Chapter 18 - The shot.
“I hear you saying that you didn’t want any of this to happen, Chris,” he heard Carol, the woman he’d been talking to on the phone, repeat. “If that’s really the truth, you can stop all of this right now. You know that, Chris. Right? You have the power to make everything stop right now. You can control this situation, get the help you’ve been telling me you want, and end all this drama. All you have to do is put down that gun and walk out the door.”
“Yeah, like I believe that,” Chris retorted. “I’m not stupid you know. I don’t want to go to jail.”
“I can’t promise that you won’t go to jail, Chris,” the soft, calming and yet serious voice said. “You know you screwed up. You knew that there would be consequences, right? But, I can promise you that your life’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t give yourself up. If you push this with the police - someone gets hurt - then you’re going to be in an even worse position than you are now. There are people here who want to help you, Chris.”
“I don’t want to talk to any quack doctors!” Hobbs insisted.
“Fine, if you don’t want to talk to a doctor there are other people that can help you instead. There are counsellors and support groups,” Carol quickly backpedalled. “And, what about your family and friends, Chris, I’m sure that once they know what you’ve been going through they will want to help you, too.”
“I don’t have a family anymore,” the ranting, pacing man yelled angrily into the phone. “I’m too big of a screw up. My father told me that he didn’t want anything more to do with me until I get my act together. And all my friends know about me by now - all they would do is make fun of me, or worse, pity me . . .”
The makeshift therapy session went on and on. Chris was relieved, in a way, to finally talk to someone about what he’d been thinking. All these ideas had been bottled up in his head for so long and it felt so good to speak them aloud so he could be free of them. Carol, the woman he’d been speaking with had a very nice voice, too. She sounded a lot like his mother. She didn’t seem to be blaming him. Carol had said that she only really wanted to help him. She said she understood that he’d never wanted things to get this bad. Maybe she could help him. Fuck, he really wanted someone to help him. He didn’t want to be like this anymore. Maybe there was still a way to get rid of all these feelings he didn’t know how to control anymore. Maybe there was some way for him to become normal again.
Of course, he’d have to tell Carol about the feelings. What would she say if she knew about him? Would she still want to help him? Or would she just turn out like all the others - laughing at him and teasing him, whispering about him behind his back. God, it was just too much. Was it even worth it to try to get better? He wished he could just crawl back home to the Pit and hide from everyone forever. He didn’t want to do this - any of this. He didn’t want to talk to anyone and tell them about his shame. He was already screwed anyway . . .
Hobbs looked up from the linoleum floor tiles he’d been contemplating while he paced and talked to Carol. He glanced around the small hospital room and made sure that the Boyfriend was still sitting quietly in the chair on the far side of the room. Kinney was so quiet, Hobbs had almost forgotten the guy was still in here with him. Taylor was apparently still sleeping, which meant he wasn’t going to cause any problems. But he knew he was going to have to take care of Kinney eventually. Kinney wasn’t going to just sit there like a statue forever. Shit! What the hell was he going to do?
*Beep, beep, beep*
The chiming of the phone interrupted Hobbs’ train of thought and he was again aware of Carol’s reassuring voice coming out of the cell phone he was still holding.
“Chris? Chris are you still there? Talk to me, Chris.” Carol’s voice was getting louder and sounded worried when he didn’t respond right away. “Chris, please just talk to me.”
“I want . . . I want help,” Chris finally whispered into the phone. “I want to be normal again. I don’t want them to all laugh at me anymore . . ."
“I won’t laugh at you, Chris. I promise,” Carol’s voice crooned at him, soothing many of his fears. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”
“I want to be . . . I don’t want to have these feelings,” Hobbs sobbed quietly into the phone, for the first time ready to admit aloud what he’d been hiding for so long.
“What feelings, Chris?” Carol asked, her calm voice encouraging Hobbs to finally open up.
