Chapter Text
Her hands won’t stop shaking.
“Please, Steph.” Pete asks, so, so quietly, and she tries with everything in her stupid, shaky body not to think about how it might be the last thing she ever hears him say.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
Pete’s supposed to graduate at the top of their class and go to college in some stupid city so he can do bigger and better things and be the kind of success story Hatchefield’s always starving for so they can put something good on the town’s Wikipedia page to help hide the higher than average number of missing persons cases.
Steph’s supposed to graduate by the skin of her teeth and her dad’s wallet and move as far away as humanly possible and never look back.
Pete’s not supposed to die at seventeen.
Steph’s not supposed to shoot him.
God, all she’d wanted was to cheat on a test.
“Just do it.”
She doesn’t want to. God fucking dammit, Spankoffski. She doesn’t want to.
(she wants to go to homecoming with him she wants to graduate with him she wants to move to some stupid, too-close-for-her-liking college city with him and share a shitty apartment and make sure he gets enough sleep while he’s studying she wants to listen to him try to explain his classes and lectures and assignments she wants to make fun of him when she doesn’t understand in the slightest she wants him she wants him she wants him-)
But he’d asked her to, and who the fuck is Stephanie to deny the dying wish of the man whose about to save the world.
(-she wants so fucking badly and that’s just the problem , isn’t it?)
So she pulls the trigger.
The dread-fear-relief-disgust pounding in her head is almost so strong she doesn’t feel it at first when someone slams into her from behind.
Almost.
The gun fires as Max Jägerman’s supernaturally cold, football trained body tackles her down hard to the ground. Artificial grass and tire-rubber friction burns through the holes of her jeans and no part of her left is optimistic enough to think he’d hit her too late. That she’d done it clean and easy and everything was over. Because Pete screams (god, isn’t that just the worst noise she’s ever fucking heard) and she doesn’t think boys with bullets in their brains have the capcity to do that. She tries desperately to lift her head, frantic for confirmation that he’s okay.
(She knows he’s not. Dead boys don’t scream but hurt ones absolutely do. After the past month, though, okay is subjective, and Steph needs to see where on the constantly changing line of okay-ness Pete falls. She needs to see it now.)
Max doesn’t let her, grinding her face harder into the turf, “Fuck you, Steph!”
It hits her all at once, Max’s knee digging hard into the base of her spine and eyes squeezed shut in a lame attempt to keep from being blinded by crumb rubber.
She’s going to die.
She’s going to die.
She is going to die and the last thing she did on Earth was shoot Peter Spankoffski.
And then, as soon as he’d appeared, Max is off of her.
Hesitantly, she lifts her head, eyes still squinting closed so hard it hurts, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for whatever horrible, bloody, violent ending Max Jägerman dreamed up for her. A stupid part of her, the part that was still worried about test scores and getting her phone taken away, prays it won’t be too embarrassing.
But nothing comes.
“Are you kidding me!” Max’s voice echoes around her… whinier than she’d been expecting. Dissonant enough that she pries her eyes open.
He’s standing above her, arms crossed and pouting, and for a second he looks so normal, so Max-ish, she forgets what's happening here. If she really wanted to she could almost imagine things were the way they were supposed to be again, that she’s stoned off her ass at a party and Max is just mad that she ate all the Doritos before he could get any. She blinks, almost prepared to roll her eyes and offer to DoorDash more from the 7/11, but suddenly he’s gone; thirty meters down the field and standing above Pete’s crumpled body faster than is humanly possible. It thrusts her back into reality like a bucket of ice water.
“Y’know, I was gonna kill you first, Steph,” Max drawls, yanking Pete up by his hair. He lets out a pained, reedy whine (because he’s hurting him, because she shot him) and Steph feels like she’s going to throw up.
‘Let him go!’ She thinks, so, so, so hard she almost says it, but she can’t, the words won’t come out, no matter how hard she tries ‘You aren’t fucking allowed to touch him, so stop it!”
