Forty Feet Below

visions of china (twilight, one shot)

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:32:38 GMT

Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Jasper/Alice, Jasper/Edward, gen Alice&Edward
Genre: Angst
Rating: I’m not sure, a firm PG – there’s nothing explicit, but parental guidance is advised.
Warning: Dodgy characterisation (ha, characterisation), total lack of plot, trite cliché.

Title: Visions of China
Author: FyrMaiden
Summary: Alice has ice-cold crescent-shaped scars on her thighs…
Word Count: 2189

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Twilight and all its content remain copyright and intellectual property of Stephenie Meyer and Little Brown. (I merely play in the sandpit.)
Author’s Note: The pretty ate my brain. Sorry.

Edward strokes her hair while she heals, sings her a soft familiar lullaby, croons her name low when her mind is too fractured to hear him. She moans softly, her eyelids hiding the anguished black of her starving eyes, and when she speaks she calls for Jasper. Edward can only hold her close and listen, reach out with his mind for Jasper’s troubled thoughts.

It’s times like these that Jasper slips, and why he’ll be gone longer. Edward knows, and he knows that Alice understands – Jasper struggles against his own nature, and against the pain he causes Alice. He’ll stay gone until his eyes are the same burnished gold as Edward’s, the colour Alice knows and loves the best.

Edward worries about her, but – her body burning through the venom and healing faster every time – Alice kisses his nose and whispers in her wind chime voice for him not to worry. “Jasper loves me,” she says, and Edward closes his eyes, because for creatures like Jasper love might not be enough, and so he intrudes on her thoughts at night, watches her examine the pale marble of her body in the moonlight. Staring at her reflection in the vanity, her guard slips and he can see her as she sees herself. He knows she thinks the same thing.

Jasper returns earlier than usual this time, though, early enough that his eyes are still red, but he looks contrite, ashamed. Alice hurls herself at him, presses her cold lips to his cheeks and eyes. He says nothing but holds her gently, smoothes her spiky hair until slowly, eventually, the corner of his mouth quirks up into a crooked smile. The earliest memories – or some of them at least – that Alice has are of him, his face serene, his eyes violent crimson, his manner troubled and burdened. She’d had a date and a place, and he’d been taller than she’d imagined, older. He’d met her gaze and known her for what she was. She’d taken in the scars, his eyes blackening with starvation, and she’d known she’d want to be with him forever.

Edward hunts with him, and neither of them says anything. Jasper keeps his mind deliberately blank, and Edward matches his pace easily, until Jasper comes to an abrupt halt. “I wish -” he breathes, voice no louder than the breeze that stirs the leaves of the trees, and Edward circles back to face him, eyes narrowing as he listens. “I wish I knew how -” but he either can’t or won’t finish the sentence. Edward knows how it ends anyway, and he wishes Jasper knew how not to hurt her as well. Alice is far from fragile – she’s lithe and ferocious and as demanding as any of them, and when the sun catches her face she is terrifyingly rivetingly beautiful.

And then Jasper’s whole posture changes, his head snapping around as he hears what he’s been waiting for. Jasper’s predatory smile reveals glittering teeth, and he glances back at Edward, who nods his head quickly. “Bear,” he says, and Jasper is gone. Edward follows, neither of them thirsty but they know it’s better for Jasper when his eyes returned to the dark hued familiar gold.

Both of them like to think that Alice is sweetly naïve of what happens in the aftermath of their hunting trips. Jasper washes his hands and his hair in the closest free flowing water he can find, and Edward watches how his muscles move beneath the marred white marble of his skin. Jasper’s scars are so clear to him that he doesn’t understand how human eyes can’t see them. Thirst sated and frenzy fading, Jasper says he wishes he could stop hurting Alice. Edward crouches beside him and splays his hand on Jasper’s spine. Jasper glances at him, and Edward drops his head to kiss him quietly, whispers, “She’ll love you regardless.” And Jasper, his mouth hungry and demanding against Edward’s, his aura anything but calm now, tells Edward that he thinks, feels, that maybe Alice’s forgiveness is just one more thing that he doesn’t deserve.

And, although they both know better, every time they think that perhaps Alice doesn’t know – she doesn’t see snap decisions, not all the time…

Alice waits for them and fixes Jasper with her prettiest smile. Jasper run his fingers through her hair and breathes in the scent of her, fills his lungs until it’s an almost physical ache. He glances over her head at Edward, who smiles. He knows, and he knows that Jasper knows as well. Jasper feels Alice’s emotions sharply, and he understands that she sees straight through them. She touches the scar in his eyebrow, and her gold eyes glitter with the tears she can’t cry.

Jasper is careful for some time after, holds her gently and loves her intensely, and she curls her fingers in his hair, whispers his name into his skin. She throws a party to justify her shopping trip with Rosalie, and invites Tanya and her family from Denali because she can. Jasper is benevolent as he bows to her whims and changes of fancy. She hunts with him, and they stay gone for weeks. Carlisle asks Edward for updates, but he shakes his head and says they’re too far gone, too far away, but he keeps listening all the same. When they return, Alice flashes a new ring and a glittering smile, and gushes about their trip to Vegas (“Drive through wedding, Edward!” she enthuses, and Edward laughs as he holds her close against him) and then their honeymoon in South America. The glitter in her golden eyes is carefree, and she talks endlessly about the wonders of the deep Amazon delta. She speaks of this half-human child they saw, who’d grown up but never old, and he strokes her hair as he listens intently. He catches Jasper’s gaze and takes in the glittering ruby of his irises. Alice glances at him and back at Edward, and her mouth twists bitterly. “Don’t – blame him,” she says, and Edward understands.

Even so, he worries about her, about how long she spends alone with Jasper and, more so, how much time she spends alone without him. He pushes open the door of her room, and she glances up at him from where she sits transcribing ancient Greek, always how she keeps him from her mind, always how she stops herself from thinking. “Did you know it would be so hard?” he asks, and she sighs softly, her breath fluttering the wafer thin pages of her book. Eventually, she glances up at him, her eyes black with starvation, and Edward’s face is sad, hollow.

“No,” she says quietly, and then cants her head, flicks him a smile that lights up her face. “Yes. I – he’s -” and her voice trails off. Edward pushes himself away from the wall, crouches before her and brushes the tips of his fingers across her cheekbones. She laughs, lyrical, musical, and he says, “You need to hunt, Alice. He’ll be back soon, and your hunger makes him worse.”

And then her voice, quiet, sad, desperate, piercing his mind with its plaintive lilt, “Help him, Edward. Help me.” In her mind, in his mind, flash all possible versions of the future, and too many of them for her fracturing stability to handle do not contain Jasper’s scarred beautiful face.

Alice holds his face between her hands, croons his name low in her throat. Her fingers are deft, and her granite body feels supple, soft against his. Jasper closes his eyes, but her face fills his mind regardless, and his lips, when they meet hers, are as hard and demanding as her fingers in his hair.

He doesn’t undress her, not anymore – it seems as if her clothes disintegrate between them, melt away from the curves of her pixie body. She tears at his clothes with a voracious hunger, her lips never leaving his skin, and even like this she smells beautiful to him. Alice is the soft scent of meadow flowers, the smell of sunlight and the glittering yellow of buttercups. He can only imagine how she would have smelled when her blood actually moved through her veins, when her heart beat a steady rhythm. He wishes he’d known her human, and then again, thinks perhaps not. He would have been James in that scenario, a monster incapable of love or trust. And for all his failings, Jasper trusts her implicitly.

Alice moves against him, the scarred white of her thighs soft against his hard, hungry flesh, legs hooking around him as she draws him closer to her, groaning his name as her nails rip against him, leaving neither mark nor scar. He buries his face against her throat and she arches impishly, throws her head back, lengthening the lean familiar lines.

He feels the hunger curl deep within him, feels himself fighting against it, but the longer he spends with her the stronger the creature becomes. He feels his fingers press harder, hears the whimper as she bucks against him, her fingers curling in his hair, pushing, pulling, and Jasper thinks that they are blood and greed, desire and heat…

His teeth don’t break her skin, not this time. She curls against him and runs her fingers daintily across the pale scars criss-crossing his torso, his shoulders, his neck. He holds her gently and she murmurs that she’s proud of him. He kisses her hair and closes his eyes against the bloodlust that threatens to engulf him.

Edward counts weeks as if they are days, and so it’s often hard to judge how long they go between episodes of transgression. Edward thinks maybe it’s months, but the likelihood is that Jasper goes for years before he fails completely. This – lifestyle isn’t his first choice, and the smell of blood burns so hot for him. Edward doesn’t remember a time when he couldn’t control his lust, but Jasper is a different creature entirely, born in blood and raised in war, without the sanctuary and support of the family to fall back on.

“He tries,” Alice says, crouching on a rock to watch him hunt. Her fingers curl around her wrists, her eyes flicking after Edward, landing where he will be just moments before he arrives. “It hurts him so much. When they die. It’s like – like you, like he feels the desperation and the fight to survive, all the emotion leeching into him with the slowing of their hearts, and it chokes him. You of all of us should understand.” He glances back at her and she looks suddenly alarmed, gasps “Edward!” before he is bowled to the ground, caught unaware by his bear of a brother. Their collision rumbles in the trees, the sound of thunder as it tumbles down the mountain.

“You’re back then,” Edward observes dryly as Emmett hauls him back to his feet and dusts him off. Emmett’s grin is infectious, and Edward can’t help but grin back at him. “Did you-?” and his voice trails off as Emmett shakes his head too quickly, drops his voice so low that even Alice’s sharp ears can’t hear, “Can’t she, you know, see him?”

“No,” Edward murmurs, and grips Emmett’s shoulder. “And she’s worried, because there’s only one reason for that, and she can’t consider it.”

Edward is not a tracker, not by nature. He is too easily distracted to follow one person’s course or scent for long, but he knows Jasper, knows his mind well enough to know where he will head. He’s not really tracking so much as following, hoping he can get there in time, or he is tracking but only in as much as he stops occasionally, to fill the car with gas and to catch the scent of Jasper.

Edward’s fingers are long and cold, his gold eyes sad as he touches Jasper’s face. Jasper stares with rage filled red eyes, before dropping his eyelids to cover them. Edward tries not to listen, courtesy as much as anything, but Jasper directs his thoughts directly toward him, and his voice is achingly soft. “It’s better like this,” he says, and Edward shakes his head, unable to agree with Jasper’s assessment.

“Better for whom?” he asks, tone clipped and brittle, his fingers digging into Jasper’s shoulder.

“For both of you.” And he tears himself from Edward’s hands. In the darkness, Edward hears the low, threatening rumble of the wolves. He knows their thoughts – they know Jasper and they know the smell of human blood. ‘Not kill,’ they say, ‘only bite.’

Edward knows enough to know when he has lost, and Jasper smiles kindly and touches his face. “Keep her safe for me,” he says, and Edward nods as he backs away. He thinks, at least this explains why Alice can’t see how it happens. She can’t see this decision of Jasper’s, and maybe, just maybe, the wolves will cloud Edward’s future for long enough that he can compose his thoughts for her.

And he’s running, already running, by the time he hears the pack howl, and he knows Jasper has crossed the line.

FIN

your heaven filled my world

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:59:25 GMT

TITLE: your heaven filled my world (the ‘do you think god is dead?’ remix)
PAIRING: Paul/Carlos
AUTHOR: FyrMaiden
SUMMARY: the one where I shamelessly rip off My Own Private Idaho. No, really. Um, seriously, hustlers, drugs, Carlos calls Paul ‘England’ which was the premise for an ENTIRELY different story…
DISCLAIMER: Not for individual resale. For private home use only. Do not consume after the use-by date.
WARNINGS: None. AWESOMECAKES! Unless a solid lack of beta counts as a warning. In this instance, it probably should.

born to lose
trying to be ruthless, in the face of beauty

Carlos calls him "England" when they fuck, and a miserable cunt when they don’t. Paul rolls away from him and lights a cigarette, blows smoke from the corner of his mouth as he flicks a burning match into the ashtray, ignores Carlos entirely as he steals the sheet and reaches for his clothes. Carlos plays with a Zippo lighter, seems idly fascinated by the spark of the flint and burning smell of butane before he snaps the lid closed again. He says he’s playing at being God. Paul mumbles something beneath his breath, and drops his cigarette on the floor as he drags his pants over his hips, swears as he leans down to retrieve it and Carlos’ hand is cool on his spine. Paul pulls away, shrugs a heavy duffel coat over narrow shoulders and tugs dirty hair back into his eyes. "You’re about as close to God as I am," he says, clearly for once and not the toneless mumble he usually employs, and Carlos’ attention refocuses and he smiles, except it’s alien on his face and doesn’t sit well so Paul narrows his eyes and closes the door behind him.

As their relationship progresses – or degenerates, Paul isn’t sure which is more true and doesn’t really care – Carlos calls him England all the time, or sometimes English, like it’s a pet name instead of desperate ignorance of what Paul’s name actually is. Paul’s not aware of much (too high, too drunk, too fucked to untangle the mess) but he thinks, vaguely, that he should probably be offended except he’s been called far worse and at least this prick is half right.

Sometimes Paul wakes up alone, peels himself from the floor of whichever dirty bathroom he’s fallen asleep in this time, pulls the needle from his thigh and leaves it dirty and begging beneath the sink as he drags his pants back over his too thin hips. He pats down his pockets for the roll of bills he keeps on hand and spends as little as possible on greasy food in grubby diners, lights a cigarette and fills up on piss-poor coffee but it’s free refills so he can’t complain, or shouldn’t but he does anyway and turns on easy blue-eyed baby-faced charm as he asks the waitress if maybe he can get cream to go in it and winds up with cherry pie on the house.

(Carlos finds him watching trains, sits beside him and wrinkles his nose, says, "You’re going to wind up on the side of a milk carton and no one will care." Paul blinks and throws breadcrumbs for the pigeons, dusts himself off as he pushes himself to his feet. "Maybe," he says, thoughtfully, shoves sunglasses up his nose to hide his red-rimmed sleep-deprived eyes. "Maybe.")

More often, though, he wakes up or regains consciousness to the hot hard pressure of someone inside of him, against him, all clawing fingers and ripping nails, the decaying funk of breath on his neck and in his hair, his pale skin bruised pristine. Paul’s mouth is a desecrated temple, all holy words and meaningless vows. Sex is an easy substitute for deeper meaning, 'I love you' tripping willingly from numb lips as he curls his tongue around the vowels. Carlos says he’s never used the word love as he slides into a booth opposite Paul, steals his coffee and moans about how cheap vinyl seats ruin his clothes. "Appearance, appearance, appearance," Paul mumbles and reaches for his coffee and the ashtray, coughs so hard that his throat is sore. Carlos rolls his eyes and stares out of the window and says maybe it wouldn’t kill Paul to care more. "I don’t need to care," Paul says and stubs another half-smoked cigarette out in the over-full ashtray, "I’ve got you to care for me." Carlos opens his mouth to say more but Paul’s already gone.

Carlos sits with him one day, brushing dirty brown-blonde hair from his face as Paul’s head lies in his lap and he says, "You got a momma that misses you, England?" And Paul opens one lazy blue eye and shrugs, says, "Did I ever tell you about my mom?" Carlos says no and Paul doesn’t elaborate, only closes his eye again and bats at Carlos’ idle hands. Later, his mouth full of the taste of Carlos even as he vomits liquor and pills, he pushes lank hair out of his face and behind his ears and says, "There’s no one out there misses me, just so you know," or at least, he thinks he says it but the look of blank incomprehension of Carlos’ face means maybe he didn’t. Carlos dissolves sugar in black market absinthe, illegally procured and European, wormwood still in, and Paul chases the dragon before knocking back the alcohol, and his eyes fog as he collapses again into stupefied inertia. Carlos swipes fifty bucks from the roll in Paul's coat pocket, folds the pile of bills neatly and slides them into his boot, says, "Sorry, English," and leaves without specifying if he's sorry for the petty theft or for Paul's life.

(Paul keeps photographs of everyone he’s ever kissed. Carlos injects heroin in the back of his hands and fumbles with Paul’s belt, says, “Did you lose a few, England?” and Paul says nothing, only fans polaroids on the lumpy mattress until he finds on in particular, Carlos’ name scrawled in blue marker beneath it. He pushes Carlos’ hands away and presses the picture to Carlos chest, probably where his heart would be if he had one and says, “Do you ever stop talking?” before curling into a fetal ball against the wall, and then thinks maybe he misses the constant noise when the door closes, turns a trick that leaves him black and blue so he takes in another badly cut line from another dirty bathroom and tries to forget about Carlos entirely. Except the photograph is on the top of the pile when he comes down, and the cycle kicks his ass again.)

Paul observes, sniffing heavily and pinching his nose with his fingers, squinting at the sun and the silhouette of Carlos sitting opposite him, that they're basically a string of diners. Their story plays out in greasy food and weak coffee. Carlos slides fifty bucks across the tabletop and Paul frowns at him, counts them, pile of ones and fives, a shiny half dollar and a dollar fifty in change. "What's this?" Paul asks and Carlos shrugs his shoulders. "Just, put it in your pocket before I change my mind." Paul rolls the bills and pushes them into his pocket, and deposits the other two dollars beside his coffee cup before sliding out of the seat. Carlos watches him leave, lights another cigarette, drains the coffee and pockets the change before following him, catches him at a crosswalk and says, "What about your mom?" Paul squints at him and shrugs, says, "Who said anything about her?" and crosses the road, losing himself in the throng.

lonely parts
i'll bring you when my lifeboat sails through the night

He leaves when he's sixteen, takes everything he has which turns out to be not much, slings his bag in the trunk of a rag-top Corvette and doesn't look back. He sucks the driver off in return for the ride, spits in the dirt and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. "Thanks," he mumbles, and the guy doesn’t speak. Paul watches his taillights fade in the distance and spends the last of his cash on a Greyhound ticket and rubbery eggs. He shares his seat with a woman in her late forties, heavy and ungainly and smelling vaguely of mint and menthols and something Paul can’t work out. When she gets off, a boy his own age, maybe slightly older, takes her place, shoves headphones over his ears and stares through Paul’s head and into the gathering darkness. He drops two pills and washed them down with boiler gin, offers it to Paul who shakes his head. The boy shrugs and continues to stare straight through him in a way that makes him feel physically violated and utterly drained.

Paul falls off the bus in the middle of a rainstorm, takes no time to work out where he is and sets immediately about losing his identity, which turns out to be surprisingly easy in a city as anonymous as New York. Less than a month later, he moves into squalid accommodation with stained ceilings and creeping rot. He learns to run when he hears police sirens within a block of where he is, and he learns that cocaine makes it all stop, briefly. He doesn’t remember when he started exchanging sex for cocaine, and he doesn’t remember when he met Carlos for the first time (second time? Not that it matters) either, except Carlos crossed his legs and lit a cigarette and waved elaborate fanciful patterns with his hands and said, “Blow for blow!” which wasn’t funny but made Paul laugh anyway. He likes to think that had he been either sober or clean, he’d never have become involved with Carlos. They’d have had nothing in common. But he thinks if wishes were horses, and closes his eyes.

(Carlos touches him with long fine fingers, and Paul finds himself fascinated with Carlos’ hands, takes them in his own and runs his tongue the length of each digit. Carlos cants his head and watches, eyes black with lust and the dim light. “Where are you from?” he asks, and Paul’s body tenses and he looks away, shakes his head and shrugs his bony shoulders, mumbles something and Carlos grabs his face and kisses him, all soft lips and hard teeth, and Paul kisses him back because – because. “England,” he says, eventually, and Carlos frowns at him, maybe because he’s forgotten he asked and maybe because the answer makes no sense, and Paul says, “I was born in England.” Carlos strokes his hair and studies his face but says nothing as he pushes another needle into Paul’s arm.)

Paul sits on a wall and eats a cold steak sub, flicks the bits he doesn’t like to the floor and devours the rest as if he hasn’t eaten for a week. Carlos leans against the adjacent building and scans the curb crawlers for business. Paul watches him get into a car with a plate he recognises and makes a decision: he’s never going to turn the same trick twice. It should be easy, he decides, in this city, in any city. Carlos, when he finds out, calls him charmingly endearingly naïve, and gives it three months.

(Carlos’ breath is hot against his skin and he smells like anise, but he’s rough and insistent and Paul’s arms snake around him as his head rolls back. His mind is fog and his limbs feel heavy, and Carlos’ voice is an urgent whisper in his ear, “Hey, England, open your eyes” so he mumbles a response into Carlos’ skin, maybe his name, maybe a plea for Carlos to stop talking, and presses his body closer, tighter, until he can feel himself breaking, aching. Carlos tastes like cigarettes and alcohol and Paul knows he doesn’t care, but he doesn’t charge or pay and Paul feels almost human - the first time since he arrived.)

Turns out, three months is generous and Carlos looks insufferably smug as he sits with Paul in the ER four weeks later. “I can’t stay,” he says, and presses Paul’s palm to his leg. Paul’s fingers curl around Carlos’, doesn’t even realise he’s doing it until Carlos withdraws his hand. Paul doesn’t respond, but fixes his eyes on a point just above Carlos’ head, and, as his gaze goes long and steady, Carlos murmurs, “I’m sorry, England.” And he sounds like maybe he means it.

dance and drink and screw
if you called your dad he could stop it all

And then Paul leaves. As ignominiously as he came, Paul is gone. He doesn’t frequent the diners, he doesn’t sit on derelict walls and choose which cars he will and won’t get into and he doesn’t steal Carlos’ drugs. Sick of the bruises and the clubs and the dull ache of neglect spreading through him, Paul uses the last of the roll of notes to catch the first Greyhound to Buffalo, and from Buffalo he calls his mom to wire him money. Paul leaves the streets and doesn’t think about the people he leaves behind, because the truth is it’s just easier this way.

(“What about your mom?” Carlos’ eyes study Paul’s face, and Paul buries it against Carlos’ chest, slides slowly down his body, his hands deft and his tongue knowledgeable, curls long fingers around Carlos’ erection and brings him on slowly until Carlos’ voice is a hoarse curse between his teeth and Paul finishes him with his mouth. “What about my mom?” he says, spitting the bitter taste of Carlos into a tissue that he’ll flush away maybe later and Carlos watches him with lazy eyes, shrugs non-commital shoulders and rolls onto his side. Paul thinks maybe he likes Carlos best when he’s asleep, because then he’s not talking.)

Later, months or years, the time wears badly on Paul’s face and ages his blue eyes, he moves back into the city. Carlos slides into a seat beside him on the train and narrows his eyes. “I don’t suppose I should be surprised,” he says and looks away again. Paul turns his head and stares at him, takes in everything he imagined he’d never see again and opens his mouth to speak, except Carlos shakes his head and pushes himself to his feet. Paul catches his wrist, same smile eloquent on his lips like it always was. “Buy you dinner,” he says and Carlos almost laughs. Paul knows he’ll show up anyway, tells him where and Carlos wrenches his wrist free and vanishes in a swirl of coat and people. Paul resumes gazing through the window but doesn’t really see.

Carlos arrives in style, tiny in the depths of his coat, and his eyes take in the façade of the building they stand before. “Fancy,” he murmurs and Paul nods his head but doesn’t say a word. He waits for the judgement in Carlos’ eyes that never arrives, and feels perhaps smaller for it. When their food comes, Carlos pushes it around his plate but drinks the wine, and asks if maybe he can get a brandy chaser when the waiter approaches the table again, looks Paul up and down. “Anyone missing you now?” he asks and Paul has the decency to look away. Carlos’ smile is mocking, “Feel like maybe I should have just kept the fifty bucks,” he says and Paul can’t decide whether to insult his pride or not. Decides not, but leaves extra when they get the bill, knows Carlos will take it because he always has.

Outside, Carlos lights another cigarette, embers burning orange in the darkness as he turns up the collar of his coat again, pushes his hands into gloves Paul knows he didn’t buy himself because Carlos has always been for sale but only to the highest bidder. He appraises Paul again and runs his tongue across his teeth. “Be seeing you, England,” and walks slowly away.

(Paul sits on the balcony of an uptown apartment and Carlos shrugs on a jacket behind him, coughs so hard it sounds like his throat might tear but lights another cigarette anyway. Carlos divides a pile of bills and dangles half in front of Paul’s face. Paul snatches and Carlos withdraws hand and money so that Paul turns around. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a fucking miserable cunt?” Carlos asks, and Paul’s smile is bitter, his eyes miserable. “I have to go,” he says eventually, and Carlos says nothing. Paul takes his money from Carlos’ fingers as he pushes past him, pulls on his own coat and glances back from the door. “I mean it,” he says, “I have to go.” Carlos doesn’t even turn around.)

“Paul,” Paul says, softly into the stillness, and Carlos pauses, frowns, laughs quietly and continues to walk.

FIN

Rattlesnakes & Smoke Signals (cowboy!AU)

Sun, 18 May 2008 22:43:57 GMT

Title: Rattlesnakes and Smoke Signals (Observations On)
Summary: the one where they’re outlaws, baby. (cowboy!AU)
Pairing: actually, sort of everyone except daniel's a girl so anything involving daniel may not count as slash, depending on how your kinks iron out.
Rating: R, for bad words, lots of bad words and then some more. and also maybe sex?
Disclaimer: Not Real. Just For Fun. Move it along, folks.
In conclusion, idk, bollo ties and too much coffee? And also, I have no clue when this is, I just, y’know, guns and outlaws and yeehaw! (Because, erm, spic is early 20th Century and 'kemo sabe' is from The Lone Ranger. So. Erm. Yes?)

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowin', I hang my head and cry

"So what were you going to do, just vanish without word or warning?"

Carlos says nothing, refuses to rise to the bait. He dusts himself off and doesn't look up, only tips the bottle again and pushes a shot glass across the table as Paul sits down opposite. Paul's face is angry, but he pours the shot down his throat and winces as it burns.

"So?" he says, and Carlos downs his own drink, coughs harshly and pushes his chair back from the table. He lights a cigarette and draws smoke deep into his lungs before blowing it down into Paul's face.

"What are you more hurt about, Banks, that I came back or that I'm leaving again?" He motions to the bartender to supply another bottle of malt as he turns away, and his steel caps ring on the wooden floor as he crosses to the bar. Outside, the midday sun scorches the earth but there's no other option. He stops for alcohol and food, and then he leaves.

Paul is behind him when turns, Carlos' cigarettes in his hand and he strikes a match on the bar, cups the flame in his hand as he lights up. The tiny flame flickers in hard blue eyes and Carlos remembers why he keeps returning, but it's not enough to make him stay.

"You're a fucking ignorant shit," Paul says, extinguishing the match and gesturing Carlos grandly. Carlos says nothing, but takes the bottle and smiles easily as he leaves.

It starts much earlier with blood and a violent temper. It starts with murder.

Carlos leans back in a chair and props his feet on the table, only for Paul to lean forward and swipe them off. He growls and Carlos rolls his eyes, pulls his hat down low to keep the sun from his eyes and throws Paul a casual fuck you. Paul leans back and arches his eyebrow, says sure, because you’d fucking love that, and that’s where they leave it.

They don’t talk about the bullet in Paul’s shoulder or how it got there, and they don’t talk about the place they’re running from or where they’re running to. Truth is, they don’t really talk at all. That’s just how it’s always been, since they first met. They mostly drift in and out of one another’s lives, fucking one another over for good measure before leaving again.

Except this time they’re stuck together. Carlos had pulled a gun on a guy back east and Paul had taken a bullet in return, lodged somewhere now beneath his skin and in the bone. So really, there's only one way to go. They’ve got to keep going west. Paul curses the luck that first brought Carlos into his life, damn fucking spic (and Carlos takes pains to point out he’s not Spanish, because the difference is, well, fucked if Paul knows, Latin America’s all the same fucking thing, gringos the lot of them which makes Carlos laugh until he aches since it’s such a goddamn role reversal, using a Spanish word at him). Still, they’re stuck together, so all they can do is belt up and deal.

Paul rolls his shoulder and winces, grits his teeth and reaches across the table for the whiskey, which Carlos pulls back out of his reach, says they need to get that looked at because seriously, if Paul just keels over and dies it wouldn’t help. Which is mostly a lie, since it would help enormously. Carlos would leave his sorry fucking ass to the jackals and the dry heat of the desert, be gone down over the border until it was safe to come back. But these, they’re desperate times and Carlos has no intention of weathering them alone. So he lights another cigarette, draws deep and passes it to Paul.

“Got to get that out,” Carlos says, motions Paul’s shoulder and turns away. Paul pushes his chair back and snorts a bitter laugh. Looks sort of pale, which would be odd except he’s naturally fair and it’s hard to tell if he’s turning blue or if it’s just his blood running close to his skin.

“You think I’m letting you near my shoulder, you got another think coming.”

“Oh, fuck you, you ignorant fucking -”

And gets no further, because Paul collapses, blood seeping through shirt and vest and staining the floor.

There’d been a girl. There’s always a girl, and Paul understands it’s a universal law. He also understands that whenever there’s a girl involved, things go bad real fucking quick. But she’d been small and fragile, with delicate bones and wide-open eyes that drew him in. She spoke slightly accented English and called him ‘chéri’, and Paul had needed to keep her close forever.

Carlos is a quick draw and a faster shot, too easy to anger and volatile when he’s drunk. Paul’s known him long enough to recognise the signs, known him long enough to know when to fight and when to walk away (always always walk away).

Not everyone is so blessed.

There’s an argument. There’s always an argument about something; money, whores, craps or whiskey. It goes sour and winds up being fists and blood and the floor, and Carlos fights like a fucking cornered coyote or something, but still. Ends with Carlos pulling his gun, and Paul’s too fucking close and too damn far to stop him. Pulls the trigger and shoots a man, no worries or cares (or even a good reason). Paul swears and steps in, pulls Carlos back just in time to block the bullet that whistles for Carlos’ heart. Paul grunts and his eyes close as he sags, uses the bar to stop himself from dying right there. Paul comes round to a vicious pain in his shoulder but he’s alive (and drunk) so it can be dealt with whenever.

Paul had always known that Carlos was (and, to a certain degree, still is) dangerous. But now he's a murderer as well, a wanted man. Paul swears that he should have let Carlos die, but helps him bury the body anyway. The girl ("woman," Carlos offers with lascivious pleasure) offers him a room while Paul steals horses. Paul thinks there are a thousand places he would rather be, but he can't bail now.

All they’ve got in their favour now is a girl with pretty eyes and a pearl-handled revolver, and a whole fucking continent of running to do.

And the ghosts in the attic
They never quite leave
And of course I forgive
You've seen how I live,
I've got darkness and fears to appease

Carlos holds Paul steady and grits his teeth as Paul thrashes against him, threatens to cut his fucking throat if he doesn't hold still. Paul swears and takes a deep breath as the bullet is dug from his shoulder (and chips the bone).

“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” says a voice behind him as his shoulder is stitched and bandaged and he snorts a bitter laugh as he pulls away, scoops his shirt from the table. He lights another cigarette and holds smoke in his lungs for far too long before exhaling slowly.

“You think this is lucky, I’m fucking glad I’m not you.”

He leaves Carlos to finish matters, rolls his shoulder to ease the pain and winces as thread pulls at his skin. He pulls his hat back on and buttons his shirt, figures Carlos will always catch him up because he can’t seem to shake him either. Not like they’re fucking stuck together or anything.

Which, unfortunately, isn’t exactly the truth.

Paul turns the revolver over in his palm, runs his fingers across the pearl and hands it back to her. She takes it and leans across his body to slip it back into her purse. He catches her waist and pulls her against him, and her lips find his throat.

“I don’t even know your name,” he whispers into her hair, and her laugh drives a spike into his heart.

“What’s in a name?” she murmurs.

Carlos tells him later that she’s English, via France and the Colonies, hands him another whiskey and leaves town the next morning. Paul wonders briefly how Carlos knows, but her skin is white like snow and when he laughs she touches his arm, so he stops thinking about it and falls for her completely.

Carlos calls him an arrogant son of a bitch, and Paul shoots him a look that says it takes one to know one and who the fuck is Carlos to even comment?

Her name is Danielle, she’s quiet and reserved, and she loses patience with Paul so quickly his head spins. She dresses in red silk and drinks neat gin however she can get it. She’s sharp and scathing and she’s older than he is, which turns him on until he physically aches. She’s a dreamer and – and this is important to Paul – she’s rich beyond his dreams.

But it's the ring she wears on a fine gold chain that fascinates Paul most of all. He takes it when she's sleeping and he smiles as her eyelashes fan across pale cheeks. When she wakes, her hand flies immediately to her throat and she curses Paul's name.

Paul holds her ring up to the light and she tries to snatch it from him. He pulls it back out of her reach and holds it up to the light, glances at her from the corner of his eye. Because his little French whore isn't laughing now. Tell me, he says, and she rolls her eyes, doesn't even look at him.

"Please," she says softly, and holds out her hand. Paul shakes his head and repeats his question.

"Just tell me what it is."

And her face sets in stone, her voice quiet, steely and vicious as she lies again with practiced ease. "Family heirloom. It belonged to my father; it's priceless to me, all I have of him now. Just give it back."

Paul watches her eyes and shakes his head, rolls away from her and gets out of bed. He's naked and unashamed in her company, and he pulls his cigarettes from his pocket on the back of her chair, lights one and blows smoke rings thoughtfully.

"Your father's?"

Paul doesn't even bother to argue with her this time. Until she can tell him the truth, Paul refuses to return the ring. Instead, he clips the chain around his own neck, pulls on his trousers and tucks his undershirt in casually.

"I wasn't born yesterday, Danni," he murmurs and the door belies his anger as it slams back into place.

So they're heading west. There's no set direction except getting away from any official who might wish them dead. Paul stops short somewhere in the middle of nowhere and says this is it, he can't do this anymore. Carlos wheels his horse around and kicks up a cloud of dust in the early evening gloom, says that sure, they'd both like something better and he had neither asked nor made Paul come with him. "You could have stayed," he says, shrugs his shoulders and runs his hand across his face. "You could have stayed back there, with her." And Paul laughs bitterly.

"And spent the rest of my life wondering what happened to you?"

"And to think I didn't even know you cared."

They make some sort of camp, fully aware that night out in the desert will be fucking frigid. Paul tends the fire and drinks the remainder of the quart of whiskey Carlos had stashed in his belongings. He thinks he'll stay awake, keep watch against whatever's out here, but the fire dies around 4 and Paul finds himself shifting his body closer to the only other warmth there is. It's not an unfamiliar situation, neither of them particular and it's mostly hands and tongues and the need to just touch something or someone.

Paul doesn't say anything when they break camp, and Carlos throws the empty whiskey bottle away, extinguishing the last glowing embers of the fire without opening his mouth. He glances at Paul from beneath long lashes and saddles his horse, and they continue chasing the sun.

“It belonged to my partner,” she says, her thighs soft against Paul’s hips. She leans down, hers lips teasing and her long fingers playful. Paul’s not so lost that he doesn’t hear the tense, and he’s not so crude that he asks. But he doesn’t give it back.

In a fit of pique and furious temper, Carlos breaks the chain around Paul’s neck. He turns the ring over in his hand and pulls his hat lower so Paul can’t see his face, asks why, in the name of all that’s holy, is he wearing such a shiny bauble around his goddamn throat. Paul says nothing and holds out his hand. Carlos runs his hand across his face and shoves the ring deep into his pocket with a feral smile.

It’s later, early evening, yet another saloon bar and another dirty game of poker, that Carlos lays the ring on the table between them. “Never pegged you for such a fucking sentimentalist,” he says.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you ever fucking asked.” Paul grabs for the ring and examines the chain, tells Carlos he’d better know where to find a new one because he’s a fucking dead man if he doesn’t fix it.

Something must register in Carlos’ subconscious though, because next time he has the opportunity, he gets the chain replaced.

Yea we're laughin' and drinkin' nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"
I catch him when he's strayin', teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

They meet a guy down somewhere in west Texas with a gold crown and a wicked smile. He’s drinking in a bar and his eyes say he’s a long way from God and home. He watches Carlos with apathetic detachment and swallows strong liquor without wincing. Carlos is uneasy and mistrustful, and he’s all but carrying Paul who seems to have got weaker since they dug the bullet from his shoulder. He props Paul against the bar and leaves him with enough money to buy beer and a room while he deals with the horses and their gear.

Paul’s voice is wan but he manages to make it clear that he wants something strong. His shoulder aches more now than it did with lead in it, but he can’t see what’s wrong so he drowns the pain with alcohol. He’s losing the range of motion in his arm, so it’s an effort to reach across the bar for the bottle, and he pulls the stopper out with his teeth. As he stretches, the ring glitters on its chain against his skin.

“Interesting bauble,” says the gold crown, and Paul says nothing, only pours himself another shot and drinks it quick, enjoying how it burns as it slides down his throat. “Can I take a closer look?”

Paul draws back and shakes his head, eyes narrowing as he stares at the stranger through his hair. “The fuck you can,” he says and buttons his shirt tighter around his throat. The gold crown glints as the stranger nods his head.

“Fair enough.” And he holds out a hand. “Name’s Sam.” Paul stares at the proffered hand and runs his tongue across his teeth thoughtfully.

“Well, Sam,” he says at length. “How about you mind your own fucking business.” He pours himself another shot of whiskey and slams the empty shot glass back on the bar, pushes himself to his feet and turns away.

He has, he thinks, some grand plan of making one hell of an exit, but the drama is marred by a spasm of pain that has him on his knees. All he sees then is Sam’s gold star and the butt of a gun as it wraps itself around his jaw.

Her dress had been just north of modest and her eyes had seemed too old. That’s all Sam remembers of her, really, other than the easy way she filled his mind even when she wasn’t there. He'd loved her accent and the way she said his name. She'd cheated at cards and dealt in stolen horses and he'd wanted her so much it became an almost physical pain. She'd said her name was Elle initially, and not bothered to tell him the truth until he was buried deep inside of her, her nails painful on his skin. He'd never been the impulsive type but he'd had to have her, always.

She'd turned him down, naturally, taken his horse and sent it back from the next stop on the stage route. She'd left a note in the saddle bag and small pearl-handled gun that he'd kept safe until she came to reclaim it.

Took her six long fucking weeks, as it turned out, but he sees her standing in the mud, wearing the red silk dress he'd first seen her in with a fox fur stole around her shoulders and a fey smile that takes his breath. She looks so damn alien, stood there, all refined grace and tiny delicate bones amidst the bustle of the horses and tradesmen. She'd smiled and waved and said, "How 'bout you give me back my gun, Sam?"

So he did. He gave her the gun and his solemn vow that he'd make sure no harm ever came to her. She'd laughed, held a glittering ring that had belonged to his mother up to the light and told him forever was a promise so many people failed to keep.

"Let me try, Elle," he said and she'd agreed.

She'd worn white and her voice had been clear and strong when she said 'I do' in front of everyone he knew. On their wedding night, she put the ring on a chain around her throat because she said it was safer than on her hands, and when he slept she'd put the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger, the hammer falling on an empty chamber as she'd known it would. She just needed him to know she had never been a kept woman.

Carlos watches Paul sleep and wonders if maybe life wouldn't be easier if he'd let Paul die. Or if Paul had just let him die. It would have been a long time coming and sometimes you really gotta take what's yours. There's no denying he wouldn't have deserved to take a bullet, to bleed out across the floor, no one caring or missing him when he's gone.

Part of him registers that sentiment as untrue. He'd like to think a few people might have noticed him gone. But he figures Paul wouldn't have been one of them. He's too tired (and far too fucking drunk) to think about why that bothers him.

Besides, all he's got in the here and now is a Paul that's sick and probably dying, and absolutely no idea how to fix the situation. Paul is far from an ideal patient and Carlos has a lot of things but healing hands sure as hell don't make the list. So he strips Paul naked and rolls him into bed, and Paul's hands fight but his heart's not in it, which leaves Carlos cold because he misses the Paul that would have laid into him for even thinking about touching him. He thinks the gun might have broken Paul's teeth, or knocked them clean out, which would be better, but Paul's face is swollen and the doctor is as much of a soak as Paul is. So Carlos figures, leave it till morning and cheats at poker instead.

Because the uncomfortable truth is that Carlos owes Paul something he can't repay, and won't be able to if Paul dies of infection first.

Carlos catches her hand and spins her around and she falls against him, looks up into his face and laughs. "Get your hands off of me, D," she says and pushes herself away from him. "I got enough fucking problems without yours as well." Carlos lets her spin away, all skirt and pretty ankles, and he tells Paul not to get his emotions involved because she's not that girl.

Paul doesn't listen, and Carlos thinks maybe Paul deserves everything he's got now. Missing teeth and all.

Sam had loved her entirely, but knows that even when she was his he never really had her. Sometimes he'd catch the look in her eyes that was so far away and so utterly unreachable. He holds the ring in the palm of his hand, and then he closes his fingers around it until the setting of the diamond cuts in. He thinks that having the ring back is a lot like having her had been, so long ago now. He's changed so much since Danielle entered his life, more so since she left it again. He'd given her everything, loved every inch of her, let her have everything it was in his power to give. And she'd wanted all of it; the dust and the dirt and the open skies that stretched so far around them.

In the end, what she wanted more than anything else was her freedom. She'd packed her bags and saddled her horse and if he hadn't woken before the sun came up he would almost certainly have missed her leaving. She'd kissed him hard and he'd fucked her slowly, and she said she had to leave.

"Love you, Elle," he whispered and she bowed her head.

"More than you know, Fog," she said and that was it.

He learned later of the child she'd lost (or killed, depending on whom he chose to believe), learned of the string of poker players and cowboys who'd ridden his wife as long as he had, and still he couldn't bring himself to hate her. The most he ever managed was a slow burning resentment that he couldn't keep her.

Sam lays the ring and his gun on the bar in front of Paul and takes a seat next to him. "Pretty little thing, isn't she?" he says conversationally, and Paul looks at him over his shoulder, shrugs and gives no indication that he knows what Sam is talking about. Sam gestures with his hands, smile ice cold and his eyes hard as iron. "Cute as a button, 'bout this tall, eyes that make you think she's thinking only of you."

"No idea, friend. I got that bauble from a whore back east. You lost a girl, I figure that's your deal."

Sam nods slowly and gestures for something in a glass. "She won't even have told you her name," Sam continues, undeterred by Paul's cold reception. He watches with vague dispassion as Paul pushes himself away from the bar. "She won't have told you anything about herself. You don't know her, Paul. You'll never know her."

Paul moves to walk away but stops, turns slowly and rests his hand on Sam's shoulder. He leans in close and his voice is soft as he whispers in Sam's ear, "Her name's Danielle, she's not French but she loves that people think she is and she's the sweetest ride this side of the ocean. And I'm guessing you'd be the man who gave her that ring, Sam, so good fucking job keeping her yourself."

He swallows whiskey and lights one of Sam's cigarettes, and doesn't look back when he walks away.

