Prayers Answered

by

 

Lizerrrbeathan

 

*

 

There was tired.

 

There was bone tired, tried and tuckered out tired; tired eyes, tired hands, tired feet and so dong gong down low you could barely walk and the maybe rescue of ten cups of coffee could keep you up; maybe--and there was sick and tired, tired and maybe something new, some added boost of chin up nose to the grindstone could ease the blue and bring you back to business as usual and then there was soul tired.

 

John Walton the third was tired down in the very measure, in the very beginning of who he knew himself to be, tired.

 

What he had seen...oh dear god what he knew to be true.

 

There was the world and there was the world beneath the world.

 

And he had seen the underbelly, the beast beneath and world and whipped cream on pie and busy traffic and laughing faces felt like the very brittle, the very thin coat of ice that could break with one hot breath to reveal the treacherous intentions of deep dark water so willing, so eager to suck you down you'd never see bright again.

 

Nazis.

 

The Nazi party. The insignia, the cold scythe and it's brazen statement for all to see. For all to cull...all one needed to do was look. And John, piqued and perceptive had looked and believed, dear god he believed he had seen the devil. The devil on earth at the party meeting and where his mind hesitated, his heart knew. It knew because he now had intimate knowledge of innocence lost. The defamation, the defiling intention voiced out loud by the Nazis struck his once white heart and he felt he might never see bright again.

 

And it wasn’t just the words spoken–ignorant words can be brushed aside; no it was the electric current in Hitler let loose to splinter every soul in it’s path, the short fuse that reached into every soul and struck at the heart of a primal fear, so old, so ancient it was like a tuning fork reverberating through viscera and beyond before the mind could slow it down with reason or love.

 

The fear of loss, the fear of starvation, the fear of betrayal; that was the chord Hitler hit like a cymbal crash. It didn’t matter if the German people were consciously aware of it; in fact, it was working because they were not. It was working on them like rousing music, that by-passed the mind and went for the old, old rhythm of fall in step. John knew it was true–because he had felt it working on himself. Just a touch surely, just a taste really...but it was enough to put a new fear in him.

 

That primal fear struck just so and in a crowd gave everyone a simultaneous experience that felt reinforced and more valid because it was shared by a multitude and such a sharing became a tempting substitution for truth. For here one could lose oneself in a larger permission granted and in advance by Father and so could go running to Mother screaming; ‘Father said it was O.K.' and ‘everybody else is doing it.’

 

The reasoning of children and wasn’t that apt? Wasn’t the mass population in the Country agreeing to be children again?

 

John knew this was true because he had felt the cold missive go inside himself. He had been raised in a Christian home, by fine parents, in West Virginia home of misted mountains...and slavery. And here he had to be honest, here he had to reach deep, deep inside himself at some terrible judgment of ‘know thy place’ and given the deep conditioning of country of pride of home of family of what had gone before and because 1936 was not that far from the rebel yell to confederacy and if he knew himself well enough to say for certain that he would never, ever go to war for Hitler could he be as certain to say that he would never have picked up knapsack and rifle for Jefferson Davis?

 

To preserve a way of life that was the very definition of evil if ever there was one?

 

“Oh dear, dear God...” John whispered out loud; “Oh dear God...how does this happen? What does this mean?”

 

Because there were rumors among the news reporters, rumors of vast numbers of people, of Jewish people going away from their homes...being taken from their homes and never heard from again. Where were they? Their homes and possessions were being stolen and surely that meant many people knew something. Theft on national scale and no one to sound the alarm? No recourse? It didn’t take much to recognize that as symptomatic of something deep and terrible and un-named...but known. People knew, but were pretending. It was a smiling mask covering a diseased countenance.

 

And here he put his head in his hands and thought:

 

Dear God, oh dear God...

 

It was the depth of mind where thought becomes prayer, where even the space between thought becomes supplication.

 

And so sincere was the sweet music that sounded from his deepest self, he felt the soft cushion of spirit come around him as it sometimes did, to hold him, to hold his heart in a safe place while he tried to find some way to weave the horror of what he had seen into what he had previously understood of life.

 

Up until that night.

 

He shook his head. This wasn't a thing of the mind...this...this...

