Fic: Special Hell (Lindsey/Jayne, NC-17)
Jul. 1st, 2007 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allyndraTitle: Special Hell
Author: Allyndra
Fandom: Angel/Firefly
Pairing: Lindsey/Jayne
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through You’re Welcome for Angel and Ariel for Firefly
Disclaimer: These characters and these ‘verses were created by Joss Whedon. I just twisted them around for my own evil purposes.
Summary: Lindsey didn’t know where the hell he was, but he supposed it was better than being dead. [Written for bugchicklvfor the Jayne round of maleslashminis. The prompt was for a bar fights and snark and no non-con or fluff. I did my best.]
bugchicklvfor the Jayne round of maleslashminis. The prompt was for a bar fights and snark and no non-con or fluff. I did my best.]**************************************
Lindsey noticed that the damp grass he was lying on was soaking through his jeans and prickling uncomfortably on his bare arms. He noticed that the air tasted strange, without a hint of the smog he'd felt on the back of his tongue the entire time he lived in LA. He noticed that he wasn't dead.
When he sat up, his entire body one dull throb of pain interrupted only by more concentrated flashes of pain, Lindsey thought he would almost have preferred to be dead. He ran his hands over his aching limbs and torso, checking for injuries and re-mapping the unmarked flesh that he'd spent so much time covering with tattoos. Other than a split lip, he didn't seem to be suffering from anything more serious than bruises.
Satisfied that he was mostly unhurt, Lindsey climbed to his feet and tried to figure out where the hell he was. He was in a field of grass, bordered by trees on one side and by a wide dirt road on the other. There was a damp, earthy tang to the air that made him think there was water somewhere nearby. Though the sun had set, the weather was warm. The road was the only sign of civilization.
Lindsey ran his hands through his tangled hair, sighing. If he'd believed in luck, he would have been cursing his about now. Instead of power and vengeance, he got a free ride to the middle of nowhere. His head was tilted back, the sigh still pushing through his lips when he froze. The sky above him was purpling with dusk, dotted with stars, a full moon hanging mid-sky. All of that was fairly expected. What was unexpected was the second moon resting just above the treetops.
He groaned. When he'd wondered where the hell he was, he hadn't meant it literally.
***
This was the strangest hell dimension he'd ever been in. For one thing, there was no torture. When the first person he'd encountered upon reaching the town had pointed a shotgun at his head, Lindsey had been sure he was in for pain and captivity. Instead, the gnarled old man had looked him over from the safety of his porch, studying Lindsey from the top of his head to the toes of his boots, and had lowered the barrel slowly, rocking back on his heels.
"I'm thinkin' you've come to the wrong place," the man said. Lindsey couldn't agree more. "Don't have much call for whores here, and them that want one are plenty happy with Jenna 'cross the street." He nodded his head toward a wooden building opposite them."
It was only thanks to the years he'd dedicated to self control that Lindsey managed not to either laugh in his face or throw something. "I'm not a whore," Lindsey said with deliberate calm. "I'm just ... misplaced."
The man snorted. "Left behind were ya? Not the first time that's happened, and it likely won't be the last. If you'd not be taken for offering more than you are, you might look into gettin' a bit more clothes on." Lindsey had looked down at himself. He'd never been body shy, but then, he'd never been in a place where wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and boots would mark him out as a hustler, either.
Lindsey gave the man his best rueful smile. "I don't have any more clothes to put on at the moment," he said. "I don't suppose you know somewhere I could work in exchange for something to wear and something to eat?"
The man gave him a long, considering look. "Might. You any good with horses?"
Lindsey's rueful smile was completely authentic this time. Horses were expensive, so his family had never owned any, but he'd put in several summers working at local stables and farms as a boy. "I'm no expert, but I can fill a feedbag and muck a stall with the best of them."
That was how Lindsey got a job working at the local inn. The old man, whose name was Saul, handed him a shirt of coarse homespun and told him he'd be responsible for washing and mending it himself. Lindsey took over the stables, tending the horses Saul used to haul his wagons and the ones his patrons rode into town. In return, he got a place to sleep, food to eat, and the use of that shirt.
Lindsey kept his nose clean and his ears open, learning as much as he could about this place. What he learned bore out his original impression: this was the strangest hell dimension he'd ever been in. There was a weapons shop at the edge of town, where you could buy old fashioned pistols and rifles or sonic grenades and laser guns. Townsfolk sat in their houses at night, whittling rough figures out of wood and watching programs broadcast over the cortex on flat screens. Half the people Lindsey met dressed like refugees from Bonanza, and the other half like they escaped from The King and I.
