"Come on, Anthony, fire!"
It was close range. He didn't need to use the scope. He had a pretty clean shot of the man's upper arm, except that Ian was in the way. The man held Ian's arms behind his back so tightly Anthony could see Ian's eyes watering despite his determined expression, and held him so close that Ian couldn't hope to get a kick to the groin or the knee in.
"Ian, I…I can't." The man could so easily just yank Ian to the right as Anthony fired, too much and Anthony would hit him in the heart.
"Anthony Padilla," Ian begged. "There's no way out unless you shoot. You're the best gunman I've ever known, you won't miss. Fire!"
The man restraining Ian clearly didn't believe Anthony would shoot. He didn't flinch in the slightest when Anthony raised his rifle to his shoulder and looked down the barrel.
"Ian, I'm sorry."
"Shoot, Anthony, goddammit!"
"That's why I'm sorry," he said, firing on the last word.
One of the men went down.
2 hours earlier…
"You ready for this?"
Anthony took a moment to answer. Was he ready? Could he ever be ready, even after almost three years of training? "Damn right I am," he answered.
Ian smiled briefly. "I know your specialty is with the guns, but lay off those unless they have guns too." He paused. "Or something goes really wrong."
Anthony swallowed and nodded. He was definitely not ready for this. Dammit, why did Ian have to have a seven-month head start on training and more experience in actual combat? This probably wasn't that big of a deal for him.
"Hey," Ian said, as if reading his thoughts, "I'm not too pleased about this either. This is nothing like my other mission."
Anthony nodded again. "I'm fine. It can't be that hard, can it?"
Ian raised his eyebrows, but just nodded in agreement. "Let's go."
In a movie, this would be the moment when they kick down the door and enter to find 'bad guys' left and right, shooting at them. But not only would that be a cheesy movie, it would also be very unrealistic.
They'd stolen the keys to the building a few days ago and, given the entrance they were using, it was likely that no one had even noticed.
Ian unlocked the heavy metal door and pushed it open silently.
There was no one inside.
"Is this good or bad?" Anthony asked under his breath, his right hand involuntarily going to the pistol at his hip.
Ian shrugged. "Dunno." He walked in, seemingly unfazed.
Anthony muttered a curseword and followed suit. Don't pull out the gun, Anthony. You can go without it.
"We're being watched already," Ian said, his quiet tone echoing in the empty concrete room.
Anthony looked toward the corner of the room, following Ian's gaze. There, on the far wall, facing the doorway, was a security camera.
"Can I pull out my gun yet?" Anthony asked.
Ian sighed. "If it makes you feel better, sure. Just don't shoot unless you have to."
He liked the rifle better, but it was more of a pain in the ass to carry, so he brought the pistol out of its holster instead. Everything felt better with a gun in his hand.
The two of them circled the room a few times, scanning for anything relevant other than the obvious door across the room from them. The building was just a warehouse, really, with a stained concrete floor, tin walls, and some abandoned equipment, such as forklifts and Anthony-didn't-even-know-what else stashed in the dimly-light corners. The only light was coming from the three rectangular skylights on the ceiling.
"Alright, there's nothing here we need," Ian declared. "Let's see what's behind this door."
"Can I shoot out that camera?" He was halfway across the giant room from its tiny shape, but he knew he could probably hit it shooting from the hip. He didn't know why; he'd always just had a way with guns.
Ian gave him a dry look. "No. Don't bother making the noise. Either way, they know we're here."
Anthony shrugged and walked with Ian to the door. Ian pulled out the ring of keys, frowning and saying, "I wonder why they haven't come to us yet."
"Ambush, maybe?"
"Probably."
Ian tried about four keys before he got the right one. All the keys on the ring looked almost exactly the same, so he at least had an excuse.
The door clicked open and creaked slightly, unlike the larger door they'd come through before. Ian's mind raced. Did that mean this room was abandoned and they'd actually chosen the smartest route? Did it mean no one had been here in a long time and they weren't even in the right place? Or did it just mean someone had gotten lazy with the oil?
