[ you're driving down the highway in the middle of the night, and a wild dog runs across the asphalt. you skid straight to the ditch, wheels kicking up gravel and dirt; something breaks your headlights, and something slams into the car doors hard enough to dent the metal.
the air bags don't deploy. your head bounces forward, like one of those dashboard toys with spring coils attached to the neck. red drips down from somewhere; gravity tells you where it stops but not where it begins.
just outside the door, something else is breathing with you.
you can almost hear god sighing. you can almost feel him shake his head, as something breaks your windshield and snarls.
—
not a dog, but a man.
there are stranger things to worry about, of course. oil spills on black tar, an engine sparking, a car turned belly-up and groaning under its own weight. johnny crawls over the glass, bleeding into the road with the grace of a child. not a dog, but a man; she hit him at full speed, the impact throwing him a ways off from where she thought they'd started. there's blood and scraps of cloth ahead, several feet from where the man is wheezing and groaning.
rasping cough; broken ribs, then. probably bleeding into his stomach, probably dying — but he's not. she knows how death sounds, how it tastes, how it sours the air and turns it bitter in the mouth. a heartbeat stronger than a horse's, she thinks wildly, hysterically. when johnny looks up to the moon in a daze, it winks at her, curved and heavy.
huh. would you look at that.
not a man, then, but a dog.
—
she watches over him for two nights with a gun aimed at his head. on the third night, wild-eyed and keening, he stops biting at the leather and metal. she holds his head in her lap, her own scratches pink-raw and healed over, as she feeds him pieces of meat. well-done is no good. the wetter and redder the cut, the easier it goes down his throat.
not a dog, but a wolf.
—
the car is her idea, but the execution is all his.
—
"i've picked up a stray," she tells clemments over the phone. the screen is cracked through; she's surprised it still registers her touch when she taps on the glass. "might take a detour."
"is it safe?"
"is it ever?"
clemments laughs with the roughness of a chronic smoker. "just be back in time for the c-suite conference. i need you to shake down a few well-dressed thugs."
a hum and a nod. to her left a shower turns on, then off, then back on again. johnny wiggles her toes; the last of her visible bruises are gone. "get me a room for two. not at the four seasons, alright? one of the nicer hotels, with a view."
"champagne? one bed?"
"two beds. a bible."
—
not a wolf, but a man. he calls himself elias.
johnny, she names herself. doesn't explain any further, and he doesn't ask; she appreciates that he doesn't. no isn't that a boy's name? or is that really your name?, just a confused little wrinkle between his eyebrow and a shaky nod.
it's easy enough to convince him to take the wheel; easier if she spoke to him in the divine tongue, but she doesn't trust the magic that's poisoned him. it's poison that tastes like overripe apples, with a faint sourness that sticks to her teeth. an old magic, maybe just as old as the ghost chain-wrapped around her bones. life is complicated enough.
elias is both old and young. both nervous and steel-cold. it's the nature of the beast, pun not intended — two halves of the same mind not quite at war with each other, but not making for good neighbors either. they're nasty ride-alongs, poorly mannered, the type to put their feet up on the dashboard with a bristling grin.
she has money and a crushed kidney that needs healing. thankfully she has one left intact, and he has a driver's license. he knows how to read.
you killed my car. you get to drive.
—
it takes almost two weeks for things to break. ]
Outside is where all the people are. In here, you just have to worry about me.
[ he's pale at the gills but flushed high on the cheeks, shaking like a fever. sweating like it too; when she presses the back of her hand to his forehead, he's as hot as high noon. overhead the cheap fluorescent lights buzz and blink like flies.
johnny crouches down so she can look up at him, her arms loosely wrapped around her knees. two weeks of endless roads and dingy motel rooms, and her shirts remain pristine white. ]
Tell me what happens. Tell me what you need.
Edited (phrasing choices i swear im done) 2025-05-26 22:39 (UTC)
[ The words spit out rough. Two weeks of sitting by her side, held in her lap that third night, bound by the click of the safety and the way he'd opened his mouth to her. The hot press of his tongue over her fingers. Blood and iron and consecration, the wet click of his throat as he'd swallowed each slice and still asked for more.
