Chapter Text
i. california
“A road trip?”
JD looked up from his pierogis (the cafeteria only had them once every couple of months, how lucky was he today?) slightly surprised at the level of hesitation in Carla’s voice. Sure, spending four and a half weeks driving his ex-stepdad’s beat-up RV across the country to go visit his girlfriend of three months wasn’t ideal, but he did think it could be fun if they all just threw in a little effort. (And okay, yes, by “effort” he meant gas money, because driving a shitty RV all the way to New York City sure as hell wouldn’t be cheap.)
“Have you talked to Kim about this?”
He avoided her eyes. "I thought I'd surprise her. I'm being spontaneous, Carla." She raised her eyebrows, but he plowed on. "Anyway, haven't you ever wanted to take a road trip? It could be a fun way to spend our vacation."
Carla sighed. “Bambi, when we talked about vacation, I was picturing somewhere with palm trees and a beach. And, y’know-” she leaned forward meaningfully and lowered her voice. “-a good chunk of time spent very far away from the people we’ve spent every single day with cooped up in here.”
JD rolled his eyes. “Carla, the entire hospital staff is not gonna fit in Gerald’s RV.”
With his final pierogi reduced to a few stray crumbs and a smear of grease on his cafeteria tray, JD stood up to leave. Carla, still eating, pointed at him threateningly with a French fry.
“I’ll think about it, but whoever Gerald is, he is not invited.”
*********
The RV is, admittedly, not in the greatest condition.
It wasn’t small, but considering the fact that JD had (somehow) managed to wrangle four other people into several weeks on the road with him, it was beginning to look considerably...not large. It was a faded shade of tan, with the word Zephyr emblazoned in blue and green letters that probably looked a lot cooler when they weren’t peeling and spotted with dead bugs.
JD, with his duffel bag over his shoulder and a suitcase in one hand, swung open the door (he was met by a symphony of creaky screeching and reminded himself, through clenched teeth, this is all part of the old thing’s charm) and dropped his bags on the floor. Inside, late afternoon sunlight cast a syrupy glow over the thick carpet (mossy green and admittedly kind of pretty) and patterned wallpaper (he tried for about three seconds to find something likable and was quickly forced to admit that there wasn’t a thing on this earth that should be allowed to have that many sickly-pink roses on it).
He took stock, glancing back and forth. On one end, just behind the driver’s seats in the front: the kitchen, complete with an adorably small oven. One little booth with a table, opposite the kitchen; beside that, a set of bunk beds. A couch against the opposite wall. Next to the thin sliding door that lead to the singular bathroom and bedroom, there was a small TV sitting on a crate.
This was enough room for five people. This was totally enough space for five people. JD moved his duffel and suitcase onto the couch next to him. Sure, they might be a little cramped, but these were his friends. It wasn’t like he was going to be stuck in a little RV for weeks on end with Dr. Cox, right?
He rolled his eyes at himself. Yeah, that would be way too good to be true.
(Also, possibly too many girls’ names for his self esteem to ever fully recover from.)
Anyway. Shaking his head at himself, JD shut the door behind him and, jangling the keys in his hand, headed toward the driver’s seat.
*********
“Perry.”
“Said no, won’t say it again.”
Carla stopped dead in her tracks, crossed her arms, and glared.
“Now that’s something I never thought I’d hear you say. Remember yesterday? When you composed an entire song using only the word no?”
Growling under his breath, Perry turned around. “An intern asked me if I could switch out his shift for tomorrow night because he had tickets to Les Mis. What would you have me do, Carla?”
Her eyebrows went up. “Come on the road trip with us.”
Groaning, he turned around again. “Leaving!”
“Come on, Perry,” she pleaded, catching up with him and grabbing his arm. “You know as well as I do that Turk and JD on the road together is gonna be a lot to handle. Elliot and Molly will be there, but…”
At this, they both paused at looked in the direction of the nurse’s station, where Elliot was ignoring her rapidly beeping pager in favor of staring at Molly with eyes so dreamy she could easily have been mistaken for an amnesia patient.
