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When it rains in Los Angeles, everybody goes fucking crazy.
Johnny has lived there long enough to know. Water falls from the sky, and everybody panics, crashes on the freeway, people knocking over space heaters and setting their apartments on fire, fools getting caught out in places they shouldn't have been in the first place.
It's been raining, off and on, for most of the past week or so. They're having a reprieve, which means it hasn't rained in a day or so and the clouds are gone pale and silver on the edges like the sun's thinking of coming out. People are still crazy and the calls don't let up but at least him and Roy are pretty much dry today.
"I think the sun's gonna come out today, Roy, I really do."
His partner just looks at him, from the driver's seat, eyebrows up, mouth in a line. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
"What."
The victim is a kid, 12, who skidded on damp pavement on his bike and gave himself one robust case of road-rash and a small, deep gash on his wrist. It's an easy rescue. Nobody's dying. Nobody's trapped. They take the kid over to the hospital just in case, and by the time they're doing with the paperwork and re-stocking their supplies it's starting to rain again.
"Sun'll come out, huh?"
"I said I think, didn't I? Never said I was sure." He throws up all kinds of bluster and Roy is half-smiling, looking at him with heavy mirth, planting one hand in the small of his back and pushing him along.
"Let's go, weatherman."
Dixie is probably laughing at them.
Sometimes Johnny thinks that she knows about them, like, maybe not the whole thing like sex, maybe but she knows something - surely, she does. Known them long enough. Smart. Sees through bullshit like holes in a sheet on a clothesline. Kind enough though, she doesn't say anything, just looks at them, shakes her head, and signs their forms. She knows. Johnny's ok with that, if she does.
"Squad 51, available."
They're heading back toward the station when the tones sound on the radio, calling them and the engine out to - what is it? Johnny's scribbling it down - child caught in storm drain, River Road, north of East Gage -
The rain is picking up hard now and Johnny curses fools and rain.
"That's the river, isn't it?"
Fools and rain, and the wide, tempting, dangerous concrete expanse of the Los Angeles River, which is not a river in his mind and never will be. They've driven right down it, at low water. When it's not raining. The center channel all sluggish and black.
"That's the river," he says, and the lights are on the sirens wailing, and with his helmet on he steps back hard from thinking child and storm drain and how heavy the rain is coming on, slips right into his paramedic skin. What're they gonna find, what'll they get, what'll they need when they arrive.
River Road, north of East Gage, backs up against a sturdy little residential neighborhood, and there's a fence along the edge of the river just like there should be, except for the part where it's ripped open in half a dozen places and the water is rising and dark. There is a woman, the child's mother? Screaming against a police officer's grip.
The engine rumbles up, Roy get the basic details from another cop.
Rope, he thinks. Rope and maybe some jacks.
It's one of those big outflow drains - with the gate perched perpetually precarious over the entrance, dank and smelling like oil and dead, rotten leaves. Grass and paper and plastic bags are shredded and caught like flags on the grate and sure enough, the goddamn thing has come down and the kid is wailing, the water flowing fast and up to his knees.
At least the kid can breathe this time. Johnny remembers the other boy, the one gasping with stridor.
But it was dry then.
"Hey, kid, hey, Tommy?"
The kid is crying too hard to speak but nods.
"Tommy, my partner and I are gonna get you outta this mess, okay? Don't worry."
"My foot," the kid hiccups. "My arm hurts."
"The gate fell on your foot? Okay..."
Back to Roy -
"Kid's arm, broken I think, his foot's caught, we gotta get this thing off him first..."
They tie a rope to the gate, loop it under a second catch bar, and Johnny hopes it works because the second bar's underwater, and the water's fast, it just needs to work long enough to get the kid out, and Roy's right there, he'll pull and Johnny'll push, that's that, back on dry land and should be easy, right?
Sure ought to be easy.
"Okay, Roy, we'll get the gate off and I'll pass him up to you - Tommy, when I tell you, you grab hold of me, okay?"
The boy's blond hair is almost black in the rain, pelting on both of them, slipping down his face and mixing with the tears.