*Beep, beep, beep*
“Sometimes, I feel . . ." Chris didn’t know if he could actually say it. He took a shuddering breath and tried to start again. “Taylor . . . Taylor made me feel . . . See, there was the one time when Taylor was helping me to clear out the athletic equipment room and . . . well . . . shit happened . . . I didn’t ask for it or anything. He started it, you know, but I didn’t really try to stop him, because . . . I kinda . . . I . . . I liked it . . .”
*Beep, beep, beep*
*Click*
“C-C-Carol? Carol, are you still there?” Hobbs stammered into the now dead phone.
He looked down as the phone in his hand, pushed a button or two to confirm that it was completely dead and then howled furiously as he threw the useless piece of plastic crap as hard as he could against the wall.
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“Horvath! The phone just died on me,” Sergeant Carol Murphy, the departmental Hostage Negotiator, shouted across the room to the detective in charge of this case. “I’ve lost him.”
“Shit,” Carl Horvath mumbled as he grabbed for the radio again. “Roberts, we’ve lost phone contact with the gunman. Do you have a visual? What’s going on in that room?”
“I can see the patient’s bed - no change there - and the big dark-haired guy is still sitting over in the corner,” came the prompt reply over the static-filled radio. “I still can’t see Hobbs real well, though. He’s still walking around over in the south corner of the room where I don’t have a direct line of sight.”
“Okay, people,” Horvath announced loudly, turning to the group of emergency personnel in the ersatz command post. “We’ve lost phone contact with the perp. I’m fresh out of ideas about what to do. Anybody else got anything?”
“Hold on, Carl,” the radio crackled back to life. “I can see Hobbs. He still has the gun and he’s moved back to the center of the room. It doesn’t look good, Carl. It looks like he’s arguing with the other guy.”
“Do you have a shot, Roberts?” Horvath demanded tersely.
“Maybe . . . If he’d just hold still . . .”
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Brian hadn’t been paying much attention to Hobbs’ phone conversation. All he’d got out of it was that it was a huge load of self-indulgent, ape shit crazy. However, when the blustering and emphatic declarations started to fade into quiet, sobbing admissions, Brian had started to take notice.
‘Shit,’ Brian thought. ‘Just like I thought. He’s just another repressed, closeted faggot. Of course, he’s a homicidally insane closet case, but, yeah, still just another fag.’
As Hobbs started to choke out more of his confession, Brian even caught himself feeling a tinge of sympathy for the guy. Then he saw the gun, which was still loosely held by the fingers protruding from the bright yellow cast on Hobbs’ left arm. That sight pretty much wiped out any potential sympathy Hobbs might have got. And when Brian glanced over at the bruised and terrified patient still looking up from the hospital bed next to him, the familiar hatred and loathing he’d always felt for this monster came back in full force.
That’s when all hell broke loose in the tiny little room.
Both Brian and Justin almost jumped out of their skins when Hobbs started roaring like a wild beast caught in its den. Justin gave up playing possum and sat straight up in his bed. Brian jumped to his feet like a flash and sprinted around the foot of the bed, trying to get between Hobbs’ and Justin. As he rounded the far corner of the over-sized bed, he had to duck as a small black object came sailing through the air towards his head. When Brian briefly halted to look over at the tiny missile that just missed him and crashed into the wall, he noted in passing that he was going to have to get a new phone. Brian didn’t waste a lot of time though and was soon perched on the edge of Justin’s bed, using his own body to shield his partner from the maniac Hobbs.
“They’re all fucking liars! Everyone!” Hobbs screamed at Brian, using the Boyfriend as his verbal sounding post for all his current frustrations. “She wouldn’t have helped me anyway. I’m NOT going to fucking jail. I’d rather die first!”
Now that he wasn’t trying to juggle a phone with his good hand, Hobbs was waiving the stolen police gun around with his right hand in a much more effective and purposeful manner than he had been before. At the moment, it was pointed directly at Brian’s chest. The man was now also completely irate and, if possible, even more irrational.
“All of this is YOUR fault, Taylor. You did this to me. You caused this. Now everybody knows - Trey, Will, Paul fucking Murchison, the football chick . . . even the fucking police know. My whole life is fucked because of YOU! Why couldn’t you have just left me alone. I was FINE before you came along. Now I’m shit. I’m a fucking loser. I have no friends, no family, no fucking future, and its ALL. YOUR. FAULT.”
