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The emptiness of the apartment breathed with an air of death's presence in Kelvin's life when he woke up in Reid's bed. It smelled like him, which was why after nearly falling asleep at the wheel on his way back to the apartment, Kelvin had crashed there, holding tightly onto a pillow and clinging to the last vestiges of his friend, his crush, his hero...

Sunlight poured into the room, and after a groggy half-minute, the alarm on his phone began to sound, shrill and annoying. The Shiba Inu sat up. It was just another day. He dreaded the idea of going to work. Reid had told him once how the news of Jeff's death had been delivered to him. Plain as day on a foggy morning.

Kelvin ate breakfast, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and grabbed his keys on the way out the door, locking it behind him and pressing his forehead against the wood. What was going to happen? Surely, he wouldn't be allowed to stay in Reid's apartment on his lease. Where was he going to go?

The ride to work was a quiet one, save for all the ambience of LA's infamous traffic. He wondered if he was even going to be able to work. Maybe Paul would let him take the day off. His mind was in so many other places, he hadn't even noticed the lack of cars in the parking lot of Doghouse Performance Engineering.

They'd closed the day following Jeff's death.

Kelvin came out of his tree. He yanked on the parking brake and bailed out of his car, disoriented, confused, sweating, and shaking - not unlike Reid the day he was admitted.

"Um...um..." Running at full sprint for the door, Kelvin peered in through the glass to see the lights off. No one was home. It wasn't until he looked at the hours posted that he realized it was Sunday.

Embarrassed, he walked awkwardly back to his still-running car. He thought about trying to call Reid, but the voicemail would have killed him. Maybe Paul? He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until Paul - cell was selected. Kelvin was just about to solicit news from the bear when the sound of a revving engine made his ears prick.

He hadn't noticed that the Nova was missing when he'd peeped into the lobby.

Sliding back into the driver's seat, Kelvin drove around to the drag strip out back. On the horizon, distorted by the mid-morning heat, a white 1971 Chevy Nova was careening down the drag strip towards him. It came to a stop about fifty meters from the Nissan. Squinting, the Shiba Inu couldn't really tell who was behind the wheel, but figuring he should check it out; he put it in gear and rolled up alongside it only to see Reid sitting there in the driver's seat.

"Reid?" Kelvin nearly screamed. He engaged the parking brake again, and the car lurched forward and stalled when he moved to exit - he'd left it in first gear.

"Reid! Reid-"

The Shiba Inu nearly threw himself through the driver's side window of the old muscle car, wrapping his arms around the heeler's shoulders.

"Reid..."

"Yeah, buddy. It's me." He said.

"What are you doing here?"

"I checked myself out this morning. Figured I'd be damned if I was going to die in some curtain room at Cedars Sinai. They gave me some medication to keep me comfortable, so I figured I would take the old Nova out for a drive, and make good on some promises."

Reid turned to look at Kelvin and gave the car's throttle a blip.

"Promises?"

"Remember when I said I would teach you how to drag race?"

For a moment, Kelvin forgot about Reid's illness, and he smiled.

***

"All right, that thing there is called the 'tree'. It's pretty self explanatory. The amber lights are like your countdown. Once it goes green, you launch."

"Uh huh." Kelvin said, buckled into the Nova's driver's seat, his hands caressing the warm wood of the steering wheel as if he was handling a priceless artifact. In a way, he was.

"Now traditionally, you'll pour water on the tires, or there'll be a spot for you to get them wet. You'll do a preliminary burnout, which heats up the tires and makes them stick to the road for better grip. We won't worry about that today; we'll just work on your launches."

Kelvin rolled slowly up to the starting line, and depressed the clutch, throwing it into first gear and staring down the track ahead of them. Long, straight, and narrow, the end was barely in sight.

"Okay. Now keep the clutch in and rev it up. As a rule, you'll want to keep it right around fifty perfect of the maximum engine range, so if the redline begins at eight, keep it around four."

