Fic: Hidden

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Hidden
Chapters: 1/1
Author:csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drama. Angst. Hurt/Comfort. Mystery. Romance.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 7,865
Pairings/Characters: Drew Regnery/Red O’Malley, Max Regnery, Carole, Stevie, Lisa, Mrs. Reg.
Synopsis: In which Red is hurt, Max is suspicious and Drew is blamed because secrets need to come out.
Comments: Been working on this forever. Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: hiding an illness/injury. I know that I am ridiculous, writing slash for Saddle Club, but I’m kind of beyond caring. Don’t like, don’t read. Also, references characters from the Season 2 episode ‘Horsenapped’ and ignores Season 3 completely because it’s not the same. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Max has already been awake for something like 27 hours straight when he steps foot into the hospital. Factoring in the time difference and jet lag, it feels more like 48. But this is serious. Serious enough to warrant an emergency flight home from Paris.

"Girls," He says, when he spots Carole, Stevie, and Lisa sitting in the main waiting room. They're huddled together and they're all looking quite worried, which does nothing to soothe the anxiety he's felt since he got the most alarming call that had brought him back to Australia. "Girls, what's going on?"

"Max!" They say as one, rushing to stand and greet him with hugs – then they're all talking at once.

"Max, it was so awful! We didn't know what –" Stevie.

"Yeah, when we found him, we were so scared and-" Lisa.

"And Drew wouldn't tell us anything when they came out to talk to him. Has anyone told you if he's okay?" Carole.

"Whoa, calm down." Max says, ushers them back towards the seats they abandoned because he is quite exhausted and if he doesn't sit down soon, gravity might just do it for him. "I need you girls to tell me, preferably one at a time, what happened. All I know is that Red's been in an accident." That was all his mother's message had told him, she hadn't known anything else when she'd called to tell him to come home.

"Oh," Carole starts, "It was no accident. No way."

Max raises a curious eyebrow, and he can't quite decide if the girls know this for sure or if they're just blowing things out of proportion as they sometimes have a propensity to do. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, Carole. We don't know that for sure." Lisa, the voice of logic and reason, cuts in.

"Did you see those bruises? I can't think of how you'd have to fall to end up looking like Red did. Unless you fell on someone's boots a dozen times or so." Carole's eyes narrow as she explains. "And no way was it one of the horses, unless they've taken to wearing actual shoes."

Max shakes his head, tries to snap them away from speculation and back toward facts. "I still haven't heard what happened."

Stevie takes this one. "We were riding the ridge trail right after lunch today and we found Barq running loose. He was all tacked up, but riderless, so we knew something was wrong."

"Carole caught him, but Stevie and I went ahead to try and find whoever had been thrown. We thought it was Kristi, at first, since she's usually the one riding Barq, but then we found Red instead." Lisa cringes as she relays the tale, as if she's seeing it all over again. "He was out cold and it looked like he'd been coughing up blood or something. And the bruises, they didn't look fresh, either."

Max knows that Red can handle pretty much anything Barq can dish out. The likelihood of Red getting thrown or something does not seem like a very likely situation. But if Red were already hurt beforehand, then maybe…

"Is Drew still here?" Max asks. He rather hopes that his cousin didn't just leave the girls here on their own.

"Yeah, he's been back with Red since they let him in. But, ugh, Max…"

He has a feeling he's not going to like what they're going to say. "Yes?"

Stevie and Lisa exchange hesitant glances, but Carole does not share their trepidation. "This morning, we, ugh, we saw Drew and Red arguing. They looked really, really mad. And Drew knew where to look for Red's bruises, too."

He's right. "Surely you girls aren't suggesting that you think Drew had something to do with this?"

They don't answer. He walks away to find a nurse to direct him to Red's room.

Upon entering the hospital room, Max is surprised to see that Red looks worse than he'd expected. Tubes and wires connect him to various machines. Blood, IV fluids, pain meds, he guesses. A few are monitoring vitals. The collar of the hospital issue shirt is open enough to reveal some dark purple-green bruises that appear, as the girls said, to be older than the fresh, new reddish-blue ones. His left arm is casted and a fresh bruise graces his forehead.

"Max," Drew says from behind him, a cup of coffee clutched in his hand like some sort of lifeline. "Your Mum wasn't sure when you'd be getting in. Have you heard what happened?"

"The girls filled me in." The cup of caffeine smells amazing. He should probably get some, too, he thinks, before he collapses from exhaustion and earns himself an admittance. Drew looks pretty exhausted, too, he notices. "You can go, if you want. I'll stay a while."

