The Female of the Species
Jun. 15th, 2005 10:40 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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rareslashtitle: THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
author: Nightspore
pairing: Pendergast / D'Agosta
source: Relic, Reliquary
disclaimer: What circle of hell is reserved for Those Who Use Other's Creations As Their Own (and make them do naughty things)? Whichever one it is, there I shall go.
rating: pr0n
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
A light scrim of mist drew across the full moon. Most of the streetlights were out, and driving down the back street felt like being at the bottom of the ocean - inky dark, dank, details obscured by drifting fogbanks.
D'Agosta spotted a lone figure lounging under a working streetlamp and let off the gas pedal, tapping the brake lights in code as the unmarked cruiser slowed. It was a shitty job, but the mayor had been making a lot of noise about "cracking down" on prostitution since the latest killings. Of course, D'Agosta didn't for one second think the crackdown would make any difference. Sure, the streets would be empty for a while - at least, until the heat was off - but the streetwalkers were just taking their business indoors. Only the brave and the desperate were out tonight.
D'Agosta had volunteered for street-sweeping partly because he knew damn well plenty of his fellow officers would take the opportunity to beat the shit out of these guys. D'Agosta felt a little more sympathy for them. They were only doing what they could to survive. A lot of them didn't have much choice.
He nudged the cruiser up to the curb and rolled down the passenger side window.
The young man remained leaning against the lamppost, arms crossed. With what he was wearing, he surely suffered from the cold: skintight denims dark with rain and a black jacket with breakaway arms half-unzipped to bare the creamy knot of bone and muscle at the shoulder, crudely cut off at the midriff, lining and leather dangling.
“C’mere, kid,” D’Agosta called, not unkindly.
The prostitute hesitated a moment. Sizing him up, no doubt. Mentally computing how expensive his clothes and Infiniti G35 appeared, whether or not he'd be worth the effort. He moved closer, walking with a precise, almost mincing gait.
"Hey, daddy," he said in a whistling, nasal voice as he leaned down and peered in the window. "Whatcha need? For fifty I can go below 14th street."
He didn’t seem like the average street kid, half-starved and drug-addled: more like a thoroughbred animal gone feral. His face was narrow and high cheekboned, eyebrows arched over pale, glistening eyes. At least, that was what D’Agosta could vaguely make out behind the thick fall of bangs that reached almost to his bony chin and obscured almost everything but a nose that was long and sharply pointed but not the least bit comical.
D'Agosta flashed his badge. "Don't you know you're not supposed to be out here?"
The young man straightened up, pressing very close to the side of the car, so that all D’Agosta could see was an expanse of abs that could have been carved from marble. He was very pale, his skin appearing velvety-textured, lightly dusted with fine, colorless hair and clinging moisture that refracted the diffuse light.
D'Agosta fought back a momentary stab of envy. He'd never have a belly that flat again. “Look, I don’t want to drag you down to the station. Too much goddamn paperwork, savvy? I just need you to stay indoors tonight. Least, until my shift ends and you‘re not my problem any more.”
“Yain’t gonna arrest me? For real?”
“Yeah, for real. You got somewhere to go?”
“Nah,” he said, adding a syrinx-trill of laughter. “I c'n come home with you.”
“No, you can’t." D'Agosta reached over and opened the door. "Hop in the car. I'll take you to a shelter.”
The prostitute stepped back and waved his offer away with a hyperarticulated hand flexure. "I gotta make a living."
"You stay out here, you're gonna be dead. I'm not busting your skinny ass for fun, you know. Someone's out here killing guys. How'd you not hear? The whole city's in a freaking panic." The ones who aren't glad that someone's taking out the scum, he added silently to himself.
"Panic? As in, the Great God Pan?" He chirped, “O Pan! O Pan! thou art not dead: ghost-like, O Pan! thou glimmerest still, a spectral face with sad dumb stare.”
“Wh-what?”
“On rainy nights thy breath blows chill in the street-walker’s dripping hair. Buchanan.“ He slid gracefully into the seat and asked in a completely different voice, low, soft and warm, a cat's sleepy purr, "Well, Vincent, what really brings you out in the dark and the cold?"
He looked closer at the prostitute. The man was not as young as his lithe body and smooth-skinned, angular face first made him appear. Strip bleaching was once again undergoing a brief surge of trendy popularity, but the cobwebby curtain of hair this joyboy pushed out of his face was bone white to the roots, as were the thick lashes fringing his smoky blue eyes.
"Pendergast!”
“I stand so accused,” he drawled, then added in a way that made it clear he was quoting something, "Drest thus, I seem a different creature."
“No shit. That’s quite a get-up.” D’Agosta resisted an urge to grab him by the throat and shake him. Special Agent Pendergast, despite an appearance that would be striking even without his albino coloring, was something of a human chameleon. The agent loved these undercover excursions a bit too much, and he had a sneaking suspicion that half his enjoyment came from fooling D‘Agosta himself. “I thought by now you'd be back in New Orleans sipping mint juleps and whipping the houseboys."
"Matters have not been entirely cleared up."
"The Lobotomy Killer," D'Agosta said, nodding wearily. "I should have figured."
That was the sobriquet the tabloids had given him: a modern day Jack the Ripper with a twist, he killed by thrusting a thin, semi-rigid instrument into the victim's eye socket, piercing the eggshell-thin bone at the back and plunging deep into the brain.
"What do you know about the killings," Pendergast asked.
D'Agosta shrugged. He was trying not to look at Pendergast, sitting there with one leg crossed over the other, fingers interlaced and resting on his knee. Calm and cool as always, despite being dressed like a five dollar whore. "Same as everyone, I guess."
"Did anything strike you as peculiar about the m.o.?"
"Yeah, now that you mention it. The victims were all men. Most serial killers kill women, right?"
"Typically, yes, although there have been notable exceptions," Pendergast agreed. "But what I refer to specifically was the manner in which the victim's brain was injured. Aside from damage caused by the weapon’s trajectory, in all cases the hypothalamus had been sucked out, as if through a straw."
"I didn't see the latest coroner's report." Eating the brains. That sounded too damn familiar. "You don't think it's - it can't be. I thought they all . . . were taken care of when we flooded the tunnels. It's gotta be a coincidence, or a copycat.”
