Honey, I can't be your martyr
Maybe it's just human nature
But honey, I can't be your savior
But then you say, "Please"
- St Vincent, Savior
The inside of the Stonewall Inn was dingy and dirty. Flynn didn't expect it to be anything else; it was constantly raided by police, previously ran by the mafia, and operated without a licquor licence - it was hardly a beloved American institution. Rather, it was unpleasantly hot, loud, and crowded. But it still seemed to be treated as a haven. He observed a group of young boys (he wasn't totally sure they were even old enough to drink yet) laughing racuously in the corner. One of them held another blonde boys hand atop their table. It was quite cute, actually, despite the unpleasant smell of alcohol mixed with sweat. With the dancing, and the laughter, and the music, the whole scene was so viscerally... Human.
"I'll get drinks."
Wyatt put a hand on his chest to stop him. "Hey. I'm better at this." He pointed to himself. "Delta force, remember?"
"Uh, NSA."
"The NSA is all brains, no muscle."
Flynn scoffed. "That you know of, army boy."
"Just 'cause you settled down and took a desk job."
Flynn looked at him through thin eyes and pinched his index and thumb together. "I literally stole a time machine."
"So did I!"
"Pfff. Yeah, the Lifeboat. You know I was born before Delta Force was even a thing?"
"That's not the burn you think it is."
Flynn's lips pursed. It was beginning to look strange that they were lingering for so long. "Would you just get the damn drinks?" He snapped.
Meanwhile, he found them a table nestled in the corner that offered a good vantage of the door. Soon, officers would charge through that door and kick off chaos that would unknowingly fuel the greatest gay rights movement in American history... Man, Flynn really hadn't appreciated how stressful the task of protecting history was until he had joined the team.
Wyatt took a while to return.
"There's only one exit in this place," he informed him as he slipped onto the couch, drinks in hand.
Of course he'd gone scouting without him.
"Only one entrance then, too. That means if Emma comes in we'll see her. Though she'll probably arrive outside."
"Agreed," Wyatt said tersely. "Even she's not stupid enough to come in."
"I wouldn't call her stupid. Just-"
"Psychopathic."
"Reckless."
"Oh, so not like you at all, then," he muttered. Flynn found himself asking how bad it would really be if he were to knock his front teeth out.
"People are looking," he said instead. "We're meant to be a couple, remember? We look like we just came straight from the police station."
Wyatt scooched one single inch closer and no more.
"You're openly carrying. You're gonna need to look a little gayer than that."
He huffed and pulled his jacket over the gun. As he did so, a young man caught Wyatt's eye and smiled. Well... Clearly he looked gay enough.
"You're too intimidating," Wyatt muttered.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means smile."
It took great effort for Flynn to brush his hair back and pull on a casual smile so far from his gloomy glowering. "Is that better, honey?" He asked with strangled distaste.
"Wait-"
"Is it not?"
"No, look."
The smiling man, dark-haired and short, was approaching them. Flynn straightened. "What's he doing?"
Wyatt's hand subtly crept towards his gun. "I don't know."
Flynn's first thought was that this might be one of the plainclothes cops, and he too was reaching for his weapon. But... Oh.
He started flirting with Wyatt.
He couldn't understand the appeal, but alright then.
"You gay?" Flynn heard him ask in a thick New York accent, though sweetly enough. Flynn could hear the rusted little cogs in Wyatt's brain smoking and grinding together.
"Bi," he replied. Flynn sipped his watered-down beer.
"Bye?"
"Bisexual. I swing both ways."
He nodded. He'd heard of that, then, though they were clearly not modern enough to know the shortened version.
Then the guy seemed to take in Flynn, who smiled completely without his eyes. It wasn't that Flynn meant to be intimidating, but he was gratified when the man withdrew.
"Oh, sorry. You together?"
Wyatt leaned back into Flynn's outstretched arm. It took every ounce of will not to take it away. "Yeah, sorry."
He then mooched away. Wyatt took a swing of his drink despite not touching it since he'd gotten it in a supposedly poor-me-lying-is-so-stressful kind of way.
But the thing was, Flynn didn't think Wyatt was lying at all.
Flynn picked at his napkin, debating if he should even bother, and carefully looked at him sideways.
"That was convincing."
Wyatt took a deep breath. He was smart, and he knew Flynn was, too. "Well, if we've got some time to kill... You never wondered why my dad hated me so much?" He asked. Flynn slowly shook his head. "There are a few reasons why a dad in the deep south hits his son so bad that some of his injuries never really heal. One is cause he was a drunk bastard, but one is because... He once caught his son kissing a boy behind the garden shed."
