Chapter Text
Victor Vale had gotten entirely too used to the ever-presence of his roommate-turned-best friend, but he’d be the last to admit it.
Their third year of college and second dorm room together had conditioned Victor to become accustomed to certain aspects of a shared life, where the edges of one person began to bleed into the edges of another, constituents becoming indistinguishable. Two pairs of boots by the doorway, both failing to see the utility of a shoe rack, mud coating the baseboards near the door; two toothbrushes in the bathroom, one black and one white; the commingling of one another’s scents into something new, something different, something altogether an us rather than a me.
It was the shared tin of expensive coffee in the creaking cupboard above the stove in their outdated Lockland kitchen. Victor spared no expense when it came to creature comforts—especially when it was his parents’ bill he was running up, platinum credit card burning a hole in his wallet—and Eli had long since abandoned the charade that he wasn’t stealing his roommate’s coffee. Eventually, Victor just began buying enough for both of them, the satisfaction of having something over Eli enough to keep him from bringing it up (too often).
Eli, however, noticed the slight narrowing of Victor’s eyes and sly grin every time Victor found him making the third pot of the day, wolfish features turned momentarily catlike.
“You looked like you needed a pick-me-up,” Eli would suggest, sounding more like he was convincing himself than convincing Victor.
“Did I?” Victor would reply without taking his eyes off the textbook splayed across his lap, a pen errantly tapping against his black-clad knee.
They’d share the pot, sitting at opposite sides of the living room, two celestial bodies caught in the orbit of the other. Victor wouldn’t say thank you for the cup Eli had brought him—it was his coffee, wasn’t that thanks enough?—but Eli would remain in the living room to continue studying instead of returning to the solitude of his room, sharing Victor’s presence. There was no need to break the comfortable silence in which they worked, save for the sipping of coffee that was really quite good, and Victor liked it that way.
It was the leftovers that Eli left for Victor in the fridge, knowing his friend had likely been too busy studying for their upcoming exams to remember to eat, a simple scribbling of his name on a post-it slapped on the container to let Victor know their purpose. At first, Victor refused these offerings, the insinuation that he couldn’t bother taking care of himself stinging unpleasantly. But Eli was persistent, doggedly so, and Victor was hungry. So he began eating the leftovers.
More than these endless, thoughtful and thoughtless gestures, it was the time spent alone, but not lonely—never lonely.
Sitting together in the living room, Victor crunched into a precarious position on the weathered armchair in the corner near the window; Eli perched with pin-straight posture on the side of the couch nearest Victor, perfect form never faltering. The only sounds were the scratching of pencils and the sharing of breath as the sun dipped below a darkening horizon. One of the boys—usually, always Eli—would eventually interrupt the silence to suggest they break for dinner at the dining hall, perhaps inviting Angie along the way or just savoring the quiet understanding of the other’s company uninhibited.
It was this easy existence—though existence for Victor Vale had certainly never been an easy thing—that he had gotten entirely too comfortable with, and he began to expect rather than covet as the fleeting thing it was destined to be. Their absence made the alone suddenly lonely in a way that Victor wasn’t familiar with despite his preference for solitude.
Victor had never been good at sharing. Growing up an only child, it was a skill he’d never had to master.
He’d never anticipated needing to learn the lesson of “sharing is caring” this late in life, never anticipated even having anyone in his life that would grate him to share. Victor had never been a people person; friendships stagnated and withered under the constant pressure of his intense personality. Victor was jagged glass where a soft touch was warranted, ripping flesh and leaving stinging shards to be picked out later with careful hands.
Victor Vale did not have friends.
Not until Angie Knight.
Not until the golden boy Eli Cardale.
Eli was the honey-colored whiskey, heady and warm, over Victor’s unyielding ice. He softened Victor’s harsh edges with his liquid charm. Victor froze the carefully crafted, expertly executed person suit Eli took pride in wearing, turning its easy charm into something cutting, something that burned your throat on the way down. Together they were something that ached.
With Angie, Victor was someone he had always wished he could be. Someone who cared, who made people laugh, someone more person-shaped than Victor had ever truly been without her. He suspected Eli felt much the same about Angie Knight, both craving the possibility she presented rather than the actuality.
At first, it had been just Victor and Angie, fast friends—or the closest Victor had ever gotten to friends–just beginning to find their ways in college and in life. And then it was Victor and Eli, two boys-become-men at the top of their classes, bringing a much-needed challenge to the other with more teeth than could be considered truly friendly to anyone else.
It was Victor and Angie, Victor and Eli; it was Victor, Angie, and Eli, inseparable. Victor had never had friends—never found himself wanting for them—and yet suddenly found himself with two, an abundance in comparison to the deficit he’d become accustomed to. No feast too bountiful for the starving man.
All too soon, it was only Angie and Eli, however, with no room left for Victor at all.
It burned his throat not with the comforting sting of whiskey dulling the senses, warming the core, but with the singe of barely-swallowed bile clawing up the throat.
Something small and putrid took root inside him. Made a nest in his rib cage, curled around his heart, and began to rot.
“...Vic?” Eli drew his attention with a crumpled straw wrapper skillfully flicked at his scowling face. The projectile found its target between Victor’s furrowed brow. His frown deepened into a scowl before his eyes snapped to Eli’s barely contained smirk. “Earth to Victor. You with us, spaceman?”
“Unfortunately,” Victor snapped. He rubbed at the place between his eyes where the wrapper had hit him as if the friction could banish the feeling it left.
He speared a piece of broccoli and bit into it, long since grown cold with neglect. The past ten minutes had passed with Victor absently pushing the food around on his plate, twirling noodles around a flimsy plastic fork over and over while never letting it reach his mouth. This was the first time he’d eaten today, but Victor couldn’t conjure up an appetite.
Across from him, Eli threw his hands up in mock surrender at Victor’s clipped response. After their shared mid-morning anatomy lecture, Victor and Eli made their way to the dining hall for lunch before their next class, a routine they had shared since the semester began in August.
Now, at the beginning of October, a change in this routine came in the form of Angie Knight’s soft freckles and unruly red mane joining them—chair pushed conspicuously closer to Eli’s than Victor’s–with the ghost of a frown blooming across her face. They sat crowded around a table meant for two, squeezed elbow-to-elbow, the dining hall unusually packed for the early afternoon.
