~

They’d done this walk a few times now. Knew their way through and up to his room when he wasn’t downstairs enjoying the show, educating those boys of his on how to perfect their impersonation. Upstairs, it was just him in the relative peace of his high-end suite, sometimes with Rex, sometimes with a groupie draped over him while he spoke business. Trick proved themselves to him without ever really meaning to, doing work around Freeside for their own ends before his. To the point that they could tell his groupies apart now. 

What happened with Pacer wasn’t intentional. At least, not at first. Technically, he was collateral in the grand scheme of things — poked too hard too many times until he’d spilled to the King. He was gone the next day, and the King’s smile had disappeared, too, as much as it could behind the facade.

But he gave Rex to Trick, and they had to find him a new brain. Figured, that dog was maybe the only real thing he had left.

The yapping was unbelievable when they got back — that was a miracle in and of itself, how they even managed to get him across the Mojave in the first place. At the King’s feet, he barked and jumped, and the King bent down to him, gathering him in his arms and baby-talking him, and for a brief moment Trick thinks they hear that silly accent fall away, all for his dog. It feels like they’re intruding, standing still in front of them amongst the other kings smoking. Watching, Trick’s blood runs a little bit warmer than they’d like to admit, and their throat closes up looking down at him like that. When he gets up, Trick is reminded — as they often are — of how broad he is.

That, and he’s smiling — genuinely smiling — for the first time in a long time. 

And still, he sends Rex away with them, to do their jobs. Both their jobs. It’s an arrangement they can agree to. The School of Impersonation always has a room open for Trick when they’re back in Freeside, spare flannel and rags to wipe the dirt off their skin, old cigarettes, and a thin, musty mattress they can lay down on for a night. 

It’s louder inside than it is anywhere else in Freeside. 

“You look good, Six,” he says one day, and Trick had briefly forgotten their hair was bleached white. A groupie in the room whipped his head around to look at them in an instant, and Trick took a step back. 

“I’m going to the Wrangler.” It came out too loudly, too much effort put into the deliberate attempt of skating past his comment. Any banter they had had pretty much died when Pacer… left. And although Trick was never particularly nice to the King, they were suddenly forced to confront the idea that that was by design.

“I’ll be back for Rex in a couple of days.”

The dog barked and wagged his tail. 

“Whatever the boss thinks is best,” he scratched Rex under his chin. “Right, Rexie?”

In an instant, their insides coiled, and their blood burned the vessels they were soaring through. Trick’s grip on their bag threatened to break the scarred and calloused skin around their knuckles, and they couldn’t admit it then that they were fucking flustered, a feeling entirely too new for them to parse. Instead, they scoffed, mostly at themselves before they stormed out of there, not looking back to see him staring after them with a smirk plastered on his face. 

Boss? The fucking ham. 

Trick paid Bea triple that night and lay awake to the sounds of Freeside — to the distant sound of the King’s songs. 

/

They told him a few days and had meant it, at the time. But now, just before noon, they found themselves back at the School, Rex greeting them excitedly. A king leaning across the counter tells them that the King is upstairs and isn’t looking to be disturbed. He relays this information without turning to look at them, more concerned with the rings of smoke he was blowing in front of him.

Trick pets Rex between his ears and makes their way up anyway.

Before they round the corner up to the second floor, they stop to the sound of hushed muttering down the hallway. 

“Well, he ain’t been the same since Pace,” a voice said. “Did you ask him if he wanted me instead?”

“I tried everything. It’s been weeks,” a different voice says, huffing impatiently. “Jesus, it’s fucking boring around here.”

“More than usual, you mean?”

The smoke was reaching Trick now, misting up the hallway. All these clowns did was smoke. So maybe Trick was meant to be a king after all. 

Just before they decide to let it go and carry on past them, they hear it. 

“Yeah, but when that courier comes around, he lights up. What’s with that?”

“It’s business. Y’know, appearances.”

Trick lets that settle, rolls that over in their mind a few times, and it doesn’t make them feel any more comfortable. The awkwardness weighs them down to their spot on that last step, clenching and unclenching their fists. Unfamiliar. Or too familiar.

When they finally decide to turn the corner, they're met with the groupies' stares through the wafting smoke. Trick comes up empty for any retorts and only manages to glare back before going up the next flight of stairs. 

Outside his door, Trick stands and listens to the unusual quiet, despite the songs playing through the School. Bouncing between on the balls of their feet, they knock on his door.

“What?” comes his impatient reply in a tone of voice they don’t even recognise. It doesn’t nothing to settle their nerves.  

A beat goes by, their voice lost somewhere in their chest, before they bring their hand to the door. His back is turned but with a look over his shoulder, cigarette between his fingers, he turns and rubs a knuckle between his brows.  

“Oh, Six,” he says in a much more resigned tone. “Didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Yeah, well,” they can only hope they don’t betray their nerves, even if they don’t have an excuse. “It’s boring in Freeside. No offence.” As far as saves go, it’s not their worst.

