Half of What You See

by Nookienostradamus

Ryan ventures out to Joe's deep-woods hideout. Everything is just as he expects, and then nothing is. Slight AU, but references events from S02, E1-3.

The mask smelled of latex, and all he could hear was his own breathing. Each breath broke in half against the suffocating wall and whirled up around his ears with typhoon sound, but at least they were measured. Slow, deep.

Tracking Joe had long ago ceased to make Ryan Hardy's pulse rise. Seeing Joe never failed to do so.

It was cold, so cold. The 40-cal Glock was white fire against his stiff hand.

They say: Hold your trigger finger against the side of the gun.

They say: Never on the trigger.

Ryan's fingertip rested within the cold curve of the trigger guard, splitting the difference.

They say: Joe Carroll must be treated with a heavy hand.

Ryan alone knew a light touch was the best way to handle Joe. Steady—no kid gloves—but gentle enough to keep the nerves lit up and anticipating. Like a trigger finger at the back of the neck. A reminder.

The condensation of his breath gathered in icicle fangs over the mask's slit mouth. Apropos, if you were a groupie or a goddamn media vampire. The profilers and the commentators, all claiming to know Joe's mind.

Ryan laughed, and the ice-teeth snapped all at once. If they knew Joe Carroll, they would see him walking toward himself, gun in hand, through black trees and the hush of a new snow.

Ten feet from the cabin, he paused, transferring the gun from his right to his left hand and flexing frozen joints. The insect-clotted lamp under the shallow eaves was made to look innocuous, but no doubt had a motion sensor. There was nothing here that wasn't carefully considered. If Ryan were an academic, this is where he might say something about Joe's "fastidious aesthetic." Or whatever.

However grandiose he was, Joe enjoyed nothing more than details. He craved intricacy. That's why his failure of a novel was so overwrought. On a small scale, the grasping little homages and flourishes read as pathetic. Large-scale, spread over a host of people and locations, they could look elegant.

Everybody saw the grand gestures but missed all the obsessive fiddling. Ryan saw a Discovery Channel special once on these places in Europe called "grottoes." Some medieval religious nut, or a group of them, took a natural cave and spent what was sometimes the rest of their lives covering every surface with decoration. Bits of glass, coins, shells—all of it mortared over the stone in neurotic patterns. They blew their compulsions all over the walls for years just to stick a sad little statue of the Virgin Mary on the damp floor and walk away. Fucking nuts.

But give it a few centuries and they're masterpieces worth a two-hour TV special, instead of something that would get you committed. Joe's goal wasn't building an empire; that was incidental.

He was building a shrine.

Ryan flexed his frozen toes inside his shoes.

The cabin's porch was barely that, a couple sagging steps up to a three-board expanse. More like a deluxe threshold. If anything about the place could be called "deluxe." It wasn't the cereal box but the prize inside that mattered. That actually made Ryan laugh again. The feds yanked him right out of the bottom of a scotch glass and back into the case because they thought he was Joe Carroll's secret decoder ring.

As if. He and Joe spoke a language between them that was unintelligible from the outside. Which is why he had to come alone.

He passed the gun back to his right hand, but thought better of it and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans, just in the small of his back. Sharp, freezing—it felt nothing like a hand, but it pushed him on toward the yellow rectangle of light that fell out onto the snow from an uncurtained window.

Within twenty paces of the cabin the outside light clicked on. Ryan stopped. There was no movement from behind the curtain, but he swung into the shadow of a wide tree trunk, finger reaching on instinct for a trigger that was, for the moment, out of his reach. He planned to keep it that way, at least for now.

The outside light snapped off again.

Ryan waited. After a minute or two he heard the door open. No attempt to quiet the shriek of old hinges. That wasn't Joe's style. Ryan wanted to look at the silhouette in the doorframe. He didn't want to look.

"I know you're not a dog."

It had been so long since Ryan had heard that voice. Singular, and not only because of the out-of-place accent that spoke of infinite, syrupy patience. Ryan knew he could stretch that patience thin as the ice filaments forming within the mouth of the mask.

"And you're not a deer, either. They tend to move in pairs," Joe said.

The voice was warm, slipping through the trees. Some movement by the house made the light come on once again. Ryan imagined Joe waving, and he smiled underneath the mask.

He stepped out from behind the tree and shoved his hands in his pockets.

"See?" Joe said. "No need to be shy."

Ryan stood, unmoving, the gun itching at his back.

Joe chuckled, ran his fingertips through the thick growth of beard that had sprung up on his cheeks. "Come on, then," he said, cajoling. "What would I...have to say to me?"

Ryan put up his hands, palms out. "Resurrection," he said.

"It's terribly cold," Joe said from the doorway. "Please don't tell me you walked."

"A little bit."

Another brush of his fingers through the beard. "I'm afraid you've caught me looking a bit more unkempt than I typically like," Joe said. "Shall we trade? One mask for another?"

"You first," said Ryan.

Joe laughed—that great, resounding laugh rolling over and disappearing beyond the reach of the light.

Ryan was still in its circle. Inside Joe's circle. He always had been. Closer than any of the followers; if they were the wriggling remoras on his skin Ryan was the knife between his ribs.

"Why don't you come inside?" Joe asked. He stepped aside and gestured toward the yellow-tinted interior of the cabin.

A faint smell of cooked meat—probably a microwave meal—drifted out, mingling in Ryan's nostrils with the ugly scent of latex. The mask was suddenly stifling. He walked toward the door, stopping at the first step. The beard was unnerving, obscuring the familiarity of Joe's face. But at least the eyes were the same—just as bright, just as mad.

"Ryan," Joe said, almost tenderly. "Take the mask off. We can talk like civilized men."

Ryan grabbed the coarse plastic hair of the mask's rubber scalp. "We aren't civilized men."

