Chapter Text
In Cobel's line of work, independence is earned with competence. Hers was earned long ago.
As such, she isn’t required to take the post-dinner break, but today, she’s chosen to.
Truck’s fine on fuel, stocked on creature comforts, and Cobel likes to save her cigarette for after dark. So she focuses on stretching her legs, walking off the rusty locked-up sensation she gets when she's been driving too long.
Nice enough day; a little windy, but clear, high-visibility on the road. Good conditions.
Nice enough rest stop, too. Comprehensive layout and clean facilities. Things Cobel knows not to take for granted.
A few other rest-stop patrons mill about, stretching, yawning, taking the chance to clear their car of accumulated road trip detritus. Busy without being rushed.
Kitty-corner to the lot, there’s a gas station offering standard fare - stale bagged chips and ice cream in glass-top chest freezers. Cobel remembers the predictably terrible drip coffee - familiar and bitter in a way she’s come to find comforting. You always know what you’re in for.
She comes to a fork in the path and swings left, heading for the vending machine. The truck hosts a cache of her personal staples, naturally, but after hours at the wheel, the walk itself is the main focus.
Upon rounding the corner, Cobel finds someone already there - a girl, kicking at the bottom of the machine like it's personally wronged her. She’s generating impressively inventive strings of curse words, dragging her hands through messy dark-copper hair.
Overall, she looks one stiff breeze away from a nervous breakdown.
Cobel sighs and takes pity. "Button sticks. Press it twice."
"Twice..." The girl shakes her head, glances over her shoulder. "Really?"
"I've been through here before." An understatement.
Two jabs to the button in rapid succession, and the Diet Coke smoothly dislodges, thunks into the slot below.
"Huh. Not bad." The redhead bends to swipe up her drink with a slightly sunnier disposition. Turns back to Cobel. “Cheers."
“Been through here,” Cobel repeats, hoping the bland statement will serve as a clean end to the interaction.
Mercifully the girl seems to register her impatience - dips her head, stepping aside. "Right. Enjoy." With that, she leaves.
Cobel releases a sigh, steps to punch in J7 - Mountain Dew. She pushes the button twice, second nature.
Soda acquired, she retraces her path across the lot, cutting through the spaces meant for regular vehicles - all the way to where her truck awaits her return.
It strikes a pleasing silhouette, deep-blue and polished. Clear of bumper stickers or visual clutter - the requisite identification, tags, and a small logo stamped on the driver's door - but nothing more. Exactly how she likes it.
Cobel checks her watch. The last daylight break is coming to an end.
Time to make the final push before retiring for the evening.
She plucks a toothpick from her pocket; pinches it between her fingers, thinking. After a moment, she fishes her phone out to update dispatch. She's on the verge of doing just that when someone clears their throat behind her - too loud and too close.
It's the girl from the vending machine, squinting against the sun. "Where you headed?"
"What?"
"That's your rig, right?" She nods to the truck.
"That's correct." Cobel looks at her and she looks right back, uncowed.
Up close, her eyes are intense - especially now, overfull with impatience. Practically boring a hole through Cobel.
She is very clearly not leaving without an answer. Realizing this, Cobel gives her a vague one: "Headed west."
"Gotcha." She looks out over the road, contemplative. "Hey, thanks for saving my ass with the soda. I was in for a grim night without my caffeine."
"Hmm," Cobel acknowledges tonelessly.
The girl fixes her with a smile, completely mismatched to Cobel's lifeless approach - too earnest, too intense. "Do you have a passenger?"
Ah. There it is.
"No." Cobel pops the toothpick in her mouth, sizing the girl up. Harmless enough, clean enough, but strange in a way she can't put her finger on.
Maybe something about her clothes, belongings - barely worn in. Cobel wouldn't be surprised to find the tag still attached to her bag.
Not a crime, owning new things, breaking them in - but odd, given she's roughing it enough to bum rides off of strangers.
Which leads to the obvious question of why she's here. Alone. Cobel asks it, more or less, keeping her tone casual: “Anything in particular bring you to the road?"
The girl rolls her eyes. "I haven't done anything illegal. Promise."
"You jumped to that particular defense in…quite a hurry.”
"It's what you were thinking, right?” She doesn't pause for an answer. "I'm not in danger and not a danger, so you don't have to worry about any of that. Just want a change of scenery."
"Simple as that, huh?” Cobel rolls the toothpick between her teeth. Assesses. "Am I to understand this is your way of asking to ride along?"
"Sure. You seem harmless enough."
Cobel chuckles at the echoing of her own assessment. "It would appear I've lost my edge."
"Well - you could be a psycho killer too." A beat passes. "I'm not sexist."
"How enlightened of you."
They look at each other a moment.
Cobel shrugs.
She wouldn't normally do this. But there's something about this girl - shoulders tense, eyes hopeful - ready to run at the first sign of trouble.
Cobel knows the type; she’d like to know the story.
Goes without saying, but acquiring said story requires keeping this stranger around - at least for a little longer.
