Work Text:
It was at times like these that Barry Benson should be asking himself what the fuck he was doing with his life. There he was, rocking up to the front of Hayes Auto in just his boxers, which were dotted all over with large red hearts. But Barry was too elated to care. He supposed that’s what happened when you had a funeral service for your missing husband and then secretly married him later that same day.
He was still in shock. His two closest friends, Collin McKinley and Pez Speedwagon, had kidnapped him, emptied his pockets, stripped him down to his underwear, and then dragged him out to Chumash Pier, which was in the middle of nowhere. The entire time they'd been making threats about how this was what he deserved for what he had done. He’d been furious, raging at them from the trunk of the car, while they made vague warnings about his failures and the importance of honesty and loyalty in the club.
Barry had wracked his goldfish-sized brain for why this could be happening. Was he about to be demoted from his position as road captain? Punished for some reason that he couldn’t remember? All he knew is that he hadn’t betrayed the club. He’d been the most loyal member in the club while their prime minister, who was also his husband, had been missing. Hell, Barry was the fucking Bondi Boys Motor Club. He bled true blue and he would shoot anyone who said otherwise. And they could all go fuck themselves. He crossed his arms at that final thought. Then the trunk lid had popped open and he was wincing at the blinding sunlight.
Collin and Pez had dragged him out of the trunk at gunpoint, and he'd felt a knot begin to form in the pit of his stomach as he took in the serious expressions on their faces. He was well and truly fucked. As he was frog-marched down the pier, hands in the air, he started idly wondering what it felt like to be ocean dumped.
Then he saw his husband, Irwin Dundee, who was in hiding from the police, turn around at the end of the pier. He was only wearing a pair a underwear too, his in a putrid faded yellow color. “What the fuck is this?" Barry said with more bravado than he felt, coming to a stop in front of Dundee, his hands still up.
“Put your hands down, Barry,” Pez stage whispered. Barry dropped them and narrowed his eyes.
Dundee stood in front of him, took a deep breath, and then smiled broadly. “Barry, you know, ever since I started this club with you, I’ve just been...idolizing you, watching you, amazed with everything that you do. You lead this club to success.” Now Barry was baffled. Just what was going on here?
Then Dundee saluted. “You know, I think we should make your attachment to the club more official than ever before.”
“What the fuck is this?” he muttered. He looked over at Collin and Pez, who were flanking Dundee. They looked like they could barely hold back their grins of delight. What kind of sick prank were they pulling here?
“Barry?” Dundee paused dramatically and then knelt down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”
Barry sputtered. His emotions fluctuated wildly as he looked down at Dee. The words that came out of his mouth were barely English.
“You- put- wh- I- oo- I GOT KIDNAPPED AND THEN HAD A GUN THROWN IN MY FUCKING FACE!” He was irate. He couldn’t believe it. Here he was, afraid that he was about to be shot and ocean dumped by his own club and instead he’d just been held at gunpoint for a fucking marriage proposal?!
“For love, Barry,” Collin and Pez obnoxiously chorused together. His eyes didn’t move from Dundee’s face, but he promised himself that he was going to punch their lights out later. They had it coming.
“For love,” Dundee repeated a little more seriously, looking up at him with a twinkle in his eye and a quirky grin under his beard. Barry felt his anger dissipate at that familiar mischievous smile.
“You want to marry me.” Barry made it a statement, not a question. He was still a bit annoyed. “Officially. Is that what this is?”
Dee's eyes widened, like a puppy dog caught misbehaving. “Of course, beautiful, of course!” Jesus. Dee could be spontaneous, but this stunt was somehow more outrageous than attending your own funeral, which Dundee had done just a few hours earlier.
With all of the adrenaline racing through his body, Barry felt like he could go shoot some cops, or maybe just some dickhead friends. Did he still have his gun on him? He felt the small of his back, disappointed that the comforting weight of it was missing. He looked down at Dee, who was still waiting at his feet. There was a nervousness growing in his eyes, and when Barry saw that he sighed.
“Fine. Yes. Fine, I do!” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air. He said “I do” again, and then repeated it a few times as Dee leapt up and hugged him enthusiastically. “Ok, ok, there it is.” He patted Dee’s back. Barry didn’t do all this touchy-feely shit, but he tolerated it because Dundee liked it. He'd do anything for Dee, and the fucker knew it.
“Why did we- why did I have to get half-fucking naked,” he asked in exasperation as Dee grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the railing overlooking the sea. Dundee always did have the craziest drip, but getting engaged in their underwear seemed over the top.
Suddenly Pez started saying, "we are gathered here together..." and Barry's head jerked. He eyes widened as he realized they were getting married right then and there. He was in the middle of an actual shotgun wedding. He felt a bubble of laughter coming up. He’d just told the entire city that he was in mourning for his missing husband, and now he was marrying the man.
