𝖙𝖜𝖔

.

Most of the Sticks was the colour of char. Kinda where they got their name from, not the colour, but what turned a whole district to a forest grave.

During the riots, Corps got sick of tryna root out the revolters the humane way and bombed the whole sector out instead. What didn't crumble – and engineering had got that way that a lot didn't crumble – what didn't crumble, burned.

Simple as when you talked back on it, but at the time, it'd been a strung out nightmare. Jack could still kinda feel the heat eating at his skin. While the fires raged, he'd stood up on top of his building two blocks out, praying they'd keep the firefighters marching the sector lines. That they'd care to keep the fire to the places they had a permit to burn.

Now the Sticks were nothin' but a three-dee labyrinth of struts and skeletons, strung through by a treetop city made of the cannibalised wreckage. All in nothin' but firechar grey and graffiti paint that'd never catch bright. See, Wolves stalked the gutter streets, sleek violet prowlers with bionic claws that clacked against the asphalt. Their spiral eyes honed on colour, so the illegal rats in the Sticks stuck to monochrome murk to save getting torn apart.

Meant amongst that ruin, Red stuck out like a rose.

Jack straightened from his slouch against the wire rail. The bridge swung, like all others did. Steel tendon and iron skin batted about by the wind high above the city streets. Red came from higher yet, where Mammie nestled in her sky nest, dedicated the one plantation in the whole sticks to coca and the money it raked in.

The bridge wavered as Jack swaggered down it, steel girders clanging beneath his boots. Neon splashed the alley Red slipped down, lanterns dangling outside huts of corrugated iron, all held together by bolts and prayers. There'd be crowds in an hour, but clever Red had caught the place in a lull.

Jack licked the back of his teeth and jogged to catch up, stepping in beside the kid in the deserted street.

Got a grin out of Red soon as his dark eyes slid up to Jack. Red grinned ugly, but for Jack, a little glint warmed his eyes right up. Or at least Jack liked to think.

"Business at Grandma's?" Jack asked.

"Literally the only time I wear this stupid hoodie. Don't you have better things to do?"

Grinning, a sharpened baring of his teeth, Jack pulled a fag from behind his ear and set it between his lips. "Nothing at all, sweetheart. Nice day for a walk is all. Whatcha got in that bag?"

Red's eyes tracked over the deserted alley, flicking between the dangling ramen sign and the grizzled old man smoking outside a holo store. Neons bathed his features in a corona of purple and violent green. He shifted the backpack higher, fingers tightening around the straps. "Mammie sent me, so exactly what you're thinking."

Sure would be. Bricks made of fine white powder. Exactly what Jack was itching for right now, little bugs crawling under his skin that no amount of whiskey swigs would chase out. But this time he got the itch twice over, one nestling between his lungs and twisting in his gut. The one with Red's bared teeth the dream behind his eyes.

Drawing a deep breath of the thick, rust-tainted air, Jack tipped his head back, letting the heat and flaking iron drift over his face. "Nice day out, huh? Fancy a walk? I know a good place for a drink."

Red glanced up at Jack, a long, lingering sort of look with his full lip drawn in between his teeth. Kinda look that drove Jack crazy, and drove him even crazier when Red just shook his head and looked away, kicking at a can lying in the street. "Grandma's doesn't like being kept waiting."

Jack gritted his teeth, damn near biting through the filter on his cigarette. Same damn conversation they always had, day after day when Jack caught Red weaving down from the rafters. Grandma, Grandma, Grandma. And when Red came out afterwards, slipping crimson into the navy sunset, his face was always set too wrought with violence and hopelessness for Jack to get the balls to ask if he were alright.

"What're you doing here anyway?" Red asked, jerking his chin at the forest of ruin rising around them. "Like no one's in the Sticks for no reason. Why are you here?

Jack sure hadn't realised how much he liked the way Red's rough-edged rasp lifted around a question, the way it almost cracked at the end. Maybe it was just 'cause for once, Red was talking to him, not just responding.

