A/N: I am... sorry... thoughts?

Chapter 17: The longest minute

"Where is this, again?" Lauren asked, looking at Darren's reflection in the mirror before drawing cautiously a black line above her eyes.

Darren crossed his legs, getting more comfortable. He shook his head and said, "You wouldn't know." Then he gave a look to the shelf next to Lauren's bed, running his fingertips through the titles of the albums and books neatly ordered in a pattern he couldn't decode yet. "It's an underground pub. Rachel's boyfriend's band is playing."

"Literally or metaphorically underground?"

"Both." Darren answered, grabbing Strange days from the base of the pile, carefully not to throw everything to the floor. "You listen to The Doors?"

"I haven't in a while, but yeah." Lauren said quickly. She put some mascara on her eyelashes as a final touch. Then she turned around and stared at her wardrobe, still on her dressing gown, recalling all of her clothes in her head and without being able to determine an adequate outfit for a situation that was completely different from any she's ever been in.

"Can I borrow this? I haven't listened to this album in ages."

"Sure." Lauren had walked to the wardrobe and decided desperate times require desperate measures, so she turned around and asked him "What should I wear?"

Darren retained the cd in the inside pocket of his jacket, and then he stood up and walked to Lauren's wardrobe. She observed with a raised eyebrow how he placed a hand on the handgrip until he asked:

"Can I?"

"If you dare." She replied, and then sat down at her bed, disposed to observe what she expected to be a hilarious situation.

Darren rummaged into the furniture for a while, like if it wasn't the first time he was challenged into getting the perfect outfit for someone. He finally decided for a pair of black, though shiny high waisted leggings and a red, loose, strappy crop top made of chiffon that worked pretty great on her. It was actually a great choice, and she was surprised. She had noticed Darren had a nice style, but it's pretty easy for a guy who doesn't wear much besides jeans and leather jackets.

"Trust me," He said, handing her the clothes and sitting down in the bed again, "Although, I'd ask Caroline for her black boots because that's what would really work."

Lauren squeezed her eyes as he looked at him, astonished, wondering why did he remember that while she didn't. "Who are you?"

"Someone who's seen a lot of girls in pubs." Darren answered, but was clever enough to add quickly, "Not tonight, obviously, because I won't need to."

Lauren rolled her eyes and gave him an amused look before turning around to take off the dressing gown and put on the clothes. Darren gulped slowly, making an effort to not make a sound or literally anything that could make his existence noticeable again. They had become more intimate with one another lately, but that didn't mean he was used to seeing Lauren in her underwear right there in front of him, and worse, not being able to do anything about it. So he just focused on breathing slowly in and out until the thing was over, because, well, he wasn't stupid enough to look away neither. And he just tried to ignore how perfect and tight her body looked with less clothes, and the movement of her spine as she lifted up her arms, and the way it curved right there above her underwear, and how that delicate black fabric stuck inside and –fuck.

"I'm gonna ask Caroline for the boots," She announced once she was done, as Darren couldn't really answer anything yet because his mind got wedged in those last three minutes.

Caroline was drying her hair in her dressing gown, as Lauren had done half an hour before; but when she asked the girl made a wince and said with an apologetic tone:

"I'm sorry, honey, I'm gonna wear them tonight."

"That's okay. Where are you going?"

"Joe invited me to hang out to this bar to have a drink and watch a show and stuff."

Lauren's gasp was quiet enough to go unnoticed. "I'm starting to think we need to communicate more, because we're going to the same place."

"Really? You?" Caroline's surprise did show, unlike hers, when she looked at her with an impressed expression.

"What does that mean?" She snapped instantly.

"Oh, nothing." She quickly said and smiled widely to disguise it. "It'll be fun, we all are going to be there!"

Lauren didn't say anything for a second.

"How are you going to get there? Do you want me to go with you?"

"Joe will pick me up, don't worry." Caroline just explained, shrugging.

Lauren tried to remember Rachel's words at the party, but they didn't seem to be of much help now; so she just gave her roommate a smile before going back to her dorm.

"I can't believe Joe is taking Caroline to this thing, and they are doing –whatever they are doing." She sentenced, crouching to reach her brown boots under the bed.

Darren bit his lip and didn't say anything.

