Hey guys, here's the next chapter for you! A little more bonding between our boys as the story carries on in their harrowing circumstances. I had an exciting plan for this chapter, but I didn't want to stretch it out too far for too long. So enjoy this bit of development and progress, and the action will catch up next chapter. Enjoy!
Roman hated goodbyes.
He hated the doleful concept of them so much that it felt like more of a relief to skip them altogether. He could have dodged the apartment all afternoon, all evening, found a way to stay out for the entire night so he wouldn't have to watch Randy pack and see him out of the place. But he wasn't a bastard. He wasn't heartless. He was just sensitive.
He swallowed hard against the lump in his burning throat as he helped Randy load hefty taped boxes of his stuff into a rented moving truck. How fast he'd carried out his plans to leave was staggering. Moving was a bitch of a process, yet Randy had it down. He left behind furniture and kept having to assure Roman that this wasn't a true goodbye, or the end of their friendship which had reached great heights in the previous days.
It still felt true.
It felt a lot like a breakup, or when Roman had kicked his previous roommate out for sleeping with his ex-girlfriend.
The difference this time was there was no frustration to serve as a mask for the pain. He'd really miss Randy.
"That's it," Randy said, heaving down the back door of the truck with a loud rattle.
Seth and Dean lingered back, not wanting to disturb the moment.
Randy patted Roman's shoulder. Roman felt it difficult to look at him; his eyes met the frozen asphalt beneath his boots.
"Hey. You take care of yourself, okay, buddy?" Randy asked. There was kindness in his voice, warmth. "I'll see you again. Don't look so sad."
Roman blinked. His eyes were cold beneath a layer of moisture. "Yeah. I'll see you around school and stuff."
"And maybe I'll be back again someday, once you get everything sorted out."
"Yeah."
Randy took Roman in a tight squeeze. Roman hugged him back without a word. Being sad was hard. Looking weak was taking a risk.
"Catch ya, buddy."
"Later, Randy."
Randy raised his hand to Seth and Dean, then crawled into the driver's seat of the truck. With a mighty roar the vehicle came to life, and it rattled the parking lot with a grumbling engine as it carried Randy away.
Roman watched on, arms folded across his chest. It was very cold.
Dean and Seth made a slow approach. Seth rubbed Roman's back, and Dean wrapped himself into Roman's arms. Roman watched the truck on until the booming engine blended with the evening traffic.
"We need a plan," Roman said, swallowing again.
"A plan?" Seth asked.
"Yeah."
"What did you have in mind?"
Part one of the "plan" involved finally getting Dean and Seth new phones.
They headed to Walmart to purchase the devices. And the war was on in aisle four of the electronics department.
"The iPhone is the way to go," Seth said, guiding Dean by the shoulders towards the Apple products. "Good camera, variety of games and apps you can play, fast speed…"
"Yeah, but the Android has better customization options," Roman said, grinning as Seth chomped down on his bait in a flare.
"Who gives a shit about customization?" he laughed. "Telling you, Dean, iPhone is the way to go."
"I don't want either," Dean said. "Just give me a good old-fashioned flip phone. It makes calls and sends texts. I don't need apps."
"A smart phone in this day and age is a good move, Dean. It's better to be able to have updates on the world around you. Especially for someone like you."
"Who, what, doesn't care?"
"He's right," Roman said. "Well, I mean about a smart phone being a better option. Not about the iPhone being the smart choice."
"The battery life on Androids is terrible," Seth pointed out. "Not to mention how much they freeze up and crash? I can't have Dean be in trouble and unable to contact us because he chose a shitty phone."
"Apple Maps is a joke."
"Androids are more prone to malware."
"Oh, for the love of God!" Dean cried. He skipped off on his own towards the customer service counter. With a fist on the glass, displaying rows of camcorders under bright lights, he asked the service rep, "Can you please show me a smart phone that's not an Android or an iPhone?"
Roman and Seth traded bemused glances. So very Dean.
The second part of Roman's plan required Seth and Dean returning to their apartment to grab a few things.
Roman was armed with his pocketknife. He'd convinced Dean to pick one up for himself while they were at Walmart. Dean insisted he was fine without one. Roman and Seth asserted their mutual standpoint. Fortunately he didn't argue with them long. There was no sense behind not carrying one on his person, even if nothing else ever happened to him again.
