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labyrinth2015Don't mind me, I'm just archiving links to older fic. This should actually be part of the Holiday Hangover series, but I can't be arsed to go back in time to 2010 again. Not that 2011 has been that fantastic, and I don't want to talk about it atm, but I am bitter today.
A collection of stories for![[community profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo and ![[profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
schmoop_bingo - originally posted to the Tulsa Gangstas Advent Calendar 2010 and Cookleta roundtable.
Dinner for Three
Neal/Andy, [R], cumulative 3,200+ words. Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otherbella.
Three times Neal and Andy share a meal. Hunger, cop/criminal AU, erotic feeding, bloodplay, vampires.
One: On the docks of the South Side
Sequel to Lick It All Up, fromceltic_cookie’s Ludacris kinkmeme. Cop/criminal!AU; hunger.
(Forhonestys_easy, who wanted to know what happened next, and thought she wouldn’t :))
Dave Cook might be the canniest liquor and small arms dealer on the South Side, but when he was angry he still turned red like a schoolboy. It was the Midwestern complexion; Andy was grateful he didn't suffer the same handicap.
"You mean to say," Dave said, struggling for calm, "that Officer Neal Fucking Tiemann came here to my bar and you threw a drink at him? Jeez, Andy."
"What, you wanted me to sit him down and serve him Christmas roast? He startled me, and it was the first distraction I could think of." Andy had been drinking steadily since Neal left him on the bar-room floor, enough to make him careless in front of the boss.
Dave didn't care about that, though. "At least he didn't find anything," he murmured. "It was a bloody fool distraction, Skib, but at least it worked, and he didn't rip your dick off and ram it to you."
No, but he rammed me something else, and I licked it down like I loved it. Andy may have been drinking for hours, but there wasn't enough beer in the world to get the taste of Neal's boots out of his mouth.
"So here's the thing," Dave muttered. "You told me you guys were tight as kids. Did he come here to make trouble for me on account of it?"
"Did I tell you that?" Andy frowned. It seemed he couldn't remember what he'd told Dave lately and what he hadn't; whereas the past - running from the welfare officers, living on the streets, laughing in Neal's thin, strong arms - the past was clear as a bell.
Did Neal come here to make trouble...? With some difficulty, Andy pushed away the image of present Neal in his blue uniform, dripping and wet and not letting Andy put his hands on him.
"Naw," he told Dave; then, "No, really," forcefully, like he believed it, because the other was just too hard to think about. "He'd swapped beats with Gibson, came in 'cause someone said they heard somethin', this was just one'a those things."
"Okay," Dave said, frowning as if he didn't quite believe Andy, but had decided not to press him. "But you call me the first sign he comes sniffing again. And you should take off now, get some rest. I'll wait for the Kid to get in."
"Gotcha, boss," Andy said. He managed to get off the bar-stool and get his jacket from the hook without falling over.
He was sober enough to realize driving home might not be the best idea. He snagged a can of beer instead and took a walk dockside to clear his head.
It took the better part of an hour to get there from Dave’s, and the evening was turning bitter cold, but Andy had been out in much worse weather.
The dockland streets had changed in the ten years since he was a teenager. The deserted warehouses and flophouses had made way for stores selling hardware and signage and long-haul services. Some of the dark alleyways where the dealers had traded and where he'd slept rough with the other teenage runaways were now lit by neon and provided access to legitimate businesses.
Andy stopped at a small, greasy burger shack on the eastern corner. He could have stayed in the warmth, but he took his burger into the gathering night instead.
Here, here was the doorway where the old shelter used to be. Here Neal and he had hidden from the cops, the guys from welfare who'd been on the lookout for them. They'd ended up here together after they'd got off the Greyhound from Tulsa. Neal had run away because his stepmother had thrown his Gibson and his old records out of the house. Andy had bounced from foster family to family, each worse than the last and filled with drugs or indifference, until the day he found couldn't remember his parents' and sister's faces anymore; he’d taken off before he lost more of himself.
Neal had helped him remember them, had helped him remember music, as well, had brought singing and guitar chords and summer nights lying in the green grass.
Neal had also helped him remember love, even though it'd been a thin, hard-edged kind of love, caught between hunger and despair.
Andy filled his stomach now with the tasteless cheeseburger and fries, and remembered ten years ago how he and Neal had once shared a burger in this alleyway. The boys hadn't had anything to eat all day and had been keeping each other going with cheap cigarettes and beer the color of horse piss. Until Neal filched the burger from some unsuspecting roadside vendor, Andy thought he might pass out from cold and the lack of food.
The meat patty of the burger had been thin, the bun already going hard, and still it had tasted more delicious than anything Andy had tasted before, or since.
Neal had pulled pieces off, big hands shaking, and fed Andy before he ate himself. He put the small hunks of meat between Andy's lips, easing one in with calloused forefinger and thumb, pausing for Andy to chew and swallow, then another.
Andy remembered pressing closer, shivering with hunger and then, after some minutes, his stomach filling with warmth, with a different hunger.
When Neal kissed him he tasted smoke and beer and the only comfort Andy could remember. They fell together that night, into a hunger and warmth that lasted all night, and so many nights after.
He didn't know when Neal started to grow away from him, when Neal started to want to learn things that the streets couldn’t teach him. Andy didn’t want to know: he’d never go back, he had everything he wanted right here, on the concrete and stone of the South Side.
