Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Johnny knows the second his fingers leave the handlebars that this one’s going to be bad. Really bad. He knows it, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t even have time to brace for impact.

The tree breaks under his weight when he hits it.

The rocks don’t.

The water rushes up to meet him, flooding his helmet, rushing up his nose and down his throat, and all he can think is get out, get out, get out. He breaks the surface, throwing his helmet to the side as he drags himself onto the wet shore with fistfuls of grass. And that’s when he knows he was right—it’s bad.

A bright burst of pain knocks a grunt from between his clenched teeth. There’s something wrong with his left leg; it hurts like hell, and he can’t move it. His toes tingle, and something pops and grinds as he rolls over onto his right side, but he manages to grab his gun.

Bodhi’s climbing out on the other side, dragging his helmet off his head. His lips start moving, but Johnny has a hard time hearing him over his own blood roaring in his ears. They ring. They pound. Fuck.

“—we knew you were a cop.”

His hands shake around the gun. He’s not sure he could hit Bodhi if he tried. “Then why’d you let me in?” he shouts. The air it takes makes him lightheaded, but he keeps Bodhi in his sights. He can’t let this go. He can’t let him go.

But then Bodhi gets this look in his eyes. It should be angry, but instead it’s … sad. Open and honest and brutally sad. “Because I thought I could save you.”

It hits Johnny like a kick in the gut. The way Bodhi looks at him—the way he keeps looking at him. It’s not anger, it’s not betrayal, it’s something worse. It’s loss. Johnny has a hard time sucking enough air in his lungs; it’s like someone’s got them in their hand and they just keep squeezing. His heart hurts, and he thinks that’s kind of funny, because it’s the one part of him that didn’t bounce off a fucking rock.

When Bodhi turns, Johnny puts his finger on the trigger.

He should do it. He doesn’t have to kill him. He could wing him—slow him down enough to take him in, and it would all be over. He’d have done his job. Earned the badge they keep holding over his head like a piece of bacon for a hungry dog. All he has to do is squeeze the trigger.

He can’t do it.

With a shout, he turns the gun on the sky and empties his clip. It should be easy. Squeeze, bang. Squeeze, bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bodhi’s bike revs, and Johnny loses the sound to the ringing in his own ears as he falls back into the grass.

It hurts worse on his back. It’s like there’s a rock tied around his left ankle, dragging it downstream. He can’t feel his toes anymore, but he feels everything else. Bodhi’s bike is disappearing into the woods, and Johnny can’t even get up. When he tries, the pain makes his vision go white.

When it clears, Bodhi’s already out of sight.

He lets his head drop to the grass, chest heaving, leg throbbing. His fingers dig into his left thigh, trying to squeeze the ice picks out of his bones, but it doesn’t work. The pain’s getting worse, shooting up his back and down his leg. He realizes he can’t hear Bodhi’s bike anymore, and it strikes him with the weirdest urge to cry. He hasn’t cried in seven years, but it’s there, bubbling in the back of his throat like vomit. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this.

Get the fuck over it, says a voice in the back of his head. It sounds like too many people. His dad. His little league baseball coach. His FBI instructor. Get off your ass and do your job. And he tries. He really fucking tries, but he barely makes it up onto his elbows before his stomach rolls and he spits puke onto the grass beside him. It tastes like stomach acid.

He’s almost gathered up the nerve to try again when he hears something. A buzz. A roar. He knows that sound like he knows his own heartbeat—the whirr of a bike engine. And it’s getting louder.

It’s hard to say how much time passes before Bodhi appears. Johnny’s having trouble keeping track of the seconds now. His heart’s beating too fast, and it just beats faster when Bodhi drops the bike and his helmet against a rock and comes stalking across the river. His boots make big splashes in the water, and his face is set like a stone.

“Shit!” He feels around the dirt for his gun, but it’s useless. He emptied the clip. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. But Bodhi’s almost on him, so he raises the gun anyway.

Bodhi knocks it aside like a toy, and when Johnny tries to grab his jacket, he knocks his hands away too. Johnny goes for a right cross, but Bodhi’s hands clamp around his wrists like fucking bear traps, and Johnny can’t seem to work up enough muscle to pull them free.

“Easy, Utah,” Bodhi says, face still hard but neutral. “I didn’t come back here to hurt you.” But he still hasn’t let go of Johnny’s wrists. He holds them tightly—not so tightly that it hurts, but enough that Johnny knows it could. If Bodhi wanted it to, it could.

Johnny keeps trying anyway; it’s just who he is. Another futile jerk of his wrists, but all it does is jar his leg, and his vision flashes white again. When he speaks, it’s through a wall of teeth ground so hard together he thinks he can hear them cracking. “Then why the hell did you come back?”

It doesn’t make sense. He could’ve gotten away. Him, Grommet, and Roach. They could’ve made their getaway and moved onto the next trial without anybody stopping them. They could’ve left him behind in the fucking forest, and he wouldn’t have blamed them. He’d lied to them. He’d betrayed their trust. They were criminals, but when Johnny remembers the way Bodhi looked at him on the road, he feels like something worse.

Bodhi’s grip tightens briefly around Johnny’s wrists. “I guess I’m not done trying to save you yet.”

That shouldn’t make Johnny hopeful, but it does. He lets himself hold onto that feeling—a flicker of good in the sea of awful hammering him like a rogue wave. Slowly, Bodhi’s hands fall away from his wrists, and Johnny doesn’t have the strength to hold his arms up anymore.

“Where are you hurt?” Bodhi asks. Not, Are you hurt? Bodhi knows. Bodhi always fucking knows, like he’s tuned into the world in a way nobody else is. Or maybe Johnny’s poker face just isn’t what he thought it was. “I need the truth, Utah. You do remember what that is, don’t you?”

Ouch. But Johnny deserved that. He deserves more. His head falls back against the grass again. “My leg,” he says, because he doesn’t see the point in bullshitting him. He’d know the second Johnny tried to get up that anything else was a lie, and Johnny doesn’t want to lie anymore. He’s never been very good at it. It doesn’t ever sit right. “Left one. Can’t move it much, and I—I can’t really feel my foot.” And shit, that’s not good, is it? That’s not good at all. Fuck. His head swims a little. Is he bleeding? His fingers feel warm where he holds his leg. They’re about the only part of him that’s warm.

Bodhi’s brows furrow, and he gets those little lines on his forehead like he gets when he’s really focusing. He stands, stepping over Johnny and kneeling on his other side, near Johnny’s waist. He shrugs out of his jacket.

“What are you doing?”

Instead of an answer, Bodhi threads his hand backward through the sleeve of the jacket and grabs Johnny’s wrist. A quick tug, and Bodhi’s jacket is suddenly Johnny’s jacket—halfway, at least. He gets the point and helps on the second arm.

“You’re going into shock,” Bodhi says matter-of-factly. His voice is calm, but his eyes are a storm like Johnny’s never seen. He must look confused, because Bodhi adds, “The shivering. It’s not that cold.”

It feels that cold, but Johnny doesn’t argue. He realizes after a second that it would prove Bodhi’s point, anyway. The thought takes longer than it should’ve to come together, and so does the one after it, and the one after that. It’s not like a high or a buzz; it’s like he’s waist-deep in quick sand, clinging to the surface.

Bodhi rucks up his shirt a little, and Johnny’s about to ask what he’s doing again, before the pressure of Bodhi’s hands on his side kills the words on his tongue. He doesn’t mean to cry out, but he doesn’t have a chance to stop it. The pain flares suddenly under Bodhi’s hand, and he knows it’s not right. Something’s really not right.

