Chapter 20
Winging It
Oliver was paying for the tutor—same one he used himself sometimes, in addition to all of his other learning resources. The online tutorials. The friends of friends. Oliver was into diversifying. Rune respected him for it. Why get something from one source when you could get it from a dozen?
The tutor was helping Rune with the nuances of lip-reading to improve his ability to do it, and helping him catch up and expand his studies in ASL, enhancing his vocabulary. The piecemeal way Rune had initially learned how to communicate needed a little smoothing out. He’d learned a lot online, and had used MeetUp.com to connect with his neighbors in the local deaf community and do things in more of a one-on-one way. The human touch had helped a lot, but everyone had lives. They couldn’t make teaching him their job.
The tutor, however, could.
Rune appreciated the guy—Mr. Hannover was his name. Older guy with an amazing, white, bushy beard and hands that flew through the air quicker than you’d believe. He was nice enough, and patient, and thorough. The lessons were helping for sure.
But sometimes Rune had other places to be. It was nothing personal. And he had no way to explain in a way that would satisfy.
When Jackson went to make a pit stop in the bathroom, Rune scrawled a message on a pad of paper, then left it on the floor just outside the bathroom.
Reschedule for me, yeah?
Then he took off, grabbing his bag, his jacket, and palming the keys to the bike. He slipped out the door and was gone.
The Watering Hole wasn’t much to look at. The high, narrow windows were mostly obscured with neon signs advertising beer. The largest was the blue outline of a woman’s torso in a bikini with Coors written across her stomach. Pickup trucks and some motorcycles filled the gravel lot. Everyone Oliver could see going in and out, or smoking by the door, was lily white and most were tattooed. They were subtle about it—a patch here, a tattoo there, and some bumper stickers slapped on grimy windows. But he’d been watching these kinds of guys longer than he’d known Rune. He recognized the pseudo-Nazi symbols, the skinhead trademarks and Klan references. There wasn’t an overt swastika in sight, but there didn’t need to be.
They didn’t look dangerous or riled, but it was early.
The bar itself was located on a curve of the road. On the other side was nothing but a field run through with a snaky creek, decorated with an obnoxious billboard advertising a hunting store a few miles down the way. On the huge sign, a gigantic goose had taken flight and a man in orange squared his rifle in preparation for the shot to take it down.
“Charming,” Oliver sighed, giving the board the side-eye before scanning the bar’s lot again.
He’d been feigning car trouble, parking just down the road a little and milling around the opened hood. Now, he pretended to be on a call and walked closer to the bar, taking his time with his cell phone pressed to his ear.
There wasn’t a plan, but Oliver wanted to go into the bar, maybe ask if they knew of a local towing company, maybe get a Bud Lite or some shit to get a feel for the crowd and eavesdrop.
The closer he got, the more an overgrown, ivy-covered tree blocked his direct view. He heard conversation carry over on the wind as a few men emerged from the bar, so he hung back in the shadows, listening.
And he heard the footstep behind him.
He tensed, adrenaline flooding his system, spinning on a heel to confront the person stalking him.
But before he’d completed the turn, he was knocked sideways, into the tangle of shrubbery, further into the shadows. Falling heavily onto his side, he braced his fall with his gloved hands, glad for the thickness of his woolen coat as branches tried to stab up at him.
A slim, dark figure wearing a balaclava jumped onto him, pinning him to the ground.
Oliver growled and took a swing, but had no leverage or a good angle, so the blow glanced off his attacker’s chest. He looked for a weapon, a gleam of metal, anything. A hand reached for his face and he tried to bite, pushing back, but they managed to get a hand over his mouth, muffling his shout.
Using his larger frame, Oliver managed to shove them both sideways, rolling them so he was on top.
That’s when he was kicked in the balls.
Groaning, cupping himself, he kept rolling through the ivy, lying on his back again and catching his breath. The dark figure leaned over him. They covered his mouth again with a gloved hand, punching his shoulder hard enough for ache to shockwave deep into the muscle. They reached for their mask.
He saw it right before the black fabric lifted away.
It was the eyes that did it.
“Oh, you massive pain in my ass,” he grumbled against the palm covering his lips.
Rune glared angrily down at him, looking ready and eager to continue their wrestling match, punching Oliver’s shoulder again, just as hard in the same spot, then raised a finger to his own lips. Then he jabbed the finger in the direction of the bar and promptly swatted Oliver again.
“Stop! Fuck,” Oliver complained. He tried to grab at Rune’s arms, not caring about the bar anymore, just wanting to get in a good hard smack of his own.
But somehow Rune was even angrier than Oliver was and won the battle for control of each other’s arms, getting a hard grip on Oliver’s wrists and straddling Oliver’s chest to stop him from moving any longer.
“Do you have any idea the kind of damage I’m going to do to your ass later?” Oliver growled. “Epic. Devastating. Possibly legendary.”
“Shh!”
“Did you just fucking shush me?”
Rune got right in his face, scowling like a demon. Oliver gave up a little more and stared up at the leaves swaying in the breeze, enjoying the ache climbing up into his gut, wondering if the kick had been intentional or not.
