Title: Burn Me Out
Fandom: All-New Ghost Rider (Fullmetal Alchemist fusion)
Rating: Teen
Length: 5k
Notes: In a world where Gabe Reyes lost his legs and Robbie Reyes had his soul implanted into a 1969 Dodge Charger in a tragic Alchemy accident.
Warnings: Noncon subtext.
Summary: Eli drives his nephews to Sioux City so he can test Gabe for an obscure genetic disorder, and joy-rides on the way. He's really happy to have his car back. Gabe is concerned.

Robbie watched the sun rise over Tio's pig farm in the hazy vision of his right-side glass, felt it dry the dew from his paint and warm the inside of his cabin. In the clear vision of his driver's side mirror, he watched the steps of the porch just peeking out at the south-east corner of Tio's single-wide. He'd passed the night apart from Gabe often enough, but it hadn't felt this final before. Before, they were driving. He knew that as soon as Gabe woke up, he'd roll out to heave himself into Robbie's left front seat and heave his chair in after him, and then they'd be on their way again, and Robbie would be alive with the hum of his engine and Gabe would be shifting and dozing in the driver's seat, reading his notes, chatting to Robbie about alchemical theory with frequent non-sequiturs about the towns they'd passed, grounding Robbie with his presence and his touch.

Now, they'd arrived. Robbie would stay parked at the entrance to Tio's machine shop until he had reason to move. Before Gabe had found him, he'd still let himself escape into the fantasy of lying insensible on a hospital bed while hallucinating; he hadn't yet settled within the prison of his body.

Gabe was so close, just two hundred feet away, up a set of little wooden steps and behind a tiny metal door. Inside: rooms, more tiny doors, a television, a table, chairs. Gabe and Tio were probably poring over texts and diagrams together, pencils in hand, by the light of a desk lamp—but no, it was just after dawn. Gabe and Tio would be having breakfast, chewing, forks, plates. Probably some coffee. Robbie tried to envision himself in the room with them, his point of view up level with theirs, a plate of his own at the table in front of him. Food on it. Eggs and sausage, maybe.

He let his mind chase itself in circles trying to remember how to sit in a chair before he stopped himself. Gazed forward into the dark machine shop, at a rack of hammers and drills, at the same time as he watched a semi-truck rumble down the road to the South.

Sitting wasn't complicated. Human bodies were just wet marionettes that pulled their own strings. The knees bent back and the hips bent forward and the butt rested on the flat part of the chair. He knew how it happened. He just couldn't quite picture himself—

He felt seized by the desire to scrub at the buzz-cut fade at the nape of his neck, spine curving down and arms folded up behind his head, velvet-soft hairs flattening under the pads of his fingers, hands. The memory faded as suddenly as it had floated up. Gravel prickled his tires, wind whistled around his blower and under his hood. The closest thing he felt to hands—and only because of the sensitivity, the sense of holding—was the leather of his seats, where Gabe would sit.

He didn't have a reason to think about sitting, or hands. It might be better if he forgot what being human was like altogether.

He knew better than to start his engine, after thinking things like this; the one blessing of his current condition was that he had a guaranteed way to pause his feelings. Telling Gabe—telling anyone—was out of the question. Even if this was fixable, Gabe would need to concentrate to figure it out. Robbie couldn't add to the pressure.

He let himself drift as he waited for the day to pass, idly watching the traffic go and a herd of cows wander across the field across the road, the same way he'd watched the hint of distant stars that had passed low enough for him to catch in his mirrors. He managed to drift away so far that he only noticed Gabe and Tio's approach when they were halfway across the gravel.

Gabe was struggling with his chair on the rough ground and Tio was walking along ahead of him. Clueless pendejo. Robbie allowed that Tio was sick, that syndrome he hoped to God that Gabe didn't have, but he could at least try to help.

What could he expect, though, from a man who'd abandoned his nephews to the System while he ran from the law for almost two decades.

Robbie started his engine in a snarl of annoyance, idled a moment to get his thoughts back in order, and then breathed in carefully as he moved his gear selector—reverse, drive, rumble over the gravel to meet Gabe and Tio. He kept them in his sights to keep from running them over, saw Tio wave Gabe toward Robbie's right, the passenger seat. He heard Gabe say something; it was hard to make out his voice hitting his body panels, but he sounded frustrated. Robbie rolled down his windows.

