Finale


It was a rage like nothing most people ever knew. A fire burned behind his ribcage, the source of the flames writhing and slithering somewhere deep in his gut. The heat licked along his lungs, but each gasp of oxygen only fed it. He quivered when he raged, as if a thin mortal form couldn't hope to hold such emotion for long.

Tristan Rucker had been this way for as long as he could remember.

In school, the early years, behavior reports had gone home on a daily basis. Smiley faces were ignored. Neutral faces were questioned. Frownie faces were met with real frowns, questions, parental efforts that fell away.

It owned him.

Before he learned not to cry, he cursed it. The way he wasn't in control. The way it brought pain and shame. The way it clung like the smell of smoke long after the campfire has burned down. If someone made him angry, they could hurt him. Control him.

Before long, he realized that the anger /was/ him. The parents, teachers, anyone who told him differently were lying. The shame vanished. The rage did not.

/Someone/ had tattled. Someone had /bitched and moaned/. Someone was going to pay.

Someone was Cameron Adamski. He knew. He knew...because the rage knew. His brain was not in charge of this analysis.

xxx

Cameron had, and had not. Those words he'd spoken to his family went no further. That indiscretion would have been enough to summon Tristan's wrath, but it wasn't the one that had gotten the boy in trouble. A neighbor had seen the drama play out in front of her house. She didn't care enough to open the door and shout when the attack was taking place, possibly drawing all those hoodlum eyes to her windows and car, but when she knew those little bastards were still out and about, she'd placed a call to Tristan's stepmother.

xxx

Tristan's stepmother, though not furious, knew she had to draw a line before the parents of the other boy told the school. It was unfortunate that her neighbor hadn't know the kid's name, or she would have been able to manage some damage control. Make some apologies for show.

The first thing she did was tell Tristan that /there would be measures taken, young man/. And that he was grounded. That way he'd have something to tell the principal is the issue was brought up. Thank /God/ for the holidays. Maybe it would blow over in that time.

xxx

All too soon, it was time to get onstage. It was a small blessing that his bangs covered the stitches on his forehead, and the long-sleeved dress shirt covered every other mark but a single angry red bruise between his right thumb and index finger. It only made tiny a bit harder, but Cam was certain his family would notice...Hannibal, at least.

Having no real experience with middle school or schools or any kind, Cam had always assumed his was 'normal'. Today, now, as the activity of the concert swirled around him, he realized that it was probably more along the lines of a /rich/ kid's school. Each boy was dressed in a suit, each girl in a dress that went past her knees, if not lower. The curtains were a heavy red velvet, and the conductor had dropped his army mannerisms for a night and wore a suit vest patterned with snowmen.

So normal, as if nothing had happened the day before.

When those curtains drew back, Cam was filled with a sudden fear that none of the faces in the audience would be his. His eyes searched, then found James' blond hair, the moment of panic gone. Next to James sat Jacob, looking thin but worlds better than he had days ago. On the other side was Will, then Hannibal, Nate, and Abby on the end snapping endless pictures with her phone that would likely end up on instagram.

Hashtag little bro

Hashtag christmas concert

Hashtag cute

A weak smile was all he could manage, glad the mouthpiece of his saxophone partially obscured his face.

The baton lifted. A sharp inhale from all around him, a single kind smile from Grace on his left.

They played.

The first song was a mash-up of traditional Christmas cartoons, Frosty the snowman and the like. Cam had only recently been acquainted with most of them. He'd watched them with the wide eyes of a much younger child, curled up on Nate's lap. It was a sadder Christmas this year, in the way a first year not believing in Santa Claus always is. Maybe he'd been past his time, but Cam had clung to the belief long enough to have one perfect year last year. And he still had his family this year. That had to be forefront in his mind, through a cover of a Trans-Siberian Orchastra song and a more unusual African Bell Carol. While Tristan Rucker was being eaten up by rage, Cam was full of confused emotions, all tied up together. His back hurt when it pressed against the chair. Hannibal watched the stage with the same rapt attention (or, at least, a heroic feigning of) that he paid the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra, and Nate's eyes never left him. Happiness was making a desperate bid for dominance. It did not want to be knocked down and pushed around. It wanted to float above all this. Cameron was the one truly innocent light in a family of cannibals.

Hugs and kisses won him over at the end, when his saxophone was safely stowed and it was time to go home. Even James and Nate seemed to be trying damn hard to get along.

There was a family dinner after that, and laughter, and conversation even from those who didn't often speak. The holidays were here.

Outside a cold moon shone over the driveway and car, harsh and unloving light. The warmth was in the house. The happiness not for everyone.