But it’s definitely not their best work.

It earns them a wry chuckle and he leans against that shitty wooden table of his. The King of Freeside can’t get a table that doesn’t look and sound like it’ll collapse underneath him.

It doesn’t. 

“Sorry we couldn’t keep you entertained,” he says, picking up the pack of cigarettes — crisp and new, somehow — from the table and holding it out. They get closer to take one, letting him light it without so much as a look his way, focusing on the flame between them. 

Trick blows the smoke over their shoulder. Studies him when he isn’t looking.

There’s only so much uneasiness Trick can take. Only so many risks they can leave untaken.  

“You know, people talk.”

He looks at them from under his brows. 

“Your people. They wonder about you, down there.”

At that, he just looks at his feet, the dim light catching the shine of his shoes. What Vegas sun found its way in through his boarded-up windows was drowned in the fluorescence of the lights, always on.

The ash on their cigarette falls to the ground before they make it to the ashtray.

And there’s too much silence sitting there, mingling with the smoke. 

“I— I’m sorry about Pacer.”

He whips his head up to look at them, the lines returning to his face, his brows closer to his eyes. At first, it looks like anger — or, maybe, frustration — but then he sighs, padded shoulders coming down.  

“Before this,” he says, gesturing to the room around him, to the School. “We were violent. I was violent.” 

Redundant, Trick thinks. Was there any other way around here? It was never in question; the unspoken and seen rule of the fallout etched into every crevice of New Vegas. 

Maybe something flashes across their face that betrays the thought crossing their mind.

“That’s what we Kings believe in. Freedom. Freedom for every man to do whatever the hell he wants, to be whoever he needs to be. A shot goes off in Freeside and so long as I know about it, I’m good, it’s settled. If bruising your knuckles is what makes you who you are then who am I to say no? But—” he inhales. “I’m a leader. And I don’t know how much leading I’ve been doing. And maybe, just maybe, if I had drawn that line, then Pacer would still be down there. Getting all up in your face, refusing to let you in, sure. But he’d still be here. I just let it happen — didn’t have to see the Jet and the blood because I didn’t want to.”

“You trusted him.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

He stares daggers into them. Trick isn’t entirely sure they’re meant for them, but some of them sure are. Like they had pulled him out of the shroud and forced him to confront it all. The courier rolls into town and rips up the Earth in their wake, but then again, people die here all the time. All for the sake of every man being allowed to follow their own path, even if the path was laden with drugs and brass.  

“I shouldn’t have done that to him.”

His voice is whisper quiet. The scar on Trick’s head stings. 

“Wasn’t your fault, maybe not even his,” even as they say it, it sounds like a lie. 

He only hums at that, looking back at his feet with his cigarette between his lips. Trick hands him the one they’ve almost finished to be put in the ashtray. His fingers brush theirs.

“Was it mine?”

“No,” he says, pushing the stump into the ashtray.

There’s a beat while he finishes his own, the smoke sitting heavy in the room now. The rays of sun coming through actually manage to catch against it, illuminating the wafting dust with gold. And that was it.

He draws himself up and tilts his chin, mask back on.

“You worried about me, boss?”

A familiar frustration sparks inside them, twisting and tightening just about every muscle within them, etching something ugly into their veins. Ugly with envy, with greed. Ugly with want and desire. And then the quiet resentment entwined with it, for wanting it at all. 

“I said people talk,” they say firmly. It only makes his smirk tilt even more. 

“You can do better than that,” he pushes off of the table and Trick pushes off the chair, defensive, clumsily closing the distance between them without meaning to. He’s fucking tall, and broad, even with his shoulders slacked. His blazer is stark white, and Trick can only wonder whether he’s actually ever been outside. 

“Been a while since you took a shot at me, Six.” Like he missed it. 

Trick opens their mouth, then closes it. Instead, they stare straight ahead at his chest rising and falling in front of them. When the moment lingers, he shifts slightly and Trick catches the way the collar of his black shirt moves against his neck, against the skin beating with his pulse. And they can’t will anything to come — not a single wry joke at his expense, and not the will to just walk away. 

Trick never hesitated, not before getting a bullet to the head, and not after.

Until him.

“It’s Trick.”

“What’s that?”

The innocence in the question is so genuine that it makes their jaw tighten. But there’s no way his hands are as smooth as him. He just admitted as much — he bent to the memory of Pacer. All because Trick asked.

And now, he’s asking for a joke.

“You can call me Trick.”

Trick grabs the lapels of his blazer, meaning to be rough and indelicate, to tug him down hard into a bruising kiss, but it doesn’t happen that way. The lapels between their fingers are so alarmingly soft in their grasp, and their tug is too light to do anything besides give him permission. Their face is hot with the number of mistakes and missteps they’ve made, with the heat of this New Vegas morning and each one before it, and with the desire to push the King of Freeside against a wall. 

