Oh, look. It's old fic.
Jan. 8th, 2004 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daemonlunaI've been trying to do something about the bits and pieces of unfinished fanfic on my hard drive, especially the stuff that's ALMOST done, and has been that way for the past, oh, three or four years. Like this. I may do some minor tweaking before it gets officially posted, but if I don't do something soon, it will never go anywhere. Poor orphan fanfic, suffering on my computer.
So. Due South/Hard Core Logo crossover, anyone? Constructive criticism type feedback appreciated if anyone is so inclined (though I know assorted Bindle alumni saw it as a WIP ages ago). (And yes, there are smutty bits. Nyah.) Can be briefly summarized as
Long Way Down To The Bitter End
Benton Fraser was a mountie. His father before him had been a mountie, and his father before that--well, he'd been a librarian, which just goes to show you that some things aren't genetic after all. He was a good mountie. He was brave and honest and he knew his duty. He knew his duty too well. After all, no-one said he was happy, did they?
In this story, there was a woman. And she was very beautiful, almost as clever as she thought she was, and convinced that the world owed her something.
He found her in Fortitude Pass, and turned her over to the authorities five days later. The extradition hearing took place six months after that, at the provincial courts in Edmonton. He gave his testimony on the second day, and only faltered once when he inadvertently caught sight of her disbelieving, accusing eyes.
By the time he finished, he was as blank and white and cold inside as the winter snow across the icefields and the tundra.
Benton Fraser left the courthouse shortly after six, returned to his hotel room, and stripped out of his dress uniform and changed into civilian clothes with a precise, mechanical efficiency. His gun was unloaded, and went into the dresser of the bedside table beside the Gideon Bible. His lanyard and belt were neatly coiled and laid atop dresser.
He left the hotel and started walking. He didn't know where he was headed. It didn't matter. He ended up in a run-down bar on Whyte Avenue. He stood in the doorway, blinking in the dim light, and only stepped into the room when it became clear he was blocking the door, as other patrons brushed past him, grumbling.
He stood at the bar, staring blankly at the dusty rows of bottles lining the wall behind it. There was a mirror behind the bottles. The backing was tarnished and the glass was warped, distorting the dim images reflected back through the smoke that hung in the air. His face in the mirror was a pale, smudged oval.
(Chalk-white face, dark hair, and darker eyes mute and judging across the courtroom...)
"What can I get you?" the bartender repeated impatiently. He realized with what should have been guilt but was only dull acceptance that'd she'd said the same thing three times while his mind had been... wherever it had been.
"I'm sorry?" Ben asked automatically.
"To drink." Her hair was peroxide-blonde and close-cropped. It didn't curl in fine, dark tendrils against her face and the pale, smooth column of her neck. Her eyes were blue and weary behind smudged mascara. Not a deep, rich brown that told him everything he wanted to forget.
"Oh. Ah. Gin and tonic," he said at random.
She set the drink in front of him and turned to more attentive patrons.
He watched the condensation bead and drip down the scratched glass to soak into the cocktail napkin beneath. He watched the ice melt. Eventually he threw a ten-dollar bill down on the counter, and left the drink untouched.
***
So there Joe was, slouched at a back-corner table in another run-down bar, this time in... where was he this week? Edmonton, right. Fucking Deadmonton. Shopping malls and campus fucking radio, band houses and bad coffee. Fuck this. He was still sober enough to remember where he was, he must be doing something wrong. He hadn't scored in a couple of days, and fucked if he could get the cunt of a waitress's attention long enough to get another drink.
So yeah, Joe was wired and edgy, foot tapping restlessly against the table leg, fingers drumming out the same rhythm against his glass. His empty glass. "Anybody home? Anything under the fucking dye job?" he called, staring at the back of the waitress's head across the room, as if he could shift her sorry ass by sheer force of will.
Fuck it. He had the dregs of a bottle of rye stashed, but the hell he was going to waste it when he was in the middle of a goddamn bar, for fuck’s sake. He shoved back his chair and sauntered over to flirt with the bartender with the nice tits long enough to get his fucking drink, and started to check out the locals.
But it was the middle of the week, the place was dead, and there was nothing or nobody to hold his attention. Joe in this sort of mood, restless and so fucking wired and jumpy that his skin itched with it, he needed to fight or to fuck. He needed somebody to needle, to push at, to goad into shoving back.
Like Billy. Treacherous thought, slipping in when he wanted it least. No, not like Billy. The fucker had sold out. Left the band. Left him. If there was anything he didn't need, it was mister big Hollywood rock star, Billy fucking Tallent.
That's what he told himself.
Joe was looking for trouble. And if he couldn't find any, he'd have to start some himself. So when he spotted the fucking tourist sitting at the bar, staring into his drink--his untouched drink--like he was looking to find the meaning of life at the bottom of the glass (Joe knew it wasn't there--he checked often enough himself) it would have been too much to expect him not to start something. How big of a stick do you gotta have up your ass to iron your blue jeans, for fuck's sake? The guy looked like the fucking Canada Health poster-boy for clean living. Joe didn't know how you could wear flannel and denim and still look so goddamned starched.
So when the boy scout threw down a ten, left his drink on the bar, and headed for the door, Joe downed the drink, got fucking watered-down gin and tonic for his troubles, and trailed him out to the street.
