by Andrea Speed
“It’s not okay. He tried to burn down our house. These fuckers aren’t going to leave you alone.”
The police siren he thought he heard moments before was now growing louder, as was the even-louder fire engine siren. He watched a muscle in Dylan’s jaw jump, saw the slightest tremor in his arm as he tried to get a hold of his own voluminous rage. Roan thought he had a corner on the market? Not at all.
“It’s my gun. I’m licensed to carry it. Give it to me before the cops get here.”
“I really want to kill him,” Dylan admitted, half-angry, half-despairing. Not a threat, but a simple statement of fact. This was when the guy shit himself; Roan could, sadly, smell it. “Why don’t they leave you alone?”
He had managed to shove the lion almost completely down now. Everybody had a breaking point, and it was kind of startling to learn that he was Dylan’s. “Because they don’t. But we have to be stronger than they are. Hon, give me the gun.”
Dylan’s arm was really trembling now, and it seemed he was fighting himself not to pull the trigger. Unshed tears made his eyes glisten. Roan gently put his hand on Dylan’s and slipped it around the gun. The sirens were almost on top of them.
Dylan slid his hand out from under his, ceding the gun to Roan, but as he stood up he kicked the guy in the side of the head just as tires crunched gravel behind them.
“This the moron?” A familiar voice, dripping with cop authority, asked. It was Thompson, and Roan figured he should be glad it was a cop he knew.
The lion was gone from his face; he felt it. He wiped the blood off his mouth and stood up, tucking the gun in the back of his sweatpants (the only clothes he was wearing; he’d almost forgotten he was barefoot until he stepped on a sharp piece of gravel). “He threw a Molotov cocktail on my front porch and then fired several rounds into my house, breaking windows. The rifle’s in the truck.”
“How smart was that?” Thompson asked, looming over the man. He already had his cuffs out, but hadn’t bothered with drawing his weapon, maybe because he saw how injured the man already was. He flipped him over onto his stomach and pulled his hands behind his back. “Fuckin’ with Batman at his own house. Man, you’re just askin’ to get your ass beat.”
“He isn’t Human!” the guy yelled, the police being here actually giving him his courage back. “He couldn’t’ve reached my truck, but he did! And that faggot put a gun to my head! He—”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Thompson interjected, firmly and loudly. “I suggest you start usin’ it right now, dumbass.”
The fire truck roared up, but it was unnecessary, because he could see for himself the fire was out and could smell water in the gasoline smoke. Dylan must have put out the blaze with the garden hose before joining them with the gun.
Roan turned to see Dylan with his back to all of them, his posture unnaturally rigid. Roan went up to him and took him in his arms. “Dylan—”
He turned and clung to Roan desperately, burying his face in the side of his neck. Roan felt tears on his skin. “What did I almost do?” he asked, sounding like he was in agony.
“It’s okay,” he reassured him, stroking his neck. But it wasn’t, although not for the reason Dylan would have guessed.
Roan had never seen him so angry. And while he was sure now he should get Dylan to leave him for the sake of his own mental health, Roan was also fairly sure he couldn’t possibly love him more.
What did you do with a dichotomy like that?
16
Bride of the Elephant Man
It was probably a good thing he wasn’t tired, as there was no sleep that night.
They gave their statements to the cops, and the firemen made sure the fire was indeed out. Roan saw for himself that the damage to the porch was slightly worse than he’d thought. The entire door was charred, the paint blistered on the jamb where it wasn’t burned, and the pine near the front door had several branches burned to black stumps, needles curled in on themselves. He told Dylan they’d have to hit Lowes in the morning and get themselves a new door. He was trying to distract Dylan, who was still miserable and now shivering in spite of the blanket a kind fireman gave him to drape over his shoulders. Roan sat with him against the side of his car, arm around his shoulders, occasionally whispering encouragement to him or just giving him a quick, surreptitious kiss. He wasn’t a fan of public displays of affection (straight or gay—he’d been tailing cheating spouses too long to have any romantic notions left), but he sensed that Dylan needed it right now, the reassurance and the comfort. He was cold, too, but didn’t care.
The cops, as he guessed (especially since it was Thompson and Bragg as the arresting officers), ignored everything the guy ranted about before shoving him in the back of the prowler. It was an open and shut case of asshattery, what with the rifle and the gasoline can in the front cab of the truck and his constant ranting references to “faggots” and “freaks” and “abominations” (all guaranteed to get you viewed as the crazy asshole they arrested about seven times a day), and Thompson just ignored him until suddenly he told him to call Fox News and walked away from the patrol car, shaking his head in disgust. “I know I can’t treat ’em differently, but I hate that shit.”
“What shit?” Roan didn’t think it was anything the perp said, as he hadn’t changed his tune (second verse, same as the first), but he doubted the basic injustice of this harassment was getting to Thompson now (especially since he still insisted on calling him Batman).
“He’s got a swastika tat,” he said and slapped his upper arm, where the tattoo presumably was.
