To make the split from canon as simple as possible, just assume that TDA happened mostly as aired, except that Courtney was never brought back outside of the Aftermath episodes everyone was a part of. (If Duncan winds up winning, feel free to assume that he's either using as little of his money as possible on purpose because he's saving it for when he moves out of home, or that his parents forced him to put most of it in a savings account until he's a legal adult and is free to blow through it as he pleases, or that he was voted out earlier without Courtney around drawing all the negative attention; it's not really going to come up in-story so think whichever you want.)
Also, sorry for taking so long with this chapter! It's been such a huge wait that I ended up deciding not to do the entire first day in one part once I reached a good stopping point so it wouldn't take even longer to get out.
Important Note #2: Because I feel kind of awkward about posting the same thing on livejournal and at at the same time, since I don't know how many people over there would already be reading it here, I've decided to make the version of the story I post over at livejournal and extended edition. The story itself won't be any different, but there will be pictures and notes about the route they're taking over there that you won't find here. If you're interested in seeing it, the story will be on the ttldramaisland and duncanxcourtney communities, or you can follow the link in my profile to my LJ and just look in my memories starting with this chapter.
The first couple of hours of their trip passed quietly. Courtney dozed off not long after finishing her yogurt, her coffee only half-drained; she could never sleep deeply in a car, but the light cat nap she fell into was enough to make the time pass more quickly and make her feel a little more rested. Whenever her mind edged towards consciousness she kept expecting Duncan to start blaring the radio or doing something else to disturb her at any second, but the closest he ever got to it was the time she heard him humming to himself while he drummed his fingertips against the steering wheel.
It was over two hours later that she finally gave up on sleep, when the rising sun starting shining on her so brightly that she could see its glaring right through her eyelids. "Ugh," she groaned, squinching her eyes up tightly and throwing her arm over them. "Why are we going east? There's not enough land that way for a one day road trip, let alone three weeks."
He snorted, and sounded amused when he replied, "We're heading north, Princess. Try turning your head away from your window."
"Or you could try driving west," she said, slowly pushing herself up straight with a yawn. Even as the words left her mouth she realized that it was a silly thing to say, but she decided to give herself a pass; she was still pretty dozy, so she could hardly be expected to be in top form. She fumbled for her coffee and the caffeine boost she'd get from it, then glared at Duncan when she found the cup empty.
"Hey, you wanted it, you should've finished it," he said. "The crap was cold sludge by the time I finished it off anyway."
"Not the point," she said, leaning back in her seat and combing her fingers through her hair to try and get it neat again after her catnap. "Out of curiosity, have you ever even considered trying not to be a criminal for a few hours? Half-a-day, maybe?"
"Not for a minute," he said cheerfully. "But it's not exactly 'criminal' when I'm the one who paid for the drink."
"That doesn't count when you bought it as a gift."
He laughed, smile lines crinkling around the corner of his eye as he gave her a sideways glance. "Never figured you for an easy date, Princess. Gotta remember when your birthday comes around that you think a two-buck cup of coffee counts as a present."
"Oh please. You know what I mean."
He answered with a quick humming noise that could have meant anything, focusing for a moment on changing lanes. "Wanna find some music for us?" he asked when he was done, nodding towards the radio.
Courtney started reaching for the radio, then hesitated. "In my family music has always been driver's choice," she said, grudgingly. It was the only fair thing to do, letting the person doing all the work listen to whatever they wanted, but pretty much everything she knew about him told her that it wasn't likely that she'd enjoy his taste in music.
"You're the one who lives around here, Babe; I don't know crap about the stations out here."
She rolled her eyes at him, starting to remember that that was something she'd be doing often while in his presence. "I know that it's a small province, but it's not nearly little enough for radio frequencies to reach from border to border. By now we're out of range of most of the stations I know."
