The Shearing Gun (8 page)

We were getting a few strange looks from people around us. I heard someone call that there was about to be a
bitch fight,
and I knew I had to calm the Doc down before he did something stupid.

“Come, now, Quackle. We should—”

“Don’t call me Quackle!” he nearly screamed. The watchers and the gossipers were forming a circle around us. I saw a couple of big, beefy men in black with the word “Security” written on their shirts push through the crowd.

“I’m sorry, Elliot. I won’t call you anything but Elliot from now on—”

The bouncers had reached us. I saw them take a look at Elliot’s small frame and then size me up. Elliot’s posture shouted tension from the tips of his toes to the top of his curly hair, whereas I was still relaxed. However, I still posed the biggest threat.

“What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?” one bouncer enquired when he reached our side. He was looking directly at me, so I answered.

“No problem, mate. I think I was just about to leave.”

The big guy had an inch or two on me and had those gym-junkie muscles going. Even if I were up for a tussle, I wouldn’t want to take bets on whether I could take him. He nodded. “Good idea. I’ll show you the door, shall I?”

I nodded, finished my beer without looking at the infuriated Elliot, and turned toward the exit. Unfortunately the bouncer decided I needed a helping hand and grabbed my arm, yanking it slightly—my bad arm that I’d decided didn’t need a sling while I was trawling.

I roared in pain. “Fuck!” Then stupidly, as I usually do when things get tough for me, I struck out with my fist. I caught the guy in the jaw, and he fell back in surprise.

I knew that I had a problem with my temper, and Paul always told me that I would one day get in trouble for it, but I was well on my way to getting drunk and in a heck of a lot of pain. Reason had flown out the window. My fist had hit without conscious choice, and I was now in knee-deep shit.

The bouncer fell to the ground as his security mate tackled me from the side. I staggered, rebounding off a few unlucky watchers, but didn’t fall. The bouncer had his meaty arms around me and was squeezing me tightly. The pain-o-meter jumped a few notches. I yelled out and tried to shake him off.

“Stop! Hank! No, stop! He has a broken collarbone!” I could hear Elliot shouting from the side, but the man on top of me was putting pressure in exactly the wrong place. I grabbed him by his shoulder and spun him around and off me. The first guy had picked himself off the floor and he came at me, throwing a punch that smashed into my nose.

It hurt like all fuck.

I roared again and put my head down, charging at the idiot and taking him to the floor along with a dozen other patrons who were crowded around to watch the show. Men squealed like girls, girls shrieked like piglets, and things deteriorated from there.

Bouncers descended from all sides. Someone tried to grab my sore arm again, and I struck out, feeling the satisfaction as my fist hit flesh. Someone got a jab in and socked me a good one in the stomach and one in the cheek before I could stop them.

“Stop! Hank!”

I could hear Elliot yelling, but I ignored him. I was surrounded by guys who wanted to hurt me, and I was enraged like a bull teased too often. One guy grabbed me from behind while another tried to put me in a headlock. I struck out with my fists and feet.

“Oh, God! Please, stop! He has an injury! I’m a doctor, and he’s angry because he’s in pain.”

Elliot was still trying to calm things from the side when someone grabbed my left arm and twisted it up behind my back. I saw stars as the pain exploded in my brain, dropping me to my knees and wrenching an agonized cry from me.

“No!”

Bile rose in my throat as the suffering threatened to black me out. But Elliot was there. “Stop, for fuck’s sake! He has a broken collarbone! Stop, stop, stop! He’s down. Stop!”

I squeezed my eyes together and concentrated on breathing to keep from passing out. Then the pressure was gone. I was woozy with the pain but someone was urging me to my feet. They walked me out of the club. “Left, right, left, right, that’s it, Hank, come on, buddy, left, right, left, I have you.”

The cold air outside was a relief, and I fell to the ground once more, this time clutching my arm to my chest. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My head was spinning crazily, but I was pulling back from the brink of unconsciousness.