Flynn stopped short. "You're queer?"
"I don't like that word," Wyatt said quietly, and Flynn immediately apologised. "That's what he'd call me when he tried to beat it out of me. I am bisexual."
Flynn leaned back in his seat and regarded Wyatt with a new set of eyes. "I never knew that."
The only person he'd seen Wyatt take any substantial interest in was Jessica, a woman. To be perfectly honest, Wyatt had never been on his mind long enough to consider the possibility.
"Growing up in '90s Texas with the dad I had, you learn to keep it quiet."
Flynn trusted if Wyatt wanted him to shut up he wouldn't be shy telling him so. So he asked tentatively, not really sure if he wanted to hear the answer,
"What happened when he found you both? Behind the shed?"
"He had this dumb look on his face. I was too scared to say anything, but," he laughed lowly, "the other boy panicked, got up and started shouting that it was all me. He told my dad that I forced him. And he believed him."
"I'm sorry."
He shrugged it off, and Flynn thought he saw the ghost of a wince as he did so - like he could still feel the pain. "Nothing I can do about it now."
"How come nobody else knows?"
Wyatt shrugged. "It's not easy to shake off years of abuse that forced me to believe I was wrong inside. Jessica knows, but... I dunno. I didn't want to open myself up to that."
All of a sudden, Flynn was reminded that Wyatt was... Young. He had aged decades in some ways, but was so stunted and vulnerable in others. Flynn felt a strange urge to protect him, similar to the way he felt for Jiya... Of course, he wouldn't be telling him that.
"I can relate to the crappy father, at least."
Flynn barely remembered his father now. From what was still there, he knew that was a small blessing.
Wyatt held up his glass and clinked it to his. "To crappy fathers."
Flynn laughed dryly. "To crappy fathers."
Wyatt watched the bar life, rowdy and full of laughter with a soldier's eyes; perfectly still, calculating.
"You know what it's like in the army. I thought it'd scare me straight, but really, trying to immerse myself in it just made me feel worse."
"It doesn't just go away like that," he agreed. They'd found, if not a common ground, then at least one that wasn't a battlefield. It occurred to Flynn that the reason they may have been so hateful of eachother was the very fact they were similar.
"I know that now. I'm coming to accept it, thanks to people like this, and like Agent Christopher. It's all... A journey."
Flynn could only nod, still slightly stunned that Wyatt was being vulnerable - with him. "Hey, thank you for trusting me with this."
"I didn't have much of a choice, did I?"
"I suppose not," he chuckled with ease.
Wyatt took another sip, quietly thoughtful. "You said something to me once. The first time we spoke. You said... We were two grunts in the same war. I should've believed you."
"No, I-"
"Let me say this, alright? I know I was against you from the get go. But it wasn't... Really about you. It was about them. I think I was so caught up on protecting Lucy and Rufus from you because... My whole life, I searched for that family I never had when I was little. I proposed to Jessica when I was nineteen, and I had a family with my squad, and they both died. That's what made me the way I am today, really, not my dad. So when I met Lucy and Rufus, I wasn't gonna let them go."
"I understand."
"It was a bit about you, though. You were a massive dick."
Flynn laughed - actually laughed - along with Wyatt. "Fair enough."
"But you know what it's like to be a widow. What it's like to lose your wife, your partner in life, and in everything... I shut down. I did anything that was dangerous, that might..." Kill me. "I know you understand that, because you did too."
Flynn sighed heavily. "It's what we were taught."
"But then I met Lucy, and Rufus. And life seemed a little brighter, and then a little more, until after years of being alone, I suddenly had people who I would consider family. Which is why if you're playing her, or if you hurt her, I swear I won't even hesitate."
Flynn reminded himself not to default to fighting with him. "When Jessica died, how long did it take for you to even look at another person?"
He looked down at the table. Looked up. "I didn't."
"So you think I'd, what did you say, play Lucy like that? So casually? She's everything."
Wyatt jerked his head in a menacing nod, as if he hadn't lost nearly every confrontation he'd ever gotten himself into with Flynn. "Alright."
"And hey, if we're being nice to eachother-"
"One night only."
"For one night only, then I'm going to thank you."
"Thank me?" Wyatt repeated incredulously, half like he expected it to be a trick. "For what?"
"For coming to me and telling me about your PTSD. You didn't have to do that."
"It was nothing..."
"Nuh-uh. We're being honest with eachother. It was hard to accept, but... I visited the doctor's, and she thinks you might be right. You saved me a lot of stress. And knowing there's someone who's gone through the same thing and survived, it helps, I think." After the whole spiel, Flynn couldn't quite look him in the eye. But he did, eventually, with a tentative smile sort of like he was taking his first steps towards a wild animal in an attempt to tame it.