Eavesdropping eventually garnered him a picture of what society was like. The Alliance had the power - better weapons, a large population, advanced medicine. All the comforts a body could need, if he were willing to hand over complete control over his life. The more Lindsey heard, the more grateful he was he'd ended up here. Newhall wasn't of much interest to the Alliance, and Lindsey was happy to be where the Alliance wasn't. No matter how strange the hell dimension, he knew that the Senior Partners would be focusing on the power structure. He planned to stay out of the Alliance's way and avoid reminding the Senior Partners that they'd dumped him here.
Lindsey focused on fitting in. It was both easier and harder than he'd expected. He found that people accepted him better if he let his accent slip back to the one he'd used as a child in Oklahoma, the one he'd trained out of himself his freshman year in college. Often he could go days at a time without getting so much as a second glance. Then someone would tell a joke in Chinese and he would fail to laugh, and he would feel the full weight of his outsider status pressing in on him. That worried him; if the Alliance ever came snooping around for the Senior Partners' lost lamb, he intended to be so much a part of the town that they would pass right by him.
***
The turning point came when he moved from the stables to the taproom. He'd been there about three months when Saul had slapped him on the back with a strength that belied his wizened features and told him he'd been doing good. "Wish I could spare the cash money to reward you, but I can't, and that's the truth. How 'bout you look through the shed yonder and pick you out a thing or two that might be of use to you?"
Lindsey shoved open the door to the shed, nearly choking on anticipation. He'd owned nothing for so long now that the thought of having something, *anything* all his own made him giddy. He sorted through the bits and pieces Saul had tossed in the storage shed, poring over old pots and mended saddles with the care and attention he'd once put into choosing the perfect Rolex, hardly bothered by the irony. He found a knife, worn but still sound, made of good steel, and set it aside. Saul had said "a thing or two," so Lindsey felt fully justified in looking for something more. He had just shifted a broken table when a curve of wood caught his eye.
It was a guitar, and it was beautiful. The veneer was chipped at the edges and the strings were missing, but Lindsey couldn't take his eyes off it. He pulled the guitar free from the pile of junk almost reverently, running his hands over the belly and up the neck, testing the joins with callused fingertips and gently thumping the wood. She might look disreputable, but he knew, if he got her strung and tuned, she would sing for him.
Saul gave him a gap-toothed grin from the back stoop when he came out of the shed. "Found yourself a treasure, boy?" he called across the yard. Lindsey held up the knife in one hand and the guitar in the other. He knew he was grinning like a fool, but for once he didn't care.
Saul hauled himself up from the step he'd been sitting on, grinning just as wide as Lindsey. "You know how to play that?" he asked.
Lindsey nodded, clutching the guitar tight around her neck. "She'll need some new strings, though," he said regretfully. His fingers had been itching to play from the moment he saw her.
"Well, don't stand about moping, let's find us some guitar strings." Saul dragged him down the street to the general store, where he'd bartered a set of guitar strings for a jug of whiskey. Back at the inn, he'd waited impatiently for Lindsey to string and tune the guitar, then nudged at his shoulder. "Play somethin'," he demanded.
Lindsey played. He was out of practice and his calluses were in the wrong places, but it still felt like coming home. He closed his eyes and let himself get lost in the music, winding old songs around his mind. When he opened his eyes, Saul was straddling a chair at staring at him.
"I'll find me a new stable hand," he said. "You start playing 'fore the evening rush." And that was that.
The contradiction that was Newhall extended to entertainment as well. The townsfolk liked raucous drinking songs and country ballads, as he'd expected, but what they really loved was when he recited poetry or told stories and provided his own soundtrack. They were intimately familiar with some literature, like Shakespeare and Kipling, but had never heard of others. It didn't seem to matter to the customers either way; when they knew the tale, they quoted along and shouted encouragements at their favorite parts, and when the story was new, they listened in rapt silence. Lindsey sang Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, recited every poem he remembered from his undergraduate literature classes, and paraphrased entire novels to the tune of his strumming. They loved it all.
Lindsey had met most of the people in town during his stint in the stables, but now he got to know them. He knew that Fatima came in every night after she'd milked her cows, and that after three cups of ale, she was likely to go home with the first man who asked. He knew that Clancy, who ran the general store, could afford the best liquor they had, but that he always nursed one cup of cheap beer all night, instead. He knew that Chan was paying court to Marciana, a young widow who'd moved here from a colony on Ita, but that Marciana was planning to stay single a while yet. He knew that Jenna was an enthusiastic whore, and that she resented any insinuation that she was inferior to a Companion.
