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Real men have sex, but they don't cuddle. They don't hold each other and stroke each other's hair. They don't know real loving words and they don't bother with lies, at least not between themselves.
So Chapel's protege and I are doing what we always do, a matter of mouths and pushing and the friction of skin. Penetrating and grappling and struggling for who's the strongest.
Even though we both know it's the last time. Because real men don't care. And real murderers don't care that someone is going to die, even if it's the person you let touch you, let hurt you, let see you after you come and you're pretending not to feel weak.
I told him what Legato told me, that the plan is not for any of us to come back. Knives wants his brother alive. He tells us to kill him only because he knows we can't. And whatever he told the priest, this isn't a spying mission in the end. He's cannon fodder like all of us.
Wolfwood believes me, but I'm not sure he really believes he'll die, or that anyone can beat him. But I think we're both doomed. And not just because of part I didn't tell him, that Knives wants the whole world gone. He wouldn't believe that could happen either. He worries for the kids outside December, Knives threatens them constantly, but I don't think he could deal with all of Gunsmoke.
But men like me don't worry even if a whole planet is going to die. I'm not sure what the protocol on that one is though: Sit back and watch it happen? Make some futile protest when there will be no one left to even say you did at least that? I'm sure Nick will, when he figures it out. But I don't tell him now, if I can do anything considerate let it be that.
He's lying down here now but we both know he has to leave soon. I don't know the protocol for that either. Especially for the fact it's the end not just of this, but of him, besides everything else.
I kiss him for while, in the end, and I touch his skin and offer him something with as little of dominance and as little of reality as I know how. He knows I'm being different after all, this last time, but it's just a matter of being humane. I think of what's never been said or asked and the understanding I told myself I didn't want. I think of words.
But I don't say anything, I just watch him pick up the cross and walk away forever.