riptide_asylum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riptide_asylum) wrote2009-03-11 06:38 pm
riptide_asylum) wrote2009-03-11 06:38 pm
Entry tags:
"The Dog Days of Summer" (Out of the Dark, 1978)
Title: The Dog Days of Summer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nick will always pick Cody up, no matter how many times he falls.
Sam's Surf Shack wasn't actually on the beach. It stood at the busy corner of 85th and Pacific Cove Highway, just across the road from the ocean, so that tourists, when they showed up to take their surf lessons, had to be led across the busy five-lane highway, surfboards in hand, by one of Sam's able-bodied instructors. Sure some folks opted for the crab shacks down on the beach itself, but Sam's location paid off in spades once those Zephyr kids got hot. Then the requests for skateboard lessons, new wheels, custom decks, pads, the right shoes -- whatever the Z-Boys had done at the last comp, that was what everyone was asking for the next week. Sam had joked to Cody a couple times now that he really should change the shop's name to Sam's Surf and Skate, maybe find a way to make the letters in the last word somehow work for "Skate". All he needed was a little hc, he joked.
Some joke, Nick thought.
He'd swung by with a deli sandwich from the 7-Eleven next to work and a piece of birthday cake, melting in the sun, a rare treat from some guy's old lady. She'd brought it to the garage amid jeers and catcalls, carrying it proudly from the car into the open work bay. "Jeff's 30" was squiggled across the top of the supermarket cake, red gel on yellow icing, and Nick hoped to God that by the time he was thirty he'd gotten Cody and him a place of their own, on the water maybe if they could swing it.
Nick pulled into a parking space in front of Sam's, narrowly avoiding a pair of acne-scarred teenagers skating slalom down around dry drainage ditch running the length of the lot. The asphalt had baked dry under the sun, and wherever Nick looked, waves of heat shimmered up off the concrete. Ventura wasn't Nam's heat, but today it was damn close.
Inside, the shop was cool and dark. Nick let the door close behind him, bells jangling, while his eyes adjusted to the change. He held the melting cake out in front of him like an offering, sandwich out in the car, where they could hopefully eat in peace. "Hello? Anybody home?" Nick peered toward the back.
A pair of bikinied blonds separated from the glass counter by the register and sauntered past Nick on their way back out into the sun, giggling. One of them grabbed Nick's ass as she passed. He ignored her. "Hey Dan. How's business?"
Dan with long, greasy blond hair and bloodshot eyes, shut the register with a sharp snap. "Hey dude, you got my message already? You must drive like...like..." His gaze settled on the cake in Nick's hand. "Is that cake, dude?"
"What message? Where's Cody?"
Dan's gaze never faltered. He licked his lips. "He's in back, dude. Like, I think he hurt his hand when he fell but he's, you know, not really registering?"
"What fall?"
"...What?" Dan held onto the counter for support.
Nick moved the cake to the left, then to the right, watching Dan track it with difficulty. "You said Cody fell. What happened? Is he hurt?"
"Nah, he's allright, just his hand's all busted up, though. ...Is that cake, dude?"
Nick set the cake on the glass counter-top and headed for the back, shouldering his way through a beaded curtain that clicked like the tongues of his grandmother's bridge group as he passed. In back, surfboards stood in orderly rows against the walls and the twin smells of sandalwood and surf wax hung heavy on the air.
Cody was bent over a longboard suspended between two sawhorses stolen from the City of Santa Monica. As Nick watched, he laboriously waxed small circles into the fiberglass with his left hand, while cradling his right arm awkwardly across his stomach. Strands of hair bleached blond by the salt and the sun fell over his forehead and Cody puffed them away at intervals as he waxed. Nick stood silently, just watching for a moment.
"Hey," he said finally.
Cody started, bumping against the surfboard, rocking it on its perch. He stood up quickly, right arm still folded across his chest. "Nick! What're you doin' here, buddy? I'm not off for another three hours. You finish early?"
"What'd you do to your hand?"
Cody held up his left hand, fingers spread. He turned it to and fro for Nick's inspection. "Nothing, Nick. See?"
