Archive of Our Own

Today is one of their off days. Kody was trying to goof around with Savo, but he had to have a serious talk with Cassie, and told him to go away. Swift was at the track and Kody finds running (even practicing running) EMBARRASING as hell and for LOSERS. Cole? Studying for the midterm. We are trapped in a place where time doesnt exist, Fuck you MEAN midterms. Tory? MEDITATING, or as Kody sees it, GEEKING. It's the most boring thing on earth. Tom was off spray painting, and his silence unnerves Kody, so he thought best to leave him. At this stage, Kody had been near tearing out his hair with boredom, and secretly, in a place he doesnt even know exists in him, loneliness. So he went back to camp, and whilst passing by the infirmary, someone calls his name.

"Hey." It's Hookline, but what makes Kody burst out laughing is not the sight of him, but that he's absolutely dishevelled. his blazer is off, his shades are misaligned and he's sweating buckets, glistening on his skin. "You have anything on your schedule right now?"

"Hookline! Hey! What happened to you, man???" Kody has a really rambunctious laugh, and it brightens up any space. He's happy to see him. "You look so shitty! You actually look horrible!"

"Judge wasn't kidding about those two hundred pushups," he says dryly, fixing his shades. His blazer, which is over his shoulder, has Judge's shoe prints on the back. "Anyway, you free?"

"Am I free?" Kody checks his wrist, and he's not wearing a watch. No one is truly free in the world. He's hungry for dopamine is what. "Am I?? Hell yeah. What are we doing?"

In the ghost city, in a random run down parking lot, a car's windows suddenly shatter open, glass flying everywhere. Kody jumps, caught off guard because, did Hookline really just break a car window with the butt of his grappling hook? Then, he hollers loudly, the sound filling up and amplified by the emptiness of the world around them.

"No way you just did that! Isn't that illegal?" Kody smacks Hookline's arm, and he pushes his cone away. "Hey! Watch the cone, grapple! I'm gonna tell Judge and, and, and he'll make you do two hundred more pushups."

"He'll make you do four hundred for affiliation." Hookline wrenches the old door open and picks glass off the dusty, worn leather seats. It's not the most graceful way to do it, but it is a way. "Let's roll."

Hookline reaches over to unlock the passenger door on the left, and Kody throws the skateboard in first before jumping after it. The cone hits the ceiling of the car, which Hookline stifles laughter at. It smells musty in this car, and the dashboard has an aged rubber duckie sitting neatly on it. It's likely been a long time since anyone has touched the inside of this car.

"You're seriously teaching me how to drive?" Kody asks, hugging the skateboard and looking around, in young, excited disbelief. Kody thought Hookline was like some stuffy police officer, and he's beginning to realise differently. "Won't Judge be mad? You know. Judge. Principle moderator. He said I'd never touch a car again after I crashed."

Hookline, now behind a wheel again and fixing the rear view (whoever owned this car once must have been really short) takes this chance to glance at Kody. The blue bandana around his neck, the bandaids from Dr Mick, the braces that make him look so much like the teen boy he is. Hookline has to wonder, when Judge was scolding him, raising his voice, waving that hammer around, was Kody scared? Did it make him feel small, or in danger? Hookline's eyes flit right back to the front after that magnifying split second of observation, and he casually reaches into his pocket for a paperclip.

"Don't tell Judge, but he can shove his law up his ass," he says, twisting a paper clip to scratch at the ignition. Kody bursts out laughing again, incredulously, loudly and in peals. "Hey, we have the right to remain silent. So let's just... not tell him."

"You're cool." Kody hoots, rocking back and forth in excitement. This may be the highest praise Hookline has ever received, and he's a decorated agent for the RBI. "No wonder you're teaching a fourteen year old how to drive."

"Being fourteen is no excuse." Maybe Kody will find this useful in the real world, years later, if they ever make it out of this place alive. If Hookline can even bear to hope, to pray with all his might that someday this annoying teenager with all this life left to live, will make it out. The engine sputters sporadically, weathered with pessimism, and shudders the car to shocking life. "Bingo."

