Word Count ~ 6900

MISSISSIPPI

Brendan's a religious man of sorts.

Born and raised in the Catholic Church and it ain't easy to scour that out of yourself once it gets in real deep, no matter how much you don't believe.

His daddy used to say good little Catholic boys obey their elders and open up and Brendan used to sit in confession with the other good little Catholic boys and girls and say his ten Hail Marys and his one Our Father and contemplate the mysteries like Father Wayne told him. He'd contemplate the other little boys and girls and wonder if they, too, sinned like he did at night in the dark with his daddy.

Seamus also used to say, queers go to Hell, boy so it turns out Brendan might see his daddy again after all.

The Old US 84 is bumpy under the Eldorado and the horizon glows like the pit itself.

The top's down, miles of blazing, red-orange, watercolour nothing above them, Steven's honey-warm tanned arm against the door, his head thrown back against the bench seat and a smile hotter than the fucking setting sun on his face.

" - and then she said if you didn't always end up pissed, we wouldn't keep gettin' thrown out and I swear I promised her I'd never touch another drink again in my life." Steven laughs, lazy and low. "But Mike's just got one of those faces that makes me wanna grab straight for the bottle, y'know?"

Steven's fucking high is what he is, helps with the dull ache of his stomach on the most brutal days, and Brendan's got hours of old road, Steven's smoke-rough, lazy words and Howlin' Wolf - killed him for murder, first degree, judge's wife cried, let the man go free - on the tape deck for company, the canvas sky and perfect heat of another almost evening breathing and alive. Sickly smelling white curls around him, a looping touch and caress before it catches the air flow and vanishes in a whisp and he inhales it as snakes past his face, makes him feel heavier and destined to pull over in a weird, divine sort of way.

Steven drawls, all elongated and syrupy, "doin'?"

Brendan slows and parks the car by the side of the road, hundreds of yards of low bush to each side, climbing up into cloud-touching mountains he could probably put a name too if he was arsed enough to find the map.

"Felt like I should stop."

"Why?"

"Maybe I just wanted to look at you," and he does, turns his head and looks at Steven's loose sprawl and blown-wide pupils and lopsided smile turning quickly into a smirk he quite fancies the taste of.

"You're always lookin' at me."

"You're nice to look at."

"You after summat?"

"Depends. What you gonna give me?" he asks, low and half smile and Steven shifts across the cracking leather, grips the open collar of the overshirt Brendan's got on over his t-shirt and slides a leg across his lap, denim rubbing rough against denim and Brendan's hands closing in on slim hips.

Steven picks up the joint in the tray and puts it between plush lips, slips a hand down and down and into Brendan's pocket, tight fit and urgent pressure, and wriggles out his lighter, flicks it open and clicks it, smell of gasoline and burning that makes Brendan's mouth water when he touches it to the paper tip. He takes it between long fingers and draws it away, smoke blooming and rolling in the gap of his parted mouth, in the inches of space between them, before he inhales it sharply, holds it, then releases the thin stream.

He asks, "this what you want?" in a voice that burns and Brendan nods slowly, slides a palm up Steven's back between his t-shirt and his sweat dampening skin and rakes his fingers down, gets Steven's spine arching and his throat humming.

Steven shudders against him, skin flushed pink, everything washed warm with the sinking sun and decadent heat of bodies. He brings up the joint again and Brendan ducks his head to catch it but Steven pulls away in a tease, slowly shakes his head. Instead, he takes another drag, slower this time, before leaning close and nuzzling against Brendan's lips.

Brendan tilts and opens up instantly and slips their mouths together while Steven feeds him the heady smoke. The rush in his blood is like a whiskey injection, sweet and buzzing hot, licking thick and heavy through his veins, up across his scorching chest and into his synapses, and he sucks down the stream, sucks on Steven's bottom lip and pulls back to let the excess curl away and fade into a haze with the rest of his thoughts.

Steven kisses him, then, curls his tongue into Brendan's mouth like the sweet smoke, taste of it on his lips. He grinds down, fucking hard against Brendan's stomach, and he's distracted enough that Brendan pinches the joint from between his loose fingers and he hasn't even noticed until Brendan's tipping his head back and taking a drag.

