Friends (1/?)
Title: Friends (1/?)
Author: hannah_chapter
Summary: Sequel to Enemies. When worlds collide...
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: 15/R
Feedback: Hit me, baby, one more time.
Disclaimer: Don't own Muse, this is fiction, never happened.
Tom steps out of the elevator. A different city, a different precinct. It's all so new - and, at the same time, all so familiar. They've put him in Homicide and he's always shone in Homicide. The captain waves him over and Tom gets his welcome speech and a desk to call his own. Some of the other cops stop by, introduce themselves, ask him to go bowling. Bowling, it seems, is a very big deal around here. It's all so friendly and Tom begins to relax. This can work.
Can it? Can it, really?
It happens right after lunch. Tom sees everyone else drifting out of the room and curiosity compels him to follow. So he follows the crowd into a briefing room and he takes a seat in the third row. A tall man with white hair approaches the podium and the room quietens down. The tall man's name is Ralph Kinnard and he's a criminologist - a man who claims to be an expert in crime, but doesn't like to get his hands dirty. An armchair cop. Tom slumps low in his seat and lets his mind wander.
The world snaps back into focus when Kinnard starts talking about armed robbery. Tom winces. Here it comes. The next slide clicks into place and now Tom's looking at two very familiar mugshots.
"And here, ladies and gentlemen," Kinnard says, "are the two biggest turds in this particular toilet bowl: Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard. If you're not familiar with their story, then you must have spent the last decade under a rock."
Laughter greets this last remark. Kinnard waits for it to die down before continuing.
"Bellamy's a slippery little shit, always has been and Howard, well, Howard's a cruel, cold-blooded bastard. They keep a low profile, makes them difficult to track. They were in Vegas a couple of years after the jailbreak, we know that much, and they got married there. A beautiful ceremony, it really gave a whole new meaning to the phrase shotgun wedding."
More laughter, louder this time.
"They have what I'd call a psychotic devotion to one another. Other criminologists will tell you to use that as a weapon, catch one of them, use him as bait to lure the other. I disagree. Catch them both, or don't even try. And God help you if you kill one of them. The one you leave alive will hunt you down and take your scalp as a trophy."
The presentation ends and the lights come on. Tom wanders over to the refreshments table and helps himself to some coffee.
"You didn't like my presentation?"
Kinnard suddenly by his side. Tom drinks some coffee, feigns nonchalance.
"What makes you say that?" he asks.
"I could see your face."
"In the dark? You could see my face in a dark room?"
"Observation is my business. You haven't answered my question."
"I didn't ... it's not ..." Tom tries to arrange his thoughts, put them in some kind of order.
"Did you know Dom Howard?"
Kinnard cuts right to the heart of the matter.
"You did, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I knew him. We came up together."
"And you think I'm being to hard on him?"
"I never said that. I can't defend what he's done, but I can understand it."
"Can you?"
"Yes. He was a good cop once. No one likes to remember that these days, but it's true. He gave everything to the job, like so many of us do. A good cop, and a sad and lonely man. Then Bellamy came along and ... love makes fools of everyone, makes us do stupid things."
"I know he was a good cop, I read the files. But that was a long time ago. And here's a story for you, something I think you need to hear. We don't like to talk about it, but it might help you understand. We almost caught them once. It happened three years ago, or maybe it's four. A member of their crew ratted them out. They got away, but not clean. Bellamy took a bullet in the chest. He survived, obviously, but it was a close call. The informant tried to run, but they sniffed him out, took him to Howard and your old friend gutted him like a fish. Then he killed the man's family and burned his house to the ground. Howard did all these things, it was Howard all the way."
Tom is cold all over.
"How do you know all this? How can you know this if they keep such a low profile?"
"Word leaks out, here and there. We hear stories."
"Stories. Not facts."
