Chapter Text
I still dream of violence
Angry at the waiting game
Chain link on your lungs
And sulfuric acid in my brain
Don't ask me why I hate myself
As I'm circling the drain
'Cause death, it takes too long
And I can't wait
Vicious fulfills his partner’s request, finish these with me and then you can go home, without complaint, and he tolerates the incidental contact sitting side by side. At one point, he even lies on his back, legs dangling off the Swordfish’s wing, as if he’s comfortable. But as the end of the night draws nearer, the anxious silence begins to fall on him too – Spike thinks about sleeping alone, and Vicious thinks about how it’s too late, again, to go to Julia. He hates the way he longs for her at times like this, as if playing house with her from time to time might actually make him something different than what he is, what he must be. She’s dangerous like that, beautiful but not real. Or real, but too beautiful for him.
Is it his mysterious woman he texts surreptitiously in his phone when he’s on the last bottle? He doesn’t explain himself, but the answer becomes clear about 20 minutes later when a Syndicate car arrives on the harbor: The boy Gage, summoned from his sleep to come and give them a ride back to the city. Of course they’ll be dropped off separately at their own places tonight, of course they will, and the car isn’t a place to say much, or to touch at all.
“Next collection is in eight days,” Vicious says tonelessly, before getting out of the car near the alley that leads to his dark waterfront loft. “I’ll see you then.”
Eight days is the longest the two of them have been apart since they started growing closer – surely Vicious doesn’t mean to be away from Spike for that long, just the boy they work with, right? Of course, the statement must be partially for Gage’s benefit, as any plans the snake has with his partner outside of their approved work schedule would be secret from the others. For now, though, there’s only one word for Spike, gleaned from the homework tapes and pronounced on request – Vicious had ignored the demand to say something in whatever language that was on the waterfront, but he’d heard it. Soft-voiced, effortless accent: “Cuidate.”
For four whole days Vicious disappears again, invisible and uncontactable. He’d acknowledged, with an irritatingly flirtatious shrug and a crooked smile, that he’d indeed eagerly anticipated his time with Spike’s evidence, but there’s no message or anything else forthcoming. It seems the snake takes pleasure in denying the young wolf’s attention-seeking, in discouraging him from performing for praise like an obedient dog.
Then again, what would Vicious say about it: the uncommonly hot summer nights he spent listening? First at a makeshift equipment station in one corner of his loft, headphones and a small console, carefully trimming out the party conversations with the men that had snippets of useful clues in them – going ever more still and focused for the rest of it, keeping strange hours, strange light framing his keen profile, his parted lips, the color in his face? Then again curled in the dark in his private room, pulse fluttering, a thick red knot in his stomach, his eyes drifting shut, breath going almost completely still. Perhaps it’s surprising, the parts he chooses to rewind and replay, watching Spike behind his eyelids, listening to the subtleties of his feelings in the texture of his voice.
You’re very good –
No, I’m –
I have a brother – maybe I won just a little more than he did – he almost stops it right there the first time, seething.
Vicious had wanted to see, to know, with his eyes closed, what the dog fucks like. Could he have imagined this, the ecstatic cries of the Lady Vega for the wolf’s strong, rough, bruised young body? The warm command in Spike’s voice? How dare he, how dare he act like an innocent, ingratiating and obedient, and then handle a woman like that? Fuck him, for enjoying himself so easily, for being so good –
No one will hurt you – like a fist around his throat –
What’s wrong with you, Julia laughs, perplexed, unwrapping a glass fish ornament from the antique market on Flower Street, and he finds himself saying nothing’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with you –
Strange to be away from Spike for days, but to be so intimate with him. To be with him in that room but not – to know I wanna come inside you, Mama is really for him, at least in some large part. To come with him so many times, and a few times with her, like he’s the one with the young wolf inside, to feed you and you feed me – to make himself ache in ways he hadn’t felt since he used his young body for certain types of work.
Though collections aren’t due for a few days, he keeps his ear to the ground, revisiting the neighborhood they’d worked last week just to gather information, drinking in places he doesn’t normally drink just as much to listen as to stay off the grid. No one has seen him in the usual haunts, and Lin and Gage haven’t even seen him on Lantern Street. Maybe somewhere in Factory Town, where the slim, handsome boy who’d called Vicious Lán is regularly behind the bar.
Probably he’s just had too much to drink tonight, a very plausible explanation for why Spike starts to feel oddly sick as both boys work through their final bottles. It doesn’t have anything to do with wondering who he might be texting, or what will happen once they’re apart tonight. Maybe Spike will be too alcohol sick to try to sleep normally. The possibility feels strangely comforting, like relief, that kind of bad night better than the other kind he’s had alone lately – but realizing he’d rather be miserably drunk all night than dealing with the alternative makes him feel even sicker.
The car pulls up, the boys get in. It’s too late to say or do the things he wants to, but he wouldn’t have anyway. When Spike lights a cigarette in the car, he doesn’t offer to share it, even though Gage has seen at least that kind of familiarity between them before, wouldn’t seem abnormal. But Vicious has cautioned him more than once, never let anyone see, and Spike had assured him he’d be careful. He knows Vicious is right about that. Maybe he’s right about everything after all. Being with Luciana, though only a few hours ago, feels impossibly long ago now, or like a dream. He’d thought then that the snake was wrong about some things, that he doesn’t know everything, but now Spike’s not so sure.
“O-oh,” obviously thrown when Vicious intimates that they won’t see each other for eight days, even if he can’t possibly mean it. But saying something to even open the door to some kind of casual meeting – or a business related one – feels too desperate even to the dog, and besides, why should I care, why should I care–
“Yeah,” shooting his partner an easy grin before the car door shuts. “See you.” He can be good, really good, even if Vicious is the only one who will ever know just how good. His pulse throbs hard in his throat, near to the bruise bloomed on the tendon there, another secret between angels. Spike doesn’t get the chance to ask what the one foreign word means, but it makes his heart skip anyway, his stomach turning, the soft tone in the other boy’s voice uncommon, reminding him of–
At least Gage is lucky tonight (though being made to pick up his two squad leaders in the middle of the night and play chauffeur is somewhat unlucky), doesn’t have to deal with Spike getting sick in the car. It’s not until Spike’s dropped off in front of his apartment building and the car is gone that the sickness feels like too much, and if he throws up in the street before going up to his place, it’s not super uncommon around here, thanks to the little neighborhood dive right across the street that Spike rarely frequents himself.
