Work Text:
The first time Spencer hit on me was the first time he saw me in my stage clothes. I’d joined Ice Nine Kills only a few weeks back when both of our careers were about to implode, my band evaporating in the wake of our vocalist’s murder and Ice Nine Kills on the verge of following suit when their lead guitarist met a similar fate only a few weeks before a huge tour. My manager had seen the news about their guitarist and had the balls to send them my demo. He knew that if I didn’t find a new band I was sunk and at least we’d have an understanding between us, even if we’d never met before and only had a limited amount of time to get to know each other. He’d been right about the shared experience. I wasn’t sure I would have trusted anyone else enough to commit to a three month tour with a group of strange men, not after what had happened to my little sister last year. But these guys understood the hole in my chest where Kevin used to live and were willing to treat me as a friend and professional, which was more than I’d gotten in ten years of playing guitar. There had been harmless flirting and what felt like sparks every now and then when Spencer and I made eye contact and couldn’t seem to blink, but nothing more. Our careers were everything to us, after all, and preparing for the fast-approaching tour had taken all our focus. Besides, he was the goofball I debated about horror movies with, who used a bizarre combination of growls and showtunes for his vocal warm-ups, who practically lived off of roast beef sandwiches and tea and had almost been put on a no-fly list because he was terrified of air travel but weird(er) on the Xanax he used to tolerate it.
And then we’d been in a shitty little dressing room in a concert hall in Milwaukee and I’d come out from behind the curtain we’d rigged up wearing my favorite leather pants, a black tank top that left very little to the imagination, and my lucky murder boots with their six inch heels. The guys had been cackling about something to each other, but the room went suddenly silent at my appearance and my eyes happened to catch on Spencer lounging on a shitty plastic chair. I watched his eyes darken, watched his head list a little to the left and a crooked smirk I’d never seen him wear stretch his lips.
Ricky let out a wolf whistle and I rolled my eyes at him, secretly grateful for the break in the tension. “Yeah, yeah, I look good in leather. Your turn, asshole.”
“You love me!” he called as he got up and made for the rack of stage clothes.
My eyes were back on Spencer, though, drawn to him by a magnetic pull. A moment later, he made the first move, stood up and closed the distance between us, stopped before me and very much closer than he usually stood. He wasn’t tall and in my boots we were at eye level for the first time, the bare inches between our eyes sparking like an electric fence. Under his breath, in a low voice that coiled around my spine like a snake, he said, “I’ve been working really hard to keep this professional, but I guess I was wasting my efforts.” He leaned in and, breath ghosting hot on my ear, whispered, “You look fucking amazing in those clothes, but I think they’d look better on my bedroom floor.”
My jaw actually dropped and a part of my brain that usually ruled me screamed pitifully that this was exactly what I didn’t want out of this tour, that I didn’t want romance or sex or complications, that I wanted to focus on my own ambitions and finally be treated as a professional by my band. The rest of my brain was screaming far louder that yes, I think my clothes would look lovely on your bedroom floor.
“I don’t date fellow musicians,” I finally said, trying to keep it light and casual. I didn’t want things to get awkward, not at the very start of the fucking tour, but I couldn’t encourage him either. When he just smirked at me, not at all discouraged, I narrowed my eyes at him and added, “And if I did, I wouldn’t pick a vocalist. At least guitarists are good with their hands.”
A slow, wicked smile stretched Spencer’s lips, parting them to show off a few too many teeth and a flash of tongue. Like many things he did, the look toed that fine line between sexy and terrifying. “If you ever reconsider that position, I highly recommend vocalists.” That tongue darted to his lips for a fraction of a second, just enough for me to notice it. Then, his voice half an octave lower, he breathed, “If a guitarist is good with his hands, a vocalist is good with his mouth.”
My eyebrows shot up at that and his smirk widened. I tried to reel my expression back in, but even if my jaw wasn’t on the floor anymore, my eyebrows seemed to be stuck near my hairline. I couldn’t help picturing his face between my thighs, his pupils blown wide and eyes watching me from beneath his lashes like he was now, that smirk curving his lips as his tongue...