Pendergast hung his head for a moment, looking pensive. The bangs he'd tucked behind his ear came loose and he swept them back again, fixing D'Agosta with a chilling sidelong stare. "I, too, believed they had all perished, but I erred. I assumed. I am terribly ashamed. Which is why I am here now, and not at all officially.“
“You ‘erred‘? Like how?“
“All the identified victims - Frock, Kawakita, Whittlesey - were male. We, or rather, I, assumed that the Wrinklers represented both male and female victims, but that is not the case. The Mbwun creatures are sexually dimorphic."
"Sounds kinky."
Pendergast chose to ignore that. “It simply means that the sexes are extremely divergent in size and shape, much more so than the extrapolator program could have predicted. The gecko genes expressed themselves differently in female victims. No doubt this would allow the two genders to exist in the same physical territory while exploiting very different ecological niches. The males, when transformed, went down . . . but the females went up, and thus escaped our engineered deluge.”
“Well, wait a minute. If those things have been here all along, why did the killings start just now? And how are they different? I mean, what exactly are we looking for here?”
Pendergast opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, focusing past D'Agosta. He nodded shortly. In the softest of whispers, he said, "Outside."
Something shot across the street and into the alley they were parked beside, on all fours but too big to be a dog. It moved so fast he sensed it more than saw it, but got the strange impression that it was wrapped in a cloak or blanket.
D'Agosta unholstered his Glock .22 and slipped out of the car. Pendergast remained inside, watching.
He played his flashlight into the unremitting darkness and was rewarded with a faint eye shine. He came closer and the animal backed away, trapping itself in the dead end alley. He aimed the beam, illuminating the creature as it scuttled further into the fogbound shadows.
It probably weighed no more than a man, but its attenuated limbs made it appear much larger. With its compact, tailless torso and sprawling arms and legs tucked tight to the body, it was vaguely froglike in shape. The head was long, tapered, almost elegant, equal parts lizard and collie dog, except for the dark, forward-facing eyes under heavy brows. Short, rust-red fur covered the head, neck, shoulders and back and the hindquarters, limbs and tail were beaded by mottled tan and blue scales. Some sort of grayish, leathery stuff was bunched between the arms and legs on each side. This close he could even smell it, like rotting apples, a syrupy sweetness verging on decay.
But as bizarre as the creature looked, he could still detect traces of humanity, even femininity, in its corded musculature, the bend of its limbs, the alert, knowing expression in the convex onyx curve of the eyes.
Of course, some of the most bloodthirsty, depraved monsters in nature were human beings.
The creature’s lips twitched back, revealing a flash of pearly fangs, and her tongue flickered out as if tasting the air. D’Agosta raised his weapon and sighted. This would be no more than putting down a dangerous animal, like a rabid dog . . .
The creature suddenly reared back. He froze with surprise as the long arms spread wide and the accordioned “cloak” unfolded with a rubbery snap. A thin membrane connected her fore and hind limbs like a humanoid flying squirrel. There were no batlike struts, just the raised filaments of tightly strung tendons, and the dark scrawl of veins, and the shine of dim moonlight through the wide-pulled stretch of it.
The creature’s hind legs straightened out, sending her into an arcing bound. He tried to keep a bead on her, but as she swept overhead her trident claws slashed down and knocked the gun from his grip. She landed lightly on the other side of the car and immediately sprang into the air again, vaulting over the car towards him, jaws that bite, claws that catch -
He dove back into the car and grabbed the radio. “10-91V!“
The thing’s arm stretched inside, claws slicing past his face and punching through the radio and instrumentation in a shower of sparks. Pendergast grabbed the membrane stretching back from her wrist in both hands and twisted it viciously. The creature let out a chattering cry of pain and the arm withdrew.
D’Agosta slammed the door so hard the glass cracked. He leaned back, trying to catch his breath. His heart was hammering so rapidly he was sure he was about to have a heart attack. The agent hadn‘t moved from his seat.
“Pendergast, are you packing or what?”
“I fear I didn’t have room for firearms,” he said, indicating his clothes with a dismissive gesture. “I did not expect to confront the creature tonight, only track and observe it.”
She wasn’t finished yet. Dropping onto all fours, she disappeared below his line of sight. A moment later there was a loud bang and the car lurched to one side. Another bang and hiss, and the car settled down, tilted forwards. She'd taken out the front tires.
They were trapped, weaponless and with their communications cut off.
A huge forepaw slapped onto the outside of the driver‘s side window. D'Agosta could clearly see the ridged, veiny pads, the arching fingers, the scimitar claws. Pendergast sat very, very still as her digits spread out, claw tips ticking on the glass. His face was paler than D'Agosta had ever seen, all blood drained away leaving him sickly-white as a corpse. Almost without moving his lips, he whispered, "I'm afraid we are in trouble."
"You don't say," D'Agosta said truculently.
"Vincent, listen to me, and listen to me carefully. You are not going to approve of this, but it might very well save our lives."
The car rocked as the creature shifted her weight, leaning against the window. The claw tips squeaked on the glass, and a small chunk fell loose. The latticework of cracks widened.
"I'm listening."
"Do you remember the printouts from Kawakita's extrapolator program? It also predicted an enhanced estrus for the female of the species."
"Yeah?"
"A human female has a suppressed cycle, so suppressed that she herself may not even realize when she is ovulating, much less her mate. She is 'available' all of the time. It is conducive to pair bonding - "
With a rippling, sucking sound the paw pulled loose of the glass. The creature inserted her central talon in between the glass and the rubber seal, deep into the mechanism of the door.
"Shit, it's unlocking the door!" He turned wide-eyed to Pendergast. "Reader's Digest version, please."
"This is important! It explains why these creatures haven't been killing until now. They've been in hiding, hunting only the prey they need to survive. But this must be their mating season . . . now they are hunting for males, not prey."
"But we killed all the males!"
"They are after the next best thing. Remember, they are at the mercy of their instincts, but they were human once." He risked a glance out the window. All that could be seen was the creature's belly, fox-red fur above and oily, pebbled scales below, heaving as it grunted and worked at the door mechanism.
"Tell her I'm married!"
Pendergast favored him with a slight, sardonic grin. “I am afraid that would have an instigating effect. Did you notice the creature was bleeding from several fresh cuts?”