It was not that Victor disliked her company—quite the opposite. Victor missed the time that he and Angie had shared milkshakes at the run-down diner right off campus, recounting their shitty weeks to each other over thick malt chocolate and cherries, a shared plate of fries between them.
He missed the time they had spent together alone. Before two became three.
At first, the three of them together had felt right, natural even, Victor soon learning to enjoy the company of the people he had found himself surrounded by. But three soon became two, Eli and Angie intertwining in ways Victor had foolishly hoped were reserved for him alone. Now, the three of them together felt like a perversion of something once beautiful, a parody never quite living up to the original.
“Angie just wanted to know if you wanted to tag along with us to a party tonight,” Eli offered after lowering his hands. “I told her you wouldn’t be into it.”
The edge of a challenge was evident in Eli’s careless tone, an edge that would go unnoticed by anyone not paying attention. Which was to say, Victor noticed immediately, and the jab grated against his already raw nerves. Eli and Victor both knew that he hated parties, hated being around the sex-obsessed, mindless masses that comprised Lockland’s student body.
The only thing Victor hated more than being forced to socialize with those he considered less than was losing to Eli fucking Cardale.
“Why, I’d love to tag along with you, Ms. Knight,” Victor seethed with a false grin, and eyes narrowed in a mask of enthusiasm, pointedly not responding directly to Eli. “To where might I have the pleasure of accompanying you both this evening?”
The frown that had previously marred Angie’s features was traded for a bright smile, her displeasure abated by Victor’s seemingly sarcastic antics. Angie was no stranger to Victor’s prickly moods, choosing to deflect his razor’s edge with a determined positivity. It was what drew Victor to her in the beginning, her undeniable gravity keeping him tethered ever since. He was but a dark moon orbiting her immortal sun.
Only Eli read the tightness in the corners of Victor’s eyes for what it was: a warning. A venomous snake coiled in the grass, rattling its tail, ready to strike.
Eli opened his mouth in response before Angie cut him off with a hard glare, “A couple of people in my mechanical engineering class are throwing a party to celebrate the end of midterms. I know you and Eli have been working so hard, and I thought it’d be good for you to get out, maybe try relaxing a little bit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the meaning of the word. As a computer-based lifeform, I know only ‘work’ and ‘power off’,” Victor sarcastically intoned in an attempt to endear himself to the girl across from him. Angie simply rolled her eyes at him with a kind-hearted batting of his shoulder.
Eli stiffened at the contact between them, frowning.
“Really, Vic?” Eli incredulously asked, eyes glued to the point on Victor’s shoulder where Angie’s hand had been a moment before. “You hate parties.”
“Maybe Angie’s right,”—“I often am.”—“...and I need to relax a little,” Victor shrugged with a lazy flick of his wrist. “Tell me there will at least be alcohol there, Ang.”
Eli’s frown deepened.
Angie didn’t notice her boyfriend’s sudden change in demeanor, or at least chose to ignore it in favor of responding, “The engineering department boasts a shocking amount of burgeoning alcoholics, I can promise drinks abound. Scouts honor.”
A cheeky grin played against Angie’s full lips as she held up three fingers in a mock salute.
“My hero,” Victor batted his eyelashes dreamily at her, earning a bright bark of laughter.
“If you two are done, we really should get to class, Vale.”
Eli’s chair shrieked against the floor of the dining hall as he abruptly stood. He moved to dispose of his finished plate, bag in hand. Though Angie, not being blind, could determine that Eli was obviously upset about something, only Victor’s discerning eyes noted the nuanced tension in his shoulders, the slightly pinched expression contorting Eli’s normally effortlessly inviting countenance.
Angie’s gaze trailed Eli’s broad form as he stalked off, a frown once again twisting her delicate features. “He’s not even going to say goodbye?”
With a roll of his eyes, Victor began shoving things into his open bag before standing with his own half-eaten plate.
“Don’t mind him, Ang. I’m sure he’s just pissy he doesn’t get you all to himself later,” Victor scoffed. “What time should we meet you tonight?”
With one last wistful glance at Eli’s retreating figure, she turned back to Victor, “Around nine is fine. And you can just meet me at my apartment building, we’ll walk over there together.”
Victor nodded before turning his back to her. He jogged after Eli, who was likely already halfway to their next class by now, not bothering to wait for Victor. If he were lucky, Eli would deign to still save him a seat in their biomechanics lecture. If he were unlucky, Eli wouldn’t object to someone occupying the seat next to him and force Victor to claim one for himself in the back, knowing Victor would struggle to see the board so far at the front of the lecture hall. He’d only do that if he were really pissed at Victor, Eli normally above such petty gestures.
Victor knew that he had no real chance of catching up to Eli, not when he was mad like this, long legs and confident stride outpacing Victor’s perpetually unhurried gate easily. He instead chose to savor the last dregs of the uncharacteristically warm October breeze, ruffling the pale fringe from his forehead. The lecture hall where their biomechanics class was located was always too full, too stuffy, and made Victor feel claustrophobic.
The only reprieve to be found was in the easy manner with which he tore down his peers' attempts at engagement, poking holes in their poorly thought-out answers. Eli discouraged this kind of simple cruelty, but Victor knew that under the guise of caring about his fellow man, Eli shared his thoughts—as was often the case. Victor may wield the truth like a weapon, but he at least had the decency to be honest at all.
Eli kept the truth at arm's reach, Victor only catching glimpses between the cracks of the mask in moments when the monster underneath simmered dangerously near the surface—moments like this, Eli storming off without so much as a goodbye.
Victor enjoyed inciting such outbursts from his friend. He enjoyed Eli’s fleeting honesty, like an animal backed into a corner bearing its teeth. It made Victor feel special, knowing only he alone could spur such reactions, that only he could peer beyond the veil of Eli’s deceit to poke at the dark thing wearing the skin of a kinder man.
Being bitten was not the cost, but the reward.
It irked Victor, however, that he had no idea what prompted such a reaction out of Eli. If he were to ask Eli about it directly, would the other man even attempt to be honest with him? Indeed, there was only one way to find out.
It was to Victor’s delight to find the object of his ruminations with his bag planted in the seat directly next to him, staring pointedly ahead as Victor entered the classroom. Victor took his place beside Eli, who removed his bag still without glancing in his friend’s direction, feigning absorption with what was clearly the same sentence being rewritten for a third time.
