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whiskeycoffee2008-04-05 10:39 pm
mjules.livejournal.com) wrote in whiskeycoffee2008-04-05 10:39 pm
FIC: "Add One to the Bodycount" (Metanoia, Star/Zan, 1/1, T+)
Title: Add One to the Bodycount
Fandom: Metanoia
Pairing: Star/Zan
Summary: Don't worry, the rain will wash the chalk-marks from the ground.
Author's Notes: If you don't like this one, blame![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aidara. She beta'd it and filled my head with pretty talk about how good it is. So if it isn't, it's her fault. ;) This is a bit of a companion piece to "Say No Sleep," which it was totally not supposed to be. Originally, it was just supposed to be me indulging myself in seeing Zan top Star, which only happened in that one dream of Star's, and... well... this took place. The title, summary, and lj-cut text are from "One More Murder" by Better Than Ezra, which is totally a Star song.
Warnings: Overuse of parenthetical phrases and alcohol-and-gun-related metaphors. Bah.
Star thought Zan really shouldn't get as upset as he did about the fact that Star wouldn't tell him things. There were places he had to go, things he had to do to exorcise his demons -- some of which bore a suspicious resemblance to a certain body that was currently playing host to an angel. White lies had been part of their partnership since the beginning, especially when it came to the crackling energy between them.
Those lies were Star's concession to his partner's comfort. It had started long before he even knew the reasons for the boundaries he could feel Zan trying to lay down between them -- the first dream, the night he'd been cursed, he'd lied about on instinct. The look on Zan's face had been priceless, but it didn't go away fast enough and the longer Star looked at it the more he didn't like it. Didn't like Zan looking like he'd found a cockroach floating in his coffee, didn't like the faint hint of rose across his cheeks that was more the color of shame and less of desire. Didn't like the peculiar tang of fear that sharpened the edges of Zan's aura. That wasn't right. It wasn't like Star had told him any details -- well, not many. It wasn't even like Star had been on top.
(Which, in retrospect, was odd because it was rare that he bottomed, rarer that he dreamed about it. It wasn't a position he favored, not after all the ways Milo had made that play out.)
So he'd grinned, shrugged. "Nah. It was more nightmares." Only if you're me.
It amused him more than it should that his statement had fucked with Zan's head in obvious ways. Good, because it wasn't like Star hadn't been on the receiving end of his share of mind-fuckery since this whole thing had started. Zan himself was the first instance and usually involved in the others. The man wasn't Jaime; he was too clever to be Jaime, (sweet, simple, impulsive Jaime with the shining goodwill of the world in his eyes; karma should have been better to him) but he found a chink in Star's armor that no one had since that boy.
He wanted Zan, pure and simple; wanted him badly enough that his subconscious mind curled itself into an invitation, made his body a warm place; warm and sweet like melted sugar, like all the best things he never got to give the first time around. It was wrong in some ways (many), but it had been good, good like the expensive coffee that didn't need cream to make it smooth; good like Irish whiskey that slid down his throat like silk and hit his chest in a burst of fire that spread through his belly. It had been good enough to call it a nightmare, because he could tell from the scared look on Zan's face that his new partner wasn't willing to go there, and now he wanted it.
The dream had been real, as many of his were. It wasn't one of the two-dimensional papier-mache pizza-dreams, the kind that felt like watching a bad porno on late-night Cinemax. It was real and present and under his skin, scent and taste and shivering texture all part of it.
"After that curse," Zan had said, and Star had shivered somewhere inside at the remembered taste of blood, "No nightmares?"
Plenty, Star thought, Because I could feel you in me and it was like something bitter and holy all at once.
