Still The Same
Aug. 20th, 2016 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hannah_chapter1Title: Still the Same
Author: hannah_chapter
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: 15/R
Summary: You're still the same/Moving game to game/Some things never change....
Disclaimer: I own nothing and this is fiction. Or is it?
Feedback: Hit me with your rhythm stick.
They meet for the first time in 1460. They clap eyes upon one another in a cramped and smoky tavern amidst the noise and confusion that follows the conflict it will please historians to dub the Battle of Northampton. Matthew fought for the Yorkists, Dominic for the Lancasters, but each man has abandoned his lord and cast off his colours. After all, as they tell each other over mugs of mead, what does it matter?
These silly squabbles, these so-called Wars of the Roses, are pointless. White rose, red rose, the beauty and life fade from all flowers in time. Ah, time; it destroys all things, all people - but not Dominic, not Matthew. They are eternal, age will never wither them, time will not erase them. Each man recognises this quality in the other, this is what drives them together, binds them together. Forever.
When they go to bed for the first time, the act is spurred as much by curiousity as by lust. Matthew, on hands and knees, bites his lip and tears straw out of an already ragged mattress as Dominic rises up and spears him. He sobs, first in pain and then in pleasure as he is impaled upon Dominic's prick, again and again and again...
...They meet in a London playhouse in 1599, in the twilight years of good Queen Bess. This play is a popular one, a bawdy comedy designed to please the crowd. It does. They laugh and hoot as Dominic and Matthew stand at the back, drinking beer and comparing fortunes. Matthew has prospered. He has made a killing in the wine trade and has settled here in London. He has a large townhouse, a wife, children. Dominic has prowled through Europe, plying his trade as a sellsword, offering his services to anyone willing to pay. Someone always is. There are always, he tells Matthew, men willing to pay any price to have certain ... inconveniences ... removed from their lives. Dominic is not married, not at this point in time, but he never has any trouble finding willing men and women to share his bed.
The talk turns to politics and to England, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, the place where they first met. The Lancasters are gone. The Yorks had their time in the sun but now they, too, are done and even these days of the Tudors are coming to an end. Elizabeth will never have children, that time has passed and, having passed, will never come again. Her crown will soon adorn the head of the Scots King. The time of the Stuarts will begin.
And, having begun, will eventually end. So it goes, they tell each other over their tankards. Time is a wheel and it rolls on and on, crushing all beneath it. All but Dominic and Matthew, of course. They sigh, they empty their tankards and Matthew buggers Dominic in the alley beside the playhouse, hand clamped over the blond's mouth to stifle his cries. They cross the threshold together; Dominic biting Matthew's fingers as he spills his seed upon the ground, Matthew grunting obscenities as he fills Dominic with his own seed...
....They meet in a tiny garrett in Paris in the first month of the year 1793. The Ancien Regime is toppled, the guillotine rise and falls, rises and falls and the air is thick with the rich, coppery scent of blood. It blots out everything else, even the stink of human effluence that rises from every city street cannot compete. The King has not yet felt the guillotine's kiss, but he will. Soon.
Dominic has already felt the bite of that blade upon his neck. Tiring of his vagabond ways, he had assumed the guise of an aristocrat, settled himself in a fine house - and was promptly dragged out of it and executed for his troubles. It quite ruined his day, to say nothing of the exquisitely tailored frock coat he had been wearing. And yet, he has to admit, the novelty of the experience made the whole ordeal worthwhile. Matthew listens to the details with great interest, but has no desire to experience this particualr method of execution. He has been hung, drawn and quartered as a traitor and burned at the stake as a heretic (Mary Tudor had no sense of humour). Quite enough for now.
Good wine is hard to find in these troubled times, but Matthew, ever the connoisseur, has managed to procure half a dozen bottles of a not altogether terrible red. They slide the bottles across the table, back and forth, back and forth, and, as men brawl in the streets below them, Matthew and Dominic shed their clothes and their inhibitions, stumble over the the bed by the window. Matthew whimpers as Dominic's mouth engulfs his prick...