Hunger squeezes inside of his chest. Endless roads and dingy motel rooms and she's pristine, some angel who dares to touch him, fleas and all, flannels and dirt near his collar. Terrifying. Unknowable. Elias doesn't know if he wants to vomit because his insides hurt or because it's been two weeks and the animal inside of him has never known how to live afraid like this, in the low-lying hum of terror against something unimaginably large.
But he doesn't want to hurt her. (Doesn't know if he can.) His hands tremble when they run restlessly over his thighs, clammy palms bunching and smoothing the fabric of his sweats. ]
Need to eat somethin'.
[ Someone. He looks at her, glassy-eyed. A shard of shame reflects in the blue of his irises. ]
Usually find faces people won't miss.
[ Two weeks and the red meat helped but it isn't what his body is cursed to want. He'll die, if he doesn't, joints aching, higher thought dissipating until all that's left is something feral and intentionally cruel, a wolf with pitch-black fur that isn't satisfied with bringing down life that moves on four legs. A rabid thing, trapped in his other shape, screaming at himself to stop but unable to think about anything except how fucking good it feels to have someone squirming underneath him, alive right until they're not—
His mouth salivates. He swallows thickly, ignoring the taste of iron in the back of his teeth. ]
M'no good to you like this, Johnny. Should've put me down when you met me. [ He laughs. Some bitter, flinty thing. ] Left me at a morgue.
[ Dead doesn't taste the same as alive. But it can work, sometimes, if he can stomach it. Elias closes his eyes so tight he sees spots and takes a shaky breath, hands balled into fists over his knees. Short nails too blunt to dig into his skin. Loathes that, loathes the black hole of feeling, loathes the way he wants her cool hand back over his forehead. ]
[ her voice comes quiet enough that the words take a while to unstick from her throat. but they come out clear, pinning themselves to the air between her and elias. she circles her fingers around the bone of his ankle, a light touch, a brittle reminder that she's real. that she has done much with her hands the past two weeks, feeding him and holding him, strapping him to a bedframe and pressing the muzzle of a gun to the soft parts of his head. ]
Killing me is the worst thing you can do at the moment. I'm not worried about that.
[ it's true enough. it's true in the only way that matters; johnny could die in this room and the wretched thing that bound itself to her will find a way to bring her back. every cell in her body no longer belongs to her. not one hair, not one fingernail, not one drop of spit or sweat. she bleeds and the red glistens with holy light for those with eyes to see.
angels are the greediest creatures to ever walk the earth. she has looked upon them and learned to be afraid. just as gabriel had appeared before the young mary, the handmaid of the lord, mother of ends and beginnings — an angel came upon her and bid her serve them.
for this is my body, which will be given up for you and for many.
there is no other answer allowed but yes. that's the difference between man and other, johnny knew; a man could say no and mean it. anything else could say no, and find itself twisted by circumstance or some greater force until it either died or surrendered.
death would be easy. killing each other, killing elias, or killing her — that would be the easy part. so she asks; ]
How much of a man do you need?
[ her hand tightens just the bit around his ankle. shifts, moves up to his calf — the muscle is stronger there, and she can feel it jump under her touch, even through the scratchy denim he's wearing. seven millimetres further back, and she can paralyse the leg with a needle.
he needs new clothes. she'll find him something when they get to the city. ]
[ No. I won't. As easy as the words heel. Elias stays hunched, shoulders rolled inward and into himself, and he huffs a laugh and the sound of it is wet, clicking into the back of his throat. A laugh even though it isn't funny. Tears, even though he's not, for a single minute, a single fragmentary second, mournful.
He still has his jeans on. His boots, even. Yet he can feel her hand up his calf and his teeth itch, every part of his body uncomfortable, skin too tight, coiled strength and discomfort. His lips, chapped, when he exhales a long shudder, finally opening his eyes and looking at her. ]
No.
[ They don't need to be alive. ]
It's better, if it—
[ He's never had to explain it. Put words to it, this vile, profane, fucked up thing he shares with so few. That so clearly makes him unhuman. He shakes his head, violently enough that stray strands unstick from behind his ears, fall messily over his forehead.
The last time this happened, more appetite than lunar, Elias followed a man on a greyhound bus. The guy had looked the type: ill-fitting clothes, yellowing teeth. 5'6", maybe 5'7". He hadn't finished him and left him there on the side of the road, offal for the earth. The next meal for the desperate predator with a stomach to keep themselves alive, picking the dirt clean. ]
Can get by on a little, if it's recent. If it's warm.