“...they’re both a bit distracted.” Carla finished. (Distantly, there was a yelp simultaneously followed by a squeal of shoes on the tile as Elliot finally noticed her pager and immediately dashed off.) “Please, Perry. I don’t want to end up lost in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.”
Perry flicked his nose, crossed his arms, and glared. “Carla, you want me to pack up, hop in an RV, and spend upwards of three weeks with you and four other people that, may I remind you, make me want to commit mass murder when I have to deal with any of them for five minutes, let alone weeks. You realize you’re initiating the setup of HBO’s next big true crime documentary?” he held up his hands, framing the air in front of his face. “Picture it: local sex icon murders four ingrates. But, dear listener....” lowering his voice theatrically, he leaned in. “was it justified?”
Carla, throughout this, had managed to maintain a completely unamused expression. (Though Perry wasn’t sure how, seeing as he was hilarious. And also right.) “You know as well as I do that you need a break from this place. And road trips are fun! We can play music, visit tourist traps…”
“Watching your husband and his boyfriend jam to Britney Spears and make out in front of the World’s Largest Can of Baked Beans doesn’t exactly match my definition of fun.”
“Yeah, well, your definition of fun is my definition of go to therapy, Perry.”
In spite of himself, Perry laughed at that. “Not bad, but I’m still not going.”
Carla’s eyes narrowed, which, generally speaking, was her version of a giant neon sign flashing Danger! Danger! in bright red letters. Perry made a conscious effort not to step back.
“You’re going on that road trip, mister. I will drag you onto that RV by your poofy little poodle perm if I have to.”
He spluttered, indignant. “You can’t make me do anything!”
“Watch me,” she hissed. “I am not taking care of four thirty-year-old children on the road by myself for four weeks. Either you’re coming or your life will be very unpleasant when I get back.”
“Oh, yeah?” he yelled as she strolled away (far too casual considering she had just threatened him with violence). “Well...I get the bedroom then!”
“Nope,” she called over her shoulder.
“Pullout couch!”
“If you behave.”
She rounded the corner. Perry turned began to bang his forehead slowly against the wall.
For fuck’s sake.
ii. california
“We are NOT bringing Rowdy!”
Turk stood in front of the Zephyr, clutching Rowdy and looking at Carla with wide, pleading eyes.
“But baby, he’ll get lonely if we leave him here!”
“You’ll be lonely if we bring him because I am not sleeping in the same room as that thing.”
JD, approaching from behind carrying one of Elliot’s (three) suitcases, chimed in. “Carla, if we leave him at home he gets anxious. You’ll come back to your sofa all chewed up.”
“Oh, good, it’s you.” Carla said dryly without turning around.
JD dropped the suitcase so that he could lean in close to Turk, who was still holding Rowdy and giving Carla puppy dog eyes. He joined in. “Can you really say no to these faces?”
“Yes. Easily.” she said flatly. “Rowdy stays.”
With that, she turned and walked back toward the car to get the rest of their luggage. Once she was out of earshot, Turk turned to JD.
“So we’re sneaking him on, right?”
“If we hide him under the bed she’ll never notice.”
Turk clapped him on the shoulder and turned hastily to the RV. JD surveyed the parking lot: they were still waiting for Elliot and Molly, who would hopefully be arriving any minute. It was already late afternoon, and he wanted to get a good start on the road before night fell.
“Cheryl!”
He jumped. A very annoyed-looking (although that was pretty much his normal face, actually, it would be more notable to see him not looking like he wanted to strangle someone) Dr. Cox was striding in his direction across the parking lot, holding a suitcase.
Holding a suitcase?
Before JD had time to register that particular questionable factor, Dr. Cox was in front of him. He jerked his head at the Zephyr. “So is this the mobile asylum I’m expected to spend the next three weeks playing Monopoly in with you people?” he squinted at it, tilting his head. “Kinda small for six people.”
