![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
FIC: FOUR OF CLUBS, PART 3
Title: Four of Clubs
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
Constantine never mentioned it again, content to forgive both me and himself by omission. He never got another dog, either. Maybe he found himself pulling me out of enough sewer culverts to satisfy that need. Maybe he was just a one-dog sort of person.
I finally learned him enough, by '05, to get him to come out drinking with me. By year three of our partnership, his continued resistance to his own thoughts and emotions genuinely puzzled me. I was trying to dig deep enough, gently enough, to figure it out. I thought maybe it was something about control.
Something about being in or out of it. I couldn't wrap my mind around which or how, though. I just wished I could convey to him that if that's what his reservations were, if he thought he'd weird me out with what he wanted to do or have done, there was no risk. I'd have tied him in knots, or dressed up like a French maid and licked his boots clean by that point, just to see him naked.
He wouldn't ask for anything though. He never even talked about any kind of sex life. I concluded - rightly so - that he didn't have one. My plan, if you could call it that, was to light off as many fireworks as I could and then be the one standing there with a hose. I would get him drunk - maybe that would overcome his reservations in admitting what he wanted. If he still didn't know what he wanted, I figured a half dozen sloppy bar-girls would help him sort out in his mind what it was he was missing.
Which I wanted the answer to, to be; 'someone who knew him'. And not ol' lefty. I'd gotten the idea when he'd completed his eye surgery - a constructive use of his vacation time which he apparently had no other use for.
I didn't know anything about LASIK, my vision had always been good. So when he'd asked me to drive him home after the procedure - an 'out patient' thing apparently, I had no idea what to expect. He was a little bit of a mess. They'd left him conscious with only a valium (or three, I never got a valid final total) to carry him through.
He emerged from the office loopy and shaken, eyes hidden behind these huge dark glasses like he was blind and still wincing away from the light. He looped an arm around my shoulder, and for the first time the gesture wasn't the strictly professional one he used when I was too drunk to drive myself home. He supported himself with his full weight pressed along my side and his head turned against my shoulder so I felt his breath on my neck. He'd never given me so much of himself when he was sober, and I was glad the Valium seemed to leave him unable to focus, and he complained of bright spots in his vision like the after-burn from looking at the sun. He couldn't see the way I had to shift as I drove, sitting uncomfortably with the most inappropriate stiffie.
By the time I got him home, it had faded - but not without a lot of thoughts of ice and baseball. He was steady enough to reserve himself again by then, to get up the stairs to his apartment with only my hand on his shoulder in a steadying touch. It wasn't before my brain put two and two together into realizing that an intoxicated Constantine could not fight himself as well.
So, after he'd recovered - and it was odd for a while to catch him without his glasses in the evenings, or not squinting when he was too self conscious to wear them, but the contacts hurt his eyes. After that, I began to get more involved. I didn't let up on him, because leaving him alone to figure it out himself hadn't worked.
Whenever we failed a case, which was often enough to have an effect - I got him out. 'The next time,' I'd say. If I couldn't drag up enough appropriate girls from my black book, I was good at not going home alone. I'm not bad to look at - fit enough that there's no spare tissue on my frame and girls like blue eyes with dark hair, almost as much as they like fucking said hair up. Constantine is fucking gorgeous, and he held himself like he had no goddamn idea how many wet panties happened just from the way he worked his hands or shaped his mouth as he spoke. Drove the girls as wild as it was starting to drive me, or maybe they just see that he was solid, had a face that couldn't lie, and he didn't seem interested.
So I drew them in, and he should have had no trouble - no trouble at all keeping them. He was never in as much of a rush. He talked to them for longer than the girls I attracted (I'm dangerous, I got the kind of girls that match, damaged goods. Crazy girls. Fuck like they mean it, though, like they could pound their problems out or carve them out of you with their nails respectively) had attention spans, so while I assumed he went home with them, I didn't usually see it happen. I'd slip out the back, to take my frustrations out on him via the most unlikely of stand-ins.
It took me until the third drunken, late night call to him for a car ride home - I'd usually go to the girl's place and let her drive us there - to realize he was still leaving the bar alone. When I'd call and he wasn't irritated or out of breath. When he could drop everything with no delay to make excuses and he was obviously coming from his place.
"Don't worry about it," he'd say, letting me climb into the passenger seat and hang my head between my knees all the way home. "I wasn't sleeping anyway."
"Con," I shot back, the third time I'd heard the words, drunk and irritable, pissed the girl I'd gotten had been meek as hell and that she hadn't been Constantine, mostly. I could use the 'drunk' part as an excuse. "Don't you ever fuck those girls?"
The fact that he hesitated at all to answer gave me all I needed to know and I jerked my head up out of my hands sharply - a mistake. I groaned, and he mistook my anger for surprise. His eyes slid away from me, excusing themselves into peering out the windshield, at the rear-view mirror.
"Really?" I challenged him. I realized he hadn't fucked any of them. Maybe not anyone in years, since after Cixous had torn us up.
