Work Text:
according to the calendar, it was a friday morning.
it was a friday morning, radiation and sunlight creeping over the horizon. nothing was different. well, not intrinsically different. acid rain came through the night before, so the constant dripping of a roof leak kept fun ghoul up for a good chunk of the evening. he’d read a bit more of the book he’d been chipping away at, some sequel in a horror series that didn’t have it’s original counterpart, so the fun of reading it had more to do with piecing together the foundational plot than any of the textual jump scares. the supposed monster wasn’t that intriguing but the dynamic between the two protagonist boys was—the series was probably a self-published deal, considering how cheap and tacky the cover art was (which was saying something, considering it was published in 1981), and having two adolescent boys-becoming-men with homoerotic subtext didn’t make for New York Times best seller. it was entertaining enough to pick at, enjoy a chapter or two, and put down. easy reading.
an acid rain storm the night before meant jet star was already up, messing with the filtration system, taking inventory of the clean water collected. he could hear the mechanical clanking from outside the thin walls of their sleeping quarters. occasionally he wondered how the motel ever stayed open when the plaster and duct tape it was built meant you could hear someone pissing in the next room.
that friday morning, ghoul took his time waking up, rolling around in the last of the warmth from his bed and lazily catching up on the last half of chapter thirteen. The boys were wandering around the shore of the lake at the local summer camp, following the clues left by the last victim, clinging to one another’s hands whenever a bump in the night—
“knock knock.”
he’d blame it on lack of sleep, the way he visibly jumped, tossing his book into the air—“jesus fuck”—before gathering himself up again. “give a guy more warning than that.”
party poison grinned from the doorway. “sorry, was i interrupting something?” fully dressed, holster on and hair gently slicked back away from his face, meant he’d been up for hours already. something about the difference between them in the moment—party, suited up and wide awake, while ghoul lounged shirtless in bed with hair pressed up at an angle on one side from restless sleep—gave him goosebumps.
(from outside: the distinct sound of metal-on-metal, and someone yelling. “FUCK.”)
“just quiet reading time. teacher said we could all read a chapter from our favorite book,” ghoul grabbed the paperback and waved it in the air. “but no, i just…didn’t sleep great. not on my A game today or whatever.” party hummed in response, pushed his shoulder from the wall and stepped further into the room. no permission needed. it’s not like ghoul would ever tell him no.
he watched him wander around the room, seemingly with no plan or purpose, admiring the random trinkets and mess of maps in nearly ever corner. sometimes, he wondered if this is what soldiers felt like—their general marching into their dorm unannounced, taking inventory and making sure all was in order, both soldier and general fearing the wrath of their chain-of-command. both falling in line. tip-toeing around one another, sharing the same mission. sharing the same vision.
they indulged in an oddly comfortable silence for a while, doing their unspoken dance. just sharing air. and then, from the open doorway, it hit him—
“holy shit. holy shit, party, is that coffee?” ghoul sat up straighter. “is there coffee brewing right now?” over his shoulder, party made a dismissive gesture.
“yeah, kobra found an old can of folgers at the swap meet, but—“ he started, but ghoul was already moving to put on a pair of sweatpants, looking half crazed, “—hey, hey, would you just. hold on a second, okay?” party crossed the space between them, steadying ghoul with a hand and sitting him back down. “I gave everyone strict orders to leave it alone until all four of us are in the same room and can duke it out for mugs.”
“and by everyone, you mean your brother.”
“yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“so. what’s the catch? do we all have to sacrifice a toe to Destroya or something for this?” for emphasis, ghoul pulled a foot up onto his opposing thigh and made a sawing motion with his hand, putting on a small performance—sound effects, faux-pain crossing his features, and even the motion of blood spurting from the imaginary severed toe. “i’m not even joking, i don’t like this toe that much anyway.” ghoul’s reward, a momentary look of amusement from party, almost immediately schooled.
“no toe sacrifices,” party said, making a quick trip to close the door, returning just as quickly, “just something i think we should talk about, that’s all.”
(outside: the whoosh of water, moving from one tank to another. “hell fucking YES.”)
0 to 180 heart rate. volleying between anxiety and curiosity, ghoul made a comical ‘gulp’ and pulled at a non-existence shirt collar. “uh-oh, boss.”
another dismissive hand wave. “don’t worry, it’s not bad.” the desk chair being dragged across the floor shrieked sharply, until party took his seat across from ghoul’s bed. “just some housekeeping shit.”
ghoul raised an eyebrow. “what, my room being a mess?”
“no, not actual housekeeping. it’s just a saying. it’s like, corporate jargon.”
“are we going corporate around here party?”
“you know what i mean, you jackass,” he replied, a laugh making it’s way into his voice. “will you just listen to me for a second?”
ghoul gave a half-assed salute. “you have my undivided attention, captain.”
it was a friday morning, according to the calendar. it was a friday morning when party poison came into his best friend’s room and said:
“i think we should have sex.”
the silence that followed was tense.
the quiet lasted long enough for ghoul to catch the sound of his own elevated breathing, and the reminder of how very undressed he was settling in the form of an insidious blush across his skin. he felt very small and vaguely stupid. he took a mental tally of the days between his last shroom trip, although auditory hallucinations were not something he experienced. ever. which meant this was a very real, very tense, very weird moment in his life. just a few feet away, his best friend remained. studied him like a creature under a microscope, frowned a bit when ghoul minutely shifted the blanket closer to himself in an attempt to cover something—anything.
“what did you say?” ghoul knew he said.
“you know what i said.” yep.
he shook his head. “no, okay captain obvious, i know what you said, i just…why?”
party squinted, almost looking annoyed. “you sound like an idiot right now.” ghoul barked out a laugh, disbelieving.
“me? i sound like an idiot? you just said you think we should have sex and i’m the one who sounds like an idiot.”
“i should have known it would go like this,” party mutters, mostly to himself, rolling his eyes, running a hand through his hair. “look,” he gestured between them with a free hand, “i’m stating the obvious. we’ve gone at each other’s throats more times than we’ve collectively gone after any dracs. that’s a fact. this tension is getting the better of us. if we’re not focused, we’ll get ourselves or someone else killed. this is simply tactical. this is strategy . if we just…get it out of our systems, we can move forward and be better for our team.”
you could have knocked ghoul over with a feather. a slight gust of wind would have done him in. he was pretty sure growing a third head wouldn’t have shocked him any more than party’s words had already.
“you want to fuck…to ‘get it out of our systems’. to, uhh. wow, okay. to be a better team ? are you fucking serious right now?”
unnerved, party nodded. leaned forward in his chair. “100%.”
ghoul sat with the disbelief, stuck between laughing until he cried and ripping his own hair out. there was…an unbelievable amount to process. it very quickly dawned on him that the coffee was, indeed, bait. fucking bastard.