 

"John! John!..."

 

The call came from across the room, it was all 'hallo' and the softer side from the Tynside, from Northumberland in England. For such a small country, people hugged their own neighborhoods so tightly they developed distinct accents from each within something as small as a twenty mile radius. It spoke of a people set in their ways, used to the invisible bonds of society–all fascinating and all this went through John's mind as he lifted his head toward the sound of his name, toward the source of the assault on his attention from the outside world.

 

"What are you on about John? I didn't bring you out to brave the rigors of a London eve and to a fine play, or so I’m told, to see you sit unreconciled in the dark of a pub, did I then?"

 

John looked up at the face of his friend Jack looming just over his. Jack had been tipping back more than a few pints.

 

"And I appreciate that...I do..."

 

"Was' the matter? Din't you like the play? You all high brow and scribbling all the time...I thought you'd be a natural for all that, then?"

 

And here John chuckled.

 

"No. no the play was wonderful, brilliant...the...performances...I didn't know words could do that until I heard that woman...that woman playing Portia do what she did tonight. It was..."

 

"Oh aye, don't tell me.." and here Jack spun back a bit on a swagger as he looked about the pub.

 

"Tell her yourself...she's a bosom pal of me girls...else'e how'd you find me here then?"

 

How indeed?

 

John had been wondering about that. Jack was a brilliant war correspondent, a savvy journalist bar none but he was all gristle, all heave ho and just how did he up at the theatre? That is, the legitimate theatre...not a peep show or a burlesque...

 

"Say...would you like to meet her? I've never had a go at an actress meself, but I hear they tumble right down to their knees straightaway..."

 

"Jack..."

 

"Oh, come on lad..." and then on a more intimate note he leaned in to say. "I know lad, I know what you've seen, I've seen the same meself, haven't I then? Sometimes you need to feel...not think so much eh, lad. Thas' all...right?"

 

John looked up at him with such pain filled eyes, Jack felt his heart clutch.

 

"You have to lad, we all do...ease that blight out of you...with, music...and some loving maybe...”

 

John smiled...but said nothing...

 

And Jack nodded and then moved away.

 

"What are you drinking, then?"

 

John looked up a little confused, it was the voice that drew him--it was deep but sonorous at the same time. The deep pull of dark water dipped in velvet.

 

He looked up into blue eyes set wide along side a patrician nose in an almost too white face.

 

John gulped.

 

He was beautiful. He...was...magnetic and masculine but with a feminine energy so pure it sparkled and called all the way through body to tweak his masculine extremity. Oh yes, his male member was growing stiff even as he sat there staring. John was shocked. At the visage of the man, at his own reaction to him.

 

The man smiled at him, into him as if he was aware of his reaction because he knew it to be mutual. His face was cold, stone cold and the chiseled lines were frightening and majestic and beautiful too, like a mountain range perhaps. The jagged edge of the Alps. John shook his head as if that would be enough to shake off this thrall or this visage. He looked up again. It wasn’t. He was still there, still standing just there, just a few feet away and now he was closing the small gap between them.

 

His hair was dark blonde, perhaps; the lighting in this place made it difficult to tell and his eyes of course were the shocking blue above the mountain range. Well that fitted. Now he was sitting down in the empty space in the stall across from John, without invitation, without a word.

 

They looked at each other and it wasn’t until he spoke that John understood for certain that he was...unnatural.

 

“Hello luv...”

 

The man said softly, sweetly even and the liquid tone went like rushing water through John’s ears and mind and senses and when it reached his heart and turned into ice, he knew.

 

He had his lifelong training in Bible study, he had his Mother at his back with book in hand and quoting verse for every occasion and yes of course had taken it in, of course he had listened about the devil and demons and understood about the struggle between good and evil, he had understood the moral lessons as best as any child might and moving as a man into the world he had lapsed in the day to day of going to work and living, just living. Ordinary things and terrible things one reported daily in the news made the black and white colors of those Bible lessons seem far and away in a world of grey tones and maybe right, maybe wrong and something to remain in the bottom drawer of the desk; unused, and almost irrelevant.