“What would attack that?” There was a loud whirring click from inside the door, and D’Agosta flinched. Sounded like she'd hit the power window motors. “I don’t think even a pit bull on crack would nuts enough to take that thing on.”
“I agree. The wounds consist of sets of three long, shallow, parallel gashes, the sort of injury that would be inflicted by the claws of another female Mbwun creature. I would conjecture they were fighting over available males. A female, especially a large-bodied mammal like our friend here, has a higher biological investment in fewer children. In order to pass on her genes to as many individuals as possible, she must make sure she bears the fittest sons, who will be able to fertilize many females. And she does that by choosing the most appealing males, who would of course, resembling their fathers, appeal to the females of the next generation. Obviously the Mbwun creatures, once having mated, ensure that no other female has access to the superior male she has chosen by killing her erstwhile mate.“
"So? What the hell do we do?"
He reached out and put one long, slender hand on D'Agosta's thigh. "Convince her we're not suitable partners."
"Oh, no. Oh, God, no!"
"My dear Vincent," he said in a low, hurried voice. "We don't have a choice."
"I think I'll die instead, thank you very much."
There was a loud clunk from the door. The creature slapped her adhesive forepaw on the glass again and yanked it down in a serious of jerks, the mechanism inside the door grinding and squealing in protest. Icy needles of rain swept inside, and then the choking musk of the creature’s scent.
"Now, Vincent." The voice he'd thought of as a warm cat's purr only a few minutes ago now sounded altogether different. Deep in his throat, it became feline in a different way, almost predatory. "Now."
And then those long, slender fingers were deftly unbuttoning his trousers.
“Wait! No, this is - I can’t!”
With the slightest trace of irritability, Pendergast whispered, “Please quell your maidenly objections. All you have to do is sit quietly, I will do the rest. Do you recall Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter on her wedding night?”
He couldn’t believe that the agent could ask him something like that as he was touching him - touching him there - and pulling his cock free from his boxers. His bright yellow boxers with Spongebob’s face on them, which Vinnie got him as a joking Christmas present and which were the only nearly-clean pair in the hamper this morning . . .
“Close your eyes and think of England. Really, this is no more personally invasive than a colonoscopy, which I trust you have done regularly, and hopefully a bit more pleasant.”
He couldn’t answer. He’d gone rigid with exquisite torture.
D'Agosta didn't know what he was expecting, but it certainly hadn't been this: Pendergast's taking his member in both hands and giving it a quick kiss on the very tip, then simply hovering his open mouth just a hair's width away. His breath was hot as he breathed out, cooling as he inhaled.
D’Agosta had assumed Pendergast intended to simulate the act, but he realized as he saw the creature thrust her wet-rimmed, flaring nostrils towards them that she could probably smell if they were faking.
He let his breath out in a hiss as the agent's tongue circled the head, then swept up and down his shaft in a busy figure eight motion, coating him with hot saliva. D'Agosta gripped the steering wheel so hard he felt his fingernails leaving permanent dents in the soft plastic. To his utter shock, he could feel his meat twitching, the internal wrench, the warm, heavy gush of blood. He was actually getting a hard-on.
Pendergast said, "Ah," under his breath, and before D'Agosta could ask what, the man began to really go to work.
That tongue was as brilliant a linguist in this as anything else, swirling roughly around his head, rasping and tumbling it inside his mouth, rubbing the glans against the ridges of his palate. He slowly twisted his head from side to side, making sure his moist lips stayed in contact with the coronal ridge, then sucked in his cheeks, holding the suction for a couple of strokes, and released.
D'Agosta bucked like a trapped animal, bending backwards until his vertebral column creaked in protest, grinding his hips down into the seat. Despite the bitter cold, sweat gummed up his skin, soaked his shirt. Muscles twitched explosively along the back of his arms, along his arched spine like timed detonations bringing a building down. He felt the leakage of precum. Pendergast stopped for a moment, turned away and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
In the momentary lull, D'Agosta managed to gather enough of his wits together to check on the whereabouts of the creature. Her floral-putrid scent still filled the car, substantial enough to cut with a knife. It was a yeasty, violently organic stench, clinging and penetrating, burning his nostrils, wafting up through his sinuses and saturating his brain.
The creature herself had backed away from the car and crouched like a spider, her unwavering gaze fixed on them still. It began to rain in a misty, invisible way, and dampness made a sheen on her scales and jeweled her short, dense fur.
He was going to hell for this . . . except that he was already in hell, with his own personal demon, red as cinnabar, leathery winged, lean and hairy and scaled, peaked ears curving like horns above the long skull, poised and waiting to carry him off.
"Vincent?" Pendergast asked quietly. "Are you well?"
“Gah . . . good,” he panted.
“There is no reason not to give this performance my best effort,” he said, licking his lips. “And every reason to make it as convincing as possible.”
"I . . . I don't . . . "
The agent met his eyes, a direct, interested stare. "You're doing quite admirably yourself, considering," he said. There was no hint of coyness, no deliberate eroticism. He sounded so matter-of-factly patronizing that he might have been complementing D'Agosta on a well-played but losing game of tennis rather than a bout of sinful lovemaking.
It made him feel like a piece of meat, which was irritating, but at the same time it was oddly arousing. Somehow, he was able to speak through his gritted teeth. "Yeah, well, I've had better."
Pendergast merely chuckled, and he lowered his head again. Wrapping his hand around the base of his cock, he tightening his little finger around the base of the shaft, leaving the thumb and index finger looser. He moved his hand up and down in unison with his mouth, a tunnel of flesh, tight and hot, his lips compressing and releasing, a sort of lip-massage that added ringlets of pleasure.
D'Agosta had had a few b.j.s before, mostly in high school, but nothing like this. It felt as good or better to have his cock sucked and licked top to bottom, his balls gently played with and the head caressed, then to have some girl trying to imitate Deep Throat and choking as she went down on him like a python swallowing a goat.
Pendergast kept varying what he was doing, never sticking to one movement for very long as his slender hands strayed, caressing, pinching, petting. He circled his fingers around just the base of his shaft then, clamping tightly, he pumped his hand up and down, rotating his hand as he stroked to create a delicious friction. Stroking up to meet his mouth coming down, and then stroking down towards the base as his mouth was coming off, thrusting his tongue in and out, and rubbing the head against the ridges of his palate.
