The Watcher: Reanimation; [Griffin/Joel NC-17] PART TWO
Fandom: The Watcher
Author: abrandnewboom
Don’t know, don’t own.
Rated: NC-17
Pairing: (Slash) Griffin/Joel
Summary: Serial killer David Allen Griffin died in the warehouse fire that night. Or did he? Meanwhile former FBI agent Joel Campbell is spiralling deeper and deeper into madness and paranoia. Griffin comes back to fix what's his.
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The next time he felt anything other than warmth, he found himself wrapped in a towel, under a duvet on his lumpy sofa. His foot had slipped from the far end armrest and fallen to the cold wooden floor with a thud.
A dark head peeped over the back of the couch. It was Griffin rubbing cheerily at his own wet hair with a towel.
“Good evening! Tell me; on a scale of one to ten, how much do you ache right now? I know you’re going to say eleven, so I got all your prescriptions together and figured out your dosages.”
If Joel had been in any condition to stand, he would have gotten up and given Griffin a taste of his right hook. If Griffin had been messing around with his medications, god knew what he’d replaced or altered them with, especially after the incident with the soda. He needed those drugs to function in the outside world, and he needed to know he could rely on them to work.
“You look stressed, Joel. Here, take your blood pressure pills. While you’re awake, maybe I should introduce you to the new deadbolts on your door. Trust me when I say you won’t be finding the keys to the padlocks anytime soon. As you know, I’m great at hiding.” Griffin beamed at Joel cheerfully; gesturing towards the apartment door, which now had no less than three heavy duty draw bolts with thick padlocks snapped into place.
Well, shit. Joel could scratch busting through the door off of his escape list.
“Fuck you.”
Griffin merely smirked for a second and set the pills and a Coke on the coffee table, disappearing back into the kitchen.
Joel ignored the Coke. It was too easy to disguise chemicals in cola. He gingerly sat upright and picked up the pills instead. They looked like the right ones. They were the correct colour and size. There was even the same amount as he usually took. And he needed to take them, to stave off the hypertension. God knew he was in a stressful situation and a half.
He swallowed them dry with a grimace at the powdery taste, and then sat still on the sofa in silence, wondering what to do. What could you do when you can barely walk and you’re under house arrest, enforced by an obsessive serial killer who is meant to be dead? Was there some kind of set of social courtesies that applied to the situation?
Griffin was right; no one would come looking for him for at least a week, if ever. The station would be glad to finally be shot of their pet crazy. He was a bit of a liability, he thought wryly.
Eventually Griffin emerged from the other side of the room, popping his head over Joel’s shoulder where he was sitting, tense, on the edge of the sofa seat.
“Dinner!” he hollered, waving the ladle Joel had moved out of home with twenty years ago in a manner rather too reminiscent of a movie-esque knife wielding maniac crossed with Bette Crocker. He came around the other end of the sofa, and carefully laid out a plate of steaming canned spaghetti. He gestured to it dramatically, stabbing a plastic spoon, the kind you tend to pick up in coffee shops, into the center of the red dribbling mess. He disappeared into the kitchen once more, presumably to feed himself, leaving Joel alone to investigate the integrity of his own meal.
The spaghetti was probably laced with crushed drugs.
But Joel was hungry. He tossed it up in his head. Was Griffin really likely to attempt to kill him immediately after going to so much trouble to recapture him? All sane reasoning and case studies pointed to “yes, definitely, this guy is a madman who kills as a hobby”. And then there was that whole time honoured serial killer tradition.
Eventually you’d either kill your obsession, or off yourself. Griffin had yet to show any real interest in self harm, or for that matter in remaining dead, contrary to all governmental records.
And he was so annoyingly cheery all the time. It grated on Joel’s nerves, as it always had. Phone calls with the man had always left him grinding his teeth down into a state of semi self inflicted lockjaw, and the way Griffin was so comfortably weaving around his flat, settling into his sofa, pressing all the buttons twice on his microwave – well, if Joel could have found a pen, or anything with what approached having a point on it in the chaos that was his apartment, he would quite happily have gone for a quick stress relieving stabbing.
Instead, he grudgingly ate the food Griffin had set in front of him at the coffee table. He pointed scraped the suspicious cheese gratings from the surface, and tried to stick to eating only the parts which he could clearly identify as wheat or tomato based. This was somewhat of a trial, as canned food was always rather dubious in nature.
The spaghetti wasn’t too bad, as canned spaghetti went. This was to say, it tasted nothing at all like real Italian spaghetti, and a great deal more like a dish of tomato flavoured soggy paper worms.
Griffin cleared away the dish, visibly amused by the scrapings of cheese and assorted unidentified presumed food objects, assumedly refugees from the canning factory.
He tripped over a sagging box, only just catching himself in time.
Joel smiled nastily, taking what pleasure he could get from the injury to his captor, until Griffin stumped back to the sofa and settled into the cushions alongside Joel.
Griffin pulled his foot into his lap, rubbing the stubbed toe gently.