"I—" Jack shrugged, scratching the back of his head as he took a draw on his cigarette, holding it between his lips while he talked around it, pulling down nicotine instead of air. "Guess I've just been driftin' closer and closer my whole life, y'know. One screw up after another 'til I can't go further down but dead. Suits me here anyway. I'm the right kinda fucked up. How about you?"

Red dipped out the alley and down a set of rickety steps, and steel clanged as Jack matched his jog down them. Figured he wouldn't get an answer 'til Red turned 'round at the bottom, framed beneath a dusky arch. Debris-shrouded rafters lent against a tall iron sheet, and the splintered bases stuck out like teeth. The gloom beneath there near swallowed Red whole, all but that crimson splash around his head.

"Same reason," Red croaked, crossing his arms tight over his chest and huddling into them. Jack had never seen a grin with more empty than there was between those chapped lips. "You know how they say the cream always comes to the top? I guess we're the scum that settles to the bottom no matter how well you try to stir it in."

That neon did more than light up his fox eyes. The bruise splashed beneath Red's eye burst there lurid against the sallow sink of his skin. It hadn't been there when Jack caught Red on the way to Grandma's yesterday, but it sure had been when he crept back out.

"Hey, sweetheart." Some lump lodged in Jack's throat cast his voice to a croak. Took another long drag on his fag like it'd chase it down. "Y'know Grandma wants some booze pickin' up, right? He sent me out to catch you."

Red's eyes narrowed, and he edged back a half-step, clutching the straps of his backpack. "Mammie always tells me to go straight there."

"Yeah, well, y'know—" Jack scuffed his boot and shrugged, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Guy likes what he likes, huh? Better not show up without, 'cause I sure ain't putting my ass on the line pretending I didn't tell ya, sweetheart."

When Red kept scowling, slinkin' back into the shadows like a little cowering fox, Jack eased back onto his heels and shrugged all nonchalant, nodding his head back up the stairs. "Head down the alley and it'll take you the other way to Grandma's. Real nice booze shop down the end, the one with the flowers and bottles hanging out front."

Red broke with a sigh, a little softness in his dark eyes as he skulked past Jack. "Thanks."

The smell of him as he brushed past was all dry and bitter. Like breakfast – coffee and too many cigarettes. His plated jacket knocked against Jack's arm, boots ringing on steel. First step back up the stairs, an aching swell swallowed Jack's chest.

"Hey!"

Jack twisted 'round, eyes catching Red's as he turned back on the first stair. Even a coupla metres away, the smog threatened to swallow him whole.

Jack tapped beneath his eye. "You ask for that?"

Red's fingers flew up, a flinch as they knocked the bruise, and his face broke into thunder. "I didn't fucking ask for any of this." Spat the words straight out his fox snarl. "Mammie and Grandma says, Casper fucking does."

Once more, as Red broke to go up the stairs, Jack called out to him, and spun back with snapping venom. Kinda jarred weirdly against the way Jack's chest was all hot air balloons and cat fur.

"You're still real gorgeous, y'know," Jack told him, voice all rough around the edges. Red's face went soft and slack. "That"—he brushed his fingers around his neck—"suits you."

Red spun away, that backpack stuffed up with snow banging against his coat and the last splash of day making a crimson sun of his hood. Cute lil' ass when he walked too. Jack leant back on his heel, dragging down a drift of smoke watching the twitch of Red's hips 'til he was long out of sight, headin' up for whiskey and wine.

Talkin' of whiskey...

The burn hardly tasted like nothing anymore, but even this hot-cold petrol made Jack wince. Got worse and worse these days, the cheap stuff. Jack wrinkled his nose and took another swig from the bottle, shaking the ends down his throat before tossing it down the gulley.

One.

Two.

Shattering glass rang between the silent buildings and right on cue, them snarling whines of electric burst beneath it. Snappin' jaws going for the blood that'd pulse pleasure through their electric veins. Jack pulled a pistol out his waistband and fired the clip at the violet glow in the murk.

Androids still whimper when they die, whining screams as their brain circuits fry.

Laughing, Jack tipped his head back to the drifting ash and ran his tongue across his lips.

Hunting time.