A/N: I'd wanted to do a darker/angrier JoLu one-shot for a while and after watching a ton of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes and hearing this quote and it finally clicked for me. And just as a fun fact, I snuck another quote from Buffy in here so you get double bonus points if you can pick it out. There's absolutely no fluff in this piece and it's definitely rated M for language and content. You have been forewarned.
You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight… and you'll shag… and you'll hate each other until it makes you quiver but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood… blood screaming inside you to work its will.
Spike from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Blood on the Parquet
She was the one.
There was no other way to explain it.
She was the one that he compared all of the other women to, the one whose taste he would never forget, the one who got underneath his skin and consumed him from within.
He was in love with her and he hated her for it.
She was standing across the room from him, clad in a burgundy floor length satin gown, her golden curls were pinned up in a mussed bun and her lips were painted dark red. The dress hugged every delicious inch of her body with the neckline plunging down her column, exposing her flawless skin to him. That very same skin that he just had the pleasure of having his lips all over two nights ago.
She probably still tasted like him.
"Can I get you anything else, Mr. Zacchara?"
Johnny looked at the bartender with a scowl before barking at him to give him another scotch. The man's hands shook as he poured the amber liquid, clearly intimidated by the young mob prince's foul mood. Johnny took the glass and downed it in one swift motion, willing the stuff to calm him down. Scotch seemed to be the only thing that could remedy this hell that she had shoved him into.
"Your ring is beautiful, Lulu… congratulations."
Johnny's hand clenched around the body of the glass, willing himself not to hurl it across the room. Maybe if he was lucky, it would just shatter and slice open his hand. Surely physical pain was preferable to this torture that she was inflicting on him. She was just doing this to make his suffer, he was sure of it. It was this sick and twisted game that the two of them played. She was showing him that she could do better than him, to make him admit when he was acting like a selfish bastard, as she had so eloquently put it, and he bedded different women every night to show her that he couldn't care less about who she was fucking or marrying.
Both were lies.
His stomach turned as he watched Lulu's hips sway as she strode over to her fiancé, bending over to place a kiss on his lips as he sat in his wheelchair. Her lipstick left a red print, branding him as her own, and Johnny could feel his lip curl in utter disgust. Sure, he was probably going to hell for wishing death on someone in a wheelchair but he didn't care. If he hadn't been such a fucking moron to get himself shot and paralyzed from the waist down, then perhaps Johnny wouldn't have been standing on the outside looking in. Maybe his stomach wouldn't turn at the very sight of the woman that he was consumed with wearing Dante Falconeri's cheap cubic zirconia ring.
"I think it's cute."
Olivia Falconeri put her hand on her hip and leaned in towards Johnny with a smirk on her lips. Her dress was emerald green that brought out the richness of her brown hair and was shorter than most of the dresses that were making the rounds in the room. Had he been in his right mind, he would've taken her into one of the stairwells and fucked her until she couldn't see straight. But he was a bit… distracted.
"I think it's nauseating."
Johnny downed another heaping glass of scotch, never taking his eyes off the couple. Olivia shook her head and put her hand on his shoulder, gently massaging it. He knew what she was up to. Her touch reeked of desperation ever since she ended things with Steve.
"You used to be a romantic…"
"Keyword… used to."
"But it's nice to see Dante and Lulu finally get their happy ending, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I'm ecstatic."
Olivia giggled at his blatant sarcasm for reasons that were oblivious to him and she put her head on his shoulder. Her body was warm and heavy against his and he could see in her eyes that she had definitely had overindulged at the open bar. She was practically throwing herself at him, waiting for him to take advantage of her, and all that he could do was to seethe at the happy couple.
"I thought that you and Lulu were doing the whole mature thing by being friends…"
"Yeah… we're friends. We're great friends."
Johnny brought his glass of scotch up to his lips and drank heavily, letting the bitter and smoky taste of it fill his senses so he wouldn't have to think about the way her nails felt as they grated against his skin or that soft mewling sound that she made when he buried himself inside of her or the way that it took him days to get the taste of her out of his mouth.
She was everywhere.
Sensing his thoughts, Lulu's gaze quickly whipped towards Johnny and their eyes met. They bore into him, burning his skin with their venom, and she quickly turned on her heel and made a swift exit and Johnny couldn't help but to smile. Her anger spoke volumes.
It told him that she still loved him.
Practically shoving Olivia's rapidly deteriorating form off him, Johnny followed her. If it was a fight that she wanted, then it was a fight that she was going to get. It wasn't in his nature to give up on something that he wanted so much. He saw her duck into the ladies room and he quickly slid in behind her. She stood over the sink, head down, hands spread along the marble. He turned the lock and the clicking sound brought her attention up to the mirror.
