Migraine, and "Two Nights, Five Days" (1/1)
Migraine that's been building for four days reached a crescendo last night and today, so I stayed home from work. Slept a lot, worshiped the great god Fioricet.
I've been watching Firefly--which I re-bought, in its entirety--and what does the Muse give me? Convergence!verse fic, and Immortal!verse. The latter's not so bad, because all I had to do was barebones sketch out some plot points. But the former had to be written. It was doing awful things to my characterization for the ficathon assignment--which, btw? Is sweetness and light holiday fic, so not my speed.
It keeps trying to go post-Serenity angsty on me--like, dead everyone, angst--and I'm fairly certain that is not what my giftee wants :(
Out, damn angst!
On a brighter note, the Hudson Valley's gonna be hit with an ice storm tonight and tomorrow. If you don't hear from me for a few days, I was trapped in my apartment and cannibalized by my loud, pot-head upstairs neighbors.
So, fic. Originally written as a last minute entry for the slashthedrabble prompt "fast". My take on three definitions of the word: quickly, securely, and to abstain from eating. But I was too late to post, due to hellacious migraine. C'est la vie.
Two Nights, Five Days
Author: _beetle_
Fandom: AtS
Pairing: Spike/Steven, Steven,Connor
Rating: R
Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Post-NFA by eight months. Set in the Convergence-verse, takes place few weeks after the events of the ficlet that inspired the 'verse.
Summary: Two 500 word ficlets and a series of five drabbles. Three explorations of the word "fast".
I
“You asleep?”
Steven smirks--and it is Steven, whose range of facial expression is somewhat limited, consisting of one all-purpose glare and smirk--but keeps playing possum. “I'll take that as a no, charlatan.”
The smirk intensifies, grows even more at odds with the dark hollows around his closed eyes, the peaky-sharpness of his features. “If you don't stop wrecking my afterglow, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave.”
Spike sits on their bed, holding out a tall glass of Pibb Xtra, something Steven hates, but will drink because Connor likes it. (There isn't, Spike reflects grimly, anything they wouldn't do for each other.) “Afterglow? And who says I'm done with you for the night, pet?”
Steven opens his eyes, and in the sodium vapor light coming in the windows of their tiny sublet the bright blue seems faded, gunmetal-grey. But they shine with a depth of emotion that takes Spike's breath away even as a thousand regrets gnaw at him. . . .
He supposes tonight will add one more set of teeth.
That smirk turns into an almost-smile (Steven can't quite manage the trick, just as Connor couldn't smirk to save his life) and he takes the glass. Automatically bolts a third of it. Then another, his sodium-grey eyes never leaving Spike's.
He holds out the glass only to jerk it away twice--soda sloshing--before letting Spike capture it. “So, are you always this energized after repeatedly violating a helpless man?”
“Helpless?” Spike snorts and puts the glass on the night-table. His fingers have barely left it before Steven's pulling him down to the bed, wrapping him tight with steel-strong arms and legs.
“Love,” he breathes between the sort of lingering, thorough kisses Steven specializes in. “Man cannot live by cock, alone. Not even a mutant, monster-boy, such as yourself. You need to sle--”
“C'mon, all you have to do is get hard, and I'll--” Steven rolls them over and straddles Spike's legs, rocking back and forth distractingly . . . smirking, smirking, smirking “--do the rest.”
Spike tries to pretend he's immune to Steven's Sex! Now! routine. To Steven. One of them has to be the adult. “Seriously, Steven. The last time I know you slept for certain was when your other half nodded off at that Citgo in Charleston. How many times since then?”
Steven's not smirking now, not meeting Spike's eyes.
“Not once in the past three weeks, then.” More than six times the span it'd take for the average human to go screaming 'round the twist. Spike's as horrified as he is worried. “Suffering Christ, love.”