[ He's more wolf than man. The measure of a person, the sight that calls, even something as pedestrian as belief — Elias has none of those things. But he looks at Johnny anyway, studying the careful, cool planes of her face, when he says, quietly, ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cracks knuckles
the air bags don't deploy. your head bounces forward, like one of those dashboard toys with spring coils attached to the neck. red drips down from somewhere; gravity tells you where it stops but not where it begins.
just outside the door, something else is breathing with you.
you can almost hear god sighing. you can almost feel him shake his head, as something breaks your windshield and snarls.
—
not a dog, but a man.
there are stranger things to worry about, of course. oil spills on black tar, an engine sparking, a car turned belly-up and groaning under its own weight. johnny crawls over the glass, bleeding into the road with the grace of a child. not a dog, but a man; she hit him at full speed, the impact throwing him a ways off from where she thought they'd started. there's blood and scraps of cloth ahead, several feet from where the man is wheezing and groaning.
rasping cough; broken ribs, then. probably bleeding into his stomach, probably dying — but he's not. she knows how death sounds, how it tastes, how it sours the air and turns it bitter in the mouth. a heartbeat stronger than a horse's, she thinks wildly, hysterically. when johnny looks up to the moon in a daze, it winks at her, curved and heavy.
huh. would you look at that.
not a man, then, but a dog.
—
she watches over him for two nights with a gun aimed at his head. on the third night, wild-eyed and keening, he stops biting at the leather and metal. she holds his head in her lap, her own scratches pink-raw and healed over, as she feeds him pieces of meat. well-done is no good. the wetter and redder the cut, the easier it goes down his throat.
not a dog, but a wolf.
—
the car is her idea, but the execution is all his.
—
"i've picked up a stray," she tells clemments over the phone. the screen is cracked through; she's surprised it still registers her touch when she taps on the glass. "might take a detour."
"is it safe?"
"is it ever?"
clemments laughs with the roughness of a chronic smoker. "just be back in time for the c-suite conference. i need you to shake down a few well-dressed thugs."
a hum and a nod. to her left a shower turns on, then off, then back on again. johnny wiggles her toes; the last of her visible bruises are gone. "get me a room for two. not at the four seasons, alright? one of the nicer hotels, with a view."
"champagne? one bed?"
"two beds. a bible."
—
not a wolf, but a man. he calls himself elias.
johnny, she names herself. doesn't explain any further, and he doesn't ask; she appreciates that he doesn't. no isn't that a boy's name? or is that really your name?, just a confused little wrinkle between his eyebrow and a shaky nod.
it's easy enough to convince him to take the wheel; easier if she spoke to him in the divine tongue, but she doesn't trust the magic that's poisoned him. it's poison that tastes like overripe apples, with a faint sourness that sticks to her teeth. an old magic, maybe just as old as the ghost chain-wrapped around her bones. life is complicated enough.
elias is both old and young. both nervous and steel-cold. it's the nature of the beast, pun not intended — two halves of the same mind not quite at war with each other, but not making for good neighbors either. they're nasty ride-alongs, poorly mannered, the type to put their feet up on the dashboard with a bristling grin.
she has money and a crushed kidney that needs healing. thankfully she has one left intact, and he has a driver's license. he knows how to read.
you killed my car. you get to drive.
—
it takes almost two weeks for things to break. ]
Outside is where all the people are. In here, you just have to worry about me.
[ he's pale at the gills but flushed high on the cheeks, shaking like a fever. sweating like it too; when she presses the back of her hand to his forehead, he's as hot as high noon. overhead the cheap fluorescent lights buzz and blink like flies.
johnny crouches down so she can look up at him, her arms loosely wrapped around her knees. two weeks of endless roads and dingy motel rooms, and her shirts remain pristine white. ]
Tell me what happens. Tell me what you need.
no subject
[ The words spit out rough. Two weeks of sitting by her side, held in her lap that third night, bound by the click of the safety and the way he'd opened his mouth to her. The hot press of his tongue over her fingers. Blood and iron and consecration, the wet click of his throat as he'd swallowed each slice and still asked for more.
Hunger squeezes inside of his chest. Endless roads and dingy motel rooms and she's pristine, some angel who dares to touch him, fleas and all, flannels and dirt near his collar. Terrifying. Unknowable. Elias doesn't know if he wants to vomit because his insides hurt or because it's been two weeks and the animal inside of him has never known how to live afraid like this, in the low-lying hum of terror against something unimaginably large.