Another laugh from Joe. He had a knack for making the predictable seem unexpected. "We aren't civilized men? Good to see you coming 'round."

Ryan pulled off the mask, the sweat on his skin prickling in the cold night, and put his boot on the first creaking step. "That's the thing about me, Joe," he said. "I never left."

It was more than a little satisfying to see just what a far cry the dumpy cabin Joe called home was from the countryside estate from which he and his followers had conducted their reign of terror. Until the Feds routed them like rats. It didn't feel like much of a victory in the end. Mikey torn to shreds...then Debra. Left to die alone and terrified in a hole in the ground.

The thought made Ryan's fingers curl into his palms until his fingernails cut red scythe-shapes into the tender skin. Those same fists itched to break Joe's bearded jaw. The two of them were alone, isolated for miles. Ryan didn't know why he held back. But he did.

He stepped into warmth and the smell of mothballs. Joe ushered him in with a sweep of his arm befitting a much grander place. That was him—theatrical to the end.

Was this the end? It could be. So easily.

"Nice digs," Ryan said. "Cabin in the woods, big beard. You look like the Unabomber."

"That was a bit of a low blow," Joe said. "Even for you."

Ryan laughed and tossed the mask onto the sagging cushions of a floral patterned couch. It landed with its empty eyes facing them. "You know me, Joe. Low is where I live." He looked around at the chipping wood paneling, the clouded plastic light fixtures, the scabby carpet. "Speaking of, how the mighty have fallen."

"You never could resist an opportunity to gloat, Agent Hardy" said Joe. "To goad me."

"Not an agent anymore."

"I believe that's what you said last time," Joe said, fastening the storm door and brushing snow from the cuff of his worn hoodie. "But you wouldn't be here if you thought, as everyone else does, that I died at the boathouse that night." He tilted his chin and unzipped the sweatshirt, shrugging it off his shoulders. "Perhaps you've got your own cabin, eh, Ryan? It could be a room tucked away in your apartment or a lonely office, smelling of stale coffee and sweat. Somewhere you can sit by yourself and stare at my picture. Draw webs in your mind."

It was a disturbingly accurate call, but Ryan kept his expression neutral. Over the past year, he'd spent uncounted hours in a windowless cubby in his condo. He had forgotten the color of the walls (not that it mattered) because of the pictures and clippings taped to every vertical surface. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your little girlfriend."

"Mandy's not my girlfriend. She's my daughter."

"What?" Ryan narrowed his eyes, shoulders tense and fingers clenching in at the same time he was preparing to call bullshit.

"Not truly, of course," Joe said. "She is the adopted daughter of the woman who owned this cabin." He hung the hoodie on a hook mounted next to the door.

"Owned?" Ryan asked. "As in past tense? See, Mandy Lang said she thought you might have killed her mother. Couldn't be sure, of course. No body. But she said you killed a priest, too. Right in front of her."

"A priest? No," Joe said. "A degenerate. His affiliation with the church was incidental."

"How long had it been, Joe? Since you killed someone? Did it feel good? Did it all come rushing back?"

"We talked about killing," Joe said, taking off the trucker's hat he wore and hanging it by the door as well. "Mandy and I. She knew my story, even if her mother thought she didn't." He walked over a few steps to where Ryan stood by the mantel and held out his hand. "Let me take your coat."

Ryan shook his head. Set into the shallow hearth was a radiant ceramic heater made up to look like a fireplace, turned up to full heat. His body was still struggling to expel the bone-deep cold, but Ryan knew the air in the cabin would be stifling in only a few minutes.

Joe shrugged, a half-smile on his face. "The thing is, it's impossible to tell who really has the stomach for it—for killing—until they come face to face with it. We knew each other only a short time, but Mandy understood that I would never hurt her."

"You say that," Ryan told him, "but the people you claim to care about keep getting hurt. Or killed." He couldn't tell if Joe's jaw clenched underneath the beard, but he caught the knife-blade shine of irrational anger—madness, Ryan reminded himself—in his eyes.

"Unlike you, I suppose, it's harder for me to drown the memory of those I've lost in a bottle of Jack Daniel's."

Ryan struggled to hold down the cold knot of rage pushing up into his throat. "I can never forget Debra Parker. What your people did to her. The way she died. I'll never forget Claire."

"Sweet Claire," said Joe. "She was my life. I know you don't believe me, but it's true. Her and Joey."

"You'll never see him again," Ryan said. "His grandmother accepted witness protection. I couldn't tell you where they are even if I knew. So I guess you're all out of life, huh?"

"I'll live long after I'm dead," Joe said. "Will you?"

"Doesn't matter. You'll be dead."

"And where will you be?" Joe asked. "Alone in the woods. Little boy lost. I thought you were my shadow, always one step behind. A shadow can't exist without a body."

"That sounds like a line from your book."

"Which one?" Joe asked. "The one about Poe, or the one about you?"

"I got the impression you never finished the second one," Ryan said. "Something about federal agents fucking up the script." He couldn't help a small smirk.

"'Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear,'" Joe said, indulgent. "I imagine you can guess who said that."

"Be careful, Joe. You might just start getting predictable."

"If I were predictable you wouldn't still have questions for me," said Joe.

"I don't think you could answer my questions. Not in a way that would make me or anybody else understand," said Ryan.

"So why did you come here?" Joe asked. "No, don't tell me. I know. You had to see for yourself before you could take your crazy theory to the cops, to the FBI. Joe Carroll, still alive. The ravings of an obsessed madman."

"I was right, wasn't I?" Ryan said. "Anyway, seems like you're the shadow now. Look at you, Joe. Locked up in this shithole. None of your fawning cult members to wait on you. Your maybe-dead, maybe-not girlfriend. Not even the young girl you traumatized by cutting up a guy right in front of her. They're all gone."

"Except you," said Joe. "I'll always have you."

"It's me who's got you now."

