dressed up like dynamite [ pax&amos ]

p a x t o n .

"Walking out into the dark
Cutting out a different path
Led by a beating heart"

Amos could do a job without him and Pax knew it on an outer level plain of existence but internally, as soon as he'd seen that day's roster, he'd died a little bit inside from dread. It wasn't that Amos was useless, it was just that his capabilities were more suited to being Pax' lookout rather than actually doing a job himself. Bad luck seemed to follow that kid like he was a goddamn voodoo magnet. It wasn't that he didn't trust Amos, Pax just didn't tust anyone else.

Nah he also didn't trust Amos, not when it came to staying out of trouble.

In the many years that he'd known him, there hadn't been a job where he wasn't saving his ass. But he couldn't go with Amos that morning, the gang leaders were having an important meeting and Pax had been told to go too. It was a good opportunity, probably the one he'd been waiting so long for. A little bit of recognition for his efforts within the gang would be fucking nice and Amos had given him that stupid smirk and said he'd be fine, so there he was, sitting at a stupid big table in a room that was dimly lit for no understandable reason. It wasn't like they didn't pay the electric bill.

His leg was jumping up and down beneath the table, and he crossed his arms to keep from drumming his fingers on the hardwood. It was stupid anyway, everyone knew that Amos ran with Pax and Pax ran with Amos and that's how it was. For them to send Amos out with a different partner was odd, especially with Stonks. If it weren't for the fact that it was just a simple four-block delivery, Pax wouldn't even be in that room anymore. You'd have to be a clown to fuck up a four-block delivery.

Pax checked his watch. He figured he could be out soon if they just sped shit up.

"...which brings us to you Pax, we want you on this."

Shit. Why hadn't he been listening? It should have been easy to, not like it was a defining moment in his career or anything right? Pax looked between Cecelia and Tank, trying to glean at least a little bit of information from their stony expressions but he was coming up dry. Stupid Amos was always distracting him even when he wasn't there. Whatever he'd just go with it and hope for more information later. "Yeah, course, I'm ready," he said, confidence rolling off of him.

It was the right answer, they looked pleased with him and Tank was hopefully about to shed some more light when the door burst open and there stood Stock, panting and Amos-less. He looked terrified and Paxton felt his stomach drop. He stood up quick, eyes on Stock's face. Kid looked like he was either going to pass out or hurl, maybe both, in the next two seconds.

He fucking knew it.

"They... they got him, they got Amos, he's probably dead bro, I-" and Stocks couldn't finish because someone was grabbing his shirt at his collar and pulling him up to an actual reasonable height. Paxton stared into his little rat face and felt the weight of his body on the end of his arm but his brain was maybe still at the table, watching it all unfold. The benefit of being reactive was that even when his head was still computing, his body was off doing its own plan.

"You better hope not, because if he is, you're next," he said, voice calm. There was that deadliness, that cold little flame within him that had put him where he now was within the gang standings. Still a teenager in so many ways, Paxton was different from the rest. He'd traded something long ago, a deal with a demon. He'd given him a home within all his hollow bits and it had slowly drowned out the rest.

He was kind of scary sometimes and he knew it but he didn't know how to stop it. He didn't know if he wanted to.

Pax dropped Stocks and ran out into the night, gun tucked safely into the back of his pants. He already knew the route they were on, Pax had been running shit for so long that he knew all of them by heart. Each had three or four variants and he was pretty sure about which on Amos would go for. If he ever listened to Pax at all, he was on Six A. He hears a dog barking in the distance, the sound of a door shutting and the faded sound of club music coming from a couple of streets down.

Fuck, Nine was such a shit hole.

Adrenaline pumped through his body and he was so focused on searching that he almost missed it, Amos' discarded jacket at the mouth of an alley. It lay there twisted in the dirt and Pax scooped it up quickly, shaking it out. The package wasn't in it and he held it up to the light of the street lamps, eyes moving it too fast. He almost didn't notice the blood speckling the front of it. Someone had gotten it bad.

Just because it was his jacket it didn't mean it was Amos' though. Pax's hand shook and he dropped the jacket again. He should have just told them to send someone else with Stocks tonight. Had it been a test for him? They knew that he always went everywhere with Amos, they fucking knew it and those assholes had sent him on purpose. Pax shook with anger, panic making his chest tight.

The cold flame inside him faltered, unable to breathe with the heavy heat of Paxton's worry smothering it. He knew it was dumb to care so much about his partner like that but Amos was more than just someone to make runs with, he was Paxton's best friend. If he lost him because of Stock's cowardice he wouldn't know what to do with himself.

Paxton's eyes looked up the street and then down the alley again, trying to figure out which way Amos would go. If he had taken the street he would have been back already.