“Nice fucking cop out, Hobbs,” Brian bravely refuted the armed man’s claims. “It’s not anybody’s fault. You’re a FAG! Don’t you get it? You like cock. So what? We all do. That’s no reason to fucking try to kill people.”
“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Hobbs shrieked and shoved the gun he was holding right up into Brian’s face. “You don’t know shit. I’m not a fag. I never had these feelings until Taylor fucking infected me. It’s all his fault. He fucking ruined my entire LIFE!”
“Bullshit!” Brian yelled back, not really sure why he was arguing with a man who had a gun pointed at his forehead, but unable to restrain himself any longer. “You ruined your own life. You’re the one who decided that taking a bat to Justin’s head was going to solve all your problems. You’re the one who thought bombing my club would cure you of being a fag! If you’re a loser and a failure then you have nobody to blame but yourself!”
“Fuck you, Kinney! Fuck you!” the incensed, red-faced gunman shrilled, waving the revolver perilously in the older man’s face. “You infected Taylor and he infected ME. As far as I’m concerned, that means It’s ALL. YOUR. FAULT!”
Hobbs punctuated each word with a jab of the pistol into Brian’s chest. Brian wasn’t about to back down, though. They both stood there, nose to nose, Brian armed with nothing more than his sheer bravado while standing up to a raving madman with a gun. He wouldn’t back down, though. Not when he knew that he was the only thing standing between this nutcase and Justin. Hobbs had been trying to kill Justin for almost five years now. Brian hadn’t been able to protect him after the Prom. He hadn’t been able to keep Justin out of the Pink Posse. He hadn’t been able to shield him from the bombing at Babylon. But he was here now and he could stop this maniac from hurting the man he loved this time.
He didn’t care what it would cost him.
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The radio in the command post crackled again.
Roberts’ voice echoed throughout the room. “I’ve got a clear shot. Requesting final authorization.”
“Take him out!” Carl decreed without a second’s hesitation.
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“Bullshit!” Justin gasped as he heard his lover arguing with Hobbs.
‘Shut up, shut up, shutup, shutup, shutupshutupshutup,’ Justin thought frantically, trying to telepathically transmit his warning to the irrepressible man standing between him and a crazy gunman.
He still felt so weak and so tired. It was a struggle for him to just stay focused on what was going on around him. But in spite of the pain and exhaustion, in spite of the continued weakness in his right side, Justin knew he had to try to diffuse this situation. Brian could be ‘out and proud’ later! Right now, in Hobbs’ face, was not really the place. If he didn’t do something he knew this would end very badly.
Justin moved as fast as he could, considering how beat up he felt. He managed to sit up in the bed straighter and wrapped his good left arm around Brian’s waist. He had to get Brian’s attention - get him to focus on something other than baiting Hobbs.
“. . . that means It’s ALL. YOUR. FAULT!” Hobbs spit his words at Brian and Justin could see from where he was peeking around the tall brunet’s side the pure, insane fury that was burning out of his former classmate’s cold steel-grey eyes.
Justin knew that this was it. This was the moment that something irreversible was going to happen. A distant and almost lost memory flitted into his consciousness - another time he’d seen that same zealous, misdirected passion, only that time it had ended when Hobbs had swung the baseball bat at him in that cold grey parking garage.
Justin almost laughed at the transient thought that instead of his whole life flashing before his eyes in a moment of crisis, all he had seen was the one memory that he’d almost lost completely. If he were about to die, weren’t there other, better, memories that he could have been reliving right now? Couldn’t his lousy subconscious pick a happier memory? The silver and grey and sparkly images out of his dream from earlier that morning flashed through his mind briefly but Justin didn’t have the leisure to examine those thoughts more carefully just then.
Just at that moment, the intense grey eyes Justin had been watching blinked closed. He watched as Hobbs took a deep breath then, gritting his teeth and with his hand shaking slightly, the distraught man raised the gun marginally and started to pull the trigger.