Max doesn’t listen, moving Pete’s head back and forth in sharp, angry movements, “I had this whole plan and you just had to go and fuck it up!”
“Max, let him go!” She chokes. It lacks any heat she could have possibly hoped for.
She’s still holding the gun. On autopilot she lifts it up with (still shaking, stop fucking shaking) hands and aims it towards him.
She doesn’t know why. She can’t shoot Max, that’s not how this works, he’s already dead. The only good it would do is maybe fucking shoot Pete again and get Max dragged down to hell, but she doesn’t think she can do that again. She could barely do it the first time.
So she keeps the gun up.
“No, I don’t think so!” He shouts, and his voice echoes across the field like he’s speaking through the tinny microphone of the outdoor PA system, “I was gonna kill you first, but this is way too fucking cool of a way for Micropeter to fucking die. Bleeding out from a fucking bullet wound? Nah, nah, nah, fuck that-”
He reaches over with the hand not buried in Pete’s hair and shoves it into the bloody hole where he’d been shot, like he’s digging searching around for the fucking bullet. Pete screams in a broken, horrible way she’s never heard a human being scream before. (Suddenly, the previous worst sound Steph’s ever heard has competition.)
“Stop!”
“Y’know, what?” Max grins, shoving his hand in deeper, “Maybe this is better. Yeah, yeah, this is what you deserve. Watch the little loser die all because you couldn’t keep it in your pants.”
“Leave him alone!” She sobs. She’d been crying before. She feels like she’s been crying for twenty-fucking-four hours, but now she’s just sobbing and she can’t stop it. God, this is so much worse than shooting him. This was so much worse.
“Uh…. nuh-uh! C’mon, it’s just even tradesies, Steph-o-nie!”
Pete writhes helplessly under him, mouth cracked open like he’s screaming but no matter how his chest seizes in indirect time with her own, no sound comes out. For the first time, Steph wishes she had meant to kill Max Jägerman. For the first time, Steph wishes she’d made it hurt. Because, sure, she’s upset, but she’d been upset. Right now, the main thing choking it’s way up her throat is pure, white hot rage.
How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
“It’s a proper thank you! You killed me for him. You made me into a god and GODS get to decide who fucking dies. So, really, this is on you! Thanks, you goddamn Judas-”
“So you do know the Bible?”
Max freezes, the whole world freezes, and there, back lit by stadium lights like a fucking Angel of the fucking Lord, is Grace goddamn Chastity.
“Graaaace?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she can’t fucking watch another person die tonight, she can’t, “Grace, get out of here!”
She doesn’t listen, of course she doesn’t goddamn listen, “I always thought there was something about your wrath that was so…” She reaches back to yank out her scrunchie with one sharp, probably-Grace-level-sexy motion, dramatically shaking her hair out, “... Old Testament.”
Steph realizes, maybe deliriously, that she’d never seen Grace with her hair totally down the way it is now; not a butterfly clip in sight.
She hadn’t noticed she was growing bangs out.
When did Grace have bangs?
“I used to have a crush on another guy who rose from the dead,” She starts, and Steph catches the exact moment she see’s Pete. How she falters in her, clearly, well rehearsed seduction routine, “But… oh. But he- Jesus. Jesus never threw a football like you, Max!”
Her eyes go wide, darting between Steph to Max to Pete, which, while more than fucking fair, does nothing to clarify what the hell she’s doing, “Grace, what the fuck?”
“Shut! The fuck! Up! Steph!” Max hisses, seemingly entirely unaware of the way Grace has started faltering. She can’t say she’s exactly surprised, he’s never been particularly observant. He drops Pete with a thud, brushing past him with his hips jutted forward (and Steph feels like crying at the way Pete just groans and curls in on himself, but god, at least he’s still moving), “You were saying, Grace?”
“You were right about me, Max,” Grace lists, sounding a little like she’s reading off cue cards and staring at Pete in a way that Steph realizes looks a hell of a lot like she’s staring at Max’s dick, “I’m a dirty girl.”
