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hostilecityshowdown · 1 year

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Heartbreak Hotel: Put your loving hand out chapter four

18+ Exclusively.

spinoff of mango’s heartbreak hotel au

as always, co-written and edited by @1-2-3kid. special thanks to @razor-ramons-thighs for being my emotional support punk and @bigzaddycool for rekindling my need to write diesel and finish this fic up

content warnings on AO3! i highly advise checking them out

Pages flew as the registry book struck the gaudy floral carpet, the rings of the binder springing open. A novelty mug full of pens followed and bounced, rolled, came to a stop against the wood paneling of the front desk, pens embossed in hearts scattered amongst red and pink matchbooks. There was a display case mounted in the desk, full of souvenirs littered in broken glass and the shattered remains of a flowerpot. Crushed rose petals and baby’s breath obscured postcards of the hotel’s sweeping, Mid-Century exterior. Even from a distance, Diesel could tell the postcards depicted a respectable resort, nestled comfortably amongst looming aspens and far-away mountains. This confused him for reasons he didn’t understand. For this brief moment, Diesel was alone with the hotel.

His boots were sinking into the carpet, so deep he imagined it continuing to the planet’s core. Above him hung a massive chandelier of brassy gold, candelabras draped in glittering crystals and pearls. Velvet, lace-trimmed plush hearts hung from the chandelier, only inches above his head yet miles above; despite the hotel's vaulted ceiling, Diesel was lucky he could stand up straight. He sunk into the carpet beneath him a little more, feeling the space above his head widen. The only light filtered in through the massive, floor to ceiling windows, despite the apparent pitch darkness outside. He was freezing. It was snowing and it was summer, and the air was still but everything was moving.

Diesel blinked, the red haze easing.

Everything was moving. Shawn had slid across the front desk, chased from behind it by a figure much broader than him and nearly as fast. That was when things fell- but when was that? Just now, minutes ago, years? A fine layer of dust settled on everything, including Diesel, but none kicked up as Shawn sprinted across the lobby, footfalls muffled by the impossibly hungry carpet. All sound was devoured by the wall upholstery of pink, painted silk. Diesel somehow knew there was a mirror wall behind him but, with just as much certainty, knew it would be a mistake to look at it. Do not look at the mirror wall. Do not look at the mirror. Don’t look at the-

Still pursued, Shawn vaulted over the back of a booth in the shape of a horseshoe so tight it was nearly a full circle. Flowering plants fell without making a sound or visible impact, as if they had been lying on the carpet, dead, long before Shawn knocked them over. He landed on a table draped in pastel blue lace and slid, touched down on the other side of the booth, and resumed sprinting. A few of these wrap-around seating arrangements were in that area of the lobby. The conversation pit was behind Diesel, under the mirror. He didn’t look at it, he looked at Shawn. Slowly, Diesel turned his head to follow the hotel proprietor’s escape attempt, watching him climb more furniture and breathe heavily. Shawn used a stiff ottoman as a first step and hopped to the arm of a leopard print loveseat, precariously standing on the sweeping back of the small sofa with all too many pillows. His arms wheeled as he tried to keep his balance, knees bent, hair a mess. The brunette after him lunged from behind, over the loveseat’s cushions, and Shawn sprung off the back like a cat. The loveseat toppled, bringing the other man with it. Shawn was gone. Diesel was there, though, no longer covered in dust, sunglasses darkening the room even more than previously, one arm wrapped around Shawn’s assailant's neck, the other under his arm. The man struggled, grunted, brought Diesel to the ground. Diesel caught a flash of livid, brown eyes and a glimpse of a faded band t-shirt before he was alone again.