“You,” he said, “you, pal, have the most incredibly filthy apartment I have ever seen. And I’ve seen a great deal of apartments, not to mention gotten them just a little filthy myself. However, you honestly take the cake. Hell, the whole bakery.”
Joel pressed his tired spine back against sofa cushions, avoiding the sight of Griffin. This was all a bit surreal. Barely a week ago he had almost assaulted a rookie officer at the station because he’d shrugged on his black leather jacket in Joel’s sight. The garment had reminded him of Griffin’s jacket, only he’d died in it.
It hadn’t been the first time Joel had become caught up in his paranoia. Increasingly over the past months Joel had seen Griffin everywhere he went. Now, seeing as the man was in fact alive, it was possibly that a couple of his glimpses had involved sighting the real deal. However, it hardly excused him from hurling himself at innocent passersby guilty of nothing more than far too familiar shoulder length black hair and a couple of hundred pirated mp3s in their iPods.
The Griffin of apparent reality interrupted his musing. “So, tomorrow, you’re going to clean up this shit hole.”
To tell the truth, whenever Griffin opened his mouth Joel only became more confused as to whether this whole ordeal was an extremely large and painful figment of his own imagination. He just seemed to say the most inane, ridiculous things.
“But, I’m tired, you’re tired, let’s play a quiet game until bedtime, what do you say, buddy?” said the almost certainly imaginary Griffin.
“Do you fancy hangman? I’ll go first. I have a good one.”
Definitely a figment, then. Madness. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting it.
---
The decision that he’d gone mad had loosened him up enough to occasionally submit to Griffin’s demands that he guess the letters. He’d been hung several times, once due to the suspicious and misspelled version of ‘flunitrazepam’, and hadn’t actually made any bold guesses as of yet. It seemed bad taste to properly take part in the game, imaginary or not.
Even Joel’s mind figments were sadistic. Certainly, he’d already known this, but playing hangman with the mental apparition of a serial killer who chronically misspelled words was truly painful.
“O?” Joel repeated tiredly. He’d already run through the vowels twice. And the upper end of the alphabet. Griffin’s hangman was almost definitely of tentacle alien origins, either that, or Griffin had decided on a whim that this particular victim was to be disemboweled and then hung merely for aesthetic and hangman related reasons.
Griffin added another tentacle-intestine squiggle with the felt tip pen from Joel’s cutlery drawer. “Okay, pal; I’ll give you a clue. It’s a consonant that sometimes acts as a vowel.”
He enunciated slowly, as you would to a class of kindergarteners already in way over their heads with regards to their language skills, miming a Y very obviously in mid air.
Joel’s eyes narrowed in irritation. He’d not quite rather go to sleep. Considering how he’d woken up this particular morning, it seemed a risky choice. “Why?-” he said, initially intending to end the sentence a little more insolently.
“Yes!” Griffin mock applauded him, and wrote the final letter in twice, once on the second space in the first word, and then again, six letters into the second word.
“I didn’t mean – for fuck’s sake - ‘Wyld’,” said Joel, incredulous enough to actually participate in conversation, “is not a word.”
“It’s a band name,” Griffin smiled benevolently, “and that hint’s gonna cost you another tentacle, buddy.”
So they were playing Sea Monster Hangman, after all. Joel had never heard of any band or musician that sounded like the round up of letters Griffin had accumulated on the back of his opened IRD envelope (he hadn’t read the innards yet, but they seemed to be absent despite the last Joel having seen of this piece of mail had been when he’d added it as an additional craggy precipice to his mail mountain last week).
“I quit.” Joel said evenly, shutting his eyes and resting back for a moment. “When am I going to die?”
“Well, this is a tentacle monster, whenever you chop off a limb it just sprouts back,” Griffin said reasonably. Joel could hear the grin in his voice. “So technically, he could go on forever.”
Joel’s mouth twitched in annoyance, and he blinked open his eyes. Much to his consternation, Griffin was still sitting on the coffee table, doodling detailed suction cups onto the hanging sea monster’s tentacles.
“And if you meant yourself, personally,” Griffin carried on, picking up on the double entendre without a hitch, “well, I won’t be tiring of you anytime soon, Joel. Not to worry, I have my work cut out for me with you.”
He turned that charming 100 watt grin on Joel for a moment.
“Now, what say you we turn in for the night?”
Unfortunately, this was exactly what Joel had feared. Extended entrapment. Well, that and the prospect of Griffin forcing him to clean his apartment. It had nice hardwood floors. He hadn’t seen them since he’d signed the lease on the place, and had never really felt the need too ever again.
---
“Just don’t- hey, stop it, asshole!” Joel pushed Griffin away from him forcefully. He hit the bigger man in the face, glancing off his nose and accidentally scraping at the raw skin on his forehead.
Griffin stumbled back, getting off the bed, “Shit!”
He turned to the wall, clutching at his old burn. Joel pulled his covers around him firmly. He glanced at Griffin’s taut back before surreptitiously reaching to the floor for his sweatpants. He’d never had to sleep naked before. Usually, he’d fall into bed or more likely, onto the sofa, still completely dressed, and half of the time that was what he’d wear the next day too. But now, Griffin ordered him to strip off before he got into bed, whether he was going to fuck him or not.
