Air

a fic by lint. zzzz

Summary: A road trip, complete with Greek takeout and denial. Roughly 2007-movieverse.

Warnings: Swearing. OCs. Angst. First person present. More angst.

Notes: This story takes place one year after the events of the 2007 CGI movie. Beware research overkill. See end for more specific notes.

Disclaimer: I own no copyrighted characters contained herein. (As if I'd want responsibility for these guys. Shyeah, right.)

Length: 4424

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7. Electrolite

"Y'know, your handwriting's horrible." Taki sets a good-sized cardboard box in the corner of the shed; the printing on the side advertises some brand of ketchup I've never heard of. "I seriously should've left you the phone, because me and the guy in the shop could barely make out what you wrote half the time, and he knew what he was talking about."

He thinks my handwriting's bad in English, he should see it in Japanese; best thing you can say about it is that I've got the right stroke order. Leo and Don and Mike would be off playing when we were younger, watching TV or whatever, and I'd still be at the table, copying everything five times over. Didn't really make a difference; not like there's much call for good penmanship in the sewers, anyway. Best thing I learned was to write small and save paper, because I'd just end up doing it all over again.

"There's one more load in the truck." Taki's out the shed door, and as soon as it swings shut, I'm digging in the box. It's half Christmas and half hell; the knowledge that I can get the bike running again means that there's nothing really standing between me and going home. I still don't know what I'd say to everyone. There's nothing to say; hurts to think about it. Things are just how they are; call it fate, or idiocy, or whatever you want. Leo's going to tell me I'm irresponsible, and dishonorable, I know already, and Mike's just going to give me that sad, grown-up look that is so out of place on him, like Peter Pan worrying about the electric bill. I'm pretty sure Donnie's going to be the one to blow up at me, especially when he hears about the bike. He's usually the most mellow of all the four of us, but when he finally loses his temper, it's spectacular. Mount Vesuvius annihilating Pompeii, and you'd be lucky to dig out the corpses two millenia later.

The door opens again, and Taki comes in, struggling with another box, a gallon of distilled water, and a plastic shopping bag. "Take something, will you? This one's heavy." I grab the water and bag before he can drop them; the bag clanks as I set it on the floor. Under a thick layer of old socks and a couple laundry-pink t-shirts there's three cans of matte Rustoleum spray paint. "I got a whole pack of new socks, so there's the old ones for rags. And the guy at Wal-Mart said that stuff'd work, and it's a lot cheaper than getting it from a car painting place."

"It'll work." I hate to cover up the red, but it'll just look stupid to have the entire right side bare fiberglass; it's not like I could match the color of the fairing anyway. "You couldn't just get black?"

"What? Charcoal's black, isn't it?"

The color of the cap's the color of the paint, moron. "Dark gray." Not like I can complain; he's nice enough to have gone out and bought all this just to get me out of his basement. "Whatever. Did you get the fiberglass stuff?"

Taki nods, taps the bottom box with the toe of his sneaker. "Got a bunch. The guy at the shop said it'd probably be easier if you just brought it in, though; he knows a guy that's real good at fixing things like that. Or they could just order a new one."

It would be easier, and not only because I've never done fiberglass repair before. But I can't do that, and I can't explain to him why not. I shake my head. "Cheaper this way." That's not the real reason, just an excuse, and he probably knows it just as much as me. It's the same reason I won't just let him take the bike into a shop to fix it; it's my fuckup, and I've got to try and make it right, as best I can. Not that anything I do is going to be more than patchwork–too little, too late–but it's all I've got.

Taki snorts. "You're worried about cheaper? With all the tools and everything, this is close to a thousand bucks. I mean, distilled water. You can't just use what comes out of the tap? You need the dollar-a-gallon stuff?"

"It's for the battery." If just topping off the battery doesn't do the trick, I'm hoping I can jumpstart the bike from his truck and I'll be back home before it finally decides to go kaput, if that's what it's going to do. I didn't find out that jumping motorcycles from cars wasn't the same as jumping cars from cars until after I'd done it the wrong way and sorta melted the battery on Merryweather's bike; good thing I was wearing the armor at the time, and a complete miracle I didn't burn out the entire electrical system. Had to scavenge up a new battery after that, which is what I shoulda done in the first place when I figured out it was a goner from sitting in storage for who-knows how many years. Shouldn't hurt to do it the right way, though, not if I'm careful, and hopefully the battery's not to the point where it won't still hold a charge.

