Chapter 8: The Panic Attack
The coffee was going cold. Arch shifted the cardboard carrier from one hand to the other, the heat leaching into his palm through the sleeves of the two cups. He stood on the cracked concrete walkway leading to Daniel’s garage studio, the morning sun already warm for December. He hadn’t called. After the heaviness of the restaurant, the quiet confession in the neon glow, a text felt too small, too casual. He’d woken with a solid, certain urge to see him, to be in the space Daniel had called a sanctuary. He’d brought coffee—Daniel’s order, black with one sugar, memorized from a throwaway comment weeks ago.
The large garage door was shut, but the side pedestrian door was ajar an inch. A bad sign, or a neutral one? Maybe he’d just stepped out. Arch nudged it open with his foot. “Daniel?”
The smell hit him first. Not just turpentine and gesso today. The sharp, acrid tang of ripped paper, of distress. The light was wrong, too. The main overhead was off, and the morning sun sliced in through the high, dusty windows in frantic, brilliant bars, illuminating a chaos of floating motes.
“Daniel?” he said again, his voice dropping.
He found him on the floor, halfway between his easel and the old sofa. He was sitting with his knees drawn up, back against the leg of his worktable, head buried in his arms. The space around him was a snowdrift of torn paper. Not just any paper. Sketches. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all ripped into halves, quarters, jagged fragments. Arch’s eyes picked out details: a careful study of a hand, torn across the palm. The slope of a shoulder, severed. A profile he vaguely recognized—the barista from the shop near campus—its face ripped clean away.
Daniel was breathing in sharp, shallow hitches, the sound raw and ugly in the quiet room. His whole body vibrated with the effort. It wasn’t crying. It was the frantic, airless panting of an animal caught in a trap.
Arch set the coffees down silently on the nearest flat surface, a stool stacked with art books. His own heart was a hammer against his ribs. He didn’t know the protocol for this. The restaurant confession had been verbal, a story from the past. This was the past vomiting itself into the present.
He moved slowly, giving the chaos a wide berth, and lowered himself to the concrete floor a few feet away from Daniel. The floor was icy through his jeans. He didn’t touch him. Not yet.
“Daniel,” he said, keeping his voice low and flat, a calm shoreline for the crashing waves of panic. “It’s Arch. I’m right here. You’re in your studio. The door’s open. It’s Tuesday morning.”
No response. Just another ragged inhale that sounded like it tore his throat.
“You’re safe. Nobody’s here but me.” He paused, searching for an anchor. “The neon sign from the Thai place is probably still flickering. My car’s out front. There’s a blue Prius parked crooked across the street.”
He kept talking, a stream of bland, present-tense facts. The quality of the light. The sound of a distant lawnmower. The smell of the coffee slowly cooling. He watched the tight coil of Daniel’s shoulders, the white-knuckled grip of his fingers on his own biceps. After what felt like an hour but was probably ninety seconds, the hitches in Daniel’s breathing deepened, slowed marginally. A shudder ran through him.
“Can you feel the floor?” Arch asked softly. “The concrete. It’s cold. Can you feel it under you?”
A tiny, almost imperceptible nod, the crown of his head brushing against his arms.
“Good. That’s good. Just stay with that.”
Another long minute passed. The lawnmower shut off somewhere, leaving a ringing silence. Daniel’s breathing began to even out, the terrible, mechanical gasps dissolving into shaky, exhausted exhales. He uncurled, just a little. His face, when he lifted it from his arms, was blotchy and ravaged, his eyes swollen and vacant. He looked at the sea of torn paper around him as if seeing it for the first time, a dull horror dawning in his expression.
“Oh, god,” he whispered, the words shredded.
“It’s just paper,” Arch said, still in that same calm tone. “It’s okay.”
Daniel shook his head, a frantic negation. He brought his hands up, stared at them. They were smudged with charcoal, a raw red scrape across one knuckle. “I did this.”