This room was dark, much darker than the warehouse room. Ian stepped in slowly, every one of his senses on high alert. If he heard a single thing other than his and Anthony's slight movements, his gun would come out without a second thought.
The room must have been large, because the gradient of light shining on the floor from the open door stretched on for many feet.
He heard Anthony move behind him and glanced briefly to see what he was doing. He was taking the rifle off his back, having already holstered his pistol.
"What are you doing?" he whispered under his breath.
"Light," Anthony replied, clicking on the light at the side of his scope.
"I could have done that with my iPhone."
Anthony shrugged.
While Ian did appreciate being able to see better, he figured Anthony mostly just wanted an excuse to get out his rifle. Ian couldn't blame him. No one could use a rifle like Anthony.
Anthony's light didn't reach very far, but from what Ian could see as his friend swung the light slowly about the room, it was a lot less empty than the room behind them. Large cardboard boxes stacked three or four high—taller than Ian's five-foot-eight—littered the room, and to their right, a rickety blue metal catwalk ascended and wrapped around the room.
"I don't like this," Ian said. There were too many places he couldn't see into. He didn't trust the unknown; he'd learned better than that.
"It's our only option, right?" Anthony muttered back. "Come on."
Anthony led the way deeper into the labyrinth of sealed shipping boxes, checking every corner thoroughly, but not thoroughly enough for Ian.
"What do you think this place is?" Anthony said. Ian noticed his voice got deeper when he spoke quietly. Weird thing to notice. "A shipping factory?"
Ian snorted quietly. "Does it matter?"
"No."
Clattering explosions and flashes of light enveloped them suddenly—gunfire.
"Shit!" Ian shouted. "Get down!"
He and Anthony dove behind a wall of boxes, listening to the tearing of bullets through cardboard and the loud cracks as others hit the cement floor. Other than Anthony's pool of blue light on the floor, they could only see each other when their assailant's gun flashed like a strobe light.
Eventually, either the gunman ran out of cartridges in that magazine, or he decided to stop shooting since he couldn't see them.
"I could hit him," Anthony said.
"You don't even know where the fuck he is!" Ian whispered fiercely.
"He's on the catwalk. I can do it."
"Fine!" Ian snapped.
Anthony stood, bending over to stay behind the boxes. In one swift motion, he turned out from behind the barrier, leaned down to look through his rifle's sight and scope, and fired twice.
Ian heard one shot hit the wall. The other didn't.
Anthony dropped down next to Ian.
"You didn't," Ian said.
"It hit," Anthony replied.
"Fuck."
"I think it killed him," Anthony said. Ian realized he looked stricken, and he remembered that Anthony had never killed anyone before.
"Just don't think about it," Ian said, simultaneously trying to and trying not to reflect back on the first time he'd ever killed anyone. "Don't go check, don't talk about it. Just move."
"No," Anthony said, shaking his head. "No, no, I didn't just—"
"He was trying to kill us!" Ian said urgently. "Did he deserve to die? No. Should you have killed him? No. Is there anything you can do about it? No!"
Anthony looked at Ian with wide eyes, not saying anything.
"I'm sorry, Anthony," Ian said, trying for a more sympathetic approach. "I'm going to be honest; I remember the feeling. It sucks ass. You'll never forget it. Sometimes I wish I'd never even signed up for this shit. But we're here. And we've gotta keep going."
He didn't know if his words made any difference.
Anthony slung his rifle off his shoulder and threw it down on the ground with a loud clatter. "I can't use that thing anymore."
"No," Ian said, grabbing Anthony's shoulder and turning him to face him. "You have to use it. Anthony, your skill with a gun is like nothing I've ever seen before. You can't abandon it now. If you're done when this is all over, that's fine with me. Just not right now. Please, Anthony."
Anthony looked into Ian's eyes for a long time. Ian could almost see his mental doors shutting out memories and emotions.
"Fine," Anthony said tightly, bending down to sweep the gun off the floor, swinging it onto his back. "Let's go."
