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They hit the road the second Jesper wakes up. Or an hour later, a day: but who’s gonna bitch Jesper out for losing track of time when he fucking died. No-one. No-one’s going to harangue Jesper for fucking up what any normal human would manage, ever again, probably.
Because he’s dead.
From a stupid little fever he just never had time to get checked out.
Kaz would know how many seconds passed in-between Jesper’s dead eyes snapping open and the road-trip. Kaz knows where they’re going. He provided the car, after all. Kaz doesn’t actually own a car, but it’s not like Jesper has any room to talk about doing things he’s not supposed to. He’s not even supposed to still be here. The car that has hand controls, perfect for a driver with impaired legs, so Kaz probably couldn’t just steal it off the street, and he didn’t order it ether because getting any accommodations at all takes years and a month’s salary in postage stamps for the forms and then you don’t get them anyway because you fucked up ticking some boxes and every time you get the advice to try again you shrink with dread, but anyway, point is, Kaz just had that fucking perfect car and when Jesper woke up he made Jesper follow him down to the car from the flat that he died in, flickering with energy, because they needed to go. They needed to leave. To flee. To outrun… something, far more urgently than a sleepy student flat or a mundane sick death should warrant.
He didn’t let Jesper get in the driving seat. Jesper doesn’t have a license. Not that Kaz does, either, but Kaz insisted he wouldn’t get pulled over like Jesper would. Well, yeah. The cops are racist. The crumple of Kaz’ face whispered that that’s not what he meant. Kaz twisted the rear-view mirror so far that Jesper couldn’t see his own face in it. He didn’t tell Jesper where they’re going.
He did tell Jesper that he’s been dead for at least two days.
Two days before he woke up, Kaz found him.
Kaz sat with his corpse for two days.
When Kaz got to Jesper’s apartment, Jesper was dead, and for two eternal days Kaz didn’t call an ambulance or Da or Inej or Wylan or Nina or Kuwei or Matthias or Jesper’s landlady or his boss or his second boss or the happy goth medical examiner from those crime shows or his thesis advisor or another of his lecturers or a hospital or the owner of his favourite takeaway restaurant or the morgue. None of them. He didn’t call anyone. He’s not told a soul what happened.
None of them know that they’re gone—on a road trip, but no-one knows Jesper was gone gone, either. It was pure luck that Kaz found him at all. Bad luck.
Jesper’s going to reach out to—well, Wy and Nej and Da first of all—as soon as he gets his stupid phone to work. The screen turns on fine when he pushes the power button. It just won’t unlock, not with his thumbprint and he can’t switch it over to password either. It’s like the touchscreen won’t acknowledge his fingers.
He's not a ghost, though. He’s pretty sure. Kaz had his corpse pulled onto his lap. Still gumming up his unwashed hair, Jesper can feel his best friend’s dried snot and tears. He couldn’t do that if he was a ghost.
So his phone’s busted, which is shit. Good that it happened now, though: it would have sent him into overwhelmed hysterics last week when he was failing so hard juggling his thesis and work and eating and the fever and the cough but ever since he died, Jesper’s been calm. Stupidly so, and Nina would tell him it’s shock, but Jesper’s been eased up enough to see that Kaz right now is an unopened tin of tomato soup on a hot stove, ready to paint the ceiling. He’s so pressurized it’s lethal, though he’s quiet about it, which is why after Jesper woke up being held like he was the last solid rope over a chasm he forced his two-days-dead dry tongue to ask ‘D’you wanna take this somewhere else?’ and with fingers worse than a bear trap Kaz pulled him out the house and put him into the shotgun seat and drove off towards fuck knows where. They haven’t gone on a trip in years. No time. They barely have time to hang out every month. Jesper died, though: and if your obligations don’t die with you, then this world really is hell.
Jesper’s not a ghost. He really wants a shower and a fresh pair of boxers. Maybe even to be wearing something more than just the underwear he died in. Ghosts don’t want that, do they?
It’s sundown and the sky tastes of flowers when Kaz pulls into the parking lot of a shopping centre. One of those massive anonymous labyrinths of concrete and glass in the middle of an industrial park. Jesper has no idea where they are. Kaz has been taking small backroads with low speed limits all day. Probably for the best: Kaz doesn’t just have no car and no driver’s license but also zero practice and even less skill actually driving, and dying once this week is enough.
