Up The Ante

By Tiriel

NC-17, m/m, language, these are bad boys

The Way of the Gun, the short version: a film very few people saw, lots of people should. The so-called "Mr. Parker" (Ryan Phillippe) and "Mr. Longbaugh" (Benicio Del Toro) are two criminals who kidnap a surrogate mother and ask for $15 million in ransom for the baby she's carrying. Things get complicated. On one level, it looks like a typical post-Tarantino ultraviolent crime film, but there's a lot more to it than that. Rent it and find out. And did I mention that the relationship between Parker and Longbaugh is very very slashy?

This is a sequel to Not An Addict. If you haven't read that, go read it now. I started out thinking this film was slashy but having no plans to write for it. Then I wrote one story but had no plans to write more. And now here's a second story. And some Q and A...

Q: Do their tattoos match, as you mentioned in Not An Addict?

A: Probably not, although we never get a clear enough view of Longbaugh's to be certain. Parker's appears to be a scorpion, and it's on the left side of his chest. Longbaugh's is in the middle of his chest, visible in some scenes when his shirt is partly undone, but not visible enough to determine a design. Either way, it's a nice idea, isn't it?

Q: Don't they die at the end of the film?

A: Well, in the director's commentary on the dvd, Christopher McQuarrie himself tells us that it's not official that they die. So, since it's ambiguous and left up to the viewer's interpretation...

Disclaimer: (Tiriel does the "they're not mine" dance.) Seriously, folks, the work of Christopher McQuarrie, writer-director of The Way of the Gun and Academy Award-winning writer of The Usual Suspects, makes me want to write screenplays. I love his work. He made these guys. This is just the cheap imitation.

Summary: What can I say? Parker's just an internal monologue kind of guy. Set after the film. Spoilers.

For Aithine, who wouldn't make me take the "The Way of the Gun" dvd out of the player when I asked her to. That bitch, I didn't need another fandom.

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Up The Ante

By Tiriel

Somehow it had all gone to hell. Not that that was a big surprise. It wasn't the first time a score had gone bad. Wasn't the first time we'd laid on the ground, side by side, bleeding. What made it different was that this time looked like it'd be the last.

So we were preparing ourselves to meet God, I guess. I was thinking about death, anyway. Wondering what it'd be like, knowing I'd find out pretty soon. And this crazy thought hit me. I figured, you know, what the hell, we're dying, so I just said it.

"I wanted to kiss you," I croaked out, my voice so much weaker in the air than it was in my head.

"Yeah? When?" He didn't sound much better, but the bastard still managed to sound amused at me.

I wanted to answer. The words swirled in my head, ready. But I was dizzy and suddenly felt like I was floating. Christ, who knew death was such a high? I wanted to answer, and I knew what I was going to say. But my mouth wouldn't move. Then the words I wanted to say drifted away from me, replaced by different words. Now I lay me down to sleep. And that's the last thought I remember.

Coming to hurt. Worse than the worst hangover or the worst beating I could remember. Bad enough that for just a minute I wondered if I'd died and gone to hell. As my eyes began to focus, I decided that I hadn't, not unless hell looks like a Mexican whorehouse.

"You here?"

He didn't answer. I sat up, pushing against the bed with the one limb that didn't hurt. Both legs and my left arm were bandaged. I was alone in the room.

"If I'm not dead, he's not dead," I muttered, then repeated it, louder. "If I'm not dead, he's not dead." Of course, he had been hit worse than me. I gritted my teeth and swung my legs over the side of the bed, standing up quickly, letting the pain hit all at once. Like cannonballing into freezing cold water instead of inching your way in. Leaning my one good arm against the wall, I limped to the door and opened it.

Dr. Painter was on the other side, his face nowhere near as surprised as mine must have been.

"Where is he?"

"Jesus, you shouldn't be out of bed."

"Where. Is. He."

"Next door. Let's get you back into bed, you shouldn't be up."

"Not until I see him."

Painter looked at me and saw that I meant business. So he helped me hobble to the doorway of the next room.

His eyes were closed. "Is he..." I trailed off, looking at the pile of bloody towels on the floor by the bed, the bandages on his arm and legs. They don't bandage the dead, right? I took an involuntary step forward and winced at the pain.

"He's alive."

"Is he gonna be all right?"

"Well, it's early, and gunshot wounds aren't exactly my specialty. You're both lucky, the bullets mostly missed bone and major arteries, so loss of blood is the main concern--"

"Will he die?" The pain was getting to be overwhelming, and I had no patience for his uncertainties. I needed an answer.

"I don't think so, no."

"Good," I said, and promptly passed out. When I came to, Painter was checking my wounds.

"You started bleeding again, walking around like that. You need to stay in bed."

"Put us in the same room, then."

"Done."

I turned my head. I hadn't even noticed, but I wasn't in the room I'd first regained consciousness in. And there he was, in the other bed. I just looked at him for a while, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Then I turned to look at Painter again.

"So, how's Robin? She get to keep her baby?"

Painter looked down at me. "You'll understand if I don't think it's wise to tell you anything about that."

