GK fic: Long Winding Road
So I wrote Long Winding Road in the GK Battle. Duh for anyone who’s ever read anything by me, ever. Except for the part where I somehow wrote 7k of more-or-less gen. I don’t really know how that happened. Does between-the-lines stuff count as gen? There is a lot of that here. What there is not a lot of is B/R, which is what I meant to do, since people date more than one person in their group of friends all the time, but I realized I’d either have to get a whole new style to make it fit in there under the deadline, or write two separate stories. That second thing may still happen.
Title: Long Winding Road
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: R
Pairing: Gen, with some Brad/OCs and Ray/OFC, plus all the between-the-lines stuff
Word Count: 7017
Summary: There’s 30% less of a chance of them dying on a road trip than dying in Iraq
Notes: Written for the GK Battle. Prompt of pop smoke. Beta by snglesrvngfrend.
Brad goes surfing. He gets out of the middle of his bed before dawn, gets his cold, still-damp wetsuit out of the bathtub and puts it on in the dark, although there’s no one to disturb. His board is still in the back of his Jeep, so he’s in the water before the sky turns pink.
He’s so early there’s no one else around. But this part of the beach mainly serves tourists. Very few other people have caught on to the fact that this is a beautiful place to surf, and Brad’s okay with that.
The waves are alright, not too big but enough for a few good runs. Brad doesn’t bother with any fancy shit, just rides the waves and looks at the houses just off the beach. It doesn’t take long before he’s had enough, so then he just drifts, his back to his board, staring up at the clouds.
He doesn’t move so the waves lap at him, washing him up onto the shore. He feels like driftwood. Going by the sky, it’s going to be a beautiful day.
*
He has a smoothie and scrambled egg whites when he gets back. While he stirs his eggs around the pan he dials his voicemail. He has eight new messages. Each one starts with a drawn-in breath, which gives him enough time to press 7 to delete the message.
He takes his time eating and then doing the dishes, putting the one plate, fork and glass in the drying rack, leaving the pan in the sink, stinking of eggs. He’ll get it later.
*
The rest of the day is a waste, and the night too. Brad fucks around with the laptop Nate gave him when he got his new one. The fan’s blown, clogged with hair and God knows what, and it could use a reformatting. He carefully takes out the old fan and puts on the work table. The empty space is so full of shit Brad has to wipe it out before he screws in the new fan. The old fan and the rag go in the garbage.
The computer starts when Brad tries it, but it does so haltingly and he almost gets the blue screen. It’s a piece of shit computer, but maybe Brad can fix it.
He surfs through Nate’s porn and pictures and files, but there’s nothing notable or new. He leaves long enough to get a beer from the garage and then sits down and starts deleting files. The new fan is perfectly silent.
*
The next morning when Brad’s surfing he happens to look across the wave to the beach. Ray’s there and so is a small fire. He rides the wave to shore and drags his board over to where Ray is crouched, warming his hands on a burning French fry box.
“Dude,” Ray says, “how the fuck do you go surfing so fucking early? My ass is frozen.”
“Isn’t it ten hours too early for you to be out of bed?”
Ray pours a handful of sand on the box, sending the flames sputtering. “Yes. But since your sad ass won’t answer the phone, I got nominated to make sure you were still alive.” He pours another handful and the fire goes out. “Goddamn Poke and his rigged straws.”
“Your concern for my well-being is touching, Ray.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ray says, rubbing his bare shins. “You should make me breakfast to show your appreciation.”
Brad hoists his board up under his arm. “Yeah, okay.” He gives Ray a hand up and they start walking to their cars.
“And then suck my dick.”
“Nice try, Ray.”
“I figured I should give it a go. I thought you might be desperate enough by now.”
Brad thinks about hitting Ray with his board but doesn’t. “Not even close.”
*
Brad’s out of eggs, so the best he can do is toast. Ray eats four pieces.
Chewing obnoxiously, Ray asks where the beer is at. He sprays wet crumbs all over Brad’s counter in the process.
“So, that’s your plan,” Brad says. “Make sure I’m not dead and then get drunk.”
Ray slaps his last two pieces of toast together and takes a big bite. “I’ll think of a better idea once I have a beer.”
Brad gets as many beers as he can carry out of the garage. Ray pounds back his first one before Brad’s got the cap on his off.
“Breakfast of fucking champions,” Ray announces, wiping his mouth, knocking the neck of his empty against Brad’s still-full beer. He gets another one and toasts Brad again.
“Okay, let me think,” he says seriously, taking another mouthful of beer in. “What to do with a broken-hearted Iceman?”
“I am not broken-hearted,” Brad protests.
“Fuck off,” Ray says, “you are.”
Brad glares at Ray, and chugs his beer. If this is going to work he’s going to have to keep pace. He opens his second beer. It’s 8:06 am.
*
“Dude, I totally know what we’re gonna do,” Ray slurs. “We’re gonna go.”
“Go where?” Brad retorts.
Ray throws up his hands. “Fuckin’ anywhere! The world is our oyster, even though oysters are fucking disgusting.” He pauses and then says, “The world, Brad, is our sweet, untapped ass. I know you like that, you big homo.”
“Whatever,” Brad says.
*
They drink all day and by 10:00 pm Brad’s out cold on the couch, sleeping the deep dark sleep of the drunk.
*
At 5:45 am Brad wakes up to Ray flicking his chin. The constant little stings transmit straight through Brad’s sinuses and into his brain, and that fucking hurts.
“Rise and shine, Harriet. We’ve got to get going.”
Brad blinks the sleep out of his eyes. Ray’s face is about four inches from his own.
“What,” is all Brad can manage. The question mark gets lost in his dry throat.
“We are going,” Ray announces. He holds up one of Brad’s black duffel bags. “I’ve already started packing for you.”
Brad struggles to sit up. His mouth tastes like a beer enema and his back is screaming from the couch.
“Packing?”
Ray drops the duffel bag on his lap. “Jesus, you really did drink a lot last night. Here, I’ll make it simple for you: you and me, we’re going on a road trip. I will drive and you will leave your problems behind. It’ll rule and you’ll feel better. Now, get up.”
Brad glances in the bag. It looks like it has most of his underwear drawer in it, plus a hefty amount of t-shirts and shorts.
“Fuck,” Brad says. “How long are you planning on being gone?”
“Who knows, Brad. The road is a tough mistress. Now quit stalling and let’s go.”
Brad gets up and moves without thinking, getting the old laptop and his phone while Ray buzzes around, cramming shit into the bag.
“This is a bad idea,” Brad says when Ray’s tying up his shoes. “No, not bad. Just stupid.”
Ray shoots Brad a cool look. “Brad. You’re all about doing dumbass shit post-dumping. And this isn’t Iraq, so there’s 30% less chance we’ll die doing this. Now, I can annoy you until you get in the car, I can leave a trail of calculator parts from here to the passenger seat, or you can get in by yourself and I'll let you hold the map."
Brad’s a proud man, so he locks the door and walks to the damn car, laptop under his arm. Ray dumps his bag in the trunk of the car and yells, “Road trip!” before he gets into the driver’s seat. It’s so loud a bunch of birds fly out of the tree in Brad’s neighbours’ yard, their predawn singing interrupted.
*
They stop at Ray’s place so he can get some shit too. He comes out of the building with a garbage bag slung over his shoulder. That goes into the trunk too.
“They can take the boy out of the trailer park, but they can’t take the trailer park out of the boy,” Brad says as Ray pulls out of the parking lot.
“Some of us like to live, Brad. Not get pissy if our precious Calvin Klein underwear isn’t folded.”
Brad snorts, looking out the window.
*
Ray stops at a grocery store on the edge of town and presses his face to the glass until the manager walks by and lets them in.
They buy over a hundred dollars worth of stuff, and it’s all junk food, even though they walk through the whole store, up and down every aisle. Brad carries the basket while Ray dumps stuff in it, Skittles and cheesies and powdered drink mix.
In the frozen foods aisle Ray smiles through the glass at a box of ice cream sandwiches, murmuring, “Hello, breakfast,” in a voice that’s pretty close to seductive.
The check-out girl raises her eyebrows when she sees them eating and the opened box, but after Ray winks at her she just shrugs and scans it. When Ray pays and says, “Now you owe me four blowjobs,” to Brad she perks up, looking between them.
Brad licks ice cream off his thumb and stares until she looks away, waiting for the receipt to print.
They finish the ice cream sandwiches in the parking lot, leaning against Ray’s beater. Brad’s still full of beer, so he’s probably going to regret this breakfast, but he finishes the last soft, super-sweet bite anyway, scraping cookie off his thumb with his teeth.
Ray drop kicks his crumpled wrapper and throws the box like a Frisbee in the direction of someone’s car. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Brad shoves his wrapper in the car door instead of dumping it on the ground. He figures it’s too early to litter.