Bodhi shushes him—honest to fucking God shushes him, like he’s a little kid with a scraped knee—and keeps right on pressing. When Johnny grabs his wrists, he finally looks up, dark eyes sharp and clouded over at the same time.

“I think it’s dislocated,” he says, turning his hands over so he can curl his fingers around Johnny’s wrists. He squeezes gently, and Johnny feels himself letting go a finger at a time. “I can’t set it here, but if you can make it to the road with me, there’s a truck waiting. We’ll take care of you. Can you do it?”

Johnny should radio in to Pappas. They can get him out of there, get him to the hospital. That’s the smart move, and he knows it, but the knowledge is someplace far away. Not like Bodhi. Bodhi’s there. He’s close. He’s got one hand on Johnny’s wrist, and the other curls around the back of his neck, and his hands are warm. Johnny doesn’t remember him taking off his gloves.

“Utah, hey.” Bodhi whistles sharply. “Can you do it?” 

He finds himself nodding. He’ll make it. He doesn’t know how, but he will. 

Bodhi smiles. It’s a small smile, strained, but it’s there nonetheless. It doesn’t last as long as Johnny would like. “This cut is deep,” Bodhi says, one hand drifting over the side of Johnny’s hip—not quite touching, but close. Johnny grits his teeth, waiting for the pain to come. “I need to slow the bleeding down before we move. It’s going to hurt.”

“Just do it,” Johnny says, then he presses his lips in a tight line. He can take it. He can take it. He can take it.

Bodhi tugs the belt out of Johnny’s jeans and tears part of the sleeve off his shirt. Every movement is quick, methodical. He barely jostles Johnny at all when he slides the belt under the small of his back, though even the smallest bump sharpens the pain. There are knives in his side. Dozens of them, and they’re carving away at him. He feels vomit in the back of his throat again.

“Breathe, Utah. Slow and deep.” Bodhi’s nostrils flare as he guides Johnny through the breath. “In and out.” He doesn’t warn Johnny before he presses the shirt over the gash on Johnny’s side, nor does he say anything before he pulls the belt tight over it.

Johnny barely manages to smother a scream behind his teeth. I can do this is turning into Please don’t make me do this too fucking fast, but Johnny knows it isn’t over yet. He still has to get to the road, and it’s fucking ridiculous, because he can’t even stand. Just thinking about it makes his stomach churn again. He’s going to puke. Maybe not now, but he knows it’s coming. He feels it in the back of his throat.

Bodhi finishes securing the belt, then he’s back at Johnny’s face, a hand on his jaw. “Still with me?” he asks.

Johnny doesn’t trust his voice, but he manages to nod. His head spins, and when he blinks, the world is starting to tilt. He barely notices Bodhi grabbing his arm. All he knows is that he’s moving suddenly, and it feels like someone took a ball peen hammer to the socket of his hip. Pop. Snap. Crack. And that’s it—that’s his limit.

His eyes roll back into his head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His eyes peel open on their own.

He’s staring at some kind of roof. Metal. Dented. He’s in a car, but it’s kind of like a dream—he doesn’t remember how he got there; he just suddenly is.

Stuff whips by in the corners of his eyes. A wash of blues and greens, muted by the fog on the windows. Trees. Mountains. Rocks. He can’t focus on it. Can’t focus on anything, and when he tries, he hits a wall of pain that drives him back into the murkiness. It doesn’t hurt there.

His head is lying on something soft. It moves up and down, up and down, up and down. The rhythm is slow and calming, almost as much as the fingers carding through his hair. The soft something isn’t a thing at all, he realizes. It’s a person, breathing. A person who smells like river water and sweat and some kind of spice, and he’s speaking Spanish in a low voice to the people in the front seat of the car.

He thinks he might groan, but he’s not sure. The pain is catching up to him, creeping in slowly, sinking its teeth into his bones. Fuck, but it’s vicious. It makes it hard to breathe.

Those fingers in his hair keep their steady rhythm. “Hold on, Utah. We’re almost there.” And when Bodhi says it, Johnny knows it’s true. Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. He doesn’t know where there is. He doesn’t even know where he is. But if Bodhi says it, it has to be true. It just has to be.

They hit a bump in the road, and the world goes dark again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This time, they’re on a dock. He smells the fish and the saltwater. He’s not in a car anymore; the movement’s all wrong. Not too rough, but his feet go up when his head goes down, and vice versa. Up and down. Up and down. It’s just a couple of inches, but he feels like a soda can that’s been shaken up too many times.

A stretcher. He’s on a stretcher. He looks down at his feet, sees thick mounds of blankets piled up over him and a bare toe. He tries to wiggle it. It won’t move, and the tingling running up and down his nerves turns into something too much like ground up glass. A startled sound tries to crawl up the back of his throat, but he’s not sure it makes it out.

“Roach, the blanket,” Bodhi says from somewhere behind him. He’s holding one end of the stretcher, at Johnny’s head. Grommet must have the other. Roach appears in his periphery, tugging the corner of the blanket down over his foot. He touches Johnny’s arm before he pulls away, wordless but reluctantly reassuring, and Johnny’s head falls back against the stretcher.

The sky is really blue.

They carry him onto a boat. A big boat. He recognizes the gentle rock, a counterpoint to the movement of the stretcher, as they carry him through a set of doors. The sky’s gone, replaced by bright lights that sting his eyes. Another door, narrower this time. The stretcher knocks the side of the door, and Bodhi swears behind him.

Suddenly, everything is moving. He’s turned over on the stretcher, and fuck, his vision whites out again. He buries a shout in the pillow that’s suddenly there by his head, and there are hands grabbing all over him. When they pull him over onto his back again, it’s onto something softer. A bed. He’s on a bed on a boat in who the fuck knows where, with a hip out of place and too little air in his lungs. Broken rib? Two?

“He’s lost a lot of blood.” Grommet.

“He’s too pale.” Roach.

Which leaves, “Bodhi?” He opens his eyes, but the light’s too bright.

“I’m going to start a line and give him something for the pain.” Johnny doesn’t recognize that voice. French accent. Man. Sounds older. After a second, there’s a pinch in his elbow.

Johnny looks to see what’s going on, but then Bodhi appears. He leans over the bed, hair hanging in his face as something warm spreads up Johnny’s arm and into his body. He’s been hurt enough times to recognize what morphine feels like when it’s spreading through his veins.

It works fast. Seconds? Minutes? His eyes start feeling heavy, and it’s harder to make them focus on the hard lines of Bodhi’s face. And then he can’t see them at all. A warm hand covers his eyes, not pressing, just resting there. The dark calms something restless in his chest.

“Close your eyes, Utah,” Bodhi says. He sounds so close. His voice fills the space around Johnny, the void, and he feels so much warmer. “Don’t fight it. It’s time for you to sleep.”

And Johnny thinks he might be right about that. He might be right about a lot of things.

He sleeps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He dreams about dark eyes and a plateau in the desert, and he wakes up screaming.

He’s confused. Disoriented. One second, he was standing on a mountain, and now he isn’t. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there; all he knows is that he’s never been in that kind of pain before. It shoots up his spine and down his leg, like hot pokers stabbing straight to his bones.