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Kody randomly breaks out into a howl, full of lifeblood and energy. They haven't even moved yet. Hookline looks at him.

"Wear your seatbelt."

Kody grumbles and tugs at the belt. "Safety's for nerds."

"No. Alright little man, don't make me repeat this." Hookline puts an elbow on the centre console and puts his shades up, as the seatbelt clicks. "So here's some background. Operating a manual is about controlling the power between your engine and your wheels. Automatic cars don't have this, they just do it for you. What's different is, on top of your lights, mirrors, acceleration and steering, whatnot, you have gears and a clutch. Right?"

"Uh huh." Kody's eyebrows furrow in upmost concentration, his eyes so focused he looks like a goldfish. "I don't know what any of that means."

"These are your gears." Hookline points at the little symbols and oh, they're faded. "Gears essentially dictate the amount of torque, or power, going into your wheels. One is the slowest, five is the fastest."

"What's P?"

"That's R. It's for reverse, you use it to park."

"Yeah, I already knew that."

Hookline is gonna crash the car out of spite. "So, right now we're in neutral gear, which is just an idle. That's the middle position. This is the gear you start and stop in. Right?"

"Uuuugggggggghhhgghhg." Kody throws his head back onto the headrest and groans loudly. It's only been 3 minutes of exposition. "When are you gonna drift, dude? I'll die of old age soon."

"Later." Hookline sees Kody's head jump off the headrest and his eyes fly open, but he keeps talking anyway. "So, let's say you want to move. Before pressing the accelerator, you need to shift from neutral to gear one. That's your level one of speed."

"You can drift? That's crazy! Savo's always talking about that! Please do it, please please please-"

"Pay attention, Kody. I'm not repeating any of this."

"Fine. Can you repeat?"

"If you want to shift gears, you release your clutch first—That's left foot. Press down. Releasing the clutch disconnects the engine from the wheels." Hookline pats his left thigh before stepping down. "Only then can you switch gears. You can't do it if you're not stepping on your clutch."

"Why?"

"There's a lock. It's not monkey business, these are incredibly fast moving gears powered by tiny explosions. You cannot switch gears in any random way without releasing the lock." The car finally starts to move, Hookline making rounds on the steering wheel with one hand to bring them out the lot. Kody rocks back and forth again, not wearing a seatbelt at all. "You release your clutch slowly. This is important."

"Why?"

"Hm." Gears turn in Hookline's head, with the teeth grinding into live lit glimmering sparks behind his eyes. They go over a speedbump, rocking gently. "Remember what I said about the engine and the wheel? Your gear and clutch are the thing connecting them both. And when you don't let the clutch down gently, this could happen."

"Why why why why why-"

Hookline swiftly switches to fifth gear (thank god this isnt their car) and the entire car jolts to a stop in the middle of the carpark, like absolutely nothing pulled them back from riding forward, albeit gently. Hookline was anticipating it, but Kody couldn't, and he grabbed onto anything, eyes widening.

"What was that for, old man?" He asks, tugging at the seat belt warily. Hookline finds that funny. There's no way he's worse at driving a car than Kody is at skateboarding.

"That is your engine stalling." Hookline takes the paperclip again to poke at the ignition. The tyranny. He can't keep doing this. "If you clutch too quickly, the car stops."

"Okay. So it's about matching speed between your wheels and gears?"

"Yes." He's learning! Hookline doesn't want to feel proud yet, though. So he tries to power the engine up and it coughs. Upon jamming the paperclip again, it roars to life. "So that is how you switch gears."

"That sounds easy. What's the big deal?"

"It's... digestible in small bits of theory, hard to apply everything in practice and under time limit." Hookline brings the car out and around the parking lot, though it needs a little care given how bumpy and run down the roads are. Kody watches him, with his eyes ranging over their surroundings, checking a blindspot for other drivers who arent here, smoothly switching gears and turning the wheel. He's almost the pinnacle of calmness, aged experience and fluency.

