- 'It is rarely seen in many species that one would not take the opportunity to take from the other. What makes humans different?'
---
The laboratory of Chemistry class smelled faintly of ethanol and scorched copper, the kind of acrid tang that clung to the back of the throat even when one tried not to notice it. Kael sat in the far corner, deliberately separated from Lucian. The teacher had insisted this morning that the two of them "needed balance, independence, academic growth outside each other's orbit." The phrasing amused Kael — as if separating them physically would undo whatever had been twisted together in silence.
The rest of the class was a hive of predictable noise: glassware clinking, half-suppressed laughter, chairs dragging across the floor. Kael had finished the assigned titration exercise long before anyone else. The pale pink endpoint stared at him accusingly from the flask, waiting for applause it did not deserve. He jotted down the result in the provided worksheet with deliberate neatness, then closed the folder. Nothing remained but time — empty, staring, sterile.
And maybe, without Lucian there, time felt just a little unbearable.
---
He leaned back, tapping the pencil against his jaw. Why am I doing this? The question arrived uninvited, like a cold draft through a locked window. He could almost hear Lucian's voice in response: Because you've already chosen the door that doesn't open backward.
It unsettled him, that realization — how easily he had followed. He was no one's follower. He despised the very concept of aligning his gravity with another's. And yet… Lucian had looked at him with those terrible, unblinking eyes and not flinched. He had seen Kael without the cheap masks, without the polished smile or casual remarks. He had seen the hunger, the boredom, the capacity for ruin — and instead of recoiling, he had invited it closer.
For Kael, that recognition felt almost divine. It was not the heaven sung of in catechisms; it was a heaven made of flames, corruption, sharp edges. Perhaps hell itself. But if it was, then it was a hell that looked suspiciously like home.
---
Kael's fingers strayed to the rack of unlabeled chemicals at his station. The students were trusted not to tamper with them unsupervised, a trust misplaced in almost every case, though rarely in ways that mattered. For Kael, though, it was an invitation.
He selected a reagent with a careless elegance, watching the viscous liquid drip into a clean beaker. Another bottle followed. He knew enough chemistry to recognize the volatility of what he was assembling — toxic, corrosive, the kind of thing that could blister skin or choke lungs with a single misstep. The teacher glanced across the room once, then turned back to correct a pair of struggling students. Nobody was watching closely. Nobody except Lucian usually would.
That thought alone made the experiment feel sharper, more illicit, like breaking a rule just to see how it works.
The liquid clouded, hissed, released a faint ribbon of smoke that curled upward before dissolving into nothing. Kael's lips tilted, not quite a smile, not quite neutral. A soft, private acknowledgment.
---
He imagined the substance as a kind of proof, an artifact. A message without words: I can create this. I can hold danger in my hand as easily as anyone else fumbles with a pencil.
The image bloomed in his mind unbidden: at the end of class, turning toward Lucian with a calm, understated flourish, presenting the vial as though it were a token of allegiance. A dead rat dropped at the feet of a master, pathetic in instinct, but sincere.
The analogy struck him mid-thought, and he froze. His stomach coiled with a mixture of revulsion and intrigue. Was that what he was doing? Performing loyalty like some small, needy animal desperate for approval? The thought was repulsive — it gnawed at the very core of his pride. He should have destroyed the experiment immediately, poured it down the sink, erased the evidence of his own neediness.
But his hand refused to move.
Instead, he carefully sealed the beaker with a stopper, transferred the liquid into a vial, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his blazer. For later; for the scenario that maybe physics class would be just as boring. The glass pressed cold against his ribs, a secret heartbeat, something alive and waiting.
---
The teacher's voice droned at the front, explaining the chemical properties of acids and bases, their dangers and their uses. Kael half-listened, though the words felt redundant. He was already carrying a more eloquent demonstration than any lecture could provide.