 

Until now. Now it all came rushing back pell mell and saturated every cell of his being until he felt forced to speak low and even in warding and warning:

 

“'For if we sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there remains no longer a sacrifice for sins, but a certain dreadful expectation of judgement, and ‘the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries–'“

 

“–'A man making void the Law of Moses dies without any mercy...'” The cold man stole the passage easily and finished it for John with a wink and then said:

 

“Oh aye...I can quote without me tongue burning in me mouth...would you like to see what else I can put in me mouth?”

 

John jerked back as if he was slapped but his heart was racing too and why was he aroused to this terrible creature? How could his heart be so repulsed and his body still be affected in this way?

 

“What are you?” He finally breathed

 

“Oh well, you named it right enough straight off, didn’t you then?” The man then leaned forward on the table to speak more intimately, “...and called me over anyway, din’t you?”

 

“I...I never...” But John’s voice faltered as he looked into those blue eyes that were looking deep into his. He lost his train of thought, he couldn’t reason..what had he been thinking?

 

“I was...I was thinking about the Nazi’s I was wondering how such pure evil could thrive in God’s world...how it could get...embraced...”

 

“Ah well...there you have it...” said the cold mouth in the colder man.

 

John Walton stared at him, didn’t ask this time but said:

 

“You are...unnatural...you are...the darkest parts of this world pulled together to be upright and walking...”

 

“Oh that’s nice, I like that...something of the poet about you–knew we had a few things in common; but not the darkest parts of the world, surely, mind you, you’ll puff me head...”

 

And with this he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to John who didn’t move and then shrugged and struck a match on the table almost savagely and lit the cigarette now dangling at the corner of his mouth. Puffed a puff and leaned back and smiled wanly.

 

To this John said nothing but merely made to leave the booth and at this the man’s right hand shot out lightening fast and seized John’s arm in an iron grip and when he spoke it was in a dry ice tone so hard it broke John’s heart to hear it.

 

“Don’t move, don’t say a word, you do and everyone...everyone in this pub, except you, dies a gruesome, horrible death within the next ten minutes and if you doubt me, peep, just make a peep and see what happens next.”

 

John didn’t doubt it, no he did not. He didn’t move, didn’t speak didn’t breath.

 

“Good.” The man said. “We understand each other...but, now see here, it wasn’t my intention to clam up your tongue, but loosen it–so to speak. So, talk now, long as it’s not in a banshee scream. Chatter on son, chatter on...”

 

John swallowed and then asked: “What do you want from me?”

 

And here the man’s razor vision glanced down through the table at John’s aroused condition and said dryly: “Well, I would have thought that was obvious...next question.”

 

“Who are you?”

 

“Oh, look at me not minding my manners, me name’s Spike and yours?”

 

John cleared his throat and when he said nothing the slight pressure on his arm increased somewhat and just what had his Mother said about never giving your name to a demon?

 

“Tick, tick, tick...” Spike said sweetly

 

“–John. Walton...my name is John Walton.” He said in a rush of breath that sounded like compitulation, but truly, what choice did he have? He knew, he knew this man, this creature was a deadly force.

 

Spike withdrew his arm slowly running his fingers down the length of Johns arm creating a cascade of terrible shivers, finally the touch was gone and John could breath again.

 

Spike smiled, “There that’s better, John...John...hmm...I could enjoy saying your name for years and years yet...how about that?”

 

John swallowed hard and then stiffened his back and said without thinking:

 

“Why did you do this to yourself?”

 

Spike leaned back, surprised and for the first time John saw a flicker of something light move through the creature, something nebulous and soft and John seized the moment and followed it with another question.

 

“Is the world so terrible....is it?”

 

“I did this...I became who I am, for love.” Spike said swiftly.

 

“No you did not.” John said his voice rising just a bit. “Love does not...spawn, cannot birth anything so black...you had reasons, The Nazis have reasons...but it’s not love, love is, is good...it is God, and there is nothing godly in you...”

 

Here Spike chuckled in genuine mirth.

 

“What? What is so funny?”

 

“Who, what do you think God is?” Spike asked simply.

 

When John said nothing Spike reached over took John’s beer for himself and drank a bit and then when he placed the glass down John was answering, stammering.