People are talking. Shouting. A stranger’s voice says to hold him down, keep him still, and his arm starts to burn. When he opens his eyes, the light sears everything into vague shapes and shadows. There’s a face he doesn’t recognize. Not Roach, not Grommet, not Bodhi. Not anybody it should be. He’s old and heavy, with big-ass glasses, and his mouth is moving out of time with the sounds. Who is he? Who the hell is he, and why the hell is he there? Except Johnny doesn’t even know where there is, and nothing makes sense. It just hurts so bad, and he’s freezing, and he can’t get his thoughts together. They just keep floating away, slipping through his fingers when he tries to grab for them.

“—nother dose. It should help him, but we need to get the fever down.”

Suddenly, there are hands on his face. Warm hands. Callused hands. Bodhi’s there, leaning into his space with eyes that are somehow distressed and calm at the same time. It’s not effortless like it usually is; he’s fighting for it.

“Look at—Johnny, look at me. Focus on me.” He’s moving his hand through Johnny’s hair, holding his jaw with the other. Johnny tries to look at the stranger, tries to see what the hell he’s doing and why there’s suddenly a shock of cold under his arm, but Bodhi holds his face straight. “You can’t fight pain, Johnny.” Not Utah. Johnny. “You have to let it come, and you have to let it go. Do you understand? I know it’s hard, but you’re strong enough. You’ll be all right.”

Johnny catches his arm. “I saw you,” he says, gripping as tight as he can.

Bodhi furrows his brows, confused, but he doesn’t say anything.

A familiar warmth spreads from the inside of Johnny’s elbow, but he holds fast. He can’t let go. If he does, Bodhi will fall. He’ll disappear, and Johnny will lose him too, and he can’t let that happen. So he holds on tighter. “You were falling.” His tongue feels heavy. Fuck. His fingers are slipping. He panics. “I can’t—”

Bodhi’s hand closes over Johnny’s. Not hard. Just there, Bodhi’s fingertips curling under Johnny’s. “No-one is falling, Utah,” he says. “You were dreaming, and you’re not ready to wake up yet. So let go.”

But he can’t. Not even for Bodhi. He can’t risk it, can’t watch another person fall. Jeff. Chowder. “No.” He can barely form the word. His tongue sticks to the bottom of his mouth, too heavy and too thick, but he’s stubborn. His mom always said it was the only thing he had going for him. “I won’t.” Won’t let go.

Bodhi smiles one of his barely-there smiles, and he relaxes his grip on Johnny’s hand. “All right,” he says, and that warmth spreads farther. Into his toes. Into his fingers. Into his head. “All right.”

Johnny doesn’t let go, not even when the morphine finally drags him back under.

Chapter Text

Johnny wakes to bright blue ocean and waves cresting just outside a sliding door. He blinks as the sheer curtains rustle, brows furrowing as he tries to put the pieces together. Ocean. Fancy curtains. Silken sheets. The quickening beep of a heart monitor feels strangely out of place.

He reaches up to wipe his eyes—or he tries to, but there’s something on his wrist. He turns his head, and he’s not as surprised as he should be to see Bodhi sitting in a chair beside his bed, head tipped against his shoulder. His fingers curl loosely around Johnny’s wrist, thumb resting over Johnny’s pulse point.

When Johnny lifts his wrist, the grip tightens. Bodhi stirs, head lifting and dark eyes suddenly open and alert. It’s not fair. Johnny still feels like he’s half-drunk and half-hungover. Really, horribly fucking hungover.

“Good morning,” Bodhi says, thumb stroking the soft part of Johnny’s wrist. It shouldn’t be as soothing as it is, but Johnny finds himself staring at the tiny motion. His eyes are still so heavy. It’s hard to make them focus. “How are you feeling?”

Instead of an answer, Johnny starts to push himself up. He barely makes it as far as getting his other hand braced on the mattress before Bodhi’s up out of his seat with a hand on Johnny’s shoulder.

“Not so fast, Utah.” His voice is soft and unhurried, but there’s something underneath that usual calm. It’s stern. Firm. “Give your body a chance to wake up before you try to move. I think you might change your mind.”

At first, Johnny’s not sure what he means. He doesn’t feel anything, which he realizes should be weird, but it’s kind of peripheral. It’s distant. Everything’s fuzzy around the edges, like somebody’s smudged all his lines and stuffed him full of cotton.

But then it hits him.

Fuck, it’s like a wave smashing him into the rocks. His muscles seize up as pain ripples across his nerve endings, and he knows he must be squeezing Bodhi’s hand purple, but Bodhi’s face doesn’t change.

“Breathe, Utah,” Bodhi says. “Breathe through it. You’ll be all right.”

And Johnny knows it’s true. Pain is just pain; he’s been through plenty before, and he can deal with it. He just has to … fuck, he just has to get in the right head space. He sucks in a breath and lets it out. Another. His chest aches, but he feels that desperate, panicky feeling start to recede a little bit. It hurts, but it’s okay. It hurts, but he can take it.

Fuck, it just hurts.

“You’re probably wondering where you are,” Bodhi says out of nowhere. Johnny knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to take Johnny’s mind off of it, and it’s so transparent, but Johnny doesn’t give a damn, because he’ll take the distraction and run with it.

He lets his head drop back against the pillows—and why the hell does he feel so wiped out just from that? He barely moved. “Thought did cross my mind,” he says.

Bodhi smiles. It’s that smile of his that says, You’ve made the right choice, and it shouldn’t make Johnny feel the way it does. A little relieved, a little reassured, a little … well, shit, he doesn’t know what the other thing is, but it settles in a small ball of warmth in the pit of his stomach.

When Bodhi seems satisfied he’s not going to try to get up again, he sits back into his chair. His hand doesn’t leave Johnny’s wrist, though. “We brought you to Al-Fariq’s yacht. He doesn’t ask questions, and he has a personal physician on hand. Very skilled. We use him a lot.”

“French accent?” Johnny asks.

Bodhi nods. “He kept a close eye on you until your fever broke. I’m sure he’ll come soon to change your bandages.”

Johnny grimaces. “Can’t wait.” He isn’t thrilled at the prospect of being poked and prodded. Honestly, he just wants to sleep some more, which is weird. Feels like he’s been sleeping for a year. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days, give or take,” Bodhi replies.

“Shit.” Johnny’s heart lurches. “I need to call in or something. They’ll think—” And oh, fuck, shit, damn, he moved, and he shouldn’t have. His hip seizes up, and it punches all the air out of his lungs.

Bodhi’s on his feet again before Johnny’s vision clears, holding his shoulder with a hand hovering near his hip. “Relax,” he says, smoothing his hand down Johnny’s arm. “Relax and breathe.”

Which is easier said than done, but Johnny does what he’s told. He’s never been one for following leads, but something about Bodhi makes it easier. Makes it natural. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You fractured your hip,” Bodhi replies, expression bland. “Maybe fine isn’t the best word.”

“Fractured?” Shit.

Bodhi squeezes his arm. “It’s a small fracture. The doctor says it should heal on its own, but you will be off your feet for another week, maybe more. Six weeks on crutches to let the bone heal properly, then we get you walking again. You can stay with us while you recover. We’ll take care of you.”

It sounds like an offer, but it feels like a request. Johnny chest feels tight again, and it’s got nothing to do with the bandages. “Why are you doing this?”

“That’s always the question with you,” Bodhi says, a small smile on his lips. “Why, why, why. Is it so hard to let things be what they are? Does everything have to have a reason?”

Johnny stares at him. Hard. His eyes don’t want to focus, but he makes them. “You have a reason.” 