JD blinked. “Uh. What?”
“Sorry, will it be Go Fish? Y’know, Patricia, I’m not with the times on what kind of games you teenage girls are into these days. Although I can bring along my Just Dance DVD if-”
JD’s eyes brightened with excitement. “Do you really have Just Dance?”
The look Dr. Cox gave him was withering enough for JD to deduce the answer to that question himself. (Also to realize that he had missed the point of this entire exchange by about a mile.) Shaking his head, he cleared his throat slightly and said, “Yeah, so actually what I meant was-”
The older doctor cut him off with a swift “I’m gonna stop you right there, Sheila, before you make this a thing. Carla convinced me that she would need some help handling you toddlers on the road for the next few weeks, so-” he grinned with absolutely no mirth, “here I am. And I’m gonna tell you right now, if a I hear a single note of a Backstreet Boys song I will not hesitate to turn you into roadkill and stuff you like that stupid dead dog you idiots are trying to sneak onto this moronmobile.”
He stalked away, leaving JD behind him opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish.
Well. Well.
This presented a few issues.
*********
So Perry did it. Fine. As much as he hated to admit it, Carla could be terrifying when she wanted to be, and he was not looking forward to finding out what she meant by his life becoming “very unpleasant” if he didn’t suck it up and help chaperone on this stupid trip.
The issue with Carla (and the only reason she was able to successfully threaten him, dammit) was that she knew enough about him to follow through. If Ghandi or Barbie or even the weirdly intuitive Molly threatened to make his life “unpleasant”, he’d laugh in their faces. (Now that he thought about it, though, he couldn’t really picture Molly actually threatening anyone; she seemed more the silently-orchestrate-your-terrifying-downfall type. Therapists.) Carla, though...Carla knew him, past and present. Probably a little too well.
Maybe the thought of how well she knew him paired with being forced onto this trip worried him, a little bit.
(Or a lot.)
If he was being perfectly, painfully honest with himself, this was dangerous. The game he had been playing over the past days, weeks, fine, months - that had already been dangerous enough. But put him into a small RV with the person who embodied the very root of this stupid problem? That fell more under the category of “catastrophically terrible ideas”.
Days and weeks and months. He could feel this pressure building up, slowly, and Perry was afraid by the time he tried to stop it it would already be too late. He remembered falling off his bike, as a kid; there was a moment, right before he hit the ground, where the anticipation of the pain that was coming shot through him like a thunderbolt.
He felt like he’d been living in that moment, that fraction of a second, for months on end.
Perry didn’t want to hit the ground. But he was already falling, and no fall could last forever.
*********
“All right, gang, are you ready for the most magical experience of your lives?”
The RV was loaded. The gas tank was full, the tires pumped and the CDs assembled. (And re-assembled, after he had been threatened with bodily harm if he tried to play any of the Backstreet Boys’ absolutely fantastic tunes. Damn Dr. Cox.) Now, JD stood at the head of the Zephyr, looking out at his friends assembled before him. Carla, Turk and Dr. Cox sat together at the little table whereas Elliot and Molly had claimed the couch. The pair were already snuggled up, barely paying attention to anyone around them as Elliot played with Molly’s long hair. It was a sickeningly sweet sight.
“Just start the damn car, Newbie,” Perry said wryly. “The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can come back.”
“I’m ready for a magical experience!” Molly said cheerfully, about forty-three seconds too late. Elliot was still carding her fingers through her hair.
“Every day with you is a magical experience,” Elliot said, in such a sweetly sincere tone that it would have been a lovely moment if not for the unanimous groan that sounded immediately afterwards.
She looked around at the others defensively. “Oh, can it, you’re just jealous that we’re happy!”
Carla threw her hands up in the air. “Turk and I are married!”