“Come on,” Kaz says, after somehow choking off the car while it takes up three parking bays.
Jesper snorts.
“We need supplies.”
“I’m almost naked. They’ll call security before I even approach the door. And I probably look—”
“Don’t,” Kaz hisses. “Don’t.”
Like the movie cliché of a heavy substance user, was all Jesper was going to say. Or your BDSM fulltime sub ordered to walk around nude for some tasty humiliation kink. Kaz’ pupils are glued like thick tree sap to Jesper’s face, as though he means to capture Jesper’s last breath that way when it leaves again any second now. Jesper’s not going to die again, he’s pretty sure. The first time was an accident. He doesn’t even feel feverish anymore.
“Just buy what you need and I’ll watch the car. I won’t leave. I’m not hitching a ride in my underpants. Least not the kinda ride I’d need to get home.” Jesper finger-guns.
The joke’s wasted on Kaz, and so is the suggestion. He waves down a series of passers-by instead, trying to find someone who’ll accept his hastily-scribbled list and his money. It takes forever until he’s found someone he finds trustworthy and manages to charm them using whatever sob story he’s come up with; hours they could have saved if Kaz had just gone inside the shopping centre on his own or at least walked far enough away from the car to head off more people, but he never did, never once went so far he could lose sight of Jesper. Honestly. A man dies one time, and suddenly he needs to be babied?
Finally, an elderly woman takes pity. Maybe it’s the cane, because she’s using a wheelchair herself; or maybe she likes the look of Jesper because he can see her staring into the car at him and wince sympathetically, her rainbow earrings dangling. Kaz probably told her he got chucked out for being too sexy for his shirt, too sexy for his shirt, so sexy it hurts. Too sexy for Milan, New York and Japan, too sexy for your party, no way I’m disco dancing. Not that. Kaz probably told her he got chucked out because he died alone on the floor in his underpants and still, all he can think of is that old Right Said Fred song.
It takes another eternity until she returns. The sky smells of the ocean now, vast and dark and restless, and somewhere in-between glancing out of the car straight into Kaz’ watching eyes and trying to get the fucking smartphone to warm up to his fingers, Jesper falls asleep.
Jesper is buried when he wakes up. It’s dark. There’s a mountain of plastic bags on his lap, hard cardboard edges and squishy fabric and something recently dead at the very top. Roses. A supermarket bouquet of roses in varying shades of dark and willow twigs with fuzzy catkins.
“She felt bad for you,” Kaz rasps. He’s smoking. There’s a 10-pack carton of Camel cigarettes on the dashboard and a lighter, too. One of the packs is half-empty. The car reeks of grey. Kaz quit the habit two years ago, growing more grumpy every day of his withdrawal, and forced Jesper to follow in his footsteps by stealing packs out of his jackets and lit cigs out of his mouth until Jesper ran out of money.
Gently Jesper bites off the largest yellow rosebud and stuffs the bouquet in the door map pocket. In the top bag, there are packs of underwear and socks and a soft green plaid. Jesper pulls out the blanket and throws it over into Kaz’ lap before he chucks the bag onto the back seat. They’re going to stop later; he can get dressed then, but you never go wrong wrapping yourself in a blanket. Next, a bag with wet wipes and gum and more drug store shit. Still chewing on yellow he inspects the trousers and shirts in the next bag—“Not your style but you’ll…” “Survive,” Jesper completes the sentence—and throws them into the back, same with the shoes and the jacket. They’ll all fit well: Kaz knows Jesper’s size in everything because he’s too nosy, and he’s meticulous enough that he’ll have written it all down for the woman.
In the very bottom bag, there’s a portable Bluetooth keyboard. An adapter to plug the dongle into Jesper’s phone, too.
“I’m sick of watching you fail your digital detox,” Kaz says, tossing the butt of one cigarette out of the window and lighting the next right away. “Don’t tell them. Don’t tell them what happened. You won’t like what happens to those who know they let family die.”