He knew that about half the unmarried women in town and a few of the men would be happy to take him for a ride. He never took any of them up on the offer. Lindsey used to have personal guidelines for affairs. Either his partners were completely disposable or they benefited him in some way. The disposable ones were kept away from his career and out of his personal life, and if they demanded more, he simply walked away. The rest were carefully chosen to advance his career or to give him information or skills he needed. Eve aside, they usually knew the game as well as he, and didn't resent him when the time came to end the relationship. Now he was stranded in this town, where gossip spread like wildfire and everyone was passionately interested in everyone else’s lives. Lindsey wasn't willing to risk getting involved, even casually, with any of his neighbors. He had nowhere to go if things turned sour.
The townsfolk weren't the inn's only customers. They had regulars who came in once a week or once a month, crew on the tramp freighters and transports that ran the Newhall route. He'd been shocked silent by the notion of spaceships for about a day, and then he'd integrated it into his understanding of how this dimension worked. Now it was just background, something else to know about the people who came into his place.
***
Lindsey had been a fixture in the taproom for nearly six months when Newhall celebrated Unification Day. 'Celebrated' may not have been the right word, since most of the colonists weren't terribly enthusiastic about Alliance rule. Still, they put up banners and muttered toasts to the Alliance, just in case Big Brother was watching.
Saul's inn drew a larger than usual crowd; not only were some of the other businesses closed for the holiday, they had no less than three ships in dock. Lindsey played his first set on autopilot, watching the new people for signs of danger or any hint of recognition. He didn't know why the Senior Partners had left him here, but he wasn't willing to count on them leaving him in peace.
One of the ships was a freighter that came this way every month or two. Its crew greeted
Saul with thirsty grins, shouted requests at Lindsey, plied Jenna with compliments and drinks, and generally made themselves at home. The second ship was full of asteroid miners. All six of the miners were huge, with beards that made them look even bigger. They crowded around a table together, scowling at anyone who came too close. Three people came in from the last ship, lingering near the bar while they drank their beer. They were all tall, two men and one woman, and all three wore guns at their hips.
One of the men set his empty mug down on the bar. "I think maybe we should be about our business," he said.
The woman cast him an amused glance. "What's the matter, sir? Not the sort of bar you like on U Day?"
"You never let me have any fun," the man accused. "One day a year I want to drink and make merry with the brainwashed masses, and you stand in my way."
"Maybe if making merry didn't always involve Zoë bailing your ass out of a fight you can't win," the other man grumbled.
The first man glared at him, but the woman still looked amused. "Why don't we let Jayne enjoy himself while we take care of the deal, sir? I doubt we'll need another gun hand."
"I think that's a mighty fine plan," Jayne said. "You go quibble about beans while I stay here and enjoy this fine establishment."
"Fine." His lips tightened and he gave Jayne a warning glare. "You cause any trouble here and you'll be riding in the airlock again," he said.
"I'll be as innocent as a flower," Jayne promised. He ordered another drink as his companions left and surveyed the room hopefully. Once he saw that all the women were occupied and the card game was full, though, he sagged a bit. He made his way around the room to one of the few empty seats in the place, a stool near the corner where Lindsey was playing.
"I don't suppose you know 'The Hero of Canton,'" Jayne asked hopefully.
"Sorry," Lindsey replied. "If you hum a few bars, I can fake it," he offered.
"Naw. It wouldn't be the same." He sipped at his drink and watched the room. Lindsey watched him.
Jayne was a big man, well over six feet tall. He gave the impression of being big and clumsy, but Lindsey had noticed that he hadn't stumbled or bumped into anyone as he crossed the crowded tap room. He also noticed that Jayne held his drink with his left hand, leaving his right free to reach for his gun. In a place where the clothing often made Lindsey feel like he'd been trapped in a costume shop, Jayne wore a t-shirt with a pin-up girl on it and combat boots. He looked comfortingly familiar, more like he'd come from LA than Lindsey did in his homespun shirt.
"So you just sit in the bar all day?" Jayne asked. "How's that pay?"
"Badly," Lindsey replied. "But it gives me a place to stay. You wave a gun around and look threatening all day? How's that pay?"
"Depends on what kind of deal the captain makes. Sometimes that man is three sorts of fool."
"You’re the one who follows him," Lindsey pointed out. "What does that make you?"
Jayne scowled at him over the rim of his cup. "A man who's got no mind for business and no inclination to leave a good berth," he said.
