A/N: this is the chapter that earns the fic the 'M' rating. Be warned!
OOO
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
– Friedrich Nietzsche.
Jones wakes abruptly, every nerve screaming. His first impression is power: bright, painful, electric power flooding every particle of his body, lashing in blue-white whips through the air. He screams from the pain of it, arching up, the power flooding through him, the power flooding through the scream, all of his world saturated in this throbbing overflow.
Then it clicks off, sharp as a snap of fingers, and Jones goes limp. Details, new information, comprehension leaks into his mind slow as tar. He's restrained, locked at the wrists to a thickly padded surface. The air is warm. He's hungry, still hungry. His head feels heavy, crammed full of something thick and alien.
He has wires taped to him, to his arms and chest and head, embedded into his flesh. He has a thick cable down his throat, can feel it shift inside of him as he breaths around it. He moans, and the sound has weird harmonics.
"You're awake," someone says.
"Nngh," he says.
The someone looms over him, strokes his cheek. "Hey, gorgeous," they say.
Spider, something in his head supplies.
You like Spider.
"Sssngh," he says. The cable inside him shifts and pulses, bleeding heat into his stomach.
"That's me," Spider agrees. "You took some damage, Jonesy, sweet thing. Got your daddy real worried. Daddies." The virus moves closer, presses his mouth against Jones' jaw and Jones trembles at the pulse of heat that goes all through him.
"We're gonna fix you up, Jonesy," Spider whispers.
Jones squirms, trying to bring the cable out of his throat, trying to get his hands out of the restraints. Spider laughs, low and sweet, and traces Jones' mouth, stretched around the thick cable.
"Like it?" he asks, pulls it a little ways out, just enough to jar it inside him. Jones moans, feeling it slide and scrape at him, and Spider presses a kiss to Jones' chest.
"I'm gonna do bad things to you, Jonesy," he sing-songs, and presses the cable back down, in, even farther than before, making Jones thrash, making him choke and squirm. "Bad things, and you're going to like 'em, and you're gonna beg me for more." The cable pulses harder, pressing farther, and Jones can feel it pressing down inside him, burning. He can feel things shifting, inside him, locking and twisting together, can feel himself changing, the hunger he has lived with for so long yawning open inside him like a pit. The cable is pumping inside of him, spilling out into that endless void, feeding him just enough to keep him starving for it. It aches so nicely, and he pants helplessly around the cable.
Spider straddles his waist and he moans, all fricatives and static.
"Don't be like that, sugar," Spider murmurs, his long fingers dancing over the wires and cords, twisting some in farther, pulling some out. He snaps his fingers and another jolt of white power snaps through Jones. "We're calibrating, that's all. Figuring you out, see?" Another snap, another jolt. Jones thrashes his head back and forth, straining for air, the cable hot and heavy against his tongue. Spider wraps his hands around Jones' neck, holding him steady as the pain rips through him, twining with the hunger like birds in flight. He needs more than Spider's hands around his neck, his warm weight across his hips, he needs substance. He would sink his teeth into Spider's arms if he could just reach, if the cable wasn't keeping his mouth locked open. He would eat Spider alive.
"We're figuring out how to make you take what you need," Spider hums, and wrenches the cable out of Jones in one long, wet pull. It spatters thick, sweet black liquid across Jones' face, down his chest.
"I need more," Jones gasps. His voice holds strange harmonics, a staticy echo, and his mouth is wet, full of the dark liquid. He swallows it down, painfully, and rubs up against Spider. "What you're doing to me," he begs, "Please, more."
"That's my boy," Spider tells him, and puts his hands on either side of Jones' face.
Whatever Spider's going to do next is a mystery, because as Jones arches eagerly up into his touch there is a flare of red heat, and a long, curving golden claw protrudes from Spider's forehead. Spider doesn't even have time to scream before his face comes apart in a blaze of smoke and flame.
Thrax, tall and dark and terrible, tosses the burning corpse off the table with a furious flick of his wrist.
"You're my boy," Thrax says, and leans down over Jones. "Mine."
Jones whimpers.
OOO
Thrax lets his hands skitter wildly over Jones' restraints, the wires sunk under his skin. Jones is breathing quickly, shallowly, his mouth dark with something thick and sweet-smelling that makes Thrax feel dizzy, something that makes his head pulse with lust. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Spider's done something to him, but it's beyond Thrax --probably beyond anyone-- to say what. Spider was a complete asshole, sure, but he was a genius too.
"Thrax," Jones moans, and the sound goes straight through him like a hot scalpel. "Thrax, man, come on, I'm gonna explode. I need--"
"It's okay, baby," Thrax says, gritting his teeth, "just hang on, I'm gonna get you out of here."
"No, please, just-- just, I don't know, help me, give me something, come on."