All was still. He stood, knees aching, dust floating through his lungs freely. He didn’t cough, but gently pat his leather down before trekking to the front desk, careful not to look at the mirror wall. Instead, he looked at the full key cubby on the far wall. All of the placards were faded red, the gold paint flaking off, matching the telephone on the desk with its receiver off the hook. He couldn’t read any of the placards, even when he inched closer, nor could he hear a dial tone from the phone. Bending to carefully fish one of the matchbooks out of the display case, he nudged crystalline pieces of glass away with his glove and raised the collectable up to his face. He squinted in the low light. It was red, each chain link connecting the silver hearts adorning the borders looking almost hand painted. At the bottom, in black text, read ‘PROTECT YOUR LOVER - CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING.’ At the top, ‘you’re never lonely at the…’ In the centre was a gold heart surrounding two words in blue and yellow cursive:

‘HeartBreak Hotel.’

Diesel dropped the matchbook. It struck the carpet and smoldered at his feet weakly. He cautiously turned his head and looked at the mirror wall.

Barreling through the gauzy drapery, Shawn launched himself through the art nouveau room divider as if it were a portal to his escape. It was a structure of twisted aluminum and peeling cream paint, the opening arched like a tunnel entrance, leading to the bedroom of a honeymoon suite. It was one of the smaller ones, but it had a window behind the backboard of the bed - granted, it was covered by the redwood paneling, but he shouldn’t have trouble ripping that clean off the wall, right? He leapt onto the heart-shaped bed, stepped across the mattress like he was trying not to slip on ice, and began attempting to rip the wall apart. His fingers were bloody before he even started somehow, nails broken painfully, nail polish now wet and oozing onto his throbbing, exposed nail bed. Wincing, Shawn turned and kicked behind him, hearing a sickening crack. Did it again. Another crack, and he collapsed to the bed, face shoved into the silk bedspread as if someone had cranked up the gravity. He choked, spat, struggled to move; it felt like someone kicked him in the spleen. The bedspread was lapping up the blood. The curtains he’d run through were fluttering to a halt, the entertainment centre with analogue television and lamps with shades askew visible through the dense lace.

Something was moving. Panic tore through him and elicited a groan from somewhere deep in Shawn’s chest, heart racing, ears ringing. He went still and hoped they wouldn’t see him, hoped it wasn’t Marty still coming for him.

The shape paused as he did. It heaved and shuddered when he did, and it tilted its head in curious confusion when Shawn did, dangling earrings sparkling far too brilliantly for the dark, dingy room. Drawing his eyebrows together, he slowly began to sit up, wheezing as the force pinning him down eased. His reflection did the same.

“When did I put… A mirror…” Shawn shook his head and dragged himself off the bed, tumbling to the floor and resisting the urge to sprawl across the shag rug. This room had rugs over marble flooring. He never liked this room. It was tacky and ugly and it used too much white and not enough shiny things. He stared into the vague reflection of his own eyes through the curtains, one lens of his flip up sunglasses snapped off, and began to crawl. Shawn used the bars of the room divider to haul himself up and blew his hair from his face as he pushed the curtain aside, locking eyes with himself. He looked horrible. Why didn’t Diesel protect him from this? The bloodied curtain fluttered shut behind him as he lurched forward with a snarl, anger rising within him like an eruption. Before he could take hold of the mirror, it lowered, and Shawn stumbled to his knees in surprise.

He hadn’t put a mirror on the entertainment centre. There was no room to fit a mirror that big, with all its lace trim and pearl bordering. Someone with long, claw-like, black nails was holding it. Someone wearing black lace gloves, with rhinestones in her hair and shimmering eye shadow smoked out from her eyelashes to her eyebrows.

The mirror lowered to Shawn’s kneeling height and, unable to look away from it still, he realised he wasn’t being reflected at all. The Heartbreak Kid stared at him, wide-eyed, kneeling on the marble flooring, draped in jewellery shining blindingly bright. He was smaller than Shawn was, leaner, face softer, clean shaven, his sunglasses unbroken and dark. Lipstick kisses trailed down his jaw and neck, staining the white hem of his vest. The chains didn’t look ornamental anymore, lashed so tightly over his pecs they rubbed the skin raw. His hair was blonder, softer, styled, but he looked horrified. Shawn reached a bloody hand out to him, his false reflection mimicking him, their white gloves both soaked through with red.