 

“I already told you...”

 

“Well, you look and sound Bible fed and so let me assume you read that particular piece of work and so no need to answer, and what is it filled with, but blood and wars and revenge and looking for justice and then the bloody hand coming down in spite--”

 

“--And love and compassion...and...and...”

 

“--And so it’s all there, in't it? You 'an me and everything between? An' it’s all true then, God is all those things, in’t it then? The dark and the bright and so you have me before you; a condensed presentation of the darker bits, I’ll grant you...but nonetheless...”

 

When John said nothing Spike leaned forward and asked softly:

 

“Where do you think I come from? How can anything exist outside your God?”

 

“You...you are trying to confuse me...”

 

And here Spike laughed a low throaty beckoning;

 

“Oh aye, I admit it, I do...”

 

“The serpent, the king of lies...”

 

“Oh now you are mixing your Bible metaphors; the serpent never lied to Eve–told it to her strait...’eat that, luv and learn a thing or two about what it's ike to be God, to sit at the center of your life and call the shots’...and so she did...bloody brilliant decision if you ask me. Now the King of Lies, well...let’s not’s talk about him. Let’s not go visit him, he’s a right nightmare–I’ll grant you that. ‘Have no plans to go back to hell anytime soon, but who do you think created that one too? So ask yourself...how can anything created by God exist outside God?”

 

Pause as John looked into Spike, really looked into his eyes and deep behind the flint he saw the soft thing move again, the soft light that reflected John back and so with a shock he recognized himself. This creature was his mirror image, Spike was what he looked like all dressed in black, all burnt through and through with the world of light and love, but if that was true; that meant he reflected back to Spike as well. It could only go both ways. And so that meant, had to mean that Spike was struggling too, that there had to have been a beginning. There had to have been a man much like John himself before becoming Spike.

 

“Why? Why did you do it?” And this time, John asked the question and it came out soft and loving and Spike’s eyes softened as he considered his answer.

 

“I was angry...I was...in pain and then something...some powerful thing came to fill me up, to pull the broken bits into something that could walk around this miserable world and it was my dark love, my Drusilla...”

 

And then there she was, a dark beauty standing just to the Spike’s right and slightly behind, like a shadow...or a dark angel and John shivered to his soul.

 

She had black eyes and the same shocking white skin as the man and John felt his pulse pound and a weakness fill his limbs as he looked into her eyes.

 

She looked back into John and he began to feel himself fade, fade, fade...

 

“Enough talk Spoike...I want to play with my pretty present...” Dru crooned softly in a sing song.

 

John heard Spike chuckle and say.

 

“You’re right luv, talk only goes so far, he wants to know and so let’s show him, eh? Now, ordinarily, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my dark Princess and I’m barely interested in anyone but her...but you are the exception aren’t you our John? Because you are our John, aren’t you than?”

 

And John felt the repulsion and pull and the promise of relief from the weight of his mind working, trying to work out the world and the almost sweet release of being slave again and no worries except please the master and oh god, oh dear God where are you? And then fade into oblivion.

 

*

 

"Come lad, come now, you need to choose, come with us...come be with us forever..."

 

Spike leaned over and breathed into his ear as he kissed his neck gently.

 

"You have a choice..."

 

"Yes..." Breathed Drusilla and as John found himself coming back to himself, he was stroking her flat stomach, the firm mounds of her breasts as she lay in front of him on the bed. He was inside her, his hot erect member was deep inside her and pushing up wanting more, probing and pumping and looking for the thing buried far inside her that would give him release from the weight of himself--she moaned and leaned back against his slow hard thrusts while Spike kissed his neck, Spike was lying behind him, his cool rock hard shaft mountain high inside John’s rectum and as if to confirm this shock and new sensation Spike moved gently and John groaned and now in turn moved inside the Dark Woman and then as three they stroked and pushed and moaned into each other, suddenly the dark woman grabbed John’s hand and pushed it down there to her mound and slipped his finger inside her clit, helping him to find her:

 

“Oh...oh.. yes...oh yes my beautiful boy...” and John rubbed gently and thrust into her more savagely and she moaned and writhed and he had to hold her fast so he could find the center of her to claim her to make her cry out and as he ground into her Spike suddenly slammed into him so hard he was shocked breathless and still, submissive and panting a moan to a higher power...