"So what the fuck's up with you?" he said conversationally to the ramrod-stiff back. "Too good to drink with the rest of us? Too pure to let booze past those pretty lips? What crawled up your ass and died?"
No response.
Fuck. Joe wanted--he needed this. Needed the adrenaline, needed the rush, needed the split knuckles and the copper-sweet tang of blood in his mouth.
"Hey! You fuckin' deaf or something, cocksucker?"
Still nothing. Joe decided to hell with it.
"Them's fightin' words," he drawled, and swung, one wild, nasty punch.
And wouldn't you know it, the bastard had Joe pinned up against the rough brick wall, and there was a half-crazed sort of look in his eye, and he wasn't going to back down.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." And he had Joe by the throat. Joe spat, and smiled lazily, just to prove he didn't give a fuck.
***
It was instinct that drove him, pure and simple. An instinct that belongs to the dangers inherent in the wildness of the elements and the predator that runs on all fours, not the sort of dangers found in darkened alleys and broken brick and glass.
He could still see her empty eyes. He could still taste her on his lips. She was itching under his skin, imprinted on his retinas, and running through his veins like poison.
It was no excuse. It wasn't enough.
"Get the fuck off me, goddamn psycho!" There was someone pushing hard against him. He was in an alleyway, not the tundra. The air was thick and soupy in his lungs. There was no snow.
And it wasn't Victoria he held hostage at all.
He should have been horrified that he had reacted without thinking and could have seriously injured--or even killed--another human being when he was in no immediate peril.
But he wasn’t. He was too full of ice and snow and empty, barren spaces to care. And he had the nagging suspicion that he should care about that, too. He didn't.
He was empty, he was broken, he was far away from anything real. Anything but here and now and the adrenaline, and the hot, solid body pinned beneath him, and the goddamned confusion and pain and guilt of it all.
He was shamefully, unmistakably aroused and hard.
"So it's like that, is it?" His would-be assailant looked him up and down consideringly. "Wanna fuck?" He ground up hard against him.
There was only this moment. There was nothing but tonight. Ben drew a sharp breath in between clenched teeth.
He looked back. Ripped black jeans. Tattered black sweater. Loose black coat. Power in his stance and in his challenging eyes, pale like ice and winter cloud cover.
Predator. Hunter. Carnivore.
Ben looked at the rings banding broad fingers, the chains and beads around neck and wrists, the loops adorning the many-times-pierced ears. The bare swath of shaved scalp on either side of the untamed mohawk. The aggression that tightened broad shoulders and bared sharp teeth.
Savage. Barbarian. Wild one.
No delicate grace here. No pale skin like fine porcelain. No deep, dark eyes to swallow your soul and twist bands of metal-sharp filigreed guilt around your heart.
He shouldn’t want this.
But he did.
***
Joe couldn’t believe it. He could feel the unmistakable hardness digging into his hip. This was turning the fucker on.
“So it’s like that, is it?” He gave him the once-over.
What the hell, Joe decided. It'd been a while since he'd fucked a guy. And this one... something about the clean, square jawline (no rough, glinting stubble along high cheekbones), the pressed clothes (not worn denim and cotton that always looked like it'd been picked up off the floor the morning after the night before, and usually had been), the posi-fucking-tively wholesome thing he had going just screamed out to be roughed up a little, messed up a bit. Made you wanna corrupt the fucker, debauch him, make him beg for it. And hey, Joe could go for that.
Besides, he looked... sturdy. Broad shoulders and all (not wiry and lithe with a mean, unexpected, whipcord sort of strength), like he could take whatever Joe was dishing out.
Of course, Billy always could take whatever Joe gave him--no, no, fuck no, he was not doing this because of Billy, fucking cock-tease prick bastard that he was, taking off like he did. Buddies don't do that sort of thing.
Joe also suspected that buddies don't offer to fuck total strangers in dark alleys just because of who they didn't look like. But fuck that, it was Billy's fault for leaving him.
“Wanna fuck?” he said casually.
The stranger frowned, looking mildly confused, instead liable to beat the shit out of him. Or try, anyhow. “Excuse me?”
“What, you don’t speak the fucking language? I said, wanna fuck?”
“Here?”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea.”
“No, I, ah... I’ve got a hotel room.”
"Where?" Joe asked.
He told him.
"You got a car?"
"No, I walked."
"You walked. That's across the river. That's fifty fucking blocks from here."
"Actually, it's only--"
"I'm not fucking walking, nature-boy."
They took a cab.
***
Ben paid the taxi driver, tipped him liberally, and walked steadily through the lobby and up the two flights to his inexpensive, government-funded hotel room. His companion followed behind, short of breath and cursing at the stairs.
"You should stop smoking," Ben said without looking back. He didn't need to ask. The stale cigarette smoke had settled in his clothes, and the nicotine had stained his fingers. Little things. Pieces of puzzles. Ben was good at puzzles.
"Fuck you," was the puffed response.
"If that's what you want."
"Yeah?"
"Yes." And Ben's voice was still level and steady and so were his hands as he unlocked the door. Good, solid hands. Not like his head which had detached itself from the proceedings entirely.
They stood in the painfully impersonal hotel room, neither willing to meet the other's eye now that they were out of the alley, out of the street, and into the bedroom.
