THREE YEARS AGO
AN ALTERNATE AND AN APPLE
Sometimes, when Friday isn't looking, Jean likes to pretend he travels through alternate universes, and that each part of his life is, in fact, not his life, but rather a version of it instead.
"Don't you ever miss Marseille?" Friday asked him once, when they only knew each other for a year but trusted each other enough to let one person make dinner. It was pasta tonight.
"No," Jean said. Sometimes.
"Oh?" Like what?
"It was boring." Like it itself.
"We should go." You want to go back?
"One day." No.
Night fell and Jean goes to his first alternate universe in Marseilles, where his French was better and he had a different last name and the 'K' stood for something boring. Where he knew nothing about Friday or a thousand and four ways to cut up a man. Where his father's butcher shop sold good ribeye.
"C'est trop beau pour être vrai," Alternate Jean says.
"Rien de réel n'est joli," Alternate Jean's mother says, and laughs.
Or:
Jean wrapped a towel around his neck. Friday hung off the edge of the bed, humming to himself.
"Stop that," Jean snapped. "You'll get a headache. Or have a seizure."
Friday grabbed his arm and hauled him next to him. "I want a honeymoon in Berlin."
Jean shook his head. "No honeymoon anywhere. We can't travel."
"Be kind."
"Be realistic."
Friday rolled over onto his stomach, cheek resting on his thigh. His green eye pulsed with forest leaves and detriments, entropic and infatuated.
"Then take me to Boston," he said. "I like Boston. I miss Boston."
"Let me sleep," Jean sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
Friday situated himself upright. "Sleep is for saints. Don't sleep," he said, and kissed Jean's neck, hand snaking between his legs, thumb beneath his shorts.
He closed his eyes.
"Is this your version of 'goodnight'?" Alternate Jean hisses when Friday begins to lean down.
"That makes me sound nice," Alternate Friday laughs, and swallows him down.
Jean figured he rather liked that universe, though.
They were at their third house of their time together when Suji told them.
"Someone is asking if you do hitman jobs." She draped her figure over the couch arm, kinky hair sprawled around her face. "What do you want me to say?"
Friday cleaned another stain off the front toe of his pink boots. It was his fourth pair by then.
He considered her statement for a few seconds before glancing at Jean, who was perched on the stool and flicking a lighter on and off with idle interest. Not much proved fascinating when you were twenty nine and living in the middle of shit-bit nowhere. Even if the scenery was nice.
Jean made most of the business calls as Friday was too unreliable and knew it. Their eyes on him made him wonder what his Alternate Jean would do, and if it was smart or not.
"Yes," Alternate Jean says.
"You sure?" Alternate Suji says. "That's risky. You'll have to go out to the city more."
"Good. We never go out," Alternate Friday says. "I haven't real Chipotle in years."
"Table your takeout," Alternate Suji replies, and grabs her computer to showcase the new client. "The first one is at a party. And they're rich. Sorry."
"Not rich people."
"You're rich people." Alternate Jean flicked the lighter off for the last time, and looks out the window to wonder why the forest he hates is suddenly terrible to leave. "How much?"
"2.1."
"Thousand?"
"Million."
"He wants someone in a high place dead."
Alternate Friday smiles, and puts his newly cleaned shoe away to run cool fingertips over Alternate Jean's arms.
"Even better," he says.
Alternate Jean does not like this universe as it happens, and for once in his life, much rather likes the endings.
"Do you ever wish we never killed anyone in the first place?"
Friday rested on his chest, their bodies wrapped in white sheets and each other. Their bedroom of their third house had been long expanded, wallpaper traded for yellow paint, their closet exchanged for a separate walk-in, their bed a mile long and drowned in silk-wrapped cotton. The wall of windows, paneled in sections, were doorways to welcome the outside world at any given time.
Not that people like him cared about the world. Or, your world, at least.
His world said, "Maybe. Sometimes. I like to think it was inevitable."
"Inevitable?"
"Unavoidable. Set in stone. Inexorable. Predestined."
"Why?"
Alternate Friday curls his face into the crook of Alternate Jean's neck. He likely smells like shower soap and pine trees, but Alternate Friday seems to like it when he smiles into his skin and opens his mouth wide on purpose despite his whisper, just to let his teeth graze.
"Don't you think we met a little too well?" he asks. "That we work a little too perfectly?"
Alternate Jean pushes his hand into heat and tender skin. The night watches like a ghost in the corner, like it knows something Alternate Jean doesn't and probably never will until it has already happened.
The happening is happening, however. And Jean might think over it, but Alternate Jean is preoccupied.
"Nothing's perfect," he murmurs.
"Don't lie," Alternate Friday says. "You always lie and never win."
Alternate Jean chases that down with his mouth, and this universe is the best of all.
Perfect, if you will.
For the skeptical questioners out there, I'll clear up the logistical part to keep you satiated.
To be politically correct: they were murderers, market merchants, and madmen.
