The challenge (and I know I'm breaking all kinds of netiquitte rules by forgetting the person who put this challenge up, and for that I'm sorry) was something along the lines of "what would happen if someone came along and held the show/studio hostage"? And I went..."hmmmm"!

It’s three twenty seven pm and they’re all waiting impatiently for some action.

The studio’s been swinging all day between ‘Arctic Tundra’ and ‘Fires of Hell’, and right now, it’s hovering a tick above ‘tongue stuck to the flagpole’. Poor Colin, the only one in short sleeves, allows himself a minute to look how he feels—absolutely miserable—and Drew, whose suit jacket’s been on and off more times than a cheap hooker’s thong, tries not to look too toasty as he snuggles into its woolen warmth. Instead, he taps his pencil against his ceramic mug, eyeing the doors that Dan and Keith went through ten minutes before with their promise of “we’ll be back in four minutes, don’t leave your seats”, and telling himself not to look over at the craft services table, where a hot coffee and jelly donut are all but screaming out his name.

Not that it matters in the end, really. He’s just the handsomely paid chimp in the suit pressing buzzers and reading cards, after all. But Ryan…Ryan’s leg is jumping like electricity between two bare wires, and if looks could kill, the entire studio audience would be nothing but heaps of ash in their seats. Cold heaps of ash.

Drew shoots him a glance, cocking his head slightly and begging silently for patience he knows is fast dwindling. Hell, even Colin’s looking a bit edgy, and his picture’s in the Merriam Webster’s next to the word ‘serenity’.

Wayne and Greg are miming playing cards, though by the twitchy look in Greg’s bespectacled eyes, it’s a toss-up who’s going to blow first—him or the tall one with the steadily throbbing temple vein. It’ll be a bang-and-splatter fest, either way, and Drew, ex-Marine that he is, isn’t quite sure he’s up for it.

The point is rendered immediately moot as the stage doors crash open, then close again in a clanging of metal that should be loud, but isn’t. Sighing in relief, Drew smiles and begins to stand—only to slam his ass post haste back down into his chair as a dozen or more men, looking like rejects from the local High School drama Ninjas with Guns, come tromping through in cheap Doc Marten rip-offs.

“What the fuck is—” Drew’s words are cut off abruptly as the muzzle of a fully automatic machine pistol acquaints itself with the flesh at his temple and decides to get comfy and stay awhile. The four men on stage who see this all rise, faces stony with anger, but sit quickly as the gun is pressed harder into Drew’s head, causing him to wince.

“Good boys,” comes a soft, raspy voice from beneath a black ski mask. The slight accent almost sounds Latino, but no one can be sure. “You all stay real good boys, play nice, and nobody has to get hurt, okay?”

No one answers as the four divide their attention between watching Drew, and watching as the rest of their…attackers?....captors?...practical jokers?....thread their way up into the audience, each taking a section and guarding it with an upraised and very lethal looking weapon.

“The doors in and out of here have been rigged to explode when touched,” the soft, lightly accented voice continues, “so I hope all of you have brought along some munchies, a good book, and nobody has to tinkle. We’re going to be here awhile, I think.”

This raises snickers from the man’s compatriots, and murmurs of dismay from the crowd. A flash of white teeth, and the man raises his weapon and fires a brief burst into the ceiling, miraculously missing the lighting and heavy scaffolding which just might have ended this little soiree before it had a chance to begin. Spent shells hit the ground with a ‘cling-cling’ ‘cling-cling’, and the stench is acrid and choking as it floats and hovers above the stage, seeming to mock the helpless players.

“I’d suggest you listen to me, Ladies and Gentlemen,” the voice goes on, soft and flat as ever. “You are now guests of the People’s Democratic Revolution Front. I am Ramon. I am the leader here. And because I am the leader, you will follow my rules.” He smiles, though the mask makes that expression rather unreadable. “I’d like to think my rules are simple. You stay quiet, quiet as a mouse in a cat’s home, you live. You do what I ask you to, when I ask you to do it, you live. Sound easy?”

Several in the audience nod, and Ramon smiles again. “Good! Excellent!” He lowers his weapon. “Now, as we are a poor association, donations of any kind are most gratefully accepted. So, if you would be so kind to empty your pockets and pass to us your wallets, passports, watches, and any jewelry you might be carrying, we would be most thankful. My men will come along the rows and collect it from you. Remember, please, that the more generous you are, the closer you are to freedom.”

The other armed men shake out army-issue duffel bags and start going among the rows, stuffing the stolen property inside. Ramon looks around, smug, then lifts his empty hand. “Carl!”

A short, stocky man, in the middle of relieving an older woman of her faux pearl earrings, straightens and turns. “Yeah?”

“I’ve got things to do. Take over here for a minute, will you please?”

“Whatever you say, Ramon.” Dropping his duffel to the floor, Carl eagerly scampers down the steps, then comes up behind Drew’s desk to fill the space vacated by his boss, tapping the rotund host on the top of the head with the muzzle of his Uzi just to remind him who’s in charge.

“You guys look like you’re not too bad off,” he observes after a moment, gesturing toward the players with his weapon. “How about throwing your wallets, watches, and whatever else you have on the middle of the rug there, huh?”

Ryan definitely looks like he wants to argue the point, but a look from Colin cuts that off at the knees. Greg, unfortunately, doesn’t have a Colin, but he does have a very healthy sense of self interest and it is that which keeps the claws sheathed; but oh does he want to spew. At this very moment, Mount Vesuvius has nothing on him.

Drew draws out his thick wallet and expensive watch amiably enough, handing it to the guy with the gun to his head as if he hasn’t a care in the world. “There ya go,” he says in his best ‘I’m just the friendly host and the points don’t mean a damn thing’ voice. “Should be enough there to front any revolution you’re thinking of starting up, m’man.”

One handed, Carl opens the wallet, going frog-eyed when he spies the fat wad of spending green gracing the folds. “Damn, man,” he breathes. “What are you, some kind of movie star?” He flips to the license, then looks back over at Drew. “I thought I recognized you, man! You’re that Drew Carey dude!

Greg has his hands clamped hard on the arms of his chair, his ass squirming on the seat like a puppy just told to ‘stay!’. His teeth are clenched tight enough to crack, but anyone who knows him can tell it’s a losing battle. Hell, even those who’ve never seen him before can tell. Wayne’s strong hand clamps over his wrist and he tenses, then relaxes slightly and shoots his friend a look that’s a cross between outrage and gratitude. It’s an interesting mix, and despite himself, Wayne finds himself grinning.

“And you!” Carl continues, pointing to Ryan, who’s turning his head away. “You’re the tall guy that’s with him! On that show! That…damn…what’s it called?”

In all honesty, Greg can’t help it. It seems cruel to even ask him to. It’s like offering a wounded gazelle to a starving lion, or Clive Anderson making a ‘you Yanks’ crack right to his face.

Once you get past the thinking brain, after all, you’re down to pure instinct. “It’s called The Drew Carey Show, you….”

Just then, and in no way coincidentally, Colin employs his own form of the censor’s ‘bleep’ by coughing so loudly—and realistically—that it both completely covers Greg’s ‘you fucking ijimimmet’ and has Ryan looking over at him in absolute horror, certain he’s suddenly acquired some wildly exotic and imminently fatal lung disease. Necrotizing pneumonitis, perhaps. Or SARS. Maybe even Legionnaires.

While still under the pretense of coughing up a lung, Colin glances up at his lover, dark eyes twinkling merrily. Ryan’s lips thin to a pale slash even as he relaxes, and his head shakes slowly, just once.

Oh, there’s going to be holy hell meted out when this is over.

If they get out of this alive, Colin will pay it willingly. Eagerly, even. It’s been awhile, after all.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’s it!” Carl continues, as if nothing untoward has happened. Then he looks around, scowling. “Where’s the fat chick? And the other doofus. Oswald, ain’t it?”

“This isn’t that show,” Drew says gently before Greg has a chance to earn himself a lead tiara.

Frowning, Carl takes a step back and lowers his weapon, aiming it at Drew’s calm face. “Don’t be fucking with me, bitch. You’re here. That Lewis dude is here. There’s the cameras. So where the fuck is everyone else?”

“This is a different show,” Drew tries again, slowly reaching for the cards that display the show’s name and holding them up so the tightly wound man can see.

The cards fly out of his hand a split second later, and Drew’s in immediate danger of sudden facial reconstruction as Carl’s finger tightens on the trigger of his weapon. “I told you to quit fucking with me, man!!”

“He’s telling you the truth,” Colin says, voice strong and true, half standing, empty hands raised, palms facing outward.

Ryan slams him back into his seat as the gun aims in the Canadian’s direction, but miraculously, Carl doesn’t fire.

“Oh yeah? Says who?”

“Says…me, I guess,” Colin replies, gently pulling Ryan’s arms away from him and straightening his rucked-up pink shirt. “See,” he continues mildly, conversationally, “this is...a game show. And the four of us, well, we’re the contestants.”

He gestures to the four of them, and they all nod vigorously, giving the gunman their best smiles. Even Greg, whose best smile is very good indeed. Perhaps not as blinding as Wayne’s, but very good nonetheless.

“And Drew, he’s sort of the host. Like Alex Trebek.”

Carl’s eyes are blank as shiny coins.

Greg snorts. “Figures,” he says, though it’s thankfully low enough not to be overheard. “I’ll take Fucking Idiots for a thousand, Alex.”

“Greg!” Wayne hisses.

Ok, so maybe he was overheard.

“Pat Sajak?” Colin tries.

The gunman smiles, revealing a mouth in severe need of some serious dental work. “Ohhhh. The Wheel of Fortune dude! Yeah, man, I totally dig him!”

“You would,” Greg snarks again, ignoring the healthy pinch he receives from a scowling Wayne.

Carl’s heavy brows beetle down over his muddy brown eyes again. “Yeah? So where’s the wheel, then?”

“There is no wheel.” Colin’s voice is patience itself, and of the four of them, only he could have pulled it off as easily. He’s got a certain charm that many people can’t seem to help but respond to. “He uses those cards down there instead.”

“Yeah?” Carl asks, genuinely interested now. By the looks of some of the other gunmen, he’s not the only one, and Colin thinks this would be the perfect time to make a move—if there was anyone around to make it. And if there was actually a move to be made. He glances over at Ryan, knowing he’s thinking the same, and sighs at the tight head shake he receives. “How?” Carl continues, oblivious.

“Well…they all have…suggestions…for things to do. And he picks a couple of us to do them, and whoever does them best wins points. And at the end, whoever has the most points wins the game.”

The other three nod again, smiling their little hearts out and praying that no hack from the audience quips up about the points not meaning anything. After all, it’s not as if they haven’t heard that a million times before.

“What kinda things?”

“Well…you’d need to look at the cards to see, I think.”

The man seems tempted, but then pulls back and shakes his head. “Huh uh. You do it,” he says to Colin, gesturing with his gun to back up his order.

“I’ll do it,” Ryan replies, pushing himself up from his chair.

“No way, Lewis dude,” Carl cries, switching the gun’s site to the extremely tall man beginning to move toward him. “You sit your ass back down now or I’ll turn it into Swiss Cheese, I swear I will!”

“It’s alright, Ryan,” Colin murmurs, easing his lover back down even as he gets to his own feet. “I’ll do it. It’s alright.”

Once Colin is fully standing and moving toward him, Carl begins to think that maybe he’s made a mistake. Though the other guy is really tall, this one isn’t that much shorter, topping his own height by a good five inches or so, and the way he moves in his body, lithe and easily, Carl finds his mouth drying a little.

Then he remembers he’s the one with the gun, and everything seems alright again. “Just pick up one of ‘em,” he orders, sticking his chest out like a banty rooster amidst a flock of hens.

“Alright,” Colin replies mildly, squatting and picking up one of the scattered blue cards at random, praying all the while that it isn’t what he’s suddenly sure it is. It was on tonight’s schedule after all, and his luck really isn’t that good. Still praying, he holds it out to Carl, who shakes his head.

“You do it. Open it up and read what it says.”

Nodding, Colin opens the envelope, slides the card out an inch or so, then flutters his eyes closed. Figures.

“It’s a hoedown.”

Some of the crowd has evidently forgotten Ramon’s orders because a few chuckles and even a cheer or two is heard. The other gunmen don’t even respond, still staring down at the stage with varying degrees of interest.

“What’s a ho down?” Carl demands over the groans of the other participants.

“It’s a singing game,” Wayne pipes up, earning himself a view down the barrel of an Uzi.

“Shut up,” Carl warns. “All of you. Except you, baldy. Tell me what this ho down thing is.”

“Well…like Wayne said, it’s a singing game.” He pauses. “Someone from the audience chooses a topic to sing about, and then all four of us sing a verse. Whichever one Drew likes best wins and the singer gets the points.”

“Sounds kinda stupid.”

Colin chuckles. “It is.”

“Then why do you do it?”

Colin hesitates a minute, thinking, then opts for a lie over the truth. “Why does anyone become a contestant on a game show?”

“Do you get a lot of money if you win?”

“Not bad,” he replies, shrugging.

Carl nods, vaguely contemplative. “Do one.”

“Excuse me?”

“One of them ho down things. Do one.”

“Well…it’s…kind of better if all four people do it instead of just me.” His hands come up to his chest, and in a move he hasn’t used since London, he begins to twist his wedding band. “I can’t sing, and….”

“Fine, fine. All four of you can do it, but any funny moves and you’re all dead, got it?” Carl doesn’t know why he’s suddenly agreeing to all of this, except for some reason he really wants to hear this ho down thing.

The other three get to their feet with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but hesitate when Carl begins waving his weapon at them.

“What the fuck are you doin?”

“They need to come down here with me,” Colin hastily explains. “That’s where the hoedown’s done.”

“Jimmy!” Carl shouts to one of his compatriots. “Get your ass down here and help me watch these idiots. If they move wrong, shoot ‘em.”

Jimmy seems happy enough to comply and stands directly in front of the stage, weapon aimed at the four players as they form a more-or-less straight line across it.

“Well,” Carl demands when they remain standing there. “What are you waitin’ for?”

