Shift, Part 15
16 – Airport Surroundings
It took several minutes for Seb to question him about the incident, and someone found a bar towel for him, which he used to clean the blood off his face and then tie around the bite on his arm. Roan still hurt, still felt like he was full of broken glass, and he wanted desperately to get to his car and break into his Percocet stash. He also desperately wanted to go into Panic and find Dylan. He had no idea what he was going to say to him beyond sorry, but he felt it was paramount he find him as soon as possible.
It turned out there was a man hiding in the Dumpster, a homeless guy who got scratched up pretty badly but would undoubtedly survive. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he was so drunk he didn’t seem to notice. That was probably for the best. But at one point, his glazed eyes settled on Roan, and he pointed at him and said to the EMTs, “He’s a werecat. Did’ja know that? Shouldn’t he be locked up or somethin’?” If they answered him, Roan didn’t hear it.
As soon as Seb wrapped the interview up, Roan stopped by his car, gulped the pills, and found himself confronted by staring men on his way back to Panic. “Wow,” one guy said. He had bleach blond hair and smelled of that so called “pheromone” cologne that Roan knew was complete bullshit. (He could smell pheromones, and while there were some in the mix, not enough to make any difference to anyone.) “That was … what did you do? Aren’t you hurt?”
Roan cut through the men without saying anything. Yes, he was hurt, but he didn’t care. And what had he done? He nearly turned into a lion, and he freaked Dylan out. Why had he freaked Dylan out? He’d seen him half transformed before … right? Oh fuck, he couldn’t even remember anymore. Maybe Dylan was just upset because he thought his head was going to explode from an aneurysm or something. Roan was growing convinced that the longer it didn’t happen, the less likely it was to happen. His body had probably adapted to the new reality, like it adapted to most things. Would Dylan buy that?
Once inside Panic, he found Rodrigo back behind the bar, trying to calm down customers who weren’t really freaked out, just vaguely excited that something violently odd had happened in their vicinity. But he couldn’t see Dylan. “Where is he?” He asked Rodrigo, aware that he would know the “he” he was referring to.
Rodrigo shot him a sympathetic look. “He headed home. Look, what you did out there -”
“Is what I do. There’s only room for one big cat around here.” He headed back out, and the crowd miraculously parted for him. Was this how Moses felt?
Dylan heading home without him – ahead of the end of his shift, in fact – was bad news. He drove home as fast as legally possible, an accident at another intersection holding him up for what seemed an unconscionable amount of time. It didn’t look to bad, it was mainly just broken glass and a ruined fender, so why the fucking hold up? Sometimes it seemed like the world conspired against you.
He arrived home, relieved to find Dylan’s car still in the driveway, but where did he think he would go? The pills were kicking in, and the edges of the pain had dissolved, melted like ice cream in the sun. It was really nice; he could move his fingers without feeling a lightning bolt of pain sizzle down each nerve. His head felt hollow, but the throbbing at the temples had ceased.
Once inside, he found that only the foyer light was on, and the rest of the house was dark, save for a sliver of light in the upstairs hallway. “Dylan?” He charged upstairs, and opened the door on the bedroom, the only lit room in the house. Dylan was standing at the end of the bed, zipping up a backpack. “Hon, what’re you -”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Dylan said, his voice sounding congested. He wiped his face with his hand before shouldering the bag, but his face was still wet with tears, his eyes red rimmed, beads of saline collecting in the stubble dusting his upper lip. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’ll come back and get the rest of my stuff eventually, okay? I just can’t do this -”
“Do what?” he exclaimed, astonished. Dylan was walking out on him? “Live with a freak?”
“Fuck you!” Dylan snapped, with so much rage he reflexively took a step back. Dylan almost never got angry, so when he did, it was explosive and astonishing in its rawness. “You are not a freak to me, and you have never been a freak. Goddamn it, why don’t you treat yourself with more respect than that? Why do you hate yourself so much?”
“I’m not dumping me, so I don’t think my hate is an issue.”