"Ugh. You knew!" Lauren stared at him, furious for a short moment. The solely presence of that guy bothered her, but she knew Darren was his best friend and she could never ask him to stop seeing him, so she worked it into tolerating him for long as it was possible.

"I couldn't do anything about it." Darren said with his most honest tone of voice, "I think you're just gonna have to accept whatever this is."

"Couldn't he find absolutely any other girl to sleep with that's not my roommate?" Lauren cried, already imagining what it'd be to wake up and find him on the couch of her living room. She wasn't sure she could handle that. She adjusted the laces of her boots with much more energy than what it was necessary. Darren held a laugh at her attitude, and she warned, "Stop laughing of me."

Darren pointed at himself with a sarcastic expression, as he dramatically expressed, "I'd never." He stood up, pulling from her hand, "Let's go, you'll forget about it once we're there."

Lauren grabbed a light brown jacked and announced to Caroline they were leaving before taking off. The pub was, as Darren said, literally underground; they got there after climbing down the stairs of an indie music store. They could hear the music bounding in the place even before they got there. The white walls of the bar were decorated completely by Pollock's dripping technique, giving a pretty overwhelming first impression as they got in. There was a stage of a minimum size in the back of the place, next to the toilets, but it was currently empty. The girl working at the bar had a pink Mohawk which height would impress anyone, and the environment overall of the place was dark, and sort of creepy and bizarre.

They sat down at Rachel, Brian and Jeff's table when they spotted them. They asked for a beer, while they joined in a casual conversation about college. Caroline and Joe arrived five minutes after the first performance started; they sat down in front of Lauren, which made everything even more surreal since she was used to have her by her side. The opening was an unexpectedly long slam poetry act of five different people reciting in turns about their life stories, starting out as a pretty common thing, before they started yelling at the same time in a very unpleasing manner they couldn't hear what any of them said whatsoever.

"Have you ever gone to a place like this?" Darren leaned a bit into her seat to whisper.

She didn't want to admit it and look like a total newbie, so instead she just commented, "What do you mean like this?"

Darren gave her a look, "Come on."

Has she been educated in art before getting into college? Of course, and at a high level for most common people. Has she ever seen something like this live? Never.

"I've known of places like these."

Darren grinned, grabbing his glass, "Good." He said. "I love first times."

Lauren bit her lip.

The second performance definitely topped last one and probably anything any of them had seen for a while. It consisted in a chubby guy doing a discourse as someone threw balloons full of painting at him. It truly was… something else. Lauren thought at first that the words he said were actually quite great, but it was difficult to focus on it as the secondhand embarrassment got harder to stand. It was sort of painful to be present when he literally screamed an unintelligible groan of sorrow for fifteen seconds, but at some point the thing was over. Rachel's boyfriend finally got onstage with a bass and the band started playing. The music was something out of normalcy, too, as it was a mix between punk-rock, rap and psychedelic; but at least they were pseudo-harmonic sounds turned into music. Maybe you just had to be incredibly high to find the sense in all of it.

Joe opened the recently arrived bottle of beer with a quick pull.

"So, Lauren…" He said, serving the liquid in the glasses Caroline continued to hand him, "What does a person like you think of what we've just seen?"

Lauren first raised her eyebrows in surprise because she wasn't expecting it. If she was being honest, it wasn't completely bad because the people did have talent and she couldn't deny it; besides, she had seen worst at high school plays and amateurs' debuts, and she had definitely heard worse music; but it just would never be her style enough to enjoy it.

"I'm interested." She finally let out, which wasn't a lie.

Joe held a laugh. "That's it?"

"Jo." Darren warned, looking at him seriously, but the guy shrugged to defend himself.

"What? I'm just doing a completely professional question, nothing else. Since we're all supposedly artists in this table."

Rachel saved the moment, "Are we sure this would be considered art? It's certainly not very aesthetic."

"Not for the academia, that's for sure, but unconventional art is art. Come on, what year is it already?" Brian said, slightly exasperated.

"How do you define art, then?" Rachel snapped, looking at him. "You gotta have some aesthetic standards."

"By beauty." Brian sentenced, and the girl just snorted in response.

"Right."

"Did the chubby guy seem beautiful to you?" Jeff messed with him.

"Beauty is subjective."