“We need a topic. To sing about.”

“Oh. Well,” his chest puffs out again. “Sing about us!”

“We…really don’t know that much about you. The song’s four verses, and—”

“You know our name. That’s all you need to know. Now start singing or Jimmy and me will start shooting.”

At a nod from Ryan, Laura Hall plays the opening bars, only to stop when Carl damn near shoots the piano into kindling. “What the fuck!?!?” he demands.

“Yo, Carl, dude, calm down!” Jimmy remonstrates, laughing. “It’s just a piano, dude. It ain’t gonna, like, grow arms and kill ya or anything.”

Carl turns accusing eyes to the tall Canadian, glaring hot enough to scald. “You didn’t tell me nothing about no piano.”

Colin looks down at the ground. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do anything like that again. You almost got that bitch over there killed.”

“I won’t,” Colin promises, meaning every word.

“All right, then. You can tell her to start playing again.”

Taking a deep breath, Laura begins again, only letting it out when the first stanza’s complete and she finds herself still tickling the ivories.

WAYNE:

Perhaps half the crowd cheers, and then begins to clap in its normal hoedown rhythm, accompanying the song. As the verses go on, the cheering gets stronger.

GREG:

Carl squints at Greg after he shuffles back, smirking. He didn’t understand one word in five, but he has the strange feeling that he’s just been made fun of. He doesn’t dare look over at Jimmy, figuring if Jimmy hasn’t cut the smarmy dude with the fairy pompadour down by now, it must not have been that bad.

COLIN:

Huh, Carl thinks, baldy really can’t sing. But his rhyme was kind of funny, and makes sense, if you think about it. It’s kind of interesting the way he lights up when it’s his turn, too—kind of reminding Carl of turning into Superman from mild mannered Clark Kent. He chuckles to himself and reminds himself to share that thought with Jimmy when they’re done.

RYAN:

ALL:

And fuck your mothers again….

The four men hit the stage hard, Ryan almost completely atop Colin, and Greg and Wayne tangled like fishing line, but the only two sporting wounds are Carl and Jimmy; minor ones, hardly worth mentioning, and from the weapon of Ramon whose sudden reappearance isn’t as coincidental as some might wish to think.

Tucking his pistol under his arm, he approaches the stage, applauding loudly and sarcastically. “Very good, gentlemen,” he says, beaming as he comes to stand before the front of the stage. Jimmy and Carl look up at him with guilt, then quickly scoop up their weapons and limp away, rubbing at their near misses and thanking God. “Very good indeed. I’m especially impressed with you, Mr. Mochrie, though I really shouldn’t be. I must confess, I’m a bit of a fan.”

Colin eases out from beneath Ryan’s heavy weight, suppressing a shudder of revulsion over Ramon’s words. With fans like him….

“And you say you have no musical skill,” Ramon continues. “Au contraire, you played poor Carl like a violin. Had you been any more expert, his dead carcass would have been on your conscience.”

“I didn’t play anything.”

Ramon laughs, dropping the pistol back into his hand. “You lie poorly, Mr. Mochrie. Do yourself and your friends a favor and don’t lie at all. It will be better for all of you that way.” He leans toward them all then, a conspiratorial air buzzing about him. “I saw it all, you realize. I was sitting backstage with your friends Dan and Keith.”

The men startle, but Ramon waves his hand, unconcerned. “They’re quite fine, I assure you. Our…negotiations…took a bit longer than I’d planned for, but in the end, they had no choice but to give in.” Grinning in private mirth, he turns to the four camera men and gestures to them. “Gentlemen, if you’ll take your places, please?”

As they scramble to their cameras, Ramon turns back to the players and host. “It took some doing, you see, but eventually those in charge saw the…shall we say ‘benefits’ of providing me with a live-feed out of this studio. Within five minutes, your faces will be on every television across this wonderful land of ours.” He chuckles. “You can, of course, thank me later for the exposure. When you’re all stars. If you manage to live through the experience, of course.” This is said with a special look toward Greg, who smirks back, totally unfazed. “Perhaps you wish to return to your seats, gentlemen? Put yourselves back to rights, as it were? After all, it wouldn’t do to appear any less than perfect before your adoring fans-to-be, would it.”

The four trudge back to their chairs, exchanging glances. “Nice going, Rambo,” Colin mutters behind his water glass as he slides into his chair.

Ryan shoots him a withering glance. “Bite me, Beethoven.”

“He played the piano.”

The air turns momentarily blue around Ryan as he outdoes his hoedown for expletives. Colin chooses to let it go, well knowing that it’s fear that is moving Ryan’s lips—and not fear for himself. It’s Colin’s safety he fears for; Colin’s life he could not live without. As Ryan slams down his glass, the last of the water in it sloshing over the side like an erupting volcano, Colin grasps his lover’s flailing fingers and squeezes them, warmly, gently, conveying with his touch the words his lips can’t articulate.

Ryan calms, gradually, but his anger remains; a palpable, breathing thing that surrounds him like a nimbus, pulsating to the rhythm of his heart.

“Going live in ten….” Keith’s voice comes loud onto the soundstage and Greg feels a bright burst of hatred for him, so bitter that his mouth and face reflexively react, as if his tongue can actually taste the emotion. “In five…four…three…two….”

With an almost professional demeanor, Ramon scoops up a live mike from Drew’s desk and turns to camera two. “Good evening, my brothers and sisters in America….”

Drew lets the Ramon’s words drift over him like snowflakes of inconsequential sounds as his agile mind thinks up and promptly discards various scenarios for ending this idiocy and getting them all out of the studio alive and, preferably, uninjured—and damnit, something should be coming to him, he’s the one with the training, after all, but there’s nothing but the static of a local station gone off the air after the National Anthem’s over and done with, and he finds his anger building, and with him, that’s never a good thing. Especially in front of his friends.

Especially in front of a studio audience.

And, perhaps, the whole nation, besides.

He forces himself to calm enough to bring his ears back on line with his brain, just in time to hear the terrorist-wannabe’s demands.

“….twenty five million American dollars in bills of any size. A plane, a DC-10, fueled and ready at the Orange County airport. We won’t be needing a pilot or any other crew. The following men and women, innocent of any crime, will be released from your American prisons and be waiting for us beside the plane when we arrive….”

Greg is sitting in his chair, battling an acid stomach that tastes faintly of guilt, since he knows that he shares at least some of his captor’s ideas. It’s a sickening thought, and he wants to shy away from it, but he can’t. And yes, he hates that his government, and by extension, himself, has meddled in other countries’ affairs to the point of toppling legitimate, democratically elected governments, but damnit, the closest he’ll ever get to committing murder is death by sarcasm. Guns and hostage taking and innocent victims blurs the line between bully and bullied. Sharp tongues may cut, but you usually don’t need surgery to heal from them.

He bends forward in his chair, gazing with desperation down the row of his friends, only to find them turning that same gaze back at him.

Professional improvisers at a loss. Never a good thing. In point of fact, a pretty goddamn bad thing, if you stop and think about it for any length of time.

His mind quickly invents its own hoedown and he sings it to himself. It’s pretty easy to do, actually, since it’s only got one word in it, repeated three dozen times.

Fuck.

A real Ryan Stiles special, come to think of it, and goddamnit, Stiles should be singing it right now, staring down the censor with those damn freaky glares of his, and daring him to do his worst; and they should all be thinking about what bar to hit after the taping’s done; and he and Drew and Wayne should be starting up the betting pool over exactly what time it will be when Colin and Ryan will put down their glasses, pick up their asses, and scramble on out of there to make the beast with two backs in some anonymous hotel room or other.

A high-pitched scream from somewhere near the back of the studio brings him back into himself and he watches in horror as one of the gunmen pulls a rotund, middle-aged man dressed in khakis and a sweater to his feet, struggling.

Closer to, Ramon drones on.

“…you have exactly sixty minutes in which to meet these demands, people of America. For every five minutes past that deadline you delay, one of these innocent men and women you see here will pay the ultimate price. And to prove to you that my words are serious….”

Drew knows what’s going to happen, and he stands, one hand thrust out toward Ramon in a pleading gesture. “No, man,” he shouts, still rising, and pushing his chair back as he does so. “Please… don’t….”

He watches with some sense of detachment as Ramon aims the machine pistol in his direction. It’s like they’re playing the Director game, and Colin has called for everything to be done in slow motion. He’s never played the Director game, but now he knows what it feels like.

He’s completely unsurprised when the sound of gunfire splits the air. There’s absolutely no pain at all, which does surprise him a bit, and his hands go automatically to his lower chest and belly even as his knees buckle, dumping him half in and half out of his still rolling chair. He manages to steady himself somehow, even as the world around him goes grey, then comes awash with more colors than he’s ever seen in his life, then greys out again to what he realizes is the beat of his heart. Sound is like that, too; waves of it crashing upon him, then receding like the tide, then crashing in again in shrill screams and cries of absolute panic.

He manages to turn his head and sees his friends once again a tangled human knot on the stage. None of them appears to be injured, and for that, he thanks God. He adores them all, and would gladly trade his life for any one of theirs. Or all of them, if need be.

He smiles.

His vision begins to fade again, this time with big black dots which burst on the horizon, only to form again like some crazy kaleidoscope. His heart beats sluggishly in his ears, and his lungs ache. It is only then that he remembers to breathe, and then surprises the hell out of himself by actually doing so.

And still, there’s no pain.

Curiosity draws his hands away, and he has to stare down at them for a full thirty seconds before he fully realizes that they are completely free of blood. He had actually hallucinated it being there, so sure was he that it was. But no, only healthy pink flesh stares back at him, mockingly, and he looks around, utterly confused.

Greg’s lips are moving, and the veins in his throat are standing out like garden hoses. His face is flushed a brick red, and though Drew can’t hear what he’s shouting, it must be something good, because Ramon is smirking at him, gun still pointed in Drew’s direction.

And still….

When he finally looks up into the audience—his audience, his thoughts remind him—only then does he realize the mistake he’s made.

There’s a body laying on the stairs; the very stairs he’s run down how many hundreds of times now, blood soaking into the carpet in an ever widening circle. They’ll never be able to get that out, he thinks inanely.

A male body dressed in khaki and a sweater against the chill of the air, unbreathing, unthinking, unbeing.

The man’s wife? Girlfriend? Friend? Relative? is still screaming shrilly, but others are comforting her while staring at the killer, smoke still curling up from the gun he has pointed at them all.

And Drew feels very small, because there should have been something he could have done to prevent it. Or at the very least, he should have been the one to take the bullet instead, like he thought he did, but he’s still breathing and a man who only wanted to laugh is now resting in eternal silence and where the holy fuck is the humor in that?

“You goddamn motherfucking son of a goddamn bitch!” he screams, jumping once again up from his seat, only to be betrayed by the selfsame seat as it finally tires of his weight and abuse, and gives up the ghost, rolling backward off the stage, dumping him hard onto the floor below, and knocking the glasses off his face and the wind out of his lungs.

And that fucking hurts!

He gathers himself quickly, pleased beyond measure that the fall hasn’t damaged his spine, but the moment’s gone and Ramon and his minions are firmly back in control of the situation. He notes that the cameras are still on, which means that the world—or the part of it watching, at any rate—has seen him make a bloody ass out of himself, but since he more or less gets paid to do that anyway, it isn’t as bad as it might have been otherwise.

Eschewing the chair, he comes around to the stage steps and climbs them, not approaching the still smirking Ramon, but not avoiding him either. His fear of that has passed. If he buys a bullet, so be it. But he’ll take the godless bastard down with him if he can. He knows that now, if he knows nothing else. This is his show, damnit, even if it doesn’t have his name on it, and these are his people. And his responsibility.

Still eyeing the terrorist leader, he parks an ample hip on one corner of his desk, clasps his hands and lays them primly on his lap. Ramon gives him a brief, almost respectful, nod, then turns back to camera two. “You have fifty five minutes, ladies and gentlemen of America. I suggest you use them wisely.”

Ramon leaves the stage then, and one by one the players disentangle themselves from one another and rise to their feet, moving toward him and forming another knot, this one a tight semicircle of warm bodies, all reaching out to touch him, reassuring themselves of his continued existence. Their words are mumbled and meaningless, stacked atop one another like bricks in a haphazard pile, but the touches are warm and comforting, and he welcomes them without pause or complaint, basking in the solid presence of his friends.

Ramon returns after a moment, a goddamned cup of coffee in his hands, as if he’s earned a drink after having someone murdered, but the smug grin he’s worn all day falls from his lips as he sees them together by the desk.

And it’s easy to know why. Singly, they might shine, and singly, they do; Greg for his sarcasm and witty repartee, Wayne for his awesome singing and dancing abilities, Colin for his sense of the absurd and the unique ability to reduce the others to quivering lumps of Jell-o with just a look or word, and Ryan for being the one the others look to because he is a master at his craft, and, like Sergeant Slaughter, is always willing to lead the attack on the hill, and the next, and the next.

But together…together is what improv is all about, and together, the four best known improvisers in the world become the best improvisational team in the world. Alone, they’re experts, worthy of being adored.

Together, they’re magic.

And it shows.

And because it shows, it feels as if the tables might just be turning, if only the slightest bit. As he comes up the stairs, the five men beam down upon him five identical half-smiles, as if they’re playing the game ‘Secret’ and not only do they know what the secret is, they also know where it’s hidden. And it’s not even twenty seconds into the scene yet.

Ramon feels an instant of fear lance through him before the comforting weight of his gun soothes his nerves and he dredges up his own oily smile, eyeing each of them in turn. “Back to your seats, please.”

For a moment, it looks as if they will refuse, and undoubtedly would have if it had just been him against them, gun or no gun, but there are others to think of, and though it takes longer than Ramon thinks it should, they finally break the close press of their bodies and make their way back to their chairs.

He eyes them all as he takes contemplative sips from the mostly cold—but still delicious—coffee. With almost an hour to kill, he had returned to the stage fully intending to order the men before him to perform for his amusement. He wasn’t lying when he said he was a fan, and the power and rush inherent in having them play their games especially for him is intoxicating.

