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Feb. 23rd, 2007 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ihearthings_iiheh. ever forgotten that you wrote something? no. oh okay. just me then.
Dean/Sam, AU-ish, around 3000 words, vague sex.
Road that drives away
You stop at a gas station, fill up the old lady, and get yourself something to eat too; coffee and a bag of chips, strawberry Twizzlers.
It’s not too hot yet, but there’s a faint shimmer in the air and you smile. Somehow, the road feels more attainable, this morning.
It’s not so much a gas station as it is two pumps and a shed, but you don’t need anything else. There’s no real shelter from the wind, and you feel tiny particles of red desert sand pierce your skin and cling to your eyelashes, catch in your stubble. It’s morning still, just in-between dawn and all it promises, and when you drive on, the last pale remnants of night cling to the sides of the car like greedy hands trying to catch you.
You press harder on the accelerator.
It’s not really running away anymore --- you’ve almost forgotten why you left, and you’ve started to enjoy this journey trip expedition; and when you hold your arm out of the open window, slowly opening your curled fist, the wind flows like liquid between your fingers.
You’ve been driving for a while and the sun is starting to coyly shine from behind a few fluffy clouds when you see a pinprick in the distance, a pinprick that grows larger and larger until there’s a man walking by the side of the road. When he hears you approach, he turns around and walks slowly backwards, smiling as you drive up beside him.
The car idles beside him and he puts his arm on the roof, bends down, looks at you from across the passenger seat. Hey, he says and he’s close enough that you can see the dimple in his cheek. You look at his rumbled clothes, road-weary eyes, the red dust that clings to the beginnings of a beard, eyebrows, wild hair - you wonder how long he’s been on the road.
Wanna ride? You cock your head to the side and he nods. Sure.
He dumps his grimy duffle and a beat-up leather messenger bag in the backseat before getting in. He arranges his long legs to fit comfortably before leaning against the door, facing you. His steady gaze unnerves you at first, but when you speed up he laughs, big and unabashed, straight white teeth and crows feet at the corners of his eyes.
Three miles down the road and he says, So where exactly are you going? and you say, I’m not sure yet, and he says, Yeah. Me neither.
You stop outside a pit stop truck diner, later sometime after, and he tries to gauge the time by looking at the sun.
I always wanted to be a boy scout, he says and you say, You’ll go blind if you keep staring at the sun.
Inside, he greedily sucks down greasy cheeseburgers fries a chocolate milkshake, licking his fingers clean while carefully considering what kind of pie he would like for desert; laminated menu sticking to the tabletop and the waitress’s hands on her hips. You eat steak sandwiches limp side salad watered down cola and he settles on coconut cream. The waitress brings him a large helping, and when he’s done he swipes a finger across the plate, licks it clean.
The waitress calls him sweetheart and makes sex eyes at you, and you both leave an unnecessary tip. You carry Styrofoam cups of bitter steaming black coffee to the car and settle in for the drive.
He reaches for the radio, and his long, nimble fingers fiddle with it for a while as you drive, but it’s mostly dry static and outdated pop songs, and once you pick up the end of a static conversation between two truckers about the women waiting for them at the drop-off.
He turns the radio off and finds the ratty shoebox of tapes underneath his seat. He searches through them with a sly grin on his face and shakes his head. Cassette tapes, man, seriously? he turns the tapes over in his large hands, squinting to try and read the smudged labels.
First rule of this car, you say, reach over and pluck your favorite tape from his fingers, driver picks the music- you pop the tape in the deck and smirk, shotgun shuts his cakehole.
He laughs over the opening sounds of AC/DC and starts humming along. Definitely not a singer, but he’s not horrible, and the familiar music and his unfamiliar company allow your thoughts to drift away on the cooling breeze.
You drive on through the twilight, the road taking on a warm glow beneath you, and you think maybe it’s his doing. He says, I could drive for a while if you want, but you shake your head, never taking your eyes of the road. Up ahead in the distance you see a bright green neon sign promising vacancy and when you glance over at him, he nods.