D'Agosta forced his streaming eyes open. The creature threw her elongated arms out and leaped - but she was not leaving, not yet. The car bounced roughly, the inadequate shocks unable to absorb the impact as she landed on the roof. Pendergast gagged, and for a moment bit down -
The mist had thickened to a drizzle, the drizzle congealed into rain that ran in silvery rivulets down the glass. Through it, he could see her muzzle once more stuck through the window, this time upside down. D'Agosta could barely make out the gaping pink mouth lined with many small, hooked fangs like ivory thorns. The curve of her jaws made her appear to be grinning.
The creature's tongue slipped out, probing against the glass. It was long, a dark, flat cartilaginous blue-black ribbon. The sides curled inward, forming a stiff, hollow tube - the weapon.
Pendergast either deigned to ignore the creature or was too deeply occupied to notice her. Now that D'Agosta was fully hard, he got a little harder and faster with him. He scratched his fingernails across the aching shaft, lightly skimming his teeth along the swollen head, squirming his tongue roughly against the little v-shaped place behind the head. Who was doing this to him ceased to matter, he ceased to think - he even forgot about the beast with her grinning muzzle inches from his face.
His pulse pounded in his temples, and he was squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that he could see stars. The stars rushed toward him and struck with a ghostly impact, blasting him outward. Gazing inward from all points of the compass at once, he saw all the matter in the universe gather at his exact center, dwindle to a single glowing point, and wink out. At once he was collapsing inward, shrinking, compressing. There was a momentary sensation of searing heat and crushing weight, and then -
Release.
Pendergast jerked his head away at the last possible second, which was fine. He would have died of mortification if the agent had accidentally swallowed his cum.
There was a burst of angry, high-pitched chittering from outside. The car rocked again as the creature jumped off and clung to the side of the building.
"That was . . . "
"Yes. Excellent. Very convincing," Pendergast gasped, softly sibilant. "Worthy of Anacreon. Although I did not intend for our deception to become so involved."
“Oh, my God.” As the blood rushed away from his groin and back into his brain, the full import hit him. D'Agosta put his head between his knees and moaned. He couldn’t believe what had happened. What he’d done. He was married, for chrissakes, he had a kid . . . and he wasn’t just playacting to trick the monster.
After the first few seconds, he’d truly enjoyed what Pendergast was doing.
“Vincent? Dear Vincent.” His voice was all honeysuckle and magnolia again. "We never asked ourselves why . . . why would anyone, animal or human, have eaten the Lilicae in the first place? The plant survived with its reovirus load because it was putting out chemical attractants, pheromones . . . the same ones the female Mbwun must have been producing."
He didn’t look up. D'Agosta felt Pendergast’s slim fingers tangle in his damp, tousled hair, stroking his head.
“Don’t you see? The Lobotomy Killer victims, those poor fellows walked right into death with their arms wide open. As soon as the creature came close you and I were hit full-strength with the same pheromones."
Impulsively he raised his head, and found himself looking directly into Pendergast's argent eyes. Somehow he was reminded of this crazy cartoon Vinnie had been addicted to as a young kid, playing the VHS tape over and over again until the lines were engraved on D'Agosta's brain. Two frogs are escaping into a surreal basement. A subway train full of horned and cheerful devils pulls up, and the doors open. "Where does this train go?" one frog asks nervously, and the other replies, "To hell. But it makes one stop at Miami Beach."
He leaned over and gave Pendergast a brief, affectionate kiss on the lips.
The agent's reaction was to look startled. "Why did you do that?"
"Because I wanted to," he said. "And because you were great."
Pendergast glanced away for a moment, staring sightlessly out the rain-streaked window. D'Agosta studied his severe profile in stark silhouette: the high forehead, the aquiline nose and the depression of the frontal sinus shaping the bridge, the grim set of his mouth. For an instant, as he looked toward him, Pendergast's eyes seemed to flare with reddish light. Then he moved his head the barest fraction of a millimeter. The strange light extinguished, and he sighed. "This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen."
D'Agosta craned his head around and spotted the creature scuttling up the sheer side of the building. Right below the roof, she gathered herself into a compact knot of bony limbs and crumpled membranes, waited a moment, then flung herself into the open air. Her arms and legs jackknifed out, her webbing belled like a sail and she was transformed into a living kite, swept into the sky by a fierce updraft.
She passed across the unveiled moon like a shadow and then was gone.
But long after the fresh, cutting wind had swept the last lingering traces of pheromone out of the car’s interior, those cool, precise fingers persisted in stroking his hair, and he did not make a move to stop them.
*end*
author's notes:
1. The poem Pendergast quotes is by Robert Buchanan:
O Pan! O Pan! thou art not dead:
Ghost-like, O Pan! thou glimmerest still,
A spectral face with sad dumb stare;
On rainy nights thy breath blows chill
In the street-walker’s dripping hair!” . . . .
By lonely meres thou dost not wait;
But here, ‘mid living waves of Fate,
We feel thee go and come.
2. "Drest thus . . . " is from FAUST, by J.W. von Goethe, John Anster translation
3. Anacreon was a sex-crazed Greek poet who is considered the originator of the "Wine, Women and Song" genre. However, he preferred boys to women. When asked why his poems celebrated handsome young men rather than the gods, Anacreon replied, "Because they are my gods".
4. The cartoon with the hell-subway is FACE LIKE A FROG by Sally Cruikshank (www.funonmars.com)
5. "This cold night . . . " is from Shakespeare's KING LEAR
6. 10-91V is code for "vicious animal"
7. The title is from Rudyard Kipling's poem:
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
author: Nightspore
pairing: Pendergast / D'Agosta
source: Relic, Reliquary
disclaimer: What circle of hell is reserved for Those Who Use Other's Creations As Their Own (and make them do naughty things)? Whichever one it is, there I shall go.
rating: pr0n
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
A light scrim of mist drew across the full moon. Most of the streetlights were out, and driving down the back street felt like being at the bottom of the ocean - inky dark, dank, details obscured by drifting fogbanks.
D'Agosta spotted a lone figure lounging under a working streetlamp and let off the gas pedal, tapping the brake lights in code as the unmarked cruiser slowed. It was a shitty job, but the mayor had been making a lot of noise about "cracking down" on prostitution since the latest killings. Of course, D'Agosta didn't for one second think the crackdown would make any difference. Sure, the streets would be empty for a while - at least, until the heat was off - but the streetwalkers were just taking their business indoors. Only the brave and the desperate were out tonight.
