TW: Bullying, PTSD, Anxiety Attack

He fucked up. Knowing he’s a bit of an asshole doesn’t stop him from pushing and this time, he’s pushed too hard. Gerald knows a panic attack when he sees one. “Fuck.” He turns around. “Alright, nothing to see here, I’m just drunk.” He waves away the attention. Gerald squeezes past the people inside. He needs to find Ray and make this right. “Anyone seen Ray? Angsty shirtless dude, all wet?”

Wordlessly, someone points him down the hallway to the bathroom. 

“Thanks.” Gerald presses his ear to the door before he tries the handle. It’s too quiet. The door is locked. “That’s not good.” 

The house belongs to the Alpha-Beta-Chi fraternity, some of which are swim team members. 

“I need the key,” he tells Kane, one of the two who live there. Kane nods. “Ray? You in there? Are you okay?” he calls and grimaces immediately. It’s a stupid question. There’s no answer and that’s telling on its own. 

They—Gerald and some of the guys—wait nervously until Kane comes back with a bunch of keys. Gerald grabs them and tries every key until the door clicks open. There is a collective sigh of relief. It lasts until they push the door open. 

The youngest member of their team lies unmoving and still half-naked on the cold tiles of the fraternity’s bathroom floor. “Call an ambulance now,” Gerald demands. “And get me a towel.” 

Gerald wraps him up as they wait for the paramedics to arrive. Ray is unresponsive but breathing, albeit shallowly. He’s shivering. Someone goes to the front door to wait for the medics, the rest of them form a wall blocking anyone else from accessing the bathroom. They wait.

“He’s having a panic attack,” Gerald says as soon as the paramedics arrive.

“How long?” they ask.

“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes?” he says uncertainly. 

“Did you move him?” the male medic asks, checking Ray for any injuries.

“Um, it started in the backyard, and he came in here. We found him like this,” Gerald answers.

“Do you know what might have triggered him?”

There’s an uncomfortable shuffling among the guys. “It’s a pool party. We, um, we didn’t know.” 

The medic’s eyebrows are raised. Gerald lifts a little of the towel. “I see,” says the female medic. “You, follow me to the ambulance.” 

They take Ray out on a stretcher, still swathed in the towel. The woman hands Gerald a pamphlet. It’s for a burn centre. 

“You may not have known this time, but I hope you will know better next time,” she says.

Gerald nods. There’s an uncomfortable lump in his throat that he knows he deserves every bit of. 

The party dies down after that. There’s no mood to have fun when people are reminded of their mortality so unceremoniously. Everyone in the swim team stays behind to help clean up in sombre silence. And when they are down, Gerald shows them the pamphlet. 

“I’m going to volunteer,” he tells them. 

Kane meets his eyes. “We’ll all go.” Around the table, the guys nod in agreement.

~

There’s a horrible moment of déjà vu when Ray wakes up in the hospital again. This time. He’s not in excessive agony and that’s enough to break him out of the momentary fear. Mum is in the bedside chair. 

“Hi, baby. How are you feeling?” she smiles concernedly. 

“I’m okay,” Ray answers. It’s not strictly a lie. “When did you get here?”

“They called last night. Just before daddy and I were going to bed. You want to talk about it?” Mum strokes his hand gently.

Ray sighs. “It was a pool party. I fell in.”

“Oh, baby.” Mum sighs and cups his cheek. “I’m so sorry, honey. I just wanted you to have fun.”

“I know, mum.” Ray touches the hand on his cheek. “I wanted to go too. Just wanted to feel normal for once.” He drops his hand, wringing fingers in his lap. “Also, I quit the swim team. I don’t want to talk about it.”

~

It totally sucks that he’s the one who has to leave swimming. Ray absolutely intends to start swimming again, just maybe not with the school’s team? He decides to take a break before he starts figuring out where he goes from here. Mum moves in for a few nights, and while she’s there, he basks in the loving attention of his mother as she takes care of him. 

But she can’t stay with him forever, so Ray goes back to being alone. There’s a community pool he considers going to. It means more strangers though and he’s not desperate enough to start going yet. 

In the end, the problem resolves itself. Someone buzzes his apartment on a Tuesday afternoon, minutes before Ray typically went to the pool for the swim meets. And when he answers the door, it’s Gerald—and the rest of the swim team.

“Hi,” says Gerald. Ray pushes the door close. “No, wait!” Gerald sticks his foot in. “We just want to talk.”

“Leave me alone,” he says.

“No, listen. We came to apologise,” Gerald says hurriedly. It stops Ray from shutting the door in his face. That, and the foot in the way. “We just want to talk,” Gerald promises. He lets them in. 

Ray’s apartment is by no means small. But he lives alone, and there’s plenty of space. So, it’s a little funny to see a group of leanly muscled men huddled on and around his three-seater sofa. 

“You wanted to talk, so talk.” Ray stands in front, arms crossed over his chest. His voice doesn’t waver, fortunately. An awesome feat considering he was facing down the group of bullies that had orchestrated his humiliation. 

Strangely, they look guilty. Gerald especially so. “I’m sorry. We all are,” he tells Ray. There’s a bunch of nodding all around. “It was supposed to be a harmless joke, we didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to um, trigger an attack.”

“You were an asshole,” Ray says bluntly. Gerald winces. “All of you were. Gerald was just the biggest. And now you’re all here because of what, guilt?”

“We thought you were just shy,” Kane says quietly. “We didn’t know.”

Ray’s arms drop to his side. “You shouldn’t have to know people’s trauma to have empathy.”

“You’re right.” Adrian, the team captain stands. “We are sorry. And we’re trying to do better.” He holds out the burn centre pamphlet that Ray takes with raised eyebrows. “We’ve been volunteering there—all of us.” 

Ray doesn’t quite know how to feel about this. “You came here to apologise and tell me you decided to volunteer at a burn recovery centre.”

“It was Gerald’s idea. To volunteer, I mean,” Adrian adds.

“If you really want to leave, we won’t stop you. But don’t quit the team because of us,” says Gerald.

Ray has no idea what to say. He didn’t want to quit; he also didn’t want the shit they gave him. But the guys are here and seemingly sincere. Is this…real? Or was it just another joke? “I’ll think about it,” he says faintly. 

The disappointed looks make him frown. But the team accepts his response and begins filing out of his home after Adrian pats his shoulder and says, “Well, you know where to find us.”

~ 

He mulls over the visit and brings it up at his weekly mental health session with his therapist. 

“It’s entirely up to you,” she says. “But if they are sincere and repentant, don’t you think you should give them a chance too?”

The next week, Ray takes his gym bag and shows up to the meet with his long sleeves. No one heckles him about it even when he waits for them to finish in the locker room before he takes his shower. He keeps coming back. 

Gerald extends an open invitation to their group dinners that Ray accepts more often than not. It feels a little like he’s overcompensating with how nice he’s being to Ray. But it’s not pity, just lingering guilt, so Ray doesn’t tell him to stop. Because these are his only friends and it’s nice to be taken care of sometimes.