Drew frowns and crosses the room to sit on the windowsill. "I think I'll stick around, if you don't mind."

"Why?"

"I need a reason?" The younger man challenges, glaring at Max. His eyes dart to Red and his expression softens a bit. "Sorry, it's been a long day. I just... I want to stay."

Max shrugs, indicating that he's okay with that, even though Carole and Stevie and Lisa's suspicion is still lingering at the forefront of his mind. "How is he?"

"Ugh," he inhales – it's kind of a long list, "They did surgery to remove part of his spleen – they said it was ruptured, but it could've been from whatever it was that happened before the fall, it could've been leaking slowly. He's got some bruised ribs, broken ribs – one was close to puncturing a lung. Not sure which incident those are from, and then there's the broken arm – that's from the fall, at least. And a slight concussion, too. But things are looking promising. At least there aren't five doctors all swarming around in here anymore. They want to keep him knocked out for a while, though."

"The Saddle Club's still here," Max tells him.

"You're not letting them see him like this, are you?" He's heard about what happened to Lisa before Max and Deborah's wedding, and that was unquestionably bad, but this is different. With Lisa, it had just been the bump to head. With Red it's blood and bruises and surgery.

Max sees his point. "No, not right now."

They fall into a kind of tension filled silence after that, and it makes the room feel small and claustrophobic despite the fact that its actually rather spacious as far as hospital rooms go. Max is still by the doorway, and Drew's clear on the other side of the room with his arms folded against his chest, distancing them even more than the space provided by the room. The silence is dragging its way into minutes when Red shifts in his drug-induced sleep and groans in pain.

"If I get my hands on whoever did this…" Drew says, letting the sentence trail off threateningly. He's watching Red closely. The hand that isn't holding his cup of coffee shifts to reach out slightly on instinct, but he stops himself and Max misses all of this.

"You, ugh," Max starts, wary of what he's going to be implying. "You don't have any idea who could've done it, do you?"

Drew's head snaps up at this question. "Why would I?"

Max holds up a hand in a calm-down sort of gesture that has virtually no effect upon his cousin's present state of tense and hostile grumpiness. "I'm not saying it was you or anything," he says, which might've probably been a mistake, "I was just wondering if you knew anything about this before what happened with Barq."

The younger man eyes him warily, like the true meaning of Max's words are registering. And then Drew's across the room and in his face, no distance now, just blind fury. "You are saying it was me. That's what you think? You think I did this to him?" He is clearly not happy about Max's thinly veiled accusation, but that's hardly surprising. "Where the hell is this coming from?"

"The girls said you knew where he was hurt," Max starts, but Drew cuts him off.

He looks more than a little hurt to realize where Max is getting his ideas and his face falls in dismay as he replies, unbelieving that, "The girls? They think I did this, too?"

"They saw you arguing with him beforehand. What was that about?"

"What, is this is an interrogation now?" Drew's back on the defensive, but he forces himself to calm down enough so that he's talking in hushed tones that he hopes won't disturb Red. "I don't have to tell you what we were arguing about because it's none of your business and it has absolutely nothing to do with this. As for the bruises, I was just as shocked as everyone else was to see them."

Max steels himself for a more hostile reaction to what he has to say next. He's still pretty much in charge of Red's well-being, so he has to do this, even though suspecting his cousin of an impressively violent crime is not high on his list of things to do. "Either way, I think you should stay away from here until we get this cleared up."

Drew looks even more wounded by this request than by the fact that numerous people he's close to seem to think he's capable of putting Red in the hospital, but he stays silent, glaring accusingly at Max like he's the one at fault for all of this. But it's Max's call and he knows it – fighting it won't help the situation any. He grabs his jacket from the back of the chair he'd been using before Max's arrival and gently squeezes Red's hand before he charges by Max. "I would never hurt him," he mumbles loud enough for Max to hear just before he disappears into the hallway.

---

Drew autopilots his way out of the hospital and out to his car. He honestly has no recollection of the drive home, but he considers himself lucky that he didn't crash the car or hit anybody or get pulled over and arrested for being so phenomenally out of it. One minute he's sitting in the hospital parking lot, punching the steering wheel and trying to remember how to breathe, and the next thing he knows, he finds himself sitting in the dark in his living room staring aimlessly at the wall.

How can Max think he's responsible for this? Does his cousin truly think him capable of that kind of violence, of any violence?

