Reaper: Hi there. In my English class we read In Cold Blood by Capote Truman. Well, for extra credit, we were allowed to write fanfiction. This was mine.

Callous hardened fingers traced stretched, scarred flesh, nails digging into the swollen marks.

"Does it hurt?" Perry asked, leaning against the bathroom doorway. Dick's eyes flickered to the man's image in the mirror before returning to his own face.

"Only a light ache. Mostly when it rains," Dick answered as he dropped his hand. Perry inched into the bathroom slowly, closing into Dick's personal space. Dick turned to look, stiffening when a hand brushed against his cheek. Dick stared, watching how Perry seemed to be entranced by Dick's deformed features. Perry leaned closer, their breaths mingling as he let his thumb rub back and forth along his partner's rough temple.

"Never had a scar ache. A bone, yeah, but never a scar. They're beautiful," Perry mumbled absent-mindedly. Dick shrunk back, caught off guard by Perry's odd words. Perry moved closer once more, his eyes dark as he regarded Dick. Dick looked like a deer caught in headlights, his eyes wide and his cheeks dusted pink underneath his warped flesh.

"Back-back off Perry. A man's got personal space," Dick snapped as he shook himself out of his daze. Perry's dark eyes flickered to Dick's hardened eyes before sliding to the mirror. As if seeing a monster in the reflection, he shot away from the older man, stumbling backwards out of the bathroom. Dick moved, closing and locking the door behind the dazed man. He fell back into a heavy heap against the bathroom sink, running a hand down his face.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Perry gasped, tripping over his own two feet as he rushed against the black abyss. His voice choked in his throat, his eyes darting this way and that. Nothing. All he could see was black. He didn't know why he could see or where he was, he just knew he had to keep running. Perry tumbled forward, his hands flying out in front of him as he slipped on an unknown wet, rust-fragranced liquid. Crashing to the ground, he looked to his hands, which were suddenly illuminating with a red hue.

A pool of red encircled him.

A pair of worn, brown loafers entered his field of vision. Perry looked up to see the red eyes of a man glaring down at him, their expression unreadable. Along with the red eyes was a stream of red running down the hole in his head.

Perry jolted up, his hands shooting up to clench his chest. Sucking in as much breath as he could, he heard it.

A small, mouse of a whimper.

"Dick?" Perry called out faintly as he looked to his companion, who was tossing in bed. Getting up as quietly as possible, he slunk over to his friend. Looking down, he watched Dick toss his head back and forth, his hands clenched tightly to the sides of his pillow. His eyebrows were furrowed, his brow drenched in sweat. Tear streaks littered his cheeks, his scars looking swollen and red.

"Dick!" Perry called out, shaking Dick awake. Dick's eyes popped open in a flash, his hands shooting out to wrap around Perry's throat. Perry gagged and threw his hands out, grabbing Dick by the shoulders. Dick snapped out of his daze, his eyebrows creasing to his hair line in shock and horror. His hold loosened, allowing Perry to lean forward slightly, gasping lightly as he sucked in more air. His grip on Dick's shoulders didn't loosen. He moved, leaning a knee against the mattress as he hovered over Dick, worried eyes peering into unguarded eyes.

"You were crying." It was a statement, not a question, and they both knew it. Perry ran his knuckles down Dick's cheeks, erasing the tear trails. Staring with an expression of awe, he leant down. Dick screwed his eyes shut, his shoulders squaring as he felt hot breath fan his face.

Then he felt it.

A pair of warm, chapped lips pressed briefly to his closed eyelids before leaning back. Dick opened his eyes in time to see Perry moving back to his own bed, his shoulders slumped. As he crawled into bed, Perry gave a soft, almost silent, sniffle.

Dick stared at the ceiling, his eyes watering as the faces of three small boys flashed into his mind for some unexplainable reason.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They both knew it, even if they didn't want to say it. They both had long since accepted the fate the two settled into. One, a thief and petty brute, the other a natural born killer. One who left his loves (twice) for the sins of reality, another who held no consciousness to care about anything as long as he could continue to feel alive.

Their fates were already settled out for them. They couldn't fight it. They could only sink into it.

The day when Dick pointed out his observations to Perry was one that would always burn into their minds as the unspoken day. The day that shouldn't have been.

"You are a natural born killer, you know that?" Dick had spoken without thinking, a mistake on his part. They had only just met a few days earlier in their free time, Perry spending most of his times watching after that church boy who sang. Dick didn't understand why Perry watched the man, it wasn't like he was some side-show saint to show off to those looking for a eye pleaser.

Perry had paused in his doodling, looking to Dick with a straight face.

"Come again?" Perry asked after a beat, his grip on his pencil tight.

"You," Dick jerked a hand into his face, "are a natural born killer. That story of that man you killed? Yeah, pure natural instincts." Perry stared at Dick before closing his abused, falling-apart leather bound journal. It was the only possession he was allowed to have with him, Dick remembered. A gift from the warden or something.

CRACK.

The inmates in the mess-hall paused as they watched Dick fall to the floor, Perry standing over him. No one moved as Perry stared down at Dick, his face unreadable.

"Say that again," Perry growled in a deep, spine-shivering voice, "I dare you." Dick stared up at him as Perry descended on him, fists and teeth flying as Dick reflected the blows. By the time the guards had pulled the two apart they were a mess of blues and reds and blacks, swollen flesh hiding cocky, sore expressions.

"Do yourself a favor and learn to keep your mouth shut, pretty boy," Perry snapped as he was pulled away harshly. Dick growled out as he jerked forward, towards the man.

"Make sure you keep your hands to yourself, Picasso, before you find your hands can't make any pretty pictures anymore!"

In lockdown in the secluded isolation section for a week calmed their heads and settled their pent-up frustrations. After a calming talk with Willie-Jay, Perry had come to apologize to Dick. Giving a fair punch as an acceptance, the two made a silence agreement to never speak of the fight and to forget it ever happened.

But Dick still thought he was a natural born killer.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Don't move," Perry snapped, his tongue sticking out in a rather odd pout, his figure hunched over his sketching pad. Dick shifted uncomfortably, looking to Perry from the corner of his eyes. Perry looked up and gave a smile, showing a thumb up. Dick slouched and gave a huff of relief, reaching a hand out to take the sketch pad. Handing it to him, Perry waited anxiously for his reaction.

Dick's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped.

The picture was a rough (in Perry words, not Dick's) sketch of the man. Perry had shaded his face to take clear attention to the scars that surrounded his eyes, light shades showing the dark circles Dick always tried to hide. He had faint stubbles lining his chin and he looked so odd, colored white and grey against such pure colored paper.

Dick looked up to Perry, who looked back.

"Beautiful," Dick whispered as a wave of déjà vu hit him, reminding him of a conversation in a bathroom not long before. Perry beamed. He reached over, fingers trailing along the scars.

"I love these things," Perry spoke and Dick leaned into the touch, his eyes sliding closed. Neither spoke, just sharing the sound of each breathing.

"They get in the way," Dick gruffly answered but Perry made a small noise of disproval, his lips tugging into a pout.

"Oh no, they don't. In fact, they make you all the more interesting to look at," Perry spoke and smiled. Dick gave a small, rare smile and leaned back, letting Perry move to sit next to him. As their bodies molded into each other side-by-side, they couldn't think of anything more perfect.

Even for them, two twisted, broken men.

One, cast away for deformities brought upon by a car accident, the other a punching bag for those who were so called Christians.

Two broken, tossed away men.

Back to show the world just who they were.