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It’s almost impulsive, the way he asks.
It’s… nighttime. The hour doesn’t seem to matter as much anymore--Alicia had a watch for a while but Chris hasn’t seen it in days. They get up when the sun is bright enough and stop when they can’t see the road in front of them anymore. Sometimes when the moon is bright enough they go a little farther.
But it’s nighttime, and they’re eating cold beans out of a can that Alicia bashed in with a rock. They sit back to back and pass the can after every other bite, scooping with dirty fingers and spitting out the shards of the lid that chipped into the sauce. Travis and Madison went to find water, or maybe fuck, or maybe just die in the dirt like everyone else they’ve ever known.
“Let’s go,” he says, absently.
Alicia goes to hand him the almost empty can. “You gotta pee?”
“No. I mean.” He scrambles to his feet, dropping the can to the side without another thought. “Let’s… let’s go.”
Alicia points in a mostly random direction. “But--”
“They don’t care about us.”
Alicia’s face goes flat. She throws the last water bottle at him. “Go fuck yourself.” She lies down, curled into a little ball. There’s no fire tonight and he can see her shivering. Chris hesitates, looking out at the horizon.
“They don’t care about us,” he repeats, but he lies down and scoots until their backs touch.
She wakes him in the morning. There’s fresh water in dirty plastic bottles and he drains half of one before passing it back to her. “Food?”
She shrugs.
They spend the day sitting on crumbling concrete, watching the birds. In the distance of the scrubby desert two figures stagger, dragging steps. Alicia twirls her knife but they disappear into the horizon.
Chris goes through his pack and finds vienna sausages, cold and slimy and dripping weird smelling water. He thinks about starting a fire but it’s too much work.
Alicia shakes her head when he offers her the can. He eats them, one at a time, methodical and mechanical until they’re all gone. Then he walks a hundred yards away and throws up into the shoulder of the freeway.
Alicia hands him a water bottle when he returns. “Let’s go,” she says, abrupt, looking off down the road with her hand to shadow the glare of the sun away. “Let’s just… let’s go.”
“Okay,” he says. They leave half the food and water behind and carve a note into the dirt with a stick.
They follow the highway. Sleep tucked up against the concrete dividers and take turns being the big spoon. It’s scorching during the day and freezing at night, and Chris doesn’t notice they smell like sweat anymore.
“Do you think they care?” Alicia asks him, snuffling into his shoulder and her arm slung around his waist. “Do you think they’re following us?”
Chris shrugs. His neck itches where his hair tangles against it, far too long, and she gently smoothes it out of the way. When she sleeps her breath ruffles against his temple, tickles across his cheek.
They find gum at a rest stop and split it one stick at a time, which helps him count six days before they run out. They eat a hostess cupcake in front of a fire and Alicia declares it their anniversary. It’s his turn to be the big spoon but she shakes her head and slips behind him. Murmurs his name and kisses the back of his neck and slides her cold hands into his boxers from behind.
He bites his lip and his chest heaves and he whispers ‘oh’ just before his toes curl. She wipes her hands in the crabgrass and bites his shoulder while he dozes. In the morning she frames the bruise with her fingers and looks darkly pleased; every time they eat she suckles it again, until it’s tender aching and faintly bleeding. Every night before he’s allowed to come she presses at it until he yelps and shudders, helpless in her hands.
++
It’s almost impulsive, the way he asks.
Nick makes him eat, pressing cans into his hands and staring at him. After it happened Chris refused for days, until Nick tackled him down and sat on his hips and pushed bites of beans into his mouth while Chris tried to bite him. “We had a dog once,” Nick says, his hand dusty and painfully tight over Chris’s mouth. “Do I have to rub your throat to make you swallow?”
Chris didn’t speak to him for five days. When he breaks it’s silence his throat feels like Nick’s hand, rough and dry and oddly callused. “Let’s go back?”
Nick is packing up the water, pretending he can’t hear.
Chris says it again, louder. Firmer. “We have to go back.”
Nick exhales. “Chris,” he tries, almost gentle.
Chris sits down in the middle of what used to be the road. He puts his head between his knees and his hands over his ears. “We have to go back, we have to go back, we have to go back we have to go back--”
“--go back,” he’s whispering, his throat dry and cracked and hoarse. “We have to--”
Nick drops him into the dirt with an angry noise, panting from the effort of carrying him. “Fine! Fuck!” He turns, kicking a rock. “Fine!”