"Yes, I see where you're going with this. And yes, they might be nothing more than lies and half-truths. But I don't believe it. My gut tells me it's all true and none of it helps your friend's case. I'll tell you something else, while we're talking: Howard ran the show, while Bellamy recovered. He picked the crews, he planned the jobs, he did it all. He's in the game now, all the way, and trust me, the good man led astray, that myth you cling to, that's all that is now, a myth."
"Sure, whatever you say," Tom's not even sure what he's saying, he just wants to get away from this awful man.
Kinnard starts to say something else, but Tom turns his back on him and trudges back up to Homicide. His conversation with the criminologist didn't take place in a vacuum, and he can feel the stares, hear the whispers. He ignores them and tries to work. But his mind keeps turning back to the subject of Dom Howard.
Where is Dom now?
What's he doing?
****************************
Sweat drips off Dom's face and neck as he teeters on the brink of what promises to be an earth-shattering orgasm. He slows his thrusts, trying to make the moment last. But then the man beneath him bucks and howls and the thin thread of Dom's control snaps. He curses and claws his lover's hips as he comes, emptying himself into the man beneath him. Completely drained, he flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling, nerve endings still sizzling. His husband wheezes into the pillows beside him and Dom smiles. The after-heist sex is always insane, all that heat and tension burning off in one fast, furious fuck. Dom stretches and feels his spine crackle.
"That," he sighs, "was perfect."
"Ugh."
"I mean, it's always perfect, but sometimes there's a kind of perfect that's just ... perfect in its perfection, you know?"
"Ugh."
"Want a beer?"
"Ugh?"
Dom giggles and sits up. He reaches down and plucks a bottle of beer from the cooler beside the bed. Matt's still lying on his stomach, limp as a deboned fish, but the smell of the beer revives him a little. He lifts his bed, Dom tilts the bottle and Matt sucks the beer down, like a baby sucking on a bottle of milk. Dom gathers his husband to him and they lie together, sharing a beer, as they have so many times before.
"I think ... you just ... fucked my brains out..." Matt finally wheezes.
"Sweet talker."
They finish their beer and Dom drops the empty bottle on the floor. Matt yawns.
"We did good today."
Dom kisses the top of his head.
"Yeah, we did."
"What time's the party again?"
"Lee's party? That's tomorrow night, Matt. Maybe I really did fuck your brains out this time."
They laugh together.
"So, what should we do until then?" Matt asks.
"Sex, beer, sex, pizza, sleep and sex."
"Perfect."
****************
Dom leans against the railing and looks down at the dancefloor. Lee's club, one of this city's hottest night spots, is closed to the public tonight. This party is very exclusive, for underworld figures only. Dom can see armed robbers, drug dealers, mob enforcers from various families, forgers, fences, back alley doctors, freelance hitmen - and then there are the groupies, low-level, fringe members of the scene, boys and girls who'll do any dirty job because they just want to be near it, the glamour and the danger. They fawn over high-level criminals like Matt and Dom, treat them like movie stars, rock stars, gods. They've been bringing Dom drinks all evening and, from his vantage point, Dom can see more of them clustered around Matt, hanging on his every word.
"Dom."
Dom turns.
"Chris!"
They hug. Chris eyes him up.
"Looking good, Dom, looking real good."
Dom touches his cheek and laughs. He and Matt have, in the last nine years or so, become masters of disguise, using wigs, beards and subtle makeup tricks to hide their famous faces from the public. But they're with their own kind tonight and are free to be themselves.
"So do you, Chris, so do you."
Chris, too, has dropped his public persona, his usual blue-collar, beaten-down by life schtick. Smartly dressed, tall and proud, he leans on the railing like a king lounging on his throne.
"Having a good time, Dom?"
"Yeah, I am," Dom looks down at the dancefloor again, "i should have been in this game from the beginning."
"You should, you really should. You were made for this life, Dom. And you're a good influence on Matt."
They run quiet these days, at Dom's insistence, with no easily traceable patterns or comic book villain flamboyance. It's all about discretion now, not showmanship.
