Look After You

The Wound

     It wasn't good enough.

     He thought that seeing that foul man's body finally limp would satisfy him, but it wasn't good enough. The crimson dripping down his ugly face wasn't enough to undo what he had done to Bo, wasn't enough to make the red lines on his wrist suddenly fade away. So he decided to do it again. Another bullet, another bang. It echoed throughout the cabin. Nothing that he wasn't used to. That wasn't good enough either. Ryan tried to keep firing until the number of holes in his head exceeded all of his sins, but he ended up running out of bullets.

     He dropped the gun. His eyes began to sting. There was only one person that he needed to think about now.

     "Bo." His name left his lips and fell into one of the bloodstains on the ground. "Bo!"

     He nearly tripped over himself trying to crawl back to him. His body felt like it belonged to someone else, but he'd be damned if he wouldn't force it to cooperate with him just this once. When he finally got back over to him, he saw that the handprint on his back had grown even more. He couldn't put a name to the shape, but the sight of it made him sick to his stomach. The metal scent in the air suddenly became much stronger.

     "Bo?" He could just barely find his voice. "Bo, are you okay?"

     Ryan didn't wait for him to respond. He placed his hands on his shoulder blades and tried to flip over his heavy body. He didn't want to keep looking at that stupid stain anymore. He wanted to take in every feature of his face, admire every bump and curve on his skin. He could feel lightning shooting through his right arm when he put the slightest bit of pressure on it, but he'd sooner eat lead than let something like that stop him.

     Bo was breathing.

     That was all Ryan could focus on when he finally got him on his back. If it wasn't obvious by the way that his chest rapidly rose and fell, then it was the hearty groan that he gave when his wound was pressed against the floor. Ryan heard himself apologize before he pulled him into his lap, hoping that it would take away some of his pain. He was breathing though, thank goodness he was breathing. Bo's lips were as blue as Ryan's eyes.

     "I-It's okay...." Ryan brushed the hair out of Bo's pale face. His skin was getting cold. "It's okay, Bo. Everything's okay, everything's going to be okay. You're okay, right?"

     He couldn't answer him. All of his energy was going into trying to keep his heart beating for now. For now. The two words slapped the assassin in the back of his aching head without warning. He was alive for now. But with all of the blood running down Ryan's jeans, there was no way that he'd be able to hold on forever. Hell, there was no way he'd be able to hold on for an hour.

     He could lose him.

     He could lose the person that he drove hours to see almost every night. The man who teased his brain and complimented his personality. The person who brought warmth to his face through his smile and passion to his soul through his words. Bo wasn't just one of his best friends, he was someone who he couldn't live without. Who else would chuckle at his jokes and respond to his texts if he wasn't around?

     Ryan took a breath. His tears were falling onto Bo's cheek.

     He couldn't let him go. He had let far too many people slip through his fingers like sand over the course of his life, but Bo wouldn't be one of them. He still had so many memories that he wanted to make with him. So many things to show him and people he wanted him to meet.

     Ryan needed to call somebody. An ambulance, the police, the fire department if they would come too. Anybody who could save him. He couldn't remember what Ralph did with his phone and asking him wasn't exactly an option anymore, so digging into Bo's pockets was the next best thing.

     "I-It's alright, everything's going to be alright, Bo." Ryan sobbed. His words weren't very convincing.

      Regardless, he repeated them over and over again as he unlocked his phone and swiped past at least fifteen missed calls from Kyle. If he hadn't told him his password months earlier during one of their midnight meetings in his workroom, then his fate would've been sealed. Ryan searched through his messages. Once he found the cabin's address, he dialed the emergency service number.

     He didn't hear anything that the operator said when she picked up. He was too busy watching Bo's good eye squeeze shut to remember how to listen. He spoke over her, trying his best not to hiccup when he told her how badly he needed an ambulance. He gave her the address and begged them to hurry. She told him to calm down. Ryan screamed at her.

     In a voice that hardly soothed his tangled nerves, she told him that an ambulance and a handful of police cars would be there shortly. She made him promise to stay on the line no matter what. He tucked the phone between his ear and his good shoulder. After that, he fumbled with his hoodie, struggling to get his fingers to cooperate long enough to get the damn thing over his head. More electricity ran through his arm. It was nothing that he couldn't handle. Once his efforts with the hoodie were successful, he tore at the seams of the sleeves until he had a patch of cloth at his disposal. He wasn't sure how long 'shortly' would be, but he knew he couldn't let Bo bleed out until whenever that time arrived.

     Ryan decided to talk to him again. He wasn't sure who he wanted to distract more.

     "Help is on the way, okay? Hold on, just hold on...." Ryan tried to be as gentle as possible when he pushed him out of his lap, but he still managed to get a gasp out of him when his back hit the ground. "D-Don't leave me, alright? Please, don't leave me like this...."

     He made his way down to his legs, where his injured knee was leaking blood. He wrapped the fabric around the wound and double knotted it for good measure, but the material still managed to get infected with red in just a few blinks. It was a temporary solution, but at least there'd be a little less rust on the floor. There was nothing left to do now but sit there and wait with his hands on his punctured knee, applying pressure the way that Luke usually did whenever Ryan got seriously hurt after a fight. 

     "Everything's going to be just fine. You're not going to go out like this. You can't. I'm the one who's supposed to kill you, not your dad." Ryan fought for every word that came out of his mouth. "You just need to hold on, okay? Think about me, think about Kyle. Can you imagine the two of us going on without you? It's impossible. We need you. I need you...."

     He had no idea how long he talked for. After a while, the ceiling felt like it had been replaced by the floor and his chest felt like it was full of fiberglass. Despite the thick fog in his head, Ryan still tried to keep his lips moving and his hands on his knee. Whatever it took to save him. The muffled sound of sirens sliced through the fog like a knife. He refused to take his eyes off of Bo for a single second, as his luck would most likely have his body still when he wasn't looking. That was probably why he had no idea that the paramedics had arrived until he saw their hands on his body, each one donning gloves and wrinkled, navy EMT jackets. A few of them all tried to tilt Bo's head backward at once. Ryan tried to tell them to be careful with him, but he forgot what he was going to say once he opened his mouth.

     There was a tap on Ryan's back before he could watch them really get to work. He jumped, sending the phone down his shoulder and onto the ground with a thud. Ryan turned and saw a tall man with a face that was made out of light pixels and auburn puzzle pieces. He almost lost his attention when he noticed the police investigating Ralph's body out of the corner of his eye. The man's mouth moved and Ryan only heard the words, "shoulder", "bleeding", and "shock".

     Before he could ask him to repeat himself, Ryan's cheek was pressed against the warm hardwood floor. When did that happen? He tried to ask that blurry looking man, but it was hard to get a single word out without his face feeling like he had just gotten stung by bees. His eyelids felt like they were packed with lead. After everything that happened, fatigue drowned him until he could only think about his bed at home. He could practically feel the sheets underneath his weary body, his pillow beneath his pulsating head and his blanket pulled up to his throat. Nothing had ever been so inviting to him. Not even air, which was having a difficult time getting into his lungs.

     There were gloved hands on him, flipping him over until he was staring up at the floor. More pixelated men crowded his vision and spoke a language that he couldn't understand at all. The last thing Ryan remembered doing before darkness ate away at everything in sight was asking the men to wake him up in five minutes.