theattic | PSL: That's A Real Lemon You Got There

James was correct.

Havoc bid him to flip over the closed sign and sank down heavily in his creaky desk chair. He moaned and ranted and talked about how they were going to be eating out of the trash cans with the raccoons as he knocked back tiny decorative glass after tiny decorative glass--and of course he shared. James had his own designated glass by this point.

It had Mickey Mouse on it.

Eventually the ranting stopped, leaving Havoc slumped in his chair staring deadly at the passing lights he could see through the crooked blinds.

"Ya ever get lonely, Sunny?"

Edited 2016-12-17 11:48 (UTC)

This working relationship had done James's old alcoholic tendencies no favors, but TO HIS CREDIT, he had never busted into the booze on his own. Even though the temptation had been pretty powerful, sometimes.

But rules were rules-- the NEW rule was that drinking was okay, if it was the boss's idea.

Even if he had to do it from a novelty Mickey Mouse shot glass.

The question makes him cough.

"--lonely?" It's a sad word all by itself but it takes on an entirely different connotation when it's being said from one man to another. "W-well, sure..."

They've already had the dead wife talk.

It was a very brief talk.

"I mean really lonely."

Havoc had his own shot glass resting on his chest now, his chin tucked against it and watching the last few drops roll back and forth as he tipped the little glass miserably from one side to the other.

"Nobody likes salesmen. People roll up into this lot, stroll through the machines I've busted my ass getting to run, and look at me like I'm a--a-- cockroach!" He stifled a belch. "If it weren't for us, nobody'd have nothin'."

He let out a smokey huff before leaning and looking over to where James hovered. "Sunny, you're the only one who really appreciates me. Y'know that? I oughtta...I oughtta really give you more credit. Give back, y'know? It's caus'a you I can find my files. I got somebody t' talk to."

Oh, James knew exactly what Havoc meant-- that was one subtlety he was just fine at picking up.

And it brought heat to his face even without the alcohol's help.

"... You're not a cockroach, Mister Dynamite."

He'd seen enough real cockroaches to consider himself something of an expert on that subject.

And he's just drunk enough that, to beat off the awkward, flustered silence that would otherwise normally ensue upon receiving anything remotely complimentary from the boss, he lets out a kind of shaky laugh.

"Don't get me started on cockroaches..."

A laugh! As weak as it was, it wasn't something Havoc heard too often from his assistant. It was nice to hear.

Havoc echoed it with a raspy laugh of his own, sitting up straighter in his chair and, after a brief struggle, standing.

"Yeah? You know a lot about cockroaches?" Havoc held up a finger on each hand and lifted them to either side of his head to make a pair of twitchy antennae for himself. He invited him into James's personal space. "You used to be an exterminator or somethin'?"

Uh oh. Well, Mister Dynamite DID tend to forget about personal space bubbles when he'd been drinking.

"Hah, w-well, not exactly..."

Unless being responsible for the death of A WHOLE LOT OF THEM made you an exterminator by definition. Because he sure had smushed a whole lot of them under his boots.

"I could probably get hired pretty easy with my resume, though..."

"Yeah?" Havoc knew so little about this weird man and the girl he'd brought with him. He occasionally thought of asking the kid for details but well...he was getting a lot of decent help and decent company.

Surprises were not one of Havoc's favorite things.

So he bent down and made his antennae poke James in the forehead, laughing wheezily at himself. He was hilarious!

"They'd probably send you right back here to squash me. You think you can take on a bug this big?"

James spluttered another laugh into his stupid Mickey Mouse glass.

"--I--I don't know, actually, I guess I'd just have to try my best."

This seemed like flirting.

Mr. Dynamite was always a vaguely touchy-feely kind of guy, but this. This was.

Well.

James reached, blindly, for the bottle again.

His ears were getting hot.

The next words left his mouth before he could even consider how they might sound.

"The cockroaches I used to deal with were huge, so..."

"Now this is news!"

Maybe he'd learn more about James yet!

"How huge? Did they bite?"

Havoc attempted to lean in, to be sly and maybe a little intimidating as he asked the question in the other man's ear, but he just wound up bonking his head against James's.

Even with Havoc's head clonking against his, the growly, pointed 'bite' in his ear made his spine straighten automatically. There was a weird, not-entirely-unpleasant lurch somewhere down south.

Oh no.

See, after the whole... massage thing, James had been having some intrusive but interesting thoughts. Thoughts that he was no stranger to, but that he hadn't really had in quite some time.

Or about anyone non-female, ever.

But oh boy. There they were.

"T-... they sure did, Mister Dynamite."