But seeing them together just then, seeing their strength and their bond and their magic, has given him pause.

It’s not that he’s afraid they’ll overpower him, per se. It’s more a fear of being somehow…absorbed; so taken away from this time and space that his control will be entirely lost. And that cannot happen, under any circumstances. It’s much easier to become disarmed when you’re bent over and breathless from laughter, after all.

He sighs in disappointment and tosses away the rest of the coffee, splattering the floor indifferently, then looks up into the audience. “Jose, come down here, please. Keep an eye on these gentlemen while I visit our friends in the control booth.” He turns back to the players. “Don’t try anything stupid this time, okay? You’ve run out of leniency points with me.”

They give him no answer, not that he expects one, and he turns away and dismounts the stage, battling the vague, unsettled feeling in his guts.

One of the things an improviser learns—if he ever hopes to last as one, anyway—is to look at his performing partner without appearing to look at him. It’s how he picks up subtle clues on where a scene might be going next, or how, for example, three grown men can do a remarkably good Village People imitation without staring at one another for cues when the music suddenly changes tempo from disco to polka.

It’s also how Colin knows that Ryan is looking intently at something behind him without appearing to know any such thing. And how he clues in to exactly what that ‘something’ is while apparently doing nothing more than staring at the water as he pours it from the pitcher into his half-filled glass.

And how Wayne discovers it by fiddling with the cuff on his slacks, while Greg completes the circle by polishing the lenses of his glasses on the blindingly white handkerchief pulled from his pocket.

The ‘something’ isn’t new, but its implications are.

Behind their chairs is a lip, which leads to a narrow depression that is well known to many a fan of the show as being rather a magnet for toppled water pitchers, glasses, tables, chairs, and the odd improviser or two unfortunate enough to be caught in a wind tunnel or playing a firefighter in slow motion.

It’s narrow, yes, but deep enough, perhaps, to hide a prone body from gunfire long enough to effect an escape.

It’s not a big secret, no. Not an ‘event ending’ secret. But it is a secret, and as all of them know, entire worlds can be constructed out of the smallest of secrets, if you play them just right.

Four gazes calmly cross as four bodies relax just slightly into their chairs.

Drew looks at his watch. There are forty seven minutes left, and he realizes that these might well be the last forty seven minutes he will ever live, and though it sounds a bit maudlin, it isn’t; at least to him. Because he’ll be damned if he’ll let another member of his audience—his audience, damnit!—be cold-bloodedly executed. Not while his heart’s still beating. He chances to meet Ryan’s gaze and sees his own thoughts, his own convictions, reflected back at him from those narrowed emerald depths and he suddenly feels almost giddy.

He might go down, but it won’t be alone. And it’s amazing how much of a difference to his whole outlook that makes.

Meanwhile, Colin sits back in his seat and practices the Art of Being Zen. He knows Ryan hates it, mainly because it makes him all but impossible to crack on stage, or, if he’s in a mood, off-stage as well, and so he does it far less than he otherwise might. It’s a useful trick, however, and he employs it now, pulling slowly back into himself and letting everything, the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything just jumble together until it is all meaningless enough to simply fade away.

Then he listens to his body—only his body. He feels the way his lungs expand to accommodate the chilled inrush of air pulled in through his nose, then contract to expel the toxins back through the same route—or ‘rowt’, as his American friends might call it.

He can feel his heart beat, a comforting rhythm he’s known his whole life, and he lets that center him. He can feel some muscles expand and contract, others twitch minutely. His stomach growls low, protesting its emptiness. His eyes blink rapidly, and he can feel them move on their bed of moisture, silent, like always.

He can also feel his thoughts clamoring for his attention, but he lets them drift away like groundmist, noted but unappreciated.

Once he’s fully there, within himself, he deliberately begins to let bits and pieces of the outside world back in, still keeping the thinking part of his brain in careful neutral. The first thing he allows himself to hear is one of the first things he always hears, and that is the music of Ryan’s breathing. Onstage or off, he is as attuned to that sound just like a homing missile to a target. It’s gotten so that he knows which hitch means he’s just stolen Ryan’s hoedown rhyme, which pause means only two more short jabs before he loses it completely, which whimpered growls mean he’s about to crash over a different edge entirely, and so much more.

Telepathy, thy name is acute hearing.

Ryan’s breathing is calm and unlabored, if slightly more rapid than usual. He’s getting ready to do something. I’m not sure what, and I doubt he’ll let me in on it, but I don’t mind. I’ll let myself in on it when the time comes.

That settled, he allows his eyes to scan the audience in long, slow sweeps, like a rooftop assassin, focusing here and there on whatever takes his fancy. Like a butterfly, his gaze lands on an older couple huddled together for warmth and safety over there, three young girls with wide eyes and matching ribbons in their hair over here, and a tall man with an angry face back and over before settling on a thirtysomething woman with mousey blonde hair, glasses, and a pleasantly rounded figure. Colin recognizes her as someone who has been to several tapings over the years. He’s even met her once or twice, just to quickly pass the time of day during small breaks; she seems soft spoken and nice in a shy, understated way.

At this moment, she appears to be doing her best to comfort what Ryan might call a ‘soccer mom’, complete with a healthy eye-rolling. Well dressed and well coiffed, the woman’s hazel eyes are like bright, shiny pinwheels, and Colin can hear her high pitched, tremulous voice clearly, though he doubts most others can. At least, not yet.

“…and, and I have to leave now, don’t you see? Right now. Because Kellen will be home from practice in a half hour, and if I’m not home, well, he’ll have to watch his sister, won’t he? And sometimes he forgets, and Casey is only four, and she likes the shiny lights when the stove is turned on, and don’t you understand? I have to leave right now!”

“Please,” the young woman…Stacy?...Stephanie?....Sharon?....Sharon replies, patting the older woman’s hand gently. “Please, keep your voice down. I know how hard it is, but….”

“You…have…no…idea!” the woman replies, voice growing more strident with every word. “Do you have children? Well, do you?” At Sharon’s miserable nod, she continues, “Then how do you know? Surely you…people understand this! You can’t keep us here forever, you know! We…are….American… Citizens! We have rights! You can’t keep us here! You can’t!!”

The audience murmurs softly as one of the gunmen makes his way down toward the panicking woman, weapon already out and pointing dangerously in her direction.

“Shhh,” Sharon pleads, watching the gunman approach with eyes as wide as saucers. “Shhhh, please. He’s got a gun, don’t you see? He’ll hurt us if you keep on like this….”

“We have rights!” the woman all but screams. “Rights, do you hear me?!?! And I have the right to go home right now!” She begins to sob. “You don’t understand. Little Casey, well, she likes fire, you know? We’ve tried to tell her it’s a bad thing, but she’s only four, and without her mommy or daddy there, she, why she could burn the house down, couldn’t she? And Kellen will be trapped. And we have a dog. And two cats. And Casey has a bird, and…. PLEASE!!!! I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!! RIGHT NOW!!!!! MY CHILDREN!! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND???”

Making it to the row, the gunman pulls Sharon away, all but throwing her into the next row of seats, grabs the hysterical woman and clubs her across the face with the butt of his weapon.

The woman goes down, gobbling in pain, blood spouting through the fingers she has clamped to her face, showering the people in front of her in sticky red heat.

“Please,” Sharon says quietly, struggling to get back to her feet, “don’t hurt her any more. She’s just scared.”

“Shut the fuck up!” shouts the gunman, turning to her.

Sharon lifts her hands. “Ok, ok, I will, but please…don’t hurt her anymore. She….”

“I’ve had enough out of you, bitch!” The terrorist turns his weapon so that it is pointing directly at Sharon’s head. The crowd screams and ducks away, leaving the poor young woman on her own little island.

“Please,” she whispers, trembling all over. “Please….”

The man lifts his weapon, aiming.

Colin feels himself rising from his chair well before his brain realizes what it is that his body is doing. “Hey!” he says, eerily calm, his trained voice raised only enough to carry to the intent gunman. “Hey!”

The terrorist turns slowly. Now his gun is pointed directly at Colin. “Get back in your seat!”

“Not until you let her get back in hers. She’s done nothing to you.”

“Do what I say, damnit!”

His hands raised to shoulder height, showing open, empty palms, Colin continues forward, down the world’s worst step, and slowly across the stage. “Please. You’ve proven your point. Everything’s back to normal again,” he continues as he walks. Behind him, he can hear Ryan, breathing like a racehorse. A low, keening cry is starting to come up from the bottom of his lover’s chest, but Colin ignores them both, still trapped within the calm bubble of his own body and mind. “You don’t need to hurt that young woman over there.”

“I’ll hurt who I fucking well want to,” the man snarls. “And it’ll be you if you don’t get back to your goddamned seat like I told you to.”

“There’s no need to be angry,” Colin continues calmly, coming down the stage steps slowly, easily, absolutely no threat to anyone or anything. “There’s no need to hurt anyone else.”

“Colin!” Ryan bellows, shooting up from his chair as if blasted from a canon. Wayne and Greg follow in quick succession, arms outstretched to their furthest limits.

The gunman smiles as his finger tightens, whitens on the trigger. “Who says I’m angry?”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!” Ryan screams, all but flying across the stage, his two friends behind him but losing ground to his longer limbs.

It isn’t anything like the “Whose Line” skit, where they played Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Where Ryan mimed that he was in a French Maid’s outfit and they’d yelled their funny battle cry—“SHUT UP AND TOUCH THE MONKEY!!!!”—and then staggered backwards, writhing, grimacing, pretending to be hit by dozens of bullets from the dreaded Mexican army.

No, it isn’t anything like that at all.

Colin doesn’t writhe, or stagger, or grimace in the slightest.

He simply falls exactly where he stands, in a sodden thump, his body landing gracelessly just below the last step of the stage, blood already pooling around his body, transparent against the deep and shining black of the floor itself.

Another thump, less sodden, as Ryan tumbles, face down, on the stage just before the steps. Wayne and Greg have managed to trip him up by grabbing one long leg apiece and pulling. Hard. They’re breathing heavily as they land atop him, using their full combined weights to keep him down.

“Let go of me, you goddamned sons of bitches!” Ryan roars, writhing and twisting with all his might in order to get loose. The two men hang on grimly, tears pouring down their reddened faces. “Colin!!! Colin!!!! Noooooooooooo!!!! Colin!!!!! Damn you!!!!!!! God, nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

The gunman appears ready to fire again when he finds himself flying across the studio floor, his guts trailing after him like a leashed dog at the end of its tether. His automatic weapon clatters to the floor, and Drew, waiting for something just like this, jumps down from the desk, only to have the muzzle of Ramon’s machine pistol shoved into his soft, ample belly. It’s hot from being fired, and Drew flinches. “That would be cheating.”

Drew stares at him, jaw agape, eyes promising slow, cold murder. “Che—wha—what the fuck?!? Look what that asshole just did!! Jesus Fucking Christ!!”

“And he paid for his sin, full measure,” Ramon replies.

“Is that supposed to make it okay?!?!”

Shrugging, Ramon turns his head slowly, eyeing with interest the tableau before him. Ryan has given up trying to shake his friends off; instead he is belly crawling, using his elbows to gain precious inches even as Wayne and Greg do everything they can think of to keep him from moving. The tall man’s face is a plum color, his eyes eerily silver and utterly without sanity, and the constant keening cry coming up from his chest is nothing that Ramon has heard from another human being before in his life. Nor would he ever wish to again, he thinks, as he keeps himself from scrubbing the goosebumps that hump up on his arms, chest and belly.

Pushing Drew back into the desk, he turns more fully and trains his weapon on the struggling Ryan. “Stop where you are, or you’ll join him.” He steps down to retrieve the forgotten gun and sling it over his shoulder by its strap, then steps back up, eyeing Ryan with interest.

Ryan stops, and tilts his head, looking up at Ramon with those mad, twirling eyes, and damn if there isn’t a hint of a smile on his lips. “Good! Do it! Do it!!! Fucking shoot me!!! Do it!!!”

Ramon pulls away the slightest increment, hearing the absolute, total honesty in Ryan’s shattered voice. There is no doubt in the world that he means every single word he says.

So, the rumors are true. Interesting.

Ramon thinks he can afford to be magnanimous. He surely hadn’t meant for Colin to die. He meant it about being a fan. But if killing his killer isn’t restitution enough, perhaps allowing his beloved to join him in death will be.

Giving a short nod, Ramon aims carefully, completely unsurprised when Ryan deliberately stills, presenting himself as the perfect target. His eyes are still glittering with tears and madness, but Ramon tells himself that he sees a bit of gratitude in there as well.

Another nod, and his finger begins to tighten—

--only to be stopped by another, smaller but strong, hand atop his own, pushing the barrel up and away from its target before he has the chance to fire.

“No, man,” Drew murmurs, sliding in between Ramon and Ryan. “Please.”

“Drew—ungh—” Ryan wheezes as his breath gets knocked out of him when Greg lands full bore on his back, crushing him to the carpet.

“Don’t do it, man, okay?” Drew continues, meeting Ramon’s dark, angry eyes and refusing to back down.

“I’m just doing him a favor….”

“No. You’re not.” Deliberately, Drew loosens his grip on the weapon and takes a step back, still keeping himself carefully and directly poised between Ramon in the front and Ryan behind.

“Fine,” Ramon replies after a moment, scowling as he bounces his weapon lightly in his hand. “Then shut him up and bring him and the others back to their seats, of you’ll be advertising for two new stars instead of just the one.”

Drew nods. “Alright, man. I will. Thank you.” He turns and sees Ryan’s huge hands scrabbling for purchase in the carpet’s short nap. Wayne has his head pinned while Greg is still lying atop him, knees pressed down hard against Ryan’s hamstrings, immobilizing his legs. “Ryan….”

“No! Not without Colin! Not without Colin, Drew! You’ll have to fucking kill me first!” His words are muffled, but no one has trouble understanding each and every one.

Drew turns again, a pleading look on his face.

Ramon shakes his head, toeing Colin’s body. “He’s just a corpse.”

“Then it really doesn’t matter, does it?” Drew replies from between tightly clenched teeth, flushing deep red. “He’s sure as hell no threat to you!”

