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Hournite Week 2022 - Day 1: Road Trip

(some spoilers for season 3)

You can also read this on ao3

~.~

Beth pushes her way through the moving crowd spurring the fight on, getting jostled by backpacks and three-ring binders. The bell rings with final dismissal and more students come pouring out into the parking lot. Beth breaks into a sprint, thanking her decision to wear stretchy pants instead of a skirt and her dad’s short genes for getting herself in through a tiny opening.

Her lungs burn from the exertion as she reaches out to the edge of the crowd. A footballer gives her an odd eye as he trips over another one of his friends, stumbling backwards and away. Like she’s crazy for trying to get in any further. Beth thought she was going crazy when she heard the sound she could pick out from a thousand people through her breezy class window. When the hair at the back of her neck stood up five minutes ago and she flew out of her seat because that was Rick she heard outside in the parking lot. Everyone else flocked to press their hands against the glass, abandoning their tests to watch what was unfolding outside, but Beth was already halfway down the first flight of stairs, hastily shoving the goggles over her face because that was the sound Rick made when he was hurt. Another time, Beth will parcel up every fragile thought that rips through her mind to analyze what it means that she recognizes that sound so well. Another time, she’ll admit to herself why she’s almost shaking at the thought of someone hurting him.

But now she’s raising her voice above the chaos and saying the first thing she can to get her to the middle of the fight. “I’m his girlfriend!” she yelps. “I know him! I’m Rick’s girlfriend!”

It works.

More footballers retreat, and it is then Beth really starts to panic. Because all this time she thought Rick pissed one of them off. But Travis and Brian crash into one another and she sees they were actually trying to help pull Rick away.

Finally, at the nucleus of the fistfight, there are only two before her. Beth’s heart leaps to her throat at the red blood gushing from Rick’s temple. He’s on the ground, twisting into himself and spitting out a tooth as Cameron Mahkent pants harshly with a suspicious sheen of sweat on his forehead, sporting a huge black eye and horribly bent nose.

“Rick!” She darts for the tooth before it gets trampled, sticking it into her pocket. “Stop!”

“Beth?!” He shoots her a wild, frantic look. “Get out of here!”

She’s not doing that. Chuck starts rattling out all of the injuries totalled between the two boys that she has to ignore as she yanks hard on Rick’s arm. He wobbles on his feet and it is so unlike him. Uncoordinated and unbalanced without his hourglass, he’s bleeding from his face and knuckles. His hands and knees. Tears and dirt streak across his face. His hair looks like a wreck. The stoic Hourman she depends on so much; he’s not here. This isn’t a superhero battle in public, this is something else. Anger and hatred with matched intensity, it’s written all over their faces. Whatever triggered this, for both of them, it’s personal.

A cry lurches from her when the goggles warn of an incoming attack in her periphery: Cameron lunges at Rick again, landing another punch to his face. Beth jumps back with another startled scream when Rick hits him back.

“Rick!” Beth yanks on Rick’s flannel flapping wildly in the autumn wind. “That’s enough. That’s enough!”

She juts her hand out at Cameron. “Both of you!”

Rick breathes sharply through his nose. His voice grows darkly low, rumbling. “Stay away from me.”

“Stop.” Beth grabs his shoulders, steering him from Cameron and presses down hard to bring Rick to her eye level.

“Just like a dog.” Cameron shakes his head with a scoff. “You need Beth Chapel to keep you on a leash.”

“Fuck you!”

“Hey! Don’t look at him. Don’t talk to him. Look at me.”

He does, blinking through more tears. If it’s from rage or pain or fear, or a mix of it all, Beth doesn’t know, but it terrifies her to see him this way. Rick tries to argue with her but Cameron does cool down, fists clenched to his sides. Beth puts herself between them, one hand still on Rick’s heaving chest. She doesn’t know what’s been going on with Cameron lately, but she’s going to take the risk that he won’t hurt her.

Cameron takes a single step toward them. Rick tenses beneath her hand. “Breathe in her direction and I’ll actually kill you.”

“No, you won’t. What did I just say? You’re not threatening him,” she snaps. “Take that back.”