“It’s not their fault! No-one fucking knew, Kaz, you didn’t either, if anything it was my own stupid—”
“Don’t tell them, Jesper Llewellyn Fahey. That’s an order.”
Kaz’ eyes are as deep as the sky. He will accept no argument: this grief isn’t rational. If Jesper made him explain, he’d only mope and hiss and still be right in the end anyway somehow because he’s Kaz.
Jesper eats another flower. He sets up his keyboard.
When Jesper wakes up, the sun is feeding warm orange into their smoked-up car. Kaz, the maniac, is still driving fifteen kilometres an hour on a dirt road.
“It’s time for a break,” Kaz rasps, before Jesper’s even stretched his limbs.
He pulls off to the side of the road, less messily than at the shopping centre though that’s not hard, and parks the car. While Kaz pisses onto the wheat field they’re next to, Jesper digs out the clothes from the back seat and the toiletries too. He pulls down his boxers and wipes the sour fever sweat off his dick, ass, armpits, face, hair, and then neatly bags up the used hygiene wipes because Inej would want him to dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way. He can feel Kaz’ eyes touching every hair on his body: as used as he is to Kaz watching him, this focus is new. Not bad. Just new.
Jesper gets dressed, in an outfit that’s too male and too young for him, but at least he’ll be able to walk into a shop without unwanted attention. Probably. Kaz is still reluctant to let him look in any mirrors, and that might be wise. He’s Kaz. He’s always right. Jesper died. There are consequences for failure. If Kaz thinks that he would be devastated seeing his face in the side mirrors, he’s right.
“I wouldn’t have let you be wearing those,” Kaz mutters. He’s shaken and tucked his dick away and is pulling cartons of rice pudding and cans of energy drink out from the car boot.
“You’re not my Ma,” Jesper snipes, accidentally. He meant father. It barely hurts anymore, though, even though she should’ve come back instead of the useless wreck that’s him and— “What do you mean?”
Kaz chugs an entire 0.5 litre can of Monster energy.
“What did you mean?”
Kaz licks the rice pudding over and over until the carton’s empty.
“Kaz. You’re not—”
“That’s not you. I know who you are. I wouldn’t have let them dress you that way for your funeral.”
Wylan sends hearts in every colour of the rainbow. He’s been sending hearts for days, frequency increasing while Jesper wasn’t alive enough to answer. Jesper sends him back cheering faces and paragraphs of red hearts that cover the page. He could type something else on the Bluetooth keyboard he’s connected to his phone. He could leave a voice message. Wylan’s doing an internship, though. He’s got more than enough on his plate. He told Jesper how proud he was about the way Jesper was handling his own uni thesis, how well he was doing, that he was finally growing up, the last time they saw each other.
Matthias leaves him on read, like he usually does, but it’s not a lack of care thing, just a Matthias thing. Sometimes he doesn’t know how to reply. Besides, Jesper’s messages are anodyne, all You up? and I’m bored, and Jesper’s conversations with Nina peter out just as quickly. They’re both busy. Nina even told Jesper as much, one time when he sent her a hundred texts an hour for several days, ‘Not now, can’t you see that I’ve got to cram five more textbooks before—’
Inej asks about Kaz, and Jesper tells her Kaz is fine.
He doesn’t call Da. He wouldn’t be able to hold back. Jesper let another Fahey die. He let Da lose him, too, when he knew Da barely made it through Ma’s death. Besides, where would he even start? It’s not the fever. The fever just happened to be the final straw. Jesper’s been struggling from one fuckup to worse all his life without help. This was inevitable. He can’t tell Da.
When they pull off to the side of the road again, it’s midday. Maybe the same day, maybe one or two later: Jesper’s been dozing a lot. Kaz hasn’t, though. Kaz pisses on a cluster of poppy flowers and limps to the boot and comes back with another can of Monster. There are quite a few empty cans tossed haphazardly onto the backseat.
“Just because I died doesn’t mean you need to kill yourself too,” says Jesper. “Prolonged sleep deprivation is as good as driving drunk. Also terrible for the immune system. That’s what the doc said, when I went.”
“You went to the doctor,” hisses Kaz, murder incarnate.
“Yeah.”
“And they sent you home.”