Maybe just the once is enough to rid the wolf’s body of the poison of his overindulgence, because he’s not sick again that night. That doesn’t mean the night’s good, or easy, or restful. He thinks about sleeping in the bathtub just in case the sick feeling overwhelms him again, eyeing it while he brushes his teeth, but then he berates himself internally, tells himself he has no reason to feel so unsettled, because nothing had happened, not tonight and not any other night, and if something had happened, something powerful and strange, a body draining of blood between them, another for him, it was only good.
But Spike only sleeps fitfully in his bed for a couple of hours, tossing and turning, overheated with his mind and pulse racing, before he relocates to his couch, bringing the pillow and blanket he’d lent to Vicious the night he’d slept here with him. It’s just a pain to drag his own comforter from his bedroom, that’s all. The pillow smells like the other boy, menthol soap and Silk Cut Silvers, a little of the suede-touched oil from polishing his sword, and something else Spike can’t put his finger on, something cold, like bright-shining steel or like a snake’s skin (not his heart, not his blood, for those are warm, Spike knows). If he buries his face in it briefly, taking a deep breath for the scent, no one has to know. And if he dozes off touching himself sensitively, wakes up in the morning violently hard, gets himself off thinking of how it had felt to do the same side by side with Vicious here, come with me, you sick fucking hound, do you like that, baby, no one has to know that either.
The days pass both slowly and in a blur, and as time drags on without hearing from his partner, it gets both easier and more difficult. Fuck him, Spike thinks, finally doing laundry so he can return the snake’s borrowed clothing the next time it makes sense to. Fuck him, pushups in his living room, forms and shadowboxing on the roof, thinking of the last time he fought the other boy, what he’ll do the next time, fuck him, fuck him, fuck me, or what Vicious might do to him–
The nights are worse than the days, waking up from unsettling dreams without much sleep, sitting at the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, chainsmoking two or three cigarettes until he gives up on feeling better, decides to sleep on the couch instead, resolves not to think about why he can sleep easier there. He hasn’t bothered to put away the spare blanket or pillow since coming home the night Gage dropped him off. He’s just lazy, that’s all.
One night he manages to fall asleep in his bed he wakes up shaking, so disturbed by the vague, hot violence in his dreams – smelled like blood, or like death, felt so warm, sickly, soft like a pigeon’s breast, unyielding as the hard muscle of his partner’s body, sensations without images. He pulls up the last number he has for Vicious on his phone, even though he already knows it’s disconnected, and though he’s able to stop himself from actually calling, he can only do so by hurling his phone across the room. He’s lucky the screen only cracks and doesn’t shatter, but that night, he does a few shots of whiskey before he curls up on the couch, the sun already rising.
When he leaves his apartment to run errands or distract himself during these days of radio silence from his partner, the neighborhood still feels eerily quiet in a way almost no one else would notice, no one tailing him or keeping tabs. He goes out his third night alone, a little Syndicate bar not far from the Tower that he’s been to with Vicious a few times, but when a pretty brunette with great tits starts chatting him up at the bar, Spike fakes a phone call, one he needs to step outside where it’s quieter to take, never goes back in.
He thinks about just showing up at the snake’s loft – he has a key, after all, doesn’t he – but that makes him inexplicably nervous. When he gets home that night and there’s still no message from Vicious on his answering machine, he first thinks about finally texting Luciana, but for some reason that makes him feel panicky and overwhelmed, so instead he decides to text Selene to finally meet up with her. But he ends up going to bed without sending her a message at all, and the picture he looks at in their text thread before he gets himself off so hard he sees stars isn’t the one she’d sent to him of her pretty, plump ass, focused instead on the one Vicious had sent to her in reply.
The next day, when he’s unable to keep himself occupied at home anymore without his vague anxiety growing too large, he actually starts looking for Vicious in earnest, though he does what he can to keep his motivations veiled, to play it cool. Getting a drink at a couple of bars they usually visit together isn’t strange, and when he runs into Lin and Gage unplanned, the two boys apparently out for the evening themselves, they actually ask Spike about Vicious, if he knows where the snake’s been these past few days, to which Spike just shrugs, sort of makes a face at, no, why would I, I’m not his keeper. Even once Spike is out of earshot, the two younger boys don’t dare to say anything to each other about their strange, volatile squad leaders and their confusing partnership, but the look they share says enough.
Spike doesn’t necessarily mean to end up in Factory Town, a neighborhood he doesn’t frequent, a couple of bad experiences there as a younger teen turning him off to the area, much of it rough in a way he doesn’t tend to seek out. There are holes in his memory from the night Vicious had taken him here not long ago, the night they’d grown even closer, but he remembers a lot of it even still: getting girls, do it good for me, come home, kissing in his loft, feeling the knife. Doing it good for the snake, choking on him, swallowing it all, his seed, the sun, the world. Helping him come new, the way only an angel can.
He remembers the pool hall, too, the curb they’d waited for cabs on, and once he slips through the door early that evening, it’s still empty, but Spike is sure it’s the right place. It’s only now that he realizes that he doesn’t remember the blue-eyed boy’s name, if he’d ever even gotten it that night. He wonders if the boy knows his, how much he might know about Spike. He’d only ever called him Wolf.
In his younger days, when his body had been a different breed of Syndicate livestock than it is now, the thing that made the days terrible was not the work itself, but the actual day, its cold light, a judgment and a penance. Anything that happened at night might as well be a dream, vampire hours, when he and the ones who were sometimes with him transformed. In the morning his head would ring like a bell, his skin would crawl, and he’d close the blinds against the intolerable sunlight to suffer. Those were the sickest hours, dry heaving in the pale dawn while black-and-blue images of the previous night played behind his eyelids. Like hauntings, he’d taste the scents of others still on him no matter how many times he washed his body, scrubbed his long pale hair.
At first he’d refused all drugs. Before he’d struck out on his own, the grandmother was always warning him against it, purse-lipped and severe. Sure, you take away pain right now. But you pay with your entire future. But young Lanzhu hadn’t been interested anyway. It seemed like it was only for weak people who couldn’t tolerate the present moment.