 

“Spoike...” Dru sighed out softly and then called more urgently, “Spoike, my sweet, please..”

 

And now like a master conductor Spike kissed the side of John’s neck again and pushed into John, showing him the rhythm, getting so deep inside John that he was also John inside Dru...John was aware of being used, so used, his energy tapped and filled and then drained to fill these two and he felt lost, lost in physical sensation of all the things he now remembered doing so far this evening, of all the things he had wanted to do in his dark imagination; and of all the things he didn’t want to do and how one part of that could make peace with the other as long as he could stay in the slavery of this oblivion of not having to think, not having to decide, just let himself be used and grab a scrap of orgasm as compensation, as payment for not having to work at freeing his mind from the group.

 

“Come John...” Spike whispered and kissed his neck, suckling now, pulling a bit of flesh into his mouth to tease.

 

John moved his head to one side to allow for more contact and as Spike nuzzled his prize, his golden find of a boy, he face morphed and the demon visage came forward, yellow eyes gleaming and then he bit him almost sweetly, his fangs slid gently inside his neck feasting into his jugular. He held John still, tight for a moment...so he would have time to absorb, to understand what was happening to him...and then he began to suckle softly, sweetly and the small slurping sounded like the beginning of the end.

 

The cold man was sucking his blood out of his body and John...loved him...he loved him in a way that seemed impossible for him to understand in the moment..he loved him for showing him the truth...

 

The Nazis flashed before John’s minds eye, he saw the flag again, that black on red and back into hell on earth and the cold demand of the man and woman, the ruthless way they had stripped his clothes off; he had flashes of being forced to do things until he was crying in a confusion of senses. Pain with pleasure; humiliation then conquer then conquest until one moment wound around another and all that mattered was orgasm. Orgasm to wipe the slate clean, and orgasm again until it all became one sensation confusing pain and humiliation with physical release but empty and hollow and so there was only the mad rush to smash to climax so hard it would wipe the world away for just a bit because, oh god, it was the closest they could get to simulating the life act. Orgasm was as close as these dead things could get to life.

 

But all without love, all of it in an empty room...and when it was done, the need to begin again was even greater than before, the need to holler so loud it would stop the hollow.

 

All this as a revelation when Spike bit into him, because now there were no secrets between them, the door that opened one way opened the other too and so Spike’s secret was revealed in the gentleness of his Vampire kiss. John had been humiliated, struck, impaled, made to beg until it became real supplication, real surrender; real hunger and this bite, this asking–because this, the surrender of soul can only be asked; the body can be pummeled and wrung in simulation of creation but the soul had to be asked. And so with the humility inherent in asking, John now knew Spike from the inside out.

 

Spike wanted love, needed love so desperately he was reaching deep into John’s body in every way he could to get closer to it, to nuzzle up to John’s light, to suck it right out of him so that Spike’s black might be made brighter for bit, just a bit

 

The truth.

 

And...surprisingly, John had a strong desire to surrender to it, to him...to just give up the burden of being free, of having to struggle to do the right thing daily and just bury himself in the ease of breaking and being broken and the hard works over, the real hard work of the mind and soul is over because now there was this tragedy to be the apex of a long list of excuses and permission too; to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and so filled with pain and anger at being broken he would forever be needing balance restored with one act of revenge followed by another and another until the end of time.

 

But...god...how lonely too. How empty. He could feel Spike’s longing, he could feel it in the hard penis that probed him from the inside out, in the gentle hand that stroked his blond hair, in the suckling on his neck, like a babe at breast; he felt such a longing in the creature, he felt the hard empty place in Spike reaching out to touch the warmth of his soul.

 

To take the warmth of his soul.

 

John knew kinship with this now and so he began to understand evil. Evil was real and walked the earth and now he had the answer to his question, he understood...how people, how one might...want to lose ones loneliness in the temporary satisfaction of stealing the life right out of another, right out of the person one wanted to be. Creatures that crave the light so dearly they would tear open a child to get at it’s purity, to steal it for themself.

