Roan made a mix CD for the Falcons to listen to, so here it is:

It’s noisy, yes, but also surprisingly funny. This probably represents Roan’s sense of humor better than any other mix.

7 – Diggers of Ditches Everywhere

Considering the day he was having, the phone call from Holden wasn’t really surprising.

Dylan had already intercepted a phone call from Seb, who said Roan wasn’t answering his cell, and he figured Roan was pissed off at him. He didn’t say what had gone on, but he asked him to pass on a message, that the Chief wanted to see him as soon as humanly possible. As soon as Dylan hung up, he asked the air, “What did you do now, Ro?” He might as well ask the air, as he was just as likely to get an answer.

He’d come home – well, their temporary home – to change and catch a quick shower before reporting early for work. Alex had a sick kid and couldn’t work her shift, so he agreed to cover it. It was to be nice to her; he really wasn’t crazy about Silver or its clientele, but he knew why he was there.

He couldn’t deny that, every now and then, he resented being the partner of such a lightning rod figure, but he resented the people who hated Roan even more. Yes, he was controversial, outspoken, and sometimes he went out of his way to offend and challenge people, but his heart was in a good place. He wasn’t trying to harm anyone; he only wanted to help, or, at his worst, hit back for someone unable or unwilling to do so. Although sometimes he worried that he was becoming a vigilante, especially when teamed up with the morally dubious Holden. Still, that was Roan’s decision to make, if he wanted to go that path, and he had no right to judge him on that. Although he was kind of dying to.

But he couldn’t help but worry more about him than get mad at him, as much as he may have deserved it. Roan just didn’t look well, and he’d been hitting the painkillers pretty hard. He was fairly sure he was taking them because he was in actual pain, not because he was an addict who needed to keep his levels up to keep from getting the shakes. He hated the idea that he was in that much pain constantly, and he hated it even more that he wouldn’t tell him about it. But Roan was one of those macho types, and he seemed to need to get to the breaking point before admitting anything like that. Dylan felt lucky. He had his art, his yoga, his family, his slightly bizarre friends. Roan had his pills, his punching bag, and his extremely bizarre friends, which didn’t seem like a equitable distribution of helpful resources.

He was on his way out the door when he got Holden’s call. Holden told him Roan had come from a pretty bad crime scene with a migraine attack, and had taken some pills and zonked out on his couch. “Gonna let him sleep it off here,” Holden said. “He’s in no shape to drive.”

Dylan almost said, ‘You could drive him home,’ but didn’t. This was probably innocent, and he knew very well Roan’s migraine attacks could be violent, ugly things. But Holden could have brought him home, he just didn’t want to.

Still, nothing was going to happen, not while Roan had a migraine. If Holden wanted to be near him, fine, Dylan knew it wasn’t a contest. (And if it was, he’d won. So, too bad for Holden.) He told him to have Roan call him when he woke up, because he wasn’t going to pass on Seb’s message second hand. Also, he wanted to know exactly what Ro did to get him in shit with the Chief.

Since it wasn’t quite the evening shift, when things swung into high gear, Silver was kind of slow, leaving him lots of time to think. Hadn’t Doctor Rosenberg left a lot of messages? And saying nothing, which was fairly unusual for her. She basically just asked for Roan to call her, and when he picked up the phone, she said the same thing to him. ‘Have that bastard call me’. This wasn’t good. Something was wrong with him, wasn’t it? And Roan wasn’t telling him, probably because he was a macho asshole. Fuck! You know, getting involved with an infected, you should expect health problems above all, but somehow, being with Roan, he’d learn to expect death threats above everything else.

There was a middle aged man, doughy in that typical way (probably thirty pounds overweight), in a fairly cheap looking gray suit and navy tie sitting at the end of the bar, who’d been there since he’d started his shift. At first he’d shot him surreptitious glances, but now he was openly glaring at him from beneath dark eyebrows salted with dandruff, his thin lips curling faintly into a sneer. Angry drunk? Dylan was sure the next time he ordered a drink, he’d cut him off. Angry drunks were worse than sloppy drunks, but frankly all drunks were pretty bad.