The classroom clock ticked overhead. Each movement of its hands seemed to press Kael deeper into himself. He let his gaze wander across the room: the bent backs of students scribbling notes, the faint sheen of sweat on a nervous boy's temple, the unconscious fidgeting of fingers tapping erasers. The mundanity of their existence only heightened his awareness of his own secret. None of you could imagine what I'm carrying under this jacket. None of you would dare.
And then, unavoidably, his mind circled back to the single member of his social circle.
Would Lucian even care? Would he arch a brow, amused, or would he dismiss it as crude posturing? Kael hated that the question mattered, hated that the thought of Lucian's opinion held more weight than the danger he had just created.
He sat very still, listening to his own pulse.
---
By the time the bell rang, Kael's notebook lay untouched, the page still open on half-scribbled formulas. The rest of the class scrambled to pack bags, scrape chairs, laugh, complain, move on to the next corridor of their day. Kael moved slower, deliberately. He could feel the vial shifting against his chest with each motion.
As he slid his books into his bag, he pictured the moment again — showing Lucian the substance, waiting for that unflinching gaze to settle on him. Maybe Lucian would see it for what it was: not just a chemical hazard, but a confession. Not a plea for approval, but a demonstration that Kael's own abyss was just as deep, just as worthy of being looked at without fear.
Even if, in some secret corner of his mind, he knew it was still the rat-at-master's-feet gesture.
Kael pulled his bag onto his shoulder, the weight of the glass vial pressing into his ribs like a reminder of both shame and triumph. He didn't discard it. Couldn't.
Instead, he stepped into the corridor with the faintest sensation that he was walking closer — not away — from the inferno.
The next lesson clocked in inevitably along with suggestions of another potentially wasted hour.
---
This classroom - one for physics - smelled faintly of iron filings and scorched plastic, the residue of hundreds of careless hands fumbling with experiments. Similar fluorescent lights hummed above, flat and unforgiving, spilling pale illumination across rows of blackened benches and scratched glassware.
It reminded him of his after-school work. He wondered when the next task would be given to them.
Kael, once again, sat alone, hunched in the far corner where shadows clung stubbornly to the tiled wall. The teacher, a gaunt man with chalk under his nails, had deliberately split him from Lucian today. It was becoming a trend among those shaking, filthily uncomposed beings that labelled themselves as educational instructors. Too much collusion, the staff whispered. Better to keep them apart.
So Lucian was across the room, head bent in concentration, surrounded by students who gave him a wide berth yet stole furtive glances—drawn to him like moths too terrified to admit the flame was burning them. Moths. Was he seeing things?
Kael's eyes strayed once, twice, then lingered. He could trace the sharp cut of Lucian's profile without even thinking. But the other students? Even if it was for a split moment, he thought they resembled those vile dust-winged pests.
And then the thought pressed in, insistent, corrosive:
How is Lucian different from them?
Why am I following him? Why am I still walking willingly into his fire, when I know it could equally leave me in ashes?
Kael's pencil twitched against the page. The same answer from earlier surfaced once more; because Lucian did not recoil. Lucian recognized. And maybe that was enough.
His hand moved faster across the paper. The formula came together in an untidy scrawl. He had finished the assigned work half an hour early. His prediction was right. This lesson was almost the same as the last. No partner. No supervision.
And no reason not to indulge.
Kael leaned back, eyelids lowering. He allowed boredom to ferment into something sharper: curiosity tipped toward malice. Carefully, he assembled glassware, each piece clinking with surgical finality. He took out the vial from earlier, measured, mixed, adjusted. A stench rose—acrid, almost sweet, like rotting fruit laced with bleach. This time the liquid in his beaker shimmered faintly green, viscous, with an oily sheen that caught the light wrong.
Once again, nobody noticed. Not the teacher, not the restless students.
The fumes prickled at his throat. His skin tingled. Kael smiled faintly. A little death in a jar. Mine alone.
By the bell, the concoction was sealed in a stoppered vial. He turned it over in his palm, admiring the way the glass distorted the poison into something deceptively beautiful.
And yet—when the crowd poured into the corridor, and Lucian passed close enough for their shoulders to brush, Kael's hand moved without thought.