Barry was bemused as the ceremony got underway. He decided this was the most ridiculous wedding ever. Pez was asking Dee if he was ready “to send it, forever, into destiny” with Barry, and then they were saying their “I dos” and being declared gay husbands. And Barry kind of loved it. Why the fuck not? There was nothing traditional about any other part of his fucked up life, so why should this be any different?
The entire surreal event had ended suddenly after Collin pulled out a video camera and joked about filming the consummation of their marriage. Then Pez had offered Barry a “wedding gift” by giving him his gun back. Barry’s eyes lit up in glee and he saw Dee take a half-step back out of the corner of his eye. “Wait, a gun?” Dee muttered. Yeah, he knew what was coming. Barry loved nothing more than some good old-fashioned vengeance.
As soon as his pistol was back in his hands, Barry immediately turned it on Collin and Pez. “Alright both of you put your fucking hands up right fucking now,” he shouted. “Keep your hands up or I will shoot you in the fucking head!” How dare they try to tell him that he was the weak link in the club. He was going to make them pay for scaring the shit out of him.
The two dinguses were still chuckling even as they raised their hands. Barry circled them, his weapon reassuringly steady in his hands. He could see Dee out of the corner of his eye, cautiously following him, trying to diffuse the situation. Barry danced around him. There was no way he was going to let anyone stop him from- Just then Collin's foot moved a half-step, and as Barry's eyes tracked it, Dundee made his move. He lunged for Barry, throwing him over his shoulder with practiced ease.
“No! Ahh, noooo!” Barry shouted, flailing while Dee carried him over to the railing. “I need to assert dominance,” he screamed, as Dundee tossed him over the side of the pier into the ocean. The dunking didn’t phase Barry, and he shot to the surface immediately. He cocked his gun. Good, it was still dry enough for his purposes.
“...fucking run,” he heard Dee shout from the pier above him. Barry could hear their laughter overhead as they ran along the boardwalk. He started swimming for the shore, shouting the entire time that he was coming for them, a grim smile on his face. He got one shot off on Pez, but by the time he’d made it back to the carpark, they had bailed out.
Barry jumped into the Tulip, intent on tracking them down. He knew the daily Hayes 500 race was about to start at Hayes Auto, and that was the most likely place Pez and Collin had gone. As he turned his car onto the highway, the same one they’d used to kidnap him in, he finally had a moment to let what had just happened sink in.
So now he was really married, he supposed. Dundee was his husband. The term wasn't just a pet name that they called each other any longer. He mulled that over. Should he change his name? Was he going to be Barry Dundee Benson now? How did that work? Or maybe Dundee should take his name. Irwin Dundee-Benson. That had a nice ring to it. He hummed happily as he parked his muscle car, looking for the boys. He liked the idea of being a married man. He glanced down at his left hand. Maybe they'd even get matching rings.
As he approached a group standing on the sidewalk waiting for the Hayes 500 to begin, he heard the murmurs about his state of undress begin. He was surrounded by what seemed like most of the Hayes employees and at least half of their regular customers. Damn, he really hadn't thought this through.
“Don’t ask why I’m naked; I just got married,” Barry boasted, his hands on his hips. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. He felt giddy, like he’d just drunk an entire bottle of champagne. Was this what it felt like to be punch-drunk? If someone shook him right now and told him this was all a dream, he'd probably believe it.
“Uh, Barry? Who’d you get married to?” He turned, blinking, to look at Ursula Leichenberg, a reporter from LSBN News. She usually spent her time eying up Barry like she was starving and he was the only thing on the buffet. Just a few hours earlier she’d been offering him condolences on the loss of his husband while wearing a very skimpy denim vest with nothing on underneath. But given the text message Barry had received from a mutual friend just an hour before, he knew there was probably more behind Ursula's probing.
“To- to-” He looked around at the group surrounding him, waiting for an answer. Oh, fuck. Dundee was supposed to be dead. No one in the city could know his husband was still alive or the cops would haul him away on terrorism charges. Smart Barry, real smart, you dumb fuck. Just confirm to the world that the entire memorial service had been a huge sham, why don’t you.
Ursula’s eyes narrowed as she waited for an answer from him. And why the fuck was there a chorus of strangers suddenly asking who he’d married? What a bunch of nosy cunts.
“To...to God! I love God.” Excellent. This was a foolproof lie. He had married God. Christ, it was the dumbest thing he could possibly say. Barry shifted back and forth a bit awkwardly in his bare feet.
“I feel like you’re lying,” Ursula said, giving him that stare of hers that could shrivel a man’s cock to the size of a cashew. Women often made Barry nervous, but Ursula was definitely the scariest. It was lucky she thought they were such good friends.
