#plotting murder

Ethan’s jaw set, eyes dead ahead as he strode toward the kitchen to wash the blood off of his neck. “Why do you even care?” 

He hoped Nate wouldn’t follow him. Of course, he did anyway.

“Why do I care!? Because you’re mine, that’s why!”

Ethan rounded on him, glaring enough it flared the throbbing in his skull. “You do not own me.” Each word precise. Spat over Nate in the dark kitchen.

Nate’s mouth immediately snapped open to retort, but he must have thought better of it. It closed again. He simply glared back for a long moment before trying again. “I don’t want you dead. I definitely don’t want him to kill you.”

Ethan raised a brow. “You want to be the one to do it, huh?”

Nate’s mouth pressed into a line. “..yes. I do.”

Ethan stepped closer, index finger pressed against Nate’s sternum. “And what if you’re not alive long enough to pull that off?”

Nate snorted - almost in amusement, but still too irritated to harbor his trademark smile. He batted Ethan’s hand away. “I know your angle. You know mine. If you had a problem with how I’m doing this, you’d have left.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I do have a problem with it, and I still won’t.”

Nate’s glare lasted almost long enough for the familiar fear to twist back through him. Luckily, anger kept it at bay long enough. “How many are left.”

“Some.”

Nate reached forward, shoving at Ethan’s chest again. “How many??” A harsh, whisper-shout that died on the wallpaper.

Ethan didn’t budge. Not that time. Nate could fall backwards if he wanted to push Ethan so damn bad. “I’m not telling you.”

“You don’t get to kill me the fucking second that I deliver the last person to you on a silver platter, you bastard-”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do, actually. Because you’re not gonna stop. You want them dead as much as I do.” Ethan found his hand drifting out, flicking a fallen lock of bang away from Nate’s brow.

Nate flinched.

He actually flinched.

A hand snapped Ethan’s away again.

“You don’t know what I want.”

“You want them to suffer.”

“Of course I w-” Nate’s teeth ground, eyes clicking to the side to think. “..do you like this?”

Ethan’s head turned slightly, eyeing Nate. “Like what?”

“Do you like getting fucked up?”

Now it was Ethan’s turn to shove Nate - hard enough the man stumbled backwards into the foyer again. “The fuck is wrong with you-??”

Nate sputtered a scoff, straightening his shirt again. “What the hell am I supposed to think, E?? You find who knows how many fuckers out there to mess you up, and even when you’re safe from two goddamn seconds, you go running off to the basement alone in the middle of the night and almost die.”

“I’m fine-!”

“YOU’RE NOT FINE.”

Air warbled and shifted, holding the words between them in silence for several echoing clicks of the farmhouse clock on the wall. 

“I just..” Nate rubbed at his eye, anger melting into frustration. “I didn’t know you were-... I thought you were dead. When I came in the workshop, you were bleeding and still and-...and I thought you ..I thought you were dead, E. I thought I’d lost you.”

Ethan’s ears were ringing, a hissing, electronic sting filling the muffled silence that settled in the wake of the words. 

Ethan stepped to the side, moving around Nate and toward the stairs. “I’m not yours to lose,” he muttered, rounding the banister. He needed a shower anyway.

He thought Nate might respond. Fight back or pull him down again.

Nothing happened. No words returned or refuted. Ethan just heard the front door open and close behind him as he moved up into the darkness with burning eyes and a throbbing skull.

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