...And it's 1888 and they meet in the East End of dear old London Town. Yellow fog covers the city like an especially foul blanket. People screech and chatter in the pubs and music halls, working girls ply their trade and a bloody-handed butcher slices them to pieces.
Matthew and Dominic swill pints in one of the East End's many pubs and talk about this mysterious man. He's a naughty one, this Jack. Dominic and Matthew are certainly no innocents when it comes to taking lives. They have killed in battle, Dominic kills for money and Matthew is not above skewering the odd business rival, but there is always method to their butchery. Even beings like them, to whom all human life is transient, cannot comprehend the notion of killing for pleasure. Vengeance? Yes. Pleasure? No.
This gruesome topic soon becomes tiresome and the conversation turns to more agreeable subjects. They speak of centuries past and the one soon to come. They have, they feel, experienced everything Europe and Asia have to offer, they have lived in so many countries, plied so many trades, fought so many wars, died so many deaths. It is time, they agree, to try something else: America, a New World for a new century. They celebrate this momentous decision by reparing to Dominic's lodgings and the blond gasps as Matthew straddles him and rides him hard...
... 1925 and Dominic and Matthew speed through the streets of Chicago in a truck full of bootleg bourbon. The cops jump on their tail and Matthew laughs as he twists the wheel and Dominic laughs along with him. This country is all they hoped it would be and more. It's a playground for them, an endless carnival. The city never sleeps and the fun never ends.
They lose the cops, deliver the booze and then it's speakeasies and reefer smoke and sex to the wail of a sweet tenor sex...
...They meet in New York in 1947. Sitting in McSorley's they drink in silence. It's not that they don't have anything to talk about; they skipped the Great War, but both went off to fight in the one just past. They could tell some stories. Dominic was blown to pieces when he stepped on a landmine. A sniper damn near took Matthew's head off.
But they don't want to talk about it, all the things the saw over there, the new and savage face of war. It brought them low. They'll recover, in time, of course they will. But now they just drink and stare at the floor and, when they finally stumble into Matthew's room they curl up, fully clothed, on his bed...
... Dallas, 1963. The President is dead, shot down by a madman in the Book Depository. Except he wasn't. There really was a second shooter on the grassy knoll that day, the conspiracy theorists will be right about that. But he wasn't a tool of the military-industrial complex, as they will also claim. How could they know, how could they believe, the real truth: the killer was an immortal blond assassin with thousands - hundreds of thousands! - of kills to his name already.
He tilts back in his chair, sipping a scotch as Matthew tries to come to terms with what his lover has done. Why, he asks, why do such a thing? They have lived in the world, watched history unfold, but never directly influenced the flow of it. They have been cogs in the great machine, no more, no less, and they have enjoyed the good times and endured the bad times and this approach has served them both well, for the most part. So, why, Matthew, asks, would you do this? Why wilfully throw dirt in the machine? An action like this cannot help but have consequences, world-shaking consequences, so why do it?
Because, Dominic replies, it will have consequences. He's sick of it all, sick of being buffeted by the winds of Fate, raised up and cast down by Fortune's Wheel. He wants to act, not be acted upon and, if the world should burn as a result, what does it matter to him? Or to Matthew, for that matter?
Matthew watches his lover drink and thinks about kicking the chair from under him and using a shard of glass to open his throat. He could do it, too. It wouldn't be the first time. But such an act would be pointless and so Matthew does the only thing he can do: he turns his back on Dominic and walks away. Dominic calls after him, begs him to come back but Matthew will not listen...
.... Miami, 1988. The cocaine wars rage and Matthew has used all the business savvy, cunning and cutthroat brutality acquired over centuries to climb to the very top of the pile. There have been missteps along the way - he now has first-hand knowledge of a Columbian necktie - but he learned from his mistakes and he rules Miami with an iron fist.
Dominic boards Matthew's yacht and they meet for the first time since 1963. They talk and drink and the breach between them is finally healed. How long can men like them hold a grudge, anyway?