I pretend I can always leave
Free to go whenever I please
But then the sound of my desperate calls
Echo off these dungeon walls

Carlos clips the holster around his waist and looks at Paul through lowered lashes. Paul stares back at him and gestures for Carlos' cigarettes. "This still isn't something we talk about, right?" he says, and Carlos shakes his head.

"What do you want me to say, Paul? You want some huge declaration of love or you want the truth because you can't have it all your own way. It's just a storm, friend." He throws Paul his cigarettes anyway, and Paul lights a match. He coughs harshly, the sound ripped from his lungs, talks around the cigarette and blows out the match from the corner of his mouth.

"Any port, right? Who do you think of when you're fucking me?"

Carlos laughs softly and shakes his head. "I'm not playing your games, okay?" and he pulls his hat low over his eyes. "Room's paid through the end of the week. You don't have to follow."

Paul snorts a laugh and grabs his pants from the floor, dusts them down and drags them over his hips without bothering to get up. "Yeah. I could just wait here for someone to recognise my face. Fuck yourself, D." He tucks his shirt in and pulls on his vest and coat as he rolls from the bed. "Asshole."

First time is a long time ago now, before either of them met her and before either of them knew who the other really was. Paul was drunk and bet himself on a hand of poker, which made him something he really wasn't (then) but Carlos had looked him up and down and won the game. Paul had smiled, thrown down his cards and all the money he had in his pocket, and Carlos had offered him enough whiskey for him to forget the entire incident.

He likes to think that if he'd known then as much as he knows now, he'd have taken Carlos' gun and pressed it to his temple, blown Carlos the fuck away before either of them could regret the meeting.

Paul watches her dancing and Carlos follows the line of his eyes, laughs mirthlessly and pushes a shot towards Paul. "She's a whore," he says, and Paul nods but doesn't stop watching her. Carlos grips his forearm and shakes his head, dark eyes sincere as he looks at Paul. "Forget her, friend," he says. "She's trouble. She'll break your heart."

But he can't just forget, not when she meets his eyes and smiles all for him.

Later, Paul's fingers splay across the mirror and he closes his eyes. Carlos' body is all angles and bones, cold like marble when they fuck. At some point, Paul stops thinking about Carlos when they’re together and imagines Danielle instead. He sees her hands and her eyes and the way she laughs so mockingly. He's become relatively adept at forgetting who he's with, and it's easier still when Carlos is on his knees. Whenever Carlos makes him come, he sees her painted lips and how her thighs part so effortlessly for him.

They base their relationship (such as it is) on mutual disdain and a game that neither of them can win. They base it on outdoing the other constantly. The long and the short is, Carlos knows her name (and probably what she looks like naked) long before Paul has got himself drunk enough to ask. So Carlos pins him against a wall, fingers digging into his shoulder, and he says "Her name's Danielle" just as he comes. Paul says nothing, rearranges his clothes and tucks in his shirt, refusing to take the bait.

"Buy me a drink," he says and Carlos laughs at him.

"You're so pretty when you're pissed, Banks."

It's somewhere between New Mexico and Arizona that Paul loses his temper entirely. His shoulder aches, his whole body feels like it's falling apart and he's had enough. He doesn't even pretend to be thinking of anyone else when pins Carlos to the outside wall of a hotel and kisses him so hard that Carlos' lips are crushed against his teeth, blood filling both their mouths. He doesn't say anything when Carlos' hands push him away and he spits blood into the dirt.

"The fuck?" Carlos asks, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he shoves himself away from the wall. "What are you now, a new kind of random fucking crazy?"

Paul says nothing, but rips the ring from the chain around his neck and places it in Carlos' palm. "Pretend like you care," he says slowly, meets Carlos' eyes. "When I die, you give that back to her."

Carlos shakes his head and refuses. "You give it back yourself," he says at length, and cups Paul's face in his hand, kisses him long and slow and rests his face against Paul's cheek. "You keep fighting, Paul, and I'll tell you whatever you want to hear."

Paul laughs bitterly and says sure, so now he has to fucking die to see any emotion at all. His heart beats like the wings of a dove.

It's after the incident with the ring that Paul stops imagining Danielle again. He tangles his hands in Carlos' hair and breathes his name, and Carlos' body is a vice around him that draws his orgasm out. He lies with his body hard against Carlos' and breathes the same air. Even asleep, the brown eyes that watch over him are most definitely male.

Carlos almost feels sorry for him, laid up with his face swollen and a slow rot eating away at his shoulder. But only almost. Partly he believes Paul should have listened when he was told that Danielle wasn't the girl he wanted to get involved with. But Paul is a stubborn pain in his ass, and he feels - well, maybe not guilty so much as responsible. Because in the end, Paul's only here because of Carlos, otherwise he'd have been happy to stay back east with the new breed of Americans, freshly arriving from the old world in their droves. Paul would have been happy to make his living playing cards and trading anything he had for a soft bed and something to eat. So yeah, maybe responsible because, well, they've come a long way from poker and whores and still Paul is taking the beating.

They're in west Texas and Carlos buys him whiskey, touches his jaw and says that Paul probably deserves everything he's got. Paul smacks his hand away and glares at the bar morosely.

"Sure, I deserve having my teeth knocked out and I deserve to have stopped a bullet with my shoulder blade. You're such a fucking-"

Carlos pushes the bottle towards him, lights a cigarette and gives that to him as well. "Don't say it," he says. "All I mean is, you were fucking the man's wife. What the fuck did you think he was going to do, buy you a drink and congratulate you on the conquest? That's a whole new kind of arrogance, even for you."

Paul snorts and empties the tumbler, pushes it back towards Carlos. "No. I don't expect anything. Well, I don't know. I expect a lot from you and God only knows why because so far you've done a great deal of fucking nothing for me."

"So leave," Carlos says, shrugs his shoulders and clenches his jaw. "There's nothing keeping you here."

Paul smiles and catches Carlos' shoulder as he pushes himself to his feet. "You know that's not true," he whispers against Carlos' ear.

You're an outlaw lover and I'm after your hide
Well you ain't so strong, won't be long 'til your hands are tied
Tonight I'm gonna take you in dead or alive

Sam meets them again on the state border. Carlos rests his hands on the pummel of his saddle and stares from beneath the brim of his hat. "Long way from home," he says, voice a low drawl and Sam nods his head in agreement.

"Thing is, cowboy, I've learned some things since you two rode away." Sam doesn't elaborate, but gestures for Carlos to get down from his horse. Carlos doesn't refuse, but he doesn't move either. He sits in silence, gazes steadily at Sam and then shakes his head.

"I figure it don't really matter what it is you think you've learnt," he says slowly. "Your little tin star means shit to me all the while we're here."

"You always been this smart, kemo sabe?" Carlos cracks a smile and shrugs his shoulders. "Friend, I've put a bullet in people for less than this, and your friend can testify to my temper. How about you get down off of your horse and we can talk like adults. Because I know there's people out for your hide, and I don't mind selling you down the river if it means I get to him." He gestures behind Carlos to Paul, who stares at them both and runs his hand around his throat, flexes his shoulder and looks away.

"Look, friend, let's put aside our differences and talk," Carlos says, sliding from his horse and handing the reins to Paul. "I have nothing to hide and nothing that you want."

Sam nods slowly, and the sun catches the gold tooth. "Your friend," he says slowly, "most definitely has something I want."

Carlos glances behind him, and Paul pulls the ring from inside of his shirt with his free hand. "This?" he asks, and Sam nods. "I'm afraid we have no deal. Kill him. I don't care. But she gave me that ring."

Paul closes his eyes and prays to anyone listening that they are too dead to read.

She arrives hot on the heels of the pony express, her hair swept back from her face and wearing a dress split up the middle to allow her to straddle the horse a leg either side. Neither the horse nor the gold she throws the usher are hers so she doesn't really care what happens to either, but she offers a wide smile and a quick kiss anyway. It's the way she's always been, trading kisses (and more) for favours. Unclipping her hair, she allows untidy black curls to tumble around her face and pushes them back with one long fine hand before heading out into the street and the mud. She figures that if she knows anything anymore, it will be where to find her husband.

True to form, Sam is at the bar but he isn't drinking. She lays a delicate hand on his waist, removes his gun before he even realises she's there, and throws it away from her. "Fog," she whispers, and presses cool lips to his warm flesh. Long years of waiting to hear her voice and weeks of waking thinking he has mean Sam doesn't even react, except to cover her hand with his and squeeze her fingers too hard.

"Elle," he says, and only now turns his head, surveys her with eyes that have grown old waiting for her to come back. "Figured I'd seen the last of you when you rode away with my horse."

"My horse," she corrects automatically. "The only one I've ever taken that wasn't technically stealing. After all, what's yours is mine, is it not?"

Sam turns to face her, cups her pale face between rough hands and shakes his head. "My horse, Danielle. My horse, my ring, my future. You rode away with all of it and you didn't even look back. And now you turn up with a smile and those big brown eyes and you expect me to forget?" Briefly, she has the decency to look ashamed, but it's quickly washed away by anger and outrage.

"You take a bird and lock it in a cage, Sam, even a goddamn gilded one, that bird's going to yearn for the skies it used to know. You don't take a girl in off the plains and expect her to just clean your filth. I loved you, God knows I loved you, and I wanted you as well. But I wanted everything else more."

"You had everything else. Everyone else." Sam coughs harshly and spits on the floor, orders himself whiskey, neat and swallows it without wincing. "You're a whore, my love. Only that and nothing more."

Her voice is clear and undeniably mocking as she walks towards the cell. "They said there was something worth seeing in town," she says, passing him a cigarette through the bars. "Worth travelling all this way for, they said. Another outlaw down for the count. Except I'm not sure you're done yet, are you, Carl?"

Carlos takes a drag of the cigarette and blows smoke away from her, shakes his head and laughs mirthlessly. "Think they got me over a barrel this time." He pauses, lost in contemplation for a moment, and then meets her steady gaze with his own. "You should have just told him the truth, you know that, yes?"

"Maybe," she says softly. "But how do you tell him the truth?"

Carlos' hands dart through the bars, catch her face between his palms and he smiles. It doesn't soften his face, but makes it feral and she pulls away. He doesn't scare her, he never has, but she clutches her purse to her with one hand and presses gloved fingers to her lips with the other. "Mostly, you just open your mouth and let the words come," he says, and she laughs outright at that.

"Because you've always been so honest," she says. "Fuck you, D. Fuck you."

He rips off her clothing with voracious hunger and pins her hands by the wrist to the door frame. "Please," she whispers, arching her neck, and his tongue finds her pulse, teeth worrying pale skin. "Please," she breathes again, and he likes the sound of her voice when she's begging. He dips his head and releases her hands, her arms wrapping around his neck as his tongue plays in the hollow at the base of her throat and sweeps down across the curve of her breasts. She uses his body to haul herself up, her legs around his waist as his weight pins her to the wall. She tangles her fingers in his hair and buries her face in his neck, her voice muffled by his skin as she says his name. He fucks her the way he always has, fast and hard and she breaks his skin with her nails when she comes, voice lost in sweat and the moment, and she sinks to the floor when he drops her. "Ma chérie," he says softly as he drops payment into her hand, and her voice is barely a whisper as she holds an antique diamond ring up to the flickering light. He closes the door quietly behind him.

Sam buys her a drink and orders her to sit, which she doesn't do until he says, "I know about the baby, Elle" and then she crashes down as though her legs can't support her. She drinks the proffered alcohol entirely too fast and feels it hit her brain almost immediately, but gestures for another one regardless.

"What do you think you know?" she says, her skin growing paler by the second as she reevaluates her situation.

"I figured I'd let you fill in the blanks," Sam says and takes a seat opposite her. She laughs mirthlessly and nods her head.

"You know shit, Samuel. I could tell you anything."

Sam rests his elbows on the edge of the table and steeples his fingers beneath his chin, calmly refuses to rise to the bait. "How do you know Carlos?"

She considers feigning ignorance but decides against it in the end, shrugs her shoulders and says, "I beat him at cards once. Turns out he plays to lose." She's fairly certain that Sam knows she's not being entirely truthful, so she pulls the ring from her purse and lays it before him as a peace offering. "I didn't come all the way out here for nothing," she whispers and gazes at him through lowered lashes. He picks it up and turns it over and smiles sadly.

"You don't change, do you?"

"I'm staying across the way, Fog," she breathes and reaches for her purse with gloved hands. "You've always known how to reach me."

It's later, his body sated and hers on fire, that he says, "It wasn't mine" and she says nothing for a long moment. "No," she says eventually and rolls into the warmth of his chest.

Danielle leans against the door of the cell and offers a tight little smile. Carlos gazes at her with dark eyes and she bows her head. "So," she says and he nods slowly.

"So," he agrees.

"You win, Carl. He's all yours." She throws him his holster and moves out of his way. He leans down and kisses her neck as he passes her.

"It wasn't a competition. He'd had stayed with you if you'd told him about Sam."

"The same way you told him about me?"

Carlos' laugh is low and bitter. "What was there to tell him, other than your name?"

"Just go, okay? Take your horse and go."

"And Paul?"

"I'll take care of Paul."

He nods and clips the holster around his waist, lights a cigarette and catches her face in the palm of his hand. "You're a good woman," he says. "A good woman and a fucking terrible wife."

Paul starts and shifts from asleep to awake the fastest he ever has. He reaches for the gun he keeps in the drawer beside the bed and fumbles when it isn't there. Hacking a cough, he pushes himself to his elbow and grimaces as slowly healing wounds tug, clamps his hand to his spasming muscles and stares toward the door.

"Morning, sleepy," she says, and uncrosses her legs. Pushing herself to her feet, she walks to the end of the bed and throws his gun down on the covers. "Make yourself comfortable, chéri, you'll be a long time waiting for salvation."

Carlos pulls his horse to a stop on the edge of town and ignores the ache that spreads in his gut. In one of his saddlebags nestles a small pearl-handled revolver, and he knows she'll want it back.

One day up near Salinas, Lord, I let him slip away,
He was lookin' for that home and I hope he finds it
But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday

Carlos ties his horse up outside the bar and straightens his vest. He scrubs a hand across his face and then splashes water on it from a barrel by the door. He coughs and lights a cigarette, and his spurs ring on the floor as he heads inside. Part of him expects to find Paul propping the bar up, but it's been a while and he isn't really surprised when the place is empty. He drops a pearl handled revolver on the bar, and tells the barkeeper what he wants is whiskey, neat, no ice. "That all?" the man asks and Carlos narrows his eyes.

"No," he says, "I want to find the owner of that gun as well."

The barman nods and uses his thumbnail to scratch his nose. "You won't find her," he says. "She's long gone by now."

Carlos gives him a look that discourages further conversation and the barman moves away. Carlos drinks in silence and leaves money on the bar when he leaves, pushing the gun back beneath the flap of his saddle. He uses what money he has left to rent a room in the hotel across the way and asks the woman on reception whether she knows of Paul or Danielle. She smiles and her teeth are rotten, making Carlos jerk back in horrified disgust. "Gone," she says. "They took off a while back." And Carlos thinks he could chase Paul across the continent but he'll never catch him up again. Instead, he heads up to his room and throws his hat and his holster onto the sheets, stares out of the window at the sun and wonders why he left to begin with. He figures that if he really thinks he'll work the answer out, but it won't be any clearer.

Back out in the street, Carlos watches the stage draw in. He lights another cigarette and pours clean water from the jug into a basin, strips and washes dust from his body. He coughs, dust lodged in his lungs as well, and thinks that if he doesn't stop soon the running will kill him if a person doesn't. What started with murder will end the same way, one way or another. He returns to the window and suppresses a smile as he sees a familiar figure running its hand across the flank of his horse. He throws on a shirt and buttons it as he runs back down the stairs.

"Danielle," he says, crossing back to his horse, and she turns slowly. Her smile is as sincere as he's ever seen it, and he pulls the revolver from beneath the flap of the saddle, hands it back to her.

"D," she replies, and holds out her hand.

"Where's-?" He lays the revolver in his palm, and her fingers close around it. She turns it over and avoids meeting his eyes.

"Gone," she breathes, looking up finally and Carlos bows his head at the tears on her cheeks. She pulls the ring from the chain around her neck and drops it into his hand. "Sam took him," and her voice breaks. She breathes deeply and steadies herself. "Soon after you left, the last time you left. Down on the Mexico border. Fast, clean, which is maybe a blessing? So I took the ring and ran. I was going to pawn it, or sell it, and then I just - I couldn't."

He nods his head slowly, and runs his tongue across his teeth. "Freedom's just another word," he whispers, and she lays a cool palm against his face, smile sad and understanding as her thumb wipes a tear from his face as well.

-FIN-
© FyrMaiden May 08

Music:
Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
Vienna Teng, Eric’s Song
Bruce Springsteen, Highway Patrolman
Tina Arena, Chains
Cher, Just Like Jesse James
Janis Joplin, Me & Bobby McGee

bullet through a flock of doves

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:35:19 GMT

Fandom: Interpol
Pairing: coughpaulcarloscough
Genre: Angst
Warning: May contain nuts.

Title: bullet through a flock of doves
Author: FyrMaiden
Summary: In the end, we’re all haunted by our past.

Disclaimer: And again, I would love to live in a world where this really happened. I, however, am stuck in a land of reality and Gothic horror belongs very much to a different age. In other words, this is not real and most definitely not true. Written for fun, not profit.
Notes: It all went a bit Truly Madly Deeply in my head for a moment, and the thought just wouldn’t go away (which was sort of a welcome distraction because holy HELL this other thing is cramping my style because Sam just won’t play ball). And then there was episode 13 of My So-Called Life, where Angela points out that if you look at life as one big circle, then sex and death are the same thing, so…

Carlos strokes his hair when he sleeps and whispers against his skin that in the end, all stories are ghost stories. Paul’s fingers press against his lips and Carlos kisses them softly. All of us, he says, are haunted by our past. He pulls away from Paul, untangles his arms and legs, and kisses the tears from Paul’s broken skin. It’s all going to be okay, he says, there’s nothing to worry about. And finally, he whispers that he’s always going to be here, as long as Paul needs him.

Always.

As it turns out, always only lasts a few years.

Carlos dies. It’s sudden and it’s unexpected and Paul has no earthly clue how to handle the aftermath. So he doesn’t handle it. He ignores everything and everyone. He smokes too much and drinks more than he ever has, and he becomes a shadow living a life that once belonged to them. He lives in the house for a while, until the lease runs out, and then he moves. Six months here, a year there, and when he wakes up it’s been almost four years of vagrancy.

“You’ve lost weight,” Carlos says, his fingers cold but his voice warm, and Paul rolls into his touch and his body.

It doesn’t surprise him, seeing Carlos lying on top of his sheets, blowing smoke rings skyward. Part of him has been waiting for Carlos to come back and part of him doesn’t really believe Carlos ever left. So he doesn’t respond, only breathes so deeply he can taste how Carlos smells.

“I waited,” he says, and Carlos nods, pulls him closer and kisses him like he’s waited forever as well.

Paul sees him everywhere after that. He sees him on the subway and standing in the underpasses, he sees him in shop doorways and in line at the ATM. Paul sees Carlos all the time, and he’s always waiting when Paul gets home. He reads the same papers, laughs at the same jokes and smokes the same brand he always has. He strokes Paul’s hair as Paul sleeps and watches movies with the volume turned off so as not to wake him. He always has breakfast ready when Paul wakes up and dinner ready when Paul gets home, despite the erratic hours that Paul keeps.

“You’re going to make me fat,” Paul murmurs, pushing food around his plate with a fork. Carlos sits opposite him, all lean elegance and easy grace, and Paul still thinks that maybe he’s the luckiest person alive. Carlos shakes his head, no, not fat.

“Just healthy,” he says, and reaches across the table to steal food from Paul’s plate.

Paul thinks, secretly, that it’s almost like nothing has changed, except he’s alive and that can’t be a bad thing. Paul says that, suddenly, the world has some kind of meaning again. Except he’s older and Carlos doesn’t appear to have aged a day, but that really doesn’t matter because they’re both young and alive.

“We’re worried,” Daniel says, speaking for both Sam and himself. He sits opposite Paul at the table, elbows resting on the edge, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. Paul leans back and shrugs his shoulders. Daniel’s sigh is exaggerated and probably exhausted as well. “Paul, you don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you’re wasting away and we don’t know what to do or say or think.”

Paul still says nothing, but Daniel prays on his mind for hours, until he stands in front of his bedroom mirror, Carlos behind him, and asks what exactly is so wrong. Carlos’ fingers trail over prominent ribs and rest on bony hips, and he shakes his head.

“You look grey,” he says. “Like paper.”

Paul’s head cants and he stares longer at his reflection. “But the world looks more alive,” he says.

Sam helps Paul pack when the lease runs out. He hasn’t sorted out a replacement apartment yet, so he’s moving back with his mom and his stuff is going into storage. He catches his leg on the corner of a cabinet and swears loudly, punches a wall so hard he breaks the skin on his knuckles. Sam puts down a box and looks at Paul like he doesn’t quite recognize him anymore.

“Paul,” he says, and stops, because really, what can he say to Paul that no one else has already? Instead, he comments on Paul’s new hairstyle. So yet again, no one talks about how they can see Paul’s veins beneath his skin now, or about the way bruises appear so easily.

Except Carlos, who props himself against the headboard for the last night they have in the apartment. Paul lays on his stomach, cheek pillowed against his arms, and Carlos runs his fingers idly up and down Paul’s spine. “Your shoulder blades,” Carlos murmurs, almost so quietly that Paul can’t hear, “they’re like wings. When did that happen?” Paul shrugs and his bones grate together, and it’s almost exquisite.

“Tell me again about ghosts,” Paul says, laying full length on his mother’s couch. Carlos sits cross-legged on the floor, Zen quiet and composed, easy smile brightening his sharp features. It’s his eyes, Paul thinks to himself, his eyes are different now; older, deeper, wiser. Which is reassuring, and also a little terrifying.

“About ghosts?”

Paul’s mother watches from the doorway, tears pooling in her eyes. She talks to his friends on the telephone, asks if they can help, get him out or away. Because he scares her now, her son, all skeletal and fragile, and possibly drunk. He’s been with her for weeks and she hasn’t seen him eat except from empty plates. She doesn’t see him sleep and he’s wasting away in front of her. She doesn’t know how to save him, really.

And always, always, he talks about ghosts.

Paul goes through phases. This week he eats real food, food that he has to prepare. Carlos sits opposite him at the table and watches, nods approvingly. For a month, Paul eats nothing except cheese and chocolate spread. For two days, Paul decides that nothing will pass his lips that he can’t liquidize. He puts weight on, briefly, his collarbones less painfully angular beneath his skin, and Carlos watches him with abject fascination.

Paul invites his friends for dinner, and Carlos cooks. His friends bring food with them as well, and everyone eats everything. Daniel sits opposite Paul to begin with, until Paul asks him to move because that’s Carlos’ seat.

Which is when things fall apart a little, because – and Daniel speaks slowly so Paul will have time to understand – Carlos is dead. Carlos sits opposite Paul and presses his fingers to his lips. So Paul makes the right noises for Daniel and later, Carlos’ tongue runs up the inside of Paul’s leg.

“They wouldn’t understand,” he says and Paul arches his back, tangles his fingers in Carlos’ hair.

“I love you,” he breathes and Carlos’ hands are reassuringly warm.

Paul rents another apartment. This one is large and airy and painfully modern. Carlos chooses furniture and Paul buys a new bed. Everything is very Scandinavian, although Carlos says Quaker and Paul’s too tired to bother arguing about it. It’s clean and it’s huge and Paul rattles around it for weeks before he invites anyone over.

There’s ample room in the shower for two, and Paul enjoys that there is a two-person bathtub as well. He goes through different phases in this apartment, different sets of obsessions. He drinks different beer and briefly decides that he’s only going to drink expensive red wine, except that it becomes a very exhausting hobby very quickly.

Sam calls him and tells him he needs to come over. Paul makes excuses, says he can’t possibly, but Carlos agrees with Sam and says he’ll drive. When Sam comes to collect him, Paul is standing on the sidewalk staring at the car like maybe it will unlock itself. So Sam takes him back inside, changes his clothes into something dry (if not necessarily clean) and holds him close, like Paul might fall apart or break if anyone lets him go.

Paul’s not entirely sure why he’s with Sam, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to stay. But he’s put into clean pyjamas and he falls asleep in a soft bed with crisp white sheets. It’s odd and somehow comforting, and there’s a content full feeling in his stomach that he’d almost forgotten existed.

In the morning, Sam wakes him and says that Paul needs to move on now. “We’re all of us haunted by our past, Paul,” he says and Paul looks at him as if he’s seen a ghost.

Carlos looks up from his book as Paul slams the door. “You’re early,” he says and Paul glares.

“No,” he replies at length. “You’re late.”

Daniel calls him early on a Thursday morning. Paul fumbles for the receiver and only succeeds in knocking it to the floor. He doesn’t even really open his eyes. He swears and buries his face back in the pillow. Carlos replaces the phone in its cradle and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Hang on in there, soldier,” he whispers, fingers ghosting over Paul’s damaged skin.

Daniel leaves a message, which Carlos deletes, and when Sam appears outside of the apartment building, Carlos disables the buzzer. He kisses his way down the ridges of Paul’s spine, and when Paul comes it’s a little like heaven used to be.

Paul sits on a window seat and stares across the nighttime cityscape that he’s always loved. Carlos is increasingly just out of sight but always there, so Paul talks to him anyway and blows smoke into the chill winter air.

“I’m not going to make it,” he says to the emptiness, and when he looks again, Carlos is nowhere to be found.

But Carlos is back, sitting in the window and blowing smoke through the vent, when Paul wakes. Carlos looks at him and his face breaks into an easy smile that Paul returns without thinking.

“I thought you were…”

“Mm,” Carlos says and slides from his seat, perches on the edge of Paul’s bed and pushes his hair back from his face. His fingers tangle with Paul’s and Paul is suddenly aware of the slow steady beep of his heart monitor.

And then, more interestingly, the urgent whine of the flatline.

“I love you,” Carlos whispers as his lips catch Paul’s.

Later, Sam says he saw it coming. He sits with Daniel in an expensive restaurant and they share a bottle of wine.

“He was always-”

“Yeah,” agrees Daniel.

And Sam says again that in the end, all stories are ghost stories.

FIN

© FyrMaiden April 08

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:41:13 GMT

Fandom: Interpol
Pairing: Carlos/Paul
Genre: Take a punt! Angst. Again. Relatively fluffy angst by my standards, though!
Rating: PG, I guess? There’s nothing in here you wouldn’t let your 12 year old watch, if that makes sense.
Warning: I’m English. Grammatical anachronisms will occur.

Title: kill me instead
Author: FyrMaiden
Summary: Paul only lives with him for half the year. Carlos can’t make it work all year round.
Word Count: 1415

Disclaimer: Just playing in the sandpit. No offense meant and no assertions made. It’s all Just For Fun.
Author’s Note: One day, I’ll stop hurting them. One day I will also write something longer than 2000 words again. When I do manage that, I'll stop spamming everyone with this dribbe. Until such time…

Excerpt: Paul says, it’s pirates and ninjas this year. And probably vampires. He say this, and then he says he misses Carlos all in the same breath, like maybe the two are related and Carlos says he misses him too and probably skeletons. Mummies, Paul corrects and Carlos hangs up the phone.

Posted at publicpervert_ here

words like violence

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:41:53 GMT

Posting here for my benefit. Cross-posted to pp_

Fandom: Interpol
Pairing: Carlos/Paul
Genre: Puppies and kittens. Okay, no. Angst. And ladlefulls of it. Yus.
Rating: NC17/18/Adult. For naughty words and lots of them. And maybe implied boysex.
Warning: Don’t eat the yellow snow.

Title: words like violence
Author: FyrMaiden
Summary: Paul learns about angels.
Word Count: 1703

Disclaimer: Just playing in the sandpit. No harm or offense meant. Also, I don’t use a beta and this may prove why I probably should. Any and all mistakes, inaccuracies, plot holes and outright contradictions are all my own work. Yus.

It starts with a random introduction (“Paul, Carlos; Carlos, Paul”) and Paul absolutely fucking hates him on sight. Figures maybe it’s the alcohol and tries to reserve judgement.

It ends much later (years, decades) with death (not theirs) and resentment.

Between times, Paul learns a lot about angels.

Carlos, Paul decides within seconds, is 90% style. It takes him slightly longer to readjust his opinion. It’s an even split, style and arrogance, no two ways about it. Then Paul changes his mind again, because he can and because, through the haze of functional alcoholism, he doesn’t remember making any previous assertions about Carlos. Anyway, he’s at least 80% pretentious cunt. That’s Paul’s final decision. Carlos (tall, sort of beautiful except Paul convinces himself he hasn’t noticed the last part) is a world class pretentious cunt.

Still picks up the phone when he calls though, which makes him feel sort of sick and kind of hot. Paul knows he’s irresistible, which isn’t the alcohol talking this time. They meet and they fuck (and it’s amazing, but still), and Carlos’ mouth forms mocking words. Paul thinks it’s because with Carlos, he’s always kissing somebody goodbye.

Despite - or maybe in spite of - that, Paul’s vaguely disgusted with himself the first time he calls Carlos, but he’s drunk or high or maybe both, and Carlos makes his bones shake or maybe the bed. Doesn’t matter in the long run, because, shit, but it’s revolting and fabulous, even when he’s vomiting it all away. Carlos tastes like experience (or promiscuity, Paul doesn’t know which) traveling both ways across his tongue.

Paul doesn’t see Carlos for weeks, maybe even months. Doesn’t call him, but shacks up with a long string of girls. And one guy, but he had narrow hips and pretty eyes so really, where’s the difference anyway. He gets progressively less drunk, which is a refreshing change but doesn’t make things any easier. Which is when he finds out that his current squeeze is screwing someone else as well, because she comes back tasting of ash and alcohol and God, he could scream because –

“Cunt.”

“Well, hey beautiful. Figured you must have lost my number.”

“You get some kind of vicarious kick out of this?”

Laughs. “Paulie, it’s late and you know I’d love to do this with you but -”

“You can’t get your own women, Carlos? You got to have mine?”

“Paul, sleep it off.”

- which is why Paul isn’t sure who he hates more, Carlos or himself, when he wakes up to find Carlos’ long (and elegant and ghostly pale and, god, beautiful) limbs tangled with his own. This wasn’t, Paul’s fairly certain, how it was supposed to turn out. But the sheets are soft and he’s warm, and Carlos’ eyes piercing black, smile knowing and lascivious.

And he says it, says what Paul’s been thinking. Except it comes out wrong (wonky, distorted, probably Paul’s hearing as well) and sounds like:

“Are you hungry?”

“Mm.”

“For breakfast?”

“Well, food, yeah.”

Except it’s sort of closer to lunch but it doesn’t matter. Paul starts most days at their tail end anyway, usually with black coffee and cigarettes.

Carlos makes real food and Paul has pretty much moved in, things moving so fast he feels like his head has flown off. Carlos’ apartment is stark and naked but it’s comfortable and at some point it becomes home. Paul buries long fingers in soft sheets, tries to remember all the various places that he’s slept and fails. Remembers most of the places where he didn’t sleep though (cubicles, car seats and once a girl went down on him at the back of a gig, his head banging hard against the wall when he came), but it’s all long ago and far away.

Carlos has this thing about wrinkled clothing, tells Paul that he’s going to have to clean up his act. That’s all there is to it, the discussion over before it has a chance to begin. Paul snorts and uses his cigarette to burn a vindictive hole in the settee. Wonders how long it’ll take Carlos to notice and drives himself home.

Except home isn’t really home and it’s got to have been weeks or maybe months, because there’s mold on the plates in the sink, which is completely disgusting and yet –

Paul buys milk from the store on the corner, and more smokes. Drinks coffee black and unsweetened from a beer mug and eats cornflakes from the lid of the cookie jar. Figures he should do something about the mess but at this stage it would be cheaper to get the place condemned. So he collapses onto his old (slightly dilapidated, definitely questionably stained) settee and watches reruns of shows he hates on the TV.

It’s around this time (caffeinated and running on fumes) that Paul Banks learns about angels.

Carlos’ voice is – well, it’s not an unwelcome intrusion when Paul finally picks up the phone, because the machine is all juiced out at a hundred some odd messages. He gave up playing them back after the first ten reminded him of all his various shortcomings and failing as both human being and man. Rubs his eyes and lights a cigarette, blows smoke rings towards the (curiously yellow) ceiling.

“Paul?”

“Ngh.”

“I thought you might have died.”

“Didn’t know you cared.”

“Yeah, well, if you answered your phone.”

“What do you want, Cee?”

Which stops him in his tracks, because when did he ever call Carlos ‘Cee’? Irrespective. What he’s offered is a lifeline and he’d be a damned fool to turn it down.

He’s not really thinking when he tells Carlos to just fuck off.

When he finally wakes up, he discovers he can’t breathe. And that incessant fucking beeping is the most aggravating thing he’s heard in, well, probably ever. And then there’s a flurry of blue and hazy instructions to exhale and he can’t fucking breathe for choking.

Which is when the lights go out. Again.

The first voice he hears that he knows he recognizes is deep and the words are so damn long. Because time has turned Carlos into a pretentious cunt with a thesaurus wedged up his arse like some kind of literary suppository, which makes Paul laugh and then choke. Flurry of blue, and Carlos standing by the bed. Paul doesn’t know if Carlos genuinely cares, if he’s genuinely been worried, but his eyes are red and there are bags under them. The hazy blue figure monitoring the beeps informs him Carlos saved his life.

Paul would say thank you, but the truth is he’s not sure what for.

Paul’s half-asleep and half tangled in (Egyptian) cotton sheets. Carlos’ fingers trace patterns on his skin and he’s not really listening to anything he’s being told but still. Carlos says he believes in angels. That one chance to change your life forever. Paul turns his head, blonde hair tumbling into his eyes as he cracks a smile. Carlos’ smile makes his eyes dance and Paul isn’t sure but he thinks he might be sort of jealous of that.

“You got an angel, Carl?”

“Mm.”

Paul thinks carefully and doesn’t press it, because, really, he’s not fit to have changed anyone’s life. Besides, Carlos had it all long before Paul Banks stumbled drunkenly into his arms.

Paul winds up at the library where he spends the entire day without eating. He stops once, goes out to get industrial strength nicotine substitutes because the prissy bitch in the attractive brown cardigan had stubbed his cigarette out for him before thanking him for not smoking. He’d said, that was nice but he was smoking. She’d smiled a tight little smile, invited him to leave, please, and he’d rammed his smokes and matches back into his pocket.

Regardless of the thundering headache that followed and the nervous tension, Paul learns about angels. History, mythology and reality. He walks home in the rain, scarf tight around his throat, hat low over his eyes, cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth. Really has time to think.

“Very avant-garde,” Carlos murmurs, pushing his hair back from his face and kissing rain from his nose and cheeks. Paul wonders when (hell, if) he stopped hating Carlos with so much passion.

Decides later, Carlos deep inside of him, that he probably hasn’t, he’s just stopped thinking about it. Because the sex is as angry and full of resentment as it ever was, before, when they didn’t really speak except to hurt and wound.

The funny thing is, though, Paul realizes one day, is that actually – if he really thinks about it – he’s sort of… happy?

And then, almost while he watches, it’s later and Carlos has been the longest relationship (maybe the only relationship) he’s ever managed to really maintain. He’s older, he’s cleaner and, well, sure, he’s verging on painfully thin but that’s okay as well, really, because so is Carlos and they’re doing okay. Or mostly okay.

Partly okay?

Except – Carlos is distant and Paul finds himself resenting to stability of years and the future, which is how he winds up in some downtown strip joint, all flesh and filth, and worse, it’s how he ends up drunk and high (but not completely gone), fucking some imitation red head with fake tits and a fake smile.

Thinks maybe he should feel bad about it later when he gets home, but there’s a body on his side of the bed so really, what’s the difference?

Paul makes breakfast for three and tells Carlos (who looks immaculate at 9am, bastard) that he’s had enough, he’s leaving, and Carlos says okay. Oh, and by the way, Daniel’s dead. Gets a blank look and continues, says, “Your friend that introduced us.”

Paul nods absently. “Just a guy I knew in Paris one summer.”

Which makes Carlos laugh, because he’d just been a guy in his class with similar interests. Small world, really.

Paul borrows his girlfriend’s wagon to collect his stuff. Carlos’ handwriting is on the boxes, but it’s not him that accepts the key that Paul returns.

“Tell him -” And he stops, shrugs. “Tell him he’s a goddamn pretentious bastard. And I’m sorry about the settee.”

FIN

© FyrMaiden March 2008

he didn't take the time to lie

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:02:39 GMT

Before we start, it's been 67 weeks since I've updated this thing. OVER A FUCKING YEAR! Christ. That's a long time with no muse, because Jamie and Ian stopped fucking line bunnies in my head. Well, actually, they just moved to AIM for a while and then Jen went and got a new job which was RUDE quite frankly. ANYWAYS! Interpol. Based entirely on the premise that Carlos is far too pretty to be real. Wobbly plot/characterisation/EVERYTHING follows after this short break...

Fandom: Interpol
Pairing: Carlos/Paul
Genre: Angst, for no better reason than I can and I do.
Rating: I don’t think it really needs one. GA?
Warning: No animals were harmed in the making of this documentary.

Title: he didn’t take the time to lie
Author: *curtsies*
Summary: phs, fairly pointless drabble thing but since it’s like, the ONLY thing I have finished it recent memory, posted it is. But Carlos does get compared to a wolf and that has to be worth SOMETHING, right!?! Right. Let’s call it the one with the properly dysfunctional relationship, si?
Word Count: 639

“Loving you,” he says, “Loving you is like staring down the barrel of a gun.” And then he doesn’t say anything else, just crosses his legs and looks away, closes himself down and refuses to be drawn further on the subject. That’s what having Carlos is; it’s offhand comments that sucker punch and distances that are still sort of incomprehensible. Having Carlos is a matter of riding out the insecurity for the sake of the highs, because really having him isn’t something to take lightly.

Besides, Paul knows that, eventually, Carlos will explain.

By Carlos’ standards, it doesn’t take long. Another cigarette flares into life and he draws smoke deep into his lungs before blasting it up into the rafters, a blue-grey ghost that makes him smile, lips stretching across his teeth. Paul wraps him arms around himself, thinks but doesn’t say that loving Carlos has always been a lot like taming a storm and a little like playing fetch with a wolf.

Carlos’ almost black eyes flick back to Paul’s face and the smile softens. His whole face softens. Lines become smoother until he appears less skeletally angular and more like himself. “Because,” he says, “because it feels a lot like dying, waiting for someone to pull the trigger. Living always on edge, waiting for the big finale, the fireworks and the end of the show, tat endless soul-destroying grey that comes when the whole world ends.” Which might even be the most articulate he’s been in days. Paul chooses not to comment and appeals to the animal instead.

“Eat,” he says. “There’s leftover from yesterday or I’ll make you eggs.”

Except Carlos isn’t hungry, because nothing really changes.

It’s later, much later, and Carlos is on the couch. His head rests on one arm, his feet are propped against the other and he says maybe he could eat, you know, food or whatever and closes his eyes. Paul thinks maybe he should find this behaviour irritating and yet –

“What do you want?”

And again, because nothing changes, Carlos shrugs non-commitally and says nothing, so Paul cooks the eggs he offered earlier and serves coffee Irish, with the whiskey already in.

Paul deals with him because he’s got to a point where he doesn’t really know any differently. He tells himself that loving Carlos is a hell of a lot like waiting for the world to end as well. He catches Carlos’ reflection, tall arrogant frame leaning against the door jam. Smiles as he puts down the razor.

“Why’re you here, Carl?” he whispers, not bothering to turn around. He knows this mood, this look. It tastes of drink and ash and, to some extent, death and finality. Living with Carlos is a lot like playing Russian roulette with his emotions. Every time he spins the chamber, he hopes the hammer will hit a nerve. Carlos doesn’t react. Try again, then, another time because one days Paul figures the hammer has got to hit home. Paint the fucking walls. Which makes him laugh and Carlos raise one arch eyebrow.

“Paint it black,” Paul whispers and turns slowly, stares down the barrel of the gun, waits for the bang and the fireworks that don’t come. Paul wonders, idly, which end of the gun Carlos is staring down the barrel from.

Late at night, Carlos tastes like soap and smells like cotton or maybe silk. By early morning, he tastes like Manhattan smells. But when he touches Paul’s flesh it’s still electric so really, it doesn’t matter.

One day, Paul thinks he’ll get bored of the eggshells he’s walked on for years; he’ll get tired of never properly gauging Carlos’ moods. The game will play itself out.

But for now Paul knows he’ll stay. Because when Carlos makes him come, the world ends. That’s when the bullet leaves the gun.

FIN

© FyrMaiden March 2008

Deep Within

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 10:28:35 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen
Genre: Angst, but really bittersweet and touching this time. Hand on heart.
Time Frame: It doesn’t fit into the canonical timeline, or not properly. Go with it being AU, huh?
Warnings: Character death. Yes, I’m at it again. Also, wing!fic – should remain in character, however.

Title: Deep Within
Author: FyrMaiden
Rating: R, for darker themes and language.
Summary: He’s there to help, until Sam can make it on his own.
Words: 3,390

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Supernatural, its characters and content are license of Eric Kripke and the CW. Basically, I make no money for playing in the sandbox.
Author’s Note: Inspiration drawn from a throwaway line in my last fic about Mary being as close to religion as Dean ever gets, and a comment quoting William Makepeace Thackeray; “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” Then there was this idea I had from an old fandom of mine for a story I started and never finished, which started out with two boys, a gravestone and a light dusting of snow. I’ve stolen that idea and reproduced it here. Does it count as plagiarism if you’re stealing from yourself?

It begins with loss, and an ending.

In the beginning, there was John. John Winchester, an ex-Marine, married Mary (who was blonde and uncompromisingly beautifully) in 1977, and in the January of 1979 they had their first child, a boy. They called him Dean. Mary called him her little angel and John always said Dean was his little soldier. Dean was bright and confident. He had good reflexes, and John would play ball with him in the yard whenever he had time. Four years later, in the May of 1983, they had a second son and they called him Samuel, like the Biblical prophet but only because Mary liked the name. Sam was quiet and introspective, and whenever he looked at Mary, she felt he was looking through her.

John part-owned the garage in town, and what spare time he had he spent working on an old ’67 Chevrolet Impala he’d bought before the boys were born. Mary said the car was impractical, especially now, with Dean and Sam being so young. John, however, saw the absolute adoration on Dean’s little face every time the car pulled up outside. Selling the car was never a serious option, and John secretly believed that Mary loved it almost as much as he did. Very briefly, John tasted idyllic urban serenity and thought he had found heaven.

