Hobbstown, Pt 2
title Hobbstown
verse Honest-to-god Harsh Realm
rating R
summary Five years post canon, Tom Hobbes and Mike Pinocchio have a refugee camp and a real resistance settled in the anonymity of the American midlands. Their world and their cause have grown bigger than themselves, however, and has come to affect the lives of hundreds, if not thousands. Two of those thousands cross paths in Hobbstown during the days leading up to one of the resistance’s greatest accomplishments. But even in the relative sanctuary of the camp, nothing is certain or permanent. Rated for cussing and bad decision making.

(Pt 1: little ripples)

It’s not like I was a kept man, sitting around, worrying apron hems and wondering when Johnny would be coming on home. I wasn’t. That first day when Nash was running a job with bossman and Pinocchio, I mostly kept myself busy. I met the only kid in Hobbstown that had a connection to some dealers, which was a point for me. At the time, I didn’t have anything to trade for the goods and I wasn’t desperate enough to offer him a BJ for an ounce, but I kept the kid in mind for later. You never really know when you might need it – just because I wasn’t technically homeless anymore didn’t mean the world was any less uncertain.

The rest of the day, I wandered. I made nice. Turns out the chick with a kid a few tents over wasn’t a complete waste of skin, and the kid – Gabriel – was grabby and whiney, but he laughed when I picked him up and that was okay, I guess. Whatever. Mary-Anne, the mother, laughed when I called him a fucking brat. She told me I reminded her of her brother, Jeremy, who’d been killed in a drive by a year and a half before. Later on, she made me a PBJ with the crusts cut off since I made sure the kid didn’t get himself killed when she went to go visit one of her friends for a while.

I didn’t ask who the father was. It was just how the world was. If the Rangers hadn’t raped her, I’d have bet that the Rangers had killed the guy who’d been Gabe’s dear old dad. You don’t think about it. You just move forward. Gabe was alive and almost walking, she said that evening, pouring me a rare glass of wine. What more could she have asked of the world?

As it was, I kept myself busy that whole day. I wasn’t much of an asshole, and even if I was, Gabe and Mary-Anne didn’t care. It was late by the time I made it back to our tent, happy on a few glasses of contraband Cabernet and sleepy. It never occurred to me that Nash wouldn’t be home.

He wasn’t. He’d left at maybe six am that morning, down into that dumb little shed, and still, there was no sign of him. It was ridiculous that I was worried – later I would learn it wasn’t unusual to be gone for days at a time – but Nash was just some dumbass in the bed across the way. Besides, what kind of trouble could he get up to in a ten by ten shed in the middle of a refugee camp?

Those were the things that I told myself as I undressed, slipping beneath scratchy sheets and staring up at the canvas above my head. He was probably out with bossman and company, drinking and picking up easy refugee girls. Mary-Anne herself had given a sly, private smile when I mentioned who I was sharing a tent with. The kid wasn’t ugly, sure. He was probably just out having fun.

It was light again when I woke up, and I woke up only because someone was scratching at the zipper at the tent’s flap.

“Fuck off,” I muttered, rolling over to go back to bed. I didn’t even notice that the bed across the way was still empty and un-slept in. “We’re full, jackass, go somewhere else.”

It was early enough to be quiet – even the morning delivery Jeeps hadn’t come through. I was almost asleep again when the aimless scratching resumed. Cursing loudly, I swung my feet out of bed, ready to tear into this asshole for disturbing my god damned sleep, when I heard for the first time, a quiet, wheezing voice along with the attempts to open the flap.

“Zeek? ‘s me….I can’t open…it’s too hard.”

Nash. Undeniably Nash. Two weeks of close quarters meant I already knew the way he breathed. Now, it was uneven and wet, strained around his few words. I don’t clearly remember crossing the few feet to the tent flap, but I know I opened it quickly because when I did, Nash grinned up at me, looking relieved. Up at me, I remember, because he was slumped bonelessly outside the tent, spread out on the ground.

“Worried?” he managed, summoning a grin. Cursing wildly, I hooked my hands under his arm pits and dragged him gracelessly inside.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I demanded, letting him fall heavily back onto the floor. “Where the fuck have you been? Are you dead? Is everyone else dead? What the fuck happened?”

Nash had already closed his eyes, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “….shut…up…” he managed, “Gotta…sleep.”

“What? Sleep? What the fuck are you talking about? You’re on the ground, dumbass! Talk to me! Who the fuck do you think you are, waking me up with this shit? Nash? Nash!”

