Divergence - Chapter 67

[escapes]

Title: Divergence 

Author: escapes  

Rating: Just to be safe, NC 17 

Pairing: Luke/Noah 

Spoiler/Warning: Spoilers up through the enlistment story arc and forward/ Warnings: M/M , Language
Disclaimer: Characters belong to ATWT, P&G, CBS, etc. I'm not making money from this, don't sue, etc.

Author’s Notes: During the whole enlistment arc in Luke and Noah's story is when I realized that the writers of ATWT are on crack. I kept thinking that I could have done so much better with the story. So I thought about it and 30 pages of outline later, I started writing. This is the result.  This is Luke and Noah’s storyline from the enlistment arc forward. How I would have liked to see it unfold.

Summary: There are consequences to your actions. Sometimes learning to live with those consequences teaches you things about yourself. Like how strong you really are.

Beta by noelleleithe

Chapter 67

'We've been on the run for three days now. What was it they called it in those old movies? On the lam? Yeah, I think that's it. Despite what they make it look like in those movies, it's not fun. It's dirty and gross and it's even worse when the person you're with is a jackass.

It's been about three hundred miles since I've been able to talk. That was the second time that Mark pulled a gun on me, the first being when he'd came out of nowhere that night and screamed at me to drive. When I didn't move fast enough, he reached into the glove compartment and the next thing I knew I had the business end pointed at my face, so I drove.'

"What the hell are you doing, Davis?"

Kevin looks up from the page he'd been scribbling on. He shrugs and turns the page, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the wash of stale coffee breath that flows under his nose.

"What? You a thirteen year old girl writing in your diary now?"

Still not saying anything, Kevin just rolls his eyes, closes the notebook and turns his torso to look at the fields passing by in a blur outside the window, green, gold, green, gold with occasional brown of a harvested field that had been plowed over. He figures if he stays silent and facing away, eventually his car mate will get bored and concentrate back on the road.

For all he'd been bitched at for talking, Kevin knows that Mark has a need to talk just as much as he does. Every few hours he'll get sick of the silence and start talking, usually calling Kevin out on something or other he's doing or not doing that's driving Mark nuts. Not that Mark was any sort of prize winner himself. If Kevin didn't rise to the bait and start defending himself, Mark would start talking, almost to himself, just to fill the gaping silence, since he'd shut off the radio somewhere around Nebraska on the first morning in the car. It had worked to Kevin's advantage, though. He'd learned the full scope of what Mark had been hired by the Dean of O.U. to do and that the Dean had been the one to give Mark the okay to take care of the Luke problem.

Luke.

Kevin feels a pang of regret when he thinks of Luke. He can only hope that his text to Noah got through after the one he'd tried to send to Luke had bounced back. He doesn't think about the reason that he had Noah's cell phone number is because Mark was planning on releasing Noah's information, like he had Luke's, to a truly frightening list of escort services and perverts.

Luke.

Even now when Kevin thinks about him, he feels annoyance rise up inside of him. He remembers the Luke he knew before he came out, the one that went along with the flow and pretty much did whatever Kevin said. The one that was his best friend. Now though, he hardly recognizes Luke. He'd become such a goody goody. No drinking, no partying and now with this foundation thing, he's out to save the fricking world.

Kevin tries not to think of the things that have happened to change the Luke he knew from a party boy to what he is now. He'd partied and done much more stupid things than Luke had and come out of it without a scratch. Luke had come out of it with losing a kidney and months of his life to recovery. If he believed the Oprah bullshit his mother was always talking about, he'd probably think that the universe seemed to have a bigger plan for Luke, so it wasn't going to let him waste his life away with partying. The universe must not be all that concerned with him though, since it's been pretty content to just let him flounder.

Back when he'd been talked into this whole scheme with his father and the Dean, he'd thought it would be no big deal. Run a campaign, get the student body president gig and then vote the way he was told to and watch Oakdale become something more than a stupid small town with nothing to show for it other than small town scandals and the unlikely location of Worldwide's headquarters.

That was before that scary lesbian girl was attacked and a larger and larger part of the student body was not content to just let the Dean do nothing about the way the campus was going to shit. And then there was Luke. He'd been the first one to start raising questions that demanded answers. Not even having him thrown off of the newspaper and trying to convince the student body that he was running for the presidency had made him back down. If anything, it had made Luke even more determined.

What had started out as not a big deal is now a huge one. Now he is a fugitive, an accessory to...he hasn't heard if Luke has survived whatever happened in that stairwell, but since the gun was in the car the whole time, he's going to believe Luke is still alive, so assault at the very least. But knowing Margo Hughes and the Snyders, they'll settle for nothing less than attempted murder if they can swing it.