"You sneaky bastard," Steven chokes and Brendan tries not to grin around a mouthful of smoke but it's too late, Steven's climbing his fucking body, rising up on his knees and hands cupping his neck and mouth wet against his trying to literally steal the breath from his lungs.

He lets Steven in, shares the smoke and spit and searing heat and friction, rough now, Steven taking what he wants like Brendan fucking loves. He's so damn greedyall the time, insatiable for everything, blood, danger, freedom, pain and dripping red skies and everything that belongs to Brendan, his body, his breath, his heart, his dripping red blood and desire to give Steven everything he has to give because how could he not? Steven's worth the world and then some and Brendan will strip it down for all its worth so Steven can take his fucking pick.

He loses count of how many times he feeds smoke into Steven's willing mouth, he's blurry, fucking sizzling from the organs up and lit up like the tab end. Steven's grinding against him, hands everywhere and Brendan feels like he's grown about six new ones the way every inch of him senses nothing but.

He drops the tiny end and wraps his arms tight around Steven's back, presses him close, claws his fingers into Steven's sides and feels his dick, trapped, against his stomach. Every inch of his skin is tingling hyper-sensitive, enough to get his blood pumping hotter than their revving engine over sun-sticky tarmac and he works Steven's button open with one hand and presses the fingers of his other to Steven's bottom lip, watches him suck it right down without a thought and damn he looks good with his mouth full like that.

There's little rush, everything's steeped in a lazy sort of fluidity, rolling motion and sensation and the slide of Steven's tongue makes his dick throb. Spit gathers wet against the corner of his mouth and Brendan cups Steven's jaw, swipes his thumb through it and drags it down his chin, makes him messy and then pulls the digits loose and replaces them with his mouth while he works his slicked up fingers inside open jeans, rubs the heel of his hand over Steven's dick, under his balls and right back until he can push against his hole and coax him open.

Tight and hot, gripping muscles against his flexing fingers, Steven's mouth parting against his lips in a gasp, his nails sinking into Brendan's shoulders; he's the pretty picture of ruined innocence under the burning sky, some kind of sign like the coming fucking apocalypse, God's creature sullied by the devil himself except Brendan had no hand in tainting Steven; his boy had already been crawling with sin when he'd found his way to Brendan.

Not that anyone would take his word on that - the devil's got a forked tongue, after all.

"Come on, baby" Brendan growls against Steven's mouth, bites into his soft bottom lip. "Fuck yourself on my fingers."

Steven chokes a moan, moves his hips like he's riding Brendan's cock, grinding roll that drags sticky pre-come against Brendan's forearm and pushes his fingers deeper. He curls them forwards, towards him, gets Steven crying out and throwing back his head, long arch of his throat for Brendan's mouth to take, taste of skin and rushing pulse, life in all her glory.

The word blessing springs to mind and he doesn't know why. Brendan hasn't thought in terms of reward for a long time, not since he learned, first-hand, the power of punishment as a weightier incentive. There it is, though, right on his tongue, literally.

There's poetry in the dichotomy of that, a blessing for the world's most damned man. He's long past seeking atonement or salvation, doesn't believe in bad things happening to bad people, just things and people, and Steven'd given him advocacy the day he'd picked up the knife that had murdered his father; he doesn't need a damn thing from anyone or anything else, doesn't need someone to tell him what's what, and if he looks at Steven and thinks of being blessed then fuck it, he'll gladly get on his knees in worship.

Except -

- something's wrong -

- unsettling, weird tension, his hair standing up.

Steven goes stiff and Brendan thinks for a panicked second, thought muzzy through his hazy brain, that he's hurt him and pulls back sharply.

His head clears instantly with the glint of flashing silver at Steven's temple and the creak of black leather; a gloved finger on the trigger.

"Stay very still or I will put a bullet through your brain," a low, gruff voice, cold chills over his skin because the motherfucker who's expressing the sentiment sounds serious in a way few people ever sound to him. "Steven." Steven's eyes go wide and Brendan feels the shiver pass up his boy's spine, feels it claw through where their skin joins and sizzle up his own in response. "I'd like you to de-tangle yourself, slowly, then step out of the car."

