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In two hours, they’re going to be dead. For now, they’re tucked right in God’s blind spot.
Andre clicks off the camera and settles it on the dashboard. They’ve got their equipment sprawled across their laps, the revolver still unloaded and one of the pistols.
“I can’t believe we actually got away with… all of it,” Cal admits. He’s looking down at the unloaded revolver in his hands, nails bitten to the quick, “I guess I always expected someone to stop us before we got this far.”
The spring-born sun, young as the day, curves in a platinum arc overhead. Early morning means it’s not warm yet, but the sun is bright enough in turn that Cal can feel the world’s edges a little softer around him. They’re headed on a forward trajectory into a hot summer that Cal won’t see.
He supposes it’s only right that Zero Day be bleak, too. They’d wanted it that way, every day of winter: that kind of clarifying cold that whistles right through you and makes your lungs shudder.
“They’re fucking idiots.” Andre scoffs. He’s got Milena spread across his lap, the modified short stock already on. He’d held her tight between his knees, hands working quick to change the stocks over while Cal kept watch – his best time yet, “Wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up and shot them in the skull.”
They’re tucked into the far end of the parking lot. Andre’d parked the pontiac right along the treeline, hidden from lingering eyes, blending into the sea of other cars as the lot had slowly, surely filled up over the hour before first period. They’re sandwiched comfortably by a red Hyundai and a crab apple tree that rains small, white petals onto the Pontiac’s windshield like confetti, like wedding-rice, like there is a sort of holiness to this union of men.
He’s got the ARMY shirt on. The one Andre first saw at the poetry night, when he’d exploded on Cal in the car after, hands trembling with the fear of being caught out. The poem was, perhaps, the most blatant thing they’d done in the lead-up to Zero Day, and Cal couldn’t know if Andre’d ever forgive him for it. Andre’s got his own gear on – he’s had this planned for months now – with his camo shirt and military surplus boots, polished to a shine. If they’re going to exact their plan with militaristic precision, he’s going to dress for the part.
Cal barks a laugh.
Everyone before them had been so fucking obvious , with their loaded threats and fucking foreshadowing, because it made them feel big. Made them feel good, knowing something no one else did. But it also made them fucking stupid, and that’s how you get caught. He doesn’t believe in leaving breadcrumbs. He doesn’t believe in easter eggs and foreshadowing and letting anything slip. It’s just him, it’s just Andre, and it’s just the tapes.
“Yeah. Jesus- they had no fucking idea. I wish I could see their faces.”
Andre’s bitter smile wavers just a little. If Cal were any less observant, he wouldn’t have even noticed. When it comes to Andre, though, Cal is astute – could pick out white paint from a white canvas. Eldest child, always quick to repair;
“We’ll be- we’re gonna be gods, Andre,” He insists, the hairs on the nape of his neck prickling at the idea alone. After years of being beat down, they’re gonna be something big, impossibly, something that transcends mere humanity. He’s gonna burn himself right into the marrow of this town. He’s gonna wake them up. He’s gonna crash into Stratford like a goddamn fucking comet. He’ll never be a victim again.
Andre glances down at Milena. Cal looks down too. Andre’s nails are also bitten to the quick, and the skin around them has been picked raw. Soon, these will be killing things.
“Yeah. Gods.” Andre echoes.
But what comes after that? What more is there? What exists for them beyond this?
The world feels like unfired clay right beneath his fingertips. Malleable, begging to be shaped by tender-cruel hands: the power to create, the power to destroy. His blood rushes just at the thought.
He picks up the revolver. They’ve not named this one, not like Milena.
Andre’s still looking down at his hands. Deliberating. He’s got day-old stubble, boyish in its sparsity, speckled over his jawline and a piece of lint on his shirt, the high points of his cheeks pinked with the cool of morning. This close, Cal can see every pore, every small line and scar and blemish that Andre’s few, few years on earth have left him.
Cal raises the revolver, and presses the muzzle right to Andre’s temple.
