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riptide_asylumTitle: Wide Awake and Dreaming
Rating: PG
Summary: When Nick got back from Nam, he didn't have much. Then the Vette found him and everything changed.
Nick's had a lot of people ask him about his Vette. Seems everywhere they go he gets at least one offer. Some of 'em are even ones he knows he should consider.
At the time he bought it, Nick hadn't been thinking about the Vette's re-sale value and he sure as hell didn't see it as an investment opportunity.
In 1974, he'd been working part-time at Vitello's, doing oil changes, rotating tires, stuff any greasemonkey could do in his sleep. But that was the thing: Nick wasn't sleeping. He'd go home after work and try eating the dinner his mama'd left for him, more often than not whistling for Chulo, the big St. Bernard a couple apartments down. The big guy sure looked like he could use the calories, that's for sure. And who has a St. Bernard in California? Poor guy was always sweltering underneath all that fur. But you should've seen him put away a plate of meatballs and marinara. Nick figured the expression on that dog's face did his mama's cooking proud, even if Nick himself barely managed to choke down a bologna sandwich now and then.
After Chulo ate, he would just lumber back down to his own apartment, or down the stairs to the patio, where the sun always kept the cement warm. He'd go down there, take a crap, then flop out in the sun and go right to sleep, heavy jowls open and drooling.
Nick liked watching him as much as he liked anything in those days. He liked watching the even rise and fall of Chulo's big chest, the easy way he swatted the flies away with his tail without waking up. He liked listening to Chulo's snores and the occasional muffled woof the dog would make, dreaming about rabbits, maybe, or people needing to be rescued, or maybe just another helping of Nick's mama's cooking. Man, that dog could eat.
Then night would fall and Chulo's owners would come home -- a couple of kids Nick figured were slumming it from the Valley, playing at living away from home, smoking grass and maybe dealing it, too, while their parents kept paying their car insurance. They probably didn't even know what "Chulo" meant, or worse yet, they found it funny.
And that left Nick all alone, wondering if he was ever gonna sleep again.
He'd pretend, when his mama got home, but he suspected she knew, standing in the doorway watching him. He hated worrying her, wished he could do anything to make her quit worrying, but the problem was, Nick had no idea how to sleep anymore. Ever since he'd got back stateside, things were different. He'd gotten used to not sleeping. Back in Nam, even when you slept, you really didn't. You lay kinda still and waited for the next explosion. You lay even stiller, fingers tight on your weapon while you decided whether it was just mist you were lookin' at, or something else. Something that would kill you.
The last time Nick slept, he and Cody had pulled three patrols, back to back. They were old-timers by then, finishing up two fucking years in-country, bruised and weary. They'd pulled off some kind of miracle and come home with the same number of guys they'd set out with on the last one, and Pitbull gave 'em a whole damn day to recuperate. Nick remembered Cody trying to laugh with the others, laughter as foreign to him as everything else, and his sweet blue eyes looked haunted. The others had headed for the mess tent, and from there promised a card game that would eat up the rest of the day. Cody had nodded along with the others, but Nick knew his heart wasn't in it. That's why he'd made up some excuse to go back to the sleeping tent, something about socks, because God knows there was always something about socks over there, the way the heat rotted their feet out from under them.
Nick remembered sitting down on a cot that wasn't his (it had been so long since he'd slept regular-like that he just grabbed whatever was open) and took off his boots and started working on his feet.
Cody had sat down heavily on the cot across the aisle, his eyes already starting to cloud with fatigue, and Nick had drawn out the whole process, made such a production of the damn thing that before he knew it, Cody had lain down, curled up on his side, fast asleep wearing the slight frown that made Nick love the hell out of him.
Nick had just sat and watched him.
Some guys came round, looking, so Nick laid down on his cot and made like he was sleeping, but really all he did was keep watch.
A couple times, Cody stirred, and Nick had talked slow, and he had talked lowly, until Cody eased finally into a sleep Nick had never seen, deep and pure and true.
