The world is a very noisy place (hear me)
Mar. 24th, 2007 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ultraviolet9a>> The world is a very noisy place (hear me)
TITLE: The world is a very noisy place (hear me)
AUTHOR: ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: Spoiler for Season 2, because it’s set shortly after BuaBS. Mild spoilers for the ending of Ats.
ultraviolet9aSPOILER: Spoiler for Season 2, because it’s set shortly after BuaBS. Mild spoilers for the ending of Ats.
GENRE: Het. Crossover with Angel the series.
CHARACTERS: Jo Harvelle/Spike, god help me. (Mentions of Ash).
CHARACTERS: Jo Harvelle/Spike, god help me. (Mentions of Ash).
SUMMARY: Hunting leaves a dryness in his mouth, a groan in his bones and a spark in his senses.
RATING: NC17.
FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t mind that I don’t own Jo. I mind that I don’t own Spike and the Winchesters. Oh well. Disclaimer and all that.
FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t mind that I don’t own Jo. I mind that I don’t own Spike and the Winchesters. Oh well. Disclaimer and all that.
He’s just so fucking tired. Sometimes he contemplates biting down the barrel of a gun and then squeeze the trigger. He imagines there’ll be noise, a red light, momentary pain. And then blessed darkness. Knows he won’t do it. He gets shitfaced drunk instead and it’s not so difficult. Plenty of joints around for that. Alcohol smells like piss and tastes like fire but leaves the so-sought numbness behind. That haze, drowning out everything.
Sometimes.
And he hunts. Moves around. Doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. It’s all that’s left, all that matters. The hunt, the numbness, the haze.
But there are other times when the numbness and the haze are followed by a goddamn clarity that is blinding, blade-sharp, bringing forth those memories he’s trying so hard to forget. Like love. And pain.
One and the same really.
There’s a feeling seeping in his bones when he starts thinking about his life and what he comes up with is nothing. He dreads it. The sensation, certainty of being totally utterly alone. And lost. No one to claim him. No one to love him. So absolutely lost that he feels like throwing himself in to the ocean. Moving in the water like driftwood. Weightless and peaceful. And dead.
Poets got it all wrong, see? Pain is not something abstract and it sure as hell ain’t beautiful or redeeming. It’s a hand that claws its way deep into the heart and starts wrenching.
It hurts. So fucking much.
He’s all alone and his life is silent and his last hunt has brought him clarity. He fucking hates clarity. What he wants is a beer.
****
The place smells of smoke, cheap drink and sweat. The change of scent from the cool crisp air outside to this hits him with the force of a sledgehammer. He doesn’t mind. It’s the familiar smell of all honky-town bars, complete with the image of the tired, pretty waitress polishing the bar.
He enters just when a man staggers past him outside. He smells of grief. Vomit. A bad hangover to come.
“It’s closin’ time,” she says, looking at him. She’s young and has hard eyes, the kind of eyes he remembers on Buffy or Wes. She’s behind the bar, and her hand moves beneath it, making her mouth one tight line.
“Just want a beer, is all,” he says leaning against the door and takes one step inside.
She looks at him.
“Christo.”
Oh Christ, he just wants a bloody beer in a warm dry place. Doesn’t want her white knuckles against the beer bottle, the other hand somewhere behind the counter surely grabbing a weapon. Doesn’t want the blonde hair doing a piss up job trying to hide the fading bruises beneath. Doesn’t want the dark eyes staring, looking at god knows what ghosts of the past, but surely as hell not him. Just wants a bloody beer. Or many of them.
Cold drops trails down his hair to the back of his neck. He shivers. There’s only so much a leather jacket can do to keep the rain off.
“Name’s Spike,” he says. “But nice try. Can I please have that bloody beer now?”
One hand is still beneath the counter. The other is holding on to an empty beer bottle. Her knuckles are white. Time trickles away.
Her hand relaxes.
“One beer, then you’re gone.”
He nods.
****
He’s tired and he’s wet. Has been feeling tired since they all scattered, some dead, some better off dead, their last fight just a small kernel of mud in a big cog. He should have died.
Hunting leaves a dryness in his mouth, a groan in his bones and a spark in his senses. He takes off his duster and shakes it at the entrance, and thinks he can hear the drops letting go of the leather, hitting the wall, the floor in silvery thuds.
She serves him in silence and he welcomes it. The smell of beer is stronger than stale smoke and sweat, and he reaches his hand out tentatively like sinner to saint.
There’s blood caked under his fingernails the rain didn’t wash off. He flicks his eyes to her, and she flicks her own eyes away from his hand but doesn’t say anything. Girl’s not stupid.
Beer trickles like balm down his throat. He shuffles through his pockets, then through his jacket. Looks at her.
“Got a ciggie, love?” He needs the raspy sense of smoke.
She shakes her head, moves out of the counter. She’s got a lean, bony body that moves in well-practiced motions as she gathers empty glasses and bottles from the tables and loads them on a big brown tray. She lifts it. The glass makes a faint tinkling sound like fairy bells. She is about to lean it on the counter when one small sway is about to send a bottle flying.