"Nah," he said, trying to keep it casual, like it shouldn't have mattered, and normally it shouldn't, but the way he wouldn't meet my eyes or tell me to leave it alone. Something about that, and the way he never said 'no' to me when I wanted to go out. When I wanted him out with me.
The way he never slept when it was just me on my own in some forsaken part of the city, just came to get me with that same brittle excuse. It infuriated me. I wanted, in that moment, to break him apart until he had to look at himself, until all of him was laying bare on the ground and he had to see it all just to pick up the pieces again. He'd never have forgiven me. Or maybe he'd have just left the parts he didn't seem to want behind.
"Christ," I said, cradling my tender head in my palms. "What you - you got AIDS?"
"No, jesus!" Con snapped. Angry. That got through to him. "I'm just not that hard up."
That's it, that's all he gave me, even mad and off-balance. I spent the rest of the car-ride in silence, irritable, trying to formulate a new plan. It was much the same as the old, but like I had to insist that he go drinking in the first place, I would stay and make sure he left with them. Pissed my 'dates' off to no end when they saw me watching him for cues instead of them. By that point I didn't give a shit - they didn't have what I really wanted. Sometimes they'd storm out, and I found some irony in the fact that making sure Con was getting sex meant I got less.
It was a few months later and I'd watched Con awkwardly escort a brunette out to her car, maybe an hour before. My date had lost patience and blown out of the bar like a bad breath sometime before that, and I was trying to space myself with time and water so I could get myself home without wrapping my classic around a telephone pole.
No matter how many girls I scraped off on Con, how much time we'd spent like this in bars where he obviously didn't want to be, he would not get outraged about it. It's like even if he didn't want it he could accept that I thought it was for his own good and also hide in it. Like that was obviously what we both wanted, and he couldn't reject it without casting some doubt.
My eyes were on the door he'd gone through when she surprised me. Corrie, I think was her name. Her face was a little familiar and I had to think about if she was one of mine or one of his.
"David," she said, and gave me a little, nervous smile. Tossed her hair a little, like she felt a bit silly. "You might not remember me - Con and I went out a few weeks ago?"
That answered that question, and I smiled to show her that I did remember, letting her climb up on the bar stool next to me. She was going to talk about something - about him maybe. So I'd listen.
"Yeah, Corrie. I remember you, sweetheart. Sit down, what's eating you?" I ordered her a drink, and another of 'what I was having' so she'd think I was less sober than I actually was, drinking straight seltzer water.
"Well, normally I'd never-" she began, twisting her hands on her glass before looking up at me apologetically, like I must surely know where this was going. "It's just you really seemed to be looking out for him, and he's the sweetest guy."
She gave me a little grin, and - I could guess where this was going, except with a sudden flare of jealousy. Maybe she wanted something steady with him. God, and maybe he'd feel obligated to do it.
"But I mean," she forged on against my silence, then lowered her tone. "I'd like to give it another try. I mean - his problem. Sometimes it's just..."
She stopped, and I felt my pulse thud - his what?
"I thought we could work together a little. He trusts you - so maybe you could slip him something? Nothing dangerous, just - you know, for his confidence. I hear a lot of times it's just a problem like that, and the condition resolves itself."
My jaw had slowly clenched itself. She wasn't looking at me, but at her drink, so she missed what a terrifying expression I must have had. That she dare suggest - that she even could claim to know Constantine that well. Like there was something wrong with him. She couldn't fucking see beyond herself, that maybe the problem wasn't him but that she wasn't what he wanted or needed.
"What the fuck's the matter with you!" I hissed, and she looked up, all traces of faint embarrassment and hopefulness gone, replaced with surprise. "You stupid bitch."
Her eyes had gone round, but then she got angry. I wanted her angry. She'd done that to me, I could return the favor at least.
"Maybe the fucking problem's your fat fucking face, you stupid cunt," I snarled. "You want me to drug my fucking friend because he's got eyes in his goddamn head? Fuck you!"
I was yelling by the end, getting up out of my chair and threatening her with my size, looking like the biggest dick in the world, I'm sure. About to hit this girl with my damn glass if I had to, to make her shut the fuck up. Her and her soft eyes and apologies, and here I was driven to the point of breaking my own rule about not hitting women.
"Fuck you!" She shouted back, unable to think of an argument outside of returning the insults. "And your limp-dicked boyfriend."
She hurled her drink at me, and it was all that saved her, the sudden freezing shock on my skin and the stinging vodka in my eyes while she left in a hurry.
Several bigger guys roughly escorted me out after. Told me I was disinvited from that bar and - fucking fine. I didn't want to see any more 'familiar' faces for a while.
-
The thought wouldn't leave me the fuck alone, though. Was that why he was hesitant with girls - why he wouldn't even think about me? Was that all it was, or was it not the problem at all but just a symptom? Was it just that he had to be really drunk to even go that far? I could hardly ask.
My ego wanted me to believe it was because women just literally weren't his thing. I couldn't get it up for like - Arnold Schwarzenagger. The body wants what it wants. It's not always logical about it. I see tits, I get wood. I get the same reaction to some guys in speedos. But I have a type in both cases. Maybe Con's type was only on one side of the fucking rainbow, and he hadn't thought he should look there.