Brendan's throat constricts, the thought of Steven moving away from any kind of means to fucking protect when there's a gun - another fucking gun - involved like a shock to his heart but Steven's mouth trembles and only half in fear. Now it's anger, too; now he's about to go blind and reckless with it because he turns like the flip of a coin when Brendan's hands aren't readily available and Brendan needs to get a fucking grip on him lest he end up showered in bits of skull.

"Steven, please," he pleads and sees Steven's attention flutter and focus in on him. "Please just do as he says. For me."

It breaks through, thank fuck. Steven kneels and Brendan pulls his hand loose, fucking awkward situation to be staring down a barrel in, now that he comes to think of it, but it definitely could have been worse and he's pretty pissed off overall not to mention the fact he was interrupted with his hand on the appetiser. It's funny but not a bit fucking funny and he kind of wants to giggle - pure hysteria that he clamps down on like an iron vice.

Steven zips up and the fella with the gun opens the car door for him like a true southern gent. He's tall and broad and rough as his voice now that Brendan can see him, deep lined face, dark and greying hair swept back, thin mouth and eyes as stone-cold deadly as Brendan's ever seen in his life and fuck, this fucker is dangerous, he can sense, taste and smell it all over him. Steven climbs out, stands at least eight inches shorter than the guy.

"Hands behind your back," he demands but nobody makes demands on Brendan's boy but Brendan and he can see the strain in Steven's muscles as he fights against his ingrained need to piss off every dangerous fucker they ever fucking come across; there is nothing Steven hates more - outside of people touching, looking at or breathing near Brendan, that is - than been told what's good for him. It doesn't matter, though, because the gun's suddenly on Brendan, "hands behind your back or I will shoot him, boy," and Steven melts like heated butter.

Big-guy ties his hands, frisks him and finds his knife and gun and tosses them into the backseat of the Eldorado and Brendan's skin crawls all the while, hands touching something that they have no right to touch, the gun was bad enough but fucking hands on Steven's body, and Brendan's in no doubt that this guy's going down no matter how much trouble it costs them - could be the king of fucking England and Brendan would gleefully start a world war over the slight.

The guy demands, "your turn, Brady. Out the car, no sudden moves," with so much calm confidence thatBrendan's borderline childish urge to shatter it pulls like a fishing hook in his gut.

"Since you obviously know who we are, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that your bollocks are pretty huge," Brendan cracks, can't help it and then he's instantly sorry when Steven yelps, gun pressed into his throat and dragged back up against Big-guy's chest like he weighs nothing.

"You're worth more to me alive and, unlike you, I consider murder a sin. But do not think I will hesitate to put you and your boy down if you cease to be worth the effort," he states, steady and loud and fucking clear in his Southern-rough voice - this is the only warning Brendan's going to get. "I reckon the good Lord would judge it righteous in the end, anyway."

Brendan stands slowly, hands up where Big-guy can see them. He's not goading when he says, "that's all a bit fire and brimstone, isn't it?" and Big-guy takes it for the curiosity it is because he's smart in a way Brendan finds both terrifyingand grudgingly impressive.

"You think your Lord would punish me for sending a monster back to hell?"

"He ain't my Lord."

"I thought as much." A smile, as warm as the fucking ice-capped mountains at Brendan's back. "Turn around, hands behind your back."

He goes slowly, breathes a long exhale through pursed lips to try calm his stuttering heart. He faces out across the bushes, purple-tinted now as night starts to climb like spreading ink over the uneven horizon and his brain sputters and chugs for some kind of way out, some way to turn the tables but it doesn't come, not before Steven's terrified, rough and cracking like a screaming vinyl voice, "Brendan!" and a sharp pain across the back of his skull, fading sky - navy - black -

I don't want -

What did I say?

Dad -

What did I say, son?

That I should be good.

Where do good boys go, Brendan?

Heaven, dad.

And bad boys?

Hell.

And what happens in Hell, boy?

This - he thinks desperately but that isn't what he says - this is what happens in Hell.

"Hell's for the wicked, boy. D'you really think that's where you belong? Talk to me, Steven, I can help you."

"Help? Sorry to say but your help's a bit backwards, mate - aaah!"

