Chapter Text
The first time Driver sees them, it’s at the apartment.
There’s a mild ringing in his ears that hasn’t gone away since the last job. It’s just noticeable enough for him to keep shifting his head, tiny tilts this way and that—a futile endeavor. The ringing persists. There’s a brief pause where he considers turning back around and going to a clinic; he can’t risk losing his hearing.
Nonsensical. He won’t do that. He knows it's the lack of sleep making his mind drone like this. He could nap in the car, he thinks, then realizes in the same breath that he could nap in the apartment he’s just about moved into. He smiles to himself a bit—it’s an indulgence, one he grants himself very rarely.
Years and years of moving, and it’s still the car that feels most comfortable. The freedom of being able to be anybody and nobody, stay in one place or go. No static building stuck to the concrete beneath will ever sate his buzzing skin like the leather of the wheel.
Yet here he is.
He stills himself before entering the apartment complex. It’s a quiet endeavor; nobody follows him and he doesn’t follow anybody to get to the elevator. The door slides shut with a ding. The solitude and assuredness of an enclosed space, with the mild rocking of movement, makes his eyes droop. It’s similar to a car in that way: Continuous movement to a specific destination, and that destination is entirely up to him. He closes his eyes—it’s just a few seconds until he gets to his floor.
The elevator stops midway.
A man enters the elevator.
His eyes open and he makes eye contact, brief, with weary eyes. Instinctively, Driver feels himself tense as a surge of adrenaline shoots through him. The fuzziness of fatigue leaves him as fast as it came. He knows his face won't betray him, though, and simply presses the close button. He glances over at the man.
Scruffy beard, glasses, hair in disarray. He's in a simple button-down and jeans, no place to hide any meaningful weapons, and faces away from Driver—exposes his vulnerable side, forgoes line of sight—to crouch in front of two boys who have been so silent he only now notices.
“C'mere,” the man mutters. He hoists one of them up and into his arms. The boy rests his cheek on the man's shoulder with a quiet sniffle, eyes squeezed shut. His small hands wrap around the man's nape in a death grip. He has a SpongeBob-patterned bandaid on his nose bridge.
The other boy grips onto the man's shirt hem with just as much vigor, though his eyes are wide open. He looks up at Driver with pointed eyes, clear and devastatingly full of suspicion.
They look at each other for half a moment of contemplative quiet.
Then, softly, “What floor?” Driver asks.
The elevator door closes.
The man looks over with a startled expression as if he didn’t notice Driver at all. Here he offers an awkward but genuine smile, so unexpected that it has Driver blinking.
“Fourth,” the man says. His voice is jarring among the quiet, but it has a kind of lilt to it Driver can’t quite place. It’s not a bad thing. “Thank you,” he adds.
Driver nods and looks away in an attempt to be polite. He files away the information: The man and two boys live on the same floor as him. The elevator shakes and rattles to move again, and the mild static of the noise tempers the potential awkwardness.
And Driver can’t help but look over—he doesn’t know why he does it.
The man looks back at him.
There’s a light curiosity to the tilt of his head, but he doesn’t say anything. The look isn’t calculating nor accusatory—just curious. He offers Driver another smile.
Something in Driver’s chest warms. A foreign thing. He flashes a smile in response. He hopes it looks nice.
“Can we have mac tonight, Ry?” the boy wrapped around the man says, voice muffled.
The moment breaks.
The man leans his head back as the boy lifts his head. His eyes are puffy and lips still wobbly, but the boy speaks with a clear voice, seemingly calmed down. The man’s eyes crinkle when he smiles at the boy. They look at each other with fondness.
Driver jerks his gaze away. He can’t intrude on that.
“Sure, buddy,” the man—Ry? Though Driver won’t refer to him that way, so intimate—responds. His voice takes on a different timbre talking to the boy.
Lined with love.
The elevator door opens.
“It was his turn to choose yesterday,” the boy gripping onto the man’s shirt pipes up. He sounds surer of himself than the other boy does, if not sharper. He throws Driver another withering look before scurrying after the man who steps out of the elevator. Driver wants to rub his neck—he feels a pinprick tap there, a stirring of an unexplainable guilt.
“That’s true,” the man acknowledges, voice bump-bump-bumping with his surprisingly light footsteps. “But sometimes we can make exceptions, especially when somebody needs cheering up, right?”