They'd fought about it, once even with fists; a fight that had left Neal in a mess of blood and bruises, even though Andy couldn't punch nearly as hard, wasn't nearly as strong and fast. He knew Neal had been holding back and it made him just hit harder though his tears.
He couldn't remember when Neal left, couldn't remember if he'd begged Neal to stay.
He could remember the hunger now, though, standing in the alley where his life as he'd know it had ended, where it had begun.
He heard the police cruiser before he saw the headlights. At first he was surprised; he didn't think he'd gotten drunk enough to start hearing things.
Then he saw the flashing lights, red and blue. He suppressed the hardwired teenage urge to run.
He saw the window go down, saw a hand beckon. He saw the letters inked on the bare knuckles, ink he'd helped put there so many years ago.
Andy walked over like he was walking into his past. He leaned down.
"Buy you dinner?" Neal asked. His blue eyes shone in the darkness, with hunger, and something else.
Andy knew this wasn't a good idea, but nostalgia made him careless. Or maybe it wasn't just nostalgia; it was the memory of love.
"For old times' sake? Sure," he told his old lover, and got in.
Two: At the Waldorf-Astoria
From Anthemicronicon: Book of the Ages. Erotic feeding at the turn of the last century. (Menu from Jed Rubenfeld’s “The Interpretation of Murder”.)
From Chapter Four: “We should really turn in early,” Cook said to his crew after the briefing.
Predictably, this was met with derisive laughter. “No telling what’ll happen tomorrow,” Tiemann said. “Masters think they’ve got this under control, but I’ve a bad feeling about that damned World’s Fair and no mistake.”
Skib said, grinning, “Neal thinks we’re in danger of our lives, and I’m taking full advantage. It’s a late dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria for us, and everything that comes after.”
Cook groaned. “Don’t wear yourselves out; I want you both able to walk later.”
Andrew Skib might be Third of the Anthemic, House Nineteen's foremost field band, but he would never be used to York City high society.
He was a small town lad at heart, his father a country doctor; when he'd come to the State of York he'd had to be told which polished fork to use at a formal dinner, what topics of conversation might be fit for polite society.
Tiemann, though, came from a long and distinguished Southern family. His father, a careful tradesman from the German Republic, had won the hand of the fairest Southern belle in Oklahoma, and married into her vast estates. Tiemann had learned proper etiquette at his mother's knee, and how to dance a quadrille before he'd turned fourteen.
The great chandelier of the Waldorf-Astoria dining room cast its fabled light over the silver cutlery, the velvet-upholstered chairs, the linen tablecloths.
Skib enjoyed dining here in this grand hotel of the Astors’, but truth be told, it intimidated him a little: the high walls covered with gold-leaf wallpaper and oil paintings from another century, the well-dressed patrons who were business tycoons and scions of York City's oldest families.
Tiemann, of course, fit right in as if he'd been born to such luxuries, as he of course had. He always cut an attractive figure, as much in his workman's coat and boots as his own skin, but Skib was particularly taken with how Tiemann looked in evening dress, the lines of his jaw and forehead elegant against the stiff white collar. Skib wanted to run his fingers over the strong bones, the fair skin, to taste the secrets that Tiemann kept just for him.
They were in public, though; there was dinner to be consumed, before they could indulge in more private pleasures.
After the oyster cocktails, roast mountain sheep with chestnut puree was served, Skib's favorite dish. "Nothing but the best for my Andrew," Tiemann said, smiling a little.
Skib said, spearing the tender meat with his fork, "You're concerned about tomorrow night, aren't you? Do you really think we're being set up as bait?"
"I don't know," Tiemann confessed. "I like to think I'm better with puzzles than our fearless leader, but truth be told, I'm somewhat at a loss. One faction's making pawns of us; Anarchists, Anachronists, or good old King Edward, and our Masters of House Nineteen are blindly playing along. And who knows, they say that a world war is brewing in Europe, and maybe we're headed towards that, as well."
Surprisingly, Skib found his appetite unaffected by the talk of intrigue. The roast was as delicious as always. "It doesn't matter," he told Tiemann firmly. "We've faced worse danger, we can handle a couple of crazed cultists and one crazy King. And you have me to watch your back."
Tiemann grinned, finally, and put a forkful of lamb into his mouth. "True," he muttered, chewing. Then he put his hand over Skib's. "Anyway, I'd walk into the teeth of hell with you, Skib, and no mistake."
Skib was unaccountably moved. "And Cook thinks I'm the sentimental one," he murmured.
"He's not wrong; I only get like this before battle." Tiemann pushed his plate away with a grimace.
"You need to keep your strength up," Skib said warningly, and Tiemann said, "I was planning on ordering a very large sherry trifle instead. And you?"
Skib finished his own plate and pulled Tiemann's towards him. "I'd like a sherbet, if they have it," he said indistinctly.
They did have it, the sweets and cream piled high on Asprey china. Tiemann's eyes caught the glitter of the chandelier. "Outstanding," he said, silver spoon poised to dig in.
"I would say that," Skib grinned. "Care to have a taste?"
Tiemann raised his eyebrows at Skib, and said, softly, "Don't I always?" and suddenly the dessert was the last thing on Skib's mind.
Skib picked up his long-handled dessert spoon and scooped a generous dollop of his champagne sherbet and offered it to Tiemann. It was a grave breach of table etiquette, but he didn't care in the least.
Tiemann's grin became feral. He opened his mouth and closed his lips around the spoon. He made a slow, sucking noise, and then a throaty sound of approval.
Skib reclaimed his spoon. There was a flash of red tongue, flickering over Tiemann's lips, quickly gone.
