[Columbine] Shotgun

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.” - Kurt Vonnegut

It's dark, and the numbers of the flip clock on Eric's dashboard read 11:42. Dylan was supposed to have been home almost an hour ago, but he didn't find himself caring about the consequences much. He figured he'd better get all his living done with, because there wasn't going to be time later, and right now, living feels like sitting in Eric's Honda Prelude, somewhere in the mess of rock and scrub grass of Littleton's outskirts.

But they aren't talking. Words feel like twenty-ton weights, and Eric is staring through the windshield as if he'd rather be anywhere else. It's Nothing, and Dylan doesn't like Nothing, because it means the return of poison thoughts wrapping their tendrils around his mind, obscuring the truth of the matter: Eric makes Dylan feel like Something.

In the end, he's afraid of it. Death, which seems so romantic and beautiful when it's a far-off thought, in the future of someone you can pretend isn't you, isn't. It isn't anything at all. Eternal Nothing, and Dylan is marching toward his greatest fear with lead in his boots and blood in his lungs, and he realizes he can't leave unless Eric knows that all of this isn't nothing to him, because Eric is everything, and it's been like that for so long that the words to describe it are lost, like ancient texts crumbled to dust. 

"Reb," Dylan says, his body taking matters into its own hands. Eric looks at him, the moonlight catching on his face just right, highlighting his sharp jawline and angular cheekbones. God, how could any of that be eaten by shotgun shells?

He doesn't have any more words that wouldn't take a lifetime to say. Isn't that this, though? A lifetime, sitting here in this tiny car that makes him slouch because otherwise his head is cramped up against the roof, and the only reason he doesn't mind is because he's sitting next to the only person who's ever been able to make his heart leap. 

Eric is gazing at him, and that's always been the worst part: those hazel eyes that see through Dylan's armor as easily as peeking through sheer lace. Dylan wishes he could do the same to Eric, but the other had always been a hurricane with no eye; a live wire sparking at the ends.

"V," Eric says, but it isn't a question. They can't look away from each other, and Dylan doesn't want to, anyway. He's pretty sure he could look at Eric forever.

A cold gust of wind finds its way through the cracks of the car. Dylan shivers involuntarily, but the shivering shakes something loose inside him. He doesn't realize he's crying until he feels the water on his hands. Those are shaking too, because all of his pent-up sadness is leaking out of him no matter how hard he tries to plug the hole. Eric is still staring, and Dylan imagines that Eric regrets making such monumental plans with someone so weak. 

Angry, he gets out of the card and slams the door behind him. They'd parked a short distance from a rocky cliff, and it's this that Dylan walks up to now, trying to convince himself to take the extra step. But he doesn't. He stands there, looking down at the black ground he isn't even sure exists. What is existing when you stand on the precipice?

He clenches his fists in frustration, but one of them doesn't close completely because something else is already there: Eric's hand. Dylan hadn't even heard him get out, but even though he lies to himself about a lot of things, he can't lie about this: he's glad Eric is here. 

"What do you think about," Eric asks after several minutes of silence, "when you look at the sky at night, and there's no clouds, and you can see all the stars?" 

This was a question so unlike anything Eric had ever asked that it took several heartbeats for it to even sink in. Dylan cast a sideways glance at his friend, and saw that he was, after all, looking up at the sky. Dylan copies him, and finds it to be scattered with pinpricks of light that fill him with a consuming, melancholic longing. About what? Dylan can't answer that; he isn't sure anyone can.

Still, he considers Eric's question, because he can tell that for all the Hurricane Boy's usual bravado and posturing, this meant something to him. 

He remembered Eric asking the question once before, at the end of an essay he'd had to read out to the class in middle school. He had been laughed at by the other students after. Dylan hadn't joined in because he thought he understood the real question: what do you think about when the universe is laid bare before you? And the first thought that crossed his mind was Eric. Reb. Shotguns and the acrid smell of gunpowder. The victorious whoop after their first successful pipe bomb, tinged with fear. The unrepentant force of his personality that the world can't understand, but Dylan can.

"You."

Author's Note

An AU Columbine fic. Just two kids figuring out their feelings. Wanted to experiment with train-of-thought sentences.