It doesn’t happen that way, and that only makes them more impatient. Their own incompetence makes their guts coil against that agonisingly slow pace of his. His kiss is achingly gentle, just his lips against theirs. He is painfully real, lips dry, and although Trick’s are definitely worse off, it is maybe the only comfort in this. He tucks a hand under their chin, lifting it up and kissing again, and again, and again. 

Trick feels like their heart is going to beat out of their chest and distantly wonders if they look like those old movie posters plastered across the Strip.

Getting greedy now, aren’t we?

When his hand slides against their jaw, they make a noise they didn’t know they had in them. 

The embarrassment boils over, and Trick feels the burn of tears behind their eyelids, a throbbing in their head. All they feel is the pure humiliation of thinking they could ever just get what they needed — wanted, which was it? — and leave in the shadows. The evidence of them ever having to admit that they wanted this, threatening to spill over with every new touch and every noise that escaped them. But then they feel the unmistakable upturn of his mouth against them as his hands moved to grab at their waist, spreading them flat against Trick’s lower back, pulling them together even closer.

Out of any other ideas, too far in to go anywhere else, Trick opens their mouth and gives him permission for the second time today. 

And maybe it’s the first time Trick has tasted anything since rising from the grave, even if that taste was stale tobacco and alcohol. The scorching paths he leaves behind and instantly replaces feel like new scars. Trick realises — partly out of fear that he will, too — how passive they’ve been; hands on him with no direction, all their muscles tensed, and feet firmly planted on the floor.

He's in no hurry.

Only, Trick has never been known for patience. 

Flattening their hands against his chest, they push him away. When they look at him, his brows are furrowed in question, eyes half-lidded. And his lips are begging for theirs.

For all the fire burning inside Trick, something finally ignites. And they’re alive all over again. 

In one motion, Trick shrugs off the ratty jacket on their shoulders and grasps him again, winding their fingers around the white fabric. And with that, they pull. 

Once more with feeling.

He chuckles against their mouth, managing to speak before they’re back on him.

“There’s the Six I know.”

They tighten their grip, and the crushing force of the kiss stifles the smile threatening to take hold of their lips. His hands ghost over their hips before they slot themselves forward into his hold. A killer’s hands on a killer’s hips.

He turns them both, and Trick lands against the table, the edge digging into their spine. 

The desk whines as the songs of the School croon, the wood settling and creaking around them. His hands slip to the surface, crowding them. Trick’s fingers find the nape of his neck, the ends of his slicked-back hair. 

No part of him unravels, not without him knowing. Not without him letting it. And Trick can hear the noises he makes, can feel them reverberate through their being. To have their moans against him echoed back only makes the ache that much worse, even with them pressed together like this. 

He is still gentle with them, despite it all. He knows when to be soft, where to be rough — Trick can only chalk it up to force of habit, perhaps. A trained rule of when to bring his hand down, when to raise his gun up. Hands of destruction and death, hands of so-called prosperity and rule on either side of them.

Between breaths and kisses, Trick thinks of how strange it would be to say his title out loud right now. Does he remember his own name?

Would he tell them if they asked? 

They beg for anything but gentleness, clawing at whatever part of him they can get their hands on, but he offers it. He still doesn’t hurry, no matter how harsh they are. His lips whisper down their neck and Trick parts their mouth to the cracked ceiling of the School as his hands roam under their shirt, yielding to his pace — to simmering under his practiced touch, his lingering attentions. Maybe, it'll be okay like this.

In return, they move their hands to his shoulders, pushing until his blazer wisps down to the floor. He follows soon after, fingers pulling at the laces and clasps of their boots.

And it occurs to Trick, then, just how much they enjoy seeing the King on his knees.

/

His mattress is not much comfier than any other mattress in the Mojave.

It had been the subject of much mockery from Trick. Sitting on the floor in its heart-shaped glory, adorned with worn crimson sheets and groupies to match. Jokingly, Trick had called him a romantic, and kicked at a stray pillow at their feet. 

“What. No heart-shaped pillows to match?”

And he laughed.

Trick blushes a little at the memory, suddenly aware of him all over again splayed out next to them. Tilting their head in his direction, they study the line of his profile; the bump in his nose, and, rather proudly, the stray hairs come loose out of his pompadour. His lips purse around a cigarette.

The sun was now high in the sky outside, still fighting to get in to the strings of smoke floating around them. Voices outside and in let them know that Freeside is properly awake.

A new song starts up through the building, one they recognised hearing when they first walked into the School.

“What’s this one?”  

“We can’t go on together, with suspicious minds,” he sings.

“God," they scoff. "Give it here,” Trick moves up on one elbow while he smiles around the cigarette they pull from his mouth. The corner of his eyes crinkle as they lazily move over their frame next to his, silken sheets barely covering the array of scars and bruises over their skin. 

They don’t see his smile fades as Trick lets the smoke fall out of their mouth. 

