Meantime, Part 6
6 – Blackest Eyes
Roan woke up with a start, sitting up, ready to pounce. On what he wasn’t sure, but he was sure there was something requiring his attention.
But only when he was crouched on the bed did he realize he was in a hospital room, and he had no less than three IVs in his arm. Also, his brain was fuzzy like he’d had way too much Vicodin, and he was mildly achy.
It all started clicking, especially when he saw Dylan asleep in a cot not too far away. And he was just asleep, he was out but still breathing, which was a relief. He hadn’t hurt him … physically … yet. God, that was a thought he hadn’t wanted to have. But for some reason he was afraid he had hurt him.
Realizing he looked like an idiot, he sat back down, tucking his bare legs back under the scratchy sheets, and he looked at the various monitors around him. Was he okay? He should be an expert at reading all these machines by now, but half the time he never paid any attention.
Roan ran a hand over his head, and was amazed at how short his hair was. Did they give him a buzz cut? But it felt really soft, new, and with the familiar dead tooth ache in his body and the scratchy five o’clock shadow on his face, he knew he had recently transformed. He should have hurt more, but that explained why his brain felt like it was lost in a pea soup fog – they pumped him so full of drugs William S. Burroughs would have been jealous. He probably wasn’t meant to be functioning yet, but panic and anger (in lion or human form) could push him past any barrier.
Looking at the books and sketchpads around Dylan’s cot, he got a really bad feeling. How long had he been here? “Dyl,” he said, and realized it was his quiet, middle of the night voice. Was it appropriate? It looked dark out the windows, but the metal mesh could have made a heavily overcast day look like night. “Dylan. Can you hear me?”
He stirred, let out a “don’t bug me” groan (you knew you were in a relationship too long when you could easily interpret each other’s grunts and groans), and then suddenly raised his head. He sat up, clearly shocked, and looked at him. It seemed to take Dylan a second to really see him. “Roan?”
He nodded. “Yeah. What happened? How long have I been out?”
Dylan sprung off his cot and rushed to his beside, crushing him in a violent hug and very nearly entangling himself in his IV lines. “Oh god, I thought I’d lost you for good.”
“I’m sorry,” he said into the side of Dylan’s neck. Roan felt tears slide down his skin as he hugged him back fiercely, Dylan trying to hide a sob in his shoulder. The smell of Dylan, the warmth of his body, was so familiar it was instantly comforting, and they were like that for several minutes, while Dylan tried to stop crying, and Roan tried to keep himself from tearing up. Dylan in tears always got to him. He then pulled away and kissed Roan’s face, his forehead, his cheeks, finally his mouth, like he’d been away forever. It probably felt that way.
Dylan finally told him he’d been out for about a week. Which was bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Dylan also let him know that, once he recovered from his general happiness of him being conscious again, he was going to beat the shit out of him. That was fair enough.
Roan was starving, his stomach felt like it was trying to digest his internal organs, and he didn’t want food, he needed it, now. After convincing Dylan he was up to the trip down to the cafeteria, he got dressed, and carefully removed two of the IVs from his arm (he had to keep one; Dylan said it was off if he didn’t keep at least one). Dylan then led him down to the cafeteria, where he was the only one trailing an IV behind him, but no one much cared.
Yes, it was hospital cafeteria food, but it struck him as some of the best food he ever had. He wolfed it down like there was no tomorrow. He had two pre-wrapped sandwiches, but only by the time he was eating the third did he bother to look and see what was in the sandwiches. Looked like turkey, sad pieces of lettuce, and some kind of anonymous cheese. He didn’t care. They needed mustard, but he couldn’t care less. Partial transformation just beat the shit out of your metabolism, and he felt like a parakeet, trying to eat twice his weight in food as fast as possible. Dylan watched him with the kind of world weary annoyance and affection that could only be adopted by the long suffering spouse. He reminded him to chew every now and then, as he told him the lion had came out in his skin, not once but twice, Dylan just looked weary. Roan would have called bullshit, except he knew Dylan wasn’t lying to him. He still seemed a little freaked out by it, and Roan couldn’t blame him. That would freak him out too; if he ever found himself conscious in a lion body, his mind would probably snap like a pretzel. According to Dylan, Rosenberg had no idea what it meant.