He took off down the alley, keeping an eye out for any signs of a struggle but Nine was so dirty that it was hard to say. It opens out onto another street and this one's busier, people roaming up and down it in packs but there's no sign of a struggle anywhere. Paxton cursed and pushed through a small group, entering the mouth of another alley. He looked down and saw blood littering the mouth, rocks with spots of if it all over them and his heart lurched. It wasn't a lot of blood but it was enough.

But this one was different, it had an end and a turn. Pax entered slowly, one hand on his gun. He wasn't a fool, it was hard to catch a kid like him off-guard. The alley was quiet but Pax didn't trust it. He didn't trust anyone, never had.

The voice called out full of false bravado and Pax took his hand off his gun, relief flooding him so quickly that he suddenly realized just how fucking terrified he'd been that Stocks had been telling the truth. He stepped into the dark of the back of the alley, knowing for a fact that Amos had no knife on him. It was too easy to take it off of him in a fight, way too much of a liability for the kid.

"It's me, it's Pax," he said, hands reaching out, feeling for him as his eyes slowly adjusted "Where the fuck are you, it's dark as hell."

And he didn't mean for his words to come out so quick, so panicked, he didn't mean to look like a goddamn fool every time Amos was in trouble and come running but there just some things he couldn't help.

p a x t o n .

"Walking out into the dark
Cutting out a different path
Led by a beating heart"

He couldn't tell by the sound of his voice whether or not he was bleeding out or not but suddenly he regretted it. Last week when they'd been arguing about something, maybe just talking and it'd been three in the morning and Pax had just needed at least two seconds of sleep so he'd gone to the couch and then he'd layed there awake until five, he'd regretted it then too.

Amos couldn't help being Amos same as how he couldn't help being Pax and for some reason that made them clash.

Still, he didn't know how to feel. He hadn't let himself feel anything at all, as soon as Stock's face had appeared in that door it was like something had switched off in Pax' head and he'd let his body do the work. That's how it always was since he was little. Even when his dad hadn't come home one night, Pax hadn't even cried because that shit was weak, he couldn't do it in front of the other gang members. Pax was better at running away from those types of things anyway, the ones that begged him to admit to feeling anything at all.

Like Amos at three in the morning, covers only half on because it was too hot so the window was open and moonlight pushed itself across the bed and then the floorboards of the apartment, shining too bright. Sleeping shirtless and moonlight lighting up drops of sweat to make it look like jewels adorning skin.

He reached out in the darkness, not realizing just how far Amos still was from him. "I don't give a fuck about the goods," Pax said, words flowing off his lips before he could cull unnecessary ones. His breathing was still too quick, his speech racing to keep up. Had his hands ever shaken that badly?

A flickering street lamp behind him splashed light too quickly across them in the dark of the alley and it only made seeing harder, just as his eyes were starting to adjust, the light would flicker again. Amos sounded too calm, too steady in comparison to himself and all Pax knew was that he wasn't ready to lose someone again, especially not Amos.

He didn't want to go back to that eleven-year-old Pax, too stubborn to admit how achingly lonely he was in his father's big, old and empty house. That Pax was sad and angry all the time and was afraid to sleep at night. He'd always hated it, the way the house creaked around him even when he knew that he was the only one there. At least when the floorboards creaked now he knew it was just Amos getting up for a glass of water.

If Amos wasn't there to welcome him home, then what was the point in even having one.

"Stocks said you were fucking dead, bro," he said, trying to tame the fear in his voice back. He reached out, hands scrambling for purchase too fast. He felt something wet and Amos hissed in pain from his touch and that cold feeling came back again, spreading down to his fingertips.

"Amos?" he whispered, hands searching his body, palms flat against his size and dancing slowly up his chest, searching for the wound he knew he'd just felt. Amos was the same height as him. First, it'd been Pax who'd grown taller, first to hit puberty and then Amos had followed him for once, levelling out equally. "Amos, you're hurt?" he asked.

All of that ice melted just for him.

Paxton's hands found his neck, then moved up to cup his face. He pressed his forehead against his, breath coming in long shuddering bits as he tried to calm himself. Everyone, he'd lost everyone to Nine's alleyways. This wasn't Paxton, couldn't be him in this moment, that shuddering mess was a little bitch, someone who actually had someone to lose.

He'd never wanted that to be him, never wanted to carry that same shit his dad had his whole life for his mom. Maybe what he felt for Amos wasn't quite like that, but it was something. His hand was on the back of Amos' neck, keeping his forehead pressed against his. He knew it was too long, the moment was lasting far too long, but his brain was still catching up, still a couple of streets back, still figuring out that Amos wasn't dead.

His other hand moved down Amos' stomach, still searching, then up, down his arm to his hand. Scraped up, his palm was scraped up. That was the wet Pax had felt, the hiss of pain from Amos. Just some bloody fucking scraped hands.