Tilting her head, blonde hair brushing her shoulders, Elliot quirked an eyebrow. “Uh-huh, Carla, you’re not making the point you think you are.”
“I’m driving across the country to see my girlfriend, so I think I win the happiest-relationship contest, actually.” JD chimed in.
“Wouldn’t you be happier if she were already here, though, Johnny?” Molly pointed out.
“No, Molly, because then I wouldn’t get to partake in this magical road trip with my friends who I love so much.”
This was the point at which Dr. Cox slammed his hand on the table and said loudly, “If someone doesn’t start this car right now someone will be losing a limb.”
“Yeah, yeah, Per-Per,” JD rolled his eyes and turned to the front of the vehicle. “I’ll take first driving shift, who wants to come keep me-”
Here, he stopped, because upon actually taking a look at the driver’s seat at the front of the RV, there was a teeny-tiny-miniscule problem in the form of Jordan, who was lounging in the seat with sunglasses on, reading a magazine.
He opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to think of what to say, before eventually managing to come up with “Jordan?”
She flipped a page of her magazine, not looking up. “That’s my name, DJ, don’t wear it out.”
Several questions flashed through his mind, the one at the forefront being how the hell did you get in here without the key? That was a security issue if he’d ever seen one. “What are you-”
“Oh no.” Dr. Cox was right next to him in the span of a single eye blink. “Oh, absolutely not, are you kidding me?” He turned to JD, snarling. “Did you know about this, Ursula?”
JD spluttered. “Do I look like I knew about this?”
“Hi, Jordan,” Turk called out, still seated in the booth. Jordan waved a hand lazily in his general direction.
Dr. Cox was now shaking his head with a maniacal sort of grin spreading across his face. It was, to say the least, a concerning sight. JD took a cautious step backwards. “Oh, I see,” Dr. Cox said, turning to look at Carla, still grinning like a slasher in a bad horror flick. “You finally got sick of Ghandi, so you’ve trapped me in a situation that you know will send me right over the edge and make me kill everyone in the general vicinity except you, since I for some reason consider you my friend.”
Turk gave Carla a horrified look. “Baby?!”
Carla adopted an expression of shock. “Oh, no, you caught me!”
Everyone stared.
She dropped the scared face and replaced it with one of disgust, throwing up her hands. “Seriously? Who do you people think I am?”
There was a snap as Jordan shut her magazine and stood up. Dr. Cox physically recoiled as she gave him a cheerful pat on the shoulder before shoving past him. “What can I say? I’m bored. This is something to do. And how could I miss an opportunity to watch this-” she gestured to an irate Dr. Cox, “for three weeks?”
He made a noise that sounded somewhat like an angry balloon deflating.
Jordan laughed. “Exactly! Anyway, I’ll be in the bedroom. Knock before you come in. Momma needs some alone time.”
With that, she disappeared through the sliding door into the bedroom. Everyone else was left staring at each other, bemused expressions on all faces but Dr. Cox’s, who still looked as if he had just witnessed a particularly horrifying animal sacrifice.
“Well.” JD said, after several more awkward moments. “Better her than the Janitor?”
Perry groaned. “Don’t invoke his name. He’s probably hiding in the sewer tank.”
iii. california (the road)
By the time the sun had set and the amber glow had faded from the RV’s flowered wallpaper, leaving the interior lit only by the neon glows of the dashboard, JD had remembered why he didn’t like driving at night.
During the day, it was easier not to think. To keep his eyes on the road and the journey ahead, to talk and laugh with his friends, to lose himself in the loud music pouring from the speakers, or in whatever wild fantasy his mind decided to throw him into (although it was generally good to avoid that while driving, as his imagination may have been the cause of what might, by some people, be considered near-death experiences a few times before). There was more to see during the day, in the sunlight. And more to see meant less opportunity for his mind to wander into thoughts that he generally tried to keep quiet.
