Chapter Text
Driver didn’t know when the world around him changed. He didn’t know how long he’d been driving. His car was running on empty, but never seemed to slow down. He never got hungry, or tired. For a while after Ken moved on, he felt hopeful on the man’s behalf. For a while after that he felt lonely every time he thought about Ken or Irene or Benicio. Now he felt numb. He’d been in a trance cruising the empty void.
But somehow, he’d come upon a town, and when he finally clocked it, he wasn’t sure how long he’d been driving in this new locale. He passed empty businesses and empty houses on empty streets, and then he passed the exact same ones again. When he realized he’d somehow gone in a circle three times or more, he turned onto a side street experimentally to see if he could go anywhere new.
And immediately a motorcycle pulled out of an alley in front of him and Driver couldn’t avoid side swiping it. Bike and rider both fell and skidded. Driver felt his heart pounding for the first time since Ken. He parked and hurried out. The rider let out a sickly, drawn out wretch. He looked and sounded like he was hurting, but he started getting up anyway.
Driver was less cautious than he would have been while he was alive, or even after he first died, and he went straight to help the man stand up.
“Get off me, man,” the guy mumbled, jerking his arm away from Driver. He removed his helmet, and Driver saw the shock of bleach blond hair first.
“Ken?” Disappointment hit him when the man turned and Driver saw the unfamiliar tattoos on his face and neck. He shouldn’t have let himself get his hopes up.
“Ken your boyfriend, Barbie?” The man scoffed.
Driver felt ambushed. Finally there was someone else here, and Driver hit him with his car and pissed him off.
“Are you okay?” He tried, feeling like an idiot. If this guy was here, he was dea—
“No, asshole, I’m fucking dead.” Right.
“Yeah,” Driver sighed.
“And you hit me with your car,” the guy added.
Driver nodded. “Sorry.”
The man looked Driver up and down. Driver could see the familiar glean of distrust in his eyes. There was something else, too. Fear? Fear that he was trying to hide under a tough exterior. He’d met plenty of guys like this on jobs. All bark and no bite. Driver could work with that.
“I’m Paul,” Driver offered, hoping to start over.
Luke looked skeptical. He stood his bike upright, then looked between Driver and the car. “Luke. Where did you come from?”
Driver shrugged. “I woke up someplace with nothing in it. I drove until I got here and went in circles until I turned and ran into you.”
“How’d you die?”
“I was stabbed.”
Luke’s eyebrows raised when he said it. Luke was curious, but Driver wouldn’t answer questions he wasn’t asked.
“You?” Driver asked so Luke could answer.
When Luke smiled there was no humor in the expression. He gestured for Driver to follow him and took him around the corner between two houses. Driver saw a large splatter of blood on the ground. He looked up at the second level window of the adjacent house.
“You fell?”
“I got shot and then I fell.”
Driver wondered what the context was. Had Luke been a burglar that picked the wrong house? A home invader with more nefarious intent? An affair partner caught in the act? He saw Luke staring at his blood on the pavement.
“Didn’t even see it fucking coming,” Luke said bitterly. There were tears rimming Luke’s eyes, and Driver looked away.
“Sorry.”
Luke shrugged and turned so he didn’t have to look at the spot where he died anymore. “I was Handsome Luke, not Lucky Luke.”
Driver thought he was going for a joke there, so he gave Luke the courtesy of smiling and replying “This wouldn’t have happened to Lucky Luke.”
Luke smiled then, too, but he couldn’t look at Driver when he did. “And what about you, Pretty Paul? You think you could have avoided it? Getting stabbed?”
There was that word again. Pretty. He convinced himself not to think too deeply into it. Ken was a special case, an outlier. Driver was never not going to fuck him, Ken was inevitable and he’d hit Driver like a truck. Or like Driver had hit Luke with his car…
He shook his head. “No. And I did see it coming.”
“How’s that work?”
Driver thought about it. “The guy that did it would have never stopped trying. If it wasn’t then, it would have been some other time.”
Luke looked amused. “So you were popular. This guy was obsessed with you.” Luke sized him up again in a way that Driver was going to let himself believe was not sexual until Luke smirked and said “Makes sense, I guess.”