And it's not that he was a homophobe. It made no sense that he should worry about that trait in himself. I'd never seen him treat anyone different - suspects, friends, because they were or appeared to be attracted to the same gender. He didn't seem to hold prejudices - if you broke the law, he treated you like you did. If you didn't, he treated you like a friend. It was like he had this picture of himself, and he wouldn't change the frame or the image, because he thought to move one part, even a part he wanted to move to be crude about it - he had to repaint the whole fucking thing.
He didn't want to see a new image. Couldn't take it maybe. Like he liked so much of what he had he was afraid of trying to make it perfect.
I tried one more time. No girls this time, just me and him at the bar, in the back. I made a show of being outraged that we'd been stood up, and for a minute, when he said he didn't mind, I think - finally. Finally we'll get somewhere. We drank, smoked. Shot shit.
"You ever get curious?" I asked, deliberately obscure, deliberately leading him. I'd let him think I was drunker than I actually was, shoulders close enough to almost brush where we sat together at the bar. He was hunched over a bit, drunk too. He should have asked 'about what?' Should have left me an opening, verbally, to plant the idea. Hell, maybe found his confidence and realized what I meant, and just said 'yeah'.
Instead he just shifted himself, pressed his cheek into the shoulder opposite me where his arm was leaning up on the bar, and with his head at that almost defeated angle, shifted his gaze to meet mine.
He looked up at me, his eyes darker in the shitty bar light than I'd seen them, and I was too drunk to guess at why, but in that moment, I could see straight through him.
Jesus, Con but words refused to leap into that well of space where angels and legality fear to tread. Just trust me.
Instead I watched him shut it down, could see every step he took to close himself up. These small things he hoped were invisible - that I let him believe were.
"One more for the road," I said - begged, so softly I'm not sure how the bartender heard, but the drink came anyway.
Constantine let me have the alcohol, at least.
-
LUCID HR. 84 - SINGLE SUBJECT
We're both drunk, and it's my fault, I keep pushing him, pushing and pushing and he gives because he won't say no when I hand him a drink, when I put my hand under it, laughing, and push it toward his mouth like - 'don't you want to have a good time, see?' Doesn't say no when I put my hand on his back. The words don't matter but I encourage him anyway -
"We're partying."
"'n we're always-" he starts, but still doesn't refuse.
I don't let him think - his thinking always keeps us out of trouble, but tonight I want us in trouble.
"Nope," I cut him off, push the mug up indicatively until he drinks. "We got this far, fair 'n square."
"How far?" he slurs, and jesus what a mess I've made of him, after getting him back to my place through some fucking magic of confidence on my part and half-blind trust on his part. 'Just a few drinks and we'll already be someplace safe to sleep,' and then we somehow were onto my couch and into more alcohol.
"This far," I answer, taking the empty glass out of his hand and leaning into him to trap him against the arm of the couch where he can't escape, casting my hand out to the side to drop the glass heavily onto the coffee table without looking. I close my mouth on his - open in disbelief, open and unresisting as my tongue pushes in to pull alcohol off of his. Pushing again, pushing and driving forward as fast as I feel myself settling against him, until I can taste past the alcohol, taste him. Faintly cigarettes, clean teeth, sharp edges. Responding mouth, groaning into it, and I can't tell if he's leaning up or I'm leaning down or pulling at the handful of his ratty old T-shirt that I have.
I have to know, have to, so I drop my hand straight down between us where it lands on his inner thigh, slides up along the inseam of his jeans, and I feel the muscle tighten, him breaking the kiss to hiss his shock. Like his mind was still working out point a, and even though point b was a straight line (down), he hadn't guessed that was where we were going.
My fingers find the crease of thigh and body, and I feel his dick jump and start to fill against the backs of my knuckles, zero to floored.
"Christ," he hisses, lost, and I look up. My eyes had angled down to watch, just sliding the back of my knuckles along the growing bulge in his pants, knowing it responded to me. To my touch. His eyes are barely brown, almost all pupil, going wide as if he needs to see everything he possibly can, and his throat works as he watches my hand on him. Has to see that it is mine to believe it, follow the flexing line of my arm back up to my shoulder and then look into my eyes to be sure that I was aware of my actions. That it wasn't an accident, what I was doing to him.
"Yeah?" I prompt, turning my hand around, cupping over his erection where it felt warm and close even through his jeans. I can feel the whole dimensions of him, and he makes this noise - a gasp, ready like he's been waiting forever, waiting as long as I have been waiting for this.
"Christ," he repeats, and lets go of the couch. One of his hands has gone to grip the thick cushions in back, the other fallen down along the front to grip the wood frame hidden under the dust ruffle, and he got his hands up. I think at first he's going to reach for me, but instead he goes between us, rushing, his hands working his own button, his own fly.
God, it turns me on more than anything that I've pushed him so far that he wants to - needs to take for himself. To know that I can do that for him when no one else can. Jesus. I'm hard as hell and he makes this noise when his hand closes over mine, when he brushes my skin to get his pants out of the way, to give me all the access I want. His fingers follow mine right onto his cock.
