[e]verything burns.

[&Ismirshalen]

Ismirshalen was immensely relieved when the therapist woke up. Although seeing how tired the guy still was he was also feeling extremely guilty. And pissed off at the patrolman for interrupting their much-needed sleep. In fact he really didn’t give a damn that they had been laying on top of each other. If this stupid blabbering idiot wasn’t standing in front of them waving around his flashlight in the predawn light then the guard would gladly resume his slumber. Right now, even sleep was so much better than being awake and knowing that you resembled a yeti that had gotten into a fight with a splintery wooden plank.

His hair was even starting to become greasy. He ran his boney fingers through it to keep it off of his face. Hah. Why bother. His face was a bloody mess. Figuratively and literally. Just thinking about what he must look like made him want to go kill himself. So it was better off that he do all in his power to keep his mind off of things like that.

The policeman took the ID and examined it for what seemed to Ismirshalen like an extremely long time. Seconds ticked back like minutes. Finally the ID was returned back to the therapist. The policeman looked between him and the sloppy Brit, as if deciding whether to believe what was in front of his own face or not. I mean, what was his problem? Did he honestly think that these two men who looked like they had just been through a hurricane were serial killers? Sure, they came in the strangest colors, so to speak, but not even the most dimwitted serial killer would fall asleep in the middle of a graveyard.

”So, Dr. DeVrais… T’his man here is your patient?” the guy finally asked, seeming uncertain. He was really pissing Ismirshalen off. He had some serious anger management issues that needed to be worked on.

”Yes, of course I am,” he spat back at the policeman, sounding exasperated. ”Don’t I look like a complete nutcase to you? Eh?” He pushed himself into a standing position fast enough to make his vision cloud with gray static for a few moments. Once it cleared, he helped Dr. DeVrais to his feet. ”Now excuse us, and we’ll get out of your hair.” Your full, thick hair, he added despairingly. He led himself and the therapist away from his wife’s grave and back to the car before he could be overtaken by his sudden urge to rip the policeman’s hair off of his head and wear it for a wig.

When they were finally back inside the thing he leaned back against the driver’s seat and closed his eyes. Massaged his temples with his fingers. Tried desperately to calm himself down. So many things were going through his head that he had been forcing himself to ignore for the past two days. They were starting to build up to the force of a title wave. He was afraid of what would happen when it hit shore. He wished someone would just run him over or something to get his pathetic existence over with. The world would be a better place without him.

”You hungry?” he asked the therapist when ten minutes later he pulled in for a coffee. He got the answer he had expected—no. However, when he went inside he still bought the guy a bagel. And left it in front of him on the dashboard, hoping he would stop being so stubborn [look who’s talking] and eat the damn thing.

By this time he was making his way to the airport. The caffeine he was now fueling himself with had not yet started circulating through his bloodstream, so at the moment he felt as if he could sleep the whole ride back to Australia. Although if he did end up doing that he would hopefully not dream about anything.

The pair of disgruntled men were just cruising along. The therapist wasn’t saying much of anything. Ismirshalen was too busy brooding to notice. In fact, it took him a second glance to notice the guy sleeping on the bench on the side of the road had a strong resemblance to the guy who—

Wait a minute.

Overtaken by a sudden blinding fury, the Englishman swerved through traffic and onto the side of the road where he parked illegally. And jumped out of the door as if the seat he had been sitting on had suddenly become infested with hot coals. Seething with rage, he made it to the redhead sleeping away on the bench and proceeded to grabbing him by the neck and squeezing it with murderous intent. A choking noise arose from the redhead as he woke up. Not a moment after he gained consciousness and his own tan hands were wrapped around Ismirshalen’s own throat. The two held each other in a death grip, unable to let out their rage at one another because they were both unable to breathe. Squirming and kicking, the tan-skinned hobo slid off the bench and took the guard with him. They rolled about on the ground, kicking at each other and not letting go of one another’s throats. Red dots swam in front of the guard’s vision. His face was starting to turn blue. So was the arsonist’s. Dreamily, he thought how funny it was that people’s faces can actually turn blue. He’d thought such things were just a myth.

[VinnNAY]

For once Vincent was happy to be in a car. He was starting to get to know this car well. Maybe he would name it. Maybe. But it would make the parting process harder for him. He didn’t want anyone to know that he might have feelings for a car. Or that he might have feelings. Maybe it wasn’t the car he had feelings for though.

Maybe it was that lovely bagel staring delightfully at him. Everything seemed so much lovelier lately. When you can only see half of the world it’s great to know you can choose to only concentrate on the good half, which the good half for most things was the left side. Maybe he would eat the bagel after all.

