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One moment Randy is in the hospital, numb from painkillers and shock. That’s what the doctors said when they pull his mom aside - he’s in a deep state of shock from his ordeal, the doctor says, not quietly enough. His mom nods along, hands shaking around her necklace. 

Randy stares at the ceiling and pretends not to notice any of it. His shoulder throbs, even with the painkillers. He hasn’t said anything since Miss Beard left. She’d come with him in the ambulance, which was nice. She’d even held his hand. She hadn’t said anything about the marks in his palm, red crescents from digging his nails in. He’d been good about not doing it lately. 

The doctor’s voice finally gets quieter. 

Randy shivers. The hospital room is warm but he’s cold, he’s always cold, not enough body fat. He left Benson’s jacket in the bathroom, back at the diner. It feels wrong to leave it there. He’ll go back first thing after they let him out. He won’t let his mom make him stay home. Benson would be proud.

He digs his fingers into his palms, re-opens the scabs that have been semi-permanent residents since grade school. Blood drips onto the hospital bed.

Later, he’ll know it was because the clock ticked over. But this time - the first time - all he knows is that he blinks. 

One moment he’s in the hospital bed and the next he -

[1]

-swallows the burger.

Chris grins. His eyes are bright and mean. His breath stinks. He missed a patch of stubble when he was shaving, Randy hadn’t noticed it this morning, back when Chris was alive.

Randy’s palms are whole. No nail marks. His shoulder doesn’t hurt and the burger is a hard lump in Randy’s throat.

Chris laughs. Says something. Randy doesn’t hear it. His ears are ringing. Everything feels so real - his work uniform, the trash burger sliding into his stomach, the weak whirr of the air con that hadn’t worked right in months. His shoulder doesn’t hurt.

Behind Chris, somebody moves.

Randy’s vision blurs. He’s crying. Sweat grows under his armpits and he shakes like that dying chihuahua that used to live across the street from Benson’s house. Benson said it peed if you looked at it too long. 

Benson has his back towards Randy. He’s walking towards the door, those long fingers flexing at his sides. Walking like he has all the time in the world, slow and lazy. Like he’s not about to come back with a gun and shoot everyone in the place except Randy, like he’s not about to drag Randy into the worst day of his life, like he’s not about to set off a chain of events which will lead to Benson lying still and bloody in a dirty parking lot.

Randy wants to vomit. It feels so real .

“Benson,” he whispers. “Benson, wait-”

Benson pushes the doors open.

Randy takes a step forward.

Chris snaps his fingers in front of his face. He says something, but Randy still doesn’t hear it. He can’t hear anything over the blood pumping through his ears.

Benson pushes open the doors.

“No,” Randy croaks. He takes a step -

- and immediately folds over. Chris has driven a fist into his stomach. He laughs, and Jess laughs with him, high and tittering. Randy never liked her except for one time when she gave a kid a free ice cream after the kid dropped her own. It was against store policy, and she’d given him a droll look as the kid walked off and said, gonna rat me out, Bradley? 

He’d shaken his head no. She’d smiled at him, and for a second it was almost… nice. 

He’d thought about that a lot yesterday. Today. Whatever day it is. Randy still doesn’t know.

His knees hit the floor. He’s wheezing, tears dripping down his cheeks. Chris and Jess are walking over to the booths, and Randy can’t breathe. Can’t warn them. Can’t do anything but kneel there and gasp for air as Benson walks in and -

Randy closes his eyes. 

After, Benson points the gun at him. 

Randy is still on his knees. Still trying to decide if this is real or not. If it’s not real, then nothing matters. If it is real, then Randy just screwed up in ways he’ll never forgive himself for. He knew . He could’ve done something. 

He stares up at Benson. Not the muzzle of that long gun - at Benson. His calm, dark eyes, so different to the tearful frenzy at the diner glowing red and blue with police lights. There’s blood in his beard. At the corner of his mouth. 

Randy is mostly sure he isn’t about to die. Benson had only headed out to the car after Randy ate the trash burger. He’d dragged Randy on that little road trip from hell, for Randy’s ‘own good.’ Was his plan to kill everyone and then he changed his mind, or did he walk in here knowing Randy would be alive at the end of this?

Benson lowers the gun. Randy lets out a giant whoosh of air, dizzy with it. Knowing you probably won’t die doesn’t matter when you have a gun pointed straight at your face.

Benson walks over to Chris’s body. 

“Help me move these two to the back,” he says.

Randy shudders and gasps. How is this happening ? Is he crazy? Is this another effect of the shock the doctors were talking about? Is he lying in a hospital bed right now, hallucinating? 

“Bradley,” Benson calls. “Don’t make me do some count to ten bullshit.”

Randy goes.

He still gives Randy the speech at the diner. 

“There’s something in you. Something fixable,” he says, arm around Randy’s shoulder, his breath hot on Randy’s cheek. 

Randy stares into those big dark eyes and thinks of wolves, of giant teeth and hot mouths poised to eat up something weak and helpless. He thinks of Benson pressing him into the hallway wall, which didn’t even happen this time. Thinks of Benson’s hand around his throat, his fist thumping hard into Randy’s stomach. His hand at the small of Randy’s back, urging him forwards. Benson touched him more yesterday than anyone had touched him in years . 

Randy hadn’t realized how starved he was for it. For someone to touch him. 

“Hey.” Benson shakes him. “You even listening to me?”

Randy nods. He’s still shaking. He can’t stop. 

Benson tugs Randy’s jacket, like holding it steady will stop Randy from quivering.

“Quit shaking,” he tells Randy casually. “People are gonna stare.”

“Sorry,” Randy whispers. He clenches his nails into his fists, feels the scars open back up.

Benson makes a face. “Jesus. You’re like this little fucking chihuahua that used to live across the street. Peed if you looked at it too long.”

I know , Randy wants to say. You told me last time.

They go to Benson’s house. Benson gives him the jacket. 

Randy pulls it on, hands shaking. He hates how comforting it is. He wants to tell Benson that he meant to go back and get it after he left the hospital, but he doesn’t know how he’d even start.

He doesn’t give Benson’s mom the phone this time. Benson doesn’t shove him into the wall. Doesn’t get a lecture on stupid decisions. He does let his gaze linger too long on the gun, though, and Benson pauses before they drive off.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, those dark eyes drilling right into him. “You know that. Right?”

Randy nods. He’d been so apologetic when he accidentally shot Randy in the shoulder. He doesn’t want to hurt Randy. But he will. Randy has no doubt.

Benson sighs, hands tightening around the steering wheel. 

“So don’t make me,” he finishes. “We square, Bradley?”

Randy’s throat clicks. “R-Randy.”

Benson pauses, key in the ignition. “What?”

“Randy,” Randy croaks. “My name is Randy.”

Benson frowns. Flicks the spot where Randy’s name tag used to be before he unpinned it in the car. 

“What the hell’s Bradley, then?”

“My last name.”

Benson stares at him. He smells like sweat and smoke cheap hand soap.

“You let us all call you by your last name for a year and you didn’t correct us once ?”

Randy shivers at the mention of their dead coworkers. If he’s been given another chance, he’s already screwed it up.

“I’m correcting you n-now,” he says, meeting Benson’s piercing gaze head-on. “It’s Randy.”

Benson stares some more. His lips twitch. He reaches out and grabs Randy by the back of the head, giving him a shake.

Randy only flinches a little.

“Atta boy,” Benson says. “We’ll make something out of you yet.”

Benson notices his hands when they’re driving towards the mall.

“Fuck,” he exclaims. “What’s that? Did you do that? How long are your nails, man?”

He takes one of Randy’s hands.

Randy startles. Benson’s hands are warm and faintly sweaty, his grip so sure as he twists Randy’s hand to examine his palm.

“Fucking claw marks,” Benson says. He squeezes the meat of Randy’s thumb, jolting a gasp out of him. 

“I get anxious,” Randy says when Benson squeezes harder, wanting an answer.

Benson snorts. Randy knows what he’s going to say before he says it, even though they never had this conversation last time. Randy had managed to keep him from noticing the whole day. 

“Fucking chihuahua,” Benson mutters.

Randy tries to think of something funny to say. He tried to do that a lot in the year they’d worked together - thinking of something funny to say for Benson. He’d never managed it. In the scant times he’d actually thought of something, he’d never gotten up the guts to say it before the moment passed.

He’d liked Benson the best out of all their coworkers. He’d been quiet. Casual. Kept his head down. One time he told Chris to shut the fuck up and didn’t even get punched for it. He never bullied Randy. Not seriously, anyway. Sometimes Randy got the feeling that Benson wanted to laugh with him, not at him, but he’d never been totally sure. He still isn’t sure. 

The gun gleams on the dashboard. 

Randy tries not to look at it. 

He gets the Lisa thing out of the way fast. Less stammering, less avoiding the point. There had been a moment, the first time around, where Randy had seriously considered letting Benson shoot him rather than suffer the humiliation of asking his ex why she broke up with him two years ago. Then he’d figured he probably shouldn’t, in case he shot her too.

Randy is pretty sure he wouldn’t shoot Lisa. At least 60% sure. 

He gets it over with so fast that Benson makes them stick around for a minute while he finishes his giraffe. It has a cock and balls, Randy is appalled to notice. He didn’t see that yesterday.

Lisa frowns at him as Benson zips up the giraffe’s insides. 

“Seriously,” she says. “Are you okay? You seem…”

She trails off. Randy suspects she doesn’t want to mention how strongly he stinks of fear sweat.

“I’m having a very weird day,” he tells her. “Benson? Can we go?”

Benson gives him a hard look, as if reminding him who’s in charge. Then he tucks the giraffes into a tiny chair. He even gives it a pat. The giraffe’s cock and balls are hidden under the table, which is good. He doesn’t want to hear Lisa’s reaction to that. More importantly, he doesn’t want to see what Benson will do if she gets upset.

They’re ahead of schedule, he assures himself as they pull up to the school. They won’t run into Mr. Shepard as they leave. They’ll get Miss Beard’s address, go to her house, talk calmly, and then…

Randy doesn’t know what happens next. Benson seems so intent on not leaving town. It’s criminal 101, but he never even suggests it. Did he ever want to get out? Or was he just waiting for the cops to find him so he could -

“Randy Bradley,” Benson says, loud enough to startle Randy from his stupor. 

Randy blinks. The receptionist is staring at him, eyeing his flop sweat and his giant jacket and his nails bloody from carving holes in his palms.

Randy waves timidly, keeping his fingers curled over the nail marks.

The receptionist keeps staring.

Benson reaches up to mime the eye accident.

“I put out Miss Beard’s eye,” Randy says before he can do it. “I - I want to apologize. Make things right.”
Benson turns to him. Gives Randy a tiny smile. Randy can’t tell if it’s ironic or not. Maybe half. 

Then a familiar face emerges into the hall behind the receptionist, and Benson’s smile dies. 

Randy stares. He hadn’t been watching the last time this happened, and now he gets a front row seat as Benson’s entire face transforms, any trace of pride for Randy vanishing into a despondent mask of cold, dull fear. But only for a second. Then it changes again, hastily covered with a casual smile.

“You haven’t seen my blue stapler,” says the old man. “Have you, Carol?”

Carol startles over by the filing desk. “Oh, Mr. Shepard. Yes, I borrowed it. I hope that’s alright.”

“I’ll let you live this time.” Mr. Shepard grins, and Randy wonders what this guy did to Benson to make him beat him to death in a parking lot. It hadn’t been like the shootings back at their work - killing him had been personal . 

Benson won’t look at Randy. Won’t look anywhere but Mr. Shepard, his jaw twitching so hard Randy worries for his teeth.

Carol turns as Mr. Shepard starts to head back down the hall. “You were meant to leave twenty minutes ago, mister!”

“I’m going,” Mr. Shepard calls back. “Just one second.”

Benson opens his mouth. “Mr. Shepard? Eli Shepard?”

Randy has to hold back a shudder the whole way through their interaction. There’s a skin-crawling moment before Mr. Shepard starts to ask if Benson went there, his entire face dropping. Like he recognizes Benson. It’s just a fleeting expression, like Benson’s cold fear. But it was there. Then Benson reassures the guy he didn’t go there, and the smile creeps back onto the old man’s face. Uncertain. Trying to tell himself everything’s fine.

What did you do to him, Randy wants to ask. He wants to believe he’s overthinking. Reading too much into facial expressions that barely lasted a second each. But there’s another part of him, deep down, that already suspects.

Mr. Shepard walks back down the hall. 

Benson’s face hardens. He cracks his neck, and Randy goes cold as he realizes that he’s seen Benson do that before - always right before he does something terrible.

They wait around the parking lot for ten minutes.

Randy tries to get him to talk for about five. He pushes too hard, and Benson pushes the gun into his chin and threatens to blow his brain out. So Randy gives it a few minutes and tries again.

“Benson,” he says. “Tell me about the zoo.”

Benson looks up. He’s leaning against their car - the only other car in the parking lot except for Mr. Shepard’s - and his shoulders have gotten stiffer with every minute that passed. 

“What?” Benson asks. His eyes are haunted. His hands are shaking, too. Randy would bring up the chihuahua, if he knew that he wouldn’t get punched for it.

“You liked the zoo as a kid,” Randy says desperately. “Out of town, right? Hosier City zoo, we went there for school trips too! You liked the giraffes, you wanted to be one, right? That’s why you picked-”

Benson grabs him by the throat and slams him against the car. His eyes are wet and wide and furious.

“What the fuck,” he snaps, voice thick. “How - how do you know that?”

“I know you,” Randy whispers. He reaches up and touches Benson’s wrists. Gently, so Benson knows he isn’t struggling. He doesn’t stand a chance against Benson and they both know it.

Benson’s grip tightens. Randy can feel his face going red as Benson cuts off his airway. His hand is so large and so warm, slick with sweat where it sits around Randy’s neck.

Benson bares his teeth, eyes shining with tears.

“You don’t know shit,” he spits.

Then he lets go. 

Randy gasps, spots dancing at the edges of his vision. He sags against the car. He wants Randy to get the hell away from him, but more than that he wants Randy to hold him up. Press him back against the car.
He’s hard , he realizes, mortified. He’d gotten hard yesterday, right after Benson punched him in the stomach. He’d only noticed it when Benson was walking away, the imprints of Benson’s fingers still fading where he’d squeezed Randy’s cheeks. He hadn’t thought much of it. Hadn’t had time, too lost in the stress of the day.

Randy pulls his coat shut, hoping Benson won’t notice. “I - I want to. I want to know you, Benson. You know all of my stuff, what about yours?”

He expects Benson to insist that today’s about Randy , like he had done the few times Randy had gotten him close to actually sharing personal information. 

But Benson just snaps, “None of your fucking business.”

Randy swallows. His neck hurts. His throat is dry. His erection is fading fast, thank god.

“Benson,” he whispers.

Benson doesn’t reply. His gaze is trained on the school doors as they swing open, Mr. Shepard strolling out into the brisk afternoon air.

“Benson,” Randy tries.

Benson doesn’t even look at him as he stalks towards Mr. Shepard, hands still shaking as they clench into fists.

He does an even worse job of apologizing to Miss Beard this time. Probably because he’s rushing it, trying to get out of here before she gets that phone call. He can’t even bring up the daughter organically; he says it with none of the stupid, naive wonder of last time, he says it like he already knows and is pretending he doesn’t. 

Miss Beard still smiles. Still tells him about her. But he can see the little furrow between her brow: she knows something is up. 

Just before she’s about to give him the speech about people getting hurt, Randy stands.

“I’m going to check on my friend,” he says. “If - if that’s okay.”

“Of course.” She smiles, adjusting her eyepatch. “Are you sure you boys don’t want anything to drink? We have coffee, juice-”

“No thank you,” Randy says. He gives her another smile, which is surprisingly steady. Then he heads down that narrow hallway and knocks on the bathroom door.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Benson. Are you alright?”

A rough, guttural noise drifts through the door. Benson is puking, gasping with the force of it.

Randy’s stomach squirms in sympathy. “Benson?”

Another harsh, wet noise. 

“Get out,” Benson snarls.