Two hours later, a pimply pizza boy shows up, and twenty minutes after that, you fall asleep, backs to each other in your respective beds.
Eighty-seven miles on, hot coffee stale pizza breath mints rolling in your belly and you realize that you don’t even know his name.
Well I don’t know yours either, he says.
I used to hate the idea of living like this, he says, fingering a small tear in thigh of his jeans, so… casual, I mean. Random. You’re parked on the shoulder and you’re stretching your legs, he’s in his seat, eyes on the horizon, past the line of trees. He looks over at you, an embarrassed smile tugging at his lips. I used to have a plan, he says, a master plan.
Master plan, huh? What happened? you ask and he shrugs. Went up in flames, he says and throws you the car keys.
You laugh and he looks at you before he tilts his head back and laughs too, an open and lighthearted sound, and at that moment, his eyes are the same color as the sky.
Forty-six miles since you last stopped to take a leak, and the road is empty except for you and him, and the black asphalt turns into a yellow brick road before your eyes, beckoning you further along. You can’t resist.
You never could.
You’ve lost count, of the miles, the hours, the directions in which you’re headed, and when you stop the car, you can still feel the wheels moving you on, away. You take the key from the ignition, slowly take your feet of the pedals; assure yourself that you’re completely still, stationary, wonder how you can have motion sickness.
He reaches across the seat, touches your arm and you startle, bile rising sickly in your throat. Hey, he says, and, are you even with me here, and when you don’t move, he slides his hand up your arm, and the sandpaper sound of it gives you goose-bumps.
He cups your face, and you can feel every callous, every single line, the sweet pulse that beats faintly but persistently in his fingertips, but you can’t even bring yourself to look at him and he sighs, leather creaks door groans – you feel guilty, but you’re not sure why.
You reach over, carefully glancing between him and the road, and curl your fingers softly around his neck, trying to tilt his head away from the window. He’s fast asleep, but the small, dull thud his head makes against the glass every time you hit a stone or pothole worries you.
Even as he falls against you, heavy and warm, your fingers are reluctant to leave the small crook where it’s warm and damp, and soft hair curls over the thin, supple skin. You think, perversely, that if you wanted to, you could kill him now without even waking him up.
Shiver shudder and he looks up at you through slitted, sleepy eyes. Warm hand on your thigh, suddenly, warm arm around you and he says, hey, like an invitation. His lips are dry and hot on your jaw and you carefully steer onto the shoulder and stop the car before you turn towards him, press him back against the door and kiss him.
He gets a bagful of snacks from the vending machine outside and dumps them on the middle of the bed, a veritable feast of things that hold less than zero nutrition. You leave him as he wrestles a stubborn bag of peanuts and when you come out of the bathroom, steam trailing after you, he’s naked on the bed, lazily sucking the sweet marrow from an Oreo.
Want some? he asks, and holds a half out for you to take. He grins at you, languid and comfortable, and you slowly take the Oreo. When you are done, black crumbs stick to your fingertips and he takes your wrist, pulls you down next to him, and licks them off.
Hey, he says and looks intently into your eyes, hey, are you -- can we do this? and carefully wedges his fingers between your own as you lean in and kiss him, soft shy hesitant, and when you tentatively lick at the seam of his lips, you taste the curve of a smile that matches your own.
After later afterglow, and you’re sticky spent sleepless in the best way. He falls asleep before you, and you watch him leisurely as you come down. He’s curled tightly up together, a mass of long limbs and sharp angles, and at first you thought you might cut yourself on him, but under above inside you, he was tender and careful.
His lashes cast long half-moon shadows on his cheeks, and even in the harsh light from the street lamp, he is beautiful.
You lose count of the minutes hours days in the slippery slick sensation of him and the whisper of skin against skin. The stops are more frequent and sometimes longer but since neither of you are going anywhere you don’t mind too much.