Ian felt horrible, but he didn't say anything else.
It was all of one minute before reinforcement came.
There must have been a door that led straight to the catwalk, because five or six people emerged above them, all armed. And Ian couldn't even hardly see them; he could only hear them. He wasn't happy about this situation.
"Anthony," he said quietly. No one had started shooting yet, and he and Anthony were sitting side by side behind another stack of boxes. Ian reckoned they had less than one minute to get this together. "Have you ever made a blind shot?"
"What, like what I just did?"
"No. You knew where he was. I mean where you're using nothing but your ears."
"I don't know," Anthony said as though it was an automatic answer. Then, "Yes. Yes, I remember it. You were there."
"'K, well, I don't remember." Ian was talking rapidly now. "Just recall that time when you're shooting here. Get the person's footsteps lined up with your center line so you're not hearing them more out of one ear than the other. You know where the catwalk is so don't worry about height."
Anthony nodded, his eyebrows knitted.
"Now turn your light off."
"But I can't shoot blind!" he said, panicked, as shots started to explode around them. "I could kill someone again!"
"Do it anyway!" Ian shouted. "Turn the light off, they can't know where we are!"
Anthony's frightened face was the last thing Ian saw before the light clicked off.
Anthony's vision came and went in flashes with the gunshots, but it was too bright at the source of the light to identify where someone was.
He strained his ears, listening for the metallic shuffle that would give him a better idea of where one of their opponents was.
In the darkness, the gunshots from above were more hesitant; Ian was right about that—they didn't know where Ian and Anthony were now.
Then he heard it. Someone shifted their weight. It was above and in front of him, as expected, and slightly to the right. Seemingly from the same person—they weren't all clustered together—came a click of a new cartridge going into the magazine.
Anthony used both his experience in training and what Ian had reminded him in order to line up his shot. As far as he could tell, there were no boxes in the way, which meant if the person he was aiming for started shooting before he did, he was dead meat.
A sliding click in between other shots. Anthony moved a bit more.
He fired three times.
He heard someone scream in pain. Anthony cringed at the sound. That was probably his target.
"Ian! Take the rifle!" Anthony shouted, trying his best to shut down the parts of his mind that hated himself right now.
"Why?" Ian yelled back, which annoyed Anthony. The longer they had a conversation, the more likely it was that their opponents would figure out where they were.
"You'll have better luck not killing them with it!" That wasn't the only reason, of course, but he didn't want to lay out his plan for their assailants.
"Do you want the shotgun?"
"No! Just take this!"
They'd settled on a rifle for one of them and a shotgun for the other; since they both could shoot either with no problems, they thought it would be safest to have options. Ian, of course, had taken the shotgun because it was more likely to kill someone and Anthony refused to use one outside of training.
When the two men had found each other in the dark, Anthony handed over his rifle.
"Where are you going?" Ian demanded.
"Up," Anthony answered, and didn't look back as he turned and felt his way through the maze of cardboard. He heard Ian cuss softly behind him, but he knew his friend wasn't about to stop him. If anything had been accomplished in the past half hour, it was that Ian probably wouldn't underestimate Anthony's skill again.
Anthony's shin found the metal stairs before he did. "Fuck!" he whispered fiercely, putting a hand on the wall as he rubbed his leg. His hand hit something sticking out of the wall and he realized immediately what it was.
Light switch.
That was going to make his world a lot easier. But it would make Ian's harder.
"Ian!" he shouted. "Get down, now!"
He flicked on the lights. They took about two seconds to come on fully, and by that time, Anthony was nearly at the top of the catwalk, having taken the stairs three at a time.
As the room was washed with pale fluorescent light, Anthony's focus locked onto the three people still standing. He heard roaring in his ears; a combination of his own racing heartbeat and his body's reaction to the suddenly bright light.
His pistol was raised. He judged the distance between him and two of his opponents to be about thirty yards. It was far for his pistol, but he didn't think twice.
Two shots, two people down, both shot in the leg. The third was too far away, and currently finishing reloading.