Then the unthinkable happened. November 2nd, 1983. All official reports would put the fire down to faulty wiring in the ceiling, or a gas leak, perhaps. No one would know for certain, except for the people inside the house. John never once believed that the fire consuming Sammy’s nursery was anything less than supernatural. He knew what he saw, and what he saw was his wife pinned to the ceiling of his son’s room with her abdomen ripped open. What he felt was Mary’s blood, dripping scarlet into Sammy’s crib, an unholy baptism bathed in fear. Much as John would have given to save Mary, the fire that billowed from beneath her and around her, blooming across the ceiling, told him that it was too late. All he could do was save his boys. He gathered Sam into his arms and then handed him to Dean, telling him to get outside as fast as he could.

He found Dean outside, still with Sam in his arms, but he’d missed the crucial moment where everything changed. He missed the part where Dean promised to protect Sam with everything he had.

That was their first loss, the death of their mother. It was followed by a string of other losses: faith, their home, their security, and (although more slowly) their father.

It begins with the end of childhood.

In the aftermath of Mary, John disconnected from the world around him but he wasn’t completely oblivious to his boys. He noticed certain things. He noticed – and made note of – how close the boys were in the wake of their mother’s death. He made note of – and worried about – Dean’s unnatural and prolonged silence. He noted how he found Dean asleep in Sammy’s crib, and how he was unsure what the correct reaction to that should have been (should he worry about it or shouldn’t he?). He did try to care, but most days caring was more than he could manage. He continued to wear his wedding band and vowed to kill whatever had murdered his wife.

Dean was five when John suddenly found purpose and direction. He couldn’t begin to imagine why. They crossed the Colorado state border. John left the boys with family and came back with a mission. This would be their lives for the foreseeable future. Dean and Sam would become each other’s constant, the bar by which the other measured his own sanity. They would spend their time shunting between their father and their father’s friends, and then John would start to leave them alone as soon as Dean was old enough to care for Sam.

There would be a lot of things that John would regret later. He would regret all the times he indirectly blamed the boys for Mary’s death. There would be the times he couldn’t look at Dean without seeing his dead wife smiling back in his son’s striking eyes. There would be every single time he left his 8, 10, 13 year old son to care for his younger brother. He would regret just exactly how much of Sam’s upbringing he left to Dean; the fact Dean’s childhood was spent growing up entirely too fast. He would regret all the small things he should have done; cooking Sammy dinner, telling Sammy stories at bedtime, making sure Sammy was clean. He would regret all the little things he should have done and didn’t. Or couldn’t, whichever.

Top of his list of regrets, however, would come the fact that he never told Dean exactly how proud he was, regret letting Dean convince himself that everything was more important than he was.

Dean was 23 when everything went wrong. Sam was gone (Stanford, because he was brilliant and Dean was so proud even when he was hurting) and Dean’s defenses were down. He’d lost some of the concern for his own safety that he’d had when Sam was around, because he couldn’t check on Sam in California without looking like he was interfering. It made him wonder if Sam hated him or their life or both. He picked up a girl in a bar in Nevada because she admired his car and he always liked that in a chick. He took her back to the motel room because she looked like fun in a little red dress and real stiletto heels. As it turned out, she was more than just fun. She was absolutely deadly. She said her name was Lucille and Dean didn’t suspect a thing until her second row of teeth sunk into his neck. He was alive enough to register her contempt as she drew away, the sneer evident in her voice as she proclaimed herself to be a little underwhelmed by John’s son. Apparently, she’d expected more.

*
It ends with a grave, and with snow so light on the ground that it could almost be frost. The figure crouching quietly amid the angels knows which is true; he has sat all night before a headstone near the doors of the church. Now, as morning breaks, a second figure joins him and rests its hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Are you ready?” The voice is little more than a whisper, barely disturbing the chill winter air. The first, a boy (for he appears to be little more than a boy as he uncurls; tall, yes, but ungainly, like he’s not quite finished yet), pushes himself to his feet and nods once, a brief flick of his head.

“I guess.” His voice is sad, almost heart-breakingly so. The latecomer wraps its arms around him and kisses his hair. Hand in hand they walk away, and the pale January sun makes their wings glitter softly.

*
Dean thinks he should be dead but he wakes up sprawled on the back seat of the Impala, face pillowed in the soft leather of his jacket. His mouth feels dry and his limbs feel weak. He has no memory of where he’s been or how he came to be here. All he knows with any certainty is that something feels different and he’s not sure what it is.

Three days later, Dean rescues his brother from a burning building. Sam looks at him like he shouldn’t still be there and looks at the car like he hasn’t seen it in years. He fights against Dean’s restraining arms, says he’s got to save her and Dean says no, because it’s too late for that. She’s gone and she’s not coming back. Sam looks at him and laughs.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Forget it. What are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass. Again. Now, c’mon.”

Sam’s not sure (and it may be exhaustion and smoke or something) but as Dean turns away, he thinks he sees the silvery glitter of wings. He tells himself it’s definitely exhaustion and pain, and convinces himself that Dean’s back for good this time, not just present in his dreams.

Dean has a poker face that even Sam can’t see through. He asks Dean where he’s been and honestly can’t tell if his brother is lying when the answer comes in.

“Working jobs, you know. Making sure the bad things stay buried.”

“I haven’t even seen you in two years and now you show up? What is it, Dean? Ghostly precognition?”

Dean mulls that thought over for a moment and then breaks out his best shit-eating grin. “Can’t it just be brotherly concern?”

Sam shakes his head and shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ve been gone four years, and you only ever show up when shit goes down. Do you want to attempt to explain that?”

“Easy, tiger!” Dean laughs, throwing his hands up. “Dude, I just saved your life. A little gratitude wouldn’t be completely out of place right now.”

Sam says nothing, only glares at Dean and goes to talk to the fire crew.

Dean doesn’t make it to Jess’s funeral. He says funerals cause a crisis of faith. Sam says what faith and Dean shrugs like it’s a long story for another time. Sam says fine, it doesn’t matter and Dean can see that it sort of does but he still can’t go. Instead he tries to dig up something useful on the apartment and, failing that, something useful from their father’s journal.

Sam spends time considering Dean’s reappearance. Last time he saw his brother, Sam had been shocked at how Dean had looked; he had seemed deathly, his skin drawn and pale. He reflects that at least he looks better now. He’s warm and vital and – Sam would love to say ‘alive’ but Dean’s been dead for more than three years. Sam’s learnt to live with a lot of things, but Dean’s reappearance terrifies him every time.

Sam can remember the telephone conversation that he had with his father, and the one with Jess that followed. Jess had kissed him gently and told him he should go. John told him he was in Nevada, gave him co-ordinates (of all things). Jess came with him. They drove (because it seemed somehow fitting) and they took her old Beetle, which was cramped for Sam’s ridiculously long legs. Sam felt like he should be crying, but somehow couldn’t comprehend that there was no more Dean. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to think about it. Dean sat beside him at the funeral. He was wan, his skin contrasting with his stubble, eyes full of pain, but even so he managed to wrap his arms around his brother and tell him not to worry too much, that he’d always be there.

It was three days later, on the way back to Stanford, that Sam actually found tears. He’d told Jess that he wanted to drive, to give himself something to do that wasn’t dwell on the absence of his brother, and a black Impala with Kansas plates passed them on the road. He didn’t mean for it to happen but there were tears on his cheeks. It wasn’t body wracking, immobilizing, gut wrenching grief, and they were the only tears he ever shed for Dean. Jess slept in the passenger seat and when Sam glanced in the mirror he caught a fleeting glimpse of Dean’s infectious grin.

After that, Sam didn’t see Dean for months. Then he caught Dean flicking through channels on the television. Dean glanced at him and winked. There was a patch where John and Sam stopped speaking altogether. Dean showed up for that as well, sat on the closed lid of the toilet as Sam showered and listened to him rant. The last time Dean had shown up, he had pretty much saved Sam’s life (faulty wiring in the car; Sam would have gone up in flames). The Dean Sam saw then looked terrifying, eyes huge in his death mask face. At least the Dean now looks alive, even if he’s been dead for entirely too long.

Sam returns from Jess’s funeral with a steely determination to find the thing that killed her. Dean takes the keys and does all the driving (which is weird, frankly, because he shouldn’t even be corporeal and yet everyone can see him, touch him even). He drives like he has a purpose as well, although possibly not the same purpose as Sam.

“Okay, genius, where to now?” Sam tries to keep the edge out of his voice but fails. Somehow he doesn’t think that leaving Palo Alto is the answer, and he can’t help but resent Dean’s certainty that it is the way forward.

“Where do the co-ordinates point?”

“To nowhere, Nevada. Dean, c’mon-”

“We’re going to Nevada. Read the map.”

Dean was never interested in religion as a child. He never kept a diary and he didn’t pray to God (because he figured that if any god existed, it certainly wasn’t watching over the Winchesters). If he ever asked for help or guidance, it was always to his mother that he directed his thoughts. Before they moved from Lawrence, he believed he could feel her in their house and hear her laugh echoing down the hall. He always called the warmth that enveloped him when he slept alone in drafty motel rooms ‘mother’. Dean never had a use for faith after his mother died, and he’s not really interested now either. It’s an attitude that rubbed off on Sam more than a little. Sam believes in good and evil and the inevitability of death. He’s just not sure why it is that death inevitably takes the good ones young. That’s because Jess is still fresh in his memories, and Dean is sitting beside him humming Motorhead (ironic) and keeping a fairly decent rhythm on the wheel.

Sam drifts somewhere between asleep and awake, slipping occasionally into dreams that wake him cold and sweating. Dean glances at him, concerned and openly so, even offers up the keys like driving might help. Sam glares and rubs his eyes, scrubs his hands through his hair.

“Want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Obviously.”

Sam says nothing, just turns the radio up and resumes staring out of the window. He tries to ignore the irony that is Dean’s current music selection. ‘Paranoid’ is about right.

They’re standing at the top of the Grand Canyon, the heat almost suffocating, when Sam’s resolve finally breaks. He finds tears in his eyes and on his cheeks for every maybe and could-have-been that has ever evaded him. He finds a well of grief that he’s left untapped for years. He finds tears for the mother he never knew, for the father who could barely look at him, for the brother whose formative years were spent raising him and for the girlfriend who knew him better than anyone but never learnt the truth.

When the tears subside, Sam pushes himself to his feet. He dusts red sand from his knees and ass, and turns to talk to Dean except that Dean’s not there and doesn’t appear to have ever been. He drives in silence back to the motel that Dean insisted they use for old time’s sake. He finds his brother sitting on a bench outside of their room, one ankle propped on his knee and a wide grin splitting his face in two. He pops the top off a cold bottle of beer and holds it out.

“You looked like you needed the space,” he says. Sam shrugs and nods and covers his eyes to keep from crying because Dean’s so damn real that it’s scary.

“You left the car.”

“It’s a long walk back from the desert, dude. You sorta need it more than I do.”

Sam nods slowly and sits beside Dean on the bench. “What are you doing here, Dean?”

There was a woman – a real psychic – that John had known back in Lawrence. Dean and Sam find her on a journey home. It takes her all of five minutes to know them both completely, but only 30 seconds to know their immediate truth. She doesn’t touch Dean and her eyes fill with tears as she gazes at Sam.

“Oh, honey,” she says, voice conciliatory and laden with years of empathic sorry, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Sam glances at Dean and Dean shrugs back. He doesn’t get it either but Dad used to know this woman, so maybe they should hear her out.

It’s going well until Dean puts crossroad dirt in his mouth and almost exorcises himself. He spits and pulls a face, and Sam’s certain he feels the faint flutter of wings as Dean puts all the little pots back where he found them.

Missouri is the first person to make Sam smile in more than half a year and then it’s because she threatens to whack Dean with a spoon. Dean finds that he can’t begrudge Sam that, much as he finds Missouri an invasion of what little space he has these days.

They don’t stop long in Lawrence, but Sam seems happier when they leave. He drives and hums along to Dean’s tapes. Sometimes, Dean leaves it until he is actually missed to get in the car. Sometimes, Sam just takes it for granted that he’s there.

They’re up on the Great Lakes – Erie or Ontario – when Sam asks the question again, and this time Dean doesn’t laugh it off.

“I told you, Sammy,” he says, crouching and skimming flat pebbles across the water’s surface.

“Yeah, I know. But tell me again.”

“I’m saving your ass.”

“From?”

Dean stands and smiles and runs his hands across his thighs. He catches his lower lip between his teeth and gazes silently across the lake for a moment. His voice is quiet when he finally replies, “From yourself, mostly.”

Sam nods his head and rams his hands into his pockets. “And you’ll go?”

“Whenever you stop needing me.”

In the privacy of his own head, Sam thinks he’ll never stop needing Dean.

It’s been almost a year since Jess died. It’s been a year full of pain and heartbreak, but it’s getting better. Some days it takes Sam hours to realize he’s alone, hours to realize he can’t hear Dean humming in the shower. The minute he realizes Dean’s not there, Dean invariably reappears. Sam understands the meaning.

“How long?” he asks and Dean shrugs.

“Who knows?” And then, quietly, “Promise me you’ll always remember me, Sam.”

Sam wants to laugh and say like he’ll ever forget, but Dean’s face has gone death mask grey again and Sam knows he can see them now; Dean’s wings encircling him to keep the melancholy out. It is Sam who this time finds himself with his arms wrapped around Dean. Dean, who is strong and warm and fading fast. Sam ends up whispering his promise to an empty room.

Sam makes his next decision alone. He decides to keep the car. The car is as much Dean as the grin and the jacket and the shit-kicker boots ever were. The decision following that one is harder. He decides to go back to Stanford. That takes all the courage he can muster.

And even then, it’s the flutter of wings that he catches in the corner of his eye that tips the balance.

*
Mary takes Dean’s hand gently in her own. Her son is just as she remembers him but grown up a little more. Old enough to still need her but not the four-year-old she left behind. Here, in her presence, Dean is 15 and he cares intensely what happens to Sam.

“It’s time, Dean,” she murmurs and he nods, turning bright green eyes on her face. “You have to let them go.”

“I know,” he whispers and traces his fingers across the name on the headstone. Its date belies Dean’s truth. On Earth, he died four years in the past but he’ll live forever for as long as he is needed.

FIN

© FyrMaiden August 2006

END NOTES: If anyone knows when John and Mary actually got married, feel free to share. To my knowledge, there isn’t a canon date, but then my knowledge of the background is sometimes a little shady. Obviously, we know Sam’s birthday because they make that one real easy for us, and we know Dean’s because we’re geeks, and we know Jess’s because it’s on her headstone, and we know Jess’s birthday and Dean’s birthday are on the same day, 5 years apart. We know when Mary died, and when Jess died (same day, 22 years apart). But do we know when John and Mary got married?! Bah! Humbug.

A Line In A Song

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:32:28 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen – Sam & Dean, guest appearances by Mary, Jess and John.
Genre: Fluffy bunnies and kittens? Okay, no. You got me. It’s angst, but sort of bittersweet?
Spoilers: They don’t count as spoilers anymore, but it centres on ‘Home’.
Warnings: Dodgy (wobbly and occasionally wildly off) characterization, if that counts as a warning!

Title: A Line In A Song
Author: fyrmaiden
Rating: All audiences. Yes, really.
Summary: Dean maps out a life he never knew, one where his mom is alive and he’s not hunted…
Words: 2560

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Supernatural, its characters and content are license of Eric Kripke and the CW.
Author’s Note: So, this is the other idea, the one that I was having trouble with. I’m still having trouble with it. This is one of the few times when I’m actually feeling the need for a beta to tell me to stop being a complete ass; it doesn’t totally suck but could use some revision. What I’m basically saying is that if you want to tell me where it needs work, feel free. I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out that the title is stolen shamelessly from Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’. Kinellman, I don’t even bloody like FOB!

Increasingly, Dean sees things that never were. He envisions a whole life for himself that never happened. He sees his mom alive, his mom at Sammy’s first Little League game and his mom taking pictures of him getting ready for Prom. Dean maps out a life that was stolen from him before he could begin to miss it.

Dean sees his life in flashes, not like Sam’s visions but not dissimilar either. They don’t hurt in a traditional sense, but they do make his entire body ache. Dean misses his mom and knows that he could have been so different if she had been in his life. He studies his hands in moments of deep reflection and wonders about this other life where he’s not a killer, and he puts that down to his mother’s influence over him.

He tries to explain his visions to Sam when he asks what makes Dean so sad sometimes and fails miserably. Two things, he says, his mom alive and his mom dead. Sam looks nonplussed and Dean tries again.

“I see her,” he whispers, staring at the ceiling with his eyes and living this other life with his mind. “She’s alive and she’s beautiful, and sometimes – she makes me different, Sammy. She makes me more like you, like normal wouldn’t be so bad.”

Sam doesn’t see this side of his brother all that often and this Dean is still a stranger to him. Dean’s emotions are a road less travelled and it’s infinitely easier that way. Sam knows enough to bite back anything like a glib remark though. Instead he moves from his own bed to Dean’s, curling his body against his brother’s prone form. He doesn’t know what the right thing to say is and so he says nothing. He can’t imagine a different Dean and more than that, he doesn’t particularly want to. This Dean raised him, taught him so much and brought him to life. Even when Dean wasn’t perfect, he was there. If Sam learned anything while he was at Stanford, it’s that normal is little more than a state of mind and this introspection isn’t normal for Dean.

Usually it happens in the early morning when Dean is somewhere between asleep and awake. The grey half-light filtering through faded curtains lends itself to the imagination. Sometimes it’s enough to drive Dean from his bed, and other times it drives him straight into Sam. Every time he sees something different, something that is enough to keep him going day after day, in memory of the mother he knew for four short years. Sam has his memories of Jess and Dean envies him that occasionally. Dean has those memories of their mom, and Sam wishes he could have known her as well. Each of them provides the other with what is so desperately lacking. Each of them is home when home is a shadowy concept always just out of reach.

Dean’s favourite visions are the ones of their house in Lawrence. He sees Sam making the Honour Roll and the soccer team. He sees Sam’s graduation and his brother’s easy open smile almost breaks his heart. Dean’s emergence into full consciousness sees him with his hands pressed to Sam’s face, a whisper on his lips that speaks of a thousand promises he never saw through. Sam doesn’t know how to react to this side of Dean but he tells Dean there is nothing to apologize for, nothing he could have done that would have made him happier. And sometimes, in the quiet privacy of his own mind, Dean thinks there is something he could have done. He could have kept the dark at bay, lassoed the moon and taught the stars to play in Sam’s huge eyes, and he did none of them. The darkness in Sam is because of him and it’s a guilt he won’t let go of.

Sam will always wake long before Dean. For Dean, early morning is a time that exists for other people. Dean revels in late nights and the long hours between dusk and dawn. Sam never has. Sam is alive between daybreak and dusk, or was, until the nightmares started and he stopped sleeping altogether. Sam goes out and gets coffee and waits patiently for Dean to wake. He smiles and hands Dean his coffee in silence, waiting for him to speak first.

“About last night-”

“Don’t,” Sam murmurs, not wanting to hear Dean apologize for some assumed moment of weakness. Dean lowers his gaze and pulls the knife from beneath his pillow, slinging it into the duffle bag by his bed. The action makes him seem sadder than Sam has seen him, probably ever. Dean’s not prone to big dreams of the past or the future but he is plagued by the thought of what he could have been in another life.

“I just want to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being you.”

Sam smiles and closes the laptop, shakes his head. “Shower,” he says, taking on the role that’s supposed to be Dean’s. “And we’ll go get breakfast.”

There’re a lot that Dean wishes he could say, wishes he could get the words past his lips, but some kind of block keeps him from expressing too much until it’s much too late. He has the water so hot it burns. When a vision blindsides him, he crashes to his knees with a cry that has Sam in the bathroom before he can even regain his feet. Sam’s arms are strong and his body is warm, safe and again, it should be the other way round but Dean really doesn’t care. He sees Sam on his wedding day, grown up and moved away. Dean doesn’t. Or he does, but he always comes back. Dean’s hands tangle in Sam’s hair and his eyes search for answers that simply aren’t forthcoming. All he sees is a deep and abiding concern and he’s falling again.

“It’s always you,” he says slowly as Sam helps him to his feet. “It’s always you and you’re always leaving.”

Sam hands him a towel and sits on the closed lid of the toilet. “You know that’s not true.”

“Sammy – you and Jess, even in this other world-”

Sam’s face, an open book to Dean, closes with a snap.

There are a lot of things that define Dean. He is obstinate, determined, stubborn and often reactionary. He’s also loyal to the point of death. The way they grew up hasn’t created these things in him. They have always been there and would always have been. Mary finds these things adorable although they ostracize him from his peers.

There are things that differ, however, because of his mom’s constant and reassuring presence. Dean grows into a gentler, calmer person. He’s good with his hands and his dad teaches him to load fire and maintain a gun, but his mom ensures that he’s neither hunter nor hunted. Mary is full of grace and humour, and Dean sees a lot of himself in her as he grows older. In his everyday real world life, Dean thinks that might explain a lot, from the way John used to tousle his sandy hair to the desolate bereavement in his father’s eyes whenever he looked at the growing (and then grown) Dean.

Sometimes in the darkness Sam will see tears glittering in Dean’s eyes, there and gone within fractions of seconds. Tears are a weakness Dean has never afforded himself. Tears for the past and the present and the future are to no avail and no one’s advantage. But even so, the more Dean sees of the woman who should have been his mother, the more he is spurred onward.

Sam turns the radio down on the car, his eyes full of concern. Dean drifts somewhere near sleep, listless and tired but still awake. “You know I’d never leave you.” Dean is too tired to argue, only smiles.

“You did leave, Sammy.”

“Not you, though. This, everything, but not you.” Sam sucks his lower lip and glances at Dean from the corner of his eye. “I was just a phone call away.”

It’s too late for the same old argument and Dean gives in. “Felt a lot like me is all. Gave you everything and you couldn’t even say you were going.”

Sam has no answer and Dean doesn’t want one. There are only miles and miles of aching paranoid silence to fill the void left by their mutual guilt, which is nothing new to either of them. They’ve become used to the filling the silence and the days with Dean’s tapes and all the things that they never actually say. Things like ‘I love you’ and ‘I missed you’ and sometimes the Holy Grail, ‘I needed you’. There are a lot of things they don’t say and a lot of shit that they do, but both of them need to be so damn masculine that they can’t say anything to actually restore the connection that got severed so unceremoniously so long ago.

Dean has a theory that he won’t share. He thinks the reason he blisses off into this other world is because it contains no pain, or not the pain that he boxes away in real life. Dean’s emotions are like Pandora’s Box and some day Sam will find the key that opens it, but until then they’re something Dean doesn’t have to deal with. Diffuse and deflect. It’s almost a personal mantra. In his other life, Dean doesn’t have to do it because his emotions never become an issue. His mom understands him without asking a thousand questions that have no answers. When he’s little, she tucks him in with a kiss and a gentle smile and after Dean has moved out of the family home, she invites him back in without question whenever he turns up on her doorstep. Dean is her favourite, her angel. It’s like she sees inside of him and that makes Dean feel safe.

Dean remembers when he laughed at Sam for wanting safety, that picket fence and expensive silver saloon but that was a year and a lifetime ago. Dean thinks that these days he’d settle for not dying before he’s 30 as well. He doesn’t have Sam’s big dreams and grand plans. Dean doesn’t think about the future because it’s a bleak place and he doesn’t think about the past a lot either, because that’s a painful place. He also doesn’t think about how concerned Sam seems when he looks at his older brother, the brother who used to be the one with some sort of grip on their reality. Sam’s voice is strained whenever he breaks Dean’s silence.

“You’ve got to eat.”

Dean nods and pushes food around his plate with his fork. He wishes he could let his mom rest, wishes he could stop relying on her, wishes he didn’t see his dad in Sam’s concern. He forces a smile and chews monotonously on his food. “Don’t tell me what to do, Sam.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to, Dean, because you’re not doing such a great job of looking after yourself.”

Dean thinks that perhaps he hears concern, and he thinks that perhaps he ought to worry because Sam concerned is Sam weakened and if there’s one thing that motivates Dean, it’s keeping his brother alive. It always has been. When Sammy was a baby, Dean would curl around him in his crib, and when Sammy was old enough to have a bed of his own they would sleep together, intertwined. Even so, sorry is still the hardest word to say.

Dean learns more about Jess in his dreams. Or Jess as he imagines her, worthy of his baby brother. In real life, Dean knew Jess for all of thirty seconds before he saw her burning on the ceiling. In this other world, Jess is beautiful and smart, grounded and encouraging. The Sam she knows is the only Sam there is. Sam’s relationship is founded on truth and trust, and that’s something neither of them has ever really known. It is something Dean always sincerely wished for his baby brother though.

Dean’s other life sees him contemplate the Marines, which would have made his father proud, but in the end he follows his dad into the garage. He keeps in contact with Sam by phone, because in this other place nothing happens to stop Sam from picking up when he calls. Once or twice a year, Dean takes the Impala and drives to Palo Alto. They drink beer, catch up, shoot pool and Dean drives home, back to Lawrence. It’s not quite heaven, but Dean’s happy with what he has. He’s happy watching his mom age gracefully. She’s an angel, and Dean sincerely believes it. She’s as close to religion as Dean ever gets.

Sam asks Dean again what he sees. Dean runs his hands across his face, catches his lower lip between his teeth as he tries to frame an answer. Finally, one comes.

“The past,” he whispers, drifting somewhere between asleep and awake, between the darkness and the light. “And the future. Us, all of us. Mom and Dad. You, and school, and Jess. And it’s beautiful. You grow up not knowing what’s lurking in the dark.”

“What about you?”

Dean smiles into his pillow. “You know me, Sammy. I’m always alright.”

Sam bows his head. Diffuse and deflect. Nothing changes for long.

They’re in another grotty run-down motel. Sam’s been having nightmares, but Dean has been sleeping as easy as he ever does. Dean drinks coffee and runs a search for new gigs in their vicinity; Sam sits on the bed, scribbling on a pad of paper. Dean’s got suggestions where they should go and then Sam looks up.

“I know where we have to go next.”

Dean’s all ears until Sam speaks again. Dean’s higher brain function stops as Sam rambles on and on. Home. Kansas, Lawrence – their old house. All on a hunch, a premonition. Dean drowns the idea with scalding water, cold beer and then miles and miles of open road. He calls their dad but winds up back in Lawrence with just Sam for company anyway. Just the two of them and nowhere to hide.

It’s late and they’re back in the house. Sam’s pinned to the wall and Dean’s got a gun levelled at the flaming apparition heading towards them. He’s all ready to pull the trigger and Sam says no, he knows who it is.

Dean went through a silent phase as a child. In the wake of his mother’s death, he didn’t speak for months. It was like he needed time apart from the world to find out where he belonged. Even as a grown up he doesn’t say much. It’s as if he doesn’t feel he has a lot to say. Mary is everything he remembers her being, though, and everything he imagines. She is beautiful and her smile is warm, and when she says his name it’s just like in his dreams.

In the aftermath of Lawrence, the dreams cease to trouble Dean anymore. He presses his fingers to his eyes as he falls asleep, though. His mom’s image is burned onto his retinas, but afterwards, try as he might, he no longer dreams of how it could have been.

FIN

© FyrMaiden June/July 2006

Tomorrow, Like Yesterday

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:47:56 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen – Dean, Sam, established. Dean/OFC, nothing graphic.
Genre: Angst. You know, for a change.
Spoilers: Er. Season 1 in general? Nothing specific. Oh – maybe for Skin but that doesn’t count.
Warnings: It’s more of a requirement – suspension of disbelief will get you a long way.

Title: Tomorrow, Like Yesterday
Author: FyrMaiden
Rating: PG-13/12A. Pick a side of the pond.
Summary: It’s only because Dean is dying that he tells Sam, because someone needs to know. Someone will need to tell his daughter when he dies.
Words: 2016

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Supernatural, its characters and content, are license of Eric Kripke and the CW.
Author’s Note: So I had these two ideas. One revolved around 1x06 (Skin) and what Dean would have written on his headstone, which sort of morphed into what you see before you. The other (and I’m working on it) is another piece about the car, but starts with the notion that Dean sees things that never were. I prefer the other idea, but this one was easier. Easier wins every time, yo. Onwards!

Dean wonders randomly what they’ll write on his headstone, if he’ll even get one, should there be anything left to bury or if there is anyone left to care. His own name is in use already, stuck on a grave in Missouri where a shape shifter stole his identity to play head games with some girl. He pauses, tries to think. He’s got a daughter in Colorado that he’s seen just once. She was tiny and fragile and breathtakingly beautiful. He wonders what her mother tells her about him now, imagines what she’s like and he tries not to get himself killed because he promised her he’d protect her when she was too young to understand. He’d wanted to stay and had left anyway because there’s still work to do and he is a soldier. But she makes him feel alive when so little else does. He’s never told Sam, but their mom knows about her. Dean wonders what they’ll write on his headstone and who will tell his daughter.

Dean is 31 and it’s been a good five years since he last told Sam to look after the car. Sam fixes him with one of his looks, the one that says to stop being stupid because death is something that happens to other people, and Dean comes over all serious, the same as he did back when. He tells Sam about his little girl. He says he wants Sam to find her because she’s got to know – she’s got to know that he died protecting her innocence like he could never do for Sam. Sam forces a smile and grips Dean’s hand tighter. He’d love to tell Dean that he was plenty protected, that all his gripes are in the past, but he doesn’t. He blinks back the pain and promises he’ll find her. He doesn’t question her existence but vows, for Dean and Jess and their mom, that he will do everything he can to protect her.

Dean spends almost a month being ferried between the apartment they’re renting and the hospital. He tells Sam at various times and in varying ways to just go, to just leave him be, let him die. Sam ignores him and writes to an address in Kansas. His abilities have increased to a point where he makes Missouri look like a fraud but he can’t see inside Dean’s head. It used to be a matter of principle and then there was Salvation. Ever since Salvation, Dean’s mind has been a closed book. But the girl – Dean’s daughter – is almost eight, and Sam has to wonder how he kept that so damn quiet. He needs help so he writes to Missouri, hoping she’ll show him the way.

Sam has a million questions once they’re back out on the road but he doesn’t ask any of them. He waits for Dean to speak, confident in his knowledge that it won’t take long. And he’s right. Dean tells him everything, about the mother who sounds completely out of type for him, and how he actually almost considered stopping but couldn’t in the long run. He’s not sure it was love, not like Cassie, but it was close and warm and sort of almost beautiful. Sam doesn’t have to ask why Dean moved on, although he does have to wonder what made him stop for almost a year. He can only guess – something about him being gone, perhaps. Without Sam there was nothing to fight for and no point continuing. And the reasons to start again – his daughter, so small that she reminded him of another baby that he’d sworn to keep safe. Sam knows why Dean doesn’t settle. He’s not cut out for the sedate pedantry of urban normality. Dean is a killer, not a father. Even their own dad couldn’t manage both.

Missouri responds to a post office box and Sam picks the letter up almost a week after it arrives. The news is good and he insists that they swing past Lawrence since they’re practically in Kansas anyway. Dean gives him a look, the one that threatens violence if his time is being wasted, and points the Impala in the direction of home. Or the home that isn’t quite, at least. Missouri takes one look at the two of them standing at her front door and her eyes fill with tears. It’s been a while, almost entirely too long, and her heart breaks a little at the burden they are forced to bear. They are yin and yang, these two, but they are without doubt stronger together. Missouri pulls Dean towards her, stares into his troubled eyes, and then she lays her palms against his cheeks. She tells him that he is beautiful and that he shouldn’t worry, his journey hasn’t ended yet. Dean’s smile has teeth in it, but it still completely misses his eyes. Missouri’s entire presence is sad when she turns to Sam.

Dean doesn’t speak for days out of Lawrence. It’s something Sam assumed he’d grown out of, but apparently not. When Dean’s emotions go into turmoil, he retreats into a world of absolute silence. It’s impenetrable. It always has been. Dean spends his days of silence thinking. He thinks about the past and the future and ignores the present. He thinks about Cassie (because he hasn’t for a long time); she makes him feel both dead and alive, so he stops again. He thinks about Sam, about everything he promised Sam and failed dismally to provide. He promised safety and security and he couldn’t follow through on either. And he promised his little girl that when she was just two months old, and that’s why he left. Because there was still the good fight, still things to fight for, and because he had things to prove to himself. It takes Dean five days to come to terms with what Missouri told Sam, and when he finally breaks his silence it is only to whisper his millionth apology. He says he is sorry for all the myriad things he promised that he just couldn’t deliver.

Missouri’s contact with the Winchester’s seems to be a series of fading taillights, but this time she at least feels useful. She wonders, as Sam has before her, how Dean managed to keep something so important so secret, but the wondering is futile. He’s been laid bare and she knows as well as Sam how he will react to them trying to help him. Dean doesn’t need help. He needs someone to mend the tears in his soul. She tells Sam what she gleaned from Dean; the girl is real, not some kind of fever dream or latent want, and his daughter is in Colorado. Missouri smiles because of the pictures in Dean’s head, but she agrees with Sam. It’s probably for the best, in the long run, that Dean left, because he’s dangerous and he’s volatile, and evil isn’t finished with him yet.

Sam says there’s this little town just over the Louisiana state border and he really needs to visit it. Dean’s suspicious when Sam won’t tell him what the town is called, but he gave the car keys to Sam a hundred miles back and so he really doesn’t have much say in anything. He thinks he regrets telling Sam anything about Colorado but he’s not sure. It seems to give Sam a sense of purpose and that’s got to be a good thing. Sam’s been a little listless for a little too long, like the voices in his head won’t leave him alone. Dean thought his baby brother had learned to control that, and he’s right, except for when Sam is worried or distressed. And he’s always worried and distressed these days. Worried that Dean might drop down dead, worried he won’t find Dean’s daughter before that happens. Dean’s told Sam a million times that he’s fine and he’s not dying, and it’s true, but Sam worries anyway, because it’s what brother’s do.

Sam’s got the name of a woman in Montana that he got from a guy that Missouri knows, the guy in Louisiana. He says this woman can help. Dean says drop it, forget it, it’s not important, and Sam ignores him because this time, Sam knows best. Dean says, have you actually tried the town in Colorado and Sam gives him one of those looks again, the one that says he’s not a complete idiot and of course he’s tried it, hello come on wake up. Dean nods, says she’s something of a gypsy. She was just passing through but he wondered whether she might have stuck it out, just in case. She’s probably in Hawaii by now. Or Alaska, or she could have gone to Canada, or Mexico. Sam rolls his eyes and promises Dean for the hundred millionth time that he will find her and stop going on about it, because they’ve got a job to do on the way up to Montana and it needs them to focus. Dean changes up a gear and puts his foot on the accelerator. He’ll take a demon over the uncertainty any day.

There’s a demon in Georgia, a poltergeist in South Dakota and a haunting in Kentucky. They see off two werewolves in a small town in Arkansas and then head back north towards Pennsylvania. There’s a curse en route that they almost beat, although Dean spends a week unable to speak which means that Sam ends up having to make their money and his poker face has never been great. They head straight through Pennsylvania and on north to New York before turning west again. There’s an exorcism in Ohio but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing they haven’t done before. Nothing that they can’t handle. As they travel, Missouri helps Sam help Dean. They build a network of people to keep Sam informed. They’re in Arizona when Missouri calls, when she says she’s got something. Sam’s got the keys again. He says they’re going to Kansas. Dean’s too tired to argue.

Sam finds Dean’s daughter for him. She’s almost ten and it’s taken him nearly two years. Dean’s says there’s a devastating kind of irony in her location when they catch her up. She’s in Lawrence. Dean says he’s not going to Lawrence and Sam gives him another one his looks, the one that tells Dean to shut up and drive. Dean stops the car at Missouri’s house and Sam glances at him out the corner of his eye. Missouri is standing on her stoop when they get out of the car. She smiles and welcomes Dean with a hug. Over the past two years, Sam’s network has informed him of every sighting of the woman that Dean will only name in the privacy of his own head, and Missouri has been its beating heart. Dean hugs her back and doesn’t even have to ask the question because she already knows it’s coming. No need to be psychic to know that. She points in the direction of town. He swallows, plays with his keys and tells Sam that he needs to do this alone. He knows this job will get him killed eventually, just like Dad, but he’s got to do this alone anyway. Sam can tell her and her mom when he dies but for now –

She’s in her front yard and she’s the prettiest thing Dean has ever seen. Her hair is brushed gold and Dean can’t see but her eyes are green. Her mom sees the Impala and knows it must be him, but she does nothing. They’ve been this close before in the last two years, and even if he knows now, she knows Dean won’t stop for long. The car draws up across the street and she goes to the screen, just in case. It would be good to see him just once more, but she’s right. He doesn’t even get out of the car. She knows why. She’s never once doubted the why. Dean is a lot of thing but father isn’t one of them.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 04.06.2006

Twist

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 14:50:13 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen – Dean, Sam, established.
Genre: Angst (and boatloads of it)
Spoilers: Devil’s Trap
Warnings: Black. Very black. Death, despair, hurt. Black.

Title: Twist
Author: FyrMaiden
Rating: R (for theme and language)
Summary: Sam thinks he can still hear Dean singing along to the radio, but he can’t remember what colour his brother’s eyes were.
Words: 945

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Supernatural is license of Eric Kripke and the CW (squee!).
Author’s Note: Yes, I know we’re getting a second season and this is absolute pish, but I can’t help it. The bunny bit me while I was watching The Da Vinci Code and wouldn’t leave me alone. Here goes!

The fates are vicious and they're cruel.
You learn too late you've used two wishes like a fool
~ Wicked Little Town (from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, performed by John Cameron Mitchell)

It’s been a long time, years even, since that night and yet you believe you can still hear the throaty rumble of the old engine and his infectious laugh. You try not to think about it, yet he still manages to blindside you and God, but it hurts. You know how to stop it hurting but the truth is, you really just wish Dean would stop haunting your dreams.

You dreamt about Jess as well, before she died and then afterwards; imagined her alive and then imagined her dead, and then you buried your head in the proverbial sand to stop yourself even thinking about anything. You don’t remember your mom (and you’re worried that you’re forgetting details of Dean as well, forgetting the exact shade of his eyes and how irritating his all-knowing smirk was) but you remember Jess. You were going to ask Jess to marry you and you could have had that life you always wanted for yourself, picket fence and Labrador and nice car, the works. Funny, really, how things don’t work out for you in quite the way you plan.

So you think it’s weird. Because the closer you got to the demon, the stronger the visions became, but you never saw Dean dying in your dreams. You see him dead now but you didn’t see him dying, which worries you because you couldn’t have had someone closer to you than he was. You couldn’t warn Dean or save him because you didn’t know what was happening to him until it was too late and you were watching (helplessly) as your father crushed him to death.

Or, you know, not your father, but the thing inside your father that was just too strong.

Doesn’t change the fact you couldn’t save Dean though, even after all that he’d done for you.

You also think it’s a little ironic that you’re the only one left and that you kept going, because you’re the one who wanted out. You hated learning to fire a gun, spent your formative years fervently wishing you could be more normal and your adolescence fighting to make sure you were. And even so, you knew you weren’t quite ordinary, because ordinary people dress up at Halloween. They get drunk and party and they don’t worry that it’s the one night of the year when the dead really do have free run of the earth. They don’t take the night watch (graveyard shift) to ensure their loved ones wake up again. Normal people don’t have that lean look, that hunter’s gait or that permanently hunted awareness. Normal people have families that they talk to (and talk about). You were never normal, but you were safe and that’s more what you wanted (needed) and that’s what you could never make Dean or Dad understand. Too late now anyway, right, because Dean and Dad aren’t coming back. Jess and Mom aren’t coming back. It’s just you, end of discussion, close of consciousness.

So you’re still tracking your progress across the state borders and county boundaries by the varying road signs and an endless parade of stucco ceilings. You have the radio on in the car and whenever it plays something from Dean’s old tape collection, you switch the channel. You spend a lot of time skipping stations, avoiding classic rock and pretty much the whole of the eighties and early nineties. At first you played Dean’s tapes to death and then you stopped, partly because the tapes wore out and partly because you started to believe you could hear Dean singing along, which just isn’t feasible. If Dean was tied to anything it was the car and the car died when he did. Which was actually sort of spooky, if you stop and think about it. You can’t be quite certain which one went first, whether Dean gave up because of the car, or the buckled chassis wouldn’t unbend because Dean wouldn’t be returning. It’s weird. You’re whole family is just weird.

You’re not married and you’re not a monk. You avoid the places that remind you of Dean and sometimes you return to Lawrence, just passing through. You stop at your mom’s grave some years, and others (most) you stop in Palo Alto to pay your respects to Jess. You avoid girls that remind you too much of her and you very rarely ask a girl her name. Dean always knew their names. You’re not Dean, though, are you?

You kept in contact with your father’s friends (the ones left alive anyway) and you make new ones, and you carry on the fine tradition of your family without worrying about having anyone to leave it all to. You’re not entirely convinced it’s a job that should be passed on, generation to generation. Look where that got you. You were raised as a soldier despite protestation and you hated it. You’d never do that a child, couldn’t. Dean once compared you to your father, said you were more alike than he realized. You know now that if you were like anyone at all, it was Dean, who needed you more than he would ever have actually admitted but would never have foisted this life onto anyone else. Dean loved what he did, most of the time, and pretended when he didn’t. Sometimes you wish you could be like that. Mostly, you’re glad that you’re not.

Dean died years ago and it aches inside, spreading like cancer. You did all you could, but it feels like nothing at all. It’s been decades and yet still, if you’re not fast enough to change the station, you can still hear Dean’s voice singing along.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 26.02.2006

Scared To Dream

Sat, 20 May 2006 19:29:43 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen – Dean, Sam, established.
Genre: Angst – shocker, huh?
Spoilers: Pretty much everything up to and including Salvation & Devil’s Trap (set post-Devil’s Trap)
Warnings: This switches between first, second and third person. Yes, that counts as a warning because I know it might bother some people. Also, this isn’t particularly cheerful. Character death is implied but not written.

Title: Scared To Dream
Author: FyrMaiden
Rating: R for dark (ish) themes
Summary: The Impala almost defines the person Dean has grown into, as much as he defines himself by its presence. Without the car, what does Dean become?
Words: 3043

Disclaimer: Fan authored for fun not profit. Supernatural is license of Eric Kripke and the CW/WB.
Author’s Note: ‘And I was thinking about the Metallicar yesterday and how it's been the only constant in Dean's life and if it dies he'll have lost his home.’ Bunny comes courtesy of V (babelicious_2) and is thus dedicated to her. For squeeing randomly with me and for being my source of much fandom junk. Thank you. Story comes without a beta; any and all mistakes are property of the author, since they’re about all she can actually claim as her own.

When Dean wakes up, his whole body aching and his soul slightly bruised, his first thought it for his brother. Dean remembers the concern in Sam’s voice when he said that no, not everything came before finding the demon. He doesn’t remember what changed Sam’s mind but it’s immaterial. Dean had never loved Sam more than at that exact moment. Pride laced with pain and blood and the bliss of unconsciousness as a juggernaut plowed into Dean’s beloved car.