"Your turn," said Tiemann, hoarsely. He extended a bite-sized portion of trifle, and Skib licked it off his spoon, as slowly and lingeringly as he desired to lick something else, watching Tiemann's face all the time. He saw the color rise in Tiemann's cheeks, saw him start to breathe faster, lips parting unconsciously.
Skib swallowed, barely tasting the warm, sweetened dessert. There was something else of Tiemann’s he desired to taste, knew it wouldn't be long now.
“Careful,” he told Tiemann, teasingly. “Cook wants us to be in fit state to walk tomorrow.”
Tiemann’s mouth curled upwards. “Never promised him that,” he drawled, like a pledge to occupy Skib all night long.
Skib intended to relish every single delicious moment.
Three: Inside the fortified Celtic garrison
Sequel to I’ll Get My Fangs. Erotic feeding redux, bloodplay, vampires.
The summer season had come and gone, and winter blanketed the Celtic lands with white. All the barbarians had returned to their strongholds in mountain lands over the seas, awaiting more favourable climes to return so as to start looting and pillaging again.
All save Tiemann, bound to the Celtic village and its red-haired chieftain, and the dark warrior lad who had won his heart.
He’d spent the harvest season at Skib’s side. All able-bodied men in the village took their turn in the fields, even the warriors – the harvest was too valuable to leave to just those who worked the land – and Tiemann had found value in the labor. For once in his adult life, he used his vast strength to nurture and bring life from the land.
It was surprising how such things were valued by those who found power in spilling blood, who drank from humans as if from a stream. But Skib told him that the Old People saw the balance in all things. They didn’t age as ordinary humans did; they measured time in decades, not just years. They knew the ebb and flow of life, like the course of the seasons that touched the land, like the blood they infrequently consumed.
Tiemann shared Skib’s wisdom, he shared Skib’s narrow bed. He’d never loved a living soul since his mother had died in their Viking homestead, but there were nights he would lie awake just for the pleasure of watching Celtic Skib asleep.
All the legends had said the blood-drinkers didn’t breathe, didn’t have hearts that beat in their breasts, but Tiemann knew better. In these last months, he would rest his head on Skib’s chest and hear thunder, he kissed Skib’s red mouth and felt Skib breathe him in.
It was midwinter when Skib told him he was ready.
“For what?” Tiemann asked him. He sat up in their bed, wrapping the skins more securely around his shoulders.
“To complete the circle,” Skib said. He touched the side of Tiemann’s face. “You’re mine, I made you mine the night we met. It’s finally time for you to make me yours.”
When Tiemann realized what Skib meant, it was as if all his blood had turned to flame. He felt himself shaking with fear and desire. “When?” he managed.
Skib’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “Tomorrow,” he said, “During the longest night. You’ll not eat or drink all day, to build up your hunger. And then you do what comes naturally.”
It wasn’t an easy thing to for a barbarian warrior admit, but – “I’m afraid,” Tiemann confessed softly, and Skib put a hand against his lips.
“Don’t be. You’re mine, I’ll ward you carefully. You have nothing to fear.”
Tiemann had to close his eyes. “All right,” he murmured. He’d put his life in Skib’s hands the moment he’d decided to stay, and he thought he might as well keep going.
Skib put an arm around him. “It will be pleasurable for you, I promise.”
Tiemann slept fitfully, dreams filled with old blood and his mother’s face.
In the morning the sun seemed brighter than usual. Skib departed early to attend to some matter for the Chief, and Tiemann was left to his own devices. He watched the village children play in the yard, shared a word with the other warriors in Skib’s war-band.
When it was the hour for luncheon, he walked out to the edge of the village and paced the fortified walls. The guard on the western wall – a young man, not one of the Folk - nodded to him, and he nodded back.
In the afternoon he followed the stream beyond the village, tracing the smooth path that was a day’s ride from the open sea. He remembered riding this way with his raiding party in the summer, seeking fortune and finding something else instead.
When the sun started to set he set off back home.
Skib was waiting for him in their room. He’d built up the fire, but opened the window to let the moonlight in. At that moment, Tiemann felt the gnawing, consuming hunger, and knew it was indeed time.
“First, you must wash,” Skib said, and he brought towels and a basin of water, oils and unguents. He helped Tiemann disrobe, more assiduous than any bath assistant, and wiped every exposed part of him with a well-worn cloth.
Then Skib disrobed, also, and spread himself across the skins. The firelight, the moonlight, cast light and shadow over his lean body. He’d washed his woad markings away, and his skin was clean and entirely without flaw, and Tiemann had never wanted anyone as absolutely as this.
He felt the hunger course through him like a blade, like night.
His own language spilled from him, pleading for Skib to let him feed. He called the name of the Triple God, and then, hardly knowing what he was doing, the name of the Celtic Goddess.
The moonlight turned Skib’s familiar eyes to silver.
“Now,” Skib said, finally, blessedly, and spread his legs wide.
Tiemann fell on him and buried himself against warm flesh and sank his sharp teeth into Skib’s throat.
It was more pleasurable than Tiemann could ever have imagined; it hurt more than he could have believed. His senses filled with Skib, he swallowed Skib whole.
Like a fever dream, he saw Skib’s mother and father and sister, the whiteness of the Celtic moon. He saw the heat of battles won and lost at the Chieftain’s side, the fury of loves past.
Saw his own face as Skib saw him, familiar and foreign and fiercely loved.