“I am not -” Dylan paused and seemed to gather his thoughts. He was still crying; he had never actually stopped crying. “I love you, you stupid asshole, and I wish I didn’t. I can’t stand aside while you kill yourself a piece at a time. I can’t. I didn’t want to leave you because you could – I didn’t know what would happen, but I thought I could brazen it out, I thought you’d realize what you were doing or … god, I’m such a fucking idiot, I thought maybe you’d love me enough not to hurt me like this. But you don’t love me, and -”
“What? Of course I love you. What the hell kind of thing is that to say?”
“You like me, and maybe you’re used to me, but you don’t really love me. And please, no, don’t deny it, okay? I was good with that; I was willing to accept that, ’cause that’s how much I loved you. You’re still in love with Paris, and I get that. I know you think the very idea is bullshit, but he was your soulmate, and I accepted that. I just can’t accept that you’d rather die than be with me.”
“This is bullshit!” Maybe it was the drugs – perhaps four Percocets was one too many – but he felt like half this argument was just rushing past him. “I had to stop the fucking panther, Dyl. What would you have me do? Let it maul someone to death, let the cops kill it? I thought -”
“It’s not about that! You’re giving it power – you want it to take over!”
“What?” Now he really was missing a piece of this argument.”What the fuck? You’re not making sense! When I’m around other cats, it -”
“It is you! You are the lion, Roan! It’s a part of you, and you wouldn’t have to fight it so hard if you didn’t unconsciously want it to take over.”
He was feeling a lot of things right now – comfortably numb, upset, sad – but now pissed off was letting its presence be known. “Don’t psychoanalyze me! You have no idea how hard it is to live with this!”
“No, I don’t, and that’s why I let the drugs go! I don’t know the kind of pain you live with, and if it takes it away, fine! Drown yourself in fucking pills, Ro! But I can’t watch you kill yourself anymore!”
“Fuck you! If I wanted to kill myself, I’d shoot myself in the head! Or slice my arms open like you did!” Even as he said it, he winced. Stupid, wrong, low, mean – why did he go there?
Dylan’s jaw tightened, and there was genuine pain in his eyes. He’d hurt him with that. That was a confidence he shared with him, his suicide attempt after the death of Jason, and to use it as a weapon was beyond the pale.
“Jesus, fuck, Dyl, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean -”
“No, you did, and it’s okay. At least it’s out now.” He ran his hand beneath his nose and sniffed. “I have to go now before things get worse.”
“Please, no, Dylan, I -”
“Don’t, just don’t. If you care about me at all, let me go.”
“But -” But what? What was he going to say? He stood aside and let Dylan pass, feeling like utter shit. He was angry, both at himself and at Dylan, but the drugs made it seem oddly abstract. “I love you, goddamn it!” he roared. Not literally; he was too drugged and too tired to manage it. There was no response besides the opening and closing of the door downstairs. Damn it. “Would I put up with this shit if I didn’t?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. If he’d set out to deliberately destroy this relationship, he couldn’t have done a better job.
Angrily, he slammed the closet door shut, but that wasn’t satisfying. So he went downstairs and headed for his office, where he landed three or four punches on the heavy bag before snapping the chain and sending it thudding into the wall and collapsing onto the floor. Now he had something to fix. Great. That would keep him occupied for about ten or twenty minutes. “Fuck!” he shouted, feeling his heart beat in his ears. He was an idiot; he was a world class moron.
Why did both Dylan and Murphy think he wanted to die? Why did they think he was suicidal? He wasn’t! His last overdose wasn’t his fault – some asshole tried to kill him with animal tranquilizers. Didn’t they remember that? That wasn’t his fucking fault.
And that lion shit – Dylan had no fucking clue what he was talking about. The lion was … well, it wasn’t a thing really, it was an impulse, an urge, an irresistible urge. He fought it, and it wasn’t as easy as he seemed to imply – he couldn’t make it roll over and play dead. How stupid was he? For a man who had taken years of college, he could seem totally clueless.
