Author's Note: I'm not a doctor in any sense of the word. I don't work in any medical field. So, please accept my apologies in advance if I end up with some inaccuracies. Thanks for reading!!
***
Vince's truck stayed right behind Arthur's car when they were on the road.
Jake's red car was behind Vince's truck.
So alarming!!
Arthur nearly lost his cool again, but he convinced himself that he was safe and everything was going to be fine. He had to do that, otherwise he'd accidentally drive off the road.
When they were finally at Vince's house, Arthur drove onto the yard and parked the car. As he was told, he didn't unlock the doors. He stayed right where he was. There was the rural equivalent of a single street lamp in the yard. It kept the pitch blackness out of everyone's eyes. Arthur watched Vince's truck roll up beside his car. He heard the engine stop and the passenger-side door open and close. Vince quickly walked around just as Jake's red car's lights glared behind them all. Jake was officially in Vince's yard. He was trespassing.
Arthur put his palm over his heart and tried to comb his breath out of its tangled state.
He saw Vince's shady figure turn as stiff and hateful as a pissed off cat. Then, to Arthur's horror, he saw Jake stalking up towards their vehicles.
Vince ran up to him, and the first thing he did wasn't to say something like, "Get the fuck off my property!!" Nope. The first thing he did was put an arm around Jake's god damn throat and force him down to the ground. There was some struggling and grunting, along with shouting that Arthur couldn't quite make out. He was pretty sure there were some punches and kicks sprinkled into their frantic rolling around.
All the activity suddenly stopped.
A rigid moment.
Vince got up and literally kicked Jake, making him roll over. Then Jake pushed himself up to his feet and limped on over to his car.
And Jake just ... drove off.
Arthur felt as if his entire being had been scraped out. Ice cream angrily dug out of a carton with a spoon. He watched Vince go up to the car. He wasn't limping at all. He gently knocked his fingers on the window. Arthur rolled it down. "Are you okay?"
Vince nodded. His hair was a mess. "I got a few bruises on my chest and belly, but I'm okay. That guy can fight, but not like me. I'm surprised he didn't bring a weapon."
"Maybe it really was a stupid coincidence," Arthur said, "and he didn't expect to see me back there. He probably thought he could just grab me the moment I was somewhere private."
"What a dumbass," Vince hissed out. "Okay, come on in. You're staying the night."
Arthur didn't know what to say to that.
***
"We're going to the basement," Vince said as he locked the front door. There was a keypad for a security system near that door. He pushed a few buttons that made beeping sounds.
Arthur put his hands on his hips and asked, "Why?"
"Well," Vince said as he made a beckoning gesture, "I have a secret bomb shelter. If Mr. Asshole decides to come back with friends, at least you'll be where he can't find you."
Arthur blinked twice. Then he followed Vince off to the entrance door that led to the basement. "Where in the absolute fuck did you hide a bomb shelter? There aren't any other doors in the basement."
Vince shrugged and sucked his cheeks in a bit. Then he made a wet noise in his mouth. "Think about it, Dummy. Why would you be allowed to see a secret door?"
Thinking he needed to see this to believe it, Arthur went downstairs with Vince to the basement, where the personal gym was. Then Vince went to a wall that looked fairly normal.
And he moved the wall like a sliding door.
Arthur hadn't even noticed the crack.
Behind the wall, there was a thick, metallic door with a tiny window, a handle, and a rotating crank that reminded Arthur of a centuries-old ship's wheel.
Vince opened the door. It made heavy creaks. Then Vince very politely asked Arthur to go in as if this was completely normal.
It was basically a second house, but underground. Two plain bedrooms. Two super clean bathrooms. A living room with a huge gun safe in the corner. An office with a PC and file cabinets. A library of books. A kitchen that might have never been used. A small dining area that looked like it was cut out of a magazine. A huge storage room full of medical supplies. A second storage room full of water in bottles and jugs. A third storage room full of all kinds of non-perishable foods and freeze-dried meals, including some military MRE packages.
These were all the things Arthur saw that he could basically understand. There were a few other rooms full of things he didn't quite know what to think of. Oxygen tanks. Gas masks. Weird tools and machines. Lots of stuff.
"Pick a room," Vince told him. "You can sleep in it. I'll go upstairs and make sure the whole house is secure."
Arthur tried to make himself comfortable inside the smaller bedroom. He took off his shoes and sat on the bed.
But he couldn't figure out how to make his hands stop shaking.
He rested on his side and tugged his knees up close to his chin.
His belly felt sour and cruel. His face was nearly feverish.
