Chapter Text
After the first, shattering, mind-altering time they'd had sex, Driver is almost expecting a tumultuous desperate rush of fucking and discovery and banging on every available surface in every available way. Which is not how things go, and he's surprised to find how relieved he is, that this isn't the case. It'd been so different - and amazing, it was indescribably amazing, how they'd sort of tumbled into one thing then another then another and then Lars was - coming inside of him - without even a thin latex barrier in between - when during the first two weeks that Casey had stayed in the garage, they hadn't touched a single time. Not even a passing graze.
Driver knew this, because during that time, besides sitting on his butt and taking stupid amounts of painkillers, antibiotics, trying not to pop stitches and sleeping an unsettling amount - sleep full of twisted, awful dreams, soothed just a little when he woke up to the dark shape of Lars, sleeping softly on the other side of the bed - besides all that nightmare, his main job had been Lars. Making a study of this kind, strange, whimsical man who looked everywhere but Driver's eyes, rambled nervously, and flinched away from even the slightest possibility of touch.
He would've assumed Lars hated him or was scared of him, except that he'd insisted Casey stay. He'd acted like Driver would burn him if they came into contact, but he'd kicked off into the biggest fuss known to man when Driver tried to sleep on the shitty couch in the corner of the garage. Saying "If I have to sleep on this stupid massive bed then so do you, Casey," which made absolutely no sense to Driver until Karin had later said "guess it's a good thing we got you a new, king-sized bed then, Lars!" and Lars had literally huffed at her. Like an angry horse.
What a strange guy.
But Driver sort of got it, too. If you're used to a twin bed with a familiar mattress, having a certain amount of space between your body and the wall, all of that, then on a big bed suddenly you'd feel ...adrift and limitless, unmoored. He'd got it. It's how he felt all the time, in the early days of Lars.
He felt like his strings had been cut. He'd been anchored for a good long while in LA, longer than any other place for a good, long while. He'd thought naively he was maybe going to be able to stay there forever. There was a place that had emerged, and a story that had been laid out. Then that was cut away, balloons drifting away, and it was like a rug being pulled out from under except the rug was his lungs. But ok, he's adaptable, so he adapts, and stays around even though the role he'd fallen into got claimed back by someone else. "Sorry, this seat is taken." But he still sat at the table, and he was very welcome there too.
So, a new story laid out and a new role. Familiarity alongside it, his sort of friend, sort of partner, sort of crappy excuse for a mentor at the garage. Maybe a career change even. Racing sounded cool, sounded doable. But the second story frays and fractures, and the harder he'd tried to hold onto it, the more he strayed from his rules, more he'd fucked up, and then the whole thing unravelled like old, rotting string.
In the garage, Lars's garage, he'd had a lot of nightmares about Irene and the elevator. Not a small amount where it was her face, or Benecio's face, under his shoe instead, (pulverised, broken, as easy as stepping on snails) and when the doors opened he was standing there watching himself from where she'd stood. Increasingly, Lars was standing there, looking in, still smiling his sleepy, cheeky smile. Once, Casey - because he was called Casey now- had been underneath Lars's shoe instead. That dream hadn't been so bad.
Anyway, so, Driver had stayed well away from any chance of touching, bothering, frightening Lars. He'd wanted to stay here, at least for a little while, and didn't want to do anything bad that could ruin that. He'd liked Lars, a lot. There was a similarity, familiarity of some kind. He couldn't really explain it beyond the feeling of... scanning through fuzzed out staticky radio and hearing nothing but sharp, piercing shrieks and buzzes, disconnected stabs of chatter, for miles, for it to suddenly, perfectly roll into the sweet, smooth notes of a pleasant melody. No static, no sharpness at all.
..."Chemistry", right? When you meet with a person and click into place. It had happened with Irene, the way she'd held his gaze, which he knows people find...interesting, but she'd seemed to like it. Then together they'd spoken without words for what felt like hours, days, just smiling and knowing each other.
Lars did not hold Driver's eye contact like that. There was no contact whatsoever. But the clicking-into-place feeling was there nonetheless. It felt, it feels now very different than before with Irene, and not just because of the no touching, barely looking.
The reason was probably that Casey pretty much died.
Driver sort of Had died. Multiple times.
Firstly, L.A., in the car. After dumping the worthless cash. That had felt like it was it. The sun blazing into his eyes, goodbye Driver, terrible knowing you.
He hadn't died, he'd come back to life. Ok, another thing to adapt to, sure, whatever. That's what he'd always done, although never quite as un-enthusiastically before. He'd broken into a veterinarians and stitched himself up while high on horse tranquillisers - that had been a fun, loopy evening. He thinks he'd maybe jerked off with his own blood.
Ketamine. Wow.
Picked up stuff from his stashes - money, clothes, that was pretty much it.
The second time he thought he'd died was halfway across America when he figured out he'd left some pieces of something inside of him, the first time, and they were really fucking mad with him about it. So, another diy surgery situation, in an abandoned barn with a piece of broken mirror propped on a hay bale. How rustic. Quite shabby-chic, as the L.A. girls called it. No horse tranqs that time though, even though he'd kept some back, because they'd make him too loopy and stupid on top of the fever, and he didn't want to have to feel his clumsy fingers inside his abdomen, fiddling around with his own intestines ever again thanks.