But now it was dark. Now, the only sights were the pavement lit by the headlights and the faint glow of a car’s taillights far ahead. A song was playing on the radio, softly, but it was some folksy one that JD didn’t know, full of mournful guitar riffs. Turk was passed out in the passenger’s seat beside him, and the rest of his friends had retreated to the back of the RV, dozing on the couch or playing cards quietly at the table.
With no distractions, his mind was wandering. And unfortunately, lately his mind seemed to be gravitating toward places that, were they real and not metaphorical, would probably be surrounded by barbed wire and a field of land mines.
(Due to the aforementioned imagination issue, he had to mentally force himself not to slip into a daydream about his physical brain hopping straight out of his head and going on a little brain-journey to a horribly dangerous place and come on, JD, eyes on the road, keep it together.)
Kim. The whole reason they were in this RV, the reason he had planned this trip in the first place, was to go and see Kim. His girlfriend who had moved across the country for her job. His girlfriend who he was still in love with.
Except.
(Even the fact that there was an except, that there was a hesitation, made him feel slimy all over. He was driving across the country for the girl that he loved. Romantic, right? And someone this romantic and heroic wasn’t sad and wasn’t lonely and didn’t feel an aching tug in his chest that he couldn’t shake. Except.)
In the back, Carla, Dr. Cox and Molly were at the table, playing cards. (Elliot had passed out on the couch at 10 PM after insisting for fifteen minutes that no, she wasn’t tired, what are you guys talking about, another game of cards, anyone?) Every once in a while, JD would catch the low rumble of Perry’s laugh, hear him make a swift, cutting comment that would undoubtedly make Carla smack him on the shoulder.
The thought made him smile. Then when he realized he was smiling, he stopped, feeling the same sickening worry he’d been feeling for weeks rise in his stomach like bile.
This, of course, was the except.
JD didn’t know when it had started, but he thought he had known when it stopped. Thought that he’d finally found someone to cure him of this stupid lovesickness for his stupid angry mentor that he couldn’t seem to shake, no matter how hard he tried.
But he thought he’d managed it, for a little while. Kim made him happy. They were good together.
Then she got a job across the country in New York City and things fell apart in the span of about two weeks.
But he was going to fix it. He had to fix it, because having a girlfriend was something he knew how to do, and unrequited love for a man who would never see him as anything more than an annoyance...wasn’t. And there was no one he could go to. There wasn’t exactly an online advice forum for “I’ve been in love with my mentor for years and I thought I was over it but apparently not and I haven’t even told my best friend and oh, did I mention he calls me girls’ names?”
All he knew was that when he suggested driving across the country to New York, he wasn’t running toward Kim. He was running away from the emptiness she left behind, because as soon as she was gone, all he could feel was the sting of what would never be his.
Unfortunately, things hadn’t exactly worked out the way he’d planned.
So now JD was stuck in a tiny RV with what was essentially a ticking time bomb. Great. If there was one thing he knew about himself, it was that he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, he wore it stamped across his forehead.
“And I didn’t even bring any hats,” he mumbled, running a hand absently through his hair. At the sound of his voice, Turk started and sat up slightly.
“Whazzwrong?”
“Hats. Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
iv. california
“Shouldn’t we still be driving?”
A gust of wind caught Perry’s words and blew them away, bringing instead a scent of salt and a snatch of sound from the distantly crashing waves. The Zephyr was parked at the base of a sizable sand dune, beyond which were several more rolling sand dunes, beyond which was the ocean. It was early dusk, the second day of their trip; they were preparing to turn East and leave California behind. Some of the others had insisted they stop to enjoy the California sunshine before heading into Nevada, despite the fact that, as Perry pointed out, California sunshine wasn’t so hard to come by - they did live here, after all. Wasn’t it kind of the point to get away, leave it behind, maybe see a snowflake or two?