It takes a week to get back. Nick talks constantly. It’ll be too hard to find, he says. There’s no more water left that way, he says. And at night, when Chris is asleep. Please don’t make me do this, he says.
“This is it,” Chris says. The pile of rocks is undisturbed--they’d dug for a full day, haunted by the thoughts of coyotes digging her up. Wrapped their palms in strips of her shirt and used rocks but their hands are still tender a full two weeks later.
Nick stares at where he buried his sister. “This is it.”
They burn her on the third day, in the moonlight. It’s harder than Chris thought it would be. The cheap ugly pile, the best pyre they could make from scrub brush and twigs, keeps going out. The smoke is heavy and oily and they take turns throwing up. She doesn’t burn all the way through and Chris wants to stay and try harder, but it’s been hours and hours, the day turned to night again, and Nick is touching his shoulder. Their clothes smell like the fire, and her, and smoke, and death and blood.
“Please,” Nick says, and his voice cracks. “Chris, please. Please let’s go.”
They walk for another two days before they stop again. It’s a rest stop and they scrub at themselves in the bathroom, where the plumbing still works. Nick bends him over the sink and scrubs at his back, making him shiver and prickling goosebumps up his spine. Nick kicks his legs farther apart and Chris shivers again for a different reason, head bowed obediently, but Nick just washes the back of his neck roughly and tells him to get dressed again. Chris stays bent over and Nick slams the door on the way out.
Chris goes to his knees before Nick on a picnic bench. Breath coming fast, uncertain hesitant eyes. Nick cradles his jaw, slips his hand through Chris’s hair and scritches gently at his scalp. Hooks a clean thumb in Chris’s mouth and tugs it open. Chris’s fingers shake when he undoes Nick’s zip. Nick smiles, gentling. “Do I have to rub your throat to get you to swallow?” he asks, and Chris holds his hands behind his back while Nick guides his head forward and eases inch by inch into Chris’s throat, until black spots dance in Chris’s vision and his drool drips down into the dust.
++
Chris opens his mouth to ask and Alicia kisses him. Nick rolls his eyes and throws a handful of beans at them, making Alicia shriek when they land wet and sticky in her hair. Nick shoulders his pack and pinches Alicia’s hip when she pouts Chris into carrying hers for her. “Don’t be prissy, Licia.”
She makes doe eyes at Nick and he sighs. Carries all three packs and Alicia hops on Chris’s back for a piggyback ride. “Tonight,” she whispers in his ear. “You think?”
Chris blinks. “Tonight what?”
“Ssh,” she says, impatient and exasperated and flicking his ear. “Don’t spill our plan.”
“It’s not our plan if I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nick turns around from where he’s a bit ahead of them. “Stop conspiring.”
“It’s not a conspiracy,” Chris protests, while Alicia giggles into the back of Chris’s neck. “I don’t know what she’s talking about either.”
Alicia wakes him while Nick is taking a piss. “It’s time.”
Chris rubs at his eyes. “That’s ominous.”
She straddles him and he forgets his entire vocabulary abruptly. Takes his hand and guides it up over her shirt and he marvels at how soft she still is, warm and faintly curved and rocking her hips when his thumb brushes over her nipple. “Do you want to touch me?”
Chris licks at his dry mouth. “I--I was going to ask--”
“Ask to touch me?”
“No to--to, uh--”
Nick sighs at them, returning. “Over the shirt, Christopher? I know you’ve got more game than that.”
Alicia turns to smirk over her shoulder at him. “We’re waiting for you.”
“You never wait. Brat.” Nick sits next to Chris and bumps shoulders, companionable. “What were you going to ask?”
Chris is quiet for a moment and they let him think, Nick’s arm around Alicia’s waist and her fingers tapping absently on Chris’s shoulders, the flex of her thighs on his hips. “For you not to leave,” he admits. “For you to take me with you.”
Nick and Alicia look at each other. They kiss feather light, eyes open like it’s the first time. “I’m no good at promises,” Nick says, hoarse. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Alicia murmurs. Nick scoots behind Chris, easing his back down into Nick’s front, legs stretched out on either side. His hands rest lightly on Chris’s hips.
His lips press dry under Chris’s ear and Chris shivers. “Touch her,” Nick murmurs, and they all moan together, the same low pitch.