There’s a strange comfort about sleeping next to someone at night, and his awkward grace becomes a familiar presence beside you in the car.
Sometimes, fleetingly, you wonder what it would feel like to just stop, but the road beckons and you’ve got momentum now, that you don’t think you could stop if you tried.
The moon is out tonight, huge and full, and the color of a brand new penny that’s balancing precariously in the sky. You’ve stopped, partly because you’ve been driving for hours on end and need to feel the ground, still inert unmoving, under your feet, and partly just to take a second to take it all in.
The night is tight around you, covering you like a blanket, and the stars are so close they look like fireflies. You imagine that if you closed your eyes and reached out, you would be able to pluck them from the sky.
Huddled up together in the backseat, listening to the crickets birds a lone toad and he pinches the fat moon between his thumb and forefinger.
The sky has never been closer, he says, and you kiss him.
I used to have a brother, you say one day as you’ve stopped for lunch picnic leg-stretch. You’re lying side by side on the ground, shaded by a friendly tree, and you feel his startled laugh before you hear it.
Used to? he asks and snakes his hand through the tall grass till he finds yours, and you squeeze his fingers.
Used to. I don’t--- You close your eyes and you can almost feel a small hand in yours, the soft downy feel of his unruly mop of hair under your fingers. I lost him somewhere, you say, and his fingers tighten around yours.
It’s okay, you say, I’ve got you now, and he laughs. We’re not exactly brotherly.
It’s okay, you insist, this is better.
His face is covered in a thick layer of shaving cream and he’s filled the tiny sink with warm water. He dips his old-fashioned razor in the water, shakes the excess off.
The bathroom is dingy and the light is yellow mute muffled, but there’s something inherently sensual about the way he stares at you through the mirror, before looking intently into the mirror, putting the blade to his skin, slowly dragging the razor down, down, down with careful precision.
When he is done, he cleans the razor, rinses the sink. He wrings out a washcloth and runs it over his skin, washing off the leftover cream, and when he shivers at the feeling of it on his sensitive skin, it makes you shiver too.
He’s barely finished before you growl and leap up from the toilet seat, pinning him back against the sink.
You kiss him with intent and he kisses you back the same, open-mouthed messy delicious, and he whimpers when your hands find him under his shirt, fingers struggling to meet at the small of his back, nails pressing into the dimples there, thumbs in the hollows of his hips as you urge him up on the sink.
He wraps his legs around you, desperate for leverage, and you fuck like that, frantic and frenzied as if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere.
I think we should just stay here for a coupla days, he says, and your hands slip on the wheel as he gestures out the window to the breeze coming in from the ocean.
Whaddaya say? A few days just relaxing here--- he trails off when you fail to answer him, your gaze locked on the faded yellow stripes in the road. They never stop, and you’ve forgotten how to.
Look, he says, and there’s a sour note to his voice that’s new, this whole Thelma and Louise thing is fun, but and you want to tell him so many things and you want him to make you stop and you want him to just understand but you can’t so you simply keep driving.
Hey, he says, don’t you want and are you even listening to me and look at me but you stare helplessly, hypnotized, overcome at the road and you don’t do anything at all.
You feel the wheels turn beneath you, swallowing up the road momentum momentum momentum, but the inertia coils sickly in your belly and you feel like throwing up.
Thirty-eight miles into morning and the car creaks moans whines, slows and then stops.
You look at each other and then out on the hood, and he slowly opens his door and gets out. You do the same.
You can’t remember how long or how much you’ve been driving, but you know that this has never happened before, and that it’s not good.
Dumbfounded you lift the hood and he leans in, cautiously pulling pressing fiddling and he looks like he is being eaten by the car. When he emerges, he wipes his fingers on his jeans and shrugs. You try and start the car but it doesn’t work and he fiddles some more, but to no avail.
After a few tries, he throws up his arms and rolls his eyes. Whatever, he says, I’m not a mechanic, and you close your eyes and smell grease and oil, feel it on your hands. You get out, walk up, push him away. He goes willingly, settling into the driver’s seat with an ease that bothers you.
