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The locker room door isn’t even closed behind her before her absence settles on him like a curse, and the adrenaline that’s fueled him and protected him all day evaporates from his body in an instant.
Holy shit, Chris just got shot.
In the heat of the moment , there’d been no time to dwell on it. The second she went down, in the middle of that apartment complex turned war zone, his instincts and training kicked in—assess the situation, get to safety, then worry about the rest. And normally, the rest worries about itself; after nearly a decade as a cop, and after spending the better part of three years on SWAT, most ops dissolve into distant memories as soon as the team calls code four.
But not this one.
Street lands heavily on the locker room bench and hunches over, elbows resting on his knees.
What he wondered aloud to her, about whether his life would be better if he had normal parents and pursued something else, anything else — he’s not sure where that thought came from. It’s something he’s never bothered to consider before, a theoretical so far outside the realm of possibility that it wasn’t worth imagining. Now, alone for the first time all day, he realizes that it was the beginning of his brain’s attempt to process the fact that he almost watched Chris die today.
He lifts his head enough to see her vest, still hanging on the front of her locker. It’s the first time he’s had a chance to really look. The scar from the bullet is just a couple inches clear of the edge. If Chris had ducked a split second sooner, been just a hair lower to the ground, that bullet could have missed her vest high. Might have pierced her chest. Would have done a whole lot worse than leaving a gnarly bruise.
Chris was right that they both survived the unimaginable as kids. Sure, he’d pin the day his mother shot his father as the worst of his life.
So far.
But today came really damn close to claiming that title.
His phone dings.
Molly. Shit. Honestly she’s the last person he wants to talk to right now. For all Chris teases him for talking too much, Molly surpasses even him in that regard — always urging him to share with her when normally, there isn’t much he wants to say. By the time he sees her at the end of any other day, his compartmentalization skill has kicked in and he’s eager to relax, to discuss literally anything other than work. But now, that coping mechanism is failing him, and that’s an even bigger problem.
Molly: Just leaving Santa Clarita, heading for drinks down by my place with Kelsey and her husband. Still want to join us?
Molly: …if you’re not too tired?
An easy cop-out. Thank goodness. She’s a solid hour away, at least.
Street: You’re still up there?
Street: Sounds like a late night
Street: I’ve been up since 3, so I’m gonna skip. Sorry
Molly: Fiiiine, you party pooper, go get some rest :)
Without responding, Street tucks his phone away and stands, catching sight of Chris’s vest once more.
There’s only one person he wants to drink with, to talk to, to see tonight.
Sarzo and Helena’s house isn’t far, but Street’s desperate to get there in a way he can’t contain. It’s irrational, he knows. An overreaction. She’s okay, she’s alive—he made sure of it, dragging her behind him through that breezeway, tucking her behind a corner for cover, herding her inside that woman’s apartment to hide all while she struggled to catch her breath and balance on her own two feet. But his body aches now with the visceral memory of hers propped heavily against the wall as he pulled her along by the back of the vest. He’s never seen her so rattled, so utterly helpless, and the fear he held at bay in that apartment complex has suddenly burrowed its way deep into his chest in a way he hasn’t experienced since he was twelve years old.
He practically screeches to a stop behind Chris’s truck and forces himself not to run across the familiar gravel driveway, not to barge in through the side door of the garage. She’s been away from him for almost an hour, and he’s forgotten the color her eyes turn when she laughs.
He knocks, and hears her distantly call, “Come in.”
He can see the top of her head where she lays across the daybed against the wall. “Tia, I ate on my—“
“Hey.” He hopes she can’t hear the tremble in his voice.
“Street?” She sits up fast and turns towards him slow, and he doesn’t miss the way she winces when she moves. “What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to check on you. See how that badge of honor’s treating you.”
“I told you, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Her left hand moves to press against the right side of her chest as she mutes the TV with her other hand. “Here, come in, sit down.”
Street crosses the garage and perches on the edge of her bed. After all the time he spent here with Chris’s family up until last year, he hasn’t come over since she’s been staying in Sarzo’s garage. She’s got the daybed up against one wall, and a TV that’s too big for the space resting on a console shelf on the opposite side. Her clothes hang from a rolling rack by the side door and there’s a framed mirror sitting on top of the stained utility sink in the corner. A patterned teal rug hides most of the concrete floor and cheap sheer curtains cover the windows, which are cleaner than he’s ever seen them. But the place still feels like a garage.
“Is this all of your stuff?”
“Everything from the apartment with Kira and Ty, yeah. My own furniture and everything, it’s been in a storage unit since I moved in with them.” She lets out a soft laugh, avoiding his eyes. “Home sweet home, right?”
“Eh, beats some of the dumps I’ve lived in,” Street says. He waits, watching her, until she looks up at him. “Are you really okay? You seem like you’re in a lot of pain.”
Chris starts to shrug off his concern but the pain in her shoulder clearly worsens from the motion. She can’t hide her sharp inhale, or the grimace that twists across her face. Street tips his chin at her, eyebrows raised with an accusatory look.
“Well, it doesn’t feel good,” Chris scoffs.
“Have you taken anything for it?”
“I’m about due for more Advil. I need to go in the house and find it but…”
“But you haven’t told your aunt and uncle, have you?”