Roan chugged down his second glass of atrocious iced tea, and started in on a pre-packaged brownie, as he thought he should mix sugar and carbs in with his protein. Actually, what he needed was a pizza, something dripping with cheese, grease, and pepperoni. As soon as he thought of it, he asked, “Do you think we can get a pizza delivered here?”
Dylan just stared at him, his dark chocolate eyes giving nothing away. “At what point do you barf or do we watch your stomach explode like Mr. Creosote?”
“Never. I seem to have hollow legs.” Actually he kind of wished that was the truth.
Just like he wished he didn’t know what the lion coming out while in his body meant. But he did know, didn’t he? Or at least he suspected its meaning. What he could do the lion could do – he could force a change, and maybe the lion could too. Or, in this case, force it to stop. But only when he wasn’t around to put up a fight. So in a technical since, he had custody of his body, but if he didn’t watch it, he was going to be kidnapped and flown off to a country with no extradition treaty. Or something like that.
Okay, so he was crazy. Roan could only hope it was the good kind of crazy.
****
Scott had no idea why he was still up, watching a movie he wouldn’t be watching if it wasn’t so late and he wasn’t so bored.
It was probably his laziness ganging up on him again. Hockey season was over, for the moment, and he had time to go off his diet and the training grind and just veg like a normal person. For about a week and a half.
Then he’d have to start training again, and back off on the junk food a bit, as he couldn’t afford to get too out of shape. There was a slim chance he could get picked up by someone during the summer trading season, and did he really want to show up with a newborn beer gut and a bit of a wheeze? He had to be in top form.
Grey had no problem with this. Grey would probably roll in around ten in the morning and kick him out of bed, telling him a jog would be good for him, and he shouldn’t complain since it was only a mile. Grey seemed to enjoy exercise, he seemed to get something out of it, but then again, Grey was always weird. If he hadn’t been a hockey player, he’d probably be a personal trainer or something, someone who gleefully tormented the out of shape for fun and profit. But since he was built like Frankenstein, exercise probably was fun for him. Get those dead body parts movin’.
Scott shoved a handful of the caramel popcorn in his mouth, and winced as he chewed. It looked like caramel, it was sticky like caramel, but it tasted like sweet chemicals. Horrible shit. But here he was, still eating the stuff, probably due to boredom and being tired. It wasn’t waking him up, though, nor was this film, which had reached ludicrous new heights every fifteen minutes or so. He still had to see how it ended, even though he knew the white guy hero would probably think of some stupid way to kill the beast, and end up with the woman with the weird hair helmet. But he wanted to see how they killed the thing, and he bet it would be pathetic. Sprinkling it with hot sauce, slamming it in a car door, smooshing it with an oversized tissue? The stupid options were endless.
He yawned and stretched out on the couch, wondering if he should risk one more beer. It didn’t go with the horrible popcorn, but the real issue was it would put him to sleep. He was perilously close to sleep as it was. He should just go to bed. Scott was still trying to decide when there was a knock on the door.
He heaved himself off the couch, and asked, “Tegan kick your ass out?” Tegan wasn’t the brightest woman he’d ever met, but she was smart enough to be unable to stand Grey sometimes. Scott gave it three months, tops.
Although it could have been Grey forgetting his keys again, it turned out to be Holden on the doorstep, leaning against the frame. “Nobody kicks my ass without paying in advance.”
He had a bruise, slowly cycling through shades of mauve and purple, growing beneath his left eye, and it looked like he had blood on his pants. “Holy shit, were you in a fight?”
“Fight makes it sound like the other guy had a chance,” Holden replied, with his usual cool humor. Scott helped him inside, as he was limping a little, and once he got him sat on the couch, he asked, “What happened?”
Scott went back to shut the door, and then detoured into the kitchenette to grab a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, while Holden once again used a lot of words to say not much of anything. Holden said it was just part of the case he was working on for Roan, and he wasn’t at liberty to go into details with client confidentiality and all. Except he could say that the guy who he beat up was a total scumbag who deserved worse. “If you wanna give me his name, Grey and I could pay him a visit.”
“Nah. He’s probably gonna need dental surgery, so he’s out of the game for a while.” Scott came back and handed him the bag of peas, which he looked at with a sarcastic raised eyebrow. “Dare I ask what you expect me to do with this?”
