I have no excuse. «Milczenie Owiec — Frozen» is at fault.
He sits on the fire escape, a lean hunched figure with crossed legs and ruffled jet hair, the cherry of his cigarette glowing bright red on each slow inhale, marring his facial features with a macabre light, making his cheekbones appear sharp enough to cut through glass. It's a chill November, the darkest, quietest time of the year. Boston is dead at 4AM, deserted and eerily silent. There is only the wind howling through the pipes and rattling the old rusty chain-links.
Murph pulls the flaps of his coat tighter together, but still doesn't button up.
He isn't sure if what they're doing is right anymore, as Connor lies in bed with a burning gunshot on his side. An angry-red, longpainful welt from where the bullet has grazed him, taking out a trail of hot, living flesh and leaving blood that seeped into the black of his turtleneck in its place.
Murph hasn't heard the calling for what's going on the third month now.
He grips the cigarette with his numb fingers, the tips gone so pale they almost match the thin white paper from the biting cold. Thinking has never been his forte, although in no way is he stupid. He could come up with plans just as grand and daring as Connor's, it's just that he doesn't want to. Doesn't have the need to.
Murphy is all about movement, fluid and angular, sudden and predictable all at once. He'd rather spring into action than sit and ponder his life at any given moment, but he's forced to stay in one place, like a guard dog. He isn't going to leave his brother alone until he knows for sure that Conn is safe, meaning he can raise his arm properly, shoot and jump down three steps at a time if needs to be.
Until then, he is going to sit here, inhaling the smooth smoke until it scratches his throat raw and burns his lungs to charcoal-black. It's the only way to soothe his bouncing leg, tucked under the other, even if it gives him damn thoughts. Thoughts he doesn't want, thoughts that aren't welcome.
Do they follow God's will?
Are they on the right path?
Is it finally time to stop?
He doesn't feel the burning sensation of justice flowing through his veins anymore. He doesn't feel it when he's thinking about their last hit, or the one before. Or the next one either. Righteousness, aequitas. The word drilled into his skin, seeping into the bones of his trigger-finger.
He feels it - justice - only when a bullet drives through the skull of some evil fucker.
Or when Connor looks at him with the same deep-blues in the early morning, staring unblinkingly for whole damn minutes, and he stares right back.
Murphy has never doubted God, and he isn't about to start now. If anything, God is one of the three unshakable truths he believes in; the other two being Connor and scars. Neither ever lie, and neither are going to fade.
They're there forever, stuck with him until the end.
And he doesn't mind. He relishes in the fact as it soothes his frayed nerves, together with the bluish smoke slinking down his throat.
It's their interpretations he isn's sure of after.
Connor thinks they're right. He thinks Murphy is talking rubbish, calls him out on it and jokes about wiping those doubts from his mind with a good scuffle or two, but it never goes further than words.
Instead, he lets Murph figure it out on his own, while still - always - following Connor.
He finds it in those same blue eyes as the world crumbles to its knees, spontaneously combusts in his veins, letting shrapnel flow into his bloodstream and tear open his heart as he all but howls silence, almost breaks his back and never, ever leaves Connor's eyes as the truth flows into his soul, as his brother's semen flows into his body.
It's the burning of the tattoo on his trigger-finger, the agonizing pain in his scars, the vivid, commendable truth he sees in his brother's eyes that has him believe:
They're on the right path, and God has never abandoned them.
He speaks to Murphy through Connor's eyes when they're ablaze with passion, through his body.