"But I can't help you if you won't ask, if you won't admit that you need it. All this pain can stop - " A rough groan. "All this fear - " Another, a gasp, a muffled cry. "No more living this life - " A stretch of silence. "You'd be safe again."

"Get fucked - ahh, fuck - "

Brendan can hear familiar voices, the rustle of clothes - he's pinned down, can't move but he's trying.

"B - Brendan?"

" - nonono - da' - "

"Brendan, no, it's me, It's Ste."

"Steven?"

"Seamus is dead, Bren. It's just me, now."

Steven and how he wakes Brendan when he screams in the dark - Seamus is dead -

"That he is." Low and rough and cold rumble, a lined face and severe eyes. "Murdered in cold blood. Your own father, Brendan?"

"Brendan didn't kill him, I did."

"And who do your hands really belong to, Steven?"

There's hard wood under the slumped curve of his half-sprawled body, hands tightly secured around something solid at his back that feels immovable; wood, he thinks, won't so much as bend. His head's fuzzy and he's blinking, trying to clear the film across his eyes, trying to asses what the fuck is going on. He smells mold and dust and hears space, the echo of voices off bare walls and wow, oh wow.

He could fucking laugh.

"Are you kidding me?"

He's bound to a fucking church pew.

Their enormous captive smiles, droll like he's in on the joke. "Too much? I kinda like it. It's really a coincidence. This just happened to be the closest place to lock you two down. Well - if you believe in coincidences, that is. I'm not sure I do this time. This one's a little heavy handed for all that, huh?"

"Lock us down for what?"

The building's old. Littered with detritus from a collapsing roof, air dry like crumbling paper, scattered pages of old bibles he can just about make out. Deuteronomy 16:20: follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.

His vision pitches a bit, wobbles like he's at sea. His head throbs at the back where he got unceremoniously decked and he's trying to focus, narrow his gaze and take in the details because they're important.

There's a raised platform that spans most of the front wall of the church a few feet in front of him, three steps up to the pulpit and Steven's sat on the wood floor there, propped against the altar, hands behind his back and fastened to the brass bar at its base. His knees are bent up and his ankles bound. There's faint bruising around his eye and a slash of blood on his cheek and then blood, more blood, pooled and splashed over the wood and Brendan's energised like someone's plugged him in, tugging, wrenching, fucking hacking his own wrists to ruin to pry himself out of the tight plastic zip binding him; there's gouges up Steven's arms, several, deep and oozing this horrible, visceral and vivid red that hurts to look at and if he just could get free, Brendan would gleefully pay them back a thousand-fold.

He asks, shattered through the tinted glass of his rage and fear and sickness, "Steven, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," and there's no give away in his face except pale, so pale, but he doesn't sound fine, he sounds weak and hoarse, sticky like his voice is caught, how long've they been here? How long has this guy been cutting into his boy's skin like it was his to so much as touch in the first place?

"I'm gonna kill you," he thinks he might be saying.

Except -

"The police are on their way." Brendan stops struggling and goes momentarily numb 'cause that's worse, worse than pain, worse than someone torturing his boy. The guy stands to full height, from where he'd been crouched down next to Steven. "About an hour out. I've been tailing you since Monroeville, Brendan, and I just happened to spot an opportunity right out here in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi. You let your guard down."

The fucking drugs and Steven's glowing, sun-warmed body right on the side of the fucking road and he could scream for how stupid they've been; when he'd wanted them on display he'd been thinking less getting caught, more business as usual.

"Bounty hunter?" he asks, his voice a wreck already.

"Hired by the Melville family; didn't believe the police had it in 'em and I'm inclined to agree. They've got money to burn but - you already knew that, didn't you?"

Brendan considers him carefully, fear quelling his anger enough to think straight and he starts slowly, "if you're in this for the money," but gets a blunt smack across the face from an unforgiving, heavy fucking hand for his trouble.

"You insult me." His voice is calm, conversational of all things. "I wouldn't."

Brendan works his jaw, throbbing now, and that's another nail in Big-guy's coffin right there. "I do apologise, wouldn't wanna insult the bloke trading bodies for cash."

"We all trade in something but money is nothing more than a pleasing by-product of what I do."

