I've never written anything angst-y in my life and so I thought I'd try my hand at it. Let me know if you like it ;)
Also I've never written in this style before. It's very different to my usual stuff so if it's awful I'll go back to my usual style.
The title was inspired by that line in Sin City (lol, am I obsessed with that film or what?) "Always and Never". It just seemed to fit the feel that I wanted to have in this fic and I hope it worked. I've never done anything like this before so fingers crossed 'eh?
Title: Always and Never.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: For that one night he could believe that she would always be his. Always and never.
Characters: Riddick, Jack, Imam, Imam's wife (OC), Dale (OC), Imam's 3 kids (OCs).
Pairings: Jack/Dale (OC), Jack/Riddick (suggested).
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, only Dale really and he's not very prominent…oh and the club (lol). I own Club Ardour…even if it is made up…Yeah, I'm talking nonsense again.
Happy Reading.
Gem
xxx
-o0o-
Always and Never.
He always graced 'Club Ardour' with his presence on a Friday night. The best strip joint in the Helion Cluster.
He always started with a whiskey or two, just to get his blood pumping. Jack Daniels was his preference before settling back with a beer.
The place was heaving as usual and he had to punch more than a few of the drunken regulars to find his usual seat in the corner, kicking his feet up to rest on the table top.
He'd been back in New Mecca for no more than a few weeks and yet he had fallen into his ritual, never deviating from it once. He needed it. He needed it more than he was happy acknowledging, even to himself.
He had stumbled on the place entirely by accident after his first night back in the city. He'd gone to the only people he knew, the only one's who would take him in and while he had been welcomed with open arms and growing smiles, he had felt alienated from them, her especially.
Imam had considered him with wary eyes for the merest of seconds before smiling and throwing his door open.
"You are always welcome here, Mr. Riddick. For what you did for dear Jacquelyn and I." he had beamed, bowing to him and ushering him inside.
The home was a good one. Warm. Lived in. Homely. Imam's wife bustled around after three tear-away youngsters, aided by Jack.
He'd known it was her from the beginning. No matter how many years it had been since he had last clapped eyes upon her and she had been all of thirteen years old.
"Hello Jack." he had announced as she wrestled with the eldest of the three children, attempting to force a pyjama top over his head.
She had looked up at him, eyes shining emerald green beneath soft, dark blonde hair and she had smiled back at him, though not the same smile that he had left with. The adoration had left her eyes, didn't make them glow as they once use to just for him and that stung.
"Alright, Riddick? How's life treating you?" she'd grinned, wrapping him in a warm but quick embrace. One that you would give to an uncle or friend of the family.
"Same old." he had responded, covering his disappointment with cocky smirk, hands forced into his trouser pockets.
Her eyes had smiled at him again and then had left his face entirely, moving to someone behind him. They lit up instantly for the person, whoever it was. That glow that Riddick remembered had once upon a time been just for him. The adoration.
"Hey." the voice was low but not deep. Smooth not gravely. Cheerful not sarcastic or smug. Completely opposite to him entirely.
The boy slipped into Riddick's line of sight, curling an arm about Jack's waist. About little Jack's waist and dropping a kiss upon her cheek. His hair was blonde, lighter than the dusky colour of Jack's, and his eyes blue, sparkling as he glanced down at the girl in his arms and then back up to meet Riddick's gaze. No fear. He wasn't scared of him. Oh how Riddick longed to make him feel the fear of God, but something in the way Jack looked up at the boy, a hand pressed lazily to his heart, made him swallow the urge. She was so goddamn happy!
"Riddick, this is Dale. He's my boyfriend." she beamed with happiness and Dale stuck his hand out in an offer of friendship to Riddick.
"It's nice to meet you. Jackie's told me so much about her favourite uncle."
Uncle. That word had possibly stung more than the fact that she was going out with the guy. She saw him as her uncle? After all those years of devotion to him, he had returned to be upstaged by a wimpy, snot-nosed little upstart?
She had finally moved on. It had been what he had told her to do many times before, but now that she had actually heeded his advice he felt like slaughtering someone, namely himself for being so stupid and suggesting it in the first place.
Riddick had managed a curt nod at the boy who was too involved in Jack to be bothered that the powerful man before him was attempting subliminal intimidation techniques.
"Come on, you. You're supposed to be leaving anyway. Work in the morning." Jack had teasingly scolded Dale and he had obeyed her instantly as she escorted him to the door.
Riddick had turned, watching them go. Glaring at them as Jack leaned against the doorframe and Dale had leaned down grinning as he had moved in to kiss her goodnight.
"Would you like a drink, Mr. Riddick?" Imam's wife stepped into his view, blocking the couple out almost as if she had sensed what was going on deep within his subconscious.
"Yeah. Yeah, make it a big one." he had replied and she had nodded and moved away revealing Jack smiling, shaking her head as she closed the door.
"Isn't he wonderful?" she breathed hours later, when Imam and his wife had retired for the evening and though Riddick desperately wanted her to be happy, he couldn't help the resentment in his tone as he replied.
"Sure, Jack."
She had paused, confused, and frowned at him.
"What, Riddick? You don't like him?" she had asked and he couldn't even find a voice to reply, simply shrugged his shoulders sullenly. "No, no! No, don't you do this to me now." she had snapped. "I'm moving on, like you told me I should. You told me to, Riddick! I was willing to wait. Don't you dare do this to me now that I'm happy!"
"Jack-" he had called, attempting to smooth things over. The she had hit him with another blow. One that rubbed salt into the wounds that he had already suffered that night.
"My name is Jackie, Riddick. Jack was a dumb kid's name. I don't want you to call me that anymore.
