Killer Crush - Kiss. Kill. Repeat #1 - ch. 2 - Tris (Patreon)

When Tris Carmichael had sent his message to the hot guy on the app, he hadn’t actually expected a response. He definitely hadn’t expected a date. If anything, maybe a quick hookup, someone else’s place, a few minutes of bad decisions, and a polite ghosting the next morning. That was usually how it went.

He’d stared at Cade’s photos for far longer than was healthy. Cade wasn’t supermodel hot. But he was movie-star hot, the kind of pretty that made Tris’s stomach feel weird and his brain short-circuit like a dial-up connection. Brownish-blonde hair that brushed his collar, bedroom eyes so dark they were almost navy, and a jawline that could cut glass.

Tris imagined closing his eyes and letting his fingertips trace every sharp plane of that face. Strong brows. High cheekbones. Full lips. The rough edge of scruff against his fingers. His hands actually twitched, like they wanted a turn before his brain could overthink it. He couldn’t explain the pull in those photos. At least if Cade agreed to a hookup, he could find out what those lips tasted like.

It wasn’t that Tris didn’t think he was hot enough to pull a guy like Cade, he was. But just as Cade’s confidence bled through every picture he posted, Tris’s instability seemed to do the same. People could smell his brand of chaos before he opened his mouth.

All but Cade, apparently. Cade had replied within minutes to Tris’s random question, and now here they were, on the worst date Cade could think of.

And Tris would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little worried that, before the end of the night, Cade would bolt and never text him again. Which sucked, because they’d barely been together for five minutes, and Tris was already addicted to the smell of his cologne and the faintly amused smirk he’d worn since the moment he’d kept Tris from barreling into him and choking to death on a Blow Pop.

Yeah, that had been a strong first impression.

He’d think about that later. No, he’d fixate on it later. He’d relive every embarrassing moment of the night and spiral until he felt small enough to slip through the cracks of his own insecurities. But that was tomorrow’s Tris. 

Right now, he was tucked under Cade’s arm, the warmth of his body bleeding through the heavy coat he wore. Tris probably should’ve worn one too, but he’d had to borrow the blazer from his next-door neighbor. He was just grateful it didn’t smell like mothballs or cat piss.

His fingers kept finding the frayed cuff like worrying it might somehow make him look more confident. Spoiler: it didn’t.

At the ramp leading from the dock to the ship, a man stood wearing black pants, a navy peacoat, and a hat that screamed period drama extra. When they approached, Cade held out his phone. The man produced a scanner that was very obviously not from the Titanic era and pointed it at the glowing screen. A digital ticket, Tris guessed.

The scanner beeped, and the guard gave Tris a slow once-over that sent his stomach plummeting. Instant anxiety. Full-body flush. Fight, flight, or fake a seizure. He looked down at his clothes, tugging the borrowed jacket tighter, only to feel Cade’s hand tighten around his waist, steady, solid. 

Protective, even.

The squeeze said don’t move. The warmth said you’re fine. Tris didn’t know which part to believe. He gnawed on the side of his tongue to keep from saying something stupid. His tongue always took the hit before his brain could embarrass him.

The man gave him a chilly smile. “I’m afraid you can’t take the candy on board, sir. No unauthorized food or beverages are permitted. But don’t worry, hors d’oeuvres and champagne are circulating.”

Tris’s heart pounded, but it wasn’t from the man’s sneer or his perfectly pretentious tone. Tris was used to that. He’d deflected a million looks just like it from his own family. It rolled right off him now…mostly.

No, what panicked him was the candy. What the hell was he supposed to do without it? Did he have gum? A breath mint? A stick of cinnamon anything?

He gave a tight smile before breaking free of Cade’s hold and walking to the large trash can, making a show of tossing the lollipop away. The sound of it clinking against the metal felt louder than it should have, like a gunshot to his sanity.

Inside, though, he was screaming. He hadn’t been lying to Cade when he said bad things happened if he didn’t have something in his mouth. It wasn’t exactly an oral fixation.

It was more of an If-I’m-chewing-I’m-not-saying-something-catastrophically-stupid fixation. 

A keep-the-intrusive-thoughts-to-yourself fixation. 

A don’t-tell-the-hot-guy-about-your-therapist’s-pet-fish-named-Socrates fixation.

The food, the candy, it was his mouth’s safety lock. And now, the safety was off.

Sure, Cade hadn’t been thrown by his ramblings about serial killers and cannibalism, but what happened when he started musing aloud about all the times he’d thought about driving into a concrete barrier or stepping in front of a bus, not because he wanted to unalive himself but because his brain liked to serve intrusive thoughts like pop-up ads?

