white wash
bds, murph pov
by lilnee
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Snow. They're not sure they like snow. Although, that's not entirely true. Fuzzy memories, like spilt milk, like waking up and turning over and there's the back of your brother's head, like pitching fits, punching shoulders, making faces, he's had good and bad snow, Murphy. Connor's always been a little bit stronger. Always, and maybe forever, in will or in muscle; he was sitting on Murph's shoulders and spine in this particular flashback, the sting and wince and super-cooled air coming wafting up Murph's nose in fits. Connor had his hair, hanks of it, stiff and cold from slush slowly warming to nothing but grass and mud underneath.
You've got moments where you're best friends with your brother, pause, and then you've got moments where you're not, suddenly, and you're awed and angered by the change. You adopt the kid next door as Connor (who smelled and laughed nothing like him), deciding that has to work. You could replace your stupid fuckin' brother, your fuckin' excuse for a twin, your fuckin' love. He was incredibly naive as a child, and has learned to understand that following your religion might just be the same. Brothers and religion were the same in a way, too. Brothers and religion always pulled through in the end, even if they never said sorry and stood there until you had your lapse in sanity.
Seven hours and roughly (as rough as the dented, rusted, crooked, and holed up road signs) 300 miles along, they're in Maine. And why not. A coin decided that when they were sitting in the car (it wasn't Rocco's, it was a grey Buick, one of their friends into drug business didn't really have the need for it anymore), your fork in the road staring dead and black and cold back at them. It was either north or west. Heads or tails. Murphy flipped the coin. It hit the ceiling and bounced onto the dashboard. They could both see what it said there, glinting. Connor leaned forward and slid it into his palm, then looked to Murph, who might have been grinning, or it was the smoke.
"Alright," Connor said, and put the coin into his right pocket, where it stayed until Maine came along.
A newer Corolla lead them the last 50 miles. They went through four cars in all, Murphy picking and heisting most of them (heisting was three-hundred cash up front for the crappy one in the back lot; most of them from the late 80s and with broken tail lights). The Corolla was Connor's want for something with working A/C and a radio and seats not peeling as if senility had set in. Murphy cried incognito and slept on the back seats, waiting his turn to man the helm.
They tried to keep out of as much trouble as they could, leaving a string of dead bad guys every gas stop wasn't the most constructive of ideas (incognito Connor repeated to Murph, the tone tired and mocking—the sun was just going down and Murphy stared for longer, watching Connor's outline and the scenery). So, one of those troubles they were trying to avoid played fate on them. Being in the wrong damn place at the wrong Goddamn time, or maybe not. It's true, they had (have) a Calling, they're doing His work, going from town to town, cleaning out the rats (not just in home-sweet-home Boston anymore, kiddies). But. Murphy still shot this guy between the eyes two seconds too late, and he's still been stewing over it since. Always a guy, singular (they had better luck with groups), and hooded (in mockery of them in a way). He pulled a gun on the attendant, did all the robbery motions, and then shot him down. Maybe the clerk looked at him wrong, maybe baby blue, the colour of his uniform, wasn't for him. Who knows. They'd been stretching out the kinks of travel when the shot echoed. Echo, echo, movie picture perfect.
Bullets whiz by your head nearly everyday, perks of the job, but this day it took a bite out of him.
"Like the Lone fuckin' Ranger, goin' in there." Connor said. He's stewing because he'd been two seconds behind Murph, gun in his hand all the same but the single door in and out blocked a dramatic two-by-two entrance. Two guns, two brothers, one bullet, the both of them standing still for seconds as blood drilled the ground. It wasn't Murphy's yet. Not yet. He felt it as they spilled outside, Connor going to the car immediately while he lagged, stopped, felt around. His palm, fingers and thumb, turned up at him red and shiny. This happens. When you get sloppy, this happens.
Connor notices things, like Murphy not next to him, and looked up. Didn't have to see his hand to know what was up, it's all under brotherly intuition. He says, hey, anyway. Hey as in what. The frown and bounce to his step as in oh, shit. Later Murphy would realize he didn't hear the second shot of the thief because they'd fired at the same time, boom, one over the other, Murph's aim just a little bit better. One over the other, Connor wrapped his arm up after grabbing electrical tape and a novelty t-shirt from back inside the building.
"So, that makes you Tonto."
"That makes me your pissed off fuckin' brother."
They didn't talk for miles.
His fingers curl stiff as he runs them through his hair (growing longer by the minute, Connor's too, spikes losing their edge). He thinks of home when tires meet snow, he thinks of laundry baskets left out in the rain, grey wooden fences ready to fall down, stone chimneys, stained wood floors, brown beer bottles lined by the kitchen window. Thinks of how Connor was different but the same. The car banks suddenly, hitting a sheen of ice, throwing him into the door and his shot arm. It all but lights up, red hot, sparking pain over his shoulder and down his spine. He winces hard, splitting his already cracked lips. Fuck cuts final out of Connor's mouth as he wrenches the wheel left and then even, coming to a skidding nothing.
Connor breathes a short breath, then Murphy. Connor fishes through his pocket then, finds the quarter, rolls down the window and throws it out. The blanket of white eats it up. Murphy's pressing his thumb into the shirt around his arm, damp warmth rising through.
"North." he says. Cold.
"We need a new coin," Connor decides.