Of course, knowing Taki, he probably doesn't own jumper cables. Or even know what to do with them.

He sighs. "Whatever, man. Just don't burn down the building."

0oo0o000o00oo0o0ooo0o0o0o

If turtles sweated, I'd be doing it right now.

I can see in my mind's eye how everything fit together, all the old bits that were worn out and covered in dirt and bugs and who knows what else. I've got all the parts laid out on paper towels on the floor; shifter, clutch assembly, the cleaned sprocket cover, new chain and front sprocket and chain guide, all the bolts and gaskets and attachments. But they're all degunked and shiny and new, and I just can't fit them into the picture in my head.

Taki's watching me from the basement doorway, his eyes boring holes in my shell. "You know what you're doing, right?"

When Casey and I originally put this bike together, we used the entire engine and drivetrain from one bike, just fit it into the frame. Theoretically, I know how this all goes together, but in terms of actual experience, I'm not much more than a backyard mechanic. Donnie's the one who stripped it down to the block, played with the gear ratios and how they complemented the power band, exchanged the stock for the extraordinary. That's why I gave Taki the actual chain and sprockets to get replacements, because I didn't know what size anything was anymore, and now I'm not sure how it all fits together. "The parts I had you take in to the shop. You didn't keep them, did you?" This'd all be so much easier if I could look at those, remember just what it looked like.

"I got the exact same things, the best the guy said he had. Didn't think you'd need the old ones back."

"I don't." Mechanically, no.

Taki chuckles from behind my back. "Good. 'Cause the guy gave me a five percent discount if he could keep them. He said he was going to frame those gear thingies, and write 'Don't Let This Happen To You' next to them."

Yeah. Funny man. "Aren't those taxes due in six days?"

"Seven, counting today."

I've got a shop light hanging from the roof of the shed because the sunlight's gone; it's going on seven-thirty in the evening, and Taki's on his second beer. "I don't think today counts anymore."

He takes a swig, stretches out his legs down the stairs. "Sure it does. Post office stays open till midnight on the fifteenth. And I've got everything organized; it won't take long to just plug in the numbers."

I don't know the first thing about doing taxes, but it's got to be more complicated than that; I've seen him working at the practice form with whiteout about three times now. Not going to argue it with him, though. I fit the new sprocket and spacers in place, and hand-tighten the nut to hold it on. The chain guide's next, and I make sure I've got all the washers in place before I put the nuts on the bolts. If I'm right about how this is going together, I can go back with the socket wrench and tighten it all up. But for now, I just want to see the shape of the puzzle.

"Hey, you want a beer?"

I shake my head. Maybe when I've got this all put back together, but not now.

"Whatever. You've been working on that thing all day. Maybe it's time to take a break."

It won't take long to get the rear wheel and sprocket back on, once I figure out the front; the chain'll wait for tomorrow. "Gimme a few more minutes. Isn't there basketball on?"

"Not on the channels we get here." He drains the beer and sets the bottle on the second stair down. "You're just trying to get rid of me, aren't you? 'Cause you don't know what you're doing and you don't want me to watch."

Too damn smart for his own good. "I know what I'm doing." He's spent one night out of the basement since the thing with the mirror. I wonder if he actually does have an an apartment; I wish he'd stay there more often, since the sofa is a hell of a lot more comfortable than the pool lounge.

He watches me polish out an imaginary scuff on the clutch assembly for another five minutes or so before heading downstairs; I can't think with someone watching me. In the two and a half weeks I've been here, I don't think he's ever gone out with friends, or talked on the phone with someone, or mentioned people he knew outside of work. It's scary to think I've got more of a social life than this guy, and I'm a mutant turtle from the sewers.

I hear the television turn on from down in the basement, and I know I'm sleeping on the pool lounge again.

0o0o00ooo00o0o0o0000o0o0

The armor's been sitting outside behind the shed for five days to air out, loosely covered with a tarp so nobody would be wondering why it was there; still smells, though, but not nearly as bad. I didn't realize how bad the metal was scraped up, and this close to the ocean, the humid salt air has started to rust the bare steel in places. I'll have to go back and sand everything out, try and smooth out the gouges, rub it down with a good coat of oil.