"Give me a name," Ben said abruptly.
"Why?" The stranger smirked.
"If you don't, you may not like the name I call you," he said bleakly. Poison on his lips and tongue. Mustn't say it. She doesn't exist here.
"Dick, Joe Dick," he said, arrogant and cock-sure.
"All right then... Joe. My name is Ben."
Joe ignored the outstretched hand. "What, you don't fucking believe me? That's my name. Joe Dick. Never heard of me?"
"I can't say that I have," Ben said indifferently. Not her name. Nothing like it. Good, then.
"Didn't figure you for a closet punk fan." Joe shrugged, and pulled a half-empty bottle of cheap rye out of the depths of his coat. He downed a third of it, and offered it to Ben, who shook his head.
Joe finished off the bottle. Ben watched the tense and flex of the muscles in his throat and jaw as he swallowed.
"Punk?" Ben said finally.
Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I had a band once. For thirteen years, we were a band, and we went through shit together. And then we broke up. But as long as I had Billy, we were good. We could always start over, y'know? Always start again.
Joe stared moodily out the darkened window.
"Do you know what happened?” He weighed the bottle consideringly, tossing it from one hand to the other.
“I don’t believe I do.” Ben’s air of polite interest wasn’t intentionally infuriating, but appeared to have that effect, none-the-less
“The fucker left me!"
The empty bottle hit the wall behind Ben's head with the percussive crash of breaking glass. He didn't flinch, didn't move. He may as well have been carved from ice, except for the blood beading up slowly in the shallow cuts that marked his face and neck.
Joe reached out and slid a rough, calloused hand over Ben's cheek, smearing the blood across his face. He held his bloody hand up, inspected it critically, and licked his palm clean.
"That's not safe," Ben said automatically.
"Yeah?"
"You don't know where I've been."
"Does it look like I fucking care?"
"Well, no."
"Because I don't," he said coldly. "And you know what? Neither do you."
Ben looked away.
"Well?" Joe leaned in closer.
"No, no I don't."
Joe’s hand was heavy at the back of his neck. "Thought not," he said, and kissed him. It was not a tender kiss. It was hot and hard and it was cheap rye and stale smoke and it was a challenge and a threat and a promise all in one.
Ben pulled back, flushed and breathing hard. “Just a minute,” he said hoarsely. He turned his back on his companion, and began unbuttoning his shirt, fingers unaccountably stiff and clumsy. He was too warm. He wasn't ice after all. And he wanted--he needed skin against bare skin, the unmistakable reassurance that this was real, that he was still alive and not as dead and numb and frozen as he felt inside.
“What’s this?”
Ben turned.
Joe stood in the middle of the room, Ben's handcuffs dangling from one extended finger. He smirked. "Didn't figure you for the kinky type."
How did... Oh. He'd left the handcuffs sitting neatly on the dresser beside his coiled lanyard and belt. It looked like--
"No, I--" He stopped. It didn't matter.
"So? You got the keys to these babies?"
"Yes, I do."
Joe's steady, sardonic eyes were challenging.
And... and Ben was mute and angry and bleeding with pain and guilt and sorrow inside, and all he could see was cold metal against skin pale and white like snow, and--
"Please," he said hoarsely, holding out his own bare, tanned wrists. "Please."
Joe's hands were quick and rough.
The cuffs shut a with quiet click.
Ben let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief and surrendered his body and soul in one pliant, easy motion.
***
Joe had condoms, but he didn’t have lube. After all, it wasn’t like he’d planned on fucking some guy up the ass tonight. He held one calloused palm out to Ben’s mouth. “Spit,” he said harshly. “I don’t want to do this dry, and neither do you.”
“No, wait, I’ve got--” Ben pulled away, and came up short against the cuffs. “In my bag, the bottle in the front left-hand pocket.”
Joe rummaged through the battered duffle bag, and whadda ya know, there it was. “What is this shit, anyhow?”
“Neatsfoot oil. For keeping leather supple,” was the terse reply.
“Leather, huh? Ben, buddy, you’re just one repressed kink after another.”
“Just shut up and fuck me,” he snarled.
“See, you don’t seem to be grasping the big picture here,” Joe said, sauntering back to the bed. “Y’see, you’re the one fucking cuffed to the bedframe here and I’m the one who’s going to be fucking you up the ass. You’re not giving me any orders, except maybe oh god yes, and, if I’m feeling generous, faster, harder, more.”
Joe knelt behind Ben on the bed, and sat back on his heels, unscrewing the cap on the bottle, and pouring a generous puddle into the palm of his hand. “You could say stop,” he said consideringly, “and we could end this right here. I’m not gonna rape you. Not into that. So tell me. Yes or no, here. No, and none of this shit ever happened. But tell me yes, and I’m the one calling all the fucking shots, got it?”
“Yes,” Ben said, head bowed, all the tension leaving his back and shoulders. “Oh god, yes.”
“You like it rough?” Joe asked casually.
“Please,” Ben moaned.
***
Ben would take the pain and welcome it, if it made him feel anything at all.
Joe moved with the assurance of someone who'd done this before. His stubby nails were long enough to leave rough half-moon gouges spread across Ben's hips.