“Hank? Hank? Can you hear me? Open your eyes and look at me, mate. I need to see if you’re okay or if we need an ambulance.”

I recognized Elliot’s voice, although it seemed to be coming at me from a distance, like at the end of a tunnel. I unclenched my teeth and blinked up at him. His face was a mask of concern. “Hank?” he tried again.

“Fuck, it hurts, Quackle!”

His mouth relaxed a bit into more of a smile. “I know it hurts. I need to check it out. Do you think you can walk to my car? It’s just around the corner, and I have my medical bag in the back.”

He helped me to my feet and steadied me until we made it to his car, which was parked in an underground parking space. The back doors opened outward and he had me sit on the edge while he pulled his black bag to him. It was like a huge gym bag, and when it opened, I could see all sorts of medical items in there, all wrapped in their sterilized bags. My head was still spinning, so I rested it on the car frame, and didn’t even flinch as I felt the needle go in my arm.

“Hank? You still with me, mate? This will take the pain away a bit, okay?”

He was right. Within seconds I was floating on a pink-and-purple-polka-dotted cloud. Moving through a fog, I tried to focus and do what the Doc said. He examined my collarbone, my nose, and my knuckles, before tying a gauze sling around my arm and attaching it to my neck. I had a couple of cuts on my hand, which he cleaned up. Then he somehow plonked an icepack on my nose and told me to hold it there.

The fog cleared, and I let loose a couple of
fucks
as he helped me into the passenger seat of his vehicle, but he was gentle when he placed the seatbelt around my body.

“Thanks, Quackle,” I managed to say before my eyelids slid closed.

I thought I heard him chuckle and say, “Don’t call me Quackle.” But I couldn’t be sure because I was asleep within half a tick.

Chapter 8

T
HE
NEXT
morning I blinked at the sunlight as it hit my face and groaned as pain engulfed me from head to toe. My head felt like it was going to split open, my cheek and nose felt swollen and hot, my stomach cramped, my knuckles throbbed, and my shoulder was a mass of agony.

“Oh, fucking sweet Jesus.”

Jesus had no time for screw-ups like me who couldn’t hold their temper, so there was no answer. I struggled to keep my eyes open and realized I didn’t know where I was. The room was unfamiliar, although obviously a hotel.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, swallowing hard while the room spun. I was in my black briefs and nothing else, apart from the sling still around my neck. I could hear the shower going in the attached bathroom and assumed the toilet was located there. And, shit, I needed to pee something bad.

The door was ajar and I stuck my head in. “Hello?”

Elliot swung his head around from inside the shower stall. It was made all of glass, and it was foggy from the steam, but you could make out enough detail.

“Hank? Are you okay?” Elliot’s face showed concern and worry—but no embarrassment. Not yet.

“Sorry, Doc. I need to drain the bladder. Just ignore me for a moment.”

The toilet was right next to the shower, and I kept my eyes to myself while I opened the lid one-handed and lowered the elastic of my briefs. However, after a night of drinking, my bladder was pretty full, and the piss came flowing out. And out. And out.

My mind began to wander, and I realized I was exposing myself to the Doc if he wanted to look. Not that I was coy about what I held in my hand. It was big enough that I didn’t need to hide in shame. But I was suddenly overcome with curiosity about the naked man in the shower right next to me.

So I looked.

He was lean and skinny, which I knew. But I didn’t know about the small covering of dark chest hair, or the pale pink nipples that looked tasty, or the thick bush of pubic hair around his uncut cock.

And the half-aroused flesh that rose out of that thick bush was turning me on.

I looked up into belligerent eyes and shrugged. “Sorry.”

I didn’t know what I was sorry for, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I wasn’t sorry about looking. I wasn’t sorry about being caught looking. And I definitely wasn’t sorry about knowing what he looked like. He had nothing to be ashamed of.

He turned his back to me and continued soaping his chest. Remember that arse that I said was scrawny? Well, I was hastily revising that opinion. It wasn’t plump, but it was still totally worth a second look.