When the guy waved him over, he went down to him to quietly and politely tell him there were no more drinks for him here, hoping to avoid a scene. But the man’s pudgy hand whipped out, snake fast, and grabbed his wrist, revealing he wasn’t drunk at all, just seething. “I know you,” he grated, in a voice like his lungs were full of gravel. “You were with that freak, that infected asshole who wants to infect everyone.”

His sausage fingers were digging into his wrist with surprising strength, enough that Dylan couldn’t pull his hand away. He instantly thought about reaching under the bar with his free hand and pulling out the ice pick. “Let go of my arm.”

“Fuck you, you infected piece of shit.” the man snarled, keeping his voice low but full of a surprising amount of hate. “You spittin’ in our drinks, huh? Trying to infect us?”

The worst part was this guy actually believed the shit he was spewing. Dylan could see it, and wasn’t even sure how you responded to this kind of insanity. And he should be an expert, considering his brother.

The man was grabbed by the back of his neck, but instead of it being Julio, the huge busboy who often passed for security, it was a really unexpected figure: Tank. He sat on the stool next to the man, and got uncomfortably close to his ear. “You feel that? You don’t want me to sever your spinal cord and leave you a vegetable, do you?”

The man was now sitting stiffly, his brown eyes bulging out of his head. Tank had something in his hand that he was pressing up against the nape of his neck, but Dylan couldn’t see anything. “N-no.”

“Okay then. Let him go.” The man did, and Dylan yanked his arm away. “Good boy. Now you’re gonna take out your wallet, leave a tip, and get the fuck outta here before my buddies show up and help me rip you to pieces, you pig fucking piece of shit.”

Part of the intimidation had to be Tank’s inappropriate closeness. He was almost sitting in this guy’s lap, and that violation of personal space had to be unnerving. Not for Tank, of course, who had one of his stony game faces on, one that suggested he was more insane than that man could ever hope to be.

He dropped some money on the bar with a shaking hand, and that’s when Tank violently shoved him off his bar stool. He stumbled, tried to keep his balance, but hadn’t been expecting it and fell on his ass.

By this time, Julio had come over, and grabbed the man as he stood up. “Problem?” He asked.

He was asking Dylan, but the man answered, indignant and still scared. “This son of a bitch has a knife! He threatened to kill me!”

Tank held his hands open, showing they were empty, as his expression was his usual deceptively mellow one, no trace of his game face at all, his eyes no longer burning with some insane internal light. “No. English not so good, but he ‘s, uh … grabby.” Tank’s natural French-Canadian accent had suddenly trebled in thickness. Oh, the crafty bastard.

“He threatened me, put his hands on me,” Dylan said, holding up his still reddened wrist.

“He, uh, grabbed my, uh, what you say in English, balls? I’m flattered, but no gay.”

“What?!” The man screeched, literally screeched, like an adolescent whose voice had yet to break. “I didn’t do that! I’m not a fag! He – he threatened me! He’s not even French! He’s making this up!”

“Tell Robin he’s barred,” Dylan said to Julio. “And if he comes back, call the police.”

Julio nodded and started muscling the man towards the door, the few restaurant patrons around staring after him as he continued fruitlessly protesting. Julio’s English was kind of limited, so it was almost all wasted on him anyways.

Tank grinned at him, looking like a goofy but attractive busker, with shaggy hair and a t-shirt that Dylan now realized read “Supervillain Intramural” (another t-shirt his teammates probably bought him, no doubt). “Amazing what you think is a knife if someone implies it is,” he said, his voice back to its lightly accented state. He fiddled with a ring on his right hand, and Dylan realized that’s what he had pressed up against his neck.

He shook his head wonderingly. “You’re just evil. I see why Roan likes you.”