It had been over a year since the last time he'd been with another man. His few liasons had been casual arrangements, affairs of convenience rather than of the heart. Friends--no, more acquaintances, really. A physical release, a fair exchange, small favours traded back and forth. All except for--no.
(Cold lips and falling snow and the entire world narrowed down to the sound of her voice and the smell of her skin and the pockets of warmth trapped between them.)
None of that existed here.
All he was going to think about was the cold metal digging into his wrists, the musk of arousal mixed with stale ciagrette smoke and alcohol, and the welcoming burn as Joe pushed his way--slowly, too slowly--inside of him. Ben didn't want to contrast and compare. The oil was cold and unevenly spread. The latex caught painfully several times. Each time Ben rocked his hips back further, wanting more.
"Harder."
Joe stopped moving altogether.
"Did I fucking say you could talk?" A calloused hand tightened warningly at the nape of Ben's neck. Ben pushed his head back needily against it. Joe gave one last warning squeeze, and deliberately raked his nails down Ben's exposed back. Ben pictured the rising red welts. The room was cold, but he felt the flush rise to his skin in a wave of heat.
"Now, if I decide I'm going to take it nice and slow, you're going to take it, and if I decide I want it hard and fast, you're going to take that too. Got it?" Joe pulled back slowly out of him to make his point.
Ben held himself still as the warmth spread through him. His mind was blank and clean and there was nothing but the dull red pain of aching muscles, the sharper pain of penetration, and the bright sparks of pleasure that grew as Joe pushed back inside and set up a steady rhythm. He accepted the pleasure, welcomed the pain, and surrended himself to the metal pinning his wrists, and the stranger using his body.
Later, he will notice the finger-sized bruises that will mark his hips for several days. They will be the only outward sign of this brief encounter. Benton will wonder at his uncharacteristic risks he took, and will dismiss the clarity he found in this act of submission as an aberration brought on by the need for penance. It was insignificant in comparison to the weight of events that acted as its impetus, and the miserably awkward aftermath that followed shortly.
When Joe found his own release with a hot, liquid rush and a wordless grunt, Ben had no way of knowing whose name rose unbidden in his mouth, or prompted him to bite down on his bottom lip not quite hard enough to draw blood.
The combination of physical stimulation and bodily restraint built high enough that Ben, who will not remember screaming, finally reached climax with Joe's last few, savage thrusts.
Ben, who had lost all language completely by that point and had no-one's name in his mouth, gave himself up to the moment entirely and forgot all about the snow.
***
It ended... badly.
"Uncuff me," Ben said, voice rough, throat raw.
"Why should I?" Joe said casually, dangling the key from one outstretched finger.
"Please," Ben said tonelessly.
Joe, scowling, unlocked the cuffs. What was the point if he wasn't going to get pissed and shout and have to be made to beg?
Ben stretched and rubbed absently at his wrists, marked with red where he'd pulled against the unyielding metal.
"You're not staying," he said. It could have been a complaint, a querelous plea. It could have been a terse demand. But most likely it was a flat statement of fact, as Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling the laces tight on his battered, black boots.
"No shit."
"Ah."
"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
For a split second, Joe thought Ben was going to take a swing at him. Instead, he kissed him. It was not a nice kiss. It was dominance, and it was control and when Joe pulled back, his lip was bleeding.
"You fucking bit me!"
Ben leaned over and licked the blood away.
"Freak," Joe said harshly, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand.
"And what does that make you?" Steady eyes, uninflected voice, just this side of cruel.
Joe slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frame on his way out.
He took the stairs down out of sheer perversity, and headed back towards Whyte Av. He was almost sober, and his lip still stung. Fucker. Fucking vampire freakshow. He needed--
Billy, whispered that fucking treacherous voice in the back of his head. No, no, fuck no.
Joe turned, and punched the concrete wall. "Shit!" he howled. He'd definitely heard something crack, and it wasn't the wall.
He spent the rest of the night sitting in the emergency room, hand packed in ice.
***
Ben knelt in the middle of the disordered array of blankets and sheets for a long moment or two after the door slammed. Then he got up, took a shower long and hot enough to leave him flushed and dizzy from the heat, changed the sheets, and went to bed.
The ice under his skin had cracked, melted, and frozen again into a different shape. He lay stiff and motionless under the thin blankets until outside the window, the sky lightened.
He didn't sleep.
***
Ben left Edmonton the next morning. He transferred planes twice, once in Yellowknife and once more to a small aircraft. He was back at his posting less than twenty-four hours later.
Joe eventually hitch-hiked back to Vancouver. It took him five days, if you don't count the weekend he spent behind bars in Penticton on charges of drunk and disorderly. (He didn't. And he had been.)
In the spring of 1994, Const. Benton Fraser left for Chicago on the trail of his father's killer, and remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian Consulate.
Joe spent the next couple of years playing the odd gig here and there. He always knew a guy who knew a guy. Band or no band, Joe was good at getting by. Always had been. Sometimes he managed to forget to think about Billy. Sometimes he didn't.
It was in the spring of 1995 when Benton Fraser next encountered Victoria Metcalf. He was inadvertently shot by his partner, one Raymond Vecchio, while in pursuit of the suspect. What he had intended to do once he caught her was never established. He survived, and went on to continue his work as liaison with the Chicago Police Department.