"Thank fuck," he breathed, and he pulled his head back, something bursting within him, a strange euphoria that wasn't quite his but was all at once and he knew that Amos wasn't keeping up by his expression but Paxton's brain had only hit the mouth of the alley and his lips were on Amos', pressing hard, his hands cupping his face, holding him close without a second thought.

p a x t o n .

"Walking out into the dark
Cutting out a different path
Led by a beating heart"

For a long moment, he felt nothing, just a void within him. It wasn't bad, just quiet, like a field of long grass at twilight in the breezeless summer, breath held for too long. Maybe that was called serenity. Pax knew that he had just stepped over a line that he wasn't meant to have crossed and he wished he could feel anything in that moment but a soft sort of peace.

It was like a six in the morning, when Amos was still fast asleep, arm slung across the bed and Pax was drinking coffee, sat beside him on the window sill. He'd smoke a cigarette, just once every so often, and watch Nine wake up slow. He liked mornings like those because they always came after a night of talking so long he couldn't remember when he'd fallen asleep.

He pulled back slowly and it was quiet too long when it shouldn't have been. Amos always had something to say but he wasn't saying anything at all and Pax had never been scared enough to run before but he could feel his feet itching to help him turn tail and book it back down the alley. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd just fucked up everything between them but what they had between them was everything to Paxton and he couldn't lose that; not for one mistake.

Even if Paxton was gay, they couldn't be together, not like that, they just couldn't.

Amos hadn't even kissed him back.

He stepped away from Amos, first nodding and then when he remembered it was dark he said, "Yeah, they're gonna think we both died or something." His hands still shook, and he didn't know how to calm them so he just shoved them into his pockets. He walked back into the light but couldn't even look at Amos, afraid of what he might see. He needed him to come home with him, he didn't want to wake up alone in the morning.

The peaceful feeling was gone, replaced with a confusing sort of heat building in the pit of his stomach and the back of his throat. It filled up his insides, hot magma crawling through his veins. His cheeks felt hot and he didn't know what to call it. He just wished he could press a button and put it all back until it was ten minutes ago.

Pax had never been afraid of anything in his short life, except losing Amos. He was his best friend, of course, he'd be afraid of losing him and you weren't supposed to kiss your best fucking friend. So maybe they could just pretend it never happened and things could go back to normal and it wouldn't be weird because it had always been Pax and Amos, Amos and Pax.

He didn't want to be just Pax again.

"Still gonna beat the shit out of Stocks for leaving you like that, Bro," he said, tone casual, "He's lucky you aren't hurt." Pax looked both ways when they got back to the mouth of the alley and the coast looked clear. There were still people milling about but no one suspicious-looking. He gestured for Amos to stick close by just in case.

p a x t o n .

"Walking out into the dark
Cutting out a different path
Led by a beating heart"

"Yeah."

It wasn't a lot of words for a notorious chatterbox. Paxton wasn't used to being the one that had to supply the conversation, it'd always been Amos talking his ear off, usually needing to prompt Paxton for a response. Now he understood just how bad that felt, that deafening wall of silence coming from behind him. He couldn't tell what Amos was thinking at all and a whole new different kind of panic was wrapping its talons slowly around the very core of him.

It was slow, fingers falling one by one and tightening silently around his throat. Paxton felt the urge to run again grabbing hold but since when had Amos become someone to run from? Maybe about two minutes ago when he had kissed him.

Paxton thought about that a bit more as they walked, trying to figure out precisely where that decision had come from. Now that it had happened, he couldn't recall ever having made it. It'd just been natural, like a raindrop hitting a puddle and bouncing, Paxton's lips had found Amos', as if it were meant to be all along and had been determined for a very long time.

That sounded like some sort of poetic bullshit that Amos would spout off.

So why wasn't he then.

And why did Paxton always have to be so rough around the edges and the one who always ruined things between them? The truth was, Amos was smart, handsome, didn't really owe the gang shit. Where Pax literally owed the gang his life, Amos was free to walk and yet he had stayed with Paxton for so many years. It'd been unspoken, a quiet thing between them that they both danced around so well again and again.

The overthinking was becoming unbearable and Paxton shut his eyes, breathing out slowly into the cool night. He knew that he should acknowledge it for both of their sakes, that the kiss was going to sit between them, immovable and in the way of absolutely everything but a boy like Paxton couldn't always be brave. A boy like Pax had emotions that he didn't even know how to explain to himself let alone someone else.

He picked up Amos' jacket from where he'd left it in the alley and dusted it off before finally turning to look at his best friend. "This is going to need a cleaning," he said. They'd have to drop it off at headquarters before heading home so that a tech could get the blood out. It just meant an extra ten minutes of walking in awkward silence. Pax was half-tempted to tell Amos to just head back first but after one scare already that night, he wasn't ready to let the other boy out of his sight again.

"I dunno, should we just drop it off tomorrow?"

Did I fuck up everything when I kissed you?