"Okay," Kody says, keeping the awe out of his voice. "So going forward is just increasing gears. Wait, then why does the accelerator matter?"

"Changing gears is one thing. But the accelerator feeds fuel into your engine to actually move. Gears are just a power allocation, its a ratio between your torque and your RPM. You still use the accelerator to move."

"I don't know what Tock is." Kody looks around at the moving world outside the windows, and he is struck with nostalgia at being in the passenger of a moving car again. It's strikingly domestic, half lidded memories of days being driven to school in a world he can't go back to. When he looks back to the driver's seat, he finds Hookline in place of where his father would be, but Kody forces himself to not think about it. He squeezes his eyes shut.

"Torque is turning force." Hookline's voice reaches out to him in a world of floating darkness, and Kody opens his eyes to sunlight on the moving road, rubble everywhere, a ghost world so impossibly far away from everything he used to know. "That's all you need to know. You'll learn more when you're older. Stay in school."

Kody looks out the window and plants his face onto a hand, normal again. "School's for nerds. And chums."

"Is that so?" Why would he say that? Hookline wonders, and he's always wondering, prying, guessing, but alas he doesn't know everything about the boy. Nevertheless, Hookline wants to imagine Kody at the top of his class. He really, really wants to.

"At least for me. I dunno about you, old man. Wait, so if I want to stop, do I just brake?"

"Hm. There's two ways you can go about it. You can use your gears to brake or just use the pedal. Either way, release your clutch first." The car cruises along the empty roads, taking alleys where possible to skirt by any rubble. Walls and dumpsters float by too close to the side view mirrors, like whiskers on a cat squeezing through a window. Cautiously, precisely, tires coming down onto potholes and rocks slowly and softly. "Your wheels always follow your engine, so you can bring it down the gears naturally or release clutch and pedal brake."

"And, changing gears down is the same thing as changing them up?"

"Yes. So that's starting and stopping."

"That's it?"

Hookline huffs. Is that a wry laugh? Did Kody make Hookline laugh? “I wouldn’t say that so quickly. Can I trust you on the roads?”

“Yes,” he says immediately.

The car is cruising happily along a bridge now. In the daytime, the ocean spans all around them, fog swallowing it up, and salty wind flows into the car from the open windows. Hookline is leaned back, slightly more relaxed than usual. Only slightly. "Alright, I want you to prove it to me. Kody, you get into a manual. Step one. What is it?"

Kody leans forward, eyes sharpening. "Um," he says, suddenly hungry to impress him. "Ignition. Key."

"Okay."

"Then... I release the clutch by stepping on it."

"Your parking brake is still on."

"What the bum is a parking brake???"

"Woops." Hookline pats the little lever by his hip. "Forgot to mention. It's a lock on your wheels to prevent it from rolling on a slope."

"Okay, I turn off parking brake. Then- release clutch, and shift from neutral to first gear." Kody's left leg moves on its own, and memory is zipping through his head like electricity in images. "Then accelerate-"

"Engine stalls."

Kody's face immediately drops into a frown. "You can't do that."

"Oh, you're right.” Hookline sounds almost gleeful to ragebait Kody, the old bastard. But it’s hard to see emotion in his usually cold voice. “I can't, but the car will."

"Ugh!" Kody pinches his eyes shut and thinks. "Release clutch- I mean, Unrelease clutch SLOWLY."

"No no, the engine's dead now. What're you "unreleasing clutch" for, little man?"

"Eat dirt!"

"Focus."

Kody kicks his feet and crosses his arms. "Turn ignition. Then... turn parking brake off. Then, release clutch, shift from neutral to first. Release clutch SLOWWLYYYYY. Then... accelerate slowly?"

"Good." He's catching on. "So you're moving now. It's the same shifting gear from one to two, and anything."

"Alright!" Kody rubs his hands together. "So can I try now?"

"No. Now, let's say you're on gear five and a red light is coming. What do you do?"

"Accelerate."

"No."

"Okay." Kody fidgets. "Um, release clutch, shift gear five to gear four, then.. Unrelease clutch slowly. Then... Release clutch again, shift four to three.."