Oh god. Is she staring at Max’s dick?
“Fuck yeah!”
Max certainly seems to think so.
“And I’ve been in my bathtub every night, brewing up a big ol’ pot of dirty girl soup just for you!”
What?
“What?” Max chokes, clutching at his chest.
“Uh, it’s what you call my bathwater in my sexual fantasies.”
What the fuck.
“That’s nasty. I like it!”
“Oh yeah, you dirty dude?”
“What the fuck,” Steph finally chokes, to no one in particular, “Is happening right now?”
“Take me, Max!”
See, the thing is, Steph had already been pissed. She’d already been so, so pissed, but it’s just getting worse. She’s angry, she’s so goddamn angry. At the world, at Max, at herself, but right now it’s like all of it has shifted right onto fucking Grace. Anger was one of those things that always came easily to Stephanie Lauter. Simpler than grief, simpler than confusion, simpler than feeling helpless, and god if Steph isn’t a broken mess of grieving, confused, helplessness right now. If anger was easy, being angry at Grace Chastity was simpler than breathing and Steph clings to it like a fucking lifeline.
She knows Grace has seen Pete, she knows it, so why the fuck is she still playing this game?
“But, uh, Grace?” Max whines, looking back to Pete (stop it stop it stop it you don’t get to look at him) , “I gotta kill these nerds!”
“Are you really gonna pass this up?” Grace yells back, and through her bafflement and rage Steph considers the possibility of this being a weird ass attempt at a distraction.
Which just makes her angrier.
What does Grace expect her to do? Shoot Pete again? She can’t. She fucking can’t.
It doesn’t even seem to be working for a second, and as Max visibly waffles between Grace and Pete, she tries to figure out if there’s any way to get Pete to shoot her. If she could press the gun to his hand and hold it against her forehead and make him pull the trigger before Max realizes what they’re doing. Because as she sees it, none of them are surviving tonight, but Pete had said he wanted her, too. If he shoots her now, maybe it’ll get Max to go away, and if it doesn’t, well, as selfish as it is, Steph can’t watch Pete die twice.
“I’ll be RIGHT BACK!” Max's voice slams through her skull again, echoey and tinny and undeniably horny, as he chases Grace across the field.
Steph’s so fucking confused she thinks she might have a panic attack about it.
She swallows back her bile and her innate need to stare down what the fuck Grace was doing to Max Jägerman’s evil murder ghost on the fifty yard line, scrambling over to where Pete’s crumpled, abandoned in the end zone.
Please don’t be dead please don’t be dead please don’t be dead.
“Come on, Spankoffski, stay with me.” She hisses, gently resting his head into her lap as she tries (and fails) to not get distracted but, like, excuse the fuck out of her where did Grace even learn how to do that–
Pete blinks up at her, eyes glassy but alive, and suddenly not being distracted is very, very easy, “Oh, hey… Steph.”
“Hey, hi, yeah! How are you?” How are you? What the hell kind of thing is that to say to the guy you just shot, Stephanie?
He sits up a little, face screwed up in more confusion than pain, “Is… is Grace…?”
“Yeah.” She pushes him back down. She’s not sure what the hell she’s supposed to do with a gunshot victim but she’s pretty sure he shouldn’t move.
“Why?”
“I have…. no goddamn clue.”
“Jesus.” He chokes out a laugh before recoiling in on himself, hissing between his teeth, “Ow, fuck.”
“Yeah, don’t- don’t do that. Idiot.”
“Hurts.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He turns his head over to the side, looking at his shoulder before Steph can stop him, “Oh. Oh, fuck, that’s pr’bly really bad, huh?”
“Don’t- don’t look at it.” She says, but it’s not very convincing because she also can’t stop looking at it. She’s sure it had been ugly before, after she had fired a close range fucking bullet through his shoulder, but Max had certainly not helped. There’s so much blood. Too much blood. That much blood shouldn’t belong in or outside of one person.
