17 July 2003
Fandom: Fastlane
Post-episode "Mighty Blue"
Feedback will make me your bitch: janestclair15@hotmail.com
Summary: They aren't good at coping at the best of times.

Disclaimer: If Fastlane were mine.  Wow.  I might not have made it quite that gay.  Wouldn't have believed I could get away with it.

Thanks muchly to Misha for nursing me through the writing of.




Their versions of comfort don't always intersect. 

Three times now, Deaq's caught Van during his favourite loss of control.  West Hollywood club bathrooms, on his knees while people snort all around him and he sucks dick he knows he'll never see again.  He rubs his tongue against the roof of his mouth for hours before he can get away and do it.  Two drinks, one nod.  The bathrooms are decent -- they design them for guys on their knees -- but he'd hit filthy rest stops if that's what he needed to do to get it.

In fact.

The first time Deaq found him, they hadn't even been debriefed yet.  Just crashed out in a motel two hours from L.A. on the edge of the desert.  Two a.m. outside in the dark with faceless, slack-bodied trucker, because it didn't matter who it was.  More important that he was on his knees in the dirt and dry growth with strange hands in his hair and sweat running down the back of his neck.  He felt the guy tense and looked and Deaq was there with his hands in his pockets.  Not really watching, but looking.

The guy said, "Fuck off," and he did.  But he was waiting half an hour later when Van came in.  Offered him a coke he didn't want.  If he didn't want the taste in the back of his mouth, he wouldn't swallow.

They talked about it later, because they talk about everything, eventually.  Their job is very, very boring, punctuated with moments of life-threatening excitement.  The word 'repressed' came up, as did 'self-destructive,' 'control,' and 'stupid fucker.'  Until Deaq just said, "Okay."

Van's methods are at least quick, easy, and anonymous.  Deaq takes all night.  He's found parts of the city where no one remembers the first version of him.  He goes down in cars that don't make the Candy Store's show floor and hits house parties.  Bungalows in south central with bars on the windows and cheap, twenty-year-old couches in front of the TV and so many people in them that you can't be alone even in the can. 

He gets very, very drunk.  He plays cards, dances with strangers, holds other people's kids while they shake with exhaustion in the middle of the night.  When the police come, he doesn't make eye contact with any of them.

He wakes up not-alone.  Occasionally on top of the covers while someone softer than him curls up underneath.  More often surrounded by the toddlers whose guardian he's somehow become.  They know him as a good guy.  Before he takes off, he makes sure there's cereal and milk and orange juice on the table, and he's been known to drop the odd kid at school on his way home.

He walks in hung over and bright eyed.  Van walks in with his shoulders hunched.  They nod at each other and sometimes they talk about it.  Later.

Neither of them knows what Billie needs.  Van thinks if she had rituals, Alexa was probably the centre of them, and it makes this harder.  He wishes she'd go out, at least, instead of pacing the Candy Store.  She stripped down to bare feet a while ago, but she keeps moving.  Strokes the cars, taps the money with her fingertips, flicks the dope stacks, rubs a hip against the 18th century French furniture they've never found a use for. 

She needs.  Something.  She needs ice cream.  She needs to bite her nails.  She needs to get drunk, get laid, get high.

Van and Deaq talk about Billie.  Bra size, sexual preference, relative ball-busting ability (compared to, say, a large prison Nazi, maybe the guy on Oz), evil overlord tendencies, secretiveness, heroin addiction, smoking, rumours.  People they've mistaken for her on the phone at four in the morning.  Whether they could, together, take her in a fight. 

Right now, Van's boneless.  He rolled with an exploding van this afternoon and didn't stop moving for eight more hours.  The bruises on his shoulders are almost black.  Deaq's as bruised as he is, but he hasn't lain down yet.  Rocked hips against the rail, watching Billie pace.  Twitching like he needs something of his own.

"What?"

"You think?"

"I think in sentences, man."

"Yeah.  I'll let you know when I figure what I'm thinkin'."

"You okay?"

"Told you I'd let you know."

Van tries to shrug before deciding it hurts too much.  He thinks about the case of jagermeister downstairs and wonders if he still remembers how to mix boilermakers.  Thinks about the half-bottle of Stoli in a box of odd objects in the storeroom and the dry ice under heavy refrigeration underground.

It takes seventeen minutes to create sub-zero alcohol.  He shatters three glasses in the process and cracks the bottle.  Finally smashes the neck off and pours shots with half a prayer for no ground glass in the cups.

"Hey."  Hands one to Deaq, who downs it and shakes all over for a hard second.  Deaq pulls himself together and reaches for another one, gets that too.  Three more before his shoulders soften and he crumples next to Van on the couch.