"So it seems." With a heavy sigh, Joe toed off his worn shoes, nudging each of them gently against the wall in turn. "However, unless your agency friends are outside—freezing in the woods, waiting for your signal—or you plan to kill me with the gun you've got tucked in your jeans, I suggest you let me take your coat."

Ryan shook his head, clenching and unclenching his fists, then smiled. He unzipped the coat, slid it off, and handed it over to Joe.

"I'm going to need that cup of tea," Joe said. "Would you like something to drink? I'm afraid I don't have any Jack Daniel's." He winked at Ryan, who stood by the faux fireplace, unsure as to what to do with his hands.

Ryan sniffed. "It's Johnnie Walker. And I'm good."

"I'll put the kettle on anyway. Perhaps you'll change your mind," Joe said. He grabbed the lifeless mask from the couch and walked toward the kitchen.

A faint click and a wedge of butter-colored light spilled out into the living room. The cabin's kitchen was just as modest as Ryan expected. Barely any counter space. A small oven and a two-burner range. Tiny formica breakfast table with two mismatched chairs. Cabinets painted over so many times they looked sticky.

Joe stood with his back to Ryan, examining the mask. "Remarkable likeness," he said, then placed it on the table. "Take a seat."

Ryan settled himself in a chair whose yellowing varnish was flaking off. He felt it sway a little under his weight. The gun remained tucked into his waistband, making him sit unnaturally upright. "You know what I'm still wondering about, Joe?"

"Do tell." The tap spit and groaned as Joe opened it, and he let it run for a few seconds before placing a battered aluminum tea kettle underneath the stream.

"Whether you think you're lucky that Mandy came to me rather than going to the Bureau."

Joe dried the bottom of the kettle with a dish towel and placed it on one of the burners, which ticked like a dying clock when he turned the knob. "In many ways, Mandy was an innocent. She wouldn't know how to begin as far as going to the authorities. But she saw you on television. Television was her link to the world. She didn't even know what her mother did for money, and they lived under the same roof."

"Your girlfriend was a prostitute?"

"Julie was a good friend. If you want to know whether I slept with her, I won't lie and tell you I didn't," Joe said. "She wrote to me often in prison."

"Another groupie?"

Joe laughed. "No. Far from it. She thought she could fix me. For a while, I let her believe she had."

"And then you killed her."

Leaning back against the counter, Joe shook his head. "Your assumptions, Ryan. They're what got your friend Agent Parker killed."

Ryan stood up so quickly he knocked the rickety chair backward, jarring loose one of the spindles on its wooden back. "You fucking know your little cult did that. Her blood is on your hands, Joe. Not mine."

"Oh, I know that's not what you really believe," Joe said. Steam began to rise behind him, curling and disappearing over his shoulder. "You look in the mirror, you see her blood on you as well. Just as fresh, just as bright."

"I don't look in mirrors too often."

Joe reached behind his back, curled his fingers around the handle of the kettle. On impulse, Ryan reached for the gun.

"Easy, Ryan," Joe said. "Easy." He picked up the kettle and set it on the dish towel. "It's just tea."

Ryan's smile was tight. He eased off, put his hands out at his sides.

Joe turned his back, an intentional gesture, and pulled a mug out of the cabinet. He looked over his shoulder, wagged the cup at Ryan. "Are you sure I can't tempt you?"

"Fine."

"You're jumpy, Ryan," said Joe. "That's your nature. If I wanted to kill you, I would have already done it."

"That line only works in the movies," Ryan said. Nonetheless, he reached behind him again and removed the gun from his waistband, placing it on the table.

Joe nodded and took another cup out of the cabinet. "The last truly English pleasure," he said, dropping a tea bag from a green and yellow box into each mug. "Cross-cultural exchange polluting the empire." As he poured steaming water over the tea a rich scent filled the kitchen. Outside the small window the snow was falling in thick gouts. "In case you're wondering, Ryan, I am joking. I'm quite fond of my adopted country."

Ryan righted the chair and sat down, carefully, minding the sway and the broken spindle. "I don't think it's nearly as fond of you."

Joe did not answer. He went to the small refrigerator and opened it. "Out of milk, though. Such a shame. Nothing to be done about it, either." He picked up both mugs and set one in front of Ryan. "They're predicting buckets of snow tonight. At least two feet by morning. We're insulated."

"Do you mean 'isolated?'" Ryan asked, swirling the tea bag in the cup by its tag.

"Both. You've got a captive audience."

"I don't want to be the one talking, Joe," Ryan said. "I want you to talk to me."

Joe shrugged. "I'm afraid I haven't got anything to tell you. No one from the group has been in contact with me for a year."

"Bullshit."

"No bullshit," Joe said. "I had no idea they hadn't simply scattered to the winds until I saw the news story." He picked up the mask once again, draping it over his fist and examining it. "Remarkable," he said again, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Something like this takes love to execute."

Ryan waved his hand over the lower half of his face. "You're going to have to update it."

With a soft laugh, Joe put the mask aside, next to Ryan's gun. "You really don't like the beard, do you?"

"It's just another thing to hide behind."

"Look at me, Ryan," Joe said, "and tell me you haven't also been hiding. Waiting, like my followers, for me. Like a cicada under the ground. Like a chrysalis."

"They didn't wait, though, did they, Joe?" Ryan asked. He took a sip of the tea. "This tastes like shit."

Joe shook his head. "My family is an evolving organism. It has its own life now. I never expected they wouldn't take initiative."

"I guess they don't even need you, then."

Joe gave Ryan a dark look, and flicked the mask with his forefinger, setting it trembling. "I think this proves that they do."

"So then tell me what the grand plan is this time," Ryan said. "And maybe you'll walk out of here. It's going to be in handcuffs, but it's better than me shooting you in the gut and leaving you right here in your crappy little kitchen."