Still, she reached for the radio and tried to think of any stations her family listened to that came from far enough west that they might still come in. She was about to switch the radio to AM and check a classical music station that she enjoyed, but she paused, glancing quickly at Duncan out of the corner of her eye. She remembered when she'd woken up earlier, and heard him humming to himself rather than putting on music and risking disturbing her even though he'd probably been bored senseless by driving in the dark without even any conversation to keep him entertained.
So she sighed, and instead changed to a classic rock station her father listened to sometimes. He would enjoy it more than any concerto, she guessed, and with older songs that had stood the test of time she guessed that the odds would be about sixty-forty that she wouldn't dislike any given song; much better than the odds she'd give any more contemporary station.
When Duncan starting tapping the steering wheel again to the beat of the first song that started playing she knew that she'd made a good choice.
They sat mostly in companionable silence through the next several songs, Courtney because she wanted to wake up a little more before they fell into their usual pattern of bizarrely-affectionate bickering (not that she'd have things any other way, but dealing with him could get exhausting when she wasn't at her top energy levels), Duncan, she assumed, because he was too tired to bother her. She took the time to start flipping through the guidebooks, making note of anything that looked interesting and not too tourist-trappy.
Her own interests ran towards touring of historical government buildings--it was a dream of Courtney's that someday she'd do something historically important enough that in a century or so people would be taking tours through a place that she'd worked--but she could just imagine what an annoying mess one of those would be with Duncan. He'd be bored, and god knew that he wouldn't just suffer in silence and let her enjoy herself, content in the knowledge that he'd probably be dragging her off to something she didn't care about before long. If she was lucky he'd just keep up a stream of sarcastic commentary if she tried dragging him to one of them, if she wasn't she was sure he wouldn't feel the least bit guilty about wandering off and doing something that would get them kicked out. And possibly incarcerated.
No, when she was choosing her stops the safest bet would probably be just ignoring tourist spots and pointing him towards cities that were big enough that they should both be able find something to do. Maybe some amusement parks too, for the sake of doing something more vacationey, provided that she could get him to swear that he wouldn't try forcing her onto any rides she didn't want to get within ten feet of.
She wondered if she could trust him to keep his mouth shut through a play, if she let him help pick it. It wasn't like getting a little culture would kill him.
She tossed aside the first guidebook, deciding that she'd already been to everywhere at all interesting in her own province during old family vacations, and reached for the one on Quebec just as Duncan blurted out, "Ha! There's our first stop!"
Courtney whipped her head up, but only caught sight of a brief blur of grey on the billboard he'd been looking at before they were past it. "What? Where?"
"The World's Largest Axe," he said, sounding bizarrely proud like he thought he'd just hit upon the best travel idea in the world.
Courtney frowned at him, trying to decide if he could actually be serious. "You want our first stop to be some giant axe?"
"Hell yeah I do! We're on a road trip, Babe; you've got to stop at some of the roadside garbage." He flashed her the grin that she hated, the one that always made her somehow go along with his ideas in spite of herself, and added, "Besides, it'll bring back good memories. The first thing I ever did for you was axing that roach in your cabin, remember?"
She just stared at him, no other appropriate reaction coming to mind. The stupidity wasn't even worth getting angry about. "Those were the girls on the other team, you dope," she finally said.
"It was?" His forehead wrinkled as he started to look way more lost in thought than Courtney liked in the person driving a car she was in, but he snapped out of it before she could prepare to grab the wheel if necessary. "Huh, guess you're right. Doesn't matter anyway; I still want to see the thing."
"Oh, whatever," she said, opening up the travel guide she'd grabbed. "We should stop soon anyway, and I guess that an actual place would be more worth it than a rest stop."
He took her reading as the dismissal of the argument that it was, and a minute later he was singing along to Pink Floyd while she flipped through the events section. She didn't expect to actually find anything worth doing there--what were the chances that there'd happen to be something interesting going one while they were passing through?--but it was more interesting to skim over than umpteen pages of two-line restaurant reviews. And if she did see anything interesting there was always next year, although even as she thought that she mentally scolded herself for it; she knew that she shouldn't just assume that there would even be a next year.
