Chapter Text
Kitt’s blacked out Trans Am was still parked in the driveway. By the fine coating of pollen that dusted its inky surface, nobody had touched it since Jess moved it back to his house last week. I made a mental note to give it a good wax and polish before Kitt got back to driving shape; some days I thought the car was practically an extension of him, and he was pretty damn particular about its condition.
It felt kinda weird to be at Kitt’s house with his car still in the driveway. Which sounded all sorts of creepy, but fact was, I wasn’t used to being here while he was home. When we hung out (which was happening with increasing frequency these days), it was either at my place, the coffee shop downtown, or that one park that Kitt liked to jog at. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever actually seen Kitt inside the building.
At first, I’d thought that he just avoided company because he liked his privacy. Then I’d realized that he was just taking any excuses to spend time away from Karr. In fact, the few times he’d invited me over, it was because he was out of town and needed someone to feed his fish for a few days, and he didn’t trust Karr to do it. He’d quipped then that he’d rather put the poor things out of their misery than subject them to Karr’s questionable care.
Which, oddly enough, was part of the reason I was here today.
“It’s about time you showed up, Buchannon.”
Speak of the devil. I shot a dry glance at Karson Knight - or what I could see of him through the cloud of cigarette smoke that obscured his broad frame and dark features. He didn’t look particularly put out, but the fact that he’d allowed himself a smoke break said more than words could.
“Had to drop Hobie off with his mom. Traffic was shit on my way back.” I shuffled the empty duffel bag to my other shoulder. “How’s he doing?”
Karr shrugged. “Bitching about anything and everything he can. Kept asking if you’d called yet.”
I pretended that my heart hadn’t twisted in my chest. “Mind if I go in?”
He gestured with the cigarette, but didn’t move to get up. I took it as the only invitation I was gonna get, and elbowed the door open.
For claiming to hate the house as much as he did, Kitt had clearly spent a hell of a lot of time decorating the place to exactly his standards. It was sleek and sophisticated, with an inviting layout, black leather furniture and expensive-looking appliances. Seated on the equally expensive-looking leather couch was Kitt.
He was looking better, I thought. Wasn’t as pale as he had been last time I saw him, when I helped him move back home from the hospital. To be fair, though, at that point he’d only been a few days out from nearly losing his life.
“Hey, pal,” I greeted him. “Ready to hit the road?”
Kitt perked up. He couldn’t spin around the way he wanted to, not with the brace that was still strapped to his back. “Just as soon as you can get me out of here,” he said, and I pretended that my chest didn’t blaze with relief when I heard his strong, assured voice. Such a difference from two days ago. “Mitch, Karr is driving me insane. Perhaps it’s time for DNA testing to prove that we’re not actually related? I see no way in hell that I could share anything with that self-absorbed smartass. And that counts for both our bloodline and this house.”
“Self absorbed smartass? Oh, nothing at all like you.” I snickered as I dropped the empty duffel on the table in front of him, and ignored the dirty look he shot me. “Let’s pack up and get the hell on, huh?”
Kitt was only too eager to comply.
* * * *
Kitt’s first reaction to the toxic spill had been fascination. “It’s rather haunting, isn’t it?” he said, staring through the Ranger’s windshield. “Homer wrote of a wine-dark sea, several times in both the Odyssey and the Iliad. He meant it to describe stormy waters, of course. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so fitting of the moniker.”
I didn’t know anything about Homer, but I was liable to believe him. Black, thick water churned and slashed over the rocks of the little cove up the south end of the beach. The dark stain washed through the current at least a hundred yards out until it faded out of sight, like the ocean itself was bleeding from an invisible wound. Wine-dark sea described the current state of the southern cove pretty damn well - if not for the acrid scent that hung in the air.
The reports had first started coming in about a week ago. ‘Black water,’ ‘terrible smell,’ ‘some kind of spill’. Water tests revealed a horrifying cocktail of toxic waste, and we’d immediately blocked off access to the cove until we could get crews to clean it up. Luckily, it wasn’t a popular shoreline, and most of the public left our caution tape barriers alone. Most of them.
