Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1869231.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Thrill_Me:_The_Leopold_&_Loeb_Story_-_Dolginoff
  Relationship:
      Nathan_Leopold/Richard_Loeb
  Character:
      Nathan_Leopold, Richard_Loeb, Background_&_Cameo_Characters
  Additional Tags:
      First_Time, Dom/sub, Arson, Trans_Male_Character, Theft, Frottage,
      Clothed_Sex, Slow_Burn, Emotional_Manipulation, Manipulation, High
      School, 1910s, did_i_mention_the_arson, Trans_Character, Nathan_POV, both
      characters_are_underage/the_same_age, Dysphoria, depiction_of_what's_more
      or_less_a_panic_attack
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-06-30 Chapters: 1/2 Words: 2146
****** Psychological primary yellow ******
by John_the_Alligator_(Chyronic)
Summary
     At this point Nathan had had enough information that he should’ve
     been able to drop it. Case closed, Richard Loeb steals things he
     could afford and seems to want to get caught. The end.
     Instead he’d made the mistake of talking to Richard—or, really, of
     letting Richard talk to him.
     Alternate summary: “And why—” Richard’s focus shifts from the fire to
     Nathan “—were you going to do that?”
Notes
     For_your_color_inquiries.
Nathan’s heart is going so fast he doesn’t know how he’s still conscious. The
smart thing to do is to keep checking his memory over: there’s nothing to tie
them to the broken window and jimmied lock. He left the empty cans of paint
thinner in the building—better than disposing of them anywhere that could tell
cops where the arsonists culpable were headed after. Nathan closes his eyes and
goes over it yet again. Did they miss anything?
Richard doesn’t seem worried. He’s sitting pressed back against the brick wall
of their school’s main building, head leaned back, eyes closed. He’s been
watching the fire for as long as Nathan’s been looking at him, aghast at how
relaxed he is. This shouldn’t have felt like such a shock; Nathan has been
watching him.
One day at school Richard had suddenly acquired a heavy black fountain pen that
set off bells in Nathan’s head. It turned up at the same time the hand Mr.
Jameson graded with changed—and there was Richard in the third row of his
class, writing peaceably. Nathan will never understand how people can be so
unobservant and survive it. From the beginning, Richard was different, and
Nathan will admit to a creeping fascination.
The thing about Richard is that he’s clever but he’s careless, and this should
have been enough to let Nathan dismiss him. Instead, he hunted down his
brother. John’s a couple years older, at their school and looking at colleges
on a normal timeline. He’s…
Boring. If he were the one stealing things off their teachers out of apparently
nothing but spite, he’d be pawning them off. John wants money, Nathan picked
that up, his family’s loaded and Richard’s definitely not their favorite but
John still has this palpable desire for things he doesn’t have. That and his
envy for the brother three years younger than him slacking off at his grade
level made it easy to get information off him, but none of it helped. Not
really. So Richard’s smart and he wastes it, he’s good with people and he uses
it, and he has a record. That wasn’t enough. Nathan kept watching.
If Richard pawned off everything he stole he’d be better off. Instead he kept
it all and then used it. In public. Nathan was horrified (and, all right, a
little bit amused) by that apparently no one, not even the theft victims who
were supposed to be keeping an eye on their classes, was paying enough
attention to notice. He wanted to pick them up and shake them.
And God damn it, Richard by all right was smart enough to know better.
At this point Nathan had had enough information that he should’ve been able to
drop it. Case closed, Richard Loeb steals things he could afford and seems to
want to get caught. The end.
Instead he’d made the mistake of talking to Richard—or, really, of letting
Richard talk to him. He’d watched Richard for long enough for Nathan to have
picked up on how much effort he sinks into making things he’s calculated look
casual. So Nathan was cataloging still when they were coincidentally both late
enough to be alone in an empty classroom, when Richard’s hand fell on Nathan’s
arm and he refused to show a reaction.
“So, you’ve been watching me,” Richard said pleasantly, still holding Nathan
back. “I’m Richard Loeb.”
