#classic you have a weird name I know im trans exchange

[thewhumperinwhite]

Café: Hospital/Squad Car

In which names are fucking FINALLY exchanged; Sol comes out the same way I do 100% of the time; hands are held angrily; I Don’t Know About You Guys But I’m Sure Shawn Is Fine And Safe To Be In A Car With Right Now.

Previous Parts: Teaser One and Teaser Two

TW for: cops; implied past suicide attempt; referenced familial abuse; implied/referenced homophobia; self-harm.

Also, this is long, but I chose not to split it into two parts in the interest of getting back to The Action next time. Also please note that this is not a police procedural and I care about Gay H/C, not about How To Police Work, so please forgive the no doubt glaring inaccuracies.

@whumpitywhumpwhump 

Sol rests his pounding head in the hand not attached to his dislocated wrist, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to shake the residual claustrophobia still crouched hot in the center of his chest.

 He doesnt look up at the sound of Shawn being steered into the chair next to him. Shawn winces audibly as the motion must pull at his stitches.

“Thank you for waiting, boys,” the nurse says. She sounds uncertain in a way Sol generally doesn’t prefer in his medical professionals. “A, um. An officer will be here to talk to you shortly, I guess?”

Sol grunts vaguely, too tired to protest, and he can hear the polite smile in the blonde boys voice when he says in a too-bright voice, “Thank you. We don’t mind waiting.”

The nurse scampers. There’s a moment of what passes for awkward silence in a crowded hospital hallway. Then someone pokes Sol gently in the shoulder.

“Hey,” the blonde says in his velvety voice. “How do you feel, man?”

Sol lowers his hand and raises his head to stare at the blonde, who does at least have the grace to look sheepish. He spreads his heavily bandaged hands. “How do I look?”

The blonde fidgets, moving carefully to avoid straining his broken ribs, and picks awkwardly at the bandage above his eye with the arm that is not currently in a sling. At some point someone lent him a plain white t-shirt to replace his bloody button-down, but there hasn’t been time or space for showers, apparently— is the hospital normally so busy at five in the morning on a rainy Friday?— and his hair is still plastered up at odd angles and kind of red in places. Though it’s hard to tell whose blood is whose, at this point. On Sol’s other side Shawn is poking half-heartedly at his bandaged shoulder.

“Sorry, stupid question,” the blond agrees ruefully. “I meant, how’s your head?”

Sol glares at the floor. “It’s fine. Just a little knock. Not like I’ve never had one of those before.” In a much lower voice he adds, “I fucking hate MRIs.”

To Sol’s surprise, the blond’s face immediately softens. “Yeah,” he says, and he sounds almost— fond. Then he holds out his hand. “I’m Kent, by the way. Kenton Graves.”

Sol stares down at the boy’s hand, and thinks about telling him to fuck off. He takes Kent Graves’s hand in his bandaged one instead. “Sol Michaelis.”

Kent Graves blinks. “That’s, uh, quite the name.”

Sol raises an eyebrow. “Thanks,” he says flatly. “I picked it myself.”

Kent stares at him. Sol waits. “Oh,” Kent says, then, “Oh! I’m— sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun.”

Sol squints, lets Kent squirm while he weighs that response. It’s not a bad one, and he doesn’t ruin it by tacking on a bunch of excuses, just looks at Sol, embarrassed but not defensive. After a moment Sol waves his hand dismissively. “Whatever.”

Kent’s face relaxes into a smile immediately. It’s kind of distracting. Then he leans forward to offer his hand to Shawn, too, paling a little as the movement must make his ribs and fractured clavicle shift painfully. Sol winces a little in sympathy.

“Uh— Shawn Dugan,” Shawn says distractedly. Speaking of pale, Shawn is currently the color of string cheese. 

“Nice to meet you, Shawn,” Kent says politely. “You feeling okay?”

It seems to take a second for Shawn to focus on Kent’s face, but when he manages it he smiles, looking a little… scared. “Yeah, I don’t feel so hot.” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “A little. Uh. Freaked, I guess.”