The mirror dropped and shattered, and Sherri smiled down at Shawn.

A guttural scream jerked Diesel from sleep, pillows and blanket flying. The motor lodge’s phone was ringing, so excruciatingly loud it felt like machine gun fire. The trucker fumbled with it, dragging it into bed and tangling his wrist in the cord as he scrambled to answer.

“‘Lo?” Fuck. He cleared his throat, which sent him into a coughing fit so harsh it made him drop the phone. He picked it back up quickly. “-uck. Fuck, hello?”

“This is a test of th-”

“-esel? Diese, are you alright?” Kimberly’s voice crackled to life, cutting through a blaring tone so loud Diesel wasn’t even sure he heard it. She coughed, too, wheezing before speaking again. “Diese, are you there?”

“Y-yeah,” he replied, running a hand through his tussled hair. It was practically matted. He must've tossed and turned all night. “I’m here, Kim. Are you…?”

“I’m okay. The hospital’s discharging me today. I need you to convince Dallas to not come get me.” Diesel couldn’t help but grin, eyes tired, sore. Everything was sore. He untangled himself from the phone cord and shook his head.

“I’ll handle it, Kimmy. We’ll make a straight shot to Miami if you can handle seventeen hours on I-95.”

“Oh, god,” she groaned, audibly collapsing against her pillows. Her voice grew quieter, more somber. Almost threatening; a big cat stalking through the underbrush in Diesel’s peripheral. Kim could be scary when she wanted to. “I don’t understand.”

“Miami’s a long-”

“I know,” she interrupted. “A long way from the Poconos, I know. I don’t understand how I’m a long way from Florida. I wasn’t even going north, Diesel, I was going southwest, I-... This doesn’t make any sense. Dallas says I’ve only been gone overnight, but I left home at six PM. How did I get my bike up here and crash it before sunrise? How did I-”

She coughed again and groaned. Diesel could envision her holding her bruised ribs. He’d already put together a care package for her when he made his quick haul to New York, there and back before the hospital had even performed the CT scan on her head. The concussion must be killing her. He could only hope it wasn’t bad, only hope they could get her into occupational therapy fast, convince her to rest long enough to recuperate. That last one might have been the hardest to pull off. Inhaling deeply, Diesel dragged himself out of bed and carried the phone with him as far as it allowed. His morning stretching was half-hearted.

“I get it,” he said, wincing at how stiff his knee was, a sharp pain shooting down his tibia. Nothing unusual. “I don’t get how it happened, but I get it. Things have been weird since I left, Kim, really weird. I’m thinking about coming back.”

“To the Exchange?”

“You think Raze would bite?”

“Not a chance in hell,” she murmured, sipping whatever carton of sugary juice they gave her through a straw with an air leak in it. Diesel could hear her struggling with it. He hated those flimsy little plastic straws, always chewed through them unintentionally. “He’s having too much fun with Kid. His business might be shady, but he’s a flawless sell.”

“But,” she paused. Diesel waited. It sounded like she was holding the phone with her shoulder and messing with the straw. “Studd would follow you to the ends of the Earth and back, Vin.”

They wrapped the phone call up around the same time Diesel gave up on stretching and decided to hit the shower, sticking his little boombox on the counter and dropping in VOWWOW’s Beat of Metal Motion. The CD started spinning even before he poked the drive shut, satisfied with the little click followed by Kyoji Yamamoto’s opening riff for Break Down. It was easy for Diesel to get lost in the music enough to forget to feel relief that he’d booked an end room with a vacancy next door. No one interrupted his shower with noise complaints, but something felt off as he stepped out, dropping a towel over his own head and wrapping it around his long hair. He couldn’t have spent more than fifteen minutes in the shower, especially since he still had an abundance of the warm (never hot) water the motor lodge offered available to him by the time he twisted the faucet off.