“Do you believe in God?” He teases. It’s awfully on the nose, sensational, he thinks. Andre’d argue it was dumb-fucking-stupid to do in broad daylight, if he weren’t too busy going still all over.
The fine, dark hairs on the nape of Andre’s neck rise in real-time. Cal watches. It’s almost animalistic, in nature, deliciously primal: the sudden salt of adrenaline in the air, Andre’s muscles jaw clamping and clicking on the close. Like a prey animal, cornered and scared, torn between lashing out and sinking its teeth in or playing dead.
Cal grins, wolfish.
“Do you?”
“What are you-?”
Dragging the barrel down the side of Andre’s face like a lover’s caress, Cal hums. Andre trembles like a bathed dog.
Everything feels undeniably urgent, now. The pot about to boil over, blood right beneath the skin’s surface, that awful second between deliberation and action where you’ve decided you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it, you’re hurtling towards an endpoint and there is nothing now that can stop you from getting there.
The muscle in Andre’s cheek twitches as Cal coasts the muzzle over it. Cal takes the scenic route: down along Andre’s soft jaw, caressing baby-fat cheeks yet to slim down with age, the bristle of metal against stubbled hair.
“‘S it loaded?” Andre murmurs.
“What do you want it to be?” Cal asks.
When he meets the small cleft of Andre’s chin, he moves down, trailing the gun’s muzzle down under his chin to that soft triangle of flesh. If Cal pressed the trigger now, he’d fire through Andre’s tongue, through the roof of his mouth, through brain tissue, through skull, through the car roof, through clean spring air.
His voice lowers suddenly. Intimate.
“You’ll put the barrel here,” He murmurs, a low bristle he’d only been able to manage since his growth spurt the past summer, “When it’s over. It’s- you’ll get it over quick, that way.”
Andre swallows.
“What if I can’t do it?”
Finger hovering over the trigger;
“You can.”
Andre swallowed down a shaky breath like a child stammering tears- embarrassed, choking on it, caught on a tightrope with a 100-foot freefall right beneath him. Orpheus realising he can never look behind him.
“But what if I can’t?” Finally, finally, Andre’s gaze broke from where he’s been staring down at Milena in his hands. She’s yet to be loaded. Instead, Andre turns, meets Cal’s eyes. Icy blue to ox-brown. Cal tracks the motion with the muzzle, still pressed right to the underside of Andre’s chin, “Would you help me?”
The words linger in the hollow space between them for a second too long.
“Help you? You mean-?”
And what an image, to be the one to put that bullet in Andre’s head. It’s not what he’d planned, but he’d do it. If Andre wanted him to.
Andre shakes his head, bumps the muzzle to his jawbone. Cal wonders if the metal’s warmed now against his skin. Debates searching out for Andre’s pulse thundering in his neck.
“No. I mean- yeah- if it comes down to it. But… remind me, I guess. Bring me back down to earth.”
A beat passes. Then, Andre;
“Do you think you’ll regret it? The moment it starts?”
“Do you regret it? Now?” Andre won’t back down, Cal knows, but he wants to hear Andre say it. When Andre swallows thickly, Cal tracks the movement, eyes curling languidly over the bob of Andre’s adam’s apple. There is a small, reddish bruise right on the left side of Andre’s neck - Cal’s left - the shape of Cal’s mouth.
“No. I don’t.” Andre rasps.
He digs the barrel into the meat of Andre’s jaw. Thumbs the trigger.
“Well. There you go.”
This is sex. This is the methodical unpacking of a body, the separation of sensation from self. This is rending fat from flesh and cleaving flesh from bone. In another life, I would’ve loved to watch you rot.
“They deserve what they’re gonna get,” Cal practically spits, years of venom souring the words on his tongue, “If it’s not gonna be us, it’s gonna be something else. Something cosmic. It always comes back.”
Andre nods.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does,” He agrees, voice still low and soft and intimate, dirty-talk, “ We’re meant to be the ones to put them in their place. Put them down. Like fucking dogs.”