“you don’t have to give me an answer right now, of course.” party moved to stand, stretching a bit and revealing a thin line of pale skin at his belly. ghoul pretended as hard as possible he did not see a damn thing. everything felt like a trap, and he couldn’t stop sweating. “how about we give it a week? think on it,” he reached over to pat ghoul on the shoulder like an old buddy that he didn’t just proposition, “but for now, let’s just focus on coffee and today’s game plan. okay?”
ghoul looked up, nodding. he was pretty sure his eyes had the ‘nobody’s home’ look, but apparently it was good enough because the flat line of party’s mouth moved into a short lived smile before he turned on a heel and left without another word.
it was going to take a prayer and a miracle for ghoul to be able to stand up again. he thanked whoever was listening for the unplanned yet incredibly useful angle of his discarded book in his lap, placed his head in his hands, and considered how bad he would look with a bald spot from where he thought to rip out his own hair.
from down the hall, kobra hollered: “if you evil sons of bitches don’t get in here, i’m going on a shooting spree.”
on monday, in the heat of the day, with the sun baking the cracked leather seats of the trans am, ghoul finally mustered up the courage to ask:
“were you messing with me?”
and to his left in the driver’s seat, party didn’t flinch. he didn’t move much at all at the question, hardly cast ghoul a sidelong glance before he tapped his finger on the wheel in time with the tinny music coming through the stereo.
“were you messing with me?” ghoul repeated.
“you’re gonna have to be more specific. i mess with you a lot,” party replied, the corner of his mouth winding up into a smile. (a fucking smirk, ghoul thought. childish and bratty.) but it wasn’t an untruth and it wasn’t a secret - ghoul wondered if it’s how little boys felt when they pulled little girls’ pigtails on the playground. he thought it must’ve been the same kind of power. “it’s fun to do. i like to do it.”
party had once put a springloaded mousetrap inside ghoul’s holster and the ugly purple bruises on his fingertips felt worth it to see party throw his head back, his teeth bared while he laughed until he cried. and most of the time, ghoul didn’t mind that the joke was on him. he didn’t mind being party’s fool.
(once, a year after the mousetrap, party found a dead phosphorous grenade somewhere in the sand in zone five and when he snatched the pin out and threw it to ghoul, he shouted, “head’s up.” and ghoul caught it, realized what he was holding and the fear that seized him was so sudden that he felt his blood run like ice water through his body. party laughed until he didn’t, a few moments that felt too long until he had noticed the way ghoul was gasping shallowly, until he noticed the way his hands were shaking around the dud grenade.
remembering that they were casualties of a war in some way or another, living and breathing, wasn’t funny. it took ghoul a full week to sleep without seeing the blinding incendiary glow of a grenade behind his eyelids. party never apologized.
ghoul never made him.)
but right then, in the car, ghoul felt like a fool. more annoyed with party being flippant than he ever had been, angry and confused and worse than lovesick. more upset than the time with the grenade. he’d worked on the words all weekend until they seemed right, had talked to himself for hours to try and find a way to get to the bottom of this. (this being: party sat across from him in that fucking desk chair, hair wild and his eyes quiet and calm, telling him we should have sex with the same ease as we should change the oil .)
“jesus christ, you’re a dick.” ghoul said, slapping at the radio carelessly until he had dragged the volume back up to a deafening decibel and the doors and windows of the car shook with the drums and guitar. he felt defeated and played, felt like he had walked into a trap that party had meticulously set days ago in the privacy of his room just to trip him up now. he felt like no matter what, the intent from the beginning was to see him fall flat on his face.
party must have sensed the tiny, almost imperceptible wound that had been picked like a scab in ghoul’s ego. he stole two quick glances at ghoul (who only turned his body to stare fully out the window) before he sighed.
(party was always sighing. ghoul thought he and atlas and sisyphus should get in a room together and see how long it would take them to use up all the air. always goddamn sighing.)
“alright, alright. enough.” party cleared his throat, reaching out to turn down the music that ghoul had just turned up. “i’m listening. crybaby.” a pause. and then: “no, ghoul. i wasn’t messing with you the other day.”
“let’s circle back to that.” ghoul insisted quickly.
“what?”
“i’m circling back -” ghoul said. “isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
a beat.
“what? ”
ghoul turned away from the window and turned back to party, resting the column of his spine on the passenger door. “corporate jargon – fuck it, nevermind. i’ve been thinking about it.”
and to say he had been thinking about it was an understatement: it was all he could turn over in his mind. we should have sex . the curve of party’s mouth, that strip of skin between his stomach and his belt. his fingers on the wheel, his hand passing through his own hair. it had been two days and suddenly, ghoul saw sex everywhere party was, in everything he did. it made him feel insane and it made him ache and it made him nauseous with fear and want.
“that’s what i told you to do.” party shrugged, almost self-congratulatory. almost like he wanted to give ghoul a little gold sticker star for being such a good boy and following directions.
ghoul rolled his eyes, and found them resting where he had left his book open on his lap in the moments before he worked up the guts to start speaking, he looked down at the pages in the sequel to a sequel. (on page 113, the boys were in grave danger. they would soon abandon all their hope, and then they’d only have each other. one boy said to the other boy: “i’m scared.”
and the other boy, who was never scared, or at least never admitted it, said: “me too.”)
and ghoul didn’t want to look at the book anymore or think about what the boys would do next. he closed it. he weighed his own thoughts and his own words. party was tapping on the wheel again, but there was no music playing this time.
“can i say no?”
the question hung in the air, thick. the landscape outside rushed by dizzyingly fast. ghoul looked at party long and hard, tried to study his face but it was like playing poker with someone who would always, always have a better hand.
“can you say no?” party asked, his voice flat. unimpressed.
ghoul shifted uncomfortably in his own seat, feeling too warm and too alive and a little sick to his stomach. “are you a parrot? fucking..why are you repeating everything i say to you?”
(can i say no? ghoul thought maybe what he meant to say was: haven’t you saved my life so many times? too many? doesn’t the devil always come to collect his dues?
maybe he meant to ask: don’t i owe you a yes?)
there was a long silence in the car and everything smelled strong and heavy and sickening. gasoline and leather and asphalt hanging heavy in the air between them. ghoul didn’t think he wanted to say no - he just wasn’t sure that it was right to say yes. he wasn’t sure of anything anymore, his sense of reality shifted all askew since the friday before in his bedroom. he couldn’t make party understand this; how easy it was for his whole world to tilt and become off-balance this way. he couldn’t make party understand the way he’d thrown off the balance of his orbit.
“are you saying no, then?” party asked, and his voice was quieter than ghoul had ever expected it to be. there was no anger in it, and no disappointment. it was fairly even and that made ghoul want to hang his head. he didn’t want to feel like a task on party’s list. he didn’t want to be a chore. (what did he want party to say, then? i want you, i need you? in a dream, in the dark, in another life altogether, maybe those are the things ghoul would want to hear and maybe party would speak them.
but this was the real world, this was their world: the road stretching out before them, on and on for miles and miles and the car’s engine rumbling so loudly it must’ve sounded like a storm on the horizon.
and here, party poison didn’t beg.)
here, ghoul wasn’t strong enough to say no. but he wasn’t brave enough to say yes, not yet. so instead, he said, “i’m not saying no.”