"Uh huh. What about the other one?"
"It's good too. Does MacArthur know you're gone, Nick? I don't want you to lose your job just 'cause you came out here."
"Fuck MacArthur. What's wrong with your arm? Toke Boy out there said you fell? You okay?"
Cody turned his back to Nick and resumed waxing the longboard with a petulant air. "Nothing happened, Nick. I'm fine."
"Sure you are. You just woke up this morning and decided after twenty-six years you'd suddenly be left-handed. Now lemme see it." Nick reached for Cody.
Cody spun away. "Nick, it's fine! Nothing happened! C'mon!" He squirmed away from Nick's questing hands. "I gotta get these boards done so we can go home."
Nick gave in, watching Cody ostentatiously wax the longboard with his strong, tan left hand. He looked around the Surf Shack's workshop, taking in the different boards lined up along the walls. Longboards, funboards, boogie boards. Fish, guns, thrusters. Thanks to Cody, Nick knew more about the different types of surfboard than he'd ever believed possible. Over in one corner of the room sat a workbench with a wheel-balancer and a vise. Brightly colored skateboard bases sat on shelves above them, next to plastic containers full of polyurethane wheels, red, yellow, orange, and coffee cans full of silver wheel mounts. Trucks, Cody had told him, that was what they were called.
Stuffed in the garbage can next to the workbench were two halves of a Superman board. The board had snapped -- or been stomped or torn -- just under the exact middle of the S on Superman's chest. Nick walked over to the workbench and pulled a truck out of one of the coffee cans. It was smooth and cool and heavy in his hand.
"Hey, you wanna go catch a movie tonight, Nick?" Cody cleared his throat but Nick could still hear the strain in his voice. "Betcha we can sneak in through the side door of the Regent. That usher with the mole and the bangs? I think she really likes me. Bet she'll let us in."
"Mm." Nick tossed the truck lightly in his hand, measuring the weight of it.
"There's that new one with Burt Reynolds as a stunt car driver. You in or what, Nick?" Cody straightened up and tossed his rag down onto the board.
Nick looked over at his partner, skin pale and clammy-looking, even in the dim light, right arm still cradled against his stomach.
Nick decided. "Hey Cody?"
"Yeah?"
"Catch."
---
The two of them made their way south along the rush-hour 405 in Nick's rusting, primer-painted Vette, Cody sitting upright in the passenger seat, determinedly staring out at the passing scenery, or straight ahead and the long gray tongue of road. Anywhere but at Nick.
Outside, the hot, dry Los Angeles summer crawled by, a mix of auto parts stores, taquerias and discount nail salons, neon lettered signs bloodless and dark in the full sun.
It was a very long drive.
---
The Good Samaritan Hospital in Redondo sat between the highway and the ocean, mute and disapproving in five stories of sand-colored stucco and blinding, reflective glass. The Vette bounced as they pulled into the parking lot and Cody yelped, biting his lip and sinking low in his seat. Nick mentally bumped "fix the fucking struts" to the top of his to-do list for the weekend. But right now, all he wanted to do was get Cody's damn hand fixed. He figured after that, everything would take care of itself.
Nick parked under a eucalyptus tree for the shade, unmindful of the sap and leaves he'd surely come back out to, and sprang out in time to dart round the back of the car and open Cody's door for him. Cody quit fumbling with the latch and contented himself with a glare up at Nick.
Nick shrugged. "C'mon. If there's nothing wrong with it, we should be home in time to watch the sun set."
Cody opened his mouth, then shut it again and, still glaring, unfolded himself awkwardly out of the car.
The ER was Tuesday afternoon busy for L.A.; all the seats but one were filled with people coughing, bleeding and grimacing, and Nick half-worried that they'd both catch something while they waited to be seen. That or die of old age. Nick glowered up at the clock, then down at the clipboard the bored intake nurse had shoved through the slit in her bulletproof glass window.
Name. Nick wrote dutifully, squatting on the edge of an industrial end table. He'd guided Cody into the last remaining seat. Cody Edward Allen.