That's one good thing about the metal armor; it did its job. Back when I was in New York, I had considered trying to make carbon fiber armor, since the steel was so damn heavy, but I'm pretty sure the fall I took would have torn it–and therefore me–to shreds. Carbon fiber's got great tensile strength for its weight, and I've read a few articles online that say you can mold it at home, but it just doesn't end up that thick.

After seeing how deep the road had bit into the metal, I want thick. I don't ever want to have to need the armor like that again, but damn, I'm glad I had it. I'd have been roadkill, on the front page of all the tabloids.

I don't think I got lucky; I think it was a miracle. I should have been paste. One tiny thing different, the speed, the angle of the fall, the texture of the pavement, and I wouldn't be fussing over all this right now.

Later. I can worry about the armor later. It took three whole days trying to get the fairing in even halfway-decent shape, and the first coat of paint's dry. If you look close, you can tell it's not the best repair job, but the matte finish makes it less noticeable. It'll work. All I want now is to lay some serious rubber down in the warehouse's tiny parking lot and find a nice stretch of road somewhere the cops don't know about. To just go; doesn't matter where, as long as it's away from the basement.

"Are you sure I don't turn the car on?"

This is the third time Taki's asked me, and I'm trying very hard not to lose my patience. "If you even think about it, I'll personally make sure that you're audited." I've had to completely take off the pillion seat to get to the battery; the electrolyte chambers are all full and now I'm trying to maneuver the oversize clips of the car jumper cables in the small space of the battery compartment.

The positive lead's on, with about a quarter inch of room to spare. It's a tighter fit than I'd like, but there's no hills around to even try and push-start the thing. "Okay, hook up the red one."

"Um." I look up; Taki's holding his end of the cables and staring down into the truck's engine compartment as if it were full of something unspeakably disgusting. "Where's it go, again?" I take the clips from him and find the battery; it's hard to see the markings for the terminals through the thick coat of road dirt. Positive first, then negative. Taki just stands there and watches, with a nervous smile that's closer to a grimace. "Yeah. Um. That's where they go. Right."

He's got to be kidding me. "You've never jumpstarted a car, and you're how old?"

A little laugh, like he's sure I'm just about to blow the truck to kingdom come. "Hey, man, that's what I pay triple-A for. I just pop the hood and they do everything."

I follow the negative lead back to the bike and hook it on a bare bit of the frame. All of us, my brothers and me, we learned to jump cars when we were fifteen, before we even knew how to drive. It was way back when we were at the farmhouse the first time; April's van had a cracked block and the truck in the barn had been sitting for probably twenty years and the battery would barely turn the engine over. Learned how to hotwire cars then, too, as long as they didn't have any fancy security systems. Casey's got a lot of hidden talents, but even he knows when it's best to leave things to Donnie.

"Should I start it now?" Taki's in the driver's seat of the truck, hand curled around the ignition.

I resist the urge to hit him. Looks like fourth time's the charm. I go over to the truck. "Taki, gimme the keys."

"But–"

"Give 'em to me." I reach past him and pull the keys from his fingers, then throw them across the parking lot; they fetch up against the side of the building, under a shrub.

"Hey, what was that for?"

I wouldn't have done it if you'd just listened to me, moron. "Don't start the car."

"But triple-A always starts their car, and then–"

He can't see the look I'm giving him through the helmet, and that's probably a good thing. "And triple-A's always jumping cars from cars. This's different."

Kill switch. Turn the key.

"I could be wrong...I mean, I don't know that much about cars, but a battery's a battery, right?"

Damn straight you don't know much about cars. Self-check's all good. Make sure it's in neutral; hold the clutch.

"I don't see what difference it makes–"

Ignition.

Yessssssss.

It's really a good thing I've got the helmet on, 'cause I know I've got this dopey smile that even Leo'd tease me for ages about. I didn't fuck it up; not completely, anyway.

Taki's out of the cab of the truck, he's looking between the bike and me disconnecting all the cables. "It actually worked." He sounds amazed, like he's just seen some sort of magic trick. "The car wasn't on, and it actually worked."