At sunset, Nick had roused him with a gentle shake and had gloried in watching Cody wake, muzzy and sweet still with sleep.
Then they went back out on patrol and Cody got pinned down on that ridge. If it hadn't been for Pitbull--
So now Nick didn't sleep.
Instead, he lay on the narrow, lumpy couch in his mom's living room and stared up at the twinkling popcorn ceiling lights and thought about Cody.
After they met back up stateside, it was almost worse.
They ran into each other in that seedy fucking bar and everything changed. Again.
This was Cody the way Nick's body remembered him, the way he'd grunted and taken and needed, but something in Cody was broken still, and it scared Nick that he wasn't sure how to fix it. He spent all day working on brakes and alignments and electrical systems on the fritz, but the one time he needed to know how to actually repair something, to make it work again, he was at a loss. Cody was so much more complicated than anything he'd ever come across.
Didn't stop him from showing up at the hotel, though. Time and again. Nick knew he'd always show up, even on the days he suspected Cody wouldn't.
Then one day Nick was swapping out brake pads on this big DeVille and Vitello whistled across the bays, beckoning to him. The fuck? Nick thought. But he went anyway because Vitello was the boss, it was his name on the sign. And besides, brake pads would keep.
Nick got up and followed Vitello out past the cool, noisy work bays and out into the sunshine. And sitting out back was this 1960 Vette already gone to seed. Some rich asshole probably, bought it on a whim, then let it go to shit when he found something shinier. A couple times, by the look of it.
Vitello shrugged and his big beer gut shrugged with him. "So? Whaddaya think?"
Nick wiped his hands on a rag. "How'd she get here?"
Vitello waved a hand dismissively. "Wanna take a look inside?"
Of course Nick wanted to take a look inside. He tried to act casual but suspected he wasn't fooling the boss for a minute. You made it home through the Battle of the Bulge and very few things fooled you.
Vitello waddled over to the driver's side and leaned over the open window. The Vette groaned quietly in protest, then the hood unlatched with a soft thunk.
Nick walked over and popped it all the way, then propped it up and took a good long look. He chuckled. "You kidding me? New carburetor, for a start. All new hoses; you couldn't use these as window screens." Nick looked closer, rubbed away some grease from one side of the V8 block. "Maybe a cracked piston here." He slipped his hand down in the narrow space between radiator and flywheel. His fingers came back wet and slick. "Got a coolant leak somewhere." Nick straightened up then dropped to the hot asphalt, getting onto his back to check out the car from below. He slid underneath and cracked up at what he saw. "You kidding me, Vic?" he called out. "How many mice you got living in this thing, anyway?"
Vitello didn't answer.
Nick slid back out and got to his feet, brushing asphalt grit from his jumpsuit. "So what's the story?"
Vitello looked at Nick a long time. Then he looked over at the Vette. "This guy I know, owes a couple debts, had to leave town in a hurry. This is his."
Nick wiped his hands on the rag again, as much to have something to do as to get them clean. He knew about guys owing debts. His grandmother and uncles told a lot of stories about guys who owed debts, usually after they thought little Nicky was sleeping. "What's this got to do with me?"
"S'a good car."
"You kidding me, Vic? It's a classic. Even in this condition, it's a one of a kind."
"So you'll do it then." It wasn't a question.
Comprehension dawned on Nick. "Who'm I fixing her up for? You got paper on it?"
Vitello nodded, heavy jowls wobbling. "Yeah. Slip's in the office. Look, I like you, Nicky, so here's what I was thinking: you work on this thing a while, huh? Figure out how bad she's in for, see what you can do, then eventually, we'll figure out where the paper goes. Okay?" He pronounced it ho-kay.
Nick didn't know what it was, but certain people got away with calling him Nicky. They were the same people who made him feel about eight years old, living back with his grandma, eating fresh pasta every night and sleeping on a Murphy bed she packed away under the couch every morning. Nick loved that bed. It was still the comfiest thing he'd ever slept on, lying there smelling biscotti or anisette cookies baking, listening to his grandma and her card cronies bickering softly in Italian.