"As subjective as growing up in this century, raised since the womb around occidental standards can be." Darren added, before lightning a cigar.

"Okay, then expression." Brian threw, almost at hit-or-miss. "As long as there's public, it's always trying to say something, even if it's being throw balloons of painting meanwhile or whatever."

"Then how do you explain absurdism?"

"Expressing nothing it's expressing something."

Darren made a pause, like if he was waiting for something else, before he finally threw a sarcastic "That's really your answer?"

"I think it's about control." Lauren said, who had stayed quiet for a while, listening carefully to the conversation but in parallel maintaining another dialogue with herself. "As Brian said, it's a performance and it's always about controlling the reaction of the public eye. And as you do that, you gotta control what you feel and want you want them to feel."

"What control there is in someone yelling into a microphone for thirty seconds while being thrown painting? Which must've hurt, by the way." Joe defiantly asked to her.

"Patheticism is a way of self-destruction for the eye of the other. And destruction is always a form of control."

There was a moment of silence in the table, like if no one really knew what to say to that or didn't want to say it, before Darren announced proudly:

"You killed it," And then leaned to kiss her.

Everybody laughed then, letting the tension out –at least, almost everyone.

"That was messed up." Brian said, as if the truth lastly hit him, "Now I can finally see why you two are together."

Joe whispered something in the red-haired girl's ear, and they announced they were taking off. Lauren pressed tightly her lips together as the new couple leaved the pub very touchy and close to each other.

"Not over it?" Darren whispered.

"Not over it." She replied, rolling her eyes.

Rachel noted the tension in the table, "Why don't we go to The Hole to finish this?" She suggested, and then added looking at the stage, with a roll of her eyes "They've got like five songs anyway."

They rode to the bridge of the race circuit and finished the beer sitting in the cement railing. The night was quiet and calm, and they enjoyed it there, looking at nowhere in particular and talking and laughing about the performances. Darren made quite an accurate though mean impression of slam poetry about Mrs. Wood's classes, and everyone couldn't just not clap at his talent while whipping the tears from laughing so hard.

A few minutes later, Jeff was making Brian listen to a song on his cell phone; Lauren saw them singularly intimate that night, as if they didn't really noticed everyone else most of the time, in a such a way she could not help but to be suspicious. Darren had walked away to have another cigar without throwing the smoke into their faces, so she was let alone with Rachel, who looked at her.

"I think I've advised you horrifyingly the other night." She confessed. "I apologize, I hardly ever get it this wrong."

Lauren laughed and shook her head, "You couldn't know. Nobody could."

Rachel nodded in agreement, although she seemed meditative. She took a moment before saying, "He's really not that bad, you know? Joe. It's just what he does, and he messes up, occasionally. He puts his dick somewhere he shouldn't."

Lauren hadn't laughed so hard in a while. When she finished, she spoke staring at the purple in the tip of her fingers.

"It's just that he's, like, Darren's best friend. I need to tolerate him, and I can't if I see him all day and he gets on my nerves."

Rachel looked at her for a while. She was sitting on the cement railing, and Lauren had placed her arms on the surface, next to her, to rest her weight against it.

"Did Darren tell you what happened in freshman year?"

Lauren looked down for a bit, again, as she nodded. The fresh wind was getting her face cold, and she was sure her nose and cheeks were getting a bit red already. "Yeah, he did tell me."

Rachel drank the last traces of alcohol in the bottle before placing it again on the railing.

"When we used to ride so much to New York, most of us had someone to hook up with there. Joe started kind of dating Michael Perkins' sister, and as him and Darren were so close they were the ones that spent time with Michael the most. They became like, genuinely close, and Joe was falling in love with the girl. One time, when he was staying there at their house, Michael got really pissed about something that happened at the club, and after a tense discussion he… raised his hand to her sister." Rachel explained, hoping Lauren would catch the expression. "Joe saw it and he lost his mind. He started hitting him, and he was so pissed he couldn't stop, and someone had to interfere afterwards. Michael's face was a mess. And obviously, you can imagine how angry he was. He was the one who told the headmaster of Michigan's uni, I can suppose, about what we were doing in the university; and everything was over then. Joe was a mess because he knew it was his fault. I thought it was so unfair… so I lied and let them blame me."