The crowd goes quiet at Beth’s hold on the two beat-up boys. They cluster together and Beth does her best to ignore them. Rick is still gawking at her. He doesn’t say anything. This isn’t happening fast enough. Soon there’ll be teachers and then there’ll be suspensions or expulsions and even though Rick looks the worst of the two here, he’s the one with the worst reputation. They won’t care about him the way they care about Cameron Mahkent. They never do. And any chance Rick was ever going to have for college scholarships will go down the drain if he gets caught here.

“What?” Rick is so shocked that he chokes on a laugh. Beth folds her arms and arches an eyebrow. She’s not joking. He turns and splutters as Cameron wears a tiny smirk. “I’m not doing that. He deserved it! He just tried-”

“Fine,” Beth says, interrupting when she sees he’s not in the right headspace to listen. She’s used to his faulty judgement on the hourglass, but she’d assumed that was partly an uncontrolled side effect of the chemical adrenaline. Now she knows it’s not. She holds out her hand. “Give me your keys.”

“You can’t drive my Mustang.”

“I don’t care,” Beth grits out between her teeth. They stare at each other in shared simmering silence. Beth refuses to break, keeping eye contact until Rick folds and slowly pats down his pockets for the keys. They’re not there. Beth thinks of Rick’s tooth, sliding her gaze to the vast expanse of charcoal pavement. The key fob gleams in the sunlight under a red Toyota.

Beth storms through the parking lot, gripping onto his wrist and dragging him from the crowd. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Beth, you don’t get it.”

“I get it perfectly fine!” she snaps. The yellow Mustang sits idly to the right. She scans it over with her goggles just in case something happened to it in the fight, remembering Rick’s accusation of someone tampering with it a few weeks back. Chuck gives it the clear. It seems fine. Beth unlocks the door. “Get in the car.”

“I can’t just–”

“GET IN THE CAR, RICK TYLER. NOW.”

Rick gets in the car.

Beth raises the goggles to her hair and presses a button on the side of the brown leather strap. She’s only driven alone a handful of uncomfortable times, but with Chuck as her GPS, she has to believe she’ll be fine. They don’t have another option. Beth adjusts the chair so she can reach the brakes. Rick sinks into the passenger seat as his right eye starts to swell shut. His arms are torn up in angry marred scrapes from falls on the pavement and the cut from his head is still bleeding. Beth opens the glove compartment and finds nothing of use. She shoots him an aggravated huff at his absolute lack of preparedness for emergencies and resigns to shredding a strip of her favourite new shirt.

“What are you doing?”

Beth leans across the console to press the fabric against the wound. She takes his hand but notices his thumb turning blue. She loosens her grip after his sharp breath and carefully guides it to his head wound. “Apply as much pressure as you can.”

Her gaze is serious and her tone is hard, but if she focuses on the wide shock and hurt in his eyes, she’ll probably burst into tears. Beth doesn’t want to be hard on him. But she has to be right now. Truly, she’s never felt this furious in her life.

He opens his mouth and his teeth are stained red too. She shudders and remembers the tooth burning a hole in her pocket and harshly rips another piece of her shirt to use as mouth gauze.

Rick presses against the fabric until the tiny strawberry prints bleed into one.

Beth takes a big breath and starts Rick’s car.

“I can explain.”

“Save it.”

Rick recoils and says something else but it gets muffled in the gauze.

“I can’t hear you.”

Rick tries again.

“I’m driving and you’re bleeding. Just be quiet.”

Rick makes a frustrated noise and takes his gauze out. “Cameron started it!”

“Put that back in.”

“But–”

“If you don’t put pressure it can spread to other parts of your mouth and you’ll get an infection. If you have to talk, talk. Just put that back in your mouth when you’re done.”

Chuck pings to direct Beth to turn left. She shifts, very rigid in Rick’s seat.

“Cameron—”

“I don’t care who started it! I just want to get you home!”

“Why are you mad at me?!”

Beth keeps her eyes on the road, biting hard on her trembling lip. She can’t cry. She won’t cry.