Was it something about this place? The chemicals from their bleach jobs? How was Driver dead and meeting these horny, blunt men? This one didn’t even have the excuse of having brand new parts, Driver assumed.
“I stole a million dollars from his family by accident,” Driver blurted out since he couldn’t think of how to respond to Luke’s flirting.
“What the fuck?” At least hearing that had stunned Luke out of whatever he was going for before. “How do you accidentally steal a million dollars?”
“I was driving for a friend who was robbing a pawn shop. It was only supposed to be forty-thousand, but,” Driver shrugged, “wrong place, wrong time.”
“Shit,” Luke exhaled. “If I ever had that kind of haul, I’d have quit while I was ahead and I might still be alive.”
Driver looked at Luke as the man realized that probably wasn’t true. Driver did have that kind of haul, and he still ended up here. That kind of money was rarely ever worth it.
“I started robbing banks,” Luke explained when Driver didn’t say anything. “That’s how I ended up—” He pointed up to the window at first, then corrected his gesture to the pool of blood to his left. “I was running from the cops. I fucked everything up.”
The guys on his jobs were never any of Driver’s concern. If he had to leave them behind because they took too long, he did. If they got arrested immediately after Driver dropped them off, oh well. Incompetence had no place in his car.
This guy, though. Something in him was anguished, and Driver couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. And a sense of understanding, too.
“What did you do before that?” Driver asked to change the subject. Luke seemed glad for it.
“Worked in a friend’s shop fixing bikes and cars, and before that I was a carny with a motorcycle stunt show.”
When Driver just blinked at him, Luke asked “How ‘bout you? You have anything going besides crime?”
“I worked in a friend’s shop fixing cars and was a stunt driver for movies.”
Luke paused and grinned like he wasn’t sure if Driver was bullshitting him. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Driver confirmed. First a living guy who was nothing like him, now a dead guy whose life seemed eerily similar. Driver was starting to wonder if there was a reason he was here.
“And I ‘spose you had a girl you couldn’t be with and a kid you were trying to provide for?”
Driver’s mouth fell open. “Yeah.”
“Really?”
Driver nodded. “Well, he wasn’t my kid, but yeah. His father was the friend I was driving for.”
“Ken?” Luke guessed so wrongly that Driver had to laugh.
“Uh, no. Ken was someone I met here.”
“Oh, where is he now?” Luke glanced over Driver’s shoulder as if to ask if Ken had been in the car.
“Well… I don’t know,” Driver rubbed the back of his neck trying to figure out how to explain Ken. “He was alive, I think, so he’s not here anymore.”
Luke was understandably confused. “What, like, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel and just went the other way?”
Driver smiled. That sounded way less stupid than reality. “No… He used to be a doll and he became a human.”
“Dude, I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“I wish I was joking.” Until now, he hadn’t really thought of how much weirder his worldview had to become after meeting Ken. “You know, Ken and Barbie, like you said.”
“That’s… okay. Sure,” Luke said, not really sure at all.
“You kind of look like him, actually,” Driver added with a smile. Luke laughed out loud. It was a joyful, creaky cackle that made Driver’s face feel warm.
“That’s not the first time I’ve been called a Ken doll,” Luke shrugged it off. “So what, did you help him become a human or something?”
Driver smiled, but shook his head. “He already was, I just helped him calm his nerves a little.”
That smirk was back on Luke’s face even though Driver was sure he hadn’t said anything that should have invited it. “You look like you’d be good at that, yeah.”
Unlike with Ken, Driver knew from the beginning that Luke knew exactly what he was doing. There was no risk of taking advantage here. Still felt weird for some reason. At the very least he needed to get them away from the spot where Luke died before he could think of reciprocating any come-ons.
“I just gave him some advice,” Driver lied, probably poorly, since he was flustered then. He started walking back to the vehicles.
Luke caught up to his side, giving him a knowing look. “So did he have a cock or was it just smooth down there?”
Driver scowled at him, suddenly feeling the good will he had for Luke draining out of him. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
“Aw, come on. Was he like a blow-up doll or what? Bet those plastic lips felt—”
Driver reacted before he realized what he was doing. His arm was pressed into Luke’s throat and pinning him to the wall of the closest house.
