Shoot Back To Skol

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Disclaimer: I don't own Eric, Alex, or the song. Both boys and any other appearing characters are from the movie 'Elephant'. I've taken some liberties with the characters. This is just the way it could have gone, in my little world of bittersweet slash.

Also, I'm not expecting this to be anywhere near as good as the movie. My advice is, don't nitpick. I probably have a lot of things wrong… but then again, this IS FAN fiction, so what the hell… it's what I want, not what the movie IS…. Although you really SHOULD see the movie.

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So run
Right
Right back to school
Check it

Look back I sift through all the cliques
Roaming' the halls all year, making me sick
While everyone's out tryin to make the cut
What?
And when you think you know me right I switch it up
Behind the walls smokin' cigarettes and sippin' vodka
hop a fence and catch a cab, aint no one can stop us
Give me a break about some other mess
What were you?
Act like it's everything you got

Push back the square
Now that you need her but you don't
So there you go
Cause back in school
We are the leaders of it all

Stop that, quit! - All that, quit!
Who ruined it? You did! Now grab a notebook and a pen
Start taking notes, I'm being everyone who's on the top
You think we're on the same page - but, oh we're not!

I'll be the man, watch your backpacks, pens and pencils
Just like he now flippin it, why you just keep it simple?

You just can't go wrong rocking' the clothes
Coppin' the stance
'Cause really is everything that you got!

Push back the square
Now that you need her but you don't
So there you go!
Cause back in school
We are the leaders of it all

So
Transpose
Or stop your lies
It's what you do
Transpose
Or stop your lies
So run

So why don't you run, so why don't you run
So why don't you run back to school
So why don't you run, so why don't you run
All you are - Now I'm on the next page
All you are - It's time to close the book up
All you are - I'm on the next page
All you are - Close the book up now

Back To School (Mini Maggit)- The Deftones

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Alex was sat at the piano playing Beethoven with a half-unthinking skill that came from continuous practise. By now, most of the movements were made before he thought about what note he was playing, he'd been playing them over and over for so long.

He liked this... the peaceful solitude of his own basement room where he could half-mindlessly play the piano and think about nothing.

Even Eric's rapping at his window didn't make him pause in his playing, despite the fact that he looked up quickly to see who it was.

But really, who else would it be?

In a few minutes that seemed like hours, Eric was now standing in his doorway, watching him play with an amused grin. A quick shot compliment that Alex half-heard and the other boy was settled on Alex's bed, resting the computer on his lap and playing what he always played.

Target practice.

Alex played his way through Fur Elise and out again, on into the Moonlight Sonata and then things got hard. He knew the first part off by heart, automatically, but the end bit was another matter. He knew it, but not that well... how often did he get to the end anyway?

Pissed off, he played a discordant noise and flipped the piano book the bird before leaving to join Eric on the couch, relieving him of the lap top and cuffing him teasingly over the head for commenting that he sucked.

He searched through websites as Eric read, until he found the last gun he'd ordered… the last one they needed for the complete set.

Because Alex had a dream. A dream where finally, thankfully, the knot inside him would release and he would finally show those pricks what it meant to be persecuted for no other reason than the fact that you're there.

He'd bought it a few days back, delivery and everything, but couldn't resist looking again, seeing it's sleek, black, dangerous power on-screen, running the cursor over it to bring up its stats…

Oh, the damage…

Oh, the glorious damage...

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Eric discreetly watched Alex's web-surfing over his friend's shoulder and gnawed on his lip. Alex worried him.

Okay, that was a bit of a moronic comment considering what he knew, and what they were planning but still…

His friend was so... intense. So likely to implode at any minute that it scared Eric a little. There was an agonising weary defeat in his expression the whole time. When he wasn't shut off that is.

And the fucking jocks had put it there, the whole stupid sheep-brained gang who thought it was harmless fun to turn and hurl spit-wads at Alex during Science class… Nathan Tyson and his friends who thought it was amusing to taunt and harass the reserved unpopular kid because he never did anything back. He didn't even move to avoid their missiles, never made a fuss to get the teachers attention, nothing.

It was just a game to them. Go into science class and torment the loser for the lesson, then leave and forget all about him. Make themselves look big. Obviously oppression of others was a sign of manliness.