He drank and drank; he fed on his lover, greedy as a raider, helpless as a child. Skib let him feed, let him groan and then howl as he filled himself with Skib’s blood and spent himself atop Skib’s body...
...and for an eternal instant, he saw the face of the God.
When Tiemann returned to himself, he could hear himself cursing weakly in his own language. His mouth felt swollen and abused. Warm liquid trickled down his chin; other wetness dribbled down his thighs.
Skib’s memories swirled in his head; Skib’s blood filled him with ecstasy.
“Mother Goddess,” Tiemann murmured. “What have I done?”
He felt calloused fingers stroke his face possessively.
“You’ve made me yours,” Celtic Skib said, simply, and reached up to kiss his bloody mouth.
Running Through Your Bones (it's easy when you know how)
Dave/Neal, [R], cuddling in vehicle
Sequel to (Gotta Jerk It Out)
Dave's totally wiped from the show. He feels strung out from adrenaline, somehow like he doesn't quite inhabit his skull.
He's always like this afterwards. Somehow when he's onstage he's larger than himself; he's the song and at the same time he's also Andy's rhythm guitar and Monty's snaking bass line and Kyle's syncopated beat. He's Neal, too, always and forever: the sounds which Neal wrings from his Gibson, the steel strings that could pull fire from the sky. He's all of them, he's the center of their world, and when they all come offstage, they crash back to earth, and there's too much him for one body to take.
Usually he works off the excess energy at meet-and-greets or post-show parties. Sometimes he just runs from one end of the bus to the other until he's panting and sweaty and feels like his body fits again somehow.
Of course, other times the parties don't work and the running doesn't work, and Neal grabs him from where he's trying to plaster himself to the bar counter or the side of the bus windows, and takes him somewhere private where Neal can fuck him with his mouth and fingers ‘til Dave can't stand up. That usually does the trick.
Tonight they have drinks hosted by the local radio station which Dave isn't really in the mood for. They haven't had a hotel stop in days and Dave hasn't gotten laid in a while.
For some reason Neal keeps looking weirdly at him and smiling. Neal'd been in a strange mood all day, wired and restless and sniping at Dave's stylist, and then he'd gone out for a smoke and come back looking really relaxed. If Dave didn't know better he'd've said Neal was stoned on something. And then Neal played that night's Dayton crowd like he was on fire; Dave and the others could barely keep up with him.
Seriously, what was up with the sideways looks and fucking smiling.
Dave gives it half an hour before he can't stand it any more and walks over to where Neal's working on what looks like his fiftieth beer.
"Care to share the joke, Doc?"
Neal shrugs. "Only if you care to take it outside, heartthrob."
The night air is totally freezing. Dave tries to huddle in his entirely inadequate jacket. "Not your best idea, this," he says, teeth chattering a little, and Neal slings his arm around Dave's shoulders.
"Stop complainin'. Where did you put your car keys?"
"Gave them to you," says Dave, trying to warm himself against Neal's body to little avail; Neal hasn't much body fat. Dave needs to get himself a boyfriend who comes with an in-built furnace or a nice spare tire or who's just more into fucking cuddling.
He conveys this to Neal, who pauses in his struggles to open Dave's car.
"You want fucking cuddling? You want fucking cuddling. Jeez, Dave, this emo thing is getting too much."
"Look, I'm cold. Also, I have needs," Dave complains, climbing into his car after Neal. Neal mutters, "Obviously," and puts his arm around Dave's waist and kind of shoves him half across the passenger seat, which is piled high with Dave's clothes and other things.
Dave twists around, trying to get into a comfortable position between the steering wheel and the gear shift and Neal's lap. Neal curses and tries to fully recline the driver's seat, muttering about the shit he does so Dave can fucking cuddle and how he didn't sign on for this.
They finally reach a temporary consensus of arms and legs; Neal reaches over Dave's shoulder to turn up the heat. Dave grins fiercely as he loops his arms around Neal's neck and leans in; Neal may not be up for much cuddling, but Neal's mouth, at least, is hot.
He smells something when he pulls off. He doesn't think it's the laundry. "Doc, what did you do in my car?"
Neal's lip rings glisten in the moonlight. "This afternoon? Wanted to smoke. I was bored, so I jacked off, too."
Dave pulls back so he can look into Neal's eyes - the fucker thinks it's hilarious; Dave doesn't know how he feels about it himself. "You jacked off? In my car?" Damn, that does sound kind of emo.
Neal shrugs, still snickering. "Yeah. Couldn't smoke. And your jeans, your car, everything smelled like you. And I have needs too, y'know."
Dave feels a rush of heat. "You came, in my car?" he asks, reaching for Neal's shirt. So that's what the smell is.
"Yeah," says Neal, not laughing any more, and cups the crotch of Dave's tight pants. "And now it's your turn."
Neal's pretty ambidextrous for a lefty; he gets Dave's fly unzipped with less effort than he'd expended opening Dave's car door.
Neal doesn't bother with lubrication or to warm his hand or rings, because Dave's already leaking and hard and well beyond the need for those things. He knows what Dave needs: Dave needs to fuck into his calloused fingers fast and violently, with Neal's voice in his ear, needs to press into the steering wheel and bite down on Neal's shoulder and dig bruises into Neal's arms as he holds on, needs to come and come, thick ropes of semen splattering over Neal's fist and Dave's stomach and everywhere in Dave's car.
"Ahh, fuck," Dave says, at last, weakly. He feels drained, unable to stand, and entirely himself.