This made him grin wider, even more endearing than before. Still, he had an almost unnerving intensity in his eyes that never quite left, and combined with his neatly trimmed pale brown goatee, it made him look slightly devilish. Who had Roan said he kind of looked like? Oh yeah, that guy who used to sing for Alice In Chains. Dylan was taking his word for it, because he kind of missed the whole grunge thing, even though he was a Seattle boy. It’s just while he was in college, the singer-songwriter stuff was more popular. (He could totally see Roan’s point about that form of music being “bloodless”, but he couldn’t see embracing some of that honestly noisy stuff that Ro seemed to love.) “Hey, he clearly wanted to start some shit. Is it my fault he wasn’t all that serious? I mean, what’s the sports cliché, go hard or go home? If he went hard, maybe he wouldn’t be going home.” He paused briefly. “Who am I kidding? Of course he’d be going home. I wasn’t gonna let some bigoted fat piece of shit get over on me. If he started gettin’ stroppy, I’d have rabbit punched him in the kidneys, thrown him down on the floor, and kicked in his solar plexuses. Hard to make charges when you can’t breathe or stand.”

Dylan continued to shake his head, mainly because he didn’t know of a more appropriate response. Violence was base and wrong. And yet there were some nice unexpected benefits to having your husband be friends with a hockey team. “Well, thank you for the help.”

“What was up that guy’s ass?”

He shrugged. “Just a hater. Saw me with Roan, figured I was an agent for infecteds, out to infect all the fat white rich people in here.”

“Horrors,” Tank said, still grinning, his eyes glittering like diamonds. He lowered his voice to a ghost of a whisper, leaning over the bar conspiratorially. “It’d serve the bourgeoisie bastards right.”

Dylan couldn’t help but smile and chuckle faintly. It was obvious why he and Roan liked each other. Yes, there was a little man crush there, but Roan and Tank seemed to have a certain attitude in common. They were also both a bit smarter than you’d probably give them credit for, and too unpredictable for safety. “What can I get you Tank?”

“Oh, I’m not here to drink. I knew you worked here now ‘cause Fi told me, and since I can’t get a hold of Roan, I thought I’d let you know that you and Roan are working personal security for me tomorrow.”

“Pardon?”

He leaned his elbows on the bar, slumping down and looking comfortable. “It’s my last game with the Falcons; I’m signing an insane contract with the Bruins the day after tomorrow. I convinced the arena staff I needed extra security and were bringing in my own people. That’s you and Roan.”

He stared at him in open disbelief. “You convinced someone you need a bodyguard?”

He continued grinning at him in a way that was equally charming and chilling. “I’m a goalie. We don’t fight.”

“Really?” Dylan busied himself pouring Tank a glass of ice water. He needed to look like a customer, or he might get shit about it. “It’s funny, but the last time we were at a Falcons game, I could have sworn the opening video bit they played of the team included you punching a guy so hard his helmet flew off. Or was that another goalie with your number?”

He chuckled with genuine amusement. “That was justified. Fucking asshead pushed Zack into the boards, and if he hadn’t gotten his shoulder up he’d have gone in head first. That’s fucking dangerous, he coulda hurt him bad, and on top of that, Zack’s small. I mean, he weighs what, as much as Grey’s leg? And this fucker, Perry, he was almost Grey sized. And it wasn’t the first asshat thing he’d done that night either. So I just snapped, called him a motherfucker, and when he turned to give me shit back, I’d already shucked off my catching glove and took him down with a right. “ His grin ramped up a notch. “That got on ESPN. So did my subsequent decking of their second enforcer with my blocker, but by then Scott had grabbed me and pulled me away from the dog pile, and Grey and Richie put themselves in front of me to fend off the angry Tigers. “

Dylan almost asked, but then figured Tigers was the team name. “Roan needs a bodyguard as much as you do.”

