Spit the dark
Title: Spit the dark
Author:
alles_luege
Pairing: William/Gabe
Rating: PG -13
Summary: This is a story about how Gabe and William get together. How Gabe tries to find out what William really is, how William isn't sure Gabe can deal with it.
Warning(s): Vampires, sex, angst
Author’s Notes: 'Midnight land'-story. Background for 'Won't you break for me' and 'Pieces of infinity'. Can be read on its own. Quotes and title from 'Spit the dark' by Empires.
Word Count: 3.531
Beta: tygermine
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real.
~1~
If hope is a dangerous hole, will you join me?
Gabe is the kind of guy who goes full steam ahead into something without thinking it through. Only, this would be one of those times, that in hindsight, he should have given it a little thought, at least.
And William for all his angles and sharp bones is kind of feminine. Soft. What with the hair and all. It's easier to process this thing he has with William when he’s had a bottle or three of Jack Daniels. As if the alcohol was the lubricant for his mental cogs.
Because he can just forget or pretend that William isn’t, in fact, a girl.
And there never is more than kissing and tentative touching. Mostly it isn’t even sexual. It’s not that Gabe doesn’t find William attractive or something, he is in fact very sensual at times. It ebbs and flows. It comes in waves and Gabe isn’t sure William knows about it. Sometimes he suspects he does, other times he doesn’t think so at all.
Like now.
William is sitting across from him on the couch, laughing about something Butcher said and he radiates sex. He’s not doing anything special, just existing. Gabe feels like someone slipped him a love/lust potion.
“Wow…” Siska says when he comes in. William turns his head and blushes.
“That bad?” he asks. Siska nods and laughs. “I didn’t realise.”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
And just like that Gabe feels normal again. Can breathe and the strange haze of lust is gone.
~+~
He’s sitting outside talking to some of the techs when he sees William sitting under a tree, reading. Hiding from the sun, maybe. He waves when William looks up as if he sensed Gabe’s gaze on him. William smiles and waves back before he bends his head to turn a page. His hair is falling into his eyes. His whole face looks soft and Gabe wonders again why sometimes, he just can’t look away.
~+~
“William,” Siska’s voice is soft, but Gabe can hear the edge in it.
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Oh, hey…”
“I know,” Siska answers with a laugh and William blushes a bit, soft pale red spreading over his skin. And Gabe is transfixed. He can’t look away again. Once more William does something to him, to the room in general and it isn’t just William being there. It’s something else.
~+~
“So, are you magical?” Gabe asks. He is drunk. Really drunk.
“Magical?” William laughs.
“Magical…sometimes it’s like you own the room and every human being is swaying in your direction, like flowers to the sun.”
“You’re drunk.” William answers with a soft smile that makes his face glow.
“And you…you are something else.” Gabe says leaning on William’s shoulder. He just needs to get closer.
“Maybe,” William answers, but Gabe doesn’t really hear him, he’s ready to drift off. His eyes closed with William’s scent in his mind.
~+~
“I wonder…” Gabe says.
“Yeah?” William asks. They’re sitting outside under a tree in the shadows because it’s just too damn hot.
“What are you?” Gabe says, he’s leaning against William, because William seems to be chilly even if the rest of them are hot and sticky with in the humid, summer weather.
“What am I?” William asks amused.
“Yeah…what are you, Bill.”
William sucks hard on his cigarette and exhales for a long time before sliding his eyes to look at Gabe.
“A singer?” William ventured.
“Yes.”
“A songwriter?”
“Yes.”
“A friend?”
“Yes. But you are something else too.” Gabe says.
“What else could I possibly be?” William wants to know, his eyes closed. He isn’t owning the room, or Gabe right now. He’s just a boy under a tree.
“I don’t know yet.” Gabe’s eye’s darken in confusion.
“Do you want to know?” William asks.
Gabe thinks about it. He isn’t sure if this is an offer, maybe. But if it is one? What then?
“Do you want to tell me?” he asks instead.
“No.”
“Hmmm…”
“Because you don’t want to know.” William adds standing up. He smiles at Gabe when Gabe looks up, the sun behind him makes William a dark shadow with soft edges.
~+~
It’s later that week that Gabe begins to connect the dots. He’s sometimes slow on the uptake. But he isn’t stupid.
They are in a club.
Somewhere, nowhere.
He loves nights like these. High on tour induced tension and promised sex, and a lot of alcohol. A girl brushes his arm as she rushes past him. She looks back with a smile for a second and he thinks…he isn’t sure. He thinks she looks nice. Beautiful, maybe, in the strobe light. Her sweat mingles with his. He grabs Vicky on impulse and makes her dance with him and she laughs carefree and a bit wild. Her eyes on him.