He didn't know how Alex… well, that was a lie, he DID know how Alex managed to put up with it. He was biding his time, practising his aim, first on the range and then on the woodpile in the garage. Collecting his weapons. The truth was he wasn't putting up with it at all.

Sometimes, Eric caught Alex with his guard down and there was a glint there of something so terrible that Eric didn't want to look ever again, but he did anyway, out of some morbid fascination. He knew that when Alex carried out his dark plan, nothing would be spared.

Because Alex, simply, didn't care anymore.

Despite this, Alex still played piano… and because of that, Eric knew there was still someone in that bullet-case shell who could still feel.

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Later on, Alex decided to have another stab at Beethoven, and practised for well over two hours, Eric lying on the sofa reading his book.

He FINALLY nailed it and turned back, pleased, only to see that Eric had fallen asleep where he was, flat out on his back, arms above his head and crossed, as if they were handcuffed.

Eric always looked young… even asleep, he still looked younger than he should do. It might have been something to do with his skinny arms, the fragile looking wrists, or the pale bleached-blond hair- whatever it was, he looked about twelve when he slept.

Alex stared down at his unaware and sleeping friend with a gaze that was emotionless from any other person's viewpoint. Only Alex truly knew what was going on in his head at any time. He'd become very good at hiding what he felt from the outside world and now, with so little to feel - or was it so much- it was even harder to tell what thoughts were playing out under that non-descript head of hair.

He'd had to have Eric over for this. Tomorrow was an important day and he had to make sure nothing happened between then and now that would come in the way of their retribution.

Whatever happened to those kids tomorrow, it was their own damn fault. Their voices, their taunting, their pathetic, mediocre little lives that would mean nothing past high school combined to bring their fate upon them.

He'd planned hard for this. Studied the floor plan of the school carefully, how it was laid out… schedules, exits, what places were most populated when…

"What are you writing?"

"Oh, this?"

"Yea."

"It's my plan."

"For what?"

"Oh, you'll see."

He wasn't about to let Eric's fucking abusive parents do anything to him that would stall their great cleansing. He wore short sleeved shirts habitually, like he was trying to prove nothing was going on, but there was. His father was passive aggressive, emotionally abusive, totally stripping the blond of self-esteem and confidence. If it wasn't being chastised for not doing something, it was being harshly criticised when he did something right, until his friend had become someone too afraid to have an opinion of his own lest it be the wrong one, which, when his dad was concerned, it invariably was.

Alex didn't think Eric's dad had ever once said anything positive to the boy at all. And his mother was a whole other story. She was physically violent. There had been more than one time when Eric had fled to the refuge of Alex's basement sanctuary to hide out quietly and lick his wounds, sometimes with marks on his face from where she'd slapped him so hard she'd left bruises.

As little as Alex felt for other people, as much of his empathy had been taunted and burned out of him, he still felt protective stirrings whenever he saw Eric like that.

Protectiveness and acerbic hatred.

With a last look of hawk like eyes, Alex turned away and fell onto his bed, still fully clothed and on top of the covers, unconsciously curling into a semi-foetal position, his arms crossed over his chest. Fuck getting dressed…

Who cared about what you slept in when you were dying tomorrow?

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The gun had finally arrived, and with its arrival, Eric knew the end of everything was drawing close.

The thought made him want to laugh out loud until the giggles shredded their way out of him and danced off in silver shards, leaving his gutted body behind to join Alex and 'cull the herd'.

It was a shame that they couldn't stop by his house first, but as Alex had shown him, the action would have compromised their mission too much. Anyway, Eric's parents would get theirs, just like all the kids at their school were going to, only they'd have to wait to receive their punishment from someone else.

Or so Alex reassured him.

Alex's mum had given them breakfast that morning, and Eric felt a little bad that she'd be going through some pretty bad times soon because of the two boys. But hey, you couldn't make an omelette without sacrificing some pawns... or something like that.

The final gun was... the final gun was pretty hot. Sleek, deadly malice flicking little pellets of woodchip out of the woodpile in Alex's garage. Out of all Alex's inventory, Eric liked this new gun the best. If he sighted down the barrel just right, he could see himself in Alex's homemade computer game.