You look at the mess before you. The engine is steaming accusingly and you shake your head. I’m sorry, you think, I’m sorry. You wipe sweaty hands on your jeans; try to remember what your father taught you. Your hands work steadily, seemingly on their own accord, but it doesn’t make a difference, the engine is still fried, and you’re stuck.
You stare down at the engine for a little while after giving up, willing it to magically jump to life, so you can get in, get on. Nothing happens.
He climbs out of the car and gently holds you by your shoulders, hey, he says, hey, it’s not working. You hiss I know before halfheartedly kicking at the air close to the bumper, and he pulls you away from the car. Shhh, he says as you collapse together in his seat. He’s stroking your hair and your eyes sting with tears, and you are fighting him, hitting your fists on his chest, shoulders, anywhere you can reach, but he holds you closer closer closer, until you can’t move at all.
I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry.
On the back of the tow-truck and the car is moving along slowly, even though your feet are off the pedals. Looking at the road as it sails by, you feel detached and cold and you look away.
You’re not sure when where how you lost him too, but as he’s sleeping uncomfortably in the seat beside you, you know you have. When he leaves you won’t see him again and you’re not sure how to feel about this.
You screech to a stop outside a bright gas station, and he wakes up. He looks at you, leftover sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes, and his lips curve carefully around a smile.
He cocks his head to the side and considers you for a moment before cupping a calloused hand to your jaw.
Hey, he says, you know—and you close your eyes and let yourself lean into the touch for a moment.
I know, you say.
You steal a glance at him in the side mirror and he’s walking backwards, just like the first time you saw him, until he’s a smaller and smaller pinprick. May be closer than they appear, but when you turn and crane your neck around he is still nothing but a pinprick and when you turn back around, he is gone.
The wind mercilessly whips desert sand in your face, and the sting makes tears well up in your eyes.
You drive on, the sun burning black spots on the back on your eyelids.
Dean/Sam, AU-ish, around 3000 words, vague sex.
Road that drives away
You stop at a gas station, fill up the old lady, and get yourself something to eat too; coffee and a bag of chips, strawberry Twizzlers.
It’s not too hot yet, but there’s a faint shimmer in the air and you smile. Somehow, the road feels more attainable, this morning.
It’s not so much a gas station as it is two pumps and a shed, but you don’t need anything else. There’s no real shelter from the wind, and you feel tiny particles of red desert sand pierce your skin and cling to your eyelashes, catch in your stubble. It’s morning still, just in-between dawn and all it promises, and when you drive on, the last pale remnants of night cling to the sides of the car like greedy hands trying to catch you.
You press harder on the accelerator.
It’s not really running away anymore --- you’ve almost forgotten why you left, and you’ve started to enjoy this journey trip expedition; and when you hold your arm out of the open window, slowly opening your curled fist, the wind flows like liquid between your fingers.
You’ve been driving for a while and the sun is starting to coyly shine from behind a few fluffy clouds when you see a pinprick in the distance, a pinprick that grows larger and larger until there’s a man walking by the side of the road. When he hears you approach, he turns around and walks slowly backwards, smiling as you drive up beside him.
The car idles beside him and he puts his arm on the roof, bends down, looks at you from across the passenger seat. Hey, he says and he’s close enough that you can see the dimple in his cheek. You look at his rumbled clothes, road-weary eyes, the red dust that clings to the beginnings of a beard, eyebrows, wild hair - you wonder how long he’s been on the road.
Wanna ride? You cock your head to the side and he nods. Sure.
He dumps his grimy duffle and a beat-up leather messenger bag in the backseat before getting in. He arranges his long legs to fit comfortably before leaning against the door, facing you. His steady gaze unnerves you at first, but when you speed up he laughs, big and unabashed, straight white teeth and crows feet at the corners of his eyes.