"You know what, you're alright, Flynn."
"And you're... Wyatt, Wyatt."
He seemed to decide that was enough heart to heart and peered over his shoulder. "I think we're bumming everyone out at this bar." Indeed, they were getting a few looks. Flynn noticed a particular few people who had been staring at them for too long without movement. His eyes narrowed.
"Hey. Four o'clock."
Wyatt subtly looked up below his eyelashes. Through several guys and girls dancing the Mambo blaring from the Jukebox he could see a bartender aggressively drying a cup in their direction - and a few patrons even Flynn and Wyatt would deem a potential threat watching them.
His hair tickled Flynn's cheeks as he leaned in seemingly casually to murmur, "I smell trouble. They Emma's?"
"Don't think so..."
"They're coming over."
Flynn and Wyatt straightened as one especially tall man approached. They kept their fists clenched, but didn't raise them. They couldn't be the ones to start anything, not yet. The sequence of events tonight was too fragile.
"Hello-" Flynn started.
"Cops aren't welcome here."
Flynn and Wyatt exchanged a look. A tough guy. Never good news.
"Do I sound like a cop?" He asked in a deliberately thicker accent than he normally would lay on.
He shrugged. "You could be."
A sudden crashing from the door turned their heads. Patrons raised to their feet, and the sound of yelling reached Flynn's ears. Oh, shit. He'd lost track of time.
Cops fanned out across the bar.
"What the hell's going on?" He heard their accusor ask. He didn't stay long enough to reply.
Flynn tugged Wyatt to the wall that shielded them temporarily from view. Behind them, patrons were forcibly lined up and made to produce IDs. Some were penalised for not wearing gender appropriate clothing. Some lesbians were frisked far too eagerly. Some people were dragged into bathrooms, and some were hit. "Stay out of it," he warned lowly. "We can't fight until someone else starts it. Be careful."
To his surprise, Wyatt actually obeyed one of his orders. He stayed low and quiet until they managed to escape before they were forced out, breathing fresh night air like it was their first. The real rebellion hadn't kicked into high gear yet. So far, people were only beginning to resist the violent arrests going on inside and outside of the bar. However, they'd caused enough of a struggle that residents of Greenwich village, some homeless kids from the park, and any passersby had come to join the growing cluster outside of Stonewall, all craning their necks to see what was going on and shouting at the police. He anxiously looked for Lucy over the sea of heads, but she was nowhere to be seen. Likely a smart idea...
A torturous age seemed to pass where people seemed to take no action. Until he saw a person in masculine clothing dragged towards the awaiting police van. He watched them escape thrice, and get dragged back through the crowd thrice more. But this time they fought tooth and nail. Perhaps too fervently, for a merciless policeman cracked them on the head with a baton. There were screams and shouts as blood trickle down their temple. But still they fought all the way into the van, and screamed into the crowd, "Why don't you guys do something?"
Flynn had never seen a tide change so abruptly. The crowd erupted.
One woman even charged straight at the officer. Of course. The detained person was Stormé DeLarverie. Lucy had covered them: A mixed race butch lesbian known frequently as 'the Rosa Parks of the gay community'. Well deserved, too, as one of the first sparks to ignite the revolution. And the other fabled one, a smashing of glass behind them, made even Flynn jump and lift his arms to protect his head. He gaped. "Did someone just-"
"What's the bet that was a brick?"
He and Wyatt looked at eachother in amazement. They'd gotten past the first hurdle: the uprising's beginnings. The momentum was only growing like crackling electricity between every single one of them. Now all they had to do was make sure Emma didn't make it flop on its face...
Meanwhile, Wyatt and Flynn did whatever they deemed they could, and helped the groups of people freeing prisoners from vans and breaking them out of handcuffs. Admittedly, they did get a little carried away, and may have thrown around several objects. Hey, who could blame them? Hardly anyone even seemed scared. It appeared as though everyone was furious, fighting against an age of police control and corruption, yet also having the time of their lives.
At one point, Flynn had to grab Wyatt's hand to pull him through a conga line cutting between them. Is hand sanitizer a thing yet?
The growing mob - it had likely earned the title mob now, going by the numbers and the sheer unruliness of it all - pelted officers and the bar with rocks and coins and other projectiles until the police retreated into Stonewall itself, barring all of them inside. Flynn wasn't quite sure when the fire started, but it started quick.
"Wyatt-"
"Oh my God."
Flynn glanced at him, confused, but Wyatt wasn't paying attention to the fire at all. Instead he clutched Flynn's shoulder to pivot him towards what he was seeing.