Dean’s second thought, his brain less bruised but his soul more shattered, is for his car. Dean and the Impala have been through a lot together. It’s been the one constant in his life and he can’t imagine a life without it. Even when Sam left he still had the car. After John and Cassie there was the car. He can’t cope with the thought that he may have let her down.

Dean spares a thought, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, for his father. He tries to form the words on his tongue to ask but can’t. He’s weak and he hurts, and in the back of his mind there’s the mangled wreck of his old Chevy and Sam behind the wheel. Loss of conscience is a blessing for Dean because it brings with it silence and repose.

The Impala – pre- and post-demon, the Impala was always there. Pre- and post-Sam, pre- and post-Dad, pre- and post- pretty much everything. The car has almost become home. Everything you own is in the trunk of the car, everything that matters is either in the glove compartment or thrown haphazard on the back seat. Throughout your life, the car has been the one thing you could claim as yours, something you can rely on to always be there, no matter what. The Impala almost defines the person you have grown into, as much as you define yourself by its presence.

You don’t think of her as a car anymore. She is your friend, confidant and lover. You know her intimately and have built your world around her. You worry for her when she is hurt, and knowing that she is crippled now hurts you more than the demons and the broken bones ever have.

She is your life, and you would give your life for her.

Sam is up first, which makes sense. He was driver’s side and he wasn’t almost dead when you got plowed off the road. You hurt, internally as well as externally. Every part of your body feels crushed and your head pounds with the effort of opening your eyes. Sam’s face is full of concern, his eyes full of pain, but he still twists his lips up into a smile.

“So, the good news,” he says, shifting forward in his seat and taking your hand. In another life, you would have snatched it away, declared this a conversation you totally were not having. In another lifetime, because in this one you can’t muster the control of enough muscle groups to move your hand, much less jerk it away. “The good news is that you’ll recover. The doctors are saying there’s no lasting damage to your organs or anything. Rest and therapy –”

You try to speak, to interrupt, but your throat is unbelievably dry and it comes out more as a croak than anything. The relief on Sam’s face, however, is startling, almost as if he’s been talking to you for days and this is the first sign of life. He calls a nurse, who comes quickly, scans your monitors and smiles at you. This hospital is a much better one than the last time you were dying, because this nurse is at least pretty.

Sam must be able to read your mind, because he rolls his eyes. But at least his smile is genuine now.

I was eight and I thought nothing could possibly be cooler than riding up front with Dad. Sam and I used to bicker endlessly about who’d get to ride shotgun on the way from one gig to the next, until Dad would tell us to be quiet and flip a coin. When Sam lost, he’d fix me with an anguished kicked-puppy stare (perfected pretty much as soon as he opened his eyes) and I’d be relegated to the back, unable to refuse him anything. Sam had us all wrapped around his little finger, even when he was just four.

The residing memories I have of when I was little aren’t of the endless days alone, Dad’s many trips away or our time with Dad’s friends. The memories I have are of the car, the times when the three of us were together and we could have been any regular family.

As I got older, I took on the role of Sam’s protector. Sam was the most important thing in any of our lives. Sam and whatever it was we were chasing, even when it was just the horizon. From when I was five until Dad gave me the keys and told me to take care of her, the car was home. When I was five, the steady hum of the engine lulled me to sleep and by the time I was ten, it was the only thing I could rely on to never change. When I was 21, it was probably the best birthday gift I’d ever received.

When we were small, though, we still argued endlessly about who got to sit up front.

Sam watches his brother and prays to every god he can name for Dean to just move, even if it’s just a flicker of his eyelid. The doctors do sound confident when they say that Dean’s body will recover. He lost a lot of blood and everything looks as if a lot of pressure was exerted on his frame. Sam doesn’t care if Dean loses a leg or both arms, as long as he gets his brother back. It’s really not the body he’s concerned about.

He stops and thinks. Maybe he is concerned about Dean losing a leg or both arms, because Dean without all of his limbs still wouldn’t be the brother that has bugged the shit out of him for the past twenty-three years. The point is – and he doesn’t seem to be able to make the doctors understand this – that all he wants to know is whether or not Dean’s brain is fried, whether the Dean that wakes up will be the Dean he grew up with. All he gets is a patronizing smile and a calm assurance that Dean will be fine.

Sam knows better. Dean won’t be fine. Everything is different out here now. Everything is different and nothing has changed. The world is still a fucked up and evil place, but now it’s a fucked up and evil place without its calm centre. Dean’s psyche will scatter to the four separate winds and Sam knows that. Dean clings to the world by his fingernails. He lives perpetually on the edge of tumbling into nothing. The world he’ll return to doesn’t contain their father but does contain Bobby’s assertion that demonic possession is on the rise. Work to be done, because their work never ends. It’s a different world and nothing has changed.

But still, Sam does as the doctors say. He sits by Dean’s bed and talks to him. Tells him the same things, day after day; tells him that he’ll be okay, that the doctors say there’s no lasting damage. And then Dean’s eyelids flicker and his lips part slightly. Sam wants to hear his voice but Dean can’t speak and he could almost cry because he’s so damn relieved.

You’ve been watching him for days. Ever since they let you up from your bed, you’ve been sitting by his bed. You’ve left only to pee, because eating is less important than making sure he’s okay. You’ve told him all the good things you can think of – that he’ll be okay, that everything will be okay – and you’ve left out the information that he doesn’t need to know. So you haven’t told him about the car, about how critical his condition actually is and you definitely haven’t told him about your dad, because that just might make Dean give up. You know Dean better than you know anyone else, and with him lying there now, so helpless, you understand him implicitly. Everything he has ever fought for, everything he has ever cared about, is rotten and broken and dead. You’re about all he has to wake up for and right now, you’re not convinced it’ll be enough.

And that’s why the relief floods through you when his eyelids flicker, when you see his fingers move just a fraction, because that’s when you know that he’ll be coming back to you. Maybe not completely and only time will really tell, but he will come back. You smile and wait for him to speak, call the nurses and watch them carefully. You need to find out how to care for him, because you know he won’t stay here. Dean doesn’t cope well with forced imprisonment. He needs the air and the open road, because he’s forgotten that there’s any other way to be.

“You’ll be fine,” you whisper, convincing yourself as much as him. “You’ll be absolutely fine.”

Dean stares in horror at what remains of the Impala, asks questions and lays his hands on her buckled chassis. Now Dean believes in the healing power of faith. He knows she’s fixable. He believes with unassailable conviction that she’s not beyond rescue even now. Sam drove her through a wall and she came out the other side. She faced down a killer truck and still works just fine. She can survive the onslaught of anything. The car is not dead. Dean’s not dead and neither is the car.

Dean’s head hurts and he’s not sure if it’s the pressure of the tears he refuses to shed or if it’s the after effects of nearly dying. All he does know is that he’s not ready to say goodbye to the car. She’s fixable and that’s the end of the conversation.

“It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.”

It’s kind of a bumpy start, you and Sam and no one to mediate when you begin to rub one another the wrong way. Still, you’re the oldest and that means your word is law, even when your baby brother towers over you and can land you on your ass if he tries.

Besides, it’s not all mullet rock. Most of it is classic rock and that’s an entirely different scenario. What the hell does Sam know, anyway?

“Damage that car and I swear I’ll haunt your ass.”

Dying is a new experience and not one you’re all that keen to repeat, but anyway. You keep up appearances, even when just smiling makes your whole body ache, and you tell Sam to take care of the car. He says you’re not funny. You laugh and cough and he looks concerned and you could kick yourself for being so stupid. Sam’s vulnerable and scared and Dad’s missing, and now you’re not going to be around to protect him.

So you give him the only security you ever had, accompanied by idle threats. The car’s all you have to give. And he’d damn well better take care of her.

“I wouldn’t have given you the car if I thought you were going to ruin it.”

Your dad. You’ve always defended your dad to Sam, but sometimes you have to wonder why. You love the car without question and yet your dad still needs to lay into you about something. You got Sam back (you kept Sam alive, damnit) and yet still – the car. You don’t get it. You don’t know what you did to deserve that. Sometimes you’re tempted to side with Sam. Your father is just flat out unreasonable.

But he’s still your father, and you still have so much to learn. Kowtow.

“I’m the one who’s going to have to bury you!”

Because Sam is a selfish bastard, just like your father, and he’s also the only person you let your guard down around. Sam’s seen you fall apart and he’s put you back together, and that really hurts because Sam’s supposed to be your baby brother. So when he says you’re being unreasonable, not letting him go all hari-kari on you, you wind up lashing out again, nail and tooth, the whole nine yards. He knows how you feel; he’s all you have, and you’ll be the one on your own in the end.

He’s more like your dad than you ever imagined. Selfish bastard.

“Funny! But that’s all part of your MO, isn’t it? Hide all that nasty pain.”

And it’s true. It doesn’t need spelling out, because any idiot can see what you’re doing. Hell, even Cassie grasped that your attitude was your preferred method of obfuscation. Whenever anything gets too serious or you’re backed into a corner, you lash out with razor sharp wit and deadly sarcasm. A girl once said you clearly had a lot of unresolved issues, probably to do with your father. You stared and then laughed and said she couldn’t possibly have any idea (and then you made her forget all about your perceived problems but that’s a story for another time). You grew up entirely too fast and it left you with no time to deal with what happened when you were little. So you don’t deal, you block, and when the walls do crumble they come down fast.

So, where’s your father when you need him most?

“It’s called a devil’s trap. Basically, it turns the trunk into a lock box.”

He drew on your car. Sam drew on the car and didn’t even apologise, and you could have quite happily killed him except for the part where you think now that he might have saved your life. You’ve always watched out for him and now he saved your life. A devil’s trap scrawled hastily on the paintwork by Sam and you couldn’t even smudge it, much less remove it. He’s your trusty sidekick geekboy. Where would you be without him?

Right now, probably six feet under.

At length, Dean asks where their father is and Sam has to think about the answer. Their father, Dean’s (sometime) personal hero, was crushed in the accident, internal organs mangled. Sam had been alive enough to be told, but he’d been more concerned about Dean and how he’d cope when he had to answer the question. He’s played this out a million times in his head and now all he can do is stumble, stutter and fail completely to keep his grip on the situation. This is why Sam wanted a normal life. Normal dads aren’t crushed to death by a hundred tons of truck to the somewhat portentous overtones of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising.

Then again, normal moms don’t die pinned to the ceiling by demonic force. Normal moms don’t go up in flames. Neither do normal girlfriends. And normally, older brothers aren’t expected to raise their baby brothers at the expense of their own emotional wellbeing.

All things considered, it’s no wonder Dean’s more attached to the car than anything.

Sam starts again.

Dean asks where Dad is and Sam stares at his feet, “Uh…”

I can hear my voice in my own ears and I know I sound stupid. Dean knows. He’s asking for confirmation, not details. But there’s the car and me, and I can’t face being the one to say yeah, no, you know, Dad’s not coming back this time, dude. “Uh…” Dean nods his head, sniffs and looks around, cool as ice, locks his emotions away again, because he doesn’t need to actually feel.

“Dean-”

And he holds his hand up, shakes his head. “No chick flick moments, Sammy.”

I don’t even argue about the nickname. Dean takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, turns away from me. “So-”

“So?”

“Just you and me, dude. Right?”

“Right.”

He forces a smile and I ache more than I did when Jess died, when the emergency services pulled me from the mangled wreck of the Impala. He’s got nothing to smile about. Neither of us has. But now? Now I’ve got to keep Dean going. Figure the best way is to find someone who can salvage something from the Impala, because Dad’s truck really isn’t Dean’s style. I mean, it might have a CD player, god forbid.

So, you’re there again. Missouri gazes at you with huge eyes and there are tears in them. You’ve told yourself you’ve cried all the tears you even had but she looks so distraught and you’re swiping at your own eyes again. This is Lawrence in the fall, and appropriately enough there is rain. Everything feels so grey and you can’t smile. Sam sits in the car outside. You just – you had to come tell Missouri yourself, although you haven’t said a word. You and Sam decided that your dad should come back here, be with your mom, and so that’s what you’re doing, having his ashes interred with Mary.

You’re so cold these days. Your bones are cold and you can’t keep warm. Grief isolates you, and you’re not entirely sure who or what you’re mourning for. Sam, Dad, Mom, you, it really doesn’t matter at this stage. Sam’s out there and he’s not, because you kind of don’t talk right now. It’s like when you were 4. This – this you need to work through and eventually, when you’ve straightened yourself out again, you can pick up where you left off. Just you and Sam now, though. There’s not going to be any back-up and that absolutely terrifies you. Just you and Sam and if you don’t run fast enough, fire quick enough, you are going to die.

Missouri watches the taillights of your dad’s truck as you roar back out of Lawrence, feels her heart break a little bit more, because you’re so lost and so frightened, and the one bench mark of your sanity that you had is completely utterly destroyed, devil’s trap and all.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 20.05.2006

Guardian

Fri, 12 May 2006 00:12:18 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Genfic – Dean, Mary
Genre: Angst. Heh!
Spoilers: None – mostly pre-series exposition
Warnings: UV is bad for your skin. Use fake tan, not sunbeds.

Title: Guardian
Author: FyrMaiden
Rating: All audiences. Nothing to see here, kids.
Summary: Dean doesn’t believe in angels, but he does believe his mother is watching over him.
Words: 894 (short vignette; no dialogue)

Disclaimer: Supernatural is license and property of Eric Kripke and whoever it is that now wants to claim responsibility for the pretty and the rabid fangirls. This is fan authored, for fun not profit.
Note: So – I had the last line of the first paragraph knocking around in my head whilst I was at work and had to write it down. The rest? Sort of just happened, really. I'd like to sincerely apologise for the absolute twaddle I subject people to.

Dean has a rocky but warm relationship with his mother. Like most teenagers, Dean feels his mom is constantly watching him and sometimes he really wishes she would stop. Other times, he is thankful that she is always there because it means he has someone he can turn to, someone he can tell his deepest fears to. Unlike most teenagers, though, Dean’s mom is dead.

Dean’s mom died in November 1983. She burned alive on the ceiling of his baby brother’s nursery. Dean saw his mom die, saw it tear his dad apart and he had his little brother in his arms, was out on the lawn as the fire gutted the top floor of his home. Dean was four years old. He would be 5 in the January of 1984.

Dean retains vague memories of his mother, the things that most 4 year olds remember. He can remember her smile, feeling safe when he was with her. He remembers being loved, how her hair felt against his face when she picked him up, and he remembers how she used to smile at him and call him her little soldier. Dean knows that Sammy won’t have these memories, so he passes them on but he knows it’s not the same. Sammy is virtually an orphan, really, because their dad has changed since Mom died too.

Dean knows his dad must have different memories of his mom, but they never talk about what they can recall. They never tell one another that they remember her blonde hair or how much love she had in her, and so they never know what they have in common. Grief, it seems, is a personal thing, even to people tied by blood.

Because Dean and his dad don’t talk, the little things become bigger things. Dean remains devoted to his father, but he feels his father pushes him away. Dean has no explanation but feels a resentment he can’t control because his dad seems to care more about keeping Sam safe than him. Dean’s emotions are the one normal part of him. The more his father distances himself, the more Dean fights for his approval. One day, John calls Dean his little soldier and Dean ends up fighting tears as well.

Dean feels that his mother is never far from him. He doesn’t tell his father because he sees that his mom haunts his dad as well, but he does tell Pastor Jim. Jim smiles at him and Dean feels that same warm comfort that Mary always gave him. Jim doesn’t laugh or belittle but nods and says that Mary will never be far from his side. A mother will give her life for her child, and she will do anything to ensure that child is safe. She is watching, caring, always there. The child that still lurks somewhere inside of Dean wants to believe in the good, but, even in his early teens, Dean can’t bring himself to have faith. He’s seen what evil can do and no amount of belief will stop his mom from dying in his dreams.

Dean doesn’t think of them as nightmares. They’re the resolve that keeps him going. Seeing his mom protecting Sammy, dying for Sammy, keeps Dean straight. His dad has changed and so Dean does what seems natural; he steps into the breach. He does all the things for Sam that Mom did for him. He helps Sam sleep, makes Sam food, and in the back of his mind he knows that Mom is proud.

Sometimes Dean is convinced he can hear his mother’s apology, resonating in the back of his mind. Mary tells him that she wishes she could be there with him, wishes she could hold him and touch him. She wishes that she could be there to keep him warm and safe again, to provide the grounding that Dean so desperately needs. And Dean tells her that he misses her as well, more with every passing day, and that he’ll come see her real soon –

Dean can feel her smile, feel her tell him not wish his life away. She will be waiting but for now his dad needs him as well. His dad needs him because Dean reminds him of Mary, and that’s what it takes for him to let each day go, what it takes for him to not sink repeatedly into the past. Even though John doesn’t tell Dean how proud he is, Mary assures her oldest boy that his father is there for him, always. She says that John needs time to adjust to what Dean is; she says Dean is a fighter, loyal and beautiful. She says Dean is the angel that will save her family.

Dean does his best to live up to his mother’s dreams for him. He stands by his father, he doesn’t argue or complain. He does whatever is asked of him without question or resentment. Every day, he grows as a person and in his head he asks his mother whether he is doing what is right. Mary comforts him as she did when he was 4, strokes his hair and sings to him, tells him that she is so proud of him. He’s her little soldier.

Dean’s relationship with his mom is a well-worn path, despite the fact that she has been dead for 23 years.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 11.05.2006

Moving in Circles

Sun, 07 May 2006 22:56:32 GMT

So. I proof read after I post and realise that not only does my ability to keep continuity going suck, but so does my word counting. I know there's at least one thing in here where I've got one word that should be two words. But nevermind, huh? The theory is still sound. The continuity is not, but the theory is. Happy days! *cough*

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen – Sam & Dean, established. Some coverage of John and the boys.
Genre: Angst
Spoilers: Erm. I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you consider fair game. I’d consider everything up to probably ‘The Benders’ to be spoiler free, since that’s where we’ve got to in the UK. So up to and including ‘The Benders’ it doesn’t count. There are minor spoilers for a few episodes after that, but nothing that hasn’t been a matter of conjecture and fan speculation prior to the airing of ‘Salvation’ and ‘Devil’s Trap’.
Warnings: Passing mention of … *gasp* … a girl! Or two.

Title: Moving in Circles
Author: FyrMaiden
Summary: A series of vignettes, ranging from 100 to 1500 words apiece, exploring the relationship between Sam and Dean.
Word Count: In total, 6000

Disclaimer: Supernatural and all characters therein are property and license of Eric Kripke and the WB. This is fan authored, for fun not profit.

Author’s Notes:
1 – This was supposed to go 100, 200, 300 etc, up to 1000. Except I got to 800 no problem, I struggled with 900 (and then got 1450 and had to knock over 500 words out of it), and then 1000 words turned into 1600 and I couldn’t actually find 600 words I could eliminate. So 1000 words became 1500, which means this fic is a failure, in the long run. I’m still fairly proud of it, though.

2 – Note belongs to “God Hears” (900 words). Tense is jumpy. Yes, it’s deliberate. It’s supposed to be a reflection of Dean’s confusion, an implication of how he doesn’t work without Sam. Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s not as garbled as I think it is. Who knows?

3- Note belongs to “Chief of Ten” (1500 words). Definitely contains minor spoilers for 1x21 – Salvation but I’ve tried to keep 1x22 – Devil’s Trap out of it. This isn’t supposed to break in quite the way post-22 fic does. As noted in the main spoiler warning, there is nothing that wasn’t already a matter of conjecture and fan speculation.

So look into my face Marie-Claire
And remember just who you are
Then go and forget me forever
But I know you still bear the scar, deep inside, yes you do
~ Where Do You Go To My Lovely (Peter Sarstedt)

100 words (Hell Hath No Fury)

Sam digs the keys from Dean’s pocket and grins uneasily. Dean glares back and scratches his head. “That counts as a plan, does it?” He rolls his shoulders and winces as the laceration along his spine tugs open again.

Sam shrugs his shoulders and motions Dean to get in the car. “You’re not dead, okay? So yeah, it kinda counted as a plan.”

Dean nods and slides in beside his brother. “Next time, you’re bait.” He slams a tape into the deck and motions for Sam to make a move. Sam’s grin is easier this time.

“Some things never change.”

200 words (Insomnia)

There’re miles and miles of open road rolling out in front of them. Sam’s happy out here now, out where he can run from the nightmares and the memories of Jess. He’d even go so far as to say he no longer resents Dean’s dragging him away from university, mostly because he’d forgotten (or suppressed) how much he actually enjoyed road trips with his brother.

Didn’t miss Dean’s tapes or the reckless way Dean drives all that much. But you have to make sacrifices.

Sam glances at Dean, asleep in the passenger seat, and grins, figures it’s probably time to find somewhere to stop. Dean’s back needs redressing. Sam’s memories of being on the road with their dad are hazy, but he does remember how to strip down a gun and how to make sure Dean doesn’t die. So he finds a quiet motel and shakes Dean awake. Dean rubs his eyes and looks around, grins and says he’ll book the room; Sam should get their stuff from the trunk.

Sam doesn’t argue because this is Dean being Dean, and he’d miss it if he changed. Because Dean’s the eldest and that means he’s always right, even when he’s not.

300 words (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)

Later, after Dean’s showered, Sam insists that his back needs proper attention. Dean grumbles but agrees, and then jerks away from Sam’s hands. Sam grabs his shoulders, pulls him back. “If you don’t keep still I swear I’m going to stick a knife in your ribs!”

“Yeah, well, it’s like you’re using battery acid or something.”

“It’s holy water.”

Dean jerks forward again and spins round, glaring at Sam like it’s all his fault that this happened anyway. Sam has the decency to look vaguely embarrassed since, in a roundabout way, it is his fault Dean has a burning rake down his spine from the demon they’d been hunting. Once it’s healed, it’ll be just another story for Dean to tell, another memory marker, an obscure town on a map. Right now, however, it’s an angry red line burned into Dean’s flesh and it needs purifying before it poisons Dean’s entire body.

“Holy water?”

“Yeah. Because, you know, I could just let your body fall apart around you or I could make sure that you don’t die on me. You choose.”

“It feels like battery acid.” It might have been something in Sam’s voice or it could just be Dean being – well, Dean. Sam doesn’t argue when he comes back and sits down on the bed. He just smiles to himself and goes back to making sure Dean’s flesh doesn’t fall off his bones or something.

Dean thinks – but would never say – that Sam’s got gentle hands. Everything considered, Sam’s more gentle about a lot of things. Dean considers himself – he runs on passion and gut instinct, things he remembers, things he’s been told. But Sammy – Sammy’s fuelled by the need for revenge and the fear of being alone.

Dean can’t (won’t) admit he’s not keen on being alone either.

400 words (Midnight Radio)

Sam rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and concentrates on the raindrops in the headlights. Dean’s asleep with his head on the window, and it’s about time because he hasn’t slept this long in a while. Sam figures he must be absolutely exhausted but he knows better than to argue semantics. Sam learnt a long time ago that there’s no use arguing pedantic points with Dean. In all honesty, there’s no point arguing, period. Dean’s – well, Dean’s Dean and that’s all there is to it. Sam wouldn’t have him any other way.

Sam’s come to appreciate the middle of the night and the long grey hours of early morning. He doesn’t sleep so well himself anymore, but the ceilings of the various motel rooms they’ve taken have lulled him into stillness if not sleep. Sam likes it best when they’re on the move, because that way he doesn’t have to worry about sleep blindsiding him. What troubles him most is that the nightmares don’t wait for him to sleep anymore. They’re catching him when he’s awake and that’s when they hurt, and Dean can’t help because Dean doesn’t understand.

Sam likes it when Dean’s asleep as well, because when Dean’s asleep he gets to drive in absolute silence. It’s just him and the car and the miles and miles of road ahead. Sam will never admit it to a conscious Dean, but if there’s one thing he really missed then it’s this damn car. Sam knows the car is Dean’s baby, but he can’t help but feel powerful whenever Dean gives him the keys. It’s impressive.

Dean groans and shifts and Sam thinks for a minute that he might wake. He glances at his brother out the corner of his eye, waiting for Dean to speak, grumble about the silence and press a tape into the deck. He suppresses a sigh of relief when Dean’s eyes remain resolutely closed.

If Sam is completely honest, there are a lot of things he missed. There are a lot of things he didn’t miss – living out of the car’s trunk, hand to mouth on fraud and trust – but there are things he did. Dean and the car and the camaraderie (and the car); he missed having someone who knew him, knew everything about him, and, when he glances at Dean, he smiles to himself. Somehow, it’s good to be back.

500 words (Miss America)

“You’re a categoric pain in the ass, you know that, right?”

Dean raises his eyebrows, asking silently what he’s guilty of. Sam glowers and throws a pair of rolled up jeans at his head. Dean ducks and rolls off the bed.

“I have no idea what I’ve done!”

“You never have any idea what you’ve done!”

“I’m getting coffee. You want coffee?”

“No.” A pause. “Yes.”

“Fine. When I get back, you can tell me what it is that I’m supposed to be guilty of this time.”

Sam stands at the window of the motel room they’ve taken in yet another small town on the edge of nowhere. He slings himself into a chair, avoids thinking about Dean altogether. Why is Dean a pain in the ass this time? He snorts. How long have you got?

Dean’s a pain in the ass because he’s everything Sam’s not. He’s gregarious, outgoing. He’s got a witty comeback for everything and a funny story to divert attention. He’s always got a ready lie. He doesn’t consider fraud to be a problem if people are dumb enough to keep giving him the cards. He doesn’t think twice about making a substantial living from hustling pool. It’s really not his problem. Usually, it’s not a problem for Sam. Dean’s a big boy; he can do whatever he wants. Sam’s almost embarrassed at how easily he slipped back into this life. It still makes Dean a pain in the ass.

This time, however, Dean’s a pain in the ass purely because he introduced Sam to a sweet girl whose name was Mandy or Sandy or – something that makes his stomach churn. He grinned his familiar Dean grin and disappeared into the depths of the smoky bar with a pert brunette who said she wanted to trace every scar on Dean’s body with her tongue. Sam glanced at Miss America, smiling at him with her teeth, and bolted.

Dean’s a pain in the ass.

Sam hears the rumble of the Impala’s engine as Dean pulls up. Realising he hasn’t actually formulated a sound argument, he slams the door of the bathroom just as Dean stalks in the front. It means he misses Dean doing his best moody James Dean, collar of his jacket all turned up and rebel pout plastered on his face, effect spoiled more than a little by the two take-out coffees he carries in a little tray.

“Sammy? You here?”

Sam decides that’s his cue to turn the shower on. It’ll piss Dean off if there’s no hot water. Sam wants to feel self-righteous about not drinking the coffee now he’s asked for it, but in the end he can’t actually even let all the hot water run out. He switches the shower off, pulls his shirt back over his head and opens the bathroom door. Dean hands him his coffee and Sam takes it gratefully.

“You’re still a pain in the ass.”

Dean grins and ruffles Sam’s tousled hair. “Learned from the best.”

600 words (Recrimination)

Dean’s back crashes against a wall and he winces slightly, figures he must be getting old because every part of his body is taking longer to recover. Last week he picked up a girl who came through on a promise to trace his every scar with her tongue, but tonight he’s gone one better. Tonight he’s got a girl with an exotic name and a bar through her tongue, and he’s so full of himself that Sam could have killed him had he not said he was leaving and not to wait up, remember to make sure the room is safe, you know the drill. Dean’s got this cocky attitude that oozes confidence, says he knows he’s gorgeous and he knows you really want to sleep with him, even if he’s a complete slut. What gets Sam is that every girl Dean grins at thinks they’re the most important thing in his life and they can’t be because that’s the car.

Dean’s back crashes against a wall, hands all over his body, and damn but this is what he misses about having Sam back around. Paying for two rooms isn’t ideal but sometimes it’s necessary. He misses the times when it was just him and the car and whoever he felt like dragging along for the ride. He misses only having to think about himself and then only as far as tomorrow, possibly the day after. So Dean relishes every brief encounter and every bolt of pain that races along his spine, through the rake that reminds him of Sam and why he’s even still bothering.

Dean could do without the way Sam looks at him over coffee in the morning, could do without all the questions. He could do without Sam bringing up the girl Dean said he loved as well (Cassie, who broke his heart and made him swear he was never falling in love again), because she’s a long way behind them and he’s not going back. Yes, the random girl (once in a blue moon these days) is little more than a poor substitute but Dean will take what he can get.

“You could get anything.”

Dean grins and shrugs, bows his head, stares into his coffee like it holds the answer to life itself. “Yeah, maybe.”

Which is a shock to Sam, who thinks Dean is probably too confident. Sam, who thinks he can see right through his big brother but misses completely the fear in his eyes when he’s out of his depth (and that’s more and more frequently since his baby brother came back, complete with a whole heap of personal anguish and shiny new psychic skills to boot). Sam has a hard time believing Dean’s got any room for self-doubt in the midst of his cocky arrogance, but then Sam doesn’t know Dean half as well as he’d like to think, since beneath the façade Dean’s still just trying to keep Sam alive. Sam doesn’t remember (and Dean’s glad about it) all the things his brother has sacrificed to keep him safe, and doesn’t know how much Dean would give to feel as important to their father as Sam seems to be.

So Dean smiles to himself when his back crashes into the wall, when nails tear his skin and when his body arches into and against another. It’s why he leaves early, before daybreak (because he’s been trained since childhood to do so), and deletes another number from his cell. And it’s why he’s relieved when Sam looks at him like he’s the most morally reprehensible character he has ever met.

700 words (Soldier of Love)

A cheap shot Sam made months ago comes back to haunt him when Dean finds a rapport with a boy in a motel. Dean uses everything he has, his entire (if rocky) relationship with Sam, and finds the level on which he and the boy are the same. It’s at those times Sam learns most about Dean and about their relationship. Dean speaks more for his own catharsis than anything, but it lays him bare. Sam never feels more humble than when Dean is talking about him, nor more grateful, because Dean’s right. Dean’s always right, whenever he brings the subject up.

Sam thinks back, tries to tie a particular version of the same conversation to a city. It’s a conversation they’ve had many times but that time, it really hit home for Sam. It had been up in Michigan. Sam had said a little less demon hunting and a little more tequila, their lives could have been painfully different. Dean looked at him in a way that made Sam feel warm (safe) and said, no, because Sam had something special. Sam had him. And then he’d grinned his familiar grin and (in an uncharacteristic chick-flick moment) told Sam that all the while he was alive, nothing bad would happen to him.

Dean makes every attempt to stay good on a promise that he made when he was four, that he’d keep Sam safe. Thing is, that promise has a nasty habit of ripping holes in Dean’s hide and, occasionally, his soul. Sam grew up with Dean taking care of him, feeding him, making sure nothing bad happened to him (and, on one particular occasion, failing conclusively at the last part). Sam never really stopped to give any thought to what Dean sacrificed for him, for the sake of keeping him in one piece.

He never appreciated how much Dean mediated between him and their father, not until Dean wasn’t there. He told Dean first that he was leaving, felt that he owed Dean that much at least. Figured out too late that he should have told Dean before he applied, should have shared his plans and his goals with his big brother. Just coming straight out and telling him he was leaving must have hurt, because Dean slammed the door, got in the car and Sam didn’t see or hear from him again for two years. Dean’s right (what’s new?) because while Sam dredges up the painful things his father said to him (if you’re going, you’d best stay gone), he certainly didn’t hold back himself.

Dean was back in time to hear the bitter showdown, but he didn’t know what to do or say, so he said nothing. Sam, believing he’d damaged the one solid relationship he’d ever had, left and had no intention of returning. Dean, for all his stoic silence, felt immense pride for everything his baby brother had achieved, even now that his baby brother was all grown up.

Didn’t understand or know what to say when Dean came to him for help, though. Didn’t know what to say to the haunted look in his big brother’s eyes. Kind of just slipped back into the role he’d always occupied – baby brother, bait, sidekick geek boy.

Except he’s older now, and he can say all the things to Dean that he couldn’t before he left. Says them all and takes them all back again, because he can’t hurt Dean anymore now than he could when they were kids. He can land Dean on his ass if he catches him off guard, but he can’t let Dean think he hates him (no matter that it might be true sometimes) or that he’s not grateful (and he is, mostly) for any more than a few hours. Since he was four years old, Dean has done his best to make sure Sam’s alright. Sam loves Dean more than he’s ever loved anything, except maybe Jess.

So Sam carefully catalogues all the things that Dean says, little offhand comments and the occasional straight declaration, and stores them for future use, for when he needs to remind himself again why it is he’s here and what it is he’s fighting for.

800 words (Cellar Door)

Dean has issues, most of which he knows about, some of which he doesn’t. He knows how he feels when Sam says yes, some things (monster things) are worth dying over. Dean’s lost everything once already; he’s not losing it again. He’ll hide behind razor sharp wit and he’ll cloak, with varying degrees of success, all of his emotions, and he’ll fool himself into believing that he could carry on alone if he had to. And underneath the bravado, he’ll still be scared to death of losing it all. Sam and his dad are all he has, all he’s ever had, and he’d be lost without them. So no, nothing is worth dying over, unless it’s him doing the dying, because really, who’d miss him if he were gone?

Dean recounts the years without Sam sometimes. He’d like to think some of the people he’s met would care, would come, but eventually he narrows his list of mourners to Dad and Sam and maybe Pastor Jim. And then he’ll catch Sam staring at him and he’ll shake his head, grin and revert back to the guy who checks out the waitresses’ asses while Sam does all the practical research geekboy things he’s so good at. Dean works more on instinct – knowing where to shoot, remembering key trivia and weaknesses. Maybe it’s impressive to other people, but to Dean it’s second nature.

Dean’s got most of his notes filed on the laptop. He keeps a paper record as well, but eventually everything goes onto the computer. Dad had his journal, Dean has his. Dean also keeps a list of people that matter to him. Sam knows the list by heart, except for one glaring omission. Dean kept Cassie a secret, just another name on a list of betrayal that had previously had Sam’s name at the bottom, scrawled in black pen, every letter registering the hurt Dean had felt as he wrote it.

So, Dean’s the one with the – problems, and Sam’s got the monopoly on crippling personal angst, and when a girl’s mother glares at Dean like she hopes he’ll die, asks why he deserves to live, he just can’t answer. He doesn’t know. He’s got no idea how he even got to be twenty-seven.

Dean’s never considered killing himself. There’s always been some reason to carry on. Sam’s a good reason. Dean wishes he could have kept Sam safe from the nightmares and the demons, but he’ll settle for keeping Sam alive. It’s as noble an ambition as any. And they’ve got to find their dad. Dean will take the olive brand and cling to it. Probably still be clinging to it when he hurtles over the waterfall. Bygones.

Five in the morning and Dean’s awake on a cocktail of espresso and concern. Sam sleeps fitfully and Dean can’t even close his eyes when his baby brother is like this. He sits in the chair right by the door, watching, waiting. He wants to wake Sam from whatever haunts him, but he doesn’t want Sam to know that he hasn’t slept. Sam doesn’t sleep enough and besides, Dean’s got him covered. When Sam does wake, he rolls onto his back and stares numbly at the ceiling.

“So, did you consider a grief counselor?” Dean tries to sound nonchalant as he snaps the laptop closed. Sam snorts but a smile does at least flicker on his lips.

“Yeah,” he tells the ceiling. “Because they hear all the time about demons taking your girlfriend.” Turns his head, gazes at Dean. “Have you slept at all?”

“Sure, I grabbed a coupla hours but your singing kept me awake.”

Sam doesn’t say anything further. Neither of them exactly excels at expressing himself. Sam wants to hate and resent everything about his past and yes, sometimes that includes Dean, but not as often as it includes their father. Dean, on the other hand – Dean just wants to find one moment of real happiness. In lieu of that, he’ll take the satisfaction of not being on his own.

Sam watches Dean closely and thinks he sees Dean when he’s vulnerable. He doesn’t see Dean when he’s scared or alone, though, because Dean saves those emotions for the empty desolate hours between three and six, when they’ve got miles to cover and they’re still traveling. Dean listens to his tapes way down low and sings along, avoids thinking altogether because four in the morning is suicide to an empty soul. At seven, Sam takes on the driving and they bicker, because that’s what siblings do. Dean will let Sam go right on hating him, if that’s what he wants to do, so long as he sticks around.

Dean has issues, most of which he knows about, some of which he doesn’t. But he does have Sam.

900 words (God Hears)

This story is a Sam story (and it’s weird, really, how all of Dean’s true stories are Sam stories). Telling Sam stories makes Dean feel like he hasn’t completely lost contact. He doesn’t care that he’s fooling himself or that he’s the only person who believes the lie (and then only occasionally).

Dean’s body is a map of scars and memories and healing wounds. Every single one tells a story, some more interesting than others. There are bullet wounds that are long healed, flesh knit neatly except paler. There are claw marks, lacerations that serve only to remind that sometimes fast isn’t fast enough, and that sometimes you need more than guts and brute force to stay alive. There’s a (long since mended) broken rib that aches every time he gets hurled into a wall. He once dislocated his shoulder but that was entirely Sam’s fault, nothing supernatural involved.

Dean is leaning against a bar in some obscure town located in the back-end of nowhere. He cradles a tumbler full of whiskey and contemplates how the story begins. When he tells the car the story, he begins by saying that Sam was 17, so that’s where he starts with the barmaid (who says her name is Louisa). She’s got a sweet smile and these huge brown eyes, and Dean thinks he’d like to get to know her better. He’s telling her a Sam story because the shoulder is playing up and she asked, and Dean had laughed, said, “Funny story actually,” before realizing it may only be funny to him. To Dean, its humour is in its irony.

Dean’s old enough to drink and Sam’s not, but no matter. John left Dean in charge and Dean says they’re going out to buy food because he can’t cook (which is a lie; Dean’s come a long way since Lucky Charms and Spaghettios). They get Chinese food and eat in the Impala before Dean hits the nearest K-Mart for cheap beer. He figures that it doesn’t much matter how it tastes, so long as Sam ends up drunk. Dean – responsible older brother that he is – wants to record the incident on his phone and use it as ammo. Louisa laughs obligingly and Dean stares at her for a moment, thinking hard.

Today, he says eventually, is Sam’s twenty-second birthday. This story is exactly five years old today. “Can I get another one of these?” Gestures his glass.

“You driving somewhere, cowboy?”

“Got a room right across the road.”

“I got a room right upstairs, should that shoulder need a little TLC.” Her smile is easy.

Back when they were younger, Sam would have laughed and rolled his eyes. In the morning, he would have raised his eyebrows and conspicuously said nothing. But Sam’s not here now and somehow that makes everything different. Still, a room’s a room and he’ll be moving on in the morning anyway.

“Got a couple of other things needing some TLC as well.”

Dean thinks she’s pretty enough and he needs to wind down somehow.

When he comes back, he lays his keys on the bar, orders a beer. He can handle beer.

Not Sammy though. Dean’s talking to a guy who looks suspiciously like his father, but he knows John is in California pretending not to be checking on Sam. Sam had only had a few cans and he was sat in front of the car giggling helplessly. Initially, Dean had found his baby brother’s inebriation mildly amusing, but then he’d had to haul Sam to his feet. For all he’s tall and skinny, Dean discovers Sam actually weighs a ton when it’s all dead weight. He almost dies when Sam says he feels sick. Dean decides there and then that Sam really is a freak – he’s the only seventeen year old in the world, probably ever, that can’t handle Chinese curry and light beer.

“Where is Sam?”

Dean manages to look affronted, despite starting the story half way through.

“Off being the boy wonder,” he says, a little drunk and more than a little bitter because of it.

“Sound proud, though.”

And that right there stops Dean in his tracks, completely derailing his train of thought.

“Dude, he’s in college!”

Dean’s pause is not-Dad’s opportunity to amble away, but his seat at the bar is quickly filled by Louisa. She shifts her stool so close that her thigh brushes Dean’s and he glances at her.

“So, how did you dislocate your shoulder?”

Dean gestures back towards the motel. “Fell out of bed.”

And that’s actually the truth. Dean managed to get Sam back to the motel without him throwing up or causing a car wreck. Sam even managed to walk without falling down. Dean put him to bed before crashing himself. Around two, Sam decided to climb into Dean’s bed where he promptly stole the sheet and more than his fair share of space. He tossed and turned and tangled them together and, as Dean tried to untangle them, they’d both landed on the floor. Dean, still gripping the knife under his pillow, had ripped his shoulder out completely as Sam landed heavily on top of him.

“Funny story,” Dean says.

She nods and takes his hand. Later, Dean will find something else to talk to her about. Dean will sleep and, when he leaves, she will just be a face in some backwoods nowhere town.

1500 words (Chief of Ten)

Dean’s earliest memory is playing ball with his dad, back when he was a little kid. Dad had come home from work and Mom was watching from the window as they played in the yard. Dean’s earliest memory is of innocence. He is three, almost four, and all that he can imagine is him and his parents and the future.

Dean is four when his mother dies and his whole life is turned upside down. He remembers holding Sam in his arms, watching their two-storey in Lawrence burn to the ground. He makes a solemn promise to keep Sam safe, because he’s the eldest and it’s what older brothers do. Dean has vague residual memories of his mom – she was beautiful, kind, and their dad loved her very much. Dean loved her very much as well.

They don’t stay in Lawrence long after the fire. Their house is rebuilt but they don’t live there again. John makes a note in his journal that he went to Missouri and learned the truth. Dean will assume for the longest time that he means the State. When he’s five he doesn’t know the reasons. All he knows is that he has to care for Sammy. He makes a note in his head as well – Kansas isn’t home anymore. He can’t ever go home again because it’s where his mom died. Kansas will always represent death to Dean.

Dean is seven the first time John leaves them alone. He calls Dean his little soldier. Dean feels mature now because he has to take care of Sammy. He feels important when John closes the door. He checks all the locks and seals and makes sure there is salt around the doors and windows. It’s second nature. When the phone rings Dean leaves it, unless it rings once and then rings again.

If John is going to be gone a little while, he leaves the boys with friends like Jim Murphy. The boys trust Jim, and so does John. The boys call him Pastor Jim and on the whole, he leaves them alone. Dean likes it that way, just him and Sam. If Sam can’t sleep, Dean stays up with him, smoothes his hair back, says all the right things. Sam shifts against Dean and slowly, his eyes drift shut.

Dean is ten or perhaps 11 when John leaves them alone for a few days at a time. Sam is 6. He is a quiet child, enjoys cartoons and doesn’t really speak all that much unless it’s to Dean. It’s not something Dean concerns himself with. Dean cooks for Sam – or at least makes sure Sam doesn’t starve. All Dean wants is to maintain Sam’s innocence.

John, it appears, has no such compunction. When Sam is eight years old he complains about the thing in his closet. Dean is 12. These days he helps John on simple hunting trips. Dean is a good shot and has excellent reflexes. Sam’s only a kid. John still leaves him with Pastor Jim when he takes Dean with him. John tries not to keep them out of school. He knows Dean won’t flunk, but there’s something about Sam. Dean’s good, follows orders, but Sam – Sam questions. Even when he’s 8, Sam refuses to just fire a gun or throw a knife.