Almost everyone at Baywatch was familiar with Cole Crawford, the spitfire head of wildlife care at the Los Angeles Aquarium. After injured and sick wildlife had started rolling in by the dozens, Cole had made it her personal mission to find (and apprehend, if she had anything to do with it) whoever was dumping toxic waste onto her beach. She was the one who’d raised the alarm when the perpetrators made a second attempt, ringing my phone off the hook early one Tuesday morning, before I’d even punched in properly.
Kitt had phoned Garner while I gunned the Ranger towards the beach, after leaving Cole with strict instructions not to do anything until we got there. Upon arrival, we were greeted with the sight of old barrels loaded with the stuff, shoved into the bed of an old, gnarled pickup. I remembered with vivid detail how the truck’s paint seemed to have been literally burned off by the awful waste that it lived and worked in.
We would’ve waited for Garner, but the perpetrators spotted us first. I didn’t want it to become a car chase; if we’d had Kitt’s Pontiac, we mighta stood a chance, but the Ranger would have a hard time keeping up even with their rust bucket. So Kitt and I had launched into action, splitting up to take on the four or five men who were responsible for the toxic waste. I’d been busy dodging fists when I heard first the roar of a diesel engine, and then Kitt’s voice.
“MITCH!”
I’d never heard Kitt scream like that before.
“MITCH, HELP ME!”
Someone had grabbed the keys to the old pickup and turned its sights towards my partner. When I found him, the ugly beast of a truck had him pinned near the edge of the cliff, pressed up against the rock face. Kitt was scrambling for freedom, but there was no way out, and the rock was crumbling under his feet. One more shove, and it could give way.
I bolted. I couldn’t reach him in time. He met my eyes with a look of sheer helplessness, the truck’s engine roared, and then the cliff edge broke under its weight. I’ll never forget the sound of Kitt’s cry as he fell at least twenty feet to the sea below, before being so abruptly cut off as his body was swallowed by that toxic, wine-dark sea.
I screamed his name. He didn’t respond, and he didn’t resurface.
I didn’t remember much about the twenty or so minutes that followed. I didn’t remember the pickup truck making its escape. I barely remembered Cole holding me back, but she said that she had to, or I’d have jumped into the sickly water after him. That was rule number-fucking-one of lifeguard school, and not for the first time, all I wanted to do was break it.
Ben, CJ and Garner had arrived shortly after, and the following rescue operation carried on for what seemed like forever. I’m well used to the media crawling the beach, the ocean dotted with lifeguards and scarabs sweeping the water. But I wasn’t used to rescuers in head-to-toe hazmat suits, protecting them against the toxic waste that Kitt was currently submerged in.
Thirty-eight torturous minutes after he’d vanished under the waves, we found him.
Kitt’s skin was death-gray. He wasn’t breathing. His arms and back were covered in raw, bloody scrapes from his fall, and I couldn’t go to him. Dammit, he was right there in front of me, and I couldn’t fucking touch him. Ben squeezed my shoulder while the hazmat suit-clad rescue team worked to revive him. I wanted to throw his hand off. But I couldn’t find it in me.
When Kitt started breathing again, I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to blink away tears. But he didn’t regain consciousness. They loaded him up into the ambulance, and I followed in the Ranger without even punching out.
Even then, I knew we’d have a long road ahead of us. But I wasn’t gonna let Kitt walk it alone.
* * * *
Kitt’s official diagnoses had been two cracked ribs, concussion, aspiration pneumonia, and most concerningly, a fractured lumbar vertebrae that had required immediate surgery. The doctors had said we were lucky it hadn’t been worse, though they’d shrugged when I asked which injuries had been caused by the fall, and which had been caused by getting hit with a damn truck. Hard to say, they’d admitted. Though his back had almost certainly broken by the percussion of the fall, everything else was anyone’s guess.
They’d also simply shrugged when I asked them about the effects of the toxins that Kitt had fallen into. We wouldn’t know till further down the line, they’d said. He might be at higher risk of cancer, or he might be absolutely fine. We simply wouldn’t know until any further problems showed up. I hadn’t told Kitt that part yet.
Kitt was every doctor’s dream patient. He was polite, cooperative, and he followed every protocol to a T. But I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t happy about it. Feeling helpless was bad enough, but to be helpless at his big brother’s mercy? I’d known from the beginning that living with Karr during his recovery wasn’t gonna work.
Luckily, I happened to have a solution.
