Dual Exhaust : Chapter 4 - Pit Stop

Before proceeding, please be aware that this is a work of fiction and fantasy. Any resemblance to real life, persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All characters portrayed in this narrative are over 18 years of age.

This chapter features strictly adult themes, including:

• Adult / Explicit Content (+18 / NSFW)

• Incest / Family Taboo Themes: Depicting sexual and psychological dynamics and fixations within a family context (father, son, and grandfather).

Chapter 4 - Pit Stop

The car slammed hard when Brandon hit another hidden pothole in the road. He cursed under his breath, knuckles white from gripping the wheel, while Jeff clicked his phone into the dashboard mount and fired off a call on speaker — one that immediately had to compete with the engine noise and the sharp rattle of gravel kicking up against the undercarriage.

“Morning, Dad,” Jeff said, his voice wobbling a little with every rough patch of road.

“Morning?! Well, would you look at that, a miracle just happened!” The old man’s voice blasted through the speaker, wrapped in the static of a bad connection. That same tone he always had — thick irony and affection disguised as gruffness, nobody else could pull it off quite like him. “You remembered you had a father, or did you just butt-dial trying to call a tow truck?”

“Come on, Dad...” Jeff’s eyes darted to the digital clock on the dash. “It’s... jeez, it’s only eleven in the morning. The day hasn’t even started yet.”

“And you’re just waking up now, you little shit?” the old man barked out a raspy laugh. “Working people are already having lunch, you bum!”

In the passenger seat, Brandon — who up until then had looked like a ghost staring down the road — let out a heavy sigh and cut in.

“Quit busting balls, old man...”

The line came out flat, none of his usual acid energy behind it. Jeff frowned and glanced sideways at his brother. Something was off. Ever since they’d settled the bill at the inn and thrown their bags in the trunk, Brandon seemed to have checked out of the world entirely. He was the kind of guy who never passed up a chance to get into a stupid joke war with their dad — and now he could barely hold a tone of voice. What the hell happened to him?, Jeff wondered, feeling a strange tightness in his chest.

On the other end of the line, their dad didn’t seem to notice the weakness in his son’s voice — or maybe he was just trying to drag a reaction out of him by force.

“Ha! Guess the ghost hasn’t died yet... yet!” The old man let out a laugh, waiting for the usual comeback.

But Brandon didn’t answer. He propped his left elbow on the window, right hand locked on the wheel, sunk into a silence that felt worse than any pothole on that highway.

“Dad, like we agreed — we’re just calling to check in. Everything’s fine.” Jeff tried to sound as natural as possible, even as he kept his eyes on his brother’s tense profile.

The static filled the car for a moment. When the old man spoke again, the irony was gone, replaced by something dry and to the point.

“You two need something? Money already run out?” The question came out almost harsh, but Jeff knew his dad too well not to recognize it for what it was — the old armor he wore to hide how worried he actually was.

Jeff swallowed hard, drumming his fingers on his own knee.

“No, Dad...” he answered, forcing steadiness into his voice. “Everything’s good here.”

“Uh-huh...” The suspicious grumble echoed through the speaker. “And where exactly are you two right now?”

“Uh... we’re coming up on the area around—” Jeff started, craning his neck to try and read the green highway sign coming up way too fast.

“Port Sterling.” Brandon’s voice cut through the engine noise, rough and sudden, finishing his brother’s sentence.

“Listen up, then,” their dad’s voice came back, more animated now, almost commanding. “Since you’re gonna be driving through downtown, there’s a Brazilian steakhouse there. Buddy of mine owns it, guy knows what he’s doing. Do me a favor and stop in, you hear me? Their barbecue is unbelievable, way better than that garbage fast food and gas-station junk food you two live on out on the road.”

“And this buddy of yours, is he Brazilian, Dad?” Jeff asked.

“No,” the old man shot back flatly. “Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Jeff shook his head, holding back a laugh. It was wild how Brandon had inherited that exact same brand of crooked logic from their dad — that dense stubbornness that let him drop a gem like that with total conviction, fully convinced he was right. Family trait, no doubt about it.

“Nothing, Dad, never mind...” Jeff smiled at the dashboard. “We’ll try and swing by. But hey, we’ve gotta go now. We’re heading into heavy city traffic and I don’t want Brandon losing focus and flipping the car.”

“All right. Safe travels. And you’d better call me tomorrow, you hear?”

“Love you, Dad,” Jeff said.

The silence that followed in the car wasn’t a dropped call. The old man was still there, waiting for the other son’s goodbye. When it didn’t come, he pushed the issue.

“Love you too, Brandon,” their dad said, voice loaded with his usual brand of irony.

Brandon had been braced for it. The corner of his mouth twitched into an involuntary smile, the icy wall cracking for just a second.

“Love you, Dad,” he answered, his voice nearly betraying a held-back laugh, arm already reaching for the dash to end the call.

Brandon’s face still held onto that trace of humor, and Jeff, catching that his brother’s guard had dropped for a second, seized the opening.

“You doing okay?” he asked, turning in his seat to look at him. “You’re always the annoying-but-funny one, but you’ve spent the last—” he glanced at his phone, which now read 1:00 PM — “the last two hours without saying a word.”

“I’m fine, Jeff.” The answer came out fast, almost automatic.

But inside, Brandon’s mind betrayed him, dragging him back to the inn’s hallway. The image that hadn’t left his head since that morning: him standing at the half-open door of the room, hearing his brother — the muffled sound of Jeff, lost in his own pleasure, whispering his name, Brandon, in a tone that left no doubt about what he was feeling.

Brandon swallowed hard, knuckles going white around the wheel again.

“We agreed we’d leave the inn at one,” Jeff pressed, eyebrow furrowed, trying to read his brother. “We were gonna grab lunch before hitting the road. But you came back from that waterfall acting weird and rushed everything.”

Brandon let out a slow breath, eyes locked on Port Sterling’s traffic getting more chaotic by the second.

“Jeff...” he began, voice heavy, picking his words carefully. “Once I made sure the money had hit those assholes’ account, I just wanted to get out of there.”

The excuse came out convincing enough to quiet his brother’s questions, but inside, Brandon’s stomach dropped. He would never tell him the truth — he couldn’t. Letting that out would turn the rest of the trip, and maybe the rest of their lives, into a bottomless pit of awkwardness with no way back. How do you sit at the same table on Thanksgiving? How do you look at your dad knowing the secret that now stood between the two of you?

As he shifted gears to merge with traffic at the Port Sterling entrance, an even darker thought hammered through his mind: does he want me like that right now, this exact second, sitting right there next to me?

The weight of that question left a bitter taste in his mouth. How long had this been going on? Months? Years? That’s when the guilt hit like a punch to the chest. Brandon replayed, with an almost physical pang of shame, his own behavior over the years — every time he’d crossed a line of closeness thinking it was just dumb brotherly teasing. The stupid horseplay in the bathroom, the jokes he’d made without a second thought, treating it all as something between brothers, harmless. Things that, to him, had never been more than dumb showing-off and older-brother needling might, to Jeff, have been silent fuel feeding something forbidden for years. Shit, he thought, jaw tightening until his teeth ground together. I should’ve seen this coming.

“Yeah, makes sense,” Jeff murmured from the passenger seat, settling back against his seat, oblivious to the mental hell playing out just inches from him. “Those guys really were scum. Good thing we got out of there.”