The murderer part was actually quite rare, and was confined to one: their intro-to-killing victim, two: the occasional old frenemy. But they were well-versed in the trenches of the markets, and were born to be madmen.
(Well, that's harsh, so maybe just shaped to be. Although, it's a toss-up as to whether they'd even consider it an insult.)
The markets were easy, especially with Suji finding their people and buyers, and Q keeping the riskier details under lock. Jean liked to complain about the clean-up and the frequent injuries he had to suffer from the endeavors to even get their people in the first place, but it was all still worth the six digit income.
Friday never got his hands too dirty, at least at the actual scene. He preferred the romance of killing, whereas Jean took skill in the practicality. A hellish match, but they were nothing if not efficient.
The plot followed a similar series of points:
"Five ten?" Friday repeated off his phone. "A bit tall, no?"
"I'm five eleven."
"You're five ten and a half." He draped his legs over the dashboard of the car, white trousers ruffling under the blasting air conditioner. "It's too hot for a job. You couldn't take me for ice cream?"
"Put your feet down," Jean snapped, rifling through the center console. "You're acting like you do much anyway."
Friday pushed his sunglasses down, peering up at him past the amber lenses with disagreeing eyes. "Don't be so egomaniacal."
Jean pushed his glasses back up, and retrieved a slim box from the console. He leaned back and pulled up his mask. "Just go and don't get killed on the way back."
The door slammed shut.
Followed by:
Friday sat at a bar, drinking alone, ringless, forlorn, and waiting.
Suji cleaning the glasses ahead said, "Look sadder."
"Shut up," he muttered. "I am sad."
"You get the easy part."
"I get the gross part. Well, emotionally speaking."
Suji rolled her eyes, filling up a fresh beer for a shouting patron across the counter.
(They couldn't frequent the same areas too often for obvious reasons, you see, so they had to space out their jobs throughout the better half of southern California and make their stops within the courses of four months each. Jean liked night clubs and bars as the chance of them being remembered or even seen through any kind of security cameras were quite slim. But he likely also enjoyed them because Friday had to do most of the work. Emotionally.
Friday rather enjoyed a good alley or the lake house, but things usually got dirty and therefore Jean avoided it. It gave Friday a chance to sit back however, which is probably why Jean avoided it.
The real point here is that Friday is spoiled, and worse, is aware of such. But anyway.)
Their man was Isaiah Campez, the aforementioned five ten in height, with too much hair in his beard and not enough on his head, a bad apartment bought with a bad job, and a penchant for back-alley gambling with drunken minors.
Friday was no minor—although twenty six was most definitely not old, as all twenty six year olds will desperately argue—but he kept a good skincare routine and ate all his vegetables so in the right lighting with enough liquor, he could pass just below the bar. Not that Isaiah had much of an IQ to help him think otherwise.
He stirred the whiskey in a circle, silently cursing Jean. He always cursed Jean during these things, though. Jean was easy to curse like that.
"Seat taken?"
The hook sunk tight. Friday turned his head to greet the man, and reeled him in.
"Now it is," he said.
Then onto:
Isaiah's shreds of decorum lasted for two whiskeys before Friday was dragging him out the back.
"You're too pretty to be out so late," he slurred, draping himself further over Friday's shoulders. "I can take you back safe. All safe n' sound."
Friday wrinkled his nose at the wind of beer. "Thanks, so kind." Isaiah hiccuped a giggle and pulled Friday flush into his side. It made him want a knife.
"I'm over here," he sighed, heading for Jean's car, parked beneath a sea of canopy green trees and bombarded out of sight with flashing billboards and rivers of prismatic traffic. He tilted his head at the door for Jean to open it.
Isaiah slipped his hand down past Friday's open shirt, the silk pushing away for his fingers to roam. He leaned down to whisper, "I'd fuck you here if I could, trust me."
Friday grimaced. It was a toss-up whether it was the content or the scent of the words that did it. Jean watched them, leaning against the hood of the car, dark eyes blank in the blare of the night and the heat of Isaiah's breath at Friday's jaw.
"Don't be impatient," Friday whispered. "Where's the fun in fast?"
Jean popped open the door. Friday crawled in with Isaiah at his back, hands now bored with his chest and stomach, and slowly becoming more interested in his hips and thighs.
Jean closed his door and locked the surrounding ones. Isaiah was still too far gone to really notice that he wasn't in a passenger's seat, or that Friday wasn't driving, or that the windows were a tad too tinted to be considered normal.
"Is there fun in a car?" Isaiah muttered, and fiddled with the buttons of Friday's pants. "'Cause I'm flexible."
Friday hummed. "I'm sure." He swung his leg over Isaiah's, fingers rucking his hair—or what little there was—as he let Isaiah have his fun with his neck. "Don't you know I'm underage?"
"Even better. Nice and new," he said, and laughed like it was funny. "Don't you feel good being with someone more experienced anyway?"
Ugh.