His phone rings in the cup holder. He’s putting on his seatbelt, so he’s too slow for it. Ray gets there first, looking at the screen. He starts the car and answers the phone at the same time.
“LT, my man. What’s up?” Ray leans really far forward over the wheel, the way he used to in Iraq when he had to drive at night. “Nah, I got him. He surprisingly didn’t fillet his arms in the bathtub. No, he’s fine. He’s Brad, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I got it, no worries, Nate. I’ll talk to you later.”
He snaps Brad’s phone closed and says, “Nate.”
Brad stretches out in the car seat. “So I gathered.”
“He’s glad you’re not dead.”
“Good.”
“Now,” Ray wags the phone back and forth, “say bye-bye to your phone. In the car we are off the grid.” He throws Brad’s phone over his shoulder. It bounces off the back seat and skitters under Ray’s.
“I’m pretty sure the highway counts as the grid, Ray,” Brad mutters.
“You would say that.” Ray pumps on the gas and the car accelerates jerkily. He slaps the steering wheel. “Get into it, Brad! Eat some fucking Skittles and look out for VW Beetles. The road trip is good for you. Being on the road builds character.”
Brad looks out the window. He doubts it.
*
Ray drives, because Brad's hangover is setting in. He stares out the windshield for a few minutes, but Ray is speeding, so the bright landscape is blurring around the edges, pulling at Brad's increasingly sour stomach.
He closes his eyes and slumps against the door, one hand over his eyes. He listens to Ray fuck around with the radio, bouncing between soft rock and talk radio. The air conditioning in Ray's car sucks, so all Brad's getting is soft puffs of dusty-cool air across his knees.
It will have to be enough. He dozes off to the sounds of "Carry On My Wayward Son" with his head on the window.
*
Ray pulling into a motel parking lot is what wakes Brad up. His head bounces off the window pretty hard when Ray puts the brakes on, but he's been asleep for a few hours, so he feels alright.
Ray points to the cup holder on the passenger side. "You were out cold so I bought you a Pepsi. It's warm now."
Brad cracks it open and takes a long drink. It is warm, but the sugar hits the spot regardless.
He twists the cap back when he's had enough and wipes his mouth. "Where are we?"
"Somewhere around Barstow," Ray says. "I am fucking beat. We should kick it for a while."
Brad looks at the empty parking lot, the shabby little hotel. "Here?"
"Fifty-four bucks a night, dude. I just want to go to sleep for a while. We've done worse."
"You're right," Brad says. He lifts his ass up to get to his wallet, and peels two twenties off. "Get two beds. I'm not cuddling with your goofy ass."
*
Brad lounges outside the office on the Broken Lock motel, waiting for Ray to come out and toss him a slightly bent key to room number seven.
Room number seven is a stereotype: small, musty and suspiciously stained. Brad steps on something that looks like a blood stain on the carpet on his way in. He frowns at it but throws his bag on the bed anyway, sitting next to it on the thin comforter. Ray belly flops onto the other bed and immediately starts rifling through the table between the beds. He pulls out a telephone book, a stack of take-out menus and a Gideon’s Bible.
He offers the Bible to Brad. “Need some naptime literature?”
“No thanks, Ray.” Brad kicks his shoes toward the television stand. He gets up and closes the curtains on their one smudgy, dead fly-studded window, tucking the room into semi-darkness. He sits back down, suddenly tired to his bones.
“We’ll buy some real food later,” Ray mumbles, wrapping himself in the bed’s scratchy comforter.
Brad makes an agreeable noise, laying down, blinking at the ceiling. There’s red splattered there too.
*
The sun’s going down when Brad wakes up, dusk creeping under the curtains. Ray’s still asleep, his face smushed into the pillow and his shoes sticking out of the blanket.
Brad goes to the bathroom, wiping his dry mouth with his hand. He turns the shower on, and the sink tap too, drinking chemical-tasting water out of his hand. The reflection in the mirror shows a guy who looks faintly like crap.
He gets naked and looks at his body instead. It looks good, maybe even better than it used to, due to all the surfing. He touches his soft cock, shrugging his shoulders to release the remaining tension there.
His stuff’s still in his bag on the bed, so Brad has to use the tiny soap and shampoo provided. He washes quickly, but then stays in the shower even though it’s getting cold already.
He touches his cock again, stroking it experimentally. It twitches readily enough, so Brad goes for it, working up an erection and stroking it briskly.
As far as jacks go it’s all business. Brad cycles through all his usual meat material, none of it particularly exciting, but it does the job.
His reflection looks better when he gets out and towels himself off in front of the mirror. Brad makes the Iceman face, the downturned mouth and the sharp, empty eyes, but drops it, toweling his hair off instead.
Ray is watching basketball on the scratchy TV, lounging across his bed. Brad digs in his bag for some skivvies.
“What do you want to eat?” Brad asks when he’s got his briefs on. Ray holds up a pamphlet for a 1950s-style diner. “Shower’s yours.”
Ray shakes his head rapidly. “Dude, you need to embrace the road trip. Be free and skanky. Me, I’m gonna grow a beard.”
Brad pulls his t-shirt over his head. “I bet you grow the beard of a child molester.”
Scratching his stubbly chin Ray says, “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”
*
The diner has dirty floors and fly paper stuck to the ceiling, but the food is pretty good, although that might just be because they’re ravenous.
Brad wipes ketchup off his fingers with a napkin. “Where are we going?” he asks.
Ray chews his meatloaf thoughtfully. “Honestly, Brad, I have no idea. And I don’t really care. Does it really matter?”
Brad thinks about it, watching their teenage waitress pour someone else some water, her Pepto pink uniform revealing the soft backs of her knees when she bends.
He picks up his burger again. “Probably not.”
“I didn’t think so,” Ray says, shoveling shriveled peas in his mouth. “Seriously, dude, I know you hate the flow but just go with it. Ride in the car and think of Iraq.”
Brad smirks. “You still drive the same.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “Awesomely.”
They watch an old Western on TV when they get back to the hotel room. Ray names all the instances of homoerotic subtext he sees, which means he doesn’t shut up until Brad turns the television off. Even after that he goes for a little while, talking about the prevailing gayness of Westerns.
They go to bed early, Ray still pumping out non-sequiturs about love on horseback into the dark. Brad falls asleep before he can tell Ray he’s a dumbass for the seven millionth time.
He wakes up just before dawn, when the air conditioner turns on for no discernable reason. Ray is silent so Brad just lays there for a while, scratching his chest, his body awake but his brain still offline. It feels fucking nice, but only lasts a few minutes.
When he gets out of bed he fishes for the Gideon’s Bible on the floor. He chucks it at Ray and it connects with a muted thump. Ray groans like Brad is doing him an injustice but he still gets up.
*
It’s Brad’s turn to drive. Brad doesn’t know that until Ray throws the keys to him when he gets out of the office. Brad has to crank the seat all the way back before he gets in. Ray starts digging under the passenger seat, pulling up handfuls of cracked CD cases and flipping through them. He tosses the rejects between his feet or over his shoulder, muttering, “No. No. Nope. Maybe. Copy of a porn. No. No,” until he finds one he likes.
It’s System of a Down. Brad rolls his eyes when Ray throws the horns at a minivan beside them. He speeds up to pass the van and heads east.
*
“So,” Ray says when they cross into Nevada, “should we talk about this, or have you successfully frozen your feelings somewhere in the region of your balls?”
“I’m fine, Ray.” Brad squints against the sun.
“Right. You just love a good long sulk. Gotcha.”
“It was not a sulk,” Brad protests.
“Oh, sorry. A good long manly reclaiming of space and pride. That is over a month long.”
“That’s better. Thank you.”
Brad stops at what looks like the same gas station from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to fill up. Ray stays in the car, so Brad browses around the store, picking up Red Vines and Dr. Pepper.
On the counter is a dusty carousel of sunglasses. Brad spins it around while he waits for the attendant to emerge from the back room. He tries on a pair of black-lensed aviators, looking up at his reflection in the domed security mirror. He looks like he could stand on the edge of the world and not give a fuck.
The attendant, a big whisky tango guy, finally comes out of the back room, yawning. Brad takes the sunglasses off and puts them on the counter next to the Red Vines.
“That’ll be all for ya?” The attendant taps the counter.
Brad gets his wallet out. “Gas too.”
*
Brad’s driving so all they do is skirt Las Vegas. Ray kicks up a fuss, talking about hookers, blow, beer, strippers, hookers and naïve tourists, but Brad’s still driving and the driver is in charge of both music and destination so he stays on a road far away from the bright lights and tells Ray to stuff it with Red Vines.
