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The rain is different in Thailand to how it was in the States. It's balmy and it pours, warm like a shower. Cleansing. Julian stands in it and lets it soak him through. He wants to be clean.
Later, he will scrub himself raw in the shower in his apartment. He will stand beneath the burning hot spray and let it turn steadily cold around him. He will stay there even when he's numb and aching from it. Burning but opposite. He will sear from stiffness when he finally moves.
But, for now, the thought of facing another bedroom, another bathroom, an enclosed space with no escape if he is cornered again — wandering hands, silent orders, suffocating desire — makes his itching skin sear. Makes his empty stomach turn. He wants to double over and retch, purge himself clean from the inside out. He wants to throw himself from the bridge he knows is down the street. Land smashed and broken on the ground below.
He thinks of himself as a body, helpless and dead. The hands that would touch him. His mother, stood over him, her cool hand reaching out and—
He walks the opposite way. Any direction to get away from his mother's hotel, where she had called him to her room again and.
And, and, and.
The streets are quiet. It's late and the pouring rain is capturing the glow of neon and electric signs, the reds and pinks and blues of hotels and spas and pleasure houses, giving way to yellowing restaurant menus and dim porch lights the further he gets from the towering monolith of luxurious suites where his mother is staying. The people who usually line the streets here, even at this late hour, have mostly gone inside to hide from the downpour, but there's still a few, sitting in alcoves and entryways that shield them from the rain. Men with cigarettes and working girls on plastic stools. A stray dog huddled beneath a restaurant table.
Julian stops and stares at it. A mutt with its ears pinned back, its fur damp from its search for shelter. It stares back, its eyes bright and wide. It's trembling, just slightly. Julian wonders if he is too. His hair is plastered to his face, clothes plastered to his skin like they're melting into him. Never to be removed again.
"Go and talk to him," a man mutters in Thai. Julian feels himself tense, and slow footsteps approach him, bare feet in flip-flops.
"Hello," a girl's voice says. "Do…" her English is tentative, accented. "Do you want…talk?"
He forces his gaze up. The girl is smiling, dark hair tucked behind her ears. The man is watching them, eyes hard, breathing the sticky smoke of his cigarette, a sharp chemical smell of something more than just tobacco. Julian stares at him, over the top of the girl's narrow shoulder.
"Don't be shy," the girl tells him gently, trying to draw his attention back to her. "It's okay."
She reaches for him. Her hand is small, without callouses, and only goes to land gently on his chest. Julian wrenches away. He stumbles backwards, his heart pounding. He doesn't want her to touch him. He doesn't want to be touched. Not at all. Not ever again.
The man stands sharply from his chair, its legs squealing against the tile. He thinks Julian is dangerous, Julian realises. That he might hurt the girl. Julian feels the opposite of dangerous, right now. He doesn't want to hurt her, he won't, he's had enough of hurting, he's the one that's hurt. But he knows he won't be able to express that, any part of it. He isn't sure he'd be able to say any words at all. His voice has been trapped somewhere beneath the lump in his throat for hours, since the final words Crystal had ordered from him before she told him to shut the fuck up and put his mouth to better use.
Julian turns and walks away. Back out into the pouring rain and empty streets. He thinks something is yelled after him, but it crackles in his ears like static, lost to the downpour and the water splashing beneath his boots.
It's different, driving in the rain in Thailand than it was in the States. It's different driving in Thailand in general, but Driver had quickly adapted. He's good at that.
Adapting, that is. But he's pretty damn good at driving too. Good enough, clearly, to be plucked off the streets of Los Angeles and shipped to the other side of the world, all because word of his talents got around. A woman, flanked by two men maybe twice the size of Driver, had cornered him in a multi-storey parking garage late at night, when he was fresh off a job. Clearly they'd known where to find him.
The woman had asked him to come to Thailand.