"Yeah," he says, "right there, right-"
But his next words drown in noise, drown in my mouth. I get the idea, curling my fingers to take the impressive measure of him, and I could almost cum just from listening to him encourage me.
His eyes haven't gone all the way closed, just mostly there, and he's watching me through his eyelashes when his hands remember themselves and start moving again. Reaching for me this time, like he's not going to leave me behind, and he's in one hell of a rush, pulling my voice out of me with a groan when his fingers start yanking the button on my jeans after only the barest grip to be sure he'd find me ready in there.
"C'mon," he's saying, arching up into each of my strokes with a rolling motion of his hips, pushing faster through my grip when it loosens. "C'mon - get me there."
Fuck, but I want to. But I can't let this end that fast, can't let him catch his breath until there's no going back, no second thoughts, no denials. I can't take my time, and I have to push this all the way through the first time, so it sticks. I claw his shirt up, his pants the rest of the way down even though his voice breaks high in frustrated desperation when I stop jerking him off.
It takes a few seconds to get my own jeans off so they don't pull tight around my thighs, let me spread my legs over his, so that when he reaches for me and I lean down again, we push against each other, skin on skin.
God, how fucking long have I waited, and it's so good - like I knew it would be. My hand on the scar on Constantine's shoulder as I arched my back downward and with only the lightest pressure of my thumb pressing down on my own dick and the first two fingers stretching wide around Con's, rocking us together, showing our dicks they aren't alone.
One of his hands seizes my shoulder, and the other comes around of the back of my neck, gripping as he pushes up hard, rushing us again. I drop my head and put my teeth into his old scar until he gasps and his pace stutters and I'm sure I have his attention. I draw back to warn him with a look. Warn him that I'd let him push, but I was in control, and I stop all our motions but the press of our bodies as I push my hand into the couch cushions. Come up with lubricant, and he doesn't question that.
I over-apply, get us drippingly slick between my hands, and push my mouth against his to swallow the noises he makes into my own chest where they echo back as hungry growls. I slide my other hand back while he's distracted, press fingers into myself, stretching, slicking. He doesn't notice until I sit up, my hand positioning him, and his eyes shoot open as I get up on my knees, his hands rushing to my hips to stop me.
"I can't," he says, looking up at me and shaking his head, wild eyed, but he was hard as ever, breath fast as ever, and I realize he hadn't expected to be in this position. "Hey, partner - I can't-"
"Yes you can," I cut him off, leaned down and wrap our hands together, "You can."
I push his fingers in where mine had been, let him feel how open and how much I want him, drive my hips down sharply to press his first two fingers in to the hilt in a slick easy slide - to let him comprehend how that was going to feel on his dick. "That's for you," I tell him, and his breath hitches as I push my fingers in along with his, feel the stretch and the way it turned my breaths fast and driven, the way he couldn't help pushing his length against my thigh in response.
"I got a-" Condom. In his wallet. I knew.
"Don't need it," I snarl, unwilling to let him delay any more, and I lift myself onto him, let our hands guide his length all the way, until I have all of him at last, his broken moan a sign that he was right there with me, aching, and now complete.
No going back, no arguing that we fit together like we were supposed to, that we both fucking want this, and there was no reason we shouldn't just have it. It's only then I let him rush us, I drive us faster, even, feel the additional stretch of his fingers as he pushes them into me alongside his cock, to feel us sliding together in the most intimate way, as if that's the only way to fully comprehend the enormity of the moment. It feels - beyond stretched. Beyond full. Bursting - teetering at the ledge -
"God," his voice organizes sounds into words, though he hardly could be thinking about what he's saying. "Gonna. Have to-"
"Come for me, partner," I say, wanting it. Wanting it to be mine, the results of my actions. "Come on, I'm right here with-"
But he shuts me up by putting his free hand roughly on my dick and giving me two quick strokes, letting me feel it, and I cum, muscles locking up tight, sweeping tidelike. Pulling me into a curl of sensation and he came after, driving up and flooding heat into me, dripping down the channel his fingers create and hotly onto my balls. I shudder, helpless, glad I hadn't let him talk me into protection or I'd have missed that, and it was him, part of him.
We lean our foreheads together in a curl of bodies, and I let my hands fall on him possessively knowing we still had the whole night - the rest of eternity for me to show him everything I wanted to, but we'd taken that last flying leap across the void and now there was no fucking way back. We'd burned the bridge like he'd burned to life inside of me, the remains undeniable, but behind us. I don't unjoin us until I have to, and my body regrets the change.
-
He dropped me off at my apartment, but had the good manners to help me up the stairs, through my door, into my bedroom where he stood back from the bed as I dropped myself onto it, utterly out of place.
"You need an intervention," he joked lamely as he got me a glass of water to put on the nightstand - got his hand out of the way when I reached for it so I had to go for the water like that's what I was reaching for all along.
"I had one," I answered, sitting up and sipping slowly. "It didn't take."
He answered my wry, tired humor with a low, two-sound laugh, and he retreated to the doorway. I watched him go, too dizzy to stop him.
