Chapter Text
She watches as he hefts their last suitcase into the back of their van, resolutely slamming the trunk shut after he finally manages to sequester the overflowing case between two six-packs of beer.
“Ready?” Eurydice asks, the iPod that the two of them share held between her fingers, which she’d painted the colour of a garbage can just the day before. Somehow, she’s already managed to chip the polish off her left pinky. Must’ve been the heavy lifting , she thinks, tongue poking against her cheek. I’ll have to do something about that later.
There’s a polaroid of the two of them at one of Orpheus’ concerts tucked inside the mostly translucent iPod case; Eurydice’s smile had been infectiously wide, her arm slung over a happy Orpheus’ shoulder.
Speaking of Orpheus, he turns to look at her now with a grin, eyes glinting with excitement. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replies, running a hand through his hair, his brown strands radiant under the glare of the summer sun.
Fiddling with the bandanna tied snugly around his neck, he inquires, “Does the aux cord work?” They’d somehow managed to buy the cord at a thrift store last week and had been thoroughly assured by the girl running the cashier that it would play whatever they wanted just fine.
A beat, and then Eurydice offers, “Well enough. The sound’s a little tinny; guess that’s the downside of buying a van as old as this.”
He chuckles; even his laugh sounds like a secret song that Eurydice hasn’t yet learned the melody to. “But we love it anyway, don’t we?” he says fondly, running his hand along the sides of the van.
“Sadly,” Eurydice mock-sighs, pulling at her baggy tank top. She’s almost a hundred percent sure that this is Orpheus’ shirt instead of hers. It’s not like she cares, anyway; it’s a cute tank top, with a graphic of a cat playing the guitar printed across the front that's faded from the many washes it's lived through.
“Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” she asks, walking up to the driver’s seat and cracking the door open. The smell of the lavender air freshener that Eurydice had swiped from Persephone’s place comes gushing out so strongly that Eurydice winces, covers her nose and says, “Maybe we should get rid of the tree.”
Climbing into the van, Eurydice takes a moment to settle into the worn leather, her sweaty skin sticky against the material of the driver’s seat. Beside her, Orpheus does the same, shuffling into the passenger’s seat. He then unceremoniously plucks the cardboard purple tree off the rearview and stuffs it into the duffle bag slumped on its side at his feet.
Orpheus does have his driver’s license, but Eurydice’s not going to let him anywhere near the steering wheel; especially not when they’ve got the Jeff Buckley playlist on. Orpheus’ last stint as a driver had almost ended with the two of them being pulled over on the highway, and Eurydice’s not looking forward to a repeat of the incident.
“Ah- music first,” Orpheus says, as Eurydice turns on the ignition. He reaches out for the iPod, which Eurydice hands over. While he busies himself with the tiny screen, Eurydice fiddles around with the air conditioning, attempting to make the sweltering inside of the van a tad bit cooler. They are going to be stuck here for a while; they might as well make the most of it.
“Hey,” she says with a frown, as the first notes of ‘Hey There Delilah’ start playing through the speakers. “This isn’t what we usually listen to.”
He grins shyly, scratching the side of his head. “Good pickup,” he says.
“I never listen to the Plain White T’s. It’s not a ‘good pickup:’ it’s an obvious one,” she quips back, playfully rolling her eyes. Her interest piqued, she asks, “What’s this?”
“I made a playlist,” he says, showing her the slightly cracked screen of their shared iPod. “I’ve put together both of our music tastes and, uh, I think I’ve accidentally given birth to a monster.”
Eurydice leans over the glovebox and squints to scan the words, despite the sun reflecting off the screen. “‘Orph-plus-Eury-on-the-road’?” she reads out loud, angling her head up to look Orpheus in the eye. “You made a road trip playlist?”
“Yeah!” Orpheus exclaims, eyes twinkling with excitement. “It’s a mixed bag of genres. I’ve slipped a few showtunes in, some Taylor Swift, and some My Chemical Romance? You like that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Eurydice says carefully, realising too late that they’re overindulging in the road trip cliché far too much. She closes her eyes; there’s something fun in that, though, playing into clichés. “Just- take out the ‘Hey There Delilah,’ yeah?
”Wait, you don’t like this song?” he asks, as the lead singer starts crooning about distance and listening to a song or whatever.
“It’s creepy,” Eurydice says curtly, shrugging. “Like, he’s literally singing about this girl that- I don’t know, Orpheus. There’s a lot of red flags.”
“Oh,” he says, his nose scrunching. “I just like it for the guitar in the back. I’ll take it off the playlist.” He skips it. Cruel Summer comes on, and Eurydice grins as she steps on the gas. “Let’s go!” she yells, as they pull away from the curb. “NYC, here we come!”
Orpheus hollers excitedly from where he’s sitting next to her, his hands tapping repeatedly against his knees all while chanting, “NYC! NYC!”
As they head for the highway, Eurydice can’t help but shoot a glance over in Orpheus’ direction. He’s singing along with Taylor Swift, eyes closed in bliss. The way the sun’s shining on his face is just right; he looks like a god, or some ethereal, unearthly being. Eurydice sees a future with him. She sees a life spent loving and kissing instead of hiding and running.
They drive onto the highway, and they’re flying down the asphalt laughing like maniacs because they’re the only people who matter in the world; who cares what the others on the road are gonna think? Orpheus rolls down the window and sticks his head out of it like he’s a very large dog, the wind ruffling his mocha-coloured hair.
And when Orpheus finally sticks his head back in, hair rumpled but still grinning, Eurydice realises that this is their summer, and so is the one that comes next, and the one after that. Every summer for all of eternity belongs to the two of them now, and no one can take this away.