He was already asleep, of course, breathing heavily and contentedly in sweaty clothes and muddy boots on the floor of our tent. I stood over him, seething, actively resisting the urge to kick him hard in the ribs. It’s not like he would have noticed. There were enough new bruises on his arms and his side. It would have been easy to deny.

“I should freaking leave you here,” I said to him, toeing him in the side with one bare foot. I should have. Fuck, I certainly could have. It’s not like I owed him a damn thing. Still, I was already up and he was taking up most of the room in our small tent, spread out on the ground like he was. Cursing, I dropped down at his feet, unlacing his boots and hauling them off. Next came his pants. Not like I never undressed a dude before, but this was just…different, and anyway the angle was weird. It took a while, and I was sweating and regretting it before I was done. Nash was bigger than he looked and a deep sleeper. He was wearing pinstripe boxers, which is something I should have found fucking hilarious, but I caught myself touching the fucking hems, knuckles resting on the wiry hair on his thigh and just…zoning out. It was ridiculous. It was what warm sheets and a full stomach at night did to you. Anyway, he was finally out of the dirty clothes but I wasn’t about to haul all 200 pounds of him up into that little fucking cot. As it was, I just stuck his pillow and mine under his head and draped the blanket over him and left it at that.

And then I left and got myself some breakfast, because I wasn’t about to sit around and watch him sleep. If I brought him back some coffee and a bagel for later, big fucking deal. I didn’t want to have to listen to him wake up and bitch about being hungry.

As I walked down to the mess, I could help wondering; how the fuck did you get that muddy and sweaty in a tiny little room with no windows and just one door?

*

It was early evening by the time he finally woke up. It was warm out and still light, but I kicked the fire to life anyway, just to chase the bugs and the humidity away. It was the quiet part of evening - most of the neighbors had skittered off to the mess hall for dinner, so when Nash groaned, I heard him easily. Glancing up from a dog-eared, many times read comic, I watched the tent flap until it opened, revealing Nash’s pale, puffy face.

“Morning,” I said, arching an eyebrow at him. I wasn’t fucking worried, but jesus, he looked like shit. It was amazing how much color he’d lost in one day. Muttering a curse, he tossed me a glare before staggering off to the latrine.

“Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays,” I muttered to myself, idly flipping pages that I’d read a dozen times before.

“Fuck, I’m hungry,” he said when he returned a few minutes later, looking marginally better. He wasn’t moving so clumsily now and the water he’d splashed on his face made his color look a little brighter. He dropped down alongside me at the fire, stretching until I could hear his vertebrae go poppoppop.

“Maybe you should have woken up for one of the three meals you missed today,” I muttered. Nash only shrugged, nodding like I actually had a point. When he didn’t say anything else, I sighing heavily, snapping the comic shut. “I brought some crap home from the mess hall,” I muttered, digging the bagel and two sandwiches out of my rucksack. “In case I got hungry. You can have them if you think you’re gonna pass out or whatever.”

“Christ, I could kiss you,” Nash said, diving for the stale food like it was a three-course-meal. “Thanks, man.”

“Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “Don’t mention it.” As I returned to my comic, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. The dumb ass was already halfway through the bagel, inhaling the food in between taking deep swallows from my canteen. It was fucking disgusting and I told him as much, pointedly scooting a few feet away from him.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning and talking with his mouth open. “Didn’t know you had such high etiquette, Zeek.”

“You could tell me where the fuck you were and what the fuck you were doing,” I pointed out, still ostentatiously reading the comic. “That would be pretty high fucking etiquette.”

“Why, because you were home all day worrying and making me snacks?” Nash said, indicating the parcels of food. Something in my face must have changed – god knows I could feel the angry flush rising in my cheeks – because he was almost instantly waving his hands placating and his tone got a lot more sincere. “Look. It’s nothing. I’m just doing some work for them, alright? And it’s not exactly a walk in the park sometimes. Whatever. I can’t talk about it. I’d tell you more if I could.”

“It looks like they were fucking torturing you,” I said immediately. Maybe for someone else, it would have been a weird conclusion to jump to. Fuck knows. But it didn’t come out as disinterested and off-hand as I meant it. It was probably just how pissed off I was, I thought, but I couldn’t completely conceal that strange, uncertain tremor in my voice. Shit.

“No,” Nash said, laughing, picking the lettuce off his sandwich and glancing up at me. Maybe he was expecting me to be joking, but something in my expression immediately sobered him up. “Jesus, no, man. It’s just…work. Don’t worry about it.”

