Chapter 3: The Revenge of the Taquitos
The silence in the hatchback was a physical thing, thick and sour, layered over the older smells of stale fries and synthetic pine air freshener. Liam drove, his hands at ten and two, eyes fixed on the unspooling grey highway. The morning’s victory felt like a stone in his own gut.
Finn had said nothing since they’d left the diner parking lot. He’d just wordlessly climbed into the passenger seat, rolled the window down an inch, and let the cold air slice across his face. Now, twenty miles later, he shifted, folding his long body sideways until he was slumped across the entire backseat, his head propped against one door and his socks feet, stripped of their shoes, landing squarely in Liam’s lap.
Liam jumped at the contact. “What are you doing?”
“Dying horizontally,” Finn mumbled, his voice hoarse. “The seated position is an insult to my current digestive landscape.” He let out a long, low burp that carried the distinct, chemical tang of processed chili and regret. It wasn’t performative. It was a genuine, miserable eruption.
Liam kept his eyes on the road. The weight of Finn’s feet in his lap was an accusation.
For a few minutes, there was only the drone of the engine. Then Finn began to move restlessly, a series of small, pained adjustments. A soft, deep rumble vibrated through the leather seat, followed by a pressurized, sighing creak. The air in the car subtly shifted, warming, carrying with it the unmistakable, eggy ghost of gas station taquitos.
Liam’s knuckles went white on the wheel. He cracked his own window.
“Sorry,” Finn said, not sounding sorry at all. He pressed a fist into his abdomen. “It’s like there’s a civil war in there. The réfugiés are fleeing.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten six taquitos ten minutes after you…” Liam trailed off, unable to say after you vomited up a five-pound burrito.
“I needed to reset the pH!” Finn’s protest was weak. He shifted again, knees bumping the ceiling. Another, tighter sound escaped him, a blunt little report against the leather. This one had a meatier pedigree.
A hot, visceral wave of something—disgust, yes, but also a weird, territorial frustration—washed over Liam. This was the raw, unedited version of Finn, the biological machinery behind the carefree smile. It was repellent. It was profoundly intimate. Liam felt like he was being forced to audit a body he’d only ever admired from a careful, curated distance.
“Do you have to?” Liam snapped, the words coming out sharper than he’d intended.
Finn went very still in the backseat. For a long moment, the only sound was the wind whistling through the cracked windows.
“Do I have to what?” Finn’s voice was quiet, stripped of its usual performative energy. “Exist in a state of physical distress? Because yeah, Liam. Right now, I kinda do.”
“You know what I mean. It’s a closed space.”
Another silence. Then Finn slowly, deliberately, drew his knees up. Another gaseous rumble, longer this time, a distress signal from the depths. The car seat leather squeaked in protest.
“It’s my car,” Finn stated flatly. “My digestive system. My consequence.” He said the last word like it was foreign, testing its weight. “You bought the tornado. You don’t get to complain about the wind.”
The truth of it, laid bare in that weary, hollow tone, was a slap. Liam had financed this entire miserable spectacle. He had paid for the weapon and was now recoiling from its aftermath. The guilt from the diner congealed into something harder, more shameful.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Finn was staring at the stained roof lining, his face pale and slack, his usually bright eyes glassy and fixed. He looked young, and vaguely betrayed. It was the same look from the diner hallway, deepened by miles of quiet.
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” Liam said, the confession ripped out of him by the tightness in his chest.
“You said that.” Finn’s response was monotone. “At the diner. But you ordered it. You set the timer.” He turned his head, his gaze meeting Liam’s in the mirror. It wasn’t angry. It was deeply confused. “Why? If you thought I’d fail, why push it? Just to watch me blow chunks in a public bathroom? Is that the new fun?”
“No! It was…” Liam fumbled, the highway lines blurring. “It was a stupid bet. It was just… the thing we do.”
“The thing we do,” Finn echoed. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but devoid of any humor. It was just air leaving a body. “Right. The thing we do.” He closed his eyes. “I feel like hell, Liam. My stomach lining is probably just a memory. And I keep thinking about that truck.”
Liam’s heart stuttered. “The truck?”
“Yeah. It was cold. And kinda gross. But it was… fine. It was us. Then this.” Finn waved a limp hand, encompassing the sour air, the grim silence, the whole ruined day. “This feels like a punishment. For what? For falling asleep on you?”
There it was. The connection Liam had been terrified to make, spoken aloud in Finn’s blunt, bodily vocabulary. The comfortable, trusting intimacy of the truck bed, and then this calculated, visceral humiliation. Cause and effect.
“It wasn’t a punishment,” Liam whispered, but the words were paper-thin.
“Feels like one.” Finn pressed the heel of his hand hard into his eye socket. “Look, just forget the karaoke, okay? You don’t have to sing. The bet’s void. Consider my gastrointestinal sacrifice as payment in full for whatever I did wrong.”