"I can't believe you did that for him." Lauren admitted, feeling a sudden respect because she didn't think she was capable of doing something like that for anyone.

"I didn't care as much as I knew he would, and… I don't know." Rachel shook her head, looking away, as if the memories were still fresh and complicated to expose. "My point is that sometimes Joe can seem a dickhead, but he's got a reason to act the way he does. With this girl, he still has a box full of photos of them somewhere in his room. Trust me, pretty romantic deep at heart."

Lauren found it so hard to believe, but it was difficult to dismiss the tone in Rachel's voice and the way she told her perspective of the story.

"Darren didn't tell me that." She finally said, quietly.

"I don't think he knows." Rachel commented, rubbing her hands against her jeans to warm them up. "They used to be so protective about each other, that Joe knew he'd do something about it if he found out, and the danger it'd imply. Which… didn't turn out well whatsoever, but how could he know?"

Her tone was sort of bittersweet, and Lauren felt she should say something, but she didn't know what.

Darren had walked back, cigar finished and with eyes very tiny.

"Jeff and Brian are officially ignoring us, I'm fucking cold and there's no more beer. I think it's time to go home." He suggested, a hand on Lauren's waist.

"Yeah," Rachel agreed, jumping from the railing, "It was an intellectually exhausting night." She made a sign to Brian and Jeff, "See you tomorrow, guys."

"Come on," Darren called her as he walked to the bike parked at the side of the street, "I'll take you home."

Lauren nodded, before climbing behind him. Her hands crept under Darren's jacket and she tucked her nose on the back of his head, hoping his wild hair could partly prevent more of that cold wind on her face once he speeded up. She was cold enough already, and she wasn't that surprised to feel Darren wasn't much warmer.

"Shit, I hope there's not a storm coming." Darren claimed, noticing the strange temper of nature as well. "We've got the race tomorrow."

Lauren insisted to have him get a coffee at her house to stand the cold, despite there was another completely different reason she wanted for them to be alone. She couldn't handle keeping the words inside of her any longer. So she prepared two cups and handed one to Darren, who was sitting comfortably on her couch.

"Darren," Lauren said, kinda frightened to ask, while she ordered the things she had moved in the kitchen, "What do Brian and Jeff do when they leave together?"

He observed her with a raised eyebrow, "I don't think you really wanna know."

She knew it, but only then she could realize how naïve was to not have noticed so long before.

She stirred the liquid with a spoon before leaving it on the coffee table and sitting down next to him. "Did you always know about them?"

"Everyone's known since forever." Darren explained, and took a few sips, like if it wasn't really that big of deal.

"Are they… dating?"

Darren held a laugh, "God, no. They're just friends that occasionally have sex, that's all."

She raised her eyebrows, curious. "I don't think I could ever do that."

Darren seemed kind of like he wasn't one hundred percent comfortable having that conversation with her, but he couldn't resist to express his opinion neither.

"It's just sex. I mean, for some people –it's just not something deep or important. Just… sex. I think it can work, with the right people."

Lauren looked at him, the hand holding the cup slightly trembling. "Have you ever had a friendship like that?"

Darren frowned, trying to decode her expression before saying, "Why are you asking me that?"

She shrugged, trying to pretend casualty, "Curiosity."

Lie.

Darren's lips bent a tad, "I did, but that was a long time ago."

If he hadn't mentioned a name it was clear he didn't want to tell her, and that only made her more curious. Was it Rachel? Anyone else could mistake them for a couple, being so similar and tight, and the girl just understood anyone in a way she could never, and that's something Darren needed so much. What about Joe? Their relationship was so messy and complicated that it just made sense.

"You have nothing to worry about." Darren added sweetly, noticing the troubling expression on her face, and halting her line of thought all of sudden. He gave her a soft kiss, but Lauren's hand cut it off quickly. That had given her a perfect entrance.

"Actually… I've got something to tell you."

Darren couldn't help but to feel anxious at the solely mention of that phrase.

Lauren first drank a few sips of the hot coffee and leaved the cup on the table. She pressed her lips together, breathing in and taking courage before continuing. "About the other night. I wasn't being completely honest." She explained, trying to hold his gaze as long as it was possible, but it was freaking hard. "I've actually never had sex before."

