Title: A Year In The Life: July There Was Goodbye
Author: Kel (kel@crazysheep.net)
Rating: R for extreme situations; no kissing, no fondling, not even
butt-grabbing.  But serious-as-a-heart-attack strangling.
Archive: Charles always has permission.  Anyone else, just ask and
it's no doubt yours.  But ask first.
Pairing: Jay/Silent Bob
Fandom: Askewniverse, what else?
Summary:  June began the dark spiral.  Now we're in it in spades. I'll leave it to someone else 
to pull the boys out.
Disclaimer: To paraphrase Charles, "Not mine. All hail Smith."  And we gotta hail him anyway for 
bringing the boys back for the next film he said he wasn't gonna make.
Notes:  As usual, I must say, `Damn, I wish I knew where this was going.'  I have an inkling, 
but I'm just hoping I can restrict it to two stories...'cos I HAVE to.  Also, there were 
passages from Slipknot's "My Plague" in here.  It's not *completely* a songfic. It's just, 
y'know, background music from the club.  *innocent look*
Warnings:  I come close to deathfic here.  It's *not*, I am here to *tell* you it's not, but 
it's...*close*.  *Real* close.  Plus there's obsession and madness and one actively dead demon 
and sweating.  If any of these are triggers for you, back the hell away.


A Year In the Life: July There Was Goodbye


It had to happen sooner or later.  Bob knew they'd avoided it as long
as they could, but Jay was more physical than he was, in so many ways.
 Eventually, his skin would start to itch with the paranoia, the
inactivity, the one-place-out, back-to-home mentality, and they'd end
up at some club, surrounded by total strangers, surrounded
by...*everyone* who could have it in for them.

To their credit, they went to a place that they'd gone to a *lot* over
the past five years.  The Zone was not even *last* year's hip club; it
was maybe 1987's hip club, what with the hot pink neon and the big
aqua freeform shapes painted along the black walls.

None of that mattered.  What mattered was that Jay and Bob *knew* most
of the motherfuckers who went there.  *Had* known them for more years
than they'd been dealing.  Maybe not *known* known, maybe known most
of them just on the acquaintance level, but it was knowledge
nonetheless.  They were fellow travelers on the edge.  Fellow
disturbers of the social pattern.  Fellow members of the Freak Club.
Bob could find truth in that.

Jay just wanted to dance.  Bob still stood on watch.  In fact, that's
all he'd done every time they'd come into the Zone.  A beer here, a
shot of whiskey there, and watching Jay, making sure Jay was safe.
Safe and having fun and not hurting himself or anyone else.  Not
*getting* hurt.

Okay, the watching was a bit more wild-eyed now, and they were both
shivering, ambling nerve endings an hour in, but�it had to be done.
Jay had to dance off some stress.  Bob had to let him.

Unfortunately, the Zone had an open-door policy, to anyone in who
wanted to come in.  Even a thin, shivering speed freak wearing black
jeans and a battered iPod.  Grime in the creases of his thin hands and
madness burning behind his blue eyes.  Anyone was welcome, as long as
they didn't make trouble.

Trouble, unfortunately, was in the building.  It was only a question
of when he'd choose to strike.

***

Jay was dancing in music, hip-deep in music, swaying to music that
coated his skin like blue honey.  Trance-house, hip-hop, thrum-dub
blending to vibrate his ribs and shimmy his hips across the floor.  He
grazed girls, boys, a couple of indeterminates in mesh shirts and
black eyeliner, even the bouncer once or twice.  He was in the groove.
 Everything was right in the universe.  He was smooth, smooth as silk,
and he trailed sparks in the dark.  His hair flew in a gold coiling
stream over his shoulder as he danced, swirled, dipped and gyrated.

He was watched from two sides of the dance floor.  Bob's eyes he kept
meeting, smiling and dancing off again; Bob would nod grimly, take a
sip of beer, scan the crowd and go back to watching Jay.  The other
pair of eyes was attached to the boy with the black jeans, tucked
clear back into the corner shadows, watching Jay like starving men
watch meat.  Watching Jay with intent.  He was the clear and present
danger.

And Jay never knew he was there.

The music changed, from the slow loping roll to something more
seductive, more aggressive.  Jay was only listening for the beat, but
his ears picked out words, translated them in motion to his floating
brain, and he half-smiled as he added language skills to the bodyparl
and rode out the tide.

*"I'm in conniptions for the final act you came here for
The one derivative you manage is the one I abhor"*

**Yeah,** he thought, **Slipknot, I know that shit.**  He remembered
the hot chick in the red dress snap-kicking those mutant dog zombies,
and hipshot his way to a clear spot in the crowd, tossing his head and
throwing out some easy chop-socky moves.  The anger of the song fueled
his movements, making them quicker, the thrum-dub driving him harder,
driving him to swing out in ever-expanding parabolae of movement.  He
lost track of Bob as he neared the far corner of the dance floor.

