Land of the Blind, Part 22

22 – Last Dance

Dylan wanted to be left alone, curled up in his own private bubble of pain, so Dee left him be. When he got the heads up Roan was out of surgery, he’d take him to see him, and he’d probably be in more of a mood to open up then.

Diego found himself sitting next to jock boy, Scott, the hockey player that Ro had inexplicably befriended. Well, maybe not so inexplicably – he had a hell of a profile, a long lashed boy with delicate features that could have been pretty if it wasn’t for his strong jaw and a few pale scars that gave him a more rugged appearance. He was a little flushed, but that was typical of the heavy anti-viral he gave him at the scene. There was an emergency anti-viral you could give in case of suspected exposure to the cat virus, but you needed to give it within twenty minutes of exposure, and even then, its efficacy was in question. But it was better than nothing, at least in theory, and if he wasn’t infected, the massive anti-viral dose wasn’t going to hurt him. Oh, he might get a mighty case of diarrhea later, but nothing that would kill him. “You feeling okay?” Dee asked him.

The boy, who was just Roan’s type, nodded. “Feel a little hot, but I’m okay.”

“Expected side effect. It’ll pass.”

He nodded again, remaining good natured, more Canadian than jock, at least for this moment. He looked at Dylan, and said, “I wish I could say something to him that would help. I don’t know what to say.”

“For now, I think it’s best to leave him be.” After a brief pause, he decided to distract him. “Where’d you learn to make a tourniquet like that?”

“Oh. I spent a winter break working with my Uncle, who was a ski instructor at a place up in the Canadian rockies. All us trainees were taught basic first aid, in case someone got hurt on the mountain. It might’ve been a while before the rescue teams could get there.”

“Ah, good. Ever hafta use it? Besides tonight, of course.”

“Not really. Well, once, I had to make a splint for somebody, but that was it.  You know, ski resorts are not the wild sex parties certain teen comedies would have you believe.”

“No, really? Senior Ski Trip lied to me? The bastards.”

That got a brief, pained smile out of Scott. “I know, I felt cheated too.”

They heard what sounded like a loud argument out in the lobby, and with the smallest of annoyed grunts, Grey – whom Dee couldn’t help but think of as Mongo, since he was about as big as an ox, and with all those scars on his face, if he hadn’t been a hockey player, he’d have been a serial murderer or world class thug of some stripe – stood up and went to the entryway, where he stood like a Human gate, either waiting for trouble or daring it to try and move him. Dee wished trouble loads of luck. Guy looked like he was built like a brick tackling dummy. He skated? When he was coming at you, it must have looked like a bus coming at you, not so much speedy as huge and unyielding, like a house thrown square at you.

Scott called out, “Situation?”

“Some people causin’ trouble, the cops closin’ ranks,” Grey reported, as if he was reading from a pre-printed menu. “I don’t think anyone’s getting’ through, but I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“Intervene only if necessary,” Scott said, sounding like a weary general issuing knee jerk orders. In fact, that’s exactly what was going on. “Let the cops handle this shit if they can.”

“Oh, you bet. Fucking bastards shot Roan.”

“It was just one. Don’t think they’re all the same.”

Very quietly, Dee whispered, “You his commanding officer?”

Again a faint, pained smile. Oh, he was a real cutey, completely fuckable. Roan really did have good taste in men. “I’m only team captain on the ice. But it’s habit, and he’s easy going, so he doesn’t mind me being bossy.”

“He’s easy going? Him?”

“I know it’s hard to believe, since he looks like he could beat us all to death with his shoe, but he really is. He generally saves his temper for the games.”

“Really?” Looking at him standing in the doorway, tensed up as if ready to start breaking walls down with his forehead, that was hard to believe. “I’d hate to see him pissed off.”

“Yeah, it’s frightening. That’s why he’s such an effective enforcer.” Scott paused in an uncomfortable way, staring at the distant wall without actually seeing it. “When Roan went after the cats … he was so fast. It was like that parkour shit, you know, running along those cars, only he wasn’t going up the side of a building. We’re in good shape, y’know, but we couldn’t keep up. We only caught up to him by the time the cop shot him.” The kid finally looked at him, and he seemed to be struggling to put his thoughts into words. “He’s not … that’s not the way infection works in most people, right? I mean … he’s more than Human. He really is a superhero, isn’t he? His face was changing after the shooting, it looked like his jaw was shrinking somehow … it was really weird.”

Oh, this was going to be difficult to handle. Thank you, Ro. “Look, Ro’s case is unique -”

“He’s magnificent,” Scott said, looking at him with something like awe. “I wish I was him.”