He’d started seething over this quirk one night, but Griffin had ‘felt him thinking’ or something equally delusional and suggested that if Joel had so much to think about he should busy himself with some manual task.
It was embarrassing having to learn things to keep Griffin happy. But the man was an appreciative teacher. The first time he’d had his hands guided down to the killer’s cock, and had reluctantly closed them around the organ, Griffin had moaned aloud, thrusting into Joel’s fists, coming hard, and pulling the psychologist on top of him, against his chest, muttering nauseating endearments. Joel could feel his captor’s dick still twitching softly against his own belly, smearing the seed into his skin. He had been disgusted, as he always was when Griffin used him for sexual pleasure, but he’d also felt amazed that he had one aspect of control over this killer, one power that could bring the bigger man to his knees and turn his spine to jelly.
He supposed he’d found another weakness. Hit the man in the scar tissue. It gave him enough time to pull the sweats on and conceal himself beneath the bed sheets at least.
“For fuck’s sake, Joel.” Griffin straightened up, and turned back to the bed, wincing and gingerly touching at his half healed wounds. “That hurt like a bitch. I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt you, you know.”
“What, only shove your dick back up my ass again?” Joel ground out, sitting back against his headboard. He looked at his bedside table. No phone. No thanks to David. He’d thought about climbing out the window. But the drop was sheer to the street. Joel was holding it as a final resort.
Then again, what substantiated a last resort? Why wasn’t ‘oh dear, I’m being held against my will as a sexual slave in my own apartment by a legally dead serial killer’ bad enough to justify risking spinal paralysis? Joel supposed he’d never really defined the circumstances of last resort. Certainly he’d considered topping himself before.
Jumping from a height had always seemed so messy though. And there was that embarrassing risk of do-gooders and policemen turning up with megaphones and self-help books. Getting talked down by Hollis was just undignified, and splattering the man with his innards fifteen seconds later seemed impolite given that the man had paid for his Sweet and Sour Pork so many times. Although if it were Mitch who turned up, Joel didn’t have a problem with leaping right on top of him. Killing two birds with one stone and all that.
The truth of the matter, Joel had to grudgingly push to the back of his mind, was that Griffin had been occupying his attention so much lately that he’d barely had a half a minute to even remember how much he wanted to kill himself.
In any other world, where Joel wasn’t trapped in his own apartment, Griffin wasn’t an obsessive serial killer on the lam, and one of the two of them was possibly slightly less male, any half qualified therapist would probably stick a gold star on his chart.
“Well done, Joel. You’re in a mid term relationship with a partner who grounds you and takes your mind off of your suicidal tendencies. Here. Have some condoms of assorted flavour.”
One could only hope that in that particular alternate reality Joel wasn’t an active member of the police force with a Chicago police standard issue Glock in his jacket pocket.
It was uncomfortably true: Joel did not currently have the inclination to die despite being faced with the alternative of an indefinite period of time under the thumb of David Allen Griffin. It was almost enough to make him feel grateful.
But not quite. The bastard was taking advantage of him after all, and that was simply unacceptable. And his history of victims, they could never be forgiven. Ever.
Joel pushed his fingers against closed eyes, bleakly. He pulled them away and blinked through blurry vision, staring out the window as a gust of wind hurled a handful of snowflakes against the pane. It was a shitty snower of an afternoon, and they had woken up that morning to find the central heating had died in the night. It was freezing, even with his smart suit socks pulled high over his ankles.
When he’d finally roused it had been to discover David crawling back into his bed, chewing, from the scent, at the last bites of an apple. When he’d eventually been allowed to extricate himself from the bedclothes, Joel found a good three bags full of groceries on the kitchen bench, and the locks on the door silent and shut, not spilling any secrets about when or how they’d been undone during the night.
It was all too obvious that Joel had missed his chance to take advantage of minimum security, and he only had his greed for slumber in the Griffin-warmed bed to blame. He supposed though, eventually they would need food once more, and David would have to leave him unattended.
More waiting games, then. That was all they played. Waiting games.
Joel grimaced at David, who had sprawled himself over the foot of the bed, and was staring at him with a faraway look in his eyes. He was humming almost imperceptibly and strumming the ruffled bed sheets in time with a pinched thumb and forefinger.
He kept on like that, appearing to have forgotten about his sore face, even as Joel turned gingerly onto his stomach and drifted off to the riffs of Iron Maiden.
---
“Mmh, that was good, Joel,” David whispered into his ear.
They were still naked but wrapped in a scratchy blanket on the sofa.
“Don’t you think that was good? Agree with me, okay?”
Joel sighed, automatically telling him what he wanted to hear, “Yes. It was good.”
“Yes, it was good, who?”
“…Griffin…”
“No. Why do you call me that, Joel? Call me David. I always liked that name.”
“It’s not your real name.”
“Neither is Griffin.”