D'Agosta had volunteered for street-sweeping partly because he knew damn well plenty of his fellow officers would take the opportunity to beat the shit out of these guys. D'Agosta felt a little more sympathy for them. They were only doing what they could to survive. A lot of them didn't have much choice.
He nudged the cruiser up to the curb and rolled down the passenger side window.
The young man remained leaning against the lamppost, arms crossed. With what he was wearing, he surely suffered from the cold: skintight denims dark with rain and a black jacket with breakaway arms half-unzipped to bare the creamy knot of bone and muscle at the shoulder, crudely cut off at the midriff, lining and leather dangling.
“C’mere, kid,” D’Agosta called, not unkindly.
The prostitute hesitated a moment. Sizing him up, no doubt. Mentally computing how expensive his clothes and Infiniti G35 appeared, whether or not he'd be worth the effort. He moved closer, walking with a precise, almost mincing gait.
"Hey, daddy," he said in a whistling, nasal voice as he leaned down and peered in the window. "Whatcha need? For fifty I can go below 14th street."
He didn’t seem like the average street kid, half-starved and drug-addled: more like a thoroughbred animal gone feral. His face was narrow and high cheekboned, eyebrows arched over pale, glistening eyes. At least, that was what D’Agosta could vaguely make out behind the thick fall of bangs that reached almost to his bony chin and obscured almost everything but a nose that was long and sharply pointed but not the least bit comical.
D'Agosta flashed his badge. "Don't you know you're not supposed to be out here?"
The young man straightened up, pressing very close to the side of the car, so that all D’Agosta could see was an expanse of abs that could have been carved from marble. He was very pale, his skin appearing velvety-textured, lightly dusted with fine, colorless hair and clinging moisture that refracted the diffuse light.
D'Agosta fought back a momentary stab of envy. He'd never have a belly that flat again. “Look, I don’t want to drag you down to the station. Too much goddamn paperwork, savvy? I just need you to stay indoors tonight. Least, until my shift ends and you‘re not my problem any more.”
“Yain’t gonna arrest me? For real?”
“Yeah, for real. You got somewhere to go?”
“Nah,” he said, adding a syrinx-trill of laughter. “I c'n come home with you.”
“No, you can’t." D'Agosta reached over and opened the door. "Hop in the car. I'll take you to a shelter.”
The prostitute stepped back and waved his offer away with a hyperarticulated hand flexure. "I gotta make a living."
"You stay out here, you're gonna be dead. I'm not busting your skinny ass for fun, you know. Someone's out here killing guys. How'd you not hear? The whole city's in a freaking panic." The ones who aren't glad that someone's taking out the scum, he added silently to himself.
"Panic? As in, the Great God Pan?" He chirped, “O Pan! O Pan! thou art not dead: ghost-like, O Pan! thou glimmerest still, a spectral face with sad dumb stare.”
“Wh-what?”
“On rainy nights thy breath blows chill in the street-walker’s dripping hair. Buchanan.“ He slid gracefully into the seat and asked in a completely different voice, low, soft and warm, a cat's sleepy purr, "Well, Vincent, what really brings you out in the dark and the cold?"
He looked closer at the prostitute. The man was not as young as his lithe body and smooth-skinned, angular face first made him appear. Strip bleaching was once again undergoing a brief surge of trendy popularity, but the cobwebby curtain of hair this joyboy pushed out of his face was bone white to the roots, as were the thick lashes fringing his smoky blue eyes.
"Pendergast!”
“I stand so accused,” he drawled, then added in a way that made it clear he was quoting something, "Drest thus, I seem a different creature."
“No shit. That’s quite a get-up.” D’Agosta resisted an urge to grab him by the throat and shake him. Special Agent Pendergast, despite an appearance that would be striking even without his albino coloring, was something of a human chameleon. The agent loved these undercover excursions a bit too much, and he had a sneaking suspicion that half his enjoyment came from fooling D‘Agosta himself. “I thought by now you'd be back in New Orleans sipping mint juleps and whipping the houseboys."
"Matters have not been entirely cleared up."
"The Lobotomy Killer," D'Agosta said, nodding wearily. "I should have figured."
That was the sobriquet the tabloids had given him: a modern day Jack the Ripper with a twist, he killed by thrusting a thin, semi-rigid instrument into the victim's eye socket, piercing the eggshell-thin bone at the back and plunging deep into the brain.
"What do you know about the killings," Pendergast asked.
D'Agosta shrugged. He was trying not to look at Pendergast, sitting there with one leg crossed over the other, fingers interlaced and resting on his knee. Calm and cool as always, despite being dressed like a five dollar whore. "Same as everyone, I guess."
"Did anything strike you as peculiar about the m.o.?"
"Yeah, now that you mention it. The victims were all men. Most serial killers kill women, right?"
"Typically, yes, although there have been notable exceptions," Pendergast agreed. "But what I refer to specifically was the manner in which the victim's brain was injured. Aside from damage caused by the weapon’s trajectory, in all cases the hypothalamus had been sucked out, as if through a straw."
"I didn't see the latest coroner's report." Eating the brains. That sounded too damn familiar. "You don't think it's - it can't be. I thought they all . . . were taken care of when we flooded the tunnels. It's gotta be a coincidence, or a copycat.”
Pendergast hung his head for a moment, looking pensive. The bangs he'd tucked behind his ear came loose and he swept them back again, fixing D'Agosta with a chilling sidelong stare. "I, too, believed they had all perished, but I erred. I assumed. I am terribly ashamed. Which is why I am here now, and not at all officially.“
“You ‘erred‘? Like how?“
“All the identified victims - Frock, Kawakita, Whittlesey - were male. We, or rather, I, assumed that the Wrinklers represented both male and female victims, but that is not the case. The Mbwun creatures are sexually dimorphic."
"Sounds kinky."
Pendergast chose to ignore that. “It simply means that the sexes are extremely divergent in size and shape, much more so than the extrapolator program could have predicted. The gecko genes expressed themselves differently in female victims. No doubt this would allow the two genders to exist in the same physical territory while exploiting very different ecological niches. The males, when transformed, went down . . . but the females went up, and thus escaped our engineered deluge.”