So many things came to mind, but Scott said, “It’s for your eye. It’s more comfortable than an ice pack.” What did he find so attractive about Holden? He wasn’t his usual type at all. Physically Roan wasn’t either, but he could understand that, because the guy was a stud. How many real life superheroes did you meet? He oozed machismo and a kind of exotic appeal that he bet even a few straight guys would go for.
But Holden just oozed sex, a kind of dark charm that suggested he’d fuck your brains out if you were lucky, and kill you if you weren’t. He could also turn it off and on, like a faucet, which added a creep factor to it, and should have been a turn off. How did you know when any of this was real? And while he was attractive, he wasn’t overwhelmingly handsome; he wasn’t the second coming of Brad Pitt. Yet there was something about him that made you take a second look, made you stare. Maybe it was just trying to figure him out, as if the puzzle of him was in his eyes, and if you could just be close enough to him long enough you would figure it out and he would make sense. But maybe that was just him projecting. He didn’t understand Holden, what motivated him, and he wasn’t sure he ever would. Maybe that’s why he was so attractive. He was a continuous, unending mystery.
Holden held the bag of peas up to his bruised eye, and let out a slight hiss of pain through his teeth. “I knew coming here was the right idea. Who better to handle black eyes than a hockey player. Bet your brilliant with dental emergencies too.”
“Wow, I haven’t heard that one before,” he replied, undoing Holden’s jeans.
Holden stared at him with his one visible eye, smirking slightly. “You aren’t even buying me dinner first?”
“I want to take a look at your leg, smart ass. How’d you hurt it?”
“Kneeing the guy in the face.”
Scott clicked his tongue. “If you don’t watch it, that’s a good way to break a bone in your knee.”
“Gee, how would you know that, being such a good boy?” he replied with sarcastic humor. “It’s not like you’re a hockey player or something.”
Scott gave him the finger before yanking his jeans down with a bit more force than necessary. Scott couldn’t help but notice he was wearing red boxer briefs which looked so incredibly sexy on him, but he ignored that and looked at his right knee, which was a bit puffy and a bit reddish tinged. He touched it gingerly, trying to avoid the bruise. “If there’s a real sharp pain, let me know.”
“It’s a dull ache,” Holden replied. “It actually feels like a pulled a muscle or something.”
“Hmm.” He was far from a trainer, but he’d become a minor expert on leg injuries just by observation. The fact that Holden wasn’t screaming in pain from him grabbing his knee cap was probably the best sign in this situation. “It’s possible. You definitely bruised it.” He started taking off Holden’s shoes, and expected another comment. He wasn’t disappointed.
“No means no, cowboy.”
“You should get in the tub, soak that knee. It’ll bring the swelling down.” Holden’s telling silence made him look up, to see Holden grinning at him in an offhand, goofy sort of way. “What?” Scott asked defensively.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re fucking adorable?”
“You have. I think this makes it several times now. I’m beginning to think it’s an insult.”
That softened Holden’s expression, and Holden sat forward and touched his face, grazing his cheek lightly with his knuckles. “No, never. I just can’t believe your real sometimes.”
What did you say to that? Scott wanted to say he felt the same way about him, but he didn’t know if the way he meant it was precisely a compliment, so he decided to just say, “I have dirty laundry that attests to my reality.”
“Don’t we all? People could die off tomorrow, and all that would be left to prove we existed would be dirty laundry and Styrofoam coffee cups,” Holden replied, sitting back and letting Scott pull his jeans off. He got a close up look at the blood, and grimaced. His first thought, as callous as it was, was that he’d never get this stain out.
He wadded up the jeans in a ball, so no blood would get on their stuff, as Holden limped to the bathroom, shedding his shirt along the way. At least his shirt hadn’t appeared bloodied, but it was dark, and flecks of blood wouldn’t show up easily. He also knew this from experience.
Scott hung around to see the end of the movie before he turned off the set. In the end, they dropped a “small” nuclear bomb on the creature(!), even though it was only in a desert two miles outside the city. Still, no buildings were destroyed, no one was evaporated by the shockwave, and fallout? What the hell was that? What a magnificent piece of crap. He would have blamed Ed Wood for this, except it apparently wasn’t an Ed Wood film. Who knew it was so easy to make a truly epic disaster of a film?
He heard the water running as he went into his room to find some sweats for Holden to wear, and wondered if his were big enough. He was a jock, sure , but Holden was pretty broad across the shoulders. Not Grey big, but a bit bigger than him. Still his sweats were oversized, so he didn’t worry about it too much.