That smile hitches a little higher, and Bodhi’s hand falls away from his arm. “You’re right. Are you going to ask me what it is, now?”

“Would you tell me?” Johnny asks.

Bodhi gets that look in his eyes—the one that makes Johnny feel like he’s staring into the center of the universe. “I will always tell you anything you want to know. All you have to do is ask.”

And Johnny believes it. Damn it, he’d believe anything that came out of Bodhi’s mouth, because he knows it’s the truth. Bodhi’s like the ocean, clear and pure. But Johnny knows he has the power to pull people under—a human force of nature.

He doesn’t ask. Johnny’s not afraid of a lot of things, but there’s some part of him that’s afraid of what Bodhi’s answer might be. He wants to save Johnny.

There are moments when Johnny wants to let him.

“You should eat something,” Bodhi says suddenly. He nods to the IV in Johnny’s elbow. “That shit is bad enough on its own; it’s worse on an empty stomach. Any requests?”

Johnny manages a laugh. “A burger sounds pretty damn good right now.” He’s definitely hungry, and the pain is dull enough that it doesn’t make his stomach churn.

Bodhi chuckles. “Any requests that won’t have you doubled over a bucket? I’m not saying no, but I think you might do better with soup maybe. If not, I’ll hold your hair.”

“Soup’s good, too,” Johnny concedes, if only because he thinks he’s embarrassed himself enough. Fuck. He doesn’t remember much of what happened since he crashed his bike; it comes in flashes or not at all. But he remembers the pain. He remembers screaming, gasping Bodhi’s name, searching him out every time he came to because he needed the grounding. He’s got no right to be here with them, not after what he’s done. What he’s still doing.

If he’s still doing it.

Bodhi clicks his tongue. “You think loudly,” he says. “Stop.”

“Stop thinking?” There’s a hint of a chuckle in his voice, but he doesn’t feel amused. He feels wrung out. The pain’s creeping back in around the edges, sharp and pulsing, and it’s just occurred to him that he’s got nothing but shorts on under those sheets—too loose to be his own.

“Yes,” says Bodhi, and there’s something almost affectionate in the way he brushes Johnny’s hair from his face. “Now’s not the time for thinking. Now’s the time for resting. Healing. And soup.”

Johnny half expects him to leave, then. The food’s not in the bedroom, and Johnny’s hardly going to get up and go fetch it. But instead, Bodhi pulls out his phone and shoots off a quick text.

“What was that?” Johnny asks, brows furrowing. He starts to sit up again, but the pain stops him, and something else. His hip is stiff; doesn’t want to move, and there’s something tight around his waist and thigh. A brace, he realizes as he runs his hand gingerly over the blanket. He feels the thickness of the neoprene, and the hard bar running along the outside. It makes him feel oddly claustrophobic, until he catches Bodhi watching him expectantly and lets his hand fall away. Right. No fiddling with the brace.

Seemingly satisfied, Bodhi tucks his phone back into his pocket. “I think the second I leave you alone, you will do something stupid. Try to get up. Try to leave. Fall flat on your ass.” He shrugs. “Grommet’s bringing you some food.”

“You guys don’t have to wait on me.” He realizes it’s a stupid thing to say, even before the words are done leaving his mouth. The arch of Bodhi’s eyebrow only clenches it. Nothing’s changed in the last few seconds; he still can’t get up and get his own food. Either somebody’s bringing it, or he’s not eating. “Fuck. Never mind,” he mutters.

Bodhi’s hand finds his shoulder again, and he pulls his chair closer to sit in arm’s reach. That’s something Johnny’s not used to: the touching. He’s not really been close enough to anybody for that, not since Jeff, and it’s … it’s been a long seven years.

“We don’t have to do anything,” Bodhi says. “But we want to.”

“To save me?” It comes out sharper than Johnny means it to. He wants to blame it on the ache, and the exhaustion that’s creeping back into his bones. It’s fucking stupid. He’s been awake for all of five minutes, and he feels like he’s just run ten miles uphill.

Bodhi weathers the sharpness with his usual ease. “Not save,” he says thoughtfully. “Save was the wrong word. It’s not for me to save you.” His hand slides down from Johnny’s shoulder to settle at his wrist, and his eyes follow. He stares like there’s something there only he can see, as his thumb finds the soft inner skin of Johnny’s wrist again. “I want to set you free.”

There’s a look in his eyes that Johnny can’t place. There’s that sadness from before, but there’s something else. Something like awe, only Johnny barely recognizes it when it’s aimed his direction. “Free from what?”

“From what?” Bodhi’s gaze sharpens. His jaw clenches visibly, and his grip tightens faintly on Johnny’s wrist. “From everything, Johnny. From the people who think they own you. From every lie you tell yourself as they tighten their collar around your neck. From this fear I see when I look into your eyes.”

Johnny’s chest tightens, and his fists clench at his sides. The beep of the heart monitor quickens, a sharp beat in the quiet room. “I’m not afraid.”

“You are,” says Bodhi, with a kind of certainty that makes Johnny want to break his jaw and beg for explanation all at once. Bodhi’s grip loosens, and his thumb resumes its steady circles on Johnny’s wrist. “But you don’t have to be. Utah, this is what I want for you—what I wanted for you from the moment I saw you on that wave. I’ve seen what you can be without their boot on your throat, and it’s beautiful.” A small, sad smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Is it such a terrible thing, to want more beauty in the world?” And then, softer, “To want to be close to it?”

A knock on the door saves Johnny having to answer, and Bodhi’s quick to drop his hand from Johnny’s wrist and rise to meet Grommet.

“How is he?” he hears Grommet ask Bodhi, and he wants to cut in. He’s right there. He can hear. He can speak. But he can’t help but feel like he’s lost the privilege of talking to them like his friends. Like his brothers. He’s an outsider looking in again, and he wasn’t prepared for how jarring it would feel. For how much it would hurt.

Bodhi glances over his shoulder, as if he really can hear Johnny thinking, and says, “Making progress.” He nods toward the soup. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Grommet casts a glance over Bodhi’s shoulder at Johnny, and for a second, he looks like he wants to say something. But then, after a moment, he turns and leaves the room without a word.

For some reason, Johnny feels like he’s been sucker punched. He sags against his pillows and tries not to let it show on his face how much it fucking stings. He’s got no right to be wounded; he knows that. He played them from the start—but then, they apparently knew he was a cop, so who was playing who? Either way, he’d gone so long without that kind of camaraderie that having it wrenched away like that … maybe he has no right to feel the way he feels, but he still does.

The sound of the tray settling on his bedside table drags him out of his head.

“He blames me, you know,” says Bodhi, apropos of nothing as he grabs a few pillows off the trunk in the corner of the room. “He thinks I pushed you too quickly. That the mine was too much, too early, and you weren’t ready. I’m not too proud to admit he was right.” He frowns and lifts Johnny’s shoulders gently.

Gentle as he is, pain still pushes the breath from Johnny’s lungs. Bodhi barely sits him up a few inches off the bed, and the brace keeps his hip from moving. But he must have bruised his ribs in the crash, because bending at the belly is fucking breathtakingly uncomfortable, and as Bodhi props the pillows under his shoulders and lowers him back down, he tastes stomach acid on the back of his tongue. Fuck, he can’t breathe. He feels sick.

“Easy,” says Bodhi softly, rubbing his shoulder. It’s a warm gesture, an affectionate gesture. Something Jeff used to do, before he—but he and Bodhi aren’t friends. He’s a cop, and Bodhi’s a fucking criminal ringleader, and he shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be there.

