Work Text:
The wind is hot, streaming past as he speeds down an empty road with only the car up ahead, its lights gleaming like the beam of a lighthouse. Sand's heart beats out of his throat. His hands are grinding the pattern of the handlebars into his palms.
He shouldn't fucking be doing this. He's shaking. But he can't—he can't stop, either. He's not going to let Ray drive himself into an early death. Not when it's his fault.
It makes nausea crawl up his throat. His fault. Not in every way, but in enough that matter.
The lights of the car at the end of the road wink out, probably turning. There's just blackness up ahead, and Sand straightens his shoulders and drives faster into the nothingness.
He's too late.
Why didn't he think of this? Why hadn't he stopped for just a breath, any time, from the moment he smashed his phone to the moment Ray locked eyes with him in the bar?
He's not supposed to care. He knows why he didn't think: because he's telling himself he doesn't care, and for a split second—that damn second—it was true.
And now he's too late.
He rounds the corner, almost skidding on the turn, and the headlights are still on. The car's stopped. The car's angled, front wheels slanted over the curb. The car's bumper is wrapped around a lamp post.
Sand feels a paralyzing fear flood through him like he's never felt before. For a moment he can't even breathe, his breath stolen right out of his chest. His eyes are burning.
The motorcycle clatters to the ground as he scrambles off—he doesn't notice. He runs to the driver's door, fumbling for his phone while he does so. The seconds feel slow. 191, he's lifting his phone to his ear and pulling the car door open simultaneously, praying to—who knows, anyone who will listen—that there's still time.
Somebody answers the phone and he barely hears them. He's caught by Ray's still face—eyes closed, slumped over the steering wheel, one arm caught in the crunch of metal in the car. He can hear himself talking but the words come out from someone else's mouth: “My friend got in a car crash, he's still breathing but I don't think I can get him out-”
“Don't try,” says the phone line operator. “Just wait.”
“He's unconscious,” Sand says, the words falling out of his mouth as if he hadn't believed it until this very second. He's unconscious.
The phone operator says something else but it goes in one ear and out the other. There's a dial tone, and then nothing; the street, deserted, Ray almost looking peaceful while the streetlight bounces off the still-wet tear tracks on his cheeks.
Sand wants to grab him, slap him, wake him up. Anything. But he can't. His hands shake and he paces back and forth in front of the wreckage, flicking a glance over every five seconds, convinced that from one moment to the next Ray's body will have gone still.
The ambulance arrives after what seems like hours, the sudden explosion of light and sound almost staggering Sand with shock. The EMTs circle in, moving around Sand as if he's nonexistent. He feels it. He feels like he can't move until they've said something. He can't start existing again until he knows Ray is okay.
One of them eventually takes notice of him and startles him out of his fugue state with a hand in his face. “Are you the one that made the call?” she asks. He blinks and nods, slowly, staring past her to where the other EMTs are gently disentangling Ray from the twisted ruin of his car.
“The patient is stable,” she informs him. He hears it, but it’s still hard to believe. He can’t tear his eyes away.
“Khun.” The EMT's voice ticks up a notch. He flinches and looks back to her serious face. “Were you involved in the accident? Do you need medical attention?”
“No,” he says blankly.
They lay Ray out on the stretcher. He looks so small. Sand's eyes stay glued to his un-mangled hand, rising and falling with the barrel of his chest.
“Khun, can you tell me anything else about the incident?"
Sand flickers back to her again. He hesitates for a moment before: “There's alcohol in his system, probably some hard drugs, I'm not sure.” He's coherent enough to know that he could get him into trouble, but he's not going to let Ray die just because the doctors give him something that interacts badly with whatever he was on before this.
“Thank you, khun.” The EMT looks unfazed.
“Can—” his voice breaks, and he's left wordless for a second. Ray is loaded into the back of the ambulance. “Can I come? There's—no one else will come. I need to be there. He can't be alone.”
None of what he's saying should be true, but it is, the words tasting sour in his mouth.
He needs to be there.