"I can't," Thrax starts to say in his firmest tone, and Jones twists his hips up and whines, high and delirious, and Thrax sways forward despite himself. He wants Jones, wants to reach into him and let himself be devoured. The black scent twines around them both, shining in Jones' mouth.
"Please, don't you want to, don't you want me--"
"The Immunities followed me here," Thrax hisses, shoving him flat. "We've got half a minute before we are up to our necks in blue shirts and plasma fire. Calm down!"
"Oh," Jones says faintly, and subsides a little. Licks his lips, and it's so obscene Thrax can't breathe. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"My wrists, the restraints," Jones manages. He swallows hard, a wet, terrible noise. "I think it-- I think they latch."
Thrax leans over him, fumbling with the thick cuffs. The latches are complicated, mechanical, and when Jones trembles beneath him and chokes back a sob Thrax grits his teeth and slices the material open, throwing the burning pieces away from the table before they can burn Jones' wrists.
When he draws back Jones has his eyes tightly closed, his head tipped to the side, his chest heaving, and he looks so vulnerable. So brave. It makes Thrax feel helpless and terrible and angry.
He wishes he could kill Spider again. But Jones is alive, however fucked-up he's gotten -- however much more fucked up-- and for that Thrax supposes Spider has served his purpose.
"The Data Core," Jones says, and it's enough of a nonsequiter that Thrax is startled out of his thoughts.
"What?"
"The Data Core," Jones says, "It's in my head, I can hear--"
The door to the workroom gives a thump. They both startle. The door thumps again, then again, setting up the pounding rhythm of a very determined police force. The material of the door starts to buckle.
"The wires, how do I pull them out--"
"You just pull them--"
"It's going to hurt you--"
"Just do it!"
Thrax tugs halfheartedly on one wire and then at Jones' flinch, he lights up his claw and slices frantically through the wires a handsbreadth out from his skin. They spark and pop and Jones screams, thrashing wildly on the table.
The door buckles, and the Police pour into the room like a tide of blue death.
"You can't have him!" Thrax roars, spreading his arms wide over Jones' small, shuddering form.
Jones hauls himself upright, and leans under Thrax's outstretched arm. He grits his teeth and a third eye nictates open in the center of his forehead, electric white. A lash of power like lightning shoots out from it and all the attackers' heads explode.
"Ow," Jones says, and clings to Thrax's side.
"Uh," Thrax says. "That's... new."
"Yeah," Jones says shakily, and passes out.
The third eye doesn't close. It looks at Thrax.
"His condition is approaching critical," it says with Jones' mouth. It's really creepy, and Thrax knows creepy.
"I know, babe."
The eye strobes, and Jones' body begins to disengage the wires from his torso with precise, mechanical movements. Black plasma leaks out of the little holes.
"This will require medical adhesive," it says. Its voice is flat and weirdly pitched, almost humming. The eye tracks up to look at Thrax again, and he finds himself backing up.
"Will you procure medical adhesive?" it asks.
"Give me Jones back," Thrax says.
The eye strobes again.
"He will be in pain," it says, still in that freaky, humming voice. "This is not a state conducive to a successful escape, which I estimate you and he will be required to make shortly."
"Give him back," Thrax says, and lights his claw up, "and don't come out again. Or I'll end you."
"You will procure medical adhesive?" it asks again.
"I'll take care of my boy," Thrax says fiercely, "by any means necessary."
The eye lingers on him for long enough that Thrax gets the impression that it-- he?-- is unimpressed and unintimidated, then closes.
Jones' hands fall limp.
"Thrax," he rasps.
"Jones?" Thrax asks, and cups his head in his hands, afraid of the answer.
"Gimme some bandaids," Jones mumbles, his normal eyes fluttering open, "and then, for the love of Frank,please fix me."
Thax freezes.
"'Frank,'" he quotes.
Jones' eyes squeeze shut. "Shit."
"I knew a guy named Frank," Thrax says. He feels numb inside, frozen, and Jones is holding so still. "He was a big guy. Easy. Didn't take much care of himself. My first 72-hour kill. And there was this one cop...Osmosis, I think his name was. Not a common name, for a cop. Sticks in the mind. Osmosis Jones."
Jones tips his head a little to the side, his mouth in a flat, unhappy line. Not denying it.
"You used to be a cop," Thrax says, and takes a step forward. Traces the line of a gun holster up Jones' chest in sweet, black fluid.
"What were you doing in that bar I found you in?" he asks. He doesn't want an answer, but something in him just goes colder when Jones doesn't give him one.
"Please," Jones only says, and catches his wrist.
"Please?" Thrax asks.
"It's been a really bad day," Jones whispers. "If you're gonna kill me... can you do it fast?"
Thrax feels so cold inside.
Jones opens his eyes, looks up at him, and they're yellow and flat and angry, virus eyes, but in them Thrax can see this traitorous flicker of sadness, this alien regret.