What the fuck? Weird. Even Roan was wishing he wasn’t himself right now. How weird was it some kid would want to be Roan? He better not tell him, because this was weird enough as it was.

Holden came back in, sipping a can of soda, and while he sat next to Dylan, he didn’t say anything or make a move, showing an odd amount of empathy. He was just staying close to him, to let him know he was there, but not imposing himself in any way. Holden was way too smart to be what he was, so Dee just assumed he was a slacker, or got a kind of thrill from living extra legally. That made him a perfect match for Ro, who was both legal and illegal at the same time, straddling so many lines that it was impossible to say where he crossed them in the first place.

Dee was just getting over his own weird feelings. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d slept with Ro in the past, seen him naked too many times to mention – no, nothing felt quite as grotesquely intimate as reaching inside his leg and pinching an artery shut. His life was literally in his hands. All he had to do was let it go, open his fingers, and that was it. Roan would have thanked him if he could, would have asked him to let him die if he was conscious, but of course he wasn’t. Still, as they were in the back of the ambulance, Dee did consider it briefly, knowing that’s exactly what Ro would have wanted, but decided fuck him, Ro didn’t know what was best for himself half the time. Besides, Ro had never filled out an official “do not revive” form, and it wouldn’t have applied here anyways.

At least if Roan died, he could tell himself he did everything he could to save him.

****

Roan couldn’t believe how cold he was. His feet felt like they were carved out of ice. He pulled the sheets tightly around him, and said, “I blame you, you know. You picked this shitty hotel.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Paris replied, wrapping his big body around him, warming him. “Besides, isn’t it romantic to get this snuggly?”

“Slowly freezing to death isn’t romantic.”

“Depends on what you’re doing while freezing to death.” He kissed his ear, arms wrapped around his chest, and Paris said, not unkindly, “You know that’s not why you’re so cold.”

It took him a moment to figure out what he meant. Yes, it was this shitty Vancouver hotel, where the heating system seemed to break down the instant they checked in, and of course it was an unseasonably cold night tonight. All of this figured, as that’s how it worked.

He ached. He had a funny pain in his leg, a dull, throbbing pain that his icy coldness didn’t seem to be helping, and he didn’t know why until he started thinking about it. And as he thought about it, he remembered fighting cats and being shot. Oh shit. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

“What if I said you were dead and this was heaven?”

“I’d say this isn’t The Lovely Bones, and cram it with walnuts.”

Paris laughed, a sound he realized he missed terribly. It made his chest ache and feel hollow. “Mister Cynical. That’s just never gonna change with you, is it?”

“Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“I kind of wish I was,” he admitted, repositioning one of Paris’s arms so it was just under his throat. He felt warm and good, but not nearly warm enough; he felt like he had an icy core, like his insides had been replaced by liquid nitrogen. He recalled losing lots of blood, reddish-black blood spurting as if from a hose. “I miss you so much.”

“What did Dylan tell you once? People die, love doesn’t.”

“How cheesy is that? I’m sure he probably got that from a fortune cookie.”

“Maybe. But you still love me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“But you love Dylan too, yes?”

“It’s not the same.” It wasn’t. How could it be? He gave everything he had to Paris, and his death had killed a part of him that had never come back. He did love Dylan, but it wasn’t the same, nor could it ever be. Sad but true.

Paris kissed him on the back of his head. “You need him. You know you do.”

“Yes.” This wasn’t really Paris, this was himself, so what was the point of a lie?

“So treat him better. Treat everyone better. You need to stop being a self-pitying bastard and get your shit together, because seriously, I’d have kicked your ass by now.”

He sighed, settling his head in the crook of Paris’s arm. Yeah, okay, it was a dream, or more likely some hallucination kicked up by his blood and oxygen starved brain in an attempt to comfort or rally him, or whatever the autonomic response of the brain was in situations like this. So he wasn’t dead, just dying. Good to know. Although why wasn’t he dead yet?

“Now that’s something else you have to get past, this stupid death wish of yours.”

“It’s not stupid. I’m tired.”

“So? Take a vacation, stop doing what you’re doing, change your life, but don’t give up entirely like some pansy ass coward.” Paris turned him onto his back so he was  facing him, looking down at him with his long hair brushing his face. God, he was beautiful. “You are a pain in the ass, and frankly you probably deserved to get your fool ass shot, but you are not a coward. Okay, becoming a drug addict was cowardly, but you always were an emotion dodger, so that makes sense. But you have to stop the rest of this shit. You promised to live for me, remember? Stop living to die. I’m already dead, and that’s no fucking fun.” He put his hand flat on his chest, as if holding him down, but he didn’t need to. If he had one more minute with Paris, even a fake one that lived in his head, he wasn’t going anywhere. “So you’re not perfectly Human – so fucking what? Humans are hardly a gift, are they? People suck and you know it. You’re better than them; start acting like it.”

