The wanted murderer L.S.

Made Love.

A plate of Sunday Dinner was set on the table in Room 109 of the Vonvalley motel. Another was laid on the opposite side, with a vase of a single red rose, and a lit candle in between. Jack sat on the chair he'd placed the meal in front of, and Harry sat on the other. The meal wasn't one from the motel, but one Jack had prepared after seeing the one he loved most become awfully hysterical in the carpark earlier that evening. There'd been screaming and crying, laughter so hard that it had shaken the walls. Gunshot after gunshot, names thrown around, drugs consumed, and the thuds of bodies dropping to the floor.

Now, it was quiet. Just the two of them like it had been since they were little.

Harry watched Jack in silence, both men gripping their dining utensils with an unnerving amount of force. Jack's knife slit through the tender meat like butter, blood pooling in the plate, and he savoured the piece before looking back to meet Harry's stare.

"Well? Eat. Wear off the drugs."

Harry shook his head, "I'm not hungry."

"You always say that. Always have. You need food after making such a fuss, don't you think?"
"No."

Jack smiled, "It tastes like the Sunday roast that Grandpa John used to make. Aye, you'll enjoy it, I promise."

"No." Harry repeated.

"Taste it or I'll make you taste it.

Harry looked down at the slab of meat surrounded by vegetables and mash. Jack drummed his fingers on the table, a vicious smile on his face as Harry cut through it.

"I drove past the primary school on the way home." Harry said, pausing, "Cops were outside."

"Were they, now?"
"Seven year old called 'Harry' went missing. His mum was at the gate. Screaming her head off, she was."

"That's sad, isn't it?" Jack said, admiring the meat on the end of his fork, "He was so cute in that little uniform with his curly hair and big glasses.
Truly the sweetest rose of the bunch. Such a tragic loss."

"What did you do to him?" Harry said, breaking his calm demeanour to stab Jack's sleeve to the wooden table with his knife. "Before he ended up here?"

Jack tutted, pulling the knife out and grimacing at the hole in his shirt. He leant back in the chair and twirled the knife around and around between his fingertips, watching the reflections of the rest of the room in it. He stopped the knife at the angle where it showed Harry.

"I had no intention of doing naught to them when you saw me there. I was just watching them play. It was you who made me heat up like that, who got me thinking about romance and how lovely of a thing it is."

"I'm not taking the blame for what you've done to him."

"Why? You've accused me plenty times before for your bad behaviour, especially as kids. I didn't say naught about it. It's only natural that the favour's returned once in a while." Jack replied with a smile. "Anyway, you took my harmless fun away, so I got bored and went to reserve a room at a motel. I returned to the school an hour later. He came over to the fence; told him I was his mummy's friend; that she wanted me to take him out for the day."

"Where did you take him?"

"A park. He played on the swings, the slide, and all.
He got tired and fell asleep in the car. I drove him to the back alleys, to Room 109 of the Vonvalley motel."

"And you raped him."
"Made love."

Harry put his fork down and turned his face away from Jack. He could feel that smile plastered there, the one he was all too familiar with.