Joel bit the inside of his cheek, unsure. He’d never called him David because first name basis was too personal, and in law enforcement you had to stay impersonal. Life was easier that way.
“Just say it, Joel,” Griffin coaxed, pressing Joel’s back into the sofa seat and pulling his arms around his own neck.
He stretched out over Joel’s body and leisurely pressed his crotch against Joel’s.
Joel tried halfheartedly to wriggle out of his grip, but failing that, closed his eyes, giving Griffin free reign over his body. Griffin smiled, shaking his head and started a gentle rocking motion between their hips. Joel’s mouth dropped open and his head lolled back against the cushions.
Griffin upped the frequency, and laid his head on Joel’s tensed shoulder to stare at the contortion he was causing on Joel’s features.
“Go on, Joel. Tell me my name. Who’s doing this to you?” he said, voice rumbling against Joel’s skin.
Joel gritted his teeth.
“Come on, Joel…I love you…I did all this for you…the least you could do is say my name.”
Joel turned his face away, determined not to say a word.
“Okay, I’ll make you a deal, Joel. Say my name now, and I’ll stop. I won’t touch you for at least twelve hours. It’s a good deal. I always give you good deals, Joel.” David breathed into Joel’s ear.
Twelve hours. That was a lot of time without Griffin’s hands constantly stroking or holding tight to him. It would be nice just to have the chance to shower on his own, to wash away the feel of the taller man, to sleep unmolested and cool for a small while.
As a captive, he would be an idiot to turn it down. As an agent he had already failed to keep control of all negotiations, let alone the situation as a whole.
He was too far gone for radical action now. It was best to settle for what he could get.
Joel failed to stifle a whimper as Griffin parted his legs once more.
“…David.” He whispered, feeling his blood run cold, and his dignity tip its hat on the way out the door.
David looked up from Joel’s navel, face glowing with pleasure. “You see how easy that was, Joel? You know you have to keep calling me that now. It’s part of the deal.”
Joel nodded dully.
“Then it’s settled. Now, I suppose you can have a reward.” David hummed indecisively for a moment and then bent down and wrapped his mouth around Joel’s half firm erection.
“W-wait! You said you’d stop!” Joel grimaced at his own voice. He sounded like a kid. He had to remember that Griffin was younger than him.
David brought his head back up for a moment. “I kill people, Joel. Why would you trust my word?”
He laughed and went back to sucking Joel off.
Joel was momentarily furious. But he inconveniently forgot all about it as soon as David brought him to the edge.
---
The last couple of days had been fairly hot and cold. Mostly Joel called Griffin just that, and it pissed him off to no end. The dark haired young man would grind his teeth whenever Joel forgot to call him ‘David’, and Joel had started exploiting the annoyance in an age-old psychological technique to ground the guy. Don’t pander to the whims of the subject, that was what they said.
David had rolled away from him and out of bed this morning and walked over to the kitchen to kindly root around for Joel’s breakfast. He’d spent a good ten minutes rummaging through the cupboards and drawers before he turned to Joel, throwing a handful of cutlery into the sink with an earsplitting crash.
“Joel.”
“Griffin.”
David gritted his teeth. Joel could see his jaw tighten, and he observed the man’s neck go tense, several veins becoming prominent under the skin.
“I can’t find the can opener.”
“You used it last.” And it was true. David prepared all the food. Mostly it was just toast, or something from a can warmed up, but it was food at any rate.
“Fuck. Just come here.”
“Fuck you.” Joel turned over and pulled the pillow over his head.
He heard David walk slowly across the hardwood floor to the bed.
“Get up, Joel.” Cold, clinical voice.
“You are not in control, Joel. Look at me.” Edgy. What the hell did David think he was now? A psychiatrist?
“You get one more chance, Joel.” Empty. Entirely different to any voice Joel had heard the man utter before. Maybe, maybe this was what he sounded like to all those young women. Right before they choked.
Joel, turned over under the pillow, resolutely staring out his window, in the opposite direction to David.
“Alright, then, Joel. I’ve warned you. I’ve given you time. I think it’s time you learnt who is in charge here, and what will happen to you if you don’t appreciate how good you have it, Joel. I’ll tell you what happens…”
David’s voice dipped and he pulled away the pillow, stooping to whisper in Joel’s ear, arms curling around and under his torso, gripping tightly.
“You get fucked. That’s what happens, Joel. You’re fucked.”
Before Joel could snarl back at him, he found himself bodily dragged from the bed and fair hurled across the few feet that separated the bed and the kitchen in his open plan studio apartment. It was cold out from under the covers at such an early hour (David believed in early rising. Joel argued that, technically, not even crime was awake at six fifty in the morning, no matter what the proverbs said) and the chill of the Chicago winter had even settled into the surface of the counter Joel found himself pressed against. He near froze up the front side of his body, forced into contact with the counter and smooth varnished cabinet facades. Meanwhile his back was flooded with heat. Griffin was looming behind him, gripping Joel’s upper arms and forcing him forwards and down, shoving him against the cool surfaces.