"You shouldn't be here, Johnny."
"Neither should you."
"Last time I checked, this was my engagement party."
"And last time I checked, you weren't in love with your fiancé."
Lulu quickly turned around and shoved Johnny back against the wall. Her perfectly manicured hand pressed on his chest and Johnny couldn't help but to chuckle. He loved her fire. He loved her spark. They were an improbable and complex match. They were all passion in all forms…
Hate.
Love.
They felt it, lived it and breathed every inch of it. He had been numb for so long that just to have this feeling, this intense feeling for this woman in front of him was the best thing in his life.
"You know nothing about me and Dante."
"Then why can't you stay away from me?"
"Old habits die hard."
"And you used to be a better liar, Lu…"
"Don't call me that."
"Why? Because that's what Dante calls you or because you like it better when I say it?"
Her gaze was venomous and her hand recoiled from his chest, as if she was reacting to something hot, and she backed away from him, shaking her head. He loved testing her, pushing her to her limits. She was the only one who he liked having under his skin and inhabit his every waking thought.
"You're disgusting."
"I could say the same thing about you… marrying a guy just because you feel sorry for him."
"I don't feel sorry for him. I'm marrying Dante because he loves me."
"Interesting choice of words… 'I'm marrying Dante because he loves me.' The million dollar question, however, is do you love him?"
She turned away from him and put her hands back on the marble countertop. The openness of the back of her dress revealed herself to him, exposing her delicious skin all the way from her neck down to the back of her waist and his mouth suddenly went dry as he just stared at her. She was too beautiful for her own good, maybe even for his own good. She then looked up, their eyes meeting, and she suddenly looked sad.
"You have no right to ask me that."
"Why not? Don't you think that the man that you've been screwing for six months deserves to know whether you're in love with another man or not?"
"I asked you to leave Olivia. I said that if you really loved me, you would leave her and you hesitated. How was I supposed to blow up my life when you weren't willing to do the same?"
"Are you kidding me? You want to talk about hesitation? Why don't we talk about the fact that I fucking proposed to you and you said that you weren't sure?"
He remembered that day. That day when he laid all of his shit bare. He got down on one knee, pulled his heart from his chest and held it out to her. It was the most painful thing that he ever did but he did it because she was the one.
She was the only one who made him feel… made him want to feel.
And he hated her for it. It wasn't supposed to be this way. He wasn't supposed to hurt like this ever again. She had destroyed him once only to build him back up again with her soft kisses and her embrace. He started towards her, eyes narrowed and focused, thinking about how much he wanted to taste her, breathe her, devour her even.
"How can I be sure of anything when it comes to you?"
"And how can I be sure of anything when it comes to you? Why don't you just admit it, Lulu? You're not mad at me… you're mad at yourself… you're mad that you have the good upstanding fiancé with the good job and house with the white picket fence and the only time that you feel anything is when I'm inside you…"
Her hand burned his skin as she struck and he immediately charged at her, pinning her against the wall. He could feel her breath on his face as she exhaled sharply and he could feel his own heart pounding against his skin. He could feel everything.
He was on fire.
He dipped his head down towards her collarbone, placing a gentle kiss against it and he felt her legs quiver against him but he held her there. She wasn't going to give up on him. He wouldn't let her. She sighed as he suckled on that tender and supple skin on her neck, running his tongue along the surface. She tasted sweet, like vanilla.
"Johnny—"
"Tell me to stop."
"Stop…"
"Tell me to stop and mean it…"
The lack of conviction in her words matched her eyes. His eyes searched hers but found nothing. There was nothing there that could deny him, nothing there that wanted to. She wanted it. She craved it just as much as he did. She needed to feel something… anything that would make her feel alive again… and he was going to make her feel it. He ran a finger along her lips and she trembled in his arms. Her hand was on the collar of his shirt, holding him back but still gripping on for dear life. He was going to make her feel him.
"Johnny, please…"
"Tell me you don't want me."
"I—I—"
"You can't even say it, can you?"
She responded by pressing her lips to his. There was no sweetness, no tenderness to speak of. Just blood. Blood boiling and coursing through their veins, sending them into a frenetic trance lost somewhere between passion and lust. Hands blindly searching, tongues sliding, teeth scraping against skin, bodies arching and twisting.
