snippet – Page 2 – Rent Day Blues

continuing from here

@preludeinz tagged @akireyta who is tagging in @drdone

Virgil hung back, became part of the furniture as Kayo became the totality of Brain’s world.

Scott rarely spoke of his new partner, but when he did, it was with the kind of quiet pride he used to use for Alan. When Alan had started disappearing, apparently to places like this, that tone had vanished until Officer Kyrano had tumbled out of the training academy and into Scott’s cruiser.

This is the first time he’s seen her work; he gets Scott’s pride now. Her interrogation implies hot lamps and pressure, for all that she’s perched herself on the desk next to where Brains is sat, her body language open and friendly and interested in anything he might have to say.

Brains is street-wise enough to know he’s being questioned. He fidgets in his seat, so clearly torn between keeping the code of silence and telling them everything that even Virgil can see it.

Virgil stays out of Brains line of sight, lets her work as he drifts around the warehouse, looking for clues with an amateur eye. In his head, that dark voice dispassionately saying the words
“Tracy probably got picked up, if he’s even in one piece” kept rattling around his brain.

Virgil’s been to enough wrecks to know how easily a ton of steel moving at speed can tie itself into a knot around a lamp post. But the voice hadn’t sounded too worried, except for the possibility that Alan was now in police custody.

This was an illegal chop shop; no doubt Scott was right now breaking out the actual hot lamps to find out what the hell Alan was doing down here. In his pocket, his dead cellphone was an accusatory dead weight.

Alan had to be all right. Brains said he put in every safety feature, and there was a rack of helmets over by the far wall.

Alan had to be all right.

“Wait, The Mechanic?” Kayo’s surprise is loud in the quiet, yanking Virgil’s attention back into the moment. He drifts closer, slowing at Kayo’s almost imperceptible head shake. “You work for the Mechanic?”

Brains is hunching down in his coveralls like a grease-marked turtle. “I h-h-have to,” he mutters as he shoves his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

Kayo’s voice is leonine purr. “Brains, I can only help you if you help me?” She smiles, letting the hook catch and settle before she applies the stick. “Or I can slap on the hand cuffs and have the entire forensic unit down here sweeping for whatever they can find.”

Brains sucks in a noisy breath through his nose, straightening his spine. “I c-can’t!” he almost spits at her. “I h-h-have a debt to pay. Everyone here does. Me.” He glances over his shoulder at Virgil. “His brother. Everyone.”

“What do you mean? Alan?” Virgil can’t stop himself. He knows he’s a big guy, tries always not to loom, but Brains has the answers that he needs. Brains flinches back, the desk chair squeaking as it rocks with his weight as Virgil plants his fists heavily on the scarred wooden desktop. “What debt? Who is the Mechanic? What the hell is going on?”

In the pregnant silence that follows, the buzz of Kayo’s cellphone is loud. She sighs, sounding frustrated as she slips off the desk, thumbing the call connection as she stalks across the workshop floor. “Yeah. Hey, yeah. Found your other brothers…uh huh. That’s great news. Scott, I’ve found something. Yeah. It’s the Mechanic.” Kayo turns, listening intently as she stares at Brains. “I have a witness. Potentially cooperative, if he knows what’s good for him. Uh huh. Yeah, I’ll be there in twenty.” She drops her phone into her pocket, her boots like gunshots as she strides across the floor.

Virgil fumbles the car keys she tosses at his chest. “You’re driving. Me and my new friend here,” she continues, grabbing Brains by the collar. “Are going to be having a little chat on the drive over.”

Brains seems resigned to his fate as Kayo shoves him behind the metal grating of the unmarked precinct car. “Station?” Virgil asks, adjusting the mirrors.

The look Kayo gives him goes on for far too long. “Scott’s meeting us at the hospital.” Her hand is warm where she wraps it over his wrist. “Alan’s going to be fine,” she begins gently. “But it was close. Real close.”

Virgil’s knuckles go white over the steering wheel.

“Virgil? I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Are you okay? Maybe I should drive…”

“No.” He snaps the word with more force than she deserves. He glances up, catches Brains’ eye in the mirror. “You have until we get there to tell her everything. Or I’ll do the asking, and I’ve not sworn any oath to protect and serve.” He waits until Brains, swallowing hard, bobs his head up and down. “Good.”

The tires squeal as Virgil peels out of the gravel lot and tears off down the empty streets.

continuing from here

@preludeinz tagging @akireyta!

Things like this happen to other people all day, every day.

It’s just statistical, there’s almost a theory to the chaos of it all. Some days nothing feels right until he’s had a certain number of a certain kind of call. Five car crashes sometimes won’t seem like enough. Sometimes he feels like he can just tell, before a call even connects, that it’s going to be a heart attack, because he just hasn’t had one in a while. He tallies these things up like they don’t represent the worst days of other people’s lives. To do his job well, it’s necessary to be detached, to be calm and practical and fixated on the facts of a situation, not the emotions of the people involved. Maybe that’s why John feels so numb, here and now, standing at the window with his back to his little brother.

