Chapter Text
Steven jolts awake with a scream. Well, it would be a scream if he currently had the necessary apparatus to scream. Instead, it's a kind of psychic howl that's swiftly joined by a normal human-type scream. The other voice sounds more than a little familiar. It's his own; or at least, a close approximation of his own. Their lungs, certainly, but seemingly not one of them controlling them as it doesn't quite sound like him, or Jake. Not Marc either, unfortunately. The scream turns into words.
"Worm! You will assist me!"
Oh bollocks.
He can’t figure out where he is. Even when they don’t have control over the body there’s usually an awareness there, and currently he’s got nothing; no dim phantom-limb what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-Jake at the back of his mind, and he’s pretty sure he heard that screaming from the outside. It’s an effort, but somehow he manages force his consciousness outwards. And really, really wishes he hadn’t.
Best guess? He’s some sort of bloody ghost.
In as much as he’s anywhere, he’s in the passenger seat of Jake’s car. Next to him, their body is hunched forward, hands in a death-grip on the steering wheel. And, horror of horrors, they’re not parked. The scenery whips past at a speed that would be uncomfortable with Jake at the helm; right now, it should be terrifying, but lack of a body has mercifully blunted that to an academic recognition that this is bad. The only saving grace is that the motorway, no, freeway, is near deserted, and they’re tearing along in the outside lane.
"Take the body, Jake," Khonshu demands imperiously.
“Not Jake, Old Bird,” he says, “and I don’t think I can.”
The vulture doesn’t even twitch, locked in place as he is, curled over the steering wheel. Steven can see his leg trembling with the effort of keeping it completely still. Whatever caused this must have dumped Khonshu into their body while Jake was driving, but the memory of anything immediately before waking is elusive. They should probably both be thankful that the pigeon’s first reaction was to freeze; anything else would probably ended up with the cab a crumpled and flaming wreck. Now to bloody keep it this way.
“Steven,” Khonshu sounds relieved, “good. You are awake. You must take the body back.” The road starts to curve around to the right and the god tries to follow, overshoots, and has to correct. The swerve takes them briefly into the next lane over, before Khonshu manages to bring them back across with a series of ever decreasing over-corrections.
“You know I can’t drive, right?” Switching back in might not be a great idea, but then, it looks like neither is leaving Khonshu in charge of a car. “We need Jake.”
“I do not believe he is here,” the god says. “I cannot hear or feel him.” Oh no. No no no, not Jake too. Being a ghost’s definitely making this more manageable; this thought would be crippling under normal circumstances. Right now, it’s another issue to be filed under later. “So you must take the body back,” Khonshu continues. “I have no knowledge of how your contraptions operate.”
He tries, he really does, but it’s not like switching out with Jake or Marc. He’s outside and he doesn’t know how to change that. The instinctive pull has nothing to catch on to. Maybe Khonshu’s grip on the body is the problem.
"Let go then!" He prompts. Interesting. Turns out frustration’s not one of the modes that requires the squishy bits.
"Tell me how!" The god snaps back. “This is not something I have done before.”
Trouble is, he wouldn’t know where to start explaining it. It’s not something that comes with a manual. They just kinda do, with varying amounts of bickering and complaining depending on the situation.
“I can’t, we’re flipping stuck like this.” He can almost forgive Khonshu’s hiss of dissatisfaction. “I think we gotta pull over, Old Bird.”
“Do you know how to start the vehicle again?” The god asks, eyes still fixed on the road ahead. He swerves to undertake a slower car, sending another swerving in turn, honking and flashing their lights.
“No.” He admits. He thinks he has a fairly good grasp of the pointing it in the right direction and changing speed bits, but the complicated starting and stopping bits that Jake seems to have a ritual for? Not a clue.
“Then we do not stop. We must turn around and go back.”
Righty-o, no stopping. At least the cab’s not manual, and American roads are nice and straight and wide. Steven doesn’t have a clue how gears work, and suspects his future nightmares may involve Khonshu, large vehicles and winding single-lane country roads in Cornwall. At least they’ll add a little mundane variety to the trippier ones.
“OK, right, aces.” He says, and imagines doing the ghostly equivalent of slapping his hands on his knees. “Looks like it’s time for a driving lesson then, innit. You’ve already got the steering, let’s see if we can slow down a bit, eh? You know that pedal you’ve been holding dead still? Lift your foot up a bit.” The car begins to slow down, and while there’s no flood of relief as a ghost, he’s grateful at least they’ve got more time to think things through. “So that one’s the accelerator. The harder you push it, more our speed increases. If you come off it completely our speed will drop. To stop or slow down faster there’s another pedal to your left called the brake. If you push that we’ll slow down more.” And please don’t ask any questions, that’s everything I know, he adds to himself.
“This is excessively complicated.” Khonshu complains. “Why has this not been made easier?”
Up ahead, two lorries are overtaking a third, filling all three lanes with an unavoidable wall of steel.
"Khonshu!" He yells. "Truck!"
Thankfully, the brakes work.
Even with his current ghostly state, there’s some satisfaction there. See, not so easy is it, he thinks, remembering his own turn in the driving seat. And you don’t have anyone shooting at you.
“They should move out of my way. I am a god.” Khonshu grumbles.
“Yeah, but they don’t bloody know that, do they?”
There’s no central barrier on this stretch of road. Steven’s shaky knowledge of the American highway code tells him that turning the car is probably not allowed, but this is an emergency, and he’s willing to chance anything that will get them back to wherever the swap happened. He can only hope that there will be some hint there that will let them reverse it.
“Think you can turn us round, Old Bird?” he asks.
He clearly does, as with no warning whatsoever he pulls on the wheel and sends them bouncing over the rough strip between the carriageways.
“Yeah, great. Thanks for that,” Steven says faintly, having learned something new. “A little warning might have been nice.” He’s not sure whether that would have helped with the travel sickness or not. Even as a bloody ghost, isn’t that just marvellous.
Now they’re on their way back the way they came, everything is calmer. Khonshu seems to have got the hang of the basics, so they’re no longer zig-zagging quite so much, and their speed doesn’t dip and increase quite so wildly. It gives Steven a moment to consider their predicament beyond the immediate not dying in a horrific car crash sense.
“Old Bird,” he says, “so we’re both here, right, and you’ve got control of our body.” If he were attached to one himself, he thinks that right about now he’d probably be drowning in dread. “You don't think...”
Jake comes round slowly, flat on his back. Around him, tall grass waves in a gentle breeze, a tasselled edge to the clear blue sky. Everything is unnaturally clear and sharp, each tufted seed-head visible in perfect clarity. It's all too bright and he feels uncomfortably alone.
Kid? He calls, and freezes. Nuh huh, no. There's no goddamn way…
He lifts his head - so light, but strangely unbalanced - to look down at himself.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.