Spike reaches out to grab it in midair.
That’s how it starts anyway.
****
Everything becomes a pandemonium of noise.
There’s the fleshy, thick sound of her knuckles colliding with his cheekbone. It is drowned out by the cold sound of glass crashing as the loaded tray falls almost in slow motion. His own thud on the floor, flesh wrapped in fabric on tiles, a small groan. A slight whisking sound of his own fingers touching his hurt flesh. Her breathlessness.
She packs a mean punch.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she hisses. He thinks he can almost see her vibrating like a tense chord.
“I don’t. Didn’t,” he says, leaning against his elbows. The floor is cold but right now moving requires effort. “A bottle was about to drop. Meant to catch it.”
He looks at her feet, the floor around her, glittering with the shattered aftermath like a night sky in reverse, nods with his head to it.
“Much good that did,” he adds, then slowly draws himself up. There’s no other sound save that of distant rain. And her panting. Short, quick breaths of hyperventilation, hands clenched into white knuckled fists.
Eerily familiar patterns of personal space and hidden bruises and pain confused with anger and oh he can wait forever in patience watching her.
Cuz he’s been here before. He’s always been here somehow, just him and a girl that is stronger, that is weaker, that can hurt him, a hurt he craves. It’s always about a girl, the story of his life. It’s always about hurt and need, and in one moment the fading bruises, the shadows in the eyes and the golden corn-glint of her hair is his.
Her breathing becomes longer, more trembling. She closes her eyes for a short moment.
“I’ll get you some ice,” she says voice almost steady. Broken glass crunches under her feet as she tiptoes back to the counter, puts some ice in a clean towel. Spike doesn’t move.
She walks again over glass, and hands it to him.
“Just put it on,” she says quietly.
Her hands are shaking and feel as cold as the ice they held. Then she goes again in the bar, opens a whiskey, pours two glasses. Pushes one to him. The other she takes down in one go. Pours another. A third one.
Whiskey feels good down his throat. Ice feels good on his face. The towel smells clean and homey, a scent as surprising as her punch.
There is a swooshing, crackling sound as she sweeps up the shards of broken glass. The strokes are long and efficient and Spike leans against the bar and keeps count inside him, the way one keeps count for the thunder, to see how close the storm is.
Oh, it’s close. It’s close alright.
Glass swept away and dumped in the trash, no other proof of what went down other than the ice pack on his cheekbone and the broom still in her hands.
There’s a sharp ringing sound and she jumps up. Then her free hand fumbles her jeans pocket and she takes out a cell phone bringing it to her ear.
“Ash…it’s you.”
There’s a sound there, just there, that Spike picks up. It doesn’t lack tenderness, but there it is, that small taint of disappointment, as if she had expected, wanted, needed someone else on the other end of the line. And that is familiar too.
Her answers are short. Clipped. I’m alright and it’s been quiet and nothing’s happened and I’m not ready to come back yet and I’m alright and I’m safe.
And you’re a liar, Spike’s thinking.
“Tell mom…” She switches the phone off, pushes it back in the pocket.
Broom still in hand, fingers clenching and unclenching around it, hair hiding her face, but not the shaking of the shoulders.
He lets the icepack rest on the counter, walks to her, takes the broom from her hands. She passes her palm over her eyes, takes deep breaths. It’s not enough.
His hand is on her shoulder, warm, heavy.
“It’s alright, pet,” he says using the voice he used thousand times before on Drusilla and Buffy. “It’s alright, really.”
It’s a litany of the same phrase over and over again and she doesn’t smell of fear or anger, but loss and pain and knowledge learned the hard way and her shoulder moves hard under his hand.
He drapes her with his body because that’s all he can do, and strokes her hair (coarser than Buffy’s, softer than Dru’s) and doesn’t promise her a happy ending because he doesn’t believe in them.
But that’s alright. There’s no numbness and no clarity anymore. Just a girl, and when her sobbing subsides, she tells him in a whiskey-streaked breath that her name is Jo.
So Spike wipes her wet cheeks with his fingers, and then his mouth, and then she pushes him away with hard palms. Too late. He already heard the small hitched breath when his mouth brushed hers.
Jo finishes with the cleaning. Empties the ashtrays. Wipes the tables. She doesn’t tell him to leave.
Then she’s at the door, locking up. From the inside.
****
Spike likes them blonde and tough. Jo smells wrong; not the vanilla orange flower scent of Buffy, nor the heavy muskier scent of Dru. But that’s not important. Her hair looks right. She’s got hard edges where Buffy had been soft, and her eyes carry roughness. And loss.
Her jeans are down her thighs and he’s as hard as can be the moment he realizes her panties are cotton, pink, with a lacy trim. He curses himself and then he’s turning her over on the table fumbling with his own belt when she says no, not this way. He’s barely holding it together now and he wouldn’t have let her turn, except there’s fear in her voice. Ghosts, he’s thinking, letting her face him, and then slides her jeans down even further. There’s an embarrassing and absolutely un-coordinated moment of them both trying to remove her boots and jeans and panties at the same time, but eventually they manage and Jo is naked from the waist down on a table she had wiped clean half an hour ago.