"Yeah. I think I'd like that, Vic." Nick took in the wrecked upholstery, the dings and scratches and Bondo patches on the battered Vette's body. "You got yourself a deal."
"Hey allright, Nicky! All right!" Vitello pounded Nick on the back with enough force to nearly knock him off his feet. Producing a set of keys from his pocket, Vitello the boss opened the driver's side door and settled his bullk behind the wheel with difficulty. "Hey, listen to this, okay?"
The Vette started on the third try, sputtering to life with a disgruntled cough, belching out a cloud of black exhaust that dissipated quickly in the air of the broiling L.A. basin. New starter, Nick thought automatically. Possibly a new ignition, too. After a few seconds, the engine kicked and knocked then stuttered out, and try as he might, Vitello couldn't get it going again.
New alternator? Nick wondered. Still, he savored the sound of the Vette's throaty purr the few moments she'd come back to life.
Vitello pried himself up out of the driver's seat and tossed Nick the keys before turning and heading for the office. "Just don't fuck it up, okay Nicky?"
Nick stared down at the wreck of a classic car and grinned.
After that, he spent every waking minute working to restore it. He stayed out at Vitello's long after the shop closed, the ancient Vette up on a lift, its innards exposed to the night and Nick's eagle eye and gentle probing fingers.
Nick's mama didn't say anything about his new hours and Nick didn't volunteer any information. He ate a little more, though, despite Chulo's pleading eyes whenever Nick passed. Then it was back out to Vitello's and the Vette.
The more he fixed, the more she broke. He sealed the leak in the radiator and replaced all the fluid lines (flushing the old ones had just resulted in a mad spray everywhere and caused Nick to curse mousekind in its entirety). The transmission basically came apart in his hands, giving him ample cause to work even longer into the night. As soon as Nick got second gear to quit slipping, third gear went out entirely. The night after that, the gear stick came off in his hand.
If he didn't know where that kind of thinking led, Nick could almost swear he heard her laughing at him each time.
When he wasn't at the garage he was cruising local pick n' pulls in his mama's big LeSabre. They fell into a new routine: Nick would drop her off at the diner, kiss her goodbye and on the days he wasn't working he still spent all day looking for original and not-so-original parts for his new project. He was never late picking Mama up, though, and he still refused to call any of the girls from the diner who sent scraps of napkin bearing their numbers.
The more Nick worked on the car, the more relaxed he felt, the more at ease. He still wasn't sleeping much, but it was a little more than before, and now when he slept, the dreams came less frequently. There was something to be said for exhaustion. The more Nick worked on the car, the more there was to work on.
In fact, the only time Nick wasn't working on the Vette was when Cody called him.
He'd neatly pack aside whatever he was working on and spend a couple extra minutes in the washroom at work, trying to get presentable, as much as the piece of tin on the wall would let him.
One night Cody called him a little late, sounding more than a little buzzed, and when Nick arrived at the motel, he could smell Cody from the door. Stinking of cheap beer and cheaper women, Cody wavered on his feet, his eyes still strangely clear and focused.
Nick went for him with a right cross.
Cody went down hard, crumpling to the floor and Nick felt bad for a second. Then Cody sprang up and threw a haymaker, busting Nick's nose. For a few seconds the two of them fought hard and mean and honest, tussling their way up onto the bed until Nick had Cody pinned.
Nick had looked into those scared blue eyes, the ones he loved so much and refused to let go. It was one thing he was good at.
After a few moments of silence, everything had been said. Nick relaxed his grip, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders.
This time was different. This time they made it last, taking pleasure in each other. Breathing each other in, banishing demons with every raw stroke. This time, Nick nearly cried it was so good, and for a time, he forgot all about everything that wasn't Cody.
They lay together in the heat, the sheet tangled round their knees, too hot to get any closer, too scared to let go.