"You'd never do that. And you won't admit to yourself that you won't. That's almost a crime in itself." Joe leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I've told you everything I know. Here I am, Ryan. Laid bare for you. And yet you refuse to take off your armor."

"Because I know you, Joe. Better than anyone."

"'Gnothi seauton,'" said Joe. "Do I have to give myself over entirely to your hands to prove my intentions?" He leaned back in the chair and held out his hands, palm up, a gesture of surrender. "Very well, Pygmalion. Chip away at the stone. I'll warn you now, though. You may not like what you see."

"I can't remember a time when I liked what I saw," said Ryan. He pushed the tea away.

Joe tilted his head, but didn't respond.

"What do you see?" Ryan asked.

"My sins catching up with me, I suppose." His expression was puckish.

"Not yet, Joe. Not even close." Ryan stood up. "Scissors."

"What?"

"Scissors. I'm going to help you take off that armor."

Joe tipped his head back and roared laughter. "Second drawer, in the bathroom. Be sure not to look in the mirror, will you?"

Ryan sniffed. "Sometimes you can't help it." He lifted the gun off the table, tucking it under his arm. "Just in case."

"You can't be expected to trust right away," said Joe, his smiling lips close to the rim of the mug as he looked away from Ryan and out toward the falling snow.

It was impossible to avoid staring into his own face as he flicked the light switch in the tiny bathroom. A mirror-fronted medicine cabinet—one of the old-fashioned kind with a cracking plastic frame—was mounted square in the middle of the wall facing the door. The wallpaper surrounding it was a hideous floral pattern in pinks and yellows.

Ryan had to laugh again.

He set the gun on the edge of the sink. It was a freestanding sink, only a bowl and a slender porcelain stem leading to the cracking linoleum below. But in the corner by the shower—a sad affair with a mildewing curtain and barely room for one person—stood a tall cabinet. There was a compartment with louvered doors, and below it, five drawers with the brass pulls dangling on their screws. Ryan pulled open the second one down.

He took the less rusty-looking of the two pairs of nail scissors. Then he opened each of the other drawers. Other than a few loose cotton swabs and safety pins rolling on the adhesive paper stuck to the bottom of each drawer, they were empty. Still, Ryan felt around inside, above and below. No weapons. He opened the louvered doors to the top compartment and was surprised to find a full, old-fashioned barber's kit: a badger brush on a stand, fragrant cake soap in a dish. A pearl-handled straight razor.

With a glance out the door, Ryan slipped the razor into his back pocket, took the scissors and his gun, and returned to the kitchen.

Joe still sat at the table, the dregs of his tea darkening around the wilting tea bag. The look he gave Ryan when he returned was expectant, almost benign. Ryan placed the gun at the far edge of the table, just out of Joe's reach.

He snapped the scissors once, twice. Open, closed, open, closed.

"You look prepared to do some damage," Joe said.

Ryan sat down, pulling his chair closer to Joe's. He had to slot one of his knees in the space between Joe's—just barely. Mimicking the way Joe had rolled the fine plastic hairs on the latex scalp of the mask between his fingertips, Ryan leaned forward and pinched a tuft of thick beard. Joe did not flinch. Ryan slid the point of the scissors into the surprisingly soft hair, and brought the blades together.

Joe inhaled through his nose, but did not move otherwise. He breathed steadily and deeply as Ryan worked his way around with the short scissors, sending snowfall-light clumps of hair sailing down into Joe's lap. The soft slicing of the blades was metronomic—the gun, the mask, the kitchen and the cooling tea forgotten. Joe tilted his chin upward with only the slightest fingertip pressure from Ryan, allowing access to the growth of thick hair that stretched below his jaw.

Finally, Ryan set the scissors aside on the table. He snapped his hand once or twice in the air, as if trying to banish a writing cramp.

"Better?" Joe asked.

"Getting there," said Ryan. He slid the straight razor from his back pocket, turning it over in the wan light of the ceiling fixture. Then he opened it. The blade made an arc in front of his eyes, across Joe's face.

Joe looked amused, not alarmed.

Ryan examined the edge of the blade, then held it in his teeth as he unfastened his belt buckle. He ran the razor a few times, switching sides, over the coarse leather of the belt's dangling end. The buckle clicked on the rivets of his jeans as he moved.

"You've done this before," Joe said.

"I used to shave with one of these," Ryan said. "First few months at the Academy. When I thought I was a badass."

"And then you became a badass?" Joe asked.

"Then I wised up and got serious about the job. About the training."

"You are a very serious man, Ryan. Agent or not," Joe said. "But you've come near me with not one but two weapons in your back pocket and haven't put a mark on me."

"You might not want to move," Ryan said. "Or you'll get that mark." He poised the edge of the razor at Joe's jaw line.

"You might want to get closer," said Joe. "Your arms will ache."

"How considerate." Ryan pushed his chair closer. His knee nearly touched the seat of Joe's chair. "Now shut your mouth."

Ryan moved with long and steady strokes, drawing the blade through the patchy stubble with a sound like footsteps on ice. Closer to the skin, the hair was coarser now. Joe was one of those men who had to be diligent about shaving in order not to look unkempt by evening.

The silver blade, which Ryan scraped on the edge of his belt every two or three strokes to dislodge the hair, coaxed out the familiar shape of Joe's face: strong chin, cheeks just beginning to go slightly heavy, the divot just above his upper lip. Ryan could feel Joe's breath on his face as he worked.

It probably hurt; the skin would be even more irritated in a few hours, but Joe made no sound of protest as Ryan maneuvered the razor over his Adam's apple. Each pass of the blade brought up a scent that was both strange and familiar. It wasn't the expensive cologne Joe used to use before Ryan put him away, or the smell of bleach and cheap soap that surrounded him in the prison interrogation rooms. But Ryan knew he'd smelled it before—on Claire.