“Fuck. FUCK.” David breathed into Joel’s ear, before biting it cruelly. He crushed the slighter man against the hard Formica bench, lifting him a little higher, bending him over the surface, spreading him with unrelenting hands.
“Why do you have to be so fucking difficult, Joel?” he hissed. “I don’t ask much of you. I haven’t asked you to love me. I do all the work. I get you off. I just want you to be grateful. Just a little appreciative of everything I do for you. I’ve dedicated my life to helping you out, Joel. Fucking thank me!”
Joel snatched a breath as David pulled back, removing his weight from his back. He couldn’t get up, even if David wasn’t pinning him against the counter. The edge was cutting into his abdomen, the pressure against his bruise excruciating. He’d been injecting less whilst in David’s hands, but the bruise had barely shrunken two inches in circumference.
The pain on his stomach was forgotten through, when David forced two fingers into him, only just slick from what, Joel didn’t know. Something David had found in the cabinets, he supposed. But it was fucking hurting. Joel wasn’t used to immediately starting on two fingers. It was tight, and painful, and just a little…hot.
David placed a hand on the back on Joel’s scalp and pressed his face into the bench surface as he fingerfucked him with ruthless strokes. The fingers of the hand on his head played with his short hair affectionately, even as the heel ground his face into the counter. When the third finger was forced in, he reflexively gasped and reared up, only to be slammed back into place, teeth cutting into his lips, splitting them.
The metallic tang was the only thing that alerted Joel to the pooling of blood beneath his head. The liquid at body temperature, and pain more urgent from another area of his body, he barely noticed the bleeding, until he was mouthing cries into it, smearing the red around his lips like an orgasmic vampire, like a sick B grade movie killer clown.
Joel had caught one of those early in his career. The clown type of serial killer, he meant. That was possibly when he’d just flat out stopped thinking of his subjects as human. That fucking ridiculous case. Raped and killed ten innocent people, dressed up as a clown on his weekends. Gacy copycats. Sick. Nothing could make you lose faith in the human race faster than that kind of shit.
A thick pressure refocused Joel’s drifting thoughts. It was a familiar feeling, now punctuated with a rough scraping friction. The oil, or whatever David had grasped at in his rage was wearing thin, instead of tightly sliding, David’s movements were more akin to battering his way in. Joel curled in on himself, trying to tuck his chin in, hunching his shoulders – David snarled, voice breaking in the middle, as he applied a firm hand to Joel’s back, crushing him flat again, finally forcing himself almost wholly into Joel.
Joel let out a low cry, muffled by his skin’s press against the Formica as David pulled out slowly and pushed back in firmly. His emotion anger, frustration, regret, apology, obstinacy only betrayed by the shaking in the fingers of the splayed hand holding Joel’s torso down.
Joel screwed up his eyes, locked his jaw, it hurt, but at the same time the familiar heat of David behind him, the knowledge that David probably wouldn’t mean to kill him, even if he happened to accidentally, the ridiculous nature of his incarceration in the arms of a man who simply seemed to want to fatten him up and fuck him stupid – even the roughest of treatment seemed caring. David wanted him so bad that he’d kill for his attention. So bad that he’d hold him down, willing or unwilling, for the chance to change Joel’s life for a well-meant, if perverse, better. It was some kind of fucked up…love thing.
Joel was finally loosening, stretching to accommodate David, and the frequent firm friction was rising. The thrusts became so erratic and harsh, that Joel’s own cock was pressed hard against the counter edge, sliding off the smooth surface, embarrassingly hard, smearing pre-cum across the cabinet fronts. The hard cold surface, the constant press, the painful neglect, it was all getting him off. He was getting off on the situation.
He would have flushed, cringed at the thought, but David was still clutching at the muscles on the backs of his thighs, pinching the nerves, and grunting loudly whenever he slammed into Joel.
It hurt, the too tight, too dry friction, but the firm way David clutched at him, pinning him in place – also felt perversely secure. It was true that until David had come back, Joel hadn’t slept with anyone since the killer had eliminated the competition back in Los Angeles. It wasn’t like Joel had ever really been too much of a ladies man anyhow. He’d been dedicated to his studies, totally focused on securing a future in one of the most elite branches of the Federal Bureaus. Not many people had touched him like this, and even when they were this close, it was usually he that was relied on to be the secure rock, the dominant comforter.
Being looked out for, cared for, was a new feeling. And although unbearably suffocating, it felt so damn good not to have to worry about anything, to be able to just shut his eyes and let go, drown in the short lived orgasms David insisted on forcing from him.
Joel gasped into the mess of blood and saliva he was pressed into, smearing it across his cheek as David finally loosened his grip enough to turn his face to the side. David slid into him only twice more, flooding him with jerking spurts. The seed was heated and stinging within him, and David’s cock finally stilled, twitching as it wilted, but still a hot, full reminder of his possession.
David pulled away finally, sobbing into Joel’s shoulder blades.
“Oh, god, Joel. I’m sorry. Oh god…”
David slid away and crouched on the floor, pulling his knees up and burying his face in his hands, hair flopping forwards like a curtain.