“I said shut your mouth. Now you can be respectful or I’ll teach you how to be.” He eased his arm off Luke’s neck when he saw the fear and distrust returning to his eyes.
Luke was just joking, and Driver had taken it too far. Driver stepped away from him completely.
Luke was holding his throat. Driver knew he hadn’t pressed so hard that there’d be any damage, he’d just spooked him. Still, the one other person he’d met in who knows how long, and he could have fucked this up irrevocably. He regretted it, and losing his cool like that.
He wasn’t going to apologize, though. He turned to go back to his car.
It took a bit, but eventually Luke followed him again. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t know it was that serious, and it’s just… I mean, this whole thing is crazy! That we’re even here. It’s fucking me up, okay?”
Driver searched Luke’s face. Luke was being sincere, and more importantly Driver saw that he needed a companion right now just as much as Driver did.
“I get it,” Driver assured him.
The silence between them stretched like a desert highway while Luke tried to find what he wanted to say.
“Do you ever get over it?” He finally asked. “Dying,” he added when Driver furrowed his brow to ask for clarification. “How did you feel when you realized?”
Driver crossed his arms and leaned against his car door. “Something like relief I guess. Regret, too, but…” He shrugged. “Nothing to do about it now.”
“How can you say that? What about your girl and your kid? You don’t care what happens to them?”
“Of course I do,” Driver corrected. “But I did my part to protect their family as well as I could have, and even if I’d lived I would have had to leave to keep them safe anyway.” It couldn’t be helped.
“Okay, so it’s easy for you because you weren’t a fuck up. I was a fuck up,” Luke lamented.
Driver thought back to the last time he saw Irene. He’d definitely fucked up. The best he could hope for is that watching him lose himself like that made it easier for her to never see him again.
“And you think they wouldn’t forgive you?” Driver asked, watching Luke’s eyes.
Luke looked away from him, on the verge of tears again. “I don’t know.”
“Then you have to forgive yourself, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Luke quietly agreed. He clearly didn’t know how he was supposed to do that, and Driver didn’t know how to help him.
Maybe that was why Driver was here, though. As ridiculous as it was that he would ever be chosen dole out life (or afterlife) advice, he seemed to keep meeting people who needed it. Maybe this was some kind of penance.
“You wanna go for a ride?” Driver nodded toward his car. “See if we can get out of here or if we’ll just keep going in circles?”
Luke hesitantly nodded. He took off his jacket as he went to get in the car revealing the worn, inside-out white tee he was wearing underneath. Driver should have known he’d be covered in ugly tattoos. He hated that he found it hot.
He sat down as Luke was tossing his jacket into the back and they sat in silence as Driver got back on the road. He quickly learned he’d escaped whatever cycle he was in when he first got here. He could roam freely now that Luke was with him. He glanced over at his new passenger, who still looked troubled. Luke was trying not to look at Driver or out the window, which left him to stare at his lap.
“Where are we?” Driver tried pulling him out of his head.
“Schenectady, New York. Turn left up here,” Luke pointed. Driver turned. “I tried to settle down here for my kid.”
There was something deeply unsettling to Driver about an entire city lying empty like this, and moreso that he and Luke were the only ghosts haunting it.
“I was trying to be a good dad,” Luke continued. “Mine was never around, so I wanted to be. So maybe Jason could turn out better than me.” He squeezed his eyes shut and let his head hit the headrest.
That touched Driver in a way he hadn’t expected. Luke was someone caught between a rock and a hard place. If there was any justice in the world, he wouldn’t have died the way he had, but here they were.
“Turn right up here,” Luke directed again. “Can you share something now so I don’t have to feel like I’m laying it all out there all by myself?”
Driver smiled at the directness. He turned where Luke had said, wondering where they were going. He saw less buildings and a lot of green up ahead.
“Okay,” Driver said. “My dad used to make me rob houses with him when I was little because I could fit into places where he couldn’t. He was a useless excuse for a man and one morning while we were eating breakfast, my mom killed him.”