As often happened, Nate extended a hand to Cam after the Christmas cookies Abby and James had made were gone and the kitchen clean, wanting to lead him upstairs for a bedtime most teenagers would balk at. Cam reached took his hand, then let it slip from his grasp.

“My saxophone....I left it in the car.”

One quick foray out into the cold, unloving night. Just the patter of feet, a car door opening and shutting, and he could turn back to the warmth the window promised still waited within. But the window, the door, everything was obscured a moment before two hands grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back against the car.

Five words had been lost in Tristan Rucker's angry rants. I'm going to kill him. Just five words in five thousand. Words that most anyone would pick up on. Even among a multitude of threats. The problem was, Tristan had meant every single word.

“I'm going to kill you while you sleep!” He'd hissed at his stepmother, hands balled tight into fists. “Both of you! I'm going to run away. Burn this place fucking down....and no one can stop me!”

That was just part of a thousand threats. Locked in his room, he'd punched the bed, howling.

I'm going to kill him.

The window was again in Cam's sight, double images that merged and melted together in the darkness before the hands again found him, wrapping around his throat before any sort of cry for help could escape.

Faggot. Cocksucker. Just words, graffiti on the desks, things that Tristan hissed as he was choking the life out of the youngest Lecter. Since coming to school, Cam had learned not to hear them.

He was drifting.

His mind was cut loose, but his body fought. His heels dug into the ground, kicked gravel, searching for purchase, for a leg to kick, bouncing off the corner of his saxophone case, which had fallen in the struggle. He clawed at the fingers around his neck, and when Tristan's finger slipped, he bit down and didn't let go.

There was no knowing whether the noise Tristan made was loud enough to get anyone's attention in the house. All Cam heard was ringing in his ears, spots of color swam in his vision, and suddenly the pressure on his neck was free. He gasped in a breath, all the while clawing forward, catching hold of a shirt or jacket and rolling around as the primal instinct of schoolyard scuffles awoke. One roll that ended with Tristan over him allowed him one hellish snapshot of the bloodied face leering at him. Tristan had started the damage to himself in his earlier fit of rage, which was probably the only reason Cam was still alive.

For now. The leering demon that had him pinned panted, even now, “Gonna fucking kill you.” With handfuls of Cam's shirt in his hands, he slammed him against the ground. Agony burst across each pellet wound on his back, but Cam's cry rasped through his throat soundless. When his head hit the ground, stars swam in his vision. A night sky between him and his nightmare. If only.

Pain melted away with fear. Cam thrashed, horrified with the stark reality that he might die in this mockery of a lover's embrace. A knee, one desperate jerk, and that thought saved him. The grip loosened and he scrambled out from under Tristan, panting, the other boy's blood trickling down his chin, trying to find his feet and crying another soundless scream because one shot to the nuts wasn't enough, Tristan was already trying to stand, on his knees, face twisted in pain. The door was too far away. His voice was gone. The happy dinner might as well be a thousand miles away.

He could try. He could try to run.

The saxophone case lay between him and Tristan, like a small coffin. It was a terrible sense of de ja vue to the books he'd dropped the day before. This instrument was far more important. His pride and joy. There was time...time to grab it...

Cam leaned over and Tristan's hand shot out, a wild grab for the smaller boy's hair. He felt the fingers slide through almost as gently as a lover's caress and managed a hoarse scream. If his hair had been longer, like James of Jacob, he'd have stood no chance. Even now...even now—

“Your hair would get you /killed/.” James said, in another life or what seemed like it, with one arm wrapped around Jacob's waist while the other playing with the newly dyed red tips of his lover's hair. Weeks, months ago, those two had let Cam watch The Hunger Games with them. That moment flashed across his memory like a shooting star, in a moment of bright panic, and he brought the saxophone case down over Tristan's head with a sharp crack.

The moment when tribute becomes victor, the man onscreen had said. Words Cam didn't really understand as he watched one of the boys onscreen beat the other to death with a brick. His shoulders heaved, and he clutched the saxophone case to his chest. He'd forgotten to run, remembering only to breathe. Tristan lay sprawled out, unmoving. Having never seen a horror movie, Cam didn't expect his adversary to spring back to life. Instead he crouched down with almost stupid boldness, and felt his chest.

Nothing.

Touched his cheek.

Nothing.

In a moment of bravery that was actually contemplated, he reached down and wrapped a hand around Tristan's mouth.

Nothing.

His legs almost gave out in that moment. It took great effort to take the path back to the door, step by step, and to open the door. Warmth flooded out, but it didn't seem to touch him. Cam set the saxophone case down just within the door and spoke, though there was no sound. Eyes caught his, and he /forced/ himself to speak now.

“I think I killed him.”

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