BOYS OF SUBURBIA [boy x boy] [Wattys 2018]

✗ EIGHT ✗

Niko couldn't believe how close he was to allowing Sebastian knew what a freak he was.

A fire-obsessed, pyromaniac-fetish, drug addict and delinquent freak.

Niko thought he would be able to sneak in some pleasurable sessions with burning some wood in the trees, to watch the branches become fodder into the flames, giving way into the dominating embers. It was sick and Niko knew it was sick, but it didn't stop him from doing it- just like his stupid cigarettes and fucking drugs and the shitty alcohol. One day, all of it would just terminate his pathetic existence on this filthy, rotting Earth, and he wondered if anybody would care.

Rae will care, a voice told him when he watched one of the squirrels he caught lit up in flames. It was already dead- it wasn't burned alive (Niko wasn't that much of a sadist, as if his list of titles needed to get any longer)- but there was something so beautiful about the way how the skin peeled off, how the fur deteriorate into pebbles of ashes, leaving fresh crisp burned flesh in its wake to turn into black dust. It was not beautiful in a typical way, not beautiful like flowers in spring. It was beautiful like the shroud over the face of a mourner, like how violence could be beautiful- similar to the sharks finishing a fresh prey, the dominant straddling over the weak, like the triumphant thrill of a girl beneath him- not even just a girl, just some innocent creature submitting after a long-winded chase. It was the sick kind of beautiful, like cigarette smoke billowing into halos, or fresh bruises from a mouth marring a delicate white neck.

Fucking beautiful.

Maybe no one will care, thought Niko as a shudder ran through his spine and his fucking dick grew hard with the forbidden salacious thoughts because you're bloody sick in the head.

Then he heard branches snap and quickly tossed a teepee of sticks he'd been idly building into the flames to hide the dead animal and rose into a stand. That was when he saw Sebastian, beautiful, shy, pale and blue-eyed, trailing into the clearing. Sebastian's blue eyes, lost and hopeless, found Niko's abyssal pools as Niko coughed out his name in total surprise, "Sebastian?"

The boy was painfully awkward and painfully shy, as expected, reacting to the drugs with surprise when he discovered the bags of pills. The drugs Niko had with him was shamelessly out on display, which Niko didn't even bother to hide, because Niko knew Sebastian would never, ever rat him out. Niko was a good reader of characters and Sebastian wasn't the type to rat. At least, Niko hoped he wasn't.

Niko told Sebastian he dealt and offered him if he wanted a hit. Niko knew his boss would be alright with it- after all, Niko had snagged a couple bags of pills and weed from his boss before and it had always gone undetected. As long as Niko did his job, delivered the set amount of money his bone expected and then received his profit, Niko knew he was fine.

"Why not?" Sebastian seated himself closer to Niko, beside him, by the fire, unaware of the dead animal underneath the pile of sticks and leaves in the fire. Niko could feel Sebastian's body warmth radiating and now that he was closer, Niko could see patches of red on Sebastian's cheeks and the remains of moist wetness in his eyes.

Niko didn't ask why.

"Want to do a line?" By now, Niko was an expert on how to perform it, how to pour the powder into a perfectly symmetrical even line and inhale it with a rolled-up, crumpled ten dollar bill he found in the pockets of his hoodie. He was trained how to love the high he would get from it, to love how his visions deform and disfigure into bursts of colour and to love watching the way how Niko's world crumbling little by little around him into specks of specks of dust and ashes- like the remnants of Niko's charred soul, the chaos of his spectacularly fucked-up life. Niko loved the high so much that he sank his teeth into it, grinned through it because it was the only way to enjoy what it feels when the world doesn't always love you. This was what it feels like when you're still cloudy-eyed and dreaming of ideas. This was the fall.

And it would be Sebastian's too- with just a simple word, a verification, a poisonous leap into the unknown, a yes to something so wrong it was right.

"Sure."

SO LIKE, THAT WAS A CREEPY CHAPTER. NIKO LIKES BURNING INNOCENT LITTLE ANIMALS. WHOOPS. CROSSED THAT LINE.

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