There’s something natural about the way they navigate the environment—they fit together like a puzzle. A real family. They walk together as a unit. Driver stares after them with something clenching and unfurling in his stomach repeatedly—constricts his throat. He barely darts off before the doors slide shut.
He walks, too, behind them, a shadow.
“Cause he got beat up?” the walking boy asks. There’s a smile on his face.
“Court,” the man says in a flat voice.
“I won the fight!” the boy in the man’s arms shoots back. He peers over the man’s shoulder to look at the other with furrowed brows.
“That’s enough,” the man says. “That’s not something to be proud of.”
They both fall silent.
Driver stops in front of his door, looking down at the doorknob, pulse fluttering under his wrist. His fingers threaten to tremble for reasons beyond him as he sorts through multiple keys. In his periphery are the three who continue to walk past him, down to the end of the hall. He knows the walking boy—Court must be his name—looks over at his direction again. The gaze of distrust burns a shameful trail of blood-riddled and, once again, inexplicable guilt, into the side of Driver’s face.
“Can you grab the key, Colt? Back pocket.” the man asks, sounding older and more tired than just a few moments ago.
Brief shuffling. Driver clicks his door open, dares another glance over, and sees the man unlock his own door. They crowd into their home.
Home.
They probably consider this apartment their home. A safe place. Two boys allowed to bicker with one another, ask for a specific menu, granted colorful bandaids and soft words of assurance on shallow wounds, held up and held close.
And here is Driver intruding on that sacred ground.
He looks away and goes inside to his dark room, dusty, mold-ridden, subhuman. The door shuts away the last bit of light filtering in from the hall.
-
The second time he sees them, it’s at a store.
He doesn’t see them for a few days, not that he thinks about them the entire time. He falls into what he might dare to call a routine: He’ll stunt drive, work at the garage and bicker with Shannon, get groceries once a week, and drive at night when it feels right.
The store, though, is his least favorite part of the routine. There’s nothing much to it, and it feels trite and like a waste of time. He’s stocking up for one person. The drive to the store itself, then the drive back, is the only thing he looks forward to about it.
Today, though, he rounds an aisle corner, toothpick in his mouth, and sees them.
The man is in a black t-shirt this time, same jeans, same glasses. He pushes a cart packed with colorful items, one of which he deposits back onto the shelf. There’s chirping from the boys of protest—the one with the bandaid, Colt, reaches up for it. His bandaid is blue and red this time. Cop colors. The man laughs. And Court, as if in response, clambers up onto the front of the cart.
The sound of laughter is a shock of melody. Driver turns, flees with calm steps, to the other aisle. He moves to leave now; he doesn’t want to risk running into them at the register. He walks.
Past the shelf, he hears their voices. He pauses.
“You’re a monkey,” the man is saying, laughter still shaping his words.
“No, you’re the monkey,” Court responds with a giggle.
“You both are,” Colt chimes in.
“Am not!”
He shouldn’t listen in—it’s not his place, never. But something about the sheer simplicity of the conversation, the lack of anything but jest and care, it makes him want to.
He can be allowed one indulgence. He hasn’t had any this week anyhow. He lowers his head, just a bit. Listens.
There’s a round of giggles. Then, “Can we please have the chips, Ry? I’ll do the dishes tonight,” Colt whines.
“You suck at washing dishes,” Court shoots, “You broke one last time.”
“I love both of you,” the man cuts in, “so much, but you gotta leave the dishes to me for now.”
“But can we have the chips, Ry?” Colt asks again.
“Please, Ryland?” Court tacks on.
Ryland. That’s the man’s name. Driver looks up at the epiphany and feels his eye twitch in confusion as to why that’s an epiphany to him.
“Okay, okay. Hmm…” Ryland—the man—makes an exaggerated noise of deep consideration. Then, “What’s the magic word? You gotta tell me…”
“I love you,” both of the boys say loudly, proudly.
The man laughs again, though it’s much more contained. It’s somehow more intimate than the words spoken aloud. “I love you too. Fine. Just this bag, though,” the man concedes.
Cheers erupt. Driver leaves as quiet as he comes. He goes to check out, packs the groceries into a paper bag, and walks out of the store. His ears feel hot.