The kids would run. They'd run from them and scream and suddenly kneel down like a camel and lie flat, as the walls were flecked with dead red, maybe even white shards like the bones of the wood pile. Alex hadn't programmed much blood flow into the game. It wasn't the background or the realism- he'd explained- it wasn't a game. It was a training programme.

Eric wondered about asking Alex to make a more graphic version, but then realised that there was no point. He'd be playing the realistic version soon enough anyway.

3-D, surround sound, full first-hand experience. Then blood would pool.

He wondered how he was going to keep score.

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Alex showered one last time. He washed mechanically, his head blank of thought. What was there to think about? He'd prepared, he had everything he needed. A quick shower and then he'd change, leaving the remains of the boy he used to be swirling down the drain like so much dirt.

Outside, Eric stood hesitantly, the question of 'should I, shouldn't I' bubbling round his head. Then he remembered they were dying tomorrow and he lost all fear, pushing his trousers down and stepping out of them, opening the glass door to the shower.

Alex looked up like some quietly dining big cat disturbed from its meal; a wealth of dead and awake emotions, annoyance and a large dose of 'what the hell?'

"I guess this is it… I've never even kissed anyone before…"

It wasn't the same as when two people kiss from love. It didn't start out with any emotion, but a curious wondering of what it was like, to press your mouth to someone else's and feel their lips with yours. Curiosity filled, but they were still kissing, and then Alex's hand moved to just hold Eric's upper arm- Eric could feel the cold of Alex's ring on his skin, and then he had to tilt his head to change position slightly because he couldn't get his breath anymore.

They kept kissing, and now Alex had pushed him back against the wall under the showerhead. They were wet and the water hit them and stung too hard, like words, so they moved to the other wall, never separating once.

The only noises were the sound of their heavy breathing, the occasional swallowed noise and the soft quietening sound of the showerhead.

Alex slid his hand down Eric's side to his thigh and lifted it from there, pressing his leg to his hip, until Eric got the idea and curled his leg round Alex's hip. Eric made a noise that was some weird cross-breeding of the noise he made when he had to get up in the morning and didn't want to, and a soft exhalation of breath, like when he unconsciously held it in a difficult point in a computer game and then, after he couldn't hold it anymore, let it go.

Also in there was a noise Alex had never heard from Eric's mouth before and it made him even harder. Amazing that he could still feel this way on his dead man's walk, even more amazing that he was forgetting everything that was to come and only focussing on the now.

The hot, wet, slippery now that was rubbing against him on it's own in a frustrated manner, and more groans were tumbling from that mouth. Alex didn't make a sound, kissing Eric, swallowing his own noises into Alex's own throat, so that when they moved even faster, and Alex's hand came down to grip both of them and hold them together, and Eric clung to the tiled wall with fingers like grappling hooks, and when they pushed and pulled and dragged each other down and Eric came with a sob, head pressed back into the tiles, Alex himself had borrowed noise to make, and he came with his mouth pressing a moan into Eric's shoulder .

Eric's leg dropped. Alex pulled them back into the shower head's direction and leant against the wall, cleaning them both off. They backed out of the spray, still in the cubicle, and Alex licked the water that was still running down Eric's face, off his chin and tasted salt.

They watched each other for aeons, and then Alex silently used the base of the palm of his hand and wiped the tears from Eric's face. Eric folded his arms over Alex's shoulders and cried into his bare skin, but the misery just rolled off Alex. He sealed his boy's skin with a kiss.

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Alex sat on his piano stool, and Eric sat on the bed and they were supposed to be getting dressed, changing, changing into their final forms to stop the bullying, the petty cliques and backstabbing in school once and for all.

Alex couldn't bring himself to do it with Eric sitting there on the bed, a towel draped over his pulled-up knees, arms crossed over them, watching him with red eyes and an oddly there expression.

They were supposed to be empty by now, but Eric's expression was anything but, a myriad of words unsaid that interconnected and piled on top of one another until his eyes seemed blank with their sheer content.

Alex pulled his black trousers on slowly, watching Eric sit there out of the corner of his eye. He didn't need to say anything to him, the plan was so definite that it was if they'd already done it. He pulled a black shirt on over his bare top, and it seemed to spur Eric into moving. He pulled his own green camouflage trousers up with shaking fingers, but every movement he made looked like a tear, filled with hesitance and teetering unspoken words.