“okay,” party replied. ghoul repeated: okay.
and party reached out and turned up the music again, and the road kept going, and the sun warmed the inside of the car and ghoul stared at the sky for a long, long time. when he looked back over, finally, party smiled at him (a real smile, a self-assured smile, a trust me s mile.)
ghoul let his head fall back until it thudded against the window and he thought: i’m so fucked.
on wednesday, party found himself standing in front of a mirror.
the great philosophers living in the times before modern medicine, technology, hell…even goddamn capitalism, would have had an aneurysm if they had the chance to glimpse into the future ahead. civilization and all it’s flaws were easier to peg back then. a moral compass pointed north or south. black and white, no gray areas. you were right (righteous) or you were wrong (immoral). even the fucking bible got a few things right—love thy neighbor, do not covet, do unto others…obviously, times change.
everything before the pig bomb was fuzzy, at best. if he thought about it hard enough, party could remember the smallest bits of a life once lived by a man he wouldn’t recognize today. he remembers a life lived in front of a TV screen, two bodies tucked together, John Wayne riding a horse through the wild, wild west. talk about morality: the life of a cowboy, the life of a rebel. the laws were that of the land, and men like Clint Eastwood ruled with the bend of their brow and the quickness of their shot. kids like party and kobra lived in a world of fantasy, tucked together there in front of a TV screen. cowboys and indians, good guys and “bad” guys, the gray that came with it all. you could, of course, shoot the sheriff. but the deputy would take his place, so what did you really gain?
party stood in front of a mirror and thought about morality.
everyone’s favorite runner saloon, The Place, was about as grimy as it got. it was the end of the world, so who in their right mind was going to waste time scrubbing a toilet or cleaning a floor? the booze was cheap (stolen), the fights were almost constant (due to the stealing), and you were liable to find just about anything your heart desired there—drugs, sex, your next broken nose. “we haven’t gone out for a rowdy night in so long, i think we’ve earned it at this point.” kobra had a continuing soft spot for The Place, mostly because the bartenders thought the world of the ‘fab four’ (a name party still found utterly confusing, but a title of honor nonetheless, as it opened many doors for him and assisted him in many ladder-climbs). kobra also didn’t mind charming the runner groupies, still freshly minted and shiny, with overly dramatized tales of times they all essentially got their asses handed to them but lived to tell-all.
so, that wednesday, party stood in front of the bathroom mirror in The Place, and considered morality—more importantly, his own.
can i say no?
perhaps in the eyes of others, party seemed like some kind of facsimile of history’s most evil dictators. ruling-with-an-iron-fist, or something similarly asinine. whispers get around and quickly go from hushed voices to regular conversation. the self-built image of the infamous party poison only matches the real one like broken pieces of a shattered mirror (how ironic). sometimes, the shards take too much impact, lose their edge—chip or crack—and you find that putting it back together doesn’t look much like the original vision. most days, party liked it that way. people give you less shit, or if they feel like they have something to prove, they quickly find out that giving you shit in the first place was a life-altering mistake.
were you messing with me? can i say no?
the thing about a reputation is it does often precede someone.
for two days, he’d felt a weak-knee queasiness whenever the ghost of can i say no? crossed his mind. for all the wicked, truly terrible things party knew about himself, he could never have predicted that ghoul would feel the need to ask that . for what it was worth, party was almost positive that ghoul wasn’t talking about…well. had the lines become that blurred? was it part of this reputation he now carried, tales growing taller each day about his supposed heroics but, the flip side, the shadowy corners no one dared touch? it didn’t seem possible. somedays it made him crazy, how impossible it was to control the narrative, control how people saw him. he craved the control.
control.
can i say no?
he wanted to say, “of course, of course you can, what kind of question is that” but the thing that made him nauseous was the part of his mind, of his heart and probably his dick, that wanted even more to say “but please, god, don’t deny me this. i won’t, couldn’t ever just take it, but i have no idea how to beg for it.
“fuck. fuck fuck fuck.” the water from the faucet came out lukewarm, but party still needed the wake up. he watched it drip down the slope of his features, gather in little pills at the edges of his hair. the face looking back mocked him, because it didn’t have to face the reality it’s counterpart had created. god help him, he needed a fucking drink.
party left the bathroom, moral compass spinning endlessly, wetness still clinging to him.
“i’m serious! i think they’re testing some fucked up steroid on these freaks to make them massive. when we were checking pockets, credentials had marked him at 6’5”, like the average drac isn’t a whopping 5 and a half feet all!” the bartender nodded solemnly, watching jet star take a long drink from his glass. “it’s getting out of hand, dude.”
“oh, and don’t get me started on whatever they’ve been doing to super charge their bike engines recently. fast little bastards,” kobra muttered, shaking his head and pulling a drag from his cigarette, passing it back over to ghoul. “you gotta have clear aim to take out their tires or you’re gonna have a bad time trying to get them off your shit.”
the bartender nodded again. “glad it’s not me out there. my liver’s been shot since before the bomb, and i’ve got a bad eye.” (jet barely stopped kobra from snorting up his drink and making a mess all over his own lap, knowing he would have gone for the classic “which eye, your blue one or your brown one”)
ghoul lifted his glass in the air. “cheers to our slowly deteriorating bodies and blowin’ up bat city’s finest.” before the rest joined in with their various liquors (of unknown origin), he locked eyes with party making his way across the bar, grinning big and wide at him. “wait, we got one more!”
the group scrambled in a quick flurry, scooting down to make room. the bartender cast a glance over their heads, asking “what’re you drinking friend?”
“something strong,” party replied, low and quick, mustering up a grin for his friends. his mask felt heavy in his pocket. the mask he wore in the moment was much different, much worse. there was still water in his hair.
if the bartender was annoyed by the brashness of party’s answer, it didn’t show—he placed down a new glass, poured from an unmarked bottle, capped it, and gave it to ghoul to hand off to party.
having a public reputation is one thing, but in that public reputation, no one really knows you as you are. no one can see through the veneer, but they’ll always try to throw a stone or two, see if you crack. if he was honest, party preferred the cloak of his reputation and the shade it provided him rest under, to the man he let himself be with his family. as ghoul handed him his drink, as their eyes met for just a moment, party knew what ghoul was seeing—who he was seeing—when he frowned momentarily. the man he was with his family was a man with crumbling walls, and every attempt to rebuild was useless. cold, cruel, and downright mean from time to time, party was still his most honest self with the ones he loved. he knew that ghoul could see through him—he wouldn’t even be surprised if ghoul had seen so far inside him, he’d seen the way party watched his own face in the bathroom minutes before, heard every thought and saw every corner of his mind, and it scared it so much more than any drac or battery city goon ever could. korse be fucking damned. the idea of ghoul seeing him for all his wickedness, for all his immorality, for all the things he lacks as a leader and as a man, and trusting him still…?
their fingers touched across the glass, and party shivered.
when he looked to ghoul again, his face was schooled once more. an understanding.