He was exhausted, his adrenaline was almost gone, and the drugs were really weighing him down. His stomach was growling, twisting itself in knots, so he had a piece of toast and wondered where Dylan had gone. To D’Andra’s? Probably. She was perfect, mainly because, as far as Roan could tell, she had never liked him. Maybe she was a rather militant lesbian, but she seemed oddly proprietary of Dylan. Possibly because they were both artists, although D’Andra’s art wasn’t painting, but sculpture and performance pieces. Dylan at least had talent – he was more than half convinced D’Andra was being awful on purpose as a sort of “fuck you” to the art world. And really he respected her for that.
He laid down on the couch and turned on the TV, making himself stare at it, but for some reason nothing was getting through. He saw images, but couldn’t connect them; they might as well have been flashing lights. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. He remembered he had phone calls to return, and as if on cue his cell hummed, but as soon as he saw it was Murphy calling, he turned it off. She’d probably just heard about the panther thing, or finally had a piece of evidence that pointed towards Michael’s death being murder, and he was just not in the mood right now. He couldn’t deal with it.
Roan had no idea when he fell asleep. The drugs were so heavy in his system, weighing him down like his blood was liquid iron, that there seemed to be no segue between consciousness and sleep. It was actually kind of nice, at least until he found himself sitting on the back porch, on a deck that didn’t actually exist in real life, watching the sun filter through the interlaced web of the trees. Sitting beside him was Paris, of course, drinking a beer and waiting for things to happen.
“I’ve really fucked this up, haven’t I?” he asked, although he knew he was just talking to himself.
“It is a minor talent of yours,” Par admitted, giving him a smart ass grin.
Well, that was certainly true. Roan had a beer bottle in his hand, but it seemed to be empty. What a bastard. “Maybe this is for the best. I was no good for Dylan anyways. He could do better.”
“Of course he could. But he wanted you, you stupid fuck.” Paris cuffed him on the back of the head, a small slap that could have been more forceful, but was just firm enough to get its point across.
“Hey!”
“And he’s right, you know. He and Murphy don’t agree on a lot, so the fact that they agree on you being a reckless and stupid asshole seems to indicate that you are being a reckless and stupid bastard.”
Roan gave him a dirty look. “Aren’t you suppose to be my soulmate?”
Par gave him a look that he knew all too well, one that made him feel a twinge in his gut even in this dream world. It was the look of a kindly old mentor, about to kick your ass and honestly sorry he has to do it. “You’re so depressed you’ve come out the other side of it, Ro. You know you could die at any second, so you push it. All your life, that’s what you’ve done. Someone says you can’t do something, you go out and do it, and go spin doughnuts on their lawn, giving them the middle finger and insulting their mothers. That’s the beauty and the terrible pain of you: you’re a contrary bastard.”
“Yeah, well …” He didn’t know what to say. There was nothing he could argue with here.
“You say you don’t want to end up a sideshow attraction, a freak show, but you go out of your way to use these abilities where they will get a lot of attention. Subtlety has never been your strong suit.”
“It’s who I am; it’s what I am. Ask me to not be gay while your at it, or a redhead. I’m a freak. World might as well get used to it.”
“I agree. But are you ready for what will happen? The media attention, the medical attention?”
Par actually seemed to be expecting an answer. “Well, no …”
“Are you ready to die half transformed?”
“No, but that’s not gonna happen.”
“Oh really? Why not?”
He shrugged, and suddenly realized he wanted badly to wake up. “I’ve adapted. It can’t kill me. It won’t.”
“Really? Then go all the way. If you won’t get any more aneurysm, go for a full change. What’s holding you back?”
“Stop it.”
“You’re not a coward, Ro. Hell, you go out and pick fights, that’s how not a coward you are. So why don’t -”
“Just shut up, all right?” he snapped angrily. He would have felt terrible if this was really Paris, but it wasn’t. He knew he was talking to himself, that the mean bastard taunting him could never be Par, but it could be him. Yes, he was contrary, but he could also be fucking vindictive.
“You want Dylan back? You tell him the truth, and you get help.”
“There’s no help for me.”
“You’ve never tried, so you don’t know. Try before you give up. Or are you actually a coward, Ro? Is that your dirty little secret?”