"Well, I do my best, Chris."
Chris finishes his drink.
"When do you leave?" he asks.
"I go tomorrow."
"And Matt?"
"End of the week."
They never stay in one place for long and they never travel together. Dom won't allow it. Too dangerous. Matt doesn't like it, but he knows it makes sense.
"You should come back to the cabin for a couple of months, have yourselves a little vacation."
"We will. Soon."
Chris squeezes his shoulder and wanders off, to the bar or maybe the bathroom. Dom drops his empty glass and goes to his husband.
"May I have this dance?"
Matt smiles and takes Dom's hand.
"Of course."
Matt's groupies pout as their idol is taken from them. Matt and Dom sway in time with the music and Dom jerks his chin at the pretty boys.
"Are you tempted? Should I be jealous?"
"Hmm?" Matt looks back at his groupies, then at his husband, "no, of course not. They just remind me of a different time, that's all."
"The old days, when you went to places like this, got drunk and fucked boys in the bathroom."
"Yeah, but that was a long time ago, before you and me. Now I've got you, I love you with all my heart and I wouldn't trade what we have for anything."
"Good, that's good," Dom presses their bodies closer, licks his husband's ear, "you know, you could just get drunk and fuck me in the bathroom."
Matt's sudden, sharp intake of breath makes Dom grin.
"Now that," Matt says, "sounds like a plan."
**************
Shit and fuck and fucking shit and shitting fuck.
Tom motors his way through the market like a black, constantly cursing cloud. This has not been his day.
His car broke down, he lost his phone and, just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, he spilled hot coffee all over his crotch. Damn near scalded his balls off - perfect end to a perfect day.
Someone bumps Tom's arm. Tom glances at the man, continues down the aisle. Then he stops. The man he just saw - he was nothing special, just another middle-aged man with a beard and a beer gut.
But his eyes ... Tom knows those eyes. Only one man he knows with eyes of that particular shade.
Dom Howard.
Author: hannah_chapter
Summary: Sequel to Enemies. When worlds collide...
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: 15/R
Feedback: Hit me, baby, one more time.
Disclaimer: Don't own Muse, this is fiction, never happened.
Tom steps out of the elevator. A different city, a different precinct. It's all so new - and, at the same time, all so familiar. They've put him in Homicide and he's always shone in Homicide. The captain waves him over and Tom gets his welcome speech and a desk to call his own. Some of the other cops stop by, introduce themselves, ask him to go bowling. Bowling, it seems, is a very big deal around here. It's all so friendly and Tom begins to relax. This can work.
Can it? Can it, really?
It happens right after lunch. Tom sees everyone else drifting out of the room and curiosity compels him to follow. So he follows the crowd into a briefing room and he takes a seat in the third row. A tall man with white hair approaches the podium and the room quietens down. The tall man's name is Ralph Kinnard and he's a criminologist - a man who claims to be an expert in crime, but doesn't like to get his hands dirty. An armchair cop. Tom slumps low in his seat and lets his mind wander.
The world snaps back into focus when Kinnard starts talking about armed robbery. Tom winces. Here it comes. The next slide clicks into place and now Tom's looking at two very familiar mugshots.
"And here, ladies and gentlemen," Kinnard says, "are the two biggest turds in this particular toilet bowl: Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard. If you're not familiar with their story, then you must have spent the last decade under a rock."
Laughter greets this last remark. Kinnard waits for it to die down before continuing.
"Bellamy's a slippery little shit, always has been and Howard, well, Howard's a cruel, cold-blooded bastard. They keep a low profile, makes them difficult to track. They were in Vegas a couple of years after the jailbreak, we know that much, and they got married there. A beautiful ceremony, it really gave a whole new meaning to the phrase shotgun wedding."
More laughter, louder this time.
