Skid

"Shit."

L.P. cursed under his breath, certain he had seen the telltale flash of a red light camera from behind him, scattered against the shimmering backdrop of nighttime rain. His fingers gripped harder into the wheel. With any luck, the camera lens would be too condensed to make out his plates, too obscured by the same driving precipitation that he fought against. He pushed his head back into the seat.

The music stuttered. The retrofitted stereo of the '97 Valero had a few loose wires, and liked to reboot itself every twenty minutes or so, completely losing the wireless connection from his phone. The lo-fi sample of an old soul singer over a synth loop faded in and out beneath the sound of slick spray from the road and the hard drops upon the smudged moonroof. He would do some rewiring later, he promised himself for the dozenth time in the past month, or would have promised were his mind not elsewhere. The rain sound stopped briefly, then crashed down even harder as the car passed under a bridge.

He pressed the accelerator more firmly.

A rattling cough from the passenger seat broke his concentration, and the wheels jittered.

"Hey, you okay?"

The shape in the seat did not respond. It was pitiful, dark, and shivering and illuminated only in flashes from the streetlamps blinking by. The reptilian frills of L's ears compressed into a fearful silhouette, his vision drifting back and forth between the shape and the dim, wet road ahead. Finally, the shape gave a feeble nod, marked by quivering, laborious breath.

A growl rumbled in the pits of L.P.'s chest, directed at nowhere but himself. He should have realized something was wrong sooner. He had no one but himself to blame here, ignoring the concerned texts from roommates and the weak voice over the phone, mistaken for so many late night drunken calls--though if anyone was at fault for that interpretation then it wasn't him, now was it? If you cry wolf so many times, people stop answering.

...No, that wasn't the sort of choices he made. That wasn't how he was raised to act. You listen when people ask for help--that was his father's teachings and his mother's spirit, and his elder sister's chiding. And in frustration and annoyance he had let them all down. He let himself down.

He let Farad down.

The vampire shuddered underneath the ragged throw they had grabbed up from the living room couch, him swaddled up in it as he stumbled to the car, barely able to walk on his own, his face burning hot where it pressed to L's as he leaned upon him. His wings were wrapped up in it now. They curled around his body like a blanket of their own, made of skin and bone and stretched sinew; even the colour in the translucent webbing seeming to take on its own angry flush. Where his face was visible, his features were wrought up into a delirious half-sleep, skin that normally wore a pallor marked by mottled, feverish pink. Perspiration dotted his cheeks, unsettled by another moist-sounding cough.

A knife to the chest would have been preferable to the way L's heart wrenched, as his stomach bounced somewhere between his throat and his shoes. If he opened up the roof right now and stared straight up he would probably drown in guilt before the waters even had a crack at him, but a drowned dead man wouldn't have very much luck at all steering a vehicle straight in weather like this, and the last thing they needed was a wreck on top of all of it.

The engine gave an an aggressive rev. His knuckles were going white.

Suddenly, the world was turning sideways.

...Speak of the devil, huh?

There was only a moment of panic before he realized what was happening, pulling his foot abruptly from the pedal as the car skidded and wobbled and planed its way over the road's surface atop a wide, inky puddle that spanned the curve in the highway. He blinked, and saw the guard rail coming, and squeezed his eyes shut.

But, when he opened them again, he saw only road, and the flash of a metal rail veering off to the side, the wheels righting themselves back onto tractive asphalt at the last second. The car rolled on momentum, and slowed to a sloppy halt on the shoulder, where he finally pressed his foot down onto the brake.

The gear shift clicked loudly into park. His eyes were wide. Percussion played hard on the rooftop. L's heart beat at an even faster tempo in his ears.

He turned to Farad, who, seeming to sense him, turned away from the windshield as well, staring wordlessly back until his glassy, stunned gaze drifted down and they both noticed that his manicured nails were dug into L's thigh. He did not let go. He couldn't, it nearly seemed, his muscles still tensed in shock. The sudden perception of the discomfort snapped the lizardblood back into the moment. Humid air drifted thick between them.

"I'm sorry." The sound of the radio rebooting itself again went unnoticed as he muttered into upholstery, digging his forehead into the side of the passenger seat. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

"Kh…" Whatever Farad was trying to say was interrupted by another bout of coughing, the cloth pressed up in front of his mouth to try and spare the driver from a direct hit. "Calm down…" he finally managed, a voice like murky water. "We're... fine... You're fine… It's okay..."

L pulled his head sharply up, staring inches from the half-hidden face. Sweetness, and pain, clouded a look at that was normally confident, his words usually a biting clarion, his whole body now quaking. Yet here L.P. was, feeling sorry for himself.

Spit sputtered out from L.P.'s lips upon a bitter laugh. "You... look like shit."

"Thanks," Farad snorted, sighing back into his position against the closed door, his fingers finally relaxed and retracted, crumpled in a sloppy heap beneath the throw. "I feel like it, too." The words were punctuated with a throaty wheeze.

"Right. Yeah. Yes."

L.P. smacked himself lightly upon the cheeks, disabled the blinking hazard lights, and put the car back into drive, checking for incoming headlights before he pressed the accelerator and angled back into the lane.

"I always forget how much push this thing's got," he joked on wavering breath, eyes flashing to the speedometer. "Old, but she likes to go fast." 40 was plenty fast enough.

The headlights poured over a hospital sign with an indicator that the facility was only two more miles out. He heaved a heavy sigh. In the blink of an eye of his washed out mind the car was parked, and he was escorting a shivering Farad through the automatic doors shod in bright, glowing lights.

For all he could tell, they had crashed along the way, and now were filling out the clipboard sign-in sheet to the gates to Heaven. A wait in the emergency room at midnight was sure to be more like Hell, in fact, but they had made it either way, so that debate was as beside as any point made.

And still, on the bright side, as bright as such a side could be, at least if he had died that night, and this was the very end for him, well there probably was no one L could think of who he would rather spend a final night with.

The thought crossed his mind, and his heart beat faster--but this time, it wasn't with fear.