Title: "Blood"

Fandom: 8MM

Pairing: Tom Welles [Nicolas Cage]/Max California [Joaquin Phoenix]

Fandom No.: 33.

Author: MonaR. (aka Mona Ramsey, aka Mona)

Story #: 506.

Series: Probably not.

Webpage: The skeleton of one is at http://www.geocities.com/monaram

Rating: NC-17.

Warnings: Explicit slash (m/m) content, violence, and a general mindfuck warning. This is as far from vanilla as you can get. Oh, and songfic.

Archive: Yeah, at RareSlash, CKoS, WWOMB, or anyone else who would like it.

Notes: I don't use betas. :( Any mistakes are solely my fault and the fault of my *#^&@ spellcheck.

** is used for emphasis, // for thought. Any weird characters should be hunted down and killed.

Feedback: Yes if you're moved to write me by the story, no if you think that *unless* you write me, I won't write any more stories. Anyone with even a glancing knowledge of my posting history (this *is* my 400-and-something-th story) knows that isn't true. Feedback is gratefully accepted and responded to whenever possible. Flames are buried in the backyard, along with a few skeletons.

Spoilers: Yes, for the whole thing.

Summary: Tom Welles finds a way to cleanse himself.

{This story has been bugging me since I wrote the last one, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to start it. If I could write from the end to the beginning just once, I think I'd be much relieved. . .

"It Can't Rain All the Time" is from "The Crow" soundtrack - my favourite writing tool - by G. Revell, J. Siberry.}

Sometimes I forget.

No - okay, no, that's not true. I never forget. That's the thing about the truth - it's always true, and once you know the truth you can't un-know it. Once you see, you can't un-see. But sometimes I can pretend; I'm like Mary Ann's mother was, and every time the phone rings I pick it up and expect it to be him, even though I *know* he's dead as surely as if I'd killed him myself. It's like a game that I play with myself, but it's one that only works if I haven't slept, if I've had a little too much to drink and smoke, if my wife is in bed and my daughter is asleep and the house is quiet. I'm not drunk, not quite; I've just had that one last drink that blurs the lines, makes the edges just a little bit fuzzy and out of focus, the one where I can pretend.

I've thought about it a thousand times, run it over and over in my mind like a continuous film-loop, and I still can't work it out. It somehow just happens - like I've become the editor, snipping and pasting bits around, I'm in one place and then I'm in another, and they're still all dead because of me, and I wonder, I wonder why I didn't do it when it would have made a difference. Because I *knew* that he was going to die when they brought him in, tied up and beaten and frightened and pleading. I'm not stupid; it was never in the plan to let him live or let me live, either, and I can't pretend that I didn't know that. He knew, too, and I just want to ask him if - if it hurt. Not the dying, but the *knowing*. Like it makes a difference, now.

But I'm thinking too hard. It doesn't work unless I stop thinking.

**********
last night I had a dream
you came into my room
you took me into your arms
whispering and kissing me, and telling me to still believe
**********
So I close my eyes and I'm back in the warehouse, and nobody is moving. The film canister is in my hand, and I know what's going to happen when I hand it over, but I'm still pretending that it doesn't have to be the way it *has* to be. I know everything now, but what I remember thinking then is whatever happens, I'm probably going to die. The thing is, I can see on his face that he *knows* it - his one eye is swollen shut, the other one ringed so black with bruises that I can't see the green or the blue, and it somehow doesn't even occur to me that I know what colour his eyes are. He's bleeding, and he's so scared and his body is so shattered that it's hard for him to breathe. Maybe two, maybe three of his ribs are broken, and I think he's wondering what comes first: if they kill him, or fuck him, or even if they care that much. Maybe it doesn't matter.

I'm watching him, and he's standing there looking at me, like Jesus on the fucking cross, and it occurs to me that maybe he's *supposed* to die, because he's the innocent one, so he has to die for my sins and for the sins of everyone in this satanic room. I don't want it, but I can't figure out how not to make it happen - how to make it happen the way I need it to happen. But if I remind myself that none of this is real and I'm not really there and I know the end, now - then in my mind I can do it. I can do it if I just close my eyes and stop looking at him and seeing his death in his eyes. If I click my heels together three times, 'there's no place like home', and open them again, he's not dead.

He's still standing there - not nailed and doubled over on the cross, with the blood from his cut throat pouring onto the floor, but looking at me, and he doesn't believe it, and he's telling me that he doesn't believe it even though the tape is still covering his mouth, and the blood is dripping down his face like the wounds from a crown of thorns, and his knees are weak. They're all there, and it's the ending the way that it was and the way that it *should* have been: Longdale's on the floor, the arrow from the crossbow right through the spot his heart would have been if he'd had one, like a vampire staked out and waiting to be burned by the light of the sun. Dino's lying in a pool of his own blood, his bullet-wound the vampire's bite on his neck, dead and still despairing of the cruel twist of fate that there were no cameras around to catch the action. Eddie's gone, just a pile of ash, not even in the form of a man anymore. I could sweep what's left up into a trash bag, if I cared that much. And the Machine - the Machine's been unmasked, a pathetic, psychopathic, four-eyed mama's boy dressed in street clothes, rain-soaked even though we're still inside, with a big fucking knife in his chest.

I'm wet, too, and shivering like I've just been born. I see what I've done, and I see what I've become, and I'm happy, partly because they're dead - because no matter if I'm awake or asleep, in the real world or the one in my mind, I'm always happy that they're dead - but mostly because it isn't too late. Because he's alive.