"Yeah, I guess I have to," I said, and grinned. He'd finally gotten it through his head that you don't give guys like us anything, not unless you have to. "So why'd you come back?"

"I'm a doctor. I'll be leaving soon. Now, listen--" He went on to give me a bunch of detailed instructions on how to care for our wounds, stuff he probably knew I'd mostly ignore anyway. He'd been gone for a few hours before I finally saw movement from the other bed.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck."

"Hurts like hell, doesn't it?"

"Where--" he started to sit up, then thought better of it.

"The whorehouse. Painter came back and patched us up. He's gone now, didn't even leave us any decent scrip. Just some over-the-counter shit. I figure, first thing we do, we knock over a pharmacy."

"Sounds good to me," he said, and then he was out again.

I slept for a while, too, and when I woke up, he was propped up in bed.

"Hey."

"We gotta get out of here."

I sat up. "Yeah, I know. Can you walk?"

"Hell, no."

"That's what I figured. Go ahead and sleep a while longer. We'll think of something."

He slept. I pondered our problem. He couldn't walk, I couldn't carry him, hell, I wasn't sure I could even drive. It was like that damn puzzle I saw in some magazine at a blood bank somewhere. The one where you're supposed to get the fox, the chicken, and the grain to the other side of the river, but you can only take one thing at a time and you can't leave the chicken alone with the grain or the fox alone with the chicken or, boom, you've got one less thing to carry across the river. To do it, you basically have to focus more on the process than the goal. Be willing to take two steps forward and then one step back.

So how do you get two crippled foxes into a van and out of Dodge before the bagman comes back to make sure they're dead?

"He aimed low." His voice sounded stronger, and he was awake enough to read me now.

"You think he let us live?"

"There were dead guys all over with guns that still had bullets."

He was right about that. If he'd wanted to finish us off, he could've. So he'd let us live, for now. That didn't mean I wanted to lie around waiting for him to change his mind and come back to finish the job. I decided to start focusing on the process.

"I'll go get the van, move it into the courtyard. That's a start." I got out of the room as fast as I could. Yeah, I was pretending I'd never said what I'd said, trying to keep as far away from the topic as possible. I felt weird about how those had almost been my last words and all. Jealous of Robin or not, it didn't mean he wanted us to be a real thing, and I didn't even know if I wanted that. Either way, he was sure to have something to say about the subject sooner or later. I just preferred it be later.

Walking hurt, and we'd parked a ways out so we wouldn't be seen. I wasn't winning any races, but I made it. I got into the van and just sat there in the driver's seat to rest for a while before I started it up. I'd found a sturdy stick on the way, and I used that to push the gas pedal so I could rest my legs. It wasn't great, but it worked, and I pulled up into the courtyard, still with no clue how I'd get him downstairs and into the van. Truth is, I hadn't been thinking about that much. I'd mostly been thinking about the stuff we'd done together--not the jobs or the traveling, but the sex. It was the one thing that had made the pain of walking bearable, thinking about his hands on me. His mouth on me. His dick in me.

So I didn't have an answer to how to get him downstairs, but it turned out not to matter, because he'd somehow done it himself while I'd been gone. He sort of dragged himself over, through the area where our blood still stained the dust, and I helped him in as best as I could.

He settled in in the back. I steered with one hand and used the stick to push the pedals and just drove. I didn't know where the hell we were going, but I figured that meant nobody else would, either. We didn't really talk, and I didn't stop until we were almost out of gas.

The clerk at the motel gave me a funny look. I couldn't blame him, really. My clothes were filthy and bloody and I was all bandaged up. But a little extra cash took care of his suspicions. It also kept him from asking for a name. The kind of life we lead, names are dangerous things to have. Even an alias leaves a trail, so we've taught ourselves not to use them, even in private.

I dragged myself and our stuff inside and left him to take his time. My back was to the door when he came in, but I heard it close and I knew. We were stuck. Just the two of us, a safe distance away, with nowhere to go. There would be no way to avoid it. I heard him ease himself onto the bed. That reminded me of how much it still hurt to stand, so I moved to the other bed to lie down.

"Over here," he said. "In case they come for us."

"Thought you said he let us live." I wasn't happy about it, but he was right. I grabbed the pillows from the other bed and lay down next to him.

"He did, back there, but he'll still come for us someday."

I couldn't handle it anymore. He was pushing me again, I was sure of it. Getting me to share the bed, waiting to see how long it'd take me to bring it up. "Fuck it. Let's just do this now and get it over with."

"Do what?" I could hear him grinning.

"You know goddamn well what. Talk."

"About what?"

"Damn you, stop fucking with me. You know--"

And then the breath was being crushed out of me and I was in even more pain because he'd rolled himself on top of me. I struggled a little and cursed at him a lot. Then he grabbed hold of my chin.

"Sleep," he said, his eyes looking down into mine, reading me. Felt like he was looking at things inside me that I didn't even know. Then he kissed me. It was that simple. One kiss that turned me completely inside out, and then he rolled back onto his side of the bed. "Just sleep." It was that simple, and the buzz that kiss left me with turned out to be enough of a painkiller that I did.

I dreamed that we were on the road. A fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain were in the back seat. The fox looked at me and asked, "How did we get here?"