Three miles down the road and he says, So where exactly are you going? and you say, I’m not sure yet, and he says, Yeah. Me neither.
+
You stop outside a pit stop truck diner, later sometime after, and he tries to gauge the time by looking at the sun.
I always wanted to be a boy scout, he says and you say, You’ll go blind if you keep staring at the sun.
Inside, he greedily sucks down greasy cheeseburgers fries a chocolate milkshake, licking his fingers clean while carefully considering what kind of pie he would like for desert; laminated menu sticking to the tabletop and the waitress’s hands on her hips. You eat steak sandwiches limp side salad watered down cola and he settles on coconut cream. The waitress brings him a large helping, and when he’s done he swipes a finger across the plate, licks it clean.
The waitress calls him sweetheart and makes sex eyes at you, and you both leave an unnecessary tip. You carry Styrofoam cups of bitter steaming black coffee to the car and settle in for the drive.
He reaches for the radio, and his long, nimble fingers fiddle with it for a while as you drive, but it’s mostly dry static and outdated pop songs, and once you pick up the end of a static conversation between two truckers about the women waiting for them at the drop-off.
He turns the radio off and finds the ratty shoebox of tapes underneath his seat. He searches through them with a sly grin on his face and shakes his head. Cassette tapes, man, seriously? he turns the tapes over in his large hands, squinting to try and read the smudged labels.
First rule of this car, you say, reach over and pluck your favorite tape from his fingers, driver picks the music- you pop the tape in the deck and smirk, shotgun shuts his cakehole.
He laughs over the opening sounds of AC/DC and starts humming along. Definitely not a singer, but he’s not horrible, and the familiar music and his unfamiliar company allow your thoughts to drift away on the cooling breeze.
+
You drive on through the twilight, the road taking on a warm glow beneath you, and you think maybe it’s his doing. He says, I could drive for a while if you want, but you shake your head, never taking your eyes of the road. Up ahead in the distance you see a bright green neon sign promising vacancy and when you glance over at him, he nods.
Two hours later, a pimply pizza boy shows up, and twenty minutes after that, you fall asleep, backs to each other in your respective beds.
+
Eighty-seven miles on, hot coffee stale pizza breath mints rolling in your belly and you realize that you don’t even know his name.
Well I don’t know yours either, he says.
+
I used to hate the idea of living like this, he says, fingering a small tear in thigh of his jeans, so… casual, I mean. Random. You’re parked on the shoulder and you’re stretching your legs, he’s in his seat, eyes on the horizon, past the line of trees. He looks over at you, an embarrassed smile tugging at his lips. I used to have a plan, he says, a master plan.
Master plan, huh? What happened? you ask and he shrugs. Went up in flames, he says and throws you the car keys.
You laugh and he looks at you before he tilts his head back and laughs too, an open and lighthearted sound, and at that moment, his eyes are the same color as the sky.
+
Forty-six miles since you last stopped to take a leak, and the road is empty except for you and him, and the black asphalt turns into a yellow brick road before your eyes, beckoning you further along. You can’t resist.
You never could.
+
You’ve lost count, of the miles, the hours, the directions in which you’re headed, and when you stop the car, you can still feel the wheels moving you on, away. You take the key from the ignition, slowly take your feet of the pedals; assure yourself that you’re completely still, stationary, wonder how you can have motion sickness.
He reaches across the seat, touches your arm and you startle, bile rising sickly in your throat. Hey, he says, and, are you even with me here, and when you don’t move, he slides his hand up your arm, and the sandpaper sound of it gives you goose-bumps.
He cups your face, and you can feel every callous, every single line, the sweet pulse that beats faintly but persistently in his fingertips, but you can’t even bring yourself to look at him and he sighs, leather creaks door groans – you feel guilty, but you’re not sure why.
+
You reach over, carefully glancing between him and the road, and curl your fingers softly around his neck, trying to tilt his head away from the window. He’s fast asleep, but the small, dull thud his head makes against the glass every time you hit a stone or pothole worries you.