He walks to his car, unlocks it. His phone buzzes in his back pocket and he looks down to check—Shannon, asking him to come in for a rush job, knowing well that Driver will say no but come in anyway—and comes back to reality when he hears the unmistakable sound of an engine giving out. He puts his phone away, then the groceries down onto the roof of the car. He glances over. He’s expecting to see some guy with a shitty, crumpled car grumbling about it never working. He doesn’t get that.
What he gets is the man again, scratching his head with both hands, staring down at a popped hood with smoke sputtering from it.
Driver should leave. He looks back down at the door he’s already unlocked. He should leave. It’s none of his business. It really isn’t.
He looks back at the man, who’s saying something to his boys who pop their heads out of the backseat window like little ferrets.
It’s none of his business, really.
He walks over.
The man looks over his shoulder, looks away, looks back, and straightens himself. Driver looks down at the engine and tilts his head. He takes out the toothpick he’s been biting down on and puts it behind his ear.
“Just kind of went—” the man makes a noise mimicking an explosion, uses both his hands to demonstrate it. He uses both hands for a lot of things, it appears. He has a sheepish smile on his face. From here, this close, Driver notices that his glasses are cracked.
He nods. He looks back at the engine, up at the boys who peer at him curiously. Looks back at the man.
“It’s not my car,” the man adds. “I usually bike. I don’t know what’s wrong with it—you think it’s temporary?” He offers information like he owes Driver. It’s dangerous to do that. The man shouldn’t be so open about himself like that.
A beat. Driver considers the smoke—the color isn’t great. The location it’s coming from isn’t great. The smell isn’t great, either. He glances up at the man again.
“Need a ride?” he asks quietly.
The man’s sheepish smile turns into a genuine one. Warmth leaks into Driver’s bones.
-
The drive back home is not quiet. Some of his drives are loud, especially during nights, but the drives back to the apartment are never loud. He’s not used to it—the chatter, the energy, the movement, the extra warmth from multiple bodies that aren’t warm from adrenaline, the weight of the car shifting this way and that—but he’s not against it, either.
The man sits in the passenger seat. His chin rests on his fist, arm propped against the window, and he seems content to look ahead with a tiny, tiny smile etched into the corners of his lips.
He looks at peace here, in this car, on the road. An odd sense of camaraderie makes Driver crack a tiny smile himself.
“Thank you again,” the man says suddenly. His tranquility shifts to attentiveness, and the unexpected attention prickles at Driver’s skin. “Sorry about this.”
What is “this” supposed to be? The situation? There’s nothing to be apologetic about. It was convenient to offer. They live in the same apartment.
Before he can formulate an answer, Colt grabs Driver’s seat and leans forward.
“Is this your car?” he asks excitedly.
Driver nods.
“Colt, buddy, seatbelt,” the man says sternly.
The boy snaps his body back into his seat and fumbles for the belt. He continues to speak, though, says, “So cool. What is it?”
That, he can answer. “1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu,” he says.
“So cool. When’dya get it? Do you drive it everywhere? I bet people think it’s cool. Ry says I’m not allowed to drive but I bet I could do it. I’d do better than Court, at least—”
“Would not. You crashed his bike.”
“You can’t even ride a bike!”
“Yes I can. I Just didn’t show you.”
“What?”
The two bicker. The man doesn’t attempt to stop them, only keeps looking forward at the passing buildings and trees, so Driver assumes this is normal. That this bickering is allowed. That it’s a healthy kind of bickering. He watches the boys through the rearview, though he doesn’t make it obvious out of respect. The bickering rapidly turns to casual conversations about friends at school, and then back to cars, then to candy, then to a new movie they watched. It’s hard to keep up with their energy, their enthusiastic rambling.
At some point, Colt starts talking about the Chevy, then a beat-up Ford next to them on the road that’s been matching their pace (which Driver has been keeping steadily in his view), then cars in general. Court is silent throughout the car talk—he instead resumes throwing looks at Driver through the rearview mirror—but even Driver can see his interest piqued.
He’s still a kid. They’re both kids. Small and weak.
What the hell are kids doing in his car? There’s an entirely irrational fear that shoots through Driver’s body that the blood on the seats—that don’t exist—will get on one of the boy’s pants. Driver’s hands tighten around the steering wheel.
Then the man turns his head ever-so-slightly over at Driver.
There’s a certain expression enveloping his features that Driver can’t possibly understand. It makes him look back and forth from the road to him repeatedly. He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean—until the man mouths chatterboxes and uses his hand propped against his chin to subtly mimic a talking mouth.
