Title: Long Road Home
Pairing(s): Gen...well, for now.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 1,646
Warnings: Minor coarse language, dog hair, cousin Olive, that one song by Rusted Root from the Matilda Movie…
Spoilers: Everythin'. This is a continuation of the cousin Olive ficlets, Duke-Stud and Gumtree.
Summary:
He takes a brief moment to wonder why these conversations always seem to take place in coffee shops. Or, you know, places where they at least serve a lot of coffee.
Dave sighs internally and also wonders how events managed to conspire against him to the point where he's about to come out to his favorite cousin in a truck-stop diner.
Long Road Home
Dave's not going to pretend he didn't see this coming.
This has been on the cards pretty much since he realized he might be…
Yeah.
He takes a brief moment to wonder why these conversations always seem to take place in coffee shops. Or, you know, places where they at least serve a lot of coffee.
Dave sighs internally and also wonders how events managed to conspire against him to the point where he's about to come out to his favorite cousin in a truck-stop diner.
Across the Formica table top, Ollie is giving him the hitched eyebrow of WTF and thoughtfully eating her French fries one by one with her fingers. Dave knows she's keeping one eye on him and the other on Gumtree, who they can just see sleeping in Ollie's ancient Chrysler Valiant outside.
Even though they can't hear her, Dave can see the rhythm of the old dog's chest moving and his memory provides the familiar sound of her snoring. She looks smaller because of her summer clip. Thinner. Dave kind of wishes they'd got their food to take away so they could sit in the car and he could have Gummy tucked up beside him when he finally tells Ollie…
"So," says the girl in question, "what's up?"
Dave sighs.
The morning began with Dave being pounced on.
Someone was sitting on the side of his bed, shaking his shoulders and whispering, "Dave, Dave! Guess what day it is!"
Dave groaned and hugged his pillow tighter, trying to bury his face in it. "G'way. S'not a school day."
"I know that, dork. C'mon, Dave, guess what day it is."
"Not a school day," he muttered.
"We've covered that. Try again."
"…Thursday?"
Low laughter. "Uh, yeah, and?"
"Dunno," he said muzzily, "wanna sleep."
The someone hummed a tune by his ear.
Dave's eyes snapped open.
"Holy crap, its Thursday," he said, rolling over a little a peering up at Ollie.
She grinned back. "Hells yeah it is! And that means…"
"Six Flags."
"Six Flags," Ollie agreed, "so get your shit and get ready, dude, we're hitting the road."
They flew out the door at six-fifteen with Dave still struggling into a shirt and the last slice of toast clenched between his teeth. Ollie bounded ahead of him, ridiculous deep purple teashades already on her nose, car keys ringing like bells between her fingers.
Gumtree was sprawled in her customary place along the back seat, spreading dog-slobber and her furiously molting coat across the tie-on calico seat-covers to spare the vintage upholstery. Dave and Ollie could hear her having noisy dreams in the backseat, legs powering whenever Dave leaned over and rubbed her side whispering, "Rabbits, Gum, rabbits!"
Summer had hit with a fiery vengeance, and they knew by ten Chrysler's interior would smell of hot leather, sun-cream and over-warm teenager. They drove with the windows down for now, sparing the AC until the heat of the day really hit. The Chicago Six Flags was a five hour drive away – four and a half if they beat the traffic and if Ollie really put the V8 under the hood to good use (without getting snapped by trafficops). All in all, they should get there by ten-thirty.
That gave them time for both their iPods, talking each other's ear off as they caught up, and figuring out what the hell they were supposed to do for the rest of the summer after their annual Six Flags blow out.
It also gave Dave a long time to wonder how the crap he was supposed to come out before they crossed the state line into Illinois.
Him and Ollie have known each other forever, but they really got to be friends when they were four – the year Dave threw a tantrum and kicked over the Christmas tree to the horror of his parents and the delight of his Great Aunt Lucy. Even now, two years after the great lady's passing, Ollie is the only one who still uses her nickname for him. Ollie still calls him Humbug…and Dave still lets her.
It's not even a fragment of all the reasons he needs to tell her – wants to, even – but it's one of the ones that sticks in his mind and then blared at him the whole time they were rocking down the US-30 with Ollie singing along to Rusted Root's 'Send Me On My Way' and making faces just to get a smile out of him.
Which is why, halfway across Indiana, he took his life in his hands and said, "Okay, we need to pull over somewhere."
Ollie stared at him. "Are you serious? I told you to pee before we left."
"It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
"It's worse."
"…oh, God."
He threw her a grimace. "I'm hungry."