He finds William later that night in a corner, a girl leaving through the door behind them. He looks post orgasmic. Gabe doesn’t know why. After all William doesn't fuck random strangers.
“Got lucky?” he asks sitting down next to William. His arm brushes Williams’s ever chilly skin.
“Maybe.”
“So, you didn’t?”
“I said maybe.” William almost leers, but on his girlish face, it comes off as smug.
“But it wasn’t a yes either.” Gabe answers stealing William’s drink. William smiles. “Bastard.” Gabe mumbles and William laughs carefree and wild. It sounds different than Vicky’s laugh earlier. It’s raw, like the sour filling hidden beneath the sugar crystals of the gummis Vicky likes to eat. It makes Gabe yearn for something similar. He leans in, breaths over William’s skin and then licks from his jaw to where his shirt begins to cover his skin and William goes still. It seems as if he isn’t even breathing. “Sorry.” Gabe says blinking, he doesn’t know why he did it. He just wanted to do it. Suddenly. As if… “I don’t even know why I did it,” he mumbles. And he realises that he doesn’t want to anymore.
“It’s okay. You did strange shit before.” William answers. That’s Gabe’s way out. Like this. Too easy.
“Yeah. I did.” He says slowly. William isn’t looking at him, he stares ahead, Gabe follows his gaze and there is Siska. Looking stern.
The girl, he thinks later, was the one that smiled at him. He’s sure of it. It makes him think again.
~+~
“I like being with you…” Gabe says and he is drunk again.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…especially when it’s so goddamned hot.”
“Hmmm…”
“You’re cold.”
“I’m not.”
“Your skin, Billy. Your skin is always cold. As if washed in mountain ice water or something…”
“You’re drunk again.”
“True.”
~+~
A few days later, they are out somewhere, nowhere, he sees William with a girl again. One he kissed at the beginning of the night. He wanted to find her and there she is: Leaning into William, letting him kiss her neck.
It happens a lot. That he sees William with someone he was with earlier. Not sexually, not every time. Sometimes he just brushes past. Bodies connecting in the small space. It's as if William is either cockblocking him from getting it on with those girls, or Gabe had truly lost his groove.
~2~
Love is best an allusion
He knows he shouldn’t be shocked when he sees William with Siska. But he is. What makes the whole thing worse is that he is spying.
On William.
Something about the way Siska holds his head, is wrong, but Gabe isn’t sure what it is. He just knows it shouldn’t be that way.
“You should…just stop.” Siska says, his words somehow slurred.
“I know. I don’t do it with purpose. I just want him.”
“To know?” Siska asks. William lets go of his neck and steps aside. Gabe isn’t sure, but he thinks he sees something red, wet, shimmering on Siska’s neck. Siska covers it with his hand. “Damn…that hurts like a bitch.” He says with a laugh.
“God…I hate that.” William answers.
“I know.”
“Gabe.” Siska says and Gabe thinks he saw him standing in the door. He steps back, so he can’t see them anymore, but he still listens.
“I know,” William answers.
“You need to stop. He will pick up on the signals…god I wonder why he hasn’t yet!”
“He’s a bit self absorbed.” William answers, Gabe can hear the smile in his voice.
“Yeah…William.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“He wants you too.”
“Doesn’t make things easier. If anything it makes everything more complicated.” William says.
“True enough.”
~+~
Gabe looks closely after that. William is close to all his band mates but he just disappears with Siska and Butcher sometimes and when he comes back he looks better. More alive maybe. And Gabe wonders if that is how William looks after sex. It’s a strange thought.
~+~
“So, if I ask, will you answer me honestly?” Gabe asks one evening.
“What’s the question?”
“Are you sleeping with Siska?”
“No,” William says and he’s laughing.
“I saw you with him.”
“What did you see?” William wants to know.
“I…” Gabe begins but he can’t really say what he saw. He didn’t see them making out, not really.
“I’m not.” William snaps out.
“With Butcher?”
“No.”
“What are you doing with them then?” Gabe wants to know. William keeps quiet. “Bill?” Gabe grabs William’s hand and William turns to look at him. Something like hope flickers behind his eyes, battling with something else.
“If I told you the truth, would you believe me?” he asks at least.
“Sure.”
“A question first,” William says, looking Gabe in the eyes.
“Shoot.”
“Why do you want to know?”
There are a million answers to that. But Gabe doesn’t know if he knows the right one. Maybe in reality there is just one. Just one answer and he isn’t sure he can give it. Wants to say it, admit it. To himself and to William.