Johnny bats his hand away, jerking back. “Stop,” he snaps through his teeth. He needs space. He needs to catch his breath. He needs … he needs … fuck, Bodhi’s still reaching for him. “Just stop!” He tries to sit up; he feels cornered on his back. Laying there, flat and helpless, he feels trapped and claustrophobic, and his chest is too damn tight.

But he can’t sit up. It’s not the pain that stops him, but the brace, wrapped tight around his hips and his thigh, cutting in at his belly where the bruises are throbbing and tender. “Fuck!” He shoves the blankets off; they’re too heavy, scratchy, and they’re in the way. The heart monitor’s racing, but all he can think about is getting the fucking brace off so he can sit up and catch his breath.

Hands seize around his wrists, gripping firm and pushing them away from his brace. “Utah,” he barely hears over the roaring of his blood in his ears. His chest won’t expand. The brace is cutting in too hard, and he’s on his back, and the air’s too thick. “Johnny!”

Those hands go from gripping his wrists to holding his face, forcing his head up until it’s Bodhi he’s looking at, not the bands of black neoprene squeezing his skin. There’s a wheezing, choking sound in the air, like something’s drowning on dry land. Dying. It sounds like it’s dying. It’s not until he feels his teeth click in time with the sound that he realizes it’s him.

“Breathe,” Bodhi’s telling him. His face is out of focus, but there’s genuine concern in his eyes. Black spots blink into Johnny’s eyes.

“Can’t,” Johnny gasps out. “Can’t breathe. Fucking brace—” He reaches for it again, but Bodhi catches his hand again. In his other, he holds Johnny’s chin firmly.

“It’s not the brace.” Bodhi eases him back onto the pillows, and he doesn’t want to go, but he doesn’t have a choice. He’s sapped. No strength to push Bodhi away, no strength to hold himself up. He can’t even get his eyes to focus. Something’s wrong. Everything is wrong, and fuck, it hurts. And for a moment, Johnny’s floating beneath a crushing wave. No air, just a crippling sense that he’s fucked up bad this time before the world starts to darken at the edges. “Johnny, listen to me. My voice, nothing else.” Bodhi presses Johnny’s palm flat to his chest, and Johnny can see that dark shape swimming down to him in the water. “Feel me breathe. Inhale when I do. Exhale when I do. Nothing else.”

Vaguely, Johnny’s aware that he’s shaking. His teeth rattle against each other in his mouth, but he finds himself doing as he’s told. It’s Bodhi. Bodhi says to do it, and he does it, and it’s fucking terrifying how natural it is to follow his lead. Inhale. Exhale. His fingers curl in the softness of Bodhi’s shirt as Bodhi speaks steadily to him. Tells him he’s all right, that he thinks too much and gets caught in his own head. You trap a strong wind in a valley, he says, and it spins itself into a tornado. “Don’t be trapped in here,” Bodhi tells him, thumb brushing his temple gently. “Be in the world. Be here with me. Nothing else, not now.”

He coughs, and it aches, but Bodhi just squeezes his hand and keeps talking until his throat starts to open up again, and his chest doesn’t feel as tight. He still feels wrong, and the pain still turns his stomach—pain or the pain meds or some combination of the two. But he feels a little less like he wants to crawl out of his skin and more like he just wants his skin to stop being so damn loud.

“There you are,” Bodhi says with a soft smile. His fingers brush fully through Johnny’s hair, scraping his scalp lightly. It makes his spine tingle comfortingly. “Just relax. You do too much too fast. Your body isn’t ready yet.”

“Too much?” He still feels winded, and he realizes with a sick twist of his stomach that he’s right where he started. The pillows keep his shoulders off the bed, just enough that he could drink something without choking on it. But that’s it. That’s as far as he made it. Fuck. “Didn’t do a damn thing.”

Bodhi’s chuckle settles like smoke in the air. “No patience.” He shakes his head lightly. “Listen to what your body is telling you.” Leaning in, he tips Johnny’s head back against the pillow and whispers in his ear, “Rest.” And Johnny realizes that he could go to sleep right then, if Bodhi let him. There’s a bowl of soup still steaming on the bedside table that says he probably won’t, but still … he could.

As Bodhi leans back, Johnny notices the dark shadows under his eyes for the first time. His scruff is thicker; his eyes are bloodshot. Three days, he said Johnny had been out. Johnny wonders how many of them Bodhi had spent in that chair by his bed, and the thought is both reassuring and uncomfortable. It’s not supposed to be like this, he thinks. Bodhi’s not supposed to be so fucking human. “This’d be so much easier if you were just an asshole,” he whispers.

It earns a quiet laugh as Bodhi lifts the lid off the soup and tastes it. His nose wrinkles a little, but it must pass muster, because he’s picking it up off the tray. “And if you were just a puppet,” he says, passing Johnny the spoon. It’s clear he plans to hold the bowl, but for now, he at least seems willing to let Johnny feed himself. “But here we are. So eat your soup.”

Chapter Text

After lunch, Johnny dozes a few hours. Not a good doze; the nowhere, nothing kind of doze that comes with heavy medication and serious injuries. It’s broken by half-remembered moments of confused discomfort. He only vaguely remembers throwing up half his lunch—into a trashcan, thankfully—and Bodhi dutifully keeping his hair out of the way. Morphine’s not his friend, but the thought of going without is enough to keep him quiet about it. The nausea’s better than the pain, and he nods off with the taste of mouthwash still on his tongue.

The next time he comes to, there’s another voice in the room. French accent, but not Al-Fariq. He manages to place it as the doctor’s, just a second before the blankets are pulled away from his leg and cool air from the room shocks his skin.

It jolts him awake—the intrusion and the cold combined have him gasping, eyes snapping open to see the old man with the glasses staring down at him. “The fuck—?”

“He’s here to check your bandages,” says Bodhi from somewhere out of sight. Johnny would look for him, but he’s more concerned with the doctor unfastening the neoprene and hard plastic of his hip brace. Just those small movements are jarring enough to have his breath stuttering, and he’s twisting his fists in the sheets so tightly his fingers ache. Can’t fight the pain, he remembers Bodhi telling him. Have to let it come. Have to let it go.

He lets out a breath that he hopes doesn’t sound as shaky as it feels, but the next one catches in his throat as the brace finally comes away. Johnny's racked up his share of bruises over the years, but the massive, purple-black beast of a welt stretching out from under his briefs is in a class of its own, even for him. It stretches up past navel-height, and down over halfway to his knees. The rest of him is a patchwork of mostly-lighter bruises and scrapes, the kind of shit he’s used to getting when he takes a header off the bike. But his hip’s nasty as fuck.

Without warning, said cold hands yank his briefs down past the jut of his hip, until they’re barely covering the shit they’re supposed to, and not covering any of the big gauze pad taped over his hip. It’s roughly the size of his hand, and the white’s spotted yellow and red.

“Pull fast?” the doctor says with a chuckle and an arched eyebrow. It takes Johnny a second to realize he’s talking about his tattoo, and by then, the bandage is already ripping away from his skin.

He tenses so hard his teeth clack, and the bite of cool air hitting his newly-exposed skin makes him hiss. “Holy fuck,” he breathes when he sees it. In the middle of all the bruising, there’s a nasty-looking line of stitches along the ridge of his hip. The stitches themselves are done neatly, but the wound must’ve been janky as fuck. There’s blood and what he hopes is just betadine on the dressing as it comes away.