Without preamble, Victor struck, “Do you want to explain what has you all worked up, Cardale? I’m afraid you wounded poor Angie’s feelings back there.”
“Don’t call me that.” The white-knuckled grip on his pencil belied the calmness of his tone. Like a branch groaning under the weight of the wind, seconds from snapping.
Eli again refused to look over at Victor. That just wouldn’t do.
Victor’s lips stretched into a sneer, “Dramatics are rather unbecoming of you, Eli.”
Hardened eyes snapped over to him like a whipcrack, pinning him in place. Victor couldn’t contain the shit-eating grin now engulfing his wolfish features—hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar.
It was no secret that Victor relished the moments Eli forwent all pretenses and bared his teeth, his sincerity. Every glare and scoff tossed carelessly in Victor’s direction was a welcome hand stroking the arched spine of a particularly self-pleased feline, perpetually the cat that got the cream after managing to crack Eli’s ever-perfect exterior.
Darkness did not so much spill between the cracks in the mask as the light was eaten right out of their surroundings. It was electric, intoxicating.
“Do try not to act so pleased when being a prick, Vale, it’s unbecoming,” Eli retorted with a disinterested curl of his lip.
He tried to maintain an effect of nonchalance in the face of Victor’s snide remarks, but Victor had always been a hound on the scent when it came to Eli’s unraveling. Jaw clenched, knuckles white, chin oh-so-slightly jutted out in defiance. Victor could practically taste how angry he was making Eli, a shark in bloodied waters.
A sharp laugh ripped from Victor’s chest, crackling like the thin ice of a frozen pond about to drop a body like a stone, “I thought that’s what you liked me for, Cardale. Don’t tell me you’re wishing for a best friend with a kinder disposition all of a sudden, I might have half a mind to be offended.”
Eli, a broken record, scoffed and rolled his honey-brown eyes at Victor’s antics.
No doubt at this very moment Eli was regretting every interaction he’d ever made the mistake of having with Victor as the latter man continued to poke at Eli like a tiger in a cage, his unending snark the sharp stick through the bars. Though, to Eli’s credit, he was doing his best not to show it; he knew the moment he let Victor’s leash out even an inch there’d be teeth wrapped around his throat—puncturing his jugular. Victor had never seen the use of restraint or half-measures.
If it was in Eli’s nature to deceive in the name of what he considered the Lord’s will, it was Victor’s nature to twist honesty into something brutal and sharp, a knife’s edge one can't help but run their finger across, savoring the sting. They were mirror images of each other, distorted reflections in the rippling surface of a pond. Two sides of the same bitter coin.
This is what Victor had missed—the verbal sparring and emotional landmines they laid for each other, the circling and snarling like two predators waiting for the other to strike.
Victor always struck first.
Above all, Victor had missed Eli; missed him now that he no longer had time for Victor, the only room in his life occupied by Angie Knight, who no longer had time for Victor either.
And like a petulant child, he didn't like to share.
“If you didn't want me at the party tonight, you could've just said so. I have no interest in poking my nose where it's not welcome,” Victor changed the subject, favoring a more direct approach if Eli was set on ignoring him.
“We both know your only interest is in poking your nose where it's not welcome,” Eli scoffed, avoiding his gaze once more. “Now shut up, I'm trying to pay attention.”
Victor turned back to his own notes as the professor began the lecture, but not before he made sure Eli saw the smirk playing at the corners of his lips, his eyes glinting like pale chips of ice.
Eli was right, of course. Victor loved poking his nose where it didn't belong. Especially when that poking got Eli’s attention. He’d keep poking, prodding, pinching until the tiger behind his bars either relented or sank sharp claws into soft flesh and eviscerated him.
Either way, Eli would be paying attention.
—
The walk back to their shared campus apartment was frigid, not for the cool breeze tossing Victor’s pale hair into his eyes, tousling Eli’s perfect curls, but for Eli’s icy mood. Unfortunately for him, Victor was a creature born of ice and frost, finding familiarity in the tense, loaded silence. He’d been plunged into the polar depths of botched social interactions long before Eli had ever graced his presence.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you, I’m just having a bad day. I shouldn’t take that out on you, or Angie,” Eli sighed with a halfhearted, embarrassed laugh. “Midterms have just been stressful, you know? I’m sure Angie’s right, we all just need to relax.”
Victor didn’t want Eli’s fucking apologies; he wanted his honesty. He wanted the sharp edges waiting under the curated smiles, razors sharpened for rending Victor’s flesh alone.
“Nobody asked you to apologize, Cardale, give it a rest. Save your empty platitudes for someone who gives a shit.” Victor waved him off and scowled, displeasure written in every fine line creasing his pale skin. This wasn’t what he wanted.
A sharp shove to his shoulder had Victor stumbling across the sidewalk, his bag almost slipping from his shoulder. He turned to find Eli positively irate, attempts at reconciliation abandoned so swiftly.
“I told you to stop fucking calling me that, Vale,” Eli ground out between clenched teeth. “Have you no sense of respect?”
“None at all, unfortunately,” Victor sneered, disparaging.
He readjusted the bag slipping from his shoulder, brushing nonexistent dust from his trousers, and turned off toward their apartment once more. Victor didn’t wait to hear Eli’s hurried steps to catch up with him, a perfect mirror to Eli’s earlier abandonment. If Eli were lucky, Victor wouldn’t quicken his pace to reach their apartment first. Eli so often forgot his house keys, after all.
With his back to Eli’s shocked expression, a wicked grin split Victor’s face in a baring of teeth.
Finally, something interesting.
—
Banging on the door interrupted Victor’s peaceful quiet as he sipped a cup of coffee from his perch on the fraying armchair near the window. In the early evening sun, Victor was washed in golden light spilling in from the parted blinds, coloring his pale skin in shades of warm oranges and reds. For someone so naturally and purposefully devoid of color, it awarded him an uncharacteristic vitality, a corpse painted beautifully for viewing.
Victor reluctantly uncurled from the textbook he had cradled in his lap, abandoning his reading to meet the incessant rattling of the door. Whoever was on the other side of the wood seemed intent on blowing it off its hinges.