Fuck. He’d just fried a few neurons in my brain. That had to be the explanation for the traitorous words that tumbled awkwardly from my mouth. “I’ll...keep that in mind.”
“You do that,” Spencer said, slow and wicked. His grin was all teeth, his eyes dark and molten with sinful thoughts.
I wanted him to bite me.
--------------------
It’s embarrassing how long it took us to figure it out. By the time we realized it, Spencer and I had been working together for months, touring together for weeks, and fucking for almost that long. We’d collaborated on two songs while on the road, spent long hours together bent over our guitars and his laptop, writing and rewriting. The FBI had been following the tour almost since it started, had already been looking at us because of Kevin getting killed in November and INK’s guitarist getting killed in December. And they’d been on the right fucking track, even if their presence did ratchet up the tension among the band and crew to a thousand. Spencer’s nerves were threadbare and mine were too, the only relief from all that pressure coming from the screams we earned, the screams of fans when we were on stage, the screams we wrenched out of each other in hotel rooms and on the bus, the screams of bloodied victims pleading for their lives in alleys. And maybe the extra stress was why it took us so long to puzzle out where the extra bodies were coming from.
We were locked in a storage room at the concert hall we were supposed to be playing at tonight, both trying to stare at each other without actually making eye contact. The last time I’d really met his gaze had been as the lead FBI agent walked away and left my heart racing, as Spencer grabbed my wrist and looked right through me with those hazel eyes gone dark with significance and I’d suddenly known. Without a word he’d pulled me here and I’d locked us in and...well, there was a silent understanding that we were here to talk this through, but fuck if I knew where to start.
Because the FBI wasn’t looking for one serial killer. They were looking for two. Two killers. Two motives. Same MO, which was how the FBI had managed to fuck up so royally and miss the fact that there were two of us.
I’d been bluffing my way through the FBI interviews and meetings and ‘conversations’ for weeks trying to figure out where the other bodies were coming from, hadn’t been able to work it out with everything that was going on. And the guy I’d been writing music with, the guy I’d been fucking, the guy I’d thought I knew better than any other man I’d ever been with, had been the one stacking the other bodies.
The FBI was getting close, was certain it was someone in the band or the road crew, someone with access. They were interviewing people separately, trying to turn us on each other, looking for a crack in someone’s alibi. They were going to find one eventually.
But they were only looking for one killer. And I was not going to prison for this.
I finally met his gaze and he stopped pacing to stare back at me, to watch me throw the gauntlet down. He’d been running his hands through his hair and it was a falling-down mess like it was after shows or after sex or on lazy days that we spent in a hotel bed arguing about music and watching scary movies. The muscles of his tattooed arms were clenched, his Kleaver Klothing t-shirt and favorite threadbare jeans pulled taut over the tension boiling inside him. He was so sexy it hurt, but we’d both been clear from the beginning that love was never going to be a part of this, that it could be business and sex and friendship, but he’d never be mine and I’d never be his. And now even what we’d had together was about to end because of that, because we’d never trusted each other, never really knew each other, and I was not going to prison for any man, including him.
I swallowed the maelstrom of unnameable emotions churning inside me, buried them under the righteous grief that had brought me this far, and I said the words that I knew he’d hate me for. “You should take the fall.”
The outrage was instantaneous, his eyes going wide, his eyebrows rising behind the slashes of his bangs, his jaw dropping for a moment in shock before he stepped into my personal space and bared his teeth. “Are you shitting me?” he hissed between those teeth.
“Those bastards raped my sister!” I snarled at him, baring my teeth right back. “They raped a little girl in a push-up bra faking her way backstage! She was innocent and naive and they fucking took advantage and they raped her. I am not going to prison for doing what needed to be done and I am certainly not serving time for your crimes.”
“Fuck you!” Spencer snapped. “Fuck you and fuck your revenge fantasy! I wasn’t even going to suggest you take the fall, but maybe you should, bitch!”