There are worse fates.
By mid-November of 1995, Joe Dick was dead.
END
I'm still not thrilled about the title, and I'm well aware that the timelines might not match up exactly. Dammit.
So. Due South/Hard Core Logo crossover, anyone? Constructive criticism type feedback appreciated if anyone is so inclined (though I know assorted Bindle alumni saw it as a WIP ages ago). (And yes, there are smutty bits. Nyah.) Can be briefly summarized as
Long Way Down To The Bitter End
Benton Fraser was a mountie. His father before him had been a mountie, and his father before that--well, he'd been a librarian, which just goes to show you that some things aren't genetic after all. He was a good mountie. He was brave and honest and he knew his duty. He knew his duty too well. After all, no-one said he was happy, did they?
In this story, there was a woman. And she was very beautiful, almost as clever as she thought she was, and convinced that the world owed her something.
He found her in Fortitude Pass, and turned her over to the authorities five days later. The extradition hearing took place six months after that, at the provincial courts in Edmonton. He gave his testimony on the second day, and only faltered once when he inadvertently caught sight of her disbelieving, accusing eyes.
By the time he finished, he was as blank and white and cold inside as the winter snow across the icefields and the tundra.
Benton Fraser left the courthouse shortly after six, returned to his hotel room, and stripped out of his dress uniform and changed into civilian clothes with a precise, mechanical efficiency. His gun was unloaded, and went into the dresser of the bedside table beside the Gideon Bible. His lanyard and belt were neatly coiled and laid atop dresser.
He left the hotel and started walking. He didn't know where he was headed. It didn't matter. He ended up in a run-down bar on Whyte Avenue. He stood in the doorway, blinking in the dim light, and only stepped into the room when it became clear he was blocking the door, as other patrons brushed past him, grumbling.
He stood at the bar, staring blankly at the dusty rows of bottles lining the wall behind it. There was a mirror behind the bottles. The backing was tarnished and the glass was warped, distorting the dim images reflected back through the smoke that hung in the air. His face in the mirror was a pale, smudged oval.
(Chalk-white face, dark hair, and darker eyes mute and judging across the courtroom...)
"What can I get you?" the bartender repeated impatiently. He realized with what should have been guilt but was only dull acceptance that'd she'd said the same thing three times while his mind had been... wherever it had been.
"I'm sorry?" Ben asked automatically.
"To drink." Her hair was peroxide-blonde and close-cropped. It didn't curl in fine, dark tendrils against her face and the pale, smooth column of her neck. Her eyes were blue and weary behind smudged mascara. Not a deep, rich brown that told him everything he wanted to forget.
"Oh. Ah. Gin and tonic," he said at random.
She set the drink in front of him and turned to more attentive patrons.
He watched the condensation bead and drip down the scratched glass to soak into the cocktail napkin beneath. He watched the ice melt. Eventually he threw a ten-dollar bill down on the counter, and left the drink untouched.
***
So there Joe was, slouched at a back-corner table in another run-down bar, this time in... where was he this week? Edmonton, right. Fucking Deadmonton. Shopping malls and campus fucking radio, band houses and bad coffee. Fuck this. He was still sober enough to remember where he was, he must be doing something wrong. He hadn't scored in a couple of days, and fucked if he could get the cunt of a waitress's attention long enough to get another drink.
So yeah, Joe was wired and edgy, foot tapping restlessly against the table leg, fingers drumming out the same rhythm against his glass. His empty glass. "Anybody home? Anything under the fucking dye job?" he called, staring at the back of the waitress's head across the room, as if he could shift her sorry ass by sheer force of will.
Fuck it. He had the dregs of a bottle of rye stashed, but the hell he was going to waste it when he was in the middle of a goddamn bar, for fuck’s sake. He shoved back his chair and sauntered over to flirt with the bartender with the nice tits long enough to get his fucking drink, and started to check out the locals.
But it was the middle of the week, the place was dead, and there was nothing or nobody to hold his attention. Joe in this sort of mood, restless and so fucking wired and jumpy that his skin itched with it, he needed to fight or to fuck. He needed somebody to needle, to push at, to goad into shoving back.
Like Billy. Treacherous thought, slipping in when he wanted it least. No, not like Billy. The fucker had sold out. Left the band. Left him. If there was anything he didn't need, it was mister big Hollywood rock star, Billy fucking Tallent.
That's what he told himself.
Joe was looking for trouble. And if he couldn't find any, he'd have to start some himself. So when he spotted the fucking tourist sitting at the bar, staring into his drink--his untouched drink--like he was looking to find the meaning of life at the bottom of the glass (Joe knew it wasn't there--he checked often enough himself) it would have been too much to expect him not to start something. How big of a stick do you gotta have up your ass to iron your blue jeans, for fuck's sake? The guy looked like the fucking Canada Health poster-boy for clean living. Joe didn't know how you could wear flannel and denim and still look so goddamned starched.
So when the boy scout threw down a ten, left his drink on the bar, and headed for the door, Joe downed the drink, got fucking watered-down gin and tonic for his troubles, and trailed him out to the street.
"So what the fuck's up with you?" he said conversationally to the ramrod-stiff back. "Too good to drink with the rest of us? Too pure to let booze past those pretty lips? What crawled up your ass and died?"