“Whenever you’re ready.” William says in a whisper, looking away. Into the dark that is surely creeping up on the dying day and them.
Gabe watches the dark win, enveloping them and doesn’t answer. He knows William will wait.
The first time things go further than kissing is at the end of the tour, end of the hot days and he is drunk again. A bit, not that much. They are in another generic club. He sees William dancing with Vicky and then a girl he doesn’t know, laughing loudly, Gabe is sure, even if he can’t hear a thing. Just the music and his own heart.
He grabs William’s wrist on impulse. William looks surprised, Gabe is surprised.
“Come with me,” he says and isn’t sure if William even hears him, but William nods and follows, lets Gabe drag him outside into the warm night. William’s fingers in his hand feel cool.
“What now?” William asks, his voice sounds different in the quiet evening air. More sensual, like there is intent behind it. Maybe there is. And Gabe doesn’t answer, because he can’t, he doesn’t know how. So he does what he knows he wants to do. Sometimes actions just speak louder and all that crap. He pushes William into the brick wall and kisses him, slow at first and then with more intent and desire, his hands find skin under William’s shirt, the curve of a hip, the button of his jeans. And William moans into his mouth and just lets him. Lets him have what he wants. Without questions.
Gabe doesn’t even know he wants to do it, will do it, before he is sinking to his knees in front of William. William’s skin is chilly, but damp with sweat. It tastes a bit salty and a bit like copper. He doesn’t care.
~+~
They don’t speak about it. It’s there between them, something big and screaming soundlessly. A loud, violent elephant they choose to ignore. Like William when he came, Gabe thinks, biting his lip until it bled.
It happens again a few days later. It’s more rushed and desperate this time and Gabe can’t shake the feeling that it’s William’s doing. That somehow William is projecting his own feelings onto Gabe. His hand on Gabe’s dick is a bit rough and there isn’t much finesse in Gabe’s movements either.
“Your skin tastes like salt and copper.” Gabe says afterwards. He’s lying near William, but their bodies aren’t touching. His skin is cooling down and his heartbeat settles too.
“Hmmm…”
“You taste different to other people.” Gabe goes on.
“You’ve tasted a lot of people?” William ventures.
“A few.” Gabe tries to shrug it off.
“Hmmm…” William says again and Gabe is sure William has had more than just a few himself. Something inside of him twists fiercely, overwhelmed with jealousy. “What did they taste like?” William asks into the silence.
“Sweet, some…the girls. And a bit salty too. The boys…hmmm…like they smell and taste like…guys. But not like copper…you kinda taste like…” blood, he thinks but doesn’t say.
“Does it bother you?” William asks. He isn’t looking at Gabe, his eyes are closed, his naked body is an invitation, or would be. Not now, not for Gabe. Somehow there is a barrier he can’t cross. He doesn’t even want to right now, maybe he doesn’t because William doesn’t want him to, he muses.
“No…yes.” He says, because it’s true.
William doesn’t answer. He just covers himself with the blanket and turns away from Gabe. Gabe closes his eyes and listens until William’s breathing evens out.
~+~
He doesn’t call. He just appears on William’s doorstep.
“Come in.” And that’s all William says, Gabe is on him as soon as the door is closed. He pins William to the couch, and just looks for a few seconds. William looks back. What are you doing to me? He thinks and then he attacks William, his mouth, his jaw, his collar bone. His hands under William’s shirt and then the shirt is gone and there are miles of skin, burned from the sun in places, pale and unmarked in others. He adds his own marks.
~+~
The girl he takes home the night after he was with William (and they didn’t fuck…not yet) is sweet and her nails are bitten. She tastes like salt and oranges. And smells like some kind of flower and pineapple.
He doesn’t think about William when he fucks her, but he realises that he misses the coppery taste of William’s skin when he licks her neck. And she feels too hot, her whole body is like an oven radiating heat when she snuggles closer. He can’t stand it.
~3~
I will guide you in the night
Summer turns slowly into autumn and they find something like a routine. Well, maybe it’s just Gabe. He always fucks some stranger after he and William are together. Always. He doesn’t know if he does it because he wants to forget William’s taste or if he needs the body heat or if…he doesn’t know anything.
What he knows it that William knows about it.
“Why don’t you say anything?” Gabe asks one afternoon. They are lying on the floor naked. It’s not the first time they didn’t make it to the bedroom. Gabe’s eyes are closed and he can still taste William at the back of his throat.
“About what?”
“About me fucking around.” Gabe answers.
“Why should I? Are we going steady and I just missed the memo?”
“William…” Gabe stresses.
