Perpetuum Mobile

A/N: The third installment. I wanted to update sooner, but there were some technical issues. Thanks for your support and enjoy!

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Out of their three cars, she loved this one the most.

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Chapter 3: The Bullet You Never Took

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A patrol pulls them over one day, when she's more than sure they haven't been speeding this time. In fact, they have been slowing down steadily. And now they're at a halt.

Peter hands him his driving license and taps the steer impatiently.

The officer is a beer belly and a pair of mustache. He eyes her, suspicious. There's a gun on his left side and she remembers one right down under her seat.

When the 'young lady' produces her ID, it says she's nineteen. She pleaded for one with a 21 but he only laughed and said it was a bit farfetched.

You kids are a long way from home. Peter gives her a long look and she does not know what it means.

- - -

He forgot about her birthday. She forgot about his privacy.

Claire has learned that the Petrellis are all about mistakes, and making it even.

- - -

The blonde waitress finishes with her soft drawl and disappears altogether with that apron and pristine, painfully white blouse. His eyes return to her, amused. She fits here, more than anything else. Her accent takes on a sonorous lilt and she can almost make him believe they're a random couple in an ice-cream bar.

He falls in love with this image of her, golden gleam against the bright red of leather seats and shiny plastic menus that promise you the wonders of sweetness that can change your life.

Claire wiggles the lined straw in the jumbo mix of everything sugary, pieces of crushed ice rustling with her activity and makes another attempt at getting him to taste it.

Her eyes glimmer and she fidgets on her seat, her dangling feet brushing his leg occasionally, but she doesn't apologize. And he doesn't mind.

- - -

It's out there in the fields and their car is out of reach. Claire rips her stare from her dusty white sneakers up to his expectant face. She does not want to do this; moreover, he shouldn't be asking her to do this. For everything it means.

"Claire, come on, how are you ever gonna protect yourself?"

The pistol weighs her down and she raises it back to her line of sight.

"Just focus. And shoot."

He ignores the flashbacks and prepares himself for the bang and the darting metal. She still doesn't act. What is this – some twisted exercise of trust? To be able to fall in order to be saved.

A loud clap and a bullet falls in the dust.

He flinches and straightens: a mark of red on his T-shirt like a dart board. It looks bizarre and it feels morbid.

"A shoulder. Good. Now, aim at the heart."

- - -

He's there, waiting, leaning against the car with his hands crossed, penitent. She can't forgive him this time. But she already has.

There's nothing else to be done.

- - -

Her arms are strong as she reaches out to him, winds them tight around his neck, careful not to hit the gearshift with her knee. He lets her. She is entitled to it. And she's come to claim it.

It's impossible that she's still shaking while the naked sun is close to turning him into a pool of sweat and breath and vapor. Soft and harsh, she plants the words in his ear.

"You're cruel in strange ways."

The voice catches a little. He swallows it, kissing her tanned arm.

"I know," he admits, blankly, "it runs in the family."

- - -

"We are what we do," Claire says once and he wonders if he's an atomic bomb or a sponge.

- - -

They watch with a gnawing regret as their blue Chevy drives away, them not inside it. Out of their three cars, she loved this one the most.

He hitches their sack up on his shoulder and turns towards the station, hand brushing her lower back.

"Guess we'll have to stick to buses, for a while," he notes. She sighs and wishes they would stop selling out.