Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey.”

As an opener, it doesn’t give him a lot to go on, but Gabe’s always considered himself adaptable. “Hey,” he replies, genially enough.

There’s a pause where William waits for Gabe to give him something more to work with, and where Gabe doesn’t do any such thing. William called him, he can make the small talk if he wants.

It’s William, though, so Gabe should have expected that he’d skip over that part. “I was thinking,” William says, not quite light enough to be offhand. “I’m flying out to do a charity thing next week in Portland, I was going to pick up the rest of my stuff from the house. And the car.”

Gabe doesn’t see yet where this is going. When William falls silent, Gabe does a little game of eeny-meeny-miney-mo in his head about whether or not to prompt things along, before coming to the conclusion that no matter how difficult he decides to make this, William will always manage to out-stubborn him. “Yeah?” he allows finally.

“I was wondering if you wanted to drive back with me,” William says, and wow, Gabe did not see that one coming.

He frowns and pulls up the weekly schedule on his NextGen Assist, scrolling through the list of appointments. “To Chicago?”

“Portsmouth,” William says. “I just got a place there.”

Gabe pauses with his finger still over the screen. He hadn’t known that. Then again, it’s been eighteen months since they’ve really talked.

“When’s the thing?” he asks, instead of pursuing why William’s moved for the third time in two years, and what the fuck is in New Hampshire.

“The 21st,” William answers, and Gabe can hear, now that he’s been listening for a while, the way William’s voice relaxes the longer they talk. “The trip would take a few days, though.”

Gabe snorts. “More than a few.” He’s done it before, of course, they both have, but being on a bus with a driver and taking a car are different things. It’s a week-long trip, and that’s if they push hard and don’t make any stops along the way.

“Will you do it?” William asks, not beating around the bush.

Gabe dithers, but the most exciting thing coming up on his calendar is the release of the first Harry Potter remake, and he can catch that anywhere. “Yeah, I’ll do it,” he says. “Book me a flight.”

He’ll be the first to admit that by now he should have grown out of doing stupid, impulsive things, but Gabe’s always been a fan of disproving the old adage about curiosity killing the cat.

William meets him outside the airport, parked directly under the enormous red ‘No Parking’ sign and leaning back against the side of one of the newer models of corn oil-fueled hatchbacks. The french fry cars, Ryland calls them on his blog about all the latest global trends, because most companies get the oil used from fast food corporations. Gabe grins at the memory and William smiles tentatively back at him, mistaking the expression.

“Hey,” he says, standing up and popping the trunk for Gabe’s rolling bag. “Glad you could make it. How was the flight?”

“Long,” Gabe answers. “I can’t wait to be in a car for the rest of the day.”

William hesitates, shutting the trunk and turning to face him. “We can leave tomorrow. I just thought we might as well…”

“No, let’s do it,” Gabe says, cutting him off and waving a hand. “I hate the west coast. Let’s see how far we can make it by tonight.”

He climbs in the passenger side and adjusts the seat back until he can stretch out his legs, checking out the standard features this model offers. Gabe hasn’t bought a new car in years, still driving his 2017 Stellar C6. It gets him where he needs to go and doesn’t quite qualify as a total junkheap yet, so he hasn’t bothered upgrading. William, on the other hand, is always buying the next greenest thing on the market.

“I was wondering if it would smell,” Gabe admits, leaning forward to sniff the dashboard. “You know they get the fuel from fast food joints?”

“Yeah, I read Ryland’s blog about it before I bought one,” William replies, easing them out into traffic and taking the turn from the highway. “They get great mileage, though. And most places have oil stations now, we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“We are driving through Wyoming,” Gabe points out. “We might have to hijack a hamburger stand or something. They’ve probably never even seen one of these.”

“I don’t think they’re quite that backward,” William says, in that sardonic drawl of his that Gabe can admit to himself he’s missed. “Though I was thinking,” he adds, glancing sideways at Gabe in the mirror panel, “we could take 70 instead of 80, across the mountains. It’s a nicer drive.”

“Like this trip isn’t going to be long enough,” Gabe says, but he shakes his head when William gives him another questioning look. “That’s fine. Just don’t forget to pick up sunblock if we’re going over the Rockies in the middle of June.”

“That was one time,” William protests, and Gabe feels himself grin, falling back into old patterns almost before they’ve even hit the road.

“I’m not listening to you bitch for an entire week about how your lobster skin is peeling off all over the car,” he shoots back. “Buy the sunblock.”

That settled, he ignores William grumbling about high altitudes and devotes himself to the important and nigh-impossible task of finding a radio station that doesn’t suck.

William’s mini-disc collection is abysmal. “What the fuck is this?” Gabe demands, holding up a mini-disc in disbelief. “The greatest hits of Maui? Ginevra Hill? Dorian LeBlanc? Are you secretly a middle-aged soccer mom?”