Ah.
An unfamiliar warmth blooms across Driver’s face. This is—a shared moment. It’s a shared moment. Between adults. Between the two of them. Driver is being invited into a private moment between—they’re having a moment. He’s being offered a space of recognition and amusement, of connection. A shared joke. An inside one.
Driver smiles.
It seems to be what the man was aiming for—he smiles back with teeth and it isn’t unnerving, it’s—pretty. It’s slightly lopsided. It’s a radiant beam of unadulterated joy that surges through Driver’s body, to his fingertips. A spark of connection is established between them. The man looks away afterwards as if embarrassed, but his smile lingers, his eyes remain crinkled, and Driver has to tear his eyes away to look back on the road.
His pulse quickens. His heart beats faster.
-
Court continues staring at him in the elevator ride up. Driver looks at him, past the bags of groceries he offered to hold for the man, who, despite flustered protest, ended up carrying Colt who fell asleep after his excited rant about cars.
They stare at each other. There’s still shame that pricks at Driver’s skin from the boy’s glare. He doesn’t know how to remedy it or rid of it, so he looks back. It seems as if that’s the only thing he can do. All the while he doesn’t blink because he doesn’t think to—and he realizes, belatedly, that Court is trying not to, either.
In the corner of his eye, he sees the man’s lips quirking up into a soft smile.
They go at it for another few seconds. The guilt and shame turn into a light confusion, then an odd sense of amusement.
Court blinks.
Driver smiles at that, and Court, brows furrowed from defeat, ducks his head. Driver sees his cheeks move.
He’s smiling.
A chime of victory. It doesn’t cleanse the shame, but it alleviates it. Driver’s smile grows.
-
He steps into their home with his shoes on.
“Where should I put this?” Driver asks.
“Oh, just—in the kitchen. Thanks.” The man, an armful of a sleeping Colt, starts grabbing at random items with one hand—clothes, toys, underwear—strewn about. “Hold—hold on. Stay here—I’ll be right back.” He disappears behind a door covered in crayon drawings of cars and animals.
Court, the little boy, locks the door behind them with practiced quiet.
The apartment is colorful and full of evidence of life. A dining table, one of the legs atop folded carboard to balance it, is against the window; three chairs of different types pushed against it. There’s a stray fork remaining on top of a yellow cloth napkin. A mug sits too close to the edge, reads WORLD’S BEST TEACHER.
Crayons litter the coffee table in front of an old television set, and a hand-painted shelf next to it is stacked with action movies and random books. There’s a calendar next to the pass-through into the kitchen, and nearly every day is marked down with messy but legible handwriting with acronyms and notes Driver is not privy to. One of them, however, is spelled out: Parent-teacher con. There is an exclamation mark next to it. The dot is a star.
The man is a teacher, then. It makes sense. The way he talked to the boys, the lilt Driver noticed, the animated movements—he’s used to a specific way of talking, of acting. All geared towards the most vulnerable and innocent.
It’s lovely.
Driver stares at the calendar a second more before moving to the kitchen.
The kitchen is the same in its liveliness—a wrapped sandwich, cutting boards pushed up against a knife block in the corner, a lemon-shaped sponge next to the sink—and as he puts down the groceries, he thinks that this is what a real home should be like.
Full of color and life.
Court appears around the corner, holding a gun pointed at him.
Driver tenses.
Green. Plastic. It’s just a toy.
Driver forces himself to relax immediately. Adrenaline flies through his nervous system and lights him up, then slams back down with a heave. He itches for a toothpick.
“Scary,” Driver says. It kind of was.
Court seems satisfied with this response. He nods and makes a small noise.
Driver’s not sure what to say. He doesn’t dislike children, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. They seem too frail to him. Too weak. He’s scared he’ll hurt them without meaning to. He wonders if the boy likes candy. He doesn’t have any.
“Hey, you want a toothpick?” Driver asks instead. He pulls one out and offers it up—Court takes it with careful hands and, once examining it, looks up at Driver again.
“What do you do?” he asks. He has a mole next to his left eye.
Rollovers. A five-minute countdown. A director yelling “cut.” Gunshots. Helicopters. A radio. The wind in Driver’s hair. A watch that ticks loudly in his ear. A bloodied hammer.