But the day was beautiful, the sky clear and wide above a turquoise ocean that looked like it belonged on a postcard (from somewhere far away and probably very tropical). Even Perry, as he stood beside the Zephyr (trying and failing to stop his curls from blowing in the wind; he’d had to apply his stupid therapist’s anger-management rule of counting down from ten only a few minutes ago after Barbie had dubbed his hair “adorable” and tried to “boing” one of the curls, whatever the hell that meant) had to admit that the sight of the roaring green waves was pretty fucking gorgeous.
Slightly less so due to the band of idiots that had just dashed in headfirst and were now whooping and splashing water at each other, but still.
“Why won’t you let yourself enjoy life, Perry?”
He jumped about a foot in the air while simultaneously letting out a garbled cry of several different swear words at once. Molly Clock had materialized next to him, wearing a gigantic sunhat, and sunglasses that gave her the appearance of a giant bug. She was also smiling in an infuriatingly sincere way. The overall effect just made Perry want to squish her like a mosquito.
“No no no no,” he said sternly, taking a step away from her. “You are nawt doing your Dr-Phil-psycho-babble...stuff on me. We are on vacation, dammit.”
She tilted her head and Perry could just tell that she was looking him up and down in that unsettlingly intense way she had. He glared. As usual, she had no reaction, which only served to make him more annoyed.
“What?” he finally snapped, losing patience.
She shrugged. “You just seem to have some kind of aversion to letting yourself be happy and enjoy life. It’s interesting.”
“Y’know what else is interesting? I’ve heard the ocean is a great place to dump dead bodies.”
Molly grinned and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Perry. I’ve had boyfriends hide real dead bodies before. You’d get caught in three days.”
Before he had time to recover from either of those things - the shoulder cuff or the potential murder confession - she was strolling toward the ocean, where her girlfriend stood waiting, soaking wet from when JD had thrown her into the waves moments before.
After a moment, Perry followed, still reeling slightly from that interaction. He spotted Jordan sitting on a towel, holding a book and studiously ignoring the nearby chaos. (Carla was now up on Turk’s shoulders, trying to knock down Elliot, who was balanced on Molly’s shoulders. The chick was strong.) The sand was hot against his legs as he plopped down beside her, leaning back on his hands. “I thought your kind burned up when you came into contact with sunlight.”
“I thought you’d last more than two and a half minutes in the sack, but our assumptions aren’t always correct, are they?”
Perry snorted. “Okay, not bad.”
“Thanks. You’re very easy to insult.”
He nodded out at the waves. “Why aren’t you out there? You used to love the water.”
Jordan shrugged, turning a page. “I’m not looking to get dunked by Tweedledee and Tweedledum over there. Also, there’s only one shower on that tin can we’re driving, and I’m not sitting around in soaking shorts for an hour and a half while I wait for Blondie to wash her hair.”
“Fair enough,” Perry grunted. His eyes were still on the sea, where JD was diving into each big wave, letting the water flip him over and tumble him back in to shore. He looked brilliantly happy, beaming as he burst out of the water and shook his soaked dark hair out of his eyes.
And now Perry was staring. He knew he was staring. But the sunlight was pouring onto the sea in pools of amber, and the warm light was casting long, sweet shadows across JD’s form. The curve of his neck, the small of his back. At every toss of his head or turn of his hips, Perry felt struck by the weight of everything he could never have, dancing down his arms and into his fingertips like electricity.
What an ugly thing it was. The ability to see, and to want.
JD was beaming now, facing the ocean, spreading his arms wide as if he wanted to capture it all - the sun, the sea, the cries of the gulls and the laughter of his friends - and instead of are you waiting for the ocean to hug you back, Shelly? all Perry could think about was how fucking beautiful it was to see JD that happy.
Pathetic, huh?
(There was a juxtaposition there, between the beauty in the seeing and the ugliness of the wanting. JD looked like a piece of art, silhouetted against the dusky horizon, and for a moment Perry could just watch him and forget the heaviness that would follow. But then he remembered that JD didn’t know, that he could never know, that if he found out he would hate him, and the longing would ooze from his skin and slide down his body like oil.)