"Seriously partner, you better dry up tomorrow," he said, and then he was gone.
-
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
Constantine never mentioned it again, content to forgive both me and himself by omission. He never got another dog, either. Maybe he found himself pulling me out of enough sewer culverts to satisfy that need. Maybe he was just a one-dog sort of person.
I finally learned him enough, by '05, to get him to come out drinking with me. By year three of our partnership, his continued resistance to his own thoughts and emotions genuinely puzzled me. I was trying to dig deep enough, gently enough, to figure it out. I thought maybe it was something about control.
Something about being in or out of it. I couldn't wrap my mind around which or how, though. I just wished I could convey to him that if that's what his reservations were, if he thought he'd weird me out with what he wanted to do or have done, there was no risk. I'd have tied him in knots, or dressed up like a French maid and licked his boots clean by that point, just to see him naked.
He wouldn't ask for anything though. He never even talked about any kind of sex life. I concluded - rightly so - that he didn't have one. My plan, if you could call it that, was to light off as many fireworks as I could and then be the one standing there with a hose. I would get him drunk - maybe that would overcome his reservations in admitting what he wanted. If he still didn't know what he wanted, I figured a half dozen sloppy bar-girls would help him sort out in his mind what it was he was missing.
Which I wanted the answer to, to be; 'someone who knew him'. And not ol' lefty. I'd gotten the idea when he'd completed his eye surgery - a constructive use of his vacation time which he apparently had no other use for.
I didn't know anything about LASIK, my vision had always been good. So when he'd asked me to drive him home after the procedure - an 'out patient' thing apparently, I had no idea what to expect. He was a little bit of a mess. They'd left him conscious with only a valium (or three, I never got a valid final total) to carry him through.
He emerged from the office loopy and shaken, eyes hidden behind these huge dark glasses like he was blind and still wincing away from the light. He looped an arm around my shoulder, and for the first time the gesture wasn't the strictly professional one he used when I was too drunk to drive myself home. He supported himself with his full weight pressed along my side and his head turned against my shoulder so I felt his breath on my neck. He'd never given me so much of himself when he was sober, and I was glad the Valium seemed to leave him unable to focus, and he complained of bright spots in his vision like the after-burn from looking at the sun. He couldn't see the way I had to shift as I drove, sitting uncomfortably with the most inappropriate stiffie.
By the time I got him home, it had faded - but not without a lot of thoughts of ice and baseball. He was steady enough to reserve himself again by then, to get up the stairs to his apartment with only my hand on his shoulder in a steadying touch. It wasn't before my brain put two and two together into realizing that an intoxicated Constantine could not fight himself as well.
So, after he'd recovered - and it was odd for a while to catch him without his glasses in the evenings, or not squinting when he was too self conscious to wear them, but the contacts hurt his eyes. After that, I began to get more involved. I didn't let up on him, because leaving him alone to figure it out himself hadn't worked.
Whenever we failed a case, which was often enough to have an effect - I got him out. 'The next time,' I'd say. If I couldn't drag up enough appropriate girls from my black book, I was good at not going home alone. I'm not bad to look at - fit enough that there's no spare tissue on my frame and girls like blue eyes with dark hair, almost as much as they like fucking said hair up. Constantine is fucking gorgeous, and he held himself like he had no goddamn idea how many wet panties happened just from the way he worked his hands or shaped his mouth as he spoke. Drove the girls as wild as it was starting to drive me, or maybe they just see that he was solid, had a face that couldn't lie, and he didn't seem interested.
So I drew them in, and he should have had no trouble - no trouble at all keeping them. He was never in as much of a rush. He talked to them for longer than the girls I attracted (I'm dangerous, I got the kind of girls that match, damaged goods. Crazy girls. Fuck like they mean it, though, like they could pound their problems out or carve them out of you with their nails respectively) had attention spans, so while I assumed he went home with them, I didn't usually see it happen. I'd slip out the back, to take my frustrations out on him via the most unlikely of stand-ins.
It took me until the third drunken, late night call to him for a car ride home - I'd usually go to the girl's place and let her drive us there - to realize he was still leaving the bar alone. When I'd call and he wasn't irritated or out of breath. When he could drop everything with no delay to make excuses and he was obviously coming from his place.
"Don't worry about it," he'd say, letting me climb into the passenger seat and hang my head between my knees all the way home. "I wasn't sleeping anyway."
"Con," I shot back, the third time I'd heard the words, drunk and irritable, pissed the girl I'd gotten had been meek as hell and that she hadn't been Constantine, mostly. I could use the 'drunk' part as an excuse. "Don't you ever fuck those girls?"
The fact that he hesitated at all to answer gave me all I needed to know and I jerked my head up out of my hands sharply - a mistake. I groaned, and he mistook my anger for surprise. His eyes slid away from me, excusing themselves into peering out the windshield, at the rear-view mirror.
"Really?" I challenged him. I realized he hadn't fucked any of them. Maybe not anyone in years, since after Cixous had torn us up.
"Nah," he said, trying to keep it casual, like it shouldn't have mattered, and normally it shouldn't, but the way he wouldn't meet my eyes or tell me to leave it alone. Something about that, and the way he never said 'no' to me when I wanted to go out. When I wanted him out with me.
