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It’s been a long day, but a productive one. Better than they have been, lately. It’s days like this that Robbie can pretend everything is alright, that everything is normal. The summer sun still hangs high, well above the horizon, and as Robbie steps out from the Playhouse into the parking lot, it glints off the metal bodies like stars in the night sky. Hot chromium on grey gravel.
Levon leans against the fresh green paintwork of Robbie’s new BMW. Robbie’s been precious about it, had it on order for a month or so from Europe, but he doesn’t tell Levon to get off it. Levon just stands there, hip cocked, cigarette hanging from his mouth, nearly at the filter now. He hasn’t asked to drive it yet. Robbie knows it’s coming.
Not this time, though.
Levon looks up at him with that ever-familiar wildness in his eyes. White water. “You gon’ show me how she handles, then?” He flicks the cigarette to the ground. Huffs smoke out through his nose.
It’s a question, but really it isn’t. Often that way with him, now. “You need a ride?” he asks instead.
He smiles - sharp, all teeth - and doesn’t reply. Levon had totalled his Corvette a few days earlier - sore ribs and a cut on his wrist from the glass, not much more. The same can’t be said for the car.
They stand there in silence for a few moments until Robbie gives in. Isn’t sure what he’s pushing, anyway. He rarely does these days. Unlocks the car for Levon before heading round the other side, slipping in. “Your place?”
He watches Levon draw in a long breath. The car still smells of fresh leather. Stings Robbie’s nose if he breathes too deep. He watches Levon feel it. “Been thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ one of these,” he says. “Maybe we could take the road on up to the lake.”
Robbie slips the key in the ignition, starts the car up with a rumble. “Whatever you say,” he says, no real desire to argue. He’s a little stoned, some of the edges that seem to clash with Levon the most having dulled just a little. He reaches for the radio, switches it on - it comes up on an old doo-wop number Robbie thinks he might have heard once, years ago, but not enough to name it.
Levon turns it off almost as soon as Robbie’s hand returns to the wheel. Robbie just huffs a little through his nose, doesn’t bother saying anything about it. He doesn’t want to give Levon the gratification of a reaction. “She sounds good,” Levon comments after a beat, once Robbie begins to move.
“Mm,” he hums, and presses his foot on the gas just a little to speed it up as they pull out onto the road, working up through the gears. His seat is warm, all day in the sun, and the vibrations rattle up through his thighs.
He drives them out onto the road up to the lake - long, winding, through green-leaved trees and high verges, and the coupe handles beautifully along those bends. Smooth, rolling like low thunder.
“Go a little faster,” Levon says, doesn’t even look at Robbie.
Robbie goes a little faster. He’s been meaning to test it out some. The thunder grows, and he feels the depth of it in his gut in the same way he feels the kick of Levon's drum, the edges of his vision pulling as the speed increases. His stomach tilts.
Levon exhales slow, still and steady out of the corner of Robbie’s eye.
He’s quiet a moment.
Then– “More.” There’s an edge to it in his low cadence, in the way it rumbles out of him in the pitch of the engine, and it’s the kind of tone that does something to Robbie, stirs something deep inside of him. It’s a voice he rarely uses, only comes out of him in private, when he wants something, when he wants something very specific from Robbie.
Robbie sends a quick glance towards Levon, just finds him staring out the window, fingers on the edge of the window.
He swallows that feeling down. Presses his foot on the gas. Listens to the sound of it, the feel of it between his legs. He may not be as inclined to tearing his way down these roads like Levon or Rick or Richard, but he can’t deny the rumble gets into his veins, the speed of it sending sharp pangs of adrenaline rushing through him in a hot tear like the car along that high road. The asphalt spins away behind them in the rear window like a dropped spool of thread.
Levon huffs again, a quick burst out of his nose like some kind of animal. “That’s it, baby,” he says and it sends this pulse of electricity through him in its half-murmured shape, and no, that’s definitely something, and as Robbie feels his face heat, he looks at him more closely.