John gives Sam a gun to stop him from being scared of the thing in his closet. To Dean it seems like the practical solution. Sam just wants to be told there’s nothing to be scared of. Sam wants to believe that it’s all in his head. He doesn’t want to know that the things his classmates laugh about are real. Sam envies them their naïvety and craves a little of it for himself. He doesn’t tell Dean though, because he doesn’t want Dean to think he’s weird or afraid.

Dean is father-figure to little Sammy. Dean cooks and stays with him, tells him stories. It is Dean who tucks Sam in and Dean who, when Sam can’t sleep, moves into his bed and keeps him safe. John is someone Sam recognizes but doesn’t actually know. It’s not something that ever really changes. Maybe it’s true or maybe it’s not but it seems to Sam that it’s almost like John can’t bear to look at him but will dedicate his every resource to keeping him alive.

Dean is thirteen. He’s getting by at school. He’ll graduate with his class, but it doesn’t interest him. He wants to learn everything his dad knows. Dean respects his father, follows orders without question. Since the incident with Sammy, Dean feels their dad looks at him differently. He makes his own notes and sometimes John lets him take a more active role in his work, which makes Dean feel proud. Sammy’s only nine and is still too small to come. He can fire a gun and he’s got wicked aim, but John ships him off to Pastor Jim.

When they’re not away fighting evil, John is more drill sergeant than father. It is still Dean that Sam comes to first. It is Dean who is left to field awkward questions and make sure Sam doesn’t grow clean out of his jeans. They’re still young. John doesn’t worry that he finds them curled up together in the mornings, mostly because he understands their need for one another. If physical proximity brings them comfort, who is he to argue?

Sam is twelve. He has no real memories of his mother. But for photographs he wouldn’t even know what she looked like. He does think, however, that there’s a lot more of their mom in Dean than there is in him. Maybe that’s why John treats Dean so differently. Sam lost him his wife but 16 year old Dean reminds him of her constantly. That’s when Sam decides he’ll do anything in his power to get away from all of this, from Dad and this life that he barely knows.

Dean is 22, Sammy is 18. Sammy locks him with that big-eyed puppy dog gaze and says he’s leaving. Dean doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react, so he reacts the only way he knows how (anger, hurt, silence). After the event, he feels guilt but he puts his emotions on hold because John still needs him, even if Sammy doesn’t. He tries not to think about how Sam’s disappearance affects him and makes a vow to stay in contact, even if it kills him.

Sam is twenty-one the last time he hears from Dean. He’s had a postcard once in a while, since he went to Stanford, but on Dean’s twenty-fifth birthday he hears the last from Dean that he will for almost two years. Sam always means to keep in contact, could write them any time, could call. But he doesn’t. It’s not until the postcards stop coming that he realizes how much he misses Dean’s presence in his life.

He thinks about Dean a lot. His girlfriend, Jessica, is 21 on the same day that Dean turns 26. All it does is serve as a painful reminder. He spends hours staring at his cell and eventually Jess has to drag him out. “Life and soul,” she laughs and kisses him easily. Dean gets as far as finding Sam’s name in his contacts list before snapping his phone closed and gunning his engine. Dean spends his twenty-sixth birthday alone, save for a ghost and a big bottle of Jack in his room.

Dean is twenty-six, almost 27. He wants to let Sam be because even if Sam doesn’t see it, he is an awesome older brother. But he’s scared and he’s alone, and he finds himself in Palo Alto because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Dean debates calling first but doesn’t think Sam will pick up, so he does what he does best and breaks in. Dean masks his fear behind his cocky grin and makes a flying pass at Sam’s girlfriend (who really is cute). Sam thinks Dean hasn’t changed a bit, but still agrees to go with him, short term.

How could he know?

Sam is twenty-three when he hears Dean crack for (possibly) the first time. He’s never believed in Dean’s fallibility, didn’t believe it when Dean was dying, but he can’t ignore the tears in Dean’s eyes. Sam wants to believe that he’s different, that he doesn’t understand what drives John, but he does. He knows what keeps John going, because Jess keeps him going. It’s revenge. Everything boils down to revenge.

Except it’s not that for Dean. Dean does it because he’s good at it, because he doesn’t know any other way to be. And he’s scared. He fights to keep the people he loves alive, because he can’t allow them to sacrifice themselves. Dean doesn’t want pick up the pieces afterwards.

Sam doesn’t want to pick up the pieces either.

Dean took on the responsibility of being born first. Sometimes it makes him feel utterly alone.

FIN
© FyrMaiden May 07 2006

Free

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 19:38:35 GMT

So. We knew this wouldn't take long to crawl out of the woodwork. I might not be able to write slash in this fandom, but I can still quite happily kill them off. *headdesk* Take that as a warning - DEATH FIC!

Fandom: Supernatural
Slash/Gen: Gen
Genre: Angst
Warning: Death fic
Spoilers: None
Rating: R – dark themes

Title: Free
Author: FyrMaiden (e-mail)
Summary: Sam’s got blood on his hands, and Dean can’t remember where it’s come from.

Disclaimer: Fan authored, for fun, not profit. Supernatural and its characters belong to Eric Kripke and the WB.

Do the thing you fear the most and death of fear is certain.
~ Mark Twain

Sam’s got blood on his hands and on his clothes. Dean wonders where it’s come from and doesn’t even think about the fact that it’s soaking through his clothes as well, staining his skin and wrenching at his nerves. He doesn’t think about it because Sam looks so utterly bewildered and Dean – Dean just wants to take him away from all this, keep him safe forever. Not because Sam’s not good at what they do (he is, really good, people open their doors for Sam and his anguished puppy-dog eyes), but because he’s too innocent. Sam wants desperately to believe in the innate good in people, and Dean just can’t. Dean believes most people are innately selfish and he thinks Sam stands a solitary counterpoint to that belief. Sam really is good, in his soul and his heart, and Dean knows he’ll die if he ever loses his baby brother again.

Dean backtracks in his mind, tries to think where the blood’s come from but everything’s kind of hazy. All he can focus on is the disorientation on Sam’s face and the fact that the wall he’s leaning against is hard, really hard, and also uncomfortable. And he’s tired, way too tired.

“C’mon, no use sitting here doing nothing. We lost it.”

Sam starts, nods his head and wipes his bloody hands on his jeans. It doesn’t do much good, really. He reaches out for Dean, who slaps his hands away and pushes himself to his feet until the pain that wrenches through his gut sends him reeling back into the wall. This time, when Sam’s hands reach out, Dean is – well, not happy to accept the assistance, but he’s really not got much choice.

“I’m getting blood all over your coat.” Sam’s voice is so shaky that any inherent humour is completely lost, but Dean grins anyway.

“Next you’ll say you’re driving.”

“Yeah, real quick and all the way to the nearest ER.”

“You know how to drive real quick?”

Sam gives him a look that could almost be the old Sam, if it wasn’t so frayed around the edges. “Ha ha.” Dean grins his old familiar grin and Sam tries to ignore his rapidly greying skin and the ashen pallor of his face.

At the hospital, the doctor asks what happened. Sam sighs and sinks into an almost expressionless monotone. Mugged, he says (having made sure to remove Dean’s wallet and cell), guy got real violent. Lashed out when Dean didn’t have as much on him as would have been ideal. Had one of those big hunting knives, could probably pierce rhino skin. Dean’s leather jacket might as well have been fish scales. “Will he live?”

The doctor's smile is placating. “He’s lost a lot of bloody and he’s in a lot of pain, but your-”

“-brother-”

“-brother’s a fighter.”

Sam almost laughs because irony is so bitterly cruel at times. “Yeah, he’s a soldier alright.”

Later, when Dean’s awake, he says he can’t stay in the hospital. He tells Sam to pay whatever’s due and get him out. Sam says he’s supposed to stay in and Dean gives him a look that infers rules are for other people to follow. He’ll be fine. Ask the doctor what needs to be done. Tell them he’s a field medic or something. Dean can keep a knife wound clean, just, you know, he can’t and won’t stay here. End of discussion.

When Sam comes back, it’s with a smile and a fully stocked medical kit. He says he found another doctor and explained the situation. Now Dean’s gay and on the run from his dad, who is completely psychotic and tried to kill him. He’s not safe until he can get the hell out of Dodge.

“In conclusion,” Sam grins, “You might want to look less like you want to kill me yourself and more like you love me so much, your dad slit your stomach open.”

Dean says nothing, only grumbles under his breath as Sam helps him get his jeans on. He winces and moans that the waistband is too tight and Sam says yeah, that’s the bandages and padding stopping his insides from falling out. Dean glares and slaps Sam’s hands away as he shrugs his jacket on.

“And another thing,” he says, breaking his stony older brother don’t-talk-to-me silence. “Why are people so willing to believe you’re my boyfriend?”

“Because your tough, masculine exterior is clearly masking deep insecurities?”

“Dude, I mean, c’mon. Even I have standards.”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up into his bangs and he nods. “It’s all good. I wouldn’t – you know. With you either.”

They’re hours out of town and hundreds of miles into the middle of nowhere when Dean – who’s been uncharacteristically silent – glances at Sam and says he thinks they might need to stop. When Sam pulls over and actually looks at his brother, he can see the suppressed pain in Dean’s hazel eyes. Sam opens his mouth to speak and closes it again quickly, all words abandoning him as Dean rolls up his top to show the blood soaking through his bandages.

“It might be time to find somewhere to stop.”

Sam curses Dean and calls him every name he can thinks of and then some. He tells Dean he’s impossible, obstinate, difficult and then, with tears in his eyes, asks why he didn’t say anything.

“We were getting the hell out of Dodge,” Dean replies weakly. His cocky grin falters and fails. Sam can’t even raise the ghost of a smile because he’s having another Haley Joel moment and seeing dead people.

When Sam has finished cleaning and redressing the gaping maw that used to be his brother’s abdomen, he takes his cell and the bloody clothes out to the Impala. It’s his turn to spend the night lying awake, fretting about Dean. He slings Dean’s old clothes in the trunk to be disposed of at the first opportune moment and rings their dad, not because he expects an answer but because their dad should at least know that Dean is sick and quite probably dying.

John Winchester’s voice sounds old when he calls Sam back. Years of guilt have caught up with him at last. Maybe, just maybe, he should have spent more time being a father to his boys. Dean never complained about having to take care of Sammy, but Dean’s stoic silence was at the expense of his childhood.

Sam’s voice is full of pain as he explains what happened. John can hear cars in the background and deduces that Sam is outside, away from Dean, because if there’s one thing the boys won’t admit to each other, it’s each other’s weaknesses.

“Dad? You there?”

“Yeah, I’m here, Sammy. Where are you?”

John knows there’s nothing he can do for Dean that Sam won’t already have tried, but he can’t let his eldest son die and not attempt to make it to his side. He tells Sam to stay put, that he’s coming, and Sam promises he’ll try, except, well, “You know how he is, Dad, any longer than a few days and he’s going crazy!”

That’s another thing John never really meant to do, raise a true nomad. He worries what will happen to Dean when the hunt is over. “I’m not far away. I’ll be with you by tomorrow night.”

As it happens, John drives all night and way too fast and he reaches Sam less than twelve hours later. Sam lets all of his pent up emotions out as he hugs his father. John can only hug him back and ask, quietly, how Dean is.

Dean dresses in silence in the middle of the night so that Sam won’t ask questions if he sees him still bleeding. Dean does his fair share of the driving, even when it almost cripples him to do so. He forces himself to remain alert and awake, and Sam, in turn, doesn’t mention Dean’s weird behaviour, his sallow skin or the red rings around his eyes. If he’s honest, Sam’s mostly just glad that Dean’s sitting up by himself. If that means not questioning Dean’s mission to self destruct then he’ll just live with it.

On a good day, Dean chats easily and unreservedly. On a bad day, he plays his tapes entirely too loudly, as if heavy guitars can drown his pain. Sam’s lost count of the times he’s watched Dean sleeping with his head against the window.

Sam has looked Death right in the eye on numerous occasions, starting way back when he was just a baby. He’s never been scared of death though because Dean’s always been there to save him, pull him from the fire. This time, however, death terrifies him, and it does so because this time, Dean’s not going to be there to save him and he doesn’t know how to save Dean.

Sam leaves his dad a progress report at least once a week, but sometimes, when Dean’s at his weakest, John’s voicemail message almost physically hurts. It hurts more though when Sam rings and it’s changed. The number John gives is Sam’s on the new message. Sam swallows the lump in his throat and understands that his wish for a normal, apple pie life is dying as quickly as Dean is.

He’s never been more scared in his life.

Dean looks positively grey against the crisp white of the sheets. He can sense Sam and so he pretends to sleep, ignoring the steady beep of the machine he’s hooked to. Sam sinks into a chair by his bed.

“So, I told Dad you’re here, okay? I guess he’s coming but I don’t know. I told him it’s serious, told him that you’re not healing or sleeping or anything, really. The doctors can’t explain it, because it’s clean, but your skin’s just not meshing like it should or something. I’ve got the keys for the Impala, because I know what you’re like-”

Dean turns his head at the mention of his car. “Promise me you’ll come visit, huh?”

Sam stops in his tracks and then forces a shaky smile. “You’re coming with me, Dean.”

Dean nods his head and smiles back. “Of course I am. In an urn.”

“Anyway,” Sam says, unsure how to respond, “I’ve got the keys for the Impala and I’ll be back in a week or so.”

Dean nods and closes his eyes again. “Sure. Just take care of my car.”

Sam sits in the car with the engine turning over. When he was a kid, the rumble of the car was like a lullaby. Lately, with Dean, it’s been home. Much as it pains him, Sam can’t wait until whatever is haunting him has been destroyed. First it took him mom, then his father (in a way). For an encore, it came back for Jess (and now he swings past Stanford whenever he can). And then it took Dean, or something did, and Sam was completely powerless to stop it.

Sam is waiting for John outside the hospital. He was with Dean when it all ended and so far he hasn’t found the tears. It’s John’s turn to say goodbye to his eldest. John wanted to send Dean’s body back to Lawrence but Sam had said no, bad idea, send him to California, to Stanford, and he’d pay his respects whenever he could.

It’s hours later, miles away, Dean’s music blaring loud through Dean’s car, when Sam hears humming. He’s been expecting to see Dean sitting beside him and he’s been constantly disappointed. Nevertheless, when Sam looks, he’s convinced Dean’s still with him and the world looks a lot less bleak that way.

FIN

© FyrMaiden April 2006

Turn Out The Dark

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:37:22 GMT

So, here we go. Second Supernatural fic. Still kind of working on how I characterise these two. It's weird. I've never felt driven to write FPS before. Dean has returned my muse to me. Really should try Dark Angel fic. That'd be lotsa fun. Anyway!

Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Turn Out The Dark
Author: FyrMaiden
Category: Gen
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13, 12A. Nothing graphic, but it does cover Jess’s death so I figure a 12A here, which I figure must a PG-13 Stateside?
Summary: There’s just one thing Dean wishes for Sam.

Warnings/Spoilers: None, really. I think we all know the premise by now, so this has nothing you won’t have seen.
Disclaimer: The characters and premise of Supernatural belong to Warner Bros and Kripke. This is fan authored for fun, not profit.
Word Count: 1290

Sam wakes with a start a little before three. He’s confused, disoriented for a moment, casting wildly for his phone or a light or anything, really, that will anchor him back in the here and now. As his heart slows and reality – or his version of reality – reasserts itself, he becomes aware of the bright glow of Dean’s laptop. Dean’s steady gaze masks deep concern well. Sam flicks a smile and Dean lowers his eyes back to the computer screen.

“What you got?” Sam asks, sliding down the bed so that he’s only a few feet from his brother. Sam feels an overwhelming need to be this close because – because Dean’s presence is reassuring, although Sam would sooner die than actually give his brother the satisfaction of knowing that.

“Nothing much.” And, as if to emphasise the point, snaps the laptop closed. “Come on. Time to move out.”

“It’s 3 am.”

“Yeah, time to roll. Come on, Sammy.”

Sammy. From anybody but Dean, that would be all kinds of irritating. Sam’s kind of given up telling Dean that Sammy is the kid that went away to college. This is the new and improved baby brother. Sleaker, honed. Hating every second of being a freak again, because sometimes – sometimes Sam actually makes himself believe that he was, at one point, normal.

They don’t exactly pack, mostly because the never exactly unpack. Dean grabs the keys for the Impala and then looks at Sam. It’s become a force of habit now, making sure Sam is following because something is really not right in that touselled student head these days. Maybe watching your girlfriend die will do that to you. Dean doesn’t know and doesn’t care to find out. Dean’s hand is on the door handle when Sam stops him.

“Let me drive. You look beat.”

Dean purses his lips and then nods, hands Sam his keys. “Maybe a little.” He doesn’t say that it’s because he’s up all hours, making sure Sam gets some sleep; doesn’t say he’s worried, doesn’t say he’s at all afraid of what is happening. Sam still looks and sounds like Sam, even when he doesn’t act like him. Dean kind of misses the kid who just wanted to play soccer.

When Dean wakes up, they’re miles from anywhere and Sam has found something truly terrible on the radio. As far as Dean’s concerned, it’s without a redeeming feature, any redeeming feature, and he thinks he can hear his beloved car hating every note until he realizes it’s actually Sam humming. He turns the radio off and Sam glances at him and grins.

“Feel better?”

“Where are we?”

“No idea. You’re the one with all the clues.”

“Mm, yeah. I’m thirsty. And hungry.”

“Your pack’s behind you.”

Dean falls silent again for a moment and then looks at Sam. “What the hell were you listening to anyway?”

When they finally stop, Dean’s craving for real food materializes in the form of burgers. Dean argues that they’re at least hot and possibly less than two weeks old. Sam’s not sure how much truth there is in either assertion, but he doesn’t argue. Sometimes it’s best not to. Dean takes over driving. He says Sam should get some sleep since he didn’t get much more than two hours yesterday. Both of them understand without saying that Dean takes over the driving because the Chevy is his baby and he either won’t or can’t be parted from it. Sam does sleep though, or doze at least.

When Sam wakes – barely forty minutes later – it’s with a jump that makes Dean punch his leg. Dean has his music – and Sam uses the term loosely – on way too loudly and he’s drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“We need to get off the road.”

Dean looks at him and frowns. “Why? If you’re gonna hurl -”

“Dean, pull over!”

Dean says it must have been the burger. Sam doesn’t say anything, just nods. Yeah, the burger. Probably was the burger. Burger and Jessica, wreathed in flames. Jess haunts his every moment and Dean can’t possibly understand. Dean was four when their mom died and he’s been hunting evil ever since he could fire a gun. Dean’s got focus, purpose. Sam just wanted to be safe and evil found him again. Still, probably the burger.

And then later, Dean plants something alcoholic in front of Sam and pull up a chair. “You really do know how to have fun, don’t you?” Sam lifts his head from his arms and forces a smile that serves only to accentuate how tired he looks.

“Yeah. Sorry.” He takes a pull on the beer and frowns, doesn’t say a word more. Instead, he just shrugs on his jacket and leaves. Dean sighs, finishes both beers and follows him, because it’s his little brother and really he’s got no choice.

Dean puts the room at the nearest motel on a card he’ll have to get rid of soon, because it’s dangerously close to maxed and he hasn’t got another one in the same name. Dean’s also painfully aware that they’re running low on ready cash, but with Sam like this he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving him alone for long enough to hustle pool. Dean’s got a damn good poker face as well, when he’s not more concerned about Sam’s mental health.

Dean wonders idly how long it’ll be until Sam actually tells him what it is that wakes him from his dreams. In that respect, Dean suspects they’re too alike. Sam will never let Dean see the chinks in his armour until he believes that Dean is fallible too. Sam doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that he is Dean’s weakness.

Years ago – so many, in fact, that it no longer counts for anyone but Dean – he was told to look after Sam. Their mom and then their dad always implied it was his duty as big brother to make sure nothing bad happened. Maybe that was nullified by their mom dying or the way their dad raised them, but Dean doesn’t think so. As far as Dean’s concerned, Sam’s his little brother and there has to be a way for him to sleep through the night. He just – doesn’t know what it is and he’s sort of worried about Sam’s dreams manifesting themselves in reality because the inside of Sam’s skull is a place he absolutely doesn’t want to be.

Dean is messing with his laptop and watching late night (early morning) television. He’s got a cup of cheap coffee that went cold hours ago and Sam, asleep, crashed out on his bed with all his clothes on. Dean closes the computer and leans back in his chair, watching Sam sleep because it’s such a rare occurrence these days.

Sam awakes quickly, terror painted clear on his face. “You let me sleep.” His tone is factual more than accusatory.

“Yeah, it’s sort of what you do at night.”

Sam shoots him a look and nods his completely unconvinced nod. “Because you’ve been fast asleep as well.”

Dean stretches and grins. “This isn’t about me, Sammy. I’m not the one having nightmares about people dying.”

Sam’s gaze turns icy. “You’re not funny.”

Regardless, whenever Sam actually sleeps, Dean stays awake to make sure he’s okay. Dean has a feeling that Sam won’t thank him for it, but that’s not precisely the point. The point is, Sam’s family and this is what family does.

And whenever Sam wakes up sweating, another lie on his lips, that’s when Dean decides it’s time to move on, because nothing quite equals the endless majesty of the open road before them except, perhaps, the soft settled sound of Sam’s breathing as he sleeps.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 29.03.2006

Second chances

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 01:07:56 GMT

Fandom: Supernatural
Author: FyrMaiden
Pairing: Gen – Sam, Dean
Rating: PG-13, 12A. Nothing here that’s not in the source material.
Spoilers: Mostly for 1x12 – Faith. Minor spoilers for 1x01 – Woman In White, 1x06 Skin, 1x09 – Home and 1x13 – Route 666.
Word Count: 965
Summary: Dean has never been the praying kind, but he does try to keep his promises.

Dean’s never been the praying kind, but he does try to keep his promises. He promised Sam he’d always be there for him and he does try to be. He promised he’d never let anything bad happen to his baby brother and that kind of fell through, making his resolve a million times stronger. Nothing – nothing – will hurt Sam again. And then Dean sends a thousand volts right through his body in a damp cellar in the middle of nowhere. If he weren’t already dying, he’d kill himself.

Lying in a hospital bed, Dean makes a new promise. Sam can’t know that he’s scared, maybe even terrified. This is worse than Lawrence because he can’t fight it. He can’t beat death with just sheer balls and bullets. And he’s so proud of Sam. Little Sammy, who’s like their dad now because he refuses to just give up.

Dean wonders, after Sam has left and when he’s alone in the dark, what they’ll write on his headstone, because Dean Winchester died months ago and states away, suspected of murder. He’d shot himself, or the shape shifter wearing his skin, and then they’d missed his funeral. Looked like he wouldn’t get to see this one either. And that’s when Dean decides that okay, fine, he might be dying but he’s not doing it alone. Not like this. Not in a hospital where the nurses aren’t even hot.

Sam’s got papers everywhere, and Dean’s laptop open on his bed. He looks exhausted but it’s his turn to keep a promise. Dean tries to think when Sam has ever let him down and can’t think of one time, not even when he went to college because Dean had been filled with so much pride. Perhaps he’d felt a little hurt and more than a little alone, but still proud. Sam says he’ll find someone who can help and that’s the end of it.

Standing in the mud outside of a tent, Dean knows he can’t blame Sam for his being there. Sam picked his words very carefully and he’d said “specialist.” Dean had turned that into “doctor” all by himself. The only thing Dean has any faith in is inevitability. Eventually, everything dies. That’s just how it is. All the faith and love in the world can’t stop death.

*
Dean’s never been the praying kind, but he does try to keep his promises. Hasn’t been so hot at that recently, though. He’s made himself a lot of promises that he just can’t seem to keep. A long time ago he told himself never to fall in love, and he did. And it was disastrous. He told himself he’d let Sam go if it was what he really wanted, but he can’t. Every time he says goodbye, he finds himself hoping Sam will follow him.

And the big one. Dean promised himself he would never go home. He really couldn’t face that one and doesn’t particularly want to ever again. He doesn’t feel much like Dorothy and Kansas hasn’t been home in a long time. Dean’s home is wherever he is, probably his car, and his life is the open road. Anywhere that Sam is will do.

Dean promised his dad he would keep hunting until they found whatever killed his mom and then, without warning, his dad disappeared. So Dean, all knee-jerk reactionary style, dragged Sam from his cute – no, not cute, safe – life. Because in the whole stupid world, Sam’s really all he’s got outside of his car and some very interesting scars.

*
Dean’s never been the praying kind, but he does try to keep his promises. He told Layla Rourke he would pray for her when he and Sam released the reaper from its binding. He told a dying girl he would pray for her and that’s exactly what he’ll do. Dean has no use for faith. He’s seen evil inflicted on the just and the unjust, on the faithful and the faithless alike. Years ago, he saw evil inflicted on his own family. He’s seen its causes and its consequences. But the faith of a dying girl seemed infectious.

Sam says nothing when Dean pulls the Impala from the road and into the lot of some backwater church. He says nothing when Dean looks at him and then at the church. Just this once, Dean is more affected. Dean is suffering, working through the chaos in his head. Because – because he should be dying and perhaps, just maybe, Layla should be living. If this is doing the right thing, then it really kind of sucks. But it’s like he told Sam; you can’t play God. That’s not how the gig plays out. So Dean’s only got one option, because – because Layla deserves a second chance more than he does.

Dean’s boots echo on the hollow wooden flooring, and he hunches his shoulders as he buries his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Dean takes a seat half way down the aisle and bows his head. Sam lingers behind the pews, doesn’t say a word until Dean is done. Eventually, Dean lifts his head and squares his shoulders. This promise, at least, he’s kept.

Sam doesn’t say anything when Dean shoves another archaic tape into the deck, or when they pull back onto the road. All the while Dean is fighting tears, Sam remains absolutely silent. When Dean swallows and says he needs beer and a break, that’s when Sam speaks.

“Thought you didn’t believe?”

Dean’s smile is lopsided, the anguish still there beneath the façade. “I don’t,” he says. “Besides, you’ve got enough faith for both of us.”

Dean doesn’t have faith because he can’t maintain it when the miracles don’t happen, but he made a promise and those he tries to keep.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 22.03.2006

Excommunication

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 13:41:58 GMT

Fandom: Interpol
Title: Excommunication
Author: FyrMaiden (fyrmaiden@gmail.com)
Summary: Carlos stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders when he started to act like this…
Pairing: Paul/Carlos
Rating: PG-13? (Probably a UK 12, for the sake of argument!)
Genre: angst
Warnings: None! That's probably a first. No one dies, no one gets hurt. Well, mostly.

Disclaimer: Not for profit. Just for fun. Should anything contained herein bear any resemblance to those persons concerned, it’s nothing more than a happy coincidence.

Author's Note: New fandom, new worries. This was sent to mumblemutter and cateris, both of whom actually appeared to enjoy it. I've outgrown the stage where I constantly tweak things. If I'm not happy, I generally just stop writing, so to have got to a conclusion marks this as something of an achievement. I've borne in mind what was said by my lahverley readers and changed like, maybe a word. Here's hoping. Merf...!

Excommunicate:
1. To deprive of the right of church membership by ecclesiastical authority.
2. To exclude by or as if by decree from membership or participation in a group.

Carlos stares at his face in the mirror and wonders when he started to act like this. It’s a little weird and easily misconstrued. He plays with his hair and pushes it back out of his face with a lazy flick of his wrist. He can see Paul leaning in the doorway behind him and he turns, leans back against the wall. He jams his hands down into his pockets and grins. He wants it to seem natural and he knows that it’s anything but. Paul opens his mouth to speak and Carlos bows his head. He removes his hands from hisc pockets and wraps his arms around his body instead. Paul’s words end up bouncing off of Carlos’s immaculate parting, and, instead of responding immediately, Carlos turns back to the mirror. Paul walks towards him, rests a hand on his shoulder and sighs. Carlos stares at him, or at his reflection in the mirror, and the animosity in that hooded glare chills Paul’s blood. Paul reaches out, touches Carlos’s cheek and feels him jerk away. He doesn’t understand what’s changed and he asks a question that receives a bitter bark of laughter in response.

“If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.” Carlos stops glaring and turns sad eyes on Paul’s face. He wants to touch it, wants to wrap his arms around Paul and just hold him, but he can’t. He can’t because he doesn’t trust himself anymore. He wants to take everything back: the words, the confession, everything. When he looks at Paul, he sees the bruised lips and he’s sorry again. In the end, Carlos gives up on apologizing, mumbles a paper-thin excuse and escapes. He can feel Paul’s eyes in the back of his skull but he doesn’t stop walking. Not this time.

*
They’re hot and they’re tired. Carlos drapes himself across a chair and contents himself to watch Paul. Paul watches Carlos watching him and he grins. It brings his face to life. Carlos pushes his hair out of his face and Paul is suddenly there in front of him. Paul’s fingers are long, nimble and strong, and Carlos’s face fits perfectly between them. This close, Carlos wonders what Paul’s mouth tastes like. Without even realizing he’s doing it, Carlos’s hand moves and his fingers brush across Paul’s lips and then he pushes Paul’s hair back from his face. Carlos thinks, briefly, that he’s never been anywhere even half as erotic as this. He can feel the tension, stretched almost to breaking point, between them. They’re so close that it seems almost natural when their lips touch.

Even so, it’s Carlos who jerks back first, shattering both the moment and Paul’s contact with his skin. “What…?” he mumbles, confused and reeling. Wanting something this badly isn’t supposed to make it happen. Paul only straightens and shrugs his shoulders.

“Nothing,” he says, and pulls his hair forward into his eyes again.

*
Carlos argues and eventually wins. He says he wants to sit by Paul on the plane. In Carlos’s opinion, they have a lot to discuss. Paul is less than ecstatic, but he smiles anyway.

Paul says he just wants to sleep, and Carlos understands that because he’s exhausted as well. Ever since the not-quite kiss, they have been studiously avoiding one another or exchanging little more than curt niceties. Carlos wants to apologize but he can’t because he’s not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. For a long time, Carlos just sits and watches Paul, and then he purses his lips and hollows his cheeks, trying to phrase the exact sentence he needs to break the ice. Except Paul spoils his moment with a crass, “Just fucking speak, hey?” Carlos shifts in his seat and wishes he could switch places with Daniel, but it’s too late now.

“The other night,” he starts, and then stops. That’s not his perfect opening but he can’t change it now, because he’s already started. “The other night, when you…When we…” Paul turns his placid gaze on Carlos.

“It was a mistake, yeah? I thought you wanted it and I was clearly wrong.”

Carlos has to try hard not to laugh at just how wrong Paul is. “No,” he says at length. “No, I did. I mean, I do. You’ve no idea how much I do. I just – it’s kind of a shock.” When Carlos’s lips press back into a thin line, Paul smiles.

“Guess we really need to talk.”

*
Paul chooses a quiet bar and drags Carlos with him. Paul looks casual in his sweater and slacks, and yet Carlos still makes him feel under-dressed. Carlos and his suits. Carlos looks as devastating as Paul has come to expect in black silk. They’ve known one another a long time, too long, perhaps, because Paul can’t think of a single thing to say. Carlos’s sexuality has been a joke for so long that its reality is almost frightening. Paul might have made the first move in the post show haze but that was weeks ago and a continent from home. Right here and right now, Paul is struggling to define himself.

It’s Carlos who takes the initiative, draping himself across the bar and smiling at the girl serving. He orders two beers and then changes his mind. Two beers and two shorts, but the shorts are for him and not for Paul. Carlos thinks he’s going to need all the fortitude he can get. He downs one drink and then the other in quick succession before grabbing his beer and following Paul.

Carlos waits patiently for Paul to speak, and when he doesn’t Carlos opens his mouth to say something himself. And that’s when Paul finally breaks the silence. “I want you to know that I don’t regret it,” he says, his voice so soft that it’s barely audible. Carlos takes a long pull from his beer and leans back in his seat. He pushes his hair back from his face, and Paul takes a moment to reflect that Carlos has beautiful bones. He imagines that Carlos is delicate, fragile, and this train of thought leads to the irreverent and somewhat dubious conclusion that making love to Carlos would be like, well, the same as with a girl.

“There’s nothing to regret though, is there?” Carlos’s voice is resigned, and perhaps even a little sad. “And you’ve got no idea how much I wish we were here because something happened.”

“Something did happen.”

“Not really.”

And they’re back to the silence.

It’s only later, when they’ve both had too much to drink and they’re both perhaps a little drunk, that they forgo the silence. Paul is willing to bet money that they’re not the first to take these initial steps in the cramped cubicle they currently occupy. Paul’s hands cup Carlos’s face and this time Carlos isn’t pushing him away. Instead, Carlos’s hands tangle and ball in Paul’s top, even as Paul pushes him back against the wall. Paul is surprised, slightly, by how hungry Carlos is now, and he’s prepared to revise his opinion that Carlos is at all effeminate. Carlos may have inspired this behavior in Paul, but he’s definitely the leader now. His hands work up into Paul’s hair and they switch positions. Paul has his back pressed to the wall and Carlos leans into him, their bodies close and the heat unbearable.

When Carlos’s hands fumble with his belt, all Paul can do is whimper.

*
The morning after the night before: Paul doesn’t recognize his surroundings and he doesn’t remember how he got here either. The figure beside him, however, he does recognize. Carlos looks far from immaculate first thing in the morning. His hair falls across his face but he looks beautiful when he’s sleeping. Paul wonders why he’s never noticed that before, all the times he’s watched Carlos sleeping on the bus.

“Hey, sleepy,” Carlos murmurs as Paul sits upright. Paul jumps and glances down at him.

“You were asleep,” he says, throat dry and voice cracking slightly.

“Mm, yeah. But I wanted to see you before you snuck out the door.”

Paul lowers his gaze, ashamed at how well Carlos seems to know him. Nothing happened, or nothing much, not after the bar. Paul was too drunk and Carlos too restrained, but even so Paul wouldn’t have said goodbye. He’d have gone back to ignoring Carlos, or being polite and cordial until Daniel or Sam were around. Until he could go back to treating the subject of Carlos’s sexuality as a joke…

“I wasn’t going to just…”

Carlos sighs and moves to drape his arms around Paul’s shoulders. “Don’t lie to me as well, hey?”

*
Next time they’re all together, Paul deliberately places himself two people away from Carlos. Carlos doesn’t look at him, or Paul doesn’t think Carlos looks at him, and he’s adept enough at lying to himself to be convinced that they’ve cracked their problem. Admittedly, Carlos doesn’t consider it to be a problem and Sam appears completely oblivious. Paul doesn’t say anything to Carlos directly and glances at him only once, when he thinks Carlos isn’t looking.

Paul is wrong about a lot of things and this is no different. Carlos has been watching him from beneath lowered lashes for hours.

Carlos catches Paul alone late in the afternoon. Paul has the decency to look ashamed of his behaviour but he still can’t muster an apology. Instead he pulls his hair down over his eyes and pretends like nothing happened. Carlos wants to scream at him, wants to force Paul to acknowledge him, but instead he just remains silent. At length, it is Carlos who whispers that he’s sorry. Sorry for everything Sorry for daring to hope.

And that’s when Paul’s hands move, gripping at Carlos’s shoulders as he brings their bodies together, the force and the passion bruising lips and bodies and hearts.

*
It’s early morning and the hazy daylight seems kind of gray. Carlos stretches and his fingers brush cool bare skin. He smiles slightly and slips from the bed. He showers and hums and it’s off-key and awful but he doesn’t care. He dresses himself and goes to wake Paul.

Except that Paul’s already gone.

*
Carlos makes a decision. He’s not chasing Paul anymore. Paul is not going to reduce him to a complete wreck anymore. From now on, Paul will be the singer with the band and that will be the end of it. No one needs to know what they are or were or might have been.

When Paul sees Carlos, he thinks he’s strong and beautiful and he wishes he had the courage not to care, to just want and have. But he’s not like that and he never will be. So he contents himself to just watch. Except for the moments of weakness when he wants Carlos so badly that it physically hurts.

Paul corners Carlos in a bar one evening. Carlos just smiles benignly at him. “I can’t do this,” Paul whispers against Carlos’s ear.

“Can’t do what?”

“Can’t just watch you ignore me. Not like this.”

Carlos presses his palms against Paul’s chest and eases him back. “You had a chance, but I can’t be there just before you bail. It’s hurting me too, every time.”

Paul nods, but he’s drunk and before he even realizes it, his lips have covered Carlos’s and his tongue seeks entrance to the sacred depths of Carlos’s mouth. Carlos thinks they’ll both regret this, but he can’t deny that he wants it too. And so he lets it continue.

This time it’s Paul’s apartment and they don’t make it as far as Paul’s bed, although it is where Carlos wakes up. His whole body hums and throbs and aches but it’s glorious. He feels bruised and used and tainted and there’s no going back.

At least, he thinks there’s no going back. The note from Paul on the bathroom door says otherwise.

*
Carlos stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders when he started to act like this.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 03.03.2006

Blood in His Hair

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:08:10 GMT

So, hands up who thought they'd ever see this thing in use ever again? Mmm, your overwhelming response astounds me. Mostly, this is purely for archiving purposes. It's got more holes than swiss cheese, I swear to God but eh. It's a start. Something from yours truly, the first in a while. Heh.

Fandom: 30STM
Title: Blood in His Hair
Author: FyrMaiden (fyrmaiden@gmail.com)
Pairing: Jared/Shannon
Rating: R (language, blood & scenes of a sexual nature which some may find offensive)
Genre: angst
Warnings: Incest! Despair! Depression! Violence!
Disclaimer: Not for profit. Just for fun. Should anything herein bear resemblance to those persons concerned, it’s nothing more than a happy coincidence.

*
Blood in His Hair
*

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight
~ Iris, Goo Goo Dolls

It’s midnight again.

Actually, it’s well past midnight but the ending is the same. It’s just me. Me, and these four walls, and I’m standing in my kitchen staring at my cell phone. Shannon always answers when it’s me. He always knows when I’ll need him. Shannon will disengage himself from his own life and come here for me. Because in this whole fucked up fucking world, Shannon is not trying to change me into something else. He loves me for me.

“Jared?” whispers a sleepy voice behind me. I spin and paste a smile onto my face, beckoning a girl in one of my old shirts into my arms. I don’t even know her name, but she was young and she was willing. I didn’t even have the heart to kick her out. I left her in my bed, snug in my sheets, wearing my shirt. I lay there until she slept, and then I took refuge on the fold-out bed in the living room. I knocked myself out with a sleeping pill. Regardless. Here we are in the long grey hours of pre-dawn, and stuck also in the same familiar routine. It’s me, me with a girl I don’t know and don’t care to know better, and an aching need to call Shannon, to explain to him everything he’s wanted to ask for the past five years.

“Hey,” I say softly in response, wrapping my arms back around her. Huge blue eyes stare up at me and I feel my stomach knot.

“You… You left,” she says, and even sleepy, her voice sounds accusing. I can’t look at her.

“Yeah. Look, um… This was - fun,” and I find myself stumbling on the word ‘fun’. It wasn’t fun. She was young, which made me feel strange and beautiful and powerful. She was inexperienced, and I felt like a fucking star when my tongue and my fingers brought her to a shuddering climax. I felt like a fucking supernova when her muscles clenched and her breath caught in her throat and her fingers tangled in the sheets and in my hair. I felt like the king of the world, briefly, when her mouth found mine and I possessed her body in its sweet entirety. But fun?

And I see it in her eyes before I even finish the sentence.

“Fun?” she nods, swallowing hard. “Fun?!”

Her voice is incredulous. I rub my eyes and fail entirely to meet hers. “Look, maybe it’d be better if you just…”

“Don’t. Don’t say it. I’ll get my stuff, just don’t wreck this any more.”

So I don’t. I sit on the counter in the kitchen, pressing my back into the corner. I draw my knees up under my chin and flip through the numbers on my cell once again. She doesn’t speak as she leaves. She adjusts her skirt and shoots me a hurt look that I can’t return, but she doesn’t speak. Should have listened to your girlfriends, I think, remembering their pitying looks as she left with me. They knew. Why didn’t she?

I know what Shannon will say. He’ll tell me it’s because every one thinks they’ll be the one to change me. Shannon always laughs when he says it, and adds that he knows what will change me in the end. I know as well. But I can’t tell him, because he’s the answer and even I can see how wrong that is. I can’t tell Shannon that I love him, and no girl under the sun is going to change that.

*
“Hello?” Shannon sounds exhausted. I haven’t even bothered to check the time. There’s a tired voice in the background, followed by Shannon’s (muffled, probably by his hand over the mouthpiece), “It’s Jared. I have to take this.”

“Shan, I need you.” I don’t have to fake the tears. Watching that girl walk out my door made me feel like the biggest bastard on the planet to date. Probably ever, in fact, because I’m doubtful anyone will ever top that. To his credit, he doesn’t sigh. He doesn’t do anything. He waits, because he knows I’ll continue and talk myself out of the innuendo inherent in that statement. “A girl in a bar, and you know the score. She’s gone. Please, I can’t be alone. You know what happens to me when I’m alone.”

And he does, because Shannon has seen them leaving when he comes to me in the morning. A man who I’ll know as little about as I do about the girls, but where I hurt those girls emotionally, I let the men dominate me physically. I need to see my own blood to make me feel alive. I’m emotionally fucked, incapable of love or affection. Maybe I just value my privacy too much. Maybe I just spent too much time with Shannon when we were both old enough to know that we’d crossed a line.

I take a moment to feel bad for whoever Shannon is with, but it’s not important. I’m important. Me. I’m his family, and I need him more than they do. “Stay where you are,” he says carefully. “I’m coming right now, J. Please, just don’t leave.”

It takes him almost an hour, even in the small hours of the morning. I spend every second of it picturing him trying to explain to his partner, trying to make it seem reasonable that he has to drop everything for his brother. Again. I’ve lost count of the times now. I can see her in my mind’s eye, another one that he loses because of me… I can see the confusion on her face as her pleas fail to elicit the response she needs from him: ‘Your kid brother is almost thirty-four years old! Surely he can deal alone this once, Shan… I can’t, we can’t - I mean…’

And the light in Shannon’s eyes flickers and fades. He smiles softly as he kisses her forehead. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. Jared’s my baby brother. And no, he can’t cope alone.’

In many ways Shannon is right. Shannon’s always been right. I spend that hour reflecting on one thing. I spend 60 long minutes counting the ways in which I’ve failed spectacularly to grow up.

*
I’m sitting on the porch when Shannon arrives. I watch his car roll up the drive and don’t even bother to stand up. In the hazy grey half-light, Shannon gets out of his car and walks towards me. He rubs his hands across his face and then shoves them deep into the pockets of his jeans. “I thought you gave those up,” he says, gesturing the cigarette burning down steadily, caught causally and absent-mindedly between my fingers.