"He doesn't know," he reminds himself aloud, his head in his hands. If Max knew about his feelings for Red then he would have understood why he needed to stay, why he needed to be there for all of this. But Red hadn't wanted to tell him and for some odd, stupid reason, Drew's keeping that promise.

He makes himself lay down on the couch - he'd go to bed, but Red was there just last night and he's not sure he can deal with that right now. Red's clothes still tossed on his floor, Red's scent on his sheets. Too much of him everywhere - and try to sleep.

It's a futile idea. All he can see when he closes his eyes is finding Red.

Stevie comes barreling into his office around lunch time. Wide-eyed and panicked enough to get his immediate attention. "What's wrong?" He asks and her answer makes his heart stop even as his feet start moving.

He grabs his desk phone and calls for help, lets Stevie tell them where to go. Then she gives him Barq, mounts up on Belle and she leads him out to the ridge trail at an impressive speed.

Carole and Lisa are kneeling on either side of him, but he can see enough as he approaches. Arm twisted awkwardly, has to be broken. Blood on his lips, trailing down his chin, soaking into the collar of his t-shirt (actually it's Drew's t-shirt (Red has a not-so-awful habit of borrowing them) but somehow that just makes seeing Red hurt even worse). Not good, not good, so totally not good. Carole shifts away to make room for him and he's instantly down on his knees and tugging at Red's shirt because he thinks he knows something he hadn't before. Last night. Last night, when Red had come to bed, he'd been more dressed than usual and when Drew had reached out for him like always, he'd flinched away. Red had made some excuse but he should have pushed it then, he knows that now, but he hadn't known that then so when he finally gets the shirt out of the way, he's floored by the colorful array of bruises he finds. Some fresh, barely formed, others a deep purple with yellowed edges that have to be at least a day old.

It takes a minute to jolt himself out of the shock of seeing that. "Was he awake when you found him?" Drew asks, hands moving, searching frantically for a pulse, which he's relieved to find. Breathing, too, just out.

"No, and we don't know how long he was out here, either. How long ago did he go out with Barq?" Carole asks, ever the inquiring mind.

"I don't know," Drew answers. He's been busy with financial stuff, Red had been working lessons. They'd barely seen each other at all since they'd come in this morning, since they'd had they're little argument and headed off to do their own work.

Sirens in the distance, then minutes - that feel a lot more like hours - later the paramedics appear. They load Red up, talking about internal bleeding and head injuries and police involvement and Drew finds himself forced to drive himself to the hospital - the girls manage to wrangle a ride out of him, too - and then there's a lot of pacing and silence until someone finally comes to tell him how Red's doing.

But it's the bruises that stick in his mind the most. Because how had he not known?

Why hadn't Red told him something had happened? He can't even figure out what might've led to those bruises. He'd seen the outlines. Boot-shaped marks, the tell-tale mark of a ringed fist in one place. Someone had been responsible, but he can't figure out who. No one at Pine Hollow, surely. But where else could it have happened?

Seeing Red like that, even in his own thoughts, his own recollections of what happened, makes his stomach churn unpleasantly. The fact that he's been subsisting on nothing but coffee all day probably doesn't help at all, so he's honestly not surprised when he finds himself rushing to the nearest trash can to throw up. When his body finally seems to be finished turning on him, after a lengthy bout of dry heaving that makes him pretty sure he's never going to ever eat anything again, he feels pale and sweaty and clammy and kind of just wants to curl up in a ball on the floor until he wakes up from this awful, awful dream.

But it's not a dream. It's not a dream and Red is hurt, someone hurt him, and Drew can't be with him. At least not right now.

A shower, he thinks, then maybe something to settle his stomach and then sleep, because as much as the idea of doing anything but going back to the hospital right now disturbs him, he knows he needs to be functional if he wants to have any chance of getting back in with Red.

He manages the shower, even if it takes an absurd amount of time. He manages the food, toast and water, but even that feels like too much right now.

He doesn't manage the sleep.

---

By morning, the Saddle Club have gone home – but probably only to one of them, Max figures – and Drew has not made a reappearance. His mom and Deborah stop by for a while, but he doesn't tell them about what the girls suspect. Or, he supposes, what he suspects.

He leaves with them long enough to shower and change and get some sleep at home before he's back at the hospital again. Scooter stops by to check on Red, and Jake calls, too. Carole, Stevie and Lisa return after lunch along with Phil. They come bearing flowers and a ridiculous stuffed horse and Max lets them in this time even though Red doesn't look much better than he did last night. Veronica and Kristi stop by later and it's while they're visiting that Max catches sight of Drew hovering in the waiting area.

