Work Text:
“He stole drugs from the hospital,” Trinity had whispered to him, months ago in their shared living room.
It had been the night after PittFest. Neither one of them had been able to sleep. Instead they stayed up, chain smoking and passing a bottle of Pink Whitney back and forth with the window cracked open to kill the suffocating humidity.
Trinity had Deftones blaring in the background, making it difficult to think. He blew out a cloud of smoke.
“So he’s gone then? For good?”
“Hopefully. He was a fucking dick today.”
Dennis filed that information away for later. Filed away how Trinity looked away from him when she said it, eyes downturned and filled with some sort of shame she wasn’t willing to share.
He felt rage bubble up inside of him. The way it always did when he felt something unfair had just taken place.
It was one of his worst qualities. That rage. He had allowed himself to be neutered of it, back when he was a teenager. His parents had thrown him into a wilderness camp to beat it out of him, and it worked.
He returned home cowed by what he had seen. Flinching at the lightest touch, and ready to leave his family behind the minute he turned eighteen.
He could see that same rage in his new friend. And over the next few months their living together allowed his own feelings to unfurl. He could tell she was hiding things, hiding some sort of torment she couldn’t escape. It clung to her, like a shadow.
His natural instinct was to protect her, even if she resented the protection. Even if she didn’t need it.
He stared Frank Langdon down from across the emergency room. Trinity had acted very nonchalant about Frank coming back. Scoffing and rolling her eyes when it was brought up in conversation.
Dennis could tell it was a front. Dennis had seen the way her fingers shook. The fixed nature of her smile.
His natural instinct was to protect his best friend, and that meant Frank Langdon had to go.
“Alright. Let’s get you some Librium, how about that Louis?”
Dennis grit his teeth, the urge to punch a hole through the glass almost overpowering. He slammed the curtain open with more force than necessary. Langdon was prescribing his patient a controlled substance. The same controlled substance he stole only ten months ago. And no one seemed to give a shit.
“I’ll place the order, Dr. Langdon.”
The natural inclination to roll over like some sick, small dog came over him. It forced his voice soft and his eyes towards the wall. The shame that came after he acted this way—
It was better not to have unproductive thoughts.
He finished typing in the order.
The look Frank was shooting him, like Dennis was in the wrong, had his hands clenching and unclenching. He was a man. He wasn’t a child. He wasn’t an animal.
“Whatever man, just trying to help out.”
“Well maybe you could help out back in triage,” he bit out.
Langdon left the room, a backwards glance filled with pure antipathy directed at him.
The gaze echoed. The same look he had been subjected to his entire life. A look that said You aren’t a real man. You’re pathetic. And everybody knows it.
An hour later he was taking his fifteen, Lucky Strike lit, eyes closed in order to better appreciate the breeze ruffling his hair.
“I heard a rumor.”
Fucking Langdon.
Dennis turned around, put his lighter back in his pocket. If he didn’t respond the other man might leave. It was a tactic he’d learned from Mr. Newby, on the back roads of an Utah National Park.
Keep your mouth shut, or get a beating. The phantom pain of a man’s black combat boot pressed on his kidney.
Two weeks ago Trinity told him she’d kill Mr. Newby for him, if he only gave her his full name. They’d argued for three hours about it. About whether murder was permissible in cases of revenge. Names like Kant and Pascal and Augustine didn’t matter to Trinity, who threw the remote at their shitty smart TV and locked herself in the bathroom for the rest of the night.
She was impervious to him hesitantly knocking on the door. They fell asleep like that, her in the bathtub, him on the carpet by their radiator.
“I heard you’re fucking your patient’s widow. The burn victim. That’s pretty low, even for you.”
Dennis exhaled into Frank’s face. He could recognize a spooked horse off for the glue factory when he saw one. Frank was on his last legs. Ankle broken, he couldn’t race anymore. What use was he, then?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t know you had it in you. I figured you were queer. Or whatever the kids are calling it these days,” he paused, waiting to see if Dennis would break.
“I’m sure Dr. Robby would be very interested to hear about it.”
Dennis froze. That wasn’t playing fair. Dr. Robby was the closest thing Dennis had to a father. A figure of benevolent authority that he could project all of his own abandonment issues onto. He was self aware enough to recognize that. He just didn’t care.
Frank wanted to take it all away. Dennis’ life ruined again, because he screwed Amy twice, loneliness hanging over both of their heads like the guillotine’s knife. The sex wasn’t even that good.
He stood up, ground his cigarette beneath his shoe. Blundstones. A gift from Trinity. He had three centers of gravity in this world. Trinity. And Dr. Robby. And Amy. And Frank wanted to snatch all three from him.
Wounded prey looking to harm the hunter. That’s what he was.
If he got rid of Frank, it wouldn’t be an act of selfishness. It would be just. They shot horses all the time
It was simple enough to check out a vial of Ativan under Frank’s name. His password was laughably easy to guess. And it was similarly easy to empty the vial, and glue it shut, and put on an expression of childlike fear as he approached Dr. Robby.
He explained, eyes purposefully large and tear-filled, that he saw Frank shooting up. He handed over the vial, head downturned. He gazed at the linoleum floor and hated himself. Not for what he was doing to Frank. That was well deserved. But for doing it this way.
A real man would have beat the shit out of Frank Langdon and went about his day. That’s what Dr. Robby would do. That’s probably what his brothers would do. But Dennis wasn’t a real man. And he had to work with what he had.
“I knew it.”
He glanced up. Robby was livid, hand trembling around the vial.
“This will be escalated through the proper channels. Thank you for telling me Dennis. I know it took a lot of courage.”
His hand landed on Dennis’ shoulder, and he felt proud.
It did take a lot of courage. It was nice to see that being acknowledged.
Trinity found him at the end of their shift, hand around his forearm. He followed where she pointed to see Frank being led out the door, cuffed.
He found he had stopped caring about the other man hours ago.
Once, when he was a child, he was forced to gun down a lame horse. His father had walked behind him, screaming each time Dennis cried, his arms around the creature’s neck. He kept hugging the thing all the way to the back of the field, towards the well.
But the minute the gun had been handed to him the tears dried up, and it was as if the horse had ceased to exist, even as it still breathed air. He had pulled the trigger. And as his favorite pet died, he felt only a withering deep inside of him. And the dry heat that pressed on your back like a lead weight.
Frank’s eyes locked onto his. And he lunged, ineffectually. The cops pushed him with more force through the back doors.
Dennis didn’t feel that withering this time. Instead he found himself standing up straighter. Shoulders back and chin parallel to the ground. He had managed to protect what was most important. And he had put Frank out of his misery.
It felt good. It felt like existence.