"And what if you have no time?" Hookline prompts, as gently as possible. no more time

"Ummm.." The car lapses into a comfortable silence, full of Kody squeezing his eyes shut to not get it wrong, Hookline just driving them to nowhere. This old car their weathered, faithful steed rumbling along, also listening in this quiet moment. The fresh wind breathing in through the windows gently, the sunlight bearing down on the ocean, the broken city behind them.

"You don't have all the time in the world to think when you're behind the wheel," he says evenly. "But you have time here."

"Can I just skip to gear one? Or neutral?"

"Yes."

"But, if.. my wheels are faster than gear one, won't it stall?"

He's asking smart questions. Huzzah! "It doesn't matter. Your wheels always follow your engine. Bringing your wheels down to gear one is how you stop naturally. But bringing them up is where it stalls. So don't worry."

"Okay. So, release clutch, shift gear three to neutral, but with clutch released, brake slowly? Then, unrelease clutch slowly? When the car rolls to a stop?"

Hookline nods. Kody appeared to monkey around the whole lesson, but he was actually listening. "Good job, Kody. You're learning."

Kody turns to him for a second, eyes a little wide, like Hookline had said something he'd never heard before. Then, he laughed, like sunshine was dumped onto the boy's head, bright and shy, something that actually sounded genuine. In this moment of vulnerability, a split second stretched out into a map of logical possibilities, Hookline examines him. The short bitten nails, freckles, the cone so tall it stuck to the roof of the car. Hookline guesses that Kody's parents don't hug him a lot.

“So anyway,” Hookline carries on dryly and casually, looking to the road after a tiny glance. Kody is still way too happy, rocking back and forth violently. "You know how to start and stop. But here's the catch--- can you do all this within a second, on the road, with other drivers honking at you?"

"Yes," Kody says immediately.

Hookline scoffs, and slows the car to a creeping crawl. He leans forward, peering at the road ahead. It looks clear, wide, comes to a corner into a carpark, as far as he can see anyway. The ground looks slightly bumpy, but that should be fine. Maybe. Hookline hates ambiguity, open ended answers, the possibility of it all. And, well, there's always the possibility that they crash and absolutely perish. In fact, Sterling walks on a hundred possibilities every day, of a thousand things just going wrong, and every single day he just barely misses it like a bullet straight to his cranium. Just barely grazed his fingertips, too close, a million bad endings like phantom pain in his chest. Constantly. And yet, Hookline will never stop riding the thin line of safety and danger, indulging and yet controlling himself, a constant tension. It all lies on a single line. This is his world. And the neither of them really know it, but they recognise it in each other--- in some measure, Kody is just like Hookline.

"It'd be so embarrassing if this went wrong," Hookline says absent-mindedly, plunging his feet into the pedals, and the engine roars, the sound travelling through the air and the seat under them. Kody's jaw drops and he hollers, the sound of his scratchy voice like hungry, excited fire pouring out of his spirit. The same fire Hookline's had all his life. Kody tugs on his seatbelt, grabs onto anything, laughter spilling out of his mouth and turning into excited screaming as they speed up. The roaring engine becomes one with the adrenaline shooting in their guts, and the car pounds down the shuddering road like a huge monster. Hookline jerks the wheel to the outside and then tosses it spinning in the other, and Kody is crushed against the door by sheer momentum like a roller coaster, only a seatbelt to reel him in, digging into his burning chest and choking his screaming. They ride the arc, sliding down the corner, and the tires grind screeching as if claws digging into the old asphalt, high pitched scream ringing out in the air. Turning the corner, Hookline sees a relatively empty parking lot for a split second before throwing the wheel and pulling the handbrake. The car makes a nice round on an apex, rolling them around like a hamster ball, and comes to a dizzying stop, dust thrown into the air, the hood hacking and coughing.