“cheers, you idiots.” jet initiated, and all followed suit. a quiet chorus of ‘cheers’ from everyone else came after. the glittery sound of glasses clinking filled their small corner of the room. almost immediately, everyone but party and the bartender made a noise of disgust. “oh my god, that’s fucking motor oil, i hate it.”
party ignored the burn in his throat, combined with the blue-flame hot already in his chest, ducking his head between the bodies around him, and made quick work to grab at ghoul’s wrist. “can we talk?” a stern whisper. ghoul didn’t answer, popping up from his seat without a word. almost pressed to the wall as they swam through small crowds, dissecting through conversations, passing clouds of smoke and vapor. party never let go of ghoul’s wrist.
the AM got a special parking spot at The Place. “the getaway,” very appropriately named. most everyone who frequented The Place knew if trouble came knocking, or Dr. Death hit the waves with a warning, four particular patrons would need a quick exit. (the pavement was permanently tattooed with tire tracks from every time they’d rushed out on a note of squealing rubber and a revved engine). “the getaway” was feet from the doors and just underneath the eyesore of a neon sign, leaving a halo-glow across the hood of the car.
party dropped ghoul’s wrist in a fight against all his best (or worse) instincts, using the bumper and smoothly sliding to sit atop one of the spindly legs of the painted spider. he searchingly patted at his chest for a moment before ghoul handed over his own pack of cigarettes. party didn’t thank him. at least, not out loud. ghoul didn’t expect it, wasn’t waiting on it. peripherally, party noticed ghoul’s hand trace his opposing wrist in small circles. he felt his breathe catch on an inhale, sputtering gracelessly on smoke.
“what, is this your first day or something?” it was a stupid joke, but party chuckled anyway, fighting the air in his own lungs for another long moment while ghoul joined him on the hood, snatching the abandoned cigarette for himself.
“feels like it, a little bit.” ghoul watched him get his breath back, blowing smoke in his face just to be contrarian. “fuck you, you little shit,” party laughed again while swatting near his nose to clear the air around himself. ghoul cracked a troublemaker’s grin.
“you were asking for it!”
“i didn’t ask for a damn thing.”
they shared another laugh, private and childish. ghoul returned the cigarette a little shorter than before. party didn’t mind a bit. they sat together, sharing the easiness of the night, glowing a bit in the surrounding haze of purple light.
a runner bike zipped by on the nearby road.
“so,” ghoul started, “what’s up?”
party ashed off over the side of the fender. took another drag. held it for long enough to burn. everything was burning, he thought, reminded of the previous pain in his throat and chest. “remember when we talked the other day, in the car?”
“uhh. yeah. a little bit, I guess. what about it?”
when the desert is quiet, you feel like you can hear anything. everything. if he listened closely enough, he believed he could have heard the harsh beating of both their hearts in that moment. ghoul went back to circling his wrist, more mindful this time.
“when you asked me…if you could say no. what did you mean by that?”
ghoul pulled a face. “what do you mean?”
“i mean, what did you mean by it? what were you asking?” party, even-voiced as ever, said quietly. never once looking anywhere but the wall in front of them. if he was an ordinary man, he’d let the tremor building in his heart flutter through his nerves, but held tight enough to stop it where it began.
“i was asking if i could say no, man. just. i dunno, asking.” although he couldn’t see it, he knew ghoul looked as confused as he sounded.
“why wouldn’t you be able to say no?” it came out as less of a question for ghoul to answer and more of an internal interrogation. “it wasn’t a command . i wouldn’t…fuck. did you think i was going to fo—“ party stopped himself before he went too far. felt the burn come back up, push at something and catch the roof of his mouth. he pulled the cigarette from his lips before he could grind it between his teeth.
almost immediately, ghoul pushed himself forward, getting into party’s space—into his field of vision—looking affronted.
“jesus party, no, that’s not why i was asking,” it came out harsh, a whip lash of words. “i know you’d never…god, fuck, no, i know you man. i know you .” softened the blow. ghoul reached back into his space, stealing back his borrowed pack. “give me your lighter, you dick.”
party obliged. took a breath through his nose. held the quiet, waited, before speaking again.
“okay. i just thought that was—important.”
the click of a flame. “yeah. important ,” ghoul retorted. “stupid question.”
party pulled his eyes away from the wall. looked at his best friend, studied him. he noted to himself the fierce, unknowable emotion that continued to fight with his mouth and eyes. “how was it stupid?”
this time, ghoul turned to mirror party, scoffing in his face and puffing smoke at him once more. “are you kidding me? you weren’t sure if me asking you ‘can i say no’ had something to do with you possibly… forcing me to have sex with you? do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?” he shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he even had to say it (he didn’t). “do you think i don’t fucking know you?”
party wanted to say ‘like the back of your hand.’ but he couldn’t, so he didn’t.
“i know you, okay? i do. i’m not saying that you haven’t done some deeply questionable shit before, but that? no. no, party-goddamn-poison is not gonna—you wouldn’t—“
“i’m sorry.”
ghoul stopped. “sorry?”
party nodded. “yes. i’m sorry.”
“for what?”
party just looked at him. looked at him and saw him. “i’m sorry i upset you.” saw the bubbling of rage, of confusion and hurt, not for his own self but on party’s behalf, rupture and spill over until there was nothing left but concern. party admired him so much, it scared him to death.
probably loved him, but that wasn’t in the equation. so he didn’t do the math and moved on.
“you’re burning your fingers,” ghoul said in lieu of anything else, pointing to where the lit filter was, indeed, burning party’s skin. “huh.” was all he could say. felt like the wind was knocked out of him, like there wasn’t anything else to say except the occasional “huh.” so he didn’t really surprise himself when he felt his legs straighten out, arms pushing up and away from the hood of the car, and steadying himself to stand. wasn’t too shocked to feel himself turn around, creating a shadow across ghoul’s body where he now blocked the light, casting everything in the shade of a bruise. there wasn’t anything left to think about, even when he saw more confusion, maybe even some version of fear that had nothing to do with being scared, on the face below him. underneath him. whatever was more accurate, or what he wished to be true.
“i’m about to do something stupid. cool?”
ghoul blinked once, twice, a third time. pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it on the ground carelessly, only halfway finished.