*"You fuckin' touch me I will rip you apart
I'll reach in and take a bite out of that/Shit you call a heart..."*

And Jay looked up, wiping sweat out of his eyes, panting, grinning
like a hyena, and met the eyes of a complete stranger.  A stranger who
reached out and pulled him close, cocking his head and tilting it up.

"Hey, what the fuck you--"

"Don't remember me?"

The boy's voice sent shivers down his spine, but he swallowed and
looked him over.

"No, bitch, you ain't much ta write home about.  I gots ta get back
out and *dance*, okay?  So you jes' lemme go and we part fuckin'
friends, yeah?"

The boy sneered, his face twisting, and something over his shoulder
shimmered for a second.  Jay blanched, thinking of the sounds beetles
make crawling through bones, and shook his head to dispel the
monster-movie image.  A spike of cold shot down his spine.  He pulled
back, only to find the kid's hands locked around his wrists, like
flesh-covered handcuffs.

"Friends?  No.  Don't *think* so."  And he pulled him into the
shadows, into the beetle-shell dark, and his eyes sparked with red
light from the spots overhead.  Jay fought him, but the kid pushed him
down, pushed him down and straddled him, and suddenly all the power
and energy in the Zone was in the kid, and Jay was very, very tired.
Tired of dancing, tired of running, tired of...everything.  Tired
without knowing why.  Tired without thinking it through, even, not
that that was *ever* Jay's fort�.

"What the fuck *you* want then, you goddamn little--"

"You," the kid said softly.  He drew his hand back.  "Dead."

Half of Jay was horrified, and burned to get off the floor, get away
from the fucking psycho in black, and tensed all his muscles to do it.
 Half of Jay just wanted to lie there.  Truth be told, he was busier
fighting *himself* than he was getting ready to fight the *kid*.

Words in his head now, words in his voice, but no words he'd ever
thought before.

**Fuckin' get it over with, then, shit, I gots shit to do, man, I am
*tired* of all this *crap*...**

But even Jay's sudden, inexplicably nihilistic urge couldn't overcome
his sense of survival, and before two blows had fallen, he was
thrashing underneath the kid, slapping at his arms, punching him in
the stomach, kicking his knees against his back.

That was when the kid changed tactics, closing his thin, wiry hands
around Jay's neck.  Squeezing.  Squeezing until even the Slipknot
drums slid away into high white noise.

*"I know why you blame me (yourself)
I know why you plague me (yourself)"*

Shit, Bob was gonna be *so* mad at him for leaving without askin'
permission first.  His vision went red, then grey, then black...and
there was only silence.

***

Bob checked out his boy again, shook his head, went to the bar for
another beer.  Jay was magic, but even *watching* him was tiring Bob
out.  All that boundless energy, sweat sheening all his limbs like
glitter, and still he danced.  Bob turned to the bartender, pointing
to the Zone special that night, which happened to be Corona.  Got a
bottle back sparkling with condensation, chunk of tangy lime wedged
into the bottle neck, and Bob nodded his thanks, sliding a few bills
across the counter and turning back to the dance floor.

And Jay was gone.

Jay was gone like he'd never existed in the Zone.  Jay was *not
fucking there*.

Bob set the beer down and started wading through the crowd, searching
for a flash of blond hair.  Halfway through, just before his battered
sneaks touched the edge of the polished dance floor, he heard a
commotion at the far end, and saw heads starting to turn.

"You--knew--and--*bastard*--you--fucking--*pay*--" he heard, and his
heart leapt into his throat.

Now he *had* to get into the corner.  He didn't care who he hurt to
get there.

***

Jay hadn't even looked behind him.  Not once.  He met the eyes of the
dancers, clear challenge in his clear hazel eyes, challenge that was
visible and inviting as he swirled around on the floor.  His pattern
wandered, random ovals drawing him closer and closer to the shadowed
figure in the corner.  The boy stopped breathing, watching Jay come
closer and closer.  His spine stiffened, as he bit his chapped lip,
his eyes narrowing to focus on the taller blond.

**Go on,** came the whisper that was almost second nature to him now.
 **Go on, get him.  You *want* to.  *Get* him�**

Azrael, hidden in the shadows behind the trembling figure, barely more
substantial than a shadow himself.  Azrael, stripped of everything but
will and hatred, wrapping him in enough substance to be the wind
through the trees, the sound of the inhalation at the back of the
neck.  Azrael, urging the boy on with touches he couldn't feel, words
he could only barely hear--at first.  Azrael had arrowed in on the boy
after he'd been kicked out of school for smoking pot, kicked out of
his home for doing drugs.  He'd gone from friends' houses to the
street within a matter of months, sleeping behind the restaurants on
1st Avenue, selling everything he could find, everything he could
scrounge, *but* the iPod.  The iPod he'd protected, at the expense of
his body some days.