It's not magic, not even close. "'Course it worked." I coil up the jumper cables and toss them in the passenger seat of the truck, then slam the hood shut. Donnie explained the difference between volts and amps to me once, using water in the sewer tunnels as an example; it made sense, that one's like the diameter of the tunnel and the other's the amount of water going through it, but I can't remember which is which. "They're both twelve volts, but the car's got a lot more amps, even just sitting there. You try and jump a bike from a running car and it'll blow up the bike battery." He doesn't need to know that's from personal experience. Nobody needs to know that. Really.

"You could've just said that. I've got to go dig my keys out of the bushes now."

"How many times did I tell you not to start it?" The engine's starting to warm up, and I twist the throttle a bit. Sounds good; the engine itself is relatively quiet, but the pipe's from a custom Ducati that got dumped into the guardrail of a track somewhere, and it's got this precise, almost bell-like exhaust note. Makes the three cylinders sound like a tenor stuck in a blender when it's nearing redline. I don't need a glasspack loud as a jet engine, don't want people to know I'm coming half a mile away; been a ninja too long to ever be into that sort of thing.

Taki's retrieved his keys from the side of the building; he still looks pissed at me. "Where you gonna go?"

I shrug. "Dunno." I hadn't thought ahead that far, just hoping the bike would start. The fuel gauge warning light's on, and I've got maybe a half gallon left in the reserve, at best. "Not far."

"Figures." He digs out his wallet from his back pocket, extracts a bill, holds it out. "I'm not as stupid as I look, you know. And you're gonna pay me back."

What, he thinks I can just go out and get a job at the local burger joint or something? I just stand there and look at him.

"You think I haven't noticed you're going nuts, stuck here? Like, more nuts than usual, anyway." He holds the money out awkwardly, refusing to give in to my mental commands and put it away. "Look, just take it. It's nothing, okay?"

It's not nothing. "I didn't ask for this." Never asked for fucking charity. Never. I'll walk until my feet bleed and until I fall over from exhaustion rather than take his pity.

He looks like he's about to say something, but then he steps forward, wraps my hand around the cash, steps back again. Starts to say something else, considers a bit before actually speaking. "I think there's a lot you didn't ask for. Now, and then."

Fucker. Goddamn bastard. He has no fucking idea what he's talking about.

"It won't get you far, anyway, not with gas prices the way they are. I'd say take the 110 to the 405 north; 10 west will take you out to Santa Monica and there's stuff to see there, or just keep going north for a bit, and there's all the canyons and Beverly Hills. Get some bugs in your teeth or whatever." He's looking down at the ground now, arms crossed; he has no idea how much I want to hit him right now, if I could only move. "We'll talk when you get back."

I don't want to talk. And I didn't think he wanted me to come back. He's waiting for me to say something, but I can't; there's something stuck in my throat. He looks up eventually. "Yeah. So. Go get a pedestrian for me. Ten points, y'know." And then he's off to the shed; I can hear the basement door slam shut.

The afternoon's gone cold and overcast, clouds rolling over the sun. I wonder how the hell I got to this point.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0ooo0o0o0o0o0o0o

Up on Mulholland, looking down over Los Angeles, a carpet of lights cupped between the Santa Monica Mountains and the ocean. The signs say no parking after nine, but it's been three hours since then and nobody's bothered me. Even if someone had a mind to come looking, the bike's half-hidden behind a stunted pine, and I'm not in a mood to let anyone see me. Cops've apparently got better things to do than roust loiterers from the pullouts. I'm not scared.

It's a winding demon of a road, echoes of rebels and angels, timelost and wanderworn. I can hear the racers off in the distance, can imagine the curves they're pulling by the sound of downshifting, tires squealing, the straights in the rev scream of big-blocks and straight-sixes. Every so often a car will pass my lookout, engine noise dopplering as they thunder past, but most of the action's off to the east. Nobody comes up here at night to drive; in their hearts they're all flying, wax wings safe in the moonlight.

I took it easy on the way up here, part because I didn't know the road and part because I was still unsure of my competency as a mechanic. I think the bike's fine; a good hour on the freeway and another two roaming the foothills and it's yet to explode, catch on fire, or send me careening into the back of some soccer mom's station wagon.