She nods to herself, decided. Reasonable enough. Daytime talk radio and audiobooks can only entertain her so long - and not as long as the road, she's sure.
Besides, it'll be dark soon enough.
"Alright then. Come on in." She opens the passenger door. Watches the girl swing a boot up, then the other, gripping the side bar and lugging her bag after her with a grunt.
Cobel calls up to her, "I'm going to take care of a couple things - probably leaving the lot in 5."
She expects a barrage of questions, gets a shrug instead. Adds, "There's a payphone down past the bathrooms, if you have anyone you'd like to call." Nothing. "I've got quarters if you-"
"I don't need to call anyone, thank you." Her voice has an edge to it now. She knows she's being prodded.
Noted. Cobel backs off.
"…Alright." She closes the door. Taps at it - "Five minutes."
Setting aside the matter of the mysterious redhead (for now), Cobel steps away to send a progress update to dispatch.
Confirmation comes quickly. No praise for being ahead of schedule.
None needed. The numbers speak for themselves.
Cobel flicks her toothpick into the garbage, takes a swig of her Mountain Dew.
This part of the day can feel the longest - not much to look forward to, even less to look at. In daylight, she chews up miles, spits them out, content to watch the landscape change.
But come nightfall, the surroundings are reduced to inky blue-black with interrupting headlights, obnoxious billboards. Not nearly as pleasant as the morning hours.
Now, though, she’s added a new variable. All bets are off.
She settles into her own seat. "Alright. Don’t expect me to turn around once we're on the road. Be very certain you've got everything you need."
Her passenger nods with exaggerated solemnity. "I'm very certain.”
She eyes the girl’s bag. "This is all you have?"
"Yeah."
"There's overhead storage, if you'd like to-"
"No." She pulls it closer, protective.
Cobel could take offense, but she doesn’t. Instead, she turns the key in the ignition and feels the truck shudder to life around her.
She raises her voice slightly, tilting her head towards the passenger side: “It occurs to me that I need to know what to call you.”
”What? Why?"
Immediately, she can feel the air shift in the cab. One glance makes it evident - her passenger has gone completely, hopelessly deer-in-the-headlights.
Cobel sighs. "Honey - it doesn't have to be your real name. Just something to say besides 'hey, you.'"
The girl is blushing furiously beside her. "…Helly. You can call me Helly."
"Cobel.” She manages to keep from making a snide comment - now, was that really so difficult? - and instead busies herself checking her mirrors. "Alright then, Helly. Are you ready?"
"Yep."
They exit the lot without fanfare.
At first, their pace is creeping, cautious, but before long they enter a gradual, straining build to near-full speed.
Cobel hums, coaxes the truck up the incline, looping back to the highway. And they’re off.
All the while, Helly faces the window with a fixed kind of intensity, as if she can't be caught looking at Cobel or anything she does.
This suits Cobel just fine.
In the absence of conversation, she falls into the usual rhythms of driving.
The truck is well-equipped to provide its own kind of white noise. Cobel hardly hears it anymore - finds it soothing, really. And Helly must think so too, because she catches her stifling a yawn in her peripheral vision.
Cobel waits - long enough that the act could be a plausibly unrelated movement - then reaches for the dial, bringing the radio down to a whisper.
"There's an extra bunk in the back," she says, conversationally. "It's serving as storage at the moment, but I'll make it up for you so you have a place to sleep when we aren't stopped somewhere with proper beds."
"I can sleep here," says Helly, patting the seat.
"Don't be absurd. You may be young, but you still have a spine, same as anyone else. One night sleeping there and you'll feel ancient." Cobel meets her eyes in the mirror. "There's a partition - a separate bunk. You can see for yourself and decide later."
"Alright." Helly yawns again, this time openly. "But I don’t think I’ll obliterate my youthful spine with a mere nap, so… I'll get the grand tour at our next stop."
"Don't go expecting too much now," Cobel warns. "It's a nice truck, but it's still a truck."
"Better than nothing," Helly says, and shifts to hug her bag in her lap. She drops her head towards the window, face pressed against her makeshift pillow.
Between one exit and the next, she begins to snore.
Later, Cobel pulls into another rest stop - one of the last nice ones before they enter a particularly bleak stretch - to move some of her belongings and make up the second bunk for Helly. Efficient, quiet - though she doubts anything could wake Helly at the moment. The girl dozes in the passenger seat through the whole thing.
By the time she stirs, Cobel's already driving again. They've put in some solid distance from the dusty GrabN'Go and the surroundings reflect it.
Helly rubs her eyes, peering through the window. "How far?"
"Nearly to the state line," Cobel says evenly.
"Really. Wouldn't know it. Spine feels pretty fresh." She stretches and curls in her seat in a distinctly feline movement. There's a strip of skin between shirt hem and denim, a pale line that widens at the peak of her stretch.
Cobel looks away a fraction too late.
"You slept through a good chunk of it," she says. "One way to make the miles go faster."