None of that will ever graze this kid, Driver thinks almost absentmindedly. None of that. Not in this house filled with life and brightness and normalcy. He’ll keep the blood far away.
“I drive,” he says.
Court blinks at him uncomprehendingly. He turns away when the man leaves the room he disappeared into.
“Would you—are you a juice kind of guy? Or would you like water?” the man asks in a tumble of words. He bends half-down to pat Court’s cheek without looking as he passes, a practiced maneuver of familiar affection, and moves into the kitchen, into Driver’s space.
He can feel the heat radiating off the man’s body from the proximity. He shifts minutely to move away. He doesn’t want to intrude in his space.
“Water’s okay,” Driver says as he leans against the counter. He does his best to not look directly at the man.
The man fills a cup with tap water as he hums a calming tune barely audible above the stream of water. It sounds calm and simple, maybe a lullaby? He hands Driver the cup—it says Don’t Trust Atoms: They Make Everything Up—and their fingers brush.
His fingers are warm. Driver’s lungs spasm.
The man leans against the opposing counter, facing Driver. There’s a shy curl of his lips that’s lighting his face—a streak of sun hits falls over his eyes and illuminates him. There’s an oval of rainbow falling onto the corner of his head, just catching his hair, and Driver wants to see if there’s a suncatcher in the apartment somewhere.
He doesn’t.
“Thanks,” Driver murmurs. He takes a sip. Tap water, nothing crazy, but it tastes different here. It’s refreshing.
The man nods in response, twice in succession. “Are you new here? L.A., I mean,” the man asks. There’s an earnestness to the question that digs into Driver’s gut.
He swallows hard before answering. “No, I’ve been here for a while.”
The man huffs out a chuckle and drops his head. He glances back up at Driver past the rim of his glasses, lips curled up. “So just new here, then?”
It’s becoming a recurring feeling of warmth whenever the man smiles at him like that. It feels wrong but it feels—nice. It’s nice. Driver smiles back for it. “Mhm.”
A beat of silence. Driver’s eyes drift from the man to next to him, where photos hang from colored yarn against the tiled wall. They’re of the boys, younger in some, the same in others, and the man. Loving doodles and paper crafts adorn all of them except one. It’s a solitary polaroid of someone else—older than the man—that Driver doesn’t recognize.
The man looks back at where Driver looks, then looks over with a wry smile.
“They’re twins,” he says. “Just started fourth grade.” At this, there’s an undeniable gleam of pride in his eyes. Then, nodding at the polaroid, “That’s their father.”
Father. Driver had been assuming the boys—the twins—were the man’s children. Or maybe they are, and the man in the polaroid is his partner, or something. He looks too old for the man, though. But Driver doesn’t know much about people at all. Maybe that’s how it is for them. Or…he doesn’t know. He just nods.
The man seems to notice the hesitation. Driver doesn’t know if it’s the silence or some expression on Driver’s face that gave it away. He chuckles again, more deprecatingly this time.
“Colt and Courtland are my brothers, technically,” he explains. He looks up at the ceiling as he says it as if looking for something in the popcorn pattern, absolution, maybe, then tilts his chin down to look at Driver, eyes half-lidded. “Half-brothers. Our father’s in prison, though, so…” He shrugs. “I take care of ‘em.”
“Oh,” Driver says.
The man’s eyes grow briefly vacant. Driver knows that look. Pain and fear cemented into detached acceptance. He doesn’t mean to frown, but he does—can’t help it.
That father is no one good. Abruptly, Driver is glad he’s not around in this quiet, beautiful haven, in a home of normalcy and care, where rainbows catch on hair and crayons litter the coffee table. The thought is quickly followed by a random burst of anger that makes Driver look away. They shouldn’t have to be around people like that—people who went to prison for bad things, doing bad things to them, most likely. People who do violent things.
“So, what do you do?” the man asks, pushing off the counter.
Driver’s eyes trail after the man.
He rubs his hand, then pushes off the counter as well. “I drive,” he says. He walks to the living room, where the man starts to organize the coffee table. Court bounds over without the gun. He has a toothpick between his lips.
“I’m almost done with that,” Court says, pointing at a half-colored illustration of a fox.
“Oh, sorry.” The man stops organizing and pulls back. “Can’t stop the flow of an artiste now, can I?” He puts a hand on Court’s shoulder and smiles, nudges him, and watches as the boy—furtively glancing over at Driver—starts to color.