Kelvin beamed nervously as the pistons began to pump and the Nova started to howl with his foot on the accelerator. Reid held the remote for the tree in his hand, and the amber lights began to illuminate.

"When you see that green light, let it go!"

Green lights lit, and Kelvin dumped the clutch. The tires squealed, and the car fought like a pissed off bull at a rodeo.

"Keep it straight, keep it straight!"

"I'm trying!"

Kelvin shifted in tandem with the light on the tachometer, and after smoking the tires well into third gear, he straightened out, and shifting into fourth, they were on their way to the finish line, which they crossed in just under fifteen seconds.

"Not bad for your first time." Reid nodded approvingly as they shot down the rest of the strip towards the turnaround at the end.

"Can we do it again?" Kelvin asked, a little kid behind the wheel of American muscle.

"Sure, Kel. We can do anything you want to do."

Out of concern for the vehicle's well-being, Reid had decided to call it quits after four runs down the strip. He'd done two before Kelvin had shown up, and the car was getting tired. The sun was high in the sky when the heeler pulled the car around to the front of the building where he would park it in its place on the showroom floor.

"I'm glad we were able to do this." Kelvin said somberly. Reid thought for a moment over the chug of the Nova's engine. They'd run into each other that morning purely by chance. And Kelvin's forgetting they were closed on Sundays.

"Park your car over there, and get in."

Kelvin was confused, but did as he was told. Stuffing his keys into his pocket, he popped open the passenger side door of the Nova and slid into the bench seat in front, buckling the lap belt and looking over at his friend.

"What do you say you and I spend the day together?"

He smiled.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

***

Aiden was dressed in his Sunday best; not that he was going to Church or anything; he was simply dressed as he always was - in designer clothing, jewelry, and shoes that cost more than a car payment.

Hastily, he began to stuff a duffle bag with clothing, toiletries, and other necessities he would need for the long trip to Nor Cal and what lied beyond. Part of him wanted to stop at the hospital on his way out and see Reid, but ultimately, he decided it wasn't necessary.

It wasn't as though he didn't care.

He'd already said his goodbyes. To Reid, to his work, to Los Angeles, California. In a few hours, it was all going to be a figment of his memory, a figment that would be tucked away into the deepest recesses of his mind, never to be touched again until someone in public or on TV mentioned the second largest city in the United States.

Plus, he didn't think he could handle the news he would undoubtedly hear on arrival.

***

"So, what are you planning on doing with your life?" Reid asked the younger canine as they walked down the Santa Monica pier, eating a couple of ice cream cones. "Do you want to make a career out of what you're doing now?"

"I think so. I enjoy it, I mean, ever since Billy got fired, things have been a lot easier around there. It's just...nicer. I feel like it's more, oh, I dunno, what's the word...'tight knit'."

"That's an accurate way of putting it."

Reid was choosing his words carefully and walking on eggshells, afraid to touch on the subject that he would not live much longer, and Paul would be forced to hire someone new at Doghouse. He was moving pretty slow, and the medication had dulled the pain to a near undetectable throb, but the pier was a fun and relaxing atmosphere. Just the way he wanted to spend his last day.

"But aside from career-wise, what are your long-term plans, and goals? Any aspirations, plans to travel anywhere foreign and exotic?"

"Hm...Not that I can think of offhand. I'd like to visit Japan one of these days, considering it's a part of my lineage. I would have to take my Dad with me though; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get around over there."

"Yeah, how's that going? Have you talked to your parents at all since you left?"

"Nah."

Reid just nodded, and thought about his Mom. Xavier was right. He needed to call her. That could come later, for at the moment, the only thing the cattle dog was concerned with was showing Kelvin a good time. He felt as if he owed it to him. Plus, doing one last good thing for someone he cared about would be a nice sendoff for Saint Peter to look at on the record books.

"Want to go to Pacific Park?"

Kelvin laughed.

"Wow. I haven't been there in years!" He turned and smiled at the older dog. "Yeah. Let's do it."