He’s crying, Randy realizes. Crying and puking and desperately trying to stop doing both. Randy’s stomach squirms again, this time in horrified disgust. Seeing Mr. Shepard had done something to Benson. Wrenched something out of place. Would he still be like this if he didn’t beat the guy to death? Randy thinks he would. Maybe next time -

He closes his eyes. Who knew if there would be a next time? He still wasn’t sure if this was really happening. He might still be in the hospital, hallucinating that he was failing all over again.

“I’m worried about you,” Randy whispers as the faucet turns on beyond the door. “I - I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

The faucet turns off. The door flies open, revealing Benson with tears still clinging to his eyelashes.

“You’re worried about what ,” he says, a warped grin on his face. He pulls out the gun and presses it into Randy’s throat. “What about you , huh? What about Miss Blackbeard down the hall? Worried about me hurting her ?”

His smile flinches. Like he has to focus to keep it there. The gun trembles against Randy’s throat, or maybe that’s just Randy.

“I don’t think you want to,” Randy whispers. “I think you want - I think you knew where today was going. That’s why you never got out of town. You never left , Benson! Never even tried! You could’ve taken me anywhere, and you didn’t. You knew how today was going to end.”

“Yeah?” Benson pushes the gun harder against Randy’s throat, digging into the soft skin there. Nobody’s touched that skin in years. Maybe a doctor. Maybe his mother checking his lymph nodes when he has a cold. And maybe Benson earlier today, when he grabbed Randy by the throat.

Benson swallows. “How’s today gonna end, Randy?”

He says it so bitterly. Like he already knows what Benson’s going to say. Like he’s been waiting for it all day.

Randy shakes his head, skin twisting against the gun muzzle. “I don’t want-”

“Yeah, well, too bad I don’t care what you want.” Benson leans in, and Randy’s heart spasms as Benson presses their sweaty foreheads together. Randy thinks he means it as an intimidation tactic. It works and it doesn’t. Randy is terrified. Randy wants Benson to press even harder, shove him into the wall until it hurts. Wants the gun muzzle to leave marks on that soft skin underneath his chin. He’s hard again. What is wrong with him?

“Y-you said today’s about me,” Randy says, glad that Benson’s lower half, at least, is too far away to notice Randy’s mortifying reaction. “Right? Was that a lie?”

Benson’s jaw flexes. His mind is racing; Randy can see it behind his eyes. He’s still forcing back tears.

“No,” Benson sneers. “Today is about you. Making sure you’re not as pathetic as when you woke up this morning. Making sure you DO something with your life instead of lying there letting everyone walk all over you. Stop letting people hurt you, you stupid - you little-”

His chin trembles. Benson rears back and smacks himself in the head. First with his empty hand, then the other. The butt of the gun bounces off his messy hair, his breathing high and ragged.

“Stupid,” he mutters, the word getting more panicked the more he says it. “Stupid, STUPID-”

Randy shushes him, terrified Miss Bears will hear it and come to see what’s wrong. Benson might shoot her. He won’t want to, but he will. Randy knows this with every bone in his body.

“I’m different now,” Randy tries, desperate. “You fixed me! You can stop now. Get out of town. I’ll come with-!”

He cuts off as Benson shoves him against the wall again. Arm braced across Randy’s throat, gun against his forehead. Benson is weeping openly now, shuddering with it. Trying to get it back under control.

“Don’t try that shit,” Benson croaks. “Don’t - don’t .”

“I’ll do it,” Randy begs. “I will. Let’s get out of town. Please?”

Benson stares at him. His face fills with deep longing and even deeper horror.

“Benson,” Randy whispers. He reaches up, curling his fingers around the arm Benson has against his throat.

For a second he thinks Benson might actually agree. He can see it in his face, flashes of desperate hope through the anger and misery.

Then the phone rings.

“No,” Randy gasps. “No, wait-”

Benson shushes him. His head cocks. Listening to Miss Beard’s distant voice down the hall.

Randy stands there, penned against the wall, waiting for the inevitable.

Randy doesn’t call the cops. But he can’t get away from the table long enough to warn Marsha the waitress, and she won’t shut up no matter his pitiful whispered protests.

Benson shoots her.

Miss Beard starts crying. Pleading. She stands up, and Randy stands up in front of her. He knows, he knows .

But he doesn’t know everything. Like the exact second Benson is going to shoot. Randy is standing in the wrong place, or maybe Benson’s hand is at the wrong angle.

The bullet goes through Randy’s throat. 

Randy crumples to the ground. His ears ring. Blood fills his throat. He chokes on it.

Someone screams. He thinks it’s Miss Beard again.

Benson appears over him, blocking everything else out. The gun is gone, his hands pressing uselessly over Randy’s gushing throat. The same throat he’d clutched earlier today, the same throat he’d used to press Randy against the wall. 

Randy thinks of a deer’s flank opening under a hunter’s bullet. Thinks of fur stained with blood. He can feel it pooling on the linoleum underneath him, matting his hair.

Tears drip onto Randy’s face. Benson is crying. 

“Shit,” he says, the word so warped by tears Randy hardly recognizes it. “God, no, fuck, what’d I do, you’re so stupid-”

He’s beautiful. Randy knew it before, but he never let himself think the word. Even now, covered in sweat and Randy’s own blood, his hands trembling where they try in vain to close up the hole he created. 

Not that it matters. Randy is still choking. 

At least he’s not hard, he thinks as he lies there choking on his own blood. Popping a boner from getting shoved against a wall was one thing; getting shot was entirely another. He thinks Benson would laugh at this observation, once he was done making fun of Randy for it. But Randy can’t say anything through the blood flowing into his throat.

Benson makes a noise, a wounded-animal sob that sounds like it’s been ripped out of him.

“No,” Benson whimpers. “No, no, no-”

A guy tackles Benson to the ground. Someone else has picked up the gun, Randy thinks it might be Miss Beard, her hands clumsy around it. He wonders if she’s ever held a gun before. Randy still hasn’t. Benson wouldn’t let him.

“No,” Benson screams. He struggles, bucks against the hold, but it’s no use. “No, no, no, you gotta help him, you gotta stop the blood, Randy -”
The diner lights up red and blue. Police lights. 

Randy tries to smile. 

He had a second chance. He didn’t protect the others, but he protected Benson. In some sick, messed up way, he thinks that’s enough.

The last thing he sees before everything goes black is Benson’s face, wet with tears and blood, his mouth open on Randy’s name.

[2]

He swallows the burger.

He can’t stop it. The motion has already happened, the burger thick and nasty down his throat. 

Randy reaches up and touches the skin. His adams’ apple bobs, growing slick with sweat. He’s whole again. He’s here again, Chris jeering in his face, Jess giggling by the counter.

And behind all of them: Benson. The long line of his back heading towards the exit.

“Benson,” Randy says.
He takes a step forwards. Faster, more forceful. Maybe that’s why Chris grabs him instead of punching him in the stomach.

“Whoa, hey.” Chris grabs him by the front of his shirt. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Randy doesn’t strain; too busy staring at Benson’s back.

“Benson,” he calls. “BENSON!”

Benson turns. He’s frowning, the smallest dent between his eyebrows. He’s never heard Randy yell before. Nobody has, before today.

Chris shakes him. “Hey! Eyes on me, dickfuck.”

Benson’s jaw clenches. He starts to turn back towards the door-

“Don’t,” Randy says. His voice cracks. 

Chris shakes him again, getting in the way of watching Benson. There’s a little bit of satisfaction to it, a small dose of fear that makes Randy’s veins light up, but the intensity of Chris’s stare is wrong. He’s not glaring at Randy for Randy . Randy could be anyone. Not like Benson, who stares at Randy like the world is narrowing down into some quiet, pathetic kid drowning in Benson’s jacket.

Benson strides out into the parking lot.

Chris starts, “I thought I said-”

Randy drops the burger. He grabs a napkin dispenser and smacks Chris across the face.

Jess yelps as Chris goes reeling. Mostly from shock, Randy thinks. It’s not like Randy hit him hard with his skinny noodle arms. He straightens up almost immediately, face twisted in an ugly snarl.

“You little shit,” he growls. “What makes you think-?”

Randy kicks him in the balls. This isn’t hard, either, but a kick to the balls is a kick to the balls, and Chris goes down with a surprised grunt.

Randy sprints, ignoring Jess yelling after him as she goes to attend to her boyfriend. He shoves the heavy doors open and runs into the parking lot, already panting.

Benson is leaning against his car. He’s got a cigarette in his mouth and he’s untucking his shirt, looking back towards his trunk.

“I hit him,” Randy yells.

Benson whirls around. There’s a beat where he just stares at Randy, like he expects him to disappear. 

He takes a long, slow drag of his cigarette and asks, “You what?”

“I hit him with the napkin dispenser,” Randy says, coming to a sweaty stop in front of him. “Then I kicked him in the - in the balls.”

Benson’s furrowed brow smooths out. His mouth curls up under his mustache, and Randy’s heart kicks up under the pounding adrenaline.

“Well,” Benson starts. “Shit, Bradley-”

“Please don’t hurt anyone,” Randy blurts.

Benson’s amused smile slides away. Then it comes back, cocky and fake.

“Who says I’m gonna hurt anyone, Bradley? Looks to me like you’re the one hurting people, going around kicking innocent fuckwits in the balls.”

“I know you have a gun,” Randy whispers.

Benson goes still. He doesn’t look towards the trunk. He doesn’t look anywhere but Randy, that dark gaze drilling straight into him. Like an old dog had just sat up and showed him a new trick.

“You’d shoot him,” Randy continues. “Then - then her, I don’t think you want to but she won’t stop screaming. Then Marty-”

Chris stumbles out, the double doors creaking behind him. 

Jess follows, sighing. “Come on, let’s just-”

Chris shakes her off. “What the fuck was THAT, you asshat?” He spits at Randy. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Randy turns and screams, “GO BACK INSIDE RIGHT NOW!”

Chris falters. His girlfriend grabs his arm.

Behind them, the double doors creak open again. Marty peeks out, frowning. Hands on his hips. They made fun of him for it behind his back. Like a middle aged mom , Chris liked to say, mimicking the stance after Marty inevitably yelled at him.

“What the hell is going on here,” Marty asks. “Get back to work! I don’t pay you guys to dick around in the parking lot!”

Jess drags Chris inside. Randy doesn’t watch them go, only listens to the doors close. Benson is still staring at him, that intense, dark stare that pulls all the light out from the world like a black hole.

“You were saying,” Benson says quietly. He takes his half-smoked cigarette out of his mouth and grinds it to dust under his shoe, never once looking away.

Randy swallows. He sounds crazy. Everything sounds crazy, maybe he’s crazy, this kind of thing isn’t real. But even if he is lying in a hospital hallucinating all of this, he still owes it to these fake people to try and fix things. Right?

“No, keep going,” Benson prompts, leaning in. He smells like cheap hand soap and smoke, but not sweat. No blood. Not yet. He taps Randy on the forehead, fingers thumping against his skull. “I wanna hear what your crazy mind has in store. I shoot ‘em all up, then… what? Then you?”

Randy shakes his head. He’s not crying, which is good. He’s tired of crying. He’s going to cry later, he can’t imagine himself not, if this day is anything like the others. But for now his eyes are dry even if his voice is shaking all over the place.

“Not me,” he says. “You’ve been - you’ve been watching me. You think I’m pathetic. But you see potential. Potential for me to be - to be SOMETHING. I have a…”

He struggles to remember the phrasing. He’s heard it twice now, but he’s gone through so much, an ordeal , the doctors called it. 

“I’m better than this shit,” Randy says. “I have a full sized, honest to god, functioning human brain. I - I’m 20 years old and I’m already more pathetic than everybody in this town and it bugs - it bugs-”

He squeezes his eyes shut, remembering Benson’s hand curling around the back of his head, gripping his hair. 

“It bugs the living shit out of you,” he gasps. “But there’s something about me. Something fixable. And you - you believe that.”

Benson stares at him. His lips are parted. They’re chapped, they’ve always been chapped, just like Randy’s always get in the winter, tearing little strips of skin off until he bleeds. 

“You show me how,” Randy continues. “You bring me with you-”

“Where?” Benson asks. Voice so low and so quiet, his eyes half-lidded. He’s staring at Randy and Randy wants to shiver, wants to run away, wants to present his throat for Randy to wrap a fist around it. He wants , and he’s so scared, the sharp, thorny feelings twisting around each other until he can’t pry them apart.

“Around town,” Randy says. “I keep thinking you’re going to drive away, but you can’t - you keep-”

He wets his dry lips. Randy’s gaze drops down to them, and Randy has never been more aware of the fact that Benson isn’t touching him, isn’t curling a hand around the back of his skull or grabbing his shirt or stroking his face like he sometimes did after he hurt him. They should be touching. Randy feels like Benson is touching him, and all Benson is doing is standing in his space and staring.

“We end up at the school,” Randy says, only half-aware of what he’s saying with Benson looking at him like that. “My teacher, her eye, I - there’s this man, Mr. Shepard-”

Benson’s face shuts down. It’s like Randy’s flipped a switch. 

“Wait,” Randy says, dread flooding his stomach where Randy had hit him; was going to hit him; had never hit him. “I didn’t-”

Benson takes a step back, throat clicking. “What do I do to Mr. Shepard, huh?”

“Nothing,” Randy whispers. “You don’t do anything-”

“No,” Benson says. “I think I do. You brought him up, Bradley. Why’d you do that, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Randy says. “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry-”

“What do I do to Mr. Shepard ,” Benson says, half-sneering it. The day’s only just begun, he hasn’t even killed anyone yet. His eyes are wide and harsh, none of that dark intensity from before. He looks at Randy like a wolf eyeing a trap.

Randy sucks in a ragged breath. “Y-you kill him.”

“I shoot him?”

“No. You-” Randy pauses, shuddering at the image of that bloody man groaning in the parking lot. “You beat him. He dies on the way to the hospital.”

Benson smiles. It’s not a nice smile. His mouth twists like he’s biting the inside of his cheek.

“Why would I do that, Bradley? Huh? Kill some random teacher from your old school?”

“I don’t-” Randy swallows. Doesn’t dare meet Benson’s eyes. “I think he hurt you? You never told me.”

Benson rubs his mustache. He did that before, back in Miss Beard’s house. And in the diner. He’s trying not to cry, Randy thinks. Or maybe trying not to beat the shit out of Randy right there in the parking lot. He looks like he’s thinking about it, hands shaking with rage.

“I never told-?” A smile flinches over Benson’s face, awful and dangerous. “Who the fuck ARE you? You been watching me, Bradley?”

He takes Randy by the throat and throws him up against the car. 

Randy doesn’t struggle. He wants to be good. He wants to get out , run away and hide under his bedsheets, but he also wants to be good. He holds very still, hoping Benson will tell him he’s good. He won’t, Randy knows it by how hard Benson is glaring at him. All rage, nothing else. No warmth. No trust. Randy doesn’t know him. He doesn’t even know Randy’s first name.

“Tell me or I’ll shoot you right here,” Benson says, hot breath washing over his face. “I swear to god.”

“I don’t know,” Randy says, a single tear spilling down his cheek. “I - we - we did this already! We did this yesterday. You killed them and you killed Mr. Shepard and you didn’t tell me why and then I’m back here and I’m eating the burger, I don’t know -”

Benson punches him. Hard and rough, right in the stomach.

Randy bends over with the force of it. He can’t breathe, the hurt radiating into every part of him. Benson had made him feel more than he’d felt in the last twenty years. One bad thing happened and Randy had filed down his edges, not liked anything, not chosen anything, not wanted anything, turned himself into a shallow husk for so long. Nothing inside him. And here Benson was, filling him up.

For a second he almost wants Benson to hit him again. Then Benson stands up, like he’s gearing up to actually hit him again, and Randy cringes.

“Wait,” he cries, stumbling forwards. “I won’t mention him again. I won’t ask about Mr. Shepard, I promise-”

Benson’s face twists. He looks dazed and horrified and hateful, glaring at Randy in a way he’d never looked at him before, even when Randy confessed he called the cops.