Perhaps the present moment became intolerable. Or perhaps, further away from the oversight of the grandmother, with boys that needed him to demonstrate leadership, there seemed to be less reason to abstain. His personhood was made profane every day, so why refuse opportunities to enhance performance, alleviate pain? What did she mean about the future, anyway? He knew never to take too much nor to mix certain things, and otherwise his future was not guaranteed anyway.
The mornings, the comedowns, the raw feeling in his body, became as necessary as every other form of suffering involved in his work at the time. He became curious about them, lying between this world and the next, hallucinatory spaces where suffering becomes a kind of purification rite. You toss and turn in your half life, attuned every moment to sickness and depletion, and wait for the mercy of sleep to take the nausea away.
Oddly enough, Vicious had forgotten those regular private hells until now, curled on his mattress in the odd hours with his headphones on. Consumed and overstimulated, stroking himself even though it aches and there’s nothing left to shoot, seeking a kind of peace that won’t come. Looking for more when there is no more, like turning the hotel room upside down for baggies that might not have been licked fully clean yet, just to delay the inevitable. The recording had made him feel several sick things at once, an intensity of feeling he hasn’t had since back then, either. It makes sense now, the things he did with Mint at times like this, and though he hadn’t forgotten that, it had felt something like another person’s memory, until now.
Thread of cold fear, like maybe he hasn’t killed the whore called Lanzhu, hasn’t buried him deep enough. Does Spike see, does he know, and is that why he’s so insatiable, so attached? Cold fear, cold fury, one transmuting into the other, joining the collision of stimulation when he listens to his current favorite part: The wolf’s body in the distant water, his own call ringing, unheard. The devoted maternal crooning of that predator woman as Spike gives over to her, lets her play with him one more time. The ache in his voice when he comes.
He’d liked that part so much he’d edited it in the software to hear it better, artificial intelligence picking out and enhancing the background detail. With his eyes closed he can hear the water hit Spike’s skin when the woman lures him in. A little more – Vicious can always give a little more then, too.
Afterward he curls around the disorientation, the bitter-tasting feelings, something vaguely shame-adjacent that reminds him of those old days, makes the shape of him confusing. Truthfully, he had not intended to disappear from Spike’s view for quite this long, although he’d needed some space like a beast needs to lick his wounds. But this raw, disoriented version of himself, who feels echoes of old sensations in his blood, the long-forgotten acrid taste of pills and powders where there are none, one with fuzzy edges, is not one he wants to share with that fucking mongrel.
How strange, then, that of all places in Tharsis City, at that same moment, Spike is walking into the small Factory Town dive bar where a young man once called Mint works? The same one who sometimes twined his body with a snake’s in Vicious’ ambivalent flashbacks? Already those two seem to wordlessly orbit things larger than themselves, knowing without knowing, whether they admit it or not.
It takes a minute or two before the bartender comes out, the same slight young blonde man Spike had seen speaking to Vicious before. He has kind, easy features, his close-cropped hair pushed back, but the eyes stand out, overlarge in his face, a striking shade of blue-green in the fading daylight. The black dress clothes and apron he wears behind the bar only seem to emphasize them.
“Hey, I’m just opening up. What can I – oh! It’s you,” the young man’s cool professional exterior quickly shifts with recognition, and then easy cheer. He must be about the same age as Spike, but something about the other boy suddenly seems childlike. Maybe it’s the eyes.
“You’re Vicious’,” he says, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to be. Vicious’. “They call you the Wolf, but your name is Spike, right? I’m Emrah.”
Although Spike had been flirting with his partner about the recording as he’d handed it over and even later in the evening, he never would have thought those couple of hours with Luciana that he’d captured on tape would have obsessed Vicious to such a degree. It’s not unheard of for Vicious to go silent for a day or sometimes two or three, has done it even lately, after they’d survived their re-education concerning Xhang’s execution, or those few days they were sick and recovering away from each other.
But this time feels different to Spike, and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the way the snake had been so agreeable after a certain point as they drove back to the city after the party at the Vega compound – not arguing with Spike, not mocking him, sure, alright. Drinking with him on the waterfront, perched on his ship’s wing. Was that because he felt bad for Spike, wanted to give him one last nice memory together before he moved on? Is he with that woman of his? Is he finally well? Maybe it’s only Spike’s sickness that is terminal.
Or maybe Vicious had been furious about what he’d heard, felt betrayed, so much so that he’s decided to end whatever had been blooming between the two boys. Of course, Spike has no way of knowing this is at least a little true, but that a snake’s indignation, a snake’s fury, only makes his suffering feel even more addictive. But this long silence, too, is what it means to love a snake.
So maybe it’s not entirely accidental that Spike ends up at this bar tonight. He doesn’t know the kinds of dark, raw memories he’s triggered in his partner, the cold fear, the creeping shadows of the past, the sickness and pain – but he does know that there’s a lot he doesn’t know about Vicious, and it had seemed that the boy behind the bar that night had known a lot about him. Wouldn’t he, if they worked together the way that Vicious had said to him that night?
But Spike doesn’t want to know about that – does he? No – it was a long time ago, both Vicious and this boy from back then are different now, and doesn’t Spike already know him different than any other? He’s just here because he thinks Vicious may have gone here, or maybe he can find out where he might be. Maybe he’s stopped here, so at least Spike can know nothing has happened to him. Or maybe he’ll happen to be here–
He’s not, of course, and Spike feels a little lurch of his stomach when he crosses the threshold into the little bar and realizes he’d been hoping to see a shock of silver hair at one of the booths or at one of the pool tables. The split in his bottom lip is pretty much healed, but Spike tongues it absently anyway, debating leaving. What a dumb idea, to think Vicious would be here–
But then that young man from the snake’s past emerges from the back, and it’s too late to leave. He may as well stay a little while, a strange feeling, like he’s supposed to. Spike doesn’t yet know, can’t understand, the way Fate puts its hands on angels.
It’s you, he says, and Spike grins, shrugs, hands in the pockets of the lambswool collared flight jacket he’s thrown on over his suit – not one of the new nice ones he’s just got, but one a little older, a slim cut medium grey paired with a maroon shirt with the top couple of buttons undone, black tie loosened. His wordless response is casual enough, but then he says you’re Vicious’, and Spike’s heart leaps. It’s only the light, turning golden and painting the bar warm and soft, that might save him, the pink flush in his cheeks less noticeable, maybe even undetectable. The little blank blip in his expression lasts only a split second, heart in his throat, and then his demeanor turns easy too, friendly.
