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This work isn't hosted on the Archive so this blurb might not be complete or accurate.
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How about a little jazz, huh?
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“I guess it is funny,” Vincent admitted, picking idly at the label on his empty beer. “Now you’re the one chasing me around. Who’d have thought?”
“Excuse me.” Max brought a hand to his hip in choreographed disbelief. “That is not the order of operations. I got here first, remember? You wanna compare itineraries?”
“Could have done without you scampering off to join a second line,” Vincent went on, his tone imbued with a smirk. “But hey, it’s jazz music. Who am I to judge, right? If the spirit moved you . . . ”
Max’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait. You were there? You were watching?”
“Yeah. It's what I got.” The way Vincent disclosed this was nonchalant and momentous all the same, a throwaway comment throwing itself behind a gut punch. He shrugged easily, too easily. “Until I’ve got you to myself.”
Max reeled from the blow, clearing his throat. He was done playing now, eager and ready to forfeit. Defeat was so close he could taste it.
“You want to drop that off upstairs?” he said, nodding at the briefcase on the floor, propped up against the bar stool. “Kick your feet up for a bit before we start thinking about dinner?”
Another crash sounded behind them, billiard balls rolling and ricocheting around. Vincent’s eyes were locked and loaded, gleaming with intent. Max loved watching it all play out across his face.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
And if you had asked Max, he couldn’t have told you. How the two of them wound up upstairs, that was, barricaded inside his suite, set right back on their head-on collision course. Same as always. It was as if his memory had fast-forwarded through the intervening scenes, skipped right ahead to the important part.
The important part was Vincent’s mouth dragging down the side of his jaw, panting into his throat.
The vibe was an irreverent, effortless kind of cool, the kind that Max would have had to study to imitate, thereby canceling out its effect. If he had seen the look pinned to a mannequin at the department store, he would have balked immediately: no way I’m pulling that off. And yet as he preened in front of the mirror, buttoning up his cuffs, tying his matching tie in a rusty but serviceable half-Windsor knot, he got the feeling he might be pulling it off.
The look on Vincent’s face settled the matter. Max found him lounging on the couch as he tottered out of the bathroom for his debut, still fiddling with a cuff link. Vincent had an ankle propped on one knee and the crossword book cracked open in his lap. They both glanced up at the same time, and it was like catching a static shock from ten feet away, without even touching. Something in Vincent’s expression instantly buckled, too quick for him to catch it. He set the book aside without looking at it and stood up fast.
Max posed sheepishly—ta-da—and let his arms drop to his sides. The devilish swell of pride he’d gotten out of Vincent’s reaction was already cresting. Vincent hadn’t lobbed over one of his wisecrack remarks; was just staring at Max in flustered silence. It was making him nervous.
“How’d you get in?” he said, and wanted to cringe at himself.
It worked, at least. Vincent shook off whatever had come over him and cleared his throat. “You left your spare keycard by the TV.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You look great,” he said, approaching with his hands in his pockets, hovering for a moment at a distance. Then he was very close, right up under Max’s chin, determinedly adjusting the knot in his tie. He seemed relieved for the task.
“Thanks,” Max replied, watching him. “I mean—you should take credit for that, right, I mean you picked it out—”
“I’m not the one wearing it.”
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This work isn't hosted on the Archive so this blurb might not be complete or accurate.
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How about a little jazz, huh?
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“Why a woman would flee across the country, change her name, start a new life with another man? I can think of a few reasons.”
“No, I mean . . . why name your only son after the guy you ran away from?”
“Who knows?Maybe she decided she was kidding herself, that she could never really wipe everything out like that. Start over. Could have been her way of making peace with it. Like grace. I don’t know—or forgiveness. For him, maybe even for herself.”
Max whipped around.
It was like seeing Vincent for the first time. The same face stared back, but something of its essential character had changed.
Or perhaps Max was the one who had changed. His way of seeing, adjusting in the night.
“What’s wrong with you? The fuck are you gawking at me for?”
Max took Vincent’s face in his hands and kissed him, long and slow, declarative in its tenderness.
Vincent was still at first, frozen in surprise, unfamiliar with this approach and unsure of how to respond. This kind of affection lacked a recognizable M.O., the frantic thrust of either hunger or aggression. He was a stranger to it.
But you could teach an old dog some new tricks, after all. This was new, this way of kissing. He liked it. It was good.