“Well, wait a minute. If those things have been here all along, why did the killings start just now? And how are they different? I mean, what exactly are we looking for here?”
Pendergast opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, focusing past D'Agosta. He nodded shortly. In the softest of whispers, he said, "Outside."
Something shot across the street and into the alley they were parked beside, on all fours but too big to be a dog. It moved so fast he sensed it more than saw it, but got the strange impression that it was wrapped in a cloak or blanket.
D'Agosta unholstered his Glock .22 and slipped out of the car. Pendergast remained inside, watching.
He played his flashlight into the unremitting darkness and was rewarded with a faint eye shine. He came closer and the animal backed away, trapping itself in the dead end alley. He aimed the beam, illuminating the creature as it scuttled further into the fogbound shadows.
It probably weighed no more than a man, but its attenuated limbs made it appear much larger. With its compact, tailless torso and sprawling arms and legs tucked tight to the body, it was vaguely froglike in shape. The head was long, tapered, almost elegant, equal parts lizard and collie dog, except for the dark, forward-facing eyes under heavy brows. Short, rust-red fur covered the head, neck, shoulders and back and the hindquarters, limbs and tail were beaded by mottled tan and blue scales. Some sort of grayish, leathery stuff was bunched between the arms and legs on each side. This close he could even smell it, like rotting apples, a syrupy sweetness verging on decay.
But as bizarre as the creature looked, he could still detect traces of humanity, even femininity, in its corded musculature, the bend of its limbs, the alert, knowing expression in the convex onyx curve of the eyes.
Of course, some of the most bloodthirsty, depraved monsters in nature were human beings.
The creature’s lips twitched back, revealing a flash of pearly fangs, and her tongue flickered out as if tasting the air. D’Agosta raised his weapon and sighted. This would be no more than putting down a dangerous animal, like a rabid dog . . .
The creature suddenly reared back. He froze with surprise as the long arms spread wide and the accordioned “cloak” unfolded with a rubbery snap. A thin membrane connected her fore and hind limbs like a humanoid flying squirrel. There were no batlike struts, just the raised filaments of tightly strung tendons, and the dark scrawl of veins, and the shine of dim moonlight through the wide-pulled stretch of it.
The creature’s hind legs straightened out, sending her into an arcing bound. He tried to keep a bead on her, but as she swept overhead her trident claws slashed down and knocked the gun from his grip. She landed lightly on the other side of the car and immediately sprang into the air again, vaulting over the car towards him, jaws that bite, claws that catch -
He dove back into the car and grabbed the radio. “10-91V!“
The thing’s arm stretched inside, claws slicing past his face and punching through the radio and instrumentation in a shower of sparks. Pendergast grabbed the membrane stretching back from her wrist in both hands and twisted it viciously. The creature let out a chattering cry of pain and the arm withdrew.
D’Agosta slammed the door so hard the glass cracked. He leaned back, trying to catch his breath. His heart was hammering so rapidly he was sure he was about to have a heart attack. The agent hadn‘t moved from his seat.
“Pendergast, are you packing or what?”
“I fear I didn’t have room for firearms,” he said, indicating his clothes with a dismissive gesture. “I did not expect to confront the creature tonight, only track and observe it.”
She wasn’t finished yet. Dropping onto all fours, she disappeared below his line of sight. A moment later there was a loud bang and the car lurched to one side. Another bang and hiss, and the car settled down, tilted forwards. She'd taken out the front tires.
They were trapped, weaponless and with their communications cut off.
A huge forepaw slapped onto the outside of the driver‘s side window. D'Agosta could clearly see the ridged, veiny pads, the arching fingers, the scimitar claws. Pendergast sat very, very still as her digits spread out, claw tips ticking on the glass. His face was paler than D'Agosta had ever seen, all blood drained away leaving him sickly-white as a corpse. Almost without moving his lips, he whispered, "I'm afraid we are in trouble."
"You don't say," D'Agosta said truculently.
"Vincent, listen to me, and listen to me carefully. You are not going to approve of this, but it might very well save our lives."
The car rocked as the creature shifted her weight, leaning against the window. The claw tips squeaked on the glass, and a small chunk fell loose. The latticework of cracks widened.
"I'm listening."
"Do you remember the printouts from Kawakita's extrapolator program? It also predicted an enhanced estrus for the female of the species."
"Yeah?"
"A human female has a suppressed cycle, so suppressed that she herself may not even realize when she is ovulating, much less her mate. She is 'available' all of the time. It is conducive to pair bonding - "
With a rippling, sucking sound the paw pulled loose of the glass. The creature inserted her central talon in between the glass and the rubber seal, deep into the mechanism of the door.
"Shit, it's unlocking the door!" He turned wide-eyed to Pendergast. "Reader's Digest version, please."
"This is important! It explains why these creatures haven't been killing until now. They've been in hiding, hunting only the prey they need to survive. But this must be their mating season . . . now they are hunting for males, not prey."
"But we killed all the males!"
"They are after the next best thing. Remember, they are at the mercy of their instincts, but they were human once." He risked a glance out the window. All that could be seen was the creature's belly, fox-red fur above and oily, pebbled scales below, heaving as it grunted and worked at the door mechanism.
"Tell her I'm married!"
Pendergast favored him with a slight, sardonic grin. “I am afraid that would have an instigating effect. Did you notice the creature was bleeding from several fresh cuts?”
“What would attack that?” There was a loud whirring click from inside the door, and D’Agosta flinched. Sounded like she'd hit the power window motors. “I don’t think even a pit bull on crack would nuts enough to take that thing on.”
“I agree. The wounds consist of sets of three long, shallow, parallel gashes, the sort of injury that would be inflicted by the claws of another female Mbwun creature. I would conjecture they were fighting over available males. A female, especially a large-bodied mammal like our friend here, has a higher biological investment in fewer children. In order to pass on her genes to as many individuals as possible, she must make sure she bears the fittest sons, who will be able to fertilize many females. And she does that by choosing the most appealing males, who would of course, resembling their fathers, appeal to the females of the next generation. Obviously the Mbwun creatures, once having mated, ensure that no other female has access to the superior male she has chosen by killing her erstwhile mate.“
"So? What the hell do we do?"
He reached out and put one long, slender hand on D'Agosta's thigh. "Convince her we're not suitable partners."
"Oh, no. Oh, God, no!"