My jaw dropped and then I was in his face, teeth bared and snarling every bit as viciously as him. “How fucking dare you?! What the fuck was your plan then, genius?! Just see how far you could run with it? How long you could get away with getting your rocks off on that shit?!”
“Don’t you fucking lecture me!” he growled in my face. His dark hazel eyes were molten with rage and so close when I’d already changed into my stage clothes, my murder boots putting me at the same height as him. “How fucking dare you?! Don’t lie to me and tell me you didn’t enjoy what you did because I’ve seen those crime scene photos, you fucking enjoyed it!” I wound up to throw a retort at him, but he didn’t give me a breath to force a word in edgeways. “No! You fucking enjoyed it every bit as much as I did, that’s why they think we’re one fucking person because our fucking crime scenes look fucking identical!”
“And what the fuck were you going to do about it if not pin it on me?!”
“I was going to pin it on the FBI clown chasing us!” That silenced me and I stood there dumbstruck as he stared at me with eyes I could watch give over slowly to something so much darker than the rage he’d been throwing at me. “That fuckface released the murdering psychopath who butchered my friend in an alley! He got him hooked on heroin and when he got in too deep, he beat him to within an inch of his life and cut him to pieces, left him there like a heap of trash, and it never would have fucking happened if that agent hadn’t released him.”
“So who the fuck are you killing?!”
“Assholes who try to sell me the drugs that got my friend killed! And if you hadn’t fucked me over, they would have all come back to that fucking agent! So don’t fucking talk to me about revenge because you don’t know the meaning of the fucking word!”
Red-hot rage bubbled up in my veins and boiled over. I planted both hands on his chest and shoved as hard as I could, throwing him back against the wall. He connected with an oomf and a stumble, his head snapping back against the concrete. “I know the meaning of the fucking word!” I screamed at him. He tilted his head forward again, hair falling across the vicious glare he leveled at me. “I had to hospitalize my sister because she fucking wished she was dead and she fucking tried to off herself! And I’m not killing random fucking drug dealers, I’m killing the asswipes who did it!”
Spencer ground his teeth and his right hand shot out, closing around my throat and hauling me forward by it, switching our positions and shoving me up against the wall. His grip on my neck was not enough to cut off my oxygen, but I could feel the threat and the barely-caged strength in it, locked my own hand around his wrist automatically to give myself leverage in case he decided to try and crush my throat. “You hate drug dealers every bit as much as I do!” he snarled in my face. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when I talk to them! We’ve fought about it how many fucking times?! Don’t tell me you give a shit now!”
“I don’t give a shit, but they’re not just meat, Spencer, they’re fucking human and you’re killing them just to pin their deaths on someone else!”
“It’s fucking more than that and you fucking know it! And besides, I have a hard time fucking believing that six fucking dudes are all responsible for raping your little sister! I think your asshole vocalist was the one who did it and every guy you killed after him was just a fucking proxy because you got off on it! I think you fucking liked it so much you started targeting the same kinds of assholes who might assault a girl!”
“Fuck you!”
“Tell me I’m fucking wrong!”
“Rot in hell!”
“I’ll see you there, bitch!”
And then his mouth was on mine, overwhelming me with a bruising kiss, and...fuck, I wanted to believe it had come out of fucking nowhere, wanted to continue hating him and punch him in his unfairly gorgeous face and maybe turn him into Dead Asshole Number Seven, but it hadn’t come out of nowhere because the moment he kissed me I realized that I was just as turned on as he was. I welcomed him with an open mouth and punished him right back by biting down on his lower lip hard enough and fast enough to flood my mouth with blood. Spencer hissed in pain, but rather than break the kiss he used his hold on my neck to slam me into the wall again. I brought my hands up between us, one to get a handle on his hair and tug hard enough to make him growl into my mouth, one to his shoulder to dig my nails into his flesh. “If you fuck my tattoos, this is gonna get ugly,” he snarled into the kiss.
“If you fuck my tattoos, I’ll cut your balls off,” I snarled right back.