He's clear enough to get a good look at the guy, as tall as he vaguely remembers through his drug-haze, probably in his late forties but looks older, face like carved granite and eyes just as sharp, just as cold and unyielding. He's wearing a black t-shirt, lean, muscled arms with tracing paper thin skin tight over dark veins and patterned in black ink, a screaming face here, a man dying on a cross there, a naked woman paying penance at the end of a lash - Bounty Hunter trades in divine favours, an eye for a one way trip on high.

Brendan's right to be afraid.

He can destroy the apathetic, reduce the ones that live like dust back to dust, it's easy, they're all but begging for someone to put them out of their misery, but this guy is a consummate believer; this guy's stakes are way higher.

This fucking place isn't helping none, either. He hasn't set foot in a church for years, Steven always had this funny kind of notion that they might burst into flames if they stepped on hallowed ground or something and it had stuck with him in some weird, irrational way. His skin already itches - trust Steven to be fucking right whenever it means bad news.

Steven who's bruised and bleeding, who he's trying not to look at in case it pushes him over the edge and shatters his already sore and fragile nerve.

"How much are we worth, then?" Brendan asks, keep him talking, calm the fuck down, he needs his head on tight. Not only that but he's pretty curious, too; it's not often Brendan meets someone who scares him and he's half enthralled. "Come on, I'm desperate to know."

"Not as much as the lives you've taken cost but," Big-guy pauses for effect, a touch of the dramatic about him. He seems happy enough to chat so long as Brendan's not trying to escape. "My highest yet, you'll be undoubtedly happy to know."

"You know me that well, huh?"

"I've read everything on paper about you, Brendan. Steven, too."

"I hope it's not too unflattering."

"Countless deaths, including that of your own father, of Steven's step - "

Brendan rolls his eyes and cuts him off, "yeah, yeah, we know about that stuff, we were there, remember?"

"I'd call that pretty unflattering."

"You've obviously never been famous, then."

Bounty Hunter looks surprised. "You're not gonna tell me that's what this is about? Infamy?"

"Nobody wants to die a nobody."

The guy considers him and then smiles, slow and knowing in a way that gets Brendan's skin writhing. "No, that's not it, is it? That's not why you do it. I'm real curious, Brendan." He hunches down in front of the pew and almost right between Brendan's splayed legs, gun in his hand but clicked safe and resting against one thigh. "Why? Why the murder, why the carnage?"

It's a loaded question, one he couldn't explain if he wanted to.

Either they pay in blood or we drown in each other's.

That's not even the half of it.

"'Cause I'm a monster, Mr Bounty Hunter."

"Interesting answer. I don't disagree but," he pauses to take a thoughtful breath. "But it seems too simple for a man like you."

"What? I'm a simple fella."

"No, you're not." The way he examines Brendan like a pinned frog in a lab makes him tense and exposed on top of everything else, brings that cornered animal cold-sweat across his skin; Brendan's a half-done puzzle and the pieces he's got left are the wrong size and shape for the holes. "And what about Steven?"

Brendan gives himself away, just like he always fucking does, eyes flicking past the guy's broad shoulder and onto Steven like a magnetic pull, dark-eyed and soft-mouthed Steven, his furious and -

- fucking clever boy, holy shit and no pun intended. Steven shakes his head and communicates a silent don't look at me you idiot, and his bloodied arms are straining with rhythm and purpose, sawing in tiny up-down movements and Brendan looks away quickly to pull Mr Bounty Hunter's attention back onto himself.

He's bound Steven with ropes, the stupid fucker. He's done that thing they all do, he's underestimated Brendan's boy.

"What about Steven?"

"You've hurt a lot of people, Brendan, but I think that Steven might just be your most tragic victim, yet." It irks on a gut level, instinct clawing and thrashing like an animal through his insides and Bounty Hunter smiles like the crack of a punishing whip. "Your sin has tainted a normal family man, turned him from a righteous path and now he wallows in your corruption."