Once upon a time, Claire would invite him in with a smile and offer to take his coat. She would usher him toward the book-lined back office where Joe would be waiting, pouring cognac from a crystal decanter. Claire's look was wry as she closed the French doors. Knowing. But they knew so little then, Ryan and Claire, worried over the time demands and sleep debt of someone who was ripping up coeds right under their noses, pretending to consult on the investigation.

Ryan used to catch that scent when he hugged Claire at the door to the home she shared with Joe. He smelled it and he knew that Joe had put his arms around her, kissed her shoulder, run his fingers along her neck and into her thick, blonde hair only a few moments earlier.

It used to drive Ryan crazy even then. Maybe it was the fact that Joe was closer to Claire than Ryan could ever get at the time. Or was it that Claire was closer to Joe? After Joe went away, he and Claire fell into bed together, pushed by the unyielding hand of their guilt and grief. But the embrace they shared was both more and less intimate, touching through the palpable film of Joe's absence.

"Nervous, Joe?" Ryan asked. "Your heart rate is elevated."

"Wouldn't your heart be pumping a bit harder with a razor at your throat?"

"Happens in barbershops all the time," Ryan said.

"Barbers typically don't want you dead," said Joe.

"If I wanted to kill you, I would have already done it," Ryan said.

"That line only works in the movies. Have you finished?"

"Well, this is the face I saw back when you were consulting with us," said Ryan, letting up on the blade but keeping the edge close to a vein at the side of Joe's neck. "The one I saw in prison. Seems even more like a mask now."

"There's some sort of symbolism in this," said Joe. "You coming to my home wearing my face, and now not even satisfied with that."

"I'm trying to figure out what's so compelling about it."

"Are you coming on to me, Agent Hardy?"

"I mean what about it makes people kill for you."

"You've killed for me," Joe said. "Killed to get at me. Was it worth the cost in the end when all you had to do was approach me, one man to another?"

"So you could watch me suffer up close?" Ryan asked. "I wouldn't have had the chance. The swarm of baby psychopaths that circled you like a goddamn wasp nest would never let me close to you. Not alone."

Joe smiled, trying not to flex the tendons in his neck. "They would have parted like the Red Sea if I waved my hand."

"I doubt it. You lost control, Joe."

"I've had a long time here, in this place, to come to terms with my failures," Joe said, breathing the words lightly over Ryan's lips. "I've failed as a writer, as a husband. As a father."

"Twice."

"I don't think so. If not for dear Mandy, you wouldn't be here. You saw an inroad—one you'd never gotten before—and just as I predicted, you chose to walk it alone, to confront the devil."

"You're not the devil," Ryan said. "You're a sad, pathetic man who's lost everything and won't face up to it."

"I wasn't talking about myself," Joe said.

Ryan leaned in, heard the chair creak with the shift in weight. "Think I'm a monster, Joe? Maybe. I could actually slit your throat right now. Leave you bleeding out on this floor and walk away."

"Same old song and dance," said Joe. "Frankly, it's getting tired. It's wearing thin. You threaten to hurt me, and then you don't. Or you can't. Point is, you're not going to kill me. Tonight or any other night. What purpose would your life have without me?"

The tea made Joe's breath overly sweet.

"Knowing I did the right thing," said Ryan. "That I saved more people from you and your cult."

"You're not remotely interested in 'the right thing,' or you would have stopped trying to save people long ago. You're feeding the beast, Ryan. But you and I both know: the beast is never satisfied."

"Your assumptions, Joe. You don't have a clue about me or what I'm doing."

"On the contrary, Ryan," Joe said, bringing up his hand just out of Ryan's peripheral vision to wrap a tight fist around the fingers that Ryan held the razor with. "I know you like I know my own hand." Twisting his wrist, Joe flicked the razor toward his own throat.

"No," Ryan said, soft but sharp, at the same time he yanked the razor back.

A line of dark blood slid down from a shallow cut an inch below the point of Joe's jawbone. He let it meet the collar of his henley and spread fan-like into the fabric. He smiled.

For the first time that night, Ryan felt the smallest pinch of fear.

Joe tilted his head, the motion sending another small pulse of blood from the cut. There was amusement in his eyes. "Either you're adamant that you be the one in control of when I die," he said, "or you don't want to hurt me at all." He let his hand fall away.

Ryan set the razor, tipped at its furthest edge with Joe's blood, on the table. Joe raised his hand to touch his neck but Ryan grabbed his wrist in a crushing grip. He took a handful of Joe's thick hair and yanked his head sideways, earning an inadvertent grunt. But Joe stayed silent while Ryan moved in and licked slowly along the line of blood, from collar to jaw, and jabbed at the ruptured skin with the tip of his tongue.

Finally, Joe shoved him back. Not hard, not too far.

The taste of copper was heavy in his mouth and Ryan felt a drop of blood-tinged saliva slip from the corner of his mouth. Then Joe pulled him forward, pressing their mouths together until it hurt. Ryan felt the pinch of teeth against his lips. He curled both hands around the back of Joe's neck and drew him in harder, forcing his tongue between Joe's lips. Joe opened right away, kissing the taste of his own blood back into Ryan's mouth.

Both of them were breathing heavily when they broke. Joe clutched Ryan's face between his strong hands. "You're trying to get a rise out of me," he said, teeth clenched.

"I already have."

Ryan's head fell forward a little when Joe released him. Their foreheads knocked together. Ryan hissed through his teeth.

"And you?" Joe asked. "Am I getting a rise?" He slid a quick hand up the inner seam of Ryan's jeans to cup his groin. "Oh, yes." Joe gave a cruel squeeze, making Ryan rear back.

He landed a punch on the underside of Joe's freshly shaven jaw, and Joe fell backward, one leg of his own rickety chair snapping and sending him tumbling to the linoleum.

Joe heaved a wheezing breath and kicked out, one shoeless foot connecting with the table leg and sending it shuddering and crashing down beside him.