"I gotcha, kid, don't worry now."
He hears the engine rumble up to life, hears the hiss of the air brakes letting go, and the gate shrieks, protests, pulls, and finally begins to lift - Johnny ducks under as soon as he can, gets a face full of black, swampy-tasting water, grabs the kid (watch his arm, watch it, watch it - ) and slips him up the outfall's wall to Roy, braced on the concrete bank, ready to grab him.
"Got him?"
"Got him pal."
"Right - "
Something goes wrong.
In the time it takes for Roy to pull the kid to safety.
With the water shoving at his waist as if it's got a mind and teeth of its own, sticks and god knows what snapping past his legs.
He steps back in the water to brace himself, reaches up for the edge, hears a grinding whine, hears the wail of wet metal, something catching his pant-leg, the gate rushing at him and slamming hard into his shoulder.
Black water and weight.
His hands just slip against moss and leaves, and the gate he thinks it's the gate is heavy like a foot in the middle of his back, and if he could just get a little traction -
If he could just get a little breath -
All his training went out the window with the slam of the gate and the roar of the water, and the last thing he remembers, full and clear, is the taste of the water and the slimy concrete under his fingers.
When he wakes again he feels like his chest is a sack of mud, and someone blurry is leaning over him, and the sky is still dark and the rain is like an insult. He coughs and coughs and someone is telling him not to move, and he rolls onto his side and pukes what feels like half the city's stormwater. Someone, with a hand on his shoulder, which hurts, which is cold to the rain, someone is taking his vitals and relaying them to Rampart base.
"The kid - " he chokes. More water. That black, sodden taste in his mouth. God only knows what he swallowed down there.
"Kid's fine, John."
That's Hank. That's Cap, crouching on his other side, patting his shoulder.
And, as if anticipating - "Roy went with him to Rampart. Chet's taking the squad. Noel's gonna ride in with you.
Noel. Noel from ... 45, he thinks. 45, Noel. Noel's partner is Jacob.
His partner is Roy. Roy's got the kid. Good. That's what matters. It's still raining and he can hear the river charging and lashing at its concrete prison somewhere down below, but Roy's got the kid and the kid's sure gonna be ok, that's what matters.
The ride in the ambulance is a daze of vitals, which he tries to give himself, until Noel tells him to cut it out.
In the hospital he pukes again, aiming for a basin and hitting the shoes of the cute new nurse, who does a brief, disgusted dance and walks out. He is fine, he insists.
"I'm alright, I'm alright - "
Just cold. Fucking cold now, it's not like they have to keep the ER at the approximate temperature of a 12-year-old refrigerator, do they? Dixie says she'll bring him a towel and he expects her to send the cute, dirty-shoe-dancing nurse back in with one, but no, it's Roy, who is still wet and dripping but does not smell like a swamp and did not throw up on the new nurse.
Roy dumps the towel on his head and says, "Kid's alright. Fractured his toe, nasty gash on the arm but no break."
Johnny relaxes almost immediately. That's perfect. That's good. That's why they do the job.
"Cap couldn't figure out why the rope broke. Him and Chet and Marco hopped down themselves and just hoisted the damn thing off you." Roy's brows are tight and he's almost chewing at his lower lip, the way he does when he's worried, like the ghost of a habit he broke once. That, and the hand on his arm, are Roy-speak for 'I'm glad you're ok.'
"Remind me to bake 'em a cake." I'm pretty happy about not being dead, too.
"God, don't do that, then I'll have to eat it, too." I mean it. If you'd have bought it, I'd have revived you just to yell at you.
"Are you gonna make 'em spring me, or what?" He's fucking freezing, other than a little water damage he's good, just cold, the best thing in the world right now would be a hot shower and a warm bed and preferably one with Roy in it.
"I'll see what I can do. Sit tight, junior, willya?"
Brackett will probably want to keep him overnight. Brackett's a force to be reckoned with, when he wants an admit done - or a test, or a surgery - but so's Roy, and Roy's his partner, and the doc ought to listen to a guy's partner.