“That’s… oh, oh man, Steph that’s… oh shit–”
She grabs his face (too hard, too fucking hard because he whimpers) forcing him to look at her, “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay, you’re fine.”
“That seems… inaccurate.”
“It’s incredibly accurate,” She laughs in a way that's pretty much ninety percent sob, “Fuck you.”
Pete’s face settles into a pained grimace, and Steph is hit with the full force of how much she doesn’t know what to do here. Digging into the recesses of her mind to try and remember anything first aid related from her two years of elementary school Girl Scouts is about as successful as she’d expected, which is to say, not even a little bit.
“What… what am I supposed to do, how do I help?” She asks, and then feels like a total bitch for it. What kind of useless idiot asks the person bleeding out how to fix it.
She bets Pete regrets calling her smart now.
“I… dunno?” He mumbles, after a second, “Pressure? Tha’s a… a big injury thing, right?”
“Okay! Okay, yeah, alright,” She scrambles to yank off her flannel, painfully aware of each distressed noise Pete makes with every movement.
She hasn’t washed this flannel in for-fucking-ever. She’s worn it like four times and then just sort of thrown it on the back of her desk chair to grab it a couple days later. It’s an over-shirt, it hadn’t smelled or anything, but now that she’s shoving it on Pete’s open goddamn shoulder wound it feels disgusting.
He clearly tries to hold back a scream when she pushes the shirt against his shoulder, whimpering a quiet ‘sorry’ when he can’t. It makes her chest ache. He shouldn’t be apologizing. He shouldn’t be fucking apologizing. If anyone should be apologizing it’s Steph.
So she does, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”
“‘S’okay. Told you to. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Sorry.”
She tries not to laugh, but it warbles it’s way out anyway. The corners of his mouth twitch up in an almost smile.
(He’s got little pieces of turf in his hair, and she realizes, feeling helpless and sick and entirely, thoroughly disgusted in herself, that some of it definitely got stuck to the blood on his shoulder. That she’s probably pushing fucking rubber and plastic deeper and deeper into him with her disgusting ass flannel and she’s definitely not supposed to that.)
A sound Steph, personally, never wants to hear Grace Chastity or Max Jägerman make ever again echoes across the field, and before she can possibly process it, there’s Grace. Sauntering over to them with her fly still unzipped and button-up hanging loose under her stupid little sweater vest.
Where the hell did she get a fucking cigarette?
“Wow. I needed that.” She sighs.
And, well, Stephanie hates to think even a little about what just happened, but to be fair Grace looks extraordinarily less tense than she thinks she’d ever seen her. (She thinks ‘good for her’ and ‘what the fuck’ in equal measure.)
Grace’s eyes go marginally less-lidded when she gets close enough to see them, as though she had forgotten what she’d walked into while Max was fucking her brains out. (Ew. No. Nope. Not gonna think about that.) She squares her shoulders up, and with her arms hidden in front of herself, points hard in their direction before snapping her hand back into an almost violent looking thumbs up. Her eyebrows are squashed together like it’s a question, but if it is Steph does not comprehend it in the slightest.
When she, evidently, doesn’t give her the response she’s looking for, she does it again. Hard point. Hard thumbs up.
“What?”
Grace rolls her eyes, “Is he-” She points, and Steph registers it’s aimed directly at Pete, before pulling back into the thumbs up, “Okay?”
“No?” She whispers, helplessly, because of fucking course he’s not okay, he got shot and you just fucked a ghost about it.
“Hey! Grace, uh, where ya goin?” Max’s voice floats over, soft and schmaltzy and making Steph all at once understand the phrase ‘hackles raised’, “Don’t you wanna cuddle a little bit?”
“Oh, Max.” Grace sighs, self-satisfied in a way that contradicts how she keeps glancing back at Pete, over and over again for frantic confirmation he’s still breathing (he is, he absolutely goddamn is, Steph keeps sliding her hand down to his chest to confirm and he is) “See, I just gave you gift. In fact! I just gave you what I cherished most.”