No response.
Fuck. Joe wanted--he needed this. Needed the adrenaline, needed the rush, needed the split knuckles and the copper-sweet tang of blood in his mouth.
"Hey! You fuckin' deaf or something, cocksucker?"
Still nothing. Joe decided to hell with it.
"Them's fightin' words," he drawled, and swung, one wild, nasty punch.
And wouldn't you know it, the bastard had Joe pinned up against the rough brick wall, and there was a half-crazed sort of look in his eye, and he wasn't going to back down.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." And he had Joe by the throat. Joe spat, and smiled lazily, just to prove he didn't give a fuck.
***
It was instinct that drove him, pure and simple. An instinct that belongs to the dangers inherent in the wildness of the elements and the predator that runs on all fours, not the sort of dangers found in darkened alleys and broken brick and glass.
He could still see her empty eyes. He could still taste her on his lips. She was itching under his skin, imprinted on his retinas, and running through his veins like poison.
It was no excuse. It wasn't enough.
"Get the fuck off me, goddamn psycho!" There was someone pushing hard against him. He was in an alleyway, not the tundra. The air was thick and soupy in his lungs. There was no snow.
And it wasn't Victoria he held hostage at all.
He should have been horrified that he had reacted without thinking and could have seriously injured--or even killed--another human being when he was in no immediate peril.
But he wasn’t. He was too full of ice and snow and empty, barren spaces to care. And he had the nagging suspicion that he should care about that, too. He didn't.
He was empty, he was broken, he was far away from anything real. Anything but here and now and the adrenaline, and the hot, solid body pinned beneath him, and the goddamned confusion and pain and guilt of it all.
He was shamefully, unmistakably aroused and hard.
"So it's like that, is it?" His would-be assailant looked him up and down consideringly. "Wanna fuck?" He ground up hard against him.
There was only this moment. There was nothing but tonight. Ben drew a sharp breath in between clenched teeth.
He looked back. Ripped black jeans. Tattered black sweater. Loose black coat. Power in his stance and in his challenging eyes, pale like ice and winter cloud cover.
Predator. Hunter. Carnivore.
Ben looked at the rings banding broad fingers, the chains and beads around neck and wrists, the loops adorning the many-times-pierced ears. The bare swath of shaved scalp on either side of the untamed mohawk. The aggression that tightened broad shoulders and bared sharp teeth.
Savage. Barbarian. Wild one.
No delicate grace here. No pale skin like fine porcelain. No deep, dark eyes to swallow your soul and twist bands of metal-sharp filigreed guilt around your heart.
He shouldn’t want this.
But he did.
***
Joe couldn’t believe it. He could feel the unmistakable hardness digging into his hip. This was turning the fucker on.
“So it’s like that, is it?” He gave him the once-over.
What the hell, Joe decided. It'd been a while since he'd fucked a guy. And this one... something about the clean, square jawline (no rough, glinting stubble along high cheekbones), the pressed clothes (not worn denim and cotton that always looked like it'd been picked up off the floor the morning after the night before, and usually had been), the posi-fucking-tively wholesome thing he had going just screamed out to be roughed up a little, messed up a bit. Made you wanna corrupt the fucker, debauch him, make him beg for it. And hey, Joe could go for that.
Besides, he looked... sturdy. Broad shoulders and all (not wiry and lithe with a mean, unexpected, whipcord sort of strength), like he could take whatever Joe was dishing out.
Of course, Billy always could take whatever Joe gave him--no, no, fuck no, he was not doing this because of Billy, fucking cock-tease prick bastard that he was, taking off like he did. Buddies don't do that sort of thing.
Joe also suspected that buddies don't offer to fuck total strangers in dark alleys just because of who they didn't look like. But fuck that, it was Billy's fault for leaving him.
“Wanna fuck?” he said casually.
The stranger frowned, looking mildly confused, instead liable to beat the shit out of him. Or try, anyhow. “Excuse me?”
“What, you don’t speak the fucking language? I said, wanna fuck?”
“Here?”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea.”
“No, I, ah... I’ve got a hotel room.”
"Where?" Joe asked.
He told him.
"You got a car?"
"No, I walked."
"You walked. That's across the river. That's fifty fucking blocks from here."
"Actually, it's only--"
"I'm not fucking walking, nature-boy."
They took a cab.
***
Ben paid the taxi driver, tipped him liberally, and walked steadily through the lobby and up the two flights to his inexpensive, government-funded hotel room. His companion followed behind, short of breath and cursing at the stairs.
"You should stop smoking," Ben said without looking back. He didn't need to ask. The stale cigarette smoke had settled in his clothes, and the nicotine had stained his fingers. Little things. Pieces of puzzles. Ben was good at puzzles.
"Fuck you," was the puffed response.
"If that's what you want."
"Yeah?"
"Yes." And Ben's voice was still level and steady and so were his hands as he unlocked the door. Good, solid hands. Not like his head which had detached itself from the proceedings entirely.
They stood in the painfully impersonal hotel room, neither willing to meet the other's eye now that they were out of the alley, out of the street, and into the bedroom.
"Give me a name," Ben said abruptly.
"Why?" The stranger smirked.
"If you don't, you may not like the name I call you," he said bleakly. Poison on his lips and tongue. Mustn't say it. She doesn't exist here.