Lean, taut, pale flesh, her breath shallow and small pools of blood on her cheekbones and neck and eyes that for a moment carry no age.
He doesn’t leave any margin for backing out. His fingers enter and rub and she’s already wet. He slips over a condom and enters her with no other preamble and his mouth sucks on her breast over the T-shirt, sound of flesh and moist fabric smelling clean, so clean, and her small sharp gasps (more pain than pleasure, he’ll realize later) are drowned out by his own as he pumps faster and faster, as the table shakes, as her legs are wrapped around him as pale as he, as he calls her name over and over again to anchor him here, to her, not another blonde girl he used to know. He comes hard and fast, trying not to rest all his weight against her, and when he pulls out there’s that hard edge again in the stiff line of her mouth, even as he kisses her.
Spike finds a towel and cleans himself up. Jo sits up on the table, hands clasped in front of her vagina as if she’s at a doctor’s office. Her eyes dart around for her jeans.
“Don’t move, pet,” Spike says, walking back to her.
“Look, Spike…” Jo says. She’s avoiding his eyes. Spike puts his palm over her mouth.
“Shhh, pet,” he says. “No talking. And everything might turn out fine.”
His hands move between her legs spreading them open, and he lowers himself over her.
She doesn’t speak.
He buries his mouth between her thighs till her body arches and her moans are louder than any other sound. She comes in wave-like spasms, pulsating and writhing on the table. She doesn’t call out his name.
That’s alright. She isn’t lying.
She dresses up in silence. She looks looser. When she smiles, some of that hard edge has mellowed.
“You a hunter,” she says. Spike nods.
“You’ll leave.”
It’s not a question. Not a request. Just a fact.
“ ’s that so?”
She shrugs.
“They all leave eventually,” she says.
And we’re the ones that stay behind. He doesn’t say it.
Her hair is sweaty, sticking on her face. She brushes it aside with gentle fingers.
“I’m sorry I punched you.”
Spike can’t help the deep throaty laugh escaping his mouth.
“I got an inkling about that, pet.”
He looks out the window at the back of the counter. It’s way late. Way early.
“Let me buy you breakfast,” he says.
Jo looks at him. It’s her hard stare, almost as hard as her punch.
He sighs.
“Not a thank-you-for-a-great-fuck breakfast. Just…breakfast.”
“You always that blunt?”
His mouth twitches.
“Only when I’m basking in the afterglow.”
Jo laughs. Bites her lower lip. There’s nothing sexy about the gesture. Just a decision reached. She finds her jacket and walks to the door. She unlocks, they walk out, bolts shut again.
It’s still drizzling. A random car passes by.
And just for a while, the world seems neither too noisy, nor too silent, but caught up in a perfect state in-between.
-The End.
SIDENOTE: I don’t know why I wrote this pairing. Honest to John Winchester, I don’t. I just woke up this morning and thought (just like some jokes start): This guy walks into a bar. Turns out this guy was Spike.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 03:50 pm (UTC)That’s alright. She isn’t lying.
Oh, Spike.
And then:
“Only when I’m basking in the afterglow.”
Yeah, that's our boy!!
That was just lovely--thank you! Very glad the thought occurred to you and you followed up on it.
*has no Spike icon; has no Jo icon; settles for Wesley and the giant talking cheeseburger*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 04:00 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's our boy!! He is gorgeous, isn't he? I'm telling you, till the Winchesters showed up? There was no other character to rival him. ... (Maybe Methos. A bit.)
Am glad you liked it, thank you! :) I'm a gen girl at heart so writing het? Awkward. In the what-the-hell-am-I-writing-is-this-any-good-? kind of awkward.
*has no Jo icon; has no Spike icon; has no Ats icon; has few icons, really; settles for John, cuz, you know. John* :)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 09:12 pm (UTC)Their little worlds collided so good you couldn't even see the seams. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 11:21 am (UTC)And yeah, I miss Spike too. I could write whole elegies about him, really.
Am happy about the seam comment. You made my day sweetie!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 11:23 am (UTC)The way I see it, both are jaded and both have abandonment and not being loved issues. It just...kinda clicked in my head. Though I have to admit that it is an odd pairing. *nods*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-25 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-26 04:07 pm (UTC)For what ever reason you did, I'm glad you did. Even though I can't connect with Spike (I've never watch DA)it's still is good, but of course I say that about everything you write so you can't go on that.
That & I'm glad it's not a Dean & Jo pairing. Dean's mine bitch (Jo), back off. LOL
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 04:35 pm (UTC)And...since Dean is obviously yours...could you share, please? *winning grin* Or tell his brother or dad to drop by?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:07 am (UTC)And I really liked your Jo. Spike was spot on, too!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-27 05:07 am (UTC)And I really liked your Jo. Spike was spot on, too!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 04:41 am (UTC)My, but it's nice to see Spike again, sounding just like himself, and to get a look at Jo on her own. The encounter makes perfect sense to me as you write it here. Thank you for a very satisfying read!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 08:17 am (UTC)