“You tunneling or something?” I asked, cocking my head at him. I’d been thinking about it all day, and it was one of the few things that made sense. What else could they be doing in that little room that needed so many people? It at least explained the mud and sweat stained clothes. As for a reason, I had no clue.

“…not really,” Nash murmured, but it had taken him a moment to respond, as if I’d been close.

I was going to press it with him – I’d already scored a point somehow, and he wasn’t exactly in good form to be staving me off – but that was just when Pinocchio walked up, dressed in civvies and looking like he was straight from the shower.

“Nash,” he said in greeting, giving him a quick once over. “You doing okay? The shoulder’s alight?”

“No, he’s not freaking -” I started, pissed off that Pinocchio seemed oblivious to the fact that Nash had practically crawled the fuck home the previous night, with no help from him or from bossman. Before I could get it out, however, Nash elbowed me hard in the side, shutting me up for a moment.

“I’m fine,” he said, putting a little stress on the second word, not looking away from Pinocchio, as if not looking at me would make the guy forget my little hissy fit. “The shoulder’s fine. It’s all fine, Mike.”

Which really would have been more convincing if I wasn’t staring at the fucking fire and glaring daggers at Nash while he spoke. But, fuck it, he’d spent the whole day snoring his brains out underneath my blankets. If he wanted his secrets kept, he should have found someone that gave a rat’s ass.

“Uh-huh,” Mike said after a minute, eyes flicking back and forth between us. “Whatever,” he said finally, shrugging. “What’s a matter, Betty?” he added to me, nodding at the sandwich that Nash was still plowing through. “You didn’t have time to pack a lunch for me?”

“This where I offer you a knuckle sandwich?” I asked him, elbows crossed over my knees and glaring at him. If Nash thought my ears were red, whatever. I was near the fire and it was hot.

“Worry makes you bitchy?” Mike said, eyebrows raised. “Never would have guessed. Anyway. Get your shit together and meet me at the shooting range in half an hour. Do you have shoes that weren’t made for a thirteen year old? No? Well, whatever, we’ll work with what you’ve got.” He half turned to go, but seemed to remember something at the last minute. “And don’t not show up just to piss me off. Trust me, I’m sure you’ll get more chances to fuck with me if you actually come.”

“Oh, goody, goody, the big bad wolf is doing charity,” I called after him, arms tighter around my knees than they had been a few minutes before. But it was slowly getting louder in the neighborhood of tents, families were sitting outside and trading stories, campfires began to light up. In civilian clothes, I quickly lost Mike’s figure to the countless refugees around him, ebbing and swelling like a tide.

“I fucking hate that guy,” I muttered, flopping onto my back, arms stretched over my head. Nash ruffled my hair, opening up the second sandwich.

“He seems to have taken to you.”

“Maybe he’s just looking for a good time,” I muttered darkly, jerking my head away.

“With Pinocchio, I don’t think he’s ever had to look that hard,” Nash said. If he was freaked out by what I’d just said, he didn’t show a trace of it. In fact, he gave me a slight smile. “You meet many people you don’t automatically hate, Zeek?”

“Look, just because I’m not Mary fucking Sunshine –“

“Maybe if he punches you in the mouth you’ll like him more,” he offered brightly. “Should I tell him to do that?”

“Oh, fuck off. How about we talk about your super-secret task force and why the entourage isn’t supposed to know how much it fucks you up?”

Immediately, Nash’s face got serious. He threw a piece of onion at me. “Funny. Seriously, Zeek. Don’t say a fucking word to them about –“

“Alright, alright, I get it,” I said, tossing my arms up in the air. “Cloak and daggers, hush hush. Whatever. You get yourself killed, it’s you own fault.”

“Damn straight,” he said, flopping out beside me so that our biceps were pressed together. “I guess you didn’t make me a dessert?”

“Go to hell,” I muttered, and had to turn away so he couldn’t see that I was grinning.

*

To maximize the potential for pissing Pinocchio off, I left our tent forty-five minutes later, leaving Nash dozing on aspirin in front of the fire. The food and water had done him some good, I thought. Already his color was brighter and that fucked up, disconnected look on his face had slid back into normal sleepiness.

“Play nice,” he called after me, and I could almost feel him grinning at my back as I slipped away into the ebb of people.

Weeks later, it was still occasionally dumbfounding how sprawling Hobbstown was. It probably wasn’t bigger than a medium sized town, but somehow the rows and rows of tents and temporary buildings underscored the masses of people assembled here. There were neighborhoods, home streets. At one point I passed an open area where a couple of guys were working on a playground. A larger tent, maybe a ten minute walk from where me and Nash lived, had to be a school or something. There were fingerpaint drawings hanging out on a line to dry. It was little things like that that struck me. How couldn’t it? It was a nation of displaced suckers like me, and here we all were, living in each other’s pockets and wishing on smoke. Life goes on.