They stiffen when they feel his fingers against their shoulder, but they don’t move away either. He traces a line here, an old stitch there, and hums along to the tune coming through the walls. The back and forth of it almost makes Trick want to lay their head back down and spend the rest of the week here on this tattered mattress, as though they’d both have time for that.

The scar on their head sings for a different story. 

He had scraped his nails on it earlier, and Trick hissed out of instinct — it was healed, by all appearances. He muttered an apology in their ear and chased it with an open-mouthed kiss to their temple close to the burning skin.

Now, his hand trails, making idle patterns against their shoulder blade. His jukebox flashes and flickers green against the pale scar tissue.

The urge to run through that door and out of the School that had accosted them every time they wound up here was nowhere to be found. Probably forgotten somewhere on the table the same moment their back had met its surface. Or maybe somewhere where he had made contact with the mattress, lost in the noises he made as he tugged at Trick’s hair. 

Trick pictures every groupie standing behind that door, ears close to the wood, holding glasses against it just to hear what their King was up to with that damn courier. Whispering and shushing until one of them takes it upon themselves to barge in. 

The door never opens. Not a knock. Doesn’t even creak. 

“No one comes to your door anymore?”

“Just you, lately.” I send anyone else away, he doesn’t say.

His hand leaves them.

“Did you get what you wanted?”

It earns him a look over their shoulder, their eyes narrowed while his cigarette hangs limply from between their lips. He chuckles; a low, rumbling sound as his hand reaches for the pack he’d flung somewhere nearby. 

“It’s lonely, being King,” he continues, propping himself up in search for the lighter. Trick finds it buried in the folds of the sheets. 

“How did you get to be the King of Freeside, anyway?” They flick the lighter on as he leans forward to the flame. 

“Why. You gunning for my spot?” He leaned back against his elbows, looking at Trick as they shook their head. 

“No.” The word drips with disdain, like it was an insult to even suggest it. “Although, I work for you enough that I’m starting to wonder why you haven’t made me a king yet.  

There’s a pause as Trick smirks to themselves, stubbing the cigarette out on the nearest ashtray. Beside them, the King hasn’t moved save for the rise and fall of his chest, carefully studying them as they shift back towards him. 

“Well?” Trick raises a split brow. 

“Oh, you know the drill,” he drawls. “The Kings are about an idea... every man free to do his own thing… own right. All that. You’re perfect for that. Coming and going as you please, holding up the right people, aiming that barrel at whoever you think will point you straight.”

They’d never heard him be so flippant about everything he stood for.

“You know, for a group that never shuts up about freedom and choice, you’re all on the same path. All look the same, dress the same, sound the same. All for an idea? Some fucking idea.”

“We each made that choice, didn’t we?”

Trick turns away, feeling the burn of his gaze on them. The lines on their back shift in front of him as they curl further in on themselves, skin itching in the absence of a cigarette to keep them busy.

“Get off your high horse for a minute - you’re not that much different than anyone else here. Trade a switchblade for a rifle, and we put you in some leather, what’s the difference?” he says with a laugh. The difference, he doesn’t say, because he knows Six isn’t stupid, and he didn’t want to have to say it. 

Something stirs in the pit of Trick’s stomach, different this time. Something akin to anger brewing under the surface. Getting Benny was final; no one could say or sway them any other way, and there wasn’t much else they cared about besides that.

And yet.

If there was some lesson here, Trick didn’t want to have to hear it, especially not from the man wearing a fossil’s voice. 

“Truth is, Six,” he sighs, blowing smoke out of his nose. “The Kings’d take you any day. But we both know; you wouldn’t take the Kings.”

He sees them freeze right next to them.  

“So, I’m going to ask you again. Did you get what you wanted?”

The question makes Trick shoot up to their feet in an instant, throwing the sheets off of their body. A wry laugh escapes him as he throws his head back onto the pillow, and it only makes them angrier. He knew that. Trick knew that he knew that, but anger, as it often did, got the better of them.  

“You think you’re so much better than us,” he says, still laughing. 

“Fuck you,” Trick says, picking up their clothes from around the room. It proves his point, but they didn’t have the patience for anything coming out of his mouth right now. More importantly, they didn’t care.

Spin that around enough times in your mind and it’ll be true , eventually.

This was about getting Benny. Putting a bullet in his brain and seeing how that felt for him. That’s all it was. A quick fuck wasn’t about to stop them.

All it was meant to be. 

His laughter dies down into a sigh, resigned. Sitting up on the mattress, loose strands of hair flop down onto his forehead. 

“You are so damn righteous, you know that? You don’t see where this is headed? What it’s gonna cost you?” 

“Don’t throw your bullshit on me. ‘Sides, isn’t that my right?” they spit, pulling up their dust-covered trousers. “Why do you care about what I—?”

“Because you’re a friend.” Because of what it cost me, he thinks. A new strategy for him then, caring out loud.

Caring.