“Yeah this sounds like bullshit, dude,” some random redhead said. Well, she could go fuck herself. Barry ignored her.
“No, to God. I-” Barry tried to speak over everyone else’s talking and stumbled over his words. He felt his palms growing sweaty. Now was not the time to panic, Barry. Stay calm.
“Barry, who did you get married to?” Ursula spoke slowly, as if he was possibly not in his right mind. Yeah, maybe that was how he would play it. Maybe he had finally cracked in his “grief.”
“Hey hands up,” Barry shouted, raising his hands like he was being robbed. “Praise the Lord! Praise uh- Jesus.” Ursula looked unimpressed.
Finally his friend Mick Flair broke the tension by teasing him about how upset he was that Barry hadn’t waited to marry him. Ursula played along, making some joke about how the entire city had always thought she and Barry were destined to be together. But the look in her eyes didn’t match her smile.
Barry resisted rolling his eyes. He’d told her a dozen times that yes, he was very definitely gay, and no, he was not interested in women, and oh by the way, have you met my husband, the cop killing gang leader Irwin Dundee? She never took the hint.
“Well, I actually want to get married to five separate people, um-” Barry started backing away as he spun out his poorly thought out joke, trying to head back to his car. “Yeah, so you guys are all on the list. Uh, autonomous relationships uh ok- God damnit!”
He got tangled in the low branches of the tree next to his car in his haste to leave and everyone laughed. God, he just wanted to find his friends, not face an inquisition. He slid behind the wheel of his car and slammed the door shut in relief. Suddenly, he saw a shadow. Ursula was at the passenger side door of his Tulip, leaning in through his open window.
“Hey, do you want a ride along, Barry?” She made her question sound so casual. Fuck. She was like a dog with a bone. The image he’d been sent earlier flashed before his eyes. It was a photo Ursula had taken during the memorial service of a man standing on a balcony, watching from a distance. A man who was clearly a tanned, bearded version of Dundee. And she'd sent it to someone else, who had then forwarded to Barry. Shit.
Barry had to think quickly. “Yeah, um, jump in. You ever do a Hayes 500 before, Ursula?” He kept his voice light.
“Yes, of course.” She sounded mildly offended that he would think otherwise. Well good, guess he was doing the Hayes 500 today.
“Oh, ok. Perfect.” Actually, this was a good thing. If she was with him, she couldn’t share her suspicions with anyone else. He could control the conversation. Maybe even pump her for information and find out what she actually knew.
As they lined up at the starting line, Ursula turned to Barry, putting on her overly-sympathetic voice.
“How are you doing tonight, Barry?” Well that sounded like a loaded question. She was obviously asking about Dundee.
“Good! It was a great ceremony. Thank you for coming, by the way. It was very-” Barry broke off, unsure how to finish the sentence.
Jesus Christ. What kind of things were you supposed to say to someone after they showed up at your missing husband’s memorial service? While said husband was supposed to be hiding out from the cops in your beach house just yards away? And instead was spying on the event from the top of the fucking lifeguard tower because the egotistical bastard just had to watch to see who showed up to the gathering, almost getting himself caught in the process?!
Barry had stood there on the beach in front of a crowd of tearful friends and acquaintances, surrounded by the headlights from the club’s muscle cars and heartfelt comments written in the sand. He’d told them all that while he knew it was a funeral, he didn’t believe that Dundee was gone, and that he was convinced he would come back. He could tell from some of the sympathetic glances he’d gotten that they thought he was delusional for holding out hope after over two weeks without any word.
Most of the criminals in the city had heard the rumors by now. Dundee had been taken from the cells of Mission Row PD and solo transported to Bolingbroke prison by police officer Sam Baas. But he had never arrived. Instead, he had been kidnapped on the highway at gunpoint by masked men and had disappeared into the night. And, now, given what Dundee had told his club about washing up on a deserted island with a bullet hole in his head, they knew the cops were behind it all.
Barry cleared his throat awkwardly. “You almost won the competition by the way, I want you to know,” he finally said to Ursula. Yes, they’d had a costume competition at a funeral. Everyone had dressed up as Dundee. It was a good addition and had added to the absurdity of the day, in Barry’s mind. “You were second place. And it’s not because of the sideboob, I want you to be aware.”
“Mm-hmm. Thanks.” Shit. Maybe mentioning her cleavage wasn’t the smartest thing to say. They fell into an uncomfortable silence.
Barry desperately wanted for the race to start so that he had an excuse not to talk anymore in front of all of these other people. A car bumped him from behind, and Ursula yelled out the window at it.
“Richard! Stop love-tapping Barry’s car! That’s for his new husband- or wife to do!” Great. She was definitely not letting that comment about him just getting married go at all.
