#closed quarters

Shawn shakes his head. Leaning around Kent to frown at Shawn, Sol sees that his eyes are glassy and he’s sweating. “I dunno, man, I didn’t feel half this bad at the hospital,” he croaks. His voice is mostly air.

“Well you look like shit now,” Sol says, and glances up at Kent. “Think they’ll let us go back if we tell ‘em he’s dying?”

Shawn pales, and Kent shoots Sol a glare. “Hey, come on, don’t even joke about that,” he snaps, and then turns to wipe sweat off Shawn’s forehead with his sleeve, fussing like a mother hen. “You’re gonna be alright, okay? We’ll get you checked out as soon as we get there. I’m sure they won’t push you if you aren’t up to— “

Shawn cuts off with a harsh cough that ends in a choking sound, and Kent pulls his hand away from his forehead, hovering with his hand near Shawn’s face like he isn’t sure what to do with it. Shawn claps both of his own hands over his mouth and bends double, squeezing his eyes shut. Then he freezes, and his eyes fly wide.

Trembling, Shawn lowers his hands. A string of blood-clotted saliva stretches between his lip and his fingers until it reaches its limit and breaks. Phlegm flecked thickly with red drips down over his chin.

Dark eyes very wide, Shawn looks down at his hands and then up at Kent. “I-I— “ His eyes are glassy with tears, now. “I’m okay,” he says in a clotted, bubbly voice.

All the air rushes out of Sol’s lungs.

“We’ve gotta stop this fucking car,” Sol says, but without any air his words are lost under the roar of the engine. Kent is already tugging the glass door in the divider back open with badly shaking hands.

“Turn the car around!” Kent shouts at the driver, his voice shrill with panic. “We’ve gotta go back to the hospital!”

“Are you out of your mind?” Sol yells. “Stop the fucking car!”

Kent rounds on him. “What’s wrong with you? Shawn needs a doctor!”

Sol doesn’t bother responding to that, hammering on the glass divider. “Hey! Are you listening? Pull over!”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Shawn press his bloody hands over his ears. “You’re being too loud,” he mumbles in a shaky voice.

Finally turning the radio down, the driver frowns at Kent over his shoulder for a second, then turns back to keep his eyes on the road. “What the hell’s going on back there?” he half-shouts. Shawn curls in on himself, shaking his head.

“Too loud,” he mutters. “Shut up!”

Kent yells “Turn around!” at the same moment that Sol howls “Pull the fuck over!” and the driver raises a hand to cut them off.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kane press his bloody hands over his ears. “You’re being too loud,” he mumbled in a shaky voice.

“Okay, slow the hell down!” he shouts over both of them. “And one of you tell me what the hell’s wrong with— “

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Shawn’s hand darts forward before anyone can make a move to stop him, wraps around the driver’s face, and slams his head back against the glass divider.

There’s a moment when everybody freezes, and then Officer Santos screams “shit!” and dives for the steering wheel just a second too late.

The car lurches up onto two wheels as she tries to get it around the next turn, and Sol’s head crashes into the window with enough forces that he loses a few seconds. He comes to unable to tell which way is up and with an awful screeching sound in the air loud enough to drown out anything except the panicked roaring of blood in his ears.

The car is airborne for either five seconds or several eternities. Sol can’t see anything because of the way his hair is floating weightlessly around his face.

Then gravity comes back as suddenly as if somebody has flipped a switch, and Sol’s head snaps back on his neck, sending pain rocketing all the way down his spine. The whole universe is upside down and his seatbelt is pressing into his chest and throat.

The radio is pounding out Kesha at a much lower volume than it was before. He guesses the driver one that one, then.

Suddenly unable to breathe, Sol scrambles for his seatbelt clasp, and dumps himself roughly onto the roof of the car when it comes undone more easily than he expected.

Sol doesn’t know how many times the car rolled, but it tore off the passenger side door, and while Kent, whose seatbelt seems to have already come undone, is sprawled across the roof of the car with his head resting against the glass divider and his eyes closed, Shawn is nowhere to be seen.

The divider is starred with a billion tiny cracks, and all Sol can see for sure is that the airbags are deployed and there is a lot of blood everywhere.

Shaking his head like a cat after a long fall, he grabs Kent by the shirt collar and crawls out through Shawn’s door, dragging Kent’s lanky body behind him. A tiny whine forces its way out of his throat when he puts weight on his wrist. He isn’t sure what yet, but something is definitely on fire.

Head spinning, Sol pulls Kent away from the car, across the asphalt, and looks around. The car has overturned in an almost empty parking lot, leaving a trail of window glass behind it. Squinting to force his eyes to focus, Sol sees something shiny that might be the torn-off car door closer to the street, and a dark lump, much closer to the car, that might be a body.

Poised to run, Sol stares at the lump, waiting for it to move.

It doesn’t.

Releasing a breath he didn’t know he was holding, Sol frowns down at Kent, who is also not moving, and pulls the blonde’s head into his lap. There is a new cut on his cheekbone from where it must have struck the divider, but Sol is fairly sure he’s breathing. Okay.

Sol presses the heels of his hands over his eyes and repeats the words don’t freak out in his head several times, as his breath picks up and his heart starts to hammer in his ears, which is why it comes as such a surprise when something large and heavy tackles him from the left, knocking Kent roughly out of the way and slamming Sol down against the pavement.

His eyes flying open, Sol stares at Shawn. Sol knows Shawn exactly well enough to know he played rugby in college and is still built like a linebacker. His big hands are wrapped around Sol’s wrists, drawing a gasp when he squeezes at the reset bones, and he plants his knees on either side of Sol’s waist.

Panting, Shawn stared down at him, his right eye and lips bloody. As Sol watches a drop of blood trembles at the corner of his eye before falling to splash against Sol’s cheek.

For a second, confusion flickers in Shawn’s eyes. Then he lunges, teeth aimed at Sol’s face.

Embarrassingly, it’s actually the gunshot that startles Sol into crying out, rather than the prospect of having his face ripped off.

Shawn’s weight lurches to the left, off of him, and he turns his head to see Officer Santos, standing beside the wreck, her gun in her hand and the driver sprawled unconscious at her feet.

Tears and fire in her eyes, she steps over the driver and fires again. Shawn’s body jolts on the asphalt next to Sol, and Sol has to throw an arm up to avoid a spray of blood across his face.

Officer Santos fires again. Squeezing his eyes shut, Sol turns away from the sight of what the shots are doing to what is left of Shawn’s face.

When the gun has been silent for thirty seconds, he starts to push himself into a sitting position with his good arm.

“Don’t you move.”

Sol freezes, forcing his eyes open. The gun is trained on the center of his chest, and although there are tears streaming down the Officer’s cheeks, her hands are steady.

“I want you to tell me exactly what the hell is going on,” she says in a low, dangerous voice.

Sol stared at her, willing his brain to start working again.

“You knew there was something wrong with him before he did a damn thing,” she says, and when he doesn’t answer, she fires again, and the bullet passes so close he can feel its heat against his cheek. “Start talking!”

His heart pounding in his ears, Sol stares at her, and sees the smoke rising from the engine behind her just in time to throw his arm over his face.