“Seemed kind of appropriate,” I mutter and drop it to the floor. He crushes it beneath the heel of his boot, and takes my hand in his.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Gonna have to change the sheets first. I can’t sleep in those…”

And to his credit, he doesn’t bat an eyelash.

*
When I wake again, I’m drowning in dove grey sheets that smell like Shannon and there’s water running somewhere. The clock says it’s almost afternoon, and I still feel tired, physically and mentally exhausted.

The water stops and Shannon appears in the doorway. “Hey,” he smiles, and I pull the sheets up over my head.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “You should hate me.”

He doesn’t ask what I mean. He knows what I mean. He should hate me, and would, if we shared anything like a normal relationship. Instead, he comes and pulls the sheets back from my head, brushing his lips across my eyelids. “Yeah,” he agrees easily. “I should.”

I open my eyes at that, and meet his stare, inches away from me. “And?”

“And… I’m not even gracing you with an answer, J. Get up.”

*
Morocco. Thailand. London. South Africa. Russia. It doesn’t matter where I am; the story is always the same. The months that I’m away, I end up picking up Shannon’s phone bill as well as mine.

And the price of a plane ticket to wherever I am…

And then, when he’s with me, I end up picking up the pieces of our lives as well.

I meet him at the airport, looking almost as exhausted and dishevelled as he does. He hoists his bag onto his shoulder and asks in a tired voice how we’re getting to the hotel. Usually I mutter something about a car and the fact that I actually only have a double room and won’t people ask questions. Generally, he shuts me up with a kiss.

“People don’t question things that threaten their neat ideals,” he whispers. “They don’t question us because we scare them a little.”

I figure that he must be right. Although I’m sure people know about us, I’ve never had to explain his presence once. He’s my brother. He doesn’t need a better reason to be where I am than that.

He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and hunches his shoulders against the biting cold. I feel suddenly like a complete jackass and take his bags from him. I’m not stupid or inept; I just fail entirely to think. I act on impulse and gut feelings. I don’t plan anything, and maybe I end up seeming heartless or brash. Cold. Distant. Emotionless.

Ask Shannon about that last one. Shannon, who has wiped away more tears than I can remember through the years, and who cleans up the blood and the vomit and the cum. Sometimes I think he’s almost afraid to leave me on my own, for fear of what I might do. I almost believe that he sees my number on his phone and knows already what kind of trouble I’m in.

Maybe he knows before he sees my number. Like a sixth sense, he knows when I’m hurting or bruised or betrayed.

We work on songs and music and anything, really, that keeps me from dwelling on my inability to attach myself emotionally to life, to being alive. Shannon glances at me occasionally and then he laughs a little.

“You’re so happy,” he says. I start and then I frown.

“You what?”

“Like this,” he gestures the paper strewn around us. “Just us and the music. Like it used to be.”

“That was a long time ago,” I whisper, and he nods. “Back then, it was just… it was a concept. A dream.”

“And now?”

“And now… Now it’s just terrifying, Shan. It’s real and I don’t understand any of it.”

He leans in and catches my lips with a kiss. “Exactly,” he breathes against my cheek, wrapping an arm around me and drawing my body towards his. “Everything’s changed. Everything except you and I and us, and maybe we’re both just…”

“Just…?”

“I think that’s your problem. The root of your problems. You have it all and you’ve never been so alone.”

I laugh a little and shake my head. “No,” I say softly, “No, my problem is you and me and us, and the fact I can’t replace you, and the more it goes on the less inclined I am to even try.”

He’s quiet then. He just releases me and turns his face away. “Oh,” he says. And that’s all. And the longer the silence stretches, the louder it is that my heart pounds in my ears, until finally:

“Shan?”

His eyes have never looked so intense or confused as when he finally turns his gaze back towards me. “I love you,” he says, and then he’s gone. He draws away from me and pushes himself to his feet. The door to my room closes before I can even begin to reply.

I can’t work out if there even is a response that does justice to twenty years of pretending.

*
It’s late when he comes back and it’s my turn to be strong. Shannon watches me from beneath a frown and I glance at him from the corner of my eye. Whenever he thinks I might be looking at him, I watch his eyes scoot away.

“How long do we keep this up?” I ask and he shrugs his shoulder without responding. We lay together, my head pillowed on his chest, my hand resting on his shoulder as I gaze up into his face.

“As long as it takes,” he breathes.

And then he closes his eyes. Finally, he actually sleeps and then I roll away from him. From the window, he looks beautiful. I light a cigarette that I don’t want and won’t smoke and I watch him through a noxious blue haze.

*
When Shannon leaves, he leaves a void which I spend days trying to fill. There are girls and there are guys and there’s a sound telling off from the director and hours and hours of make-up to cover the bruises. I spend nights alone, staring at my phone, trying to work out whether I should just call or whether to wait until we’re face to face. And there are more nights with girls, and less with guys, because I spend time trying to appease my sexuality and assuage my guilt.

The longer I spend alone, the more I wonder if I backed him into a corner. I wonder if I drove a wedge between us by needing him too much, relied too much on his always being there.

It’s when I’m sitting in the airport that I finally gather together the balls to just call him. His voice laughs over the phone at me: “Don Juan.”

“Huh?”

“The amount of people attached to your name. You’re like Don fucking Juan!”

Even I have the decency to blush. “Yeah…” I hear my voice trail off and Shannon is quiet as well.

“Jared?”

“What?”

“Why?”

Good question. I don’t know. “Because…” I stop. I ponder. “I…”

“Because you?”

In my head, I try several answers; because I’m sick of holding back? Because I’m sick of trying to convince myself that he’s not the only person who leaves me happy or sated; tired of needing him, and him not being there?

“Would you believe me if I said because I love you, too?”

Shannon’s end goes silent and I start to fidget, shifting nervously in my seat. “I’ll speak to you when you get back.”

And I’m left staring once more at the screen of my cell, wishing fervently that we could go back to pretending.

*
It’s different this time. There’s no Shannon at the airport, no Shannon at my house and no Shannon on the other end of the phone. I leave him a message, and then I leave him another message every hour until I run out of things to say. And then I leave the silence, wondering if it says more than I can with words.

And from there it gets worse.

There’s no food in the cupboards, and usually Shannon has bought something. There’s nothing in the refrigerator, and even the dried pasta I had somewhere is gone. Shannon must have cleaned up.

It’s – it’s kind of weird. It’s the first time I’ve come home to absolutely nothing, and it scares me a little. I end up on the sofa with my knees tucked under my chin eating take out pizza whilst I wait for the phone to ring. I slide the pizza box onto the table, and curl up to watch tired re-runs on the television, and I guess I must doze off because the phone wakes me. I drag myself up and will it to be Shannon for two more rings.

“Jared?” says a voice in response to a fuzzy ‘hello’. My heart plummets. It’s not Shannon. I guess that was too much to hope for.

“Yeah?”

“Hey. Uh…”

I don’t know who it is. I stumble over my words and want to just put the phone down on them. “Look…” I start, wanting to tell the strange voice on the phone that I’m tired and mostly just want to hear from my brother.

All I know about the voice is that it’s female. I can’t even give it a name. It sighs at me though, and says, “Shannon’s on his way over to you. He couldn’t get a response on your cell. He’s been trying. He gave me your number and asked me try you again, to let you know…”

Figures that one of us would have managed to put the past behind us. “Oh.” And once again I sound like a jackass. “Thanks,” I mumble, trying to make amends and failing dismally.

“It’s all good,” she mumbles in response. She doesn’t know me. I guess it’s kind of daunting talking to people you’ve never met. Or it is if you don’t do it for a living. I kill the phone. I’ll tell Shannon the line cut out if he ever asks. I don’t want to carry on a conversation. I want to sleep. I want Shannon and I want to sleep and I’m not sure which I need more. The lack of both is certainly killing me though.

When I next wake up, I’m in my own bed. Shannon’s sitting next to me, and his fingers trail through my hair. He smiles at me easily. “Hey, sleepy,” he whispers. “I didn’t realise you were coming straight back. I’d have got the place sorted for you. Or at the least, I’d have got you some real food.”

“Pizza seemed appropriate,” I murmur, resisting the urge to move closer to him. He laughs a little. “Besides, you’d have known if you answered your phone.” My voice sounds bitter and accusing. I hate myself for it. I hate even more that Shannon’s hand leaves my hair and he leaves the bed. I bury my face in the pillow and will him to just go or something.

“What happened to us, huh?”

“I don’t know,” I say, my voice muffled by the pillow. I don’t want to move ever again, I decide, figuring I’ll just smother myself with the pillow. “I guess we both said some things, and now we can’t unsay them.”

Shannon’s silence stretches and I turn my face to look at him. His lips twitch, almost like he’s not sure whether to laugh or smile or cry, but the sadness is palpable. “I don’t know about you,” he whispers at length, “but I meant every word.”

It’s then that I sit up and crawl across the bed towards him. Standing only inches from him, breathing his air, I whisper my own confirmation. “I wasn’t joking,” I say softly. “All the others? It’s always been because I can’t have you.”

When Shannon’s lips meet my own, it’s a consummation that has been three decades coming.

*
True to form, for a long time we don’t talk about what happened. Our relationship changes on a fundamental level, but the word itself never actually raises its head. We skirt around it, and I know what that look in his eyes means. He probably reads a million emotions on my face as well. Sometimes, we forget to speak at all.

You hear that at support groups, the first step is admitting the problem. All the while you pretend that nothing is wrong, you can't resolve it properly. You have to accept that you need help. It's not supposed to work the other way. You're not supposed to admit the problem and still feel the chasm growing. Where once I had a brother and confidant, there is a man not quite my lover and a little less than my friend. We're cordial, and we're certainly not rude, but it's not the same.

It's Shannon who eventually breaks the stalemate. I find him sitting on my countertop drinking milk straight from the bottle. His eyes meet mine and I feel a pain that I can't actually name bloom in my chest.

“Would you take it back?” he asks. I frown and look away, run my tongue across my teeth and purse my lips. He's staring at me when I look back. “If you could," he says, “would you change those words?”

A heavy sigh escapes, and slowly – almost reticently – I shake my head. I feel my hair brush my collar and shake it back off of my face. “No,” I murmur at length, “No, I wouldn't.” A pause, and then, “Would you?”

Shannon gazes at me levelly, and I wait. It's all I can do. I can't force a response, as much as the silence kills me. Mostly, I just want back the man I fell in love with. I want my brother back. Shannon's voice is heavy with a jumble of emotions when it finally makes it past his lips. “I don't know,” he whispers. “I'm confused by so much. It was easier when…”

“When people assumed they knew the truth,” I murmur, moving slowly towards him. He slides from the countertop and wraps his arms around me. His cheek presses against mine and his lips graze my ear.

“Mm,” he breathes, his arms moving around my shoulders, drawing me in towards him. “And there’s us, abiding by the laws of society. Quietly hating that conformity and never… Never daring to say it.”

Shannon buries his face in my neck and his next sentence is muffled in my skin. I hear him though, his words burning into my flesh and my psyche.

“Wouldn’t take it back, J. Couldn’t.”

Fin

© FyrMaiden November 2005

Enslaved

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:21:44 GMT

Fandom: Linkin Park
Title: Enslaved
Pairing: Chester/Brad (main pairing; others involved and implied)
Status: Standalone (COMPLETE)
Category: Drama/Angst
Rating: NC-17 – language, sex, drugs
Summary: ‘And the thought again, the thought – knowledge – that has been with me since I was young: I am a drug; one look will never be enough.’ He is addiction, and addiction is never healthy…

Author's Note: And so this amounts to the Christmas fic I've been harping on about... except for the part where it changed into something else whilst I was writing it. Hmm... With thanks to cm at mumblemutter for the beta.

Tick. Tick tick tick… Sitting, watching, waiting, glass clutched firmly in hand. Midnight.

“Merry fucking Christmas.”

A sigh, one long expulsion of suppressed breath. And then two firm hands against my cheeks. Two near-black eyes pouring their concern out, a heart worn carelessly pinned to a sleeve: a man begging to be shattered and broken, and a man who’s picked just the right person to do that for him.

I stare right through him, past him, over his shoulder. I stare anywhere that means not meeting his eyes. He presses his lips to my forehead and prises the glass from between my fingers.

“You’ve had enough,” he whispers, standing the glass on the floor and guiding me to my feet. I stumble and lean on him heavily, the world spinning and revolving. “You’ve had too much.”

There’s a tree, and it sparkles brightly. Its myriad lights dance before my eyes, wine and tears blurring them together. There’s a tree, and a song that plays in the background. Its words are soft comfort to me, a reminder that I’m not alone. There is a tree, and our song, and a body that holds me tight and doesn’t let me go.

Backtrack.

Tick.

Tick tick tick…

Countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two. One… There sits my father, glass of wine in one hand and his switch across his knees, waiting – always waiting for one of us to make a move. There was a tree, and through the tears its lights sparkled.

Two hands. Two lips. Two eyes.

Two bodies.

Everything in pairs; everything arranged and perfected with anal exactitude. A place for everything, and everything in its place: we sleep side by side, although sometimes his arm rests across my chest possessively. He loves me, he says, and in his eyes flickers the fire of doubt and uncertainty. Perhaps if I could say it back…

I trip and stumble over the words, ‘love’ sticking in the back of my throat. What is love but loss and longing…?

And the ticking of the clock on the wall…

*
Foil and ribbons and bows, boxes full of the weird, the wonderful and the outlandish – everything a gift from a friend with happiness in mind. I sit in the midst, staring with glassy jaded eyes at the presents, and I try to force my mind to imbibe Christmas…

I clutch a wine glass and slip slowly into unconsciousness.

He pulls a blanket over me and sits on the floor, his head leaning back against the cushions. There are tears in his beautiful eyes that I want to brush away.

“Brad?” I whisper and he turns, glancing at me and then quickly away again.

“I want to help you,” he breathes.

“I…”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I know. You don’t need help, right?”

“I love you,” I breathe, listening to the sounds of his tears.

*
“What happened to you?”

Silence.

“Chester?”

Silence.

“Sleepy.”

His fingers pull the sheets to cover me and keep me warm. His voice is quiet, almost amused, and his lips are warm as they press against my eyelids. I murmur and I feel his mouth curve into a smile.

“I love you.”

And, as always, those three words are spoken to the silence, echoing lonely in the cavernous dark.

When he sleeps, I curl against him and bury my face in his neck. My stomach churns and my body revolts, but I can’t let him go.

Two bodies. One night. And there’s me, isolated and removed.

*
Backwards once more, my life playing itself out in reverse and retrospect.

We meet.

Christmas 1999; it’s a big event for everyone involved. I’ve moved from Phoenix because there’s nothing in Arizona but death and despair, long hot days of staring into the abyss. We’re at Mike’s house. I’m in the bathroom, naked in the shower with the bathroom door locked, washing blood and vomit from my limbs. In the hallway and on the landing, people laugh, people get high and people get drunk. In the bedrooms, people fuck one another; random sordid acts that they won’t remember tomorrow.

The door rattles. I stand in the middle of the bathroom and watch the door handle with alcohol induced fascination. The mechanics intrigue me suddenly. I stand and watch and listen.

And unlock the door.

A man. He stands in the doorway and tilts his head, runs his hand across his shaved scalp, and then he grins. I make no attempt to cover the nakedness, and he makes no attempt to disguise the lust. And the thought again, the thought – knowledge – that has been with me since I was young: I am a drug; one look will never be enough.

He steps over the threshold and closes the door behind him, locking it with one fluid gesture. His smile is animal, feral and completely untameable. I have no desire even to try.

At this point, he’s probably the most natural partner I’ve had. We don’t try to make it anything beyond carnal gratification, but with him inside me and my arm braced against the wall, my head bowed and my breath hitching in my throat – it feels like utopia.

Forwards.

New Year. The millennium is – explosive, and memorable for the drugs and the destruction and the sex. We spend three hours steeped in hedonistic excess, and we’re like a machine. Our nails like claws, tearing and raking at one another’s flesh. There’s no hiding from the comedown this time, and so we spend the next three days drinking and fucking as well.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, trailing wet kisses across my stomach. I catch my lip between my teeth and tangle my fingers in his growing hair, pulling him up towards me, crushing his words with my mouth, kissing so hard that it hurts.

“Mm,” I murmur as I pull away, “just…”

We don’t have a relationship. We have sex.

*
Forwards…

“You can’t believe everything you read in gossip columns!”

“So you’re not fucking around?”

I don’t move or blink. His hands grab my shoulders and rattle my brain. “Chester! Are you or aren’t you?”

I turn my face to meet his eyes and shrug. “If I have?”

He places his palms flat on the work surface and glares at me, daggers shooting from his eyes. The clock on the wall says it’s almost 9. I stare, watching the seconds of my life tick themselves away. I don’t realise the time is evaporating until the clock says 11.30. Two and a half hours of watching the day disappear.

I can see the source of this eruption open on the counter. It was just lunch with a girl I knew in Phoenix. Well – a girl and her Los Angeles beau. Lunch and a hotel and…

…her nails in my shoulders, her legs around my waist. Her lips crushing mine, sucking at my throat and his teeth sinking into my shoulder, drawing blood, warm as it runs down my spine, his fingers harsh and invading as they push into my body…

And the climax… It’s - almost interstellar, space-age awe rocketing through my body.

There’s a photographer outside the hotel. I see him, and kiss her.

And wait for the backlash…

*
Once, twice… I lose track. Brad sits in silence and stares at me. He sucks his teeth, his lip, runs his hands through his hair, closes his eyes… He breathes in, and he breathes out.

“Why?”

I sit on the couch and drink whiskey neat from the bottle. Bourbon burns my throat and leaves it red raw, but somehow being drunk feels right. I haven’t done this for months.

“How many?”

His voice sounds naked, ragged. I try to focus, but before my eyes there are four Brads and I can’t quite get a handle on which one is real. They’re all fucking real. I giggle helplessly and the whiskey bottle crashes to the floor. They’re all – fucking!

And then he kneels in front of me, his hands on my knees. His hands on my knees pushing them down and apart, and he’s crouching between them, staring at me with those huge eyes…

“Chester?”

I hold up my fingers and stare blearily as I count aloud. “I… don’t know,” I slur, waving my hands vaguely as I run out of fingers. “Seventeen thousand million. Who cares?”

And my ears think they hear two words but my brain doesn’t want to know. “I care.”

He spins away from me, and his feet thunder on the stairs. I sit in complete dazed silence and say nothing as the front door slams as well.

*
Forward… forward.

Eighteen months.

I should be a walking disease. I have… money and sex and neat bourbon, and there’s nothing else I can think of that I particularly want. Everything that doesn’t fall into those categories has become something of a by-product, disposable and completely superfluous

Christmas. Another party, more free drink and a warm room, and a waterbed. Mike’s house again, because Mike has the biggest house and the biggest circle of friends. It’s numbing to discover I’ve fucked… all of them. Mike and his wife, on separate occasions, both since they’ve been married; Mike’s friend David and his wife, but they were together, just needed an extra body… Mike’s college friend Joe is a voyeur – he gets his kicks watching. He has a semi-precious porn collection of various men fucking me; his favourite is a tape he has of a friend of his, body mottled with scarification and the angry keloid lines of self-mutilation, fucking me until I bleed and scream and cry for release. He plays drums in a college band, but I never learn his name. It’s torture, but it turns me on.

And in the middle of it all watching me with curiously dead eyes is Brad.

“What are you?”

He speaks from across the room, just tilts his head and parts his lips and it’s like we’ve never been apart. Before I know it, I’m in his arms and his hipbones grate against my flesh, threatening to saw me in half. His mouth is hungry, and he tastes of ash and something I can’t quite place.

Wormwood.

“How long?”

He ignores the question and his tongue invades my body. My fingers tangle in the sheets, and I whimper involuntarily. He’s still one of the best partners I’ve ever had, even running on absinthe and opium.

Takes an addict to know one.

*
Forward. Fast forward. Whirlwind split second scenes of tragedy excess and despair.

Slow. Focus the blur.

2002. March.

I don’t see Brad again from that moment until my birthday. He does some growing up and loses more weight. I don’t change. Or – not anatomically. Maybe I gain a pound, lose a few. I’m more or less the same. Brad’s… different.

Brad says, “I stopped chasing the dragon. Killing me, you know?”

We’re at Dave’s house, because Mike’s – well, Mike’s not around at the moment. Mike’s house is on the market, and Anna is expecting another man’s child. Mike’s skipped town, for all that she cares. She pauses briefly to kiss my cheek, and then she whirls away again in a flash of colour and silk and smoke.

We’re at Dave’s, because Dave has a swimming pool and Dave has a lot of rooms. And because Mike’s friends know Dave, so it’s guaranteed to be a good party. Dave has the drinks and the drugs, and he throws a party that almost makes us forget that Mike has UV lighting in all of his rooms. Ours is a party culture that revels in its exhibitionism.

“You’re… different.”

He grins and casts a glance sideways at the wall, and rubs his hand across his stomach. He’s vanished beneath his clothes. He’s a wraith, clinging to the edges of being alive. He embodies every negative element of our visual excess.

“I always wanted you,” he breathes.

And it hurts so much, but I can’t stop. Because he’s beautiful and pale and I don’t want to be with him so much as I want to be what he is. I envy the clean lines of his skeleton and the jarring grate of his bones as he slams into me. God, it kills me…

But he’s like the drummer. He turns me on.

*
Relentless – time marches onwards. Forwards. Never ending…

He says, “I love you.”

He says, “I have an apartment, in the city.”

He says, “Live with me.”

And I say yes.

But I don’t know why. I don’t like the inner city sanctum. I feel claustrophobic, trapped within the four walls of his rooms. I long to break free, and instead I sink into a pit of misery and… not bourbon but wine, because wine is what he has.

He says, “Stop. For me?”

He says, “You must actually be pushing seventeen thousand million, right, Don Juan?”

He says, “Chester, just – go.”

And I sit and listen to the clock.

Tick.

Tick tick tick…

*
Time stalls, but somehow the months inch onwards.

Brad says no more parties, and so we stop and instead we just… sit. Brad has things the way he likes them. I am under lock and key, his alone, to have and to hold and to keep. He looks at me like I should be grateful. He smiles at me like I should understand why he does this.

But I don’t.

I see myself. I see my reflection and its emaciated lines and I laugh. In silence, I watch the second hand on the clock, listening to the minutes evaporating.

Tick.

Tick tick tick…

Flash of the past; the empties in the kitchen, row upon row of green glass sin…

The tree lights turned off, and the music turned down, and my father laughing… sitting in his chair, laughing at me as I watched him from the doorway.

“Your mother,” he slurred, wine glass slipping from his hand and staining the threadbare carpet merlot red. “Your mother couldn’t do anything right, not even raise her own bastard son.”

And in the silence of the hallways, I scream my frustration to the world.

*
Forwards.

One last time.

2003. Christmas.

All the memorable events are Christmases. Each a ghost: past, present and future, co-joined and overlapping, their faces morphed and hideous.

Mike’s house has UV lights in every room, and Brad says, “Let’s play.” Joe, the perennial artiste, plays director, adding another number to his catalogue of sin. Brad straddles my hips and threads ultraviolet jewellery through holes in my nipples and my dick, and Joe dims the lights so that the paint outlining my tattoos glows. Brad tilts his head and bares his teeth. Joe murmurs his appreciation.

And I know I’m home, preening beneath their adoring gaze.

Sweat seeps from every pore. Paint smudges and blurs and my limbs become longer, ethereal in the half-light. I bow my head and push back against Brad, and his hands smear blood and paint some more. With every movement, I feel something give, but the pain and the exhilaration bring me to life, my spine arching until it almost breaks. I press my head back against Brad’s shoulder and his lips suck at my neck as his fingers wrap around my erection.

And then I’m lying on my back, my body aching and Brad’s tongue licks come from my stomach. When we sleep, his arm drapes across me possessively and I know there’s nowhere I’d rather be, because he’s still the one drug that never wears off.

He says, “I love you”, and I try to respond but the words stick in my throat. Alcohol pumps through my veins – wine and whiskey and the illegal intoxicating wormwood that used to poison his soul. I roll onto my side and bury my face against him, mumbling a response that I hope suffices. He says nothing more, and I wonder if perhaps we’ve died.

*
This is a cage, a prison, a hell of my own devising. I should have told him no, should have run a mile and instead I sit and stare at the tree as he decorates it. My mind plays out the Christmases at Mike’s house. My mind sifts through every drug fuelled orgy and the excitement of meeting him and knowing him.

In retrospect, Brad was beautiful. Now Brad is a grey spirit, half in this world and slipping half into another. I stare at him and try to make some sense of what I see but he’s fading fast. He sits in front of me on the floor and leans his head back against my knees. He prises glasses from my cold fingers and kisses my eyelids in the darkness. But I’m not really alive. I’m becoming what he is.

“What happened to us?”

“We grew up.”

I want to turn back time. I want to carry on living in retrospect, because the past has a pretty rose tint and I like that. The future has – blackness and despair and not much else.

*
There’s a tree, and it sparkles brightly. Its myriad lights dance before my eyes, wine and tears blurring them together. There’s a tree, and a song that plays in the background. Its words are soft comfort to me, a reminder that I’m not alone. There is a tree, and our song, and a body that holds me tight and doesn’t let me go.

And there’s Brad, with concern in his eyes and his heart pinned to his sleeve, trying desperately to save a man on a mission to self-destruct.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 22.12.2004

Power and the Glory

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:20:04 GMT

Fandom: Linkin Park
Title: Power and the Glory, or Five Things That Never Happened to Chester Bennington
Pairing: Chester-centric, but no pairing as such
Category: Angst
Rating: R - drugs, prostitution, death
Summary: Inspired by cm's Five Things That Never Happened challenge at lpffichallenge: abandonment; prostitution; infidelity; alcoholism; and the eulogy...

i – alone

You sit on the bed and stare at the dresser. It registers that something is missing, but you can’t place what exactly. Everything seems different, but you’re much too self-absorbed to notice. For five years, the world has been your oyster. Everything has gone your way, and you can’t comprehend or remember now a world where it wasn’t always quite so simple.

You sit and you stare.

And slowly the missing object resolves itself. In front of the mirror there used to be a photograph in a beautiful gilt frame. It was taken back when you still remembered how to smile, before the destructive, abortive shot at glory, before the fame and the resultant dissolution of your life. She smiled and kissed your cheek, and you wrapped your arm around her, and held your son on your hip.

Gone, and as you look around you see more things that are not there. Or rather, you see the holes where things that should have been there are no longer. Her dresses are gone from the closet, her underwear from the drawer; and the expensive perfume you bought her is gone as well.

But she’s left you one thing. On the dresser, where the photo once was, is her ring. It glitters and refracts the light, and your tears bounce from its white gold surface. You slide the ring into the drawer and make a vow never to look at it again, so help you god, and the rest of her belongings you pack into bags. You look at these at least once a day. You put a lock on your son’s room, and sometimes you take out the key and sit in his room to cry.

You ask yourself questions which you cannot answer. Why has she gone? Where, and with whom?

And you have one last thought as the rot sets in: so this is how it feels to be alone.

ii – self-destruction

He asks no questions as he counts my money, and he points to a door. I force a smile and wonder which of his whores I have paid for this time. I feel like dirt. I don’t even get as far as opening the door before nausea claims me, and he swears as he scoops me from the floor. “Fucking fag,” he mutters as I am escorted to the entrance, money non-refundable…

I’m not entirely sure how I got from patron of his grim brothel to being just another guy with a jaded, glassy stare abusing his own body for an extra fifty to let some sleazy soak fuck him without a rubber. It was never what I had planned for myself.

I see myself in mirrors, rouged and painted. I wear collars to hide the finger marks around my neck. I cover the bruises with foundation, and wear kohl around my eyes as I strip. I am a sleazy sideshow oddity, a freak and an abomination. I am sex.

And time progresses.

I learn to hate my reflection. I learn to loathe the touch of another human being. I learn to fear the sound of feet in the carpeted hallways. I learn to know when the only way I’ll see daylight again is to play dead; come to understand what turns men on.

And there are things that I miss as well – I miss daylight, and regular hours. I miss my self-respect and pity my own self-destruction. I miss my life…

Most importantly, I miss knowing what a smile meant, and miss the time when sex was more than just ritual, more than just money, more than just cold hard cash and a roof. I miss having somewhere to go home to, and someone.

It takes a while, months perhaps, but it comes to me. I miss Sam.

iii – devilry

The telephone is a loud insistent trill in the silence of the house. I disentangle myself from my lover’s arms, staring down at him as I slip from the bed. He rolls onto his side, and I run a hand across my throat and my jaw. My skin crawls.

It’s too dark to see the display on the phone, and my voice is tired as I murmur an opening hello. My knees sag as I hear the voice that responds.

“Do you have some time to hear me out?”

His voice hasn’t changed, and I feel the smile on my lips. “Yes,” I whisper in response. “Yes, I have time.”

“I’m sorry for things, how it ended - the way that I treated you. I don’t know how to apologise anymore. I don’t suppose I ever did. But I – I miss you, and I know that now. Know it like I never did; understand that I can’t live without you. I love you. And I guess I never told you that often enough either. But I need you, Sam, need you so much. I need you to make it all alright again.”

I want to be able to find the words to console him, but they’re not coming. My voice only sticks in my throat and makes me feel sick. My stomach twists itself in knots.

“Are you there?”

His voice is identical; uncertain and demanding and completely unfazed by the hour. “Yes,” I croak.

“Please,” he whispers now, begging, “please come. I’m dying here, alone.”

I want to be able to tell him to just fuck off, that he can’t go from treating me the way he did to imploring me to return. And then I remember how it felt with him – the sex and the drama and the passion, and I compare it to the steadiness and the boredom I live with now. He never hit me or hurt me; only took me for granted…

And the irony doesn’t escape me as he moves within me, as my nails tear at his pale flesh and my thighs clamp against his creamy hips – I’m cheating on my lover… with my husband.

iv – decline

He lies awake at night and watches shadows on the ceiling. At 8am every day, he takes his first drink – Irish coffee, caffeine and whiskey. He can feel the dual burn. His brain is wired. This is his life now; drugs and sex, sex and drugs – one fuelling the need for the other. The alcohol merely helps.

As Chester drinks his coffee, Sam slips from his bed. Not everyday, but some days. She pulls on the clothes she discarded so eagerly the night before, and she kisses his cheek as she slips from the door. Her hair isn’t even damp, and the towels in the bathroom hang exactly as they always do. She must crawl into bed beside her lover still smelling of him.

He wonders what she tells her lover she does. He wants her to say she’s a stripper, like she used to be, back when they first met. But it’s more likely that she says night work for the Samaritans – voluntary, of course. She’s got no need to work for money.

It’s her that he thinks of when he snorts cocaine. He draws the line at heroin. Heroin might affect his career of choice, when his veins collapse and he’s comatose, staring at the ceiling. But coke is different. He thinks of Sam exclusively when he’s high. And sometimes when he’s not as well.

He remembers her words, days before she walked out, days before she left (and months before she returned): “You’re not a rock star! You’re a two-bit fucking talent, Chester. You’re nothing. You’re washed up. You’ve burned everything out. Your voice, your lungs. Love. Everything! All you are is a cliché – sex and drugs and rock and fucking roll!”

As luck would have it, she was right. Sex for money, money for coke – he’s a fucking rock star now…

v – eulogy

Now that it’s too late, she finds the tears for him, and she finds the time to grieve. She stands at his grave and weeps. It shouldn’t have been like this. He shouldn’t have been alone. Her voice breaks as she apologises. She tries to tell her new lover, but the words don’t sink it. She wants to shake his calm placidity and yell at him what she is – she’s a stripper and a barroom entertainer. She only stopped for her son, and for Chester, because Chester was beautiful and amazing and he was going to be a fucking star…

So she stands at his grave and lays flowers for him, and she tells him all the things she wanted to say when he was alive. She berates him for abandoning her, although she was the one who left, and then she whispers that their son asks about his daddy and she just can’t answer the questions.

Eventually she runs out of words, and that’s when she says that their son is living with her mom for now, because Sam’s in the middle of a breakdown. She just can’t cope without Chester – even Chester fuelled by whiskey and sex and badly cut cocaine was better than no Chester at all…

Which reminds her – there’s an off-licence near the crematorium. She needs whiskey.

At 8am, Sam takes her first drink of the day. Irish coffee – caffeine and whiskey – and she can feel the dual burn as it slides down her throat… She sits on the bed and tries to think what is missing from the dresser, but the images just won’t form.

And on the table beside the bed is a picture in a beautiful gilt frame, of her and Chester, and their son when he was just a baby. Soon he will be 3. She kisses Chester’s cheek, and he wraps his arm around her as he holds his son on his hip.

And yes – she knows that those things on her cheeks are the tracks of her tears…

FIN

© FyrMaiden – 12.12.2004

Mute Idolatry

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:35:04 GMT

Fandom: Linkin Park
Title: Mute Idolatry
Pairing: Brad/Mike Brad/Chester
Genre: Angst/Drama
Rating: R – death, murder, sex, imagery
Status: Standalone
Summary: Beneath the façade, beauty faded. Behind the scenes, the rot set in. But Mike wasn’t prepared to let go. Mike wasn’t prepared for the end of their dream. When Brad moved on, the worst could only be expected…

Author's Notes: As some of you may be aware, this started life as a 500 word fic I wrote for lpffichallenge and it's mostly grown from there. I started this with cm's A Sorta Fairytale whirring around in my mind, because I have so much respect for her writing style. And so I stole the layout (short multi-chaptered = standalone), and perhaps a smidge of the style. Mostly, however, I figure it's come out being mostly all me once again, because I can't write anything without it turning into a tour de force of depression angst and raw unbridled desire. Go me. Read and enjoy. Please?

Prologue

He sat on the edge of the bed, blood soaking into his jeans and smearing across his hands. Tears swam in the depths of his eyes as he surveyed the carnage wrought upon them, their quiet urban domesticity displaced by the vengeful violence of their death. He breathed through his nose, choking occasionally on a sob as he ran his fingers lightly across their eyelids, chewing his lip until it, too, bled.

“It – this… It was never meant to end like this,” he whispered to their deaf ears, prying stiff fingers from cold, clammy flesh. Minutes passed, hours faded, time blurring into a haze as he tried to find forgiveness in the depths of their blind eyes. He reached with his red fingers to one face in particular, ran his palms across its jaw and the planes of its cheeks. He closed its eyelids so he wouldn’t be plagued with its guileless glare. A sigh shuddered from his body as he pushed himself to his feet, meeting his gaze in the full-length mirror by the door. His own eyes accused, and his laugh sounded maniacal in his ears as the butt of the gun sent his reflection tinkling to the floor.

Hot water washed over him as he stood beneath their shower. He imagined them together, imagined how they must have looked, and he cried. His tears mingled with their blood. He braced his hand against the wall, his nails raking the tiles as he collapsed to his knees. His breath sounded hoarse, ragged in his ears, and his guilt would not leave him alone.

Naked and dripping - his black hair appearing almost oily as it clung to his face - he made one final call before collecting the gun again. He called the police and gave them the address. “It was me,” he whispered, emptying the bullets from the chamber of the revolver. Four left, all present and correct. He toyed with the idea of Russian roulette, but understanding swept over him in the instant. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want anyone to have died, but the guilt seemed easier than turning the gun upon himself. “It was me. I did it… I killed him. Both of them…”

The phone slipped from his hand, thudding on the thick bedroom carpet. From the corner of his eye, he could see his lover still cradled in the protective embrace of the man who had replaced him. He pressed his back against the wall and slipped down it, paper burning his spine until he crouched, his arms wrapped around his knees. In his head, he hears relentlessly his lover’s voice. He hears his pleas; he hears his endless professions of love… For one shattering moment, they almost made a difference.

But love was gone. Love had fled from those beautiful eyes, and he ached to feel those arms around him. In one bitter moment of rage, he had swiped from himself and the world the one thing he had always relied upon. Why bother now?

He didn’t move when the sirens blared in the street outside, nor when the door of their expensive apartment was kicked in. He laughed softly as a man with crew-cut hair and a navy blue flack jacket stood over him. He pointed to the bed with its dripping crimson sheets.

“I loved him,” he murmured as they hauled him to his feet. “I thought there was no life without him. And I – I killed him. Killed them. Both of them, because – because he shouldn’t have replaced me…”

Mute Idolatry
1.

The door slams behind him and Mike thinks briefly that he can see the wall shake and shudder around it. The sound ricochets through him and reverberates in his skull. Hours later, he can still hear it. His fevered mind thinks he can see the cracks growing around the door, spreading outwards until the whole shell of the house caves in around him. The artist sees the gross comparison with the way his life has turned out. He laughs at the door, hours later when he can finally face it again. He says to the door all the things he wishes he could have said to Brad. All the things he should have said and didn’t. In the end, it probably would have made no difference. Sometimes things change and die. Love. Love dies every single time. And then he laughs at himself as well. He has to laugh. Laughter is easier than crying.

Mike wonders why. He spends a lot of time wondering why, trying to think how it could have gone so grossly wrong for them. Mike thinks – Mike thinks it might have been college. They were kids when they made their grand promises and built their dreams on wisps of cloud. They had promised one another in the dusky morning hours that they would be true to one another forever.

Forever turned out to be too long.

Mike stares at the door, fooling himself into believing that it will reopen, and that Brad’s familiar smile will greet him. He pays no heed to the tracks of his tears, and sometimes he forgets to eat. All he can concentrate on is how much he misses Brad, and how quickly their beauty faded.

And slowly, things he never would have contemplated begin to make some kind of sense. His artist brain sees beauty in the abstract. Revenge sings a bittersweet song in his ears, and he listens. He listens to the words that drip poison into his ravaged mind.

Love… Love is complicated and vile and beautiful and painful… Love is hate. Love is war. Love is – love is Brad…

He plots.

2.

The door slams behind him, but he doesn’t look back. He heaves his bag to his shoulder and keeps walking. In the street outside is a low slung black sports car, and as he approaches it its driver pops the trunk. He throws his bags in and rests his hands on the gleaming surface as he closes his eyes briefly, exhaling slowly. And then, glancing back at the house, he pulls open the door of the car. He smiles at the figure inside and slides into the seat. The leather feels cool against his skin, and he sinks into its depths, a sigh mingling with a laugh as it crosses his lips. He turns his head and glances at his companion, who smiles back easily. The engine roars as they speed down the deserted streets, 5am easy in their minds.

His companion glances at him occasionally, and his voice is a whisper that barely breaks the silence. “Are you alright?” he murmurs. Brad smiles and nods, and then leans his head back against the head rest as he exhales once more. His breath is long and sad and perhaps a little desperate.

“Yeah,” he murmurs to the ceiling and the rolls his head to the side, flicking a smile at Chester. “Just more drained than I imagined.”

Chester nods and moves his hand to squeeze Brad’s leg. Brad smiles more easily now, his body relaxing into the seat’s intimate embrace. “It’s all over now,” he whispers, and Brad nods his head up and down just once, agreeing silently. Chester’s smile is sad, and his heart aches for Brad.

“You could go back,” he suggests. “If it would help.”

Brad laughs and shakes his heavy head. “It wouldn’t,” he says. “We’d kill one another, eventually.”

He thinks of how things were, and how they’ve become. He can’t help but compare the two. He loves Mike, always loved him. But he can’t live with him anymore, can’t be with him. Mike’s changed – the sex and the drugs, alcohol and hedonism fuelling him and his ‘art’. Brad fell out of love with the man Mike has become, but knows that if Mike could just change he would join him again – knows that Mike never will, though.

Chester pulls the car over to the side of the road and presses a hand to Brad’s cheek, turning his face towards his own, so their eyes meet. Brad stares deep into Chester’s chocolate stare, and sees his reflection. He leans in towards Chester and presses his lips to Chester’s. Chester’s response is immediate, his fingers splaying against Brad’s skin as they run into Brad’s hair, Brad’s own hand pressing against his throat. He feels safe as Brad’s arm slips around him, the kiss deepening. As they pull apart, Chester grins at Brad, and Brad grins back.

“Take me home,” Brad whispers, and Chester nods his head this time, up and down, just once. They both know which home Brad means, and Chester doesn’t stop again until the car pulls up on his drive.

3.

Mike finds himself out late at night, bracing his hand against the walls to stop himself stumbling and falling. He runs his bruised and bloodied hands across his hips, crimson smears spreading across the fawn fabric. He sees pity in the eyes of the whores on Sunset Strip, and ends up picking up a boy who approaches him as he crosses the road to his apartment. He feels like shit when he hands the kid money – makes him feel old, sleazy, dirty – and he watches the kid walk away, pulling his coat tight across his shoulders as he heads back to work. At just twenty-seven, he feels incomparably ancient and simultaneously immeasurably childish compared to the lanky frame of an adolescent with eyes older than Heaven and Hell.

His art suffers. Brad offered encouragement and a muse, something to draw from and lean upon. He knows now how important Brad was to what he is. From every corner of his studio, Brad smiles – portraits and abstract depictions, emotional wheels and the sunlight on leaves. Everything is Brad.

He wraps his arms around his knees as he stares forlornly at the front door. Everything he does now revolves around that rectangle, and some days it seems he can’t actually leave the apartment in case he misses Brad coming home again.

He knows Brad isn’t coming.

He finds himself on the phone to a friend from school, someone who knows and understands when he says he’s never going to work again, that his muse has taken a permanent leave of absence. And then later finds himself on his back, his mouth gaping wide as he moans a name. Which name doesn’t matter as his nails tear at familiar skin – it just feels good to have someone he knows moving within him, sharing this with him. It feels good to know that he’ll recognise the face he wakes up beside once again. He pushes to the back of his mind the thought that this is step one of whoredom; all Joe needs to do is pay him.

Joe becomes a regular small hours visitor. He knows and Mike knows that what they’re sharing is sex. Joe has a girlfriend at home. Mike laughs as he burns a photograph of her. He’s going through Joe’s wallet – credit card, driving licence, social security… Mike feels the tears in his eyes as he stares for too long at the picture of a pretty girl with long hair and an innocent smile.

“Love you,” he whispers to Joe, glancing to his left. Joe tilts his head and arches an eyebrow, prising the picture from Mike’s fingers.

“No,” he murmurs, turning his body to press his hand against Mike’s face. “No, but you think you should.”

It’s the morning and Joe’s in the shower. Mike can smell sex on his body, but he doesn’t want to wash. He wants to sit here and rot, staring at this picture of the girl who waits for Joe. He wonders idly what Joe tells her when he comes to visit, when he leaves the house at 11 and doesn’t return. Or rather, returns smelling of soap and expensive shampoo. He laughs to himself quietly – it’s worse than smelling another woman’s perfume. Joe returns with another man’s smell stamped all over him. He feeds the photograph to the candle that flickers before his eyes, and he lets the ashes drop into the melted wax and waft down onto the careful pebble arrangement the candle sits within.

