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sweptawaybayou answered a ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
slashthedrabble challenge, number 85, 'David Bowie Song Titles'. Snow picked Sex and the Church... As if *anyone* was suprised. Heeee.
She wrote Redeeming Spiritual Qualities from Angel's POV and then challenged *me* to write it from Spike's POV. So, i did.
'Cause she roxors, that's why.
Enjoy!
Always the same, with him. Twenty bloody years I followed him - fought him - laughed with him and at him and shared the same eager hungers - the same fevered dreams. But this... Holy place. Sacred ground and stomping ground and he always comes back to it.
Moth to an eternal flame, only his wings grow back, don't they? Regenerative and unliving, just like the sad, mad carpenter they pinned to a cross. Dying butterflies, both of them.
But there's no redemption here. Not for him - not for us. We have no Doubting Thomas who'll put his hand to our bleeding wounds and believe. We have no whore-turned-goddess who will wash the dust and blood off our feet with her summer-brown hair.
We only have these skins, and the things that hide behind them.
He kneels there, penitent and silent. Head bowed, hands clasped...but I can smell him. Old blood - old sin - new lust. He's not praying, unless it's me he's praying for.
His hair is rough-cut, damp - too short for my tastes and it slips between my fingers as I stroke his bowed neck. Shiver through the both of us as I kneel beside him - as I make the sign of the cross over my body and feel the faint, faint burn of it.
I want you, he whispers, and I know this. I know this. I can't not know this, and he knows it, too, so there's nothing to say. Nothing to do but turn to him - tug him closer. Kiss him, cool lips and tongue and the taste of whiskey - taste of deceit and exhaustion. So many lies we tell. So many things we...forget. So many years and tears and kills and they don't see them, anymore. Or - don't see them clearly.
Don't see that we're so steeped in the blood that we'll never be clean. That we don't want to be clean.
The press of lips and tongues becomes a crush - a fight. The face that he hides behind sinks and surges and he is there. Finally. The one I met and knew and loved so long ago. The one who showed me...so many things.
Hands do the work they must, efficient stripping of leather, denim, cotton. The time worn stone under my back feels almost warm, and I hold him - touch him - taste him. Blood like sparkling wine on my tongue and our lives playing out behind my eyes like an age-cracked film. Jerky, dark - splashed with indecent color.
Remember when the Priests used to watch us as they died...?
And he's shaking his head - refuting our past and our deeds but oh, god... I can't care. Won't fight him, this time. Can't begin to understand him. We are what we are - we shall never be anything else. Souls inside of us like fireflies battering against the glass but nothing changes what came before. Nothing erases it.
This is his solace - his comfort. His moment of oblivion and rest. This is my moment of crystal-pure clarity. The window in the dirty grey of my life that shows me...
Everything.
We'll never be clean, we'll never be free, we'll never be saved or damned. We'll only and forever be us. This. Two twining bodies, two desperate mouths. Hands that clutch and won't let go - hearts that struggle to beat. Dead to the world but alive inside - seething with it.
The light comes through the stained glass and shatters over us, ice-blue and grass-green, the yellow of cyanide and the rich, brittle red of the rose. Saints and sinners staring down, Jesus caught forever in that one perfect moment while demons not yet fallen lift fiery swords and feathered wings.
He breathes into me; his blood is on my tongue, his body slips and slides and finds, and his eyes flutter closed as he sinks deep.
I need you, he says. As if I didn't already know this. As if I haven't already heard this, oh, a thousand, thousand times. Father, brother, lover - rival and comrade in arms. The last, truest friend I will ever have - the only being I would give my life for.
The only one who would give his life for me.
I know, I tell him. Let my head fall back, let my back arch high. Let my eyes go blind, staring into the leaping, guttering flames of all the candles he's lit, for every soul he sent down to perdition or up to arcadia.
I know.