 

Spike wanted to be John.

 

John knew it, could feel it and so now he understood.

 

The Nazis were all vampires.

 

But it was the hand, it was Spike’s hand gently stroking the flesh of his chest, Spike’s hand on his heart that gave him the strength to raise his own hand and place it over Spikes and touch it so gently Spike purred and bit deeper trying to find a way inside to this bright soul, this heavenly boy he had found because the blood wasn't enough...it wasn't...and with his hand still on Spike’s and with his life fading and Daisy's face suddenly swimming before him in his mind’s eye, John found it easy to say:

 

"Spike..no...."

 

It was soft..but Spike heard it and Dru heard it and they turned their attention to him in an odd, curious way. 'No?'

 

Spike bit in a little deeper and John said again faintly but from the beginning of his soul...

 

" No, Spike...I don’t want this...I want my love...Daisy...” And then even softer he murmured:

 

“Sorry..."

 

It was the apology that saved his life. Spike wouldn’t have turned him against his will, but he might have killed him easily for the rejection save for the simple homespun politeness of a genuine apology.

 

He withdrew he fangs from John's neck and then paused for a moment and licked the wound closed, and then tidied up by licking a bit of man neck flesh for good measure and then whispered softly.

 

"I'm sorry too."

 

It was an unspecific apology, sorry for biting, sorry for the bruising, for busting his maiden manhood, sorry for...saying goodbye...

 

Dru pulled away from John’s body and he felt bereft without her. And then Spike groaned and pumped a bit longer into him until he ejaculated a long stream of cool seed that John felt swim into the interior of his soul to become part of him now. Spike kissed his neck and then pulled his body from his and the keen loss seemed confusing and John had to bite his lip and clench his eyes shut against the beauty of the man as stood naked in front of where he lay on the bed.

 

John was too weak to move. The loss of blood and the loss...of them...and the bliss too...of finding himself...again.

 

When he woke it was dark in the room, dusk and the man was sitting in the bed stroking his member to stiffness and then flicked his thumb up under to tickle his balls and jerked him off with a detachment and swift ease that left him spinning.

 

Spike said nothing but his eyes asked: ‘You sure?’

 

And John replied out loud but so, so soft.

 

"My life belongs to me."

 

Spike's eyebrows went up in slight surprise and then he said softly.

 

"It does lad, it does...but you best mind it, you best take better care if you value it...coz, you stood out last night like a barein begging for it...you were lucky, plain dumb luck it was Dru & Me..."

 

"It wasn't luck."

 

"No?"

 

"..I needed to find something out...and you where the answer to my prayer..."

 

It took all John’s strength to raise his head and look at Spike at the end of the bed. He was dressed in black and ready for the road and Spike stared and then laughed in good humor (just a very good joke between old friends) but Dru, looking over Spike’s shoulder at John, did not.

 

John and Dru looked into each others eyes and he thought, he thought he heard her say inside his mind...

 

'Say hello for me to the old one on Sunday morning for me, will you?'

 

And then John began to cry at the depth and breath of her loss and loneliness and he nodded back...

 

Spike was aware that he been left out of this little silent communion and so now he said.

 

"Say...no hidey holes, eh, pet?"

 

And then John said out loud to Spike.

 

"I hope you find the love you're looking for."

 

Dru's face fell and now he almost wished he hadn’t said it...almost.

 

It seemed John had named something that Dru knew but Spike did not.

 

The male vampire was drawn to the light, he was, he was drawn to the light, because there was still enough light inside him to go looking and longing and so he shopped the windows of every human walking, crossing his path and there was nothing she could do about it.

 

Because ‘the old one’ had made Spike that way.

 

Spike started at John and then wrapped his left arm around Dru as if that was a statement in itself and as he was looking at John he didn't notice the sad faraway look on Dru's face.

 

They said nothing more, Spike took one last look over his shoulder and then the door opened and was closed behind them.

 

John lay there and stared at the ceiling and thought.

 

‘Oh dear God...oh Daisy...oh God..."

 

*

 

 

 

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That’s it for this fic–back to ‘Skein and Bone’ for Spike’s Problem