Detecting the end of Oliver’s fight, he let go and started to sign.
Go home.
Oliver laughed.
“Shh!”
Go home.
You go home. Oliver replied with his hands, then said, “You fucking lunatic.”
“Shh!”
“I swear to god.”
Rune’s fingers flew through the air. Get in the car. Go home.
Oliver signed in reply, You come with me.
He let it settle into his expression that he had no intention of moving an inch unless Rune was coming along. He didn’t care that Rune had likely driven down on his bike. Fuck the bike. Oliver wanted to smash the damned thing with a sledgehammer, then chain his darling submissive in his bedroom for a while. One thing was for damn sure, Rune was not taking off again on some vigilante mission. Oliver intended to make sure of it.
Rune pointed to the car, hidden by foliage, his mouth screwed up with the disappointment of an aggravated father pushed to the end of his rope.
With the agility of a cat, he climbed off of Oliver and crouched expectantly.
Oliver got to his feet with a groan, brushing leaves, twigs and dirt from his black coat, straightening the collar and tugging at the sleeves. Rune swatted at him. Oliver pointed at him in warning.
He saw his phone lying in the dirt, picked it up and checked for cracks.
There was no immediate sign of Rune’s bike.
Oliver started to walk back to the car. Hood pulled up, balaclava back in place, Rune shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked past Oliver, beating him to the car. He slipped into the passenger seat, slumped down, yanked the mask from his face.
Oliver closed the hood and got into the driver’s seat.
Not bothering to sign, Oliver caught Rune’s eye and ranted, “You little shit. I can’t believe you shushed me. You’re deaf for Christ’s sake. And you can’t hear me bitching at you right now anyway. Are you getting any of this at all?”
Rune waved his hands at the open road, looking frantic to be gone. His eyes were everywhere, behind them, in front, to the sides. He kept twisting in his seat.
With none of Rune’s impatience, Oliver calmly shifted into reverse and started to do a three-point turn.
Once almost completely turned around, his saw Rune in his peripheral vision completely twisted backward in his seat. Ignoring him, Oliver kept his eyes on the road and began preparing all of the ways he’d rain some vengeance of his own down on his sub who was supposed to be with the paid tutor instead of tackling Oliver and kicking him in the balls.
Then Rune yelled, “The truck!” The force and volume of the cry startled Oliver to an embarrassing degree. Rune smacked Oliver’s arm and pointed back at the bar.
With a heavy sigh, praying for patience so the urge to strangle Rune would pass, Oliver pulled to the side of the road again and looked.
A decades-old light blue Ford pickup had just pulled into the lot. Two men in nondescript redneck garb and baseball caps got out, then walked into the bar.
That truck hit me, Rune explained, his hands making shapes in the air.
“Are you sure?” Oliver both asked and signed.
Rune nodded enthusiastically, pointing. He grabbed for his phone, pulled up the camera and held it up so Oliver would get the idea.
“Stay in the fucking car. We’ll drive past,” Oliver explained, with words and hands.
He turned around again, and slowly drove by the gravel lot. Rune rolled his window down and snapped photo after photo of the truck, its plates, the whole shebang.
Satisfied, Oliver kept driving and planned to loop around a different way in order to head back to town. He went as fast as he could without speeding.
The robotic voice on Rune’s phone asked, “Where are we going?”
“Police,” Oliver answered, holding his right hand in a C shape over his chest where a police badge would be found, then returned his hands to the wheel.
“I can handle it,” the phone insisted in monotone.
“No.” He used one hand as in command, bringing his first two fingers and thumb swiftly together, closing the argument.
The rest of the drive was silent. Fifteen minutes later, they had pulled up to the police station. Oliver cut the engine and turned toward Rune.
“You need to file a police report about the attack. Give them the photos.” He pointed to the phone.
Rune pressed play on his phone, which dictated his message. “The cops will do nothing. It’s hearsay. No evidence. They’ll let them go and they’ll keep attacking people. I need to handle this on my own. I need to stop them. If I file a report, the Lions will know I’m gunning for them. They’ll know I’m coming.”
“No.” Again, Oliver brought his fingers together, infusing the gesture with his anger.
Rune huffed and moved to start typing again.
“No,” Oliver repeated, slicing through the air, smacking Rune’s arm to get his attention. He said it slowly, exaggerating the words so they’d be understood, waiting until Rune’s gaze was on his mouth. “Report or we’re done.” He gestured between them, then cut through the air.
He saw the pain in Rune’s expression, the hurt, the frustration. It was grasping, fevered, driven. But Oliver was resigned and held his place. He would not be moved. Not anymore. Because he knew what was right, and the best ways to protect Rune from the consequences of his ferocious crusade against his attackers. He also knew he loved Rune too much to stand by and watch him sacrifice himself for the cause.
There was a pause. Stillness. Tension. Rune gazed up at the station, licked his lips, bowed his head and slowly nodded. In the silence of the car, he wadded up the balaclava in his lap, gathering the fabric in a hand and slid the phone back into his pocket.
Oliver sighed, relieved.
Rune opened the door, got out, slammed it shut and started to jog away, in the opposite direction of the station.
Oliver realized he had his answer.