He lashes out and shoves Randy backwards.

Randy falls. His head smashes into a hubcap, pain exploding through his skull. He bounces off onto the ground, right next to the cigarette Benson had grinded into the concrete.

Something’s wrong. He can tell even if he couldn’t feel the blood pooling under his face. Benson is on his hands and knees next to him, staring down at him in horror. He’s saying something. Randy can’t hear it, but he can see Benson’s mouth moving, forming the same word over and over: No no no. 

Randy tries to speak. Tries to do anything, but he can’t even make his fingers move. Bensons is finally looking at him the way Randy wants him to, but it’s too late now. Why did he get given another chance - not even a second, a third - if he was just going to screw it up like this?

The pain fades. Everything fades. Randy closes his eyes and -

[3]

-swallows the burger.

Chris laughs. Says something to his girlfriend. Behind them, Benson strides casually out the door.

Randy doesn’t do anything. Chris gets mad, tries to make him eat another bite of burger, but Randy can’t make himself move. It’s like he still has the head wound, like something important in his brain is broken. He doesn’t move even as Benson walks back in with the gun and shoots all three of them, one after the other.

It doesn’t feel real. None of it does, even as he wrings a bloody rag into a bucket and wipes another glob of Chris’s torso from the wall. Even when Benson walks him to the car, hand on his lower back. Pushing slightly, like Randy would do anything except walk beside him, numb and obedient.

Maybe he’s stuck like this, he thinks as he sits in the diner, listening to Benson humiliate Marsha the waitress. Maybe he’s going to relive this until he gets it right. He’s gone through a day with Benson dead, a day with Randy dead - maybe he has to make sure everyone gets out of today alive and then he can leave. Or maybe he’s dead and this is his punishment. Or he’s hallucinating in some hospital somewhere. He’s growing less sure of that last theory. Hallucinations don’t last this long. Right? 

“You’re quiet,” Benson says as they drive towards the school after meeting Lisa at the mall. “Even more than usual.”

I’m having a stressful day, Benson. He thinks about saying it. It would probably make him laugh.

“Did you name it?” He asks instead. 

Benson frowns over at him. He’s wearing the fuzzy jacket he always wears after they go back to his house. Randy wouldn’t have guessed it was Benson’s style before today. Whatever ‘today’ is. He’d never seen Benson out of his work uniform before this.

“The giraffe,” Randy clarifies. “Did you give it a name?”

Benson tilts his head, considering. “Uhhh. Randy,” he says, clearly pulling the name out of his ass. Then he shoots Randy a self-satisfied smile.

Randy laughs, a weak, spluttery thing. “I don’t know if that suits him.”
“Why? Not shaky enough?” Benson reaches over and gives Randy a shake, his hand hot and broad on Randy’s shoulder. “Is his dick too big?”

Randy laughs for real this time. Benson looks surprised to hear it. Then he grins, pleased. 

“There we go,” he crows. “Loosening up! That’s what I like to hear.”

Randy swallows. “Did you ever have a pet?”

“Uhhh.” For a second Randy thinks he’s going to blow him off, the way he always blows Randy off when he asks personal questions. Then he says, “Hamster. When I was 12. Bastard escaped after three weeks.”

“Did you ever find him?”

“Nope.” Benson flashes him a smile, still relaxed, or doing a good job at pretending he is. “Might still be roaming the plains as we speak. Or, y’know. Rotting in my walls.”

“He’s roaming the plains,” Randy says. He likes how that sounds. A hamster running through the tall grass somewhere, the sun on his fur.

Benson snorts. He rests his hands on the steering wheel. It’s so satisfying, the way he moves. Ordinary actions turn into something Randy wants to watch. Randy has been noticing this more, in these quiet moments between horror. He even noticed it before, but he didn’t have a name for it. He’s noticing it a lot more now, especially with Benson asking him if he’s gay every day of this stupid loop.

“Glass half full kinda guy,” Benson says. “Huh?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Randy scratches his cheek. “Maybe I just like happy endings.”

Benson snorts again, but his eyes go dull. He shifts in his seat, turning to watch the road. 

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll work on that.”

Mr. Shepard still dies. 

Even after Randy lies about where his school is and gets a black eye for it, they run into the guy at a grocery store, of all places. Benson follows him out into the not-so-empty parking lot and beats him to death and then threatens an innocent family loading groceries into their car.

Randy blurts out that he does, actually, know Miss Beard’s address. 

Benson stares at him, betrayed. He punches Randy in the stomach before leading him back to the car, and Randy stares at the family he just saved as they drive off.

They still end up in the diner. Randy can’t get away long enough to warn Marsha, so she marches up and goes off on Benson who, predictably, shoots her in the leg.

“Don’t do this,” Randy begs as Benson stands there pointing the gun at Miss Beard who’s started screaming again. “If you kill her, you have to kill me first. And you don’t want to kill me.”

“No?” Benson stares at him, eyes rimmed in red. “You really want to test that out, Randy?”

“I think you’d really regret it,” Randy says, thinking of all the times he’d bled out with Benson screaming for him. “I - I’m the only person who cares about you.”

Benson presses the gun into Randy’s chin. “You don’t even know me.”

“I do,” Randy whispers. “And you know me. You wanted to help me. And now I want to help you. Please let me help you.”

Benson shakes his head, dazed. “There’s no helping me.”

“There is,” Randy begs. “There is . Take me with you. Leave the others. You want me to stay with you, right?”

Benson’s hand spasms around the gun. He’s holding Randy around the throat again. If he shoots, he’ll shoot off his own fingers before the bullet reaches Randy.

There are no red and blue lights. Randy didn’t call the cops this time. He thinks he knows where he went wrong, the first time: Benson’s eyes had only gone dull after Randy confessed that he called the cops. If the cops aren’t here, if Randy doesn’t admit he betrayed him, maybe Benson won’t decide he has to kill himself.

Randy holds his breath.

Then, a miracle: Benson cricks his neck.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Randy is still reeling as they speed through the streets towards the town limits.

They’re getting out. They’re getting to tomorrow , unless something else happens. He didn’t save anybody except Benson, but that’s - that’s something, right? Even if they’ll be on the run, even if Randy will be stuck with this man who terrifies him, he still saved Benson. For now, anyway.

Benson swears as he drives, wiping his face. Sometimes he gags, like he’s holding back a mouthful of bile. 

“Goddamnit,” he keeps saying, looking over at Randy. “Fuck. Shit.”

Randy sits back against the passenger seat, his eye swelling up and his ribs aching. He hasn’t slept in days. Hasn’t eaten in just as long, except the trash burger. He wants to sleep so badly. Maybe when they reach a motel -

A tire blows out. Benson yells, twisting the steering wheel. His arm flies out, slamming Randy into the seat so hard his chest would’ve bruised if it had time.

The car careens into a signpost at 120 miles an hour. Randy sees an explosion of glass, hears Benson scream his name, and then he -

[4]

-swallows the burger.

Randy looks up. Chris laughing, Jess giggling behind him. Benson heading towards the exit. 

“BENSON,” Randy screams as loud and screechy as he can.

Benson turns, the store falling silent with shock at hearing such a strange noise come out of a man who they had never heard raise his voice before today.

Randy uses the ensuing stillness to knee Chris in the balls as viciously as he can. Which, admittedly, is not that vicious. He has nothing on Benson. But he has desperation and pointy knees on his side, and Chris collapses like a stack of cards onto the dirty linoleum.

Randy takes off. Benson is staring at him, a shocked smile growing on his face as Randy charges towards him.

“Holy fucking shit, Bradley,” Benson says. “Where the hell-?”

“I quit,” Randy pants. “Are you coming?”

Benson’s dark eyes gleam. His gaze flicks over Randy, and Randy has to hold back a shiver. Benson has to say yes. He hates this job, he’s impulsive - Randy is almost certain he didn’t plan to kill anyone today, he really did just see Randy eat a trash burger and snapped - and most importantly, he wants Randy’s attention. Randy doesn’t know much about any of this crazy shit that’s been going on, but he knows that. 

Benson shrugs. “Shit. Alright.”

Jess looks up from the floor, where she’s kneeling down to attend to her groaning boyfriend.

“What the fuck is WRONG with you, Bradley?” she snaps, rubbing Chris’s back even as he tries to shove her off.

Randy ignores her. He waits for Benson to move, to lead them out the door and towards the car and hopefully (god please) not towards the trunk. But Benson just stands there, watching Randy like he’s something spectacular. Or maybe like he wants to eat him. One of the two.

The moment builds. Randy can feel his cheeks go red. He’s shaking again , even though nobody’s dead and the worst thing that’s happened so far is him kneeing a jerk in the balls. From the looks of it, Benson might like it.

Benson claps Randy on the shoulder so hard that Randy jumps. Then he turns on his heel and ushers Randy out of the store.

Benson’s cackling by the time they pull into the road. The laughter is bright and delighted, looser than Randy’s ever heard it.

He sags against the passenger seat, numb with relief. He did it. He got Benson out of the store and nobody got hurt. And Benson’s happy , shoving Randy in the shoulder so hard he slams against the door.

“Thought I’d have to do something fucking drastic to get you to pull shit like that,” Benson says, grinning. “Where the hell was this last week when he made you stay an extra half hour to make you clean up his own mess, Bradley? Fuck!”

Randy swallows. “Randy.”

“What?”

“My name’s Randy.”

“What’s Bradley?”

“My last name.”
Benson stares at him. He often stares at Randy so long it makes Randy nervous about the road. 

“You let your coworkers call you by your last name for a whole year and you never corrected us?”

“I’m correcting you now,” Randy says. He’s getting better at picking the right things to say. It’s easier after he’s been through it a few times.

Benson grins again. He glances back at the road, then at Randy, like he can’t stop looking. It makes Randy terrified and warm inside. He wishes he was wearing Benson’s coat. 

“Shit,” Benson says, dragging a long thumb up the steering wheel. “Gotta say, I like this new version of you, Randy. New kung-fu grip. Kicks assholes right in the balls and quits his deadbeat job all before 8 in the morning.”

You made me, Randy thinks. For better or worse, Benson had turned him into the kind of person who could do those things. Without him, Randy would still be mopping floors with his head down, too afraid to call his dentist for an appointment or ask his mom to turn the radio down. He’d do those both now, he’s pretty sure. They pale in comparison to standing up to a man with a gun in his hand and tears in his eyes.

He watches Benson chuckle. Maybe today is a good day, he thinks. Maybe this is how he gets out.

Randy pauses. An idea brews in the back of his mind. 

“Hey,” he says. “Can - can you drop me off somewhere?”

Benson shakes his head, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “No can do, Randy. See, I’m impressed. I think you really have potential. And I think-”

Randy’s heart sinks. Benson isn’t going to let him leave, and he doesn’t want this to turn into a fight. 

He cuts Benson off. “Can we get out of town, then?” 

Benson pauses. He looks over, eyebrows raised. He looks a little annoyed that Randy interrupted his spiel, but he doesn’t do anything about it.

“What? Why?” Benson shoves him again, less hard this time. “Don’t tell me. Running from the cops? You kill somebody, Randy?”

Randy bursts into tears. He can’t stop. He’s so scared, and so trapped, and so confused. Why is this happening to him? Why Benson? Why is it only him who remembers the loops? Is he stuck here until he finds a way to convince Benson to let him go? What does he have to do? What’s the point ?

“Oooookay,” Benson says. He laughs, uncertain and gleeful. “What the fuck? Are you on your period? ‘Cause if it means you start kicking Chris, I say it’s-”

“I saw someone get shot,” Randy croaks. It’s hard to speak, he’s crying so hard. Tears roll down his cheeks and drip onto his work uniform, clean as it was when he put it on this morning. Is it still that morning? Randy doesn’t know how any of this worked.

“It was awful,” Randy continues, trembling with it. “I could’ve done something but I just stood there. He - his blood, it-”

He curls into himself, sobbing hard. He barely notices it when the car pulls over. It’s only Benson’s hand that pulls him back, wide and solid on Randy’s shoulder.

“That’s fucked up,” Benson says quietly. “Did he die?”

Randy nods.

“Shit. Who was it?” He looks at Randy like he always does when Randy tells him about Miss Beard, all quiet and compassionate, like he’d never shoot anyone in cold blood.

Randy wants him to wipe his tears away so badly his teeth ache.

“A friend,” he whispers. “My - my only friend.”

Benson nods. “Shit,” he says again. “I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s fine.” Randy wipes his nose, embarrassed by the snot. “Can we just get out of town? Only for the night. I need…”

He trails off. Benson’s thumb strokes softly over his cheekbone, wiping the tears away. Randy has to stop himself from leaning into it. He has a brief, bizarre urge to ask Benson to bite him.

“With me,” Benson says. There’s something underneath his voice. Not caution, but close to it. “You sure?”

Randy nods hard against Benson’s hand. “Please.”

He cowers into his shoulders. Part of it is real. Part of it is trying to make himself look small and shy and scared. He has the feeling that Benson likes it. When he’s the one causing it, anyway.

It works: Benson’s eyes flicker down to Randy’s mouth.

Randy’s heart thumps so hard he’s sure Benson has to hear it. 

There’s a second where Randy thinks something impossible is going to happen. The moment stretches, Benson’s thumb still on Randy’s cheek. Not moving. There is so much space between their car seats, and Randy can’t move. Can hardly breathe. Can only sit here and hope that this is the end of the road for this crazy day that he can’t seem to escape-

Benson blinks. Then he leans back in his seat, hand dropping carelessly from Randy’s cheek.

“Fuck it,” he says. “Let’s blow this joint.”

For a while, it’s good. 

Benson stops by his house. Grabs some clothes. Gives Benson his jacket when he asks, even if he gives Benson a curious look as he hands it over. They stop at a diner for breakfast, Benson waving away Randy’s repeated insistence that they should really get out of town now.

Then they talk. It’s so much nicer when they haven’t had to clean blood out from under their nails beforehand. Randy stops shaking, and he even makes Benson laugh a few times. 

This is it, Randy decides as they get back in the car. This is the last day. Then they’ll be out, and Randy will… 

He doesn’t know. Go back to community college? Finally finish the degree he’d done one semester of before dropping out after one too many panic attacks? Will he keep seeing Benson after the clock finally ticks over to tomorrow?

He doesn’t have to make that choice. 

There are no tire blowing out this time - a deer darts across the road and Benson swerves. In the last seconds before they hit the only streetlight in sight, Randy thinks, he’ll swerve for deer but he’ll kill his coworkers in cold blood?

Benson’s hand flies over his chest, protecting him. Bruising him. 

The hood crumples in to meet them.

[12]

It is shockingly easy to talk Benson out of murdering the first ones. 

All he has to do is get Chris to step off, then quit on the spot and ask Benson to go somewhere. He’s still hesitant to drive him out of town. Unless Benson breaks down about a dead ‘friend,’ Benson still drives him around on their messed up little road trip. Fixing Randy, he claims. Making sure whatever weird change he had back at work sticks for good.

“Oh man,” Randy realizes as Benson drives them out of the Burgers Burgers Burgers parking lot. “I haven’t eaten in… weeks? Other than that trash burger.”

Benson gives him a look. “I watched you eat a twinkie four days ago, you goddamn liar.”

“You did?” Randy tries to remember. It’s difficult to remember anything beyond this neverending hellscape of a day. 

“You were weirdly neat about it,” Benson says, drumming his fingers along to the metal song playing on the radio. “Got a napkin to clean your fucking fingers instead of licking them like everybody else.”

Randy thinks about Benson licking his fingers. “You were watching me?”

He likes to bring it up. Benson always tries to play it off so casually. It’s… cute. Threatening and cute at the same time. Like a baby animal who could genuinely kill you. 

Benson looks over at him. Looks back at the road. Looks back again. He only does this when Randy has successfully flustered him, which doesn’t happen often.
“You’re too fucking weird not to watch, Bradley.”

“Randy,” he says. 

“What?”

“My name is Randy,” Randy says. “I watched you, too.”

