They stumbled some distance before they smelled the smoke. Nathan didn’t want to turn round to see what he feared was behind them.
“We gotta step this up,” Ryan urged. “Can you walk faster?”
Nathan swallowed; he was already pushing it to walk at this pace. Every movement was agony in his thighs where the beam had laid, and his breathing was labored. He knew he couldn’t go any faster, but Ryan could. Ryan could run ahead, get out of the way of the fire, get help, maybe he could get back here in time?
“Ryan, I can’t. I really am trying, but you need to go ahead and get help.”
“You need me to help you walk. I’m not going ahead.”
“You could get help.”
“I’d never get back up in time, and they’re dealing with a city in flames. They won’t be focusing on the hills.”
Nathan was tired and in pain. Why couldn’t Ryan see this and just leave him to sit on the side of what was left of the road. “Ryan, just go, I’ll—”
Ryan spun so fast Nathan almost lost his footing, and he was suddenly hauled up against a desperate-eyed Ryan, his face inches away.
“Fuck you, Nathan. I didn’t leave you to burn in your apartment. Do you think I’m gonna leave you to burn now?”
They stared at each other, Nathan’s breath hitching, the pain in his chest flaring. Whatever Ryan’s faults, he wouldn’t leave anyone to burn alive. He would save whoever needed to be saved, not just Nathan.
“I just don’t want to hold you up,” Nathan said, wheezing.
Ryan relaxed, the fight leaving him as quickly as it arrived. “I love you and I’m not leaving you,” he finished simply, and with this declaration from Ryan, they resumed their slow journey downhill, Nathan still itching to make Ryan go ahead, not wanting to hold him back. That was the second time he’d heard the words from Ryan and he needed to make sure, if they didn’t make it out, that Ryan knew how he felt.
“I love you too, you know,” he said. Ryan glanced at him with a smile. “I never stopped.” They didn’t talk anymore but at least they both knew how each other really felt underneath the insecurities.
Nathan really was trying so hard to walk faster, but the pain in his legs—the grating, sharp insistent ache as he walked added to the whole not being able to breathe thing—was making it impossible to push any more. Ryan was supporting as much weight as he could, but fuck, he wasn’t Superman, and frustration that he wouldn’t leave him and go ahead was bubbling insistently below the surface. Where only moments before he’d been speaking words of love, that warm feeling had subsided.
This was typical. Damn stubborn, irritating, controlling, insufferable Ryan. Always in control, always organizing, always so anal about detail. Nathan swore Ryan had OCD when it came to stubbornness and control.
Well, Nathan wasn’t ready for that. Nathan was his own man, and he could organize his own life, thank you very much. He didn’t need the Ortiz rules to live by. He didn’t need jealousy, and he didn’t need to be told what to do. Ryan should just leave him. Go. He didn’t want Ryan anyway.
Fuck, he really loved the big idiot. Why was his head so screwed and why was he considering this when he should be focusing on getting down to civilization—or what was left of it in LA.
The smoke was visible now. Wisps floated around them, a breeze following them down the hills, bringing with it a forewarning of the destruction that would follow. Each time a disaster happened—the fires, earthquakes, hurricanes—it felt remote and removed on the news, not like this, not personal and vindictive. He wished he was watching this on TV and wasn’t right smack in the middle of it.
They had been stumbling downhill for at least half an hour when Nathan heard the barking long before he actually saw the scruffy mutt.
“Oscar,” he breathed softly. The dog that hung around the apartment building looking for scraps stood on an outcrop of broken and torn road, barking insistently.
“That’s Oscar?” Ryan said. They stopped. Ryan tried to call him over, but the dog stubbornly stood where he was, his ears pricked, and his tail high. “Is he normally this active?” He winced as he turned to face Oscar and Nathan immediately worried Ryan was hurt worse than he wanted to admit.
“Nah, he’s usually kinda quiet,” Nathan confirmed. “Can you grab him, Ry?”
“We have to move, he’ll find his way down on his own,” Ryan said immediately.
“Please?” Nathan pleaded. Oscar had accompanied him on many a morning jog around the park and somehow, in the middle of all this, he wanted to cling onto normality.
Ryan cursed, then left Nathan propped against a fallen tree and crossed to the dog, who danced backwards and down the side of the twisted road.