Ramon eyes him for what seems an eternity. Finally, he sighs. “Fine.”

“Thank you, man. Thank you.” Easing his way from between Ramon and Ryan, he moves down the last step and onto the floor, stepping through the pool—getting to be a lake now, he thinks—of blood spreading from Colin’s body. He drops immediately to his knees, the sticky wetness sinking through the expensive fabric of his trousers. “I’m sorry man,” he murmurs, tears burning at his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. “I’m so, so fucking sorry….” He lifts a hand, wincing at its unnatural chill, and instinctively cradles it between both of his, trying to offer up some of his own heat, as if it even makes one fucking bit of difference at this stage in the game. He swore, didn’t he? He promised, didn’t he? No more death. None.

Big man with the words he is. Rich man, huh? Fucking liar; that’s all he is. That’s all he’ll ever be.

“Fuck!” he screams, head tilted back, eyes to the ceiling.

He blinks rapidly, tears dribbling out of the corners of his eyes, then freezes, his jaw agape. Slowly, like a man who thinks there might be a venomous spider crawling across him, but is afraid to check for sure, he lowers his eyes to his bloody hands. A tear drips from the point of his nose and dots the viscous red, diluting it the tiniest bit.

And then….

“Holy fuck,” he breathes.

Greg is the first to look up, though without his tear-stained glasses on, all he sees is a blur. “What? What is it?”

And again….

“JesusChristhe’salive!”

More than a hundred sets of eyes set on him, and he swears he can feel the weight of every one. “He’s alive!” he shouts again, loud enough to be heard in Pasadena, even without benefit of the television cameras which are still recording. “He’s fucking squeezing my hand!”

Wayne and Greg jump to their feet and fly down the steps like Mercury. “Tell me you’re not kidding, man,” Greg rasps, voice more nasal than usual, and who can blame him. “Tell me you’re not fucking kidding me.”

“I’m not!” Drew replies, smiling so hard his cheeks actually hurt. “He fucking squeezed my hand! Come on, you guys, help me get him up on stage!”

A shadow looms over them then, and they instinctively back away, looking up in unison to see Ryan, pale-faced and with eyes still shining like newly minted coins, swaying before them. “Don’t touch him,” he rasps. “Don’t you dare touch him.”

“But—”

“Move!”

They scatter like pigeons on the city square and Ryan steps into the space they’ve created. When he squats, the joints in his knees go off like twin rifle shots. Wayne flinches, and Greg grabs his elbow. They both grin uneasily at one another—two adolescents going bungee jumping on a dare.

Ryan stares down at his lover for a very long moment. Then, without warning, he levers his long arms under Colin’s knees and behind his shoulders, and comes to his feet, staggering, holding his burden tight to his chest. Greg, Wayne and Drew jump to their feet to offer support, and in a tight group, step up onto the stage. Wayne breaks off and grabs the chairs, throwing them willy-nilly out of the way while Greg moves the tables likewise, the water pitchers and glasses crashing over the side. Ryan ascends the second set of steps and slowly, gently, lays Colin down on the carpet on his back.

Blood oozes from his lover’s pale lips, and he absently rubs it away, dark eyes flicking back and forth continuously, bird-like.

“Um…maybe we should take his shirt off and….?” Greg begins, uncharacteristically tentative.

Wayne, glad to be doing anything, jumps in and, after a look to Ryan which isn’t acknowledged, simply grabs Colin’s collar and rips out and down. Buttons fly, landing soundlessly on the thick carpeting of the stage.

All of them stare down at the damage wrought.

“Holy fuck,” Greg whispers, echoing the thoughts of them all.

Five perfect circles form a diagonal from just above Colin’s right nipple to just above his left hip. Blood oozes from each of the wounds, adding another layer of red paint to his gore-covered flesh.

Ryan turns, suddenly, holding out one hand, fingers splayed. “Turn those fucking cameras off!” he snarls.

“Leave them on,” Ramon counters calmly.

“Fuck you!!”

“It’s okay, Ry,” Drew murmurs, coming to stand beside him. “Go…go over to the other side. Wayne, you and Greg come over here. We’ll form like a wall, okay? No one will see.” He quiets for a moment, then gives his friend a delicate shove. “Go on, man. Move.”

As Ryan finally moves—with obvious reluctance—Greg, shielding his actions from the all-seeing cameras as much as possible, quickly unbuckles Colin’s belt, unbuttons and unzips his slacks, and slides them down just low enough to confirm that there is no further damage. Then he replaces the clothing as it was and steps around to join Wayne and Drew on the side closest to the cameras.

“Shouldn’t we, you know, raise his legs or something?” Wayne asks.

“We should, but….”

Suddenly, Colin begins to gasp, his lips, already much too pale, turning an ominous shade of purple within milliseconds. His legs thrum against the ground, beating a useless tattoo, as his friends stare down at him, helpless.

“I was afraid of this,” Drew says finally, reaching for Colin’s jerking shoulder, only to have his hand swatted off by Ryan. He looks up, glaring at the much larger man. “You’re making this harder, man. Calm down or back off, got me?”

“Wanna make me?”

Ignoring him, Drew turns Colin just enough to confirm his suspicions. “Everybody, listen. Can you hear it?”

The four men tilt their heads in unison. A sucking sound is clearly heard, starkly loud against the sudden silence.

“What--?”

“I think it’s because we moved him. The floor down there might have formed a seal or something.”

“What are you talking about, Drew? What can we do? He’s fucking dying!” Greg cries.

“I know! I know. He’s got a punctured lung. It’s collapsing.”

“How do we fix it?”

Drew thinks back to basic, to the first aid he received there. They all stare at him, making it harder for him to remember, but the images come. Slowly, yes, but they come.

“Plastic,” he says finally, wincing as Colin’s gasps become more frantic and labored and Ryan’s long fingers knot against themselves in a gesture of hopelessness as old as time itself. “We need plastic of some kind. Thin. Like a wrapper. We have to form an occlusive dressing.”

Greg and Wayne go through their pockets, shaking their heads as they come up empty.

“Okay, okay,” Drew mutters, still thinking. He looks up. “Foil? Anything foil? Like a gum wrapper or anything?”

Greg brightens and digs into his back pocket for his wallet. The one he didn’t hand over to the scumbags. Slipping it free, he slides it open and pulls out a row of condoms, packed neatly in their foil wrappers. “How about these?”

“Hope your wife isn’t watching,” Wayne murmurs.

“Tough shit if she is,” Greg snaps, handing the condoms to Drew, who quickly opens them, removing the contents without comment on that particular subject.

“Wayne, take his shoulder, Greg, grab his hips. Turn him on his side, gently. One, two, turn.”

As soon as the wound is exposed, Drew waits until Colin exhales, then slaps the foil packet atop the ragged hole, holding it in place with the meaty part of the palm of his hand. The sucking sound stops immediately, and soon thereafter, Colin’s breathing becomes much less labored, and he stills, muscles relaxing as the deep purple fades from his lips and nailbeds. “Okay, Wayne, hold this tight. I need to do the one in the front.”

“You got it, Drew.”

Within seconds, the hole in Colin’s chest is similarly plugged, and he is breathing much easier.

Greg slumps back, breathing heavily. “Fuckin’ A,” he mutters, arming away the sweat beading on his forehead. The studio is still cold as hell, and his sweat is clammy and greasy—a fear-sweat, pure and simple, and he doesn’t in the least mind admitting it. “What now?”

“Grab Colin’s shirt and rip two good sized swatches from it, then double them over, like pads. Then you and Wayne take your belts off. We’re going to need to make a pressure dressing and keep it on tight.”

“Will do.”

A very short time later, Colin’s back on his back again, the belts snug around his chest. His breathing, though quick and shallow, seems, for the moment, unlabored.

“What now?” Wayne asks, eyeing the other holes in his friend’s body.

“Well, from what I remember, it’s best to lay him over on his injured side, but it looks like his gut got hit, too, and from what I can see back here, he’s bleeding like a fucking stuck pig, so we’ll need to get his legs elevated or we’re going to lose him for sure.”

Wayne jumps up, grabs one of the chairs, lays it down so that its back is on the ground, grabs Colin’s legs and rests them atop the cushion. “How’s that?”

“Perfect. Thanks, Wayne.”

Wayne smiles shyly, then looks over at Greg and quickly removes his shirt, ripping it to pieces in imitation of his friend. He looks back at Drew, then, awaiting further orders—and praying that there will be some. There must be more they can do. Already the carpet around Colin is stained a deep purple, and it seems impossible that anyone could have that much blood in them, or that there would be even a drop left after what he’s lost so far.

He always thought Colin was full of life, from the first moment they met. Now he has his proof.

“Drew?” Greg asks gently, handing over the shredded remains of his own shirt, together with the rest of Colin’s.

“I dunno,” Drew says, twisting his oddly small hands together. “He’s bleeding so much. I-I think maybe they hit his spleen, but I’m not a doctor. I mean….”

“Do we have a doctor here?” Greg calls out, voice carrying easily. “A paramedic? Nurse? Anyone? We sure could use your help.”

A woman in the fifth row tentatively raises her hand, but is pulled back by her husband when one of the gunmen swings his weapon her way. The husband glares down at them as the woman—a Nurse by trade—shrugs apologetically.

“Well fuck you all very much,” he mutters, knowing he’s being overheard and caring not one whit.

And Drew’s left wondering how he could have possibly made the vow he did, to give up his own life to protect that of the audience. It’s a mistake. He sees that now. And how well he sees it. Colin has taught him that lesson. Colin, who walked into the line of fire deliberately, all to save one person in the audience; an audience who now wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.

And Drew wonders if it’s time to change careers, because if you begin to hate your audience, what’s the sense in performing for them? Why bother to give your all for them when you know they won’t give the same in return? It’s like a Priest hating his congregation, or a doctor hating his patients. It’s just not done, is it?

“Alright then,” he says, jaw squared, teeth clenched in defiance. Of what, he’s not sure. Of the audience, maybe, or their kidnappers, or maybe even Death itself who he can feel hovering around them, waiting patiently for its next customer. “We’re on our own. Greg, hold this dressing down on that middle wound there—yes, that’s the one. Wayne, you turn him again and let me put this cloth against that big hole near his spine. Ready, go.”

The three men work together quickly, efficiently, improvising far more than they’ve ever done in their lives, and for a far greater reward—or at least the hope of one. Colin grows ever paler as they work over him, but his breathing remains steady, and his heart is still beating, and that is, all tolled, far better news than they could ever have hoped for.

They sit back, finally, bloodied arms propped behind them, breathing hard as if they’ve just finished a marathon, and pray that what little they’ve done is good enough, even though they know in their hearts that they’ve just delayed the inevitable.

Greg chances a look at Ryan and his heart breaks at the utterly lost look in his friend’s grief-darkened eyes. Ryan’s sitting on his heels, not touching Colin, barely breathing, just…staring. Greg thinks he’s probably already planning the funeral.

Hell, he’s probably already attending it.

Without saying a word, he gets to his feet, a swatch of someone’s shirt in his hand, and grabs for a water pitcher that has a slosh or two left. Dunking the shirt to drench it, he goes over to Ryan’s side and kneels beside him silently. Picking up Colin’s hand, he begins to methodically clean the drying blood from it, all the while thinking about the man sitting so still next to him.

Thinking about their years in England and the long running affair that was as torrid as any romance novel, and probably moreso than most. Thinking about how, deep down inside where all truths hide in their darkling dens, he’d loved Ryan Stiles with a desperation that scared the piss out of him. Thinking about how he’d felt when he’d seen Colin and Ryan in the same room for the first time, how they just stood there, not touching, just smiling at one another, and oh how his heart had wrenched in his chest until he was sure it would simply stop beating and how tears as scalding as any acid leapt to his traitorous eyes, and how he’d run out of the room crying like some goddamned spurned woman and how he’d almost got run over by a fucking double decker bus, if you could believe that, and how much he fucking wanted to hate Colin, to hate him like he’d never before hated anything in his life, and how he found he couldn’t, because he loved Ryan too much, and he could never hate anything that Ryan loved.

And though he’s come to love Colin deeply, he also realizes he’s never quite let go of Ryan. And he thinks that now might be a good time to do it. Maybe the best time.

Colin’s hand is free from blood and much, much too white. The Canadian’s a naturally pale man, but this is too pale, even for him. And it’s cold, chilled through to the bone, and Greg uses his own suit jacket to dry it, but even the wool won’t put any warmth back into it.

Looking up at Ryan, he smiles slightly, sadly, reaches out, and lifts his friend’s gigantic hand, using the gentlest of touches to ease open the tight, white-knuckled fist he has it balled into. Then he lifts Colin’s too-pale, too-cold hand and places it into the warmth of Ryan’s, closing the long, elegant, tanned fingers over the snowy whiteness like a father giving his daughter to her groom.

He holds the joined hands between his own for a moment, then nods, more to himself than anyone else. “Love him,” he whispers to Ryan, finally, fiercely. “Love him enough to keep him alive, and I’ll love you both enough to get us out of here.”

And he surprises himself by meaning every word. And those damn tears, back again, though this time, they don’t seem quite as scalding.

Amazing, that.

Drew gives him a look as he comes back around to form part of the human wall, blocking Colin again from view. He ignores it, just as he ignores the tears as they wend their way down his cheeks. Wayne’s strong hand ghosts over his lower back in a silent show of support, and he turns his head just enough to show the dark-skinned entertainer his smile of thanks.

Wayne nods in return. “Time?” he whispers.

“Nineteen minutes.”

“Damn.”

Time, Greg thinks, is quite an amazing thing, capable of being stretched, or compressed, simply by the point of view of the observer. To Drew and Wayne, no doubt, nineteen minutes is like an eyeblink, entirely too little time in which to formulate a plan to keep someone else from being cold-bloodedly murdered. To Greg, as he looks at Colin, nineteen minutes is an eternity; his friend won’t last half that time, unless something is done. And quickly.