Sunday afternoon, and there was still traffic. I thought I'd seen traffic in New York, but it doesn't have anything on L.A.; a city that grew out rather than up, born in the coming of age of the automobile, where eight-lane freeways sprout like weeds through the cityscape. From this height they glisten, iridescent, like arteries left to run free, thick threads in the city planners' warp and weft, busy even in the dead of night. So many people, moving with such purpose and determination, and I'm sitting here on top of a mountain, alone with my thoughts.

I don't have anywhere to go. I'm at a loss, at a standstill, while the rest of the world spins by, oblivious. No matter how much I've always wanted to be on my own, I've always defined myself by my family, as a part of a whole. We'd each be strong where the other was weak, pieces of a circle, and no matter how much I'd fight against it, fists drawn and words falling, it'd still be there in the end.

And stupid me, that's the way I always thought it would be. It's broken now, and it's all my fault.

I am.

I am a–

No.

The night air's crisp, the mild chill of mid-spring, redolent with the scent of scrub sage and smog. I breathe it in in great lungfuls, as if I could somehow absorb the soul of the city, its purpose, take it on myself when I have nothing left to be.

I have–

No.

Hollywood and Beverly Hills stretch out at my feet, the skyscrapers of downtown off to my left, the lights of LAX in the distance to my right. This is a city of contrasts, an artificial oasis, home to the haves and the have-nots, has-beens and wanna-bes, held taut in the balance between natural disaster and human reaction; it plunges headlong into the twenty-first century without so much as a nod to history. A city in all stages of life, all at once, from inception to growth to decay. Where New York is busy, always busy, L.A. is tense; a simmer ready to boil over at any moment, to explode in earthquakes and wildfires and riots.

I did not choose this city; it did not choose me. Yet here I am, looking out over its breadth like some sort of voyeur. I never wanted to leave New York, didn't plan it, but I'm starting to think that maybe it was for the best. I wasn't a good son or a good brother, particularly, and maybe it's better for my family that I'm not there, always screwing things up. I leave, they'll live. I don't deserve their compassion, not now, if I ever did.

And in time, it'll stop hurting so goddamn much, like I've carved out my heart with a soup spoon. I've earned this pain; I deserve it. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that.

I am–

I have–

Can't even say it to myself.

A coyote nudges at a burger wrapper on the other side of the turnout, amidst the broken brown glass of beer bottles and other detritus. The city lights below and the thin clouds above have eclipsed the stars and the first-quarter moon; earlier I saw a shade in the sky where the moon might be, but it's obscured now. The lights reflect off the haze as a sort of sick, ghostly orange, an ominous halo. The coyote doesn't notice me, still scavenging amongst the refuse; he either doesn't know I'm here, or is so accustomed to human presence that he doesn't care. I'd like to think it's the first, that all my training has somehow rendered me invisible to the animal kingdom.

It's probably the second. Wile E.'s muzzle's buried in a discarded bag of fries.

My son, if this is so important to you, then you must do it. There is no choice.

Always a choice, always. I knew it from the start. If I could just say the words, even once, then I wouldn't be here. When is the good of the many less important than the good of the one? The good of my family? I made a choice; it was not made for me, not inevitable. And now I have to live with it, as my family lives it, reaction for action. This is my consequence.

This I must learn on my own. There's no one here to teach me.

I am.

I am–

A car screams by, headlights blazing, tires squealing on even this mild curve. Flying, feet buried in earth, hands scraping the sky.

There's two ways down off this mountain. My choice.

If I ever wanted to fly...

I realize, suddenly and surprisingly, that I'm not scared.

And I'm alive.

I'm outta here.

00o0o0ooo0o0o0o0o0o000o

Notes: The last section is probably as close to a songfic as I will ever write. (The tune of the music totally doesn't fit the characters, but something about the tone of the song just stuck with me, if that makes any sense, and it's why this story is set where it is, instead of some other city on the western edge of North America.) It's also the second-to-last chapter that I have written. That's all I have to say about that.

And yes, the traffic in L.A. is really, really bad. (Numerous online rankings will back up my smidgen of personal experience, here.) Thank you for reading, and please feel free to take some virtual squash bourekakia home with you