He’s sat still, yes, but his legs have drifted apart a little– easing the tightness of his jeans, Robbie realises. He’s half-hard in the passenger seat. Robbie swallows thickly. Wonders, briefly, whether it’s the speed or the car or simply Robbie following his directions. Knowing Levon it’s probably all of those things.
But he keeps going.
The road climbs, and he revs the car to pull her up that hill, and when they pass over it, his stomach flips at the hump. He lets up on the accelerator a little as they go down again, his hands tight on the steering wheel - tighter than they need to be - as he rounds the corner a little too fast, faster than he normally would. It tilts them to the left a little with the momentum of it, and as he picks up speed again on the way out, it’s like the engine is resonating in his skull.
He can’t get it out of his head - Levon next to him like that. A bump in the road, the slightest noise from his throat to the right of him, and Robbie can feel himself start to stir too. Can’t help it, with the smell of him, wood and headiness, twisted in with the new leather and the gas and the way that his seat buzzes with the vehicle.
Robbie isn’t sure what it is - a shift in the air or maybe a sound from his throat that he missed or even that Levon smelt him on the air like a fucking coyote - but when he shoots another glance across to him, Levon is watching him. Eyes bright, daring, a smile playing on his lips. Not one of Levon’s broad, friendly grins, or the private smiles he used to press into Robbie’s neck in much younger days - increasingly fewer of those have been directed at him lately - but something else entirely. Not quite predatory, not quite mean and certainly not kind, but sort of amused and hungry. Pleased, though, it’s definitely pleased, and even that does something to Robbie, though he doesn’t care to think about that much further.
And then Levon is shifting, because of course he fucking is. Pushing along the bench seat closer to him, and then he’s got a hand on his thigh, moving slow and ever closer.
Suddenly Robbie can’t look at him, can’t take his eyes off the goddamn road. He’s still tearing along it, far faster than he ever usually would, can’t seem to stop. Leans into Levon’s approval too much - he hates that he still wants it. It takes so much not to look at him, not to let his eyes close as Levon touches him for the first time, as he sees Levon’s face out of the corner of his eye, feels his breath against him before the slightest brush of his lips against his cheek, against his jaw, against his neck.
His heart skips, gut twists, and he takes that next bend too sharp again, jostling them both as his sweaty hands slip on the wheel, and he feels himself have to gasp at the shock of it, and from Levon there is only a laugh. His hand keeps moving, and Robbie feels it begin to spark warm and bright in him.
“Lee,” he warns, makes a sort of trapped sound in the back of his throat, trying to get him to back off. This is so stupid. This isn’t what he does, this is what Levon does. This is the type of shit they used to do, young and godless, when Robbie would have followed Levon anywhere. Before Dominique, before his daughter, before he had fucking responsibilities that meant something. But Robbie knows. Knows terribly, embarrassingly, that he wants it. He knows he does. And when Levon’s hand presses harder, he knows this too– he will say yes. He’d still follow Levon much further than he’d like to admit.
Levon rubs his hand between his legs, no grip to it, just motion and the press of fingers, his middle finger pushing hardest, almost circular, as if he expects to find something else between his legs. Robbie wonders– has he been doing this with the girls he’s been bringing out here, is that what he’s been doing when he’s been sticking those cars in ditches all over Woodstock. He lets out a shaky breath as Levon leans in close, says, breathy, “You must be the one man in the goddamn state who’d turn down gettin’ his dick sucked in his shiny new sports car.”
Goddammit, he thinks, tries to swallow the slightest moan as his cock hardens in his pants. “It isn’t–” Safe, maybe, or a good idea, or maybe something entirely different. He doesn’t know because his brain has stopped giving him words.
“C’mon,” Levon says, and he grins, Robbie can hear it, feel it, even, his teeth at the underside of his jaw as he tries to stare resolutely at the road, holds the wheel in a white-knuckled grasp so as not to spin wide. “You gotta live a little. I don’t know nobody as wound-up as you.”
He starts to undo his fly and Robbie jumps, the car slowing a little, swerving before he straightens out. And then Levon is taking him out, hand on him familiarly rough-palmed and warm, and all Robbie managed is a half-caught, “Mm.”