Kevin swallows down the metallic lump of fear in his throat. His father had to know that this had the possibility of going wrong and still he'd made sure his son was involved in it neck deep. No one is ever going to believe that he had no idea it was going to go this far.

Turning his head back towards Mark, though at this point he's not even sure that's his actual name, Kevin sees that the other man still has the tense and surly expression on his face. Even opening his mouth right now would be useless. No matter what he says, Mark will turn it into a fight.

Turning back towards the window, he watches the signs approaching and then whizzing past. Mark has been getting more and more tense and Kevin knows it's because he has no plan on what to do now and he's been obsessively checking for something on Luke from the Oakdale news and beyond the report that night of what had happened, there has been nothing. Kevin has no doubt that Margo has clamped down on the media, and with Lucinda owning the newspaper and Luke's mother half owner of WOAK, he very much doubts anything is getting out that isn't going through them first. To Kevin no news is good news, but Mark looks like he's anticipated the worst and Kevin is worried he's going to do something stupid like make a break for Mexico, or worse, decide that the only other witness to the crime is too big of a liability and use the gun to get rid of him.

He blinks out of his thoughts when a familiar logo flashes by on a sign. Shifting a little more forward facing, he looks for another sign and a plan starts to form. "There’s an exit coming up. We need to get some gas and food."

"Don't tell me what to do, Davis."

Kevin's mind is running three steps ahead with his plan. He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and opens it in the space between his side and the car door. Feeling around in the hidden compartment under a ripped bottom of a credit card slot, he finds the card he had hoped was still there. Pulling his fingers out and refolding the wallet, he slides it back in his pocket as he turns his head to talk to Mark. "You want me to piss in the car? We're wearing three day old clothes and it smells like ass in here, you want to add piss to the mix? We need food, we need a bathroom. Pull the fuck off and stop being a paranoid asshole. It's the middle of nowhere and no one is going to think anything about two college age guys driving across country, unless you keep acting like a twitchy pothead. Pull in, or so help me god I'm going to use your seat as a urinal."

The look that Mark shoots at him could have killed him on the spot and the tirade of insults that he spits out can probably strip paint, but he pulls over when the exit comes up.

As he steps out of the car, Kevin stays behind a second to grabs his jacket and then follows Mark into the building. It's now or never. He takes a deep breath and turns in the opposite direction of the bathrooms.

"You!" Noah can feel the tension and anger rising inside of him. This is who Luke had been talking to instead of him? He storms over to Luke's bed and ignores the other man that's sitting there. "This is who you've been with? Roth?! What the hell?!"

Luke actually flinches away from Noah, clapping his hands over his mouth and nose and his feet start almost kicking against the mattress, trying to propel him further up on the bed. It doesn't work and Noah can see him growing whiter and whiter as the movement aggravates his ribs.

"Get out! Get out! Get out!"

Noah's eyes widen as he registers what Luke is saying. The words hit him almost like a physical blow, causing him pull his hands off of Luke's bed and shrink back like it has burned him.

Hands come down on Noah's shoulders and start steering him towards the door."Noah, you need to get out."

Noah's head whips around. "Get. Your. Hands. Off. Of. Me."

The hands did not move. "Noah, we need to get out before the nurses throw us out. You can't be in here with Luke right now."

Noah watches as Luke's movements have brought him to the edge of passing out from the pain and even though he doesn't want to admit it, Roth is right. He's never seen Luke so spooked.

Relaxing his struggling against the Roth's hands on his shoulders, he raises his hands in surrender. "You come with me. Leave him in the hands of the nurses."

Roth nods and moves them both out of the way as the escalating vital signs of Luke's monitors have caused two nurses to come and investigate the cause.

"Both of you need to leave. Right now."

Roth turns to face the stern nurse and nods solemnly at her. "We will, ma'am. He was feeling a little panicked and I think the disagreement that Noah and I were having was a little too much for Luke to handle. We'll go and get ourselves sorted out and leave you to Luke. We're very sorry."

Noah could only nod behind Roth, knowing that if he dared to look angry still or argue against what Roth was saying, he’d get not only Roth thrown out for the night, but most likely him as well, medical power of attorney or not. "Sorry, Beth. We'll get this dealt with and I'll come back and sleep quietly, I promise."

They can both tell that there is a stern lecture on the tip of her tongue that she's wanting to let fly, but both of the young men in front of her are working the contrite faces she'd seen on her own sons when they'd screwed up. Sighing, she points towards the door. "Go. Don't make me regret not throwing you both out for the night." She looks over her shoulder to see her colleague placing the used sedative needle in the red sharps container on the wall. "He's going to be out until morning. So if either of you come back in here, you be quiet. If you wake him up, you are out of here. Understood?"