Luke didn’t say anything and Driver could feel him staring. Finally, he said “What the fuck, man?”
“You asked,” Driver said plainly.
“Wait, you’re not kidding? Jesus, dude, I can’t tell when you’re being serious.”
“Most of the time,” Driver informed him.
“Well, that’s horrible,” Luke offered. “I’m sorry.”
Driver shrugged. “I knew it was coming. My mom was always quiet, but she never spoke again after that and then the state took me away.”
“And how the fuck are you so nonchalant about that?”
“I liked my foster family, I guess?” Driver didn’t know how else to answer.
“Yeah? What, they fixed you by being great parents?”
“They were great parents, but they didn’t fix me.” Driver smiled at him. “I never really came out of my room and I stole their car and ran away when I was sixteen.”
“Christ, dude,” Luke huffed. “Maybe you are a fuck up.”
Driver chuckled. “I paid them back for it eventually.”
Luke silently pointed out another turn. They were fully in the woods now, and Driver took it slow down the long gravel driveway.
“I guess my point is,” Driver continued. “Kids are resilient and you were at least trying. I wish you’d had more of a chance to be a father, but it sounds like you were a good one.”
Luke turned away from him, but Driver could see his reflection in the window. His eyes were glossy again and this time he couldn’t hold his tears back. Driver just let him have a moment.
They pulled up to a lot with a trailer home, some sheds, and a camper further back.
Driver pretended not to notice Luke wiping his eyes. “This is where my friend Robin lives. I’m…” He pointed back toward the camper. “Or, you know. That’s where I stayed when I was alive.”
Driver pulled onto the grass and up to Luke’s home. He just wanted to be somewhere familiar, and Driver was happy to make that happen.
He got out after Luke, but just leaned against the hood of his car as Luke went up to his door. He turned back to Driver. “I’ll be right back. You want a beer?” Driver nodded.
When Luke reemerged and joined him on the hood, they drank in comfortable silence. When they’d nearly polished off the six pack, Luke looked over at him like he had something to say. Driver waited.
“This is a genuine question, so don’t get mad,” Luke began. Always a good sign when a question needed to be couched like that. “Did you and Ken really..? You know?”
Driver tried not to roll his eyes. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said with that knowing, devious little smirk. “‘Cause you’re hot, you’ve been sweet to me, you’re the only other person here, and you said I look like him.”
Driver turned his face so Luke couldn’t see him blushing. “You’d look like him if you gained about thirty more pounds of muscle and removed all your tattoos.”
“Ouch,” Luke said with a laugh that made Driver’s face warmer. “And you’re into that? Big muscles, blank canvas?”
“I don’t have a type,” Driver admitted.
“So I’ve got a chance?” Luke was leaning so close now that Driver could smell the beer on his breath. Driver let him get closer. “He let you pin him down like you pinned me earlier, or do you like letting big guys take control?”
Driver bristled, goosebumps radiating out from the spot where Luke’s breath hit just below his ear. He turned his face toward Luke’s, but didn’t commit to anything yet. Was he really doing this? It wasn’t a pattern yet if it was only two people, right?
Fuck it.
“I don’t have a preference, either,” Driver informed him before catching Luke’s lips with his own.
Ken’s kisses had reminded Driver of adolescence, being a teenager first figuring yourself out. Sweet, earnest, innocent, and charged by all the same raging hormones. Kissing Luke was like kissing the closest person to you at last call in a seedy dive bar. Sloppy, questionable, but feels like the hottest thing you’ve ever done because you’re drunk and maybe you’ve never hooked up with a stranger before.
Luke pushed up from the hood of the car and rounded on Driver without breaking the kiss. He grabbed Driver’s face in both hands and leaned into him while Driver braced himself against the hood. The last time Driver had been pressed against a car like this, he’d been stabbed. His heart raced the same way it did then, like his body remembered, and he had to suppress the urge to fight.
He hoisted himself further onto the car and spread his legs to let Luke between them. He let Luke lean in until the man had him laying against the hood, nearly on top of him. He let Luke’s tongue into his mouth, let himself moan first, let his hands explore Luke’s arms and his chest. He would not let himself admit that Luke's muscles actually rivaled Ken’s.