When a knock sounded, Arthur jolted back up to a sitting position. "Hey," Vince's voice said from outside, "are you okay?"
Arthur's voice sounded like his balls had only dropped a few minutes ago. "Uh ... uh, yeah?"
"Yeah, no. You're not okay. Mind if I come in?"
After a chunky gulp of stress, Arthur said that was fine.
Vince entered the room with a gloomy frown on his normally charming face. He closed the door behind him. "Do you want some cake? I got all kinds of stuff for baking a cake."
Arthur's fingers clawed as he put his hands on his thighs. "Sure, that's ... that's cool."
Vince wasn't wearing any shoes. His white socks pressed into the carpet as he moved in. "You really don't look so good."
With an unusual vigor, Arthur shook his head back and forth. "I'm good! It's all good!"
Vince took a spot on the bed, on Arthur's left. His weight made the mattress grouse and grumble much more than Arthur's weight had done. "I'll bring the ingredients and cake mixes down here, and you can help me bake it if you want." His closed fingers lightly tapped Arthur's shoulder. "What kind do you want?" We can do chocolate, vanilla, lemon, angel food, even rainbow sprinkle crap."
Quite randomly, Arthur chose chocolate. Normally, Arthur would've made a joke about dirtying up such a nice, clean kitchen, but he wasn't in the mood. As he mindlessly performed each task given, his brain was swamped with negative thoughts.
He'd ran away, just as before. He didn't face Jake. He just ran away.
Like a scared little bitch.
"Hey, you can stop mixing that."
Vince.
Arthur looked down at the bowl of batter he'd been mixing with a spoon. Vince had an electric mixer, but he hated cleaning it. "Oh," Arthur said with no emotion. "Okay." He slid the bowl across the counter, towards Vince. "Here you go." While Vince poured and scraped the batter into the cake pan, Arthur sat down on a stool and looked down at the shiny tiled floor.
Soon, he heard the oven's door being opened, the pan being placed on the rack, and then the door shutting.
"Hey, you need some water?"
A stupid, weak little bitch.
"Arthur?"
Arthur could hear Jake's screaming, and he actually felt his arm ram into a wall right after being shoved.
"Hey!!"
Snap, snap, snap!!
Vince's hand was before Arthur's eyes, rough and insistent. He'd snapped his fingers. Arthur blinked at them and lazily said, "Oh, what's up?"
"You're totally out of it."
"No," Arthur slowly let himself off the stool. When his socks slid on the tiles, and he fell down, Vince caught him.
"Woah! Be careful, Man!"
For some reason, that was the breaking point. That was when tears escaped and Arthur screamed into his palms.
Vince walked him to the living room. On the way, Arthur sobbed out angry and shameful things.
"I can't do anything! What kind of man am I?! I couldn't fight back! I just ran off like I always do!"
Vince sat him down on a couch. "Calm down!" He gripped Arthur's shoulders like he thought Arthur would keel over. "Why do you need to hate yourself? That's not healthy." His fingers pressed down a little bit more. Arthur thought he wouldn't move even if something from behind pushed him. "Everyone has flaws, but come on."
Wiping his face with the heels of his hands, Arthur blubbered out, "A man should ... you know ... do stuff! I'm a god damn coward!"
Vince literally shook him, stunning him enough to hush him. "Hey, you're not a coward." His voice as low, but fuzzy and comforting, a soft blanket on a cold day. "You just did what made sense. We can't all be raging badasses."
"Huh?" Arthur made the grossest sniff. Then he looked ahead at Vince's shirt and wrinkling jeans. He'd changed clothes before getting all the cake stuff. He faintly smelled like fabric softener.
"Just calm down and stop beating yourself up." Vince let him go and took a step back. He put his hand on his hip. "Let's watch a movie or something."
As Vince went to the television, Arthur watched his long legs move in those jeans. He was like a hero from of an old pulp fiction book cover ... well, almost. The hairstyle was a bit too wild and crazy.
And he really was, honestly and truly was, the nicest guy Arthur had ever met.
On the following morning, everything seemed okay. Vince even said so. After eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, Arthur went back home. He got a few texts from his friend. "You ok? Ok. Hey, you still ok?" Arthur thought it was sweet.
He wondered for a while if Vince could possibly, maybe, just maybe ... be interested in ...
But he shot the thought down.
Vince probably wasn't interested in men.
Probably.
And even if he was, there was little chance that Vince would even think of Arthur that way.
Didn't Vince even say that he didn't care what Arthur's sexual orientation was?
Yeah, yeah. That's right. Vince never took that into consideration.
They were buddies.
Just buddies.
***