"My sin?" Brendan drawls, keeps the furious tremble out of his voice. "Oh, you mean my dick in him? That what you talkin' about?" Bounty Hunter's mouth curls in a sneer, the first genuine betrayal of his true emotions yet, and ain't that fucking hilarious? Arson, murder and patricide's fine but bumming is what really turns this huge motherfucker's stomach and Brendan's the distraction here so he thinks, whatever, in for a penny, and goes on and hopes it won't get him shot. "I'm only giving him what he begs me for and he does beg. A lot. You should hear the way he moans, the sounds I pull out of him when I fuck him real deep and hit that spot inside him, makes him so. Fucking. Hard for me."

"That - "

"He's so sweet when he comes, too," and Steven's good humour's back in the game because Brendan can see the ghost of a smile playing over his lips, one he's trying not to let snowball into a full on laugh, right there in his peripheral vision. "Sometimes all over my hand. Sometimes he likes to come on my face. Sometimes I take it right down my throat - "

He gets another smack, chokes on the tang of blood on his lips and turns his head to the side to spit it out but can't stop his grin.

"That boy is only begging to be saved. He's still in there, under layers of your brainwashing and perversion, and one day you will watch as he sees you for what you really are."

Brendan's found the missing piece of his puzzle, it's shaped exactly like Brendan's boy but the guy can't see it, he's put it together all wrong. "I know I'm good, Mr Bounty Hunter, but are you suggesting my dick has actual magical, mind-controlling powers?"

"You know what your sin is, Brendan?" Bounty Hunter asks, heated, low tremble to his voice that's like music to Brendan's ears, seems he has little patience left for Brendan's - if he does say so himself - hilarious quips.

Steven's knees are tucked up against his body over by the altar, movements small and focused around his bound ankles.

"I dabble in all seven but go on."

"Lust. You lust for every sick and diseased vice, you're a base animal with no discipline or control."

He could fucking laugh at that, fucker doesn't know the meaning of the words and he's talking to the wrong guy here, anyway. Brendan's a pro at control. Steven on the other hand -

"There's a difference between control and self-denial. You should try a bit of vice sometime, might loosen you up."

"I have no desire to sink so low or indulge in your depravity," he growls, hackles rising, Brendan's getting to him now and it's pretty damn satisfying, as satisfying as seeing Steven's ankles almost free over a broad shoulder. "Hell isn't where I'm aiming."

"I gathered. What is it you did that's so bad you gotta try and earn back your ticket up above, rounding up sinners for Judgement Day?" Bounty Hunter goes still as cold marble, eyes wide and glassy and clear rage, the purest quality, terrifying in its intensity and it looks like Brendan's hit that sore nerve dead on. "Hmm? What's your sin?"

"Very presumptuous of you."

It's a very clear warning.

"Is it sloth? Nah. Spot of wrath, maybe? Definitely. I'd say avarice but - we've already established that one and you're more an entrepreneur, really. But I don't suppose anyone went to Hell for havin' a tantrum or doin' a bit of business, hmm?"

The guy collects himself quickly, tries to smirk and shrug off Brendan's assumption with forced nonchalance. "If you're tryin' to rattle me, Brady - "

"You murder someone?" Eyes flash dark and his words dry up like a fish on land. "Ahh, bingo."

"I'm warning you."

And that's probably his last clear warning; shame Brendan's enjoying himself so damn much now. "It was a prostitute, wasn't it? It's always a prostitute - "

"She was not a whore!"

It rings out around the bare church walls in an appalling, never ending echo. Something snaps and wrenches in the thickening air of shocked silence that follows and Bounty Hunter stands smoothly, steps back and holds up the gun straight into Brendan's face and even then, Brendan still can't help a soft, kind of fascinated, "okay," escaping through his lips. Watching men lose control like this has always fascinated him; he thinks there's probably something sickening about that, something real dark in his veins over it that's had over two whole decades to dirty his blood.

"I said you were worth more money alive but that doesn't mean I won't kill you," Bounty Hunter says and he's shaking, finely trembling and unbalanced, the gun wavering, perfect.

"You know what I think it is, Mr Bounty Hunter? I think your sin is pride," Brendan says and lets some of his tension bleed through his words, no more teasing, he's baring teeth, using that well learned control to push something into his voice that makes this guy fucking listen good. "I think you take one look at the book cover and your judgement's set in stone. You looked at mine and Steven's police report, looked at me and Steven, and decided in a split second exactly who we were but, Mr Bounty Hunter, you made a grave error that's gonna cost you dearly."