Lindsey was just settling his fingers for the next song when a shout from across the room drew his attention. One of the miners was out of his seat and glowering at the engineer from the freighter.
"You gonna say that on Unification Day?" he growled. "What kind of a traitor are you?"
"The kind of traitor who doesn't swallow the Alliance's lies like a greedy lap dog," the engineer snarled back, reaching out a hand to shove the miner. That was all it took. The crowd was on its feet in an instant, swinging and kicking and generally brawling. It was the miners against everyone else, but they didn't seem to mind being out numbered.
"Gorram it!" Jayne swore. "A U Day brawl and Mal wasn't even here to start it." He put his cup down and stood up from his stool, rolling his neck to loosen it.
"Hey," Lindsey said, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "You sure you want to join that party? Your captain said something about riding home in the airlock if you got into trouble."
Jayne looked torn. "This ain't my trouble, though. It'd just be a little fun."
Just then a stool came flying across the room and narrowly missed their heads. "That's a little too much fun for me," Lindsey said. He hadn't survived Wolfram and Hart and Angel to wind up a casualty of a bar fight. Making sure he had his guitar, he ducked out the back door, glancing over his shoulder to be sure Jayne was following. He was. The back door led to a low, dark hallway. To the right lay the kitchen and storerooms, and to the left lay the guest rooms Saul rented out. Lindsey didn't know which guest rooms had been let, so he led Jayne to the biggest storeroom.
"Pull up a bag of rice," he said, plopping down on a stack of huge rice sacks himself. The sheriff ought to come quiet things down in a bit."
Jayne looked around the storeroom unhappily. "And we're just gonna hide out in here, staring at canned vegetables? Where's that get fun?"
Lindsey gave him an exasperated glare. "Well, what do you suggest?" he demanded.
Jayne looked stumped for a moment, then he grinned. "I know!" he said. Lindsey expected him to produce a deck of cards, but instead he started undoing his pants. He had his boots off and his pants halfway down when he caught Lindsey's disbelieving expression. "What? Sex is always fun."
Lindsey distinctly remembered more than one sexual encounter that hadn't been fun at all, but he didn't want to challenge Jayne's statement. Jayne was all the way naked now, and he did look like a lot of fun. Dressed he was tall and impressive. Naked he was stunning, like a Greek statue if the sculptor had a pornographic imagination. He was big all over, solid muscles and tanned skin, and the sight of him was interfering with Lindsey's ability to think. Any other time, Lindsey probably would have been able to recite a dozen reasons not to do this, but right now all he could think was that he hadn't had sex since he'd landed in this place.
"Yeah, okay," he said, fumbling with his belt and kicking off his boots. He was still sitting on the bags of rice, so he lay back to wriggle out of his jeans. He'd just gotten them off and was sprawled there, working on the buttons to his shirt when he felt a touch on his thigh. That was all the warning he got before Jayne's mouth closed over his dick.
Lindsey's hands fell away from his buttons and his eyes closed as the sensation hit him. God, it was good. Jayne knelt on the floor between Lindsey's spread legs. He sucked at the tip, tracing circles over it with his tongue, and it had been so long that Lindsey might have come just from that if Jayne hadn't pulled off almost immediately. He bent lower to lick and nip at Lindsey's balls, teeth gentle and tongue teasing. His goatee scraped against Lindsey's thighs, making him shiver. Jayne moved back up, placing open mouthed kisses up the length of Lindsey's erection as he went. When he was back at the tip, he hesitated just for a moment, then opened his mouth and took him in.
Lindsey wanted to watch, but he simply couldn't keep his head up or his eyes open. This was ... warm and slick and wet and perfect. He swore to himself that he would never go more than half a year without sex again. Then Jayne twisted his head as he bobbed it up and down, and all Lindsey could do was pant. One of Jayne's big hands started playing with his balls, and Lindsey felt all the muscles in his legs tighten up. His toes even curled. He didn't have a chance to warm Jayne before he was coming, shaking and moaning and pulsing into that hot mouth.
"My God," he breathed as he coasted back down to himself.
Jayne pulled off with a smirk. "I ain't exactly the religious type, but I wouldn't say no to a little worship. Specially if you wanted to get down on your knees and pray," he said, waggling his eyebrows.
Lindsey let out a weak laugh and rolled sideways off the sacks of rice. "Here, trade me places," he offered. Jayne obeyed with alacrity, punching the bags into a comfortable shape and spreading his legs wide in invitation.