Darren let a bit of air out in what it seemed a laugh, but it wasn't a laugh, because he was far from being something similar to amused. "What are you talking about? You said…"

Lauren interrupted him, but the words out loud never sound as kind as they did when she rehearsed them in her head.

"I know. I know what I said. I lied because… I got scared. People usually make such a big deal of it, and I freaked out for a moment."

Darren leaved the half-empty cup of coffee on the table as well. His tone was very severe and anyone could've noticed he felt offended. "So you just lied to me, right in front of my face?"

"I'm sorry, Darren, but I had my reasons."

She wished she could explain it differently. She wished he could get inside of her skin, and know everything and feel everything and just accept her confession without changing a single thing, because things were perfect, but the guilt and fear in her throat were keeping her awake at night and if everything stood as she claimed so, it shouldn't be that way.

Darren ran a hand through his hair, remembering all the things he's said and done in the past weeks and he probably shouldn't have to someone who's never had sex. "I can't believe… I acted so fucking out of place, and you let me do it. I shouldn't have –shit, Lauren. This changes everything. Why can't you be straight with me once and for all?"

He seemed deeply conflicted, and Lauren realized in that exact moment two things that hurt inside in places you can't delimit: He wouldn't get it, and she couldn't explain it.

"You just said right now it's just sex. It doesn't change anything."

Darren's voice got louder, and she didn't know if he was standing up because he was leaving or because the energy of his rage was bigger than his body. "Yes, it does! It does, because you're inexperienced and you don't know what you want. I don't want to… hurt you, or make you regret anything."

Lauren stood up as well, giving a step to find his eyes again. "Then just don't hurt me or make me regret it!"

Darren shook his head, looking deeply disappointed, "You don't understand."

She breathed out. "I understand you're acting exactly the way I didn't want you to."

There was a pause so quiet and long she felt it'd kill her. Then Darren turned around, as she sensed he'd for a while, but she didn't want him to, and she didn't find the way to ask him not to. What'd she say if he stayed, anyway?

"You know what? If you understand yourself so well, as I'll never be able to, then I'll just leave you alone." Darren said calmly, disappearing behind a slamming door.

Lauren's room's door slammed in the exact same way fifteen seconds later. The coffee in the table got cold, and neither of them felt warm anyway.

"How was last night?" Rick asked, trying to seem casual while sitting at the edge of the table, but he knew what the question implied since the start.

"Mm. It was okay." Darren simply answered, not paying much attention to him. "We left early anyways. I sent you a text inviting you to go with us."

"I know, but…"

"Rachel's boyfriend wasn't even with us, you know." He harshly explained. "It could've been a good chance for you."

"Still." Rick looked mildly upset. "Things have turned out… too complicated for me."

"But I saw you sucking her face like a vacuum cleaner the night of my birthday." Darren's eyebrows raised in disregard.

Rick shook his head, disappointed.

"Exactly. That night, you know what she said to me? We should do this more often. She said we should do it more often, like… I don't wanna be another one of her lame hookups. I don't wanna be casual. But what else is kept or me, to fight with her boyfriend? I don't know. It's messed up."

Darren snorted.

"God, Rick. I fucking tried to make it work for you so hard."

He was more than aware of it. "I know, it's not that I'm not interested, but…"

"You know what you need to do? Get in a fucking real race. I'll sign you up for the third one. Like, man up, I've been listening to your weeping for how long already? You need to feel something. Fucking live." Darren's statement came off abruptly tough and he knew it, but Rick should've guessed since his first cold answer that he wasn't in the mood to hear any of that.

"Dude, I'm not sure…"

Darren didn't look at him. "Yes, you are. And as you can tell, I'm fucking busy right now."

Somebody bet twenty five dollars on Rachel, as Rick turned around and left. He wrote the bet down on a pad, the letters underlining thickly from the strength he pressed the pen against the paper.

Joey looked at him, kind of startled. "Hey. You okay?"

Darren let out a sigh, making an effort into relaxing the tense muscles of his face and shoulders. He had been in the worst mood all day, and that minor dispute worked to burst the irritability inside of him.