“Ginevra Hill has a very pleasant voice,” William argues, batting at his hand when Gabe makes a noise demonstrating his feelings on that point. He manages to grab the MDs out of Gabe’s hand, probably sensing Gabe’s growing intent to chuck them out the window, and tosses them onto the back seat. “There’s some other…I don’t know, I have a mini-drive hooked up, you should be able to find plenty on there.”

William’s taste may have taken a turn for the worst, but he’s at least as voracious as ever in his appetite for new music, if his mini-drive is anything to go by. Gabe checks the playlists first, because an album will only last them forty-five minutes, and they have a lot more time than that to kill.

He pauses when he reaches a familiar acronym. “What’s FBR RMX?” he asks, clicking on it to look at the tracks. The song titles are familiar but the group names aren’t, not a single one that Gabe recognizes.

“Oh, that’s…you should play that,” William says, glancing over at the screen. “Evie made it; it’s a collection of cover songs by college a cappella groups. She really wants to join one when she goes, she’s been keeping a list of the regional BOCA winners.”

Gabe doesn’t know what the fuck a BOCA is, but he hits play. “She looking at programs yet?” She’s still young yet, but with her parents’ brains and at the rate she’s been going through school, he thinks there’s a good chance she’ll hit college ahead of the general curve.

“Yeah, we’re going to go look at a few in the fall. She’s been thinking about New England. There’s a prep school there that she’s applied to for next year.” William sounds more okay with that than Gabe would have anticipated, considering. Then he puts the pieces together.

“Portsmouth?” When William nods, Gabe ducks back to the screen. It claims to be playing thnks fr th mmrs, but all he can hear are a bunch of people chanting and the occasional beat box. “What the fuck is this, seriously?”

“A cappella,” William says again, waving his fingers back in forth over the steering yoke in some inexplicable William-esque gesture. “They don’t have any instruments, it’s all their voices. They sing everything.”

“What the fuck?” Gabe repeats, because of course he’s heard of a cappella, he just hasn’t heard any that sounded like this. But he’s finally caught the melody line, at least, so for now he just turns it up and listens to some college chick try to out-belt Patrick Stump.

He pokes through the mini-drive for a while longer, seeing what else William has squirreled away on there, until he hears a chorus of young voices harmonize on a very familiar intro line. “The city is at war…” a kid sings before the chorus explodes into frantic vocables, and Gabe leans back in his chair.

He listens to the song the whole way through, and only when the next track begins does he say, “So, you’ve kept up with Ryland?”

From the way William’s hands tense on the yoke, he hears the question Gabe hasn’t asked – yet – which is ‘Ryland but not me?’ He knows it’s not the same thing. He just doesn’t know what made William stop picking up the phone.

“I should have called,” William says, to his credit, taking the bull by the horns and getting it out there. “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you?” Gabe asks, posture deceptively lazy as he lounges back against the inside of the door, both eyes on William and keeping his reflection mostly out of the mirror panel. “Is it because of the…”

“No,” William says, cutting him off before he can even get it out, shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t you. I shouldn’t have lost touch.”

Gabe waits, but William doesn’t give him anything else, distracted and evasive. He shrugs mentally and turns up the volume on a high-energy cover of Cupid’s Chokehold. He came out here to figure out what this is all about, and now that he’s here, he feels he’s owed a few explanations.

William can be as evasive as he likes for now; they’ve still got another six-and-a-half days together in this car.

“How long are we on 84?” Gabe asks, doing a time calculation when they see the first sign for Boise.

“Another day-and-a-half, probably,” William answers, stretching out as much as he can in the driver’s seat. He sounds tired already; William’s been a morning person for as long as Gabe’s known him, and that habit only got worse when Evie arrived. They should probably switch places if they decide to keep driving after dark.

“In that case, pull off sometime soon and we’ll get dinner.” They haven’t been talking much, still avoiding the topics neither of them has been determined enough to address, and Gabe could use a chance to refuel and wake up a little. Evie’s mix has given way to old-school emo, Sunny Day Real Estate and Jawbreaker providing a fun trip down memory lane but not the most upbeat soundtrack for a rainy Oregon afternoon.

Apparently William thinks so as well, because he turns the music down and shifts over into the right lane. “Where do you want to eat?”

“Somewhere with thirty-dollar entrees,” Gabe says, hitting the button on William’s GPS interface and fondly remembering when you could get a decent meal for less than fifteen. He’s fine with fast food for two meals out of three, but dinner has become sacred.

Gabe could have predicted that William’s aversion to technology would mean he doesn’t use the 3d interface often. Sure enough, when he turns it on he’s greeted by the flat voice and nondescript brunette features of the factory setting, and there are no favorites saved in the restaurants folder.

“There’s a Chestnut Street, if you want burgers,” Gabe reads off, scrolling past the chains he’s not a big fan of and the ones he knows William will veto. “Jimmy’s Grill, Bait and Switch, Haute Cuisine, Hearthstone…”

“Pick anything that isn’t a chain,” William requests, so Gabe pulls up details and reviews for a few of the local kitchens and finds a French-American place with vegan options.

It’s a nice enough and French enough place to have a wine list. William glances at it nervously when they’re first seated, an expression Gabe is used to seeing from people by now, and then tries to surreptitiously slip it under the table under the cover of his menu.