And that little bit of information sent his synapses firing. Swastika tattoo? And Sander Lewis did time in Idaho, home of the Aryan Nation compound? “Oh holy fuck,” he exclaimed. “They’re white supremacists.”
Thompson snorted. “Nazis? Yeah.”
“No. These guys who have been harassing me? That’s the connecting thread. They’re white supremacists.” And he hoped the fact that two black police officers had arrested that bastard was making him choke on his own bile.
Thompson smirked faintly. “They know you’re white, right?”
“I’m gay and infected. Both of those things—infected edging out gay—make me a pariah to them. I’m honorarily not white.”
“Lucky you.” Thompson then edged closer and indicated Dylan without pointing at him. “Ain’t he Mexican?” he whispered.
“Mixed.”
“Could they be after him?”
He shook his head and filled Thompson in on everything, starting from the attempted stabbing incident in Panic to the guy getting in a fight with Dylan to now. Thompson listened with an ever-deepening frown and finally said, “Maybe you should talk to Chief Matthews. If you’re really being targeted, you might be able to get some protection.”
He meant police protection, which ran the gamut from random prowler patrols to a marked car sitting outside his house for several hours each day. He honestly didn’t like either idea but said, “Yeah, maybe I should talk to her.” He didn’t need protection. But Dylan? He was worried about Dylan. He’d resent being tailed by the cops, though, being protected. He may have been a cop’s son, but his father did murder his mother—he had no great love of cops.
He decided not to worry about it at the moment. As Thompson and Bragg drove off with the offending neo-Nazi and the fire truck following in short order, he wondered why a bunch of racist fuckheads would suddenly take up a campaign of arms against him. Hate him, sure, but actively try and hurt him? Why after all this time?
He asked Dylan if he wanted to go somewhere else and spend the night, go to a hotel, and he angrily refused, saying those fucks weren’t scaring them out of their home. Which was good, as that was the response Roan was hoping to hear.
Dylan was still in a kind of shell-shocked mood, stunned by his own rage, so Roan just talked to him, trying to reassure him, and held him. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying half the time, but he was pretty sure Dylan wasn’
t paying attention either. Eventually Dylan fell asleep, as the sky was starting to shade to a paler violet, and Roan stared at the ceiling and wondered. He was accustomed to someone out there—some person, unknown to him or known—wanting to kill him at all times. He knew the hate was out there, he knew it occasionally manifested, and he knew some of that hate wasn’t even personal. He became a symbol, a representative of every single infected who walked the earth, everything that was wrong with the world and his kind, his sub-human kind. Some people who might consider killing him, or might actually try and kill him, didn’t know him at all; he was just a handy target. He'd accepted that when he first joined the police force and would get anonymous phoned-in death threats, find notes shoved in his locker promising to skin him alive. He had long ago made peace with it, with the fact that his death could be sudden and at the hands of a stranger, and now more than ever was confident in his ability to beat them back (because the haters were ironically kind of right—no, he wasn’t totally Human, and yes, that should really bother them). But was it fair to drag a civilian into this? At least Paris hadn’t been a civilian; he’d been an infected too, knew all about the fear, revulsion, and weirdly homicidal hatred that a medical condition (as alien as it was) could cause. But Dylan? This kind of hatred was new to him, and he didn’t deserve to be subjected to it. But how did he send him away?
When he was sure he wouldn’t wake him up, Roan slid out from beneath him and went downstairs to check out the damage the fuck had done with his rifle. Glass would have to be replaced, and he’d have to spackle and repaint a couple of walls, but he’d probably be able to get money for the windows from the crime victims fund, and it really wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The Modest Mouse song came and went through his brain again, and he realized he was starting to acquire a skill for dodging bullets, both literal and metaphorical.
He had some toast, popped a codeine, and checked his phone messages, glad he’d turned the ringer off when they went to bed, because his call messaging box was full. He deleted all the messages from reporters wanting statements and saved messages of concern from Gordo, Seb, and Dropkick, all of which were recent. Dropkick probably put it best when she asked, “Fuck Angus, whose corn flakes did you piss in?” He wished he knew. He might take it back.
He considered going out to the hardware store and getting what he needed to sheet up the windows (temporarily), fix the walls, maybe buy another small tree to put near the door, but he realized he didn’t want to leave Dylan alone. After thinking about it for a few minutes—would he really opt for police protection? Even though Dylan would loathe it?—he called another number. With a yawn, Scott answered, “You do know what time it is, don’t cha?”
“Need a favor.”
“More tough guy work?”
“Yeah.” He then told Scott what had transpired late last night, and soon he heard him covering the mouthpiece of the phone and repeating parts of it to Grey in the background, who went from sounding barely conscious to deeply unhappy in the space of a couple of minutes. He told Scott he needed some guys here to just kick back and keep an ear out for trouble while he was gone—and it might be work he needed on and off for the next couple of days. “Good thing for you we’re out of the playoffs,” Scott replied and said they’d be there as soon as they got dressed.
That turned out to be in about ten minutes. Grey and Scott both came over and marveled at the damage done to the front of the house, which looked even worse in daylight. “Tell me you killed him,” Grey said.
