“What about your job?”

“It doesn’t matter. I can get another one somewhere else.” Eugene couldn’t put in words the creeping dread he felt, that he was teetering on the brink of something vast and dark, and any day he could tip over the edge and that would be the end. “Nothing matters.”

Johnny touched his hand and Eugene’s concentration faltered. Johnny’s fingers were long and slender, like he was born to make music rather than rob banks. They looked like they should be put to work coaxing the blues from an old guitar, but instead they were calloused from their ready handling of guns and knives. Eugene pictured them curled around a trigger and he shivered. He pictured them doing other things, warm and wet and secret, and he burned hot.

Johnny seemed like he had been about to say something else, but his expression changed as Eugene met his eyes. Neither moved their hand away.

“Come upstairs with me?” Johnny asked.

Their hands fit together like they were meant to touch, and when Eugene made no resistance, Johnny smiled and tugged him to his feet. He led Eugene inside, pitch black without a lamp, and Eugene followed him up the stairs, his heart trembling in his throat. They passed the other bedrooms first, doors all closed—the hush of nighttime voices behind one as Todd and Nancy prepared for bed, Angelique’s catlike tread from the other as she hummed along to the tune on the crackling radio. Eugene’s bedroom door stood open and beckoning. They paused on the threshold and Johnny turned to him, his gaze searching. He looked less like the devil then, his eyes wide and earnest, but Milton wrote that Lucifer knew how to cry.

“Say no,” Johnny whispered.

Eugene pushed aside all thoughts of the devil, squeezed Johnny’s fingers, and met his lips. They were as soft as he’d imagined, and Johnny sighed and closed his eyes when Eugene pressed against him, his hands coming up to hold Eugene by the shoulders.

Eugene drew back and wet his lips, self-conscious after the fact. They stood in the darkened hallway, not even inside the privacy of his bedroom, but everyone else in the house was shut away. Eugene let go and leaned against the doorway, his intrinsic caution fleeing in a dizzying rush. Catching him by the elbow, Johnny steered him to the bed. The mattress dipped under their combined weight.

“All this time I tried to be so careful," Eugene said quietly, removing his glasses to put them on the bedside table. "But you knew from the moment you saw me, didn't you? What I am."

Johnny drew his thumb over the crest of Eugene’s cheek and Eugene turned into it, eyes closed, desperate for the touch. His stolen moments with Benoit were always rushed, both of them fearful of being noticed, and his travels to New Orleans had no room for quiet intimacy.

“You’ve always seen me, too,” Johnny agreed. His gaze fell to Eugene's mouth.