“Bitch,” he growled. And then I was drowning in his kiss, his tongue fucking deep into my mouth, dancing with my tongue, laying claim, ruining me. We’d gotten rough before, but he’d never kissed me like this, no one had, and I’d had no idea how badly I needed it. I brought my hand from his shoulder and the tattoos there to grab a fistful of his shirt collar and wrench it downward, the sound of ripping cotton echoing somewhere in the background of getting my hand on his blazing-hot skin, feeling him so hot and smooth and powerful under my digits, and then raking my fingernails down his chest.
“Fuck!” Spencer shoved his hand up under my jaw, tilting my head back and turning my vision spotted and shiny. His mouth latched onto my neck then, teeth drilling deep into my flesh, tongue laving over the wound, bruise rising instantly under the sucking pressure.
I screamed and it was every bit as desperate as his curse, full of aggression and lust. I hooked my claws into his neck and hair and used them to hoist myself up him and lock my legs around his waist. He hissed in pain again and was right with me, slamming me against the wall again with his hips this time, pinning me there by my core and his hand on my throat. His free hand grappled with my tank-top for a moment until I hissed at him, “Don’t be a pussy.” That very second, he grabbed hold of my collar and shredded my tank right down the center, getting our bare skin in direct contact and his hand on my breast, squeezing and massaging so much harder than usual, pinching my nipple hard enough to make me cry out again. I grabbed him by the jaw then and jerked his face back up to kiss me, his hand dropping down the column of my throat to brace on my collarbone, his thumb pressing into my airway. My head began to swim and in seconds I was drunk on him, the kiss turning sloppy and needy in amongst the sharp edges and the force. And in that drunken lust-fueled haze, my mind of all things latched onto one fact that screamed in my head like my guitar ripping through a bridge.
He was just like me.
I wrapped both hands around his throat, locking my fingers right where I wanted them, and squeezed. His breath in my mouth turned shallow and gasping, though his kiss didn’t slow in pace or desperation. A groan that was all pleasure echoed through the kiss and I couldn’t have said whether it was me, him, or both of us in stereo.
Dizzy, I let up on his throat and he released the pressure on mine at the same time. Into his mouth, I groaned, “Fuck me.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled back, hands moving to my ass and then we were in motion, tumbling in a half-drunk controlled fall to the concrete floor. He cushioned the back of my head with his hand, which was downright romantic in the moment, and then we were a tangle of limbs fighting each other to rip more clothing. “If you tear these jeans…” Riiiippp. Spencer glared at me and shook his head as if promising retribution. “Bitch. These jeans fit my ass perfectly.”
“That’s why I had to tear them,” I snarked, taking his momentary pause as an opportunity to get a better grip and tear them right down his left thigh. Riiippppppp. Spencer’s jaw dropped and he stared down at the destroyed pants in renewed outrage. “I’ve been staring at that ass in those jeans for months wanting to do exactly this.”
He quirked an eyebrow upward and then we were grappling, him fighting to roll me over underneath him and me still trying to do more damage to his clothes. He had gravity and at least twenty pounds of muscle on me, so faster than I would have guessed or admitted he had me facedown on the floor. I tossed my hair to try and get it out of my face and then his breath was at my neck, whispering into my ear, “That goes both ways.”
Rrrrrriiiipppp.
“You motherfucker, these are fucking leather!” I hissed over my shoulder at him. He wasn’t wasting time, though, and within seconds of feeling the cool air on my bare ass, his hand was inside what remained of my pants and burying itself between my thighs. “Oh fucking fuck!” I gasped, my body bowing automatically to take him in. I was shockingly wet and he groaned feeling it, giving me only a few seconds before he pulled out and thrusted back in with two fingers right away, fast and rough. “Fucking shit!”
“You can take it,” he growled in my ear. With his free hand he grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked, wrenching my head back by it and dragging a cry of pleasure from my throat. “Hurts so good, right?” he murmured against my pulse point, his fingers thrusting and twisting inside me, pulling gasps and cries from my lungs. “Been thinking about this since the first time I saw you in these clothes.”