"My dear Vincent," he said in a low, hurried voice. "We don't have a choice."
"I think I'll die instead, thank you very much."
There was a loud clunk from the door. The creature slapped her adhesive forepaw on the glass again and yanked it down in a serious of jerks, the mechanism inside the door grinding and squealing in protest. Icy needles of rain swept inside, and then the choking musk of the creature’s scent.
"Now, Vincent." The voice he'd thought of as a warm cat's purr only a few minutes ago now sounded altogether different. Deep in his throat, it became feline in a different way, almost predatory. "Now."
And then those long, slender fingers were deftly unbuttoning his trousers.
“Wait! No, this is - I can’t!”
With the slightest trace of irritability, Pendergast whispered, “Please quell your maidenly objections. All you have to do is sit quietly, I will do the rest. Do you recall Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter on her wedding night?”
He couldn’t believe that the agent could ask him something like that as he was touching him - touching him there - and pulling his cock free from his boxers. His bright yellow boxers with Spongebob’s face on them, which Vinnie got him as a joking Christmas present and which were the only nearly-clean pair in the hamper this morning . . .
“Close your eyes and think of England. Really, this is no more personally invasive than a colonoscopy, which I trust you have done regularly, and hopefully a bit more pleasant.”
He couldn’t answer. He’d gone rigid with exquisite torture.
D'Agosta didn't know what he was expecting, but it certainly hadn't been this: Pendergast's taking his member in both hands and giving it a quick kiss on the very tip, then simply hovering his open mouth just a hair's width away. His breath was hot as he breathed out, cooling as he inhaled.
D’Agosta had assumed Pendergast intended to simulate the act, but he realized as he saw the creature thrust her wet-rimmed, flaring nostrils towards them that she could probably smell if they were faking.
He let his breath out in a hiss as the agent's tongue circled the head, then swept up and down his shaft in a busy figure eight motion, coating him with hot saliva. D'Agosta gripped the steering wheel so hard he felt his fingernails leaving permanent dents in the soft plastic. To his utter shock, he could feel his meat twitching, the internal wrench, the warm, heavy gush of blood. He was actually getting a hard-on.
Pendergast said, "Ah," under his breath, and before D'Agosta could ask what, the man began to really go to work.
That tongue was as brilliant a linguist in this as anything else, swirling roughly around his head, rasping and tumbling it inside his mouth, rubbing the glans against the ridges of his palate. He slowly twisted his head from side to side, making sure his moist lips stayed in contact with the coronal ridge, then sucked in his cheeks, holding the suction for a couple of strokes, and released.
D'Agosta bucked like a trapped animal, bending backwards until his vertebral column creaked in protest, grinding his hips down into the seat. Despite the bitter cold, sweat gummed up his skin, soaked his shirt. Muscles twitched explosively along the back of his arms, along his arched spine like timed detonations bringing a building down. He felt the leakage of precum. Pendergast stopped for a moment, turned away and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
In the momentary lull, D'Agosta managed to gather enough of his wits together to check on the whereabouts of the creature. Her floral-putrid scent still filled the car, substantial enough to cut with a knife. It was a yeasty, violently organic stench, clinging and penetrating, burning his nostrils, wafting up through his sinuses and saturating his brain.
The creature herself had backed away from the car and crouched like a spider, her unwavering gaze fixed on them still. It began to rain in a misty, invisible way, and dampness made a sheen on her scales and jeweled her short, dense fur.
He was going to hell for this . . . except that he was already in hell, with his own personal demon, red as cinnabar, leathery winged, lean and hairy and scaled, peaked ears curving like horns above the long skull, poised and waiting to carry him off.
"Vincent?" Pendergast asked quietly. "Are you well?"
“Gah . . . good,” he panted.
“There is no reason not to give this performance my best effort,” he said, licking his lips. “And every reason to make it as convincing as possible.”
"I . . . I don't . . . "
The agent met his eyes, a direct, interested stare. "You're doing quite admirably yourself, considering," he said. There was no hint of coyness, no deliberate eroticism. He sounded so matter-of-factly patronizing that he might have been complementing D'Agosta on a well-played but losing game of tennis rather than a bout of sinful lovemaking.
It made him feel like a piece of meat, which was irritating, but at the same time it was oddly arousing. Somehow, he was able to speak through his gritted teeth. "Yeah, well, I've had better."
Pendergast merely chuckled, and he lowered his head again. Wrapping his hand around the base of his cock, he tightening his little finger around the base of the shaft, leaving the thumb and index finger looser. He moved his hand up and down in unison with his mouth, a tunnel of flesh, tight and hot, his lips compressing and releasing, a sort of lip-massage that added ringlets of pleasure.
D'Agosta had had a few b.j.s before, mostly in high school, but nothing like this. It felt as good or better to have his cock sucked and licked top to bottom, his balls gently played with and the head caressed, then to have some girl trying to imitate Deep Throat and choking as she went down on him like a python swallowing a goat.
Pendergast kept varying what he was doing, never sticking to one movement for very long as his slender hands strayed, caressing, pinching, petting. He circled his fingers around just the base of his shaft then, clamping tightly, he pumped his hand up and down, rotating his hand as he stroked to create a delicious friction. Stroking up to meet his mouth coming down, and then stroking down towards the base as his mouth was coming off, thrusting his tongue in and out, and rubbing the head against the ridges of his palate.
D'Agosta forced his streaming eyes open. The creature threw her elongated arms out and leaped - but she was not leaving, not yet. The car bounced roughly, the inadequate shocks unable to absorb the impact as she landed on the roof. Pendergast gagged, and for a moment bit down -
The mist had thickened to a drizzle, the drizzle congealed into rain that ran in silvery rivulets down the glass. Through it, he could see her muzzle once more stuck through the window, this time upside down. D'Agosta could barely make out the gaping pink mouth lined with many small, hooked fangs like ivory thorns. The curve of her jaws made her appear to be grinning.
The creature's tongue slipped out, probing against the glass. It was long, a dark, flat cartilaginous blue-black ribbon. The sides curled inward, forming a stiff, hollow tube - the weapon.
Pendergast either deigned to ignore the creature or was too deeply occupied to notice her. Now that D'Agosta was fully hard, he got a little harder and faster with him. He scratched his fingernails across the aching shaft, lightly skimming his teeth along the swollen head, squirming his tongue roughly against the little v-shaped place behind the head. Who was doing this to him ceased to matter, he ceased to think - he even forgot about the beast with her grinning muzzle inches from his face.