"You're back," Max observes as Drew approaches him in the hall outside of Red's room.

Drew drags his hands over his face, which portrays only a combination of pure exhaustion and barely restrained frustration. He looks like he hasn't slept at all even though he's obviously gone home since he's wearing different clothes and his hair is still lingeringly damp from a shower. "Don't start with me. Please. Not now."

"I wouldn't, not with them around," he nods in Kristi and Veronica's direction. Veronica looks like she wants to bolt; Kristi is too busy fawning over a still unconscious Red to notice much of anything.

Drew watches Kristi's hovering with envy. Everyone knows she has a crush on Red. Even Red knows and he has been subtly trying to dissuade her for a while now. She can go in there, sit with him, hold his hand, but he's exiled? How is that fair at all?

"Can I go in once they leave?" Drew asks, as much as it kills him that he needs permission to do so.

"For a little while, I suppose," Max says, though he seems reluctant to allow it.

He pulls Max down the hall a ways, so that they're out of earshot of the room. "Do you think I'm going to smother him in his sleep or something? I want him to wake up as much as everyone else, more than anyone else, probably. Then he can tell you himself how ridiculous you're being about this."

Veronica's exiting the room when they return, though they're both a little more heated now. "Has there been any word on the delinquents responsible for what happened?" She asks. She almost sounds sincerely concerned.

"Not yet," Max says, with a pointed look in Drew's direction. "I'm meeting with a Detective in the morning so hopefully we'll have some answers soon."

Drew almost hates that it's Veronica of all people who doesn't seem to be blaming him for what happened. How is she on his side and the Saddle Club against him?

"Kristi! Come on, already. We need to go!" Veronica calls over her shoulder at her friend who's still lingering by Red's bedside.

"Coming!" Kristi answers. She's still holding his hand and she only releases it after she gives him a peck of a kiss on the cheek. She's blushing when she leaves the room. Drew is not pleased.

"Go." Max says, now that the room is clear. "I'm driving them back to Pine Hollow. I'll be back in half an hour." Which is a not so subtle indicator that that's probably all the time Drew will be getting.

He's in the room before the three of them are through the hallway.

---

Drew has reclaimed both his rightful location by Red's bedside and his grip on the younger man's hand. He doesn't care if anyone sees anymore; he's passed the point of caring about that when he's stuck on a time limit. Red's still out and Drew spends a good few minutes just watching the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Eventually, he breaks away to survey the room. It's changed since last night. There are flowers and cards and other get-well-inspiring offerings, including the stuffed horse that the Saddle Club left behind. He wonders if they knew that the one they'd chosen looks a lot like Joker, the horse the Red lost in a barn fire when he was 14. He wonders how many people even know about Joker.

He knows because Red told him. And because there's a picture of Red and Joker in a jumping competition that's framed in Red's room, where he has spent a good deal of time.

The door creaks open a few minutes later and dread hits Drew like a punch to the chest because he knows he's going to have to leave again. He's going to have to go home and not sleep and not do anything because pretty much everything there can remind him of Red if he thinks about it long enough.

"Max," he starts, and he realizes that he's probably willing to beg if it means he can stay just a little bit longer.

"Nope, just me, dear," Mrs. Reg says, and Max's mom slips into the room instead. "Max is dealing with a problem at Pine Hollow. That horse we were supposed to get in next week arrived early. And since Red's not there…" She sighs and claims a second chair on Red's other side. "I thought I'd come over and see how he was doing."

Drew frowns, "You mean Max asked you to spy on me."

"And why would he ask me to do that?" She is officially suspicious now. If she hadn't known before, she's going to want to know now. Fantastic. "Clearly I am being kept out of the loop on something important…"

"We're not exactly getting along right now," he says, which is leaving out a lot of details but it's the easiest way to start.

"Ah, I see." She hums as she absently straightens out the blankets on Red's hospital bed. "If he's blaming you for what happened, I wouldn't worry. He'll cool off soon enough. This wasn't your fault."

For a second, he feels better, but then he realizes she is referring to an intellectual level of blame and not the physical level on which all of his problems presently reside. "I wish that were the case, that would be easier. But, Max actually thinks I did this, that I attacked Red and landed him here."

His aunt shakes her head. "No. There's not a chance in the world that Max would think you did this."

