Again, this one goes out to EriKaBalDeL. I had planned some of this already, but you managed to persuade me to add some Buzz eyes for next chapter.
Fever Pitch.
Buzz turned and ran into the room, worried that his charges were escaping. What he saw froze him in place. Officer Daniel Stevens was holding a pillow over Officer Truman's face.
The Pulse Oximeter that was monitoring Truman's heart rate and blood oxygen level was going berserk.
Buzz broke from his frozen state and ran forwards, grabbing Stevens shoulder and wrenching him backwards away from the criminal.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Buzz snarled. The anger was so out of character, that Stevens just stared at him in shock. They both ignored the nurses bustling around, trying to save the suffocating man.
"I asked you what the hell you were doing!" Buzz shook him, and Stevens blinked.
"That bastard... He... he raped Shawn!" Buzz's grip loosened in distress.
"What?" Buzz took half a step back. "What are you talking about?"
"He raped him! He was... he was... he did that to Shawn!"
"Who told you that?"Buzz asked, but his voice sounded distant to himself. Stevens looked at the floor and then shot a venom filled glare at Truman. The man had told him to his face, probably gloated about it. Stevens was only a young officer, and coming from Buzz, that was saying something. He'd only graduated from the academy a few months ago, and he worshipped Shawn.
"This is none of your business. Maybe he did that to... to Shawn, maybe he didn't. But you are not to speak of it. And as of this moment, you are taken off guard duty." Buzz said sternly. Stevens had the good sense to look ashamed of his actions. "You are a police officer. He is the criminal. Whatever he says, you can't let it get to you. You're supposed to be the good guy. You can't sink to their level."
"They were supposed to be good guys too. Office Randolf trained me to shoot."
And there it is. The kid's feeling betrayed. McNabb thought. We all are, but he had the betrayal shoved into his face.
"They're going to get what they deserve. You know what happens to cops in prison." Buzz assured. He guided Stevens out the door and radioed the Chief to fill her in on what had happened. She told him she'd send Officer Allan over immediately to cover Stevens shift.
He went back into the room when he was done.
"Is he going to be alright?" Buzz asked, unsure if he wanted Truman to be okay or not.
"Yes." One nurse said shortly, glaring at Buzz.
"Good." There was no use in this ruining a good cop's career. There were extenuating circumstances, and Stevens was a good kid, a good officer.
Shawn was making strange noises. Lassiter woke up slowly, wondering at the sounds on the edge of his consciousness.
"Spencer?"
Shawn muttered and writhed a little on the bed.
"Shawn?" He called louder, and Shawn awoke with a start, giving a pained mew as the motion pulled at his back. "You okay?" He asked, as Shawn slowly caught his breath.
"I don't like hospitals." He muttered.
They were wary of each other. The two of them had been flung into this friendship in the deep end and neither was wearing water wings. They had no idea what they were doing, where they stood. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, Lassiter asked the question that had been bothering, while the drugs still had Shawn's mouth running without censors.
"Shawn? Why did you come to me?"
"Huh?"
"Four o'clock in the morning. You were drunk, and hurting. Why did you show up at my door? Why not Gus or Henry? Hell, even Jules!"
There was a long pause. The only sound was the beep of the heart monitor.
Lassiter wondered if Shawn had fallen back to sleep.
"I didn't want to run away."
"What?"
"It's what I do. When things get bad, I get away. I think this is the longest I've stayed in one place, and one job, since I was a kid. I miss the freedom." Lassiter struggled to find something to say, but before he could, Shawn was talking again.
"Like pineapples and rainbows." Shawn smiled. "But I don't miss everything. Do you know the sorts of things that happen to a twenty year old travelling across the country alone?"
Lassiter did.
He didn't want to think about those things in the context of Shawn.
"But when things go south, all I can think is GET OUT! But this time... do you know how happy I've been here? How hard I've worked for this? For the first time in a long time, I am actually happy, and I don't want to run away from that. Dad... he would yell at me, and Gus... he'd let me. He always does. I think he prefers it when I run. I figured if anyone would stop me, it would be you. Especially if I told you the truth. You've been looking for an excuse to arrest me forever. That would make me stay. And I really needed to tell someone." He laughed, but it sounded broken.
Lassiter had no idea how to respond. He just listened. Shawn kept talking in a long disjointed monologue, leaping from thought to thought in a long rambling stream of consciousness.
He spoke about the year he spent hitch-hiking after his beloved bike died, and he couldn't afford repairs. The things he did to raise the money to fix it. The trouble he got into with his drivers.
He told Lassiter about the time he'd woken up naked, in Mexico, missing two days. He still had no idea how he'd gotten there.
He listed his many jobs and spoke of various injuries.
He listed girlfriends he'd had, and lost.
He spoke about the first time he'd tried to run away. His first serious escape attempt. He didn't count the attempts to join the circus, or with his Uncle Jack. Those were all running to somewhere. Not away. The first time he ran away, seriously, was when Henry hit him. Lassiter got righteously angry and sat straight up in his bed, gasping as he jarred his ribs.
"It wasn't his fault." Shawn assured him, hastily. He noted the rage through the haze of drugs.
He went on to explain about the legendary fights Henry and Maddie had. And how, this time, Maddie had stormed out. She'd gone on a business trip. Shawn had gone to Gus's. And Henry? Henry had gone to the Scotch bottle.
But Gus's Aunt had died and the Gustors had had to go be with their family. Shawn was sent back.
He had been angry and upset and nervous.
"I was being more obnoxious than usual."
And Henry had been furious. They gotten into a shouting match, culminating in Shawn telling his father that he and his mother would be better off without Henry. It had won him a vicious back-hand to the face. He fallen and hit his head on the side table.
Henry's anger had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. He'd tried to take Shawn to the hospital, but the boy had packed a bag and left, before Henry's drunken mind could comprehend it.
He'd run.
Shawn spent the night in a doorway, shivering. And the next. The day after that, he was picked up by Henry's cop buddies. There was no investigation.
It was the first time Henry had hit Shawn. And the last.
It was the first time Shawn ran.
It wasn't the last.
I hope you liked it. Yeah, I know I was mean to Henry again. But I just can't seem to help it. And I did make the hitting a drunken mistake. This is actually up quicker than I thought. I guess being stuck in traffic for four hours on the M25 gave me a lot of time to plan this chapter. Working on the next one now.
If you got 2 update things, it's cos I made a mistake, picked up on by the reader this was dedicated to. So, I fixed it for her.
And another typo fixed courtesy of AchillesMonkey. Thank you!
