I'll not be a gentleman

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It's been a while, but I hope everyone remembers who I am…

This is an idea I've been developing since Hate is a Drug came out, but with all the trappings of modern life and stuff, this is the first time it's been outside my cerebellum. Be gentle with it, it's been a very strange place…

I got this idea, and developed it while listening to the song "Possom Kingdom" by The Toadies. Repeatedly. On more than on occation my sterio threatened to jump out my bedroom window and end it all. It's a good song, and has nicely warped my mind on more than one occation. It also gave me the title for the fic: "I'm not gonna lie/ I'll not be a gentleman/ behind the boathouse/ I'll show you my dark secret" A bit OOC for this pairing, but the song was about a real life small-town murder, so I at least get bonus points for that, eh?

If you want to listen to it so you can hum along, go here for a wav file: (http://www.geocities.com/dementia_inc/PossumKingdom.wav  )  Not the best quality, I admit, but a little squinting and head tilting never hurt anyone.

I must warn you in the first few parts, there is HEAVY SHIPPERNESS, at least until the serial killer comes in. (Should be around the second installment) It can and will give you cavities.

Also, if you have time, surf on over and check out Dementia Inc's new website.
http://www.geocities.com/dementia_inc/      Because, yes, we are doing a sequel to HIAD, it's just taking too fucking LONG…And it gives as many details as you're going to get…

And, please for the love of your god, REVIEW!!!! Plllllleeeassseee!

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The road was dark, and it made Nny very awake and aware of what was going on. He really didn't want to be awake right now. All his suspicions were telling him the best thing to be right now was unconcious or vomiting. Maybe both. He had his eyeballs trained on the little while dots that told you what side of the street you were on. (Had he set the VCR for Scumby? Fuck…)

He had been counting them off in groups of ten for what seemed like the last few miles.

He had hoped that it would distract him from where he was going to end up. It didn't.

"Take a left here, we need to get on this road." Devi told him.

He nodded, and taking the utmost care to slooowly make the turn, he pulled onto another road. That task being accomplished, he went back into his own mind, and was surprised to find a new thought playing around in the feted muck.The realization of how warm Devi's leg was, a few inches away from his hand. He pushed the thought away, but it came back, stronger. He felt like he was choking on it.

"You want to pull over and let me to take the wheel?" Devi asked, "You don't look so good…"

"'M fine." He muttered, clearing his throat and swallowing the phlemn for good measure. He went back to counting the white dots, or at least part of him did. The other non-attached parts was having a meeting near the back to find out what they should all do. Briefly, they reviewed how he had acted last Thrusday, and, after generally agreeing he'd acted like a stunted mongoose, they moved onto how the hell he was getting out of this.

Nny quickly peeked back over at Devi. She was smiling, and looking at the road, not at him, so he went back to blinking at the little white dots.

She was happy about this. She HAD to be happy about this, she was getting her revenge.

It was the only thing it could be, since she had been very insistant as this little.. trip out to the lake as an acceptible payback. He tried had expalined how he saw things. How he hated nature and all it's devices, and how thermostats are our friends, but she wouldn't listen.

Something was out here. Something she wanted him to see.

Still, he had never been to a lake. Maybe they had large human-devoring aligators like in that one movie. This could be something neat, right?

They had been watching that movie on her couch last Thursday. He had thought that was neat. Stupid, but neat. All the main people trying to find out if the aligator really was an aligator, and all the hicks who lived around the lake telling them they were fucking stupid to hanging around the lake. Showed em some nice fake-mutilated goats too. And what did the main charicters do as soon as they were by themselves? Go into the lake! Ooo! Our non-descript scientific equiptment will save us! Fak! And what the fuck was a marine biologist doing wearing high heels to a swamp? Wasn't suitible footwear in a crisis part of the doctor-making… exam… thingie? She's walking around in those things in the middle of the night, and when things started rustling, and the BITCH says 'Is someone there?', like that's NEVER going to be a cue to start the disemboweling! Fucking idiots! And then…

… he wasn't quite sure what happened then… Devi kissed him, he paniced and… well… it was probably a good thing she threw him out. Her toaster was never going to be the same.

Dammit, he shouldn't have stopped her from doing the kissing stuff. (At least not like that…) It wasn't like she had done anything that had started to hurt yet. And she did get cranky when he didn't poke her like that after a few days. Maybe she had been trying to get all the gropey feely stuff out of the way so he wouldn't have to do it for the rest of the week.

It wasn't that all the groping and the touching and poking wasn't nice, but it was too damn distracting. Like sleep. Worse than sleep, because you were awake when it was happening, and you knew how real and warm and safe it was, and you knew it was going to end eventually and then you would have to go on with your life like it haddn't happened. Depressing as hell… Worse, some of the stuff she had been suggesting 'moving on' to was just fucking unhygenic!

"You're going to want to get on the dirt road." Devi said, interrupting his thoughts.

He nodded, did so just as slowly and bounced along the chipped up earth. Low boughs of pine trees smacked against the window, like large angry birds. Nny wondered if he had enough stakes in the trunk if vampires started showing up. This was bat country if he'd ever seen it.

Devi turned on the radio and cranked it up to a reasonible level. The song that came on was a little piece of fluff that he had heard before, involuntarily, and dealt with some chirpy preppy bitch with a blonde die-job trying to sing about how much she loved her eunich jock boyfriend.

Devi didn't change the channel. She actually started humming along with the paper thin lyrics, and began to smile. Hard.

Nny didn't often see Devi smile, mostly because a good chunk of the time she was pissed off at the earth and all the beings that walked it. And even when she did smile, it was small sad smiles, who knew they were dying even as they were being born.

