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Their travels aren't all silence and soft, bleary radio tunes, of course. But they are both people who understand that too many words can damage the moment. Sometimes this is what they miss, the injured moments carrying the weight of too much, the people around them brushing up against their privacy, intruding in all the best ways.

They never say it to one another, but they both wonder to themselves how it is they found themselves here on the open (and occasionally congested) road, together. How strange it is to be so close to someone sitting next to you but not being able to share the same histories. He cannot say 'remember that swing on that massive tree in the neighbour's yard' as much as she cannot say 'remember when mom was alive'.

She doesn't know if his mother is still alive; he doesn't know if she ever had a sibling to play with.

Carolina puts her feet up on the dash while he drives. He could ask if he's allowed, and she would say yes, but he doesn't, so she doesn't. Her hand flits out the window, fingers waggling in the breeze, preventing liftoff but teasing it all the same. The first time she dove off a building was the most exhilarated she has ever felt. She couldn't feel the air whip on by, but she could feel the friction brushing up against her armour. She says, "Do you ever think about flying?"

Malcolm scoffs, light enough that she can ignore it if she chooses to. (She does not.) "Do you ever think about falling?"

"All the time."

He does, too.

They make due curled up in the truck together, a mass, a mix of seat fabric and clothing and a blanket thrown overtop, socks rubbing together and hair brushed aside. It's still miles (and miles) before they hit a motel, and they both agree that seeing the stars is a comfort. How so alike and so different, soldiers fighting and flying and falling and feet on terra firma. "I was going to be a ballerina," Carolina sighs into the dark.

Malcolm doesn't shift, only thinks for a protracted moment. "I was going to be in the navy."

"Close enough," she suggests.

"Not really."

Fair enough, then. Not close, but fair. "I wanted to make my dad happy."

He slings an arm around her, breathes quietly. "Me, too."

Her laugh is quiet, and they say nothing more. She wants to ask how this all happened. This is absurd. The back of her neck itches, and she refuses to let psychosomatic symptoms get the better of her.

***

It's not long after he's eased his shoes off and tentatively places his feet on the dashboard, cautious yet with an air of nonchalance, asking if it's allowed without asking and, since she doesn't say otherwise, without telling, that his phone rings off. He answers it crisply, but his voice warms by magic of another person in this big wide (impossibly small) world speaking from too far away to be fathomable. 'Hoshi', he mouths to her, though she didn't ask. But she did look.

It's "we're still a few days out" and "yes, making good time" and "surprisingly enough, she can drive without putting anyone in danger" and "yes" and "yes" and "how's Takashi" and she's paying attention, ears attuned, because their world is this truck. His voice sounds as if he's rolled his window down and tickling the air with his fingers, but his only move is to sink into his seat a little. They are becoming attuned enough that his inner relaxation at a familiar voice eases tension in her shoulders.

This truck should not be hers. She should have a motorcycle, a jacket her father wouldn't have approved of (and her mother would), a stream of red hair jutting out wildly from under a helmet. She should be going the opposite direction, anywhere but their pinpoints on a map. She should not have a passenger. She should be going to get a passenger.

Carolina squints at the sun, letting it blind her for a few blessed moments before she flips the visor down, and he hangs up the phone. Hoshi is crew. Any crew of Malcolm's is a crew of hers. It matters. Sometimes their distance from their crews is all that matters.

She tilts her head at him, though her eyes only briefly leave the road. "Sounds good. From this end."

Malcolm gives her in reply a noncommittal sound she suspects was supposed to be a positive. He is perhaps content or perhaps in thought or perhaps both. Content and in thought can occasionally be the same. His feet remain planted on the dash, at least.

You are here. The here keeps moving, but it never changes.

'Do you ever think about hitting the ground?'

She does not say it. But she thinks his answer is the same.

'All the time.'