#dislocated wrist

Continued directly from this; that one was all Setup, this one is all Action.

TW for: minor character death, blood/gore, mild body horror (only on the level of, like, a zombie movie), Eye Horror, very oblique references to child abuse (just in case). Also, overuse of epithets, and I swear to got this will be the last section where they don’t know each other’s names.

“Please,” the old man says, and blood sprays from his lips as he speaks and splatters onto Sol’s shirt. “Please. You’ve got to help me.”

The old man’s skin is the dull white of a body that’s spent a week underwater. His eyes are more bloodshot that Sol’s ever seen, yellow and red everywhere they should be white. Sol thinks, unconsciously, of his father’s first few attempts at taxidermy, before he’d really gotten it right; after a week, if his father hadn’t gotten all the wet parts out, they would start to smell the way this moving breathing man smells now.

Sol’s ears are ringing so loud that he almost can’t understand what the old man is saying. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

The old man’s hand tightens on his arm, and his grip is so much stronger than it should be— 

Out of nowhere, an arm in a white sleeve passes in front of Sol’s face and a pale hand with long thin fingers wraps around the old man’s wrist, clearly being careful not to touch the man’s worm-eaten hand.

“Sir,” the blonde boy from the corner table says in a steady, soothing voice, “We’re going to get you the help you need, but we can’t do anything unless you let go. Okay?”

The blonde pushes gently on the old man’s arm, but if anything, the hand on Sol’s bicep gets a little tighter.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Sol croaks. His mouth feels very dry.

“Be quiet and don’t make any sudden movements,” the blonde says, his voice quiet but still smooth and soothing. Sol darts a glance at him and sees a drop of sweat make its way down the side of the blonde’s face. The blonde gives Sol a strained smile.

The old man stares at the blonde’s hand on his wrist. His own hand still hasn’t loosened on Sol’s bicep. Sol is beginning to lose feeling in his fingers.

“Not you,” the old man says in such a low voice that Sol isn’t sure he’s heard right. The old man’s black and bloodshot eyes widen, and as Sol watches a blood vessel pops in the left one, filling it up with red. Sol gags and blinks his own eye shut in sympathy.

“Jesus,” Sol mutters, and says to the blonde without looking away, “Go get Proux.”

The old man is shaking again. Sol can feel the tremors all the way up into his shoulders, and while he can’t be a hundred percent sure he thinks the old man might be making a high pitched whine low in his throat that scrapes against Sol’s back teeth like nails on a chalkboard. 

The blonde, meanwhile, is looking at Sol like he’s out of his mind. “What? No.”

The old man’s hand tightens even more, how is it doing that, and Sol gives a vague grunt of pain and readjusts his footing. “Fuck off, man!”

A drop of blood wells up in the corner of the old man’s left eye. Sol feels bile rising in his throat but can’t look away.

Like he’s speaking to a particularly dull child, the blonde says shakily, “I can’t just leave you here with— “

“I said,” the old man repeats in a whisper that is suddenly a shout, “NOT—” He raises the hand that is not wrapped around Sol’s arm. “–YOU.”

The old man’s arm connects with the blonde’s collarbone with a sharp crack, and the boy stumbles back, blue eyes flying wide, and goes to his knees, mouth open but no sound finding its way out.

Bowing his head, the old man stands, shoving Sol a few steps backward. Sol’s ass connects with the glass-top table behind him and he is suddenly very aware that there is no more space to back up.

“You’ve got to help me,” the man says again, but with a great deal less conviction than before. He sounds kind of— confused.

Sol swallows hard. There has to be a right thing to say, something that will make this not be happening. There has to be. What is it?

“Sir,” Sol says, wincing. He can almost feel his arm bruising through the wool of his jacket. “What do you want?”

The old man looks at Sol. His left eye is nothing but a mess of blood, now.

There’s a moment of airless silence. Sol wonders if the blonde has had the presence of mind to yell for help and he just can’t hear it.

Then the old man leaps for his throat.

“Jesus shit!” Sol throws his arm up in front of his face, and the old man’s teeth sink into the wool instead of his skin. Sol topples backwards into the table, feeling the glass connect with the back of his head and shatter under him, against his arm and shoulders. Someone is screaming, and he doesn’t realize it’s him until after he’s hit the floor in a pile of linen and broken glass.

The old man is on top of him, shaking his head back and forth like a dog worrying a bone, his dull teeth unable to pierce the sleeve of Sol’s blazer. His hood flipped back when he lunged and Sol can see more of his worm-eaten, skeletal frame and Jesus, he looks like he’s been dead a month— 

The old man’s free hand clamps down on Sol’s wrist and squeezes. Almost immediately there’s a sharp pop and Sol’s vision goes entirely dark for a second.

He’d screamed again, except he can’t breathe.

Afterward Sol isn’t sure that he ever actually lost consciousness but either way he’s disoriented enough that his only thought when he hears a voice that is unmistakably Proux’s squawk something he doesn’t understand is Jesus Christ what could that fucker want now?