He narrows his eyes, sneers, "oh, and what's that?"

Brendan smiles, tastes blood on his splitting lip, watches Steven rise up like an avenging angel and he whispers, low enough to get their would-be-captor focusing, "I'm not the base animal, here." Bounty Hunter frowns. "Where's your knife?"

That does it; Brendan watches all the colour drain out of Bounty Hunter's face, watches his eyes go wide in dawning horror and both his hands, gun included, fall to his pocket and waistband but it's too late, he fucking knows it isn't there, it's just another instinct, another fascinating and completely human reaction.

Steven moves and the guy turns like he's resigned to his fate already and then he's got fucking armfuls of Brendan's boy, Steven jumping the steps of the alter and hurling himself up onto him, legs locking around Mr Bounty Hunter's middle, one hand curled tight around the back of his neck while he brings the knife down again and again and again into the spattering, gushing artery under his throat. He falls back, Steven still on him, going down with him, knees against the wood floor at either side of Bounty Hunter's heaving ribs and he stabs and stabs, noise like something wild tearing from his throat with the force of it, pathetic hands trying to fight him off, scrabbling at his hips desperately until there's no more movement; fucker's down and dead and Steven's wearing his blood.

Brendan watches him in awe, something like fucking worship, something terrible and beautiful knelt before the alter of this crumbling, desecrated place. Steven breathes furiously and looks up through his lashes, air dripping thick with iron and blasphemy. There's that lust, blood and sex and so little separation between the two. Brendan's still bound but Steven doesn't care, crawls off the body and comes close and fucking climbs into Brendan's lap like a cat. He takes Brendan's face in slippery hands and kisses him, wet and deep, bleeds fear and fury into Brendan's body and he knows, he knows, he'd thought - for just a second -

"I thought that was it, when he knocked you out, I thought - "

"Steven, shh," Brendan murmurs against his lips, aches to touch but again, Steven's the only one with the means to free him and Brendan's helpless in his hands and very fucking okay with it. "We're okay. They'll never win, I promise you. You trust me, don't you?"

"Course I do."

"I trust you, too, okay? As long as we got that, they'll never take us." Steven makes a strangled sound like a creature in pain and he is, gashes across the skin of his arms, but that's not it, not why he hurts. He surges forward, into Brendan's body, against his lips, swallows down Brendan's words and devours them like they're everything. He grinds his hips and moans and Brendan arches into it because it's all he can do but it's not enough. "Steven, come on, like earlier, okay?" and Steven tears at the sets of buttons separating them in answer, slides two fingers into Brendan's mouth that he slicks up with his tongue like a mirror of before and fuck -

Steven stands, kicks off his jeans, climbs back into Brendan's lap and reaches back and fingers himself open and Brendan's dizzy on not being able to touch like it's the hottest fucking thrill. He can hardly breathe, hardly fucking see straight, too much adrenaline, the searing heat of danger and the teetering edge of the abyss still clinging to him, the goosebumps on his skin and then Steven's licked-wet palm dragging over his blood-filled cock. He's rough with it, desperate edge of pain that Brendan needs right now, obscene slap of spit on skin on more skin and Brendan's trying to get a handle on it but it's too good he's flying out of control.

He feels Steven shift, position himself and then he's sinking down, trembling thighs and tight muscles to set Brendan's nerves alight.

"Brendan," Steven hitches out breathlessly, fucking rides him like he asked, up and down, rubs himself into the tight press between their bodies, swallows up Brendan's dick in warmth and friction with both hands cupping his neck, pulling at his hair.

"Steven, oh, God - "

"Is he right? Are - are we goin' to Hell?"

Steven's mouth parts over his own, air and words gasped between them, "there's no s - such thing, baby."

"But what - what if there is?"

He's so fucking close he can taste it, the burning heat of it, washing everything else invisible, pointless. "Then we'll burn that to the ground, too."