Taking in a deep breath, he holds it for a long second, then releases it gustily, already feeling his heart speeding up in response to his thoughts. Now that he’s committed, there’s no going back. Interestingly enough, the feeling is almost the same as the one he gets every time just before the cameras roll, and he finds that he can take some comfort in that, if nothing else.

Raising his gaze from Colin to Ryan, he calls out the tall man’s name softly. Their battery packs and mics have long been discarded, but now, of all times, it would not do to be overheard.

Blinking owlishly, Ryan slowly raises his head. Greg is more than pleased to see that some of the whirling craziness has left the emerald eyes, and he smiles in response.

“When things start to happen,” Greg continues, his voice pitched low and intimate, “I want you to drag him down there.” He gestures to the depression behind the stage with his eyes; there is no such thing as being too careful, now of all times.

After a moment, Ryan nods.

“I want you both to stay there until this thing is over, one way or another. Understand? You protect him as best you can. Don’t think about the rest of us, just him, you got it? No matter what.”

Ryan nods again, and Greg thinks he comprehends. He wishes he had more time to be sure, but he can feel the seconds ticking away—and my, hasn’t time speeded up now that he’s got the workings of a plan going on?—and he can only rely on what he thinks he knows.

With a final smile, he turns to Drew. “Those guns,” he murmurs. “If one, say, just happened to fall into your hands, could you use it?”

“Wha--? What are--?”

“It’s a simple question, Drew. Yes or no is all that’s required for an answer.” Some of his sharpness has returned, and he finds he likes that just fine.

“Well, yeah, I’m sure I can, but—”

“Fine. You’ll need to take out the cameras first. We wouldn’t want our good friend Ramon interrupting us.”

“But—”

He turns to Wayne. “Can you just be ready for anything?”

“S-sure….”

“Good. You guys get busy thinking up a Plan B if this one goes to Hell in a burnoose.”

“Greg,” Drew finally spits out, clamping a hand on his bicep as he starts to rise, “what the fuck are you doin’, man?”

“Why Drew,” he responds, brushing off the hand gently and coming easily to his feet, smirking, “can’t you tell? I’m going fishing.”

Before anyone can stop him, he’s stepped down into the bearpit and across it to perch on one corner of Drew’s desk, suit jacket dangling limply from one finger. He’s very aware he presents a ludicrous picture—half clad, hair mussed, tears drying on his cheeks—especially when placed up against his normally meticulous, fashion-plate reputation, but he thinks it’s fitting, somehow, and no, the pun is not pardoned.

Smiling pleasantly, if a bit absently, he lays his jacket down on the desk and slips out his half-empty pack of smokes together with his gold Zippo. Shaking a butt out of the pack, he slides it between his lips with a nearly sensual air, and moans softly as he touches the tip to the Zippo’s steady flame with expert flair and takes in that first wondrous, wonderful inhale. His lungs are filled with the smoke of the gods and his head is going swimmy, and dear God how can anything that makes you feel this good be so bad for you?

Jetting the smoke out through his nose, he looks around with a casual air. Here, fishy, fishy, fishy, he thinks, having thrown the lure and jigging the bait a little by taking another sensual drag. Daddy’s got some nice nicotine.

He knows his friends are looking at him like he’s grown a second head, particularly Drew, who’s a bear for smoking, and he knows he’s breaking all sorts of state codes and laws, but you know what? Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. If Ryan were only aware enough, he’d appreciate the irony.

As a fellow addict, he’d probably also ‘get it’. No questions asked. So would Colin, for that matter.

Colin.

Shit.

He continues to look around with faux idleness, casually flicking his lighter open and closed in a way that he knows can be supremely annoying—which is, of course, precisely why he perfected the move lo these many years ago. A day without annoyance is a day without Proops. Or so they say.

Bingo.

A masked gentleman—and he uses the term loosely—standing near the green-screen stares at him through eyes filled with envy and a certain degree of hunger. He looks as if he can practically taste the cigarette Greg’s got dangling from his lips, and when the comic takes another deliberate drag, he leans perceptibly forward, licking his lips.

Keeping his smile firmly in check now, Greg leans back just slightly, and extends his legs, crossing them at the ankles and adopting an attitude of almost supreme leisure, displaying himself and what he has to offer as well as any high class call-girl ever did. Another long drag—thank god these are 100’s or he’d be lighting another—and he blows a series of smoke rings, watching them dissolve into the still chilly air with forced carelessness.

His prey is drawn forward as if on strings—one step, two steps, three steps, four. He stops by the piano, eyeing a Greg who pretends that he doesn’t see him, and then surveying the lay of the land, rather like a gazelle stopping at a water hole and checking for predators before drinking.

C’mon, fishy. Almost there. Almost….

Weapon aimed squarely at Greg, the man mounts the steps and slowly crosses the stage, gaze hungrily glued to the cherry tip of the cigarette. Greg turns his head just slightly, and affixes his brightest smile to his face. “Oh! Hello, there. Can I help you?”

The gunman grunts, still staring as Greg’s hand makes little circles before bringing the butt to his mouth again. Naughty, Greg. Naughty, naughty, naughty. You need to be spanked for your impertinence.

His smile grows even more oily. “Ah, a fellow partaker, I see.”

“Huh?”

Ooh, we’ve got a live one here, folks. Words of one syllable or less, if you please.

Holding back a sigh, Greg lifts his pack and shakes another smoke up from the few he has left. “Care to join me?”

The man reaches out, then hesitates, dark eyes darting around.

“It’s alright,” Greg says softly, encouragingly. “Take one. I won’t bite.”

The final space between them is breeched and the gunman grabs the cigarette, nearly crushing the filter between his callused, clumsy fingers. He almost drops it twice as he brings it to his lips, finally clenching it between his teeth when it reaches its destination.

Just a little more. Just…a…little…more….

Snapping a flame to his lighter, Greg holds it up, enticing. The man ducks forward, then stops abruptly as the nose of his gun pokes the comic in the meaty part of his shoulder and prevents his cigarette from reaching the all important fire. “Hunh?”

Greg gives forth a fake chuckle that sounds real enough. “You’ll have to…you know….” He mimes slinging the weapon over his shoulder.

The gunman hesitates again, eyeing the Zippo’s steady flame, seemingly mesmerized by it.

C’mon, man. You know you want it. C’mon. Stow the gun and come to Uncle Greggy. He’ll give you what you need, oh yes.

By now, the man is too far gone in nicotine foreplay to even bother to look for danger. “Oh, sorry,” he grunts, quickly shouldering his weapon before leaning forward and finally, blessedly, lighting the cigarette. “Oh, God, that’s good,” he moans, taking his first deep drag in hours.

And we have liftoff, ladies and gentlemen!!

“Nothin’ finer, huh?” Greg replies, smirking as he deliberately butts out his smoke on Drew’s desk and promptly grabs another from his pack. Lighting it, he takes a deep drag, and chuffs it out, elbowing the gunman; just two men of the world on a well earned smoke break shooting the breeze.

“Mm.” After another delightful drag, the man looks down at Greg’s lighter with interest. “That real gold?”

“Nothing but the best, my good man.”

“Mm. Had one like it, way back when. Lost it a long time ago, long time ago now. Damn good lighter.”

“Damn good,” Greg agrees, fiddling with said lighter. “Say, can you do this?” he asks, flipping open the lighter and lighting it at the same time. “Or this?” He does the same thing, only using his slacks instead of his dexterous fingers.

“Used to,” the man snorts, taking another drag. “When I was younger.”

“Yeah, well, it’s sort of a prop for me, you know? Something comforting about it….” He trails off, eyes going distant, as if in a haze of pleasant memories, still flicking the lighter open and closed.

The gunman turns his head away briefly, scanning the audience and surroundings. Jose is there, scarfing down what’s left of the doughnuts, and the rest of his group are staring off at nothing in particular, weapons at the ready.

Greg’s mild “oh, my” brings him back to the present, and he stares down at his sleeve, which has suddenly begun to sprout flames. “What the--?”

“Here, let me,” Greg replies, grabbing his suit jacket and flipping it over the growing flames, wrapping the man’s arm tight between both hands, and yanking.

“Woah!”

The man stumbles, and it’s then that Greg yanks the gunstrap down his arm—the same one that’s on fire, not so coincidentally—frees the gun and tosses it back in the general direction of Drew.

It’s also when Wayne apparently decides that this is the ‘anything’ that Greg referred to, and launches himself at the still stumbling gunman-sans-gun, tackling both him and, by extension, Greg, to the ground. “’Stop, drop, and roll,’ my Mama always said,” he chirps brightly, rolling the stunned man to his back and launching a right cross worthy of Sugar Ray Leonard, knocking him out cold.

Drew fumbles with the weapon, almost drops it, then rights it in his hands so that when Jose-of-the-Doughnuts finally buys a clue and begins to turn, he is taken out of the game with a perfectly placed shot to his gun arm, flinging him across the craft services table and toppling him over the other side, his collarbone shattered into more pieces than can be counted without an electron microscope.

“Camera guys, get the fuck down!” Drew screams, then shoots four times in quick succession, getting all four forward cameras before quickly picking off the other ones. He looks behind him to see Ryan all but tossing Colin into the depression behind the stage, then jumping in after him, head disappearing just as six ragged holes appear in the backdrop where it had been a split second before. “Holy fuck that was close!”

Then he ducks as bullets come even closer, this time aimed at him, but what’s worse are his friends stuck in front of him, with no cover and no weapons. “Guys!” he cries out. “Get back here!”

“Trying, your lordship,” Greg grunts, trying to untangle himself from both Wayne and the now unconscious ex-gunman.

“Greg!” Wayne shouts. “Get behind me!”

He scrambles behind the singer, but is really unsure what good it’s going to do. Wayne doesn’t present much protection that he can see. “Now what?”

“Stand up when I tell you!” Wayne grabs the unconscious terrorist in a tight grip, and prepares to get up on his knees. “Lord,” he prays, “please forgive me for what I’m about to do. Amen.” Taking a deep breath, he goes first to his knees, then to his feet, bringing the man up with him as a human shield, holding him up under the armpits and ducking beneath his lolling head. “Now! Right up against me! We’ll move together!”

“You got it, man!” Greg replies, jumping up and pressing his front tight against Wayne’s back. At any other time, he might have found the position mildly arousing—Wayne has an awesome ass, after all—but being shot at like a buck in deer season tends to take the fun out of everything.

Most of the gunmen have rushed down toward the stage, kept from moving in further by Drew’s lusty shooting. He doesn’t have time to be accurate, but he more than makes up for that in quantity.

They hesitate when they see one of their own being used as a shield, but a maverick on the extreme left decides they’re all dead anyway and fires a burst into his unconscious comrade, making the body in Wayne’s strong hands jiggle and dance.

“Fuck,” Wayne grunts as a bullet plows through what is now a corpse and pings off his hipbone, causing his entire left leg to go completely numb and buckle beneath his weight.

“What?” Greg demands, suddenly finding himself bearing nearly the entire weight of his friend. “What happened?”

“Got hit,” Wayne bites off, still holding onto the bullet-riddled corpse in his hands.

Greg grabs Wayne’s belt and begins to tug him backward. “It’s alright,” he murmurs into his friend’s ear. “We can do this. We can do this.” Though he’s not exactly, in all reality, sure what ‘this’ could possibly be. They’re completely exposed here, with nowhere really to go. He hits the World’s Worst Step and almost pulls a ‘Drew’, managing to steady himself only at the last moment. He chances a look behind him to see Drew hiding, sort of, behind two overturned chairs that have more holes than Swiss cheese in them.

“I’m almost out of ammo!” Drew mouths, and Greg shrugs, unsure what he could possibly do about that.

Greg drags himself and Wayne up the step and up again until they are on a level with Drew. Wayne drops the corpse and it lands on its side right in front of Drew, providing another small barrier. Greg makes to throw them both behind Drew and his chair fort when his ankle is grabbed from behind and he is yanked, hard. Still holding Wayne’s belt, he falls face forward, toppling the singer forward with him, and then begins to slide backward until he falls, with a breathless ‘oof!’ into the stage depression, Wayne landing on top of him and knocking whatever air remains in his lungs out. Bullets patter and zing as they hit the backdrop harmlessly over their heads.

Wayne rolls off of him, rubbing his hip and swearing softly, and Greg’s left gasping for air and praying that his paralyzed diaphragm will be waking up again some time real soon: sometime before he passes out sounds real good.

The singer looks over the lump of bodies, spying Colin who looks, impossibly, even more pale than he did five minutes earlier. “Is he…?”

Ryan’s mouth is set in a grim line. “He was last time I checked.” His prominent Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallows, hard. “I’m afraid to go back and look.”

That brings Greg up and around like a knee to the nuts, and he glares at his friend. “I thought I told you—”

An enormous hand goes up, halting Greg’s words in their tracks. “I know what you said. I also know that if I didn’t try to save you guys when I had the chance, he would fucking haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.”

Both Greg and Wayne shiver in reaction. Colin is a sweet and sweetly natured man, good in all the right ways, but put him before the needs of others, and it’s Katy-bar-the-door.

Greg scrambles over Ryan, trying to keep his head below the level of the lip and failing more often than not. When he gets to Colin, he stops and slides his fingers down the Canadian’s pale, clammy neck, searching for a pulse. He almost misses it at first; it’s so faint and frail, like a hummingbird’s, but it’s still there. For now.

He can feel Ryan’s eyes burning holes through his back, and he turns, giving him a quick nod and a quicker smile. Ryan nearly collapses.

Above them, it sounds like WWIII, and they all feel guilty for leaving Drew up there, isolated, alone, and running out of bullets.

Whispering another quiet prayer, Wayne begins to shuffle, crab-like, back along the depression in the direction of stage left.

“Wait!” Greg demands. “Where are you going?”

“To create a diversion. We just can’t leave him up there like that, man.”

“But you’re hurt!”

“So?”

“Alright, then. I’m coming with you.”

“Fine. Just hurry up. Drew doesn’t have much time.”

“Stay with him and don’t leave this time,” Greg orders Ryan as he clambers over his long, stick-thin legs and follows Wayne out into the studio proper once again. With most of the gunmen concentrating on Drew, the duo makes it to the small rise that houses the piano with ease. Laura and Linda are huddled beneath the instrument, clinging tightly together and obviously hoping not to be noticed.

