During season seven, I frequently wound up writing two diverse vignettes for certain episodes. Seems odd, because I actually don't much care for season seven. Maybe it turned out this way because the episodes feel so fractured; too many things going on at once. Also, it seems that I wrote an awful lot of drabbles in season seven, which felt like survival at the time. Still drabbles are cheating, so I had to go back and redo some episodes.
This one's from Welcome, Waylon Jennings, and centers on how Luke kept pulling Bo away from flirting with the blonde-girl-of-the-week. Chapter 2 is an entirely different vignette.
Luke has been just about as perfect a jerk as he's capable of being over these past couple of days. Regular jerk starts somewhere around the eye rolls and elbows in Bo's ribs, full-out jerk picks up around the time Luke turns an intimate dinner into a family affair, no-holds-barred jerk rears its ugly head in the snide comments and embarrassing stories Luke starts at the dinner table. Perfect jerk is finally achieved by a grab of his arm, Luke pulling him out of Betty Jo's hotel room like the kid cousin he hasn't been in easily a decade.
Explanations come later, but are flimsy. Well, that is until Betty Jo keeps on finding the two them everywhere, almost like she's got a sixth sense or has been listening to them snap at each other all day.
How so many electronic gadgets find their way into backwater Hazzard Bo may never understand, but when the idea comes into Luke's head to look for bugs in the car, Bo reckons he's got a point. That the search only reveals about a thousand gum wrappers and seventy-three cents which Luke lays a questionable claim on, is a surprise. A shock follows when Luke explains how he's not done looking, and makes to go out the window. Luke may be a perfect jerk, but Bo doesn't want him to get himself killed out there, crawling all over the General while he's in full flight.
Luke lives, just like always, waving the evidence over his head for Bo to see before chucking it off into the fruit stand. All right, so his cousin was right about Betty Jo suspecting them, and Bo'll get back around to being mad about that as soon as Luke's safe in the car with him again.
After all the cards have been turned over, Bo figures it's safe; what objections can there be to him hooking up with Betty Jo now? Makes his move at the Boar's Nest while Waylon's singing, she responds. Seems like a sure thing until Luke's telling him they have to go home now, something about chores in the morning. As if they haven't managed chores on no sleep, hung over, concussed and beaten black and blue. But then Betty Jo's agreeing, she has to leave in the morning for her next job anyway, long drive and she needs her beauty sleep (which is just absurd, really. She's cute enough, but a long ways from beautiful).
It's a wonder that Bo manages to get the General rolling without popping the clutch. Kicks up the dust and gravel of the parking lot, nearly spins out taking the turn onto Cedar Ridge Road. Luke is smart enough (or too busy holding onto the dashboard) not to say anything to him until after he's spun around a few more turns, landing them in precisely the middle of nowhere. Doesn't even look at Luke before cutting the engine and shoving himself up and out the window. Stomping around to Luke's side, he finds his cousin already seated on the frame of the car.
"Bo." It's fairly level, no complaining or accusation in it. To his credit, Luke's not pretending that Bo's gone off the deep end for no good reason. Doesn't matter.
"You." Yeah, he's already loud, and he hasn't even said much of anything yet. "Ain't got no call to be pulling me away from Betty Jo all the time." Luke's feet are on the ground, but Bo's got him pinned to the car with a single finger.
"She ain't," and the quiet voice has that exceedingly reasonable quality to it, the kind that makes Bo's hand fist up in Luke's shirt, "trusted us from the get go, Bo. She—"
Helpfully brought them the General, booby-trapped with a homing device, yeah, he knows. It's the same reasoning Luke's used all along and it just doesn't hold water anymore.
"And she ain't gonna do it again, now that she's seen we was on her side all along. We done rescued her, Luke!"
And his cousin's hands come up quick, a sudden shove against Bo's shoulders and he finds himself staggering back, hears Luke's shirt suffering the consequences.
"She ain't worth it, Bo," Luke sneers, his face full of that look that reminds Bo that he's an unfortunate idiot. "She ain't staying anyways." And since when had that ever mattered? "She ain't gonna hang around for the likes of you."