Scott’s gone, though he’d sworn to be back as soon as possible. He’s had to go report in to his superiors, and to get permission to take some emergency leave. There’s no question that this will be granted, but it still needs to be made formal, and he has a report to make about the scene he’d responded to. Gordon’s gone home, and that’d been for the best, because their grandmother will need his attention. He’s not only the best at taking care of her, but the best at getting her to admit she needs to be taken care of. Virgil, as far as John’s aware, is still MIA.

And now that he’s finally been allowed into Alan’s hospital room, he can’t actually bring himself to sit down in the chair that’s been pulled up beside the bed. He’s barely been able to look at his little brother, because this is all wrong. He can’t sit at his brother’s bedside, because it will be too much like sitting at his mother’s bedside, and that was never supposed to happen again. Their mother had gotten sick, and her medical bills had drained every cent from the family, and she’d died anyway, only to leave them in debt they’re still paying off. Their father had slowly gone just about out of his mind with grief, and then one day he’d just disappeared. Left the five of them and their grandmother to manage without him, and to this day, even having been no small part of how they’d gotten through it, John still doesn’t know how exactly they’d managed.

But this isn’t like that. This is injury, not illness. And this is Alan, not Mom. This is sudden and sharp and shocking, as opposed to their mother’s long, slow decline. And this time around they have insurance, Scott is Alan’s legal guardian, and Scott’s got a decent health plan, such as it is.

And Alan’s not going to die. Probably. Gordon had been very careful to be clear about how lucky their little brother had been, but there’s no way around the reality that this is bad. Alan’s young and healthy and if he’s a little scrawny, that’s still probably about the only thing he’s got working against him, so his odds are good. He’ll get better.

But it’s a lot. It’s more than John can even think about right now, because right now all he can do is stand at the window of his little brother’s hospital room, watching the orange glow of the parking lot lights through the raindrops that glint on the glass. There’s no rhyme or reason or pattern to them, but he’s still trying to find one. There’s got to be more sense in rain on the window than there is in what’s happening to his family. To his baby brother. In spite of everything, in spite of what he does and the way that he acts, Alan doesn’t deserve this.

Alan’s a good kid.

It’s Scott’s mantra. And John gets it, and deep down he knows it’s true, because even in spite of everything, he knows Alan. There are still occasional flashes of the kid he used to be—smart and kind and clever and funny—but the goodness in his nature has been lacquered over by anger, layer upon layer building up over his surface, as he’d tried to make himself harder than the world he has to face.

John loves his brothers, his grandmother. Some deeply buried part of him may even still love his father, though if ever he sees Jeff Tracy’s face again, John’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to help but throw a fist at it. But Alan—

Lately he’s been hard pressed to remember the last time he even liked Alan. He hates himself for thinking it, but even here and now, John almost can’t help believing that at least something like this might teach his little brother a lesson.

John had been Alan’s age when their mother had died, over a decade ago now, and John’s about that same decade Alan’s senior. An entire ten years between them, and yet John still remembers the lost, lonely little boy who’d been so scared and so desperate after that one, horrible, final day. Their mother had died in a hospital much like this one. And from then on, Alan had been adrift, young and tiny and terrified, and in the maelstrom of grief that had swallowed their whole family, somehow he’d managed to find his way to John and latch on for dear life.

Sixteen to his brother’s six, John had suddenly become a surrogate for everything their mother had been to Alan, a source of comfort and care and attention and affection, things he’d never particularly sought from his brothers, and certainly never from their father. Most of all, he’d just needed the reassurance that he was still loved, and that he’d always be cared for.

Maybe that assurance is something that they’ve allowed to let slip. Maybe they should’ve tried harder. Maybe this never would’ve happened if they’d just managed to find some time, some energy, some way to get through to Alan. Between the four—the five of them, counting Grandma—they should’ve been able to make it work. It shouldn’t have had to come to this, to a lesson learned in a hospital room.

Better late than never, John manages to tear himself away from the senselessness of raindrops on the windowpane, and towards his little brother, still senseless in a hospital bed. The first step he takes towards the chair at the bedside actually makes his head spin, a little, and he gets the reminder that he’s been awake for what’ll be twenty four hours, come four AM. He muscles past the vertigo and drops himself into the chair at the bedside. He still can’t quite look at his little brother—all those tubes and lines and bandages and bruises make him too much of a stranger—but he can reach for Alan’s hand, can carefully stroke his fingertips across his upturned palm.

“I’m sorry, Al,” he says, softly and mostly to himself, because it won’t excuse the last thing he’d said to Alan. “I’m sorry, I should’ve done more.”