“Nobody gonna come along here in the middle of the day,” he soothes, starts stroking him, teeth still at his jawline and murmuring the persuasions against his skin like they’re fucking affections. “I been out here hundreds of times. You go too fuckin’ slow to hit anything, anyway.”
“Why can’t I – ah – why can’t I say no to you?”
“You know that ain’t true. Just tryin’ to make you feel good, Duke.”
That isn’t true either, he knows that. This is some fucking– some power play, some stupid game, some inexplicable test from Levon. Or in the very least, Levon’s making himself feel good. Seems to Robbie that’s Levon’s main fucking priority these days. But, Levon’s priority or not, Robbie feels pretty good too. His heart pounds in his chest as he begins to shift, almost involuntarily, under Levon’s hand. The road keeps on flying past, the engine keeps on pounding through his ears. He feels like he’s on goddamn fire.
So he spreads his legs. And then Levon’s going down.
His mouth is hot and does nothing to soothe the burning, only stoke it. He’s good at it, now, years of practice, and Robbie is not especially prone to possessiveness around him - God knows he’d probably go insane if he was - but he finds himself hoping he’s the only one, that his is the only cock Levon’s ever tasted, at the very least the only one he’s ever had here. Hurtling down the fucking asphalt with the thunder in their blood.
Robbie can barely breathe, let alone think, and his foot backs off the pedal, slipping as he presses into that wet heat, as Levon hums around him, as he moves his head– and then he pulls up for a moment, fingers splaying at the base of his cock. “Faster,” he says.
Robbie’s hands shake; he clenches them on the wheel. It takes him a moment. He’s not moving, he thinks, Levon’s leading here, but then– he knows. Levon’s got his other hand in his own pants, fist tight like he’s punishing himself, and he’s leaning heavy on Robbie’s leg. He should refuse, he shouldn’t let himself give into this, but Christ. In the trees flying past in darting flashes, the heady rumble of the BMW, Levon’s hand, Levon’s mouth, it’s too easy to press his foot down harder.
They pick up speed. Sixty, seventy, more, maybe, he’s stopped watching the meter climb, just feels that roar in his bones and that heat off the seats and the engine and Levon.
He’s close. He feels the scrape of teeth, and coupled with everything else, Robbie feels a pulse of what could be fear but not any kind of fear he’s ever felt before. He presses his hips up into Levon’s mouth, feels himself hit the back of his throat. He moans.
Then there’s the car.
Lights flashing, horn blaring. Silver Ford, glinting like a knife down that winding road as it gets closer and closer. Robbie can feel the tightness in his gut growing taut, tauter, his breathing shuddering, and he can hear that car’s engine now, growling louder as it gets nearer and nearer and–
Levon’s hand comes flying to the wheel, a sharp little steer to the right, and the car flies clear past them with a roar that stirs something so deep that he gasps, sharp, and then he’s coming.
He has no idea how he manages to keep the damn thing on the road, but he does. Carries on driving as he slowly comes back to himself, as Levon pulls off, as his cock hangs limp between his legs and cools in the open air of the car. Robbie can’t believe he’s done any of this.
He swallows, mouth dry, and hazards a glance at Levon. Both of his hands are splayed on his legs, fly undone, and his briefs are wet. Nothing on the dashboard, nothing on the leather. And Levon just flashes him a grin. “You gotta let me drive this thing,” is all he says.
—
Robbie tries not to think about it. Fails, mostly, nearly every time he gets in his car. He tries for a while to rationalise it. That he didn’t know what Levon had wanted when he’d let him in the car, that he was trying to find some goddamn connection with him again, that he didn’t know how far it was going to go. That at least there’s something Levon’s excited about that doesn’t come from a fucking needle. None of it is enough, not for how damn good it felt.
At least, he tells himself, it won’t happen again.
“Let me borrow your car,” Levon asks a few days later, clear as day, in front of the whole fucking control room. After a whole morning joking about his totalled Corvette.
