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Danny was tucked into the corner under the glass awning, his hood pulled up and his face tilted towards the ground, just in case there were cameras or watchful eyes. He didn't have the chance to stake out the station before to look for cameras and even if the only other people at the station were a tiny old lady lady and a tired man with two little kids, there was always the chance that they would talk. That they would talk to him.
Maybe the old lady was a secretary at one of his offices. Maybe the man was one of his security guards. Maybe one of them was paid to trail Danny, keep an eye on him. He didn't recognize them, but there was always a chance.
Or maybe they were just taking a day trip to Chicago and he was being a paranoid freak again.
The train finally pulled into the station and Danny scurried in as soon as the doors opened, followed by the shrieking kids. The train was nearly empty (of course it was, who was going to Chicago at 11 am on a Thursday?) and he claimed a bench in a corner, far from any other passengers. While the dad tried to get the kids to settle down and no one was looking at the gaunt teen in the corner, Danny pulled out his wallet and checked on the handful of bills. $7.83, $13.50 already spent on a train pass. Just enough for the bus fare and maybe a soda. He didn't have time for a job and his parents barely remembered to pay the bills, let alone give him an allowance, so every single penny was scrounged up from couch cushions and his childhood piggy bank and a few scattered dollars and coins slipped out of his parents' wallets when he could get away with it. He thought a few times about the box he knew was tucked away in Jazz's closet, hidden inside a tattered elementary school backpack patterened with faded flowers, but he knew she scrounged just as much as he did.
Sam would've helped in a heartbeat if he asked, but he didn't. She didn't know. No one did. Not Sam or Tucker, not Jazz, not his parents, and definitely not him.
(Right? He doesn't know? He should be in meetings all day, completely unaware that Danny wasn't at school until he was slipping back into his seat in time for detention.)
They didn't know he was on a train to Chicago in his most nondescript jeans and a black hoodie, all his piercings taken out to make him harder to notice, harder to remember. Danny kept going to fiddle with one of his snake bites and feeling painfully alone every time he touched his bare lip; Sam had done his piercings for him, grinning at him in her massive bathroom, wielding a needle and a bowl of ice cubes while Tucker turned more and more green next to him. He'd been holding Danny's hand the whole time, for "emotional support," but Danny thinks Tucker was the one who really needed the support. Right now though, he'd do anything to have that comfort.
But they didn't know, not about any of it. They didn't know about Danny's visits to the mayor's office, the nights spent in a Wisconsin mansion, the steady breakdown of all his boundaries ("we don't need a condom this time, I'll pull out," fucking liar), or the mornings spent over the toilet. They couldn't know. If they knew, then he could too.
Danny put his wallet away and popped a piece of candied ginger in his mouth, trying to soothe the twisting in his belly. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool green glass of the window. He pressed one hand against his stomach, not even able to feel the tiny bump through his hoodie and t-shirt, and thought about the tiny life inside him. An entire person growing inside his body, a future and so many possibilities. But he knew that it was also a prison, a chain to him that Danny would never be able to escape from, forever reduced to arm candy and a trophy spouse.
That future would be ended today, snuffed out in a clinic. He would ignore the doctor's advice to rest and drag himself back on the train and then back to school, exhausted and in pain and overly emotional but with one less fetus and one extra little implant in his arm that he would never know about.
It wouldn't be freedom, not quite yet, but it would be one step closer to a future for himself and that was all Danny could hope for.