“Beth…?” She turns aside, looking out her own window as she waits for the crossing guard to help little kids with lunchboxes across the road as they pass Blue Valley Elementary’s school zone. Anywhere but his face that she knows is staring at her right now. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good.” The car rolls to a stop at another red light. Her shoulders are so tight as she holds herself in the driver’s seat, the seatbelt cuts into her waist like a reminder she’s trapped here with him and all her stormy emotions. “Because I was scared! I had no idea if you were okay. If your hourglass was on or if it gave out. If the entire school now knew who you are. I didn’t know if Cameron was using his powers or not, I didn’t know who was even after you until I got there. All I knew was you were hurt, that someone had hurt you.” She swallows and finally allows herself a glance over. “Rick, that terrified me.”

“It was just a fight. I’ve been in worse.” The way Rick says that gives her chills.

“No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have.”

Beth looks at Rick’s swollen face and immediately knows he isn’t referring to Eclipso or Grundy. There’s never been a fight this violent at school. He’s started skirmishes before, sure, but nothing to this extent. It was like they wanted to kill each other.

Her voice shakes. “What are you talking about?”

Rick is stone-cold quiet.

“Rick?”

“I was twelve,” is all he says, and now Beth really does cry.

The car jerks and Chuck blares out a warning. White knuckling the steering wheel, she swerves out of the lane and miraculously gets the Mustang parked in front of a tree with a tire swing just a few blocks from her house. Beth twists around and wipes futilely at her eyes to prevent smudges on her glasses. “Rick, please don’t say that.” And the more she sees her favourite shirt drenched in blood, the more she wants to turn this car around and fight Cameron Mahkent and Matt Harris, and anyone who has ever wronged Rick herself.

He says, “I was in the hospital and Matt told them I fell out of a tree.”

She chokes on a sob. “You never told me!” “How could I ever tell you that!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know...You just could have. I would have...This has to stop. You can’t keep living like this anymore.” She rips another strip of her poor shirt and helps him to replace the gauze in his mouth. It’s soggy and disgusting, but she doesn’t care. She rolls up the new piece, but Rick puts his sprained hand on her arm to stop her.

“I’m Hourman. Getting into fights is what I do.”

“You didn’t have your suit. You’re not wearing your hourglass.” She cups the side of his face, lightly tracing his bruise. He winces. “You didn’t have Courtney, or Yolanda…Or me. Hourman gets into fights. But you’re just Rick Tyler at school and home, okay? You’re Rick Tyler, not Hourman.” Rick deflates entirely when she says, “Cameron hurt you.”

She closes her eyes. Rick’s breaths are still laboured, but they’re a comfort in this fragile quiet. Her voice is a careful whisper. “What did he do?”

His mouth parts, like he can’t quite believe she knows this wasn’t him. That he threatens all he wants, but would never let this escalate this far at school.

He works his jaw open, wincing again at the copper taste flooding his mouth. Beth sighs and waits for him to adjust the new strip of fabric. “My class ended early. I was going to wait for you at the Mustang, but he was there with the open hood of my car.”

Her breath catches. “What?”

“He was trying to mess with it. I don’t know. I drive you in this car. My parents died in a car. His dad sent Grundy and–” He bites off, his gaze unfocused and murky. Like he’s stuck in a mental abyss somewhere.

Beth hums, gently. “It’s okay,” she says, as tender as the moment. And all that horrible anger she had welling up inside for his reckless behaviour is gone. Rick comes back to her, and that seething fire returns to his sheening open eye. “I lost it. I lost it.”

Not just his temper and grief. The fight itself. He lost that one too. “I know.”

The next question needs tact and she’s not quite sure she mastered it. “How did he…?”

Rick chuckles dryly. He closes his good hand in a fist. Moves his bad one to encase it in a demonstration. “Ice.”

“Ice?” Her eyes widen at the implication. “Oh…oh no.” He’s lucky he only lost one tooth. “That’s new. That’s new, right?”

Rick shrugs, leaning his back against his headrest. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry.” She finds the new rolled up fabric again and reaches over for Rick to bite down. “Here. Let it stay in this time. We’ll call the dentist when we get home.”

Beth turns the keys in the ignition and starts the car. Two minutes onto the road, she turns left instead of right on her street. Rick frowns at her silently when she pulls the Mustang into the lot at the back of the grocery store. “Stay here.”