Neal puts his forehead to Dave's. "Now we can fucking cuddle if you want," he says, and Dave has to laugh.
This entry was originally posted on dreamwidth; you can choose to read it there.
A collection of stories for
hc_bingo and schmoop_bingo - originally posted to the Tulsa Gangstas Advent Calendar 2010 and Cookleta roundtable.Dinner for Three
Neal/Andy, [R], cumulative 3,200+ words. Betaed by
otherbella.Three times Neal and Andy share a meal. Hunger, cop/criminal AU, erotic feeding, bloodplay, vampires.
One: On the docks of the South Side
Sequel to Lick It All Up, from
celtic_cookie’s Ludacris kinkmeme. Cop/criminal!AU; hunger.(For
honestys_easy, who wanted to know what happened next, and thought she wouldn’t :))Dave Cook might be the canniest liquor and small arms dealer on the South Side, but when he was angry he still turned red like a schoolboy. It was the Midwestern complexion; Andy was grateful he didn't suffer the same handicap.
"You mean to say," Dave said, struggling for calm, "that Officer Neal Fucking Tiemann came here to my bar and you threw a drink at him? Jeez, Andy."
"What, you wanted me to sit him down and serve him Christmas roast? He startled me, and it was the first distraction I could think of." Andy had been drinking steadily since Neal left him on the bar-room floor, enough to make him careless in front of the boss.
Dave didn't care about that, though. "At least he didn't find anything," he murmured. "It was a bloody fool distraction, Skib, but at least it worked, and he didn't rip your dick off and ram it to you."
No, but he rammed me something else, and I licked it down like I loved it. Andy may have been drinking for hours, but there wasn't enough beer in the world to get the taste of Neal's boots out of his mouth.
"So here's the thing," Dave muttered. "You told me you guys were tight as kids. Did he come here to make trouble for me on account of it?"
"Did I tell you that?" Andy frowned. It seemed he couldn't remember what he'd told Dave lately and what he hadn't; whereas the past - running from the welfare officers, living on the streets, laughing in Neal's thin, strong arms - the past was clear as a bell.
Did Neal come here to make trouble...? With some difficulty, Andy pushed away the image of present Neal in his blue uniform, dripping and wet and not letting Andy put his hands on him.
"Naw," he told Dave; then, "No, really," forcefully, like he believed it, because the other was just too hard to think about. "He'd swapped beats with Gibson, came in 'cause someone said they heard somethin', this was just one'a those things."
"Okay," Dave said, frowning as if he didn't quite believe Andy, but had decided not to press him. "But you call me the first sign he comes sniffing again. And you should take off now, get some rest. I'll wait for the Kid to get in."
"Gotcha, boss," Andy said. He managed to get off the bar-stool and get his jacket from the hook without falling over.
He was sober enough to realize driving home might not be the best idea. He snagged a can of beer instead and took a walk dockside to clear his head.
It took the better part of an hour to get there from Dave’s, and the evening was turning bitter cold, but Andy had been out in much worse weather.
The dockland streets had changed in the ten years since he was a teenager. The deserted warehouses and flophouses had made way for stores selling hardware and signage and long-haul services. Some of the dark alleyways where the dealers had traded and where he'd slept rough with the other teenage runaways were now lit by neon and provided access to legitimate businesses.
Andy stopped at a small, greasy burger shack on the eastern corner. He could have stayed in the warmth, but he took his burger into the gathering night instead.
Here, here was the doorway where the old shelter used to be. Here Neal and he had hidden from the cops, the guys from welfare who'd been on the lookout for them. They'd ended up here together after they'd got off the Greyhound from Tulsa. Neal had run away because his stepmother had thrown his Gibson and his old records out of the house. Andy had bounced from foster family to family, each worse than the last and filled with drugs or indifference, until the day he found couldn't remember his parents' and sister's faces anymore; he’d taken off before he lost more of himself.
Neal had helped him remember them, had helped him remember music, as well, had brought singing and guitar chords and summer nights lying in the green grass.
Neal had also helped him remember love, even though it'd been a thin, hard-edged kind of love, caught between hunger and despair.
Andy filled his stomach now with the tasteless cheeseburger and fries, and remembered ten years ago how he and Neal had once shared a burger in this alleyway. The boys hadn't had anything to eat all day and had been keeping each other going with cheap cigarettes and beer the color of horse piss. Until Neal filched the burger from some unsuspecting roadside vendor, Andy thought he might pass out from cold and the lack of food.
The meat patty of the burger had been thin, the bun already going hard, and still it had tasted more delicious than anything Andy had tasted before, or since.
Neal had pulled pieces off, big hands shaking, and fed Andy before he ate himself. He put the small hunks of meat between Andy's lips, easing one in with calloused forefinger and thumb, pausing for Andy to chew and swallow, then another.
Andy remembered pressing closer, shivering with hunger and then, after some minutes, his stomach filling with warmth, with a different hunger.
When Neal kissed him he tasted smoke and beer and the only comfort Andy could remember. They fell together that night, into a hunger and warmth that lasted all night, and so many nights after.
He didn't know when Neal started to grow away from him, when Neal started to want to learn things that the streets couldn’t teach him. Andy didn’t want to know: he’d never go back, he had everything he wanted right here, on the concrete and stone of the South Side.
They'd fought about it, once even with fists; a fight that had left Neal in a mess of blood and bruises, even though Andy couldn't punch nearly as hard, wasn't nearly as strong and fast. He knew Neal had been holding back and it made him just hit harder though his tears.