Both Noah and Roth nod and with a final long, stern look, she turns around and makes her way over to Luke's bed, checking the lines and monitors.

Roth grabs his satchel and walks out of the room, turning around when he gets into the corridor, waiting for Noah to follow him.

Noah wants to give in to the childish urge to just shut the door of the room in Roth's face and lock it, keeping himself in with Luke, and Roth firmly on the outside looking in. It's a nice thought and he relishes it for a second, before following Roth out into the corridor and leaning against the wall across from him. He crosses his arms across his chest and levels a stare at Roth. "What in the hell are you doing? It's not enough that Luke's running to you about things, now you've twisted him around enough that the sight of me sends him into a panic attack."

Roth just watches Noah, looking like he was trying to not rise to the verbal bait. "I'm not doing anything but being Luke's friend, Noah." Roth pushes himself off the wall and steps over to Noah, grabbing him lightly by the bicep and tugging. "You need to change your shirt."

Noah instinctively flinches his arm away. "I'm not doing a damn thing until you tell me what the hell is going on!"

Blowing out a frustrated breath, Roth grabs hold of Noah's arm again, this time not as gently, and starts pulling him into motion. "The reason Luke freaked out is because when you walked in, he was talking to me about being afraid that the person who did this to him is still out there, but more than that he's afraid that the fear he has is going to feed into his need to drink to escape."

Noah stops fighting being propelled down the corridor and drops his head into his hands with a groan. "And then I come busting in there smelling like a brewery."

Roth makes a sympathetic noise and nods. "Exactly." He stops at a door and knocks on it softly. When there is no answer, he pushes the door open.

Noah looks over his shoulder and sees that the entire room is a shower stall with shelves lining the wall furthest from the shower head, filled with folded piles of towels, gowns and scrubs. Roth pulls a scrub shirt from a pile and tosses it at Noah. "You need a shower to clear your head?"

Noah grabs the shirt and looks at Roth, not understanding for a second what he means. Taking in a breath, he's hit with another waft of beer smell from his shirt and it clicks into place. "Oh. No, I'm not drunk. I had two swallows before I ended up wearing most of this lady's beer and leaving."

Roth senses a story there, but decides to just take Noah at his word. He reaches onto another shelf and pulls out a hospital issue personal belongings bag. Snapping the folded plastic open, he hands it to Noah. "You can put your shirts in there when you're changed."

Pulling off the button up flannel shirt, he folds it and slides it in the bag. "How do you know exactly where everything is?"

Roth leans his shoulder against one of the shelving units and keeps his eyes focused on a point on the wall as Noah changes. "I volunteer here and at a shelter. Between helping the clients at the shelter when they're hospitalized and helping patients here, I don't think there's any part of the hospital I haven't seen."

Noah nods, more to himself than Roth, who still isn't looking at him, even though he's changed now. "Uhm...thanks for..." He's not sure what he's thanking him for, either the shirt, or helping to hold his boyfriend together, he's not sure. He knows he owes the thanks for the shirt, but it remains to be seen whether thanks are called for with Luke.

Roth stops leaning and stands straight again. "Now for the hard part. Let's go get a coffee. I know a lounge on the fifth floor where they have a coffee pot going 24/7."

Knowing that the drugs they pumped into Luke would likely have him out until morning, Noah grips his plastic bag and follows Roth down the hallway towards the elevator. "Hard part?" His life hasn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows since all of this happened, so Roth calling something out as being the hard part has Noah's heart rate increasing in dread.

Roth hits the button for the fifth floor and Noah stands silently as they ride up the two floors. The doors slide open to reveal the nurses’ desk and closed doors leading to the east and west parts of the ward.

Noah looks around, realizing he'd never been to this floor. Seeing the plexi-glass that fronts the nurses area, he flicks his eyes over the signage on the wall behind the nurses’ desk. Noah takes a step back towards the elevator. "You took me to the psych ward?"

Roth quirks a small smile. "They always have the good coffee." Raising his hand, he drums the pads of his fingers on the plexi-glass in a disjointed rhythm. "Paaaaaaammmmmmmm!"

Less than a minute later, Noah sees a nurse dressed in green scrubs with a no-nonsense look on her face. "Hey darlin'. You here to do a drop off?"

Noah's eyes widen and he takes another step back towards the elevator.

Roth chuckles and shakes his head. "Pam. Don't scare Noah. He's with me and in desperate need of the benevolence of the caffeine goddess that you are."

