Chapter 148: Too Stupid To Live
There is a term that Tim's come in contact with on several
occasions. He's never seen it outside of discussions of writing or characters,
so he's not sure how common it is outside the writer/reader community, but
right now, as he's fighting with Jimmy, it's springing to mind.
That term is Too Stupid To Live. It's used when the
character in a story does something so ridiculously stupid that you, the
reader, start rooting for them to die.
There are times when Tim is pretty firmly convinced that he
is indeed too stupid to live. Usually, he tries to avoid that, but, well, as
the title implies, he's too damn stupid to figure out where the problem is
ahead of time.
But, as Jimmy's fist goes crashing into his eye, he's
rapidly coming to the conclusion that yes, today he is indeed too damn stupid
to live.
The idea of helping Jimmy to fight out his aggression seemed
like a really good one until the actual fighting started. And then it dawned on
Tim that A: he carries a gun for a reason. B: that reason is to avoid having to
get into fist fights. C: this really, really hurts.
Part of the issue is that, while Tim has been trying to
avoid hurting Jimmy, and it's true that for the first two or three minutes
Jimmy was also trying to avoid hurting him, as the fight got going and the
adrenaline got pumping, Jimmy's control vanished.
What's also true is that Jimmy has no technique, can't
really see because he's not wearing his glasses, is angry on an existential
level, hurts worse than anyone has ever hurt, is high as a kite on endorphins
right now, and is way stronger than anyone his size has any right to be.
So, to put it nicely, Tim's getting his ass handed to him on
a silver platter.
He's also vaguely aware of the fact that there were probably
preparations they could have taken besides just changing into sweats. Like,
he's thinking that head gear might have been a good plan. (Very good plan,
Jimmy just dodged into one of Tim's punches, and Tim's not entirely sure how
much of the blood dripping off his hand is from Jimmy's now split lip or his
now split knuckles. This is also when the idea of taping up their hands occurs
to him.) But, as he manages to sweep Jimmy's legs out from under him, he's
fairly pleased that they were at least smart enough to take their shoes off.
Jimmy gets up slowly, and Tim stands there, open, waiting,
breathing hard.
"One more round?" Jimmy asks. They're calling a
round fighting until one of them goes down. That was, he thinks, the end of
number five.
"As many as you need." And yeah, that's probably
stupid too, but fight aside, Jimmy actually seems a little calmer now, well,
maybe calmer isn't the right word. Less angry? Yeah, that's probably better. Of
course, he's also, like Tim, pretty close to exhausted, too, so he might just
not have enough energy to be angry.
Jimmy nods and charges him. Tim managed a decent sidestep
and got him in the back with his elbow, but Jimmy was already whipping around
and punched him in the ribs.
Part of fighting is that it goes by way faster than you
think it should. If he was doing this with a game controller, hitting buttons,
he'd be able to do it fast enough to react to Jimmy and think a few moves
ahead. But as it is, doing this live means he feels like he's constantly
playing catch up.
But the good thing about this going faster than expected is
that it's probably less than three minutes later that he's on his back, staring
up at the ceiling of the gym, aching from his hair to the soles of his feet,
gasping to get his breath back.
Jimmy gives him a hand up, pulling him back into standing
up.
"You okay?"
Tim nods, finally able to inhale again.
"More?" he asks Jimmy.
"I'm done."
"Okay."
"Tim," Jimmy's looking at him, eyes wide open and
earnest. "Thank you."
"Anytime." And as they head for the locker room,
Tim knows he means it. As often as Jimmy needs to do this, he'll be there for.
They peel off sweat and blood soaked clothing, ready to hit
the showers, which right now sounds really, really good to Tim. He looks at
himself as he hangs his towel outside the shower stall and moans softly. He's
covered in bruises, and since he knows a little something about how this works,
he also knows that they're all going to get worse before they get better.
"Tim." Jimmy's in the next stall over, and likely
doing a pretty similar inspection of his body.
"Yeah."
"Cold water. Hot'll feel better, but it'll make the
bruising and swelling worse."
"Great." He hates cold showers. Hated them before
he almost froze to death and absolutely abhors them now. And right this second
the idea of putting his extremely tender, hurts to look at wrong body into icy
cold water seems like getting to enjoy a sneak preview of Hell.
He still cranks the water all the way to the cold side
because Jimmy is right. He remembers enough of his wrestling days to know that
if you put hot on bruised, battered flesh you end up even more swollen, stiff,
and sore.
"Did you tell Abby what we were doing?"
"Told her we were working out. What'd you tell
Breena?"
"You were helping me deal with my anger."
"They're going to flip out when they see us." See,
this is part of the too stupid to live thing. Coming home to a pregnant wife
beaten to a pulp is a bad plan. She's going to take one look at him and freak
out.
"Yeah." Jimmy sighs. "She's going to yell at
me for being stupid."
Tim nods, steps into the water, shrieks when it hits his
skin, because God, icy cold water beating down on bruised skin is every sort of
horrible he can think of, and says, "Abby's going to do that, too."
He hears a low moan from Jimmy, so he assumes that means
he's stepped into the water as well.
"Did it help?"
"Yeah. It did. I may just be too tired and sore to feel
it, but I'm not angry right now."
"Good."
The human body is a wonderfully designed machine. For
example, when it experiences pain, it produces chemicals that fight that pain.
Those chemicals are called endorphins. They act as a pain reliever and mild euphoric.
The fact that Tim knows that was part of suggesting fighting
to Jimmy. Endorphins make you feel better, they lift your mood, and that effect
can last for hours, days even. That's why they suggest you exercise if you're
depressed.
However, the pain fighting aspect of endorphins wears off
pretty quickly after you stop doing whatever it was that caused the pain in the
first place. And while Tim is well aware of how this works when it comes to
certain amounts of discomfort he's experienced chasing an especially good
orgasm, he wasn't aware of how fast it was going to wear off in relation to a
fight.
Basically, he was only a few blocks away from the Navy Yard
when his seatbelt started to really hurt his shoulder. Which was not to say
everything else about him didn't hurt, too, but as per the Gate Theory of Pain,
you really only feel what hurts worst, and the belt pressing into his very
tender, very bruised left shoulder really hurt.
He was at a stop light, about ten minutes from home,
debating sending Abby a text to warn her that he wasn't in quite the same shape
as he had been when she last saw him two hours earlier. He could either send
that text, and then have her worried about him from now until he got home, or
not send it and shock the hell out of her when he got in the door.
He sent the text.
Two seconds later his phone was ringing. He set it on
speaker and put it in the cup holder.
"You got into a fight with Jimmy!? What the hell were
you thinking? Jimmy's so fragile right now; how could you possibly start a
fight with him?" She continued on that vein for a bit, and he was thinking
that texting: Got into fight with Jimmy, look pretty bad, home soon,
explain then was yet another sign of being too stupid to live.
"What could he have possibly have said to piss you off
so much, especially right now, that would make you fight him?"
She actually paused for breath after that one, so he replied,
"'I'm so angry, and there's nothing to do with it, nothing to hit, and
screaming at fate doesn't help.' So I volunteered to fight him to help get the
angry out."
"Oh." Dead silence. "You couldn't have put
that in your text?"
"I should have."
"How bad are you?"
"Lots of Advil and ice packs when I get home."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Did it help him?"
"I think so."
"I'll have the frozen peas ready to go."
"Thanks. Should be home in three minutes."
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