Some Days Are Diamonds; Some Aren't
By Beth Green
Author's notes: A day in the life of Bobby Hobbes; Darien, Bobby owies. This story started out as a little bit of fluff called "Bobby's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Day." Then the muses nudged me toward a darker pathway. This is the result. ***** Part One
To the casual observer, the lone figure walking erratically down the darkened highway might have been thought to be under the influence. His gait was staggering and uncertain despite his efforts to maintain a strong, steady pace. However, there were no casual observers and the man was not drunk. The only thing influencing him at the moment was extreme exhaustion with its co-conspirator, extreme pain.
If there were anyone to hear, they would have noticed that he was carrying on a conversation with himself. "C'mon, Bobby, no problem, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, left, right, left, right, left, right." He repeated the steps to himself in a military cadence. "It's all just mind over matter, and Bobby Hobbes knows his own mind."
Speaking of himself in the third person helped to distance Bobby from his tired, aching body, especially his pounding, intense headache. He felt as if someone had wrapped a band around his head and they just kept squeezing it tighter and tighter. The pain occasionally gained the upper hand, trying to send him to his knees, while his empty stomach threatened to add to his misery with the churning of dry heaves. So far, he'd been able to beat it all back by sheer force of will. It still hurt like hell but Bobby Hobbes remained in charge. The pain was not going to rule him.
He kept his gaze fixed as best as he could on the mile marker up ahead as it sometimes doubled, other times seemed to waver from side to side but never quite disappeared. It helped considerably that he had something visual to focus on. "There it is, one more mile, no problem, you can do it."
Somehow, he reached his goal then staggered along past it. His eyes began to look ahead for the next mile marker, another goal to reach. He'd been doing this for . . . well, for longer than he wanted to know. He didn't want to examine too closely just how long he'd been on the road because that way lay discouragement and despair, not the emotions he wanted to keep company with at the moment. The righteous emotion of anger was needed to keep him going, so he would not give in to the extreme exhaustion that was trying to take him down. He was sweating despite the cool night air. His fisted hand was the only evidence of the pain his tired face strained not to show. His shirtsleeves were torn and bloodied. Abraded skin was visible through the rents in the fabric. One knee of his blue jeans was also torn. The dried brown stains around the frayed material hinted at yet another injury.
He was determined to keep as much of his mind as possible away from his current waking nightmare. He'd learned in the past to use his mind to control pain, to focus away from it. All it took was mind over matter. "Heh. Yeah." He laughed to himself, adding with perhaps a slight edge of hysteria, "When you've lost your mind, it just doesn't matter." He mentally slapped himself. "Whoa there, Bobby, you are not going to do this to yourself. Not when you're the last man standing."
As he continued on, his mind kept replaying the events which had led to his current circumstances. If he were the superstitious sort, he would have taken the start to his day this morning as an omen to stay home and lock himself indoors. Sighing with regret, Bobby thought, "If only I had."
"Whoops! Wrong answer," he mentally scolded. "Look. Unless you suddenly turned psychic, there's no way you could have known that today the world would be out to get Bobby Hobbes."
The morning had begun in a truly bizarre fashion. As he exited the shower, the shower bar suddenly broke loose from its mounting bracket, barely missing his head. The end of the bar flipped into the vanity mirror, shattering it into dozens of deadly shards. He thanked his luck that he'd avoided being injured by either the errant shower bar or the broken mirror. He'd shaken his head at the mirror, glad that he wasn't the superstitious sort, or he'd be looking at seven years' bad luck.
In retrospect, maybe Bobby needed to examine this luck business more closely. He'd barely made it out of his subdivision before he met up with the next disaster of the day. He suddenly found himself fighting the wheel of the van for control when one of the tires abruptly blew. He muscled the van over to the shoulder of the road as it bucked and threatened to roll. Afterwards, he sat a moment, waiting for his hands to unclench enough so that he could let go of the steering wheel. Bobby had no idea how the heavy rush hour traffic had managed to avoid hitting the wandering van. He was just glad that it had.
With a sigh, he removed his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to check on the damage. He found a large nail buried deeply between the treads. At least the tire appeared to be salvageable. Bobby headed to the rear of the van to retrieve the spare tire. His jaw dropped in disbelief when he found that the spare, too, was flat. He punched the side of the van in anger, shaking out his aching hand immediately afterward. "Bobby, that was really stupid." He added, "So was not checking on the spare this week."
He gave another frustrated kick to the hopelessly flattened tire as he muttered a few choice curses involving various gods under his breath. Were he the sort to believe in a vengeful god, Bobby would have felt that he was being punished for taking the name of god in vain when a car passed too close to his parked van. The speeding vehicle managed to hit a nearby puddle with enough force to send its contents rushing over the beleaguered agent in a sudden squall, drenching him from head to foot in brown, stagnant, muddy water.