“cool.”
joy was a hard thing to capture. party knew about happiness. he knew giddiness like that christmas morning feeling, when there’s so many presents under the tree your eyes can’t focus on a single thing. knew about triumph with blood on his clothes and a gun in hand. joy was such closer to catching lightening in a bottle. it was fleeting and hard to find. hard to hold onto.
when he leaned down with a hand on either side of ghoul’s thighs to kiss him there on the hood of the Trans AM, he knew that was joy.
friday came again, and ghoul found he couldn’t be alone in a room with party.
he couldn’t be in the car alone with party on thursday morning when party said he was jaunting out for a little supply run and and stared at him from across the diner, asking for his company without asking anything at all. and he couldn’t be alone with party on the roof sometime around sunset on thursday evening, when he heard the familiar heavy clang of his boots on the fire escape ladder before he even saw a shock of red hair over the horizon of the building; party tried to smoke a cigarette with him but ghoul left after a moment, unable to exhale fully while party’s shoulder was pressed so near to his own. he couldn’t be alone with party out near the gas pumps friday morning, when he was somehow both mindlessly and mindfully taking one apart to see if there was anything useful inside and party asked him if he needed any help.
(nope, ghoul had said, sliding his hand out from the rusted inside of the mechanics of the pump. just finished. and he had walked away so quickly that he’d almost tripped over his own feet - left party standing there in the blazing midmorning sun, halfway between the diner and the long-abandoned gas bay.)
ghoul could have been alone with party; he had ample opportunity, more chance than one. physically, it was possible. but he shouldn’t - he wouldn’t.
the last time they’d been alone was the night outside the place, the night with the drinks so strong and acrid that they’d left ghoul feeling more poisoned than drunk. they’d been alone on the hood of the car, a cigarette spent between them and another lit for good measure and it had been too much. it had all been too much. they’d been alone, together and party had kissed him.
it was friday, and he could only think about that kiss, that moment - like a bandaid and a fresh wound at the same time. it had healed something ( i know you, i know you ; the wild look of doubt in party’s eyes, the flush of understanding in his cheeks) but it had opened up something else. a kiss had opened up ghoul’s chest, cracked his ribs open and left some of him spilling out. he didn’t think he was ever going to be able to push it all back in. it scared him. it made him aware – reminded him – that he wasn’t whole.
(but i could be , he thought, remembered the way party licked into his mouth and how he had made a small, surprised, embarrassing noise and his hands had gone to the sides of party’s face and they fit. they fit together so well, a key sliding into a lock and turning to find home.)
friday - two whole days, and he’d done a damn good job of staying away from party and an even better job of holding himself together. he knew it couldn’t last forever. party had kissed him - and he’d kissed party back, had parted his lips and widened his stance and made room for party between his legs and they’d stayed there, hands in hair and mouths on throats until the door of the bar had swung open wildly and party had moved backwards in a flash. and it was like possession - ghoul felt hungry for something he didn’t have the words for. he just knew that now, when party looked at him, he felt like want was going to swallow him up whole. more than want -
need.
he couldn’t be alone with party.
but he was all alone with thoughts about him, and feelings about him, and that was miserable. more than want. need need need. he tried to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied and it worked, sort of.
“you seem tense,” jet said to him as the sun was setting on friday, the light pouring into the diner all rose golden and askew. ghoul looked up at him but said nothing; he had become miraculously quieter in the past two days, secretly afraid that if he started talking - to anyone, about anything - it would all come pouring out.
- and he then he kissed me and it confused me more, i didn’t think i could be more confused but i am now and i know i can say no but i know that i can’t say anything except yes he wants me to say yes and he kissed me and all i can taste is his tongue in my mouth and i want i need more i want i need him i need i need i need -
he understood why people took vows of silence.
so he said nothing to jet (who whispered something to kobra) and he stalked off to bed, leaving the ancient pistol he’d been tinkering with unassembled and rusty on the counter at the booth in the diner. in bed, he tried to read the book - the sequel, the boys with the purpose, the boys with their murky, shadowy fates. in the book, the boys were looking at each other - they were seeing each other, they were sharing a moment of understanding. one boy looked at the other’s lips.
ghoul closed the book. he considered the desk chair with its wobbly legs, the trinkets on the milk crates, the rolls of zone maps leaning against the wall and he realized that everything here was tied to party. no place, no thing safe. he looked around his room and suddenly had the urge to set it all on fire - there wasn’t a corner of this place that was supposed to be his that party hadn’t touched. there wasn’t anything he could see that party hadn’t seen. the beginning and the end. the sun and the planet that orbits. that was the problem, ghoul thought, and also the solution. a compass always point due north.
he had taken party in (their mouths together, their hands tangled) and he was never, ever going to be able to get him out. the desire felt like disease, like cancer - eating him up until he was more want than person. and he’d never been good with pain, he’d never been good at being strong.
he was so much better at giving up, giving in.
ghoul stood, book falling off his lap and sliding to the floor, and he thought that just because something was stupid didn’t mean it wasn’t inevitable. he went to party’s room.
the door was ajar, low light filtering through the small crack. he pushed it open, but didn’t dare cross the threshold. party was sitting at the desk they’d pulled from the motel office some years before - his gun was atop the desk, his jacket on the back of the chair. his arms were bare, pricked and carved with scars, some big and some small and even in the low light from the candle on the desk, ghoul wanted to study them. to study him, all of him, the scars and the veins and the angles. ghoul was good at puzzles, and he was good at maps - he could figure party out, if party would let him.
“hey - “ he heard party saying, and ghoul suddenly realized that he had no real idea how long he’d been standing there in the doorframe staring. he blinked quickly. “you’re awfully impractical as a doorstop.”
ghoul huffed a little laugh and shuffled inside. party looked at him and then back down to the papers on the desk in front of him. he glanced over his shoulder at ghoul - “the door.” was all he said, and ghoul was quick to side step a little more and push the door closed behind him.
now, standing in party’s room, he realized he had no idea what to do or say now that he’d worked up the courage to come in and remembered why it was that he couldn’t be alone with him in the first place. he was waitng for something but he wasn’t sure what. for party to say something, for party to lead - for party to say i know you’ve been avoiding me or i’m sorry about the other night or get on your knees . (i have , ghoul practiced saying - i’m not, and yes sir, in that order.)
but in the end, party said something different.
“i don’t wanna keep doing this,” party said and ghoul felt his heart lurch and sink in his chest. he hung his head, but party raised his own and straightened his spine. he turned in the chair to face ghoul and he squared his shoulders. “this back and forth where you’re sorry and i’m sorry and both of us feel like we fucked up.”
“what do you want, then?”
ghoul wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. he wrung them for a moment, hard, until they felt a bit numb.
“i don’t know.”
“party,” he said softly. softer than he thought he could, a gentleness that the thought had left him long ago. “what do you want?”
it was a stupid question. he’d been asking a lot of those in the last week, but it wasn’t his fault. it’s not my fault, he wanted to tell party. it’s not my fault that you’re trying so hard to undo me. ghoul felt threadbare.
party replied: “you.”
“you want me to say yes.” ghoul said. it wasn’t a question.