I had to stop and ask for directions twice, but eventually I was in a much quieter section of camp. The people that were sitting out in front of their tents here looked a lot more military. Their clothes were in shades of olive green and it seemed like every other tent I passed there was somebody cleaning a rifle or some other kind of gun. It was quiet. There weren’t any children. In one clearing, two guys were practicing hand-to-hand while a cluster of others sat around chugging water and shouting advice.

Not exactly my idea of Friday night entertainment, but hey, the big bad soldiers had to get their jollies somehow, right?

It was truly dark now, but parts of the military neighborhood were lit with fiercely bright flood lights. And there was me, casting shadows in my ratty shoes and tight tee-shirt, hair down to my shoulders and only half held back by the rubber band. Fuck, yeah, I stood out. Normally it didn’t bother me so much. I walked fast, shrugging off the looks without thinking about it. In this world, I sure as hell wasn’t the strangest thing they’d ever seen. Eventually, not very much later, even the military tents drifted away, replaced by storage lockers for meds and food and then, eventually, it was forest. The packed dirt road curved away into the woods and ahead I could see the floodlights on the shooting range. I hesitated on the cusp of the treeline. The road was a clear shot, but it was damn dark until you got to the floodlights at the range. Having me walk here alone was probably Pinocchio’s preemptive retribution for giving him lip.

“Asshole,” I muttered, and started jogging down the trail. I’d slept alone in a ditch on the side of the road in more dangerous places, but a few weeks of safety made me even more jumpy about how dark it was. Glancing around the spooky ass woods, I slid my fingers around the hilt of the short knife in my windbreaker pocket and tried to pull myself together. There was half a fucking army behind me. I didn’t have any reason to be scared.

Still, it was a relief when I came up on the shooting range, illuminated to daylight brightness by floodlights fifty feet up in the air. I slowed down around the edges, peering at the set up. On the far side of the clearing, facing away from the camp, there was an earthen embankment about ten feet high on which shooting targets had been hung. Simple, really. Just the black silhouettes that I’d seen around before. On the near side of the clearing, Tom Hobbes was stepping up and taking aim. I braced for a volley of shots, but all that followed was the muted phutphutphut of a silenced gun.

He emptied an entire magazine, cursed loudly, discharged the empty, twisted the silencer off, dropped it to the ground and reloaded. He was firing again in seconds, each shot a loud, jarring disturbance against the quiet of the night. The whole thing had taken maybe fifteen seconds. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the leader of the entire revolution could move with such seamless, precise grace on the firing range but. Well. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who fell into the trap of thinking Tom Hobbes was in over his head and harmless.

“I’ve got a rocket launcher,” someone said, and I almost jumped out of my skin, looking around wildly, half convinced I’d been spotted. Where I was, half crouched behind a tree and outside the spill of the light, I was sure they couldn’t see me. It took me a moment to place the voice, but to my relief, there was Mike Pinocchio rolling to his feet from where he’d been watching the other man shoot. From the way he walked up behind Tom, who was still out of breath and seemed to be shaking a little, he hadn’t seen me yet, either.

“That one makes a really big boom.”

“Sure,” Tom said tersely, not moving as Mike stepped around him to go retrieve the target. “How about an oozi? Flame thrower? Fuck it, why don’t we just buy that nuke off Jerry? God knows I’d sleep better knowing it was off the market.”

Mike shrugged, holding up the target for inspection. There had been so many shots through the head that, holding it in front of him, Pinocchio’s face was clearly visible through the foot diameter hole in the paper.

“You missed a few,” he said, smirking. “Any specific kinda bug crawl up your ass tonight or are you just feeling cranky?”

Tom ripped the paper out of his hands, tossing it to the ground. “You read the evening report, Pinocchio?”

“Not yet. I like to save all the good news for right before bed.”

Tom snorted, shoving his gun in his back pocket. “Few weeks ago, that half-way house outside San Fran?”

Mike rolled a shoulder. “Sure. Those bat shit social workers, right? Helping out all the addicts? Didn’t want to close up shop and take us up on the sanctuary offer?”

Tom starred off at the tree line. “They said their work was more important. They took that supply truck from us, though. It was stuff they could use. Meds and food.” Where I was hiding, I had to shift around to hear them clearly. Tom’s voice had slowly begun to trail off.