I quickly flushed the toilet and made a quick getaway to the bedroom before Elliot saw my stiffening boner. Unfortunately my clothes were nowhere to be found. I heard the shower shut off and knew I had to make a decision as to where I was going to sit. Sitting back on the bed was an invitation I knew I wasn’t ready to issue yet—if I ever would be. Standing seemed a good idea, but it put me on display, since I was wearing very little. In the end I settled in the dining chair behind the table and waited.

Quackle came out wearing only a towel. He threw me a brief, inscrutable look before going to his suitcase on the bench seat at the end of the bed. The bed that we had obviously shared the night before.

“Umm….” I swallowed as he riffled through his clothes and found what he was looking for. “Do you know where my clothes are?”

He looked up then, obviously surprised, and glanced around the room. “Oh! They must be in the bathroom. That’s where I undressed you last night.”

Now wasn’t that an interesting thing to say?
We both flushed red, and I stood to go to my clothes, but that meant shuffling past a naked Elliot, wrapped in just a towel. “Excuse me,” I murmured and fled to the bathroom to dress.

Unfortunately I could only do my pants and grudgingly had to ask Elliot to untie the sling from behind me so I could get my shirt on. He sat me down on the bed and looked me over in a professional manner.

“So, how are you this morning, Hank?”

The pain of moving my arm hit me again. “Just peachy, Doc.”

He didn’t laugh. He moved around the bed so he could look me in the eye. “Tell me the truth this time.”

I sighed in exasperation. “I’m in pain. My shoulder hurts, my cheek hurts, my nose hurts, my stomach hurts. Nothing that a bit of painkiller won’t take care of.”

He squinted at me for a moment before accepting my words. “You know that what you did last night was stupid, right? What did you think was going to happen if you punched a bouncer?”

I hung my head. “I know, mate. I just…. Fuck! I have a temper, I know. I need to learn to control it better. It’s no excuse for what I did, but I wasn’t exactly happy last night.” Doc raised an eyebrow in query. I chuckled with embarrassment and tried humor. “Well, it’s like this. I was on my way to being mellow when someone I know from back home saw me and worked out I’m a gay prick. I was panicking a bit, and he came over and yelled at me, chasing away this beautiful young man I was hoping to fuck until all the sexual frustration that had been building up for a good three months had gone. So I was a little pissed off at him—the guy from back home—so when this arsehole of a bouncer jerked my arm, and the pain was incredible, I just hit out. Sorry.”

His jaw worked a bit, and I thought he was trying to hide a smile, until he finally said, “You’re not a prick.” Then he helped me on with my shirt.

And that was it. He retied my sling, helped me put my shoes on, told me that I shouldn’t be driving, even though he knew I would, and showed me the door. “They should be able to get you a taxi at the entrance. I’ll see you back home, Hank” was all he said before he firmly shut the door behind me.

I stewed about it for days.

J
IMMIE
HUGGED
me good-bye Thursday afternoon and pressed a tin of homemade biscuits into my hand. “Be good, Hank,” he said. I’d told him about the incident and knew that he would discuss it with Murray once I was gone. I’d told him all about Elliot’s wandering eyes, our confrontation in the nightclub, the fight, and even me checking him out in the shower. He let me talk, but didn’t have any sage advice to give me. Only a “let me know how it turns out, huh?”

The drive home was painful. I’d swapped to my usual blue sling, which allowed me movement, but I needed to change gears with my left hand, which had the agony spiking regularly. Once I was out of the city, I could just drive—the roads allowed me to drive at a hundred and ten and would take me home quickly—but the city traffic meant constant gear changes. My arm throbbed despite the painkillers I had swallowed.

Dusk was falling as I made Narrogin, so I stopped for dinner at their local pub. Sunset and sunrise were the worst times to be driving—due to the kangaroos. They were on the move at that time, and hitting one would damage your vehicle, even with roo-bars and bull-bars attached to the front. The big bucks could stand taller than a man, and if you hit one of them, they could flip up over your bonnet and smash your windscreen.