"Lauren and I had a fight." He finally said. He hadn't talked about it with anyone, and he didn't plan to. She had called him once that afternoon, but he wasn't in the mood to apologize about anything yet, and he knew how high the chances were that he'd say something worse over the phone, so he took the smart decision of ignoring the call, and she didn't insist anymore.

"I think she's around here with that ginger girl." Joey commented, looking around but without much luck for the moment.

"I'm not ready to see her right now." Darren just said coldly.

Joey got the cue, and he didn't insist either.

The first two races went pretty good, unexpectedly more exciting than what he expected. Darren sat in their ice containers with Joe, and just enjoyed the night as a simple spectator. At some point during the first half hour, Caroline had approached Joe to greet him with an unwanted long snog he didn't want to be an spectator of, and when he stood up to avoid watching it he saw Lauren had come along with her friend.

He didn't know what to say and, luckily, she talked first.

"Hey, can I talk to you later?" She asked sweetly, and Darren hated himself because since he heard her voice and stared into the brown of her eyes, he was already willing to do and say what it was necessary so they could be okay again.

"Yeah." He replied after a moment, "Of course."

She grinned scarcely and nodded before walking away with Julia and Dylan, who were chatting without playing much attention to the races.

The third one was beginning, so Darren walked to the starting line where Rachel, Rick and other three competitors were gearing up. He tried to make eye contact with Rick to give him some courage, since he acted like an asshole to him, but the brunette's gaze was focused completely in the horizon, where he'd soon direct to.

Jim counted down to one with his loud, grim voice, then the air gun was shot into the air, and the engines became so deafening that the screaming of the people sounded distant despite they were all around him; and he was in the center of that sturdy and strenuous mass of people.

It all happened in the first minute. The longest minute of his entire life.

The five motorbikes contested for taking the lead in that first straight line, and the struggle was nail-biting since the minor obstacle could cause any of them to slow down a bit and get way behind the others, making it difficult to catch them later, unless they had a difficulty later on. Rachel took the lead with a visible difference, a guy he didn't know behind her, and almost at the same position Rick was following them, the other two guys a bit behind. It was clear Rick had gotten much better, or he'd be losing the others' track right since the start.

Then they came across their first turn, so everyone slowed down a little bit to cross it. There was a lurid clatter that sounded like glasses breaking and things falling and tearing apart at the same time, and the screams of the people near that curve filled absolutely everything for ten seconds before they turned into whispers and talking spreading through the crowd.

Darren felt nothing but a huge lump in his throat before running towards the curve. He had never run so hard and fast in his entire life, but he knew he had to get there, right then, before it was too late.

There was a big crowd of people around the bike when he got there, but they were just whispering and looking at the mess in the floor without doing a thing to help.

"Move, move, move!" He yelled as he pushed them to get to Rick. Rachel had come back when she noticed somebody had an accident, and she was climbing off the bike to see what was going on. The other two guys behind Rick did it too.

Darren passed the motorbike lying on the floor, and the glass and plastic scattered all around it, the materials crushing under his feet. He felt clumsy despite he was walking in a straight line. Rick was lying on his back, near the edge of the street, so fucking away from his bike; his head was facing towards the lane, and he wasn't moving.

He fell on his knees next to him, before holding his face with trembling hands and slightly moving it to look at it. Brian and the rest of the group got there behind him a few seconds after he did.

Rick's eyes were closed, just like if he was asleep.

"Don't move him, Darren! Don't move him!" Brian was screaming as he got on his knees too, at the other side of Rick.

Brian was just as freaked out as him, but he gathered some sanity to grab Rick's wrist and look for his pulse. Darren stared at him, not moving, almost not breathing, as he did. Brian gulped, and looked then for the pulse on his neck. Come on, Brian, say something, Darren thought. He remembered that time when Jim had an accident and he knew exactly what to do, practically saving his life. He had to know what to do this time, too.

Lauren was calling 911 on her phone, somewhere near him. Rachel had already started crying as Joe held her, his eyes fixed on Rick.

Brian sat down on the cold cement, almost throwing himself there, his hands covering his mouth and with teary eyes and Darren would not allow himself to believe it.

"Come on, Brian! Do something! Please! You gotta do something now!"

He could never forget the tone as Brian said it, almost in slow motion, the people around them becoming static as their voices turned into a never ending ringing he wanted to cut off like a band aid.

"He's gone."