"They have what I'd call a psychotic devotion to one another. Other criminologists will tell you to use that as a weapon, catch one of them, use him as bait to lure the other. I disagree. Catch them both, or don't even try. And God help you if you kill one of them. The one you leave alive will hunt you down and take your scalp as a trophy."
The presentation ends and the lights come on. Tom wanders over to the refreshments table and helps himself to some coffee.
"You didn't like my presentation?"
Kinnard suddenly by his side. Tom drinks some coffee, feigns nonchalance.
"What makes you say that?" he asks.
"I could see your face."
"In the dark? You could see my face in a dark room?"
"Observation is my business. You haven't answered my question."
"I didn't ... it's not ..." Tom tries to arrange his thoughts, put them in some kind of order.
"Did you know Dom Howard?"
Kinnard cuts right to the heart of the matter.
"You did, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I knew him. We came up together."
"And you think I'm being to hard on him?"
"I never said that. I can't defend what he's done, but I can understand it."
"Can you?"
"Yes. He was a good cop once. No one likes to remember that these days, but it's true. He gave everything to the job, like so many of us do. A good cop, and a sad and lonely man. Then Bellamy came along and ... love makes fools of everyone, makes us do stupid things."
"I know he was a good cop, I read the files. But that was a long time ago. And here's a story for you, something I think you need to hear. We don't like to talk about it, but it might help you understand. We almost caught them once. It happened three years ago, or maybe it's four. A member of their crew ratted them out. They got away, but not clean. Bellamy took a bullet in the chest. He survived, obviously, but it was a close call. The informant tried to run, but they sniffed him out, took him to Howard and your old friend gutted him like a fish. Then he killed the man's family and burned his house to the ground. Howard did all these things, it was Howard all the way."
Tom is cold all over.
"How do you know all this? How can you know this if they keep such a low profile?"
"Word leaks out, here and there. We hear stories."
"Stories. Not facts."
"Yes, I see where you're going with this. And yes, they might be nothing more than lies and half-truths. But I don't believe it. My gut tells me it's all true and none of it helps your friend's case. I'll tell you something else, while we're talking: Howard ran the show, while Bellamy recovered. He picked the crews, he planned the jobs, he did it all. He's in the game now, all the way, and trust me, the good man led astray, that myth you cling to, that's all that is now, a myth."
"Sure, whatever you say," Tom's not even sure what he's saying, he just wants to get away from this awful man.
Kinnard starts to say something else, but Tom turns his back on him and trudges back up to Homicide. His conversation with the criminologist didn't take place in a vacuum, and he can feel the stares, hear the whispers. He ignores them and tries to work. But his mind keeps turning back to the subject of Dom Howard.
Where is Dom now?
What's he doing?
****************************
Sweat drips off Dom's face and neck as he teeters on the brink of what promises to be an earth-shattering orgasm. He slows his thrusts, trying to make the moment last. But then the man beneath him bucks and howls and the thin thread of Dom's control snaps. He curses and claws his lover's hips as he comes, emptying himself into the man beneath him. Completely drained, he flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling, nerve endings still sizzling. His husband wheezes into the pillows beside him and Dom smiles. The after-heist sex is always insane, all that heat and tension burning off in one fast, furious fuck. Dom stretches and feels his spine crackle.
"That," he sighs, "was perfect."
"Ugh."
"I mean, it's always perfect, but sometimes there's a kind of perfect that's just ... perfect in its perfection, you know?"
"Ugh."
"Want a beer?"
"Ugh?"
Dom giggles and sits up. He reaches down and plucks a bottle of beer from the cooler beside the bed. Matt's still lying on his stomach, limp as a deboned fish, but the smell of the beer revives him a little. He lifts his bed, Dom tilts the bottle and Matt sucks the beer down, like a baby sucking on a bottle of milk. Dom gathers his husband to him and they lie together, sharing a beer, as they have so many times before.
"I think ... you just ... fucked my brains out..." Matt finally wheezes.
"Sweet talker."