**********
when I'm lonely, I lie awake at night and I wish you were here
I miss you
can you tell me is there something more to believe in
or is this all there is
**********
I don't know why we go back to the hotel, or even how we get there; I only know that in my dreams, like in my life, I can blink and the whole world changes. I don't know why I wait until we're inside to take the tape off of his mouth - in one fast motion because it will hurt less that way. I don't know why I don't untie him, or why he doesn't ask me to, but I tear his bloodied shirt away from his body until I can see his mottled skin, dark and light with bruises. He's so hurt, and so am I, and all that I can think is that he should be dead, but every time I think that the blood drips down like tears just a little bit more, so I try not to think at all.

By the time I've undressed him, my hands are slick with the stuff - I'm not sure if it's more his blood or mine, but I'm wiping my hands in wide circles over his bruises, painting his skin in swathes of red and black. Jesus, I think, and maybe it isn't a curse, maybe I'm talking to him, asking him what to do. His mouth opens to speak but I can't hear him, and I have to bend over so that his lips brush my ear when they move, and still I can't hear him, only now it's because of the pounding pulse in my head, and I turn my head.

My lips just rest on his, just barely touching them, and I breathe, in and out, recycling the air from his lungs into mine and back again until I'm dizzy. I know he's too weak to move but I don't even question it when his body lurches up against mine and then we're not breathing, we're kissing. I can't touch him anywhere that isn't bruised, and I can't not touch him because he's the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen, and I could spend the rest of my life and his just watching the rise and fall of his chest. The kiss is warm, and wet, and I wonder if there's blood in my mouth. It lasts longer and longer, because I don't need to breathe and neither does he, but when I drag my mouth away from his I'm the one sucking air into my lungs like a dying man.

It isn't until I peel away his leather pants, also slick with blood, that I realize that his hands are still tied behind his back, and it must hurt the way he's lying on them, but he's just staring at me and I need to see him. The cuts over his eyes are still bleeding, and there's a wound on his side, and when I pull off his shoes some of my blood splashes on his feet. I want to check his hands but I don't dare untie him because I'm afraid of what I'll find. I think I'm afraid that if I do I'll ask for what I want right out loud - his blessing - and I'm also afraid that he might take that to mean that I don't want to receive my absolution by fucking him until he screams. I almost wish I'd left the tape over his mouth.

I move my mouth down over his body, over tattoos and blood, over nipples and bruises and blood, over piercings and carvings and blood, over blood and more blood until I'm drinking it down, licking it away, burning him with my tongue and my teeth, and he's gasping and crying out but I can't hear him. The blinking light from the motel-sign in the window has burned us both with red heat - no more of that cool blue glare from the tv-screen; we're not frozen, we're aflame. My mouth tastes copper and fire, blood and sweat and tears, and his cock his slick with it, and so hard. My fingers push inside, opening him up with blood, and when he comes, it's a gush of blood-red fire down my throat.

His mouth is open, and I thrust inside his body while he's still gasping for breath, turning his gasps into a keening cry of pain. I know it must be hard for him to do, but somehow he thrusts up anyway, putting his weight on his shoulders and the back of his head as his hips raise off the bed. The more I fuck him, the more he bleeds, new wounds opening all over his skin like flowers blooming, or like lashes from a whip; he's crying and the blood is his skin weeping. I want to stop, but it is the look on his face that compels me to finish it: he is serene, happy, enlightened, pure. The dirty, stained-white sheets are clean, now, soaked through red with his blood.

I can't stop, and I don't really want to. I want to fuck him forever, because it feels so good, because as long as I keep fucking him, he's alive. Of course, this is my dream, so it feels like forever, and I really can *feel* it - I can feel him, feel his flesh around me, feel the way his heart beats, feel the blood on my skin and in my mouth; but I know that even my dreams - even my *nightmares* - can't last forever. When I come, it's a river of blood, and I'm screaming and sated.

I fall on him, and I beg him to hold me, but his hands are tied behind him, fingers digging into the mattress. He whispers into my ear, murmuring benedictions and blessings, comforting me as I struggle to catch my breath. He waits for me to quiet and curl up against him, like a small child. Not once does he ask me to let him free. We are both suddenly silent, and I realize that the entire world is silent. There is no noise from the street - New York has quieted around us, as well.

After a while, I stand up, naked and smeared with blood. I find cigarettes and tear the tattered curtains from the window into strips of cloth and bring him water, and start to clean him up. It takes a long time to wash away that much blood, but I keep at it until I'm done, caressing and kissing his wounds. When I finish, he's clean and the room is a mess, the cuts and bruises are gone, and it is only I who look as though I've been through the wars. His breathing is shallow, and then it stops, but his blue and green eyes are both now open, and he watches me. I can feel the blood drying on my skin when I kneel down at the foot of the bed and look at him.

I stare into his eyes for the longest time, and when he blinks, I start to cry.

**********
(within the emptiness of the burning cities
against which we save our darkest selves...)
until I felt safe and warm
I fell asleep in your arms
when I awoke I cried again for you were gone
**********
That's always the point when it happens: I wake up, and I'm in bed beside my wife, holding her in my arms, and my daughter is asleep in her crib down the hall. The world hasn't changed, not really; because I know it now, and I know that no matter how many times I blink, it never will.

My wife murmurs something in her sleep, but I don't answer. I can't speak, because the taste of the blood is still thick on my tongue, and my tears burn fiery hollows into my skin as they fall down my cheeks.

**********
it won't rain all the time
the sky won't fall forever.
and though the night seems long
your tears won't fall forever

The End
MonaR.