“They’d just overreact.”
“Chris. It’s not overreacting to be concerned when someone you love gets shot.”
She pauses, quirks an eyebrow at him before she deflects, “I took one slug to the vest. It’s really not that big of a deal.”
“But it could have been,” he says quietly.
Chris gingerly leans back into the pillows propped against the corner of the metal bed frame. He’s surprised that she doesn’t argue or minimize further.
“You don’t have anything out here that’ll take the edge off?” Street verifies.
“Just the beer in the fridge.”
Street isn’t about to turn down the invitation. He stands, drops his backpack to the floor, and helps himself to two beers and a bag of frozen peas from the separate freezer compartment at the top of her large mini-fridge. He opens the beers and passes her one, along with the peas before settling back against the bed frame at the center of her mattress.
“Icing it will help.”
She flattens her lips in silent thanks. And when she tugs down on the collar of her crewneck sweatshirt — exposing a stretch of angry, welted purple flesh below her collarbone — a fist made of dreadful what-ifs clenches around Street’s windpipe and he can’t remember what it feels like to breathe. He downs an urgent swallow of his beer, a futile attempt to grasp a little composure. Only when Chris leans back once more, the frozen peas tucked in under the strap of her sports bra and her beer in her hand and the tense muscles in her neck starting to unwind — only then does Street feel the tightness in his chest begin to subside.
“What’s Molly up to?”
“Working late up in Santa Clarita.”
“Ah.”
“Yep.”
“Well. Then I guess you can stay for Game of Thrones.” She feels around her comforter for the remote.
“Um, Chris—can we maybe skip the gore tonight?”
She frowns at him. “What? Come on.”
He can’t organize the words he’d need to communicate to her that after watching her take a bullet, bloodless as it was, he can’t stomach any more violence. Even if it’s fake.
“ Schitt’s Creek?” Chris offers mercifully.
Street nods, eyes forward to the TV.
“Hey,” she says softly. “Street. You okay?”
He turns his head to look at her, just as she unfolds her legs from underneath her body and stretches them out. She crosses her ankles, socked feet just inches from his left thigh.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” Holding his beer, he nudges her foot with his knuckles.
“Thanks for coming over.”
“Of course.” He pauses, watching the screen as Chris lazily navigates to their show. “You know, for what it’s worth. I still hate the shitty childhood thing, and I’m a hundred percent sure we’re crazy for signing up for this, but I am glad I met you.”
He can feel her attention on him and he glances over at her. She catches his gaze with a small smile, one that doesn’t reach her eyes — but in those wide, dark eyes of hers, he reads a deep understanding.
Street lets himself rest a friendly, casual hand on Chris’s ankle, over the narrow strip of skin visible between her sock and the hem of her black leggings. He tells himself that he only craves more of her touch in order to assure his anxious mind that she — his best friend — is alive, safe, here with him where they both should be.
The lie feels flimsier by the second.
Chris dozes off by the end of the second episode, leaving Street alone with his thoughts. It scares him, how much today is affecting him. How the notion of a lifetime without Chris is enough to knock the wind out of him as badly as that bullet had done for her. How there’s nobody else in his world — not his girlfriend, or Buck, or 20 squad, and definitely not his mom — who feels irreplaceable the way Chris does. Even the death of his brother Nate, as angry as it made him and as fresh as it still feels, didn’t set him spiraling like the mere threat, today, of Chris’s.
But—of course. It makes sense. He’s never had a best friend before, he rationalizes, not one like Chris. Someone whose existence is comfortable and challenging at the same time. Who cares for him unconditionally, who would walk to the ends of the earth for him — who has walked to the ends of the earth for him, even when he tried not to let her. He owes her everything: his career, his relationship with Molly, the family he’s found within this job, not to mention his goddamn life from more than one occasion.
So no, he decides. He isn’t overreacting.
Bathed in the orange light of the TV, watching Chris’s slow, easy breaths, Street manages to match her cadence. It’s way more effective than the measured 2-4-6-8 pattern Buck taught him all those years ago, and he finally feels the chaos behind his thoughts begin to fade. It’s later than he realized and he’s been up for almost 24 hours. Even with the promise of a day off tomorrow — or today, at this point — he needs to get home. And for now, he feels calm enough to sleep.
In her sleep Chris has shifted down in her bed until her calves rested across Street’s lap; silently, he scoops them up and moves out from under them. He’s been sitting on top of a throw blanket and he covers Chris with it before trashing their beer bottles and pulling the forgotten bag of peas, mushy now, from her neckline. He refills her black Hydroflask with the water pitcher in the fridge, and he considers ducking into the main house to track down some painkillers to leave her, but he thinks better of that idea. It won’t be a bad thing anyway, he knows, for her to face her family in the morning and tell them what happened. Sarzo and Helena will take care of her for a minute, if she hurts enough to let them.
He leaves the TV on for her, something he used to do as a kid to keep the noises and the monsters at bay. Pausing in front of the side door, he grants himself a few seconds to watch her and sync his breathing with hers once more — knowing that as long as she’s breathing, he can keep on breathing too. And before he can talk himself into crawling back into her bed, he slips quietly outside to his bike.