Chapter three has arrived. Huge thanks to babythunder for being an amazing beta, and CTB for helping me with the Spanish. You guys rock!
I don't own them, this is only vaguely canon . . . enjoy.
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The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a red haze that hung in the air, obscuring his view. He didn't know where he was, or when it was -- the last thing he remembered was falling into a bottomless black pit.
He tried to focus on his surroundings, but he was overcome by a sudden throbbing sensation in his brain. The sunlight that streamed through the blinds was too bright, the hushed whispers of the people next to him were too loud, and all of his senses seemed to be amplified so that every detail resounded in his brain with mind-splitting intensity.
"Hey, he's awake."
"Uh?" Danny croaked out as the two figures -- Rafael and Dino, he guessed -- laughed. "What the . . . what the hell happened?"
Rafael's face slowly appeared. "Well, you totally passed out. We had to go back and get you because if someone had found you, we'd really be fucked."
Danny tried to nod his head slightly in agreement to keep the conversation going, but it felt like a bag of bricks came crashing down on his head with every motion.
"And then we got you back here, me and Dino went and sold the car, we paid Pedro." He grinned. "And now we're all good." He mussed Danny's hair (it hurt his head, but he didn't want to admit that) and patted him on the arm as if they had suddenly bonded overnight. Danny didn't bother to ask about how they managed to sell the car; at this point he didn't care much about Pedro or cars or anything.
Dino tapped Raffi on the arm. "Hey, we gotta go."
Rafael gave Danny a nod and stood up. "We're gonna stop by the racetrack. If Consuela asks, we're at the movies, claro?" He mussed Danny's hair again, something neither he nor Papi had ever done before (did it take crime to bring them together?). "That was fun, wasn't it? Probably the best time you've had in a while."
He and Dino left to go to the racetrack as Danny's stomach churned. He couldn't tell whether it was from the alcohol or the gut feeling that told him he'd be going on more midnight escapades sometime soon, but it made him vomit in the trash can next to his bed nevertheless.
His sheets felt like they were trapping him, binding him to the bed, but he somehow managed to fall into a restless slumber.
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When Rafael had told Danny that the robbery was the best time Danny had had in a while, Danny had nodded. He pretended to agree with him while the memories of the real day lurked further in the back of his mind, shrouded by the alcohol-induced fog that clouded his brain. It was a Wednesday afternoon.
His other brother's name wasn't Joe, but somewhere along the line that's what people started calling him. Even Mami and Papi did it, and eventually his original name was lost, a faded memory harbored in the minds of only those who remembered his baptism twenty-two years ago. Joe had picked up Danny early from school that day and let him sit in the very back of the pickup truck, where he sat and let the breeze ruffle his hair and sting his eyes. Joe brought along his fiancée Ellie, and they sat up front while Danny watched them laugh and talk from behind the smudged plastic window.
They had gone to the movies and seen Scarface, and when it ended Danny and Joe did their best impressions of Al Pacino while Ellie held hands with Joe and rolled her eyes. They went to an ice-cream shop, like Joe and Grandpapi used to before Grandpapi passed away, and ordered sundaes that they all shared. And Danny felt like the smile on his face would never, could never fade; he had never done things like this with Mami or Papi or Rafael or anyone else.
But then he got back home and it was different, and a week later some drunk drove his car into Joe's, and it flipped over twice and hit a tree. Papi was too drunk to go to the funeral so Danny walked there and stood next to Ellie during the service. Three days later she tried to hang herself from the ceiling fan, but it broke and she ended up in a mental hospital somewhere outside of Tallahassee. And when the boys at Danny's school laughed about it, he laughed along too, because he couldn't do anything else anymore.
For the longest time his dreams were filled with faceless bodies hanging from ceiling fans and shadows in pickup trucks. For some reason the dream came back as he slept, and he awoke sweating and breathing hard, trying to rid his mind of those images and of the intense pain in his head that accompanied them.
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"Where were you last night?" Andres asked, kicking a can down the street.
Danny's head had cleared but the sunlight still hurt his eyes. "I was busy." He said importantly, as if he had been spying for the government rather than stealing a car in a rundown garage.