Thrax feels like, for just this one moment, he's looking at the cop Jones used to be: a man that wanted to make the world a better place to live in, a good man who's been broken and put back together too many times for any part of himself to fit and now the edges tear and scrape at him and he's so tired of hurting that the prospect of his own death is almost a relief. A person hanging on by his bloody fingers to the edge of the abyss.
Thrax wants to burn that person up, tear him out of those pretty yellow eyes until all that Thrax can see is his own reflection.
"I'm gonna kill you on my own time, Osmosis Jones," Thrax says slowly, "And you'll feel so much better afterwards."
Jones whimpers again, a wordless pleading noise, and launches himself off the table. He and Thrax go down in a tangle of limbs and cords, and roll until Jones is on top.
He bends over Thrax, that sweet black fluid dripping out of his wire-wounds like rain, that sweet black in his mouth, and he's kissing Thrax everywhere.
The scent of it, of whatever Spider has done to him, rises around them and Thrax shudders with lust, catching Jones' slick mouth and sucking at his tongue. Jones snarls, a wild awful sound with too many harmonics, a sound like static and anger and pain and desire and he presses savage bites to Thrax's face, his neck, like he's looking for weakness. Thrax lets him, drowning in the sharp pressure and the heat, clawing at the remains of Jones' pants, at his own shirt.
(--they're on this eyelash, fighting, and Jones, Osmosis, dodges his killing strike and reaches for the chain,his precious string of trophies and it stretches out for this long endless moment and then it snaps, the beads sparkling as they all fall down--)
It isn't pretty, what they're doing, and it's nowhere as slow and gentle as Thrax meant to go. He can feel himself losing control, coming to pieces under Jones' relentless assault. He's got that ancient urge uncoiling in his gut, strands of RNA inside him coming together all hot and restless. He's wearing too many layers and they feel like cages, like they're choking him. He needs desperately to interface, to feel Jones' hot flesh against his own. He wants Jones and he wants him now, and when Jones grinds relentlessly down against his hardening cock he tips his head back and howls, his claws scoring deep rents in the floor.
"Give me--" Jones growls, sucking on his throat, grinding in his lap, "kill me-" and it hits Thrax like a slap that the boy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, that this is all, still, Thrax's show.
"Get off," he snaps, shoving the boy up, off of him, and his skin reels at the loss of contact but this isn't some juvenile fumble, some fling, this is for real, and he swore he was going to do it right.
Jones snarls, sprawled across the floor, his eyes glassy, his hips twitching. Thrax hauls him to his feet, holds on to his face and kisses him deep and sweet, ignoring the tingling distraction of Spider's poison. He kisses him properly, like his own daddy taught him to: an interface, an intimate exchange of the secret language of the self, something more and deeper and hotter than lust. When he pulls back Jones blinks, dazed, and touches his mouth.
"Oh," he says, high and lost, and sways in Thrax's arms.
"Wasn't like that before, was it?" Thrax murmurs.
Jones tries to shake his head. "He just-- he just-- he bit--" and he flails his arm a little. There's no scar there, but then, there wouldn't be. "I didn't--"
"Shut up," Thrax says, decisively, and kisses him again until he does. Kisses him until he moans into Thrax's mouth, sways against him.
His chest heaves against Thrax's hands, the wounds in his skin still pulsing out that black fluid. When Thrax wipes at them with his thumb Jones hisses, kicks. Thrax takes him by his neck and spins the boy around while he's still disoriented and shoves him up against the table, bending him over it, savoring the tight, clean lines of his back, his ass.
"Come on," Jones growls, and tries to grind back. "Come on, come on! I want you."
(Osmosis looks at him as the hypothalmus bead gutters and dies in his soft blue hands, looks up at him and in his wet, dark cell-eyes there is this spark of hate and it is so pure, so gorgeous--)
"Shut up," Thrax says again, leaning to whisper against his shoulder, brushing his fingers lightly down the boy's spine. "Course you do, baby."
He strokes down the curve of Jones' ass, careful of his claws, mild as milk. Jones shudders beneath him, moans with too much reverb. It echoes in the small room, pulsing through them both. Thrax digs his claws into his flesh instinctively, panting harsh and a little desperate. His body wants Jones, longs to tear him apart, his cock hard and more than ready. Hot drops of coding pearl the end, sizzle when they hit the floor. He's going to fill Jones up, fix him proper, rewrite his every thought and desire and molecule, change the boy until it's just him inside, only him forever.
