Work Text:
The car has stalled out on the side of the road.
It sits, with its hood up and its back door open, on the dirt shoulder of a two-lane, unmarked highway, beneath a high, bright summer-sun. The road shoots a straight line to the horizon. Few vehicles pass along it, and to either side of the blacktop, a wild land of tall grasses and blooming flowers runs unchecked. From the meadow rises a loud buzz of unseen insects, while the grasses bend beneath their own weight, unruffled in the stillness and the breathless, windless heat.
Thin plumes of smoke rise up from the car’s engine. A single truck speeds by, sending a hot and stifling wind, disturbing the air.
Raven closes her eyes as it rushes her, and then she straightens herself up and steps back.
This close to the car, all she can smell is the tangy scent of overheated metal and the familiar sharpness of gasoline. She pulls a rag out of her back pocket and wipes the grease from her hands, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there were still a smudge on her face, mixing with the trickles of sweat she can feel sliding down her temples and her nose. A few steps farther back and onto the shoulder, and she can breathe deep of clearer air, still warm, but threaded through with something sweet, like an overblooming of flowers in the distance. She traces it, a cloying perfume blended beneath the growth of grass and the steadiness of the dirt.
And a few steps onto the highway, and the afternoon smells of burning asphalt and the acrid tinge of dissipating smoke from her car, smells exactly how the outdoors always smells when summer reaches its peak, and the air starts to shimmer and the horizon turn to distant, gleaming waves of heat-distorted light.
She looks out as far as she can, back the way they came. She can’t remember the last time the road curved. They’ve been driving straight and narrow with the windows down and the hot wind blowing through their hair, so loud that they can’t talk and they can’t hear the music from the radio. But sometimes they’ll glance at each other anyway, and some quick and fleeting joke will pass between them, freedom and distance and optimism in the speed of the car and the endless unfurling of the road ahead of them.
Two feet are sticking out of the back passenger-side door: two sneakers flat on the blacktop, and then the ends of two ratty jean legs, disappearing into the shadowy insides of the car. Strains of music, almost inaudibly low, waft out from two round, portable speakers left sitting on the floor. The speakers are attached to a CD player, which Clarke is holding on her lap.
She does not move when Raven approaches her, nor when Raven pokes at Clarke’s foot with her foot.
“She’ll be fine,” Raven says, loudly, to compete with the music, and nudges at one of the sneakers again. “We just need to wait for the engine to cool down a little more. It happens sometimes.”
The sound of the guitar solo distorts, crackles with static for a moment and then skips, as the CD player is set down on the floor beneath the seat. The feet shuffle forward. Then Clarke swings herself up, slowly, into a sitting position, and pokes her head out through the door. She gives Raven a look that’s slightly bleary, as if she had been dozing, slightly skeptical, with the tiniest wrinkle of a frown between her eyes.
“So I definitely shouldn’t worry about the smoke, or the clunking sound when we pulled over, and there definitely isn’t a fire,” she says, then sighs deeply when Raven grabs her hands and pulls her out of the car, as if this were a great imposition.
“Nor an imminent explosion,” Raven finishes. She leans in and kisses the spot between Clarke’s brows, sees that the gesture made her smile, kisses her lips. Their fingers twine together. Clarke pulls her a little closer, and Raven stumbles forward; their noses bump. The next kiss is longer, languid.
Clarke takes a step back and drags Raven with her, so Clarke is pressed against the side of the car, and her hands can settle at Raven’s hips, while Raven’s pass along her sides like she’s taking the measure of her.
“You know what I want?” Clarke asks, when she pulls back. They’re still so close that Raven can see the danger-glint in her eye and the tiny curve at the corner of her mouth, and the strands of hair that have come loose from her bun and plastered themselves to the sides of her face.
“To get back on the road? Immediately?” She’s half-teasing, but she knows Clarke must be frustrated. She’s always hated delays and hiccups in the plan, uncertainties she can’t control and problems she can’t fix.
But she shakes her head, a short and nearly imperceptible movement. “The hotel,” she breathes. “I want to get to the hotel, and cool down, and get out of these clothes…”
Raven tugs her closer, a hitch of breath and another kiss.
“I want a bed with clean sheets and a big mattress. I want to open the windows and listen to the people passing by on the street.”
Each word, each syllable, sounds low and secret, murmured close so she can read them from Clarke’s lips.
“Mmm? Yeah, and what else?”
She lists them, all the small comforts of rest, not a destination but a pause in the journey, everything they’ll have by the time a warm, soft twilight settles and the sky pales to grays and violet-blues and the road finally curves and winds its way through a small byway of a town. They’ll rent a small room. They’ll buy bottles of water, chilled, from the vending machine in the hall, and drink so fast and so deep that they’ll feel almost sick with it, wide gulping mouthfuls of water to quench their parched throats and dry, salt-cracked skin. They’ll turn on the air conditioning, first, for a cool blast of artificial air, take off their shoes and feel the thin, worn carpet under the soles of their feet, and Clarke will bounce on the bed, forming a star-fish shape across the middle, until Raven pulls her up again and insists they shower first. The water will be just warm enough not to startle or burn on their bare skin, refreshing and cool, and it will wash away the staleness of old sweat and long burning heat. They’ll laugh as they take turns slipping and sliding past each other to reach the full blast of the spray.
The evening and the night just a pause, and just the two of them alone. After sunset, after dinner, the AC off and the windows open, the comforter on the floor, they’ll slide beneath the top sheet, and Clarke’s fingers will tangle through the knots still in Raven’s hair. Clarke, looking at her like only Clarke does or ever could, with such unbearable patience, like devotion. She’ll let Raven sink back into the pillows, but not let her look away.
And tomorrow, they’ll be back on the road. Another day to their destination, if they’re lucky—no fires, no explosions, no breakdowns that cannot be fixed.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Clarke asks, and Raven blinks, and shakes her head and tries to smile. The sun is beating down directly on her; she feels nearly dizzy with it. Her palm rests on the back of Clarke’s neck, her thumb gently passing back and forth across her cheek.
“Like what?” she asks.
Clarke shrugs. “I don’t know. Like you’re seeing me.”
Before Raven can answer—a reply will take a while; she doesn’t know what to say—Clarke pulls her forward again with her fingertips at Raven’s chin, and kisses her, gentle and sweet. “Don’t stop, anyway,” she says, and it feels like a confession. “I like it. I like you looking at me.”