Drew has reached his breaking point and before he even realizes it, he's spilling everything. "But he does! He kicked me out last night. He didn't even want to let me back in now. The girls – God, the girls, they told him that they saw us arguing before and now they all think it was me. I wouldn't, I couldn't-" he chokes on his own words, but in all fairness, he's kind of losing it at this point. "They told him I knew about the bruises beforehand, but I didn't know, I swear. If I had known, I wouldn't have let him take Barq out, or unload the feed bags, or any of the things he did before he fell. I would've taken him to the hospital before all of this and he wouldn't be like this now. I would've gotten him to tell me who did it. I didn't know. I suspected that maybe something was wrong because he wouldn't let me touch him but he wouldn't tell me. If I had thought it was as bad as this…"

"Honey," she says softly and now she's standing next to him and when did that happen? She rubs calming, soothing circles on his back and he realizes that he's pretty much hyperventilating. "Honey, breathe, relax. I know it wasn't you."

"You do?" He kind of hates how much he feels like a little kid right now.

"Of course. Max knows that, too, whether or not he thinks so right now." Her words actually do reassure him this time, now that she knows what's going on. Most of it anyway. He feels compelled to tell her the rest of it.

"Red and I, we've been together for months now. We haven't told anyone yet. I've been trying to talk him into it so he could move in with me, and he was okay with telling you and Deborah, but he wasn't sure how Max would react so we decided to hold off for now," Drew confesses and he's a little surprised by how relieving it feels to actually tell somebody.

Mrs. Reg, however, does not look terribly surprised by his admission. Not particularly surprised at all, actually. "I was beginning to wonder when you were going to get around to mentioning that," she hums in something that's almost amusement; it probably would have been a laugh if not for Red's present situation. "Deborah suspected as well."

"And Max?"

"Max has no idea. It was your news to tell, not mine. Though, if he'd been around Pine Hollow instead of in Paris, he probably would have noticed it, too." She offers him a smile that makes him feel exponentially better about everything. "I'm happy for the both of you."

"Thanks, it means a lot. It'll mean a lot to him, too, once he's awake again."

"Of course, dear," she says, kissing the top of his head like she used to do with Max, when he was little. "I'm going to go get some coffee. I'll bring you back some."

By the time she returns, the exhaustion and stress have finally gotten the better of him and he is quite thoroughly passed out with his head pillowed on his arms on the edge of Red's hospital bed. She settles a spare blanket over Drew's shoulders and lets him sleep.

---

Max returns to find the room as such.

He hadn't meant to be gone so long, but even still he's surprised Drew's still here. There's no real reason he needs to be sticking around this much. As far as he knows, Red and Drew aren't even really friends. He wonders if his mother noticed anything odd while she was here, but he hadn't gotten a chance to talk with her.

"Drew," he says quietly, because he means to stand by his restricted visiting hours policy even if he hasn't been around to enforce it much today. "Drew, come on."

Half-asleep and unaware, Drew blinks himself back to consciousness only to be confronted with Max as the reason behind his unwanted awakening. "What?" He asks and he sounds so broken and exhausted that Max almost lets him go back to sleep.

"You need to go, we've been through this already."

"Max, don't do this. Please. I… I won't be able to sleep at home. Everything there, it's just all, everything reminds me and I can't…" He is well aware that he is making virtually no sense but he's barely awake and he'll do pretty much anything if it means he can stay longer. "I need to stay. I have to stay."

Max sighs in something like exasperation because his cousin just isn't getting it. Or he isn't getting it. Someone is definitely missing something important here. "Why do you have to stay? Why should I not call the police and tell them what might be going on here?"

The threat of direct police involvement is new. Drew stands, edges closer to Max and keeps his voice quiet. "Because I am your cousin. Because I didn't do anything to him. Because you have no idea what's going on here. Pick one. I don't care which at this point." He knows if he lets Max say anything it's going to lead to getting kicked out, maybe to the police and that does not equate to staying with Red, so he keeps talking. "I would never hurt him, not ever. And you know why? It's because I'm in love with him, okay? I've been with him since before the bank tried to foreclose on Pine Hollow."

This throws Max. He had not seen that one coming. At all.

Drew tries to ignore the fact that his hands are shaking and his heart is racing. He steps away, toward the door and adds, "I'm going to get some air. You can stay and we can talk. Or you can leave. I don't really care but you're not keeping me away from him anymore." And then he walks away.

Max is left staring at an unconscious Red and trying to figure out how he missed all of this.

---

Drew is having a panic attack. Which is technically his second one today, if he counts the one earlier, with Mrs. Reg. He really does not enjoy being this stressed out.