“yes. i want you to say yes.” party imparted, reaching out to move move a messy curl of hair out of ghoul’s eyes to see him better. get a clearer picture, a better read. there was ink on his fingers, ghoul noticed. ink on his fingers - imperfect, not a god after all. not to everyone. but ghoul thought he could believe in a god that wasn’t quite perfect. “say yes.”
ghoul tried, but the words were stuck in his throat, his tongue thick and stupid with desire and he realized maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t speak right then because alarmed, he realized he would’ve let it all out: he would’ve said too much.
so he said nothing at all, and instead, let himself reach out to brush his thumbs across party’s cheekbones before he sank into his lap.
having sex with your very best friend in the world came with it’s own complications. naturally.
“oh my god, oh my god,” the room couldn’t have been hotter, filled to the ceiling with humidity and something almost tangibly sticky. when there were too many clothes, suddenly there weren’t enough and everything became skin and wetness and wild noises. “come on, please, fuck.” ghoul bucked up in party’s lap, head thrown back on a high-note moan, the hands on his hips guiding him on a constant see-saw. back and forth, back and forth. those same hands guided the pressure, kept him pressed down so everything was aligned. a fine-tuned machine made by their two bodies.
“just like this, you can. it has to be just like this.”
“hey, are you gonna eat that?”
from over ghoul’s shoulder, kobra poked at the can of green beans sitting nearly untouched between his hands. a single bite still sat neatly on his fork.
ghoul looked down at the offending bite. looked at the can. “uhhh. no, it’s fine, you can have it.”
“fucking score , thanks ghoulie,” and soon enough, the can was no longer in his hands. the fork remained, mostly to mock him. “you not hungry or something?”
the thing about that was he had been insatiably hungry. for nearly 10 minutes, ghoul found himself rummaging through their pantry, carefully cycling through possible options—although there wasn’t much variety, he knew he needed something . the hunger encompassed his whole being, felt like a cat scratching and tearing at the inside of him. anything would do, and yet, nothing would. realistically, he knew that. but the can of green beans happened to be there on the shelf at the very moment a phantom wave of that same sticky-heat from party’s room washed over him. so he said “fuck it” and stalked out of the pantry on a mission.
and now that mission was utterly useless.
ghoul watched kobra take bite after bite until his cheeks were stuffed full. felt envious. “no, not really. well, i thought i was but…turns out i was wrong.”
kobra chewed and gave him an uninterpretable look. “huh. weird.”
he could only stand another thirty seconds of watching someone else enjoy their food before making a quiet exit back to his room where he had been holed up the entire morning.
when the initial period of shock ended and ghoul realized he had absolutely come in his pants like some fucking virgin, he barely had time to process the finer things like how and why and jesus christ almighty that was good because he was transported from straddling party’s legs to laying on his back in a matter of seconds. distantly, he heard something that sounded a lot like humming.
“are you humming?” party asked from above him.
well shit.
“i dunno. maybe?”
a laugh. “so weird.” it sounded complimentary coming from party’s mouth, and ghoul really liked party’s mouth, so he rolled with it.
“can i ask for stuff? like, sex stuff?”
“of course.”
“like, if i asked you to fuck my mouth, would you?”
ghoul didn’t need an answer. he wasn’t waiting for one. he came in his pants after four minutes of being held down and rocked over party’s body while on the verge of sobbing. “you’ll do it, you’ll do it for me. i can make you, you can come like this, i know you can.” ghoul wouldn’t dare examine how easily they had gone from consent dynamics 101 to the sudden (and very sexy) way party just decided that ghoul was his toy to play with how he saw fit. ‘i can make you.’ well, he proved himself right about fifteen seconds later when ghoul shuddered in his arms, whimpering and still rocking gently in his lap. party didn’t answer ghoul’s questions; rather, he immediately sucked in a breath through his nose and got to work placing ghoul exactly where he wanted him—on the floor, on his knees, body half-propped up by the bed at his back.
there was that humming again.
shirtless, jacket somewhere on the floor, looking just as wrecked as he felt, ghoul waited patiently for the sound of party’s belt and for the command that told him to open his mouth.
he wasn’t sure where party was, but instead of anxiously waiting around to find out, ghoul scurried out of the motel and made up a reason to tinker with the car. what was the protocol now? were they supposed to pretend everything was normal and cool now? just pass each other in hallways and share spaces together like nothing had happened? because in reality, all ghoul felt like doing was hiding. he wanted to avoid so much of the morning after shit, didn’t even know if that was in the cards for them. there was no cheesy blushing over breakfast or hiding hickies like teenagers. ghoul supposed it was just a mission after all. and, well…mission abso-fucking-loutely accomplished. but the ‘now what’ hadn’t been in the fine print.
in a way, it made him pissed off at party—his very own goddamn leader, but no guidance as to how they were supposed to navigate these particularly murky waters.
with the hood popped, ghoul got to work. checked the oil level, the clarity, made sure the coolant tank was full, went through a mental checklist of everything. cars were easy. cars were full of parts to maintain or fix. ghoul liked them for their simplicity and their reliability: if you took care of a car, it took car of you.
under the mid-morning desert sun, ghoul stripped down to just a t-shirt and got himself under the Trans AM for a completely unneeded oil change (but a fully welcomed distraction).
his jaw had never ached like this. the feeling was a delicious pinch of constant pain running up into his skull as he tried to find the balance between concentrating and letting go. party moved in and out of his mouth just as roughly as he pleased with a hand in ghoul’s hair. every part of ghoul’s brain was lit up like a pinball machine, and he tried his best to watch the man above him—knew he was giving him something he wanted and was pleased as punch about it. it was easy to forget how to breathe like this. ghoul felt lightheaded and elated to just be there, to be used in the moment.
“hold still baby, so good,” the hand in his hair tightened, keeping ghoul even more in place than before. it felt like an oxymoron to get praised in the same sentence as being told to hold still. the desire to be absolutely perfect for party was more overwhelming than the sensory overload of someone using his mouth like a fucking fleshlight. it felt pointless if he couldn’t be perfect. so when he got so into it, got so good at holding still and being absolutely silent there underneath him (nobody asked him to be, he just assumed), he really did forget how to breathe. lost control of the rhythm he had found breathing through his nose, of gasping for a quick bit of air whenever party pulled out and away just to dive right back in, and got so dizzy that he almost passed out with a dick in his mouth.
“hey, hey, hey, shit, ghoul? hey, are you good?” party moved to his level on the floor, gathering ghoul’s face up in between his hands. “what happened?”
even though air was perfectly available to him in the moment, ghoul still pulled breaths through his nose. steadied himself there on the floor, only imagining what kind of image he made—face blotchy and red, swollen, a fat tear slowly falling from his eye, taking in air like someone told him it was about to stop being free.
“‘m good, ‘m fine.”
party held him still.
“are you sure?”
ghoul floated a hand up, waved it. “‘m fine party, it’s good. forgot uhhhh. how to breathe for a second.” hearing his own voice was devastating—ghoul knew he sounded scratchy as hell, had no idea how to explain that one away in the morning if anyone asked.
fully on par for the course, party laughed at him a bit. “you forgot how to breathe? how the hell did you manage that?”