Benson looks at him again. This time his gaze catches and stays, a considering smile spreading over his face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Randy says. “I - you-”
He can’t say it. Even after all these loops. He never admitted it to himself before, and he hasn’t had a lot of time to think in these loops. It’s getting easier to relax in the moments of quiet. To watch Benson’s hands around the steering wheel and let his mind wander to places he would never let it, before.

“I’ve never gotten drunk,” he says instead.

Benson snorts. “What, you offering to buy me a beer? Huh? You even old enough?”

“I’m 21.”

“Yeah? You wanna go get trashed at…” He checks the car clock. “Eight in the morning, Randy Bradley?”

“I do,” Randy whispers.

Benson grins at him. Randy wonders if he’s happy that he didn’t kill their coworkers like he’d been planning to when he started walking to his car. If he’s glad Randy stopped him.

Benson feeds him bar peanuts. Then Randy admits he hasn’t had breakfast and Benson buys him a plate of fries and insists Randy eat half of them before he lets Randy have his first sip of beer.

Randy almost chokes. The liquid is sour and foul. 

“Swallow,” Benson orders.

Randy gags, but the beer goes down. 

“Good boy.” Benson grins again. There’s still an undercurrent of threat there, a too-still confidence that makes Randy uneasy and excited, the same deep stillness that had been in Benson right before he killed their coworkers. But it’s softening, getting looser with each beer that Benson sinks. He drinks steadily, sprawling back in his seat. The sight of his hand around his beer bottle has Randy shifting in his seat, trying to hide yet another mortifying erection.

He’s a lightweight. They both knew he would be. Benson teases him about it, lips skimming the mouth of his bottle as he speaks, and Randy has to hide his blush. Benson keeps looking at him. That’s consistent throughout all the loops, it was consistent before they started - Benson looking at him like that, intense and strange and terrible. 

Randy stares back at him, trying not to let his hand shake around his beer. If only he’d done this on the first day. Before it was a loop. He never would have - there was nothing in the world that would have made him stand up to Chris and then quit on the spot. Absolutely nothing. Even the second loop, after Benson and his sharp edges filing Randy into something new, he still couldn’t do it. He needed Benson, but he also needed the loop. It was easy to do something life-changing when you knew everything reset at midnight.

“I like you like this,” Randy admits on his third beer. 

Benson raises his eyebrows. Waiting for Randy to continue.

Randy waves at him: his lax posture, leaning back in his chair. The lack of blood on his clothes. 

“Soft,” Randy says nonsensically. “Like a giraffe. You should be a giraffe.”

Benson’s face creases. “I actually did want to be a giraffe as a kid.”

“I know,” Randy says. “Because it was really big! No one would hurt you if you were that big. No one would dare .”

Benson stills. He rocks forwards in his chair, setting his elbows on the grimy wood of the small table they were squeezed around.

“Now,” he says, voice low and dangerous. “When the fuck did I tell you that, Randy?”

Randy pauses. The fear is still there, hot and roiling. But it’s duller than usual. Maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s because he’s done this so many times and is getting a handle on what, exactly, Benson will do to him. On what Benson will do to other people.

Then again, if other people do get caught up in it, the loop still resets. Randy still doesn’t want anybody to get hurt, but if the loop resets -

Benson continues, rolling the beer between his long fingers: “‘Cause I think I’d remember if I told you that. Think I’d remember if I told anyone that, actually. I’m racking my brain, and I can’t think of any sensible reason why you’d fucking know that.”

“There isn’t,” Randy admits. “A sensible reason.”

Benson blinks. There’s still danger there, but now he looks intrigued. “Oh? What’s the fucked up reason, then?”

Before Randy can decide if he’s going to tell the truth - he’s tried a few times, but Benson’s never believed him yet - a middle aged man with a cowboy hat bumps into their table.

Randy’s beer topples over, spilling all over the man’s worn boots.

“Oh,” Randy says, grabbing for the bottle. “I’m sorry-”

The man turns around. His eyes are bloodshot, his nose covered in broken capillaries, and he stinks like vodka.

“ My fuckin’ boots,” the guy says. Like Randy was going to steal them or something.

“I’m sorry,” Randy says again, knee-jerk, unable to stop it. “I can, uh, clean them up-”

“Fuckin’ better,” the guy mumbles, swaying on his feet.

Randy pushes his chair back. He’s only realized what he’s done wrong when Benson says, deceivingly calm: “Hey.”

Randy freezes. He looks over just in time to watch Benson smash his bottle over the guy’s head, the cowboy hat spilling off onto the damp floor along with the broken glass.

“No,” Randy blurts. “Wait-”

But it’s too late. Benson is on him. Cowboy guy flails, tries to shove him off, but Benson shoves the broken bottle right into the guys’s shoulder.

Cowboy guy bellows. Benson rips the bottle out of the guy’s skin and then rears back, aiming for his throat -

“BENSON,” Randy yells. 

He throws himself in the middle. Benson looks shocked. Tries to shove Randy aside.

Randy grabs his arm, coming in close.

“I want to go,” he begs. He gets the best results when he tells Benson what he wants. “It’s my first time being drunk, I don’t like this, I want to go-”

Benson flinches. He does that sometimes when Randy gets too close without warning him first. Then he blinks, cracking his neck.

“Fucking go then,” he snarls, and shoves him off. 

Cowboy man charges. 

Randy screams. 

He’s still screaming when Benson shoves the broken bottle into the guy’s stomach.

They stumble into an alleyway, Benson’s grip bruisingly tight around Randy’s arm. His sleeve is covered in blood. Some of it had splashed down his chest. 

It’s not even midday yet.

“Could you just ,” Randy says tearfully. “Could you not destroy everything for five seconds?”

Benson wipes blood out of his mustache and squeezes the bridge of his nose. His calm has been shaken, which is strange for his first kill of the day. Maybe it was bringing up the zoo.

“You don’t know me, Randy,” he says, almost conversationally. “I’m fucking toxic waste.”

The police are coming. Randy saw a bartender on the phone before they left. They should get out of here.

They’re never getting out of here.

Benson turns towards the parking lot, still gripping Randy’s arm like he expects Randy to pull away.

Randy doesn’t pull away. He pushes closer instead, and it must startle Benson because he shoves Randy hard against the bricks.

“Hurt me then,” Randy begs, his head smarting from where it banged against the wall. “Just me. No one else.”

Benson’s brows furrow. Randy realizes with equal parts excitement and terror that he’s hard, and Benson can feel it against his leg. 

He watches Benson’s lips part. There’s a spot of blood right at the corner of his mouth.

“What,” Benson says, and he would almost sound unaffected if he wasn’t panting. “You looking for some big bad wolf to hurt you? Huh?”

Randy nods desperately. “Yeah. Yes.”

Benson laughs, hands tightening on Randy’s wrists. “No you fucking don’t. You don’t want what I just did in there.”
“I don’t want you to fucking kill people,” Randy says. 

“Guy’s not fucking dead,” Benson argues. “Least, not yet.”

His dark eyes glint. All these loops and Randy can still count the number of times he’s said ‘fuck’ on one hand.

Randy gasps. “But I do - I do want-” 

His hips twitch, furtive, helpless. 

Benson’s pupils swell. His gaze drops down to Randy’s mouth.

Randy whimpers. He can’t stop it.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he tries. “Benson. I’ll - I’ll do whatever you want.”

And just like that, the moment is gone. Benson’s face twists up like he’s just said something disgusting, which is strange, because Randy has said much weirder stuff to make Benson stop doing something. Then Benson shudders, his hands locking up around Randy’s wrists before he stumbles off of him.

“Let’s go,” he says.

Sirens wail in the distance.

Benson clicks his fingers. “Hey. I said let’s go .”

Randy doesn’t want to see what happens next.

But he does. He always does. 

[22]

“Are you gay?”

“Probably,” Randy admits. This is the first time he’s admitted it aloud. He’d been too busy thinking up ways to get himself out of the loop. He hasn’t tried this yet.

Benson snickers. “Probably? What, you don’t know?”

“I don’t let myself think about it,” Randy says honestly. These terror-fuelled days with Benson have been the most he’s let himself dwell on his sexuality, and he hasn’t even had a chance to explore it. He hasn’t even jerked off since the loops started. When would he have the chance? A risky bathroom break with Benson waiting for him to come back out? Actually, that sounds -

Randy shakes himself from that line of thought as Benson asks the next question.

“Huh. Guess that means you’re a virgin?”

Randy asks, “Do you know the movie with Bill Murray and it’s the same day every day?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Yes, I’m a virgin. Obviously. Have you seen that movie?”

Benson squints at the road. “You mean Groundhog Day?”

Randy nods vigorously. “Groundhog Day! That’s it!”

Benson looks over at him. For a second Randy thinks he’s going to ignore him and go into the Don’t Have Kids spiel. Then he says, “‘Course I’ve seen it. Shit’s a classic.”

“Right,” Randy says. “I’ve only seen half. My class showed the first part but then I twisted my ankle and went home before they showed the second. How does he get out of it?”

“He fucks Andie MacDowell,” Benson says.

Randy sighs. That’s even less helpful than he was imagining. “So it’s a love story? He convinces her to fall in love, and when she does, it’s tomorrow?”

“Sorta.” Benson scratches his beard. “He has to, like. Improve as a person first. Character arc shit.”

“Character arc?”

“Yeah, like-” Benson splays his fingers out on the steering wheel. He hadn’t needed to scrub blood off himself today. Randy managed to talk him out of it in this loop.

“Start of a movie, character’s fucked up in some way,” Benson continues. “She works too much or he doesn’t spend time with his kids or doesn’t appreciate shit in his life. That kind of crap. By the end of the movie, they fix themselves.”

Randy thinks about it.

“Like you’re doing to me,” he says.

Benson laughs. He still does the fixable spiel in the diner when Randy gets them out of work with zero deaths. Randy wonders how long he’s been wanting to fix Randy. What the moment was that made Benson watch him for this long.

“ Exactly ,” Benson says. “Now you’re getting it.”

[33]

Maybe, Randy considers as he tries to talk Benson out of suicide by cop for the dozenth time, they’re just doomed.

“You don’t need to do this,” he pleads, police lights flashing red and blue over the diner glass. “Just because - just because people hurt you-”

“You think I’m doing this because I got hurt ?” Benson laughs, wet and rough. “I’m doing this for you , Randy. This whole day was for you .”

“It’s not,” Randy yells. “If you were doing this for me, you’d get us out of town! You’re doing this because - because you want to help me and you want to hurt people but mostly, Benson, you just want to die. Right?”

Benson stares at him. His eyes are bright, his hands shaking. He often gets like this so late in the day. He always gets like this after they run into Mr. Shepard. 

“You don’t know me,” Benson says. He doesn’t yell it, all the time. Sometimes he whispers. It depends on what Randy says. Randy still flinches every time he hears it. It was true the first time, and Randy still hates that, hates that Benson died without being truly known, and he hates that it’s still sort of true now.

They’ve been through so many loops, and getting personal information out of Benson is like hauling cement. Hard and unforgiving, and liable to fall and smash your skin open.

Benson heads towards the diner doors, gun in his hand.

Randy runs after him. It’s this or a night in the hospital, waiting for the clock to tick over and assuring his mom he’s fine in a dull monotone. 

Randy will take the shortcut.

He dives in front of Benson just as the shots ring out. He dies fast. He doesn’t even hear Benson scream his name, which is a shame. He has a sick affection for the loops where he dies with Benson’s hands on him, desperately trying to keep the blood in.

[40]

“Tell me about the time loop stages again,” Randy asks.

Benson looks over. They’re in the car. Post-Lisa, pre-Miss Beard. The sweet spot, Randy calls it. He made them bring their stuffed animals this time. The crocodile and giraffe are riding in the backseat. Benson made Randy strap them in before they drove off. 

“When did I say that?” Benson asks. 

“You said you had a theory,” Randy prompts. “The first loops are about figuring out the rules of the loop…”

He waves for Benson to continue. Benson looks surprised to see him gesturing, since before today Randy was a strictly keep-your-hands-at-your-sides-at-all-times kind of guy. 

“Then the fun stuff,” Randy continues. “Seeing what you can do. Then…”

“The despair,” Benson says flatly. “You’re trapped. No forward momentum, no nothing . Go nutballs crazy. Try to kill yourself a bunch of times. Then you get over yourself and learn what you gotta know, then get out of the loop.”

“What if it’s not you who needs to learn something? What if you’re stuck in a loop with someone who gets reset every time?”

Benson looks over at him, considering. His mouth twitches. He likes it when Randy brings up weird, random stuff like this, even if it annoys him sometimes.

“Then you’re stuck making ice sculptures and learning how to play piano,” Benson says. He throws up a punk-rock sign, and Randy watches his long fingers wiggle. “Go fucking nuts , my guy.”

[41]

“Fuck me.”

Benson stops in the middle of his there’s something fixable about you spiel, which Randy pretty much has memorized by now. He blinks. Behind the counter, Marsha the waitress blinks too, her eyebrows up by her hairline. 

Randy ignores her. 

“I’m probably gay,” he says. “I’ve never had sex. Fuck me.”

Benson stares at him, his hand frozen at the back of Randy’s head. Then he twists, checking to see if there’s anyone watching. Marsha almost knocks over a coffeepot in her haste to pretend she isn’t listening, and Benson watches her for a moment before turning back to Randy.

“What,” he says, giving Randy a strange, bewildered little smile that Randy’s only been able to coax out of him a few times in all these loops. “You got some kind of murder kink, Randy? You fucked up?”

You fucked me up , Randy thinks. You stuck me in this and I can’t get out. I’ve tried so many things but I haven’t tried this, maybe that’s it.

Randy didn’t stop the shootings this time. He knows that means he’s a terrible person. But he’s very tired, and he isn’t sure if anything he does matters. Maybe it’s useless trying.

And yet he’s trying this. He isn’t sure if this is to get him out or if he’s just Going Fucking Nuts, which Benson insisted was a key part of every time loop story. One of these days he should make Benson host a movie day. He could probably talk him into it, if they manage to avoid the murders. 

“I am,” Randy says. “I am f-fucked up. When I was a kid I made one choice that hurt somebody and then I didn’t make any choices ever again. Didn’t let myself feel anything, didn’t let myself want -”

He stops, throat thick. He still cries, most loops. He’s so sick of it. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want,” he says, even though he’s 95% sure Benson does want to, even if Benson has never, ever initiated it in all their loops, even the ones where Randy talks him out of murders and they spend the day riding around - dying on the road out of town; drinking beer at a dingy bar where someone will inevitably be rude to Randy and then Benson will beat them unconscious; playing 20 questions that Benson will find some way to avoid answering while pestering Randy to tell him the absolute truth.

“I just - I thought -” Randy swallows. “I’ve seen you watching me, so-”

Benson’s grip tightens on the back of his head. His eyes are so dark, they’re always so dark.

“Come on,” he says.

He doesn’t even wait for his coffee.

The first time Randy loses his virginity is in the back of Benson’s car. 

It’s cramped and sweaty and the sex hurts, but only a little. Benson stole lube from the drugstore on their way to the back roads of town. 

It isn’t what he expected. Well, it is and it isn’t. Benson is rough and gentle all at once, which Randy really should’ve seen coming. He shoves Randy into the car seats so hard Randy gets imprints of leather on his naked chest, but he also takes his time stretching Randy out. Keeps hushing Randy when he begs him to put it in already, telling him to be patient. 

“But I want it to hurt,” Randy gasps against the car seats, unsure if he’s relieved or disappointed.

“Not like that,” Benson says. “Not your first time.”

Randy doesn’t know if he agrees with him, but there’s something oddly panicked in Benson’s eyes that makes Randy think he should shut up. 

There’s a knife in the glovebox. Randy doesn’t ask Benson to use it, but he thinks about it as Randy pushes into him, his hand tight around Randy’s throat. Next time, he thinks, with a vaguely sick feeling that is quickly forgotten as Benson fucks into him faster.

[43]

“I just wish we had more time,” Randy says. “You don’t know me. If we had a few more days… I don’t know. I hate having to start over all the time. I miss you.”