It was good thing she was driving, because otherwise he might have lost a limb. "We're going to be so late," she muttered, but pulled over at the next place they came across and threw his wallet at him as they climbed out of the car. "The lines are going to be huge, Dave."
"I know," he says quietly, contritely, and follows her stomping footsteps into the diner.
…Which is how they came to be sitting here now, with Ollie giving him the laser-eyes and somehow managing to each French fries archly.
"So," she says, apropos of nothing, "what's up?"
Dave really wishes she'd stop doing that thing where she can apparently read his mind or whatever. He thinks she might have figured out they weren't really here for food about the time he put down his burger half-eaten and started fidgeting with the salt-shaker, because it's also when she stopped stabbing her sandwich irritably as though imagining it were his internal organs.
He half-smiles, even though he fells kind of like his stomach is about to drop out through is shoes. "What makes you think something's up?"
Ollie laughs. "Really? This again?" She casts a definitive glance at his plate.
"Yeah," says Dave, and then wonders, again, how the hell to do this. "So…y'know how I had some stuff going on earlier this year?"
Ollie's eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. "Uh, yeah."
"Well, part of it was 'cause… I mean it really…" He scrubs his hands over his face. "What – what I'm trying to say is…"
She watches him fumble for a few seconds more while nonchalantly continuing to eat her fries and then says, "So is this the part where you confess you're gay or what?"
Dave stares at her, appalled. "You know?"
"I'm right!"
Dave can only gape at her in mortification.
"Humbug, I'm kidding." She's grinning and reaching out to put one small hand over his forearm where it lies on the table. "But really, you're…?"
If he weren't in shock, he'd probably throw the remains of his burger at her. "I – I'm – yeah. I'm –" He takes a bracing breath and finishes softly, "I'm gay."
"Well thank God," Ollie says, rolling her eyes a little. "I thought my gaydar was broken."
Dave feels like he should be picking his jaw up off the table. This conversation is spinning so out of control right now. "What? You have…just…what?"
"Yes," says Ollie. And continues to eat her damn French fries like it's nothing.
Seriously, how is this his life?
"So…" Dave tries once they're back in the car and powering towards Six Flags with a vengeance (and Dave doesn't feel like he's about to have some kind of cardiac event), "So, really? Gaydar? That shit's real?"
"I'unno," Ollie says, shrugging. Her eyes remain on the road, and she's still bizarrely calm about all this. Although, if she really does have…gaydar…it explains a few things. "I mean, it could just be really specific womanly intuition or something."
"So, hang on," Dave puzzles this out for a moment, "you can sort of…sense non-straight people."
"Uh-huh."
"And you've always been able to sense me?"
"Pretty much."
"And that made you think your 'dar was broken?"
"In a nutshell."
"You didn't think that maybe I was still…in my closet or whatever?"
Ollie throws him a hurt look. "No, actually, because I assumed that you'd tell me once you figured yourself out. Not, y'know, go on a rampage and start tossing people into lockers like a big shaved bear."
Burn.
"Although I can see why you were hiding out," she mutters, "after all, your school is full of dicks."
"I…should've been able to tell you though," Dave says, partly because that's what she wants to hear, but also because, well. She's not wrong.
"Yeah," Ollie says, voice very small.
Dave is not liking the angst up in this car.
"So," he says briskly, "how does this whole gaydar thing go?"
As it turns out, gaydar isn't anything like radar at all.
"Well, mine's not anyway," Ollie says, shrugging again. "It's not like there's a little black screen in my head with a rotating green line that goes bing every time there's a gay person within broadwave range or whatever."
It really is more an intuition thing, 'like gay-divining dousing rod', which of course brings to mind every Yosemite Sam 'toon Dave ever saw as a kid, watching the yelping bewhiskered figure being dragged around by a forked branch while he tried to divine for water, or oil or Bugs Bunny. Then he makes the mistake of picturing Ollie divining for gay with a rainbow rod and getting dragged smack into an outraged looking Kurt Hummel.
It takes him a good ten minutes to stop laughing and explain himself to Ollie.
And it's not 'til they're pulling into the Six Flags parking lot, The Hives still blasting like a dare put to music, that it all hits him.
He came out to his cousin. The world is still spinning.
He came out…and he's okay.
He's okay.
Author's Note: Guys, I don't even know where this came from. It just kind of happened while I was watching Matilda last night (hence the Rusted Root – every feel-good drama needs to have that song). I have more on their trip to Six Flags planned, but I kinda want to see how you guys feel about this first.
Also, if you're trying to picture Ollie, go with Ellen Page.