Hobie was excited to have a house guest (more excited than he’d been during Thorpe’s stay, anyway), and was the most eager tour guide I’d ever seen. Kitt was too polite to bring up that he already knew the house inside and out from his prior visits.
I made us a light dinner of chicken and rice. Kitt barely ate, but I’d kinda expected that. Ever since the surgery, he hadn’t had much appetite, thanks to the fresh four-inch vertical scar over his stomach where they’d had to go in from the front to fix his spine. Nausea had been his constant companion since he’d woken, as his insides tried to reorient themselves after being shoved around during his spinal reconstruction. The doctors said it might take a few weeks for everything to get back to normal, but watching his fit frame waste away was… well. It was like watching the tide ebb out, the strong swell of the sea curling back on itself to reveal the broken seashells and rib-like sand ripples left in its wake. And like the sea, I felt frustratingly powerless against it.
Once Kitt finally got a little food down, I settled him in the master bedroom. Hobie was eager to offer his room, and Kitt meekly offered to sleep on the couch, but I wasn’t having it. Not while he was still healing. Judging by the expression on Kitt’s face, he was hurting too much to argue, which told me I’d made the right call.
I put Hobie to bed, and took a quick shower while Kitt sorted himself out. When I came back to the bedroom, my house guest was already on his side, buried in every single one of the extra pillows I’d lined the bed with. I hesitated, not sure if he was asleep or not, and then practically tip-toed towards the bed to grab my own pillow.
Wasn’t quiet enough. Kitt shifted as soon as I gently lifted my pillow from its place, craning his neck around to face me. His dark eyes were weary, but still held sparks of their old fire. “Don’t even think about it.”
I played dumb. “Think about what?”
“You’re not sleeping on the couch. I’ve inconvenienced you enough as it is. Lay down.”
“Now, wait a minute, who said anything about the couch?” I countered. “Besides, you’re the one who’s hurting, so you get the bed. Only fair.”
Kitt rolled his eyes. Opinionated bastard. Then he peeled the covers back and stared at me expectantly. “Mitch. Do I have to say ‘please?’” When I hesitated again, his eyes softened. The dim light caught the copper in them just right, sending flares of red through the rich brown tones. “Don’t make me say ‘please’. For the sake of my pride, just lie down.”
I snorted, and relented with a sigh that didn’t sound as irritated as I’d wanted it to. I dropped a hip onto the bed and yanked the sheet over top of me, and I had to remind myself to stay on what was now ‘my’ side of the bed. “Anything for your fragile pride, Kitt.”
Kitt huffed as he laid back down. “Thank you,” he said primly, and it was that goddamn haughty voice that had driven me up the fucking wall when I’d first met him. Now, it drove me crazy for another reason entirely, but I wasn’t thinking about that right now. Laying in the same goddamn bed, I needed to be thinking about literally anything else.
“My pride has taken a rather good beating these past few days, I’ll have you know,” Kitt continued, taking my mind off of things. “Hospitals are horrid places. I’ve been poked, prodded, violated, taken just about all the tests you can imagine. I could use a bit of a break from feeling like an invalid, thank you very much.”
“Uh huh.” I eyed him. “Guess I shouldn’t ask if you need anything else to get through the night, huh? Meds all set?”
He gave a vague gesture to the bedside table. Shauni had been kind enough to sort the first week of pills for us, labeling each dose with the correct time and putting them into little containers. “All set. I promise not to wake you when I have to get up and take them.” He made a face. “I don’t enjoy the dilaudid. It makes me tired and loopy. I don’t like feeling loopy.”
“You do what you gotta do, pal. If we get a few rough nights here and there, that’s okay. I’ll take ‘em.” If it means you’re alive, I’ll take 'em all, I thought.
Kitt didn’t respond. Just gave a little frown, and then gingerly moved to ease himself back onto his side. It was hard for him to support himself with his core, I noticed. It would probably be hard for a long time to come. Before I could stop myself, my arm shot out and caught his weight, one hand finding home against his ribs (on the side where they weren’t broken) and one under his head, easing the strain on his back.
I felt his breath catch. Probably from the lung scarring. Then he let me ease him back down onto the pillows, on his side where his weight wouldn’t bother the incisions on his stomach or his back. I had a split second to feel the heat of his body against my arms before I pulled away, and the feeling lingered in my mind far longer than it should’ve.