When Max pulled away, Vincent just stared at him for a while, dazed speechless, breathing as though he’d forgotten how. Max broke into a beatific grin.
“We should be careful out here.” Vincent scolded, barely, when he remembered how to speak. His hands still lingered on Max’s waist.
Vincent brought his hands up to where Max’s still cradled the hinge of his jaw, probably intending to pull them away, and finding himself unable. He covered them with his own, stroking them down along Max’s wrists, thumbs against the ridge of each tendon. The pads of his fingers were rough, layered with callouses that seemed as permanent as the scars patterning his knuckles, that extended under the suit like a root network.
“You’re never going to tell me, are you?”
Vincent’s face tightened, but a rebuke never followed. There was a question in his expression before a wincing spasm wiped it away.
He forced himself to smile. It was a strained, unconvincing performance. And then, spontaneously, it lightened. It became almost real.
“Does it really matter?” he said.
“It matters,” said Max.
To Max, Vincent would always be Vincent. The idea of calling him anything else was incomprehensible. But the black mark it replaced was significant nonetheless. It was of interest to him with an intensity that not even the Durocher branch of the family tree could have commanded.
Of course it mattered. It mattered every ounce as much to Vincent, and Max knew it. That name, its total and deliberate erasure, was more than a defensive bulwark. It was the sole reservoir of power from which Vincent had drawn all his life. The blank, gray nothingness to which he had dispatched so many others, he had first conquered himself. He had claimed that territory for his own. Home Sweet Home.
But Max couldn’t shake it, just how badly he wanted to know. The original identity Vincent had shed like a skin, and the red molten substance underneath, still tender to the touch when you poked in the right places, at the raw nerves tangled up in redacted history.
Vincent wasn’t just afraid of losing Max. He feared losing himself. His cherished nothingness. It would be too much to bear, sifting through the shrapnel and finding there were pieces left to give, that had survived intact. The shame of an unfinished job, remnants of a foundation that resisted self-destruction.
The staunchness of his dread was proof of its possibility. All hope was not lost.
“Feels like the rain’s going to start back up,” said Vincent, scanning the sky. He brought Max’s arms down and replaced them at his sides, releasing them with a playful but authoritative squeeze.
Evasive maneuvers. Max ignored them. He studied Vincent closely.
“You won’t tell me,” he said. “But you thought about it, didn’t you?”
Startled, Vincent leered at him.
“Yeah,” Max affirmed. Quiet, but resolute. “That’s why we came here.”
For an instant, Vincent’s eyes widened and blazed. Then they went blank. He shrugged if off with a smile, and turned back in pursuit of the main road.
Max watched him go. As Vincent passed under a street lamp, without even breaking his stride, he spun briefly on his heel and spread his arms out. There was an elegance to it, an eerie whimsy that gave him the air of a trickster Gene Kelly. He called back to Max with a grin and an odd lilt in his voice.
“What’s in a name, right?”
Max returned a smile, bittersweet, and soldiered on after him.
It was the best he was going to get. For now, it was enough. Like their brief time together, it would have to be enough.
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Perhaps the novelty had worn thin, Max’s appeal precipitously and arbitrarily tanked, a hand-me-down toy that had lost its luster. Vincent was fickle, after all, mercurial like that.
If that was the worst case scenario, it wasn’t so bad. Sure, it would have crushed him. Broken him into pieces. He would never have come back from that, not really; the wound would have festered for the rest of his life. But it would be the good thing, the right thing, measurable in its consequences if not by the impetus. To go back home, return the shelter of safety and sanity, leave all this madness behind. It would be a blessing in disguise, Vincent forcing his hand like that.
Or what if something happened to him? The idea came rocketing down like a bolt of lightning from a vengeful, Old Testament-type God. It just about stopped his heart. Max recalled what Vincent had said to him last winter, their short-lived squabble before his departure.
You ever wonder how I afford my retirement, Max?
He was on the verge of spiraling into panic when he saw the bartender turn his head and nod over toward the door in greeting, animated by the abrupt, switched-on enthusiasm that service workers didn’t bother wasting on familiar faces.
He knew even before he angled himself to look. It enveloped him just like that, a cleansing certainty that erased all perception of time beyond the present moment, each infinitely divisible instant. No more tracing back over the ruts of his memory, no projecting its contents into anxious shapes of the future. Right then, Max could have sworn he didn’t know what fear was, had never felt it in his life. He had no recollection of it. There was only here, only now.