Steven goes erratic, half-gone, clings to his shoulders and neck and shirt collar, presses their foreheads together and cries out, long and loud, fucks himself stuttering through his own orgasm, come streaking into the material of Brendan's t-shirt, and Brendan's not long after him, the look on Steven's face like rapture, like a fucking blessing, there's that word again, and maybe Brendan is still a believer but not in any God - he doesn't need them, not when he's got this.

His hips push up, shaky and jerking, until he's spent and slumping back into the unyielding wood, exact opposite of Steven's warm body as he curls close and presses soft kisses to Brendan's jaw.

His throat sticks when he tries to talk, words coming out rough and slurred, "the police are on their way, we need to move," and Steven nods, pulls back and gives him a smile, back to calm and okay, that terrifying, crippling energy spent up in the most satisfying way. "You wanna free me?" Steven laughs a breath, stands and picks up his jeans and the knife and cuts Brendan's hands loose, wrists fucking torn up pretty bad, slicked red and purple with blood and bruising. "Where are we?"

"Some old ghost lookin' town. I didn't see any people about but this church is right at the top of an hill, so - we should still be careful," Steven tells him, brushes dust off himself which is pretty hilarious considering he's soaked in blood and spunk and he smiles at Brendan's sheepishly. "We only drove about five minutes so we're not that far from the car."

Brendan stretches out his stiff limbs and goes to his boy, cups under the backs of his hands carefully and traces the gashes over his skin with his eyes. There's bad ones, three over his forearms, two higher, above the bend of his left elbow, all a few inches long and deep but not deep enough for stitches. There's shallow ones, too, dozens of them, red and inflamed, tiny little nicks designed to fucking hurt; Bounty Hunter wasn't trying to kill him. Steven's still bleeding.

Brendan pulls off his overshirt and tears into it and it's good, feels good to rip and hear the material scream. Steven attempts a token protest but Brendan grabs one wrist roughly because no, just no. He wraps strips of material around and around, rips and winds and ties until all of the wounds are covered thick enough not to completely soak through.

Another near miss, more blood, another gun, another person trying to hurt Steven, trying to separate them, fucking kill them or put them away for life. The walls of this church close in and he feels eight years old again, suffocating in a trap, wishing for a miracle, some divine intervention in his favour. Only one man had favoured him back then, though.

His hands are shaking on the last knot.

"Brendan," soft and sweet. "I'm fine, we're fine."

"I know."

It's not quite terror he feels, now, it's some unholy alchemical amalgamation of rage and possession and renunciation, the refusal of fear, the refusal to be cowed by this; it's like a twisted sense of furious thrill that even the best of the crop couldn't take them down, couldn't keep his clever boy trussed up, wasn't good enough to keep his game face on while Brendan tore him apart with his hands bound behind his back.

It's not like last time, if anything he feels more determined now.

"I know, Steven." Brendan grabs his boy's hand, laces their fingers together and drags him close to kiss him, to drink down that taste of fresh air and sunlight and miles of road and horizon. "So, in your immortal words: let's do one."

*/*/*

"Very little is known about the victim, Jacob Fiori; only that he was a highly paid private investigator. Many assume he was out to bring Brady and Hay into police custody but instead, ran afoul of the sadistic pair and paid for it with his life."

"Here you go, frappuccino, just like you asked," Steven throws himself into the passenger side like a small tornado and hands him a plastic cup. "Told you I could run a simple errand without gettin' myself shot."

"Again. Gettin' yourself shot again."

"Whatever."

Steven plays with the radio dial and Brendan brings the engine to life, hums in satisfaction along with her purring and taps his fingers over the door to the twanging guitar from the speakers.

~ rebel souls, deserters we are called, chose a gun and threw away the sun ~

" - Fiori, who's wife is the subject of a seven year missing persons investigation - "

He takes them back to the road and through Laurel but he doesn't stop, pulls off the US 84 and onto the I 59, glad for the feel of smooth tarmac under his tires and a different signpost, something new, won't become a victim of the sin that Jacob Fiori fell to.

~ now these towns, they all know our name, six-gun sound is our claim to fame ~

Steven sings to the radio and the landscape blurs past and Brendan thinks about Deuteronomy.

Vengeance is mine, and requital, for the time when they make a false step.

For it is close, the day of their ruin; their doom comes at speed.