“You did. And now it’s done.” Arch finally moved, shifting closer until their knees were almost touching. He reached out, slow as approaching a spooked horse, and placed his palm flat against Daniel’s back, between his shoulder blades. He could feel the frantic drumbeat of his heart through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. “Just breathe where my hand is. Feel that.”
Daniel sucked in a long, trembling breath, his back expanding under Arch’s palm. He held it, then let it out in a whoosh, his body sagging forward. The fight was leaving him, leaving behind a terrible, hollowed-out fatigue.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into the space between his knees. “I’m so sorry you saw that.”
“Don’t.” The word came out firmer than Arch intended. He softened his voice. “Don’t apologize. I’m glad I was here.”
Daniel let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. “To see me lose my shit and destroy a month’s worth of work? Yeah, real romantic.”
“It’s not about romance.” Arch kept his hand steady, a point of contact, of weight. “What happened?”
Daniel was silent for a long time. His eyes tracked over the destruction. “I woke up. It was still dark. I’d been… dreaming. Not even a narrative dream. Just sensations. The smell of oil paint and mildew. The sound of canvas ripping. That specific, squeaky sound his shoes made on my old studio floor.” He swallowed convulsively. “I woke up and I was here, but I wasn’t. It was like the dream was in the room with me. I could smell it. I could feel him here. I just… I needed to destroy something before he could. I needed to do it first.”
The logic of trauma. Arch understood it in his own way. The need to control the narrative of your own ruin. He said nothing, just let the explanation hang in the dusty air.
“It was the sketchbooks,” Daniel continued, his voice gaining a thin, wretched steadiness. “The ones with people in them. Faces. I thought if I got rid of the faces… he wouldn’t have anything to slice through.” He looked at his hands again, turning them over. “It was stupid. It’s just paper. It doesn’t keep anything out.”
“It made sense in the moment,” Arch said. It wasn’t forgiveness; it was comprehension.
Daniel finally turned his head to look at him. His eyes were wrecked, but present. “You’re very calm about this.”
Arch offered a small, wry smile. “I’ve seen a lot of locker room meltdowns. This is different, but the principle’s the same. You don’t poke the wounded animal. You just sit with it until it remembers it’s not in a cage.”
The analogy landed. Daniel’s gaze drifted to the torn portrait of the barista. “I liked that one.”
“You can draw him again. He’ll still have the same nose.”
A faint, genuine smile touched Daniel’s lips, there and gone. He took another deep breath, Arch’s hand rising and falling with it. “The coffee’s cold.”
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“You brought me coffee?”
“That was the plan before I walked in on the paper massacre.”
Daniel nodded slowly, as if reassembling the morning from fragments. He looked around, seeming to truly see the studio again. The easel held the new canvas, the one of deep blues with the thread of gold. It was untouched, a quiet island in the storm. His eyes lingered on it, and some of the tension in his back eased under Arch’s hand.
“Help me up?” Daniel asked, his voice small.
Arch stood first, then offered both hands. Daniel took them, his grip weak and cold. Arch pulled him to his feet in one smooth motion, feeling how unsteady he was. Daniel swayed for a second, his eyes closing. Arch kept hold of one hand, grounding him.
“Dizzy,” Daniel muttered.
“You just hyperventilated for ten minutes. You’re allowed to be dizzy.” Arch guided him the few steps to the battered sofa and sat him down. He retrieved the coffees, handing one to Daniel. “Probably lukewarm.”
Daniel took it, cradling the cup in both hands, not drinking. He stared at the floor. “I hate this,” he said, not with anger, but with a profound, weary resignation. “I hate that he’s still in my head. That he can reach out from three years and five states away and make me do this.”
Arch sat beside him, leaving a few inches of space between them. He sipped his own coffee. It was bitter and cool. “He didn’t make you do anything. Your brain, trying to protect you, did a really shitty, dramatic job. That’s not him. That’s you. And you stopped.”
Daniel was quiet, absorbing that. He took a tentative sip. “You’re annoyingly logical sometimes.”
“Business school. We’re good at cost-benefit analysis. Cost: a bunch of sketches. Benefit: you didn’t touch the big painting. Net positive.”