Even as he falls against you, heavy and warm, your fingers are reluctant to leave the small crook where it’s warm and damp, and soft hair curls over the thin, supple skin. You think, perversely, that if you wanted to, you could kill him now without even waking him up.
Shiver shudder and he looks up at you through slitted, sleepy eyes. Warm hand on your thigh, suddenly, warm arm around you and he says, hey, like an invitation. His lips are dry and hot on your jaw and you carefully steer onto the shoulder and stop the car before you turn towards him, press him back against the door and kiss him.
+
He gets a bagful of snacks from the vending machine outside and dumps them on the middle of the bed, a veritable feast of things that hold less than zero nutrition. You leave him as he wrestles a stubborn bag of peanuts and when you come out of the bathroom, steam trailing after you, he’s naked on the bed, lazily sucking the sweet marrow from an Oreo.
Want some? he asks, and holds a half out for you to take. He grins at you, languid and comfortable, and you slowly take the Oreo. When you are done, black crumbs stick to your fingertips and he takes your wrist, pulls you down next to him, and licks them off.
Hey, he says and looks intently into your eyes, hey, are you -- can we do this? and carefully wedges his fingers between your own as you lean in and kiss him, soft shy hesitant, and when you tentatively lick at the seam of his lips, you taste the curve of a smile that matches your own.
+
After later afterglow, and you’re sticky spent sleepless in the best way. He falls asleep before you, and you watch him leisurely as you come down. He’s curled tightly up together, a mass of long limbs and sharp angles, and at first you thought you might cut yourself on him, but under above inside you, he was tender and careful.
His lashes cast long half-moon shadows on his cheeks, and even in the harsh light from the street lamp, he is beautiful.
+
You lose count of the minutes hours days in the slippery slick sensation of him and the whisper of skin against skin. The stops are more frequent and sometimes longer but since neither of you are going anywhere you don’t mind too much.
There’s a strange comfort about sleeping next to someone at night, and his awkward grace becomes a familiar presence beside you in the car.
Sometimes, fleetingly, you wonder what it would feel like to just stop, but the road beckons and you’ve got momentum now, that you don’t think you could stop if you tried.
+
The moon is out tonight, huge and full, and the color of a brand new penny that’s balancing precariously in the sky. You’ve stopped, partly because you’ve been driving for hours on end and need to feel the ground, still inert unmoving, under your feet, and partly just to take a second to take it all in.
The night is tight around you, covering you like a blanket, and the stars are so close they look like fireflies. You imagine that if you closed your eyes and reached out, you would be able to pluck them from the sky.
Huddled up together in the backseat, listening to the crickets birds a lone toad and he pinches the fat moon between his thumb and forefinger.
The sky has never been closer, he says, and you kiss him.
+
I used to have a brother, you say one day as you’ve stopped for lunch picnic leg-stretch. You’re lying side by side on the ground, shaded by a friendly tree, and you feel his startled laugh before you hear it.
Used to? he asks and snakes his hand through the tall grass till he finds yours, and you squeeze his fingers.
Used to. I don’t--- You close your eyes and you can almost feel a small hand in yours, the soft downy feel of his unruly mop of hair under your fingers. I lost him somewhere, you say, and his fingers tighten around yours.
It’s okay, you say, I’ve got you now, and he laughs. We’re not exactly brotherly.
It’s okay, you insist, this is better.
+
His face is covered in a thick layer of shaving cream and he’s filled the tiny sink with warm water. He dips his old-fashioned razor in the water, shakes the excess off.
The bathroom is dingy and the light is yellow mute muffled, but there’s something inherently sensual about the way he stares at you through the mirror, before looking intently into the mirror, putting the blade to his skin, slowly dragging the razor down, down, down with careful precision.
When he is done, he cleans the razor, rinses the sink. He wrings out a washcloth and runs it over his skin, washing off the leftover cream, and when he shivers at the feeling of it on his sensitive skin, it makes you shiver too.