“Laura!” Wayne whispers during a short burst of gunfire, peeking over the top of the rise.

Laura turns slightly; her eyes go wide at seeing him. She peeks back to the stage. Everyone’s attention still seems to be centered there. Drew fires a scattering burst, then ducks down behind the now three chairs he’s managed to acquire. Greg notices that both arms of his shirt are red with blood.

“C’mon!” Wayne reaches out with both arms, hands splayed. “It’s safer down here!”

“I—“

“C’mon! Both of you! Hurry!”

With a last, desperate look stageward, they both scramble from beneath the piano and into the waiting arms of Wayne and Greg. Wayne pushes them down flat on the floor. “Just stay here,” he whispers. “Don’t move unless you hear them coming over here. Then get the heck outta here, fast, got it?”

Laura nods, pale. “Wayne?” she asks, grabbing his slightly flared trouser leg.

“Yeah?”

“How…how’s Colin? Is he…?”

“Not yet,” the singer replies before shooting a glance toward Linda. “You’re not overly fond of those guitars, are you?”

The improv guitarist blinks for a moment, then shakes her head in the negative.

“Alright, then. Wish me luck.”

“But—”

“Get ready, Greg.”

Before Greg can ask “ready for what?”, Wayne’s up and belly crawling across the ‘piano-stage’. When he reaches the electric rhythm guitar, he pauses, looks up, and meets Drew’s watching eyes. Silent communication passes between them, and with an inarticulate cry, Drew pops up and sprays the last of his ammunition at the men before him, causing the whole group to duck and cover, and allowing Wayne to pull the instrument from its stand and slide it back along the carpet and into Greg’s waiting hands. A second later, the bass is likewise taken, and Wayne is back behind the tiny rise, breathing heavily, but smiling.

A second later, he’s got the bass in his hand and is nodding to his friend. “Follow me, dude.” A moment later, they’re directly behind the cover of the ‘credits monitor’ that sits along the front of the part of the stage where the piano rests. Though only waist high, it’s thick and wide enough to hide them completely from those on or near the stage.

“Alright, man,” Greg says, panting lightly and holding the rhythm guitar. “Now what?”

Wayne quirks a grin and slips the bass in his hands until he’s holding it by the neck, almost, but not quite, like a baseball bat. “Watch.”

Jumping up like a demented Jack-in-the-Box, he shouts, “Hey, guys! Over here!!” Without giving the gunmen a chance to turn, he winds up and releases the quite heavy, very solid instrument in a strong, flat throw. “Incoming!!”

The bass flies past gunman number one, only to hit number two right in the mouth, utterly destroying whatever teeth he might have had, the jaw that held them in, and the nose that sat above them.

The strength of the impact sends the screaming man into gunman number three, who in turn tumbles into gunman number four, leaving Wayne with somewhat of a seven-ten split, if bass guitars were bowling balls and he was inclined to play. Instead, he ducks down behind the monitor just as a series of thuds indicate impacting bullets which, thankfully, bury themselves within the machinery and not the people hiding behind it.

Hearing footsteps running in their direction, Wayne begins to scramble away. “C’mon! Let’s get outta here!”

“You go,” Greg replies, grinning a bit crazily and remaining where he is, crouched behind the monitor and holding the rhythm guitar exactly like a baseball bat. “Take the ladies with you. I’ll be along in a minute.”

“But….”

“Go!” The comic releases his grip just long enough to give his friend a healthy shove, then grabs the instrument again, listening, listening…..

When shoes begin to skid along the highly waxed floor, Greg pogos to his feet and swings with a fluid style that would have done The Babe proud. The gunman’s scream is more of a squawk as his nose is completely obliterated, and he drops like a stone, his gun clattering to the floor. He’s very likely dead, but Greg doesn’t spend the time dwelling on it now. He’s sure the crunch of heavily polyurethaned wood, or plastic, or whateverthefuck it is, on bone—and likely bone on brain—and the startled ‘sproing’ the instrument made when hitting something it was never intended to hit will dwell in his nightmares for likely the rest of his life, but that’s for later, when he has time to breathe again.

“Ha!” he shouts, getting a latecomer right behind the ear with an axe-like swing and likewise dropping him and his gun. “Teach you to fuck with the ProopMeister, shit-fer-brains!”

Cackling like a madman, he pelts the guitar along the ground, very nearly picking up Wayne’s seven-ten split, then scoops up both dropped weapons, touching them as if they were covered in cholera—Greg and guns have never had a very good relationship—and bolts away from his bitchin’ hiding spot, vaulting over Wayne, Laura and Linda as he rushes toward the stage. “Drew! Catch!” He tosses one weapon to his boss and keeps the second. Maybe Ryan will know how to use it.

The automatic rifle goes through the air, end over end. The throw’s a bit short, but Drew’s able to snag it, and right after he does so, he pulls the move that’s made him famous onstage and trips up the stairs, landing flat on his back. He feels like an upended turtle, arms and legs flailing, expecting to get an ass full of lead at any second. Instead, he nearly squeals in shock as two strong hands land on his shoulders and yank him backwards, and down off the stage into the depression behind it.

He lands on his ass again, hard, and blinks, a bit stunned, staring up through glasses sitting askew at the face of one Ryan Stiles, which is currently the color of one of those old brick schoolhouses and whose eyes would be popping out of his head if they weren’t attached in the back. Feeling the sharp poke of hipbones through his pants, Drew realizes, a bit belatedly, he’s just scored a direct hit amidships, coming down full bore on Ryan’s crotch with every single ounce of his impressive weight, including the gun.

“Oh fuck,” he mumbles, scrambling to ease the pressure, so to speak, and planting one knee just a whisper westward of where his ass had landed seconds before.

Ryan’s quite incapable of vocalizing at the moment, but if he had been, he would have brought down the house with the scream begging to be released. As it is, a wheeze is the best he can do, and he uses the gut wrenching pain as impetus to shove Drew off his lap before cupping his injured equipment with both of his hands and rocking slightly, trying to ease the agony.

Drew stumbles forward on his knees, only to clonk skulls—again, quite solidly—with none other than Greg Proops, who is rushing along the narrow dip on his hands and knees, gun dragging behind him.

“Owww!” both of them yelp, jerking back in unison and rubbing the steadily rising knots birthing on their heads. Drew wonders briefly if he’s stumbled somehow into the middle of a bad Keystone Kops movie before reseating his glasses and taking the gun Greg’s all but throwing at him.

“Thanks, man. Could always use a spare.”

“I thought…maybe for Ryan….”

Drew looks over his shoulder at the still red-faced man. “Maybe later.”

Gunfire starts up again from the front of the stage, though what the idiots are shooting at no one knows. Or cares, really.

Greg looks past Drew and the rocking Ryan to where Colin still lies flat on his back, unmoving. Something about the scene troubles him, and he scrambles over his two friends, ignoring the cursing.

Drew, meanwhile, is using his new mostly hidden position to the utmost, returning fire with an accuracy he couldn’t afford before. Two men go down howling, leaving four that he can see, plus Ramon, who’s been suspiciously absent. Not bad odds, considering….

He’s about to try his luck again when Greg’s not-quite steady voice filters through to him.

“Uh, guys?”

He looks. Greg’s eyes are wide and scared.

“Anyone know CPR?”

Ryan freezes.

Drew goes pale. “No way, man. No fucking WAY!”

“YES fucking way, man. Now who the fuck knows CPR! I know somebody does. You, Drew?”

“Yeah, but….”

“I do,” Wayne says, coming around the corner, scrambling quickly over various limbs and other bodily parts, followed swiftly by Laura, who’s also been trained. “Move, Greg. Let us get in there.”

Greg scrambles out of the way and Wayne and Laura move in. Wayne immediately leans down to see if he can hear or feel Colin breathing as Laura expertly searches for a pulse.

“I’ve got one,” she says after a moment, relief evident in her melodious voice. “It’s very irregular, but it’s there.”

“Well, he’s not breathing,” Wayne replies, lifting his head. “I’ll start rescue breathing. You keep checking for a pulse okay?”

“Go.”

Tilting Colin’s head back, Wayne pinches off the older man’s nose and makes a mouth to mouth seal, giving his own breath to Colin and watching as his friend’s chest moves sluggishly and unevenly as the air entered his lungs. He suspects that one or both of the lungs have collapsed again, which will make what he is doing completely fruitless. Nevertheless, he continues on, stopping every fifteen breaths for Laura to check for a pulse.

After the third set, Laura shakes her head. “No pulse. We’re losing him.”

Ryan scrambles forward, looming, and Wayne unconsciously pushes him back. “You want to do the compressions?” he asks her.

“Got ‘em.”

They work in perfect tandem, like they do on stage, sweat dripping from twin brows, but at every break, Laura shakes her head, her face grim, her deep, dark eyes filled with tears.

“Keep going,” Wayne says after every one. “Damned if I’m going to give up on him now.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to.”

Ramon.

Fuck.

They all look up as one to find the leader of this little tea party standing at the entrance to their hidey-hole, the muzzle of his gun gently brushing against the wispy, dark hair at Laura’s temple. It’s with more than a little satisfaction that they note that Ramon—with his ripped and bloodied clothing, bruised face, and two shiners just beginning to form—is much the worse for wear. Drew bares his teeth as Dan and Keith, rumpled but clearly better off, are dragged away by two of Ramon’s compatriots. “Sorry!” Keith mouths as he stumbles by, cupping a freely bleeding nose. Drew shakes his head.

Shit.

“I’m quite serious, Ms. Hall,” Ramon is saying, finger tightening on the trigger as Laura resumes chest compressions on Colin.

“Kill me, then, because I’m not stopping.”

“Pulling that trigger will be the last thing you ever do,” Drew promises, lifting his own weapon and aiming it squarely at Ramon’s no longer masked head.

Ramon looks at him through rapidly swelling eyes, laughing softly. “Do you really think that matters? My cause will continue, with or without me.”

Begging Laura and Wayne to forgive him, Drew nods, stonefaced. “So will mine.”

Her muscles burning in protest, Laura prays silently as she continues her life saving actions, breathing a tiny sigh of relief when Wayne finally joins her.

Drew and Ramon stare at one another over their heads as a bit of a ‘Mexican standoff’ ensues.

Greg’s rather sudden disappearance isn’t even noticed.

The aforementioned gentleman is currently walking quickly, if quietly, directly behind the stage in the direction of Ramon. He’s also having a furious argument with himself, though it’s mostly internal. You can do this. You can. Just because you hate guns doesn’t mean that you don’t understand that sometimes they have uses. And this might be one of those times. Yeah, yeah, I know it goes against everything you believe in, but sometimes…sometimes… Fuck that. My friends are going to die if I don’t do anything, and from the looks of things, I’m the only one who can do anything. And that’s just the way it is.

His hands are clammy and drenched with sweat, and the weapon sits uncomfortably in them. He’s not even sure he knows how to use it, though the mechanics of the thing—point and pull the trigger—seem simple enough. After all, if Dick Cheney…ah…bad example.

Yes, I know I’m on my way to commit cold blooded murder, but it’s not like I haven’t killed someone already. They say it gets easier after the first one, and NO, I don’t know who ‘they’ are, alright? Just shut up.

It’s either us or them and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my friends die just because I’m too chickenshit to pull a goddamned trigger. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

And then he nearly shoots his dick off when the feel of a hand ghosting against his mid-back almost sends him into orbit. “Wha--?” he blurts out, turning in a quick circle and seeing absolutely nothing. “Who did that? Who’s there?”

The touch comes again, light, like a butterfly’s wings brushing against his left shoulder.

But there’s no one there.

“Ryan? Is that you? If it is, show your face, guy, and I’ll give you the gun, okay?”

“Don’t.”

The word is whispered, but clear and distinct, and seemingly coming from two inches away from Greg’s left ear. He spins again, gun trembling in his hands.

“I swear to God, man,” he says, not caring in the least that is voice is as cracked and wavery as a pre-teen waking up from his first wet dream, “I’ll never drop another tab again as long as I live. Way fucked up time to be trippin’.”

“Don’t do it, Greg. Don’t kill for me, my friend.”

“What the fu—? Colin? Col, is that you, man? Step out where I can see you.”

He says this even as he realizes that what he is saying is flat out impossible. Colin could no more be speaking to him than birds could channel Elmer Fudd, but damned if his mind isn’t making up a damned good impersonation of the man! I’ll have to use that one day.

The touch comes again, this time, the feeling of a cool palm briefly cupping his cheek before equally cool fingers dance briefly across his lips, then withdraw. “Don’t, my friend. Not for me. It’s not worth it.”

And then the voice, and the touch, are gone and Greg is left standing in absolute darkness and in absolute stillness, wondering just where it is that his mind has gone, and why it has decided to use now, of all times, as the best moment to take that much needed vacation to Barbados or Tahiti or the fucking Arctic Circle, for all he knows.

“Fuck!!”

The expletive is oddly flat in the dark, still space that surrounded him, and he shakes his head once, twice to clear it. “Ok,” he says, a trace of his old resolve in his voice, “let’s just get this the hell over with. I go in, do what I have to do, and that’s that.”

Arriving at the end of the short walkway, he presses himself against the back wall and eases his head around the corner. Ramon is no more than three feet away in a pool of filtered light, staring intently at the guys behind the stage, weapon aimed at someone, and Greg realizes that the terrorist has absolutely no idea that he’s there. A rather ominous smile etches deep creases in his face and he thinks that perhaps he might get away without having to commit murder after all.

Subtly changing his grip on his own weapon, he takes in one deep breath, then two, and a third for luck, and then slips around the corner, creeping forward on silent feet. The distance is closed to almost nil, the smile—a quite frightening one, if truths be told to shame the devil—still present, and almost without thought, he slips into his eerily perfect impression of Jack Nicholson playing Jack Torrence playing Ed McMahon. Glasses on, this time.

“Heeeeeere’s Johnny, you fucking ringmeat bastard!”

