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alt_tentacles

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Ventura Highway in the sunshine

Where the days are longer

The nights are stronger

You're gonna go, I know

                                    -- "Ventura Highway," America

Flop sweat drips down the back of your neck as you bundle into the car at three A.M.

A shaking hand releases your shoulder and drops you in the passenger seat of the car. A heap of clothes and an open day bag follow, spilling out over your lap.

Eddie chatters as he shuts your door and shuffles quickly around the long, flat hood of the car, the gold firebird just barely visible in a dim streetlight. It’s not clear whether or not he’s talking to you.

"Sorry, god, I’m sorry-- I had no idea-- I mean, I’ve met assholes before but I wasn’t expecting him to swing like that."

You’re not sure exactly what he means, although he keeps apologizing while he fumbles with the key.

"Eddie," you say, trying to get him to slow down for a second, to breathe.

He ignores you and throws the car into gear. She jerks backwards and stalls with a clap.

You’re groggy, but you definitely don’t remember seeing the other guy throw a punch, or really seeing much of him at all. Ten minutes ago you were asleep, and then you were watching as a big, black something like animate tar exploded from his body.

"Eddie, Eddie, Eddie," you say, putting a hand on his arm where it grips the steering wheel. "Stop. Stop for a second."

He looks over with his eyebrows raised, more fearful than angry.

"Nobody’s coming out after us. Just wait for a minute."

He flicks a glance out the windshield of the car to confirm your assertion. No one is coming. The front of the hostel is as quiet and still as when you arrived. The world is not falling apart.

"What happened?"

Eddie takes a deep breath in and lets it out in a sigh. He rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. He sighs again. "I didn’t want to get into it, but, right. Okay. About that."

"I have," Eddie says, "a kinda...parasite."

When Moose had asked if you’d be okay with working with a stranger, you weren’t sure what you expected, but it wasn’t Eddie.

Standing in front of him two days earlier, you had tried to pin down what he did for a living, with his tired eyes, loose hoodie, and firm handshake.

The worn clothes said something that didn’t involve a lot of money, as did his involvement in one of Moose’s schemes, but his watch looked deceptively expensive and he had the relaxed stance of someone who wasn’t afraid of failing to make rent. He had the social graces of your weird, old thesis advisor without the overeducation. Sharp eyes that scanned the room like he was memorizing it, but he had a tendency to make Moose repeat himself every other sentence. A career criminal with hearing damage? An absent-minded high school teacher with a rent-controlled apartment?

But when you introduced yourself, all he says was, "Eddie, Eddie Brock," in the weirdest regional accent you’ve ever heard.

Moose gave you a minute to look at each other and fail to exchange pleasantries before giving up and taking you out back of his rental house.

Three shining muscle cars were parked in the overgrown and yellowing yard, only one of which you know the name of. Eddie whistled.

"Doin’ good for yourself up here, huh?"

Moose shrugged and gave an affectionate pat the firebird of a black Pontiac Trans Am. "I’ve got a buyer for her down in Salt Lake City, but don’t have the time to take her there myself and shipping is heinous."

"What about the extra miles?" Eddie tripped over the words like a kid hopping down stairs, like he wasn’t not quite sure where the next one would lead him.

"She’s a ’78 Trans Am, nobody’s selling new."

Coming closer, you saw Moose is right about that. The leather interior had an unmistakable patina. With soft, dark spots of wear and small cracks, it wasn’t busted, but it wasn’t stiff and shiny-new, either. A front-facing slab of burnished gold with tiny overlapping circles brushed into it made up the dashboard, interrupted by hairline scratches and the circular portholes of the gauges and air vents. She had no anachronistic tape deck or satellite radio between the front seats, just the original set of two dials on each side of a backlit, lucite display.

Not new, but perfect, in a way. It was easy to imagine spending a long time in that car, by counts of miles or years. Some people must have sat in here and listened to the radio: when Sally Ride went into space in "83, when the Berlin wall fell "89, when the first mutant cure was tested (and failed) in "96. You couldn’t remember all of those things, but the car probably could.

"You got the beer truck stashed somewhere else?" You’d asked Moose.

He didn’t seem to get it, but Eddie did, giving a gravelly little laugh.

"Smokey and the Bandit, good one."

"Yeah, saw it as a kid, never forgot it."

"Amen," Eddie said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and nodding solemnly.

Moose drummed his fingers on the roof of the car and smiled. "I knew you two weirdos would get along."

"Who are you calling a weirdo?" Eddie asked.

"Are you serious? You’ve got an alien living inside of you."