Another intimate moment that Driver is intruding in. He blinks, feeling out of place. He wants to pace, or—something. His hands itch. He feels restless.
“Sorry—you said you drive?” The man asks.
“Yeah.”
“For like, a limo, or taxi?”
“No, like, for movies.”
The man hums. He tilts his head and straightens his back. He considers Driver’s words, as if they’re something important worth considering. Then he snaps his finger. “Oh, like stunts. You stunt drive?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool. Isn’t that cool?” The man shakes Court a bit, who nods eagerly, then catches himself to nod calmly. The man laughs quietly.
The restlessness grows. Driver walks around them and glances out the window—they’re high-up enough for burglars or thieves to stay away, it’d be too inconvenient—and moves towards the door.
“That’s cool. Is that dangerous?” the man asks.
Driver stops and leans against the wall next to the door. He looks down at the cup he still cradles in his rough hands, then up at the man, whose hands have not left Court’s shoulder. They are framed in this environment of soft calm, of normalcy, of a built life that embraces them with warmth. There’s a smell of coffee in the air. It mingles with varnished wood and lunch.
He’s entirely out of place here. He knows it. His life doesn’t fit here like theirs do.
Dangerous. Stunt drives. Rollovers. Blood on tires, angry yells, horrified screams, five minutes. Is that dangerous?
The man grins.
And selfishly and so desperately it makes Driver almost nauseous within a sudden rush of want, he wishes his life could fit like theirs, too. In this nice life of normalcy.
So he says, “It’s only part time.” And he says, “Mostly I work at a garage.” And he smiles and hopes that the man takes the smile kindly. He hopes his smile looks right. He hopes it looks nice.
The man considers this again, so carefully. “Where?” he asks.
“Reseda Boulevard.”
The man stares at Driver then, with an almost calculating sharpness to his eyes. He hasn’t seen this look before from the few times they’ve met. Driver worries, irrationally, that he’ll see the blood on his jacket, the gloves in his back pocket, the burner phone in his apartment. The pieces of metal and scrap lining his desk. His watch, ticking. Forever ticking. His desperation. His violence.
But the man’s contemplative stare turns into a softer one. It turns into a smile, one that stretches his features, shifts his cracked glasses. He runs a hand through the back of his head.
“I didn’t even introduce myself,” the man admits.
Oh.
Driver nods. No, he didn’t. But Driver’s been listening in; he knows who he is. It’s a shameful admittance.
“My name’s Ryland. Uh, Grace.” The man sticks his hand out after a beat, as if realizing he’s supposed to do that. And Driver isn’t dumb. He sees bashfulness in the man’s actions, his lingering smile, and for some reason, stupidly, idiotically, recklessly, Driver feels the same. He feels his stomach twist, turn, tighten, flutter, dance.
“Good name,” Driver says quietly. He takes the hand, shakes it. He lets go because he doesn’t want to let go.
“Is it?” Ryland asks. His fingers slip out of Driver’s hand. He’s grinning now.
“Yeah.” Then, after a long, quiet moment of looking at one another, “I gotta go,” Driver says. Because if he doesn’t leave now, he won’t want to leave again.
“Yeah. Okay,” the man whispers.
He looks almost disappointed, but Driver knows it’s the buzzing under his skin and the lightheaded rush of unfiltered joy that’s taken him hostage that’s making it look that way. Driver has to—leave, now.
“Thanks for the water,” he adds. He turns away. Exposed. He feels raw. His skin buzzes and his feet burn and he knows he needs to leave. He doesn’t want to track his dirt into their home any longer.
Yet none of this—none of anything about Driver—seems to faze Ryland.
“Say bye-bye, Court,” he prompts instead of staying silent in Driver’s leave.
“Bye,” Court says.
Driver glances back. Ryland’s waving at him, as is the boy, who looks at him with a well-practiced poker face. He’s just a kid, though. It’s a bad one. He’s barely concealing a smile. He gives his own poker face back—though he offers a wiggle of the brow, an alleviation, another small offer.
Court’s lips quirk up more definitively. Ryland does not miss this—he glances down, back up at Driver.
Smiles. Again. He smiles a lot. Too much, maybe.
Driver likes it. He likes it. He hopes Ryland doesn’t smile like that to others.
He leaves the apartment. The door shuts.
The hall smells of mold.