King of the Road

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"I bless the rains down in Aaaafricaaaa!" Scott sang – more like screeched – joyously, not at all bothered by the fact that he couldn't hit even one note correctly. The steady hum of the engine and the crunch of gravel under the Nomad's impressive tires mercifully muffled most of the cacophonic melody Scott tried to hold and butchered in the process.

Reyes, riding shotgun and looking seconds from putting a real shotgun to his head, stared at his lover with the fond, exasperated, 'at least you're pretty' expression of a man who had survived worse but barely.

"Scott, cariño y amor de mi vida, I'm glad that you're enjoying driving while indulging in, ah... musical entertainment, but please pay attention to what's happening in front of you."

"Huh?" Scott turned and gawked at him, the road completely forgotten for a couple of seconds. Reyes wasn't a religious man but he nearly crossed himself. "I am paying attention. Dunno what you mean."

"You drove an inch from the bottomless crevice."

"Yeah, an inch. Plenty of room to wiggle. I know what I'm doing."

"Mhm. And you straight up climbed a boulder instead of passing it by."

"It was challenging me."

"And you mowed down a Collective's surveying equipment."

"I said I was sorry."

Reyes sighed. The Lord was testing him.

Scott, deciding that the topic was closed, got back to singing out of tune. This time something about touching his tra la la and his ding ding dong.

Reyes cringed inwardly so hard that his organs rearranged like in Tetris, wanting to dematerialize. The things you endure for love...

Like driving high in the mountains with your boyfriend, who just took a sharp turn at full speed, the dust from the tires falling into the abyss below.

"Kadara drift!" Scott clapped like a happy seven-year-old. Incidentally, he seemed to possess the self-preservation instinct appropriate for that age group.

Reyes felt a lot of sympathy for the poor souls on the Pathfinder team forced to take these kinds of field trips almost every day. He'd need to send them a shipment of protective helmets. Ones that you could wear over your normal helmet for maximum safety.

There was another sharp curve approaching, so Scott of course stepped on the accelerator, the insides of the Nomad boiling under the hood.

"Scott!"

He didn't listen to any warnings, too busy shouting "Wooohooo!" at the top of his lungs. The same "Wooohooo!" that turned into "Wooo...oh shit!" once he noticed that a giant fiend was blocking their way right at the end of the curve.

"RYDER, LOOK OUT!"

Scott panicked. And panicked Scott was also monkey-brain Scott, so he swerved the Nomad to the right to drive around the obstacle. To the right, at full speed, and straight off the cliff.

"WAAAAAAAAAH!" shouted both passengers in unison, the primal equivalent of 'fuck, we're gonna die.'

The vehicle plummeted like a stone, the ground growing closer with each passing second.

"Thrusters!" yelled Reyes, yanking at Scott's shoulder. "Use them to slow down!"

Scott uncharacteristically obeyed, pressing the right buttons. Four thrusters on the undercarriage fired up, breaking the fall from a terminal velocity to an only mortally-wounding velocity.

The force of impact as the Nomad collided with the ground threatened to eject the skeleton out of Reyes' body. His teeth clashed, his head hit the headrest, his stomach traded places with his tonsils. Everything around him went dark only to become even brighter as all the Nomad's systems came back online, recovering from the crash landing.

"Phew!" said Scott, a goofy, adrenaline-fueled smile on his face. "Now that was fun. And I found a shortcut."

Reyes turned to face him, the movement glacial, as though he were stuck in slow motion. His skin the color of a ghost about to barf ectoplasm, his eyes a thousand yard stare, his hair standing bolt upright and graying at the ends, he looked as if he had just gone through the biggest trauma of his life.

"Scott," he said. One word with more meaning than a thousand page novel.

"What?"

"You're banned from driving on Kadara. For life."

"Oh come on..."

"I'm establishing traffic police. Today. Two shuttles on every road..."

"Don't be overdramatic."

"...and a sniper in each of them. Ordered to kill on sight if they spot you behind the wheel."

"Reyes..."

"Don't you even try to Reyes me. And scoot over, I'm driving us home."

Scott pouted, his sulk eleven on a scale of one to ten. It only deepened when Reyes truly kicked him out of the driver's seat to claim it as his own.

As they drove towards the slums at a sluggishly boring pace on the main road, a mischievous smirk curled Scott's lips. He wasn't too worried. There were plenty of methods to wipe that stern expression from Reyes' face and he'd mastered all of them. Kiss here, touch there and tomorrow he'd reclaim what was rightly his – the title of the King of Kadara's Roads. For now, he contented himself with singing.

"Like a virgin... HEY! Touched for the very first time~!"

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