Another goddamn game. Another goddamn test. That’s what this is, Robbie knows, but–
He can’t stop thinking about that drive, hopes, fucking prays that he doesn’t flush, even though he must, he can feel it in his face. Heat, pure heat. And Levon’s gaze sharpens impossibly, those green-blue eyes cutting and precise. He doesn’t reply, though, just lets the words sit.
Robbie isn’t losing the game. He wants to trust Levon, desperately, desperately does, but he finds that he simply doesn’t. He doesn’t do it out of trust. He does it to win. He throws him the keys.
Levon catches them, flashes a grin. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll bring her back in one piece.”
“You’re a braver man than me, Robbie,” Todd says, not looking up.
Levon hesitates in the doorway. A hesitation is rare for him, Robbie knows. He feels something in him perk up. “You wanna supervise?” Levon asks.
He knows exactly what that question is.
And he should say no. Robbie knows he should. It was a mistake the last time, it’ll be a mistake now. He wants no part in Levon’s tirade of self-destruction, hates the idea of encouraging him, would rather just look the other way. Hurts too much most of the time to look at it head-on - what he’s become. What he’s doing.
Robbie doesn’t. Robbie stands. Wishes he didn’t, but he does, and he follows Levon out that door.
They get back in his car. The new leather smell is fading, slowly, but it’s still there, stubborn. It’s a bit later in the day today, not as hot, and he’d parked up in the shade so the seat is cool. Robbie is almost glad of it, presses a palm against the seat to the side of him to try to stop his palms sweating as Levon pulls out of the parking lot smoothly.
“You gotta get it out more often,” Levon tells him like it’s nothing as he pulls onto the main road back to Bearsville, like they don’t know what’s going to happen out here. “Car like this shouldn’t be a fuckin’ commuter car. She’s gotta get out and breathe.”
“It’s not a horse, Lee,” he says, staring out the window at the passing trees.
He snorts, not completely out of humour. He takes them around the bend. “Smooth,” he comments.
Robbie hums.
It isn’t until they get out on a long road headed west that Levon really starts to pick up speed - it’s mostly straight, Robbie’s not been out this direction in a long while and Levon takes a turn onto some track he barely remembers. It winds off towards the horizon, dirty and thin, a brown-grey trickle trailing off into the green.
The coupe tears up a stream of dust behind them as Levon revs the car, pushes it harder, pushes it faster. Jaw set like he's found the groove. Must be eighty or so, now, and Robbie’s beginning to feel short of breath. Some sort of flutter of anxious excitement churns in him, and he tells himself he doesn’t like it but he knows that’s a lie. Raw heat begins to flood his veins, begins to pool low. The BMW roars down that dirty road.
Levon hasn’t said much. He’s quieter these days, especially with Robbie, but the silence now is especially potent. Robbie looks at him, and he’s staring resolutely forward. Focused, so focused, the way he only ever is when he plays or when he fucks.
The sun hangs low in the sky, leaden and hot and incredibly bright. It’s in Levon’s eyes, Robbie can see that - the way his eyes flash, the way he squints, the way it washes his skin warm, dying freckles fading over his cheekbones, the way his hair glints golden. Levon doesn’t look at him - he’s looking straight ahead. Robbie wonders absurdly if he’s staring directly at the sun, but when he turns, he sees it, glinting on the horizon.
A metal star at first, just pure light and refraction.
“Levon,” he says, just to say something, like Levon hasn’t seen it. But he knows he has.
He can see it as a truck, now. Big, red. Chevy pickup, centred on the long, thin road. Hurtling about as fast as they are, burning in the sun on that thin road. Getting closer, closer, and Robbie knows that a collision at this speed would be fatal, and this whole goddamn thing changes in his head, and he starts seeing all of it. Pictures crushed metal, scattered glass. Blood. His blood. Levon’s blood. Levon flexes his fingers on the wheel of the BMW.
“Levon,” he tries again, and the feeling in him is starting to crystallise now - fear. Robbie can’t call it anything but that. He wants to grab the wheel, wants to swerve, but he’s frozen, eyes darting between the truck and Levon.