Laughing a little, shrugging again, leaning up against the bar, “I don’t know about that,” though he does, knows it vividly, you’re my fucking dog, or I have you, and where’s my useful animal. “But I’m his partner, yeah.”
Little bit of thrill, hearing the way he’s known, and maybe his eyes are just a little brighter for it, or it puts a little more liquid into his bones, posture changing just subtly, the effect of praise on a young predator. “And that’s right,” about his name. Somewhat relieved to discover that he must not have been given the blond boy’s name that night since he gives it now, and not that he’d been introduced and had just forgotten. “It’s nice to meet you, Emrah – or I guess, uh… meet again?” Wincing a little then, vaguely sheepish, but he’s still smiling, meeting Emrah’s deep, striking eyes. “I hope I wasn’t too much of a pain the other night. I was really trying to be on my best behavior, but trouble just follows me for some reason.” Little quirk of his mouth that turns his smile wry. He wonders what kind of reputation he has, what else they say about the Wolf.
He doesn’t ask for a drink just yet, but he does light up a cigarette from the half-empty pack of Luckies he retrieves from his jacket pocket, and before he sets the pack on the bartop, he offers it Emrah’s way.
The handsome boy only shakes his head politely at the offered cigarettes, polishing the fresh-washed glassware behind the bar with a small cloth. By the golden light of early evening, it seems almost like a different place than it was that seedy, crowded night, now golden and wax-edged. The irregular floorboards, the bar wall with its peeling stickers for bands and anarchist groups, the worn felt on the old pool tables all seem less trashy and more cozy, especially when Spike and Emrah are the only two here.
“What do you mean? I didn’t see anything,” the marine-eyed boy replies smoothly, like anyone at home in the Syndicate’s sea of secrets, though a coy little smile tugs up the ribbon of his mouth. On closer inspection, Emrah’s upper lip is bee-stung, the cupid’s bow emphasized like that of a marble carving. Probably he’s had injections, as it would be a hell of a shape to come by naturally. Lush, subtly alien in an angular face. “Have a good time?”
His body language is easy, his hands gracile and articulate as they go about their work. The buoyancy of his wrists, like a piano player, surfaces an alcohol-addled memory of that night: An old piano tucked away in one of the dusty upstairs rooms, a hidden prettiness in the space Spike had used with Vicious and the girls. Like the hidden prettiness in the snake himself.
“Something to drink? Or are you waiting for him?” It’s an innocuous enough question – the two had come here together before, and maybe they’ll be here together today. Emrah can’t know, of course, how Spike has been waiting for him, prowling restlessly in Vicious’ absence. But the way he glances toward the door is subtly hopeful.
He takes a plain black ashtray out from behind the bar and places it gently down for his only customer. Prettiness is less hidden in Emrah: There’s definitely something feminine about the sway of his waist, the poise of his chin. And as Spike studies Vicious’ old friend in surreptitious ways, it seems the interest is mutual, those striking crème de menthe eyes subtly keen, too.
Spike grins at that response, the easy blind eye turned to whatever it was that he’d had gotten up to that night while here with Vicious. It makes him seem a little younger when he smiles like this, more his age, a wild boy instead of a blood-hound or an angel, but he’s a little coy too. “Yeah, a great time. Nights like that don’t happen often.” Spike wonders if anything like that will happen again, thinks maybe he should try to forget about that night, or at least accept that it was once in a lifetime. Vicious had only done it to make up for putting him in such a dangerous situation with Xhang, but now they’re even, and probably that’s that.
“But we had that promotion and all to celebrate,” ashing his cigarette into the ashtray Emrah sets down for him, giving him a sort of knowing look after, conspiratorial, “And I don’t need any big reason to have a good time, but…” Trailing off, happy to talk about his mean, weird partner’s sullen recalcitrance in his absence with someone else who must know it well. Vicious was probably the same back then – right?
Are you waiting for him? The playfulness leaves Spike’s expression, though he’s at least able to school his expression enough to keep it neutral instead of any of his real emotion coming through – because yes, the wolf is waiting for him, has been for days, and he’s realizing it only now, makes him feel sick again. “No, I’m not waiting for him,” he lies – or maybe it’s true, because he’s not waiting here for him, not really, and that’s all Emrah had meant – but for some reason, he doesn’t leave it at that: “Haven’t heard from him in a few days, really. I think he’s doing that disappearing thing… Or he’s just avoiding me.”
He means to smirk, like he’s unapologetic for whatever thing he may have done to make himself worthy of being avoided. Mostly he’s successful, but there’s something a little soft to the curve of his mouth, maybe a fondness? It might come across that way to Emrah, which Spike would be mortified to know, but inside, it’s something different – feels fond, yes, a subtle warmth behind his ribs, but it aches, too, like a bruise. It takes effort not to look back over his shoulder at the door when Emrah glances toward it.
A little surreal to be so near someone who might know Vicious in ways almost no one else does. We worked together when we were young, he’d told Spike that night, mouth at his ear, close. It had piqued Spike’s curiosity at the time, but there were much more pressing matters that took his attention away that night, and he hasn’t thought too much about it since. But now, observing the grace in Emrah’s hands, something about it feels so similar to Vicious, and Spike finds himself wondering what working together had entailed, how close they might have been. Even the ways Emrah is pretty, touched with femininity, isn’t dissimilar to Vicious, at least in some contexts, secret ways of being that he hides from most but that Spike has seen. They’d seemed comfortable with each other, and Vicious isn’t comfortable with almost anyone, so–
“A drink sounds great. Just a whiskey neat, I’m not picky…” Slipping off the flight jacket and laying it over a nearby stool, it’s clearer how similar Spike is to his partner’s build without the extra layer, even if he must have an extra inch or two in the shoulders, something more obviously brutal about his own feral grace. But he’s long and lean and leggy just like Vicious, a similar strong angle to his jaw, and though there’s more warmth in his smile, more ease, the shape of it is still so similar to the snake’s. “And get something for yourself, too.” Bruises on his knuckles that have nearly faded, seem the same age as the one darkening one side of his jawline, just a shadow of it left. The same as the little bitemark on the tendon of his neck, easier to see when he thoughtlessly tips his head back a little, lazy exhale of smoke.