He paces across the parking lot at an impressive speed, trying not to stop long enough for what's happened to really catch up with him. He's not worried about Red being mad, he'll understand why he had to tell when he explains what Max thinks he's done. He's worried that he was wrong and Max won't take this news well at all, that Red was right to want to keep the secret. If that happens, if Max is gone when he goes back in, then he and Red will probably have to leave Pine Hollow. They'll have to go find someplace else, some other stable. Maybe they could even start their own or something.

He hopes Max is still there.

---

How did he miss this? How did he miss this? How did he miss this?

Max is still standing, rooted to the same spot and staring ahead at nothing in particular. He'd actually known about Drew's inclinations, at least suspected. But, Red… just before Drew's arrival at Pine Hollow, Red had been involved with Dorotée. How had that changed so much in the time since he'd left for Paris?

And Drew had claimed they were already together when he'd come home to deal with their fragile monetary situation. He hadn't noticed anything then. But maybe he just hadn't been looking. It had certainly been a stressful time at the stables – if it hadn't been for that really rare stamp, there would no longer be a Pine Hollow – so it's understandable that he missed Drew and Red's involvement. But he's been home briefly since then and… Oh.

He thinks back to the morning where he'd seen Drew and Red arrive together, which should have registered as weird nearly automatically since Red lives on Pine Hollow property. And then there was the time that Drew's shoulder started acting up again and Red was right there with ice and the car keys and the number for Drew's chiropractor. He thinks he recalls a late afternoon trail ride, once most of the riders had left on a slow day. And just a few weeks ago he and Drew had seen Kristi prowling after Red and then there'd been the generally displeased look Drew had given him before making some excuse about asking Red something about a shipment of feed.

Yeah, he's missed a lot of evidence. That's for sure.

He takes the seat Drew abandoned, tries to think about what's really going on here and waits for Drew to return.

---

"You're still here," Drew says quietly, when he returns to Red's hospital room. Max is half-asleep in the chair by Red's bedside, but he perks up when he spots his cousin. "So…"

"You could have told me."

Drew breathes a sigh of relief and leans against the window sill, suddenly feeling even more exhausted than he'd already been with the realization that, hey, Max might actually be cool with this. "We weren't sure how you'd take it. That's actually what we were arguing about... that morning. I'd asked him to move in with me, but he didn't want to tell you. At least not until you were home again - not exactly the kind of bombshell you want to drop over the phone, yeah?"

"Who else knows?"

"Your Mom and Deborah suspected, apparently. I told her when she was here earlier, asked her not to tell, either."

"And what the girls said? The arguing they saw was over telling me, you said, but what about the bruises?" Max asks, beginning to suspect he jumped to all of the wrong conclusions he possibly could have.

"He was at my place the night before he fell. We were going to bed and he was... really jumpy about me touching him. When the girls took me to him, I thought it might be related, that maybe..." He frowns, pushes off the window to pace the length of the room. "I should've pushed him for answers then, but I didn't... there wasn't any reason to think that something was wrong, he just said he was sore from fixing up one of the fences. I don't know why he was hiding the bruises, but I had no reason to doubt him."

Max nods in acceptance. There are still a lot of unanswered questions here, but more importantly, he needs to apologize. "I'm sorry I thought it was you. I didn't want to think that, that you were capable of that, but with the information I had..."

"Whatever," Drew answers, waving off the apology because he's not quite ready to accept it just yet, even though Max hadn't known everything factoring into the equation. "I just want this to be over."

"The doctor's said they're going to try waking him up in the morning," Max informs him, knowing that Drew hasn't actually had an update on Red's health since last night when Max arrived. "Hopefully he'll be able to tell us what's going on then, who did this."

Drew's relieved to hear that Red should wake up soon. He's sick of seeing Red like this, lifeless and still. "I still don't know where it could've happened. He came in with me that morning and spent most of the day at the stables. I mean, he ran out to pick up the shipment of hay, and stopped to get dinner, but he wasn't gone more than an hour and then he came back to Pine Hollow and stayed there until I left. And he wasn't hurt before that day, so... somewhere in there something had to have happened."

Max takes in this summarization carefully. There's no way this happened on Pine Hollow property. No way. He tells Drew as much and that leaves one of Red's errands as possibilities.

"I guess we'll find out in the morning." Drew shrugs, quite thoroughly done with the mystery. He yawns, even more exhausted than before now that the panic over telling Max has worn off.

Max seems to figure this out and he stands, vacating the chair by Red's bedside. "I'll be back in the morning, okay?" He says, though it's not really a question at all. "After I speak with the Detective, see if they've found anything." A pause, and then, "Is it okay if I tell Deborah? About you and Red?"

