A/N: Er. Hahaha. Sorry about this. (Not really.) Seriously though, you've been warned. ;o

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Silent

"—can't seem to commit to one truth, but I know that I won't waver in doing what needs to be done, or in going down the path that I have to take. Wait for me."

But of course she wasn't going anywhere. Sparing one last look, Roger turned away and made for the door. He would find Norman wherever he'd gone off to, and then he had to go. Out. To find Dorothy, the android that he could have loved but didn't. And he didn't, at least not in that implicative way. He dismissed her small black waist, a small white hand, glossing over its mannequin softness. Had to, with her lying there. On her back. But so suppose she were to open her eyes now. Suppose her hair, her mouth, her feet.

Well. Nothing. Because she was always so beautiful, in a sacrosanct sort of way, but that didn't mean…

He had to go.

He set one foot into the hallway and came face to face with Beck. It took a heartbeat and one half-yelp of protest and he cracked against the doorframe, Roger's hands white-knuckled and shaking in his lapels.

"You son of a bitch, how can you even show your face in here?This is your fault." His voice came out tattered and ugly and he swallowed hard against the tight ball in his throat. It took an instant for Beck to lose his resigned stare and start to swivel in his grip, and then Roger jerked him hard and as his skull hit the wall with the muted bang of bone on wood he winced again and again and again and again and Roger shook him with a white fury even after he recovered. "Rat-bastard. Son of a bitch!"

"Get the hell off me," Beck spat. He shoved roughly against Roger's shoulder and broke loose but then Roger was on him again with one hand planted in the middle of his chest and thrusting him back against the wall and the air burst free from his lungs in a rush.

They stood still for a moment, and then Beck narrowed his eyes, smirked, and reached under Roger's arm to retrieve his comb from his pocket.

"Huh. Figures you'd still be here," he said, though he felt tenser underneath Roger's palm than appearances alone would betray.

"You—" His fingers dug sharply into the black cotton to either side of Beck's tie, flowering a hot pain in his skin that put a bitter and strained edge on the quirk of his lips. He had just enough time to drag the pad of his thumb over the comb's teeth before Roger belted it out of his hand with a blind, enraged flail and sent it clattering to the dirty floor some distance away.

Snarling, Beck slammed his full weight into his captor and the two went staggering, stumbling back until Roger's spine cracked dully against the back of the sheeted armchair just blocking them from Dorothy's prone and silent body. Beck barely managed an admirable right hook when black arms shot out and seized him by the neck, squeezing with such brutal intensity that he could feel the bruises welling up in his skin could do nothing but reach up and return the favor concurrently crushing his windpipe and now there were spots but Roger's vision was blackwhiteprickledblotted too so it was perfectly fine with him.

"I hate you," gurglehissed Roger amid his trachea's desperate spasmodic retching motions and shaking forearms fingers curled into Beck's throat Beck let out a high thin wheeze of Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you and twisted futilely while jerking Roger against the chair and jerking himself against Roger again and again and again and again and his head felt heavy high pressure in his eye sockets then sweet oxygen and he didn't catch how but all hands clawed benignly into muscle not organs and Roger only realized it when he felt Beck's stabbing insistently his hip up and out and in feral sound tearing from the red throat he still clutched with one spastically twitching hand and him and all things hitching white-knuckled fever-faced fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you oh fuck fuck you

They stopped and panted faintly but were otherwise still as death. Finally Beck righted himself, straightened his tie, and made it a surreptitious point not to retrieve his comb from the mess of dust and broken glass on the floor near Dorothy Wayneright's shell of a body.

"You're really fucked up, Crow Boy," he said solemnly, and then he turned and left like he didn't have a sickly cooling mess between his legs.

Roger stared without seeing for three and a half minutes exactly before rising and walking to his Big.

fin