He balled Luke’s shirt into his fists and Luke’s hands slipped to Driver’s neck. His thumbs dragged up Driver’s jawline. Driver squeezed his shirt tighter and pulled. Luke’s hand found the back of his neck. Driver wanted to rip his shirt off. Luke’s hand clamped down to tell Driver that his mouth wasn’t allowed to leave Luke’s yet.
Driver was stiff as a board. He knew Luke could feel it after he chuckled into Driver’s mouth.
Luke’s hand moved from the back of Driver’s neck up into his hair, yanking. Driver’s head jerked back and Luke was kissing the side of his mouth.
“You’re so hard,” Luke teased between kisses on Driver’s jaw. “You sure you don’t like when bigger guys push you around? Hm? Or is it…” He left slow, deliberate kisses all down Driver’s neck. “... the kissing you get off to?”
Driver’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head. Luke shoved his free hand between Driver’s legs to palm his dick. Driver inhaled sharply through his teeth and Luke sucked on Driver’s neck. He grinded his hand into Driver’s groin, moving intentionally, painfully slowly, and when Driver tried with a whimper to roll his hips into Luke’s hand, Luke sucked on his neck even harder.
He bruised Driver’s neck, then kissed the spot so gently Driver could have come right there. Whatever noise he’d made apparently conveyed that fact to Luke, because Driver felt him smiling.
“I know, baby,” he said against Driver’s skin. “My Pretty Paul likes to be kissed, who could have guessed?” Jesus, Luke was entitled. The kind of guy Driver normally hated.
This was so fucking hot, though.
“Are you done teasing?” Driver asked impatiently. “How about you fuck me already?”
Luke let out his creaky laugh into Driver’s neck, and the sound tugged at Driver’s heart. It tugged at his balls, too—fuck. When Luke let go of him and stood up straight, Driver was worried he was still going to be a cocktease.
“Yeah,” Luke answered. Driver was relieved until he added “Gimme a second.”
Luke laughed again when Driver kept hold of his shirt.
“I gotta get lube, dude,” Luke tried. Then a patronizing “I know, baby” when Driver gritted his teeth.
Driver let Luke go and he walked. So. Disgustingly. Slowly. Driver glared at the back of Luke's head until he disappeared in his camper again.
He huffed and relaxed on top of his hood. Driver had never masturbated on top of his car before. He reached down to cross that off the list of things to do before he escaped Limbo. He closed his eyes and imagined Irene and Ken had met by chance somewhere out there in the Real World, and that they were waiting for him…
He didn’t realize his hand had been moving so vigorously until Luke grabbed his wrist to stop him. Driver whined in frustration, but he let go.
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Luke asked with that devilish smile. He pulled Driver’s arm to get him to sit up, and Luke caught him and kissed him again. Driver peeked his eyes open and tried grabbing for the lube, but Luke jerked his hand away. He was smiling into Driver’s mouth. Ugh. And Driver thought Ken made him impatient.
Driver changed tactics and lifted Luke’s shirt off of him. Luke allowed that. Then Driver unbuckled his belt, and Luke allowed that, too. Driver took one look at Luke in his hand and wanted to allow Luke to fuck his face.
The next moments were a blur to him. He’d been enthralled by Luke’s cock and it compelled him off the car and onto his knees. Luke had hold of his hair again and Driver had him so deep in his mouth he was hitting the back of his throat.
Luke finally moaned and the sound made Driver throb. He pressed his nose against Luke’s stomach and hoped he’d make more noise. He did. Driver wanted to touch himself so badly at that moment, but he forbade it. He settled on touching Luke’s legs. He rubbed his hands up them and grabbed Luke’s pants to expose as much of his thighs as possible. Then he dug his nails into their meat and scratched them down and up and down again.
That nearly broke Luke. His voice came out strained and he bucked his hips. The first time seemed involuntary. But then he clutched Driver’s hair tighter, pressed his hand firmer into Driver’s head, and did it again. Driver made sure Luke saw that it wasn’t stopping him. He made sure Luke saw that he wanted it.