“Can’t steal this,” he breathes, watching the pieces of paper curl into blackened remains.

4.

Chester likes to watch Brad dress. As Brad sits on the edge of the bed, Chester creeps up behind him and flicks his tongue across the ridges of Brad’s spine. Brad groans and arches his back more, and Chester’s briefly jealous of prominence of his lover’s vertebrae. He sits back on his heels as his hand runs around Brad’s waist and over too-prominent hipbones, snaking down to wrap his fingers around Brad’s cock. He smiles as Brad’s breath catches in his throat, and whimpers as Brad reaches behind him to take Chester into his own hand. Chester’s arm eases around Brad’s neck as his hand moves with sure and comfortable confidence along the younger man’s erection. The morning light brushes over them, and Chester’s teeth graze along pale ivory skin. Brad’s fingers grip at Chester’s arm as he presses his head back against a firm shoulder, his voice hoarse as he whispers his own passionate confession of love and lust. And when he climaxes, it’s as explosive as ever. Chester grins and kisses him as he glances over his shoulder, meeting that gaze that reassures him, convinces him he’s made the right decision.

Brad showers and leave for work. Chester stands in front of the mirror and runs his hands across his own slight frame. He finishes himself off, closing his eyes as he comes, biting his lip until it bleeds, and then he showers as well. He wishes he could be more like Brad. He envies the clear line of his skeleton beneath the opaque film of his skin. His own frame carriers barely any more flesh, but he makes a silent vow that he wants Brad to feel his bones the same way the can feel Brad’s whenever they fuck.

At first he thinks that perhaps he can just – not eat. But Brad would notice, and that’s the last thing he wants. Instead, he eats meagre meals and fights his gag reflex as he feels the food hit his stomach. On his knees, minutes later, he sees his food once more, and then flushes expensive meals away, quite literally wasting food. This he finds easy. He’s done this before, but now he wants to be like Brad, with his sharp hips and angular features. He wants to look like glass, wants to look beautiful.

When did love become so destructive?

5.

Joe uses a key to get in now. Mike gave it to him. Mike’s given Joe a lot, and the side effect has been dramatic for Mike. Somewhere in the depths of his slowly rotting soul, he’s realised that he actually feels… feels something for this man. And Joe worries about Mike in return, because his friend’s eyes are curiously dead, and Mike doesn’t really respond when they screw anymore either.

Mike’s sitting there on his couch like he does every morning now. His has an old paint-stained t-shirt pulled over his upper half, and it clings to his slim frame. His curiously blank stare turns and refocuses. An empty smile twists his full lips upwards. Joe sighs and sits beside his friend on the leather loveseat. Mike’s tan thighs are streaked with white that hasn’t been washed away. He smells sour, unclean. Joe sighs sadly, remembering how Mike was years ago. Images flicker on the television, but Mike doesn’t protest when Joe turns it off. Only figures, Joe reflects sadly, that Mike wouldn’t be watching it.

As he helps Mike to his feet, he notices the redecoration of the wall beyond the glass divider separating Mike’s bedroom from the main living space. On the very far wall Mike has pasted an Andy Warhol-esque picture of Brad, ballooned to fit floor to ceiling, corner to far-flung corner. One face, repeating infinitum; he recognises this as obsession and it breaks his heart.

Mike’s voice breaks the silence, and Joe turns his gaze back to Mike, who gestures towards the blank screen of the TV. “Keeps me company,” he whispers, putting to use a voice not used to anything beyond the guttural expression of lust these days. “The colours.”

Joe nods and switches the television back on, watching in silence the endless rotation of pop videos that spew across the screen. Naked flesh, sex laid bare. He glances at Mike and feels the tears on his cheeks.

“You’ve got to wash,” he whispers. Mike nods and pushes himself to his feet, stripping his shirt from his frame as he does so. And Joe shakes his head. Weeks ago, Mike standing naked in front of him would have sent shivers down his spine, would have aroused him until he could barely contain it any longer. Today, however, it’s just a little sad. Mike’s beautiful body has become a commodity, just another space to fill and file. He’s mail order furniture; smart, durable, practical. Cheap…

Joe brushes the tears from his cheeks as he takes Mike’s shoulder and guides him to the shower, wishing he knew the cure, wishing that he could just say the right thing.

6.

From a shadowy doorway, Rob watches them walk arm in arm, laughing. He longs to reach out and touch Chester again, like he used to. He knows that he can’t, and instead he sinks further back into the shadows. Chester looks different, he reflects. He’s wasted, unsteady, and Rob has seen him like it before. Last time he fell in love with a trick, and he tried to make his body a temple for a man who bought his time twice a week.

Landed on his feet though, Rob reflects – wound up with a fancy condo and a steady income. All he had to do was give generously of his time whenever it was requested.

He slips from the doorway and follows them down the street, neon signs and barroom lights throwing his features into sharp relief over and over. Reflex pushes non existent hair behind his ears, and he greets the boys who speak to him with an easy smile. He feels almost sick in the pit of his stomach as he studies Chester’s slim frame; imagines he can see Chester’s bones moving beneath the thin film of his silk shirt, his suit jacket slung casually across his shoulder. When he turns his face to glance at Brad, his cheek bones are razor sharp beneath the flashing neon strips. Rob’s breath hitches and he shakes his head, turning away and crossing the street, unsure whether Chester will make it through this time or not.

7.

David – Phoenix to friends, enemies and his boys – doesn’t recognise the voice on the phone when it wakes him at just gone 4. His voice is tired as he presses the receiver to his ear, shooing the body beside him from the bed. His life has been a string of meaningless one night relationships for as long as he can remember, with boys paid not to care or to think. It suits him not to have to think about them in any depth.

All bar one, one that he couldn’t just leave out there; one that had pressed against him and demanded love in sultry tones that he just didn’t have the power to deny. And so Chester had got the condo in the city, which cost Phoenix a small fortune, and in return Chester gave his time and his body whenever Phoenix demanded it of him.

Except: “With another man,” finishes the voice on the phone. Phoenix hauls the silk sheets around his body and twists the slats on the Venetian blind so that he can stare down into the dark street outside. His small silver Mercedes gleams on the drive, parked haphazardly on the gravel with all the grace of someone who has no need to care for material possessions. He knows he can replace it any time the fancy takes him.

“What do you mean?” he asks in a quiet, threatening voice. He turns, leaning back against the window, his eyes raking over the painting he bought from a local gallery some months before. He remembers the artist vividly, because his dark exotic eyes and easy, sensuous smile had aroused him effortlessly. Then Phoenix had experienced something for the first time – rejection. The man didn’t want him. Phoenix bought the painting instead, the artist’s signature scribbled hastily in the corner – nothing flash or gaudy, just marker pen. He smiled at Phoenix as he straightened once more and extended his hand. Japanese, family name first – Shinoda Kenji.

He realises he’s not listening to the voice on the phone, and snaps back to it. He sits in the window, the moonlight lancing through the blind and bouncing off of his skin. He hears the feet of the boy who has just left on the gravel, and he glances over his shoulder. His smile flickers. Ultimately, he’s lonely. And now he’s also jealous, because the voice on the phone explains to him that his toy has another man shacked up in that city condo…

“Do you know who this man is?” he murmurs.

Silence.

And then; “Yeah – I remember seeing him at the gallery. You know?”

8.

Mike’s presence casts a dour gloom over the gallery now. Where once he was respected for his easy intimacy with his patrons, now they cast accusing looks at him but he doesn’t care so long as they buy what meagre offerings he manages to put on display. They comment and talk amongst themselves, and sometimes he overhears them. They wonder idly where Brad could have gone, although they don’t use his name of course. They just notice that he’s not here anymore.

Mike finds himself sitting at the front desk with a glass of wine in his hand. His smile is brittle and fake, but he flicks it at everyone to walk through the door regardless. They smile back, their eyes guarded. They wonder who he is.

The girl on reception rings Brad’s cell phone, not knowing the story, not knowing that Brad isn’t coming by anymore. She tries to speak quietly, but Mike hears her voice regardless. He stands the glass on the desk with careful precision, swaying as he climbs to his feet.

Beneath his beautifully cut Italian suit, he wears a black t-shirt tucked into the waist band of his pants. Here, now, in public, his sanity cracks completely. Without him having to say a word, every eye has riveted upon him, this real-life drama more important than anything else they might ever witness. On the ring finger of Mike’s left hand is a circlet that Brad gave him when he graduated. Before that, he’d worn a promise ring. Forever. Forever had been inscribed in beautiful flowing script on the inside. He tears it from his hand as tears tumble from his eyes.

“Read it,” he whispers loud enough for everyone to hear. Drunk and emotionally fucked, he has no patience when she just stares at him. He slams his palm down on the top of the desk. “Read it!” he shouts, shoving the ring towards her. Her hands shake as she lifts it, holding it so she can see the words.

“Forever,” she mouths, and then louder; “Forever. Brad.”

Mike’s tears won’t stop as he crumples to the floor. “Forever,” he murmurs, his voice nasal and hoarse in his ears. He reaches for his wine glass, but instead he merely knocks it over. The glass smashes as it hits the parquet floor.

All the girl can do is help him to his feet again and ask for someone to clear the mess. She guides him into a back room and asks if there is anyone she should contact. He shakes his head, no. Who the fuck would care now…?

“I care.”

Mike’s head snaps around, his blood shot eyes trying in vain to focus on the figure in the doorway. In the shadows, Phoenix’s smile makes him appear almost sinister.

“You see, I want my property back as well.”

9.

Sometimes, when Chester’s out late on business, Brad drives past the building where he used to live with Mike. He glances up and sees the yellow glare of light in the windows, and knows the Mike must be home. Mike’s car is never there, but Brad doesn’t question that. Instead, a strange car is always there – whenever the lights are still on, a black car gleams beneath the street lamp. Sometimes, Brad sees shadows in the windows, but he never stops to look at them. There’s an ache in his heart that he keeps secret from Chester. There’s a part of him that longs for Mike, something in him that beats deep down. Something that Chester will never be able to satisfy, no matter how hard he tries or how good he is.

Some nights, Brad finds himself alone in Chester’s bed, stretching luxuriously on soft linen sheets. There are no clocks in Chester’s room – and he finds it a little odd that these things, these belongings, they’re all still Chester’s and never ‘theirs’ – so he has no concept of what the time is. He can sense the minutes passing, and slowly the hour drags his eyelids closed. He’s never awake when Chester returns, so he never hears the shower or feels the cold dampness of Chester’s skin against him.

Brad has never questioned Chester about how he makes his money. It’s not that he isn’t interested – far from it. It’s just never crossed his mind to ask. He’s told Chester what he does; told him over drinks minutes after they met. Chester seemed different to most of the men who spoke to him. Most of the men just wanted sex. Chester had wanted to talk. Brad had found himself insanely attracted to a smile and a laugh that was only a fraction away from being a giggle. Chester had picked up the tab.

But Brad’s not blind, and he’s seen the difference in Chester as the months have gone on. He’s grown deeply attached to Chester, but that attachment means he sees the whitening of Chester’s skin, and the slow greying of it as Chester’s weight falls – plummets – and his health fails. Chester used to wake him up when he got home late. Chester always had an inventive way of saying ‘I love you’. Now, Chester only wants to sleep, and when they do fuck, Chester’s bones are painful against Brad’s body. Chester feels fragile, and Brad isn’t quite sure how to handle that.

He asks Chester, confronts him over the breakfast bar as he watches Chester swallow two tablets and wash them down with black coffee. Chester stares at him with exhausted, red-rimmed eyes. He scares Brad, who knows that his lover is malnourished and – well, frankly, not well. Ill. Something in Chester’s mind isn’t wired quite right. Far from making himself perfect – which Brad recalls him mentioning more than once – Chester had made himself a living skeleton, all hard surfaces and polished ivory.

Brad catches Chester’s face between his hands and kisses him tenderly. “I love you,” he murmurs against Chester’s ear, and Chester wraps his arms around Brad, holding him without saying a word. Brad sighs as he pulls away.

“Get some help,” he murmurs, and strokes Chester’s curly black hair before leaving for work.

10.

Mike’s car is in a lock-up, and Joe has the keys. Mike is drinking too much to be allowed the car anymore. Joe’s relationship suffers and dies because of Mike, but he doesn’t begrudge him that. He knows that he’ll never have Mike, and so he makes the most of what he does have. He has Mike’s trust, and he’ll never abuse that.

Since the episode at the gallery, Mike’s paintings have doubled in value. Everyone wants to own something by him – tortured gay artist, lover gone, public breakdown. They assume the angst and the alcohol will combine to form something great. World-weary, Joe knows the sad truth. It’s him that washes Mike, dresses Mike, helps Mike to sleep…

Helps Mike to sleep.

Sex is the only thing that still brings Mike to life and makes him seem like more than the automaton he’s become in his daily life. Barely lucid, his fingers fumble with Joe’s clothes, and Joe allows himself to be used because he knows that in a way, he’s using Mike as well. They’re both fucking one another; physically, metaphorically… Emotionally.

Joe continues to hold down a full-time job in graphic design. He works weird hours, long hours, but has alerted his team leader to the fact that he’s on call 24/7 for his friend. His manager understands – owns work by Mike, wants to see Mike back on his feet again. Joe nods and agrees, but already has a nasty suspicion that won’t go away.

Mike’s not going to get better. Mike’s going to get life.

11.

Brad answers the phone, but doesn’t recognise the voice. It’s for Chester anyway. He passes the phone, and instantly Chester’s pale skin loses all pigment. Terror flashes in his eyes. He takes the phone and leaves the room, closing the bedroom door behind him. Brad settles back on the couch and channel surfs cable to relax, a habit he’s picked up from Chester. He almost doesn’t notice Chester when he sits back down again. He touches Brad’s foot, and Brad jumps.

“I, uh – I need you to go out,” Chester murmurs, uncomfortable and not sure how to phrase this without playing a game of twenty questions that he doesn’t have time for. “I need the apartment. Just for a couple of hours. Uh…”

Brad’s lips part to speak, but he thinks better of it. It’s an opportunity to go check out the yellow glare of Mike’s window, but he doesn’t say anything to Chester lest it raise questions that he doesn’t have time to answer. He just gets his keys and his jacket and leaves. He glances back at Chester.

“Give it till midnight,” Chester whispers, checking his watch and the numbers on the VCR. Brad nods. He’ll get drunk and perhaps actually ring Mike’s doorbell tonight. It’s a comforting thought.

He knows it’s crap, but it’s comforting nonetheless.

12.

Phoenix watches Brad leave with mild disdain. He wonders if Brad’s aware of his lover’s little sideline in prostitution. His finger presses the buzzer for the apartment and Chester’s voice shakes as he answers. Phoenix laughs.

“Rent’s due, Chester,” he whispers, and the door clicks.

13.

Chester sits on the couch with his knees curled up to his chest when Brad returns. He offers a wan smile that flickers and fades quickly. Brad smiles in return, but it’s barely stronger than Chester’s. In his heart, Chester knows that he has to tell the truth. He knows that Brad should be aware of what he does. It’s with a sinking feeling that understands Brad won’t be shocked by the revelation.

Chester feels sick. His insides churn and mash together until the bile rises in his throat and he scrambles from the couch to the bathroom, retching as he crouches double over the bowl of the toilet. His heart hammers a furious rhythm. This is familiar, and somehow portentous – him, on his knees. He laughs at himself as he straightens and runs his hands across his face, wiping the cold sweat from his skin before splashing water over his face and washing his hands. He sees Brad in the doorway, reflected in the mirror, and he offers another smile.

“Talk,” Brad murmurs.

Chester turns and leans back against the sink, tucking his cold palms beneath his armpits as he shields himself from Brad’s penetrating stare. “Talk?” he whispers.

“Tell me.”

“There’s no-”

“Don’t lie to me!” Brad’s voice rises involuntarily. He lowers it again and closes his eyes, sniffing back the tears that threaten behind his eyes. “I just want to hear you say it.”

Chester looks, tries to find an escape route, a means of avoiding this conversation; tries to delay it for a few more minutes. One look at Brad and he knows it’s futile. Eventually he knows he’ll have to say it.

“The apartment,” he murmurs, “The decoration. Everything you see? It’s not mine. Someone else pays for it.”

Brad nods slowly, and laughs bitterly. “Who pays?”

Chester feels the tears on his cheeks and searches Brad’s gaze for pity. He finds none and he turns back to the mirror. Somehow, it’s easier to tell Brad’s reflection, and the words drip like acid from his tongue. “He’s just a trick,” he whispers, his voice only just audible. “He’s just a trick, and I’m just a whore, and a long time ago I made a promise because I thought I was in love.”

“And you repay him how?”

Chester closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Does it matter?”

Brad’s arms run around his waist and Chester leans back against him. Slowly, he turns in Brad’s arms and buries his face against Brad’s throat as he wraps his arms around Brad’s neck. Brad presses his lips to Chester’s temple and then holds him a little more tightly. Chester’s façade is starting to crumble, and what lies beneath breaks Brad’s heart. Because Chester’s just like everyone else – a little bit of loneliness and a lot of insecurity. And Brad just can’t let him go now; realises that some when, somehow, he’s fallen in love with Chester.

“No,” he whispers. “No, it doesn’t matter.”

Chester pulls back and searches Brad’s eyes again, looking for the lie this time. He crumbles when he doesn’t find it and catches Brad’s face in his hand, pressing his lips to Brad’s, searching between Brad’s lips with his tongue.

As he pulls away, his eyes drop to the floor. “I’m just a whore, Brad,” he repeats, and Brad’s gentle hands tilt his face back upwards. “I’m his whore.”

14.

In the long slow hours between 2am and daybreak, Mike lies awake staring at the ceiling. Some mornings, he will roll onto his side and bury his face against Joe’s shoulder. Other days, he swings his legs from the bed, and finds himself in the kitchen with cold water from the refrigerator in his hand. Sometimes, when he looks up, Joe will be watching him with that sad, faraway look in his slanted black eyes. Mike will run his hand across his face and smile lopsidedly.

“Needed a drink,” he murmurs, although it’s never strictly true – in all honesty, he can never actually remember why he’s standing in the kitchen. Joe will nod his head and gesture for Mike to join him, and he will guide Mike back to bed. Even Mike, in his hazy state of mind, knows that this is not a relationship based on attraction. This is based on need and lust and open, sickening want. It exists because neither of them really have anything better to do, or anyone else to do it with. Without the sex, neither of them would bother.

Mike sits on the couch in just his boxers now. Joe has drummed into him a relentless need to wash. His fractured mind has absorbed this. Mike washes three or four times a day. Sometimes the water is so hot it burns, and other times, it’s so cold he shivers for hours afterwards and Joe has to turn on the heating when he gets home.

Mike keeps a notebook of all his ideas and thoughts. One time Joe read it, and the thoughts in it terrified him. Mike draws sketches: pools of blood and gore; bullet wounds and broken skulls; strangers cuddling together; a couple sleeping together… Joe looks closer. Not sleeping, as it happens – dying, dead… Joe wouldn’t be inside Mike’s head for anything, and he clings to his sanity as if he is half-mad himself. Perhaps he is. After all, most people would have left Mike to it by now.

Mike spends hours rearranging the pebble display around the tall church candle on the coffee table. He is doing it when Joe leaves for work, and when Joe returns. Mike smiles as he works. They live in almost uninterrupted silence. Joe doesn’t question Mike; just lets him carry on. Mike seems content, even if his mind is disturbed.

And then one day, Mike is playing with a gun. It glistens in the flickering light of the candle. They grey is almost hypnotising with the flame dancing in its surface. Mike just spins the chamber endlessly, listening to it whir softly, and click as he pushes it back into place.

He grins at Joe, and lays it on the surface of the coffee table. Slowly, he gets to his feet and wraps his arms around Joe’s neck, kissing Joe’s cheek. Joe holds Mike’s waist loosely, startled. Mike seems almost lucid right now, and there’s life in his dull black eyes.

“Fuck me,” Mike whispers, and Joe laughs quietly, shaking his head as he pushes Mike away. But Mike won’t be deterred and his hands dart out to unfasten Joe’s belt. Joe groans his acquiescence and remembers how he fell so in lust with Mike when they were kids in college…

15.

So Mike has the gun, and Chester has a crude DF etched into his hip. Phoenix smiles as he leans against the window, staring at the painting on the wall. He laughs and casts a glance at the light spilling from the bathroom. Rob soaks in the whirlpool tub, and Phoenix’s smile widens. He knows that there’s only one way to reward his boys when they’ve done as they’re paid to do. They spend one night in luxury. He doesn’t want Rob – Rob’s the antithesis of everything Phoenix likes – but Rob did tell him about Chester. He’s earned a soft bed and a soak at the very least.

Phoenix leaves his room and moves towards the kitchen. The moonlight haunts the hallways and corridors, white beams glancing off of reflective chrome and expensive post-modern architecture. He smiles to himself and pours a glass of wine before settling back in the deep leather couch with his feet tucked beneath him. He sits in the dark silence and watches the television on mute, spending time just thinking.

He hears the creak of the floorboards above him as feet move across them. He ignores them and sips red wine. He doesn’t worry about his belongings or fear for his property. He trusts his boys not to take anything. He keeps an inventory that is updated weekly of all the things that he owns, and he can narrow down any missing items to a select number of people very rapidly. He’s made examples of more than a few over the years. Ever since Chester got the condo, Rob’s been very good for Phoenix and for business. He knows the kid won’t take anything.

The hours creep on and he finishes the wine. He puts the glass in the dishwasher and leaves the bottle on the side, figuring that his housekeeper will do with it whatever she normally does. He checks on Rob and smiles to himself as his eyes rake over the figure recumbent beneath dove-grey satin. He closes the door silently and readies himself for bed.

All in all, he reflects in the early morning gloom, it’s been a successful day.

16.

In the early hours of the morning, Brad’s tongue finds the healing scabs on Chester’s hip, and he has to ask about them again, hoping that perhaps this time he might get an answer. Chester flinches and rolls onto his side, burying his face in the pillow. Brad sighs and kisses the base of Chester’s spine and works his way slowly to Chester’s shoulder blades before wrapping an arm around his lover’s wasted form. Chester glances over his shoulder and whispers two words, and Brad knows not to press it any further.

“A warning,” Chester smiles, and Brad notices that his teeth are almost luminous against his lips.

Chester’s legs shake when he stands, and he lunges for the doorframe to keep himself upright. Brad’s arms are around his waist almost immediately. This happens more and more frequently, and Brad’s worried.

Even if he wanted to, he knows that he can’t leave now.

17.

Mike’s not at home when Joe returns from work. He pauses and takes some time to wonder about this. The pebbles that he watched Mike tip onto the floor are still there, on the floor. Mike’s latest pattern exists only as an outline, the spaces filled with… with wine. Joe breathes a sigh of relief as he sucks the liquid from his fingers.

He calls Mike’s name, and then checks Mike’s bedroom. Nothing – the only sign of his presence is the angry gash across the face of his obsession. Line after line torn through row upon row of Brad’s face. Panic gathers in Joe’s chest as he pushes open the door of the bathroom.

Except… There’s nothing. Only two damp towels folded beside the tub. Joe runs his hands across his face and shakes his head, hoping against hope that the gun is still in a box at the bottom of Mike’s closet. Half stumbling, half walking, he crashes back into Mike’s room and throws open the closet doors.

And there, exposed and so obviously empty, is the box that he knows Mike put he gun in weeks ago when it suddenly appeared in his hands. Joe shakes his head and backs towards the bed, sitting heavily on the edge with his eyes riveted on the garish object. His mind plays with him, visualising the notebook with its couple – it’s too familiar lovers – in their fatal embrace.

He knows what is about to happen… And he knows already that he can do nothing to stop it.

18.

The winter evening is chill when they get home. Chester wraps his arms around Brad, absorbing Brad’s body heat into himself. He grins easily as he meets Brad’s eyes. It’s been easier for both of them since Chester’s admission of what he does. Brad kisses the tip of Chester’s nose and eases Chester’s jacket from his shoulders. Beneath it, Chester wears a familiar dress shirt. Chester insisted that this day was an anniversary of sorts. Brad frowned.

“It’s been a year since we met,” Chester exuded, and they went out for a meal.

Now, midnight looms in the long shadows. One glance at Chester, and Brad smiles. His hands fall to his waist and he tilts his head. The cynic in him mutters that of course, Chester should be good at this; that feral need is practiced. But the part of him that loves Chester still, despite the radically altered appearance, wins every time. Even though it hurts sometimes, Brad has found that he can deny Chester nothing. He doesn’t really want to either.

As the hours drag on, Brad finds himself with his arms around Chester, just watching Chester sleep. He appears so fragile, so completely perfect and so tragically alone when he sleeps. Chester’s eyelashes brush his cheeks like feathers, and his lips part just slightly as he breathes. When Chester rolls onto his side, Brad notes idly that Chester’s prominent shoulder blades seem almost like wings, soaring pale beneath his papery skin.

When Chester rolls back to face him, Brad wraps his arms around the tiny frail body of his lover. He holds Chester gently against him, and vows silently that he will never let him go.

As sleep steals over him as well, he fails to hear the hushed opening and closing of the main door, and he doesn’t hear the gentle tread of feed on the wooden floors. In absolute peace, he thinks of nothing but the man in his arms.

19.

Mike feels remarkably lucid as his car coasts down the deserted early morning back roads. Scribbled on a scrap of paper is an address. His foggy mind manages to recall that this address is where Brad is living. Phoenix gave him a key, and Mike didn’t ask questions. Mike didn’t want the answers. What Mike wants is justice for the hurt in his own heart, some kind of resolution for the pain he has been put through.

On the seat beside him is the gun. Phoenix asked if he could use it and Mike simply laughed. It had sounded dry and brittle, and his teeth had snapped together as he nodded affirmation. Yes, he could use it. Phoenix smiled easily, and later, as Mike dragged his clothes back on again, he couldn’t help but feel like someone’s toy, someone’s plaything. With Phoenix gone and the address remaining, he couldn’t help but feel like a whore – he felt he was prostituting his emotions for someone else’s gain. Bastard; but he knew he’d carry it through.

There’s a name on the buzzer. Phoenix told him Chester’s name, and that’s what he expects to see. But the little label reads ‘David Farrell’, and that confuses him momentarily. Regardless, he continues with his mission. He sees them together in his mind, although he can’t actually visualise Chester. All he sees is Brad with his arms around another man. It fills his vision until he finds himself blinking back tears.

The key fits the lock, and he finds himself in a beautiful room. The thud of his feet is muffled by the thin rug lying on the floor. It’s immaculate. His aesthetics fall in love with the dimensions and the colours, and he thinks briefly that perhaps he could like Chester in another life.

Phoenix has told him exactly where to find everything, and he knows that the first door he tries will be the right one. His tears blind him as he absorbs the beauty lying before him. He sniffs and leans against the door frame, tormented and alone – broken.

His hands shake but his mind is set. He knows what he has to do, and it breaks him into pieces as he watches Brad sleep through the film of his tears. Brad murmurs and pulls closer to Chester. Mike takes a shaky step towards the bed and reaches with one clammy hand to pull the sheet back from them. Brad’s eyes flicker and open, and he turns his bleary gaze towards Mike. Recognition dawns and he shakes his head, eyes riveting on the gun levelled at him.

“I loved you so much,” Mike whispers as his finger begins to squeeze the trigger…

20.

In the glove box of his car, Joe keeps a small pistol. He bought it for protection, and he’s thankful that he’s never had to use it. But now there’s an idea in his head and he can’t shake it.

He sits in front of Mike’s pebble creation and stares at the pistol in his hands. He laughs bitterly and downs tequila as if it were water. It serves as a little courage and a little fortitude – just something to make him feel a little braver.

He’s scared, terrified even, as he pushes the muzzle of the pistol between his lips. But there’s no time for fear, and there’s only room for guilt that he didn’t stop Mike when he had the chance.

Blood mingles with wine, the pebble mosaic spreading across the table and the floor as Joe slumps forward. The church candle tumbles to the floor, and a crack runs right through it. But Joe’s eyes see nothing, the light that used to flicker in them fading rapidly.

And as life ebbs away, all he feels is free…

21.

Chester thinks he can hear Brad’s voice pleading with someone, and slowly consciousness steals over him. He can feel the tension in the air. He can smell the fear and he looks at Brad, whose gaze is focussed on the end of the bed. Chester’s slow stare follows Brad’s, and he can’t help but laugh.

“Phoenix,” he whispers before he can think, and Mike’s black stare switches to him. Chester shrinks back from the seething hatred. Brad’s voice whispers professions of love, and Chester’s heart aches a little. Mike’s resolve seems to weaken and the gun lowers slightly. Chester grips at Brad’s body, clinging to him, and Brad hugs him in return, pressing his lips to Chester’s hair.

The last thing Chester hears is the blast of the gun, and he feels pain as the bullet shatters his skull upon entry. Brad chokes on his tears as he cradles Chester’s limp body against him, and he gazes at Mike. Mike’s eyes are rimmed with red, tears streaking down his cheeks as well, and he wavers as he levels the gun again.

“Please,” Brad murmurs.

Mike’s never sure of the details, but he is sure that he’s sorry. Blood like claret soaks into the sheets as he sits on the edge of the bed. He appreciates the sick parallel with the sketch he drew and he feels a kind of finality that he never would have expected.

And he’s jealous. Because he longs for this kind of devotion; longs for someone who would follow him into hell – and he knows that there is no one.

In silence, he stares at his reflection mocking him in the mirror and he throws the gun at it. Watching that shatter is somehow beautiful. He rings his own apartment and receives no answer. The only ears there to hear the pulse of the phone can’t hear it. Hours disappear, and he reaches out to touch Brad the way he always used to. He whispers his apology to dead ears, feeling the accusation that is non-existent in Brad’s blind eyes.

He showers.

And then he dials 911, reading the address from a scrap of bloodstained paper. One thing he does know. Phoenix will have never been involved. And that twists in his gut.

*
Epilogue

Phoenix sat down opposite him, and Mike smiled uneasily. Phoenix tilted his head, and Mike looked away. Outside, the sun shone weakly. Mike shook his head and found himself speaking.

“I did everything you asked,” he murmured without meeting the other man’s hazel stare. “I killed them. I never once thought that perhaps you were taking advantage. Never once… I just wanted him to hurt like I did.”

Phoenix pressed a hand on Mike’s knee, and Mike turned his dull black eyes back to Phoenix’s face. “I’m sorry about Joe,” Phoenix whispered. “I didn’t realise you and he…”

“We weren’t.”

Mike’s eyes followed a nurse in a white hospital uniform. Medication was all that kept him going. They kept him pumped full of sedatives, just to ensure that he wouldn’t hurt himself anymore. They needed to be sure he wouldn’t attack anyone else, that he wasn’t a threat to any of the other patients.

“Why are you here?”

Phoenix laughed and rocked back in his chair. “I have an offer,” he said softly. “When you get out of here – I have an apartment in the city, and the terms of lease are fairly straight forward. What do you say?”

FIN

© FyrMaiden 28.11.2004

Core

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 20:56:06 GMT

Fandom: Linkin Park
Title: Core
Pairing: Brad/Chester
Distribution: Journal, LPF – any others, please ask.
Genre: Angst
Rating: R – suicide, death, sex
Summary: They promised one another they’d be there together one day. A shame it took almost fifty years and death to achieve their dream.

Author's Note: As with Valentine's Day, I decided to do something a little different. I'm actually fairly sure it's solid crap, but it was meant to be a melancholy ghosty love story affair. But it went wrong and it's only taken maybe 3 or 4 hours to write. It's un-beta'd (obviously) and... well. Yeah. That's it really. I'd say enjoy, but it's unlikely!

There’s always a house that you remember. For me, it was a run-down affair on the East side. I remembered clearly its soaring façade, remembered the way it seemed to stretch eternally up into the inky black of the sky. We would stand, hand in hand, gazing up forever, trying to see the pinnacle of the roof. He would wrap his arms around me and hold me gently against him, and I would rest my head on his shoulder.

“We’ll live here together,” he would murmur into my hair, and I would laugh easily.

“We could never afford this place,” I would say, and kiss his cheek lightly. He would smile easily and nod his acceptance, and his resonant black stare would return to the leaded windows of our Gothic dream.

The realtor sold it to me with a ghost story. It had been on the market for years, he said. “We did sell it to a gentleman,” he murmured in hushed tones as we walked its hallways and admired its crystal chandeliers. He gestured its grand central staircase and inclined his head briefly. “Very sad story,” he continued at length, giving me time to fully digest the majestic vista before us. “He said that he and his lover had always planned to have this house, but that the boy concerned had been taken away from him. And yet he pursued that dream, purchasing this house with his parents’ money. They found him swinging from the railings of the staircase. Hanged himself, you see. We’ve been unable to sell the house since then. They say – they say that his ghost lingers, waiting for that boy to return.”

“What makes him so sure the boy will,” I murmured, nodding my head, transfixed now by the rising marble of the railings, and by the romantic light of the candelabra. I glanced at my companion, who shrugged uneasily. I smiled and moved into the centre of the hallway, spinning slow circles as I gazed up, trying to pinpoint once again the pinnacle of the roof.

Back at the realtor’s office, he seemed shocked when I said that I would take the house, cash sale. I wrote him a cheque for the entire amount.

“But – it’s haunted,” he insisted. I laughed a little and nodded my head.

“I know,” I whispered, voice grating, sounding like gravel as I spoke. Pulling my trench coat around me, purple silk flashed in the afternoon sun. I shook his hand, confirming the deal. “I’ll expect the paperwork within the week.”

*
I stood in the driveway and peered up at the leaded windows of my Gothic mansion. I laughed softly to myself. It had taken me forty-five years, but I was back here again. The heavy doors loomed in the fading sunlight, but I ran my fingers across them as if they were old friends. I had travelled the world, seen many sights and many strange things, and yet these solid oak doors felt like home. We had stood here together just once, sheltering from the rain. His lips had found mine, and my back had crashed against the doors as his wet hand slid inside my pants. His tongue had been hot against mine, his fingers freezing against my skin, but blood and passion had fuelled us both. Giggling against one another’s throats, clinging to one another – unsure whether rain or sweat plastered our hair to our faces – we had vowed that we would live here together.

It had surprised me that the house had been sold with its ghost intact. My boots echoed lonely in the hallways and up the stairs. The crystal glittered weakly in the moonlight, casting a melancholy glow across the floors and cavorting playfully with the ghosts in the marble. The moonlight filtered through the dusty windows and haunted the corners of rooms, casting long silver shadows throughout the house.

And yet still I smiled. I imagined him here, sitting in peaceful stillness as he waited for me to return. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. He was young, and yet he wasted away waiting for me. I was twenty-four, and there was no coming back. They sectioned me, locked me away for murder. I didn’t do it, didn’t kill anyone, but the doctors declared that I was ‘unstable’; I was ‘a threat’. They locked me away until I forgot who I was. Can enough money buy someone insanity and a criminal record? Brad’s parents never liked me, that much is certain beyond all question.

His brief period of residence still seemed marked indelibly on the furnishings. I smiled as I found his things, pulling back dust sheets and opening draws. His chair, the writing bureau that he had treasured; his dining table, made from solid teak and shipped from the other side of the world at great expense. Nothing was too much effort. Even with it mouldering furniture and its smell of damp decay, the house spoke of so much promise and so many broken dreams.

*
I knew the whole sad story before the estate agent had even begun to speak. Myth and legend intertwined around that house. He wasn’t the first, people whispered. No, a long while before him, a boy had done the same thing – Brad’s predecessor’s girlfriend had moved out of state for college, and in a fit of despair the boy had done exactly as Brad had. His parents came home from a night out, only to hear music blasting from his bedroom. About to shout, his mother lost her voice when she saw her seventeen year old son’s lifeless body dangling from the railing of the stairs. Her partner, staunch and manly, cut the boy down and his mother cradled that stiff lifeless figure to her chest. Bereavement drove her mad. She overdosed on prescription valium six months later. Her husband, but not the boy’s natural father, took his shot gun into the yard with him, and blew his brain’s out beneath an unforgiving October moon.

The moon would have cast Brad’s face into beautiful silver relief when he hung himself with rope bought from the hardware store a week beforehand. Brad had a poet’s timing. He had waited for four years before deciding that I was not returning. He had the mood right, the setting. The house was locked securely, shutters fastened against the night. A note to me, penned in his beautiful scrawling script, and another for his parents, both written in blood red ink. The tail of the g swooped to underline my name, although crimson had faded to dull brown when the police finally tracked me down. He wore funereal black, they said, his thin frame clad in a three piece suit. He had scorned a tie. The chandelier glittered faintly yellow, refracting its light in every crystal drop. The only thing that seemed out of place, read the coroner’s report, was the music. Unspecified in the documentation, my gut instinct was confirmed by his mother, who pointed one long decadent purple talon at me, her eyes full of malicious ire.

“You,” she hissed, her eyes blazing. He had been dead for seven years when I first learnt of his passing. “Even without being here, you stole by baby from me. You and your music. You and your – your love!”

And I knew. The music that hadn’t fit the scene of his death had been meant for me to know.

*
I trailed languid fingers over cold white stone, the hem of my coat fluttering around my ankles as I climbed the stairs. I could feel him with me without saying a word, without asking him permission to break the sanctity of almost fifty years. I hadn’t come here when I learnt what had happened. I had seen his grave, kissed its cold granite headstone with its curiously dead inscription. I had pined silently for him and vowed that I would move on, that I wouldn’t waste my time on mourning when I could have done nothing to help.

And I did. I fell in love and travelled the world with my partner. We saw snow fall at Bergen-Belsen, where I couldn’t help but remember what I’d lost; we wandered the grimy back alleys of London, re-enacting scenes from our favourite plays; we experienced Fall in New England and saw spring break heady across Galway Bay. We owned houses in Paris, in Naples and Brussels. He knew people in Russia and Turkey. He had contacts in Japan and Greece. We were never short of places to go. If we kept moving, I didn’t have to think of the house my lost love and I had built our dreams around.

But time wore us both down, and eventually he said he needed to return home. I tried to laugh, to act my part – which home? I asked. He smiled weakly and wrapped his arms around me, his beard tickling my cheek. California, he said. He needed the sun again. He said he needed to see Mission Viejo one last time. I nodded uneasily, and was there with him when cancer rang the death knell.

So I drifted back to LA, and inexorably back to the house. I stood at dusk in front of it, and strained my eyes ever upwards. I laughed to myself and scuffed my toes in the gravel and the dust. Overrun and uncared for, it appeared a shell of itself even more than it had when together we had vowed to make it beautiful again. I pulled my coat tight around my body, and felt its desolation echoed in my tired bones. And I promised myself that I would see it in all its glory one final time.

*
It was always like this for us. For me. This one night of the year was meant for remembering, for thinking – for reflecting on the past and on the dead, and praying that just this one night they’d have the power to come back. Just for a moment. Just for you to say that you were sorry… Just long enough to say I love you one more time.

I sat on the top step, just the one light in the grand hallway on. It spilled its yellow glare across the floor and down the steps, driving away the mysterious shadows and the memories built on emptiness. I smiled and pushed myself to my feet, turning slowly. I was a fool – what did I honestly expect? To come back here and find him still waiting, leaning easily against the banister as his lips twisted into their familiar smile?

I ran tired, coarse hands across my face and shook my head. Too late for apologies now. The past was best left alone, and I had been a fool to come here at all. And yet, as I turned, I felt someone watching. I could feel a presence there with me. I knew it could only be him, and I felt the smile flicker on my lips. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t move, but it was his voice, crystal clear in my mind – silver like the moonlight and cold as the grave, but touched with him all the same.

‘You never came,’ it whispered, and I nodded my head sadly. ‘I waited for you, but you never came back. There was nothing here without you. Only your records, and this house…’

“There are no excuses,” I said, glancing into the mirror opposite. I could see his outline, flickering iridescently, clinging to a shape that I knew I gave it. I saw me as well, my grey hair, the lines around my eyes, the elasticity gone from my skin. The years were kind, but there’s no cure for old age, really.

‘I – I wanted you to come back,’ his voice whispered once more, he shape flickering wildly as emotion flared within me. ‘I believed in you.’

“I came as soon as I could…”

‘Too late,’ he accused, and I felt the anger inside of me, although he only voiced what I knew I felt. ‘You came too late. You could have saved me, Chester, but you didn’t.’

“I couldn’t,” I protested, “I couldn’t.”

He nodded sagely, pressing translucent fingers to his lips as he moved towards me. His brown eyes gazed at me in the mirror, and I ached to be able to touch him one last time. His smile broke my heart in two.

‘We had such dreams,’ he said, standing beside me now. His eyes flicked to the stairway and the chandelier. Nostalgia seeped from him. ‘We had such plans for this place. I wanted to make those dreams come true. So that this could be our home when you were released, but…’ His sigh rustled, dust settling as a breath that had never been drawn was exhaled. ‘My mom. She said you weren’t coming. That you had forgotten me, abandoned me. I should marry, she said. Move into a proper house, with central heating and a built in garage.’ He laughed bitterly and lowered his eyes before glancing back into the mirror again. ‘All I wanted was you. And it was all I couldn’t have. Death seemed easier, somehow. Easier than marriage, easier than waiting. I was so tired of waiting for you. It was your CD. Did you know that? You used to play it all the time. I had it on repeat as I tidied the house one last time. I never thought I’d still be waiting for you now. Because – because I had to know you were okay. I had to know that you hadn’t wasted away as I did without you.’

I swiped at the tears on my cheeks and reached out toward the mirror. “Noting felt the same without you,” I whispered, screwing my eyes shut, shaking my head as I tried to push these thoughts away. I was too old to be pining for lost love. I was forty-five years too late to save him now.

‘I’m always here,’ he said, and for a brief instance I felt a feather-light frost against my cheek, and a cold that spread chills around my heart. ‘You’ve never let me go,’ said a voice I could no longer see. ‘You kept me in here and never let me rest. And I’m tired, Chester. I love you, but I’m tired…’

His words made perfect sense to me as well. The October moon spread her beautiful arms wide to embrace lost souls on this one night. I pressed my fingers to my lips and hung my coat across the mirror. My feet found their own way down the corridors to a bedroom – his bedroom – and sleep drew me silently into its embrace as I lay my head against the pillow. I could feel him with me still, watching me as I slept.

And if I strained my ears, I could hear faint strains of that CD drifting down the corridor. I smiled as I slept, knowing he would be there with me when I awoke. And knowing also that, when life departed and death slipped in, I would still have that CD and the memories of Brad that had never faded.

FIN

© FyrMaiden 31.10.2004

End Notes: So, uh... Yeah. Back to working on With Apologies then. Or something. w00t?

Beautiful Abomination

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 08:38:16 GMT

Title: Beautiful Abomination
Fandom: Linkin Park
Pairing: Chester/Phoenix, Chester/Brad
Genre: Angst
Rating: R/NC-17 (for imagery, language, abuse)
Status: Standalone
Summary: He used to be able to pretend that he meant something. He used to believe that there was some redemption in the good times… And now he knows, he understands. There’s only one way to survive, and only one person who can help him.