“No. But Dylan almost did, so maybe that counts.”
They said Tank was on his way—it seemed he got laid last night (good for him) and nobody knew where he was, but he'd finally answered his cell phone—and while Richie was too hung over to be of much good, they'd left Jeff a message on his cell. Grey and Scott were discussing whether to bring Troy in on this, a “benchwarmer,” a guy who was on the team but played so little Roan couldn’t remember ever having seen him, but they described him as an “old school bruiser,” which was presumably good for guard duty. Roan wasn’t sure they needed so many guys (at least not yet), but Scott, acting in full captain mode, said it was good to have enough guys so anyone could fill in at a moment’s notice.
Seemed weird, but wasn’t it weird to have a hockey team protecting your boyfriend? So he agreed the idea was sound. He asked them to be quiet and not wake up Dylan, and then asked that they call Gordon instantly (he gave them his cell number) if any trouble started. They agreed, but Grey did so with a kind of unsettling smirk, a kind that said “I’ll call the police as soon as I’ve beaten them into a chunky red smear.” Which was fine with him; Grey had already beaten one of the Aryan Moronhood before, and round two was unlikely to have a different outcome.
He left them going through his DVD library and arguing over what they wanted to watch (Scott wanted to see Slap Shot, Grey wanted to see The Venture Brothers, and both volunteered disappointment at not finding gay porn, but Scott joked you always kept your “porn drawer” out of the living room—making him wonder if Scott had just given away where his porn was, and if his porn was all straight, which he doubted). Although you’d think watching TV would keep them distracted from guard duty, Roan didn’t see the problem—these guys loved to fight. They wouldn’t give up an opportunity through inattention. As he was leaving, he wondered why he should trust them, as really they were just acquaintances (and Scott had come on to him pretty hard—in fact, kissing him probably went over the “come-on” line), but he did have the oddest feeling that at some point they’d all become good friends without realizing it. He still wasn’t sure how. Why a bunch of young (mostly) straight boy jocks wanted to be friends with him was still utterly baffling. (Except, of course, he was a “superhero,” wasn’t he? Some people may have seen that as pretty cool.)
At the home improvement behemoth, he picked up all the stuff he needed, and in the paint section (just aisles and aisles of cans—did anyone need this many varieties of paint?) he found some paint on its own stand-alone shelving, apparently color “mis-mixed” paint being sold for five or ten dollars a can. He noticed one had a daub of paint on the lid (signifying the color inside) that was a kind of warm reddish-brown with a hint of orange. It looked almost exactly like that “Autumn Spice” color Paris had wanted to paint his office. He bet Dylan would like this color, and how would it look in the living room? So he grabbed it and added it to his cart. Why not? Try and use the disaster to make some improvements.
He had just finished loading up his car when his cell went off. Checking it, he saw it was Gordo before he answered it. “Yeah?”
“You need to come down to the church,” Gordo said, his voice sounding strained. “Divine Transformation. You need to see this. We may need you for crowd control.”
Roan could hear sirens in the background, people talking in raised, stern voices. “What’s going on?”
“You weren’t the only person targeted,” he said cryptically and broke the connection. Not a single bit of that sounded good.
On his way to the scene, he put in a quick call to the house. Everything was fine, they were all watching the Venture Brothers, Tank had apparently arrived, and they were being careful to keep it down so they didn’t wake Dylan. He wondered if it was okay if Tank made some toast, and Roan told him to go ahead and help themselves to whatever, although he’d appreciate it if they left Dylan’s vegetarian stuff alone. As Roan expected, that got a big chuckle from Grey. (Yeah, like those big jock boys were vegetarians.) They were not so much bodyguards right now as babysitters, but he didn’t care. They would keep Dylan safe. One attacker might be able to get past one of them, but all three, including enforcer Grey and crazyass Tank? Never. Not unless they brought submachine guns, and that was more unlikely than someone bringing a rocket launcher to a knife fight.
It turned out police cars had blocked off the street down to the Church of the Divine Transformation, so he had to double park in front of someone’s house on the next block
and walk in, and even then he had to weave his way through clots of rubberneckers and reporters. Some of the reporters recognized him and asked if he knew what was going on, if he had any comment, if he knew anything about the shooter. That confirmed his worst fear before he got to the front line of the cordon. One of the cops on the other side of the sawhorse recognized him and waved him through as he slowly but surely saw the scene for himself.
Crime scene tape blocked off most of the front yard, although an ambulance had backed up on the main lawn, blocking most of the view from the front end of the street. Roan could smell blood, death, and cordite, hear the buzz of bees and flies periodically drowned out by the crackle of police radios and the low discussions of paramedics and evidence technicians. Camera flashes burst through the open door of the house-turned-church, and in their brief light he could spot liquid dark splashes of what could only be blood in the foyer. Gordo and Seb were loitering near the side of the stairs leading up to the wraparound porch, and from the sheer number of other cops walking around, he assumed homicide was in charge of the investigation. While Gordo and Seb may have been the initially responding officers, when it became clear this wasn’t a “kitty crime,” they got shoved off.