Daniel glanced at the canvas. “I wouldn’t have. That one’s… separate.”
“Because it’s the settled noise?” Arch asked, recalling the term from the restaurant.
Daniel’s eyes flicked to him, surprised he remembered. He nodded. “Yeah. That one’s mine. Really mine. The sketches… they feel like evidence. Of looking. Of wanting. He always said that was my sickness. That I hid behind watching people, wanting things I couldn’t have.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m just… dumping.”
“Dump away. My family’s Thanksgiving was a masterclass in emotional dumping. This is more interesting.” Arch leaned back against the couch, the springs groaning. “So you think wanting things is a sickness?”
“I did. For a long time.” Daniel set his coffee on the floor and pulled his legs up onto the couch, hugging his knees. He looked younger like that, swamped in his worn-out t-shirt. “Wanting men. Wanting to make art. Wanting a life that wasn’t just fear and checking the locks. He framed it as this pathetic, greedy thing. And after a while, you start to believe the narrator.”
Arch knew that voice. The family narrator, the one that said wanting a life outside of football was a betrayal, a lack of grit. The voice that called a spinal injury “bad luck” and a changed major “drifting.” He’d spent years trying to mute that narrator.
“What does the narrator say about you wanting me?” Arch asked. The question left his mouth before he could censor it, blunt and terrifying.
Daniel went very still. He didn’t look at Arch. He studied the weave of the old couch fabric. “The narrator says it’s a fantasy. A safe fantasy because it’s impossible. Because you’re you. And then…” He gestured weakly at the torn paper on the floor. “When it started to feel possible, the narrator panicked. Said it was a trick. A setup for a worse fall. That I was collecting evidence for my own humiliation.”
The raw honesty of it was a physical blow. Arch felt the weight of his own identity—the “you’re you” of it all—the legacy, the smile, the assumed straightness, as a kind of wall Daniel had been content to admire from a distance. His crossing over had not just been a revelation; it had been an earthquake in Daniel’s carefully ordered world of safe longing.
“It’s not a trick,” Arch said, his voice low.
“I know. Logically.” Daniel finally turned his head. His eyes were clear now, if exhausted. “The part of me that isn’t a narrator knows that. That part remembers you holding my hand over a sticky table. That part remembers the kiss outside the restaurant. That part feels… settled. When you’re around.”
Arch didn’t know what to do with the intensity of that trust. It was more unsettling than any family expectation. He reached out, not for Daniel’s hand this time, but to brush his thumb gently over the red scrape on Daniel’s knuckle. “This part needs a Band-Aid.”
Daniel let out a soft breath, a real laugh this time. “It’s fine.”
“Humor me. I have a first aid kit in my car. Football habit.”
While Arch went to retrieve the kit, Daniel remained on the couch, staring at the wreckage of his sketches. When Arch returned, he found Daniel kneeling, slowly gathering the larger pieces into a messy pile.
“Don’t,” Arch said, kneeling beside him with the small plastic box.
“I have to clean it up.”
“Later. Let me do this first.” He opened the kit, took out an antiseptic wipe. “Hand.”
Daniel surrendered his hand. The wipe was cold, and he flinched. Arch held his wrist gently, cleaning the minor abrasion with a clinical focus. He blew on it softly to dry it, then applied a small bandage with careful precision. The act was simple, intimate in its mundanity.
“There,” Arch said, not letting go of his wrist. “All better.”
Daniel looked from the bandage to Arch’s face. “You’re good at that.”
“Told you. Locker room medic.” He released his wrist but stayed close, their knees almost touching in the nest of paper. “What do you want to do now?”
Daniel looked around. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a deep, bone-aching fatigue. “I don’t want to be here. With all this.” He gestured at the paper. “But I don’t want to be alone in my apartment either. The silence there is worse right now.”
“Come with me,” Arch said, the idea forming as he spoke.
“Where?”