The shink of the lock turning revealed a murderous Eli beyond the threshold, fingers clenched around the strap of his bag like a lifeline, foot tap-tap-tapping a steady drumbeat of anger onto the weathered linoleum floor of the hallway. If Victor were a God-fearing man, he'd perhaps consider moving out of Eli's way.
As it were, Victor had never been religious, raised on science and a different kind of absent father.
“Oh, Eli, how kind of you to join us,” Victor drawled, arm lazily thrown across the door frame as if he were greeting a friend dropping by to catch up and not, say, his roommate, whom he'd just locked out of their apartment.
Eli bodily shoved Victor aside, shouldering his way past him. The heavy sound of boots stomping down the hallway and a door slamming resoundingly drowned Victor’s low chuckle.
Really, Eli was making it too easy for him.
“Angie wants us to meet her at nine, so don't pout for too long, princess!” Victor called out to the unyielding oak of Eli’s bedroom door after he’d collected the breath that had been knocked out of him.
Behind him, he pushed the door shut, relocking it, before turning to resume his position in his armchair, a bird of prey at its roost. Victor didn't doubt that Eli had heard him, despite the pointed lack of response. And if he forgot, Victor just had another excuse to bother Eli more.
Poke, poke, poking.
After two hours of near-perfect silence, Victor began to worry that Eli really had forgotten, or perhaps hadn't heard him to begin with.
Victor put another pot of coffee on, this time enough for two. He retrieved a chipped old Lockland mug from the cabinet, Eli’s favorite despite the distinct wear. He said it had character, but Victor just thought it looked cheap. Victor poured steaming liquid into the mug, leaving it black without cream and sugar. Eli argued that expensive coffee was best enjoyed without dilutions, but Victor suspected that Eli just didn't want to pay for the additives. And Victor really did prefer the bitter taste of black coffee—the lasting product of an edgy phase in his teens—so he couldn't even steal Victor’s supply.
Mug in hand, Victor tentatively raised a fist to knock against Eli’s door.
“Eli, are you done throwing a fit? I made some coffee for us.”
Victor wasn't a sentimental man, preferring the practicality of self-reliance over senseless gestures of affection, but he knew such acts wouldn't be lost on Eli. He knew Eli would note the addition of “for us” tacked onto his statement. Call it an investment of sorts; Victor was prone to Machiavellianism.
When no sound came from within, Victor knocked again, a little harder this time, “Come on, man, it's getting cold. I'll just throw it away if you're intent on playing hard to get.”
Finally, a soft shuffling before the door was wrenched open, ruffling a few strands of Victor’s fine hair. He brushed them away from his eyes.
“Would it kill you to try to be nice for once?” Eli rumbled, a frown creasing the perfectly bronzed skin of his brow. He continued to hold the door ajar, rather than opening it fully as if to bar Victor’s presence from sullying his space.
“Yes, actually,” Victor deadpanned, then raised the still-steaming mug. “Is this nice enough for you?”
Eli snatched the mug from Victor’s grasp, hissing as a splash of too-hot coffee washed over the side. He grumbled a muffled thanks and returned to his place at the desk situated on one side of the shoebox-sized room, leaving the door ajar. Victor leaned against the doorway, watching.
He hadn't slammed the door in Victor’s face, so despite his grumbling, the peace offering had accomplished its intended effect.
Victor was unused to Eli’s door ever being closed, the other man preferring to leave the barrier cracked even when sleeping, in stark contrast to Victor’s coveted privacy. Thus, Victor lingered in Eli’s doorway, savoring the once again open point of contact.
Victor’s door remained closed at all hours of the day, regardless of whether or not he was present in the apartment; not even Eli had been permitted to enter his sanctuary. It was perhaps due to the hovering of Victor’s parents, whenever they deigned to be present in Victor’s life at all, that resulted in such reclusive behavior. Or it may have been because he’d never had a friend before—not a real one—that would allow him to become used to the idea of existing alongside another person. It was only due to Eli’s magnetic effect on Victor that he tolerated the other’s presence in such a capacity.
This was, in part, the cause for the possessive animal that had as of late begun to rear its head. The blade’s edge of Victor’s normally harsh demeanor suddenly turned deadly, his sourness turning rotten.
As if sensing the weight of Victor’s eyes boring into the back of his skull, Eli turned.
“Do you need something?” Eli asked, his suspicious tone accentuated by the raising of an eyebrow and gesturing to the stack of papers below him. “I’m a little busy here.”
“A thank you would be nice,” Victor griped, his own eyebrow raised to match Eli’s.
Eli’s tone turned incredulous, “What, for the coffee? I already said thank you, Vic.”
“No, you didn’t. You said a lot of unintelligible whining. Last I checked, your vocal cords were in perfect working order,” Victor remarked, a tinge of real annoyance coloring his words. “I want to hear you say it.”
Eli’s response came slowly and dripping in sarcasm, as if to make sure Victor would be able to taste his words, “Thank you for your unending acts of kindness, Victor. I am deeply appreciative.”
He punctuated his sentence by bringing the mug to his mouth and taking a deep swig, hazel eyes locked onto Victor’s glacier blue, unwavering. Victor tracked the movement of Eli’s lips around the edge of the mug, the bobbing of his throat as he swallowed, the bead of dark liquid dripping down Eli’s clean-shaven chin.
Victor swallowed around the cotton suddenly filling his mouth. For the cool autumn evening, he became over-warm in his layered Oxford and cashmere sweater.
Without replying, Victor stiffly pushed off the door frame, turning on his heel to beeline for his own room. He had intended to ask Eli if he’d like to review today’s biomechanics lecture together, the presence of another person encouraging the transfer from short-term to long-term memory, but Victor found himself retreating from the open doorway in favor of the solitude his room offered.
What had gotten into him? He never retreated.
Hell surely hath frozen over.
In his hasty flight, Victor missed the confusion flashing across Eli’s face. And if he had not fled at all, Victor may have perhaps been subjected to Eli’s own brand of questioning, with all of Victor’s determination and yet none of his directness.
—
The two of them made an odd pair, walking with steps in sync across campus to Angie’s apartment, located just beyond the sprawling buildings of Lockland and nearer to the bustling cityscape that surrounded the college.
Victor had remained in his clothes from class, a dark cashmere sweater layered over a darker Oxford, straight-legged slacks falling over heavy boots. The only evidence that Victor was headed for a night of drinking and not a business casual meeting was the heavy rings adorning his long fingers, glittering in the light of the setting sun.