Ryan kicked the razor out of his reach with the toe of his boot. It skimmed across the dirty floor and clattered on the baseboard of the far wall. Then he leapt on Joe, straddling his hips and pinning him down with forearms on his chest.

Joe's laugh was more of a cough, but his face was ecstatic. He put his hands out to his sides, palms up in surrender.

Ryan let up, only a little.

"What is it like?" Joe asked. "My blood. Now that you've got a taste of it. Does it make you want more?"

"Shut up."

"I can taste you, too, Ryan. Familiar somehow."

Joe was hard; Ryan could feel it. He ground his hips down with precision and with intent.

Joe bared his teeth and pushed up into it. "You resist for so long," he said. "You think you're doing so well, drinking the need away. But you always give in, Ryan. Every time. Now who's predictable?"

"Fuck you."

"If that's the point," Joe said, "then by all means."

Ryan froze, just for a moment. In that span of time, Joe raised his hands from the floor, reaching toward Ryan, very, very slowly.

Ryan narrowed his eyes, but it was permission enough, and Joe grabbed fistfuls of fabric and tore at Ryan's shirt, sending buttons clicking like gravel across the floor. Ryan yanked the ruined shirt from his shoulders. More buttons clattered as he ripped the cuffs from his wrists. He took hold of Joe's jaw and kissed him again, crushing his mouth open with merciless fingers. At the same time he hauled at the hem of Joe's shirt and pushed a hand underneath it.

Joe hissed with pain as Ryan's fingers tightened in his chest hair, and he reached down to tug hard at Ryan's belt buckle, sending the leather whirring through the loops. Ryan pulled the belt from Joe's grasp and tossed it toward the refrigerator.

"I don't think so," Ryan said.

"I'll even the odds," said Joe, and began to unfasten his own belt. He had to lift his hips to pull it off entirely, but afterward he slid it away just as Ryan had.

"That, too," said Ryan, tilting his chin toward Joe's chest.

Joe smiled and pulled off the henley. Where he was swarthy and furred, broad-chested, Ryan was whipcord-lean and nearly hairless. Physically, Joe was probably the stronger of the two, but he yielded for the moment, letting Ryan pin his wrists to the floor and deliver haphazard bites to the flesh of his neck and shoulders. Sharp, not brutal. A preview.

When Ryan let one hand loose so he could fumble at the button of Joe's pants, Joe took a handful of his hair and hauled him down. Instead of drawing him into another kiss, though, he put his lips next to Ryan's ear.

"How long?" Joe asked.

"Why don't you ask yourself?"

"I have."

Ryan had gotten the button free, and Joe's zipper came undone with a strained sound like tearing paper as he shoved his hand into the heat of Joe's groin. "And?"

Joe winced as Ryan's ragged fingernails scraped the head of his cock. "It scared me."

"Joe Carroll doesn't get scared," Ryan said, dragging his lips along Joe's jaw. "Or am I wrong?"

"Only a fool is never frightened," said Joe. He ducked his head and ran his tongue along the straining column of Ryan's throat. Ryan could feel teeth as Joe spoke into his skin. "A fool, or a man with absolutely nothing to lose."

"That could be either of us," said Ryan.

"Or neither." Joe pushed Ryan upright with a hand on his sternum. He began to unbutton Ryan's jeans, but Ryan pushed his hands down, encouraging him to undress himself instead. "Uh-uh," Joe scolded. "Even the odds."

Gritting his teeth, Ryan pulled his zipper down and pressed the broad heel of Joe's hand to his erection.

They both fell silent for a moment, reconciling with the strangeness of unexplored territory.

"Curiosity, then." Joe said, his voice tighter and lower in pitch.

"No," Ryan said. "I know you. Better than anyone."

"We are linked, you and I," Joe said. "Intertwined. I knew you would be part of my plan from the moment you stepped into my house."

Ryan pushed his trigger finger into Joe's mouth, relishing the graze of his sharp teeth on the skin. "I thought Claire was the link."

Joe grabbed Ryan's hand, bit firmly into the meat of his palm, making Ryan gasp. "You thought," he said. "You don't think so anymore."

Ryan was silent, raking his fingernails down Joe's flank, trailing red.

"Say it," Joe told him. "I can hear it in your head. She came between us."

Ryan let his head drop back, releasing a sigh as Joe curled his fingers around his cock. There was no fight for leverage in the gesture this time, just a search for pleasure, and it disgusted Ryan at the same time that it seared his bones. He hooked his fingers into Joe's waistband and pulled. Joe obliged and lifted his hips, breath hitching a little when his bare skin came in contact with the cold floor. The heady scent that the razor had scraped up reappeared, magnified. Ryan's head spun with it.

He took Joe's cock in his hand, testing—both the familiar hard weight and the strange slide of a foreskin. He was English, of course he wouldn't be cut. It made Ryan pause only for a second; he had expected it to be just like touching himself.

Joe was staring at him, hooded eyes half-disbelieving. Then he smiled. "Do you know I thought about you?" he asked. "About us, like this. In my study all those years ago. When you only had eyes for Claire. My proxy. You were driven, possessed of singular purpose. You were a powerful man, Ryan. It was arousing."

Ryan tightened his grip, only a little. "Good to know."

"Your denial is endearing, in its own way," Joe said. "Your field of vision encompasses only me and still you pretend you don't want me so badly it burns your skin. I can feel it."

"Nobody's pretending here," Ryan said. "I got what I wanted."

"You always do," said Joe. "And it always has a price. What will you pay this time? Your sanity?"

Ryan bent and bit Joe's hipbone, making him cry out for the first time. "Trying to even the odds again, Joe? You turned in that coin a long time ago."

"Suck me," Joe said. His tone was matter-of-fact.

"No," Ryan told him.

Joe laughed. "Didn't think so. You'll have this your way or not at all."

