Chapter 12: It's good to see you, I must go (I know I look a fright) -
Thursday September 17, 1998; Sunnydale High School Library, mid/late morning.
Jonathan Levinson was contemplating karma. He would only call it that after long consideration, but it was probably the word that fit the best.
The criminal offenses that could be leveled at a hacker were potentially enormous, coming with the kind of jail time that could prevent the perpetrator from ever holding a decent paying job again. Alternatively and for better or worse, depending on how you looked it it, you could find yourself being offered a nice, secure job in computer security - working for one of the TLA agencies. In the mind of Jonathan, he knew that he was getting off lightly by paying off his debt to society, and that debt was much lighter than he knew it could have been: tutoring Faith and helping Oz wasn't that harsh a sentence. Getting off that lightly from what he knew by now amounted to negligent homicide at worst, manslaughter at best, there was a sense of oppressive Jewish guilt that weighed on his head. If there was one thing his mother taught him, it was that the other shoe dropped when you least expected or wanted it to. The other thing was 'Be a mensch.'
As such, he was sadly unsurprised when a panicked looking Xander Harris stopping into his Economics class just a few moments after the bell rang. When Xander stuck his shaggy head around the corner, he immediately drew it back. The flicker of motion was enough to get Jonathan's attention. Other shoe, meet linoleum.
Slowly Harris leaned back in and made a 'come hither' gesture as slowly as he could. Jonathan raised an eyebrow and made a very pointed gesture at Ms. Wright, whose back was currently towards the class. In response Xander narrowed his eyes and very deliberately drew his index finger across his own neck and then jabbing at Ms. Wright's computer. Jonathan let out a small sigh and slumped in his chair. Great. Here we go again.
Oh well, could be worse. It could be raining again.
"Ms. Wright," he asked as she paused in her speech about the structure of macro economic conditions in Russia. "May I use the restroom?"
"Certainly dear," the aging Wright responded. With a grateful smile, Jonathan got to his feet and walked out the door. There were perks to being a nerd, he supposed. Infrequent perks in high school, sure, but there were perks. Ok, based on the look Xander'd been wearing, maybe not a perk...
As soon as he was out the door, Harris grabbed him and began a near sprint down the hall and out the stairwell door leading to the side courtyards. Once at the ground level, he turned them towards the back of the library. Reaching the doors and looking around, Xander seemed pleased that the coast looked clear. Tugging the mildly protesting Jonathan behind him, Xander yanked open the door to the library stacks open. He pushed Jonathan in ahead of him, throwing another look around. "C'mon - this way."
"Oh, maaannn... " Jonathan whined. "Cutting out of 3rd period - I am so screwed. My economics grade is gonna be shot."
"Some things are more important than grades," Xander said, tugging the other senior along behind him. "We've got trouble. Bigger trouble than a plummeting GPA." Jonathan shot him a scandalized look. "Here we go." Giving Jonathan a push, Xander herded him toward the stairs to the main floor, not giving him a chance to balk. No other students around, for good or ill.
"But... Mr. Giles hates me," Jonathan said, attempting to balk anyway.
"Hate is such a strong word," Xander said, giving him a shove. Seeing the frightened and wounded expression on Jonathan, he winced a bit - seeming uncomfortable at the image of himself acting like the other school bullies, but his face was serious. "Accurate, maybe, but strong."
Hearing the commotion, Rupert Giles came out of his office door and stopped to fix the pair with a bemused and slightly alarmed look as they came down the stairs. "Xander? I had rather thought you'd be in biology observing?" Nodding to the other teen, he added, "Mr. Levinson."
"Hey, Mr. Giles," Jonathan hunched into his shoulders as they came to a stop by the desk.
"Uh, change of plans, Giles." Xander scowled, shoving his hands into his front pockets. "Remember when I said we had trouble in River City? Upgrade to 'Big Trouble on Little Hellmouth'." His eyes widening, Jonathan mouthed 'Hellmouth?'.
"Indeed?" Giles removed his glasses, fixing Xander with an inquiring look.
"Yeah. Mondo bad - Hideyoshi took a personal day out and isn't here," Xander said, guiding Jonathan to one of the library computers. "Means Faith may be in deep kimchi."
"Oh dear," Giles nodded, beginning to distractedly polish his glasses.