Eli, however, had traded the formal attire that he normally wore to class for a practical Lockland sweatshirt (the same he’d had since their sophomore year, now beginning to fade with age), baggy jeans, and worn sneakers. He looked ever the part of perfect college student, with tousled hair and wind-chapped cheeks, youth abounding, while Victor looked overdressed and high-strung, a sharpened knife so out of place in the garden shed.
The tension from earlier had dissipated somewhat, to Victor’s reluctant relief. He was still slightly reeling from his uncharacteristic reaction, thorny vines of shame catching in his throat, an altogether unknown and unwelcome feeling for the normally self-assured man. For once he was grateful that Eli tended to shy away from the direct approach that Victor so often favored, allowing him a momentary reprieve.
They walked in a mostly comfortable silence, kept company only by the scuffing of heavy boots and ratty sneakers against the pavement.
If Eli noticed the way Victor’s footfalls were stiffer than usual, the way his shoulders bunched slightly beneath his ears, curling in on himself ever so slightly like a plant seeking refuge from the too-hot sun, he didn’t comment on it.
A chilled wind brought with it the cloying scent of a feminine perfume. Its owner stood outside her apartment building, bright red curls waving wildly about her freckled face. Like Eli, Angie had replaced her earlier outfit with something more befitting a night of getting plastered amongst other twenty-somethings. Victor recognized the hoodie as his own Lockland sweatshirt that he had purposefully misplaced in Angie’s apartment the last time he’d been there, hoping to dissuade her constant complaints of the growing cold.
And if his attentions bothered Eli, well, then that’d just be a happy accident, wouldn’t it?
Eli, Victor could tell, recognized the sweater as well. He had always—as in many other aspects of his life—given the perfect performance of model boyfriend, offering Angie his sweatshirts, flowers, chocolates, and the like. She had invariably refused Eli’s offers, citing that her own clothes worked just as well.
But curiously, she had accepted the sweatshirt Victor had left her. Eli’s shoulders stiffened minutely, mirror to Victor’s earlier agitation. And Victor, like a moth to the flame with none of Eli’s taste for restraint, allowed his lips to curl into a jagged-edged smirk.
“Nice sweater, Ang. Where’d you get that, I wonder?” Victor taunted. Beside him, Eli was a spring-loaded hammer clicking down in the chamber, ready to fire.
“Oh, whatever, Victor. Remind me to give it back by the end of the night. I was just running late and couldn’t find my own,” she retorted with an easy shove of his shoulder. “It’s unlike you to forget something like that, though. Have you been feeling okay?”
“Yeah, Vic, you feeling okay?” Eli reiterated, cocking his head at Victor with mock concern.
As Angie’s hand lingered on Victor’s shoulder, Eli tracked the movement, looking for all the world like he wished to spontaneously combust the point of contact between them. Angie, either not noticing her boyfriend’s oddly uncouth behavior or pointedly ignoring it, took Victor’s arm in her own and offered her other for Eli.
“Ready, kids?” Angie asked as Eli reluctantly intertwined their arms, joining the three of them with her at the junction. “Let’s go get shit-faced.”
Victor lightly whooped his approval while Eli offered a noncommittal grunt, eyes lingering upon Victor’s arm twined in Angie's.
As the sun dispelled its last rays in the burgeoning twilight, Victor was a pale moon in Angie’s radiant orbit, caught breathless. Eli was then a streaming comet, poised for an impact that would surely crater the moon’s delicate surface. Or he was, perhaps, the dark planet around which the moon revolved.
A brisk walk deposited the group on the engineering side of campus, outside of a building spilling students already in varying states of drunkenness despite the early start to the night. Thumping music radiated from the open door, and Victor suddenly regretted his decision to prove a point with his being here, as a headache was already sprouting behind his eyes, a foreboding omen.
At least there’s booze, Victor thought.
Their secret stash under the bathroom sink had gotten low, and both of them were too busy studying to replenish it. In any case, Victor and Eli hadn’t had a night of drinking together, legs haphazardly tangled together on their creaking couch, in quite some time.
Not since two became three.
Angie gracefully extricated herself from the boys’ grasp, making her way inside to presumably find the source of the alcohol. It was likely that, despite her positivity, she had been working harder than both Victor and Eli these past couple of weeks. It was then even more likely that Angie had dragged them along to this party with no intention of facilitating any actual relaxation on their parts, but instead procuring her own with Victor and Eli as unwitting witnesses.
The thought of being a secondary goal to her disconcerted Victor; he’d rather be the primary goal or not be considered at all.
His primary goal was found in the form of cheap vodka in a cheaper red solo cup, flavored sparsely with a splash of extra-pulp orange juice.
What kind of psychopath used extra-pulp orange juice to make a screwdriver?
“Sorry, it’s all they have left,” Angie explained, suddenly bashful as she noted the disgusted expression on Victor’s face.
“How did you know I love chunks in my vodka, Ang? I’m thrilled,” Victor deadpanned, earning a tinkling laugh from Angie as she moved to pour her and Eli’s drinks.
Between them, Eli was uncharacteristically quiet throughout this exchange.
Victor glanced up from his off-puttingly textured drink to find Eli glaring daggers at him, a muscle jumping in his jaw, the behavior wholly incongruous with the jovial atmosphere of the surrounding party. He was almost taken aback by Eli’s inappropriate reaction, jarred by the heat simmering in Eli’s eyes. Was a little flirting with Angie really that serious to him?
The mysteriously aggrieved expression washed from Eli’s features like so much dust in the wind as Angie turned to hand him his drink, slipping into the placid, easygoing temper he reserved for her presence. Around her, Eli was nothing short of perfect—if the golden boy could get any more perfect than he normally was. The seams of his person suit sealed shut, with only the greatest of perturbations sending the beast underneath writhing.
Victor hated the way Eli was around Angie. He hated the dishonesty of it, hated the faultless illusion of unyielding virtue. Eli would insist that it was just the way a God-fearing man ought to act; it was a common point of contention between them—Eli’s faith—that Victor refused to let rest without beating the horse to death. Victor would argue that it couldn’t be considered true morality if he needed a higher power to keep the monster inside him at bay; Eli would sigh in a manner that suggested he found Victor to be irritatingly shortsighted and attest that it was simply his cross to bear.