Anthony dove to the ground as the gun started spraying bullets in his direction. Fuck, it must have been a shotgun, there were so many projectiles. The woman shooting wasn't going to hit Anthony; she'd have to risk hitting her still-living comrades in order to do it. But she could prevent him from getting a shot in.
Then a round of shots fired from below, and the woman dropped her gun, screaming and clutching her right arm.
Ian had put the rifle to use.
Anthony went over to the railing and leaned over, seeing Ian get up off the floor and sling the two guns across each other on his back. He'd made those shots from the ground.
Anthony had to admit; Ian Hecox was pretty badass.
"You might want to take those guns away," Ian called as he climbed up the staircase to meet Anthony, gesturing toward the fallen men and woman behind him.
"Why—" Anthony turned just in time to see one of the men he'd shot in the leg raise his gun and fire.
Anthony felt Ian slam him in the back, knocking him out of the way. Anthony was regaining his balance when Ian went up to the man and growled in a voice Anthony had only ever heard him use for empty threats—not that they sounded empty, of course, "Don't make me kill you, bastard." He snatched the gun away and tossed it off the side of the catwalk. He took the guns from the other two people as well—it wasn't as though they were stupid enough to fight. Anthony knew they wouldn't call the police on him and Ian anyway, since their whole operation was illegal. The police force might have refused to help Ian and Anthony because they deemed the situation unimportant, but they weren't on the enemy's side.
As Ian turned back to Anthony, Anthony noticed the blood running down his friend's right arm.
"Dude, did they hit you?" Anthony asked, holstering his pistol. He walked to Ian and grabbed his arm.
"Oh. Yeah," Ian said, feigning apathy. He brushed Anthony away. "It just barely grazed me."
"Did you get that just now, when you pushed me out of the way?"
"Nah. I got it down there."
Anthony was doubtful, but he didn't question.
"Come on. If everyone keeps coming from here," Ian said, walking toward the door at the end of the catwalk, "that's probably where we need to go."
"Agreed," Anthony said. "Can I have my rifle back?"
Ian smirked wearily. "Can't go without it, huh?"
Anthony gave him a look.
"Okay, I wouldn't really want to make you go without it," Ian admitted, pulling it around his shoulder. "God knows I couldn't do this without you."
Anthony smiled, taking the firearm. It was a heavy weapon, really; heavier than Ian's shotgun. But in Anthony's opinion, it was worth it. While the shotgun spat out multiple pellets per cartridge, Anthony's rifle shot only one bullet at a time. Better precision for long distances, plus the added bonus of not ever accidently hitting someone in the chest. Although, Anthony had to admit despite his modesty, he'd never really 'accidently' hit anything with a gun, accept when he very first started.
Even the man he'd killed.
If he ever got off-target at this point, it was because he was thinking too fast, not because the bullet didn't go where he wanted it to.
He blocked out any more thoughts of what had happened and continued after Ian, through the doorway to whatever was about to meet them on the other side.
Ian's arm hurt a lot. Even after taking several dozen shots throughout his training and previous mission, he never expected a bullet wound to hurt as much as it did.
So yeah, he'd lied to Anthony about taking the shot. He had gotten the wound after pushing Anthony out of the way, but he knew Anthony would beat himself up about it, so he'd lied. No harm done.
Who have you become, Ian Hecox? Do you even remember who you used to be? That boy with the bowl haircut and the dedication to making YouTube videos?
Ian had changed a lot in three years.
In 2015, he'd gotten his hair cut and had started to get mixed up in this business. He'd started training while still just barely twenty-seven years old. His first mission was in mid-2016, after Anthony had been accepted into the same insanity Ian had been working for. As soon as people started to realize Anthony's exceptional ability with guns, he got promoted to the same 'rank'—none of this was official, of course—as Ian, even though Ian had more experience. Ian had never held any bitterness about this—it wasn't exactly an honor. Besides, if they'd ever been separated, Ian probably would have given up this job eons ago.
Even if it would have eventually led to the loss of hundreds of lives.