He couldn't remember when Neal left, couldn't remember if he'd begged Neal to stay.
He could remember the hunger now, though, standing in the alley where his life as he'd know it had ended, where it had begun.
He heard the police cruiser before he saw the headlights. At first he was surprised; he didn't think he'd gotten drunk enough to start hearing things.
Then he saw the flashing lights, red and blue. He suppressed the hardwired teenage urge to run.
He saw the window go down, saw a hand beckon. He saw the letters inked on the bare knuckles, ink he'd helped put there so many years ago.
Andy walked over like he was walking into his past. He leaned down.
"Buy you dinner?" Neal asked. His blue eyes shone in the darkness, with hunger, and something else.
Andy knew this wasn't a good idea, but nostalgia made him careless. Or maybe it wasn't just nostalgia; it was the memory of love.
"For old times' sake? Sure," he told his old lover, and got in.
Two: At the Waldorf-Astoria
From Anthemicronicon: Book of the Ages. Erotic feeding at the turn of the last century. (Menu from Jed Rubenfeld’s “The Interpretation of Murder”.)
From Chapter Four: “We should really turn in early,” Cook said to his crew after the briefing.
Predictably, this was met with derisive laughter. “No telling what’ll happen tomorrow,” Tiemann said. “Masters think they’ve got this under control, but I’ve a bad feeling about that damned World’s Fair and no mistake.”
Skib said, grinning, “Neal thinks we’re in danger of our lives, and I’m taking full advantage. It’s a late dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria for us, and everything that comes after.”
Cook groaned. “Don’t wear yourselves out; I want you both able to walk later.”
Andrew Skib might be Third of the Anthemic, House Nineteen's foremost field band, but he would never be used to York City high society.
He was a small town lad at heart, his father a country doctor; when he'd come to the State of York he'd had to be told which polished fork to use at a formal dinner, what topics of conversation might be fit for polite society.
Tiemann, though, came from a long and distinguished Southern family. His father, a careful tradesman from the German Republic, had won the hand of the fairest Southern belle in Oklahoma, and married into her vast estates. Tiemann had learned proper etiquette at his mother's knee, and how to dance a quadrille before he'd turned fourteen.
The great chandelier of the Waldorf-Astoria dining room cast its fabled light over the silver cutlery, the velvet-upholstered chairs, the linen tablecloths.
Skib enjoyed dining here in this grand hotel of the Astors’, but truth be told, it intimidated him a little: the high walls covered with gold-leaf wallpaper and oil paintings from another century, the well-dressed patrons who were business tycoons and scions of York City's oldest families.
Tiemann, of course, fit right in as if he'd been born to such luxuries, as he of course had. He always cut an attractive figure, as much in his workman's coat and boots as his own skin, but Skib was particularly taken with how Tiemann looked in evening dress, the lines of his jaw and forehead elegant against the stiff white collar. Skib wanted to run his fingers over the strong bones, the fair skin, to taste the secrets that Tiemann kept just for him.
They were in public, though; there was dinner to be consumed, before they could indulge in more private pleasures.
After the oyster cocktails, roast mountain sheep with chestnut puree was served, Skib's favorite dish. "Nothing but the best for my Andrew," Tiemann said, smiling a little.
Skib said, spearing the tender meat with his fork, "You're concerned about tomorrow night, aren't you? Do you really think we're being set up as bait?"
"I don't know," Tiemann confessed. "I like to think I'm better with puzzles than our fearless leader, but truth be told, I'm somewhat at a loss. One faction's making pawns of us; Anarchists, Anachronists, or good old King Edward, and our Masters of House Nineteen are blindly playing along. And who knows, they say that a world war is brewing in Europe, and maybe we're headed towards that, as well."
Surprisingly, Skib found his appetite unaffected by the talk of intrigue. The roast was as delicious as always. "It doesn't matter," he told Tiemann firmly. "We've faced worse danger, we can handle a couple of crazed cultists and one crazy King. And you have me to watch your back."
Tiemann grinned, finally, and put a forkful of lamb into his mouth. "True," he muttered, chewing. Then he put his hand over Skib's. "Anyway, I'd walk into the teeth of hell with you, Skib, and no mistake."
Skib was unaccountably moved. "And Cook thinks I'm the sentimental one," he murmured.
"He's not wrong; I only get like this before battle." Tiemann pushed his plate away with a grimace.
"You need to keep your strength up," Skib said warningly, and Tiemann said, "I was planning on ordering a very large sherry trifle instead. And you?"
Skib finished his own plate and pulled Tiemann's towards him. "I'd like a sherbet, if they have it," he said indistinctly.
They did have it, the sweets and cream piled high on Asprey china. Tiemann's eyes caught the glitter of the chandelier. "Outstanding," he said, silver spoon poised to dig in.
"I would say that," Skib grinned. "Care to have a taste?"
Tiemann raised his eyebrows at Skib, and said, softly, "Don't I always?" and suddenly the dessert was the last thing on Skib's mind.
Skib picked up his long-handled dessert spoon and scooped a generous dollop of his champagne sherbet and offered it to Tiemann. It was a grave breach of table etiquette, but he didn't care in the least.
Tiemann's grin became feral. He opened his mouth and closed his lips around the spoon. He made a slow, sucking noise, and then a throaty sound of approval.
Skib reclaimed his spoon. There was a flash of red tongue, flickering over Tiemann's lips, quickly gone.