"I hate you… I fucking hate you…"
There were tears in her eyes and there was a subtle crack in her voice as she said it and he knew that she meant it. She meant every syllable of it and he drank it in. He caught her chin in between his fingertips and brought her gaze to his. His slacks were in a heap around his ankles and her legs were wrapped around his waist and he could feel her heat against him, just waiting to be taken.
"I know… but I fucking love you..."
And then she broke.
Because it had been three years since he had said those words to her.
Her hands framed his face as he slowly pushed into her. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, letting a low moan pass over her lips. She squeezed him tightly and he thought that he was about to lose his mind. It was too much. Too much hate, too much love, too much desire, too much caring. It was enough to make him want to die. But he loved it all.
"I hate you so much…"
"And I love you so fucking much…"
His hips snapped against hers, raw and unforgiving, and her nails dug into his skin, clinging and pulling him closer. She bucked and writhed against him and she was beautiful. He loved to see her with such wild abandon, knowing that she came alive at his touch. This was how she was supposed to be always, with him, riding on the heels of an unspeakable ecstasy.
"Johnny…"
"Tell me you love me."
"No…"
"Tell me!"
He stilled, holding her against the wall, waiting for an answer. Her eyes fell to his and she bit her bottom lip, trying to stop it from trembling. Why did she have to fight him so hard? Perhaps he wouldn't love her as much as he did if she wasn't so damn maddening but it was killing him to be this close to her but to not fully have her but he was almost there. He could feel her at that precipice. He pulled out and pushed himself back in at a languid pace and her entire body shook with need. He couldn't help but to smirk internally at her impatience. All she had to do was admit what he already knew and he would give her anything she wanted.
"I can't—"
"Do you want me to stop?"
"No…"
"Then say it… tell me you love me…"
"I do… I love you, Johnny."
Her muscles clenched around him, her orgasm taking complete control of her body, as the words rolled off her tongue and he followed right after her, with her name on his lips, pouring himself into her until there was nothing left. He had given her everything, his body and his soul. What more could she want from him? Their bodies slumped down towards the floor, the tile cooling their tangled limbs, still shaking from the intensity of their encounter.
"You're gonna be the death of me…"
"This can't happen again… ever."
She had unceremoniously shoved him off her and began to dress, tucking everything back into its proper place. He rose to his feet, pulling up his slacks and he laughed bitterly. No matter how much she fixed her appearance, adjusted her dress, he would be there. She knew what he tasted like, what he smelled like. He was in her soul and that was never going to come out.
"You said that last time."
"I mean it this time… I don't like myself when I'm with you… you make me crazy."
"That's what love is supposed to do… great love is wild… and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes."
"Until there's nothing left. Love like that doesn't last, Johnny."
"But we have."
"We? We don't have shit…"
"How much longer are you going to keep lying to yourself?"
"As long as it takes for you to believe me."
Her words were quiet, almost like she didn't want him to hear them, and she went for the door. Johnny, however, was quicker and placed a hand on the door, preventing her from leaving. His free hand ran up her arm and she prickled at his touch. He inhaled and smirked as he realized that she smelled like his cologne. She would go back to Dante and he would know that she didn't belong to him.
"You can't deny it, Lulu… you can't deny your feelings for me. You said it yourself."
"I don't deny it, Johnny. I don't deny that I love you… but it's not enough for us to be together."
"Like hell it isn't… how can you make love to me like that… with that much intensity and passion… and not see it as a sign that we should be together?"
He turned her around and pinned her against the door with his gaze. This was the part that he hated. He hated how much he cared, hated how much he needed her, and hated to admit that she was his only weakness. And she was right there, just beyond his reach. He had her in the palm of his hand and now she was slipping like sand through his fingertips.
"Because feeling like this? Loving you and needing like this… it's killing me, Johnny."
"And you don't think this is killing me too? To love you like this? To want you like this but never really have all of you? This is absolute hell for me."
"Then just let me go…"
"Why don't you?"
"You think I haven't tried?"
There were tears in her eyes again and she shook her head, as if loving him was the most horrific thing that she had ever done, but she quickly wiped her eyes and placed a sweet kiss on Johnny's lips, a stark contrast to their fiery union just moments ago. The gesture made him ease off the door and she was able to open it. The roar of the outside room rushed into their quiet little alcove, bringing them back to reality.
"This isn't over… you know that this isn't over. It never will be."
She reached out and wiped two tears that he had failed to notice were on his cheeks. Her fingers lingered there, softly running the pads of her fingertips over his features long after the tears had been wiped away, and she smiled sadly.
"I know… but we have to try."
And then she was gone and his palm was empty. Not even a grain of sand was left.