Also, the drugs seemed to make him crazy-sicko-horny and he might end up jerking off with his intestines, or something.
So, no more ket for Driver :( The foreign body removal process wasn't wholly unfamiliar though, to be honest. A tad more screaming agony than usual, but ultimately just a sloppier kind of engine to fix.
Obviously he'd lost more blood than he should have done because, and this may be surprising, he is not a trauma surgeon. He's a great mechanic, a decent stunt driver, a pretty good murderer, and a poor, poor excuse for a getaway driver. So things had also seemed very bye bye for a little while there.
Thirdly and lastly, outside the garage, Lars's garage. He'd thought he'd been maybe, slightly, possibly on the mend?, until he really, really wasn't, and his car was running on fumes. Sorry, baby. There were two cars in the yard of the isolated house, and he'd had a vague idea about siphoning some gas and then he'd thought, why am I trying so hard? Pull into the driveway, stumble out, lean, look at the stars, the stars start falling? All around him, they're so pretty. This can be what happens when you die, for the third, hopefully last, and final time.
...It's snowing. It's snow, not stars. He's never seen snow before, that's not on tv. A guy is here too now. Hello, guy. Driver maybe says something, the guy replies relatively calmly, all things considered, and Driver has no idea what he says but his voice is nice and his face is really, really nice. The mustache - eh. Driver's never been big on mustaches. Guy is squishy all over in a puffy winter coat, like marshmallow man. Driver's just in his jacket and he's been feeling lately like maybe he hates his jacket but he doesn't feel the cold even though his jacket is terrible and awful and he hates it, and it's snowing, or the stars are falling, so that's how he knows he's dying again and he thinks at least I'm dying with a friend here.
Casey pulls himself back to the present with a start.
That was pretty far back he'd just slipped. Waiting for Lars for too long, thoughts get tangled and head gets weird. Need to keep busy, Casey.
Anyway the pertinent thing is he's glad they haven't had a ton of sex after er, breaking the ice. He is certainly interested in more. But they've (both, Lars too, miraculously) become so very fond of each other and the way they get along, their rhythm of a quiet life, - that somehow he might be allowed to keep? - that he feels almost sad today that this could change. Has changed. He's changed Lars so much already, even though Driver's tried to slip into his life as neatly, smoothly, unobtrusively as possible.
Maybe he should go.
He hears Lars yelling in the yard.
What.
Who is he shouting at?
Look through the window, peek round the curtain.
Ok, Lars is having a fight with Karin. It's not a bad one, it's not a breaking-things, hate- you-forever, blood-across-the-kitchen-table one. They both just seem very annoyed with each other, that's ok (-it is ok- ). And Lars has just got home from work, and Casey has been waiting for him to come in and brighten everything up again just like the now-wilting sunflowers did, just got lost in spiralling melancholy that lifts as soon as he hears Lars yell "I don't Care that you invited the neighbours for dinner, me and Casey are having our Own dinner, we scheduled this together, well in advance, and that's FINAL."
They did schedule this together.
They're going to drive to get pizza. Casey's gonna drive them, and if it's a nice night, there's a lake Lars has been wanting to show him. An old treehouse. Pizza in a treehouse by a lake.
It sounds like a dream.
Karin's giving up. I mean, it was scheduled, thinks Driver. You can't change a plan just like that.
"FINE! You just do what You want, and Only what you want, FOREVER, Lars."
She turns and stomps up the porch steps, storms into the house. Lars nods, satisfied. That is what he will do.
Driver considers.
Lars doesn't do anything he doesn't want to. He didn't let a guy he was afraid of sleep in his own (- if very reluctantly owned, how did Karin swing that one?- ) bed, because, well, they've definitely, enthusiastically established that Lars is not afraid of Casey (Casey is sometimes afraid of Lars, but this also makes Casey horny as fuck, so it's fine.)
Driver didn't make him fuck him. He didn't make him kiss him. He wouldn't have wanted any of that in a million years if Lars hadn't wanted it. Lars asked him to sit on his lap himself, kissed his forehead, made him sandwiches himself, like he loves him (don't, Casey.) Lars is very, very set in some of his ways, so Casey couldn't of changed him in any way Lars isn't ok with. And Casey can't say to Lars, "don't change, I don't like that," because that's just the same as making him change in the first place.
Driver looks at the now slightly-dried sunflowers he'd bought Lars after, to say thank you, say "I'm staying, if you'll have me, and sorry for (briefly) running away." If he's completely honest, they're also to say "I love you", because he will not say that to Lars, not verbally, he won't ask for anything more than he's given. They've been put in an old but precious vase - Lars says it was his mother's - right next to Lars's pillow, because he wants to look at them as soon he wakes up, every single day, he says. The tissue paper they'd been wrapped in was neatly folded, and put in a box full of other, pretty papers Lars had kept, from treasures before, perhaps. The shiny, pretty, trailing ribbons are coiled on Lars's bedside table, because he likes them too much to put them away yet, he says. Before he goes to sleep every night, Casey watches Lars comb through and through and through them with his fingers, letting the curling ends bounce, stretch, spring upwards again.
Driver....Casey adores him. Wants to carve a safe home for Lars inside his own chest and tuck him inside, keeping him safe from every bad thing, including Driver himself. This...he's really in it this time. If this time goes wrong, he won't start over again.