"Dick, Joe Dick," he said, arrogant and cock-sure.
"All right then... Joe. My name is Ben."
Joe ignored the outstretched hand. "What, you don't fucking believe me? That's my name. Joe Dick. Never heard of me?"
"I can't say that I have," Ben said indifferently. Not her name. Nothing like it. Good, then.
"Didn't figure you for a closet punk fan." Joe shrugged, and pulled a half-empty bottle of cheap rye out of the depths of his coat. He downed a third of it, and offered it to Ben, who shook his head.
Joe finished off the bottle. Ben watched the tense and flex of the muscles in his throat and jaw as he swallowed.
"Punk?" Ben said finally.
Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I had a band once. For thirteen years, we were a band, and we went through shit together. And then we broke up. But as long as I had Billy, we were good. We could always start over, y'know? Always start again.
Joe stared moodily out the darkened window.
"Do you know what happened?” He weighed the bottle consideringly, tossing it from one hand to the other.
“I don’t believe I do.” Ben’s air of polite interest wasn’t intentionally infuriating, but appeared to have that effect, none-the-less
“The fucker left me!"
The empty bottle hit the wall behind Ben's head with the percussive crash of breaking glass. He didn't flinch, didn't move. He may as well have been carved from ice, except for the blood beading up slowly in the shallow cuts that marked his face and neck.
Joe reached out and slid a rough, calloused hand over Ben's cheek, smearing the blood across his face. He held his bloody hand up, inspected it critically, and licked his palm clean.
"That's not safe," Ben said automatically.
"Yeah?"
"You don't know where I've been."
"Does it look like I fucking care?"
"Well, no."
"Because I don't," he said coldly. "And you know what? Neither do you."
Ben looked away.
"Well?" Joe leaned in closer.
"No, no I don't."
Joe’s hand was heavy at the back of his neck. "Thought not," he said, and kissed him. It was not a tender kiss. It was hot and hard and it was cheap rye and stale smoke and it was a challenge and a threat and a promise all in one.
Ben pulled back, flushed and breathing hard. “Just a minute,” he said hoarsely. He turned his back on his companion, and began unbuttoning his shirt, fingers unaccountably stiff and clumsy. He was too warm. He wasn't ice after all. And he wanted--he needed skin against bare skin, the unmistakable reassurance that this was real, that he was still alive and not as dead and numb and frozen as he felt inside.
“What’s this?”
Ben turned.
Joe stood in the middle of the room, Ben's handcuffs dangling from one extended finger. He smirked. "Didn't figure you for the kinky type."
How did... Oh. He'd left the handcuffs sitting neatly on the dresser beside his coiled lanyard and belt. It looked like--
"No, I--" He stopped. It didn't matter.
"So? You got the keys to these babies?"
"Yes, I do."
Joe's steady, sardonic eyes were challenging.
And... and Ben was mute and angry and bleeding with pain and guilt and sorrow inside, and all he could see was cold metal against skin pale and white like snow, and--
"Please," he said hoarsely, holding out his own bare, tanned wrists. "Please."
Joe's hands were quick and rough.
The cuffs shut a with quiet click.
Ben let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief and surrendered his body and soul in one pliant, easy motion.
***
Joe had condoms, but he didn’t have lube. After all, it wasn’t like he’d planned on fucking some guy up the ass tonight. He held one calloused palm out to Ben’s mouth. “Spit,” he said harshly. “I don’t want to do this dry, and neither do you.”
“No, wait, I’ve got--” Ben pulled away, and came up short against the cuffs. “In my bag, the bottle in the front left-hand pocket.”
Joe rummaged through the battered duffle bag, and whadda ya know, there it was. “What is this shit, anyhow?”
“Neatsfoot oil. For keeping leather supple,” was the terse reply.
“Leather, huh? Ben, buddy, you’re just one repressed kink after another.”
“Just shut up and fuck me,” he snarled.
“See, you don’t seem to be grasping the big picture here,” Joe said, sauntering back to the bed. “Y’see, you’re the one fucking cuffed to the bedframe here and I’m the one who’s going to be fucking you up the ass. You’re not giving me any orders, except maybe oh god yes, and, if I’m feeling generous, faster, harder, more.”
Joe knelt behind Ben on the bed, and sat back on his heels, unscrewing the cap on the bottle, and pouring a generous puddle into the palm of his hand. “You could say stop,” he said consideringly, “and we could end this right here. I’m not gonna rape you. Not into that. So tell me. Yes or no, here. No, and none of this shit ever happened. But tell me yes, and I’m the one calling all the fucking shots, got it?”
“Yes,” Ben said, head bowed, all the tension leaving his back and shoulders. “Oh god, yes.”
“You like it rough?” Joe asked casually.
“Please,” Ben moaned.
***
Ben would take the pain and welcome it, if it made him feel anything at all.
Joe moved with the assurance of someone who'd done this before. His stubby nails were long enough to leave rough half-moon gouges spread across Ben's hips.
It had been over a year since the last time he'd been with another man. His few liasons had been casual arrangements, affairs of convenience rather than of the heart. Friends--no, more acquaintances, really. A physical release, a fair exchange, small favours traded back and forth. All except for--no.