Rolling his eyes heavenward, Bobby asked, "Why me?" No reply was forthcoming. Seeing as no help was coming from above, he needed to arrange for some transportation. The agent called his partner on his cell phone. "Hey, Fawkes, where are you?"
There was a pause while Darien pondered the reason for the question. Bobby should already know the answer. Deciding to simply tell the truth, Darien replied, "In my car. On my way to work."
Bobby could hear the unasked question behind the answer. //Why are you asking?// Bobby responded with another question. "Would you be willing to make a little detour? Say, by the corner of Forest and Main?"
Still suspicious, Darien replied, "I could. Any particular reason why I should?"
Bobby confessed, "I'm stuck here with a flat tire and no spare. That enough of a reason?"
Darien cheerfully replied, "Yeah, sure, what are partners for? Want me to call the Fat Man and let him know what's up?"
As much as Bobby would have liked to avoid taking any flack from the Official this morning, he declined Darien's offer. No. Bobby Hobbes would face his own demons. "No, that's okay. I've got nothing better to do while I'm sitting here waiting. I'll take the heat." He knew that the Official would not be pleased to hear that he and Darien were going to be late for a scheduled nine o'clock briefing.
The Official was as unpleasant as Bobby had expected him to be. He promised to dock Bobby's pay for both his and Darien's tardiness. Bobby did not maintain his cool at that statement as he felt his blood pressure rising. His meager paycheck and the Agency's penny-pinching ways were a sore spot with him. He decided to spell it out for the Official. "Sir, that's not going to solve anything. My paycheck is part of the problem. If I got paid enough money that I could afford new tires for my van . . ." Bobby stopped when he found himself speaking to dead air. He snapped the phone closed with much more force than necessary. To let off some steam while he waited, he decided to amuse himself by thinking up new nicknames for the Official, none of which were suitable for tender ears.
Darien finally arrived, quite cheerful at the prospect of spending some time away from the Agency, whatever the reason. He willingly chauffeured Bobby and his flattened tires to his mechanic's garage.
Bobby walked up to the assistant behind the counter. "I got a couple of flat tires. I'd like 'em patched up. Do you suppose I could just wait here while the job gets done?" The assistant burst into laughter as if that suggestion were the funniest thing he'd heard all day. Bobby's spirits sunk even lower than they'd been. As the man finally got himself under control, snickering and mopping up tears of laughter, Bobby stated, "I take it that's a 'No'?"
The guy told him that they were swamped. He couldn't even give an estimate of when someone would be available to see to his tires. Bobby made it quite clear that he wasn't in the market for new tires, and left the old ones there to be repaired.
He joined Darien as a passenger in his vehicle, less than pleased at doing so. He was not enjoying the fact that he was dependent on someone else's driving skills. Unfortunately, Bobby made the mistake of sharing his thoughts out loud. "Nothing personal, but I'm not happy when anybody besides me is in charge of a motor vehicle."
Darien tilted his head downward, the result being that he was looking at Bobby over the top of his sunglasses. His partner's twisted smile told Bobby that he should've kept his mouth shut. Darien calmly asked, "Is that so?" He proceeded to floor the accelerator as he peeled away from the curb, leaving a trail of burning rubber in his wake. The rest of the drive in to the Agency, he seemed to take great delight in hitting every pothole in the road. Darien also managed to time the traffic lights so that he'd barely inch through before they turned red. Bobby silently gritted his teeth the whole way, not wanting to risk saying anything that might piss off his partner more than he already had; at least, not while he was behind the wheel. The drive seemed to take forever.
It was two hours later than scheduled, but they finally arrived at the Agency. The pattern that Bobby's day had taken on continued. As Bobby started to head in through the entrance, a fellow agent came rushing out through the door at the exact same time. There was no way for either of them to avoid colliding. Due to the laws of physics governing rapidly moving, big-assed agents versus more compact, lesser weight colleagues, Bobby was forced backwards as he lost his balance. He ended up on the ground, way more up close and personal with the guy than he ever wanted to be.
The guy crawled off of him, a lot slower than Bobby thought he should've moved. If Bobby didn't know any better, he'd swear the guy had been trying to grope him in the process.
The man offered a quick apology. "Sorry. Gotta run!" and was gone.
Bobby was wondering if maybe he shouldn't just stay where he was. However, when Darien offered a hand to help him to his feet, Bobby decided to accept. He stood for a minute, rubbing at his sore butt. His slow burn of anger came to a major boil when he felt the split in the seam of his pants. He pulled out his cell phone and began dialing.