His pulse pounded in his temples, and he was squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that he could see stars. The stars rushed toward him and struck with a ghostly impact, blasting him outward. Gazing inward from all points of the compass at once, he saw all the matter in the universe gather at his exact center, dwindle to a single glowing point, and wink out. At once he was collapsing inward, shrinking, compressing. There was a momentary sensation of searing heat and crushing weight, and then -
Release.
Pendergast jerked his head away at the last possible second, which was fine. He would have died of mortification if the agent had accidentally swallowed his cum.
There was a burst of angry, high-pitched chittering from outside. The car rocked again as the creature jumped off and clung to the side of the building.
"That was . . . "
"Yes. Excellent. Very convincing," Pendergast gasped, softly sibilant. "Worthy of Anacreon. Although I did not intend for our deception to become so involved."
“Oh, my God.” As the blood rushed away from his groin and back into his brain, the full import hit him. D'Agosta put his head between his knees and moaned. He couldn’t believe what had happened. What he’d done. He was married, for chrissakes, he had a kid . . . and he wasn’t just playacting to trick the monster.
After the first few seconds, he’d truly enjoyed what Pendergast was doing.
“Vincent? Dear Vincent.” His voice was all honeysuckle and magnolia again. "We never asked ourselves why . . . why would anyone, animal or human, have eaten the Lilicae in the first place? The plant survived with its reovirus load because it was putting out chemical attractants, pheromones . . . the same ones the female Mbwun must have been producing."
He didn’t look up. D'Agosta felt Pendergast’s slim fingers tangle in his damp, tousled hair, stroking his head.
“Don’t you see? The Lobotomy Killer victims, those poor fellows walked right into death with their arms wide open. As soon as the creature came close you and I were hit full-strength with the same pheromones."
Impulsively he raised his head, and found himself looking directly into Pendergast's argent eyes. Somehow he was reminded of this crazy cartoon Vinnie had been addicted to as a young kid, playing the VHS tape over and over again until the lines were engraved on D'Agosta's brain. Two frogs are escaping into a surreal basement. A subway train full of horned and cheerful devils pulls up, and the doors open. "Where does this train go?" one frog asks nervously, and the other replies, "To hell. But it makes one stop at Miami Beach."
He leaned over and gave Pendergast a brief, affectionate kiss on the lips.
The agent's reaction was to look startled. "Why did you do that?"
"Because I wanted to," he said. "And because you were great."
Pendergast glanced away for a moment, staring sightlessly out the rain-streaked window. D'Agosta studied his severe profile in stark silhouette: the high forehead, the aquiline nose and the depression of the frontal sinus shaping the bridge, the grim set of his mouth. For an instant, as he looked toward him, Pendergast's eyes seemed to flare with reddish light. Then he moved his head the barest fraction of a millimeter. The strange light extinguished, and he sighed. "This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen."
D'Agosta craned his head around and spotted the creature scuttling up the sheer side of the building. Right below the roof, she gathered herself into a compact knot of bony limbs and crumpled membranes, waited a moment, then flung herself into the open air. Her arms and legs jackknifed out, her webbing belled like a sail and she was transformed into a living kite, swept into the sky by a fierce updraft.
She passed across the unveiled moon like a shadow and then was gone.
But long after the fresh, cutting wind had swept the last lingering traces of pheromone out of the car’s interior, those cool, precise fingers persisted in stroking his hair, and he did not make a move to stop them.
author's notes:
1. The poem Pendergast quotes is by Robert Buchanan:
O Pan! O Pan! thou art not dead:
Ghost-like, O Pan! thou glimmerest still,
A spectral face with sad dumb stare;
On rainy nights thy breath blows chill
In the street-walker’s dripping hair!” . . . .
By lonely meres thou dost not wait;
But here, ‘mid living waves of Fate,
We feel thee go and come.
2. "Drest thus . . . " is from FAUST, by J.W. von Goethe, John Anster translation
3. Anacreon was a sex-crazed Greek poet who is considered the originator of the "Wine, Women and Song" genre. However, he preferred boys to women. When asked why his poems celebrated handsome young men rather than the gods, Anacreon replied, "Because they are my gods".
4. The cartoon with the hell-subway is FACE LIKE A FROG by Sally Cruikshank (www.funonmars.com)
5. "This cold night . . . " is from Shakespeare's KING LEAR
6. 10-91V is code for "vicious animal"
7. The title is from Rudyard Kipling's poem:
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-02 06:51 am (UTC)You wrote D'Agosta/Pendergast slash.
*quietly worships you*
Seriously, I've been waiting for someone to write something like this for years. So. Thank you. As a bonus, it was incredibly well-written and thought out, and I think I'll be amused (or very possibly faint) over the idea of Prostitute!Pendergast for a long time. Aloysius... just... stop.
He really does have far too much fun with fooling D'Agosta with his disguises. XD
I am sorry to intrude, really, I only found this by searching through the Rare Slash community. I just wanted to let you know how fantastic I thought the story was, as well as how happy I am to see (I believe, at least) the first slash Pendergast fic. So happy! So unbelievably happy!
Because it was so unbelievably good! A good beginning-- D'Agosta being his usual kind self-- a fairly tense, yet sexy middle, and an ending that left me content and having that "Pendergast slash!" warm sort of afterglow that, erm, I've never been able to have before. *grins* So thanks.
(Now that I've felt it, of course... I want more. Argh.)
Again, wonderful job! Very, very well-written! :) Thank you so much for absolutely making my night, and possibly even my entire week!
--Kay
no subject
Date: 2005-07-02 08:48 pm (UTC)I'll be posting this to skyehawke.com and there's another one in the works *wink*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-02 09:19 pm (UTC)I'd offer you my soul, but it's like Swiss cheese. Full of holes, and no one actually likes it.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-03 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-03 05:49 am (UTC)... an action figure.
I don't know whether to laugh myself sick (because the moment I saw it, I wanted to know if you could strip it-- my brain lives in gutters, sorry) or fangirl like silly over it.
*does both*
You are an utter genius, obviously.
Eeee!
Date: 2005-07-12 09:03 am (UTC)