Address. 3011 East Mariposa Ave, Apt 12A, El Segundo CA. He looked over the top of the clipboard at Cody staring fixedly straight ahead. Nick cleared his throat, then put the phone number of the bodega downstairs. The proprietor sometimes took messages for them. Considering the hospital probably only wanted a phone number so they could follow up on any unpaid bills, Nick wasn't too concerned about getting that particular message. He cleared his throat again, still writing. "So...you gonna tell me what happened?"
Cody remained motionless and silent. A few chairs down, a toddler threw himself on the ground and began to wail. Its mother shushed it half-heartedly before an older child scooped it up and carried it determinedly toward the windows.
"Cody." Nick laid a hand on his friend's arm, then wished he hadn't when Cody winced and pulled away.
Nick sighed and returned to the clipboard. Social security number. Veteran status. Blood type.
"You wanna know what happened?" Cody asked eventually.
Nick kept writing. "Only if you wanna tell me."
Cody gingerly settled lower in the hard plastic chair, hair falling over his eyes. He made to brush it away with his right hand then froze, air seething through his teeth. Nick stopped writing and looked up.
This was the problem with loving Cody, he decided. He couldn't keep the guy with him 24/7. He had to let him go out into the world -- a world that didn't give a fuck whether the best friend Nick ever had got bruised and beat up, banged around like -- just like he was anybody else. Which he wasn't. Nick watched Cody wincing, try to find a comfy place to rest his busted hand. His color was high and his skin sheened with a light sweat.
Nick could see it all now, in glorious, horrifying technicolor: skateboards (which Cody knew enough about to fix, not ride), the two bikini blondes who'd been on their way out when Nick arrived (and he wasn't about to forget that pinch, either) and the hard, hard asphalt of the parking lot out front of Sam's Surf (and sort of Skate) Shack. Some days Nick wished they'd never left Nam. At least there Pitbull let him rig the odds so he could keep Cody in his back pocket. That way if they got blown up at least then Nick didn't have to see the aftermath.
He looked around the crowded waiting room then took a deep breath and sauntered up to the intake window, clipboard in hand.
"Yes?" The intake nurse looked just as bored as she had the last time Nick had bothered her. He didn't care anymore. Nothing mattered. Nothing but Cody.
"I was just wondering," Nick set the clipboard on her counter and pushed it firmly toward the slot, "whether you knew how much longer it would be before my friend got seen."
The intake nurse eyeballed him through her partition. Nick eyeballed her right back. He hadn't been to war for nothing.
"Sir, if you would just have a seat..."
"Look," Nick fished his wallet from his back pocket. "I can see you guys are busy and I know a beautiful woman like you--"
They looked at each other through the bulletproof glass.
"A beautiful woman like you has a lot of demands on her time, okay? I get that, I really do." Nick rifled through his wallet, mentally calculating rent, food, utilities and gas for the Vette. He pulled out two twenties and palmed them with an ease borne of long practice. He leaned forward across the counter. "Look, if you could just maybe take another look at the schedule, see how many people are in front of my partner, just maybe gimme an estimate of how much longer we're talkin' about, I'd really appreciate it, you know? Really. Appreciate it." Nick put his hand down flat on the counter in front of the intake slot.
The intake nurse looked down at Nick's hand, then back up at his eyes. She sighed heavily, then motioned for his clipboard.
Nick slid that across through the open slot with the pair of twenties he'd palmed.
The nurse scooped up both in one fell motion and skimmed the intake form. Frowning, she slapped it back on the counter and shoved it at him. "Next of Kin."
"What?" The twenties had disappeared.
"Next. Of. Kin. Who's your 'partner' related to? Who'd come get him in an emergency?"
Nick scowled, but he was up against a pro. She tapped the top of the clipboard with a very long, very expensive-looking fake fingernail.
Nick cast a glance back over his shoulder at Cody, huddled and gray in the waiting room. He snatched the clipboard back and hurriedly scrawled: "Nick Ryder".
Then he shoved it back through the glass.
The intake nurse collected it up in a leisurely manner. "Relation?"
Nick narrowed his eyes. "Look lady, I gave you forty good American dollars and you wanna--"
"Relationship...sir."
