The Third Nail
Fandom: Ultraviolet UK (tv)
Written for: Melody in the Yuletide 2003 Challenge
by Janis Cortese
The Third Nail
"What's around?"
They like a beating heart. They like the taste of it, the freshness.
"There's nothing."
As long as I don't have one, I'm safe.
If it had awakened, if it had stirred sluggishly back to life after years of hibernation, that
would surely make it shrivel up and withdraw back into its hole, where it couldn't get
him killed.
It hadn't started with a bang, hadn't even made that old thump-thump noise that
he remembered. Well, aside from the pounding in his ears when he'd sat with a ring of
cold metal against his neck, an unfeeling little "o" jammed against his adam's apple that
promised deliverance from evil. But that was different. Any hunted animal felt fear, and
he wouldn't be the first to chew himself into pieces to escape from a trap.
But his heart, goddamn it. He'd thought he'd banished it, or at least wrestled it
under control until it did nothing beyond moving his blood around, keeping him alive.
They'd nearly drunk him down to nothing in the desert, drained him. He hadn't been
lying to Michael; they'd very nearly managed it before the desert sun came up, flooding
the sands like a biblical deluge and sending them scurrying like cockroaches.
That had been the first nail in the coffin.
Well, no. Actually, when he'd joined up, that was the first. The army's gay policy was
significantly less ... enlightened back then. He'd put his heart behind one set of shields
then, when he'd signed up. Say nothing, tell no one. Love no one. The nightmare in the
desert had been the second nail.
And by the time he'd found himself recruited by the icy haematologist and the ex-priest,
he figured the coffin would stay shut with two nails in it. Both of them had betrayed
roiling waters beneath their cool exteriors, and Vaughan imagined that they thought
themselves quite calm on the outside, impenetrable. Vaughan made sure that his
facade was a bit more firmly in place. Then again, as a queer in the British army
("It's a Man's Life in the Modern Army!"), he'd had more practice.
And then, separated from the safety of sunlight by steel and his own weakness as he
watched four coffins placidly counting down to perdition, his heart had started thudding
again.
"Look mate, when you say 'nothing' -- "
"Mike, mate ... shut up."
Then there was the final decision, to go all the way. Stopping his heart once and for all.
And the fucking thing had thudded to life, demanding one final say before it was silenced
for good. It had reeled out everything in front of his eyes, the college love he had pushed
away before going into the army, the faces of his mates whom he'd shot rather than let
them be turned into snacks --
Committing suicide to keep from getting killed, isn't that what they called it?
some great wit had said when they been handed their little suicide capsules before being
dumped in the middle of the desert in 1991.
Angela. Angela, who was clear and focused as a lens, and as brittle, needing someone
more than she ever realized and unable to let go of what she could never have.
Michael.
Michael, who had the balls to think he could manage this job without nailing the coffin
shut. Arrogant, stupid little bastard. How the hell could anyone have been a cop for that
long and still be an idealist?
He was going to get himself killed, or get his heart broken six ways from Sunday.
Vaughan knew what awaited Michael; when his heart got broken into small enough
pieces, he'd see the wisdom of keeping it safely locked away. It hurt the hell out of him,
though -- and when he'd been crouched up against that door, ready to blow out his
hindbrain, he'd finally let himself grieve for the creature Michael would become one day.
He'd let the picture flash across his mind's eye, of Michael in a few years' time if he
survived, with his smile driven off of his lips for good and his eyes dull as lead. Green as
grass, they were now, and they seemed to be fixed on a far distant place even when they
looked right into Vaughan's.
Vaughan had mourned the imminent death of what little innocence Michael possessed
after ten years with the metropolitan police as he had mourned Derek, who would not
have agreed to a life as some closet-case soldier's dirty little secret anyway. He'd let it
all float up from his memory, welling around his brain like a cool tide as he'd pulled back
the hammer and lodged the muzzle of his handgun under his windpipe. He was about to
die. Those memories couldn't hurt him now.
And he hadn't even had to do it.
The men who had come with Michael to rescue him were off scouring the surroundings
around the warehouse while Vaughan sat in rear of the copter and cursed the fact that his
goddamned heart was harder to silence that he'd ever thought.