He’s barely finished before you growl and leap up from the toilet seat, pinning him back against the sink.
You kiss him with intent and he kisses you back the same, open-mouthed messy delicious, and he whimpers when your hands find him under his shirt, fingers struggling to meet at the small of his back, nails pressing into the dimples there, thumbs in the hollows of his hips as you urge him up on the sink.
He wraps his legs around you, desperate for leverage, and you fuck like that, frantic and frenzied as if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere.
+
I think we should just stay here for a coupla days, he says, and your hands slip on the wheel as he gestures out the window to the breeze coming in from the ocean.
Whaddaya say? A few days just relaxing here--- he trails off when you fail to answer him, your gaze locked on the faded yellow stripes in the road. They never stop, and you’ve forgotten how to.
+
Look, he says, and there’s a sour note to his voice that’s new, this whole Thelma and Louise thing is fun, but and you want to tell him so many things and you want him to make you stop and you want him to just understand but you can’t so you simply keep driving.
Hey, he says, don’t you want and are you even listening to me and look at me but you stare helplessly, hypnotized, overcome at the road and you don’t do anything at all.
You feel the wheels turn beneath you, swallowing up the road momentum momentum momentum, but the inertia coils sickly in your belly and you feel like throwing up.
+
Thirty-eight miles into morning and the car creaks moans whines, slows and then stops.
You look at each other and then out on the hood, and he slowly opens his door and gets out. You do the same.
You can’t remember how long or how much you’ve been driving, but you know that this has never happened before, and that it’s not good.
Dumbfounded you lift the hood and he leans in, cautiously pulling pressing fiddling and he looks like he is being eaten by the car. When he emerges, he wipes his fingers on his jeans and shrugs. You try and start the car but it doesn’t work and he fiddles some more, but to no avail.
After a few tries, he throws up his arms and rolls his eyes. Whatever, he says, I’m not a mechanic, and you close your eyes and smell grease and oil, feel it on your hands. You get out, walk up, push him away. He goes willingly, settling into the driver’s seat with an ease that bothers you.
You look at the mess before you. The engine is steaming accusingly and you shake your head. I’m sorry, you think, I’m sorry. You wipe sweaty hands on your jeans; try to remember what your father taught you. Your hands work steadily, seemingly on their own accord, but it doesn’t make a difference, the engine is still fried, and you’re stuck.
You stare down at the engine for a little while after giving up, willing it to magically jump to life, so you can get in, get on. Nothing happens.
He climbs out of the car and gently holds you by your shoulders, hey, he says, hey, it’s not working. You hiss I know before halfheartedly kicking at the air close to the bumper, and he pulls you away from the car. Shhh, he says as you collapse together in his seat. He’s stroking your hair and your eyes sting with tears, and you are fighting him, hitting your fists on his chest, shoulders, anywhere you can reach, but he holds you closer closer closer, until you can’t move at all.
I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry.
+
On the back of the tow-truck and the car is moving along slowly, even though your feet are off the pedals. Looking at the road as it sails by, you feel detached and cold and you look away.
You’re not sure when where how you lost him too, but as he’s sleeping uncomfortably in the seat beside you, you know you have. When he leaves you won’t see him again and you’re not sure how to feel about this.
You screech to a stop outside a bright gas station, and he wakes up. He looks at you, leftover sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes, and his lips curve carefully around a smile.
He cocks his head to the side and considers you for a moment before cupping a calloused hand to your jaw.
Hey, he says, you know—and you close your eyes and let yourself lean into the touch for a moment.
I know, you say.
+
You steal a glance at him in the side mirror and he’s walking backwards, just like the first time you saw him, until he’s a smaller and smaller pinprick. May be closer than they appear, but when you turn and crane your neck around he is still nothing but a pinprick and when you turn back around, he is gone.
The wind mercilessly whips desert sand in your face, and the sting makes tears well up in your eyes.
You drive on, the sun burning black spots on the back on your eyelids.
