ꜱᴡᴇᴇᴛ ʜᴏᴍᴇ ⇴ ᴛᴠᴅ ² ✓

three

"I don't like this... weird, sulky look on you, what happened to the supercilious asshole I grew to hate slightly less."

For the millionth time that summer, Billie found herself being carted around in a stolen car with her favourite deranged duo, the hybrid and his ripper. Her thumbs drummed thoughtlessly on the leather steering wheel as they sped down the long interstate, legs crossed in her lap while the modern car cruised on auto pilot. She was unfortunately cut off from her drinks for the time being as the clairvoyant was forced to drive, being the only one that could follow the dark path that Klaus needed to figure out why his hybrids kept dying.

He glanced over at the woman who had her eyes trained on him, eyebrows raised sassily from behind her cheap sunglasses. "Eyes on the road, love."

Billie laughed with mirth, complying after a moment before she shrugged her shoulders, readjusting her light grip on the wheel. "If you were so worried about road safety love, you wouldn't have let me drive in the first place. I don't even have a license! The last lesson I took was four years ago in a druggie's Toyota under a freeway." She recounted humorously, remembering Steve, the homeless guy that taught her how to parallel park.

"A part of me wants to know the full story here, but I also somewhat value the last, miniscule shred of sanity I have left." Stefan piped up from the back where he lay horizontally across the seats with a book just above his face, feet propped up against the window pane where they were too large to stretch out.

Hours passed, Billie realising her brooding immortal companions would not improve on their roadtrip etiquette and simply plugged in her earphones to pass the time. Along the way, she made a rather abrupt stop at a passing gas station, silently exiting the car and heading in to grab a family pack of doritos and mints to nauseate the sensitive ears of her companions for however long their trip lasted.

She hadn't said a word about it, but along a certain point of the drive, the path she followed had divided in two, a dark path, and a light path, the former, she later realised, would have taken her up to Virginia, while the other stretched further up north. Silently, Billie had followed her intuition and followed the light, getting a sense that the darkness would have taken them to a familiar little town with an odd name.

⇴

After a gruelling day of endless driving, Billie had pulled over at the side of the road for a nap, awaking to the light of the morning to continue their journey. They were all getting quite restless with the car, quite pleased when Billie announced that they had arrived.

Climbing out of the suffocating vehicle, Billie spied the oldschool wooden sign hanging above the place. By the cute little grin on Klaus' lips, he clearly recognised it, fond memories flooding his curly head. Gloria's.

Billie stretched her locked up body, shaking out stiff limbs while the duo moved to enter. "I'm gonna go get some pizza, I'll see you in a bit." She called over to them, ignoring the little purse of Klaus' lips before he waved her off, heading inside. Besides, she couldn't drive twelve and a half hours to the Windy City and not get their famous pizza. Billie was pleased as ever to know that Klaus had enough faith in her to rest easy when she wondered off, well aware that she wouldn't dare try to run for fear of her loved ones. It allowed their travels together to be that much more pleasant, she thought.

Harper decided to leave the car parked where it was outside Gloria's seeing as she wasn't in the heart to drive around some more. Chicago reminded her just a bit of Brooklyn, with the short tempered drivers and big city charm. It felt just a bit too much like home.

Quickly enough, Billie realised that just about every other street corner had a pizzeria of it's own so she settled for a quaint little stop just short of the seaside, a few too many blocks further than the hybrid probably would have liked, but Billie guessed he'd be a bit preoccupied to notice.