Ray rolls down the window to look back at Las Vegas. He salutes the city. Brad snorts.
“You know neither of us can afford Las Vegas, right?”
“But the-”
“Road trip is not a valid reason here.”
Ray frowns and crosses his arms. “Road trip is always a valid reason.”
Brad grins. “When it’s your turn to drive you can turn the car around and speed right back here.”
“Is it my turn to drive?”
“Not even close.”
“Goddamn you, Colbert.”
*
Another day done, another tiny crappy hotel room. Almost everything on the TV is pay-per-view and there’s a bar across the street, so they ditch the room in search of some fun. That’s what Ray says. Brad just wants a beer and something to eat.
His firm protests don’t deter Ray, who zeroes in on the only two attractive women in the bar as soon as they step in. Brad heads to the bar instead and orders a sandwich and a pint of one of the terrible domestic beers on tap.
Twenty minutes later he’s halfway through his club sandwich and his pint, sort of watching the basketball game on the bar’s television. He’s been expecting the staccato tap on the shoulder for ten, so it’s no surprise when it comes. He spins around slowly to see Ray in the middle of the two women, one blonde and one brunette. They’re both that sort of down-home naturally attractive with a touch of hick.
“Sandy and Jessica,” Ray says, pointing, “meet Brad. Brad, Sandy and Jessica.” He’s making a face that says, The blonde is mine.
“Hey.” Brad nods. The women nod and smile back, looking expectantly.
“We’re on a road trip,” Ray says to the women, “because Brad got dumped a month ago and his heart still hurts.”
The women immediately look sympathetic.
“Fuck off, Ray. I’m here because you got me drunk and made me.”
“On account of the heartbreak.”
Brad opens his mouth to really shut Ray’s shtick down but Ray takes one look at his face and says, “Okay, I lied. It’s because I am a badass who takes charge. Brad’s cool,” very quickly.
The blonde looks a little let-down that Brad’s not broken, but she still looks back when Ray ushers her and her friend away with promises of pool and a pitcher.
Brad shakes his head and goes back to his dinner.
*
He gets roped into playing pool with Ray and the women. He doesn't put in much effort but wins anyway, since Ray mostly just poses with his cue and Sandy and Jessica have no aim. Ray propels the conversation along with ridiculous anecdotes of all the outlandish things he's done, in and out of the Middle East. Brad provides the occasional correction that Ray uses as a jumping-off point for the next story.
It's okay, enough so that when Ray and the brunette disappear from the bar with no notice Brad offers to walk the blonde -- Sandy, like from Grease-- home. It's late, so she accepts. In the parking lot she takes Brad's hand and he lets her, walking at her pace, their palms cupped together. It's too dark to see the flush on her face.
The town is tiny, and Sandy doesn't live far. It's not much of a house but it would have put a teenage Ray to shame.
Brad doesn't plan on going inside. Sandy looks hopeful and sweet so he bends down to kiss her, his hand sliding away from hers to cup her round bare shoulder. She sighs into his mouth and leans into the kiss.
When Brad pulls away she leans up to whisper, "Did someone really dump you?"
"Yeah."
She touches Brad's t-shirt, right above his pec. "I'm sorry. She shouldn't have done that to you."
He kisses her again so she won’t ask anymore questions.
*
It's been a month, longer really, but she's young and it's not like you forget this kind of stuff even if you don't make a habit of it.
Sandy looks like anyone else naked, but she responds to his mouth and hands with thready moans, gripping his shoulders when he sucks on her nipples. When he goes down on her she stifles her cry on the heel of her hand, and he smiles against her.
He fucks her carefully, using one of the condoms from her white bedside table, measuring his thrusts, watching her face because he doesn't know what she likes. It's better than jerking off in a crappy hotel shower, but not as good as some other things. But Brad comes easily, looking at the bit of sweat on her chest and her tipped-back chin.
He doesn't linger. He gets dressed and leaves, making sure she locks the door behind him and walks with his hands in his pockets back across town, following the streetlights, walking through light to darkness and back again.
Ray's inside the room with the other woman, audible from twenty feet away from the door. He's crooning and groaning and the woman is moaning.
Brad doesn't have anywhere else to go so he leans against the stucco beside the open window, sometimes looking at the cloudy sky, and sometimes not, listening to Ray going, Oh, girl, that's it. You're so fucking good, baby. Fuck yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck.
*
They keep driving and Ray keeps talking.
“I know what you should do. Community college, man. Upgrade your shit. You could be in Pottery and Being a Pussy for Beginners. Star pupil!”
“Why the fuck would I take pottery?”
“Duh, Brad. The only good reason anyone goes to school for anything. To get some ass.”
*
After a week they stop to do laundry at a dusty, empty laundromat. Brad’s okay for clothes, since Ray packed half his dresser but Ray strips right down nothing and dumps that and his garbage bag of clothes in the washer, feeding quarters into the machine naked.
Then he digs through one of the dryers, pulling out someone else’s sheet and folds it into a toga. He fusses with the folds of it as he sits in the plastic chair next to Brad’s.
Brad ignores him in favour of checking the messages on his phone. Ray gave it back this morning, dead from being under the car seat for a week. It took all day to charge in the motel and frankly, Brad didn’t mind.
He has eighteen texts, from a variety of people, mostly him mom and sisters. There are two from Nate, and one from Walt.
Ray’s with you, right? He didn’t gamble away his phone again?
Brad skims the other texts and deletes them all. Ray is stroking his stubbly beard thoughtfully, watching one black sock tumble around in the washer.
Yeah, Brad texts back, he’s right here.
It’s the only text he responds to. Ray takes the phone hostage again before the spin cycle is done, stashing it somewhere even though he doesn’t have any pockets.
Brad lets him and they talk about where the one black sock came from, since neither of them own it.
*
“Dude,” Ray says. “I’ve got it.”
“What?” Brad says. He probably doesn’t want to know.
“It. Relationships. They are exactly like being on the road.”
“Oh,” Brad says, not at all interested in the exploits of Dr. Person, Psychologist.
“Journeys,” Ray says grandly, sweeping his hand above the steering wheel. “Road trips and relationships are journeys, man. Except sometimes in relationships you let someone put it in your butt and you still get left behind.”
“Well,” Brad replies, “what was last night and what’s going to happen to you at the next gas station?”
Ray taps on the steering wheel, bap-bap-bap. “Last night was magical, and hopefully you’re going to buy me a Big Gulp.” He has cheese dust on his chin and he keeps tapping, smiling at Brad sideways.
*
Ray gets his Big Gulp, and Brad only imagines leaving him behind for the briefest of moments.
*
As far as Brad knows they’re not going anywhere on purpose. Ray gives directions arbitrarily and ignores questions about goals. He just keeps filling up the tank, taking Brad’s money every second time. When it’s his turn to drive he never turns back for Las Vegas.
He makes up his own family history and dissects every relationship Brad’s even been in, starting with Brad’s birth mother and ending with himself with some notable stops in between.
“Clearly, I’m the best you’ve ever had. I know all your likes and dislikes and accept your numerous faults. You’d be basically nowhere without me. You need me.”
“That’s a little reductive.”
“You love me.”
“That’s even more reductive.”
Ray digs in the bag of Skittles for a huge handful. “But totally true.”
*
Brad runs out of razor blades for his razor and starts to smell like motel soap since he left his stuff three states back. He drives past three drug stores before he thinks to stop.
Ray goes straight through the deodorant toward the coolers at the back. Brad picks up some shampoo and looks at the razor blades. The stubble on his chin isn’t too long, just a few days.
He picks the blades closest to him. Three girls come up the aisle, muttering about the child molester trying to steal all the Fanta. They smile at Brad and he smiles back.
Ray comes up the aisle after them, laden down with soda. He dumps half of it in Brad’s arms and the girls frown, moving on. Brad doesn’t bother watching them go.
Three for three dollars is a way better deal than underage pussy.
*
On the way to Wisconsin Ray asks if Brad wants to talk about it.
“The story’s over, Ray. It ended months ago. We gave it a shot, but it didn’t work so we broke up and now we’re all moving on. It’s great.”
“Then why are we here?”
“You stole my underwear and forced me into your car.”
“And you’re loving it. Can you feel the healing, Brad? Can you feel it?”
“I can feel your sorry excuse for air conditioning.”
“Then that is not the healing. The healing is warm and located in your ass.”
“Definitely not.”
Ray affects a thoughtful face. “No, wait. That’s not healing. That’s an anal creampie. My bad. Or maybe they’re the same thing. Taking a big drippy load in your ass probably does cure all ills. Am I right?”
“Jesus Christ, Ray.”
*
He gets his phone from Ray on a twelve-hour pass in Tennessee. He has one voicemail from Nate, asking how he is and when he’s coming back. Apparently his mom called Nate to ask where he was.