Together, Reid and Kelvin entered the park through the grandiose entrance, where they proceeded to have the date that Kelvin had always wanted. They rode the roller coaster and the scrambler until they both were nauseous. They barked and bellowed side by side on the swinging ship, and laughed with maniacal glee as they crashed into bumper cars piloted by screeching children.

They caroused and gallivanted around the park until the sun began to sink below the horizon of the Pacific, finding them beneath the shade of an umbrella, sharing a funnel cake.

"I always wanted to go on a cruise, or take a sailboat out on the water, just...so far out that you couldn't even see the land anymore." Reid mused, staring out at the sunlit waters.

"Maybe you still could." Kelvin said. The heeler broke off a piece of the funnel cake and popped it into his muzzle.

"Maybe."

"Maybe we could sail all the way to Japan. We could go together." Kelvin remarked wistfully, turning from the water to face the heeler, eyeing him as dreamily as he had from the day they'd first met, there at the shop. He tried to wipe the event from his memory, even if only for a moment, lest the waterworks begin.

"That'd be fun. Would you settle for the Ferris Wheel?" He winked. The Shiba Inu smiled.

"I would."

***

Aiden had chosen to sleep during the day, sprawled out in his designer jeans and undershirt, wishing to avoid the hustle and bustle of daily LA traffic. If he drove through the night, he could make it by the next afternoon, he surmised.

Sleep came easily to him, considering he'd had none to speak of the previous night. And while it made the time pass quickly by, the lab's heavy-hearted hopes that it would keep him from thinking about Reid were dashed, plagued with dreams of the cattle dog's smiling face. His voice. His laugh. His embrace.

He'd woken up crying more than once, and by the third time, he was unable to return. Wide awake, he checked his watch: seven forty-five. Outside, the sun was setting, the Sunday evening traffic was growing thin, and it was time to get on the road.

***

Suspended more than 130 feet above the Santa Monica Pier, the two canines sat side by side in the gondola, staring out at the expanse before them. Kelvin had sidled right up to Reid, and he'd nearly melted like ice cream in the summertime when the older dog placed his arm around him.

"Are you scared?" Kelvin asked, quietly.

"Of what, heights?"

"No. I mean...are you afraid of what's on the other side? I mean, when you...go."

"Oh. No, not really. Curious, if anything." He chuckled softly. "I suppose that if you had asked me that ten or fifteen years ago, I might have said yes, but back then, I hadn't experienced as much of what life has to offer as I have now."

"Mm." The Shiba Inu rested his head on the heeler's shoulder.

"I worry about you, though."

"Me? Why?"

"I know life hasn't exactly been easy for you. I know mine certainly wasn't. When I was your age, I'd been drinking heavily for over five years, I smoked, I did drugs...it was Paul who got me whipped into shape. I got off the drugs, I stopped smoking, but for some reason, I just kept drinking. It was a way to cope with everything from growing up without a father to failed relationships, and everything in between. It wasn't hard to get. You didn't need a dealer. You just waltzed into the liquor store, bought what you wanted, and waltzed right back out."

"And you're worried I'm going to slip into the same habits?"

"Nah. You've got a good head on your shoulders. I just want to know that once I'm gone, you're going to be all right."

Kelvin just nodded.

"I wish I'd had this kind of time to prepare for when Jeff died."

"Did you love Jeff?"

His question struck the heeler as odd. Love could mean so many different things, but what was the younger dog getting at?

"Well...I suppose you could say that I did in a platonic way. Jeff was like a brother to me. Kind of like the older brother I never had. I always had to be the big brother. I suppose I did a good job of it, though. Xavier turned out to be a lot more successful than me."

"Was he the Marine I saw in the hospital last night?"

"Yeah."

"I kind of thought he might be related to you. He looked so hot in that uniform."

Reid laughed.

"Yeah, well, don't get your hopes up, he's about as straight as they come."

Kelvin aww'ed playfully and nuzzled into the heeler's neck fur, just as he'd done that night at his apartment. This time, there were no repercussions. No discouragement. Only compassion, understanding, and adoration.