Roy's hand slides from his arm. Johnny closes his eyes and feels the reluctance there. They do not, strictly speaking, actually really truly almost die on a given shift. They're firefighters, paramedics, they're well-trained, professional, they know how to be safe even if the stuff they're doing seems absolutely lunatic to most people. It's the unexpected things. The time cut too close. The line that burns, the wind that shifts, the rope that snaps. Johnny closes his eyes, shivers, so cold and tired that he doesn't think even about sex with Roy, per se, just the part where Roy is warm and the covers are heavy.
Yeah. That'd be nice. Roy warm around him, soft bed, heavy covers. That'd sure be nice.
...
Brackett keeps him. That's doc 1, paramedic 0.
Dixie tells him it's just for one night, for observation, and the look in her eyes says Johnny, behave yourself or you will be getting the most invasive observation of your life.
Of all the people whose unspoken-eye-threats Johnny takes seriously, Dixie is at the top of the list, neck-and-neck with Cap.
When no one is looking Roy ruffles his hair, reminds him that he'll be off shift at the same time Johnny's getting released.
"I'll pick you up," he says. "Take you home."
Roy's blue eyes are bright, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Translation: Go home with you.
Johnny figures he can behave himself for one night. Take it like a man, with that to look forward to in the morning.
...
Roy talks a lot when he picks him up. Talks to Dixie. Talks to Brackett. Talks while Johnny fills out the discharge paperwork. Talks in the car on the way back to Johnny's place.
Johnny's partner is not a talker by nature. Persuasive, sure. Not a talker. Says what he needs to, means what he says.
"I figured I should pick you up in your truck. I mean. I couldn't really decide exactly, since we both got to get back to work somehow, but I thought about it and I figured you'd want your truck at home and maybe you can just give me a lift back to my place or to the station or - you know, whatever, when you're feeling better, or something, I - what do you want to eat, by the way? I know you didn't eat the hospital food. Which I don't understand since you vacuum down everything else, including whatever Chet's made, and you even ate that cheesecake that Mike tried to make one time, you remember? It was sort of weird and crumbly and burnt, and - do you have food at home? Or we can get a pizza. That good place up the street is still open, right?"
Johnny's still tired but he sees Roy's hands white-knuckled on his truck's steering wheel, sees him blinking rapidly, sees his mouth parted, his teeth just grazing his lower lip. He hears his partner. Not just the words. Hell, not the words at all. He hears him.
"Don't want you to hafta pay for pizza - "
Why do all the stupid words come out of his mouth at the important times? Johnny blames the stormwater. Maybe he ate some weird leaf down there in the drain.
Roy doesn't answer him, but parks the truck, and follows Johnny inside.
"I got some ground beef I think, maybe hot dogs," Johnny trails his jacket, wanders toward the kitchen, stomach leading the way, brain somewhere back down the hall with Roy. "But if it's just gonna start raining again - " and the sky is still muted, still grey.
He has one hand on the refrigerator when Roy grabs him suddenly by the belt, swings him around and slams him solidly into the door. Pain shoots up from his back like a pile of springs exploding.
Roy, about to - he's not sure. Roy. Winces, touches his face.
"Forgot about your back," he says. "You ok?"
"Nah, this is nothing, man. Lot worse coulda happened, right? I mean I pretty much practically drowned down there, didn't I?"
"Yeah, you did." Roy's voice is real soft, real strained. Tentatively, like it's something he's never done before (and he has, they haven't been physical a real long time but long enough it shouldn't be like - ) Roy puts his lips to Johnny's neck, grazes him with teeth, and whispers in his ear - "And don't you ever fucking do it again."
Roy doesn't swear much but holy mother of god, the way it turns Johnny's legs into jelly. The way he is pressed against him, the way he is breathing hot.
He can't promise. They both know, neither of them can promise.
But -
"Okay," Johnny says, because he would promise anything. Because the weight of the past twenty-four hours has finally reared up and smacked him across the back of his brain like a two-by-four, and he almost fucking drowned and it's like his body has just been caught waiting, waiting to hit him with the adrenaline shock.