Kent’s smile fades, and he massages a careful hand over his collarbone. “Yeah,” he agrees, settling back into his chair. “Me too.”

Sol glares down at his splinted wrist and says nothing. They tried to put him under general anaesthetic to reset it and he had to fight tooth and nail to keep them from putting him under. Goddamn bastards.

Somebody wearing heels clicks down the long hallway in their direction, and Sol raises his head too fast, his vision blurring out for a second. “Fuck,” he mutters, raising a hand to his pounding head.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, boys,” the person attached to the noisy heels says in a brisk, businesslike voice. As Sol blinks she slowly resolves herself into a pretty girl in a police uniform, her long black hair bound back into a tight braid. “How are we feeling tonight?”

Sol hasn’t really had a chance to look in a mirror since before he was shoved in an ambulance fucking five hours ago, but if he looks anywhere near as wrecked as Shawn or Kent, the answer to that question should be pretty fucking obvious. Nobody answers the officer, anyway. She smirks at them, hands on her hips.

“Yeah, I thought so. Well, we’ve got the okay to take you three down to the station so you can tell us exactly what happened, kids. Do any of you have anybody you’d like to inform of your whereabouts and condition before we get this show on the road?” She fishes a flip-phone out of the pocket of her not-very-flattering uniform trousers. “You can use this if you didn’t get a chance to grab your phone before we left the café. I’ve been told you left in kind of a hurry.”

There’s a moment of silence as all three of them stare at the phone. Shawn, with a nervous glance towards Sol and Kent, who haven’t moved, reaches a shaky hand out for the phone.

“Uh,” he croaks, and then he lurches forward slightly and raises a hand to his head. The officer has to take a quick step forward and grab hold of his uninjured shoulder to keep him from falling right out of his chair. He pauses for a second, and then looks up at her. Sol winces at the look on his face. Shawn is almost thirty, but he looks like a scared kid.

“I-I’d like to call my mom,” he croaks, and he’s really a worrying color under his embarrassed flush. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

The officer’s face softens at Shawn’s obvious distress, and she passes him the phone. “Yeah, of course it is.” Planting her hands back on her hips, she looks from Sol to Kent, one dark eyebrows raised. “Who’s next? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Shawn gets very shakily to his feet and wanders off a little down the hallway to call his mother in peace, using the wall for support. Sol looks expectantly over at Kent, who fidgets and then looks back at Sol for a second, and then down at the floor.

“There isn’t anyone I want to call,” he says, looking up at the officer.

Sol looks at him. There’s a muscle jumping slightly in his jaw. Interesting. Sol shrugs. “Me neither, I guess.”

The officer looks from Sol to Kent, frowning. Sol can’t really tell if she looks annoyed or— god— sympathetic. He looks away to keep from rolling his eyes. “You sure? Last call.”

Sol and Kent exchange a look almost without meaning to, and then they both look at the floor. Sol thinks of the look on Kent’s father’s face as he left the cafe. It isn’t an entirely unfamiliar one. “Yeah,” he mumbles finally. “I think we’re both sure, lady.”

There’s a long, awkward moment when the officer and the two boys listen to Shawn murmur shaky assurances into the phone and resolutely do not look at each other. Then Shawn hangs up the phone with a click and stumbles back over to hold it out toward the officer. “Thanks,” he croaks, swaying a little.

“Uh— no problem.” The officer looks from one pale face to the other, looking a little out of her depth. Then she sighs and squares her shoulders. “Okay. The sooner we get down to the station, the quicker you kids can go home. Are, uh— “ She falters a little. “Are you guys all okay to walk?”

Annoyed, Sol swings himself up to his feet, overbalances, and has to be stopped from falling by a hand on his shoulder he realizes to his mortification belongs to Kent. He wills himself not to blush and feels his cheeks and ears reddening anyway, and shrugs away. “Yes, we can walk,” he snaps, shaking his head to clear it.

The officer doesn’t quite laugh at him, but it looks like a struggle to hold it in. “Okay, sure, tough guy. Squad car’s this way.” She strides away, her non-concussed head held high, and the noisy clicking of her heeled boots drills straight into Sol’s skull, sounding much louder in his bruised brain than it probably is.

