#troik

Over the course of the past few hours, sweeping through a terrain which feels endless in it's monotony, the absence of sound has crept it's way up incumbent limbs. Nick doesn't realize he's been mouthing, then singing, in his own tuneless fashion, the words to songs thought long forgotten. It's only the chorus of another voice stumbling over the same verse, which rouses him from where he's been scrunched over into an impossible position in the passenger seat.

Troy smiles, his eyes squinting against a horizon rendered molten by the final throes of daylight. Laughter snorts its way out of him when Nick flares back, cursing with vibrancy, and blowing upon forearms which were baking against the heat of the battered door where he'd discarded all notion of them - lost instead in ill-remembered lyrics from another time.

"Good job you don't burn, Nicky."

His gaze never wavers, as a procession of dead wood, and rusting billboards drowns in the dust of their wake. But he's still grinning as if the joke is firmly upon his companion.

"Fuck you very much."

Nick bites back a groan, and inspects the welts speckling every inch of his left arm. They're already receding, but an uncomfortable sting of bothered nerves still remains. Troy's unfettered amusement is a welcome distraction, and even if he keeps right on smirking after a solid punch to the thigh, somehow it eases any lingering lament over the state of his damn arms.  

They sit in silence for five or so miles. At the crest of the trail the sun drowns her sorrows in a distant range of hills. Troy tries to fill the spaces with idle observations, as if they'll keep the encroaching night at bay. 

At seven miles they swap out.

Sure hands find the curve of tired shoulders, and for a moment Nick closes his eyes against it all. From the crown of his head, with it's perpetual itch, to the tips of numb toes, he's hollowed out - chemical comforts run dry hours back. The world, in all it's shit stained, reckless glory is in such focus that if his eyes weren't already closed he'd be shielding them. Those same fingers which have wrought terrible, awful things upon the two of them, they dig deep into the ache which sobriety brings. He leans back, giving over his burden to Troy, digs his heels into the dead earth, surrendering some small piece of this moment to him.

"You ever wonder what the hell we're doing?"

A snort disturbs his hair where it's refusing to cooperate in such incessant humidity. The untangling of knots pauses, and for a moment he thinks they'll leave it at that. Hesitating somewhere between a closeness which everyone else finds inexplicable, save for Alicia. She'd spelled it out without pretence, concern in her eyes, but a dull kind of acknowledgement clinging to each word. And pushing each other over a precipice, going willingly towards a madness that feels like home. 

"You like him."

Denying it wasn't something that occurred to Nick back there, even when the first cracks had started to appear, ready to demolish a fragile peace at a moment's notice. Even when Troy had taken complete leave of his senses, high upon the same kind of heady rush denied by circumstance to the man who'd persuaded, lied, and killed for him.

"You stayed at the ranch because you love me."

It was an aside, something to quench the mood, to segue seamlessly into a description of himself which felt like a hand sliding through the dirt upon a neglected mirror. Yet, again he'd never thought to protest.

Just as he drowns, slowly, but surely in these quiet instances. In the feeling of being in tune with someone who no one else would vouch for. Of losing themselves in their own story at the end of the world. It felt like free fall, like all or nothing. Then and now. The greatest adrenaline rush, coupled with the quietest his mind has felt in years.  

Just when he thinks his question has become an rhetorical one, Troy takes a step back. The weight of both feet conceded to their owner. He's a long streak of shadow against a dying sun, hands dug into the pockets of dusty fatigues, and smile something Nick doesn't have to see to understand.

"We're living. You and me."

And that's enough. It goes unspoken, and for once Troy stops running his mouth long enough to find himself crowded up against the back of the truck. The heat against his spine, sun scorned metal, is nothing compared to greedy hands as they pick apart the last of their control with ease. Nick kisses like he's been bit. Like every time is the last. Like he knows just what he's doing, and knows just as well that Troy doesn't.

They part only to breathe, and even then it's a tenuous span of seconds before Troy's the one who captures his lips again. Run ragged, and with all the buttons on both their shirts in disarray is how they face the encroaching darkness. Soft verses, softer laughter echoing out over the barren expanse beyond the road. Out here the only drug they need is each other.