Which is exactly what's going to happen if you don't focus on what you're doing, Hecox.
The voice in his head was right, but he couldn't help but come to one more realization: he and Anthony were thirty years old now. Smosh had been dead for three whole years.
Ian's guess about where they needed to be was correct. As soon as he and Anthony had stepped to the catwalk on the other side of the door, they'd seen a row of people below them, guarding the exact place they needed to break into; a locked titanium safe. Where the hell this illegal operation had gotten a titanium safe, Ian had no idea. He didn't really want to know.
The guards below noticed their arrival. It wasn't as though the long absence of gunfire was going to be easy to miss. The first thing Ian saw was one of them take a hand off his gun to grab a communication device—Ian didn't want to think of it as a walkie-talkie, necessarily—and mutter some nonsense code into it. Shit, that probably meant backup.
Anthony had pulled his pistol out and fired multiple times before Ian had his shotgun off his back. Amazingly, none of his shots hit, but after all, there was a catwalk in the way. The people below had shouldered their guns and were firing nonstop. The pinging of bullets off metal was nearly deafening.
"We've gotta get off of here!" Anthony shouted.
"I know, dumbass!" Ian yelled back. "But we're going to have a problem with that."
He saw Anthony glance over to see the people coming around the catwalk toward them; somehow, the backup had already arrived.
"Be more creative than that," Anthony said with fleeting grin as he holstered his pistol, put one hand on the worn blue rail, and jumped off.
Ian's heart skipped a beat before Anthony hit the ground, rolled, and came up on one knee, firing his pistol.
Goddamn he's good.
Not, of course, that Ian couldn't do the same. He pulled his shotgun's trigger twice to hold off the guards coming his way, then slung it onto his back and jumped the rail, landing hard and going into a quick somersault before rising. He pulled his gun out again and aimed for the people on the catwalk, trusting Anthony to take care of the guards that were already down here.
He didn't usually like aiming for people's shoulders and arms, because he could too easily miss and hit their heads or chests, but when shooting up the way he was, he didn't really have a choice. The catwalk blocked any shots to the lower half of a person's body.
He'd taken one person down and was desperately dodging side to side to avoid getting hit by the other when he heard Anthony cry out in pain. His brain panicked, but he kept in cool control, as always. He ducked and dropped into a somersault, positioning himself underneath the catwalk so the person couldn't easily shoot him. Only then did he turn to Anthony.
Anthony was on his knees now and Ian could see the blood oozing from his left calf, but Anthony was still shooting, growling in anger and pain through gritted teeth.
Ian looked back up as a bullet cracked off of the metal above him. His assailant was trying to shoot through the catwalk's grate. Dumbass.
Ian stepped up to the wall below the metal structure. The catwalk was technically on wheels and it was only chained to the wall on one end. It was heavy, sure, but probably not terribly so.
He pulled on the pole and it moved a tiny bit. He couldn't help but allow a sly smile to creep onto his face.
Positioning himself between the wall and the pole, he shoved it with all his strength. It skidded more than it rolled, and as the poles and wheels were pushed out away from the wall, the person on top must have shifted their weight toward the wall, and the whole structure groaned and started to tip.
That was not supposed to happen.
The guard let out a cry of surprise as the catwalk shifted, cracking and squealing. Ian decided quickly to take advantage of the situation. Before the catwalk could settle against the wall, its legs crooked, Ian shoved the pole away again, then ran like hell out from under it.
Anthony fired the last bullet in his magazine, hitting exactly his target; the weapon of the man who'd just barely entered the room. If Anthony had hit it right, the shotgun would be unusable. The man dropped it immediately as if it would explode. It wouldn't, of course—Anthony knew guns better than that—it took an idiot loading it wrong to make a gun explode. That or a blocked barrel. Anthony had always had this fantasy that someday he would be able to shoot a bullet into another gun's barrel and cause it to blow up. This was impossible, of course, but that was beside the point.
His leg still burned with pain as he turned to see what all the ruckus over by the catwalk was about. What he saw was Ian running toward him, the metal catwalk scraping down the wall as its supports rolled out from under it.