Both of them fall still in their seats the second the car jerks to a standstill, bouncing on tired tires and suspension. They're breathing heavily, but Hookline is still and calculative, eyes wide, and Kody is in pieces all over the passenger seat. Rush, speed, momentum all at once burning into their guts, draining force out their limbs. The air, the walls of the car, dusty metal and slow mechanisms, all vibrating. Multiple hazard lights on the dashboard are flickering weakly, like the car itself was crying. Kody grabs himself, comes back up as if surfacing from a storm, coughing, and incredulous laughter bursts out of him in short gasping breaths.

"Holy shit," he says, bouncing back twice as strong, shaking off the fear that clings to his skin like cobwebs. He's young. "That was freaking awesome, dude. Hookline, holy shit. That was sick!"

Kody grabs his seatbelt but the buckle snaps. He stares at it dumbly, still in the lock, obviously not connected to the strap, wondering for a second if this was the thing preventing him from flying out the windshield a mere moment ago. Then, he falls apart laughing even more, as if it's funny at all.

Hookline exhales when he finally dares to, confronted for a second, adrenaline burning, the fragile breath with which he lives. He nearly lost it, didn't he? the multiple borders and limits he forces onto himself in order to not spin out of control and lose it all in a glorious explosion. For a second, Hookline was about to keep going. He was about to laugh loudly, throw all his cares into the wind (just like how he used to) and rev up again. He nearly forgot that he has a responsibility to care for the teen beside him, and over himself. Careful, Hookline. Always careful. Hookline coughs, and kind of dribbles into his seat lamely, his spirit deflating like a lamp.

"I'm too old for this," he says hoarsely. Kody tries to smack him, but Hookline waves his hand away gently.

"No, you're not," Kody bites at him with full blooded conviction, daring and excited, shaking his hands. "You clearly still got it in you. Why don't you just let it all go?"

Hookline blinks.

He looks at Kody. "What?"

"You always act like you're too cool for this," Kody says, words spilling quickly with no filter. "You act too much like an adult, and its all, control control discipline ooo black coffee and taxes! Look at me I'm Hookline I don't laugh and I'm serious all the time. That's what everyone thinks about you. But you're fun! You're so fun to be around, and you're cool. What is stopping you, man?"

Hookline opens his mouth too quickly, a little defensive, and runs dry on words. He wants to say a million things. To be him, pulling off missions as an agent for the RBI, being wanted by the police, even just grappling around and flying through the air--- all that presents to you an ultimatum: You control yourself or you die. That is how tiny the margin for failure is, threading through an impossibly thin needle eye every single time. You can't get away with a fall, a stray bullet, a rock under a skidding wheel. Hookline can't possibly explain the thousand different ways they could have died in just the last few seconds. How could he?

"I.." Sterling trails out, struck senseless for a second. "I appreciate that you think I'm fun. That's- That is very ironic. Most people don't think that."

"Heh." Kody smiles at him, warm blooded and raw, eyes crinkling. Then, in this magnifying millisecond of examination, he peers deeply at Hookline, the same way Hookline peers into basically everyone, baring the nuclear whites of his eyes. Sterling stares back, a little uncomfortably, eyes unsure, and the air stills, as if expanding.

"It's because you are terrified, Hookline," Kody says, slowly and surely, pronouncing his teeth, every syllable, jumbling his name up to make fun of him. But Sterling is glad he doesn't have to explain himself to someone who already knows, somehow— He's inwardly terrified all the time. "And I am too. But I'm not a coward like you. You know what I do when I'm scared? You slow down, but I go even faster. That's why I win."

Sterling is thoroughly impressed by his gall. What is danger to some skateboarding chud who can't stop?  "... Engine stall."

"Screw off, old man!"

They stop here to stretch. The parking lot is for some old, unassuming building, some concrete husk saturated with dusty air. Empty aisles, soft light to dimness. Kody walked in whilst Hookline stayed sitting on the hood of the car, catching his breath, thinking about what the boy said to him. He apparently walked through the entire building in 5 minutes, and came out with a bag of chips munching. Hookline saw and was a little peeved, even more so when Kody walked up to him, said, "They're probably expired." and offered him one.