"Man, Mr. Giles already came down on me for this," Jonathan stage whispered to Xander. "He'll kill me."
"Hey, the G can be real flexible in a crisis," Xander said. "Hack."
"Ummm... " Giles wandered over to the pair from around the counter, still polishing. "May I ask exactly what you two are about?" Jonathan winced, hunching a bit deeper into his chair.
"Got to get to Hideyoshi's place. Oz stayed in class," Xander remarked, leaning over Jonathan's chair.
"Ah. Quite," replacing his glasses, Giles nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Do carry on then."
"Ok... " sighing, Jonathan put his hands to the keyboard, pulling up a prompt window. "But if I get in trouble, I'm blaming you."
"Jonathan... " Xander let out a frustrated breath, running his hand through his hair. "Willow, Oz, Cordy, and Faith are the reason you're not buying Depends right now. Gather that Faith's the reason you're not talking to the Feds. You owe them."
"Quite right, Mr. Levinson," Giles remarked. "While I prefer not to encourage illegalities, such niceties drop by the wayside when one of my charges is endangered. If you are able to be of assistance, please do so."
"Right. I know," Jonathan muttered in a distracted tone. "I know." Entering his appropriated password, he hit Enter and waited a few moments. "Ok, I'm in," he said. "What am I looking for?"
"Uh... Mr. Hideyoshi's files?" Xander frowned. "Need his address."
"Oh. Ah... " pausing, he said. "No problem - I saved out and took notes on some stuff that looked useful even if we didn't know what was connected yet." Digging a scrap of note paper from his pocket, he passed it to Xander. "Anything else?"
"Huh. Anything else you can dig up on Hideyoshi. No matter what - no idea what could come in handy," Xander said.
"Right. School employment records and personnel files it is, and," Jonathan said, nodding decisively. "On my way... " his fingers clicked rapidly on the keys, "Here and off we go."
"Thanks," he said. "Ok. Can you pull up one of them map thingies for directions? To here, I mean?" Xander waved the note.
"Oh, that's easy," Jonathan said. Opening a browser window, he pulled up a web map for California and entered the information, waiting several minutes for it to process. "Lab computers are faster," he remarked. "Ok... " entering the school's address, he waited until it displayed directions and a map route, saying, "Here you go."
"Cool. Uh... " Xander patted himself down, then looked around helplessly.
"Allow me," Giles said. He retrieved a pad and pen from the main desk, and handed them to Xander. Xander grabbed them, turning back to the screen and scribbling furiously.
"Good deal," Xander grinned, leaning over Jonathan's shoulder to jot down the directions. "Cool." Tearing off the directions page, he tossed the pad and pen onto the computer desk and went around to the research table. Grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair, he shrugged into it. "Off to rescue Slaygal, Giles."
"Umm... do be careful, please," Giles remarked.
"Hey, 'Carefulness' is my middle name too," Xander said, heading across to the stairs. "Well, according to Cordy it's 'Doofus' right now, but I'm thinking of changing it." Bounding up the short staircase, he disappeared towards the rear door.
"Umm... " Jonathan frowned at Xander's retreating back, then looked over at Giles. "Slaygal? Hellmouth?"
"Err, ah. Oh, bother," Giles frowned, removing his glasses again. Sighing heavily, he looked down at Jonathan, saying, "You may as well step into my office, Mr. Levinson. This may take a bit."
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Thursday September 17, 1998; Sunnydale residential neighborhood, eleven-thirty-ish.
The neighbor across the street and several doors down had a large cluster of bushes near the base of a huge, decorative pine tree that almost formed a small thicket at the corner of their yard. Prickly bushes - Xander shifted uncomfortably as a leaf with too many sharp edges worked its away into his collar. Eyes narrowed, Xander knelt at the edge of the small thicket staring at the house matching the address Jonathan had given him, trying his best to spontaneously develop x-ray vision. It wasn't working.
Nice neighborhood. Way nicer than the one Xander and Jesse had grown up it at the upper edge of town. Matter of fact, it was as nice as Jonathan's over by Oz's neighborhood. Too bad this guy couldn't be like ninety percent of the people in nice neighborhoods in Sunnydale and park his damned car out in the driveway or on the street. Sheesh. Well, it was either parked in the double doored garage attached to the Spanish style house, or Hideyoshi wasn't home - Xander had done a casual circle of the block and alley and hadn't spotted car nor movement near the house or in the rear carport. Portico. Whatever the hell you called those little roofed things you pulled a car under.