Levon doesn’t falter. A muscle in his jaw twitches.
Bigger, bigger. His ears are ringing, he feels his breath catch, heart pounding. Robbie can only hear that, that and the roar of the engine and Levon’s breath and the truck’s horn blaring, cacophonous, and he’s shouting, not even meaning to, “Levon!”
At the last second, Levon swerves. Harsh, sharp, and the car rocks so hard that Robbie isn’t sure they haven’t hit it, tyres screaming and kicking up dirt as they spin off the asphalt onto the side of the road. Robbie is thrown into Levon, grabs onto the door handle as the car fishtails, and then Levon is pulling them back onto the road on the other side and leaving that damn pickup in the rearview.
As they straighten out, Levon tells him, “Didn’t fuckin’ touch it,” not quite prideful, and certainly not soothing. No, it’s headier than that, deeper. It’s like he’s vibrating with it, chest heaving and skin flushed and radiating sheer heat.
Robbie feels himself shaking, feels his breath tremble its way out of his lungs as Levon pulls them up off the road, slightly secluded by a willow, and it’s only then that he realises where all that adrenaline has gone in him, what all those sparked nerves have caused, all that blood pooling somewhere between his legs. He barely gets time to wonder whether he’s truly gone insane, whether something has genuinely short-circuited in him before Levon has put the car into neutral and is on him. “What the fuck–” he tries, but Levon cuts him off, kisses him open-mouthed, alive, fuck, alive.
He’s pressed back against the car door, fingers grappling first at leather before he finally grabs onto Levon’s shirt, parts his legs so Levon can shove his knee up between them. “Not a goddamn scratch,” Levon tells him, the words echoing in his mouth, and Robbie finds awfully that he doesn’t even give that much of a shit about the paintwork, not like this. Levon bites his lip, his jaw, his throat, and he moans, grinds down on his leg.
They hump like fucking teenagers against the inside of the door, Levon pushing down hard enough on his thigh that Robbie thinks he might get friction burns, tries not to think about the revving of the engine and the red truck and Levon’s clean and practised swerve out of the way, and he comes fully clothed right there with a hapless grunt.
Robbie lets Levon collapse on his chest after without complaint, feels the heat and rub of the fabric begin to itch uncomfortably on his skin. He holds Levon’s head against his chest, keeps his legs half-wrapped around him. Like he might be able to keep him. It’s been a long time since Levon has let Robbie hold him like this. Maybe that’s the damn point of this, he tries to reason with himself, but he knows it isn’t.
“You’re gonna get hurt,” Robbie tells him, without even meaning to, strangely calm.
Levon hums. “I’m careful,” he says simply.
“That ain’t–that isn’t enough, Lee, you know that,” he says. He keeps his voice calm, and it seems to keep Levon the same way, at least right now. “Careful don’t win out against luck.” They’re talking about something else, and they both know it.
“Good thing I’m lucky, then.” It’s a non-answer, and Robbie knows that Levon means it as such. “You can’t spend your life just doin’ fuckin’ nothing because somethin’ bad might happen. That ain’t why we’re here.”
“You wanna get into the fucking meaning of life?”
His shoulders shift. A laugh, almost. “Naw, you know what I mean. What’s the damn point if we can’t have a little fun? Just wanna feel good, Robbie.”
“Feel good,” he repeats, tries not to get angry. This is the most they’ve spoken about this without raised voices in weeks, if not more. They’ve not been talking much at all, lately. “You could get yourself killed.”
“Could get yourself killed doin’ fuckin’ anything, boy,” Levon replies, sharper now. Still quiet, though, still against his heart. “Get yourself killed goin’ goddamn twenty through the middle of fuckin’ town. And you’d never get to feel like this.”
There are things Robbie could say that would ruin it - that Levon is going to have a kid soon, he can’t keep thinking like that. That it’s a childish way to think about things, selfish. But he doesn’t want that, not now. “Just sayin’ it’s dangerous. You worry me.”