"Really just airing my dirty laundry like that, huh?"

"Man, too little too late, I’ve seen you on the news. They were gonna know."

A silence followed in which they both waited for you to ask more. Was Moose being serious or just making a joke about mutation? Eddie’s weirdness was his business, just like your weirdness was yours.

"So," you said, "Salt Lake City. That’s at least a week of driving, right?"

Eddie and Moose both shrugged. At least you weren’t the least informed.

"Buyer isn’t expecting you until the eighteenth, so you’ve got some time. Feel free to tourist it up on the way. See landmarks or whatever. My treat."

Eddie took the billfold from Moose’s hand and flicked through it. "This really gonna get us across the country?"

"It had better."

The sight of the cash and the prospect of a roadtrip had a tickle building in your throat. Saliva pooled up on the back of your tongue, maybe in excitement, maybe apprehension.

As you would learn, there was reason to feel both.

Eddie explains very calmly in the hostel parking lot that this isn’t his first time having something happen. Not his third or fifth time, either. He doesn’t want to say much more right now -- really just wants to leave -- but he promises he’ll tell you more later, after the sun comes up.

"I’m sorry, babe," he says, rubbing at his eyes. "Shit, is it okay if I call you that? Bad habit. I don’t have to."

You tell him you don’t mind, there’s a lot of worse things to be called.

The car restarts easily under his now much steadier hand and he turns the radio on, volume low. "This okay? Music keeps me from nodding off."

"No, it’s okay. I like funk, too, actually. We’re moving on, then?"

"I wanna say "if you don’t mind,’ but-- Yeah, we’re moving on. You should go back to sleep, though. Like I said, radio’ll keep me awake."

Eddie doesn’t look like he’s about to nod off, but you don’t argue. He doesn’t have to tell you to sleep twice.

"Maybe no more hostels for a bit, though?"

He grunts in a way that might be a laugh or might be annoyance. "No, probably not."

You try to make the most of your car sleep, but you can only get so comfortable in a bucket seat. The first glow of dawn illuminates the car dimly in shades of pale blue, and then orange. If he notices you waking, Eddie says nothing about it, but adjusts the radio whenever you start to leave the range of the last classics station. And it is always classics.

The Bar-Kays, the Moody Blues, Earth Wind & Fire, The Temptations. You and Eddie spend the whole morning wrapped up in fuzzy guitar and throaty vocals, with the occasional brass band backing. He likes oldies and funk and classic rock and you find out around breakfast that his favorite Fleetwood Mac song is "Dreams" (yours is "The Chain").

You learn a lot about Eddie in that early morning, more than the previous two days combined. He stops before the border at a Tim Hortons and orders like a pro, somehow knowing how to get exactly the amount of cream and sugar you want using a series of words that sounds like a Soviet number station going off-script. He takes his coffee black, though, likes dipping his "Timbits" in it and letting the powdered sugar do the sweetening for him.

He likes his eggs over easy just like you and prefers Glo-Worms to gummi bears and is, unfortunately, way cuter up close in this small space than you had initially thought. He’s got sweet brown eyes and a pretty mouth and hands that are far more gentle with Moose’s paper maps than you would have guessed by the size of his arms or the roughness of his chin. He curls up tight in the passenger seat for a catnap in the afternoon, and you can’t help but be charmed, last night’s exodus aside.

Eddie, you find, is also true to his word, explaining as best he can what happened at the hostel as he crunches his way through a bag of pork rinds and Sam Cooke croons over the radio.

It isn’t really a parasite, it’s a symbiotic organism. A "symbiote."

"That seems a little, I don’t know, literal?"

Eddie laughs, "Yeah, well, that’s a good word for him."

"A straightforward kinda guy?"

"Yeah, he’s-- I guess abrasive is a word for it. Aggressive."

"Huh," you say, adjusting your hands on the wheel. That seems like an understatement if it got you thrown out of a hostel, but what do you know? You don’t live with it.

"But it’s," Eddie crunches, huffs. "He’s, I don’t know, protective. Won’t hurt certain people. Tries to do things he thinks I’d like."

"Like throwing people into walls?"

"Not always that mean, but yeah."

"What, then? Does he buy you bouquets?"

Eddie laughs, raspy, and sinks back into the cracked leather seat. "Once, actually." He cuts his gaze to you with a smile, daring you to disagree.

And even though you think you should probably still be afraid of it, that kind of makes you like it-- him. Venom. That’s what Eddie calls him.