Joints go weak and full of sand, and he leans back into Roy's embrace, not a lot of things can override his stomach but near-dying and Roy are two of those things and conveniently, somehow, they usually go together.
"I'll be good," Johnny says, because he could say, I won't die, or, jesus christ Roy, but that's not what Roy needs - or wants - to hear, that's not what's gonna make Roy do that growling, grinding noise in his chest. "I'll be good."
Hospitals are cold. Hospital beds are hard and miserable. Hospital food is fundamentally inedible.
But this is his home. His place. His bed is messed up and rumpled, there's a car magazine and a catalog from the Darley company on one pillow, but it's warm and it's his and it's also Roy's whenever he wants. Oh, boy, does he ever want.
It doesn't take them long to get naked, a brief frustrated tangle with jeans or buttons, everything ending up on the floor. The first few times Roy would try and fold his clothes before they fucked which Johnny refused to stand for, so Roy puts up with it, and Johnny likes to think it wasn't that difficult a decision to make.
They don't need to say much when they do it. When they did it at first Roy was nervous and talked through the whole thing, but so did Johnny, Johnny talking and kicking himself for saying stupid shit, but it made Roy laugh and it made him put his hand on his face and it made his eyes go still and quiet and steady, and Johnny liked that part.
"Fuck me," he says, jacking Roy's hard on with one and trying to look wicked. Roy's got the vaseline and Johnny wants to be on his back, not just looking up at Roy but entangled with him, "Fuck me, real hard," so damn hard please until he forgets where they end and where they begin.
Roy doesn't take his time, holds his mouth in a kiss while he fingers him open, sliding in, sliding out, until Johnny's panting and groaning and threatens to never ever ever make him a cake for anything ever, which makes Roy laugh, but Roy pushes inside him the laugh stops and stutters into a groan that might be Johnny's anyway. It doesn't matter. It feels good and it feels right and his back's gonna kill him later and his shoulder's gonna help, but he just grabs on and says Roy, please, yes, yeah, fuck, Roy.
The way Roy's sucking at his shoulder it's gonna leave a mark, and he'll be coming up with a lie on the spot to explain it to Chet while Roy will be casually getting dressed next to him but fuck it, fuck that, oh -
"Fuck, fuck, harder - "
Roy makes this sort of heaving sigh like a freight train when he comes, a sound that settles into a groan, that settles into Roy's kissing on his jaw and face. Johnny is stinging with arousal, all his nerves on fire, and it doesn't take much more than a few strokes of Roy's hand to get him all the way to fucking gone.
He almost died. Sure. But no way is he dead not by a fucking long-shot, no way, no how, not like this.
Roy mutters against his skin, kisses him, mutters, licks his body which has been all but fucking tenderized, tongue at his collarbone, tongue around his nipples (he twitches), fingers up and down his belly, tracing his navel, tracing his hip.
Roy mutters mostly senseless things, sometimes coalescing into words, like stupid and fucking drowning and love you, love you.
It startled him, the first time he heard it coming out of Roy's mouth. Startled him so bad he bolted to the bathroom and ran the water for ten minutes.
But then he thought about it, thinking like he's doing now, staring at the ceiling, Roy's fingers dancing around on his skin.
He already knew it. He'd already seen it, in the way Roy moved around him. Already felt it in the hand on his shoulder - cuffing or steadying. Already heard it in his voice, annoyed maybe, or smoke-rough.
Startled him too, when he said it back, the first time, in the middle of Roy fucking him through the mattress, which was a good time to say it because no way Roy could freeze up and back off.
"You too," Johnny says. "I'm hungry."
Roy groans at him, reaches one long arm over him and smacks him with what is definitely the Darley catalog, a half-inch thick of advertisements for turnouts, equipment, and apparatus.
"Pizza?"
"Yeah," Roy says, "yeah, whatever." Roy is still touching him. His eyes murky under sweat-damp hair. Stay, his eyes say. His body pressed against Johnny's. Sticky. They smell like a whore-house. Stay. Roy's hand resting on his belly like he's counting respirations.
Oh.
Stay.