“I know,” Nathan said; then, after a pause, “Nathan Leopold.”
“Nice to meet you, Nathan. We should talk sometime.”
He’ll give Richard this: he drew Nathan in almost perfectly. They were
acquaintances, and then they were friends, and then Nathan was standing
watch—lounging watch really—in the doorway of another empty classroom. Richard
pushed him up against the door to slam it shut, held Nathan there with his body
and a hand tight on the back of his neck and kissed him until Nathan gave up on
self-control and moaned into his mouth.
Richard, of course, had taken that as a signal to stop. “Really? That’s all?”
Nathan let himself fall back against the door and closed his eyes. “Fuck you.”
“No,” Richard said, laying one finger against Nathan’s lips. “That’s really not
where this is going.”
“Please,” Nathan whispered, and kept his eyes closed. He wasn’t sure if he’d be
able to stand it, if he looked, and Richard was mocking him, if—
“Hmm. No. Break’s almost over.”
And he hadn’t objected, later, when Richard pressed the pocket watch he’d
lifted into Nathan’s hand. Nathan knew better, knew that it wasn’t so much a
gift as it was an insurance policy, knew he should’ve turned it in, said he
found it on the floor and taken how trustworthy he’d look and used it. But this
was his senior year. And he really did hate their statistics teacher.
He stayed laid out on his bed, flicking the watch open and shut, for a while
that afternoon. It kept much better time than the one he’d lost last year.
Later that week he and Richard were on the same discussion group, to Nathan’s
knowledge by chance. He was long done with the individual assignment and had
quietly pulled out that day’s spare book, waiting.
Richard, of course, had other ideas. “So, how much force do you think it would
take to kill Mary—” the one scholarship student in class, who always tried so
hard; of course she’d grate on Richard Loeb, who prided himself on
effortlessness “—with a pencil?”
Nathan could assume how the other three people in their group grimaced or
flinched. He gave them a second to object, then said, “More than you’d think.
You’d have decent luck through the throat or the eye, but I’m not sure if even
bracing yourself you could make it fatal.” Unlike Richard, he took the sensible
precautions of keeping his voice low and his head down.
There wasn’t really anything wrong with Mary as a person. She was out of place,
desperate for validation, and torn up by wanting to be smarter than she’d ever
managed. Of course she’d had no choice but to take a place at their school when
it was offered, but it was still unfortunate. Nathan had kept an eye on her for
a little while; she was bright enough. She owned exactly one pair of shoes.
If Richard wanted to establish a reputation on his way out, she was a decent
target, with no hope of ever having the clout to make him regret it. No one
would believe her if she tried.
What he said caught up with Nathan belatedly. That was around when he’d
realized he was lost.
It still mystified Nathan that Richard was smart enough to be cautious and he
wasn’t. He threw around charm, and power, and plausible deniability, instead of
just making sure he didn’t have an accusation to get out of in the first place.
It didn’t even always work, and he still…
Which is what led them to the records office. Nathan and Richard had decided to
apply to UChicago together, and unlike Nathan, Richard had been lazy enough to
get himself a record.
Nathan would’ve refused outright, if the records office hadn’t been a new
building. It was offset from the rest of the school, wood and brick to the
larger building’s more solid brick and stone. Insofar as burning down a
building in the middle of Chicago could be safe, this was safe. So while part
of Nathan had stood by in wordless horror, he’d let Richard wear him down.
The building was a brand-new expansion, which meant it had a sprinkler system.
That had worried Richard; Nathan—still horrified by how routine this felt—was
the one who’d figured acetone would work just fine.
The strangest part was how little effort it took, in the end. Richard broke a
pane of glass on the door to get to the deadbolt. The file cabinets were
unlocked, which let them dump all the folders on the floor before soaking the
papers in paint thinner. Richard stood there, eyes closed, smiling. Whatever he
was enjoying, Nathan was too jumpy to appreciate it.