Even while his attention is on his casual work, wiping and then stowing glasses from the rack behind the bar, he stays present with Spike, smiling when he smiles. “Honey, you never need to justify a big celebration to me,” Emrah says with a shake of his head. “We’ve had a lot worse go on up there for less, don’t worry.”
Honey, easy familiarity, something genuine and sweet in the boy’s grin, enticing. But there’s a weariness underlying it, like it’s partially a performance, delivering the expected welcome. The shrewd, distinctive eyes tick over the young wolf discreetly, the markings of his injuries, but the attentive, approachable expression on his face never shifts.
He pours two whiskeys in short, square glasses and leaves the bottle on the bar, pushing Spike’s toward him as he comes to rest his forearms coyly on the bar on his side, Up close, those vivid eyes look hungry in a familiar way.
“Oh, I just figured you must be waiting for him…” his eyes widen innocently, and then spark with a subtle knowing. “...because no one ever comes in here before 11pm, Wolf. This one’s on me.”
Emrah stands back up, turning Spike his profile, raising the glass to his lips with his fingertips around the rim. Like whiskey in the blood, his warm smile spreads, and his soft laugh has a touch of the flirtatious, though maybe that too is mostly performance: “Unless you’re collections come to shake me down? But I’m up to date on my rent, Sir Spike, don’t hurt me.”
“Oh, I bet,” glancing at the stairway that leads up to that locked room, little snatches of memory: the old upright piano in the corner of the room, the gouged table with its layer of ultrafine dust that just can’t be cleaned away. Sitting next to Vicious, close to him, his arm behind Spike’s shoulders, voice in his ear, I want–
“You must have great stories,” about things a lot worse that go on up there? Or about the grey-eyed boy they both wish would come through the door?
Spike takes the familiar address in stride, doesn’t seem flustered or resistant to it, maybe a little charmed by it, even. But Spike is observant too, and he catches that strange undercurrent in Emrah’s demeanor. He probably really is a sweet boy at heart, some kind of light in him Spike doesn’t see often, but the world they live in isn’t always kind to boys who are bright like that. Even though the shine Spike has isn’t quite the same, he’s still learned that same lesson himself, in different ways.
He sort of makes a face when the handsome marine-eyed boy mentions again that he figures Spike must be waiting for his partner, but he’s still smiling, even if it turns somewhat helpless, caught. Picking up the other glass without sipping from it yet – and then he laughs openly, a real one, easy. If there’s a dust of pink in his cheeks for Sir Spike, it’s just because it’s new and foreign, that’s all, nothing to do with it sounding like teasing in the other boy’s voice. “No, no, nothing like that. I don’t think you’re on this week’s list,” expression turning thoughtful as he lifts his glass to his lips, pausing to grin again before he takes a swallow of the whiskey: “I’m joking. Do I really look so dangerous?”
Finishing half the glass before setting it back down on the bar, thumb flicking the filter of his cigarette a couple extra times after ashing it into the ashtray, subtle restlessness that doesn’t otherwise show in the languid slouch of his body. “I’m really not waiting for him. But… I guess I was sort of looking for him. Just to be sure he’s okay. It’s not like him to be out of touch for as long as he has been.”
Wincing before he gives Emrah an imploring look, dark eyes a little wide, the sweet dog: “Please don’t say anything about this if you do see him. If he knows I was looking out for him, he’ll make it into something it’s not and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I don’t know, eventually it’s all the same story,” Emrah demures, shrugging again and swirling the whiskey in his glass, sniffing it. It’s an expensive, peaty one, but this is Vicious’ partner, after all. He leans casually back against the shelf behind him, slim-hipped with a cosmopolitan poise, but he has the rough-jointed hands of someone who works, and maybe who plays instruments, articulate in the fingers.
But when Spike flusters just a little, grins at him over his own glass, Emrah’s response is a wry purr with a cant of his head: “I don’t think I’m in your territory,” he retorts playfully. He seems like a natural flirt, like that might even be his default demeanor. But he looks genuinely interested in Spike too, taking the time to study him as if earnestly considering the question of whether he looks dangerous.
“You can’t tell how dangerous someone is by looking, I’m sure you know,” the other boy replies coyly, sipping his drink. “But if you work with him, I wouldn’t want to be at your mercy… tied to a chair while you beat me with a belt, or whatever it is you guys do.”
Emrah actually sighs longingly, and then winks at Spike. After a moment though, he lowers his gaze again, thoughtful, that gentle smile still resting on his lips. “I hardly ever see him around these days. How long has it been since you saw him? What made you think he might be here?”
A glance up, curious but guarded, too. The plea not to tell, though, makes Emrah raise both brows, startled, and then he smirks knowingly: “I’m no snitch, Sir, I don’t report on who comes and goes from here. But may I ask… what would he make it into?”
Eventually it’s all the same story, this boy from his partner’s past tells Spike, and the wolf doesn’t push it. It probably is all the same for boys like Emrah, even if the life he lives now is not the same as the one he shared with a younger snake. For a second, Spike wonders if he’ll think the same of his own life someday, its own violence and hunger, his own stories. If the unsettling things in the shadows of his bedroom at night will someday become boring or go away completely – and if the thing he did to create them will turn repetitive, tiresome. It seems impossible right now, the wild overstimulation of their first night really working together still fresh in his mind, along with how it had felt to reunite with Vicious after being sent off to spy on his own. How could those feelings, those vast cravings and strange hungers, ever grow less?
So Spike lets it go, but he smirks about whether or not this bar is in his territory, the look on his face only growing cockier when Emrah points out that it’s hard to tell how fearsome someone really is just by looking – but then he laughs again, shrugging up one shoulder, pausing to hit his cigarette one last time before putting it out in the ashtray. “You’re right, you’re not in my territory… But I’m not always very good at rule-following. It seems like you’ve heard a little about me, Emrah, so you must know at least that much.”
“Using a belt would be pretty unstylish, like entry-level type shit… I’m a little more creative than that, but I’ll spare you the details.” Though it occurs to Spike then that maybe this pretty blue-eyed boy has committed his own share of violence. It’s hard to say – it seems like the understanding Vicious and Spike have around it is unique, and Emrah doesn’t quite seem the type to turn on in that particular way. But just as Emrah had pointed out, can one ever really tell just by looking?