Joel had to catch his breath first, but he finally gathered his wits and pushed up from the Formica bench, wiping away a spit string that connected him to the surface. He felt at his nose and lip – it was split, but not too badly. It was bleeding intermittently, mostly only if he pressed on it. His ass stung like a bitch, David had fucked him within an inch of his life. He’d say raped – but really, he’d been asking for it. Even if David had made advances instead of outright fucking him, he’d have let him. And he really couldn’t complain, especially when he had to technically unstick himself from the front of the cupboards he’d come all over.
He slid to the floor as well, following David’s route. He knocked his head a couple of times against the cabinets and finally looked over at David. Who was crying into his hands, powerful shoulders heaving, a sad caricature of himself.
Joel had always thought the killers he chased deserved everything they got. He’d relished the thought of them getting the death penalty or at least serving multiple life sentences. It was an oversight on his part that killers were people too. He wasn’t a criminal lawyer. You didn’t need to believe or follow all psychological beliefs or practices to graduate with a degree in it. It had been a long time since Joel had had to think about the feelings or emotional repercussions for both sides rather than just one. He’d disregarded the fact, that when it came to the psych game, no one ever won. Everyone was fucked up. Joel had stopped pitying because it made charging the people and bringing their worlds down around their ears too much of a hard job.
He supposed he’d had it coming. Psychology was a bitch that always got you back.
“Here.” Joel shuffled across the linoleum and pressed his shoulder uncomfortably against David’s. He sat there for a second, staring at the refrigerator opposite them. The handle of the goddamn can-opener was just protruding from under the door. He sighed and hesitantly put an arm around David’s neck. The body beneath it shuddered and relaxed.
David looked up from his hands, self consciously wiping away tears before he could meet Joel’s eyes. He looked down Joel’s body lingeringly, but stopped at his groin.
“You…”
There was come smeared across Joel’s belly and thighs.
“You got off on that, didn’t you, Joel.”
Joel looked away, out the window to their left.
“You kinky little whore. You like it rough,” David’s voice wasn’t cracked any more – it was amused and a little low from lust. “Joel. Joel.”
Joel looked at him. David’s eyes were amused, smiling, but they were still wet. He was really being sincere. Joel could see that truth.
“I’m sorry, Joel. You know I have to, right? You know why. You know me.”
Joel could only nod at him silently, eyes looking tired and old, before reaching out to grasp the missing can opener.
---
It was Christmas before Joel figured it was even December.
He supposed if he’d paid attention to the television he would have known earlier, commercial season that it was, but they hadn’t really been watching too much TV lately. David was a hundred times more likely to entertain himself with his captive than he was to turn to electronic entertainment. It seemed as though the killer’s only real technological expertise was in long distance camera surveillance. When the waste disposal refused to grind their canned leftovers David had simply shrugged and let it be. Joel wondered if David actually knew how to use a computer.
Nevertheless, David had somehow figured out it was Christmas Eve, and seemed fairly abashed that he hadn’t gotten Joel a present. Joel had to shrug and move over on the sofa he had been napping on. He had neither received nor given a yuletide gift even once over the last ten years. The only difference between this Christmas and the previous ones was that he actually had someone around to spend it with. Usually he was alone. And drunk.
Some of the better ones he’d spent in hospital.
“Hey, Joel…”
“What do you want, now?”
“I’ve figured out how to make it up to you…come on…”
Joel didn’t even bother to ask. It was both obvious and inevitable. Everyday, David took his pleasure from him. Occasionally Joel came if David held off long enough to help him out-
Joel’s train of thought was cut off as David hauled him out of the sofa cushions and tossed him onto the bed.
“Quit your frowning, buddy. This one’s a gift. I don’t come until you do, buddy.”
…
It was an okay Christmas, all things considered.
---
Joel shook as David thrusted into him harshly. His face was pressed into the blankets and his hips held aloft as his cock slid roughly to and fro, buried in his ass. Joel felt the punishing rhythm slow before fingers pressed into him alongside the intruding member. He moaned loudly, clutching at the sheets.
“David…..” he gasped, compulsively arching his back and pushing back against the heat of his captor’s body.
“Yes…” David whispered. His voice was gravelly. He was scarcely holding back the urge to groan. Joel was hot and tight around his fingers and cock. If the smaller man tensed at all, he could feel it through his dick. Joel was always tense, and god, it made David want to come. In his ass. In his mouth. Against his bruised belly. As long as it was Joel, and as long as Joel was still making those frightened aroused noises.
“I’m going to take you. I’m going to spread you, ravage you, and fuck you until you’re too raw to sit down. I’ll come inside of you. It’ll burn, and you’ll love it, Joel.”
Joel groaned, feeling his own cock throb in response to David’s low purr. He clenched unconsciously, and behind him David let out a long growl of pleasure.
He pulled his fingers out of Joel and pressed him to the mattress.
“Spread,” he commanded.