“Santiago found out they took supplies from us. And what he did was he sent a death squad down and flayed every person they found there. Twenty people, three families, two girls under the age of ten. The head woman he left alive enough so that she wouldn’t digitize and nailed her to the front porch. Nailed her, hand and foot. As a warning to others. Because we gave them food and meds.” He rubbed a hand down over his face. “Any affiliation with us that isn’t an outright attack is going to be perceived as betrayal to the State and to be dealt with accordingly.

“We good as signed those people’s death warrants.”

I wasn’t surprised. If anything, I was surprised that Hobbes was. This shit happened every damn day, he of all people should know that. Still, he looked pretty shook up, poor fucker. I moved a little closer, trying to get a good look at Pinocchio’s face.

“That’s…a hundred and seventy-two deaths since May,” Tom said dully, something furiously cool in his tone. Suddenly, all I could think of standing on a frozen lake when I was a kid, maybe nine or ten, and hearing the distant, booming sound of cracking ice. The desperate run for the shoreline that followed. Mike was standing in front of Tom now, a lot closer than was really friendly. You stand that close to someone, you’re either going to punch them in the face or fuck them, and I wasn’t sure even now which I expected more.

“What were we going to do?” Mike said. Now I had to actively strain to listen in, trying to creep forward silently. “Leave them to starve? Force them to come with us? You start forcing people into encampments, it changes the tone of things entirely, Hobbes. Or don’t you know your European history?”

Tom snorted a laugh, but he sounded weary, uncomforted. As I watched, against the harsh floodlights of the shooting range, Pinocchio slid one of his hands around Tom’s wrist and squeezed, gently trailing his fingers up the inside of his arm, over the barbed tattoo on his bicep, gently tracing the neckline of his shirt. Stepping closer, with me holding my breath not more than twenty feet away, he spread a palm on the back of Tom’s neck and, with gentleness far surpassing what I thought him capable of, leaned his forehead against the other man’s.

What he said after that was way to quiet for me to hear. But the whole thing, the familiar touch, the stupid fucking sweet nothings – I didn’t feel bad about watching them. Whatever. Don’t ask, please don’t fucking tell me. But, still. Whatever I was, I wasn’t a fucking peeping tom. So, just when I was going to start backing up – since, anyway, it was obvious they weren’t going to start necking in the middle of the range or if they were, they were taking their sweet time getting to it – Tom pulled back just a little and looked up at Mike and said,

“Why haven’t you shot that kid that’s watching us yet?”

“Shit,” I muttered, watching Pinocchio start to laugh against Hobbes’s neck.

“Get your scrawny ass out here, Zeb,” he said, still laughing, casually pulling away. “You had enough of a show yet?”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, dashing out of the underbrush with as much dignity as I could muster. Neither of them even looked guilty. Even Hobbes’s was giving me an amused little look. “I just got here. What? Not everyone knows the two big scary bossman are flaming fags? Didn’t let your military boys back there in on that one? What? What, goddammit? Are you laughing at me? Are you?”

“Down killer,” Pinocchio said, sharing a look over my head with Tom that was just a little too quietly suffering for my taste.

“It’s Zeek,” I added, kicking myself for the damn petulant tone. “Am I out here for a threesome or something? Is that what this is?” I barely held myself back from adding, You could have just asked.

“Nope,” Hobbes said, and I was freaking pleased to see his ears color lightly. “Mike, wanna teach him on the glock?”

“Right now, I’m tempted to use him for target practice, but yeah, sure,” he muttered, staring at me and catching the handgun Tom tossed him without looking up.

Tom laughed to himself. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could just make him out shaking his head at us as we stared each other down. “I’m gonna…get going. You kids play nice.”

“Don’t wait up for him,” I muttered, grinning up at Pinocchio. I was gonna make this guy hit me before we were through with each other. I could almost feel it now. It made me grin.

“I never do,” Tom called, throwing one last look at Mike before laughing quietly, and walking back down the trail to Hobbestown. Around us, the night got a little deeper.

“What?” I said, staring up at Pinocchio. “So sorry I burst in. You want to go blow your boyfriend, feel free, man. I can play with the guns by myself.”

“Oh,” he said, laughing to himself, going around me to grab a full magazine out of his pack. Hell, I wasn’t scared. He couldn’t really shoot me.

Right?

“Oh, this is going to be fun.”

“Asshole,” I said, and finally cracked a grin when he waved me over and said, with painstaking patience,

“See, now this is the trigger…”

As it was, it was the start of a beautiful friendship. Or, whatever. Close enough.