And just like that, in those few words, Jack was no longer "His Jack". She'd gone and grown herself up. Nineteen she was now, saving up for further education next year, working a nice little day job in a nice little café and in love with the young, blonde haired, blued eyed lad named Dale. He was perfect for her, a good, well-mannered boy that doted on her completely and she loved Dale back dearly, instead of adoring him, the convict, the murderer, the bad-ass, as she always had before.
It was strange to him. Foreign. Alien. She had always loved him before. Yes, it had been a teenage crush. Yes, she had been bound to grow out of it. But it's lack left a gaping hole in him. One that he had never realised would be there when he had been a bastard and yelled at her to get her own life and stop pestering him. He may possibly have destroyed her back then, an impressionable thirteen year old, desperate for someone to look up to. For someone to take an interest in her for a change, to be kind to her and make her feel wanted like all children should. And yet he had crushed her feelings like they were of no importance to him. They hadn't been back then and now he was paying for his mistakes. Now he was paying dearly for them.
That first night he had found "Club Ardour" he had drunk himself something stupid. Drowning his sorrows, no matter that they were all of his own idiotic doing. He had pressed the glass to his forehead and glared over at the women dancing on the stage, eyes trained studiously upon the swaying hips and rhythmic motions.
He had never expected to see her there. To find her beautiful face taunting him upon the catwalk that they danced on. He had never thought that she would need to be up there, though in hindsight, there would be no other possible way for her to finance her own way through further education just from working in a poxy little café. He had never thought that she would have the nerve to be up there. She had always had too much dignity. To see her young, slender body the object of so many men's desires. He had never thought that he would have cared so much.
-o0o-
She never thought that she would care that Riddick had returned to torment her. She had told herself so many times that she was over it and in some ways she was. She did truly love Dale and she was going to marry him…one day.
She laughed and joked and smiled with Riddick upon his return into her and Imam's lives, all the while tucked into the single seated armchair. All the while staying out of the larger man's reach.
He had told her to get on with her own life and she always did as he told her. She just never realised that she would enjoy tormenting him so much, the way he had her. And she had never realised just how much it would hurt her to see him again.
She lied to him about her work. Well, not lied technically. She just omitted a few details, like she had a second job that paid more in one night than the café did in a month. But then again, Riddick was no one special and she lied to Imam and his wife, she even lied to Dale about her night job.
That first night that he had arrived he had gone out. To where, she didn't have a clue, but she pushed her concern for him back down and left for her second job. Riddick was a big man. He could take care of himself.
She had never in a million years expected to find his face there among the crowd of regulars. Haunting her again. At first she thought that she was hallucinating beneath the flashing neon lights. That was until he had gotten up from his seat and moved for the stage.
She had never felt so nervous up there, clad in barely anything of substance. She'd never had qualms dancing there before, until his silver eyes studied her, watched her, scrutinized her every movement.
She had never expected him to reach a large strong hand up and catch her wrist, dragging her down from the stage. He was furious, she could tell and despite that, she fought. With all her might she resisted his pull until finally the bouncers got involved and she had to intervene just to stop them from punching Riddick's lights out.
"Don't kick him out, Boxer! Don't beat him up!" she had begged the rotund, heavily built head-bouncer, hands placed pleadingly on his chest, though the plea for him not to beat Riddick up was mainly to save the bouncer's lives. She knew that Riddick could kill them all in seconds if he really wanted to. "He won't do it again."
She had glared at Riddick, silently telling him to do as she said and Boxer had grumbled under his breath angrily.
"You know what the rules are, Jackie. No boyfriends in the bar!"
He had done nothing more though, calling his team away and leaving Jack and Riddick to stare at each other in an uncomfortable silence.
"It's only dancing, Riddick." she had muttered finally. "I only dance." she hugged her arms across her chest, shivering slightly in the cold breeze from the doorway.
She had turned to leave, to retake her place up beside her co-workers when he spoke out to her. The first time since he had seen her up there and dragged her down.
"I love you, Jack…" he stated, unable to deny it any longer. Unable to lie to himself.
And she glanced at him over her shoulder.
"I know." she responded turning away from him once more. Her pause was drawn out, only the thunderous music and talk of the customers could be heard between them for long minutes. "And I love you too…Don't come here again."
-o0o-
"Don't come here again." she had said to him, hunching her shoulders against the cool air and his gaze. "Don't come here again."
And yet he disobeyed.
He always graced 'Club Ardour' with his presence on a Friday night. The best strip joint in the Helion Cluster.
She always danced on the Friday. She always danced and not Imam and his wife her adoptive parents, not even her boyfriend, soon to be fiance from the way things were going, knew that she did it.
Only Riddick knew. Only he watched her.
She only danced for him. Her eyes intent on his figure sat in the corner. The other customers no longer held her attention for more than a few seconds.
She always only danced for him.
Not for Dale. The man that she was going to marry. The man that she loved.
For that one night a week. For those scant few hours, she was his and he was hers as she moved to the sounds of the music around her.
One night and then the following day she belonged to another man. A boy that Riddick could have killed in a heart beat. Who Riddick would have loved to kill. But he didn't. He didn't listen to the urgings of his inner beast to slit the boys throat and take Jack back from him. He love Jack too much for that and he knew that she loved Dale. It was Dale that she wanted to be with but Riddick had no doubt that she did love him still, somewhere deep in her heart and it was because of that that she danced for him.
That one night in that stupid club with that stupid name she belonged to him.
That one night he could believe that she would always be his.
Always and never.
-o0o-
Thoughts, anyone? Good? Bad? Or just plain ugly?