when i came i was a stranger

“You know Kate was still my sister, right. I know how siblings are supposed to act. You guys aren’t even trying to hide it.”

Richie doesn’t say anything. His joint’s still smoldering, sending threads of sweet smoke spilling up into his face, and when he blinks it away his eyes flash culebra-yellow. Their little illegal handoff has become like a ritual for them, the two dead guys in the house — smoke up when you’re cold-blooded and get really lazy and sluggish. Makes sense. Scott is wearing one of Richie’s massive shirts and smoking Richie’s weed and it’s the next best thing to sharing.

“Is that why you guys are such assholes? So nobody finds out? I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and call me crazy but he doesn’t look at you like you’re his brother.”

Richie makes a face. “Then you’re crazy. You said call me crazy, so I’m calling you crazy.”

And if anybody called Richie crazy Seth would be jumping down their throat for it in a hot second — he’s stabler now than he was when he was alive and mortal, and there’s less of that Tokyo Drift shit. Richie is content to settle in and watch these shitty-looking John Carpenter movies from the 70s and smoke a J with Scott. Scott is content to get high, scribble some chords in a stained composition notebook, and watch Richie — watch his face, watch what’s behind his eyes, watch his whole bearing.

“Like sometimes he’ll touch your back, and you’ll stay there in place for a minute and let him do it. Or you say shit to each other. People don’t just say that stuff. You keep ditching your girlfriend for him.”

“I didn’t ditch her. She ditched me. There’s a lot of factors in play. Like loyalty.” But he knows, Richie knows, Richie knows he’s right. Eyes see eyes, whatever the fuck that means, it’s one of those Richie-isms that sounds either really stupid or really deep.

“That doesn’t matter. Neither of you guys has a fucking life. You know? You care more about him than you care about anybody.”

Richie’s eyes are marble-hard, vague. His shoulders stiffen, and he sinks back against the upholstery. “It’s not like that. You have a sister. You don’t get it.”

Have. Had. They don’t talk about Kate much, but it’s enough to confirm they’re both still cut up inside.

Like shit he doesn’t get it. There are things two people don’t do — there’s macho he-man gangster stuff and then there’s the stuff Scott’s seen them do. All the arguing they do, and when they think he’s not watching, when they’re doing the whole happy-to-be-alive routine, even back at the border in front of their fucking hostages, pawing and bickering — or in Houston, on the way back, when they thought they were alone.

Seeing them together was like a slippery glimpse of something forbidden, and it scorches his eyes like a chemical flash even now, in memory — Seth’s guilty hand rubbing the side of Richie’s neck, Richie catching Seth’s bottom lip in his teeth and sticking his big hand past Seth’s waistband to grab a handful, two overlapping bodies obscured by the door swinging shut.

“Bullshit it’s not like that. You guys are all over each other.” Scott grips the arm of the couch, trying not to twitch with wiry culebra energy. “You’re always touching each other.”

“It’s complicated,” Richie says lamely.

Richie’s hand is on his wrist, and Scott levers himself up — culebra-strong, fast, careless. They’re close now; Richie’s so much bigger than he is and more solid, but the look on his face is gentle confusion, disarming dopiness it’s hard to imagine on the other side of a gun. He’s not smoldering with creepy banked heat — not any more. He’s not kill-crazy, he’s just a dipshit with a couple screws loose. Scott draws his legs up and rises in his seat.

They’re both a couple of fuckups. They’re both dead guys, and they’re both monsters under the skin.

The wait is long and slow, exquisite. Scott’s tense and buzzed, burning with the memory of the memory of Seth’s hands on Richie’s throat, Richie breathing out in a hard shudder. He kind of wants to fuck him up just for that — for the way he let his brother touch him, when he suddenly wasn’t a kill-crazy skull-cracking glacier of a dude any more but urgent and receptive. Mess up his hair, maybe, rumple the collar of his ugly shirt. Scott leans over and sucks a kiss from his mouth, the bed of his fangs prickling.

Richie can’t brush him off now, the way Scott’s already seen in his mind, the way he’s already been shut down in a hundred little ways when all he’s wanted is to get a little closer. Richie can’t say you’re like a brother to me or it’s like having a kid brother when he’s actually fucking his brother. He can’t even say Scott’s too young — because how long have they been doing this for? When did it start?

The VCR is thrumming away, but it sounds really far-away. Richie makes a fist in his shirtfront, and Scott stiffens, bracing for a fight or some other macho gesture, but instead he just eases him back against the couch, breaking the kiss without snarling in disgust or popping his fangs. Something went between the two of them in that moment and now it’s Richie who knows too much.

Scott rubs his mouth. Don’t let the lacrosse team find out about this one, guys, and don’t tell dad. It’s going to take a whole lot of explaining. Richie shifts back in his seat, and holds up a hand, like: no harm, no foul.

Richie rubs his forearm gingerly; his big hand is soft, but not warm. “You’re a good kid, Scott, but you’re in over your head on this one. Maybe in a couple decades. But until then, don’t try and pull this this shit on Seth. He won’t take it well.”

Like he’s going to go running around telling everybody. Seth isn’t the problem — if he wants Seth it’s a footnote, not an undercurrent he can’t get away from, not some sick undertow. A culebra thing — love among the cold-blooded.

Scott clears his throat, laughing a hoarse laugh. “I’m just saying — next time, why not me?”

Down here in a back room with the sticky-labeled video tapes and the Gecko family detritus — maybe the two of them sneak off here to fuck sometimes, los hermanos Gecko boning down on the creaking leather couch. Their secret’s safe with him.