But thinking along those lines made her stomach revolt strangely, like she'd throw up all over his car if she didn't stop it that instant. So she just focused on her reading, and was surprised to find that maybe there was something worth doing that day after all.
"Did you see how far it was to that axe? Do you think the local library will be open when we get into town?" she asked, looking doubtfully at the clock on the dashboard.
"Jesus, Princess; if you're planning on turning this road trip into a tour of libraries across Canada than you've got no right to judge whatever crap I want to do on it."
"Oh, please, I'm not that boring. I just want to check something online, and unless you've got a laptop away hidden somewhere I'm going to need to find a computer I can use to do it."
"Eh, it's not like this place'll be your only chance. We're gonna need to stop for lunch eventually, so you can find somewhere then if nothing's open now. Unless you need it for something we're gonna hit before then?" He craned his neck to try looking at the page she had open. "What are you looking at anyway?"
She smacked his arm with more force than was probably wise to use against someone who was driving. "Are you crazy? Eyes on the road!"
"There's this cool invention called 'cruise control', Sweetheart. It means we won't be zooming into another car if I look away for a few seconds."
"No, what it means is that I'm getting out of the car as soon as we stop and finding a pay-phone I can use to call my parents and get them to pick me up unless you promise to knock it off," she insisted, though she knew that the threat could only be empty as she made it; what were the chances that she'd even be able to find a pay-phone in the current day and age if she looked? "I don't know how you think cruise control works, but it's not going to keep you from weaving around the road if you're doing something as stupid as trying to read while driving, and I'm not driving all the way across the country with somebody who'll put my life at risk like that."
"Fine, whatever. You feel like being paranoid, I'll go along with it."
"Good." She snapped the travel guide closed, and tossed it with the others. "As for what I was looking at, you'll find that out when we get there. You're not the only one who can be all mysterious about what we're going to be doing on this vacation."
He laughed and reached over to squeeze the hand she had sitting on the armrest, keeping his eyes fixed on the road true to his word as he felt for it. "I do like a woman with secrets."
He left his hand there, and Courtney stared at it wondering if she should move her own. They'd never been the type of couple who just casually touched like that; they'd never really even had a chance to be, when they'd been separated by the hundreds of miles between their hometowns as soon as they were away from the show and had a chance to start trying to develop the insane rush from then into a normal relationship. It wasn't as if it were unpleasant, far from it in fact, but she just wasn't used to coming into contact with him when it wasn't just in the spur of the moment.
Before she could decide what she was going to do, Duncan piped up again. "Hey, over there! I think I see the handle."
Sure enough, in the distance Courtney spotted a huge stick jutting into the sky. "...Well, I bet Freud would think that's an interesting first impression to want your town to make," she muttered to herself.
"Bet you I can make it there in ten minutes, Babe," he said, and she could feel the car starting to speed up beneath them even as he spoke.
"I don't know how you can even expect this trip to last three weeks if you're going to start speeding every time you get near someplace you want to go," she told him. "The police will take away your license long before we make it to the left coast."
"This doesn't count as speeding when we're on the highway, Princess. It's just the high end of normal. Now that chick's speeding." He nodded to a car which was just flying past them. Although Courtney didn't agree with Duncan's idea of what qualified as speeding, she could recognize that he wasn't the one the police would be going after if they happened to be watching that stretch of road.
In the end the only issue that they had was working out exactly how to get to the axe, a problem Duncan solved by doing his best to drive straight towards it without leaving the road. When she was actually standing in front of it Courtney realized that it actually was impressive, in a weird way. It looked like it was just waiting for some giant woodsman to come scoop it up and begin chopping down trees, although anyone big enough to lift it would have to be so massive that he could probably knock the trees straight over with a quick shove. Courtney had never been a person given to flights of fancy like that, but it was an interesting mental picture.