There’s a sudden pain against the side of his face, sharp enough to bring him most of the way back to reality. He’s on the floor surrounded by broken glass. 

The maitre d’, who is positively shrieking, is tugging at the old man’s shoulder, and the old man, still intent on tearing Sol’s sleeve, is ignoring him.

Proux, who, Sol realizes in a dizzily detached way, is sobbing, fumbles around on the floor beside him, comes up with a thick water glass, and smashes it over the old man’s head.

Glass shards spray Sol in the face, several tiny needles of pain, and so he barely sees the old man rock once with the blow and then, with no change in expression, turn and leap full force for Proux’s face.

Sol forces in a lungful of air and scrambles to get up onto his hands and knees, shredding his palms on the glass shards. Proux is screaming and he can’t tell where anyone else is and he can’t see right and there is a strange, fuzzy pounding in his ears, but he is able to give the old man one weak shove before he sees the old man take Proux’s trachea between his teeth and tear.

Proux’s scream cuts off with a gurgle and the old man turns to face Sol again, his one eye wide and blank, and the world goes silent again.

The old man is gathering to spring when someone grabs Sol by the shirt collar and yanks him to his feet.

Someone is yelling at him in a language he doesn’t know, but Proux’s eyes are wide and glassy with tears, and for a second before they go empty and the desperate airless rise and fall of his chest stops, Proux’s hand twitches in Sol’s direction and his lips move and Sol’s single dizzy thought as he’s dragged backwards toward the kitchen is I didn’t want this not this I never— 

“Will you move your fucking feet?” the blonde boy is shouting at him.

Sol hears another voice he recognizes but can’t identify make a desperate squawk and then he’s half-thrown against the wall and the door slams shut behind him. Sol sinks down against the wall, feeling fried.

Shawn is standing in the kitchen, and his spotless uniform suddenly looks very strange to Sol. “What the fuck is going on out there?” he half-shouts.

    “I don’t know,” the blonde boy says, his voice steady. He’s standing kind of weirdly, curled in around his chest, and one of his hands hovers unsteadily around his shirt collar as though determined to protect it. “Is there anyone else here?”

“Just you guys and Proux as far as I— “

“Proux’s dead,” Sol says, though his voice comes out so slurred he doesn’t know if Shawn will understand him. His head feels funny. “He’s dead. Proux’s dead.”

Shawn stares at him, and then to Sol’s dull surprise, he snorts, though he sounds kind of desperate. “No he’s not,” he says. He looks at the blonde boy for confirmation, and the blonde looked at the floor for a second before getting carefully to his knees in front of Sol. “He’s not!”

The blonde ignores him and pushes Sol’s hair away from the side of his face, then winces. “I thought so. You’ve got a concussion, man.” Sol feels the boy’s fingers ghost over his ear, and they come away bloody. He looks up at Shawn. “Have you called the police?”

“What? Y-yeah, I did—but—”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Sol yells, and ignores the way the ringing in his ears gets so much louder afterward. “He’s dead! Proux’s dead! Don’t you get—“

 He doesn’t get to finish, though, because that’s when the kitchen door explodes.

The blonde, kneeling in front of it, puts an arm up to shield his face from the splinters but isn’t quite fast enough to avoid a chunk of wood the size of Sol’s fist that strikes his temple like a bullet and knocks him over just fast enough that the old man travels right over his head and slams into Shawn at chest height, sending him down to the tile of the kitchen floor in a tangle of limbs.

The old man tears at Shawn’s shoulder with his teeth and Shawn makes a sound Sol doesn’t have a word for.

Sol isn’t sure how he’s gotten to his feet exactly but once he’s there he takes hold of the hood of the old man’s coat and pulls as hard as he can.

The old man finally seems to notice and turn to look at Sol at roughly the same time the hood tears and Sol tumbles back against the wall. His vision blurs out for a second that he does not have.

Sol catches a flash of dull teeth and thinks of that look on his father’s face and waits for the sick wet sound of the old man tearing into him.

There is a sharp clang instead.

Sol waits for his vision to clear.

The blonde boy is standing over him with a frying pan in his hand and so much blood on his shirt it’s hard to tell it was ever white. The old man, the side of his skull caved in like an overripe fruit, sags to the floor as if in slow motion.

Panting, the blonde turns to look at Sol, blood running down the side of his face from the cut in his temple. He’s shaking.

“Do you think,” he wheezes; closes his eyes, sways for a second, opens his eyes again. “D’you think that covers the cost of the coffee?”

 Sol stares at him, his ears buzzing.

“Fuck you,” he slurs.

The blonde takes a stumbling step toward Shawn. 

Somebody swears loudly from the front room and the blond freezes like a popsicle and raises the pan again, eyes wide.

Then the voice clears its throat and shouts, “This is the police! If there’s anyone back there, stay right where you are! We’re coming to get you!”