*i almost titled this et in arcadia ego but that was too pretentious, even for me*
sweptawaybayou answered a slashthedrabble challenge, number 85, 'David Bowie Song Titles'. Snow picked Sex and the Church... As if *anyone* was suprised. Heeee.She wrote Redeeming Spiritual Qualities from Angel's POV and then challenged *me* to write it from Spike's POV. So, i did.
'Cause she roxors, that's why.
Enjoy!
Always the same, with him. Twenty bloody years I followed him - fought him - laughed with him and at him and shared the same eager hungers - the same fevered dreams. But this... Holy place. Sacred ground and stomping ground and he always comes back to it.
Moth to an eternal flame, only his wings grow back, don't they? Regenerative and unliving, just like the sad, mad carpenter they pinned to a cross. Dying butterflies, both of them.
But there's no redemption here. Not for him - not for us. We have no Doubting Thomas who'll put his hand to our bleeding wounds and believe. We have no whore-turned-goddess who will wash the dust and blood off our feet with her summer-brown hair.
We only have these skins, and the things that hide behind them.
He kneels there, penitent and silent. Head bowed, hands clasped...but I can smell him. Old blood - old sin - new lust. He's not praying, unless it's me he's praying for.
His hair is rough-cut, damp - too short for my tastes and it slips between my fingers as I stroke his bowed neck. Shiver through the both of us as I kneel beside him - as I make the sign of the cross over my body and feel the faint, faint burn of it.
I want you, he whispers, and I know this. I know this. I can't not know this, and he knows it, too, so there's nothing to say. Nothing to do but turn to him - tug him closer. Kiss him, cool lips and tongue and the taste of whiskey - taste of deceit and exhaustion. So many lies we tell. So many things we...forget. So many years and tears and kills and they don't see them, anymore. Or - don't see them clearly.
Don't see that we're so steeped in the blood that we'll never be clean. That we don't want to be clean.
The press of lips and tongues becomes a crush - a fight. The face that he hides behind sinks and surges and he is there. Finally. The one I met and knew and loved so long ago. The one who showed me...so many things.
Hands do the work they must, efficient stripping of leather, denim, cotton. The time worn stone under my back feels almost warm, and I hold him - touch him - taste him. Blood like sparkling wine on my tongue and our lives playing out behind my eyes like an age-cracked film. Jerky, dark - splashed with indecent color.
Remember when the Priests used to watch us as they died...?
And he's shaking his head - refuting our past and our deeds but oh, god... I can't care. Won't fight him, this time. Can't begin to understand him. We are what we are - we shall never be anything else. Souls inside of us like fireflies battering against the glass but nothing changes what came before. Nothing erases it.
This is his solace - his comfort. His moment of oblivion and rest. This is my moment of crystal-pure clarity. The window in the dirty grey of my life that shows me...
Everything.
We'll never be clean, we'll never be free, we'll never be saved or damned. We'll only and forever be us. This. Two twining bodies, two desperate mouths. Hands that clutch and won't let go - hearts that struggle to beat. Dead to the world but alive inside - seething with it.
The light comes through the stained glass and shatters over us, ice-blue and grass-green, the yellow of cyanide and the rich, brittle red of the rose. Saints and sinners staring down, Jesus caught forever in that one perfect moment while demons not yet fallen lift fiery swords and feathered wings.
He breathes into me; his blood is on my tongue, his body slips and slides and finds, and his eyes flutter closed as he sinks deep.
I need you, he says. As if I didn't already know this. As if I haven't already heard this, oh, a thousand, thousand times. Father, brother, lover - rival and comrade in arms. The last, truest friend I will ever have - the only being I would give my life for.
The only one who would give his life for me.
I know, I tell him. Let my head fall back, let my back arch high. Let my eyes go blind, staring into the leaping, guttering flames of all the candles he's lit, for every soul he sent down to perdition or up to arcadia.
I know.
*i almost titled this et in arcadia ego but that was too pretentious, even for me*
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