With the door shut this tight, this soundly, the reins pulled taut around the monster kept locked behind it with lock and key, Eli rarely looked Victor’s way.
It made him sick.
With a grimace, Victor chugged the lumpy concoction claiming to be a screwdriver. He refilled his cup with a few shots' worth of vodka and set upon the bitter liquor with renewed determination.
“I think you should slow down a little there, Vic. You don’t hold your liquor half as well as you think you do,” Eli scolded, the grip on his cup tightening a fraction.
“Oh, you think, do you? I wouldn't have guessed,” Victor griped, arching an eyebrow at him.
Eli huffed at his attitude, quoting Victor’s earlier remark, “Dramatics aren’t becoming of you, Victor.”
Victor scowled.
“I thought we were here to get shit-faced, or am I remembering incorrectly? Tell me, Ms. Knight, am I remembering incorrectly?” Victor questioned, his scowl stretching into a lopsided grin that pulled at the sharp corner of his mouth. “I’m just getting from Point A to Point B with greater efficiency than you. Do try to keep up.”
“That is what I said…” Angie trailed off, her gaze flitting anxiously between the two men accompanying her, sensing that Victor didn't truly care for her answer. “But, Vic-”
“Right. Then, if you’ll excuse me,” Victor cut her off, promptly moving to lose the pair in the throng of bodies that moved around them. He couldn’t stand to be party to the Eli-and-Angie show a torturous second longer lest he lose his fucking mind. Or his lunch.
Finding himself a relatively unoccupied corner to quietly seethe in—ever the dark and brooding archetype—Victor sipped his drink. He feared the burning sensation clawing down his throat and settling uncomfortably in his core was not just a result of the alcohol.
From somewhere in the room, Victor felt a pair of eyes boring into him, but cared not to locate their owner. Instead, he hoped to quell the roiling, rotting thing curled possessively inside his chest by finding the fastest way to the bottom of his cup. Perhaps the elusive “relaxation” Angie spoke of would be a byproduct if Victor were lucky.
Victor chewed at his lip as the acrid liquid stung his sinuses and settled in his stomach before clawing back up his throat with a vengeance. Maybe he really should slow down.
He washed the bitter taste of Eli out of his mouth by slugging back the remnants of his cup. The room suddenly lurched dangerously around him, and Victor had to throw a hand out against the wall to steady himself. He leaned heavily against the wall, taking a deep, shuddering breath that did nothing to clear the building buzz in his head.
“Easy there, man,” greeted a smooth, masculine voice. When Victor’s scathing eyes raked across the man now in front of him, he continued, “You here by yourself?”
With the distinct feeling of being watched tingling along Victor’s spine, the claws of a devil shrouded in the darkness, he snapped in reply, “Yes. What’s it to you?”
The man shrugged his shoulders as he leaned against the wall next to Victor. He was slightly shorter than Victor, with dark hair that reached his shoulders in messy waves. The beginnings of a beard created a fine scruff along the man’s jaw. He was clearly going for a purposefully unkempt look, with a simple flannel thrown over a T-shirt sporting a logo for a band Victor had never heard of. The cargo pants suggested that he wasn’t premed—maybe an environmental science major? Victor found that he didn’t care enough to find out.
“I just thought you looked lonely over here in this corner,” he offered, hands raised in supplication. “I’m Jude, by the way.”
“Victor.”
“I know,” came Jude’s too-quick reply. At Victor’s unguarded look of confusion, he clarified, “I mean, I’ve seen you around before. I think we’re in the same organic chemistry lecture.”
“You think we’re in the same lecture?” Victor questioned unkindly. He was fully aware that the man in front of him did nothing to warrant such a cold reception, save for the fact that he made the mistake of starting a conversation with Victor at all.
Jude laughed awkwardly and shuffled his feet, not meeting Victor’s reproachful eye, “Okay, I know we’re in the same lecture. You sit a few rows in front of me. I’ve never gotten a chance to talk to you because your intimidating friend is always with you.”
“My intimidating friend?” Victor's eyebrows screwed up in further bewilderment. “You cannot possibly mean Eli Cardale.”
“Is that his name? You know, tall, brown hair, looks like he thinks he’s too good for everyone around him?” Jude pantomimed his description with animated hands, a nervous laugh brushing past his lips.
Jude’s description wrenched a barking laugh out of Victor, shocking them both. It was the first time Victor had ever heard anyone say something critical about his golden friend, and he savored the flavor of it along his tongue, across his teeth. Victor ran a hand through his hair to regain his composure.
Jude’s posture seemed to straighten a fraction at Victor’s first seemingly positive response to him.
“He does kind of look like that, doesn’t he?” Victor chuckled derisively.
“I don’t mean to be rude at all!” Jude exclaimed, realizing suddenly the implications of his ill-mannered joke. “He’s just not my type, is all.”
“And what is your type, then?” Victor questioned, raising an eyebrow, aware of the flirtatious undertones. Jude seemed to wither somewhat under Victor’s critical gaze, despite the question being Victor’s genuine attempt at returning his advances; he tended to have that effect on people.
“I don’t know. Smart, dark clothes, blue eyes…” Jude offered, his statement lilting up at the end, unsure of himself.
“Oh, really? That sounds shockingly familiar,” Victor scoffed, a mirthful tinge blunting the edge of his sharp words.
Jude rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, huffing quietly, “Yeah, you caught me. I guess I’m a sucker for a pretty face and a bad attitude.”
Victor attempted to take another sip of his drink with another low chuckle—Jude had no idea that that ‘bad attitude’ didn’t even begin to describe Victor—finding only a few scant drops at the bottom of his empty cup. Noticing this, Jude asked, “You need a refill?”
He’d probably had far too much to drink tonight already, arriving less than an hour ago, but nonetheless replied, “Yeah, thanks.”
Pushing off from his place against the wall, he took the empty cup from Victor’s outstretched hand. In his absence, Victor let his gaze wander out across the room writhing with bodies; many were broken off into distinct groups, chatting, while others halfheartedly danced along to the too-loud music playing from speakers Victor couldn’t locate. He was unsure if he was looking for something—or someone—specific.