The three of them knew damn well that was most likely not the case.
Seth struggled with the lock. Roman held Dean's cold hand. With a grunt, Seth shoved the door open.
The place was dark, cold. Not as cold as Roman had found it. The windows were still closed. Seth slapped at a light switch on the wall. Roman slithered in front of him, shielding him and Dean both with his brawny figure.
Stillness.
"Where's the paperwork?" Roman asked.
"My bedroom closet," Seth said. "Safety box."
Roman nodded. He half-expected to be jumped around every corner. He scoped the place out, one hand upholding his pocketknife, the other securing Dean in his grip. A familiar chill danced on his neck, and he licked his lips. Living in this sort of fear on a daily basis was harmful to the health of the mind and the body. The stress could have reached fatal levels.
He had to get them out of here.
Dean's bedroom looked normal—as "normal" as Bray Wyatt had left it, anyway. Dean released Roman to obtain the vandalized picture of his best friend and himself.
"Bastards," Dean whispered.
"Nobody in my room," Seth said. The entire space had been cleared. What a relief. "I'll get that file."
"Pack up whatever you can," Roman instructed. "Don't break your back over how heavy your luggage is, but pretend you're not coming back."
"Isn't that the plan?" Seth asked, half-smiling. It was warming amidst their crisis.
Roman lingered halfway between Dean's room and the front door, staring at the sinister message chiseled in its wooden body. Home. Did Dean know the meaning of the world? Certainly it wasn't with the Wyatts. It wasn't his place of origin, California. Until moving in with Seth, he hadn't had one at all. The streets had served as his address.
Poor Dean.
He deserved a better existence.
At least he was handling it well. With one or two setbacks, here and there.
Roman wanted to give Dean a home. Not just a house, but a home; a place he could always feel safe, a place he could always go no matter how far away he traveled in the world. Home was not a building. Home was the very heart of soundness.
He wanted to be Dean's home.
Dean was trembling as he yanked a suitcase from the top shelf of his closet, a fact he tried to camouflage with fast movement and distracting babble. "I hope you have a decent Christmas tree, Ro. We never owned one. You should see Seth's parents' tree. It's fake, because Steph said it was a fire hazard or something. But it's huge. And they always decorate it with millions of these little golden lights that flash?"
"You okay, Dean?"
"Sure. Never better." He scooped up an armful of shirts and crammed them into the suitcase without folding them.
"Dean."
"You hungry? I'm kinda hungry. I'm that weirdo who can pretty much eat whatever, whenever. Yet I never seem to gain any weight. Pretty sure if I was a chick, all the other chicks would hate me. Then again, I do work out. Does your apartment complex have a decent fitness center? I think I told you about how crappy the one is here. I need to get back into working out. It's been a while."
"Dean."
"Yes, Superman?"
Instinctively Roman's fingers rose to his neck to finger the silver pendant. "I want you to know that it's okay to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid." He stated it so matter-of-factly that if Roman were anyone else, he just might have believed the words.
"Dean—"
"Look, I've got my moments of weakness, alright. But just because he creeps me out doesn't mean I'm afraid of him." Dean crammed more clothes into his suitcase, then struggled to zip the bag closed. "It's like…riding a roller coaster. It may seem scary. It may feel scary, when you're on the ride. But you can't be too scared, because you know as well as anyone else that it'll all be over soon. You'll be back on your feet on the still ground before you know it."
"But people aren't out of their rights to be afraid of roller coasters. Just like you're not out of your right to be afraid of Bray Wyatt."
"Bray Wyatt might be the scariest roller coaster in the world. But I'm not going to be scared of him. He can scare me, but I'm not scared. There's a difference between a mood and a psyche. A temporary state of mind, and a life meant living, and worth living. That's why emotions can be real dicks sometimes."
"What about love? Isn't love an emotion?" Roman raised, trying not to sound accusatory.
Dean looked up at him. "Like I said. There's a difference between a mood and a psyche. How you feel, and who you're meant to be." Dean slowly approached Roman. Roman felt his heart pick up its pace. "Where you always want to be."
Roman almost swooped down for the kiss when Seth knocked on the open door and said, "You about ready?"
"As I'll ever be, my man," Dean said.
"Let's just get out of this place," Roman said with a sigh. How could he miss Dean so much when Dean was right there?
Because losing him was too real a possibility.