Andres rolled his eyes.
"Let's just say I had some business to take care of." Nonchalantly, he gave a half-shrug and squinted as the sun hit his eyes and obscured his view of the street in front of him.
Andres' interest was clearly piqued. "Is that where you got the cut on your arm?"
"Oh yeah." He hadn't noticed the cut before, but now there was a large red gash running from his elbow to his wrist. A wound he had received during a blackout at three in the morning was transformed into the result of a violent fight in Andres' eager eyes.
"So you gonna come over tonight? We can hang out by the park, I got a coupla packs of smokes from my dad."
Danny made a face that suggested he was above such childish behavior. "Actually, I got some more important stuff to do."
It made him feel better to act better than Andres when he was around him, but he had already begun to wish everything were like it used to be. He didn't want to wake up in pain or spend late nights in alleys drinking with people who he hardly knew. He wanted to be able to throw a ball around with Andres and sneak into movies when it got to be too hot outside and just be a regular kid, but already he felt like those options had been taken away from him.
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He had left Andres only five minutes ago, waved to him as Andres waved back with big eyes filled with admiration, when he heard the voice.
"Hey, Alvarez!"
Frozen in his tracks, he turned around to see Pedro and his gang seated on a bench in the park, looking powerful and superior without even trying. Attempting to imitate that coolness, Danny walked over to the group. His hands shoved in his pockets, his face blank and cold, he tried to steady his heart. All he could manage to get out was a weak "Hey."
Pedro could see straight through him, and the amused twinkle in his eyes proved that to Danny. "So you're the hotshot your brother was braggin' about? Boosted a car for him to pay off a debt?"
He didn't know how to answer this, so he nodded uncertainly.
"Hey, you ever play chess?" Pedro asked him. "It's what's called a 'metaphor,' man. A metaphor for life." Having graduated high school, he demonstrated wisdom that was lost upon the middle-school dropouts of his gang. "You see, there are kings and queens and knights, and then there are the pawns. The pawns are the ones that don't matter, that no one gives a shit about. They're always the first to go. And you" -- he pointed at Danny almost accusingly -- "You're a pawn. But you have what it takes to be something else."
One of his goons spoke up. "What, he gonna be a king?" While the others laughed, Pedro and Danny made eye contact, keeping perfectly straight faces all the while.
"You have what it takes." He repeated again. "So I want to help you get to where you deserve to be."
"I don't understand." He said slowly.
Pedro smiled. "With Rafael, you'll be boosting cars for the rest of your life. With me, I can take you places. And I have many uses for guys that are skilled in this area of business." The way he spoke was so fluid and charming and educated that it sounded more like he was trying to recruit Danny for a job on Wall Street instead of a robbery in Hialeah.
"You want me to help you?" Danny asked incredulously.
"I need an extra man for a job tonight."
(Just like the other time, say no, he's not family, he's not Raffi, he won't mind, he's the one that got you into this mess to begin with, you don't want to do this)
"Sure."
Pedro looked at him the same way Raffi had, with a combination of newfound respect and curiosity. "Be here at midnight."
Danny nodded and walked away.
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The gang members looked so calm and collected that it was hard to imagine them feeling the same way Danny did. Butterflies were swarming furiously in his stomach, but the others looked so composed that he had no choice but to imitate them.
The door of the liquor store had an old sticker claiming the store not only had surveillance cameras but a security system. The three of them -- Danny and two other guys he didn't know -- ignored those (no one in Hialeah could afford that, and who would want to spend a fortune just to guard a couple of old bottles of whisky anyway?) and picked the lock.
Once inside they headed towards the cash register, which was pitifully empty save for a few five-dollar bills. Danny and one of the others went to the wall and grabbed some of the bottles.
With a strange mixture of pride and regret and guilt (don't forget, it was a drunk guy that killed Joe) and some helplessness (so much for not getting sucked back in), he finished filling his bag with the stolen goods and exited the store.
Sometime that night the wound on his arm opened and he could only watch as the blood began to seep out.