She looks right at Steph as she says it, grinning, “My chastity.”
Holy shit.
Holy shit. She’d never fucking thought she would say it but God Bless Grace Chastity.
That's when the sky explodes.
She’d thought the horrible, skin crawling laughter of the Lords in Black had been bad in the gym. That it’d been trapped by the high ceilings and thundered like an echo chamber. But it’s worse outside.
It’s so, so much worse outside.
Suddenly the whole world is their echo chamber and Steph can feel her teeth rattling in her goddamn skull as the field is washed in technicolor lightning and the otherworldly cackling of five fucked up gods.
She can barely hear Max screaming.
She can only hear Max screaming.
And part of her wants to feel bad. A part of her is almost aching to feel bad, because, sure, he was a total dick, even before she knew how badly he was bullying anyone below him on the social ladder, but he was also Max.
Max who got she got stoned with for first time when they were fourteen and spent the entire night with in her basement, laughing their asses off and DoorDashing Taco Bell and McDonalds and Wendy’s and 24-hour-diner french fries all off her dad’s credit card.
Max who always texted her the address for parties she wasn’t invited to.
Max who was the first person to high five her eighth grade when she’d dyed her hair maroon, even though it looked like crap, because he hadn’t known you could do that and thought it was cool.
Max who’d sat with her in the back of every remedial Math and Science and English class she’d ever taken.
Max who’d she’d known since she was five fucking years old.
And no matter what version of herself is in the back of her head reminding her of all of that, begging her to feel bad that he’s screaming and sobbing his way to somewhere worse than hell, Stephanie Lauter can’t find it in herself to give a singular shit.
‘Good.’ She thinks, and means it, ‘Fucking good.’
Just as soon as it started, it’s over.
Max is gone (he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone) and the world feels suddenly, and disorientingly, silent and sepia toned.
Pete’s head lolls against her knee. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Hey, hey, no, come on,” She scrambles to find a pulse, trying to ignore the bloody mess that's become the other side of his neck. She finds one, hesitantly and not entirely sure of what the fuck she’s doing, but she finds one. His eyes go ever so slightly more clear with her prompting, “Come on, Pete, stay awake, stay with me-”
“What happened!” Grace squeaks, but she only half hears it. It doesn’t matter what happened, it matters that Pete is hurt. God, he doesn’t need Steph and her stupid, shaky hands or Grace and her stupid, shaky questions, he needs a hospital. He needs a hospital right fucking now.
“Call an ambulance.” She demands, voice shaking.
An ambulance might be too slow. She knows that but neither of them have fucking cars, jesus, Grace rides a bike does she even have her license? Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Pete’s gonna be fine, he just needs a hospital.
“But, the police–”
“I don’t fucking care, Chastity, just call!”
“Okay.” She nods, roughly pushing her hair out of her face, “Okay.”
Pete watches as she gets up and walks away with heavy lidded eyes.
She’s supposed to keep him awake, right? Ask questions? She can… she can do that.
But can she? She doesn’t know what kind of questions she’s supposed to ask, aren’t they supposed to keep his brain working or some shit? Pete’s so smart, and god, fuck, she really shouldn’t be the one in charge of this situation. She doesn’t know what fucking complex math bullcrap is going to keep him awake enough not to die, “Hey, Pete, what’s… what's your favorite movie?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s so stupid.
Pete blinks at her like he agrees, “What?”
“Your… your favorite movie?”
“.... What?” He says again, like the polite, Pete version of: ‘Are you fucking kidding, Steph, I’m bleeding out and you're asking about my opinions on fucking cinema?’
“I don’t know!” Is she supposed to tell him that she’s asking him questions to keep him awake? Does it mess it up if he knows? It feels like the kind of thing that would get messed up if she told him about it, “Just answer the stupid question, Spankoffski.”