“I know. But since it’s my last game with the team – well, if I don’t get busted back to the minors at some point – I thought it might be fun to have you guys right there, behind the bench. Ethan’s all for it, he can’t wait to have Roan nearby, he thinks his good luck will rub off on him.”

“Ethan?”

“Back up goalie, now becoming primary goalie. I told him Roan’s been my good luck charm.”

Dylan almost laughed. He’d been wondering if Roan was a bad luck charm, and here came an alternate view. “Why?”

Tank looked at him as if he couldn’t believe he’d have to ask. “My career’s taken off since I met him. I mean, I’m playing the best I’ve ever played, and now I’m off to the NHL. How is he not a good luck charm?”

“But that was a coincidence. You’re playing so well because you train like bastard, and you’ve been working for this most of your life. Roan was happenstance, coincidental at best.”

He nodded. “Doesn’t change anything. He’s been good luck for me.” He gulped down his ice water, and when he put it down, he asked, “Do you have a specialty?”

It caught him off guard, mainly because he was still pondering Tank’s superstitious but weirdly sweet belief that Roan was a good omen. Wasn‘t he, in an odd way? Yes, things had been kind of rough, but there were undeniable good times. And Roan, as much as he frustrated him, could make him happy in a way that no man had since Jason. Maybe even more than Jason ever had. “Huh?”

“Specialty drink, something you like to make.”

Wow, he hadn’t been asked that since … had he ever been asked? He wasn’t sure, but he said the first thing that popped into his head. “I dunno, a Surf Sider?”

“What’s that?”

“Blue Curacao, Southern Comfort, pineapple juice, lime.”

“Ah. Sounds like a fruity drink that’ll knock you on your ass.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“Set me up. Oh, what time do you get off work?”

“Tonight? Midnight. Why?”

“Insurance,” he said cryptically, pulling out his cell.

There was another customer, so Dylan had to get him his glass of wine before he made the Surf Sider and brought it back to Tank, who was now folding his phone and shoving it in his pocket. “So who’s the insurance?” he wondered, putting the blue drink in front of him.

“Grey. I’m worried fat ass is gonna hang around and try for ya after work. So if he does, instead of meeting me, he’s gonna meet Grey.” He picked up his drink with a smile. “If he thought I was bad, he hasn’t met him.”

“Ah yes, the guy who threw the punch heard ‘round the hospital.”

“I’m sorry I missed that. Usually you start a riot with a punch, not stop one by throwing a hit.”

“Well, this one was pretty stunning. I don’t think anyone knew you could actually rearrange someone’s face with one punch. You just assumed it was a figure of speech.”

“Grey’s got fists the size of ham hocks and punches like a jackhammer. He can rearrange, renovate, dislodge, puree, pulp, and blend. That’s why he’s an enforcer. To make sure guys who go after little guys or me don’t do it twice. So I doubt Mr. Fat Ass is gonna bug you twice.” He sipped the blue drink, raised his eyebrows, and then gulped it, putting down the now empty tulip glass with gusto. “Wow, that tastes good enough to get shitfaced on. Can I have another?”

“Don’t you have a game tomorrow?”

“Yep, but I’ll stop at two, or you can call me a cheese eating surrender monkey.”

Dylan grinned, unable to help himself. “You know, I’m going to miss you.”

“I ain’t going anywhere. I mean, sure, I’ll have to relocate to Boston, but I’ll be emailing, phoning, and when it’s the off season, I’ll be back. I love Seattle. It’s like Vancouver, but American.” He then gave him a cheesy but genuine grin, showing that, in spite of stereotypes, he had a full set of teeth.

Yes, there were some odd positive notes to being friends with crazy hockey players. But the thing he really never expected was one of them cheering him up when he was feeling down. Maybe he should encourage Roan to hang around with them more often.

****

Roan was initially disoriented when he woke up on Holden’s couch, although the smell of the place was familiar enough that awareness clicked into place, and helped his memory kick in.