Author's Note: Another one that was a loose challenge from Jen. "Phoenix Brad triangle with abused!Chester." You're right. It doesn't get much vaguer. I sent it to her last night, and since I haven't spoken to her since then, I've no idea if it's what was expected. Most likely not. But hey, on the plus side! No one dies in this one!

Shit... I've given away the ending. Oh well, eh?

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive
~ Iris, Goo Goo Dolls

Leaning over the sink, I watched blood drip a steady tattoo against the white porcelain. I clamped a hand over my mouth as I felt my stomach revolt at the sight, only for the blood to trickle over my fingers before resuming its persistent rhythm. I saw the fear in my eyes when I glanced in the mirror. I saw the mess that used to be my face, pressing bloody fingers to my cheek.

Feet. I heard feet on the hall carpet and I dived for the door. I didn’t care about blood on the tiles, blood staining the rugs or soaking into the fabric of my shirt. I drew a shuddering breath as I pressed my palms against the back of the door, curling them into futile fists as I sank to my knees. I rolled to a sitting position, pressing my back against the door as I strained for a towel just a fraction out of reach. All I could taste was iron, and all I felt was pain.

His fist hammered against the door, before he slapped it with the palm of his hand, kicking it with vile frustration. His voice coaxed, wheedled, promised that things would change and things would be different. And then he rattled the door handle and called me every name under the sun that he could think of, expletives fusing together as they lodged in my brain.

I clutched my ribs as they protested, reaching for the towel again, outstretching myself and opening the wound down my spine. I bit my lip as I slammed the back of my skull against the door, trying to numb the pain in my back and across my cheek by creating new pain. I pushed the soft towel gently across my face, wiping my split lip with the cuff of my shirt. I could feel my left eye swelling closed and I swallowed.

An hour more, maybe. An hour and he would calm down enough to take me to the ER to get the laceration on my spine treated again. Meanwhile, I patted my pockets until I found my phone. He kept a list of my calls, so I dialled one of the numbers he saw as ‘safe’ numbers.

“Can you get-”

“Is that you?”

“Depends,” I whispered, pressing my tongue gingerly against the back of my teeth. Blood continued to trickle from my lip and my nose. I used my cuff again to wipe it away as best I could.

“Chester?”

“Who else?”

“Are you-”

“Can you just get him to give me a call?”

“Cell?”

“I can’t get to the other phone.”

“I’ll let him know.”

I snapped the phone shut and lay it on the floor within easy reach. I turned the volume off. I’d have to rely on seeing it light up, hope against hope that the rug would cushion the vibration. I could hear the television when I shifted, pressing my ear to the door. I tried the handle, making sure I’d locked it. It opened and I slammed it closed again. Immediately, his weight landed against the other side. A tired, painful sob broke from my throat as I was thrown backwards, the door slamming open.

He tilted his head, his smile feral. His severe eyes flashed black as I pressed myself against the wall. I could hear my phone, muted by the rug as I’d hoped. He leant down and picked it up, staring intently at the number. I knew the number. I knew every number that had ever been used by heart, but none were stored on the phone.

“Expecting a call?” he whispered. I shook my head instantly.

“No,” I whispered, swiping at the blood, tears rolling soundless and unchecked from my eyes.

“No,” he repeated, answering the call as he pressed my phone to his ear. His eyes never left mine, and I withered beneath his gaze.

He threw my cell at me, missing me only because I chose that moment to sink down the wall, a sob catching in my throat now. He’d been drinking. It was always the same when he drank…

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as he crouched before me. I screwed my eyes shut as he tangled his fingers in my hair.

“I’m sorry, too,” he breathed lightly. “I love you, Chester.”

*
I always hated the reflection that stared back at me when I looked in the mirror. I loathed everything about it, its pale skin and its mocking, self-pitying gaze. Its eyes, so full of self-loathing and self-destruction, seemed dead. I tried every way I knew to escape the drudgery of being me –self-abuse, substance abuse. Suicide. Self-injury reminded me I was human. The pain made me feel alive, my blood – crimson against my ivory flesh – proved that I was living. Otherwise, the abject detestation I had for the world around me was painfully obvious.

Briefly, I was a vanity project for an art major in Pasadena. Friend of a friend. I was hooked with a guy in a different state who had no idea who I was, beyond a picture that had been snail mailed to him. I was perfect. A social misfit and an outsider; lowly, base and rank with the stench of the streets. I was everything that he would never be. And he was fucking me six ways from Sunday.

He ended up with another friend of his who dropped out. And me? I was back where I had come from, only now I didn’t have anywhere to stay at all. Feeling perhaps some vestige of remorse for the way he had treated me, my pretty Japanese art major called his friend, who offered a place on his couch.

“You drive?” he said. I nodded. “We’ll take your car, I guess.”

“How will you get back?”

He shrugged and chewed his lip for a moment. “One of them will come. I’ll call Joe. I don’t know. But you can’t stay here.”

As easily as I entered his life, I left it. Brad’s housemate took the trip back with him. They dubbed it their monthly road trip. Brad stood on the doorstep and stared at me. He stared at Mike, and then at me once more.

“This is him?”

“Yeah,” Mike nodded. “This is Chester. Chester, Brad. He’ll uh – well, you can sleep on the couch.”

I came equipped with everything Brad needed. I had what remained of an eighth that I’d picked up before leaving Pasadena. He had the beer. I had the self-hatred, and he had a dominant streak twice the size of his personality. Stoned and drunk, from day one I never slept on the couch. Not even when I would rather have done so. Two weeks later, when Brad’s roommate returned from driving Mike back to college, we were unofficially attached. Brad looped his arm around my shoulders and grinned rakishly.

“Fuckin’… rabbit,” he laughed. I felt my cheeks burn as his friend’s hazel stare swept across my features. Owned, it said silently, completely utterly and without doubt owned. His possession, his property; his Christmas present and birthday gift. His, forever. Those eyes weighed up how long I would last before their owner even said a word.

And something else struck me about the man standing in the doorway as well. It was in the wry twist of his lips as he glanced at Brad. It was in the slump of his shoulders, the careless arch of his eyebrow. “Are you this charming naturally?” he said, forced joviality lacing his voice. “Jesus, Brad!”

“What? C’mon, David, don’t pretend like you’re offended. Christ, credit me with some intelligence.” Brad removed his arm from around me. I sank back from him, slipping around his friend and disappearing into our room.

“Offended?” David laughed, “God! Does your self-importance know any end? Did you see him? Did you? Actually, I don’t suppose you have seen him any way other than naked. Usually he’s just there, huh? Yours, to have and to hold. Fuck!”

Brad said nothing for a moment. I could picture him, sizing David up, running his gaze over his friend’s body. Stripping him, fucking him mentally. And then his voice, “Jealous much?”

“Oh, fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking… your fucking toy! It’s not a game. He’s terrified of you. He doesn’t even know what you’re like and he’s scared of you!”

“And you care why again?”

David’s door slammed so hard that the picture on Brad’s wall fell down, the glass shattering and spreading across the floor.

*
I stood nervously at the reception desk, chewing my lip as I glanced around. I tucked my hands beneath my arms, hugging my body tightly. At length, the girl cradled her phone and fixed her simulated smile on her lips.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her eyes raking me up and down. I squirmed internally, peering from behind dark glasses.

“Uh, yeah, no. I don’t know, maybe.” I forced a hopeful smile, which slipped and fell quickly. “I’m looking for David Farrell.”

She nodded and lifted the receiver on the phone once more, gesturing for the seats. “Is he expecting you?” I shook my head once, and followed her finger. “Can I tell him who’s waiting?”

“Uh, just Chester.”

“Take a seat, and I’ll call him down for you.”

I perched precariously on the edge of a seat, gazing at the flight of stairs to my left. I knotted my hands together in my lap, hunching my shoulders as I tried to disappear. I could feel the pitying gaze of the receptionist resting on me, making me feel small and insignificant. I kept glancing at my watch, counting the seconds and the minutes until I heard a familiar tread on the stairs. I forced another smile as he came round the corner, and watched his face fall as he glanced at me. He took me in his arms, holding me gently against him.

“Have you-”

“Yeah, he took me last night. I-”

“I tried your cell again, but it’s dead.”

“Yeah. He smashed it.”

“And you?”

“Yeah, he smashed me as well.”

Against all his better instincts, the corners of his lips pulled into an amused smile. “You know what I meant, Chester.”

I sighed heavily and shrugged my shoulders uneasily, looking away from him. His fingers pulled down the roll-neck of my sweater. My shoulders sagged and I removed my sunglasses for his benefit. “Mhm,” I sniffed. “I know what you meant. Can you leave early at all?”

“Give me ten minutes. Can you find my car in the lot?”

I nodded. “That’s how I knew you were in.”

“Meet me at the car. Erm – no, meet me in the car. No one needs to see you, huh?” He smiled as he handed me his keys. “And take my cell. I’ll call you if there’s an issue.”

My hands shaking, I took his keys and slid my glasses back on, hiding again my swollen, bruised eyes. “What’s on your CD player?” I murmured. He batted the back of my head and laughed.

“Ten minutes.”

*
He slid into the seat next to me, slinging his tie into the back. It fluttered uselessly to the floor. When he glanced at me, his lips twisted into a wry smile. “Where do you want to go, Chester?”

“Away,” I whispered, sliding lower in my seat. Removing the glasses again, I ran my hands tiredly across my face before glancing at him sidelong. “You have the weekend?”

“Yeah, this afternoon, tomorrow and Sunday.”

“Just drive, Phi. Please? Don’t stop until we have to come back. Leave me wherever we wind up.” I opened his glove compartment without thinking, pulling out tissues and the book pack that had come with the car when it was brand new. He was staring at me with tears in his eyes when I finally looked at him.

“Why do you stay?”

“Where would I go that he wouldn’t find me and kill me?”

He nodded, the sad truth apparent to him as well as me. “Do you remember?” he whispered, his voice hoarse and his eyes red-rimmed with repressed tears. “The first time I saw you and him together, what – eight years ago? I never thought you’d still be here, taking his shit.”

“I’ve got everything he needs.”

“Do you still believe that?”

“No,” I whispered, my voice small, dead in my throat. “No, but I like to pretend that I’m more than a toy. More than just a game for him.”

“You know,” he sighed, pressing his lips into a thin line as he turned his head to stare through the windshield. “You know, I used to think the world of Brad. I used to think that there was no world without him. And then I heard him, on the phone to Mike talking about me. And the language, the things he said. I knew, I knew right then that I couldn’t stay with him in the capacity that I had been. No one had ever hit him back before. He wasn’t prepared…”

He smiled when he glanced at me, although his eyes were glazed as memory overtook him. His sigh was heartfelt as it whispered across his lips. “You’ve got to fight back, get away.”

“I’m a dead man,” I whispered, pulling my lips into a weak parody of a smile. The glimmer of heartbreak in the depths of his eyes tore me in two. “Just drive. Please?”

“I love you,” he murmured. The engine roared as he hit the main road right out of town.

*
He switched his cell to speakerphone when it rang, so that he could talk and concentrate on driving. It displayed no info when it rang. It only said ‘private number’. Phi glanced at me and pressed a finger to his lips.

“David Farrell,” he said, professional voice kicking in. I tucked my hands beneath my arms and blanched physically when I heard the reply.

“Dave? Good, I didn’t know if you’d changed your number.”

“It’s me. What do you want, Brad?”

“He’s gone again, except this time he’s taken nothing with him. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

Phi glanced at me. I flicked my stare out of the window, hunching my shoulders protectively against the world.

“Uh, no. No, I haven’t. He won’t get far, right? I mean, it’s not like he’s got any money or anywhere to stay.”

“Can you check with your mom? I’m trying the places he’s vanished to before.”

“Dude, calm down. What’s the longest he’s ever gone for?”

I heard Brad sigh, and I turned imploring eyes on David. He reached out and squeezed my leg. Love you, he mouthed. I smiled weakly. Brad’s voice sounded abrasive as it broke the silence again.

“That’s not exactly the point, Phi. If you see him-”

“Why would I see him?”

“He always comes to you.”

“And you damn near kill him when he does. You think perhaps by now he’s learnt? Brad, you’ve won. He doesn’t even ring me anymore!”

Brad laughed down the phone, “All the same, if you see him, tell him he’s got to learn.”

There was an audible click as Brad’s line went dead, and David pulled the car to the side of the road. “You’ve left with nothing?”

“I can’t go back,” I whispered. “I just – I need to get away. I can’t go back.”

“Ches-”

“I – you’re right. Like always. I guess you should take me home.”

*
Angry eyes flashed black, reflecting the harsh kitchen light. I cowered, pressing my back into a corner, suppressing the whimper that rose in my throat. His smile was vicious, feral animosity rolling from him. His fists balled at his sides, and then with one ferocious swing of his arm he cleared the sideboard. I sank into a tiny ball, raising my arms to protect myself as pots and utensils rained down upon me.

“Why?” he demanded. I bit my lip, casting tearful eyes up towards his face.

“I love you,” I whispered, making a move to crawl from the corner. Instead, he crouched before me, catching my face between his hands as he tilted my chin up.

“And I love you, but you’ve got to stop doing this.” His smile changed, vindictive pleasure at my discomfort seeping through. “Chester, why do you do it?”

I shifted, wrapping my arms around him as I buried my face in his neck. His arms moved easily around me, his hands splaying possessively against my spine. And then he pushed me away again, holding my shoulders as he met my eyes. He shook me gently, and then more roughly, my head bounding back and forth on my neck. I felt like a broken toy, some crazy damaged Jack-in-the-box. I felt the sob in my throat, and wheezed as it ripped roughly from my throat.

“Because!” I managed, closing my eyes and turning my face away. “Because it’s not supposed to hurt like this. I know it shouldn’t. Not like this. All I ever wanted was to please you, and recently it’s all that I can do to make it through the week un-bruised. You don’t touch me anymore, except to hit me. You don’t care about me. All I am is gratification for you. Some kind of trophy. I used to be just – just your bit of rough. God, Brad! Even David never saw us lasting this long. And – and it’s all because I just can’t leave. Despite everything, I still love you. And I must be fucking mad, mustn’t I? I mean, what kind of idiot comes home to this every day? I was so close today, so close to not stopping until I was hundreds of miles away. For the first time since I wound up on your doorstep eight years ago, I finally almost made it back home. Back to my family. And you had to spoil it all by phoning-”

“You were in the car with him?”

“Wake the fuck up! Of course I was in the car. He cares for me. He loves me. He always has, and you’ve always known it. He’s the one standing by my side, holding me gently as I’m patched up again. He’s the one suffering silently as I say that yes, I fell. Got into a fight outside the bar. Stupid, clumsy me. He’s the one doing all the things that a lover should, except he does it without any gratification whatsoever. He does it because he honestly cares. And you know what, Brad? I care for him as well.”

He rocked back on his heels, staring at me with shock large in his eyes. He chewed his lip as he climbed slowly to his feet, turning away with silent deliberation. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing myself back into the corner as my mind played out everything he could possibly do to me now. But he did nothing. He sat at the table and dialled a number with that same silent deliberation. I opened one eye to watch him, and found his stare fixed on me. I cringed inwardly.

“Phoenix,” he said, his voice full of false warmth. “Phi, I need you to come round for a bit. Now, immediately.”

He smiled at me, and gestured for me to move. Not daring to disobey, I scooted from my corner and into the hall. He shoved me viciously through the door into the lounge, and I crashed to my knees on the rug. My breath hitching around the sob that rose in my throat, I crawled to my chair and climbed into it. I curled my knees up to my chest, hugging them to me tightly as I rocked in silence. I prayed to every god I could name. I prayed for some kind of benevolent, belated mercy. I watched Brad watch the road, wishing I could erase the past hours, the past day. I sat and wished with my whole heart that David would have the intelligence not to come.

I felt my heart sink when the doorbell rang. Brad glanced at me, lips spreading into a vindictive, victorious smile. I sniffed and twisted the corners of my mouth into a vulgar parody of his smile.

“What’s your defence now, Chester?” he whispered as he headed for the door.

*
David sat on the couch and glanced at me, a heavy sigh passing his lips. He smiled as he looked at Brad. “You were never supposed to keep him, Brad. You were supposed to let him stay on the couch while he sorted himself out and got back to Arizona. Mike never meant for this, and you know it.”

“Mike didn’t care what happened to him, Phoenix, don’t give me that bullshit. If Mike had cared-”

“Which one of us went back with your best friend? Let me see. Oh, yeah! Shit, who knew, huh? It was me. And do you know what we talked about the whole fucking trip?”

I whimpered, sinking lower still in my chair. Brad shot me a warning glare, and I clapped a hand to my mouth. The bruises along my ribs throbbed. The ring of finger marks around my throat reminded me viciously of their presence every time I swallowed. Brad’s glare was icy when it snapped to me. I squeezed my eyes shut, turning my face to press it into the cushions behind me.

“Enlighten me, huh?” Brad whispered. I heard the rustle of David’s pants, and gasped as his arms wrapped around me gently. He squeezed into the chair beside me, forcing me to move my legs so that he had room.

“Did Mike ever ask you what happened to Chester?”

“Never,” Brad murmured, staring directly at David, who never even flinched. He only held me tighter and pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead.

“You’re a liar, Brad,” he said softly, barely audibly. “He used to phone at least once a week. From time to time, I hear from him. And every time – every time! – he asks me what happened to Chester. And I have to lie to him, because I can’t face telling him that you tore this man apart.”

“He could have left at any time.”

“Could he? Really? Why didn’t you just say?!” David’s voice was full of mocking sincerity, and he turned to me, catching my face gently between his hands as he forced me to meet his eyes.

“Did you hear?” he whispered to me, his voice pitched for my ears alone. “Brad says you can leave. We can be happy, Chester. All you have to do is go upstairs and pack. Brad says that’s all you ever had to do.”

I snapped my gaze to Brad, sniffing as a sob rose in my throat again. I whimpered and pushed myself away from the chair. Brad tilted his head as I sought guidance from him. Slowly, deliberately, I moved towards him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders as I pressed my lips to his throat. I glanced back at David and he nodded his head, a tiny triumphant smile flickering on his lips.

“All he had to do was walk away, hmm?”

He gathered his belongings to him and got to his feet. “I’m not giving up on him, Brad. One way or another, he has to be saved from you. He deserves a shot at happiness, deserves someone who loves him and not the idea of him. He deserves to be seen as human, just once in his life.”

*
Blood on the tiles, gleaming crimson beneath the harsh strip light. I clapped a hand to my mouth, listening to the shrill buzz of the phone. I brought my head up, meeting my own eyes staring back at me from the mirror. The front door slammed, and I braced my arms against the weakness in my legs, holding myself upright through sheer force of will.

The machine caught the phone, and went dead before a message was left. Mere seconds later, it rang again. I whimpered, and lurched from the bathroom and into the hallway. My fingers scrabbled for purchase on the walls, crimson smearing across the paintwork.

“Hello?”

My voice sounded weak in my own ears, barely a croak as it passed my lips. The phone slipped in my grip as I crumpled to my knees. Head swimming, I forced myself to a sitting position, resting my head back against the wall. My vision swam, pain searing through my limbs. I wiped blood from my mouth and nose with the cuff of my sleeve once again.

“Chester?”

I felt a laugh bubble in my throat, and I clutched the phone with both hands, forcing myself to hold it against my ear.

“I – I thought you’d given up on me,” I whispered, tears mingling with the blood to leave weak, bloody trails down my face.

“It was easier to walk away,” he said quietly. “I was only trying to make a point. I’m going to help you, save you before you die.”

“Come get me, Nix. I need you more than ever tonight.”

“I can’t. Brad. You know.”

“He’s not here. Gone.” I paused, chewing my lip as I fought blood loss and panic. “There’s – there’s a key. It hasn’t moved since you last used it. Let yourself in. Rescue me. Please, if you love me then save me now.”

The line went dead, and the receiver banged ominously against the wall before hanging still when I released it. It looked forlorn, dangling on its cable, casting its shadow against the wall. I crawled back into the hall, closing my eyes to steady myself as the world revolved in hazy greys around me. I needed comfort, human contact. Slowly, unsteadily, using the walls once more as support, I fought my way to the television. It threw its gaudy light across a small patch of floor. Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Breath hissing between my teeth, I turned slowly, searching for the switch for the wall lights, delicate up-lighters to take the edge off of the darkness.

I heard a key in the door, and pressed myself into the remaining dark corner. I stared at the liquid patches of light, revelling in the way they spread against the carpet. I listened to heavy boots on the hall carpet and squeezed my eyes shut as the hinge on the door protested at being opened. Couldn’t be David, I reasoned, couldn’t be my David – too soon, much too soon. Shattered, fragmented, my brain tried to time the period between the phone call and the key in the lock. Not enough time, surely not enough time. Hadn’t heard the car. Had Brad taken the car? Couldn’t be David, not yet – too soon…

The heavy footsteps quickened as they crossed the intervening space. Fabric rustled, and warm calloused fingers caught my face. I heard his breath hitch in his throat, and forced one eye open. A strangled sob escaped me as I collapsed in his arms.

“Save me,” I whispered, tangling bloody fingers in his crisp brown work shirt. He smoothed my hair and kissed my face. Blood like ruby claret clung to his lips as he pulled away.

“Can you stand, Chester?” he whispered, wiping his lips as he pulled away from me. I shook my head, no.

“I don’t even have anything to take,” I said, my voice hoarse in my throat.

“Do you need anything?”

“Just my clothes. From the closet.” I paused and tugged furiously at my hands, sobbing as my ring refused resolutely to budge. I held my hand out uselessly to Dave. “And leave that on his pillow. Get it off me and leave it for him. I’m no coming back this time. Not alive.”

*
He crouched before me, tilting his head, concern large in his beautiful eyes. “You need to go,” he whispered, his voice breaking around the vowels. “I can’t clean this mess.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head so hard that the world began to spin once more. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t. He’ll look there first. Do you see?”

He nodded reluctantly and pushed himself to his feet. His smile was sad as his eyes flicked over me. “You’re safe here,” he murmured. “Just rest now.”

His hand moved to turn off the light to his spare room. I whimpered audibly and called his name.

“Nix, please – leave the light?”

He glanced back at me and nodded his head once, slowly. When the door closed silently behind him, I rolled onto my side and stare impassively at the wall. I waited for the sound of footsteps on the hall carpet, for the sound of the car pulling onto the driveway and the fierce, blinding beam of the headlights. I waited to hear the pop of another beer being opened, or the front door slamming. Instead, I heard his dog’s claws on the kitchen floor and the chatter of the television. I buried my head under the quilt, unnerved by the silence, by the rigid normality of David’s house.

The alarm clocked flickered steadily in front of me, counting the individual minutes that I lay silently immersed in my pain. I curled my knees up, pressing my palms together between my thighs as I buried my face in the pillow and my shoulder. I drifted uneasily in and out of consciousness, and jumped physically when a gentle hand came to rest on my shoulder.

“How you doing, Chaz?”

I glanced over my shoulder and risked a smile. It wavered unsteadily before finally settling. “Good,” I whispered, rolling onto my back. I reached with one damaged, torn hand to touch his face. “I’m doing good. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips. “Don’t,” he said gently, “Just rest, concentrate on recovering. I’ll call a doctor for you tomorrow.”

He made a move to get off the bed, and I gripped his arm as best I could. He glanced back at me. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Stay. Hold me. Keep me safe.”

He paused, tilting his head once again. I pressed my lips into a thin line, and then shook my head.

“Forget it,” I whispered, sinking back down beneath the quilt, resuming the near foetal position I had assumed before he woke me. Panic flared in my chest as the light flicked off, but I refused resolutely to move. I froze as a warm hand slid across my bruised hip, but his voice was gentle as he murmured three words into my ear.

“I love you,” he said. I smiled as I relaxed, gripping his hand as I pressed myself back against him.

He was gone when I awoke, but he called me from work. He said he was coming home at lunchtime, that he’d organised time away from work. Emergency, he told them, unavoidable. He was going out of a state for a month or so, last minute affair. They weren’t happy, understandably, but they needed David when he came back. There was a doctor coming at one to make sure I wasn’t broken beyond all repair, and then he said we were going back to Phoenix. He said it’d been too long since I’d last been home, and perhaps he was right. I hadn’t seen my family since I’d moved to California for the sake of the art major and his vanity.

“Chester, you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

I was sat on the couch when he arrived home, working my way through the bank of videos he had to hand. He grinned at me, and gestured the pile.

“Where’d you find those?”

I glanced at him out the corner of my eye. “Don’t worry. I didn’t touch your porn.”

He rolled his eyes and switched the video off, placing his hands beneath my elbows and guiding me to my feet. “We should get you washed again. The doctor will be here shortly. Ches?”

“Dave?”

“He didn’t – you know?”

I stared blankly, trying to read his meaning in his eyes. “I don’t know,” I said, failing. His voice was a low hiss as his throat clenched around the word.

“Rape you,” he whispered, tears pricking in his expressive eyes. I smiled and shook my head.

“No. He never has. He’s not that stupid. He knows that eventually he’ll have to explain it to someone who might think the damage a little suspicious.”

He nodded. “We should get you cleaned up.”

*
He gripped my hand as we boarded the plane, and I glanced at him with my troubled eyes. Too easy, my mind kept repeating. It had all been too easy. He wouldn’t have let go of eight years without a struggle. I wanted desperately to believe that I had meant more to him than that. I wanted desperately to feel that he had loved me in any respect. But instead, it seemed he had just let me walk away. I glanced at David and squeezed his hand, reassuring myself that he was still there at least. He raked his eyes over me and looped an arm about my shoulder, pulling me to one side of the boarding passage briefly.

“Ches-”

I pressed a finger to his lip, shaking my head before leaning in and kissing him softly. His hands slid around my waist as he responded, his voice sinking to a low purr.

“Don’t say anything,” I whispered, pulling away from him. “Please, Nix. Don’t spoil it.”

He nodded acquiescence, and I hugged him easily against me. But even as I did so, it was Brad I pictured in my mind. It was Brad that I wanted to hold me tenderly one last time. I wanted to hear Brad whisper another apology, another empty promise to change before I walked away forever. I wanted him to feel for me what I had always felt for him, and I knew that he never would. Even as I wished for Brad, I knew completely that I had always been a commodity, expendable. There were plenty more fools like me. I was replaceable in every respect. Even as I boarded that plane, I made a silent vow to myself. One last phone call, one last chance – I wanted him to know what happened to me. I wanted to let him know that he hadn’t won…

“Chester,” David murmured, nudging me from my sleep. I shook my head groggily and pushed myself upright. It was there in his eyes. He knew. He knew me more completely than I would ever know myself.

“I-”

“I know,” he said, nodding sadly. “Call him, Ches. When we land, call him. See how much he cares for you. I love you. I’ve never been lying about that.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, glancing away. “I do love you as well.”

“But he’s all you know.”

I glanced back, pure misery tensing every working muscle and flowing from every pore. “How d’you know?”

“Remember what he was to me,” he said, and handed me a small cup. “I got you juice. It’s better than water, and certainly better than nothing.”

True to his word, as soon as we left the airport, he handed me his cell and reeled off all the numbers he had for Brad. “But try your home number first.”

“Home’s with you,” I whispered, and typed in my old number. David had tears in his eyes when I looked at him again. I wrapped my free arm around him, pressing my lips to his cheek.

Brad’s voice almost made me drop the phone, but I clutched it tightly. “Not David, Brad,” I whispered, barely audible down the line. “Do you remember me?”

“Chester? Dear God! I figured you got run over or some shit. Rushed to the ER and died, no contacts or anything. It’s not like you carried identifiers, not since your licence expired.”

Anger boiled, hatred seethed. “I loved you,” I said, my voice growing stronger. Brad laughed.

“What’s love, Ches?”

“I’m safe now.”

“Good, great. I’m happy for you. Look, I hate to sound harsh but I have an important meeting right now. Drop it, move on. I said – all you had to do was walk away. I don’t need you. I never did. You were fun, but at least David hit back. I think I liked that about him. You? You’re a doormat. Good day.”

The line went dead, and David’s fingers wiped away the tears on my cheeks.

“You’re safe,” he whispered, hailing a taxi. “You’re free.”

*
There remain traces all over my body. The scars on my arms, the uneven arc of my repeatedly shattered ribs… And when the cold sets in, my hip seizes up until I can barely walk. They say revenge is best served cold, and perhaps that is true. I know I took pleasure in testifying against him when the man who followed me took him to court. To see his face twisted into a macabre parody of itself as I spoke of our lives together… Few things make me feel that strong.

David remains as another one of those things. Twice a year, he takes me back home, back to my family. With his help, I have found within me the courage to finish my education and find employment. Self-respect and self-confidence are, I am sure, within my reach.

David has made one final promise, his smile easy as his fingers tangle in my hair, as he presses his beautiful body flush against mine. Next year, he laughs, Hawaii. Rum, sea and sand. And a beautiful platinum ring.

And;

“Someone wants to meet you,” he whispers, his voice muffled against my skin as I arch my spine. His fingers play a sensuous game against tender flesh.

“Mm? Who?” I groan, arching my neck as I catch my lip between my teeth, tangling my fingers in the bed sheets.

“Someone with a guilty conscience. Someone who knew he was feeding something precious to the wolves.”

I push myself to my elbows and into a sitting position, catching his face between my hands. He smiles and runs his hands across my hips and up my sides, calloused fingers playing games with my damaged body.

“Mike?” I whisper. He bites his lip and laughs.

“Mike,” he confirms. I laugh and kiss him hungrily. Full circle, I reflect. Full circle, and safe back home…

FIN

© FyrMaiden 10.10.2004

End Notes: Hurrah for updating at work! Read and review. Chars!

Damaged Shadow

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 23:52:45 GMT

Fandom: Linkin Park
Pairing: Sam/Chester, written from Phoenix’s point of view
Title: Damaged Shadow
Category: Angst
Rating: R, for imagery
Status: Standalone
Summary: ‘It was your eyes that made me fall in love with you.’ How do you eulogise the one thing you’ve learnt you can never replace?

Author's Notes: Okay, so no whining. I'm warning you right now that this is a death fic, and yes, it's another emotional wringer. Bring your Kleenex or equivalent along with. No refunds... Title shamlessly stolen from someone who commented on Shooting Star, but I don't remember who. My bad!

It was your eyes that made me fall in love with you.

No. Perhaps that’s not where this should begin.

I always thought that I knew myself. I understood myself. I was sure of myself. Nothing could change that. Nothing. And then you came along. Your sharp wit, your laugh. You and your boyish charm invaded my world and turned it on its head. You and your smile, and the way your eyes were so expressive. All your emotions poured from your eyes. When you forced your easy smile, your eyes retained that melancholy that was so characteristic. Even when you appeared physically fine, your eyes turned you into glass. Your eyes made you fragile, all the pain and hurt in the world glittering in their tragic depths.

I honestly didn’t think you’d last. I never imagined that you would slip so easily into our lives. Everything about you was so wildly different. You were married. You smoked. You smoked more than just tobacco. You drank too much, but you were fighting that. You had responsibilities that the rest of us couldn’t envisage. We were college kids. You? You were already a man.

I guess we didn’t bank on your determination to succeed. We didn’t bank on the courage you possessed, or on the support that your wife gave you. We had no comprehension of what you had been through and what spurred you on. Not one of us would ever have dreamed of doing what you did. Despite there being less than a year between us, you seemed so much older from the start. We had a lot of catching up to do before we would be fit to call you our friend.

You. Everything you did was novel to us. We were loose acquaintances brought together by one thing. We didn’t really know one another, except as friends of at least one other person in the band. You didn’t even have that quasi-fraternal bond. You were outside, alone. But you were also impossible to exclude. We knew. Right from the moment we heard that demo, when you were recommended – we knew that here was something special. You blew us away. We’d struck gold. How could we possibly fail now?

You weren’t what we expected. I don’t know what we did expect, but what we got wasn’t it. Under-nourished, skinny, tattooed. You screamed punk in a way that we never would. All we would ever say in any remotely raised voice was ‘frat-boy’. But you stood apart and bellowed rock from the pit of your stomach. You pushed yourself to do things we had never dreamt of. Such was your determination when you first hit LA that you were sleeping in your car.

All of us – we were a mismatch of taste, style and sophistication. But you found you could relate to each of us in a different way. You were adaptable, and we learnt that we were as well. You taught us so much in the time that we knew you. Not least of all, you taught us the irrepressibility of the human spirit. Despite everything that rose before you, you managed to stay the course. You didn’t win every time, but at the very least, you finished. We couldn’t help but respect that. Too many times, our natural reaction would have been to give up, quit, return to day jobs. Nine till five. At least we would have been assured a steady income.

‘No,’ you declared with all your emphatic passion. Your eyes flashed black as anger rolled beneath the surface. You’d given up so much. You and Sam hadn’t had much back in Phoenix, but you’d been making something of yourself. You’d risked too much to give up. I do believe that without you, we’d have continued to mess around in Mike’s room, opening gigs for local bands, always envying them the limelight they had so effortlessly achieved.

Effortlessly.

We know the truth of ‘effortless’ and ‘overnight success’. We know how hard we worked. We know how shocked we were when the record kept selling. Rejection after rejection weighed on our minds and our hearts, but we knew that we had something.

We had you.

Even the people who didn’t like the cohesive whole that we were admired you. They admired that something as fragile looking as you could sing, scream, shout and throw itself about with the casual abandon that you did. They saw in you probably the same things that Sam always did: you were genuine, honest, funny, talented. You were you, and you weren’t ashamed of who that person was. You embraced everything about yourself. Or at least, you did in public.

You never let the crumbling walls of your sanity affect your public persona. Even when you were dying inside, you understood the commitment you had made when the band became globally recognised. As the travelling and the loneliness got to you, as you broke down slowly, it was only in your own company that you allowed the tears to fall. It was only when you were alone that you allowed the cracks to grow.

To begin with, we didn’t know you well enough, didn’t know enough about you to help or stop the onslaught. It was only as friendship became deeper – until friendship could be recognised as love and trust – that we knew what to watch for. Understand, initially we didn’t know that there was a problem with you drinking. We never stopped to consider that weed was a poor substitute for something stronger. We knew you had to be missing Sam, but there wasn’t anything we could do…

It was Sam who told us in the end. Sam told Mike, because Mike had taken on the role of spokesman for our concern. Mike told us. ‘He’s on The Wagon,’ he said, his voice fully justifying the capitals. Suddenly it was so obvious. How had we not noticed? What kind of friends were we?

As one, we were ashamed of ourselves. When Joe pointed out that as we hadn’t known there was nothing we could have done, it didn’t really make us feel any better. He made a good point, but it didn’t alleviate the guilt.

All the while we were in America, Sam came with us. She made all the difference to you. Being apart from her was crippling for you. You hadn’t been separated from her for any length of time since you’d been married. That first touring cycle, you were home for perhaps a week at most. It was draining for all of us, but a blow to you. I think we all learnt something that year. And you learnt that being on a different continent to the one thing that made life feel liveable was almost more than you could bear.

We all grew up and grew closer simultaneously. We learnt a lot about you, but then, you weren’t shy about talking about it. You felt you owed it to the kids still suffering. You owed it to yourself to do all that you could. There was light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

You had your flaws. No one’s perfect. That was your mantra. A little cliché for you, really, but you wore it well. No one’s perfect; shit happens; you just got to roll with it… You made us smile and laugh, and even when you were angry you tried to make sure you kept it quiet. Not one of us had the words to explain how much we looked up to you. We tried and we failed, but you still understood.

You were a walking paradox. On the one hand, you craved your privacy and your personal space. On the other, you couldn’t bear to be completely alone. You made jokes to take the edge off of loneliness. You wouldn’t stay on the bus with no one else there. The shadows frightened you, and you laughed at your own stupidity. Without Sam, you would insist that one of us at least share a room with you. Even if you didn’t talk, you needed the certainty that someone was in the room with you. No matter where we were in the world, you spent hours on your phone talking to your wife. Sam remained the only grasp you still had on the reality of your every day life.

You used to describe her as an angel. You always said that she was perfect, that you didn’t deserve her. Your devotion seeped from every pore, and your fans loved her as much as you did. How could they fail to respect her when she was clearly the centre of your spinning world?

We thought – always knew innately – that we would falter and fail eventually. We would have liked to pretend for a short while that we could have existed independently of your burning star. Each of us knew that it wasn’t true, but we didn’t mind. There should have been some burning malice, some ugly emotion, but the truth is that there wasn’t. There should have been resentment. You were the last member to join, and yet you usurped even Mike as the spokesman. But you were the light relief. Mike was too long-winded, too technical. When Mike got boring, you were the person still there to interject something stupid. Some atypical remark so characteristic of you. As for the rest of us, we were content to be ‘the band’. We were happy with our anonymity. Although perhaps not so immediately unrecognisable as many musicians, we were still largely untroubled by global fame.

You had quirks, the same insecurities as so many people. In myriad small ways, you tested us every day that we knew you. Sam explained this to us as well. Your wife explained so much about your character. You were an enigma, cloaked in mystery and intrigue. Every day revealed something new, and every time we thought that at long last we knew Chester, you revealed something more. Extravagance and excess were bywords for your lifestyle.

You revelled in the simplest things. Your guilty pleasures were few and innocent at that. Your car, your son, your friends, the warmth of the afternoon sun. Cold beer and trashy vampire novels. Your wife. At the end of it all and after everything else, your principle source of light was always Sam, because you knew that after everything else had faded, Sam would still be there with you. To the end of the world with you.

What happened to us, then? We had everything. Health, money, serenity. We existed on a plain with all the self-assurance of people who could do nothing wrong. It was Sam who told us again. Actually, this time Sam told me. She couldn’t tell Mike, she said. The love for Chester was too clear in his eyes. She said, ‘You know him best, Dave. Probably because, of all of you, you’re the most like him. He sees in you the person he could have been, if things had been different for him.’

I wondered briefly if perhaps she thought that I didn’t love him like Mike did, but one look at her dissolved my concern. ‘You care,’ she murmured, her heart breaking. ‘You love him as much as I do. I see that in you. I’m not blind. And so you should know. Perhaps you can tell the rest. You’ll have to learn to live without him. He won’t be here forever.’

She barely got the words out, her whispering voice breaking around each syllable that passed her lips. Her eyes gazed at me, and somewhere in their shimmering depths crystal tears welled and fell. I took her in my arms and held her against me. Her cheek pressed against my chest as she hugged me in response.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I murmured. She pulled back, licking her dry, damaged lips.

‘Tumour,’ she said, tapping the side of her head. ‘In his brain. There’s nothing they can do. Too far along. All they can do is alleviate the pain.’

We added a new awareness fund to the growing list.0 The heart of Trinity Hospice Care is the team, a group of professionals who provide comfort and care to those individuals for whom a cure is no longer possible. Suddenly their work was invaluable to us.

We realised full force in record time just how invaluable you were as well. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that I knew. None of us could. It’s impossibly difficult to look your friend in the eye and tell him you know he’s dying. I loved you too much, respected you too much.

‘You know,’ you said. Your eyes caught mine and wouldn’t let them go. You sat behind the wheel of your car. You were playing a game and wouldn’t let me out. And then the atmosphere changed. You sprang the question on me. I couldn’t lie to you.

‘I know,’ I whispered. You touched my arm gently. How was it that you were the one comforting me? And the look in your eyes summarised all the reasons I loved and respected you so much. Behind the film of tears, behind the layer of glass… behind it all was the resolute strength of personality that shone from you at all times, a beacon to warn others on their way.

The band was over, finished. You were irreplaceable, and you obviously couldn’t continue. Weeks rolled into months that became a year. You swore by the magic powers of weed. Sam told us that you were on enough medication to kill an elephant. In a way it was true. You were on medication to counteract the side effects of the pills and shots to alleviate the pain. You became even more emotionally charged, flicking between anger and tears in seconds. You lashed out at all of us, and at Sam who was there with you around the clock. Nothing, Chester, nothing could stop that woman from loving you with her whole being.

The only person completely spared was your son. You cherished every single moment that you could spend with him, and tried to keep as much of your illness from him as you could. Sam never let you out of her sight with him. She never really let you out of her sight at all. Unpaid and un-begrudging, she tended you night and day. When you lashed out at each of us, pushing us away – perhaps trying to stop us caring, to stop it hurting when you were finally gone for good – it was Sam who was always there.

When your increasingly erratic behaviour became too much for her to handle, Sam would spend time with us. Your mom came out to help her care for you, and when she needed time away from you, you mom was always there. It broke everyone’s hearts to see you, unaware of who you were or what day of the week it was. Sam would come to me with stories about you. I learnt so much about you in the last days of your life. Between her broken sobs, wracked with pain and broken beyond repair, she would relay the stories regarding how you met, every anniversary, her birthdays – all the little things you’d ever done that had lodged forever in her mind. As she talked, everything about you snapped into vivid focus. I felt your loss in the same way she did, and it hurt me more to see the dying man that I did when I saw you.

The last couple of months were the worst. You were admitted to hospital. Sam couldn’t do any more than she had. We all knew that. You knew that, but when she met your eyes all she saw was non-existent accusation. It broke her heart. She wanted you to be at home when the inevitable happened, but they didn’t have medication available to numb the pain. You were in no state to administer morphine, and she couldn’t. She was there with you day and night. She would call me at around midnight, when you had finally drifted into fitful sleep.

‘It’s not long, Phi,’ she’d say with a choked sob. ‘It can’t be. Keep the guys informed for me.’

One of us would go in every day to see her, take in the flowers that still arrived daily, the condolences that flooded from across the globe. It was amazing how many people had honestly found a place for you and for us in their hearts and in their minds. You told Sam you were scared, but never us. You told us to take care of her, that you were worried for her. We, in turn, told you that she would never want for anything.

They let you out for Christmas. By January, a minor complication had become a major one. You were rushed back into hospital on the first day of the New Year. I think we all knew that this was it. We knew that this time you weren’t coming back. I don’t think any of us expected you to deteriorate so quickly, however.

‘Dave?’ she whispered down the phone, and something in the quiet exhaustion told me before she said another word. ‘Dave, can you come pick me up?’

She sat in the passenger seat and glanced sidelong at me through the curtain of her hair. She was trying so hard to be strong, but none of it seemed to matter. She bit her lip as the threatening tears finally became too much and rolled ceaselessly down her face. She swiped at them angrily, and laughed because she didn’t know what else to do.

‘What now, Phi?’ she murmured. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. I didn’t have the answers and didn’t know how to respond. I told Mike, and Mike told the guys. Together, as one, we mourned you. Each of us remembered something different. It was enlightening, to see you as each of us had done while you had still been with us.

And me? I’ll always remember your eyes, and the way that they made me fall in love with you…

FIN

© FyrMaiden: September 2004