He hums, shifts, just a little, and Robbie knows he’ll be getting up in a moment. “But you’re here,” he says simply.
That sits heavy. He doesn’t like it. “I’m here,” he repeats.
—
It’s dark and the headlights on Levon’s new Corvette spill pale over the light grey road back to Woodstock. It’s fall now, the trees beginning to loom bare, almost sinister in the flashing lights on the bends as they cast long shadows like dark tendrils across the night. Fall, cool, but Levon’s still got the roof down on his convertible. Robbie’s cold. Trying not to think about anything other than the fact he’s cold.
Things have been getting worse between them, they both know it. Robbie doesn’t like to think about it, so he tries not to, and he just looks the other way. He knows Levon is doing the same. They each have other things to throw themselves into these days to keep busy. He tries not to think about what that means for Levon.
It hasn’t happened again, not since that red Chevy and Robbie’s BMW and the dirt he spent an hour trying to polish off the fucking bumper.
Levon tears through the night at about the same speed as he would during the day. Robbie tries not to get too caught up in the roar, in the rumble. Tells himself it’s the rushing wind that’s leaving him breathless, that the clenching somewhere inside of him is hunger, that the heat in the core of him is just thanks to his coat.
The trees whip past and Robbie can hear the way the sound of the car echoes off the banks at the side of the road, how it changes ever so slightly as they fly past gaps in the treeline, as the bank starts to give way into a ditch. If they went flying over the edge of that, Robbie isn’t sure how far they’d go before they wrapped the car around a tree.
Levon looks good like this, focused and honed in with the wind in his hair and his hands on the wheel, silent amongst the great roar of the engine in the silence of the night. He really is a good driver.
Tonight, they’re driving back from some party. Robbie isn’t sure whose. He usually knows, that’s usually his job, but Albert told them to go so they went. They went, they showed, they left early. Garth hadn’t bothered, Richard had disappeared within half an hour, and Rick was probably only a couple of miles ahead of them now.
They round a bend too fast, and Robbie jolts. “Goddamn–” Levon starts, corrects as they skid, wheel skimming the edge of the road where it tumbles down into the woods. The scrape of it, the spin– Robbie feels the bright crash of adrenaline in his veins and the gasp that it shocks out of him.
Levon flashes him a look, the barest glimpse of a grin, then back on the road - and Robbie can see himself in the mirror. Wide-eyed, lips parted. That stubborn goddamn flush on his cheekbones. “Easy,” he says, for want of saying anything at all.
He watches Levon’s throat work as he evens out. He tries not to do the same, tries not to keep staring either.
Then–
Deer. Eyes flashing in the headlights, stock still and fucking big, antlers like branches reaching upwards and a sort of ghostly paleness to its coat, and with a curse, Levon swerves.
A screeching, a metallic roaring, a terrible breathless shaking, until a sudden and violent stop.
The crash echoes into the night, dissipating like smoke. Then, silence.
Robbie opens his eyes. He didn’t realise he’d closed them. It’s dark, still, but one of the headlights is on, casting a ghostly wash over the rotten earth of the woods at the bottom of the ditch. He heaves a single, gasping breath.
Then he stares. Sees the tree buried obscenely deep into the crumpled black metal of the hood of the Corvette, the metal creasing up around it in folds, shimmering in the moonlight like they’re wet. The engine huffs a steady stream of smoke, steam. The glass of the windshield is gone, shattered across their laps and the ground and the rest of the car. It is only then that he becomes aware of the sting, brings his fingers up to the side of his head– and winces.
Blood, he realises, and he glances at the window next to him to see it shattered, still in frame, glass pressed in in an indentation where he’d hit his head. He checks his fingers, finds only a few drops and figures it can’t be that bad.
Then–
Levon.
He turns with a sort of directionless panic, and it is not immediately soothed by the sight of him, though he is clearly conscious, clearly alright. He’s got a hand to his nose. Blood, there, too, but Robbie doesn’t think he’s broken it. Just hit it on the wheel, probably. When Levon turns, sudden, the panic he sees in his eyes is a mirror of his own. He has blood smeared over his upper lip, around his mouth, wiped by the back of his hand.