Nick looked back at Cody, bent nearly double in his chair. He turned back to the window. "I'm the guy's gonna kill 'im if he ever does anything this dumb ever again. That count?"
She snorted and wrote something on the form, then set it in the highest rung of a set of staggered clipboards. Squinting, Nick could just make out her loopy, bubbled script: next to his name, she'd written, "(spouse)".
He scowled again.
"Be another five minutes, honey," the intake nurse said, "then we'll get your partner out there all fixed up, okay?"
Nick swallowed hard, feeling adrenaline wash down through him and away, like swirling round a drain. He nodded. "Okay. Thanks."
---
That night, Nick didn't want to -- all right he wanted to, he always wanted to, but he'd been reluctant to because of Cody's cast and the painkillers and everything. But the longer they'd lain sprawled together on the fold-out couch, Nick curled against Cody's hip, hand resting lightly on Cody's stomach, the more it had become obvious that Cody wanted him to. Needed him to.
The rest was a formality. A soft, gentle formality, until Nick found himself spooning Cody, taking him from behind, Cody's bad hand lying up on a pillow, Nick's arms around him and the light from the ancient television flickering over their naked skin.
Nick barely moved. Buried to the hilt in his best friend, feeling Cody breathe against him, the tight heat of Cody's ass caressing him, that was everything Nick needed. And as he slipped a hand down to cup Cody's balls, squeezing gently, he watched Cody move past the day. He watched Cody come home to him, each soft thrust bringing them closer, bringing the two of them together.
Right there.
There.
...There.
Cody threw his head back against Nick's shoulder and, shuddering, exhaled in a gasp. Nick moved his hand to Cody's shaft, stroking, and burrowed his head in the crook of Cody's neck. He pushed in deep and stayed there, nuzzling Cody, waiting.
Cody drew a sharp breath then exhaled in a rush, cock swelling then pulsing in Nick's hand. Eyes closed, Nick pushed his face against Cody's neck and felt Cody come, felt his whole body shudder with pleasure, tight chute squeezing rhythmically. Nick smelled Cody's seed as it erupted, sour and metallic over his hand. It made him grin into Cody's warm skin, panting into the night, panting into Cody.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nick will always pick Cody up, no matter how many times he falls.
Sam's Surf Shack wasn't actually on the beach. It stood at the busy corner of 85th and Pacific Cove Highway, just across the road from the ocean, so that tourists, when they showed up to take their surf lessons, had to be led across the busy five-lane highway, surfboards in hand, by one of Sam's able-bodied instructors. Sure some folks opted for the crab shacks down on the beach itself, but Sam's location paid off in spades once those Zephyr kids got hot. Then the requests for skateboard lessons, new wheels, custom decks, pads, the right shoes -- whatever the Z-Boys had done at the last comp, that was what everyone was asking for the next week. Sam had joked to Cody a couple times now that he really should change the shop's name to Sam's Surf and Skate, maybe find a way to make the letters in the last word somehow work for "Skate". All he needed was a little hc, he joked.
Some joke, Nick thought.
He'd swung by with a deli sandwich from the 7-Eleven next to work and a piece of birthday cake, melting in the sun, a rare treat from some guy's old lady. She'd brought it to the garage amid jeers and catcalls, carrying it proudly from the car into the open work bay. "Jeff's 30" was squiggled across the top of the supermarket cake, red gel on yellow icing, and Nick hoped to God that by the time he was thirty he'd gotten Cody and him a place of their own, on the water maybe if they could swing it.
Nick pulled into a parking space in front of Sam's, narrowly avoiding a pair of acne-scarred teenagers skating slalom down around dry drainage ditch running the length of the lot. The asphalt had baked dry under the sun, and wherever Nick looked, waves of heat shimmered up off the concrete. Ventura wasn't Nam's heat, but today it was damn close.
Inside, the shop was cool and dark. Nick let the door close behind him, bells jangling, while his eyes adjusted to the change. He held the melting cake out in front of him like an offering, sandwich out in the car, where they could hopefully eat in peace. "Hello? Anybody home?" Nick peered toward the back.