The blond took up killing for profit again. What can he say, he's always been so very good at killing people and the methods might change but human nature never does. There's always work for a good hitman. Dominic started freelancing for the Boston mob in the '70s. But he had so many contracts out on him by the end of the decade and fending off rival hitmen was getting to be a real drag, so he moved his operation to Miami and worked for anyone with the cash to hire him. He wasn't picky.
Until now. A new outfit, small but ambitious, hired him to take out Matthew Bellamy, Miami's reigning kingpin. Dominic took their money. And their coke. And their lives. He pocketed the cash and brought the drugs to Matthew, a little peace offering. It is graciously accepted and the night quickly fades in a coke-and-sex-fuelled haze...
...New York, 2005. Dominic lies on a piss-stained floor, jabs a needle in his arm. The smack dulls the pain, makes him forget, but not for long. The memories always come flooding back. That's his burden. That's his curse. When Matthew finally finds him Dominic is weeping, clutching a picture of his wife and daughters, the family taken from him in a brutal home invasion while he was on a business trip.
Matthew and Dominic have each raised and buried so many families over the centuries and are no strangers to loss, but this one has crushed Dominic like nothing else ever has. He found the killers and he had his revenge, slow, sweet revenge. But it wasn't enough and now Dominic knows the truth: this is his punishment. For Dallas. He interfered with the running of the machine and the universe struck back, finding a way to kill his only joy.
Matthew listens to it all, then gathers Dominic to him. He takes his lover away from all the filth and despair and he loves him and heals him and, eventually, Dominic is whole again...
.... They meet on a space station in 2237. The Earth has become a barren and irradiated wasteland, but mankind has spread its code to the stars and it has endured, as it always does.
Matthew and Dominic inject themselves with Ephemerol and they talk about terraforming on Mars and mining on Jupiter and all the things they've seen over the centuries and speculate about all the things they'll see in the centuries to come...
....because they'll always be here. They'll live, love, laugh, watch empires rise and fall, experience everything the universe has to offer...
... and it will be glorious .....
Author: hannah_chapter
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: 15/R
Summary: You're still the same/Moving game to game/Some things never change....
Disclaimer: I own nothing and this is fiction. Or is it?
Feedback: Hit me with your rhythm stick.
They meet for the first time in 1460. They clap eyes upon one another in a cramped and smoky tavern amidst the noise and confusion that follows the conflict it will please historians to dub the Battle of Northampton. Matthew fought for the Yorkists, Dominic for the Lancasters, but each man has abandoned his lord and cast off his colours. After all, as they tell each other over mugs of mead, what does it matter?
These silly squabbles, these so-called Wars of the Roses, are pointless. White rose, red rose, the beauty and life fade from all flowers in time. Ah, time; it destroys all things, all people - but not Dominic, not Matthew. They are eternal, age will never wither them, time will not erase them. Each man recognises this quality in the other, this is what drives them together, binds them together. Forever.
When they go to bed for the first time, the act is spurred as much by curiousity as by lust. Matthew, on hands and knees, bites his lip and tears straw out of an already ragged mattress as Dominic rises up and spears him. He sobs, first in pain and then in pleasure as he is impaled upon Dominic's prick, again and again and again...
...They meet in a London playhouse in 1599, in the twilight years of good Queen Bess. This play is a popular one, a bawdy comedy designed to please the crowd. It does. They laugh and hoot as Dominic and Matthew stand at the back, drinking beer and comparing fortunes. Matthew has prospered. He has made a killing in the wine trade and has settled here in London. He has a large townhouse, a wife, children. Dominic has prowled through Europe, plying his trade as a sellsword, offering his services to anyone willing to pay. Someone always is. There are always, he tells Matthew, men willing to pay any price to have certain ... inconveniences ... removed from their lives. Dominic is not married, not at this point in time, but he never has any trouble finding willing men and women to share his bed.
The talk turns to politics and to England, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, the place where they first met. The Lancasters are gone. The Yorks had their time in the sun but now they, too, are done and even these days of the Tudors are coming to an end. Elizabeth will never have children, that time has passed and, having passed, will never come again. Her crown will soon adorn the head of the Scots King. The time of the Stuarts will begin.