There’d been a quality to Spike’s voice that might’ve been a little flirtatious, or suggestive, or something, something light, but maybe he’d just been trying to play with the idea of violence, or with himself as violent and dangerous, to make it seem casual, like nothing to be afraid of. Though Emrah doesn’t seem afraid of him at all.
Spike takes advantage of the way Emrah’s focus drops for that moment, studying him closely – the quality of his smile, the way he holds his glass. It puts his heart in his throat to see someone looking like this over Vicious, gentle, fond, maybe even a little sad. Someone else who must see him as more than a vicious little snake.
He doesn’t answer right away, actually looks away quickly when Emrah lifts his gaze again, but his posture is still casual, leaning with one elbow on the bar. He even manages not to choke on the whiskey he’s swallowing when the other boy digs a little deeper, asks what Vicious might make Spike’s waiting or searching into, though his eyes go briefly wide.
“I’m sure he’d just call me soft in the head or something, or emotional like a woman. Like he’d make it into me missing him or not wanting to be away from him.” Clearing his throat a little, he sets the empty glass down, goes through the motions of lighting up another cigarette, which makes for a good distraction, an excuse not to meet Emrah’s eyes directly. “It’s been maybe four days? Which is just… uncommon lately, not to hear from him for that long. And we left things a little…” Biting his bottom lip briefly, right where the near-healed split is. Seeking the taste of blood, but it’s been too long, and the little wound Vicious had given him won’t open back up now. “Unsettled. But I’m sure he’s just busy. I don’t need to worry about him.”
The most difficult question to answer, what makes Spike think his partner might be here. He takes a drag from his cigarette, exhales the smoke down and away from Emrah, then finally meets his eyes again. His own catch the golden light of the early evening, refracting it into innumerable stars. “He seems comfortable with you, which is pretty unheard of, I’m sure you know. You must know him pretty well. So I just thought he might’ve come by to see you.”
Another drag, though this time he exhales the smoke in a rush, twin plumes from his nose like a dragon, half a laugh. “You can call me Spike. We must be the same age, and I don’t care about all that formality and rank.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Emrah replies easily, quirking an eyebrow – about a belt not being the young wolf’s style, or about being spared the stylish details of an angel’s methods? Sighing with a touch of faux-melodrama, even as a playful smile lingers: “I can only imagine.”
No, he doesn’t seem afraid of Spike, at ease in the presence of beasts. One would have to be, in this part of town, and to be so well acquainted with Vicious. The openness of Spike’s worry seems to pique his interest, though, certain word choices impossible not to notice: missing him or not wanting to be away from him, not to hear from him for that long, we left things unsettled, and he keeps his eyes carefully on the clean glass he continues to polish.
It’s not unlike Vicious, in fact, the way he’s always watching, the way he seems to hear the things unsaid, even if Emrah exercises discretion, only listens warmly. Another quirk of his expressive brow at four days suggests surprise that such a relatively-short disappearance is of concern when it comes to someone who, in his own experience, was fond of disappearing often, but he doesn’t give his opinion.
“Ah, I see,” soft and courteous, a keen observer and a good listener, like they say all good bartenders ought to be. “I wouldn’t worry. If something had happened to him, I think his partner would be the first to know.”
Subtly mischievous twinkle: “Is that actually what they call it, partners, or is there some… secret word for it?”
Emrah’s less able to conceal his surprise, though, at the notion Vicious had seemed comfortable with him, wide-eyed, a laugh. “Is that so?” The query is like a deflection, subtly coy, as if he’s careful not to comment either way on whether he knows Vicious pretty well or not.
But he puts the cloth down and picks up his drink again, swirling its contents idly. Careful, too, in what he says next, softer-voiced, the way a girl would ask, pretending at innocence: “Did he… happen to say anything about me? Or you only saw us talking that night?”
What a shame, Emrah says, and Spike isn’t sure what to make of that, the slight lift of his brows not quite surprise, more like incredulity – but his smile remains, and so does the cocksure quality of it. I can only imagine, the other boy sighs, and the young wolf is only playing, must be, when he gives Emrah a little more detail for his imaginings: “I like to be a little more hands on,” is all he’ll say, shrugging, glancing at his own hands, the bruises on his knuckles, the blood under his nails that won’t come out. But there’s a grace to his movements too, articulate fingers, nimble. He tries to look less cocky and only ends up coy-mouthed and sly instead.
But the playfulness in his expression fades when he talks about his worry over Vicious, though he means for it to come across as casual, like he’s not that concerned. Like he just happened to be out, just happened to pass by, thought he’d check here for his partner on a whim. Like he knows four days really isn’t that long, especially considering they used to go that long often without seeing each other, or even longer. But Spike used to dread the time he spent with Vicious too, felt like punishment to be around the mean, weird snake, and that isn’t the same anymore either.
So he makes a face when Emrah gives that silent sign of surprise that Spike is apparently so concerned about his partner after just a few days of silence, sort of cringing, his smile turning a little sheepish. There’s nothing to worry about, and even if there was, he probably would be the first to know. “Yeah, I know,” sighing, slumping over the bar a little bit, head propped up by one fist as he flicks the filter of his cigarette with his thumb over and over, watching ash spill into the ashtray, sparks scattering. “He can take care of himself.”
Is there some secret word for it? Spike stops his fidgeting with the cigarette and straightens up his posture somewhat, has to focus all his energy otherwise on not acting surprised, or defensive, or coy and flirtatious. He brings the cigarette to his lips for a drag, actually does a good job of keeping his expression neutral, a pale snake’s voice in his ears: never let anyone see, but that’s not all, I don’t know why you want to be lovers–
“Not one that I know,” somewhat thoughtful, like he’s actually considering it. If only he could control his blood, faintly pink in the cheeks again. It’s just the warmth from the whiskey, the same reason his playfulness returns so easily, in the texture of his voice and in his smile: “And if there was something secret, I couldn’t tell you.”
It seems both boys have this in common, this subtle avoidance regarding the grey-eyed snake currently absent to them both, the way they both pretend. It confuses Spike, to see something of himself in a young man like Emrah. Just as confusing are his feelings, the turn of his stomach, a subtle ache inside, strange melancholy. “Oh… I mean, a lot of that night is a blur,” soft humor in his voice that is a touch embarrassed, “But I could just tell from the way he looked when he talked to you.” Which is maybe more than he should say, possibly revealing just how well Spike knows Vicious, but the wolf is keen-eyed, and maybe he could pick up that kind of thing watching anyone.