Friday shrugged and gave him a starlit smile, sharp like a pearl knife. His hand glided behind him, the other pressing fingers on Isaiah's waiting tongue. "Don't you feel stupid getting into the wrong car?"
Isaiah took a minute to understand that, and once he did, frowned. He tried to take Friday's fingers from his mouth, gaze turning towards the driver's seat.
He choked, "What—"
Friday sunk the needle right into his neck, and let the scream drown out with it.
Resulting in:
Jean tore off the medical mask, relegating it to the trash, as he lugged the bag behind him. Friday followed, dusting off his hands on his pants.
"He ruined my shirt," he sighed, presenting the stain of alcohol at the lower corner. "You owe me a new shirt."
Jean slung the man over his shoulder. He said, "Help me get him down."
(Every murderer needs a basement. It's common law. And simply more sanitary, according to Friday.)
The man was likely already dead, but checking upstairs was a no-go. So Friday followed him downstairs where their sins lay, still mourning his shirt.
When Jean and him placed the bag on the table, gloves traded and sleeves rolled up high, he held his hand out for the scalpel. Friday flipped it once, before sliding it into his palm.
Jean said, "Go take a shower. You reek."
Friday shrugged, brushing past him to return to the stairs. Like he'd pass up the opportunity to miss the butchering. He was wearing white pants, after all.
"Cut off his dick," Friday called. "In memoriam."
He disappeared without any comments to that, the night greeting him with a liquidized acceptance, the forest around them silent.
He shut the door when the sound of the first cut began.
Ending with:
Jean sat down on the foot of the bed. Friday was eating apple slices, newly washed and smelling like lavender, reading glasses perched on his nose as he likely read a manifesto about the end of the world, or some other pretentious, unnecessary literature the world mistakenly let slip by its censoring hands. Which was half-fitting, because Friday was pretentious and definitely one to slip by the world's hands, but he was quite necessary.
At least to Jean.
"What are you selling off him?" he asked, tossing the book aside. The only light illuminating them cascaded off the golden lamp, ricocheting against the blue moon.
"Definitely not his liver. Dégoûtant," he scoffed. "Kidney and lungs."
"Oh, we should eat out, then," Friday said.
Jean raised a brow, and sighed. He tapped his fingers against the sheets, trying to spell out his words without having to speak them aloud, writing them out in barely-there sounds only Friday could hear.
"Sell his hands, too," Friday quipped.
"Can't," Jean said. "I cut them off."
"Literally or hopefully?"
"Literally."
"Oh? Hacking isn't your specialty." Friday scooted closer, lifting Jean's hand up to fiddle with his fingers, trace the shape of his nails, tug at the ring bound tight to his skin.
Jean watched him. Friday took an apple slice, lifting it to him. "Don't give me that look," he murmured. "It's the job."
Jean took the slice. "I think we should stop doing bar scenes."
"You love bar scenes."
"I'll go with you next time then."
"Wouldn't that be risky?"
"I'll go with."
"You never want to go with."
"So what? Now I do."
"Mm, but isn't it better for you to be in the car? Makes everything secure. You hate leaving loose ends." Friday tugged at the ring again. "What's got you so riled?"
"Nothing. I'm just changing the plans, that's all. Why are you acting like that's weird?"
"Because it is weird. You're weird."
Jean scoffed. He flicked his hand in a quick dismissal of that, jaw tight. "Whatever. I'm going with you."
Friday hummed, resting his head on his knee. "Didn't know that greasy thing was all it took to make you jealous."
"I'm not jealous," Jean hissed.
"You seem jealous."
"Shut up, Friday."
"No? Then I'm going alone. Let's do another next week."
Jean stopped his hand from fiddling with his own. He sent a glare at Friday, significant and unspoken. Jean was fun to tease, by all means, but he was an equivalent of a sleeping hound: there were only so many times Friday could poke as a laugh before the teeth came out.
He saw them glimmer now, and laughed in their face.
"You didn't need to cut off his hands for it," Friday whispered.
Jean tightened his grip on him. He took in a breath, pretending the forest around them wasn't so dark, that there wasn't so much blood soaked through their floorboards, that Friday would only smile in their house.
"Let's take a break from jobs," Alternate Jean says.
Alternate Friday takes the last apple slice, lifting it to his mouth. "You're so serious. And, for a murderer, insecure."
"Let's take a break," he repeats. "Okay?"
Alternate Friday hesitates. Then, crunches down on the apple, juice sweet on his lips, the green skin bright as his glinting eye.
"I'm not going anywhere," he whispers.
Friday might not be necessary in the world, but it didn't mean he wasn't imperative to Jean's. Jean was selfish like that, in any universe. And to ever take that chance was certain suicide for every version of him.
Alternate Jean pulls him into him. "I know," he says.
He leans down, and chases the last of the apple's crisp till the sun rises.
(longer chapter, but ty for reading)
(how's it moving alone with this story? it's a lot different than what I'm used to in terms of format and content etc 🤔 the little star awaits nonetheless)