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Eric isn't particularly pretty. There are chord progressions and smooth piano keys that are pretty, drawings and coal sketches. Not him.
He's got an awkward face and thin blonde hair, with too-dark eyebrows that don't match, and he dresses shitty, like he thinks he looks cool, but he doesn't, he just looks like a dick.
Eric's not smart either. He reads, but it's never anything with a whole lot of substance. He flunked math and English and pretty much everything that isn't p.e. 'cause in another life he's a stupid fucking jock and not the type of loser who can afford to hang with Alex, to be his best friend. So Eric is kinda dumb, and he's only gotten good at shooter games by playing them ten hours a day for three years when they were on the cusp of middle and high school, slowly growing into longer limbs and lower voices.
When Alex doesn't know something, it's because he couldn't be bothered to learn it. When Eric doesn't know something, it's because it never even occurred to him to question it.
Eric isn't nice either: he makes fun of the cheerleaders who throw up during lunch break and trips people up in the hallways. There's this real ugly girl in their gym class - Nelly, or Milly, maybe Michelle? - and Eric will lean over to whisper mean nasty things in Alex's ear, just loud enough to make sure she knows they're making fun of her. Alex barely hears what he says, only registers the fan of hot breath on the shell of his ear, the way Eric's lips will sometimes brush against the side of his head as he talks.
There's no reason to like him as much as Alex does.
He's had crushes on girls. Or maybe, a girl, singular, with long hair and a halter top, who did the car wash at summer camp. She didn't know his name, probably, and if she did she thought he was weird, a creep who stared too much and talked too little.
It's unfair, maybe: how come boys like John McFarland, with his terrible bleach job that he surely straightens with an iron- and how come Alex's the one they called a faggot in the locker room in seventh grade? But how come John's gonna have a date to the prom and a whole group of friends who are there for him when he cries - which won't make him a sissy, just a boy in touch with his feelings.
No one will take Alex to prom. Well - it's not like there will be a prom to go to, no long-haired girls to kiss or dance with in some dingy corner. It doesn't even bother him these days.
There's a crack in the mirror at school.
Alex isn't afraid to kill or to die. He sort of can't wait. It's gonna be fun; it's gotta be.
Once, when wrestling, Alex had put his hand on Eric's throat and pushed, watched the easy grin drop off his face with a choked out little gasp. Violence is never something they questioned, never anything that had to be discussed. Eric had liked it, Alex had liked doing it. He'd lain awake that night, Eric passed out on the couch somewhere, and wondered what sound he'd have made if Alex had dug his nails in hard enough to break the skin, drawn blood.
He likes Eric flushed with exertion, likes him in camo, and now even better, maybe, naked.
No one has ever touched him like this. He's never tasted a mouth but his own. Eric's is soft, warm to the touch.
Alex thinks, briefly, that this is perfect. The perfect send-off to a life lived so poorly.
For a moment, he considers staying.
The water is hot and steams up the shower wall. Eric's skin is slick and wet and his hair plastered to his forehead. Alex is - content, very nearly happy in a way he hasn't been since year six, a piano recital, applause more polite than amazed but still potent.
Maybe they could get out of the shower, dry off and dress in each other's clothes, and then Eric could boot up a shooter game or put on an old nazi speech and Alex could watch the rapid movement of his pupils as his reflexes work overtime.
They could skip school for a week, shoot cans in the woods, then stick it out until Alex graduates. Eric's from a military family, he doesn't need a degree. They could get an apartment somewhere, with a shitty couch and a gun range nearby to get their fix of the violence every other week or so.
Alex could touch him again, his mouth and his neck and the trail of pale blonde hair under his belly button. Inner thigh, maybe, or the soft swell of his ass.
It's a pipedream of a thought. Something to imagine, maybe, when the recoil hits and his ears start to ring.
They get out of the shower together, and Eric grins at him, a boyish thing, presses his mouth to the junction of his neck one last time, then steps away to towel off.
Alex feels his fingers itch. For his hand or maybe for the trigger of a gun.
As quickly as the dream was there, it's gone again. They have a school to blow up, a world to wreck. A hundred lives to change and change and change.
He'd rather not think about the afterlife. Waiting for him and Eric is the point of no return. A loveseat on death row, a lifetime in a prison cell in sickness and in health.
He unfolds the map, colour coded to hell and back. There's a grin on his face that he can't quite shake.