And, naw. He couldn't be that lucky. Hideyoshi was in there, dammit. Lurking. Because that's what monsters and aliens do in bad horror movies. They lurk.
And then they rear up and bite the heads off of idiots like Xander who casually wander down into their basements thinking they're not home.
'The calvary is a scared guy with a rock, again,' Xander thought. He snorted. 'Man, we really need some better cavalry. And I shoulda gone with the costume with the big red 'S' on Halloween.'
Finally giving up, he backed up a bit and frantically clawed the spiny leaf out of the back of his shirt collar before it managed to work its way even farther down his back. He moved back up to where he could peer out between the two bush edges, sighing in relief. Ok, so it was a little better than a rock and a sharp stick, this time. His new knife made for a comforting weight in the shoulder scabbard under his arm, as did the Holy Water pistol in the 45 pocket of his bomber jacket. It'd be even more comforting if he knew the heavy bladed knife would kill whatever Hideyoshi was, or if holy water would affect him. And if he wasn't uncomfortably aware that Faith usually carried that evil looking eighteen inch dagger across her back and that wicked tanto in her boot. Not that he had any intention of using a blade on Faith - he'd cut his own throat first.
'Ok, Xander. So, what would Buffy do in this situation?' Xander mused. A shock of resentment, staggering in its viciousness and intensity, shot through him. 'Screw that. Buffy's not here - she bugged out and left us to it. Faith is here, and she's in there, and it's all down to you, doofus.' The imagined Cordy-voice in his head brought a ghost of a smirk to his lips as he imagined her chewing him out. The smirk faded as he realized the intensity with which he wished Cordy was kneeling next to him doing just that, bitching and complaining all the while. 'Focus, Xan. One thing at a time. We go in, me and the Cordy-ghost in my head, we get Faith out, and then we get Cordy and Will out of this... '
A grinding sound caught his attention and he narrowed his eyes at the house as the garage door slowly slid upwards. A few endless minutes later the nose of a vehicle poked its way out and a metallic blue mini-van rolled down the driveway and hung a right into the street. Through the tinted glass he could barely make out a head that looked somewhat like Hideyoshi's as the van drove past him. Letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding, he waited til the van turned the corner at the end of the block, and then slowly counted out one-Mississippi increments until he was sure it wasn't just coming back around.
There was no way of telling if Faith had been in the van. He shook his head to clear mental images of a small, five-foot-five dark haired body being hauled out for disposal as he gingerly extracted himself from his hiding place.
Across the street and at the side of Hideyoshi's house, he slid along the garage wall to the narrow gate and examined the latch. No visible lock, at least not from the outside. A relieved breath left him when the latch lifted easly and the wooden gate swung outwards. Once inside, he swung the gate shut behind him, crouching inside and looking around. Xander waited a few agonizing moments before standing up and moving towards the back sliding door. He froze for a moment as he heard voices from inside, then music and flickering lights clued him in that Hideyoshi had left the TV on. Reaching out, he restarted his heart and pulled gently on the handle. With a slight grin of victory, the door slid quietly open. Xander stepped into the carpeted den, noting the big TV, prints, plants, and various bonsai knock offs scattered around the room.
Clearing the grin from his lips, he crept towards one of the room ends. Fifty-fifty chance on directions, might as well search the whole house...
Harmony popping up from the chair behind the TV as he moved toward one of the arched doorways damned near stopped his heart again.
"Yikes! Harmony, jeeze," Xander shook his head. "Don't do that!"
"Harmony, jeeze," Harmony said, in what Xander took as a mocking tone. "Don't do that!"
"Funny, Harm," Xander blew out an exasperated breath, shaking his head. "Let me find Faith and we'll get you out of here." It itched at the back of his mind that Harmony should have been able to walk out the unlocked sliding door...
Harmony hopped up to squat on the seat of the big recliner, cocking her head oddly at him. Blinking, she said, "Funny, Harm. Let me find Faith. Let me find Faith." She moved her elbows in a weird flapping motion and Xander's blood ran cold.