Steven slumps, and bites his lip. “It's nothing, I just--don't need as much . . . much . . . uh. . . .” he seems to lose his train of thought completely--then collapses on top of Spike, who grunts as the air is driven out of him.
In the sudden silence, punctuated only by deep, quiet breaths, he's left to wonder if maybe he should've halved the dose after all.
II
Blood-red, sunless sky above, burnt-blood dirt below--rocks covered in scorch-marks, and trees made out of cinders. Blast-furnace air, and grass too dead to burn.
The Quor'toth.
His memory of it, anyway. But still. . . .
“I hate this place,” Steven mutters.
Heavy hands settle on his shoulders. For a moment, he's certain it's Holtz.
“Me, too.” Beat. Definitely not Holtz. “Dunno how you survived.”
“I didn't have a choice.”
“Point.” The hands start kneading his shoulders “So why're you back?”
“Spike spiked my soda.”
“What?!” The hands freeze, then yank Steven around.
Connor is . . . thinner, shabbier. Angrier. The J. Crew look--chosen by Spike, protested by neither of them--is frayed around the edges and toward the center. Steven's own version of the outfit still looks like new.
It's like staring into a distorted mirror--everything familiar rendered just different enough to discomfit.
“Say ahhh,” Connor commands, and leans in when Steven does. Tilts both their heads at odd angles. Sniffs Steven's breath for awhile before huffing out an unhappy one of his own. “Something I don't recognize. And Pibb Xtra,” he adds wistfully, stepping back.
“Biggest glass I ever had.” Steven runs his finger along a bloody rip in the front of Connor's grimy button-down shirt. He can just glimpse the raw gouge underneath. “You're hurt.”
Connor shrugs and scans the sky above them uneasily. “Just because they're memories, doesn't mean the monsters are less real. Let's keep moving.”
*
“So . . . how is he?”
No need to ask who 'he' is. “Spike's . . . Spike. Sarcastic, tired, horny--sneaky. . . .”
“Beautiful,” Connor says, and it's not a question.
They walk in silence for several minutes, kicking up red dust and redder insects.
“You love him.”
Connor doesn't smile, but he seems amused. “Maybe . . . but you loved him first.”
Remembering that night in the museum, and the strange ripples of something that'd soothed away the driving urge to kill, Steven sighs. “I don't think I did.”
Now Connor smiles; laughs, and there's red dirt in the laugh lines. “You love him best, then.”
“We both do.”
Connor snorts. “Yeah, was that before, or after I nearly killed him?”
Steven shakes his head but doesn't makes excuses. If he hadn't battered Connor back and below--shunted him here--the nightmares he'd been having would've cost Spike his life.
Spike still has faint, fingers-shaped bruises on his neck.
But. . . . “He misses you . . . so do I.” Also true, but not easy to admit.
“It's better, this way. For Spike, especially. I mean, someone's gotta keep the inside from coming out, right?” Connor's voice is soft, but firm with the kind of miserable, unshakable resolve Angel would've been proud of.
Having been raised by Daniel Holtz--who thankfully is not present--Steven knows a little about miserable, unshakable resolve, too.
“We leave together, or not at all.”
Something flickers in Connor's eyes, and he looks away. Squints up into a sun that isn't there. His grin is hard, angry.
“We'll be here awhile, then.”
III
Day 1
The indolent quiet is broken only by these:
snowflakes hitting the cheap, un-weatherproofed windows of their flat,
the ratchet and clank of an ancient furnace that's doing more to warm the neighborhood than the occupants of the building,
the occasional sigh that slips out as hours crawl slowly by.
By days end, Spike's comparing this sterile near-silence with Steven's watchful, but companionable one--a silence interspersed with kisses and touches. With soulful gazes, and smirks that are actually almost-smiles.
It's a different quality of silence, he realizes. One that I miss now that it's gone, however temporarily.
Day 2
Spike is bored.
He misses Connor's sardonic, self-conscious loquacity, and his easy unselfconscious laughter.
