BADLANDS

Got a head-on collision smashing in my guts man

I'm caught in a crossfire I don't understand

I don't give a damn

Charlie dips his finger into the bag of H. The grain is harsh against his fingertip; as he lifts his hand from the baggie (the sound of crinkling plastic, oddly innocent; it reminds him of school lunches being unwound from sheets of silvery film, of Christmas presents being unwrapped) and holds the hit up before his eyes, he can see it, crystalline, glinting in the white desert sunlight. Delicately, he spreads a line of it over his palm, compensating with practiced ease for the bucking rumble of the moving car. He inhales. The heroin hits him almost at once, as the raw crystals dissolve into the thin, blood-rich membrane of his throat. He leans back onto the sweat-slicked vinyl backseat of his lover's Camaro, and lets out a trembling, blissful sigh.

"That's better," he says.

Sawyer says nothing. He watches Charlie through the fractured, spidery silver rectangle of the rear-view mirror; his pale green eyes narrow, cold against the hot, flat light of the afternoon. His left hand spreads over the steering wheel, so hot that the plastic practically bubbles under his palm; his right hand traces the steel curves of the pistol at his side. Charlie is not worried by his lover's silence, nor troubled by the restless way that he fingers the gun. He can see everything clearly now. And he knows that there is nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

ADAM RAISED A CAIN

We were prisoners of love, a love in chains

He was standing in the door, I was standing in the rain

With the same hot blood burning in our veins

Charlie remembers Jack, as he remembers most of his worst moments, through a haze of desire. He had been on his knees, one hand splayed in the gritty sand, watching the firelight flicker and refract along the doctor's lean, bird-of prey profile. With his free hand, he had traced Jack's thigh, noting its length, the tautness of the muscle. He must have run, thought Charlie, must have been some sort of athlete; he would be beautiful when undressed. Under his hand, Jack began to shake.

"You don't have to say anything," he had said, following the seam of the denim to its source, the base of the other man's spine. First chakra, he thought. Survival instinct – remembering Claire, her late-night disquisitions on subtle bodies, faith healing, the map of the soul. "If it's not – what you fancy, I mean… I can go. No harm done."

He shifted, bringing his palm up and over Jack's cock, hard and tight against the rusted metal fly of his jeans. For a brief, breathless moment, the world was silent as a dead radio station. Then, Jack sighed. His head fell back on his neck. The world came into motion and sound once more.

Charlie felt his friend's cock out through the denim, fingering the long, left-leaning curve. It was thicker than he had imagined; it was also, slightly, shorter. Not that he had complaints: the better to eat you with, my dear, he thought, wolfish. He eased the zipper down with his teeth.

"You don't have to say anything," he had said, repeating the words like a good-luck charm. "Just let me."

Jack had looked down at Charlie, catching his jaw between forefinger and thumb. His eyes were steamed with desire, glittering, molten; still, he looked kind, even noble, his features edged in chiaroscuro against the black jungle evening.

"I like you a lot, Charlie," he had said. His low voice rumbled in his abdomen; Charlie fancied that he could feel the words pass through his own body, as if Jack were whispering to his bones. "And I'm okay with this. You don't need to beg me."

"No," said Charlie, grinning crookedly. "But I might do. I'm already on my knees."

Charlie remembers that night often, plays it over in his mind: the harsh glow of the firelight, flickering over their first, furtive, earnest coupling, the smell of rain, falling softly in the jungle beyond the caves. When he is with Sawyer, this moment flickers to life in him, filling him with its lost sweetness. Sawyer always makes him beg.

SOMETHING IN THE NIGHT

Nothing is forgotten or forgiven,

when it's your last time around,

I got stuff running 'round my head

That I just can't live down

Sawyer sings along to the radio. The low, rough purr of his voice is drowned out by the sound of engine. He has been playing the same Springsteen tape since Wyoming – low, mournful music, the acoustic guitar a steely whisper under Bruce's junkyard moan. These songs, Charlie thinks, are driving him mad. Madder. He can't bear the relentless repetition of sounds, the violence and sorrow of that torn voice, looping back on itself, as if it's caught in a story that it can't end.

"What is it with you and this album, man?" His voice sounds thin and testy in his own ears. He leans over the driver's seat and rubs Sawyer's shoulder through the thin cloth of his blue dress shirt, trying to soften the moment.

"I like it," Sawyer snarls, keeping his eyes on the road. Charlie can feel muscles tensing under his palm. "Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah," Charlie says, softly. He curls back into his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah, it's fine. I just thought, you know, you might like to try something else. For a little while."

"No, thank you," Sawyer says.

A silence passes between them. Charlie leans his head against the window, watching the featureless desert landscape, blurred with speed into a line of dust against the sky.

"I tell you what, Short Round," Sawyer says, finally, fingering the latch of the glove compartment. "When we get to Mexico, I'll buy you any album that you want. Hell, I'll buy 'em all."

He presses the latch, and the glove compartment falls forward, with a sound like a flock of birds, startled into the sky. Inside the glove compartment, Charlie sees the haul: crisp, neatly bound stacks of fifty-dollar bills, liberated from the dozen or so convenience store safes they've emptied in their time on the road. Sawyer ripples the edge of one stack, almost lovingly. He smiles.

"Shut that up, man," Charlie says, uncomfortably. Do you want to get caught? he nearly adds, but stops himself, realizing that he's afraid of the answer.

"Whatever," Sawyer says. He shoots Charlie a knife-edged glare through the rear-view mirror as he slams the glove compartment door.

Charlie settles onto his back, staring at the ripped and water-stained roof of the Camaro. Much as he hates to admit it, he's used to this: bickering, murderous glances, silences that last for hours or days. Sawyer has not been the same, since they buried Jack. Then again, nothing has.