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It’s the points of pressure across his body – the spot where his ipod sat under his leg, the earbuds in his ears, the seatbelt across his chest. The way his thighs were pressed against the seat and the way it exaggerated the curve of his spine to his senses.
The push and pull of driving Oliver, the shadow stretching out in front of him and the irritating flash of the rising sun in the wing mirrors.
The surface unlike any he really has beneath his wheels at home.
This is something completely different.
Jeremy and his Lancia lumber along before them, the smooth curves of his normal driving interrupted by rapid corrections for obstacles that weren’t planned for.
Last night wasn’t really planned for, either.
Jeremy had pushed his tent open at two in the morning, pushed him awake, and declared, groggy and disgruntled, that he couldn’t sleep.
When that had become drinking, Richard hadn’t complained, giggling at the stars tossed across the sky and waiting for himself to wake up properly. It was like waking up half-drunk and then actually becoming half-drunk as he became properly conscious…
There had been lots of hugely amusing half-awake anecdotes passed between the two of them. The only thing they weren’t doing by halves was the trip, really.
He was loving it – out of the way, letting something take shape that would be brilliant, because sometimes you could tell that it would before it was done, and nothing had yet gone horribly wrong. When it did, he was sure it would be hilarious. Jeremy, oddly enough, agreed with this. They chuckled to each other.
“We mustn’t do anything without meaning it,” Jeremy had said after that. “And I mean, meaning it.” Richard focused on him with difficulty in the darkness, twitching an eyebrow.
“It can’t just be because!” Jeremy exclaimed. A bit of the liquor slopped out of his glass. He brought his hand up to his mouth and mouthed it messily clean. Richard was still watching him. “I don’t want to end up going anywhere quietly when it matters.”
They drank to that. It chimed too loudly with the rest of reality for them not to.