"I got my civil rights!"
Flynn's eyes could have burst out of his head. A woman cried those words, cheering with a small group of others before flaming windows they'd likely smashed. "That's Marsha P Johnson."
Johnson didn't throw the first fire bomb, but she sure as hell threw the second. Maybe she wasn't the first spark, but along with Sylvia Rivera and other LGBTQ+ organisations, she kept the movement alive. Tonight and every night after she nurtured it into a beautiful forest fire. Wyatt plunged through the crowd towards her, just to see her. Hell, just to breathe her air. Flynn followed with earnest.
"It is so good to meet you," he panted as soon as they reached them. Johnson turned, blinking politely, as she realised he was talking to her.
"Do I know you?"
"Oh, um, no," Wyatt stammered, increasingly aware of how weird he must seem.
Johnson and her two companions looked at eachother. Then a striking blonde man shook Wyatt's hand. "Jackie Hormona. I like your hair."
Wyatt brushed a hand through his hair, grown out slightly longer than usual, and practically blushed. "I like yours!"
Flynn laughed aloud and Johnson turned her smile on him. "You're cute together."
They looked at eachother, grinning, before their faces collapsed into frowns. Flynn glanced at the woman beside them. She was the same one he'd seen running to Stormé as soon as they'd called for action. He suspected of the hundreds of people gathered, one of these three may have been behind the first smash he heard. The first brick thrown, if there even was such a thing. He knew Johnson - of course, everybody did, but the other figures at Stonewall were so hidden in obscurity he didn't know her name. "And - I'm sorry - who are you?"
"The Queen!" Johnson cackled. 'The Queen' laughed, but didn't object in the slightest.
"Zazu Nova," she introduced herself, as if it was a grand proclamation. Hell, she was so confident he believed it was a grand proclamation. "And I gotta go!"
Nova cheered as she left to find more trouble. The other two followed, leaving Flynn and Wyatt alone, still reeling over the last two minutes alone. That history was made by transgender and queer people, people of colour, homeless people, and sexworkers. And it was great.
But they weren't left alone for long.
The tough guy from before pinned them down with a stare and a group of people gathered around him who didn't look afraid to use force. He folded thick arms over his chest and called back to the group,
"They're the cops! They brought them here! I heard em talking earlier."
Flynn and Wyatt shifted on their feet. They didn't have to even look at eachother to share the dread they were both feeling at that moment. They were, however, incredibly aware that the bigger circle forming around them wasn't incognito in the slightest.
"We're not cops!" Wyatt tried.
It was as if they hadn't said anything at all - the guys beckoned even more friends over. They outnumbered them ten to one and, let's be honest, even though they could probably take them, they weren't about to beat up a group of people instrumental in gaining gay rights. It just wasn't something you could do. But everything was about to go to shit in five seconds flat if they kept shouting about cops around them. He saw rocks tossed menacingly in the air and mutters exchanged as fists clenched, ready to attack them, or force them into that flaming bar with the rest of the cops.
So Flynn did the only thing Flynn could think to do - he grabbed Wyatt by the face and kissed him. Hard.
Wyatt's hands flailed for a moment, completely unsure of what to do, before settling clumsily on Flynn's arms.
They broke apart breathing heavily and holding in their gags, looking to the man for a reaction. He watched them for a long moment.
"Alright," he muttered finally, and shepherded away his friends. Thank God for that. Flynn looked back at Wyatt, whom he could not believe he had just kissed, and visibly cringed. "I'm sorry-" he started.
"No, it was-" Wyatt coughed and deepened his voice- "it was the right call. Good call. I should've thought of it first."
"...We should find Lucy and Rufus."
"God, please."
---
The riots were proving to be more chaos than Emma had anticipated, no matter how many freakin' documentaries she had watched. But she ploughed through, Amy, Hank, and a new guy whose name Amy didn't remember - Paul, maybe. Or Patrick. Or was it Jonathan? Either way, it didn't matter. (Carl?). Amy didn't want to move one step further.
Emma barely spared her a glance. "Come on, June, let's go."
"No."
Her feet ground to a halt. Maybe Carl glared at her. "What do you mean no?"
"I can't let you do this."
Emma laughed and shouldered past her, but Amy stepped in her way. "Please. I'm queer. If you're doing this, you're doing it to me. And them."
Hank and... Tom? scoffed and went ahead without them. Emma was dangerously exasperated. "I told you, in the long run, it's harmless."
Amy thought it sounded awfully like she was trying to convince even herself.
"No, it's not! If it helps them, it will never be harmless. Look at them, Emma."