After that, Cody started showing up to help Nick with the Vette. He hadn't forgotten anything Nick had taught him in Nam about tools and tool sets, and besides it being useful to have an extra set of hands around the place, with Cody next to him, Nick found something he thought he'd lost forever. Even the Vette herself seemed more cooperative.
There was one time they were replacing the alternator, the two of them slick with sweat and grease, backs aching from hanging so long over the Vette's engine. Cody was trying to hold the new part in place while Nick hooked up the connectors, but the damn thing kept getting jogged loose just as Nick went to tighten the electrical line and Cody got more and more frustrated, the longer it went on, swearing and cursing. Nick, your stupid car this, and This damn Vette that, until he was venting just one long stream of indignities that hung in the warm night air like smog.
Nick said as little as he could, preferring to listen. It was the first time since they'd come home that he'd heard Cody string together more than a couple sentences. Sure, they were blue as hell but nothing Nick could bring to mind sounded half as sweet.
They got the Vette up and running between them, so it was at the point they could take it out on weekends or more often during the week, when Cody had his days off and Nick could sneak out under Vitello's watchful eye. He always made the time up later, usually with Cody sitting by his side, handing him whatever he needed.
They'd get out of the city, heading west to the ocean, wind so loud on all sides that was all they could hear. They'd take the Vette out along the Pacific Coast Highway, then turn off down the entrance to some dusty dirt road, Cody desperate for the water, desperate to get in it, be near it, share it with Nick, need emanating from him like waves. Nick watched countless sunsets from that Vette, silent and awed and thankful, Cody by his side, the two of them sitting up behind the headrests, staring out over the top of the windscreen, toes or hips or just fingers barely touching.
Nick didn't know what he'd've done without the Vette. Without all those hours spent with Cody next to him, sometimes talking, shooting the breeze, but most of the time just hanging out together amazed at being alive. Amazed at having made it home.
Even now, ten years later and the car's admittedly a classic, but like everything else, it breaks down sometimes. And then it's still just him and Cody, working on fixing something nobody would've believed back then was worth saving.
Rating: PG
Summary: When Nick got back from Nam, he didn't have much. Then the Vette found him and everything changed.
Nick's had a lot of people ask him about his Vette. Seems everywhere they go he gets at least one offer. Some of 'em are even ones he knows he should consider.
At the time he bought it, Nick hadn't been thinking about the Vette's re-sale value and he sure as hell didn't see it as an investment opportunity.
In 1974, he'd been working part-time at Vitello's, doing oil changes, rotating tires, stuff any greasemonkey could do in his sleep. But that was the thing: Nick wasn't sleeping. He'd go home after work and try eating the dinner his mama'd left for him, more often than not whistling for Chulo, the big St. Bernard a couple apartments down. The big guy sure looked like he could use the calories, that's for sure. And who has a St. Bernard in California? Poor guy was always sweltering underneath all that fur. But you should've seen him put away a plate of meatballs and marinara. Nick figured the expression on that dog's face did his mama's cooking proud, even if Nick himself barely managed to choke down a bologna sandwich now and then.
After Chulo ate, he would just lumber back down to his own apartment, or down the stairs to the patio, where the sun always kept the cement warm. He'd go down there, take a crap, then flop out in the sun and go right to sleep, heavy jowls open and drooling.
Nick liked watching him as much as he liked anything in those days. He liked watching the even rise and fall of Chulo's big chest, the easy way he swatted the flies away with his tail without waking up. He liked listening to Chulo's snores and the occasional muffled woof the dog would make, dreaming about rabbits, maybe, or people needing to be rescued, or maybe just another helping of Nick's mama's cooking. Man, that dog could eat.
Then night would fall and Chulo's owners would come home -- a couple of kids Nick figured were slumming it from the Valley, playing at living away from home, smoking grass and maybe dealing it, too, while their parents kept paying their car insurance. They probably didn't even know what "Chulo" meant, or worse yet, they found it funny.
And that left Nick all alone, wondering if he was ever gonna sleep again.