Lindsey moved between Jayne's legs and dropped slowly to his knees. He was still feeling the aftershocks of his orgasm, and he felt like he was doing everything slowly. He raised a hand and let his fingertips trail down the length of Jayne's dick. It twitched, and Lindsey leaned forward, following the path his hand had taken with his tongue. He pointed his tongue on the way down, then licked up his way back up, tongue flat and broad. When he got to the head, he lapped delicately at it, little kitten licks that teased more than they satisfied. Jayne groaned in frustration and thrust his hips up, looking for more. Lindsey grinned and complied.
If it had been too long since he'd gotten a blow job, it had been twice as long since he'd given one. He had forgotten how it felt, stretching his mouth around another man. His lips caught on Jayne's skin, and he lifted his head to run his tongue over as much flesh as he could reach without pulling all the way off. His hair fell around him as he lowered his head again, and he let it curtain him in. This was good. The smooth soft skin pressing against his tongue, the smell of Jayne in surrounding him, the strain as the muscles in his cheeks and neck started to notice the unaccustomed exercise. He got lost in it until he felt a hand on his head, brushing the hair back from his face. He looked up and saw Jayne staring down at him, his eyes gone dark and wide, his stomach muscles tense with the effort of curling himself forward to watch. Lindsey moaned at the sight, half hard again already.
Jayne's hips hitched and his hand tightened in Lindsey's hair, and he came with a grunt that sounded almost like pain. Lindsey nearly choked on the forgotten bitterness, but he managed to swallow. He kept swallowing until Jayne was done, the pulled away gently. Jayne let his hand fall from Lindsey's hair and gave him a goofy grin.
"See? I told you sex was fun."
"You're not nearly as stupid as you look," Lindsey said agreeably, settling back on his haunches. He looked around for his pants, halfway surprised to find that he was still wearing his shirt. "You think it's safe to go out?"
Jayne lazily hauled himself off the rice bags and picked up his own clothes. "It better be. I gotta get back to Serenity before Mal decides to light out without me." He raised an eyebrow at Lindsey. "Don't suppose you're looking for transport anywhere? 'Cause there's not a lot to do while we're in transit but fuck or clean your weapons ..." he let the sentence trail off.
"And your weapons are all clean and pretty?" Lindsey asked.
"My weapons are so clean you could eat off 'em. Actually, I do sometimes."
"I'll keep it in mind if I ever have anywhere to go," Lindsey said, stamping his feet to settle his boots. "But right now, I'm good here." Checking that Jayne was fully dressed, he picked up his guitar and led the way out of the storeroom and back to the bar. The crowd had cleared out, leaving the taproom a shambles of broken furniture and spilled drinks. Saul shook his head when he saw Lindsey.
"Sometimes I think Unification Day was only invented to give the idiots a reason to brawl," Saul said, swiping a hand across his brow. "Give me a hand here, lad?"
"I think that's my cue to leave," Jayne said. "Thank you for the hospitality." His words were addressed to Saul, but the wicked gleam in his eyes was all for Lindsey. He gave them a wave and left, winding his way through the destruction and out the door.
"All right, Lindsey?" Saul asked, bending to pick up the shards of a mug from the floor.
Lindsey set his guitar down in the corner and began righting stools and tables. "Yeah. I'm good," he replied. And he was. This might be the strangest hell dimension he'd ever been in, but it was his hell.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 02:50 am (UTC)Lindsey is going to have a NICE Special Hell.
:-) xx
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 03:10 am (UTC)Thanks for taking part in the ficathon. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 03:33 am (UTC)They worked really well together and it was nice.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 05:20 am (UTC)THANK YOU!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 09:42 am (UTC)This is really good - the exposition, describing the Firefly 'verse from Lindsey's POV, is excellent. He definitely would be one of the characters most at ease if transplanted there! I particularly love his thoughts about the apparent contradictions and influences, Wild West meeting Space Age. This is great: Half the people Lindsey met dressed like refugees from Bonanza, and the other half like they escaped from The King and I.
You have the voices down really well. "I don't suppose you know 'The Hero of Canton,'" Jayne asked hopefully. Awesome! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:39 am (UTC)I particularly love his thoughts about the apparent contradictions and influences, Wild West meeting Space Age. I love the Firefly-verse, but it would be really damn confusing to enter from the outside. :o)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-02 04:27 pm (UTC)Thank you for writing this!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 04:40 am (UTC)Feedback on Special Hell
Date: 2007-07-02 07:21 pm (UTC)Re: Feedback on Special Hell
Date: 2007-07-03 04:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-03 11:39 am (UTC)Anyway, this was great fun, with good characterizations and hot sex. What more could I ask for? I'll be in my bunk, thanks!