Joel obeyed reluctantly. David’s cock was still swollen within him, and it seemed to be throbbing firmer and thicker. He knew David was big, but he’d always been gentle in penetration. This time though – David wasn’t holding back. Joel could almost feel the violence David was capable of in the grip on his thigh. David was not about to let Joel close his legs once more.
The thrusts began again, firm and fast, plunging so deep that Joel couldn’t keep from crying out at the unbearable pressure.
David’s only response was to push Joel further up the bed. He guided his hands to the head board, and Joel gripped it out of fear. Every thrust had him clutching at the wood, digging his blunt nails into the grain every time David slammed home with a grunt. The bed, previously sturdy no matter how hard David had bucked Joel into it, was creaking and colliding with the wall. The thrusts eventually became shorter but solid. Joel could barely stand the swollen heat filling him, and he began to moan involuntarily with each stroke.
David placed his own hands over Joel’s on the headboard, looming over him. His skin was shiny with sweat and his hair was pushed back off of his face. Turning his face, straining to look back at David, the scar didn’t seem as threatening to Joel as it seemed…animalistic. Wild. Or perhaps it was just the rakish appearance combined with the continued pounding force of his movements.
David drew close and jerked into Joel, rolling his hips, barely pulling from within him. He was getting off on the tight friction, and the way that Joel curled in on himself, barely able to stand the pleasure of being fucked so viciously. David redoubled his efforts, pulling Joel’s legs as wide as he could and pounding relentlessly, faster and as deep as he could go. Joel came over his pillow without even a touch to his cock, and he lost hold of the headboard, and let his head droop onto the sheets. David thrusted into him a few more times and finally spilled over, filling Joel with several spurts. He wrapped arms around Joel’s waist and pulled him against his chest, felling them slowly backwards to lie flat on the bed.
He caught his breath after about fifteen minutes, and mouthed at Joel’s ear. There was no response. David smiled. He’d actually fucked the man into unconsciousness.
Joel came around half an hour later. He was wrapped in David’s arms, but now they were actually under the covers. Turning over, David appeared to be napping, but the movement woke him.
“So, you’re back.” David both looked and sounded smug. “Care to go again?”
Joel let his eyes close and his bones melt into the warm bed. “Mmm.”
Maybe later.
---
[SPRING, 2001]
Joel woke up early. There were birds squabbling over breakfast on his open window sill, and light was barely beginning to filter in. Most days David and he slept until eight, when David would roll out of bed and make some toast, chipper morning person that he was.
It was rare that he woke before David. Joel was usually exhausted from the previous night’s activities. He had to remind his captor that he wasn’t as young as him. A good four years older, in fact, and hitting forty soon. It was bizarre to think of birthdays and David in the same stream of thought. It made the whole predicament seem far too close to becoming a dysfunctional relationship.
Joel was uncomfortable with the thought, so he shied away from it, and pondered on less important details. Like what the hell kind of a bird was making such a racket in the window.
“Damn pigeons…” there was a mutter from the heap under the blankets beside Joel.
Thick arms reached out to wrap around Joel and pull him back under the covers. “Go back to sleep, Joel…it’s too early for you to be awake.”
Joel closed his eyes contentedly, and nestled against the secure heat of David’s chest. David turned them so he was covering the whole of Joel’s body, but he just kissed the smaller man’s face and dropped off into sleep again. It was a strange position to sleep in, but it had become second nature to Joel. David had slept sprawled atop him for two months straight.
What had initially felt frightening and claustrophobic now seemed like the most comfortable sleeping position Joel had ever adopted. David never laid on the bruised side of Joel’s stomach, and he didn’t mind Joel’s cold feet on his legs.
These days Joel didn’t like to think about Hollis eventually turning up to check on him.
He wondered though, would David be content with staying in cold Chicago forever? And what would happen if he wanted to leave? Would Joel have to uproot and submit to being bundled into the boot of a car en route to any number of mystery locations?
When David got bored of him…would he leave him desolate, or would he cut his throat as a last act of mercy?
David snored quietly in Joel’s ear. Joel turned his face to look at David’s sleeping features. Instincts whispered that now was an ideal time to disable or kill his captor. But Joel didn’t think he could find it in him these days. He shut his eyes and leaned into David’s heat, to counter the cold pang of guilt in his stomach. Repression worked far too well, and Joel drifted off for another hour of contentedness.
---
David eventually deigned the day as ready for his rising, and rolled out of the bed, landing on his feet like a surprisingly large but nimble cat. He pulled on his clothing and crashed around the apartment for a while. He seemed to be searching for something, which he eventually found among Joel’s belongings and palmed into the breast pocket of the long jacket he’d hung on Joel’s coat stand two months previous. It was still chilly out, since it was only the crack of spring.
The keys to the locks were concealed in three separate places. One was tucked into the loose skirting board behind the refrigerator, another behind a loose brick on the exterior of the building barely reachable from inside the kitchen window, and the last, slipped into a barely noticeable tear on the underside of the quilted mattress he and Joel slept on.