“well, you see, when someone’s fucking your throat…” ghoul croaked, using the same previous hand to gesture around his entire face and neck.
“point taken.” party stroked a single finger down the line of ghoul’s neck, a moment just on the wrong side of tender. “you figured it out again though, huh?”
ghoul nodded. “sure did captain.”
and that was the thing. the thing they kept finding out together. nobody needed to say a word; no confirmation, no questions, no eggshells to walk on. they were holding hands and going off the cliff together if it was the last thing either of them did.
they reset. they moved forward. they moved and moved and moved.
“yeah, he’s out here!”
ghoul had been living in the peaceful, almost serene environment under the car for long enough that the sound of jet calling from the open gas station doorway spooked him into sitting up without thinking. “FUCK.” smacked his head into the sway bar with a particularly solid sound, falling back again and clutching the tender spot.
he could hear the soft sound of boots crushing sand, someone moving with a moderate amount of haste in his direction. the wheels of the creeper had broken some time ago, so ghoul rolled out with his back on an old skateboard, sunlight blinding him. combined with the pain from his forehead, it felt impossible to get his eyes back open.
“what the fuck are you doing?”
ghoul didn’t need to open his eyes after all.
“i was giving the old girl an oil change.” using his elbow like a sun shield, ghoul managed to look up only to be met with narrowed eyes.
he waited for something else…anything else.
instead, party turned away. went for the discarded jacket laying in the crook between sand and tire, rummaging through pockets, muttering to himself. ghoul looked at him like he’d gone full white walls nuts.
“woah, woah, what—what the hell is going on?” he scrambled to sit upright without moving himself too far forward, using his heels to stop the wheels.
“just what i fucking thought,” party said, loud enough for ghoul to pick up. he tossed the jacket back down, no care, marching back to stand in front of ghoul once more. pushed the offending item right in front of ghoul’s nose. huffed, as if to say ‘see? see?’, but everything was going so fast ghoul couldn’t process a single thing. he squinted against the light again and pushed the object into his vision in a way that didn’t make him go crosseyed.
his canteen.
ghoul looked at it. looked at party. looked at the canteen again. considered the very real possibility that he smacked his head so hard, he’d shaken up some loose acid in his brain. and the trip was off to a pretty bad fucking start if he did say so himself.
“my canteen.”
“your canteen.”
“my…canteen? party, what’s the deal? it’s just a fucking canteen.” if this was an acid trip, he didn’t love how much he was being made to explain himself.
when party laughed, it was cutting and dark. like it spat from him. “yes. it’s your fucking canteen. and guess what? it’s empty.” to prove his point, he unscrewed the lid and turned it entirely upside down, a single drop falling to the ground, but otherwise dry.
maybe he just hit his head far, far too hard. maybe he was lucky and this was just some weird side effect of a concussion. he figured if he started throwing up soon, he’d have his answer.
“i am…so deeply confused here.”
when he met party’s eyes, which he realized was the first time he had done so since the night before, he was met with a blossoming fury. the canteen fell out from his hand, dully hitting sand. party looked fucking insane . ghoul had lost count of the many times party had, for all intents and purposes, lost his shit on one of them (usually ghoul), but it felt like a time so far away from that moment. sometimes, it was like having a phoenix for a friend, for a leader. rising from the ashes and becoming anew, becoming someone they could all recognize and count on for months at a time. but just as quick as he would be reborn, party could lose it all. it felt like that, like he was losing it again. and ghoul sat there, full of confusion and new-found guilt he couldn’t understand and the fear he was fighting a losing battle.
“you’re confused?” party’s words came out icy. “alright then. let me spell it out for you.” he kneeled, putting weight on one leg and using the other side of himself to open up and spread an arm out towards the open desert. “you see all that out there? that’s the desert. it’s hot . it’s devoid of water. it’s devoid of so much. and if you’re smart, or have a single fucking brain cell rattling around in that head of yours, you’d realize how very lucky you are to have water available to you,” party spoke to him low, malicious. spoke to him like his imagined concussion was suddenly very real. “but here you are, out in the heat—in the desert. empty canteen. empty fucking canteen.”
when ghoul had first joined party’s crew, being the very last to complete their little unit, he remembered thinking ‘this guy must have been military.’ he remembers a three month stint in the very beginning when he, jet star, and kobra kid would line up every morning like soldiers and wait for party to check them all over, make sure they were ready for the day. masks, holsters, laces tied, guns loaded, back-up packs ready. it made him feel so small. he’d wake up dreading it, dreading how party’s eyes would rake over him, how quickly he could be reduced down to something closer to a child than a man. there were nights he wondered if pony would be willing to move him somewhere else—relocation was difficult, but not impossible. nobody liked going through it. but for those three months, ghoul couldn’t settle down. couldn’t settle in. it wasn’t until the reigns were loosened, until cigarettes were shared and stupid inside jokes were made, or until their first collective fight over what tape got played in the Trans AM that he started to breathe.
and before he could even process it, ghoul thought of them as family.
he didn’t mind being put in his place. didn’t mind being kept in line. didn’t mind the disagreements or the spats or the silent treatments. ghoul had a family, and that’s what family did. he belonged somewhere. he had a room and a bed, had two brothers and a best friend, had a leader and a sense of purpose.
it dawned on him that having sex with party had repercussions beyond awkwardness or dissonance.
“so, if you’d like to fail your team by dying of something so idiotic, so preventable, so goddamn fucking stupid as dehydration , be my guest.” party stood up straight, no longer the center of ghoul’s vision, and it made him dizzy. “but you will not fail me . that’s a command.”
and that was it.
a storm, rolling in and taking down everything in it’s path. destructive. party could level a city with just the sheer force of his will and have it remade to perfect detail from memory.
“you’re perfect.”
the bruises on ghoul’s thighs ached.
“needed this, needed you.”
the bruise on his forehead ached too. his cheeks shined with oil and sweat.
“stay just like that, perfect, so perfect.”
the sun was far too close, felt like it lived on his back.
“say it again, say you want me to fuck you, come on.”
the door to the gas station slammed so hard, it bounced back, swinging open wildly once more before closing with a metallic whimper. the bells on the door rang for ten seconds, ghoul counted.
“this is it, this is everything. do this for me, you can do this. nobody even comes close, nob—“
oh.
oh fuck.
“hey, are you good? i heard shouting or. yelling or whatever out here.” jet got down to ghoul’s level, looking him up and down. “did he fucking pistol whip you or something?” he pointed at the glaring red spot above his brows, frowning. took ghoul’s face into his hands, licking his thumb before trying to remove the slick dark dashes of oil from where he’d gotten his hands all over himself. ghoul let him dote for about five seconds before swatting at him. “come on, quit it, i’m fine, i’m fine. no, he didn’t pistol whip me, jesus.”