Justin somehow found the strength he needed to pull Brian’s body backwards, down to the bed with him, just as he heard the deafening retort of the gun. At the same instant, Brian’s hands had come up to grab onto Hobbs’ wrist in an attempt to wrestle the gun away. As Justin pulled Brian towards him, Brian also towed Hobbs down, the three of them moving together, almost gracefully, as a seemingly-choreographed whole.
Less than a heartbeat later, the huge pane of glass in the window next to Justin’s bed shattered, little shards of glass exploding everywhere, covering the bed and pelting into the three falling men.
When the whole moil of them landed atop the pillows, there was perfect silence and stillness for an immeasurable moment of time. Justin’s heart was pounding. He could hear his own loud panting in cadence with another’s equally rapid breathing and a third, rasping and wheezing almost-breathing. There was a lot of shouting going on in the hallway outside the room, but inside everything seemed almost peaceful.
Then the peace was irredeemably lost as the hospital room door was thrown open and a whole herd of loudly yelling people erupted into the small restrictive space.
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Brian blinked his eyes, trying to focus and orient himself. He had no idea where he was or why he had such a pounding headache. His mouth was dry as cotton and he felt a bit nauseous. Based on the half-muted laughter coming from over on his right, he thought maybe he had passed out at a party and was just really hungover right now. But that didn’t make much sense - he didn’t remember going to any party last night and, if he had, how had the party ended up in a hospital room?
Yes, he was most definitely in some kind of medical facility - the walls were white, the floor was white, the ceiling was a dingy white and the scratchy, poor-quality linens on the bed where he was lying were white, too. There was altogether too much white and it wasn’t a fun kind of white either - like at the White Party - but a boring, overly-sterile kind of white. That much dull white sort of screamed ‘Hospital’.
A few more blinks later and Brian had managed to look around him a bit more. He was definitely in one of those big adjustable beds with metal guardrails that they used in hospitals. He couldn’t see much beyond his bed though because there was a heavy blue curtain attached to a track in the ceiling with large metal hoops that had been pulled all the way around his part of the room. The voices and laughter he’d notice before were coming from the other side of the curtain. It all added up to convince him that this was NOT just another hangover.
Man of action that he was, Brian wasn’t about to just lie here and wait until someone came and told him what was going on. He merely told his head to stop throbbing, pushed down the incipient nausea and threw off the blankets and sheets that had been draped over him. Then, swinging his legs to the side, he sat up and scooted over until his feet were in contact with the floor. He shook off a momentary bout of dizziness and then pulled his body upright, taking the two steps over to the curtain and shoving it unceremoniously aside.
The rest of the room was brightly lit and it took him several seconds before he could adjust enough to figure out what was out there. Before he even took in the whole scene, though, he heard several surprised voices saying his name and noted a blurry shadow moving towards him.
“Brian! What are you doing out of bed? You shouldn’t be up. You’re going to topple over and knock yourself out again, you little asshole. Come on, get back in that bed, now!” a familiar, boisterous voice admonished him.
“What the fuck’s going on, Deb?” he managed to ask as he shook off the motherly attentions of his favorite pseudo-redhead, ignoring her advice and stepping forward into the room further rather than letting himself be led back to the bed.
“What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on, Brian” Debbie followed him closely, one hand on his arm to steady the tall brunet, all the time keeping up her harangue. “YOU were trying to play hero and almost got yourself shot, scaring the shit out of poor Sunshine here in the process. Not to mention how much you freaked out all the rest of us.
“Shit! Hobbs!” Brian exclaimed as it all finally came back to him.
“It’s okay, Brian. He’s gone,” Brian felt overwhelmingly relieved to hear Justin’s voice and, a moment later, to finally locate his blond sitting on a second hospital bed surrounded by many of their friends and family.
Brian stumbled directly over to Justin’s bed and plonked himself down on the edge, not caring in the least that he knocked at least two other people over in his dash to get to the man he had been so worried about.
“Justin,” he breathed out the name as he reached his left hand up to touch the soft cheek of the man and confirm that he was truly there.
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