Luckily, he's not forced to fight his way onboard. The EMT just looks at him for a moment and says, “Hurry, then,” and he bundles in with the rest of them and Ray in the middle on his stretcher. Still unconscious.
Sand leans back against the cold wall of the ambulance and squeezes his eyes shut.
By the time they let him into Ray's room it's three in the morning. Sand's voice is rubbed raw and the cold buzzing lights are making the beginnings of a migraine pulse behind his eyes. But they let him in, so he doesn't care about anything else.
The staff at Ray's bedside says something to him, explaining, something about head trauma and a broken arm. He's not really listening. Too busy staring down at Ray, whose eyes have finally cracked open. He's staring unseeing up at the ceiling.
The staff draws him back in with a raising of their voice and: “Someone will need to stay with him for the next twenty four to forty eight hours, to watch for worsening symptoms of head trauma. Do you know who can do that for him?”
“I will,” says Sand, knee-jerk, but he doesn’t take it back.
Ray makes a little noise on the bed. Apparently he's coherent after all.
Sand doesn't meet his eyes. Can't, yet.
The staff nods and this time Sand stays attentive as they detail everything he needs to be aware of, hand him sheets of paper that he tucks into his satchel. He breathes in and out; this he can do. Everything else with Ray—well, it's gone to shit, but Sand knows how to take care of people. He lives and dies by it.
Eventually, after being assured he knows what he's doing, the staff gently coaxes Ray to sit up and unhooks him from his monitors. Then they depart. And then it's just Sand and Ray and the harsh light of the hospital room.
Ray hangs over the edge of the bed, eyes flickering from one spot in the room to another like they can't settle. He's barely drunk anymore, but he's on painkillers. It doesn't seem to make his expression any less pinched.
Sand knows he's staring. But what else is he supposed to do? He's fine with just looking. Ray, alive, is enough.
He doesn't want to talk about the party. He doesn't want to replay the words or the scene in the parking lot. Not now.
Ray taps his fingers on the bed and looks up, finally catching his gaze. It holds. His eyes are dark, his mouth is bruised, and he's looking at Sand in that way that he’s found he can't stand.
“Thank you for saving my life,” he says softly.
Sand twists his hands into the strap of his bag and squares his shoulders. “I'm your emergency staff,” he says. He can offer that much. It will have to be enough. “Don't overthink it.”
Ray looks down and smiles, small and strained, at his lap. Sand shakes himself. “Come on. We can't stay here.”
Ray wobbles when he stands and Sand wraps his uninjured arm around his waist. They move through the hospital as one, limping creature; Ray is silent, and his cheek presses into Sand's shoulder.
Ray gives him his phone to call for a ride as they stand out on the curb. He shivers when the wind passes through and presses his hand to Sand's hip, like he thinks Sand will leave if he doesn't hold on tight enough.
“I don't remember what happened,” is what he breaks the silence with, subdued, as they wait.
Sand jerks his head to look at him. “All of it...?”
“No.” Ray's face goes dark at the recollection. “Just after I drove off.”
"You hit a lamp post," Sand says, instead of what he knows Ray wants him to say. Yes, I followed you. I followed you, after you called me a whore and ignored my help and shoved me to the ground. "You were unconscious when I got there."
Ray lets it be. “Dad's gonna be pissed about the car,” he mutters, scuffing his shoe on the pavement.
“He shouldn't give a fuck about his car,” Sand snaps. “He should be worried about his son. Who got into a car crash.”
Ray rolls his eyes, and then winces in pain. “Not everyone is as kind as you, Sand. Besides, it's not like it wasn't my fault.”
“Ray—” Sand cuts himself off.
“You know, I did tell Mew,” Ray says, louder. “I told him about Top and Boston. So you can thank me for that at least.“
"Ray." Sand's voice is too loud and too harsh. Ray flinches. Something horrible twists in Sand's chest, ugly, the same ugly that he felt staring at Ray across the pool table. ”Let's just go home, okay?“
Ray deflates. ”Fine,” he says, and squishes himself back into Sand's side.