Luke held him still and fucked his mouth even as he gagged around Luke’s dick. Driver thought of how Ken had just gone for it and, Jesus, he wanted to come so bad. He almost gave Luke a thumbs up, but he reached around and grabbed Luke’s ass instead. It just encouraged Luke to go faster. Driver squeezed him, and Luke facefucked him harder until Driver could no longer recover from choking on his cock.
He shoved Luke off of him. Luke had already let go of Driver’s hair as soon as he put his hands up, and he stumbled backward. Driver coughed and sputtered up precum and drool. Luke came quickly back to him while Driver was wiping his mouth.
“You good?” He checked. When Driver nodded, he said “Yeah, you are. You got such a pretty mouth, don’t you?”
Driver hated how well that shit was working for him. He calmly stood.
“If you don’t fuck me in the next five seconds we are going to have a problem,” Driver had barely finished informing him before Luke was on him trying to placate him with kisses. It pissed Driver off that it was even half working.
But Luke put the bottle of lube in his hand. Progress. Driver was already in the process of slicking him up, and when their lips broke apart while Luke pulled Driver’s shirt off, he said “I’m gonna fuck you, but I need you do do one thing.”
Driver thought about squeezing the dick in his hand, or giving Luke a hardy ball tap, or even just finishing himself off without Luke’s help. He refrained.
Luke held Driver's chin in his hand, made sure Driver looked at him. “I need you to scream my name real loud when I do, okay?”
Driver couldn’t respond before Luke had spun him around and pushed him. His face hit the hood of the car with a thud and Luke held Driver’s head down while he pushed his pants out of the way. Finally.
It had been a while since Driver had had someone inside him. Luke was sickeningly considerate and freakishly in tune with Driver, so even when Driver thought about pounding his forehead against the hood in frustration because he wanted Luke to go from zero to one hundred immediately, Luke was listening to what Driver’s body needed. He leaned over and kissed Driver’s shoulder blade, rolling his hips nice and easy.
“You gonna do that one thing for me, Paul?” Luke mumbled into his back.
Driver clenched his fists. “Whenever you start fucking me,” he goaded.
Luke cackled. “God, you’re so cute when you’re mad.”
He stood up straight again, then grabbed Driver’s hips and yanked him close in a way that made his stomach clench. Finally, please.
When Luke’s hips were slapping rapidly against Driver’s ass, when Luke was panting and groaning with the effort of it, when Driver’s body felt so wound tight he could have snapped, only then did Driver fulfill Luke’s request. He screamed for Luke like he’d never screamed for anyone.
Luke came inside him almost immediately on hearing it. By contrast, Luke squeaked Paul’s name pathetically when he did. Mercifully, he also fucked into Driver harder, more desperately as he gave Driver his load. When he fantasized about this later, Driver would entirely loathe that that combination had worked for him. He finished on the grill of his car, shaking underneath Luke.
“God, you’re something else,” Luke said when the pump of his hips slowed. Every so often he’d hit a coveted aftershock he’d been looking for that set them both moaning again. When he couldn’t find any more and Driver was limp against his car, Luke kissed his spine and then pulled away.
When Driver recovered enough to stand, Luke caught him in a kiss. Driver let it be tender. He let it be whatever Luke needed.
“Can you take me somewhere else?” Luke asked him after they’d each taken a short, cramped shower in his camper. “I just want to see something.”
Driver nodded.
They dressed and Luke directed Driver to a house. Luke looked like he was afraid to go in. Driver quietly urged him forward, then followed him inside. Luke took the stairs cautiously, as if someone might hear them creaking from another room and be alerted to their intrusion. Luke rounded the top of the stairs and opened the door to a bedroom. From his place still on the top step, Driver couldn’t see what Luke saw that made the man start crying.
Luke smiled tearfully at him, and just said “They finished it.”
Driver intended to follow him into the bedroom, but when he got to the doorway, Luke was gone. Driver looked around, eyes coming to rest on a wooden crib against the far wall.
Alone again, Driver sat on the edge of the bed for a while, staring at the crib and thinking about all of the people in his life that had moved on. Eventually he moved on, too, leaving the house, leaving this ghost town and driving on to the next.