Although that was really only enough to hold her interest until she became accustomed to its size. Once that initial burst of awe wore off it was just an axe, and she didn't have Duncan's thing for pointy objects. It was already losing its luster by the time Duncan dug a camera out of his glove compartment and gestured for her to climb up onto the platform the axe was stuck on. "Get up there and say 'cheese', Sweetheart."
She did as he asked, rolling her eyes even as she smiled. "I can't believe that you're the type of person who likes taking sight-seeing photos."
The camera flashed and he tossed it back into the car before she even had the chance to pose properly for a picture. A moment later he hopped up onto the platform in front of her and planted his hands flat against the metal of the axe head to either side of her, trapping her in place with his arms. "I only do it when there's a sight in the way worth seeing. Now tell me, Princess; have you ever made out against a national monument?"
"I don't think a roadside attraction really counts as a--" she began, only to be cut off by his lips before she could get into the definition of a national monument or the fact that even if it did count as one he should know full well that no, she hadn't, since they'd never been to one together before. He pressed her back against the axe with his body, but it was still so early in the day that the sun hadn't had a chance to warm the metal and the shock of the chill of it against her back made her arch sharply forward away from the cold.
That was the only reason, really; a purely involuntarily reaction. It certainly had nothing to do with the way it left her pressed even more tightly against him, and she was only glad for the arm he slid into the space behind the small of her back to hold her there because of the buffer of heat it made between her and the axehead. It wasn't just because the way he nipped at her mouth, or how he stroked the thin line of skin that was revealed when wrapping her arms around him made the bottom of her shirt pull up a little, made he want to crush herself against him as tightly as possible. It wasn't because just the one kiss he'd stolen from her that morning wasn't enough to satisfy her after an entire year of separation. That wasn't it at all.
Really.
o 0 O 0 o
In the end she never found out whether the library was open or not. Before they found it she spotted a small internet cafe with a few ancient desktop computers set up that anyone without a laptop could rent time on for a couple of bucks. She took care of her business while Duncan went down the road to top off his gas tank.
When they met up again she insisted that he let her drive. "You've been awake for how long now?" she'd asked as she pushed him towards the passenger side. "Put the seat back and get some sleep; I'll wake you up when it's time to stop somewhere for lunch."
"It's not like I've never been up longer, and you know it," he'd told her, though he let himself be herded.
"And doing so made you a cranky jerk, so that's hardly going to convince me to let you try it again."
He'd ended up going along with her, on the condition that instead of waiting for lunch she wake him up when they were close to the border, and was asleep almost the moment he got his seat reclined. It made Courtney worry a little about how tired her must have been the entire time he was the one in the driver's seat, but she realized that it was a little too late to start thinking about the danger involved once it had already passed.
It was interesting, watching him sleep. Not that she'd never seen it before, of course, but during the show it had always only been for a few seconds before he woke up. She'd never caught him when he was really deeply asleep.
He didn't look innocent, the way cliche would suggest. She doubted that anything short of massive head trauma leading to complete amnesia could bring out that trait in him. But he did relax; the way the tension drained out of him made suddenly obvious how much he always held himself like he was ready to put up a fight if necessary while he was awake.
It was definitely gratifying to know that he could relax that way around her so easily that he hadn't even needed to toss and turn at all to settle down. She might be reading to much into it, of course--there was always the possibility that if she hunted down the other guys from the show and asked they'd tell her that he'd always passed straight out when they were sharing a room and it had nothing to do with her--but from the way he always freaked out when Chris pulled one of his rude awakenings she rather doubted it.
And even if that were true, it didn't really matter. It still made her feel strangely happy just watching him sprawled out at peace the way he was, and how many things could she say that about?
It was nice enough that when she started seeing signs indicating that they were near Edmundston, and the border just a few kilometers beyond it, she considered just ignoring his request to wake him up. It was ridiculous for him to even want to be woken up that soon anyway; a couple of hours was hardly long enough for him to really feel rested, and they still had a few more to go before lunchtime that he could use.