“Please!” It cuts through the room, biting and loud “I work for you. We’re not friends.”

Trick glares at him until he turns away, and they put their shirt on in silence. The King pushes his hair back out of his face.

After what feels like a century, he moves, planting his feet on the floor and standing up, sheets falling to meet them. His form shamelessly exposed, he saunters over to where they left his slacks. 

“Well, aren’t we a pair?” There’s no hint of levity in his voice despite the permanent smile etched onto his face.

“We aren’t—”

“Hypocrites.”

It stuns them slightly, snapping their mouth shut — something they can’t argue with. He slides the latch closed on his trousers before taking a particularly long drag from his cigarette, finishing it. Trick takes his vest, sat just by their hand, balls it up and throws it at him. He catches it with one hand as they plop themselves down on a chair, pulling a boot up their right foot.

“Your problem, your highness, is you think I’m making a choice. You think I want this. I don’t want anything.” Until. They won’t say it, won’t admit it. Like the evidence isn’t sinking into the walls of the room with every second they spent here. “Have you ever been shot in the head?”

He tucks his vest in, looking back at them, and Trick can only hope that isn’t pity in his eyes. 

“I didn’t think so,” they take a deep breath and rest their elbows on their knees. 

“Try and understand that. Understand that it doesn’t cost me anything. It can’t, and it won’t. I delivered mail, kept my head low, and got shot for my trouble. And now, I’m in an equation I never asked to be a part of. I’m on borrowed time, and that’s someone else’s mistake, not mine.” 

The words leave their mouth calmer than they could’ve ever hoped for, despite the rage they felt. Righteously or otherwise, it didn’t matter. Searing fire licked at the scar across their head from within. They were already dead. A living dead thing.

“You need to do this,” he says, tonelessly.

When they look back at him, he has his arms folded across his chest, suspenders hooked onto his shoulders. The smile he usually has plastered on is nowhere to be found. There’s no hint of pity in his eyes. Something stern, and maybe something proud.

They can only hope that's all it is. 

He takes a step towards the table and bends to pick up their left boot, sole hanging off at the toes.

“Well,” he says, handing it to them. “I’ll be sure to let Benny know how much of a pain in my ass you’ve been.”

They tie the laces and fasten the clasps, seeing his waiting hand out the corner of their eye. They don’t need help to get up, but what reason seeps through their emotions can see it for what it is — a peace offering. 

They take it. 

“You’re a king as far as I’m concerned,” he says, pulling their hands closer to his chest. “And maybe, I’d like to be friends.”

Trick stares up at him, at the soft tilt of his brow, into his warm eyes. And maybe they had been cruel, before. The urge to apologise, foreign to them, sits somewhere in the back of their throat. But through it all, his face never faltered, the act held up. It was impossible to try and figure out where the man began, and the King ended. The persona, no longer a persona, but entirely him. Was this vulnerability — for their sake — or was it all part of the role?

Their mind wanders momentarily, to the idea of his name rotting away, never to be spoken again by anyone after Pacer, lost in the Mojave forever.

“Unless this was just—”

His voice shakes them out of it and before they feel him pull away any further, Trick pulls him by his neck and cuts him off with their mouth. They smile against him when they feel his surprise, but he wastes no time, hooking his hands around their hips.

When they pull apart, they lock eyes for a moment, hands still on each other. The gravity of it all shakes something loose in Trick.

“I’m not one of your fucking groupies, by the way," sticking a finger into his chest.

“Don’t get nasty.”

They relax slightly, Trick’s hands moving down to his arms. Both smiling.

“You don’t need to worry about my... affairs so much,” Trick says quietly, unsure. Not quite meeting his gaze, instead choosing to study a scar snaking out from under his vest until they feel a finger hook under their chin, forcing them to look back at him.

“I don’t worry about you, Trick.”

Trick’s smile widens. 

“For a man who doesn’t worry, you sure have a lot to say.”

“In my defence, you started it.”

Trick lets out a breath of a laugh before finally, gently, pushing him away so that they can grab their coat. He goes to grab his shirt.

“You taking Rexie with you?”

Fine company for a dog with a cybernetic brain. Fine companion for what lies ahead in the wastes. Fine excuse to keep seeing each other again.

“Of course,” they say. He hears the door open, and all the uneasiness that Pacer had brought about blossoms again somewhere deep in his gut. He hesitates to call it concern and settles for something between reeling and discomfort. Either way, it doesn’t show.

“Trick,” he says. “You better get him back to me in one piece.”

“‘Course.”

Lincoln shuffles slowly into the kitchen, daring himself to get up and boil his own water. Coffee sounds good. A hot towel against the pulse in the side of his head sounds better. Sure, his hands are grasping onto every surface he can hold onto, but he does it; his palms eventually colliding flat against the kitchen counter. When he lets go, there are two large sweaty prints left behind. He sighs and his vision blurs - he smells burning. 