“It wasn’t that bad—”
“It wasn’t—”
“—it was early, I don’t know, October? Just a cough and fever, needed a sick note for work mostly because my advisor expected an exposé in two days for the thesis and I hadn’t even picked a topic. He could see I wasn’t really sick. Gave me meds anyway. Took those in December.”
“Because you weren’t better.”
“I was just busy. Everyone gets a cold in winter, and I was looking for excuses anyway for why I wasn’t working, you know me. Went back in January, though.”
Kaz is watching him with silent eyes: maybe he’s remembering how annoyed he was with Jesper that whole month for being extra flaky and a giant whiny bitch. Water under the bridge, though. If Jesper got upset every time he was annoying and reaped the consequences, he wouldn’t have any friends.
“Took my antibiotics and missed the follow-up appointment. Didn’t reschedule. I just either forgot to call and when I remembered, I was too busy. I had more important shit to do. I had to save my energy. And then I died.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m what?!”
“We have time. Let’s sleep,” Kaz mutters, and Jesper’s not particularly eager to talk about fucking up so hard he died of the flu either, so he just brings down his car seat as far as it’ll go. Kaz does the same. They could have switched seats: Kaz is exhausted but Jesper’s been dozing for most of the drive, so he could take over the gas pedal. But also. Jesper’s been dozing. He’d been drifting off over and over, and getting behind the wheel when he could speed into a tree on accident and kill his best friend… he’s already proved he shouldn’t be trusted with a human life. He won’t risk Kaz.
“I’m sorry,” Jesper says, staring at the sharp shadows cast by Kaz’ cheekbones in the afternoon sun. He went and died: Kaz takes that sort of thing personally. “I’ll ask for help next time.”
Kaz doesn’t open his eyes or his mouth again.
He turns towards Jesper’s voice, though, arms hugging his belly, and Jesper plucks a bit of lint off Kaz’ left dress shirt sleeve. He eats it. It tastes salty and roaring.
He’s not going back to his old flat, Jesper realizes. Except to pick up his jewellery and some shirts, maybe, or some of his books. Postcards. The shit he borrowed for his thesis so he can return it, if he’s clever and remembers the existence of fees in a week or three, but maybe not even that, because Jesper died in there, and he—Kaz found him dead there and will never again want to hang out on Jesper’s couch. He won’t go into Jesper’s tiny kitchen. Jesper’s not a superstitious person but it does make a place feel a little less like home if you gasp your burning lungs out on the bare floor.
Flat-hunting gives him something to do, anyway, something that’s not checking mails and WhatsApp and texts and Discord and missed calls for anyone to show an interest while next to him Kaz silently holds on to the wheel like he’s still dangling over the abyss.
A student flat share would still cost too much—he didn’t show up for a week or so even before he died so he must’ve lost both his jobs, and even both of them barely kept pace with his debts—plus they’re all off the market anyway, probably even filled their spots for the next semester already. Fuck. Apparently, being dead is just as much work as being alive, and Jesper wasn’t even good enough not to fuck that one up.
Couch-surfing it is, and right now it’s three am and no-one’s replying to any of his hundreds of messages.
Jesper kneads his eyelids and eats the last rosebud and licks his lips. “You know, flowers are reproductive organs,” he says, and Kaz’ eyes are warmer than the cranked-up aircon on his cheeks. “You’re the live audience on this porn set of genital vore.”
Kaz laughs so hard he drives the car into a wheat field.
They arrive at a beach in the morning. It’s a warm spring day, and there are no tourists yet: just an overcast sky and overgrown dunes and shrieking birds far overhead.
Kaz moves quickly, despite the wily sands. He doesn’t walk into the water. He doesn’t walk onto the flat beach. There is a patch of tall grass on the dune next to some fortified wood stairs and he makes a beeline straight for it, as if it was something special, this patch of tall grass right next to the signposted parking area. Jesper follows him, snacking on the penultimate of his catkins.
The beach doesn’t look much different from up here. Soft laps of water. The air tastes young.
Kaz doesn’t say anything.
Jesper finishes his catkins. He picks stalks of grass, next, gnawing sweet juices from their bottom ends, and Kaz is silent.