The buzzing in Victor’s head only increased the longer he was left to his own devices, rising to an uncomfortable fever pitch as the steadiness bled from his limbs in the alcohol’s wake. Victor drummed his fingers against his leg in an attempt to keep himself present as the edges of his vision began to swirl nauseatingly.
A moment later, Jude returned to his side with two cups in hand. He handed one to Victor, who took it with only a slight tremor in his hands, keeping the other for himself. Jude raised his cup to his lips, drawing deeply from it while looking anywhere other than Victor. He accepted this without comment, taking his own long pull from the cup now clutched in his slightly shaking hand.
The silence between them quickly grew awkward, Jude’s confidence evidently failing him.
“You really think Eli’s intimidating?” Victor asked, wishing to fill the silence lest he acknowledge his growing disorientation a moment longer. Besides, the discrepancy had weighed too heavily on Victor not to bring it up again. “I must admit that I’m a little surprised by your observation. ‘Intimidating’ is a description most would save for me, no?”
Jude seemed to consider this for a moment before responding, “You’re definitely scary, man, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t like the guy's vibe. Seems a little too perfect, you know?”
“No offense, of course!” Jude quickly amended, having once again found himself rudely criticizing Victor’s friend.
Victor chuckled at the clear display of anxiety, Jude averting his gaze from Victor’s appraising eyes and scuffing the toe of his shoe against the dirty floor. It was perhaps a stroke of luck for him then that Victor was particularly fond of rude criticisms, especially those directed toward the object of Victor’s increasing displeasure.
“Eli can be a bit… intense, I suppose,” Victor spoke after a moment of watching the other man squirm. “It’s not an entirely ridiculous conclusion to come to, I admit.”
Victor dismissed the topic with a lazy wave of his hand, changing the subject without segue, “You’re trying to hit on me, is that correct?”
Jude choked—mid-drink—in shock at Victor’s abrasive non-sequitur, pounding his chest with a closed fist to dispel the liquid from his windpipe.
“You really don’t pull any punches, do you?” Jude huffed, chagrined. The sound was beginning to grate on Victor’s nerves, the delight he’d previously felt at Jude’s nervousness quickly souring into exasperation.
When Victor failed to reply, instead fixing the other man with an unimpressed, flat look, Jude continued with transparent trepidation, “Is… is that okay?”
“Do you often ask people if it’s okay to hit on them?” Victor asked with naked criticism in his voice. His growing displeasure manifested in the curling of his upper lip, which he attempted to hide with another swig of his drink.
“Are you often this big of a dick when people try to hit on you?”
Victor laughed humorlessly, “Always.”
It seemed Jude was capable of growing some teeth after all. The vexed expression Jude now wore was infinitely more attractive than the timid demeanor he’d approached Victor with, slightly piquing the interest that had been severely waning as their conversation trudged on. If he wanted a chance with Victor, he’d first have to get past the barbed wire at the gates.
To Jude’s credit, he seemed to brush off Victor’s jilting with only minimal difficulty. He rolled his shoulders as if to shake off the feeling of Victor’s thorny responses and downed the remaining contents of his cup with a grimace. With a final shake of his head as he swallowed, setting his now-empty cup on a nearby table, Jude met Victor’s eye with a level of defiance Victor was surprised to find in his gaze.
“Can I kiss you?” Jude asked, seemingly mustering his remaining courage.
“I don’t see why not,” Victor decided, waving him off with another apathetic flick of his wrist. Really, what the hell else would he be doing right now?
The man across from him was attractive enough, Victor supposed, and he welcomed the prospect of something to distract him from the churning in his gut and the room spinning around him. He came to regret not finishing his meal earlier in the day, the only substance absorbing the alcohol in his stomach being a few pieces of broccoli, not much considering the amount he’d imbibed already. Not wishing to be wasteful, however, Victor finished the last dregs of his third drink of the night, allowing the empty cup to crash to the floor at his feet.
“Well, are you going to kiss me?” Victor barked after Jude failed to come forward. Nothing snuffed the flame of desire like indecision, and Victor found that he was tired of hearing the man speak.
Jude stumbled toward Victor with a hand outstretched to grasp at his shirtfront, yanking him forward to smash their lips together. He tasted of alcohol and a little like cigarettes; Victor was forced to fight his revulsion as his senses were overwhelmed with it. Their kiss was sloppy, teeth clinking together, scruff rubbing uncomfortably against Victor’s skin. He could feel Jude’s hands shaking where they gripped his shirt or brushed against his side.
Victor led them in a lazy dance of lips slotting together with little grace. It wasn’t exactly enjoyable—the angle of Victor’s neck slightly uncomfortable—but it wasn’t the worst thing Victor could possibly be doing right now, either. It was simply a way to fill his time as he waited for the alcohol content in his veins to deafen the roaring of blood in his ears.
Following the pace Victor set for them, Jude sighed into his mouth as Victor rested a hand at the boy’s throat, feeling the hammering pulse there. Victor’s other hand steadied himself against the wall as the room continued to tilt.
Two things occurred to Victor in that moment: One, that he was significantly drunker than he’d originally thought. The floor felt like it was going to pull out from under him at any moment, shapes swirling in dizzying patterns behind his eyelids. Two, the feeling of being watched—ants under his skin chewing with so many mandibles into Victor’s nerve endings—had grown nearly unbearable. It was a live wire begging for Victor's electrocution.
Victor wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch.
His grip on Jude’s throat turned from a caress to something more urgent, gripping at the fragile column of muscle, cartilage, and bone with grappling fingers and scraping nails. Jude recoiled slightly from Victor’s touch, frightened by the ugly creature he found beneath the spiny exterior of Victor’s personality.
Some wore bristling demeanors as a defense mechanism, hoping to scare away the things that went bump in the night with hollow words gilded with venom. When they went home at night, they wished for the same sweet nothings that everyone craved, praying that eventually, someone would be brave enough to break past the knife’s edge persona to find the soft and gooey center.
Victor was none of these things. He was the monster that went bump in the night; the thing that craved sundering flesh between sharp teeth, basking in the warmth of blood spilling from gaping maws. Victor Vale was a wolf among sheep.
What he craved was not the one brave enough to find the real him beyond the unsightly exterior, but the one to take Victor’s harsh reality for what it was and see him.