Curious, Darien asked, "Bobby, what are you doing?"
"I'm calling a cab." Bobby listened to the canned music as the cab company's answering machine put him on hold.
Gently, as if trying to reason with a lunatic (as perhaps his partner currently was), Darien questioned, "And why are you calling a cab? Did you take your meds this morning?"
Bobby angrily replied, "Yes, I took my meds this morning. But that doesn't do any good when the entire damn universe is conspiring against you! I'm calling a cab so I can go home and go back to bed and pretend that this day never happened!"
Holding up his watch so that Bobby could see the dial, Darien reasoned, "It's only eleven o'clock in the morning. Have you ever heard the saying, 'It's gotta get better, 'cause it can't get worse?' The day is young, and so are you," he offered. Hey, a little flattery couldn't hurt. "Besides, Bobby Hobbes isn't a quitter."
Bobby's eyes narrowed as he considered Darien's words. "Yeah. You're right." Bobby snapped the cell phone shut decisively. "Let's get to work." Straightening his shoulders, he strode into the Agency, Darien following. A minute later, Darien placed a hand on Bobby's shoulder, stopping him in mid-stride.
Irritated, Bobby snapped, "What?!"
Trying not to be too discouraging, Darien pulled at the bottom of Bobby's jacket, trying to get it to hang lower. He was not successful. "Well, you might want to maybe just tie your jacket around your waist, there."
Bobby attempted to twist his head back around enough to see what the problem was, but he couldn't. "Why?"
Darien helpfully supplied, "Unless you want everyone to know that you own a pair of pink boxers with red hearts on them, you probably want to cover up the rip in your pants, that's all."
Bobby felt his face flushing in embarrassment. "They were a gag gift. I haven't been able to get my laundry done this week and they were the only clean pair I had left." He quickly tied the arms of his jacket around his waist, asking Darien to check to see that the damage was well covered.
Darien reassured him that it was. He couldn't resist adding, "You could have gone commando, you know." The devil in him pushed him to lean closer toward Bobby, practically whispering in his ear, "I did." Satisfied that he'd distracted his partner from the downward spiral his thoughts had taken, Darien headed for the Official's office, Bobby unfreezing from his shock at Darien's comment to hurriedly follow. **** continued in part 2
Author's notes: A day in the life of Bobby Hobbes; Darien, Bobby owies. This story started out as a little bit of fluff called "Bobby's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Day." Then the muses nudged me toward a darker pathway. This is the result. ***** Part One
To the casual observer, the lone figure walking erratically down the darkened highway might have been thought to be under the influence. His gait was staggering and uncertain despite his efforts to maintain a strong, steady pace. However, there were no casual observers and the man was not drunk. The only thing influencing him at the moment was extreme exhaustion with its co-conspirator, extreme pain.
If there were anyone to hear, they would have noticed that he was carrying on a conversation with himself. "C'mon, Bobby, no problem, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, left, right, left, right, left, right." He repeated the steps to himself in a military cadence. "It's all just mind over matter, and Bobby Hobbes knows his own mind."
Speaking of himself in the third person helped to distance Bobby from his tired, aching body, especially his pounding, intense headache. He felt as if someone had wrapped a band around his head and they just kept squeezing it tighter and tighter. The pain occasionally gained the upper hand, trying to send him to his knees, while his empty stomach threatened to add to his misery with the churning of dry heaves. So far, he'd been able to beat it all back by sheer force of will. It still hurt like hell but Bobby Hobbes remained in charge. The pain was not going to rule him.
He kept his gaze fixed as best as he could on the mile marker up ahead as it sometimes doubled, other times seemed to waver from side to side but never quite disappeared. It helped considerably that he had something visual to focus on. "There it is, one more mile, no problem, you can do it."
Somehow, he reached his goal then staggered along past it. His eyes began to look ahead for the next mile marker, another goal to reach. He'd been doing this for . . . well, for longer than he wanted to know. He didn't want to examine too closely just how long he'd been on the road because that way lay discouragement and despair, not the emotions he wanted to keep company with at the moment. The righteous emotion of anger was needed to keep him going, so he would not give in to the extreme exhaustion that was trying to take him down. He was sweating despite the cool night air. His fisted hand was the only evidence of the pain his tired face strained not to show. His shirtsleeves were torn and bloodied. Abraded skin was visible through the rents in the fabric. One knee of his blue jeans was also torn. The dried brown stains around the frayed material hinted at yet another injury.