The only hint of Pam's amusement is a flick of her eyebrow upwards and a fond roll of her eyes as she presses something on the desk and a grinding buzzer noise echoes in the space. "Sweet talker. Just clean up when you're done and try not to wake anyone."

Noah looks down at his watch out of habit and sees that it's after ten already. All the days are running together. He's not even really what day of the week it is.

Following Roth, Noah watches as he stops at a door and pulls out a volunteer I.D. for the hospital and swipes it through the reader by the door. A second later, the light on the reader switches from red to green and he hears an audible click of the lock releasing on the door.

Roth goes in first and holds it open for Noah. "They have to keep it locked because some of the clients are a suicide risk and they can make a cutting implement out of anything. Others would use the coffee machine to burn themselves. They have a full house usually, so you can't be too careful."

Noah’s a little dazed, not even knowing that the hospital had a whole floor reserved for the psych ward and that it was usually full. He looks around the room that they're in, the cupboards with key locks where the knobs should be, the table legs bolted to the floor, the microwave bolted down to the countertop and a fridge that had a latch on the side of it with a padlock in place. It looks like the only things moveable in the room are the chairs, the carafe from the coffee machine and the line of five coffee mugs beside it.

Roth pours them both a cup of coffee and asks Noah about cream or sugar. Noah shakes his head, preferring it black. "If this room is locked, why is everything locked and bolted down?"

Roth sets their cups down on the table and takes a seat. Noah sits as well, still feeling off-balance. "Sometimes things get out of control, so they keep everything locked down. That way if they do get in here, there is only so much damage they can do."

Noah takes a sip of his coffee and feels like this has to qualify as one of the weirder days of his life. This morning, he never thought he'd be sitting across from Roth in the staff lounge of the psych ward, waiting to hear what Roth and Luke have been doing. "Okay, we're here, we have coffee. Now, what's the hard part you were talking about?"

Roth takes a sip of his own coffee and sets the mug down, stalling for a second to get his thoughts together. "First of all, I just want you to know that nothing has ever happened between Luke and me. Sure, I was interested in him that first time I went for coffee with him, but he was yours, Noah, even if you were still with Maddie."

Noah feels a flush of blood bloom on his cheeks and takes a sip of his coffee to cover it. Even though it was over, not enough time had gone by for the scars that regret had left in their wake to fade.

Roth pretends not to notice Noah's blush. "We fell into a friendship after that. I can't say that it's stayed just a friendship though, Noah."

Noah's grip tightens on his mug as he stares at Roth over the rim. "Talk. Quickly."

Roth holds up his hands in surrender. "It's not what you're thinking. I'm sure you pieced together now that I'm the one that Luke's been talking to when he's felt tempted to drink."

Noah puts his coffee cup down with very deliberate movements. "I figured that out. What I don't understand is why Luke couldn't just tell me it was you he was talking to, unless it's more than just talking as friends."

"It is more than talking as friends, but not the way you're thinking." He leans down for his satchel and flips the flap open, reaching inside. He places a wooden box on the table and slides it towards Noah, gesturing for him to open it.

Noah opens the box and looks inside to see that it's filled with discs with words on them. Lifting one out, he sees the words of the serenity prayer etched on the back. Flipping it over, his eyes widen as he sees it's a sobriety chip commemorating five years sober. Doing the math, he doesn’t want to believe it’s possible these are Roth’s.

Roth nods, understanding where Noah's thoughts are going. "I'm twenty-two. That's the chip I got for my anniversary this year. I started drinking when I was twelve. I started in A.A. when I was fifteen." He waves hand in a vaguely dismissive gesture. "I knew I was gay before I even hit puberty and I had parents that were too lost in their own misery and alcohol to give a shit about anything doing on with me." He lifts his head and meets Noah's eyes. "I've been acting as his unofficial sponsor, I get guidance through my own meeting group leader and we go from there. He's afraid to go to meetings here in Oakdale, his family being who they are. Luke wanted nothing more than to tell you he was meeting me and why, but there are rules why he couldn’t."

Noah shakes his head, "He could have."

Roth nods towards the wooden box between them. "No, he couldn't. You don't bust the anonymity of anyone in your group. Not without extreme circumstances. That's why he told Margo who I was, but also why he asked you to leave the room."

Noah rubs a finger around the rim of the coffee cup, thinking of how much that had stung, but he could see Roth's point, as much as it burned him. If Luke had told him who he was meeting, he'd want to know more and would start snooping to find it out.