Robbie tries not to feel gratified by that. It wouldn’t be fair to think he wouldn’t care - but the number of things Levon cares about has grown smaller and smaller over the last few months, and some childish and insecure part of Robbie had wondered just when he’d finally slip off that list.
“You’re hurt,” Levon says, unreadable.
He swallows drily. “So are you.”
“‘M fine.” And he’s moving then, a rustle of fabric and a scrape of leather as he shifts himself closer along the bench seat, broken glass singing as it drops into the footwell. “Lemme see.”
Robbie tilts his head. Watches Levon in the moonlight, silvered, his hand coming up slow. Shaking, and that’s what gets Robbie– a fucking reaction. His breath shudders out of him as he lets Levon touch him, move him, look at it as best as he can in the pale spill of light off the ground and underneath the moon. Wind wisps cool and Robbie is glad for it. He’s too hot, blood coursing like a wildfire throughout his whole body.
“Ain’t bad,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t let go.
“I know,” he replies. Feels caught, almost– in time, in Levon’s assessing gaze. Levon’s fingertips burn against his skin, and he can feel his breath on his lips. Warm. Wet. He turns himself towards him, a slight ache to his body he knows will be worse in the morning but it’s no worry now.
Levon’s head tilts slightly, slow. Curious, almost, lips parting as he looks close at him. Robbie feels unsteady. Then Levon is pressing his fingers against the thin cut. Robbie hisses as it stings, as the blood sticks to his fingertips and he pushes at the edges of it like he’s trying to go deeper, and as his mouth falls open, Levon moves forward to catch his lip between his teeth, pressing into where Robbie had half-bitten through his own skin. He struggles to catch the whimper, but his hands are on Levon fast.
A crack splits to a shatter.
He has a sudden and desperate need to touch him. Robbie hauls him closer, turning more fully, and they’re both manoeuvring fast to get closer, come together, and soon Robbie’s on his back with Levon between his legs, boots and shoes knocking together on the seat. Robbie grabs the back of his head, kisses him deep, tonguing into his mouth as he hears little shards of glass drop to the ground somewhere, the slow hiss of the engine. Levon tastes of blood and he is hard already; Robbie wonders if he had been the whole way along that road, or maybe since they nearly spun off the first time. He moans at the thought as Levon grinds into him.
“I wanna fuck you,” Levon tells him as he pulls apart, hands all over him, eyes flashing like chromium. “Let me fuck you, baby.”
They haven’t in a long time. Months, maybe, neither having the time nor inclination, and Robbie had begun to think it wasn’t a part of who they were anymore. He tried not to feel it like a loss. “Please,” he says, pushing against Levon’s hand where it presses between his legs. “Yes, yes.”
And Levon is moving then, grabbing something out of the glovebox, and Robbie briefly thinks it might be something insane like grease, like motor oil, but it’s not, it’s Vaseline, and Levon gets Robbie’s pants down just below his knees and presses him into the leather seat before he starts working him open. Perfunctory, almost, but Robbie finds he doesn’t care, not now. He would, usually. Something must have been knocked loose.
Under the stars, car having cut a clear path through woodland off the road, Robbie is suddenly aware that someone might show up to check on them at any time. A sudden twist of a hot urgency. “Now, Lee, now.”
He doesn’t need telling. Levon presses himself flush against Robbie’s back, and as he pushes inside him, solid and hot and big, Robbie screws his eyes shut and pushes his forehead against the back of the seat, one hand trapped across his chest and the other fumbling behind him at Levon’s thigh. More burning. Black metal in the sun. He grunts, hears himself make a few strained sounds as Levon presses his lips drily to the back of his neck.
“Fuckin’...” he bites out, doesn’t even mean to. “Move,” he insists.
Levon fucks him slow and deep with a snap to his hips that is unfamiliar. He jerks him off with one hand and brings the other up to grip in his hair, occasionally prods at the cut at his temple when he wants to hear him hiss. “Beautiful,” he tells him when Robbie lets out a high gasp, finally at the right angle. “So good, baby.”
