found out about it, you’d go find him and hit him until he was irreparably injured or until someone pulled you off. And that’s exactly what you did.

“Except now, the whole thing went down at a party with like fifty witnesses and everyone’s phones were out and recording.”

“Good.”

“It’s not good, Damian.” She said, exasperated. “You could get suspended.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do!” The words came out sharper than she meant them to. She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you getting in trouble or getting hurt because some idiot with more hair gel than sense couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”

“And I don’t want you to have to deal with something like that by yourself when I’m here to help you. You shouldn’t have to sit on something like that by yourself.” He said. “What else don’t I know? What else has just been happening to you that you’ve decided isn’t worth mentioning?”

She could have come clean at the moment and told him everything. She didn’t.

“It wasn’t a big deal.” She mumbled instead.

“It was enough of a big deal that Kethan, or whatever his name was, felt the need to bring it up.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “It was the first day of class, and the teacher hadn’t come into class yet. Kethan and I were trying to find our seats, Marcus and his friends made some… comments about my uniform, and then Marcus slapped my ass because my skirt was short. But Kethan made him apologize. It was handled.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t just him that was being a creep?” Damian asked. He looked just about ready to shoot back up and head into the thick of the party looking for Marcus’ friends so that they could also get the same treatment he did.

Asteria put a firm hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure that with what just happened to Marcus, his friends know not to try something like that on anyone else ever again.”

Damian sighed. “It had nothing to do with your skirt length.”

“I’m just saying, if it had been longer…”

“No.” He cut in sharply. “Don’t do that. Don’t stand here and try to convince yourself that the length of your skirt has anything to do with some bloody wanker deciding to put his hands on you. Marcus was an asshole who needed to learn boundaries, and I did a decent job of teaching him that tonight.

“So don’t make it about what you were wearing, like that’s the part that matters here.” He said sternly.

For a while, neither of them said anything.

“I’m not mad at you.” Damian said gently. Now, all the adrenaline had drained out of him, and he was visibly less coiled up than before. “I need you to know that. None of this is about you doing anything wrong.”

“Then what’s this about?”

“It’s about the fact that you’ll say everything’s fine and handled and not a big deal when that’s not the case.” He said. “I don’t like hearing about what happened to you from someone that’s practically a stranger. When something happens to you, I need you to tell me.”

“Okay.”

“And I especially don’t want you to hide or sugarcoat your problems with me. I might not be able to solve them, but I want to be involved in the process of trying to solve them. Because I’m your friend and that’s what friends do.”

“Okay.” She repeated. “I’ll try.”

He sighed, then gave her a lopsided smile. “I reckon that’ll have to be good enough.”

She reached for his hand, gently pulling the soda can away to assess the damage. The knuckles were split, with blood dried between the creases of his fingers. They were already swelling, although not as much as they would have had she not put the cold can on them.

She dug out a pack of tissues from her bag and started carefully dabbing at each cut. “You’re going to need actual antiseptic for this as soon as you get home. It’s probably going to bruise.”

“Oh, it’ll definitely bruise. But I take great comfort in knowing that Marcus’ bruises will be a lot worse.”

She bit back a smile. It took her a few minutes to dab away most of the blood, taking care to make sure that no flecks of tissue residue were left in the cuts.

“And there. All done.” She announced.

Damian glanced down at his knuckles, then back up at her. “You got terrible bedside manner, you know. No kiss to make it better?”

Asteria rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a bedside.”

“Then let’s go find one, and I’ll help you work on your bedside manner.”

Before she could formulate a response, a throat cleared deliberately behind them.