Drew nods, already falling back into the chair. "Yeah, yeah. Probably won't be much of a surprise." Another yawn, and he thinks about going to get a cup of coffee, but he hasn't quite recovered from the taste it left in his mouth when he got sick yesterday so he's pretty sure he's just going to opt for sleep. He might even be able to do that here, so long as he's near Red. "See you."

He's asleep with his hand in Red's and his head pillowed on the bed before Max even leaves.

---

Drew wakes feeling surprisingly rested given everything that's been going on. He has a crick in his neck from sleeping all hunched over Red's hospital bed, but other than that, he's good. There's a hand slowly dragging through his hair, a familiar and comforting feeling - in fact, it has him so relaxed that it takes him a minute to realize just what that means.

"You're awake," he says, lifting his head with a smile already plastered on his face.

"Yeah," Red answers, voice rough and hoarse from more than a day of sleep. "Yeah, the doctor's woke me up about an hour ago. You were well and truly out of it."

A sigh of relief escapes him because Red's awake. He's awake and he's okay and he's here. Another sigh and then he's standing up and leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to Red's lips because he can. "Seeing you hurt is well and truly awful," he responds when he pulls away, his hand catching Red's again. "Please don't ever make me go through that again?"

"I'll try," Red responds, squeezing Drew's hand lightly.

From there the conversation turns to Drew updating Red on what's been going on with Max, how he (and the girls) had thought him guilty of whatever had been done to Red, "and, no, I haven't forgotten that you hid it from me." He tells him that Max knows now. Max and Mrs. Reg and probably Deborah by now, too. That they've all taken it well, and so if Red wants to, once he's out of here, he can comes stay at Drew's and then maybe just keep staying there because there's nothing to stop them anymore.

Red says yes, relief evident on his face when he hears that Max didn't flip out upon discovering their relationship (though he secretly supposes that it was easier to take when the alternative involved considering charges of assault) and he isn't surprised at all with how happy Drew looks about his agreement, given how long he's been pushing for this.

It's then that Max appears, along with a Detective who boots Drew out of the room so that he can get Red's statement about whatever the hell happened to land him here. Drew desperately wants to hear that explanation, but Max pulls him out before he can protest.

"How is he?" Max asks, at exactly the same time Drew questions, "Have they found anything?"

Max's question is more important, though, so Drew quickly assure his cousin of Red's wellbeing. Then he awaits his own answers.

"He was attacked outside of JB's, apparently. Someone there reported blood and signs of a struggle. No witnesses, though, and no video. You said Red went there to pick up dinner that night, yeah? So I guess it happened then."

"Okay," Drew agrees, glad to at least know the when and the where - but that just leaves the daunting questions of who and why. "But, they don't know who did it? Their motive? Was this just random?" If so, there's no reason Red would have hid it. There has to be a reason he hid it.

And there is.

They find out a short time later - once the officer has left to go arrest the bad guys, once the doctors have given Red another look over and allowed him visitors again.

Drew claims the chair by the bed and Max hovers just behind him, and then they ask for answers.

"It's a long story," Red says, pointedly not looking at either of them as he tells it.

Red explains that he didn't tell anyone because it would have involved telling them other things, too. Because back when the stable was in trouble, going under and not looking like it was coming back up for air, he'd borrowed some money. Jake had pointed him to a guy who lent him the cash (because no one is surprised that Jake knows those kinds of people). It had been a considerable amount meant to fix the Pine Hollow truck, it had gone up (not for the first time) and he knew the stable didn't have the money to pay for it again, but that they needed it. He'd almost paid it all back, that wasn't the problem, but this time when he went to make the payment, Mark and Sean were the ones picking it up. Mark and Sean being the two delinquents who had conned Murray into horse-napping Garnet to ransom to Veronica. He hadn't know that they were working for the guy he'd borrowed from and he doesn't think they knew who he was - at least until they saw him. And it turns out that they were a little more than pissed at him since he played a part in getting them arrested - Mark, especially, since he'd been the one to stop him from running away.

Sitting in stunned silence, Drew flounders for something to say. Max beats him to it. "You could've told us about the truck - if not when it went up, then once things went back to normal, Red. We would've paid you back for it. We will pay you back. Paying for Pine Hollow equipment isn't your responsibility."

It is a logical response. Drew knows this. Max has focused on the past, on the cause that led to the effect of Red getting hurt. He has pointed out a circumstance that would have altered the way these last few days have gone, and that's fine.

That's logical.