As Scott walked to the bathroom, he wondered what he knew about male prostitutes, except certain neo-cons and evangelists had an insatiable love for them. That was all he knew about them, come to think of it. You just naturally assumed they were all abused as kids, and were all addicted to drugs. The fact that neither of these things applied to Holden made him a true puzzle. That and he seemed so smart, too smart to be doing this for a living. Was he doing this just to be contrary? It seemed a long way to go just to say “fuck you” to the world. But then you add this whole sidekick to a superhero thing into the mix, and things just got too fucked up for words.
He knocked on the door and waited for the okay before coming in, putting the sweats on the top of the toilet tank. “You’re gonna want to wash your clothes before you go out in daylight. Or maybe burn them. This guy was still alive, right?”
Holden chuckled, but in a dark, almost sinister sort of way. He was laying back in their acrylic plastic bathtub, the water still coming in at full blast even though the tub was half full. Since he was naked, Scott could see he had no other bruises, so the fight probably was as one sided as he said he was. And that was yet another oddity of Holden, that he could fight as well as he apparently did. His size was a help, sure, Grey proved that sometimes size was the only difference between a sissy slap fight and a devastating shot heard ‘round the world, but without some ability size wasn’t enough. Had Roan trained him? (Shades of Batman and Robin – a comparison Holden hated, especially since “Batman is a normal guys with a lot of money and tech. Roan isn’t normal, isn’t rich, and has no tech. The comparison would send a comic nerd into a tizzy.” Scott felt Holden had revealed himself as a comic nerd by that statement, but kept the observation to himself.) “I wouldn’t come here if I’d killed someone. I wouldn’t want you getting nailed as an accomplice after the fact.”
“Thanks.” The fact that he had actually considered this made Scott nervous. How dangerous was this guy? He sat on the closed toilet lid, and noticed the steam coming from the tub. “You know, you should be soaking the knee is cooler water.”
“What, and risk shrinkage? Fuck that. Besides, warm water is nice and relaxing.” He settled back against the back of the tub, putting an arm behind his head, adopting a sexy smile. “My knee feels better already.”
He bet. “So where did you learn to fight?”
“From watching hockey.” At Scott’s scowl, Holden snickered, and admitted,” Various places. When I played baseball, the coach encouraged me to do a little boxing, strengthen my arms, and then when I was on the street, I picked up some other things by watching other guys, and trial and error. Fighting isn’t rocket science, it’s just learning not to hurt yourself while hurting someone else. “ He sat forward and turned off the taps. “Isn’t that how you learned?”
“More or less. I took up sparring during the off season, mainly to get my excess energy out and as exercise I could bother to do, but as I started moving up the amateur hockey ranks, I learned some from the older or more experienced defensemen. There may have been a couple wingers, but defensemen seem to know the best tricks.”
“Maybe you could teach me some sometime.”
Scott sighed and shook his head at a grinning Holden. “Do you ever say anything that doesn’t sound like a come on?”
“I do, all the time. It’s not my fault if you think it’s a come on.” He gave him an innocent look, but after a moment’s struggle couldn’t keep a straight face and laughed.
“You know, I really thought you weren’t coming by tonight.”
That seemed to sober him up; Scott watched his mirth die away like a light on a dimmer switch. “I wasn’t. But the thought of going home … I dunno. I didn’t want to. “
Scott’s first thought was teasing him, as surely Holden would have done the same thing to him, but there was an alien vulnerability in his expression that made him look Human for once. Not the world’s slickest, untouchable bastard. Something happened tonight, and it wasn’t the fight. Something had gotten under Holden’s skin, although the likelihood he’d ever mention it was near zero. Then again, would he? Talking was for other people; talking was what his girlfriends made him do. The good thing about having a boyfriend was you didn’t always need to talk. Scott moved to the side of the tub, and knelt down before grabbing the back of his head and kissing him, just to see how he’d react.
Holden kissed him back, a wet hand on the back of his neck, water dripping down his back. Holden had this way of kissing him that felt like he was almost trying to consume him, eat his face off like a zombie, but it wasn’t actually a bad thing. It told Scott that he was done with talking for the night, that he wanted to do something much more interesting. And that suited him just fine.