The way he never slept when it was just me on my own in some forsaken part of the city, just came to get me with that same brittle excuse. It infuriated me. I wanted, in that moment, to break him apart until he had to look at himself, until all of him was laying bare on the ground and he had to see it all just to pick up the pieces again. He'd never have forgiven me. Or maybe he'd have just left the parts he didn't seem to want behind.
"Christ," I said, cradling my tender head in my palms. "What you - you got AIDS?"
"No, jesus!" Con snapped. Angry. That got through to him. "I'm just not that hard up."
That's it, that's all he gave me, even mad and off-balance. I spent the rest of the car-ride in silence, irritable, trying to formulate a new plan. It was much the same as the old, but like I had to insist that he go drinking in the first place, I would stay and make sure he left with them. Pissed my 'dates' off to no end when they saw me watching him for cues instead of them. By that point I didn't give a shit - they didn't have what I really wanted. Sometimes they'd storm out, and I found some irony in the fact that making sure Con was getting sex meant I got less.
It was a few months later and I'd watched Con awkwardly escort a brunette out to her car, maybe an hour before. My date had lost patience and blown out of the bar like a bad breath sometime before that, and I was trying to space myself with time and water so I could get myself home without wrapping my classic around a telephone pole.
No matter how many girls I scraped off on Con, how much time we'd spent like this in bars where he obviously didn't want to be, he would not get outraged about it. It's like even if he didn't want it he could accept that I thought it was for his own good and also hide in it. Like that was obviously what we both wanted, and he couldn't reject it without casting some doubt.
My eyes were on the door he'd gone through when she surprised me. Corrie, I think was her name. Her face was a little familiar and I had to think about if she was one of mine or one of his.
"David," she said, and gave me a little, nervous smile. Tossed her hair a little, like she felt a bit silly. "You might not remember me - Con and I went out a few weeks ago?"
That answered that question, and I smiled to show her that I did remember, letting her climb up on the bar stool next to me. She was going to talk about something - about him maybe. So I'd listen.
"Yeah, Corrie. I remember you, sweetheart. Sit down, what's eating you?" I ordered her a drink, and another of 'what I was having' so she'd think I was less sober than I actually was, drinking straight seltzer water.
"Well, normally I'd never-" she began, twisting her hands on her glass before looking up at me apologetically, like I must surely know where this was going. "It's just you really seemed to be looking out for him, and he's the sweetest guy."
She gave me a little grin, and - I could guess where this was going, except with a sudden flare of jealousy. Maybe she wanted something steady with him. God, and maybe he'd feel obligated to do it.
"But I mean," she forged on against my silence, then lowered her tone. "I'd like to give it another try. I mean - his problem. Sometimes it's just..."
She stopped, and I felt my pulse thud - his what?
"I thought we could work together a little. He trusts you - so maybe you could slip him something? Nothing dangerous, just - you know, for his confidence. I hear a lot of times it's just a problem like that, and the condition resolves itself."
My jaw had slowly clenched itself. She wasn't looking at me, but at her drink, so she missed what a terrifying expression I must have had. That she dare suggest - that she even could claim to know Constantine that well. Like there was something wrong with him. She couldn't fucking see beyond herself, that maybe the problem wasn't him but that she wasn't what he wanted or needed.
"What the fuck's the matter with you!" I hissed, and she looked up, all traces of faint embarrassment and hopefulness gone, replaced with surprise. "You stupid bitch."
Her eyes had gone round, but then she got angry. I wanted her angry. She'd done that to me, I could return the favor at least.
"Maybe the fucking problem's your fat fucking face, you stupid cunt," I snarled. "You want me to drug my fucking friend because he's got eyes in his goddamn head? Fuck you!"
I was yelling by the end, getting up out of my chair and threatening her with my size, looking like the biggest dick in the world, I'm sure. About to hit this girl with my damn glass if I had to, to make her shut the fuck up. Her and her soft eyes and apologies, and here I was driven to the point of breaking my own rule about not hitting women.
"Fuck you!" She shouted back, unable to think of an argument outside of returning the insults. "And your limp-dicked boyfriend."
She hurled her drink at me, and it was all that saved her, the sudden freezing shock on my skin and the stinging vodka in my eyes while she left in a hurry.
Several bigger guys roughly escorted me out after. Told me I was disinvited from that bar and - fucking fine. I didn't want to see any more 'familiar' faces for a while.
-
The thought wouldn't leave me the fuck alone, though. Was that why he was hesitant with girls - why he wouldn't even think about me? Was that all it was, or was it not the problem at all but just a symptom? Was it just that he had to be really drunk to even go that far? I could hardly ask.
My ego wanted me to believe it was because women just literally weren't his thing. I couldn't get it up for like - Arnold Schwarzenagger. The body wants what it wants. It's not always logical about it. I see tits, I get wood. I get the same reaction to some guys in speedos. But I have a type in both cases. Maybe Con's type was only on one side of the fucking rainbow, and he hadn't thought he should look there.