"What?" Alex couldn't take it anymore.

Eric jumped. "Huh?" He looked pale, twelve years old once again, only not asleep this time.

"We're practically dead Eric, you can tell me." He said again, in a dry voice, unlike the amiable one he used on the students. That girl in the cafeteria…

"Oh, you'll see."

Eric sat on the edge of Alex's bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed down like he was praying in shame to Alex. "Alex…"

Anything else he said wasn't verbal. Alex sighed and stepped forward and knelt down in front of him. "What?"

Eric straightened up and fell onto him, once again holding him round the neck, head turned into Alex's chin, where he felt breathy words fall like the shower water had, hard and cleaning.

"I don't want to die Alex, not anymore. I don't want to die, I don't want to die…"

Not crying after all, but shaking. Coldly- because Alex was all hard, frozen, still-frame emotions, cold, icy, frozen, never the hot burning heat of anger, not anymore- Alex picked Eric off and pushed him away, and Eric lay there like one of Alex's crumpled drawings, only they didn't shiver in a plague of fear for their own mortality.

"Eric. We're already dead." He stood and watched as Eric pulled himself together and sat with his back against the bed, the frame digging into his bony back, sitting on the floor and looking up at Alex, the tangle in his eyes unravelling fast. "Remember why we're doing this. We've got nothing left to live for. I can't take another day at school." There was a sharp sudden flash of panicked fear in Alex's eyes for a second, like a home-made wind mobile suddenly turned to expose its aluminium can shiny exterior before it turned back again, and the sharp shock of fear was gone. "There's no way we can stay at either of our houses for much longer." Eric still winced at the thought. It was a Pavlovian reaction by now. "We have nothing left to live for Eric." He said again, his voice softer and all the more harder for it.

Once again they were staring at each other, from wildly different heights and wildly different thought processes.

"We could live for each other." Eric finally said, soft like a nuclear cloud rising, eyes resting on Alex's face.

Alex scattered apart and reformed into the same shape in less than a second, or so it seemed to Eric. "Nothing like that lasts."

"We could try."

They were silent again, and an ice-age came and went before they spoke.

"It wouldn't be enough…"

"But we wouldn't be dead."

"They wouldn't have learnt their lessons…"

"We can teach them some other way."

A pause and then- "We don't have any money."

"We can sell the guns." Although something tweaked in him at the thought of selling all that black, cold, smooth death in his hands. "Some of them… we could leave in your car. Go to another state, get jobs, become different people."

Alex was never going to agree to this flight of fancy. But then he saw that this wasn't a fairytale. Eric didn't expect them to live in their own house with a back garden, going on holiday and being able to afford things like the newest pair of trainers when they came out.

He foresaw hard work, and a poky flat for them both, and occasionally no food except for beans on toast. But he was still willing to try for it; a different kind of dying perhaps?

"We can't… we're too young."

Eric stood up. "We're old enough to kill a school. We're already dead. There's nothing we can't do."

There wasn't any fight, any fire in Eric's expression for Alex to hate right then. Nothing that would have justified Alex calling him theatrical or a romantic, because there was only an odd kind of carelessness in his friend's (and that was an uneasy word for him) face. As if he WAS dead and was now just walking around enjoying the benefits of being out from under the protective steel cage of mortal living, and all it's morals and laws.

Alex saw Eric's hand lying, pale and like a sleeping dove against the camouflage trouser leg, and he took it in his own equally pale hand, just holding it, an amazingly innocent touch from someone so dead and scoured out.

"We'll still teach them a lesson." He said. It wasn't a question, and Eric knew he brooked no argument. He nodded. "Then we'll leave. Sell the guns at that pawn shop down the road. Stop at your house, get your stuff. Then go."

Eric nodded again and Alex did the same, only his was a curt nod of action. "Right."

And just like that, they lived again, freer, better than before, because a life like that hadn't really been living at all.

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I'm going to end it here, because I think it works. I was going to go on and have them up and leave. Then I was going to have maybe John meet up with them later on when they were all older and grown, but it would just make the fic weaker. I like it like this...

I hope you did too.