A seagull shits on Jesper’s shoulder. Kaz doesn’t even laugh.
“Are you mad?”
Nothing.
“At me,” Jesper clarifies. “It was a really stupid way to go. Unnecessary. Avoidable. I always thought I’d get shot, you know, get concrete boots because I forgot to pay someone back, get hit by a car because I got distracted by a cloud. A cool heroic death,” he tosses over, hoping for at least a smirk.
“Do not,” Kaz hisses, “make your death about my feelings.”
Everything is always about everyone: feelings, ripples, whatever. No-one’s on their own. If Jesper was alone, he would die. Worse. Permanently. There would be nothing more painful, Jesper decides, than to come back into the room that killed you and nothing’s changed. Never-ending toil. Jesper had Kaz, though, who took him way. Here, in this car, on this beach, it’s easy to believe that he could have asked for help and had it. That the next time, he can ask. He can refuse to return to his flat, his studies, his struggle against his brain. He can give up. He can live.
“Drowning is quiet,” Kaz rasps.
Jesper stares at him: wind-swept and sun-kissed and shameful, eyes chained to a specific spot in the surf.
“It’s not like the films. He used what strength he had left to stay up and he couldn’t wave. He had water in his mouth already, too little air, he couldn’t shout. He couldn’t. He looked normal. To me, he looked normal. To father, he looked normal, until it was too late. We were sitting here and we both watched Jordie drown.”
It won’t do any good, to take Kaz into his arms. It’s not what Kaz needs: and that matters more than Jesper’s itch to do something. Jordie’s dead. Kaz’ father died of guilt. It happened, and in hindsight maybe it’s obvious that Jordie was dying, all the warning signs were there and unmissable, but that’s just bias. The signs feel glaring because Kaz and his dad know the outcome. It’s never that way before it’s over. Just like scientists will know in a century exactly how this beach disappeared, but right now, it’s just a warm day for spring.
Jesper watches the wet breeze play with Kaz’ hair for a minute or an hour. The sun dives out from the clouds. Around his toes, willow saplings dig up through the dunes.
Jesper leaves his shoes at the beach. It’s not an offering. It’s not that deep. Just an impulse, but Jesper’s tired of shoes, and anyway, he’s hot. He fingerguns as soon as he realizes what he just said, on reflex, and Kaz laughs at him.
In the car, Jesper takes off his shirt. He’s more awake now—maybe it was the sea breeze and death or maybe it was the half-drunk can of Monster he stole from Kaz because the madman was about to gulp down his fifth can of the day—and somehow Kaz has stopped grumping at Jesper pointing out every cow they drive past and every boulder and incorporating them into an epic spy drama wherein they’re all friends in fursuits—rocksuits?—or rather, government agents, enemies, trying to catch Jesper Fahey Oh-Oh-Seven and his sidekick. His Bond girl. His driver and saviour and guy he still owes seventy euros and sixty-seven cents—okay fine, you win that one, Kaz.
Kaz has watched far more spy flicks than Jesper. While Jesper’s story was mostly about fast cars and cool guns and both of them being hot babes, once Kaz warms up to the idle pastime the story grows twists and misdirections like a mutant lichen. Every secret agency’s suddenly involved, from the NSA and MI6 to the Mukhabarat and Verfassungsschutz and time-travelling KGB agents. Everyone has betrayed them—states cannot be trusted to care for people, even their own agents—and they are outwitting everyone. They are also tragically in love despite being on different sides of a global war about… pencil lead shortage, Jesper contributes. Kaz just takes the words in and bounces ideas off them, like he used to, deep in their youth.
“No. You’re right, actually,” Jesper realizes, halfway through Kaz’ treatise on logging, somehow. Jesper’s equally far through cutting nipple windows into his boring t-shirt. “I'm prettier. I should be the Bond girl.”
“Suit yourself,” says Kaz. “I won’t buy you a new t-shirt once you’ve ruined this one.”
“You will.” Jesper’s bare feet are resting on the dashboard. There are yellow roses growing through the ventilation slots of the car. Jesper eats a newborn bud. “You bought this one. You’ll let me fuck up the next one, too. And the next. You will.”