Brad frowns when he listens to it at the truck stop, leaning on the car while Ray fills it up.
“LT?” Ray says when he hangs up.
“Yeah.”
Ray nods. He’s wearing Brad’s sunglasses. He finishes with the gas and digs in his jeans for his wallet.
“I think some town called Atwood is like, two hours away,” he says. “You wanna stop there?”
“We can do that,” Brad says, like he doesn’t care either way.
*
They get drunk in Atwood. And apparently because he feels like being provocative Ray kisses Brad in the middle of a bar. After he crows about freaking out the locals, although there was basketball on so no one gives a shit.
Brad’s just drunk enough to not give a shit either. He pushes Ray’s face away, laughing, saying, “I’m trying to watch this.”
“Where’s the love?” Ray protests loudly, his arm tight around Brad’s neck.
“It’s on TV,” Brad replies, peeling Ray’s drunk ass off. The Raptors win by three points.
*
As it turns out, someone did see, and they’re not happy about it. Brad is dragging Ray down the sidewalk in the direction of their motel, trying to avoid having to put him in a fireman hold when three built farm boys step out in front of them.
“Hey, faggot.”
Brad blinks. He hasn’t heard that one for a while. He can feel the alcohol draining out of his body drop by drop.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Taking your boyfriend home to fuck his drunk ass?” A different one than the first says it, but it sounds the same.
“What’s it to you?” Brad replies. “I could fuck you after.”
He doesn’t even have to wait for a reply. He just gets the fist thrown at him. Brad shakes Ray off, letting him stumble back against the window of a store and grabs the fist, twisting it sharply, listening to the resulting howl.
He gets the shit kicked out of him. But he gets some licks in too, cracking at least one nose. He can’t hear anything, too pumped on the fight, so he misses all the slurs and the abuse.
The fight ends with far-off sirens that Brad doesn’t hear. But he ends up alone on the pavement anyway, staring up at the washed-out sky, swallowing a mouthful of blood while the words Fuck you echo in his mind from the times he must have said them.
He sits up slowly, picking at his bloody t-shirt. Ray is sitting on the pavement, but he doesn’t look hurt, just a little pushed around and wasted.
Ray squints at him. “Man,” he says slowly, “you got the crap kicked out of you by three whiskey tango dickbags.”
There’s a trail of blood on the sidewalk leading away. Brad carefully gets up, touching his bloody face.
“I didn’t do so bad,” he says, hauling Ray up. They slowly start walking away from the bloody, dusty place on the sidewalk as the sirens get closer.
In the motel Brad dumps Ray in the bed and wipes his face off with one of the starchy towels, dumping it in the bathtub when he’s gotten most of the mess off. Then he sits on the toilet, licking his pink teeth. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. It’s an hour overdue.
He listens to his voicemail again and deletes it. The box is empty and the time is 1:47 am.
*
“Man,” Ray says the next morning when he crawls out of the bathroom after a gratuitously loud pukefest, “I feel like shit but you look like it.”
“I saved your ass.”
“With what, your face?”
Brad touches his swollen cheek bone, patting the bruises. “That and my fists.”
Ray leans back against the bed he didn’t sleep in last night, watching the weather report.
Brad picks at the scab on his lip. “You wanna go soon?”
The forecast says it’s going to be sunny for days, with a smattering of rain.
“Yeah, cool,” Ray says.
*
Between Tennessee and Connecticut Brad fucks two guys and a girl. They all like the bruises and the sunglasses and the attitude but don’t ask any questions.
*
Their hotel in Bridgeport has free wifi, so Brad excavates Nate’s laptop from underneath all the clothes and wrappers in the backseat of the car and brings it into the room. It starts up quietly, still silent, but Brad gets the blue screen of death and a series of beeps. He gets past that, but it lags like a motherfucker.
Ray asks where his free porn is. Brad tells him to shut up. He wonders if Nate backed all his files up. It’s a lot of stuff to lose.
He decides to wipe it clean. It takes a long time to reformat, but it’s for the best. When that’s done it starts up okay. Brad slides it over to Ray, who wasn’t kidding about the free porn.
Nate’s the kind of guy who saves almost everything so it probably doesn’t matter.
*
Ray comes into the bathroom while Brad’s brushing his teeth. They’re right on the edge of New York in a hotel that’s slightly nicer than their usual.
“So,” he says. “Are we going all the way to the coast?”
Brad looks at Ray’s reflection, taking his time brushing each tooth.
“We can,” Ray says carefully, picking up his own toothbrush. He uses some of Brad’s toothpaste.
Brad scrubs his molars and thinks about it. The backseat of Ray’s car is full of garbage, Brad can’t remember the last time he ate anything green that didn’t come on a burger and they lost the map weeks ago.
He spits straight down the drain.
“Nah,” he says. “I’m good. We can go back.”
There’s nothing out here for him anyway.
*
It doesn’t seem to take as long to get home, even though they state-hop just as much. Ray has a brief love affair with the Moon Over My Hammy meal at Denny’s and when Brad looks in hotel mirrors he sees a guy who looks a little happier, but like he could use some time on a board.
On their way back to California they go through Nevada and Ray’s driving this time. The sun’s just going down when Las Vegas comes up on the horizon as a cloud of lights. Ray smiles, speeding up and Brad slouches down in his seat, preparing for the worst. At least one night of gambling money he doesn't have and trying to avoid the worst diseases. More than one night, if he's unlucky.
Ray blows right past the city, focused on the road ahead like it might pull him in like a siren if he looks.
"What the fuck?" Brad asks, sitting up. Ray holds up a hand for silence.
Ray keeps driving until the sun's down and Las Vegas is gone from the rear view mirror. When he's good and ready he pulls off the road and into a rest stop.
"You could have pissed in Las Vegas," Brad says.
Ray shrugs and turns the car off. He sits with his hands in his lap for a second and then says, "Looks nice out."
"Yeah," Brad says slowly. "If you've recently been possessed into turning down Las Vegas."
"I'm not possessed," Ray replies. "I'm trying to make your gay ass feel better. I didn't think Las Vegas would be to your tastes. So here we are, in the Mojave desert, stargazing like assholes."
"Shit, I don't know how to perform an exorcism."
"Fuck off. This is the gayest thing I could think of."
Brad snorts. "You could have just sucked my dick."
In the dark Ray smiles. "We drove across the country and back and you're telling me I could have just tickled your balls and got the same result?"
Brad opens the car door to let some fresh, still-warm air into the car. "Pretty much, yeah."
Ray makes an exaggerated Ffff noise. "There is always next time, I guess."
"Now I'm going to get dumped on purpose, you know."
"Goddamn, Colbert, you really are gay. I figured it was just a phase."
Brad looks out the car at the stars. "You made me like this."
Ray tilts his seat back so he's flat next to Brad. He folds his hands on his chest. "It's my amazing driving skills. And my hot ass. And my beard."
"There is no way it's the beard. You look like you got lost in the woods before puberty and just got out."
Ray laughs pretty hard at that. Brad looks at the Big Dipper and listens to the engine tick as it cools down. Somewhere under the seats his phone beeps as the battery dies, forgotten in the dark.
*
They cross into California an hour before dawn.
“So, are you okay?”
Brad toes his shoes off and turns Queen down. “Yes.”
“More okay than when we started?”
Brad thinks about it. “Actually, yeah. I think so.”
Ray smiles and leans forward. “Is it because I kissed you?”
“Only a little bit.”
*
He’s not really fine, not yet. But then again, he wasn’t that fine before all this shit.
*
They’ve been gone for over a month. Ray looks like he should be subject to Megan’s Law and Brad’s not much better. He’s wearing dirty clothes and has fading bruises on his face and more stubble than he’s had for years.
Brad comes home to a pile of yellowish newspapers on his porch, a blinking red light on the phone, and mold growing in the pan sitting in the sink.
He throws the pan away and listens to all the messages. The newspaper wants to know if Mr. Bradley Colbert still resides at this address; the post office has stopped delivering his mail, and if he would like to collect it he will have to come in; Nate, Poke, Walt and the others want to know where the fuck he is and why he won’t answer the door; his mom says she’s sorry about what happened, Nate told her, and maybe he’d like to come for dinner, or to stay a few nights?
They’re varying degrees of old, so Brad deletes them, wiping dust off the counter absently as he listens.
When he’s got rid of each one, all the way back to Brad, I’m gonna swing by tonight around six-thirty, he looks around the kitchen. The house smells unlived in, stale. But not like the way the air conditioner in a hotel or car smells. It smells like neglect.
He should clean up, move all his clothes around now that he’s not sharing space, eat something green and make some calls to tell everyone he’s back.