"You have a profound effect on people, Reid."

"Do you think so?"

"I do. Especially the people who look up to you, and admire you. You had to play a father figure for your younger brother, and look at him now. Look at me. I was so timid and unsure of myself when I first started, and now, my confidence is higher than it's ever been, even in spite of the setback with my parents. And it's all thanks to you."

"I just wish I could have had a similar effect on Aiden."

"Hmm."

"Maybe he was too far gone already. Paul was right. I shouldn't have settled for someone at my level just because I thought I'd never rise any higher." Reid said, looking around with a tip of his hat to the symbolism of their current location.

"I suppose that maybe I ought to thank you as well for what you've done."

"What have I done?" Kelvin asked, perplexed.

"I believe that if it wasn't for you, I never would have found the drive to stop drinking. Sure, Aiden had something to do with it as well, but for different reasons. It goes back to what I said earlier. I wanted to set a good example for you. You looked up to me. I wanted to give you someone who was worth looking up to."

"You always were."

Reid smirked.

"And you always will be, for as long as you live, and longer."

He turned to look at the younger canine, meeting his eyes, lit softly by the light of the setting sun and the festivity of the pier. A brief moment of silence passed between them, and without a moment's hesitation, they closed the gap between their muzzles with a soft and gentle kiss. A quiet smek was the only sound they made when their lips parted and they resumed their staring into one another's eyes. The smallest of smiles split the cattle dog's muzzle, and he reached up slowly, gently brushing a strand of the Shiba Inu's long, black hair behind his cheek before leaning in to kiss him once more, pulling him close and sighing. Kelvin closed his eyes and kissed him back, wrapping his arms around him and melting with pure, unfiltered bliss.

***

Aiden cruised along I-5 with music blasting, drowning out the thrum of the engine that so reminded him of Reid. Setting the cruise control, he rested one hand on the wheel, the other in his lap while he relaxed in the sport seat, its harness hugging him tightly. He found himself skipping song after song on his playlist, as each of them reminded him of his boyfriend - or former boyfriend, as it were - in some way or another. A lyric, a melody, sometimes both.

He turned on the radio. Songs foreign to his ears played and he decided he would not allow them to dig up old memories. Those songs, he decreed, would be saved just for his enjoyment. It was a viable and welcome alternative to a silence that drove him mad.

Aiden was almost out of LA when the high beams of a tailing vehicle lit up his mirrors like the sun. The lab squinted into them and proceeded to change lanes, allowing the other driver to pass. They did not. Instead, they changed lanes with him, staying right behind him the entire time, the brightness of the car's high beams preventing the lab from seeing who was driving it.

"Fuck off..." He whispered, his anxiety growing, his blood pressure rising. His heart rate quickened when his memory harkened back to the events of the past few days. Killing the cruise control, Aiden shifted into the next gear and sped up considerably, putting some distance in between he and the other driver. With that distance, he identified the vehicle as a Dodge Challenger. With any luck, it was just some dumb kid who wanted to play around with another hot rod on the road.

Not so. The moment he sped up, so did his rival, such that the front fascia of the Challenger was bashed up against the rear of Aiden's Mustang. Frightened, the lab did not stop, but continued to speed, now only concerned with getting away.

"I've run from the cops, I can run from you too, asshole!" He spoke to the rearview mirror with defiance, shielding himself from his own fear. Just as he had done that night with Reid, Aiden swung his car through what little traffic there was, crossing three and four lanes in one fell swoop until he found what he was looking for - an exit.

The Challenger was hot on his tail the entire time. It seemed to Aiden as though the Challenger's driver and he were evenly matched, for no matter how fast he took what turns, he never lost his pursuer. He shifted erratically. The V8 engine pumped hard. The supercharger whined loudly, and the exhaust pipes roared.