"I don't have a passport," he'd told her. Though it had become immediately apparent that she wasn't asking, not really. She'd just told him — told him she wanted him to come and work for her operation in Bangkok, and Driver was well-versed enough to know exactly what that meant. So he couldn't really be surprised when she only waved a hand at his protest and replied, "We'll get you one."
And they had. One of the best fakes Driver's ever seen, and certainly the best he's ever had, with an ID and driver's license to match. Paul West. Not his favourite name he's been given, but not the worst. Suitably nothing. The sort of name you hear and forget. Crystal told him he needed a name and so he'd taken one, ignored her smiling suggestion that he could be Thompson like her sons, could be her's. He'd asked her to call him Driver, whatever name she gave him on the paperwork, and she'd given the order for everyone else to do the same. They had all obeyed immediately, without question. People don't disobey Crystal.
Nobody except her eldest, that is, who had immediately gleefully taken to calling Driver West, clearly assuming it's a name that bothers him. He likes to ask Driver shameless, invasive questions about his past and his family — if West is from his daddy. If said daddy beat him or fucked him or ignored him entirely.
Driver ignores Billy entirely. Billy despises it. His younger brother — Crystal's youngest, Julian — isn't quite spiteful enough to enjoy it, but Driver can tell if nothing else it interests him. As if it has never occured to Julian to do anything but whatever his older brother wants. And, sure, Driver's job apparently encompasses obeying Crystal's sons almost as much as he obeys her — Billy moreso than Julian, because Billy loves to give orders and Julian receives about as many as Driver does, and Julian also obeys his mother and brother with the devotion of an acolyte —but Driver isn't a doormat. He won't roll over and let Billy kick him in the stomach like Julian does.
Thailand is different to the States. There is a new way to survive here, and survive Driver will. He always has done, wherever he is. A street dog finding shelter through each storm that passes over him.
A street dog growling and snapping to protect another stray that won't fight for itself.
It's an ironic thought. Julian fights, that much has never been in question — it's how Driver was introduced to him. A couple days after he'd landed, started to settle into this new manner of survival, he'd been brought to the boxing gym where Julian works and teaches — a major part of the front the family operates behind, Driver had quickly put together — and watched several matches, sat in the stalls beside Crystal with her hand cold on his thigh. She'd been disinterested in the fights at first, but by the time Julian had put three men on their backs and came, blood-splattered, to speak with them, Crystal's eyes were sparkling. She'd introduced him with some measure of pride, and Driver could tell Julian was silently overjoyed to have earned it.
It had become quickly apparent that Crystal's pride was temporary. For Julian, at least. Earned and provided in short bursts like a few dollars on the electricity meter. And, in that, came the recognition that Julian will not fight for himself. If he is hurt or ignored, he'll believe he deserves it. He will only try to earn that pride back, pay the price on the meter for it. And when it cuts out he will unhesitatingly face the consequences.
Driver looks at Julian and sees himself, four years old. Eight, twelve, fifteen.
That first day they'd met, Driver had watched Julian lay out three men bigger than himself with cold, vicious efficiency. A few days later, Driver had watched him stand silently while his mother smacked him repeatedly across the face, screaming at him, and he hadn't so much as braced for it. In the ensuing weeks, Driver has seen countless acts of violence inflicted on Julian, by strangers and family alike, and he has seen Julian simply take it all, wordless and accepting.
Driver has asked no questions.
Julian doesn't talk much. Usually somewhere between unwilling and unable, but he seems especially unwilling-or-unable to talk about this. Any of it. The violence or the way he begs for approval or the way his mother looks at him sometimes. The jokes and comments his brother makes. Maybe he just doesn't know how, because sometimes it does seem to weigh on him — Driver can almost feel the weight of words trapped in Julian's throat sometimes, see him struggling between throwing them up or swallowing them, when he's sat silent in the back of Driver's car like a ghost in the rearview mirror.
He and Driver are alike in that way. Amongst others.
Now, Driver searches the empty, rain-wet streets for him. For Julian.