“Tio, Robbie. Robbie, Tio,” Gabe said, waving between them. “Robbie, say something.”

Hola, Tio Maldito. Been a while—fifteen years? Don't worry about us, I've already raised us both. In the worst neighborhood in East Los. I had backyard concerts and constant pressure to save me from a heroin addiction and Gabe had D&D. Take us out for ice cream once or twice and we're good. Robbie breathed carefully, the weight of his engine shifting from side to side with the changing momentum of his flywheel. He only had to establish a professional relationship. They needed Tio's Alchemy. “Good morning,” Robbie enunciated. He was proud of himself for getting all the consonants crisp, finally, but he sounded formal and stilted. Robotic.

Tio approached Robbie's front door, and Robbie allowed him to open it. “If you're Roberto, tell me something only he would know.”

Robbie revved in frustration. “I wwaz fiive,” he squawked. “I barerly know you.” He twisted his rear-view mirror around, stared at Tio's lined face. In the morning light, the whites of his eyes looked yellow. Maybe that was from years of sun exposure, or maybe that was his sickness. The syndrome. His nose looked a bit messed up and dilated, but Robbie had a feeling that might be from hard drugs. “You can take Gabe's word or not. Just don't play games with me.”

Tio's mouth twitched and he looked down at Robbie's speakers and center console. “I'm going to be annoyed if I find you wired up my car with Chicano Siri.”

Robbie kept his throttle deliberately still, his engine steady and just above idle. “You have my word I did not damage or alter your vehicle during restoration.”

Tio stared down at the radio, as though that was where Robbie was. “You set the valve lash? Tuned it?”

“I did. Replaced some hoses and vacuum tubes, too. Reinforced silicone.”

“Changed the oil?”

“Of course.”

“Flushed the radiator and the intercooler?”

“Yes.”

“Battery?”

“Reconditioned.”

“And I see you vacuumed in here,” Tio remarked, peering down at the carpet in Robbie's rear footwell. “Before your road-trip, anyway.”

Robbie let his engine rumble, his blower hiss.

“Well,” Tio said, sitting down abruptly in the driver's seat, “it's good to have her back.”

Gabe cut in, from across Robbie's hood. “That's Robbie. That's my brother.”

Tio rolled his eyes. “Relax, kid. I meant literally.”

“It's literally Robbie's body.”

Robbie had only rarely experienced Gabe fighting for him before, but it always made him uncomfortable. “Well, it is Tio's car. I'm just—” haunting it— “Embedded in it.”

“Well-put,” Tio said. “See, I'm not objectifying your brother, I'm just admiring my car.” Then, “I'm driving.”

“Robbie!—”

“It's okay, Gabe,” Robbie said. He's got the feet.

 

Trying to drive himself by opening his throttle and breathing into his engine, while Tio was also trying to drive him by pushing down on the gas pedal to operate the mechanical linkage that opened his throttle and forced him to breathe into his engine harder and twisting on his steering wheel while Robbie was already turning in almost the same direction, reminded Robbie of his first open-mouthed-kiss-with-tongue. Which would be a disturbing and incestuous comparison without the context in which this kiss had occurred.

Robbie's first open-mouthed-kiss-with-tongue had happened while he was helping Police Shit pack up their instruments after playing an indoor venue. A DJ was playing his own dubstep on a Bluetooth speaker and the younger kids were generally exhausted or plastered, unless they'd partaken in some kind of stimulant. Robbie had just finished dismantling their lighting rig when a drunk girl in ripped black jeans tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for a favor. She wanted him to kiss her so she could test whether she was gay.

Robbie wasn't quite sure how this would help, but she seemed determined to go through with her experiment. The Robbie Reyes of today would have brushed her off and driven her home, but the seventeen-year-old Robbie Reyes of before knew that he was one of maybe five sober people in the room and didn't know any of the others enough to trust them with a pushy drunk girl. He said okay and then the kiss happened.

She latched her face against his lips and licked his teeth hard and that made him open his mouth and then she managed to suck his tongue into her mouth because he was so surprised, but when he pulled it back she stuck her tongue in his mouth and he couldn't exactly close his mouth with her tongue between his teeth but he couldn't pull away from her either because she was grabbing his head, and then she started trying to inhale through his mouth and air started running in through his nose and into her mouth, bypassing his lungs entirely, and then she started breathing out through her nose which was pressed against his face and also breathing through his mouth, and he could either inhale her breath or let her exhale through his nose—or both at the same time—and all in all it made the simple act of breathing into a clumsy and complicated Three Stooges routine. At the end of it, she pulled back and announced, firmly, that she must really be a lesbian, and thankfully let him go. That was no kiss to judge one's sexuality by, but Robbie had kept this opinion to himself.