But he doesn’t. He cranks open the window in the kitchen to let the egg-still stink out and goes into the dim bedroom where the bed is unmade and his wetsuit is hanging from the bathroom door, leaving his duffel on the kitchen floor and Nate’s old laptop unplugged on the counter. He’s going surfing.
Title: Long Winding Road
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: R
Pairing: Gen, with some Brad/OCs and Ray/OFC, plus all the between-the-lines stuff
Word Count: 7017
Summary: There’s 30% less of a chance of them dying on a road trip than dying in Iraq
Notes: Written for the GK Battle. Prompt of pop smoke. Beta by snglesrvngfrend.
Brad goes surfing. He gets out of the middle of his bed before dawn, gets his cold, still-damp wetsuit out of the bathtub and puts it on in the dark, although there’s no one to disturb. His board is still in the back of his Jeep, so he’s in the water before the sky turns pink.
He’s so early there’s no one else around. But this part of the beach mainly serves tourists. Very few other people have caught on to the fact that this is a beautiful place to surf, and Brad’s okay with that.
The waves are alright, not too big but enough for a few good runs. Brad doesn’t bother with any fancy shit, just rides the waves and looks at the houses just off the beach. It doesn’t take long before he’s had enough, so then he just drifts, his back to his board, staring up at the clouds.
He doesn’t move so the waves lap at him, washing him up onto the shore. He feels like driftwood. Going by the sky, it’s going to be a beautiful day.
*
He has a smoothie and scrambled egg whites when he gets back. While he stirs his eggs around the pan he dials his voicemail. He has eight new messages. Each one starts with a drawn-in breath, which gives him enough time to press 7 to delete the message.
He takes his time eating and then doing the dishes, putting the one plate, fork and glass in the drying rack, leaving the pan in the sink, stinking of eggs. He’ll get it later.
*
The rest of the day is a waste, and the night too. Brad fucks around with the laptop Nate gave him when he got his new one. The fan’s blown, clogged with hair and God knows what, and it could use a reformatting. He carefully takes out the old fan and puts on the work table. The empty space is so full of shit Brad has to wipe it out before he screws in the new fan. The old fan and the rag go in the garbage.
The computer starts when Brad tries it, but it does so haltingly and he almost gets the blue screen. It’s a piece of shit computer, but maybe Brad can fix it.
He surfs through Nate’s porn and pictures and files, but there’s nothing notable or new. He leaves long enough to get a beer from the garage and then sits down and starts deleting files. The new fan is perfectly silent.
*
The next morning when Brad’s surfing he happens to look across the wave to the beach. Ray’s there and so is a small fire. He rides the wave to shore and drags his board over to where Ray is crouched, warming his hands on a burning French fry box.
“Dude,” Ray says, “how the fuck do you go surfing so fucking early? My ass is frozen.”
“Isn’t it ten hours too early for you to be out of bed?”
Ray pours a handful of sand on the box, sending the flames sputtering. “Yes. But since your sad ass won’t answer the phone, I got nominated to make sure you were still alive.” He pours another handful and the fire goes out. “Goddamn Poke and his rigged straws.”
“Your concern for my well-being is touching, Ray.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ray says, rubbing his bare shins. “You should make me breakfast to show your appreciation.”
Brad hoists his board up under his arm. “Yeah, okay.” He gives Ray a hand up and they start walking to their cars.
“And then suck my dick.”
“Nice try, Ray.”
“I figured I should give it a go. I thought you might be desperate enough by now.”
Brad thinks about hitting Ray with his board but doesn’t. “Not even close.”
*
Brad’s out of eggs, so the best he can do is toast. Ray eats four pieces.
Chewing obnoxiously, Ray asks where the beer is at. He sprays wet crumbs all over Brad’s counter in the process.
“So, that’s your plan,” Brad says. “Make sure I’m not dead and then get drunk.”
Ray slaps his last two pieces of toast together and takes a big bite. “I’ll think of a better idea once I have a beer.”
Brad gets as many beers as he can carry out of the garage. Ray pounds back his first one before Brad’s got the cap on his off.
“Breakfast of fucking champions,” Ray announces, wiping his mouth, knocking the neck of his empty against Brad’s still-full beer. He gets another one and toasts Brad again.
“Okay, let me think,” he says seriously, taking another mouthful of beer in. “What to do with a broken-hearted Iceman?”
“I am not broken-hearted,” Brad protests.
“Fuck off,” Ray says, “you are.”
Brad glares at Ray, and chugs his beer. If this is going to work he’s going to have to keep pace. He opens his second beer. It’s 8:06 am.
*
“Dude, I totally know what we’re gonna do,” Ray slurs. “We’re gonna go.”
“Go where?” Brad retorts.
Ray throws up his hands. “Fuckin’ anywhere! The world is our oyster, even though oysters are fucking disgusting.” He pauses and then says, “The world, Brad, is our sweet, untapped ass. I know you like that, you big homo.”
“Whatever,” Brad says.
*
They drink all day and by 10:00 pm Brad’s out cold on the couch, sleeping the deep dark sleep of the drunk.
*
At 5:45 am Brad wakes up to Ray flicking his chin. The constant little stings transmit straight through Brad’s sinuses and into his brain, and that fucking hurts.
“Rise and shine, Harriet. We’ve got to get going.”
Brad blinks the sleep out of his eyes. Ray’s face is about four inches from his own.
“What,” is all Brad can manage. The question mark gets lost in his dry throat.
“We are going,” Ray announces. He holds up one of Brad’s black duffel bags. “I’ve already started packing for you.”
Brad struggles to sit up. His mouth tastes like a beer enema and his back is screaming from the couch.
“Packing?”
Ray drops the duffel bag on his lap. “Jesus, you really did drink a lot last night. Here, I’ll make it simple for you: you and me, we’re going on a road trip. I will drive and you will leave your problems behind. It’ll rule and you’ll feel better. Now, get up.”
Brad glances in the bag. It looks like it has most of his underwear drawer in it, plus a hefty amount of t-shirts and shorts.
“Fuck,” Brad says. “How long are you planning on being gone?”
“Who knows, Brad. The road is a tough mistress. Now quit stalling and let’s go.”
Brad gets up and moves without thinking, getting the old laptop and his phone while Ray buzzes around, cramming shit into the bag.
“This is a bad idea,” Brad says when Ray’s tying up his shoes. “No, not bad. Just stupid.”
Ray shoots Brad a cool look. “Brad. You’re all about doing dumbass shit post-dumping. And this isn’t Iraq, so there’s 30% less chance we’ll die doing this. Now, I can annoy you until you get in the car, I can leave a trail of calculator parts from here to the passenger seat, or you can get in by yourself and I'll let you hold the map."
Brad’s a proud man, so he locks the door and walks to the damn car, laptop under his arm. Ray dumps his bag in the trunk of the car and yells, “Road trip!” before he gets into the driver’s seat. It’s so loud a bunch of birds fly out of the tree in Brad’s neighbours’ yard, their predawn singing interrupted.
*
They stop at Ray’s place so he can get some shit too. He comes out of the building with a garbage bag slung over his shoulder. That goes into the trunk too.
“They can take the boy out of the trailer park, but they can’t take the trailer park out of the boy,” Brad says as Ray pulls out of the parking lot.
“Some of us like to live, Brad. Not get pissy if our precious Calvin Klein underwear isn’t folded.”
Brad snorts, looking out the window.
*
Ray stops at a grocery store on the edge of town and presses his face to the glass until the manager walks by and lets them in.
They buy over a hundred dollars worth of stuff, and it’s all junk food, even though they walk through the whole store, up and down every aisle. Brad carries the basket while Ray dumps stuff in it, Skittles and cheesies and powdered drink mix.
In the frozen foods aisle Ray smiles through the glass at a box of ice cream sandwiches, murmuring, “Hello, breakfast,” in a voice that’s pretty close to seductive.
The check-out girl raises her eyebrows when she sees them eating and the opened box, but after Ray winks at her she just shrugs and scans it. When Ray pays and says, “Now you owe me four blowjobs,” to Brad she perks up, looking between them.
Brad licks ice cream off his thumb and stares until she looks away, waiting for the receipt to print.
They finish the ice cream sandwiches in the parking lot, leaning against Ray’s beater. Brad’s still full of beer, so he’s probably going to regret this breakfast, but he finishes the last soft, super-sweet bite anyway, scraping cookie off his thumb with his teeth.
Ray drop kicks his crumpled wrapper and throws the box like a Frisbee in the direction of someone’s car. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Brad shoves his wrapper in the car door instead of dumping it on the ground. He figures it’s too early to litter.
His phone rings in the cup holder. He’s putting on his seatbelt, so he’s too slow for it. Ray gets there first, looking at the screen. He starts the car and answers the phone at the same time.