Jones bucks when Thrax presses into him, hands fisted against the table. Thrax takes his time, grits his teeth, takes it slow. Jones is cooler than he is inside, as blissfully cool as water in the desert, like air after being strangled. Thrax doesn't want to rush, to burn him, doesn't want to lose himself and hurt his boy. He'll heat him up slow, make him want it, make him need to burn. Jones is trapped between Thrax and the table, anyway, his hips pinned in place, and he doesn't seem to know which way to twist. He shudders all around Thrax's cock and the sensation dances up Thrax's flesh, into his core, making him pant and move maybe just a little faster, slide just a little looser.
(somewhere in the past he spreads his black wings and flies away, into the cold, so long ago)
"Jones," he says, warningly, and then loses it when Jones grinds back hard, impaling himself.
Thrax moans, the rough sound wrenched out of him by the blissfully tight pressure of the little virus around him, around his hard flesh. It's been too long, he's forgotten-- he can't handle this rush of endless pleasure, the eager grasp of flesh begging to be recoded, to be molded, to be fucked. Maybe, once, when he was young and stupid and whored his way through every passing corpse, but he's been playing it cool for too long, doing the one-man show, making a name for himself. It's been a while. This is too much, he can't-- he can't keep it together. He feels himself unwinding, unraveling under the onslaught of sensation, and bites down on the back of Jones' neck to keep from screaming, pumping into the virus hard and fast.
Jones screams and climaxes, spilling his own useless code on to the floor and his hips only work harder against Thrax's, spurring him on, and he's nowhere close to coherent, just sobbing this kind of endless noise of 'more' and 'yes' and 'please' and 'Thrax' and Thrax is moaning, himself, moaning shit like 'so sweet' and 'keep going' and 'I love you'-- and maybe he didn't mean to say it, but it's true, he does, Jones is the best thing that ever happened to him.
Jones wails and twists around him, begging for more even as he boils from the inside out, the last remnants of his old DNA sequence burning up in a storm of recoding. His skin flushes redder, and claws stretch out longer, and he heats up under Thrax's hands, burning, incandescent as he climaxes again, again, each burst of ecstasy wiping away one more imperfection, bringing him closer and closer to his one true form, his best form, making him into the monster he was born to be, making him into Thrax's boy forever.
"Look at me," Thrax pants, pounding into him, and when Jones isn't coherent enough to turn his head Thrax pulls his face around himself, twisting him painfully-- his hot red skin doesn't stretch as far, and Jones twists with his neck and his shoulders and his spine, a sharp and elegant contortion.
His eyes are gold-green, perfect and clear and clean and empty.
(there's a little virus at the bar, choking on a bowl of sugar paste, and Thrax feels that sweet familiar rush of longing: oh, to be young again, to have a pretty young thing by his side, taking those first steps--)
"Jones," Thrax says like it's a prayer, and spills for the last time into him, surrendering.
There is a long pause as the whole world stops, where they are suspend in this quiet little moment of time. Just breathing. Then Jones shifts and murmurs something wordless and Thrax comes back to himself, pulls off of him. Steps back.
Jones steps with him, shaky as a colt, and looks up at him.
"You're done," Thrax says. He's still breathing a little hard, his balance not quite right. He smoothes his dreadlocks back with a practiced gesture, then reaches out to brush his claws through his boy's own messy crown. "You're all grown up, Mister Jones."
Jones stares up at him, then down at his trembling hands. One claw stretches, easy as breathing, and lights the room. He twists it back and forth, feeling the toxic power radiate from it, then sets the tip against Thrax's chest, right where Thrax's nucleus would be, if he had a nucleus.
"Talk to me, baby," Thrax says. He puts his hand out gently, like Jones is some skittish wild thing, and cups his face. "Come on, Jones, sweet thing. How are you feeling?"
"Weird," Jones says. His voice is a sexy, smoky rasp, worn down from screaming.
"Yeah," Thrax agrees. "You get used to it."
Jones looks at him, a strange little frown playing over his new mouth.
"You said you loved me," he says, a little lost, a little accusing. A little hopeful.
Thrax smiles, gathers the new virus into his arms. "I was going to kill the whole world for you," Thrax says, nuzzling his cheek, "If you were dead. When you were dead. Just to make them all pay. I love you."
Jones laughs, low and bitter, and it makes Thrax shudder with pleasure and sadness both.
(--this nasty world, this cold and empty world that chews sweet things up and spits them out broken--)
"You're the only person that's ever loved me," Jones says. "Isn't that-- isn't that weird? You're the only one."
He laughs again, careless and crazy, and curls up against Thrax's chest. "Let's do it," he whispers against Thrax's neck. His skin is exactly the same temperature as Thrax's, smooth and red and deceptively unmarked.
"Do what?" Thrax asks.
"Let's kill the whole world," Jones says, and that third eye comes open and glows blue-white. "Let's make them pay."
"Anything, baby," Thrax says, and he doesn't know yet how much he means it, "Anything you want."
(He's little and he's young but he's Thrax's boy, he's perfect and nobody's going to hurt his baby ever, ever again.)
END.