He could practically see the ‘do not engage’ flash across Cade’s perfect face already.

He was so deep into his panic spiral, he barely registered that Cade had threaded their fingers together and was tugging him up the ramp.

The contact grounded him. Cade’s hand was warm–solid, sure–and Tris’s brain short-circuited for a beat. He glanced at their joined hands, then up at the towering shadow of the ship. And it was a ship, not a boat, massive and gleaming, its lights rippling across the dark water like stars trapped on the surface.

Inside, a woman in costume greeted them, draped in lace, pearls, and a hat big enough to have its own gravitational pull. She smiled politely and handed each of them a white card embossed with gold lettering.

Tris frowned at the unfamiliar name on his. “What’s this?”

“Tonight, you’re one of the original passengers of the RMS Titanic,” she said brightly, like this wasn’t a reenactment of one of the most famous maritime disasters in history. “At the end of the night, you’ll find a list of those who survived and those who perished on April 15th, 1912. Will you be one of those who lived?”

Her voice held way too much cheer for a woman casually assigning people imaginary drownings. Tris fought the urge to roll his eyes. Whoever wrote her script needed a career change. He opened his mouth to say something–something that would absolutely get them kicked off–but she gestured for them to move along, and Cade’s hand was suddenly at the small of his back, steady pressure guiding him forward.

‘Behave,’ that touch seemed to say. Which was hilarious, because Tris didn’t know how.

As they followed the guests down a carpeted hallway, Tris looked down at the name on his paper. “Clifford Jeffries,” he muttered, wrinkling his nose.

He glanced up, and froze. Cade was watching him with an intensity that scrambled his brain like an egg. For a second, words completely abandoned him. Only when Cade raised a brow, clearly waiting, did Tris snap out of it.

“Who’d you get?” he blurted, trying to sound normal.

Cade glanced at his own card, looking monumentally unimpressed. “David John Barton.”

Tris’s shoulders sagged. He screwed up his face like a disappointed kid denied candy. “Yours sounds cooler. Trade me?”

Cade’s thick brows arched, his smirk flickering back to life. “It’s just paper.”

“Then it doesn’t matter, right? Right?” Tris asked again, deploying his best puppy-dog eyes and pooching his lip for maximum effect. When Cade remained unmoved, Tris stopped walking, bouncing on the balls of his feet, flailing his arms like an overstimulated Muppet, and drawing more than a few stares from the other guests. “Please? Please? Please? Please?”

Cade snorted, a smile finally breaking free. “Fine. Just call me Clifford.”

Tris made a face. “Ew. God, no. Could you imagine having to scream that name in bed?”

“You already thinking about screaming my name in bed?” Cade teased, reaching for his hand again.

Tris flicked his gaze up, meeting that dark, amused stare head-on. “Since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

The shift in Cade was instant, like flipping a switch from charming to predatory. His arm snaked around Tris’s waist, iron-tight, lifting him clean off his feet and nearly colliding with two women behind them. Tris barely got out a startled yelp before Cade carried him into a shadowed alcove beneath a staircase and pinned him against the wall.

The impact knocked the air from his lungs. For one sharp, electric heartbeat, Tris thought maybe he’d pushed too far, that Cade would hurt him. But then Cade leaned in, the rough drag of his stubble scraping across Tris’s cheek, and everything inside him went molten.

“Be very careful what you dangle in front of me,” Cade murmured, his lips hovering just shy of contact.

Tris’s pulse thundered, blood rushing south so fast he thought he might black out. Still, he managed to tilt his head, brushing his mouth along Cade’s jaw in a reckless whisper of touch. “Or what?”

Cade’s thumb traced his lower lip, slow and deliberate. “Or I’ll spend the night fucking you in every dark corner of this ship instead of getting to know you better.”

The words were low, dangerous, like heat made sound.

Jesus. Was this flirting? It felt heavier. More like a promise. A filthy, breath-stealing promise that left his knees weak.

Tris swallowed hard. He’d had hookups before–too many, probably–but never one that felt like this, like every cell in his body had been turned inside out. His skin buzzed. His brain fizzed. Breathing was an Olympic sport now.

“Sounds like you’d know me in every sense of the word after that…” Tris whispered, part challenge, part surrender, his lips parting just enough for Cade’s thumb to slip between them.

He shouldn’t have done that. He knew it. But he also knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Cade grinned, the pad of his thumb rubbing over Tris’s tongue just long enough for him to taste the faint salt and heat of skin. Then it was gone. Cade pressed their foreheads together, a small smile tugging at his mouth like he was delighted by this turn of events.