It's most of that second day before he turns on the telly. He's quick to turn it off again. Sitcoms are rubbish without their running banter as a replacement soundtrack.
It's far better, he discovers, to watch them sleep. To chart the peaceable rise and fall of their breast, and compose overblown, but heartfelt sonnets to the way their hand rests just so upon their abdomen. . . .
Yet when he puts pen to paper, words desert him, leaving him wistful and yearning at his lover's bedside.
Day 3
With their guileless, clean-cut looks it's easy to forget that Steven/Connor is, appearances aside, something more than human.
Vampire-strong, vampire-fast, vampire-durable--without the inherent susceptibility to sunlight and various holy relics--they should've thrown off the effects the sedative by now. Ground Iendas root would put a master vampire under for only a day or so. Maybe less.
It wouldn't do worse than that to Steven and Connor.
Or maybe it wouldn't have if they'd been getting . . . whatever constitutes a normal amount of rest for healthy Monster-Boys.
Three days, now, and Spike is . . . concerned. . . .
Day 4
Spike has tried everything including kisses, and kicks, but they won't wake up. Won't get hard, won't defend themselves from pinches, punches or slaps.
“Why won't you wake up?”
They don't even twitch. As it is their heart-rate is almost nonexistent. Spike knows this because he's spent hours with his head resting over that barely beating heart, listening for a rhythm he can only just feel.
“If you're waitin' on me to be sorry, you can wake up now, 'cos . . . I am.”
The only response he receives is another sluggish beat, and he's grateful for that, but--
“Wake up. . . .”
Day 5
Like any comatose human, Steven and Connor are wasting away, Spike is certain of this.
Only they are not human. Any doctor worth his salt will recognize that, and sharpish, too.
No, there's only one place left to turn.
In his ear, the phone rings and rings, as it has been for hours. Still, it's evening before someone on the other end finally picks up. “Prego?”
“Come sta, ma--yes, it's really, really me, now shut it, git, and listen.” Spike takes a breath, and the plunge. “Someone I love is very ill--dying, and . . . I need the Council's help. . . .”
*
I've been watching Firefly--which I re-bought, in its entirety--and what does the Muse give me? Convergence!verse fic, and Immortal!verse. The latter's not so bad, because all I had to do was barebones sketch out some plot points. But the former had to be written. It was doing awful things to my characterization for the ficathon assignment--which, btw? Is sweetness and light holiday fic, so not my speed.
It keeps trying to go post-Serenity angsty on me--like, dead everyone, angst--and I'm fairly certain that is not what my giftee wants :(
Out, damn angst!
On a brighter note, the Hudson Valley's gonna be hit with an ice storm tonight and tomorrow. If you don't hear from me for a few days, I was trapped in my apartment and cannibalized by my loud, pot-head upstairs neighbors.
So, fic. Originally written as a last minute entry for the slashthedrabble prompt "fast". My take on three definitions of the word: quickly, securely, and to abstain from eating. But I was too late to post, due to hellacious migraine. C'est la vie.
Two Nights, Five Days
Author: _beetle_
Fandom: AtS
Pairing: Spike/Steven, Steven,Connor
Rating: R
Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: Post-NFA by eight months. Set in the Convergence-verse, takes place few weeks after the events of the ficlet that inspired the 'verse.
Summary: Two 500 word ficlets and a series of five drabbles. Three explorations of the word "fast".
I
“You asleep?”
Steven smirks--and it is Steven, whose range of facial expression is somewhat limited, consisting of one all-purpose glare and smirk--but keeps playing possum. “I'll take that as a no, charlatan.”
The smirk intensifies, grows even more at odds with the dark hollows around his closed eyes, the peaky-sharpness of his features. “If you don't stop wrecking my afterglow, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave.”
Spike sits on their bed, holding out a tall glass of Pibb Xtra, something Steven hates, but will drink because Connor likes it. (There isn't, Spike reflects grimly, anything they wouldn't do for each other.) “Afterglow? And who says I'm done with you for the night, pet?”