Dean had better have been careful out there, with that reckless attitude.
Roman would lose himself losing Dean.
"Man, I can't figure this thing out at all," Dean said, tapping a finger on the already-smudged screen of his new phone. "How the hell do you add contacts?"
"I don't know," Seth teased. He raised a steaming cup of coffee to his lips. "You got a Windows phone, and I don't know shit about 'em." He returned the cup to the table and wiped his lips with a napkin before replacing his attention on the paperwork he'd seized from the apartment.
"What's your lease say?" Roman asked, next to Dean, across the booth table from Seth.
"I was right. There is an opt-out clause." He squinted his eyes and drew the paper nearer to his eyes. "Should have brought my glasses, damn. They printed this text for ants."
Roman grinned. Seth would have looked mighty cute in glasses.
"Says there's a fee, of course…a fee on top of the two rent payments we have to make for 'inconveniencing' the landlord. Fuck, this is going to be costly."
"What the hell is Outlook?" Dean asked.
"It's your email account."
"I don't have an email. Says I need to set one up."
"Maybe you should," Roman said.
"I'll do it later. Skip. How do I skip this step? Skip, you asshole!"
Seth bit his lip, stifling a giggle.
"I'm guessing the place has to be spic and span before you can leave?" Roman asked. "Meaning no creepy-ass message on the door for future tenants to see."
"Right." Seth sighed, lowering the copy of his lease to the table again. "Okay, as far as I can tell, payment will be the biggest of bitches, but there's no further penalties. I'm glad I decided to check."
"Fuck this thing." Dean pushed the phone aside and reached for a jelly packet.
Wayside Cafe was fairly busy. The cold evening had pushed several patrons in for coffee and fluffy pancakes. Roman, Dean and Seth patiently waited for Naomi to deliver their meals. None of them had let her in on their situation, nor gave any hints resembling an existing problem.
"How much will it cost to replace the door?" Dean asked, licking up a glob of orange jelly.
"Dunno. We can hit up Home Depot tomorrow while Ro's at school. Get an estimate. But I don't want to delay. I want out of that place."
"And in with the new," Roman said.
"Don't you kinda feel bad for the new tenants, though?" Dean asked. "Like, what if they've just moved in, they get nice and comfortable, then suddenly the Wyatts show up under the impression we still live there and give the new guys hell?"
Roman and Seth traded glances.
"Didn't think about that," Roman said.
"Maybe I should just be straight-up honest with the landlord, y'know?" Seth asked. "Maybe he won't even wait for our fee. Maybe he'll just kick us out for being 'one with the thugs'. Then he can decide how to protect anyone who moves in there."
"Let's not focus on it right now," Roman said, eyes lifting towards a very delightful sight. "Food's here."
Naomi set their plates down on the table and didn't fail to touch Seth's arm, batting her long eyelashes, before stalking off. Maybe it was just in her personality to be so flirtatious.
They ate in peace. Peace meant no talk of the Wyatts or their predicament. Which meant no talk at all.
The peace lasted until Seth's new phone buzzed in his pocket.
"Please be what I was waiting for—oh, thank God, yes," he spoke aloud to himself.
"What's up?" Roman asked.
"I subscribed to updates on that news article I sent you earlier."
"The one about the shooting?"
"Yep. Moment we've all been waiting for."
Dean performed a drumroll on the table until Seth stared up at him with "seriously?" eyes. His hands went rigid in their rhythm, and he lowered them to his lap, sheepish. Roman chuckled and put an arm around Dean.
Seth scanned each word of whatever update he'd received. His demeanor hardly changed. He looked frozen in time.
"What?" Roman felt he had to ask at last.
"Well, the victims' names were released."
"And?"
He made eye contact with both his friends. "Two names I don't recognize, those guys were arrested for involvement. Ace is the one who died."
"The guy I called?" Dean asked, color draining from his face. Fuck, that had been so against the plan.
"Yep. Antonio 'Ace' Cortez. Age twenty-four."
"Did they say who got shot?" Roman queried.
"Yeah," Seth said. "Luke Harper."
Sorry if that one was a bit slow and dull, guys. I'm hoping you enjoyed the interactions between the guys, at the very least. :) And I hope the ending left you satisfied after the mystery of the last chapter! Stay tuned for the result of that piece of news... You guys are awesome!
Reviews = love!