Actually, it was too late for that because the maniac who was driving swerved so fast that Jacques (The bagel) went flying off into the back seat. Vincent rested a bored, sighing head on a hand and looked out the window at half a bench. He was growing so used to everything it was almost boring. However, the guard always made sure to add excitement into this adventure for he was jumping out of the vehicle and trouncing a sleeping man. A sleeping handicapped man (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen two skinny handicapped men beat the crap out of each other).

Vincent didn’t get it. Why could Ismirshalen never win a physical battle? If he was gay he would always be bottom. But, really, he started all of his fights. Why couldn’t he ever finish them? He would have waited in the car a bit longer to have Izzy learn his lesson but he saw a flash of bright red hair and then found himself hopping out from the classy car.

He ran as fast as a brain damaged physically disabled man could and slapped the fuck out of the mysterious red man not once, but twice (One for each side of the face). Maybe his face will match his hair. He dragged the guy by his hair until he was separated from his patient.

[&Ismirshalen]

Suddenly Ismirshalen could breathe again. For a moment he wondered if he even remembered how to, and suffocated for a few more needless seconds. Then the concept of taking in air once again made itself familiar, and he swallowed gallons of it, rolling away from the redhead he had been trying to kill. He heard a pained scream from in his direction. He wondered what had caused it.

When he finally was able to sit up without toppling back over onto his side he saw that the therapist had gotten out of the car and was now dragging the arsonist by his hair in the opposite direction of himself. He wondered if this was to protect him from the killer or the killer from him. If it was the latter than that was extremely unfavorable because Ismirshalen really wanted to kill the guy right now.

Looking at the mystery man’s face, he saw the two telltale red hand prints that were pulsating on it. Now the scream made sense. He had been Vincent-slapped. Ismirshalen himself knew the pain of a Vincent-slap. But two? Two Vincent-slaps? That must be unbearable. He was surprised that the arsonist hadn’t lost consciousness. He did look a little dazed, though. But it didn’t stop the guard from feeling like a wimpy old man.

”Gettoff my hair!,” the sunglassed guy wailed, holding his face in his hands and trying to squirm away from the therapist. ”Hello?! What is bloody up with you two? Can't a chap get a bit of shut-eye here?!”

Enraged at how the murderer could even think of complaining like a whiny brat at them, Ismirshalen regained his feet and wrestled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. Being a guard came with some nifty ups. ”You bloody bastard!” he shouted, grabbing the guy’s tan wrists and linking them together. Unable to help himself even under the therapist’s watchful gaze, he started to repeatedly kick the Australian git in the ribcage.

”YOU. FUCKING. ALMOST. KILLED. VINCENT,” he shouted after each kick. The redhead yelped under him.

”I wasn’t trying to kill him,” he wailed, trying to ward off the damaging blows to his ribs. ”I was trying to kill you!”

The guard just let out a frustrated scream and started kicking the man harder.

[VinnNAY]

Vincent wasn’t sure if he was flinching because of how stupid the murderer’s last comment was or because of its truth factor. He wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to recover from almost leading his patient to his death.

These thoughts were interrupted when he realized that Ismirshalen was kicking the fuckshit out of the other man. Vincent finally let go of the blind man’s hair and grabbed Izzy’s instead. He was trying his best not to slap him, too. Vincent was tired of the guard’s violent behavior and had a killer headache. He made sure to glare him off to show how serious he was about these violent urges and announced, «Take him back to Quattrocchi.»

---

The new voyager proved to be quite the emotional and financial burden. That didn’t stop them from bringing Red along, however (They referred to him as Red once, later finding out his name actually is Red. Creative parents). Sure, they had to secretly pack him into a discount animal cage in order to make it onto the plane without paying for another ticket. But all was well. Vincent even stuffed one of his three day old socks into Red’s mouth to keep him from being the only cursing dog on the plane.

Good things happened, too. Such as while Vincent was asleep waiting for the plane, Ismirshalen got the guts to go out and buy him a real cane. Of course Vincent later complained that his was shorter than Izzy’s. Afterwards on the drive back the guard finally convinced him that he was at least five inches shorter than him and an Izzy-sized cane would certainty never work for a Vincent-sized man. There was a defeated noise Vincent created after that comment.

Vincent was used to getting carried around everywhere so when they got to his living quarters (Which were surreally just the way they had left it) he found himself limping to and then collapsing on top his bed. He made sure to grab a mismatched pillow so that he could scream into it.