Steven opens his eyes, and in the sodium vapor light coming in the windows of their tiny sublet the bright blue seems faded, gunmetal-grey. But they shine with a depth of emotion that takes Spike's breath away even as a thousand regrets gnaw at him. . . .
He supposes tonight will add one more set of teeth.
That smirk turns into an almost-smile (Steven can't quite manage the trick, just as Connor couldn't smirk to save his life) and he takes the glass. Automatically bolts a third of it. Then another, his sodium-grey eyes never leaving Spike's.
He holds out the glass only to jerk it away twice--soda sloshing--before letting Spike capture it. “So, are you always this energized after repeatedly violating a helpless man?”
“Helpless?” Spike snorts and puts the glass on the night-table. His fingers have barely left it before Steven's pulling him down to the bed, wrapping him tight with steel-strong arms and legs.
“Love,” he breathes between the sort of lingering, thorough kisses Steven specializes in. “Man cannot live by cock, alone. Not even a mutant, monster-boy, such as yourself. You need to sle--”
“C'mon, all you have to do is get hard, and I'll--” Steven rolls them over and straddles Spike's legs, rocking back and forth distractingly . . . smirking, smirking, smirking “--do the rest.”
Spike tries to pretend he's immune to Steven's Sex! Now! routine. To Steven. One of them has to be the adult. “Seriously, Steven. The last time I know you slept for certain was when your other half nodded off at that Citgo in Charleston. How many times since then?”
Steven's not smirking now, not meeting Spike's eyes.
“Not once in the past three weeks, then.” More than six times the span it'd take for the average human to go screaming 'round the twist. Spike's as horrified as he is worried. “Suffering Christ, love.”
Steven slumps, and bites his lip. “It's nothing, I just--don't need as much . . . much . . . uh. . . .” he seems to lose his train of thought completely--then collapses on top of Spike, who grunts as the air is driven out of him.
In the sudden silence, punctuated only by deep, quiet breaths, he's left to wonder if maybe he should've halved the dose after all.
II
Blood-red, sunless sky above, burnt-blood dirt below--rocks covered in scorch-marks, and trees made out of cinders. Blast-furnace air, and grass too dead to burn.
The Quor'toth.
His memory of it, anyway. But still. . . .
“I hate this place,” Steven mutters.
Heavy hands settle on his shoulders. For a moment, he's certain it's Holtz.
“Me, too.” Beat. Definitely not Holtz. “Dunno how you survived.”
“I didn't have a choice.”
“Point.” The hands start kneading his shoulders “So why're you back?”
“Spike spiked my soda.”
“What?!” The hands freeze, then yank Steven around.
Connor is . . . thinner, shabbier. Angrier. The J. Crew look--chosen by Spike, protested by neither of them--is frayed around the edges and toward the center. Steven's own version of the outfit still looks like new.
It's like staring into a distorted mirror--everything familiar rendered just different enough to discomfit.
“Say ahhh,” Connor commands, and leans in when Steven does. Tilts both their heads at odd angles. Sniffs Steven's breath for awhile before huffing out an unhappy one of his own. “Something I don't recognize. And Pibb Xtra,” he adds wistfully, stepping back.
“Biggest glass I ever had.” Steven runs his finger along a bloody rip in the front of Connor's grimy button-down shirt. He can just glimpse the raw gouge underneath. “You're hurt.”
Connor shrugs and scans the sky above them uneasily. “Just because they're memories, doesn't mean the monsters are less real. Let's keep moving.”
*
“So . . . how is he?”
No need to ask who 'he' is. “Spike's . . . Spike. Sarcastic, tired, horny--sneaky. . . .”
“Beautiful,” Connor says, and it's not a question.
They walk in silence for several minutes, kicking up red dust and redder insects.
“You love him.”
Connor doesn't smile, but he seems amused. “Maybe . . . but you loved him first.”