But she knew him well enough to realize how much he'd annoy her if she ignored his request. Under different circumstances it might be worth it, the cycle of them bugging each other now a game as much as anything, but being stuck in a car with him for days and unable to get away for a while if he pushed it too far would not be a good situation to deliberately provoke him in. Not if she valued her own continued sanity.
"Hey, it's time to get up," she told him softly when they finally got close enough that she couldn't put it off a moment longer, trying to wake him gently. His only response was to snort and shift onto his side facing her without waking up. Next she reached over to give his elbow a quick shake. "Come on, Duncan. If you don't get up soon, you have no right to complain when you wake up and realize we're already in Quebec!"
Again there was no response, aside from his face scrunching up for a moment.
She frowned, then quickly glanced in her mirrors and over her shoulders to make absolutely positive she was a safe distance away from the nearest other cars. "Okay, you asked for this," she told him, and stretched out to squeeze his nose shut.
At first there was no reaction, and Courtney silently vowed that if he turned out to the type of person who could just switch to breathing through their mouth without waking up at all then she was giving up. True, she hated to turn away from a challenge, but it hardly counted when there was there was no real benefit to seeing it through.
Then Duncan gasped and lashed aimlessly out at her, his eyes flying open a moment later as he started to cough.
"Duncan! No hitting the driver!" Courtney squealed, just barely managing to push back her instinctual urge to dodge away from his flailing arm and yank the steering wheel to the side along with her.
At the sound of her voice his eyes flew to her face, and just for a moment he seemed completely shocked to see her; shocked, and so happy at her presence that she found herself blushing faintly at his obvious pleasure. But it only lasted for a split second before he seemed to remember what was going on and the look was hidden behind his usual easy but not especially revealing grin.
"We almost out of your dinky province?" he asked, stretching as best he could in his car seat. Courtney pursed her lips but refrained from commenting when that involved unbuckling his seatbelt; it wasn't as though he was in any danger as long as she was the one in the driver's seat anyway.
Instead she focused on what he'd said. "It's not dinky. We've been driving all morning and we're still inside of it, that's a perfectly respectable size."
He snorted and smirked at her, "Wow, all morning. Impressive. You want to know how far you'd get in one morning where I'm from?"
"Oh, shut up. Anyway, yes, we're almost at the border. In fact, I think that's the sign up ahead."
He leaned forward towards the windshield to look, and she didn't bother giving him the further direction that it was still just on the edge of her vision, so he needed to look well ahead if he wanted to spot it himself. After a moment, when they were a little closer, he seemed to manage to find it on his own and leaned back with a satisfied expression on his face. "Pull over when we get there," he instructed her.
"What? Why?"
"Just do it, Babe. It's not gonna take that long."
"Fine, be cryptic. I supposed I can stop, if that's what you want."
It didn't take that long at a hundred-and-ten kilometers per hour. Soon enough the sign was bidding them a cheerful 'bienvenue' to Quebec, and she pulled the car off onto the shoulder next to it, trying to ignore the feeling that everyone driving past were gawking at them as they went by.
Once again he pulled his camera out of the glove box. "Come on, we need to get up there."
"Oh my God, Duncan, have you turned into someone's grandpa? I mean, pictured of roadside attractions are one thing, but border signs? Are you going to turn them into a slideshow next?"
"Ooh, Princess, talk sarcastic to me some more. You know how much I like it." He hopped out of the car and, when she didn't immediately follow, walked around to pop open her door and offer her his hand. She could only stare for a second at the thoughtless courtesy of the gesture before she accepted it and let him yank her out of the car. "Make fun of me as much as you want; you're hot as hell when you do it," he said as he lead her up in front of the sign and positioned them in front of it, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "But I'm sick of watching that damn show whenever I want to get a look at you. So I'm taking pictures everywhere we head through, and you're not complaining about it because I'm gonna need to end up with enough to last me for a year."
He held the camera out at arms length and squeezed her more tightly to his side, but just before his finger clicked on the shutter button she had to look away with a blush when he added, seemingly as an afterthought, "But after that, I get to keep you."