A pair of bikinied blonds separated from the glass counter by the register and sauntered past Nick on their way back out into the sun, giggling. One of them grabbed Nick's ass as she passed. He ignored her. "Hey Dan. How's business?"
Dan with long, greasy blond hair and bloodshot eyes, shut the register with a sharp snap. "Hey dude, you got my message already? You must drive like...like..." His gaze settled on the cake in Nick's hand. "Is that cake, dude?"
"What message? Where's Cody?"
Dan's gaze never faltered. He licked his lips. "He's in back, dude. Like, I think he hurt his hand when he fell but he's, you know, not really registering?"
"What fall?"
"...What?" Dan held onto the counter for support.
Nick moved the cake to the left, then to the right, watching Dan track it with difficulty. "You said Cody fell. What happened? Is he hurt?"
"Nah, he's allright, just his hand's all busted up, though. ...Is that cake, dude?"
Nick set the cake on the glass counter-top and headed for the back, shouldering his way through a beaded curtain that clicked like the tongues of his grandmother's bridge group as he passed. In back, surfboards stood in orderly rows against the walls and the twin smells of sandalwood and surf wax hung heavy on the air.
Cody was bent over a longboard suspended between two sawhorses stolen from the City of Santa Monica. As Nick watched, he laboriously waxed small circles into the fiberglass with his left hand, while cradling his right arm awkwardly across his stomach. Strands of hair bleached blond by the salt and the sun fell over his forehead and Cody puffed them away at intervals as he waxed. Nick stood silently, just watching for a moment.
"Hey," he said finally.
Cody started, bumping against the surfboard, rocking it on its perch. He stood up quickly, right arm still folded across his chest. "Nick! What're you doin' here, buddy? I'm not off for another three hours. You finish early?"
"What'd you do to your hand?"
Cody held up his left hand, fingers spread. He turned it to and fro for Nick's inspection. "Nothing, Nick. See?"
"Uh huh. What about the other one?"
"It's good too. Does MacArthur know you're gone, Nick? I don't want you to lose your job just 'cause you came out here."
"Fuck MacArthur. What's wrong with your arm? Toke Boy out there said you fell? You okay?"
Cody turned his back to Nick and resumed waxing the longboard with a petulant air. "Nothing happened, Nick. I'm fine."
"Sure you are. You just woke up this morning and decided after twenty-six years you'd suddenly be left-handed. Now lemme see it." Nick reached for Cody.
Cody spun away. "Nick, it's fine! Nothing happened! C'mon!" He squirmed away from Nick's questing hands. "I gotta get these boards done so we can go home."
Nick gave in, watching Cody ostentatiously wax the longboard with his strong, tan left hand. He looked around the Surf Shack's workshop, taking in the different boards lined up along the walls. Longboards, funboards, boogie boards. Fish, guns, thrusters. Thanks to Cody, Nick knew more about the different types of surfboard than he'd ever believed possible. Over in one corner of the room sat a workbench with a wheel-balancer and a vise. Brightly colored skateboard bases sat on shelves above them, next to plastic containers full of polyurethane wheels, red, yellow, orange, and coffee cans full of silver wheel mounts. Trucks, Cody had told him, that was what they were called.
Stuffed in the garbage can next to the workbench were two halves of a Superman board. The board had snapped -- or been stomped or torn -- just under the exact middle of the S on Superman's chest. Nick walked over to the workbench and pulled a truck out of one of the coffee cans. It was smooth and cool and heavy in his hand.
"Hey, you wanna go catch a movie tonight, Nick?" Cody cleared his throat but Nick could still hear the strain in his voice. "Betcha we can sneak in through the side door of the Regent. That usher with the mole and the bangs? I think she really likes me. Bet she'll let us in."
"Mm." Nick tossed the truck lightly in his hand, measuring the weight of it.
"There's that new one with Burt Reynolds as a stunt car driver. You in or what, Nick?" Cody straightened up and tossed his rag down onto the board.
Nick looked over at his partner, skin pale and clammy-looking, even in the dim light, right arm still cradled against his stomach.
Nick decided. "Hey Cody?"