Tio jabbing at his gas pedal while Robbie was trying to open his throttle gradually was invasive and irritating and confusing in exactly the same way as that kiss. Only it was in no way like kissing; Tio was just operating Robbie's body, from the inside, with his shoe.

“What the f—hell did you do to the engine,” Tio gritted out, shifting back and forth in his seat as Robbie struggled to maintain a consistent speed over the two-lane road. He could only guess at how fast they were going, since Tio hadn't yet read his speedometer for him. “It's misfiring half the time.”

“Eyemmmm shutteen down four cylnnderz,” Robbie managed. “I get.” A pause as Tio pulsed the throttle again and Robbie struggled to resist the influx of air. He lurched faster anyway, his weight rocking backward and the road dipping below him as his whole being hummed; he clenched his brakes and his rear tires skidded briefly. It took a few car-lengths to recover his train of thought. “Fifteen mpg.”

Tio thumped his steering wheel with his thumbs. “How?”

“Alchemical flame array. I move the fuel where I want it.”

“Well, stop.”

“Robbie saved us from getting stranded when he figured out how to do that,” Gabe interrupted.

“Then Robbie gets a gold star.” Tio glared at Robbie's radio. “The engine note's giving me hives. Stop.” He punctuated this with another pulse of the gas pedal, forcing Robbie to inhale and speed up, alive, alive, alive.

Robbie focused on Gabe's weight in the passenger seat, his concerned grasp on Robbie's door, and squeezed his brakes again. “I need to reset the points and the carb. Keep me steady.” And then he focused inward, on the most vital parts of himself. The screw that adjusted the choke for the Holley four-barrel carburetor, the spark gaps inside his distributor. He twisted cautiously, step by step, back to proper spark timing and fuel-air richness as he relaxed his guiding pull on the aerosolized gasoline flowing through him. It did feel more balanced, stronger, to run on all eight cylinders again. The strain on his engine block disappeared, and he turned his attention back outward. His wheels surged over the pavement. Tio looked pleased. Gabe was smiling nervously into his side mirror. Robbie chirped his radio, angled his rear-view mirror to watch Gabe and Tio at the same time. “Done.”

“Thank-you,” Tio said. “Now relax and let me drive.”

Robbie crackled, irritation rumbling from his engine.

“It's Robbie's body,” Gabe protested. “He drives himself. You just have to sit there.”

“I get carsick.” Tio shrugged unrepentantly at Gabe. “I'm serious.”

“Fine,” Robbie said. “Gabe, it's fine. It's his car. I'll just ride along.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. We can't both drive at the same time, it's really annoying.”

“Exactly,” Tio said, and dipped his foot against Robbie's accelerator. Robbie felt the air and fuel rush in, and tried to pull himself back from the sensation, observe, accept, pass on, to let his body breathe on its own. And it did. Tio pushed him up to second gear, then third, cruising along steadily at just a thousand rpm or so above idling, an easy, effortless pace. Robbie released his grip on his power steering pump and let Tio's hands on his wheel keep him centered in his lane. His wheels hummed against the pavement. His blower sucked down air and packed it into his intake manifold. Wind fluttered over his panels. His engine warmed and growled.

“How're you doing?” Gabe asked, and Robbie replied, honestly, “Good.”

“Good?”

“See, he's fine,” Tio said.

He was relaxing. He was warm and moving and alive, but he didn't have to think so hard about everything he was doing. He didn't have to do anything right now, except talk. Hang out. Ride along. And he didn't have to worry, with Tio controlling his throttle, about what might happen if driving got too intense, if he got carried away by the rhythm of his steel body. He stopped watching the road ahead so closely and turned his rear-view mirror toward Gabe.

Tio grabbed his mirror and twisted it back toward him. Right. He needed that. Robbie used his side mirror, which was closer to Gabe anyway, though it was hard to see his face through the glare of the sun on his window. Gabe was staring back at him; he smiled when he noticed the mirror move.