From somewhere else in the room, Bodhi says, “Looks better.”  

“We’re finally getting the infection under control,” the doctor agrees. “If his temperature settles after this round of antibiotics, we should be able to stop them altogether.” Those cold hands clean his wound methodically, wiping away dried blood from the stitches and applying some kind of ointment over the top. It stings a little, maybe, but he’s had much worse. It’s the ache that’s starting to get to him. The brace was uncomfortable, but now that it’s off, it feels like his hip’s trying to fall apart. Too much swelling in the joint, and when the doctor presses the fresh bandage into place, his vision grays. 

“What about the vomiting?” he hears Bodhi ask. He sounds farther away than he did before, but Johnny thinks that might be the vertigo talking.

The doctor finishes securing the bandage and lifts Johnny’s briefs clinically back into place. “It could be the antibiotics. Could also be the pain medication. There are things we can give him for the nausea; I can add it to his IV.”

“Will it interfere with what he’s on?” asks Bodhi. Johnny’s beginning to feel distinctly left out of the conversation. Which is just as well. When the doctor starts tightening the brace straps into place again, he can’t find the air to protest. Instead, he squeezes his eyes shut, jaw clenching. He feels beads of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, but he forces himself to breathe as the doctor hums a negative.

Velcro crunches into place. “No,” says the doctor. “It may make him more drowsy, but that might not be such a bad thing, oui?”

“Then do that.” Bodhi’s tone is decisive, and once the doctor finishes at his brace, he hears him fidgeting with the bag of fluids above his head.

“Et voila.” The doctor steps back; Johnny watches him go through narrow, black-spotted slivers and tries not to think about how often his bandages will have to be changed. The blankets are replaced without much thought, and as the doctor heads for the door, Johnny finally sees Bodhi standing near it with his arms folded and brows furrowed. “Call if you need something, and make sure he eats. The anti-nausea medicine should help him keep it down. A body needs calories to heal.” And then he’s out the door with a nod, and Johnny feels a sickening sort of relief.

Or maybe he just feels sick.

“You’re pale,” says Bodhi quietly. His footsteps are nearly silent as he approaches the bed, but he makes his presence known in other ways. He fixes the blanket, closing the gaps left behind when the doctor put it back in place, so there’s no more cool air hitting his leg and side. And when he’s finished with that, he carefully eases the fistful of sheets from one of Johnny’s hands. “And quiet.”

Johnny peels an eye open—he didn’t remember closing them, but he guesses he must have—and frowns at him. “S’that gonna happen a lot?” he asks.

Bodhi settles into the chair by the bed with a sigh. “Doctor wants to see it at least once a day, but he wants the bandages changed at least twice that often. I try to do it when you’re sleeping.”

That’s real sweet of him, Johnny thinks. And then he has another thought. “’xactly how many times have you seen my junk by now?” he asks. Because he’s pretty sure these aren’t his shorts, and somebody had to get him into them.

Bodhi huffs on a laugh. “I should be keeping count?” He nudges Johnny’s arm almost playfully. “You don’t strike me as the shy type.”

“’m not shy,” Johnny replies. “Just wondering how many dinners you owe me, is all.”

“I did save your life.”

“Right.” Johnny feels his own lips twitching. Little too clumsy to be a smile, but it’s not a grimace either, so he’s better than he was with Doctor Cold Hands. “Guy saves you one time, and suddenly it’s a free show, on demand.” Horror show, maybe. The bruising, the swelling, the bleeding—not exactly a turn-on. Not that he’s worried about turning Bodhi’s on.

Though, he’s not not worried about it, either. He’s got eyes. Woke up on the yacht after that wave and saw him sitting here like a perfume ad, and it’s only gotten fucking worse. The gravity of him, rumbling thunder and raging wind—the kind that’ll either cut through you or carry you with it, and lately, Johnny’s felt himself slipping. Caught himself thinking, more than he cares to admit, that maybe he wants to get swept away.

“You’re quiet again,” Bodhi observes, and Johnny’s still getting used to the way concern shapes his face. It’s as intense as all his other expressions, but it’s … softer, in its own way. It says, I’m here. It says, I won’t let anything happen to you.

It says, you’re safe.  

He’s kind of surprised he still knows what that feels like. Way he was raised, safety was just a position in football. Then the bikes, the jumps, the fans and the promoters all looking to take a piece of him away with them. Maybe there was a minute there, with Jeff, where he started to feel like he could …

But then, he fell, and Johnny fell, too. Into the FBI. Into rules and training and a starched collar around his neck, and it never quite fit, but change wasn’t supposed to be easy, he told himself. It was supposed to chafe. It was supposed to hurt. He put everything he had left into that badge, and it occurs to him that it’s all probably up in flames, now. Can’t explain the mine without outing Bodhi, and he can’t—he can’t take Bodhi’s freedom away.

He’s gonna lose his badge. No badge. No job. His hip’s fucked, and everything’s getting away from him, and he should be terrified.

But Bodhi’s there with that look, and he just feels safe.

Johnny’s next breath comes a little shaky, and he clears his throat. “Just thinking,” he says.

“About?”

And Johnny’s not sure if it’s the drugs or just his budding new relationship with the truth, but he looks Bodhi dead in the eyes and says, “You.”

Bodhi’s eyebrows rise, and maybe some other time, he’ll relish the thought that he actually surprised Bodhi. Right now, though, he can’t seem to think about much other than that glint in Bodhi’s eyes. A little amused, a little intrigued. Bodhi leans in a little closer, and Johnny realizes with a funny sort of pang that it’s still not quite close enough. “Me.”

“Yep.” He pops the ‘p,’ and yeah, some of it’s definitely the drugs. His eyes are getting heavy, tongue loose, head dipping against the pillow because he’s just having a hard damn time keeping it up.

“And what are you thinking about me, Utah?”

“I’m thinkin’ that I don’t get you,” he says.

“I’m not so hard to get.”

Johnny snorts, winces, snorts again. His ribs hurt like a motherfucker, but the idea of Bodhi being anything but incomprehensible is too funny not to laugh at. “You give up the wave of the century to haul my fool ass out of the water. You know I’m a fuckin’ fed, but you let me into your bona fide criminal enterprise. You just … ” Johnny’s smile falls, and he’s having a hard time meeting Bodhi’s stare. But anybody who calls liquor liquid courage obviously hasn’t had a couple doses of morphine shot straight into their veins. “You just keep saving me,” he says. “And I can’t figure out why.”

Bodhi leans back, and Johnny wants to reach for him. Pull him back. I still feel like I’m falling and you’re the only thing I can seem to hold onto. But maybe he’s not as brave as he thought, because he just lets him go.

“Why not?” Bodhi asks, and it’s one of those questions that shouldn’t be hard, but it dives right to the core of him. “Why shouldn’t I want to save you?”

I’m not worth it. He doesn’t even say it, but it feels like a fucking confession. Like he’s carving the guilt from his own bones, laying it out for Bodhi to see. “You can’t trust me,” he says, quietly. “People trust me, and they die.”

Bodhi inhales sharply, exhales slow. Not quite exasperated, but something close. “Chowder chose his line.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe what happened to Chowder isn’t his fault.

Doesn’t mean his hands are clean. “Jeff didn’t choose a line,” he said, voice rough in his own ears. Fuck, he wants that feeling back. The soft-warm security, the lazy back-and-forth before his head started spinning and his heart started sinking. Just follow my line. All the tattoos Johnny’s got, and those are the words that feel stuck to him. Feels like they’re branded onto him, scar tissue that never stopped tugging.