“What are you waiting for?” It made no sense to whisper but Nathan did anyway.
“Shhh.” Richard waited a couple seconds longer before striking a match—took a
moment to make sure a pile of files on the far side of the room caught—and they
were running.
Richard laughed as they sprinted across the grass, a loud, almost breathless,
hysterical sound. It was catching, though; by the time they collapsed against
the main school building, Richard sprawled on the ground and Nathan leaning on
the wall, Nathan was shaking with incredulous laughter too.
Now the laughter’s gone, and the incredulity isn’t. Nathan’s breathing too
fast. He can’t believe they’ll get away with it, that this has gone off without
a hitch. What if someone sees them? Why hasn’t anyone noticed? What the hell is
he doing? Nathan just committed arson, this is ridiculous, this is impossible,
this isn’t who he is. He’s going to be a lawyer.
He can’t get his breathing under control. It’s very warm, and as bright as an
hour before sunset despite it being the middle of the night. Richard’s sprawled
on the ground, staring intently at the burning building. Nathan notices the
sharp beauty of the shifting orange-yellows and deep shadows across his face,
and catalogs it to deal with later.
Bracing himself against the wall and trying to force his lungs to breathe
evenly eventually works. “Richard,” Nathan says. Richard doesn’t stir.
At no point in their planning had it occurred to Richard to mention that he
apparently intended to stick around and watch the show. Nathan didn’t plan for
this. He resents being denied the chance to.
But all right. They’re right at the awkward age where authorities won’t assume
their innocence or their honesty, no matter how respectable they come off.
(Nathan is entirely ready to not look like a teenager.) So what would work if
police came? Maybe making up a prank to say they were here for. They’d come to
their school in the middle of the night with harmlessly destructive intent, to
paint a teacher’s desk pink or something, when they happened to see a running
man and the building go up in flames in his wake. They stayed out of—Nathan
pinches the bridge of his nose—a sense of responsibility, they’re troublemakers
but not that bad, their prank forgotten…
That still undoes too much of their careful work. Nathan’s years of not
acquiring a disciplinary record and tonight’s labor of erasing Richard’s would
be meaningless. Nathan refuses to take Richard’s path of using money and power
and charm to get out of scrapes he could’ve just avoided getting into. That’s
not the answer.
Maybe provoking embarrassment and evoking harmlessness together? There’s a park
across the street, Nathan could adjust his shirt and finger-comb his hair down
and that would do it, in the low light they’d be an awkward couple, boyfriend
and girlfriend who’d snuck off away from their parents to the first place they
both could get to easily. There’s a fire alarm on the telephone pole facing the
street. Nathan could tell Richard;, he’d catch on fast enough; he could pull
the alarm on the way across, and that would be their backup plan. He just has
to…
Shake Richard’s shoulder. Watch his face when Nathan tells him. “Richard.”
This time Richard stirs. “Yeah?”
“All the papers have got to be long gone by now. We’re fine, but the fire could
spread. Look, I’m going to pull the alarm and we can—”
“And why—” Richard’s focus shifts from the fire to Nathan “—were you going to
do that?”
Nathan stares at him. “Because the fire could spread.”
“So?” Richard levers himself to his feet, facing Nathan. This may or may not be
a bad thing.
“What do you mean, ‘So’? You’ve done what you came here to do, it’s over, and
people could get hurt!”
“No one would let it get to that point. Burn down the school, maybe, but we’ve
got green on all sides and it’s not like there’s anyone in there.”
“But there’s no point!” Nathan had control over himself briefly, and he lost
it. Now he’s getting more and more agitated, and Richard’s calm is only making
it worse. “You wanted to destroy our—” Shit, shit shit. “—your records and we
have, the only purpose staying here serves is getting us caught!”
“I mean, if you feel that strongly about it, we can have this argument over
there.” There’s a sort of seam between the oldest part of their school and an
addition; it makes an alley that’s just wide enough to walk through. Richard
holds out his hand, raises his eyebrows.
Nathan follows.
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