“So, Sr. Reyes,” Robbie started. Tio startled and looked down at the radio again. “What kind of Alchemy training do you have?”

“Right to business, huh. You want my qualifications? This a job interview?”

Robbie considered and discarded a dozen inarticulate but sarcastic responses before settling on, “Yes.”

Tio cocked his hips sideways on the driver's seat, leaned back, and drove with one hand on Robbie's wheel, the other arm resting on his door. “Army. Thought I'd see the world, have some adventure. Applied to the Alchemy program, aced my aptitude test, got the grand tour, signed my Super Restrictive Lifelong Alchemy Service Commitment, then they made me do some bullshit inkblot testing, didn't like the results, and put me on permanent desk deployment. I said fuck it, if they're gonna put me in prison I'd at least make them chase me down first, and helped myself to half their textbooks on my way out. Went into business for myself, picked up some new tricks here and there. I'm self-taught, you could say. Like you two.”

“But you've been practicing a lot longer,” Robbie prodded. “Right?”

“Of course. It's the second-closest thing you can do to becoming a god. A life-time hobby.”

Tio was a hobbyist. Fantastic. “What's your strongest field?”

“You don't want to catch up?” Tio demanded, thumping Robbie's wheel again. “Swap stories? Talk about your folks?”

Robbie crackled his radio. He hummed irritably over the road.

“Robbie looked out for me, growing up,” Gabe said. “It was hard sometimes, but we got out okay. Robbie had to do...um, everything. Mostly. He had to quit community college.”

“Gabe, could you please plug in my phone and play some Corrupted Youth,” Robbie interrupted.

“Oh,” Gabe said. He leaned forward in his seat, and Robbie felt his hand brush his center console as he fished out the aux cord for the tape-deck adapter. “Okay.” Robbie swallowed the tape and waited for Gabe to flick through his new phone. At last his speakers filled with the sound of Eugene and Hector's manic guitars and Riff-Raff's frenetic drumming and Nacho's hoarse howling vocals over Adan's pounding bass line, and he couldn't really hear anything in his cabin anymore. In his mirror, he saw Tio wince and mouth What is this shit, felt Gabe bouncing in his seat despite how he insisted punk rock annoyed him. He let the music flow through his wires, resisted Tio's hand trying to turn down his volume knob and eject the cassette adapter. Let himself float between endless corn fields, scanning the horizon in every direction, feeling the air whistling over and through him, the sun beating down. He could almost believe he was lying in his bed at home with his headphones on, daydreaming about Iowa for whatever reason, his body breathing on its own and his heart pulsing within him. Alive.

They crested a low rise and the corn stretched out in all directions, the road a shimmering gray seam in the world. Tio's foot lifted off his accelerator and pressed his brake, squeezing fluid through steel brake lines from his master cylinder and forcing all his calipers to clench. Robbie observed the sensation with interest. However he'd been braking himself, he'd apparently been skipping a few steps. His transmission downshifted to second, then first as they stopped. Robbie cut the signal from his cassette player so he could talk. “¿Que pasa?”

“There's nowhere for a cop to hide around here,” Tio remarked, twisting in his seat to look over his shoulder. When he turned back around, he had a little grin that pulled at the laugh lines around his mouth, made him look younger and less sinister. “You know the blower starts to sing at about 5500 rpm? It still do that?”

Robbie thought back to last week, those ecstatic miles on the salt flats when he'd pushed his new body to its limit. “I think so.”

“Let's check,” Tio said, and then he put his left foot on the brake and moved his right to the gas, and fuck fuck ai carajo his engine strained and his tires burned, smoke filled the view from his side mirrors, hot, scraping but a good pain like peeling off a sunburn, his thoughts shattered under the roar of his engine like a wineglass in front of an amplifier. Tio lifted his foot off the gas and his heart slowed. Robbie knew what Tio was going to do, he knew this, he'd never done this himself because tires weren't cheap and his Neon had been a front-wheel drive anyway; he felt his hot rear tires sticking to every pebble and pore in the asphalt as Tio reversed him and backed him onto his own hot rubber smeared off and painted to the road, he knew what was going to happen and he'd like to say something, but he'd lost his grip on his sound system and “Wasted Youth” was screaming through his speakers, and then Tio stomped on his accelerator and ripped open his throttle, and hiyrrrRRRRRRRR—

 

Gabe slammed back into Robbie's seat as they took off. His breath caught in his throat, he felt like the world had tipped backward, then his breath caught as Robbie's front tires slammed back to the ground. Robbie's engine was howling, his music pounding, just like on the freeway sometimes when he got to listening to one of his favorite bands and started screwing around with his gears because he couldn't headbang anymore, only now Robbie wasn't doing it voluntarily. Tio sat straight in the driver's seat, both hands gripping Robbie's wheel, grinning as they whipped over the narrow road faster and faster, and then Robbie started screaming.