When Kody moved to get into the passenger seat, Hookline held out a hand and gestured for him to sit in the driver's. Kody's jaw dropped but he was quickly overtaken by something else. "Really?" Kody says, stumbling on his words, hesitating. "After that sick ass drift?"

"You're probably good enough to drive." Hookline shrugs. Kody just took a 30 minute lesson and he's fourteen. But good enough.

"But Judge-"

"You care?"

"No," Kody says hardly and bravely. Too much gall, not enough audacity. He stomps over and rips the car door open, but cares enough to sit in the driver's, the throne of the adults, with some reverence. Again, the cone hits the ceiling of the car.

"Careful with the door, it's probably gonna fall off soon." Hookline ducks in and realises the skateboard is still in here. Kody looks too small in the seat, his eyes ranging over all this new technology with the fresh air of novelty. Behind his eyes, words are turning into tactile objects right before his eyes, and that is the quiet power of learning. The kid touches the wheel, the clutch, checks between his shoes for the pedals, eyes going back up to the mirror, trying the car on to see how it fits. Sadly, to Hookline it's the oldest, dustiest most rickety ass setup he's ever seen... but Kody doesn't need to know that.

"Oh, you should adjust that." Hookline helps him fiddle with the mirror, a quiet moment of checking.

Interestingly enough, as they get settled in, Kody puts his seatbelt on, notices Hookline doesn't have any (because it broke off like the useless thing it is), and says, "What about you?"

"Kody, you've seen how powerful cars can be and now you're sitting in the driver's seat of one. Both of our lives are in your hands right now. I don't want you to fumble it. So go slow."

Kody, with his tiny hands around the wheel, half his sitting height made of a literal cone, looks at Hookline with fear, not of crashing, per se--- but of disappointing him. "What if I crash?"

Hookline thinks about flying through the windshield, about people who respond to your 'what if' with 'it wont happen'. Then it's speckled with incandescent glass shards and splattering guts like a roach. "As long as you don't exceed second gear," he goes onto say, instead. "No one will get hurt if you crash. And this isn't even our car, I mean you can ruin it however you like. But Kody, I'm not wearing a seatbelt because I trust you not to crash. Understand?"

"I think you're not wearing a seatbelt because it's currently in pieces right now."

"I think it's because you broke it."

"Eat dirt." Kody looks back to the windshield, eyes furrowed in what Hookline could only call determination. "Okay. I won't mess up."

So the step one--- Kody pulls the handbrake, and then pushes it when he realises its a push. The car immediately loosens into free move, like a great beast that was stirring. Immediately, they both surge as the car jerks, and the next second the engine dies.

"Shit-" Kody's hands fly off the wheel as if the car bucked him off and ducks his head to look. "I thought that was the brake. Sorry."

"Middle's brake. Maybe I should've said." Hookline reaches over with the paperclip to stick it into the ignition. Third time's the charm. Yes, he feels very confident he's not going to die in this car. "Most drivers hate when you stall their engine, but this isn't even my car."

"Yeah, yeah." Kody fixes his hands onto the wheel again as the engine roars again. "Rip and tear. So right is acceleration-"

Kody tries again, and almost gets everything right. He pulls his handbrake, releases clutch, jiggles the gear shift around. The car begins to move, almost miraculously, and the boy begins screeching like they're not going at a snail's pace. "Wow," Hookline can't help but snark monotonously.

"Shut up," he says, making rounds around the wheel awkwardly. The car, led by his hand, crawls around like a confused beetle. "The steering's hard."

"Naturally."

They speed up, prompted by Hookline. Kody makes rounds around the parking lot, and every time he sees something he could hit, he swerves violently and overcorrects all the time. Again, not dangerous at this speed, definitely a little annoying. But the boy barrels through tracks on just a skateboard and would rather die than slow or stop. What else was Hookline expecting? Maybe it'd make him a really good driver in the future, but certainly not right now, no. At the prompt to brake, Kody disconnects the clutch and the car kind of jumps a little bit, nothing severe but enough for Kody to stagger in his concentration. He brakes hard and they both ride forward, pulled back by the car's inertia.

