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Fifty miles outside of Motorcity, past the gleaming white walls of Detroit Deluxe and the rocky no-mans-land that surrounds the metropolis, there is a lake. It's flat and deep and blue-green and sort of man-made looking, in that it's basically a huge crack in the scorched land that's filled with rainwater over the years. Somehow, it's pretty clean and there are tiny darting fish. It's beautiful, and Chuck hates it.
He feels gross, too hot and his feet are all gritty from the gravel-sand surrounding the water, and there are insects freaking everywhere. All the moisture is slowly leaching out of his body, he knows it, like the sun is some sort of parasitic slug-worm-lamprey thing and his blood is delicious. Julie gives him a sweet smile from where she's stretched out on a towel a few feet away with a book in her hands and he manages one back, just about. Stupid sun. He's so not agreeing to this again.
Mike, of course, had said it would be fun. Get outside for once! See the sky! Go swimming and put their cars through their paces on the miles and miles of old highway that's still out here, blacktop blistering under the sun, all incredibly dangerous! Well, that bit was kinda fun. Mike had almost killed them, but that was how it usually went.
He scratches at what he suspects is going to be sunburn tomorrow. Great. Awesome. They're camping out here tonight so that will be great to drive home with tomorrow, in a car with mayonnaise souring in the back because Jacob packed them lunch. Texas will make fun of him and Claire will ignore him more than usual. He huffs and digs around for a bottle of water.
A wonderful, cool shadow spreads itself over Chuck and Mike's voice says 'hey', and he looks up. He is being dripped on and it's kind of gross because, lakewater, duh, who knows what creepy-ass parasites live in there, he wants to keep his eyeballs, thank you. It's also kind of really nice though, all cool and wet from Mike's hair.
“Could you stay right there, please?”
Mike laughs. His teeth are really white. “What?”
“Like, stay right there bro, don't move. You're the perfect sun-shield-shadow-caster-thing.”
With a grin Mike falls to his knees so Chuck has to scrunch up a bit to stay in his shadow. Sadly, he is no longer being dripped on.
“Chuck, man, you're gonna fry. Come swim.” He flicks his parasite-laden fingers at Chuck's exposed eyes like the traitor he is and Chuck squeals very masculinely, rubbing at them. “Mike!”
“Come onn-” Mike reaches out and he is being dragged - may-day, may-day, being dragged here, he can't deal with this sudden a change in velocity unless he's in a car, and even then he's never entirely successful – towards the water suddenly, to cheers from the others, scrambling to keep his footing because walking on gravel is hard, all right, especially if you don't have control over where you're going. Mike is still grinning, annoyingly and infectiously. They hit the water and he goes down hard.
“Aaaaah!”
He avoids swallowing a lethal dose of the water but only just, has to cough a bit up when he emerges, skin tingling and hair sopping wet down over his eyes so he can't see. The water is really freaking cold, jesus. Everyone is laughing, but it's the good kind, or at least he feels it is. The 'with him, not at him' kind. The sun is still burning in the sky and the water sloshes around his thighs when he stands up, feathery and cool. He lifts his fringe and sticks it back and out of his face. His skin doesn't feel like it's about to slough off anymore. Huh. He squidges his toes into the sand.
“You okay there?” Dutch asks, hair still miraculously in shape despite being waterlogged, and man that must be heavy.
“Yeah nice trip, see you next fall!” Texas laughs loudly at his own joke, poses a bit, then dives into the water again. Dutch, beside him, disappears as if his legs had somehow mysteriously been grabbed from below, with a yelp.
Mike claps him on the back, looking up at him.
“Not so bad, eh buddy? Nothing like a good swim on a hot day, for real.”
Texas grabs his ankles just as he's about to agree reluctantly and with many caveats, and down he goes again. He can hear Mike's loud laugh above the rushing of the water in his ears and more splashing. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day but, as always with the Burners, it's all in good fun.
It gets dark slowly under the open sky. The day isn't over even after the sun has died a blazing death under the horizon, stretching on for what feels like hours into twilight hues. There are stars.
It's so big out here. He's not used to it and it's scary, knowing him and Mike are just tiny dots in all this vastness, no walls or ruins or buildings to break the line of sight. At least they'd be able to hear anyone coming, he guesses. And they're in Mike's car, at a standstill, so that's pretty safe.
They hadn't brought tents because it was just easier to use the carseats as beds. The seats recline a few degrees, not much but Chuck didn't complain, his legs kicked up onto the dashboard (shoes off, as per Mike's order) and his head tipped to the side to watch the sky shut down. He's pretty comfortable, even with his lanky frame, the tiny bits of gravel in his pants and the prickling starting up on his neck and the tip of his nose. Should have brought some sort of cream.
The cars are all grouped together near the lake, Mutt closest to the water. He can hear the soft lapping of the lake from the breeze that had sprung up when the sun went down and the weirdly far-off sounds of Texas and Dutch arguing about something, the bubbly sound of Claire's laugh where she's stretched out with Julie on the hood of 9 Lives. Chuck lives in a state of perpetual stress, on edge almost all the time but now? Now he's feels pretty freakin' chill.
“This was a good idea, Mikey,” he says, turning to find that Mike is already looking at him, his jacket draped over his body like a blanket. He gets a smile in response.
“Didn't I tell you? You need to trust me more,” he says. There's a rustling as he sits up and digs through a bag at his feet. A chocolate bar nearly hits Chuck in the face but he catches it, miraculously, fumbling a little to look at the label. No nuts. Awesome.
“I do, man.”
Mike chomps into his own bar – also no nuts - and nods his head towards the glass.
“We should come out here more often, bro. There's so much space, it's pretty freaking beautiful.”
“Totally,” he replies, not looking at Mike because Mike isn't beautiful. He's something else. Something faster and bigger and better.
They eat their candy in companionable silence. The lights gradually switch off in the cars around them and the noises of the others die down until it's just the water. Chuck brushes his teeth with bottled water and spits carefully outside, and Mike flips the inner light off, locks the car. So it's safe, and it's not like they're alone with the rest of the gang so close, but if he arranges his arms so the tip of his elbow just touches Mike's, well, it's not like anyone else will know anyway.