Crystal had called earlier, said Julian would need picking up from outside of her hotel — and that's what Driver does, outside of the death-defying chases and high-risk transport he's used to, he's the Thompson family's glorified chauffeur — but he hadn't been there when Driver pulled up. Driver had gone reluctantly upstairs, and Crystal had answered the door bare beneath a loose silk robe, cigarette dangling from her fingers. She'd been in a good mood. She'd been handsy. Driver had left quickly. Julian can't have gotten far.
It doesn't take long to find him. The streets are barren, but even when they aren't, Julian sticks out just the same as Driver does. Very tall and almost blond, dressed in white washed diaphanous by the rain — he looks like something angelic, stood on the corner of an empty street, washed in neon, staring at nothing. He turns and stares as Driver pulls up, blue eyes stark bright in the darkness. It seems to take him a while to process what he's seeing, who he's seeing, but when he does he staggers forwards like a man seeing what will save him.
If it were anybody else, Driver would probably be annoyed to have them sopping wet on his leather seats — as much as they're his when Crystal had footed the bill. She'd called it a gift, at any rate. A sleek, dark car befitting her operation, luxurious enough to suit her sitting dolled up in the back. Her youngest sits there now, drenched, dripping water from his clenched jaw and his long eyelashes and the ends of his hair. His t-shirt is transparent, jeans dark, boots unlaced and squelching with each minute movement. His eyes are empty, unblinking. Driver eyes him in the rearview and sees how he's trembling, his arms wrapped around himself in a manner Driver can't identify between a man freezing or a child self-soothing.
Wordlessly, he turns the warm air on.
Julian says nothing, but he relaxes, incrementally, as Driver pulls away and begins to drive. The car warms up quickly. Julian stares unseeing out of his window, the raindrops reflected against his face, and he keeps shaking, keeps his arms around himself like a shield. When he finally blinks, one step back towards himself, Driver opens his mouth to speak — but Julian gets there first.
"Can you just drive?" he asks quietly.
It's too hoarse and hollow to be demeaning. Too fragile to even really be an order. It would be from anyone else — from Crystal or Billy, it would be the sort of order that would make ire turn in Driver's stomach, the sort of order he's spent so much of his life pushing back against that he had it down to a clean little speech. From Julian, it's hardly even a plea.
"Okay," Driver tells him.
He doesn't really need anything more than that. He's just been driving regardless, looping smoothly around the quiet streets while he waited for Julian to come back to himself enough to say what he wants — or what he doesn't want. And if Julian doesn't want to go home, doesn't want to go anywhere, Driver won't take him there. The city's pretty at night. Julian seems to appreciate it the same way Driver does, willing to whittle away late hours in silence aside from the purr of the engine, the soft melodies of Driver's few CDs he's taken to picking up, and Driver finds himself melting into it again now. Their shared, sacred ritual. Their worship. Driver's always thought that a car can be a church pew or a confessional. He wonders, passing lights and pouring rain washing the car interior pink and purple and red, who their God is here. If it's the car or the city or the usual guy.
Maybe it's each other.
Julian leans his forehead slowly against the door. He's still holding onto himself, protectively clinging to his own arms as if shielding himself from unseen hands or eyes, but he melts — gradually, helplessly — as his consciousness falters. He usually does, falls asleep like a kid in the back of the car, soothed the same as Driver always has been by the safety of somewhere so escapable, something transient and unknowable as a moving vehicle rather than a house, a room to be found and cornered in. But Julian looks especially exhausted today. He looks hurt, looks young and scared and ruined, as his guard slips steadily away to leave something far more fragile behind.
Driver thinks of Crystal in her lace-and-silk robe. He thinks of his father in his oil-stained wifebeater. Thinks of hands. He looks again at Julian in the rearview mirror, his long legs curled small, his sleeping face almost obscured behind the window's reflection, and sees himself. Sixteen, eighteen, now.
The CD finishes. The car is plunged into silence, just the hum of the engine and the drumming of the rain all around them — and Driver listens, for just a moment, to Julian's breathing, soft and deep and even.
He restarts the album and keeps driving.