I woke up to the smell of food. I'd been starving, I realized, but hadn't even noticed until now. Probably because of the pain. He'd sweet-talked the maid into going out to pick up some supplies and a hot meal for us. Me, I was just surprised there was a maid in a fleabag like this, but he had her believing that we were just two good American boys who'd been badly beaten in an attempted robbery.

We ate in silence. I still wasn't sure how to act. Once we were done, I checked out our wounds. Painter'd done a good job, but we were still in bad shape. All the moving around we'd been doing probably hadn't helped.

"I figure we should hole up here for a couple more days, then move on. Switch cars as soon as we can. Get out of the area, keep a low profile for a while."

"Yeah." He'd probably had the same plan in mind, but one of us had had to say it. Then he said the same thing he always says in a situation like that. "Cards?"

"Yeah." I got the deck of cards and pulled a chair over next to the bed. He propped himself up, and we started to play. I won a few hands for a change. I figured it was because his arm was too injured for him to cheat. So I decided to get even, to get some of my own back. It was my deal, it was the fifth or sixth hand, and I asked, "So, what're we playing for?"

"Doesn't matter. You looking to up the ante?" And there was that goddamn wink again.

"Sure, why not?" I was trying to be casual about it. Like it was his idea and no big deal. Casual only lasted so long. I had a good hand. Figured I had it made. Then he showed me his cards. He had that look on his face, the one he gets when he knows he's pissed me off and he's just kicking back to enjoy the show.

"You fucking smug motherfucker, you were playing possum before. You cheated, you shit!" He'd never pulled that trick before, losing on purpose to give me false confidence. He'd been planning this from the very first hand. I was half-amazed, half-furious. Furious won, and I launched myself at him.

I wasn't just pissed about how he'd played me this time, either. This whole thing had been his idea from the start. He'd been the one to jerk me off first. It had all been his idea, and I'd been the one feeling weird about it. There was all that and the pain and the being stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. There was the fact that, despite our expectations, I'd actually had my hands on the money and lost it. On top of all that, now we were going to have to always be looking over our shoulders for the bagman. All that put together made me see red.

So I threw myself at him and we wrestled around on the bed. We were both too banged up to do much damage, but I hit him a couple of times and he hit me back. Finally, we rolled clean off the bed. I landed on my back on the floor and he landed on me. I was still getting over the fall when he kissed me.

Damned if that didn't make me forget all about the fall and the pain. But I was still mad. "Get off me, you bastard. You've had your fun. Game over."

"No way," he said, and kissed me again.

After that kiss, I started trying to shove him off, but he wouldn't budge. "It's all a fucking joke to you, isn't it? You started this whole thing. You touched me first. You even got to fuck me. You've had your fun, you've had your laughs, and now it's done. I'm on to you and it's through. No more fucking with me like that."

"Is that what you think this is about?"

"Yeah."

"You're wrong." He pushed up a little and slid down my body. I tried to sit up, but he pressed me down hard. Then he put his hand on my arm, over the bandage that covered the place where the glass had gone in. He squeezed hard once to tell me not to fight him. I kicked his thigh where he'd been shot to tell him that if I did stop struggling it was because I wanted to, not because he told me to. Then he opened up the button of my pants with his teeth and I forgot about everything else. By the time he'd pulled down my zipper, also with his teeth, I was panting and sweating and perfectly willing to just sit back and let him convince me that he wasn't just messing with my head.

He yanked my pants down roughly and licked slowly along the length of my cock. One more lick, then he went to town on me. That lasted for a while, and it was good. It was incredible. I was lost in it, whimpering, when he suddenly stopped. My gut tightened up. Was this it? The moment when he'd back off and admit that it had been one of our games, that he hadn't meant it?

He waited for me to open my eyes and lift my head enough to see his face before he spoke. "We're both hurt too bad to fuck now. But when we're not, you can do me if you want to."

My dick jerked in response. He grinned at me and went back to work blowing me. It had been good before, and now, with the image of what was to come suddenly clear in my mind, it was even better. I got it, I really understood, and I came, calling out his name in spite of myself. He slid back up and kissed me. I'd kissed chicks before after they'd blown me, tasted my own come in their mouths, but it had never been something that got me hot. That time, it almost made me hard all over again.

"We cool?"

I laughed. "Yeah, man. We're cool. Beyond cool." I pushed up against him with my hips. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me. I was into it, but I just hurt too damn much."

I wasn't going to take that answer. "Let me try?"

He rolled off me and I shifted around until I found a comfortable enough position where I could stroke him. Then I set about proving him wrong.

I figure it's safer sleeping two to a bed anyway. And as we lay there, side by side on the ground, my hand on his dick, I thought about how it all made perfect sense, really. This just makes us even more self-sustaining. We've always been about living day to day, planning only in the short term. More about the process than any particular goal. That's the whole idea of living off the path, really. That the shit most people care about--houses, cars, jobs, promotions--none of that is important. That the natural order is bullshit. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do or who you do it to. It doesn't matter how or when you die or how many bullets you take along the way. All that matters is that you enjoy the ride.

The End

Tiriel

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