Kitt made it worse by turning onto his shoulder away from me, just so that I could see the curve of his cheek under his soft black hair. “Good night, Mitch.”
The words that rose in my throat were not ‘good night’. Suddenly, my tongue wanted to say something else entirely. But I swallowed back the impulse, and replied in kind: “Good night, Kitt.”
I flicked the light off, and silence draped over the room as we settled on separate sides of the bed.
* * * *
“Hey, pal. It’s me. It’s Mitch.”
“…Hello… Mitch.”
The doctors had warned us that they weren’t sure what would happen when (or if) Kitt woke up. Kitt hadn’t gotten any oxygen in him for a stretch of over thirty minutes, and brain damage wasn’t out of the question. Neither was a long-term coma. They’d given him a 50/50 shot of waking up at all.
For three days, I’d split my time. Half of the day (and most of my nights) were spent at Kitt’s side, holding his hand and talking to him, just in case he could hear me. The other half was spent with Cole and Garner, working to track down our friends from the toxic waste dump, who were now wanted on charges of attempted murder on top of illegal dumping. I’d had to give a witness statement and everything.
I’d been out with them when CJ had called me excitedly to tell me that Kitt was awake, and that poor Ranger had given its heart and soul to get me back to the hospital as damn quick as I could.
His face was still pale, but his eyes were open. Deep, warm brown. They found my gaze the second I stepped inside, and I’d never been so glad to see them in my life.
“Hey, pal, good to see you on this side of the veil!” I think I’d grasped his hand. Couldn’t really remember. “Scale of one to ‘I’m never fucking doing that again,’ where do we rank?”
I saw Kitt’s throat work as he swallowed with more effort than should’ve been necessary. Then he looked me dead in the eye and said, in a voice still raspy with saltwater, “I’m never fucking doing this again.”
Later, I’d kick myself for not registering the gravity in his voice. At the time, I’d burst out laughing. Maybe I’d been trying to keep the mood light, or maybe it was just the simple fact that if I didn’t laugh I was gonna start to cry. “Naww, I think we’re about ready to dive back in, lap a quarter mile to the pier and catch some waves, huh?”
He didn’t answer. In fact, I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me at first, because his eyelashes fluttered and he exhaled long and low. For a brief, panicked moment, I thought he’d slipped under, and I reached out to touch his hand. “Kitt?”
He was silent for a long moment. Then, without opening his eyes, “Yes?”
“You know I’m just kidding, right?”
“…Yes, Mitch.”
I squeezed his hand, and then let go.
* * * *
When I woke, the glowing green clock at my bedside read 3:21 AM.
At first, I thought I’d merely been woken by some of the normal aches and pains that tended to plague me periodically; the side effects of an active life. Then I heard a muffled sound, and I realized that I’d woken for an entirely different reason.
“Kitt?” I turned to him. He was twisting under the blankets, and the sounds that had woken me came from him. “Hey.” I put a hand on his shoulder, scooting closer. “Hey, hey. Wake up, pal. You’re safe, m’kay? You’re okay.”
He recoiled from my touch at first, like the sea shrinking in on itself, slave to its tides. But I insisted, shifting up slightly to roll my weight against him, shaking his shoulder briefly, and that’s what woke him.
Kitt’s eyes flew open. He gasped like he had when we dragged him out of the cove, poison in his mouth and water in his lungs. But this time, unlike the cove, he tried to scramble upright. Cried out in pain when he did, and I didn’t know if it was because of his back, or the severed muscles in his abdomen. Didn’t matter. My arms snaked instantly around his back, pinning him against me so that he didn’t have to hold himself up. “Hey, look at me. Breathe, Kitt, breathe. You’re okay.”
He took a fistful of my shirt to ground himself, and forced air into his scarred lungs. Started coughing uncontrollably, sobbing with pain between every cough, and I could only imagine how every convulsion wrenched the incisions in his gut.
I held him through it, keeping him as steady as I could. Murmured words that not even I knew the meaning of, until he was finally able to breathe somewhat normally, looking exhausted. “I’m sorry,” was all he said. His voice was ragged and he was still out of breath; from the pain, the nightmare, or the pneumonia, I couldn’t tell. “I’m sorry.”