There was another jolt as he was hit again by the pursuing vehicle. Eventually, the Challenger pulled to the side, but just enough so that its front right wheel was right alongside Aiden's rear left. Pulling hard to the right, the rival driver utilized a common tactic used by the police - the PIT maneuver. The lab exhaled with a concerned groan as he felt the back end of his car slip away, out of his control. He fought hard to correct the vehicle's spin, and when he'd finally straightened out, he was heading in the opposite direction. It would take several seconds for the other driver to turn around as well, giving him precious time to escape. Aiden laughed triumphantly, watching this event in the rear view mirror.

By the time his eyes were back on the road, it was too late.

Left and right slammed inward on the clutch and brake in tandem, but the Mustang crashed violently at eighty miles per hour through a gate leading into a steel yard. Wheels locked, the car slid on the gravel towards an unknown destination. The car finally stopped, but not before it had crashed into a large rack stacked with metal reinforcing bar.

Aiden was knocked unconscious for no more than a few seconds, and when he came to in a cloud of dust and smoke, he looked down in horror to see his car a wreck, his windshield shattered, his engine stalled and smoking, and that a one-inch thick piece of rebar had pierced his windshield and impaled him through the left lung, out his back, and into the seat effectively immobilizing him.

"Uhhh!" He groaned, and a deluge of blood spilled forth from his mouth with a raspy, wet cough. Several hundred yards to his left, he could see the high beams of the Challenger approaching.

Futilely, Aiden grabbed the piece of rebar and tried to pull it out, but only succeeded in inflicting an unspeakable amount of pain. It was getting harder for him to breathe, and he could feel his consciousness slipping out of his grasp as his lungs filled with blood. Trading one hand for the other, he gripped the rust-colored steel with his right, and dug into his pocket for his phone with the left.

His breaths were little more than a short wheeze, raspy, strained, and spaced several seconds apart. The screen of his phone lit the interior of his ruined car, and instead of dialing 911, he opened up his text messages and began to tap at the keyboard.

Wheeze.

He finished typing, and tapped a picture icon. A smiling Reid filled the screen, and he gazed longingly at it through half-lidded eyes.

Wheeze.

Slowly, the other car entered the steel yard through the ruined gate and stopped just inside.

Wheeze.

Reid's face began to blur, and so did everything around it.

Wheeze.

Aiden's head lifted slightly with his final breath. Lifeless, unfocused eyes stared out ahead into abysmal darkness, his head drooped forward, and he died. The Challenger's door popped open and a short, stocky pit bull stepped out of it, a forty-five caliber pistol held tightly in his right hand.

"Get that motherfucker!" Someone in the passenger seat called out.

"Steal my money?" Billy asked rhetorically as he approached the wrecked Mustang, unaware that the lab had expired. "Embarrass me in front of my friends at the club and on the streets? Not in my neighborhood, motherfucker!"

Billy racked the slide on the pistol, raised it, and shot Aiden in the head. The lab's head rocked to the side from the bullet's impact, and what was left of his blood began to drain from the wound and his nose as his sinuses were breached by the bullet's expansion and consequent trauma. Billy took a quick look around, then reached in, grabbed the lab's arm and removed his watch, an Omega Speedmaster. Pocketing the watch and tucking the gun into his belt, the pit bull spit on the ground and turned to run back to his car.

Luckily, Aiden's phone had gone to sleep, its black monolith concealed in the night as it fell to the floorboards when his arm was lifted. Reid's picture and the note accompanying it were just a button and a swipe of the finger away.

***

Reid had permitted Kelvin to sleep in his bed that night, and they found one another falling asleep in each other's embrace.

He'd been on the fence all day about calling his Mother, so in turn, he left it up to fate. If he made it through the night, he'd call her in the morning. Perhaps, he thought, it would be a way of tricking the universe into giving him one more day. The last thing he wanted to leave Kelvin with was for him to wake up beside a cold, lifeless husk.

Either way, he hoped Kelvin had made his peace as well.

Reid relaxed - largely with the help of pain medication - and felt himself slipping away into the night. For the first time in years, he found himself hoping for another day.

Just one more.