Roan looked up at him in disbelief. “You would never say I was better than anyone else.”

“No? C’mon, I used to be purely Human, I know first hand we suck. You know it too. Having a less than Human element is surely a boon.”

He eyed him warily. “This is me bleeding into you.”

“I could be as cynical as you.”

“Not often. How much of this is me telling myself what I want to hear?”

Paris smiled down at him sadly. “You’re gonna hafta tell me, hon.”

He wished he could, but he honestly didn’t know anymore. All he knew was he’d be lucky to die, so he never had to find out.

****

Holden watched the continuing tableau with interest, letting his anger ebb as he realized the cop’s name would probably be in the papers. All he needed to do was wait a couple of hours, and he’d know everything about the guy.

Not that he was going to do anything right now. It was best to wait, see what happened. Maybe the cops would go hard on him, maybe not, but the publicity would keep him in a bubble for a while. He could wait. Sometimes having patience was difficult, but he could bide his time, aware that when the publicity died down, the shock of revenge would have that much more impact.

Kevin Robinson arrived, the vice cop that he knew by his nickname “Karo” (sort of a contraction of his name, also a reference to corn syrup, since some of the kids on the street found him corny), the guy Roan and Dylan had been crashing with recently. The burly, somewhat overweight cop surveyed the room, and upon seeing him, gave him the guarded but familiar nod that passed between any cop who was trying to keep his street informant options open and the potential informant. Holden filled the potential informant part of the bargain by giving him the slightest of nods in return, although with no enthusiasm. He had nothing against Karo, he just pitied him. It was well known amongst the hustlers he was a closet case, as gay as a unicorn in hot pants, but not one of the bad ones who overcompensated by beating up any suspected fags as viciously as possible, or by coercing blow jobs out of hustlers he busted. It was known he’d bought services once or twice, but that was the point: he bought, and never identified himself as a cop. It was a straight (no pun intended) transaction, purely business, and that was fantastic. Most people with positions of power abused it, and Karo was known to be the exact opposite of that.  So he was respected and pitied in equal measure, because, damn, if you had that power, why not use it to your advantage? There wasn’t a hustler around who wouldn’t have had a bit of fun abusing any authority they got. What was wrong with Karo that he wouldn’t?

Maybe that was the true horror of the world. When someone didn’t abuse their position, something was assumed to be wrong with them.

Kevin approached Dylan but stopped, as his grief was apparent in his hunched over body, as if he was trying to curl in on himself, and he seemed almost grateful when the cop Roan always called Dropkick returned. She was talking to Grey, but as soon as she saw Kevin she included him too. He couldn’t help but smirk at the inclusion of Grey in the talk, but why not? If you had Frankenstein, you wanted him to be ready to spring into the fight if things got bad. And while Grey seemed more clever and tolerant than Holden would have ever given him credit for (considering who he was), he was built like Frankenstein, and probably wouldn’t be discouraged from a fight unless you waved a great big torch in his face. He would probably even growl, “Fire bad!”

Also, he seemed to be really torqued at the cops for having shot Roan. It was best to keep him on whatever sliver of good side they could eek out.  Because she was Roan’s friend, Holden didn’t think she’d try and talk Grey out of making his statement that the shooter had lied, mainly because Frankenstein couldn’t be intimidated, not unless they brought out the flaming torches early.

Fiona came over and sat beside him with a sigh. “Have you ever felt more useless?”

“Not particularly.” He held out his can of Pepsi towards her, and after a moment, she took it and had a swig. When she handed it back, he asked, “Is it wrong that I always assumed Roan would get himself taken down in a hail of bullets?”

She shrugged. “There was a certain inevitability to it.”

The commotion out in the waiting room got worse, and everyone, save for Dylan, noticed. Kevin, Dropkick, and Frankenstein all stiffened and then headed out as someone in the lobby shouted, “Gun!” Dee was immediately on his feet, along with Jeff and Scott. Holden wasn’t sure if they were going to join the rush, or were planning to build a barricade.

He wished he had his gun. The only weapon he had was his butterfly knife, and only Roan could bring a knife to a gun fight and survive it. Well, he could pass it off to Frankenstein, but Frankie probably did well enough with his fists to never need it.

The most bizarre thing of all? Holden had a feeling Roan would have thrived in this chaos. There was nothing he liked more than a good, hopeless fight.