“LT, my man. What’s up?” Ray leans really far forward over the wheel, the way he used to in Iraq when he had to drive at night. “Nah, I got him. He surprisingly didn’t fillet his arms in the bathtub. No, he’s fine. He’s Brad, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I got it, no worries, Nate. I’ll talk to you later.”
He snaps Brad’s phone closed and says, “Nate.”
Brad stretches out in the car seat. “So I gathered.”
“He’s glad you’re not dead.”
“Good.”
“Now,” Ray wags the phone back and forth, “say bye-bye to your phone. In the car we are off the grid.” He throws Brad’s phone over his shoulder. It bounces off the back seat and skitters under Ray’s.
“I’m pretty sure the highway counts as the grid, Ray,” Brad mutters.
“You would say that.” Ray pumps on the gas and the car accelerates jerkily. He slaps the steering wheel. “Get into it, Brad! Eat some fucking Skittles and look out for VW Beetles. The road trip is good for you. Being on the road builds character.”
Brad looks out the window. He doubts it.
*
Ray drives, because Brad's hangover is setting in. He stares out the windshield for a few minutes, but Ray is speeding, so the bright landscape is blurring around the edges, pulling at Brad's increasingly sour stomach.
He closes his eyes and slumps against the door, one hand over his eyes. He listens to Ray fuck around with the radio, bouncing between soft rock and talk radio. The air conditioning in Ray's car sucks, so all Brad's getting is soft puffs of dusty-cool air across his knees.
It will have to be enough. He dozes off to the sounds of "Carry On My Wayward Son" with his head on the window.
*
Ray pulling into a motel parking lot is what wakes Brad up. His head bounces off the window pretty hard when Ray puts the brakes on, but he's been asleep for a few hours, so he feels alright.
Ray points to the cup holder on the passenger side. "You were out cold so I bought you a Pepsi. It's warm now."
Brad cracks it open and takes a long drink. It is warm, but the sugar hits the spot regardless.
He twists the cap back when he's had enough and wipes his mouth. "Where are we?"
"Somewhere around Barstow," Ray says. "I am fucking beat. We should kick it for a while."
Brad looks at the empty parking lot, the shabby little hotel. "Here?"
"Fifty-four bucks a night, dude. I just want to go to sleep for a while. We've done worse."
"You're right," Brad says. He lifts his ass up to get to his wallet, and peels two twenties off. "Get two beds. I'm not cuddling with your goofy ass."
*
Brad lounges outside the office on the Broken Lock motel, waiting for Ray to come out and toss him a slightly bent key to room number seven.
Room number seven is a stereotype: small, musty and suspiciously stained. Brad steps on something that looks like a blood stain on the carpet on his way in. He frowns at it but throws his bag on the bed anyway, sitting next to it on the thin comforter. Ray belly flops onto the other bed and immediately starts rifling through the table between the beds. He pulls out a telephone book, a stack of take-out menus and a Gideon’s Bible.
He offers the Bible to Brad. “Need some naptime literature?”
“No thanks, Ray.” Brad kicks his shoes toward the television stand. He gets up and closes the curtains on their one smudgy, dead fly-studded window, tucking the room into semi-darkness. He sits back down, suddenly tired to his bones.
“We’ll buy some real food later,” Ray mumbles, wrapping himself in the bed’s scratchy comforter.
Brad makes an agreeable noise, laying down, blinking at the ceiling. There’s red splattered there too.
*
The sun’s going down when Brad wakes up, dusk creeping under the curtains. Ray’s still asleep, his face smushed into the pillow and his shoes sticking out of the blanket.
Brad goes to the bathroom, wiping his dry mouth with his hand. He turns the shower on, and the sink tap too, drinking chemical-tasting water out of his hand. The reflection in the mirror shows a guy who looks faintly like crap.
He gets naked and looks at his body instead. It looks good, maybe even better than it used to, due to all the surfing. He touches his soft cock, shrugging his shoulders to release the remaining tension there.
His stuff’s still in his bag on the bed, so Brad has to use the tiny soap and shampoo provided. He washes quickly, but then stays in the shower even though it’s getting cold already.
He touches his cock again, stroking it experimentally. It twitches readily enough, so Brad goes for it, working up an erection and stroking it briskly.
As far as jacks go it’s all business. Brad cycles through all his usual meat material, none of it particularly exciting, but it does the job.
His reflection looks better when he gets out and towels himself off in front of the mirror. Brad makes the Iceman face, the downturned mouth and the sharp, empty eyes, but drops it, toweling his hair off instead.
Ray is watching basketball on the scratchy TV, lounging across his bed. Brad digs in his bag for some skivvies.
“What do you want to eat?” Brad asks when he’s got his briefs on. Ray holds up a pamphlet for a 1950s-style diner. “Shower’s yours.”
Ray shakes his head rapidly. “Dude, you need to embrace the road trip. Be free and skanky. Me, I’m gonna grow a beard.”
Brad pulls his t-shirt over his head. “I bet you grow the beard of a child molester.”
Scratching his stubbly chin Ray says, “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”
*
The diner has dirty floors and fly paper stuck to the ceiling, but the food is pretty good, although that might just be because they’re ravenous.
Brad wipes ketchup off his fingers with a napkin. “Where are we going?” he asks.
Ray chews his meatloaf thoughtfully. “Honestly, Brad, I have no idea. And I don’t really care. Does it really matter?”
Brad thinks about it, watching their teenage waitress pour someone else some water, her Pepto pink uniform revealing the soft backs of her knees when she bends.
He picks up his burger again. “Probably not.”
“I didn’t think so,” Ray says, shoveling shriveled peas in his mouth. “Seriously, dude, I know you hate the flow but just go with it. Ride in the car and think of Iraq.”
Brad smirks. “You still drive the same.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “Awesomely.”
They watch an old Western on TV when they get back to the hotel room. Ray names all the instances of homoerotic subtext he sees, which means he doesn’t shut up until Brad turns the television off. Even after that he goes for a little while, talking about the prevailing gayness of Westerns.
They go to bed early, Ray still pumping out non-sequiturs about love on horseback into the dark. Brad falls asleep before he can tell Ray he’s a dumbass for the seven millionth time.
He wakes up just before dawn, when the air conditioner turns on for no discernable reason. Ray is silent so Brad just lays there for a while, scratching his chest, his body awake but his brain still offline. It feels fucking nice, but only lasts a few minutes.
When he gets out of bed he fishes for the Gideon’s Bible on the floor. He chucks it at Ray and it connects with a muted thump. Ray groans like Brad is doing him an injustice but he still gets up.
*
It’s Brad’s turn to drive. Brad doesn’t know that until Ray throws the keys to him when he gets out of the office. Brad has to crank the seat all the way back before he gets in. Ray starts digging under the passenger seat, pulling up handfuls of cracked CD cases and flipping through them. He tosses the rejects between his feet or over his shoulder, muttering, “No. No. Nope. Maybe. Copy of a porn. No. No,” until he finds one he likes.
It’s System of a Down. Brad rolls his eyes when Ray throws the horns at a minivan beside them. He speeds up to pass the van and heads east.
*
“So,” Ray says when they cross into Nevada, “should we talk about this, or have you successfully frozen your feelings somewhere in the region of your balls?”
“I’m fine, Ray.” Brad squints against the sun.
“Right. You just love a good long sulk. Gotcha.”
“It was not a sulk,” Brad protests.
“Oh, sorry. A good long manly reclaiming of space and pride. That is over a month long.”
“That’s better. Thank you.”
Brad stops at what looks like the same gas station from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to fill up. Ray stays in the car, so Brad browses around the store, picking up Red Vines and Dr. Pepper.
On the counter is a dusty carousel of sunglasses. Brad spins it around while he waits for the attendant to emerge from the back room. He tries on a pair of black-lensed aviators, looking up at his reflection in the domed security mirror. He looks like he could stand on the edge of the world and not give a fuck.
The attendant, a big whisky tango guy, finally comes out of the back room, yawning. Brad takes the sunglasses off and puts them on the counter next to the Red Vines.
“That’ll be all for ya?” The attendant taps the counter.
Brad gets his wallet out. “Gas too.”
*
Brad’s driving so all they do is skirt Las Vegas. Ray kicks up a fuss, talking about hookers, blow, beer, strippers, hookers and naïve tourists, but Brad’s still driving and the driver is in charge of both music and destination so he stays on a road far away from the bright lights and tells Ray to stuff it with Red Vines.
Ray rolls down the window to look back at Las Vegas. He salutes the city. Brad snorts.
“You know neither of us can afford Las Vegas, right?”
“But the-”
“Road trip is not a valid reason here.”
Ray frowns and crosses his arms. “Road trip is always a valid reason.”