"Your turn," said Tiemann, hoarsely. He extended a bite-sized portion of trifle, and Skib licked it off his spoon, as slowly and lingeringly as he desired to lick something else, watching Tiemann's face all the time. He saw the color rise in Tiemann's cheeks, saw him start to breathe faster, lips parting unconsciously.
Skib swallowed, barely tasting the warm, sweetened dessert. There was something else of Tiemann’s he desired to taste, knew it wouldn't be long now.
“Careful,” he told Tiemann, teasingly. “Cook wants us to be in fit state to walk tomorrow.”
Tiemann’s mouth curled upwards. “Never promised him that,” he drawled, like a pledge to occupy Skib all night long.
Skib intended to relish every single delicious moment.
Three: Inside the fortified Celtic garrison
Sequel to I’ll Get My Fangs. Erotic feeding redux, bloodplay, vampires.
The summer season had come and gone, and winter blanketed the Celtic lands with white. All the barbarians had returned to their strongholds in mountain lands over the seas, awaiting more favourable climes to return so as to start looting and pillaging again.
All save Tiemann, bound to the Celtic village and its red-haired chieftain, and the dark warrior lad who had won his heart.
He’d spent the harvest season at Skib’s side. All able-bodied men in the village took their turn in the fields, even the warriors – the harvest was too valuable to leave to just those who worked the land – and Tiemann had found value in the labor. For once in his adult life, he used his vast strength to nurture and bring life from the land.
It was surprising how such things were valued by those who found power in spilling blood, who drank from humans as if from a stream. But Skib told him that the Old People saw the balance in all things. They didn’t age as ordinary humans did; they measured time in decades, not just years. They knew the ebb and flow of life, like the course of the seasons that touched the land, like the blood they infrequently consumed.
Tiemann shared Skib’s wisdom, he shared Skib’s narrow bed. He’d never loved a living soul since his mother had died in their Viking homestead, but there were nights he would lie awake just for the pleasure of watching Celtic Skib asleep.
All the legends had said the blood-drinkers didn’t breathe, didn’t have hearts that beat in their breasts, but Tiemann knew better. In these last months, he would rest his head on Skib’s chest and hear thunder, he kissed Skib’s red mouth and felt Skib breathe him in.
It was midwinter when Skib told him he was ready.
“For what?” Tiemann asked him. He sat up in their bed, wrapping the skins more securely around his shoulders.
“To complete the circle,” Skib said. He touched the side of Tiemann’s face. “You’re mine, I made you mine the night we met. It’s finally time for you to make me yours.”
When Tiemann realized what Skib meant, it was as if all his blood had turned to flame. He felt himself shaking with fear and desire. “When?” he managed.
Skib’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “Tomorrow,” he said, “During the longest night. You’ll not eat or drink all day, to build up your hunger. And then you do what comes naturally.”
It wasn’t an easy thing to for a barbarian warrior admit, but – “I’m afraid,” Tiemann confessed softly, and Skib put a hand against his lips.
“Don’t be. You’re mine, I’ll ward you carefully. You have nothing to fear.”
Tiemann had to close his eyes. “All right,” he murmured. He’d put his life in Skib’s hands the moment he’d decided to stay, and he thought he might as well keep going.
Skib put an arm around him. “It will be pleasurable for you, I promise.”
Tiemann slept fitfully, dreams filled with old blood and his mother’s face.
In the morning the sun seemed brighter than usual. Skib departed early to attend to some matter for the Chief, and Tiemann was left to his own devices. He watched the village children play in the yard, shared a word with the other warriors in Skib’s war-band.
When it was the hour for luncheon, he walked out to the edge of the village and paced the fortified walls. The guard on the western wall – a young man, not one of the Folk - nodded to him, and he nodded back.
In the afternoon he followed the stream beyond the village, tracing the smooth path that was a day’s ride from the open sea. He remembered riding this way with his raiding party in the summer, seeking fortune and finding something else instead.
When the sun started to set he set off back home.
Skib was waiting for him in their room. He’d built up the fire, but opened the window to let the moonlight in. At that moment, Tiemann felt the gnawing, consuming hunger, and knew it was indeed time.
“First, you must wash,” Skib said, and he brought towels and a basin of water, oils and unguents. He helped Tiemann disrobe, more assiduous than any bath assistant, and wiped every exposed part of him with a well-worn cloth.
Then Skib disrobed, also, and spread himself across the skins. The firelight, the moonlight, cast light and shadow over his lean body. He’d washed his woad markings away, and his skin was clean and entirely without flaw, and Tiemann had never wanted anyone as absolutely as this.
He felt the hunger course through him like a blade, like night.
His own language spilled from him, pleading for Skib to let him feed. He called the name of the Triple God, and then, hardly knowing what he was doing, the name of the Celtic Goddess.
The moonlight turned Skib’s familiar eyes to silver.
“Now,” Skib said, finally, blessedly, and spread his legs wide.
Tiemann fell on him and buried himself against warm flesh and sank his sharp teeth into Skib’s throat.
It was more pleasurable than Tiemann could ever have imagined; it hurt more than he could have believed. His senses filled with Skib, he swallowed Skib whole.
Like a fever dream, he saw Skib’s mother and father and sister, the whiteness of the Celtic moon. He saw the heat of battles won and lost at the Chieftain’s side, the fury of loves past.
Saw his own face as Skib saw him, familiar and foreign and fiercely loved.
He drank and drank; he fed on his lover, greedy as a raider, helpless as a child. Skib let him feed, let him groan and then howl as he filled himself with Skib’s blood and spent himself atop Skib’s body...