He hadn’t heard the CD skip, so how was it playing Sleeping in a Dream House, a track twenty six minutes in? The boombox was quieter than it had been during his shower, too, Genki Hitomi’s poignant crone of ‘I know, I’ll just have to dream alone…’ barely audible. Diesel wrapped the bigger towel around his waist and secured it, waving away more steam than the shower should have been able to produce. The bathroom seemed bigger than it had been when Diesel entered it, the sickly orange light above the mirror no longer able to illuminate the far walls.

“Dreams- and in dreams, in the dreamhouse…” The boombox sounded like it was underwater and Diesel shivered, breaking out in a cold sweat as he inched towards the counter. He could just barely see the little machine’s black and chrome outline on the countertop, which had elongated during his shower. The mirror was no longer a simple oval, either, now spanning the full length of the counter and etched with frosty, floral patterns around the edges. It was rimmed in gold. “Gotta get away, let me out of here… In the dreamhouse I’m alone-”

A burst of deafening static made Diesel jump, one hand instinctively going to his chest. His mouth was dry, the mirror so fogged his reflection was nothing more than a blurry blob of colour. The CD’s audio came back, even more distorted. Deeper, gruffer. Hoarser, with a frightening desperation creeping into the melancholy. “-with my fingers on the walls… Searching for the door that leads to you.”

It didn’t sound like Genki anymore. It sounded like Shawn.

Diesel bolted, finding the door on instinct alone and rattling the knob until the screws came loose. It wasn’t locked but it wouldn’t open, the stereo repeating ‘gotta get away- get me out of here’ on an endless, broken loop. The music abruptly cut off when Diesel took a step back and kicked the door open. Everything was normal when he opened his eyes. The door hung correctly on its hinges, the knob firmly screwed into place, and Diesel clutched his towel around his waist as he slowly turned to face the mirror. It was a small oval, peeling at the bottom left, streaks of condensation running down it. The steam that had filled the bathroom was gone, the counter almost too small to fit everything Diesel laid out on it, the light a warm yellow glow. The CD sat in the tray, unmoving.

He’d never plugged the boombox in.

“Diesel Cool, here to see Kimberly Page,” Diesel tiredly informed hospital security, ID already in his hand. They kept it behind the desk and gave him a visitor’s pass to stick on his shirt, sending him on his way to the second floor. Thankfully, Kimberly’s room wasn’t a long walk away from the elevators. He didn’t wear his knee braces during hauls unless he planned to make a lot of stops and do a good amount of lifting, but his legs were killing him after his freakout. He’d have to talk to his psychiatrist about his anxiety meds and find out if he was supposed to be experiencing psychosis or what. His appointment was still a few weeks off, but he felt like he needed to talk about the Heartbreak Hotel and Shawn as soon as possible. He wasn’t even sure why his psych didn’t comment on his long absence when he was working the hotel, but he wasn’t putting anything past Shawn. Maybe he’d been talking to his psych the whole time behind Diesel’s back. He couldn’t remember if he had any of his medications aside from his testosterone at the hotel, the memories growing fuzzy and blending together already. He knocked on Kimberly’s open door before entering, relieved to see her already packed and waiting for him.

“Don’t even come in, we gotta go,” Kim said, limping to Diesel and grabbing his arm, steering him backwards out the door. He chuckled and turned, taking her bag and carefully draping his left arm around her shoulders as they walked to the elevator. Kim didn’t laugh back, speaking no louder than a whisper when the elevator doors closed behind them. “Something’s wrong with me, Diesel.”

“The CT scan? It doesn’t look that bad-”

“No, not-” she held her breath when the elevator shook, “not that. I saw something.”

“On the road? The asshole that hit you?”