“It’s cool,” Gabe tells him, scanning his own menu while William freezes, caught-out. “I’m not going to turn into a basket case at the mention of Bordeaux.”

William pushes the wine list back onto the table. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Gabe smiles at him, and by this time, it’s almost a genuine smile. “Two years, three months, eleven days,” he says, like he has every day since the first. “I can handle it.”

William gets smoked salmon crepes with a salad, and Gabe tries to pretend he’s hungry enough for an entrée but really he just wants the chestnut soup. He’ll probably be hungry again later, but there are always instant meals available at fuel stations. He raises an eyebrow after the waiter leaves and says, “You can have a beer, it’s not going to bother me.”

“I’m driving,” William answers, even though Gabe knows that never would have stopped him before, not one beer with a meal like this one. He’s not as annoyed as he could have been, because William hasn’t talked to him in a year and a half, so he doesn’t know where Gabe’s head is at anymore. And because nine months before that, the worst ones, William had been at his side learning firsthand the darker side of detox.

When the waiter comes back to refill their waters, William tacks on bread and two appetizers to their order, which means he thinks Gabe hasn’t ordered enough to eat and is overcompensating. Gabe lets it go because it’s William’s way of apologizing and fussing all at once, and because Gabe will end up eating three-quarters of it anyway once it’s on the table.

“How are you doing?” William asks once they’re alone again, waiting for food. “With the program?”

“Every day one step at a time,” Gabe quotes, which is a stock answer, but it’s not like there’s a better one for that question. He grins when he takes a drink of water. “I used to be straight edge, you know.”

“I know,” William says. His smile is crooked and familiar. “I was too, but only because I was too young to drink at the time.”

“Yeah, keep playing that age card,” Gabe snorts, leaning back. “You’re almost forty.”

“Don’t remind me,” William says, wrinkling his nose like he’s seventeen again, and Gabe laughs for the first time on this trip, long and loud until William finally breaks down and smiles.

“The Thrifty Inn?” Gabe asks, scrolling through their choices for accommodations. “We could pretend to be authentic, recapture our youth and the glorious van days. American Family Motel?”

“No and no,” William tells him without question. “I’m too old to be sleeping on a shitty mattress. At least three stars.”

“I’m mourning your sense of adventure,” Gabe says, but he’s already pulled up a respectable chain and is keying in a reservation for the night. “Next exit, to the right.”

They get one room, two beds, and it’s almost uncanny, the way Gabe’s body knows and reacts to everything, the rumble of the ice machine in the hall and the smell of chlorine and the mass-produced art prints on the walls. He’s spent half his life in motels when he wasn’t on buses, and having William here just makes it stranger.

He dumps his shit on the first bed because some habits are impossible to break, and being closest to the door is one of them. William doesn’t seem to mind, adjusting the settings on the climate control and closing the privacy panels before settling down on the other bed, scrolling through the list of hotel amenities on the digital interface.

“Movie?” he asks, interrupting Gabe’s search for his shaving bag.

“I’ll probably just fall asleep,” Gabe admits, scratching under his chin and trying to determine how tired he is. Doing nothing but traveling all day is surprisingly exhausting. Maybe especially when you’re trying to reconstruct a friendship without all of the critical information. “Pick whatever you want. You tired at all?”

William shakes his head, still browsing. “Yesterday was a big day, I crashed early and slept in this morning. I can read, though, if a movie will keep you up.”

“Nothing will keep me up,” Gabe promises. He’s been trained by years on the road to sleep through anything less than a nuclear attack. “How’d that go, by the way?”

“What, the charity thing? It went well.” William frowns, looking up but not really at Gabe, that focused, distant expression that means he’s evaluating. “We raised a lot of money, and got some good publicity.”

Gabe chuckles. “I still can’t believe you bought a basketball team,” he says, lying down on the bed with one arm curled under his head so he can keep watching William. “I never thought you’d actually do it.”

“Didn’t you?” William says, smiling faintly. He looks back down at the interface, tilting his head. “There’s probably a game on, if you want to watch sports instead.”

“Nah, get a movie,” Gabe votes. If they’re going to spend all week together, he has no doubt that he’ll be subjected to at least one basketball game at some point, and he wants to limit his exposure as much as he can. “Or porn. Is there porn?”

William laughs, but two minutes later there’s an oiled blonde with enormous fake breasts on the 3d screen riding a Sybian, shrieking and giggling while her two equally curvaceous friends pet her arms and make envious noises of support.

Gabe grins and tucks both hands behind his head, watching the show. After a few seconds he glances over at William and has to grin harder, because he might not know what William’s taste in porn is, but he knows what it’s not, and the expression on William’s face is as hilariously disgusted as Gabe remembers from overnight hotel parties with the Academy back in the day.

“Hey, you’re a divorcee now,” he says, lightly but still careful, because William’s marriage had ended not long before their friendship had taken a similar – albeit quieter – turn, and he’s not sure yet that this is a safe topic. “You’re allowed to look.”