Right now, she somehow seemed like she was genuinely happy.

Johnny was suddenly very afraid.

~~+~~

The biggest shock was it haddn't changed.

Even now, a few years from the last time Devi had visited and a lifetime away from those horrific camp outs with the Firefly Scouts, the Lake haddn't changed one bit. She should have brought the marshmellows and welding torch.

She blinked over at Nny who was going a raging 2.5 miles and hour through the dirt parking lot, twisitng his head around like an owl on speed.

Poor bastard. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost...

She still wasn't sure how they had convinced each other to stop trying to disasemble each other long enough to get back together. It wasn't always the best of circustances, but it sure as hell beat dating again. Especially with her luck.

Not that the sputtering-cigarette-lighter sized flame of her affection had changed anything between them. She knew what he still did nights. He was never good in hiding the stains, the smells, the loose body parts in various stages of decomposition. It had taken her a lot of thinking, but in the end she decided that she didn't really give a shit. He had been doing it since before she knew him, and she just wasn't one of those gals who got into a relationship simply to fix the guy she was dating. As long as he didn't try to add her to the cattle again, he could do whatever he wanted. Ninety percent of the shitheads usually had it coming to them anyway. Why fight karma?

There had even been some times, when she had gone back into the house after a long, hard day and found him in the basement working on some more or less deserving waste of oxygen. He always offered to let her gouge out a cheerleaders eyes or rip out some lecherous assholes tounge, just like a kid asking his newest bestest friend if they wanted to play with a new toy. She had never taken him up on it, but had always carefully thanked him for the invite.

It wasn't the gouging that was getting harder and harder to swallow. She had gotten desensitized to exposed human organs within a week. It was starting to get difficult to refuse. Sickness was somewhere in the back of her mind, during her worst moments of doubt and unhappiness, whispering in the raspy gasp that was now her voice, that she should go ahead. Kill. Hurt. PAIN. Enjoy herself, yes? Hell, there had been days when a little mutilation would have been stress relief she would have paid good money for in an other situation. But she still said no.

And in the end, she was pretty proud of herself for that. She was still the sane one in this fucked up relationship, after all. By default of being the lesser evil, granted, but it wasn't a title she was aiming to get rid of any time soon. Like hell she was going to have that change just because of a few bad days… or a few dozen bad days like she had been having lately.

"If you keep driving, there's a second parking lot close to the lake." Devi heard herself tell him, as they drove through the park. "Those have a much better view."

"Kay." Nny said, still looking at her suspicously. He was obviously waiting for her to bring out the knives. Once or twice he actually jerked back when she had made a sudden move. Heh. Such a nice,warm, fuzzy feeling to know he was scared shitless by her. Not that she wasn't still amazed that he had gotten him out here at all.

God, it was such a gorgeous night. The lake glittered distantly in the dark like a demented opal. The moon was out in full tonight, and the light merrily danced over the ripples. Even the land surrounding it was bathed in a pale blue light. And it was cool enough down here to open the windows without being tenderized by the unseasonally hot weather. She couldn't have planned this better.

"This looks good. Just park anywhere." she told Nny. He pulled in to a spot under a large, old tree and put it in park. The engine was quietly turned off, and soon the only sound coming from the car was their breathing.

Devi looked over at Nny who was looking nervious even in the dim illumination. The moonlight played off the painfully thin angles of his face perfectly. It brought out an attractive qualitly that Devi had only seen in him before when she looked at him when he didn't realize she was looking. She could never seem to identify what emotion or side unseen it showed, but now that it was there, stairing her in the face. Her throat was starting to go dry.

He made a slight move, and she realized he was looking at her too.

She looked at him, hopefully, gently matching his piercing gaze. The tension was still there, but an expression that knew meant he was trying to put the pieces of a puzzling situation togeter was starting to fight for territory of his face.

Devi felt her gut start to twist under his gaze. It was starting to ram home how much she had been anticipating this.They hadn't been completely alone since that first night… with the knives and the moments to be immortialized and the… stuff. This time they both knew what the other was capable, yet somehow the new-person butterflies where creeping back. The shyness of starting to getting close. She did want to get close. She wanted to experience some of the nice stuff about being in an occationally working relationship.

Not a lot. She didn't want to dissolve into one of those disgusting couples on the sidewalk spending 20 minutes to say goodbye, or worse yet her roomie Amber from college and her 2 oversexed boyfriends. She had always hated touchy-feely crap, and everytime she had tried it she had felt sick. But plain, old, vanilla touching… Well, it was damn hard to say you were with someone if you couldn't stand next to them for too long...

"Devi?"

Devi looked up, and saw Nny looking at her all squinty-eyed. "Whuh?" she asked, intellegently.

"What are we doin?" Nny asked. Devi marveled at the way he could keep his body perfectly still while his eyes kept darting around and all but bouncing out of his skull.

"Trying to… relax." Devi told him. She almost mentioned what method of relaxation she was aiming for, but she had managed not to. You didn't exactly tell a psychopathic killer you dragged them into a rural area to neck with them… You had to carefully build them up to it. God knew her poor toaster was testiment of that…

"Well are we going to LEAVE the CAR to do the relaxing? SOMETIME? Huh? Huh?" Nny said starting to get nervious. Well 'starting' for him, anyway.

"Sure…" Devi said. She popped the car door and the musical "ding-ding-ding-ding" that the car made when the door was open sang out, echoing over the quiet hillside.

"He…hey! Whereya going?" Nny asked, quickly getting out of the car, instantly insulted that he was getting left behind.

"You said you wanted to get out of the car." Devi said, walking quickly towards the lake. She slowed down and waited for him to catch up. "Say… you want to see something neat?"