The apartment was low lit, though, and he had no sense anyone was around. He found Holden had left a Post-It note on the bathroom mirror. It read: ‘Gone to store. Keys on counter. Don’t kill yourself.’ It was almost a poem, and if they could work around the syllables, it was a haiku waiting to happen.

He felt infinitely better, mainly because his head didn’t feel like it was splitting open anymore. It was always humbling to be taken down so easily by a migraine, but that opened up a new possibility, now considered – it wasn’t just a migraine. Maybe he had a time bomb in his head, not an aneurysm this time, but a tumor.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering if he could see it on his face, death written in the fine lines of his eyes, in the tense set of his jaw. But no, he looked no different than before, except he had two days’ growth of stubble from his partial change earlier in the evening.

Evening. Holy shit, how late was it? He checked his watch, and realized if he floored it, he just might beat Dylan home. He’d already decided he couldn’t keep this from him any longer, and since there was no good time to tell him, he was just going to have to come out with it. Besides, he’d already told Holden, and that wasn’t fair.

As it turned out, he didn’t beat Dylan home, but arrived soon after he had. He was still making himself tea, his post-work de-stressing ritual, and full of messages for him. Seb called to let him know Matthews wanted to see him ASAP (what a shock); Doctor Rosenberg wanted to see him, but wouldn’t leave a message. That concerned him a lot, and he asked if something was wrong. He couldn’t say there wasn’t a good reason to tell the truth.

So he did. He told him about the tumors, about how most were small and of no consequence, but Rosenberg still wanted a biopsy, and wanted to get a couple removed from him. Also, he’d had a brain scan, and she thought maybe his uncontrollable shifts could be blamed on a tumor. Then Roan admitted something he hadn’t said to Holden: the idea of this scared him shitless. He didn’t want to die like this.

Dylan held him and reassured him he wouldn’t, told him everything would be okay, even though Roan knew he didn’t quite believe that himself. He was hoping, he was trying to will it to be true, and Roan actually found some reassurance in that. Dylan said all the right things, and eventually they started kissing desperately, both realizing they wanted the comfort of each other at the same time. Sex made you feel alive, it made you feel like you weren’t going to die, even though it was inevitable. It was a little death that made you feel, if only for a moment, that you could subvert the big one.

Afterwards, Dylan slept while Roan found himself staring out the window at the unfamiliar landscape of a stranger’s backyard, wishing he was home. But he could still smell Dylan on him, and knew exactly why he wasn’t home. Not everybody wanted to fight him; most wanted easier targets. He couldn’t let that happen.

He was planning out his day tomorrow, where he was going to start his search, when the phone rang. He almost didn’t answer it – at nearly three in the morning, there was no way it could be good news – but that’s precisely why he answered it. Might as well man up, face it head on.

He really hadn’t expected anything, but still the fact that it was Luke on the phone – Dee’s nurse boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend? He wasn’t clear on their relationship status) – was still a surprise. “Hey Roan, didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No, you got lucky. What can I do for you?”

“You know a guy named Oliver Jephson?”

“Yes, he’s a client. Why?”

“He’s in the ER, someone beat the ever living shit outta him. We found your card in his possession, and it was the closest thing to a next of kin we found. Got some contact info for him?”

“Nothing in state,” he admitted, trying to remember. “How is he?”

“He’ll live, assuming there’s no complications. He’s unconscious, though, and he’s at least got a concussion.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No, no idea. It looks like someone wanted to make it look like a mugging, and maybe it was, but … it’s too vicious. Either he encountered a psycho mugger, or this was personal.”

Yes, that was what he was afraid of. Nothing was ever as it seemed, and why should he expect anything different from this? Even a sad sack kid who seemed perfectly harmless.

But what if he wasn’t?

This is the Holden mix, which is a bit different from the others. Not just because Holden likes himself a bit of emo, but because many of these songs seem to capture specific attitudes and philosophies  of the character. Trying to figure out what applies and what doesn’t may make your head hurt, but that’s Holden in a nutshell.