Brief hesitation, like there’s more he might say. Putting out his cigarette half-finished, his attention there when he admits, tone somewhat cautious, soft: “He did tell me he knows you from before. When you were both younger.”
Spike looks at his hands, and Emrah looks too, gives that mysterious smile. It could be flirtatious, or he could just be playing along, easy to talk to as Spike is. But when the young wolf says he likes to be hands on, the other boy tilts his head playfully, studying him a little more keenly for a moment.
“Rough time at work for the two of you?” He asks, his tone pleasant enough but veiled, as he pretends again to occupy himself with barwork. “You look like you need a sandwich, honey. Vicious is fine, I’m sure. You know, he probably just needs to be …self-sufficient.”
“That’s interesting,” he says mildly, “that you observed that. I was just seeing if he wanted party favors, but he said you’re not like that.”
“An angel and a devil, working together. Is that it?” Bowlipped smile, fey. A note of something teasing in there, that it’s funny to him that Spike’s not like that, whatever that is. Emrah knows he’s being ambiguous, his striking, overlarge eyes wise.
His expression grows distant as Spike goes on, though remaining pleasant, schooling himself against any response in particular. “From before?” Meets Spike’s eyes, earnest curiosity. Inviting him to say more, but will not offer it.
“He used to look out for me when I was on the streets,” Emrah nods, and he can’t keep the admiration from his voice, a strange nostalgic fondness from tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I owe him a lot. But he was kinda like this even then, like… he always knew where we were, but we never knew where he was. Like a control thing.”
“If it wasn’t at least a little rough, it would be easy,” Spike says, sounding like he’s joking, even though he’s not. “And I don’t do good with boring. Where’s the fun in that?” Ambiguous himself, though he downplays that aspect of it, acting like he’s only talking about his work, and that this want he has for danger and stimulation doesn’t bleed into his personal life in any way.
He just sighs when Emrah reassures him again that Vicious must be fine. “I know, I know.” And he does, knows very well that his partner can shut down and get distant at times – he’s seen it happen more than once over the past few weeks, how cool and mean he can be after especially intense moments they share together, after vulnerability. After Spike sees. He wonders, just for a moment, what it was that had made him feel that Spike was too close this time around.
But something Emrah says pulls Spike from his reverie. “Wait, wait,” laughing, “Which one is the angel and which is the devil? And what does that mean, ‘not like that’?”
Spike’s demeanor shifts too, not so unserious, but he’s not grave, either, secretly relieved that bringing up the past Emrah had shared with Vicious doesn’t seem like a complete misstep. He still has mixed feelings over mentioning it, but he has mixed feelings about being here at all.
“From before.” He holds Emrah’s gaze for just a few seconds, but then he drops his focus to his glass, idly tracing a fingertip along the rim of it for a second, restless. Catches himself though, and before he can turn too contemplative, “He said you used to work together. I don’t know anything other than that.”
Hearing that Vicious used to look out for Emrah years ago makes Spike smile a little too, similarly fond. If he knew he looked like that over Vicious, especially in front of someone else, he’d hate himself for it. “A control thing, huh?” Is he punishing Spike, for being impulsive and too dangerous and so good? Or is he punishing himself for forgiving, for going along with Spike’s perfume-dipped fantasies?
“Well… I guess it’s good to know he hasn’t changed any and I shouldn’t take this personally.” But it feels a little uncanny to have someone point it out, that Vicious does always seem to know where he is, knows everything.Spike glances back over his shoulder toward the door, and then toward Emrah again, something a little sly in his smile. “I guess it doesn’t matter if you snitch or not. He’ll probably know I was here somehow anyway.”
“Me, I love the easy life,” Emrah sighs, and if to exemplify this he stretches his slim body languidly, arching at the waist and leaning his hip up against the bar, closer to Spike, smiling at him sidelong. Innuendo: “I leave the rough stuff up to the bigger guys, you know what I mean?”
“You seem like the angel to me, of the two of you. But I guess it is the really friendly, good-looking guys who do the most damage, now that I think about it.” Emrah sighs again, large and liquid-eyed, running his palm along his hip like he might want to get his phone out, but resists, instead curling his fingers to examine his nails.
“Oh, you know, just that you’re not a party boy, I guess,” but even still Emrah seems to be paraphrasing exactly what it is Vicious told him, unseen implications. But like that hangs in the air, and that curious, assessing inquiry lights those marine eyes. Subtle invitation, there, as if Spike could tell him what kind of boy he is, if he felt like it. Whether talking about drugs or something more, it seems Emrah’s in the business of allusion, discretion.
From before. The boy who used to be called Mint holds Spike’s gaze for a moment, and while parts of Emrah actually do remind of Vicious – the keenness, the quiet calculation, the level of discreet communication that seems to occur below language – in this moment, Spike sees something else: Strange infinity, timelessness, the eyes of a child in a man’s weary face. Or the eyes of an ancient folkloric being, hanging like twin moons in the smooth-jawed, angular visage of a youth. A familiar tinge of endlessness.
“We did,” Emrah simply confirms, a cautiousness veiling him. “Though we were very young, and we had other names, then.”
Those days are forbidden to speak of – Emrah knows Apollo Xhang lost his life because he looked at the snake called Vicious and still saw the boy called Lanzhu. Friend or not, no matter how comfortable, Emrah knows he could become just as expendable if he were to allow certain ghosts into his bar. Would Vicious really tell his partner about his last life, or is Spike baiting him, curious of his own accord? Did Vicious himself send his partner here to test him?
It’s hard to tell, and for a moment Spike can sense how guarded the other boy becomes, but even that’s normal for Syndicate youth – Spike himself might be the same in a venue where people asked him about his own work turning bodily fluids into coin. Whether fearing for his survival or out of real loyalty to Vicious, this guy’s good.
I don’t know anything other than that, Spike says, and though it’s not the whole truth, Emrah takes him at his word, examining the whiskey in his glass one last time before draining it. “Probably,” he sighs, about the possibility that Vicious would somehow find out about the conversation in this empty bar whether someone told him or not.