It's awful. Sand never wants him to leave.
The car ride to Ray's place is quiet as well. The exhaustion is finally hitting Sand. Probably because the tension is draining out of him; the anxiety fading now that he knows, has tangible proof with every ghost of Ray's breath on his neck, that he's okay.
It's a good thing the only real damage was to Ray's arm. They have to make it all the way up the stairs, then to Ray's room, but he manages alright, aside from the burgeoning stiffness he’s clearly feeling from being in a collision. Sand flicks the light on and Ray grimaces.
“So what now?” he says, fumbling to get his shoes off, scowling when it takes him a little too long. “You're, what, my nurse?”
Sand thins his lips. “Now, you don't get on my nerves, and we go to sleep. And I wake you up in two hours to make sure you haven't died while I wasn't looking.”
“For fuck's sake,” Ray sighs. “Can't you just… leave?“
Ray doesn't want that. Sand knows he doesn't. So why-?
"I'm not going anywhere," he says flatly. ”Emergency staff, remember?“
Ray looks at him long and hard. Sand tries his best to remain impassive. Eventually he rolls his unharmed shoulder and looks away. "Fine," he shrugs, also going for nonchalant, "I guess, if you're so determined."
He sits down on his bed. Glares at the floor. Sand pulls out his phone to set an alarm for later, and waits.
"Do I really have to sleep in this fucking jacket?"
Despite everything it makes a smile tug at the corner of Sand's mouth. Something in him calms. He steps over the clothes on Ray's floor and settles on the bed next to him, prods at the sling with a finger. "Stay still," he says, and begins the careful work of removing it, sidling Ray's jacket off his shoulders, re-attaching. Ray hisses and winces but doesn't outwardly complain.
In fact, by the time he's done, them facing each other, Ray letting his head hang to the side to expose his neck, his expression is intent on Sand. "You know, maybe this isn't such a terrible idea," he muses.
"Don't get used to it. I'm not going to be here forever."
It comes out with no heat. Sand's own attention has been caught by the vast expanse of Ray's skin now on display, the junction between his neck and shoulder bared. He can't tear his eyes away. He knows he should.
"Sand," says Ray, barely audible. His free hand drifts unsteadily up to Sand's neck and then slides to his nape.
The contact is all it takes; as soon as Sand feels the pressure he gives in, an awkward not-quite hug, burying his face into the crook of Ray's neck. It smells like him. It's warm like him. He's alive.
He presses kiss after kiss onto Ray's skin, sometimes sucking an almost-bruise, sometimes just mouthing. He makes it up to behind the shell of Ray's ear and back to the edge of his tank top over his chest. Every so often he hears his name again, mumbled, whispered, Ray's chin hooked around his shoulder, his hand running along the planes of his back. “Sand,” and then, “thank you,” and then, "I'm sorry."
They fall together so Ray hits the mattress, and the strength in Sand's limbs seems to give out. He stops moving and settles for just hiding his face, breathing in. Ray's skin beneath him is wet. Ray's hand cards through his hair.
Eventually Ray whispers, "Hey—my arm—" and Sand pulls himself up immediately.
“Are you okay?” His eyes sweep up and down for evidence of pain, but find none.
“I'm fine.” Ray thumbs his cheek, through a tear drop unfallen at the corner of his eye. “I will be. You should sleep.“
Sand shakes himself. "Right," he says, separating them entirely; at least Ray looks just as bereft as he feels. ”Do you need me to tuck you in?”
"No," says Ray, determined, and Sand rounds the bed to his side as Ray wriggles under the covers ungracefully. He makes it, though. “Don't laugh at me.”
Sand tries to smother his slightly manic smile. “I'm not,” he claims. “You did a good job.”
“Shut up.” But he's finally smiling too.
He rolls onto his side, keeping his injured arm out of harm's way, but it means his back is turned to Sand. For a moment he disappears. Just like the night in Sand's room, an unknowable shape; entirely out of reach.
Then he says, “Come hold me,” and Sand doesn't need to be told twice.