There was only Vincent hovering in the entryway, pulling off his sunglasses to scope out the scene. His gaze swept the room, skimming right over Max on the first pass, but then settling on him and holding steady, capturing him whole.
He heard the loud, lacquered crash of billiard balls colliding, and glanced over Vincent’s shoulder, where one of the old, leather-faced men was playing a solitary game. The pool table was upholstered with a rich, maroon velvet. He watched the balls skating and floundering across it, and remembered how Vincent had flattened him that night, knocked his breath away. Almost a year ago now, almost exactly. It felt like yesterday.
Vincent nudged Max with his elbow. “Charming coincidence, I have to admit, but I was never much of a trad jazz kind of guy . . . ”
Max snorted. “Yeah, well, I tried to convince Franco to hold his bachelor party in Chicago just for you. Turns out it’s too damn cold there in April. Gonna have to get your bebop fix elsewhere, I’m afraid.”
“I think I’ll survive. Besides, might be time for you to pick the entertainment this round, don’t you think? What d'you say?”
“You’re trusting me with the reins?” Max leaned over suspiciously, convinced it was a set-up. “And what if I went up to that jukebox over there, right behind us, and put on some of that ‘processed pop junk food’ you been so fond of denigrating?”
“Suppose I’d just have to be open to it, wouldn’t I.”
He held Vincent’s stare with a look of dramatized skepticism. Vincent shrugged obligingly. He pulled a money clip from the breast pocket of his jacket and peeled off a five-dollar bill, held it up a moment to brandish his sincerity, formalize the offer.
“Knock yourself out,” he said, handing it over.
Max hesitated a beat, then flashed him a rascally grin. He snatched it away, disembarking from the bar stool before Vincent had a chance to reconsider. He heard laughter coming from behind him. It was the real thing again, stark and unadorned.
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Max thought later that he was still halfway in the past when it happened. Thinking of the woman with the folder and the smile that was a private thing she accidentally let him see. Thinking of the brochure: the way the turn of the wheel would feel once he owned that car.
Then something fell from the sky and broke the world.
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AU in which Vincent survived the train incident. Months later, coming to LA gets him into trouble again. But he doesn’t have many accomplices left, much to Max’ chagrin.
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How about a little jazz, huh?
Series
- Part 2 of Amber Headlights
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Max decided that if he could remember one thing with perfect fidelity, preserve it in amber and keep it with him forever, he wanted it to be that: Vincent’s raw, unvarnished grunt of surprise as his back knocked into the wood, the pliant sound that it turned into when Max fell upon him.
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fff
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AU. How it could have ended.
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hhhholy shit
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Two men collide and talk their way out of the wreckage.
An epilogue, set five years after the night that started like any other night.
Series
- Part 1 of Amber Headlights
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“No, I can’t, but the closest I ever came was with you. You saw me. Max. MAX! Look at me. Open your eyes. So the way I see it, I have two options. I can kill you, or I can accept the change of terrain. Negotiate the rules of engagement. New contract, new terms. I know you’re not going to tell anyone. You didn’t even check to see if I’d cut the phone lines. Didn’t grab your cell off the nightstand, text your wife, call the fucking cops, none of it. Do you even know what time it is? . . . No. You don’t. Because it doesn’t make a difference. None of it will ever make a difference. Because for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not, you’re going to be waking up alone, in the dark, and you’re going to be thinking about me. You know it. That is the truth, and you know it. Learn to fucking live with it.”
The rest was left to implication. To say those final two words aloud would have been overkill. They were so plain and irrefutable that even a concussed, suffocating Max instantly filled in the blanks.
“You’re . . . full of shit,” he hissed, his ribs and jaw aching, lungs burning with each inhalation. Vincent’s grip tightened steadily with each sputtering fragment. “You are vengeful. That’s why you’re here . . . the real reason. Lone wolf, lone, lonely wolf, so you gotta make it . . . making sure the damage is . . . reciprocal, make sure it’s . . . permanent.”
“Yeah. Save it for your four o’clock on Thursday. Sounds like you’re on the verge of a real breakthrough.”
Vincent was sneering, but his face was an exposed nerve, contorted with resentment. There was a blurry hairline fracture splitting it down the right side. Max realized that one of the lenses on his glasses had cracked.