Havoc let out another wheezy laugh. This guy! This guy.

The salesman had entertained the odd thought here or there--he was lonely after all, and prone to daydreaming. His idle thoughts about James and folks on television weren't something he'd call intrusive. He had far worse intrusive thoughts than how fun giving James a little nip on the ear might be--which honestly sounded too fun now that he thought about it.

So he did.

"Hard?"

Vodka really was the worst for him out of everything in the cabinet.

Here was the thing about James's intrusive thoughts, and why he, a Completely Heterosexual Man (tm), was only slightly alarmed by them: when you crawled, clawed, and scraped your way through Silent Hill, you saw things. And sometimes felt things, because the things you saw generally weren't content with just being looked at. Some of those things showed up in your dreams and made you wake up in both a cold sweat and an advanced state of arousal. Most of them were still fucking terrifying.

As bizarre and sometimes irritating as the not-even-remotely-ladylike Havoc Dynamite was, dreaming about his hands was an entirely welcome reprieve from the veritable rogues' gallery of other hands James's psyche had lined up to both tease and terrorize him at night.

Of course, all that rationalizing (of which he's done PLENTY since the dreams started) goes right out the window when Havoc's teeth close on his ear.

James sucked in a sharp breath, eyes popping open. His reply was a surprised gasp.

"--y-yes!"

If the demon had known that his grubby hands won out of all the other demons James had faced, he'd feel pretty darn proud of himself.

The gasp only egged him on. He couldn't help it. He was a demon, the Unlucky, it was in his very re-written DNA to torment. However, had James leaned away from his weird buggy advances or held up a hand, the game would have ended. But no plea or warning came so Havoc made a new goal for himself.

He wanted to make James yelp.

Havoc finally stopped doing twitchy fingers on top of his head--mostly because he needed to lean against the desk to keep from swaying. He kept his head bowed, trying to think of something else to do, some other button to push. His breath was hot and ashy.

"Coror me impreshed," he said, still having not let go of the man's ear. He started to pull, like a dog with a chewy toy. "Myshterious! Danroush!"

If he'd been completely sober, he might have leaned away. Maybe in discomfort or maybe just embarrassment.

But they were both liquored up and if James hadn't been partially sitting down already his knees would be going wobbly for infinitely more reasons than just the booze.

Maybe the massage had just... clinched it. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before something like this happened-- god knows it was hardly the weirdest turn of events to have gone down in James's life since hitting the road, even if you completely disregarded everything directly connected to Silent Hill.

But whatever had led to this, one thing was for certain: Havoc would have to set his goalposts higher.

James not only let out a yelp instantly, but the yelp tapered off into a straight-up, bona fide moan as he rolled his shoulders up under the demon's chin reflexively.

Havoc finally released James's ear in favor of a victorious chuckle but his mirth was cut short by surprise when--did he hear that right?

He broke character in favor of blinking stupidly at the other man for a moment, noting the color in his face and said ear he'd been cockroaching on. Sure he could tell James was flustered--who WOULDN'T be? But he did not know his drunken half-kidding advances were actually being received. On one level or another.

Oh. Oh HO. Well then!

With his teeth clacked shut by the taller man's shoulder, he was in sort of a pickle. How did he see how far this was going to go without falling over or looking stupid? It had been years since he'd made anybody make a noise like that.

He took a different route, pulling his chin away (and taking a moment to crack his neck) before ducking around under James's arm so he could grin up at him and get a peek at all the fun colors he was turning. One hand came around to grab hold of his arm for stability. This was the least flattering position he had ever been in while making advances.

"What else did they do--them big nasty cockroaches?"

Havoc you big dummy, you can't just chew on someone's ear and then be surprised that their not-shoving-you-off is directly related to them being turned on.

And boy, IS he.

James blinked down at the demon, flushed and slightly mortified. He may have been drunk, but he wasn't drunk enough to not feel at least a LITTLE horrified at having made a noise like that in response to another man biting him.

"I-- ... they, uh..."

With Havoc's head where it was, he could likely hear James's heart pounding.

He'd never been a smooth talker. Pickup lines and flirting were hard enough when he was the one doing the hitting-on, and he was sailing in foreign waters here.

The thought that the bugs had frequently tried to crawl up into his clothes came briefly to mind, but translating that into a sentence that wasn't just GROSS was kind of beyond his mental capabilities at the moment.

"--mostly they just bit, a lot," was what finally came out. He could still feel the indents of his boss's teeth on his earlobe, throbbing slightly.

Edited 2016-12-17 14:21 (UTC)

"Bit a lot, huh?"