Of course, that was before all shreds of pride fled, and he sold the
iPod he'd protected for so long.  The longing for its return gave
Azrael entrance.  The longing turned into acute pain, exacerbated by
withdrawal from whatever it had been that week.  He'd sold *himself*
on another streetcorner, and another streetcorner, *several* other
streetcorners, to get the iPod back.  And by then--due to Azrael's
sinister whispers--he was convinced Jay was the source of all his
troubles.

How could he not be?  Jay had sold him the pot.  That was truth.  He
had been kicked out of school.  *That* was truth.  He had been kicked
out of his house, his parents never wanting to see him again.  That
*also* was truth.

Of course, his mind easily slid by, now, the fact that the pot he'd
been kicked out of school for having, wasn't the bag he'd bought from
Jay.  And the drug he'd been kicked out of his home for having wasn't pot.

Easy, easy little omissions.  The mind was so easy to convince.  A
word here, a word there, never admitting outright that two plus two
was equaling five, and the kid swallowing it all down like mother's
poisoned milk.

And now, now, after *months* of forcing this boy to act, to move
forward, to do *anything* other than spray-paint death threats, crush
bird skulls and mangle kittens�now they were not even *yards* away
from Jay.  Jay, who'd spurred Bob on to kill Azrael.  Bob, who Azrael
would swear would never have acted otherwise.

Jay.  Jay had to go down.  Jay had to *pay*.

**Get him, you idiot!**

The boy moved.

***

Now there was just wailing, words strung together until they distorted
under their own weight, the pounding of the backbeat drowning anything
coherent out.  And Bob's heart froze at the *other* voice he could
swear he was hearing--short, sobbed-out hitching noises, coordinating
with heavy, meaty *thunks*.  This did not bode well.  He began putting
some muscle into his dive across the dance floor, elbowing aside
anyone who hadn't yet caught on that something, on the far side, had
gone horribly wrong.

**Don't kill him,** he thought, over and over, like a mantra.  *Don't
kill him, don't kill him, don't you DARE fucking kill him until *I*
get my hands on him--**

And then there was nothing.  There was silence, other than one boy's
frantic high breathing, that he could barely make out.  He was almost
there and there was *nothing*, nothing he could hear of Jay.  He was
there, he was *there*, and he was pushing aside the crowd that was
only now stopping to gather.  He was *there* and he was on his knees
and he was pushing the kid off Jay so hard that the kid slid into the
back wall of the Zone.

**Fuck.  Fuck.  He's not breathing.  He's not breathing, I'm too late,
that fucking kid killed him--that fucking kid--**

The kid sprawled in a tangle of too-thin limbs, reminding him
painfully of Jay, once upon a time.  Not that far fuckin' back,
either, all things considered.  How the hell had all this gone down?
Why the fuck hadn't Jay fought back?  Why the fuck weren't they even
now getting kicked out of the Zone, add yet *another* fucking place to
the list of places they couldn't go in for a while?  Why the fuck�

Bob leaned over Jay, picking up one lax arm, feeling for a pulse.  No
pulse.  Fuck, no pulse.

Red sheeted over his vision for a second, the urge to kill, the urge
to pound the kid into hamburger and beyond, and he breathed through
his nose, for a while, calming down.  He bent farther, lifting Jay up
at the same time.

**Shit, this better work.  And if he says anything about gay fucking
*anything*, I'm clocking him one--**

He pried open Jay's mouth, leaned down, clamped his mouth on the
blond's, and blew.  He lifted his head, counted to three, and blew
again.  Then he carefully set Jay back on the floor and started
pumping his chest, his hands locked together.

**Fuck, let this work.  Please, fuck, God, let this work.**

Two more breaths.  Five more pumps.   Jay lying still, too still,
under his hands.  Two more breaths.  Five more pumps.  Ignoring the
tears that were flowing all too freely down his bearded face.  Two
more breaths.  Five more pumps.  Talk behind him about an ambulance,
about calling the cops, about things he couldn't afford to care about
right now.  Two more breaths.  Five more pumps.

**Please, God.  Please.  Please, don't take Jay away from me.**

And Jay, lying so still, under the house lights that were springing
up.  Jay, lying still and pale on the dark floor.  Jay, all the
dancing energy brought to this.

**Please, God.  Please.**

Bob broke down and wept, knotting his fingers in Jay's tangled hair.
Jay was gone.

END
*******************
Kelandris the Mad
no, the princess does not get eaten by the eels at this time