But he doesn't want to hurt her. (Doesn't know if he can.) His hands tremble when they run restlessly over his thighs, clammy palms bunching and smoothing the fabric of his sweats. ]
Need to eat somethin'.
[ Someone. He looks at her, glassy-eyed. A shard of shame reflects in the blue of his irises. ]
Usually find faces people won't miss.
[ Two weeks and the red meat helped but it isn't what his body is cursed to want. He'll die, if he doesn't, joints aching, higher thought dissipating until all that's left is something feral and intentionally cruel, a wolf with pitch-black fur that isn't satisfied with bringing down life that moves on four legs. A rabid thing, trapped in his other shape, screaming at himself to stop but unable to think about anything except how fucking good it feels to have someone squirming underneath him, alive right until they're not—
His mouth salivates. He swallows thickly, ignoring the taste of iron in the back of his teeth. ]
M'no good to you like this, Johnny. Should've put me down when you met me. [ He laughs. Some bitter, flinty thing. ] Left me at a morgue.
[ Dead doesn't taste the same as alive. But it can work, sometimes, if he can stomach it. Elias closes his eyes so tight he sees spots and takes a shaky breath, hands balled into fists over his knees. Short nails too blunt to dig into his skin. Loathes that, loathes the black hole of feeling, loathes the way he wants her cool hand back over his forehead. ]
You gonna let me go?
[ Please let me. Please don't. ]
no subject
[ her voice comes quiet enough that the words take a while to unstick from her throat. but they come out clear, pinning themselves to the air between her and elias. she circles her fingers around the bone of his ankle, a light touch, a brittle reminder that she's real. that she has done much with her hands the past two weeks, feeding him and holding him, strapping him to a bedframe and pressing the muzzle of a gun to the soft parts of his head. ]
Killing me is the worst thing you can do at the moment. I'm not worried about that.
[ it's true enough. it's true in the only way that matters; johnny could die in this room and the wretched thing that bound itself to her will find a way to bring her back. every cell in her body no longer belongs to her. not one hair, not one fingernail, not one drop of spit or sweat. she bleeds and the red glistens with holy light for those with eyes to see.
angels are the greediest creatures to ever walk the earth. she has looked upon them and learned to be afraid. just as gabriel had appeared before the young mary, the handmaid of the lord, mother of ends and beginnings — an angel came upon her and bid her serve them.
for this is my body, which will be given up for you and for many.
there is no other answer allowed but yes. that's the difference between man and other, johnny knew; a man could say no and mean it. anything else could say no, and find itself twisted by circumstance or some greater force until it either died or surrendered.
death would be easy. killing each other, killing elias, or killing her — that would be the easy part. so she asks; ]
How much of a man do you need?
[ her hand tightens just the bit around his ankle. shifts, moves up to his calf — the muscle is stronger there, and she can feel it jump under her touch, even through the scratchy denim he's wearing. seven millimetres further back, and she can paralyse the leg with a needle.
he needs new clothes. she'll find him something when they get to the city. ]
Do you need them alive?
no subject
He still has his jeans on. His boots, even. Yet he can feel her hand up his calf and his teeth itch, every part of his body uncomfortable, skin too tight, coiled strength and discomfort. His lips, chapped, when he exhales a long shudder, finally opening his eyes and looking at her. ]
No.
[ They don't need to be alive. ]
It's better, if it—
[ He's never had to explain it. Put words to it, this vile, profane, fucked up thing he shares with so few. That so clearly makes him unhuman. He shakes his head, violently enough that stray strands unstick from behind his ears, fall messily over his forehead.
The last time this happened, more appetite than lunar, Elias followed a man on a greyhound bus. The guy had looked the type: ill-fitting clothes, yellowing teeth. 5'6", maybe 5'7". He hadn't finished him and left him there on the side of the road, offal for the earth. The next meal for the desperate predator with a stomach to keep themselves alive, picking the dirt clean. ]
Can get by on a little, if it's recent. If it's warm.
[ He's more wolf than man. The measure of a person, the sight that calls, even something as pedestrian as belief — Elias has none of those things. But he looks at Johnny anyway, studying the careful, cool planes of her face, when he says, quietly, ]
You shouldn't be askin' me about this.