He was determined to keep as much of his mind as possible away from his current waking nightmare. He'd learned in the past to use his mind to control pain, to focus away from it. All it took was mind over matter. "Heh. Yeah." He laughed to himself, adding with perhaps a slight edge of hysteria, "When you've lost your mind, it just doesn't matter." He mentally slapped himself. "Whoa there, Bobby, you are not going to do this to yourself. Not when you're the last man standing."
As he continued on, his mind kept replaying the events which had led to his current circumstances. If he were the superstitious sort, he would have taken the start to his day this morning as an omen to stay home and lock himself indoors. Sighing with regret, Bobby thought, "If only I had."
"Whoops! Wrong answer," he mentally scolded. "Look. Unless you suddenly turned psychic, there's no way you could have known that today the world would be out to get Bobby Hobbes."
The morning had begun in a truly bizarre fashion. As he exited the shower, the shower bar suddenly broke loose from its mounting bracket, barely missing his head. The end of the bar flipped into the vanity mirror, shattering it into dozens of deadly shards. He thanked his luck that he'd avoided being injured by either the errant shower bar or the broken mirror. He'd shaken his head at the mirror, glad that he wasn't the superstitious sort, or he'd be looking at seven years' bad luck.
In retrospect, maybe Bobby needed to examine this luck business more closely. He'd barely made it out of his subdivision before he met up with the next disaster of the day. He suddenly found himself fighting the wheel of the van for control when one of the tires abruptly blew. He muscled the van over to the shoulder of the road as it bucked and threatened to roll. Afterwards, he sat a moment, waiting for his hands to unclench enough so that he could let go of the steering wheel. Bobby had no idea how the heavy rush hour traffic had managed to avoid hitting the wandering van. He was just glad that it had.
With a sigh, he removed his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to check on the damage. He found a large nail buried deeply between the treads. At least the tire appeared to be salvageable. Bobby headed to the rear of the van to retrieve the spare tire. His jaw dropped in disbelief when he found that the spare, too, was flat. He punched the side of the van in anger, shaking out his aching hand immediately afterward. "Bobby, that was really stupid." He added, "So was not checking on the spare this week."
He gave another frustrated kick to the hopelessly flattened tire as he muttered a few choice curses involving various gods under his breath. Were he the sort to believe in a vengeful god, Bobby would have felt that he was being punished for taking the name of god in vain when a car passed too close to his parked van. The speeding vehicle managed to hit a nearby puddle with enough force to send its contents rushing over the beleaguered agent in a sudden squall, drenching him from head to foot in brown, stagnant, muddy water.
Rolling his eyes heavenward, Bobby asked, "Why me?" No reply was forthcoming. Seeing as no help was coming from above, he needed to arrange for some transportation. The agent called his partner on his cell phone. "Hey, Fawkes, where are you?"
There was a pause while Darien pondered the reason for the question. Bobby should already know the answer. Deciding to simply tell the truth, Darien replied, "In my car. On my way to work."
Bobby could hear the unasked question behind the answer. //Why are you asking?// Bobby responded with another question. "Would you be willing to make a little detour? Say, by the corner of Forest and Main?"
Still suspicious, Darien replied, "I could. Any particular reason why I should?"
Bobby confessed, "I'm stuck here with a flat tire and no spare. That enough of a reason?"
Darien cheerfully replied, "Yeah, sure, what are partners for? Want me to call the Fat Man and let him know what's up?"
As much as Bobby would have liked to avoid taking any flack from the Official this morning, he declined Darien's offer. No. Bobby Hobbes would face his own demons. "No, that's okay. I've got nothing better to do while I'm sitting here waiting. I'll take the heat." He knew that the Official would not be pleased to hear that he and Darien were going to be late for a scheduled nine o'clock briefing.
The Official was as unpleasant as Bobby had expected him to be. He promised to dock Bobby's pay for both his and Darien's tardiness. Bobby did not maintain his cool at that statement as he felt his blood pressure rising. His meager paycheck and the Agency's penny-pinching ways were a sore spot with him. He decided to spell it out for the Official. "Sir, that's not going to solve anything. My paycheck is part of the problem. If I got paid enough money that I could afford new tires for my van . . ." Bobby stopped when he found himself speaking to dead air. He snapped the phone closed with much more force than necessary. To let off some steam while he waited, he decided to amuse himself by thinking up new nicknames for the Official, none of which were suitable for tender ears.
Darien finally arrived, quite cheerful at the prospect of spending some time away from the Agency, whatever the reason. He willingly chauffeured Bobby and his flattened tires to his mechanic's garage.