Meanwhile, Jordan, never one to mince words, glanced from Perry to JD and back again before asking (in a tone that indicated she didn’t particularly care about the answer) “So why are you staring at DJ?”
He whipped around so fast his neck nearly cracked. “What are you- I’m not!”
“Since when is looking at someone for a probably inappropriate period of time not staring?” she asked conversationally, turning a page without looking at him. “‘Cause I hate to tell you this, but that’s definitely what was happening.”
“Maybe your succubus eyes have lost the ability to process beauty, but in case you haven’t noticed, we are on a beach,” Perry snapped. “Just because Sandy Cheeks over there happened to disrupt my view a few times doesn’t mean I was staring.”
Jordan sighed, looked up into the sky as if begging for patience, and dropped her book. “Yes, Perry, whatever you say.” Then she turned to look at him, wearing an expression that he had trouble placing for a moment because it was so unusual to see it on Jordan’s face. She looked...earnest?
“If you ever need to talk about it,” she said sincerely, actually laying a hand on his arm (Perry was too frozen with surprise to jerk away in horror) “I’m here for you.”
There were a few beats of silence. Then her face split into a grin and she leaned back, laughing so hard she nearly fell sideways into the sand.
“Man, can you imagine if I was like that?”
Perry rubbed his temples. Yeah, that checked out.
v. nevada (the road)
“Are you ever going to let me play my CD?”
“Terry-Ann, last time you were in control of the music, you subjected us all to California Girls-”
“It’s a classic! And we were in California! How are you not seeing how perfect that was?”
“-which is something I never thought I’d have to hear outside of Jordan’s niece’s sweet sixteen birthday party, and which I do nawt plan on being forced to listen to ever again, so I’m gonna go with no.”
“Also, JD, we’re in Nevada now, remember?” Elliot informed him from the couch, where she was laying with her legs sprawled over Molly’s lap.
“I wasn’t going to play California Girls again,” JD grumbled. “Katy Perry has a very expansive discography-”
“This is why you’ve lost CD privileges.”
Exasperated, JD turned to Dr. Cox, who for some reason was lounging in the passenger’s seat beside him, his feet kicked up on the dashboard. “Why are you even here?”
“Yes, Perry, why are you even there?” Jordan’s voice came from the bedroom, which she was still refusing to give up custody of. Perry jumped and cast a hunted look back in her direction.
“Ears like a fucking bat,” he muttered, shaking his head. “And Lacy, I’m sitting here because if you’re allowed control over the music in this vehicle, I will be forced to pull this steering wheel and send us all into sweet oblivion, and I really don’t want the last thing I hear before I die to be Taylor Swift’s greatest breakup ballads.”
“Okay, uncalled for, Taylor Swift is a musical miracle and you know it.”
“Let Bambi play music, he’s driving,” Carla called. JD smirked triumphantly, but Dr. Cox just rolled his eyes.
“What are you talking about? Passenger gets music privileges.”
“Who raised you?” Turk chimed in, disgusted.
“Ghandi, you don’t wanna go there.”
Out of the corner of his eye (because of course he was keeping his eyes on the road, he wasn’t a monster) JD could see Carla sidling up behind Dr. Cox’s seat, her eyes on the CD player. The music he was playing wasn’t bad, JD would give him that; a man with a low, growly voice, saturated with vibrant guitar and bursts of drums. It certainly wasn’t the death-metal he had been expecting.
But JD hadn’t spend two and a half hours with Turk compiling the ultimate perfect road trip mix for nothing. So he stayed silent as Carla crept up behind Dr. Cox-
-and dove for the “eject” button on the dashboard, her legs dangling in the air as she leaned over Perry’s seat. He made a strangled noise of surprise, jerking backwards away from her at first before realizing what she was doing and shoving her hand away.