"And that's fine with you? Just giving it up?"

The smile fell away from Joe's face and he propped himself up on his elbow, dark eyes inscrutable in Ryan's gaze. "I'm giving nothing up," he said. "You're going to hurt me, and I'm going to let you do it. Because you like hurting people, Ryan Hardy. And I like to watch you hurt them."

"I like to see you hurt, yes," Ryan said. He knocked Joe's knees apart and pinched the flesh of his inner thigh until Joe cried out behind clenched teeth.

"Don't displace it," Joe said in the space between short breaths. "Own it. Everything you take from me, you take from yourself. You can't make me suffer without suffering. It's so beautiful, Ryan. If only you'd let yourself see."

Ryan spit once onto his fingertips. "I see you. All I see is you. Behind my fucking eyes when I close them." He slid one finger inside Joe, the scant lubrication not enough to stop the catch and drag of skin against skin.

"I won't say I told you—ah!" Joe arched his back and clenched his jaw as Ryan pushed another finger in alongside the first. Joe's laughter carried an edge of the hysterical. "You always wanted to get inside me, Ryan. What's it like?"

"I'll let you know when I decide I'm finished with you," Ryan said. Two fingers still buried inside Joe, he pushed his pants and boxers away from his hips. The room was far too warm; he half-expected to see melted snow dripping into sharp-toothed points outside the window from the waves of heat boiling up through the cabin's roof. He spit into his hand again, twice more, tasting the bitter remnants of the tea. When he shouldered Joe's leg up toward his body there was no resistance, and Joe lay still but for quick, panting breaths as Ryan pushed in.

The effort of the act seemed to sap Ryan's strength for a moment; he sagged against the body below him, pressing Joe's cock between them. Joe was still terribly, terribly hard. Ryan's knee slid on the linoleum and his first thrust went shallow, but Joe dug his fingers into Ryan's back and held him crushingly close, his stare both mesmeric and repugnant.

Ryan anchored himself with a hand on Joe's sternum and pushed his hips forward. There was little comfort for either of them, not yet.

"You know, I fucked your wife like this," Ryan said, giving the momentum of his body to the next thrust.

"I knew Claire to enjoy it occasionally," Joe said.

"I mean just like this," Ryan said, lips curling upward. "Fucked her ass on the floor of your house."

Joe's hand shot up and connected with Ryan's neck. Ryan's laugh was cut short by strong fingers digging on either side of his trachea. Instead of flinching back, Ryan pushed into the chokehold, took a fistful of Joe's hair and slammed his head against the floor.

The pressure on his throat eased at once, and Joe's eyes rolled back. But he wasn't dazed, he was in ecstasy. "Good, Ryan. Show me how brutal you can be."

"No more talking," Ryan said, and thrust again.

Joe let go of his throat altogether and swung his hand out to the side, toward the table.

Ryan saw it a split-second late, but Joe wasn't reaching for the gun. He had the limp latex of the mask in his grip, holding it up to Ryan.

"Put it on," Joe said.

"No," said Ryan, but the protest followed the briefest of pauses.

"You want to," said Joe. "What is this about, if not acting on your desires?"

Propping himself on one arm, Ryan snatched the mask and tugged it on over his face. Joe's expression was rapt through the slitted eyeholes.

"What do you see?" Joe asked.

"I see Joe Carroll," Ryan said, canting his hips up to remain deep within Joe.

"So do I. I see myself."

"Does that get you off?"

"Oh, yes."

"You're fucking sick, Joe," he said, punctuating the condemnation with another thrust. "And what if I took it off?"

"I've been asking you to take off the mask all night, Ryan."

"If I did, what do you think you'd see?"

"The same. I'd see myself."

Ryan tore off the mask, tossed it aside. "Go to hell," he hissed. He closed his eyes, increasing the pace of his thrusts.

Joe slapped his face. "No, Ryan. You don't get to look away."

Ryan reached between their bodies and gripped Joe's cock to shut him up. Just as he had with the razor, Joe wrapped his own hand around Ryan's and guided him, forced him. When Joe came it was with a deep shudder, a long and low sound in his throat, semen arcing onto the exertion-pinked skin of Ryan's chest. He never broke eye contact.

Ryan curled his hand over Joe's shoulder for leverage, pushing into Joe so hard that Joe's sweat-slicked back slid along the tile.

"Don't—" he said, breathless, easing down from his orgasm, "Don't tell me you don't see."

"Shut the fuck up."

"You don't look into mirrors, Ryan. Do it this once. Look at my face. Tell me what you really see."

Ryan hovered just on the edge, thrusts faltering.

"Say it," Joe said, and it was like a new seduction. "And you can let go."

"Myself," Ryan whispered. "I see myself."

"Yes."

And Ryan roared as he came, fingers digging red pits into Joe's thighs.

Until the drops fell and shivered on Joe's skin, Ryan did not realize he was crying. "Fuck," he said, slurring, spraying spittle, too spent to move away from Joe.

"Yes, yes," Joe said. It was almost a purr, soothing. He played gentle fingers up and down the heaving bars of Ryan's ribs. "That's it. Good."

They stayed, frozen for a moment—breath and silence and realization. Then Ryan fell forward and forced the air from Joe's lungs with his weight. He swung his arm out, scrabbling for the gun, the pressure and movement tormenting his sensitized skin—and Joe's, no doubt.

The Glock's chamber tapped over the pitted linoleum as Ryan dragged it up and pressed the barrel, hard, to Joe's temple.

Joe laughed underneath him, the movement shaking more teardrops free. They fell on Joe's lips, where he licked them off. "You're going to end it now? Like this? With your cock still in me? Oh, let it never be said that you have no sense of the ridiculous, Ryan." He knocked the gun away with his forearm, sent it swirling out of Ryan's grip.