Cal grins. He’s done with mourning. He’s buried all of that already. Andre… Andre’s always been the sort of guy to drag dead weight forward. He’s still holding grudges from before Cal’s time. Every seam of Andre’s skin now is stitched together with regret and resentment.
Revenge shadowed Andre like a dog. Loyal to its own detriment.
“Yeah. Shit. And then we’ll get to- we’ll be fucking gods. Gonna leave this all behind,” Andre continues, “They’re never gonna be able to separate us. It’s always gonna be the two of us. Cal-And-Andre. Every headline- Every newspaper- it’s all gonna be-”
He pauses. Takes a shaky breath. A bead of sweat trails down his throat, blooms out across the seam where metal meets skin.
“I’m glad it’s with you.”
He knows the turns of Andre’s body better than his own. The freckles on his hips, the way his soft stomach swells over the elastic waistband of his boxers, the way Andre hiccups in his sleep and curls up tight like a newborn. The taste of Andre’s mouth. Somehow, this feels more intimate.
The moment clings to Cal like a sunburn: skin-deep, all over, red-hot and sensitive. He thumbs the trigger. Andre closes his eyes. He’s replayed every iteration of this moment in his mind a thousand times and branched off into infinite consequences.
It falls into place in pieces: The press of Cal’s thumb, the trigger clicks against the far end of the trigger guard. Andre’s breath catches. The revolver chamber spins. Andre’s skull remains intact.
The illusion splinters then. The air around them trembles, sick to fever with guilt and shame and longing. The moment clings to Cal like a sunburn: skin-deep, all over, red-hot.
“Disappointed?”
Andre asks. His voice quivers. When Cal was young, very young, his parents had friends over for dinner. They shared a bottle of wine between the four of them and Cal watched them talk in a language he’d never understand. Slices of adulthood, inside jokes he was never in on. One of the guests, a long-faced man, had leaned across the table and shown Cal a party trick. A finger wetted in wine, traced around the glass rim. The air had whined and trembled like a kicked dog. Cal’d felt it more than skin deep, felt it in his bones, eating into the marrow. This is how Andre sounds.
“I didn’t want you to miss out on all of the fun.”
When Cal meets Andre’s eyes, glancing up from where his gaze had been fixed onto the dimple of Andre’s throat where the muzzle presses in, he realises their faces are only inches apart. Andre sighs, all breath. The gun trails from the underside of Andre’s chin to the curve of his jaw. Right against the pulsepoint. Like an electric current, Andre’s rapidfire pulse conducts through the metal right to Cal’s fingertips.
Andre’s tongue darts out, wets his lips. He looks between Cal’s eyes and his mouth. Leans forward.
It’s a delicate, tentative thing, but not new. Andre tastes like toothpaste and orange juice and sheer nerves, the hot slide of his mouth against Cal’s. A clash of enamel, Andre’s hand comes up to curve right over the side of Cal’s jaw, thumb pressing right into the mirror-point where Andre can feel Cal’s own fluttering pulse. They are a closed circuit, lit up, complete.
A soft sigh exchanges between their lips. He can’t be sure whose it is, can’t be sure of anything but the slickness of Andre’s spit against his own lips, the way Andre’s tongue dips right into the seam of their mouths and takes, dominates, possesses.
Cal’s still got the gun pressed to Andre’s pulse. He leans closer, pushes himself into Andre’s space until Andre’s forced to lean back against the door of the Pontiac. Milena clatters into the footwell.
Sliding a hand up over the base of Cal’s skull, Andre curls his fingers right into the grease-blond, tugs, letting Cal groan at the tension of it. He’s always wanted Andre feral: like a dog chained up at a junkyard. Wasted away, nothing left but skin over a skeleton and the desperate urge to survive. Willing to chew through muscle, tendon, bone to set himself free.
If earlier was sex, this must be murder now. This is blood and guts, this is vivisection, this is the joining of two souls, entwined, inseparable in history and law.