William’s mouth twists, self-mockery and regret. “I was always allowed to look,” he says finally, quietly. “I just didn’t want to.”

He slides down on the bed and takes an electronic reader out of his bag, body language signaling a retreat. Gabe wishes he knew where all the landmines were in their relationship now, and that he didn’t feel guilty for stepping on them. It’s not his fault they never talked much about William leaving Christine, either when it happened or afterward. He’s not the one who cut ties.

Unfortunately, knowing that only helps to a point. Gabe reaches over and changes the channel.

Gabe wakes up early, and knows he’s the first one up when he sees the mound of blankets completely cocooning the lump he assumes is William in the other bed. He yawns, checks the clock, considers sleeping for another fifteen minutes before remembering how far they still have to drive, and finally rolls himself out of bed.

The second he turns the light on in the bathroom, there’s a thump from the main bedroom. William pokes his head in a moment later, bleary-eyed and with his hair a tousled wreck, squinting at Gabe in the mirror as Gabe cheerfully brushes his teeth.

“I want first shower,” William announces, hanging a little off the door frame as if he’s not fully capable of remaining upright on his own yet. He’s already perking up, though, the morning-person syndrome kicking in while Gabe still wants nothing more than to crawl back under the covers.

“First up gets first shower,” Gabe tells him through a mouthful of foam, and spits into the sink. “Why?”

“Because you piss in the shower when you first wake up,” William says, nose wrinkling in opinionated distaste. “I’ve spent enough time in my life stepping in puddles of urine.”

“It’s totally sterile,” Gabe defends. “And it goes right down the drain. How is piss worse than washing off dirt? Or jizz?”

“Do not jizz in my shower,” William warns, and Gabe has a moment of realizing that he’s forty-four years old, an established record producer employing kids half his age, and he’s still hanging out in hotel bathrooms with his best friend talking about jizz. It’s good to know that some things will never change.

“You know,” he says reflectively, “A lot of people love it when I jizz in their showers. It’s considered a highlight, even.”

William rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Let me in when you’re done,” he says, already pushing away from the doorframe and heading back into the bedroom. “I’ll be quick.”

“Not something you should say when discussing those kinds of showers,” Gabe hollers after him, but he misses William’s reply under the sound of running water.

Day two, he thinks, when they’re both showered and ready to check out. Time to see whether William is ready to explain this whole road trip idea, or if he’s going to keep being evasive about it. Maybe Gabe can ply him with coffee over breakfast and get him to spill what the fuck is going on here. Maybe he can push a little, because if it wasn’t the alcoholism and the rehab that finally drove William away, Gabe doesn’t know what it was.

“There’s a complimentary breakfast near the lobby,” William says as they leave the room. “I thought we could grab something and take it with us, get an early start.” He doesn’t look at Gabe when he says it, and his tone is light but his shoulders are hunched.

Right, Gabe thinks. Not ready to talk yet.

They spend too many hours in northern Utah looking for the famous fish taco stand they’d discovered during their first Halcyon Days tour together, when it had been them and Pete and Travis when he’d felt like it, too many front men for one stage and loving every minute of it because they never minded sharing the spotlight when it was with each other.

They shouldn’t take the time now, but William’s stubborn as hell and Gabe really wants a fucking taco, so they comb the streets off each exit until they’re ninety-percent sure they’ve found where it used to be, a familiar whitewashed building with a parking lot full of pot holes, and then they agree to admit defeat and stop for falafel and gyros instead.

Gabe entertains himself for a while by making lists of other culinary delights they can’t miss on the way; the Mongolian barbecue outside of Denver, and one of the Lebanese delis in Toledo, where you can’t throw a stone without hitting a kabob shop.

“You know they’re making a musical or some shit on Broadway now?” Gabe says, when they take a break from William’s MD collection to see what’s on the radio in Salt Lake. They’ve found a mostly rev-rock station, declaring it plays all the best revolutionary hits of the early 21st century and currently blasting something from My Chemical Romance’s sixth studio album.

William glances at him briefly in the mirror panel, eyebrows raised. “No shit, seriously?”

“Yeah, Gee had a vision or something, they’re following in the footsteps of Green Day and Muse. I’m actually surprised it took them this long.” He needs to message Mikey, come to think of it, shoot the shit and see how things are going. The last he’d heard, there were intergalactic water nymphs and unicyclists involved, and Gabe has to be in on that shit.

“Evie will love that,” William says. “I’ll have to get tickets.”

“You know you have a place to crash in the city,” Gabe offers, as offhand as he can make it.

He’s watching for it, but William doesn’t look over at him this time. “Thanks.” There’s another beat of silence, and then William says, “She’d love to see you. She says she misses her Uncle Gabe.”

Gabe snorts. “Yeah, well, I was a lot more fun the way she remembers me,” he says.

“Bullshit, she loves you,” William says, immediate and forceful. Gabe’s about to deflect onto another topic when William asks suddenly, “Why’d you stop drinking?”