In his irritation he shoves Kent’s offer of a steadying hand away a little harder than he means to, and Kent winces away like he thinks Sol might hit him. Sol immediately feels guilty, but there’s no way to take it back, so he just stomps after the police lady, and Kent falls back to make sure Shawn doesn’t fall over, instead.

“You can call me Officer Santos, by the way,” she tells Sol over her shoulder. “I think that’s a couple steps up from ‘lady,’ don’t you?”

Sol grumbles at her.

It’s fucking freezing outside, but the fresh air feels good against Sol’s face anyway— the MRI machine had been so damn closed in, and he’d started sweating all over, and while he doesn’t feel clean and he aches all over, at least the icy wind snaps a little bit of clarity back into his poor overheated brain. 

Then he sees the squad car, and cringes a little. “You’re— not gonna let one of us sit up front, are you? he asks Officer Santos halfheartedly.

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” she says cheerfully. “My backup’s already in the driver’s seat. Back seat’s not really meant for three people, but you kids’ll fit just fine if you get a little cozy, don’t worry about it.”

She grins at him, and then practically skips over to the passenger’s side. Sol grinds his teeth.

Sol turns back to glare at Shawn, who has a hand clamped over his mouth, and then at Kent, who seems to be half holding him up, although his face is very pale. Shawn’s shoulder is resting against Kent’s collarbone, and Sol can’t keep in a sympathetic wince before he schools his features back into a glare. “You’re sitting in the middle,” he snaps at Kent. “If anybody gets puked on, it ain’t gonna be me.” He slides into the driver’s side before either of them can protest.

It takes some doing to actually get Shawn in the car, and by the time everybody is seated and buckled in, Sol and Kent are pressed together from shoulder to hip. His head starting to spin a little, Sol notes that Kent has nice thighs— slender, but with more muscle definition than he saw from far away. Sol wonders dizzily if he works out.

Shawn, who seems to be sweating king of a lot, rests his head against the window and goes immediately to sleep. Sol kind of envies him.

Officer Santos’s “backup” turns out to be a twenty-something man with shaggy hair and a carefully cultivated smattering of stubble across his chin. Sol sees that the driver very briefly reaches for Officer Santos’s hand once she’s slid into her seat, but elects not to comment.

Kent looks around at the cramped interior of of the squad car with academic interest, and Sol rolls his eyes at him. “What, you’ve never seen the back of a police car?”

That earns him a quizzical look not just from Kent but from Officer Santos, too, and he immediately regrets saying it.

“Uh— no, never,” Kent says, but thankfully doesn’t ask any of the dozen questions written all over his dumb pretty bruised-up face. Instead he reaches forward and taps against the plexiglass divider between the back seat and the front, like the one in a taxi. The little sliding glass door stands open. “What’s this for?”

“It’s bulletproof, in case you guys turn out to be violent killers,” Officer Santos says brightly.

“Soundproof, too,” the driver pipes up. “For when we have to take noisy drunks back to the station.

Kent laughs, and the sound is awkward and strained. “Oh.”

Officer Santos elbows the driver in the ribs. “Come on, backup. Let’s get these kids back to the station so we can all go to bed.”

He laughs, and as soon as he starts the car, Officer Santos dives for the radio knob. Screaming metal guitars fill the cab, but the noise dills into Sol’s temples with far too much force for him to enjoy it even a little. He throws his hands over his ears. “Jesus!”

“I agree,” the driver says, grinning, and reaches for the radio himself.

If anything, the candy-coated pop he selects is even worse, especially because he grins widely and starts singing along. Sol’s head hurts entirely too much for him to judge whether or not the driver is any good. “Christ, will you shut up?”

When Officer Santos yanks the radio back to the metal station, Sol gives up and reaches forward around Kent to slam the sliding door in the divider closed, and although the sound doesn’t entirely cut off, it at least dies down to a bearable drone. Sinking back into his seat, Sol heaves a relieved sigh, mostly for the sake of his own pounding headache, but also because even in his sleep Shawn looks fucking exhausted, sweat visible on his forehead even from Sol’s seat.