Benson sits up, a cigarette in his mouth. They’re lying naked in his backseat again. Well, again for Randy. The first time for Benson. It’s noon and nobody is dead yet.

“Bradley,” Benson says, because Randy didn’t bother correcting him in this loop. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Randy sighs. “Can we get out of town?”

Benson tells him no. Randy didn’t expect anything else. He knows how to convince Benson to leave, and he hadn’t said any of it. 

[55]

Randy only tries to leave Benson a few times.

The first time, Benson shoots some guy who was walking past and Randy slinks back, crying and shaking.

The second time is on a loop where Randy talks him out of the murders. He sneaks away when Benson is in the bar bathroom and spends the rest of the day hyperventilating in a random cafe. Then he goes home and hugs his mom and turns on the news and sees that Benson stabbed a guy at the bar and then died with three police bullets in his chest.

He stops trying after that. 

[55 - 70]

You don’t know me, Benson tells him.

He screams it, face washed in red and blue lights. He whispers it, his hand clenched around Randy’s throat. He sobs it, over and over. 

It’s usually a sign that he’s going to die soon. Randy’s heart sinks every time he hears it.

[71 - 80]

An incomplete, ever-updating list of things Randy knows about Benson:

1. His last name is Roderick. This took a shocking amount of time to pry out of him, and he only finds out after asking his mom.

2. He doesn’t want kids. Vehemently doesn’t want kids, and once he shoves Randy against a wall for suggesting it might be nice to be a dad. 

3. His dad took off when he was a kid. “Only stayed long enough to do damage,” as Benson phrases it.

4. His favorite movies are a tie between Godfather 2 and Evil Dead.

5. He always thought he’d die young.

6. Mr. Shepard was his mentor during most of grade school. This one isn’t from Benson, it’s from the only time Randy dares to reveal to Mr. Shepard who Benson is. The betrayed look Benson shoots him - and the broken jaw Benson gives him later - means Randy doesn’t risk it again.

7. He lost his virginity at 15 to a girl at a house party who wanted to sniff his armpit while she rode him. Or when he was 14 to a girl who traded blowjobs for drugs. Or when he was 16 and a girl slept with him in her new car to make her father mad. He gives several conflicting stories until Randy decides to stop asking.

8. He likes it when Randy laughs. This is self-evident. It’s especially evident when Benson is the one who makes him laugh. One time Randy coughs water out of his nose thanks to an off-color joke about cowboys, and Benson grins so hard that Randy has to look away from it.

9. He likes it when Randy cries. He licks the tears off his cheeks when they have sex, something dark and primal behind his eyes.

10. He was on the wrestling team in high school. He got kicked out for biting his opponent one too many times.

11. He gets screaming nightmares. Randy has never seen him sleep, but Benson brings it up once. Said his mom tells him to shut the hell up.

12. He used to save baby birds when he found them out of their nests in spring. He’d search until he found a nest, then plop them in. Then a kid from school stomped on a bird he was trying to save, right in front of him. Benson stopped the habit after that.

13. Never, ever say ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’ it brings up a bad memory. Benson never tells him about it, but he shudders every time Randy says it.

There is a short window of time where Benson will offer up information without violence: after he gets to know Randy better, but before he sees Mr. Shepard. Trying to get any information on either side of those things is liable to get Randy a black eye or a gun in his face.

One last thing about Benson:

He never shoots Randy on purpose. Sometimes Randy gets in the way of the bullet as he’s trying to shoot someone else, and Benson’s eyes always blow wide with terror. He always rushes over to tend to him, always calls Randy an idiot and - depending on the severity of the wound - screams for people to help. It’s the only time Randy has ever heard him ask anybody for help.

[81 - 90]

He stands up to Benson more. He knows what annoys him and what will make him smile. What will make Benson shove him up against a wall and what will make Benson knock his teeth out. 

It’s easier to stand up to a man with a gun when you know he isn’t going to shoot you, at least not on purpose. 

It’s easier when you’ve done this so many times.

[91 - 100]

More and more often, he just… lets it happen.

He doesn’t chase after Benson. Stands there while everybody gets shot, numb to the screaming and the blood and the buckets full of red. Lets Benson guide him to the car, his hand rough on his back.

It means Randy is a horrible person. He knows that. But he’s so tired .

He’s been on edge for so long. Some part of him still believes this isn’t real, that he’s stuck in hospital hallucinating. It’s a small part, but still.

Another part of him is convinced that he can’t stop the loop without letting the shootings happen. It’s awful, especially when he knows how to stop it. How easy it is to talk Benson into just… taking Randy with him, no bloodshed needed. But he wants out of this loop. And if these people dying is the key to get out of it, then Randy can feel guilty when he finally reaches tomorrow. The loop after he loses track of loops, he smears blood on his face before he leaves. Just a little bit, enough to be accidental. He feels sick every time, but he still does it. Because then Benson will look over when Randy is seated in the passenger seat and say, “You’ve got something.” Randy will swipe at the wrong cheek. 

“No,” Benson will say, annoyed. “Here. Jesus.” 

Then he’ll reach over and wipe it off himself, his thumb skating over Randy’s cheek. The first gentle touch of the day. 

Sometimes Randy will goad Benson into punching him just so Benson will hold his face while he gasps. It’s the combination that he loves - the pain and then the gentleness. One without the other feels like it’s missing something.

[102 - 120]

Nothing works .

There is no solution. No combination of events that gets Randy out of this. For a while he’s stressed about it, crying and screaming and sometimes even begging Benson to kill him, even though Benson never does. 

Then he’s oddly calm. Serene. Benson tells him he’s being less shivery-chihuahua than he expected in a hostage situation, and Randy just shrugs and asks Benson to fuck him in the backseat. Sometimes Benson doesn’t. Sometimes Benson thinks he’s gone full coco-puff crazy and tries to steer the conversation into things that Randy needs to fix about himself, which is infuriating, because Randy already fixed himself. It’s Benson’s turn to be fixed, even though he fights Randy against it at every turn.

Randy doesn’t even blame him. It took a gun pointing at his head for Randy to fix himself. 

Too bad that pointing a gun at Benson just makes Benson wrestle the gun off of him and punch him in the stomach. 

[121]

Benson’s grip slips mid-punch.

The gun drops out of his hand, bouncing off of Mr. Shepard’s bulk and clattering onto the asphalt.

Benson curses and keeps hitting him.

They’re in the parking lot. Randy has seen so much violence in so many parking lots all over town. 

He steps forwards, not really thinking much about what he’s doing. Then the gun is in his hand.

Benson looks up. His next punch falters. Mr. Shepherd groans underneath him, his lower lip bashed open on his teeth, both eyes swelling.

Benson’s upper lip twitches into a snarl. He’s always more volatile when it comes to Mr. Shepard, always that undercurrent of horror under his expression, even when he’s trying to convince Randy he’s a monster and nothing else.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Benson starts.

You really don’t, Randy thinks.

He raises the gun and shoots Mr. Shepard in the head.

Brains splatters out onto the asphalt. A few pieces of skull. It’s not white, like Randy assumed before the loops started. It’s flesh-colored. 

Mr. Shepard goes limp. Benson stares. First at Mr. Shepard. Then - head turning slow and horrified - at Randy.

The receptionist doesn’t come out to investigate the noise. She never does. Randy wouldn’t have either, before all this. He’d have hoped it was a car backfiring and then got on with paperwork.

Randy holds the gun out, handle-first. 

Benson doesn’t move. He just sits there, still kneeling over Mr. Shepard’s bloody body, staring up at Randy with wide, wet eyes.

Randy sighs, exhausted. He gestures at the gun. “Come on.”

Benson takes the gun, blinking hard at it like he’s surprised to see it back in his hand. 

Randy turns back to the car. Doesn’t hear Benson follow. He turns around, that big coat swishing around his legs, to find Benson still kneeling there, staring at him. 

“Come on,” Randy repeats. He waves at Mr. Shepard, dead on the ground. “This is what you wanted, right?”

Benson makes a noise in his throat. It doesn’t sound like a word. It doesn’t sound like anything.

“Yeah,” Randy says nonsensically.

Then he turns and dry-heaves onto the asphalt. Nothing comes out except a single bite of half-digested trash burger. He hasn’t eaten anything else but that single bite of trash burger in days or possibly months, depending on how you count it.

When he straightens up, Benson is beside him. Grabbing the back of his coat, pushing him towards the car.

“Can we get out of town,” Randy asks as they pull out of the parking lot.

“What?” Benson looks distracted, like he’s forgotten Randy was there and also maybe how to drive a car. His hands are white around the steering wheel, and he’d stalled the car at first, staring at the gears like he didn’t know what went where.

Randy swallows. This isn’t good.

“Because I killed somebody,” he says, his voice basically steady. “I’m - I’m a fugitive now.”

He doesn’t ask much anymore. It seems fruitless when he knows that a tire will burst or a deer will run out in front of the car or something will happen to make them crash before they hit the town limits. But maybe this is it. Maybe this is the loop. It’s a vain hope, but sometimes he has it when he tries something new. He’s never killed anybody before.

Benson laughs wetly. He usually doesn’t cry until they leave the parking lot. 

“I can’t - I can’t believe you did that,” Benson says. “You fucking - you fucking shot him.”

“You were going to do it!”

“Then you just-” Benson shakes the gun. “What the fuck?”

“You were going to do it,” Randy says again. He doesn’t like how Benson’s hands are shaking. He’s never broke down this fast after beating Mr. Shepard. 

“Yeah, but I’m me,” Benson says. “I’m - I’m toxic waste, I’m poison . You’re…”

He looks over at Randy, and the horror in his face has never been more prominent. No amount of killing or knowing he’s about to die measures up to the horror of watching Randy shoot someone.

“You were good ,” Benson says. “Fucking… sunshine and light and shit. Just needed something to smack you awake. You know? This was supposed to wake you up, make you stop taking so much shit, not-”

He stops. His eyes are going dull, the kind of dull that spells danger. 

“I fucking ruined you,” Benson says. 

Randy swallows. “I thought you’d be proud of me.”

Benson shakes his head. “I ruined you like he ruined me.” 

“No,” Randy tries. “You didn’t ruin me. Benson, you - you made me better!”

But it’s hard to convince him with tears on his face and Mr. Shepard’s blood splattered over his shoes.

Benson cricks his neck. Randy’s heart plummets right into his blood-covered shoes.

“Wait,” he says as Benson pulls over. “Benson, come on, wait-”

Benson presses the gun against his own forehead. 

“You can say I did it,” Benson says as Randy continues to plead. “Okay?  Hey. You can tell them I did it. You tell ‘em, alright?”

He reaches over and thumbs a tear off of Randy’s cheek, just as soft and gentle as the very first time.

Then he pulls the trigger.

[149]

Like he always does in the past fifty or so loops, Benson comments on how steady Randy is being.

“I expected you to be more shaky about this,” Benson says. “There was this chihuahua who used to live across the road-”

“Pull over,” Randy tells him.

Benson looks at him, torn between delight and annoyance that Randy talked over him.

“What?”

“Pull over,” Randy says. “Please.”

Benson makes a show of considering it. “Gotta give me a reason here, Randy. What, you gotta go to the little boys room?”

“I’m going to tell you something,” Randy says. “And you’re going to think I’m crazy. Then you’re going to get mad. But you have to listen.”

Benson bites his bottom lip. Randy watches the pink skin go white with pressure and wonders if he should’ve gotten Benson to fuck him first. 

Benson pulls over to the side of the road, leaving the car idling. He reaches up to the dashboard, where the handgun is resting.

“I’m all ears,” he announces.

He’s amused, at first. As he should be. Randy doesn’t get into the hard stuff until later.

“Soooo, what,” Bensons says. “We already solved your shit, and now we gotta solve mine?”

Randy nods. 

Benson whistles. “Bad luck, bud. I got no knots to untangle.”

Randy ignores him. “If you were a movie character, I’d say that character needs to work through some stuff. And do something about his third grade teacher.”

Benson’s smile vanishes. 

“I just don’t see how we could put him in prison in one day,” Randy continues. “So either you need to talk to him, or kill him.”

Benson’s jaw clenches. He takes the gun off the dashboard.

“I’ll help you,” Randy says hastily. “I just - you killed him on the first day. So maybe you just need to talk to-”

He stops as Benson shoves the gun in his face.

“I don’t know what kind of fucked up game you’re playing,” he starts, voice dull and flat.

Randy speaks over him. “You had a hamster for three weeks and you didn’t name it because you didn’t think you deserved something so small and good. You have nightmares about being buried alive. You got that scar under your chin when you broke the miniature windmill Mr. Shepard brought in for show and tell. You were wrestling over it with a girl named Cindy Lap. She wanted to go to Mr. Shepard’s office but you went instead. Because you knew what he’d to do her if she went, and you’d already been through it, and you didn’t want her go to through that.”

He stops. The car is silent. Benson’s hand is trembling around the gun.

Randy sighs. “It was really heroic of you, Benson.”

Benson tries to punch him. Randy catches his fist. It still bounces into Randy’s forehead, but Benson stares at him, surprised by his reflexes.

“I told you,” Randy says, forehead stinging. “We’ve done this before. You just don’t remember it.”

Benson’s jaw works. He lowers the gun. Then he cricks his neck.

“If I see that -” he stops, squeezing his eyes shut. “If I see him, it won’t be so we can talk . There’s no talking that can solve this.”

“I know,” Randy says quietly. 

There is no part of him that believes they can escape this loop without violence. It’s in Benson too deep. If it wasn’t, Randy wouldn’t be so drawn to him. 

They fuck in Benson’s car. It’s less rough than usual, and Randy gets the feeling like Benson might be ignoring some resurfacing memories. He keeps asking if Randy is okay, even after Randy insists that they’ve done this dozens upon dozens of times. This only seems to freak Benson out more. 

Randy doesn’t ask Benson to hold a knife to his throat, because once Benson had admitted that he spent the whole time worried he would slip and slash Randy’s throat open. Same with the gun. It’s better if he unloads it first. Then they can both stop worrying. 

“Don’t see the point in doing this here instead of the parking lot,” Benson says as he shakes the broken glass off his jacket from punching in Mr. Shepard’s back window. “Cops will already be after me.”

“We’ve never killed him here before,” Randy replies. 

“Right. So you’re just throwing shit at the wall, seeing what sticks?” Benson snorts. His eyes are wet. He had to pull over to the side of the road to vomit on the way over here. 

“You know if this loop ends it, I’m still on the run,” Benson says, stalking slowly through the living room. “Still taking you with me. You okay with that?”

Randy doesn’t know what he’s okay with anymore. He’s been through so many days that don’t exist for anyone else. He hasn’t slept in so, so long.

“It won’t break the loop,” he says. “When I think I really have it, I’ll talk you out of shooting them.”

Benson looks up. He’d been picking at the arm of a couch. 

“I spit the burger in Chris’s face,” Randy says, answering the question he knew was coming. “Then I quit. Then I ask you to come with me.”

Benson’s mouth tugs to the side in a half-smile. “And why didn’t you do that this morning, if you had all that lined up and ready to go?”

Randy goes over his list of excuses. Every one of them means he’s a terrible person.

“I’m tired,” he says. “And if they’re always okay the next day, then did they really die? It’s like - this whole loop, it feels like a practice run. Nothing’s real.”

“That’s pretty fucked up, Randy,” Benson says, like he didn’t just commit a workplace shooting this morning.

“Yeah,” Randy says. “Well. I’m pretty fucked up. You fucked me up , Benson. And yeah, you saved me a little. But you could’ve done it without-”

The bloody bodies they’d cleaned up this morning fly through his mind. He’d dragged them into the freezer so many times he could picture every wound from memory. The limp sprawl of their limbs. When he pictures them, he pictures them dead. Like maybe they’re meant to be dead.

“It’s so useless,” Randy whispers. The dead calm that had come over him for so many loops shivers. “It just makes things bad for you, why do you want it to be bad for you? What is so great about destroying everything? Destroying yourself?”

A spark of pain in his hands. He’s clenching his fists again, nails digging into his palms. He hasn’t made himself bleed in a long time.