"Holy shit," Ian panted, stopping next to Anthony, "you downed all of them. Now what?"
"Now we figure out how to get into that safe." Anthony smirked. "That sounds like a sex joke."
Ian shook his head, smiling a bit as he still tried to catch his breath. "It's been a while."
Anthony nodded. He limped over to the door to the safe, which was about half as tall as Anthony himself and had a silver handle and a number pad on it.
"Shit," Anthony said. "There's no key for this. It's a number code." As he was talking, he heard a grunt behind him.
Out of reflex more than conscious thought, his hand went up to the barrel of his rifle and he pulled the weapon into the crook of his shoulder as he turned around.
The man he hadn't shot had made a move.
He was behind Ian now, one hand over Ian's mouth and the other pinning Ian's wrists together behind his back. Ian was struggling furiously, trying to kick back at the man's knees or step on his foot, but nothing could get the large man to budge, except that he had to take his hand off Ian's mouth in order to pull out Ian's own pistol and hold it to his head.
"Stop right there," the man said, louder than he needed to.
"Don't!" Ian spat. "Shoot him, Anthony!"
"One move and I'll fire," the man said. "I don't know who the hell you two are, but our project is staying here. Put the gun down."
"Come on, Anthony, fire!"
It was close range. He didn't need to use the scope. He had a pretty clean shot of the man's upper arm, except that Ian was in the way. The man held Ian's arms behind his back so tightly Anthony could see Ian's eyes watering despite his determined expression, and held him so close that Ian couldn't hope to get a kick to the groin or the knee in.
"Ian, I…I can't." The man could so easily just yank Ian to the right as Anthony fired, too much and Anthony would hit him in the heart. It was hard enough to kill someone he didn't even know. If he killed Ian….
"Anthony Padilla," Ian begged. "There's no way out unless you shoot. You're the best gunman I've ever known, you won't miss. Fire!"
The man restraining Ian clearly didn't believe Anthony would shoot. He didn't flinch in the slightest when Anthony raised his rifle to his shoulder and looked down the barrel. He shoved the pistol against Ian's temple, but didn't look like he was about to pull the trigger.
"Ian, I'm sorry," Anthony said. He'd never aimed so carefully.
"Shoot, Anthony, goddammit!"
"That's why I'm sorry," he said, firing on the last word.
One of the men went down.
Ian felt the spray of blood hit the back of his neck and shoulder right before the man behind him shouted in pain and released Ian. Ian didn't immediately make a move; his heart was hammering so fiercely in his chest that it actually hurt. Despite his bravado, he had been scared as fuck that Anthony was going to hit him.
But no.
Anthony would never miss.
Anthony was breathing hard, probably just as worked up as Ian. He lowered his rifle slowly, still staring at Ian. He probably looked the most badass Ian had ever seen him, with his black faux-leather jacket, his black jeans, a spray of blood across his right cheek, and a wild, determined look in his dark eyes.
Coming to his senses at last, Ian turned to the man behind him. The man looked up and swung a bloody fist in a roundhouse punch at Ian's face. Ian blocked it with ease and used the man's own arm as a path straight to his neck, slamming the side of his open hand into the man's neck. He fell immediately, stunned.
Ian grabbed the pistol off the floor, clicking the magazine back into place and pulling it with his left hand to cock it, crouching and holding it to the man's temple.
"Tell me the code to the safe," he demanded. His voice was steady and firm.
The man stared vacantly at him, then started to come around a bit more.
"What's the code to the safe?" Ian growled.
"Five-zero-six-nine-six," the man started saying before it looked like he had made a conscious decision to. Ian could hear beeping as Anthony punched in the numbers.
"Was that right?" Ian asked, still keeping his gaze on the man in front of him.
"Yeah," Anthony answered as he grunted to pull the door open.
"Good," Ian said. "You're spared," he added to the man.
He clicked the safety back on his pistol and holstered it as he turned around. Anthony was bending down and reaching into the safe, pulling out a mass of metal about twice as big as his head.