Without the interference of crust punks or college students looking for a cheap bed, things with Eddie could go on like this for weeks, you imagine, simmering. Sitting side by side, getting to know each other one fun-fact at a time, not touching except nearly, when passing things back and forth. Just little sparks, the kind of kindling that keeps you warm as you pull off to a rest stop around midnight to sleep.

It’s spring, but you’re in Michigan according to the rest stop signage, so Eddie gets out to grab the blankets from the trunk. Gravel crunches under his feet, not half as loud as the pork rinds. He knocks on the window in the universal sign to roll it down. This requires you to reach across the seats and crank, because this car is beautiful, but she’s in her golden years. You turn the handle and slowly, the window opens.

Eddie leans in, blanket in one arm, the other resting on the door. "You want to stay up here or get in the back?"

You shut the car off. The wind blows around him through the window, stirring your hair and smelling of grass and wet. Even under your flannel your skin prickles.

"Actually, let’s get in the back," you say, thinking of your earlier nap. "Getting pretty sick of this view." You gesture towards the wheel and windshield.

"Sure," he says, lilting and with a shrug. He reaches his free arm in to start cranking the window shut himself. You let him try, going on until his arm gets stuck. It’s absent-minded and conscientious at the same time, silly but sweet. Perpetually endearing.

He pulls your door open instead of waiting for you to get out. When you slide into the backseat together, he folds the blanket down between you, a little modesty curtain between your back and his front. You can still feel him, though, warm and breathing behind you. It’s comforting to know that Eddie falls asleep almost instantly. It’s not the same for you.

You haven’t shared a room since college and before that you were an only child. You haven’t had a partner in your bed for... well, better not to think about it now. It’s not going to help you sleep any easier, thinking about how lonely the last few years have been and what nice company Eddie could be if you let him. Or rather, if he was even interested. That’s the part you doubt.

But doubt or no, you’re thinking about it again and, well, he’s gotta be asleep with the way he’s snoring, right? It wouldn’t be all that hard just to wedge a couple of fingers right where your thighs meet. Not inside or anything, just over your jeans. With the threat of waking him up it wouldn’t even take that much, probably only five minutes before you’d be coming in your pants all loose and relaxed. And that’d be better, wouldn’t it? To rub one out real quick, just for the sake of your rest. Nature’s Ambien. Maybe even the more considerate thing to do. Better than waking Eddie up tossing and turning from a nightmare or a frustrated dream.

You can make one up so easily, too, remembering the way Eddie reacted when he saw the car. A little sad that it was worn down, but unmistakably excited to get behind the wheel. Maybe he’s into that kind of thing, would like to bend you over the hood for a quickie...

Sleeping in jeans is usually nothing but a downer, but as you scooch out of Eddie’s big spoon, the seam of your Levi’s stretches tight in just the right place and, hey, maybe you won’t have to get your hand involved after all. With the smallest moves you can manage, you ride the denim until your heartbeat starts to quicken. It slots in nicely with an image you have in your head of sitting astride Eddie’s thigh.

You nearly yelp as the seam twists in your underwear and pinches. It doesn’t hurt that bad, but the interruption isn’t welcome.

You do your best to adjust and slide your outside hand down your side and over the swell of your hip. It’s your non-dominant hand, but the other arm is currently pillowing your head and already mostly asleep and it’s not worth a crick in your neck.

But it is worth destroying the little trust you and Eddie have been building. Apparently.

You put your hand back where it was and try to ignore both the press of your jeans and the heat of your shame. Seriously? Trying to get off while he’s right there? You’re a creep for even thinking about it, let alone trying it. From here on out, no more weird thoughts about Eddie and definitely no masturbating in the back seat. You’ll keep things normal if it kills you.

Eddie shifts in his sleep behind you, throwing an elbow or knee into your back. And shit, you think, that was a mistake, the worst mistake you’ve made in a long time. He’s gonna throw you out of the car, leave you to deal with all of this alone, abandoned on a shitty Interstate in Michigan with nothing but your clothes and the cornfields to keep you company.

You’re so busy catastrophizing, imagining yourself having to hitchhike your way all the way back to New York from western Ontario, that you almost miss the little rumble emanating from behind you.

Done already, sweetheart?

And that-- that is not Eddie.

It doesn’t sound like him. It’s not quite warm like him, either, but hot. You can feel the heat of it through the blanket, bleeding through to you like sunlight through a thin shirt. The shape of it feels off, too, like it can’t settle as it moves continuously behind your back.

Mmm, don’t be coy, we know you’re awake.

"Are-- are you, uh," you stammer.

Mm-hmm. Told you about us, right? We wouldn’t forget about that.