"Sorry," he says again, as Hookline takes a deep, deep breath and settles into his seat. Then, he looks at Kody and he's blanking out, staring at Hookline--- or past him, through him and at something else in the room that Hookline couldn't see. 

"Focus." Kody kind of blinks at Hookline's voice, going back to the frontview tersely. "Don't forget what you're driving."

Hookline guides him through the parking lot and then onto the road, a journey he didn't think he'd make it through. About a thousand thingshad casually hit the bumper or scratch the car, a whole lot of Kody saying, "woops!" and Hookline sighing heavily. At the bridge back to the broken city, where their camp is, Kody wants to release clutch to speed up to third gear, but only a metal sound hitting the floor is heard. Kody peeks down for an oblivious second and looks back up at the road around them, eyes gaunt like he was held at gunpoint.

Hookline immediately leans over centre console to see, and oh, the clutch pedal is on the floor and very not connected to anything. Okay. He looks at the road around them to see Kody swerve violently to avoid a tiny pothole, and for a second their trajectory connects too closely to the railing of the bridge, the only thing stopping them from a slow heavy fall into the very tossing, very everpresent ocean all around them. Then Kody overcorrects, and their back wheel hits the pothole, dragging the car ever so slightly in all the wrong directions.

"Brake pedal." Come the words too quickly, but it's never that simple. When the car drags itself out the pothole, Hookline immediately feels the sluggish sag of a blown out tire dragging behind them. Another thing to worry about.

"Shut up. Shut up shut up stop talking," Kody forces out, the room suddenly a hundred degrees colder with fear. He turns the wheel so violently and erratically he could wrench it right off in an attempt to regain control, but it's no use. As he brakes, the car begins rolling slower, but defies the steering wheel and runs right into the railing anyway, a surge in their seats to a stop. But at least they stopped! Then, the bumper begins grinding off it like teeth, continuously digging into what fragile rebar and concrete holds them back from falling. They're stuck. Hookline's hand subconsciously flies to Kody's arm, maybe the first time he has ever initiated contact with anyone, ever.

"Don't panic," Hookline says, grabbing the skateboard with his other hand. The brakes should slow the wheels down just enough to stall the engine and stop the car, is the first thing Hookline thinks. "Keep braking. You need to stall the engine."

"It's not enough," Kody seethes through his teeth, breathing thickly and steadily. Unless the brakes are old. "I don't know if it's enough. What do I do?"

The metal slowly begins to give with an onerous groan, trailing in the air as if taunting them, waving the prospect of their death in front of them like a dead squirrel. Kody's breath hitches, but Hookline- he's really good at acting calm.

"Open the door and step out." is the next thing he says, tempered and low. "Make sure your foot leaves the brake last."

So they do just that. Hookline grabs the skateboard, and they walk out of their own deaths, right out of its arms, a plunge into the cold ocean reversing, right out of two people trapped in a broken car sinking to the depths, right out of drowning. And they stand there, by the road, as the metal railing slowly gives under the car, wheels slowly rumbling and pushing against the asphalt and then nothing, sailing down.

Hookline and Kody lean over to watch and hear the glorious crash of water, white, tossing and splashing, emerge from the old car hitting suffocating blue. Kody snarks out a soulless laugh, as if he personally hated that car, and meant to crash. It sounds a little echoey, a little hollow when it's stretched a translucent thin to cover something up.

"You laugh when you're nervous," Hookline remarks casually. It was meant to be a lighthearted observation, but Kody suddenly stopped, and with the skateboard he took out of Hookline's hands, turned away silently. "... Kody?"

Hookline watches the boy stalk off, suddenly feeling his throat squeeze. "I-" The apology catches in his throat, because he has too much pride in him. "Are you okay?"

"I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say I did that on purpose," Kody bites out, back still turned so Hookline can't see that he's going to cry. "You're gonna say I meant to kick the clutch off, and- and swerve into the railing and ruin everything, and then you're gonna tell Judge. I already know, alright? So- shut up and save your breath!"