Suddenly, the gun’s aimed at his belly, but that’s okay because his gun is at eye level and coming down fast, smashing the right arm of Ramon and sending the terrorist’s weapon skittering across the floor. A quick reverse of the process sends the rifle’s butt into said ‘ringmeat bastard’s’ jaw, dropping him to the canvas for the full twelve.

He lets go of his own weapon quickly, but its clatter is lost in the sound of a muffled explosion, and when the doors bang open, it seems as if an entire army is rushing inside, bearing their own weapons and screaming for everyone to get down, down, down, damnit, right now!

Greg himself is treated to a more physical demonstration of the truth behind those words as what feels like the entire defensive line of the LA Rams is using him as a tackling dummy. He crashes to the floor, breath forcefully expelled from his lungs, and his struggles are quickly reduced to absolute stillness by the feel of a gun’s never closing eye being pressed steadily against the back of his head—the hairless part behind his right ear.

“I’m one of the good guys!” he wants to shout, but his breath still hasn’t come back, and he sees black dots forming in front of his vision and wonders if he’s going to pass out and miss all the fun. Perfect ending to a perfect day, he thinks as the weight on him is finally, blessedly removed and he’s hauled—none-too-gently—to his feet, gun still firmly pressed against his body in warning. He bends at the waist slightly, gulping in great gusts of air and watching the blooming black roses begin to fade from his vision.

“He’s one of us,” he can hear Drew telling what he hopes are the cops, but he wonders if that’s even a good idea as the cops—please, please let them be the cops—have their guns trained on Drew and crew as well. “He saved our lives, actually.”

“With some help from my superhero friends,” he quips, feeling oddly warm and, dare he say it, fuzzy inside. He, of course, quashes those feelings immediately, following them down with a sarcasm chaser. “Uh, you mind easing up a little there, Officer Bob? You’re cutting off circulation to things I might want to use later, if you know what I mean.”

The officer in question, whose name most definitely isn’t Bob, gives him a look designed to shrivel his testicles. Apparently, there isn’t an ‘Intimidation Techniques Totally Useless on Greg Proops 101’ class at the Academy, or, if there is, ‘Officer Bob’ slept through the lecture.

“Yeah,” Greg says, completely unfazed, “I’m sure shakin’ now, Bobs. Wanna lighten up a little, please? I’m being nice, here. Really.” When the pressure finally eases up some, he looks down to see two men dressed in black, the letters SWAT starkly white against the fabric, huddled over Colin, performing CPR. “Shit.”

Laura Hall looks up at him, tears shimmering in her dark, forlorn eyes. “We…we got him back for a few minutes, but….” She covers a sob with a cough and swipes angrily at her eyes. “I think he’s just lost too much blood. I don’t—.”

Greg chances a glance over at Ryan. The tall comedian has slipped back into his shell once again. Using the wall to hold himself up, he stares down at the action going on around his beloved, but if he’s actually seeing anything is impossible to know.

“Where are the goddamned paramedics?” Greg demands, spinning on the officer still holding him.

“They’re here,” the cop answers after a moment. “But they’re staying outside until the scene is secured.”

“The goddamned scene is goddamned secured already!” Greg erupts, hands flailing. “Look, officer man, in case you didn’t notice, that man over there is fucking dying! The only reason he’s alive right now is no thanks to you or your asshole buddies, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna let you be the cause of his goddamned death!” Yanking his arm away, Greg begins to stride off in the direction of the blown doors. Hearing the cock of a pistol hammer, he turns just enough to sneer at the cop. “You wanna shoot me now? Go ahead and do it, then. Do what those fucking assholes who fucking held us hostage didn’t. Finish the fucking job already! You’re already doing it to Colin.” He throws his hands up. “I’m outta here, man. If you decide to pull the trigger, you better come up with a good excuse about how you wound up shooting a crime victim in the back while he was going to get help for his dying friend. I’m sure even the LA cops will dig on that, huh?”

And then he leaves.

The paramedics, old hands who are chafing at the bit to actually do their jobs, barely wait for him to finish speaking before two of them rush into the studio, equipment boxes in hand. ‘Officer Bob’, still wearing the testicle-shriveling expression, stares at them as they approach. As unintimidated as Greg had been earlier, they brush past the man and squeeze behind the stage, efficiently displacing the two SWAT team members who had been providing CPR to Colin.

“Multiple gunshot wounds,” one of the SWAT guys is saying as he moves, stepping up onto the stage and bending low at the waist to continue his report, “chest and abdomen. He hasn’t breathed on his own since we got here, maybe three minutes ago. Pulse comes and goes. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Nodding, the medics kneel down on either side of the tall Canadian, already pulling AED out of the equipment bag and slapping the pads down onto Colin’s unmoving, bloody chest. An ambu bag follows, and the second medic, a blonde woman of indeterminate age, places the mask over Colin’s face and begins breathing for him.

“Ventricular fibrillation,” the automated, robotic voice of the AED intones after several seconds. “Please clear the area. Ready to commence cardioversion.”

“Cardioversion commencing.”

Drew, Greg and the rest, save Ryan who is too far gone to notice a thing, flinsh as Colin’s body arches beneath the weight of the delivered shock.

“Ventricular fibrillation. Please clear the area. Ready to commence cardioversion.”

“Cardioversion commencing.”

“What…what’s happening?” Drew asks.

He’s ignored as Colin’s body goes into spasm again.

“Sinus tachycardia. Pulse one hundred twenty three. Continue scanning.”

Nodding, the first medic, a grizzled man in his fifties, grabs the IV equipment from his bag and quickly examines Colin’s arms. “His veins are collapsed,” he says, continuing to search. “We might need to do a cut-down. How long has he been like this?”

Greg checks his watch. Damn. “Sixteen minutes.”

The two paramedics exchange dark looks. The possibility that they just might be saving the life of a brain dead man occurs to them simultaneously. Their shoulders droop just slightly.

“We…haven’t been doing CPR the whole time,” Laura offers, reading their thoughts like a book. “That’s only been, what…five or six minutes?”

The others nod, and the medics feel some measure of hope enter back into the equation. With the skill of long experience, and just the faintest hint of blind luck, the older medic manages to find and spear a vein in Colin’s chilled arm. Nodding in satisfaction, he begins to slowly push some fluids and looks up at his partner. “Grab a stretcher and let the Life-Flight pilot know we’ve got a Code One here. We’re gonna need to move fast.”

“Will do,” the younger woman snaps, jumping to her feet and rushing away.

The stretcher comes quickly, and Colin is stowed aboard just as quickly, leaving everyone staring after him like lost children.

“Where are you taking him?” Drew asks softly. The paramedic names the hospital and Drew nods. “Ok. We’ll follow you there.” He looks behind him, scowling. “Wayne, get your ass up here and get checked out, too. You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit. I saw you get hit.” Sighing, Drew purposefully gentles his voice. “C’mon, Wayne. Please?”

A heavy sigh is his answer.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ignoring the interplay, Greg jumps up on the stage, then jumps down behind it when he’s level with Ryan. “Hey, Ry?” he says softly, laying a gentle hand on the tall man’s elbow. “You ready to go see Colin? We’ll go together, ok? I’ll drive, and you can just…you know…take it easy? Does that sound okay to you?”

Like a zombie, or someone heavily under a tranquilizer blanket, Ryan blinks, then nods, very slowly. Greg almost feels as if he’s trying to get through to a toddler, but quickly dismisses the thought. “C’mon, guy,” he says, grasping Ryan’s huge mitt and tugging gently. “Let’s go.”

Ryan follows along with docility, more one of those animatronic figures he’d once claimed to be than the living, breathing, thinking human they all know he is. Greg actually thinks it’s easier this way. He could, after all, be screaming.

They almost make it to the door when they’re stopped by another cop, this one an older dude with iron grey hair poking out from beneath his cap and a rounded belly that speaks of too many jelly donuts and not enough foot chases. “You guys need to stay here until we get your statements,” he announces, easing his considerable girth between them and the door, thumbs hooked in his wide gunbelt like some latter day old-West sheriff.

“Look,” Greg begins, already feeling his temper start to flare yet again, “you’ve got a million other idiots to get statements from. You don’t need us right this minute.”

“But….”

“Did you see the guy who got wheeled out for Life-Flight?”

“Yes, but….”

“This man,” he continues through the cop’s protestations, hooking his thumb behind him to where Ryan stands like a wind-up toy with a broken spring, “is his partner. Now, I know you guys aren’t all too fond of that diversity training us taxpayers are forcing on you, but….”

And the man surprises the hell out of him by lifting both arms and nodding slightly. “I understand,” he says calmly. “We can get your statements later. Be careful driving to the hospital.”

“Well. I guess that’s okay then.” Greg thinks, inanely, that thwarted rage is somewhat like blue balls, and then he grabs Ryan’s hand again and heads out of the studio.

“Hope the guy makes it,” the cop murmurs as he moves back into the studio, leaving Greg surprised once again.

The trip to the hospital is quicker than it, by rights, should be, and Greg pulls up past the ambulance entrance, not even bothering to attempt to find a parking space in the massive paying lots that surrounded the Medical Center Campus. Flicking on his hazard blinkers, he slips out the driver’s side and walks around, opening up the passenger side door and helping Ryan out. The tall man offers absolutely no resistance, following along behind him like a well-trained primate.

The Emergency Room is a madhouse of pain-wracked and raving patients and frazzled nurses, physicians, and techs rushing hither and yon, seemingly at random. Spying a likely looking desk, Greg strides up to it and tries for his best smile. “Excuse me, Ma’am?”

“Yes?” a rather harried admissions clerk asks, one hand on the phone, the other on her computer’s mouse, dark eyes flicking back and forth between the two.

“Ma’am, I was just wondering if you could tell me if a Mr. Colin Mochrie had been brought in, and where he might be?”

“Hold on a minute. Gladys! Dr. Johnson needs you in 4. Spanish speaking only. Now, as for you, sir, as you can see, we’re busy. I’ll make an exception for you just this once. Patient’s last name?”

“Mochrie,” Greg repeats with what looks to be the last of his patience.

“No one by that name listed here. You should check the other—.”

“That’s because you’re not spelling it the right way,” Greg interjects, his voice on the knife-edge between calm and scathing sarcasm and getting ready to topple. “It’s M-O-C-H-R-I-E.”

“That’s how I spelled it, sir. If you’ll just….”

Growling, Greg spins the monitor, pointing. “Was your spelling teacher Mr. Ed?” he demands. “Since when does M-O-C-K-E-R-Y spell M-O-C-H-R-I-E?”

“Do you want me to call security?” the clerk demands.

“No-o. I want you to learn how to spell! Jesus-Flipping-Horned-Toads, lady, it’s not that hard!”

The clerk narrows her eyes at him, and he does the same right back at her until they are nearly nose to nose. The clerk, still rather new at her job, breaks first and, with a sigh worthy of an Emmy, retypes in Colin’s name, correctly this time. Information begins to scroll down the previously blank screen. “He’s in the Trauma Room,” she says finally, deciphering the medical-ese displayed on the computer. “Go down this hall, third hallway to your left, take the ‘G’ elevator. Immediately to your right, you’ll see a sign for the Trauma Waiting Room. Wait there, and when they’re ready, someone will come out and speak with you.”

Greg blinks at her once, twice. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens. “Uh…could you….”

With the slightest hint of a triumphant spark in her dark eyes, the clerk pulls out a map and highlights the directions in brilliant yellow. Her smirk, when she hands it over, is carefully hidden and Greg thinks, offhandedly, that when this is all over, he might just ask her out for coffee.

The directions are easy to follow, and in only a few minutes, Greg and Ryan are in the sizable Trauma Waiting Room, though, because it’s a weekend in LA, all of the seats are filled. Here, all races, ages and genders are equalized—everyone wears identical masks of horror, shock and grief. Every so often, someone in scrubs, a stethoscope looped indifferently around their neck, will enter. All heads will lift, and as often as not, the family who is chosen looks more scared than those who weren’t. The saying ‘no news is good news’ seems to apply here, at least to some extent.

Greg leads Ryan over to a more or less empty corner, and Ryan wedges his tall body into it, as if the walls to either side are the only things that can possibly hold him on his feet now. His eyes are twin blank slates as he stares out over the heads of everyone else at exactly nothing. Several moments later, a woman dressed in business attire and bearing a badge announcing her as being from Patient Accounts, enters the room, laptop in hand. “Colin Mochrie?” she asks, pronouncing Colin’s name like a game GI surgeons play for kicks—colon mockery (“Ha! Did ya see the size of that one?”).

Greg, having heard that particular rendition a time or ten, immediately steps forward. “Yes?”

“Are you family?” the woman asks, quite dubiously.

“He is,” Greg replies, again hooking his thumb over his shoulder. “Ryan Stiles. Domestic partner.”

Nodding, the woman enters the information into her computer. “And does Mr. Stiles have the authority to make financial and medical decisions for the patient?”

“You mean because this fucked up country won’t let them get married, so they have to jump through all kinds of legal hoops in order to be able to speak for one another at times like these?” Greg asks, his ire growing with every word, even though it’s an old argument with him. He sighs. “Yeah. They each have POA over the other.”

“Paperwork?”

“Look, lady,” he says, baring his teeth, “my friend in there, wherever the fuck he is right now, was just shot to pieces in front of about ten million people on network television. He died, fucking died, at least twice that I know of, and we couldn’t do a fucking thing about it because we were all being held hostage. If you think we had time to go around looking for fucking papers, you’re up a fucking tree. Am I coming in clear to you, Ma’am?”

The woman thinks about becoming hissy, then decides not to, and opts for a careful nod. “Without any paperwork,” she says, “I can’t guarantee anything, but I don’t think the doctors will have any problems talking with you when they know something.”

She starts in with insurance questions, then gives up when it’s obvious that Greg doesn’t know the answers, and Ryan can’t give them. “I’ll…just put him down as Self-Pay, then. He can submit the bill to his insurance company once he receives it.”

“Ah, yeah, that sounds great,” Greg replies, sounding as enthused as a man about to have dental surgery. “Any idea when somebody might be out to talk to us?”