And it's not that he was a homophobe. It made no sense that he should worry about that trait in himself. I'd never seen him treat anyone different - suspects, friends, because they were or appeared to be attracted to the same gender. He didn't seem to hold prejudices - if you broke the law, he treated you like you did. If you didn't, he treated you like a friend. It was like he had this picture of himself, and he wouldn't change the frame or the image, because he thought to move one part, even a part he wanted to move to be crude about it - he had to repaint the whole fucking thing.
He didn't want to see a new image. Couldn't take it maybe. Like he liked so much of what he had he was afraid of trying to make it perfect.
I tried one more time. No girls this time, just me and him at the bar, in the back. I made a show of being outraged that we'd been stood up, and for a minute, when he said he didn't mind, I think - finally. Finally we'll get somewhere. We drank, smoked. Shot shit.
"You ever get curious?" I asked, deliberately obscure, deliberately leading him. I'd let him think I was drunker than I actually was, shoulders close enough to almost brush where we sat together at the bar. He was hunched over a bit, drunk too. He should have asked 'about what?' Should have left me an opening, verbally, to plant the idea. Hell, maybe found his confidence and realized what I meant, and just said 'yeah'.
Instead he just shifted himself, pressed his cheek into the shoulder opposite me where his arm was leaning up on the bar, and with his head at that almost defeated angle, shifted his gaze to meet mine.
He looked up at me, his eyes darker in the shitty bar light than I'd seen them, and I was too drunk to guess at why, but in that moment, I could see straight through him.
Jesus, Con but words refused to leap into that well of space where angels and legality fear to tread. Just trust me.
Instead I watched him shut it down, could see every step he took to close himself up. These small things he hoped were invisible - that I let him believe were.
"One more for the road," I said - begged, so softly I'm not sure how the bartender heard, but the drink came anyway.
Constantine let me have the alcohol, at least.
-
LUCID HR. 84 - SINGLE SUBJECT
We're both drunk, and it's my fault, I keep pushing him, pushing and pushing and he gives because he won't say no when I hand him a drink, when I put my hand under it, laughing, and push it toward his mouth like - 'don't you want to have a good time, see?' Doesn't say no when I put my hand on his back. The words don't matter but I encourage him anyway -
"We're partying."
"'n we're always-" he starts, but still doesn't refuse.
I don't let him think - his thinking always keeps us out of trouble, but tonight I want us in trouble.
"Nope," I cut him off, push the mug up indicatively until he drinks. "We got this far, fair 'n square."
"How far?" he slurs, and jesus what a mess I've made of him, after getting him back to my place through some fucking magic of confidence on my part and half-blind trust on his part. 'Just a few drinks and we'll already be someplace safe to sleep,' and then we somehow were onto my couch and into more alcohol.
"This far," I answer, taking the empty glass out of his hand and leaning into him to trap him against the arm of the couch where he can't escape, casting my hand out to the side to drop the glass heavily onto the coffee table without looking. I close my mouth on his - open in disbelief, open and unresisting as my tongue pushes in to pull alcohol off of his. Pushing again, pushing and driving forward as fast as I feel myself settling against him, until I can taste past the alcohol, taste him. Faintly cigarettes, clean teeth, sharp edges. Responding mouth, groaning into it, and I can't tell if he's leaning up or I'm leaning down or pulling at the handful of his ratty old T-shirt that I have.
I have to know, have to, so I drop my hand straight down between us where it lands on his inner thigh, slides up along the inseam of his jeans, and I feel the muscle tighten, him breaking the kiss to hiss his shock. Like his mind was still working out point a, and even though point b was a straight line (down), he hadn't guessed that was where we were going.
My fingers find the crease of thigh and body, and I feel his dick jump and start to fill against the backs of my knuckles, zero to floored.
"Christ," he hisses, lost, and I look up. My eyes had angled down to watch, just sliding the back of my knuckles along the growing bulge in his pants, knowing it responded to me. To my touch. His eyes are barely brown, almost all pupil, going wide as if he needs to see everything he possibly can, and his throat works as he watches my hand on him. Has to see that it is mine to believe it, follow the flexing line of my arm back up to my shoulder and then look into my eyes to be sure that I was aware of my actions. That it wasn't an accident, what I was doing to him.
"Yeah?" I prompt, turning my hand around, cupping over his erection where it felt warm and close even through his jeans. I can feel the whole dimensions of him, and he makes this noise - a gasp, ready like he's been waiting forever, waiting as long as I have been waiting for this.
"Christ," he repeats, and lets go of the couch. One of his hands has gone to grip the thick cushions in back, the other fallen down along the front to grip the wood frame hidden under the dust ruffle, and he got his hands up. I think at first he's going to reach for me, but instead he goes between us, rushing, his hands working his own button, his own fly.
God, it turns me on more than anything that I've pushed him so far that he wants to - needs to take for himself. To know that I can do that for him when no one else can. Jesus. I'm hard as hell and he makes this noise when his hand closes over mine, when he brushes my skin to get his pants out of the way, to give me all the access I want. His fingers follow mine right onto his cock.
