Notes: Written for yuletide.
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He doesn't look when he shoots.
At first it was just to see if he could do it. Close his eyes, turn his head, let off a shot. If it connected, he won.
He very rarely lost.
It's like dancing, like talking, and like fucking. Natural, no thought required, just movement, just action, just a little bit of control and a lot of skill.
Skill, he had from the beginning, and control can be learned.
Now he shoots without looking, with his head averted, his eyes closing at the last second, and it's more habit than anything.
Habit, and maybe just not wanting to see anymore.
It's easier to lie to yourself if you never see.
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When he was young, he slept in a room with his father's gun cabinet.
It was a small house, barely big enough for the two of them, and not nearly big enough when his mother was around. So when he was old enough to get out of a crib, a bed was set up in the spare room, the gun room, and it became Mamet's room.
Except the guns remained, and he would look at them through the glass, his fingers leaving sticky trails down the doors, smears where his forehead and nose rested.
He learned to count using the guns.
How many are in the third row? his father would ask, the two of them sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall. And he'd squint, lean in, pointing at each one with a chubby finger as he counted.
He slept curled up with his back against the wall, because his father told him it was the best way to be ready for an attack.
Never turn your back on anyone, son, he said. Always be ready. Always be aware.
He still sleeps lightly, and rarely dreams.
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Speech came late to him, and people rarely understood him even when he could find the words to say what he was thinking.
Instead, he danced, and people understood him less.
He didn't mind.
He was graceful, in an awkward sort of way, and heard music when other people heard silence. You get that from your mother, his father would say when he found Mamet alone in his room, dancing, but he'd smile, and wouldn't tell him to stop.
When he was older, he discovered that girls like boys who dance, and boys do too.
He got his first kiss in an alleyway from a girl named Kate, and his first blowjob in a locker room from a boy whose name he's forgotten. Her lips were sticky, and tasted like strawberries and wax. His were warmer, softer, and tasted like nothing in particular, but knew what they were doing with a dick between them.
He liked both of them, and all the others, but loved none of them. He hears that's unusual, but it doesn't bother him.
He knows how to dance alone.
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He learned to shoot when he was thirteen, in an abandoned car lot outside of the city.
His father didn't take him.
It was a point of contention between them for years, because he had been holding guns since he was big enough not to drop them, but was never allowed to shoot one. So at thirteen he unlocked the cabinet and took one out, and left.
He left the door swinging open, because he had nothing to hide.
The gun was cold in his hands, heavy, and he aimed at nothing for a long time before pointing it at an empty beer bottle and pulling the trigger. The bottle shattered, and he smiled.
He went home when the sun set, his boots crunching against the broken glass of car windows.
The cabinet was closed and locked when he got there, and his father stood in the doorway and watched him put the gun away, but didn't say anything.
His father died two years later, and in that time, he never mentioned the guns to Mamet again. He left them to a cousin in his will.
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This gun has forgotten more than you'll ever love.
The guy's words are still running through his head as he's fucking some girl up against the wall of the bathroom stall. He smiles, and she thinks the smile is for her.
There are knocks on the door, but he ignores them, focuses on the warm skin beneath his hands, his lips. Her head tips back against the wall as he leans in to suck on her throat, her collarbone, leaving marks. One of her legs is wrapped around his waist, pulling him against her in an impatient rhythm, and her hands are tangled into his hair, tugging at it, hurting.
He lets her hurt him, just a little.
Her hips arch up, change the angle, and she's gasping into his ear, her nails dragging tracks along his spine through his shirt. It's a dance, one without any steps, just movement, just sliding his hips forward and back, feeling her pressed up against every inch of him, breathing together, thrusting together, and when he comes it's like music, like rising and falling and falling some more. Falling into nothing, into sensation without sound, without the rough walls of some seedy club bathroom scraping at his palms.
It's like forgetting.
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Like dancing, like talking, like fucking, the shots come from his hands.
One, two, three, and then he stops counting, just starts moving, forward and upward and any way but the way he wants to go, which is out, down, away. Up onto the desk, and he's a cat, a predator, a natural killer.
He's never killed before.
The dog had been the first, and he can still feel its blood on his hands, mixing with the blood of these men. It's right and wrong all at the same time, because he was born to do this, exists to move in this dance, and yet the blood is slick, still warm on his skin, and a part of him wants to cry.
He laughs instead, leans back against the wall, enemies defeated, and laughs until he can't breathe anymore. He closes his eyes, and the metal of the gun presses cold against the skin of his throat.
He doesn't look when he shoots.