Red Jack couldn’t help the shaking in his knees anymore and slid to the floor, watching Loki wreck his prized collection. This wasn’t how he wanted to die. Just because he was too angry, too afraid of the truth behind the furious words shouted into his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You hardly know me!” Jack grabbed a piece of glass and threw it at Loki, but it didn’t even reach him.
Loki exhaled and slowly scooted down so that he was at Jack’s eye level. He shook his head. “I don’t have time for that. I just didn’t want to die alone... why couldn’t you put up with me for a few more weeks? Can’t I keep your interest for even that long?”
Red Jack looked away as, the pain spread all over his body like venom. “You were good until you fuckin’ shot me…” He began moving on all fours, ignoring the blood dripping to the floor. He just needed to get to the car. He could still survive this.
Loki shook his head, and wiped his face with his sleeve. “No. You already hit me, you bastard. I won’t let anyone kill me again. I’ve got enough of that shit,” he whispered and walked off to the front yard. He left the door open, and Jack could see the slender shadow move across the yard in the faint light of the lamp that switched on automatically whenever it detected movement.
Jack continued his slow journey to hell naked, on all fours, sweating and shivering. Each move felt like an unbelievable chore, and as he finally reached the porch, the four steps leading to the yard made him want to throw up already. He’d have to stretch his midsection, something he instinctively knew he needed to avoid. But he could do it. The car wasn’t that far. He just needed to catch a deep breath and push on, but even as he thought that, he felt focus trickling out of him along with blood. “Come back here,” he muttered, too desperate for dignity.
But a shot ripped through the air, and all the hairs on Jack’s body bristled when he turned his head to the side to see his beloved golden-wheeled chopper ripped with a bullet. “Don’t!” he cried in agony as if it was him who got another shot. It certainly did feel like it. Loki might have turned the barrel at something else, but they both knew that the bullet was meant for Jack’s heart.
Loki pushed his hair back and shot the injured metal beast again. “Or what? You’ll hurt me? Punch me, you motherfucker?”
Red Jack fell to the porch, unable to hold up any longer. He groaned in pain, watching Loki loom over his beautiful ride, wild and desperate like a wounded animal. Jack should have just admitted he liked a guy. It would have been better than dying. “I can’t hurt you…”
Loki kicked the bike into the gravel, and it gave a panicked, metallic scream. “You have! You keep hurting me. I thought we had something... that I could... be happy for once. I can’t even have that.”
Red Jack barely caught a breath. Even in violence, Loki looked so, so beautiful. And he was right. This was a well-deserved death. Jack had never believed he could be really loved by anyone, and here he was, shot by a man who claimed just that. Maybe this was the only way for him to ever experience it? To believe in Loki’s words for that brief moment before the end?
“You did make me happy,” Jack confessed as his vision got fuzzy.
Loki turned around to face him, and as the breeze swept the long hair off his face, Jack could see it so clearly. The eyes that seemed to hide a darkness even as Loki smiled, the ugly scars he never allowed Jack to touch, the small piercing in Loki’s septum and the graceful arch of his lips “I did?”
Red Jack licked his lips. If he was to die, there was no point lying anymore. “When your ass squeezed around me, when you kissed me… it was heaven. You’d look at me like I was God.” He chuckled but then hissed when pain gripped his insides.
Loki was silent for a few seconds before stepping closer, his gait fleeting as a ghost’s. “I just wanted to be with you. Is that really so much to ask? Three months of your life?” Loki slowly sat down next to Jack. There was the dull sound of metal being placed on concrete, but as Loki’s hand skirted down Jack’s chest, to the wound in his side, the pretty, grief-stricken face seemed much more important than grabbing the gun.
“You’ve got all my attention now,” Red Jack rasped and fought to not close his eyes, so he could watch Loki when everything goes black. Where did that even come from? He’d wanted to squeeze the life out of Loki just minutes ago, but now all he felt was tenderness. As if the closeness of death let only what was really important stay in focus.
Loki gasped, and his face twisted with what looked an awful lot like pain. Jack wanted to ask what it was about, but then Loki ripped off his shirt, quickly pushing it against Jack’s wound. “I’m sorry... That wasn’t what I... I just wanted it to hurt...”