“My place. My roommate is visiting his girlfriend in Dallas. It’s empty. We can get real coffee. We can watch terrible TV. You can not talk. Or you can talk. You can sleep on my couch. You just don’t have to be here with this.”
Daniel searched his face, looking for pity, for obligation. He found neither. Just a steady, open offer. “I’d be terrible company.”
“I don’t need company. I just want you to not be in the place where the nightmare followed you.” He stood, offering his hand again. “Come on. Leave it. It’ll keep.”
Daniel hesitated, his eyes sweeping over the studio one last time. He looked at the painting on the easel, the blues and gold, then at the torn paper, the evidence of his panic. He took Arch’s hand.
“Okay.”
They stepped out into the blinding morning sun. Arch locked the side door with the key Daniel handed him, the click of the deadbolt sounding final. Daniel stood on the walkway, squinting, looking pale and insubstantial in the light. Arch guided him to the passenger side of his car, opened the door.
Daniel paused before getting in. “Arch?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For not… freaking out. For the hand on the back thing. That helped.”
Arch nodded. “Anytime.”
The drive to Arch’s apartment was quiet, filled with a local alt-rock station playing softly. Daniel stared out the window, his forehead resting against the glass. Arch didn’t push. He just drove, the solid familiarity of the route a comfort.
His apartment was standard senior-year issue: beige walls, mismatched furniture, a lingering smell of stale beer and microwave popcorn from a weekend gathering. It was messy, but lived-in. Daniel stood awkwardly in the living room, as if unsure where to place himself.
“Make yourself at home,” Arch said, tossing his keys on the counter. “I’ll make coffee. The real stuff.”
While the coffee brewed, Arch heard the soft thump of Daniel sitting on the sofa. When he came back with two mugs, he found Daniel had kicked off his shoes and was curled on his side, eyes closed. He wasn’t asleep; his breathing was too alert. He’d taken the old afghan from the back of the couch and pulled it over himself.
Arch set the coffee on the side table and sat in the armchair opposite, giving him space. He picked up a textbook he’d been neglecting and pretended to read. The silence was different here. It was warm, charged not with panic but with a fragile, exhausting peace.
After twenty minutes, Daniel spoke, his voice muffled by the blanket. “You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I’m not. I have a finance midterm I should be studying for. This is just a change of scenery for both of us.”
Daniel opened his eyes. They were less haunted now, just deeply tired. “What’s the topic?”
“Derivatives. Excruciatingly boring.”
“Tell me about it.”
So Arch did. He talked about Black-Scholes models, about hedging strategies, his voice a low, steady drone. He didn’t simplify it; he talked about the parts he found frustratingly abstract, the parts that made sense. It was nonsense to Daniel, but the sound of Arch’s voice, engaged in something normal, mundane, was a lifeline back to reality. Daniel watched him as he talked, his fingers tracing the pattern on the afghan.
Eventually, Arch trailed off. Daniel’s eyes were closed again, his breathing deep and even. This time, he was truly asleep.
Arch put the book down. He sat in the quiet room, the only sounds the hum of the refrigerator and Daniel’s soft breaths. He watched the slow rise and fall of the blanket, the way Daniel’s face smoothed out in sleep, the guarded tension finally gone. He looked young, and vulnerable, and beautiful.
The fear that had been a low hum in Arch’s own chest since the restaurant—the fear of fucking this up, of not knowing the rules, of being somehow inadequate to the history Daniel carried—quieted. It didn’t vanish, but it settled. This wasn’t about knowing the right thing to say. It was about showing up. It was about bandaging a scraped knuckle and talking about boring finance while someone remembered how to feel safe.
He got up slowly, careful not to make a sound, and went to his room. He returned with a pillow. Gently, he slipped it under Daniel’s head. Daniel stirred, mumbling something incoherent, and curled tighter around the pillow, sinking deeper into sleep.
Arch resumed his seat. He didn’t pick up the textbook. He just watched the afternoon light crawl across the carpet, thinking about settled noises, and the courage it took to stop destroying things you love just because you’re afraid someone else might.