...and for an eternal instant, he saw the face of the God.
When Tiemann returned to himself, he could hear himself cursing weakly in his own language. His mouth felt swollen and abused. Warm liquid trickled down his chin; other wetness dribbled down his thighs.
Skib’s memories swirled in his head; Skib’s blood filled him with ecstasy.
“Mother Goddess,” Tiemann murmured. “What have I done?”
He felt calloused fingers stroke his face possessively.
“You’ve made me yours,” Celtic Skib said, simply, and reached up to kiss his bloody mouth.
Running Through Your Bones (it's easy when you know how)
Dave/Neal, [R], cuddling in vehicle
Sequel to (Gotta Jerk It Out)
Dave's totally wiped from the show. He feels strung out from adrenaline, somehow like he doesn't quite inhabit his skull.
He's always like this afterwards. Somehow when he's onstage he's larger than himself; he's the song and at the same time he's also Andy's rhythm guitar and Monty's snaking bass line and Kyle's syncopated beat. He's Neal, too, always and forever: the sounds which Neal wrings from his Gibson, the steel strings that could pull fire from the sky. He's all of them, he's the center of their world, and when they all come offstage, they crash back to earth, and there's too much him for one body to take.
Usually he works off the excess energy at meet-and-greets or post-show parties. Sometimes he just runs from one end of the bus to the other until he's panting and sweaty and feels like his body fits again somehow.
Of course, other times the parties don't work and the running doesn't work, and Neal grabs him from where he's trying to plaster himself to the bar counter or the side of the bus windows, and takes him somewhere private where Neal can fuck him with his mouth and fingers ‘til Dave can't stand up. That usually does the trick.
Tonight they have drinks hosted by the local radio station which Dave isn't really in the mood for. They haven't had a hotel stop in days and Dave hasn't gotten laid in a while.
For some reason Neal keeps looking weirdly at him and smiling. Neal'd been in a strange mood all day, wired and restless and sniping at Dave's stylist, and then he'd gone out for a smoke and come back looking really relaxed. If Dave didn't know better he'd've said Neal was stoned on something. And then Neal played that night's Dayton crowd like he was on fire; Dave and the others could barely keep up with him.
Seriously, what was up with the sideways looks and fucking smiling.
Dave gives it half an hour before he can't stand it any more and walks over to where Neal's working on what looks like his fiftieth beer.
"Care to share the joke, Doc?"
Neal shrugs. "Only if you care to take it outside, heartthrob."
The night air is totally freezing. Dave tries to huddle in his entirely inadequate jacket. "Not your best idea, this," he says, teeth chattering a little, and Neal slings his arm around Dave's shoulders.
"Stop complainin'. Where did you put your car keys?"
"Gave them to you," says Dave, trying to warm himself against Neal's body to little avail; Neal hasn't much body fat. Dave needs to get himself a boyfriend who comes with an in-built furnace or a nice spare tire or who's just more into fucking cuddling.
He conveys this to Neal, who pauses in his struggles to open Dave's car.
"You want fucking cuddling? You want fucking cuddling. Jeez, Dave, this emo thing is getting too much."
"Look, I'm cold. Also, I have needs," Dave complains, climbing into his car after Neal. Neal mutters, "Obviously," and puts his arm around Dave's waist and kind of shoves him half across the passenger seat, which is piled high with Dave's clothes and other things.
Dave twists around, trying to get into a comfortable position between the steering wheel and the gear shift and Neal's lap. Neal curses and tries to fully recline the driver's seat, muttering about the shit he does so Dave can fucking cuddle and how he didn't sign on for this.
They finally reach a temporary consensus of arms and legs; Neal reaches over Dave's shoulder to turn up the heat. Dave grins fiercely as he loops his arms around Neal's neck and leans in; Neal may not be up for much cuddling, but Neal's mouth, at least, is hot.
He smells something when he pulls off. He doesn't think it's the laundry. "Doc, what did you do in my car?"
Neal's lip rings glisten in the moonlight. "This afternoon? Wanted to smoke. I was bored, so I jacked off, too."
Dave pulls back so he can look into Neal's eyes - the fucker thinks it's hilarious; Dave doesn't know how he feels about it himself. "You jacked off? In my car?" Damn, that does sound kind of emo.
Neal shrugs, still snickering. "Yeah. Couldn't smoke. And your jeans, your car, everything smelled like you. And I have needs too, y'know."
Dave feels a rush of heat. "You came, in my car?" he asks, reaching for Neal's shirt. So that's what the smell is.
"Yeah," says Neal, not laughing any more, and cups the crotch of Dave's tight pants. "And now it's your turn."
Neal's pretty ambidextrous for a lefty; he gets Dave's fly unzipped with less effort than he'd expended opening Dave's car door.
Neal doesn't bother with lubrication or to warm his hand or rings, because Dave's already leaking and hard and well beyond the need for those things. He knows what Dave needs: Dave needs to fuck into his calloused fingers fast and violently, with Neal's voice in his ear, needs to press into the steering wheel and bite down on Neal's shoulder and dig bruises into Neal's arms as he holds on, needs to come and come, thick ropes of semen splattering over Neal's fist and Dave's stomach and everywhere in Dave's car.
"Ahh, fuck," Dave says, at last, weakly. He feels drained, unable to stand, and entirely himself.
Neal puts his forehead to Dave's. "Now we can fucking cuddle if you want," he says, and Dave has to laugh.
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