By now, you'd think Marshall had gotten used to random visitation. You'd be wrong. In his defense, it's awfully hard not to shit oneself when you glance at your bedroom window one presumably uneventful night, and see a figure standing there. Watching you.

Marshall had always thought he'd die in a car crash. Or mid-panic attack. Or maybe even as a victim of random hate crime. Can you classify a hate crime as random? We're getting off track here. Anyway, there was Marshall. Cautiously trying to digest his own inevitable death. Were there any regrets? Any cast aside future plans that he would have to mourn during his last handful of breathing-based seconds? There were things he wished he had done, sure. But none that, realistically, he thought would have ever happened.

So, Marshall decided that this was fair. That who could make for a murder victim, if not an insignificant speck such as himself? As the figure drew itself nearer, he saw the moonlight gleam on the thing in his hand. That thing was a knife. Despite already preparing for his death just a second ago, Marshall found the knife legitimized this realization like a punch to the gut. He was going to die tonight. His lungs were less graceful in processing this.

But when the figure drew nearer to him, the knife did not raise. Why wasn't it raising? So close, and he could still only see an outline and a blade's scintillation. Marshall reached, tentatively, for the lamp beside him. Just before it illuminated the room, their lips met. Lee would later swear that he wasn't to blame for that one. But maybe he was. Isn't that the romantic way to go? He closed his eyes, and was rewarded with a slap.

"I want you to look at me." Marshall's eyes widened.

"Bu-"

"God, I despise that name. You got anything better to call me by? …Never mind. No time."

Marshall quickly fixed his hair, and re-blanketed his naked upper half. As always, he was underdressed. His "murderer" on the other hand, was decked out in a fabric that had to be at least one thousand. "I don't understand."

"You never do." Bubba reached for the top of his head. His knife was still in the other hand. He knotted it back up. He yanked the blanket back down. "We've already established you're not coming with me. And maybe I shouldn't have offered you that anyway. You need to graduate and get a job. You need to find someone. You need to eat right and by yourself some new godamn clothes."

Marshall sighed. There was a lot he could, and maybe should say. But then his company would just run away faster.

"Could you please put the knife down?"

Bubba gave him a look, a look like Marshall was being a big baby for not wanting to associate with a big hunk of metal in his bedroom. But he sat the glistening piece down on the bed stand, and with a clunk it was gone.

Or was it? Marshall swore he could still see that piercing reflection in either one of his eyes. The same sharpness as a slice to the chest.

Bubba kissed him again. He pushed him back against the bed, sinking him into his own pillowcase. Marshall obliged, he closed his eyes and began stretching the moment. When they were done, Bubba picked the knife back up. He knew this wasn't the case, but for a second Marshall took this to mean he was in fact going to be gutted, now that he had served his purpose. He could think of no argument for prolonging his own existence, and if he had one, he would not have used it.

"You're going after him."

Bubba kissed his forehead. This was Marshall's first ever forehead kiss. He quickly decided it was his favorite kind of kiss. It was the nice kind of possessive, a more tender and less destructive form of selfish. He felt butterflies the way he used to.

"Go back to sleep," he said, and Marshall swore to himself that he didn't want to, that he was going to call the police the minute he was alone again. But his eyelids had a different plan in mind, shutting him off from the world before the company and his knife had even left the room.