David reached under the mattress and slid it out, at the same time leaning over Joel’s sprawled form and pressing his lips briefly to his temple.
“See ya,” he whispered in a puff of breath.
Joel’s eye’s snapped open. A chance for escape – he’d just have to wait until David left, locking the door, and then he could tackle the climb from the window, or consider reassessing whether he could shoulder the door down. He’d grown stronger over the months.
But David, stepped away from the bed, smiling guilelessly and unlocked the door silently. He stepped through it, leaving it ajar. Joel heard David’s heavy footfalls start down the hall and the rhythm of his steps in the hollow echo of the staircase to the ground floor. Ever since the girl below – ever since David had killed the girl who lived below him, the building had been emptying out. This was the slum city centre, and another murder hadn’t encouraged anyone to stick around. The rent wasn’t low enough for that kind of risk. He’d never really thought about it, but he supposed he might be the only resident left. Damn convenient for David, it must have been.
The door swung open a little in a draught. David must have opened the doors of the lobby.
And all of a sudden, Joel found himself galvanized. Incredulous and confused, but galvanized. He threw back his covers and hopped whilst dragging on pants, thrusting arms through neck holes, the clothing conspiring to slow him down, demanding due attention from the dresser. But Joel finally ran at the doorframe, shivering unconsciously as he passed through it for the first time in weeks. He slipped and clattered down the stairs, light and barefoot, but somehow noisier than David.
Bursting through the lobby doors into a bright flash of sunlight as Spring announced her arrival, Joel had to squint, half blinded, searching left and right for David’s solid black form. Which was right in front of him. He was smiling again, as he always did when Joel looked at him.
“What – where..” Joel panted for breath, hands on his thighs, still dazed. His muscles were in shock. Their last encounter with stairs had been a while ago.
Joel reached his arm out to pat Joel’s back, leaving it there even as he leant into traffic, straining his neck to see up and down the street. He turned his gaze amicably on Joel once more.
“You know, Joel, I’m really proud of you. And because of that, I’m going to let you walk.” David grinned and wiped away an imaginary tear.
“You can make it out there on your own. Don’t know how long I can last without you though. So don’t be surprised when I track you down, Joel.”
With that, David stepped to the curb and hailed a taxi with a friendly wave. He got in, but didn’t close the door. He leaned out it instead and gave Joel a last devastating smile.
Joel was still leaning against the door to the apartment lobby, mouth agape.
“W-wait. You’re going? You’re going to let me go?” he stuttered, out of character, out of sorts, changed and different now, pressing at his abdomen gingerly. It was a lingering nervous compulsion. Almost all winter David had kept a tight reign on his whereabouts, he’d done…things to Joel. And his head. Joel couldn’t see how he could work in crime fighting ever again. He’d betrayed every principle he’d ever believed in. He was all but in league with a serial killer. What the hell was he meant to do now? Without David? Without a career, a job, morals, a family, a friend, without anything?
“Oi, are you comin’ or going, pal?” the typically obnoxious Chicago cabbie yelled at Griffin.
“Yeah, yeah,” David shot back at the driver. “Look, Joel, you don’t have to work for the FBI anymore. You retired before, didn’t you? You have a hefty pension to cover the psychological damage I inflicted on you, buddy. I looked at all of your mail, Joel, I know you’re secure.”
“Have you quite finished with your love confessions back there?” shouted the cabbie, turning up his radio. Hard rock blared out all four windows of the cab.
David rolled his eyes. “I want you to do something fun. I know from experience that you’ve never done that on your own before. Go to different restaurants, at least. Travel. Get a hobby. I know that’s rich coming from me, but I have your best interests at heart. You know what I’m like, Joel.”
And Joel did know what David was like. He’d profiled him. Knowing ‘what David was like’ had been his job for a long time. Most of all Joel knew that David really did believe he knew what was best for Joel. And he’d been right. David following him to Chicago really had, in his own twisted way, and saved Joel from spiraling into a pathetic retirement of Vietnamese food and daytime television.
Only, now he was scared again. Really scared. He was afraid that he’d fall back into the same rut, with nothing to live for but his needles.
David knew him too well, though.
“I’ll have some eyes on you. If you really get into trouble, I’ll be back to enforce a little more fun. I’ll be back no matter what, Joel.”
He slid into the cab and closed the door with a slam. The taxi spluttered up a gear and pulled into rush hour traffic. Joel could see David brushing his dark hair over his scars and grinning at something the cabbie was mouthing off about.
David was gone. Joel was free.
Joel should have been running up to his empty apartment and calling Hollis to alert the force to David’s survival and location. He should have been calling in his own kidnapping. A rape report. Assault. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone about David.
Especially now he couldn’t think of him as anyone but ‘David’.
He sighed, pressed his forehead into the cool glass doors. A pigeon cooed at him from above, shitting down the stonework. Joel scrunched his eyes up for a moment, compressing emotion, and then he flipped the finger at the winged rat.
“Thank you,” he said to no-one in particular before walking downtown towards the docks.
ADDENDUM VIDEO
(Will go up by xmas 07.)
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