Benson looks away, considering. He digs a thumb into the hole he’s picked into the couch.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Was always where I was headed. Kind of a relief to finally…”

He trails off. Looks at the gun dangling from the hand that isn’t picking a hole into the couch material.

“Did you ever kill me?” He asks. 

Randy frowns. “What?”

“Did you ever-?” Randy mimes a gunshot at his own head. “You know. Get a lucky shot.”

Randy shakes his head.

“What, that many goes around and you never got the gun off me?”

“I got the gun,” Randy said. “I just never shot you with it.”

Benson scoffs. “Seriously?”

“No,” Randy says. “Why would I?”

Benson says nothing. He winds his finger deeper into the hole, and Randy catches a flash of sadness in his face before he sniffs and the expression vanishes.

“Just hoped you’d grow some balls,” Benson says. He’s about to say more when Randy hears a strange noise.

Randy shushes him.

Benson sits up. “Don’t shush me.”

Randy shushes him again, holding up a hand. “Someone’s here. In the hall.”

Benson jerks to his feet, holding the gun up. He angles himself in front of Randy, pointing the gun down the hall.

Randy shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s him. It sounded like-”

The voice comes again, small and muffled, barely audible.

“ Hello ,” says a young boy’s voice. “Is someone there?”

Benson freezes. 

For a moment neither of them move. They just stand there, staring at the padlocked basement door where the voice came from.

“What the fuck,” Benson whispers. “What the fuck ?”

“I d-don’t know,” Randy says. “I’ve never been here before.”

The voice comes again, more urgent this time. “ Hello? I’m down here!”

“Is this real? Is this fucking real?” Benson stalks over to the basement door and rattles the lock. “Randy, what the fuck is happening right now? Does he have some little kid locked up in there?”

“ Hello ,” the voice yells. “ Hello ?”

Benson bangs on the door. 

Randy shushes him.

“Shut the fuck up,” Benson tells him, hands and voice shaking. He turns back to the door. “Are you there? Are you, uh, good?” 

It’s a ridiculous thing to ask. There’s a pause before the boy answers: “ Please, I’m down here, please get me out-”

“Oh god,” Randy whispers.

Benson dry-heaves, bending over with the force of it. Then he straightens, scrabbling uselessly for the lock.
“Fucking,” he gasps. “Fuck - do we have a key? Randy, do we have a key?”

“I don’t know,” Randy says. “I don’t-”

He steps back into the living room. They don’t have time to scour the house, he’s pretty sure of it. Then he looks at the corner of the room, and his heart sinks.

Mr. Shepard is standing near the curtains, a shotgun trained on him. Sweat beads on his forehead.

“I’m gonna shoot it,” Benson snarls. 

Randy says nothing. Mr. Shepard’s gun is trained right on his heart.

There are no consequences in a loop. Still, it takes Randy several terrified moments to do anything.

“Benson,” he says. “Benson, there’s-”

Mr. Shepard shoots him in the chest. 

Randy slams back into the wall with the force of it, wishing Mr. Shepard shot him in the head. A headshot is a quick, clean kill. This is so much worse.

He watches uselessly as Benson comes barreling into the room, gun drawn, and gets a bullet in the gut for his troubles. Benson goes down, the gun falling from his hand.

Benson lands on the floor next to Randy. His face is still set in that same horrified expression he always gets after Mr. Shepard, his gaze stuck on the hole in Randy’s chest.

“‘S fine,” Randy manages, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. “We’ll do it right next time. We’ll-”

Another gunshot rings out. 

[150]

Randy has lost count of how many times he’s swallowed this damn burger. 

Every day he opens his eyes and Chris is laughing, Jess giggling behind him, Benson striding towards the doors, the burger bite halfway down his throat.

Randy swallows the rest of his burger. He swallows his fear along with it, the horror of finding a kidnapped child in a teacher’s house, the horror of seeing Benson bleed out next to him yet again.

Then he screams: “BENSOOOOON!”

He makes it as weird and scratchy as he can, just so everybody shuts up and Benson actually turns around. The weirder the yell, the higher the chances are that Benson turns.

He waits until Benson is looking at him, brows furrowed. Waiting to see that the strange quiet kid that Benson has been fixating on for a year reveals why he just yodeled at him like that.

Randy drops the burger. Then he rears back and punches Chris right in the nose.

The crack of Chris’s nose snapping rings loudly through the restaurant. Chris goes stumbling back, Randy hissing as pain blares over his knuckles. Benson had taught him how to punch several times, and he said to not go for the face if you didn’t want to break your knuckles, even though he went for the face 80% of the time. 

The dangerous calm slides off of Benson’s face instantly. A grin replaces it, bright and wild.

Chris stumbles back up, blood coursing down his face.

“You motherfugger,” he spits, muffled with blood. He lurches towards Randy. “You liddle-”

Randy kicks him in the balls and runs.

Benson meets him halfway, a hand coming up to grip Randy’s shoulder. “Want me to finish him off?”

“No,” Randy says, mind reeling with everything they should do today. “I want to go with you.”

Benson squints at him. “Where am I going?”

“Anywhere,” Randy says, his mouth tasting like day-old burger and bile and, for some reason, blood. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Benson stares at him. Nobody has ever looked at Randy like Benson does. Nobody ever will.

“I gotta say,” Benson says as he patches up Randy’s hand a few minutes down the road. “I like this new version of you.”

They’re sitting in the car. It’s idling as Benson patches up Randy’s hand, dabbing it with antiseptic he keeps in the glovebox.

Randy laughs. It comes out high and a little crazy, and it makes Benson’s eyebrows bump up as he wiped Randy’s bloody knuckles.

Maybe he is crazy, Randy thinks as his knuckles sting. He feels like he feels that first time he called the cops, all horrible relief and desperate laughter as he dropped Benson’s jacket on that dirty bathroom floor. Except Benson is right here with him, and Randy isn’t even trying to get away. Hadn’t tried to get away for a long time. They’re bound together, for better or worse.

“You like it?” Randy asks, still giggling. “You like it when I’m like this? All fucked up and - and bloody, and-”

He bends over in the passenger seat, tears streaming down his cheeks, shaking with laughter. 

“You’re infuriating,” he chokes out. “I hate you. I hate you, Benson! Why couldn’t you just ask if I wanted to - to go shoot cans? I would’ve said no, but you could’ve bullied me into saying yes! Why couldn’t you just corner me into the supply closet one day and-”

Benson shoves him into the passenger seat with one large hand. His fingers splay over Randy’s chest, and Randy gasps in relief.

Benson pinches his cigarette, flicking it out of the open window.

“And?” he asks, voice all low and dangerous again.

“I don’t know,” Randy admits. “I wouldn’t - even if you had, I wouldn’t have - I was barely a person. I didn’t know myself, I didn’t have - I didn’t have favorite foods, I didn’t even know what MUSIC I liked, let alone-”

He strains uselessly against Benson’s hand. Less to get away, more to feel Benson press him back into the seat. 

He reaches over, takes Benson’s other hand, the one holding the antiseptic bottle, and brings it up to his mouth. He kisses Benson’s thumb, gratified when it twitches against the antiseptic bottle.

“Where the fuck was this last week,” Benson asks, his pupils huge. He drops the antiseptic into Randy’s lap, cups Randy’s cheek. “I think you’re having a fucking psychotic break, baby.”

Randy sucks in a breath. He still gets a thrill when Benson calls him pet names. He usually only does it when he’s fucking him, right near the end, when they’re both lost in it.

Randy leans in. Benson lets him this time, his eyes predator-sharp all the way up until Randy kisses him, hard and desperate.

“Wish I was having a psychotic break,” Randy moans into his mouth. “Wish none of this was real. Wish - wish you’d bullied me into shooting cans with you, wish I spat Chris’s burger back at him, I wish we met years ago, I wish-”

He climbs into Benson’s lap. He hits the steering wheel as he does it, and the horn emits a short bleat before Randy rearranges himself on top of Benson.

Benson tastes like smoke and coffee. No blood yet. 

Benson pulls Randy back by his hair.

“Jesus,” he says. “What the fuck got into your cornflakes this morning? Huh?”

Randy buries his face in Benson’s neck. This man who has punched him and shot him and knelt over him holding the blood in his body, this man who kidnapped him, threatened to kill him, threatened to kill everyone around him, threatened to kill his mom the one time they ran into her by accident. This man who dragged Randy from his small, thin life and turned it huge and horrible, who woke him up from his stupor. Benson owes him everything. 

“I can tell you in a few hours,” he says into the collar of Benson’s work uniform. “If you promise not to hit me.”

Benson snorts. “Depends what you tell me.”

“Please promise,” Randy says, pulling back. 

Benson crosses his heart with his fingers. Then, like an afterthought, he crosses Randy’s heart. There’s a drop of blood over the fabric, and Randy isn’t sure if it’s his or Chris’s.

“Yeah?” Randy asks. “We’re a team? You and me?”

Benson shifts underneath him. They’re still coworkers in this loop, or since they just walked out on their job, maybe they’re… friends? Ex-coworkers turned friends turned lovers? It’s not a hostage situation, is Randy’s point. Though it could always turn into one. You never knew with Benson, especially when the day was early.

“Sure, Bradley,” Benson says. “We’re a team.”

He’s lying. But he doesn’t want to be lying. He’s intrigued by Randy, and he does want to be a team. Randy can tell. Randy knows him, after all this time. Knows him better than he’s known anyone, down to his bones.

“Randy,” Randy says. “My name’s Randy.”

“Randy,” Benson repeats, rolling it around in his mouth. He thumbs Randy’s lower lip. His finger tastes like antiseptic. “Come on, crazy boy. Lemme patch you up proper and you can tell me all about it.”

Randy doesn’t tell him as Benson patches him up. They have to have breakfast first, he insists, and Benson goes along with it. He always takes the loop news better when he knows Randy’s shit beforehand.

“You hit him hard,” Benson says, tying off the last bandage. “Bastard’s gonna have a real shiner.”

Randy nods happily. “You’re proud of me, right?”

Benson laughs. Benson plays with Randy’s fingers, pulling one back so hard it almost hurts.

“What?”

“For-” Randy mimes a punch. “For standing up to him. For being different.”

“Sure,” Benson says, looking pleased that he asked, and also like he’s going to make fun of him for it later. “I’m proud of you, Randy. Now what the fuck is going on with you, huh? Yesterday you could barely look Chris in the eye and now you’re decking him and running out on this bullshit job. What changed?”

Randy looks him straight in the eyes. “You.”

Benson pauses. That smile comes back, razor-sharp and possessive.

“And what’d I do, huh?”

Randy thinks about it. “I’ll tell you at breakfast.”

They don’t even stop by Benson’s house first. Randy shifts uncomfortably in his work uniform as they wait for their food. All the time he’s worked there, all these loops, and he still hates the feel of the scratchy fabric against his skin.

They get two western omelets. Benson ribs him for eating ‘like a bird,’ as he always says. Randy makes a disgusted face at all the hot sauce Benson heaps on his.

It’s nice. It’s normal. Randy wished Benson remembered all the times they shared before this. He doesn’t want nice and normal - at least, not all the time. Not anymore. He wants excitement , the kind that he didn’t know existed before Benson barrelled into his life. He wants danger and risk and okay, he’s probably crazy, he accepts that. He’ll deal with the consequences when they finally come. If they finally come. If Benson goes to prison, Randy will visit. Probably try to break him out. If they go on the run, Randy will go gladly. If Benson dies, Randy will be irrevocably fucked. If Randy dies - 

Well. Then Randy won’t have to deal with the consequences.

Randy tells Benson about Miss Beard. He tells him about Lisa. He even tells him about his ‘friend’ who helped him with it through threats of incredible violence, keeping it hazy on the details so Benson can’t poke holes in his story or ask too many questions, and ends on the confession that his friend died, fast and bloody. 

He still cries. He can’t not. Benson reaches over and thumbs the tears away, and Randy aches with wanting to tell him the rest.

But he won’t. Not yet. It’s not a good idea to do it around people. Randy learned that the hard way, the same way he’d learned most things in these loops.

“Sounds like this guy was a blessing in the shape of an attack dog,” Benson says. His smile is stiff. He wanted to be the thing that jolted Randy out of his stupor, Randy knows. 

Benson leans back, flexing his hands. “Sorry you lost him. That sucks.”

Randy snorts. If the guy was alive, Benson would probably ask for his name so he could find him and beat him up. 

“So,” Benson continues. “You’re… what? You’re fixed now? No more limp dick, eyes down, letting people walk over you? No more yes sir I’ll clean up your mess even though you’re the one who spilled table 4’s milkshakes all over the floor ?”

“No more limp dick,” Randy agrees. 

Benson laughs. “Well, shit, Randy. Here I was, thinking I’d have to do something drastic.”

Randy laughs with him, thinking of those bodies in the freezer. His coworkers are going about their days right now, taking orders wrong or watching porn in the office while pretending to do paperwork, not knowing that Randy saved them. If Randy ever gets out of the loop, they’re never going to know.

“You shouldn’t be that excited,” Randy says, full of no-consequence confidence and the solid knowledge that this is something Benson likes hearing. 

Benson cocks his head, circling the rim of his coffee with one finger. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“You want to walk all over me.”

Benson’s finger stills on his coffee mug. 

“It’s okay,” Randy says. “I’ll still let you.”

He finishes off the last of his omelet with Benson staring at him, eyes half-lidded and dark. 

“What?” He asks when he tucks the last bite into his mouth. 

Benson shakes his head. “You’re so different.”

Randy’s stomach squirms. “I thought that’s what you wanted. I’m - I’m fixed. He fixed me.”

Benson doesn’t reply. He leans forwards fast, and Randy doesn’t even startle. He stays still as Benson wipes a thumb over his cheek, clearing away a piece of yolk Randy hadn’t noticed.

Then he pauses, thumb still on Randy’s cheek. A furrow forms between his brow, getting deeper and deeper.

“What?” Randy asks again. He can’t tell what’s setting Benson off. Usually he can tell. He knows Benson so well by now. Knows what to avoid and what to lean into. What noises make him nervous, what conversation topics he hates and loves, he knows that crowds freak him out and the only time he went to a concert he had a panic attack.

Benson sits back, still frowning. His hand drops from Randy’s cheek, and Randy is alarmed to see it shaking. 

“Benson,” Randy says. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Benson shakes his head. His eyes track nothing, like he’s remembering something terrible. It usually only happens after Mr. Shepard.

“Let’s, uh.” Benson squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Jesus. Let’s ditch this hole. I gotta get out of this fucking uniform.”

“We don’t work in fast food anymore,” Randy agrees.

Benson freezes, half-out of the chair. His head snaps back up to look at Randy.

Randy’s stomach plummets. There’s no reason for Benson to look at him like that unless - 

Unless.

“Benson,” Randy whispers. “Is - do you-?”

Benson’s face shuts down. He stands, cricking his neck.

“You coming or what,” he calls as he heads up to pay his bill.

Randy clenches his fists. He doesn’t dig his nails in. He’s getting better about not doing that.

Benson is strangely quiet on the drive to his house. Any time Randy tries to make conversation, Benson turns up the radio. It’s strange. Benson is usually very chatty at this point in the morning.

“Wait here,” Benson says when they head into his house. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Don’t touch anything.”

Then he stops, frowning. He’s finally noticed Randy is carrying his jacket in from the car.

Randy hugs the jacket to his chest, “Can I borrow your clothes?”

Benson gives him the same look that he always gives him on a day where they don’t have blood on their work uniforms.

“I just want to get out of these,” Randy says, tugging at his work shirt. 

The furrow appears between Benson’s brows again. Then just as soon as it appears, it smooths out again.

“Sure,” he says, heading down the hall. “I’ll find you something small. Freak.”

Your freak, Randy thinks as he watches Benson turn into his bedroom. 

Benson’s mom stares up at him from the pull-out couch. Randy hasn’t been able to get a solid handle on her through all these loops. He knows she doesn’t say much. That she’s on disability and that the neighbor occasionally comes around to clean the kitchen. That she resents her son. That she wasn’t around much when she was a kid. And that she’s allergic to peanuts.