“well, what in god’s name happened then? because he came rolling in like someone pissed in his cereal and then set his cereal on fire immediately after.”
party poison, furious and full of piss-and-vinegar, for once in his life let someone else peak at his hand. for all his anger, for the way he could lash out and bite and snarl, he could also on rare occasion be easy to read. chips down, winner take all. party had no bone to pick with him about a goddamn canteen or ‘failing his team’, couldn’t be fucked to care any other time about something so small and trivial. no, this was something ghoul hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
party was scared. no. not scared. one hundred percent, down to his bones, terrified.
“we had a fight. don’t worry about it though, dude, he’ll get over it. you know how he is.”
jet looked at ghoul for another moment. let himself believe it. (the thing about family is they can be incredibly perceptive at the worst times.) but still, he let it go. nodded, ruffling ghoul’s hair affectionately, before following after party back inside.
the bells on the door rang. three seconds.
ghoul sat and held his breath for a bit.
inside the diner, out of the sun, party felt ignited and delirious. his head was throbbing and he couldn’t be certain if it was from raising his voice the way he had, or from how loud and hard his heart was working to pump blood through his body. perhaps it was a bit of both - he felt feverish and wild with power for no real reason at all. his skin hurt from being out in the sun. he needed some water himself.
his hands were shaking when he went to snatch his own jacket off the back of one of the tall barstools and he tried to steady them when the bell chime of the bell rang out from behind him. party spun on his heel, half-expecting ghoul and ready for a fight.
but it wasn’t ghoul at all. party felt his shoulders slump, disappointment where there should’ve been only relief.
“you’re being hard on him,” jet said, and he glanced out the window, at the silhouette fading away behind the newspaper pasted over the glass. ghoul, now stood up from where he had been working so peacefully, walking away, a shadow getting smaller and smaller through the sun-bleached print. jet looked at the retreating form and at party, and then back and forth for good measure. “you’re being too hard on him, party.”
the newspapers glued over the windows were from years ago; party stared at one of the washed out photos of the destruction after a bomb until it looked like an inkblot - something that could mean anything, he saw ghoul’s form disappear behind the newspaper rorshach. he blinked.
party had always wondered if ghoul knew that they did this; that they talked about him this way. conspired, sometimes, so that he wouldn’t hear. he wondered if ghoul knew that they handled him with kid gloves, that they hid things from him. that they whispered - that they tried to remind themselves to go easy on him.
it wasn’t that ghoul was incapable or inept - it had never been that. he was good with a ray gun and even better with tools, with taking things apart and putting other things together. you wouldn’t find anyone else in the zones who could do what ghoul could do with some wire and some batteries and some time. he was smart, party had always recognized that. smart and loyal and trustworthy.
but he was just different - emotional and intense and worst of all, party thought, he was sensitive. if party was a more sentimental person, he would’ve said ghoul was special.
but sentiment felt too much like weakness, so party would never say that to anyone. about anyone. his throat began to ache; he remembered that he needed a drink of water.
“bullshit i am,” party said to jet, knowing that yes, jet was right. “he’s a big boy. he can handle it.”
forget water. he needed whiskey or vodka or one of the horrible fermented things that tommy chow-mein came up with from time to time and poured out of an old gasoline canister. but the water would do for the moment. he would take a long drink, splash some on his face to cool down (his heart was still racing, his blood pumping so fast and hard he thought it would turn to battery acid) and when all was said and done, he’d go about his day - but when party turned to leave, the steel-toe of his boot connected with an empty can rolling across the floor and he sent it clanging into the bar. it seemed like he’d kicked it on purpose, but he hadn’t, and sensing that it was punctuation to their conversation, jet grumbled a quiet fuck you, buddy and for that, party did slam the door when he left.
he circled around the back of the diner, through the dim halls of the motel, unnerved by how uneven and ragged his own breathing had become. he felt like there was sand in his teeth and under his skin. his brain felt on fire.
what had party hoped would happen? he wanted for the things that had happened the night before with ghoul, everything that they’d done to have been mediocre, less than awe-inspiring. ultimately, he’d hoped that they would’ve both been a bit bored with the way sleeping together would make them feel.
but deep down, he was always prepared for it to be the way that it was. in some secret, hollowed out space behind his heart, party had known that this would be the result. he knew about the torch ghoul carried around for him, knew about the pining. how could he not? ghoul was too easy to read and it hadn’t been necessary to convince him of anything that friday the week before, sitting in that small bedroom. party saying we should have sex and ghoul pretending that he didn’t know they would, pretending that it wasn’t exactly what he wanted -
you wanted this - party said to ghoul, looking down at him. his mouth was slick with spit and his hair was wild. in the dim light of party’s room, on the floor, he looked ruined. pathetic. party wiped a tear away from the corner of his left eye, tracing it down the plane of ghoul’s face to the corner of his mouth with his thumb. and once he was there, he curled the pad of the same thumb around the plush swell of ghoul’s bottom lip, pressed the tender flesh there over the sharp point of his own teeth until his lower lip bled. ghoul didn’t whimper or wince, just let the blood bead and pool. another tear tracked down his face. you wanted this, party reminded him, and set to prying his mouth open wider.
ghoul wanted it but party wanted it, too. and getting what he wanted was just what party couldn’t stomach now, after the fact. he didn’t know what to do with it. what had felt like control the night before now felt like frailty. he had started something that he had no idea how to stop - and he was sure that no matter what, it would end badly.
(and party could say all along that it was fate instead of a self-fulfilling prophecy. he could excuse the mess they’d made as something written in the stars and ever the believer in party, ghoul would agree. ghoul hung on every word he said, kept party’s word like scripture.
you wanted this, he said.
you will not fail me, he said.
it felt like too much power for one person to hold. but party held it anyway. burdened.)
he thought of ghoul’s face, shining with sweat and oil, his eyes confused and wide and scared and pleading. the upturned canteen in the sand between them. he thought of ghoul’s face, less than a day ago; pupils blown out, cheeks flushed with heat, their foreheads pressed together. party wasn’t sure which of these two things made him ache worse, so he called it draw. stalking out behind the motel to the water tanks, party stopped briefly, so overcome with frustration that he put a hole in the wall near the backdoor with his fist.
his knuckles were bleeding. he just let them. worry about the mess later. that was the kind of thinking that got him in this trouble in the first place - party knew better. he felt reckless, careless, like he’d played with fire and only in hindsight had the clarity of mind to be upset that he had caught flame.
(but it had felt right. if it wasn’t, then how could it have been so easy?)
the rain barrels smelled like damp earth and salt. the shade kept the water cool enough that it was a small shock to the system when party dipped his hand in and dragged out a palm full, splashing his face and sipping the rest from his cupped hand. eventually, he stuck both hands in and imagined that he was being baptized. starting over. his heart was still beating wildly and he knew he had to fix all of this; the fire he’d started, the mess he’d made. he pressed his water-filled hands to his face and thought extinguish, extinguish, extinguish until the rushing in his head stopped.
he would fix this. he always did.