Finding out Zan was bound by a vow of celibacy was like turning legal the day they passed prohibition. The near miss made his mouth that much dryer, his thirst that much greater. It made him a little sympathetic (but only a little) to that poor Kevin kid. No wonder he'd been so needy, so desperate. To have that (dark hair swinging in the strobe lights of the club; warm brown skin like cinnamon and honey poured over sweet, shifting muscle; all crazy kinetic energy that shouldn't have looked so centered, so calm, with so much happy, eager violence just waiting to be loosed) within arm's reach only to realize it was like grabbing a handful of smoke... to have so much of something you wanted and be denied the fullness of it... If it weren't for that curse thing, Star would probably have already taken Kev out for a few rounds of beer and a shoulder to cry on. He might have to do that sometime soon anyway.
And okay, part of him was starting to feel like a possessive bastard, because he was Zan's partner now and Zan had pulled him off a ledge and pinned him to the ground (and later, to the door of his truck) and Zan wanted him. It was more than the dreams, more than the coral flush across Zan's nose in the mornings, the guilty way his eyes slid away from Star for the first thirty minutes after they woke up. It was the way Zan automatically gravitated to wherever he was, pulled as if by a magnet, a homing beacon, knowing without having to look. It was the way Star could feel him like a ghost clinging to him anytime he left -- which was unfair, because sometimes he left just to get away, for fear he'd do something horrible and stupid like kissing him. Again.
The feeling was mutual (the taste of drought on his tongue was a witness with a condemning testimony), and his leaving was proof of it. There was something satisfying in the masochism of it, like pulling the trigger on himself for every wicked thought he had. And when he came back on the early morning side of midnight and Zan was waiting up with eyes that swept his body in a rush of worry and transparent relief, it was the burning surge of resurrected desire that closed his throat and cut off his words and sent him straight to bed with barely a nod. It was a live bullet in a spinning chamber knowing that nightmares of one kind or another waited for him on the other side of sleep, and he smiled as the hammer came down.
//End//
Fandom: Metanoia
Pairing: Star/Zan
Summary: Don't worry, the rain will wash the chalk-marks from the ground.
Author's Notes: If you don't like this one, blame
aidara. She beta'd it and filled my head with pretty talk about how good it is. So if it isn't, it's her fault. ;) This is a bit of a companion piece to "Say No Sleep," which it was totally not supposed to be. Originally, it was just supposed to be me indulging myself in seeing Zan top Star, which only happened in that one dream of Star's, and... well... this took place. The title, summary, and lj-cut text are from "One More Murder" by Better Than Ezra, which is totally a Star song.Warnings: Overuse of parenthetical phrases and alcohol-and-gun-related metaphors. Bah.
Star thought Zan really shouldn't get as upset as he did about the fact that Star wouldn't tell him things. There were places he had to go, things he had to do to exorcise his demons -- some of which bore a suspicious resemblance to a certain body that was currently playing host to an angel. White lies had been part of their partnership since the beginning, especially when it came to the crackling energy between them.
Those lies were Star's concession to his partner's comfort. It had started long before he even knew the reasons for the boundaries he could feel Zan trying to lay down between them -- the first dream, the night he'd been cursed, he'd lied about on instinct. The look on Zan's face had been priceless, but it didn't go away fast enough and the longer Star looked at it the more he didn't like it. Didn't like Zan looking like he'd found a cockroach floating in his coffee, didn't like the faint hint of rose across his cheeks that was more the color of shame and less of desire. Didn't like the peculiar tang of fear that sharpened the edges of Zan's aura. That wasn't right. It wasn't like Star had told him any details -- well, not many. It wasn't even like Star had been on top.
(Which, in retrospect, was odd because it was rare that he bottomed, rarer that he dreamed about it. It wasn't a position he favored, not after all the ways Milo had made that play out.)
So he'd grinned, shrugged. "Nah. It was more nightmares." Only if you're me.
It amused him more than it should that his statement had fucked with Zan's head in obvious ways. Good, because it wasn't like Star hadn't been on the receiving end of his share of mind-fuckery since this whole thing had started. Zan himself was the first instance and usually involved in the others. The man wasn't Jaime; he was too clever to be Jaime, (sweet, simple, impulsive Jaime with the shining goodwill of the world in his eyes; karma should have been better to him) but he found a chink in Star's armor that no one had since that boy.