And, having begun, will eventually end. So it goes, they tell each other over their tankards. Time is a wheel and it rolls on and on, crushing all beneath it. All but Dominic and Matthew, of course. They sigh, they empty their tankards and Matthew buggers Dominic in the alley beside the playhouse, hand clamped over the blond's mouth to stifle his cries. They cross the threshold together; Dominic biting Matthew's fingers as he spills his seed upon the ground, Matthew grunting obscenities as he fills Dominic with his own seed...
....They meet in a tiny garrett in Paris in the first month of the year 1793. The Ancien Regime is toppled, the guillotine rise and falls, rises and falls and the air is thick with the rich, coppery scent of blood. It blots out everything else, even the stink of human effluence that rises from every city street cannot compete. The King has not yet felt the guillotine's kiss, but he will. Soon.
Dominic has already felt the bite of that blade upon his neck. Tiring of his vagabond ways, he had assumed the guise of an aristocrat, settled himself in a fine house - and was promptly dragged out of it and executed for his troubles. It quite ruined his day, to say nothing of the exquisitely tailored frock coat he had been wearing. And yet, he has to admit, the novelty of the experience made the whole ordeal worthwhile. Matthew listens to the details with great interest, but has no desire to experience this particualr method of execution. He has been hung, drawn and quartered as a traitor and burned at the stake as a heretic (Mary Tudor had no sense of humour). Quite enough for now.
Good wine is hard to find in these troubled times, but Matthew, ever the connoisseur, has managed to procure half a dozen bottles of a not altogether terrible red. They slide the bottles across the table, back and forth, back and forth, and, as men brawl in the streets below them, Matthew and Dominic shed their clothes and their inhibitions, stumble over the the bed by the window. Matthew whimpers as Dominic's mouth engulfs his prick...
...And it's 1888 and they meet in the East End of dear old London Town. Yellow fog covers the city like an especially foul blanket. People screech and chatter in the pubs and music halls, working girls ply their trade and a bloody-handed butcher slices them to pieces.
Matthew and Dominic swill pints in one of the East End's many pubs and talk about this mysterious man. He's a naughty one, this Jack. Dominic and Matthew are certainly no innocents when it comes to taking lives. They have killed in battle, Dominic kills for money and Matthew is not above skewering the odd business rival, but there is always method to their butchery. Even beings like them, to whom all human life is transient, cannot comprehend the notion of killing for pleasure. Vengeance? Yes. Pleasure? No.
This gruesome topic soon becomes tiresome and the conversation turns to more agreeable subjects. They speak of centuries past and the one soon to come. They have, they feel, experienced everything Europe and Asia have to offer, they have lived in so many countries, plied so many trades, fought so many wars, died so many deaths. It is time, they agree, to try something else: America, a New World for a new century. They celebrate this momentous decision by reparing to Dominic's lodgings and the blond gasps as Matthew straddles him and rides him hard...
... 1925 and Dominic and Matthew speed through the streets of Chicago in a truck full of bootleg bourbon. The cops jump on their tail and Matthew laughs as he twists the wheel and Dominic laughs along with him. This country is all they hoped it would be and more. It's a playground for them, an endless carnival. The city never sleeps and the fun never ends.
They lose the cops, deliver the booze and then it's speakeasies and reefer smoke and sex to the wail of a sweet tenor sex...
...They meet in New York in 1947. Sitting in McSorley's they drink in silence. It's not that they don't have anything to talk about; they skipped the Great War, but both went off to fight in the one just past. They could tell some stories. Dominic was blown to pieces when he stepped on a landmine. A sniper damn near took Matthew's head off.
But they don't want to talk about it, all the things the saw over there, the new and savage face of war. It brought them low. They'll recover, in time, of course they will. But now they just drink and stare at the floor and, when they finally stumble into Matthew's room they curl up, fully clothed, on his bed...