“Look, if you don’t want to do it, then just don’t. I can’t stop you from doing it.”
Sometimes Gabe really hates how reasonable William is.
“Bill…”
“What?”
“Doesn’t it hurt you?” Gabe wants to know.
“What do you think?” William answers and his voice is low and dangerous. Gabe thinks about dragons and poking them.
“So, why?” Gabe wants to know, but William just stands up and leaves the room. A few minutes later Gabe can hear the shower running.
~+~
Gabe isn’t stupid. He knows that William is waiting for something. Maybe for Gabe to leave him. Maybe for Gabe to pop the question. Gabe almost grimaces at the image of him on one knee, looking up at William and saying - Do you, William Beckett, want to adopt a few Cambodian babies with me?
“Is that it? Do you think you can keep me like this?”
“No.” William answers, he doesn’t pretend to not know what they are discussing.
“What is it then?” Gabe wants to know.
“I…maybe I’m waiting for you to find out.” William answers.
“Find out what?”
“What you know.” William says. Gabe just looks at him.
“God! Sometimes…you make me insane. Honestly. You drive me crazy and not in a good way.”
William keeps stubbornly quiet.
~+~
Sometimes when they’re together, something inside William shifts. And Gabe thinks, for a moment, he looks like something else. Not someone, something. Like something dangerous, ready to strike, ready to kill. It gives Gabe goose bumps. But it also makes him hard.
Maybe, he thinks, maybe he is secretly waiting for William to lose it. To show what he really is, underneath it all.
~+~
Gabe thinks it’s an addiction. And William is his favourite drug. The question is: What type of drug is William?
He would ask, but he is afraid of the answer.
Some nights William tastes more coppery than others, usually when he was out or when he was with Butcher or Siska. In those nights he never slips, the thing inside him never shifts, never comes out to play on the surface of reality like Gabe knows it.
~+~
He doesn’t know how it started, but somehow it got out of control and everyone is screaming and someone is hitting someone and there is blood and William looks pale and wild. Siska looks scared; not for himself, Gabe realises. He is scared for William. Of William, maybe even. He grabs William’s wrist and William snarls at him, hisses something Gabe can’t hear because he’s standing to far away. And the music from the club is droning in his ears and bounces from the brick walls and the street.
“Let me go!” William screams, but Siska holds on and shakes his head.
“We’re going home.” He answers.
William pushes him against the wall, it looks painful. Siska makes a face and then there is Butcher pulling William away, it looks a bit like they’re trying to reason with a drunk, violent boy. But William isn’t drunk, not on alcohol.
The last thing Gabe sees are William’s wild eyes, the hidden something there, that dangerous part, before Butcher and Siska drag him away. Into a car and out of sight.
~+~
He knows he should stay away but he doesn’t; not that night. Because he saw it. Saw that dangerous thing underneath the surface of normality. It was stronger than ever before.
“Gabe…” it’s just a gasp and then he is pulled into the apartment and his head connects with the wall and his mouth with William’s mouth. Hot and slick and demanding and perfect. William’s grip on him is hard, bruising and he doesn’t care. The coppery taste comes from his own lip this time, he notices the taste first then the pain.
“Want to fuck you,” William says into his ear. His breath hot on Gabe’s skin. A contrast to his ever chilled body. It’s not really a question Gabe knows. He knew maybe as soon as he knocked on the door that it would lead to this. “Gabe…” he says again, pulling away, so Gabe can see his face, he shakes. His whole body is shaking with suppressed need.
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t want to be…taken. If you don’t want to know, you need to go now.”
And that’s his way out of this. William will let him and everything will be as it was. They will continue like before and maybe he will see the thing underneath a few times more, but he will never know. He knows, he will never know. William will never let him again. That much is for sure. This is his chance to make this last. To make this into something true.
“The fuck, Bill.” He says and pulls William close again.
“Oh god…” William says. “You smell so good. So delicious…”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…” William answers, but his voice sounds different, seductive, low, dangerous. “Don’t be afraid,” he adds.
“I’m not.”
“Liar.” William says with a low laugh before he bites down into the crook between shoulder and neck.
“Fuck!” It hurts. It fucking hurts, but there is this need, this desire too, and William’s true self - all of him, not one part hidden, locked away - so Gabe just rolls with it.
~+~
There is a big bruise on his neck to prove what had happen. He stares at it in the mirror.
“Are you okay?” William asks, he’s standing in the doorway to the bathroom. Gabe can’t see him, but he just knows that that’s what William is doing.
“Sore.” Gabe answers and William laughs. He isn’t sorry. Neither is Gabe.
~end~