Work Text:
Pairing: Implied Warren/Tucker
Thanks to Emony for the beta.
Murderous Tendencies
by Anna
Grit stuck in his teeth from the road and he was tired, exhausted, a great draining sense of emptiness, his essence, vitality, his life being sucked away. His hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white. He forced his eyes to stay open. He could see Sunnydale across the flatness of the desert, could see the twinkling lights of the oasis. He laughed quietly, under his breath. Sunnydale was no oasis.
The night was silent, breathless. The moon was gaudily bright. Tucker could see the ribbon road stretch glistening all the way to the town. Deep in his belly he could feel a fear creeping back inside, a hatred, a bitter acid, remembering Sunnydale. He had never wanted to come home again.
He was just so tired. There was nothing else to do.
The car was an old one. He had hot wired it in a matter of seconds back in some tiny crossroad town in New Mexico. Wherever he dumped the bike, he couldn't remember. No one would look for this old thing. The bike was worth more. He just couldn't make it, he had known then and knew now, he would never have made it through the desert on the bike. He would have fallen, and lain there for days until he died. He knew it as surely as he knew the town in front of him was home.
Home. He'd drive straight there, the old wooden shell that had served as a house. He felt sick, a twisted, acid nausea in his gut. He'd drive straight there and if he found his parents maybe he'd kill them and dump them down in the basement. Cover them with cement in the morning and no one would ever be the wiser. Who'd miss Sunnydale trash?
Maybe they were gone, moved on. Maybe some other poor fuckers lived in the house now, and Tucker would kill them instead. Didn't matter. He was going to sleep there tonight, and he was going to sleep alone. Welcome home, son.
Son. there was another one. He wouldn't kill his brother. He never killed pathetic creatures, not unless they really pissed him off. He barely remembered Andrew now.
He eased the car into the parking space outside the old shack. It looked like a shack. Home. Tucker had forgotten how fucking small it was. It was black, too, dark, so unless they were in bed, maybe Tucker wouldn't have to kill tonight. He opened the old car door as quietly as he could, and took a knife from the glove compartment. The hilt fit snugly in his hand.
The house stank of silence and long hours baking in the sun. Floorboards, bare and dusty, creaked underfoot as Tucker crept slowly, one step after another, knife by his side but ready and gleaming in random shafts of moonlight. He could smell emptiness but did not trust his own fatigued senses. Could be some squatter here, he reasoned. Some drunk fuck taking up space that didn't belong to him. Could be anyone in the next room. So he crept and felt his way around the house, peering through doorways, through milky moonlight, searching, smelling, sweeping.
The house was empty. From basement to attic, not another soul. Tucker stood in the living room, caught, for a moment, a still silhouette in the moonlight, and sighed. Relief washed through him, fatigue in its wake. He felt his own eyes close as he collapsed into the old couch. Dust billowed around him as he fell, but he didn't care. He was already asleep. The knife hit the floor with a hollow thud.
*
Warren found him there two days later. Sunlight, now, streamed through the dust stuck in a thick film to the window. Warren stood, his shadow stretched out behind him, staring at the sleeping form. Black t-shirt, threads pulled and frayed from the hem. Jeans, stains on them like engine oil, viscous and thick. He could see a hand print on the thigh, maybe Tucker's hand, wiping off oil, maybe someone else's. He didn't know.
He looked at the knife on the ground. It was a hunting knife, not much good, Warren knew, for anything but cleaning animals and killing. He didn't see any animals around. He watched Tucker sleep and wondered what to do. Leave him there? Something twisted under his sternum at the thought. No. Wake him up? Gently, gently do you wake up a homicidal man. Murderous tendencies, had Tucker. Warren remembered the dogs, remembered Tucker's eager descriptions of his plans for the prom. Sitting in the computer lab at Dutton reading emails full of determination, hatred, bitterness disguised as anticipation. Warren remembered hanging from every word.
Then nothing. No word on how it went, no email full of victory, jubilation, death, torn prom dresses soaked in blood. Nothing. Warren waited. Nothing. Sent an email. Where are you, man, what happened? Nothing. He came home to Sunnydale that summer and Tucker was gone. Just gone. No one knew anything but that he was gone.
That was the last he had heard of Tucker Wells. Now, standing still in the dirty sunshine, Warren looked down through the glistening dust motes and saw that same face, older now, leaner, harder, hungrier. Muscles strung out over bone. Dreamless sleep, regular, easy breath. Eyeballs unmoving under the lids. Warren had no idea how long he'd been there, lying like this, asleep, alone.
Suddenly it seemed claustrophobic, unmoving and deathlike.
"Tucker," he tried to say, but his voice caught in his throat. He coughed gently. "Tucker," he said again, and this time it worked, he heard the word clearly and roundly in the room.
Tucker remained asleep. Warren bent down beside him, down on his hunkers, staring more closely now at skin weathered and tanned, crinkles around the eyes from squinting, smiling, Warren couldn't tell which. A face that had spent long hours in the sun, maybe frowning, maybe laughing. Who knew? Pictures came into Warren's head like the recollections of a movie, scenes flicking by just slow enough for him to understand. Tucker out on roads through great seas of corn, Tucker in dusty towns of the bible belt, Tucker spitting grit from his mouth and laughing, though Warren couldn't see with whom or at whom. All the while that knife was in his hand or strapped to his side.
Warren shook his head. It was all fancy, anyway. He had no idea where Tucker had been or what he had been doing.
"Tucker," he said again, his hand now hovering over Tucker's shoulder, about to touch, about to make contact, when Tucker's eyes sprang open and Warren recoiled inwardly once more at the fierce blackness of the pupils, the dark molasses of the irises. He took his hand away as if hiding it.