Not the horn, not the radio, but a new sound, an eerie metallic whistle from the blower. “Yes! There!” Tio exclaimed. Their speed flattened out, then Tio braked and Robbie skidded, almost twisted sideways before Tio fought the wheel straight again. Then they were speeding off again, propelled by the shocking power of Robbie's engine.

When Tio had braked and almost spun them off the road, Robbie hadn't reacted.

“Robbie,” Gabe said. He could barely hear himself. He followed the aux cord from the cassette adapter to Robbie's phone, which had fallen into the footwell, and fished it up. He paused the music and the horrible racket went silent; now it was just the roar of Robbie's engine drowning out his voice. “Robbie!”

Tio sped up until the blower started shrieking again, then slowed. Speed and slow. Speed and slow. Even on the perfectly flat Iowa backroad, Gabe felt like he was on a roller coaster. A big one.

“Robbie, are you okay,” Gabe demanded, slapping Robbie's dashboard to get his attention.

Robbie's speakers crackled, and Gabe almost melted in relief but then Tio sped them up again and the acceleration pinned him against the backrest. “I built the car for this,” Tio yelled. “He's fine.”

“Robbie, come on,” Gabe insisted, and then Robbie started whistling. Not with the blower, but with his speakers, a tuneless electronic eeeeeeeooooooooo. “Is that good?” Gabe demanded.

Eeeeeeeeee, said Robbie. EeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEE!

Gabe covered his ears. Tio was cackling in the driver's seat, Robbie had reverted to droid noises, and there was absolutely nothing Gabe could do to make this all stop.

Mercifully, the backroad terminated on Highway 20 and Tio slowed to a legal pace. He ejected Robbie's cassette adapter and put his radio on a Country station and Robbie didn't say anything until they reached the hospital.

 

“Wait here,” Tio said as he steered Robbie around the back of the hospital toward a loading dock and a set of concrete steps leading to a metal door with key-card entry. Gabe nodded, even though he didn't really have an option otherwise, with his chair in Robbie's trunk. Tio reached for Robbie's ignition switch and looked confused when he saw there was no key in it. “How do you shut him down?” he asked.

Gabe banged his head against Robbie's headrest. “You don't.”

“Where's the keys?”

“Here.” Gabe opened Robbie's glove box and pulled out the Charger's key with the pewter skull keychain. “We never use them, anyway.”

“Handy,” Tio said, and stuck the key in Robbie's ignition. Robbie shut himself down before he could turn it, and Tio frowned.

“I. Got. It.” Robbie's speech came slow and chopped.

“Well, look who's back. Was it good for you, too?”

Gabe snapped his head around and stared. Tio had a smug little smirk; he couldn't tell what kind of a joke he was trying to make—an absurd joke, or a too-close-to-home joke.

Robbie was slow to answer, his speakers fuzzing softly. At last he managed, “I'm fine.”

“Good to hear.” Tio patted his wheel and opened the door, then paused, feet on the pavement, before he slowly pushed himself to his feet. He stopped to brace his hand against Robbie's roof before shutting his door and approaching the staff door, texting as he went.

Gabe stared at Tio's back as he hooked his arms into the railing of the steps. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath and he seemed to droop, letting the armrail take his weight. Gabe reached up and waved to Robbie's rear-view mirror. Slowly, it turned to face him. “Robbie. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Robbie said, slow but clear. “I'm fine.”

“You're not acting fine.”

Robbie crackled, pops and fizzes, the static more lively than it had been a few seconds ago. “Let it go.”

“Is it weird?” Gabe persisted. “When Tio drives you? Because you're acting weird. And I know your engine is connected to your emotions, you told me—”

“I never told you that,” Robbie said. Calm, mechanical, a bit fuzzy around the edges.

