Page 26 of Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters
If Vikash hadn’t flung an arm around him, Kyle would have dropped to the ground, his sight wavering in and out. He heard Vikash talking to someone, explaining about a possible pipe bomb, and he realized he was sitting in a chair back in the ER’s waiting room.
“Kyle.” Vikash crouched in front of him, forehead crinkled, eyes just a little too wide. “Hey. Talk to me. Please. Kyle?”
“I’m… I think I’m okay. Definitely in what-the-fuck mode. But stuff is staying still now.”
“Good. The uniforms from the 22nd are investigating the, ah, explosion. They’re done with us. Think you can get to the car?”
With Vikash hovering, Kyle managed to stand and even walk with credible steadiness, though his legs felt like pudding. He wasn’t tracking reliably, not quite yet, since Vikash asked him several times for the keys before he managed to fish them out of his pocket.
“Station?”
“Just to return the squad car. I’m taking you home.”
Kyle put his head back and closed his eyes. “So assertive and shit. I’ll be fine. We need to talk about what happened back there.”
“I’m not sure,” Vikash whispered.
“Right. This is why we talk about it.” Kyle slumped in the passenger seat.Nauseous. Still woozy. Definitely not okay yet. “Let’s review. I get pissy and say stupid shit. You get mad. Your thing-in-which-bad-things-happen starts to wind itself up. I grab you, and my weird thing, which should suck your thing up… Okay, that didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean. And it kinda does. I feel something. But it’s like the something is bouncing around inside me.”
“It echoed,” Vikash still whispered, his distress practically fogging the windows. “You grabbed me and it echoed back and forth between us. It…grew. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was scared it would hurt someone. Lots of people. I didn’t mean to get so angry.”
“Kash, look at me. Don’t turn the car on yet. You can’t drive like this. Look at me.” Kyle waited until those blue pools of anguish turned to him. “You directed it. I felt you do that. You sent the thing, the power, the energy in a directionyouchose. Do you usually do that?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” Kyle let his eyes drift shut again. “Damn it. For everyone else, I’m Kirby. For you, I’m a fucking transformer.”
The strangled laugh was unexpected, so Kyle cracked an eye open. “What?”
“Sorry.” Vikash gave him a strained smile. “Just picturing you turning into a VW.”
“Aw, man, really? You turn me into an Autobot and I have to be Bumblebee? This is another short joke, isn’t it? One of these days, you’re really gonna hurt my feelings with those.”
The strangled sound turned into a choking one. Alarmed, Kyle sat up, only to find Vikash with his head on the steering wheel breathless in the throes of his version of laughter.
“I mean, I know you wouldn’t let me be Prime, but I could at least be Ironhide or Sideswipe or someone cool.” Kyle snorted. “Bumblebee.”
Vikash wiped at his eyes with a last snicker. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Great. I’d be better if you’d acknowledge my badassness.” Kyle subsided to take stock of how bad it was, decided he wasn’t going to puke in the car, and let Vikash pull out onto the street in peace. “We have a ton of crap to lay out for the lieutenant tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
Simple as that, no gloating, no need to rub it in that he was right. “You really could try a little harder. It’s so hard to hate you sometimes.”
****
After a bit more patient argument, Vikash ended up staying the night at Kyle’s place. He could grab a few things and come back in half an hour, he had insisted, but he refused to leave Kyle alone for longer than that.
“You were white and shaking,” Vikash finally admitted softly. “I thought you were having a seizure.”
While Kyle wanted to be annoyed at the hovering, he felt too much guilty pleasure at having an extra night with Vikash wrapped around him. There were so many ways for this to end badly. He just wasn’t ready to face reality yet, and he got the morning that had been stolen from him the previous day with him cooking breakfast and Vikash lounging at the table in a bathrobe. It was way too fucking early a morning, since Vikash had to dash home before work and feed Ellie, but Kyle was firmly entrenched inI’ll take what I can getmode.
When they caught up to each other at the station later, even morning roll call was easier with Vikash there. Kyle took an end chair, and Vikash sat ramrod straight beside him, a barrier against all comers. Instead of isolating them, though, Kyle’s fellow officers had become more relaxed around him and actually greeted him in the morning, chatting and joking. Sure, they kept a prudent distance, but the ritual ofoh my God, there’s Kyle, where can I sit that’s safe?That no longer happened.
Vikash hung back when roll call was over, and though Kyle was eager to get things going that morning, he stayed, curious as to what his partner was thinking.
“I know what some of us do,” Vikash said when everyone else was gone. “But not everyone.”
