Free Me (bxb)

Part 31

 "Griffin, that's-"

Griffin leans closer to the window, and realizes, that through the bright glow of headlights, that's not his dad's SUV or truck. In fact, he isn't sure if he's ever seen that car before, but it's hard to tell in the dark. He doesn't have much time to ponder over whose car that is before three guys are getting out of the car. Two go off in a few different directions, as if they're scanning the area, and one goes to the back of the trunk.

"Who are those guys?"

"I don't know," Griffin replies honestly, and he keeps his voice hushed, a different kind of fear filling him than the one when he thought his dad had pulled up. He sees two guys pull a fourth out of the trunk, and his eyes widen at the sight. "G-get under the bed," he stammers, pushing on Keith's bare shoulder urgently, "now!"

While Keith drops to the floor and crawls under the bed, he hides himself in the closet on the opposite wall farthest from the door. He pulls the shutters of the closet door open just enough so he can see out as soon as he hears the door open and the shuffle of feet and muffled voices. The lights cut on and one of the guys orders another to close the door.

Griffin's heart is in his throat, and he can hear the guys talking to one another, mostly arguing from the sound of it, but none of it really registers. All he can feel is this confused sort of terror flood his entire being, rooting him to the spot until he can't move. Then, there's a gun being pointed at the guy from the trunk and Griffin's entire body locks so much he doesn't even jump when the first gunshot goes off, echoing throughout the cabin, but his ears start ringing.

But it's not the guy from the trunk that collapses, it's the one who first pointed his gun, the one who'd been standing directly in front of the closet. Then another one is shot through the chest and Griffin's eyes fight to close, but he can't stop looking away from the horrific scene unfolding before him. And then, the shirtless man is standing in front of the last one still alive, aiming the gun at his forehead.

The threatened man says something about being with the FBI, but before Griffin can even begin to fully register that, another gunshot is fired and the last one is dead, falling down right in front of Keith from where he's hidden under the bed.

There's complete silence for about three seconds, and Griffin almost thinks that the last standing man will leave the cabin and them, but then he's moving slowly and deliberately towards the bed, his gun cocked and held low in front of him. Without even thinking about what he is doing, Griffin begins to quietly push the closet door open, his eyes wide and solely focused from where the murderer is standing, about to find Keith.

Griffin goes unnoticed by the man, and by the time he has the closet door fully open, the man has flipped the covers up and Keith is shakingly begging for his life. Griffin pauses for the briefest second, his body unsure of what to do even though his mind is screaming at him to move, he's going to shoot Keith!, so when the man points his gun at Keith and presses his finger to the trigger, Griffin moves faster than he ever has before.

His fingers grip tightly onto an iron frying pan on the side of him and he hits the shirtless man over the head with it. The man falls, Keith jumps, but then the man looks up at him and Griffin hurriedly crashes the pan down against the side his face. And when the man collapses, he stays down this time.

"Keith come on! We gotta go, let's go!" he shouts, tugging at Keith's arm and dragging him forcibly out from under the bed before the guy has the chance to wake up and kill them both. When Keith's standing and grabbing his jacket, Griffin grabs the gun the man had used up from the floor then flees from the cabin. He flings the frying pan somewhere into the bushes then shoots at the window of the cabin when he thinks he heard movement from inside.

"Dude, get the bike- go get the bike!" Keith says so fast it's almost gibberish as he takes the gun from Griffin, but he understands him so he rushes for their only chance of fast escape. As soon as he's revving up the engine, he feels Keith's body against his back and arms wrapped tighter around his waist than ever before, and Griffin drives the bike faster than he ever has in his life.

He drives them out nearly five miles away from the cabin until he stops in front of a lake, and both he and Keith hop off the bike. Griffin lets the bike crash to the ground without a care, because he's pretty sure he's about to puke, but when Keith pulls the gun out of his jacket, he snatches it out of his hands.

"What are you doing?"

"Listen to me. We can't say anything to anyone," Griffin says, wiping the gun off with the hem of his shirt in an attempt to clean off any fingerprints.

"Are you kidding me? He was gonna kill us, who would blame you for killing him?" Keith says, his voice shaky and clearly misunderstanding why they could never tell anyone about what they saw.

"You don't get it! I'm not gay like you!" he shouts, the word 'gay' coming out of his mouth with disgust and venom, the same way so many guys around school say it. "No one even knows we talk, got it?"

Griffin feels his eyes burning and he sniffles, and tries to ignore the pain in his chest when Keith looks at him with shocked hurt. He distracts himself with more wiping of the gun until he hears rustling in the treeline behind Keith half a second later.

"It's him!"

He points the gun at the treeline where he heard the noise and Keith leaps behind him, and he shoots off three rounds into the night until he realizes what exactly it was he was shooting at.

"Is- is that a deer?"

"It's a deer," Keith confirms for him. "We gotta tell Helen."

"Tell her what? That we were at the cabin, naked? No! N-never gonna happen." The last part of his sentence comes out as if he's drunk, and he sways on his feet just slightly.

"Okay, well, I won't say anything," Keith says, subdued.

Griffin's hands shake as he continues to fiddle with the gun, and a thank you forms on his tongue but he forces it back and throws the gun into the pond, only satisfied when he hears the splash. When he turns around to face Keith, he starts talking.

"He was gonna kill me if you hadn't stopped him... if y-you hadn't-"

Griffin pulls Keith into a hug before Keith can even finish talking because he doesn't want to hear about him getting shot or being killed. They are safe now. The guy is dead. And Keith is alive. Keith is alive and sobbing in his arms just as much as Griffin was sobbing in his.

When they pull themselves together as much as they possibly can, they get back on the bike and Griffin rides back into town. He's about to turn onto the street where Helen and Gabe's house is when Keith shakes his head and yells over the engine for him to drop him off at the bus station instead. It's early enough in the morning for the buses to be running, and Griffin drops him off at the bus station without asking any questions.

He knows Keith's mom is in the city, and he knows how much Keith must need her. If Griffin had his mom to go to now he knows he would run to her as fast as he possibly could, wherever she was.

He drives back to his house, sneaks back into his room, somehow being quiet enough to not get caught by his dad, and collapses onto his bed. He has two hours before he has to be up for school, and he should get some sleep, but there's no way he possibly can with the echo of gunshots ricocheting off his brain and the sight of dead bodies burning behind his eyelids each time he blinks.

As he lies awake, scrolling through YouTube on his phone for any kind of distraction, absolutely refusing to sleep. He's never sleeping again.