She turned her chin to look at the Stonewall Inn. The light of the fire reflected in her light irises, shadows of people blocking it out as they marched, and danced, and yelled, and cheered. It was a glorious celebration of all that they were. And Emma didn't want to do it. She was reminded her of whatever shrivelled conscience she had left. The conscience that had saved Marie Curie, Rufus, women's rights, Amy from bleeding out on that floor in that French palace... Likely all of them had been spared by Emma at some point or another, even if she only viewed that as collateral damage. But this - maybe even she couldn't bring herself to ruin this.
Amy lowered her voice to a pleading whisper. "Let's just leave. We can lie, nobody needs to know."
"Hank."
Amy blinked. "What?"
"No, Hank," Amy looked up. Hank was surrounded by a group of people, headed by one tough looking guy. They clearly thought he was another cop. "Fuck."
Emma barely made it a step. Hank didn't even try to keep his cool before breaking it out into a fight. To his credit, he won against several of them. The way he was able to throw someone two metres with just a fist made Amy wince. But why the hell did he even have to?
It was then that far away through the crowd, at the very end of Christopher Street, she could see Flynn and Wyatt. They'd sent them. Flynn raised two fingers to his forehead in salute and winked. Amy took it as a sign of her saving grace, but Emma as a mockery.
"Those sons of bitches," she swore under her breath. She went straight for her gun. Amy, however, was just as fast, and lunged for the handle. They were locked in a tight struggle for it before Amy emerged, gasping and clutching it tightly.
"Are you crazy?" Emma yelled.
"Don't call me crazy! You'll turn this into a massacre. Think."
Emma furiously stared at her, breathing hard, before her heaving chest calmed and she let out one, long breath. "Fine, I won't shoot. Now give me my gun."
It was then that they saw the police reinforcements arrive, and look straight at them. Emma hurriedly stashed her gun away, but she was sure the police had seen it, for two of them halted on their way to the bar.
"Hey! You got a license for that?"
Emma held her hands up to show they were empty and spoke in the sweetest, most sugary Texan accent. "License for what, sir?"
He turned buggy eyes on Amy, and she remembered all too suddenly that she was the one wearing trousers. "That doesn't look like gender appropriate clothing to me."
His friend grinned unpleasantly. "You know what, Jimmy, no, it does not."
"They're trousers!"
They stepped forwards, and Amy's adrenaline kicked into high gear. Perhaps because she knew it would hinder Emma, and perhaps because her blood boiled to knock the look of off his face, Amy kneed him straight between the legs. He doubled over, allowing her a free hit to the head.
When the other went to throw a punch on his behalf, Emma caught his fist in a hand that shook with effort. She twisted it downwards so hard she heard a crack.
Amy was absolutely, utterly terrified just by the way she moved and the cool anger that frosted over in her eyes as she retreated into whatever dark place let her hurt people like that. Perhaps if Amy hadn't been so distracted she could have moved quickly enough to dodge the baton that flew towards her face. Emma bashed her to the side.
Emma took the hit.
The cry as Emma plummeted to the floor kicked Amy into action. She finally let her drag her away from the police.
---
Lucy frantically searched the crowd, dodging drag queens and dances as she went. She could've sworn she'd just seen the back of Flynn's head walking in the other direction.
"Excuse me, sorry, sorry," she apologised profusely every time she bashed into someone or stepped on yet another foot. She really wasn't made for big crowds.
"Lucy!"
Lucy's head turned left and right in complete confusion. Rufus tapped her on the shoulder and pointed.
The backdrop of the fire blazed as they found eachother again. Lucy heaved a sigh of relief at Flynn's familiar smile.
She stumbled on the paving as she ran towards him, and was hugged so tightly she was lifted off of her feet. She pulled Wyatt in with the crook of her elbow and felt Rufus join in, too.
He dropped her back on the floor and she looked around for Emma, "We couldn't get through the police. Where are they?"
"Gone, we think," Wyatt replied. "Flynn got one of Emma's guys."
"Nah, Wyatt did."
"You did."
"You did!"
"Okay, I did. But Wyatt set the mob on the other one."
Rufus and Lucy grinned at eachother knowingly, then at them. "You and Wyatt, huh?"
"Aw, don't worry Rufus, you're still my main guy."
Rufus scoffed and looked away to mutter, "Yeah, I'd better be."
The warm light on their faces extinguished so they were only lit by the first signs of morning light. Lucy breathed out. "The fire's been put out. The first night ends soon after that."
"We made it."
---
Teasers for Stonewall (3)
•
"So who's better, me or Wyatt?"
•
"You saw the cuts on my legs."
•
"How did Emma Whitmore come to lead Rittenhouse all on her own?"