"We're both missin' someone else and the only reason we got together is 'cause that someone wasn't there"

The words continued to echo in Randall's head, until all the sounds around faded, the gravel beneath his feet, the stirring of leaves by the passing wind, the tiny movements made by night-time creatures… everything faded. Everything but the words, and the pain. He was used to that kind of pain, but what always caught him out were the memories that came with the pain.

He had spent his whole damn life denying who he was and what he really wanted. After all, he was Randall Malone, pride and joy of his father, star quarterback, strong and handsome, the world ready for his taking. Girls would almost throw themselves at him, as much as girls could back in '63.

Yes, he was the golden boy. If only they had known that the moments the golden boy enjoyed most was not going out with some girl or another, being paraded around like a prize by his parents… no, what he liked best was being in the locker room with his teammates after a game… the feeling of camaraderie, of that exhilaration after winning a game… and he couldn't quite explain why his eyes strayed to the bodies of his friends, almost like… but no, he couldn't feel attraction. It just couldn't be.

But it was. And it was in that year when he met another young man like him, whose face would come to haunt his dreams. They had been thrown together by random circumstance, Randall needed a tutor for the mathematics course he was in because the teacher's explanations were just not doing it for him, and he needed to keep his grades up to stay in the football team.

They seemed complete opposites, but they connected beyond anything Randall had ever experienced. And they connected in more ways than one…

It was Randall who ended it. He wasn't queer, it was a mistake, it could not happen. So he ended it, he graduated, he married with LeSawn who was talkative enough not to notice who her husband really was, and he built a straight, respectable life. He tore his heart apart while doing it, of course, but what was his heart compared to a straight, respectable life?

And then he met Jack Twist. He didn't know what possessed him to actually do it, to ask him to go with him to the cabin, but he hadn't mistaken what he had seen in the man's eyes. He was just like him.

They used each other to quench their longing and their loneliness, to quench the insatiable memories of others, long gone, far away. After all, Jack Twist was one fucking beautiful man to look at, and Randall was no ugly thing himself. It had been convenient.

Wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking
As we moved together in the dark

They tried to pretend they weren't thinking of someone else, but the truth was laid bare in their eyes… because they weren't looking at each other, they were looking at someone else, at the ghostly presence of that someone else.


Tiny vessels oozed into your neck
And formed the bruises
That you said you didn't want to fade
But they did and so did I that day

He remembered the last time he had seen… him. They had one last time, one last desperate kiss… and then he had pushed him off, tackled him, bruised him. 'I wanted him to hate me, to yell at me' Randall remembered despondently 'so leaving him would have been easier. But he just looked at me. Quiet, bruised and heartbroken. And I just turned and left.'

A sob escaped his lips.

He didn't know why he had come to yell at Jack, why he had gotten drunk and acted like a spurned lover. Jack was right… they meant fuck all to each other. And every time they had been together, he hadn't been able to shake off the feeling of dirtiness, of cheating. He was of course, cheating on LeShawn, but it wasn't her he had felt he'd betrayed. It was him. Always him.

So one last touch and then you'll go
And we'll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beautiful but you don't mean a thing to me
You are beautiful but you don't mean a thing to me

He stopped walking then. Silent tears were clouding his vision. He looked up at the night sky, the bright stars somehow mocking his pain, somehow trying to assuage it.

"Andrew…" a sigh, a plea, a fractured whisper, came from the fractured man.

Author's note: Ok, that was a COMPLETE artistic license taken by me right there, but since we know so little of Randall, I hope nobody is offended I went of a tangent and decided to make a past for the quiet cabin friend. The lyrics I used where from the song 'Tiny Vessels' by Death Cab for Cutie, and this time there was no radio, it was just because it gave me a feeling of what Jack and Randall were to each other, I do not own the song just borrowed it and took it out of context ;)