Less than ten minutes later, she’s hurrying back to the car with a brown paper bag. She opens his side of the car in a rush, out of breath. “I forgot to ask. Are you dizzy?”

Rick blinks at her as she enters full Dr. Chapel mode. She recites the steps her mom drilled into her head as she grabbed all the supplies she needed via the phone, dialling her work number with the goggles again. “Lightheaded?”

“...I don’t know.”

She peels the dried-sticky first strip of her strawberry shirt against Rick’s temple, giving it a proper look for the first time. “You have an emergency dental trauma appointment at 6 tonight. My mom called in a favour.”

Considerate enough of the delicate situation that caused the wound, she digs out a bag of frozen green peas she nabbed instead of the bag of cubed ice and instructs Rick to lean his head against it by the window. “And my mom is coming home to check out the rest of you.”

The look on his face says plainly that Rick never wants to feel coldness against his skin again, but to reduce the swelling, she needs to put it there. Rick struggles with the mouthwash and styrofoam cup of hot water she sweet-talked a store employee into finding, watching her rip the packaging from a salt container to shake vigorously into the mixture. She gestures to the cup. “Spit.”

She arches an eyebrow when he merely stares at it with disgust. “Spit.”

Rick rinses his mouth out with much reluctance, spitting onto the ground. Beth twists open naproxen and hands him a gel pill and a new water bottle.

“Last thing.” Beth lowers the paper bag and crowds into the open passenger space. She steps over the glob of pink spit on the ground and wraps her arms around his broad shoulders with a light and careful touch, hugging him. He freezes in her hold, holding himself stiffly, but Beth rubs a hand down his back and he accepts it without protest. His tired body soon slumps forward, leaning into her embrace. She wants to squeeze him tight. She wants to never let him go. Instead, she draws her arms away and gives him a crooked smile. “Let’s go.”

Beth closes the door and climbs into the driver’s seat again. Her phone blows up in her pocket. Texts pouring into the JSA group chat from Courtney and Yolanda, even Mike and Jakeem. She scrolls past all the notifications and quickly texts her parents to meet her at home, then sets it on do not disturb.

She taps on the wheel at the next red light, glancing down at her shredded outfit and then at Rick. “I care about you,” she says. “That’s why I was so angry, okay? Because sometimes I feel like I’m the only person that does, and that’s so unfair to you. And then I think if that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine–” her voice breaks. “I just care, Rick. I don’t know how to help you.”

The light turns green. “You don’t have to say anything,” she tells him. “I just wanted you to know.”

Rick doesn’t reply but he nods, purple eyelids drooping against the cold peas. He picks up his cracked phone and fiddles with it. Beth focuses on the rest of the drive.

Her mom and dad are both already home by the time she pulls into her driveway. Mom flings open the car with her medical bag and helps Rick into the house, rattling off questions a mile a minute as her dad reels Beth in for a much needed hug.

“Are you alright, kiddo?”

Beth releases a huge shuddering breath, pressing into her father’s jacket. She’d never tell this to Rick. Not in a million years, but her voice is small and honest when it cracks again. “I missed my test.”

“It’ll be alright.” Dad pats her back. “You did a good thing. You were our brave girl.”

“You’re not mad?”

Dad chuckles as they head inside. “Heck, no! Icicle’s son messing with our Rick? I say next time whoop his ass!”

One nap and a few hours later, in the hard plastic chair of the dental trauma floor of the Blue Valley Medical Centre waiting room, Beth remembers her phone. She scrolls through the walls of panicked texts and sends a short update without giving many details. Her inbox also has a new message from her teacher, excusing her from the way she left her test. Beth lets out a sigh and returns to her text messages. Her brows crinkle together at one she missed. Rick sent her something only three hours ago.

Rick: I’m not taking this “gauze” out of my mouth

Rick: Doctors orders and all

Rick: But honestly, Beth…

Rick: You help.

Rick: You help by being you

#beth chapel #stargirl #hournite #rick tyler #rick x beth #hournite week 22 #hn fics #hn fic #tkv fic #angst #hurt comfort #s3 spoilers

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