Those words uttered in that tone against my throat ratcheted up the pleasure again and I was writhing under him, begging for more. He yanked my hair again, stretching my neck to its limit and sending pinpricks of pain arcing across my scalp. I could feel an orgasm building at the base of my spine that promised to be scream-worthy. “Oh my god fuck…” I whined.
“I think I should fuck you just like this,” Spencer growled.
“Oh god, Spence!” I cried. “I’m so fucking close, oh fuck.”
He yanked on my hair again, harder this time, and I cried out as his response rumbled against the back of my neck. “Don’t you fucking dare.” His fingers abandoned me and I damn near sobbed at the emptiness they left, my hips chasing him wantonly. There was another rrrippp, more bare skin, and then his cock was filling me in one hard thrust. I choked on a scream, feeling him in my throat he had filled me so deep and so fast, my walls stretching and clenching around him, every muscle in my body following suit and seizing. My hands scrabbled for purchase on the concrete to push myself up onto all fours, but he planted one hand in the center of my back and pinned me face-down ass-up, his other hand still in my hair and pulling it taut. I gasped as he retreated and then let my breath go in a guttural moan as he railed into me. “Fuck yes,” he groaned. He set a brutal pace, fast and hard and so deep I could feel every thrust bruising my insides, his hips slamming into mine, and yet I couldn’t get enough, could feel my body clutching him and begging for more. That orgasm was winding up again but demanding moremoremore.
“Fuck, Spence, please,” I gasped.
He lifted his hand from my back and as he thrust into me a moment later, smack! An instant’s pain and searing heat bloomed on the side of my ass and I cried out automatically in pain. Before my brain could even process the way the pain morphed into pleasure, my scream turned into a moan.
Spencer laughed, low and dark, and stilled, which right away had me rutting back into him to find the friction he’d stolen. “Dirty girl,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. Then, smack! I cried out again and writhed against the hold he had on my hair, incapable of words and still trying desperately to regain that friction. “Say please again, baby,” he murmured, laughter in his voice.
“Rot. In. Hell,” I gritted out.
SMACK!
I screamed at the much harder strike, was still mid-scream as Spencer gripped my ass in his hand right over the burning handprint he’d left and shoved me down into the floor, one leg stretched out behind me and one bent up towards my body. He followed me down and ground into me, somehow deeper and dirtier with the brutal angle, one hand on my spine again to flatten my chest to the cold floor and the other yanking my head back by my hair as far as he could pull me, right up against his shoulder. “You like that? You like it rough like this? Like me so fucking deep in you you’re choking on me?”
He was so deep in me and staying there, grinding against me and inside me so I couldn’t fucking see through the blinding pleasure and desperation. “Fuck, Spence,” I whimpered. “I’m so fucking close.”
“Yeah? You gonna come on my cock? Or is this still not enough for you?” The words sent me spiraling upwards to the very fucking brink and I couldn’t see or speak or do anything but writhe underneath him, mindlessly seeking that last bit of pressure I needed. Spencer chuckled in my ear, then murmured against my skin, “Oh, baby...I got you.” Pain, sharp bruising pain as he bit down hard on the juncture of my shoulder and neck and I was screaming and exploding and burning like the sun as I tumbled downward….
When I came back to earth, I could feel Spencer’s breath hot on my skin and fluttering my hair. His forehead was braced on the back of my neck, his breath coming in uneven shudders. The wearily exhaled ‘holy fuck’ confirmed my suspicions and a lust-drunk smirk curved my lips. “Didn’t think you were that close,” I mumbled, my tongue still a little numb and clumsy. “Thought I’d have to get on top and finish you.”
“Mmm,” he groaned. “Give me twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Holy shit...didn’t think I was that close either, but you came like a derailing train and swept me right up with you.”
