Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

so I stuck the phone in my pocket and ran.
    Somehow every cop in the county missed spotting me as I flew through the near-empty streets. I didn't know the corner, but I knew where Elm Street was and I knew Wilson didn't cross it east of the college, so it had to be west—
    The corner had a stop sign to make sure I saw it. I called Alan back as I got out of the car under a streetlight.
    "Lukas, god—"
    "I'm here. Where are you?"
    "I see you! Look! I'm here!"
    I saw a pale arm waving from a second story window— and there was a fire escape. I almost regretted not getting to bash my way through a bunch of attempted rapists.
    "Are you all right?" I asked, trotting across the intersection. The house actually backed Wilson Street across a yard. The front, on another street, was lit up, but the back of the house was dark and I was grateful.
    "Mal fell asleep, thank god," Alan said through my phone.
    Crap. "Keep an eye on her breathing. Date rape drugs are depressants. If she drank too—"
    "She didn't, do you think she's stupid? She was having an effing ginger ale! We watch each other's backs and only one of us drinks only I fucking failed her—"
    "I doubt she'll see it that way." When I stood under the fire escape I put my phone away to jump for the ladder. "I can't get it," I called up to Alan's pale face. "Come out and force it down."
    " High in her tower, She sits by the hour, Maintaining her hair ," Alan sang, but he half-fell out the window and swung his weight onto the ladder so clumsily I thought I'd have to catch him. He hung on, though, and the ladder came down. I climbed up and Alan sang " Agony! " and leaned over the side of the fire escape to throw up.
    Mallory lay curled up in the bathtub, her hair standing up and her makeup smeared but her chest moving as it should. Some bastard was crooning " You've lost that loving feeling ," under the door. I resisted the urge to open it and slug him. Instead I handed out Mallory's purse, and the toilet paper so Alan could wipe his mouth.
    "Batman," he muttered when I came out with Mallory over my shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Fucking Batman. In a trench coat."
    "Will it make you feel better if I drop her?" I asked.
    "Fuck," he said. "I'll go first so I don't land on you." He stumbled off the platform but climbing reflexes held and he fumbled down the ladder but didn't fall. I climbed carefully after him. I laid Mallory in the back of Lilia's car and told Alan to get in with her and watch that she kept breathing.
    "In the backseat with another girl, headed to the hospital," he grumbled. "Is this car cursed?"
    "I'm starting to think so."
    At the hospital we answered a lot of questions, some of them several times. Finally we were told they'd be keeping Mallory for observation so we might as well go home. Alan didn't answer, just sat down and folded his arms, crossed his legs. The doctor shook his head and walked away. Alan bounded back up.
    "You should go," he said. "The rescue completed, the hero rides into the sunset—"
    "Could you stop that?" I asked, pulling off the trench coat in the heated room. "I'm not a superhero. I'm Mallory's friend. Your friend. You'd do the same for me in a heartbeat and you know it."
    "Lukas Blake would never need rescuing."
    "Lukas Blake needs friends," I said and sat down.
    "Gah," Alan said, and paced. "Sorry," he muttered from almost the corner, went a few more steps and turned to pace the other way, his eyes on his feet. On his little black boots. He looked… amazing. Ankle boots, skin-tight pants, fingerless gloves, a black shirt with rips that showed blue, his hair black and blue and standing up after his wild night, blue glitter and black eyeliner around his eyes… some people wore black and faded into the background. Alan wore it and shone brighter.
    Everyone thinks I'm a fucking whore , he'd said. Even Mallory groped him when her judgment was gone. Was that why he'd hit me? Did he think I'd wanted to— to use him for— well, didn't I? Even now the urge to reach out and touch him— crap. Or, in the words of Alan, "Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Bugger. Buggity bugger bug FUCK."
    I folded my arms, stretched my legs out and crossed my ankles, put my chin on my chest and tried to stop looking at Alan and go back to sleep. It being three in the morning, that was easier than I expected.
    My phone woke me by vibrating in my left front pocket. I cranked my eyes open on a mostly empty waiting room, on sun streaming in the windows, on