They finish their beer and Dom drops the empty bottle on the floor. Matt yawns.
"We did good today."
Dom kisses the top of his head.
"Yeah, we did."
"What time's the party again?"
"Lee's party? That's tomorrow night, Matt. Maybe I really did fuck your brains out this time."
They laugh together.
"So, what should we do until then?" Matt asks.
"Sex, beer, sex, pizza, sleep and sex."
"Perfect."
****************
Dom leans against the railing and looks down at the dancefloor. Lee's club, one of this city's hottest night spots, is closed to the public tonight. This party is very exclusive, for underworld figures only. Dom can see armed robbers, drug dealers, mob enforcers from various families, forgers, fences, back alley doctors, freelance hitmen - and then there are the groupies, low-level, fringe members of the scene, boys and girls who'll do any dirty job because they just want to be near it, the glamour and the danger. They fawn over high-level criminals like Matt and Dom, treat them like movie stars, rock stars, gods. They've been bringing Dom drinks all evening and, from his vantage point, Dom can see more of them clustered around Matt, hanging on his every word.
"Dom."
Dom turns.
"Chris!"
They hug. Chris eyes him up.
"Looking good, Dom, looking real good."
Dom touches his cheek and laughs. He and Matt have, in the last nine years or so, become masters of disguise, using wigs, beards and subtle makeup tricks to hide their famous faces from the public. But they're with their own kind tonight and are free to be themselves.
"So do you, Chris, so do you."
Chris, too, has dropped his public persona, his usual blue-collar, beaten-down by life schtick. Smartly dressed, tall and proud, he leans on the railing like a king lounging on his throne.
"Having a good time, Dom?"
"Yeah, I am," Dom looks down at the dancefloor again, "i should have been in this game from the beginning."
"You should, you really should. You were made for this life, Dom. And you're a good influence on Matt."
They run quiet these days, at Dom's insistence, with no easily traceable patterns or comic book villain flamboyance. It's all about discretion now, not showmanship.
"Well, I do my best, Chris."
Chris finishes his drink.
"When do you leave?" he asks.
"I go tomorrow."
"And Matt?"
"End of the week."
They never stay in one place for long and they never travel together. Dom won't allow it. Too dangerous. Matt doesn't like it, but he knows it makes sense.
"You should come back to the cabin for a couple of months, have yourselves a little vacation."
"We will. Soon."
Chris squeezes his shoulder and wanders off, to the bar or maybe the bathroom. Dom drops his empty glass and goes to his husband.
"May I have this dance?"
Matt smiles and takes Dom's hand.
"Of course."
Matt's groupies pout as their idol is taken from them. Matt and Dom sway in time with the music and Dom jerks his chin at the pretty boys.
"Are you tempted? Should I be jealous?"
"Hmm?" Matt looks back at his groupies, then at his husband, "no, of course not. They just remind me of a different time, that's all."
"The old days, when you went to places like this, got drunk and fucked boys in the bathroom."
"Yeah, but that was a long time ago, before you and me. Now I've got you, I love you with all my heart and I wouldn't trade what we have for anything."
"Good, that's good," Dom presses their bodies closer, licks his husband's ear, "you know, you could just get drunk and fuck me in the bathroom."
Matt's sudden, sharp intake of breath makes Dom grin.
"Now that," Matt says, "sounds like a plan."
**************
Shit and fuck and fucking shit and shitting fuck.
Tom motors his way through the market like a black, constantly cursing cloud. This has not been his day.
His car broke down, he lost his phone and, just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, he spilled hot coffee all over his crotch. Damn near scalded his balls off - perfect end to a perfect day.
Someone bumps Tom's arm. Tom glances at the man, continues down the aisle. Then he stops. The man he just saw - he was nothing special, just another middle-aged man with a beard and a beer gut.
But his eyes ... Tom knows those eyes. Only one man he knows with eyes of that particular shade.
Dom Howard.