“I dunno… Gattaca?”
She laughs, wetly and despite herself, “What the fuck is Gattaca?”
“It’s… um… it’s this dystopian movie against… like… eugenics?” His voice sort of trails off by the end, “S’cool.”
“Your favorite movie is about eugenics?” She teases, prompting and feeling like a total fucking bitch about it.
“It’s against it!”
“Ah. Of course and that makes it less dorky-”
“And s’got Uma Thurman.”
Well, okay, that one’s kind of a fair point. She slaps at his cheeks as gently as she can when his eyes start to go all glassy again, “So, what the hell is a Gattaca?”
“Oh!” He blinks, slower than she’s sure he’s supposed to, “It’s… um… that’s the really cool part. So, um, it’s like…. DNA?”
He pauses, looking up at her, and she just sort of nods. She, at the very least, knows that DNA exists.
“So, it’s the letters. Of the nuc…leobases in DNA,” He’s clearly forcing the words out, but he sounds so normal and Pete-ish for the first time this whole conversation, like they’re studying at Beanies again he’s just gotten stuck on some impassioned rant about fucking… imaginary numbers or something. It makes her chest ache, “G and A and T and… um… y’know…”
“C?”
“Yeah! See, y’r’so smart.” He gives her a surprised smile that looks more like a grimace, “H’bout you?”
“What?”
“What’s…. your f’v’rite movie?”
Oh.
Oh, god dammit it he’s so sweet. He’s too sweet. He’s bleeding out on her knees because she shot him and here he is fucking asking about her favorite movie just because she asked about his. God dammit, Pete.
“Yeah ‘course, um," Has she ever watched a movie before? She knows, objectively, she absolutely goddamn has, but all of a sudden her brain feels muddy and hollow. Like someone's carved out the section designated for her nights spent in the Lakeside Mall Cineplex to make room for Pete Pete Pete, "It's Lady Bird.”
Pete seems to consider this for a second, long enough that she gets nervous and (softly) slaps him again, “Cool.”
“Yeah.” She sniffles.
Movies was a stupid question. Movies was such a stupid question. It’s too goddamn personal, and now all she wants to do is sit here and cry about Pete Spankoffki’s stupid nerd movie instead of asking him more questions so he doesn’t die.
No.
No, because Pete’s not going to die.
No, because Pete’s not going to die because Steph doesn’t fucking want him to.
It’s as simple as that: Steph doesn’t want him to so he won’t because Steph is a Lauter. She’s a motherfucking Lauter and Lauter’s always, always get what they want. If her dad (god, fuck, her dad-) can win a mayoral election with nothing but bluster and want then Stephanie should damn well be allowed to manifest Peter Spankosffki from dying.
“Ambulance is on its way!” Grace says, plopping down criss cross applesauce next to them. And for a second Steph wants to yell at her to go away, get away from him and leave the two of them alone. But that’s not fair and she knows it.
Honestly, if the past hour is any indication, Pete’s, like, statistically so much safer with Grace because Grace just saved his life and Steph just shot him. So she just gives Grace a tight-lipped smile and tries not to cry.
“Richie…” Pete mumbles, and her stomach drops in like five different ways, “Rich’s’gonna be pissed if I die f’rm this.”
“What?”
“...’s his f’vrite trope. Like, th’bullet in th’shoulder? Cuz it’s’dr’matic but d’sn’t act-lly kill you– ‘s’what he says ‘least. He’s gonnaaaa be… so mad if I die an’he can’t write it in his fan… fic anym’re.”
She doesn’t correct him. It just feels mean.
(And… and he’s not going to die, so it’s not like Steph’s worried about being the person who made his last moments a reminder that his best friends are dead, because he’s going to be fine– but still)
She just leans down before she can over think it (before she can think about how she might never actually get to do this the right way, because Peter Spankoffski isn’t going anywhere) and presses a kiss to his forehead, “Well, then you better not fucking die, then.”