"Yeah," he says, "right there, right-"
But his next words drown in noise, drown in my mouth. I get the idea, curling my fingers to take the impressive measure of him, and I could almost cum just from listening to him encourage me.
His eyes haven't gone all the way closed, just mostly there, and he's watching me through his eyelashes when his hands remember themselves and start moving again. Reaching for me this time, like he's not going to leave me behind, and he's in one hell of a rush, pulling my voice out of me with a groan when his fingers start yanking the button on my jeans after only the barest grip to be sure he'd find me ready in there.
"C'mon," he's saying, arching up into each of my strokes with a rolling motion of his hips, pushing faster through my grip when it loosens. "C'mon - get me there."
Fuck, but I want to. But I can't let this end that fast, can't let him catch his breath until there's no going back, no second thoughts, no denials. I can't take my time, and I have to push this all the way through the first time, so it sticks. I claw his shirt up, his pants the rest of the way down even though his voice breaks high in frustrated desperation when I stop jerking him off.
It takes a few seconds to get my own jeans off so they don't pull tight around my thighs, let me spread my legs over his, so that when he reaches for me and I lean down again, we push against each other, skin on skin.
God, how fucking long have I waited, and it's so good - like I knew it would be. My hand on the scar on Constantine's shoulder as I arched my back downward and with only the lightest pressure of my thumb pressing down on my own dick and the first two fingers stretching wide around Con's, rocking us together, showing our dicks they aren't alone.
One of his hands seizes my shoulder, and the other comes around of the back of my neck, gripping as he pushes up hard, rushing us again. I drop my head and put my teeth into his old scar until he gasps and his pace stutters and I'm sure I have his attention. I draw back to warn him with a look. Warn him that I'd let him push, but I was in control, and I stop all our motions but the press of our bodies as I push my hand into the couch cushions. Come up with lubricant, and he doesn't question that.
I over-apply, get us drippingly slick between my hands, and push my mouth against his to swallow the noises he makes into my own chest where they echo back as hungry growls. I slide my other hand back while he's distracted, press fingers into myself, stretching, slicking. He doesn't notice until I sit up, my hand positioning him, and his eyes shoot open as I get up on my knees, his hands rushing to my hips to stop me.
"I can't," he says, looking up at me and shaking his head, wild eyed, but he was hard as ever, breath fast as ever, and I realize he hadn't expected to be in this position. "Hey, partner - I can't-"
"Yes you can," I cut him off, leaned down and wrap our hands together, "You can."
I push his fingers in where mine had been, let him feel how open and how much I want him, drive my hips down sharply to press his first two fingers in to the hilt in a slick easy slide - to let him comprehend how that was going to feel on his dick. "That's for you," I tell him, and his breath hitches as I push my fingers in along with his, feel the stretch and the way it turned my breaths fast and driven, the way he couldn't help pushing his length against my thigh in response.
"I got a-" Condom. In his wallet. I knew.
"Don't need it," I snarl, unwilling to let him delay any more, and I lift myself onto him, let our hands guide his length all the way, until I have all of him at last, his broken moan a sign that he was right there with me, aching, and now complete.
No going back, no arguing that we fit together like we were supposed to, that we both fucking want this, and there was no reason we shouldn't just have it. It's only then I let him rush us, I drive us faster, even, feel the additional stretch of his fingers as he pushes them into me alongside his cock, to feel us sliding together in the most intimate way, as if that's the only way to fully comprehend the enormity of the moment. It feels - beyond stretched. Beyond full. Bursting - teetering at the ledge -
"God," his voice organizes sounds into words, though he hardly could be thinking about what he's saying. "Gonna. Have to-"
"Come for me, partner," I say, wanting it. Wanting it to be mine, the results of my actions. "Come on, I'm right here with-"
But he shuts me up by putting his free hand roughly on my dick and giving me two quick strokes, letting me feel it, and I cum, muscles locking up tight, sweeping tidelike. Pulling me into a curl of sensation and he came after, driving up and flooding heat into me, dripping down the channel his fingers create and hotly onto my balls. I shudder, helpless, glad I hadn't let him talk me into protection or I'd have missed that, and it was him, part of him.
We lean our foreheads together in a curl of bodies, and I let my hands fall on him possessively knowing we still had the whole night - the rest of eternity for me to show him everything I wanted to, but we'd taken that last flying leap across the void and now there was no fucking way back. We'd burned the bridge like he'd burned to life inside of me, the remains undeniable, but behind us. I don't unjoin us until I have to, and my body regrets the change.
-
He dropped me off at my apartment, but had the good manners to help me up the stairs, through my door, into my bedroom where he stood back from the bed as I dropped myself onto it, utterly out of place.
"You need an intervention," he joked lamely as he got me a glass of water to put on the nightstand - got his hand out of the way when I reached for it so I had to go for the water like that's what I was reaching for all along.
"I had one," I answered, sitting up and sipping slowly. "It didn't take."
He answered my wry, tired humor with a low, two-sound laugh, and he retreated to the doorway. I watched him go, too dizzy to stop him.
"Seriously partner, you better dry up tomorrow," he said, and then he was gone.
-