Brad grins. “When it’s your turn to drive you can turn the car around and speed right back here.”
“Is it my turn to drive?”
“Not even close.”
“Goddamn you, Colbert.”
*
Another day done, another tiny crappy hotel room. Almost everything on the TV is pay-per-view and there’s a bar across the street, so they ditch the room in search of some fun. That’s what Ray says. Brad just wants a beer and something to eat.
His firm protests don’t deter Ray, who zeroes in on the only two attractive women in the bar as soon as they step in. Brad heads to the bar instead and orders a sandwich and a pint of one of the terrible domestic beers on tap.
Twenty minutes later he’s halfway through his club sandwich and his pint, sort of watching the basketball game on the bar’s television. He’s been expecting the staccato tap on the shoulder for ten, so it’s no surprise when it comes. He spins around slowly to see Ray in the middle of the two women, one blonde and one brunette. They’re both that sort of down-home naturally attractive with a touch of hick.
“Sandy and Jessica,” Ray says, pointing, “meet Brad. Brad, Sandy and Jessica.” He’s making a face that says, The blonde is mine.
“Hey.” Brad nods. The women nod and smile back, looking expectantly.
“We’re on a road trip,” Ray says to the women, “because Brad got dumped a month ago and his heart still hurts.”
The women immediately look sympathetic.
“Fuck off, Ray. I’m here because you got me drunk and made me.”
“On account of the heartbreak.”
Brad opens his mouth to really shut Ray’s shtick down but Ray takes one look at his face and says, “Okay, I lied. It’s because I am a badass who takes charge. Brad’s cool,” very quickly.
The blonde looks a little let-down that Brad’s not broken, but she still looks back when Ray ushers her and her friend away with promises of pool and a pitcher.
Brad shakes his head and goes back to his dinner.
*
He gets roped into playing pool with Ray and the women. He doesn't put in much effort but wins anyway, since Ray mostly just poses with his cue and Sandy and Jessica have no aim. Ray propels the conversation along with ridiculous anecdotes of all the outlandish things he's done, in and out of the Middle East. Brad provides the occasional correction that Ray uses as a jumping-off point for the next story.
It's okay, enough so that when Ray and the brunette disappear from the bar with no notice Brad offers to walk the blonde -- Sandy, like from Grease-- home. It's late, so she accepts. In the parking lot she takes Brad's hand and he lets her, walking at her pace, their palms cupped together. It's too dark to see the flush on her face.
The town is tiny, and Sandy doesn't live far. It's not much of a house but it would have put a teenage Ray to shame.
Brad doesn't plan on going inside. Sandy looks hopeful and sweet so he bends down to kiss her, his hand sliding away from hers to cup her round bare shoulder. She sighs into his mouth and leans into the kiss.
When Brad pulls away she leans up to whisper, "Did someone really dump you?"
"Yeah."
She touches Brad's t-shirt, right above his pec. "I'm sorry. She shouldn't have done that to you."
He kisses her again so she won’t ask anymore questions.
*
It's been a month, longer really, but she's young and it's not like you forget this kind of stuff even if you don't make a habit of it.
Sandy looks like anyone else naked, but she responds to his mouth and hands with thready moans, gripping his shoulders when he sucks on her nipples. When he goes down on her she stifles her cry on the heel of her hand, and he smiles against her.
He fucks her carefully, using one of the condoms from her white bedside table, measuring his thrusts, watching her face because he doesn't know what she likes. It's better than jerking off in a crappy hotel shower, but not as good as some other things. But Brad comes easily, looking at the bit of sweat on her chest and her tipped-back chin.
He doesn't linger. He gets dressed and leaves, making sure she locks the door behind him and walks with his hands in his pockets back across town, following the streetlights, walking through light to darkness and back again.
Ray's inside the room with the other woman, audible from twenty feet away from the door. He's crooning and groaning and the woman is moaning.
Brad doesn't have anywhere else to go so he leans against the stucco beside the open window, sometimes looking at the cloudy sky, and sometimes not, listening to Ray going, Oh, girl, that's it. You're so fucking good, baby. Fuck yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck.
*
They keep driving and Ray keeps talking.
“I know what you should do. Community college, man. Upgrade your shit. You could be in Pottery and Being a Pussy for Beginners. Star pupil!”
“Why the fuck would I take pottery?”
“Duh, Brad. The only good reason anyone goes to school for anything. To get some ass.”
*
After a week they stop to do laundry at a dusty, empty laundromat. Brad’s okay for clothes, since Ray packed half his dresser but Ray strips right down nothing and dumps that and his garbage bag of clothes in the washer, feeding quarters into the machine naked.
Then he digs through one of the dryers, pulling out someone else’s sheet and folds it into a toga. He fusses with the folds of it as he sits in the plastic chair next to Brad’s.
Brad ignores him in favour of checking the messages on his phone. Ray gave it back this morning, dead from being under the car seat for a week. It took all day to charge in the motel and frankly, Brad didn’t mind.
He has eighteen texts, from a variety of people, mostly him mom and sisters. There are two from Nate, and one from Walt.
Ray’s with you, right? He didn’t gamble away his phone again?
Brad skims the other texts and deletes them all. Ray is stroking his stubbly beard thoughtfully, watching one black sock tumble around in the washer.
Yeah, Brad texts back, he’s right here.
It’s the only text he responds to. Ray takes the phone hostage again before the spin cycle is done, stashing it somewhere even though he doesn’t have any pockets.
Brad lets him and they talk about where the one black sock came from, since neither of them own it.
*
“Dude,” Ray says. “I’ve got it.”
“What?” Brad says. He probably doesn’t want to know.
“It. Relationships. They are exactly like being on the road.”
“Oh,” Brad says, not at all interested in the exploits of Dr. Person, Psychologist.
“Journeys,” Ray says grandly, sweeping his hand above the steering wheel. “Road trips and relationships are journeys, man. Except sometimes in relationships you let someone put it in your butt and you still get left behind.”
“Well,” Brad replies, “what was last night and what’s going to happen to you at the next gas station?”
Ray taps on the steering wheel, bap-bap-bap. “Last night was magical, and hopefully you’re going to buy me a Big Gulp.” He has cheese dust on his chin and he keeps tapping, smiling at Brad sideways.
*
Ray gets his Big Gulp, and Brad only imagines leaving him behind for the briefest of moments.
*
As far as Brad knows they’re not going anywhere on purpose. Ray gives directions arbitrarily and ignores questions about goals. He just keeps filling up the tank, taking Brad’s money every second time. When it’s his turn to drive he never turns back for Las Vegas.
He makes up his own family history and dissects every relationship Brad’s even been in, starting with Brad’s birth mother and ending with himself with some notable stops in between.
“Clearly, I’m the best you’ve ever had. I know all your likes and dislikes and accept your numerous faults. You’d be basically nowhere without me. You need me.”
“That’s a little reductive.”
“You love me.”
“That’s even more reductive.”
Ray digs in the bag of Skittles for a huge handful. “But totally true.”
*
Brad runs out of razor blades for his razor and starts to smell like motel soap since he left his stuff three states back. He drives past three drug stores before he thinks to stop.
Ray goes straight through the deodorant toward the coolers at the back. Brad picks up some shampoo and looks at the razor blades. The stubble on his chin isn’t too long, just a few days.
He picks the blades closest to him. Three girls come up the aisle, muttering about the child molester trying to steal all the Fanta. They smile at Brad and he smiles back.
Ray comes up the aisle after them, laden down with soda. He dumps half of it in Brad’s arms and the girls frown, moving on. Brad doesn’t bother watching them go.
Three for three dollars is a way better deal than underage pussy.
*
On the way to Wisconsin Ray asks if Brad wants to talk about it.
“The story’s over, Ray. It ended months ago. We gave it a shot, but it didn’t work so we broke up and now we’re all moving on. It’s great.”
“Then why are we here?”
“You stole my underwear and forced me into your car.”
“And you’re loving it. Can you feel the healing, Brad? Can you feel it?”
“I can feel your sorry excuse for air conditioning.”
“Then that is not the healing. The healing is warm and located in your ass.”
“Definitely not.”
Ray affects a thoughtful face. “No, wait. That’s not healing. That’s an anal creampie. My bad. Or maybe they’re the same thing. Taking a big drippy load in your ass probably does cure all ills. Am I right?”
“Jesus Christ, Ray.”
*
He gets his phone from Ray on a twelve-hour pass in Tennessee. He has one voicemail from Nate, asking how he is and when he’s coming back. Apparently his mom called Nate to ask where he was.
Brad frowns when he listens to it at the truck stop, leaning on the car while Ray fills it up.
“LT?” Ray says when he hangs up.
“Yeah.”