He belatedly unclenched the fist he had in my hair and I laid my head wearily on the floor, turning one side of my face towards him so he could see my smirk. “I’m still impressed by your post-sex poeticism,” I mumbled. As answer, Spencer pressed a gentle but fervent kiss to my cheek. Surprised by the softness on top of the poeticism, I tried to turn to look at him and he shocked me further by pulling out and helping me roll over. He kept me under him and laid over me again, elbows bracketing my shoulders, skin scorching hot on mine, dark bottomless pit eyes inches away. The breath left my lungs and I thought again of the epiphany I’d had minutes before. He’s just like me.
“I’d take the fall for you, Alix,” he whispered. My jaw dropped and a pink blush bloomed on his cheeks, though his expression remained serious, his eyes still locked right on mine. “I would if it came to that, but I’d rather it didn’t.”
“I don’t want you to,” I said immediately, the words no less true for their quickness to leap from my tongue. Unable to help myself, I reached up and cradled his face in my hand, his hair brushing my fingertips. He kept his eyes on mine, but leaned into the contact. Warmth bloomed in my chest like a balloon inflating and sparks skittered along my nerve endings. I’d never felt anything like it before, knew it was so much more than a fantastic fucking orgasm, so much more than anything I’d ever felt before. “Spence…”
“I know,” he said softly, cutting off the words I was terrified might actually be worth uttering. “I feel it too...including the absolute fucking terror.”
“I don’t want love,” I whispered to him for what could have been the hundredth time. It was the first time it felt like a lie.
“Me neither,” he returned, as he always did. This time, though, his eyes dropped to my lips as he said it and his brow creased. “I think you’re going to ruin me, Alix.”
I think you already ruined me. But I couldn’t say that, wouldn’t say it. Instead, I swallowed the dryness in my mouth and changed the subject. “What now?”
One corner of his mouth tilted crookedly upward. “I told you, give me twenty minutes.”
“Spence.”
He dropped the smirk and met my gaze, serious once more. It was a strange and unsettling look on him when I’d grown used to his dead-pan humor, his crooked half-smiles and his laughter, but for all its strangeness it felt priceless. “Now we’re allies. If we’re hunting, we tell each other. If we take someone, we tell each other. We use my plan to make it trace back to the agent, I’ll show you how.” His eyes dropped to my lips again and when he spoke it was with a growl that made me want to count down those twenty minutes. “And we’re exclusive now. We need to trust each other...and also, if I see you with someone else I’m going to take his head off.”
“That doesn’t fit the MO.”
“No, not at all, but that’s what’s going to happen.” That warmth ballooned inside my chest again and this time it wasn’t so frightening. Instead, it brought a pleased grin to my face. At the sight, Spencer met my gaze again with raised eyebrows. “You like me jealous? I’m dead-serious, Alix, don’t fuck with me or someone’s going to die.”
“Good,” I said, letting my smile tilt into a wicked smirk. I leaned up to his parted lips and whispered into his mouth, “Because if I see you with another girl, I’m going to take her head off.” Spencer’s pupils dilated before my eyes, all but consuming his hazel irises. For a moment, he just stared down at me. Then he was in motion, shoving my shredded clothes out of the way and kissing down my body. “What are you…?” He’d made it to my abused leather pants, though, and answered my question with his mouth between my thighs the moment he got my pants far enough out of the way to gain him access. A gasp hissed past my teeth at the feel of his tongue on very sensitive flesh. He sucked my clit between his lips and a shot of electricity exploded up my spine. “Fuck, Spence!” I cried. “What, because I threatened to murder someone?”
“Guess that’s a kink for me,” he hummed into my skin. Then his talented tongue was deep inside me and he’s tasting his own come in me and he groaned into me and the vibrations were heaven and hell dancing on my nerve-endings. He slung my legs over his shoulders and settled in, growling into my flesh, practically inside of me, “Fuck...this is a kink for me too. Tastes like you’re mine.”
Maybe that would terrify me later. Maybe realizing how badly I wanted to be his or how badly I wanted him to be mine would put me over the edge. Maybe I’d panic in the aftermath of letting go of my fear and anger and guilt and grief for the first time in years. But right now all I could think about was this moment and how fucking good he made me feel.