He felt safe, then, too. He felt free and crazy and happier than he’d ever been in his miserable fucking life. One of those big, dimply grins and the roar of a bike engine, and Johnny finally understood what people meant when they talked about loving someone.

“He didn’t choose a line,” Johnny repeats, hoarsely. “He chose me. And I looked into his eyes when he died, because I couldn’t save him. Because I wasn’t afraid when I should’ve been. Because I didn’t have respect.” Not for the jump, for the sand, for the rock, but for the person following behind him.

The ceiling above his head blurs, watery halos around the lights. He tries to blink them away, but it burns. His throat hurts, sticking when he swallows. His head feels like cotton and seawater, and he suddenly wants nothing more than to curl up like when he was a kid, make himself small, as if this is something he can hide from.

Maybe I’m chasing something. Must’ve been one of the first lies he told Bodhi, so goddamn convincing even he didn’t know it was bullshit. But he knows, now. He knows it was never about chasing.

It’s always been about running away.

“I’m tired,” he rasps, squeezing his eyes shut and swallowing so hard his throat clicks. His jaw feels like it’s spasming, clenched so hard against whatever’s trying to claw its way up his throat. It’s the meds. It’s gotta be the meds, scraping him down to nothing but raw nerves and broken bones, and he can’t— “Need some sleep.” Go away.

Please don’t go.

Leave me alone.

Please, I can’t be alone.

There’s a moment when the hand on his feels like it’s letting go, but then it’s on his jaw. Warm, calluses rough against Johnny’s unshaved face and so steady that Johnny knows Bodhi’s got to feel him shaking.

“Utah, look at me.” Quiet, but commanding. It says, you don’t know what you need, but it’s okay. I do. “Johnny.”

His vision’s even blurrier when he finally opens his eyes, and he hates that he can feel the first fucking tears rolling loose down his cheeks. Bodhi’s right there, leaning over him. Forelock in his face, and maybe one day, Johnny’ll be brave enough to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, but it turns out, today’s Johnny isn’t brave. He isn’t fearless or reckless or stupid.

Today, he’s just sad.

“You loved him.” It isn’t a question. Bodhi doesn’t ask questions to get answers. Bodhi’s already got the answers, and he asks so everybody else can catch up. “Before, when your fever was high, you said I was falling. You said you couldn’t let go.”

Johnny drags in a shaking breath, dragging his arm across his eyes and leaving it there. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to remember those blue eyes going wide—brown in his nightmare, tinted through the visor. Doesn’t want to remember the fear and the weight of the bike slowly slipping from his fingers. The scream of the engine, like a wounded animal. He doesn’t want to remember what he did.

But he’s promised Bodhi the truth.

“You shouldn’t keep saving me,” he says. “’Cause the last guy that tried, I got him killed.” That’s his problem: he’s too much. He’s too wild. He’s too hungry. And if he lets himself be that—worse, if someone else lets him—then he drags them into it. He’s a fucking scrapyard dog of his leash, and when he lets go, people get hurt. “Now would you please,” he grinds through his teeth, “just leave me alone?”

A pause.

“No.”

“No?”

Bodhi’s answer is a hand circling his wrist, pulling his arm from across his eyes with less effort than Johnny’d really care to admit. “There,” he whispers with one of those smiles he gets when the world tells its secrets to him and him only. “No more hiding, Utah. I want to see you.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Johnny sighs. There’s a sob buried somewhere in his chest, like a hiccup he keeps swallowing back until it finally gives, but he can’t let it out. If he starts, he won’t stop, and there’s a reason he doesn’t talk about Jeff much. Broken bones, torn skin—he can take those kinds of hurts. But the kind he felt at the bottom of the canyon, watching them carry what was left of his best friend, his partner, his solid ground to the helicopter … that pain nearly killed him.

There were times, especially those first few months, he wished it had.

“That’s not true,” Bodhi answers, in that patient way of his. Wise, but never condescending. “All these things you think you need to be. A suit. A savior. A man. When was the last time you let yourself be what you are, in the moment?”

“I don’t know what I am.”  

“Because it’s not about knowing; it’s about feeling. It’s about this.” Bodhi brushes a thumb across Johnny’s cheek, through the tear tracks burning his shame-hot skin. “If you’re hurting, cry. If you’re happy, laugh. If you’re angry, fight. You don’t owe it to anyone to be anything other than what you are. I want to see you, Utah. As you are, not as you think you’re supposed to be. So this?” he says, brushing another tear from Johnny’s cheek. “This is nothing to be ashamed of. This is truth. Your truth. And your truth is beautiful.”

And what can Johnny really say to that? Beautiful. He doesn’t feel that way, but when Bodhi looks at him like that, like the rest of the universe has fallen away and light and life exist only for the two of them, he thinks he could. Maybe. If Bodhi just keeps looking at him like that, he could.

In the end, he doesn’t have to say anything. Bodhi just squeezes his wrist and bends, tucking a kiss against his head. Such a simple thing. Fond. It warms him more than the morphine could, as Bodhi settles back into his chair. “Rest,” he says, gently.

Johnny rests.

Chapter Text

Eventually, he has to deal with the FBI.

“What are you going to do?”

Johnny nearly drops his phone. “Shit, Roach,” he hisses. Fast movements still aren’t his friend, but Roach moves like a fucking cat. Johnny didn’t hear him coming. “Wanna try knocking next time?”

Roach arches an eyebrow and slowly, pointedly—like a cat that stares you dead in the eye while it swipes your favorite mug off the counter—raps two knuckles on the doorway. “Better?”

Asshole. “What do you want?” Bodhi finally stepped out a while ago for a shower and maybe some actual, horizontal sleep, but Johnny wouldn’t put it past him to get one of the guys to check in on him. Make sure he’s not doing something reckless like trying to scratch his nose without adult supervision. For a guy that’s all about freedom, he’s surprisingly good at hovering.

But Roach just shakes his head. “I asked you first.” He points at the phone. “What are you going to do? That’s the handler you’re thinking of calling, no?”

“Handler.” Johnny hates that word. “Sounds like I’m his dog.”

“Are you?” Roach asks. There’s a sharpness to him, a quickness and an edge that reminds Johnny of the growl of a motocross bike. It’s such a change from Bodhi and all his easy quiet that Johnny has to take a breath, try to shake some of the cobwebs out of his head. “You call the higher-ups, tell them what happened—what we tried to do, how you tried to stop us … they might give you something shiny for your trouble.”

“You think I’m calling to turn you in?”

Roach shrugs. “I don’t know.” He tilts his head. “Do you?”

Johnny opens his mouth, only to shut it again when he realizes … no. He really fucking doesn’t. He knows he’s got to call Pappas, before the guy sends out a search team and it turns into a bigger mess than it already is. But what he’s gonna say to him when he does?

He’s got no idea.

Because the thing is, nothing’s changed. Not really. Bodhi’s not gonna stop chasing the eight, the FBI’s not gonna stop chasing Bodhi, and Johnny’s stuck in the middle. He doesn’t give one flying fuck about ripping off diamond dealers and Robin Hooding a couple pallets of cash, but those guys at the mine? People had died.

Could Johnny really stand by and let that happen again?

Roach lets the silence hang with a small, sharp-edged smile. “Think on it, Utah,” he says. “Think fast.” And with a couple more knocks on the doorframe, he turns and leaves.