“You’re such a little fucking tease.”

“I’m not teasing,” Tris promised, leaning forward to kiss him.

Cade ducked away, the movement quick, controlled. “Uh-uh. Not yet. Bad date first, good sex later.”

“Mighty bold of you to assume the sex will be good,” Tris said, trying to bury his disappointment under sarcasm and the residual thrum in his chest.

“Sex is like pizza,” Cade said easily. “Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” He stepped back, still holding Tris’s gaze. “Now, let’s go look at some dead people.”

Tris flounced, crossing his arms. “Fine.”

Cade’s grin widened. “You look like a kid who just dropped his ice cream cone.”

Tris fixed him with a flat stare. “I told you. Oral. Fixation.”

Cade chuckled, sliding an arm around him again as he steered him back into the deserted hallway. “I promise I’ll keep your mouth plenty busy later.”

“You say that now,” Tris muttered, “but you haven’t seen what happens when it’s not occupied.”

“I think I’ll live,” Cade said, low and amused.

That was what they all said…at first.

Tris’s gaze drifted down to the name card still in his hand, his anxiety ebbing for the first time since stepping on board. At least now he had something to fidget with besides his tongue and intrusive thoughts.

They entered a large exhibit room just as Tris did a little happy dance–an involuntary twitch of energy more than anything–but stopped dead when a few guests turned to glare. His stomach dropped. He darted a glance at Cade, half-expecting mockery, but Cade only looked faintly amused.

Without a word, Cade took his hand again, thumb brushing over the back in quiet reassurance, and tugged him toward the first exhibit.

It looked like a real museum: glass cases gleaming under soft light, filled with replicas of the ship, brittle documents pressed behind glass, and delicate trinkets–hairbrushes, jeweled pins, pocket watches–displayed on velvet stands.

The air smelled like salt and old metal, faintly musty, like history that hadn’t fully dried. Tris couldn’t decide if it was beautiful or morbid. Probably both.

“It seems kinda like giving God the middle finger when you build a replica Titanic to memorialize the Titanic,” he said, eyes tracing the massive model before them. “Like you’re just begging fate to make a sequel.”

“Do you believe in God?” Cade asked, tone casual but curious.

“I’m more like a paranoid agnostic,” Tris said.

Cade’s brow quirked. “How so?”

Tris shrugged. “I don’t know what’s out there, but I believe it’s probably out to fuck me in some way.”

Cade’s laugh was low and unrestrained, drawing a few dirty looks from nearby guests. Tris felt their eyes like static under his skin, but Cade didn’t seem to care. He just laughed harder, the sound warm and unbothered.

Something eased in Tris’s chest, like Cade’s amusement made the room tilt back toward safety again.

He turned toward the wall display instead, eyes catching on a black-and-white photograph of a ballroom: chandeliers glittering, banisters curling like gold vines, people dressed in layers of fabric and money.

Beneath it was a second photo, the same ballroom now, half-consumed by the ocean. Rust and sea life clung to every surface, the gilded banisters faded to green.

And beneath that was a drawing: a woman floating, pale and ethereal, her white gown drifting like fog around her. Her lips were blue. Her eyes empty. The placard read that the water had been twenty-eight degrees that night.

Tris shivered, suddenly aware of how cold his hands were, even tucked in Cade’s. It wasn’t the kind of cold you could shake off; it was the kind that crawled under your skin and stayed there.

Tris shivered, the cold outside somehow working its way into his bloodstream. “Would you rather drown or freeze to death?” he muttered, eyes lingering on the photo of the woman floating in that endless blue.

Cade’s arms came around him from behind, pulling him back against a chest that felt like a furnace. The contrast made his nerves buzz, cold and warmth colliding under his skin. Cade was so touchy-feely, but Tris kind of liked it. When was the last time someone had wanted to hold him, not out of comfort or pity but want? Also, Jesus, he smelled good, clean spice and something darker beneath.

“Drown,” Cade said immediately, voice a low rumble against Tris’s ear. “For sure.”

Tris blinked, caught off guard by the certainty. “Why?”

Cade’s chin came to rest on his shoulder, his breath a warm ghost against Tris’s neck. “Drowning’s quick. At most, what–twelve minutes? The first part’s the worst. You’re fighting, lungs burning like fire. You think you can hold out forever, but then you inhale and everything goes white-hot for a second.”

He paused, voice dropping lower. “Then it gets…quiet. Peaceful. You start to hallucinate. Then nothing.”