Drew, however, is thinking a little less logically. "You could've told me," he says, sounding more than a little hurt that Red hadn't trusted him with this. And he's not talking about the money (though he could've told him about that, too).

"It wasn't that bad," Red protests. "Bruises, yeah," he continues, because he can see the purely incredulous looks both Max and Drew are shooting him and needs to keep talking before they can cut in and tell him he's crazy for thinking all of this hasn't been 'that bad'. "And my ribs hurt after, but it was nothing I couldn't handle, then." Because, sure, they'd left the boot-shaped bruises and-fist shaped marks, and a dull ache in his chest that made it hurt to move certain ways, but he'd been hurt way worse doing chores at the stable. It hadn't been that bad, really. "The stomachache came later," Red tells them, "it got worse as the day went on and I know I shouldn't have taken Barq out, but I did and when he spooked it was so bad that I couldn't do anything to stop him and I got thrown."

Drew is still not thinking logically, because now Red is saying 'stomachache' instead of 'slowly bleeding into his abdomen' and very obviously not thinking about how absolutely terrifying it had been to find him after he'd been thrown and how close Drew thought he was to losing him.

But a knock at the door to the hospital room interrupts the slow-building eruption that Drew has going on. Which is probably maybe a good thing.

Stevie and Lisa and Carole poke their heads into the room. "Can we come visit for a little while?
Carole asks. "We won't stay long, we promise."

Drew and Max head for the door without complaint because it's only fair that they get to see Red awake and doing better after being the ones to find him. They duck into the hallway and exchange frustrated looks.

"He's downplaying everything. Why is he downplaying everything?" Drew asks, dragging a hand through his hair and pacing across the short distance between the hallway walls. "Doesn't he know how bad all of this was?"

Max sighs and leans against the wall, lets his cousin vent all he wants. "I don't know," he says when Drew stops to stare at him, as if expecting an answer. "He's usually pretty closed off, when it comes to his personal life. He's hid being sick before, didn't want to bail on work, but when it gets bad he'll usually cave. Maybe he doesn't really know how much this scared all of us."

Drew doesn't know if that's the answer or not, but it's the only one he's got for now. He stands next to Max and waits for a sign that the girls are ready to leave so he can get to the bottom of this new mystery.

"I'll take the girls back to the stable when they leave, give you some time alone." Max tells him and things have changed so much since this time yesterday when Drew was willing to beg Max to be left alone with Red.

"Thanks."

The girls duck out of the room about ten minutes later, looking sheepish and apologetic. "Drew," Lisa starts, the three of them exchanging guilty looks. "We... need to apologize." Stevie cuts in with, "big time," and Carole continues on from there. "We might've misjudged some things when we found out Red was hurt. And we're really, really sorry. We didn't want to think that you'd hurt him, but..."

"It's okay, girls," Drew says. And he kind of means it this time because they're kids and they're way too curious for their own good and they jump to conclusions a lot. "You can make it up to me by mucking out stalls."

The girls frown (but giving them barn chores is kind of like telling a kid who loves to read that they can't do anything else until they finish the book) but nod in agreement. "They'll be spotless!" Stevie announces, as Max leads them away.

He laughs (the first time he thinks he's done that since all of this started) and goes back to Red.

"So..."

"Yeah?" Drew asks, reclaiming his spot. He catches Red's hand because he's going to try not to stay mad about this.

"The girls told me that they were the ones who found me. And then that they went and got you." Red looks like of guilty himself now. "I didn't know you'd been there, that you saw things when they were that bad. I'm sorry you had to see that - that they had to see that."

"Is that why you were acting like it was all nothing?" Drew questions, feeling a little better now. "Because it really, really wasn't nothing. It was kind of the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. And finding the bruises? Connecting the dots that that's what you were hiding that night? Knowing that I could've stopped it if I'd pushed you harder..."

Red nods. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I... I didn't want you to worry anymore than you already were. I swear, though - that night I didn't think anything was that serious. If I'd known about the stomach thing then, I would've told you."

"Okay," Drew says, because things are finally looking like they might be. "Okay, it's okay. Just... I'll worry more if I think something's wrong and you hide it, so can we not do that anymore? Please?"

"Yeah," Red agrees, tugging slightly on Drew's hand.

Drew gets the message and leans forward, kissing Red soundly and letting his free hand slip into Red's hair, careful of the bump on the side of his head from the fall. He smiles against Red's lips - because Red will get to go home soon, home with him and then they'll work all of this out and he'll get better and everything will just be... "Good."