He'd pretend, when his mama got home, but he suspected she knew, standing in the doorway watching him. He hated worrying her, wished he could do anything to make her quit worrying, but the problem was, Nick had no idea how to sleep anymore. Ever since he'd got back stateside, things were different. He'd gotten used to not sleeping. Back in Nam, even when you slept, you really didn't. You lay kinda still and waited for the next explosion. You lay even stiller, fingers tight on your weapon while you decided whether it was just mist you were lookin' at, or something else. Something that would kill you.
The last time Nick slept, he and Cody had pulled three patrols, back to back. They were old-timers by then, finishing up two fucking years in-country, bruised and weary. They'd pulled off some kind of miracle and come home with the same number of guys they'd set out with on the last one, and Pitbull gave 'em a whole damn day to recuperate. Nick remembered Cody trying to laugh with the others, laughter as foreign to him as everything else, and his sweet blue eyes looked haunted. The others had headed for the mess tent, and from there promised a card game that would eat up the rest of the day. Cody had nodded along with the others, but Nick knew his heart wasn't in it. That's why he'd made up some excuse to go back to the sleeping tent, something about socks, because God knows there was always something about socks over there, the way the heat rotted their feet out from under them.
Nick remembered sitting down on a cot that wasn't his (it had been so long since he'd slept regular-like that he just grabbed whatever was open) and took off his boots and started working on his feet.
Cody had sat down heavily on the cot across the aisle, his eyes already starting to cloud with fatigue, and Nick had drawn out the whole process, made such a production of the damn thing that before he knew it, Cody had lain down, curled up on his side, fast asleep wearing the slight frown that made Nick love the hell out of him.
Nick had just sat and watched him.
Some guys came round, looking, so Nick laid down on his cot and made like he was sleeping, but really all he did was keep watch.
A couple times, Cody stirred, and Nick had talked slow, and he had talked lowly, until Cody eased finally into a sleep Nick had never seen, deep and pure and true.
At sunset, Nick had roused him with a gentle shake and had gloried in watching Cody wake, muzzy and sweet still with sleep.
Then they went back out on patrol and Cody got pinned down on that ridge. If it hadn't been for Pitbull--
So now Nick didn't sleep.
Instead, he lay on the narrow, lumpy couch in his mom's living room and stared up at the twinkling popcorn ceiling lights and thought about Cody.
After they met back up stateside, it was almost worse.
They ran into each other in that seedy fucking bar and everything changed. Again.
This was Cody the way Nick's body remembered him, the way he'd grunted and taken and needed, but something in Cody was broken still, and it scared Nick that he wasn't sure how to fix it. He spent all day working on brakes and alignments and electrical systems on the fritz, but the one time he needed to know how to actually repair something, to make it work again, he was at a loss. Cody was so much more complicated than anything he'd ever come across.
Didn't stop him from showing up at the hotel, though. Time and again. Nick knew he'd always show up, even on the days he suspected Cody wouldn't.
Then one day Nick was swapping out brake pads on this big DeVille and Vitello whistled across the bays, beckoning to him. The fuck? Nick thought. But he went anyway because Vitello was the boss, it was his name on the sign. And besides, brake pads would keep.
Nick got up and followed Vitello out past the cool, noisy work bays and out into the sunshine. And sitting out back was this 1960 Vette already gone to seed. Some rich asshole probably, bought it on a whim, then let it go to shit when he found something shinier. A couple times, by the look of it.
Vitello shrugged and his big beer gut shrugged with him. "So? Whaddaya think?"
Nick wiped his hands on a rag. "How'd she get here?"
Vitello waved a hand dismissively. "Wanna take a look inside?"
Of course Nick wanted to take a look inside. He tried to act casual but suspected he wasn't fooling the boss for a minute. You made it home through the Battle of the Bulge and very few things fooled you.
Vitello waddled over to the driver's side and leaned over the open window. The Vette groaned quietly in protest, then the hood unlatched with a soft thunk.