There were tears in his eyes. Oh, there were tears in his beautiful brown eyes when he glanced up at me. It was all I could do not to wipe those tears away. “Sorry for what?” I asked instead, trying to ensure that my grin didn’t look too forced. “Man, all I was doing was drooling into the pillow. Can’t even say you woke me up from a nice dream. Now if I’d been dreaming about a nice cold beer on the beach, well. That’d be another story.”
The gentle teasing had the desired effect. Kitt scoffed in amusement, through tears though it may have been. I half expected him to pull away, sort himself out and work on drying his face, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed leaning hard on me as he caught his breath, letting me take the brunt of his weight. Not that I minded. Belatedly, I realized that I’d tangled one of my hands in his hair, and was drawing small semi-circles into the back of his head.
”Wanna lie back down?” I asked.
Kitt nodded. I shifted, keeping him held up against my chest as I gingerly lowered us both down to the bed, supporting his back and neck until his head hit the pillow. I felt his grip loosen as he sank into the mattress, and I moved to pull back, giving him space. I wasn’t expecting the hand that shot out to grasp my arm, or the timid tone of voice that accompanied it.
”Mitch.” God, I’d rarely ever heard him so small. “Stay. Please.”
I hadn’t exactly been planning on going anywhere. But that voice, paired with the wide-eyed look he gave me… well, fuck me. “Course,” I said, and I lowered myself back down to him. Closer, this time, so he could touch me if he wanted. I didn’t reach out to him, though. I let him close the distance on his own terms.
Kitt didn’t wait long. He gingerly scooted closer, arms tucked in close to his sides, and pressed into me. My chest melted. Without even thinking about it, I wrapped my arms around him, tucking him close to me, like he was made to fit the curve of my body. Maybe he was. Holding him felt… God, it felt right.
For a few quiet, blissful seconds, I thought Kitt was settled where he wanted to be. But then he shifted again, wriggling down so that his head rested just a few inches under my chin. He was still, just for a moment. Then he sighed long and low, and I felt a good portion of the tension bled out of his body as he did, leaving him practically putty against my chest.
“Kitt?” I said. “You okay?”
Kitt didn’t respond for a moment. Finally, he pushed his face into my chest, snuggling impossibly closer, threatening to melt me all over again. “I can feel your heartbeat,” he murmured, as though that explained everything. “It feels like home.” And I wondered if he could feel it skip a beat the way it did. Those drugs must be doing a damn number on him (and me by proxy, apparently).
Still, I wrapped my arms tighter around him, careful of the brace strapped to his back. Pressed my nose into his hair, breathing him in. Something about the way his scent mingled with mine was comforting. “Go to sleep, Kitt,” I murmured. “I’m gonna be here when you wake up.”
Kitt sighed by way of response, and I felt him wince as he did. Poor man couldn’t do anything without causing himself pain from his injuries. His pain seemed to be trying to manifest in my own chest, whenever I saw him hurting. I wanted him better. Dammit, I just wanted him better.
I held him tighter, and eventually, it seemed to settle him. Kitt’s eyes fluttered closed, and before long I felt him slipping away into a drug-aided sleep, muscles relaxing as his chest pressed into mine with each deep breath. His lungs rattled more now that he wasn’t forcing them quiet, and the sound damn near broke my heart.
I stayed awake for a while. Wanted to feel him breathe, reassure myself that each one wasn’t going to be his last. He’d seemed so strong in the daylight; he really shouldn’t feel so fragile and small and mortal in my arms now. I relished every drum of his heart, every wheezing breath from his scarred lungs, because it was hitting me all over again that I’d almost lost him forever - and before I could even tell him how I felt. My eyes stung, and I blinked rapidly to clear them.
Fuck, I dunno what I would’ve done if I lost him.
“Never gonna let anything hurt you again,” I breathed to the quiet air as he slept, a promise I knew I couldn’t keep no matter how desperately I wanted it, no matter how I knew he’d grumble at the notion of not being able to protect himself. “I promise, baby. I promise.”
I leaned down, and I kissed his hair. Stayed there a second, letting myself breathe him in. Then I finally settled down myself, finding a comfortable place and letting the echo of our heartbeats lull me to sleep.
Thought I felt Kitt smile against me before I, too, slipped away.