“Here, in the bathroom-” Kim cut herself off when the elevator stopped, smiling brilliantly at the janitor and nurse waiting to enter. Diesel’s stomach soured. She said hello politely in passing, thanked the security guard after he handed Diesel’s ID back with a suspicious glare, and hustled her big man to his truck as quickly as they could collectively manage. Diesel helped her climb into the passenger seat of his truck before rounding it to the driver’s side, Kimberly starting to speak before he even closed his door. “Something was wrong with the window. It wasn’t the hospital window, Diese, it was-”

Frustrated, she motioned with her hands vaguely before throwing them up and letting them fall into her lap. She buckled her seatbelt when Diesel gently reminded her, and was quiet until they merged onto the interstate. Diesel let the radio play quietly, music low enough to be indiscernible. “It was somewhere else’s window. I’m not crazy.”

“Never said you were,” Diesel replied, trying not to clench his jaw too tightly. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “If I did, that’d make me crazy, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw something like that in the bathroom. I had a fucked up dream, Kim. The hotel was trying to get you, Shawn was trying to prey upon you, that’s why I had to get you out-”

“What? Slow down, what? Who is Shawn? What hotel, what bathroom?”

“The- fuck,” breathing out deeply through his nose, Diesel eased off the gas. Last thing they needed to do was jackknife in perfect weather on I-95. That’d just be embarrassing. “I went somewhere, Kimmy. It was like a-a living thing.”

The hours flew by, both travelers content to keep their stops to a minimum. Diesel told Kimberly everything, and she recounted what she remembered of the accident. One minute she was driving down the strip, getting ready to start heading west, and the next she was wiping out three miles from the Sweetheart Corner in Syracuse, New York. She didn’t know the area, but Diesel was familiar with Syracuse, and her description of the ornate, white and red payphone booth struck him as eerily wrong. There was no payphone at the intersection of Route 11 and Taft Road. The Sweetheart Corner hosted a small plaza, boasting a farmer’s market, ice cream, barber shop, liquor store - but no telephone booths. She would have had to go inside to use a phone from what Diesel remembered, but Kimberly didn’t recall anyone setting up shop at the Corner except the Sweetheart Market. That hadn’t been true since the 1960s.

After Diesel rescued her, her motorcycle had disappeared, the police unable to find any remains of the bike near Malden Road, where she reported the accident. She was adamant about that being the location of her crash, but the cops swept the area up and down and couldn’t find anything. The air force base off Malden even assisted in the search and, when they didn’t have any luck, the police agreed to report the bike stolen.

“Not that there was anything left of her to steal,” Kimberly grumbled into her onion rings. They pulled into a diner in Durham, North Carolina, seven hours into their drive. It was afternoon and busy, bustling with more tourists and travelers than locals by Diesel’s guess. He was actually enjoying being around so many people. He didn’t even mind the kids sitting two tables behind Kim, constantly turning around in their seats to make faces at him. Whenever Kim looked down at her food or out the window overlooking the full parking lot, Diesel would raise an eyebrow at them and make them burst into fits of giggles. He couldn’t even remember the last time he saw a kid-

“Ground control to Major Tom.” “Huh?” “Stay with me, space cadet.” Kim was grinning up at him. She cast a glance at the kids behind them and waved, both excitedly waving back until their grandparents made them sit down and eat their brunch or grilled cheese or whatever kids got at diners. Shaking her head, Kim traded an onion ring for one of Diesel’s fries. She had managed to choke down more of her chicken than he’d got through his panini, his stomach still churning with anxiety. Rubbing his right hand and sitting back in his booth seat, Diesel looked Kim over. Plenty of scrapes and bruises, scabbing. She needed two little sutures up in her hairline, she didn’t have any of her makeup or hair products, and she was wearing clothes Diesel bought for her. In the truck, she layered with one of Diesel’s shirts, so much smaller than him she looked like she was wearing a circus tent. They had both forgotten to remove her hospital bracelet. Diesel reached for her left wrist and Kim held it out, letting him peel up the adhesive on the plastic band until he could tear through the last bit.