The ringing of the phone woke him up, shattered his reverie, and he was honestly grateful. His subconscious was a bitch.
He didn’t answer the phone, he just let it go to machine, and it was Murphy, like he suspected (it was either her or Dee – there was no way Dylan would be calling him so soon). He listened to her talk, and felt water on his face. Was he crying? Yes, he was, but he hadn’t been aware of it. The drugs still had a velvet stranglehold on him, but he wasn’t sure he could totally blame them.
Apparently the Brand case was being shut. They’d found nothing that indicated foul play, and since he’d killed himself with his service revolver and left a note on his computer, it looked pretty legit. She still didn’t trust it – she said it looked like there might have been another person in the house – but there was no way to make a timeline for that. He wondered idly if she’d found the bottle of booze he took out of the back cupboard. It was unlikely Michael had cleaned up. She wasn’t happy – was she ever? – but it was done, unless he wanted to tell her something. He didn’t, so the case was closed.
Maybe Grey was telling the truth – maybe he had gone back to bed, and never paid Brand a visit. Would he ever know for sure? Truth be told, he was fine not knowing. Michael had been dead in every way save physically. Poor bastard. That was where Hamlet syndrome killed you – you couldn’t live with things as they were, but you couldn’t make yourself change them either. Indecision as mental illness and self-destruction.
Roan must have fallen back to sleep, or just slipped into some drug infused fugue state, as the next time he found himself staring at the curtains that were closed over the glass patio door, there was weak sunlight behind them, making them faintly glow. He still felt tired and empty, but now that the drugs had mostly warn off, his joints ached ever so slightly, like he was getting over the flu. His stomach rumbled to let him know toast was nowhere near enough last night.
He went upstairs and took a long bath, letting the warm water relax his muscles and take out the residual aches. His face was itchy, and he noticed he’d gotten a two days’ growth of beard overnight. He was too tired to shave, so he didn’t. He almost didn’t bother to get dressed, except he was cold, so he put on sweatpants before going downstairs. He threw a frozen dinner in the microwave and nuked it, not looking at what it was and not caring. After it was done, he still wasn’t sure what it was, and again, didn’t care. Eating it didn’t provide further illumination.
So he was supposed to tell Dylan the truth? The truth about what? He knew he was a freak; they had covered that part. So what was there to say?
There was a knock on the door, and he wasn’t going to answer the door, but Dee shouted, “I know you’re in there!”
So, fuck, word was getting around.
He got up and let Dee in, not surprised he was in his paramedic gear. “So Dylan called me and told me he might need me to pick up some stuff for him. So he’s left you? What did you do?”
He glared at him, but stalked back to the sofa, not even in the mood to argue with him. “Didn’t you hear what went on last night?”
“The cat outside Panic? Yeah, I heard. That’s it? Gotta be more than that.”
“He seems to think I hate myself and I want to die. Or I want the lion to take over full time, or some shit like that.”
“And you’re saying that’s not true?”
He gave him a scathing look that he knew would do no good, as it never did any good with Dee. “No, it’s not. Just get his stuff and go. What stuff does he want?”
Dee came and stood in front of him in the living room, hands on his hips. “No, you’re fucking not.”
“Not what?”
“You are not giving up.”
“I can if I want.” What was he doing? He didn’t even know. It was all reflex.
Dee glared down at him, imperious and angry. “He’s right, isn’t he? You want to die. Dylan leaving is the final excuse you need.”
“Fuck you.” He couldn’t even work up enough energy to make it sound angry. It was anemic, and could have been anything. It didn’t even sound like an insult.
Dee gave him a curious look, one only an ex could possibly give you, and sat down on the sofa beside him. He put his hand on his leg in a comforting, friendly manner, and asked in his most consoling EMT voice, “What’s wrong?”
A good question. He didn’t know. But he found himself admitting, “I’m so tired,” and for reasons unknown to him, he burst into tears. Stupid fucking asshole – why was he crying?
Dee pulled him into a hug and let him cry into his shoulder, and in that moment, Roan really did want to die.