“Get him, baby!” Turk cheered enthusiastically. Carla, who was laughing too hard to actually do much damage, was still scrabbling at the dashboard as Dr. Cox fought her off. She smacked him halfheartedly on the shoulder with her other hand.
Even Dr. Cox couldn’t help himself - he started laughing too as Carla relented and leaned her head on his shoulder, grinning. “If I let Newbie play his CD will someone get this spider monkey off me?”
She smacked the top of his head playfully. “How dare you.”
A pang of jealousy ran through JD, and he shook his head sharply, trying to focus on the road. He’d always envied the easy camaraderie that Carla had with the older doctor. The way she could make him laugh with as little as a single comment. The way that around her, he seemed less like an untouchable super-doctor and a little more like a person.
Also, he laughed more. JD was pretty sure it had been one of those times, one of the first times he had seen Perry really, truly laugh, that made him fall a little bit in love.
He swallowed and snapped his eyes back onto the road. Carla had retreated back to the table, leaving the two men alone again. It was getting late now, darkness falling around them, illuminating Dr. Cox’s face in a the red and green lights from the dashboard. JD glanced at him out of the corner of his eye; his smile had faded, but he still had the faint glow of someone who had just been laughing. He was messing with the CD player. A moment later, Beyoncé began crooning faintly through the speakers.
JD beamed. “Our ultimate perfect road trip mix!”
Dr. Cox raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes, I saw that written in sharpie on the case.”
“Well, it isn’t wrong.”
Dr. Cox rolled his eyes, but JD could see him grinning. He smiled too, in spite of himself, bobbing his head along to the beat of the song. He rolled his window down a few inches to let in the breeze. For several minutes they sat in shared silence, surrounded by the darkness and the warm, summery air, which seemed to linger hazily around them, filled with something that JD couldn’t quite place.
Then a semi passed by them going about 110 miles per hour, and the spell was broken as JD let out a high pitched screech and jerked the steering wheel to the right, causing the entire RV to sway.
“Fucking hell, Newbie,” Dr. Cox exclaimed sharply. “I thought I was gonna be the one trying to crash this car!”
“That was nowhere in the realm of the speed limit!” JD yelled, leaning out the window to glare at the rapidly retreating semi (which was already nothing but a faint glint of taillights in the distance, probably because it had been speeding at about 150 miles per hour). He plopped back into his seat with a huff. “Do you believe that? Ever heard of the rules of the road, sir? He was going, like, two hundred and twenty!”
There was a considerable lack of biting commentary coming from the passenger’s side. When he glanced over, it was with a jolt of surprise to see the other man looking back at him, holding back a smile. JD quirked his head to the side. “Yes, Perry? Comments?”
Dr. Cox shook his head, grinning slightly. “You wouldn’t be one for the racetrack, huh, Newbie?”
JD rolled his eyes, attempting to look indifferent. “I’ve been to races, Perry. My dad used to take me every weekend to watch…the cars, doing the...circle thing…”
“Ever seen a car do a backflip over a school bus?”
“I’m sorry, have I ever seen a WHAT?”
The Zephyr sped down the lonely highway as Perry educated JD on the finer points of auto racing. For once, JD didn’t find himself celebrating each time Perry smiled or laughed or didn’t call him a girls’ name; he just listened, and watched, and let the pull of longing in his chest spill out and crackle like electricity in the air between them. He felt hyperaware of every movement Perry made, every flutter of his eyelashes or quirk of his mouth in the dark.
(And his entire body ached in the places he knew Perry would never touch, and the negative space between them grew tangible, static that buzzed and whispered against his skin. But this time he didn’t think to quiet it. Tonight, in this moment, there was a space that existed for only the two of them. And there, in the quiet and the dark, JD was drifting past that line had drawn in the sand years ago, the line he swore he would never let himself cross back when he first realized that the buzz he felt when he looked at his mentor was more than just hero worship.)
And they were off.