Bless him, Deshawn was really good at cooking up these fake IDs.
“Thanks,” Rooster said, slipped the card back in his wallet and limped back out to the truck to collect Red. He never liked for her to interact with front desk people: the red hair was too memorable. If goons in riot gear kicked in the door tonight, he didn’t want it to be because the receptionist had ratted them out.
When he got back to the truck – parked away from the cameras, of course – he could see through the passenger window that Red had kicked off her boots, reclined her seat all the way back, and lay with her socked feet propped up on the dash, eyes shut, hands folded over her stomach. She looked like Sleeping Beauty. If Sleeping Beauty had a hole in her left sock big enough for her whole toe to peek through. Poor tired kid.
He rapped softly on the glass and she opened her eyes slow, blinking a minute, fighting the exhaustion of her earlier display.
“Got us a room,” he said.
She gave him a tired smile and raised the seat, unlocked the doors for him.
Another night, he would have carried her. But tonight, their bags were almost too much for him. He told her to go first up the staircase that ran along the outside of the building. Partly so he could keep an eye out, but also so she couldn’t see the way sweat popped out on his brow and he had to grit his teeth against the pain. It never really went away, even when Red was at her strongest and freshest, her hands hitting his skin like God’s own heating pads. But her power could push it back, drive it out of his nerves and into his bones where it lay dormant, buzzing quietly to itself, waiting until it found the chance to slip back to the surface and cripple him again. They tried to keep on top of it, but sometimes, like tonight, he fought it alone, playing the martyr, he guessed, until it came roaring back and got out of control.
On the second to last step, his left leg buckled, and he caught himself hard against the railing, one of the duffel bags thumping to the ground. The pain was so fierce he could feel it in his teeth, and his muscles had gone watery weak.
Red turned around, worry notching her brows, hands already reaching out.
“Nah,” he huffed, and knew his smile was more of a grimace. It hurt so fucking bad. “Just tripped.”
“Liar,” she said, and made it sound like an endearment.
Rooster bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, bent at the waist, and snagged the fallen duffel. Almost there, almost there, almost there. His mantra for the last five years. Almost to the truck, almost to the room, almost to the next town. Almost done running.
When he fumbled the key card with shaking fingers, Red picked it up and unlocked the door to their room. From behind, he watched her shoulders relax as they stepped into the room and he managed to elbow the door shut behind them. Safe for now, away from eyes. She felt all those almosts, too.
Rooster secured the safety bar, and let their bags drop to the peach carpet. For a moment there, on that last step, he’d thought he might go down in the stairwell and not make it this far. But he had, and a standard double room with vertical blinds, an Ikea TV cabinet, and awful floral bedspreads had never looked so wonderful.
Red started fussing with the bedspreads right away, folding them down and peeling back the blankets. She’d watched a 60 Minutes special about the microscopic dangers found in hotel rooms, and the black light demonstration had left an impression on her, needless to say. “Alright, come lie down,” she said. “And we’ll get you fixed up.” When she smiled at him over her shoulder, he saw the dark circles under her eyes.
He shook his head. “I’m fine. Watch some TV or something. Rest. I’m gonna take a shower.”
She’d let him deflect her up ‘til this point, but had now had enough of the game. She turned around fully to face him, fists settling on her hips. “Rooster.”
“Red,” he shot back. It took every last scrap of self-composure he possessed not to wince as he crouched down and dug a mostly clean shirt and sweats from the bag at his feet. “I wanna clean up first.”
When he stood – with another monumental effort, and an embarrassing grab for the edge of the nearest bed – he found her glaring at him. It was about as threatening as being glared at by a Disney character, but voicing that might get his hair singed.
“You’re hurting,” she accused.
“Five minutes to wash the stink off me, yeah?” And five minutes for her to lie still and recover a little, as best she could.
She held his gaze a long moment, clearly unhappy, then jerked a single nod and sat down on one of the beds. “But if I hear you fall down,” she said, reaching for the remote.
“You’ll set me on fire?”
She heaved a dramatic, put-upon sigh, and Rooster managed to smile through the pain.
When he was shut inside the bathroom, he sagged back against the door a moment, letting the cheap wood hold his weight. Pretending he didn’t hurt too badly was exhausting, and now, away from her wounded, woodland creature eyes, he felt the last of his energy give out.
His strength bled out from the top down, and the shakes came rushing in to fill the gap. His hands shook, but so did the big muscles in his legs, and arms, and chest. His breath hitched in his lungs and his eyelashes fluttered. His teeth chattered, and his thoughts flickered, on and off, an old radio station at the county line.
Five years ago – almost six, now – he’d lived with the agony of his screaming nerves day to day, moment to moment, the only relief the few hours he managed to find in the bottom of a bottle. Constant pain was the sort of awfulness the human body could adapt to.
But after Red, after she’d been able to turn the dial down and take the pain from a roar to a faint whisper, managing it during the breakthroughs rendered him helpless.
He estimated he had about ten minutes before he was reduced to the fetal position, so he turned on the shower, cranked the knob to hot, and stripped with clumsy movements.
He didn’t intentionally seek out his reflection in the mirror above the sink, but the scars grabbed his attention, the way they always did. In the last five years, he’d managed to regain the muscle he’d lost after his discharge and then some. Lowered pain levels meant he could run, and lift, and push his body in a way he hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to again. His shoulders and arms and chest looked huge in the dinky hotel bathroom, shadows defining the sharp cuts of muscle, veins standing out in his wrists and forearms.
But Red hadn’t been able to erase the scars, all the pink patches and craters down the left side of his body that marked the places where shrapnel had carved away little slivers and chunks. The muscle tone in his left leg looked off, his body compensating for the places where tissue had simply been lost, unable to be replaced.
He was still square-jawed, and tanned, hair still wheat-colored where it fell nearly to his chin. But he wasn’t sure anyone from his old life would have recognized him. He looked like a fugitive, and maybe that’s what he was.
Slowly, gripping the handrail mounted to the tile, Rooster stepped over the lip of the tub and into the shower, hissing as the hot water hit his oversensitive skin like needles. The pervasiveness of the pain never ceased to amaze him, the way it could make every inch of his body ache and throb. He shut his eyes and bowed his head, breathing slow and uneven as the heat slowly began to soak into him, the jets easing some of the tension in the back of his neck, the steam loosening his lungs.
He was weak as a newborn foal when he finally shut the water off. Almost there, he thought, toweling clumsily. Almost there. He tripped putting on his sweats and nearly bashed his head on the counter. Almost there. Shirt, socks, token scrub at his wet hair with the towel.