Tris swallowed. “That doesn’t sound better than freezing to death,” he said, though his voice came out rough, like he’d already lost oxygen.

“Freezing can take hours. Sometimes days,” Cade murmured. He lifted one arm and pointed toward the photo. “In water like that night, it probably took an hour, maybe more. But it would be agony. When you hit water that cold, it’s like being stabbed with a thousand needles all at once. It steals your breath and makes you feel like it’ll never give it back.”

Tris knew that feeling, the sharp panic, the breathless ache. He was living it right now with Cade whispering death like a bedtime story against his ear.

“And then,” Cade went on, tightening his arms around him, “the shivering starts. Your teeth chatter until you think they’ll crack. You can feel your organs shake, trying to keep you alive. One by one, the systems shut down. Until finally your brain can’t feel anything, and the pain fades. You go lightheaded. Euphoric. Then the world just…blinks out.”

The way he said it–slow, reverent–made Tris’s skin prickle. How did this man make dying sound pornographic?

“That’s…” Tris cleared his throat, pulse pounding. “Descriptive. You sure do know a lot about dying.”

Cade’s laugh was low and dark, vibrating through Tris’s spine. “We all have our hobbies.”

Tris tried to smile but it came out crooked. There was something off about Cade’s laugh, something too close to truth. But Cade didn’t let go. If anything, he guided him forward, still wrapped around him like a blanket.

It should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t. It was possessive in a way that made Tris’s stomach flip for entirely conflicting reasons.

They stopped before a wall of square portraits, faces of passengers from the Titanic, long dead and forever frozen in time. Men in suits, women in pearls, children caught mid-giggle in the grainy stillness.

Tris scanned them until one caught his eye and snorted. “They did my man dirty in this photo.”

Cade gripped him tighter, practically folding Tris in half to lean forward for a closer look. The man in the photo had crooked teeth and one eye noticeably smaller than the other, both appearing to look in opposite directions. It was clearly a painted-over photograph, and the result was…unfortunate.

“Perhaps the artist took some liberties,” Cade said dryly.

“You’d think if you were gonna take liberties, you’d make them look better, not worse,” Tris muttered. “I’d be so mad if I died and this was the photo people used to remember me by. Like, surely there was at least one decent pic on file.”

Cade hummed, then–without warning–smacked a kiss to Tris’s cheek. “What does he care? He’s dead.”

Tris froze, blinking, brain short-circuiting from the soft press of lips against his skin. It was the kind of touch that shorted out logic but left every nerve standing at attention. After a second, he managed to push back enough to breathe, though Cade’s arms stayed locked around his waist, unbothered.

He wanted to hate it. He really did. But he just…didn’t.

“If anybody uses an ugly photo of me when I die, I’m coming back to haunt them,” Tris declared. “Bet. And not just some low-effort boo-from-the-closet haunting either. I mean full-on poltergeist, flinging dishes, possessing your grandkids, opening a portal to hell in your basement.”

Cade chuckled, low and genuine. “Noted.”

Tris’s pulse hiccupped when Cade’s lips brushed the skin behind his ear, heat blooming there before his brain could catch up.

“For the record,” Cade murmured, voice like dark velvet, “I can’t imagine there’s a photo where you look ugly.”

“Wow,” Tris said, words tumbling out before his filter could stop them. “Your flirting game is lethal. Are you like this with every guy?”

“Actually, no.” Cade’s tone held a hint of surprise, like he’d surprised himself. “But you smell really fucking good, and you’re really warm, and very pretty, and I’ve wanted to drag you into a bathroom and fuck your brains out since you almost barreled into me thirty minutes ago.”

The gasp that followed wasn’t from Tris, it was from a woman standing beside them, clutching her wineglass. She smirked, lifted it in salute, and walked away.

Tris blinked. “You have zero chill.”

“I just know what I want,” Cade countered, all smug composure again.

Before Tris could fire back something snarky–or, worse, something honest–Cade’s focus shifted. His eyes locked on a man across the room. The guy looked like a cartoon mobster: pinstripe suit, red tie, slicked-back hair, and a face sharp enough to cut glass.

Tris followed his gaze. “Do you know him?”

“Mm.” Cade’s response was noncommittal, but there was a flicker in his eyes that didn’t match the easy tone. “Only in passing.”

Something cold threaded through the moment, gone as quickly as it came. Cade gave Tris’s waist a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s scope out the hors d’oeuvres. I’m suddenly starving.”

Tris wasn’t sure if that hunger had anything to do with food.