(Cold lips and falling snow and the entire world narrowed down to the sound of her voice and the smell of her skin and the pockets of warmth trapped between them.)
None of that existed here.
All he was going to think about was the cold metal digging into his wrists, the musk of arousal mixed with stale ciagrette smoke and alcohol, and the welcoming burn as Joe pushed his way--slowly, too slowly--inside of him. Ben didn't want to contrast and compare. The oil was cold and unevenly spread. The latex caught painfully several times. Each time Ben rocked his hips back further, wanting more.
"Harder."
Joe stopped moving altogether.
"Did I fucking say you could talk?" A calloused hand tightened warningly at the nape of Ben's neck. Ben pushed his head back needily against it. Joe gave one last warning squeeze, and deliberately raked his nails down Ben's exposed back. Ben pictured the rising red welts. The room was cold, but he felt the flush rise to his skin in a wave of heat.
"Now, if I decide I'm going to take it nice and slow, you're going to take it, and if I decide I want it hard and fast, you're going to take that too. Got it?" Joe pulled back slowly out of him to make his point.
Ben held himself still as the warmth spread through him. His mind was blank and clean and there was nothing but the dull red pain of aching muscles, the sharper pain of penetration, and the bright sparks of pleasure that grew as Joe pushed back inside and set up a steady rhythm. He accepted the pleasure, welcomed the pain, and surrended himself to the metal pinning his wrists, and the stranger using his body.
Later, he will notice the finger-sized bruises that will mark his hips for several days. They will be the only outward sign of this brief encounter. Benton will wonder at his uncharacteristic risks he took, and will dismiss the clarity he found in this act of submission as an aberration brought on by the need for penance. It was insignificant in comparison to the weight of events that acted as its impetus, and the miserably awkward aftermath that followed shortly.
When Joe found his own release with a hot, liquid rush and a wordless grunt, Ben had no way of knowing whose name rose unbidden in his mouth, or prompted him to bite down on his bottom lip not quite hard enough to draw blood.
The combination of physical stimulation and bodily restraint built high enough that Ben, who will not remember screaming, finally reached climax with Joe's last few, savage thrusts.
Ben, who had lost all language completely by that point and had no-one's name in his mouth, gave himself up to the moment entirely and forgot all about the snow.
***
It ended... badly.
"Uncuff me," Ben said, voice rough, throat raw.
"Why should I?" Joe said casually, dangling the key from one outstretched finger.
"Please," Ben said tonelessly.
Joe, scowling, unlocked the cuffs. What was the point if he wasn't going to get pissed and shout and have to be made to beg?
Ben stretched and rubbed absently at his wrists, marked with red where he'd pulled against the unyielding metal.
"You're not staying," he said. It could have been a complaint, a querelous plea. It could have been a terse demand. But most likely it was a flat statement of fact, as Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling the laces tight on his battered, black boots.
"No shit."
"Ah."
"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
For a split second, Joe thought Ben was going to take a swing at him. Instead, he kissed him. It was not a nice kiss. It was dominance, and it was control and when Joe pulled back, his lip was bleeding.
"You fucking bit me!"
Ben leaned over and licked the blood away.
"Freak," Joe said harshly, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand.
"And what does that make you?" Steady eyes, uninflected voice, just this side of cruel.
Joe slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frame on his way out.
He took the stairs down out of sheer perversity, and headed back towards Whyte Av. He was almost sober, and his lip still stung. Fucker. Fucking vampire freakshow. He needed--
Billy, whispered that fucking treacherous voice in the back of his head. No, no, fuck no.
Joe turned, and punched the concrete wall. "Shit!" he howled. He'd definitely heard something crack, and it wasn't the wall.
He spent the rest of the night sitting in the emergency room, hand packed in ice.
***
Ben knelt in the middle of the disordered array of blankets and sheets for a long moment or two after the door slammed. Then he got up, took a shower long and hot enough to leave him flushed and dizzy from the heat, changed the sheets, and went to bed.
The ice under his skin had cracked, melted, and frozen again into a different shape. He lay stiff and motionless under the thin blankets until outside the window, the sky lightened.
He didn't sleep.
***
Ben left Edmonton the next morning. He transferred planes twice, once in Yellowknife and once more to a small aircraft. He was back at his posting less than twenty-four hours later.
Joe eventually hitch-hiked back to Vancouver. It took him five days, if you don't count the weekend he spent behind bars in Penticton on charges of drunk and disorderly. (He didn't. And he had been.)
In the spring of 1994, Const. Benton Fraser left for Chicago on the trail of his father's killer, and remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian Consulate.
Joe spent the next couple of years playing the odd gig here and there. He always knew a guy who knew a guy. Band or no band, Joe was good at getting by. Always had been. Sometimes he managed to forget to think about Billy. Sometimes he didn't.
It was in the spring of 1995 when Benton Fraser next encountered Victoria Metcalf. He was inadvertently shot by his partner, one Raymond Vecchio, while in pursuit of the suspect. What he had intended to do once he caught her was never established. He survived, and went on to continue his work as liaison with the Chicago Police Department.
There are worse fates.
By mid-November of 1995, Joe Dick was dead.
END
I'm still not thrilled about the title, and I'm well aware that the timelines might not match up exactly. Dammit.