... Dallas, 1963. The President is dead, shot down by a madman in the Book Depository. Except he wasn't. There really was a second shooter on the grassy knoll that day, the conspiracy theorists will be right about that. But he wasn't a tool of the military-industrial complex, as they will also claim. How could they know, how could they believe, the real truth: the killer was an immortal blond assassin with thousands - hundreds of thousands! - of kills to his name already.
He tilts back in his chair, sipping a scotch as Matthew tries to come to terms with what his lover has done. Why, he asks, why do such a thing? They have lived in the world, watched history unfold, but never directly influenced the flow of it. They have been cogs in the great machine, no more, no less, and they have enjoyed the good times and endured the bad times and this approach has served them both well, for the most part. So, why, Matthew, asks, would you do this? Why wilfully throw dirt in the machine? An action like this cannot help but have consequences, world-shaking consequences, so why do it?
Because, Dominic replies, it will have consequences. He's sick of it all, sick of being buffeted by the winds of Fate, raised up and cast down by Fortune's Wheel. He wants to act, not be acted upon and, if the world should burn as a result, what does it matter to him? Or to Matthew, for that matter?
Matthew watches his lover drink and thinks about kicking the chair from under him and using a shard of glass to open his throat. He could do it, too. It wouldn't be the first time. But such an act would be pointless and so Matthew does the only thing he can do: he turns his back on Dominic and walks away. Dominic calls after him, begs him to come back but Matthew will not listen...
.... Miami, 1988. The cocaine wars rage and Matthew has used all the business savvy, cunning and cutthroat brutality acquired over centuries to climb to the very top of the pile. There have been missteps along the way - he now has first-hand knowledge of a Columbian necktie - but he learned from his mistakes and he rules Miami with an iron fist.
Dominic boards Matthew's yacht and they meet for the first time since 1963. They talk and drink and the breach between them is finally healed. How long can men like them hold a grudge, anyway?
The blond took up killing for profit again. What can he say, he's always been so very good at killing people and the methods might change but human nature never does. There's always work for a good hitman. Dominic started freelancing for the Boston mob in the '70s. But he had so many contracts out on him by the end of the decade and fending off rival hitmen was getting to be a real drag, so he moved his operation to Miami and worked for anyone with the cash to hire him. He wasn't picky.
Until now. A new outfit, small but ambitious, hired him to take out Matthew Bellamy, Miami's reigning kingpin. Dominic took their money. And their coke. And their lives. He pocketed the cash and brought the drugs to Matthew, a little peace offering. It is graciously accepted and the night quickly fades in a coke-and-sex-fuelled haze...
...New York, 2005. Dominic lies on a piss-stained floor, jabs a needle in his arm. The smack dulls the pain, makes him forget, but not for long. The memories always come flooding back. That's his burden. That's his curse. When Matthew finally finds him Dominic is weeping, clutching a picture of his wife and daughters, the family taken from him in a brutal home invasion while he was on a business trip.
Matthew and Dominic have each raised and buried so many families over the centuries and are no strangers to loss, but this one has crushed Dominic like nothing else ever has. He found the killers and he had his revenge, slow, sweet revenge. But it wasn't enough and now Dominic knows the truth: this is his punishment. For Dallas. He interfered with the running of the machine and the universe struck back, finding a way to kill his only joy.
Matthew listens to it all, then gathers Dominic to him. He takes his lover away from all the filth and despair and he loves him and heals him and, eventually, Dominic is whole again...
.... They meet on a space station in 2237. The Earth has become a barren and irradiated wasteland, but mankind has spread its code to the stars and it has endured, as it always does.
Matthew and Dominic inject themselves with Ephemerol and they talk about terraforming on Mars and mining on Jupiter and all the things they've seen over the centuries and speculate about all the things they'll see in the centuries to come...
....because they'll always be here. They'll live, love, laugh, watch empires rise and fall, experience everything the universe has to offer...
... and it will be glorious .....
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Date: 2016-08-21 07:05 am (UTC)Your writing always leaves me stunned. Beautiful story.
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