Gabe fiddles with the radio just to have something to do with his hands, skipping over two country stations and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir before stalling on static. He’s better with talking about this, more honest with himself, but it’s still not that easy. “I didn’t like who I was,” he answers, which is the simplest version.

There had been a lot of other factors, including Evie and Bandit and Chesapeake, but underneath it all he’d finally scared himself badly enough to stop. He hadn’t been a violent drunk, exactly, but he’d been violent sometimes and drunk all the time, which had amounted to the same thing. And two years ago it had gotten out of hand. Or further out of hand than it had ever been before, anyway, which is saying something.

William had been there for that fight, but he’d stuck with Gabe all night, so he hadn’t seen the photos of the guy’s face afterward and heard the list of injuries the police had read off later when they were threatening to put Gabe in jail. Gabe’s fine with that; William had seen enough of what came later, after his decision to quit but before rehab, to be more than familiar with the dark side of Gabe’s soul.

Turnabout is fair play, though, and Gabe’s done baring his inner pain, so he asks, “Why’d you stop calling?”

William keeps his eyes on the road, one finger tapping restlessly against the steering yoke. “We need to stop for oil,” he says, and takes the ramp for the exit.

“Is this some kind of mid-life crisis?” Gabe asks, when they start making the climb into the Rocky Mountains.

He’d made William switch off with him at the last fuel station, because William couldn’t drive in the mountains without stripping his brake pads and Gabe had gotten tired of watching them nearly get mown over by pissed-off semis. Now he has less shit to fiddle with and a solid five hours of driving ahead of him, and he’s bored with patiently waiting for William to come around.

“What?” William’s playing the innocent card, but it doesn’t work as well now that he’s in his thirties, and Gabe has known him far too long to be fooled by the act.

“You. Me. The road trip across the country.” Gabe raises his eyebrows, risking a glance sideways at the passenger seat. “You’re turning forty next year; is this the Beckett equivalent of buying a drag racer and banging a bimbo?”

“Don’t –” William cuts himself off, apparently remembering belatedly that Gabe isn’t Evie and lecturing him about female-positive language isn’t going to do any good. He fidgets in his seat, and he’s obviously considering his answer so Gabe gives him time, tapping the yoke in rhythm with the bass line on the radio.

“I don’t know,” William says finally. “I wanted you back, and this was the best way I could think of to do it. And I wanted…to figure things out, I guess.”

Gabe tries to catch his eyes in the mirror panel, but William’s looking out the window. “You could have had me back anytime,” he says. “You didn’t have to make up an excuse for it.”

“I know.” William fidgets again, but it’s the restless energy kind, the kind that always makes Gabe think look out, here it comes.

“I didn’t cut you out on purpose,” he says finally. “It was just…Christine and I were done, and suddenly I didn’t have my best friend anymore. I couldn’t pick up the phone and tell her about the new movie I’d just heard about, or the book cover that made me think of her. It was hard, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Bill, you two were together longer than you and I have even known each other,” Gabe points out. “Of course that’s gonna fuck you up. She’s been in your life a long fucking time.”

“Right, but then I didn’t have anyone I could tell that stuff to,” William presses. “So even if it was something I’d normally tell you, it felt like I was just trying to replace her because I was so lonely. And you were dealing with so much shit then; I felt so stupid calling you about how I couldn’t decide what to have for dinner when your problems were so much bigger than mine. You were dealing with all of these huge life changes; you didn’t deserve to be someone’s second-best choice.”

“It’s been more than a year,” Gabe reminds him, after he’s processed that. “I think I could have handled a call every once I a while.”

“But then it was a whole thing,” William says, gesturing in wonky circles with one hand. “I psyched myself out about it. It had been so long and I didn’t have anything saying that was worth breaking that much silence. I felt like I didn’t have the right anymore.”

Gabe wants to say that’s bullshit, but he knows how that feels. After the first few months, he hadn’t called William for the exact same reason. Even when he hadn’t known why, it had still been clear that they weren’t talking, rather than it just being a coincidence that they hadn’t. He and William didn’t casually walk in and out of each other’s lives like that and never had. It’s part of why he’s here now, trying to piece it all together and figure out where they went wrong.

“So,” Gabe says finally. “Road trip.”

“Road trip,” William echoes, smiling weakly. His fingers are still twitching on the window pane, but Gabe thinks some of the tension might be gone from his shoulders.

Gabe rolls out his own neck, feeling the satisfying pop of vertebrae too settled in their old age. “It’s going to take us for-fucking-ever to make it over these mountains in your piece of shit french fry car,” he says. “Tell me again why we’re not taking the Trans-continental?”

“I thought you wanted an old-fashioned road trip,” William says, with familiar arch superiority. Gabe grins at the windshield.

“I thought we were going to watch movies and fuck around all the way through Iowa and Nebraska,” he says, shaking his head. “Now I’m going to end up trying to strangle myself with a corn husk.”

They stop off in Vail because Gabe can’t stand being cooped up in a car anymore, particularly not one the size of William’s, and he’s always been a fan of resort towns. There’s something about the sheer amount of kitsch crammed into one small space that makes him feel right at home.