"No. Brian, come on. Do something." His pleading didn't come from a rational place, because he didn't want to be rational, and nothing about this could make sense. His hands had clutched in Rick's shirt, reliably leaving marks on his skin. "Brian, come on. There must be something you can do. Brian… Please…"

Darren's voice was breaking and there was nothing that could send it firm again.

Brian looked at him in the eye, his hands fell on his lap, and he was crying uncontrollably as he said:

"I –I can't."

Darren couldn't recall for how long he kept repeating the same words, begging him to do something –anything, and shaking his head and saying no over and over because nothing in that situation was real, and holding Rick's face as his warm blood slid through the cement under his jeans, and Brian, do something...

Everything around him became a blur, and none of the voices were talking in a language he could understand, and he couldn't breathe and Brian was crying in front of him and there must be something he can do because he saved Jim the last time and…

A siren sounded in the far distance and the curious eyes of everyone around them disappeared in the matter of two minutes, as they always did. People simultaneously whispered and screamed, they pushed and found each other, but everyone ran away until it was calm and their quiet sobs were the only sound in miles.

Jeff helped Brian to stand up.

"We gotta go." He said softly, weakly, and Brian looked at him with the face of someone who knows it's the truth and doesn't want it. "You know we gotta." He looked at the group around them. The siren sounded dangerously nearer. "I don't want to, but we all know who is going to be blamed for this."

"How can you say that?" Rachel screamed in the middle of what used to be a sob, and she let the words out with such anger she shook in Joe's arms. "I don't care! They can take me to jail right now if they want to."

Jeff gave a few steps to face her. His voice was severe as it wasn't usual in him when he said, "No, you know who is going to be blamed for this if we're all here."

He glanced at Darren, who was absent, still there on his knees, holding Rick's shirt.

Joe gulped, closing his eyes for a bit. "It's true."

Rachel looked at him, speechless, before pulling away. She walked away from them to avoid looking at the scene she knew was approaching, and she hid her face with her hands, sobbing quietly.

Nobody said anything for a moment, until Joe placed a hand in Darren's shoulder.

"Darren." He called, sort of sweetly, maybe too sweetly. "We gotta go."

He didn't even seem to be listening. His gaze was lost somewhere else in Rick's shirt.

Joe continued. "You know you're the last person who should be here, and everything is going to blow up on your face. We can't do anything anymore. You can't do anything. Please, let's just leave."

Darren snorted a laugh before looking into Joe's watery eyes.

"I'm not leaving." He merely said firmly, like if he wasn't there, bending into a dead body that kept bleeding underneath him.

"You're not thinking straight right now."

"I'm not gonna leave him here, like a fucking nobody, okay?!"

Joe's arm was violently slammed off. He stepped back. He knew he had lost him, the hysteria was talking through him, and trying to get some sense into him was in vain.

Lauren walked to Joe, "You can leave." She said. "I think I got this. I'm gonna make something up. And I'll talk him into it. Don't worry about it."

Joe looked at her for a while, and she could see the misgiving on his eyes. But he finally nodded before Rachel pulled from her arm, and everyone disappeared within thirty seconds. Lauren breathed in as she gave a step into Rick's blood, feeling she could scream as she sensed the dense red liquid mildly spreading away around her feet, and she walked next to Darren.

She put a hand on his shoulder with a gentle touch, as Joe did before; then she did the same with the other hand, trying to face him, but it felt like if Darren wasn't even there.

"Honey, look at me." She called, getting no answer at first. "Look at me." She repeated, gulping heavily before talking when Darren finally obeyed her. "You can't stay here. You got to go home. I'll take care of this. I'll stay with him, and I'll make something up. I'm gonna make sure they know who he is and they call his family, okay? He's not gonna be alone. I promise."

Darren shook his head, but she noted he was giving in.

"Trust me, please."

The siren sounded dangerously near, and Lauren pulled from him to make him stand up. He was like a dead weight, moving passively around but without the will to take a decision. But when she pushed him slightly and yelled go, he walked backwards for a bit, with an emotionless expression, before turning around and running to get his bike.

Lauren looked up to the sky, breathing in and out for a while as the sirens got closer, and trying to distract herself with anything that wasn't looking down, at her shoes splashed with blood.