Ray nods. He’s wearing Brad’s sunglasses. He finishes with the gas and digs in his jeans for his wallet.
“I think some town called Atwood is like, two hours away,” he says. “You wanna stop there?”
“We can do that,” Brad says, like he doesn’t care either way.
*
They get drunk in Atwood. And apparently because he feels like being provocative Ray kisses Brad in the middle of a bar. After he crows about freaking out the locals, although there was basketball on so no one gives a shit.
Brad’s just drunk enough to not give a shit either. He pushes Ray’s face away, laughing, saying, “I’m trying to watch this.”
“Where’s the love?” Ray protests loudly, his arm tight around Brad’s neck.
“It’s on TV,” Brad replies, peeling Ray’s drunk ass off. The Raptors win by three points.
*
As it turns out, someone did see, and they’re not happy about it. Brad is dragging Ray down the sidewalk in the direction of their motel, trying to avoid having to put him in a fireman hold when three built farm boys step out in front of them.
“Hey, faggot.”
Brad blinks. He hasn’t heard that one for a while. He can feel the alcohol draining out of his body drop by drop.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Taking your boyfriend home to fuck his drunk ass?” A different one than the first says it, but it sounds the same.
“What’s it to you?” Brad replies. “I could fuck you after.”
He doesn’t even have to wait for a reply. He just gets the fist thrown at him. Brad shakes Ray off, letting him stumble back against the window of a store and grabs the fist, twisting it sharply, listening to the resulting howl.
He gets the shit kicked out of him. But he gets some licks in too, cracking at least one nose. He can’t hear anything, too pumped on the fight, so he misses all the slurs and the abuse.
The fight ends with far-off sirens that Brad doesn’t hear. But he ends up alone on the pavement anyway, staring up at the washed-out sky, swallowing a mouthful of blood while the words Fuck you echo in his mind from the times he must have said them.
He sits up slowly, picking at his bloody t-shirt. Ray is sitting on the pavement, but he doesn’t look hurt, just a little pushed around and wasted.
Ray squints at him. “Man,” he says slowly, “you got the crap kicked out of you by three whiskey tango dickbags.”
There’s a trail of blood on the sidewalk leading away. Brad carefully gets up, touching his bloody face.
“I didn’t do so bad,” he says, hauling Ray up. They slowly start walking away from the bloody, dusty place on the sidewalk as the sirens get closer.
In the motel Brad dumps Ray in the bed and wipes his face off with one of the starchy towels, dumping it in the bathtub when he’s gotten most of the mess off. Then he sits on the toilet, licking his pink teeth. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. It’s an hour overdue.
He listens to his voicemail again and deletes it. The box is empty and the time is 1:47 am.
*
“Man,” Ray says the next morning when he crawls out of the bathroom after a gratuitously loud pukefest, “I feel like shit but you look like it.”
“I saved your ass.”
“With what, your face?”
Brad touches his swollen cheek bone, patting the bruises. “That and my fists.”
Ray leans back against the bed he didn’t sleep in last night, watching the weather report.
Brad picks at the scab on his lip. “You wanna go soon?”
The forecast says it’s going to be sunny for days, with a smattering of rain.
“Yeah, cool,” Ray says.
*
Between Tennessee and Connecticut Brad fucks two guys and a girl. They all like the bruises and the sunglasses and the attitude but don’t ask any questions.
*
Their hotel in Bridgeport has free wifi, so Brad excavates Nate’s laptop from underneath all the clothes and wrappers in the backseat of the car and brings it into the room. It starts up quietly, still silent, but Brad gets the blue screen of death and a series of beeps. He gets past that, but it lags like a motherfucker.
Ray asks where his free porn is. Brad tells him to shut up. He wonders if Nate backed all his files up. It’s a lot of stuff to lose.
He decides to wipe it clean. It takes a long time to reformat, but it’s for the best. When that’s done it starts up okay. Brad slides it over to Ray, who wasn’t kidding about the free porn.
Nate’s the kind of guy who saves almost everything so it probably doesn’t matter.
*
Ray comes into the bathroom while Brad’s brushing his teeth. They’re right on the edge of New York in a hotel that’s slightly nicer than their usual.
“So,” he says. “Are we going all the way to the coast?”
Brad looks at Ray’s reflection, taking his time brushing each tooth.
“We can,” Ray says carefully, picking up his own toothbrush. He uses some of Brad’s toothpaste.
Brad scrubs his molars and thinks about it. The backseat of Ray’s car is full of garbage, Brad can’t remember the last time he ate anything green that didn’t come on a burger and they lost the map weeks ago.
He spits straight down the drain.
“Nah,” he says. “I’m good. We can go back.”
There’s nothing out here for him anyway.
*
It doesn’t seem to take as long to get home, even though they state-hop just as much. Ray has a brief love affair with the Moon Over My Hammy meal at Denny’s and when Brad looks in hotel mirrors he sees a guy who looks a little happier, but like he could use some time on a board.
On their way back to California they go through Nevada and Ray’s driving this time. The sun’s just going down when Las Vegas comes up on the horizon as a cloud of lights. Ray smiles, speeding up and Brad slouches down in his seat, preparing for the worst. At least one night of gambling money he doesn't have and trying to avoid the worst diseases. More than one night, if he's unlucky.
Ray blows right past the city, focused on the road ahead like it might pull him in like a siren if he looks.
"What the fuck?" Brad asks, sitting up. Ray holds up a hand for silence.
Ray keeps driving until the sun's down and Las Vegas is gone from the rear view mirror. When he's good and ready he pulls off the road and into a rest stop.
"You could have pissed in Las Vegas," Brad says.
Ray shrugs and turns the car off. He sits with his hands in his lap for a second and then says, "Looks nice out."
"Yeah," Brad says slowly. "If you've recently been possessed into turning down Las Vegas."
"I'm not possessed," Ray replies. "I'm trying to make your gay ass feel better. I didn't think Las Vegas would be to your tastes. So here we are, in the Mojave desert, stargazing like assholes."
"Shit, I don't know how to perform an exorcism."
"Fuck off. This is the gayest thing I could think of."
Brad snorts. "You could have just sucked my dick."
In the dark Ray smiles. "We drove across the country and back and you're telling me I could have just tickled your balls and got the same result?"
Brad opens the car door to let some fresh, still-warm air into the car. "Pretty much, yeah."
Ray makes an exaggerated Ffff noise. "There is always next time, I guess."
"Now I'm going to get dumped on purpose, you know."
"Goddamn, Colbert, you really are gay. I figured it was just a phase."
Brad looks out the car at the stars. "You made me like this."
Ray tilts his seat back so he's flat next to Brad. He folds his hands on his chest. "It's my amazing driving skills. And my hot ass. And my beard."
"There is no way it's the beard. You look like you got lost in the woods before puberty and just got out."
Ray laughs pretty hard at that. Brad looks at the Big Dipper and listens to the engine tick as it cools down. Somewhere under the seats his phone beeps as the battery dies, forgotten in the dark.
*
They cross into California an hour before dawn.
“So, are you okay?”
Brad toes his shoes off and turns Queen down. “Yes.”
“More okay than when we started?”
Brad thinks about it. “Actually, yeah. I think so.”
Ray smiles and leans forward. “Is it because I kissed you?”
“Only a little bit.”
*
He’s not really fine, not yet. But then again, he wasn’t that fine before all this shit.
*
They’ve been gone for over a month. Ray looks like he should be subject to Megan’s Law and Brad’s not much better. He’s wearing dirty clothes and has fading bruises on his face and more stubble than he’s had for years.
Brad comes home to a pile of yellowish newspapers on his porch, a blinking red light on the phone, and mold growing in the pan sitting in the sink.
He throws the pan away and listens to all the messages. The newspaper wants to know if Mr. Bradley Colbert still resides at this address; the post office has stopped delivering his mail, and if he would like to collect it he will have to come in; Nate, Poke, Walt and the others want to know where the fuck he is and why he won’t answer the door; his mom says she’s sorry about what happened, Nate told her, and maybe he’d like to come for dinner, or to stay a few nights?
They’re varying degrees of old, so Brad deletes them, wiping dust off the counter absently as he listens.
When he’s got rid of each one, all the way back to Brad, I’m gonna swing by tonight around six-thirty, he looks around the kitchen. The house smells unlived in, stale. But not like the way the air conditioner in a hotel or car smells. It smells like neglect.
He should clean up, move all his clothes around now that he’s not sharing space, eat something green and make some calls to tell everyone he’s back.
But he doesn’t. He cranks open the window in the kitchen to let the egg-still stink out and goes into the dim bedroom where the bed is unmade and his wetsuit is hanging from the bathroom door, leaving his duffel on the kitchen floor and Nate’s old laptop unplugged on the counter. He’s going surfing.