They wander around playing tourist and buying stupid key chains, trying on hats they’d never wear – although Gabe can never tell with William, sometimes he dresses the same way for three years straight and then hits one right out of left field – and Gabe stocks up on overpriced snack food in one of the convenience shops.

“I can’t believe you didn’t prepare for this,” he says, dropping another handful of plastic-wrapped saturated fats into the basket that William is carrying over his arm like a spinster milkmaid. “What the fuck is a road trip without a massive bag full of junk food?”

“I didn’t think we needed it,” William answers, reaching up to smooth the hair behind his ear. It’s just starting to grow longer than the respectable-dad cut he’s had for nearly a decade, tickling his ears and sticking up funny at the back from when he’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat half an hour ago.

“Speak for yourself,” Gabe says, although at least half of the stuff he’s getting is for William. Gabe knows from years on the road how much of a pissy bitch William can be if his blood sugar gets too low, and the fact that he’s still skinny as a rail means his metabolism probably hasn’t slowed down much at all over the past few years. Gabe had put on weight since hitting forty, with most of it going straight to a beer belly, but he’d burned it all off again in the gym during rehab when he couldn’t stand sitting still and being inside his own head.

They don’t get as many looks as they used to, and it’s not just because they aren’t as famous and this crowd isn’t their demographic. Gabe flatters himself that he’s aged well, distinguished gray at his temples and skin that hasn’t lost its color yet, but William has never lost the fine-boned prettiness of his youth, and middle-aged women are seldom looking for pretty in an older man.

Besides which, he realizes with amusement as he puts another bag of chips in William’s basket and steers him toward the Combos, things have changed a lot over the past twenty years. Half the people passing them in the aisles and nodding to them over postcard displays probably think they’re a couple.

“Hey,” he says, grinning and tugging William in closer by the basket handle, and it’s a testament to how long they’ve known each other that William doesn’t pull away when Gabe leans in, just tilts his head automatically into the light kiss.

William just gives him a mildly quizzical look when Gabe lets him go. “What was that for?” he asks, and Gabe shrugs, still grinning, turning away to make critical pretzel-related decisions.

“Classic cheddar or gorgonzola?” he asks, after snagging a bag of tomato basil for himself, and when William doesn’t answer fast enough, he just gets them both.

“70 through Kansas, or back north on 76 until we hit 80?” William asks when they’re on the outskirts of Denver, looking at maps on his electronic reader rather than using the 3d interface.

“Hey, I’m only along so I can throw dollar coins into those stupid basketball nets once we hit Indiana,” Gabe says, trying to catch a glimpse of William’s proposed routes. “Did you want to stop in Chicago?”

He’s thinking more along the lines of William picking up more of whatever shit he has still in storage there, but William looks at him thoughtfully as if he’s thinking something else. “Yeah,” he says. “We should.”

“Back to 80 it is,” Gabe agrees easily. “Anything else major you want to hit? Extended trips down nostalgia lane?”

William half-curls against the car door, poking at the touch pad on his reader. Gabe is convinced he’s lost William to his boundless love of reading material when William finally speaks up. “I just don’t want to have any regrets.”

Gabe raises his eyebrows and cuts his gaze sideways briefly. “That’s a tall order for one road trip, isn’t it? Or are we talking things like ‘I’ve always wanted to see Little America, and the world’s biggest ball of twine’?”

“No. I don’t know.” William’s hands twist together before he plucks them apart to touch something on the reader. He looks out the window and says, distant, “Do you think it’s ever too late for something?”

“Something like a reunion tour, or something like seeing the Great Barrier Reef?” Gabe asks, remembering with a sort of exasperated fondness how difficult it can be to navigate William’s existential conversations. “Because I hate to break it to you, but that ship has definitely sailed.”

“I’ve always had something,” William says, twisting around again and leaning back against the door. “Music, mostly, but I’ve always been doing what I wanted to do. There was the Academy, and then Halcyon, and Evie…”

“This is definitely a mid-life crisis,” Gabe confirms. “I should have known when you bought that fucking basketball team.”

“Shut up,” William says, but he’s smiling, his eyes crinkled enough to show the laugh lines that have deepened over the decades. “I’m not freaking out or anything, it’s not that. I just don’t want to wonder if I should have done something differently; if it would have worked out better.”

Gabe marvels sometimes at the way he can look at William sometimes and still see William at eighteen, at twenty-three, at thirty. He wonders if William ever feels like this when he looks at Evie.

Well, he amends, probably not exactly this way, no. His feelings toward William have been many things over the years, but they’ve never been parental.

“There’s always going to be something,” Gabe tells him. “Other choices, other bands, other friends. You’ve got to stick by the ones you choose, because that’s what matters. Right?”

William smiles when Gabe glances at him, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes; doesn’t touch the crow’s eyes hidden in the corners. “What if you still wondered?”