"Okayyy... I see you're happy where you are. Good." Xander bobbed his head, getting a surreal chill as Harmony bobbed hers back and repeated the 'happy where you are, good' to him. 'Oh, crap. They got Harmony. The bastards,' ran through his mind followed by the strange little voice at the back of it remarking, 'Always knew she was a bird brain.'
A soft door slam from his left, some small distance off, caught his attention and he jerked his head that way as Faith ambled up into visibility in the other archway. For a brief instant, Xander felt himself relax as he saw Faith up and moving freely. Then he noticed the steak clutched in one of her hands...
Then he noticed the red drippy marks on her lower face and chin, around the mouth, and the raw steak in her hand registered on him, and the relief turned to horror in his mind and congealed there.
Tilting her head, she fixed him with that flat predator's gaze that she examined vamps with and the horror melted and started running freely again.
Locking eyes with him, Faith's lips parted and a soft, deep rumbling sound came from her chest. There was a momentary flash in her eyes as though she recognized him, and her lips peeled away from her teeth in her familiar, blinding grin. Then the recognition submerged and Faith's eyes lit up and she took a slow step forward, her nostrils flaring as he involuntarily backed up, seeing no trace of his friend's normal consciousness or personality behind those opaque brown orbs. Like a slide show on steroids, a kaleidoscope of images shot across his mind's eye...
* Willow bent forward at the Bronze, pushing her rear at Oz on the dance floor. Willow with her teeth bared almost in a rictus and her arm cocked back to fling a roll at Snyder. Willow with a tray full of greens and fruit. 'Presenting', Oz had said...
* Harmony cocking her head in an almost bird like fashion, bobbing it erratically and repeating things back at him. Parroting things back at him...
* Aura's voice gone shrill and yappy sounding as she wriggled all over at the least tone of approval, her eyes huge and liquidy. Aura bouncing up to Hideyoshi's desk, almost pathetically eager...
* Cordelia hunching into herself, her arms spread slightly, breath coming in tiny pants. Cordelia tucking into his arm and side, nuzzling at him, her eyes downcast. Cordelia drab and almost shy in her clothing choices...
* Faith with a raw steak in her hand and her eyes gone flat, calculating, and disinterested. Faith slowly prowling towards him with a feline and graceful stride, a low rumble in her chest and throat...
* Raw, naked lust in Faith's gaze on his body. Kyle and Rhonda's eyes gone greenish as they almost hoisted Lance into the hyena pit before he broke loose and ran. Heidi examining the biology classroom with that same opaque, flat, and disinterested gaze, her body gone bonelessly relaxed. Oz coiled in his seat, an oddly wolfish cast to his expression. Herbert-the-piglet struggling frantically in his hands as his head came down to bite, and the sensuous feel of raw living flesh sliding down his throat. The hair bristling on his neck nape and his eyes narrowing as a sense of something walking somewhere in the biology room near him, dangerous and unseen, and an echo of something ancient and deadly inside of him standing up on its hind legs and snarling in response...
Everything that Heidi and Tor had told him, all of the little subtle clues that had been there that they hadn't quite been able to put together, finally smacked him in the face and then clicked into that congealing horror and locked there. Whoever or whatever Hideyoshi was, Xander knew he had done this. Somehow he'd caused Faith, Cordelia, Harmony, and Aura to become something Other - something truly animal. He knew that feeling, remembered the haze of it all as he stared at Faith for that awful moment, remembered crouching at the back of his own mind gibbering as his own body did things he couldn't control, and acted on feelings and thoughts he'd pushed deep inside and locked away over the years.
He'd forgotten the other thing that monsters do in their lairs besides lurk. They make other monsters.
Some part of him wondered if this distant horror was what Buffy had felt like when he was standing where Faith was and Buffy was in his position.
Unfortunately, he didn't have super strength this time, unlike Buffy. And boy was he regretting that right about now.
Faith slunk forward, her body seeming awfully low to the ground for some reason, her eyes fixed on his and that not-quite smile parting her lips. Xander found himself backing away just as slowly, almost unconsciously dropping into something in between one of the stances they'd been training in and something another part of his mind dredged up. The mounting horror deepened as he felt something inside of him wake up and respond to Faith's graceful, swaying stalk with a rush of heat in his loins. He was suddenly aware that he was way too conscious of the shape of Faith's lips, the pulse at the line of her throat, and the curving swell of her breasts showing at the 'V' neck of her t-shirt. Bizarrely, the lion busting through a silk-screened tear on the front of the Mountain tee registered as weirdly appropriate.