It’s too hot, too humid. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say was back in Nam. But he’s in America; home, in New Orleans. But then there’s the fact he’s been shot in the face. Sounds like Nam. Like some sick joke. 

Fucking Giorgi.

That stings like holy hell all over again. And he tries to think past it all over again, a pattern quickly forming since the moment he woke up. The rage and upset sitting neatly under the seared skin on the side of his skull. Seeing John at the foot of his bed with a hand resting an inch away from his own, it was hard not to think of Giorgi. Not that he felt that he had betrayed John in anyway – it had been a few months since they last spoke, and Lincoln assumed he was a busy man, like he always was. And maybe he wanted to leave Nam in Nam. That old CIA way, perhaps. And Giorgi wasn’t John, not one bit.

Instead, it’s the memory of Giorgi scraping his fingers across the side of Lincoln’s face, pulling him close, and his other hand gripping so tightly onto him that it burns. Laughing at the job they pulled, drinking to it and locking themselves away. The memory of after, sitting in his bed and smoking cigarettes after cigars while he complained about his father. Lincoln would listen distantly, eyeing the way the muscles of his jaw worked. Turns out it didn’t matter that much if he was willing to put a bullet to him if his dad gave the word. It stings like Giorgi’s fingers scratched jagged lines across his cheek. Oh, but if only he had killed him. Couldn’t even look him in the eye when he did it and the sonofabitch actually missed the kill-shot. He couldn’t even get the aim right enough to take those memories away. So, it’s drinks and laughs and then. Giorgi looking over him and blood and Sammy falling to the ground while the flames ate Ellis up. The heat – the fire. On loop.

His head fucking hurts and maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

There’s a clean, empty pot on the stove which he takes to the sink. The water splashes against the bottom, loud and aggressive at first, calming down slowly as it fills up. It takes him a little more effort to carry it back over to the hob than he’d like, and it slams down a little louder than he intended, the water spilling slightly over the edge. He takes the matchbox from where he knows they are – second drawer to the right – and he delicately pushes it open, grabs a match and strikes it.

But it doesn’t light. He strikes it again, and it doesn’t light. He strikes it again. It doesn’t— His hands shake more, and his vision gets blurrier, head throbbing so hard it feels like it'll break the scar right back open. Then, there’s a hand gripping his wrist as gently as it could, suggesting that he stop trying. Lincoln sucks in a deep breath, and when he opens his eyes the tears are gone.

“Easy, Lazarus.”

He lets John take the matchbox and the match out of his hands. John puts them down on the counter and Lincoln wants to tell them that’s not where they go.

“Sit down, will you?” John says, equally concerned and annoyed. He would resist if he had it in him. But he lets John take him to the dining chair, putting his hand on his shoulder and John wrapping his arm around Lincoln. The chair creaks underneath him. John goes back to the stove.

“You should’ve just asked me,” he says in some sombre tone that betrays him. Annoyed would’ve suited him better. But then again, it is just him and Lincoln here.

“Father James isn’t home,” Lincoln’s voice is low, and the words slur slightly. John strikes the match. “You were asleep.”

“You should’ve just asked me,” he says again, annoyed this time. He turns around after lighting up the stove and looks at Lincoln. “We’ll get Marcano,” his voice softer now, “but that means we have to get you back up on your feet. And I can still help with that, too.”

Lincoln hasn’t changed much since he first met him, and he’s seen his wounds heal over before. But nothing – no one – ever came close to killing him. Now, he gets the front row seat to seeing how a bullet wound to the head is cleaned and bandaged over. He gets to see Lincoln’s hair and beard grow out while he lay there, nearly dead. Because he supposes Lincoln was always a miracle in some way. In Vietnam, it was otherworldly to see him emerge out of the heat and the smog, the aftermath, with just scrapes and scratches and the determination to go again. He never did it for John – whether it turned into that, no one can say for sure – but he knows what he’d do for Lincoln. John never told him, but it drove him frantic when he came out a second too late. In tents and the grottiest hotel rooms the C.I.A. could muster, his touch would be gentler than humanly possible and yet could somehow tear him apart, drive him frantic in other ways. He learned to say Lincoln's name like a prayer. Saint Lincoln Clay, out of the gunfire and dirt, with his eyes on him.

“Watch out, Donovan. I might think you care,” Lincoln smirks up at him and it sends a shooting pain up to his temple – he looks back down at his feet. John grabs another chair and puts it opposite Lincoln where he sits, one of his legs knocking between Lincoln’s.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he smiles, bringing one of his hands to rest on Lincoln’s knee.

“Yeah,” regretting the stupid joke – should leave those to Donovan – but his hand meets John’s anyway. “You are.”

“Damn straight,” and his tone shifts into the John Donovan that Lincoln knows. “I got all the gear I need and I’m set up in a shitty motel in Delray Hollow. The Blue Gulf. Sal and Giorgi have got no fucking idea what's coming for 'em,” he laughs then but it’s tinged with something else. He pulls his hand away, leaning back in the chair and running his hand through his hair once. “You’re going to scare them to death.”