Nick walked over and popped it all the way, then propped it up and took a good long look. He chuckled. "You kidding me? New carburetor, for a start. All new hoses; you couldn't use these as window screens." Nick looked closer, rubbed away some grease from one side of the V8 block. "Maybe a cracked piston here." He slipped his hand down in the narrow space between radiator and flywheel. His fingers came back wet and slick. "Got a coolant leak somewhere." Nick straightened up then dropped to the hot asphalt, getting onto his back to check out the car from below. He slid underneath and cracked up at what he saw. "You kidding me, Vic?" he called out. "How many mice you got living in this thing, anyway?"
Vitello didn't answer.
Nick slid back out and got to his feet, brushing asphalt grit from his jumpsuit. "So what's the story?"
Vitello looked at Nick a long time. Then he looked over at the Vette. "This guy I know, owes a couple debts, had to leave town in a hurry. This is his."
Nick wiped his hands on the rag again, as much to have something to do as to get them clean. He knew about guys owing debts. His grandmother and uncles told a lot of stories about guys who owed debts, usually after they thought little Nicky was sleeping. "What's this got to do with me?"
"S'a good car."
"You kidding me, Vic? It's a classic. Even in this condition, it's a one of a kind."
"So you'll do it then." It wasn't a question.
Comprehension dawned on Nick. "Who'm I fixing her up for? You got paper on it?"
Vitello nodded, heavy jowls wobbling. "Yeah. Slip's in the office. Look, I like you, Nicky, so here's what I was thinking: you work on this thing a while, huh? Figure out how bad she's in for, see what you can do, then eventually, we'll figure out where the paper goes. Okay?" He pronounced it ho-kay.
Nick didn't know what it was, but certain people got away with calling him Nicky. They were the same people who made him feel about eight years old, living back with his grandma, eating fresh pasta every night and sleeping on a Murphy bed she packed away under the couch every morning. Nick loved that bed. It was still the comfiest thing he'd ever slept on, lying there smelling biscotti or anisette cookies baking, listening to his grandma and her card cronies bickering softly in Italian.
"Yeah. I think I'd like that, Vic." Nick took in the wrecked upholstery, the dings and scratches and Bondo patches on the battered Vette's body. "You got yourself a deal."
"Hey allright, Nicky! All right!" Vitello pounded Nick on the back with enough force to nearly knock him off his feet. Producing a set of keys from his pocket, Vitello the boss opened the driver's side door and settled his bullk behind the wheel with difficulty. "Hey, listen to this, okay?"
The Vette started on the third try, sputtering to life with a disgruntled cough, belching out a cloud of black exhaust that dissipated quickly in the air of the broiling L.A. basin. New starter, Nick thought automatically. Possibly a new ignition, too. After a few seconds, the engine kicked and knocked then stuttered out, and try as he might, Vitello couldn't get it going again.
New alternator? Nick wondered. Still, he savored the sound of the Vette's throaty purr the few moments she'd come back to life.
Vitello pried himself up out of the driver's seat and tossed Nick the keys before turning and heading for the office. "Just don't fuck it up, okay Nicky?"
Nick stared down at the wreck of a classic car and grinned.
After that, he spent every waking minute working to restore it. He stayed out at Vitello's long after the shop closed, the ancient Vette up on a lift, its innards exposed to the night and Nick's eagle eye and gentle probing fingers.
Nick's mama didn't say anything about his new hours and Nick didn't volunteer any information. He ate a little more, though, despite Chulo's pleading eyes whenever Nick passed. Then it was back out to Vitello's and the Vette.
The more he fixed, the more she broke. He sealed the leak in the radiator and replaced all the fluid lines (flushing the old ones had just resulted in a mad spray everywhere and caused Nick to curse mousekind in its entirety). The transmission basically came apart in his hands, giving him ample cause to work even longer into the night. As soon as Nick got second gear to quit slipping, third gear went out entirely. The night after that, the gear stick came off in his hand.