"Uh," Xander shifted uncomfortably, attempting to will a certain traitorous part of his anatomy down as he took another slow step back. "Could we, like, talk about this?"
"Talk about this? Talk about this?" Harmony screeched and Xander's eyes jerked involuntarily as he remembered her presence. A surreal image of her burned itself into the corner of his eye: bent forward over her knees with her head and body bobbing up and down, the gleeful expression on her face starkly maniacal.
Faith made a small leap forward and his gaze jerked back around to her as he stepped back hastily, feeling himself go over backwards with his arms windmilling for balance. He remembered to slap the carpet to break his fall after he'd already nailed it with an impact that made his eyes cross for a second. A grinning Faith landed astride him on her fingertips and the balls of her feet, a soft golden glow lighting up her eyes. He scrambled back hastily and she toe-and-fingertip walked forward with him, rumbling softly.
"Ok, Faith? Can we talk about this?" In answer, Faith leaned forward over him, sniffing at his neck with a whuffling sound. Xander's eyes widened even more. "C'mon, Faith - I know you're in there somewhere watching all this. You've got to break past it and stop." He slid backwards, shoving himself along with his elbows and fingers. If he had one of Cordy's dad's shotguns right now, he'd turn Harmony into a puff of blonde feathers just to shut up her endless screechy repeats of his words...
'Great,' he thought as Faith's mouth opened and lowered closer to his collarbone. 'I'm going to be eaten alive by one of my best friends with the last thing I hear being Harmony echoing every scream, gurgle and belch. I'm in Hell!'
Faith teeth closed gently on his collarbone and he shrieked. The low rumbling deepened, going up and down in a weird pattern as her lips and teeth moved up along the line of his throat to his face. Lips curving in a malevolent looking parody of her usual smirk, she leaned forward and - ran her tongue along his jawline? Lowering herself onto her spread knees, she ground herself against him, drawing a sudden, involuntary response from his crotch...
"Yah!!!" Xander shoved himself backwards with his feet, elbows and hands, scooting almost two feet farther into the room before he lost momentum. Harmony bounced up and down, screeching 'Yah!' in hideous, gleeful agreement. Her lips twitching, Faith slid forward onto him in a pouncing motion and pressed her crotch against him as she leaned down to nip at his throat again, rumbling deeper. "Bad kitty! Bad Faith!"
'Oh my god, she's purring, not growling,' Xander realized. Something inside woke up farther and he felt his own hips move up to meet Faith's in an involuntary spasm. He was suddenly too aware of Faith's scent and the heat of her body, her smell a mixture of musk, cinnamon, sweat, woman, and the citrusy body oil she liked, mixed with something that his mind remembered from the intense not-quite-sex sessions with Cordelia as female arousal. His jeans suddenly went uncomfortably tight. 'Oh my god, Cordelia's going to kill me! Slowly!'
The strange little voice at the back of it remarked, 'But no mantis ladies will ever look at you again,' and he spasmed as Faith locked her mouth against his, engulfing his lips in a vortex of heat and moistness and cherry flavored lip gloss. And raw steak juice. It was the realization that a part of his brain found the steak blood oddly erotic that caused him to shove her away in horror as he scrambled backwards again. A flailing hand struck something metal that clattered off of the TV stand and Faith tilted her head, her eyes focusing on it intently. Some spark fired in whatever neurons he had that weren't seized up in lust and shock and he threw it to roll rattling across the floor behind his head.
Faith pounced at it like a huge, playful tabby and he scrambled to his feet, up and running for the archway that she'd entered the room through.
He managed to delude himself that he might have made it if his foot hadn't come down on something squishy and gone out from under him in mid stride...
Xander's chin struck the carpet and black closed in around the edges of his vision as raw steak juice soaked into the knee of his pants. A cheerfully rumbling Faith landed astride his back, her crotch hot against his buttocks as he desperately blinked cartoon canaries away. Rolling convulsively onto his back, Xander found Faith's curving lips inches away from his own, coffee-golden colored eyes boring into his with lust dilated pupils. One of Faith's hands worked down between them and her head pulled back a tiny bit as a puzzled frown creased her brow. The brow lines deepened and a frustrated whine came from her throat as her fingers worked futilely against the fabric of his jeans, Xander twitching with them. Shaking her head, she nipped at his nose gently, her hips thrusting her moving hand against him. Her head lowered and another one of those rumbling growls came out of her she bent her head down and nuzzled his neck firmly, her lips seeming fire hot as she gently bit down on his shoulder.