"Wow," Ian commented. "It looks actually really harmless."
"I know," Anthony said, hoisting the explosive up to look at it more closely. It looked heavy.
"Well, now we get it back without setting it off," Ian said, smiling with false brightness. Honestly, he was starting to feel like shit, but that wasn't going to get in his way.
"I wouldn't even know how to set this off," Anthony said, tucking the bomb under one arm. Given the small screen on the top of the device, it wasn't one that would explode on impact with the ground. It wasn't meant to be dropped from above; it was meant to be set off with a timer.
"Let's get out of here, shall we?" Ian asked.
A few hours later, after Ian and Anthony had handed off the bomb so that it could be liquidated by some people smarter than the two of them, Anthony pulled his car into the garage of their house, where, miraculously, they'd ended up living together again. If their futures had gone in a different direction, they would be separated, living with girlfriends or wives and perhaps even thinking about children.
Instead, they were two thirty-year-old motherfuckers living together because they weren't even home often enough to need anything else.
Anthony was very tired. Admittedly, it had been a long, hard day. He'd only gotten a brief checkup on his leg and had gotten a bandage that was a sort of excuse for a cast, and, to his weary annoyance, crutches.
Ian, who looked tired as fuck himself, helped Anthony out of the car.
"How you feelin'?"
Anthony shrugged as he adjusted his crutches. "Like I want to fall over and sleep on the garage floor."
Ian smiled. "Same."
They went inside and started to clean themselves up; Anthony still had blood crusted across his face and Ian's whole neck was covered in it.
Anthony couldn't stop himself from breaking down in the bathroom. As he splashed water over his face, scrubbing at the blood, his mind couldn't keep pushing away the knowledge of what he'd done that day.
Ian came in only thirty seconds or so after Anthony started to sob.
"Oh, God…" Ian said, probably at taking in the sight of Anthony on his knees on the floor, his forehead rested against the edge of the counter. The faucet water was still running.
"I'm fine," Anthony said bitterly. He'd never seen Ian break down.
"No, you're not," Ian said firmly. "And that's okay. A lot of shit happened today." He crouched down next to Anthony and rubbed his back. "I felt the same way after—the first time I did it, too."
"Why am I…why do I have to be so fucking good with a gun, Ian?" Anthony said miserably, refusing to look his friend in the face.
Ian shut the water off. "I don't know. But don't hate yourself for it. Your skill is amazing. Remember, we did save a couple hundred lives today. Even if the police didn't believe any of it was true; we really did get the bomb. One life for a hundred—think about it."
"But I wasn't going to kill the hundred!" Anthony said, sitting back as well as he could with a thick bandage on and leaning the top of his head on the cabinet.
"Anthony, stop, okay? Shit happens. Nothing about you has changed."
There was a silence hanging in the air for a moment as Anthony choked back his sobs.
"Ian?"
"Yeah?"
Anthony hesitated to ask the next question. It seemed terrible to ask, but he charged ahead anyway. "How many people have you killed? You've never told me."
Ian sighed, sitting down in the doorway. "Five, Anthony. Five."
Anthony looked over to him, his eyes filling with sympathy. No longer empathy—sympathy. "I'm sorry. I know what it feels like now. I'm so sorry." He leaned over to give Ian a hug, then backed away and looked at him. "How do you deal with it?"
Ian shrugged. "I don't know. You just get over things. You move on. That's life."
Anthony nodded and pulled himself up to a standing position. He helped Ian to his feet. "I'm gonna be fine, aren't I? It's like—like anything else."
"Yeah," Ian said. "And hey. I don't want to sound cheesy here, but seriously; I'm here for you, man. I'm always here for you."
"I know," Anthony said with a smile.
Ian started to turn away, but Anthony said, "Hey, Ian? Do you remember 'friendship always wins'?"
Ian chuckled. "Yep."
"Still true, huh?"
He nodded and said pensively, "Good times, Anthony. Those were good times."
Good times that would, hopefully, circle back to them someday. ●