He keeps drinking for a long time.  Water, vodka.  When Van leans into him, he just opens an arm and pulls him closer.  Nods when Van licks his throat and noses his way downwards.  Pushes Deaq's shirt up and mouths his belly.  One hand in the man's pants and his mouth sucking bruises to the surface of that already damaged skin.

"You think . . ."

Van bites him.  Don't.

Goes down on him.  Pants open, belt laid back, briefs down, cock hard against the roof of his mouth.  Sucking hard and rubbing his tongue on the underside and breathing through it.  Bent over him from the side, hair spreading over his lap.  Hands on expensive thighs, holding on.

Today wasn't even his trauma and he still needed this.  Hands in his hair, push at the back of his mouth.  Suck until something lets go, let his brain slide.

"Fuck."

Fingers on the back of his neck.  He thinks Deaq's still drinking, up above him where he can't see.  He'd be drinking straight from the bottle if it wasn't raw-sharp around its mouth.

It doesn't take that long.  Half his imagination says he can taste Alexa on Deaq, but it's nothing he should be thinking about.  Just skin in his mouth, shaking and coming and yeah, that really is what he wanted.

He stays down, after, face buried in Deaq's thighs.  Just breathing.  He can feel the alcohol's spill down the back of his neck, but it's not worth moving for. 

"No, hey.  C'mere."  Deaq pulls Van up and lays them both out.  Nails on his shoulders, peeling his shirt off and then scratching him hard until he relaxes.

He's chewing into Deaq's arm when Billie touches him.  Soft fingers on the back of his neck, and a hot, raw patch that he only identifies later as a cigarette burn.  Nails completely different than Deaq's cutting into his back.

Deaq offers her a drink.  Raw glass warming now the dry ice is gone. 

Van watches Billie in the periphery of his sight.  There are nail-marks running up and down her arms.  The burns on her wrists could be just a chain-smoking accident.

She sits when Deaq pulls at her, though.  By their shoulders, watching Van burrow deeper against the body under his.  He can feel Deaq shift until his hand's in the small of her back.  Rub along her spine and waistband like he really believes she'll give.

Except she does.  She pushes Van until he slides off, then crawls in between them.  Without shoes and her personal space, she's tiny.  There's muscle all over her, though, and she's strong enough to hurt him even if he didn't hurt already.  She only shoulders him out, though.  Bends in and kisses Deaq very, very carefully, less like it's what she wants and more like she's looking for something.

Deaq bends out of the kiss.  Pulls her in against his neck and rubs her back with both hands.  Then catches Van with his fingertips and leads him in close enough to kiss over Billie's shoulder.

Van's half-hard, which was fine until he shifted close enough to press against her ass.  So very, very wrong, but the body on the other side of her keeps pulling at him.  Even if he doesn't.  Kiss.  Personal rule of the comfort ritual that never before included blowing his friends or rubbing against his boss.

She doesn't cry.  She cried on Deaq for two minutes, hours ago, and since then she's been winding tighter.  Deaq kisses Van around her and she only fists her hands in Deaq's shirt and breathes.  Hard little gasps that don't seem to connect with Van's dick against her or the sex-smell covering both guys.

Even.  Deaq's fingers in Van's pants, stroking him, elbow on Billie's hip, and she doesn't look.  Doesn't let go, either.  Van can feel his growls run through her hair like he can feel her breath in his gut, smell her on his skin.  Calluses snag on his cock, just barely slick enough for this, but it feels good, like a hand sunk inside him.

"God…"

"Shut up."

He bites her hair when he comes.  The back of her head's against his mouth, and he can't not.  It's too quiet to scream, but the pleasure built through a lot of too-light touches, and it almost hurts.  Still, deep and wrung out of him, slick on his belly and Deaq's fingers and Billie's side, bare where her shirt rode up.

Still panting when he rolls her down onto her back.  She would never in a million years let him touch her, but when he bends over her, she pulls the neck of her shirt down until he can see her breast curve up into her bra.  He bites her there.  Sucks through his teeth for a minute and feels her arch before he lets go.

When he stands up, Deaq and Billie tangle around each other.  His smell's all over them and they're all over him, but he's so thirsty.  Down to just his jeans, padding through the Candy Store looking for water.  The first bottle goes down so fast he can hardly feel himself swallow and has to brace to keep from throwing it back up.  Second one against his face while he leans against Billie's Mercedes S-class.

There are cigarette butts in a heap on the floor.  They're only half-crushed, and not that cold.  He picks one up and runs it under his nose.  His tongue runs over the filter semi-consciously.  He could almost swear he can taste her on it.



jane
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