He held it out. An offering.
"Look."
Lucian stopped. His eyes dropped to the vial, then rose back up, unreadable. He took it with the delicacy of a jeweler examining a rare stone. The faintest smile curved his mouth.
"Dangerous." His tone was more appreciative than warning.
Kael smirked, but his throat felt tight. "Made it while everyone else wasted time."
Lucian rolled the vial in the light, the green catching like malachite. "You know what this needs?"
Kael tilted his head.
"A test." Lucian's smile widened—not boyish, but lupine. "On something alive."
---
It was not until later, when the corridors emptied and the evening draped the school in a hushed pall, that Lucian pressed the vial back into Kael's palm.
The proposal felt like striking gold. "Wasn't there a specimen," he said softly, as though sharing a secret. "One who made your life… irritating, yes?"
Kael's jaw flexed. He knew the name before Lucian gave it. The jeering voice. The shove into lockers. The laughter that clung like oil.
Lucian leaned close enough for the other to smell his cologne—sharp cedar, overlaying something cold and metallic. "Why waste poison on paper? Let's make a lesson of it. For him, that lab rat in human skin. For you."
Kael should have hesitated. Should have turned away.
But the truth slithered in like silk: he wanted it. Not only the death, but the witness. To be seen doing it, to be understood.
He nodded once.
---
An experiment. The chosen boy was cornered in a forgotten utility hallway at the back of the gym. The walls were damp, paint blistering, the air thick with mold.
Kael's hands shook faintly as he prepared the bait: the liquid diluted into a cheap water bottle. It looked harmless, refreshing even.
Lucian did the talking. He always did. His charm was a blade honed fine, and he wielded it effortlessly.
"Thirsty?" Lucian's smile cut through the gloom. "Compliments of Kael. Peace offering."
The boy sneered, suspicious—but pride wouldn't let him refuse. He snatched the bottle, muttered something foul, and drank.
It was not instant. That was the beauty.
At first, he scoffed, threw the bottle aside. Then a cough. Another. His face flushed, then blanched, veins standing out like ink beneath his skin. His throat worked, desperate, clawing for air that would not come.
Kael watched, frozen, as the boy's body buckled. Fingers raked raw lines into his own neck. His eyes bulged, bloodshot, lips frothing with spit that turned an ugly gray.
Lucian stood calmly, watching the convulsions with the stillness of a man admiring art.
Finally, the boy collapsed, limbs twitching once, twice, then falling still. The stench of voided bowels filled the air, acrid and humiliating.
Kael's stomach lurched—but not from guilt. From exhilaration.
The poison worked. His poison worked.
He looked to Lucian.
And Lucian was already looking at him, eyes alight, lips curved in something dangerously close to reverence.
"You've outdone yourself," Lucian murmured. "Our first success."
He crouched, wiped the froth from the corpse's mouth with a rag, disposed of the bottle in a plastic bag. Every motion precise, rehearsed, as though he had done this before.
No hesitation. No fear.
Together, they dragged the body to the utility drain where janitors poured mop water. The grating was wide, the basement pipe deep. They worked silently, in rhythm, sweat beading on their foreheads. The corpse slid down, the echo of flesh on metal a grotesque punctuation.
Water followed. Bleach. Silence.
By the time they climbed back up, the hallway smelled of disinfectant. The body was gone.
And Kael—Kael was trembling with something that felt like freedom.
---
Outside, night air bit at their cheeks.
Aftermath left them both questioning why ending a life felt so natural.
Like putting a lab rat to sleep after testing.
Like letting it's life fade and documenting the way it struggled to keep breathing.
Neither spoke for a while.
Then Lucian's voice, low, deliberate: "You see? Heaven is only hell in better clothing. But together, we can make it ours."
Kael stared at the lights in the late night darkness, dissipating into the void as they walked away.
He did not answer. But he didn't need to.
Lucian's hand brushed his shoulder—light, suggesting of what they could have.
Their pact was sealed, not in words, but in poison and silence.