“You said it earlier. You couldn’t have done this with anyone else.”
His own words echo is his mind. I don’t think that I could’ve done this without anybody else. His lips curve. Braceless smile.
“I don’t think I could,” Andre agrees, mouth pressed right to Cal’s. His other hand twists into the meat of Cal’s shoulder through the Army shirt. Nails digging, seeking to draw blood, “Do you-?”
His question is answered when Cal all but clambers over the centre console, sliding home between Andre’s thighs. He crowds Andre in against the car door, savours the feeling like he’s a prey animal just caught. Pulling off, Andre looks up at him. His lips are wet- Cal’s spit, maybe, or his own, a mixture of both. His fingers tighten in Cal’s hair.
“We don’t have to talk about it.” He breathes. Arches up, closes the gap between them again. Their mantra.
This kiss is hungrier, needier, that starved dog caught in a trap. Anything to keep breathing. Andre’s groan rumbles right through the two of them, from the base of his throat to the finger Cal’s got pressed to the trigger, splintering off up the length of his arm into fractals of sensation.
Clumsy, desperate hands stumble down Cal’s chest, trailing a familiar path. They’ve done this before, rehearsed the motions, committed each sensation to memory. Andre’s got rougher hands than Cal, moves with the gracelessness only possessed by a teenage boy, yet to fully grow into himself.
Andre pants against his mouth as his hand rips Cal’s shirt from his pants. The only option then is to break apart, for Cal to bury his face right against Andre’s shoulder and wait in anticipation, quivering like a wine glass. When Andre’s hand curls over the bulge in Cal’s boxers, Cal’s already hard and aching - has been from the moment he’d pressed the gun to Andre’s temple. He shoves his knee forward harder against Andre’s crotch.
Andre is, Cal discovers, also hard. He doesn’t know why it surprises him so much.
It’s a blur of sensation, then: Andre’s hand slipping into his boxers and curling tight over the hard heat of Cal’s cock. The way Cal’s entire body aches like an open wound. He rocks forward, presses his knee harder against Andre’s cock and feels the way Andre rocks right into it.
They’re living in a blindspot, now, but Cal can feel they’re right on the edge of something great. So close to breaking the surface. They’re running out of time. He’s running out of time.
“Shit. I wish we had more time.” He breathes into Andre’s shoulder. His back arches, body confused on whether he wants to pull away from the sensation or fuck into it, bury himself into it, lose himself, lose himself, lose himself. Andre’s rough hand clamps harder around his cock.
“Shut up.” Andre groans back, half incoherent, hips rocking hard up into Cal’s thigh, “Fuck- fuck-”
Looking down on Andre now, he looks like a starved man given food. There is a distinct desperation there that only Cal can recognise, that wanting-wanting-wanting. Forbidden fruit has always tasted sweeter, he finds, dives down to seek the tang of it on Andre’s mouth.
Like every time, Andre surges into it. Propels himself with the full bodied intensity of a man who realises he has nothing left to lose. Crooked canines nip into Cal’s swollen bottom lip, scratch indentations that say I was here, I claimed this, I made my mark.
Time unfolds like a paper crane. Methodical folds made smooth, undone, the intricacy of each moment flattened out into something hurried. They exist beyond context now. The pontiac is an iron fortress 3,000 feet deep and they are running out of oxygen and Cal can’t breathe with Andre’s mouth mashed to his.
It’s not long before Cal’s coming undone, spilling into Andre’s fist. A loud, guttural groan rips through him right from the pit of his stomach. Dark, hot, desperate, a long time coming. Andre follows suit (always does) and bucks a final time against Cal’s thigh.
He feels the moment Andre comes like a gunshot. The spill of heat against his leg, the way Andre’s entire body - previously set into fevered motion - suddenly stills.
“Fuck-” Andre prays, “Cal- Cal- Cal.”
Cal leans back, chest still heaving. Checks the clock on the dashboard.
9:15. In an hour, they’re going to be dead.