It was a long drive. It was another seven hours before they hit the Florida state line, and they were exhausted. Diesel was used to it, but not under duress, and the Interstate Commerce Commission had been changing up the industry’s rules like it was going out of style recently. He was just relieved he hadn’t had to drive a cab outfitted with a Qualcomm yet, or he’d have to actually explain what he was up to. For now, he could tell his employer he was using time off to run errands and would be local again in a few days, no questions asked. He’d purchased the cab he drove years ago, anyway, but he anticipated the new regulations were going to phase his cabover out soon. At least the newer trucks had better breaks, if he was forced to trade.

“I’ll ring Dallas, let him know we’re close,” Kimberly said, pulling Diesel from his thoughts. She was grabbing a leather bag from the centre console, her bag phone fully charged after the long ride. She manually dialed his number, being outside the regular service area, and waited. Her face lit up when her husband answered. “We’re in Jacksonville now, heading to Patti’s. Please get me their chicken parmesan, I’m starving. You’ll know what Diesel wants.”

Diesel could hear Dallas laugh on the other side of the line. He followed the signage along Beach Boulevard for the Roosevelt Mall, relieved when the ornate, white siding of the restaurant came into view. Kim was nearly jumping out of the cab before Diesel could park. He related to the sentiment, neither caring to collect themselves before walking across the small parking lot. Dallas was waiting outside for them and lifted Kimberly off her feet in a bear hug so tight, Diesel remembered when he used to expect her to snap in half. He remembered when he used to think he’d snap in half from Dallas’s hugs, too.

“Alright,” Dallas began, setting Kimberly down but still holding her waist. “You’re only off the hook for as long as it takes my wife to inhale a chicken breast.”

Seated in Patti’s, a handful of people wandered over to inquire after Kim, and she regaled them with the harrowing tale of her motorcycle accident. One woman, a former Diamond Doll at Dallas’s club and previously trained by Kimberly herself, hummed the chorus to Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las, earning laughs all around the table. It was so normal it was wrong, the trio communicating how surreal it all felt through locked eyes, grazes of a hand against an elbow, an arm draped across the back of a chair. Diesel couldn’t fathom why they had to sit in a restaurant during the late dinner rush and pretend everything was fine, but he followed the Pages’ lead. They’d taken care of him so long, he couldn’t do anything but trust them.

“About that down payment,” Kimberly began, voice taking on that frightening tone again. Diesel had only just started splitting the panna cotta in half to share with Dallas, “on a new bike.”

“Down payment?” Dallas asked, head dipping as if to scrutinise Diesel over his shades. They were tucked away in his breast pocket. “New bike?”

“A desperate man will say anything,” Diesel muttered, stabbing into the coffee flavoured dessert with more force than necessary. “No one should be held accountable for what they say in an emergency.”

“Sounds like you made my wife a promise, Diesel.” Dallas’s tone became as serious as Kimberly’s. Diesel could feel the migraine coming on, alongside a wave of nostalgia. Any second now, Scotty would come tumbling through the door, dancing his way out of women’s arms and hiding behind the biggest guy he could find… “You better keep it. You’re an honourable man.”

“Since when, Dally?” Diesel groaned, elbowing his friend in the ribs. Kimberly laughed, stole a bite of her husband’s panna cotta half. Despite all his complaints, he still slipped Kimberly a check for a couple thousand before the end of the night, knowing Dallas would beat him half to death if he found out before Diesel was halfway up the Eastern seaboard. On their way out, he glanced at the outdoor smoking seats, stopping in his tracks when he laid eyes on one of the ashtrays. It was frosted glass, filled with a gooey substance similar to a lava lamp, and cracked, the liquid and oil inside slowly bubbling out. It held no ash, but the bottom of the tray read ‘HeartBreak Hotel’.

#[ heartbreak hotel au ]#[ put your loving hand out ]#[ voyager ]#[ mango madness ]#long post #the heartbreak kid #big daddy cool diesel #in compliance with poll results i'm posting this as one chapter and then hbk's perspective as the next chapter #aaaand finishing commissions Finally. then writing some things for this au mango wanted me to write. then starting the sixth chapter #unless i get distracted.

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