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“Come on, Johnny,” Paul mumbled out drunkenly as he tried his best to drag his older friend away from the bar.
“What do you want, Macca? I’m trying to talk to this bird.” He turned around annoyed, and Paul squirmed around. He had a deathly fear of public toilets, and he really had to piss.
“We need to go home,” he whispered.
“What?!” John shouted through the thick air inside of the club. “I can’t hear you, Paulie.”
“I said we need to go home!” he shouted back, and a look of plain confusion appeared on John’s face.
“What? Why?” Paul blushed, but it didn’t help John’s worry. “Paul, what’s wrong with you?”
“I just need to pee, okay? And I can’t use public toilets.” John smirked, causing Paul to sigh. “Can we please just leave?”
“Yeah, alright, Paulie. Let’s go walk on back, then.” He started to head outside with Paul when they were interrupted by a group of men coming menacingly towards them.
“Hey, kids. Follow us.”
“No thanks,” John said, trying to walk around them, but they stood in front of John. The boy huffed and then pushed them back. “Get out of my way!”
He pushed John back with greater force. “No!” Then one of them walked over to Paul and traced his hand down Paul’s face.
“Hey there, pretty boy.”
“Get your fucking hands off of him!”
The man smirked at the way it made John so angry. He made a fist of his hand and shoved it right into Paul’s stomach. “Like that?”
Paul started to whimper as he doubled over and cried.
“Get the fuck away from him!” John struggled against the man grasping onto him and looked over at Paul to see that as he fell to the floor, a puddle was spreading out around him. Scared that it was blood, John screamed, “Paul! Ah, shit! Macca, you alright?”
But Paul said nothing and stayed on the ground as the men started to rough around with John.
Eventually, though, they gave up and left, leaving John to run over to Paul, grabbing a hold of the boy’s face and checking him all over.
“Did they hurt you, Paulie?” No reply came, so John raised up Paul’s shirt when the man had punched him, preparing himself to see a cut based on the amount of blood that was now on the ground. But he found nothing as Paul sniffled. And then he got closer to Paul to check his sides, but he realised that this liquid he was in wasn’t quite thick enough to be blood.
When he looked back up at his friend, the boy had tears down his face. “I’m so sorry, John.”
John helped him to his feet and when he looked back down to see where the blood (maybe?) had come from, and he saw in the darkness the wetness on Paul’s pants, particularly around the crotch and down his legs and… nope, that definitely wasn’t blood.
“Oh, Paulie. Shit, let’s get you home, okay?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be out drinking. My dad will be mad at me.”
“That’s just life, Paul. I mean, I’m sure Mimi will be pretty pissed at me, too. But it’ll be alright.”
Paul sniffled. “I hope you’re right. I guess I’ll see you next month, then. I’m gonna be grounded for life.” John hugged him.
“Not that long. Sorry about those guys,” he started to walk and Paul followed.
“Sorry I pissed myself.”
John laughed. “Hey, I thought it was blood, that you were dying! I’m kinda glad it was only that you pissed yourself.”
“Well, I’m glad that I’m not dying, too. I‘m probably going to want to when my dad sees me like this, though.”
John chuckled. “You’ll be alright. If you’re not, I’ll wait outside and take you home with me, yeah? You’ll be fine.”
Paul leaned up against John as they walked, but he didn’t say a thing. At that moment, he didn’t even have to.