"We discussed this just before you came into the room, so I know that Luke is okay with me telling you this. Everything that has been happening to him on campus is affecting him in a huge way. He's feeling powerless and humiliated from the harassment, and now with the attack, he's got a lot of anger going on, along with the fear that I told you about earlier, and the temptation to bury all of that in a bottle is pretty strong right now." Roth pauses, trying to find the wording he wants. "That's why he freaked out when you came in the room. The thoughts and fears he was having, coupled with you coming in the room smelling like alcohol set off pretty much every panic alarm his system has right now."

Noah finds himself glad that everything in the room is bolted down and locked. The urge to destroy something at his stupidity is almost overwhelming. He has a feeling that Roth hadn't picked this room simply for the coffee. "Why didn't he tell me he was having thoughts like that?"

“Because he said you were fighting demons of your own and he didn’t want to add his to them. He didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Noah cringes and they both finish their coffee in near silence, thinking about the turn of events things have taken now that everything is out in the open.

Kevin wanders around the store, his eyes tracking over to the counter that’s his main goal. He strolls up an aisle with phone cards and other gadgets and he finds a pre-paid phone package that promises being able to be used immediately and grabs it off the shelf. Doing a quick look around, he sees a map on the wall and sees they're just about out of Oklahoma. Making his way to the end of the aisle, Kevin fumbles for his wallet in his pocket, using two fingers to dig the hidden card out from the depths again.

He'd opened this account years ago, and no one knew about it but him. At first he'd used it to put his party money into, starting with twenties pulled from his mother's purse or out of the stash she kept in the unused cookie jar on the top of the fridge. Later, when he'd realized that his parents didn't give care where he was or what he was doing to himself, he took the money his father threw at him to get him out of the way during school vacations or summer breaks, his parents not wanting him home to screw up their perfectly ordered life.

Over the years it had added up to a nice little sum and he started seeing the fact he didn’t use that money as something that he could point to mentally when his partying ways were thrown in his face. He couldn't be as bad off as they make him seen if he has all this money sitting in an account to party with and he doesn't touch it, could he? Addicts don't know when to stop and Kevin figures this account proves that he does.

Not seeing Mark as he looks around, Kevin walks up to the counter and pushes the phone box across the counter. "I'd also like a ticket. When is the bus out there leaving?"

The clerk rings in the phone and looks at the screen of the ticketing machine. "Few minutes. Going to Dallas. Want a ticket as well?"

Kevin nods. It's going in the opposite direction from where he wants to be, but maybe that will work in his favor. Paying with the card, he buries it back in the depths of his wallet again.

Slipping the bus ticket in the inside pocket of his jacket, he takes the box with the phone and asks for a plastic bag, hoping it will camouflage it if Mark happens to look his way.

Making his way to the entrance way where the main corridor splits off into the bathrooms straight ahead, the store on the left and a local fast food place on the right, he looks around and sees Mark in the line at the counter for food. Ducking his head, he turns and heads out of the building and over to the car.

He'd made sure to close his car door after Mark had pressed the auto lock, sliding his hand across the door as he got out and making sure he'd flipped the toggle above the window cranks that manually unlocked his door only. Walking up to the car, he pulls the door open and reaches into the backseat, pulling out his backpack. Mark had grabbed him from the campus before he'd even had a chance to go back to his dorm and he's thankful for that now. Security in a post 9/11 world means if you have no baggage, people start looking into what you're doing and where you're going.

Closing the door, he walks across the parking lot and heads for the bus, keeping his head down and his pace normal. Only when the bus is on the road and fields are streaking their way past his window does Kevin let himself breathe.

He opens his backpack and grabs the white plastic bag he'd shoved in there. Pulling out the disposable cell phone, he thumbs the power button and walks through the steps included to get the phone working.

He wonders how long it will be before Mark calls his regular cell phone and realizes it's in the car with him. Not that Mark would get any information off of Kevin's phone. He'd made sure that the screen was locked and if the wrong passcode was put in more than three times, it would erase everything.

Tapping the side of his new phone against his leg, he contemplates what he's about to do. He's tired of being ignored by his father until he's useful and wonders if his father knew how bad this was all going to go. It wouldn't surprise him if his father did know and considered him expendable in the grand scheme of things.

Kevin knows if he goes through with what he's thinking, his father will consider it an unforgivable betrayal. Seeing as he's looking at being an accessory to a crime, Kevin is not surprised that he doesn't feel anything about going ahead with his plan and losing his family. He doesn't consider it as much of a loss.

His mind made up, he presses 4-1-1 and waits while the call connects.

"Information. City please."

"Oakdale, Illinois"

"Name of the person or business?"

"Oakdale Police Department."

"Number found. Would you like the number read out or to be connected. Please state your preference."

"Connect me."

The automated system tells him to wait a moment as it connects and then the line is ringing.

"Lieutenant Margo Hughes, please."

Click to view