Bobby walked up to the assistant behind the counter. "I got a couple of flat tires. I'd like 'em patched up. Do you suppose I could just wait here while the job gets done?" The assistant burst into laughter as if that suggestion were the funniest thing he'd heard all day. Bobby's spirits sunk even lower than they'd been. As the man finally got himself under control, snickering and mopping up tears of laughter, Bobby stated, "I take it that's a 'No'?"
The guy told him that they were swamped. He couldn't even give an estimate of when someone would be available to see to his tires. Bobby made it quite clear that he wasn't in the market for new tires, and left the old ones there to be repaired.
He joined Darien as a passenger in his vehicle, less than pleased at doing so. He was not enjoying the fact that he was dependent on someone else's driving skills. Unfortunately, Bobby made the mistake of sharing his thoughts out loud. "Nothing personal, but I'm not happy when anybody besides me is in charge of a motor vehicle."
Darien tilted his head downward, the result being that he was looking at Bobby over the top of his sunglasses. His partner's twisted smile told Bobby that he should've kept his mouth shut. Darien calmly asked, "Is that so?" He proceeded to floor the accelerator as he peeled away from the curb, leaving a trail of burning rubber in his wake. The rest of the drive in to the Agency, he seemed to take great delight in hitting every pothole in the road. Darien also managed to time the traffic lights so that he'd barely inch through before they turned red. Bobby silently gritted his teeth the whole way, not wanting to risk saying anything that might piss off his partner more than he already had; at least, not while he was behind the wheel. The drive seemed to take forever.
It was two hours later than scheduled, but they finally arrived at the Agency. The pattern that Bobby's day had taken on continued. As Bobby started to head in through the entrance, a fellow agent came rushing out through the door at the exact same time. There was no way for either of them to avoid colliding. Due to the laws of physics governing rapidly moving, big-assed agents versus more compact, lesser weight colleagues, Bobby was forced backwards as he lost his balance. He ended up on the ground, way more up close and personal with the guy than he ever wanted to be.
The guy crawled off of him, a lot slower than Bobby thought he should've moved. If Bobby didn't know any better, he'd swear the guy had been trying to grope him in the process.
The man offered a quick apology. "Sorry. Gotta run!" and was gone.
Bobby was wondering if maybe he shouldn't just stay where he was. However, when Darien offered a hand to help him to his feet, Bobby decided to accept. He stood for a minute, rubbing at his sore butt. His slow burn of anger came to a major boil when he felt the split in the seam of his pants. He pulled out his cell phone and began dialing.
Curious, Darien asked, "Bobby, what are you doing?"
"I'm calling a cab." Bobby listened to the canned music as the cab company's answering machine put him on hold.
Gently, as if trying to reason with a lunatic (as perhaps his partner currently was), Darien questioned, "And why are you calling a cab? Did you take your meds this morning?"
Bobby angrily replied, "Yes, I took my meds this morning. But that doesn't do any good when the entire damn universe is conspiring against you! I'm calling a cab so I can go home and go back to bed and pretend that this day never happened!"
Holding up his watch so that Bobby could see the dial, Darien reasoned, "It's only eleven o'clock in the morning. Have you ever heard the saying, 'It's gotta get better, 'cause it can't get worse?' The day is young, and so are you," he offered. Hey, a little flattery couldn't hurt. "Besides, Bobby Hobbes isn't a quitter."
Bobby's eyes narrowed as he considered Darien's words. "Yeah. You're right." Bobby snapped the cell phone shut decisively. "Let's get to work." Straightening his shoulders, he strode into the Agency, Darien following. A minute later, Darien placed a hand on Bobby's shoulder, stopping him in mid-stride.
Irritated, Bobby snapped, "What?!"
Trying not to be too discouraging, Darien pulled at the bottom of Bobby's jacket, trying to get it to hang lower. He was not successful. "Well, you might want to maybe just tie your jacket around your waist, there."
Bobby attempted to twist his head back around enough to see what the problem was, but he couldn't. "Why?"
Darien helpfully supplied, "Unless you want everyone to know that you own a pair of pink boxers with red hearts on them, you probably want to cover up the rip in your pants, that's all."
Bobby felt his face flushing in embarrassment. "They were a gag gift. I haven't been able to get my laundry done this week and they were the only clean pair I had left." He quickly tied the arms of his jacket around his waist, asking Darien to check to see that the damage was well covered.
Darien reassured him that it was. He couldn't resist adding, "You could have gone commando, you know." The devil in him pushed him to lean closer toward Bobby, practically whispering in his ear, "I did." Satisfied that he'd distracted his partner from the downward spiral his thoughts had taken, Darien headed for the Official's office, Bobby unfreezing from his shock at Darien's comment to hurriedly follow. **** continued in part 2