“Then it’s never too late,” Gabe says firmly. Fuck, he should know. He’s the king of second chances and starting over. “Unless you mean the reef,” he amends, glancing over again. “Because like I said…”

“Right, right,” William says, and this time the smile is real, so Gabe doesn’t fight it when he changes the subject.

They end up stopping at a carnival in Nebraska even though they’d been planning to push for Omaha, since, as William had put it, he’d fucking murder everyone if he had to spend another day driving through cornfields without a latte. The bright lights of the carnival are too much to resist, though, and this is the shit they almost never got away with on tour, being able to say fuck the schedule and follow their impulses.

Gabe loses half his cash on stupid games but ends up winning an enormous pink bunny, which he names Fluffer Nutter and presents to William with a flourish. They ride the roller coaster in spite of knowing it probably came off a truck in pieces that morning and was cobbled together in an hour without a safety inspection. It adds to the thrill. Fluffer Nutter rides between them on the ferris wheel, strapped in for safety, and when the ride comes to a stop just after they pass the apex, William reaches over to tangle their fingers together and sighs quietly, staring out at the bright scattered stars.

It’s one of the best things Gabe thinks he’s done with his life since getting sober, and when William insists on staying at a fancy hotel for the night, Gabe can’t argue with him.

“I want towel-rabbits,” William says, practically impossible to see beneath the massive rabbit sitting on his lap in the passenger seat. “Fluffer Nutter should have a friend.”

“You are a fucking nutjob,” Gabe informs him, a fact which he feels is becoming clearer every day, but he takes the exit when William tells him to and they end up at the Hilton Regal in a suite bigger than Gabe’s entire condo in New York.

There’s a Jacuzzi in the room, too, which they can’t pass up even though neither of them packed swim trunks. Gabe strips to his boxer-briefs and idly watches William do the same from the comfort of the hot tub, lazing around in a flood of bubbles and letting the hot water soothe out the ache gained from too much time in the car.

“So why Portsmouth?” Gabe asks when William finally climbs in, gingerly settling across from him and stretching his arms out across the rim. When William looks inquiring, he clarifies, “I get why New England, but you could have gone anywhere. You could have gone back to Chicago, or stayed closer to Christine. You could have waited until Evie actually started prep school. What’s in New Hampshire?”

William doesn’t answer for a few minutes, trailing his toe through the water at the edge of the Jacuzzi and looking distracted. Finally he says, “We went there for a concert once. Not Halcyon; it was when you were still with Cobra and we were touring together. Do you remember?”

Gabe thinks he does, vaguely. He remembers the city, at least, and some of those memories include playing tourist with William and Butcher, wandering the streets and reading the historical plaques. “Yeah, sure,” he answers vaguely. “Way back.”

William looks off to his right somewhere, distant. “You said something at the time, about how it was where you’d go if you didn’t love New York so much. Something about the city feeling like home. And I didn’t have any place like that other than Chicago, so when Christine and I split, I thought. Well.” He shrugs. “I had to go somewhere, and it might as well be there.”

Gabe’s eyebrows feel like they’re somewhere in his hairline. “You picked it because I said some shit about it fifteen years ago?”

“No, no. I just.” William smiles, the rueful one, and shrugs again. “It was the first place that came to mind, and I wanted somewhere that felt like home.”

Gabe shakes his head slowly. “That is the stupidest fucking reason I have ever heard for buying a house,” he says, and William laughs.

“I know,” he says. “But whatever, you can always help me flip it if it doesn’t work out. It was a fresh start, that’s all. I wanted to be somewhere I hadn’t been before.”

“I can’t believe you still won’t come to the big city, but you’ll buy a fucking house in…” Gabe grouses, but he’s smiling when William splashes him with a face full of water, and then there’s no time for more questions, only revenge.

“Okay, latte in Omaha,” Gabe checks off the list. He’s back on the passenger side now that they’re in the flat lands heading into Iowa, and relegated to DJ duty and coffee management. “Archway in Great Platte. Carnival in fucking nowhere. We’ve got sandwiches in West Des Moines at that organic place for lunch, what else do you want to do?”

“Dessert,” William reminds him, because he’s still upset that they keep stopping for dinner at places that don’t have any vegan dessert options for Gabe.

“On the list; we’ll find something tonight, or we can do cake or something at the organic place,” Gabe promises. “Come on, there has to be something more important than that. This is your big no-regrets trip, right?”

William’s quiet for long enough that Gabe gives up on scrolling through blurbs on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Cedar Point – they’re definitely going to Cedar Point – and pays attention to him. “Oh, that’s a big one, whatever it is. Come on, tell me. How far out of our way is it? Are you going to tell me we should have stayed on 70 after all?”

William shakes his head, smiling faintly. “No, it’s not…it’s not a place, sorry, I was just thinking.”

Now, Gabe thinks, they might finally be getting somewhere. “Spill it, Beckett,” he orders, stretching out his legs to get more comfortable.

“It’s not really a regret,” William says. “I’ve just been wondering, I guess. What would have happened if I’d met you first, instead of Christine. Loved you first.”