Helly nods. After a moment, she digs through her bag and pulls out a map.
Cobel keeps her eyes on the road with an exaggerated focus, letting the girl feel she has some privacy - but from half-second glances, the map looks worn, well-used - the opposite of her clothes and bag. Interesting.
At the next mile marker, Helly reads with a piercing intensity. Then, she traces their progress with her fingertip, chewing on her lip all the while.
By now, Cobel knows better than to comment.
Instead, she nods to the center console. "There's a bag of candy in there, by the way - mostly sour, maybe a chocolate or two left. On the house." A small offering.
"Fancy." Helly doesn't reach for one, but she glances over briefly before she turns to her post at the window.
They share a silence as the sun slinks to the horizon and suburbia turns to poorly-maintained farm plots. Abandoned sheds here and there. What used to be a century farm, left to rot beside the highway that halved its value.
With dark comes a hushed feeling, something softer, more anonymous. Cobel sees Helly feel it, unfurling ever-so-slightly from her tight coil of tension.
"Been on the road long before GrabN'Go?" Cobel asks.
Helly's face instantly pull tight, wary. Easy.
Cobel takes a beat, adjusts one of her mirrors with a casual touch. Pretends the conversation is a distant secondary focus. "I'm no stranger to the area. I know it's not unheard of to come across an unsavory character or two."
To her delight, Helly bites.
"No creeps," she shrugs. "Or at least, not to me."
Cobel hums in acknowledgement.
Helly offers something unprompted next, real progress - "The first person who picked me up was actually a pregnant woman, so I figured my odds of not getting murdered were fine."
"You could tell she was pregnant before you got in the car?"
"Well - no," Helly admits, "but she had a nice face."
"Ah."
"And she was nice," she insists. "Gave me a bunch of power bars from the glovebox."
"Your rations."
"Yes." She pats her bag, almost affectionately.
"And no ‘creeps’ since?"
"Nope. She got me to town. Ran into this older guy with his dog. Also very nice. Gave me a couple maps." She glances at Cobel. "Didn't pester me with questions."
Cobel almost smiles. "Message received."
"I didn't mean it like that," Helly says.
"Of course you did." But Cobel makes certain she can see she's amused, not truly bothered, before the girl's guard goes up again.
Helly relaxes the smallest amount. "You know - it’s not personal. It's just-"
"Just how it is."
"Just how it is," she agrees.
Cobel turns the radio up slightly and lets the girl have her space.
Two songs later, she offers Helly a stick of gum.
She accepts it, pops it in her mouth, pocketing the wrapper. "Do this often?"
"Drive?"
Helly rolls her eyes. "Good one. No, pick up pretty girls at gas stations."
Cobel ignores the qualifier and addresses the core question. "You seemed like you needed the ride."
"Hm." Helly blows a small bubble with her gum, snap-pops it.
"No snarky comment for that?"
"Gotta save my energy. Miles to go, you know?"
Cobel almost smiles again. She takes another drink of her soda instead, reigning in the impulse.
Helly stays quiet a long moment.
Then:
"Can I ask you something?”
”You can try.” She braces.
Helly pauses, solemn. “…Can I drive?”
Cobel scowls at her.
Helly sits back against the passenger seat, raising her hands in surrender. "Jesus, wow - I’m joking. Put the claws away."
"They were never out." Cobel shakes her head, plucking a candy from the bag in the center console.
Her passenger isn’t done heckling, apparently. "Thought those were all mine, 'on the house.'" She mimics Cobel's deadpan cadence with middling accuracy.
Cobel, for her part, refuses to dignify the mockery with acknowledgement. Pops the candy in her mouth. The sour edge of it begin to dissolve, giving way to a sugary fizz. "Transportation tax."
Helly brightens at this. "What do you transport, anyway?"
"I specialize in high-end executive relocation."
"You're fucking with me." The girl stares, then laughs. "That sounds absolutely, one-hundred percent made up."
"Rest assured it is not." Cobel doesn't offer more - not yet. Helly seems to like being mysterious; two can play at that.
"When you say executive - you don't mean you've got people back there, right?" Half-joking. But not entirely joking.
“Just you," Cobel answers.
Helly considers. "Well, even so…I’m going to assume that pays well. Sounds fancy.”
"You’d be correct,” says Cobel evenly.
Helly twists in her seat to glance behind her, as if she'll manage to see through the back to the cargo. "Hmm." She yawns, ponders. "I'm definitely gonna ask more about that when I'm not asleep."
She unbuckles her seatbelt with a click, standing carefully as the truck hums beneath her. "Going to check out the bunk. Protect my spine and all.”
"I set out extra blankets," Cobel says. "On the bunk with blue sheets."
"Gotcha." The girl takes her bag with her, slipping into the rear sleeping compartment with barely a sound. She leaves only the abandoned gum wrapper as evidence she was ever there.
The world outside the cab flows by in a steady stream, parting cleanly around them.
The world inside the cab falls still.
Cobel turns the radio up just a hair.
Just enough to hear the melody.