The epsiodes where Luke likes a girl are always tricky, primarily because he gets so dang serious about them. Then again, this vignette, from Play it Again Luke, wasn't so hard after all.
"Luke," he asked down at his cousin, tucked under his arm, right where Bo liked to keep him. Two Duke cousins doing what they did best; standing still and watching the dust settle behind a departing RV. "How come you didn't ask Candy to stay?"
A puff of air escaped Luke's mouth before he pressed his lips together, facing Bo and asking him how he could be such an idiot without ever even opening his mouth.
"She liked you." Maybe more than that.
A bitter little laugh came out of Luke's mouth, and he tried to step away, but Bo clenched onto him all the tighter. "She's on tour, Bo," he growled, but stayed put under Bo's arm.
"I bet," Bo persisted. "She would have made Hazzard her home base if you asked her to." And it would have been a strange exchange for Bo. Over the past couple of days Luke's focus had been somewhere other than Bo, probably for the first time since he'd come back from the service. That wasn't anything Bo liked, and yet being around a woman he genuinely cared about brought out a quiet and gentle side of his cousin that no one, not even Bo, go to see anymore. Some remnants of the young adult that Luke had once been, a man that could be caught caring about things that weren't necessarily fast, loud and dangerous. Bo wasn't sure he really wanted Candy sticking around, but he did want to see more of this side of Luke.
And maybe to hear him sing like he had with Candy again, like the song meant something to him, more than words and notes and making sure they all landed in the right place. Like maybe Luke felt some things instead of just thinking them.
"She just about went back to Eddie Lee right in the middle of everything, Bo." Yeah, gentle Luke was gone, leaving behind the surly version that had slid himself out of Bo's grasp. "She ain't—"
"To protect you," Bo reminded him.
Or reminded his back, anyway, because Luke was halfway to the General. "Come on," he hollered back over his shoulder. "Let's get out of here."
Bo let him drive, or at least didn't argue when Luke slid into the driver's side of the car. Let the man take control of things, maybe all the wrong things, but he probably needed that control.
"You remember," Luke said, somewhere around the time they'd passed Conyers Crossing on their way to nowhere Bo could figure out. "Diane." A couple of seconds of just air rushing by their ears. "Benson." In case he'd forgotten, but he hadn't, just didn't like to talk about it. Neither did Luke, most days. Different reason, probably. For Bo it was that itch under his skin, slightly-nauseated feel of embarrassment. Luke just hated the woman.
"Sure, I remember." Well, at least being angry helped him to get over that other feeling he was having about Luke, caught somewhere between sympathy and nostalgia with a mix of missing a man that was sitting right next to him. "I remember just fine." That feeling of freedom he'd lusted after more strongly than the girl, thinking that without the burden of family, he could just fly over cars day and night if he wanted. Luke and gravity had been his only enemies for a couple of days there.
"You could have gone with her, after." Once they figured out that she wasn't really behind the crashes that had plagued her carnival, after Carl was shuffled away in handcuffs.
"She—" Luke wasn't a big guy, at least comparatively, but that had always been deceptive. As were his half-baked attempts at peacemaking. The man knew exactly how, where and when to hit a man to cause the greatest amount of pain. Even when it was just words he was hitting with. "I wouldn't have lasted a month with her. She ain't never really wanted me, just my—" Could say she wanted his body, but even that was pretty limited. His right foot, hands, and eyes would be enough to make the jump with, and none of them were even his best features.
"Candy ain't no different." Oh, but she was, she was beautiful to Diane's pretty, sang sweet as a bird and made Luke happy. "She wanted me to rescue her. I did. End of story."
Damn. Luke had the worst way of seeing things, but then it wasn't like Candy had asked him to go with her, or even seemed too upset at their parting. Eddie Lee was gone, Candy was in control of her own contracts again, and— Damn. She's traded on the way Luke felt about her to get those things. Come to think of it, she wasn't the first one to do something like that. All of Hazzard traded on Luke's love for the county to keep their lives safe.
"Besides," Luke was saying, like he had no idea of the magnitude of what he'd just said. "Sooner or later, she would have messed things up between you and me. And anything that comes between a man and his family, well you can't call that love."
Well. He'd heard Luke say that before, but always about girls Bo was seeing. Still…
"If you're going to go thinking that way, ain't nobody either of us can end up with. Except each other," he laughed. Laughed some more and then some extra on top of that because he was having to do it for the both of them. Laughed until it was just stupid to be laughing anymore and he had to give up. "Luke?"