“Brother Lán’s confusing, isn’t he,” Emrah says, leaning onto his forearms again, facing Spike. With a fingertip, he coyly begins to draw lacy patterns in the condensation ring on the otherwise spotless bar top. So casual, like friendly banter, and at the same time, low-whispered, like something dangerous: “Seems like maybe you’ve got it bad.”
If Spike happens to look Emrah over discreetly as he stretches, he’s only being observant – and that has to be why he’s being so demonstrative in the first place, wants the wolf to look, even sort of flirting with him after. But Spike can handle joking around with the other boy, at least to this degree, soft little huff of wry laughter about rough stuff and bigger guys: “Sure.”
Being called an angel changes Spike’s smile subtly, like it pleases him, but like he thinks it’s a little funny, too, and his smile turns crooked when Emrah reconsiders somewhat, notes that it’s the friendly, good-looking guys who are the most dangerous. Seems a little sinister, this young wolf, but in the way of a young predator, like it’s fun, like it’s his nature, like he’s not bad, even if he does all kinds of bad things. “I wasn’t sure how to take that, being the angel, but if it means I’m good-looking, it sounds like a compliment to me.” Of course, the implication that he might do more damage than his partner is a compliment too, but he keeps the dark competition these two young beasts have with each other to himself.
“Oh… Well if that’s what he said about me, that was true. I like to have a good time, but I’ve never really done things like that.” Like that, again – if Emrah is going to be vague in the face of Spike’s curiosity, two can play. He shrugs it off, but then makes the mistake of meeting the other boy’s eyes, looks a little too long. Is he like that? All of a sudden, Spike isn’t sure. Familiar-unfamiliar, this endlessness, a vastness that makes certainty feel uncertain. Like anything could happen. Like it’s exciting that it could. “Not that I’m opposed, not completely,” something cautious in his tone, intentional, and though the texture of it is a little rough, it’s still warm, rich. “In the right situation.”
Spike leaves it there, even though it might make his position on party drugs – and other things – even more ambiguous. But it’s easy to let that thread of conversation go when another one is there to grasp. Something sparks hot in his blood then, unexpectedly, finding himself so near to his partner’s ghost, a version of it so few get to see and even fewer are allowed to go on living after having seen it. “Mm,” quiet sound of acknowledgment, and then he admits, cautious in a different way, like handling something fragile, “I guess I knew that, too.” The young snake’s much younger age when his work with bigger beasts began, the name Emrah had called him the other night.
Spike had almost, almost called him the same several mornings ago, after Vicious had demanded don’t say my name. But the thought had been fleeting, dismissed almost immediately, especially because the snake had been briefly overwhelmed then. Like he’d been somewhere else, or feared being someone else. Names have power, and even though Spike isn’t sure if Lán is a chosen name (his suspicion) or his given name, he still had no wish to summon the ghosts of his partner’s youthful work in that moment. As much as was possible, Spike only wanted the two of them to be in the other boy’s loft, entwined on his couch, a world for angels alone. When it comes to these two beasts, maybe they don’t even need names, their knowing of each other complete enough without them.
So he doesn’t take it personally when this boy from the snake’s past life grows guarded. Spike knows he’s picking at wounds that have left scars if they’ve even healed at all, and while of course he wants to know more – he can be more useful that way, make the death they bring to certain sinners more meaningful, the kind of violent, painful death a disgusting beast deserves – he also doesn’t want to find out in ways Vicious would find invasive. The last thing he wants is for his partner to feel violated by him, too.
Willing to drop the topic of Vicious’ past, and maybe even the grey-eyed boy they have in common entirely, Spike isn’t expecting several things Emrah says. Feels like a sneak attack, one coming from all angles, brother Lán enough to turn the tips of his ears pink, but maybe he’s just flushing from the alcohol. “He sure fucking is,” the young wolf agrees, half-groan, half-laugh, most of his attention on his empty glass, something faintly strained in his tone. “And I tell him so all the time.”
Vicious is confusing, that must be why Spike is so confused right now, red wolf-heart beating fast. I have a brother–
Memory of trying to care for a mean little snake he’d invited into his apartment, bratty and rude, cooing shall I wash your back for you, big brother mockingly before calling him a pervert–
When Emrah leans in, though, starts to trace patterns on the bartop with one articulate finger, Spike leans in a little too. Feels like they’re just being conspiratorial, comparing notes on how to handle a grey-eyed snake. That must be why Spike feels a little warm, why his pulse throbs hard in his throat. It isn’t the stir of vague danger for some other undefined reason that puts that heat in his blood, or some other confusing temptation he won’t name.
But if brother Lán had been a sucker punch, what Emrah says next is like a silent assassination. Spike’s eyes go wide, pupils dilating briefly, fear or desire, the same, just the same. “Oh,” forcing some laughter, and it’s lucky that he might just come across as flustered for being mistaken for being like that. But he also might not. “N-no, I’m not– I’m not into guys,” still sort of laughing, awkward, obviously pink in the cheeks now, blushing brighter than before, the gold-touched light fading besides. His smile quirks oddly, something wild in his expression, an animal caught.
Spike only seems thrown, so much so that he’s sort of dazed, not offended or upset, though he tries to inject some of the latter when he protests, “And even if I was, I wouldn’t be interested in him. He’s so fucking weird, and mean – and confusing, like you said. I get more than enough of that when I work with him.” But he thinks about how it had felt when his pale, beautiful angel-twin got under that rose-scented, blood-spotted comforter with him that blue-grey dawn, how perfect to kiss him, to touch him. How complete, to feel so full of him, more and more until there is no more, until it’s enough, finally.
Or the queer vulnerability of him, pink-cheeked and hot-skinned in Spike’s clothes and on his couch, pretty – or the pretty sounds he makes, do you like that, baby, mocking little girl-moan that felt like a blade, or a real one, soft and sweet in Spike’s ear, like it pained him a little to be inside the tight, virginal young wolf, but like it felt so good–
“What makes you think that?” A risky question, dangerous, but if Emrah explains how Spike had given himself away, surely he can spin some bullshit explanation to convince him he’s mistaken. Besides – isn’t he? Spike doesn’t have it bad for anyone. His stomach flips, heart in his throat. It won’t stop pounding hard, racing like it wants to escape, and he wishes he had another drink. If his heart won’t behave, maybe he can drown it in whiskey.