This here was what started it all. It was supposed to be a chapter story, with plot basically mapped out, but it turned into this vignette. After I wrote it I decided to write one vignette per episode starting a relationship between Bo and Luke. The original rules were to find that relationship during or immediately after each episode, though I had to bend them from time to time.
This one is from season three's Carnival of Thrills. It's based on the entire episode. (As we go along, you'll see that often enough I pick out some little moment inside to expand on.)
Bo was an idiot.
That was why Luke hit him, because maybe a punch would help him see sense. Well, that and Bo swung first which technically made it defending himself. Even if he could have plastered Bo to the ground with any kind of an honest-to-goodness attempt at really hurting him. But it was Bo, his cousin, the idiot. Hurting him went against all the unwritten rules he'd ever lived by.
The fool refused to pay attention to reality, as if looking out for himself would hurt him in some way, make him think too hard instead of coasting through life. Childhood all over again; learning that the sun only rose because the Earth was spinning and tilting had made Bo cry, because it meant the sun didn't love them, didn't shine just to make the Dukes happy. Knowing that Diane had him spinning in that same dizzy way would have ruined Bo's whole day, maybe week. He'd rather kill himself trying to impress her than squint through the glare to see what she really was.
Filthy, though he'd showered. Shoot, he'd even been to jail and back since they'd been rolling in the dirt, but Luke felt coarse and grimy, going off to Cedar City. Trying to prove that Bo was a fool, and if he succeeded, what would that make him? Damn it, why did he always have to be the one that took the glow from Bo's smile, made his cousin blush hot with embarrassment or anger? The damn kid ought to have learned a thing or two by now about how the sun could burn a man faster than it could make a flower grow.
At least there was the mad dash of the day, leapfrogging back to Hazzard, giving Jesse whiplash and that pathetic excuse for a car that Zembra drove a workout. It was about the only thing that kept him from bashing his own head against anything hard enough to open up a wound and let some of the bile inside of him out.
Someone was going to hurt Bo. Dang it, why did it have to be Luke?
Because in all the world there was no one else that could do it, could tell his cousin what a fool he'd been, could put the whole stinking turd of a truth right under Bo's nose, and stand up to that inevitable eclipse in Bo's heart and eyes. Jesse had turned all the impossible tasks over to Luke years ago. Love your cousin, don't hurt him, tell him the truth. As if the three were not mutually exclusive.
Backed into a corner, at least Bo's polecat girlfriend simply showed her stripes. Maybe she'd used up all the power of her scent glands anyway, the way she'd been spraying Bo, trying to mark him as hers when in all their lives, he'd always belonged to Luke.
Bo was an idiot, and that was why Luke hit him. Bo was his cousin, and that was why Luke dug through decomposing refuse and ripe manure to find exactly the right kind filth that would break his heart. Bo was the kid he'd spent a lifetime protecting, and that was why Luke sat next to him when he went ahead and dared death to come and steal him away anyway, after everything that had happened. Bo was hurting and miserable and Luke had been the cause of all of it, and that was why he hugged him after they'd landed bone-jarringly safe on the rough concrete of the fairgrounds. Bo was his, and that was why the hug turned into a kiss, stolen in the seconds before the crowd surrounded them with congratulations.
Luke was an idiot.