Sol rests his head against the pleasantly freezing glass of his own window and basks in the silence for a second. In fact, he makes it a respectable forty seconds before he can’t resist shooting Kent a sideways glance.

The blond is playing with the bandage above his eye, and looking deeply uncomfortable. Sol frowns at him.

“You know,” Sol says abruptly, and doesn’t stop when Kent winces at the sound of his voice, “I don’t fucking get you, kid. There’s no way they’d take you to the station if you’d called him and had him pick you up. You’ve gotta be fucking loaded, right?”

Kent’s blue eyes slide over to Sol’s face, and then he looks down at his hands, smiling unhappily. “I’m not actually sure I am ‘loaded’ anymore. He may have actually disinherited me this time.”

“What, for— “ Winking at me? Sol doesn’t say. “What’d you do?”

Kent’s answering huff of laughter is pathetic enough that Sol almost doesn’t hear it over the hum of the car around them and the faint pounding of bass from the front seat. “Uh, I dunno. Something stupid, I guess,” he says softly, and twists his hands together.

For a second, his sleeve shifts up and Sol catches a fast glimpse of a single, deep scar on his left wrist, but he tugs it back down so fast Sol can’t be entirely sure.

There’s a very awkward silence. Sol wonders if Kent knows he’s seen it. Probably not.

“It’s like a twenty minute ride to the station, man,” Sol says, when he doesn’t think he can take it anymore. “Elaborate, dammit.”

Kent winces a little and shifts in his seat, poking at the thin scar on his forehead in a way that seems unconscious. “Uh, not that it’s any of your business, but I— broke up with my girlfriend.”

Sol blinks, and waits for him to go on. He doesn’t.

“What the fuck’s that got to do with you dad?” he asks blankly, and Kent laughs and looks away, really scrubbing at his scar now in a way that looks like it should be painful.

“Uh, well, I say girlfriend but I guess the real word is fiance,” he says, fidgeting, and that pulls Sol right up short again.

“Huh? How old are you, man?”

Kent laughs again, looking everywhere but at Sol’s face. “I’ll be twenty this May,” he mumbles. “Sophie and I grew up together, and I think my father kind of decided I’d marry her when we were, like, nine. Her dad’s a business associate.”

“He what? What year is this?” Sol says blankly. “Who the hell does that?”

“My father does, I guess,” Kent says, and the way he says “father” reminds Sol of things he doesn’t really want to think about. Damn, he’s really going to town on that scar of his. Sol’s surprised he hasn’t just torn it right back open.

“So why’d you break up with her, then?” Sol says, because goddammit that’s enough with the awkward pauses. “Because you’re gay?”

Kent actually splutters at that one, and actually looks Sol in the eye for the first time in the whole damn car ride. He also colors prettily. Sol feels weirdly pleased with himself. “Uh,” Kent says, and then looks away, flushing. “Um… no, actually. Or not… entirely, anyway.” Oh, god, now he’s digging his nails against his scar. “I’m not really sure why I did it, exactly. I think maybe I just wanted— I wanted— “

Sol one hundred person does not mean to dart his hand up and wrap it around Kent’s and after he’s done it his brain catches up with him and they both freeze and sit there stock still for at least ten seconds, Sol’s bandaged fingers all tangled up with Kent’s.

Finally Sol drops their twined-together hands to the tiny space on the seat between his right leg and Kent’s left one, even though half of his brain is screaming at him to let go of the guy’s hand oh god.

“Fucking quit that before you tear your fucking face open, okay? Forget it, I’m sorry I asked.”

Kent is staring down at his hand, which is still trapped beneath Sol’s, and wow, he is red all the way down to his broken collarbone.

Sol stares down at their hands too, and is feeling his own face start to flush when he’s saved by Shawn apparently coughing up one of his lungs. They both jump like they’ve been shot, and Kent snatches his band back before turning to touch Shawn’s shoulder with admirable care.

“Hey, you alright?” Kent asks him, and Shawn, shaking with chest-deep coughs, shakes his head.

“Oh man,” he says faintly. “Dude. I feel like absolute shit right now.”