There’s a weird ringing noise happening in Gabe’s ears. He stares, but William doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t laugh like it’s a joke or look over to check his reaction. “What?” he manages finally.

William shrugs. “I just thought…I’ve been with Christine since we were kids. Even when we were on a break, she was still in my life. You and I were never a possibility.”

“And we are now?” Gabe asks. He’s pretty sure he should be handling this situation with more grace and aplomb, but he’s a little thrown. This definitely counts as one of those existentialist conversational labyrinths.

“I don’t know.” William’s tone is still casual, but his grip on the yoke has tightened, and the fine lines are standing out at the corner of his mouth. “You said it was never too late. At least, for anything but the Great Barrier Reef.”

Gabe’s voice hardens. “If you’re trying to say that the past twenty years of your life have been a regret…”

“No,” William says quickly, definitely. “No. It’s not like that. I don’t regret any of that. Evie isn’t ever going to be a regret,” he says, and Gabe can hear the same fierceness in his voice that William always gets when someone mentions his daughter. “Neither is Christine. This is just…another choice. A different option.”

Twenty-odd years they’ve been friends. Gabe’s been engaged three times. William’s been fucking married. Gabe needs to be sitting down at a table, or better yet, in a hotel room. Somewhere he can see William’s face. It’s nine o’clock in the fucking morning, William couldn’t have sprung this on him last night in the fucking Jacuzzi?

White lettering catches at the corner of his eye and he reaches out without thinking. “Get in the left lane,” he orders, pointing across the highway where a green interstate sign proclaims Trans-Continental: This Lane Only.

“I thought we were doing this the old-fashion…”

“Get on the fucking TC,” Gabe repeats, forcefully enough that William clicks on his signal and promptly moves out of the right lane. “You can’t fucking pull this shit with no warning in the middle of Nebraska, what the fuck.”

Traffic grinds to a standstill the way it always does right before the TC ramp, and William starts flicking nervous looks at him, like he thinks Gabe may have gone insane somewhere past the Omaha City Limits. Gabe thinks that might actually be a possibility; he’s not discounting it. If he has, it’s because William has been driving him there.

Finally they reach the boarding shuttle, and William lines up between the barriers, paying the heinously exorbitant toll and waiting until the light turns green before pulling onto the gleaming black surface of the Trans-continental. He lines up in a marked space behind a garishly cheerful yellow Sunspot and shifts into park, turning off the car and letting the enormous conveyor belt of a road carry them steadily east.

Gabe unhooks his seatbelt and turns as much as he can to face the driver’s side. “Let me get this straight. You want to fuck up twenty years of friendship because you think we could have had something back when we were both punk kids?”

William goes stiff and tense, and physically draws away as far as the car will let him, which isn’t far in this one. “No. I was saying I wondered if we could have something after twenty years of friendship. You could have just said no.”

“I’m not saying no,” Gabe corrects. “I’m saying what the fuck. You disappear for eighteen months, fly me out to Oregon, and now this?”

“It was all for this,” William says, starting to warm up the way he does when he really gets into a fight, all flashing eyes and hands curled into fists. “How was I supposed to call you when…”

“I’m not going to be your fucking rebound,” Gabe says. “I won’t…”

“You’re not,” William cuts over him, “you’ve never…”

“You fucking…” Gabe gets out, and then kisses him.

William tries to say something else, but Gabe bites William’s lip, holds his face still between his hands. “Stop,” he says. “Just stop. Let me…”

He barely manages to hit the button for the privacy screens before William is halfway over the gearshift touchpad.

They’re going to have to stop at some point, Gabe thinks; get off at a way station for some real food and stretch out, because even with the seats converted, french fry cars apparently don’t offer much in the way of a comfortable sleeping deck. But for now they have pretzels and bottled water, and a quiet place to do this together, hours of making out interspersed with hours of conversation, catching up on all the time they’ve missed out on.

“I’m not fucking you in the backseat of a car,” William says at one point, when both of their hands have started wandering for the tenth or twentieth time. “And I’m not spunking my jeans like a teenager.”

“We have fresh ones in the trunk,” Gabe points out, grinning. “At least let me try to convince you.”

“No,” William says, smiling anyway as he twists up onto one elbow over Gabe, fingers brushing Gabe’s raw mouth. “We might have missed West Des Moines.”

“I’ll live,” Gabe reassures him. “We could start thinking about a hotel, though.”

“Maybe not for a while,” William says, biting his lip, which perversely makes Gabe want him to stop doing it so that he can be the one to bite it instead.

Gabe belatedly emerges from his lip-biting thoughts to register what William’s just said. “No?” he asks. Because, really?

“I was thinking we could keep going,” William says, shrugging one shoulder and laying his palm flat across Gabe’s chest. “And then when it gets dark, we could open up the moon roof and watch the stars come out. I mean…” He grins, and all the perfect laughter lines crease his face into something even more beautiful. “Isn’t that worthy of making your vaunted list?”

Gabe can’t really say no right now anyway, so it’s a good thing he doesn’t want to. “Yeah,” he says, reaching up to pull William back down. “Yeah, okay.”