Driving Lessons
Author: fragrantwoods
Title: Driving Lessons
Word Count: 300
Rating: T
Not my characters or show
for challenge no 104: Abstinence
Follow-up drabble to previous AU drabbles The Old Man, the Old Lady, Running Late, and If He'd Only Known... and Presidential Abstinence
She’d been so scared…he’d appeared so confident, his fear hidden, secret. Few enough years separated them in age, but the scars left from a brutal war made him a million years older than her. He couldn’t believe her father trusted him, he’d thought, palms sweating.
He’d let her be in control, her foot on the pedal, her hand on the shift. He thought he’d have to struggle to get her to listen to him, thought she’d put up more of a fight…but she was eighteen, her wide green eyes begging him to understand that she trusted him. Completely. Begged him to be worthy of that trust.
She’d known how to drive a wimpy four-cylinder stick, but she’d walk away from him knowing how to manage a muscle car. He tried not to think about the walking away...He hadn’t planned for this to happen. Things got out of control, clouds moving in way too fast.
One stop, a burger, a soda, and talking that wouldn’t quit, her hair shining, falling over a nubby over-sized sweater. And the clouds had dumped over an inch of ice on the roads…
She asked, then begged him to drive. He was older, more experienced. He put her hands on the wheel and said he’d get her through it. They made it back to her house, her hands and feet, instruments under his control: clutch, downshift, turn right, ease up, turn into the skid. She was so scared, and she trusted his every word. She was shy and shaking when they got back, her eyes hot with adrenaline and safe landings.
Can you stay, she’d asked. In the dark garage, in the ice, the snow.
When it comes to your Dad’s daughters, I’m abstinent, he’d joked, as he walked into the cold night, aching.