Randy nods at her politely. “Hello.”
She gives him a look and goes back to her magazine. She’s not interested in small talk unless he’s got blood on him.

Benson comes out in his orange sweater and shoves a familiar bundle of clothes into Randy’s arms.

“Don’t touch anything,” he reminds Randy.

Randy nods and heads into Benson’s room. They never spend much time here - the walls are too thin. The longest they spent here is when Randy finally talked him into watching Groundhog Day, which took a lot of wheedling and finding out the exact right combination of things to say to convince him. It was predictably unhelpful, and also Randy started talking about how long it took to learn to carve ice and play the piano and it made Randy have a panic attack thinking he could be stuck like this for thirty goddamn years .

It was kind of nice, actually. Benson held him after, stroking his hair and feeding him water and cut-up pieces of fruit. The cut-up fruit made Randy start crying again, and Benson had called him a crybaby and pinched him and then got back on the bed to hold him again.

Randy pulls on the clothes he’s come to feel a strange, deep kinship with and heads back into the living room.

“That was fast,” Benson says. “I thought-”

He stops. He’s standing in the mouth of the hallway, staring at Randy like he’s seen a ghost. 

Randy’s stomach spasms. He doesn’t have time to get Benson’s name out of his mouth before Benson is surging forwards, slamming him into the hallway wall.

“Who are you,” he hisses. “What the fuck is going on? Huh?”

“I’m Randy,” Randy gasps, muffled from where Randy is pressing down hard over his jaw. “You know me, we work together. We…”

He trails off. Benson’s grip has loosened, that horrified look coming back into his eyes.

“Benson,” Randy whispers. “Do you - do you remember ?”

Benson shakes his head immediately. But his hands tremble as he reaches up to tug on Randy’s Motorhead shirt. He knots his fingers in the material over Randy’s chest, squeezing hard.

Benson’s mom calls down the hall. “What’s going on down there?”

Randy ignores her. He leans in close, whispering: “Do you remember talking to Marsha? The waitress back at the diner, you asked her if she’d done anything with her life.”

Benson frowns. Genuine confusion, not the horrified realization Randy was sure he was seeing before.

Randy wets his lips. “D-do you remember shooting them? Like you were gonna do before I stopped you? Y-you went out to your car, you were gonna-”

Benson punches him in the stomach and storms out. 

Randy stumbles after him, wheezing. He’s gotten very good at walking off a stomach punch.

“Wait,” he croaks as he reaches the front porch. Benson is almost across the road, digging his car keys frantically out of his pocket. “Benson!”

Benson swears at him, scrabbling desperately now. 

“It was you,” Randy yells. “The man I told you about, my friend who died. It was you.”

Benson stares at him. Randy can tell he wants to tell Randy to fuck off. To shove him up against another wall. Punch him in the stomach again, harder this time. But he can also see the fear in Benson’s face, the desperation. 

He shudders, and Randy shudders with him in sympathy.

“I - I can explain it to you,” Randy says. “We could get back in the car?”

Benson’s jaw clicks. Then, slower: his neck.

“Fuck,” he says. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

It takes twenty minutes. A lot of backtracking. A lot of what the fuck are you talking about. Benson drums his fingers on the wheel for most of it, training a thousand-yard stare out the windscreen. Sometimes he glances over at Randy, and his eyes are haunted as Randy spills his guts.

“Pretty fucked up story,” he says when Randy finishes, drumming up a storm. “Pretty fucked up. What, now we gotta - we gotta go rescue some poor fucking kid from - from-”

“I know,” Randy says. “I think it has to be you. Character arc stuff.”

“Character arc,” Benson says, voice full of acid. “I’m gonna - I’m gonna fucking kill the bastard.”

“I know,” Randy repeats. “I’ll help.”

Benson’s face twists. Remembering the boy he was yesterday, Randy assumes. Remembering the shaky, sweating, sobbing mess from the first loop. Randy doesn’t know how many days have passed since then.

Benson lights up a cigarette. Randy is surprised it took him this long.

“You think this loop is about me,” Benson says after he’s taken a truly impressive drag. “I’m Bill Murray?”

Randy shrugs. “I’m already fixed. You didn’t get that far.”

Benson snorts, scratching his cheek nervously. “Yeah. So that’s how I go out, huh? Police shootout?”

“You go in a lot of ways,” Randy whispers. “You really don’t remember?”

“‘S fuzzy,” Benson mutters. “I just - it’s just flashes.”

He rubs his chest. Right over the bullet wounds, that very first day.

Randy’s heart lurches. He reaches over before can stop himself. Slowly, making sure Benson sees it coming. You let a dog sniff your hand first, he remembers his mom telling him once.

He touches Benson’s cheek. Thumbs the stubble there. 

Benson stares at him, lips slack around his cigarette. Then he flinches, like he’s remembering something. He lunges out and grabs Randy’s face, clamping a hard hand around Randy’s jaw.

“How many times have we done this damn day,” Benson whispers. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, throws it unceremoniously out the car window. 

“I don’t know,” Randy says honestly. “Six months? A year?” 

Benson’s fingers twitch hard against his jaw. Randy leans into the bruising touch, eyelids fluttering.

“I really got my hooks into you,” Benson whispers. “Huh?”

Randy nods. He can barely move his head, Benson is holding it so hard.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Yes.”

Benson blows out a breath. He looks terrified. He looks sad. He looks reverent, like Randy is something good and holy, and Benson is getting his grubby fingerprints all over it. He’d told Randy that once when he was shoving Randy face-first into his car seats.

Then Benson’s grip is gone. Randy has to catch himself as he sags forwards.

“Okay,” Benson says, squeezing the steering wheel. “Let’s - let’s go kill this sonofabitch.”

“We have to give it a few hours,” Randy says, enjoying his stinging jaw while it lasts. “He won’t be home until later.”

“Well, fuck ,” Benson says, white-knuckling the steering wheel. “What do we - we fucking - we gotta-” 

“I know,” Randy says, and twists to look back at the house. “Do you have bolt cutters?”

Randy is really not looking forward to doing this again.

Benson goes completely dead behind the eyes as they cut the lock off the door and descend into the basement. His gloved hands are steady around the bolt cutters.

The basement is dark except for one hanging bulb. There’s a water bowl in the corner. A pile of Choose Your Own Adventure books that Randy vaguely recognizes from his childhood library. A TV playing The Simpsons on mute. 

A dirty mattress sits in the middle of the room. A boy kneels on it, his eyes too big for his tiny face. He’s wearing a pajama shirt that’s so large it puddles down to his ankles, and there’s a chain running from his ankle to a pipe on the wall. 

Randy can’t tell how old he is. Eight? Nine? If he’s nine, he’s small for his age.

“H-hello,” the boy says, shrinking into his shoulders. “Are - are you p-police-?”

“We’re here to help,” Randy says, proud of how his voice doesn’t break at all. Everything in him screams to get out of here. But he needs to help. Besides, Benson is here.

“You’ll be okay,” Randy says as Benson positions the bolt cutters on the chain. “What’s your name?”

“B-Ben. Ben Sturgis.”

Benson shudders. His grip slips on the bolt cutters and he has to take a second to reposition.

“That’s a great name,” Randy says, feeling like an idiot. “You’re going to be just fine, Ben.”

Benson grunts. The chain clatters onto the mattress.

The boy stands, shaking like a leaf. He stares at the stairs, then at them, like he’s afraid what will happen if he takes a step towards freedom.

“Go,” Benson says gruffly. The first word he’d said since he cut the lock off the basement door. “Fucking go, kid, Jesus.”

The boy stumbles up the stairs. At one point he falls, scraping his knee, and Randy has to help him up. Benson lingers behind him, still dead behind the eyes. It’s a defense mechanism, Randy knows this by now. Numbing himself out, just like Randy used to do. Keeping a lock on everything that waited behind the numbness, so it wouldn’t rush in and drown him.

“How much time,” Benson mutters to Randy as they reach the living room.

Randy checks his watch. “Maybe a few minutes?”

Benson grunts. Then he looks down at Ben, who is standing there shivering and wild-eyed as he stares around the living room. Randy wonders if he’s ever seen it before, or if the only thing he ever saw in this house is the basement.

Benson curses. Turns back to Randy. “If we - if we send him out there, is he gonna be safe? Like, if he goes to a neighbor-”

“I think so,” Randy says. “I haven’t done this before.”

Benson’s face twists. 

“We could go with him,” Randy offers. “Make sure he’s safe-”

The front door clicks.

Benson swears again. He drops the bolt cutters and digs a handgun out of his belt.

“Go,” he hisses at the kid. “Back door, get out.”

The boy freezes, looking helplessly down the hall.

Benson shoves him. “That way! Go!”

The boy stumbles down the hall, sparing a glance back at them before picking up his pace. He almost stumbles on the PJ shirt hanging by his ankles, then he vanishes around the corner.

Randy lets out a breath. Then he goes back to holding it, because the front door is opening properly now, he can hear Mr. Shepard’s cautious step. He’s heard something. 

Benson squeezes his eyes shut. His hands are trembling around the gun.

“Benson,” Randy whispers. “Hey, it’s-”

He touched Benson’s arm. Benson shakes him off. Cricks his neck. Then he charges towards the front door, rounding the corner.

“Don’t touch it, motherfucker,” he spits.

Randy follows. 

Mr. Shepard stands frozen in the front hall. He’d been reaching up above the coat rack, and Randy’s stomach twists as he sees the shotgun that he’d used to shoot them yesterday.

“I said,” Benson hisses. “Don’t touch it. Step away from it right the fuck now.”

Mr. Shepard hesitates. He looks back towards the front door, which is closed behind him.

“Don’t you dare,” Benson says. “You get the fuck over here right now and get what’s coming to you.”

“Look,” Mr. Shepard says, stepping away from the front door. “I don’t have any money. You can take the TV-”

“We’re not robbing you, you old fat fuck,” Benson spits. “You - you - god. How long? Did -? There was that kid who went missing the year after I left, Jimmy something. Everybody said he ran. Did you-?”

Mr. Shepard goes pale. He shakes his head, a line of sweat dripping down his bald forehead.

“I don’t-”

“We found Ben,” Randy says. “It’s - you don’t have to lie anymore. He’s out. He’s free.”

Mr. Shepard keeps shaking his head. Then he slows. Stops. Squints at Benson, his breath coming out thin and wheezy.

“Benson,” he whispers.

Benson jerks. His grip tightens on the handgun. He’s got it pointed right at Mr. Shepard’s head.

“Benson,” Mr. Shepard repeats. “It is you, right?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Benson says through gritted teeth. “You - you shut the fuck up.”

“Benson,” Mr. Shepard says again, taking a step closer. “I don’t know what you think you found-”

“Don’t say my name, you sick fuck,” Benson says. A tear spills down his cheek. 

“You were always troubled,” Mr. Shepard said, advancing slowly. “I - I did my best to keep you calm. Stop you from hurting anybody, including yourself. Even when you were a kid, you had that acid in you.”

“Shut up,” Benson croaks. “You - god, just-”

He lunges. Randy tenses in anticipation, because Benson doesn’t shoot him. Of course he doesn’t. He slings the butt of the gun at Mr. Shepard’s forehead, bringing him to the ground with one hard crack. Then he climbs on top of him, raining down hard punches.

Randy watches. It still horrifies him. He half-wishes he could get some satisfaction out of it, after so many times. This man hurt Benson, after all. Had hurt who knows how many kids. He was a monster, and it’s good Benson is hurting him back. But all Randy can muster as he watches Mr. Shepard’s jaw crack is that same sick horror from that first day. Just… less shock.

Benson hits him until he stops crying. Then he keeps hitting him until he stops twitching. Then he keeps hitting him, and Randy has to step forward.

“Benson,” he whispers. “Hey. Benson! You did it. You can stop now.”

Benson hesitates. A gloved fist hovers in the air above Mr. Shepard’s face, shaking, covered in blood. Randy wonders if his skin will still be shredded after this. He’s never worn gloves before when he beat someone to death.

“You can stop,” Randy repeats. “We can go now.”

Benson twitches. He stands. The gun is still in his hand, his finger too close to the trigger.

“I was gonna kill them this morning,” he says, voice flat. “I remember doing it. Remember doing it a few times.”

“But you didn’t this time,” Randy says, filled with desperate joy that Benson does remember, even just a few of the loops. “I stopped you. Remember?”

He touches Benson’s arm. Benson shudders under it. Then he turns and shoves Randy up against the fridge. The gun is in his hand, but it’s almost incidental, the gun shoving sideways against Randy’s borrowed shirt.

“You didn’t fucking fix me,” Benson whispers, grip shaking in the sweaty fabric. “I can’t - I can’t be fixed. You think - what? We get out of this day, I never hurt anyone again? I’m toxic fucking waste, Randy.”

“You don’t have to be!” Randy yells. He reaches up and covers Benson’s hands with his own. The gun is cold under his grip. “Benson. You saved that kid. You saved me. In your - in your own fucked up way, you saved me. Now I’m gonna save you.”
Benson snorts. 

Randy squeezes his hands. “We’re getting out of this town. We’re - we’re going to the zoo. Benson. Come see the giraffes with me. Please?”

Benson stares at him in disbelief. His gaze flickers down towards the gun, and Randy knows what he’s thinking. Benson believed in his own doom for almost as long as he’s been alive. Destroying himself feels inevitable. Like a relief.

It isn’t a relief for Randy. Every time Benson dies, Randy goes numb. If Benson dies and life finally resumes, Randy will look for Benson in the faces of everyone he meets. He was going to do that anyway, if that first day stuck. He’d go back and find Benson’s jacket and he’d never take the damn thing off. He would’ve picked at his bullet wound until it scarred. Would’ve found scary older men to fuck him at gunpoint, thinking back to Benson and wishing he’d just bullied him into hanging out.

“You knew,” Randy whispers. “Right? When you watched me eat that trash burger and you headed out to get your gun, you knew you weren’t getting out of today alive. I’ve watched you die so many times. You’re just -”

Randy laughs wetly. “You’re so determined . I don’t want to watch it again. Please? Please . For me.”

Benson blinks. It’s slow, almost dreamlike. 

This day is for you. How many times has Randy heard him say that? Dozens. Hundreds. He lost track a long time ago. He hasn’t said it today, but he was going to. If Randy didn’t emerge, already fixed. Already changed from Benson’s rough hands. He would’ve said it. This day is for you. Everything’s for you.  

It was a half-truth, Randy knew. If it was all for Randy, Benson wouldn’t have walked into those bullets at the end of the day.

“Please,” he begs again. “Benson.”

Benson sways. His eyes drop to Randy’s mouth.

Then, miracle of miracles:

He cricks his neck.

He drops the gun. 

“Fuck,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”

They make one stop before they leave.

“Thought you’ve already done this,” Benson says as they pull up outside Miss Beard’s house. His face is slick with sweat, his hands shaky around the steering wheel. His knuckles are bruised, the gloves hiding in the backseat with the bolt cutters.

“A hundred times,” Randy agrees. “But I have to do it again. She doesn’t remember the loops.”

Benson rubs his face. “What about Lisa?” 

“Miss Beard - she needs to talk to me too. In person, not just the text I sent Lisa.” Randy waits to see if Benson will protest. He’s pretty sure he can talk him into it.

But Benson just shakes his head with a tired sigh and climbs out of the car.

“Get this the fuck over with,” he mutters. 

Miss Beard opens the door with the words she always says: “May I help you?”

Randy smiles. “Hi, Miss Beard. I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I’m Randy Bradley, I wanted to apologize for what happened in second grade.”

Miss Beard’s polite smile drops. She stares at him, her eye filling with tears.

“ Randy ,” he says, and she breaks into a watery grin. “I - hello! Hi! Of course it’s okay you’re here.”

She wraps him in a hug. He relaxes into it. He likes her hugs. She always hugs him when she sees him again, unless there’s visible blood and someone is screaming.

She pulls back. “Do you want to come in?”

“Actually, we have someplace to be.” Randy smiles again. He doesn’t know where the script goes from here. He always goes in the house. “But thank you. How have you been?”