“Haunt the shit out of ‘em,” Lincoln slurs out. Donovan brings his hand back on top of his, and they stay that way for a minute. The water’s boiling. But Donovan’s hand moves up to the side of Lincoln’s face, palm soft against his beard and fingers gingerly stroking his temple. Lincoln can’t help but close his eyes and lean into it, and it isn’t as painful as he expects it to be. The horrible throb of agony ebbs away into a dull ache against the touch.

“Maybe, you could keep the beard,” Donovan says out of sheer curiosity, but saves it with a grin. He drags his fingers through it all the way down to his chin, feeling Lincoln's voice through the contact.

“In your dreams,” Lincoln laughs and winces all at once. “Fuck.”

At that, Donovan’s hand goes back up his cheek. Lincoln looks at him, his eyes teary and bloodshot. John’s got that furrow in his brow going on when he’d usually be looking up at him, searching for the parts of him his anger was working so quickly to stifle. Those times he told him things weren’t his fault; that it was a war zone and it was just the way things were, but he knew that anyway. John just said it and he'd actually want to hear it. He could tell him the same thing now. Maybe there wasn’t enough good bourbon in the entirety of New Bordeaux for him to get a word in. What the fuck. He'd be here with him for as long as it took.

A door clicks open; Lincoln looks down and Donovan pushes back in his chair and swiftly moves back to the pot of water.

“Don’t you fucking worry, Lincoln,” Donovan says firmly and loudly. “Sal Marcano’s gonna regret ever being born,” and Lincoln can just about make out the sly twitch of his mouth.

***

It takes a few more weeks before Lincoln doesn’t need anyone to lean on to make his own way around the house. At the chance, he leaps to trim his hair and get rid of his beard while Donovan watched him in the bathroom mirror, pulling faces at him and talking about the “tremendous loss”. Lincoln jabbed his elbow in his direction, and told him if he kept distracting him, he was going to end up cutting himself. John laughed back and lit a cigarette, holding it out for Lincoln to share. Lincoln's lips brushed against his fingers every single time.

John had gone to Sammy’s while Lincoln was still out. It smelled of charred wood and flesh, and he swore it still felt hot. But maybe that was just the weather. The fire burned anything and everything, and although there was nothing to be salvaged, he still had to go. It was his job, after all. Miraculously, the building’s still standing, but inside it’s a nightmare. And there’s no evidence, no police tape, fucking nothing. He probably stays a few minutes longer than he needs to, imagining the scene play out in front of him; Lincoln above the moon, his arm wrapped tightly around Giorgi’s shoulders. The moment he lets go is the moment he’ll probably regret.

So when Lincoln asks to be dropped off at Sammy’s, Donovan doesn’t realise what’s going on until he parks up.

“Don’t you think this is a little morbid, Lincoln?”

“What?”

“This,” he gestures to Sammy’s. “You’re not seriously staying here.”

Lincoln is already getting out of the car.

“Hey,” John follows him. “Hey, asshole. You’re not staying here.”

“Is that an order?” Lincoln is already at the door, standing broad and tall. But he doesn’t open the door just yet. Instead, his voice turns low and dark, quiet and all-business. “We need to get to the underbosses first – there’s no way I can go straight for Marcano, as much as I’d fucking like to get my hands on his pale fucking neck.”

Donovan, now by his side, knows this rhythm, and he walks right into it.

“I’m way ahead of you. Number of civvies around here were willing to give me what I needed with the right kind of pressure. No shock to you that Marcano’s henchmen aren’t really the most well-liked around these parts. But you’re right, only there’s a good number of ‘em we have to get to before Sal starts feeling the heat. I got all the intel you need to get started back at my room. I stole th—” he's broken off by Lincoln's dry laugh.

Lincoln turns to him and squints. John fucking Donovan, always sealing the deal and closing all the exits. He was good that way, having everything covered and all the questions answered. Always there when Lincoln called. But he was never one to leave himself this open, to let Lincoln see the pressing concern and desperation etched onto his face right now.

“This is where I need to be,” Lincoln says. John shifts on his feet and really looks up at him now, staring right into him.

“With all due respect, no, it isn’t. Lincoln, this isn’t your fault. You don’t need to go in there,” he takes a step closer, making to get in between of Lincoln and the door. “It's not like you need the fucking guilt to burden yourself with.”

“What I need right now is for you to point me in the direction of the person I need to kill to start this thing. This is where I’m staying. Donovan,” he says before John can open his smart mouth, “It is my fault. I let Giorgi in. I had fucking lunch with Sal Marcano and his son and I let them in. We got drunk, and I turned my head and the whole thing is burning to the fucking ground. So, it is my fault. And I’m taking Marcano down, even if I have to go down with him. Just— Just fucking help me.”