That treacherous thing somewhere inside came up again, whispering, 'Mate. Mine. Now!' into his mind's ear...
"Gah!" Dredging reserves up from somewhere, Xander brought his hands up between them to push Faith off. Something rounded, firm, and extremely soft filled one palm and he froze, a vivid tactile memory of waking up in an awkward position at the pool house one morning flooding through his brain. His mind supplied the exact shape and texture of Faith's breast, compared it against current stimuli, and went, 'Yup. That's it, that's a Faith tit,' as his fingers twitched in an unconscious - hopefully unconscious - grasping motion. Faith's eyes slid half closed and she threw her head back, her neck arching as the rumbling sound intensified into a hoarse moan along with the grinding movement of her hips. Xander yanked his hand away like it was on fire and shoved with all of his strength against Faith's shoulders while bucking his hips upward. He didn't stop to register surprise as she flew off of him, only scrambled to his feet and fled through the archway.
The empty, frustrated, hungry look behind her eyes stayed with him all the way to the kitchen island until Faith grabbed him from behind and threw him on top of it.
Coming up to crouch over him with an almost effortless looking leap, Faith brought her fingers raking down his chest, ripping open his shirt. Her gold-brown eyes were fixed on his intently, glowing with a kind of deep and empty hunger that was frankly just a bit too disturbing, even for Xander's high weirdness threshold. A memory of the intoxicating fear in Buffy's eyes and scent, mixed with arousal, assaulted his mind and he froze, suddenly, finally, truly understanding just what it was that he'd done to her that day before Buffy clocked him with that desk. He had a sudden sympathy for the Willow-shocked Oz...
Faith mewled softly in her throat with a plaintive and oddly heartrending sound, panting over him. Xander brought his hand up, running his fingertips along her face to cup her cheek in his palm. Her eyes closing, she turned her face into his hand, moving her cheek and lips urgently against his palm.
"Sorry," he whispered. "I'm so very sorry you're trapped in there like this." Faith froze momentarily, tilting her head while looking down at him, her eyes suddenly moist almost as if she'd understood the words.
"Sorry," he whispered again as he brought the stiffened fingers of his other hand up into her diaphragm while grabbing and shoving her shoulder to the side and twisting underneath her. Faith squalled like an angry movie cougar as she rolled off of him and thumped to the parquet floor between the island and the refrigerator, looking startled. Her flailing right hand snagged his belt, almost claw like, and he went over with her, landing on his feet with a wrenching thump that drew a sharp hiss from him as his vamp kicked hip twisted. Faith shook herself, starting to rise to one knee and the fingertips of her other hand and Xander stepped and reached to grab the top edge and back of the refrigerator, torquing it forward with every remaining ounce of his strength.
He scrambled to one side, falling backwards to catch himself against a counter as the fridge toppled over to pin a half risen Faith between itself and the center island. She went down with a pitiful keening sound as it slammed into her torso. Her eyes wide and shocked, they suddenly narrowed as she twisted her head to look at him, hissing at Xander from the back of her throat with a menacing note that made his blood run cold.
"Sorry," he said again, pushing himself upright from the counter edge. His eyes widening, that voice piped up again from the back of his mind saying, 'Good going - she's not horny any longer... ' Putting a hand out in a soothing gesture, Xander murmured, "Um... good kitty?"
Spitting out snarling sounds, with a grunt of effort, Faith began to push herself, and the fridge up, trying to lever it away from her. At that moment, Xander decided that the tried and true tactic of 'regroup and rearm' applied here - his mind's eye vividly supplied him with a memory of Faith hoisting a weight bar carrying a full set and a half of weights. Way past time to cut his losses... With a final desperate look at her, he turned tail and ran, leaving her struggling beneath the appliance. He pelted out of Hideyoshi's house and down the road at a dead run, not even conscious of his throbbing hip until he fell leaning against a telephone pole several blocks away, drawing in huge, ragged gulps of breath.
He swore to himself that it was only the jarring pain there that was making his eyes begin to water. And only the shortness of breath making his chest ache.
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