The pounding in James's chest was still something to take in. Here he'd had a rotten day...and suddenly it was turning around! Maybe he WAS a good salesman! Maybe he'd worked too hard selling the van instead of himself. He was his product after all!

"That sounds just awful, Mr. Exterminator."

While he wasn't in any position to bite again, he was able to creep his hand up James's chest. Two ideas were battling in the vodka-soaked mire that was his brain: one was to slowly scratch James's chin and tell him he was a good boy. The other was to pinch his cheek. One was not nearly as sexy as the other but he just...his FACE! His dumb beet-red face! There was just something about his dopey innocence that made deciding what kind of weird possibly foreplay to act on difficult.

In a display of sheer willpower, he managed to swerve away from squeezing James's red cheek like some weird drunken overly affectionate aunt and instead gently dragged his blunt human nails down James's throat.

"You do a good job, y'know that?"

"It was," James blurted out stupidly before he could stop himself. It was hard to focus.

And it only got harder as the nails slooooowly dragged down his throat. He found himself tilting his head back obligingly, almost in offering. The words 'good job' were not ones he'd ever heard a whole lot in his life, unless you counted the times it was uttered sarcastically. It gave him another twitch downstairs. This time, his hips gave a tiny jerk along with it.

He didn't try to stop them.

"Y-yes, sir..."

"Y'do?" Havoc teased him with a laugh. "Well then, you don't need me tellin' you!"

His tone made it clear that the praise was not going to stop any time soon. But suddenly a thought came to him, as drunken thoughts often do. He stopped scratching James's chin and let his fingers hook onto the collar of his shirt so that he had something to hold onto. The thought made it into the open air before he could sort it out.

"...Am I?"

His eyes had slipped shut at the chin-scratching like a happy dog, but they blinked open again, almost woozily. He stared down at Havoc in slightly out-of-focus surprise.

Is he?

Is he what?

Doing a good job?

At what, selling cars or... or whatever this is?

"... Yes?"

He liked to play the cool guy, but as Whatever This Was went on and James literally melted into Havoc's weird affections like a content dog, James was not the only one with a little color on his face.

His boss waited for an answer with the slightest hint of concern creasing his brow. Being drunk made him sassy and flirty and mischievous, but vodka was just. Memories in a bottle now that he was here running his hands over another person and biting parts of their face.

"Good--good to know." Havoc barked out a cough to break away from his worries and focus on finding his next tactic to make James make a fun noise. He let go of James's shirt and moved to run his fingers down the nape of his neck instead of his throat. The last thing he wanted was to slip up and actually claw the guy. He kind of needed his esophagus.

Even in his weird little dreams, James didn't usually expect to be completely complacent. It surprised him how easy it was to just sink down and let the weirdo who halfway-bullied him into staying here and working just put his hands all over him. And just how good it FELT.

Was it that he was just so starved for some kind of affectionate touch that it didn't matter that it was coming from a guy with hideous fashion sense and the last name 'Dynamite'? Maybe THAT was it. Maybe this was straight-up rock bottom and he'd just hit it like a dropped pancake.

But if human fingers stroking his neck instead of a latex-gloved abomination THROTTLING IT was rock bottom, well, sign him up, because James Sunderland lost his standards somewhere in Silent Hill and never actually found them again.

His eyes fluttered shut and he let out another soft groan. He'd completely forgotten about the bottle he was reaching for.

Rock Bottom isn't so bad! There's food and shelter. Wario is there.

Havoc continued giving James's neck those good old scratches until his hands found his shoulders. Tense again. This James was always tense. What'd he have to be tense about? He was doing a good job taking care of him wasn't he?

He finally withdrew from under James's arm and just faced him, plastered man to hideously plastered man and planted his hands against his chest so he could look up at him.

"Hey, Sunshine, you're gonna be alright." He jabbed a finger into his ribs. "So I don't wanna see you wour-worryin'."

--aw man Havoc why'd you have to bring this back to REALITY.

James's eyes fluttered back open, pulled back from the place he'd slipped off into.

"--worrying?" he echoed. Not quite confused. More... guilty.

Which was, really, his default emotion. With or without comforting words from Mr. Dynamite. In this case, those comforting words seemed to have done the opposite. James kind of looked like he'd gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar-- although the finger in his ribs made him twitch jerkily, a motion that was all the more noticeable since they were kind of... pressed together.

"You know what I'm talkin' about. You don't gotta be so tense all the time." Havoc danced his fingers down James's ribs. He wondered if he could make James dance. "Lighten up!"

PSL: That's A Real Lemon You Got There

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)