“It's kind of obvious,” Gabe said, and Robbie chuffed static. He frowned down at his lap, at the stumps of his legs, at the tape deck with the adapter sticking out where Robbie hadn't sucked it back in. “I don't think he should be driving you like that. It's weird.”

“I'm a car,” Robbie argued. Gabe met his own eyes in the rear-view mirror, tried to picture Robbie looking back at him. Probably exasperated. “People drive cars. It's normal. And this Charger was modified for drag racing. That's what it's—I'm—for. It's a little overwhelming but I'll get used to it.”

You couldn't talk, Gabe thought. You weren't moving on your own. “What if it was me?”

Robbie went dead silent. There was the faintest click from his speakers as soft static he'd mistaken for the ringing of his ears cut out. “It's not you.”

“But if it was. If it was me, would you think it was okay? For someone to control me like that?”

Robbie didn't answer.

The staff door opened and a scruffy white man Tio's age wearing gray scrubs emerged, carrying a plastic bag full of medical stuff. Tio handed him something and they talked for a bit, then the man in the scrubs, the doctor or whatever he was, walked quickly to Robbie's passenger door. Robbie swung it open as he approached.

“Hi,” Gabe said. The man didn't meet his eyes. “You here to test me for Ivanov's?”

“Sure,” the man said. He tied a latex ribbon above Gabe's elbow and swabbed the skin below it with some alcohol. “Hold still and I'll get this over with.”

Gabe had been expecting some forms to sign or insurance questions. Maybe Tio had already filled them all out online. It was nice not to have to leave Robbie to get his blood drawn. He looked over his shoulder, as far away from the needle as possible, and grabbed on to the side of Robbie's seat to steady his elbow. He felt the needle stab in and it was all he could do not to pull away and shudder.

Robbie whistled softly, oooo-ooo-ooooooo. Gabe focused on the sound until the man untied the tourniquet and pressed a cotton ball into the blood spot. He turned back and watched him apply a little Batman bandaid. “That's it?”

“That's it.” The man still didn't meet his eyes.

“When will we know?”

The man glanced over his shoulder to where Tio had joined them. “Couple days.”

“You're a pal,” Tio said, and clapped him on the back. He shut Robbie's door and returned to the driver's seat. Started Robbie back up with the key. “Who wants McDonalds and who wants ethanol-free premium?”

Gabe stared at Robbie's glove-box, tension building. He had to say something, and Tio would not be happy. He didn't know Tio all that well, but he got the idea he didn't like being told what to do. On the other hand, if he said nothing now, it would be harder and harder to fix things in the future and he'd never forgive himself if he didn't nip things in the bud. “You shouldn't drive Robbie.”

Tio shot him an ugly look, and put his hand deliberately on Robbie's gear selector. “This is my car.”

“Gabe—” Robbie said, but instead of saying it's fine, he just stopped.

“After we fix Robbie you can drive it as much as you want. But right now it's not just a car, it's a person. I'm sorry I put Robbie in your car, but I didn't have any better options and it's just temporary.” It has to be. “Controlling people like that is wrong.”

“Speaking for people is wrong, too,” Tio said. “How about it, Roberto? Was or was that not fun?”

Gabe watched Robbie's mirror nervously. At last Robbie said, “That's not important.”

Tio followed Gabe's eyes and twisted Robbie's mirror to face him. “That's no way to live your best life, my boy.”

“Gabe's right,” Robbie said. “I might let you do that again, but. If it was Gabe, if you used Gabe like that. I would be very angry.”

Tio looked from Robbie's mirror to Gabe's face. Gabe nodded hard at him, not daring to say anything else. “I see,” he said at last.

“We just need to fix Robbie, then you can have your car back,” Gabe said.

“Yes. Of course.” Tio stared ahead at the hospital. “You know the way to McDonald's, Robbie? How to get home?”

Robbie paused before answering. “I was distracted.”

“Then I think I should be the one driving. At least for now.”

“Okay.”

“Don't race him,” Gabe said. “I'm serious.”

“You have my word,” Tio said, reversing Robbie before driving him out of the parking lot. “Say, after that trip you boys had, he'll need a tune-up. Where'd you put his binding mark? So I don't accidentally damage it.”

“Oh!” Gabe had forgotten to show it to Tio. “It's on the door-frame. Driver's side.”

“Good to know,” Tio remarked, and he guided Robbie gently onto the main drag, toward rows of strip malls and fast food restaurants.

.