“Good! Good.” Miss Beard laughs again, still watery. “How - how are you?”

“Good,” Randy whispers. He even believes it. Nobody has died today except Mr. Shepard, which usually means it’s a good day. “I quit my job today.”

“Oh? I take it that’s a good thing?”

“A very good thing.” He lets himself laugh. Then he sobers. “I - I’m so sorry, Miss Beard. I never meant for that to happen. I understand if you’re still upset.”

Miss Beard shakes her head. “Randy. It takes a lot of energy to be angry at a seven year old.”

Benson twitches. He always does, if he’s around when Miss Beard says this.

Miss Beard looks over at him, taking in his sweaty face and haunted expression. “Are you alright?”

“He’ll be fine,” Randy says. “Um. I really have to go now. Out of town. But is it okay if I write to you sometime?”

Her eye lights up. “Sure! Sure that’s okay. I’d love that.”

“Great. I’ll do that.” Randy hesitates. He really would like to stay longer, but if this is the last loop, he wants to know about it. And he wants to get Benson out of here as soon as possible. He’s going to throw up again. 

Benson pukes twice on the way out of town. The second time, Randy walks out onto the grass where Benson is kneeling and offers to take over the wheel.

Benson’s eyes go distant, and Randy knows he’s thinking about their hostage situation. But they’re not hostage-and-captor right now. Not in this loop.

“Sure,” Benson says. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then adds: “That’s, uh. That’d be good. Thanks, Randy.”

“No problem,” Randy says, and tries not to think about wrapping around a pole.

His grip gets tighter around the steering wheel the closer they get to the town limits.

“This is where it happens,” Benson says uncertainly. He squints out the windshield at the afternoon sun. “Fucking… deer, right? No, the tire blows out. Wait-”

“It doesn’t let us get out,” Randy says, knuckles white around the steering wheel. “It doesn’t - it never has.”

Benson hums. Then he does up his seatbelt. Randy has never seen him do that before.

The town limits get closer. Randy feels a strange sense of calm despite his death grip on the steering wheel. If they die, they die. If they don’t - if they make it out, then -

The plastic is slippery under his hands as they careen past the NOW LEAVING sign.

Randy waits. Nothing happens. And nothing keeps happening as they sail past, towards the highway.

Benson twists to watch the sign drift into the distance. “What was that? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Randy says. A strange, unhinged laugh spills out of his mouth. “Nothing happened. We’re out.”

“Out of the loop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, it’s not - it’s not tomorrow yet-” Randy checks the car clock. It’s not even dark yet. They have hours. 

Randy presses hard on the accelerator. If the loop has let them go or not, he wants to get as far away from that place as possible.

Benson makes him pull over at 10pm.

“Nobody’s chasing us,” he reminds Randy. “Best thing they have is… fucking face sketches from that kid. I’m fucking exhausted, man. And you’re going to drive us into a ditch if you keep shaking like that.”

“Like a chihuahua,” Randy whispers. Then he lets out another crazy laugh that makes Benson grab the wheel and yank until Randy relents and pulls into the next motel.

Randy is so tired. 

“Just go to sleep,” Benson says the third time Randy sags against him.

They’re on a twin bed, one of the many, many vacancies at the three-star motel they’re staying in. At first Randy thought Benson would want space, but he didn’t say a word when Randy timidly suggested they share a bed. He started out a little stiff, but he’s gotten less rigid the longer Randy leans against him. He even has an arm over Randy’s shoulder.

Randy shakes his head, trying to focus on the grainy TV. “I have to see it,” he says, twisting to look at the blinking red clock. Only one hour and three minutes until tomorrow. But he’s exhausted, and he hasn’t slept since Benson shot up the place the first time, and sleep sounds so sweet he could cry.

Benson grumbles something under his breath. Pulls Randy’s chin back and rests it against his shoulder.

The room lapses back into silence, only interrupted by the quiet hum of the TV. They have it down so low it might as well be on mute. There’s a rerun of MASH playing: the Dreams episode, which Randy only saw once as a kid. It gave him nightmares.

Benson makes a noise into Randy’s hair. “This shit gave me nightmares when I was a kid.”

Randy smiles into his shoulder. He didn’t know that about Benson.

His eyelids are drifting shut again when Benson speaks up.

“You know I’m not fixed,” he says. “Right? I’m - I can’t - it’s in me, man. Fucking rot. This isn’t even the first time I fucking killed someone.”

“I know,” Randy says against his sweaty shirt. “You were 19. He tried to make you blow him. You hit him with a garbage can lid.”

Benson lets out an ugly laugh. “I told you that shit?”

“You told me a lot of things,” Randy admits. “It was really hard. You never want to tell me anything.”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ bet,” Benson mutters.

Randy’s head swims. His head sags heavily, but he picks it back up again. Onscreen, Hawkeye is trying to row a boat without arms.

“Jesus,” Benson says. “Just sleep .”

“No,” Randy says, muffled into his shirt. “I need to stay up.”

Benson waves at the TV. “Then you better find something to keep you awake, ‘cause this shit ain’t working.”

Randy pries his eyelids back open. Then he sits up, arms like lead. He butts his nose against Benson’s cheek, questioning. 

Benson hesitates, gaze dark on Randy’s mouth.

“We, uh.” He clears his throat. “We do this in the loops?”

Randy nods.

“Shit. Guess I’ll remember… taking your virginity.” Benson reaches up, gripping Randy’s shoulder. Slides a finger under Randy’s sleeve, almost tentative. “How many times?”

“I lost count,” Randy says. He kisses Benson’s chin and lies down, tugging Benson gently down with him. “Want me to show you what you taught me?”

Benson huffs a laugh, staring down at him. There’s something hazy behind his eyes, like he, too, is waiting to close them and find himself standing in Burgers, Burgers, Burgers once again, the day reset.

Then he blinks, and his gaze refocuses on Randy.

“Jesus fucking shit, sunshine,” he says as Randy slips a hand under his shirt. “You sure? You’re shaking.”

Randy is only shaking a little. It’s barely anything. He shook all the time in the first loops, it started feeling weird when he wasn’t quivering and covered in sweat.

“You too,” he realizes. He presses a hand to Benson’s back, feeling the minute tremble.

Benson’s throat clicks. He leans down, pressing a kiss to Randy’s waiting mouth. Randy has been through so many first kisses with Benson: tentative and shy, rough and confused, angry and biting. This one, though, is most common: shockingly soft, Benson’s chapped lips working gently against his. Like he’s easing him into it.

“Hey,” Randy says once they have their shirts off. “Can you hurt me? I - I want to wake up tomorrow and-”

Benson picks Randy’s hand off his chest and brings it up to his mouth. He slots his mouth into the webbing between Randy’s thumb and pointer finger, biting to the blood.
Randy gasps and squirms. Tears fill his eyes. Half pain, half hope. He wants so badly to wake up tomorrow and have it be tomorrow , hand scabbing over, not open his eyes and find himself healed, whole, mid-swallow on a burger that he’s eaten so many times he’s lost count.

Benson pulls back, licking blood off his teeth.

“There,” he says quietly. “That’ll be there in the morning.”

Randy falls asleep at 11.54pm, eyes drifting reluctantly shut as Benson snores behind him. There’s blood drying on Randy’s cheek, blood in the sheets. Not a lot of it. Just dots.

Randy stares at them as sleep drags him under, Benson’s arm heavy and grounding over his hip.

[0]

Running water.

Someone muttering.

Sunlight.

Randy opens his eyes, squinting in the morning light. 

For a second he doesn’t know where he is. He waits for reality to set in - does he have work? Why do his sheets feel weird and scratchy? Why does his hand hurt? - and then he looks up and sees Benson in the on-suite bathroom and he goes numb.

Benson is brushing his teeth. He still looks tired, but his hand is steady as he brushes his teeth with a finger. He bends down, spits toothpaste that he had in the glovebox. Then he straightens, looks over at Randy.

“Morning,” he says. “How’s the hand?”

Randy bursts into tears.

“Whoa,” Benson says. “What the fuck?”

Randy cries harder.

“Shit,” Benson mutters. He wipes his toothpast-y finger on his jeans and rushes over, taking Randy’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s fine. You’re okay.”

Randy makes a sound like he’s drowning. Gulps a breath. Then another.

“It’s tomorrow,” he manages.

“Yeah,” Benson says warily. “Thought you’d be happy about it.”

“I am,” Randy croaks. He drops his head onto Benson’s shoulder. “God. We did it. And you didn’t kill anyone!”

Benson is stiff underneath him. “I mean-”

“Who cares about him?” Randy sniffs, wiping his face on Benson’s shirt. It’s disgusting, but Benson will forgive him. He’s cried on Benson before. He’s bled and drooled and come on him so many times he can’t keep track. 

“Nobody’s after you,” Randy continues. “You’re not pointing a gun at anybody. We can - we can do whatever we want.”

Benson doesn’t reply. He rubs Randy’s back, slow and even.
Randy pulls back. Benson’s eyes are haunted, even though he’s trying to hide it by keeping his face as blank as possible.

“Benson?”

Benson shakes his head. He mumbles something that sounds like got your hooks in me. Then he admits: “I had weird dreams. Shitton of loops. Not - not all of them, I think. Just… I remember walking towards those doors so many fucking times. And then you stop me. Or you don’t.”

Randy looks away. “It just - it seemed so useless after a while.”

Benson snorts dismissively. “You don’t gotta fucking justify yourself to me, man. I’m surprised you didn’t go shitbox crazy and join in.”

Then his face twists. He reaches up, thumbing the tears off of Randy’s damp cheeks, his face full of strange, scared reverence as he stares down at him.

“Not that surprised,” he adds quietly. “You’re still - y’know.”

Good , Randy supplies. He isn’t sure he believes it. But it means a lot that Benson does.

“Anybody would go fucking nuts in there,” Benson continues, distracted. He keeps thumbing at Randy’s cheeks, absent, almost an afterthought. He’s deep in thought. Wherever he is, it isn’t nice there.

Before Randy can bring him out of it, his face clears. Forcibly, like he’s shutting it down. He takes Randy’s hand and twists it to see the bite mark. It’s scabbing over, a bruise blooming around it from the blunt pressure.

“Hey,” he says. “No nail marks. Nice. You were working on that.”

He leans over and takes the antiseptic from the bedside table. Randy hadn’t noticed it. He must’ve gone to the car.

Benson dabs it on with a wad of toilet paper. Then he secures a bandage around it, winding it into place around Randy’s thumb.

Randy watches him do it in silence. The numbness is coming back. Not overwhelming, like before Benson - it’s just there at the edges. He’s still expecting to find himself back at work, swallowing that fucking burger, watching Benson walk out to the car. Benson might have fixed him, but there were a lot of cracks. They’d have to hold each other together.

Benson sits back and sniffs. Rubs his mustache. “Found a newspaper. The kid’s okay. For now. They’re not saying much. Not even his name. Saying he’s at the hospital, gonna go back with his parents soon.”

“Oh,” Randy says. “Good.” 

He should be more relieved. But it still doesn’t feel totally real. He’s not going to feel relief, proper relief, for a while. Until it finally sinks in that he made it out.

Benson hesitates. “Want to go to the zoo?”

Randy blinks. He can’t remember how many times he’s asked Benson that same question, trying to coax him on a doomed trip out of town, or to make him stop whatever terrible thing he was about to do.

“Asked the motel lady,” Benson continues. “There’s one a few towns over. Could make it in two hours if we speed.”

Randy nods. “Okay.”

“You sure? You look-”

Randy cuts him off. First with a hand over his arm, because Benson doesn’t do well with being kissed unexpectedly. The one time Randy tried - charging at him in the parking lot, the both of them still in their work uniforms - Benson clocked him on reflex. 

What the hell was that, Bradley, he’d asked as Randy lay there on the concrete, dazed and a little crazy with the loops.

Randy waits for Benson to look at him. Then he leans is and kisses him. Soft. Gentle. Only a bit of teeth, right at the end.

“Let’s go to the fucking zoo,” Randy says.

It’s another chilly day. The sun is half-hidden, and Randy looks up at the gray clouds and tries to remember the last time he felt rain on his skin. He’ll go out in it, when it comes. Stand in the rain and let it drown him. Maybe he’ll get Benson to come along. 

There’s no line to get into the zoo. The girl behind the counter is bored, and Randy can’t tell if she’s serious if she asks him if he wants an adult’s ticket or a child’s.
“Child’s,” Benson says immediately, always eager for a discount.

Randy smiles. Then he pauses.

There’s a gift shop just beyond the entrance. He starts towards it.

Benson catches up not long after, joining Randy in the stuffed animals aisle. “What, trying to ditch me already?”

Randy holds up two toy animals. They aren’t the right colors - the zoo went for realistic over colorful, unlike Lisa’s work, the only store on her side of the dying mall. But they’ll do.

Benson takes the giraffe with surprisingly careful hands. He blinks hard, and Randy knows he’s remembering.

Benson’s throat clicks. He nods at Randy’s crocodile. “What’re you gonna name it?”

“Benson,” Randy replies instantly.

Benson snorts. “What, ‘cause of the teeth?”

Randy hugs it to his chest. “Among other things.”

Benson rubs a thumb over the giraffe’s soft nose. For a moment Randy thinks he’s going to ask about something in the loops. There were so many, and Benson was getting them shoved into him all at once in odd, jagged fragments.

Benson cricks his neck. Randy’s body floods with adrenaline, purely on principle.

“Well,” Benson says. “There’s the counter. You gonna stand there and make puppy eyes or are you gonna go?”

Randy wants to squeeze his hand. Wants to touch his arm. But they haven’t discussed the rules here. They’ve never had a tomorrow before.

The giraffe enclosure is so small Randy worries for them. There are only two, but they’re big, and surely they need more than this little enclosure they’re looking into.

Benson is twitchy. He insists he’s fine, but every time someone comes too close there’s a second where he looks like he’s going to snarl at them. The zoo is far from crowded, but Randy understands. It’s a strange day.

“We can go soon,” he offers the fifth time Benson shoots evil-eyes at a mom passing by with her kid, the stroller almost rolling over Benson’s foot.

Benson nods. His jaw flexes. The toy giraffe hangs from his fist, which is clenched tight around its front legs. 

“We’re not going back,” he says. “Right?”

There’s no threat in it. He’s actually asking. Like he’ll follow Randy back home if he says yes. But there’s so much dread behind his eyes, even if he’s flattening out his face to try and hide it.

Randy shakes his head. The giraffes are grooming each other in the enclosure below, their weird, thick lips working at the other’s manes. Randy didn’t know they did that. He doesn’t know a lot of things. The world isn’t predictable anymore, not even Benson. Anything could happen.

Randy swallows. “I have to see my mom. But she can wait. Maybe Christmas.”

Benson looks at him. Christmas was a while away.

“Okay,” Benson says. “What do you wanna do, Randy?”

It’s almost wry, the way he says it. Like he’s thinking about all the times he’s asked Randy what he wants, what he really wants, grow a spine, Randy, take charge of your own life, today is about you .

Randy thinks about it. He has savings. His mom will send him money if they run out. They’re not running from the cops, so they can get jobs. Neither of them will have a solid reference, since they both ran out at the start of a shift after Randy broke his coworker’s nose. But there were jobs that would still take them. They could find somewhere less shitty and settle down. Or maybe not. Maybe they could do six months waiting tables, another six months at a movie theater. Travel around for a while. Randy has never crossed state lines. Never seen the ocean. Never gone dancing or sang karaoke or watched the sunrise with somebody he loved.

“I never want to eat a fucking burger again,” Randy says.

Benson laughs. “Fuck. You got it, sunshine. Anything else?”

“I -” Randy swallows again, his throat dry. “I want to see the states. All fifty of them.”

“We can do that,” Benson says. He rearranges his grip on the giraffe so he’s holding it by the chest, almost gentle. “Wanna drive?”

Randy looks down at the giraffes. They’re still grooming each other, not noticing or caring the two of them standing there watching. Not that Benson is watching them, Randy realizes. Benson is watching Randy. 

“Tomorrow,” Randy says.