Remembering that night in the museum, and the strange ripples of something that'd soothed away the driving urge to kill, Steven sighs. “I don't think I did.”
Now Connor smiles; laughs, and there's red dirt in the laugh lines. “You love him best, then.”
“We both do.”
Connor snorts. “Yeah, was that before, or after I nearly killed him?”
Steven shakes his head but doesn't makes excuses. If he hadn't battered Connor back and below--shunted him here--the nightmares he'd been having would've cost Spike his life.
Spike still has faint, fingers-shaped bruises on his neck.
But. . . . “He misses you . . . so do I.” Also true, but not easy to admit.
“It's better, this way. For Spike, especially. I mean, someone's gotta keep the inside from coming out, right?” Connor's voice is soft, but firm with the kind of miserable, unshakable resolve Angel would've been proud of.
Having been raised by Daniel Holtz--who thankfully is not present--Steven knows a little about miserable, unshakable resolve, too.
“We leave together, or not at all.”
Something flickers in Connor's eyes, and he looks away. Squints up into a sun that isn't there. His grin is hard, angry.
“We'll be here awhile, then.”
III
Day 1
The indolent quiet is broken only by these:
snowflakes hitting the cheap, un-weatherproofed windows of their flat,
the ratchet and clank of an ancient furnace that's doing more to warm the neighborhood than the occupants of the building,
the occasional sigh that slips out as hours crawl slowly by.
By days end, Spike's comparing this sterile near-silence with Steven's watchful, but companionable one--a silence interspersed with kisses and touches. With soulful gazes, and smirks that are actually almost-smiles.
It's a different quality of silence, he realizes. One that I miss now that it's gone, however temporarily.
Day 2
Spike is bored.
He misses Connor's sardonic, self-conscious loquacity, and his easy unselfconscious laughter.
It's most of that second day before he turns on the telly. He's quick to turn it off again. Sitcoms are rubbish without their running banter as a replacement soundtrack.
It's far better, he discovers, to watch them sleep. To chart the peaceable rise and fall of their breast, and compose overblown, but heartfelt sonnets to the way their hand rests just so upon their abdomen. . . .
Yet when he puts pen to paper, words desert him, leaving him wistful and yearning at his lover's bedside.
Day 3
With their guileless, clean-cut looks it's easy to forget that Steven/Connor is, appearances aside, something more than human.
Vampire-strong, vampire-fast, vampire-durable--without the inherent susceptibility to sunlight and various holy relics--they should've thrown off the effects the sedative by now. Ground Iendas root would put a master vampire under for only a day or so. Maybe less.
It wouldn't do worse than that to Steven and Connor.
Or maybe it wouldn't have if they'd been getting . . . whatever constitutes a normal amount of rest for healthy Monster-Boys.
Three days, now, and Spike is . . . concerned. . . .
Day 4
Spike has tried everything including kisses, and kicks, but they won't wake up. Won't get hard, won't defend themselves from pinches, punches or slaps.
“Why won't you wake up?”
They don't even twitch. As it is their heart-rate is almost nonexistent. Spike knows this because he's spent hours with his head resting over that barely beating heart, listening for a rhythm he can only just feel.
“If you're waitin' on me to be sorry, you can wake up now, 'cos . . . I am.”
The only response he receives is another sluggish beat, and he's grateful for that, but--
“Wake up. . . .”
Day 5
Like any comatose human, Steven and Connor are wasting away, Spike is certain of this.
Only they are not human. Any doctor worth his salt will recognize that, and sharpish, too.
No, there's only one place left to turn.
In his ear, the phone rings and rings, as it has been for hours. Still, it's evening before someone on the other end finally picks up. “Prego?”
“Come sta, ma--yes, it's really, really me, now shut it, git, and listen.” Spike takes a breath, and the plunge. “Someone I love is very ill--dying, and . . . I need the Council's help. . . .”
*