“No, Sir. I’m afraid not.”

“Great. Well, you’ve been a big help, then. Thanks.”

She thinks about turning on the Diva again, then remembers the big Customer

Service inservice she’s just attended and, sighing, turns on her two inch FMP and leaves the way she came, lacquered hair trying, and failing, to flutter behind her.

Watching her leave, Greg spies a coffee maker and fixins tucked against the far wall, and heads in that direction, knowing that Ryan won’t know—or care—that he’s gone and needing the caffeine something fierce. He makes himself a cup of Java goodness, and, after a moment, prepares one for Ryan as well. Returning to the corner, he lifts Ryan’s hand and presses the hot coffee into it. Ryan takes it, surprisingly, and lifts the cup to his lips, drinking without thought or emotion, but at least he’s drinking it, and Greg thinks that’s a damn good thing right there.

Greg’s almost finished his second cup when the doors open and a rather mussed young gentleman in the requisite scrubs with the requisite stethoscope over his bull neck enters the room. All eyes follow as if he’s carrying the Law down from the Mount. “Ryan Stiles?” he calls out in a pleasing baritone.

Greg steps forward in answer, his heart suddenly going a mile a minute. “He’s…um…not handling things real well at the moment,” he announces, gesturing over his shoulder to Ryan, who is still holding up his little corner of the world.

“Is he injured?”

“More like in shock, I think.” He holds out his hand. “Greg Proops. I’m a…friend of the family.”

The physician smiles faintly. “I recognize you, Mr. Proops. And Mr. Stiles and my patient as well. Let’s step into the family room, where we can talk.”

Greg feels himself paling at the words, and their import, and it is with decidedly weak knees that he collects Ryan, tugging the too-compliant man along with him into a tiny anteroom off the main waiting room—a room that has tiny curtained windows and reminds Greg of nothing so much as an execution chamber. He shudders as he steps through and utters a quick prayer to he doesn’t know who for he doesn’t know what. Strength, maybe.

Perching a hip on the corner of the small table, the trauma surgeon clasps his hands in his lap and looks up at the two men, intelligence and competence shining in his obsidian eyes. “Well, gentlemen, I’m not the kind who beats around bushes, so I’ll give the news to you unadulterated. Mr. Mochrie has sustained significant gunshot trauma to his chest and abdomen along with severe blood loss. To tell you the honest truth, I’ve never had a patient still living who had as low a blood count as Mr. Mochrie did when he arrived here.”

“But…he’s still alive, right?”

“Indeed he is, and headed straight for surgery, where I will be joining him after I finish briefing you. He sustained two bullet wounds to the lungs. The one to the right lung was through and through, and effectively collapsed it, though whomever did the First Aid on it did a remarkably good job.”

“That would be Drew,” Greg replies.

The smile broadens a bit. “Sucking lung wound reexpansion with condom foils. I may just have to write that one up for journal publication.”

“Just don’t mention whose condoms they were, and you’ve got a deal.”

The surgeon chuckles briefly, then sobers. “We inserted a chest tube, and the lung has since reinflated, but we’ll need to go in there to check around and see what can be seen. The wound to the left is less severe. Luckilly, the bullet went off of two ribs and didn’t puncture the lung, so we’re dealing with bruising, for the most part. His spleen was largely destroyed, so that will have to be removed—but many people are living normal lives without one, so I don’t see that as being a problem at this point. There’s a question of some liver damage, so I’ll have to check that out when I go in as well. Luckilly, his stomach and intestines were spared from any trauma, though it was close…a millimeter either way.” He straightens. “All in all, this is something we can fix. All of it. Many times, unfortunately, patients like Mr. Mochrie, with eminently fixable conditions, never reach us in time. But because of you and the rest of his friends, well….”

As he begins to rise, Greg puts a hand on his arm. “Doc,” he begins, then clears his throat, not wanting to say the words he knows he must. “I…um…I know it’s probably too early to talk about this, or even know, really, but…um…he…he wasn’t breathing for a long time, and his heart stopped at least twice that I know of, and, well, when I was in school, I remember all those horror stories about brains and no oxygen and….” He stops, miserable, hands over his face for a long moment.

A compassionate hand lands on his shoulder, and when he looks up, the surgeon is smiling at him. “I understand,” he says. “And if it were me, I’d be asking as well. But what I haven’t told you yet is that, although we haven’t done any definitive testing, I think he’s going to be fine in that department.”

“F-fine? H-how do you know?”

“Once we started replenishing his lost blood, Mr. Mochrie became—well, I wouldn’t say more ‘awake’ because he didn’t, but I would use the word more ‘responsive’. Though he didn’t open his eyes, and wasn’t able to speak because of the tube in his throat, he was able to squeeze my hands correctly to the questions I asked him. Now I can’t guarantee anything, and things may change, but I think that, for right now, you can breathe easily on that point, at least.”

His legs give out then, and if it wasn’t for the kindly trauma surgeon (surely a misnomer to anyone who knows anything at all about trauma surgeons), he’d have wound up ass first on the floor—again. Instead, he’s cradled in strong arms and guided to a less than comfortable chair, where he sits, slumped. “You…you’re not shitting me, right?”

“No, Mr. Proops,” the surgeon says, smiling. “No shit here. Like I said, something could happen between now and then, but for now…no…I’m telling it to you straight.”

“Thank god,” he whispers, dragging both hands through his hair. “Oh, thank god.”

“You guys should go down to the cafeteria while you’re waiting. The food’s not great, but it’s edible, and you both look like you could use some.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a small pager and slides it across the table to Greg. “When this goes off, come on back up here and I’ll tell you how everything went, ok?”

“Thanks, Doc. You…can’t…I…just…thanks.”

Smiling, the surgeon stands and claps Greg lightly on the shoulder. Then he moves around him to stop before the still standing Ryan. “Mr. Stiles?” he says, careful not to touch the blank-faced man. “I’m going to take very good care of Mr. Mochrie. You have my word on that.”

Like a child coming up from a long, hard sleep, Ryan blinks, slowly, several times. “Th—” Clearing his throat, he tries again. “Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome, sir.” A final nod to them both, and the surgeon leaves, heading for the OR and Colin.

Greg stands as well, and approaches Ryan, stopping a half-foot away. “Hey, Ry,” he says softly, a bit uncertainly. “You doin’ a little better?”

Ryan looks around slowly, as if wondering where he is and how he’s gotten there. “Uh…yeah, I guess,” he replies finally, lifting a hand to rub it at the back of his neck.

“Fuck of a day.”

Ryan grunts, then carefully places the dregs of his coffee on the small table. “Where’s everyone else?”

“They’ll be here. Wayne’s probably here already, getting checked over, and the rest of them probably are finishing up their statements to the cops. I bet they get here before Colin’s out of surgery.” Ryan’s nodding absently, and Greg is worried he’ll start to slip away again. “You want to go get something to eat? I’ve got this,” he says, holding up the beeper, “for when, you know, they’re done.”

After a long moment, Ryan nods. He’s not hungry in the least, and even if he was, the molten ball sitting in his stomach wouldn’t let any food down there anyway. But Greg looks pale and wan, and is probably damn hungry to boot.

“Great! Let’s go!”

They wind up staying for almost two hours as the others gradually wander in, stumbling and numb like shellshocked troops returning from overseas. Wayne’s injury turned out to be minor; just a treat and release from the ER. The rest of them haven’t even bothered to change their clothes, though they all dig into what passes for food at the hospital with a will. No one talks much; they’re all too busy processing and Drew figures there’s gonna be a boom in the therapy market for some months to come.

The piercing noise of the beeper shatters their silent knot, and every face pales, particularly Ryan, who looks as if he might not even have enough strength to stand, but somehow does. He and Greg pelt down the hallway for the elevator, the others trailing in their wake like ducks following their mother. The others miss the first elevator, but Greg’s already given them directions, so they take the second and arrive less than fifteen seconds behind the first two.

The doctor, in different scrubs now, a pristine white labcoat slung over them, leans against one wall, looking tired but content.

“Did everything….?” Ryan’s voice fades to nothing, though his leg is pogoing a mile a minute as if to make up for it.

“Went just fine,” the surgeon replies, smiling. “We had to remove his spleen, but that was expected. His liver was much less damaged than we’d feared. I removed a tiny bit of it, but it won’t give him any problems. We patched up his lung without any difficulty, and didn’t find anything else unexpected. He’s still getting blood, and will be for the next day or so, and we’re keeping him pretty heavily sedated and on the ventilator until his lungs and liver have a chance to heal a little, but other than that, I’m really pleased with the way things went, and barring anything unforeseen, I see no reason why he won’t go on to have a full recovery. The next couple of days will pretty much set the tone for that.”

Drew and Greg move just quickly enough to prevent Ryan from hitting the floor as his knees buckle. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he says irritably, as if he hadn’t just nearly fainted, and swats their arms away, his face tinged with pink. “Can I see him?”

“He’s probably just getting into his room now, in the Trauma ICU. Only two visitors at a time, but the rest of you can wait here and go in when someone else comes out, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Drew says.

“Follow me, then.”

Ryan grabs Greg’s hand in a tight, sweaty grip and all but pulls the smaller man behind him as he follows the surgeon through the pneumatic doors and into the whooshing, beeping world of the Trauma ICU.

The nursing station is in the middle, and the rooms are arranged like spokes on a wagon wheel. The doctor leads them to the third room to the left of the door. Ryan hesitates, but Greg’s hand on his lower back eases him over the threshold and into a room that smells chiefly of alcohol and latex powder.

Colin is in the exact center of a narrow bed and, surprisingly, he actually looks better than he did when last they saw him. Yes, he’s hooked up to monitors that beep and boop away, and yes, he’s got an endotracheal tube down his throat connected to a ventilator that hisses and whooshes as it breathes for him, and yes his chest and belly are shaved and an odd color yellow from the betadine wipe—at least where they aren’t white from the bandages covering his wounds, but his cheeks are flushed a rosy pink, and for them, that makes all the difference in the world.

The nurse introduces herself and explains the equipment and the care he’ll be receiving, answering questions with a care and grace that leave Ryan and Greg feeling more than comfortable with her presence at Colin’s bedside.

“He can hear you if you talk to him,” she says, pushing over a chair for Ryan to sit in. “He was responsive in the Recovery Room, but I’ve just given him a big dose of Morphine, so I don’t know if he’ll respond to you. But he will hear you.”

“Can I…touch him?” Ryan asks, endearingly hesitant as one massive hand goes behind his own head, rubbing at his neck in a nervous tic.

“Of course you can,” she replies, smiling. Reaching over, she lowers the rail on the side of the bed closest to Ryan. “There you go.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Ryan reaches out and brushes the very tip of his index finger along the back of Colin’s right hand. The skin is warm and dry—such a massive difference from earlier, when touching Colin was like touching a corpse, or at least what he imagines touching a corpse would feel like.

Greg walks to the other side of the bed and leans down, his lips close to Colin’s ear. “Hey, Col. The doc said you did great in surgery and that you’re gonna pull through just fine. All the guys are here, and they’ll be visiting soon, too. And, I’m sure you know Ryan’s here trying to figure out whether or not he can hold your hand.” He smirks at the look of death tossed his way. “G’wan, Ry, for Hell’s sweet sake. It’s not like you’re gonna break it or anything!”

Ryan growls, but Greg’s words more or less shame him into sliding his hand under Colin’s, and from there, it’s only a quick squeeze of the fingers and Colin’s smaller hand is cradled easily and gently in Ryan’s giant mitt. Somewhat awkwardly—because he’s a big guy, after all, and the chair isn’t—he leans forward and brushes his lips tenderly against his lover’s hand. “I love you, Colin,” he whispers, pointedly ignoring Greg’s smirk and the nurse’s barely hidden grin. “And you’re gonna get better fast, and you’re never, ever gonna do anything like this again, you hear me?”

Greg chuckles softly. “I don’t think he can answer you, dude.”

“I don’t care. He can hear me. That’s enough.” He leans in closer and his voice drops to a whisper. “Please don’t ever put me through something like this again, Col…cause I don’t think I could take it.” The tears aren’t spilling, but they’re very close, and he wishes Greg would just fucking leave so he could let them fall in peace, but Greg won’t leave because Greg loves Colin too, and besides, he saved all their lives, and….”Fuck!”

“What?” Greg asks, alarmed. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Ryan snaps, unable to help himself. “It’s nothing, alright?”

The next thing he feels is a gentle hand on his shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “I understand, Ry. How ‘bout I grab a cuppa Java and come back in, say, fifteen minutes?”

The tears are closer now, and all Ryan can do is nod dumbly, but Greg understands and leaves, taking the nurse with him and pleading the case for a minute of privacy.

By moving the chair slightly toward the head of the bed, Ryan finds that his long arms can reach both Colin’s head and his hand, so he continues to cradle his lover’s hand as he strokes the fine, soft fringe of hair along the side of Colin’s head. “I love you,” he murmurs again. “I could say it a million times, Col, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

And through the tears, a smile is born as to his questing hand an answering grip comes, brief, but strong, strong as any verbal declaration and letting him know exactly the place he holds in this sweet, funny man’s heart.

Completely drained, he lays his head on the soft, warm blanket, still gripping Colin’s hand, and falls immediately to sleep, secure for the first time since the horror of the day that Colin will be there when he again awakens.

*******

EPILOGUE

Four Months Later:

“Good evening everybody and welcome to Whose Line is it Anyway? On tonight’s show, Listen to Your Mother, Mister…Wayne Brady! Don’t Sit So Close to the Television…Greg Proops! Stop Doing That Or You’ll Grow Hair on Your Palms…Ryan Stiles! And Don’t You Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever Scare Us Like That Again…Colin Mochrie!”

The standing ovation went on for what seemed like hours.

Confetti dropped like a mini ticker-tape parade, and it seemed like everyone in the studio wanted to shake his hand.

And through it all was the calming presence and the loving support of the one man who had kept Colin trapped safely in the land of the living.

“I love you, Ryan,” he mouthed, and the smile he received in return made every ounce of pain he’d endured worth it.

And, for now, all was right with the world.

FIN.