Time for a distraction. “Want to hear the most annoying horn of all time?” Without waiting for an answer, he started honking the Tulip’s high-pitched horn incessantly. It’s squeal made everyone around him scream at him until finally someone rammed him with their car. Finally, the race was getting started.
“Don’t worry, Ursula, I always win the Hayes 500,” he said. It was one of Barry’s favorite jokes. The Hayes 500 was not about being the best driver, or even about winning. It was about who could survive.
The race started out more like bumper cars this time, and Barry was grateful because he needed to use all of his brain power to concentrate on the road ahead of him without spinning out. As they hit the open highway, Ursula decided to speak.
“So I’m very glad that we all got to get together for the funeral.” Ursula's voice broke his concentration and he jerked the wheel a little.
“It was great,” Barry said with fake cheer. “Yeah, I had a great time.” He paused. Maybe that was a bit too enthusiastic. “Well, not a great time, because- well, yeah.”
“Yeah, it’s sad,” Ursula said solemnly. “It was good to have so many people there.”
“Yeah, sad. Very sad.” Barry suddenly realized this was a good opening to subtly try to press her about what she might have seen at the memorial service or knew about Dundee. “Um, you didn’t happen to see anything while you were there, did you? Anything weird?” He slanted a glance toward her profile in the passenger seat before returning his eyes to the road.
Ursula paused, before saying a little too quickly, “Of course not. I didn’t see anything. I wouldn’t have seen anything. If I saw anything weird I would simply let people know I had seen it and then you know, move on. And not notify anyone of it. Because that’s none of my damn business.”
“Oh. Well ok. That’s...good.” Barry was a little uncertain what Ursula was hinting at. So was she not going to tell anyone about the photo she had taken? Or she was going to tell people that she suspected Dundee was alive? Fuck. It made Barry's head ache a bit as he tried to process what she might have meant.
“Right, well good. Not that there would be anything weird to see. I was just...wondering.” Barry’s hands slipped on the wheel a little and he gulped. Christ. He needed to keep his head on straight and think of something actually smart to ask.
Suddenly some racers were passing them, and as Barry tried to push past a motorcycle, it whacked the Tulip into a bridge barrier. Barry shouted as his car spun out, coming to rest on the far side of the road. As he struggled to turn it back around to face the right direction, he saw a man rushing the driver’s side of the car.
“Who the fuck?” Barry’s eyes widened. Oh damn. It was Dee, coming to join him for the race at the last minute, still in his wedding outfit. And he had no idea Ursula was in his car, or that Barry was in the middle of trying to interrogate her. Dundee slipped into the backseat, and Barry began talking immediately.
“Hope you don’t mind, Ursula; sometimes I like to pick up hobos.” He heard the softest indrawn breath from behind his seat and he grimaced. This was going horribly, confusingly wrong. “It’s just kind of a charity case.”
“Who is this guy?” Ursula waited for a reply, and when there wasn't one, she smiled at Barry like a cat that had just caught a canary and said, “Yep, sure.” Fuck. Now she definitely knew that Dundee was alive. And in the goddamn fucking car with them!
Just then another car hit Barry’s and as he slowed, Dundee threw the door open and rolled out in one smooth motion. He hit the ground running, leaping over the side of the cliff toward the ocean below. Damnit this was a disaster.
Barry realized in a split second that today was not a day where he would be surviving the Hayes 500. He swung the car off of Great Ocean Highway just as Ursula began speaking rapidly again, clearly sensing the tension in the air.
“Listen, as far as I’m concerned whatever I may or may not have seen, or clearly did or did not see does not matter-”
Barry was no longer listening to her, though, as he had only one goal left. And that was the gas station dead ahead. As they approached it at 75 miles an hour, Barry leapt out, landing hard on the pavement.
“Fuck you, Barry, it’s not going to work this time,” Ursula shouted as the car, with her still buckled in it, drove straight into the nearest pump. The station went up in flames. Multiple bursts rocked the ground as each pump caught fire in succession. Barry rolled to a hard stop, covered in cuts and bruises and with the wind knocked out of him.
Just then his phone rang. He dragged it out of his pocket as explosions boomed around him. “Hello?” he wheezed. It was Dundee. His voice was deadly serious.
“Hey, you should actually kill Ursula. She knows I’m alive and she’s sending me text messages saying she’s going to expose me.”
“Oh, don’t worry, way ahead of you,” he gasped out. “Way ahead of you. I just sent her into a fucking gas station.” The call disconnected as he let the phone drop to the ground beside him.
Barry looked around him at the scene, from the fireballs still leaping toward the sky to the burnt out Tulip on his left. Suddenly he realized he had made one grave miscalculation.
“Fuck! That’s my car! I have to pay for that!”
He turned his face back up to the sky, and began to laugh. He'd just gotten married to a dead man after his funeral and blown up a reporter and his car all in one day. Yup, his life was fucking weird. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.