"Warren," said Tucker, his voice shrouded in remnant scraps of sleep. He took in a deep breath and let it out noisily, sending dust motes dancing in sunlit eddies. "How'd you know I was here?" Tucker's eyes darted this way and that, not from fear, thought Warren, but from habit.
"I didn't," he said, backing off a little now, leaving space. Tucker didn't seem to want to move, though. He sighed again, throwing an arm behind his head and blinking sleep away.
"But you're here, in my house." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah," nodded Warren. "There was some stuff I had to get, some of Andrew's. stuff." His voice trailed away. He sat on the ground, on the floorboards.
Tucker's eyes finished their search and came to rest on Warren. "Andrew." Again, not a question. "My brother." Warren nodded. Tucker frowned slightly. "I hadn't forgotten him. I was thinking of him. when I was coming here."
Warren watched him, waiting. Tucker spoke so softly, so strangely, Warren wasn't quite sure when he had finished. But he seemed to have exhausted his conversation on the subject of Andrew.
"When did you come here?" asked Warren, looking away from those black eyes, now, pretending that a loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt was worthy of examination.
"I don't know," shrugged Tucker. "Before I fell asleep. I looked around, but there was no one here."
Again, that seemed to drain him of the topic. Warren waited for more, but none was forthcoming.
"Your folks moved away," said Warren, in case Tucker cared. "Except Andrew. He's still here." He saw Tucker's eyes darting around again, tension suddenly in the muscles. "Not here, not right here," he corrected. "Here in Sunnydale. We live a few blocks away."
Tucker's face remained impassive, until a smile began to play with the side of his mouth. "We?" he repeated. "I always knew he had a thing for you, Warren, but you and my little brother.?" He laughed and Warren saw the way his skin creased up into those same wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Laughter lines, then. Laughter and sunlight. He was suddenly struck with a fierce jealousy.
"It's not like that," said Warren, attempting to quell this new surge of envy. He felt thrown back three years, flung back to high school, envious of Tucker Wells and his ideas, his serpentine mind, the black fire flashing in his eyes. "Where have you been?" he asked, attempting not to choke on the past.
"I been everywhere," said Tucker, his eyes glazing over. "I've been all over. Three years, man, you cover a lot of road in that time."
Warren stared, unmoved. "I know," he said.
Tucker watched him, adjusting the way he lay, turning to look at Warren face on from the couch. "You?" he said. "What have you been doing, here in Sunnydale?"
Warren shrugged, still playing, unconsciously, with the thread on his sleeve. "Nothing," he said. "There's nothing to do here."
"That's why I got out," said Tucker.
"Why are you back?" The question was out of Warren's mouth before he thought about it and he regretted it instantly, the second he saw Tucker's face become once again blank, like those wrinkles and creases around his eyes served no purpose at all.
"To get what's mine," was all he said, and Warren had no idea what he could possibly mean.
The words hung menacingly in the air and Warren's brain ran through an inventory of anything in Sunnydale that Tucker could call his. This house. Its contents. His brother, Andrew. And, in some purely instinctive, basic, deeply illogical way, Warren himself.
He wondered which of these things Tucker was referring to. Then he thought, perhaps he wants them all.
Tucker stirred and pushed himself up from the couch, dust once more filling the air from the ancient fabric. "Show me where you live," he said, seemingly unaware of the new electricity running over Warren's skin, the new excitement, anticipation, paranoia. "Show me where my brother lives."
"Jonathan, too," managed Warren through a constricted throat. He coughed, pretending it was the dust, and stood up from the floor.
Tucker frowned. "Do I know Jonathan?"
"Small guy. Hobbit. Annoying."
Tucker nodded, standing up. "Warren," he said, that smile insinuating itself anew on Tucker's face. "What the fuck are you doing?"
Warren shrugged. "Doesn't matter," he said. "Are you hungry? We have food."
"Yeah, last night's pizza and warm coke, I'm guessing."
"Shit, you got me." Warren scratched his head, half smiling. "You've got a car. We can swing by the mall."
"Great, I'm back in civilisation now." Tucker grinned, hitting Warren playfully on the arm. Warren felt it like a thousand secret words, hidden meanings, running up his skin into his pounding blood.
"Yeah," was all he said. "Welcome home."
Tucker's eyes flashed something indescribable, incomprehensible. "Thanks," he said, before picking up the knife. "It's great to be back."
Warren followed him out the door. He held the knife loosely, not as a weapon but as a tool, something he was simply carrying from one place to another.
It still glinted evilly in the sunlight. There were many stories on that blade, thought Warren. And in his head he saw flashes again, another mini-movie: Tucker's hand gripping that hilt, the blade buried in someone's belly; the knife at a man's throat, Tucker's voice hissing and animal in his ear, threatening and promising as one. Tucker's hand holding down a girl, blonde, on some stairs, smashing.
No, that wasn't Tucker.
He sat in the passenger seat while Tucker leaned over him and put the knife away in the glove compartment. "The mall," he said, starting the engine.
Warren just nodded. The sun was too fucking bright and glinted off the hood into his eyes. "Yeah," he said, squinting. His eyes had no wrinkles around them, no laughter lines and no tan.
Tucker pulled out, humming something. "I hate this fucking place, man," he said, almost to himself. "But it's good to be back." And he smiled broadly at the world, like he owned it or soon would.
Warren felt sick. "It's good to have you here again," he said. Tucker glanced over and grinned. He kept humming the same tune as he drove, something Warren didn't recognise.
It's over, thought Warren, staring blindly out the open window. He's back, and I'm through. He can do this so much better than me.
end