"Yeah?"
"Catch."
---
The two of them made their way south along the rush-hour 405 in Nick's rusting, primer-painted Vette, Cody sitting upright in the passenger seat, determinedly staring out at the passing scenery, or straight ahead and the long gray tongue of road. Anywhere but at Nick.
Outside, the hot, dry Los Angeles summer crawled by, a mix of auto parts stores, taquerias and discount nail salons, neon lettered signs bloodless and dark in the full sun.
It was a very long drive.
---
The Good Samaritan Hospital in Redondo sat between the highway and the ocean, mute and disapproving in five stories of sand-colored stucco and blinding, reflective glass. The Vette bounced as they pulled into the parking lot and Cody yelped, biting his lip and sinking low in his seat. Nick mentally bumped "fix the fucking struts" to the top of his to-do list for the weekend. But right now, all he wanted to do was get Cody's damn hand fixed. He figured after that, everything would take care of itself.
Nick parked under a eucalyptus tree for the shade, unmindful of the sap and leaves he'd surely come back out to, and sprang out in time to dart round the back of the car and open Cody's door for him. Cody quit fumbling with the latch and contented himself with a glare up at Nick.
Nick shrugged. "C'mon. If there's nothing wrong with it, we should be home in time to watch the sun set."
Cody opened his mouth, then shut it again and, still glaring, unfolded himself awkwardly out of the car.
The ER was Tuesday afternoon busy for L.A.; all the seats but one were filled with people coughing, bleeding and grimacing, and Nick half-worried that they'd both catch something while they waited to be seen. That or die of old age. Nick glowered up at the clock, then down at the clipboard the bored intake nurse had shoved through the slit in her bulletproof glass window.
Name. Nick wrote dutifully, squatting on the edge of an industrial end table. He'd guided Cody into the last remaining seat. Cody Edward Allen.
Address. 3011 East Mariposa Ave, Apt 12A, El Segundo CA. He looked over the top of the clipboard at Cody staring fixedly straight ahead. Nick cleared his throat, then put the phone number of the bodega downstairs. The proprietor sometimes took messages for them. Considering the hospital probably only wanted a phone number so they could follow up on any unpaid bills, Nick wasn't too concerned about getting that particular message. He cleared his throat again, still writing. "So...you gonna tell me what happened?"
Cody remained motionless and silent. A few chairs down, a toddler threw himself on the ground and began to wail. Its mother shushed it half-heartedly before an older child scooped it up and carried it determinedly toward the windows.
"Cody." Nick laid a hand on his friend's arm, then wished he hadn't when Cody winced and pulled away.
Nick sighed and returned to the clipboard. Social security number. Veteran status. Blood type.
"You wanna know what happened?" Cody asked eventually.
Nick kept writing. "Only if you wanna tell me."
Cody gingerly settled lower in the hard plastic chair, hair falling over his eyes. He made to brush it away with his right hand then froze, air seething through his teeth. Nick stopped writing and looked up.
This was the problem with loving Cody, he decided. He couldn't keep the guy with him 24/7. He had to let him go out into the world -- a world that didn't give a fuck whether the best friend Nick ever had got bruised and beat up, banged around like -- just like he was anybody else. Which he wasn't. Nick watched Cody wincing, try to find a comfy place to rest his busted hand. His color was high and his skin sheened with a light sweat.
Nick could see it all now, in glorious, horrifying technicolor: skateboards (which Cody knew enough about to fix, not ride), the two bikini blondes who'd been on their way out when Nick arrived (and he wasn't about to forget that pinch, either) and the hard, hard asphalt of the parking lot out front of Sam's Surf (and sort of Skate) Shack. Some days Nick wished they'd never left Nam. At least there Pitbull let him rig the odds so he could keep Cody in his back pocket. That way if they got blown up at least then Nick didn't have to see the aftermath.
He looked around the crowded waiting room then took a deep breath and sauntered up to the intake window, clipboard in hand.
"Yes?" The intake nurse looked just as bored as she had the last time Nick had bothered her. He didn't care anymore. Nothing mattered. Nothing but Cody.