“Well,” Max said, riding out a railroad spike of pain down his neck. “What about you. Have you?”
“Have I what?”
He made sure to get it out unbroken.
“ . . . Learned to live with it.”
Prolonged silence, challenging him to remain conscious.
“Working on it,” Vincent said. He glanced at his own hand, blinking once as if remembering himself, and then released Max, stepping away. “So don’t push your luck. What are the odds, right? You getting the best of me twice in a row?”
Switching it off as quickly as it came on, reining it all back in, maybe even shaken, embarrassed by the slip.
Max forced himself to remain upright, gasping and coughing, propped awkwardly against the window pane.
“Blue Whale, Saturday night, ten o’clock. If you change your mind.” Vincent brushed off the arm of his jacket and tugged it down by the lapels, one last long, wrenching look at Max. “See you around.”
Dumbfounded, Max watched helplessly as Vincent departed.
It should have been some meager consolation. It should have offered a semblance of relief. He felt neither. Only a churning, incomprehensible emptiness, an ache like black hole, its destructive magnetism inescapable.
“The word is ‘oneiromancy.’ Divination by way of dreams.”
Vincent was calling blithely over his shoulder, turning for a few moments to face Max while he walked backwards, drifting toward the stairs.
Max had no idea what that meant. He heaved in a stinging breath and called back hoarsely. “What?”
“Sunday crossword in the downstairs foyer, 12 down, 11 letters. You left it blank.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember what the clue was.”
“‘Someday my prince will come,’” Vincent said, spinning back around. Max couldn’t see his face anymore. It was just his retreating voice, carrying through the house like the sound from a gramophone. “Then a parenthetical: ‘in dreams.’”
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存档
文森特的父亲是个赌徒酒鬼，输了钱会让儿子卖身抵债，后来喝醉了把自己儿子操了就忘不了这个感觉，文森特变成了Daddy的专属婊子
包含父子乱伦怀孕流产不健康daddy issue，慎入-
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Max doesn't have Vincent's gun as he comes to Annie's rescue. Fortunately, there's other leverage than .45 mm rounds to the head.
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Ugh Vincent you are going to be the death of me. Everything you do is so hot. And the ending, it's so satisfying and dark and ugh, so good.
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"What was that about ‘I Ching’…?"
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Ugh Vincent is so broken and hurting in a totally new way, it's amazing.
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Max is stressed out and Vincent is searching for a solution.
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Oh poor baby you need this much more than Max does.
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The pair of blue bloodshot eyes in front of him reflected concern and indifference at the same time, honestly letting people see his hypocrisy.
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AU in which Vincent survived the train incident. No human can ever dream to be a perfectly functioning machine, not even Vincent.
(Four drabbles for a 100 word challenge.)-
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Yep, pushing all my buttons again, damnit.
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This work isn't hosted on the Archive so this blurb might not be complete or accurate.
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Hey, Max... A guy gets on the L.A. subway and dies. Do you think anyone will notice?
Vincent asks him this question and looks at him sadly with his impossible blue eyes. Although he doesn't expect an answer, Max wants to answer, wants to say: " I will notice", but no matter how hard he tries, no matter how hard he opens his mouth, he can't utter a sound. He helplessly opens his mouth in a silent scream and... wakes up, covered in cold sweat and with a pounding heart. After that night, he dreams of this dream again, and again, and again...
(A guy gets on the LA subway and dies. Do you think anyone will notice?)
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In this version, the head prosecutor Annie Farrell hasn’t seen Vincent’s face, and Max didn’t have a gun. Story starts from the escape from the building at the end of the film. A slightly more compassionate Vincent, even though his motives are ambiguous. The second half was meant to be a fun and silly epilogue, but it morphed into a serious continuation, so I kept it as one chapter.
Tried to keep in character while exploring something more AU - R&R appreciated!
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Max gives a short ride to an old… acquaintance.
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In another life, maybe it all goes differently…
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- English
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- 1,716
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- 1/1
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- 6
- Kudos:
- 39
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The apartment door slammed shut behind him, causing Max to jerk up from his slouched position on the couch and stare. Not because he had not expected him - Vincent knew he had been waiting. It had gotten rather late and Vincent rarely was not on time.
It was probably the blood.
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Frank had no choice, he had to do just one last job