If he didn't know where that kind of thinking led, Nick could almost swear he heard her laughing at him each time.
When he wasn't at the garage he was cruising local pick n' pulls in his mama's big LeSabre. They fell into a new routine: Nick would drop her off at the diner, kiss her goodbye and on the days he wasn't working he still spent all day looking for original and not-so-original parts for his new project. He was never late picking Mama up, though, and he still refused to call any of the girls from the diner who sent scraps of napkin bearing their numbers.
The more Nick worked on the car, the more relaxed he felt, the more at ease. He still wasn't sleeping much, but it was a little more than before, and now when he slept, the dreams came less frequently. There was something to be said for exhaustion. The more Nick worked on the car, the more there was to work on.
In fact, the only time Nick wasn't working on the Vette was when Cody called him.
He'd neatly pack aside whatever he was working on and spend a couple extra minutes in the washroom at work, trying to get presentable, as much as the piece of tin on the wall would let him.
One night Cody called him a little late, sounding more than a little buzzed, and when Nick arrived at the motel, he could smell Cody from the door. Stinking of cheap beer and cheaper women, Cody wavered on his feet, his eyes still strangely clear and focused.
Nick went for him with a right cross.
Cody went down hard, crumpling to the floor and Nick felt bad for a second. Then Cody sprang up and threw a haymaker, busting Nick's nose. For a few seconds the two of them fought hard and mean and honest, tussling their way up onto the bed until Nick had Cody pinned.
Nick had looked into those scared blue eyes, the ones he loved so much and refused to let go. It was one thing he was good at.
After a few moments of silence, everything had been said. Nick relaxed his grip, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders.
This time was different. This time they made it last, taking pleasure in each other. Breathing each other in, banishing demons with every raw stroke. This time, Nick nearly cried it was so good, and for a time, he forgot all about everything that wasn't Cody.
They lay together in the heat, the sheet tangled round their knees, too hot to get any closer, too scared to let go.
After that, Cody started showing up to help Nick with the Vette. He hadn't forgotten anything Nick had taught him in Nam about tools and tool sets, and besides it being useful to have an extra set of hands around the place, with Cody next to him, Nick found something he thought he'd lost forever. Even the Vette herself seemed more cooperative.
There was one time they were replacing the alternator, the two of them slick with sweat and grease, backs aching from hanging so long over the Vette's engine. Cody was trying to hold the new part in place while Nick hooked up the connectors, but the damn thing kept getting jogged loose just as Nick went to tighten the electrical line and Cody got more and more frustrated, the longer it went on, swearing and cursing. Nick, your stupid car this, and This damn Vette that, until he was venting just one long stream of indignities that hung in the warm night air like smog.
Nick said as little as he could, preferring to listen. It was the first time since they'd come home that he'd heard Cody string together more than a couple sentences. Sure, they were blue as hell but nothing Nick could bring to mind sounded half as sweet.
They got the Vette up and running between them, so it was at the point they could take it out on weekends or more often during the week, when Cody had his days off and Nick could sneak out under Vitello's watchful eye. He always made the time up later, usually with Cody sitting by his side, handing him whatever he needed.
They'd get out of the city, heading west to the ocean, wind so loud on all sides that was all they could hear. They'd take the Vette out along the Pacific Coast Highway, then turn off down the entrance to some dusty dirt road, Cody desperate for the water, desperate to get in it, be near it, share it with Nick, need emanating from him like waves. Nick watched countless sunsets from that Vette, silent and awed and thankful, Cody by his side, the two of them sitting up behind the headrests, staring out over the top of the windscreen, toes or hips or just fingers barely touching.
Nick didn't know what he'd've done without the Vette. Without all those hours spent with Cody next to him, sometimes talking, shooting the breeze, but most of the time just hanging out together amazed at being alive. Amazed at having made it home.
Even now, ten years later and the car's admittedly a classic, but like everything else, it breaks down sometimes. And then it's still just him and Cody, working on fixing something nobody would've believed back then was worth saving.