There’s a pain to it all, but it feels so fucking intoxicating that Robbie can’t disentangle it, wants to stay there forever. His breath is hot against the car seat in front of him. “Go a little faster.”
He does, picks up the tempo. Foot on the goddamn accelerator. “Like that?” he murmurs, teeth scraping against his ear, and he’s listening to him. That makes something warm and bright start to flutter and ache in him. Always a fucking fight with him. Not now, not this time.
“M-more,” he pushes out, even if just to get him to follow his lead again.
And he does, hand dropping from Robbie’s hair so he can lean up on his arm. Robbie hears glass crush under his forearm, wonders if Levon can feel it through his thick sleeve. Levon fucks him fast, knocking the air out of his lungs, and Robbie thinks inexplicably of the days Levon used to fly full-throttle down the interstate with him riding shotgun in that light green Cadillac, when Robbie used to glance over to him and think embarrassingly of Jimmy Dean.
“That’s it,” he gasps, clenching hard at Levon’s thigh with his hand, intent on bruising. “That’s it, Lee.”
“Feel good?” Levon asks him, panting, and it’s–it’s not a question, Robbie hears it. It’s some kind of taunt. Just wanna feel good, Robbie, he recalls. “You feelin’ good, Robbie?”
And he is, that’s obvious, and not the point of Levon’s question. Instead of replying, he just tilts his head back so he can see him, look up at those bright eyes glinting like steel. “Faster.”
Levon listens, flashes his teeth in the cold light, only lasts a few more moments before he’s burying himself obscenely deep and gasping against Robbie’s ear. He presses his forehead down hard against the cut on Robbie’s head. Levon’s already jerking him off faster by the time he pulls out, come spilling onto the leather as he does it. Robbie tries to swallow the half-trapped sounds he’s making, but Levon coaxes him on.
He doesn’t speak, occasionally hushes him, and does not look away. It’s hard to look, like staring at the sun, but Robbie holds his gaze as the familiar tightness builds deep in his gut. Levon is– not quite grinning, blood on his teeth, but it’s something. Knowing. Like he’s won something, and Robbie has some idea of what it is, and he feels his whole body clench like he’s bracing for impact as he comes with an aborted gasp into Levon’s fist.
They lie there for a long time in the wreck of Levon’s open-top car under the sky, moon too bright to really see the stars, just black and endless. Dread begins to encroach on Robbie like that dark void– what the hell was that, where the hell are they. Practicalities. He’s always practical.
Always? Something inside of him asks, and it sounds like Levon.
“How we gettin’ back?” he asks.
Levon snorts. Amused. “Reckon we’re only ‘bout five miles out. We can walk most of that, try and hitch a ride.”
Now Robbie isn’t sure about that, covered in blood and come and pieces of the broken Corvette, would much rather walk five miles in his fucking dress shoes than muscle themselves both in with some farmer stinking of dirt and each other. “Sonofabitch,” he says, mostly to himself, and they’re getting up, leaving the body of that car down in the ditch.
Levon presses his fingers slow against that folded hood as he passes.
Looking at it, at the crumpled metal and the long scratches down the side and the crushed path down from the road, Robbie knows they’re lucky to be alive. It makes his blood burn. He swallows, follows Levon up the hill and back onto the road. Solid earth, reality. Hard ground beneath his feet. Levon is limping.
Stupid, childish, dangerous. Robbie’s feet scrape along the asphalt. A certain degree of anger and blame begins to fester as he watches Levon’s back, a few feet ahead of him, faster even with the hitch in his step. He thinks of Dominique, of his girls, and the guilt is so crushing that he promises to himself he isn’t doing this shit again. Isn’t getting in a car with Levon like this again, isn’t letting him do this to them. He can resist it. He can.
He isn’t like Levon. He has some goddamn self-control.
The road is endless and even and quiet, and the long walk back is slow.
Dully and bleakly slow. And Robbie walks it steady.