Well, fuck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johnny’s still staring at his phone’s blacked-out screen when Bodhi comes back a solid half-hour later.

“You haven’t called.” Bodhi doesn’t ask. He’s Bodhi; he doesn’t have to. He just knows shit, and right now, Johnny’s so jealous of that, he could scream.

All he can seem to muster, though, is a sigh. “Don’t know what I’d say,” he admits.

“Are you going back?” This time, it is a question. Bodhi even sounds a little uncertain, as he comes to reclaim his seat by Johnny’s bed.

“To the FBI?” Johnny shakes his head. “Don’t think I could if I wanted to.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong. They would take you back.”

“It’s not about them,” Johnny says.

“Then what is it?”

Me, Johnny thinks, but that’s not quite right. You. That’s not it, either, though. Everything. It’s fucking everything. It’s the way the bosses looked down their noses at him, even when he did everything right. It’s the way he’d felt on that riverbank, so painfully, viciously alone.

It’s the way, even after everything, Bodhi came back.

He takes another breath, and almost welcomes the twinge from his ribs. He knows what to do with pain like that. He understands it. Right now, it feels like the only thing he understands. “People died on that mountain, Bodhi,” he hears himself say, at last.

Bodhi’s expression tightens. This isn’t news to him; of course it isn’t. He’d watched that SUV crash through the guardrail, same as Johnny had. But it’s still a reaction, and it’s strangely … reassuring. He’d been afraid maybe Bodhi had written it off. Collateral damage. Acceptable loss. But that’s not what he sees when he looks in Bodhi’s eyes. “That wasn’t our intention.”

“But it happened.” And that’s the problem. That’s the pin that bursts this whole dreamy little bubble he’s been living in these last few days, thinking about healing up and sticking around. Thinking about a future with Bodhi and the others, living the life he’d only glanced at sideways through his fingers the last few years. He wants it so badly, he can taste it, but he can’t forget the crash of metal as the car pitched over that hill, or the look in Bodhi’s eyes when he’d begged him to call the whole thing off. “And you knew it could. I told you it could, but you kept going anyway.”

“I did.” He doesn’t shy away from it. Doesn’t try to excuse it or defend himself. He embraces that truth, ugly as it is, the same way he embraces all the others: unblinking, unflinching, unwavering.

Part of Johnny wishes that, just this once, he’d try something new. Say something that makes this okay, he wants to tell him. Say something that lets me stay, ’cause I don’t know how to let this go. He’ll be starting over. No FBI. No Bodhi. No idea what to do next, and he’s been there before—floating in that awful, crushing wave of nothing. Directionless. Motionless. He barely survived it the last time, and it wasn’t the FBI that pulled him out. It was Bodhi. So what the fuck is Johnny gonna do if he has to leave him?

“Goddamn it, Bodhi,” he chokes out, scraping a hand through his hair. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry, except he’s done enough of that to last him a few years, thanks. So he doesn’t do either of those things. He just shakes his head and tries to remind himself he’s not really underwater. He’s not really drowning. “I can’t let you hurt people.”

“Then don’t.”

Bodhi’s answer catches him off guard. He looks up, brows furrowing. Maybe it’s just the drugs making everything fuzzy, but he’s not sure how to interpret that. “Are you telling me to go?” he asks. Don’t want to see what happens? Then leave. Wouldn’t be the first time someone called Johnny on a bluff, but it’s worse than that, because he’s not even sure he’s bluffing this time. Johnny’s not religious, and he’s never been one to stick to a whole lot of principles, but thou shalt not kill always seemed like a pretty solid one to live by. He’s had his fill of people who hurt. People who take. He grew up watching people treat each other like they weren’t worth a cent more than the cash in their wallets and the dope in their pockets, and he can’t go back to that. Not even if it’d mean staying with Bodhi.

But fuck, he doesn’t want to leave.

Bodhi’s face does something strange. A surprised wrinkle, almost taken aback. It’d be funny, if Johnny didn’t feel like his heart was sitting outside his body, thumping under someone’s boot. “Go?” he says, sounding genuinely confused. “No. I’m … I’m asking you to stay. Stay here, with us. With me.”

“And then what?” Johnny asks. “What happens the next time you cross a line?”

“You stop me,” Bodhi says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Something in Johnny twists. For a second, he’s back in that passenger seat, begging Bodhi to stop. To think. To listen. “I tried,” he says. He tried, and he failed, and what happened on that mountain is as much his fault as Bodhi’s. “I tried.”

“And I wouldn’t listen.” Bodhi nods. “I know, Johnny. You saw the line.”

Johnny huffs a bitter laugh. “All I see is lines.” That was what Bodhi’d told him. Fuck, Johnny can’t even look at him. Doesn’t trust himself to see that face and not crumble like a house of cards in a wind tunnel. “But you see the truth, right?”

“I saw a truth,” Bodhi replies, evenly, but there’s a roughness to his voice, like the scrape of sharp stone on fingertips clinging to a cliff’s edge. Like desperation. “But so did you, and I didn’t see what you saw. I didn’t see the line.”

“You didn’t want to see it.”

“I didn’t,” Bodhi says, and Johnny wants to sink under the covers like a little kid. Hide from the rest of the conversation like it’s a monster under his bed, because there’s a nightmare hiding at the end. There has to be. “So help me.”

Wait.

What?

Bodhi’s shifted forward in his chair, hands reaching for Johnny’s, but not quite touching. Like he doesn’t think he can. Like he doesn’t think he’s allowed. “If there’s a line I don’t see, if there’s a line I’m going to cross, tell me. Help me see it.”

“I tried that.”

“And I didn’t listen. I know.” Bodhi looks pained. Regret is such a strange expression on his face. It harshens all those soft edges, twists them into something new and uncomfortable. “I know, Johnny, but I will.”

And Johnny wants to believe it. He wants to believe that he could be the one to help Bodhi accomplish this impossible dream, and fight this impossible war, without endangering anyone but their own fool selves. But Bodhi … he’s fucking elemental. Even if Johnny thought he could change him, he wouldn’t want to. It’d ruin them both.

“You don’t follow people, Bodhi,” he says past the ache in his throat. “It’s not in you.”

“No,” says Bodhi. “It’s not.” And finally, he reaches across that last little gap and folds one of Johnny’s hands between his own. “But I would follow you. Tell me when I go too far, and I’ll stop. Tell me when I’m about to cross a line, and I won’t.”

“You’d resent me for it.” Even the thought of it makes Johnny’s stomach turn.

“Only if you took advantage,” Bodhi tells him. He squeezes Johnny’s hand in a silent plea. Look at me, Utah. Look at me. And Johnny’s still not very good at ignoring him. He raises his eyes, and fuck, the intensity in Bodhi’s dark eyes still takes his breath away. There’s no trace of a lie, there. No trace of uncertainty. He says it, and he means it, and what can Johnny do but believe it. “And that isn’t in you.”

No, Johnny thinks, it’s not. He’d have chased Bodhi to the ends of the earth, if he thought it was the only way to stop him hurting people. But if it isn’t? Then he doesn’t want to chase. He wants to help. Help him chase the Eight. Help him walk that invisible line. Help him do what only Bodhi—impossible, incredible Bodhi—could ever do, and be right there beside him every batshit step of the way.

“So?” Bodhi asks, a small smile tucked into the corner of his eyes. It’s like he already knows the answer, before he’s even really asked the question. “Will you stay?”

With a smile of his own, Johnny picks up his phone and makes a call.