Could have been that Luke had more to say than that; Bo will never know, because he's trying to pound those words back down Luke's throat. Not succeeding, exactly. Luke took the first punch, but now he's swinging back, one of those heart-stopping hits that comes under Bo's chin, knocks his head back and lands him on the ground, flat on his back. It takes a second to get his breath back; by that time, Luke's closer, hard to read his face from this angle where the moon's casting more shadows than light. Could be that Luke's sorry for decking him, but Bo's not going to bother to find out. He pulls himself upright, or mostly, tries to swing before his feet have figured out where solid ground is, and finds himself falling, Luke catching one of his arms, but spinning with Bo's lost balance and going down on top of him. The second crash to the ground is no more pleasant than the first was, and with Luke's weight added into the mix, there's no hope for getting air into his lungs now.
The heavy warmth of Luke is off his chest in seconds; by the time Bo's breathing well enough to fight, he finds his cousin straddling him and pinning his wrists. There's a struggle, but it's futile. Luke's got too much leverage and strength on is side.
It's more than Bo's ready to tolerate, humiliation on top of more humiliation, and he throws his whole body into a struggle to get out from under Luke's shadow.
"Bo." Seems like Luke's said that a few times before Bo really puts together that his cousin is talking to him, and more than that, he doesn't sound right. Winded, yes, but there's something else to the tone, like Luke's struggling against more than Bo. "Just…"
There must be more to that sentence, but the words never make it out of Luke's mouth. His cousin slides off him, makes to get up, and that's a really rude choice on his part, to start a conversation then walk off in the middle of it. Which is why Bo grabs hold of an arm, pulling him back down. Luke manages to miss his ribcage this time, landing hard on his hind end, right next to Bo.
"Just what?" He's still panting, but he can get that much out. Luke seems like he's going to stay put, so Bo lets go of that hard forearm, and wipes across his own forehead. His ears are still ringing a bit from his head getting banged around so many times.
"You all right?" Luke asks instead of answering him.
He's not, he's sore and frustrated and maybe even a bit worried about what's gotten into Luke. But for the sake of expediency, or maybe just to find out what Luke's not saying, he nods, and repeats, "Just what?"
"You don't need to be with someone that don't trust you. Or someone that's gonna leave tomorrow, anyways. You're… better than that."
That's an interesting notion, that Bo's better than anything (except a better driver than Luke, but that can't be what his cousin's talking about), or, for that matter, that Luke is. They are hicks, plowboys, moonshiners, dirt poor and on probation. They take what they can get.
So he sits up, facing Luke, hoping that seeing him better will help make sense of what he's saying. But he's not getting any help from his cousin, whose eyes are fixed on the horizon that it's too far off into the dark to see anyway.
"Since when," Bo asks, because this is coming out of nowhere (or everywhere, now that he thinks about it. When was the last time Luke casually picked up a girl?), "do you care who I spend time with?" Oh, but there again, the road signs he's been missing all along are suddenly glowing everywhere to his left and right. Luke has always paid attention to who Bo's got his eye on. "Since when," there's a valid point in here somewhere, and Bo's determined to find it, "does it matter if she's staying or not? Luke?"
His cousin wants to leave this conversation behind, it's all there in how he tenses up like he's going to try to stand again. Bo puts both hands on Luke's shoulders, asking, but not demanding, that he stick this out.
"Since now, I guess," Luke answers.
"You offering something better?" Bo asks, though he's already figured out the answer.
"If," Luke shrugs, like they've been talking about the merit of peas over green beans, "you want."
Bo has no idea what it means to say yes to this. He knows that saying maybe is the same as saying no, and no will likely drive his cousin all the way out of Hazzard. So he says nothing, just moves one hand from Luke's shoulder to his jaw, then feels the warmth of Luke's hands on his ribs, pulling him closer. Luke's face stays put, though, letting Bo come to him. A kiss, so careful that it's almost boring, but it's enough. Bo's glad he chose to say yes to the perfect jerk.