"I was just wondering," Nick set the clipboard on her counter and pushed it firmly toward the slot, "whether you knew how much longer it would be before my friend got seen."
The intake nurse eyeballed him through her partition. Nick eyeballed her right back. He hadn't been to war for nothing.
"Sir, if you would just have a seat..."
"Look," Nick fished his wallet from his back pocket. "I can see you guys are busy and I know a beautiful woman like you--"
They looked at each other through the bulletproof glass.
"A beautiful woman like you has a lot of demands on her time, okay? I get that, I really do." Nick rifled through his wallet, mentally calculating rent, food, utilities and gas for the Vette. He pulled out two twenties and palmed them with an ease borne of long practice. He leaned forward across the counter. "Look, if you could just maybe take another look at the schedule, see how many people are in front of my partner, just maybe gimme an estimate of how much longer we're talkin' about, I'd really appreciate it, you know? Really. Appreciate it." Nick put his hand down flat on the counter in front of the intake slot.
The intake nurse looked down at Nick's hand, then back up at his eyes. She sighed heavily, then motioned for his clipboard.
Nick slid that across through the open slot with the pair of twenties he'd palmed.
The nurse scooped up both in one fell motion and skimmed the intake form. Frowning, she slapped it back on the counter and shoved it at him. "Next of Kin."
"What?" The twenties had disappeared.
"Next. Of. Kin. Who's your 'partner' related to? Who'd come get him in an emergency?"
Nick scowled, but he was up against a pro. She tapped the top of the clipboard with a very long, very expensive-looking fake fingernail.
Nick cast a glance back over his shoulder at Cody, huddled and gray in the waiting room. He snatched the clipboard back and hurriedly scrawled: "Nick Ryder".
Then he shoved it back through the glass.
The intake nurse collected it up in a leisurely manner. "Relation?"
Nick narrowed his eyes. "Look lady, I gave you forty good American dollars and you wanna--"
"Relationship...sir."
Nick looked back at Cody, bent nearly double in his chair. He turned back to the window. "I'm the guy's gonna kill 'im if he ever does anything this dumb ever again. That count?"
She snorted and wrote something on the form, then set it in the highest rung of a set of staggered clipboards. Squinting, Nick could just make out her loopy, bubbled script: next to his name, she'd written, "(spouse)".
He scowled again.
"Be another five minutes, honey," the intake nurse said, "then we'll get your partner out there all fixed up, okay?"
Nick swallowed hard, feeling adrenaline wash down through him and away, like swirling round a drain. He nodded. "Okay. Thanks."
---
That night, Nick didn't want to -- all right he wanted to, he always wanted to, but he'd been reluctant to because of Cody's cast and the painkillers and everything. But the longer they'd lain sprawled together on the fold-out couch, Nick curled against Cody's hip, hand resting lightly on Cody's stomach, the more it had become obvious that Cody wanted him to. Needed him to.
The rest was a formality. A soft, gentle formality, until Nick found himself spooning Cody, taking him from behind, Cody's bad hand lying up on a pillow, Nick's arms around him and the light from the ancient television flickering over their naked skin.
Nick barely moved. Buried to the hilt in his best friend, feeling Cody breathe against him, the tight heat of Cody's ass caressing him, that was everything Nick needed. And as he slipped a hand down to cup Cody's balls, squeezing gently, he watched Cody move past the day. He watched Cody come home to him, each soft thrust bringing them closer, bringing the two of them together.
Right there.
There.
...There.
Cody threw his head back against Nick's shoulder and, shuddering, exhaled in a gasp. Nick moved his hand to Cody's shaft, stroking, and burrowed his head in the crook of Cody's neck. He pushed in deep and stayed there, nuzzling Cody, waiting.
Cody drew a sharp breath then exhaled in a rush, cock swelling then pulsing in Nick's hand. Eyes closed, Nick pushed his face against Cody's neck and felt Cody come, felt his whole body shudder with pleasure, tight chute squeezing rhythmically. Nick smelled Cody's seed as it erupted, sour and metallic over his hand. It made him grin into Cody's warm skin, panting into the night, panting into Cody.