He wanted Zan, pure and simple; wanted him badly enough that his subconscious mind curled itself into an invitation, made his body a warm place; warm and sweet like melted sugar, like all the best things he never got to give the first time around. It was wrong in some ways (many), but it had been good, good like the expensive coffee that didn't need cream to make it smooth; good like Irish whiskey that slid down his throat like silk and hit his chest in a burst of fire that spread through his belly. It had been good enough to call it a nightmare, because he could tell from the scared look on Zan's face that his new partner wasn't willing to go there, and now he wanted it.
The dream had been real, as many of his were. It wasn't one of the two-dimensional papier-mache pizza-dreams, the kind that felt like watching a bad porno on late-night Cinemax. It was real and present and under his skin, scent and taste and shivering texture all part of it.
"After that curse," Zan had said, and Star had shivered somewhere inside at the remembered taste of blood, "No nightmares?"
Plenty, Star thought, Because I could feel you in me and it was like something bitter and holy all at once.
Finding out Zan was bound by a vow of celibacy was like turning legal the day they passed prohibition. The near miss made his mouth that much dryer, his thirst that much greater. It made him a little sympathetic (but only a little) to that poor Kevin kid. No wonder he'd been so needy, so desperate. To have that (dark hair swinging in the strobe lights of the club; warm brown skin like cinnamon and honey poured over sweet, shifting muscle; all crazy kinetic energy that shouldn't have looked so centered, so calm, with so much happy, eager violence just waiting to be loosed) within arm's reach only to realize it was like grabbing a handful of smoke... to have so much of something you wanted and be denied the fullness of it... If it weren't for that curse thing, Star would probably have already taken Kev out for a few rounds of beer and a shoulder to cry on. He might have to do that sometime soon anyway.
And okay, part of him was starting to feel like a possessive bastard, because he was Zan's partner now and Zan had pulled him off a ledge and pinned him to the ground (and later, to the door of his truck) and Zan wanted him. It was more than the dreams, more than the coral flush across Zan's nose in the mornings, the guilty way his eyes slid away from Star for the first thirty minutes after they woke up. It was the way Zan automatically gravitated to wherever he was, pulled as if by a magnet, a homing beacon, knowing without having to look. It was the way Star could feel him like a ghost clinging to him anytime he left -- which was unfair, because sometimes he left just to get away, for fear he'd do something horrible and stupid like kissing him. Again.
The feeling was mutual (the taste of drought on his tongue was a witness with a condemning testimony), and his leaving was proof of it. There was something satisfying in the masochism of it, like pulling the trigger on himself for every wicked thought he had. And when he came back on the early morning side of midnight and Zan was waiting up with eyes that swept his body in a rush of worry and transparent relief, it was the burning surge of resurrected desire that closed his throat and cut off his words and sent him straight to bed with barely a nod. It was a live bullet in a spinning chamber knowing that nightmares of one kind or another waited for him on the other side of sleep, and he smiled as the hammer came down.
//End//
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*glomp*
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Thank you SO much. <3
Also, where did you get that icon!? It's gorgeous.
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I made the icon, actually! It's from the last page of the utterly gorgeous side-mini-comic thing that's posted here and here. The dream sequences are some of my favorite parts of Metanoia.
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Those are gorgeous!
Waaah, now I'm all, "When's the next chapter? WHEN!?"
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I knoooooow. I'm trying so hard to be patient.
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And the "MINE." Gods, yes.
We don't even have an approximation, do we?
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No, I don't think so. Rah makes occasional progress updates on her dA main page, but I think it's a 'see it when we see it' sort of thing. They seem like pretty busy monkeys.
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...I need icons of blood running down Zan's throat, I just DO. Will probably actually get around to making them sometime soon.
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W00T!!