"All right, mate?" Michael had asked, his handgun in one hand and his other leaning
against the helicopter's open hatch. Behind him, night had fallen and Vaughan could
hear the scufflings and hollers of the men as they began to clear the brushy area
surrounding the warehouse. Some of the security lights were on autotimer and had
flashed on in the past few minutes; evidently, these warehouses were normally used to
store some fairly big-ticket items, or else their owners wouldn't have bothered with the
expense. Unsurprising, given that said owners had probably had money sitting in stocks
since the turn of the century. Compound interest added up after that much time.
Vaughan closed his eyes and hunched forward, his elbows on his knees. He laced his
fingers together behind his head and felt the dirt in his hair, then brushed it out.
Michael had stopped then, when he'd seen Vaughan's face, ashen beneath its rich color
and his eyes staring. Vaughan pressed his hands over his face and the damned things
wouldn't stop shaking. He hadn't known that Michael would stick his face into the
fucking thing; he'd figured he would have run off to play soldier with the rest of them.
Cops weren't soldiers, though. Michael had had to handle witnesses and victims before
one on one, and had managed to develop a decent rapport with frightened people as a
result.
"I'm fine," Vaughan said. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"What do you - "
"Go help them," he said curtly, nodding out towards where the soldiers had already split
up, their shouts fading into the darkness. One of the floodlamps was shining right in his
eyes, beyond Michael's head and putting a glowing halo around the ends of his hair.
"They'll manage on their own," Michael had said. "I'm worried about you."
"I told you," Vaughan snapped out, "if I were one of them, I'd have done you by now."
Interesting turn of phrase, some part of his brain yammered at him. Great. He'd
thought he would only have to sequester his heart, and now his fucking brain was getting
into the act.
Michael climbed into the helicopter, avoiding the various controls and mechanical bits
and pieces in the process, and sat down next to him. The harsh lights threw little slashes
and triangles across them both. "That's not what I meant," he told him. "And you know
it." He put a hand on Vaughan's back. "Are you all right?" he said again.
"I'll live."
"Glad to hear it. Come on, you've had a hell of a scare."
"Not the first time."
"No, and that's what I'm thinking about." Vaughan didn't move, but his gaze slid up to
fix itself on Michael's face, neutral and waiting, and in that, cold as ice. "Don't give me
that look."
"What look?"
"You're not a fucking machine."
Vaughan's gaze refocused, shifting out to a point directly ahead of his nose. His
breathing had evened out, and his hands weren't so cold anymore. "More's the pity."
Michael whoofed. "Oh, don't give me that shit."
The interior of the helicopter was cramped and close, and Michael was nearly on top of
him. Their thighs were pressed together from hip to knee.
"Do you know what you're going to turn into?" Vaughan found himself saying.
"Well, you did say I had a lot of potential," Michael replied with a curl to his lip. He
reached forward under the pilot's seat of the helicopter where someone had placed a
water bottle, and pulled up on the top. "Here."
Vaughan took it. "Thanks." Three long pulls later, he had nearly drained it. Both of
them looked at the almost empty bottle. "Guest I needed it more than I thought."
"Fear'll sweat a lot out of you," Michael told him evenly. "You'll be all right?"
I should be asking you that. Vaughan laughed out loud at the strange phrase that
bubbled up from his mind, riding images of his mates laughing, talking about what they
would do after they came back from the mission. Vaughan had never been attracted to
any of them, but he'd loved them nonetheless. Loved them for their easygoing
acceptance of danger, for their camaraderie, for the way they bubbled cheerfully about
how they would pass the time when they got back to Jeddah after they were finished with
this tour and then went home. One of them wanted to buy a house with his girl. Another
wanted to see his new baby. Another wanted to get stinking drunk the second he got the
hell out of the desert and Saudi Arabia and was planning on drinking Germany dry the
second he made wheels-down in the US base in Germany.
Bang. Bang bang bang. That had been the second nail. Michael looked at him,
and he saw those amazing green eyes swim up at him from behind a hazy veil of images
that faded into the present.
That friend of his, his partner, that had been Michael's first nail.
"What?"
Vaughan wondered what his second nail would be.