Victor wondered if Jude had yet realized that he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
Jude’s sounds of protest were interrupted by a bruising grip at Victor’s neck, wrenching him backward, punctuated with a wet, dissonant smack. Victor’s snarl was swallowed by the force of Eli suddenly filling his space, eyes alight with a barely contained fury.
He leered down his straight nose at Victor, growling into the intimate space where their breaths became one, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought you said you weren’t here with anyone,” said a bemused Jude, real fear trembling in the timbre of his voice. He hurriedly wiped the back of his hand over his kiss-slick mouth, a conspicuous attempt to hide the evidence of his involvement with Victor in the face of Eli’s wrath.
“I’m not,” Victor said at the same time Eli said, “He is.”
Eli’s features were contorted into a jarring mask of naked rage, so discordant with the shade of composure Eli usually clothed himself with that Victor was momentarily stunned into silence.
He gripped Victor by the scruff of his neck with Herculean strength, using Victor’s shock as an opportunity to steer them toward the exit without so much as a glance in Jude’s direction. Blunt nails dug into the sensitive skin at Victor’s nape as Eli pushed them onward. Victor shivered uncomfortably at the sensation, feeling uniquely like an unruly kitten being dragged thrashing by its mother.
Once outside, Eli released Victor from his crushing hold with a shove, sending Victor stumbling across the pavement for the second time today. Victor rounded on Eli’s heaving form, seething, and considered throwing a heavily-ringed fist into Eli’s jaw for such an audacious stunt. The exhilarating promise of violence turned the acid in Victor’s veins to venom.
“Do you care to explain what in the name of God you think you’re doing?” Victor barked, flecks of spit flying from his lips with the force of his words. He bristled at the condemnatory look plastered across Eli’s face, lunging forward to seize a fistful of the thick fabric of Eli’s sweatshirt. Victor hauled the taller man down until Eli was eye-level with his viciously snarling countenance.
Eli turned his nose up haughtily at Victor’s impulsive brutishness, frigid glare through half-lidded eyes slicing Victor to the quick.
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Victor,” Eli scolded, his calm tone incongruous with the unbridled fury blazing in his eyes, a hazel flame threatening to consume Victor within its scorching heat.
Where Victor was all gnashing teeth and animal savagery, Eli was the swinging Sword of Saint Michael—avenging angel incarnate—prepared to exact God’s brutal judgment with a righteous pleasure. Victor’s anger was a hurricane to be weathered; Eli’s anger was fire and brimstone, razing devastation all that remained in its wake.
Coiled tension limned Eli’s lithe, powerful form, a predator ready to strike—or perhaps the hunter finally cornering his prey. Victor felt acutely as though he were meant to be the prey, an idea so ludicrous to him that he couldn’t help the mirthless laugh crashing past his bared teeth like a strike of lightning.
Contempt dripped from Victor’s curled lips, “Spare me the sermon, Pastor Cardale. I thought I told you to save it for someone who gives a shit .”
“You just never fucking listen, do you,” Eli spat, eyes simmering dangerously at Victor’s choice of pejorative. His hands flew up to plant themselves against Victor’s chest and shoved him forcefully backward. Victor struggled to find his balance again, with the alcohol turning his feet to lead, momentarily disoriented.
Beneath Eli’s skin, flushed with anger, the monster writhed in plain sight, casting his features in a dark, unholy relief.
While Victor was in a state of drunken disarray, Eli roughly snatched his arm and began dragging him down the sidewalk. His cries of objection fell on deaf ears, heavy boots catching awkwardly on the pavement beneath him. Eli’s gaze remained stalwartly trained forward as he enacted his justice. A few straggling students gawked at the scuffle unfolding before them. Eli behaved as though the eyes that bore witness to his acts of callous physicality and following their struggle—none brave enough to step forward and interrupt—were little more than insects to be crushed beneath his heel.
Victor preened despite himself at the abrupt manifestation of Eli’s demon, the utter disregard for the bystanders scrutinizing their display with greedy gazes, all to teach Victor what he thought to be a sorely needed lesson.
What had Victor done so wrong to warrant such a brazen display of dominance? Or more aptly, what had he done so right?
“I’m taking you home. You’re drunk,” Eli ground out between clenched teeth as if in answer to Victor’s question, jaw threatening to splinter under the force.
Victor’s arm screamed in protest at the awkward angle with which Eli was yanking him forward. A fractional tightening of Eli’s grip had Victor audibly grunting in pain, hands scrabbling in vain against the stronger man’s grasp. In response to his thrashing, Eli clutched Victor close to his side like a criminal taking a hostage as a human shield, a knife pressed frighteningly close to the vulnerable jugular. Beneath his fingertips, a deep bruise was no doubt blooming in the shape of Eli’s hand, marking Victor.
“Unhand me, you fucking Neanderthal,” Victor nearly shouted, struggling to no avail to free himself from the cage of Eli’s arms. He continued to drag Victor like a misbehaving child, not so much as budging at Victor’s continued assault.
Feeling like a cornered animal left with no other option, Victor reared his arm back as far as was possible while impeded by Eli’s punishing grip and cracked a metal-knuckled fist across Eli’s mouth, knocking the scowl right off his full lips. His lip split on contact, blood erupting from the wound like a wicked reward for Victor’s tribulations.
Eli staggered from the impact of Victor’s punch, finally releasing him. His hand flew up to cup the burst lip that now gushed blood across Eli’s teeth, down his chin, and dripped unceremoniously onto the concrete of the sidewalk. Drawing his hand back, now smeared red, an expression of bald shock contorted Eli’s features as though he were startled by the fact that Victor had the audacity to defy him.
Victor bared his teeth in a wolfish grin as his eyes followed the drip, drip, drip of Eli’s spilling blood.
With a ferociousness Victor had never before seen marring Eli’s countenance, he turned and spat blood directly onto Victor’s boots, his pants, his shirt, painting the cool autumn air with a fine red mist. A few flecks of it spattered across the pale skin of Victor’s face; red petals falling on fresh snow, a flourish of scarlet ink on unblemished paper. Where each drop landed, his skin burned, the venom of a basilisk.
Victor’s squawk of disbelief was interrupted by a heavy fist exploding across his cheekbone like a clap of thunder. His vision lost focus—spinning, spinning, spinning—as he crashed to the ground. With the heavy thud of Victor’s body violently becoming acquainted with the concrete below him, no more than a man-sized sack of potatoes, his world went deliciously black.