He didn’t get it. He would never get it. The wrong wasn’t something Finn had done; it was something he was. Effortless, enviable, oblivious. A living mirror that showed Liam everything he cramped and disciplined himself to avoid being. And Liam, in his twisted, silent war with himself, had tried to shatter the mirror, only to cut his hands on the glass.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Liam said, the words thick.
“Then why does this suck so much?” Finn’s question was small, lost in the rumble of the road.
Liam had no answer. He just drove, one hand leaving the wheel to rest, finally, on the bony arch of Finn’s socked foot in his lap. He hadn’t realized how cold Finn’s feet were. The touch was an apology, a plea, a anchor in the weird, toxic sea they were sailing.
Finn didn’t pull away. He just let his foot lie there, a neutral territory.
Another minute passed. Another soft, inevitable release of pressure sounded from the backseat, this one weary, almost resigned. The smell bloomed, stale and organic.
This time, Liam didn’t flinch. He didn’t crank the window further. He just took a slow breath, letting the reality of it—the consequence, the biology, the messy, uncomfortable truth of another person’s existence—fill the car. He kept his hand on Finn’s cold foot.
“I just wanted you to look at me,” Finn said to the roof, so quietly Liam almost missed it over the wind. “Not at the burger, or the burrito, or the… the spectacle. Just at me. I don’t know why it’s so hard for you.”
Liam’s throat closed. In the rearview mirror, he saw a single traitorous tear escape from the corner of Finn’s closed eye and track a path through the dust on his temple. It was the most naked thing Liam had ever seen.
The highway stretched ahead, a grey river leading to an uncertain horizon. The car was a shell of smell and sound and profound, echoing damage. Liam looked at the road, and then, for a long, steady moment, he looked in the mirror. He held Finn’s reflected, hurting gaze, and for the first time, he didn’t look away.
He held Finn’s reflected, hurting gaze, and for the first time, he didn’t look away. The car drifted slightly onto the rumble strip, the violent vibration startling them both. Liam jerked the wheel back, his heart hammering, and took the next exit without signaling.
“Where are we going?” Finn’s voice was drained.
“Anywhere but here.” The exit led to a scarred service road, then to a forgotten pull-off overlooking a quarry filled with murky, rain-slicked water. Liam killed the engine. The sudden silence was immense.
“Great. Scenic.” Finn didn’t move from the backseat.
Liam got out. The cold air bit through his hoodie. He walked around the car, yanked open the creaking back door, and just stood there. Finn looked up at him, blinking, his face a landscape of misery and confusion.
“Scoot over,” Liam said.
“What?”
“Just move.”
Finn shifted his limbs, making a hollow space against the seatback. Liam climbed in, the old leather groaning under his weight. The space was impossibly small. His hip pressed against Finn’s. Their shoulders jammed together. The residual warmth from Finn’s body was a shock in the chill.
“This is weird,” Finn stated.
“Yeah.” Liam stared straight ahead at the cracked vinyl of the front seat headrest. “I look at you all the time, Finn. That’s the whole problem.”
Finn turned his head slowly on the seatback. His breath was still sour. “What does that mean?”
The words felt like stones he had to spit out. “It means I watched you destroy that burrito and I hated it and I couldn’t stop. I watch you eat and I want to crawl out of my own skin. I watched you sleep in my truck and I didn’t sleep for a second because I was too busy memorizing how your breathing felt.” Liam’s voice cracked. “I set up that stupid challenge because I wanted you to feel just one ounce of the horrible, calculated control I feel every day. I wanted to see you break. Because you never do. You just exist. You just are. And I’m always… managing.”
Finn was utterly still. “Managing what?”
“Everything. My weight. My calories. My feelings. This.” Liam finally turned to face him. In the confined dark, Finn’s eyes were wide and uncomprehending. “This thing I have for you. It’s not… friendly. It’s not just buddy shit.”
A long, frozen moment stretched between them. A truck roared past on the highway above, a brief storm of sound and light that swept through the car.
“Oh,” Finn breathed. The syllable hung there, thin with dawning, awkward understanding.
Liam’s body was rigid with tension. The confession, a live wire tossed between them, seemed to supercharge the air. Every point of contact burned—the press of thigh to thigh, the brush of a sleeve. A traitorous, involuntary heat pooled low in his gut, a visceral response to the terrifying proximity and the naked truth now laid bare.
He shifted, a tiny movement, and the friction of rough denim against the growing, unmistakable rigidity in his own jeans was a shocking punctuation. He saw Finn’s gaze flicker down, then snap back to his face, those bright blue eyes now stunned, aware.
Liam didn’t hide it. He let out a shuddering breath, letting Finn see the full, humiliating, physical truth of it—the raw want stamped plainly on his body, an undeniable fact in the cramped quiet.