Don't let it, he nearly said to him. Mike mate, don't let them kill your heart.
Don't let them make you kill it.*
[][][]
They had gone back to Mike's flat immediately afterwards, ostensibly just for a few
minutes before they went in to see Angela and Pearse and debrief them on precisely what
had happened. It was odd. He'd had Mike pegged as a rampant, irredeemable
heterosexual from the way he mooned over that girl Kirsty.
"What's this about killing your heart, now?" Michael had said when he'd pulled a cold
beer out of his refrigerator and handed it to Vaughan.
"God, you drink this stuff?" Vaughan had said incredulously as he looked down at the
bottle. American piss-water. "Looks like it's been through somebody already."
"So you want a brandy?" Mike said. "Get a shower, and then we'll go in. You look like
shit."
And after Vaughan had stepped out of the shower, Mike had been waiting at the end of
the short hall, leaning against his kitchen counter with a half-done beer in one hand.
"Now, what's all this about killing my heart?" he'd said then.
Vaughan laughed, once, a short dry bark. "You don't let up, do you?"
"No."
"Worse than that girlfriend of yours." He tucked the towel around his waist.
"She's not my girlfriend," Mike replied curtly, draining the rest of the beer. He was a
rank amateur at hiding bitterness, and Vaughan told him so. "Yeah well, fuck you, too."
"Mike - "
Michael stopped, half facing away.
"Look, I don't want ... " Vaughan pressed his mouth closed and began again. "The way
you're going, you're gonna get hurt. And I don't mean killed. I don't want you to - "
"To what?"
Was there any easy way to say this? I've been through everything you've been
through, and as bad as you think it is, it's going to get worse. "I'm trying to make it
easier for you, mate."
"It's not easy."
"I didn't say easy, I said easier. It's not going to be easy. But you've got to manage it,
don't you? Else you're going to get killed, you're going to get us killed, and ... "
"And."
"And you're going to get your heart broken a dozen different ways." Vaughan had
walked down to where Michael was facing half away from him. He stood there for some
time.
"I remember what you said," Michael said finally, dangling the empty beer bottle
between his fingertips as he stood and his voice a whisper. "When I asked you what've I
got."
Vaughan remembered it. He suddenly felt very conscious of the fact that he was standing
in Michael's flat wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, and everything that
swarmed up to wreathe him in the warehouse did so again, with no comfort whatsoever in
it this time. "You've got me."
Michael looked up at him then, his eyes like nails, a direct challenge. "How much of
you?"
No one could be entirely heterosexual and know how to do what Michael did with his
mouth. Vaughan wondered just what the hell had gone on between him and his partner
before Michael's determined assault on his prick banished coherent thought. He slid
down along the wall, his eyes wide and staring, his mouth open as Michael knelt in front
of him and gave him a bath-house blow job that made him see stars. He put both hands
on Michael's head, gripping his hair between his fingers. The beer bottle had clattered to
the wood floor, the towel torn off as Vaughan's bare arse sat on Michael's knees, with
Michael hunched over him. Vaughan could feel Michael's handgun in his waistband
holster against his thigh and didn't give a damn.
"Jesus fucking Christ ... " Michael said when Vaughan was left gasping. He leaned
forward and pressed the crown of his head to Vaughan's chest. "Fucking hell ... " He
sniffed then, and brought his hands up to wipe at his eyes.
They didn't stay like that for long. Michael got up then, his eyes red but his voice steady
and his cheeks dry. "Get dressed," he said shortly. Vaughan picked up the towel and
pulled it around himself. His own eyes, large and dark as night, looked empty, stunned.
"We've got to get in, or else they'll be calling - " He was interrupted by the tinny ring of
his cellphone. "Get dressed," he hissed, pulling it out of his pocket. "Colefield," he said
into it as Vaughan went back into the bathroom and pulled on his filthy clothing.
By the time he exited, he was back in place. His face showed nothing of what had
happened.
"Ready?" Michael asked him, pulling car keys out of his jacket pocket. Vaughan
nodded. "Let's go, then."
The first two nails had worked loose when he hadn't been looking. The third one would
stay put if he had anything to say about it.
END
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