Safe.

A Chapter by Lolita

Starting out with nothing but a Buick and an Icee.

    "This is like some miserable form of heaven."
    Lukas has a soft, scratchy voice, like a little boy on an old record that's been played too many times. It's barely audible over the roar of the wind assaulting the open windows of the car, but Jonah can hear him. He thinks sometimes that he could pick Lukas out in a crowd of a million people if he just said Jonah's name.
    "How do you mean?" he asks, glancing over at him quickly, then darting his eyes back to the road. They're quite literally in the middle of nowhere, going down one of those long stretched out strips of black asphalt snaking through the middle of a desert, the kind you'd see in a movie along with some dramatic music as the two main characters drove away from their problems and onto bigger and better things.
    "I mean," Lukas says, sticking a hand out the window and letting his fingers be attacked by the barreling wind, "it's so empty. We haven't seen another car for an hour. It's like this is some kind of other world, and we're the only two left."
    "Shame you're not a girl then, as we can't exactly repopulate the earth together." Jonah turns his head a few inches to see Lukas grinning in that lopsided, off-kilter way that always unnerves him a little bit. It's sort of... unhinged. But then again, so is Lukas. It's why they left.
    "You're the b***h in this relationship and you know it, Jonah." The grin fades slowly as Lukas tucks his knees up against his chest, gazing out the window at the far-off mountains. "I wonder when we'll be safe," he murmurs, vocalizing something that Jonah had been worrying about for most of their twenty seven going on twenty eight hour drive. His mother had said often that Jonah had been born worrying, but something strange had been happening every time he'd turned to Lukas to ask him what they were going to do: he'd seen the utter innocence in Lukas' eyes, he'd seen the way his dark hair had fluttered across his forehead in the most carefree way, he'd seen the crease between Lukas' eyebrows disappear completely.
    And he couldn't bring himself to speak.
    Brown eyes turn onto Jonah's blue ones, and they both look at each other for a moment, before Jonah turns back to the road. Lukas' fingers, with their chewed down nails and silver rings, slither their way onto Jonah's denim-clad thigh. It's gone in another moment, but it was all they need to be calm, to know that things would eventually turn out alright as long as they kept on driving.
    There's a crinkling noise as Lukas takes out an old map, withered at the edges and stained with spilled cherry slushies after a trip to a tiny 7-11 on the outskirts of the last town they had been in more than a day ago. They'd been laughing and Lukas had, in a fit of giggles, spit cherry-flavored ice and water all over the dashboard, where it still gleamed in the hot Arizona sun, dried onto the fake wood of Jonah's old beat-up car.
    "We should be coming up on a little town soon. A few hours' drive at the most." He folds the map up and shoves it back in the glove box, then leans back in his seat and lets out a sigh, closing his eyes.
    "Sleep," Jonah says, though he's been doing all the driving and his eyelids are drooping more and more by the minute.
    "No. Pull over and I'll drive. You need to sleep." Lukas doesn't sound like he's just offering to be nice, and Jonah knows better than to f**k with him when he means business. But he hates sleeping, and Lukas knows it.
    "I don't think you'll have any nightmares." Lukas looks at him plainly. "Jonah," he says, and it's a serious Jonah, not a playful Jonaaaaaah or an about to come Jonah-ah-ah-ahh! "You get why, don't you? We're going to be safe."
    "Safe," Jonah echoes, pulling over on the side of the road and stopping the car.
    Lukas smiles, and it's not a shifty lilting grin, but a genuine soft smile. "Safe," he whispers, and Jonah kisses him before he climbs into the backseat, where he spends three blissfully nightmare-free hours, dreaming of what it would feel like to be safe.