Chapter Text
The headlights painted the road in brief, flickering gold. Rain had stopped hours ago, but the smell of it still clung to the air — sharp, cold, and clean. Liam’s hands rested loosely on the steering wheel, his knuckles pale in the glow from the dashboard.
Isack sat beside him, hood pulled up, staring out into the darkness. Neither had spoken since they left the diner. The quiet was heavy but not cruel. It was the kind of silence that settled in after too many miles and too many words left unspoken.
“Same back roads,” Liam murmured, mostly to himself.
Isack smirked faintly. “You never take the highway.”
“Too predictable,” Liam said. Then, after a beat, “Or maybe I just like pretending we’re not going anywhere.”
That got a soft laugh out of Isack. The kind that used to come so easily — back when they’d race each other down these same roads, music blasting, shouting over lyrics they didn’t know.
Back when they still thought the world couldn’t move without them.
It was late summer. The sky had been cracked open with color — streaks of pink and amber stretching above the trees. Liam’s old car rattled over gravel as Isack leaned out the window, his hair catching the wind.
“Don’t kill us!” he shouted, laughing.
“Don’t distract the driver!” Liam called back, grinning.
They’d just finished some meaningless day — karting maybe, or one of those long training sessions that blurred into each other. But it hadn’t mattered what it was. What mattered was this: the music too loud, the windows down, the road endless.
When the sun dipped low, Isack had turned to him, face half-lit in orange.
“Hey,” he said suddenly. “When we make it — really make it — let’s not change, yeah?”
Liam snorted. “You sound like a bad teen movie.”
“I’m serious,” Isack pressed. “You and me — same roads, same jokes, same everything.”
“Deal,” Liam said, and they shook on it, like kids making a promise neither of them could possibly keep.
Now, months later, winter had eaten the warmth out of everything.
Liam’s voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Do you ever think maybe this is it? Like… we had our time.”
Isack turned his head, eyes unreadable in the dim light. “You mean us?”
Liam nodded, the motion small.
Isack’s jaw tightened, then eased. “Maybe. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
He looked out the window again. “We don’t have to be what we were. We just… were. That’s enough.”
The radio crackled — “Hope you find somebody to ride, somebody to die…” — and Liam almost laughed at the timing.
“I hope you do,” he said softly. “Find people who get you. Who keep you grounded.”
Isack smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You too, man.”
They pulled over at the old lookout point — their old spot. The city lights shimmered below, like constellations spilled across the earth. It looked smaller than it used to. Maybe they’d just grown.
When they got out, the air hit them — sharp and clean, the kind that made you aware of how alive you were.
“I always thought we’d stay like that,” Isack said suddenly. “The way we were that summer.”
“So did I,” Liam admitted. “But people change. Roads end.”
“Yeah,” Isack whispered. “Guess so.”
They stood there a while, the silence between them stretching wide and gentle. Then Liam turned back toward the car, hands in his pockets.
“Take care of yourself, okay?”
“You too.”
Liam gave a small nod, then climbed in. He didn’t look back when he drove away — but in the mirror, he could still see Isack standing there, a dark figure against the faint glow of the city.
The radio played one last chorus:
“Hope you know that somebody ain’t me.”
And Liam, for the first time, didn’t fight the ache in his chest. He just drove — headlights cutting through the quiet — and let the song carry what words couldn’t.