Hookline blinks, shocked. Kody's actually upset. He doesn't say anything though, just listens. If there's one thing Hookline is really bad at, it's feelings. He spent all his life intellectualising his own feelings and putting them into neat, soundproof boxes, only to be brought to his knees by the thought of Kody crying.

"You can say whatever you want, but I was really trying." Kody's voice wear thins at this, seizing with the beginning of tears. Sterling isn't prepared, for the first time since he was a kid, to suddenly feel like crying as well. "I really listened to everything you said. I tried to be careful, I tried! You can't say I didn't try to be good. I always do, and I always mess it up."

Everything ebbs into a sacramental silence after this. For a beat, Sterling is unable to say anything. So who hit you and starved you when you made any tiny mistake, he thinks to himself, fervently and madly wrapping his head around this crucial bit of history Kody has decided to bare to him. Who made you feel like everything was your fault and it was ingrained into who you are? Who destroyed you, again and again, when you were just a kid? Because Sterling kind of feels like killing Kody's parents, right now. You do not have to be good.

"I-I'm not mad," Sterling says quietly, as soft and gentle as cold, sleek lethal gunmetal can manage. "The car was just old and wrecked. And you're only fourteen, Kody. It was your first time operating a manual. Things just happen on the road. I don't want you to beat yourself up over it, kid." 

Kody turns around to him, head a little low, hunched, eyebrows knitted with turmoil. He looks like a kicked dog, a wet cat. He sort of looks like a baby chick that Sterling wants to put in his pocket. Hold on, what is this metaphor? 

"I wanted to impress you," he says, his voice small in all the ways Sterling has never known Kody to be. "I wanted to make you proud." 

"I am," Sterling says, a little desperately, a little too truthfully and heartfully. He can't help but step a bit closer. "I always am." 

The words burn in the air. Sterling inhales, suddenly so terrified he could leap off a rooftop. It's actually so cooked for him. Fatherhood is knocking. He's not a "talk his emotions" out guy, and neither is Kody, really. To be frank, for the past thirty years Hookline has been downing brandy over any emotion he feels that isn't fear. How do you show a kid you care? How do you be gentle when you've spent your entire life killing people and avoiding death? I wouldn't be a good role model for this kid, Sterling begs to a higher being in his head, as Kody slowly trudges up to him. God, give him someone more well equipped than me. I'M NOT READY TO BE A FATHER.

Kody plants his forehead onto Sterling's shoulder, some defeated half hug. He's just a kid, looking for refuge. For once, Sterling doesn't move away. 

"So you made a mistake," Sterling says, patting his shoulder, tripping over his words. "Who cares, Kody? We're both safe, and you learnt a valuable lesson from it. You're not immune to mistakes, no one is perfect. I'm not going to prosecute you for that, alright? If anything, it was my fault." 

Kody sniffles, and nods silently. For a second, he closes his eyes, imagining for an agonizing second the foreign feeling of being held. Then, he rips himself away the next second and paces off hurriedly, dropping the skateboard and stepping on. 

"We have a long way home," he says, trying to make his voice strong. Is there anything more fucked up than a kid trying to be strong? Something about it reminds Hookline of an animal accepting its losses, scrapping up its pride, limping away still bleeding. So he simply doesn't force the matter, and says, "Alright." 

Hookline stuffs his hands into his pockets (lest he fiddles--- something he hasn't done since he was an awkward, inexperienced kid) and walks to catch up. Within the next fifteen minutes, Kody is bouncing back and making rude jokes like nothing else, trying to get Hookline to laugh, like some sort of truce or peace agreement. Some silences idle on comfortably, taken in by the salty, warm air around them, the sun hiding behind clouds and throwing radiance out in rays, the bridge. They walk out of this one day, arguably closer than before. 

btw the post credits scene is them running into judge at camp, and judge stops them, looks at hookline, and grabs a piece of glass off his blazer. then he says (in accusing housewife tone) "where the fuck have you two been?" and hookline starts coming up with a million lies whilst Kody starts wilting like a flower