Ryan vaulted off him and fell backward, panting, naked, clutching his head in shaking hands.

Joe sat up, flexing his neck until the vertebrae gave a dry pop. "I'll be sore tomorrow."

"There won't be a tomorrow," Ryan said. "Not for you."

Another laugh, huge enough to fill the room and rattle the cold-wracked glass of the window. "That's what I love about you, Ryan. You're running in place, wearing yourself out like a little hamster on a wheel. All I need to do is sit back and watch."

Ryan said nothing, trying and failing to even out his ragged breathing.

"I made you do nothing and say nothing you didn't already want," Joe said. "You came to me, Ryan."

"To end this." Ryan stood, pulling his jeans back up. He cast a quick look at the belt where it lay, but didn't want to take his eyes off Joe for too long. Even undressed, sweaty, and stained, the man was quicksilver.

"Oh, come off it," Joe said "You're not going to put a bullet in my head any more than you'll eat the gun yourself. We both know, Ryan: if I die, you die. We're two halves of the same whole. That's why I sent Mandy to fetch you."

"Wait. You sent her?"

"I did," he said, standing up and kicking away the sweatpants pooled around his ankles. "She wanted to go. She wants very much to be a part of this."

Ryan scrubbed a hand over his mussed hair as if trying to grind the idea into his head. "Poor girl was probably shell-shocked after watching you kill two people."

"I only killed one," Joe said. "Our good friend the preacher. As for the other? Julie? That was all Mandy."

"She killed her mother?" Ryan asked. "No, of course she did. Another fucked-up convert to the Church of Joe Carroll. Another sacrifice on the altar."

"There's only one offering I want."

"And the rest are expendable," said Ryan.

"See? Now you're getting it," Joe said. He stepped again into Ryan's space and ran a thumb over his jaw. "A bit prickly," said Joe. "Perhaps you need a shave yourself?"

Ryan jerked his head away. By some witchcraft Joe seemed even more imposing, more present, standing naked in his dingy kitchen than he ever had in a lecture hall or bolted to the floor in a prison interrogation room.

"You talked about coming to you, one man to another, but you needed this whole elaborate charade just to get me to show up at your door," Ryan said.

"I enjoy the charade," said Joe. "But you would have come here regardless."

Wrung out and fed up with pretense, Ryan couldn't find the energy to dodge the question. "Yes."

Joe smiled. It was almost, but not quite, tender.

"You didn't bring me here for a fuck, Joe," said Ryan. "So what is it?"

"An official invitation to start the game over again," Joe said. "A trap, but not a fatal one. Something much more elegant. I needed you to know that if you walk out that door and I'm still alive and breathing, you're accepting my terms. You are consenting to trample anyone and everyone in your path—again—to see me publicly humiliated. To see yourself raised to the status of hero. You're a narcissist, Ryan. You want to be worshiped. And that adoration is just within your grasp. I saw you reach out and take it only moments ago."

Joe stepped in closer, close enough that Ryan could feel the heat of his skin once more. As though he were touching a rare artifact, Joe curled his fingers softly around Ryan's nape, and breathed words into his ear.

"I will worship you, Ryan. If you'll worship me in return," Joe said. "We could tear this world apart, you and I."

Ryan turned his head, and whispered against Joe's lips. "No."

"Suit yourself," Joe said, backing away. "I will act out our little farce for as long as you need me to. I'll run alongside you, watching you take lives for no reason until you realize you can take them with purpose. And then you'll come to me. And the rest of them will fear you, Ryan. Fear you and love you."

"It's not too late, Joe." Ryan said, turning to walk into the living room, leaving his ruined shirt behind. "I can still flip the script on you."

"You can change what you do," Joe said. "You can't change what you are."

Ryan took his coat from the hook by the door and shrugged it on.

"Remember what it is you're agreeing to if you walk out that door," Joe said.

Ryan didn't answer. He opened the screen door and snow swirled into his face on a sharp-fanged wind.

"Ryan!" Joe called. "You'll freeze to death before you find your car." The tone was chiding, but there may have been the barest note of concern hidden inside it.

"And where would that leave you?" Ryan asked, shooting a grin back toward Joe's silhouette in the weak kitchen light, and stepping off the stoop into obliterating white.

He heard Joe calling after him a few times, then nothing. With the light of the cabin nearly vanished, the night wasn't even white anymore—the snow had become a thick, mossy blackness. It clumped in Ryan's eyelashes and melted down his face. His coat flapped open.

And it felt good. Very good. The unbearable heat of the cabin—multiplied by Joe's presence and his endless "revelations," which were really just the stubborn, nagging things that Ryan himself found at the tail end of every dream and at the bottom of every bottle—fell away. The cold wind carved the air out of his lungs, froze the tongue that had somehow voiced those things, given that knowledge to Joe.

As if he hadn't already known.

Ryan laughed, doubled over with freezing sleeves pressed against his naked chest, the cold pinching his gums. He was so breathless with laughter that he had to sit down, his back thumping hard against the peeling trunk of a birch. Its papery bark scattered over his shoulders and into his lap.

He stayed pressed against the tree as the laughter subsided to short, burning breaths. His fingers were tingling, releasing heat from the furious rise of blood flow. They would be numb in only a little while.

Ryan closed his eyes.

Then, on one side of his face, a warm hand. At the opposite temple, the frigid bore of his Glock, pressing hard.

"I'm right here, Ryan," Joe said. He pushed the muzzle of the gun into Ryan's skin until lights danced behind his eyes. "I'll always—" Another press of the gun. "Be right—" And another. "Here."

Ryan knocked the gun away and was greeted with a low laugh from Joe.

"Come back inside," Joe said. "Don't be an idiot."

Joe was right; Ryan would freeze if he stayed. A very small part of him actually wanted to.

Back inside the cabin, it would be warm. Not safe—never safe—but warm.

So he took Joe's hand.