There’s a silence after that and he realises that he was talking a little too loudly. Glancing around him, the street looks empty enough. And then John in front of him is mimicking the way his jaw’s tensed up, hearing the effort it takes to keep his voice level and clearly failing. He probably has something to say, but he lets the moment sit like that. Lincoln's anger starts to dissipate and settle until his blood isn't running as hot. 

“Lincoln,” he says maybe a minute later. “Thinking like that isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

They lock eyes again and the last of Lincoln's rage turns, and sure it leaves behind the profound melancholy and guilt of losing your father and brother to the man you slept with and his Mafioso father, but for now, he lets Donovan bring him back down to earth. He tells him it isn’t his fault again, and this time he considers it. Only considers it. Because when it's John, he's willing to listen.

“You’ll believe me once you mull it over with the good whiskey I have,” Donovan tries, smiling up at Lincoln. “I got everything you need, because you asked for me and I’m the fucking best. And we’re gonna take him down. You don’t think I owe you this?”

“You don’t owe me anything, John,” Lincoln replies, earnestly.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But don’t forget that I might actually care about you, Corporal,” and John’s classic shit-eating grin appears across his face and Lincoln is possessed with the urge to taste it. Instead, he laughs and slaps his hand a little too hard on his arm. "Easy, or I won't be able to drive us there," he says, rubbing his arm.

“Well, where’s the fucking whiskey?”

“That’s more like it.”

They both climb back into the car. John starts the engine before Lincoln says;

“John.”

“Yeah?” he looks back at him, genuinely confused. For once, Donovan’s caught off-guard and Lincoln likes the way it looks on him.

“I hate your fucking suit.”

John takes a beat, looking down at himself before scoffing and looking back at Lincoln, open-mouthed.

“Can’t all be as handsome as you,” he puts his hands on the wheel. “If it’s got you so damn wound up—”

“Shut up and drive, gorgeous.”

***

The sheets scrambled towards her, hiding her, are warm against her fingers. She shifts, looking at him. It slowly seeps into her – not warmth – the realisation that she has no idea who she’s in bed with. Business. He’d brought – bought – her on for business, like every other fucker that swings by. They’d known each other for just hours.

But coupled with that, is the strange feeling that she knows him. So much so that she might not want to. Or, that she might want to. Either way, she doesn’t reach for him. This much she knows; he can’t read, he is the preacher’s brother, and he needs her. What pieces fell that way in the universe to concoct this fate for her, for him.

Soon enough, after what feels like forever, he lowers his gun. His eyes close shut, and he takes no sigh of relief as he rests his head back on the pillow.

Bessie gets up and starts to get dressed.

“What’re you doing?” he says suddenly. She hears the bed moan as he props himself up on his elbows, but she doesn’t look at him. It’s not fear. Or that’s what she tells herself. Perhaps it’s anger, but, that, she tells herself it’s not.

“We weren’t finished,” the bed creaks again.

She turns around then, half-dressed. The gun glints at her – he’s still holding it, sitting up with his brows furrowed. Her lips draw into a thin line and she lets go of the clothes she was holding.

“Business is business,” she tells him. “But I don’t need someone’s brains plastered across these walls. And not my own, neither.”

“Is this your way of saying the mood’s gone?” he laughs at her. And she realises that there’s money in this exchange, and suppresses the feeling deeper that she might actually want to help him. She could back out now, because she knows he’s not going to aim that gun at her.

But she’s not laughing. He picks up on her eyes rolling as she turns her back to him firmly, picking up the clothes she dropped. Putting the gun down on the bedside table, the bed whines again underneath him as he sits up to reach out for her arm. Ice to the touch, but he feels so warm against her that it almost burns.

“Hey,” he turns her to him and he is all serious now. Not serious enough to actually tell her anything more than what she heard, but serious enough for the blood to start moving underneath her skin again. “I’m not gonna let you get hurt,” he says it and she doesn’t believe it. Still, the sentiment is nice. Pulling her closer to the edge of the bed, his hand moves down to her waist and she doesn’t resist.

They find themselves the same way they were before the preacher interrupted them, but there is something different here. Creeley is level with her, his hands softer on her thighs, the small of her back. And Bessie knows that she’s in trouble. Creeley’s known it for himself for a long time, now. 

He kisses her. It’s so soft that she doesn’t recognise it. To him, even, it feels foreign, but he does it anyway. This doesn’t taste like business, and that hurts for both of them.

Her thighs tighten as she adjusts herself in the soft hold, and business is indifferent, she’s known that for a while. A sickly feeling curls in her stomach and that, that is not indifference. He mutters something against her and distantly she notes that if they live long enough, she’s going to make him tell her everything. By right. And maybe one day he’ll ask her for the same thing. Fantasy stuff, but she thinks on it for a moment. 

No, god, this isn’t indifference.

This much she knows; a preacher says he’s going to hell, and Creeley’s going with him. And she might just let him take her along.